First in a while...

Posts (apart from last night's John Martyn one, anyway), and finished garments. I think that actually it might be about 4 years since I last finished a sweater for me. I knitted most of a sweater in this yarn in October 2007 - in fact, I knitted all of it, but it looked utterly catastrophic when worn... I like to think this one's better.

February Lady Sweater by Pamela Wynne. Yarn: Debbie Bliss Rialto DK (12 balls so far, probably 13 eventually - see below). Needles: 5mm. Cast on January 9, cast off January 29 - the quickest sweater I've knitted for a couple of decades...

I am probably, however, going to lengthen the sleeves - the "just above the wrist" measurement I thought I had when I tried it on (repeatedly) has retrenched to the dreaded fat-lady-three-quarter-sleeves in wear, now it's been washed and blocked... Thankfully as they're top down this is easy peasy. And let's have a closer luck at these buttons...

Yumm... Bloody expensive, but exactly The Right Thing.

And while I'm typing this, the news is on and another of the Good Guys has departed. Bearded Wonder, seriously funny man, cricket geek and statistician extraordinaire, Bill Frindall, you'll be missed...

May you never...

Farewell, John Martyn.

This was the one I loved first; but May you never was such a beautiful, tender thing... even for a heavy metal girl..

Rest you well.

Portmanteau post...

Well, all that NaBloPoMo stuff went out of the window last week, what with the Inauguration brouhaha, and being completely knackered, and all that - and then this weekend Sue and I went to Hove (actually) to see Jan. Sue brought the weather on Saturday

so it was fine and lovely (I had my usual WeatherGoddess effect on Sunday and it hurled it down all day); and after lunch at Hove Museum we went off to the seafront for a walk. The sun descended pretty quickly as we did so, and I got this photo

which has also been stuntblogged at the Hove Daily Photo site today!

In other news - Neil Gaiman has won the Newbery Medal for the wonderful Graveyard Book! This is just about the best award you can win for fiction for young people - and he's in extremely good company. [And any author who tags a blog post GOD I LOVE LIBRARIANS needs a mention on any librarian's blog]... Definitely one of the best books, if not the best book, I read last year - Terry Pratchett's Nation might just have edged it out at the time, but I find myself remembering more snippets from The Graveyard Book. Interesting that they're both YA titles.

I also got my copy of the new Springsteen CD through the post today - haven't listened to it yet because that'll be a treat for tomorrow morning's train journey... I don't know, a new US administration, a new Springsteen production and a new Newbery winner in one week - it's all seriously testing my British sense of moderation... And there's knitting tomorrow night at the Blue; my cup runneth over.

Finally got the prizes out in the post today to those people who won things in the blog contest. That was another reason for not blogging - I really needed to spend the small amount of time I had at home packing parcels etc. - but instead I did Bad Things like sleeping and feeding the cat instead...

Reprieve

Well, the Bye George comedy night was marvellous - even the Telegraph seems to have sort of liked it, as did thelondonpaper. Marcus Brigstocke, Shappi Khorsandi, Rory Bremner and Mitch Benn were highlights, but there was also an introduction from Reprieve's director, Clive Stafford-Smith, who's been a bit of a hero of mine for a long time, and was also very funny and articulate...

Quick London shot, too - I walked along the other side of the Thames to the Queen Elizabeth Hall, and took this photo of the Royal Air Force Memorial in front of the London Eye.

The night was somewhat marred by FirstCapitalConnect's decision to take the last train out of operation this week and replace it with a bus, meaning I got home at 1:30am and logged an impressive 4 hours of sleep before getting up and doing it all again; but it was worth it.

In town tonight...

Marcus Brigstocke, Rory Bremner, Mitch Benn and others are seeing off the Bush administration with a fundraiser for human rights charity Reprieve...

Camping on the Southbank Centre's site the morning the tickets were released got me a seat in the second row...

That's if I ever get down to London today, of course - the plumber is currently 20 minutes late... Ah, here he is!

