There’s a one-day Economic Blackout planned for today, 28-Feb-2025, partially in protest of the current administration’s attempt to rollback diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”) efforts and boycotts of some large companies that have simply dropped their DEI efforts in response to the government’s discriminatory efforts. Many of the targeted businesses have been pulling in record profits for the past few years while increasing prices for the average consumer. Additional business-specific boycotts are planned for later this spring; some of them are detailed here.
Will this really help? I don’t know, I don’t recall seeing something like this done before. My thought is it can’t hurt. It’s a starting point, nothing more.
How else can you help? You could reach out to your representatives and senators, whether to thank them for voting against cutting our support services (my paycheck shows deductions for Social Security and Medicare, why should they cut those to give billionaires bigger tax breaks?) or reiterate your disappointment in their votes. You can find a local charity to support – a food bank, an LGBTQ+ organization, or something else – that will be picking up the slack as our tax dollars are misappropriated to help the rich.
You could even generate an Activism Bingo card if you want a checklist to work through.
What’s that? Well, crocheting is when you use a single hook… oh, you mean a Temperature Blanket? It’s when you crochet a little bit each day based on the current temperature, or specifically (in this case), the day’s high temperature at my current location. I had heard about the concept years ago, and was considering starting one this year, but the last couple months have been kind of hectic (something about co-chairing a convention…). But someone told me that a Temperature Blanket doesn’t have to start on January 1st, so when I learned that JoAnn Fabrics is closing the three stores closest to me, I rushed out to pick up some yarn.
OK, not quite rushed out. I wanted to know how much yarn I needed to buy first… we have more days in the 70s than in the 20s, and only a handful of super hot days, and I wanted to know by how much. I pulled temperature data for the last year for Rosemont into a spreadsheet, used the mround function to round up or down to the nearest 10, and created a pivot table to count the occurrences. Yes, that’s a super geeky approach to yarn shopping.
Based on those numbers, I determined to buy 1, 2, or 3 skeins of yarn, as appropriate, with some loosely set colors. I know from experience that color selection varies, especially when trying to find multiple colors in the same or similar yarns. Then I went shopping – the only change was picking up a gradient white & blue for 30, because there wasn’t a white available in that yarn, and I flipped the blue and light blue because there was only one skein available for the darker color. (Caron Simply Soft, for reference. Which is, in fact, fabulously soft.) I also picked up a joining color (gradient black & white), having already decided I would be crocheting squares.
After shopping, I grabbed a spare piece of cardboard, punched 11 holes into it, and looped a snippet of each yarn by the appropriate temperature. Because I’m using the mround function, 10 really means anywhere from 6 to 15, and so on for the ranges. I created a tracking sheet where I enter each day’s temperature, set up a vlookup against my color guide, and track when it’s done. If I miss a day or two, I’ll have the data saved and can mark as I catch up.
I picked a granny square pattern that starts from the center and works out (which is why I needed a joining yarn). While searching for that pattern, I spotted another one that starts with a more obvious circle in the center before expanding to a square – that might be fun some other year for a lows and highs temperature blanket, since we do get wide ranges some days. I also trimmed the pattern down to three rounds instead of the five it comes with, realizing that I’m making either 360 or 375 of these squares (for rows of 15)… at 3.5 inches, that builds up pretty quickly.
I will admit it’s hard to only crochet today’s square. Yes, I could look at the forecast and crochet ahead, but what if it shifts? A predicted 14 can easily become a 16, which is an entirely different color! It’s a practice in patience. I’m sure I’ll share some progress photos later in the year.
Alas, our fourth GoH, Dr. Tom Barclay, isn’t particularly active on social media. Rest assured, he appears in photos and definitely had a blast. In fact, here’s how it started, with the traditional Meet the GoHs panel Thursday afternoon:
These four guests met at their first panel, an opportunity for them to talk about anything they want before Opening Ceremonies. And here’s how it looked near the end, on Saturday night:
This was an exciting moment for me, as co-chair, when I realized that three of our GoHs were circulating through the parties together. Not pictured is a slightly different combination of GoHs on DJ Scalzi‘s dance floor about an hour later for the traditional midnight rendition of the Time Warp.
I know, you’re probably thinking that sounds like a fabulous photo opportunity. It was! I’ve seen several photos that include the three GoHs… and myself… doing the Time Warp. Obviously, I was too busy… doing the Time Warp… to take photos.
As I mentioned before, this year’s theme for Capricon is Let Your Geek Flag Fly!
Depending on your interests, you probably have one of two questions: 1) What’s a geek flag? or 2) Why only one?
I’ll work through them in order. A geek flag is a flag that represents geek pride or a love of geeky things. Really, there’s no limitation on what you can geek out about. According to Dictionary.com, one definition for geek is “a person who has excessive enthusiasm for and some expertise about a specialized subject or activity”. My father, for example, was a Jerome K. Jerome geek, which can also be presented as Jerome K. Jerome was one of his geek flags.
You may have noticed “one of” in the previous sentence. Most geeks I know fly multiple geek flags. The earliest one I identify with is Star Trek, having been introduced to the original show before elementary school, closely followed by Doctor Who. By college, I was also flying a gamer flag – video, board, and role-playing games – and had realized that reading is its own flag as well. It will surprise nobody that Dork Tower is another geek flags I fly proudly.
Obviously, I fly multiple geek flags, which brings us back to the second question… why is our theme singular? Another one of my geek flags is musicals, and it’s a reference to Shrek: the Musical, specifically the song “Freak Flag.” The theme is singular in order to fly that particular geek flag.
What are your geek flags? Better yet, come find me at Capricon this weekend and tell me in person.
