Of computer bits and shawls

Several things have conspired against me in this past week. For starters, my computer decided to start making funny noises. It sounded like something was stuck on one of the fans, but when I peaked at it, I couldn't see anything, so I decided to leave any investigation for the weekend, when I wasn't tired and there was plenty of daylight.
Then I got a bad tooth. One of my wisdom teeth has decided to start hurting (and I mean really hurting, triggering migraines and all that jazz), so until I got my diet of painkillers sorted, nothing besides curling up in a dark room with a hot-water bottle on my cheek was appealing.

The good news are that I have a dentist appointment for tomorrow, and I have fixed my computer. Alex and I spent a while playing with it, unplugging different fans until we established that the problem was on the graphics fan. Conveniently, we had a spare graphics card lying around (as one does), and now my computer is quiet again, so I can be here more than the bare minimum.

Alex also decided to get the cleaning on, so we've spent part of the day taking the sink appart and resealing. Yep, it's as exciting as it sounds, and even worse. Thankfully we are done now (it's not actually that long a job), and I got some pictures taken of Ishbel. I wore it to work on Friday a loved it! It's an amazing shawl. I'm planning to make a bigger one, because it's just beautiful.
   

Also, I can use it for my next career as a highway robber!



My shawl was made using the Ishbel pattern, with 3 balls of Rowan Cotton Glace and 4.5 needles. It's a wonderful and very easy shawl, and I will recommended to everybody

I have a new camera!

This is my Wisteria. You can't see the cables very well in the picture, but I just wanted to show off my new camera (Samsung L200, for what is worth).

The stitch markers are some cute bees from yarnlust. I am completely in love with them, and I will recommend her: I got several sets from her and I'm very happy with all.

Pictures will slowly resume as I take them. I still don't have a full picture of my Emerald, so I should probably do that first.

Tales of a camera

My camera used to belong to one of my housemates. About two years ago, when we were moving out of a house, he left all his packing to the very last day. I found this incredibly annoying because that meant he was busy packing, and did not help cleaning and tidying the place, but that is another story. He was panicking and packing, and then decided to throw away his digital camera, because it was broken. By broken, he meant that he had lost the battery charger and the little tab to move between taking pictures, videos and displaying them was missing, so you had to get a pen into it to move it. So, while it was technically broken, it was perfectly serviceable.
I rescued it, got the card reader from him, got myself a charger and voilà, I had a digital camera! It was fairly decent, albeit a bit old (4 years when I got it), and it served me well ever since (although I did have to get another card reader eventually, and then another memory card).

Alas, now it's dead! It turns on, but everything comes out black, so I would like to replace it before its body finishes cooling down.
Given that all I use my camera is to take pictures of knitting and the occasional holiday, I don't have grand demands from one. Yesterday I had a look at the cameras in the big supermarket and discovered that they go as low as £29. While I will not buy something so cheap, at least I now know that you don't have to sink in hundreds of pounds on one. Something mid-range, so it can last me a bit, and ideally with manual features, as I do know how to handle a fully manual camera: I took photography and was school photographer for a year!

I'll probably buy my camera online after some research, and hopefully I can have some pictures up soon. My webcam does no justice to anything.

I could not resist it

And I have made it one of my multiple forum icons:

Oh noes, the pictures are clogging the tubes

Picocon. Picocon was awesome, and here are some pictures of the DoDM (destruction of dodgy merchandise).
Here is Alex about to golf a frozen snitch, and then me with the golden snitch wings in my Jayne hat (which everybody loved).

Some more general DoDM: the enjoying audience, Owain destroying a Darth Vader mecha-TIE fighter, the abomination that is Highlander 2 (sorry for the profane language), and Peter making sure that the abomination doesn't survive.

And Miranda!



Draconic mittens!


And, as said, I finished the tummy piece, and redid the neckline of the Blue Tomato. Now it's 4 rounds rather than 8, and I think it looks better, and doesn't buldge so much at the shoulder pieces.




Jonathan was here this weekend. Alex has just left to drive him home, and then he is off to a course on rockets (lucky him). I was a bit sad yesterday, and I realised it was jealousy-based, because Alex had spent a lot of the day with JJ, while I just was on the side. But he paid a bit more attention to me today, and I was a lot better. On the other hand, I think that he passed me his cold. While he won't be here this week to take care of me, it is nice to be alone sometimes, and I can just lounge around being ill. And knitting!