Personal Clown Scarf &Kittens

Sergeant Kisielnicki is adding some trim to his triple clown scarf. I should probably tell him he needs to come up with a name for his pattern. He made up the design for the scarf himself. So he gets to name it. This is exciting stuff if you are a clown that knits

This is two of the kittens. A couple of the folks from the Corps wanted to see pictures of the kittens. Here are a couple pictures.

This one is mostly black and I think the cutest of the kitties

These are a couple of the kitties hiding behind their mother.

Here they are with their mom.

Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

 Here are some cat under the bed. This is Abigail and her and here three kittens under the bed. Isn't that cute.

 

This is another kitten that does not have a name. I want to call her stripe.

 

 This is the boy. I could not get a picture with his eyes open.

We did another car wash. And this one did not go very well. We did it at our corps in Homestead. We did get to use the new car port tent. So that was kind of fun. Here is Apprentice Prelue and a couple of the neighborhood kids helping put up the tent. It was just like being the the circus again. Except the tent was really small. And there were no animals. A couple pigeons. But, nothing that would make this blog.

Here is Cadet Birmage, Apprentice Thurman and Apprentice Wilson waiting for the customers. Actually there was a great deal of waiting for customers. Like I emtntioner earlier this did not go terribly well.

This is the grill stand. It did slowly as well. Still, we had hot dogs and popcorn for the kids. And really the Brigade is all about making kids happy. And if this means hot dogs on a nice summer's day that is close enough. Well despite the fact we didn't do terribly well financially we still have a good time.

This is Carol at the grill. She always likes doing the food. She comes from a family of people that are all about the food. Her mother worked in a restaraunt and her twin brother is a baker. There is no candelstick maker. Like I said they are all about the food.

Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

3:30 AM Dog Attack

This is what it looks like when a dog attacks you at 3:30 AM. I was up because she attacked me at 3:00 AM The Camera freaks her out so if i had to be up i might as well have some fun.
The wife is still in the hospital so the dog is lonely. I am apparently not good enough company. Still she was getting really hard up and needed some reassurance.

This by the way is why I prefer cats. The wife does not like small dogs. As you can see the Sally is large enough to make her presence known. When Abigail or Mariska need loving they just curl up next to you. Occasional they wake one up when they fall asleep on your face. The Sally waked you up if she is in the same room.
Well she has enough love and had to head off an bother the cats. I can hear them plaing on the first floor.

Be safe out there everyone and keep you stick on the ice.

Annoying Cats

My cats love to sleep on my keyboard and bother me when I am typing . They also like to climb on me when I think i am doing something important. So just for fun as i cannot sleep I decided to play on the computer.

The cats were sleeping on a chair on the other side of the computer table. Just for fun I started taking pictures of them over and over again.

even after I chased one of them off with the camera I kep following Mariska with the camera. Nothing more fun than bothering cats with technology in your secret lair.

Random Stuff you learn at 7:00 AM

Long time reader will know that I am a fan of the science fiction. So much of a fan that I am writing my own science fiction.

Being that I could not sleep. You know me I only sleep five or six hours a day. I was playing around in my office. My office as you may or may know is a big pile of stuff in milk crates in the basement of my house. Anyway next week my pile of milk crates is going to be host to the Clown Brigade's Manual Writing Committee. So I figured that I should clean it up. There is even a small chance that I might post pictures of it if I get it looking presentable. Don't hold your breath though.

Anyway there is all sorts of foolishness that goes on in my office. First there are all of my books and a fair amount of yarn. Prized among my books is the beginning of my collection of Leather Bound Books. You know them they are the classic books sold at Boarders make to look old tyme. I firmly believe that you should have a good set of some important books. Spakespeare, Twain you know the books I am talking about. It is one of those things I can leave to my kids. Meaning they will sell them at a yard sale after I amdead.

My library such as it is does not have tenth of the books that I think it should. There are a ton of history books. These center on American, Scottish, English, Ancient Roman, Greek and Egyptian. I have recently become enamored with Hawaiian history. So thee are a couple of those popin up.

Of course there are fair number of books on clowning. These cover all the major clowning subjects, magic, juggling, puppetry building funny stuff and oddly enough in my own mind several books on knitting.

There is also the stuff that helps me write the science fiction books (you thought I forgot about that). Dictionaries, Thesauruses, The Elements of Style, Jane's fighting ships and bunches of Legos. Legos you say how are they helpful. Well I do not have the budget of Star War or Star trek. So when I want to build a new ship of star base I can't farm it out to a model building company.

So all in all my office looks like that of an insanely brilliant five year old. Oddly when I started playing around with these stories in middle school I collected a lot of this stuff to help me back then. I still have my first Roget's Thesaurus which was a 1964 version I bought with my own allowance money. My old dictionary finally gave up the ghost. It was a gigantic Funk and Wagnals that was several decades out of date as well. I suppose modern writers use the Internet thing or have their dictionaries on a disk or something. Well I don't have that kind of time to be learning knew things like that.

I thought I was pretty out there as far as things go. I am after all a clown that is called to be a minister and feels he should be able to write books. And I suppose I am a guy who knits quite a bit. It strikes me that some might think I am fairly out there. This is something that I have grown accustom to. So I am really not that bothered by it any more.

I forgot to mention my two black cats that believe my office is their personal domain. I am reminded of this because Abigail is trying to help me type.

Retuning to the subject at hand which has me thinking this AM. And you may not have guessed what this is leading up to but here it is, Fan Fiction.