2009 books, #4

Everything is miscellaneous : the power of the new digital disorder, by David Weinberger. New York : Henry Holt, 2007.

Reading books on information management theory for fun isn't something I'd usually admit to, but this is a marvellous, un-put-downable read. Weinberger starts with an interview with the manager of a Staples store to discuss organisational principles in retail; and moves on to discuss the randomness of alphabetisation, Aristotelian definitions, "lumping" and "splitting", Linnean classification, the periodic table, the Dewey Decimal system and Ranganathan and faceted searching, all in completely comprehensible terms using (frequently amusing) real-world examples; before moving on to tackle the (dis)organisation of the second-generation Web.

Weinberger has a positive outlook on the "third order" of information, seeing great creativity in the apparent chaos of the web; but is not entirely in the camp of people who believe that more advanced machines will create an organised utopia.

If you have any interest at all in how knowledge is organised (whether as an information or computing professional, or at the level of wondering why Amazon is suggesting these books to you, and what ads Google decides to position next to your search results), this book is fascinating and immensely readable.

Results, and winners, and prizes!

Thanks to the nine people who sent in answers for the competition - really nice to hear from you!

The questions and the answers and the winners... As there were a few questions with no winners, there are a couple of questions with two winners...

1. How many metres of yarn did I knit up this year?
18,624 metres. Or 0.96 miles a month. I'd like to do a mile a month this year, just for my own satisfaction... The nearest guess for this one was SusieH at 15,000 metres. Well done, Susie!

2. How many grammes of yarn did I knit up this year?
6,525 grammes. Or 544 grammes a month. Best guess on this one was Anne, with 5,361.

3. What was my best month (grammes)?
It was July... Nobody got this one, sorry. It's a weird month to be knitting that much, but I finished a couple of Big Projects and the summer was so miserable that you could knit all the way through...

4. What was my best month (metres)?
That was December. It usually is - high-speed knitting for Christmas... Nobody got that one either...

5. What was my least stash-reductive month (grammes)?
March. Two people got this one, Yvonne and Bekki - so both shall have prizes...

6. What was my least stash-reductive month (metres)?
That was also March. Maybe it was a trick question - no takers for that one either...

7. What was the longest-metreage project I knitted up this year, and how many metres of yarn did it take?
Nearly everyone guessed the Mystic Meadows stole, which came out at #10 in this year's meterage-chart. Probably because I droned on (andonandonandonandon) about it during the Ravelympics. Actually, it was the Peacock Feathers Shawl I made for Sue's birthday (it was one of those with an 0 at the end of it...) which clocked in at 904 metres... I only blogged three times about that one, because she occasionally reads... Mystic Meadows came in at 640 metres, if you're interested...

8. What was the heaviest project this year, and how much did it weigh?
Several people got the answer to this, the Hemlock Ring Blanket. But two were quite scary in their accuracy. Take a bow again, SusieH, who guessed 400 grammes; but Bekki was quite astonishing in guessing to the gramme what the weight was (402 grammes). Both get prizes (and Bekki has been informed about quite how scary she is)...

As I have an extra, I'm also sending a prize to Mary for showing up, as the only entrant for a whole week - it felt rather like one of the early KTogs several years ago where you (and by 'you', I actually mean 'I') got there first, and were wondering whether you'd be drinking alone all night, so I was so glad to know that there was one person there with me! That's worth a lot.

I shall be mailing the winners to let them know (and with a request for an address where appropriate) tonight; and finishing up the prizes tomorrow for posting early next week...

If you're interested, I produced graphs. (OK, OK, I know, but it's fun with Excel...). The meterage one is here, and the grammage one is here...

2009 books, #2-3

I'm working in the library tomorrow morning, and at knitting tomorrow afternoon - competition results when I get back... But some books.

The moonstone, by Wilkie Collins. (Collector's Library edition). London : CRW, 2007.

