I can almost say that I have learned the sequence of the flashings-on-and-off of that little hourglass, when I try to start FreeCell. First it flashes for a while, then comes a patch when it appears steadily, then a couple more teeny tiny flashes � and then either success or failure. Although twice, I think, on �failure� evenings, I have coaxed it forth by wandering around the blue screen that says �Microsoft Solitaire Collection� and clicking away, both left and right. It came up good as gold tonight, just when I need it to get me through these last two draughts of my colonoscopy stuff. Jane, I�m a blind follower if ever there was one. I don�t think I�ll be ready for another drink of this stuff much before 9, anyway. I am interpreting the instruction to get it down within half an hour to mean that I can start 15 minutes before the specified time. Today went quite well, and this time tomorrow it�ll all be over. Helen�s husband David is an expert in such things �...
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Well, that�s the first day of preparation nearly done. I feel a bit peculiar, but I think I�ve survived. The difficulty lies in the funny stuff I�ve got to take. I feared something foul-tasting, and I feared a strong laxative. Neither proves to be the case. The difficulty is that I have to put 20 mg of it into 700 ml of water and drink it within half an hour. Reading the instructions in advance, I failed to notice that 700 ml is the better part of a litre. Today I had to do one at breakfast and one just now � and Freecell came up like a lamb so I just sat here sipping from my vase as if it were cider, playing Freecell. But tomorrow I will be obliged to do that, and then drink a third � at 9 p.m., which is after my bedtime. Needless to say, I didn�t walk, but I had my Tuesday bath which always feels wonderful. And ripped out the corrugated rib I had started to do on the neck of the Calcutta Cup vest, and re-did it (it looks much better) and bound it off ...
Freecell came up, good as gold, on the first click this evening � and I feel much better, too. I didn�t go out, feeling perhaps still a bit weak but also that in these days of the colonography, I can do what I want. The regimen begins tomorrow. That�s interesting, what you say about lack of salt, Shandy. I will certainly save the episode up for telling to a doctor. I don�t suppose I�ll even see a doctor when I go to the hospital on Thursday. I started on the corrugated rib for the neck of wee Hamish�s Calcutta Cup vest, but made enough silly mistakes that I think it�s worth pulling it all out and starting again. It won�t take long, once I really get going. I discovered in my previous adventures with corrugated rib, that my best bet is to carry the purl yarn in my right hand and the other in the left. Mechanically, that works fine, but my right hand keeps feeling that it�s entitled to do the knit stitch and muddle ensues. I had another salad from my salad machine...
I�ve been very low today. Low blood pressure? Why? I felt faint, and even feared that my eyesight was darkening. It started in the night � one of the times I got up to pee, I found I was steadying myself on the wall, as well as using a stick. However, I didn�t faint, or even fall, and this evening I think I feel a bit better. There�s no Freecell, though. So much for teetotalism. C. came. We didn�t attempt a walk. She brought me a loaf of plastic white bread, which is to form the basis of my colonography preparation on Tuesday and Wednesday. I ate some � it is truly delicious. Tamar, I had your very thought about the neck of wee Hamish�s vest during the night (before I saw your comment) and today, put it into action. The hole is not quite big enough for me. I have a rather large head. I think I could have tugged it on, but then maybe I couldn�t have got it off again. I�ve unpicked half a dozen stitches on one of the shoulder seams � the one that terminates...
You�re quite right, Mary Lou. I�ve got both Machu Picchu and Kate Davies� Coofle somewhere here on my laptop computer. The leg warmers, no. They were part of a kit from Jamieson & Smith and came on sort of stiff paper, I think. Tamar, they�re Fair Isle leg warmers, so not as easy knitting as they might be. I�ve three-needle bound off the shoulders of Hamish�s Calcutta Cup vest. All is well, except that I�m slightly worried about whether the neck is big enough, given the extraordinary size of the infant head. I won�t do much ribbing, and I won�t do any decreases. It can be a round neck. And I�ll use a stretch bind-off. I may get the neck tacked down on the inside tonight, ready for action tomorrow. I could unpick an inch on one of the shoulders, and knit the edging back and forth�That might be better than worrying. No Freecell so far tonight. Yesterday it suddenly appeared when I was wandering around the screen clicking both left and right. That�s having no ...
