Knit across half the stitches of the heel flap. Knit one additional stitch, ssk, knit 1, and turn the work. On the next (wrong side) row, slip 1, purl 3, purl 2 together, purl 1, turn. On the following row, sl1, knit to one stitch before the turning point from the previous row, ssk, knit 1, turn; sl1, purl to one stitch before the turning point from the previous row, purl 2 together, purl 1, turn. Repeat these two rows until the heel is turned and you have a nice triangle.

The truncated file is about 29 minutes long. The fixed file is about 32 minutes long.

Here’s the fixed file: Fellowship1 07 In the House of Tom Bombadil

When Henry became obsessed with Tolkien at age six I recorded the whole Fellowship (and The Two Towers, I think) onto cassette tapes which then wore out with daily listening, so when Dan gave me my first iBook with a built-in mic I re-recorded The Fellowship digitally. After we did book 1 we decided to do The Hobbit, and I guess after that we branched out to other authors and never got around to book 2. But don’t worry — I want to hear it so I’ll record it soon! Recording quality will be much higher but there won’t be a little person asking questions and reading the poems :)

Links to both books are here: Kayray Reads to You, or you can download directly from my page on archive.org: http://archive.org/details/KayrayReadsToYou

Here’s a little audio Easter present from me:

The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Wiliams.

And also an English/German recording of the wonderful little picturebook, Guess How Much I Love You/ Weisst du eigentlich wie lieb ich dich hab? (Elli sent the German version to me for Easter!)

http://www.happyplace.com/14844/childs-drawing-serves-as-grim-st-patricks-day-warning

Hear that, Leprechauns? Looks like the luck of the Irish just ran out. Little Jack McGovern doesn’t want your pot of gold or your Lucky Charms or whatever freaky crap you have stashed at the end of your rainbow. He wants you dead, and he’s using nothing but a lasso, a spear, and an unnamed accomplice with messed up arms to make it happen. On March 17th, the dirt will get muddy with fresh, green blood. Top o’ the mournin’ to ye!

Look out, leprechauns!

I appreciate young Jack’s writing style. Terse, to the point, no-frills.

http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEss12/FEATss12SIT.php

Now, you may never have considered knitting a purse in the shape of a pineapple; but in the mid-19th century, judging from the number of extant examples and the number of published patterns for making them, they were Just the Thing. The craze was only for pineapple bags, mind you, not for hand luggage knit in the shape of fruits generally.

The pattern I figured I’d use is in the only Victorian knitting book of which I own an original copy: The Ladies’ Work Table Book, published in Philadelphia in the 1860s. There is no author’s name given, possibly because she was afraid of angry readers coming after her. The patterns in The Ladies’ Work Table Book are the sort of that give the entire era a bad name.

The pineapple bag, in particular, is a doozy. It rambles like an opium dream from one page to the next without even a paragraph break, only to end abruptly with the supremely helpful phrase “…then knit the stalks and narrow [bind] off.”

Then knit the stalks? Stalks? What are the stalks supposed to look like? I grew up in Hawaii across the street from a pineapple field. I don’t remember any stalks. How big are they? Answer comes there none.

ROFLMAO! Thank you, Franklin Habit!

Last night I invented a handkerchief edging that I like a lot. Thought I’d write it up here so I can remember how to do it.

Mark off a hemmed hankie in inches and imagine 1/2 and 1/4 inch marks too. Shells happen at every inch mark and at the corners, and all the scs are at 1/4-inch intervals between the shells.

Starting at an inch-mark: 6 dc, sc, ch1, sc, ch3 picot, ch1, sc. Then you’re ready to do another 6 dc at the next inch-mark.

At corners work 8 dc.

Easy! Pretty! Delicate!

Hmm, what has been going on…. On Dan’s recommendation I read Neal Stephenson’s “REAMDE” and loved it. Really fun plot, great characters, beautifully written. I would say “I couldn’t put it down” except I did force myself to put it down occasionally so that I could postpone reaching the end!

I played a lot too much Skyward Sword in January and did something awful to my right arm. Had to take a break from knitting which pretty much drove me crazy. Eventually I found out that I could crochet without too much pain so I had a ton of fun making lovely lace-edged hankies to replace my nasty old cut-up-t-shirt ones.

Ravelry link: http://ravel.me/kayray/leh

I invented a few of the edgings, found some here:
http://lacycrochet.blogspot.com/ (love those charts!), and got a few more out of this great $2 pdf booklet: Edgings: 100 Old and New Favorites.

Ok that’s enough for now. Next time: my “Ticket to Ride” obsession. The game, not the song, although the song is great too ;-)

http://librivox.org/kayrays-storytime-by-various/

It’s a collection of children’s stories and rhymes, and includes:

Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
The Old Woman and her Pig by Sara Cone Bryant
The House that Jack Built by Randolph Caldecott
Mother Goose by Eulalie Osgood Grover
The Old Man’s Bag by T. W. H. Crosland
Struwwelpeter: Merry Stories and Funny Pictures by Heinrich Hoffmann
Johnny Crow’s Garden by L. Leslie Brooke
Johnny Crow’s Party by L. Leslie Brooke
Book About Animals by Rufus Merrill
‘Twas the Night Before Christmas by Clement C. Moore
The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter
Androcles and the Lion by Joseph Jacobs
The Master Cat, or Puss In Boots by Charles Perrault
The Little Red Hen by Florence White Williams
The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
The Slant Book by Peter Newell
The Rocket Book by Peter Newell
and
The Mythological Zoo by Oliver Herford

They’re almost all picture books (except for a few that are chapters from larger books) and you can find them online at Project Gutenberg if you want to look at the pictures.

Thanks for proof-listening and cataloging, Elli! :)

http://www.archive.org/post/408542/archiveorg-will-be-dark-on-wednesday-january-18-to-protest-sopa-and-pipa

12 Hours Dark: Internet Archive vs. Censorship

The Internet Archive believes that it is critical to protest and raise awareness of pending legislation in the United States: House Bill 3261, The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and S.968, the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA).

Archive.org is going dark from 6:00 am – 6:00 pm PDT on Wednesday January 18 (14:00 – 02:00 GMT) to drive a message to Washington. We need your help to do this.

Legislation such as this directly affects libraries (pdf) such as the Internet Archive, which collects, preserves, and offers access to cultural materials. Furthermore, these laws can negatively affect the ecosystem of web publishing that led to the emergence of the Internet Archive.

These bills would encourage the development of blacklists to censor sites with little recourse or due process. The Internet Archive is already blacklisted in China—let’s prevent the United States from establishing its own blacklist system.

For United States residents, please take action.

For non-US residents: Sorry for dragging you into this, and if you are willing, sign a petition to the State Department to express your concern.

–Internet Archive

For United States residents, please take action.

http://www.contactingthecongress.org/

or ->

http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml

or ->

Here is the Congressional Switchboard Telephone Number:

1-866-220-0044

Be sure you have your ten-digit zip code so the switchboard can direct your call to the correct congressperson who represents you. You can find your ten-digit zip code on any piece of junk mail that reaches your home.