Hi all!

 

A couple of blogs I find interesting. I have nothing to say – as usual 😉

You Knit What?

Wil Wheaton dot Net and WWdN in exile

I hope your week will be lovely 🙂 I’m SURE it will be lovely. So will mine 🙂

Hugs,
Ket

 

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Genes and Memes

No, it’s not about guys named Gene and gals named Meme – it could be, but it isn’t.

Most of the people know what genes are – genes are the little buggers that decide what kind of physiology we have – haircolor and type, eyes, and other such things. Whether you can roll your tongue or not. What blood type you are. Things like that.
Memes are kind of a cultural genes – ideas that have been passed to us from other people. Memes are things like one’s theology, attitudes, philosophies, what we KNOW of the world, scientific theories, habits, traditions – all this kind of little bits of information typical to us – and all of which we have got from other people, like genes, and within us it has formed a specific combination that is – us.

“Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. ”
“Memes can include scientific theories, religious doctrine, tips on fashion and racial attitudes.”

So – I catched this thing called “habit meme” from a Finnish blog. It exists in other blogs as well, in English it’s more “The Quirky Habit Meme” game. (So – if you read this – consider yourself tagged – you’re it – now go and write 5 of your quirky habits in your blog and contage someone else…)

So…
1. I hate onions, garlic, leek, shallot, chives – all alliums. *yuk*
This I have learned from my parents, who don’t eat alliums either.

2. I need to fold sheets in a certain way, which drives my husband crazy. One starts by folding the sheat lengthwise two times, so one has four layers. Then one drags the sheet between two people, door, what ever one has available, so that all layers lay nicely and evenly – but before that – the top fold is to be flipped around, so that if you look at the sheet from short end, it forms an M. After dragging the sheet, it is folded in three times, but so that the last flap is longer than the others. Then the sheet is rolled tightly and the longer flap “seals” the sheet-roll so that it looks nice. This way, you don’t need to iron or mangle the sheet, it will still be nice and crisp when you use it, and when you make the bed with a sheet folded like this, the folds are symmetrical – one in the middle going down, two beside them going up… Nice.
Large sheets are first folded in two and then in THREE, so that when you take a sheet from the linen closet, you can see immediately whether it is a small or large sheet.
This I have learned from my mother.

3. I have my own inner radiochannel. I have quite a good hearing memory and pretty good ear for music – so every song and every piece of music I have ever heard is in my head, and I can HEAR if someone is playing wrong or something, because I HEAR the music in my head. HEAR it. It is very annoying to have a song stuck in your head… it’s like with “Groundhog Day” – the radio only plays one song over and over again… Sometimes I can “rewind” or “forward”, but… usually not. I can only REPLACE an annoying song stuck in my head.

4. Another thing with this is – I am an Alto, (Contra-alto, to be precise) and I have sang in choirs. 99% of leads are made for Sopranos, which means that I always, always, always need to sing the accompanying phrase. This combined with my musical memory means that I have learned to hear the accompanion in music – I can sing songs and repeat musical pieces by an instrument – This works especially with Christmas songs – and it is pretty chaotic, because when I NEED to sing, I try to sing ALL the sounds in my head… and sometimes it gets really uncomfortable, when I just NEED to wait until the orchestra in my head has played the middle accompanion…
It’s especially present when it comes to “O, Holy Night”

Dee dididi dee dee didee

Oh holy night!
The stars are brightly shining
It is the night of the dear Savior’s birth!

dididi dididi

Long lay the world in sin and error pining
Till he appear’d and the soul felt its worth.

dee dee dee

A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!

Fall on your knees
Oh hear the angel voices
Oh night divine
Oh night when Christ was born

dididi dididi dididi dididi

Oh night divine
Oh night divine

didideedi dee dididi dee dee didee
dididi dididi dididi dididi… and so on.

Before one can start the next “chapter” everyone needs to wait until this middle piece has stopped and the orchestra starts playing the next “chapter” – otherwise I won’t sing. 😉

And BTW – I hear both Mahalia Jackson and Tommy Körberg singing this – and a child choir 😉
I don’t know where I have catched this one… It’s pretty annoying, but – not to be denied – makes me a great choir singer 🙂

5. I can’t come up with fifth guirky habit I have… so I asked my husband and he HATES my list – I write a list about ANYTHING. I have cleaning list, shopping lists, to do lists, wish lists, book lists… if one can write a list about something, I probably have…
That’s why I like 43 things, places and people so much 🙂 (They also have “lists of bests“… :-D)

Raindrops on roses,
And whiskers on kittens,
Bright copper kettles,
And warm woolen mittens,
Brown paper packages,
Tied up with strings,
These are a few of my favorite things . . .

Cream colored ponies,
An’ crisp apple strudels,
Doorbells an’ sleigh bells,
An’ schnitzel with noodles,
Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings,
These are a few of my favorite things . . .

Girls in white dresses,
With blue satin sashes,
Snow flakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes,
Silver white winters,
That melt into springs,
These are a few of my favorite things . . .

When the dog bites,
When the bee stings,
When I’m feelin’ sad,
I simply remember my favorite things,
And then I don’t feel so bad . . .

Roses….hmmm kittens…
Kettles…….mittens….
La dee da, la dee da,
La dee da, da,
These are a few of my favorite things . . .

When the dog bites,
When the bee stings,
When I’m feelin’ sad,
I simply remember my favorite things,
And little by little my heavy heart sings . . .

And then I don’t feel so bad . . .

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Ostara

This blog post was originally posted in Goddess Food and can be found there.

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How hard is it to write a blog?

