POTW: 4 June 2012

It's been a difficult week; and probably more difficult after last week being so excellent!  Some of the interesting things weren't exactly cheerful; some of the work stuff which should have worked out fine went all to hell...  And then there was an internet thing which derailed me a bit.  I would love to be one of those people who can shrug things off; but I do tend to dwell on the things which go badly, and I had a somewhat upsetting post about a project I felt relatively happy about.  a softer world got it absolutely right, as ever.  It's just weird when you experience it in a place in which you usually feel pretty safe.

Anyway, enough about my head.  There's a Jubilee.  And it looks as if the weather was absolutely awful for the flotilla of boats along the Thames; which is a dreadful shame for all the people who put all that effort into it.  Having said that, it seems that everyone just put on their little plastic rain-hoods and got on with it... as we do.   If that link's still there when you look at this post - when they go past the National Theatre and there's the War Horse (from about 0:45) - the Queen's "look, look, Camilla", is interesting... well, it was to me, anyway.

Has to be said that the level of Jubilee effort put into this household was probably best expressed by my realising I had an appropriately-coloured tea-towel out yesterday afternoon...



Sadly, the picnic up at the local recreation ground was cancelled the night before - wisely as the weather was dreadful.  Still, with any luck the weather will be good for the Feast, which is in a fortnight...

Knitting
I finished a baby blanket, and a hat.  Both are sort of secret... I took photos for a test-knit, and I think they were pretty good.  Otherwise, my main knitting project (not a test-knit) went a bit awry.  I've PMd the designer to find out what she suggests, as this is the first project for this pattern on Ravelry and I don't seem to be able to work out how to get one of the more attractive things on it going...


Music
I had a bit of a splurge on CDs a few weeks ago - birthday money.  I bought the Fleet Foxes' Helplessness Blues and am really enjoying it.  For the last 3 months or so I've been playing wall-to-wall Bruce Springsteen, mostly the utterly superb Wrecking Ball, (here, have a link to the audio of Death to my hometown  to listen to while you read the rest of this - but please for the sake of your own sanity don't read the comments); something different around the house is nice.


Weaving
Needs a little more planning.  Thinking has been a bit off because of the internet-derailing... I can't decide whether to do something in laceweight (got a new heddle for the loom, which should handle finer yarns) or whether to weave some table-mats in the "log cabin" pattern which is the first slightly fancy thing in the fabulous weaving book I got for Christmas, Jane Patrick's Weaver's idea book ...  Weaving isn't something you want to start without considerable mental forethought - warping uses up so much yarn that if you find you've done it wrong, you've probably wasted two-thirds of your supplies before you even start...

Not a lot of spinning on the go, either...

Today I've started doing a couple of more positive things; clearing up in the back bedroom so my nephew has somewhere to sleep in July (will have to start looking at chairs which turn into beds) and washing a Manx Loaghtan fleece.  Photos of that next weekend, maybe...  I'm accomplishing the tidying up by reminding myself how much I enjoy Stephen Fry reading the Harry Potter books (which I have on cassette); and then taking the cassette player and the kitchen timer up to the back bedroom and leaving them there.  I can't stay up there for more than half an hour or so at a time because of the dust, but that's probably just as well.

Food
Went to Leon in Spitalfields on Monday night with some other knitters - first time I've been to one of their restaurants; but as they have a takeaway in the new King's Cross concourse, definitely not the last.  The dinner menu is slightly more extensive than the one I've linked to, and it's very good food at reasonable prices (certainly for central London); it arrives fast, but you couldn't describe it as fast food...

Also had my first home-cooked asparagus of the season (I want to add "Mummy sends them from Brideshead!" because any way you say it, it sounds pretentious) - lovely.  I gather it's been a terrible year for it.


Technology
After a comic interlude on delivery of a new modem (Virgin Media being majestically unaware, despite multiple confirmations,  that we have some sort of bank holiday-type-thing going on today, until Realisation on May 24...) I obtained delivery of a so-called SuperHub on Friday.  After a hugely time-wasting conversation on Friday lunchtime, we established after 36 minutes what I'd asked the guy in the first 60 seconds..."You've just delivered a wireless hub.  I don't think my PC does wireless because it's quite old.  I have a new PC coming next Friday.  Can I just plug the old phone connection in for the next week until the new one's delivered and phone you then if I can't get it to work with the instructions?..."    I stuck with the conversation because the guy from tech support who got me onto the internet again with this PC, despite my having realised I was going from Win98 to XP but failed to get the appropriate installation CD from them, was genius, so I thought this one might be able to magic up wireless on my old PC somehow (just before he plucked a pound coin from my ear and accurately predicted the lottery numbers, presumably).  I had forgotten that the previous guy was from ntl, in the Days Before Virgin Media. Sigh.

However, I have a new Argos PC table, picked up and delivered by a friend, which was really kind; particularly when I realised that I couldn't even pick the package up, let alone schlep it to the bus station as I'd been intending.  So, the current one looks like this at the moment...



And on Friday the new PC arrives.  With any luck, by next weekend the next workstation will be less cluttered...