KnitBot

… and don’t you ever forget it! We were driving by Castalia Marsh at high tide, the other day, and were astonished to see that it was completely flooded.  It’s winter, high tides tend to be at their highest, and we did just have a wicked storm system come through, that did significant damage in [...]

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Many buildings in Amsterdam are old.  And they have a “native population”, that survives transfer of ownership.  To help deal with this, it is not unusual for restaurants to employ “peace keepers” of the four-legged sort. I recently met Mavis: Mavis was not above supplementing her rodent-chasing diet with handouts from the restaurant’s kitchen: While [...]

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Best wishes, from Grand Manan. And, by request — socks in the window: Those are, in fact, new socks (old feet).  There’ve been a few end-of-year Finished Objects here at KnitBot central, and they are duly posted up on in the KnitBot Yarn Gallery. And, for fun — here is the year in review (all [...]

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When looking at grey November vistas, stunning in their simple beauty… there’s only one question:  guess who’s coming… … to dinner? And a fine dinner they were, too. Didn’t stop me from playing with the “Ducka la Something or Other” recipe — browning the cabbage and onionbefore adding it to the duck in the slow [...]

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So, what would make you, the day after a 12 hour flight home from Japan, turn this: Into this?: I’d like to say something clever, like “reverse jetlag”,  or “desperately delayed burst of house pride”, but that’s hardly the case.  Rather, it took a wolf’s influence… the arrival of the Schacht Baby Wolf I’d ordered [...]

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Every now and then, the question comes up on knitting message boards — “can I take my knitting project on the plane?”.  There is no uniform answer across the globe.  Generally speaking, knitting needles are allowed through airport security in Canada and the US, but not allowed in a number of European airports.  And, there [...]

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I do mean fog… It’s like somebody turned off the CGI rendering of the background (cove, boats, rest of island…). Or, here’s a different perspective of Flaggs Cove, Grand Manan, not in fog: The fog can also play tricks — fading here, and thickening there.  Here, you see a glimpse of Castalia. But, here it’s [...]

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Here’s a fine example of something that should be seen, and not heard: These pheasants make a noise that sounds something like a car starter being turned after the car is already running. This guy & his missus have taken over our property, strutting about in full ownership mode. They might be even better tasted [...]

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988 miles, blue carrier, pink blankie… Window! No, really — quite happy:

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I’m sensitive to the mutterings I’ve been hearing lately — that for “knitbot”, there sure isn’t much knitting content on this blog.  Well, this post is not going to change that situation!  If you happen to find yourself considering making Bon Appetit’s Devil’s Food Layer Cake with Pepperming Frosting, there are a couple of things [...]

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When is a (meeting) table not a table? When it is a Rube Goldberg implementation of a table: Yes, those are vise grips and hinges you see under there. And it all looked so innocent with the table clothes!

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For Christmas, I received one of these: It’s an Emile Henry Flame Top Tagine.  Tagine is a North African pot for producing slow-cooked delicacies, such as one might experience in Morocco.  “Flame top” is Emile Henry’s special material — a clay vessel that works on the cooktop, in the oven, in the fridge etc.  Deeee-lightful. [...]

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We share an office here, so the rule is that someone who has a teleconference has to wander off to some other part of the house to have it.  It’s not all bad — the views are pleasant, and watching the waves (“~~~~~”) is fun: Sometimes, there are added distractions — the teleconferencee is not [...]

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It started innocently enough, with the duck thing, and slid right along with the roast turkey challenge. Then there was the choux done proper-like: to accompany the rock cornish hens (stand ins for perdrix this year): (There is cabbage in there, between the hen-halves & the toast points:  trust me!).   Finally, for good measure, [...]

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Best wishes, from Grand Manan. (Stanley Beach; -12C (-23C with windchill)).

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… but, thankfully, no fire in the sky. This is -10C air over salt water.

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Merry merry!  Best wishes of the season.  It’s certainly been merry here. An important point about message fragmentation.  Here are 2 very different messages, each starting with the same first chunk: We found the roasting pan we thought we’d given away. We found the roasting pan we thought we’d given away, but it’s not in [...]

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Perhaps — just perhaps — I am learning. I have previously observed, on more than one occasion, that I really should swatch for colours and pattern realities before I embark on a project. I’m now playing with some ideas for a multicolour, textured sweater in Rowan Cocoon (chunky merino/kid mohair).  I bought the yarn with [...]

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Last week, I did my Christmas (cookie) marathon, constructing and baking 4 different batches of cookies through the week, and another 4 on Saturday.  It’s not like there’s  a lack of other things going on this month — I just broke them up into stages and wove the different stages (dough, shaping, resting, baking, decorating) [...]

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Now this is obscure:  the 1904 date system in Excel. I was working with a spreadsheet in which I was trying to create a projection of a larger spreadsheet.  I.e., I want to be able to share just a portion of the larger spreadsheet — so I copied the relevant cells from the larger workbook [...]

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