26th April 2015 - Out for the markets

Two markets/fairs were on today that I had on my agenda. First was the Dublin Flea near St. Patrick's Cathedral and the Vintage and Décor Fair in Dun Laoghaire.

I met my friend at the market for breakfast and coffee and we had a chat before our usual nosy around at the market. It usually involves knitting and I'm so delighted that I managed to finish my slippers yesterday, only to leave the embellishments left to do which I completed this morning. I brought the slippers to the market to show them around to my friend and another knitter who owns a shop not far from the market.

My finished slippers. As mentioned in my previous post they are heavily modified. I doubled the yarn - grey is a cotton-bamboo mix from Kingcole, red is Sirdar's Luxury Cotton Soft DK - and I increased the needle size from a 3.75 mm to a 4.5mm. A bit of ripping and re-knitting et voila - my new house slippers. I bought thick insoles from Penny's for about €1.50 and cut them to size and then added a couple of dots on the outer knitted sole with Rico's Sock Stop. I can certainly recommend the product as it avoids slipping on smooth surfaces such as wood.

The embellishments are left-overs from a necklace and a bracelet I also bought in Penny's with the intention of using them as decorations on bags. I remember the day I was taking apart the necklace - took me ages. Also, at the brim I sewed in some elastic so I wouldn't loose the shoes. Overall, I'm very happy with the results and they are really compfy to wear.

After we finished checking out the goods on offer, we headed for Dun Laoghaire in my car (I do have to admit that I bought a round mirror with brass leaves as decorations - will post a picture once I've upcycled it. The brass has to be replaced. Oh, I also got an owl necklace - I going to knit a cardigan soon that will be super-cute with it.).

We had a look around the fair's offering but we were good girls and didn't buy anything else. Instead, we took advantage of the good weather and had a walk around. I took another couple of pictures.

Vintage car outside the Royal Marine Hotel were the fair took place.

We were tempted to buy Fish & Chips as the pier as it smelled so nice - but again, we were good girls and didn't get any greasy food. But the smell was heavenly.

View from the pier wall towards County Wicklow.

Overall, we had a lovely day with a bit of rain and a lot of sunshine. I finished my day with watching a movie and cleaning my room. Then I took out my other project which is a jewel-toned cardigan that still needs a second sleeve. I hope to have it done soon.

20th April 2015 - A good start of the week

I had the opportunity to leave work a little earlier today which was a nice treat. Being close to my holidays and house-hunting, I really love it when I get the chance to have walk at the beach and enjoy the sun. And I treated myself to an icecream.

I took a couple of pictures when walking which I hope you like too:

A picture of a bumblebee. Their sight always makes me happy. I believe they are a sign of spring and the coming summer. It's a pity they have become a little rare, same with butterflies.

Skerries Beach - I've realised that after changing the light settings on my phone the camera pictures seem to be a lot better. Could be my imagination though. Still would like a new phone.

I made mistakes the last time I installed Korora, so I reinstalled it. Now it's working fine again and at least I can get into the root to work on the system. Good that everything is up to date now.

Watching a bit of Netflix at the moment. I seriously can recommend buying a Chromecast to get it casted on the TV. makes watching TV a lot more enjoyable. Catching up on old movies and TV series I've never seen. Tonights, it's Missing Impossible II. So much drama ...

Working on a couple of projects at the same time. At the moment I knitting myself a pair of slipper made of left overs. I've heavily modified the pattern though otherwise they would have fitted a child. Hope to post a picture soon. Mary Jane Slippers by Ros Badger.

19th April 2015 - Overdue

Haven't written much in the last while. I've been so busy house hunting, I've barely been on the internet. It seems as if I will be leaving county Dublin for accommodation and instead move out further to county Meath. As of this week I have been priced out of Dublin. The market has changed so dramatically that I'm forced to look at different locations just outside Dublin. The demand is unbelievable and it seems that people in Dublin have more cash available to them to outbid you on property. It has become rather unnerving.

