Uphill in Every Direction

Ah, Mama said there'd be days like this.

While getting ready for the club in the morning, I was feeling sick to my stomach.  There's been a thing going around, but it was probably something I ate, because it didn't last long. I considered calling and cancelling, but realized I'd promised to bring a machine and some other items, so I better go. I lounged in a recliner while John went after a cake for the club dessert.  No baking for me.

I fired up the color printer to run a prototype Goldilocks book.  Right.  I made every possible mistake trying to get the printer going.  The house internet connection was down, and when it came back, I sent the job to the printer for the umpty-umpthed time and printed the whole book on cardstock (instead of just a cover).

John was resolutely pointing out things in the books that he is finding in his proofreading.  He's an awesome proofreader and editor, BUT after about 25 rewrites, it's hard to keep on revising.

After I was gone, John tried again to fix a laptop's drivers that I re-imaged a couple weeks ago.  I have just about "had it" with doing computer work at home - I take care of the network at work and don't want to do any more at home.  John has about "had it" with this driver issue, as well, but he got it working perfectly at some point.  He doesn't know what we did wrong or right, and neither do I, which is not that unusual for PC software problems.

We had actually made backups of all my precious knitting files onto a portable hard drive before reimaging, and it broke before we could restore them to our network.  Perhaps we'll have to hire a data recovery firm, an expensive endeavor.

My mirror image lace shawl is on the request list for Denver, and the file was lost in the backup hard drive breakdown.  I found a printed copy after going through almost my entire bookshelves, thank goodness, and retyped it, then saved it to three computers.  Gosh, remember when we had to do everything with paper copies?  Well, the good news is I pulled out a pile of other notes and ideas to try out when I get a chance.

My friend called while I was alone in the house and in the shower, so I answered the phone soaking wet in a towel.  I'm still wondering if I was rude to her - she didn't know I was dripping on the carpet.

I needed to take the 970 and to the meeting.  The 970 slid onto the floor from the back seat and I spent most of my trip wondering if it had been damaged in its fall (It was in its case, and it was fine).

I forgot to take the loose items for the 970, and had to call John, who searched our guest room and eventually found them and brought them to us.   My 970 has been packed away for ages; I don't do videos on it because most people don't own one.  Having it out gave me a taste of how badly I want to start using it.  (Golly, I picked it up second-hand and it has every known accessory in like-new shape.)

Then the day flipped the other way up.

Knit Natters was wonderful.  We had a nice-sized group; not at our regular place and not exactly the uusual crowd, but fantastic all the same.  We had a business meeting and divvied up work so we can try our own seminar this fall.

Greta showed us fish scales on the Brother, and she's such a good teacher, she let us take turns in the chair doing a few scales ourselves.  This is a great technique, very unusual.  Greta drives over 110 miles to attend, and I am grateful to have her attending and showing us her fantastic knitting.  She is a brilliant knitter.

Rose showed us Studio lace, and I got a huge kick out of it.  Rose let us take turns in the drivers' seat, too.  By the end of the meeting we were talking about staging a "knit-in" and spending an afternoon making charity items.  We'd all have to bring our machines to Margaret's house, but she's game.

Margaret made me feel so at home,  She even fed my husband lunch!  I felt completely surrounded by love in that house.  Her beautiful teenaged son and daughter carried all my stuff to and from the car.

John and I had a good evening, watched an excellent mystery movie, and I had some lovely surprises in my emails.  My fave had photos of two adorable girls in the bulky child's raglan.  I've asked him for permission to post the picture.

After we were tucked in bed, we remembered something we forgot to do.  We put on our robes and slippers and went out into the front yard to look at the "Super Moon."  The full moon was unusually close to Earth, therefore, it was unusually large and bright.  There was a cloud cover, but in Central Texas style, it was blowing rapidly over the moon, and we watched the moon light up in between passing cloud banks with a background of our twisted Texas Halloween tree (a lot of the trees here are gnarled and twisted).  We howled softly at the moon, laughed at ourselves, and were thankful that we got to see such a wonderful sight.