The awesome geekiness of my friends

JT, who modded this for use in the Gigcast recording studios (aka the back room with the comp in it):

Literary Humor: No, reelee!

In the midst of a perfectly serious examination of modern prose, including Junot Diaz’s The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao on Feminist SF — The Blog!, I find this:

Is anyone else suffering fits of lit-geeky laughter like I am?

Fiber Geekery: Why yes, I am obsessed. How kind of you to notice.

I’ve found an official addiction, of a kind I never thought I’d have: Trying to Find New Colors of A Discontinued Yarn, or “Colorway Hunter’s Syndrome”.

I wonder sometimes if I’d still be doing this blanket at all if I wasn’t “having” to track the yarn down, skein by precious skein, instead of being able to just trot down to Local Yarn Store (hereafter LYS) and pick some up.

I started with three colors that I purchased at LYS, decided I really liked the yarn, discovered that it had been, in fact, discontinued, which was why I’d gotten it On Sale in the first place, acquired one more color from LYS, and then started browsing around for another color or two for the Kids’ Hats Christmas Gift Project of 2007. I did find another color, and then another. So, with five marled and one solid in my stash, I had this brilliant idea to use up the scraps: Making a patchwork afghan.

Except that the scraps themselves might have made a Patchwork Tea-Towel, and were quite insufficient for even a crib size blanket, which is what I was going for.

The hunt gathered steam, and has now managed to gain me not one, not two, but thirteen additional marled colors and one more solid, with another marled color on the way. With the official color count at 19 (plus solids for the border) I’m looking at a blanket at least 42″ square, with no color repeated in any ’strip’ I knit.

Astounding.

But! I have 70 Whole Squares knitted so far, in 7 strips of various length.

Just 12 to 13 strips to go, with a possible total of 330 squares left to knit.

What have I gotten myself into?

If I can finish it in the final three months of my pregnancy, I’ll have a great cotton blanket for the newly arriving Kiddo. If not, maybe Baby’s First Christmas?

Fiber Geekery: Crocheting, and a return to the Afghan

Author’s note: This is largely a reminder post, because I have made some progress on the afghan, and have yet to update my pictures yet. I also have some pics to take for my Ravelry stash, because I’ve gotten So Much Yarn in the last few weeks.

The official yarn color count is now approaching 20. I started out with five, if you recall. I am such an addict.

I got more skeins than I needed of a really great blue, though, so I decided to crochet a bag for my knitting, or maybe for taking my swim stuff to the pool this summer. It’s my first real crochet project, and so far it appears to be a good one for a beginner. You pretty much just make a chain and connect it to the previous row every few loops or so with a single crochet. The straps will be made with rows of single crochet, if memory serves.

But, since I’m now nearly overflowing with Classic Elite Flash yarn in various marled hues, I should really be getting back to the afghan. I mean, I have three months, sure, but the first 25% took me two weeks, and I’ll have to take another hiatus or four between now and completion.

Besides, the sooner I finish the afghan, the sooner I can start in on another baby blanket. I’m not starting another big project though, to intersperse with the first one. I’m no dummy. That’s a recipe for never finishing a blanket, ever. I’ll stick with small distractions like washcloths and amigurumi.

Food Geekery: Butternut Squash, Experiment #1 (Part the First)

I’m cooking on the fly with very little guidance. Be very, very afraid.

I got a 7-lb. (!) butternut squash from work. It was the last one. No one else was buying it. I was just tempted enough to take a winter vegetable and see what summery things I could do with it. At least, what edible things I can do with it. “Summery” would be a bonus.

The only problem is that Joel isn’t so fond of the butternut squash. “Vegetables shouldn’t be sweet,” he says. In honor of this, I went with a curried soup that will (hopefully!) taste good cold too. (Why I didn’t just make a pie is beyond me, but I wanted soup, so soup it was. I’m going to regret that decision, I can tell. That, or I’ll have to get a sweet potato pie from the pie lady at the farmer’s market tomorrow, to make it up to myself.)

I started with a recipe that I’ve made once or twice, which usually calls for red lentils, tomatoes and onions as the base, with some lovely spices — turmeric, cumin, cardamom, cinnamon — thrown in. Simmer, puree, strain, add coconut milk and lime juice.

For some reason, I thought the squash would work well with these flavors, so I basically just cut up the beauty, steamed it, and chunked it up into what was, more or less, the normal ingredients. (I say “more or less” because I didn’t have red lentils, but yellow split peas. It’s an experiment.)

Did I mention the squash was huge? (Note: I have larger hands than most; about 7-1/2 inches from wrist to tip.)

