At last

My computer woes have finally been resolved. The modem arrived yesterday and everything's working well. So now I can provide pictures for you of what I've been up to.

I head for SOAR tomorrow. There hasn't been much chatter on it this week but I do know one thing: it's been cold! Snow flurries have been falling in the night and the daytime temps have been in the 40's. Sunriver is on the high desert plateau which is around 5000 feet so it's a great place to wear one's woollens. I was able to finish the Ruba'iyat mittens for the walk from my room to the classes building.

One of the things I needed to do was clear off all my bobbins for the wheel I was taking to SOAR. In the past few weeks on and off I've been working on this fiber and plying it with a lovely heathered pink merino silk. The resulting fingering yarn came out nicely.

Autumn Sunset. 710 yards, 16 wpi, 2 ply. Medium wool plied with merino silk.

In living color!

One mitten down. One to go. The new modem's on its way. Keep your fingers crossed. In the meantime, here are a few pictures from events in the past few weeks.

Franklin Habit made it to Portland during OFFF weekend. He made a call out to his Dolores Devotees for help in arranging it and I was able to hook him up with Knit/Purl. He was quite delightful and very happy for my assistance in getting him to the City of Roses. It was my pleasure, Frank.

Judy "JMCO" Becker has adamantly said she would not learn how to spin. While my fellow spinsters are still trying to convince her to take up the craft, I've opted to take a different tack and lure her to my handspun. I spun up some Dicentra Designs merino silk into fingering weight yarn and gave her the yarn to play with. She came up with a stunning wrap that has garnered many compliments. You can read her full story of the wrap on her blog. Fabulous job Judy!

There was also Spin In Public Day in Hillsboro where we encountered rain but no one shied away from it. Not even the small fry. Baby Hazel and Mama Rachel were there with their February sweaters.

Then there was OFFF. The Spinnerati and Knitbloggers had tents on the main lawn but shade was a premium. By the end of the day we were huddled against one side of the two tents to keep from getting cooked. We had visitors from regulars like Tina Newton of Blue Moon Fiber Arts and Morgaine of Carolina Homespun to newcomers Frank Habit,

Rabbitch, and Oregon newcomers Condom Amulet Naomi with her "spinster" husband Ron and Sivia Harding (welcome!).

Another notable was this lovely lady who spun while she walked over 300 miles. This is the sweater she knitted from the yarn she spun.

Karen wore her lovely stashbuster shawl and fell in love with some mohair locks, but being the nonspinner she needed someone to spin them. I offered my services. [BEG]

Soon to come: SOAR! I looked over the requirements list for the classes I'm taking and figure I might as well pack the suitcase acquired earlier this summer with everything but the kitchen sink. In the meantime I'm preparing my arsenal because you don't know whether you may come across this.

Fall has arrived

October here in the Pacific Northwest is often our transition month. The beginning will have nice weather with a touch of coolness to the nights, then something will shift and a string of storms will come across the Pacific Ocean to begin the rain that won't quit until May. This year some cold air came down prior to the storms and gave us some frosty nights. I heard a few grumbles in the corridors of my office building but I was delighted because it meant I could wear my woollens made up last year. The wool slippers came out for evening TV watching, the Queen Anne's Lace came out for barring the drafts, and Joe's scarf is ready for those early morning walks from the parking lot to the building. I finished one of the Mini Mochi mittens yesterday and will start the second. I want to knit Beaumont but the gauge is not as fine as the mittens, so I'm going to have to do some math and graphwork to work out something. But if the mittens are done, then I'll have something pretty for my hands.

The modem's got the ball! It shoots! It ...

flies into the stands.

The saga of the computer continues. Last Wednesday I left my laptop in the hands of Dell certified guru Brandon, who shall in my pantheon of demigods stand tall as the Monitor and Network Restorer (All hail! **genuflect, genuflect**). He found my network card had truly decided to create a language of its own that wasn't communicating with the rest of the computer, so he slapped that boy into shape and in the process succeeded in restoring my monitor from the Andy Warholian 16-bit mush to proper 32-bit. He tested the computer's DSL networking and pronounced it good. Saturday when I went to spin with his wife Tami I received my laptop back. I could have gone skipping back home to test it out but I was there to spin and I had yarn to spin up for Judy. I was a good kid, finished my singles, and started plying.

