The following is not news to my regular readers, but I thought it worth mentioning:

www.ormond.unimelb.edu.au/footer/employment/opportunities.shtml

As far as I’m concerned, a good friend has found a satisfactory way to extricate himself from a situation that had been causing him a great deal of unhappiness for quite some time. And that’s all I have to say about that.

Looking forward, I am quite pleased to see quite a number of confirmed engagements on www.auschoir.org/ which have immediately made their way into my calendar, and they should just as immediately find their way into yours.

And now, as promised, knitting. I haven’t blogged about knitting for rather a while, since I haven’t been making any progress worth blogging about. But last night I knocked off most of the backlog of episodes of the Enough Rope podcast (abc.net.au/tv/enoughrope/podcast.xml) and before I knew it I had finished another ball of wool and the scarf was as long as I am. So I decided to cast off and call it finished. (All of 5 months behind schedule. With that kind of record I could tender for government contracts.)

Now, I had already decided what to do with the leftover wool (and in fact ensured there would be leftover wool to do this with): namely, www.knitty.com/issuespring06/PATTtopi.html Current progress:

And now that iTunes 7 provides gapless playback, I can finally enjoy all my Bach mp3s without artificial gaps between movements. So I shall return to my Bach.

Photo-y goodness. Unfortunately they all seem somewhat out of focus… I hope it’s the fact that I took them to El Cheapo ™ Photo Developing, rather than that my camera has fscked three whole films… they seem uniformly out-of-focus, so here’s hoping it’s the developing. I might take my favourite photos to another place for reprinting, to see if they do it any better; if it’s better I’ll get a better place to scan them to a CD and put sharper photos online. Meanwhile, I’ve processed them a bit to make them bearable.

As always: http://www.ockle.org/photos.
More specifically: Amess Street housewarming, and breakfast with Richard; the first film in Saarbrücken and Sarreguemines; and the second film from Sarreguemines and Saarbrücken.

And of course you want to see some more mundane photos, of where I live and what I see around me, etc, so here they are (click for the album):

In other news, I cooked chili con carne yesterday. From a packet, alas; although one day I will succumb to the temptation to just “take a fresh and ripe tomato”… and of course I sang while I was cooking

Also bought a German cookbook today, because I didn’t take any of my Australian ones with me (weight considerations!!), and I’d rather not rely on stir-frys, spaghetti bolognese, and packet meals. And so that I have something to read other than my Lonely Planet, I invested in “Sakrileg” by Dan Brown (er, that was called “The Da Vinci Code” before it got translated.) I also ventured into the Ausländerbehörde and marvelled at the queues, I think I’ll try going there again early in the morning, with my book, and a lot more patience.

I have also begun another scarf, although I suspect I will finish it just in time for the weather to warm up and me not to need it any more. But oh well. Photo:

I’d better get back to actually knitting that.

After some experimentation with the old Super 8 camera, and some watching of films etc, I think it would be quite fun to make an actual film with an actual plot. Since I can’t write stories to save myself, I should probably adapt a story. Probably one in the public domain. The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe is rather a good story, with no dialogue (perfect for silent film!) and not terribly many special effects to worry about.

Read more about it at the wiki: ockle.org/wiki/index.php?ThePitAndThePendulum

Knitting first. I have finished the back of my Harry jumper. (phew.) Now there’s only the front, and two arms left to do.

Crumpler second. I have decided it is time to replace the blue backpack/messenger bag crossbreed that has served me faithfully for the past five years, carrying my stuff around with me almost every day. Since I had enjoyed the messenger bag half of the crossbreed rather more than the backpack half, I thought a Crumpler might be a good investment — also because a Crumpler is probably likely to last the next five years under similar wear and tear. (I hope.) Because I want to be able to carry my laptop around, I went for a “Considerable Embarrassment”. (Who comes up with these names?) Because I want to ride with the bag, I went to the Custom Crumpler store in Fitzroy to get a “Third Leg” attached. Because I’m me, I went to the Custom Crumpler store in Fitzroy to get the bag, not in the pale blue or pale green that they usually come in, but in a design of my own, erm, designing. (Prose. Yeah. Go me.)

Photos follow. Of course.

I promised photos, so here they are…

… and the new project is a bag to keep future projects in (since the Lincraft shopping bag broke) …

I probably owe it to my faithful readers to record that I have finished the cardigan. With the purchase of nine buttons at Cleg’s in town, and the sowing on of said buttons later last night, I now have one complete cardigan. Photos are forthcoming; I will endeavour to do my best impression of “Man standing awkwardly”, “Man staring into distance”, “Man contemplating life”, and “Man draped on chair”. If I find an assistant I might even be able to present “Man draped across woman”, or “Woman draped across man draped on chair”.

Indeed.

knitting update: the left front panel of the jacket is approaching completion. w00t.

kitten update: the kitten discovered my knitting today. Well, he discovered me knitting a few days ago, and has already developed a fascination for the non-business end of my knitting needles. Presumably the patterns they make in the air while I knit or something. But today he discovered the ball of wool at the other end of the knitting; and also discovered that the yarn gradually makes its way up my leg to my hands… and promptly followed it, claws out, up my leg to investigate what happened to it up there. Oh joy - it joins the knitting needles! Kitty heaven! The whole process of discovery seems to have exhausted him however, cos now he’s curled up behind the desk and fallen deep asleep.

(yes, gaga. see previous post.)

I have taken up knitting. As if I don’t already have enough to procrastinate with. Anyhow, I now have a nice dirty blue scarf. And am working on a tie.

And I have found that it does seem to be quite a geek-y thing to do… there are oodles of web pages about it around, and my 340 project team has asked me to teach them… possibly we need to decide that if Thursdays is coding night, Wednesdays is knitting night, or something.

Oh, and it’s also good for boring lectures. Easier to half-pay attention to the lecture over knitting than over a good book…