September Charms Homework

You may or may not be aware that I have joined a Harry Potter House Cup KAL on Ravelry.

Each month (or in one case, each week) there is a homework assignment posted for any members who care to participate.

The September Charms assignment was to choose either Lumos or Wingardium Leviosa to knit something for.

For Wingardium Leviosa, we need to make something that shows something that flies, or, for extra points, is something that flies itself, like a kite. The sweater I did for an earlier HP KAL would have been perfect. One year, for Christmas, Harry gets a blue sweater from Mrs. Weasley with a snitch on the front of it. Of course, since I did this for a previous KAL, it's not eligible.



For Lumos, you need to make something that shows something that lights up, or, better yet, something that actually lights up.

I made this Christmas stocking with beads (some of them star shaped) and white yarn that are glow-in-the-dark, so that when the lights go out, the stocking lights up by itself.

You can see other finished projects here.

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Yesterday, I planned to do a lot of things, but then reality intruded with it's own plans, and very little of the the things I planned actually got done.

I'm finding that the current second great depression is causing a lot of the same effects as the first one There was a discussion I heard on the radio about it because of a book that had been written on the the great depression. 

The author said that it tended to separate people by their reaction to it. Some people became very nasty and treated others badly because those others could no longer afford to pay their debts. Some of these people went so far as to abandon their children.

In other cases, whole communities banded together to help each other survive in the best way possible.

Yesterday, annoyed that my bank had imposed fees that they previously had told me they wouldn't do, I went to close an account with them. I was amazed to find that they refunded some of the fees, changed my account to one without fees, and added in several nice things I hadn't even thought to ask for! So, now, according to the new set-up, I not only have a little money to spend at the Fall Fiber Fest, that money shouldn't be spent on anything but fiberarts, and I really need to spend it to avoid bank fees! This is the first time in my life that somebody else wanted me to spend money at a fiberarts sale!

So, now I'm really excited about the Fall Fiber Fest on Saturday! There has been some rain last week, and it looks like it might rain now, so I'm not sure about the footing we'll find this weekend. I'm taking my Wellies. But the weather sounds like it would not be better if we were given an air conditioning controller to set it up! The high for the day will be about 70, so we may want a little something to keep warm at some point, but it will not be too hot, even in the sun that is expected!

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So, here is the schedule coming up for a while:

4 Sep 08  Fall Fiber Festival

18 Sep 08  Maryland Renaissance Festival

6-9 Nov 08  Stitches East

And then, of course, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year and Twelfth Night.

Wow! What a lot of wonderful stuff to do!

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John and I are getting down to the end on the front cover of the New Steve Canyon DVD. We are pretty much agreed on the cover except for the colors for the title. We worked on it for a while yesterday.

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Tonight, Pushing Daisies is back on ABC for it's season premier!

In non-SF TV news tonight, it will be followed by Private Practice,  and Bones will be on at the same time.

Knight Rider will also be on (NBC) at the same time, which creates a conflict for me. I found the premier sufficiently intriguing to want to watch some more, but it will not be on again later in the week on the SciFi Channel, so I'll have to make some hard choices in order to see it.

Tomorrow evening, get set for another new episode of Supernatural, which has developed into the best spooky show on TV for a long time.

And on Friday, the premier of Sanctuary will be lighting up the SciFi Channel.

Have a great rest-of-the-week!

Knitting Furiously!

Well the Celtic sweater has reached that point where I knit and knit and it stays the same.

Actually, it achieved about an extra 1.5 inches in length yesterday, if you want to be technical. 

Have I mentioned that there are a lot of stitches on the needle? I do remember saying that it had more than twice as many stitches on the needle than it did when it was just the back I was knitting.

I hate to sew seams. When I'm done knitting this, I'll have lots of ends to darn in, but no seams to sew. Otherwise it would never be done. But this is the downside of it. Knitting and knitting and knitting, and nothing happens.

I was planning to have some pretty photos for you today, but 1.5 inches of progress is almost impossible to see in a photo, so it's not really worth taking them.

