Knittin' Crap: SFAC November 2013

Yeah, so, apparently we all got captured by the Borg. Big suck.

Mission	Report
Engineering - Craft something to help you stay unnoticed in the Borg cube.	While wearing this light gray covering, it should be easier to walk among the Borg. In a pinch, the wearer can meld into a panel of wiring to hide.
Medical - Craft something to help you return to your normal pre-Borg self or hold on to your individuality.	I can’t think of anything that screams anti-Borg more than a deep pink, fuzzy mohair garment. Hence, my mission report:
Science - Craft a part of the Borg Queen’s new body.	While the Borg are busy changing the environmental controls to raise the temperature to their liking, I thought the Borg Queen would appreciate this head gear to warm her cranial circuits. Little does she realize, it is made of a self-reversing material that will entrap her!
Shuttle - Make a decorative item representing a holiday from your homeworld.	While this sphere might normally not evoke notice from a Borg, the gold and red are quite festive indeed!

En Pointe Pullover pattern by Alice Tang
Mohair T-Shirt pattern by Lisa Myers
Brioche Hat pattern by Kevin Norton
Bauble pattern by Suzanne Strachan

Knittin' Crap: SFAC October 2013

October projects are a little late going up because many of them had "extended" deadlines. This tour started with a visit to a really cold planet. Or something.

Mission	Report
Command: Prove your own understanding of the concept of duality: Craft an item made up of two parts (a pair of gloves or socks, for example), or two separate items which mirror each other in some way.	My mission report on duality may come from a slightly unintended angle. I thought not of the split personalities in the physical copies created by the transporter malfunction on the Enterprise at Alpha 177, but of what they represented: two aspects, however highly contrasted, contained within a whole. Once Captain Kirk was re-integrated, he still contained the contrasting personalities. This report demonstrates that quality: each side is the opposite of the other, but they are indivisible, part of a complete whole and the complement can always be spied from the other angle. This is also demonstrated by this invasive quadruped. On the one hand, he’s in a comfortable warm lap, yet the total coward side of his personality still shines through. At least he looks handsome modeling the mission report!
Diplomatic: Finish up your UnFinished Objects!	This UFO had been sighted on an earlier tour, but it seemed unspaceworthy and when we tried to catch it in the tractor beam, it disintegrated into balls of yarn. (Strange, but true.) I began working to recreate it in a more stable form in August, and have finally completed the facsimile. Status at beginning of the month: Completed mission:
Engineering: Craft – in black (or another dark color) – something which might be of use to a member of a Landing Party.	This device not only provides a high-contrast background for the dangerous ore, but particles passing through the detector pores in the fabric will automatically be analyzed and set off an alarm if they pose a threat, either to equipment or personnel.
Science: Craft an otherwise plain design, then add embellishment.	The trims on this simple torso-covering is made of a special fabric with self-activated chameleon-derived color changing pigments. They will automatically identify and display a series of horizontal and vertical bars to communicate the wearer’s identity, rank, and other salient information. Children start learning the patterns and color meanings from an early age, starting first with their parents, until they finally can read the information even for people they never met before. In times of danger, they can force the trim to assume the same coloration as the background ice-storm camouflage fabric to remain unseen. (A favorite prank of juveniles is to reprogram their identification trims to appear to be figures of authority. Obviously this works better when they’ve chosen a senior of the same height and build.)
Tactical: Craft something to prevent or treat frostbite.	My self-tested experiments have found that sipping and holding a container of a warm beverage or food helps warm the fingers and raise the comfort level of warm-blooded humanoids in cold conditions. Therefore I have programmed the replicators to make some nabeyaki udon, a Japanese noodle soup with multiple toppings.
The Brig	This prisoner was just in pieces at the beginning of the month. I gave it a good pep talk and told it to pull itself together already! Finally, it did.

Fisherman's Rib Muffler pattern by Kotomi Hayashi
Seamless Pullover recipe by Elizabeth Zimmermann
Begonia shawl pattern by Carfield Ma
Mosaic V-Neck Pullover pattern by Makiko Okamoto
Nabeyaki Udon pattern by Mitsuki Hoshi
Diamond Jacket pattern by DROPS

News: Transport Tidbits

• WANT
  
• So true....
  
