We have a newcomer in the family.  Meet the Librarian!

It’s a Dell netbook - 10.25” wide, 7” deep and about 1” tall.  It weighs less than 2.5 lbs.  Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh…..

I am absolutely enchanted with this machine.  It all started when I mentioned to Myria that my reader was beginning to show some issues.  It’s a Viewsonic PPC and has been in near constant use for almost 7 years.  Mainly I have used it as a portable book-reader and an appointment keeper and I was beginning to think I should start looking for a new one.

But guess what?  There aren’t a lot of PPCs being made any more; do-everything phones have just about killed that market and what there is that’s still available is very expensive and comes with a lot of features I don’t need and would never use.

Of course my resident computer expert encouraged me to look at the netbooks - the little, tiny laptops that have been springing up everywhere.  They were small, portable, light-weight and cute as the dickens :)  I was reluctant at first because I wanted something small enough to put in my purse and because I doubted that I would be able to manage (what I thought would be) the small keyboard on a netbook.

As it happens, the keys on the Dell are actually bigger than the keys on the Logitech keyboard that I use with my main system.

We researched the possibilities - including looking at exclusive readers like Sony’s and Amazon’s Kindle and while they certainly do a good job, reading books is all they do.  I don’t need Blue Tooth or GPS, but I wanted a little more functionality than that.  Also, for a one-trick-pony, I felt they were a little expensive.  On to the netbooks.

These little things are ubiquitous - or nearly so :)  Everybody makes one (including Gateway which I thought had died the big death years ago) and some manufacturers make several versions.  But the basic package is pretty much the same no matter who you buy it from.  1 gig of RAM, 160 gig hard drive, built in wi-fi.  The cases can vary quite a lot - and you can pay a fair bit extra for a colored case (something other than black) or a “special” edition designer case.  Other extras would include things like more memory, a bigger hard-drive, etc.  After looking around, it seemed that the basic Dell machine would suit my needs well.

Frankly, it’s a better and faster unit than my main system - which is also Dell, but several years old now :)

That’s my reader software.  I was really afraid I would have trouble reading on the small screen.  But actually, the screen isn’t that small and I have no trouble reading at all.  Whee!

So Myria and my father got together an gave me a combined, early Christmas present :)  I dearly love this little machine.  I can do anything with it that I can do with my main system and I can bring it anywhere.

I have a bag I can use to put it in, but I eventually want something I can use both as a purse and a carrier.  I’ll have to look around and see what’s available but there’s a possibility of making one too :)  That might be too much fun not to try!

Finally, from the Try Anything department:

Last weekend I got an urge to make something decorative for fall as we have absolutely nothing.  Christmas decorations we have - Thanksgiving/fall - not so much.  Anyway, I hied me to the webs looking for pumpkin patterns.  Let me tell you, you could drown in all the pumpkin patterns available for free out there.  But in the midst of searching through them, I remembered a pattern for making a ball - a sphere.  It’s here - Judy’s 12 Section Yarnball.  The 12-section is for a large ball.  I used the pattern for the smaller ball towards the bottom of the page.  And I followed the pattern exactly (except for the number of sections) but I crocheted it instead of knitting it.

I admit it was something of a whimsical experiment that happened to come out way better than expected.  The rounder pumpkin has 6 sections; the squattier version has 8 (the stems and vines were improvised).  They took very little time to make and were really quite a bit of fun.  If you want to try this, I used worsted weight yarn and a size H hook - but the pattern should work just as well for any size yarn and the appropriately sized tool to work it with.

Myria loves them!