kayray.org

The Aeropress coffee maker! OMG! OK, yeah, I try to avoid coffee, generally. But every couple of months I give in. I might as well make that rare treat as good as it can be.

Watch as Nerd God Mark Frauenfelder demonstrates the awesomeness:

Dear Santa, this is available at thinkgeek! Hint, hint :)

Materials:

About 200 grams worsted weight wool or wool blend — this will be plenty even if your Knight is bigger than mine and you want short sleeves. I suggest Knitpicks’ Wool of the Andes. At $2/ball for real wool you just can’t find a better deal!

Size 15 circular needles (Or bigger. Or smaller. Add or subtract a few stitches from the body if you use different size needles, or your knight is more round or much smaller than mine. Garter stitch is VERY stretchy, so don’t sweat it too much.)
Yarn needle
Scrap yarn for cast on and stitch holders

The Chainmail Hauberk:

Using scrap yarn and a provisional cast on, cast on 30 st for top of shoulders.

Back: Work back and forth in garter stitch to underarm (8 ridges or so for a sleeveless hauberk, maybe 9 or 10 if you want sleeves. Use your own judgement.) Put these 30 stitches on a string, and pick up 30 from the cast on edge.

Front/neck: Work 10 stitches (right front). Cast off the next ten. Work the next ten (left front). Turn. Work ten, drop yarn, skip the ten cast off stitches, use the other end of the yarn (or the other ball) to work the next ten. Turn.

Neck increase row: work to last stitch of right front, make one, knit last stitch. Now the right front has 11 stitches. For the left front, knit one stitch, make one, knit to end. Now the left front has 11 stitches too.

Knit back across for the wrong side, using both balls of yarn to keep fronts separate.

Repeat the right-side neck increase row and the wrong-side plain row until you have a total of 30 stitches again: 15 for the right front and 15 for the left front. On the next right-side row, knit all the way across with the first ball of yarn so the two sides are joined.

Continue working back and forth to underarm (count ridges and make the front match the back), then join with back section and begin to work in the round. Place a marker at the join. Now that you’re knitting in the round, you’ll need to purl every other round to stay in garter stitch. Invite your Knight to help!

(If you don’t want to purl, leave the front and back separate and sew up the side seams when you’re done.)

Here is how it looks after having used up my first ball of yarn:

When the body is long enough (to lower hip), work a split in front and back to allow easy horseback riding:

Put all 60 stitches on a string. Starting at center front (count 15 over from the side marker), pick up 30 stitches (to center back). Work these 30 stitches back and forth until the flap is long enough (8-10 ridges). Cast off.

Pick up the remaining 30 side stitches and work flap to match the other one. Cast off. Weave in ends.

If you want sleeves, pick up stitches around the arm holes. I’d work flat and weave the underarm seam so you don’t have to do any purling :)

And now, photos of the finished armor!

(Thanks for letting me take pictures even though you still don’t feel well, Henry :)

(When Ravelry goes live, you can visit this project there: Chainmail Hauberk for a Young Knight)

Poor Henry is sick. He came down with some kind of horrid virus on Sunday while he was at his dad’s house. He felt too awful to go anywhere, so he spent the night there and his dad brought him home today. He felt a bit better today, no more fever and puking, but his throat is still sore and he feels pretty miserable. I let him watch Survivor All-Stars all day. Survivor makes great entertainment when you’re sick! We’ve got several other seasons saved up.

I did bills and shopping and housework and laundry and LibriVox stuff all day, and kept Henry company, and worked on his chainmail (and he helped with some of the knitting). I’ll have that pattern to post very soon, as soon as the thing is finished.

Henry’s in bed now. I hope he sleeps ok. When he’s sick we always read cozy happy familiar picture books for bedtime — tonight it was Blueberries for Sal and Goodnight Moon. While we were reading, Dan put a Legend of Zelda ringtone on his phone for him, which made him very very happy.

Now I will eat Trader Joe’s Gingeroo cookies and read Hypocrite in a Poufy White dress, which I’m really enjoying. I finished Anybody Out There last night and can’t WAIT to find more by the same author!

Oh here’s the chainmail as of yesterday:

Today we started knitting the bottom part that’s split in front and back.