• Awesome
  

And because kitties need transport to:

News: Funny Ha Ha

Long time, no post! Anyway, here's some stuff to kill some time.

• Yo Mama jokes are universal!
• For Fluzz:
  

Knittin' Crap: SFAC JJA Tour

What with moving and starting a new job, I was woefully lax in my Starfleet duties, only managing a handful of missions during the June/July/August tour.

Mission	Report
June Brig	This prisoner served a long and well-deserved sentence. The first time I thought it was finally ready for release, it turned out to be completely too large, with mysterious repeats that shouldn’t have been there. I had to start over from the beginning! This time, however, it meets the release requirements:
June Shuttle Mission (got zapped into a temporal rift and popped out in early August for points): Crochet a bag that represents your family, chosen or blood.	This bag represents my family’s love of cats, particularly my father’s affection for the Siamese breed.
June Science Mission - Craft a gift for either the Romulans or the Klingons based on your research.	As a gift for the Romulans, I have created this miniature hologram of Mr Spock, as a celebration of his work toward peace between the Federation and Romulan Empire.
July Brig	These prisoners were supposed to record my visit last month to Regulus V, but the report was delayed, so they had to be held for questioning! Requesting release now that the report is finished!
August Brig	This prisoner was supposed to report for a mission last month, but she spent too much time doing her hair and thus was late for duty. Her hair is done and she’s ready for action now, though!
August Medical Mission - Craft something that represents the time distortion that we are experiencing by crafting something multi-colored.	The time distortion somehow affected not only the color wavelengths of this thermal wrap but also seems to have caused the top and bottom edges to become vastly different lengths.
August Science Mission - Craft something ‘disguised’ to look like another object.	This device may look like a flower, but it is actually a monitoring device that can be discreetly fastened in one’s hair.

Crochet Overlap Vest pattern by Aya Kasama (笠間綾)
Siamese Cat Crochet Block pattern by Melody Griffiths
Coquille Shawl pattern by Mary Lou Egan
Crochet flower from 238 Best Lace Motif Pattners

Metro Journal: Welcome Aboard! Next Stop, Your Stop!

I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. I did, however, move into my permanent (for now) apartment two weeks ago, and have been slowly settling in with the cats.

I've been commuting most mornings for the past week by taking a bus to the Sunnyvale Caltrain station, and then riding the train. For 5 minutes. To the next stop. Yes, it's slightly silly, but it's less irritating than driving, there's a shuttle from the station to the office, and a bus-only plan isn't very viable, because the VTA bus routes here make even less sense than they do for riders not going to downtown LA. Grid? Ha! Let's just pick two random endpoints, draw some squiggles on the map, and call it a bus route. The "most efficient" bus route to the office, which is less than 10 miles away in the car, is to take a bus west, overshooting the cross-street by a couple miles, then take the bus that I had actually taken while I was in temporary housing. The whole thing would take well over an hour with some waiting in between busses. *shrug* I think I will eventually get a bike, and then I can take the bus west to Stevens Creek Nature Trail and ride about 3 miles north to the office on a trail that has no cars on it (unless the driver has gotten terribly lost). I'll have to work myself up for that.

Anyway, back to Caltrain. It's the commuter heavy rail here in the Bay Area. The trains are pretty nice, everything has been efficient so far (a train will be 5 minutes late, but that is as bad as it's been). The Sunnyvale station is about 1.25 miles from my apartment, and since the bus schedule starts getting sparse before I make it back, I've been walking home most evenings. The weather here is so much cooler than it is around Glendale, so it's not too warm, even moving around, at that time.

Bus Journal: Welcome to the VTA

So, I moved up to the Bay Area last month. I've had to do quite a bit of driving, and while drivers up here aren't stupid in quite the same way that Southern California drivers are, they are equally stupid in their own, very special ways. So.... I've been trying out the public transportation here.

