Aanschaf wegens vertrek Italiaanse huisgenoot

proof

This morning, apple no. 2:

Brent does sport

Today I threw an apple core into my dustbin from the other side of my bedroom, and it went in without even hitting the sides.

Man, that felt good.

How I spent my Sunday morning

This morning I used J.’s new swift to transform my 2-ply Wensleydale yarn into a skein:

I really love this antique swift. Firstly because it looks great, and secondly because it has a funky gear-and-hammer system that tells you when you’ve turned the wheel 100 times: 10 turns of the wheel = 1 turn of the first gear, and 10 turns of the first gear = 1 turn of the second gear, by which time a peg protruding from the second gear will have lifted up a hammer and let it drop again, acting as a sort of alarm  (probably to wake up the spinster who had fallen asleep by that stage, still cranking mechanically). We measured the circumference of the wheel and found it to be 2.34 metres (is this maybe an old unit of measurement?), meaning that once the hammer drops, you have exactly 234 metres of yarn (Arja, blijf je bij de les? )

Our calculations revealed that I’d spun around 260 metres, which is surprisingly little for 130 grams of wool at this thickness. My conclusion is that Wensleydale is simply a heavier fibre. In any case, here it is, all wound up and looking divine:

And again, as a scrumptious skein:

Previously I had already spun around 360 metres (100 grams) of this same wool, which is currently lying at home so unfortunately I’m unable to compare it with this one. I was hoping to end up with two skeins of comparable yarn, but given that this skein has less metrage yet more weight than the previous one, I don’t think I’ll be able to use them both for the same project. Alas and alack.

Still, I think it looks beautiful, and it feels lovely. Maybe I’ll dye it!

How I spent my Saturday night:

Women, whine and knitting

In two weeks’ time, after having sung my guts out for a week in Canterbury (and quite possibly ruined the tenor solo of the Vaughan Williams Mass in G Minor, more on that later), I will be sittin’ an’ knittin’ in the Royal Horticultural Hall in central London at the annual “I Knit” day. Yes, I will be surrounded by yarn, needles, books and knitters of every shape, size, colour and weight. It’ll be fabulous.

I’m going there under the auspices of The Dutch Knitters, a sub-group of hard-core knitting maniacs from the Utrecht Stitch ‘n’ Bitch. Today I visited The Dutch Knitters site for the first time.

See what I mean? Good thing I’m actually a girl.

Updated sphere pattern

Just a note to say that there are two sizes available for my knitted sphere pattern. Now you can knit either a golf ball or a cricket ball! (Actually the golf ball size is a little smaller than a golf ball, but I thought the name sounded cute.)

This little piggy

Oh my god:

Someone at Nintendo knows what they’re doing

I’m talking about the music for Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Wii. The main theme is totally listenable-to, and it appears in at least 7 different arangements at various points in the game.

Compare these versions:
Die Hard (main menu theme)
Spanish ska? (practice stage)
‘Lounge Jazz’ version (trophy collection) (theme starts at 1:20)
Russian Cossacks (target smash)
Ode to Ravel? (stage builder)
Cheesy soap-opera (all-star waiting room)
Opera chorus (final credits, text in Latin)

And while you’re at it, check out “Mario goes canonic” from Super Mario Sunshine.

Nice to see someone’s doing a good job out there!

Finnish tidbits

A few random but interesting facts about Finnish:

In Finnish, the words for ‘miracle’ and ‘human being’ differ only in their grammatical ending (ihme/ihminen).

The word for ‘raspberry’ (vadelma) is very similar to the general word for ‘fruit’ (hedelmä).

‘Stranger’ and ‘guest’ are the same word in Finnish (vieras).

The word maailma, meaning ‘world’, is made up of the words for ‘ground’ (maa) and ‘air’ (ilma).

Finnish is one of the few languages that has its own native word for ‘telephone’ (puhelin).