stale coffee

Velvet Worms

Posted on 17 June 2009 | No responses

It’s been a fairly lazy summer so far and the weather has been less-than-delightful lately, but today is absolutely gorgeous. However, we ran out of coffee entirely two days ago, so I wasn’t really up to writing a post, regardless of the weather, until I got at least two big cups of French roast into me.

I’ve been somewhat productive on the knitting front. Just small things, though. Image intensive content ahead.

A (roomy) dice bag for Nate, because the little faux-velvet thing one of his five sets came with just wasn’t cutting it for all those dice.

Pattern: Drawstring Bag
Yarn: One full ball of Peaches & Creme in Licorice
Needles: US 10.5/6.5mm

Another dice bag. Not as big as the one above, but still more than big enough for a few sets of polyhedral gaming dice.

Pattern: A heavy modification of the Drawstring Bag
Yarn: About 50% of a ball of Peaches & Creme
Needles: US 7/5.0mm and a size H/8 crochet hook (for the base)

And a quick little wrist pillow for Nate (who was complaining the edge of his mousepad was uncomfortable for his wrist and was using folded paper towels as a cushion).

Pattern: Improvised. CO 20 sts and worked a 6 inch swatch which I then folded in half, stuffed and seamed shut.
Yarn: About 25% of a ball of Peaches & Creme
Needles: US 8

I also decided to attempt a project with sock yarn and my size 2 Knitpicks DPNs, so I cast on for the first of a pair of Jacoby mitts a couple of days ago.

The cast on and first row or two were tricky with such small needles, but after that, it got progressively easier. So far, so good. I’m hoping once I get to the thumb gusset, it won’t be overwhelming.

In other knit-related news, I’ve been quite the bargain hunter. I found a bunch of people on Etsy who were doing destashing sales and managed to grab up approximately 1200 yards of hand-dyed laceweight wool for $8 USD (plus $4 shipping). It just arrived today and is gorgeous. I’m not entirely sure if it’s merino or just plain wool, but it’s fairly soft and definitely deserves an elegant pattern to do it justice. I’m thinking a shawl of some sort.

I also scored two skeins of Regia Galaxy sock yarn from Knit and Tonic’s destash (haven’t arrived yet) for a good price.

Knitting aside… I AM TERRIBLY UPSET. I was really, really looking forward to the Ghostbusters video game that just came out… only to discover that the PC version (the one I’d be getting because I’m primarily a PC gamer and don’t own any of the new consoles outside of my DS lite) has had any and all multiplayer capability removed. Sure, it’s $20 cheaper than the console versions, but what’s the point in playing that kind of action game when you can’t play it with other people? It’s being sold over steam, for christ’s sake, and you can’t do multiplayer?! Not even co-op??? What’s the sense in that?!

This is almost as irritating as Valve’s brilliant (read: idiotic) idea to announce a sequel to Left 4 Dead when they haven’t added hardly anything to the first game. L4D is hardly a year old and they’re already going to dump it for a sequel which looks and apparently plays (according to reports on trying the initial demo at E3) almost exactly the same as the first game?? That’s ridiculous. That’s why I’m currently boycotting it unless they can offer something more than reskins and a couple of new weapons for an additional $50 price tag.

At the very least, I’m hoping Star Trek Online won’t be too terrible. However, if it follows the god awful example of that terrible movie JJ Abrams made, I’ll probably be disappointed in that as well.

WHUNK-WHUNK

Posted on 4 June 2009 | 3 responses

I left my computer on over night on Thursday to let it defrag after clearing out some old programs and other files from my HD to free up some space. Little did I expect I would be awakened at 8:30am yesterday morning to the delightful tune of “WHUNK-WHUNK-WHUNK” coming from my computer. I jumped out of bed to go assess the situation and found my monitor with a blue error screen on it, basically telling me something about a kernel core problem and that, essentially, my computer had something seriously wrong with it. Thanks, Windows. I really couldn’t tell on my own.

Anyhow, I shut it down manually and tried rebooting. The BIOS loaded fine (meaning the motherboard and processor were okay), but it wouldn’t load any further than that. The OS would not load and thusly the computer wouldn’t get past the very basics of booting. That, combined with the WHUNK-WHUNK told me one thing: my hard drive was dead.

So, after cursory inspection of the inside of my machine, Nate removed the deceased HD with a bit of effort. Giving it a little shake caused this bizarre squeaky noise not too dissimilar to a DJ scratching on a record. Hard drives aren’t supposed to sound like that.

Now, I could have easily just decided to trash the whole thing and just buy a brand new computer entirely, but I didn’t feel like spending that kind of money so soon after getting all the stuff involved in the construction of Nate’s new monster rig… and I’d kind of like to wait for the core i5 and Windows 7 to come out before I get myself a new system of any sort. Soooo, I bit the bullet and once again turned to Newegg to order myself a new hard drive and, consequently, OS disc because my computer didn’t come with one when I bought it. Convenient.

We chose 1-Day delivery service and it did, as promised, arrive today. Nate set to installing the bugger, which went over pretty well until we had an issue with the Windows installer not wanting to recognize the new hard drive even though the BIOS said it was there. Turns out, with some quick Googling (When I wasn’t having a mini panic-attack about potentially losing my computer and wasting money on replacement items which would go to no use), XP does not have native support for SATA drives. Nate set it to IDE instead and it installed. It’s slower than SATA would be, but at least it works.

