Quick Update

More news is out on the Steve Canyon blog! Read about it here!

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Welcome to the Jungle is out in the stores! I was asleep at the switch, and they sneaked the latest Dresden Files books out while I wasn't looking! And before I forget about it, Backup will be out on Halloween or the next day.

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I finished the first sleeve on the Celtic sweater completely (including the I-cord) and am nearly finished the first sleeve. There's about an inch to go plus the I-cord.

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Pushing Daisies will be on tonight at the same time as Knight Rider.

I have some errands to do, and am otherwise busy, but here's something you might enjoy.

Have a great evening!

Another Wednesday

I spent about five hours of my day today paying my Comcast bill. Most of that time was spent riding on a bus or waiting for one of 4 different buses I needed to ride to get there.

But I did get to talk to one of the technical people at the office. He promised me he would look into the fact that there's no closed captioning on ABC Family, and hasn't been since early May.

In all fairness, I have to say that they have started (usually) to do their "weekly tests" by transmitting a ribbon across the top of the screen and they've been doing it at around 2 am, rather than showing a lime green screen that completely blocks out all the picture and sound during prime time on Friday, Saturday and Tuesday evenings. So, that's an improvement.

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Yesterday, I got all the way back to the start of the redo of the Saint John's cross on the back of the Celtic sweater. I love the St. John's cross with the interlaced ring that's in Elsebeth Lavold's Viking Patterns for Knitting book, but it's much smaller than I wanted for the back of the sweater. 

I solved that originally by putting a "frame" around it to make it seem to take up more space.

But this time around, I was just really ticked off, and sat down with some graph paper and redid the cross a bit larger. I really think I'm going to like this SO much better than the way I did it originally.


Well, I didn't include the shoulders in the photo, so maybe you can't see how much bigger it is, but it is bigger, trust me. I like it so much better than the original.

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John says he can't see or smell smoke from his house anymore, so it looks like that's going to be alright for him.

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Pushing Daisies and Knight Rider will be on tonight! Presidential debate, too. But I can't watch the debate for long without getting completely upset, so, I'll probably miss part of it. 

Have a great evening!

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!

Tropical Storm Kyle on the Way

It was overcast and rainy all day yesterday, and it looks like it will be for a while. I usually tune in to the TV station that just says what the weather will be for today and a few days into the future.

But it doesn't show a map with information about highs and lows and so forth. I should watch the map more often because I had some meteorology training when I attended ground school to learn to fly, so I can look at the data in raw form and usually come up with a more accurate forecast than the weather people on TV.

So, we're going to have bad weather for a few days. Well, rainy, anyway.

I have to get moving if I want to get to the library during a lull in the rain, so this will be short.

The SciFi Channel will be showing Knight Rider tonight along with a new episode of Stargate Atlantis.

The episode of Knight Rider seems to be a repeat of the premier earlier in the week, which I missed because it was on at the same time as two other shows I really didn't want to miss, and which wouldn't be shown again until reruns. I am a little ambivalent about Knight Rider, but I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt until I actually get to see it.

One new show that's really exciting (at least to me) will be on tonight on the History Channel. It's called Hacking History, and is about the history of more recent technology. There was an article about this on io9, but I can't find it anymore. It raved about Nicola Tessla, and his experiments with electricity. The show's listing says it does deal with the history of electricity. I don't know if that's all it's ever going to deal with, or if that's what it's about this week. But it sounds like it will be fun finding out.

I have to run, now. Have a great weekend!