My First Slippers

I finished crocheting my first pair of slippers last night. After weeks of crocheting for gifts, this is the first thing I’ve crocheted for myself since the first few experimental projects. So it’s the first good thing I’ve made for myself. I finished them in two nights of crocheting casually.

I used this pattern. I made them in only one color. I also made a regular strap instead of the loop thing and sewed it on instead of using a button. They’re a little loose for me, but they seem “normal” with socks. I think if I make another pair I’ll try going down a hook size or something. I do have smallish feet though. These are my first slippers and I’m pretty happy with them. I’m wearing them right now!

Crochet Trivet and Holly

If you saw my post about making my first baby booties for my new soon-to-be cousin, you know I started crocheting recently.

I made this holly ornament for our annual ornament exchange and craft party. This is the ornament I will exchange. I finally got the front loop/back loop thing down with this project. Here’s the project on Ravelry.

I’m planning to give this to my grandma for her birthday, which is December 24. It’s a dishcloth pattern but I’m calling it a trivet. Here’s the project on ravelry.

Current Mood:  pleased

First Crochet Booties

I made these booties for my aunt Erika’s baby shower for my new little cousin Zachary. It’s my first pair of booties, and also my first finished crochet project. My mom had shown me a few years ago, but I had never made anything but a misshapen square.Gramma made the pom-poms.

I couldn’t remember how to get started so I followed the beginning tutorials in a book and learned the basic stitches. I looked up a video on youtube if I was unclear from the written instructions. Once I had a a long block of all my test stitches I started on my booty pattern. My first try didn’t come out right. The next morning I showed my grandma and though she’s more of a knitter, she was able to clear some things up in the pattern. The second one came out fine, we sewed it up and put on the pom-pom. My next one came out alot bigger than the first, so I had to do it again and that one matched.

I didn’t tell my mom I had made them until Erika opened them at the shower, and she was really surprised.

I’m hoping to make some Christmas presents by crochet.

Current Mood:  pleased

Little Person

Made this “little person” in Cheetah 3D.

Blue PC building, now called “Streaky”

Finally, here is the build log from my most recent PC build. This new PC was put in the lovely blue case you see pictured, and I named her “Streaky” after Supergirl’s cat. You may recall that my pink Supergirl Linux box is called “Comet” after Supergirl’s horse.
Here are the new machine’s specs
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Windsor 2.6GHz 2 x 1MB L2 Cache Socket AM2 Processor
G.SKILL 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800
ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 64 Pro
The pictures show an abit, but I had to replace it with a Gigabyte

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Pink Supergirl Linux Box: Part 6

Okay, the top coat is on and dry, and I’m ready to assemble!

Here I am, ready to start.

Me with the Motherboard.

CPU! This is an Athlon XP 2800+

I put in the CPU

I RAM! I’ve got two sticks of 256mb each.

Snapping in the RAM that I

I predict that this crazy sound card snagged out of my dad’s old PC will be the bane of my existance. It’s a Creative SoundBlaster Audigy.

Securing the Hard Drive.

Channel your inner Back to the Future cast member. “Those things don’t work on water!”

“Unless you’ve got POWer”

Cables everywhere…

Turning on the power.

Here I am with my new box!

I have successfully installed Kubuntu Linux onto my new box. I booted with System Rescue CD first to wipe the drive because it was my younger sister’s old drive and who knows what could be on there. Then I had no problem installing Kubuntu with the dvd I burned from the iso. It looks so pretty! I named the computer Comet, the name of Supergirl’s horse.

I set the new box up to use a KVM so it’s working fine sharing the keyboard and monitor with my Windows box, but I did have some trouble with the mouse, so I just have two different mice plugged in for now, and I’ll look into that later.

Here’s a screenshot for my Kubuntu desktop on my new machine. I was quite pleased with how configurable it is. I was easily able to create and use a pink fading pattern on the panel(at the bottom). I was pleasantly surprised when I pressed print screen and a little box popped up, allowing me to save the screenshot as a png!

Pink Supergirl Linux Box: Part 5

Okay, the top coat is on and dry, and I’m ready to assemble!

Here I am, ready to start.

Me with the Motherboard.

CPU! This is an Athlon XP 2800+

I put in the CPU

I *heart* RAM! I’ve got two sticks of 256mb each.

Snapping in the RAM that I *heart*

I predict that this crazy sound card snagged out of my dad’s old PC will be the bane of my existance. It’s a Creative SoundBlaster Audigy.

Securing the Hard Drive.

Channel your inner Back to the Future cast member. “Those things don’t work on water!”

