Miniature Pocket Hat - in Action

Remarks about the pattern, which is an adaptation of Techknitting's brilliant Pocket Hat, are here.

I think I made it too long and not wide enough. He's too big for it already now, but it lasted a few weeks, and his Proper Present is now ready for delivery (post in the works).

I should make a collage of all these babies.

Hoisted from Comments

In response to my post about the classes next month with Ezequiel and Geraldin Paludi, Sophie (on behalf of Tango in Action), said:

Henceforth couples rotation will be enforced in the workshops, although those who have come to work specifically with their partner will be invited to mention it at the beginning so they can be left alone.

So if you were thinking about booking, now you know. Many thanks to Sophie for taking the trouble.

[Edit 1st Jan 09: it didn't happen, though, or at least not always. I took one of the all-levels couple classes, and there was no rotation, and no attempt to rotate. No one piped up and asked to rotate, either. Luckily for me, I'd booked with a suitable partner.]

Strictly Pro Milonga

Ok, I was going to start writing something completely different, but this takes precedence because the vid will probably get pulled after about five minutes.

It's pure, pure flash, but it's huge fun, they both look delighted to be there, and notice the crowd just can't help clapping along. That's how you can tell this kind of thing is working.



I haven't actually watched it much recently, because I'm out on Saturday nights, but I am Strictly Pro this show. Actual social dancers will of course feel embarrassed by a lot of it, but it is top-class entertainment and it makes people want to dance. If we feel embarrassed we can always hide behind the sofa.

I also like that they used real milonga music, specifically a milonga that makes it almost impossible to sit still, and didn't just do milonga to some inane pop song. And didn't the band do a good job? Another thing I like about this show is that they use real live musicians, all the time.

I hear they take lessons with Leandro and Romina. ;)

Another dance of love

Here's a completely beautiful "dance of love" Tango.

The man is Julian Elizari, who teaches at the Dome. The woman I only know as Audrey, she's a regular on the London social scene. She has a stupendous grace and elegance of movement, but the thing I'm really studying in this video is her beautiful, gentle, soft, fluid, connected, lively embrace. I want to be able to do it like that one day.



Hat tip Psyche.

Financial and Economics Blogs

Finance and economics are notable as subjects on which people who really know what they are talking about write some really good blogs. Because all that information just wants to get out of their heads and into yours.

For the friend who requested them, here are some links:

Tanta on Alt-A and why it never made any sense.
Tanta's UberNerd series on mortgage lending for people who really want the details.
Also, Tanta is really witty.
FT Alphaville has absolutely everything down the right hand side and is funnier than the newspaper.
What shall it profit a man to have money in his wallet, but not in the core of his being?
Brad Delong mostly teaches Economics at the University of California at Berkeley. He sometimes does videos, and podcasts of his lectures. And sometimes he just loses his mind.

The same thing seems to happen with knitting.

Geraldine in London, and the single booking

If you were searching for "Geraldine Rojas in London December", like quite a few people are right now, the site you need is tango in action, and you'll see the link to the booking page on the right. Booking is cheaper, and the requirements are more flexible, than last time.

I'm interested in the women's technique class, and I'd expect it to sell out quickly. It also occurs to me that this might possibly be a last-chance-to-see, before the new immigration rules really kick in and make it much more difficult to book visiting teachers who don't have European passports, no matter how eminent. I imagine that Mr and Mrs Paludi don't. So anyway, if you want to take that one, it probably makes sense to get a move on.

I'm also interested in "Variations on Walking Patterns - Different patterns based on walk (inside, outside, parallel walk, crossed walk) (ALL LEVELS)", and in "Fundamental Concepts for Turns (Giros) - various combinations of giros on the left and on the right (INTERMEDIATE)". I want to know what Ezequiel and Geraldine think it's important to say about these subjects, and perhaps you, dear reader, would like to know too. And I'm interested in the Milonga class, for the same reason. The "Fantasia" and advanced classes, not so much.

But for any of those, I would need to arrange the right partner. I would book alone if I could assume that the class would rotate. If it rotates, a follower can at least find out if she has any problems with the material that she needs to fix, and look for advice on how to fix them. If it doesn't rotate, it's very difficult to distinguish her problems from the leader's. If it rotates, the leaders' problems will vary, which is fine; if it doesn't, she might get stuck with someone whose particular quirks or difficulties totally prevent her working on the content of the class at all, or put her on the wrong track. The same problems apply from the leader's point of view, if not so acutely.

But these kinds of classes don't always rotate, and they're even less likely to if most people book in pairs. People get risk-averse, and avoid rotation. To be on the safe side, then, it'd be wise to take someone I can dance a whole class with, without creating new problems for either of us. Ideally, not the same person each time, because then I'm just learning to dance with him, and he is just learning to dance with me, which is no better.

It's a puzzle. Even for the single lady who's lucky enough to have options, it's a puzzle to deal with it.

Or, I suppose, two or three couples taking the same classes might arrange to rotate between themselves even if it's not enforced. I wonder how that would work?

[Update 20th Dec 08: see here for my report on the women's technique class. I also took one of the couple classes, in which there was no rotation and no attempt to rotate.]

A Coincidence

I've just made a beautifully bizarre accidental discovery.

I happened upon this site. I was actually looking for a different site, the Worst Covers of 2004, which I eventually found, and it's still hilarious. Read it if you've ever read a cheap romantic novel, and you would like to laugh quite hard for several minutes.

But anyway. Here is a small screenshot of "Romance Book Covers", after the Flash animations stop whirling.



Here, on the other hand, is a small screenshot of "Tango in Action", after the identical Flash animations stop whirling.



Poetic, no?

This is in no way odd or inexplicable; it's certainly a template, pre-designed and supplied with options to anyone who needs a website but doesn't have the relevant skills in-house. Lots of small businesses use them. They do the job they do, moderately well, and they're very reasonably priced. I wouldn't use one; but I have the skills myself.

Although now I consider the matter, I think if I were a tango small business, or any other small business, what I might do in practice is just use Blogger, together with Google's mildly-useful Calendar tool, a YouTube account, a domain name, maybe some hacking around with the stylesheet, and a little extra ingenuity in the sidebar. I could build myself something clever in PHP, but it wouldn't be a good use of time. What would be a good use of time, and money, would be getting some good photos done (as Stefano and Alexandra have in this example) and dreaming up some interesting content.

One advantage of Blogger is that it manages everything chronologically, solving the problem of cobwebs in a way that's transparent to the visitor, so you don't have to go back and update things all the time, and you don't have to lose anything either. Another would be that it's very straightforward to share the job of adding content between several people, none of them needing more than minimal skills.