Keeping my hands busy

When I asked my cousin to teach me how to knit, it was explicitly so I could have a crafty pursuit to do in college when space and time were both at a premium.  Knitting, so I had heard, had the potential to be a social craft—something I could work on while talking about Great Ideas and all that.  Little did I know it would also be what I turn to whilst blathering about nothing at the breakfast table.

My toddler is not a particularly quick eater, except when it comes to cherries, but I want to set a half-decent example and not race away from the table as soon as I’m finished with my food.  Don’t get me wrong, I still make my escape to throw laundry in the wash/do other jobs that are just easier when my helper is strapped in and entertained, but I like to have something sitting beside me to keep me at the table a little longer, and not scurrying off to the computer.

Enter knitting.  This is the Age of Brass and Steam Kerchief (Ravelry link).  I saw it on a Yarn Along post at Small Things (can I tell you how much I love the things she knits?  They’re beautiful, but simple enough to do without overtaxing one’s brain).  I liked the look of it, but loved it more, I think, when I saw the name of the pattern.  I am such a sucker for good names—anything with a sort-of-geeky name gets extra points in my book, which may be why my queue also includes a shawl called Scalene.

Notes on Ravelry.

Oh, and I know I still owe you a 3 month post for Little Brother.  I’ll work on it this weekend.

This is what I do for fun

But really, the finished product (or, actually, draft), is nothing if not accompanied by this.

I was attempting to make the biggest pentagon possible on my tracing paper.  In the middle of the night.  While my child was crying.  Yes, this was the distraction/relaxation I chose when Peter Potamus was going through a rough sleeping patch and I sent his father in so I could take a little break.

Eleven tracing paper pentagons, some wire, fishing line, and complicated glue stick maneuvering, and we have a starry dodecahedron lantern.  It doesn’t light up because I haven’t found my paper lantern cord, and I think a second draft is probably in order.  But I’m still pretty happy.  Especially because I got to whip out SOH-CAH-TOA.

Showering in Style

That’s our new shower curtain.  Did you know that charcoal shower curtains don’t seem to exist?  They don’t.  Or, at least not at prices that this girl can/chooses to afford.  But this cheap polyester is slightly sheer (the curtain on the window is the same stuff).  Which means that light from the bathroom filters in nicely, the better for dimly lit calming showers.  Yay for unintended consequences.

Oh, and the bigger rectangle?  Is a golden rectangle.  Just for that little touch of nerdiness.

Nerdy Movie Review: Fermat's Room

While I was waiting for A. to finish checking out at the grocery store this evening (the essentials--ice cream and ingredients for french toast), I started to browse the movies available in the Redbox. On the first page, after all of the "Coming Soon" movies, was one called "Fermat's Room." Well, that was certainly intriguing. And then the description itself had me from go--

Four mathematicians who do not know each other are invited by a mysterious host on the pretext of resolving a great enigma. The room in which they find themselves turns out to be a shrinking room that will crush them if they do not discover in time what connects them all and why someone might wish to murder them.

My husband, being the generous soul that he is, agreed that we could watch it this evening. And it was everything one could have wished for. A grown-up Clue or Mathnet with some classic brainteasers thrown in for good measure. It made me want to host a murder mystery party weekend.

Side Note: LibraryThing

Library Parabola,
originally uploaded by Sifter.

After plugging LibraryThing twice this weekend and mentioning that it would be even more awesome when Collections was released, I was excited to find out today that it was rolled out to all members yesterday.

LibraryThing is, by its own description, "a home for your books." It's a book cataloging site that makes it possible for you to keep track of the books you own, the books you want to own, the books you have read, and the books you want to read. Essentially, any kind of list or grouping of books you can imagine, you can track using LibraryThing. In fact, the site is so great at what it does that it's been adopted by, guess what, libraries!

It also has a social networking aspect, allowing you to browse the catalogues of members who have public libraries, and showing you what books you have in common. There are even efforts underway to catalog the books of famous individuals, so you can find out what books you have in common with C.S. Lewis or John Adams.

I suggested it to my mom as a way her sewing guild members could let each other know what craft books they have. I think it would be great for a church library (my church runs a school, so I think they're set...). I also think sharing your catalog with friends or family could be a great opportunity to obtain some of the books you're looking for. It's like a less crass version of sharing your Amazon wishlist, at least for those of us whose wishes are shelves and shelves of books.

I love the library

Okay, making things better isn't always about making the world better. Sometimes it's about making life easier or more fun. I've recently been reading a decent amount about productivity, which I think appeals to the poor, suppressed organized person that lives inside of me. A couple of favorites include LifeHacker(geek to live=great slogan), which led me to David Allen's Getting Things Done.

Anyway (puts self back on original tangent), I found out today about the LibraryLookup project. For other people who love the library (or who read more books than their current income should really support), you know that when you're browsing Amazon, and you find a great book, you want to see if your local library (or, if you're lucky enough, the higher education institution with which you are affiliated's library...more about how sad I will be to lose such an affiliation later) has the book that is setting off your imagination. Back in the day, you would write down the name of the book on some running list, and look the next time you were at the library. Online card catalogues made it that much easier...now you open another tab, copy and paste the name of the book or the ISBN into your local library catalog's search feature and out pops the availability.

Presenting...an even easier way! Go to LibraryLookup. Figure out what cataloging system your library uses. Make a "bookmarklet" and drag it up to your bookmarks toolbar. Now, anytime you're on a website that uses the ISBN of a book in its URL (the handiest example being Amazon), you can click the bookmarklet and badda-bing, badda-boom, up will pop a window with all of the information on your library's holdings. No copy/paste required.

Apparently, there's more (the geeky among you should read an update from the creator of LibraryLookup), but I'm not going to look now.