When I got home, I got everything all set up and was able to talk to the modem. Yay! I did my configuration in the modem. I tried to get on line. Nothing. Tried another configuration. Nothing. By that point it was too complex for me to tackle. I found that I could go on dial-up for an extra ten bucks a month which since this was starting at the beginning of October worked out fine. I wouldn't be able to talk with my ISP until Monday evening but I had something for the weekend.

So Monday evening rolls around and I get on the horn with my ISP. Now one thing I have to say about my ISP is that despite all the mess they have been the nicest and helpful tech guys to work with. Not only that, the techs are local. Like across the river. Love 'em. They want me to be connected and use their product and I hear it in their voices. So this time around I spend nearly an hour with my tech guy trying to get the modem to let my ISP DSL talk to my computer. He can detect my computer and all that but the modem won't let me look at the Internet. So after a bunch of settings testing he thinks the modem is the issue, that it's defective, and I need to get another one.

Argh. Still no picture loading. Now where are all those original packing materials for the modem?.....

Heavy Breathing

There's been a bunch of remodeling going on in the past week in my office so I'm ensconced in a different office on a different air conditioning system to keep from reacting to the dust. However, I still have to go in those areas so I'm running around with a respirator mask on. Yesterday I got some looks that I thought bordered on rude from folks in the hallway. Then again my fellow office workers kid me with Darth Vader jokes. If it means I can breathe freely, all the better. Friday's carpet ripping nearly sent me to the ER, so I'm not taking any chances. it sucks though that with the crappy economy the company couldn't afford to send us to another site to work until it was all done.

Waiting

It's been interesting being without the computer at home. I knew I was attached to it but it took a good week to get used to not having it there. The cats are happy it's not working because they don't have to compete with the keyboard for my lap and the weather's getting chilly. A friend lent me hers but it's not being cooperative with my household set up, so I've decided to just wait until I find out for certain if my old laptop is recoverable. It's in the hands of a friend's husband, who's Dell certified, who will see if he can do anything with the old boy. The thing was built in 2001 and has held up very well. If I can get it to continue to work until next year, hopefully I can work out being able to get a new computer to replace it. I'm just glad I got the huge external hard drive for my backups; otherwise I would have been in a major world of hurt. In the meantime, there's my iPAQ and the library for checking my email. I only wish I could upload my pictures of me and Dolores playing strip parcheesi the beautiful Rubaiyat mittens I'm knitting from MiniMochi and black Cherry Tree Hill.

The move to my new office has worked out well for my allergies. I'm gradually improving. I'm getting over a small head cold that crept up on me Tuesday, hid on Wednesday, and pounced on me today. The coughing is just the cold, not my lungs trying to get air, which considering the week before is much better. The extra distance I have to walk for delivering reports and getting together with the rest of my work group has its benefits too. I'm hoping that by the end of the year I will be greatly improved.

In 4 weeks I'll be heading for Sunriver and the Spin-OFF Autumn Retreat! I looked over my badly battered finances and I'll be able to squeak out my share of the lodging and perhaps indulge in some goodies.

I did some indulgence during OFFF but not a lot: a pound of undyed Merino/ Rambouillet/ Targhee top; a couple of ounces of black silk; a project basket for next to my chair. Judy and I found another bump of the fiber I need for spinning the yarn she needs for completing her shawl at Dicentra Designs. Judy treated me to a couple bumps of fiber from the discount bin. Karen fell in love with some lovely magenta and dark blue mohair locks but she doesn't spin. I told her I would spin it up for her, so she purchased that and I'll be preparing those for spinning it up into fine yarn. I was fascinated with how Barbara was spinning up the silk bell she had brought with her, so was watching how she was working that. I'll have to see what I can find in my stash to stretch out the mohair locks. Silk? Hmmm.....