Other than that, my life has been filled with paperwork. That translates to forms. Forms for things I haven't imagined. The universe has dedicated itself to ways that it can get money away from me, and the only way I can prevent that is by filling out tons of forms. I'm drowning in them.

I had planned to get them all filled out and in the mail on Monday, but I didn't even have most of the forms to fill out. I printed some from the internet, and found someone today (who I had to go see in person) who found some of the more abstruse ones that I filled out, and there are still more that I haven't had time to do sitting there waiting.

I've decided that I will spend normal working hours working on it, and spend evenings, etc. doing my own thing. Translation: knitting.

If there's something I can be knitting for you, make a donation, and get in touch. I'll start at the end of the Ravelympics.

Oh, and I've signed up for a Harry Potter KAL that starts on September the first, so if I can knit some Harry Potter stuff for you, let me know. It will fit right in.

Oh, and Designs Toscano is having a sale: Save up to 70% on Design Toscano Clearance items

Have a great evening!

Ravelympics News!

Well, the discussion boards are burning up at Ravelry about the Ravelympics.

Everybody has questions or is happy to meet everyone else, and the Harry Potter fans are already starting a new House Cup KAL for the beginning of September in order to coincide with the beginning of the Hogwarts school year. 

We're still discussing both the start and end date. The general consensus is that it should start on the first of September, but there's no decision on the end date. Halloween was an important date in the books, but I was just thinking that it might be good to use the opening of Half Blood Prince (the movie) for a deadline.

So, anyway, I lost my mind over the Ravelympics. I had already joined Team TARDIS in the WIP Wrestling, but I just couldn't resist also joining Team Browncoat for the Shawl Relay. And once I had done that, how could I possibly leave Team Hogwarts out? So, I signed up with them for the Cowl Jump for which I will knit a wimple.

While trying to recover from the shock of all that, I came across Team Hopelessly Overextended, and (since you can knit a project or enter an event for more than one team) signed up all my projects with them, too.

That was all yesterday. Overnight, the thought struck me that all the projects are things for which I wrote (or am writing) the patterns. When I came across the Designers Discus event, I signed up all the projects for that, too.

If you have been able to follow all this (if I explained it well enough), you will note that although I signed up for a total of three projects, the things I signed up for after that did not increase the number of projects I'm knitting, so there are still only three.

I'm not totally crazy!

Change of topic.

On the TV front, Comcast is continuing to be a colossal disappointment. They keep messing things up for their viewers and their "customer service" is a group of people who function to make sure that they don't actually have to fix anything, they just deal with keeping the customers from bothering the repair people.

I know I've been talking about it, but I'm stepping up my search for a replacement for Comcast.

They said that they would have someone in authority, someone who could actually do something about the problems call me up today after 2 pm. It's about 6:30, and I'm still waiting.

Have a good evening!

More Ravelympics and KAL!

I need to put together the chart for the rune bag and get back to knitting it. That's my project for today.

For the Ravelympics, I need to make some decisions real soon now. I'm thinking of making as many as two more projects for the Ravelympics.

I love that I joined Team TARDIS, and I really need to get going again on the Celtic sweater, but at the same time, I want to join Team Browncoat and Team Hogwarts!

I have yarn for a poncho, which might work for the shawl relay, but I'm not sure. I mean, it's not called the shawl relay. It would work well for Team Browncoat. The big advantage of this is that I already have yarn to do it with.

I'm also thinking that the cowl jump might be a good project for Team Hogwarts, and this would be a good, short project, but the problem with that is that I don't have yarn to do it in, or the money to buy yarn with.

Well, I take that back. I do have a batch of yarn in a faded denim color that's really pretty. I guess I could do it in that.

Now the problem is, how crazy do I want to make myself over this?

The big push is going to be on the Celtic sweater.

Do I really want to take on some more knitting?

Opinions! I need opinions!

I hope you're enjoying Eureka on SciFi today!

The Tour de Fleece Is Over!

Yesterday was the last day for the Tour de Fleece, and I finished!

In return for that, I got the spiffy little badge in the sidebar. 

