cupcake update

Three down, at least three to go. I have four yarns: a nice bright orange cotton (A), a soft green soy cotton blend (B), a fun purple "bulky" merino (it's not that bulky) (C), and a peaches-and-cream chenille (D). This should make ... um, twelve? combinations permutations, right, because each color can be paired with each other color twice (once for the base and once for the frosting). In practice, though, the chenille isn't really good for the wrapper part of the knitting, so there can be nine cupcakes total -- AB, AC, BA, BC, CA, CB, and one each with one color on the bottom and the chenille on the top. I should have enough for this.

One thing's for sure: I will absolutely not run out of stuffing.

inventory

Scalp itches.
Eyes itch.
Ears itch.
Nose itches.
Nose running to and fro (or fore and aft, if you prefer).
Throat irritated by PND and also itches.
Have chosen not to think about how would feel if were not loaded up on Claritin and Afrin.

Hip still achy from whatever happened to it on Sunday, but this is unrelated to allergies (I assume).

Would like to curl up in hypoallergenic room for a couple of weeks, until cherries and the thing that comes next will have finished flowering, pls.

[cough][wheeze][snif]

Ugh.

being a grown-up is hard

So I am, as I've said, knitting cupcakes for the babies I'll be seeing this weekend. These will coordinate with the knitted tea set their other auntie is making for them, and be the main present for the oldest girl (with enough spares that it will be easier for her to share, which is important). But there are other kids!, and thus other presents. The second child is almost two, and gets a baby doll the way her sister got when she was born, because having one's own baby to take care of is a Thing when one finds that one is suddenly an older sibling. The third child is two weeks old, and he won't know it, but he gets a lion that is very very very soft. (His sisters got a giraffe and, I believe, an elephant or some other savannah animal. I didn't intend a theme, but there it is.)

Anyway, the reason I bring it up is that the older girls also normally get animals from me. The oldest has duck familiars and the middle one has bunnies, and I was having just an awful time trying to find a bunny for this middle child. Not a lot of stuffed animals, but what there were ran heavily to puppies and bears -- and, oddly, horsies. Who, I started to wonder, do I have to maim to find a bunny in this joint? And I'd just about given up and left the place when I remembered: they have a "seasonal" section, and it's almost Easter.

A list, then:

• #1, who is almost three and a half: several cupcakes, and a Domo dressed up like a duck. (Probably like a baby chick, but it's yellow and has a beak, good enough for us.)
  
• #2, who is almost two: a cupcake, a baby doll, and a Domo dressed up like a bunny. (Her mother loves headbands and hats and things that have ears on them, so a stuffed animal wearing such a hat will be a big hit.)
  
• #3, who is fourteen months: this is the child of the other auntie, and is also coming to visit, and her mother doesn't know it, but I'm bringing her a cupcake and an Elmo as well, because I can't have her be the only kid not getting presents.
  
• #4, who is two weeks: a cupcake analine and a lion.

I only get two and a half days there this time, instead of a week like I used to be able to spend, so I'm going to have to squeeze a lot of auntieing into a short span. Better get more knitting done!

oh, and a technical question

Do cables exist that are USB-A at both ends?

The reason I ask is this. At my old place, the DVR took the coaxial cable from the wall, right; it also had another coaxial port, from which it connected to the television. The television has three sets of A/V inputs; it connected to the DVD player through video 1, to the VHS through video 2, and to nothing through video 3. The DVR also had at least one set of A/V input and output jacks, so that when I wanted to tape something on a VHS tape from the DVR, I could do this by connecting red/white/yellow plugs between the DVR and the VHS and then choosing the right option from the menu.

My present DVR takes the coaxial cable from the wall, and has no more coaxial ports. It is connected to the television's first video input by component cable. The TV is connected to the VCR by coaxial cable, to the DVD at video 2, and to the Wii at video 3.

I have this year's Oscars in the DVR, and my father has asked me to tape the show for him before I delete it. I can't work out how to do this. I'm out of output jacks on the DVR, and in any case the menu doesn't give me an option to save a program on VHS the way the old one did. The DVR does, however, have many other sockets on the back -- HDMI, SATA, USB, and some others I can't remember right now and don't feel like looking again to see what they are.

So what occurred to me was, if I could hook the DVR to my computer, I could burn the damn thing onto a DVD. But I haven't been able to locate a cable with the right ends. And then I thought, how big is a three-hour television broadcast? What size flash drive would I need to move it that way? (But how would I do this, since the DVR doesn't give me choices other than play, delete, and lock?)

Although now I'm thinking, suppose I run red/white/yellow cables from the DVR to the VHS, and additional red/white/yellow cables from the VHS to the television. The program would then have to go through the VHS to get to the TV, wouldn't it? And I could tape it while it was playing? Somehow that seems like it shouldn't work, but I can't quite think why not.

Some time when I've got a free Saturday, I'm going to take the box to the cable company office and swap it for one like I had at my old place. But even if I could do that now, it wouldn't help me get the program off this one; so in the meantime, anyone have any suggestions? I'm running into the limits of my logical capabilities here.