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Friday, June 29, 2012

Spectra

Tragedy struck yesterday. My trusty laptop was overheating to the point of shutting itself off. I assumed that the fan was either clogged or malfunctioning or that the innards had finally gotten so full of cat hair that it decided to give up. I took it to the apple store expecting them to tell me the would either clean it out or install a new fan. Imagine my surprise when I was told that my hard drive was in the process of dying a slow but inevitable death.



Now I am a marginally savvy cookie and I backed up everything to my external hard drive before taking it in. Because of this, I didn't feel too bad when they told me I'd need a new drive. I bought the extended warranty, so even though Lappy is almost 3 years old he would get the new drive for free. Bonus: they no longer make 250GB drives so I'd be getting 500 at no extra charge. This was all sounding pretty good until Appleman tells me that, because of the long and agonizing death Lappy has been suffering, he may not have been backing my data up properly at all. Perfect.



I was supposed to get him back today to and I would be able to see if my external dive actually contains any data (I store as much as I can in the cloud, but all my bar outlines are on that drive... Or I should say, are maybe on that drive.) Appleman called me back today to say that the drive replacement went well, but when they ran Lappy through the stress test, his board failed and must also be replaced and then he must go through the stress test again.



Now for some good news: we took a practice bar exam today and my score was passing! Theoretically this means I can pass the real exam on the 24/25. WOOT.



Also, Spectra is done and blocked.





I'm not sure if I mentioned this before but Spectra sort of started out as a bet between Ryan and I. We were in Twisted and they had a store sample using the same color of Zauberball for the wedges (I lost my tag so I can't tell you what that color is) and Ryan thought it looked pretty cool, but difficult to make. I told him it was cool (it's Stephen West after all) but really not that difficult. "Really?" he said, "you could makes this?" His tone was a little too incredulous for my taste and I immediately boasted that I could easily make it. At this point Ryan bought me the yarn and challenged me to make a Spectra. Challenge accepted.



BAM

BAM

BAM


If there is a winner here, it's clearly me. I got free yarn. Proved my awesome knitting prowess. AND now I have a Spectra.



The non-zauber yarn is Cascade heritage silk. It's lovely to work with. I did run out of it a bit early, and so my Spectra only has 84 rather than 86 wedges. (This has no affect on my victory!)



This is the first time since December I haven't had something by Stephen West on the needles.



This brings my WIP total down to 9.



Go check out Tami's.



4 comments:

  1. Bam! I don't know why people always doubt the power of knitters. We're clearly superior beings. I'm sorry to hear about your computer, that super sucks. I had to buy a new one a few months ago because the screen on my old one was slowly turning black, one vertical stripe at a time. It eventually got to the point that I couldn't write papers on it anymore because I couldn't see enough of the word document.

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  2. Hahaha! I love this so much, hell yes for free yarn he should challenge you more often. Never tell a woman with sticks that she can't do something if you don't want to eat your words! Sorry to hear about mr. laptop, I think that mine is slowly dying as well. Oh well I'm going to ride this thing warranty free for as long as I can! I might have to cast on one of those though I love the colors.

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  3. Wow - it looks awesome! I love that you got free yarn for it, and what a way to meet a challenge. Love it!

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