Showing posts with label Celtic festival. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Celtic festival. Show all posts

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Knit In Public!


It's World Wide Knit in Public Day!

Well, sort of.

The website says that you can pick which day you choose to celebrate it on. From the twelfth to the twentieth of June. I suppose you could celebrate it all of those days if you wanted to, also.

The site at the link above wants to sell you lots of stuff. They have a store. But they don't tell you about knitting in public in your area. You can find out more about the history and founding of the "day" here.

I thought I could find a website to send you to with more information about activities in various places, but it seems to be very unstructured. If you google it, you can find information about a few activities in a few places, but there's no one centralized location to find out what's happening near you.

But keep in mind that you don't have to have a specific planned activity that's coordinated with a lot of people. You can just take your knitting with you and knit in public all by yourself! Then again, that makes it all just like any other day for me. I tend to carry something to knit with me whenever I go out, unless it's just walking to Safeway or the library, both of which I can see from my apartment. People on the bus ask me what I'm knitting, especially when it's a sock because I've gravitated toward the two-circular-needles method of knitting them, and I guess it looks funny to people not familiar with that method.

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I planned to knit in public at the Potomac Celtic Festival today, but Holly's not feeling too well, and she's got a problem with her foot. She says it feels like she stepped on some glass, but she can't find any glass or anything else in her foot. But she doesn't want to either walk or drive much today, so we're not going. I'm disappointed, but not terribly so. If I go, it means a lot of extra driving for her, and I hate to do that to her. It also means that if I went, I'd feel terrible from all the walking later today and for the next few days. And, on top of that, after the expense of the TiVo, I really don't have any money to spend unless I plan to starve at the end of the month.

So, I think what I should do is find some hard cider to buy and drink this weekend, and find a nice little Celtic or other special treat for myself to buy next month. It's just not a Celtic festival without scrumpy!

While I'm on the subject of scrumpy, I found the lyrics to one of my favorite folk songs, Dead Dog Scrumpy on the internet. And, as if that wasn't enough, here's a video of the song so you can hear it!



When Holly was younger, I put together a tape of folk songs that were humorous, and this was one of them. This next one was also on the tape.



It's called The Vicar and the Frog, and is here performed by Fred Wedlock. This was also one that Steve did for SCA (along with Scrumpy). They are not, I hasten to add, period songs for SCA, but period subjects. They'd both be great songs for the Celtic festival, too. I may not be getting something neat at the Celtic festival, but this is something for you.

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There is some good science fiction on TV this weekend. There will be a new Doctor Who on BBC in America this evening, The Hungry Earth.

Two of the Librarian series will be on TNT this weekend, Return to King Solomon's Mines and Curse of the Judas Chalice, plus I Am Legend, which I saw last weekend, and was surprisingly good, and Transformers, which I haven't seen yet, and don't have high expectations for, but I'm going to check out.

I watched Hancock last night on Encore, and was surprised at how good that was, too. Since it was on Encore, it'll be on again a few times in the next few days, so check it out!

There's probably a lot more, but I'm sure you can find things to watch on your own.

Have a wonderful weekend, and don't forget to knit in public!

Friday, June 12, 2009

Errands

I took the shoes that don't fit back. Thankfully, that's over!

Wednesday, I did all that running around, and, surprisingly, did not feel too bad. Yesterday, I went to the library and the grocery store and came back feeling awful! I've been analyzing what I did differently on the two days in order to prepare for all the walking I expect to do at the Celtic Festival tomorrow.

I have bunches of stuff to do before tomorrow morning so that I'll be ready. Got to get busy and do it all.

Have a great Friday evening and wonderful weekend!

Saturday, June 7, 2008

Mathematic and Fiberarts

I was reading the TECHknitting blog, and found a very intriguing article about mathematics and fiberarts.

It took me to this site, which mentions a fascinating book. The book sounded so interesting that I put it in my Amazon store and you can find it here. Needless to say, I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but it looks like something I want to buy as soon as I have the money.

You can find out more about how art and science coexist, and make your own model of chaos (it's very pretty) with the information here, and get a PDF of the crochet instructions for a Lorenz Manifold. Even if you're not interested, open the PDF and look at the part near the end. The finished Lorenz Manifold is stunningly beautiful!

I found more amazing articles about Knitting Mathematics, which has several wonderful links, Geometrics: a New Way to Crochet (this is a book which has a beautiful star afghan on the cover and some interesting projects), Crocheting a hyperbolic plane, and a list of a lot more.

Don't skip these pages because of the math. They are amazingly beautiful. Even if you aren't interested in math and crochet, these are a feast for the eyes.

Enjoy!

In the meantime, I have finally gotten around to washing the Mandalay silk yarn I bought for the rune bags. Of course, if I had been paying attention (and not so lazy) I could have washed it on Monday, then it would have had plenty of time to dry and be wound into balls by the time the knitting needles finally arrived. But then, that's the story of my life. I wanted to wash them because other people who used the same yarn (on Ravelry) mentioned the smell, which leads me to believe that there may still be some sericin in the yarn. Hence, the wash in hot water with plenty of soap. 

So, 4 skeins of yarn have been happily dripping into my tub overnight. They've just about stopped dripping, so I should be able to knit tomorrow. In the meantime, now that I have the needles to make the job nice, rather than a pain, I can finish the sample rune bag and find any bugs in the pattern.

I hope to have enough yarn to make 4 bags: a grey one for the lady who gave me a rune last year, a grey one for Holly, and a blue one and grey one for me. 

I live in hope that I can either get the sodalite runes that I bought, but never got, or find another set of runes just like it, plus I found some really beautiful clear crystal quartz runes online, and as soon as I get a few extra dollars, I plan to buy them. So, I'll need two rune bags.

Maybe I can find runes at the Celtic festival this coming weekend!

Lots of knitting ahead today!

Have a great weekend!