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!

It's Official. I'm Old

You may have noticed that I haven't posted anything for a few days (well, more like a week), and it's because of being sick. I was diagnosed with sinusitis at the emergency room which had affected my inner ears, thus rendering me officially dizzy. Actually, beyond dizzy and into my own, private amusement park ride that I couldn't turn off.

I'm sure there are a lot of people who would respond to that by tilling me I've been dizzy for years, but that's a whole other thing.

I'm still taking the antibiotics, and will be for a while, so the bathroom has become my friend, but I'm starting to get away from some of the awful symptoms I was having. I'm off the meds for dizziness and nausea, and if I sit still and close my eyes, I still feel like the room has been moved to a decent size boat, and is gently moving just a little bit, but it's not rendering me in imminent danger of falling, as it was earlier.

The thing that makes me feel old is that I went out and bought a cane so that when I walked, if I got dizzy, I could stop and have something stable to hold onto. It's got four little feet on the bottom, and can stand on it's own, which is more than could be said for me during most of the last week.

When I saw the doctor on Thursday to check on my progress, there was a woman there with a walker that had a nice, padded seat, so she could sit down and relax if she was dizzy, and it had a compartment (bag) under the seat with space between the seat and bag that allowed her to put her yarn in it and have it feed out through the space while she crocheted. I know this dizziness will be gone soon, and I don't need a walker, but I really envied her that day.

One of the next worst things has been that my mind is just not working. I'm thankful to TiVo because I could record Stargate Universe. I watched the first half of the episode from earlier in the week at least four times so far and each time realized that I still didn't have a clue what was happening. That's probably linked to the fact that within 10 minutes of waking up, I've felt like I was ready for a nap all last week.

I'm guessing it will be about another week before I'm really up to speed as far as blogging goes, so bear with me. I have a lot of stuff that I wanted to do this past week that I need to catch up on.

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I have been working on the cabled mobius hat and stuff to go with it.

I got the yarn for it a while back (last week?) and a copy of Power Cables by Lily Chin, which I thought would help. It's a fabulous book for anyone who wants to knit cables, and especially design cables, but did not really have the information in it that I wanted. I'm still glad I bought it because it has a lot of really neat stuff, and some of it isn't things that I had thought of as cables, but it's wonderful!

After some preliminary trials, I determined that I needed a larger size needle than I originally thought, and sent for a size 9 Addi lace needle from Jimmy Beans Wool, and they got it to me very quickly, and I started swatching in earnest. A needle (or needles) with a good, sharp point is really a necessity for this project.

I did more trials than I usually do, but I haven't done something quite like this before, and considering the brain fog engendered by the combination of sinus infection and meds, I think I did quite well.

Every time I knitted a swatch, I looked at it and saw something I could improve. Then I ripped it out and did it again, but different.

Here's the next-to-the-last trial:

That's a cable needle stuck in the swatch, and my penciled chart under it. The other side looks the same except that you can't see that part of the cable needle.

But that's already been ripped out, and I've eliminated some of the space on either side of the cable, between it and the applied I-cord on the side. It looks better and is more the width I actually wanted it to be. I'll be continuing the new swatch, and it'll be the cuff of the hat.

So, being sick slowed me down, but most of the delays on both versions of the mobius hat and it's accessories has been with getting the supplies and tools to work with.

So, at this point, the hat and cowl are started, and I still have to design a scarf that carries forward the mobius theme. I have ideas going around in my head for that, but so far, I don't think that any of them are actually practical in the real knitting world that involves yarn and needles. I'm also thinking about designing mitts to go with all this, but haven't decided if I will do it. The mitts that are in my head look awfully good, though, so maybe I'll do it.

As far as the plainer mobius hat and cowl are concerned, I've finished knitting them, and have the instructions for the hat mostly written. I haven't gotten back to editing and proofing the directions, and haven't done most of the instructions for the cowl yet. I need more yarn before I can do the scarf (I think--I'll have to check what's left over, but I don't think I haven enough). I'm also trying to decide if I want to write a separate pattern for mitts to go with this, or if I'll recommend that you use the mitts pattern that I've already written and will be converting to PDF.

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In more knitting news, or, more accurately, spinning news, Spin Off Magazine has a free trial offer for their magazine. If you've let your subscription lapse, you can get a free issue. I just got my personal copy in the mail, and it really brightened up being sick. I haven't read the article about spinning paper yet, but it looks interesting.

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Firefly is on The Science Channel again tonight. You can catch The Train Job if you missed it last week, and it's followed by Bushwhacked, which is not a fun episode because it's about the reivers. My brain is still not working, and I can't figure out how to spell that.

I hope you enjoyed the two hour return of The Event last Monday, and it'll be back tomorrow night right after the return of Chuck.

I'm about to fall over asleep at this point, and Firefly is coming on, so that's it for today.

I hope you had a great weekend, and will have a wonderful week coming up!

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!

19 Days Until Christmas

Yes, I know that the title of this post is totally annoying, but it just doesn't seem real to me. We just finished Thanksgiving, and there should be a whole month left, at least.

I can't believe how much I haven't done.

Don't get me wrong, there's a lot that I have done. I'm the eternal optimist, though, and I always think I can get done lots more than it's humanly possible to do!

I'm usually disappointed.

I'm determined to get the Christmas stockings up on Angel Fire and Etsy tomorrow. I also intend to go to Joann Fabrics and WalMart, and write out the pattern for the stocking and get that up on both stores, too. That's physically impossible to do all that (given that I don't have a car, and the bus/waiting at the bus stop/walking time for that trip alone is about three hours, not counting the time actually in the stores) so it's pretty apparent that it's not going to get done.

Here's the photo of one of the almost finished stockings (again). I have to do some good photography of a finished stocking tomorrow, too, to get it listed and for the pattern.

This is a great way to package many different Christmas presents, folks, so if you're interested, check back tomorrow in case I manage to get it all up on the internet with a good photo! The one here doesn't really show off the beads and sparkle, not to mention that it's not blocked.

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No Chuck tonight! I'm going through withdrawal! And there's no The Event, either!

There's a new Hawaii Five-O, and I think Castle is new tonight, too, although I'm not certain.

Tomorrow, Syfy is having a Warehouse 13 marathon during the day, and two Christmas specials in the evening. The specials are Eureka and Warehouse 13, and you can bet that they'll be repeating the heck out of both of them between now and Christmas, so don't worry if you miss them.

The Golden Compass seems to be up for grabs this Christmas season, and a couple of the networks have run it so far (the tail end is on Syfy right now), so it'll probably be on again a few times between now and Christmas. If you've read the books, you'll see that they did an excellent job of putting it on the big screen. The problem is that it's really the first third of a story (like Fellowship of the Ring is the first third of a story), and they haven't made the other two thirds. Considering that the girl who plays Lyra is growing up, the other two movies seem unlikely. But if you liked the books, you'll like the movie, and there are some interesting knitwear in if for you knitters.

There's lots of Christmas programming on, and I'm a sucker for those kinds of movies. Eloise at Christmas was on this past weekend, and will probably be repeated sometime before Christmas. The main networks that seem to be showing this kind of stuff seem to be: Lifetime Movie Network, ABC Family and Hallmark. If you have a kid, both of the Eloise movies are a good option if you're going to watch a movie with them.

Have a terrific evening!

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!