I sat down before Christmas and decided I was going to knit myself a Liverpool FC sweater. There is a deplorable lack of fan craft in the world of sports, and also a deplorable lack of decent fan clothing options for women, where everything either has to be pink or otherwise horribly designed. These are things I can rectify!
- Ultras play with fire as Bundesliga engulfed by flares and violence | Raphael Honigstein | Football | guardian.co.uk
'Over in Munich's Allianz Arena, one ultra group were also happy to play with fire, at least in a rhetorical way. "The board are a whore, fucked by the police and the German FA," read a banner from "Inferno Bavaria" that contained only one grammatical error.' - Altering Fair Isle Charts in Excel | A pile of sheep
This person is my hero for combining knitting and Excel nerdiness into one technique. Macros! - Guest Post: Why “men’s rights” groups are wrong – Shameless Magazine – your daily dose of fresh feminism for girls and trans youth
"Manipulating men’s anxieties faced with neoliberalism and austerity, “men’s issues” groups ignore the poverty, racism, ableism, homophobia and transphobia that men and women face, and instead scapegoat the women’s movement and progressive movements in general." - RA Dickey Wins National League Cy Young Award! » Bloomer Girls Blog
"…in addition to winning 20 games for a bad baseball team and leading the league in strikeouts, he climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro to raise money for Bombay Teen Challenge, an organization that ”rescues and cares for sex slaves in the brothels of Mumbai, cares for the children of sex slaves, juveniles roaming the streets, addicts and runaways.” He also gets excited about the possibility of a female knuckler making it to the majors." - Why STEM Fields Still Don’t Draw More Women – Diversity in Academe
- ‘Ballot Design With Todd Oldham’ – NYTimes.com
Or more like Craftermonth? I’ve been very busy lately making… stuff. Mostly knitted stuff, but some paper crafty stuff too.
I’ve decided to not put up my Christmas tree this year beacuse it’s a hassle to take down again (i.e. I usually take it down in February, oops) but after several years of thinking about it, I finally got around to making a wreath for my front door.
This paper Christmas wreath tutorial was my starting point, but I put it together slightly differently after forgetting the construction techniques completely when I went to buy supplies. (more…)
I’ve been a complete failure at posting about the travelling I’ve been fortunate enough to do this year, mostly due to laziness because I’m good that way. I only managed to post about the soccer-related portion of our trip to Boston, New York City, and Baltimore in July, but I also spent a long weekend in San Francisco in August after I got to go to San Diego for work, which I naturally also failed to post about.
But! Amelia and I went to England (and Scotland) for two-and-a-half weeks at the end of September / start of October, and I am now forcing myself to write about it before I forget everything. The general organizing theme of this trip was called “How Many Soccer Games Can We Go To In Two Weeks?”. [This shocks you, I'm sure.] Onwards, to Part 1! (more…)
I’m not super into Halloween but I like to make stuff and was shamed for not dressing up at work last year, so this year I went as… spaghetti dinner! A.K.A. It’s Actually Not Hard To Wear A Non-Racist, Non-Sexist Halloween Costume™ (I had many rage issues this Halloween).
If you’re feeling inclined, a half-hearted tutorial on how to make the spaghetti plate out of dollar store supplies is below the cut. (more…)
Sports
- Bookmark This YouTube Channel That Teaches You How To Get Your Favorite Footballer’s Hair | KCKRS
- Can you guess which of these quotes came from the John Terry trial… and which came from Guy Ritchie movies?
I honestly could not guess for most of these. - Canada delivers something worth remembering in London 2012 Olympics soccer semi-final loss to U.S
"Because the Olympics are at their best when they deliver the kind of performance that makes you call or text or email or tweet your friends to tell them to get to a TV, do it, do it now. We were waiting for the elation of watching an athlete like Sinclair deliver the kind of performance you’re not going to forget, that this country should love her for. And we were waiting for the part that hurt, for the anger and the regret, because it meant it mattered, really mattered." - Olympic “Medal Count Map: London 2012 Totals By Country, Population, Wealth (INTERACTIVE MAP)
Ranking nations by total Olympic medals isn't really the best way to judge relative success at the London Olympics. Some countries have a lot more people — or a lot more money — than others. With 530 athletes representing the United States and just two in London on behalf of Somalia, context is important.”