This has been the subject of some disturbing conversations I have had recently. I will not get into them, still, they were bad.

Well I was taking a break from figuring out why my Robert B. Parker Books are mixed in with juggling books and and books on growing bonsai trees. So I was tooling around the You Tube watching the decline of Western Civilization. I come across something called USS Farragut. I am nothing if not a big fan of our Navy. My Grand Father Stiles was in the Navy during WWII in the pacific. That was back when being in the Navy was really really hard. I am sure it is hard now. Back then we were fighting wars that looked like we were going to loose for a while. I am sure that added to the stress.

I also dislike mines. I don't even play mine sweeper because of my dislike of the mines. Admiral David Farrgut was the one that said, darn the torpedoes full speed ahead. Yes he used stronger language still those were times for stronger language. And the torpedoes he was talking about were actually mines.

So I click on this thing expecting to see a historic naval battle or maybe something on the new Burke Class Destroyer. Lo and behold what do I see but computer generated version of the the Star Trek Enterprise. Someone created a computer generated version of the Enterprise and called it the Farragut. As the clip played on it became apparent a bunch of people had gotten together written a script and made new episode of Star Trek on their own.

I was amazed by this. How can people do that? No what are they thinking. But how do you make up a computer generated star at home. They had sets and all the stuff actors have. How is that possible. It there a feature in media player that I missed? I was feeling proud of myself for throwing together the Yarn N'at Vidcast. Then I find out there are people that make up their own TV shows. I am just blown away. And if any wants to clue me in on how that stuff is done I would be happy.

Be safe out there everyone and keep your stick on the ice.

The Critters

This is the Sally Dog. She does not like the camera. I working under the assumption that she is a rather large squirrel. My wife is still convinced that she is a dog. I am not buying it.

Yes the dog has nothing to do with the entire knitting thing. No I will not be spinning my dog's hair into yarn. Although she has very pretty fur. I could brush her but I do not have that kind of attention span. And my wife assures me that she will kill me if I shave the dog.

So there will be no dog hair sweater in the Zeeppo household. Oh Well.


The cat is abigail. She is the one eyed cat that has many health problems. You cannot tell she has one eye because her eyes are closed. She is on top of the little house that was built for her. She loves her house and the rubber mouse on a bit of metal.

By the way I am not allow to shave the cat either. We have another cat name Mariska who I was not able to find for a picture. She is Abigail's sister and is black. So they look a lot alike. Although Mariska has both eyes and no health problems.

To the best of my knowledge there is nothing else living in my house besides us. I don't know knitting people are always showing pictures of their animals. Maybe I should take some pictures of other animals. It would sort of be like an urban safari.

Stuff in the Knitting World.

I managed to get fryers and posters into a couple more shops today. I am not sure how many are signed up at this point. We have a few in and things are looking up on that front.

Moving along the book is continuing to come together as well. I am typing it in as slowly as Humanly possible. In another month or so when my hand is in better shape I should be able to finish it off quickly. I have decided to add a good battle scene in the first couple chapters. Nothing like a good shot em up to get things going.

The cats are being silly as cats tend to be. Abigail likes to follow around the cursor on the screen. This of course slows down my already snail like typing. Well I just wanted to check in.

be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

The five things FeministsHave Done for me.

The Natasha made a comment about a list of five things the feminists had done. I am supposing this was a personal list and so I wanted to take a moment to list what feminism has done for me. You may think it is odd for a male to be posting something like this. Well if you have been reading this blog and you have not figured out it is a little off then you are more tolerant than most of the people I know.

Thing #1
Made the women on Star Trek wear pants. Dag nabbit that it one of the reason men watch. The only way I got through Spock being logical was by knowing Uhura could come into the shot at any time. Well I will have to settle for reruns of Dr. Who with Leela. Gloria Steinem eat your heart out.

Thing #2
Ended barefoot in the Kitchen, well there goes the foot fetish thing.

Thing #3
Convinced Madonna and the goblin Dixie Chick that they had something important to say. There are some people that should just do one thing and not try and be thinkers. That is true for women as well as men. I knew a rather unenlightened person that always said “the world needs ditch diggers”. Well the world also needs people to be pretty and sing. And what is with the English accent? I am not blaming anyone for that it just bothers me for some reason.

Thing #4
Bra Burnings, yes it is a typical male response to something that was deeply symbolic of generation of oppression to focus on the underwear getting burned. Well I am male and what can I say. I am not sure how that did anything to get rid of the glass ceiling; still, it was nice while it lasted.

Thing #5
Debbie Stroller – My mentor Herman Braun had issues with Zimmerman the great knitting woman of her time. Well Debbie you are my Zimmerman. It is a male dominated world and I want knitting back. I can see it now a knitting sections at the Super Bowl, yarn for sale at NASCAR events, needles at Pirate games. Not that I mind that much being out numbered ten to one by women at knitting groups. That part does not bother me. Although Debbie did pretty much skip over the male knitter in her book. It is not about rehabbing knitting’s image so that it fit’s into the image of the on the go woman. It is not some kind of social statement. It’s supposed to be fun and enjoyable. Good grief why can’t something be fun?

On a more serious note there are many feminists that have been lost to time. Like Abigail Adams who tried to convince her husband to give women the vote. Or Catherine Booth cofounder of The Salvation Army. She saw suffering and decided to do something about it. Or it could be as simple as someone like Molly Pitcher who saw an immediate need and filled it. In general we worry too much about image these days. Why can’t we do something because it needs done.


Well that was rather long winded to list five things. well be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.