The Blog

 I can hit a target through a telescope...

Did I ever link you lot to the (Doctor Who) Handlebars vid? Because it's one of my favourite things in the universe, and I frequently leave it on loop for many repetitions at a time.

Speaking of, Eleven is lovely, Amy is fabulous and I want to give her many hugs (especially her young self who took to biting psychologists). Can't wait for the next episode, and have surprisingly high hopes for the Moff's reign. This could just be because Eleven reminds me of a baby Four, but it might be that we went a whole episode without actually killing anyone (correct me if I'm wrong). Also I'm looking forward to seeing River Song again.

Anyway, I'm going to bed, but I thought it might be prudent to check in and say I'm still here and I am not completely useless. I auditioned for a telly commercial last Tuesday before celebrating Gemma winning many ribbons at the easter show. Going to the post office tomorrow or the day after to send off the stack of things I've been failing to send for quite a while.

I'm hoping that as soon as I get over this stupid cold I might actually start catching up on life. It's unlikely, but the hope lives on. While I'm waiting, the giant chapter of doom hit 10,000 words this afternoon. No real end in sight, as I've lost the thread of the narrative, but I'm giving up on it this weekend. Oh, and the boss said the last chapter I gave him was "pretty awesome", which is high praise indeed.

Labels: crafty-Cat, crazy mexicans, cross stitch, doctor who, i can ride my bike with no handlebars, I made this, mail, thesis ftl, writing

 Raising money for a good cause...

I'm offering to make a bookmark of your favourite fictional character for the highest donation bid to help_haiti. Bidding closes on the 20th, American time, and the bookmark should be posted by February.

I may also offer an amigurumi katamari if I can find the time to make both and think anyone will want it.

Labels: auction, charity, crafty-Cat

In response to a series of requests...

Here's my brief guide to making my version of Mina de Malfois' Internet Sampler, as shown below.

First off, the pattern is by Gnat. Worship at her altar. And print out a copy.

The one thing everyone keeps asking me for is my list of colours. I don't have all of them, as most came from the family's box of miscellaneous leftover stranded cotton. And while I do have a list that I worked from, sadly chunks of it read as "grey 1 = kangaroo 4", which isn't helpful for the rest of you. But here's the simple version:

• Greens (Firefox 2 back/forward buttons): DMC 907, 906, 905 and one darker from the set. 905 was also used for the green row of checkerboard squares.
• Yellows (Firefox 2 home button): DMC 742, 743 and 3842.
• Blues (Firefox 2 refresh button): DMC 3846, 3845, 3844, 3845, 3846 (it's easy to know your colours will match if they're all from the same row in the shop). 3845 is the second row of checkerboard squares.
• Blue (prayer and "home" window): DMC 824
• Purple ("log in"): DMC 154
• Purple (border): From the stash - Anchor 0102 (though this appears to be ancient). It's a very Cadbury purple, if that helps.
• Red (hearts): DMC 817. It's very shiny and bold.
• Maroon (404, eleventy): No tag, sorry.
• Peach (smilie border): I don't have a number for this, but it's in the box next to a similar but lighter DMC 352, so choose something a shade darker than that.
• Pinks and purple (3rd and 4th checkerboard rows and @s): No idea, sorry. The @s are very fushia, go crazy. :)
• Greys (home button, tickybox and radio button): You need 3 greys for the buttons and tickyboxes, two dark and one light. These came from a koala set, but there are plenty of available references for anyone who is stressed about the colour.
• Grey (alphabet, cursors): This is a darker grey than those that came before, almost charcoal.
• Black and White: No numbers, but you should have those in your stash anyway.

Other notes:

• I stitched on 16 count aida cloth in an off-white colour (I think I may have recycled the packaging). The whole thing (including borders as shown above) measures 42x33.5cm (~16.5*13 inches).
• I made the letters of the alphabet one pixel taller than they were in the original pattern. I forget why, but it was important at the time. Just use your judgement, or the high resolution version of my photos if you're desperate. I worked it from the centre out, and didn't worry too much about making the letters be properly lined up with a real keyboard (e.g. 'B' should be centred between 'G' and 'H'). There comes a point where you have to let these things go.
• I made the home button by shrinking down a screenshot. In a perfect world I would have spaced it properly so that it was the same size as the back/forward/refresh arrows.
• In a truly perfect world, I would have made a Mac version of the cursors. This is not a perfect world, and I'm lazy. :)

I think that's it. If you have any questions, or if I missed something you did ask for, drop me a comment and I'll reply as soon as humanly possible. Thanks for reading.

Labels: crafty-Cat, cross stitch, crossing the streams, emails, fandom, mina de malfois, pattern notes

*yawns*...

You can expect a proper blog post tomorrow, in which I report on the excursion to the nuclear power plant, but for now, have a handful of random links and then I'm going to bed. Oh, and I should report that I got around to entering my awesome sampler of awesome in the Easter Show in category 43: embroidery of a modern design. There's $10 I'll never see again, but perhaps I'll make some poor soul laugh. Pattern notes now available.

