Hilary Booth... of course!

Sock it to me: Competitive Knitters Get Deadly Serious: Apparently some knitters are tired of their reputation as a serene group of Miss Marples and have endeavored to add a more cutthroat perspective in the form of an assassination game:

Sock Wars requires each participant to knit a pair of socks for another player and ship them off to the target. Players are eliminated from the contest -- or "killed" -- when, like Ms. Williams, they receive the socks. Once they receive their socks, participants have to ship to their assassins the pair they were still working on for their own targets. The assassins then must finish those socks and send them along, hoping that they don't first receive their own killer socks from another assassin. The last assassin standing -- or sitting -- wins.

Scar: The sock pattern for Sock Wars II.

Wonder what the needleworkers would do... Ornament wars? Biscornu Battles?

Knitted squid: Proof positive with enough imagination and enough yarn you can knit anything. And he multitasks magnificently too. The original version was intended as a hat.

I found a English review of the shogi manga Shion no Ou that actually explains it better for me. Still not licensed alas and apparently the fourth volume is coming out in Japan. After the trouble I had special ordering the first volume from Sasuga, I'd have either delve through Amazon.jp or some other site.

Today is National Wear Red Day is promoting women's heart disease awareness. I'm wearing more of a burgundy today, but I hope it's close enough.

Apparently WHFS wasn't the only station to turn to the Latin beat. My mother reports that her usual Orlando oldies station WBEG has turned from Motown and Simon & Garfunkel to salsa and merengue. She's none too pleased about this change.

My knitting friends would not be at all surprised by the AP article about men who knit. It's no different really than the ones who cross-stitch. One of the best blackwork specialists from Britain is male, Leon Conrad. He turns out the most intricate stuff, including the Elizabethan chessboard.

The CVS meeting last night featured some newcomers and a couple of workshops. For the first one, I need to reread "Scene and Structure" a little. I was reminded of the second one today when reading a review of the Official Movie Plot Generator. whytcrow used the Evil Overlord's list to great effectiveness with her exercise based on Teresa Nielsen Hayden's Stupid Plot Tricks. I still don't know why mine turned into a western saloon. Too much Firefly maybe?

Debra Doyle and James Macdonald have a new journal, mist_and_snow, which will contain notes and research for an alt-historical novel they're doing for Eos, featuring the American Civil War at sea.

CVS meeting last night. I completely muffed two critiques. I really need to reorganize this apartment if I'm losing things like this. ariadnesthread, though, gave me a beautiful black and white knitted shawl as an early birthday present. It felt warm and snuggly especially in the cold Barnes & Noble. I always have to remember a sweater for the meetings these days. I went to a second dinner afterwards with iced_spice to just natter and chatter.

I DVRed the Olympics from last night except the sound was wonky, so I watched swimming and gymnastics on mute, which was fine, as long as there wasn't some controversy or "huh" moment. It's not the girls were really moving to the music on the floor exercise. But at least I could fast forward past the beach volleyball.

My parents apparently escaped Charley without nary a flicker or a problem. Apparently the bad stuff was north of them. They said they had had worse thunderstorms pass through before Charley.

DHL should be coming sometime today to snag the other monitor. Knock on wood, but there hasn't been a trace of my previous computer woes.

To counterpoint ariadnesthread's Subversive Cross Stitch, I offer up Geek Knitting. Need a DNA scarf or one using Fibonacci numbers?