Score One for Stupidity!

In a spectacular display of stupidity, Texas has decided to make sure it's school age residents are unaware of the age of the universe.

Read more about it here.

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I was looking at some of my blog posts from earlier in the week, and realized that I had said I would post a photo of the finished mobius hood.

Then I finished it, took a photo, and posted it on my Ravelry projects page and the page for FOs on the Harry Potter House Cup page.

And I completely forgot to post it here.

So, for those of you who are waiting with baited breath, here it is (finally).

I'm thinking I still have to do a little bit of tweaking before I'm really happy with it. I like it, but not a lot. I'm not overjoyed about the photo, either.

I have decided to give myself a day off on the Christmas stockings.

The first one is completely knitted, sewn up, and woven in. It still needs an overall blocking (looks like a crumpled piece of paper at the moment) and pom poms plus a hanging loop added.

I'm going to wait until I block the leg on the second one, which is easier to do before I start knitting in the round. That way, I can block that part of it flat. That way, I can put off having to make pom poms.

I have finished the name and year on the second one, and am almost to the icicles between the "snow" on  the top and the actual red part of the ankle with the tree and Santa on it.

I may get back to it later today if I finish the poncho I'm making with the yarn that matches the hood, above. The yarn looks very plain, and like a solid color in the photo, but it's really a "printed" yarn in off white with blue dots of varying intensity (along with some tan ones) on it. It looks tweedy in the ball, and I thought it would look that way knitted up, too, but no, it's visually a light blue, even though you can't see it in the photo. I liked this yarn when I bought it, but I like it even more now.

Anyway, it's almost finished, and the kind of weather I wanted to wear it in is suddenly here, so I thought I'd finish it and have it to wear. I'll probably finish it this evening and get back to the stocking.

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There will be new episodes of: Chuck, Heroes, Medium, and Castle on Monday evening!

Well, it's probably over 80 degrees in my apartment again, and almost like a sauna in here, so I'm going to sit (or maybe lie down) and read a book.

Hope you're having a great weekend!

107 Days Until Half Blood Prince

There are 107 days until the premier of The Half Blood Prince!

For all you Harry Potter fans out there who are knitters: have you started your knitting projects so that you'll have something Harry-Potter-themed to wear to the movie? If not, you need to get started in time! You don't want to go to the movie without your Dobby socks, dark mark scarf, snitch sweater and other stuff. It's a shame it'll be during the summer instead of in the winter like some of them have been.

If you're on Ravelry, search there for Harry Potter projects, otherwise, you'll have to use search engines. Whatever you do, there's a lot out there, so get those needles clicking!

Don't forget that there is a count-down timer at the bottom of this page. It not only tells you how long until the movie, but it also has a link to Mugglenet, which is filled with all sorts of wonderfull Harry Potter news!

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Which reminds me that I have to have my mobius hood finished today to turn in as homework for the Harry Potter House Cup KAL/CAL! All I have to do is weave in some ends and take a photo. Oh, and get it up on Ravelry. 

So, you can expect a photo tomorrow.

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This will be a short post. I've just finished putting the barcode on the cover for the second volume of the Steve Canyon DVDs, and I'll be uploading it to a server in a bit, so I can't hang here too long. I may be wrong about this, but the sense I get from it is that John has all the files and stuff he needs to dump it on the DVD manufacturer, and it's about to be out of his hands for a bit. I'm sure that will be a big relief to him. Then all he'll have to do is wait for the DVDs and feverishly ship them out when they arrive. 

I'm really enthused about this!

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Comcast messed up NBC all last night. This is so run-of-the-mill for them that you may wonder why I'm even mentioning it. For three hours on NBC (and maybe more--I only watched it for three hours), the picture would periodically freeze for from one to 5 seconds, sometimes followed by the picture breaking up into large pixels, which then smashed up and slid off the screen. The sound was going in and out, and the story was interspersed with blackouts of sound and picture for several seconds. I got to watch Chuck, Heroes and Medium in that messed-up way. Castle was playing OK, though, and at least I got to see and hear that without all the mess.

There is no Fringe on tonight, but it's supposed to be back next week. I don't know what's wrong with TV networks today. They only have short runs of shows (Star Trek used to have 25 shows per season, now we only get 13 episodes of a series if we're lucky), they interrupt them with other stuff rather than showing the whole series, change the times of shows, and generally do everything they can to sabotage their own series, and then get rid of the series as though it's the fault of the series. It's disgusting!

There will be a new Mentalist on tonight, along with a new Reaper, though.

I have to run.

Have a great Tuesday!

Happy Monday!

Well, in the last 24 hours, my mobius hood has exploded from something that looked just a little longer than it did the day before to starting to look like a real hood!


It doesn't look in the photo like it would fit as well as it does in real life. Well, I did some shaping on the hood, and I still have some doubts about this project. I think it's really turning out nice, so far, though.

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For those of you who don't know, the SciFi Channel has discovered that they can't trademark/register/copyright/whatever the term "SciFi." So they have embarked on a journey to find the perfect new name for their network. They have chosen SyFy as their new name. I read one report that insisted that they chose it because that's how they would spell it in a text message.

First of all, I doubt that they can't trademark it. Blaster, and a lot of other basic SF words were successfully trademarked in the past, which seems really silly to me. Unless someone else has already trademarked it.

