Sock Wars

Update: 1st May... I'm in... Now just need to wait for 9th May for my secret dossier and intended target to assasinate !

30th April...Yep I'm a real iPod freak now and just spend ages looking for either knitting or crochet related podcasts or videos, and audio books to download.

Today I found the 'Sock Wars' pod/video by CAT at 'Let's Knit2gether' and watched it during the afternoon prayer time at the Mall. I couldn't wait to get back and get onto the website to get involved in the latest sock war. I'm a little bit late as the deadline for registering is 1st May and I'm in the process (now) of sorting out how to make the $4 subscription payment. I may not be able to join in this time but will be keeping a good eye on the progress on the website and Ravelry forum.

Fingers crossed I'll get in on this one and be able to report my personal progress here.

Here's a little bit more information (source OregonLive.com):
"Billed as "the largest, bloodiest extreme knitting tournament in the world," Sock Wars is (are?) not for the faint of heart or the slow of needle. You sign up, you get a target's address in the mail, and you get to assassinate them. Via sock. Basically, you gotta outknit the competition. To win, you must complete a pair of socks (the Sock Wars folk supply the pattern) before your foe does. You mail them to him/her, and you score a kill. Your victim mails you his/her unfinished sock(s), plus the name of his/her target, and you continue knitting, and, presumably, killing. It's primal, it's brutal, it's kill or be killed, and if you're the last knitter standing? You score a sweet knitting gift certificate. (It's currently at $154, but it goes up as more troops enlist.) This year they're also taking team entries, so you don't have to be a mercenary acting alone -- you can be part of a squad of commandos taking out the enemy. Or something."

Here's the link to the Sock Wars Website if anyone else is interested in just a little bit of fun: http://www.sockwars.org/press.html

KnitMinder & StitchMinder iPod Application...Free Download

As mentioned in a previous post, I received an iPod for Mother's Day this year and have been busy adding music, knitting, crochet and even exercise (spinning/bike) music poscasts.

Today I found these 2 application for a knitting and stitch minding programme developed by 'Quilt2Go'. These 2 applications have been around for a while and are free with an option to purchase the full Knit Minder at £2.99 at a later date. The Stitch Minder is 'free'. I downloaded both free versions today and have been busy playing.

Knit Minder, is a great record of projects you're working on, or completed with details of the pattern, needles and yarn used. However, I did find it a little limited when adding the colour of the yarns as I'm using a varigated coloured yarn and could only choose a solid colour for the project, but I'm sure this could be sorted at a later stage by the programmer, who incidentally is a Ravelry member.

Also you cannot actually upload pictures from the 'upload pic' icon, but I notice that this blip is to be rectified shortly.

Stitch Minder, is a great little gadget where you can do exactly as it says, keep a track of all your projects, with 'rows completed', pattern row, pattern repeats, increase and decrease row counters. All at the touch of the i-pad. This is great as I regularly take my knitting or crochet projects with me, especially on my little trips to Saad Hospital (dentist) where I always chuck in my iPod incase I want to listen to a knitting related iPod download. But now I can just use it to keep track of my progress as I invariably forget to take pencil and paper and then completely forget where I am in a pattern and spend ages trying to work it out.

I love these little applications and look forward to using them on a regular basis, and will probably download the £2.99 download version, but will continue with the KnitMinder Lite for the time being to get to grips with it.

If you're interested in giving them a go here are the links to copy and paste into your search engine:

http://www.quilt2go.com/

If you would like another review then go here:
http://www.notmartha.org/archives/2008/08/12/stitchminder-free-iphone-knitting-app/

Happy Mother's Day

Well it came early for me (yesterday - Friday) as Friday is the new Sunday as it goes out here ! So I got mine early... yipppeeeee... and I got (cold, very milky tea) in bed, a personalised card and .... a iPod Touch ! WOW I'm thrilled.. spent most of the time playing with it and adding itunes and cd's and blogs.. in fact had a terrific headache last night cos of it. No knitting or anything else.. well except an hour at the pool and then an hour's walk along the corniche just before sunset.
We would have gone earlier but William had a football match in the morning and then it just got toooo hot, around 90oc and wearing an abaya was more than I could bear...and its only the start of summer ! The 'locals' well ex-pats who've been here a while promise me that I'll acclimatize but I'm not too sure about that as I never managed to do that in the UK over the last 20 years... or so... !

Found some of the corniche strays hiding amongst the rocks and couldn't help but take a pic of this one with unusual eyes, one blue and one amber. Not sure how unusual it is but I've only seen it once before.
The cats thrive on the corniche as there are always fish from the sea or those that the fishermen throw to them.

Last night was full of people fishing, even women in their abaya's, trying to stop them from getting wet, and as a well dressed abaya'd women knows, an abaya should trail on the ground to make sure ankles and feet are well covered, and by the waterfront its a bit difficult to hold a fishing rod and your abaya, up just a little to stop it from getting wet. The men's thobes are a little easier as they are shorter, but a lot of the men were in 'shorts'... I mean, come on, its summer !

Picnics are also a big thing for the weekends so we'll definitely be doing that sometime soon.Well that was my 'Mother's Day' and it was lovely and without these 3 very important people it would not have been possible.