the pace of life conspires against me, this Wednesday I was happily sitting on the sofa knitting, just thinking about how it was very nearly late and I should really make moves towards sleeping .. when I realized it was Wednesday and there was no blog post. How could that happen? In hindsight - one little interruption to a day can pretty much derailed normal events for the day. Our car needed its regular 6 month service, nothing odd there, usually Bear drops it off in the morning, he collects the cubs after school and taxi them home, then I taxi to the service agent pick up the car and home I go. Our car is 'older' but reliable, except a few weeks ago the radio died, I've been missing the news and weather and current events as I drive .. and we were both slightly worried that as the radio was permanently on, with lights but no sound and we couldn't turn it off .. and worried that the electricity flow to it was constant and might be a danger. Much as I would love insurance to pay out for a replacement car.... I couldn't be bothered shopping around for a replacement right now or struggling to live even for a short time without one while we did that. So we explained and asked them to disconnect the radio ... and they said they had a small supply of fairly inexpensive radio/cd/mp3 player units which they could install. Sounded good ....except when I went to collect the car at 4:30 it wasn't quite ready, the plug between the new radio and the car wasn't the type they needed, so a mechanic shot off to obtain the right one and promised me it would be all done by 5pm .... and at 5, a quick discussion that that cable wasn't right either .. but it would be sorted by 5:30pm .. at 6pm one of the mechanics dropped me home sans car. They were really insistent I stay and it would only be a little more, and were really sorry .. but there is only so much free coffee one can drink after work and only so many glossy magazines one can flick thru sitting on a sofa in a car place. It appears that the radio connection that our car has specified is not the type it has installed .. and yet the car has had one careful owner(us) and no modifications, it still had the factory installed radio. Thursday the cubs and I walked to where we had to be. Poppy's idea, she really really wanted to walk ... 35 minutes to their school and a further 30 minutes to my work. I was totally surprised that they not only managed but skipped and chatted the whole way. I do have to say it was pretty much all downhill. After work Bear collected the car, with new radio, and mp3 playing unit, and its fab. Turns out the installer ended up resorting to 'old-school' techniques, rather than using a pre-manufactured plug. He cut wires and soldered, nice to know they can still do 'old-school' when they need to. The look of the new radio makes me smile, its very 'bling' after the old budget one, this has far more lights than I'm used to, its new and black and shiny and glows with fake neon lights at odds with the the rest of the car that is worn and black fading to dusty grey.
We are back on track now, today will be a standard Friday, and I've got finished knit objects, Toby's Turkish socks, all done and progress on Nightingale, a heel done in colour work. Nightingale is a fairly quick knit, despite the fact I've now worked this heel cup and heel three times in total - nothing to do with the pattern just me learning to best tension which stitches how and when to achieve a neat and tidy finish. Part of that was reading the pattern properly .. my first go was messy, the second go a little better and the third attempt involved reading carefully and following all the instructions to the letter.. and it worked like a dream. Funny that - how following instructions worked best.
And the Turkish socks, Toby's are all done and into their second day of wearing. At first they were a little tight to pull on, but today they are easier, a huge relief, as I didn't want to knit them again. Note: his jeans are longer - I just made him hitch them up for the photo.
So nearly time to leave for work, and listen to the new and improved old school installed radio - and find out whats happening with the weather and news about town.
take care
Stellla
2 comments:
Ah, the vagaries of car repair; we had a day like that this week, too (poor Rick had to drive their loaner car all day on Thursday). All of the socks are looking absolutely lovely -- have you gotten T to take them off yet? (I know I wouldn't be able to convince the girls to give them up.)
Toby's socks are so lovely! He must be really proud of them, too!
Don't talk to me about cars, though, they are NOT my favourite subject right now. Among other things (which definitely will not be spoken about!) I had to take mine in to be repaired as the "check engine" light came on. Turned out to be the oxygen sensor (I didn't even know that engines had these - they look something like a spark plug - who knew?) which new costs a little over $600 all up. A secondhand part would be about a third of that. No guesses which option I took! Problems arose, though, when the part arrived - the wires were different colours than the ones in my car plus they were shorter! the mechanic finally married it together in much the same fashion as your guys did, fitted it and my car now works a treat once more. Pity about my bank account being in shock, though.
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