It has been a very long time since I have composed a blog. On fact, I've never gone this long without a post. First of all, my computer crashed and my hard drive was fried. This happened in June when I was traveling to Talkeetna or Sheep Mountain almost every week-end to do some extra biking, so my trusted in-house computer builder/tech expert was too tied up to build me a new one.
By July, I had a new computer at my disposal, but I was so depressed that I had lost over 7 years of digital photos, knitting errata and journaling, etc., etc. that I just couldn't bring myself to start over.
In August, miracle of miracles, as DH was scouting about for a possible way of retrieving my data from my old hard drive without paying big $$$$... he read that my hard drive had a built-in maufacturing flaw and there was a "fix" issued by the company. He sent it back to them and they retrieved all my data, PHOTOS!!!!, at no cost since the failure was their error.
Now I have a new working computer, all my old data, and 2 new back-up systems; so I did learn something. It still took me a long time to reaquire all the old links, passwords, email addresses, etc.... It's been a colossal pain. Now I am finally ready to blog.
As I said, I spent my summer doing as much bike riding as possible, but in between rides, there was lots of knitting accomplished. I had several things to enter in the Alaska State Fair so I drove them to Palmer to enter in early August. Picked them up September 7 and here are the results.
My Dale of Norway tunic, "We Are A Nation", took a first place in the "other" knitted category. The matching gloves within mittens took a second place.
My Aran sweater, "Inishmaan", an Alice Starmore pattern, took a first place in the knitted sweaters category.
My "Edith the Hat", a Johanne Landin hat pattern, took a first place in the knitted hat category.
And most exciting of all, my "Monkey socks", pattern by Cookie A, took a first place and a Division Champion award in the knitted socks category.
I took all new photos except for the mittens, because the light in the fair display building was very dim.
I'm blogging about the fair now, even though it's been awhile, because we left on vacation the day after I picked my items up, but our bike tour will be for another post.
I'm so glad to see you're back! And congratulations on all your state fair wins! Awesome!
Posted by: Kathy (Wet Ptarmigan) | November 01, 2010 at 08:00 AM
Glad you are back! A lesson learned here for sure -- I'm going to back up my computer today!
Love your fair entries -- especially the hat!
Posted by: Anne | November 01, 2010 at 09:20 AM
Such good news about your photos!
And those ribbons are well deserved. Gorgeous, gorgeous.
Posted by: Carrie K | November 05, 2010 at 02:10 PM
Carolyn- Congratulations on your entries- well done.
It's amazing how we all rely on technology.
Posted by: Lorraine | November 07, 2010 at 05:57 AM
Was it a Seagate? Sounds like what happened to my computer, but I had already sent it back to HP (under warranty) to switch out the hard drive.
Congrats on all the ribbons. Well deserved!
Posted by: Marina | November 07, 2010 at 05:42 PM
LOVE LOVE LOVE your entries Carolyn... Congrats!!!! ;)
Posted by: Toni | December 04, 2010 at 12:48 PM
You do beautiful work. Thank you for sharing.
Posted by: Kathy | March 19, 2011 at 06:06 PM