kayray.org

Watched NASA’s live stream from the control room as the Curiosity rover landed safely on Mars.

SCIENCE!

A quote from the press conference afterward: “Tomorrow we are going to begin exploring Mars.”

I just listened to this week’s episode of This American Life, show #470: “Show Me The Way”. Act 1 was a wonderful long story about an unhappy teenager who ran away to meet his favorite author, Piers Anthony. Near the end of the story was a quote from the author’s notes in one of his novels:

“One thing you who had secure or happy childhoods should understand about those of us who did not. We who control our feelings, who avoid conflicts at all costs, or seem to seek them. Who are hypersensitive, self-critical, compulsive, workaholic, and above all survivors. We are not that way from perversity, and we cannot just relax and let it go. We’ve learned to cope in ways you never had to.” — Piers Anthony

Beautiful.

You can listen to the episode online here:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/470/show-me-the-way

Good news, everyone! I’ve got a brand-new audiobook for you. It only took four years to make :)

Emma, by Jane Austen http://librivox.org/emma-version-4-by-jane-austen/

I started this as a duet with Annie in 2008. She drifted away from Librivox before we finished and the project lay dormant until I asked Laurie Anne if she’d finish it with me. It took us about a year but we did it! I read the even chapters and then when I got to the end I worked backwards for a while, so the end of the book is just me. So — three different readers but all excellent (if I say so myself) and most of volume 3 is just me.

I’m so happy this is finished because I’ve been wanting a new book for my all-night audiobook playlist but I have strict requirements: it must be a book I already know really well, and it must be read by me or a reader with a similar style.

Many thanks to Aravis for proof-listening and cataloging!

Hope you like it!

Photo time!

Me (June 3, 2012):

A hummingbird:

Cabled cardigan in progress (Ravelry link):

One green striped sock (Ravelry link):

Lace cardigan in progress (Ravelry link):

Blue-ribbon socks at the fair (Ravelry link):

Honorable Mention shawl at the fair (Ravelry link):

JUst a quick post to try to get back in the habit. Lots of stuff happened between the last post and this one… I had a small stroke in early May (I’m ok now, just a little numb on my left side), we saw the AMAZING “This American Life Live” show, I won a First Place and an Honorable Mention for my knitting at the fair, I finished recording the entire Fellowship of the Ring, I knit a lovely pair of red-and-white striped socks and started a green-and-brown pair, I started a red lace cardigan, I started a big thick oatmeal-colored bulky cabled cardigan, Henry finished his Instructor Training at his Kung Fu school and has a job as a fledgling instructor now.

Also I got a speeding ticket for driving 45 in a 35 zone. Totally my fault, was listening to music and not paying attention. Cost me $400 and I have to do online traffic school to keep my insurance rates from going up too. So I’m going to do that now before the deadline gets any nearer.

But first I need to check my Pocket Planes… ;-)

My favorite heel turn. I’m tired of trying to remember which of my Ravelry projects I wrote this in, so I’m putting it here:

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.

Whoops, while listening to The Fellowship I found that the end of chapter 7 was missing. Dunno what happened there. So I re-recorded the ending and uploaded the file again. Sorry about that!

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

I just found some very old recordings to share — The Hobbit and book 1 of The Fellowship of the Ring! I must have recorded these when Henry was seven or so. The Fellowship was first and it’s actually my second recording of the book.

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

Happy Easter, everyone! I hope the Bunny brought you some nice treats :)

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!)

This post makes me laugh and laugh and laugh, and then laugh some more:

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.

The funniest knitting pattern you’ll ever read!

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!

Happy March! Hope you had a good Leap Day yesterday, and that Leap Day William brought you lots of candy.

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!

Hello, yes, I’m still alive. Fell out of the habit of blogging, but I’ll try to get back in.

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 ;-)

My latest LibriVox solo is finished!

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! :)

My LibriVox and “Kayray reads to you” links will not work tomorrow, January 18th. Our file host, The Internet Archive, will be holding a black-out to protest the internet censorship bills SOPA/PIPA:

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.

Happy New Year!

I really need to do a quick wrap-up of the end of December so that Future Kara can remember all the stuff that happened. Let’s see… I finished making Dan’s “Discipline” hooked rug on Christmas morning before he woke up. He loves it. In fact, he loves it so much he doesn’t want to walk on it, so we’re going to hang it on his office wall. Henry loves his cozy warm robot quilt. I love my tangerine-orange KitchenAid stand mixer and the wonderful stack of books that everyone gave me, and my jigsaw puzzle, and the amazing huge framed Link to the Past map!

Henry and I had a bit of an adventure when we bought the Christmas tree, a new variety called a Grand Fir, which was beautiful, inexpensive, long-lasting, and smelled amazing. I hope we can get a Grand Fir next year too. Anyway, after we bought the tree we discovered that Henry’s learner’s permit was missing. We retraced our steps and asked the tree guys to look for it, but it was just gone. And Henry was scheduled for his driver’s test a few days later, so it was a real problem! Next day we went to the DMV and got a new permit, and then immediately found his old one in the car. Hilarious. Problem solved. :) And he passed his test! He can now drive himself to and from kung fu, and even run errands for us. Excellent.

I printed out my Christmas Village at 50% and built it and it’s so tiny and cute! (Make your own: http://www.archive.org/details/SantasChristmasVillage)

One more thing — here’s the frog I knit for Elli:
(Ravelry page http://ravel.me/kayray/tf)

You were just thinking, gee, I wish I could hear a German translation of How The Grinch Stole Christmas, weren’t you? Well! Your wish is my command.

Wie der Grinch Weihnachten gestohlen hat:
http://www.archive.org/download/KayrayReadsToYou/dergrinch.mp3

My German isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty good :)

Merry Christmas, everyone!

How the Grinch Stole Christmas, by Dr. Seuss. Read aloud by me with help from Karen the Cat.

Here’s a little present for you – the recording I made last year of Dylan Thomas’s “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”.

http://www.archive.org/download/KayrayReadsToYou/childs_christmas.mp3

Henry passed his driver’s test today. I’m so proud of him! Way to go, Henry!

It’s a really odd feeling, though, knowing he’s at Kung Fu but that he drove himself there and will drive himself back. I’ve driven him everywhere for 16 years.

Baked two kinds of cookies and two enormous pizzas with Chloe this evening. Super fun! And then we watched most of this great George Harrision biography, which had a ton of footage and photos that I’d never seen.

All tired out. Bed, book, cat, Dan.