You can see the beautiful yarn I produced in the previous post.

So, now that that's over what next?

Well, I'll tell you. There's a Harry Potter KAL/CAL on Ravelry that I've been meaning to join, but I keep knitting other things. You may not be able to see the page if you're not a Ravelry member.

Anyway, things are supposed to be finished by Harry's birthday, the 31st of July. That gives me until Thursday to make a project and finish it. I'm thinking about competing in the "A bag for all things" category. This will give me a chance to finish my rune bag. You know, the one that I expected to have done around the beginning of June. Yes, that one.

I've started it, but it's my own design, and I made charts for the runes, but I used square graph paper, and the knitted runes look all squashed and short.

So, I'm going to have to make new charts that will actually look OK. And then knit it. Or finish knitting it.

So, assuming that I finish that, that will give me a chance to knit some more bags before the real event begins!

The Ravelympics is about to start! Once again, if you're not a member of Ravelry, you probably won't be able to see this page. If you do fiberarts, you really need to think about joining Ravelry. It's just too much fun!

I have already signed up to compete in the WIP Wrestling for Team TARDIS. This doesn't start until the eighth of August (during the opening ceremonies), but if you are going to compete, you have to sign up now. If you are a Doctor Who fan, you really want to click the Team TARDIS link. It is just s0 funny!

The WIP I'll be wrestling with is the off white tweed Celtic sweater that I started months ago, and stalled out after knitting the hood. You can see a photo of the hood that I'm using as my profile picture, but I'll include it here.

I need to do an EZ type percentage system for picking up stitches at the base of a hood to continue with the body. So far, I haven't figured it out. But I did have a dream about it. That's where I decided I need a percentage system. I just haven't figured it out yet.

But I'll be starting a page for the Celtic Sweater with the directions. This will be a WIP itself until I finish the actual sweater, and possibly a bit after that until I get it all up there. Once I start it, I'll put a link to it in the sidebar, and I'll try to note that it's a WIP until I finish the sweater and the instructions.

For fans of the blue coat that I knitted for the knitting olympics, this will walk you though the same design process that I used on the coat.

For science fiction fans, tomorrow is a big day, at least if you like Eureka. Tomorrow seems to be Eureka day on the SciFi Channel. They will be showing reruns during the daytime rotation, followed by the season premier later. There's a lot to look forward to!

The big news for tonight on TV for SF fans is the Middleman.

My problem with this is that Comcast still hasn't fixed ABC Family so that the closed captioning works.

On the Comcast front, the repairman showed up today in the time slot he was supposed to show up in on Saturday. Well, the saying is "better late than never."

I let me know that the problem with the sound on 35 (which had grown and spread to 45 and 47 by then) could be fixed by turning on SAP.

Acording to Wikipedia, "Second[ary] audio program[ming] (SAP) is an auxiliary audio channel for analog television that can be broadcast or transmitted both over the air and by cable TV. It is often used for an alternate language..."

I guess I'm just so dumb that it never occurred to me that any cable or satellite company would possibly be obtuse enough to require having SAP enabled just to be able to hear a program.

The repairman also didn't fix the problem with closed captioning. He said that it's the network that's not broadcasting it. I pointed out that the network was broadcasting it to DirecTV, and asked why it wasn't broadcasting it to Comcast. He said he'd put in a work notice at the office and get them to check it and call me back either later today or tomorrow.

Why should I have to pay full price if they're not offering full service? I'm really unhappy with them.

I hope to be surprised by them and be able to read what's going on with Middleman this evening. Even if they don't get it turned on tonight, if they turn it on at all, I may still be able to catch tonight's episode later in the week. They run it several times over the course of the week.

I haven't gotten a chance to talk to John about yesterday and the panel at Comic Con yet. I suspect that he's busy putting up a new post at his Steve Canyon blog about it. His computer is online, but that doesn't prove that he's sitting in front of it and is actually present.

More info when it happens!

In the meantime, join the Ravelympics! And expect to see some really neat Ravelympics buttons in the sidebar soon.

And have a great Monday!