Relative Sizes

Stole this from digg, but I had to repost, Nikon put together this pretty wicked flash demo to show the relative sizes of all things of known measurement. It is pretty freaking cool!

read more | digg story

Build a Bear Bear Built, say that five times fast.

Loki was excited to meet his new friend.

Friend!

Sheepy Quilt

Here is the quilt I mentioned a few posts back, here are the squares that are done, I have two others in partial complete states.

Socks!

 

So here is my active project, just some fun socks. They are my first two-tone socks, and they are working out okay. I need to start working my socks toe up, so I know exactly how much extra yarn I have for cuff, and stop having little leftover balls.

Sidebars

A few new side bars here, InteReSSting Feeds is a witty play on RSS, okay it isn't that witty. Any stories in my RSS feed that I find to be interesting, I will just mark as shared, and they will show up there.

The Feedworthy images are basically any image that has been posted to the blog, or images I randomly add. I'm not sure how often it will cycle through it, but it is amusing me.

And polls, I just added them for fun :)

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Kick Ass Knitting Bag

Ooookay, so this is a little kn-nerdy, but listening to It's Purl Man this morning and he mentioned a knitting bag, so I decided I would check it out, and I want it, no NEED it!

So knitting isn't exactly the most macho of train activities, but most knitting bags would make it even less so. But this actually accents my Crumpler bag nicely, and is awesomely functional. Check it out, I think it is called the SoYouCanKnit: Swift from Tom Bihn.

Clouds

Who's driving blog?

Bear driving blog!

Oooookay, that makes < sense.

I'm playing around with some stuff here, you may notice that you have auto-forwarded to blog.araska.org and everything looks weird. Don't worry that is on purpose....

more changes to come in the come days.

Nursery Green

 

Here's the nursery after coat two. It was snapped quickly in the middle of the night, so it isn't the best picture, but you get the idea I imagine.

Loki is a little evil in this one...

Big project on the go

 

So I'm busy at work with a lot of knitting these days, back to my projects after a busy pre-christmas knitting frenzy. I'm glad the slippers received such a warm welcome in the west, so warm that I may need to knit another pair or three out east.

So what I have "on my needles" is two things, the first, and probably permanent project, are socks, I'm always knitting socks, they are like the fall back pattern. When not knitting socks I am going to be working on my sheep afgahan from the Knit Simple magazine, the pattern is described as follows:

MARY KNIT A LITTLE LAMB Curl up and count away under a sepia-toned afghan of grazing sheep and lazing sheepdogs.

It is a really portable project as you can carry one square at a time. I'm done about 5-6 panels, if I'm lucky I can have them all finished by mid-march I think. I will start taking pictures of them as I go, but here is the promo pic from the magazine (found somewhere on the interwebosphere.)

Busy Busy Weekend

Well what can I say we got a lot done, our house is still a mess, and I think we are both exhausted. Erin will more then willingly paint you the image of her tyrant slave driver husband, but I don't really have to drive her too hard, just make a puppy dog face. It was all for good though. Are office is finally done, I may even post some pictures if I can remember. It is a little tight, but we have a work area for people, and a sleeping area for people (a desk and bed) and a work area and sleep area for cats (the cat tree, it serves both purposes.) Let's be honest, every surface is a sleeping area for cats, and cats don't do work, although to them napping is serious business.

The process of cleaning the office/future nursery, as well as furniture buying, has produced an inordinate amount of garbage. Were I to try and give it an ordinal, I would have to say one car load, and not one of those small trunk hybrid car loads, but a Sonata's worth. On that note, arriving at the dump in -15 degree C temperatures, with blowing winds, and not gloves is not a smart move. Especially when you realize only after arrival that unlike street pickup, dump drop off of recyclables must be sorted in advance...

After all that we began work on "Morgan's" room, Erin and her mom picked up paint Friday night, and we had at it on Sunday. The first coat went up without complaint, and the room is looking very gender-neutral babyesque. Its a really cute cheery green, (not hospital green) I think it is called farm yard? but if I were to pick a name, soft lime, or perhaps margarita would suffice. In the midst of all that we tackled the heap of laundry and kitchen mess that has been building up as a back log while we cleaned. The house still looks awful, but a lot less awful then before. There are corners of sanity forming, the office being the only one that has completely coalesced.

"Morgan's" new dresser is still occupying about 1/5 of our living room, and my D&D boxes another 1/6th. The piles have apparently given the umbrella plant cause to complain as they are blocking light. I can almost see the light myself, the tunnel just has one more coat of paint, and two coats of baseboard paint, but we are almost there, almost :) Actually we are going to put up the last coat tonight, and probably hang the closet bar tomorrow.

