The Thousand

I suppose that should say the thousand plus. That's the current number of members of the 2-at-a-Time Socks group on Ravelry. Now, my plan was to give away yarn to a few lucky members when we hit 1,000. But thanks to the generosity of Gail, the Kangaroo Dyer and Tina of Blue Moon Fiber Arts, and Kathy of Webs I had 8 prizes to distribute. I've seen the random number generator thing used before, but never had a call to employ it myself. And I wasn't quite sure how to do so - I mean, I can generate 8 random numbers out of 1024 members, but then how do I match those 8 random numbers up with the 1024 members to get my 8 lucky winners? It came to me pretty quickly. Calculator. Total number of members per page. Random number divided by number of members per page. And so on. With the assistance of, in the interest of fair play, my capable supervisor I chose my winners. I was surprised, and tickled, when the first winner selected - the lowest number of the bunch - was Stacey of Crimson Purl fame. The Other Lucky Winners are (drum roll please…)
Kgrigs
seamstresskate
yarnchocolate
scisorlady
dizzyd
shelbymt
PurlnDrops
I am waiting to hear from a few, so if you know any of them, give them a shout for me. I know a lot of Ravelers don't check their Rav messages daily, or even regularly.
I did do some knitting last week. I was sort of a captive audience in the hospital on Friday and Saturday and Sunday and part of Monday. I finished a Falling Leaves scarf, and used the leftovers to make a tam. Scarf will appear next week after blocking. I didn't have circs so I did it on straights and seamed it up.I also did not have a pattern. It's not blocked yet, and you can see my model was super-coperative. Here is the little diva between shots, having a bit of a snack. Or a read. I am not sure which.Either way she seems enlightened by the experience.
Mr. Wonderful took me for a de-stress drive in there someplace. I don't even remember which day it was now. I was just kind of over my head, so he stuck me in the car with the camera and took me in search of water. If you click on this, and look at it big...for some reason I am in love with it. It looks like glass. Or water. Or both.
Also somewhere in there I came home to find Mr. Wonderful waiting for me with this on a stick.I took April (she was visiting for a bit) inside and grabbed my camera. Coolest. It's a Cecropia moth caterpillar, they are a form of a silk worm, and it will eventually develop into a beautiful creature nearly 6" across. I found out about it at Wormspit. No, really. Wormspit. What else would you call a website devoted to worm spit? These folks managed to photograph a Cecropia moth from egg through metamorphosis. An awesome site, really, loaded with detail. I loved watching the process via their website. The caterpilar looked like a baby toy, right down to it's bright blue feet and red, yellow, orange and blue head knobs. Too cool. Then Girl brought out the baby, and I forgot about the caterpillar. Who wouldn't? I could eat her up. I adore this infant. She's the cutest baby on earth since the person to the left. And she's smart, too. Smarter than both parents put together. After all, she said "Omie" when she was a mere 12 weeks old, so of course she's brilliant!
Fan-freaking-tastic. Twist Collaborative. Awesome!
Last - but NOT LEAST - Still Standing. Which may become it's name.We've had a rough start. He developed flip-over which is usually fatal, although Girl and I have saved a turkey with flip-over by conscientious, consistent monitoring, flipping back, and patiently waiting for them to grow out of it. They flip, get stuck, and cannot turn back over. It's believed to be a metabolic disorder and seems to be associated with high-carbohydrate feed. The thing is, I feed a high protein feed, and it seems to be chicks or poults who don't eat right off. It's the ones I have to coax and remind to eat and drink that flip. I've lost some to it. This guy amazes me. He was born with a bit of a mushy belly (another thing only chicken people know about) and I thought for sure we were going to lose him. Somehow - unbelievably really, since it's almost always fatal - it healed and he survived. Here again I've only ever had one survive who had a mushy belly and that was with a bit of opsite over his tummy. I love my birds. The loss of the six last week is still heavy in my mind, so losing this guy would have really been awful. And I keep saying guy. It could be a girl!! Either way, isn't it cute??