Knitting, first
There’s little to report. I’m sailing along with the anthracite socks, loving the colour, loving the yarn. My husband is wearing the KF hand-dyed-effect as his first socks of 2012, and seems happy with them. But my delight in having returned to proper, firmly-spun sock yarn is such that I won’t repeat the experiment.
I stumbled across Leafcutter Designs’ “Sky scarf” somehow, and started one yesterday. You cast on some stitches and knit two rows – one garter stitch bump – every day, the colour of that day’s sky. That’s it.
Life
Helen and her family are still here in GB, and we’ve had a lovely week. We didn’t go to Strathardle – we meant to leave on Tuesday, but there was a storm that day. I phoned a friend in Kirkmichael and learned that snow was lying. So we stayed home, and it was just as well, I suspect. It was an epic storm. We probably couldn’t have reached Strathardle anyway as the Forth Road Bridge was closed for much of the day. The Botanic Gardens near here lost 40 trees, I have been told.
Alexander and Ketki still have no land line, unless BT fixed it yesterday. What happened was that that lightening strike, described in an earlier post, fried the telephone line. I have heard of lightening doing that to the electricity supply, destroying available televisions and computers – indeed, I’ve known people to whom it happened. But I had never heard of lightening taking out the telephone. Now I have.
They have been told they were lucky the house didn’t burn down.
Since Tuesday’s storm, they have also lost the signals for their mobile telephones.
They have a flat in Glasgow, not much used except in emergencies such as this. Ketki had arranged with her bank to work from home in December and Jamuary, but can’t very well do that with all communication severed. So they are based in Glasgow at the moment, with Alexander going back to Loch Fyne by day to entertain the man from BT. Helen and Mungo went over last night to see them.
She will be back today, and the rest of her family – currently in Cheshire with David’s mother – will rejoin us on Saturday. Then they’ll all go back to Greece.
I am having trouble with Google Chrome, in that it opens in a window offset to the right, denying me access to the vital right-hand controls. All I can think of to do is drag it left – it won’t budge; and reboot – that doesn’t help. Archie will be here tomorrow. I am pinning my hopes on him.
He took this picture of me (coughing), with the iPad.
Glad to hear you are all well, even if phone lines etc further north are not. The storm on Tuesday was a funny one - we live a stones throw from Blackford Hill which recorded a wind speed of 102 mph. I'm not sure it felt that wild - and at one point I had some washing on the line for a blow(!) It was well pegged, so stayed put until I rescued it from the rain... Still, our route back from Morningside was blocked by a tree across the road at Newbattle Terrace, and on Blackford Avenue we noticed a group of people surveying a very large piece of roofing/felt which had evidently blown off their garages.
ReplyDeleteI definitely prefer the snow that we had last year!
I have heard of lightning attacking a telephone line - in fact the usual advice is that if there is lightning around, cut the call. This is something we have to watch here, unlike in Surrey, where our phone line was an underground fibreoptic cable.
ReplyDeleteVery glad you had the sense not to try for Strathardle - I was watching the weather reports, and hoping you were still in Edinburgh!
Definitely stop the call, and also stay off the computer, when lightning threatens. I also unplug the computer and the router when I'm not on it.
ReplyDeleteI think the storm must have picked up on the way from us to scotland! there was some damage in the north (not for us luckily), but nothing as bad as this!
ReplyDeletenot sure that knitting this sky scarf would be a good idea for me though - I would end up with an all grey piece! bad enough if the weather is uniform grey, I'd rather put a bit more colour into my project:))
I hope you'll all be back to normal soon, you only realize how much you rely on the phone etc., when everything goes down...
good luck for the year to come
Bettina (from the west of ireland)
Jean
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear about the weather. And lightening can ruin all of your electronics and phone equipment that connected to the phone wire.
If you are having problems with chrome on the iPad try tapping with three fingers to zoom out. I often zoom in to see better and the next time I use the iPad I have forgotten the zoom and cannot see the right side of the page. Three finger tap will zoom in/out.
I am happy to hear you are having a nice visit with your family. When I read about the storms in Scotland I thought you probably hadn't been able to make it to Strathardle. With snow on the ground there probably wasn't much you could have done in the garden anyway. It is so warm here my garden box is thawing out and if this keeps up I should be able to dig up some parsnips and Jerusalem artichokes in a few days.
ReplyDeleteI clicked on that link for the Sky Scarf. What a great idea! What yarn are you using for it? I will have to see what I have in the stash that would be suitable.
I like the idea of the Sky Scarf but with the weather being so variable around here I'd have so many ends to work in or else have a bunch of yarn loops training along one side. I wonder if instead of doing that you could start with a small cast on and increase one stitch with each iteration, leaving the ends as fringe.
ReplyDeleteWith your Chrome, is there a menu that drops down from the top bar that allows you to maximize your window? I'm a Windows nerd unfortunately so can't really help but that's what we have. Yep it's a pain when that happens.
We have lost electricity due to electrocuted squirrels.
ReplyDeleteFunny, I kept on looking at your photo for the iPad and then finally realized that the picture had been taken with it!