Day: July 30, 2007

So it’s tempting to put together a run-on sentence of swear words to describe the disappointment and utter sickness the next few sentences make me feel.

I got my new camera Friday.

My kids thought I was posessed and kept asking me to make that scary laughing sound again.

I took about 100 pictures.

My new camera died.

A slow, horrible death.

First I got a simple enough warning with a beep telling me to stop that or else.

Next, it wouldn’t stop trying to autofocus.

Next, it kept changing shutter speed.

Next, it stopped letting me get into menus and stopped showing me the picture preview.

Mind, it was taking pictures all the while.

So, my brain is screaming at me, I read the manual. Front to back. I do all I can do (remember I can’t get into menus). I take both batteries and charge them overnight Friday night.

Saturday morning I put a battery in & all I can do is manually focus to take pictures. But I can’t view the pictures or change any settings other than the focus.

I email the seller.

He says he never had that problem, I believe him (don’t tell me I am naive ok? I have had much contact with him and believe he is on the up & up. If you know me, you know I am a half empty kinda girl so he’s gotta be trustworthy if I haven’t jumped down his throat yet).

So for the last 3 days I have been sick to my stomach thinking I just wasted a whole lot of money. The seller is ocmmunicating with me still but is feeling like I am the one trying to pull the wool over his eyes to get my money back (possibly switching cameras & pulling a fast one on him, talk about pessimistic).

So tomorrow I take the camera into a shop we agreed on here in SB to have it looked at.

What the F am I supposed to do? He sent it, it worked. For about 2 hours, then it stopped working. And, it’s not a minor malfunction. I have a feeling it’s toast.

George was mad because I don’t just go to a store & buy something. I always do it all on the computer, buy it used for a good deal, yadayadayada…

He got over that once I cried for hours on end.

Now to move forward. I could possibly go to Ebay if it ends up not being resolved between the seller & myself. For the amount I spent I do believe I will have to pursue it.

For now, you wanna see the few pics I did get while it did work?

Well I would love to show you but I can’t.

So for now, take me as a really grumpy bitch.

But I am on the last piece of the Bedjacket from Knitting Lingerie Style using Cotton Fleece. It’s been a relatively fast knit only becuase it’s 9 separate pieces. The seaming is going to be a major process & who knows if I will do it right away or if it will get put away until my patience level has returned to normal.

Tomorrow I go back to working on the Mystery Stole. I am on Clue 4 and Clue 5 comes out Friday so I want to have it done. No high hopes on that one. Actually I have no high hopes for anything right now.

Unfortunately for my students, I have to finish the entrelac class tomorrow night and I so do not feel like being around people. Angry, snappy, not nice chauntel has entered the building. Hopefully she’ll be gone soon enough.

So, on that happy note, have a great Tuesday!

I haven’t posted or been commenting much on your blogs because I have been fighting with many retarded programs on my computer.  So, I spent the last 2 days fixing things. They are not totally fixed but well enough that I can return to cyberspace.

Knitting tonight at the Java Station will be fun, as usual. I am taking my spinning wheel tonight, hopefully Molly’s husband will join us to spin on his new Lendrum too.

My sock class at Knit & Pearl finished this last Tuesday and the ladies did a wonderful job on their first sock. I must say it turned out to be a great class to teach and I am so glad that I did it. Too bad one sock got eaten by a dog, it really happened, the dog ate her homework. But she did a good job saving the sock even though she had to buy new dpn’s to finish.

I will be teaching a beginning sweater class starting in January, that one will be a hoot I am sure!

The Shedir hat is moving right along for George. His is the only one I will get done for our Christmas trip. I am using knitpicks Telemark yarn and I do believe I love that yarn. It’s smooth and a nice wool to work with. It doesn’t feel like it is going to pill like the Merino Style or Wool of the Andes.

I have a good friend who’s daughter is getting married in January and she needs a matching stocking to hang for her future son in law. I am going to help her out by embroidering his name on a stocking that she bought that matches the rest of the kids stockings. I will post some pics of the progress once I get it started. Which will be my entire morning tomorrow so they can actually have it to decorate with.

Okay, I am off to get my wheel in the car and ready to go!

Once again my bandwidth is getting eaten up by the end of the month. I am not sure why the last 2 months I have had this problem & never before but that is why you can’t leave comments sometimes. At least that is what I am suspecting is the reason for you not being able to leave comments. I haven’t checked but it could be that there is work being done by my blog host also. Not sure which. But thank you for actually trying to leave me a comment!

My color choice is not so tulip-y though. I am using some Palette yarn I had on hand. I am not caring that they are not even close the the suggested colorway, I like the oddball colors. You know, the usual Chauntel thing. I am about halfway through the leg chart and wondering just how ugly they really will be

I guess they are fun enough. They are really fun to knit so the color choices are fine either way!

I am a cheap gardener. I hate to pay for plants when you can divide, take cuttings & conquer! Geraniums are ridiculously easy to take cuttings & root in water. Then when they are a bit more woody looking than the one in the glass on the right, you stick it in the dirt! Around here they can go straight into the ground, you don’t have to pot them first if you don’t want to. They take very little water & love the full sun we get! I have been known to grab a handful of geraniums out of containers around town & stick them in a glass in my car while I am out & about town. Hello?!!? Free plants!!!

I am only the back neck shaping & collar away from being done with the fair isle yoke.

I love it! I am very pleased with how it turned out. I didn’t need the whole chart so I worked my favorite parts of it to get them all in before running out of space. Now I have to decide what I want to do for the collar & cuffs. I am going to steek it to make it a cardigan so the fronts will need to match. I am thinking that I will do a 2 color rib but do I do a pattern like peaks (triangles) or do I do 2×2 rib with 2 colors. Not sure, I will go right back in & start messing around with it to decide. I do think the 2 color 2×2 is what is going to win out.

Yesterday was great with Tracy working on her fair isle shawl. She posted pics, you should go check them out! For her 80+ rows of fair isle on the machine, I finished 12 rows in the same amount of time. Granted, I was not sitting at the machine non-stop like she was. I had little beasties to discipline, torment & generally just be a mom to.

For the life of me I couldn’t get a really true picture of the colors. It is somewhere between the dark of the yarn on the winder,

and the bright colors of the yarn outside in natural light,

I love the colors! And I like how it stripes each row going between the blue/orange on needle 1, blue/red on needle 2 and the blue/green/purple on needle 3. It’s fantastic & another order of knitpicks dye your own yarn has been placed! I have 3 more hanks of the sock yarn to mess around with in the meantime.

Another thing I really like about using this yarn to dye is that it is so soft and it stayed that way after all the manipulation of the dyeing process. I am using size 2 needles with this yarn and getting 8sts/inch. It works out well. My hands don’t cramp nearly as much as with the size 00’s! For this set of socks I am not sure what pattern I will do. I may just do some simple stockinette socks and let the yarn do the talkin’!

I finished the Noro sweater yesterday, it had a nice long dip in woolwash and is now drying. I love the spin cycle on the washer, it cuts dry time in half! I still need to steam the yoke shaping. You can see on top of the shoulders that after each decrease row there is a row that is knit tighter. That must be steamed & pinned to dry straight.

AND I actually wrote down the entire pattern while I was making it! So with no further ado…

It’s pretty decieving but there is a 3″ difference from the hip to the waist & then out another 2″ to the bust. I will do a picture of me wearing it once it’s dry. Let me know what you think of the yoke top with the shaping in simple stockinette stitch.