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Saturday, April 30, 2011

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

It's raining knitting machines!

I'm hoping to pick up a new-to-me Passap E6000 knitting machine tonight. That means I need to find a new home for my Passap Duomatic. Those machines are too big to hoard!

Monday, April 25, 2011

We live in a dump: They Might Be Giants

TMBG: We Live In a Dump. Kid-friendly music video.

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Sunday, April 24, 2011

Politics: More free images

An artist friend-of-a-friend, Marta Robertson-Smyth, has offered another image to those who would like to use them. It's also available as a PDF for those who would like it as a poster - email me at chris (dot) hitchcock (at) shaw (dot) ca to get a copy. Enjoy!

Friday, April 22, 2011

Politics: why I will not be voting Conservative

Feel free to use either of these as you like.






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Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Felted clogs (machine knit)

I ordered some Lion Brand 100% wool cone yarn from Amazon, because it is accessible to many people. I bought the LB 1878 which is fingering weight, good for the standard gauge machine. I adapted KrisKrafter's pattern and made a pair of example slippers/clogs according to the pattern for bulky gauge. It wont fit me, but I hope it will be big enough that DD can wear it eventually.




Here is a finished clog off the machine. I started at the bottom, knit the cuff in off- white, switched to charcoal for the heel, burgundy for the foot, back to charcoal for the toe, plum for the top of the foot, then back to off-white again for the front part of the cuff.





And here it is with the parts together the way I will sew them up later. After that I will felt/full them in the washing machine.

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Monday, April 18, 2011

Swift to cone winder set up

This is how I arrange things to wind from a skein to a cone.





We have an extra kitchen in the basement which is used for a variety of tasks. Here is how I use the kitchen to set up a cone winder to wind from a skein. I use my hand to control the direction of the yarn coming off the swift. It also works well with a manual cone winder or ball winder.


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Cavalia

We went to see Cavalia yesterday. It was amazing -- a beautiful and Impressive performance of both horses and acrobats. The stage work itself was a marvel to see. They created a flexible space that transformed easily and elegantly across many different configurations.

By contrast with the Cirque de Soleil troupe, Cavalia's colours were more earth tones, softer, less circus primaries and jewel tones, more earthy browns and soft rich colours. The use of projectors to create large backdrops was gorgeous, and they were able to harmonize the projections of movies with the slight billowing of the curtain fabric in interesting ways.

The performance itself was beautiful. Horses are such strong and impressive animals, and these were glossy and chosen to look great together. The training of the animals was excellent. They also have some very strong tumblers and acrobats, and also combine the horsemanship with acrobatics at times.

It was pricey, but worth the money. Definitely would recommend it.


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Friday, April 15, 2011

Internal struggle

I am learning to pay attention and slow down when I find myself resisting.

When I am fighting against myself, it is exhausting. One of us is going to lose, and either way it is going to be me.

Cheaper than a sportscar -LOL

I am picking up another electronic gizmo. This time it is an efficient scanner that will do duplex (double-sided) scanning at 20 pages (40 sides) per minute and automagically produce a PDF. I have a backlog of old manuals I would like to scan and put up on the web, but I just can't face the work of doing it page by page. It's not cheap, but it is also fairly compact. And it is most definitely cheaper than a sportscar.

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Sunday, April 10, 2011

New crap for old

We went to a local kids' swap meet today. It was a lot of work, but in the end we passed a lot of stuff along to new people who can use it, and brought more of other people's crap into our house. At least it's more age-appropriate crap.

Now to Craigslist the stuff that didn't sell.


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