Me: *turn on camera*
Camera: Hay what’s u- *PICTURE DIES*
Me: WTF?
Camera: Look at my pretty flashing horizontal lines on a black screen.
Me: WTF?
Camera: You didn’t want a picture of what you’re actually pointing the camera at, did you?
Me: Yes, yes I did.
Camera: Well, you get horizontal pink lines instead.
Me: WTF?
Camera: Neener.
Me: *turn off camera*

Wait for it…

Me: *turn on camera again*
Camera: Look, your picture is back!
Me: Yay!
Camera: HAHAHA JUST KIDDING. Here, have some horizontal flashing lines instead.
Me: WTF?

So after an initial fit of “OMG WTF I HAVE NO MONEY TO GET CAMERA FIXED OR BUY NEW CAMERA AHHHHH FUCK FUCK FUCK, ALSO, FUCK!” I poked around on the internets and found out that maybe, maaaaaybe, it might be a known image sensor defect that Canon would fix for free regardless of warranty status (which, the thing is six years old hahahahaha warranty yeahright, so, sweet). Called ‘em up, found out that yes, it could be that, but I wouldn’t know until they took a look at it. Luckily the service centre is not far away.

Of course, knowing that electronics are fickle, I took another look at it this morning before taking it in.

Me: *turn on camera*
Zombie Camera: Hi, here’s your picture!
Me: *waits for picture to turn into black screen and flashing lines again*
Zombie Camera: Nope, still picture!
Me: WTF?
Zombie Camera: Oh, by the way, here’s some flashing lines over your picture.
Me: WTF?
Zombie Camera: Yeah, I figured you missed them.
Me: WTF?

Okay. Whatever, camera. You may have returned from the dead, but until you give me a picture with no lines over it, you’re still broken. To the service centre you go.

Me: Blah blah flashing lines.
Lady at Service Centre: *turn on camera*
Zombie Camera: I am a perfectly functional camera. See? Picture!
Me: WTF?
Lady: Huh. It looks fine.
Zombie Camera: *on best behaviour*
Me: WTF?
Lady: Yeah, no flashing lines.
Zombie Camera: Flashing lines? What? I know not of what you speak.
Me: I swear it was broken half an hour ago.
Lady: Heh, I believe you.
Zombie Camera: I WAS FRAMED. Heh heh. Framed. I made a funny.
Me: I hope they dissect you.
Zombie Camera: *whimper*

The end result is, in three weeks or so, I’ll either get back a shiny repaired camera in the mail, or a phone call saying “neener it ain’t the image sensor, you have to pay $150 if you want it fixed”, to which I’ll reply “NOT GONNA”, and then I’ll get back a shiny non-repaired zombie camera that makes terrible puns. And will have no camera, until I can afford a new one. And thus will not blog, for a knitting blog without pictures would be some awful mess of incoherence and imaginary conversations with inanimate objects, and nobody wants that.

So. We’ll see. In the meantime, perhaps I’ll actually knit something.

I schlepped the 4.5-year-old dying PowerBook to the Apple Store, where the genius type people told me exactly what I didn’t want to hear: “logic board”. Oh lord. Not this again. In terms of repair costs, that roughly translates to “bend over!” followed by a maniacal cackle. Ah, well. It had a good run. So I am now the proud owner of a shiny white MacBook. Well, mostly proud. We’ve had a few fights already, but I think with some time and some counseling we can make this relationship work.

One would think that without a computer, I’d get plenty of knitting done. Er. I made… a hat. And… um… nope, just a hat. Which my camera seems to hate, because it won’t take a proper picture of it, but once I smack some sense into it soothe it with loving calming words, I’ll throw up a FO post for the hat. It’s a cute hat. But really, all that time and just a hat? Huh.

Well, then, one would think that I’d be eager to get back to blogging, at least. Eh… not so much.

I started this blog about a year ago. No, it’s not my blogiversary (oh god, that word) yet. I know I won’t remember when the actual date comes ’round so let’s meta-ramble about it now, shall we? Obviously I was not so much into the blogging thing at first. I just wanted a place to dump project info. Hence my blog name, which I guess is a bit of a misnomer now, because I’m using a good three-quarters of my ass. But I’m not changing it. I heart that little half-donkey.

So I took a liking to knitblogging. I still like it. But, full disclosure: I was glad to have a legitimate excuse to ignore the blog for awhile. I’m not sure why. Just needed a break, I guess. I’m still behind on emails and PMs and such. Probably because I’ve been ignoring them and they refuse to answer themselves. You’d think that with today’s advanced technology they’d answer themselves. Who can I complain to about this?

