Sunday, May 29, 2011

Fourth Blogoversary

I only missed it by 12 minutes this year. That's a vast improvement.

I am on Team Tardis again for the next Nerd Wars tournament. I've been happily gathering up supplies for possible projects.

  • Tardis Afghan. It's more of a bedspread, at 9'6" x 6'4". 5 to 10 rows of 337 stitches per day for three months in addition to the smaller monthly challenges. It's all ready to start. I'll be knitting along with a couple of other people doing the same project.
  • Adipose. It's a little amigurumi type character. I spun the yarn for this one. A bunch of people on the team plan to do this one, too.
  • Jim the Fish Hat. Pattern came from Knitty. Yarn will come from leftovers.
  • Fez TP cover. As The Doctor will tell you fezes are cool. Yarn's left over from a Christmas stocking.
  • Allons-y Scarflet. Named after a phrase often used by the Tenth Doctor. I expect to use one of my skeins of Dream in Color Starry. Ooooh, shiny!
  • Wavy bag. It's a knitalong with several members of the team I've got some stash yarn and beads from a frogged project for this. We hope to work this into a challenge.

I'm off to print off some more patterns.

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Checking In

I've been kind of lost without Nerd Wars. I thought I'd be getting all sorts of things done between tournaments, but that hasn't been the case. Most of my efforts have involve ant squishing and spraying. There have been a few new fibery things here and there.

Only Ewe and Cotton Too is the most local of the four LYS here. It's even more local now. If you know where The Silos are*, that's where it moved. I haven't been there yet.

I finished one pair of my Cookie A club socks. I (re)started the second pair. Then the mail showed up and I got distracted.

The distraction was a fluff box from Phat Fiber. After a year of trying, I finally got another box. I gathered up all my little fiber samples and have been spinning them on the spindle (still too chicken to try the wheel again). They're going to be slippers eventually.

*The Silos are near The Castle. The Castle is a favorite of mine. From the intersection near The Silos, go west on Arnold Mill for about a mile. It's on the left. Watch for the garden gnomes.

Friday, May 13, 2011

11 Reasons...

...why I should get a place on Team Tardis for Nerd Wars Tournament 2.


  1. My second choice, the Browncoats, is also a Very Popular team.
  2. I don't have enough detailed knowlege of Battlestar Galactica to be a good player on Team Viper (third choice).
  3. The outgoing captain wants me on the team.
  4. The incoming captain says I'm Team Tardis' franchise player. I'm told that in the sports world, this is a player that can't be traded to another team.
  5. I already have the yarn for my dissertation. It is in the Team Spirit category so it will only work for Team Tardis.
  6. Two other potential team members also plan to do the same dissertation and we'd like to support each other.
  7. When we submit our dissertations, there will be serious questioning of our sanity. It'll be easier to keep track of three crazy people if they are in the same place.
  8. I'm going to do the dissertation project no matter what happens, but it would be much more fun to get points for the team for doing it.
  9. It makes me happy that I'm wanted. If you've ever been picked last, you'll know how important this is.
  10. I have nine skeins of yarn that match the Doctor Who theme. I do have three or four that would work for the Browncoats, but they've got lots of potential players (see Reason #1)
  11. I would be very sad if I was on another team. I haz enough sad already.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Happy Yarn Day

No, it's not an actual holiday. It is a day that I got a bunch of yarn and it makes me happy.



There aren't too many things more dangerous than feeling a bit blue and having a PayPal credit balance. I've been trying not to reach SABLE (Stash Acquisiton Beyond Life Expectancy), but sometimes you just have to ignore that and go shopping.

The turquoise/pink/etc color is a yummy 50/50 silk/merino from Nerd Girl Yarns. It's called Bibbity Bobbity Boo and was the most indulgent in the pile.

In front of it is the latest shipment from the Big Damn Sock Club. I didn't know what was going to be coming for the club. The only yarn that I "needed" right now was something in a purple semisolid with more yardage than the average skein. This has 490 yards. It put the happy in happy yarn day.

The yellow yarn with the sparkles is Meta-crisis, also from Nerd Girl Yarns. It's Doctor Who themed (Meta-crisis = DoctorDonna) so I needed it for Nerd Wars. It's irrelvant that I won't know for a couple more weeks whether I will be on Team Tardis again or not. Well, not relevant to me. At least not very relevant.

The other two yarns are also Doctor Who themed (see above for why I had to have them). They, along with the Big Damn yarn are from Schmutzarella Yarns. The white with pale lavender is called The Fat Just Walks Away. The green/red/etc is called The Legs, The Nose, and Mrs. Robinson. Whovians will understand why that one makes me laugh.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Enough with the mittens already!

camilla by Paula knits
camilla, a photo by Paula knits on Flickr.

The Camilla mittens are appearing again, because they have been honored. They have been nominated for a Nerd Wars fan favorite. There's no way in the world that they'll win, but it was a nice surprise to be nominated. It's no false modesty. There's this jacket that someone on the Babylon 5 team did that is freaking incredible. It better win. I hope it's a comfort to Team Rangers, because they are going down. It looks like they are the closest competition to Team Tardis. Close, but no banana, Team Rangers.

What have I been up to? I got out my drop spindle. I now have about 300 yards of mystery fiber. I think there's alpaca, bamboo, something shiny, and maybe more in it. I started the harder of the two Cookie A patterns in the latest club shipment. It's really challenging. Two different patterns come down at a diagonal and form an X on the front and the back of the leg. It's not going to win any prizes, but I'm having fun.