Month: January 2006

While my old computer has not yet entirely given up the ghost, it’s been close enough for the last few years (ahem…) that I’ve been looking for a new one. I’ve been taking it apart and giving it new pieces, OS’s, etc. since senior year of college to try to mollify it, but since it has trouble staying non-crashed for long enough to load photos and write a blog post, it was increasingly apparent that it was more or less time to move on.

I’m now the proud owner of an eMachines T6524.

I’ve been moving files and programs and settings over for the last night or two (wouldn’t take so long if I didn’t keep stopping to look through old photos and college essays), so I still have my old, not-so-reliable machine plugged in on the left, along with a plethora of wires. I am exceptionally happy with it so far. I’ve known that this was my next machine since late-summer, after a lot of comparison-shopping and buoyed by the knowledge from an inside source (who lives in my apartment) that it has outdone machines that cost twice as much in his company’s performance tests. I’ll probably be putting in 1-2 more GB of memory at some point soon, and I’ll upgrade the video card before I install Vista next year, but otherwise it’s perfect. My favourite part is how wonderfully quiet it is — I can hear the fishtank gurgling downstairs over the computer sitting next to me. Bliss.

Finally done with the vexing hat! I don’t know why I can’t just follow directions when it comes to hats, but I always end up second- and third-guessing, then ripping. After two false starts, it was clear that my third try would be too long, so I condensed the decreases and finished up, then cut off the bottom inch and a half. Three inches into the ripping, and well past the point of ridiculousness (it’s a HAT! how long should it take?!), it occured to me that I’d made a Sorting Hat:

See the mouth? 🙂

Once the stitches were ripped, I picked up the bottoms of the next row and turned around to cast off. It was going the wrong direction but with the dark yarn you couldn’t tell — good enough. I cast off super-loosely, so it has a nice stretch and is actually a prettier and smoother edge than the original. Awesome.

I should have taken a picture of it on the boy, but enough minutes have gone into this project, and so I’m on to his second sock… 🙂 I’m sure I’ll have an action shot of the hat some time down the road.

Hayden Hat for Kevin:
Yarn: Plymouth Encore Worsted
Colors: #668 (Lt Sage), #1234 (Dk Forest), #240 (Lt Beige)

Needles: 16″ #8 circulars until decreases became too tight, then switched to magic loop with 24″ #8s.