In my attempt to still get onto the property ladder I'm looking at Bettystown, Co. Meath, one of the last places before Drogheda. It's lovely place at the beach, less hassle compared to Dublin and it's considerably cheaper. Also the places are a lot bigger for the money you're paying.

I currently have bids in for two apartments and I would be happy in either of them.

Going to the market today in Dublin city centre (Dublin 8, just around the corner from St. Patrick's Cathedral and Christchurch) to catch up with a friends I haven't seen in a while. Weather has become very and quite mild. Looking forward to my break though.

I took a picture of a daffodil field when I was on my way back on Friday from Bettystown.

Daffodil field just outside Julianstown, opposite the cheapest petrol station I've found so far in all of Ireland and just a couple of minutes drive away from the location where I hope to be moving. I've been looking for this field for ages. I remember driving by once, telling myself to find it again to take pictures.

I've realised over the last couple of days that I need to replace my phone. It seriously has reached its limits.

Keep fingers crossed now that everything is going well.

8th April 2015 - A taste of spring and Linux experiments

Spring certainly has arrived. We experienced a couple of warm days. The change of the clock contributes - it's now brighter again in the evenings. I took the liberty and took pictures with my phone the last days.

Skerries Harbour last Easter Monday. I had too much Easter dinner on Sunday so I had to go for a walk around the harbour. And look, no clouds in the sky and the water is very calm as well. Unfortunately, I didn't quite anticipate the weather to turn out like this so I was still wearing my winter coat and roasting away in the heat.

This is a picture of a tulip tree. Everyday on my way to work I pass by these beautiful houses at the train station where I get off. The first house on the left once you leave the station has a huge tulip tree in his garden. It's a pity they don't last very long. Still, I think they are beautiful.

Well, to explain the second part of the post title, I have to give a few explanations. A while ago I changed my large laptop (17.2") to run Ubutu 14.04, a Linux-based operating system. Turned out that I wasn't quite happy with it and for a good while the laptop remained in my wardrobe unused.

Last week I decided to give it another go and install a different operating system on it. My netbook is running on Linux Mint Cinnamon and personally I love it, however found that it didn't quite agree with the laptop.

I called upon dear old Google to have a look at couple of different operating systems and after another not so successful installation of Korora 21 KDE, I settled with Korora 21 GNOME, 32-bit version. The other system didn't allow me to log into the root to run necessary updates (which turned out to be a whooping 522) and instead I was faced with constant error messages. I liked Korora - it's a deviate of Fedora after they split from Red Hat and I have to say that I'm happy that I moved again. Installation also went much smoother.

I have a thing with butterflies at the moment and decided to use a different desktop background for this computer.

On the left-hand side you can see some preset shortcuts to applications. The bottom icon allows you to look into other applications currently available. From there you can link them to this task bar.

I have to admit that I'm quite the fan of Thunderbird - easy setup even with more than one email account and the import of emails goes rather quickly. Now Korora offered me Evolution to set up my emails (after I remembered all the passwords) and I have to saw that I prefer it over Thunderbird. Set up is easy as well, also adding more than one email account. However additionally it has a calendar, address book and to-do task feature makes it a bit more usable compared to Thunderbird.

I'm still experiencing problems with the root access but I will sort that out hopefully soon. I've also set up OwnCloud and taken advantage of a German Cloud provider, BlauCloud, that offers me 2 GB for free on their servers. I wanted to make sure that I can exchange none-sensitive data between my laptop and netbook without the use of a USB stick. It's just something that has started to annoy me even though I have a good selection of sticks available now. Still the netbook to set up though and then I hope OwnCloud is the solution to my problem.

Overall, Korora seems to be doing well, nothing bad to report except for the root issue. Somehow it reminds me of - and this is just a personal opinion and no criticism - an Apple IOs on LSD. It's very colourful.

On a last note, I currently have a bit on a small house so I hope to have some great news soon.