moon_custafer

08:04 pm: Via Making Light - The Adventures of Babbage & Lovelace!

08:16 pm: Living the Cliche
Ugh. Normally my period doesn't hit me too severely, but today it went all stereotypical on me - cramps relatively mild, but depression severe enough to keep me home from work. Luckily it lifted after a few hours, but it was disturbing - not so much pain, but a horrifying numbness; the inside of my head went all grey and empty, and any attempt to bring in thoughts to furnish the void just resulted in exhausting clutter. As it started to ease off, I could find a few things that were simple and pleasant enough to think about (Fruit. Cobwebs. The smell of wood-smoke.) and I started to rebuild a mindscape out of them.

I have enough co-workers who suffer migraines that no-one's likely to inquire too deeply into my sickday, but this leaves me with only two left for the rest of the year.

10:05 pm: Thank You, CBC Radio
If you want to hear 80s pop hits played in the style of Django Reinhardt,(you do, you know you do) check out the website of The Lost Fingers.

12:15 pm: new comic
http://futurismic.com/2009/06/28/data-von-teese/#respond

11:00 am: DNE update
http://futurismic.com/2009/06/21/lost-phones/#respond

09:36 am: PI enjoys SF
...I mixed a tall cold one this time and sat in an easy chair with my shirt open and pecked at a magazine, reading a crazy story about a guy that had two lives and two psychiatrists, one was human and one was some kind of insect in a hive. The guy kept going from one to the other and the whole thing was as crazy as a crumpet, but funny in an off-beat sort of way.

Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

10:39 am: Also
New DNE:

http://futurismic.com/2009/06/14/dream-radio/#respond

07:40 am: adore_robot
green_trilobite & I replaced our mobile phones a few weeks back, so
I finally have a camera-phone. it's not fast enough to photograph birds, but I've been recording interesting bits of graffiti.

Apparently someone wants us to do more than welcome the robot overlords (photo enhanced in post-production)....

07:38 am: tehinder
I think he means Ruby Dhalla.

09:50 pm: Neilgaihanwilson
Neil Gaiman + Gahan Wilson + it's animated:

It Was a Dark and Silly Night.

05:01 am: Tweets

• 14:13 New webcomic posting: bit.ly/S9kNo #

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01:56 pm: New DNE
http://futurismic.com/2009/06/07/spider/#comments

05:01 am: Tweets

• 19:47 Like most home dye jobs, this one has had little noticeable effect on my hair colour. Bit more even than before, though. #

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08:38 pm: Via handful_ofdust: Name 20 books you've read that will always stick with you—the first 20 you can recall in no more than 20 minutes:

In no order:

Watership Down (Richard Adams)

Dido and Pa (Joan Aiken)

Everyman (Anonymous)

Through The Looking Glass (Lewis Carrol)

The Story of the Amulet (E. Nesbitt)

Till We Have Faces (C. S. Lewis)

The Cyberiad (Stanislaw Lem)

Les Malheurs de Sophie, etc (La Comtesse de Segur)

The Daughter of Time (Josephine Tey)

The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins)

The Lady in the Lake (Raymond Chandler)

Ghosts Have Warm Hands (Will R. Bird)

Eloise in Paris (Kay Smith)

The Nine Tailors (Dorothy L. Sayers)

From Hell (Alan Moore, Eddie Campbell)

The Random House Visual Encyclopedia (various)

I Am a Cat (Natsume Sōseki)

Religio Medici (Sir Thomas Browne)

The Essays of Elia (Charles Lamb)

Understanding Comics (Scott McCloud)

12:04 pm: Came across the last quarter of an odd 1930s film showing on TCM, which after some googling turned out to be Rain Or Shine (1930) an early Capra talkie showcasing the then-popular Joe Cook.


Weird but fascinating stuff. The humour is very 1930s non-sequitor vaudeville stuff, but the way it's filmed, though static, really captures the way this was survival humour - in the next-to-last scene, two guys sitting in a smouldering ruin trade minstrel-show banter because, well, what else can they do?

09:41 am: I think this bit of footage, from the website of a Japanese fashion designer, shows the opening of a runway show, but I'm mainly interested in the terrific fantasy set design.

08:34 am: Dream Report
Just woke from a dream in which I went to hell, or maybe some sort of non-judgmental land-of-the-dead, because it wasn't particularly unpleasant, just weird; and overall, very low-budget and homemade. There was a lot of Flat Black paint and signs done in magic marker and bristol board. Some of the more upscale sections had neon and strobe lights, but a lot of it looked like some 14-year-old goths and/or metalheads had set up a club in their family's basement - which now that I think of it, is pretty much what Milton's fallen angels did.

02:01 am: Tweets

• 17:24 Sunnyside Pavillion cafe open 4 the season.B-) #

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06:19 am: prototype2_complete
As-Yet-Unnamed Sweater:

Gage: approx 3 st to the inch in garter st. Size shown small - I have to work out the numbers for larger sizes.

CO 70 st
K garter st for 20 ridges
k10 onto stitch holder. Cast on 5 purlwise. knit 55 across. Transfer remaining 10 st to stitch holder without knitting them. Turn work and co 5 st purlwise, then k across (60 st) Continue in garter stitch for 12 ridges and bind off.

Placing work on flat surface so that the stitches that were *knitted onto* the stitch holder are on the right side. Fold them over front Pick up and k the 5 st that form the bottom of the sleeve, then knit the 10 st from the stitchholder. K back and forth on these 15 st for 12 ridges of garter stitch, then bind off and seam to the top of the sleeve.

Again placing work on flat surface so front is facing you, fold over held stitches and transfer them, still without knitting, onto needle. Pick up and k 5 stitches from bottom of sleeve, turn and knit those 5 st, then the 10 that were transferred from the stitch holder. Work back and forth in garter stitch for 12 ridges and then as before, bind off and seam to the top of the sleeve.

You should now have the body of a sweater with *really* short stubby sleeves and an open front.

Front: pick up and knit (multiple of 3, plus 1) stitches up one front side, along the back of the neck and down the other front side. Turn and P all stitches.

(K1, P2) to last stitch, K1.
(P1, K2) to last stitch, P1.
K all stitches.
P all stitches.
Repeat these 4 rows 5 more times.

(K1, P2) to last stitch, K1.
Bind off in pattern ((P1, K2) to last stitch, P1.)

Sleeves: pick up and knit (multiple of 3) stitches around sleeve stubs.
(K1, P2) for 2 rounds.
K all st for 2 rounds.
Repeat these 4 rows 6 more times.

(K1, P2) for 1 round
Bind off in pattern (K1, P2).

Repeat for other sleeve. Sweater can be worn either way up. Fasten with a scarf pin.

07:17 pm: 3-stage front
Sweater designs in progress.
( Read more... )