Archive for July, 2006

Singularity Theory 28Jul06


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So last night I went to the Yarn Harlot Tour, to find more out about this mysterious genre known as “knitting humor”. I’ll have to admit, I’d never read any of Stephanie Pearl-McPhee’s books, and was somewhat skeptical about this supposed style of writing. I anticipated that going to a book signing about knitting humor, where the author gives a “comedy routine” as Scout put it, would be a little bit nerdy. I imagined that knitting humor would somewhat like nerdy engineering humor…you know like the joke we used to write on the board in physics class before the professor came in…

“E = mc3: Please don’t drink and derive.”

Now that’s kinda funny, if you’re really nerdy…and believe me I have like 50 of those jokes. But I decided to go to the signing and see if this knitting humor was really as funny as people say, and I was not let down. Stephanie was absolutely hilarious!!! Her insights into what it means to be a knitter, and what we look like to the “muggles” (nice appropriation of the term Stephanie :) ) when we sit around knitting furiously on something in public. Very funny stuff.

And at the end I got a new copy of Knitting Rules and Stephanie signed it. And guess what? She’s read my blog :) That made my night. So thanks Stephanie for a great evening.

I just hope that I represented Albuquerque male knitters well. (Seriously if there’s more of you, we need to have a knit and beer night, then maybe I wouldn’t be the single guy at these events…)

As far as knitting goes, I finished the cabled purse, and it looks awesome! The lining is a very nice silky purple material, and I think it came out great. Here’s some pictures:

the cabled purse cabled purse lining

I also finished my 30,000th Mason Dixon Dishrag while at the signing last night…they’re like crack I swear. Except they go one step further because they clean your counter, while real crack just makes a big mess everywhere. Not speaking from experience at all.

That’s about it for me, I’m just going to go enjoy my day off, eat some good Thai food for lunch, see a movie this evening, and probably stay up until the wee hours of the morning with a glass of wine and some knitting. Should be a wonderful day.

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Cubicle Days 25Jul06


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Are not very fun. I long for the day when I’m not sitting here in a cube farm, listening to everyone whine and complain about the security clearance system, all day long. I mean, yes it’s frustrating to not have a clearance, but calling the clearance department every single day makes them dislike you very much. Probably enough to just let your paperwork sit on their desk another month or two. Sometimes you just have to let go and realize that you can’t control everything, and make the best of your situtation. Especially when you find out that the clearance department lost a bunch of your paperwork, and you’ve been waiting 4 months for nothing. Simple things that I do to help me to not stress out about working in an “uncleared” farm (cough leper colony cough):

  1. Listen to my iPod: My favorite, since music can have a very calming effect on me. This also helps me drown out the incessant conversations of my cube mates. They can’t seem to be quiet and keep to themselves…how can they be real engineers and be so social? * (See obligatory engineer joke at bottom of post) And the upside is that I can actually have my iPod right now. When I become cleared and am no longer ostracized from engineering society, my iPod will not be allowed to accompany me into the “cleared” area.

  2. Drink Lots of TaB: Really, like a whole bunch. In fact, my stock is dwindling, and on last trip to Raley’s it wasn’t restocked yet. :(

  3. Take Periodic Sunshine Breaks: This is just good advice if you’re an engineer period. Sometimes us nerds have a tendency to sit in front of the computer a bit too long, and not actually go out into the sun. And it helps clear your head to get up every few hours to stretch and get some fresh air.

  4. Obsessively Compulsively Check Knitting Blogs: Sometimes the lack of work and the boredom begins to set in, and the best remedy I’ve found is to go on a blog checking spree, seeing if any other people have knitted something amazing since the last 30 minutes since I last checked.

So those are the small ways in which I deal with little work frustrations. Do you have any tips for dealing with blabby cube mates?

As far as knitting goes, I’m almost done with this cabled purse for the artisan fair. The deadline is swiftly approaching, so I’ve been knitting a lot lately. Quite relaxing.

And finally, in “OMG! Stockpile Money!” news, I just discovered that Village Wools is having a huge inventory sale next month to prepare for the upcoming shop move. 15% off everything!!! This will be very bad for my wallet.

EDIT (Forgot the Engineer Joke! Thanks Joanna!):

So what’s the difference between an extroverted engineer, and an introverted engineer??? The extroverted engineer looks at your shoes, while the introverted engineer looks at his shoes. Ba-dum-chi!