This is the third time of reading, but the Kniterati were discussing it this month, and it's a favourite. I bolted through it quite quickly as I didn't pick it up until the weekend before, but it was as good as I remembered... The first 150 or so pages drag slightly, as the narrator is a bit of a pompous old fool, but as soon as Sergeant Cuff appears, the plot takes off like a rocket and it's a great read thereafter. The interlocking narratives work as well as they ever did (and there's a nice self-consciousness about that which makes you realise it's all artifice without actually minding it!), and the foundation for a thousand detective-novel clichés is laid.

The thing which struck me forcibly on this readthrough was how much scientific method is dominant, to the detriment of religion. Checking the dates, The moonstone was published in 1868, nine years after The origin of species. Solving the mystery surrounding the moonstone hinges on two discoveries, one forensic and one medical - we're led to feel that if only hard facts and scientific method can be used, any problem is solvable. Conversely, the figures representing religion are shown to by hypocritical, insensitive and stupid. Miss Clack, one of the narrators, came over in this re-reading as a horrific figure, pushing religious tracts at a dying woman, rather than the slightly dotty spinster I'd had in my memory.

An old school tie, by Andrew Taylor. London : Hodder, 2008

Andrew Taylor is the master of the slightly sinister; this one was odd because it felt as if he were holding himself back; and also because the picture of "Rosington" on the cover was clearly Ely Cathedral, when the books in The Roth trilogy didn't ever really identify themselves, despite being set in a small Cathedral city in the Fens. It's a good book, but probably one for Taylor enthusiasts, or people more interested in the pure form of the Golden Age detective novel; it has a curiously old-fashioned air to it. It was only right at the end, when I read the dedications and so on, that I realised that this was Taylor's first novel; so interesting for that alone.

Last call...

I've been completely shattered the last couple of days - lots of people evidently came back to work last Monday feeling Keen and Brisk, and determined to kick off new projects. Which is great because some of them are really interesting; but exhausting...

I'm hoping to post again later this evening, but just a reminder that the competition finishes at midnight my time tonight (7pm EST) - so if you were thinking of entering, please go ahead!

Exasperation... and bandwagons

For the first time in years and years, I went out without my purse (cash, cards, etc.) today. I had my bag, which had all my travel passes in it, so getting to and from work wasn't a problem. I was on an all-day training course, and had some small hopes that lunch would be provided; but when I found out they hadn't even arranged for coffee, I took advantage of a colleague being on the course and asked him to buy me lunch. Bless him, he obliged...





But it did mean that when the course ended a whole hour early, and I could have escaped to get to the KTog at the GradPad tonight, I couldn't, because I still had no cash/cards/busfare... Gah! Not that I was intending to make it anyway, as we're in term-time, but it would've been nice...





Anyway. Enough of my uselessness.





Having said I wasn't a joiner, I have jumped on the enormous and highly-populated bandwagon that is the February Lady Sweater. I've made this for a baby, as intended in EZ's book, but the adult version has gradually grown on me. Just after Christmas I saw the very-nearly-finished-but-unloved Tahoe cardigan lurking under the armchair in the living-room and decided to pull it out and knit this. The intention was solidified when I measured myself and realised that I've lost 5.5" round my bust, as well as the 8" round my waist and hips I knew had gone, and that therefore I should probably knit myself the L rather than the XXL...

So; here it is, in Debbie Bliss Rialto. It's meant to be a DK yarn, but it's a really smooshy one, and I knit loosely, so I'm hoping it will work OK. The colour is nice - and I'm hoping that after a wash, the unevenness of texture because of the ripped-out yarn will work itself out...

Making up...

I was a bad NaBloPoMo-er yesterday - no post from me! It was a busy weekend, and I'll try and take a couple of pictures of what I was doing; and somehow I completely forgot I hadn't blogged last night, and proofread a friend's short story instead.


