It's Dead, Jim!

It's not quite dead yet, but my TV is well on the way to the dump or wherever old, broken, malfunctioning TVs go.

Last Wednesday, I turned it on, and my hearing aids started buzzing. I figured that one of the pieces of equipment must have started leaking an RF signal, and the aids were picking it up. But there were thin, staticky white lines running across the picture, too.

I spent a few days trying to figure out how I could test to see if it was the TV, TiVo or RF converter. While I was doing that, I turned on the TV when I wasn't wearing the aids, and still heard the buzzing, so it wasn't an RF leak.

I continued trying to figure it out.

Today, I woke up really early, and decided to check the weather for the rest of the day before I went back to sleep. I turned on the TV, turned the sound down, and read about the weather. Then I hit the button on the remote to turn the TV off, and it went to black and restarted! I tried that about 5 more times, then tried the button directly on the TV (which did the same thing) and it restarted each time. I finally had to unplug it to actually turn it off.

Later, when I actually woke up for real, I plugged it in, waited 5 minutes (to let it warm up), and hit the on button on the TV. Nothing happened. Then I tried the on button on the remote, and it started. I tried hitting the volume button on the TV without effect, and after a few tries with the remote, I was able to adjust the volume on it so I could actually hear it!

Doctor Who is on Saturday! Friday of next week is the royal wedding! New episodes of Chuck, The Event, Castle, Hawaii Five-O, The Mentalist, Supernatural and Fringe will be on, too! Will it last? Will I be able to see them?

At this point, I'll be lucky to have enough money for food for the rest of the month, let alone money for a new or even used TV.

I'm bummed!

But the TiVo is recording The Fall of Sam Axe, so I'm going to get to see that tonight, at least.

I hope your weekend has been better than mine!

Happy President's Day!

Happy President's Day!

Congratulations to all those out there who got a paid holiday out of the deal!

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I've gradually been feeling yuckier and yuckier over the past few days, and it finally dawned on me last night that I'm actually sick.

All this seems to have started on Thursday (possibly Tuesday), but it took me until last night to realize that the lump under my ear that hurts, the sore muscles, The desire to take a nap all the time, the ache all over, and the food that wants to escape via the nearest exit shortly after I eat it might be trying to tell me something. It took a thermometer that told me that I had a low grade fever to make it actually sink in.

I spent a lot of last night too tired to keep my eyes open, but not able to actually fall asleep.

So, I've given myself the day off. Usually, I have a mental list of things that I plan to accomplish in a given day. But today, I can do anything I want. Take a nap, have some chicken soup, whatever.

So, I'm going to sign off for today. I feel like I'm rambling anyway, and I'll do better another day.

Hope you're feeling better than I am!

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Oh, wait! I found some neat knitting things on the internet that I wanted to tell you about, and nearly forgot!

Knit Picks has a new yarn out called Aloft! It's a mohair and silk lace weight yarn! I've wanted a fuzzy mohair type yarn in the past and looked in their catalog and gave up in disgust, but I (and you) don't have to do that anymore. Don't forget, you could knit two strands of this together to get a different gauge and a quicker knit!

Jimmy Beans has a broken knitting needle exchange program. If your knitting needles break, you can get them replaced through them for much less than buying new needles. Their plan only covers certain brands, but it's a big step forward for knitters!

Lion Brand Yarn has a really nice pattern out for a unique scarf! You'll have to sign in (if you've already signed up) or sign up, but it's free, and the scarf is terrific!

Have a great evening and don't miss Chuck or Castle, both of which are new! There's a new Being Human on tonight, too, on the Syfy Channel, but I saw the first episode of the original Being Human on BBC in America on Saturday, and the new one can't begin to compare to it!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Once again, it's that day dedicated to lovers! I wish you all many, many valentines this day!

If you're a history nut and want to know more about Valentine's Day, Wikipedia has lots to say about it, and you'll feel absolutely stuffed with facts if you read the entry!

You can find out about the stages and chemistry of love here!

Or, if you want to look at it another way, FX put Mr. and Mrs. Smith on for Valentine's Day earlier today. They're not replaying it, but you might want to watch it on DVD for a weird take on the season.

