Miscellaneous: New Book

My real birthday is coming up this week (I got my gift a few weeks ago, a brand new Nook e-reader, which I am enjoying a LOT.  My dentist even commented on how neat it was.) so I treated myself to a new weaving book.  It's an actual paper-in-your-hands book, not one for the Nook.  You don't get many weaving e-books.

The title I got was "Woven Treasures", a book about weaving bags on a rigid-heddle loom.  As you may have guessed, I am seriously neglecting my Kromski Harp loom, which was my birthday gift last year.  My first project is still on it, untouched.  Why?  I did my usual thing and started too big too soon.  I warped enough for six placemats long side to long side.  While I enjoy the process of weaving, the stick shuttle provided with the 32" loom was as wide as the loom itself.  I hated dealing with it.  What I should have done was purchased, or fabricated, some smaller shuttles.  And I should have started with a much smaller project, to gain confidence.

Besides, we don't have a dining table... when was I ever going to use placemats?  :/

The woven treasures book not only shows simple 1x1 weaving, but has projects that use two heddles, plus some old-world techniques such as soumak, a kind of method where you twine the weft around pairs of warp threads as you go across, and piled weaving, such as is used in persian rugs.  You're getting into bags that look like latch-hook at that point, but it was still neat to see an example of the technique.

Now I'm itching to try the beginner's bag, a small 3x6 woven bag with woven strap handle.  My problem is that I only got one heddle with my Harp, and I would need to purchase a second heddle and a second heddle block.  Add in a few smaller shuttles and you're talking about an investment of $85 on a device I've hardly used. 

I'm going to have to think long and hard about this one.

The thing is, though, project bags are something I've always wanted to do on my Etsy shop, but my problem is that even commercial patterns like Butterick or Simplicity have end-user restrictions on whether the sewn items can be made for resale.  Some of them are very explicit about it, some will say its okay, and some don't say one way or the other.  If you really want to protect yourself from lawsuits, there's very few pattern options I'd feel completely comfortable using for the shop.  And three guesses as to how many of them are even attractive or functional!

The solution of course, is to not use a pattern at all, or something so basic that no one can claim it.  A woven, folded, and stitched rectangle fits that bill nicely.  Add in some of my own designs for the decorative panels of fabric, and I'm golden.

But is the $85 investment a wise one?

Television: Previously on...

The Dharma dye people keep sending me promotional emails when they put their non-dyed items on sale, which, considering I'm currently up to the fourth season of LOST on my re-watch rotation, I'm finding it both creepy and amusing. Since I always seem to inexplicably miss the last two or three episodes of LOST every season, last night I got to finally see the season closer for S3. Some things make more sense, some are just baffling, and some things I KNEW were coming.

Hello, Christian and Claire. Yes Jack, Aaron is your Nephew. Now grow a pair and kick the pill habit.

And someone explain to me why the Oceanic six need to lie about the island to protect the people who are still on it, when it has been proven time and again that if anyone actively goes looking for the island, they are unable to find it? And, hey, plus it's MOVED?

Also, this time around I finally noticed that the guy on the training videos has used a different name for himself in each one. I also want to go googling to see if anyone has compiled a list of the books on the show. I've got "Carrie" "The Shining" and "Watership Down" covered, and possibly some of the Philip K. Dick, but some of the more esoteric ones (was the Russian book "Catch-22"?) might stick me.

Television: Space-age Technology, books, and dentistry

V is grabbing my attention, for sure. Not only is Elizabeth Mitchell doing her usual excellent job, but Alan Tudyk (Wash from "Firefly") is kicking ass!

The introduction of V technology that renders a small patch of fabric on a Visitor uniform into a camera is spooky and unsettling. Is it a commentary on Big Brother, or just there for the creepiness factor?

I did not watch Supernatural last night, as I have been knee-deep in the new Stephen King novel and enjoying it immensely. It's a huge tome, over 1075 pages, but I'm about 90% of the way through it. I figure I will finish it later today, what with my permanent crowns being installed. I figure on a minimum wait of half an hour at least, then more waiting in the chair. I then plan to reward myself with a nice view of the Winchester boys when I get home.

Back to the subject of S. King... my husband and I have been less than pleased with Mr. King's work of the past ten years or so. I'm sure coming back from being hit by a car was a harrowing ordeal, and it's bound to affect anybody.

Reading "Under the Dome" however, I'm convinced that the beast is back... you know, the one who wrote "The Stand"? My final judgement is reserved for when I finish it, however. A lot of his work is truly excellent right up until the last few pages, and then it all goes to hell (and not in a good way). Kind of like the adaptation of his short story (my all-time favorite) "The Mist". The adaptation was great, and did the story justice... until the last MINUTE or so, when I threw things at the screen and yelled at the craptacularness of it.

