it's about damn time!

Finally finished my Superman baby blanket! It's all double crochet, 113 dc across, making it approx 34" wide, 33.75" tall. It's all made from Red Heart Super Saver - nearly 3 skeins of blue, a little bit of black, cornmeal (yellow) and cherry red (red). Great way to use up my scraps of black, red, and yellow. Hopefully my friends will appreciate it!

pay in cash when ordering take out

I learned something disturbing when ordering some pizza last night for dinner. Domino's has been keeping my credit card on file.

Yep, it's right there in their computer, for anyone and everyone to look up, along with my address and phone number. Now, I understand keeping my card number long enough to tally the tip when the driver gets back to the restaurant, but to keep it in their computer system indefinately? Isn't that illegal?

My concerns have to do mainly with identity theft. And, on a more basic note, just credit card theft. There's nothing stopping any of their staff from logging into the computer and just 'borrowing' my credit card info to order to their heart's desire.

And - if that's not worrisome enough - the woman on the phone taking my order said that this is standard policy for their restaurant! Which means, anyone and everyone who orders take out at least from that location, has their credit card numbers saved in their computer as well!

Well, this worried the crap out of me. But, naive of me to be surprised.

See, a year and a half ago, approximately, I ordered pizza from Domino's one night - same location - and I started giving my credit card number, and the guy taking my order read back the rest of the number for me, just like the woman on the phone did last night. I called back later on, got the manager on the phone, and he told me that this was just something they did, but they were getting a new program into their computer soon that wouldn't allow credit cards to be saved, so it would no longer be an issue, and that my number would apparently be deleted that evening.

Clearly, it's not the case.

So, I called Domino's head office to find out if this is common practice with the whole chain, because I'm sure this can't be legal, and it's a bit fishy. Head office informed me that this is not their policy, my number shouldn't be saved, and they took down both my phone number and the phone number of the location I normally order from, and have the issue cleared up.

Hopefully this location is an isolated incident, and I'm glad I caught it when I did before seeing any big surprises on my Visa statement. But, truthfully, I wouldn't be surprised if this sort of thing happened not only at other Domino's locations, but at any restaurant that does take out and take credit card numbers over the phone.

Best to be safe than sorry - and it's the reason why I wanted to blog this - please, if you're going to get take out, avoid using your credit cards and pay in cash to avoid potential credit card fraud.

gotta love Maxine

My skin crawls at the idea of my even blogging this, but despite it being July, I'm in the midst of December-holiday knitting. I've got 3 gifts already made, and at least 3 more planned out to finish before December. I totally hate and love myself, at the same time. Damned me for being this well organized this early in the year.

Today I received an email from my MIL, she often sends me very funny emails, occasionally with Maxine cartoons in them. I love her sense of humor. (Both my MIL's and Maxine's!) One cartoon from the email stood out for me, I wanted to post it in my blog, because it so aptly applies to my current WIP's:

distractions

I got some more self stripping yarn in the mail the other day, so I started knitting a little to add to my blankie-from-sock-yarn project that I started a couple weeks ago. Plus, I finally got around to picking 3 winnners from the Black Yarn Swap that I organized a while back, and I'm getting their care package prizes ready. I'll probably mail them out next week some time.

moving further along...

Apparently, a skein-plus-a-bit of Red Heart Super Saver gets me about 13" worth of double crochet blanket! :) Phew! Have that much completed. I've started, today, incorporating the Superman logo into the blankie. At this rate, I should be done in no time!

progress

The Superman blankie is slowly evolving - the entire thing's going to be done in double crochet, so it's so far nearly 7 inches long. I thought I had made it about 33 inches wide, but as it turns out, it's 36 inches wide - a bit wider than what I want it to be, but at this point I'm not going to frog it and start over. I've got enough blue Red Heart Super Saver to make a long enough blanket as it is, although it's taking forever to complete a row!

untraditional baby blankets

A few days ago I found out that a friend of my DH and I - the best man at our wedding, and his wife - are expecting a baby in January! Since he's such a comic book fan, I instantly thought to incorporate this Superman chart into a baby blanket. Why? Well, there's a scene in Kill Bill 2, at the end, where David Caradine's character tells a little tale of Superman, and how his cape was made from his baby blanket. Hence, a baby blanket with the Superman logo I think would make an ideal baby blanket!


I knit it originally, starting a couple days ago, but I completely miscalculated the guage, and I knit 4 inches of moss stitch for nothing. So, I frogged it, and started again with the proper cast on stitches, and crochet this time. This is what I have so far:

I really hope this turns out - I'm making the whole thing in double crochet! Hopefully it'll be a quick enough project! (I just hate the fact that I wasted 2 days knitting that effin' moss stitch! Argh!)


Yes, I know - not only am I using acrylic, but red heart of all things. But the problem is that traditional baby yarns that I've found do not come in the colours I need, only pastels, so this is the best I can do! And besides, acrylic is easy enough to maintain!

ETA: this link identifies that Superman's cape was made from his baby blankets, rather than the cape being the blanket itself. The original baby blankets were knit, by Ma Kent, using "ordinary knitting needles" - as opposed to what, dare I ask? Some sort of mysterious Kryptonian knitting mechanism? (I need to look into my comic-book-geekery-knitting-referance manual on that one...)

another xmas scarf done!

Well, it took a few days (actually at least a week) for me to complete this scarf for my SIL, but I finally got around to it today!

The pattern is from The Little Box of Scarves book, and it's a good easy first-attempt-at-lace-knitting project! The pattern is the Diamond Leaf Ascot.

I found the yarn at Value Village of all places, it's not one that I'm familiar with: Twilleys Featherspun Mohair Look - it's 85% acrylic and 15% wool. I got a good amount of yardage from one single 50gram ball (plus borrowing enough from a second skein to complete the 16 row pattern + knit an extra pattern repeat) - the whole scarf's approx 45 inches long.

sheep eggs

When my MIL was in N. Ireland, she had picked up these very cute egg cups, in the shape of sheep:

I just thought they were a hoot, so I needed a photo of them for my blog :)

Happy Canada Day!

Phew! Canada Day! Yay!

Weatherwise, it'll be a great day for bbq! It's weird having a Tuesday as a day off, but it does break up the work week a bit.

This past weekend, DH and I went up to my in-law's for the weeekend to celebrate the two June birthdays - my FIL and DH, whose birthdays are on the 10th and 28th respectively. So that was fun, and despite a little tiny downpour, the weather was great!

My MIL also just came back on the 17th from Northern Ireland - where most of her family lives and is from (as is my FIL's, but he stayed home because he's not much of a flyer) and look at some of the things she brought us back:
- super big chocolates! (250g & 400g!) These are huge! And for some reason, the Cadbury chocolates taste totally different and much more decadent from over there! I hate to say it, but they're already gone, but they were sooooo good!

Also, I've been looking for some real Aran sweater patterns, but having a hard time coming across any - so my MIL picked one up for me while she was there! She also found these two HUGE balls of yarn for me to knit them with, which is enough to knit one sweater! (Totaly blows my mind! They're huge!) So, I'll knit a sweater for my DH, who's been itching for a nice textured sweater ever since I knit that cabled sweater for my brother a year or so ago. He wanted a good cabled or textured sweater, but since the sweater I knit for my brother was made with Lionbrand's wool ease thick n quick, which is a super bulky yarn, it was too thick for DH's taste - but this yarn is really ideal.

Woo hoo! Such treats... People can gift me yarn and chocolate any time!