*sigh* …. hmm… *sigh* Pheew… *whistle* *sigh*

Er… Uhm… Hrmph…

I am supposed to be a WRITER dammit!!!

*sigh*

 

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Knitting Memes

Snatched from http://www.licketyknit.com
What is your all time favorite yarn to knit with?
Frankly, I don’t know. I’m not very tactile of me. And I haven’t been paying attention to that. I will be from here on 😉

Your favorite needles?

I have no answer to that either… I suppose it would be the 1,5 mm aluminium needles, which I am so sad for that I lost. :´( One doesn’t get so thin needles anymore.
I made a pair of gloves with them, and I loved those gloves… white one-strand wool from our own sheep, with fair isle “collar” done with the same yarn plant dyed with onion and krapp and tiny tassels in the edge 🙂
I wore them two years and needed to prepare them every month, because the wool was so thin, and finally I gave up and discarded them… but boy I loved them!

The worst thing you’ve ever knit?

A sweater with thick acrylic yarns.

It was in the early 90’s and the kimono sleeved things were really fashionable… my mother had made my big sister one, and I loved it, so I wanted to make me one.

I bought the yarns in different turquoise shades, because it was about the only yarn they had in the store, and they didn’t have enough for a whole sweater in one color, and I loved the colors and the feel of the yarn.
I made the swatch and created the model from scratch – fair isle – and started knitting. And it was awful. I managed to make about half a meter, and then I gave up.
The yarn which felt soooo soft and nice in the… what’s it’s called… ball? was sweaty, plasticy and sounded awful when knitted. The yarn didn’t glide on the needles as it should have. And it was way too thick for such a bat sweater. I would have looked like a striped turquoise mushroom in it.
The positive thing with it was that I really loved the colors and the design. I love knitting fair isle 😀

Your most favorite knit pattern (maybe you don’t like wearing it, but it was the most fun to knit)?

I like knitting things with new techniques. I knitted my sister a pair of mittens with old Finnish mitten knitting techniques. She hasn’t used them once, but they sure look amazing. She still keeps them. I think I’m going to suggest that she frames them 😀

Most valuable knitting technique?

Er… knitting stich?
The value of a technique depends on what you are making. It’s invaluable to know how to knit the heel if you are making socks, and thumb is the most important in the mittens. If you are making lace, you need to know how to make holes. In fair isle knitting it’s important to know how to keep the runs tiny in the backside and not let them draw, and so on and so forth.

Best knit book or magazine?

I love Mary Olki’s books.
Then my sister has a book about folk knitting, with socks, mittens, hats and sweaters from all over Scandinavia. It’s not a big book, but fullpacked with valuable information.
I don’t know much about other books or magazines, so I can’t really say.

Your favorite knit-a-long?

My only one – Six Sox. I just started 😀

Your favorite knitblogs?

Blue Blog. I also love Helene’s blog. And “You Knit What!”
I love knitblogs 🙂 They are all good 😀

Your favorite knitwear designer?

Couldn’t say. I can say it’s not Kaffe Fassett.
Joan McGowan-Michael from White Lies is great.
Nancy Bush, Lucy Neatby, Nicky Epstein, Dorothy Siemens… That’s about all I know.
Oh, my big sister, Vappu Bergius. She is one of the greatest knit designers ever born, and if she would write a knitting design book, she would become rich in 10 minutes. 😀

The knit item you wear the most? (How about a picture of it?)

My sister, Vappu,  knitted a sweater I just loved. I wore it all the time. It was soft greyish purply pinky color, quite snug, with cables. I hate the color, but the sweater was the best thing ever. I washed it too hot and it shrank. :´(

I really need to work with the pictures… The problem is that there are not too many pictures of me, and all the things are in the past and spread over two countries… it’s a too big a task to hunt them down, and I’m sure I have thrown away quite a lot of evidence too…

So – I promise I’ll be better. 🙂

 

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Writers write

Whooph… I haven’t been writing a blog for a loooong time… But then I read “Why I Blog” by Chip Scanlan and decided it’s time to blog again 😉

I want to be a writer. Writers write. I don’t write, so I’m no writer. That’s obvious.
But I WANT to be a writer. I WANT to write. I want to put my mark on the world, and as I am good at writing, that’s the way to do it.

I haven’t read anything for a very long time… well, sure, I read my “toilet book”, “dinner book” and “bedtime book”, oh and my “train book”, but… for some reason I don’t think that’s reading. Hmm… I wonder why…

By the toilet are ‘Opening doors within’ by Eileen Caddy, and a book about how to be free from fear, anxiety and worrying, and a pile of magazines, comics, Time, popular scientic magazines and other such things; by my bed are Zsuzsanna Budapest’s book of witch’s year and one of Patricia Wrede’s dragon quadrology, I think it’s number 3 and in my pocket is always a miniature version of Gabriel Gracian’s book and right now Torgny Lindgren’s Bibel of Doré… fascinating book. I like Torgny Lindgren… but none of these books “counts” because I’ m not reading them to READ them.  And there’s always a Terry Pratchett hanging with me somewhere. He’s my guru LOL

So why do I blog? Because it gives me a possibility to train my writing 🙂 It gives me possibility to make my opinions heard. Every now and then something happens I need to react on. There are things I’m DYING to say what I think. I can use a blog to do that 🙂

Chip is right, you know. That the standard is lowered doesn’t mean that a blog is lesser journalism or what ever – it means that the performance anxiety doesn’t exist – I can write what ever I want to my own blog and you can just as well give a damn, because I don’t give a damn what anyone in the whole wide world thinks about my blog, my writing, my style or my faults and vices 🙂

Hugs,
Ket

 

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