Anyway. I’m back now. And I’ll have to go back to using lame, stupid excuses when I ignore my emails, since my legitimate excuse has been replaced by a MacBook. Woo!

Er.

Um…

How do I write a knit blog entry with no knitting content? I need pictures of something. I’ve got pictures of… something. I have a new toy.

Eeeee! I’ve wanted a tablet for years, and I spotted one on sale last week and finally took the plunge. It’s just a little basic one but it’ll do just fine. It arrived yesterday, and thus began the fun time of learning how to draw with the thing.

Snerk.

Yeah, I clearly had a whole lot of learning to do. But pretty soon I’d progressed from the drawing skills of a 4-year-old to the drawing skills of a 7-year-old. (Not a particularly talented 7-year-old, mind you.) But there was still a problem. The problem was Wrongcat.

Let’s meet Wrongcat!

Wrongcat is wrong. It’s easily recognizable as a cat, but there is clearly something wrong with it. And yet, I sort of love Wrongcat. I drew a wrongbunny, and a wrongflamingo (actually the flamingo itself was quite nice, but the speech bubble coming from it saying “I (heart) green condoms” was the wrong part. Er. Long story…), and various other wrongcreatures, and even a second Wrongcat. It was an improvement on the first one…

… but you know, it really lacked the creepy charm of original Wrongcat.

By the end of the day, I had reached the skill level of a moderately talented 12-year-old (no pics, because they’re not bad enough to mock… heh), so I am confident that pretty soon I’ll be able to draw things that are actually good. Maybe I’ll redraw my half-donkey. The current one was drawn with a mouse, and that’s just tragic.

Now, since I went and bought a pricey-even-on-sale toy, I am officially on a yarn diet. Well, I’m kind of always on a yarn diet, but now it’s more of a strict, unhealthy starvation diet. Yarn anorexia, if you will. I’m not much of a stasher, but I’ve got enough yarn on hand that I probably won’t go mad. What this does mean is that I definitely won’t be going to the Knitter’s Frolic in Toronto this month. While I love my new toy, I still need to sulk about that for a moment.

*sulks*

Okay, I’m done now.

Next time, back to your regularly scheduled knitting content!

Okay, well, everything is broken. Don’t click on anything, because I can pretty much guarantee it’s broken. But my old posts are imported and (some of) my redirects seem to be working. And all the broken things should be fixed by the end of tonight, unless they’re more broken than I thought they were.

If you’re subscribed to me (I heart you!) and you’re reading this, it means my feed redirects work! I’m sure they don’t, but I’m making a post just to see if they do, heh.

Okay, back to un-b0rking the site. I am treating myself to something delicious and alcoholic after this.

I said after, not during…. sigh.

I haven’t switched yet, I’ve just been playing around in a temporary directory. After finding about 5 different ways to break and then fix my WordPress install, I got everything working, and then decided to learn everything about the template system because I hate myself. What exactly was the purpose of reading through the widgets API and then saying “fuck it, I’m not using widgets because then I can’t use conditional tags on the sidebar”?

Oh. Right. Self-hatred.

Then I have to figure out how to not lose all my subscribers when my feed URLs change; I’m going to do a 301 redirect which is supposed to automatically switch over everything, but won’t, because… well, when does this stuff ever work the way it’s supposed to? And all my old blog links will be broken… more 301 redirects, I guess… and lord knows what’s going to happen to my blog stuff on Ravelry. Sob. I don’t want to think about it.

At least I’ll be able to reply to comments. And abuse tags. And now I’ll have a proper site search! And previous/next entry links! Even though it’s making my brain melty, WordPress is pretty darn cool.

Guess what. Maddy is two rows from being bound off.

Guess what else. Maddy has been two rows from being bound off for, like, three days, and I haven’t finished because I’ve been too busy fucking around with WordPress.

Guess what again. I bought more yarn. A whole hour before it even became Sunday, the Day of Unnecessary Yarn Purchases.

Why? Why?! I’ll tell you why. This… thing:

IT HAUNTS ME. I wantssss it, precioussss. (Sorry. That just slipped out.) I’ve been obsessively browsing online for Rowan Felted Tweed, and Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool which seems like a good (cheaper!) sub. But I’ve bought a lot of yarn lately. I’ll wait, I thought, the pattern isn’t going anywhere, and if I wait long enough there will be a really good sale on Felted Tweed or Silky Wool, and then I’ll get it. Good plan, isn’t it?

