Things, randomly written here.

Firstly, for all those of you who are planning to put in a visit to the V&A before they close down the textile study room, a heads-up: I have been sent additional information by two friends who went there and found that, without any further notice, the staff closed the study room at noon.

So they recommend that

any colleagues intending to make a special visit to the collection are *strongly* advised to contact the museum first to check that the room is likely to be open : they probably won't give any promises, citing the usual weasle phrase "lack of resources", but pointing out that the room will soon be closed anyway might help.

So please phone ahead if going to the V&A to save you a disappointment.

Secondly, there are more conferences coming up: The Braid Society meeting in 2012 and the Leeds Congress 11-14th of July 2011. I have made the mistake of looking at the preliminary programme up on the website, and now I'm totally lusting to go there. If only beaming were invented already!

Thirdly, I spent part of the weekend having a load of fun with the new "in" sports discipline, Extreme Hedgehog Wrestling. Here's photo proof of it:

And this is the hedgehog in rest:

The thing lying around on the table in addition to the needles and yarn is a count-down d20* that I use for counting knitting rounds. (For those of you not enlightened by roleplaying friends sharing their dice and knowledge, countdown dice have the numbers arranged so you can easily find the next one in sequence - as opposed to normal dice where you have to hunt for the next number.)



It's a pattern that was published in Knitty a while ago**, and contrary to my usual approach, I actually did not change anything when knitting it. Well, except using dpns instead of the recommended two circs, and messing with the needle size : yarn thickness ratio to get the correct gauge. (Hint: My needles are, to a normal knitter's mind, way too small for the yarn.) After I broke one needle tip during the wrestling session start, I sort of tried to err on the side of caution in regards to the number of needles (and therefor reduced stress on the individual needle).Hedgehog Wrestling then is the natural side effect of this.

* A 20-sided die. Which is plenty for most knitting purposes and a very standard type for a lot of roleplaying games.
** I won't tell you what it is yet, because it's intended as a gift, and you never know who reads this blog. I'll show the finished thing once it's been received, though.