I'd taken the VTA (Valley Transit Authority, for Santa Clara County (home of Silicon Valley)) on previous visits. The buses are generally much nicer, with actual cushioning on the seats, as are the riders I've encountered. (As in generally nicer, not with generally more cushioning on their seats.) However, VTA suffers from the same problem as LA County's Metro: whether a bus can get you where you need to go is hit or miss. Partially because of the shape of the inhabited area of the valley, and partly for reasons that may harken back to a history before my time, coverage is not gridded or even or logical-looking.

I've already gotten my "Clipper Card," the reloadable card analogous to TAP in LA so you can load bus passes and fares and so forth for the various transit authorities in the area. (San Francisco ferries and BART, the northern Bay light rail, use it, too.) I got a VTA pass. The problem is that, not only is the card reader not in the same place as it is in LA (on the fare machine thing), it's not even consistently in the same other place on every bus. I'll figure it out eventually, maybe.

I also am getting a Caltrain (heavy commuter rail which runs up into San Francisco, analogous to Metrolink in LA) pass at no cost through work. It turns out that the apartment I seem to be moving to probably won't make the pass quite as useful for the commute, but it will still be useful for going up into San Francisco on the weekends and such. It looks like I'll be just over a mile from the Sunnyvale Caltrain station.

More on transit here as I figure it out myself...

News: Cat Wisdom

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News: Cats'R'Awesome

These are dedicated to my awesome kitties, who just went through the ordeal of moving 300+ miles with me!

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News: A New Whiteboard Jungle!

I just started a new job, so let's celebrate the workplace!

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News: High-Density Vroom Vroom

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• It's not always like this, I swear. That said, avoid Hollywood buses late on weekends....
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• Studies show that even small increases in public transit ridership can have a visible impact on road congestion.
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Knittin' Crap: SFAC May Shore Leave

May is a shore leave month in the Starfleet Fiber Arts Corps, but we still had a shuttle mission, plus afghan blocks and a brig release.

Mission	Report
Shuttle: Something about voting on ownership of a disputed ice planet claimed by both the Romulans and the Klingons Your mission: • Option A: Craft something in Blood wine red to show your support for the Klingon claim to Poosh. • Option B: Craft something in Romulan ale blue to show your support for the Romulan claim to Poosh.	Purely out of curiosity to see for what use they need a frozen moon (if betting weren’t against Starfleet regulations, my credits would be on ice hockey training so they can sweep the next Interstellar Games), I vote for the Romulans. My vote takes the highly appropriate form of an Earth peacock, as they are a symbol of pride, and the Romulans are a proud race, indeed.
Afghan Challenge Planet of the Month: Qo’noS, the Klingon homeworld.	These squares either represent Kang’s Summit or the pointy end of a bat’leth, both of which a tourist on Qo’noS may encounter.
The Brig - the place where unfinished projects languish in shame	This prisoner promised to deliver a personal force field 2 whole tours ago and failed miserably, causing some damage to engineering. It has since cleaned up the damage and adopted Starfleet safety protocols. Requesting release back to regular duty. Excuse me, some crew members have no manners…. There.

Peacock pattern by Yasuko Ando
Original vest pattern by DROPS Designs

News: Critical Facepalms

These make my head hurt.

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• 4th grade "science" quiz, which explains a lot and makes me sad at the same time...
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News: Even More Random Stupid

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• Why I always freeze to death in an office when I dress for the actual weather. The building at my last entertainment-industry job was kept cold enough for storing meat (which was apropos, considering how they treated the IT people), which struck me as particularly at odds with the fact that Hollywood was touting how green it was. If they'd turned the thermostat up a few degrees, they could have reduced their energy consumption quite a bit. (Also, if they gave bus passes instead of a car allowance to VPs and above, they could have done even more in that direction, but... wait, you think I'm calling them hypocrites? Hollywood? Never!) For men who insist on wearing suits in the summer, they should revert to the Southern gentlemanly practice of wearing linen. Surely some big agro-business is trying to engineer wrinkle-resistant linen?
• Instead of inventing machines to do physical labor for us, maybe we should be inventing machines to think for us...
  

Kitty's response to the stupid: