Look! My computer is speaking to me! I have the internets back! I have pictures!

Ah… it’s the little things that make me happy.

I won’t bore you, gentle reader, with the long and sordid tale of what it took to get this damn doorstop fine computer back amongst the living. Suffice it to say it’s been a long, slow, tortuous path. I lost a few things in one of the restores, but not things I can’t get back (I’m still hoping). Fortunately I keep my data on a drive separate from my operating system, and I back my data up religiously.

But enough techie stuff.

The socks have progressed further than this now. Not a lot further because I just haven’t had nearly enough knitting time. But I’m a ways up the ankle now. I hope to get these wrapped up this weekend. Then the rainbow socks might have to still wait a bit while I try out some of that new Sock Candy. Yum!

I was minding my own business yesterday, doing a little computer stuff and uploading some files to PI, when WinXP decided to download some updates. And when WinXP wants to download updates, it wants complete control and it doesn’t stop to ask please even if you tell it to. I’ve had this happen twice before (update download during upload to web), and both times XP has been damaged.

This time my (nice, well-behaved, well-protected, working) computer has been turned in to a large doorstop. It’s a pretty, flashy, glowing doorstop, but a doorstop nonetheless.

Yep, it’s deader than Marley’s ghost. Deader than a doornail. Dead.

Try to boot: Cannot boot. System files corrupted or missing.

Try to repair: Blue Screen Of Death, BAD_POOL_CALLER

Say what?

In the end, I had to resort to reinstalling XP from scratch, which means I lost Windows knowledge of all of the software I have installed, some of which I need and use every day. Some of which gets me to the Internets. I tried something to “fix” it, and it’s gone back to being dead. No reason giving. Just won’t boot. So I will reinstall again. I have a backup that’s about 4 months old. It should be reasonably close. I haven’t done that many new things since then. So, reinstall again, and then restore, and then we’ll see.

I tried to use #1 Son’s (newly working) computer last night to check my e-mail, and I couldn’t get to the web on his computer either. And I couldn’t figure out why, I tried and tried and tried everything I knew. I worked at it for 2 hours last night (e-mail is a powerful incentive). I could talk to the network router, but that’s as far as I could go. It was very mysterious.

This morning I tried again. Still no go.

Then I went back to my desk to get something and noticed that the modem wasn’t working. See, it’s powered through the battery backup that my computer is on. And I’d turned it off when I shut down the doorstop.

That’s right, gentle reader, it does indeed work better if you plug it in.

Three hours killed to learn that little lesson. Ah well.

I planned on showing you knitting progress today. But, alas, the pictures are on my damn computer. There will be no pictures until I can get my computer talking to the world again. 😥

You will have to trust me when I say that the Fixation socks are coming along nicely, I’m almost ready to start working on the Rainbow socks again, and all that STR is yelling knit me, knit me.

[sigh] Computer things seem to come in waves. Once I get past this, it should settle down for awhile again. Here’s hoping!

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.

Helen declared my secret project to be “not socks.”

Nope. It was socks. I wanted to try a toe-up version of the fitted-arch socks in Meg Swansen’s Knitting.

Above are side, bottom and top views of the result. (Be sure to click on the pic to get the biggy version.) I made these anklets because my hands were too sore to knit with size US#1 needles any more I got bored knitting ribbed cables I think they look great that way.

The particulars:

• Socks That Rock in colorway Carbon
• two 24″ US#1 Inox Gray circular needles
• foot: stockinette stitch
• heel: Eye Of Partridge stitch
• cuff: ribbles (i.e. ribbed cables)
• technique: shaped arches

Lessons learned:

• I should have started the shaping back further from the toe. That would have kept the toe from being poochy underneath.
• This toe looks too pointy. I should try a toe that has the shaping closer to the sides.
• This colorway looks amazing in Eye Of Partridge
• For some reason the arch shaping kept the socks from pooling.
• Fitter arches feel great and I need to try this again.
• Band heels do not appear to fit my feet well.

On a completely different subject Daisy asks:

Can you give me more information on the Rose Festival? I am a single mom living in Wyoming, my daughter is attending college in Oregon, so I will be driving through Portland in two weeks to help her move out of the dorm. I have driven through Portland once, but did not get off the interstate, so I am not familiar with the city at all, I have always thought I would like to explore Portland, but don’t even know where to start. Would you mind giving me some information on the city?

Here are some links that hopefully will get you started on Portland and the surrounding area.

Portland Rose Festival, Portland visitor’s info
Mt. St. Helens
Multnomah Falls
Mt. Hood
the Oregon coast

One further hint: If you come during Rose Festival, bring your umbrella. It never fails to rain.

… never let it be said that I can’t make a good one!

The task was not so hard. Not really. I simply needed to wind a hank of Socks That Rock into two balls. Usually I do that at home with my low-tech equipment (nostepinne and chair). Today I decided to wind at Tangle Knitting Studio because Alice has a yarn measure so it’s easy to tell when 1/2 of the yarn has been wound.

I have wound yarn there before. Really. But the yarn measure thingy is a little new to me.

