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 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!

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!