I’ve always enjoyed giving hand made gifts. I remember learning to crochet as a child and giving out lopsided pot holders to my family for Christmas.  Since then, I’ve learned several other crafts including beadwork and lampworking.

The last few years I’ve made it a point to give the boys something hand made.  They’ve gotten scarves, house slippers and fingerless gloves the last few years.  Most of these things I can make up fairly quickly and they do use them.

While looking at crocheted hats on Etsy one day, I cam across some Mohawk caps and as a joke, showed them to my oldest.  O.o  He loved them and asked for one for Christmas.  Z even knew what colors he wanted: dark purple body, two white stripes and lime green fringe.   I said okay and stared looking for free hat patterns.

Once I found one, I pulled out the purple and white yarn and set to work.  Now the hat pattern was only a basic hat, I had to make a few more rounds for the back and ear flaps, but that was a no brainer.  The hardest part was deciding on how to do the fringe.  I decided on making a larkshead knot, two to a row for the hair.  I think it worked out quite well.  Most of the pattern was done in double crochet, except for the stripes–single crochet–and the trim.  Over all, it took about 4 hours for the body and another 2 hours for the fringework.  See  I think  he likes it.

Then, I started on J’s hat. He finally decided on a black body with orange stripes and red trim.  Since I knew I didn’t have enough of the black, I went to the store and bought more, along with some red for the fringe.

Now, most of the time, if I use the exact same supplies for a second project, things always turn out the same right?  -_-  J’s hat just would not cooperate.  Even though I used the same type/brand yarn, the black was somehow thicker but just a bit. No big deal right? The first three rounds of the hat was fine, but after that, it turned into a lopsided floppy frisby.  So I ripped it out and started again, wondering if I had picked up a stitch or two somehow.

Nope,  same thing.

I think I ripped it apart 4 or 5 times and still didn’t get it right.

So I dug into my yarn stash and came up with some thinner yarn for the top, started the pattern again and yes, this time it worked better.  However….

it ended up too big.

Same pattern, same amount of stitches, same type/brand of yarn.

But both the boys are happy.  J wears a short stocking cap under his so it doesn’t fly off.  I’m going to make some more, just because I want to know where I went wrong with the second hat.  If you want one, let me know.

*Apparently my computer decided to shut down during my first draft.  And since the interwebs occasionally is funky here, WP didn’t save it.  Sans blog post round 2. lol

As I have mentioned before, I have 2 boys.  They are good kids, just coming into their teenage years.  Most of the time they do like working together, however it does meet with some hilarious results.

My oldest, Z, is in FFA this year and is raising chickens.  He has 3 little bantam hens kept in a coop with 4 other small white chickens which belong to another student.  On weekends and holidays, it is Z’s job to check on them to make sure they have plenty of food and water or to see if they have laid any eggs.

Since I was busy cooking and getting ready to go to my parents yesterday morning, we did not check the birds until we got back later last night.  It was dark, misting a bit and cold, so to hurry up the process Z and J got out of the car to take care of the birds.

The FFA building is behind the high school, almost in the woods.  There’s pens for cattle, horses and pigs. Currently there are only a few pigs and the chickens there. The only lighting is at the front of the building and of course inside.  B maneuvered the car so the headlights would shine on the coop so the boys could see.  Zac ran inside and grabbed the key and came back outside to unlock the first padlock.  He handed J the feed trough and they shut the door so they could fill it up.

Before they came back out, I noticed a car driving up the lane. Sure enough, it was the town cop to see what we were doing.  Once the saw the boys carrying food for the birds, he turned around and drove off. But not before he distracted the boys enough for some hilarity.

Z opened the door back up and walked to the other door.  J put the feed into the stall, closed the door, and proceeded to lock up, just as Z turned back around.

I knew that look on my oldest son’s face.  If you have kids, it is that “ahhh shit,” look.  You know the one where they knew they had done something stupid.

Z started kicking the straw and grass around the coop.

B made a quiet comment. “He’s lost the key.”

We watched as both boys searched the grass, the ledge of the coop and tried to pry the door open enough they could feel around.  No key.

Ten minutes later, we head to the house to get flashlights and the portable drill.  Luckily, the coop hinges were put on the outside with screws.  If we couldn’t find the key in the grass, then there was only one place it could be-Inside the coop.

By this time the mist had changed over to an almost snow-like precipitation but we were all scrounging around looking for a glint of silver in the grass. No luck.

The portable drill made quick work of the screws holding the hinges down.  Just a few quick zoop zoop zoops and we could lift the door up just enough to see the key sitting on the ledge.

We put everything back together.  The boys finished taking care of the birds and we went home, teasing Z about our little adventure.

I think next time Z will be a bit more careful with the key, either that or we need to carry a full demolition kit with us at all times.

The netbook had the windows 7 starter edition installed on it.  After using XP I found the transition easy; just a few things that were different. Things were okay until the past few months when I noticed a slow down of my computer.  Some webpages – the graphic heavy ones- were taking up to 5 minutes to load.  My processor was maxing out the RAM frequently.  Sitting it was running at 70-85%.

I’m careful as to what and where I click on any computer. Yes mistakes happen, that’s why I regularly run my virus scans. Except for a very few things, scans have come up clean. No infections or viruses.

We still couldn’t find out why the netbook was using up 70-80% of my RAM.

Next we deleted a bunch of programs that I didn’t use or didn’t want any more.  While it dropped the RAM usage, it wasn’t much, only about 8% or so.  But it still was running anywhere from 60-80%.  Not good.

We have a good friend who is a computer guru and he poked around on it for a bit before declaring it to be a Windows issue.

Choices:

install XP  or try a different operating system.

Since I didn’t have a disk or key for XP, a different OP it was.

My friend suggested Ubuntu, although he doesn’t use it.

So after a quick preview, we put the installer on a flash drive and installed it on the computer.

Now for some people, installing something besides Windows would be nothing short of a terrifying experience.  Me, not such a big deal.  I’ve worked (though briefly) on other formats.  In fact, the very first computer I worked with in high school was an Apple.  I even worked on one of the first Mac’s back then.  Once I went to college, I was introduced to IBM and windows. My previous job at the newspaper had me doing some work on a Mac along with working with windows.

So bouncing from one user interface to another wasn’t anything new, but then I’ve never worked with Linux or Ubuntu yet.

After it installed and updated I started playing.

Ubuntu is different from windows in a lot of ways but has some features that are familiar.  Program files are located in different places. That takes a bit of getting used to.

I’ve got my writing programs installed, the browser I like on it, and loads of information on the internet if I have any issues.

But as I use it more and more, I’m finding that I really like it.

After I located the boxes of decorations and the bag that contained the tree, I cleaned off the very large console TV and moved the router and modem over a bit. As I pulled out boxes and bags I noticed I had 2 little eyes watching me with great intent.

Olaf ran up the back of the couch as I put up silver and blue ornaments on the tree.  I knew what he was thinking: OHHHH new toys!

I made a comment to B as to how long it would be before the kitten got in trouble.

It took only about ten minutes after I was finished. He got sprayed with the water bottle for his efforts

So tonight, after my son’s Winter concert, I’m going to try to get a photo of him and the tree… before he gets wet again.