Today, I phoned the boiler-installer/plumber to report the final demise of my hot water supply (I have been procrastinating since just after Christmas on this, so entirely my own fault it died over the weekend); good news was that he's coming to fix it and is reasonably sure of what the problem is; bad news is he can't come till next Monday. (So it's going to be cold showers here until then! Thankfully the heating is still working fine; and if it gets cold again at the end of the week, I'll go into work a bit early and use the shower there!) Another bit of good news is that my lovely employer gives leeway for the fact that nobody lives anywhere near work and everyone has a "domestic emergency" from time to time, so there's a small amount of annual discretionary leave for this sort of thing...


But the cold water, the time-of-the-month, the rainy weather and the prospect of a repair bill have taken a toll on my willpower; I am about to heat up the first frozen pizza I've had since June...


But it's not all doom and gloom... things could be an awful lot worse... And look, pretty things!

I made the humbug pincushion a couple of years ago when I was teaching embroidery, but the lovely Fimo pins were a Christmas present from Jan. I originally intended to use them in the pinboard, but it seemed that you needed way too much pressure to get them in there, so the pincushion now has suitably eccentric pins.

I think the one below, half Arts-and-Crafts, half Murano-glass, is my favourite... Thanks again, Jan!

Socks Show

Thanks for comments, and competition entries, on yesterday's post. It really wasn't meant to be a maths thing; although I enjoyed working out the sums. Maths was possibly my worst subject at school. Apart from Art. Which was sad, as they were two of the subjects I enjoyed most and have used most.

Still time to have a wild guess - original post here...

But, this post is about socks; and specifically Socks that Rock from last year's club. First of all - I Knitted All the Yarns Within A Year. I think that deserves recognition... I didn't knit all of them to the designated pattern though... But here they are....

So, top to bottom and left to right;

• Yarn called "Dragon Dance", and pattern called Serendipity, by Adrienne Fong (with club);
• Yarn called "Lucky", didn't go with the suggested Leafling pattern by BMFA because I'd been looking for a long time for a leafy green yarn for the Embossed Leaves pattern by Mona Schmidt...;
• Yarn called "the incredible shrinking violet"; didn't go with the Cleopatra pattern by Yarnissima because I'd been looking for a while for a yarn to go with her "Firestarter"
• Yarn called "Goody Goody"; pattern called "Gumdrops" by JC Briar (with club). This was both the nicest and the worst package of the club; up to then I'd reconciled myself to having to sign off Ravelry for a couple of weeks after the packages were mailed out - this time I was spoiled the day after US mailing, ON the club blog, BY the DESIGNER!. And that was sad, because they are gorgeous socks... But that was the point at which I thought, no, this really isn't worth the money if they can't be bothered even getting confidentiality from their designers.. .
• Yarn called "Tide Pooling" - lovely stuff. Pattern also excellent, by Team Blue Moon (with club)... Lightweight again; I think that's 4 Lightweight, 1 Mediumweight and nothing else...
• Yarn called "Muddy Autumn Rainbow". Pattern "Holidazed" by Anne Hanson. That and "Tide Pooling" definitely my favourite colourways of the year, and this one's Mediumweight, but not enough to get me to sign up again...

I love these socks; but I'm looking forward to the Socktopus club this year!

Cold, and possibly silly

This is sort of in the nature of a reminder of the competition I announced with such a flourish on New Year's Day. I genuinely thought people would be on for some guesses. But only one brave person has done so (and THANK YOU; you know who you are because I sent you a 'thank you for entering' e-mail).

I don't want to sound too pathetic, but the competition e-mail is waiting for you!

Pavlovian

... but without the meringue.


I was intending to go to Ely to knit tonight. I got out of the house a few minutes earlier this morning, bought myself a ticket for the Waterbeach-to-Ely bit my season ticket doesn't cover, went to work (long old day dealing with an external contact rather than doing what I had on my to-do list), left on time, Tube on time, train on time (on the way home - the ones to work have been a bit horrible this week), got to Cambridge, train divides, left Cambridge, got off train.


