in which I ramble about knitting, dreams, and weird patents

[kaylarudbek]

how to carry small knitting projects with one: what a great idea

Another knitting link to remember: Loosen up This article actually featured in a dream l had last night; in the dream, I was knitting a scarf out of a ribbon yarn & the colors simply weren't showing up; I was producing a knotted muted pastel and I was reminded to start doing this & stop doing that extra fifth tug step. Then all of a sudden the stitches loosened up & got taller, & I was able to produce/see the colors I was working with. Then of course I was upset that things were not going to match, but the senior knitter I was working with said, "Don't worry. The tension will even out in the wash."

Gacked this from ellid :

My Unitarian
Jihad Name is: Sister/Brother Shotgun of Looking at All Sides of the Question.

Get yours.

what I've been up to recently...making a big list... Now to get this much work actually lined up at work. Although we have a bunch of new clients, so there is work coming in. Now to get my fair share of it. Although I never know what to expect when I come in the door; sometimes what I think will be a quiet day with very little billing turns into a mad busy day (e.g. today when I walked in thinking I had only two things to do and it turned into mad multitasking after lunch), and sometimes when I think it will be busy, the clients don't pay and we don't work on their projects.

Wacky link from Making Light: Crocheting the Hyperbolic Plane

Free Patents On-Line This actually works better than the USPTO in some respects because you can get the entire patent as a pdf, rather than one pdf page at a time. OTOH, not as searchable as the USPTO.

Patents:
Published patent applications This site is truly great. Where else can you find the U.S. patent application for a talking telescope? Or soybean jam? Or by industry categories such as fishing, trapping and vermin-destroying? And it breaks down applications by geographic locations, so I can find out how many US patent applications were made in, e.g. Wiltshire, UK. (besides esp@cenet, or the USPTO website, but this is a lot more fun) Caveats: 1) typos galore; 2) only searchable by title/abstract, industry, location, inventor, attorney/agent. Brooke's comment about the talking telescope and soybean jam patents: "Obviously there are people with too much time on their hands."


Mood explanation:
1) the weather
2) the fear that we are living in the latter days of the Empire & of cheap energy/oil & that economic collapse will occur within my lifetime, and that I should have gone into trying to find how to make fusion energy work instead of wasting my time with chemistry & law...minastir tells me not to be depressed about it because then everyone will be biking.

Comments

[roseprofessor.livejournal.com]

This site also provides U.S. patents as pdf's:

http://www.pat2pdf.org/

[ex-ajhalluk585.livejournal.com]

You do know about AP Pedrick, don't you?

If not: General Guide to Pedrick (http://www.patent.freeserve.co.uk/pedrick.html) and
PHOTON PUSH-PULL RADIATION DETECTOR FOR USE IN CHROMATICALLY SELECTIVE CAT FLAP CONTROL AND 1000 MEGATON EARTH-ORBITAL PEACE-KEEPING BOMB" - the invention that would secure world peace once and for all, which he created in collaboration with his cat Ginger (http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:zfxJfrGwd8wJ:www.takete.com/uncletweed/uncletweed.asp%3Fid%3D27+AP+Pedrick&hl=en) (The Patent Office applied to invalidate the latter on the basis that Ginger was not properly named as co-inventor on the form)

[annearchy.livejournal.com]

As a Unitarian I though that was quite funny. We are all about reason and compassion in human relations (seriously). So the concept of Unitarians doing a jihad is wonderfully oxymoronic, much like Garrison Keillor's concept of "Unitiarian missionaries". Jon Carroll is right, though; the United States has certainly been overtaken by extremism :(

[fyrdrakken]

I've gotten to the point of having a small project in my backpack pretty much at all times -- and have found that a single-color sock is a great project to walk around with when, for example, standing in line for two hours in an airport, since the single ball of yarn can often neatly fit into a pocket. (Though currently I only have three projects on the needles, since I just finished one last night -- but fortunately the Ravenclaw scarf and Mom's socks are both portable.)

I suppose I have to agree with the idea of loosening one's knitting, but I've solved my problems by just adjusting needle size to get the correct gauge. (Like the striped kneesocks pattern I keep doing, where the pattern calls for size 3 on most of the sock and size 2 ribbing, and I use size 5 or 6 on the ribbing and 7 or 8 on the rest of the sock, depending on the calf-thickness of the recipient.)