Except that there is a really good sale on Silky Wool RIGHT NOW, at Webs. So I got the damn yarn. I’m a bit worried that the colour I picked (#43) will be too dark to show cablework, but if so, I have other plans for the yarn. (cackle cackle)

I’m terrified, though, that the shipping costs to Canada will be so astronomical that they’ll negate any savings, and Webs doesn’t calculate costs in the cart so I have no idea what they’ll be. They charge actual shipping plus $1, so I know they won’t screw me, but the USPS might – I keep hearing that international shipping costs have gone way up. I’ve ordered from the US recently, since the shipping hike, and the envelopes have shown postage around $4 or $5, but IF ANYTHING CAN GO WRONG IT WILL AAAAAAAH.

Okay, that’s quite enough of my neuroses.

Hopefully my next entry will either be “yay I’m switching to WordPress now!” or “yay Maddy is done!”. Hopefully it will not be “boo Webs charged me $21 for shipping and I will go cry now!”

(sniffle, sob)

So things may be mildly b0rked for the next, oh, 24-72 hours. Not severely b0rked, though, because I’m just going to re-upload my Blogger blog to the new host for now. The severe b0rkage will come when I switch it over to WordPress, but that isn’t happening quite yet.

b0rk!

Except, I totally did.

I should stay away from online yarn shops on Sundays. For some reason, Sundays are always when I go and order things I don’t need. Anyway, it was on sale. I am at least good about only buying yarn when I am getting a good deal. I got 3 skeins of Euroflax sport weight linen in Cedarwood, which according to the intarnets is either brownish red or reddish brown. I am hoping for brownish red, but I can live with reddish brown. It will become a lacy cardigan of some sort. I’ve heard good things about this yarn, so I am excited, weee! Also a skein of Plymouth Royal Bamboo, in Coral, just to see what knitting with bamboo is like. I’ll make a headband or something with it. As you can see, I’m back to my old colour habits. Oh, well. I’ll knit with any colour yarn as long as it’s red or coral!

Gah. I am becoming a stasher. Ohnoes! At least I have projects in mind, if vague ones.

In other news, I hate Blogger. Well, that’s not news. I have always hated Blogger, for many reasons. But right now it’s the comments thing that’s driving me nuts. As in, I can’t reply to them unless people have their email set to visible, which most people don’t (and I can understand why). Sometimes I go to people’s blogs and reply there, but it’s so clumsy, and anyway I don’t want to clutter people’s blogs with “haaaay thanks for visiting me, now here is a reply that is a total non sequitur to anyone who reads your blog but not mine”.

I love when people comment, and I want to be able to acknowledge those comments. If people took the time to comment, then I want to take the time to reply!

I can’t run WordPress or Movable Type on my current web hosting plan. In fact, I can’t run squat on my current web hosting plan, unless it doesn’t require a database. This has been bugging me for awhile and maybe it’s finally time to suck it up and go through the mess of switching web hosts.

So if anyone reading this is running WordPress, etc. on their own domain, I’d love recommendations for a reliable, inexpensive web host. (I saw several linked on WordPress’s site that have everything I need for 7 bucks a month, which sounds fine to me – but I don’t know anything about those hosts, so I’m hoping someone else does.) SAVE ME FROM THE TYRANNY OF BLOGGER! ALLOW ME TO REPLY TO COMMENTS AND ABUSE TAGS!

(Yeah, that’s another thing, self-hosted Blogger blogs don’t do tags/labels quite right. It saddens me that I can’t abuse tags without making a big mess. I am compensating by tagging my projects on Ravelry with “thisprojectisouttogetme”.)

This entry fails because it contains no pictures. So here is a picture of a giant kitten in a yarn shop:

Sadly, it is not breathing fire or eating demons yet. I’ll work on that.

I decided to add an entire pattern section, thinking that maybe it will nudge me to write up more patterns. Right now only the backpack is there, but I’m going to move over the Instant Gratification Scarf pattern, and hopefully write up that damn monster hat pattern soon. Look at me, I’m a designer! Except, I’m totally not.

I have a new pattern brewing in my head, but it requires a skein of Handmaiden Mini Maiden, which I do not have. I am hoping one will magically appear if I close my eyes for awhile and then open them and look around, but so far nothing has happened. I suppose I’ll actually have to purchase one. The universe is so cruel.

And I added a syndication feed whatever thingy. At least I think I did.

I still hate Blogger.

I can’t install WordPress, because my hosting plan doesn’t inclue MySQL (and I can’t be arsed to hunt around for a new host right now). I can install MovableType, and I might, but all the weird licensing stuff spooks me – there is a free personal version, but who knows what weird restrictions are on it. Graaaaah! Graaaaaah, I say!

Whine, whine, bitch, whine. I’m such a control freak.