He's not responsible for that, though. I blame Hollywood.

But it serves as an illustration. A story can be an excellent piece of work all the way through, but if the ending sucks, the ending sucks and you will hate the whole thing as a result... even if there are a thousand pages before it that were truly amazing.

SPOILERS AHEAD FOR "Under the Dome"

Here's what I'm hoping for the end of "Dome": I want Dale Barbara to come out alive. I want Julia and Col. Cox to end up together... you know, happily. I want Rose to end up meeting her favorite CNN correspondent and preening and flirting with him. It would be cool if Alice and Aide end up being aliens in disguise, but that's not a deal-breaker. And I want Big Rennie to die... horribly. Under the tight, hot beam of a magnifying glass in the sun, if possible. Chef and Andy should only be able to blow themselves up, out of pure stupid.

And somehow, Joe figures out how to shut down the dome... through cleverness, not some kind of "interference".

I mean, Jeeze man... horror doesn't have to end horribly for it to work, does it? DOES it?

Knitting: Not quite in gear

I am STILL on my blankets... I'm just not in a knitting mood right now. Didn't start my halloween socks (I've resigned myself to the fact that they will not be finished)and fortunately found a way around having to KNIT my daughter's halloween costume, as she's caught the Harry Potter bug and was wanting me to knit the wizard's robe from Charmed Knits. I mean, please. I'll be happy to do it when I don't have a deadline, but not with less than a month to go, and little money for yarn. Hellooo!

I DID manage to finally mail off my uncle's test socks. They've been hanging out on the back of the couch for two weeks, mocking me.

I've been far more interested in reading, which isn't so odd... hubby decided that I MUST read some Sidney Sheldon, which is fine, and bought a stack of used paperbacks from a store near his work. Mr. Sheldon is a fine writer, but I found some of his characterizations of women slightly naive, and quite frankly, sometimes insulting. I had to check the publish date on a few of them. One was from '69, which, okay, I get the caveman-like attitude about women, but the one from '95 made me feel like sending him a feminist book. Something from the Friedan ouvre.

Once I finished those, I was back into the Sookie Stackhouse books (snort... after a rant about feminism) to remind myself about the plotlines from the book, since we'd just finished watching season two of True Blood. They took liberties. I haven't decided whether or not they are good or bad ones. They ARE hitting all the high points (like sneaky Eric Northman) but the blending of the plots of books two and three was a little odd, and I would have preferred that they not have changed the incident near the end of season two to a bomb instead of a shooting. I can see why they did it, especially if they're trying to step up the "use" of the plotlines, but I was looking forward to more of Barry the telepathic bellboy.

I must be reaching that age...

...where everyone I know starts dying. Strangely, despite the physical feeling of slowly coming apart at the seams, mentally I feel like I'm too young for this to start happening.

Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Ed McMahon... even TV pitchman Billy Mays (that wonderfully, ever-energetic guy who pitched everything from Oxy-clean to Wonder-putty) died very recently. As if watching all the seasons of "Six Feet Under" didn't already have me contemplating pre-need funeral options.

But then there's my wonderful grandmother, still kickin at the spry age of almost 90.

I'm about to make a pilgrimage up to see her and the rest of the clan, so I may be quiet for the next few weeks (I know, like you could tell the difference. :D). I've been in book-reading mode, having discovered the wonder that is e-books *without* the benefit of a Kindle, thank you very much. So far I've read Lumley's "Necroscope" which was okay but not mind-blowing. I tried to get into the second of the series, but they changed the font enough that it was smaller and harder to read, thus very off-putting. So I switched to CJ Cherryh's Chanur series, and having finished "Pride of Chanur" I'm on to "Chanur's Venture". Even though they seem stilted and slightly stand-offish (the characters don't seem to want you to understand or get to know them very well) they are an interesting look at making something seem both alien and familiar at the same time. I just wish I could warm up to them and think of the characters as fondly as I do, say, the characters in MacCaffrey's "Crystal Singer" series.

So that's the news this week (month?). After I've recovered from a total of 52 hours in our tiny car, I'll probably be swinging back into the fiber mode. Since all TV up there is aerial, and all internet connections dial-up (gods preserve us) I plan on a lot of knitting, and possibly taking my Kromski spinning wheel, room permitting. I have two pairs of socks that I intend to finish, a beautiful laceweight sweater I might start, and a couple of baby hat/sweater kits from Knitpicks. Just in case little cousin Cole makes an appearance.