It’s been a long week traveling to and visiting family. Ultimately rewarding, so that’s good. I’m headed back to Utah even more tired than when I arrived, though, and will be playing some hardcore catch-up. Look forward to “real content” reappearing on my blog in the near future. Just not too near—my brain can’t handle it right now.
This is Sarah, one of the cats that belongs to my in-laws. She had a full tail once. It was mangled when she showed up in their yard, so they took her to the vet who recommended amputation. Now she has half of a tail. (I think it’s the right half to have.)
We saw her for the first time about a year ago when her tail was still bandaged up. It’s healed nicely, but still looks a little weird. I did not ask for her permission before taking this photo, perhaps explaining her look.
Well, this is officially the first day that technical difficulties have prevented me from fulfilling my daily blogging goal. I’m writing this in a text editor because I cannot reach my website… which is less than awesome. And guess what other site isn’t working, which makes this whole scenario completely and utterly UNawesome? webhosting.yahoo.com, through which I am embarrassed to admit that I still have my hosting.
I know, I know. What more should I expect from Yahoo? I’ve unfortunately been a long-term customer since I created my website—not out of desire for crappy webhosting, but because it was the easy choice for me given my inexperience with webhosts at the time. Some things were easy when I started out, but mostly Yahoo has been a piece of crap service provider.
For some time now I’ve been intending to switch over to bluehost, with which I’ve had very good experience using for other sites. But it requires, like, effort and stuff, and I’m nervous about switching hosts because I fear that I will lose everything and/or my site will be hacked in the process and turn into a Twilight fan site. Quel horreur!
Right. I can’t reach webhosting.yahoo.com to register a complaint via email, telephone, fax, carrier pigeon, etc. I probably have a phone number at home, but I am not at home right now. And it’s too late for me to want to deal with that crap anyway.
I’m going to bed and will backdate this entry tomorrow to fulfill my daily blogging requirement. Because technically I am writing this on March 19. Grrr, stupid Yahoo. I’m quitting you for real this time! As soon as I can find the phone number I need to quit you.
Karen “PhileoSophia” sent me an email a while back* with a bunch of knitting-related suggestions for the Geek Test. What do you think about her proposal that there is a relationship between knitting and geekiness? Is knitting a hobby that attracts geeks, or vice versa? Perhaps you would be so kind as to draw a Ven diagram and/or a graph a scatter plot and include it in your comment below.
In any case, here is the email I received. At the very least you should check out the links at the bottom! I’ve linked to a couple before on my blog, but they’re all great enough to link again. And all are added to my “someday I’ll have skillz to knit that” pile. Especially the knitted dissected frog and rat, which I could imagine displaying in a shadow box on my living room wall.
Greetings Yvette,
I love your site! I am a proud, female Major Geek as well as an avid knitter/crocheter. I have noticed that there is an odd relationship between knitting and geekiness. For the past few months, I have been trying to find the geekiest knitted items on the web. I have found Futurama’s Bender toilet paper holder, binary scarves, probability sweaters, d4 shaped dicebags, R2-D2 hats, the Digestive system, a truly amazing knitted Brain, other *ahem* body parts and systems, and, (my personal favourites) knitted dissections of a frog and a rat. Perhaps you should look into the geekiness of knitting and consider adding that to the test. A couple of examples would be: “Have you ever… Used dice to determine the cable pattern for a sweater you’re knitting? Transferred a program in binary to binary knitting (where Knit=0 and Purl=1)? Knit any body system? (Bonus points for the Circulatory system) Created amigurumi of any Star Wars character? Star Trek character? etc, etc.”
Yes, I am trying to inflate my score…
For your amusement, I have included some fun links of geeky knits for you to peruse! Enjoy!
PhileoSophia
(A Knitting Geek)Binary Scarf
Code Red Virus Scarf
Chaos Sweater
Star Wars Amigurumi
Knitted Dissections
Knitted Brain
Knitted Digestive System
*I’m behind in answering emails, in case you sent one and have not yet received a reply. I read them all and try to answer them all!
I do a little knitting from time to time, but I’m not very good. Mostly scarves and/or abandoned projects. (We shall not mention the cowl I made with my own non-pattern for a friend’s baby a few years ago.) I can knit and purl and even There’s just something about interpreting a pattern with 3-letter abbreviations (dpn, ssl, omg, wtf) that makes my eyes spin. I can’t even understand the concept of a “yarnover.” A yarn over what?!? That’s an incomplete sentence, not a noun!
Anyway. I have these fantasies of knitting some fabulous items for fashion, warmth, and expression of geekiness. Of course they only take an hour or so in my fantasies and turn out perfectly and I’m even sipping on margaritas while happily clicking my needles together and there’s nary a knot or dropped stitch.
Also, Matt Damon is doing shirtless sit-ups in my living room while Mike Rowe shovels something and sings to me.
….Um. What were we talking about? OH YEAH. Knitting.
At this point, I’m a little bit of an obsessive pattern saver. I know what I want to knit—I just need to develop the skills and patience and dedicate time to it and stuff. Once I do, though, here’s what I want to tackle first: knitting Star Wars inspired hats! These are my 3 favorite fangirl patterns:
R2D2 knit beanie by CarissaKnits. A very awesome (free!) pattern that is somehow made by the telescoping lens thingy on the front.
