Thank Goodness It's Friday

Actually for those of us who work at home, Friday is pretty much like any other day. The difference with weekends is there are more people around — in my case Thom — who because he had to stick around home on-call last weekend will likely want to go out this weekend. I guess we need some groceries anyway, at least the heavy ones that I can't carry home on my back (like 25 kilo bags of cat food). I pick up things on my way home from visiting mom or while running other errands all the time, but occasionally a car and a strong husband are helpful. Going to a big supermarket brings out the survivalist in me and I tend to stock up big! That's how I get away with small amounts the rest of the time — stuff that doesn't store for long: fresh fruit and veggies, dairy products, seafood etc. We eat pretty well around here. Good thing I like to cook.

Rant Alert! I'm annoyed with computer and peripheral manufacturers. My darling daughter recently gave me her old 17" monitor so I could have a bigger one. There's nothing actually wrong with my old one except that it's a mere 14" and I have to scroll a lot. OK, so I get this nice big flat screen and my speakers (which came with my last computer) no longer have a built-in place to hang and plug in. Thom managed to hook them up but the sound is tiny no matter how much we crank up the volume. Turns out my old speakers got their power from the monitor but this one doesn't have anywhere to attach them. The new monitor isn't the same brand and the manufacturer figures you have separately wired and powered speakers. So I had to go out and buy a new set of independant speakers. Luckily they aren't very expensive, but $2o could have bought me something a lot more fun, like yarn. Why couldn't there be some kind of standardization where things actually work together? Now I have yet another computer peripheral that I don't need. Add it to the several keyboards, mice, digital card reader, monitor, printer, and old computer running Windows 98SE, and I could set someone up with a perfectly functioning system — that's outdated. Who wants it? Any takers? I'll give it away free just to get it all out of my house.

Craft Report
Look what I found:
More of that dye-painted roving! I thought I'd spun it all up but it was actually only maybe half of it. Now I can make another skein like that one to the left and have enough yarn to make something more than a skinny scarf or mittens. I guess I enjoyed my Spinning Tuesdays. Now I've got a project to work on for next Tuesday. I can hardly wait.

I've been plugging away at my sewing. I got quite far on my two semi-simultaneous shirts yesterday. I already had dark red thread in both serger and sewing machine and would have had to change the thread over to black for one of shirt so I worked with the red one for awhile. Then I ran out of thread in the bobbin so after winding a new one, I switched to black on the sewing machine and carried on with the black shirt until I couldn't go any further without the serger. The stupid thing is giving me a hard time so I didn't want to change threads on the serger quite yet. I went back to working on the red shirt. It's not quite finished but I've gotten fairly far on both shirts. Should be able to finish them today before I head out to see mom in the care home.

It's been rather hot up here all week but today it's cloudy and a bit cooler. Much more pleasant to work with a hot iron, but I hope summer hasn't gone away again.