Well, now I feel silly...

Turns out I can do the PDF converting myself! Just after posting the long rant yesterday I discovered that Word2007 has this cool function that converts the document into PDF, and there's no extra software needed :) So after a month of bothering my aunt and stressing her out with all my e-mails, I could have just fixed it really easily myself... Don't know why she hasn't told me, unless she is also unaware of this fancy function. The only difference I see is that the document I made is about half the size of the ones she did for me (I have counted the number of pages and pictures, and they seem to have little to do with this). As far as I can tell my converted PDFs are just as good as hers... Oh, well :)

I won't repeat what I said about the pattern yesterday. Instead you can just skip the first 2.5 paragraphs of my previous post and read the rest :) Oh, and in case you are wondering, the body of the spider is brushed. The pattern is now added to my Ravelry store, I'll list it on Etsy later. Now I'm off to work!

No pattern Tuesday :(

Well, today was Tuesday (I'm going to bed in a few minutes - first day at work tomorrow, wish me luck!), so I should have posted a new Bug pattern. Sadly, that didn't happen, and I'm guessing it won't for a while. You see, converting my Word documents into PDF isn't as easy as it sounds. First of all, I use Word2007, which is new and fancy and I love it :) But, since it's so new and fancy very few other people have it, like the library or my mother's office. Which means I have to save my documents as Word97/2003 to be able to read it on other computers. Second, I don't have a PDF converter. I could do that in the library, but then my formatting will be screwed and the fonts I use will be changed. I know this because I've tried.  I've also tried some free online converters, but they only screw things up even worse. 

So, the solution I've used so far is to e-mail the files to my aunt (who is a journalist and has bought the complete Adobe-thingy through her work with a HUGE discount - it would otherwise cost thousands of money), and then she sends the finished PDFs back to me. Simple enough, right? Nooo... Today I e-mailed my aunt my latest pattern, and she called me back a few hours ago and told me her computer (laptop) had crashed. Completely. Won't start or shut down (sounds weird, but that's how it is), so she has to get it fixed, and that will take at least two weeks :(

So unless I find some other solution there will be no new patterns for a while :( However, this doesn't mean that I'll stop working on new patterns! I just means that I'll have several new patterns out when things are in order again :) Today's pattern was going to be a Great Big Spider! Can't believe I have actually crocheted a spider, I'd told myself I'd never do that... But I got a request to make one, so here it is :)

Unlike the other bugs, this guy is not based on any particular species of spider, since I'm totally unable to google images for inspiration! Heh, it's really that bad... So it's sort of a generic tarantula, with that shell-like thing on its back and a furry butt :) Because the anatomy of spiders is different from insects (insects have three main "parts" while spiders only have two), I have attached all the legs on the front part of the critter, and the eyes are placed in the front. To me, spiders really are little monsters, so I gave him neon green eyes to make him a little (more) scary. He's a green-eyed monster :p

This is the first time I have done a pattern that has color changes in the middle, which raises the level of difficulty to intermediate. Don't worry though, it's only a few stitches on the back end of the spider, and you can skip the patterning altogether if you feel like it. I have also tried to make it as easy as possible by not putting the color changes and the decreases on the same round :)

I must admit that I'm still not sure how I feel about this guy, he almost creeps me out a little, and while working on him I've had more spider dreams than usual :/ Bollan seems to like him, though, she has always wanted her very own spider!

Thou shalt not suffer a spider to live...

Yesterday a spider came crawling up our livingroom curtains. I just squealed and pointed, and my boyfriend jumped up to rescue me. He caught the thing in a cup and threw it out on the street. I took this picture of it just to show you how tiny it was, you can barely see it:

I took two other pictures a little closer, but I had to delete them because I couldn't look at them. Anyway, I was very happy to be rid of this thing, since sometime before Christmas it had been sitting on the floor in the corner behind the couch where I couldn't reach it with the vacuum cleaner. But of course, my happiness wasn't going to last long...

This morning my boyfriend found a big nasty spider in our kitchen cabinet, but it ran and hid in a crack before he could catch it and throw it out. So now I can't get to the plates and the bowls in that cabinet, because of that darn monster :( I've had plans for a while about spraying the house down with some sort of pesticide (I just call it "kill"), but it's not really healthy and the rooms would need airing afterwards, so it's a lot of work... One thing I hate about spring is that all these nasty critters come out of their holes to plague me :/

Itsy Bitsy Spider...

No longer lives in our home, because my boyfriend killed him! But do not think I'm unhappy about it, because I'm not. I hate spiders and can barely think about them without shivering. I just read that they can grow up to 10cm! (According to Wikipedia they can actually get as big as 20cm, but only in warmer countries.) That's just insane.. A friend of mine once told me about a spider of the same kind that she found in her apartment, and it was so huge that she thought it might be the neighbor's tarantula! I didn't really believe her until I read about the spiders in the news (well, I had my bf read the article, because I couldn't look at the pictures). It doesn't have a name, but it's sort of the European common house spider, brown and kind of long, with something that looks like horns... Gah! *retching*

The other day I found a huge spider in the doorframe between the kitchen and the hallway, and I called my boyfriend so that he could remove it. I won't get near the horrible eight-legged beasts.. *brr* Anyway, he got on the floor and tried to catch the spider with a cup and a piece of paper, but the spider suddenly ran off, and he squished it with the cup. Haha.. I have always comlained about him throwing the spiders out instead of killing them, because I can swear that the damn creatures find their way back in the house again. So, I'm quite pleased with the outcome this time :) I absolutely hate them and wish they would keep away from me forever (but they shouldn't be exterminated, though, because then we would be overrun with flies).. The only spider I willingly let in my house is this one:

It's actually kind of cute. I found it in a gadgetshop in London some years ago and just had to buy it :) In case you can't see it, it's a clock! The web is the actual clock and the spider is just decoration :)