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Up at this hour because
Mar. 29th, 2023 05:39 amI took Kip to the airport for an Alpha Chi convention. The next few days will be all about foods Kip doesn't like (not that there are a lot of those.)
Siderea has a very depressing but timely post up about when it might be time to consider moving to a free state if you are LGBT or capable of getting pregnant (tl; dr: now. Now is the time. Yes, moving sucks, and yes, lots of people will have a very hard time making it happen, but the longer you wait the harder it is likely to get. Take your creativity and your earning power and your human potential and move it to a free state, because you can't help others if you are in prison or dead.) Kip and I are in that class of people who are safe-for-now: white, cis, straight, and not capable of getting pregnant (thank you menopause) but it may be time for me to check with folks who aren't and see if they need help escaping.
In happier news, I had a very good FKnO (the online version of FilkOntario) not least because I was inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame on Sunday, an honor to which I had hoped to someday aspire for about twenty five years. I also had a concert with Lauren that evening, and Kip got a cake for me to celebrate, which we all shared over dinner after the concert. The folks at the bakery had never heard of filk, so they did the best they could with Kip's handwriting and their understanding of common English words, and the cake said "Film Fame" on it, which made us laugh.
With regard to nalbinding, I have made two hats, a top-down one for me that I ended up taking apart and redoing three times to get it the way I wanted it, and a bottom-up one for Kip that was much easier to do, and now I am working on a pair of mittens. I noticed that nalbinding in Oslo stitch results in a fabric that stretches much more across the rows than along the rows, and since I wanted a cuff on the mittens, because I don't like the cold air getting at my wrists, I came up with the idea of nalbinding a long flat flap and joining it top-to-bottom to make a short fat cylinder--the cuff for the wrist, and then picking up stitches along the edge of the cuff to bind the rest of the mitten in the round. It has worked pretty well, though just like knitting, it's hard to get the edges of the cuff even. I did a better job on the second than the first. I had to re-do the thumb opening a couple of times, but I'm now about 2/3 done on each mitten. I work on one for a while then work on the second while I can still remember what I did on that stage of the first. By the time I have the mittens done it will be too warm to wear them, but I can try them out come winter. I'm using the leftover lovely pink yarn I used for Tim Griffin's hats. The cuffs are lighter than the rest of the mittens because I nalbound the yarn and picked it out again three times trying to work out how I was going to accomplish the cuffs, so the yarn took a lot more wear. But the yarn is varied pinks rather than one solid pink, so it's not very noticeable, though the various mistakes and wear-and-tear does give the mittens an endearing "new crafter's first mitten" air. Which to be fair, they are the first mittens I have ever made.
I am starting out making kefir (a fermented milk drink like a thin yogurt, but slightly fizzy) at home, because I like kefir and it's supposed to be good for you, but store bought kefir is expensive. Turns out you don't make kefir from kefir, the way you do yogurt or sourdough; you make kefir from "kefir grains" a sort of colony of mixed bacteria and yeast all gummed together in a polysaccharide that the bacteria secrete. Kefir grains look a lot like cauliflower florets, and you can mail order them, and soak them in a cup of milk for a few days at room temperature to bring them out of dormancy. So far so good, so I'm trying my first actual kefir ferment and we will see.
Siderea has a very depressing but timely post up about when it might be time to consider moving to a free state if you are LGBT or capable of getting pregnant (tl; dr: now. Now is the time. Yes, moving sucks, and yes, lots of people will have a very hard time making it happen, but the longer you wait the harder it is likely to get. Take your creativity and your earning power and your human potential and move it to a free state, because you can't help others if you are in prison or dead.) Kip and I are in that class of people who are safe-for-now: white, cis, straight, and not capable of getting pregnant (thank you menopause) but it may be time for me to check with folks who aren't and see if they need help escaping.
In happier news, I had a very good FKnO (the online version of FilkOntario) not least because I was inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame on Sunday, an honor to which I had hoped to someday aspire for about twenty five years. I also had a concert with Lauren that evening, and Kip got a cake for me to celebrate, which we all shared over dinner after the concert. The folks at the bakery had never heard of filk, so they did the best they could with Kip's handwriting and their understanding of common English words, and the cake said "Film Fame" on it, which made us laugh.
With regard to nalbinding, I have made two hats, a top-down one for me that I ended up taking apart and redoing three times to get it the way I wanted it, and a bottom-up one for Kip that was much easier to do, and now I am working on a pair of mittens. I noticed that nalbinding in Oslo stitch results in a fabric that stretches much more across the rows than along the rows, and since I wanted a cuff on the mittens, because I don't like the cold air getting at my wrists, I came up with the idea of nalbinding a long flat flap and joining it top-to-bottom to make a short fat cylinder--the cuff for the wrist, and then picking up stitches along the edge of the cuff to bind the rest of the mitten in the round. It has worked pretty well, though just like knitting, it's hard to get the edges of the cuff even. I did a better job on the second than the first. I had to re-do the thumb opening a couple of times, but I'm now about 2/3 done on each mitten. I work on one for a while then work on the second while I can still remember what I did on that stage of the first. By the time I have the mittens done it will be too warm to wear them, but I can try them out come winter. I'm using the leftover lovely pink yarn I used for Tim Griffin's hats. The cuffs are lighter than the rest of the mittens because I nalbound the yarn and picked it out again three times trying to work out how I was going to accomplish the cuffs, so the yarn took a lot more wear. But the yarn is varied pinks rather than one solid pink, so it's not very noticeable, though the various mistakes and wear-and-tear does give the mittens an endearing "new crafter's first mitten" air. Which to be fair, they are the first mittens I have ever made.
I am starting out making kefir (a fermented milk drink like a thin yogurt, but slightly fizzy) at home, because I like kefir and it's supposed to be good for you, but store bought kefir is expensive. Turns out you don't make kefir from kefir, the way you do yogurt or sourdough; you make kefir from "kefir grains" a sort of colony of mixed bacteria and yeast all gummed together in a polysaccharide that the bacteria secrete. Kefir grains look a lot like cauliflower florets, and you can mail order them, and soak them in a cup of milk for a few days at room temperature to bring them out of dormancy. So far so good, so I'm trying my first actual kefir ferment and we will see.
