Fat Quarter Tote Bag Tutorial. Must make this!

We’ve just hit 200 entries in the Oscar Contest! You’ve got less than a week to put in your picks if you haven’t already. We’ve got clear frontrunners in almost every category, so I am really hoping for some upsets. (Where did Penelope Cruz come from? She’s gotten a big late surge in picks…)

Note to self: Use Aurebesh in a knitting pattern sometimes for maximum geekitude.

Congratulations to Kristen who just ran her first marathon this past weekend! She’s posted an awesome race report too. She’s giving me very dangerous ideas…

I heart Yoko.
I kinda always liked Yoko Ono, though I didn’t know much about her. I just had this vague idea that she was a cool yet wacky Asian chick who did her own thing. I felt a vague sense of feminist annoyance whenever people blamed her for breaking up the Beatles. I also really like Dar Williams’s song “I Won’t Be Your Yoko Ono”. Then a few weeks ago, I stumbled across Yoko’s Twitter feed and decided to follow her. I guess I thought it would be pretty funny, because obviously she’d be a weirdo, you know? But instead I think it’s fantastic. She posts these whimsical, childlike notes every day or two. I don’t know if it’s part of a performance, or whether she really is like that. But then today came THE BEST THING: she posted her 25 things list. I absolutely love it. She starts off talking about feet and shoes and face creams and gloves and then moves on to John and Martians and war and daydreams and gods and dinosaurs. I know that sounds terribly twee and contrived, but really it’s not. She’s much more interesting than I ever gave her credit for.

Not-So-Secret Guild Business
So the big news of the weekend was that I was elected unopposed as the new Convenor of the Inner City group of the Knitters Guild of NSW. Basically that means I’m in charge of running the meetings for our group of 32 knitters every month. My first act upon taking power was to MOVE THE MEETING! Our old location at Humanist House was getting decidedly cramped. So last week I got in contact with a nice lady at the City of Sydney Libraries who ended up offering us free meeting space at Customs House Library! Fiona and I checked it out Saturday afternoon and it’s PERFECT. (Photos: 1, 2, 3, 4) The group members agreed to it immediately so I’ve been busy sending out notices and updating websites. In the space of a fortnight I’ve gone from “Revolution!” to holding an office within the regime!

Cats and cupboards
The foot board beneath our oven used to be broken, and Dr. Amy would climb in and hide under there. We didn’t want Petey learning that trick though, so when we got him Rodd finally fixed the board back in place. Amy was really confused and disappointed. She kept wandering the kitchen like she was looking for the entrance to Narnia. Unfortunately it seems to have spurred a sudden leap in intelligence. She’s figured out how to open cupboards. THIS IS BAD. Now I walk in the kitchen and it’s like that scene in The Sixth Sense, when all the doors are hanging open. I actually watched her do it this morning while I was making breakfast. She walked right up to the corner cupboard and used her head to pull it open, then climbed in amongst the pots and pans. (The doors have magnetic spring catches on them, but the springs are pretty much dead. Obviously we’ll have to replace them sooner than expected.) Now whenever I go to cook dinner, I have to check for cat hair in the pans. I just hope they don’t start teaming up against us…

Happy Valentine’s Day!
The Snook and I celebrated in our traditional way: going out for a nice dinner. We’d made a reservation earlier in the week for Redoak. They were doing a special Valentine’s set menu, and they also had two new recently-launched beers that we wanted to try. WIN-WIN! We got there about an hour early, thinking we’d hang at the bar and try the new beers. We talked to Janet about her family in Victoria surviving the bushfires, which seems pretty miraculous. Apparently a lot of the produce they use in brewing comes from the family farms, so they’re waiting to hear how much of it (if any) survived. Well, we gave them our support by ordering half a dozen beers over the night. My favorite was the new Biere Blanche, a Belgian wheat beer (somewhat similar to Hoegaarden). Our table was free so they seated us pretty early and we got stuck into our dinner. For the first course, I had an onion and blue cheese tart while the Snook had calamari with pasta. For mains, I had an absolutely fantastic sirloin steak while the Snook went for the bream fillet with risotto. Dessert was a shared plate with four different morsels on it. We left feeling well-fed and happy. I’m glad Redoak has managed to survive in Sydney over the years. We need more places with great atmosphere, great food, great service, and most importantly, great beers.

If you haven’t yet entered the web-goddess Oscar Contest, Roger Ebert has announced his picks which might give you some tips.

Hahaha… To celebrate Valentine’s Day, Amazon.com are offering a free MP3 download of “Let’s Get It On” by Marvin Gaye. Nice.

Edited to add: Bastards. It’s US-only. Of course, they don’t tell you that until you’ve already logged in and installed their stupid Downloader app. Grrr.