Unfortunately, I hadn't got to Ely at that point.


I only realised halfway home that actually, I wasn't meant to be going straight home... And shortly after that I realised that I am, actually, a robot. By that time, if I'd turned round and waited 40 minutes for the next train, it would have been well after 8 by the time I arrived at Ely; so I stomped home.


And then I found that I was unable to locate the perfectly good photo I'd taken of last night's socks anywhere on the PC, or on the camera... So I went to hunt for the socks...


Oh well. At the weekend, maybe.

And now I know...

... why Mr Gaiman has always seemed so eerily familiar.
ETA: The second "conversation" in the comments bears reading... I can almost hear the tone of amused tolerance...

But back to I Knit tonight - I think they'll just bar me from there soon on the grounds that I have no home to go to and they're scared I'll be camping out on their one remaining sofa... Actually, I didn't intend to go this evening; but it was demolition and suggested reconstruction on a colleague's cardigan/hoodie time, and there was no time at work. Didn't get a lot of knitting done myself, but I did finish the last pair from the year's Socks That Rock yarn from the Rockin' Sock Club (looks like they're all signed up for next year...) on the train home. And they are lovely. They're in the Mediumweight, which is beautiful stuff.

Blogger is, however, unhappy with the idea of uploading photos. Or at least, this photo. So you'll just have to believe me that this is a nice pair of socks.

I'm intending to have a line-up of all the club socks for a post this weekend, at which point I'll hope Blogger is a bit happier...

Tomorrow night I'm hoping to get to the group at Ely (promiscuous with the knit, moi??)...

Knitting and books and brrrrr....

A great combination at I Knit tonight. I finished the book half an hour before the group started (in the pub down the road), and it was really good fun meeting people and discussing it, as it's been a bit of a favourite since I first read it as a teenager. Looks as if the group will continue meeting on first Tuesdays of the month, rather than the last Tuesday which mostly clashed with KTogs at the Blue, so I might get along to a lot more of the meetings...

I have been freezing the last couple of days. Thankfully not in the office - although the one with the other half of the team in it had no heating between the 29th and today - but outside it's been evilly, bitterly cold. Realised today that I needed a hat, badly; I have one, but couldn't find it at the right time this morning or yesterday morning... So I bought a couple of balls of Lang West (not an I Knit link because they don't have it in the online shop at the moment, but I'm sure they'd be able to send some if you rang/e-mailed them) which matched the tension on a pattern I downloaded from Ravelry (Ravelry link), and cast on at around 6:10 - and cast off two minutes before the train arrived at Waterbeach at 10:15 (with a couple of yards of the first ball to spare, total cost of hat £3.95). So had warm ears on the way home...

Which was just as well. As I was walking up the road, a guy started up his car and while he was scraping the windscreen, remarked that the thermometer was showing -7C... The London free papers had photos of the fountains at Trafalgar Square frozen over this morning... I know this is nothing to people who live in seriously cold climes (although apparently we're colder than some parts of Greenland at the moment), but it's pretty shocking to me!

First of the year...

Knitting event, that is. The view from the steps of Portcullis House was somewhat different this evening - County Hall was bathed in a series of different coloured lights. I'm not sure if that's just for the season, or whether it'll stay...



Going across Westminster Bridge, I got the chance to photograph the new lampstands which are pretty magnificent, and replace the standard modern ones. Slightly puzzling though - the hoardings we had to traipse past in single file last year said that the lighting was being replaced for reasons of safety at night (I assumed that was because there was a long distance between lamps, and they put in several more along each side) but they were only lighting every alternate one tonight...

It was a freezing night. I was originally intending to pick up some tickets from the National Theatre before going to the ultimate destination, the Royal Festival Hall foyer for I Knit's first knit-in of the year, but I got as far as the RFH and was seriously worried about the state of my fingers, despite my lovely crocheted mitts (thanks again, E-J, I think I'd have perished without them!)...