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My Blog, the Chameleon 21Jul06


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So you may have noticed that since I started this humble blog back in January, it’s gone through about, oh I’d say about 95 design iterations. I suppose I’m just picky, but I’ve never quite gotten it to the way I like it…but that’s starting to change. I liked the header with Emma, but then I wanted to update that to include Dallas, but I never got around to that, etc…

And then one day, I thought it’d be really really cool (or super nerdy depending on how you see it) to do some kind of circuit design for knitting. As you can see in the current header, we have a ball of yarn as a function of length (hence Y(l)), which is the input to our circuit. That yarn goes through the capacitor Cy, which stores up energy and dissipates it across the knitting needles, where it encounters Rf, the Resistance to Finishing. Then finally, the yarn input Y(l) is transformed into a Knitted Object as a function of time, K(t). So yeah, it’s a bit ridiculous, but it makes me happy :)

I can’t promise the site will stay this way forever, but I think it has the potential to. Especially since it works in all the major browsers, finally! (If it doesn’t, leave a comment and smash all my dreams and hopes forever, if you must). The only major change is the background of the header, because I want to scan in a sheet of Engineering Paper, the kind I use to write notes and similar circuit diagrams on, and use that in the header.

So what do you think? Am I a super nerd or what?

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in which i spew randomness 20Jul06


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Today is somewhat random…and so I’m going to make a list to jot down the googol of thoughts swimming around in my brain.

  1. bureacracy is frustrating. especially when your security clearance application gets returned after waiting for 3 months because someone lost a form, and you have to start the whole hurry up and wait process all over.

  2. my stash is dwindling, as I’ve made a new hat and quite a few Mason Dixon Washrags (why are they so darn addicting?)…I think a stash stocking trip is order. or SEX* as some dirty minded knitters would call it.

  3. le chantilly brownies have to be the best ever. it was definitely the highlight of my day to enjoy one after lunch.

  4. in a completely undisguised and overt attempt at comment whoring I’ve moved the comment link to a more prominent location, and added a pestering message. if this desperate subtle hint doesn’t work, I may have to put hyptonizing music or videos on the site.

  5. I renewed my long dormant eMusic subscription (now that I have money) and downloaded some good indie tunes, including Sufjan Stevens, Neko Case and Ryan Adams. rock on.

  6. I have a very cool idea for a new pattern swimming around in my head and on the pages of my infamous notebook. I call the concept “knitting fusion”. more info to follow when the idea is more real and less ethereal.

  7. having a garage is probably the single most amazing thing that’s happened to me this year. the very thought of being able to walk into the garage and get in my car or bring in groceries without getting wet when it’s raining it’s simply mindblowing. I’m sure the family of the man who invented the garage is filthy stinking rich, like the people who invented ziploc bags or tin foil.

  8. I’ve been reviewing my signals theory books today, and studying such wonderful things as discrete fourier transforms, aliasing, the nyquist-shannon theorem and the hilbert transform, to name a few. riveting stuff I tell ya. (I know it might sound boring to you, but I really do love it!)

*SEX = Stash Enrichment Expedition. Don’t ask me, I didn’t come up with it.

Ok, that’s about it. Now there are a ( googol - 8 ) thoughts flying around in my head, at least it’s somewhat of an improvement.

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The Jumping Schnauzer 16Jul06


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Today was a blast. Emma and I did our first major agility event, and it was so much fun. It was the 2006 Show N’ Go, put on by the Southwest Agility Team. It was just a fun event, no judging or scoring, but we got to run 2 different courses, and get a lot of good experience. Emma had a very good time, and so did I. I can’t wait until we start competing for real! Here’s a few pictures, one of Emma getting ready to run, and one of the course that she ran.

agility show n' go - 4 agility show n' go - 14

In other news, the house is done! I actually started parking my car in the garage yesterday, which was pretty cool. I feel a lot better now knowing that my car is safe from the freak hailstorms that seem to follow me around. And that means that I’ve been able to crank out a lot more knitting now that I’m not spending my evenings cleaning. Not that I wouldn’t do that if I could, since apparently that’s my new favorite past-time, at least that’s what my roomates think.

So I suppose I need to back up my claims of increased knitting with actual results. So here’s the obligatory pictures. I finished my first sock with the Smores yarn, and I also joined the Mason Dixon dishrag craze that seems to be sweeping the knitting blog world by storm. They’re really quite satisfying and quick to crank out.

mason dixon dishrag sock in smore's colorway

Well, I better go because Mom (AKA the Knit Nazi…”More Knit for You!”) is pestering me to keep knitting so we have lots of stuff to sell at the artisan fair. Peace Out Knitters.

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