I decided to steam it in slices, and I have never been so grateful for a good knife in all my days.

I’d heard that squashes steam up nicely, but I’d never tried it before. The flesh certainly stays a nice vibrant color that way.

I had some other good ingredients to work with, including Vidalia onion and fresh local tomatoes.

My favorite part of making any meal is when I get to grind up spices or salt in the mortar and pestle. That’s food therapy at its best. I used whole cumin seed instead of ground, mainly because I found the whole first.

This is the best part about this soup recipe in general — it’s “chop it up and throw it all in”.

After the peas got cooked, I added in chunks of the butternut squash.

Of course, I ran out of energy, and we needed dinner, so the cooking had to be put on hold for the evening. The whole shebang is sitting in my refrigerator right now, being good until I can finish it (probably Sunday). The spices should be quite strong by then. I’ll have to taste it tomorrow, to make sure it’s not getting too heavy on the spice.

Next steps: blending, sieving, and adding coconut milk. Then the spicing experimentation will begin.

More Geek Love.

Just a quick one this time: thanks to a new poster at the IBTP message boards, I’ve been introduced to something I should have seriously missed* before now: Feminst SciFi - The Blog!(TM)

So far, it’s good. Touches on just about everything: on the front page right now are posts about BSG: Razor, the passing of Verity Lambert**, aliens and sex/gender (not sex with aliens, which is more typical), and a bit about Joss Whedon’s new series, Dollhouse.

I’m looking forward to more reading. (Although I still have to see Razor. Bah for me being so wiped out the Saturday after Thanksgiving I didn’t even remember it was on that night.)

*I’d even asked for recommendations for feminist/not-horribly-misogynist scifi lit on said boards. Didn’t even occur to me there’d be a blog about it somewhere. I really am clueless sometimes. Or just so used to SciFi==Teh Menz Wurld, kthxbai.***

**Which I knew about, amazingly, even though I’m not the Dr. Who fan I used to be. Thanks Richie!

*** and if I ever forget again how to make bog-damned footnotes, this is the code to use with this version of WordPress: <span style=”font-size:0.8em;”> </span>

This is all it takes to get me started

It’s a simple, step-by-step process.

1. Check Google Reader.
2. Click “The Girl Gamer” feed.
3. See title: “Behold my army! They are small and plastic!”
4. Look at the cute FFVI sprites in those funky melt-with-an-iron beads.
5. Remember playing the original FF — on the NES.
6. Google Image-search “Final Fantasy NES Sprites“.
7. Click on something that looks like a shirt.
8. Click on ‘How to make your own NES cross stitch‘
9. Spend 10 minutes manually downloading all the FF sprites from Video Game Sprites.
10. Try to justify starting ANOTHER project when I’m already supposed to be knitting hats for the nephews/niece for Christmas.
11. Blog the steps necessary to reach this point.
12. Rince.
13. Repeat until exhaustion or reader revolt.

I’m so ashamed… almost.

Because a line like this nearly made me pee in my pants*: Does your gun shoot brownies?

EDIT: I’ve had something serious to post for the last couple of days, but sheer laziness on my part has prevented any profound opining and/or contemplation. I’m off work today though, so maybe you’ll get the benefit of my great wisdom sometime today.

*IF I were wearing pants.

Because I really AM a geek…

… here are the quiz results to prove it:

Your Score: Modern, Cool Nerd

86 % Nerd, 60% Geek, 26% Dork

For The Record:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.

You scored better than half in Nerd and Geek, earning you the title of: Modern, Cool Nerd.

Nerds didn’t use to be cool, but in the 90’s that all changed. It used to be that, if you were a computer expert, you had to wear plaid or a pocket protector or suspenders or something that announced to the world that you couldn’t quite fit in. Not anymore. Now, the intelligent and geeky have eked out for themselves a modicum of respect at the very least, and “geek is chic.” The Modern, Cool Nerd is intelligent, knowledgable and always the person to call in a crisis (needing computer advice/an arcane bit of trivia knowledge). They are the one you want as your lifeline in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (or the one up there, winning the million bucks)!

Congratulations!

Take it yourself: THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST

Okay, so maybe I’m not MOSTLY a geek according to their definitions. STILL managed 60%. Yeah. Just because I’m not the horrible fan-girl (fan-folks just don’t have enough of a life, IMO).

That’s it. No thinking today.

A minor point.

So I’m reading this article, and this wee footnote catches my attention:

* The masculine pronoun is used for the sake of brevity. It refers to both genres, of course.