Not speaking Japanese

Well, I've been somewhat restricted from machine knitting this weekend, because an installation guy came to fit an aerial socket first thing Monday morning, so I had to move machines about to clear the corner, thus making two of them unusable. It's all back to normal now and Santa is bringing me a small freeview tv - the Cog'll never see me soon, haha! It was strange and slightly amusing that although there wasn't anything I actually wanted to machine-knit right then, the fact that I couldn't made me slightly twitchy. Like being told you can't have chocolate, and there's some in the kitchen, I suppose.

My Passap E6000 cable arrived yesterday, fully repaired, so last night I got it back onto the machine and the console is no longer complaining about mystery microbes or other mythical "dirt". I had a quick go at a tuck sample, but the leftmost needle was playing up and wouldn't knit off (possibly operator error) so I had to give up after about 2 inches. I also decided to have a play with the mylar patterning function of the Brother KH950i - it knits preprogrammed fairisle beautifully, but refused to produce the snowflake pattern I tried to input, although it did appear to read it in ok. It would only knit a column of dots and produce massive floats. I have heard that the mylar sheet reader can be cantankerous, and as I have a PPD I'm not too worried if it doesn't work, but it would have been nice to get it working as it's the quickest way to get data into the machine. Hence the post title - I find the manual a little dense, it seems to jump about a bit in this area. A simple flow diagram instead of pages of dense diagrams would help no end.

The Cog's dad fancied the fingerless gloves the Cog was wearing on Saturday, so I've had an order to make some for Christmas. I think the Cog's must have been the smaller size, because this pair seem quite a bit bigger. Oh well, I shall sew them up and see what he thinks. They are from a pattern published in the Guild newsletter a while ago, designed by our Chairman, and they are very quick and easy to do, so it's no great hassle to make up a pair in the smaller size and see which ones he prefers. I suspect they might stretch a little so smaller is probably better.

Google managed to mess up my diary when it was imported from my old Palm PDA, so I didn't realise until yesterday that I was attending a rock concert whilst simultaneously attending the Passap meeting over in Dudley. This will be a problem for any dated-but-untimed event I booked before I got the new mobile 'phone in September - like birthdays. But at least I'll be a day early - better that than a day late I suppose!

On the handknitting front, I am now onto the sleeve of the fluffy jumper. They seem to be three-quarter length sleeves, with very little shaping, so shouldn't take too long. Mentally aiming to have this jumper ready for a trip I'm making before xmas, but not sure it will actually be finished in time.

I also seem to have face-ache today, my right upper wisdom tooth is having some sort of growth spurt. I wish it'd leave my face and ear alone! Made serious inroads to the xmas shopping this weekend, and hoping to complete most of the rest of it on Sunday. The sooner it's done, the sooner I can relax.