There were knitters...

Quite a lot of knitters... There was also a cameraperson from Reuters who interviewed Gerard and took film of people knitting... There was also a vast quantity of chocolate... A nice evening.

I didn't do the final Christmas-present knit much justice - I was going to do something arty on the South Bank with it, but it was just too damn cold... This is the Curvaceous scarf (Ravelry link), made in the yarn called for!!! by Yvonne, lounging on one of the RFH's surprisingly comfortable wooden chairs... Thanks, Yvonne!

I'll go back and add the link, but yesterday's Clanger came from here... Now I'm off to bed to try and read some more of The Moonstone for tomorrow night's Kniterati.

Outside...

Handmade presents on Christ's Pieces, yesterday...

Jan has taken much better photos than this of this present, but this is the scarf against the really pretty silver birch tree near the Wesley sheltered housing in the centre of Cambridge...

and a closer photo...

And the pretty, pretty crocheted gloves from E-J; here doing jazz-hands on the gateway which, oddly enough, leads to the Sew Creative yarn shop....

Thanks! It's so lovely to receive presents as well as to make them.

There was also this: Tiny has a friend in crochet - I had a card for the maker but am hoping Wibbo will be able to help me with the details... Edited to add, the maker is NiftyKnits and she has a shop over on Folksy...

Tomorrow - the South Bank and another gift. I have been very lucky this year.

A bit of a sort-out

There isn't much visible organisation in my house, as anyone who's visited will know; but there are a few tiny pockets where order prevails - the CDs and DVDs go in alphabetical order (by artist for the CDs and title for the DVDs, with boxed sets in a separate sequence below, in the unlikely event you were interested); and the bookshelves have an internal order of sorts. My knitting books were reasonably organised, but my knitting patterns were all over the place. About a month before Christmas I realised I'd downloaded and printed the pattern for the Serpentine Mitts not once, not twice, but four times... I exacerbated the problem at about the same time by vandalising my Interweave Knits, Vogue and Knitters pile, and scalpeling out patterns from those where I only wanted to make one or two of the patterns, but then didn't have anywhere to put them, so they sat in those loose-leaf plastic things, periodically avalanching from the bookshelves onto the floor in a slick puddle...


When I was in Tesco yesterday, they had extra-strong (and wide-enough-for-US-letter-paper, as it turns out) pocket protectors, and files at three-for-two-quid. So behold, the four coloured files on the right of the "tall" half of the books... "Accessories and Home", "Hands and Feet", "Lace" and "Sweaters and Kids' Knits".



The remaining mags now fit onto the second shelf down along with my notebook collection...



The other half is here, on a shorter shelf...




(I'm saying 'half'. In fact there are another couple of feet of knitting books and magazines upstairs, old Rowan books, 80s Phildar collections I can't bear to throw away, that sort of thing... but this is the presentable bit of the collection...)

And these are the new ones from Christmas. I haven't really had a good look at them yet, but am looking forward to having a very good read.

I did manage to get photos of one of the knitted and both of the crochet items I received for Christmas, but will take pics of the remaining one for tomorrow's post.

Meanwhile, I have finished the first sleeve of St Brigid. This is momentous as I think I last knitted on it in 2007. I'm determined to finish this this year... It's not a particularly difficult knit - but it does involve sitting down with a series of charts which don't lend themselves easily to remembering (the large ones, anyway). I turned away to get the camera to photograph this event, and when I got back...

This is the Bug's "what could you possibly want?" expression...

But I shall have my revenge. She was sitting under the daylight lamp (which gives off a welcome shred of heat in the otherwise unheated dining room). As I snapped the shutter for one shot, she stared directly up at the light, and her ridiculously luxuriant neck-ruff startled the camera...

2009 books, #1

All in the mind, by Alastair Campbell. London : Hutchinson, 2008.

