29 May 2009 · 1 Comment
Calumny: ˈka-ləm-nē noun
– a misrepresentation intended to harm another’s reputation
I checked my email this morning and was more than a bit surprised to find that I had received 300 new messages in the space of a few minutes. Surprise quickly gave way to dismay as it became clear that these were bounced spam messages, many offering what purported to be the finest in male enhancement and weight loss opportunities.
I called The Boy. The Boy is possessed of a variety of very useful skills, among them strong email-fu. I whimpered in dismay. He said “Joe Job” in an authoritative tone and strode off to do some skillful typing. According to the all knowing Wikipedia, Joe Job is “a spam attack using spoofed sender data and aimed at tarnishing the reputation of the apparent sender and/or induce the recipients to take action against him.”
I think I’ve figured out what happened. First, allow me to introduce our villain. Somewhere out there is a very sad lonely man, we’ll call him Leroy. Leroy seems to be unhappy with his sex life and to have very poor body image. In a misguided attempt to make himself feel better, Leroy has decided to try and make others feel as bad about themselves as he clearly does about himself. He also wants to make a few bucks. He’s decided to do this by attempting to sell us all a variety of pills and potions meant to remedy our perceived faults.
Leroy started out using his own email address, but people quickly realized what he was up to, and politely declined to receive email from him. Not easily foiled, Leroy decided to make his emails appear to be from someone else. Leroy is a shifty little toad. Today, I was the lucky someone. Leroy lovingly crafted his most recent round of spam, and sneakily said they were from Violently Domestic, instead of from him. That way, all the people who had declined to receive mail from Leroy would still get his messages.
Lots of folks are clever enough to decline to receive the sort of email that Leroy writes, and have cleverly set up their email to reject messages containing his brand of drek. When those messages were refused, they came to me. Lots of them came to me. Hundreds in the space of a few minutes. This triggered the whimpering mentioned above.
Alas, there is little if anything I can do to chastise Leroy. He just picked the name Violently Domestic out of the ether. I had nothing to do with it, and there is no way for me to keep him or others of his ilk from doing it in the future. We must just cherish the knowledge that people like Leroy have a way of getting what they deserve in the end (and try not to be too gleeful when he gets accidentally locked in a truck full of rabid wombats overnight).
In short, if you got an email purporting to be from Violently Domestic, and you hadn’t asked me to email you (and if it wasn’t in some way about knitting), it wasn’t from me. It was from Leroy. Don’t worry though, the wombats are coming for him.
26 May 2009 · 2 Comments
After much wavering, equivocating, and down right shilly shallying, I have come to a decision.
I will be attending Sock Summit 2009.
Eep. I will be getting the wee pretty button later, but right now their computers seem to be a bit busy doing other things (like fending off the hordes of hopeful knitters, credit cards in one hand, sharp pointy sticks in the other). Button success. Ahh, pretty socks. Now, to plan the trip.
Erp. I think I must go lie down.
25 May 2009 · 1 Comment
I went to the Great Lakes Fiber Show this weekend and displayed astonishing self restraint and admirable fiscal responsibility. I bought a mere six skeins of yarn. Quite noble. I must have been too distracted by the squee-worthy critters to engage in commerce. Sheep are both cuter and smellier than I had realized. Especially that smelly part.
In actual knitting news, the first of the Embonpoint socks is complete, and the second will be started shortly. The pattern will be posted here, likely some time in June. I spent some time this morning taking pictures for my Knitty submission. It is doubtless a long shot, but worth a try. If it’s not accepted, it too will be making an appearance here. Finally, Pedigreed is taking a brief hiatus while other projects with more pressing deadlines are finished. It should hopefully resurface toward the end of the summer.
22 May 2009 · 1 Comment
Embonpoint: \äⁿ-bōⁿ-ˈpwaⁿ\ adjective
-sufficiently fat so as to have a pleasing fullness of figure
Allow me to present my newest creation, Embonpoint!
The name is perfect on several counts. First, this is the most luciously fat sock yarn I’ve ever seen. It is thick enough that the socks work up quickly, but still thin enough to fit inside of most shoes. It has a nice tight twist, making the strands marvelously plump and firm. The name works for the pattern too. There is a lovely round little faux cable. It’s great fun to make, doesn’t take a cable needle, and makes adorable little circles. Finally, the cuff of the sock is made on straight needles and then joined up for working in the round in such a way that it absolutely will not bother you if you’re having a puffy ankle sort of day.
Also, it’s just a damn nifty word. If you want to hear the official dictionary droid pronounce it for you, just go here. It’s great fun to say.
22 May 2009 · No Comments
The charming (enviably athletic, and astonishingly coordinated) Claudia is raising money for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. She’s riding in the MS Bike Tour and asking knitters to sponsor her. The cause is a good one, and supporting it should be reward enough, but Claudia has arranged for some marvelous prizes to sweeten the pot. Prizes include yarn (lots of yarn), knitted items, books, patterns, kits, and all sorts of other knitterly goodness. I’m happy to do my part, and have offered up a couple of bundles of my patterns to add to the pile of goodies.
Every ten dollar donation gets you one entry into the prize drawing, which will be held on June 29, 2009. Last year Claudia raised over thirty thousand dollars. She has been the number one fundraiser for two years running. Lets see if we can make it three!
21 May 2009 · No Comments
More non-knitting stuff today. I promise next time there will be pictures of yarn or at least discussion of it. We’re off to the Great Lakes Fiber Show this weekend, and that should be good for some yarn-y indulgence.
On the plumbing front, the dismemberment stage seems to have reached its conclusion, and the reconstruction has begun. We now have drywall instead of holes. It is am improvement, but the upstairs bathroom still has no actual plumbing fixtures, just a lot of pipes. This fairly severely impedes its utility as a bathroom. Despite this rather glaring lack, I am assured all is going as intended and will be well in the end.
Now, before the surprise plumbing adventure, we had planned to put a patio in our back yard. We have the world’s smallest yard. It’s about 20 feet across and 40 feet deep. The back half is very shady. Nothing much more than moss and weeds will grow back there. The previous owners had a play set, but we’d rather have a patio. We’d been wanting it for years and fianlly decided to do it. A week later the wall started crying.
The patio was already under contract though, so it’s going in anyways. Work started today. It’s a noisy noisy day around these parts, and I’ve got the whole street parked up with work trucks. I should make apology cookies for the neighbors.
