carlin, balls, and yarn

PK and I were talking the other day - I'd called her while I was channel surfing, and I'd come across an HBO special with George Carlin. I'd exclaimed that he looked old! She'd laughed and said that that happens when you get to be in your 70's.

George Carlin passed away last night of heart failure - and Jay Leno was among those who remembered him. He was 71. I think the one routine I'll remember is the one about "the earth...plus plastic!" Mind you, that link is not kid safe. Carlin was best known for his "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" (also not a kid safe link) which went to the US Supreme Court. RIP, George.

We've been busy on the PFW - the End of Term Ball is coming up, and the Prefects are running games, and auctions, and other stuff. Ought to be a fun time, so come check it out! Speaking of games, Dan and Kez started the Ravenclaws playing at bowling online - it's one of a ton of games you can play at the Wrigley Company's site, "The Candystand". You don't have to sign up to play. I beat my first opponent, and and arranging to play the next person on the bracket. I think Dave is chomping at the bit to play the winner of my next match! It's a fun time-waster.

I visited a new (to me) yarn store in St. Charles called Knit and Caboodle on Main Street. They just moved this last week, and the new place has a lot of room. They're now in the middle of the 'craft' area of Main - there are quilt shops and needle arts shops across the street, and it's about a half a block up from the visitor's center. Easy to find! I bought:

• 1 100g call of Berroco "Comfort Sox" (50% superfine nylon/50% superfine acrylic) in colorway Hari Hari (blues and greys to light charcoal). I swear I didn't know the name of the colorway when I bought it...
• 1 100g hank of Rio de la Plata Yarns "Lana del Artista" (100% superwash merino) in colorway SL38 (grey-green, grey-blue to sky blue, chocolate browns to light pinks, cream). This is a kettle-dyed yarn, and is a very unusual color. Here's the yarn I bought!
• 2 50g balls of Cascade Yarns "Fixation" (98.3% cotton, 1.7% elastic) in colorway #9980 Los Alamos (bright blue, yellow, orange, hot pink to red). I've heard lots of things about people making socks out of this yarn, and K&C had ot on sale, sooo...I bought some.

Mom bought a new digital camera, and she 'loaned' me her old one. It's a Olympus C-50 Zoom, which is about 4 or 5 years old. It's a 5 MPixel camera but the biggest card it can take (with a firmware update that you have to SEND THEM YOUR CAMERA to do) is a 512. I'll be ordering a 256 card online - you can't find them anywhere except online because everyone now has the 1GB and 2 GB cards. Oh well. A 256 is only $12 with free shipping, so I'll get one or two of those. I've been playing around with it, and it has a macro setting, which is exactly what I was looking for to take my sock pics. Yay! The color representation looks pretty good too - the pic I have of the Rio de la Plata yarn was taken from about 2 feet away with the flash - I adjusted the color temperature and the saturation, and it's very close.

I finished the Monkeys and cast right on another pair. Okay, so it took me a couple of days to get started on the new pair - the Spiraling Coriolis sock from Cat Bordhi's book New Pathways for Sock Knitters Vol 1. I'm using the multi-colored Sockotta I bought from DNBY a few weeks ago. It's a very WEIRD pattern. It actually reminds me of The Joy of Cooking, where if you want to make say, a lasagna, you have to jump all over the cookbook for the meat sauce recipe here, the cheese blend there, yadda yadda. The Spiraling Coriolis pattern is the same. The toe is in one chapter, the heel in another, and the leg in a third. Never mind the initial cast-on and the increases/decreases. It's mind-boggling! But fun. I'm thinking that I might make the next pair out of this book with the Opal 6-fach that I got from the Weaving Dept.

I think that's all for me. Cheers!