More William, by Richmal Crompton.
Read by me!
Chapter 4: The Knight at Arms

We just got home from a great afternoon/evening with Bob and Chloe. We played a ton of music together, and talked, and sat around, and watched School of Rock, which was really entertaining and funny and well-made! I thought it would be quite a different kind of movie and was most pleasantly surprised.

We wish we lived closer to them but at least we don’t live farther apart.

Also watched last Thursday’s Survivor… my, what an unpleasant group of people.

Ran out of yarn for Henry’s chainmail so I’ll have to buy another ball tomorrow. Hope the yarn store is open.

Last night Dan, Henry, and I went to see The Australian Pink Floyd down at Humphrey’s! Henry and I picked Dan up from work at 5, and traffic was remarkably light so we got down to the place at about 5:40. We amused ourselves (Phantom Hourglass! Rush!) until 7:00-ish and then found our seats and waited for the show to start. It was a fantastic show, of course. Man. They did the entire Dark Side album, then a ton of other stuff. It was a three-hour show. We were all extremely tired but we had fun anyway. My favorites were One of These Days and Pigs. Great show, great show. If you’re a Pink Floyd fan, try to see The Australian Pink Floyd!

Meg over at The House of Mirth just gave me the Rockin’ Girl Blogger award :)

Thanks, Meg!

I, in turn, give this award to Mari, a 4-year old photographer. See The World According to Mari! You rock, Mari, keep posting those beautiful photos!

I’ve been really tired the last few days, but I think I feel better today. It’s only 10:45 and I’ve already taken Henry to his classes, got my bloodwork done, bought bird food, bought flea stuff for the cat, filled up my gas tank, read email, checked LV, waded through part of my unread feeds, and blogged. Go team kayray. Next up: dishes, housework, maybe some recording, maybe some Phantom Hourglass. I started the Ice Dungeon last night! Also need to fix the WoW add-ons on my iMac but that’s easy, I already fixed them on the Macbook so I’ll just copy the AddOns folder over.

Oh, I forgot to mention — the freeway was closed on the way home last night. Yup, closed. Whee! They detoured us onto a sort of frontage road for a few miles, which narrowed down to one lane at times, and eventually let us back onto 5. But hey, they’ve got to do roadwork sometime, and 11pm on a Wednesday is probably the best time for it.

Also: concerts would be a lot more fun if it weren’t for the other people. Don’t their mothers teach them to stop talking at concerts? The people behind us carried on a loud, drunk conversation through the entire Dark Side set. They left after that. Why on earth did they bother to come at all? Stay home next time, people, put on a cd, and have your loud drunk conversation where you won’t be ignoring hard-working real-live musicians and annoying the people all around you.

I ripped out my BPT sweater last winter (the poor neck design bothered me) and all that red yarn has been waiting around to be made into something new. I considered the Tilted Duster from the recent issue of Interweave Knits, but after looking at finished ones on ravelry I changed my mind. Very few of them seem to end up fitting and hanging properly, and I didn’t want to fuss with altering a not-very-good design. I liked the looks of the Cobblestone pullover (except for the curled neckline), but wanted a cardigan. It wouldn’t be hard to work it mostly as-written but split the front, but as my gauge is wildly different and I prefer to work top-down, I decided to re-write the whole pattern to suit my requirements.

Here are some in-progress photos:

Have done neckline and collar and am increasing down the top:

Yoke nearly done! Have worked three short rows across the back portion, from center shoulder to center shoulder.

Have divided for fronts/sleeves/back and am working sleeves flat, simultaneously on one long circ. Added 12 total st. to underarms, making sleeves 58 st each. Fronts right now are 38 (will be 44 when those underarm st are picked up). Back is 64 (will be 76). There’s an 11st overlap for the front edges, so I make that out to be about 38″ around, which should fit me in a loose, jackety way. I might nip in the waist a bit when I get there. Will work a few short rows across the back now and then.

I wonder if it’s too big:

Well, I’ll work a little more on the sleeves, then join the body sections and work those for an inch or two. Not much to rip out if I need to go a little smaller. Or I might just need to decrease away those underarm sections.

