Hard drives are surprisingly robust

 I've been trying to get my head around how I will go about clearing my machine knitting room, and have obtained some good advice from Steelbreeze (who is an expert on all things MK) for which I am very grateful. As step one in the seemingly insurmountable programme, I tackled the ancient computer tower block dating back to at least the late 90s which I used to use to run Designaknit on, to connect to my 950i machine. We're talking the original chunky cream metal early PC here (until recently, I also had the matching enormous CRT monitor).  It's going to the recycling centre at the tip, but first I wanted to remove and destroy the hard drive.  And since I was doing that, I decided to tackle my collection of tower PCs that had succeeded it (two more) and a fourth one that my f-i-l had wanted to get rid of.

Thanks to the recent shenanigans with the failed hard drive on my current tower PC, I at least knew what a hard drive looks like and how it is connected/removed. It took me a while to work out how to get the early PC box open (I don't think it was intended for user modification) but the hard drive was easy to find and remove. It went downhill after that: this hard drive was in a vastly over-engineered cast metal case with a steel lid fastened on with multiple immovable screws.  The whole exercise turned into a crowbar and metal mallet bashfest until I could eventually pry off the steel lid.  The hard drive itself turned out to be two very robust metal disks which absolutely refused to break.  The best I could do in the end was to extremely mangle them with the mallet, bend them over etc.  Moving onto PC number two from the early 2000s was pretty much a repeat, although only one metal disk to mangle.  PC number three again featured a puzzle box from which I removed every visible screw (about 20) but which still refused to open, so we were back to bashing it with a mallet and crowbar until it popped open to reveal the inevitable unbreakable metal disk.  I was pretty mad at it by then so enjoyed bashing that one into oblivion.  The fourth hard drive I am actually keeping as it's pretty recent, so I only had to figure out how to open the box, and how to unscrew the drive.  The whole thing was exhausting but at least there is a pile of four PCs by the back door ready to go to the tip. Why is downsizing so hard....

My replacement Grace speed control arrived this week so I swapped it onto the quilting frame.  It's much better and I'm getting a much more consistent speed now - instead of it slowing down for no reason or suddenly dropping a gear in speed after a pause.  I'm trying to do three passes a day on the Cottage Stars quilt but it's tedious, I would have liked to have got the frame out of the dining room by Christmas but I don't think that's going to happen now.

Just before I went to Italy, it was National Cartonnage Day and Colourway Arts ran a free cartonnage workshop to make a storage basket and a lidded box.  I had got all the pieces cut out of chipboard and posterboard with the help of my Scan N Cut (it won't cut the chipboard through but it marks the pieces then I can cut them). This week I made up the storage basket using some Japanese-themed fabric: sumo wrestlers on the inside and the Wave on the outside.  I'm still not finding the recommended glue, Elmer's GlueAll, very good but I managed to finish the project and it's turned out fairly well.  I went around the house looking for something to store in it, and I've decided to keep my Bruges lace bobbins in it.

After doing some research into rolling suitcases (to replace the backpack), I eventually realised that I already knew the answer.  We've been very pleased with our Eastpak soft rolling bags that I bought for our first trip to Japan in 2016. They're really robust, the wheels are virtually silent in use even on rough ground, they open clam-shell style so it's easy to get at everything.  It turns out they do a carry-on size of the same Transverz bag that we already had.  It comes in various colours, I eventually chose one that isn't too wild but still stands out for easy retrieval on the security conveyor belt - and the hot pink interior makes me smile.  It's incredibly lightweight as well, I think it is lighter than my backpack even though they are both around 40litres in capacity. I look forward to testing it out on my next trip.

I finished sewing the binding onto the London quilt so DH is enjoying using that now. I've been doing a lot of work on Block 15 of the Australian BOM this week, making a big push to get it done.  There are so many elements crusted on top of each other, filling the appliqued needlework box, that I have officially abandoned hope of ever quilting this on my frame because that kind of bulk is just not going to roll onto the take up roll.  So it will have to be a sit down quilting job.  I've been avoiding attaching the various hard elements over the months, such as buttons, thinking that I might get the quilt onto the frame but no. Also because of all the bulk and hard elements, I think this is going to be a wall hanging quilt and not a bed quilt.

We had a nice autumnal walk yesterday along a section of the Grand Union canal near Stockton in Warwickshire, and stumbled across a narrowboat cafe open for business.  So we enjoyed a hot cup of tea and admired their canal art painted accessories. Last night was our last night of the season in the caravan.  After it goes in for one more bit of warranty work, we'll put it to bed for the winter and bring everything home.