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If you're a knitter and would like to celebrate Valentine's Day with a sweepstakes, check out the one on the Knitty blog. They're giving away two sets (large and small sizes) of Hiya Hiya stainless steel interchangeable knitting needles to one lucky winner!

Also for knitters: find out how one school is using knitting to teach a lot of different subjects.

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In more knitting news, I've ordered the yarn to make another mobius hat so I can take more photos and make some accessories to go with it while I write up the instructions.

Here's a photo of the hat (which was also in yesterdays blog post). I think it's relevant because it has a heart on it, although I'm also going to make a version with a star. I'll include directions for both.

I guess the star version would be especially good for Christmas.

I ordered the yarn from Mary Maxim yesterday. It's their Starlette Tweed yarn in the Mariner color. It's the featured color at the top of the page, a soft blue.

Yeah, I'd like to make it in wool, but I couldn't find a nice tweed (which I wanted) in a pretty blue (which I also wanted) at anything near a reasonable price. So, there we are. I haven't tried the Starlette Tweed yet, so I'm a little worried about the quality, but I've gotten nice stuff from Mary Maxim before, so I have my fingers crossed.

Since I don't have a lot of money begging to be spent on yarn at the moment, I'm opting for speed in getting it knitted and getting pictures taken and the instructions written.

In the meantime, I'm going to use some yarn I have on hand to start knitting and writing the Screaming KnitFit version of this hat. I have nearly four skeins of Wool Ease in Violet, which is a cool, dark purple, plus part of a skein of some furry yarn (not Fun Fur, but that could be used). I'm using a different brand of furry yarn because it nearly matches the purple yarn.

Since it's in my stash, I can jump in and start knitting tonight, and go get some more furry yarn later in the week.

New topic here, but still about knitting: I ordered an Addi lace circular needle from Jimmy Beans Wool last Wednesday evening, very late (probably around or after midnight), and it was in my mailbox waiting for me to pick it up on Friday morning! That's slightly more than one day! I think they deserve a silver star and a mention for that fabulous service!

I'm thinking about getting another pair of Addis to make the mobius hat, scart, etc on. I'm really in love with these needles. If you ever tried the Bryspun circular needles and loved the points, you'll love these, too.

The points are a bit concave, which lets them have a point that's not too pointy, but still lets you do K2tog and other increases and decreases plus lace knitting without having to fight with the needles to do it. They have a clear resin coating which seems to let your knitting slide as well as the nickel-coated ones or the grey resin coated ones when you want your knitting to slide, but has enough grip that the last few stitches of a row don't try to escape the way they do on the slicker needles.

 They're just a dream to knit with! I love tools that work well!

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Tonight, there's a brand new Chuck, and I'd be surprised if they didn't put in something about Valentines Day!

There's also a brand new Castle!

The network is saying that they're still showing new episodes of Hawaii Five-O on Mondays, but they've been showing reruns on Mondays for a while. So, I'm not sure.

So, it's a hard choice between that and Warehouse 13, which is a hilarious rerun tonight.

My sister also recommended Harry's Law, which is in the same time slot, but I'm finding that they usually rerun it on Saturday night, so, as usual, there's a way to have three shows that are shown at the same time, but watch them at different times. I just have to wait until Saturday.

But, unfortunately, not all four.

Have a great evening!

Happy Groundhog Day!

Once again, that time of year has rolled around again.

Yes, folks, it's Groundhog Day!

Opinions seem to be divided about whether the groundhog saw his shadow in my area. When I first woke up, it was overcast here, so it would have been impossible to see a shadow. But then it cleared up and it's been sunny all day.

In Pennsylvania, they have happier news. Punxutawney Phil did not see his shadow, so it's (theoretically) going to be an easy balance of Winter. Let's hope he's right. We got enough snow last year where I live for the next five years, so we deserve it.

In Atlanta, their local groundhog agrees with Phil, so it's probably going to be an early Spring both North and South of here.

For those of you who want to celebrate it with a movie, one of the Encore channels is playing Groundhog Day all day to day, over and over and over again, kind of like in the movie.

