Quackity-quack

While thanks to a heads-up over at the Knittyboard, we've all been over at Youtube watching Muppet classic music videos (Beaker and The Swedish Chef sing Carmen; Gonzo and the Perfect Pitch Poultry chorus perform Strauss's waltz...), I've managed to finish Kayla's Ducky socks in one week (well, 8 days). The pattern is from Interweave, "Socks for Veronik;" the yarn is KP Bare Fingering wool & nylon dyed in broom sedge:

Happy Birthday to Feivel

He's a big 12 year old now!

Here he is with his cake (and with Gilad).

I had hoped to offer a photo some time in the last few weeks of Sachy eating birthday cake for the first time, but since he's been sick he's been back to formula only for the last 2+ weeks (orally now, at least; for a couple of days he was back to pretty much g-tube and pump only, but that resolved pretty quickly).  So it looks like Sachy getting to eat his own birthday cake for the first time will have to wait for next year.

Meanwhile, I knit one more quick hat, this one meant to be donated and made with yarn sent to me by AKknitter over on the Knittyboard, 

but then Trillian42 told me the donations were meant to be baby hats for Hats for Alex, not adult sized!  So I'll donate that one myself and am in the  middle of whipping up a quick baby hat from stash yarn, with huge apologies to AKknitter for messing up her plans, though at least in the end 2 donated hats will come from it.

And if you're wondering why I'm writing blog posts at 2:30 am, yeah, still not feeling so hot.

Catch up: SP Exchange, a Mystery that keeps on growing, and a round of smooches

I got my package from my Knittyboard Summer Loving Exchange:

BFL (that's Blue-Faced Leicester, a breed of sheep) top (combed fiber), thank you cards, a notepad and stitch markers.

I've been busily working on my Slow Bee Mystery II stole, now finished clue 10, with 5 more to go and then the second half to complete:

Meanwhile, back at the book shelves, a bad case of smooching has broken out at LibraryThing.  Thingamabrarians have been anonymously smooching each other over at BookMooch.  When you smooch someone, you give them the gift of a book point, worth a whole book choice.  I received two smooches in one day, and gave some to others too.  The only problem was that my first few choices for smoochees turned out to each have about 50 points accumulated in their accounts already.  I was afraid it would just be an empty gesture, albeit a nice and well-appreciated one, to give them the points, so I had to do a little digging to find members of both LT and BM who were newer or lower in points but had active accounts.  It's quite fun both to give and to get a smooch, as I'm sure you can imagine (think figuratively or literally here, I'm open).

Tuesday Thingers: Discussion Groups

Today's LibraryThing discussion area is our discussion groups. I'm something of a discussion group obsessor and a pretty active participant; I check my groups throughout the day when I can. I belong to 24 at this point: (Dis)ability Politics, Ask LibraryThing, Bookcases: If You Build/Buy Them, They Will Fill, BookMooching, Caregiving, Early Reviewers, Fiber Arts, History of Science/Technology/Medicine, Jewish Cookbooks and Cookery, Jewish History , Judaica, Knitters Inc., Language, Librarians who LibraryThing, Maryland Librarythingers, Mawrtyrs, Medicine, Name that Book, Needlearts, Nurses, Redwall Abbey, Weavers, בעברית LT in Hebrew

How's that for a variety? Hobbies, special needs, intellectual interests, alumnae, and more books; that sounds like a pretty good summation of a large portion of my life. Well, in truth, not the alumnae part; I'm not the least bit active in BMC alum stuff, I kind of wish I could block a lot of my college experience out of my memory, but I'd love to hook up with some people I've lost, so that's my motivation to belong to that group.

I think my favorites are the BookMooching and the Name that Book groups. BookMooching is very important to me both from a recycling/reuse point of view and a money saving one. I don't find the BM forums very functional, so I prefer to discuss activities on LT. In fact, it was through LT that I first discovered Mooching. My wishlist there is now close to 350 books; I've sent out something like 30 already, and more keep going in and out.

Name that Book is a delight. I just love discovering books I'd forgotten, tracking down ones I can't quite place, and even finding new ones I'd never heard of which others describe. The energy and excitement they express about certain books they had once treasured and now have re-discovered translate into a deep desire on my part to find and read their bookloves.

A few of my groups are extremely inactive, but it's always nice to have them around in case an issue ever arises.

In any case, I definitely have found that of almost all the social interactions in which I engage online, LT groups are one of the better areas. Most participants seem intelligent, coherent, pleasant, well-spoken, well-read, and interesting. The only other online message board or virtual community I find so pleasant is Knittyboard, but of course while we go quite off topic there, the community is composed of knitters, spinners, and general fiber artists.

I'll be checking other LT bloggers' thoughts on this area, but comments and suggestions for groups and boards are more than welcomed; they're encouraged. Help me pretend to be social!