1. I had like ten plantar warts removed this morning. I know it’s gross but it hurts a lot so I feel like I have a right to complain.
2. If you would like to know why you should vote for Barak instead of Hillary, watch this: 
3. If you would like to feel inspired about actually voting for Barak, watch this:
4. If you would like to feel terrified about the possibility of President McCain, watch this:
5. If Larry Lessig is successful in his run for congress, and once there, if he is successful in his efforts to end political corruption, I predict that he will go down in history as one of the most influential and important citizens our country has ever benefited from. Here is Larry’s blog. His anti-corruption efforts are not yet online, but you can give him your email address.
6. Oh my God, there is no place better to live. At the risk of sending the groundhog back into his hole, we’ve had a week of spring-y-ness here in the PNW and is it beautiful. If it’s really spring, then the winter was exactly one week too long. I can totally live with that.
7. Tomorrow, Matt and I embark on a short vacation in Lake Tahoe (well, very near it, anyway) before going to Sparks for some boot-camp-style entrepreneurialism for the remainder of the week. Can’t wait to see the peeps and play with yarn–what with this bum foot, I don’t expect I’ll be going downhill (or anywhere else) fast. Before then, it’s just cleaning, packing, and, oh yeah, finishing my work day before knitting night.
8. A friend of mine created this fantastic site. If you’ve ever known anyone with even the tiniest hope of an internet startup, these are fantastic.

Hooray! I am SO proud of this project, I simply must share! Here is the lovely felted laptop cover that I made for Matt just in time for Valentine’s Day!

There are a handful of other felted laptop cover recipes out there, but I haven’t found them to be detailed enough to duplicate, so I decided to post this here. This is custom-sized for Matt’s 17″ MacBook Pro. If you happen to catch a mistake, or if you adapt this pattern to fit another laptop, please post your findings in the comments so we can all benefit! Thank you!

Yarn

• 2 skeins Noro Kureyon in #185 (multi)
• 1 skein Cascade 220 wool in #8400 (grey)

Needles

• 1 24″ US size 8 circular (Addi Turbos, natch!)

Pattern

• c/o 140 using Judy Becker’s Magic Cast-On: 70 sts on each needle using solid color.
• Knit 3 complete rounds with solid color.
• *Change color, k 2 rounds with variegated color.
• Change color, k 2 rounds with solid color.
• Repeat from * until work reaches 38 cm.
• Bind off 70 sts, aligned with the cast-on row.
• Continue in 2 row stripes until work reaches 50 cm.
• Bind off remaining 70 sts.

Now, you have a choice: it’s up to you if you want to sew down the flap pre- or post- felting. I ended up sewing it down pre-felting, then cutting it out and re-sewing post-felting, so that it would be as snug as possible on the machine.

pre-felting pictures:

Felting

Felt using your preferred method, making sure that it doesn’t get smaller than 25 cm wide. Mine went through two hot wash cycles full of jeans, with me shocking the wool by pulling it out of the machine, wringing it out, and swishing it in a big bowl of ice water every 3-5 minutes during both wash cycles.

Finishing

The construction of the cover is basically a glorified sandwich bag. The top 10 cm or so acts like the flap that you turn inside-out to open, and then turn the other way to close. The advantage of this design is huge: no sewing on fasteners of any kind, and no fear that the fasteners will interact with your laptop in a way you won’t like.

Good news! Matt has received preliminary admission to the University of Washington Law School!  If only he were excited about it…

It’s not that he is definitely NOT going. Or that he definitely is. Let me explain: Matt’s initial interest in law school developed from a few different places. On one hand, he believed that he did not have a talent for management or leadership in his current industry. At the same time, he felt he was rapidly approaching the personal satisfaction/earning ceiling as a coder-for-hire. Finally, in recent years he had been choosing his career path in hopes of getting management experience and opportunity, to no avail.

Add to these things his genuine interest in the intersection of law and technology, and law school seems to be a very reasonable, and even exciting, direction.

Then, just days after the law school applications were complete, January happened. Several things happened in January to make law school look remarkably less attractive than it did in December.