In old Gaelic folklore, it's also St. Brigid's Day, also known as Candlemas and Imbolc, which may have been a precursor to Groundhog Day.

 Are you completely bored with this yet?

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I've been knitting like a crazy person on some Christmas presents for some people I won't see until next week. Unfortunately, that means that I can't show you pictures and spoil the surprise.

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In other TV news, the second of the two Human Target episodes that we missed a couple of weeks ago will be on tonight! The first of the two was repeated on Monday along with a new Chuck. If you have a TiVo and don't want to miss Human Target, I suggest that you program a season pass for it. Fox seems to be persecuting it the way it did Firefly!

And although NBC said they were going to show a new Castle on Monday, they didn't and instead showed a rerun. Shame on you, NBC!

Back on the subject of tonight, there will be a rerun of Supernatural, and it will be on at the same time as Human Target, natch! You didn't think that as much as the networks seem to hate Wednesday, that they'd conveniently put the good things on a different times, did you?

Speaking of TV, if you live in the Northern Virginia area and you'd like to get a TiVo HD, leave a comment. I have one for sale for a limited time for a low, low price and a 5 month contract for service (it won't work without the service). More details are available to commenters. I won't bore you with them here.

I'm still having lots of problems with internet, so there still won't be a lot of posts until I can get that ironed out. Sorry, but it's such a fight to get something up.

Have a fabulous week, and I wish no more snow to all the people who have already gotten too much!

Have a Lucky New Year!

I got an email today, and this is what it said.

Essentially, feeling like you're lucky, or wearing a lucky charm actually seems to affect your luck in a positive way!

All over the world, you find spinners and knitters throughout history that have a belief that making yarn or knitting something for a specific person and thinking happy, lucky, or healing thoughts has the corresponding effect on the person when they wear the item. And these are cultures and times where the people had no real communication with each other, but it pops up everywhere and when.

It's nice to know that modern studies agree with age-old beliefs!

Posting this makes me feel like Immanuel Velikovski!

And it's one reason I always wish you a nice day, evening, week or weekend at the end of a post.

Reruns of Chuck and Castle are on tonight! Have fun!

It's Monday

I'm becoming a real stick-in-the-mud lately. I've been knitting like crazy to get some Christmas presents done, and watching TV while I'm doing it.

Which means that although it's been a lot of fun for me, it's not a good idea to post photos of what I'm making because some of the people I'm making presents for read this blog. So, I can't really tell you about it.

But here's something I can tell you about.

I've ordered some yarn to make Christmas projects that I plan to sell! I'll be making a limited edition of 10 (if there's enough yarn, and I think there will be) Christmas stockings!

The main yarn for it will be Classic Worsted Tapestry yarn in Chili Pepper. It's a self patterning yarn as you can see by the knitted sample below.

There will be a cuff around the top of white Fun Fur from Lion Brand, and the toes and heels will be plain white yarn. There will also be some size E glass seed beads randomly in the leg of the stocking to add a little sparkle. The beads I'll be using have a "rainbow" finish, in other words they look like carnival glass.

Although the yarn is named Worsted, it's light enough that I can actually place the beads at random with a crochet hook if I want to rather than stringing them before I start to knit. I haven't decided which way I'd rather do it. I like the spontaneous place-as-the-mood-hits-you freedom of using a hook, but the project will be more portable if I string them first. I think I'm going to use a hook, but haven't decided absolutely.

Which reminds me that Tulip has some new crochet hooks that are just coming out, and I've read some really good things about them. They'll be distributed by Caron in the US, but they don't have any available yet, or didn't last week, anyway. There are aluminum hooks with black handles and gold hooks as well as steel hooks with blue handles.

The links show a whole set of them, but Caron will have the aluminum ones available individually. They haven't said whether they'll carry the steel hooks individually, though. Personally, I like steel hooks better, because the hook part is smaller and easier to insert, but the shaft is tapered, so you can push it through to the diameter you want for your project. It's easier for me to use and much more flexible as to effect created. Steel hooks are just too small for some projects, though.