I had a struggle to get Freecell this evening, but eventually succeeded. Very odd. I think I�ve decided that I�ve finished knitting wee Hamish�s vest. It remains to finish it. I�m operating without a pattern. Graft the shoulder stitches together? Three-needle bind-off? I incline to the latter. I�ve got time for a corrugated rib � this year�s match is a fortnight tomorrow. But I�ve got to press ahead. The thing is to do the v-neck first. Then I can do an ordinary rib at the sleeve holes, if I run out of time. I still haven�t found those patterns. However I have established that Machu Picchu and Kate Davies� Coofle are both on my computer, leaving only the leg warmers. I need some soothing knitting right now, and think I will do the first Machu Picchu sleeve next. I�m knitting it bottom-up on vaguely EPS lines, so I don�t really need the pattern for a while. I�ve finished the body, up to the armpits. Sunshine again today, but I didn�t walk. Helen reported...
Freecell has been miraculously restored to me. Every time I turn this old laptop on and sit down to it, I begin by asking for the Microsoft Solitaire Collection. For the last few evenings, the blue screen has come up with those words on it, and with the hourglass symbol next to the cursor as if it were trying. Then no more. But tonight, just as I was about to give up, there it was. Did I not wait long enough, on the other evenings? I don�t think it was that. Anyway, I�m glad to see it. I found the menu plan for the �real� colonoscopy. The first day is not too bad � much like both days of my present regime, and with butter allowed on one�s white bread. But on the second day, no food at all, just liquids. That was where I feared I�d be too weak, and risk falling. I suspect the laxative was more savage, too. My husband had a colonoscopy once, and he had diabetes. I can�t imagine how we got through it. I�ve done some knitting. Helen and Fergus (her youngest son) ar...
I couldn�t walk today because I was waiting in for a delivery. Tomorrow, that will be the story again. All very tedious. The weather was bright today, although cold. You can just begin to see the light coming back, if you look at the edges. There�s some confusion about what I wrote yesterday. It�s partly � rather, mostly � the fault of medical vocabulary, I think. The procedure I am going to have next Thursday is a CT scan. It�s called a colonoscopy presumably because the colon is what they will be scanning, but it doesn�t involve sticking a camera up my bottom or having a sedative. The preparation doesn�t sound much fun, but is much easier than for a proper colonoscopy. I will get myself a loaf of the whitest sliced bread and, if possible, a jar of jelly marmalade (no peel). Sometimes I will have the bread with Marmite, which I love. And for lunch I will have a pseudo-ramen: stock from a stock-cube perhaps seasoned with soy sauce and fish sauce; some ramen noodles; and ...
I�ve got Microsoft Word back, anyway. It was a matter of switching the machine off and on again. Archie was no help � he thinks I should get a new computer. This one is old, as computers go � eight years at least. And it runs Windows 8. That's bad, according to Archie. I didn�t try to go out today � bath day. And I got a get-out-of-jail-free card in the post: a summons from the NHS for a �CT colonoscopy minimum preparation examination�. �Minimum preparation� is still pretty severe � no fruit or vegetables or red meat, minimum fat, minimum dairy, for two days. But sugar and floppy white bread and white pasta are allowed so one shouldn�t faint. There is a little bottle of something to take three times a day while staying near a lavatory. The actual ordeal is on Thursday of next week. Get-out-of-jail-free, because I feel I can not do anything I don�t want to do, between now and then. I will be very tempted to drink a bottle of cider when I get back from the hospital next Th...
I am being persecuted by computers � starting with the disappearance of Freecell. We discovered yesterday that Google Mail is sending all messages from Alexander to Spam. I thought he was mad at me. He knows a lot about computers, and works from home on one. He doesn�t know why this is happening. And we can�t even blame it on Microsoft. And now I�ve had trouble loading Word. (My practice is to compose there and save to Dropbox and then copy it over to Blogger.) I have succeeded in the end, although only in �safe mode�. And it turns out that "safe mode" doesn't know about Dropbox and where I usually save things. We had sunshine again today, and Helen came to walk with me, but I felt too feeble to get around the garden. (So much for temperance.) We got there, and I sat for a while on a damp bench. Better than nothing. And I got some knitting done, too. I hope those of you on the Eastern Seaboard aren�t suffering too much. My cheetahs clearly do...
