#Knitting #WIPWednesday : I will be busy tomorrow, so here are my primary #fibrearts projects:
* a #Hap #shawl, barely cast on. It needs to move to circular, but I do not have 2.0 mm. Yet.
* grandbaby #blanket, finally on 'last' ball of #yarn. A deliberate gauge shift means 6-8 more balls of yarn to gain width.
* #shetland #wool #steek #cardigan for myself.
@knitting @fedigroups.social
A question is implied by data centres #water use: are they using closed loop cooling systems, and if not, why not?
Most of the analyses I read bitd showed a substantial cost benefit to closed loop systems - even when water costs were not part of the calculation. The benefit was longer hardware life at higher frequency (overclocking.) Has this somehow changed, or is hardware lifecycle simply too long for short-term #VC to accept?
I have a terrible feeling there are a bunch of soon-to-be-born humans who will be blessed with the name "2024 YR4".
The yarn is probably Jamieson's of Shetland Spindrift in the Sholmit/Mooskit colour way, but there are clearly undyed/unbleached primitives in the fibres so it may be a natural colourway not listed on the JoS website.
Shetland sheep have 11 different colour standards. This particular wool might be eesit-light grey.
There is a bit of itch to this wool, and firm but lively on the needles. But the swatch became softer and tighter with a light hand wash in Soak.
I bought the whole cone.
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Speaking of #yarn projects, lemme brag about what I am using for a #sweater for **me**.
I stopped at Wet Coast Wools in #Vancouver (https://wetcoastwools.com/) And atop the yarn displays there were cones of yarn, mostly strong colours for Fair Isle knitting, but one cone was just the right variegated offwhite/grey.
It was a shetland wool, actually from Shetland. Inside the cone the original label was covered by a sticker saying "Shoormal".
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#Knitting #WIPs: I should really do this on schedule…
* The garter stitch blanket is almost to the last ball of yarn. But, because the grandbaby is growing like a weed, thinking about adding two side stripes, about 4 more balls of yarn.
* Finished and gifted 2x baby sweaters; one more is off the needles and needs finishing, blocking, buttons.
* NEW: a sweater for myself, bottom-up. Cast on, hem is turned, now just a zillion rows of stockinette…
Powerline has started a fire in South #Nanaimo on #VancouverIsland. #Firefighters just arriving as we drove by.
This seems like a moment to mention #search engines, and federated alternatives.
I am (again) experimenting with #YaCy - https://yacy.net. It is not a silver bullet. But my very amateur testing of a self-hosted instance is working on very old hardware. And the search results are decent, without the vast majority of crap we put up with from G, or MS. And, of course, no advertising or surveillance.
If you think a federated internet without big tech is good, take a look!
#TIL about Hershey #font, a #VectorFont in #ascii.
So I clicked the link on @tod 's toot: https://hci.social/@tod/116763903006448447
Do not click the link until you read this. The site is built using #NotionAI - you should be informed of this.
I know nothing bad about Notion AI, a San Francisco-based tech company. #WP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notion_(productivity_software)
I cannot help but think the #Canadian #Fediverse communities could come up with products made in #Canada using a hashtag, like #TodsTryitTuesday, or #MadeInCanada, to share weekly discoveries.
When I was younger I had a brief job preparing a house for demolition. It had been a bit of mansion when it was built, probably in the 1920s.
What surprised me most were the "eaves troughs", built in wood. The bottom boards were carefully sloped, each board cut to fit very precisely its position on the house, with the front and back edges at differing bevels to suit its position.
It was 80 some years old, and these were the original 'gutters'.
Once upon a time in #Wikimedia history I was involved in an exercise to examine knowledge categorization standards for systems with potential to apply to #WMF projects. And, not surprisingly, absolutely none of the commercial purveyors were interested in talking to us.
Do you have any idea how many millions of ever-more-specific category tree leaves the Wikipedias have developed?
Do you know if anyone is studying this?
non- #Knitting self-inflicted #yarn tasks:
Today, on my arrival home, I was forced to confront a task I had (admittedly deliberately) not addressed before my departure: the last ball of yarn for the (rather boring) traveling project.
Which project is: 7 different colours of Drops Baby #Merino #knit into a garter stitch rectangle. Think 80-100 rows of knitting for each ball, resulting in fairly fat stripes.
Dull work.
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Stuck on a ferry with only the boring travelling project, a couple finished projects, and the bag of failed-to-match-colours of silk mohair.
#Caston an as-yet-undesigned #hap #shawl. Well, maybe it **is** designed - a starter square in garter stitch, then switch to a lace mesh, and finish with an as-yet-undetermined same-on-both-sides stitch pattern. And a tubular #bindoff? What do you suggest?
@knitting @fedigroups.social
@Pufferfish @consumablejoy @Paws2Spindle
Okay, trying not to hijack the other🧵
How many dpns? is a question. I like 4, where the math works. It's just a bit faster, a bit easier for knitting, but harder to carry around because it generally does not fold flat to go into a bag neatly.
I once knit an Old Shale table cloth with 9, count 'em, very long dpns (about 20" as I recall.) They all looked like very poorly executed corkscrews by completion.
I am wondering if I could sock knit with 3.
#AskFedi #knitters / #KnittingDeisign / #designers @knitting : What #knitting design software do you suggest?
I am mostly in the #FLOSS camp: I will happily donate to a project with good ethos, but I am terribly suspicious of all code which is hidden, anything intended to only run on a phone. Code spec where hand knitting is an afterthought and the primary goal is direct-to-factory makes me wary.
I need to crank out a few patterns to give away, so something easy to get productive?
As it is a different topic, a different thread.
Catalonia in Spain is one of the many regions which now part of a single country, but used to be many dozens of nations with local cultures and sometimes different languages. Many of the people of Catalonia speak Catalan.
Just north of the border, in France, are the regions formerly part of the County of Toulouse, now generically part of Occitanie, who also speak Catalon dialects.
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RE: https://mastodon.social/@3CatInfo/116583568120523003
I would like to point out - these are the people who will be empowered by #BillC22 to spy on #Canadians without checks:
"**Three #Canadian #police arrested for sexual assault in a cab in Barcelona** Two of the arrested were tourists to the city, are being investigated for sexual assault and injury."
They picked up a prostitute, started to sexually assault her, hit her in the face causing injuries requiring stitches. One tried to flee the country.
When I see people posting links to progressive articles, authors, who are posting on #Substack, I do not know what to do.
I am trying to mindfully not support publishers who platform hate, intolerance, which Substack does. So I am not going to like, or boost, a post which links there..
I want to tell writers like Dean Blundell they are being a tool - creating a feed used to identify progressive thinkers on a surveillance site.
And I want scream at the link poster for marketing such fools.