You can find a review of the aluminum hooks here.

If you're using them for beading, like me, Tulip will (someday soon) have out a line of Sucre beading hooks, specifically intended for beading! They're color coded according to size, and you can see the sizes offered and the color coding by following the link.

While I'm on a roll with knitting content, I want to make sure you know that Vogue Knitting is having a sale on their patterns, just in case you're looking for something to knit someone for Christmas, too!

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Speaking of TV, there was a lot that was interesting on this past weekend.

The Golden Compass made it's TV premier on Saturday and Sunday, completely uncut according to the advertising. It was fairly true to the book, but suffers from the fact that the book was the first of a series of three books that comprise a whole story. They did their best to give it a good ending, but all the ending really did was promise that there would be more to the whole thing, which hasn't happened so far.

ABC Family put on as much of the Harry Potter movies as they could over the weekend, too. I recorded them on my TiVo, but haven't watched them yet. Of course I've seen them all, but this time they're showing tons of trailers for the next movie, which is the first part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I want to go see the movie, but it will be a cliffhanger, so I'm a little less sure.

There's a new episode of Chuck on tonight! It wasn't on last week, and I really missed it! It'll be followed by a new episode of The Event, which continues to be top-notch in the exciting, science fiction, action and adventure departments! There will also be new episodes of Castle and Hawaii Five-O. Obviously, Hawaii Five-O isn't science fiction, but it has Alex O'Loughlin (Moonlight) and Grace Park (Battlestar Galactica) in it, and it's really a good show.

I'm going to get back to my knitting now, and make some great Christmas presents. You'll hear more about it later.

Got to go! Chuck is coming on!

Have a wonderful evening!

Fall Fiber Fest Aftermath

I'll bet you're all ready to see all the beautiful things I got at the Fall Fiber Fest.

Well, we didn't go.

It was a combination of a lot of things. The bad economy, Holly being low on money due to the new Hummer, the current cost of gas combined with the distance to the Festival, and the torrential rains that happened earlier in the week coupled with our vivid memories of the muddy mess that ensued a few years ago after two days of light rain.

But, in an effort to make up for it all, the universe managed to time my brand new Herrshner's Fall Yarn Sale catalog to arrive on Saturday. So, I had a lot of great yarn to look at! I'd gotten Herrshner's catalogs a few years ago, and thought they only had a poor selection of yucky acrylic yarns, but two years ago, they sent me their Fall Yarn Sale catalog, and I discovered they have lots of wool, alpaca, and many other yarns with natural fibers in them. Not to mention some acrylic yarns that are really nice!

I got my order in today, and if you're interested, check it out. I ordered some Bernat Mosaic yarn, and they're already sold out of some of the colors. I thought I'd have a tough time deciding between their ambrosia colorway and mosaic, but the ambrosia is sold out, so there wasn't much of a choice.

This is the ambrosia colorway:

This is what it looks like made up.

Here's Mosaic, the color I did order:

Here's how it looks made up:

I think I'm going to like it. The only problem with it will be trying to let go of it so that I can give it to someone else as a Christmas present!

They had some yarn I bought to trim Christmas stockings, too.

I got some in the lavender (shown), black and white.

I also, finally, ordered the 16 inch size 7 Addi lace needles! The listing on Herrshner's says the size of the needles, but doesn't say the length. I called up the store and asked them, and the guy I talked to was reading the listing, and assured me that they are 16 inches. Then he said "Holy cow! Those are almost 17 dollars!" I told him that was why I wanted to be sure!

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Holly had surgery on her leg today, and planned to go to work afterward. She just called to tell me that it had gone well, and that afterwards she was so stressed out that she decided to call in sick today. She was at a restaurant with Robin when she called and planned to go home and start the cowl that she's supposed to make for the retreat in. The one she hasn't started yet! Oh, and she planned to watch a football game, too. That should be relaxing.

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An all new Chuck will be on tonight! And a new Castle!

I apologize for saying that there was an episode of Human Target on Friday. My digital TV Guide said that there was up until it recorded House on Friday evening. I hate it when they do that!

Have a fun evening tonight!