Quantum Tea
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Thursday 3 June, 2004
Contemplating destruction
Re-reading Henri Nouwen's "The Genesee Diary" I got to the part about how work can be done in a contemplative spirit:
If I have learned anything this week, it is that there is a contemplative way of working that is more important for me than praying, reading, or singing. Most people think that you go to the monastery to pray. Well, I have prayed more this week than before but also discovered that I have not learned yet to make the work of my hands into a prayer
My day job requires more thought than Nouwen's monastery jobs of washing raisins and bagging bread, but we're gardening this weekend. Summer has officially started, I have my first bug bite, therefore it's time to tame the yard. I'm planning to go out with the loppers and shears, beat a few bushes into submission, excavate a wire bench one of the cottonwoods is trying to absorb, trim the unidentified green stuff hanging over the drive, attack the honeysuckle, and generally tidy things up. This is not a task requiring much thought beyond "Chop! Hack! Destroy!" Can you do contemplative slash-and-prune yard work? This won't be nice civilised gardening with gloves and a trowel and a kneeling pad, this will be hard manual labour, works of destruction with sharp tools. Doesn't seem to quite fit with prayer, but I'll try. Adam and Eve were gardeners too.
Friday 28 May, 2004
Weather
Would the person who ordered a Midwest Monsoon please stand up? I'd like to see you in my office. Now.
Wednesday 26 May, 2004
Fiona (the bag) in progress
One ball of yarn is almost used up, and I have six Triple Crosses done. I think this is going to work. The stitches look decent, the bag is a little floppier than I was expecting, but it looks good. There's one "deliberately accidental" mistake on it, and it's unlikely a non-knitter would find it. You have to put these things in to prove it's not done by a machine, right? If I do another, I'll use US size 6 needles to make the fabric firmer.
This is a close-up of the triple cross stitch, with a coin as a size reference. It's a one rupee coin, which is roughly the size of a US quarter and a UK ten pence piece. I spent my reference quarter on Mountain Dew this morning. Anyone know what the Canadian equivalent coin is? There must be some international treaty on standard coin sizes.
I'm planning to line my bag with something stiff, probably a canvas fabric. If I'm nifty with the sewing machine (an antique, handle-powered Singer we picked up from a car boot sale at St Clements Mental Hospital in Ipswich, UK) I could do a patch pocket in the lining, and maybe try adding a zip. Never made anything with a zip before. The yarn keeps forming little balls of fuzz that come away on my shirt, I'm hoping this will stop after the first wash, which will be just before I line it.
While I'm on a bag kick, Nanette posted a photo of her beginner's colour knitting hat, which would make a cool bag as there's no shaping. The pattern is going to be in her stranded colour knitting booklet, which I'm looking forward to getting. There are two bags in the new Knitter's magazine, It's a Cinch and Latitude and Longitude, that I really like the look of. Cinch looks pretty easy, Lat/Long has a tuck stitch to create horizontal ridges that I like the look of, with directions for a purse or a backpack version. It's made in bulky weight yarn (two strands for the backpack, one for the purse), and might become my new knitting projects bag sometime this decade.
Tuesday 25 May, 2004
Storm
It got dark, very quickly, then the hail came around 2:45pm. Loud, too loud to concentrate, bouncing off the ground and rattling the windows. Sounded like an angry mob stoning a heretic. Thunder in sharp whip cracks instead of slow rumbles. Marble sized hail, in late May, collecting in piles on the ground and by the doors. Sirens and fire trucks and two power outages. Everyone on their cell phone, calling. Steam rising off the piles of hail and mixing with rain. A river of brown water running through what used to be the garden/patio area at work, re-landscaping it with islands and furrows. Leaves torn off trees, littering the car park. Wondering if the house, the car, the trees, are damaged. Then silence. No hail, sky lightens, rain almost stops. Tornado on the way? Doesn't look like it. Sky's not green, just a faded grey, wrung out. It's over. Now for the clean up.
Aftermath: Wednesday 26th May
It took well over an hour to get home, normally a 25 minute journey with the usual heavy traffic at one point. Driving a manual transmission car stop-start for that long is tiring on the ankles. At home it looked as if it had snowed leaves. There was a small pile of hail outside the back door. I think the tree protected the roof from hail, and only one minor branch fell off the trees. It landed on the yard. I've never seen that much leaf fall in spring. Cars are plastered with leaves.
Monday 24 May, 2004
The Secret Service
(Leftover post from Friday)
Found an official page of MI5 Myths, on their website:
We [MI5] are a civilian organisation and members of staff have no executive powers, such as the authority to detain or arrest people. We are not a "secret police force."
So there you have it. MI5 is not to be confused with the Secret Intelligence Service (sometimes called called MI6, who don't have a website I could find) or Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). MI5 don't assassinate people, or illegally eavesdrop communications, and they will hire people over 5ft 11. The site also has a glossary that's quite useful. Taxpayer's money at work.
Sunday 23 May, 2004
End of the month week
I probably won't post this week. It's the end of the month, which means a ton of work, an inflexible deadline, lots of overtime, and desperate prayer that I won't have to go in next Saturday. See you in June.
Wednesday 19 May, 2004
Doing the maths
One US gallon is 3.78 litres
UK average petrol price in April 2004: 78.6p per litre
Percentage of UK price taken as tax: 74.8% (58.8p a litre)
Price in UK Sterling for one US gallon of petrol: £2.97
Today's exchange rate £1 = $1.77
Price US gasoline has to reach before it costs the same as in the UK: $5.26 a gallon
So stop whining!
