This morning during the pre-prep phase I read an excellent article about the (rather unhinged) reaction when Celeste Ng tweeted that she’d rather teachers not set contacting her for quotations as assessment tasks. Which is an entirely reasonable attitude to have – what the hell, teachers? how about thousands of people contact you for quotes?

Anyway I thought (as I do): that book looks like it might be worth reading, I’ll add this to the ever-growing stack of un-read stuff on my kindle.

Before I snapped it up, I thought I’d do a bit of a price comparison across the various amazon sites. And verily:

amazon.com = US$12.32 (AU$16.80)

amazon.co.uk = £1.49 (AU$3.11)

amazon.ca = CDN$ 13.99 (AU$14.73)

amazon.com.au = NOT AVAILABLE IN YOUR REGION

Rather a disparity, shall we say?

Also, screw you Australian publishers, are we not permitted access to read anything? This “not available in your region” happens way too frequently with all sorts of digital media. I’d love the opportunity to line your pockets with my money, why won’t you let me?

So for the moment, kindle-y has gone to … ermm … live in Surrey.

While waiting for Bessie to drag herself from her slumber, I’ve been for a short run, had brekkie, put a load of delicates in the machine, packed up the winter coats for a trip to the dry cleaner and pulled the trigger on the baby hat pattern.

My head circumference is a smidge over 21.25 inches. The largest size is child at 18.25 inches. That gives me 3 inches (7.5cm) to make up – which admittedly is quite a bit. Having super-short hair, I need a quite small, close-fitting hat because floppy, loose hats look utterly preposterous on me.

I forsee this taking quite a few attempts – but it will be quite a good intellectual exercise.

The pattern calls for 3.75mm (US size 5) and 4mm (US size 6) needles using 10ply (worsted weight). I’m pretty sure that Joan’s Icelandic wool is between 12ply and 14ply, so my first attempt will be going up two needle sizes (4.5mm and 5mm) knitting the pattern as specified.

If this doesn’t work (as well it might not!), my second attempt will be adding in extra repeats of the cable pattern.

If anything, this will let me settle and peacefully consume some media in the evenings for a while!