It turns out that when the yarn goes through the measure thingy, the balls are wound sort of tight. I also had some problem with the ball winder coming un-anchored and falling on the floor. And I no sooner got that picked up and re-anchored than the center thing that the yarn winds around fell off with my ball on it. Needless to say that the first ball was a little strange looking. I decided to rewind it. I pulled on the center end, and it stuck. So I pulled a little harder, and the ball started to fall apart. Someone else needed to wind yarn, so I moved over out of the way and started trying to untangle my yarn.

And it got worse, and worse, and worse. At one point I actually had the yarn tangled through the slats on the back of a chair. I have no idea how I did that. I was afraid I would have to take the chair home. I told Alice I hoped she didn’t mind too much staying open for a little longer than normal.

When it became clear that my ball of yarn was becoming increasingly more tangled, I began to press other Tangle (oh what a now-appropriate name that is!) visitors and customers into service. Eventually there were three of us untangling different portions of the yarn while Alice tried to wind it with the ball winder.

Alice was only semi-successful because the part she had was so tangled.

But when the other end of the yarn was finally located and freed, and the chair was unchained, and we began to get a little bit of control back, I started winding the yarn on to the swift. Then it was down to myself swifting and Alice untangling, and we finally got it back on the swift.

From there I could wind it using the ball winder, and bypassing the measure.

I wish I’d thought to take a picture of us all hysterically untangling yarn. It’s amazing how tangled 500 feet or so of yarn can get. But I did not think to stop and grab my camera, so you will have to be content with pictures of my Tipsy Knitter socks, which I finished this morning.

The second picture is my happy feet enjoying the fine, yarny Tangle ambiance. Look at that lovely cabled heel! (click on the pictures for the biggy version)

And here are the finished socks after washing and blocking. They are a bit fraternal. But, strangely enough, if I hold my legs together the diagonal stripes on one leg meet the diagonal stripes on the other leg. There’s a couple of splotches of pooling, but both are under the foot, so who cares? I love their red rock stripy-ness. I think it fits the leaning ladders and cables perfectly.

The particulars:

• two Inox Gray US#2 circular needles
• Socks That Rock in colorway Red Rock Canyon
• The stitch pattern is called Tipsy Knitter in the Socks Socks Socks book and Tilting Ladders in Barbara Walker’s Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns. I used the pattern more as an inspiration than actually something to follow.

• Changes made: I knit toe-up instead of top-down. I used a star toe. I ribbed the top instead of using cables. I didn’t think the cables would hold the sock up as well as ribbing.

You can see from the pictures that the socks fit pretty good. They are a little big, especially in the toes. But I think washing without blocking will help them to pull in a little tighter.

They certainly fit a lot better than I thought they did on the night that I almost frogged them out!

And what am I doing with the yarn I was tangling up winding today? Ah… it’s something of an experiment. I will post pics if it works out.

My favorite rose is blooming! This is Eyepaint. It will bloom fairly constantly until November. I love to look out in my yard and see its cheerful blossoms dancing in the breeze.

The other roses have buds, also, although they haven’t opened yet. I am reminded that it’s almost time for Rose Festival here in Portland.

Thank you to every one who commented about the rainbow socks. I guess I’ll keep them. (sorry Starr) 😉

A friend of mine needed someone to take a few things down to his beach house this weekend and then be there while some guys install a wood stove. I jumped up and down yelling pick me! pick me! volunteered.

I’m taking all most of my unfinished objects and I’m going to spend the weekend knitting. I’m leaving right after work today. It’s supposed to rain all weekend, so I won’t have any distractions to keep me from finishing something. I’d really like to make some progress on the green sweater. And the tipsy knitter socks are only a couple of pattern repeats away from being done.

Shelly asks:

What’s you favorite reference for toe up contruction?

I have to admit that I don’t really have one. Most of my favorite sock books are for top-down construction. I love Nancy Bush’s books, for example, but they’re all top-down. Toe-up construction just isn’t addressed by most of my favorite designers.

I’ve found that many top-down sock patterns can be worked toe-up by reading and working the pattern backwards. It doesn’t always work, but in most cases it can be done with a little modification.

For the basic sock construction, I often just use my favorite techniques and go for it. Of course, I always start with Judy’s Magic Cast-On For Toe-Up Socks. And I have a favorite heel (flap-and-gusset type) that I usually work. I’ve found that a standard pointy toe fits my foot better (although I don’t seem to have worked many lately, looks like I’m stuck on rounder toes right now). I usually look through my stitch pattern books until I find one that I’d like to try. Sometimes I start with the stitch pattern and pick a yarn I think will go well with it, and sometimes I pick the yarn first and then look for a stitch pattern.

I do encourage everyone to try two-at-once sock knitting. It isn’t any faster than doing them one at a time, but it certainly alleviates the dreaded second sock syndrome. And it’s easy to do, especially if you are already familiar with knitting one sock using either two circulars or magic loop.

Just cast on one sock, then use a second ball of yarn to cast on the second sock. Knit from the first needle on both socks (remembering between the socks to drop the yarn for the first sock and pick up the yarn for the second sock), then turn the needles around and knit from the second needle on both socks. And go around and around and around until you have a foot. Then work the heel on the first sock while the second one just hangs there. Finish the heel of the first sock, then work the heel of the second sock while the first sock rests. Then go back to knitting around and around until you have a pair of socks. Cast off. Done.

I don’t know if that was helpful or not! I hope it was.