Io9 has some really funny articles about this. The first one I saw was named SciFi Channel Changes It's Name to a Typo, and it was just an announcement of the change. The second one, 25 Other Names the SciFi Channel Could Rebrand With was funny. My favorite on the list was "Sci-Fi Except For All That Wrestling Channel," although I also liked "Zzzzzzzzzy-Phy."

Then there was a post called "15 More Alternate Names for the SciFi Channel," which continued the funny theme. One of my favorites from this list was the "I Cant Spel But I Kin Txt Chanel."

Here's what SciFi has to say about the name change in their own words. The theme that keeps repeating is the idea of "a name we can own." There was also a poll on your opinion of the new name in the sidebar. I voted against it, but it seems to be gone now. I can't find it on their site. But when I voted, the score was something like 157 for and over a half million against. I suspect they took it down because they didn't like the general direction in which it was headed.

But they are doing something good tomorrow during the day. They have reruns of Eureka on! On Wednesday, there will be episodes of Tru Calling on their daytime rotation, too.

This weekend, actually Friday evening at nine (here) they're showing Stargate: Ark of Truth for all of you, like me who haven't been able to scrape up the money for the DVD, even though it's not very expensive.

I suspect they're doing that to make it up to us for showing Beowulf last weekend. I didn't think anything or anybody could mess up a fine, classic, Icelandic saga as badly as Grendel, but Beowulf gave it a run for it's money.

NBC will be showing their usual Monday night science fiction shows, Chuck, Heroes, and Medium, and we'll be treated to another episode of Castle at the same time as Medium. The Monday night lineup is currently good for all old Firefly fans because we can get to see both Nathan Fillion and Adam Baldwin! It's just a shame Castle isn't science fiction (or fantasy).

Well, there's lots to do today, so I'd better get going.

Have a great day!

Happy Pi Day!

I guess this is a big day for mathematicians, but, although I can see that the discovery of Pi is useful, it just doesn't strike me as something I really want to set aside a whole day to celebrate.

But then, I was never very good at arithmetic.

Maybe it's just today. It's not getting too far above freezing today and it's raining. I was going to go out with Holly, but Robin made plans to get off work and do something with her, so it's been postponed until tomorrow. After looking at the weather, I'm not really sad about not going out today.

Today is the kind of day that (back when I had a job) made me look out the window and want to call in sick, then crawl back into bed and go back to sleep.

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In knitting news, not much is happening. I'm almost done with a sock, but it looks just like the sock before it, and only slightly different than the two socks before that. I've done more on the mobius hood, but it's just a little longer, it really doesn't look too much different. The excitement will be happening when it gets even longer than it is,  not now. But photos right now will be unbelievably dull.

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There's also almost nothing worthwhile to see on TV today or tomorrow, so, all in all, it's just a blah day. It's a good thing I have a DVR with a backlog of stuff to watch.

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I finished reading Inkdeath a more than a week ago. It was a good series, and I enjoyed reading it, but I'm glad I was able to borrow it from the library instead of buying it. I'm really in a blah mood today.

After that, I read The Alchemyst, which is the contemporary adventures of Nicholas Flamel, the famed (and real) alchemist from the Renaissance. I have the sequel, The Magician, ordered at the library. Amazon says in on place that it's already available, but another listing says it won't be out until later this month. There's a third book (The Sorceress), and judging by the first one, I'll definitely want to read all three.

In the meanwhile, while I'm waiting for those, I'm reading the copy of Twilight that I bought in January.

So, it's back to knitting, TV, and maybe some reading.

I hope you're having a great weekend!

Oh, I nearly forgot! There's now a widget at the bottom of my blog that will tell you about pollen in your area. Just scroll down all the way to the bottom. It's with the widget that tells you how many days are left until Christmas, and the one that says how many days are left until Half Blood Prince (the movie) will be out.

More Steve Canyon Excitement!

John put up a new post on the Steve Canyon on DVD blog, and he's not the only one that's talking about our favorite pilot. The people over at TV Shows on DVD have an article up about the cover and label art. Go on over and check out what mischief John and I have been up to.

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I finally got around to starting on the project for the Harry Potter Knit/Crochet House Cup on Ravelry. You may recall that I bought some yarn over at JoAnn Fabrics last week. I didn't read the label as carefully as I should have, and it turned out it wasn't worsted weight, as I thought it was, but chunky or bulky instead. I'd have liked the lighter weight, but Now that I'm actually knitting it, I love it! It looked like the print on the yarn would look too tweedy for Spring, but it looks like it will be the perfect Spring color. 

I still have severe doubts about the way this is going to turn out. I know I can do the Mobius, I know I can add a hood, but is it going to fit the way I want it to? I suspect that all I can do is try it out and see.

This yarn is acrylic, but it's so nice that it's making me think about going back for some more. It does look a bit tweedy, but not too much so for Spring or even Summer, and it feels so good!

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The SciFi Channel is having some really good stuff on this week on it's daytime rotation. I hope you realized that Charlie Jade is on today so that you are watching it. Tomorrow, they'll be doing Stargate Atlantis, Thursday it'll be Doctor Who, and Friday they have The Twilight Zone.

On TV tonight, we have an all new Reaper, and a Mentalist rerun. Pretty slim pickin's.

I hope you got to see the premier of Castle last night. Nathan Fillion was his usual lovable self, which would be reason enough to watch, but it may be a really good series. 

Have a great day!