Thursday, October 22, 2009

More than one Wug.


Hi folks.
I've got a strange little project to describe today. A psycholinguist friend was telling me about an experiment called the Wug test, the aim of which is to get children of various ages to form a plural of 'wug', a fictitious animal, among other things. You can see scans of the original images here. You can also buy merchandise, if you're that way inclined.
Aside from being pretty cute, they're fun little nonsense monsters, and they have the weird property that you're not allowed to talk about them in the plural. So, this is the plan -- I'm going to knit a Wug. Then I'll knit another Wug. Then I'll have two of them. I'll probably knit up one or two of the other monsters, which have the other plural sounds.
The patterns will be quick, simple, and prominently feature googly eyes, since they make everything cute.

This is in no way as weird as a psychology experiment having a line of merchandising. Geeks!
Hugh.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Sad news

Hi folks.
Sad news this post -- I've mentioned Knittiana here a few times. She was very ill for a long time, and had been waiting for a heart transplant. We just heard recently that she had died.
She was an inspirational and incredibly brave person, and she meant a lot to the folks in Edinburgh. If you're not an organ donor already, I'd urge you to read about it (here if you're in the UK, or Germany, the US, or Canada). It's a big step, but it's something you should know about before you decide one way or the other.

There'll be more to write about this later, but just now I just want to say that we all miss her.
Hugh.