Not mad, just mildly disgruntled. Coming home from visiting mom, inserted my key card to open my front door and . . . . zip. Fortunately, I’ve gotten in the habit of never leaving the apartment without my phone and my keys in my pocket. Called security. His key worked just as fine as frog hairs. Mine (neither of mine!) got a brief flick of red light and accomplished nothing. Zilch. Zipola. By then it was 4:30 in the p.m. Called down to the front desk, got them to make a new set of keys. Fortunately, I know my neighbors, so when I went out Tuesday (trolley in tow) to knitting group, Michaels (guess what I bought there!) and then Market Street, I could leave my door nearly closed but not latched, so I wouldn’t have to wait out in the hall with a trolley full of groceries, etc., for security to come open my door for me. I was in Market Street when the Front Desk called to let me know my new key cards were ready.
We ordered mom a new phone, not exactly smart, but of average intelligence. It’s a little Nokia. She can text on it. (she could text on the other one, but not as easily.) She says she’s not going to be texting anybody. I’m taking bets on how long she’ll hold out. Once she sees how easy it is to do, she’ll be texting. She’ll finally be able to text Jim S. during the Cowboy games. Joy will no doubt be unconfined. Three to five business days. Not here yet. Expecting it probably Monday. Considering how much snow places have gotten this year, if it gets here by Monday, I’ll be delighted.
The next hurdle will be getting mom to use the hearing aids with Bluetooth I got her. “Oh, but an audiologist . . .!” No, mom. At this stage of the game her hearing loss is past the point of “fine tuning by an audiologist.” Well into the brute force range. The new hearing aides can connect to her phone via Bluetooth, and hopefully she’ll be able to hear on her phone again. It’ll be an interim solution at best. Unfortunately, her hearing loss is getting to the point where nothing short of hooking the phone up to a bullhorn will help her hear a phone conversation, which is sad. She’s isolated enough already. Anyway, I’ll set it up for her with the numbers I have that I know she’ll want, and program the rest in when I take it to her.
How to tell you’ve “I’ll just do one more row and then I’ll go to bed” one time too many.
Working on David’s Hat. Need to do cable crosses and go looking for my cable needle. Not in the bowl. Not on my desk. Not under my keyboard. Not on the floor. Tore the world up looking for the durn thing for ten minutes. Then I realized where it was. (Exhibit A). I’d knitted off and left it. Time to go to bed. So, the next morning I go to pick up my knitting and realized there was something wonky about the cable I was about to knit. (Exhibit B) Realized I’d done a C3F when I should have done a C3B (crossed over right when I should have crossed over left). So I had to frog that cable back past the cross and re-do it. Sigh.
This is what I got at Michael’s after I’d run them through the ball winder. Intended to get just a few skeins, but when I got there, they were having a 50% off sale on all their yarn, so I was able to get twice as much yarn for the same budgeted amount of $$. Yes, Ma’m! Not shown is a take-no-prisoners turquoise colored skein of Caron Simply Soft yarn, which is already in progress. I’ll hat this yarn up and then start in on the bulky yarn I have in stash for guy’s hats. Guys do chemo, too, but ladies first.
I finished “David’s Hat” (what I’m calling that pattern in memory of David Crosby) but was not happy with that row of purl right before the crown decreases. Next one won’t have it and neither will the pattern.
I’ve started hat bags: I’ve put a 16-inch circular, a 24-inch circular and a set of double pointed needles all in the same size in a bag. I have a US 6 (4.0 mm) bag, a US 7 (4.5 mm) bag, and a US 8 (5.0 mm) bag.
Finished a swirly hat using yarn overs to make the stitch. Now I’m working on one that uses kfb (knit front and back) to make the stitch. (I’m using that rampant turquoise yarn.) These are such simple hats you really don’t need a pattern. Just figure your gauge, work out the number to cast on from your circumference measurement making sure it is a number that is evenly divisible by a number larger than 5, and decide how you want to make the stitches. If you want it to swirl to the right, you make the stitch at the beginning of the section, and k2tog (knit two together) at the end of the section. If you want it to swirl to the left, you k2tog at the beginning of the section and add the stitch at the end of the section. When you’re ready to do your crown decreases, you replace k2tog with k3tog. They’re sweet little hats, but they’d work for guys as well as girls.
I’ve been using that little bed table I got for mom that she doesn’t need anymore as a desk extension. I discovered the other day that my ball winder will clamp onto it. The table will become a permanent fixture, I suspect.
I am inching closer and closer to getting rid of the Windows 7 machine. Last night it wouldn’t power off and I had to “help” it by holding down the power button. Today, when I booted it up, it told me that I had an unauthorized version of Windows, which I most certainly do not. Dragged kicking and screaming to Windows 11. Yep. Any day now.
The Owl Underground 
You’re a lot smarter than a couple of my cousins, who keep trying to pawn off their old smart phones on my aunt. She’s well past the point of being able to comprehend one of those bad boys, but even when her mentis was a little more composed, the frustration level often went off the charts. She’d beg for a simpler phone, and finally they went back to a flip phone of some sort. To be honest, I’m a bit the same way. It’s not that I couldn’t load my iPhone with dozens of apps, or take photos with it, or text my life away: I just don’t want to. Give me my radars, weather apps, and “let’s go identify flowers and birds” apps, and I’m happy.
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Interested in “hearing” how the bluetooth hearing aids work out. I think I’ll be getting those when my current hearing aids “die”. My son bought me a “smart” watch because I’d miss phone calls/texts if my phone was in a different room. Now my watch alerts me to a phone call. Love the yarn you used for “David’s Hat”. Congrats on the Michaels yarn sale. I use a bed table like that to hold my laptop while knitting on my deck in the summer.
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Your Michael’s shopping gives me yarn envy. 😉 It’s wonderful when sales are on! Love the hats. For left swirls in the swirly hat, would ssk be more suited than k2tog, since ssk is left-leaning anyway?
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Yep, my mom used to say with her careful enunciation, I just want a Flip Phone. Numbers to dial, and Answer, and Hang Up. The end. I held out with Windows 7 forever, even running Windows 10 in the “looks like 7” mode. I wonder what life will be like in 20 years when I am forced to upgrade from 10 to A Million. Armageddon, that’s what.
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