(And on the left, my yarn-winder, currently empty. It's very handy to have something that can stand permanently in its corner looking like furniture.)
When I bought the television set, I arranged to have it delivered sometime in November, not knowing when exactly we were likely to go to London. I was happy enough to drift on in that state, the plunge taken but with no facing-up involved.
But my husband increasingly felt that since we had bought and paid for it, we ought to start watching it. So yesterday I went up to John Lewis’s and fetched it home, and we spent a tense afternoon setting it up.
We succeeded beyond expectation, in that we can now receive a lot of mysterious channels which we had thought (in our 20th-century way) were only for people with “cable” or “Sky” and other mysterious entities like that. In fact A Man once told us that we couldn’t receive Channel Five because our aerial wasn’t up to it.
However, as we were watching the early evening news, BBC One broke up and then disappeared. BBC Two went with it, but other channels remained fine. Alexander, consulted by telephone, says to try re-tuning. I will face up to that after a fortifying breakfast.
Knitting
Here’s the current state of the Earth Stripe. Five feet are required, so there’s a long way to go. Reading the pattern with more attention, I see that not one but two rounds of single crochet are expected around the circumference. In that case, I feel that attached i-cord would be a reasonable substitute. I will probably try it.
I should get the last few books into LibraryThing today, and then back to Ravelry, which is already out of date.
My husband brought home a new DVD player to replace our broken one and lo and behold, more channels and great reception.(We don't have cable.) It has a digital tuner in it, much like all the new televisions. I find that it is all or nothing. If the signal drops, it's gone, just a blue screen. Then eventually it returns. No idea why and can't find anything to do about it.
ReplyDeleteI have never seen a ball winder like yours. Where can I find one?
ReplyDeleteI'm just guessing here, but maybe there's something about the digital signals (or the digital way of receiving signals) that makes them more vulnerable to disruption by, e.g., passing aircraft.
ReplyDeleteI would postpone making any changes to see whether the channels come back, having had to deal with changes that were made when in fact it wasn't my system that was having problems.
P.S. Is that "yarn winder" just a vertical swift (holds the skein while you wind from it)? Does it somehow incorporate a ball winder (hand-cranked gadget that actually winds the ball from the skein held on the swift part)? I like that it takes up so little horizontal room.
ReplyDeleteCan you adjust the positions of the two reels for longer or shorter skeins?
I have been thinking about making a ball winder similar to yours for a long time. (I thought I was so original.) Where did you get it?
ReplyDeleteHi Jean,
ReplyDeleteyour Yarn-winder is exactly like the one my Grandmother had. I remember as a child i was fascinated with the way it worked and with the holder for the yarn-ball at the top.My Grandmother was the one that taught me how to knit at the age of 4, this was in Denmark in the late 1940'es. Unfortunately I did not inherit the Yarn-winder although I did get a lot of wonderful things of hers.
Ann in Vancouver