A Leia knit wig by ansleybleu. This one’s not free—the downloadable pattern PDF costs $7.95 from her Etsy store. It was apparently originally a commission specifically for Carrie Fisher (through one of her friends). It’s basically honeybun earmuffs with a beanie instead of one of those annoying headbands. Oh, and Princess Leia Buns of Hotness!
Finally, the Yoda knit hat, felted for extra coolness, by Sunshyne. The free pattern is for a baby-size head. But by the time I develop mad knitting skillz with the first two projects, I bet I will have the skillz to resize this pattern for an adult noggin. Now that I think about it, though… it would be very cool to wear the knit Leia buns and carry around a baby* in a knit Yoda hat. That sort of cosplay requires a little more, though… maybe a third character… anyone know of a free Han-Solo-in-Carbonite knitting pattern?
*So I guess in addition to mad knitting skillz, I would also need a baby. Or, if you’re following the Star Wars mythology that is expanded in books and such, I would need two babies since [SPOILER] Han and Leia have twins (a boy and a girl, natch). There can’t be two Yodas, though. I cannot think of a good solution to this problem. Oh. Em. Gee. I just did! One of the babies would wear the R2D2 beanie!!! Now that’s a full circle Star Wars geek craft geek-out. If I had a lightsaber, it would be extended.
The secular celebration of St. Patrick’s Day, as I see it, has three real purposes: 1) for kids to eat green cupcakes until they’re sick, 2) for adults to drink green beer until they’re sick, and 3) for everyone to pretend they’re Irish for the day as an excuse to be loud and wear gaudy clothing.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone! Enjoy this women’s church suit and hat by Donna Vinci that suitably merges the religious and secular purpose of this holiday for the sake of fashion. I’d need to consume at least three leprechaun-shaped hats full of green beer in order to wear that out in public, even on St. Patty’s day. Click on the photo to see more detail, including the really crappy Photoshopping.
Too many years later, here is an updated Geek Test! It’s version 3.14 in honor of Pi Day.
I uploaded it late last night and have updated a few minor things on the site. It’s driving me a little crazy because there’s so much I still want to do regarding the site, not to mention how the test is scored… but getting a more relevant-in-2010 test online was a big step for me. Dear self: just take baby steps from here and you can do it. Like the addition of social networking/sharing buttons at the bottom of the page. Done, but tweaking is still required.
For now, the geek tests in other languages are still in version 3.1 but will hopefully be updated soon.
Now go get your quiz on. It’s a little bit longer than before, but not by much. I hope you enjoy it! Please let me know if there are any glaring omissions in your opinion.
Happy Pi Day! May your day be filled with delicious pies and other round edibles as you do math for fun and recite π to as many decimal places as you can. Stay tuned for a slightly refreshed geek test sometime today….
I wanted to take a moment to address Beth’s comment/question from last week regarding how to deal with her daughter getting picked on at school (presumably for being a geek). Am I really a geek? Yes, ma’am, I believe I am. How did I deal with that at school?
Well, that’s not a question with a straightforward answer. First of all, getting picked on—and being called a geek, nerd, dork, or many of the other horrific things kids call one another—is part of a larger problem of bullying and social ostracization that runs rampant through schools and beyond. Geeks aren’t the only ones who are picked on by any means. Kids who are “different” in any way tend to suffer, and there is usually not an easy way to deal with the pain caused by anything from a day of not fitting in to being an outcast for years. But that’s not to say that they won’t eventually find a friend or a crowd that gets them. Which is what the growing geek subculture is all about.
Personally, my biggest school social challenges were in seventh and eighth grade at my small and somewhat-rural middle school. I was a good student who tended to be a teacher’s pet, which meant that I unintentionally rubbed a lot of kids the wrong way. Maybe I was precocious and annoying, maybe I had no fashion sense, maybe I was too chubby or clumsy or weird, maybe I tried too hard to fit in, maybe all of the above. Boys rarely talked to me, but I had a decent group of girlfriends in sixth grade—who suddenly started snubbing me in seventh grade for reasons still unknown. It was traumatic, to say the least. And then in eighth grade I developed a strong friendship with a different girl only to have her also suddenly turn on me by the end of the school year and take another of my precious few friends with her.
I don’t remember anyone calling me a geek specifically, but who knows what they whispered about me behind my back before I turned to see disgusted loathing in their eyes. I may not remember the exact words they used, but I remember those looks and how they much they hurt. After all, I didn’t know what I had done to deserve such outward hatred. The worst part about the kids who were truly mean to me was that Read more…
I finally have a better understanding of what Chat Roulette* is after watching this clever video from Casey Neistat. Spoiler: there are perverts who troll this random video chat mechanism! Sch0cking! I have to admit that I’m mildly curious to check it out, but definitely less so after learning more about Chat Roulette Maps. Oh, internet.
*Which, as “chatroulette,” for some reason brings to mind the word “charlatan.” Also, it took me a while to realize it was not a French-sounding “CHA-troulette.”