1. The new year hiring scramble. Since the second week of January, Matt’s received calls and emails from at least one recruiter per week. In addition to spawning this brilliant response, it resulted in Matt taking on two more part-time clients, and renewing his excitement for his field.
2. A conversation with Margaret. Margaret was the first employee supervised by Matt during his start-up days at Tomo. It is this experience that taught Matt that he probably wasn’t cut out to be a manager. Margaret’s position was very different, though: “It was a tough job in a young company, and you were far from the worst manager I’ve ever worked with.”
3. Startup Weekend. I still do intend to write a good deal more about this, but essentially, Matt’s title for the weekend was “The Glue.” Translation: he was THE go-between for helping the technical and non-technical sides of the business communicate. He did such a fantastic job during the weekend that he was selected to lead the ongoing development of our business as the Chief Technical Officer.
4. We got serious. He finally heard me when I said that now seemed like a bad time. My position, many of you have heard, is that five years ago or five years from now this would be fine. Starting law school this year would set him up to experience the most demanding part of his career and his family life at exactly the same time. Not exactly ideal.

Let’s review: Matt’s super excited about our startup. He has a leadership position which he is really rocking. He has many many interesting projects for a wide variety of clients. He likes me a lot.

Um, why spend $100,000 for unknown when known is so good?

That’s what I call him. My Yarn Whisperer. He is always, always willing to have fights with the yarn that I am just too tired or unmotivated to have. And he always wins. Always.

Last night was Knit Night. Since Matt had already participated in Snow Boarding Day as well as Afternoon Beer, he wasn’t really interested in Working. Turns out, fighting with this yarn was just the thing to keep him busy. When Courtney pulled it out of her bag, it was plain that she was just illustrating the cause of her day-long lament. As soon as she did, it was plain that Matt wanted to take charge of that yarn and show it who is boss. Of course, he was successful, but not right away.

In fact, Matt’s Yarn Whispering Night started with our Knit Night, went straight through Old Episodes of Project Runway and clear past Girlfriend’s Bedtime. I didn’t look at the clock, when he finally came to bed victorious, but he’s admitting to 3:00am, so I’m guessing it’s closer to 3:30 or 4:00.

While I’m on the subject, I thought I might as well add some of my recent work with yarn here. This is just part of the blanket that I’m slowly making for Matt. I’m only about half way through, based on the number of squares I think I will need for the size. I love getting him to participate in these things, and for this one he wrote a fantastic little bit of code that randomly gives me the next color. I love it, because random usually turns out prettier than my choices.

And these are my new socks! The yarn is beautiful (my Christmas gift from Ted & Erin!) with really subtle color changes, and I’m really happy about how it’s turning out. I had to change the pattern, since it was written for top-down. My position is that toe-up is better, simply because you can knit until you are out of yarn and you’re in control of how tall the sock are!

I participated in the Washington Democratic Caucus on Saturday. Guess who I supported?

I actually spent a good amount of time and energy gathering the information to help me decide between Hillary and Barak. I watched debates, I read blogs of candidates, I read blogs of pundits, I read blogs of friends, and I engaged pretty much anyone who made themselves available in conversation.

I was surprised to find that, inconsistent with my demographic, I was leaning toward Hillary. Truth is, I was impressed with her in the first few debates I watched and I’ve always had a soft spot for Bill. I just couldn’t seem to be sold-out for Barak. Even though I could see that he appealed to my (slowly dying) inner idealist, I just couldn’t manage to change my mind.

Then, in the few days leading up to the Washington caucus, I got the same sort argument from several different sources and several different perspectives. Basically, it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t have as much experience because his leadership ability is greater. He will lead young people to be more politically engaged. He will lead overseas consumers to like us and buy our stuff. He will lead overseas governments to respect us. I believe that he will unite more than he will divide and that is why I supported him in the caucus.

As for the caucus itself, well, we should be honest: democracy is not the most efficient political process. It was cool to have to explain to people why I was on the side of the boy’s gym that I was on. It was exciting to be able to answer questions posed by undecided voters. (These people especially impressed me, by the way. How civic-minded do you have to be to feel compelled to participate in something in which your participation was immaterial?) In the end, my 3-block radius of participants went 3:1 Obama over Clinton. I think the city of Seattle ended up averaging 7:1, and the state ended up with a 2:1 showing.

Though there are lots of good reasons why a secret ballot is a mainstay of US democracy, the upside to the caucus, as far as I can tell, is singular: The people who participated are now far more emotionally tied to the outcome.  Record-breaking numbers of individuals participated in the Washington caucus which means, if my theory has any validity, we should expect to see political participation increase as a result of increased ownership as a result of increased participation.

Rad.