Lost

I've never owned a computer that was not a Mac.

I've never had trouble with a computer, except once that eMac died and they said it was cheaper to replace it so I did. My daughter was distraught at the loss of 30Gb of music, so my colleague Matthias carefully and painfully extracted the hard drive.

The New Year happened. 

The stroke of midnight was uneventful.

The following morning was like any other. I drank coffee, read email, that sort of thing.

That evening my laptop forgot it had an Airport card. Like that man who woke up with someone else's arm attached to him; unrecognizable. Sadly, my laptop isn't much one for deductive reasoning, and no amount of cajoling could get it to recognize its own Airport card.

I still have the replacement eMac (an iMac) so I went surfing for solutions. 

I tried rebuilding the <insert some acronym here> and reset the <insert other acronym here> and nothing made any difference. Reboot, rinse, repeat. Nada.

Then I saw something that said to remove some file that was a remnant from a previous operating system, and I checked, and nothing had changed or been touched in two years, so I deleted the file and tried to restart.

Grey screen, grey apple, grey spinner.

No problem, I thought: I have Time Machine and it backs up ALL THE TIME. I can do this.

So I did.

Time Machine lies. It said it was backed up through Tuesday morning, but it has nothing newer than November 28th. 

More than a month of stuff is missing.

Photos, instructions, notes, emails, receipts, invoices, records. Gone.

A pox on Time Machine. I suppose it's better than losing everything, though in truth I could have started it from a system disk (if only I had one, what's that about) and reinstalled that stupid file from the Trash.

The other problem? Time Machine (my stupid choice) didn't back up Applications, so I had the OS, but no Safari, no System Updater, no iPhoto, no iTunes, nothing. 

Luckily my son with his newer-than-mine laptop is in town, so yay File Sharing, I copied his Applications folder to mine and I'm set.

Except for the missing stuff.

I'm not sure what the lesson is. Better research next time? Don't freaking delete anything just because some random strangers cheerfully suggest it will help you? Bite the bullet and pay for those so-called Geniuses to fix it?

Meanwhile, earrings for a friend. They're a surprise (if she doesn't read this).

Version 2 of the spike pendant with the back window.

 See the floral shape deep inside?

In December I completed the instructions for at least two classes that have not even been submitted yet (so they'd be sometime after May).

Gone.

Worked out colour-ways for my Bead and Button classes.

Gone (unless the shopping cart didn't also disappear).

Took photos of new beadwork.

Mostly gone. Some are on the iPad, which I synced about a week ago.

I'll give myself a full week to get over the loss, and then I'll move on.

I will.

Contrariwise

I freely admit, I have some reliable hot buttons.

For instance, I hate a Big Fat Waste of Time.

I don't mean that every second of every day has to be dedicated to my enjoyment (although this is not something I'd refuse if available, let's face it). I also don't mean that all of my free hours (or minutes, as the case may be) have to be fully employed in the Making of Something. Pawing through the Yum Section of the fiber stash (that part lives under my bed for safe-keeping) or deciding which is my absolutely favourite gold seed bead are perfectly valid uses of my time.

What I can't bear is being trapped doing something that is neither beneficial, necessary nor pleasant and not being able to escape.

Like being unable to extricate myself from last night's performance of Stomp (insert universal finger-in-mouth sign for gagging).

The current season's dance subscription has so far at best been mediocre, and at worst (so far), Stomp.

Wikipedia describes them as a dance troupe, but I think that's being generous. Tina Turner's live show had a dance troupe. Those cute boy bands are pretty decent dance troupes. Brittney does a pretty good imitation of a dance troupe.

You get the picture.

Stomp doesn't even come close.

They have one concept: making rhythmic percussive noises by hitting things with other things, none of said things being anything manufactured for their acoustic properties. That's a fine idea, if not unique, and eminently suitable for a ten-minute slot on a late-night or morning talk show, but two hours of it on a stage WITH NO FREAKIN' INTERMISSION was more than I could bear.

At first I was just bored.

For quite some time - at least it felt like a few days, or perhaps even a week. I kept waiting for intermission so that I could leave.

Then the noise started to bother me, especially the mindless and endless "WOO!"s made by audience members, especially the prepubescent boy to my right.

I found it dull and low-brow: the sound ordinary, the so-called comedy trite at best, unfunny more often, and I kept on wondering when the dancing would start. People putting their whole ungraceful bodies into hitting things with feeling is not dance, no matter how hard you squint.

I may have been the only person in the entire theatre who was not hysterically enthralled and enraptured.

As it happens, I did have a small (sock) knitting project in my purse, but it's more complicated than stocking stitch or even two-by-two ribbing and so not well-suited to KITDWB (knitting in the dark while bored).

