I'm an English fiend!

Muwah ha ha! Look at them beautiful test scores! I'm a master of the English language!

The Commonly confused English words test:

Your Score: Advanced
You scored 100% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 100% Advanced, and 60% Expert!

You have an extremely good understanding of beginner, intermediate, and advanced level commonly confused English words. This is an exceptional score. Remember, these are commonly confused English words, which means most people don't use them properly. You got an extremely respectable score.

Well, as a matter of fact, ma sista got a better score than me (she's a genius, what did you expect?). I blame the imperfect score on tha fact that the "expert" section involved a lot of spelling questions. My zpeling ees nott so goot. ; )

I have plenty of news to share, but you'll have o wait a few hours for my brain to wake up and for some yoga to be done.
Ciao!

Please, tell me you're kidding!

You don't have to be a woman to care about "women's issues", but as one, I'm twice as mad to read about stories like this. After the initial "What the...?!" came the "You've got to be kidding me!" and a serious wish I had a punching bag I could go and punish.
In case you didn't read/hear about it, one mr. Judge Jeffre Cheuvront from Nabraska ruled that using words like "Rape", "Sexual assault" and "Victim" in the rape trial of pre-law student Tory Bowen was too inflamatory to make for a fair trial. You can hear more about the story here and here. This, in the same week Israeli Attorney General Menny Mazuz offers the sex offender ex-president Katzav a light and sweet plea deal in the multiple sexual assault and rape charges case of several former employees over decades of public service. The full story is here (in short, not much you can find in English).
It never ceases to amaze me how far we still are from the 21st century, where people with (supposedly) wisdom and lots of education can still come up with ideas that are so primitive, so intent on sending women's rights back to the dark ages. I am, I admit, a couch feminist. I do what feels like a lot of us do - read about cases like these in the paper, get mad, go to work the next day thinking "well, I don't like being aggressive. I'll just work twice as hard to prove my worth and that will strengthen the global woman mojo and make the rest of the world (men?) appreciate us more. But what if it's not enough? What can a peace loving, non confrontational (aren't wel all?) woman do?
I just wonder if either Judge Chevront or Mr. Mazuz have any daughters.

A sock has got to begin somewhere

A couple of days ago, I was sitting in the break room at work, knitting on my Sockapalooza 4 pal's socks. I don't get much time at work, maybe two, three rounds (knitted two at the same time on two circs), but having so little time to knit these days - that's really important. Anyway, one of my team members goes past the door and sees me knitting (freaking muggles, stop looking at me funny and asking stupid questions unless you own a pair of needles and some yarn you're eager to learn how to turn into something useful). Here's the dialogue that followed:

Pal: "You're knitting baby booties".
Me: "No, these are adult socks".
Pal (raises an eyebrow): "They don't look like adult socks".
Me (stretching the toe and half the instep to show that the width alone negates baby socks): "But they are, look - that's the toe..."
Pal: "They don't look like adult socks".
Me (sighing to myself): "Every sock has got to begin somewhere".


These are the Spring Grass socks and I love them. The pattern is simple and easy to understant and by lucky alignment of the stars, the Lorna's Shepard Sock yarn on size #1 needles works perfectly for the gauge required to fit my pal's feet. Which brings me to the only bummer about this Sockapalooza project: my pal's feet are significantly smaller than mine, by both length and circumference. I'm talking about at least a size and a half down. I can't even have Ant try them on (yes, his feet are smaller than mine). I'm plotting making some sock blockers to her feet's specs, but it just ups my enxiaty levels about fit quite a bit. Cross you fingers for me everyone! Please?

There's another half a pattern repeat done on them now, but it's not yet worth more picture taking.

And now for something completely different:
Are there any yogis among you? I need some advice. I've been twisting my limbs into unnatural shapes for almost two months now, and I'm beginning to get the impression that it's not only that I'm an impossibly inflexible klutz - my mat might also be to blame. I have a cheapy old thing from Wal-Mart I got when I started doing pilated three years ago, and while it was fine for the pilates mostly horizontal positions, it feels way too thin and slippery for the stability demanding yoga. I've been looking at some mats at work, especially these four nice guys, and I just don't know. Is the extra thickness worth it? What does the "extra sticky" or "extra traction" good for? Are they really worth it? Some of those things aren't cheap... And there are some nice colors and cute designs on the regular thickness/traction/stickyness from the Gaiam website on sale...
What do you think? Any expert knowledge/experience/opinion will be super appreciated.
Namaste.

P.S.
This post was brought to you by this here feline who kindly let me use my hands for something other than patting her every few minutes. She loves it when we're home all day (yes, I'm in my PJs. It's my day off, for crying out loud!).

G? Me?!

I had to go on Blog Rating after reading about it on TECHknitting. With my dirty-dirty mouth, I was sure The R rating is mine. You know me, I curse at just about everything (especially when knitting, doing web work or driving). Imagine my surprise when I came out a squeaky clean G! Amusingly, even saying 'crack' (can't remember where, must have been chocolate related) didn't matter. Man!


I guess that hiding nasty words with *** for your gentle souls' sakes has worked. Evil email spammers! Come learn from me how to beat the system! (Ah, not. Not really. But you could, theoretically)