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lexin: (Default)
Monday, July 31st, 2023 09:29 pm
Finished one scenario – ran like rabbits from some kind of Great Old One with an enormous eye, which sucked knowledge from your brain like a sponge. We did our skills and mine did rather well, which was nice for once.

Next scenario starts with an invitation to a fraternity party. I don’t think it needs scary things to happen for an invitation to a fraternity party to be generally a bad idea.

In other news

People may know that I’m not good at gardening, or even that interested. However, I don’t like my garden the way that it is currently. It’s just…boring. It was stones around three edges and astro-turf in the middle.

I met a friend at my Welsh class, and in return for me teaching her to sew, she’s doing my garden. So she moved the gravel that covered the three edges and I bought a ton (a genuine ton, in a bag) of topsoil for £66 including VAT. My friend Lizzy shovelled the soil onto the spaces left by the removal of the stones.

Next stage is for me to buy some plants, which I’ve done and which should be arriving in the next few days. Roses good for poor soil, epimedium, geranium, euphorbia (though I had to get seeds), and senecio. Then we will plant them in the most suitable spots – I am very much under Lizzy’s tutelage, I know bugger-all about plants. They all need to be suitable for soil which is not very good, for areas which have partial sun and which are not poisonous to cats.

Smokey doesn’t go out, but who knows what the habits will be of any cats I have in the future.
lexin: (Default)
Friday, April 12th, 2013 03:48 pm
Who else is watching and enjoying The Great British Sewing Bee?

I love it to bits.

Every single rookie mistake those people have made, I've made at some stage up to and including not reading the pattern properly and putting a zip in wrong and taking on a project too complicated for me. I've even made some mistakes they haven't managed yet.

I'm wondering if they'll make them sew using knitted rather than woven cloth in the semi final, because they were full of doom and gloom about how difficult it is to sew silk and satin, but I've found jersey much, much harder to cope with.

Any comments?
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lexin: (Default)
Sunday, January 8th, 2012 05:23 pm
A few weeks ago I decided, in a fit of enthusiasm, to speed up my PC. The software I used stripped the driver from my onboard sound and rendered my computer silent other than the odd 'bip' when I press the wrong button.

I improved the shining hour this weekend by trying to get to the bottom of why it didn't work. This has driven me into the depths of the BIOS (which looks like no other BIOS I've ever encountered) and to distant websites to download the chipset drivers for the motherboard. For it is onboard sound, not a soundcard. I don't want a soundcard as that will mean me sitting on the floor, and anyway I don't think I have a slot left for one.

Even given all this, my computer is as silent as ever.

I give up. It'll have to stay silent until it is replaced, and who knows when that will be? Because I refuse to replace a perfectly good computer just because the sound doesn't work.

In other news

I turned up two pairs of trousers that were too long. I bought them weeks ago, but never got around to it, and replaced two buttons. I still have one button to go.
lexin: (Default)
Wednesday, May 4th, 2011 05:01 pm
I spent some time this lunchtime clicking through the options on buying sewing patterns. Hush, those of you who (justifiably) point out that I have a box of sewing patterns as yet unsewn. You can't have too many.

Or, perhaps you can take heart; it seems that even if a fat bird chooses to make her own clothes, there are few options. Perhaps it's me being too optimistic, but all that I could find seemed to be a variation on 'sack, tied up with string'.

Pull on trousers, yes. I can understand that women of more corpulent dimensions prefer not to do battle with zips on a daily basis. In general, I prefer that option myself. Still worse is that variation known as the 'side zip'. Preserve us, please, from the evil of the side zip – the last thing I want in the morning is to have to tie my arms in knots to get the zip to fasten. (And has anyone but me ever had one of those frocks where the zip is under the arm? Nightmare! I just don't have the spoons for that at any time.)

Having said that, why is it not possible to get frocks with swishy skirts for larger women? Why are we condemned to pencil or A-line skirts? It's not as if they make us look any less fat.

And that's the crux of it; I'm fat, I'm going to have to clothe a fat body. I've noticed this. But I don't want clothe it in variations on a sack. I can't make it look thinner (I don't believe your 'slimming cut' bollocks, I've been had by that before) but I want it to look shapely and interesting. Is it too much to ask?