(Sources: Google, the UK Automobile Association and FT.com.)
Extreme Golf
Malaysian golfer attacked by crocodile.
Golf is not often seen as a dangerous pastime. But 42-year-old company director Terry Hong Kee Siong needed 38 stitches after a crocodile grabbed his leg as he was playing at Malaysia's A Famosa Resort. Mr Hong is now suing the resort for damages, saying he has not hit a golf ball since the incident, which happened in January.
Not to mention all the sharks out playing golf...
Fiona (the bag)
I made a page for progress on my Fiona drawstring bag. The yarn I ordered on Sunday from Fiber Nooks & Crannys arrived today, beating the Acorn hat pattern I ordered from New York the same day. Kudos to Fiber Nooks & Crannys, they're fast, polite, and they do return phone calls. Better still, they answer when you call them. I'm a happy bunny. I have my Mission Falls 1824 Cotton yarn, and it looks very fine.
Now I have to go swatch...
Tuesday 18 May, 2004
Fabergé
Pictures of Faberge Eggs from the BBC News website.
A collection of Faberge gems and nine Imperial Eggs - including the Coronation egg - has gone on show at the Kremlin Museum in Moscow. Russian industrialist Viktor Vekselberg bought them from the Forbes family in New York.
This list of the current whereabouts of the Faberge Imperial Eggs is courtesy of PBS, who have a decent site about the eggs. This Moscow guide has some pictures, and there is a good illustrated guide by Bruce R Schulmann on his site (scroll down for the pictures). I always loved Faberge Eggs, and the idea of an egg with a surprise in.
Stranded Colourwork
Nanette of Knitting in Color is writing a booklet on stranded colourwork, knitting with two or more colours at once. I'd love to try this, but I have no-one to teach me, so this booklet will be great. She plans to have the book on sale around June 15th, for less than $10. Proceeds will go to her local nonprofit pet rabbit rescue group. Nanette has lots of tips and useful information on her blog, and an adorable house rabbit called Peaches. Read more about the booklet on her blog post for today
Caffeine replacement
Stand aside Starbucks Mocha Frappachino ®, there's a better wake-up call: grapefruit juice. A hefty dose of citric acid first thing in the morning is bound to wake me up. I found a freeware alarm program called Citrus, and a set of sounds to go with it called Lemon Juice. The author of Citrus also wrote a web photo album generator I might have to try. What's your caffeine replacement?
Saturday 15 May, 2004
Measurements
Somewhere in Texas had 17 inches of rain Thursday night according to the radio, which is 43cm, or nearly half a metre. I'm still a metric girl, it makes much more sense just to slam on an extra zero or power of ten and keep making up great new units like the parsec (*) or the nanometre. True, every ruler in the world is ever so slightly off since they made the metre exactly 1 / 3 x 108 the speed of light, instead of 1 / 2.998 something x 108 light speed, but that's only going a problem for the people doing subatomic measurement work. How often do you measure the width of a neutron anyway, right?
It bugs me to hear Imperial described as "English" measurements. The English aren't using it; we've been metric for decades! It's been illegal to sell a pound of apples in England for years now, you have to sell 454 grams, or just round up to half a kilo. Imperial scales are relics and all apples are grown in metric fields. Cows are fined for producing gallons of milk instead of litres. Did anyone else notice that when petrol prices went from gallons to litres, we got our price increases in 4.4 pence per gallon increments instead of just 1p per gallon? Sneaky.
* One parsec is a heck of a long way, and one furlong per fortnight is about as fast as an old age pensioner in a traffic jam. Good to see those old Imperial measurements have some use...
Wednesday 12 May, 2004
Rescheduled
The Fiona Drawstring Bag is going to trade places with the Mermaid socks in my project schedule. This is for several reasons:
- It's spring. I won't be wearing wool socks until autumn.
- The Fiona knitalong starts on Saturday
- I have a yarn store trip planned for Saturday and the store has Mission Falls 1824 Cotton
- I need practice if I'm going to make a Fiona bag for my sister Fiona
- My current handbag is very ratty in the handle department, not to mention boring and black.
- Because Wendy's doing it.
- An excuse to use my antique handle-powered sewing machine to make the lining
- There's a nifty knitalong button
I'm hoping to use Chili (colour 207), or Coral (201) for the main colour, but Merlot (208) would work too, and Jade (303) as my contrast colour. I'm not a big fan of the circular needles the pattern uses. I used one for the Umbilical Cord hat and I didn't like it. Sat in the dentist's waiting room with no knitters to help me (and three non-knitters eagerly watching), I couldn't figure out how to join the ends, so I used the dpns and switched to the circular later. Apart from the sweaters I did as a teen with Mother, I'm self-taught and book-taught, but I couldn't figure it out. Oddly the woman in the waiting room who declared knitting far to difficult for her said she does counted cross stitch, which is way over my head. The hat turned out OK, looks cute, and was received well:
I can't wait to see it on baby's head. The coin at the front of the picture is either a US quarter or a UK ten pence piece, both are the same size. The UK five pence coin is the size of a US ten cent (dime), and the penny and one cent coins are similar too.
Update 18th May
Baby born last night!
Googleblog
The official Google blog is up. (link via Jordon Cooper)
Copyright © Alison Hawke 2003. All rights reserved.
