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Idunno, halfpipe snowboarding doesn't really do much for me; I think it's because the commentating trips off the same mental BS Detector circuit that art criticism does, like they're Making Shit Up to make everything sound much grander and more earthshatteringly important than it could ever possibly be. It is funny to watch them all hopping around like plastic army men afterwards, though.
My Knitting Olympics experience so far:
The raw materials for the Project: a holiday 2005 sampler-box of KnitPicks "Wool of the Andes" -- 36 balls x 110 yards each, minus part of the tan ball which I used for the felting tests and the white ball which I'm going to leave out since I've heard that white yarns may not felt properly . It's dishevelled because it didn't occur to me to grab a quick "before" picture until I'd already started work.
Day 0 (Opening Ceremonies) -- Needle I ordered still not turned up at LYS. Cast on for and knit the pocket with a shorter needle, since it has to be done first anyway. Will deal with yarn-ends later...
Day 1 of events -- Needle still not turned up at LYS. Spent day working in yarn ends. Left picture is what it actually looks like at the moment, right picture is a clever simulation (IE I turned it inside out) of what it will look like without all the little tag-ends flopping around -- leaving the actual trimming-off of those until after the felting, though.
Day 2 of events -- Needle still not turned up at LYS, but I have to get cracking, so I pulled out the elderly Boye interchangable set and cast on for the main body with the longest string I've got left. Which is, obviously, not nearly long enough. Since it's all garter-stitch, it knits up pretty fast despite being 350 stitches wide, but there's a lot of acreage to cover in the next two weeks... This is as far as I got for the day before my left thumb started to chafe, so I put it down for the night here.
In between all of this excitement, the cats held Olympic tryouts of their own Saturday night: I came in the front door from a grocery-run, walked through the house turning lights on and went out the back door to lug more stuff up the back stairs, and when I came back in, arms laden, Snip was on-point underneath my desk. Since she was staring into the crack left when the sink was pulled out and repositioned last summer, I immediately went into oh, god, not six legs mode and steeled myself to investigate. And at first it looked at if it might have been a no-legs false alarm in the form of a stray Brillo pad -- but as I looked closer, something beside the Brillo pad moved. Our mouser was on the job!
For once, Weasel has clued in to the fact that she's a cat too, and follows Snip around trying to figure out what's going on. This picture was taken a few minutes into the hunt; Snip had already retrieved the mouse from under my desk, dragged it into the living room and dropped it a few times, then carried it back into the dining room and lost it again. The mouse has darted under my worktable at this point.
"I'm going in!"
The mouse is well-hidden under the worktable. Confused, Weasel has given up and gone to sit in a box. I put the camera away and resume work on my knitting.
Some hours later, I hear the distinctive trot-trot-trot of a Snip with live game on-board passing; the hunt is on again, and I go to play embedded reporter. This was the best shot I was able to capture of Snip with the mouse in her actual possession.
I decided, since a "humane" catch-and-release would be a death-sentence in this weather anyway, to let Nature take its course, and let the hunt play out; here Snip and the mouse have arrived at a stalemate under my desk again.
And then I remembered that this new camera has a mini-movie mode... (click thumbnail for .avi) Note the part in the middle where I pan across to Weasel, who is apparently "supervising" as Snip works.
The mouse makes a break for it.
But no; when the dust clears, Snip's pounce has left a small furry corpse lying in its wake. She whaps the body around some more while I go to fetch a bodybag and some hazmat gear.
Inspection shows no obvious external cause of death, so I surmise either internal injuries or a heart-attack from fright. Attempts to take a picture of the hunter with her trophy were not particularly successful, since she was still looking around for the body after I took it away from her and wouldn't look up at the bag for me...
Alas, poor mousie. Boy, did you pick the wrong apartment to break into...
Not sure whether to complain to the landlady again or not, since Snip seems to have the matter well in paw and she's probably smarter than the maintainance goons anyway. :)
And lastly, the week's You Know You're A Geek When moment: flipping past a public-access channel, you pause because the guy with the Amish beard looks kinda familiar, and then you place him as Jared Diamond before the caption comes up to confirm it. And realize that since you wouldn't know Paris Hilton by sight if she came up and bit you on the ass, this probably means that you will never date within your species again.