Now that I'm well and truly past the halfway mark on my own personal time line, I really resent those three lost hours (two sitting there, another getting there and home again). At least I got some knitting done in the ten or so minutes sitting in my seat waiting for it to start.

Today my time was well-spent.

I made a kit sample.

I made a cool right angle weave open cube on a necklace (removable).

And earrings to match.

And a pair of earrings to match the pendant I sold two weeks ago.

And then I saw Jane Eyre, which I liked far better than I'd thought I would, notably the actress playing Jane, who was remarkably aptly-cast. She's not ugly and has a wonderfully expressive and interesting face, but isn't too pretty, unlike in the previous Jane Eyre I saw. And Mr Rochester was pretty yummy.

Also I think I may be clawing my way out of Knitting Hell. (I've resigned myself to stripes in the context of multi-directional knitting in the interest of not being permanently mired).

Not According to Plan

I'm in Knitting Hell.

A few weeks ago, I saw a picture of a sweater from a German magazine that inspired me, and I collected some handspun in shades of dull reds, pinks, browns and oranges, with deep blue-violet for the accent, and started knitting.

At first, it went well.

Then, when I had to knit on the next section, it started getting ugly and I knew I couldn't continue as planned (knitting one section onto the next), and I'd be certifiable if I persisted in the design but had to sew everything together, so I tried to come up with an alternative plan for my fine (I'm knitting on 3mm needles) collection of yarns.

I found a modular shell-like motif.

Bleargh.

Modular squares.

Just not right.

I'm not in the mood for intarsia, and I don't think a stranded design will be ideal for the yarn, and stripes are so ho-hum and I HAVE NOTHING TO KNIT and it's driving me crazy.

The socks that I keep in my car? Yeah I don't like what I've been doing with them, so I've ripped out a few inches too.

M beading life isn't helping all that much either, as most of what I'm doing is packing kits, and any actual beading is kit samples.

Like this one.

At least I like it.

Lipstick?

Before the 2008 election brouhaha concerning lipstick and pigs, I was working for a company that made cool science-heavy drug discovery software (I learned a lot of chemistry so obscure that Google had no idea) that was to modern software in terms of look and feel the way DOS is to OS X. As part of its downhill spiral (a year or two of which I was lucky enough to witness from the inside) the new CEO promised to make things better, newer, faster, sexier, more efficient, more profitable, and not just do the equivalent of putting lipstick on a pig.

Yeah that worked out well: more than half the people there when I left have since been laid off, and from what I hear, it hasn't stopped.

Anyway.

There have been classes that I've taught that I've turned into kits, some with more modifications than others. If the instructions contain numerous variations and I don't plan to provide beads for every combination of choices possible, then I need to prune them; conversely if the kit (as is usual) is for a particular item (you can teach a technique class and chat about uses and colour choices and bead choices and finishing, but that's not useful for a kit which needs to have an end goal), the instructions may need to be expanded somewhat.

So for Calathid, which I taught a few months ago, it occurred to me that it might look more interesting and more floral (though still fairly abstract) if I played with colour gradations.

I also needed a better sample for the photo for a class proposal for a national show. I hoped that it wouldn't just be lipstick on a pig.

There are three different colour combinations, and I'm pleased with the results, but this was more effort than I'd been anticipating, and I have to confess that finishing it amounted to quite the act of will and self-discipline (not normally words in my lexicon when it comes to beading or knitting where I'm more likely to fall on the self-indulgent side), as each segment took somewhere between an hour and an hour and a half to complete. (There are eight in total, plus the toggle section).

Before I started, I was considering other colour-ways as well. Now I'm rethinking my Full-Sized Samples strategy.

Painful as it was to complete it, I needed some consolation after my day of spinning on some roving which was very unpleasant; partly my fault and partly not.

Most of the time I buy fibre in small amounts, but every now and again I'll indulge in a sweater-amount if that's the only way it's available.

A few years I bought a large bag of slow-change roving from a vendor from whom I've bought quite a bit, in a colour-way somewhat less saturated and paler than my usual sludge, and I started spinning on Saturday.

I spun all day, almost a full bobbin, and it was full of second cuts (which made lumps) and neps (possibly because not all the lanolin had been washed out). And I hate the colours. When I dug in the bag, along with the lovely mauves, taupes and greens, there were way too many creams and beiges, all of them neppy, all of them sticky with lanolin. The few colours I like? Not neppy, not sticky.

I tried to disregard the annoyance of stopping to pick out neps as I spun, but I couldn't get away from the blah colours, and spent quite a bit of spinning time wondering what would be the best colour with which to overdye it, which in itself is a bit depressing when the whole point of the roving is the supposedly fabulous colour gradation - but I'm sure someone would love it; just not me.

I hate to toss a hundred dollars of fibre, but the spinning is no fun either, and life's too short and the stash is too big to waste time on spinning something that's Not Fun.

