It has been quite a week.
At the weekend I had my broken washing line repaired, so I seized advantage of the better weather and did laundry. Loads and loads of it. Day after day… as weather permitted. We have suffered a great deal of har recently, and also had heavy rainfall one day (don’t ask me which, I’m punchy.)
I skeined off some of the grey 4ply and washed and dried that while I was at it. Then I swatched for Bloke Sweater #2.
Having now got the Sanday Voices project work behind me I also braved the Windows updates that Mr L has been wanting me to make for some time. On Monday I began to prepare for the updates. I ran an Ad Aware deep scan on all drives. This took the best part of the day and parted me from my computer. Once that was done, I ran a deep virus scan on all drives. This took the rest of the day and the evening, parting me from my PC once again. On Tuesday, I spent a lot of time removing old files. Then I ran a disk check on all drives. Yep – couldn’t use the ‘puter all day again. After that task, came the defrag…
Wednesday was Spinning chez Woolgatherer. A frantic morning’s cleaning and baking ensued. I made Cranberry and White Chocolate Cookies, a Marmalade Cake, and Chocolate-coated Mars Bar Crispies. 11am came, but no spinners (it’s lambing season.) P arrived a little late, and she and I faced a mountain of cakes together. We were very brave, tried our best, and I did send some home with her for her husband. He’s fond of cake…
I had brought out my wheel but as P had her knitting with her I joined her on the sticks and we knitted together. I began the edging on my Girasole, which had made great progress during all those hours when I was nursing my PC but couldn’t actually do anything useful with it.
By mid-afternoon I was feeling really rather rubbish. I had been a little off colour all week but was now feeling terrible, in a completely indefinable way. I headed for bed before tea time and had a couple of hours’ sleep before rousing myself and knitting in bed for a while before proper bedtime.
Thursday dawned with me feeling little better, but I braved the task before me and I installed Windows Vista. Eventually. I put off the updates until Friday… and knitted the rest of my Girasole edging.
C’est finis! ready to block. It will have to join the queue.
Am now working towards finishing the Echoes of Eden fingerless mitts…
These began on magic loop but I was finding them hard going. The cable on my needle was full of kinks. Given that the stitches seem very tight as well (it’s the yarn.) I realised that they were on 2.5mm needles and promptly dug out the two needles I got to try socks on 2 circs with. So, here I am, knitting these on two circs with little Clue. The pointy Lace needles are making a huge difference. Not sure I like fiddling with two needles, though.
Things were going well until last night, when I had to rip out ALL the thumb gusset shaping when I realised I had shifted the pattern over by one stitch.
This I did while installing the final Vista security updates and a few of the optional ones…
I spotted a Writer update in there. “I’ll have that†I thought to myself. And have it I did. I am using it right now to write this post. There are some changes; auto-linking of known terms, for a start.
Once the Vista updates were done, I had to address Office… which is now re-installed but in need of setting up for my mail accounts etc. I suppose I shall have to do that some time today.
So that’s it. One full working week, spent mostly offline, has resulted in lots of fresh laundry, a finished shawl, and a fully-legal machine – instead of a quasi-legal one ((My PC was installed with Windows XP and MS Office. Both were fully legal copies but licensed to Mr L, not to me. I now have my own licences through Microsoft’s BizSpark program, completely FoC. There will be fallout from this move and I expect to have far less free time in the near future. More of this in another post.)). Notable highlights from this week’s kitchen include all those cakes, plus chilli baked beans, a caramelised onion and camembert tart, and a roasted butternut squash risotto.I feel virtuous. Despite all the cake that I am having to eat up to avoid waste. 🙂