Year of the Wombat?

At the heart of much speculative fiction (and fiction in general) is a question. What if? On Tuesdays I like to throw one out there and see what you make of it. Do with it as you please. If a for-instance is not specified, feel free to interpret that instance as you wish. And if you find this becomes a novel-length answer, I'd appreciate a thank you in the acknowledgements. 😉

What if years had names rather than numbers?

Knitting More Shark Beanies

My Christmas knitting is now in full swing...

No, not next Christmas. This Christmas. Yes, the one that occurred five days ago...

A few years ago I decided that it wasn't worth it to knit things for people if it wasn't something they were going to want. So, I let the family decide what they want. I suppose I should have asked earlier, but I didn't. That's on me.

On the bright side, how fun is it to get Christmas gifts in February?

The youngest nephews (the twins) requested shark hats...

Do you remember the shark hat? I knit it for... Well, let me go into the wayback files...

I'm so glad I have the blog. I forget these things.

I made two. They were for Christmas 2013. Apparently, middle nephew wasn't a fan.

I made one for eldest nephew and one for middle nephew. The twins were only eight months old that Christmas, so I made them something more age appropriate.

When I sent SIL the "what do they want for Christmas?" message, she replied that middle nephew has been wearing his shark hat, and the twins now want their own. So, I dug out the pattern, acquired the yarn, and got started.

I decided I'd finish off the main body knitting first, and then I'd add the embellishments to both at the same time. I have finished the body of one...

Yes, this gray is a bit darker than the yarn I used for the older boys.

...And I've started the body of the second hat...

So, progress is being made...

Middle nephew likes his shark hat so much that he wants a scarf to go with it. Considering how the hat was received, this is very good news.

But, a shark scarf... Yeah, I'm stumped. Because I can knit a scarf in similar yarn so that it'll compliment the hat. Or, I can find a shark scarf? I really, really don't know what to do with that.

That's the danger of asking what they want. I may not have the skills to carry off their requests. (Yeah, I'm a bit stumped as to the other requests, too. There's a reason I started with the shark hats.)

So, wish me luck. I'm not terribly worried about these hats. They'll get done in good time. But if you have a good link to a shark scarf, send them my way. (I'll show the other Christmas requests as I make them.)

Rock and Roll Fantasy

A few boats from the boat parade...

The theme of the Huntington Harbor Boat Parade was "Rock and Roll Fantasy" (click on the images to enlarge)...

Musical notes.

They had an actual band playing on the bow.

Guitars and records.

The Beatles.

KISS.

Can't do rock & roll without someone impersonating Elvis.

Santa with a guitar.

I really should take video so you can hear all the music playing. And, of course, the people on board calling out to us, "the people on the bridge".

Almost Missed It

The last two times we went to the Huntington Harbor Boat Parade (2014, 2018), we got there 'round about 5 PM and waited until the boats arrived after 7 PM. So, this year, we were going to be clever and get there after 6 PM.

So, we'd gotten our chairs set up, and I had even taken a test picture...

...when we talked to a passerby. Who told us the boats had been there about an hour previous...

Seriously? The one year we don't go early...

A boat did come by...

But it was clear we had missed the festivities. Doh!

After a quick search online, a map was found of the parade route. The boats had been scheduled to get to our location at 5:15 PM. But...

This area has a lot of channels of water. It'd be best if you take a look at the map...

We were at location number 4. It's nearly at the top of the map. Right next to it is a strip of green. And next to that is location 31, which had the not yet reached time of 7:56 PM.

The strip of green is actually a bridge. The boats didn't go under the bridge but came back around to it. In previous years, they hit that side of the bridge first. But if the map was correct, we had over an hour to kill (just like in previous years).

So, we came later, and we still had to wait. Although, we weren't sure if we had missed it entirely. Since we were already there, we decided to wait.

As the time drew closer, a crowd had gathered on the bridge...

We joined them, and we waited. And waited. It was nearly 8:15 PM when we spied...

We hadn't missed it after all. Whew.

And somehow, I have managed to figure out how to work my phone camera so that I could get pretty decent images, unlike the prior two times. It turns out night photos take 3 seconds, but I could turn that off so the image just captures with no upload time. (I'm not sure what this is called.)

Not all the images came out, because moving boats, but after that first test boat (second picture in this post), more of them came out decently than not.

I'll save most of those pictures for tomorrow, although I posted a few of them yesterday. (So many photos came out I was able to make three posts out of them. Success.)

But I'll close this post with the last boat of the parade. They really went all out with this...

It was really, really tall. And impressive.

Christmas Boats

No one's actually around today, right? Right...

So, here are some boats from the Huntington Harbour Boat Parade this year, keeping in the spirit of the holiday. (Click on the images to enlarge them.)

My favorite boat every year. Just spectacular.

From this angle you can see the "wings" better.

Olaf and a few Christmas things.

It's not a SoCal Christmas without lit up palm trees.

A few Christmas friends.

This is like that house with all the blow up things on the front lawn.

I imagine this is what Santa's sleigh looks like at the end of the night.

Merry Christmas.

Move Christmas?

At the heart of much speculative fiction (and fiction in general) is a question. What if? On Tuesdays I like to throw one out there and see what you make of it. Do with it as you please. If a for-instance is not specified, feel free to interpret that instance as you wish. And if you find this becomes a novel-length answer, I'd appreciate a thank you in the acknowledgements. 😉

There is a sign that gets posted around this time of year that makes me a little crazy. I keep it to myself, and I won't be complaining about it here, but it's what brings this question to my mind:

What if historians/scholars were able to pinpoint the actual date of Jesus' birth? What if that day was in May? Or June? Or March?

With a Twist in It

Last week, I showed how badly the colors were lining up in the moebius scarf I was crocheting.

Since then, I've frogged this and completed the second try...

How did I get this done so fast? Bulky weight yarn on a 10 mm (N) hook. It's amazing how quickly that works up (especially compared to the infinity scarves that I was working on for a year).

Once I realized that the star stitch wasn't lining up as I'd like and that it was pulling the fabric in so much, I switched over to the shell stitch. The shell stitch did none of those things, although I'm not 100% pleased with how the colors lined up.

It's hard to tell from these pictures, but it is a moebius, meaning it has one side and one edge. That's accomplished by putting a twist in it...

I'm thinking I like this so much, I might have to make a couple for my Etsy shop. In January, most likely.

As for the pooling...

I'm not sure if I like that big swath of blue at the bottom. One side of me likes that sections have one color or another in majority. The other side wishes each round was a different color. Sigh.

But it is warm. And I do mostly like it. Besides, it's finished in time for Christmas. Hooray!