“Unless you’ve got POWer”

Cables everywhere…

Turning on the power.

Here I am with my new box!

I have successfully installed Kubuntu Linux onto my new box. I booted with System Rescue CD first to wipe the drive because it was my younger sister’s old drive and who knows what could be on there. Then I had no problem installing Kubuntu with the dvd I burned from the iso. It looks so pretty! I named the computer Comet, the name of Supergirl’s horse.

I set the new box up to use a KVM so it’s working fine sharing the keyboard and monitor with my Windows box, but I did have some trouble with the mouse, so I just have two different mice plugged in for now, and I’ll look into that later.

Here’s a screenshot for my Kubuntu desktop on my new machine. I was quite pleased with how configurable it is. I was easily able to create and use a pink fading pattern on the panel(at the bottom). I was pleasantly surprised when I pressed print screen and a little box popped up, allowing me to save the screenshot as a png!

Pink Supergirl Linux Box: Part 5

Okay, I think I’ve finally got it right.

I painted the top over with the light pink

I printed out a template on some card stock and cut it out. Then I stuck it to the top. I actually used a gluestick because I didn’t have any double stick tape. Actually, it worked pretty well, but if you try it make sure you get any glue residue off of the parts you want the paint to stick to. I went around it after I stuck it down with a damp paper towel.

Okay, so then I sprayed it over with the dark pink again.

Pink Linux Box: Part 4

So I decided that I need to do the stencil in 2 parts, so here I am doing the S part of it on the side of the case.

Stencil Ready

Stencil Sprayed

Success! not perfect, but I think it looks pretty good.

I waited for the stencil to dry and did one on the top too.

I taped it down more this time and I think I actually got a little more under the edges. I think it was the angle, though. I’m not very tall.

I think it’ll still look good once I get the border part on, though. I may also go over it with the original color to clean up some of the spots that the light pink got through.

And I did actually have to put on some sunblock to go outside and paint, because it’s 100 degrees outside on our patio.

Pink Linux Box: Part 3

here’s the second coat on my case:

the lighting’s different though, it’s cloudier today.

Okay, here’s my younger sister drawing a stencil for me. I brought out a shirt for her to use as a guide.

here it is finished, and there I am trying to cut it out

I started thinking about it too much and confused myself about where I needed to cut out so I had to stop and take a break

Pink Linux Box: Part 2

First coat of pink!

I’m going to let it dry, probably overnight, and then see if it needs another coat(it probably will, especially on the sides). Then I plan on using a glossy top coat. I’m trying to think of something good to put in the case badge spot. Any suggestions?

Changing it Up

I feel like changing something up a bit. I’d like to try a new mood theme, but I’m not sure what theme I’d pick.

I’m still working on the HTPC/PVR for my parents’ house. I’ve got the box together and all the software installed and everything. It works as a computer, but I’m getting stuck on the TV part. I tried to record from it using SageTV and it just recorded this fuzzy stuff. I plugged in Component cables from the DirecTV reciever into the tuner card, I had the right DirecTV selected because I got the right tv listings, but I think the problem is that i don’t have the right serial COM port selected. I’m not sure I even know what this is or how to find out which one it should be. None of the default settings have worked.

PC Update Extravaganza

Today started off a bit of computer upgrading/building madness. I’m building an HTPC(Home Theater PC)/HD PVR for my parents, and must of the parts are here now. I also got an extra hard drive for my computer. One of the nice Seagate 400 gb ones I’ve been admiring for a while now. I also got a new power supply, and one for my sister’s computer which has been apparently turning off on it’s own, so hopefully that will help. Nice ones, 500 watt with wrapped cables, extra fan, and of course lots of connectors so I can finally add more hard drives. I also decided to try the PlusDeck in my computer first, instead of installing it in my parents’ HTPC. The PlusDeck will allow me to convert my old audio tapes to mp3 format. I needed a bit of a break because I’ve been at it all day and my fingers are starting to feel raw.

Iconic

The other night, Jerrod was trying to make a character for his new mini-boss domain, and I was once again looking for a hack or plugin to use post icons in MT. We were both having little success when I suggested that we switch projects. So as it happened, I pixel painted a cute little flaming boss monster style guy for him, and he whipped up a nice little MT hack for me. Now I can use as many cute little icons as I want. I have never used custom favicons on my sites before. I don’t know why, I just haven’t, but I decided to give it a try. It turned out to be extremely simple and now you should be able to notice an icon of two little pink hearts in your address bar, bookmark list, or tab(if you’re using a browser with tabs of course).