More William, by Richmal Crompton.
Read by me!
Chapter 3: William’s Burglar

The long-awaited Legend of Zelda game for the Nintendo DS was finally released last Tuesday. Phantom Hourglass, YAY!!! Henry and I were at the store before it opened to buy two copies. We’ve been playing all week. It’s a fantastic game. Here’s an in-depth review on Gamespot: The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

It took me a little while to get used to the stylus control. I kept wanting to steer Link around with the d-pad, but now I’ve got the hang of it, and the control system is flawless. The ability to make notes on the maps is fantastic. The puzzles and bosses are perfect — not too hard, not too easy. I really enjoyed the boss fight on the Ghost Ship — yeah, I died the first time but by then I had figured out what to do and I won the next time. The graphics are beautiful. The music is perfect.

If you have a DS, buy this game. If you don’t have a DS, buy one and then buy this game.

Read a banned book!

Here’s a thingy I picked up from Amythyst’s Shiny Pebbles (she a fellow librivoxer and admin). It’s a list of the 100 most frequently challenged books in the US, 1990-2000, according to the American Library Association – that is, books that people have wanted to ban. Bold the ones you’ve read.

1. Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
2. Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
3. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
4. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
7. Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
8. Forever by Judy Blume
9. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
10. Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
11. Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
12. My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
13. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
14. The Giver by Lois Lowry
15. It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
16. Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine (at least, some of them)
17. A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
18. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
19. Sex by Madonna
20. Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel(I think… Was that Clan of the Cave Bear? Ghastly thing…)
21. The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
22. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
23. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
24. Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
25. In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
26. The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard
27. The Witches by Roald Dahl
28. The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein
29. Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry
30. The Goats by Brock Cole
31. Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
32. Blubber by Judy Blume
33. Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
34. Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
35. We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
36. Final Exit by Derek Humphry
37. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood(didn’t finish, hated it, but still :)
38. Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
39. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
40. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras
41. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
42. Beloved by Toni Morrison
43. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
44. The Pigman by Paul Zindel
45. Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard
46. Deenie by Judy Blume
47. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
48. Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
49. The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar
50. Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz
51. A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
52. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
53. Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
54. Asking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole
55. Cujo by Stephen King
56. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
57. The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
58. Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
59. Ordinary People by Judith Guest
60. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
61. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras
62. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
63. Crazy Lady by Jane Conly
64. Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
65. Fade by Robert Cormier
66. Guess What? by Mem Fox
67. The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
68. The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
69. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
70. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
71. Native Son by Richard Wright
72. Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday
73. Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen
74. Jack by A.M. Homes
75. Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
76. Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
77. Carrie by Stephen King
78. Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
79. On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
80. Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge
81. Family Secrets by Norma Klein
82. Mommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole
83. The Dead Zone by Stephen King
84. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
85. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
86. Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
87. Private Parts by Howard Stern
88. Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford
89. Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
90. Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
91. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
92. Running Loose by Chris Crutcher
93. Sex Education by Jenny Davis
94. The Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene
95. Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
96. How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
97. View from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts
98. The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
99. The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
100. Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

That’s 26 for me. Which ones have you read?

Happy happy birthday to my sweet, classy, kind-hearted sister Kathy :) Hope you had a great day!

Here’s a little treat for you, maybe. We just finished Wives and Daughters at LibriVox and I cataloged it today:
http://librivox.org/wives-and-daughters-by-elizabeth-gaskell/

I think our readers did a great job on this one.

More William, by Richmal Crompton.
Read by me.
Chapter 2: Rice-Mould

Here’s a 13-minute CBS interview with Daniel Tammet (author of Born on a Blue Day):
Interview with Daniel

I love soup, I really do. I’d eat soup every night if I could. Not canned soup, good homemade soup. The soup I made tonight turned out so good that I’m going to write the recipe down so I can recreate it again soon.

Put 1/2 cup of barley in a pan of water and bring it to a boil. Turn off the heat and let it soak for a couple of hours. Drain and rinse.

Chop up half an onion, two potatoes, two celery stalks, a chunk of bell pepper, a handful of green beans, and a handful of baby carrots. Gently saute the veggies in a big lump of butter until they turn bright colors, then add a 32-oz carton of good beef stock, a pinch of salt and pepper, and a pinch of thyme. I had an open can of Italian tomatoes in the fridge, so I diced one up and threw it in with a bit of the thick tomato juice from the can. Simmer gently until veggies are tender. Oh man, it was a good rich soup. Man oh man. I try always to make enough soup to eat for the next few meals.

