Congratulations to Autistic Youth on the release of their new LP Landmine Beach.

Break a leg on the tour!

By the way, gentle reader, inside that cover is vinyl. Kinda makes me feel all nostalgic and stuff. #1 Son gives me a new album to add to my record collection — and it’s his album.

Seems like I’m doing various interludes this week. Mostly work interludes. Now, if I could just get some time for a knitting interlude!

I had a short reprieve last evening and I hoped to spend it knitting. Alas, it was not to be. Yesterday afternoon, my phone rang:

#1 Son: Mom, my computer is broken.

Mom: Define “broken.”

#1 Son: When I try to start it up I get a weird error message and when I press [OK] it reboots and the same thing happens over and over.

Mom: What does the error message say? Exactly.

#1 Son: Something about ‘lsass.exe access denied’ and then a message about something trying to access something it didn’t have rights to.

Mom: What were you doing?

#1 Son: Nothing! When I woke up this morning it wouldn’t boot.

Mom: I don’t think this is an over-the-phone thing. I’ll look at it when I get home.

#1 Son: OK. I’m going to use your computer then because I have to get this finished.

Mom: Download anything and you will die!

#1 Son: No problemo.

So, guess what I did last evening? Of course #1 Son was gone when I arrived home. I turned it on his computer and booted it up.

lsass.exe access denied

Which is Win XP’s rather cryptic way of saying, I don’t know who you are and I’m not even sure who I am and that being the case I don’t know if it’s OK for you to log in, so I’m not going to let you. And you can’t make me. So there. Nyah, nyah, nyah

It wouldn’t boot in safe mode. [lsass.exe access denied] It wouldn’t boot to a command line. [nyah nyah nyah nyah] I could get to the repair console, but not really do anything from there that would help. I could reinstall XP, but I tend to think of that as a last-resort solution.

In the end, I pulled out the hard drive and slaved it to my (nice, well-behaved, well-protected, working) computer, manually restored a few strategic config files from a prior restore point, put everything back together and blah, blah, blah (I’m sure all 10 of my readers are fascinated by this).

Welcome back to your desktop. Have a nice day.

I ran a virus scan on both computers, just in case. Nothing was found. The cause of the “breakage” will remain a mystery.

Yes, I realize our family is a little backwards. Most people would expect that it would be me calling my techie son to help fix my computer because it’s doing something weird. Nope. We’re the opposite. I built both of these computers, set up our home network, etc. I love to push buttons and tweak things and figure out how stuff works. For me, technology is a toy. For #1 Son, technology is a tool. He just wants it to work consistently and on demand, without regard to why or how.

I want it to work too. But I can’t say that I didn’t get a little bit of technoid geeky satisfaction from the little interlude.

It seriously cut into my knitting time, though.

Perhaps Little Cow found that the grass wasn’t really greener on the other side of the pasture fence. Perhaps Little Cow became lonely and missed me. Perhaps Little Cow heard that I’d found a new little cow companion and jealously decided to break up a cozy twosome.

Perhaps I finally got caught up on my laundry and found Little Cow in a pair of jeans buried at the bottom of the laundry basket.

Which do you think is the correct answer?

I’m just glad that Little Cow is home. My mini-herd of mini-cows is posing here in front of a clump of daylilies that just started blooming. They both look pleased, don’t you think?

Moo Cow (#1 Son’s cat, that is) is sulking because I didn’t believe she was innocent.

No, you are not allowed to go back into PI history to see how long it’s been since Little Cow went missing and thus figure out how far behind I was on my laundry. Let’s just say that, while I am not going naked into the world every morning, it’s maybe been a little while since I’ve seen the actual bottom of that basket. Let’s just leave it at that.

Hah! The cherry thieves have not managed to rob me blind.

Not yet, anyway.

There are only a few truly ripe cherries so far. The birds have taken a few. That’s OK. I don’t mind sharing some. I just don’t want to share all. Because that wouldn’t be sharing, would it?

This is the sum total of my harvest so far. I’m being optimistic. There will be more!

The champagne flute was my mother’s. I rarely have an occasion to use Mama’s crystal or china or silver or any of that stuff. I’ve decided I will use it when there isn’t an occasion. Such things are made to be used and not just stuck away to be look at now and again. Right?