• More British passengers died on the Titanic because they queued politely for lifeboats.
• Apparently someone tried to kill the Queen back in the 70s when she visited. No one knew.
• Snakes eating other snakes!

Labels: crafty-Cat, linking all over the place, news, Radioactive-Cat, snakes, Spider-Cat, tired

   300 posts later...

...and I still want to do this blogging thing. Who would have thought?

So, in the personal news, Minako is back! Woo! *does the happy laptop dance, which sounds much dirtier than it actually is*

James bought me some stickers from MOO with my flickr photos on them, and I've been gleefully sticking them all over my once immaculately white iBook. I'll post photos later, I imagine.

Actually, on the subject of photos, the other week I knitted a scarf in three days for my dear friend Nilanka's birthday. It was the short row rib from Magknits, knitted in Vintage Hues by Cleckheaton and it was really fun to knit something fun and simple for a change. Which is to say something other than my jacket of doom (last seen in this blog post by my mum), which is coming along nicely, but the last stages (knitting the collar and sewing it up) are going very slow.

As a part of her birthday present I also promised to teach Nilanka how to knit herself, and so last Sunday I went to see her and taught her how to both knit and purl and she's now the proud creator of the first 15cm of a scarf in a 3 rows knit, 3 rows purl rib (much the same as the one I knitted for her, but without the short rows). It's very pretty and I hope she enjoys knitting from now on. I may have to go back in a week or two to teach her how to cast off.

I've also knitted a scarf for Heidi in the last few weeks, but I forgot to photograph it. :(

I'm currently at 6 pages on "Skirting the Paradox", for those who care about my fictional works. I'd love to have this finished soon, but I'm really bad at writing fight scenes, and when you get right down to it the whole story is one long string of fight scenes. *sighs* I kinda just want to skip them and get on with the fun mystery stuff, because that's really the point of the story, but the violent setting keeps getting in the way.

Oh, and I suppose you want to know about the PhD. Well, I think I finally made a breakthrough today. I'm still not going to finish anytime soon, but I feel like I know what's going on and where I'm headed. I'm sure that'll only last a day or two, but right at this moment, I'm feeling good about it.

James has started a new job today. That makes me inordinately happy. I imagine he'll be blogging about it soon enough. In the meantime, everyone should go and read his post where he points out the uncanny resemblance between the latest iPod posters and screenshots from Battle Royale. Because it's awesome and while I believed him when he first told me that was what they look like I didn't realise just how similar the imagery was.

My sister has packed herself a "go-bag" in case of terrorist attack during the APEC summit next month. We're reasonably certain she's being ironic, since it primarily consists of her St John's Ambulance first aid kit (which she keeps in her car anyway), a change of clothes and a packet of timtams (which will someday run out), but you can never be too sure.

My grandmother on my father's side is currently in the Sydney Eye Hospital (she had the cataracts removed from one eye last week and it promptly became infected) and yesterday she had an operation which was apparently successful. She's in the room next door to Anthony Mundine, who's got himself a horrible eye infection because he noticed a speck on his contact lens and licked it to get it clean. The good news is that my nanna will be fine, the bad news is that no one is sure about "the Man".

Actually, while we're on the subject of Catherine's relatives, my grandmother on my mum's side recently loaned me her collection of newspaper clippings about her father (my great grandfather), Edward Michael Boland. My mum took the time to scan them all into a pdf file for posterity, and it's available for download if you are interested in my family history. He was a great man (even the Queen recognised it, giving him an OBE *smiles*), being Apprenticeship Commissioner in NSW for more than 20 years, known for being fair minded and working with Liberal governments in power despite him being a Labor man through and through. Grandma informed me that the Liberal government actually changed the age of retirement laws so that he could stay on longer in his job.

My favourite quote from the collection reads:
The Commissioner is not concerned that his OBE puts in the same order of chivalry as the Beatles with their MBEs. But he commented wryly: "I still prefer youths with hair short back and sides."
- (We think the Sunday Telegraph), 27th June, 1965


Moving on to the world outside my circle of peoples, we have a couple of great bits of news to discuss:

Giant Lego man washed up on Dutch beach
This is just amazing. Both for the quotes ("I saw the Lego toy floating towards the beach from the direction of England.") and for the thought that maybe he was made to walk the plank on a giant Lego pirate ship. Or maybe he was just washed overboard. We may never know!


China tells living Buddhas to obtain permission before they reincarnate
You read that right. The Dalai Lama must now ask permission (no doubt in triplicate) before he reincarnates.
And while that sounds amusing at first (and indeed, those of us here in the office laughed when we first read it), it's also terribly sad when you think of the Chinese government using this power to corrupt the beautiful mysticism of the Tibetan people.

