Daily Archives: October 20, 2009

Gnarr Take Two

I washed and am currently blocking the swatches. Then I realised that I couldn’t retake the swatch photos, because the swatches are currently pinned with blocking sticks to a Styrofoam block.

This is so not my day.

OTOH, the n-ply swatch seems to have softened up. The two-ply hasn’t really redistributed its unevenness as much as I’d hoped, though; it really is an issue of thick/thin yarn. (I apologise for the orange towel. It’s the current scrap towel in the bathroom and so was what I had at hand when the swatches were rinsed and needed to be dried.)

That’s the two-ply on the left and the n-ply on the right. The border on the n-ply looks a bit cockeyed because I was knitting three stitches on one side and four on the other, and I switched them accidentally after the rows of straight knit stitch in the middle. So it’s thicker on the upper left and lower right. Not a true reflection of how the border will look in the finished product, because I’ll be doing the full stitch count and won’t be having to make up numbers on the fly. (I did learn, and subtracted a stitch from my cast-on for the two-ply sample, which is why the borders at the top and bottom are even.)

I really don’t know. The n-ply looks crisper and the pattern is really textured. The two-ply looks softer and the pattern is somewhat blurred. They’re about the same to touch.

While the swatches dry completely, this is as good a place as any to paste this reply I recently made in a Ravelry forum. Someone was prepping a fibre arts presentation for classmates in a fine arts program, and was collecting answers for the inevitable question of, “Why bother spinning when you can just go the store and buy yarn?”

As others have said, it’s a tactile thing for me. Soft, pretty fibre feels so good on my hands. It’s also very meditative. I can sit down to spin and disengage the monkey-chatter of my mind, focusing solely on the feel of the fibre in my fingers, the tension between my hands and the fibre as I draft, the slide as the drafting pulls the staples along one another, and the draw of the wheel. But it’s also pleasing on a sensory level in other ways, too: I love the rhythm my foot, hands, and body get into. I love the mellow glowing stain I used to finish my wheel. I love seeing how the colours of my fibre blend as they move from the drafting triangle and begin to twist together, and I love seeing how the tones and hues of the new single wrap around the core of my bobbin. I even love the whooshing sound the wheel makes (just not the squeak that develops as the orifice spins in the cup until I dab a bit of Vaseline on it).

I’m not much of a knitter, so while I’m currently working on a specific yarn to use for a project, that’s not really part of my thing. I spin for others, though.

And yes, there is a large dose of “I made something useful out of fluff!” as well as “I made something beautiful!” that goes along with loving the process.

Gnarr

This morning I am on a homicidal rampage against HP.

When I got the Mac my printer worked, yay (unlike my previous Windows PCs where I had to install sixty trillion things to get my peripherals to work); no need to install all the HP software that takes up huge amounts of space and that I don’t use. And then I said to someone I’d scan and e-mail them a printed photo. For some reason, that didn’t work at all. The printer says it isn’t connected to the computer when I try to initiate the scan from it; the printer says there’s no scanner hooked up when I try to go at it the other way around. This is hunh?-worthy, because my printer is an all-in-one unit, so if the printer is connected and works, then the scanner is also connected and should work. So last week I finally downloaded the Mac software from HP and installed it. The scan worked. And then the computer froze upon reboot the next morning. But since then there hasn’t been a problem, not that I’ve tried another scan.

Till this morning, when HRH asked me to scan and send an image to him at work.

Nothing works. Nothing. I tried going at it from sixteen different directions. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling four times; now the software and drivers won’t even install without crashing. I downloaded non-HP software that claims it works with my scanner; it doesn’t recognize it.

My research online tells me that an awful lot of people using Macs have the same problem with HP printers of all models and types, despite HP claiming to be fully Mac-compatible. Apparently HP is dreadful in general with their drivers, but even more so with Macs.

Gods-damned HP. Why do I keep buying their products? Why? (Because they’re cheap. And I’m paying for it in other ways.)

This means I may need to need to buy or acquire a third printer within four years. I am not pleased. Although HP was so ashamed of the bashlash they experienced upon the release of Snow Leopard because they’d utterly failed to match the upgrade (they actually told people to buy new printers instead!) that they decided that it would be a good move to develop Snow Leopard-compatible drivers after all, and finally made sure the scanner part of the all-in-one units like the one I have would actually be supported, after ages of ignoring them in the driver updates. So if I upgrade to Snow Leopard, the printer and scanner should work. This is worth thinking about, as Snow Leopard is only $35 and by all reports is very shiny and exciting. Still; I shouldn’t have to upgrade my OS from a perfectly functional release to get my scanner to work. HP should be releasing fully functional updated drivers concurrent with every previous OS upgrade instead of crippled ones that only address one of the functions in an all-in-one.

I can’t even spin to relax because I don’t have spare bobbins, and I can’t go ahead and ply the stuff I’ve got because I still don’t know if I’m using the n-ply or the two-ply for Devon’s wrap.

I had Girl Guide cookies for breakfast. I suspect I’m going to make chocolate chip shortbread cookies very soon, and probably focaccia for lunch. Also, if it’s going to go up to 14 today, would the sun please come out?

rawr rawr rawr. and grump.

Maybe I’ll retake all those awful swatch photos while listening to decent music. I’m not calm enough to open my new freelance assignment and work on it just yet.