Quick-O Change-O

As I mentioned yesterday, I was knitting away on the next pair of socks when I decided that they weren’t what I wanted for my MIL’s birthday socks. I’ve got about 1/4 finished (both cuffs and partway down the legs) and I’ll probably finish them off later for myself. I found the combination of 6-ply yarn, metal needles and tight knitting are kind of hard on my hands. Plus these things are ugly and may need an overdye to be palatable. The yarn looked attractive in the ball but knitted up — not so much. Something hand-dyed would be better so yesterday I followed through on winding off 2 balls of natural white Sisu yarn into skeins and dyed them with some of the leftover Lanaset/Telana dyes that are still sitting down in my dye studio waiting to be used up. I got a lovely mid-violet with subtle rosy dashes. It’s a bit darker than I expected even though I didn’t soak the skeins in the dye but just squeezed them through purple, popped them into a casserole dish, sprinkled a little red and bright violet over top, flipped them over and repeated the red and violet sprinkles and then nuked the covered dish for 2 five-minute intervals. The water was totally clear so all the dye got into the fibre. After rinsing and spinning in the washing machine and hanging to dry overnight, I’ve wound them back into balls and cast on. Here we go again. Sorry it’s not light enough today for an accurate photo.

I think I’m going through a purple phase right now. The socks I just finished are purple-blue; this pair is redder purple; my current spinning is purple too with orange and bronze highlights. I’m currently wearing a red-purple long-sleeved t-shirt with a purple cotton cardigan over it. Hmmm…I see a theme. Maybe it’s the foggy weather? I’ve been listening to the ships in the harbour complaining about it.

Speaking of spinning, I finally took Tori out of her backpack and took a look. Almost 2 weeks ago I took her to my spinning class and when I got in my ride’s car afterward I dropped my pack out onto the curb. I’ve been afraid to look ever since. I guess Louet should have thought about putting at least a little padding in the pack because now poor Tori has a deep ding in the top of her upright. There is nothing between this part and the hard cement except a single layer of nylon fabric. Ouchie. I feel kind of like when you buy a new car and get the first dent or scratch on it. Life’s not perfect. I’ll get over it. Tori will get a little wood filler.

Further thoughts on file storage: In a comment from Silk (yes, I remember who you are!) she suggests a Zip drive to solve my backup problems. Well hon’, that used to work in the Old Days. I’ve had a 100 mb Zippy (that’s his name) for many years but now the disks don’t hold a fraction of what I need them to hold! Plus they are slowwwwwww and I only have just so many of the zip disks. They used to be around $13 EACH! Can you even get them anymore? A re-writable DVD which costs about a buck and a half holds 47 times as much and it takes 4 or 5 of them just to back up my critical stuff. You do the math. Guess I collect files like I collect books and magazines — too many! That’s why I want a portable hard drive that can be a complete copy of my computer’s hard drive, just in case. It’s really cheap insurance if you think about it.

Just for fun:

What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Dedicated Reader You are always trying to find the time to get back to your book. You are convinced that the world would be a much better place if only everyone read more.
Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm
Literate Good Citizen
Book Snob
Fad Reader
Non-Reader
What Kind of Reader Are You? Create Your Own Quiz

Why am I not surprised at this result? (Though they really should have included reading email and blogs in there!) What’s yours?