And I will use the antique tea cups I inherited from Grandma and her sisters, The Aunts. I will eat Ben & Jerry’s with a sterling sliver spoon from an antique china bowl. And, damn it, I’ll drink whiskey from the tiny, hand-blown stemmed glass (the family calls it a wine glass but it will hold only a shot) that was used at one of my multi-great ancestor’s wedding in 1860 or so. And I will serve cherries in Mama’s champagne flute. Yes I will.

Blogging may be sporadic for the next few weeks. Large project. Tight deadline. Much to do.

OK…. I have a little knitting content for you today. But very little, I’m afraid.

Because I don’t seem to have the time to concentrate on any larger projects In an attempt to keep 2006 the Year Of The Sock, I have two new socks-aborning on the needles.

To the left is the reborn Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in Rainbow. My plans for these toes include a second stab at arch shaping a la Meg Swansen. I think I will work the instep and ankle in the stranded stitch from the Crusoe pattern in Knitty. These socks are being worked on my trusty Inox Gray US#2 circs.

To the right is a pair of socks I’m making as a gift. I don’t think the recipient reads here, but just in case I’ll only say that it’s someone who likes red and black a lot. The yarn is Cascade Fixation (I love-a love-a love-a this yarn) in colorways 3628 (cherry red) and 8690 (black). The needles are Clover US#3 circs.

Can you tell I’m glad it’s summer and time to start knitting cotton socks again? I think Fixation is so fun in its stretchy goodness, and it comes in such great colors. How much fun can one girl have? I’m thinking of doing the lovemeknot socks in it. But maybe not in red and black. I’m thinking lime green and maybe white.

Someone asked me a question about using the Magic Cast-On with striped yarns. How do you get the stripes to “fall right?”

Well… it depends on how you want the stripes to fall…

OK. I sorry for the smart-aleck answer, but it is true. The absolute middle of the sock toe will be between the two needles that are used for the cast-on. The tail makes the loops on one needles and the “working yarn” makes the loops on the other. You are probably casting on between 20 and 30 total stitches, and that doesn’t take much yarn.

If you want the first toe round to be one color, start the first loop in the middle of the color repeat so that the working yarn and the tail are both the same color.

If you want a little stripe of a different color at the toe, start the first loop where the color changes. This is nicely illustrated by the Rainbow socks in the picture above. These toes were cast on with the tail green and the working yarn yellow.

If you want both toes to start the same, measure how far it is from the needle to the next color change when starting the first sock, and start the second sock at the same place in the color repeat.

If you want your socks to stripe randomly, start in random places.

See? It’s not hard at all.

Cherries! Yum!

They’re almost ripe too. Now if I can just keep the birds away from them.

Every year the same thing happens:

1) I see that the cherries are almost ripe, but not quite.

2) I tell myself to give them one more day and then pick them.

3) I come out the next day to pick cherries, only to find that the local birds have completely stripped the tree, leaving me with nothing but a few seeds.

4) I promise myself that next year I’m not going to wait that extra day!

So… the countdown begins. I will report back on my cherry-picking luck.

And this is the promise of good things to come in September.

The grape vines were severely whacked back last autumn, so I didn’t think I’d have much of a harvest this year. But it looks like there will be just as many as there usually is. And that means all of my friends, my colleagues at work, and 1/2 of the neighborhood will be eating grapes until sick of them until I get sick of picking and leave the rest for the racoons until they’re all gone.

I really planted the grapes in order to shade the back patio. It’s in full sun all day in the summer and really needs the shade. But I wanted a deciduous vine because there’s no sun in the winter and I need the light. Grapes grow fast and fit the bill nicely. They covered the arbor and tried to take over the whole yard in 3 years. Now they get whacked back every year.

I only have two vines. Two. They produce bushels of grapes. I prune to keep them off the roof and to prevent a stranglehold on the cherry and silk trees and to keep them in line. I do not prune for production — never even think about it. I just whack. I don’t fertilize them. Heck — I don’t even water them. Makes me wonder why grapes are seen as touchy and hard to grow. Of course, if I planted an entire vineyard my luck would probably be decidedly worse.

No knitting news. I’m knitting, but nothing noteworthy right now. I frogged out the mermaid socks. I’m just not feeling the love there. I’ve strated that pattern twice with different yarns, and both times it’s gone in the frog pond. So I’m considering what to do with the rainbow yarn.