FINE GAUGE SWEATER

I am very pleased with this. It is my own design. I am using DAK(designaknit) software with the SilverLink 4 and my XP PC. The pattern is one whole pattern of 250sts and 290 rows.

I have knitted it at Tension 5*, the gauge being 40sts and 44r to 10cm.

This is the shelving John is about to put up for me to store my DM's on.

Further down are photographs of my Brother Standard Gauge 940, with the iMac on the left. The other is my Silver Reed Fine Gauge 830 with the XP PC opposite it. this PC provides the patterning system for the SR8300, using a USB cable form PC to knitting machine.

THE FUTURE IS iMAC!!!!!!

This hasn’t happened for a while. I got up after only 3.5 hrs disturbed sleep. I just can’t get comfortable with the pain in my hips and legs. Taken pills and waiting for them to work. It’s not even as if the pain is really bad, just annoying and enough to make me restless.

Anyway, although right now I am using the laptop, yesterday I bought an iMac desktop. I took a memory stick with photographs of my yarn on it to see what they looked like on the iMac. I was so surprised to see my un-edited pics look just like they are in life! I am in the process of redoing all my yarn shop pictures as a result.

The machine is fast. It’s beautiful to look at. It WORKS! When I put the memory stick in my pc to get the yarn pics, it froze on me! I had to restart. That just indicated to me that I was about to make the right decision.

I had taken a while to come to the decision and Sunday night I went to bed with the decision on my mind, knowing by the time I awoke, I would know what I wanted to do. I got the iMac and already know it was right and that PC’s are jalopies by comparison.

It loaded up two programs, large ones, in the time it takes my PC’s to start up! It also came with almost all I need on it-which on my pc I had to pay for. In the end, this is not an expensive choice.

One thing I did do, which I would not have had it not been recommended by the Mac Users Group, is buy the Apple Care thing for 3 years. It is not like the crap extended warranties one can buy from PC World or Curry’s for example.

I guess I shall most of today taking new photographs of my yarns and hanking the six new dyes I did over the weekend. I would think I shall not do much dyeing or knitting this week as I will have the iMac to learn. I also still have stuff to get off my PC and onto the external and then onto the iMac.

People can be so nice. Every time I go out, to a mall, at least two or three people stop to compliment my hat or footwear or just my general attire. I  like it. It isn’t just the fact I am sitting in Daniel because I have experienced the same when walking with the sticks.

Yesterday in House of Frazer I saw some beautiful coffee crockery. I didn’t buy any because they were high in quality and price and I just can’t trust my hands enough for that. I buy nice crockery when  I see it if the price is under £15 because my grip is poor. I would be really upset if I paid £40 and then dropped it!

I forgot to say that I had booked a personal shopping hour at the Apple store. This meant I had a young man, Sam, to myself for an hour to show me the machine and answer my questions. It was very good and he was very polite and friendly. (He like so many others, was wear very low slung jeans. If only they could see how they look from behind and how it affects their gait. I am sure it is building future mobility problems!) Sam took the iMac to our car for us.

I am going to meditate now and see if I can get some rest. John  will be up in an hour and then I have to take him to the station as he is back to work in London till Friday evening. I have spent more time at the flat in London recently but won’t be there this week.

PS: my PC’s have always been high end so the problems are PC not cheap PC’s. One of the things that really got too much was the constant changing of OS and having to pay for it. I was happy with XP! Still, I won’t be worrying about that any more.

 

QUANDARY

My desktop PC has a problem, I don't know what, I am taking it to the shop Tuesday. It works fine but it has become very noisy and something sounds like it's whirring/clicking all the time, a bit like when a bike wheel turns and soemthing is hitting the spokes. It has been doing this a logn time I have to say. I figured the loud whirring is the fan. It's making this funny engine sound now. It is intermittent. Not the whole time the pc is on.

Anyway the desktop is used mostly for photography and printing. I am thinking of replacing with an Imac. I would appreciate any feedback. Here the differece in cost is not a lot. The new All In One PC's cost about the same as the Imac.

Frustratingly my laptop Pc, Acer Aspire is buggered. The wi fi won't work properly. I can, weirdly, use Skype and Norton was able to download updates. However, if I try to connect to my email or browser it can't. The diagnostic says windows cannot communicate witht eh device or DNS server. No idea what that emans. It says the device is working properly. It clearly isn't.

ON MY LAP

I am writing this sitting on my couch using my first laptop.