I guess what I'll do is separate out the good parts and make pretty yarn that I can use (sport-weight or dk-weight three-ply yarn), and consider spinning the rest of it really quickly into either a fat two-ply or a really fat singles yarn that I'll use for fulling.

I might be able to convince myself that I've been meaning to make bags or baskets or oven-gloves or something.

Misogyny. Not My Favourite Thing.

So I work in a male-dominated field, and at the current job where the median age is particularly low, my peers are largely twenty-something or barely thirty-something guys.

No problem.

I don't have a problem with swearing (either them or me, hah) and except for this toy monkey thing which made a godawful noise (but which they fortunately exercised only once a day, and eventually were ordered by someone else to disappear) I don't believe we have in any way clashed at all.

I would characterize interactions as comfortable and cordial.

The physical area in which I work contains two teams: mine (with a higher median age, not entirely my doing thank you) and another younger team (the one which had the monkey). Perhaps ten people all told. All male, save me.

Again, not a problem.

The side of our fridge has one of those magnetic poetry sets: a collection of magnets each containing a word, which those inclined may arrange into poems or prose or whatever. Since John, one of our Systems guys got laid off last Thanksgiving, no one does much with the words. I glance at it daily as I make coffee, but it's at best uninspiring and more usually unchanged.

A few weeks ago there was something about woman...taste...mouth - a bit risque I suppose, but not (to me) offensive.

Last week it changed to "the wildest woman will give you crabs" which pretty quickly changed to "the crabbiest woman will make you wild" or something like that.

Today it was changed back again to "the wildest woman will soon give you the crabs" which crossed the line for me.

I wasn't bothered when a former colleague would make comments indicating that my body had crossed his mind (a remark about me in a cheerleader costume, that sort of thing) because I was perfectly comfortable reprimanding him, and even though it was slightly creepy, it didn't make me uncomfortable or create any sort of hostile environment.

I may be mouthy at times, but I generally avoid making waves. I've observed that squeaky wheels, far from getting oiled, are often exchanged for those which play better with others, but one of my buttons was pressed.

I attached a yellow stickie saying "Inappropriate. Enjoy sexual harassment lawsuits much?" and complained to HR. I had to do something, no matter how ineffectual. I'm not sure what else I can do, or want to do, in this frightening job market.

It leaves a bad taste though.

Spinning, Yeah, That's the Ticket

So tomorrow is our monthly spinner's food-a-thon, uh, day of spinning with incidentally a potluck lunch.

This may not look like much, but it's a stack of crepes flavoured with blood orange zest and orange liqueur, separated by whipped cream flavoured once again with blood orange zest and orange liqueur, and waiting in the fridge I have some blood orange segments macerating in a reduced orange liqueur syrup, not to mention more of the cream.

Should be edible.

And oh yes, lots of spinning tomorrow with, y'know, wheels and fiber and so on.

I prototyped a sweater while I was in Santa Fe.

It's perfect travel knitting, as you don't need long needles (except towards the end of the project when making the gussets), but I do wish I didn't have to rip the whole thing out.

The usual.

Not enough yarn, though I knew that going in, but I thought it would be okay to add oddments of other colours and it would be in a fair isle or striped project but I have to say that (a) I really don't like the other-colour triangles and (b) even with them I only have about an ounce of yarn left, with an entire sleeve and three-quarters of the front still to go.

This yarn really is way denser than I'd realised and really won't stretch far enough for me to finish this sweater (with which realistically I'm less than satisfied anyway, but I hate to have wasted the effort, even if it's been only a bit more than a week of knitting which really isn't bad speed-wise, telling me (as if I didn't know it already) that really, modular knitting is the way to go for me.

One benefit to all the half-done beading projects that I was too weak to not start while I was supposed to be getting ready for Santa Fe but was strong enough to not finish, is that I get to finish them now.

Mmmm, blue tiger eye.

I'm not in general a fan of blue in the abstract, but when it's smoky or chatoyant or iridescent or otherwise interesting and not royal blue which to my eyes is a blight in the spectrum (though I might make the occasional exception for lapis lazuli if it has plenty of pyrite veining), I can be quite taken with it.

I Don't Want What's In Your Head

A rant has been brewing since mid-December, and I think it's crystallising.

It all started with this exchange, quoted verbatim but redacted slightly:

Person #1: "one of the kids in the neighbor hood was telling another friend.that they dont say "Merry Christmas", because of so many Religions beliefs and their holidays. In school its "Happy Holidays" is this true. I dont know."

Person #2: " it will always be " MERRY CHRISTMAS" TO ME. Say what is in your heart, We can't give into the minority that is trying to take God away from us."

I have rarely come across such a hateful, narrow-minded, ethnocentric, ignorant expression of the repudiation of one of my core beliefs. I bit my tongue (or more literally, sat on my fingers), because this was in a forum completely unrelated to this topic, and I had no interest in even engaging with wilful blindness.

