Progress, regress, and progress in the wrong direction

The past few days have seemed to move very, very slowly, but at the same time it's incredible to me that the week is almost over.

I made some progress on WIPped into Shape Month. The first thing I did was finish the Boring Socks:

...which turned out to be a little short. I'm hoping they'll grow a little when they hit the water, but the last item I knit with this yarn (my HP house sweater) didn't grow at all. When it comes to knitting, I live in a near-permanent state of denial. Despite the sizing issues, this counts as my first finished object for the month.

I continued this trend by putting sleeves on the A-squared cardi. It was a big hit at the SnB last night; everyone got a chance to fondle the soft, soft alpaca and angora. I finished the second sleeve, but just barely: it was knitter vs. yarn in a race to the finish before I ran totally out. I have just enough of the main color left over to seam the underarms. Today I added the button bands, including my first ever buttonhole, which I'm not all that impressed with. There must be a neater way to make a buttonhole than cast off, cast on. At any rate, all that's left is to weave in the multitude of ends and add a button, so this cardi is very close to being finished.

I might have accomplished more on my WIP month goals except for a minor distraction that turned into a major time-suck: spinning. Now, I want to make clear at the outset that this was not my fault. I could have continued knitting happily all month were it not for Alice the Enabler, her drop spindle, and her English angora. (My idea of paradise now consists of rolling around naked in a pile of English angora. ...What?)

After Alice pushed her crack- er, spinning, on me last night, I remembered how much fun spinning was. And I remembered my drop spindle, and I remembered that big bag of lamb's wool in the seaweed-y colors, and three hours later:

A whole lot of single. My spinning is actually pretty consistent now, not thick and slubby like it was when I started. At some point, I'm going to have to figure out how to ply all this single, though, which is when I'll find out just how uneven my tension is. Ah, well. I'm learning a lot as I go.

And finally, some actual, practical, non-fiber progress. I had my first real interview with a Wycliffe rep yesterday! I'm starting the application process and taking my first real steps toward membership. It was exciting to sit down and look at plans and timelines and feel like my life was actually going somewhere.

The only real setback this week is, once again, this blasted cough I caught. It's back, it's mean, it's ugly, and this time it's actually starting to be painful. Warning to everyone: I'm back on the narcotics for the time being, drugged to the gills, falling asleep at completely inappropriate times, and with no filters between brain and mouth. Should be exciting.

Using our powers for good

So, the thing is, I'm a linguist. Playing around with made-up languages is fun; I get that. But there's a sobering statistic that bothers me.

2,251 of the world's languages need a Bible and have none of it. Not a single verse.

On the other hand, there are at least partial translations of the Bible into:
Lolcat
Klingon
Pig Latin
Quenya (that's Elvish, for non-LotR fans)
D'ni (okay, I'm the guilty party here)

...and any number of other conlangs, probably. Think about all the translation power that's getting used up in wikis and forums across the net. Imagine what that could do, were it loosed on natural languages, ones that actually need translations.

The internet is a great place to see the power of lots of people to do little things that add up to big things, like Wikipedia or Knitters without Borders. I wonder, are there ways to loose this flood of power into the realm of Bible translation or literacy?

While I wonder about that, ponder this bit of good news:

"So liek teh Ceiling Cat lieks teh ppl lots and he sez 'Oh hai I givez u me only kitteh and ifs u beleevs in him u wont evr diez no moar, k?'"

Iz John 3:16, k?