Anyone seen the movie Whip It? It’s about roller derby and it’s set in Austin. I think more than a few Austinites have, or else they did an especially good job promoting the current derby season – I went up on Sunday and the place was mobbed. I just barely got a spot to take pictures.
But take pictures I did.
I’m just wondering how long it takes for roller derby to make it as an Olympic sport. The women certainly work hard enough at it.
So I did not make it to the podium in the Knitting Olympics. Which is perfectly fine by me – I did manage to churn out more stitches than I have in a very long time. It felt good to get my knitting groove on again.
I want to thank everyone who signed up and I especially want to thank everyone who found the tip jar at the bottom of the sign up page and contributed. I promised Stephanie that if she mentioned the tip jar on her blog, I would send her half of the proceeds to be donated to Knitters Without Borders. The other half is going to defray my bandwidth costs – you’d be amazed at how much traffic came through the last two weeks.
I’m going to update the Knitting Olympics sign-up page at ko2010.sweaterproject.org with a page where you can submit your e-mail address (if you supplied one when you first signed up) to indicate that you completed your project. Those who completed will get Franklin’s spiffy medal icon next to their names.
I’ll update again when I have the podium page finished.
Citius, Altius, Fortius, y’all.
UPDATE
There is now a podium page at ko2010.sweaterproject.org/podium.php. Please feel free to mark yourself as having finished if, you know, you finished.
Well, this was unexpected.
I went out of town this weekend and like the forgetful person that I am, I left the measurements for the target recipient of my kilt hose at home. So I winged it when I turned the heel and started the leg. Unfortunately, in the winging of it, I mis-remembered the number of stitches that I’d put in the foot and I decreased more than necessary in the ankle. By the time I realized this, I was several inches in to the leg and I had a quandary. Without the measurements I had no idea if the leg would fit or not; it seemed as though it would, but I wasn’t sure.
So I punted and I started the other kilt ho. I worked it up through the heel turn and started the leg, this time only decreasing to where I had the same number of stitches in the ankle as I’d had in the foot.
This morning, I got the victim recipient to try on both nascent socks and guess what? The one with “too many” decreases fits like a glove. Or rather a sock. The other one is too loose.
So I have about an inch to rip on the second one and then I’m ready to rock these bad boys all the way to the finish line.
And there will be pictures soon.
Update
And a picture!
Rosa was generous enough to act as my backdrop.
I’m doing the same thing for this year’s Knitting Olympics as I did four years ago – I’m making kilt hose. Only this time, I have a vague idea of what I’m doing, and I’m not making the hose for myself. They’re going to a friend of mine at work who is going to be participating in a Scottish wedding in August. He’s very excited about the chance to wear a kilt and he knows the importance of proper hose to go with it. So I was only too happy to oblige his request for a pair of John Anderson kilt hose.
I’m also working as support for the 2010 Knitting Olympians this year – The Yarn Harlot put out a call for a sign-up page a few days before the event started, and I threw one together for the project. I was painfully aware of just how badly my coding skills have atrophied while writing it, but it’s up and running and the server has not been bricked by the load.
Pics of the WIP coming very soon.
class Geek(Earth) {
}
(For non-coders – that says “the geek shall inherit the Earth”.
Tonight I made jambalaya.
I started with some really nice Vermont butter and flour to make a roux. Then I added the holy trinity of onions, bell peppers and celery, followed by tomato paste, diced tomatoes, black pepper, rice, water, and andouille sausage (sorry Cari, it’s not vegetarian) and let it simmer.
The verdict? Epic fail.
The aroma is right on. When the trinity hit the roux, oh my – I love that smell. That smell could be methadone for all those cooks out there who have been huffing bay leaves. It’s just wonderful.
The taste is good – very good. The smokiness of the andouille is permeating the dish, and the toasted flour from the roux is giving it this great savory tone and it’s just delicious.
The texture feels like some kind of horrible accident involving milled wheat and a personal lubricant. I completely screwed up the roux. It hasn’t separated exactly, but what should be a nice velvety thick body to the dish is instead this mealy slickness. It’s not bad enough to render the batch inedible. This is going to provide lunch for the next week. But there’s no way I’m going to serve this to anyone else (unless they really piss me off).
Anyone got good tips on making a proper roux? I lack experience here.
Update
Yes, I know – there’s no roux in jambalaya. I wasn’t working off a recipe here, and the term ‘jambalaya’ isn’t technically correct to describe what I was making. I’m not sure what else to call this stuff.
A friend called me a word geek in a chat today. That prompted the following outburst:
Sentience is really cool – once you become self-aware, you’ve got the ability to perceive your environment as distinct from you and something that you can proactively influence and manipulate.
But when you add a population with language on top of that, you get a massive network that can act in concert to influence the environment.
And when you add written language to that, you’ve got a population whose knowledge can be transferred across inhospitable environments to other populations, survive calamities, and even persist past extinction.
Language is fucking awesome.
With the possible exception of Java. Fuck Java.
The little girl can put on a scary face when she wants to. Or when she’s yawning.
I have a beautiful brunette living with me.
It was cold and rainy this weekend . . . perfect soup weather.
