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Dec. 17th, 2005 10:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catsittingstillI had a wonderful time at Philcon! Philadelphia (at least the parts of it that I spent any time in) is a very pretty city. Snow chased me halfway up I-81 and I-76 coming in (the radio kept giving me the weather report and warning me to stay off the roads that night--which was a strong incentive to keep the rest stops brief) but didn't actually catch up until well after I got to Mark and Rene Mandel's house (where crash space had kindly been offered). Mark is a linguist, so naturally I wondered if he knew any sign language (ASL) and it turned out he did, so I picked a few things up from him. I've got a fair amount of vocabulary but am having trouble with syntax--mostly because I can find out almost nothing about it.
The con itself was lots of fun too. I really enjoyed the filking, and there were several people (and groups) I wished I could have heard more from. I got to sing a little myself, but didn't have to sing so much that my throat started hurting again. Lady Mondegreen even started off one of David Weber's panels with a rousing rendition of No Quarter. I got to talk to David for a while--I don't know how someone so extroverted manages to lock himself away from people long enough to write. Unless the extroversion is a function of not seeing anyone for months at a time.
In other news, I have put in a little work on the canoe this week--not as much as I would have liked, owing to spending Monday driving back from the con and Tuesday Christmas shopping. But I have traced and cut three (of 15) stations. I need to find or make a longboard (basically a long sanding block) to smooth them off. I was thinking that could wait until I had them all cut out, but it turns out that handling the jigsaw is really hard on my hands and wrists--I guess it's the vibration. So it would be good to have a variety of stuff to do to let different muscles rest. Really, a longboard shouldn't be hard to make--gluing handles on a piece of 1/4 inch plywood ought to do it. I just don't want to buy a whole sheet of the stuff when I'm only going to use a 4 x 18 inch piece.
The other other news is that I have a new laptop--Scheherezade is a 15 inch Powerbook we've been saving up for since summer. We were waffling about whether to get one soon or wait until after the Intel chips have been beta tested, but decided that if we got one now, Kip could use it to work on stuff for his classes while we're visiting Dad. This happy occasion has left us with a lot of stuff to sort out, programs to load and update, files and settings to transfer and so on. Which is the other part of what I've been doing this week, besides driving, Christmas shopping, and working on the canoe.
And I finished my first lace sock. Okay, it just has one panel of lace down the front. (I found out when I was experimenting with cables that it's a good thing to try new techniques a little at a time.) Unfortunately the only lightweight yarn I can buy at my usual yarn store is that dratted magic stripe stuff and the striping (and especially the fake fair isle bits) camoflages the lace pattern pretty effectively. But aside from that it's a pretty nice sock. And I weighed the sock and the remains of the yarn and it looks like I'll have *just* enough to do the second sock from the same ball. Then I'll find out if I can actually stand to wear wool socks :-)
The con itself was lots of fun too. I really enjoyed the filking, and there were several people (and groups) I wished I could have heard more from. I got to sing a little myself, but didn't have to sing so much that my throat started hurting again. Lady Mondegreen even started off one of David Weber's panels with a rousing rendition of No Quarter. I got to talk to David for a while--I don't know how someone so extroverted manages to lock himself away from people long enough to write. Unless the extroversion is a function of not seeing anyone for months at a time.
In other news, I have put in a little work on the canoe this week--not as much as I would have liked, owing to spending Monday driving back from the con and Tuesday Christmas shopping. But I have traced and cut three (of 15) stations. I need to find or make a longboard (basically a long sanding block) to smooth them off. I was thinking that could wait until I had them all cut out, but it turns out that handling the jigsaw is really hard on my hands and wrists--I guess it's the vibration. So it would be good to have a variety of stuff to do to let different muscles rest. Really, a longboard shouldn't be hard to make--gluing handles on a piece of 1/4 inch plywood ought to do it. I just don't want to buy a whole sheet of the stuff when I'm only going to use a 4 x 18 inch piece.
The other other news is that I have a new laptop--Scheherezade is a 15 inch Powerbook we've been saving up for since summer. We were waffling about whether to get one soon or wait until after the Intel chips have been beta tested, but decided that if we got one now, Kip could use it to work on stuff for his classes while we're visiting Dad. This happy occasion has left us with a lot of stuff to sort out, programs to load and update, files and settings to transfer and so on. Which is the other part of what I've been doing this week, besides driving, Christmas shopping, and working on the canoe.
And I finished my first lace sock. Okay, it just has one panel of lace down the front. (I found out when I was experimenting with cables that it's a good thing to try new techniques a little at a time.) Unfortunately the only lightweight yarn I can buy at my usual yarn store is that dratted magic stripe stuff and the striping (and especially the fake fair isle bits) camoflages the lace pattern pretty effectively. But aside from that it's a pretty nice sock. And I weighed the sock and the remains of the yarn and it looks like I'll have *just* enough to do the second sock from the same ball. Then I'll find out if I can actually stand to wear wool socks :-)
