Tuesday, July 20, 2010


That is my new Hub. Isn’t it nice? I’m sure the ease of yesterday's transition owed a lot to it. It already knew many of the things James struggled for hours to teach the Netgear router about my former ISP.

I’m now trying to find messages for my new address -- drump at btinternet dot com. It’s no use writing to me there because I don’t know where to go to pick up mail. Googlemail (address in sidebar) works as usual, thank goodness. And I must look into security. James said before he left that it is important to ensure that students in the flat downstairs can’t download porn on my wi-fi.

Knitting

Yesterday’s event, apart from BT Total Broadband, was my husband’s appointment at the Royal Infirmary Breathlessness Dep’t. They can’t do anything for him, but say that he is not declining, or at least not rapidly, and that his resting oxygen level is good. There was a long wait, as expected, and I finished off his second sock.

The first is too long. I Kitchener’d the second in the evening and it’s just right. It won’t take long to re-knit the toe of the first one. Is this an argument against toe-up sock-knitting?

(They had a pamphlet on the rack, just in front of where I sat knitting, called “Coping With the Final Stages of Chronic Lung Disease”. I would have loved to have a look, but didn’t, so as not to worry or distress my husband. The man on the front of the pamphlet looked pale but otherwise as cheerful as any man could in his condition.*)

Today’s event is a friend coming to lunch. I’ll make soup.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the right front of Green Granite Blocks is bounding forward. I should finish the first rank of blocks this evening, and set the second.

I used my brilliant new connection last night to winkle out the information I need about Knit Camp – times and places of classes, what to bring, map of Stirling campus, train timetables. I feel better having all this together, and still think the organisers might have sent a simple email.

They have a “list of tutors” on the Ravelry Knit Camp page – it’s fairly short, and doesn’t include Franklin. I deduce that it is a list of tutors whose classes aren’t full. It does include Donna Druchunas who is going to teach me about Japanese knitting. But of course there is no way to distinguish a tutor who is below the class-minimum from one who is a few short of the maximum.

Vegetables

The walking onions turned up yesterday, too. The plan is to go to Strathardle on Friday, with Helen – her arrival is Thursday’s event. I’ll plant them straight away, of course.

Rachel is already overwhelmed by her husband Ed’s allotment crop – more artichokes than they can eat, marrows, courgettes, borlotti beans, mange-tout peas. Will I have anything? Well, peas, hopefully, and red currants for the summer pudding. Courgettes and the first potatoes and broad beans not far behind. Not too bad.

*see Pepys on the hanging, drawing and quartering of poor Major General Harrison.

6 comments:

  1. I fear we'll be doing without artichokes this year. They haven't fared well at all in the recent heat - partly, I suspect, due to my setting them out later than I should have.

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  2. I was interested to see a brief entry on Ysolde's site saying that she had withdrawn from Knit Camp because of contractual issues, but giving no details. I have signed up for a class with Alice Starmore at the i-knit London Weekender in September. I can hardly believe that such an event is possible.

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  3. Jean you can set up googlemail to collect your bt emails.
    From your g mail inbox look at the top right hand corner of the page and go into "settings" then in the middle of the page click "accounts and import" then scroll down and you will see "add Pop 3 email acoount". Click here and you can add in all your e mail access codes and then googlemail very cleverly just hauls it all in for you and you can just read it in your gmail box as normal.
    It will also let you choose the account you want to send e mails from.
    As for security I think the BT codes when they set up avoid the wifi sharing, it is something to do with the access they use but I'm no expert on this!
    However, depending on which package you bought from BT, you may have free access to Mcafee anti virus anti spam etc. Again a visit to the BT web portal downloads it and I find this works better than the Norton I had which always gummed up my laptop.
    Have fun.

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  4. Jean, today's post reminds me to thank you for mentioning summer pudding in an earlier one. I had never heard of it before, and thought it must be a Very British pudding, but found and used a recipe in my copy of American Cookery (James Beard, of course). Beard doesn't forget to instruct removal of the bread crusts. The result was spectacular. I fear that raspberries are finished here, but will check at this week's farmers' market. The red currants still are going strong.

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  5. New hub had me thinking for a moment that you had changed horses in mid stream, but no, it's all about the technology. I took some photos to post of the walking onions doing their walk but they are sort of blurry, I'll have to try again.

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  6. Alas, no Franklin. Oh dear. What about the photograph for the book??

    I have been daydreaming about going to Knit Camp at the last minute if my schedule worked out that way. No sign of the baby yet here in Seattle. Will have to see how things go after the baby comes.

    Janet

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