We had a bit of sunshine today. It does help. I got around the garden with C., very slowly. I ate a little green salad from my salad machine. C. brought me two Seville oranges, and I used one of them to make a vinaigrette for it. Very tasty. And I knit. It�s still agonizingly difficult, the more so now that it is divided by three steeks (armholes and v-neck) so that one has to figure out where one is in the pattern three times per round. There are two rounds in which nothing much happens, evenly all the way around. The following round, in each case, is still very difficult for me: the pattern is two lozenge-shapes, squares tipped on end. One is always expanding while the other contracts, and at the mid-way point they change places. It is important, after those do-nothing rounds to be sure I�ve got it right, which is which and where am I. It seems to involve a lot of time and a lot of unpicking. But I remain confident that I�m going to get it done in tim...
I thought maybe Freecell would come back by magic, but it hasn�t. I�ve Googled the problem, which has happened to other people before, but I have failed to perform the actions required. I�ve found a new copy, free, in the Microsoft Store, but they say they don�t have a record of any suitable appliance of mine to install it on. So I�ve given up. Archie is coming to see me next week. He�s young, and relatively computer-savvy, but I think this lies outside his field of expertise. Otherwise all is much as before. A dull, grey day, warm for January. I got around the garden with Helen. I moved the knitting forward. If I can keep up this pace, I�ll have no difficulty in finishing before this year�s Cup Day � three weeks from today, I think. I had an awful tussle with it this evening. I think it�ll have to be photographed in soft focus. Of our three interesting villains (Djokovic, the Prime Minister, Prince Andrew) it begins to look as if it may be the Prime Minister wh...
Another pretty good day. Still grey -- it would be nice to see the sun � but still very easy, as winters go. I got around the garden. Kirsten, I�m sure I wouldn�t be walking if the weather were anything like yours. I don't care for cold, and I'm scared to death of slippery. And, yes, it�s wonderful how good it makes you feel to plant a seed and see it come up. I think I will be able to eat a very modest green side-salad from my salad factory soon � two kinds of lettuce and some rocket. My computer did one of those maddening �updates� when I turned it off last night � and now, it won�t load Freecell. That�s more of a New Year�s resolution than I feel entirely ready for. Knitting went well. I�ve done the arithmetic, counted and re-counted the stitches, placed the steek for the v-neck opening, finished the decreases at the sides. I�m relying a lot on your Rylan pattern, Mary Lou, for which I am daily grateful. I have come to a decision, too. If Scotland win the Cal...
A pretty good day. I got around the garden, and embarked on the underarm decreases of wee Hamish's Calcutta Cup vest, next to the steeks. I thought perhaps what I might do this evening is the arithmetic: how wide do I want the shoulders to be at the end, allowing for ribbing at both neck and sleeve-hole? How many stitches on each side does that amount to? When do I start the neck steek, and how fast do I decrease thereafter? But I�ve just discovered that a new Americast is up, and it�s about Prince Andrew. So perhaps I�ll actually knit this evening, while I listen to it. One more round couldn�t hurt. One of the Americast regulars is Emily Maitlis who conducted the infamous interview with Prince Andrew. What a delicious start to the year, to have Boris and Prince Andrew and Novak Djokovic all providing us gossip-lovers with cliff-hangers, all at once! I kept getting into trouble with the stitch pattern this morning, and having to frog a few stitches. Maybe I�ve l...
A dull day. I got around the garden. I got the tinking done (see yesterday) and the second steek cast on. Then I sank back, exhausted. However, later in the day I discovered that the Calcutta Cup will actually be contested during the first week of February, the 5 th or so. I�d better get cracking. I could finish the vest off with ordinary ribbing instead of corrugated if need be: that would speed things up a bit. Here is my salad factory at the end of week 3, under its eerie light. Basil, far left, was slow to start but is now moving along nicely. I messed around with Youtube a bit, and discovered that I am not expected to wait until I can replace all four lingots; I can take them out and slot in replacements whenever. It is sort of embarrassing not to have thought of that myself. Sometime in June I am supposed to take the whole thing apart and clean it. I want to grow chillies. There are two chilli lingots, cayenne and jalapeno, but both are �out of stock�, th...