Seasilk Lattice Moebius

I am back, gentle reader, and what a journey I have had. I now have a working computer — and boy howdy is it fast compared to the old one. There were a few parts that just aren’t going to work, it appears. XP will not recognize my internal Zip drive, although the bios insists it’s there. It’s very old, however, and may have come to the end of its useful life. Or may have been harmed when the floppy bit the dust. Poor thing. Let us shed a tear. The floppy drive was fried — quite literally. There’s an amazing amount of smoke that comes pouring out when a floppy drive melts.

Note to self: This is not something that should be repeated with any frequency. In fact, never would be good.

I pretty much have software back in working order, etc. I managed to recover my mail, so nothing was lost there. Whew. Thank you to all of you who commiserated with me. I was tempted a few times to call Bobby’s hunky techie contact. But then I would have to explain what had happened. I’ve had enough embarrassment over this one, I think.

It’s all running again not a moment too soon, because in just a few short hours, I will be heading north for a Floating Knitting Retreat with Cat Bordhi, Lucy Neatby, and other wonderful knitters. Riding around on the ferries through the San Juans and knitting — what’s not to like? I think it’s going to be a blast! I will report back next week.

The first picture is what up to now has been called secret project. It can now be revealed as a lattice-stitch moebius in Sea Silk. (Note that this one is actually the right size!) This was a birthday present for my friend LT, who likes to wear pink. Although she tells me that she is branching out and trying other colors, so I will have to expand my LT palette.

ladybug, ladybug

This is a close up showing how the little ladybug stitch marker from J L Yarnworks’ Etsy shop. Isn’t that just the cutest little thing? I had a ton of fun watching it fly around the moebius while I knit, and every time it came to the front, I just had to smile.

I have not had much other knitting time. The Coriolis socks progress slowly up the ankles. I like the beads. Next time I’ll show you a pic or two.

The Particulars:

• Yarn: Sea Silk (70% silk, 30% Sea Cell / 100g, 400m per skein) in colorway Rose Garden — Parts of two skeins with a goodly bit left over.
• Needle: 47″ Knit Picks Options circular, US#6.
• Pattern: Made up as I went along, with much inspiration from A Treasury Of Magical Knitting by Cat Bordhi
• Modification to pattern:
  • Not really a lot. I used a lattice-stitch pattern.
  • Cat suggests the I-cord bind-off, which I used.
  • I trusted Cat as to how many stitches I should cast on.

Hopefully brief, that is.

Over the weekend, I was visited by some wild hare and decided I really needed to upgrade my computer. Now… my computer has been my faithful companion for three years, and there wasn’t anything wrong with it at all. But it was getting a little long in the tooth and struggling with a few newer programs I’d loaded. It was a little noisy, too, being built before quiet PCs were a good thing. Sometimes I could fancy that the fan noise almost sounded like it was breathing.

In reality it was probably gasping for breath. (Note to self: Blow the dust out occasionally, eh?)

So I decided to upgrade. With a PC of this age, that pretty much means new everything. New CPU, new motherboard, new drives, new video card, etc. I saved my sound card, my CD drive, my floppy drive, an old zip drive and a card reader. And my printer and monitor, of course. And my operating system (Win XP).

After a little research, I ran up to PC Club, where they just happened to have the exact parts I wanted. It was like fate, I tell you.

Note: I’ve done this before. I’m usually fairly successful. The things just plug together. It’s like Legos, sort of.

I got started after dinner Saturday night putting it all together. I had the old computer torn apart and the new one almost ready for a test firing when I realized that I needed a new power supply. Then I remembered that the one in #1 Son’s computer would work. So I pulled the power supply from his, put it in mine, hooked it all up, plugged it in, turned it on, and copied the old disk over to the new disk.

I knew I would have to do a repair install of XP, which I did. But then it would boot as far as the welcome screen, and then reboot, and then go as far as the welcome screen, and then reboot… lather, rinse, repeat. I didn’t know what to do. And, if you are keeping track, you will note that #1 Son’s computer wasn’t working either now, so I had no way to look it up on the internet and see what a fix might be. So I decided to reinstall Win XP from scratch, which meant all of my software, while still there on my disk, needs to be reinstalled because Windows doesn’t know where or what it is.

Note to self: Leave one working computer at all costs.

I should have just gone to bed. In the wee hours of the morning, I fried my old drive, thus rendering any kind of reinstall of the old system impossible. And I melted (yes…. melted… very exciting!) my floppy drive and probably fried my zip drive as well.

I now have two working computers, but I’m still trying to recover software. So you will excuse me because I haven’t written, I haven’t read any blogs. I’ve done a little knitting, but I can’t show you pictures because my PC still won’t talk to my camera. It’s an interesting time over hear at chez PI, gentle reader.

So far I have a nice, new, very fast, very efficient, very quiet….

doorstop.