I have decided, apparently, that I'm going to translate Tennyson's "The Lady of Shallot" into one or the other of my conlangs.  This should be entertaining.

I have no idea why my brain has decided this is a good idea, but hey, it'll be practice.  And then I can do "The Stolen Child".

"The Highwayman" can be safely not translated, in the interests of keeping that particular ball o'stupid confined to English.

I was working on Boreas during my lunch hour when, out of nowhere, the needle I was using snapped right below the eye.  I've never had this happen before, and it wasn't even a particularly old needle.  Odd.

Of course, being me I had another needle with me.

My iPod appears to be either dead or gravely ill.  It makes a whirring sound, as if it's trying to start, then displays a URL for support and shuts down.  I suppose I should be glad it has any response at all, but still.

Perhaps I will spend this evening loading stuff onto the little Sony mp3 player.

Having just talked to Liam, he says it sounds like hard drive failure.  Somehow I doubt that's good.

Bartelby.com has taken down the online version of the American Heritage Dictionary.  Which rather sucks, because that means that the AHD's appendix, which had a wonderful discussion of Proto-Indo-European and a lovely, lovely dictionary of reconstructed roots, is gone too.

I haz a sad.  I'm having to make do with the significantly inferior Wikitionary list.

1: It's an I-E root meaning "to kill"

Is it just me, or do most of these giraffes seem to be facing to dexter?  That makes them default giraffes.

Of course I'm going to send him some.  Good thing they don't have to be well-done hand-drawn giraffes.

Of course, the power came back on all of ten minutes after I called work to tell them I was staying home today.

I'm still staying home.  I'm feeling kind of blah anyway--the month being what it is--and it's just a nasty grey gloomy day.

Anyone who wants to get hold of me should call the cell phone; our land line is dead (aren't I glad I have DSL) for at least a few days, so we're relying on cell phones.

Miss Honeychurch by Cheryl Niamath: I rather like the silhouette of this one, but I don't know as I'd want to go to the trouble of knitting it.  Sometimes you really can get something just as good at Target, and I think this might be one of those times.

Kingdom by Betty Herrick: These are lovely mittens, and clever construction, but the model shot's in the snow, which perhaps should have told the editors that the pattern didn't belong in a summer issue.  I love the color of the yarn, though.

Rani by Katherine Matthews: Beaded pulse-warmers.  Pretty (or would be if they weren't in the same whirled peas green as the little girl dress), and quite clever, but again not summery. 

Tridactyl by Tina Melvin: Vaugely like shooters' gloves, except that the first and middle fingers get one sleeve and the ring and pinkie get the other; the thumb is still all alone.  Probably a dexterity improvement over mittens and warmer than gloves.  Have I mentioned it's June? Invoking hot chocolate and cozy wool doesn't go over so well when the temps are in the 80s.

Verdigris by Rosemary Hill: The tease for the issue; you can't have fingerless mitts like this unless you can spin your own yarn!  This is why I hate the spinning stuff they seem determined to shove in.

Morning Glory by Angela Sixian Wu: You know, I understand the urge to make cute stuff like this, but who the heck has the chance to carry a beaded evening bag anymore?  Still, it's very pretty.  I might have chosen a color other than lavender, if I were designing it, but that's just a taste quibble.

Treetop by Heidi M. Scheppmann: The only pattern I might even consider knitting, and I will not be making myself knee-high cabled wool stockings till after Pennsic, thanks so much.  Very clever construction.

Outside In by Janice Kang: They've actually managed to include a sock pattern that's worth having, for the cool trick of knitting it inside-out.  The pattern's quite neat, too, but it's mostly the construction that fascinates me.  

Mermaid's Lagoon by Sadie Bellegarde: These, on the other hand, are socks.

Cold Mountain by Kieran Foley: It's a large, beautiful lace stole.  It looks much like any other rectangular lace stole, which is not a bad thing but it's hard to find something original to say.

Entomology by Laura Nelkin: The lace pattern on this one is a little out of the ordinary, and nifty, though I confess I don't really see dragonflies in it.  Gorgeous color, too.

Urbanista by Wooly Wormhead: Yes, just what everyone needs in the week before the summer solstice, a nice fuzzy wooly hat.  Neat construction, though.

Trilobite by Hannah Ingalls: OK, yes, I get a bit of a Heterodyne thrill from the trilobite pattern, but again, who the heck wants to contemplate that kind of wool in the middle of summer?  Makes my hands sweat just thinking about it.

And...that's it.  A good half the patterns in this issue aren't summer at all, and the ones that are are kind of blah.  A very disappointing Knitty, all in all.

Last week there was a blood drive in my office building, so I decided to go and see if I could give blood.  Alas, I have too little iron--not so little that I'm actually anemic, but little enough that they can't take my blood.

More red meat for me, clearly!  But in the meantime, I have a reason why I can't give blood.

You know, I may be biased, but I think my embroidered buttons look pretty darn nice.  The link there goes to my Etsy shop, for two reasons: to show it off, and because the shot of the buttons on their card is kind of tall and thin, which is a pain in the neck to write around for purposes of avoiding awkward text-wrapping.

Anyway, I'm really pleased with how they came out.  I was a little iffy on embroidering on a 5/8" circle (that's ~16mm, for the metric-enabled), but everything came out quite nicely, even the button card itself.

Next I want to do a set with wisteria, and then possibly suns or stars or something.  Maybe something a little more manly would be in order?  I dunno, is there a way to make embroidered buttons manly enough?

Over in the right sidebar, under "And now for a word from our sponsors", I have some text links to possibly-useful sites.  If you click on one, I get a dime or so.  Clicking a bunch of times, alas, will not get me many dimes; I'll just get in trouble.  But if you want to click on one every day or so, that'd be great.

In a few minutes I'll have pictures of some stuff to point at, so stay tuned!