I got the “your books are about to be due” email this morning, so I gathered them up and took myself to our wonderful library. I went to Trader Joe’s for salad things first so I didn’t want to stay too long at the library for fear of warm lettuce. But I grabbed five tempting books off the New Books shelf:

Make Him Look Good, by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
Born on a Blue Day, by Daniel Tammet
The Medici Giraffe, by Marina Belozerskaya
Anybody Out There? by Marian Keyes
Ancestor Stones, by Aminatta Forna

Make Him Look Good looks like the worst of the bunch, so I started with that one while I ate my fruit and yogurt and granola. I figured it would either be a fluffy, soapy, fun little book, or completely unreadable. So far it’s leaning toward the former. I’m not sure which one I’ll read next. They all look really good so it’ll be hard to choose, but I think Born on a Blue Day might win. I find autism quite fascinating.

Edited to say: Right after I posted, I did start Born on a Blue Day and it’s great!

Did you know that you can subscribe to feeds of your friends’ flickr photos? It took me rather a long time to notice this feature. Here’s how you do it. If you don’t already have a favorite feed reader, get one. I like Google Reader.

Ok, now go to your flicker page. Click “Home” at the top. Click “Photos from your contacts” on the right. Click “Contact List” near the top.

Now, click one of your contacts. Scroll to the bottom of his first page of photos, and look for the small orange square. It’ll say, for instance, “Subscribe to DigiSage’s photos”. Now you’re kind of on your own because I don’t know what feed reader you’re using, but you’ll probably either right click and copy/paste the url into your feed reader, or left-click and follow instructions.

I really like being notified when my friends upload new photos!

Dude steals macbook pro, accidentally takes photo of self with photobooth, photobooth automatically uploads said photo to owner’s flickr account, hi-jinx ensue!

Oh hai, I bott it frum a frend, honnest

Today is Henry’s 12th birthday, hooray hooray! It has been a very celebratory week. He’s been saving money for months toward a Geddy Lee Signature Fender Jazz Bass, and had 2/3 of the price of a nice used one saved up, so for his Main Birthday Present, last week we pitched in the extra and helped him find a good deal on Ebay. It arrived on Monday and it was a day of great rejoicing. The ebayer is a Rush fan and was happy to have his bass go to another fan. The bass is in beautiful condition, and came with a hard case and flat-wound strings, which Henry loves, and a tuner and picks and a strap… Henry has played it for hours every day this week.

Since today is a school day and he’ll be at his dad’s house tonight, we had birthday fun yesterday. I let him play Wind Waker for hours, and then he had his Stage Design class (they made plans and talked about the color wheel) while I went to the knitting store and bought my first Addi circular… $20 but oh, it’s a nice needle. After we got home we did more stuff together, and then Chloe and Bob came over to help celebrate! I made Birthday Soup and another loaf of bread and we had Trader Joe’s cherry pie for dessert. And we hung around and played on the Wii and did a crossword. They gave Henry two t-shirts, which he loves, and a contribution to his Bass Amp Fund. And we surprised Henry with a couple more little gifts right before bed (he thought the bass-help was his only present from us) and he was almost choked up with happiness :) What a sweet boy he is!

See more photos in my Henry’s Geddy Lee Bass photo set.

More William, by Richmal Crompton.
Chapter 1: A Busy Day

I’ve just finished cataloging my solo recording of More William, by Richmal Crompton. Jeremy wrote a really nice summary:

The second of Crompton’s series of 39 books about William Brown, our cheeky 11 year-old protagonist. A hero to some, a dastardly villain to others, this book is structured round a year in his life. Starting with William waking up on Christmas morning and ending with him going to sleep the following Christmas Eve, there are the usual round of misadventures, misunderstandings, and general mayhem in between. When a boy like William wakes up under a motto that says “A Busy Day Is A Happy Day” alongside a copy of “Things A Boy Can Do”, chaos is just around the corner. Includes the very first William short story – “Rice Mould”. Often dismissed as children’s literature, the first few books of William stories were probably aimed more at an adult audience. They resonate with a distinctly English humour, but there are obvious echoes from ‘Tom Sawyer’ and ‘Huckleberry Finn’.

It’s a great book. You can download the whole thing here:
http://librivox.org/more-william-by-richmal-crompton/
Or subscribe to my podcast, or check my Audiobooks category for a new chapter every Monday.

William might remind you just a little bit of your favorite 11-year-old boy, though of course he’s much naughtier than any 11-year-olds that I know!