I took the plunge

Has anyone besides me had trouble uploading pictures to your posts?  When I would click the "insert image" icon, the next window wouldn't have a "browse" button to upload your photos.  Well, it works okay now but meanwhile I found a workaround that I like even better... just go to the picasa web page and upload all your pictures at once.  I like it better because you can control which album they go into, and when you're ready for another picture the album is right there opened up for you!

Sometimes things happen that make you go "Well I be die!" (in my father's words); or Andy of Mayberry would say "Well I'll be dog!" which is another way of saying "I swanee!" which is the same as "well, darn!"  My printer had me saying all that and more the past few weeks because I kept getting error codes, especially when I tried to print a picture or a color file or a pdf.  I knew I needed a new printer but I didn't want to get one til I used up all the ink I had ... you can't always swap ink between different printer types and that ink is NOT cheap!  If I had to get a new printer I wanted to upgrade, not get the same thing (if it was even available).

Long story short, ever since Saturday my printer thinks it has a paper jam (which it doesn't) and it won't do anything til I "clear" it.  Nope, I know what you're thinking but shutting it off or disconnecting the power didn't work.  I had to get a new printer.  Period.

I wanted to be able to print/copy/scan - faxing was optional, I haven't had to fax one thing since I retired almost two years ago.  I never used the photo print feature on my old printer, so that wasn't a biggie, but I did need a drive for my camera disc.  I settled on this Officejet Pro - it met those criteria plus  the scan bed is 14" rather than 11"  (sometimes I need to scan bigger images) plus  it can read thumb drives.  It was on sale and I'd like to have paid even less for it, but there you go.

And of course it means a whole new category of ink... these aren't even the same shape as the old cartridges, they're sorta flat and rectangular shaped. 

When I blogged about my printer woes before, someone suggested a laser printer ... I thought about that but I went with ink jet because I print quilt labels on my printer and I'm not sure if lasers would be permanent enough.  If I understand it correctly, ink goes into  the paper whereas lasers print on the surface.  ??  In any case, I went with the ink jet again because I was thinking "Bubble jet... Bubble jet."

So there you have it - for the rest of today I'll be installing my printer and working on a challenge project.  I might also look closely at a project that I want to get done... I've decided this year to finish at least two projects from blocks exchanged at a retreat. 

These strips were exchanged at the 2009 Scrapbag retreat (I think) and it's time to move it along...

I laid these out at the senior center a few months ago; it's really just a matter of placing each strip where I like it, then filling in the holes with either a solid (probably black or gold) or making more strips using the color theme.  I know of two people who attended the retreat and have finished their quilts and they were beautiful!

Well that's it for now, enjoy the rest of your day, sew forth and sew on...