The Ravelympics "denigrate" Olympians everywhere.

Have you seen this yet?  This here (must be logged onto to see) is the letter sent to Ravelry by the US Olympic Committee telling them that they may be infringing on copyrights to the word "Olympic" by naming the friendly competition that is the Ravelympics, the Ravelympics.  A few of the things that bother me the most about this letter are that it seems they are mostly worried that they some how might not get a cut of some mysterious money that must come from this event.  I'm fairly certain that the Original Olympics, which started in Greece in 770BC, weren't in the spirit of monetary gain, but moreso the spirit of friendly competition.  No less were they about monetary gain when they started back up again in 1896. (info found here)
It also bothers me that their decision to send this letter is full of things like this:

  The Olympic Games represent ideals that go beyond sport to encompass culture and education, tolerance and respect, world peace and harmony.

And this:

We believe using the name “Ravelympics” for a competition that involves an afghan marathon, scarf hockey and sweater triathlon, among others, tends to denigrate the true nature of the Olympic Games.  In a sense, it is disrespectful to our country’s finest athletes and fails to recognize or appreciate their hard work. 

 Which, really?  How do the Ravelympics not represent those ideals too?  Holding this event only promotes this, and celebrates the Olympics, and the Olympians.  How is over 7300 people who are actively involved in the Ravelympics group, and the remaining approximately 1 992 600 people who can't help but notice them, who are watching the games, supporting the athletes, being directly influenced by all the logo and product placement of the sponsors, who will undoubtedly then go out buy a new pair of Nikes or a Coke or whatever, be disrespectful or denigrating?  Oh wait, by that logic, the Ravelympics are a fabulous way to support the Olympics, and we can't have that, can we?  Especially when we can't cash in some how.


.... When will the "Big Wigs" of the world ever see the light? The "99%" make their world possible, and pissing enough of them off will negatively effect them.  But that's another rant, for another time, and likely another blog... not sure how I could relate that to Fibre Arts ;D

~Kara

UPDATE:
There was an apology issued today, regarding the wording and disparaging remarks towards the knitting community.  You can find it here.  And I accept the apology.  Fully and completely, even though I know people are still mad, I'm not.  I think tho, this just goes to show that the Internet has changed the game, in regards to legal matters.  This and the big hullaballoo over at The Oatmeal...  It also shows, that when united, people of a common ilk can make enough noise to have things changed, or at least apologised for.

I'm so Spoiled

About a month ago, we celebrated our 6 year Wedding Anniversary.  We've been together for nearly 11 years, but married for 6 of them (sure took him long enough ;) )  And every single day of this marriage/relationship I'm reminded how wonderful he is.  He brings me coffee in the morning, sometimes before I get out of bed.  He helps do the dishes, does the yard work, and plays with the kiddos.  He treats me like a princess.  And doesn't mind that I take a week a year to go to school, and leave him with the kiddos.  And on special occasions, he buys me pretty things.  This year he bought me an Majacraft Aura!!!!! It was my dream wheel, and he bought it for me!!! Wooohoooo!

So here it is, in all it's majesty, fabulousness, awesome spinning power...


And of course, I've waited so long to tell you all about it, because I wanted to spin on it before I shared.  So here are some of the yarns I made on the Aura.
This is the first one, I just grabbed some roving, and had at it, adjusting, tweaking and figuring out just what everything does! It's pretty thick, and at the end i wanted to see if it could handle undrafted top, and it can!! It's Navajo plied, and it can even handle three layers of lightly spun undrafted top.  Wowza!

Here's the second thing I spun, after deciding that I already have a traditional spinning wheel, that makes a very nice traditional yarn, so why keep trying to get a "perfect" yarn on a wheel that is made to do more then that?  It was tail spun, then coiled.  I'm so glad I decided to coil it.  In person, the BFL is so lustrous, and when the light hits it just right, it glows like it's strung with pearls.


And the last one so far is this one, thick singles wrapped with bamboo thread.  This one is kind of odd, I was having issues trying to get it to feed right and not spin to much at the same time...  The tension system is still pretty odd to me. I'll get it though!


I can't wait to get back from Fibre Week, so I can get to playing on the Aura.  3 more sleeps!!!

~Kara

oooh! Score!

So, lately, I've been keeping my eye out at thrift stores and garage sales for crochet cottons and other odd yarns.  And I'd not been having any luck.  Then my wonderful neighbour tells me she just dropped off her entire stash at the local Re-Gift It Shop.  Well, I headed there immediately! Lookie what I got for 15$!

There's a second layer under there.  Those are some big boxes!  Some are brand new, and most are nearly full.  There's some strange "yarn" which I think is just really long lengths of polyester or some other man made fibre.

And then, I get a knock on the door, a few days later, and its my BFF, who tells me to get my butt dressed and head two blocks down.  There's a garage sale, and a lot of crochet cotton and yarn! So, I left the kids in their PJ's, and put some jeans on me, and ran on over.  Check out this haul!

An extremely large jar (that is unfortunately plastic) full of odds, ends, and other things. The two large jars are glass and I'll be using them for dyeing. There are 8 of the burgundy, which are brand spankin' new.  And there seems to be one white one missing too... But that must be the one that I've already inserted twist into for cores.  This was also 15$  worth.  I'll be hunting and gathering more of this stuff, as I've got over 10 fleeces coming my way, and likely will be buying more when I'm at Fibre Week, if the auction is in my favour!

Speaking of Fibre Week, it's just over a week away!  10 days!! EEK!  But I'll have the entire work book together by the end of tomorrow, and will hand it in while I'm there... That took a lot more effort then I'd thought it would.  And for level 2, I'm going to not use my basket as an organizational system... made far to much more work then entirely necessary.

~Kara

Icelandic Leadersheep

coool.

~Kara

Belinda Shawl Update

I'm still pluggin' away at the Belinda Shawl.  I'm 1/2 way done the second half.  That means I'm 75% there! Wewt!  Only 15 more lace holes (made by 30 rows) and a bind off.  Not much longer now!  I've decided that I am going to use this shawl, despite it's emense effort time wise as compared to what is required by the work book, as my final project.  It's why I spun the yarn.  It's why I nature dyed the yarn, and didn't use acid dyes.   I've put to much into it.


The most daunting part is going to be the blocking.  We have a spare bed I can use to do it on, but no blocking wires, and I refuse to pay 20-30$ on shipping for an item that costs 20-30$.   So I'll be using far to many pins.  Hopefully I don't loose any on the floor.

I'll worry about that later, but for now my mantra will be "just keep knitting. just keep knitting. knitting knitting knitting.  when you want knit you have to kniiiiiiiit!" A la Dori on Finding Nemo.

~ Kara

Cool Stuffs from Quirky Craft

A bit back, Quirky Craft had a give away to celebrate opening her Etsy.  And I won! Wewt!  And my pacakge of wonderfully interesting goodies came on Friday!  Here they are all line up real nice:

The lovely zip pouch, with WTF along the bottom, and the Narwahls!  Love the Narwahls! And the cool junk canvas,  so muc junk= wonderful treasure!


The ever so cute, and quirky, goat magnet.  It's hillarious and awesome!


Cup Cuff.  Love the measuring tape fabric!


And the Cool Cat print cards!  They are so fun, and a welcome addition to my handmade card collection!


Thank you so much, Emma!   Now, everybody go check out Quirky Craft, and her Etsy shop!  I think I'll be doing some shopping, for more of these fabulous faux taxidermy magnets!

~Kara