Social Jusice
- The ‘Yo, Is This Racist?’ Month in Racism for April: Our Token Black(face) Friend
"Which, when it comes down to it, is really the problem with all satire that re-creates racist behavior. In the best-case scenario, the message you communicate to the erudite audience who utterly "get it" is, at best, nothing more complex or noteworthy than "Hey, blackface is bad, homies, man, we used to be racist." That's it. The best you get out of the portrayal is a chance to state the (hopefully) completely obvious." - Teenage Dread | Toronto Standard
“The marginalization of young female music fans”, specifically heavy metal fans bout might as well be about teenage girls who are fans of anything since they’re scorned for, you know, liking stuff. - "They Won’t Magically Turn You Into A Lustful Cockmonster"
Chris Kluwe explains gay marriage to the politician who is offended by an NFL player supporting it.
Miscellaneous
- The Smart Way to Chart | knitty.com
- 24 Vintage Photographs of Abe Lincoln Being Awesome – Mental Floss
- The Best of The Supremes on The Ed Sullivan Show – YouTube
- How To Pack Two Weeks in a Carry-On
- Northern Cities Vowel Shift: How Americans in the Great Lakes region are revolutionizing English. – Slate Magazine
"In 1972, three linguists, led by William Labov of the University of Pennsylvania, christened the phenomenon the Northern Cities Vowel Shift or, more simply, the Northern Cities Shift (NCS). What they observed may be the most important change in English pronunciation in centuries."
I’ve been knitting! And forgetting to post!
When I took that knitting class in January, I bought a ball of charcoal grey and a ball of cream-coloured worsted weight yarn that I ended up not doing anything with on account of not wanting to finish the deeply hideous scarf I was playing around with for the class. Instead, I found a herringbone mitten pattern that coincidentally used both grey and cream as well.
- They were pretty straightforward and I made only a few mistakes that I didn’t bother to correct because a) I am lazy, and b) the pattern is so busy you can barely see them.
- I left off the pompoms because I can’t imagine anything more obnoxious dangling from my mittens.
- If I made these again, I’d probably add another few rows to the top part of the mitten after the thumb increases end since apparently I have longer fingers than the average person; I don’t enjoy not having the join of the thumb and the mitten not sitting right at the join of my thumb and hand, so I think that would help. I would also make the cuff longer since it’s pretty short and thus useless for actually keeping out the cold in the winter.
The Canadian government is throwing all sorts of money at projects commemorating the War of 1812 this year, including two brand new Heritage Minutes featuring lesser known stories about the war. New Heritage Minutes, yay! Better yet, they held a sneak preview screening of the minutes last night, so I went with Audrey despite my general aversion to doing anything that happens on College St. Not only did they screen the top older Heritage Minutes as voted by Canadians, but they also gave out t-shirts featuring various War of 1812 Canadian heroes (Isaac Brock, represent!) and a DVD* containing all sixty-four previous minutes. Double yay!
Somewhat hilariously, they had a Q&A with the director, writers, and actors afterwards. Ye Olde Standard Q&A questions were asked, which was entertaining given that they were speaking about a piece of work that was literally a minute long. At Q&As you always here filmmakers talking about how inspired by X or Y they were, blah blah, but I think this is the first time I’ve ever really and truly believed a filmmaker talking about how inspired they were, in this case, by the previous Heritage Minutes because literally no one in Canada does not love these.
I think my favourite is a bit of a toss up, but today I’ll go with the one on the origin of Canada’s name, as I think the priest does a good job of embodying the douchiness of a colonizer who thinks he knows better than everyone else.
They don’t show these on TV very much anymore, but the new minute on Richard Pierpoint is out this year while the second on John Norton and the Grand River Warriors at Queenston Heights is out next year.
* Not going to lie, I looked into buying this online a few months ago but balked at spending $27 for it. I complained about this to Audrey before the screening started, so when we were handed our swag bags upon leaving she said “Oh my god, you are going to be so happy!”
Save for a few costly and exceedingly costly mistakes, I feel optimistic. (more…)
Hi. I am not dead. My sister Amelia and I spent last week following Liverpool FC on their North American tour because sports nerd vacations are evidently hereditary in our family. With games in Toronto, Boston, and Baltimore we managed to have a nice little trip down the Eastern seaboard. This is the soccer-centric component of the trip. [Click photos for larger versions; a few are by my sister.]