I ended up losing, well, everything I had saved on my computer, but nothing terribly valuable. At least I have more space now.

On another, unrelated note, my dear brother sent me a small package containing some cute sugar cubes and two absinthe spoons.

Wheeze

Posted on 23 May 2009 | No responses

Yesterday started off well enough. Until we got home from morning errands to find our precious Pembroke Welsh Corgi, Spider, having a terrible amount of trouble breathing and generally looking disoriented and dazed. His gums were slightly pale and I decided that it was no time to piddlefart around and hope he snapped out of it.

Contagious

Posted on 22 May 2009 | No responses

Illustration Friday.

This week’s theme: “Contagious”.

Zombies like to give it, but can’t take it, apparently.

Lazy

Posted on 21 May 2009 | No responses

Semester’s over. Time to relax and loaf around!

To “celebrate”, we grabbed some books from the UMD library, then we hung out with friends after Nate’s final final. Old Country Buffet and browsing around Barnes and Noble, GameStop and BestBuy.

We ended up with a pretty decent haul and didn’t actually spend all that much in the process.

From the library:

From Barnes and Noble:

And we grabbed Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume from GameStop and then Empire Total War from Best Buy.

D-IKEA-Y

Posted on 9 May 2009 | 2 responses

I’ve had a HULTET bowl from IKEA for several years. It’s a decorative bowl, unsuited for food or liquids, so it’s mostly sat around on various tables and shelves, sometimes holding candies, wax tarts, tea lights, beads or other odds and ends.

Once I started knitting, I began to use the bowl to hold my yarn as I worked with it. Then, after spying some yarn bowls made from ceramics, I had an idea involving my modest little bamboo bowl and my dremel.

I first went at it with the cutting disc, making roughly a 5mm deep cut into the side of the bowl, just to give the small sanding drum a bit of a catch to guide it. I then used the sanding drum to make the actual slit into the side of the bowl, going straight down for a little, then making a gradual curve to the left, finally making a small catch to help the yarn from jumping up and out of the gap when being used.

Ideally, I’d like a finer grain sanding drum to finish, but I don’t have one in my kit and don’t feel like going out to get one right now. Maybe soon. I’d also like some laquer to coat the inside of the gap, but I don’t have any of that on hand either. Really, this is just an experiment, but considering the bowls are really well priced and easy to mod, I might make some of these for sale eventually.

Gray May Day

Posted on 1 May 2009 | No responses

It’s a pretty dreary day today. But I come bearing an FO, some yarn porn and other picture spam!

First, a Mothers’ Day gift finished early:

Pattern: Book Sweater
Yarn: About 25% of a skein of Caron Simply soft in Autumn Red
Needles: US 7/5.0mm
Started: Apr 6
Finished: Apr 29

I recently got into the world of exploiting Ebay for deals on yarn and supplies. I managed to grab two skeins of Lane Cervinia Calzetteria for less than $4 total (plus $3.60 shipping).

I also ended up getting a lot of 12 sets of bamboo DPNs (sizes 1-11) for $9.99 with free shipping. They’re not a name brand and shipped from China (so it took a while for them to arrive), but for that price, it was a steal until I can find occasion to obtain something like a Knitpicks DPN set or something like that.

Additionally, I got a set of bamboo circs separately and a while before I got the DPNs from Etsy. I’ve been lazy about taking pictures of them, so here’s one.

And, finally in unrelated news, here’s my first submission to Illustration Friday: a quick digital painting. The theme for this last week was “Theatre“.

Oh yeah

Posted on 24 April 2009 | No responses

I still draw. Seriously. Here’s a peek at my new art project:

Peek

And here’re a couple of recently completed pieces (sorry, too lazy to make thumbnails):

Ammonites (Buy a print or mousepad)
Hannya

OH! Dudes, I found an awesome site featuring badly drawn pictures of Spock from Star Trek. I will be submitting a piece or two of my own to the collection soonishly.

Aaaaand on a teeny tiny side note: I’ve changed some stuff around on the blog. Nothing major, but I like it more now. Just need to slap a favicon up there and fiddle with some minor things here and there.

A Sunday Smile

Posted on 12 April 2009 | No responses

I finished this a couple of weeks ago, but I’m lazy.

Pattern: Just a 2×2 rib
Yarn: 1 ball Cascade 220 heathers purchased at The Wool Patch
Needles: US 8/5.0mm straights
Started: Feb 1
Finished: Mar 25

- CO 20 sts.
- Work in 2×2 rib (k2, p2 every row), sl the first st of each row for nice edges.
- End when desired length is reached or you run out of yarn.

This one ball of yarn produced a scarf longer than I am tall. It’s skinny, but I’m okay with that because my neck isn’t that long anyhow and it’s long enough to where I can wrap it around 2-3 times and have plenty of slack left to dangle and show off while still being toasty.

I’m working on a second for Nate with minor modifications. Basically, it’s twice as thick (cast on twice the number of stitches, otherwise it is worked the same) and it’s in Patons Classic Wool instead of Cascade because Patons was on sale at Joann’s and I liked the smooshy grey yarn.

It’s growing nicely.