Disaster strikes...

... dear B's laptop (on which he has been feverishly writing his dissertation and analysing data) crashed yesterday. A serious, serious crash. Blue screen of death? Not even... if we were lucky, we could *get* the blue screen of death up. It was just a black DOS screen with a "disk error", and "press ctrl-alt-del to reboot with system disk"... Nasty. Completely nasty.

He has moved houses no fewer than 5 times since starting his PhD (and buying his laptop), including moving cross-country not once but twice, and has lost his original Windows XP software CD. So, we borrowed his parent's copy so we could have a recovery disk with which to re-boot the system. I had the honour of trying to re-boot the system by CD but it just wasn't working. Some DOS commands (when I miraculously managed to get a prompt) showed that "dir" and "cd" commands were coming up with errors - probably a sign that the hard drive had been wiped.

We ended up REFORMATTING his hard drive.

He is in the middle of writing his dissertation... you can imagine what the guy is going through currently. Anyway, when we went to re-install Windows, it asked for a serial number and we entered it off the CD sleeve but it is giving us an error... don't tell me we have to re-purchase Windows?!? Oh, I forgot to mention that it DOES appear that he has all his data and his writing backed up. (Happy Dance - all things considered, anyway) He is concerned now with the missing (original) software and losing time to all this. What a mess.

Anyway, just wanted to give the update in my rock'n'roll life.

In other news:

Knitting is going fine but egyptian cotton baby blanket project deadline moved up to late August because of scheduling of baby shower (baby is due in October)....

My M-I-L will be selling llama yarn and I will likely be giving her a hand. Her latest batch from this year's shearing will be mixed with Merino. I'm not sure of the details yet, but I'll pass those along when I get them. :-)

We went for a 6 hour, 9 mile hike up to 4,000+ ft in Franconia Notch State Park on Saturday. Did we set out to do this? Not exactly. I need to do a full post on this little trip of ours. Later. First, we must fix the computer.

The Domicile, Part I

I've made some progress on the Sandnes blankie, but not enough to take another photo... I was able to get some of it done yesterday while watching Pride & Prejudice (note the ampersand) on DVD. Yes, the Pride & Prejudice production that thought it adequate to *use* an ampersand in the title... of course, I'm referring to the non-BBC, non-Colin Firth, non-Jennifer Ehle, non-pond swimming scene Pride & Prejudice. The Keira Knightley version. Ugh. Granted, cutting four hours out of the adaptation will cause the movie to suffer, but still... ugh. I'm just glad I had knitting there to soothe me as I scoffed at Keira Knightley's "acting". Don't get me wrong - she was good in Bend It Like Beckham, she even wasn't too bad in Love Actually even though that was a crappy movie, and I confess that I'm one of the four people on earth who hasn't seen Pirates of the Carribean - the first or the second - but I may cave on that one. But Pride & Prejudice? No. Ok, so I digress... not a lot of knitting content there and verging on rant... I went to my first stitch and bitch in the boston area last night - tried out the arlington group and had a good time. Thanks, of course, to Lauren for connecting Kristin and I as recent transplants to Boston. Incidentally, Kristin and I have decided that Lauren knows EVERYONE. Everyone, everywhere. Seriously, that woman is connected.

Pardon the slight disorganization (but seriously, that's as good as it's going to get for now... er, at least until Friday when my mom and dad are showing up from Toronto...), but this is our new living room. It is still a work in progress - we will hang things on the wall when we're done with the other rooms and we've still got two rooms left to go. Three, if you include the indoor porch at the front of the house (on the other side of those far living room windows). Notice my mobile knitting bag (as opposed to my "KNITTING BAG" which is an extra large, er, two extra large LL Bean totes that serve as my stash/WIP storage) strewn on the couch to the left.

And our very boring bathroom.









Ok, so these are boring pictures... I haven't figured out how to take a flattering picture of the kitchen yet - it is great - it's just a difficult room for a picture due to one super long counter... Oh, and then there's the fact that it is Dissertation Central currently. Brendan has boxes of stuff - files full of data actually - and his laptop at the kitchen table and is going to town. As for our bedroom, it is too boring to take a photo - I'll have to wait until there are things on the wall.

So, the dining room and the "office" (a.k.a. second bedroom) are complete disasters. I'm looking to make some serious progress before my parents get here. Wish me luck!

The Self-Striping Disaster of Ought Six

...also known as: my first pair of socks. Formerly known as: ill turned-out baby sweater for my friend's baby, Kian.

Now, I was pleased to successfully finish my first pair of socks (VK Fall 2002) - don't get me wrong. However, I think my Regia self-striping / self-patterning days are over. Perhaps I just picked a bad colourway - I've certainly seen other Regia or similar sock yarn knit up in much cuter patterns than these. Nevermind, I've learned a new skill - I can knit socks now. That's the important thing. Technically, I did start these socks before the "Summer of Socks" kicked off, so I will have to knit at least one more pair this summer... my goal was first to learn how to knit socks, then to learn better ways to construct socks... I'm intrigued by the single circular/magic loop, toe-up, kitchener stitch bind-off construction but I may need to try out a two circular needle sock in between the basic model (top-down, heel flap) and the deluxe (toe-up baby).

So, amidst the moving and the cleaning and the teary goodbyes (don't get me started on how much I'm going to miss the New Haven SnB crowd), I have been doing a little bit of knitting... this is my progress on the Norwegian Sandnes baby blanket in egyptian cotton. (I have to keep reminding myself that it is, indeed, egyptian cotton so that I don't tell myself that I was crazy to pick this yarn to create a blanket)

Our new place is coming together but we've hit a lull in our set-up progress... we're acquiring a couple of pieces of furniture soon-ish, so hopefully that will spur on things like picture hanging and office organizing. :-)

In recent llama news: I've finished the reversible cable scarf but owe pictures and I have news that my M-I-L got *another* llama recently. Apparently, it is a 4 yr old boy llama that plays and rough-houses with the baby boy llama and they have a famous time together. (All the other llamas are older and/or girl llamas so the addition of the younger male is apparently a good thing for the herd. er.. pack? ...herd?)