On a completely side note, this morning on the radio was a bit about handguns. While most crime is committed with 'illegal guns' those guns themselves are often stolen legal guns. While the restrictions put on gun owners is already onerous, I speculated on a few more that might discourage gun theft.

1. Ban the sale of hand gun ammo, except at licensed shooting ranges, stipulate that all ammo must stay at the range. This won't keep all the ammo off the streets but it should heavily restrict it. It would force ammo to be illegally sold through narrow distribution channels, and force thugs to pay more for it, given the Chris Rock theory, they may think twice before spending their expensive bullets. For hunters who use their handguns as a last defense against a big arse bear trying to eat them, if you allow for licensed gun owners to own licensed ammo presses, then they would be able to make ammo for personal use.

2. Limit the number of assembled weapons kept at a single location. Many gun collectors rage against crippling/disabling collection pieces as it reduces their value. But, if those collectors were permitted to keep their weapons not permanently disabled, but partially disassembled, with the requirement of keeping the removed components in an off site storage location, like a gun club, or bank vault. The weapons could be bought and sold by collectors as complete units, so long as they are stored apart. Each legal owner would be permitted a reasonable number of assembled weapons for the purposes of hunting, or range practice. The intent here is to be a disincentive to thieves from targeting gun collectors knowing that they will not posses sufficient weapons to make them viable targets.

Anyways some thoughts on the subject, maybe Colin can weigh in on how they are bad?

A Real Fire Alarm

Well after nearly six months of constant, and I mean CONSTANT fire alarm tests actually inside my left ear, we had are real first fire alarm today. No mention of why we had it, but it did require a company wide email to indicate that it wasn't a test. Boys and wolf crying apparently do have relevance in the modern world.

Anyways we had a nice breakfast break instead, and now back to the grindstone.

Online Sci-fi Book Club

So I've never book clubbed before, but I heard this being pimped on Buzz Out Loud and had to follow it up. First off it is being run by Tom Merrit and Veronica Bellmont, two of the three people I first heard when I started listening to Buzz Out Loud. Veronica has since wandered over to her own daily video show on Mahalo, but they are sticking together for this book club thing. The thing that drew me in, at least to start, was the name, Sword And Laser! That is just wicked, so I cruised the site, and it looks like a good book club thing, and maybe I will try it out, and maybe I won't, but I thought I would share for any book club folks out there of the Sci-fi persuasion. At the very least it's always nice to see a list of books that people whose opinions and tastes I respect that I haven't read before.

Stealing from Gabe again

Well I'm stealing an image from Gabe again, but its my wife :) and I am linking to its source.

Where did winter go?

I'm not exactly sure what's up with winter this year, this was taken about a week ago, and ever speck of snow and trace of parka had all but diapered this morning at the station. I do hope winter comes back, I haven't had a chance to get my skis out of the garage yet.

Blogging more, on stupid things...

From Sleeping cat ...

So Loki has been the subject of much photography of late, so mostly when he is asleep, he is less curmudgeonly when asleep. I keep meaning to snap a picture of him in my night table. He can actually open the drawers himself, and frequently does so in the middle of the night. I have started to close the drawer with him curled up inside, but this just makes him purr louder. Weird cat...

Jurrasic Perk

So I'm working this weekend, and as I stopped for coffee on the way in, I nearly was eaten alive by free roaming dinosaurs in my local cafe.

Morgan at Apx. 1613Weeks

Crazy British Man Rambles About Mario Galaxy

So I've heard this guy ramble on games before, and he is if nothing funny, and somewhat accurate. He is generally cruel to the subjects of his review, not withstanding portal, so here he goes on Mario, and well he is right, I guess, but his most hilarious incite came about Mario Sunshine, because that game did suck, even in comparison to Gobbles head on transplanted on to a praying mantis.

Having finished the game I will say I liked it, and its terrible formulaic star gather way, but I couldn't help chuckle, so enjoy the review

The Shrewd Tower Builder

Just chilling at my grand parents on New Year's Day, playing some Sky Bridge.

Random Cat Picture

Here is Loki being furry, he pretty much does that all the time.

Erin has him trained to 'sit', 'attack', and 'shake', she is working on 'lie down', and if were are lucky 'do the dishes'

New Night Tables

So here is one of our new matching night tables all installed and looking nifty, Erin's books are being well protected, both by a nook, and, well, a dragon...

We are going to go looking for a dresser this weekend, thanks to Mom, Andrew, Grandma, Grandpa, Fred and Beth, we will have a nice, adult, bedroom set that should last us.

We also started work on clearing out Morgan's room so we can start with the painting. So we can move home our rock'n rocking bassinet from Erin's Parents.