St Isidore of Seville

Image of St Isidore of Seville from WikiCommons, part of the Yorck Project and in the public domain

I previously mentioned that bear is having issues with an extremely fancy and expensive graphics card that was uninstalling, reinstalling and deinstalling all sorts of stuff and causing chaos. It has been tense in the study as bear tries all sorts of different solutions, aided by my brother, DH and a swathe of internet searches. I suspect it's only because bear is the sensible adult in the household that the whole computer hasn't been flung out of the window. 

In other technological news, DH's laptop has been on the way out for a while. I swear that it's older than bear, which is implausible, but he's definitely had it for plenty of years. A few keys have finally failed and he caved in and got a much needed replacement. He did all his due diligence and picked up a refurbished laptop from Amazon. 

70% of the keys on the new laptop also didn't work. 

DH sent that laptop back, picked out another refurbished laptop from a reputable seller which arrived yesterday. It arrived with a US style charger which is completely incompatible with our British power outlets. Some harsh language may have been used. Another, more compatible, cable is on its way.

After this spectacular run of tech bad luck, I had concerns. Did we have cursed tech? If you lose your keys, you should pray to St Jude. I wondered who the patron saint of computers was and it's Saint Isidore of Seville who compiled knowledge back in the sixth and seventh centuries CE. It's been getting so stressful that I even googled how to set up a shrine to a saint. By the way, if you put 'holy water' into the search function of eBay, it's surprising and somewhat concerning what you can find.

I can't help feeling that it's not very good faith for me to be thinking like this. Proper faith, for me, isn't about technical difficulties. I have always felt that the divine is more than 'insert rote action, push button, receive outcome'. I can understand why people feel like that. When everything seems to stack up and you are feeling overwhelmed, being able to do something is at least something to hold on to. I am still fighting the temptation to print out a pic of the saint, though, which then bugs me because it's not rational. Then again, putting up a picture of St Isidore appeals to the side of me that always looks for stories... 

Also, the printer is acting up. We tried to print out a recipe last night and the print was faint with the colours not showing properly. When DH printed out the 'test cartridge' sheet, everything was perfect. I am somewhat unimpressed. 

Hugs and good health to all. 

Still Moving

Before I forget - the pattern for the yarn harlot one row scarf is here - https://www.yarnharlot.ca/blog/archives/2006/10/12/one_row_handspun_scarf.html

You have to scroll past instructions for spinning the yarn, but I think you can use any yarn with the needle size given on the ball band. It's a lovely pattern but I have the attention span of wet candyfloss at the moment. 

And for those looking for elderberry recipes, Sarah has some wonderful recipes on her blog Tales of a Kitchen Herbwife and there is one in this article here which has a wonderful elderberry cordial - Sarah, please could you share links for any others that are good for health, as I want to get it right. 

Bear has painted the window.

He did all the work and was entirely unsupervised. I could no doubt nitpick, but I'm just glad that he did it. Now I need to dig up the bed and plant winter pansies - or get bear to do it. The poor lad has had some trials these last two weeks. My brother gave him a fancy game card. Bear inserted the game card into his computer's guts, and the poor thing has had a nervous breakdown. I know that strictly speaking computers don't have nervous breakdown, but bear's has done a very good imitation. It keeps forgetting that things have been installed, uninstalling things that it shouldn't and reinstalling things that it should. Bear has found it tough.

DH has been off for a few days, which has been awesome. We've been watching hour after hour of the old Doctor Who, and we've been so impressed at the quality of the stories for Jon Pertwee. He was less impressed that I've run out of his favourite jar pasta bake sauce. To be fair, it doesn't seem like that long since I bought 26 of them when they were on offer. Instead we had sausages cooked and then chopped into chunks, then stirred into cooked pasta, frozen peas (cooked with the pasta), softened onions and mushrooms, garlic and a carton of passata. It was very pleasant indeed. It's interesting that when I bought them last time, they were something like 75p and now they're 66p so the price isn't too much of a killer. I'll buy them as I need them until the next good sale. 

Writing stuff - I've finally got a story from the White Hart posted and it's here. I've been doing some thinking about how I write, and I think I need to change up a lot. I also can't get the White Hart books to go free on Kindle, but I'll be posting the stories from the beginning on Royal Road from the beginning of October so it should be available to read then. 

A friend of mine, L Bachman, has a book free until 29th August. I promised that I'd share the info, picked up the book and dipped in. I'm not supposed to do reviews, because Amazon get suspicious if friends swap reviews because they may not be truthful. However, I'll say that the collection of short stories remind me of Victorian Gothic or Lovecraft stories. They're intricate and layered and the language is more formal than you find in a lot of current books. The stories also scared the living daylights out of me, so while I'm sharing, please be aware that they are not for the faint hearted, no matter how well written they are. It's Little Lunacies by L Bachman. 

Hugs and good health to all. 

Opportunity to Knit

My hip is bad today, so I'm not guaranteeing to make sense. I am in a lot of pain. 