Other than pc working and buying this, I have done little today as yesterday’s dyeing spree left me done in.

It has been a glorious day with the sun shining bright throughout. The small independent dealer I  bought this laptop from has a glass frontage and it was very warm in there.

Shameless is not ripe yet and Luque is getting fed up! Her daughter, Bridget, has taken a dislike to her and we have had a few contretempts.

Isn’t modern technology amazing? Those who eschew modernity are missing so much and those that think life was better in the ‘old days’ must have been in La La Land then!

Hoarding

John is away in Washington DC. He will return on Sunday.

Yesterday was another beautiful day weather wise. I did my swim of 70 lengths instead of 64 as I just felt like it. Recently, without trying, I have shave 8minutes off the time it takes me to swim a mile, 64 lengths.

I spent the rest of the day on the new PC. It does so much more than I realised. I love the widescreen HD screen, now that I have got the pixels right.

The search facility is good too. I am going through and deleting many files I don't need or have multiple copies of, stuff I saved 'in case'.

I am doing the same in the house. With John, I sorted through a whole load of jackets and shirts that are too big for me now. Also shoes, some 20 years old, hardly worn, but no longer my size. All kept 'in case'. They have gone.

We are going to do the same with my yarn and machines.

The room I am in now, my PC and knitting machine room, is just a tip, so full of stuff. I have started to clear it up. Just a little corner at a time otherwise it just appears overwhelming.

I was sorting through dvd's last night too, to see what was recorded on them. It is time consuming and not always easy to keep track of which ones have been checked. I then realised that as they have sat in a pile for years, they don't contain anything important. So they went in the bin. A bit more junk in my life gone.

Whilst swimming yesterday, I was thinking about how so many don't realise that love is a verb.

Love is not a just feeling but action.

Many people wonder if they are loved by whoever. If we just looked at how we are treated by a person, we know if they love us or not by how they treat us.

The trouble is some of us are treated very badly by people who say they love us or it is assumed they do(parents). Therefore we can take a long time to realise that love is not being treated badly.

I have been with my John for almost 27 years and I know he loves me because of the way he treats me. I didn't used to know this. In fact I found him very confusing for a long time. He never shouted at me, he never hit me, he did things for me I didn't even know needed doing. He was kind and gentle with me and still is. I thought he didn't care about me! Then when I began to see he was treating me well and that maybe he loved me, I thought he was deranged because I already knew I was not worth loving. If he knew what I was really like, he wouldn't. After a while, and I knew he did know me, I then thought he must be a man with a secret - like he was serial killer or something. Seriously. I just couldn't get my head around the concept that he was a good a a sane who person who saw ME and loved me.

I don't have people in my life who don't love me. Oh, there are people I speak with, say hello too, and spend a little time with but those I am close with treat me with respect. They show show how they feel about me by their actions. They don't say and don't act it. They know, like I do, that love is a verb. It is expressed in our actions.

Today I have a dental appointment. I am so excited about that. I have dogs to groom and bath and plenty more clearing out of dross to do. I did not go swimming today.

On Saturday, I am speaking at an eating disorder convention. My first time. I have spoken at smaller meetings before but not at a big do.

New PC and stuff

I replaced my old PC which I had not realised was quite as old as it is!

I bought an HP Pavilion Elite. I can't believe how fast it is. I was not that impressed with Broadband. Now I know why. My old PC was slow and hence that limited the broadband.

This has 1TB of disc space (500gb internal and a removable 500gb drive). It has 3gb ram its an Intel Quad Core and ....now I am lost...lets just say it is fast and running smoothly. It means I can do more than one thing at a time which was very slow or not possible on my previous Pavilion.

I did not sleep at all well last night. Kept waking up and was in bed 5 hours though as I said kept waking up. I know this is because of the new PC. Strange as it may seem, until this new pc is settled and I have all my stuff on it, I won't feel settled. I have yet to figure out how to get my links and address book from the old one to this one. It is possible I know. I think I shall ask Michael next door to help me as he is a computer whiz.

For now, I did not buy a new monitor. I will as this one will be use don the old one, which I shall keep for now a sit has stuff, like my knitting design software on it and other stuff.

I also need desperately to sort this computer / knitting machine room out. It is a mess to say the least and it has got to the point I can't find stuff or move around easily!

The weather is sunny and warm. We have had a rather long and dull though not especially cold winter.

Shameless is at the point of her pregnancy where she has morning sickness and is not keen on eating though she is still eating some. It will usually pass after a week.