I'm not a religious person, though like many I had an upbringing filled with religious ritual (though little explicit spirituality) which pretty much revolved around food and family. I like the food and family part, but quite frankly the spiritual trappings of faith, and the notion of faith itself leave me at best unmoved, and generally make me want to run away, screaming. 

Me. For myself. 

I don't want it and can't subscribe to it.

However I absolutely support the right of anyone anywhere to believe in anything and practise the same as long as it does not involve their prescribing or proscribing my behaviour, except insofar as my behaviour infringes on their behaviour which may infringe on mine - but let me skip to the conclusion which is that I believe we should all treat each other's belief systems (not to mention cultural backgrounds and so on and so forth to quote - completely out of context - someone more amusing than I) with respect, and allow everyone to act upon their belief systems unless it hurts someone else.

Except for a couple of years in graduate school, I've always lived in countries in which the majority cultural belief system was not mine, and quite frankly, it very quickly gets very old having the majority continually make wrong assumptions about one just because they are too lazy and too narrow to consider the fact that majority homogeneity does not translate to individual homogeneity, and that a small adjustment in interactions with others, without altering one's internal status, can really go a long way in maintaining harmonious relations among disparate groups.

In other words, wishing strangers or at least non-intimates about whom one may not know the particulars of their traditions the inclusive "Happy Holidays" rather than the specific "Merry Christmas" is in my view more loving, more generous and more in the spirit touted by those for whom "Merry Christmas" is an accurate indication of their belief system or at least their culture.

I'm willing to step away from the possibility that December may not be holiday time for some around here, and that even wishing someone "Happy Holidays" is making unwarranted lifestyle assumptions, since at least in North America there are public holidays exempting most from work, so I'll grant you that "Happy Holidays" is not exclusionary by this minimal standard, though I'll admit that there's a part of me that wonders if even this is valid.

I am stunned and outraged by the notion that a warmly inclusive wish translates into a "minority that is trying to take God away from us"; so completely at odds with my preferred world view and personal behaviour guidelines (I'm not perfect. I'm sure I've expressed things injudiciously more than once).

The assumption that the non-Christmas-celebrating minority is either godless or proselytisingly godless is ludicrous, not to mention offensive, and in my mind is analogous to the vitriolic homophobic ravings of terrified homosexuals in denial. 

Clearly this person is unaware of other faiths practised by Jews, Moslems, Hindus, Jains, Baha'is, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Wiccans, to name a few, none of which is godless, although the individual views of deities may differ from both each other as well as the Christian view. One thing I do know is that none of the adherents of the above-mentioned faiths have any desire to "take God away" from anyone else. In fact, I know of few non-extreme atheists who either want this, or are likely to do anything more heinous that which the earnest young men in white dress shirts who knock on your door at inconvenient times want to do, and which is regarded as a contractual obligation of their faith, obnoxious as it may be to others trying to get some sleep on the weekend.

I know I'm going to sound like a beauty pageant contestant, but how on earth will we ever achieve world peace if views like this are propagated?

Hatefulness is awfully disheartening.

Oh The Horror

Even though I measured and calculated, it turns out that the narrow end of my skirt isn't quite the right size to be flattering to my wide end (which after the food orgy that is Thanksgiving is probably even wider). Couple that with the fact that this skirt, while following the proportions of other knitted skirt patterns, is not ideal for my proportions, resulting in robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Alternately: I have to remove hexagons from the small end of the skirt to make bigger and better hexagons on the big end of the skirt so that the small end better approximates a suitable size and the big end does not become the way too short end (my knees are not my best feature, so I prefer not to wear skirts that highlight them).

My life is still hexed, as it turns out.

Apart from the fact that I was so very ready to start on the next project (I have even swatched), and that the disappointment of delayed startitis approaches crushingly sad, this is actually not a bad thing, as Skirt 2.0 will be better.

My original shaping plan for seven rounds of hexagons was two rounds at sixteen stitches per side, two with fifteen, and three with fourteen. As I laid it out on the sofa to admire it, that this size progression didn't allow for quite enough flare over the hips-thighs-lower-belly area to be attractive, so my new and improved shaping, with only a single round of fourteen-per-side hexagons allows more ease where I need it, and a flippy bottom edge: my inverse Robin Hood rounds (I'm stealing from the stitch-poor hexagons to make stitch-rich hexagons) will not both contain hexagons with seventeen stitches per side - the second round will have eighteen stitches per side.

I know it'll make a prettier skirt, but I really wanted to wear it sooner than in a couple of weeks.

The added bummer is that these larger hexagons take considerably longer to complete than the small ones. Obvious, yes of course, but the actuality of it is less than ideal, emotionally. I'll try to be grown-up about it.