Into Each Life. . .

. . . some rain must fall. Last night my computer crashed. Big time. I got the dreaded Blue Screen Of Death and a black screen thereafter. I kept it open all night, and there was a little note at the bottom of the screen telling me that the computer was trying to repair itself and that it would take more than an hour.

This is a disaster for several reasons, the most pertinent here that the catalogue of my yarn stash was on my desktop, and not backed up (because it was a working document, added to each day). I've done almost everything that I can do with my computer, save one, the course of action I call The Nuclear Option. The one I haven't tried yet says Reset your PC or see advanced options. I used this option once before on this particular computer. It set my computer back to factory newness. No Word program, all my pictures disappeared, anything that wasn't backed up on a flash stick gone. Forever. I do not want to lose any pictures that might be on my drive, and I certainly don't want to lose my catalogue. I've done 11 of 25+ boxes, and certainly don't want to do them all again. That way lies madness.

But catalogue them again I shall if I must. I really need to get a handle on what yarns I own, what colours I keep (mostly blue) and what I can make for people now that I'm living in the south, where the temperatures in January hover between 55 and 70 degrees. Wool is not so necessary here as it was back in New England. I've also discovered bags with enough yarn of the same dye lot to make sweaters, since I can think of no other reason for having 15 skeins of the same dye lot. Though I hardly need sweaters down here. I suppose I could make a list of everyone I know and make hats and scarves with all the one and two skein yarns I've got. And there are some special projects for which I've bought yarn but never started, like the 2 skeins of Gilded and the 2 skeins of Fathom Madeline Tosh Pashmina, with which I'd like to make a double sided scarf with a fleur-de-lys design. I should get started on that. But, without the damn catalogue, I don't actually remember which bins contain that yarn. So if I decide to go with The Nuclear Option, I'll be starting from scratch.

The one good thing from which I can take comfort is that my file of patterns, acquired over the years, mostly from Ravelry, are in a folder on my Google Drive. Those, at least, are still accessible.