How to Fix a ColecoVision Gaming Unit That Shows Weird Picture

by Kelly

We interrupt our regularly scheduled crafty post to bring you a special feature - old school video game repair.

Santa came to our house early and brought us the ColecoVision gaming system that my husband wanted when he was a kid. Only 29 years late, but hey, you can't have everything. Including, it seems, a working game system.

No Cartridge

With Cartridge

We tried to clean it (that's what the giant sized bottle of rubbing alcohol on the table is all about) to no avail. Luckily, through the magic of the Internet, the solution was less than a minute away.

We landed on Joomla!, which I had never heard of before, but it's a great site for those with a love of archaic game systems. And there was our solution - an easy, in depth tutorial, with pictures. Cheers, Callan, our faceless Internet adviser, and thanks for the help!

All you have to is change the power switch. Get out your solder braid or your handy dandy vacuum pump solder sucking system, if you have one. Ah, how I miss the high-tech soldering stations that I had access to at school.

Switch removed

You can repair the switch itself, if you're a traditionalist, but that requires disassembling the switch, cleaning the contacts, applying new dielectric grease, and reassembling said switch. Frankly, that seemed like a huge pain in the a**, so we chose to install a new switch.

Once you've done this minor repair, you can do the happy dance, when your system works like new:

 

So if you're in a similar situation with your ColecoVision, just visit Joomla!'s tutorial and in no time you'll be up and running. One tip on taking apart the ColecoVision: there are three case screws under the silver label on the front of the unit. If you're a patient person, and lucky, you should be able to peel up that label and reapply it with no problems. Don't take it all the way off, just lift each end until you find the screws, then stick it back down.

Sorry to go off topic, but I just had to share, and never fear, our next post will be about crafting. Or backyard birding. Or books. Probably.

The Sweater Project

by Kelly


The sweater project begins:

This is a project from the kit I Taught Myself Knitting, produced by Boye. Some people slam this kit because of the 'outdated' patterns, or because they found it difficult to learn from, or because the materials weren't adequate.  I personally would give this book 4 stars, and think it's a great resource for beginning knitters, provided you have access to YouTube. 

I freely confess that I learned how to knit by watching YouTube videos. It's cheaper than classes, easier than trying to decipher diagrams or drawings in a book, and you can consult YouTube in the middle of the night when a project has gone awry and you need a helping hand.

The Boye kit does provide great guidance in 'what's next'. It walks you through the process of learning to knit, and the projects in the book detail exactly what you need to know, with page numbers of the lessons.  For example, for the sweater I'm working on, I need to know lessons 1,2,3,4,7,8, 10, 14, and 16. In other words, I should be able to knit, purl, increase and decrease, knit to gauge, join yarn, and seam. If I can't, I probably shouldn't tackle this project yet.

Since I have never knit a sweater before, I needed a simple pattern that has been tested. I decided I would rather not learn from an online pattern that might be full of errors and typos, and would only confuse me further. I'm sure that I'll be plenty confused as is. And the Ravelry page (I heart you, Ravelry) doesn't have any errata for this pattern, so I'm hopeful that at least I'll be working from good instructions.

I can already say, though, after knitting three gauge swatches, that I don't think much of this Bernat yarn. It doesn't seem to wear very well in the washer, though it's advertised as 'machine washable'. I might end up hand washing this sweater, and it would have been nice to know this ahead of time. Still, we'll see what the finished product looks like.

Stay tuned for the next week or so, to see how it goes.

Awake with the Birds

by Kelly

Another potently pink sunrise.

In the photo it actually comes off as more mauve. Interesting.

Meanwhile, word has gotten around the neighborhood that I'm offering a free breakfast. Take a look at some of the visitors I've had over the last few days.

 

Our cat is a confirmed birdwatcher. He lurks under the Christmas tree, which is right by the patio door, so that he can watch unseen. Occasionally he meows in frustration when he sees a particularly tasty morsel fly off, stuffed with seeds or peanuts.

And speaking of Christmas trees, we've decided to put up the artificial one. Mostly because we had to go to our other house to get ornaments anyway, so if we used the artificial one, we wouldn't have to make another trip to get a tree. Chalk one up for laziness.

Of course, now it's time to unpack all the non-working light strings and get to work on repairing them. Sigh.

Pirate Dew Rag - Finished!

by Kelly

And here's the reveal of the finished project - A pirate dew rag for my husband's birthday:

I used this free pattern from sewing artistry. If you're handy with a sewing machine, you should definitely check them out. And even if you're like me, and regard a sewing machine as something just a little less tricky (and potentially dangerous) than a hand held plasma cutter, check them out anyway, because this dew rag pattern is perfect.