A stunning book, and not at all what I expected. While I can appreciate the views of the reviewers who thought the prose style was occasionally overly prosaic, or just clunky - it does occasionally come over as workmanlike and very little more - the degree of humanity and compassion, and total lack of arrogance in this book makes it extremely readable. It's absorbing, ultimately extremely moving, and highly recommended.

A competition for the new year

In 2008, I started off with the idea of calculating metres and grammes of yarn in and out of my stash. In the event, I gave up on "metres in" quite quickly in the new year (basically, once I started going to I Knit on a regular basis); but I kept on with the calculation of metres and grammes knitted. And about a couple of weeks in, I thought this would make a nice end of year competition for the blog so I didn't tell anyone the totals.

There will be prizes; nice prizes. There will be handpainted yarns (of various weights), and handmade silk viscose knitting accessory thingies, and stitch-marker-and-notebook sets. If a non-knitter gets a best-guess, we can negotiate.

OK: I'd like best-guess answers to the following questions

1. How many metres of yarn did I knit up this year?

2. How many grammes of yarn did I knit up this year?

3. What was my best month (grammes)?

4. What was my best month (metres)?

5. What was my least stash-reductive month (grammes)?

6. What was my least stash-reductive month (metres)?

7. What was the longest-metreage project I knitted up this year, and how many metres of yarn did it take?

8. What was the heaviest project this year, and how much did it weigh?

A bit of background information:

• I only log metres/grammes if I finish an item. Therefore 500g/850m of the She Gansey from No Sheep for You, and 600g/however many metres that is, 1500m? of Tahoe from Knitty will not count as they're heading for the frog-pond having been tried on and found wanting.
• I only log metres/grammes when I finish an item. This seriously skews totals...
• I finished no adult sweaters or other adult-garments-you-put-on-over-your-head in 2008.
• Any WIPs at the end of the year don't count, however near completion they are...
• Not everything I've knitted this year has been blogged; however both of the 'largest items' are there. I did have a question about a "smallest item", a tiny beaded Victorian purse, but removed it, having found I didn't actually ever blog the thing because it was so difficult to photograph (and because although the knitting is done, the finishing isn't - I need some dove-grey silk taffeta...)
• You don't have to answer all the questions - just put the number in front and I'll know what you've chosen to answer...

On sending in your answers (sorry, short librarian-type essay here, skip to the next bolded bit if you really don't care):

There are two phenomena which were discussed by several speakers at Online Information last month, one called the wisdom of crowds, which says that if you ask a large number of people a question, and then average out all the guesses, you'll get a much better result than by asking a small number of experts. Which is why asking the audience in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire often works better than phoning a friend for some questions...

There's then the one called the madness of crowds which says that if you ask a large number of people a question, and the first three come up with the same answer or sets of answers, the likelihood is that nearly all the subsequent people will agree with that, regardless of what their own personal answer would have been... Google relies on this 'popularity' phenomenon for some of its results weightings. It's the same sort of thing that causes runs on banks and occasional flocks of sheep tripping gaily and unexpectedly off cliffs in mountainous areas.

The crucial difference is that in the first method, nobody knows what anyone else has guessed...


So on that basis and just for this post, I'm going to shut down comments and ask you to mail me at a new e-mail address: competition@lizmarley.co.uk. (This also gives me the advantage of having your e-mail in case you won anything, so you don't have to keep checking back). I will e-mail back to anyone who enters, to let you know I have received your entry. (I will not use your e-mail address for any other purpose).

In the event of a tie in any question, I'll get someone at the KTog on January 17th to draw names out of a hat.

The closing date is midnight UK time (7pm EST) on Friday 16th January 2009.

Good luck!

Happy New Year!

And a suitably wintery video, found on Brenda Dayne's blog.



I bought Tricot machine's CD in Montréal in May, but hadn't seen this gorgeous accompanying video... (And now I've finally learned to embed videos in blog posts!)

For an explanation of why this song is called Les peaux de lièvres (literally, Hares' skins), go here...