I thought I'd mention about elderberries. Bless asked if I would make jam with them. There are three very good reasons why I shouldn't. Reason one is that I should never be allowed near boiling sugar. I am creative when it comes to accidents and I don't want to find out what I could do with jam making. Reason two is that I don't really know anyone who eats jam, food banks don't accept home made jam and no-one in this house has opened a jar of jam since before last Christmas. It would be a waste. The third reason is that there are a lot of birds around even though we don't have a bird feeder anymore, and plenty of wildlife, so I'm very happy for them to get the benefit. 

I went to the doctor today as the cellulitis continues, even after stupid amounts of antibiotics. So I drove my poor asthmatic car over there and back and got a prescription for more stupid antibiotics and steroid cream. I also need to get my leg elevated. In the past, it's been a problem. The house wasn't set up for that - and I know that sounds weird, but it was the unfortunate truth. However, over the last few years, we've moved around all the bookcases, shifted a few chairs around and cleared out some rubbish. I've worked out that I can now stretch out on the sofa with cushions under my leg for a regulated 30 minutes a time, three times a day. And while I'm there, it will be impossible for me to use my laptop so I will have a space to make a dent on my knitting stash, together with some thinking time. I may even catch up on some 'proper' reading. 

We've been watching a lot of the old Doctor Who, so I've been working on the blanket which doesn't need me to concentrate. The Jon Pertwee era had exciting plots and scary moments and I don't trust myself with anything that needs counting. It's looking like this at the moment.

And it's about 55 inches square (around 140cm) and I've got enough yarn to add perhaps another 12 inches to the length. It's just plain knit, but it keeps my hands busy and I'm hoping to sell it for at least 10% more than the very inexpensive yarn cost. However, while I was elevating, I also finished off the hat, finally. Because it's 2x2 rib, I can't knit and watch something exciting or I get lost. And speaking of getting lost, after finishing the hat, I dug out the Yarn Harlot One Row Scarf that I was working on ages ago in an attempt to get closer to finishing the thing and I kept losing my place on the four (yep, only four) stitches that make up the pattern. 

I've got quite a bit of yarn left on the scarf, but hopefully it won't take too long. Then I think that I need to get cracking on the sweaters that I want to make for myself if I want them for the cool weather. All my current sweaters are on their way out, looking threadbare and bobbly with holes. 

Hugs and good health to all. 

Exhausted

The exhaust has gone on the car. The garage said that something had come off. They can't get the part at the moment but it's safe to drive. They'll give me a call when they can do it. Poor Red sounds like a boy racer going 0-60mph when I'm trundling along at 20mph. 

You will notice that I'm not exactly next to the kerb. Parking that way makes it a lot easier for me to get in and out. I'm concerned about cars gettig past as there is a lot of growth on the other side of the road, but it's okay at the moment, as far as I can judge. I'm going to have to have a go at cutting it back, but after autumn. There are still a lot of birds in the street, plus squirrels and goodness knows what else. There are a lot of elderberries.

We went out to see the crows and magpies this morning and on the way noisily dropped off some stuff at the children's hospice shop. I feel like having a purge. 

I hope that the garage get back to us soon. The car was growling and backfiring all the way. 

Hugs and good health to all. 

Handwash

Father told me that he once got caught talking in class when he was a kid and the teacher made him stand at the front and talk for five minutes about a matchbox. If you stick strictly to the matchbox, it's surprisingly hard to talk for that long. Normally I would say that I was the best candidate to talk about matchboxes because I can usually find a story in everything. That's not been working for me recently, and I think I'm just looking inward too much. 

Besides, there's not that much going on. Here is a bottle of handwash that I have in my bathroom.

And it's looming larger and larger in my life. I don't like the stuff. It smells of plastic roses and it's far too strong. It may not have originally been that pungent. I had a really good stockpile of handsoap back in 2018, long before the pandemic, and I think that it may have been festering. It's still soapy, however, and I would feel wasteful and feckless if I just dumped it out, no matter how tempted I felt. But it isn't nice. And that is one of the main things hanging around in my head - handwash. It's not on the Asda website anymore, but the current equivalent is around 85p. I've already suffered through half. I am agonising over 40p. And the principle of waste not want not, of course, but still, 40p and a lot of mental energy.

I also got rid of a sweater. I knitted it before we moved into this house, if I remember rightly, and that makes it over thirty years old. I used acrylic and the poor thing had dropped ridiculously and was so brittle and scratchy that it seemed the best thing to do. I was very proud of it at the time.

I really liked the neck detail, but I made rather a mess of sewing it up.

So at least I've made a little space. I've been meaning to get around to discarding it for ages, so that's a big step.

I've still got a few health bits going on, but I'm working on being more positive.

Hugs and good health to all. 

Normal Service

I currently have cellulitis, something very unpleasant going on with my ear and throat and it hurts to take more than ten steps. I am not feeling in the pink of health. To be honest, I am throwing an epic pity party and trying to remember what a plot is.

And my laptop has developed an erratic 'n'. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't and sometimes it goes on and on like this - nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn. Thank goodness for the backspace key.

Normal service will resume whenever I work out what normal is. Until then, I found this pretty picture.

Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash and perhaps a reference to the whole mess at Paris - its
The Feast of Peleus, 1881. By Sir Edward Burne-Jones

This is what happens when I get access to the internet when I'm running a fever.

Please remember that you are all awesome. 

Hugs and good health to all.