Sunday, May 27, 2007

Blocking doilies

The doily is finished--everything except the blocking. The blocking (and photographs) will wait until the arrival of this. When you make something that needs to block to a specific shape--round or square--a grid is essential. I was trying to figure out how I could draw a grid that would be safely waterproof when a post to the Flickr knitting group sent me racing to the Joann's site to order a blocking board. I ordered the 18" x 24" size, which should cover any doily I ever want to make. (For larger items, I can block in sections.)

Sam normally sleeps on the sofa next to me when I'm watching television (and playing on the computer or working on crocheting). Sam has blissfully slept through all sorts of programs. But last night I watched King Kong (on TCM) and the first part of Mighty Joe Young. Between the women screaming and the animals roaring, Sam decided he'd had enough, and he moved to the quieter dining room. As soon as I turned off the movie (went back to a Harry Potter movie), Sam came back to the sofa to sleep.

Sam: the film critic.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Who broke the Internet?

IMDB is down. For me, anyway.

And GNIS is down. (That's the US government's site for official names of places.) http://geonames.usgs.gov/ It was totally down--as in "Are you sure you typed that right?" down--last night. Today, you can get to the search window, but you get an error when you search.

Saturday is the 100th anniversary of John Wayne's birth. TCM is showing bunches of his movies every day. Today's been the non-John Ford Westerns (Hondo, The Alamo, etc.). Tonight is Wayne-in-the-air: Island in the Sky, the High and the Mighty, The Flying Tigers, and Reunion in France. Tomorrow night is Wayne-in-World War II.

I've been working on the fancy doily today. When I need to give my hands a rest, I do a little genealogy fiddling--even without GNIS (which I need to try to locate an tiny cemetery).

I found a picture on Flickr of someone else's efforts on the same doily. I'm working it in a cream color--almost yellow. I've done through round 18. The pattern is 29 rounds. Round 18 was 256 stitches; it eventually gets up to 400 stitches. The blocked piece--if I have the size right--will be 15.25 inches.

I ordered an out-of-print book of killer doily patterns from a seller on ebay. No bidding: I just bought the thing.

Edited to add: IMDB is back. The government's a bit slower to fix breakages.

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Eeeewww! Gross!

I microwaved a bag of popcorn, and I've been tossing some pieces to the dogs.

Sam's standing here, drooling on my knee...

Cookies!

An old picture, but the current look.