Donna makes the suggestion that you start sewing at the back (where the ties are located) and work your way forward, to ensure that everything lines up perfectly. Meanwhile, I would suggest that if you're cutting out a fabric pattern for the first time, don't choose the most slippery rayon fabric in the store. And get yourself a decent piece of white chalk, for heaven's sake...if you can find one, that is.

Donna also suggested that these would be perfect for kids who are undergoing chemo, and when I suggested this to my mom she concurred. She even said that she would have preferred one of these to the endless stream of headscarves, hats and sad looking wigs that we were offered when she was going through chemo. My mom in a pirate headscarf...see what I've missed by not being crafty, all these years?

Since I have no idea how to scale down sewing patterns, I'll leave that part to someone else, but I think any kid would love these, even if they haven't lost all their hair.

Especially in a pirate print. Arrrr.

The Sewing Project - Black Pirate Dew Rag

by Kelly

Today is Black Friday, which means I will be staying out of harm's way by avoiding retail storefronts until the shopping mania is over. I participated in one Black Friday, years ago, when I was getting off work at 6 AM and was already awake and functional for the biggest shopping event of the year. Never again. Or at least, not unarmed.

Crafting stores in general seem to be the exception to the Black Friday rule.They know their audience, and they understand that their demographic will be far too busy struggling in hand to hand combat over that last 'Tickle Me Elmo' doll to even think about their current crafting needs.

Speaking of crafting stores, when three of us here from Three Strands Together were in Joann's Fabric recently, we saw this must have fabric for my piratey husband:

The three of us all had the same thought - this fabric was made for my piratey husband. But what could I possibly do with it?

My husband is a biker, as in a motorcycle rider, so wooly scarves and, heaven forbid, mittens, aren't really his style, and that means that I have never made him a homemade gift. On the other hand, he does like to wear something under his helmet to prevent 'helmet hair', and that something is called a dew rag. Or DooRag. Or however the spelling is supposed to go.

So I went to a site called sewingartistry, and found a pattern to print out:

And then I found some black fabric to use as a liner for this somewhat transparent top fabric, and cut that out in the pattern shapes as well:

And now I'm off to Donna's house to tap into her sewing expertise, because frankly I don't have a clue how to go about this. More on that in an upcoming post.

Gingerbread Men Christmas Ornaments

by Kelly

Since we usually put up our Christmas tree right after Thanksgiving, I went back to a project I had put aside: small gingerbread men.

Of course, for the last couple of years we've used a live tree, so our Christmas decorating might be slightly delayed. Artificial trees can go up any time, but real ones don't age well, and I'm pretty soft-hearted, so that bugs me. I always feel a little twinge of sorrow when I'm vacuuming up loads of pine needles around the poor tree hacked down in its prime and dragged from its clean scented woodland home to suffer indignities of tinsel and garish lights in its dying days.

Anyway, back to the gingerbread men ornaments. These poor guys have suffered many crafting setbacks.

First, I couldn't get a nice outline with my chalk pencil. I have never had much luck with chalk pencils, and a long discussion with my mom has convinced me that I'm  not alone in my troubles. She showed me her large collection of unsatisfactory chalk bits and pieces, gathered over five decades of sewing, and said that she has never understood why she couldn't get the hang of drawing on fabric with the stuff. Maybe it's genetic. I eventually settled on using a black Sharpie instead. To heck with tradition, anyway.

My second problem with these ornaments was that I couldn't get the crisp fabric edge that I was looking for. The frayed linen edges made me pretty unhappy. I solved that problem with iron-on fusible webbing.

And then, for some reason, I had trouble with the embroidered faces. The early ones had 'creepy doll eyes syndrome', even though I wasn't using buttons. I may eventually specialize in creepy eyed dolls, since I seem to be able to produce them with very little effort.

At any rate, I'm pretty satisfied with them now. I think they'll look very nice on our Christmas tree. Which will actually come from a Christmas tree farm, by the way, and whoever owns that farm will be really grateful for an influx of cash so he can keep the lights on and put a turkey dinner on the table for his family.

There, that makes me feel better. First wave of Christmas guilt successfully battled!  'Tis the season.

Candy Dot Hat and Scarf

by Kelly

Now finished: the Candy Dot Hat and Scarf Set.

And the hat came out just a smidge smaller than I calculated, and by a smidge I mean less than 1/8 of an inch, so I'm really happy about that. I am now a Gauge Master! Ha, not really. But I'm making progress.

I'm going to try a few more pairs of gloves and then plunge into the sweater project.