Category: To Occupy my Time

Baby blanket (finally) finished!

The baby in question, MaryAnn’s Henry, is now two months old.  This is the same pattern I used for the other three baby blankets I made.  One for Ariel’s Charlie and Matt’s niece Mya.  I’ve also made it for a friend whose child is now in elementary school.  That was the pre-digital-camera era though, so I don’t have a picture of that one. 

I’m such a slow knitter I usually start these before the couple knows the sex of the child, so green is the default color. I would be fine with giving more girly colors to boys and vice versa, but not everyone feels that way and so gender-neutral green it is.

I’ve also got a PDF of the pattern I can send you if you are interested.  Just let me know. It’s very easy, 3 knits 3 pearls in a repeating pattern of 14 rows. 

Starting with this blanket, I kept track of what I was watching while knitting.  Here’s the list:

  • Wolverine
  • Persuasion (BBC)
  • Midsummer Night’s Dream (Portland Actor’s Ensemble)
  • Revenge of the Nerds
  • In a World
  • Repo Man
  • Ruby Sparks
  • Mad Men Season 7 part I
  • Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains
  • Frozen
  • Sherlock Season 1
  • House of Cards Season 1 (episodes 1-3)
  • Stuck in Love
  • Treme Season 1 (episodes 1-3)
  • Downton Abbey, Season 5 (episodes 1-3)

Someone has a little too much discretionary spending money.

From an Oregonian article about most downtown parking tickets accumulated.  The top winner is a UPS truck.  But also high on the list?  The daughter of a doctor with a little too much spending money.  Who also has a parking space in a garage.  The absurdity of this made me laugh.

Circle Skirt part I

Gertie’s New Book for Better Sewing has a schematic to make a circle skirt. I had material left over from the capes I made last summer, so here I go.

I had very little pattern paper, so I made my right angle in one corner.

And then raided the wrapping paper for the rest of the pattern.

Here are my two pattern pieces, the waistband and the skirt.

I moved the chairs out of the way to clean and then left them while I was working on the skirt.  Sentinel found a new seat to sit on.

Sadly, while I had thread and the material, I did not have a zipper, so this is as far as the circle skirt has gotten.

The preferred method.

This is a moot point because I’ve switched over to an electronic calendar, but I need to point out to nearly all of the planner makers that the above is a better setup than five days the same size and Saturday/Sunday sharing one space.   We have things to do on the weekend.  Lots of things.  It used to drive me crazy, having acres of space to write things Monday through Friday and then squeezing in the Saturday and Sunday details.  Here Monday through Thursday share one page and the remaining three days share the other.

Here’s the number one thing that drives me crazy about the Oregonian.

Longtime readers know that I am quite frustrated with the shell of the paper that the Oregonian has become.  But here’s my number one hatred.  They are so namby-pamby with their changes.  Don’t want to publish a paper copy of the newspaper anymore?  Fine, stop doing it. That would be better than this four-day a week hybrid we’ve got.  Don’t want to have certain features anymore? Just print an announcement that you are discontinuing them.  That would be much better than just ushering said feature/person out the door and  waiting for us to wonder what ever happened to the guy who wrote the local political cartoons for 30 years.  Don’t like the name Oregonian anymore and want to be called OregonLive, even though it’s a stupid name?  Fine!  Just change the damn name. Don’t start using this weird, wordy, dumb looking hybrid Oregonian/OregonLive.  Be the newspaper you want to be and see if we all follow.  We probably will.  We’ve got nothing else.

Three things from the paper.

Ads like these make me very angry.  I dislike the pressure to look a certain way, especially after putting your body through the reverse boot camp that is the process of creating life.  I also hate how the model’s torso is stretched out to make her look thinner.  And I hate that three surgical procedures (any of which could kill you) are crammed into one day.   When I was growing up, my father often bought the Sunday Oregonian (which was available in Boise) and the plastic surgery ads always disturbed me.  The Idaho Statesmen didn’t have plastic surgery ads.  But I bet it does now.

This is the biggest “duh” statement of the day.

And this just made me laugh.  It reminds me of the “learn multiplication facts AND have fun!” nonsense.