My Knitting Olympics experience so far:
The raw materials for the Project: a holiday 2005 sampler-box of KnitPicks "Wool of the Andes" -- 36 balls x 110 yards each, minus part of the tan ball which I used for the felting tests and the white ball which I'm going to leave out since I've heard that white yarns may not felt properly . It's dishevelled because it didn't occur to me to grab a quick "before" picture until I'd already started work.
Day 0 (Opening Ceremonies) -- Needle I ordered still not turned up at LYS. Cast on for and knit the pocket with a shorter needle, since it has to be done first anyway. Will deal with yarn-ends later...
Day 1 of events -- Needle still not turned up at LYS. Spent day working in yarn ends. Left picture is what it actually looks like at the moment, right picture is a clever simulation (IE I turned it inside out) of what it will look like without all the little tag-ends flopping around -- leaving the actual trimming-off of those until after the felting, though.
Day 2 of events -- Needle still not turned up at LYS, but I have to get cracking, so I pulled out the elderly Boye interchangable set and cast on for the main body with the longest string I've got left. Which is, obviously, not nearly long enough. Since it's all garter-stitch, it knits up pretty fast despite being 350 stitches wide, but there's a lot of acreage to cover in the next two weeks... This is as far as I got for the day before my left thumb started to chafe, so I put it down for the night here.
In between all of this excitement, the cats held Olympic tryouts of their own Saturday night: I came in the front door from a grocery-run, walked through the house turning lights on and went out the back door to lug more stuff up the back stairs, and when I came back in, arms laden, Snip was on-point underneath my desk. Since she was staring into the crack left when the sink was pulled out and repositioned last summer, I immediately went into oh, god, not six legs mode and steeled myself to investigate. And at first it looked at if it might have been a no-legs false alarm in the form of a stray Brillo pad -- but as I looked closer, something beside the Brillo pad moved. Our mouser was on the job!
For once, Weasel has clued in to the fact that she's a cat too, and follows Snip around trying to figure out what's going on. This picture was taken a few minutes into the hunt; Snip had already retrieved the mouse from under my desk, dragged it into the living room and dropped it a few times, then carried it back into the dining room and lost it again. The mouse has darted under my worktable at this point.
"I'm going in!"
The mouse is well-hidden under the worktable. Confused, Weasel has given up and gone to sit in a box. I put the camera away and resume work on my knitting.
Some hours later, I hear the distinctive trot-trot-trot of a Snip with live game on-board passing; the hunt is on again, and I go to play embedded reporter. This was the best shot I was able to capture of Snip with the mouse in her actual possession.
I decided, since a "humane" catch-and-release would be a death-sentence in this weather anyway, to let Nature take its course, and let the hunt play out; here Snip and the mouse have arrived at a stalemate under my desk again.
And then I remembered that this new camera has a mini-movie mode... (click thumbnail for .avi) Note the part in the middle where I pan across to Weasel, who is apparently "supervising" as Snip works.
The mouse makes a break for it.
But no; when the dust clears, Snip's pounce has left a small furry corpse lying in its wake. She whaps the body around some more while I go to fetch a bodybag and some hazmat gear.
Inspection shows no obvious external cause of death, so I surmise either internal injuries or a heart-attack from fright. Attempts to take a picture of the hunter with her trophy were not particularly successful, since she was still looking around for the body after I took it away from her and wouldn't look up at the bag for me...
Alas, poor mousie. Boy, did you pick the wrong apartment to break into...
Not sure whether to complain to the landlady again or not, since Snip seems to have the matter well in paw and she's probably smarter than the maintainance goons anyway. :)
And lastly, the week's You Know You're A Geek When moment: flipping past a public-access channel, you pause because the guy with the Amish beard looks kinda familiar, and then you place him as Jared Diamond before the caption comes up to confirm it. And realize that since you wouldn't know Paris Hilton by sight if she came up and bit you on the ass, this probably means that you will never date within your species again.