Skipping away from depressing news, the new iMacs were released today. I think they're pretty ugly, what with the giant black border around the screen (which is really a quite clever way of hiding the fact that you can't actually fit a computer in the space behind the screen alone), but they're better than the mockups James showed me last week and still reasonably sexy. And I'm sad to say that I want one like burning. Good thing they haven't released Leopard yet, or I'd be in trouble. Bloody Steve.

And this story about Magic has just made my day. I must wire some of those switches into my life.

So, this is the end of my 300th blog post. Was it good for you too?

Labels: crafty-Cat, Domus Prime, family, history, iCatherine, knitting, lego, longest blog ever, magic, never going to graduate, news, old photographs, phd, reality distortion field, web stuff, writing

   Gratuitous Scarf Post...

So, I've been busy. We got to that horrible point in the semester where I end up with two assignments and a test to mark within two weeks, and it's always nasty. So between the maths department and the conferences I'm organising I've not done much since I last posted.

That said, I did get to do a little last Saturday.

As you can see, the red was where I was up to the last time I took photos, and I hadn't done very much since then. I got to knit a lot that day, as once we got Heidi moved in and she started unpacking there wasn't much else for a large group of us to do (no one wanted to unpack her stuff into the wrong places).

A better photo will follow in the next day or so as I finish catching up and my brain re-engages enough that I can make with the image-editing-fu.

Labels: conferences, crafty-Cat, doctor who, Heidi, knitting, losing sleep, Tony is a legend

   So, who's sick of hearing about the conferences?

The answer is me! (For the record, we got enough people, and the deadline is technically tomorrow night, since I need my beauty sleep and we want to give everyone around the world a chance to register. And I didn't break the site at all today, go team me!)

So tonight I bring you a scaled and dated (well, more or less) photo of my latest craft project, because you all need to know just how stressed I am (I only knit this quickly when I'm stressed and need an escape).


I've made myself a promise that I'll have it finished and ready to wear on the last day of the second conference. It doesn't look like it'll be a problem, as I've still got a month and a half and it is now... *bashes head against carculator for a bit* ...31% done.

Wait, that's it? It's not even a third of the proper length, and it comes up to my chin already? I'm doomed!

Labels: bloody hell I'm short, conferences, crafty-Cat, doctor who, I made this, knitting, web stuff

   I win!...

So, Heidi got her cat (bear) beanie today. Expect photos at some point in the future when I see her and take some.

And I finished my other glove today, which is awesome.



I'm all out of ongoing craft projects now. I guess it's time to get on with the marking.

Labels: crafty-Cat, doctor who, hooray, knitting, reaffirming my faith in humanity, second sock syndrome

   One more down...

So, I also finally sat down and sewed the ears on Heidi's latest beanie, which I've been meaning to do for months but have been too busylazy to contemplate.
It's certainly not the best cat beanie I've made, and I'm still amazed that the first one I made turned out so well. This one isn't quite long enough in the back, but the ears turned out symmetric after a few tries, which is reassuring.

I also have a strange desire to put one of my crescent moon hair clips on it. I guess it's a good thing for all involved that they're at James' house.

So, in one day I've gotten done all the crafty things I had planned for the entire weekend. This is good. Tomorrow I guess I'll do all the webby things.

Labels: beanie-cat, crafty-Cat, Heidi, knitting

   Weekend projects...

I promised myself I'd finish a few of my outstanding craft projects this weekend, and since I am having a day at home all by myself, I got through a few bits and pieces, and hopefully I'll have one more to blog about before I go to bed.
But for now, here is the shrug I just knitted (as modelled by my awesome sister):
It's meant to be worn over a cocktail dress, but neither of us was wearing one, so we had to go without. This is just simple knitting on huge needles, a pattern I picked up at lincraft one time.

And then I finished the first of my wrist-warmers:
which is based upon (I only say that because I stuffed the whole thing in a number of places) Christina Slattery's pattern, which in turn was inspired by a costume worn by Rose on Doctor Who.

I totally need a knitting chibi, methinks.

Labels: crafty-Cat, I made this, knitting, second sock syndrome

   I thought black was meant to be slimming...

Dear blog, from now on please remind me that I'm not meant to pose for photos when wearing this much extra weight and having this little self-esteem. And I know that blogging like this is just begging for comments saying "you're not fat", but I don't want that, I just want to say that sometimes I feel it. Now is one of those times. And no, you don't get to see the photos. I've already deleted them.

Labels: Catheirne can't do anything right, crafty-Cat, fat-Cat, unhappiness

   Second Sock Syndrome...

So I've discovered that there's actually a name for the malaise that comes over me when I've made it halfway through a craft project and I just want to give up because I've learned all I was going to and really, what I've done is good enough.

Sadly, giving the beast a name doesn't make it go away.

Labels: crafty-Cat, knitting, second sock syndrome