#moose adventures

[m0ose-idiot]

Ahhh, I'm covered with bugs and Kitty isn't helping!! Bug spray or a nit comb, what do I do, WHAT DO I DO??

[mikamckinnon]

My last journey in the Before Times was to a huge science conference in Seattle. I snuck away to Pike Place Market between sessions to buy a hank of beautiful silk/alpaca yarn in a delicious spring green to match my boots, and a new pair of beautiful wooden needles to work it.

I knit around and around in circles the next few days, adding rows while livetweeting research talks, awkwardly networking with science writers I’d known for years but never met, and burying my unease about reports of novel coronavirus cases popping up in North America.

Strikes were blocking the rail lines home and I started to worry I’d be trapped on the wrong side of the border as a pandemic blossomed.

So I knit.

And I knit, and I knit.

And I kept knitting to keep my hands busy and my mind keeping up a steady background of counting so I wouldn’t have space to fret about all the things I couldn’t change, and I tweeted and I talked and I knit some more.

The strikes lifted just in time for my train back north. Three weeks after I got home and unpacked my bags, the Canadian border closed for two years.

I haven’t touched my knitting since I got off the train.

A lot has changed since then. Vaccines, elections, a whole new human in my family, a whole future I couldn’t have imagined that’s now my past. I would’ve sworn I was making a hat, but from loop size it’s looking more like an infinity scarf and I don’t know if that’s a flaw in my memories or in the distracted counting of me in the last days before the world changed.

I picked it up tonight.

I wonder if I can still match the tension.

[tree-frog-kids]

[atimetobeyou]

💕

[m0ose-idiot]

There's a post going around about six degrees of separation from celebrities that I didn't want to hijack, so I guess this Moose is making an original post! #niche

It's a long post that includes Terry Pratchett and tiddies, so settle in, fam

Cultural context: in the late 1990s in Australia, asking someone of higher status than you to sign the top of your boobs (no nip) was a sign of respect that the celebrities had the power to say no to, and indeed bestowed upon them great status. Sexual harassment was something boys did out the windows of muscle cars.

Cut to people not in muscle cars:

One of my bosses: Hell yeah, my fit is fierce, let's get every low-level celebrity to sign my boob!

Several low-level offences occur. Anyone remember the cast of Good News Week? No? Doesn’t matter, we got them (the lesbian cast member was delighted to be included).

BUT THEN the Pinnacle: Sir Terry Pratchett. He was a consummate gentleman; my boss couldn't afford to buy a new book to be signed, so he signed her boob, and at the same time said he "felt a right tit" – the man was a fiend for puns!

Is that the end of Sir P'Terry's involvement in her shenanigans? NO. In 2024, when Adam Spencer and Wil Anderson cashed in on nostalgia to do a show based on their Triple J breakfast radio show, they asked for audience call ins. My boss having no shame asked, "Hey Adam Spencer, do you remember when you signed my boobs, back in the day.... do you want to do it again?”

And Adam Spencer was all, HELL YEAH, THAT'S GOING TO END THE SHOW. And then when my boss was brought on stage, and as Adam was signing, she asked.... "DO YOU FEEL A RIGHT TIT?"

Anyway, that's the story of how Sir Terry made such a good off-the-cuff joke in 1998, that my boss pulled it out on stage over 25 years later and got a cracking laugh out of a couple of thousand people at a Melbourne Comedy Festival show.

Fit is still fierce, even if the inhabitant's boobs take up more real estate now 😁

[m0ose-idiot]

why have you been literally everywhere

Hee hee, there's plenty of the world left to explore, but I am a venerable moose who is both old and very lucky 😀

[m0ose-idiot]

Tagged by @carpe-mamilia to share six recent non-selfies - thank you! Normally this could have been pretty boring, but I've just been to Sulawesi! Featuring 40,000 year old cave art, a sus buffalo, provocative geographical features, and some epic funeral traditions of the Toraja people.

Tagging @fimofomo @idontknowknit @fearsome-camel @sapphicwanderer (no pressure) and anyone else who wants to play

[m0ose-idiot]

So normally this Moose restricts the creation of crochet to characters, not real people, but when my bosses said we were going to the Dick and Angel's Forever Home live show (Escape to the Chateau) in Bendigo, I obviously had to make an exception...

I must say, when they said they had hopes I'd get a Dick Holding, this wasn't what I had in mind, but I mustn't complain. Marvellous show, lovely humans, I hope they enjoy the lil finger puppet family 🧶🏰♥️