East Africa Drought

photo courtesy of http://www.redcross.org.au/AfricaAppeal.htm

I am ashamed to say that life has gotten so hectic lately that I have failed to keep up with what's happening around the world. Thankfully, exercising on the cross-trainer at the gym gives me some opportunity to catch up a little bit on my news and that was when I came across this rather sad piece yesterday.

Africa is in strife. Again.

Yes, it happens way too often and it can be quite demoralising. I guess more for them than for us, considering they're living through it. But it just makes me sad that no matter how hard (or little?) we try to help, it still doesn't seem to make a difference.

But this doesn't mean we should stop helping. No indeed. Coz if we did, then they wouldn't even get that little bit of help. I'd like to believe that it's simply about helping, not about the quantity. So even if it means helping only one person, it's still helping that one person.

Anyway, the latest is that Kenya and Somalia are in drought and people are starving to death. From what I heard, it's the worst food shortage they've faced in 60 years. Which probably makes it on an even worse scale than in the 1980s when your parents started saying, "Don't waste food, there are starving children in Ethiopia."

It's bad. People are hungry. They are going to aid organisations for help but these aid organisations are not equipped enough to help the overwhelming number of people.

Will you help?

Why I'm a chick and I do NOT dig Bruno Mars' Marry You*

Have you heard the lyrics?

I mean, really listen to it, besides the part where he's crooning "I want to marry yoooooou" to wedding bells chiming in the background?

This is the guy who wants to marry this girl because:

1. He's looking for "something dumb to do"
2. He's proposing getting married at a dinky chapel because then "no one will know"
3. Oh, they both happen to be "trashed"
4. And what's this about "If we wake up and you wanna break up that’s cool"?!?!

Bruno Mars might as well have just sung "You wanna have a one night stand"? It's just about as unromantic as that!

But the sad thing is...it's got a rather catchy tune...*walks off humming*

*This blog has largely been inspired by the fact that every time I hear Marry You on the radio, the DJ almost always preface it by "All the girls love this song..." or something along those lines.

Gnomeo

Now this is what I call a truly quick knit. And the best bit? I pretty much made up the pattern. It's a really simply pattern, but considering I had never done pattern designing before, I'm pleased that it didn't turn out looking stupid.

Well, ok, not stupid in the "it looks munted" kind of way. I'm not going to debate the other kind of stupid.

It basically involved doing some ribbing at the start (knitting in the round), doing some stockinette stitches for a while, and then doing some basic decreases and finishing with an i-cord. Viola!

I was going for gnome. But I think it kinda looks gumnut-ish too.

Pattern here.

I write like...

I write like
James Joyce

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

Apparently!

Brother Beanie

This was in theory meant to be a pretty quick knit. All I really had to do was knit a few rows of garter stitches in the round, move on to stockinette and then proceed to decrease. The ear flaps are then added afterwards.

However, there were a few hiccups:

1. Between uni and work, I was finding it really hard to garner up enough motivation to finish it. So what would have taken a couple of weeks at the most ended up taking a couple of months.
2. My DPns were not quite long enough to hold all the stitches, so it was quite fiddly trying to ensure the stitches didn't fall off while I was knitting (a few did fall off in the end, I simply tied knots on the inside to ensure they didn't unravel).
3. I misread the pattern somehow when I finally had some holidays from uni and was visiting D's sister's family in Tassie. Our flight home was delayed because of the Chilean ash cloud. Luckily, we were flying Virgin, so we had no flight cancellation, only a delay because of some heavy fog cover, which meant ample knitting time. As a result of misreading the pattern however, I ended up knitting more rows than needed (the time I took to knit up those extra unwanted rows could probably have been used to finish it).
4. I didn't realise I had misread the pattern while on a long car ride and continued to add to the rows. It wasn't until a friend mentioned that the beanie looked like it was complete that I decided to take a long hard look at the beanie and that was when I discovered it was simply going to be ginormous. And so began the joyful task of unpicking.

I finally got there however, and through no deliberate intention, have made a "Rasta" beanie, according to both the brother and D.

So discounting the mistakes and the fact that the beanie may be a touch too big circumference-wise, it was a really easy and quick knit. I can definitely see myself making more of these beanies.

"Kim's Hats" pattern from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts