Thread, Bare

Days like today

2012-01-25T00:48:00.000-05:00

Some days... are not good days.

Some days, even when you have accomplished things — good things — all you can feel is the weight of the things that you haven't done pressing down on you.

Today was one of those days. You know how sometimes when people ask you if you're able to see the light at the end of the tunnel yet? And if that light is likely to be a train?

Sometimes I think the damn light is just unplugged.

So, let's have some pictures that make me happy.

Bullwinkle, is that you?

Only the finest severed heads will do here.

And finally, for Lady S:

They're not daffodils, but they sure are fantastic, no?

Today sucked balls. Let's try again tomorrow, shall we?

Coffee and the Nature of the Universe

2012-01-13T23:50:00.013-05:00

When and Where: A city morning in October, going to my favourite local coffee shop.
Music: "Java Jive" (the Inkspots), because duh.
Disclaimer: Not a commercial or intended to be one. It's just a goofy-ass little video shot on my goofy-ass Super35mm camera. I wanted to see if I could put something together in IMovie and sync up sound.

See, I told you we needed a zombie plan.*

2011-12-17T00:51:00.017-05:00

I said so all the way back in this post. This right here is why.

There I was, minding my own business on a lovely late-October Saturday afternoon, running some errands in The Annex and loaded up with with two cameras, twenty bucks and a pack of gum. I figured I was ready for anything.

And then suddenly, I saw... wait, no way... are those zombies?

I couldn't tell. I needed a closer look. I hopped in my car, circled the block and hauled butt down Bathurst Street, in order to get a better look at them. Just down the road, my suspicions were confirmed:

So, I did what any self-respecting, well-armed citizen would do. I shot them — with my trusty Minolta X-370, conveniently already loaded with film.

The zombie bride spotted me, and blew me a kiss...

...and that's when I noticed her zombie wedding party was on my side of the street!

It was scary there for a minute. They were all, "Blahblah BRAINS blahblah," and I was like, "Hey, no, no, look THERE!! Spicy brains! Yeah, that's it!" In the end, all the zombies needed was a little attention, guidance, appreciation, encouragement, and the promise of spicy brains. They ate it all up.

*No zombies were harmed in the making of this post. In fact, it sounds like a grand time was had by all, living and undead alike. If you know any of the zombies in these pictures personally, please give them my love. They were fantastic and completely made my day.

For the record...

2011-10-04T21:22:00.002-04:00

...next week, I am going to start my lecture off with the following announcement:

"Good evening everyone. If you happen to notice that my fly is open, or that my blouse or dress has come unbuttoned, feel free to raise your hand and tell me RIGHT AWAY. The code phrase is knickerbocker.Thank you."

Well, at least I was wearing my fancy knickers and not some old filthy ones pulled out of the dirty clothes. Or better yet, a pair with something tacky like "aim here" printed on them.

#awesomesauce #thisdaygetsbetterbythehour #fuckmylife

Suddenly, September

2011-09-18T23:35:00.014-04:00

Oh look, it's not summer any more.

I'm not going to lie, I couldn't be happier. Have I mentioned I'm not all that fond of summer? Probably. It bears repeating, though. I turn into a lump of uselessness during the summer. Heat, humidity, too much sunlight, headaches, constant sweatiness. Anywhere you go there are too many people. People trying to cram in all their fun before September, before they have to go "back". I want to hibernate, close my door, lay under a fan and sleep until the cooler evenings come.

Blah. Give me a cool September breeze and the crisp autumn smell of leaves any day. This is the time I love. This is the time of year I come back to life.

How to sum up the last three months?

I was in Boston in mid-June. It was lovely, as much fun as one can have by oneself when they are at a conference.

Entrance to to a T station in Boston, Summer 2011

A perfect day for a carousel, Boston Common Frog Pond, Summer 2011

I visited my parents for a couple days right after the conference, which was great. We drove around and hung out. We needed that.

Dad's Swamp, Pennsylvania, Summer 2011

Childhood memory, Conneaut Lake Park, Pennsylvania, Summer 2011

I taught in July and August. It was not fun, but it was a job, and not as painful as I was expecting for a course I had never taught before. I didn't get to go to Pennsic due to the time constraints, not even for a few days, and that made me exceedingly cranky. Overall, I tried not to die of heat exhaustion. There were a few days when the heat and humidity weren't so oppressive and I was able to get out, walk around, take some pictures, and remember what an amazing city I live in.

Nathan Philips Square, Toronto, Summer 2011

Cathedral Church of St. James, Toronto, Summer 2011

I've needed to pour myself into work a bit these last couple months, while at the same time hide away and restore my soul. We have been officially cat-less since July 6. I haven't really been able to talk about it much yet, let alone write about it. Ford had a great last few months with us. He went out on his own terms, and I was with him. We miss him. That's really all I can muster, even now, over two months later. So, pictures.

Ford in the park, Summer 2011

OHAI, IZ YOU THERE? (Ford meets the IPad camera) Summer 2011

One of the amazing emails I received from my guys while I was in Boston, Summer 2011

Words and signs, signs and words.

2011-06-01T08:22:00.003-04:00

Pretty much sums it up, right there.

How to describe April and May? "Over" is the best I can come up with. My routine goes something like this: Wake up. Stare at screen. Make coffee. Stare at screen. Type a sentence. Make more coffee. Delete sentence you just typed. Stare at screen. You get the idea. Work is happening, slowly, at its own pace. I'm not entirely pleased about that pace, but I take it as a sign that some words aren't ready to come out yet.

There hasn't been much knitting, either. I've hit a bit of a slump on that. Plugging away on a scarf for myself. This picture is from late April, when I'd just started it. It's getting close to done now:

How to waste an hour without really trying: coffee, camera and knitting.

Mixed in with all the boredom and daily grind, though, there are signs of movement:

Fluvog feets are happy feets. You probably can't tell, but those are the infamous 'Angry Pink Bear' socks. His 'H' is not for 'happy.' His 'H' is for HATE.

There are also signs of spring:

How much did this swan care that I was there? Sweet F. A. comes to mind.

Double exposure of Impossibly Red Tulips in Christie Pits park.

And, being Toronto, there are signs of awesomeness:

Words to live by.

Sometimes, words are hard. I'll take what I can get.

...and miles to go, but I'm sleeping anyhow.

2011-03-24T23:55:00.026-04:00

My concrete ivory tower, Robarts Library, University of Toronto, Feb. 18, 2011.

I keep promising myself I will blog more. It's my only non-academic writing outlet.

And then I think to myself: Do you really need another distraction from academic writing right now?

Probably not.

It's entirely possible I'm kidding myself that I'm actually making progress. Today, it feels like I haven't made a bit of progress in months. Realistically, I know that's not the case, but it's overwhelming to even think about how much there still is to do. Frankly, I'm at the point where this dissertation thing just isn't fun.

Lady S, if you're reading this, I'm kidding. Actually, I'm having a blast. I write enthusiastically eight hours a day and every morning I wake up chirpy and energized, ready to sit down and write some more. I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.*

It appears I don't have a lot to say, really, so here are some more pictures, taken with my very manual camera.

Helpful cat... is not all that helpful, actually. Taken by MrJ. He also put the scarf on the cat, who doesn't seem to mind. Don't ask me, I just work here.

Humber River under the Dundas bridge, Toronto, Feb. 28, 2011. The figure against the pillar on the far bank is graffiti.

My Neighbour's Totoro, a most wonderful snowman near my house. He did have ears, but I hadn't quite mastered how much fits in the frame on this setting yet.

Urban Wisdom

*Spoilers for the movie 'Serenity': The guy who says this quote gets a long wooden spear through the chest and becomes all deadified on the word 'soar'. Take that as you will.

Retreat from technology

2011-01-31T23:38:00.007-05:00

It definitely seems that the more stressed I become about deadlines and work, all of it done online, or at least sitting in front of a keyboard, the more reliant I become on activities that do not involve things with power cords.

January was a month of knitting hats and scarves, taking pictures on the very-manual analogue camera, and attempting to convince myself to keep regular work hours. I was very successful at the first of these.

A Scotty Hat for MrJ, modeled on the one worn by Simon Pegg in the recent Trek reboot, because it's Toronto in January.

A scarf for MrJ, because although he loves his Dr. Who Scarf and wears it on the coldest of cold days, a 15.5 ft. scarf is impractical for his crowded subway commute most of the time.

Another Scotty Hat for me, because I keep stealing his when I go out without him.

The re-done hat-which-will-have-kickass-expensive-trim, the one that came out way too large the ~~second~~ third time I did it. Now smaller, and waiting for lining, to help it keep its shape.

Yet another hat for me, this one an Urchin. Because it's Toronto in January, and one cannot have enough of these things.

For some reason, the last three things I've knit for myself have been shades of green. I have no explanation.

I was moderately successful at the second item, taking more pictures on the new analogue camera. The last couple rolls have been B&W 120 film.

How to Climb Without Stairs

As for the last thing, keeping regular work hours, I've been somewhat less successful, but it hasn't been a total wash. Some days I feel like I'm treading water on the Big D, some days I'm moving backwards, and some days I'm clawing my way forward by my flimsy, flaking fingernails. Ford has been doing his part, of course, to make sure I take regular breaks.

Taken by MrJ. I'm the one buried under the cat.

I'll get there. One stitch at a time, one shutter click at a time, one word at a time.

Yeah, and how long with that take to get?

We're all waiting for spring

2010-12-30T01:10:00.009-05:00

...even the street art.

She Waits for Spring, Kensington Market, Toronto, Dec. 29, 2010

I took this yesterday with my new camera, a DianaF+. It's an intentional double exposure using 35mm 100-speed film. These are fun, totally manual, very retro cameras that normally use 120 film, but can be modified to use 35mm (thankfully, since processing options for 120 film are few and far between these days). I think I'm in love.

Happiness. I've missed analog photography. For the first time in a long time, I can't wait for the next sunny day.

They All Come at Once, Streetcars on King Street (at Peter Street), Toronto, Dec. 29, 2010 (double exposure)

Time zones are messing with me

2010-11-08T11:33:00.004-05:00

So now that this conference is over, perhaps I can update the blog more regularly again. Perhaps I can even knit more regularly again. I have a couple sweaters that were put on hold in the sweaty, icky heatwave this summer, and this is now the right time to pull them out again and add those last sleeves.

I am in Texas. Right now I'm in Katy, Texas, but before this I was in San Antonio for several days for a conference. SA was fantastic. I told someone that it seems to have taken me 10 years of grad school to figure out how to enjoy a conference, but then, I always was a slow learner. Our hotel was right on the Riverwalk. That's a little bit of awesome, right there.

After waking up Wednesday morning in Toronto to FUCKING FROST on my car, it was fantastic when, 36 hours later, I was walking along the river in San Antonio barefoot - I skipped out of the conference briefly (lesson #1 in learning to enjoy a conference: leave the fucking conference once in a while) in search of cheap photocopies and Starbucks, and decided to go back to the hotel via the Riverwalk only to get completely turned around down there and THEN find that I'd worn the wrong shoes, hence the barefoot. While in SA, I had beef and guacamole in some form every day for three days. I would call that a win, wouldn't you?

I still have to double-check what time it is at any given moment. My computer and IPod were still on EST until yesterday, my phone was on Central, and then Daylight Savings time ended yesterday morning, so everything moved back yet another hour. I finally changed the computer and the IPod to Central yesterday, even though I'm going home today... it was just too confusing, and I don't want to miss my flight or some stupid-ass thing. A lot of clocks (like in my current hotel room) are not changed back to non-Daylight Savings yet. One must be careful.

The conference ended Saturday, and Sunday I rented a car and drove to Katy to meet up with a friend who I'd never met in person before! I love the innernets. Trish and I had fun - dinner and good conversation. We had a hard time finding the bathrooms in the restaurant, though. It was a "Baker Street"-Sherlock Holmes-themed pub, and the door to the restrooms was cleverly disguised as the end of a bookshelf. Trish has a pic, once I get it I'll post it. In honour of the pub, I went back to my hotel and caught the last half of an episode of "Sherlock" (seen it before, but whatever), and fell into blissful-full-belly-post-conference-I'm-on-vacation-tonight sleep. I'm still in bed, and haven't moved much since. Bliss.

I should get moving, though. Time to drive BACK to San Antonio to return the rental car and catch my flight home. Well, almost home - I flew out of Buffalo, NY because OMGLESSTHANHALFTHEPRICE. So once I get into Buffalo at 11pm, I have a 90 minute drive home to Toronto. But I'll have company. And there will be a stop at the duty-free.

No pics in this post, because I suck. I brought my camera, as I always do, but never pulled it out, as always happens. Yes, I went to the Alamo while I was in SA. It's still there. Comforting, yes? As for Relics of Americana: I saw a lock of Davy Crockett's hair in a locket, and my life is now more complete.

And now for a bit of honesty: I love Texas. That's right - this Yankee-Pennsylvanian-Canadian-Liberal has fallen just a little bit for Texas. I blame the gorgeous November weather, which Trish assures me is short-lived. And the guacamole.

BLOG ALL THE THINGS!!*

2010-09-06T02:30:00.008-04:00

My honey made crepes last weekend. By God, I love when that man cooks. When he cooks, I know all is right with the world. He is the creative one in the kitchen, I'm more of a "throw that shit in the oven on 350 for 35 minutes and it's done" type (I do make a mean chocolate chip cookie, though).

We finally got a barbecue this summer, and it is good. See? This was a couple months ago when we put on the first real steak. It was documented for posterity. And beans on the side burner. Because beans are awesome.

Beans and MEAT

He did this impromptu thing on the barbecue last week with the sweet potatoes where he added maple syrup and cinnamon. NOMNOMNOM.

Enough food prøn. Enough of me feeling like a lazy slacker who doesn't know how to work or get shit done. Let's look at the things I've done recently that don't fall into the SUCK category.

My first foray into entrelac, two of these 8x8 squares for group blanket projects.

Malabrigo worsted in the so-obnoxious-you-have-to-love-it "Lime Blue" colourway

I finished knitting the hat that I bought awesome trim for in mid-June, and finally got around to thinking about blocking and finishing it. One problem: it fit fine before blocking, but when I took it out of the water and tried to block it with a balled-up towel, the yarn stretched like crazy, and the hat suddenly ballooned to a size that comes halfway down my face. I now have it drying flat, and spent a lot of time fiddling with it to try and block it back down to the proper size, but I'm not sure I was all that successful. If I have to, I'll frog it and do it again in the smaller size. It's not that difficult a knit. I'm also now wondering if it's maybe worth lining the final hat to help keep its shape in the future. Of course, that involves sewing. *grumblegrumble*

The amazing expanding hat. Yikes. We'll see what I end up with when it's dry, but I'm betting on huuuuuuuge.

The new Liesl cardigan is flying along, surprisingly. I'm almost done with the body. I'm very much enjoying working with the Cascade220 Heathers wool.

Sleeves soon! It's almost like an insta-sweater.

Finally, an Audrey update! I'm hoping to re-start Audrey the Indigo-Sig Vat for her third season of dyeing. She's been sitting outside in her bin all summer during the heat wave, while I've been sweating too much to even think of dealing with her. One would think that I'd try to get her going again when the weather is possibly hot enough to keep her warm naturally, but that would be too easy. Today was a lovely cool day, and I finally had the energy to do what I've been wanting to all summer, namely strain off the liquid into the spare jar and get rid of the inch or so of muck on the bottom before trying to start her up for the season.

Let me lay this out plainly. This afternoon, I spent 30 minutes carefully transferring nearly 2 gallons of very stale, bacteria-ridden, indigo-infused piss from one jar to another, in the process straining out the rotted remains of 3 years worth of dates, plums, bananas and settled-out urine sediment, using a tea strainer and an old teacup. All clear? OK.

Audrey in her natural habitat, surrounded by Morning Glories for company.

The thing that worries me is that... well... she just wasn't very stinky today. I mean, there's smell, but it's nothing like the normal mind-blowing stench I've come to know and... er, love? I don't remember the smell being this tolerable before... unless, Jebus and FSM help me, I'm actually getting used to it. At any rate, I'm not entirely sure if she'll come back this year. We'll see. I checked her pH (between 9-10, which is just right), added some more stale urine (ask not from where it came - it's FOR SCIENCE!!), fed her some mushy bananas, and turned on her heating pad.

After today's handling, she's now thoroughly oxygenated, so it'll be several days before she even starts to settle down, and a good 7-10 days before we can expect her to be dye-worthy. And then I might still have to add some indigo. You can see some of the mushed-up banana floating here:

Tucked in for the night. I feel like a nervous Mom. Or perhaps, a nervous mad scientist.

Let's see, we've gone from food to knitting to straining pee. All in a week's work, I'd say. Next post: Pennsic loot.

*Translation here. Read and weep tears of joy and recognition at your own life.

Summer Daze (the longer, but no less non-sequitur version)

2010-08-25T12:34:00.006-04:00

I am quite possibly the most infuriating person I know.

That fucking tunic that I was going to finish before I left for Pennsic, the one that has been on the go 3 years? Yeah, not finished.

That fucking article review that I was going to finish before I finished the fucking tunic before leaving for Pennsic? Went with me to PA, where I carried it around Pennsic with me, slept with it under my pillow, worked on it here and there and finally sent it off a day before packing up my tent.

That large wool sweater that I need to NOT be knitting during a heatwave? Yeah, still knitting it. It has a sleeve now.

To top off the crazy, I started another sweater! In the middle of summer.

Another Liesl cardigan, this time hopefully better-fitting for me, and definitely in a harder-wearing yarn.

Taking a look at that top picture of the "Hey, Lady!" sweater again, I think I've finally figured out my fitting problem with several of my handknits. No, my arms are not quite that freakishly short, although they are pretty short. The problem lies in the back width. I always make the pattern for my bust size, and my sweaters always come out huge - the neck yokes end up going halfway down my upper arm, with the "sleeve" portions starting closer to my elbow than my shoulder.

Same thing happened on the Liesl de no Manos (which has now officially been gifted to my big sister Kath, yay! And it looks fantastic on her.) Same thing on the Shimmer shrug, which resulted in many shortenings of the sleeves.

Problem is, while I am busty* and extra-large-sized because of considerable extra weight, I am a petite build. That means my shoulder-to-shoulder width is way smaller than what patterns for my bust size are designed for. I need to be making smaller back sizes, and fixing the bust size issue with short rows or extra width on the front or something. There are ways. And I will learn them. I will learn how to make them work for me, and bend them to my will.

Because what I really need to do is learn about clothes sizing and proper fitting techniques, rather than work on Big D, right?

Yeah, like I said: infuriating. But very, very me.

*According to the first Real Bra I have ever purchased, after having had my first ever Real Bra Fitting: I am a (UK)40H, which is also a (US)40K. Yes. Fucking K-cup. Baby Jebus could fit inside my bra cup and take a nap.

Summer Daze (the non-sequitur, abbreviated version)

2010-07-28T13:46:00.000-04:00

This blog will resume shortly.

Note to self: Knitting a large wool sweater during a July heatwave is stupid. Stop it.

Note to self 2: I will finish this fucking tunic before leaving for Pennsic on Friday. It's only been on the go for three years, and I would like to wear it next week.

Note to self 3: I will write up and email this fucking article review before I finish that fucking tunic before leaving for Pennsic on Friday.

Note to self 4: A day when I have to clean up cat barf twice before noon is just taking the piss.

How is your summer going?

Into the fire

2010-05-31T15:47:00.002-04:00

It's hot.

It's really, really, fucking hot.

We are having a heat wave. In May. In Toronto. 30+ degrees today, not counting the humidity.

Did I mention that our AC hasn't worked for over a year? Yeah. Probably need to get on that.

The cat is desperate for cuddles, and I can't stand to have him on me. His fur sticks and I sweat more. Poor thing. Instead, he and I sit at the kitchen table under the ceiling fan, trying to stay cool.

I'm teaching this term, hence the relative silence. We're half way through the first 6-week summer term, only 6 more lectures and a final exam to go. Um, whee? Even when you've taught the course before, it's always more work than you think it will be.

What, then, is a sweaty, cranky fibre fanatic to do? Knit, of course. The "Hey, Lady!" sweater is very slowly gaining sleeves. Well, a sleeve, so far. As the average daytime temperature rises, progress has slowed on anything semi-heavy and made of wool. Pictures once the first sleeve is on.

In the meantime, I'm making a hat.

I was further along last week, but I decided I didn't like the way the hem folded up (the purl row stuck out rather than under), so I ripped back down to that point, added a couple more rows, and re-folded it. I'm at the pleat row now for the second time, and much happier with how the hem looks..

The best part of this hat, and the thing I'm most excited about, inexplicably, is that is calls for a ribbon band. This of course meant that I was required to make a trip to Mokuba on Queen Street, which is easily the best place to go for ribbons and trim in the city, if not the province or the country. It's also likely one of the few places where I could drop $60 on 4.5 meters of ribbon and be thanking them when I leave. But it's that good, it really is. Not being a great fan of sewing, I have little reason to go ribbon or trim shopping, so if I'm going to do it, I'm going to splurge. Considering that they have spools of stuff that go for well over $150/metre, I like to think I did pretty well.

So, what does $60 of trim get you at Mokuba?

2 metres of 50mm golden-yellow grosgrain ribbon, and 2.5 metres of complimentary floral tape

The floral tape will be tacked to the grosgrain in a wave.

Finally, I've been feeling a bit bereft this past week, since my favourite show has wrapped up. No, not Lost. Give me some credit, please. I mean Ashes to Ashes. Not quite sure what I'm going to do without my weekly dose of Guv Luv. Keep an eye out for the next good thing, I guess, and in the meantime, watch A2A and Life on Mars from the beginning again.

I'm going to be deadly serious here for a second. Gene Hunt: Best. Character. Ever. Accept no imitations.

Last night: Jonathon Coulton, Paul & Storm, in concert. Always a wonderful show, wouldn't have missed it for anything. So we didn't.

Better living through technology

2010-04-02T23:38:00.017-04:00

At last, Mother Nature, that Tease, has decided to let us have a real taste of spring. I wore sandals outside yesterday for the first time this year. "They" say it's going to be nice for at least the next several days, but I don't trust her, Mother Nature, that Bastion of Bitchiness. She's pulled this stuff before.

In the meantime, knitters work to clothe ourselves and our loved ones for all contingencies. For example:

The finished "Liesl de no Manos" cardigan:

Made with almost exactly three skeins of Malabrigo worsted, in the "Plena" colourway

I suspect I'll be making a couple more of these, as gifts. It was a relatively quick knit, too. But first, another one for myself, this time a concert-appropriate black version for over the sleeveless black concert dress. Here's a preview:

Fingering-weight spun wool-soysilk, to be knit together with a worsted-weight black to make another Liesl cardigan

I'll start a gauge swatch shortly.

Finally, the continuing progress on the "Hey, Lady!" Sweater:

No sleeves yet, but it's almost long enough.

I got far more done on it than I realized while visiting PA a couple weeks ago. Since I have such a short torso, the body is much closer to being done than I expected. I tried it on, and it's looking like a couple more inches of the lace pattern are all that's needed. Then it's the final couple inches of garter stitch, then sleeves.

In other news, I'd like to officially welcome the newest member of our household:

Oh no, I didn't...

Oh yes, I did.

An antique Canadian Production Wheel, bought from a lady in my concert band who is moving and downsizing. Purchased by her father in 1967 from an antique shop in Baie-St.-Paul, Quebec, it was kept in her parents' cottage and home, and following that, her home, as a decorative piece. They took great care of it, so although it hasn't been used as a working wheel in well over 40 years, it only requires a disassembly for a good cleaning and oiling, replacing the dowels that are missing on the wheel supports, and putting on a drive band.

Bandfriend Derryl and I had talked about this wheel last year. She mentioned she was planning to sell a bunch of things, including a wheel that had been in her family for decades. She wondered if I knew people who might be interested. She didn't even know if it worked, and she wanted to have it appraised, so I told her to let me know when she had an amount and I would put out feelers and drop by to see it. I promptly forgot about it until she mentioned a couple weeks ago at rehearsal that the appraiser had suggested CDN $200, if I was still interested, otherwise it would be put up for auction. Some phone calls and 24 hours later, my friend Jean and I (she's a wheel spinner who knows what to look for, so I was hoping she could come with me) went to look at it. Within five minutes, we knew the only real question was, "Will it fit into my car, or does it need to go in Jean's truck?"

It fit in the car. I called DH on the way home to warn him. He was... understandably surprised. Heck, I was surprised.

There's no maker's mark on it. It has been refinished in its past, and the mark was likely a simple stencil that was stripped off. However, thanks to the magic of the innernets and some wonderful research being done on these wheels by an online group, it has been tentatively identified as a Michel Cadorette wheel made in St Hyacinthe, Quebec, some time before 1929 (when Michel died), and likely before 1922, when his son Phillias took over the business. A woman in the online group has an exact twin of this wheel, with identical wood turnings, maker mark intact.

And so here it sits, in my kitchen. I'm pleased, if a little bewildered. Seriously, I wasn't planning to buy a wheel any time soon. I'm very happy with my large collection of drop spindles. I use them regularly and productively. Being of the belief that to really understand how things work, you have to start at the beginning, I've often considered a wheel something of an unnecessary technological luxury in my own "process" spinning. But there was no way I could walk away from this one. From her. She's a proud old lady who has stood the test of time, and she wants to be used, put back into production.

Also, she needs a name. Preferably something French Canadian - suggestions welcome. I'll learn to pronounce it properly, I promise.

The week after I brought her home, I showed pictures of the new girl to Lady S while we were chatting at the beginning of our weekly meeting - I figure it's just as well your supervisor knows exactly why you're distracted from work, no sense hiding it. Later in the meeting, my computer began to act up. I was charting something for Lady S and trying to print it, while Excel (that bastard) was crashing, taking Word (that farging arsebadger) with it, and with that the rest of the system. I cussed firmly and force-rebooted the whole dratted laptop.

"Just in case you ever wonder why I bought a spinning wheel," I said over my shoulder, "or why I have a loom, or a tendency to use two sticks to knot string into fabric a lot, this is why."

Lady S raised an eyebrow in question.

"In 40 years, this thing" - I waved jauntily with my middle finger toward the rebooting laptop - "will be junk. It won't work. I depend on it daily. I rarely leave home without it, and in a few years, it'll be a paperweight. But I'd put hard money down right now that in 40, or even 60 years, that 80-year-old spinning wheel in my kitchen will still be working."

She smiled. And she did not take me up on the bet.

When the going gets tough, the tough make stuff.

2010-03-03T16:37:00.016-05:00

Some times are meant more for creating, it seems, and others for talking about and documenting the creating. The last few months have been more of the former, less of the latter. I notice that the last couple entries are about losses. January and February were pretty arse-tastic in that respect, I suppose. My brain's response has been to prod me to make things - things to keep me and others warm and wrap us all up in comfort.

Makes sense to me.

I finished those mittens that I was working on in December, according to my notes, on January 10, and they have seen wear almost every day since. The pattern was for fingerless with the option of making them into mittens. I decided to make mittens with removable tops:

Mostly-Fingerless Malabrigo Flip-top Mittens

We also have another finished baby blanket for a friend. Little V, daughter of Vanessa, is nearly a year old now. This blanket has been on the go since before her arrival was imminent:

Crochet really can fix anything, it's true. Consistent sized squares? Bah, that's for wimps.

Truly a group project in every way, Lydia, Manami, Sarah, Chris, Tanya and myself worked out a layout, went shopping together in December 2008, divided up the yarn squares and got creative with picking our favourite stitch patterns for the squares. Several of us even took up hooks over the last couple months and learned (or re-learned, as the case may be) to crochet so that über-crocheter Liisa wasn't stuck putting it all together on her own. It was finally delivered last weekend, and pics of a happy Little V with her blankie landed in our inboxes earlier this week. Hurrah for finishing before she's ready to go to grad school herself, I say!

And then there are the cardigans. I recently decided there is an appalling lack of cardigans in my wardrobe. Enter the Liesl cardigan. I originally started it as the "Liesl de Manos", in a lovely light colour of Manos del Uruguay silk blend. Unfortunately, I needed size 15 needles to even come close to gauge, and I didn't like how it was looking, so it was frogged a few rounds into the yoke increases. I re-started using Malabrigo worsted, and redubbed it (in intentionally bad Spanish) the "Liesl de no Manos":

The Liesl of Not Manos, in Malabrigo worsted (Plena colourway), ready for some sleeves.

The left sleeve is done now, and I'm working on the right one. The back will be as long as the remaining wool allows.

It's going so well, and so quickly, that I've decided to make a second one, this time as a "concert black" cardigan for when I don't want to sweat my butt off under stage lights wearing the Shimmer shrug for band concerts. I love that shrug, it was a true learning experience. But it has its problems, not the least of which: it's heavy. Really freaking heavy. And despite all the re-engineering of the sleeves, they are still a little longer than I'm totally comfortable with when playing the horn. I really need a short-sleeve concert sweater.

Not to make it too easy, because what's the fun in that, I'm planning to spin some lightweight singles to knit together with the plain black yarn to give it a little shine. I found this marvelous roving last month:

Wool and Soysilk, Louet "Karaoke Black Tiger" roving

Spinning is underway. I'll need a good 800 yards of it at least, so it won't be an instant gratification kind of thing, but I'll have enough by the time I finish the "Liesl de no Manos" to be able to start knitting, and I'll continue to spin as-needed.

Finally, in a fit of crazy, I started a second cardigan. This one is a bigger project, definitely not for instant gratification. It's also intended to be another on-stage-appropriate cardigan for over the sleeveless black concert dress. I'm making a February Lady Sweater, or what I have dubbed my "February 'Hey Lady!' Sweater":

The neverending garter-stitch yoke increases on the "February 'Hey, Lady!' Sweater." Yarn is Cascade 200 wool.

I can't wait to separate off the sleeves so that it no longer takes me 15 minutes to knit a single row. The never-ending garter stitch is killing me here, I'm looking forward to the lace pattern. My friend Jean, who is a glass bead maker, offered to make me some buttons for this, because she is made of awesome. I can't wait - this sweater definitely needs special buttons, and what she has in mind sounds perfect.

When the Zombie Apocalypse comes, my friends and I will be ready. We'll have plenty of warm blankets, we'll be wearing sweaters, and we'll be kicking butt and taking names.

Nine+Taylers+Make+A+Manne

2010-02-03T17:13:00.010-05:00

The world lost a Teacher yesterday. A dear and unique man, with a most infectious laugh. A stop by his office very often led to a discussion about something else once business was taken care of. Maybe Celtic languages. Or typefaces. Or computers. Or a story about the department in the 70s. Or why he had a dried chunk of dirt wrapped in plastic in his desk (it was a peat brick from Scotland, which of course led to another conversation). Or how his latest cooking class was going. Or books.

Gems of conversations, each one held dear.

He was kindness, calm, generosity and philosophical wisdom all rolled together with a twinkle in his eye, a smile, and a bottle of Diet Coke in his hand. He is the reason I didn't give up on one particularly bad day. The books he passed on to me when he retired are cherished and regularly put to good use.

He taught me an enormous amount about teaching.

Once, during a discussion about bell towers and carillons (a topic arrived at by a perfectly logical course of discussion that I couldn't replicate if I tried), he recommended a particular book. Today I can't get it out of my head.

To my friend and mentor:

"The voice of the Bells of Fenchurch St. Paul: Gaude, Gaudy, Domini in laude. Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth. John Cole made me, John Presbyter paid me, John Evangelist aid me. From Jericho to John A-Groate there is no bell can better my note. Jubilate Deo. Nunc Dimittis, Domine. Abbot Thomas set me here and bade me ring both loud and clear. Paul is my name, honour that same.
Gaude, Sabaoth, John, Jericho, Jubilee, Dimity, Batty Thomas and Tailor Paul.

Nine Tailors Make a Man."

- Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors

Many, many people will miss you dearly, Hank.

I will miss you dearly.

Toll the bell nine times. The world has lost a Teacher.

sigh

2010-01-02T21:51:00.007-05:00

We lost Tiger on Wednesday evening. It took us by surprise, but was mercifully quick, and we were with him, at home. In retrospect, it's surprising he lasted as long as he did, even though that very day we were still holding out hope that he'd rebound and pull through like he did last month. But really, he was nearly 17, and he had been through too much. It was his time.

Dammit.

DH and I are melancholy on and off. We're grateful for the good long time we had with him. He had a wonderful life, and he was a joy to us every day of it. Sweet, curious, gentle, affectionate, persistently yet kindly demanding and without a cranky thought in his fuzzy little brain. We knew it was coming, but I don't think you can really be ready to lose one of your guys.

I'm mostly fine until I try to find a couple pictures to post, and I start to go through my archive. There are a lot, thankfully. He was with us since spring 1996, when he was three years old. I even found some short MPEG movies, but I don't think I'm ready to share those yet. Later.

ca. 2004, age 11, in the old apartment

late 2008, and very comfy thank you

Hug your fuzzy ones. Give them a treat and a skritch and a belly rub if they are so inclined. Feel the love returned back tenfold.

Not entirely unlike The Exorcist. Also, mittens.

2009-12-27T00:28:00.010-05:00

I started a pair of fingerless mittens using the skein of yummy soft Malabrigo chunky. It's an almost instant gratification project. I'm using this pattern. (note: you have to have a Ravelry account to see it). The left mitt is almost done, see?

I was too lazy to pull out the swift and ball winder for a single skein last night, so I wound the pull ball on the nostepinne.*

In other news, we've cleaned up cat barf five times today between two cats. Tiger is slowly recovering from a serious illness and occasionally, much like a scene from The Exorcist, has trouble keeping his food down - this was one of those days. Both of them are getting over a persistent cold, the main symptom of which has been one or the other sneezing on us at every opportunity. To make today even better, they're both working on hairballs. To top it off, Ford got into my glass of milk this evening with predictable results.

The onslaught seems to have abated for now, thank goodness. Tiger is resting comfortably out front on his chair, the poor thing. Ford has decided to take out his frustrations on a piece of scrap paper, and is shredding it into little bits as I type. And he's still eyeing my glass of milk, because "cause" and "effect" mean nothing to him when there's milk involved. And also, he's hungry. Can't imagine why.

That's pretty much it, here. Mittens and cat barf. I think I need a vacation from my vacation.

*A fancy name for a very useful stick.

It's sentimental, I know

2009-12-25T00:05:00.000-05:00

A simple thought for the season:

I quite like the songs, too.

tap tap Is this thing still on?

2009-12-24T23:55:00.002-05:00

Dum, de dum, de... Oh crap! I have a blog!

Things have been a little crazy the last few months. Autumn is over. Solstice was Monday. I am tired. I'm also mostly on vacation. When I declared myself to be on vacation yesterday afternoon, I felt guilty about it for exactly 3.4 seconds. Then I remembered what I've been doing for the last four months (longer, really, since I was also teaching in the summer and last Jan-May).

From September to now, I have:
- Taught a class of 140 students, with 2 TAs. Finals still need to be graded, but I'm working through that. The first part-time job.
- Finished and submitted the written version of my Big D proposal, 70+ pages. The other part-time job.
- Defended that proposal orally, in a 1 hour presentation to the faculty and graduate students of my department. I am now *officially* ABD (All But Dissertation).
- Given two conference presentations, on different topics, within 2 weeks of each other in October.
- Done the final re-read on a joint paper so that it could finally be re-submitted.
- Tried, with medium success, to attend my weekly band rehearsals, occasional quintet rehearsals, and SCA meetings.
- Helped out with two full-day SCA events in September, and played 4 or 5 concerts, between the band and quintet.
- Helped to nurse a very sick kitty (Tiger) this past month. We almost lost him, but he's doing much better now.
- Not fallen apart, mentally or physically. Mostly mentally.

That last one is huge. I can't tell express how huge. A year ago I was in complete shut down. I still have *days*. I still don't like getting out of bed most of the time. But I can, and I do, and that's what counts. I still drop balls (see that bit about the final exams still needing to be graded!), but I usually catch them on the first bounce.

Of course, there has been knitting and otherwise playing with string. The double-knit hat from hell is has been finished since September, and even now it's almost too warm to wear. It's a hat for the coldest of the cold sub-zero plus windchill days:

My model prefers to retain his anonymity

I also just finished this scarf, probably my longest-term WIP ever, started on July 4, 2001. I hadn't bought my own set of knitting needles at that point, and started it on a pair of Gram's old 1950's metal needles (pink). I'm not fond of knitting on metal, and the combination of yarns was extra frustrating (mohair and rayon). I would do an inch or two and then put it up for a year. Long ago, I declared it would be done when I ran out of one or the other yarn. I finally, blessedly ran out of rayon Monday night! I present the lace scarf, final length just over 7 feet (before blocking):

Lace scarf from Knitting for Dummies, started July 4, 2001, finished December 24, 2009.

And then there was this little guy, made not quite in time for Remembrance Day.

Pattern available from Laura Chou, Cosmic Pluto, and please donate to the Royal Canadian Legion Poppy Fund

There has also been yarn shopping therapy, oh yes. I have plans for all of these...

Top to bottom: malabrigo chunky, some worsted-weight merino-silk blend, and DK alpaca.

There has also been spindle-shopping therapy. First, the good deals:

Inexpensive beginner pine spindle bought, along with four of its siblings, at Pennsic from Baron Tancred of Tancred's Tangled Wood (no website). Boat-anchor spindle by Roger Hawins (Peterborough, ON), bought for a holy-crap-whattadeal price at Gemini Fibres.

And then the other very good deal, but not due to the price:

A Forrester supported spindle with yellowheart whorl and birch shaft, and a paduak bowl, bought at Gemini Fibres in Mt Albert, ON.

I was torn between this bowl and a purpleheart one that had a small hole in the corner to hold the spindle, but the yellow whorl and orange bowl are beautiful together in a uniquely warm way. The fibre is this cochineal-tin dyed roving that I bought at Pennsic in 2008. Now I just need to learn to use a supported spindle properly!

In eight minutes it will be Christmas Day. Nothing special planned, we prefer no-stress holidays. We'll have the usual lunch at the in-laws, perhaps a board game or three, some knitting, and possibly our traditional trip to whichever local Starbucks has the honour of being open so that their employees don't feel like they're there for nothing. Overall, it's going to be a good day, that much I know.

Five minutes. G'night.

A Magpie in Autumn

2009-11-08T17:37:00.004-05:00

Aaaah! *flail*

Elisem is having a sale again. And people, the prices are getting darned good.

So much for my self-imposed moratorium on buying jewelry and other shiny things. I've already bought this pendant

And there are tektites, meteorite beads and dinosaur bone beads. Yes, that's right, meteorites and dinosaur bone beads.

Go, go, go. We'll talk when you get back.

If it were E.T. phoning home, I'd be more OK with it

2009-10-18T18:39:00.009-04:00

I press a button near my ear. There's a little *bleep*, and a digital female voice says, "Say command."

"Call home," I reply.

"Did you say, 'Call home?' "

"Yes."

----------------------------------------------------------------

The province is introducing a law at the end of the month prohibiting the use of hand-held devices while driving. Cell phones. MP3 players. As of the end of the month, you have to be able to operate them hands-free if you're behind the wheel.

If only they could prohibit pedestrians from using the same distracting hand-held devices while crossing the street, we'd be all set. I had two separate potential my-fault-accidents walk out in front of me — without looking, against their signals and into the middle of downtown traffic — while talking on their phones this Friday afternoon. But I digress.

I get it, I really do, and I fully support the law. I don't use my cell phone in the car that much, but I'm certainly guilty of taking and making calls once in a while while driving, and it's a convenience that I'm not willing to give up. What that means, though, is that I'm being dragged kicking and screaming into a little more technology in my daily life than I am completely comfortable with.

I'm of that in-between generation. The internet started to become more widely used while I was an undergraduate in the early 90s, but the web didn't come about for several years after that. I was an early, if slightly reluctant, internet user, but it quickly became integral to how I communicated with friends. I could telnet into a MUSH and talk with them in real-time when I was on the other side of the ocean. Email was a necessity. When the WWW came in, I was in my early 20s, and I acclimated just fine. These days, I check my email compulsively and usually have my laptop nearby. I'm a Mac girl, through and through.

It took me longer to get a cell phone than an ISP. It seemed... too much connectivity. I finally broke down in 1998 after a car accident in Western PA, and we realized how much issue it would have been had we not had family right there with us to help out. Only a handful of people have the number, and to this day, my cell plan is the cheapest one I can get that includes voicemail. I do not have an IPhone or a Blackberry, it's just a basic cell phone. It has a camera, that's kind of cool, but whatever. I do not have data or text messaging. Honestly, I have three email addresses and I check them 50 bazillion times a day. I'm not hard to reach. I have to draw the line somewhere.

Which brings us to today, me sitting in a cafe with a bizarre-looking earpiece sticking out of my ear. I figured I'd try this hands-free cellphone thingy out when it's not critical, so we set it up and I went out to do some errands on a Sunday afternoon. I'll admit, the voice-dialing thing is neat. I knew the phone had the feature, I just never used it.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I was heading out the door, and realized that I look like one of those people that annoy the living shit out of me - earpiece sticking out of their ear, you never know when they might stop talking to you to take a phone call that you didn't hear coming. They talk loudly, and apparently to themselves, in the coffee shop or in the line instead of ordering or paying. I'm reminded of one of those stories where everyone is plugged into their technology all the time and it takes over their minds. I sighed.

"I look ridiculous."

DH stuck his head around the corner.

"Hey, just pretend you're like Uhura. 'Captain, you have a call...' "

I grinned. You know, I hadn't thought of it that way.

"Captain, Priority One message for you from Starfleet," I said in my best phone-professional voice.

"There you go!"

Sometimes, he really knows what to say to make me feel better. If Uhura can have that thing sticking out of her ear and still be awesome, I'm good, right?

----------------------------------------------------------------

"Did you say, 'Call home?' "

"Yes."

The line begins to ring on the other end, and my husband answers the phone.

"Starbase 5-8-0-0 here."

"Hi, honey."

"You broke the ship again, didn't you?"

I break into peals of laugher. I love that man.

[Insert witty title here]

2009-10-11T03:28:00.006-04:00

I am beat. Spent. Wiped.

Also, I am in Edmonton at the moment.

These two things seem to be related.

The first conference talk of the month, and I did not make an ass of myself. In my world, that is an unqualified success. (ETA *)

The last month has been a frenzy of preparing lectures, doing revisions, writing conferences papers (one to go, in two weeks), helping to run events, band concerts, wrangling sick cats, battling moths and sticking a thermometer in the mouth of a sick husband. There have been occasional moments here and there of knitting, dyeing and weaving, but they have been few and very far between. My schedule is so screwed up, I'm not sure I could immediately recognize my husband when he's awake.

We pulled out Audrey the Indigo Vat last week to get her going again for our annual early October dye day. She wasn't quite at full speed for the day last Saturday, but I've heard that she's going gangbusters now. She's still hanging out at friend Helena's house, in the shed, on her heating pad, since I was preparing for Edmonton this week and didn't have a chance to go pick up and wrangle back home a big Rubbermaid bin containing a very stinky4-gallon jar of 18-month old fermented urine. It's good to have friends who understand "BYOP", and do it without question.

Also, I finished the neverending double-knit not-a-toque. It's big and warm and comfy.

A real update, with pictures and everything, perhaps when I get home tomorrow. After I commune a bit with my bed, cats and husband, not necessarily in that order.

* Well, Would you look at that. Huh. I guess it went better than I thought.

Progress With Work begets Playing With String

2009-09-07T22:45:00.020-04:00

Ah, September. I love September. The weather is cooler, but not too cool. I don't need a jacket yet, but I don't want to lay around all day under a fan and sweat. Summer really is my least productive time of year. I turn into a sweaty, useless lump. This is not helped by our air conditioner being dead - not a huge deal, really, expect for that one week. But still. Hot and sticky = cranky me.

My Big D proposal draft was turned in on August 15. On August 20, I received the following email from CM1. I thought it was worth posting here verbatim, because it is both hilarious (to me) and touching:

I raced through the thesis proposal these last two days because I won't be back again for a couple of weeks. It sounds good to me. It is repetitive and method-obsessed but readable and as sensible (surely) as anything else in the literature on register. All my comments in the attached pages are editorial, not substantive. I will have to study your results more closely eventually but for now the document seems to me to be clearly acceptable as the basis for a thesis proposal. No problem. (Organizing it in PowerPoint will undoubtedly make it more svelte.) I am well pleased. And happy, of course, to see you emerge from a long battle in such good shape. Nice going.

In person, he also told me that he had wanted to check before he left that it was "sane" (it was, which made him happy), and that he was pleased that I was once again "as comprehensible as you've ever been."

I thanked him, and told him it was possibly the first time I'd ever received an email using the word "svelte." To that end, I believe CM1 has now earned himself an official Blog Name. He is henceforth Sir C for his amazing ability to interweave Compliments and Constructive Criticism in the most Concise and Creative ways. Also, this is the first time I've felt complimented by someone telling me I was Comprehensible.

A little back story: Sir C is very well aware of my battle with depression over the last several years, and has been unwavering in his support for me to talk about it openly, admit and come to terms with it, and never consider it something shameful or to be hidden. This attitude is something I appreciate more than I can say, especially coming from a field like academia, where it seems every grad student goes through a bout of depression at some point, and there is still a certain amount of stigma attached to "taking some time off" for that reason. Sir C has also, in the nine years over which he's read my work, never been particularly comfortable with my writing style, something we've discussed many times. "Method-obsessed" is absolutely, 100% true, and everyone who knows me knows that I am, indeed method-obsessed. Part of my purpose in the Big D is to improve on methodology. His comment is his way of saying he recognizes that and it's fine, but I also need to work a little more substantive theory in there yet before it's done - and he is correct, as always.

In the meantime, the fall term starts tomorrow, and I start teaching again on Thursday. It's the same class I taught in January, so at least my prep time is minimal. I expect to hear from Lady S (that's S for Supervisor, since we're revisiting the blog-name thing) and CM2 (Committee Member 2, as yet blog-nameless) soon, and then maybe this thing can move forward. I've taken the last couple weeks off, except for a few rounds of The Administrative Paperwork Dance, which is a neverending production in academia.

But! The important things! There has been progress on things which involve Playing With String!

One blanket, star and moon charted by me, the overall design and layout cribbed from another pattern.

And a picture of the back, because I'm weird that way:

It will not be backed at the recipient's request.

Hopefully I'll be able to catch up with and hand it off to its intended this week. With that finished, I returned to the Double-Knit Not-A-Toque of Doom:

DH thinks it should be high enough now, so I'll start decreasing in a couple more rows.

No major screw-ups for the last couple inches. Crap, I just jinxed it, didn't I?

Finally, I have a warped loom, and I'm not afraid to use it:

A full-width dummy warp for the colour samples for the Coppergate textile (wabengewebe pattern) yardage, which I'll be weaving possibly eternity.

I've been wandering around in a daze today, convinced that there's something I'm supposed to be doing that I'm forgetting. I've come to the realization that, in fact, I'm extremely well aware of everything that I have to get done this week - including several things for tomorrow - and the fact that I don't feel like doing them is what's causing me to be such a space cadet.

And on that note, I'm going to soak in the tub.

What summer?

2009-08-09T20:51:00.001-04:00

It's nearly the middle of August, and I'm not even sure I remember July. I just finished teaching a summer-term course - an entire 12-week semester course crammed into 6 weeks. This means I write and delivered two two-hour lectures per week for six weeks, as well as preparing two hours of tutorial material per week. It's as crazy for the instructors as for the students. As one of my friends said, "If teaching summer courses were easy, the profs would be doing it, not the grad students."

A friend and I did manage to sneak down to Pennsic for the August long weekend, though, spend three days there and coming home in time for me to teach class on Tuesday evening. It was exhausting, but worth every minute of the drive. Glad we went, and glad we didn't stay longer (although, I would have loved to have been there Wednesday night, but it was not an option). We were ready to leave Tuesday morning, though.

My friend got in a couple days' worth of glass bead classes (i.e. "playing with fire"), and I got in a couple days' worth of warping my loom (i.e. "playing with string") at my favourite Pennsic hangout, Seelie's picnic table in the back of her shop, with other weavers. Aside from that, all I did was some shopping, a lot of walking, and a little visiting with the parents. Picked up a nice umbrella (which I can't find at the moment, how does that happen?), a solid cloak clasp, another good hair pin (which I'm wearing), some warp yarn (pale yellow Cottolin, for a specific project), and year's supply of honey. I did not buy fabric I don't need, or an alpaca or llama fleece which I need even less. I did get my niece addicted to weaving. All in all, I have to call it a good weekend's work.

Knitting on the Wiglet Blanket for my friend's newborn continues. ("Wiglet" was the baby's nickname while he was in utero, and it has stuck). Should be done soon, only one more easy block row to go. Here is Tiger demonstrating how it is both comfy and cool at the same time:

Guess I'll be washing that before it goes out...

The sky has just opened on us in what can only be described as a deluge, cooling down one of the stickiest warm days in what has so far been a cool, wet summer. There's a helluva light & sound show out there. Time to go watch.

It's good to be home.

The luck just outside our door

2009-07-14T02:20:00.000-04:00

My mother has this strange, magical and occasionally infuriating ability to find four-leaf clovers. I suspect it's her superpower. She can be walking through a parking lot or down a city street, glance at a patch of grass and Bam! Four-leaf clover. She's been doing it all my life.

Over the years, she has taken to picking and pressing them, keeping them as reminders of places she's been. Sometimes she finds so many that she gets distracted, and sometimes it drives Dad a little crazy,* even though he generally finds it endearing, her looking for napkins to press them in, writing on it when and where she found it and bringing them home. There are napkins with pressed four-leaf clovers around the house, in books, in drawers and around her office desk.

Mom was visiting a few weeks ago and went out back in the morning to sit at the picnic table with her coffee and read, as she likes to do. Our backyard is now filled with flowering clover, which we have neglected to mow, partly out of laziness and partly because we like it, and its bee-friendliness. Some days it's positively buzzing.

Mom sat down and started to read. Within seconds, she was distracted. One. Two four-leaf clovers.

"I have to stop this," she said, "it's insane. Oh, for heaven's sake, there's another one!" She hadn't even gone into the clover patch yet - she was still standing next to it.

I went and got her a paper towel to press them.

"Can you see them?" she asked. I looked carefully, and no. Not for the life of me. It's definitely her superpower, not mine.

"It's like the pattern just jumps out at me. See? Here's another one. That's four. Dammit. I'm going to have to go inside, or I'll never stop."

It's a little comforting that I seem to come by my OCD-ish tendencies honestly.

As for me... I've been busy. Very busy. Working. Writing. Teaching. Playing. Going a little crazy with the Busy, trying not to drop any balls that are too fragile to hit the ground, catching others after the first bounce.

But you know what? I have house full of love and a backyard full of luck. It'll all bee fine.

* This might also be partly because he can't find them; this is a man who can spot a deer in a far-away field while driving on the interstate at 70mph.

Snippets from Crazyland, Academia

2009-06-21T16:41:00.010-04:00

I met with my full thesis committee last week for the first time in over two years. The players:

Me: Eternal student, trying to get back on track.
Lady S: My long-suffering supervisor.
CM1: Committee member 1, another long-suffering mentor who I adore, even if we don't always agree.
CM2: New committee member, a recent hire.

What follows are some of my favourite excepts:

------------------------------

Lady S to CM1 and CM2: I've been getting regular updates on her draft. My last email to Bridget was last Monday, titled, "Where is it?"

Me: Was that the one that I responded to you with song lyrics?

Lady S: Yep.

Me (thoughtfully): It was a good song.

------------------------------

Lady S (digging through her file cabinet): Why can't I find your folder?

Me: I don't know, they should be easy to spot, you have, like, 7 years of them now.

CM2: She has seven years of folders on you?

Me: Or is it eight?

------------------------------

CM1 (looking over my CV): You spelled "assisstant" (sic.) with one too many S's on the top of page 6.

CM2: And two lines below that, I guess that's a copy-paste?

Me: Actually, I was going to say that was me being as "ass," but yes. And oh look, here's the same typo again! And again! Joy.

------------------------------

CM1 (looking at a journal citation on my CV): Shouldn't this title be italicized and not in quotes? Since it's a special volume?

Me: You know, I specifically checked the Chicago Manual of Style on that one and apparently, this is how they do it.

CM1 (once an editor always an editor): I don't know about that...

Me (once a typesetter always a typesetter): I'd be happy to send you the reference to the page in Chicago or bring it in...

CM1: That won't be necessary. *pause* Besides, we don't use Chicago style...

We continue to nag each other for a couple more minutes about editorial minutae.

CM2: I would be very surprised if anyone else ever noticed the difference.

Me: True. And we can continue to argue about italics and quotes later.

Lady S (ever patiently): Yes, thank you.

------------------------------

Lady S: So, what day shall we set for you to turn in the draft?

Me (firmly): This coming Monday.

CM1: Are you sure? Will you be able to finish it by then, do you think?

Me (grinning): Well, since you're giving me the option, how about the following Monday?

Lady S: If we give her another week now we'll have to pry it out of her hands in two weeks.

Me: Without a doubt. This coming Monday, then?

------------------------------

Miraculously, I'm not only still a graduate student, but apparently things are going okay.

PS: Note to self, do not open and look at your previous semester's teaching evaluations from your students while working in the department four hours prior to your long-dreaded committee meeting, for which you are not yet ready. Save it for when there's wine, and possibly fire.

PPS: Monday approaches, and the draft is not yet ready.

Ask not what we do to history; ask what history does to us*

2009-06-14T00:10:00.013-04:00

Some days, I think, should simply be re-written. Forgotten. Pages removed from The Book and dropped into the fire.

I tried to explain this to a Librarian once, and was threatened with excommunication and confiscation of all of my library cards for being a heretic. Librarians can be scary.

Mind you, some days, I want to be a Librarian too. "Fear me," I would say, and others would tremble as they handed their books back. Naturally, I would only use my Super Seekrit Reference-Finding Powers and my Mighty Data Mining Decoder Ring for good. Also, my cape would look suspiciously like a lace shawl.

Obviously, I digress.

I think what The Librarian didn't understand is that I wasn't implying that it was only the bad days that should be forgotten.

History is tomorrow's spoilers. "Doomed to repeat itself if forgotten" and all that.

On those days when it seems like there is nothing new in the world, nothing exciting that can make me want to do, to create, I curse my inconveniently good memory and beg to forget something that made me insanely happy so that I can rediscover it and be insanely happy about it again.

It's a slippery slope, I know. Remember that episode of Fantasy Island, where the couple wanted to fall in love again, so they were made to forget each other and they almost hooked up with the wrong people? I know I'm the sum of my experiences, of my history, and I like who I am, and I wouldn't erase a part of that. To quote a truth from an otherwise unfortunate movie, "I need my pain!"** Eventually, something else comes along that brings me joy again. I hold out for those moments, because if I lost hope in them, I would surely go crazy.

But still, there are some days...

...some days when I wonder if in order to experience true joy again, we first need to forget what it was like.

*A musing on the pendant What We Do To History, made by elisem.

**And just what does God need with a Starship, anyhow?

In which I re-read the last post and cringe. And also, shoes.

2009-06-04T23:39:00.003-04:00

Wow, when I resort to blogging song lyrics, you know it's been a rough week. Let's move on to hopefully better things, shall we?

This, I think, should be the lunch of hardworking graduate students everywhere:

Iced tea (Jasmine), cherries (Mmmmm), and a generic version of my second-favourite Girl Scout cookie, Samoas, (which are not sold by the Girl Guides in Canada.)

I recently stocked up on these cookies in the event of a Zombie Apocalypse. For the record, Thin Mints are my favourite GS cookie. They don't sell those in Canada, either; they have a different chocolate mint cookie that I don't like nearly as much. It's OK, I maintain a US supplier for Thin Mints.

On the weekend, I believe I submitted what is officially the Crappiest Abstract Ever. We shall see. I had another abstract accepted yesterday to a different conference (which I'm even looking forward to), so even if CrappyAbstract is rejected - and well it should be - I can relax and be OK with its complete suckiness.

My stress has been finding new and interesting ways to manifest itself. I've never been much of a stress-relief shopper. Today, though, in a rare and bizarre fit of vanity (and definitely stress relief), I bought three pairs of Very Nice Shoes, from a great store that is normally outside my price range, but does indeed have exceptionally nice and somewhat unique things, and was having a great sale.

I can naturally rationalize this by pointing out that my current "dress" shoes are several years old and no longer qualify as nice in any sense of the word. Further, I had intended, very soon, to buy both some decent new SCA garb-appropriate footwear (which I got today X 2), as well as something tastefully dressy for black concert wear - preferably with heels for a change, as I haven't owned a pair of heels in years. This is all true, and rational, and perfectly explainable.

Or, I can just let out a crazy-lady whoop and say, "Yeehaw! I bought Shoes!! I did it just because I wanted to, and They Are Awesome!!" It seems like such a wonderfully typical female thing to do, and I'm of a mood to embrace that bit of myself that I usually don't allow out of the bottle.

Go ahead, tell me these don't kick ass. Really, go for it, I dare you. You're wrong! HAHAHAHA!!

So, yeah, I don't shop for shoes much. Or clothes, for that matter. I tend to view clothes shopping as a form of torture. So when the mood strikes, the finances are acceptable and I find something I like, I take that as a sign and go with it.

Ahem. So, to sum up: Abstract fail and success, writing semi-fail, shoe success. It all balances out, and even allows for some happiness. And on the theme of balance and happiness, two happy cats, my opposite-boys:

Tiger, who prefers to sleep in the poofiest, cuddliest spot available, and right up against a human who will pet him indefinitely if possible, but does not, under any circumstance, like to be picked up or held.

Ford, who is usually up for several furious, in-your-face snuggles per day, but who likes to sleep at least partially on a cool, flat surface, away from potential human (or other) contact.

"Even when it's approaching torture, I've got my routine"

2009-06-02T22:46:00.009-04:00

A year ago today, I had a Very Bad Day. It wasn't that kind of bad, if you understand my meaning. No one was in physical danger. But it was still bad.

Friends helped. Family helped. Talking helped. Medicine helped.

Things are better today.

And yet there is something I still struggle with, a lingering leftover from That Day. I have still not written the thing I was working on when I had my Very Bad Day. I fight with it, I poke around at it, I write a little and then I stop. And the next day, it starts again. Some days I give up completely and walk away. Sometimes it's for weeks at a time.

This has been going on far too long.

It's not that the thing I'm writing is hard - well, OK, actually it is hard, and it's supposed to be hard - but I've done things that are much harder in the past. This one, though, is linked to the Very Bad Day, and until I get through it, That Day will always be there, hanging over me. And more to the point, if I don't finish it in the very near future, I will be willfully, intentionally shooting myself in the foot, sacrificing years of work and time on my part and many others' because I had a Very Bad Day that I'm afraid to face again.

All the flowers have fallen from the magnolia tree out back, and it is fully, lushly green. Nature waits for no one, not even for me to find a way to write the thing I was supposed to have written before that last flower fell. So, I will pick up again from yet another missed deadline, and keep plugging.

The innernets, though, has a wicked sense of humour. As I was sitting here wasting time this evening, surfing the endless seas of YouTube, thinking about what I should be doing while I was doing anything but, thinking about one year ago today, and promises, and magnolia trees, this song came up unexpectedly, randomly, and I knew it was right (repeated lyrics edited):

----------------------------------
Oh, for the sake of momentum
I've allowed my fears to get larger than life
And it's brought me to my current agendum
Whereupon I deny fulfillment has yet to arrive

And I know life is getting shorter
I can't bring myself to set the scene
Even when it's approaching torture
I've got my routine

Oh, for the sake of momentum
Even though I agree with that stuff about seizing the day
But I hate to think of effort expended
All those minutes and days and hours
I have frittered away.

But I can't confront the doubts I have
I can't admit that maybe the past was bad
And so, for the sake of momentum
I'm condemning the future to death
So it can match the past.

- Aimee Mann, "Momentum" (from the Magnolia soundtrack)

So many palettes, so little time

2009-05-16T22:12:00.002-04:00

This week we finally had a warm enough day, one where I could leave the back door open and let the fresh air in. There are still flowers on the magnolia tree, though they are dropping fast. The wind is helping them along. The forsythia is greening. The lilacs are about to bloom. On weekdays, I can hear the bell of the elementary school on the street behind us, calling in the kids from lunch and recess. Someone is mowing their lawn. Hrm, perhaps we should think about that.

That clover is far too high to be real.

Notice that there are still flowers on the magnolia tree, although they are falling fast. As such, my draft is not yet turned in to Lady S, but it must be soon. I have not yet resorted to glueing flowers back on to the tree. She made a point to remind me on Friday to "not mess with nature." We seem to have developed a strange dialect of floral metaphor for the writing process.

It's still too cool to move Audrey the Indigo Vat outside and open her up for the season. Maybe next week.

Last weekend, DH and I made it to the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF), and spent a little more than we planned - but only on good things. For instance, two prints and a small, obsessively handmade copy of The Innumerable Obsessions of Purl McGee from artist Willow Dawson, a couple collections from Wondermark, and this poster from Dinosaur Comics, to hang in the ~~TARDIS,~~ er house.

And then in the "Oooh, check it out, they signed it and sketched something for me!" category:

Matt Kindt's Super Spy, in which he drew the top half of the panel of original art that I also bought.

And perhaps our favourite score (for now), one of the last four copies in the building on Sunday of Kate Beeton's Never Learn Anything From History, bought from the lady herself and signed, along with a copy of this print, which makes this Trek-girl very happy. Kate personalized the book with this:

General Brock, from this strip, being all majestic and heroic and shiny before, you know, getting himself heroically killed.

A Magpie in Spring

2009-05-05T01:52:00.007-04:00

Attention, Magpies and those who love Magpies:

Elisem is having a sale, right here.

I have been drooling over tektite pendants for weeks now.

And then there are quite a few other amazing pendants.

And some necklaces that I like quite a bit. And perhaps one day I'll have one of these for my very own.

If her jewelry is amazing, her sales kick serious butt. I don't get everything that I buy from her on sale, but I won't deny that I've gotten some of my favourite things at a healthy markdown over the last couple years.

Here are a couple of her pieces, doing what they do best:

Hairstick: "To Serve The Great Engine"; Necklace: "Of the Battle in the Woods and What Happened Thereafter", both by Elise Matthesen

In other news, I'm supposed to be writing the Big D proposal. Which I am. Slowly, and despite other necessary things. For instance, today was rather spent in the company of six of my eight marvelous ~~henchmen~~TAs, grading the final exam for my Jan - April course, which just finished. That will be done tomorrow, and then I can go back to work.

If anyone sees Lady S, tell her I'm coming. The magnolia tree is in full bloom. That is not a euphemism. Before the flowers on it fall and it goes green with leaves, this draft will be in her hands.

And also, did I mention these shockingly adorable little guys? I'm just sayin'.

Sometimes Lazy Days. Sometimes Not So Much.

2009-04-26T23:15:00.003-04:00

I keep meaning to post, and then I realize I haven't taken the pictures, and then I put it off, and then suddenly it's a week later and I haven't posted. This has happened more than once. Bah.

See, I have this new camera. I mostly like it, except that the only documented way to get pictures off of it and on to the Mac appears to be through iPhoto, a program which I dislike, intensely and almost unreasonably, since it 1) forces me to upload everything currently on the camera, whether I want to at that moment or not (for instance: I only want to deal with two small pictures right now, not spend 30 minutes waiting for iPhoto to chug and churn to upload 7 GB of video), and 2) decides all on its own where to put files on my hard drive. Putting the pictures where I want them involves extra steps of digging through the hard drive to find the right directory and moving things around manually.

The whole process is unnecessarily complicated and drives me batty. I wish I could just plug the dratted thing in and have it show up as an external hard drive, like my old camera (ca. 2000, only takes 15 second videos, needs a new battery, but which I know like the back of my hand and love). All of this means I can no longer deal with pictures quite as efficiently as I'm used to, so it's become yet another thing to avoid. I suspect I have a solution though, which I will try out this week.

Bloody technology, thinking it knows what's best for me.

ANYhow.

It's been a mostly lazy couple of weeks. The sun is shining and it has been getting warmer each day. Dare I guess that it might be... spring? The magnolia tree seems to think so. It's now full of pink buds.

Some progress on no-longer-secret-project #3. The recipient knows about it, and has happily approved the yarn, colour scheme and pattern, so I think it's safe to say that this blanket will be for M. & C.'s Wiglet (i.e. baby), who, in fact, decided to make his grand arrival in Canada just over a week ago, after keeping parents and midwife on their toes for several days. But all are well, and he is as adorable as expected.

A big welcome to the week-old young Mr. R., aka Wiglet, who I met Friday.

I'm almost halfway done and speeding up a little, especially now that I've finalized the moon and star charts, weaving in ends as I go. In a strange way, I'm enjoying all the balls of yarn hanging from the back, which slowly but surely become tangled as I change colours. I carefully untangle them, knit a few more rows, and do it again. It's like a little dance between me and the yarn. A very pleasant, slow dance.

A couple Saturdays ago was spent in the back corner of my dusty basement with several SCA friends, sorting through a pile of canton common property, counting, consolidating, re-packing, tossing junk, and creating a photo-database of everything. There was wine and Dooley's and laughter along with the friends, which I think is the best way to spend an afternoon and evening. The inventory was well overdue. It was a big job, and in the end we completed what we set out to do, and felt like we accomplished a lot, which is the best outcome one can ask for, don't you think? Especially with wine.

Now taking up only 1/3 less space, and we know what's in every box.

Last weekend was spent making mini-heddle weaving kits using tongue depressors, sticks, glue and a Dremel. I've been wanting to try this out since seeing something similar last summer. Basically, it's the heddle portion of a rigid heddle loom. No frame. C-clamp each end of a not-too-long warp to something and weave away. Great for making narrow warp-faced bands, as you can see, and I think a little less troublesome (and less expensive) than an inkle loom or card weaving. A lot of patterns can be created using pickups. I demonstrated the technique to one of my local SCA cantons Monday evening.

A small strip of warp-faced weaving on the mini-heddle loom, and the current movie to feed the ongoing fixation.

Finally, with the impending spring, I will soon venture out into the gradually-greening backyard. The yellow tulips are long since open, and the magnolia tree is probably less than a week away from being in full bloom. I haven't raked all the dead leaves from last year, so much of the back yard remains a mushy mess. Stay tuned for an upcoming new installment of...

Weird Things We Find In Our Yard

Crazy Lady Alert: Rockin' the Procrastination

2009-04-12T12:54:00.009-04:00

As if I don't have far, far better things to be doing, like the next round of revisions on the Big D proposal that I promised to Lady S last week, it appears that I've recently developed a unexpected fixation on one Alan Rickman. I just thought I'd share that with the world - I have been ordering and devouring his back catalogue of movies at an astonishing rate.

We already had Dogma and Galaxy Quest, and of course the HP catalogue - but not much else. I'm still trying to figure out how in Hades we didn't have Die Hard, but that was quickly remedied. I've been scouring YouTube for the movies I can't find. I'm a little shocked to find that I haven't yet seen a performance that doesn't inspire awe, be it eeeevil mister nasty, comedic straight guy, leading man of moral ambiguity, romantic lead, ordinary guy in extraordinary circumstances, or even when it's attached to a somewhat bizarre video for a pop-fodder song that would never be found on my IPod.

I have no rational explanation for this, but then, sometimes rationality is overrated. I blame the onset of late-30s craziness and some firmly honed, mad procrastination skillz. Also, I think I finally understand my gradeschool best friend's thing about The Hof and later Simon LeBon, and I can say, unequivocally (and a solid 20 - 25 years too late for this type of thing), that I have better taste. I'm also very glad to know that I'm not alone.

This picture ~~shamelessly stolen~~ courtesy of Teh Innernets. Please, no one sue me.

And besides, I ask you, is an explanation really necessary? Before you answer that, listen to this.

I rest my case. That is all.

The sign on the apartment door (Nine Things About Oracles)

2009-03-27T13:17:00.007-04:00

A contribution to an ongoing thread, in response to this pendant:

-----------------------------------------

The Oracle is in 6-8 Tuesdays, Thursdays and the first and third Saturdays of the month. First come, first serve. No appointments.

Do not let the cat out when you open the door. No smoking.

One person at a time, one question at a time. Trust me on this.

Payment required before services rendered. Pay what you think an answer to your question is worth. Barter accepted.

If there is a line, a three-question limit is in effect.

You must be old enough to ask the Oracle. Age is relative; she will know if you are.

Do not poke the Oracle. She is not asleep. She is not dead. She is working.

The answer is the answer. If you want clarification, see a therapist. (Due to possible conflicts of interest, the Oracle can not recommend a therapist.)

The Oracle can not communicate with your lost loved ones. See Odette down the hall for that. Follow the smell of incense, you can't miss it.

Avoidance strategies for the well-entrenched

2009-03-21T16:21:00.003-04:00

Another of my peers successfully passed their Big D proposal through the department recently, making, I think, four in as many weeks, and more if you count the last several months. Every time someone who has been here a couple years less than I have completes this ritual (a 40-minute presentation to all faculty and graduate students in the department followed by an open question period), I simultaneously feel joy for them, and a sense of impending doom at my own lack of progress.

To that end, I made a pact with Lady S recently. Two weeks from the date of our last meeting, on a Wednesday, I am honour-bound to give her what revisions I have completed on the Big D proposal so far. We'll call this date "D-Day," for lack of a better euphamism.

I can't help but think this was an insane thing to agree to, and yet Lady S and I both know that this is the only way anything will possibly happen.

It doesn't have to be done, or even done right, which is a good thing, because I don't think I can do that. It just has to be something turned in, something which has addressed a significant number of her comments from a year ago. Not all of them. Some of them. Just... progress of some kind. And that I can do.

Since agreeing to this about 10 days ago, I have, of course, done nothing on it. I've fiddled around with the course I'm teaching, wasting a lot of time on things that don't require half as much effort.

I once again ripped out several rows on the double-knit hat from hell. Somehow the last time I picked it up, I knitting around the circle in the wrong direction, and chaos ensued a couple rounds later. Given that we're over halfway through March, I think it's safe to say that DH won't be getting the dratted thing this winter.

I have, however, finished knitting for secret projects #1 and #2, and begun to dive into #3 in earnest:

Finished bits of Secret Project #1 and #2

I've been combing wool and making rovings from seemingly bottomles supply of Dorset Cross fleece. These are for a beginner drop spinning class I'll be giving on April 4 (after D-Day).

I plan to make 10 spindle kits and roughly 200 combed roving nests for the classes, so that each kit contains about 60 grams of roving. 9 nests down, 191 to go. Hrm. Might have to break out the weapons-grade 5-pitch English combs next weekend and speed things up a little there. Here is one of the experimental drop spindles, made from recycled CDs, rubber washers, a dowl, an eye hook and superglue. It spins surprisingly well, so at least that's all good.

I even managed to finish a long-term editing job (4+ years) in its entirety. The final book is uploaded and available to order. Tell me THAT'S not some serious avoidance going on right there.

And now here we are. Saturday. It's warm and sunny in my kitchen. All day is mine, and all day tomorrow. DH is happily getting in some long-overdue game time (actually, he's snoring while the game plays on without him. Shhh!), I'm dressed, awake, have coffee and a full stomach, and it's time to start getting this thing together.

Ready now? One, two...

Say cheese. Prewrapped processed slices preferred, thanks.

On the moment of silence between the squelch and the splat

2009-03-07T01:37:00.009-05:00

I woke to the sound of a hairball being horfed up yesterday morning. If you have cats, you know the sound. It is unmistakable. It's a sound that can wake me out of a dead sleep from half a house away.

I particularly like when there is a short delay between the "squelch" sound of it coming out and the "splat" sound of it hitting the floor. That means it was horfed from a great height, and had trajectory and speed in its favour upon landing.

I knew all of this before I even opened my eyes yesterday morning.

When I did open my eyes, it was to see Ford staring at me from the foot of the bed going, "Not me, dude. I've been right here. But since you're awake, food would be great, thanks."

A few seconds later, a plaintive "Huh-rooow?" from Tiger in the front room. Honestly, it sounds like he's saying "Hullo."

Translation yesterday morning: "There's an icky here, someone come and make it go away?"

Cats are amazing communicators. Some more than others. There's nothing quite like the sound and smell of fresh hairball in the morning to make you want to crawl under the covers and not come out, like, ever.

In other news, I am officially too tired tonight from the last several days to even run a warm LUSH-filled bubble bath. It has been that kind of week. I love teaching, but it can be a serious challenge sometimes. I'm going to fall down and go boom now. Maybe a post with pictures over the weekend.

Ceci n'est pas une toque

2009-02-26T15:10:00.001-05:00

There's something to be said for instant gratification, but I'm certainly not getting any of it. My bit of secret knitting project #1 is done, but project #2 is still hanging around, and unlikely to go away soon. Same with project #3. That one's going to be a while.

And then there's the double-knit hat. The energizer double-knit hat. The hat that's still going.

For nearly 15 years, as long as I've lived in Toronto (and by extension, Canada), I thought I knew what a toque was. I understood that a toque was a kind of knitted winter cap that wasn't a tight-fitting beanie or skullcap. But according to DH, this and even this are not toques. Neither is this standard Seaman's cap, which I consider to be quite respectable and toque-like. DH was very specific: In a toque, there should be a gap between the top of the head and the crown of the hat. He says this pocket of air is warmed by the heat coming off your head, and this then helps keep your head warm, like insulation. Above all, it is not snug. Apparently, this is his idea of a perfect-fitting toque. The tassle on the top, says DH, is optional, though it's the only time that he will be willing to wear a tassle.

I was a little confused when he told me this, but then I started really watching guys old and young on the subway (all in the name of research, of course), and I realized that yes, for the classic "toque look," there is a gap between the top of the head and the crown of the hat.

I would call this a "badly fitting winter hat," but it just goes to show what I know.

So, the never-ending double-knit hat will be a DH-defined toque. Which means I have quite a few more inches to go.

Sigh.

The Threads That Bind Us All Together

2009-02-04T13:37:00.010-05:00

The new Baronial Pillow was presented to the Baron and Baroness of Septentria this past Saturday at Ealdormere Kingdom 12th Night. I finished weaving the back a couple hours before leaving for the event, having had to replace not one or two, but four broken warp threads the night before.

Four Vest Yorvik ladies, (myself, Eleanor, Aislinne and Violetta), formed an instant sewing circle upon Eleanor's and my arrival at the event at 2pm, and spent most of the afternoon putting the finishing touches on it. We were like a well-oiled, multi-tasking sewing machine. Aislinne, who had created, applied and embroidered the baronial arms on the front with hand-made felt and some of my indigo blue and green hand-dyed drop-spun wool embroidery thread, added two more badges to the front, recently delivered from their respective Cantons. In the meantime, I cut the back off the loom, hem-stitched the edges and pulled out the packing thread. Violetta, who had made the inner stuffed pillow from red linen, added the last of the stuffing to that and sewed it up, then helped me weave in the loose bits on the back. Eleanor held us all together with the passing of pins, scissors and wrangling ends of long fabric.

After Violetta whip-stitched one long side of the top to the bottom, Eleanor and I sewed up the sides and attempted to make the fringe more respectable. With 10 minutes to go before court - we were first on the agenda - Violetta stuffed the inner pillow into it and began to whip stitch the long bottom closed. In a moment of inspiration, Aislinne took the remaining warp thread off my shuttle and skeined it, stuffing it inside along the bottom just before Violetta finished closing it up, so that when it's opened up later for eventual re-stuffing or repair, there is a small repair kit inside. It was finished as court processed into the room.

Unsurprisingly, I don't have pictures of us working, because I was, well, working. I saw some pictures being taken, so if someone else posts them, I'll link.

The new Baronial Kneeling Pillow for the Barony of Septentria, Kingdom of Ealdormere, made by the Canton of Vest Yorvik, bearing the arms of each Canton in the Barony (Skeldergate is still coming!). Finished woven size (before stuffing): 3ft. x 18". It comes with a lifetime guarantee that we will make any necessary repairs.

Just under two years in the making, from shearing to wool prep to dyeing, carding, spinning, weaving, embroidery and finishing. A group project, from start to the very moment of finish, with the participation of not just the four of us who finished it on Saturday, but many others in the canton who helped us procure the fleece, clean it, dye it, and even help me weave a few inches. I personally learned a great deal about dealing with raw fleece, dyeing and weaving during this project.

A little better view of the weaving and Baronial Arms. The canton arms displayed here are: Vest Yorvik (top left), Monadh (bottom left), Eoforwic (top right) and Swan's Keep (bottom right)

And now, I can put something new on my loom. Thank Jeebus.

Also: A closeup of the arms of the Canton of Vest Yorvik, our official part of last year's baronial taxes, where each canton was to create their embroidered arms. Vest Yorvik then had the added privilege of making the pillow to display them all.

Designed and stitched by Aislinne with help from all members of the canton (a few stitches each), using my hand-dyed hand-spun blue, yellow, green, black and natural wool. The red is the same red as the pillow wool.

Small luxuries

2009-01-18T12:40:00.018-05:00

As I begin to climb out of my long-term depression (for that is indeed what it was, likely going on years now, coming to a head early last summer), I'm finding ways to spoil myself again. It's been so long since I spoiled myself in meaningful ways, not just by buying something I don't need - a new toy or DVD more yarn, another spindle... these things had stopped making me happy. When the things you love stop making you happy, it's time to find other things to help with the happy, so that you can return to the things you love.

And here we have the most indulgent small luxury of working (mostly) from home: A noon-time bath in the middle of last week. Take one of each of these:

One-half of a Sunny Side Bubble Bar and one Avobath Bath Bomb both from Lush

Add the bubble bar first, while the water is running.

Once the bath has been run, add the bath bomb.

The fizziness! The colour! The smell!

Here is the main reason I love this combination. The Sunny Side bubble bar turns the water golden yellow, with gold sparkles swirling through it. (They don't stick to you in the water, and they rinse down the drain easily.) Avobath turns the water green. So together, not only do they smell orange-tangerine-lemongrass yummy, they are sparkly and pretty and the water is avocado-oil soft and full of bubbles.

See the shimmery gold in the green water? This makes me insanely happy.

And just in case you think it's all boring to lie in a tub for 45 minutes doing nothing else, have no fear. There is coffee, and music, or in this case, Stephen Fry's latest podgram. Only once the bubbles and the podcast are done do I get down to the work of actually, you know, bathing.

Would you care for some soap? For possibly the most perfect soap ever made, try some lightly exfoliating Figs and Leaves, or for more scrub, the scrumptious Porridge.

Here, have some soap. No really, have a couple.

Today, I'm going for less scrubby and more sweet-smelling, so I have some Sultana of Soap and The Godmother. Both smell wonderful. Also, this is a great time to do the face cleaner thing.

I'm trying an experiment - the strong Ocean Salt on the left side of the face and the lighter Herbalism on the right. We'll see which one wins out on the oilies.

Finally, a quick shower to wash the hair and rinse out the tub.

That's a NEW! solid shampoo bar, and a Squeaky Green, as well as a small chunk of Jungle solid conditioner, which btw, works equally well for shaving.

------------------------------

Why, yes, I have been shopping at LUSH a lot lately. So why the inventory? Call it... a journey of discovery.

Here's the thing. I love baths. Love them. I always have. From my pre-teens, I would spend hours in the tub, soaking, thinking, getting wrinkly. I've always liked that more than evening TV. When the water got cool, I would drain part out and warm it up again. From late 1990 - late 2007, I had only intermittent access to bathtubs, perhaps when staying in a hotel or visiting friends. I loathe stand-up showers, but they are a staple of dorm and apartment living. A bathtub was one of the top five things I was looking forward to when we bought a house.

I love bath products that smell good, but I'm also very sensitive to smells. If I use something more than twice in a row, the smell, particularly if it's a stronger one, begins to bother me. It's not an allergy, it's... oh, hell, I don't know what it is. It's a sensitivity to scents that affects my mental state. This is the reason I have so many different kinds of soaps. I'm not a germophobe, rather the only way I can continue to enjoy many wonderful scents and soaps is to rotate through them every few days. The alternative is to not bathe as often. During depression, that is sadly the more common option. No need, really, when you rarely leave the house or even get out of bed.*

I knew I was beginning to feel better - more like myself than I had felt in years, in fact - when I began looking forward to long, relaxing baths again. I've missed them terribly.

* I even try to keep two bottles of dishsoap on the go, or else I'll avoid washing dishes because the smell of the same soap day after day drives me apeshit. It took me a long time to figure out that little personality tick, if you can believe it. When I wash a fleece with dishsoap, it has to be the most lightly-scented, inoffensive smell ever, or I will go nuts when I'm still spinning fleece six months later that smells like lemon Sunlight. I ruin more dishsoaps for myself that way...

We've lived here over a year? No way.

2009-01-13T22:44:00.006-05:00

I'm not exactly sure what happened to this last year. It definitely doesn't feel like we've lived in our house for over a year. It really didn't feel like it last week when I was down in the basement digging through boxes looking for something that I hadn't seen in, well, a year, unearthing a whole lot of other things I hadn't seen in... um... a year, and thinking, "Holy crap! We have to start unpacking some of this stuff!" And then I started sneezing profusely, and I realized that all the boxes and bags were covered in a not-insignificant amount of dust, and I had to come back upstairs and sit down with a glass of iced tea, a cookie and contemplate The Year That Was.

Unsurprisingly, I found it upstairs in the living room, in full view in a bag on a bookshelf that I've walked past every day for a year. The Cube is never far away in my house.

Ten minutes later, after I'd messed it up and solved it three times to prove to myself I could, I was being poked by a cat, the phone was ringing, my email was beeping and I had forgotten all about the hole in time that was last year. This was home for me as soon as my husband, cats, knitting, bed and the computers were moved in. In that order. I might as well have always been here. I don't know if it's home for DH yet, but he takes a little longer to warm up to these things than I do. He keeps saying, "It's getting there." I suspect it won't really be home to him until we do something major, like renovate the kitchen, which will come in time.

This past week, I naturally should have been preparing for my second-ever lecture today - this is the first time I've been the course instructor (i.e. head honcho) for a course, and I have 200+ students and no fewer than eight ~~minions~~ teaching assistants to organize. They're all great and experienced, though, I'm very lucky. I, however, have been knitting and weaving instead. I'm mostly finished with my part for one super-seekrit joint project:

Brighter is better!

I'm working up a swatch for another:

Reversible cables without a cable needle, a slight revision of this pattern. Because I am a masochist, apparently.

And I've gotten well underway on a third project, which is also super-seekrit, but not joint.

Why, yes, that is the yellow yarn that was taking the form of yarn barf in the last post. Thanks for noticing!

Emails have been piling up from students who have conflicts with this and questions about that (some of which are answered on the syllabus, but let's not tell them that, OK?), my course website is barely adequate, and I only just got access to the enrollment lists because someone higher up fixed it for me today. One of my TAs is on the other side of the world and wasn't able to get a flight back in time for the first tutorial today (though she certainly did try - and there was someone to cover it, but it makes a good course instructor story, no?). Another TA flew into town late last night and had a solid case of jetlag for the first tutorial, poor thing. It would be nice if I started the next lecture before the day I have to give it - that hasn't happened yet for the first two lectures, which, apparently, I pulled out of my ass with a great deal of support and shared course materials. I owe Lady S an email, and I have a goal of doing some work on the Big D Proposal before the end of the week.

But those are all tomorrow's issues.

Tonight, I can relax in the knowledge that my second lecture, by some miracle, did not suck, my inbox is temporarily empty, and I'm mostly on top of the things I can control. I will weave a little, and attack cables a little, and enjoy being... home.

Weaving post soon.

Yarn gnomes. It's the only reasonable explanation.

2008-12-21T23:55:00.002-05:00

This craptacular pile of yarn barf represents my Saturday and Sunday evenings' fibre-related work, and has absolutely nothing to do with weaving. Whoops. I pulled out a brand new ball of Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece to swatch something, and hilarity ensued.

DH congratulated me on my debacle (pronounced "de-ball-cle". HAH.)

I have continued to work on the group-project woven pillow with the hand-dyed, hand-spun weft. For all my time, I haven't made a lot of forward progress, and not just because of the above distraction. At one point, I had about two feet of the pillow woven (2/3 of the first half, 1/3 of the whole thing), but then I realized that I hadn't staggered rows of the new skein with the previous one when I started the second skein of weft. The point where the second skein started was an obvious shade change. So a couple weeks ago I ripped out over a good foot of weaving.

When I started again last week, this time staggering the two skeins in alternating rows, I had some problems with the edges. On one side, the final warp thread wasn't being caught by the weft. I ripped out about 6-8 inches again, and figured out that on the right side I needed to run one shuttle of warp thread under the other before throwing it, so that it would bind the right edge. I still don't really understand how warp edges behave in weaving. I want to go back after this and really figure out double weaves on my rigid heddle, beyond just reading a pattern draft. I'm pretty sure that will help me to understand this problem.

Very late Thursday night, while at a friend's place for our weekly Thursday Night Crafts, I figured out the edge thing and wove 8-9 inches again. I need to get the front side of this pillow, three feet of weaving, off my loom some time Monday, so that it can go to the embroiderer, who will most likely be visiting that evening.

I also continue to work on the Double-knit Hat from Hades. I haven't ripped out anything on it recently. Keeping my fingers crossed on that one. It's amazing, though - I sit down to do a single row, and I'm asleep before I'm half-way through. Who needs a sleep aid? I have the double-knit hat.

Finally, I've started a few new super-secret knitting conspiracies.

More details eventually. Mwa Ha Ha. Just as soon as I finish untangling the rest of that skein.

Seriously, how does that happen? I have no good explanation.

One of those rare memes worth posting

2008-12-14T01:34:00.004-05:00

Because the world needs more voluntary goodness. From elisem:

Reply to this post (even just a "hey" will do), and I'll tell you one reason why I like you. Then put this in your own journal, and spread the love.

Magpie Telegraph System Active

2008-12-13T19:15:00.009-05:00

Elisem is having another sale.

And she has hairsticks.

And oh, these hairsticks. Did I mention they can double as shawl pins? I'm also awfully fond of these necklaces.

Given how crazy that double-knit hat is still driving me (let's not talk about the 6-7 rows I had to rip out again yesterday), this is necessary shopping therapy.

Hat... boring... losing... consciousness...

2008-12-10T23:35:00.000-05:00

I've been trying to finish the double-knit hat that I started for DH here, then ripped out and started again here. Yes, that's right, I've been working on this damn thing since March. We're into the cold weather now, so I've been thinking he could probably use it before, say, next spring.

I feel like, for a "simple" hat, I'm not getting very far. I was trying to turn it into my "subway project" at first, but with my transit ride into downtown only about 15 minutes, I could barely get around two rounds, which on this hat, being 2-layer double-knit, is really a single row. Every time I try to sit down and knit on it in the evening while we watch TV, I doze off. Not even a steady stream of old X-Files episodes (we're on Season 4 now, working through the series) can keep me awake while I knit this hat. So I haven't been progressing very quickly.

I have no idea how close this is to being done.

Last week, I had him try it on, and thinking that it looked to be about the right time, I spent a day or so on decreases. When I had him try it on again, it was pretty clear that the hat wasn't actually deep enough (by at least a couple inches), so I ripped out the decrease rows. But at least now I know how to do them.

Faced with the prospect of more tedious solid-colour double-knit stockinette, I became a little crazed. For yuks, I tried putting in some simple colour work, thinking maybe that would spruce it up enough to keep me interested. It kept me interested all right - and frustrated enough with how it was turning out to rip it out after five rows of hell. I was trying to do it without charting it out, and I had what barely passed for my "pattern" thoroughly screwed up. And to be honest, the two colours don't have enough contrast to make a pattern worthwhile anyhow. So this will be a 2-solid colour hat, despite my best efforts.

Now, I'm working out various ways of doing rounds that will allow me to keep the two sides separate, yet not have to knit each round twice to finish a single row. It's not crucial that the two pieces remain separate, it's not like it will matter for this hat, but I feel like I have to find some challenge to keep me interested here. Since I moved it over to a long cable in order to magic loop the decreases earlier, I've left it on the long cable and will just continue to magic loop it the rest of the way.

For a while I was doing a half-round of one colour (i.e. knit or purl one colour, slip the other colour the whole length), then I would transfer all the stitches back onto the left needle and do the other colour before moving the cables around to do the other half of the round. Then - and this was very exciting, to be sure - I figured out how to hold and carry both colours of yarn and work with them together without twisting them so that I can alternately purl with the one, then knit the other. That way I can do a single round of both colours in one pass, but the sides remain separate. This trick is not letting the threads twist.

Yes, I know, it's amazing. I've re-invented the wheel.

And then... then? Wait for it... I figured out how to do it while riding the subway and bus!!

Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

Tomorrow, I need to put up the Hell Hat and do some swatches for a new super-seekrit joint project. In other words, I might get the hat done by spring.

If I don't light it on fire first.

I swear I'm not really a dyer, Part 4: The second annual dye madness day (BYOP), and "black enough"

2008-12-04T17:03:00.001-05:00

The final installment of this year's dye adventures, at long last. It occurs to me that we have officially been in our house for a year: we closed on Black Friday 2007 (an accident of Realty and Lawyers over which we had little control), and then we spent the next week and a bit moving, a van-load at a time. We had to be out of our old apartment on Dec. 4, 2007. That makes this post appropriate - I guarantee I would never have undertaken most of this year's the dye adventures if we hadn't acquired a basement, a working kitchen, and a backyard!

Audrey the Indigo Vat had a magnificent final outing of the season over the Canadian Thanksgiving long weekend (mid-October), when she was very carefully packed up and transported across town to my friend Helena's house a few days ahead of our annual* Dye Madness day at her house. Helena cared for her and kept her warm, feeding her some de-thawed, mushed up, organic bananas - after the traumatic ride, Audrey was a little gassy and needed to settle down, eat, ferment and reduce for a couple days.

Why not have the dye day at my house? You see, Helena has a magnificent dye garden, and Audrey was more portable than the garden. I requested that folks BYOP**, if they could, so that we would be sure to have enough to pre-soak things. One can only generate so much urine on one's own. In the end, with the help of the others (and also my reluctant but patient husband, who eventually learns to accept the Crazy), we had plenty.

Last year we did cochineal, weld, and madder berries. This year, though, the main plan was to dig up some of Helena's now 3-year-old madder and work with it fresh. The weather was perfect, and nearly room temperature outside - on the second weekend of October! We actually worked up a sweat, attacking the raised beds with gloves, shovel, spade and much glee. We hosed down some huge balls of bright-carrot-orange roots that looked for all the world like strange sea creatures, chopped it up and into the pot it went. We only dug up a little corner of her madder - and there was still plenty for each of us to take some home, and she still has 3/4 of her madder plants growing:

Freshly killed madder roots, drying in my basement

We weren't sure how the madder would go - the one experienced madder dyer in the group had never used it fresh from the ground and chopped roughly. She suspected it wouldn't give us anything too far into the reds or too dark. She was right - we got a nice salmon - but towards the end of the dyebath we did start seeing the reds come out a little. It will be interesting to see what we get later with the roots that we're drying, as those will be ground up more finely.

We also found a bush of Dyer's Broom growing in her garden, so we pruned it back a little and made a small pot of that with alum. We poked it dubiously throughout the afternoon, as the water didn't seem to be getting much colour into it. But after a good 90 minutes of cooking, it finally started to suck colour out of the leaves. We ended up with a nice light greeny-yellow.

Audrey was in fine form for the day, thanks to Helena's kind care and feeding after her rough ride. She performed well, and gave us everything from a medium blue fleece (a 5-hour soak) to some lovely light blues on roving that was only left in an hour or so, to a nice overdye of some patterned tan fabric.

As we were packing up our wet samples, we suddenly realized that we had, without really planning it that way, done the a primary colour set that day:

L - R: Indigo blue, fresh-killed dyer's broom yellow, and fresh-killed madder salmon

And then there was the added bonus: as we were standing around surveying the wonder that is Helena's dye garden, one of the ladies noticed that right next to us, very near the house and suspiciously close to where we had been chopping up weld plants the previous year, were three tall stalks of weld. It appears the seeds took root between cracks in the concrete. Nature is nothing if not persistent. Helena was happy for us to pull it and make it go away, so the lady and I split it.

Surprise weld, the best kind!

All the participants in the festivities agreed that our second annual (BYOP) dye day was a great success, and we all look forward to next year. And if Sharon Ann is reading this, your half of that weld has been packed up and will be in the mail to you soon, I hope (as soon as my mother comes up for a visit, which should be in the next couple weeks, before Christmas).

In other dyeing adventures, I continued my quest for black by once again trying to overdye this unfortunate colour, which I achieved by way of the weld on the left overdyed with Indigo to make the teal in the middle,, then overdyed in a cochineal exhaust bath. I had originally just tried this in a walnut bath with no additive, but there was no noticeable colour change, since the walnut bath would only add a nice brown to it.

This time, I bit the bullet and added a touch of iron powder to the dyebath. The smell was not as horrifically rotten-egg-like as I anticipated, but it certainly wasn't great. This time, though, I was very careful not to inhale deeply while standing over the pot, and often held a wet towel over my face when I was near it.

Liles (1990: 184-5) recommends an oxalic acid mordanting prior to the walnut-iron dyebath for a good black, but I didn't have a ready source of oxalic acid unless I wanted to buy over a pound of it, so I just went with the iron. I spun up a couple yards of it for my friend to finish the embroidery project that we needed it for:

Not-Quite-Black-But-Black-Enough!

So there we have it. Bridget's 2008 adventures in dying.

And just in case you forgot: I'm not really a dyer. We swears, precious. We swears.

* Two years in a row makes it annual, right?

** P = Pee

Born to work with fibre, I guess: An excavation of love

2008-11-22T23:32:00.002-05:00

When Grandma Helen passed away over five years ago, my mother and uncle faced the herculean task of cleaning out her house and selling it. They could have called in help, boxed things up, sold things off and gotten it done and over with quickly, but they didn't. They decided to take their time. Gram was a firebrand, creative, a collector of quite a few things, and sorely missed by a lot of people. All the grandkids were allowed to come to the house when we wanted and set aside things we would like to have. Those things would be okayed by mom and uncle, and given to us. Mom gave away pieces of the glass collection to friends, anyone touched by Helen who wanted a keepsake. She still does it. It took them over a year to clean out the house and sell it, but it was worth it.

Early on, I offered to deal with all the fabric and fibre-related things. Gram was mostly a crocheter, but she also did a good amount of knitting and sewing (clothes for us, then later doll and puppet clothes). I asked Mom to check with uncle, his daughters and my sister (the other three grandkids) and see if anyone else wanted to join me while I sorted through the boxes, or split stuff with me. No one did. So one day four or so years ago, Mom and I spent the day at the house. We cried. We laughed. I swore at Gram when I was stabbed by rusty pins that she left in pieced-together pieces of fabric. Gram had far more WIPs and UFOs than I do, which is somehow reassuring. Take, for instance, this blue cardigan, found in a bag with a plenty more yarn, 80% finished and still on a circular needle:

I plan to finish it and give it to my older sister, who was very close to Gram and misses her terribly.

Most of the acrylic yarn (bags and bags of Red Heart) was given to a ladies' church auxiliary for making blankets. For the last five or so years of her life, Gram was far less mobile and spent a lot of time watching TV and making granny square afghans. Mom would buy 1 lb. balls of Red Heart by the bagful every so often and drop them off. Mom still has dozens of these afghans, which she occasionally gives away, and I have a couple:

The rust/mustard/white afghan is also crocheted by hand - by my great-grandmother K., Grandma Helen's mom. I've had it since my pre-teens and use it every day.

I also brought a big bag of acrylic home with me and sent most of it to my husband's home-bound grandmother. Most of the fabric stash, once I had removed all the rusty pins and updated my tetanus shot *rollseyes*, went to a family friend who is an avid quilter. I kept a few things, including all of Gram's knitting needles and crochet hooks. While I usually use my Denise interchangables for knitting, once in a while I use a set of her straight needles. I definitely use the crochet hooks.

She kept all her crochet hooks in that old alka-seltzer bottle for as long as Mom can remember.

Now that we're mostly settled into the house (it's been a year), I'm starting to delve into the boxes that were not meant to be unpacked for a while. One of those was the auxiliary knitting box: the sub-prime yarn stash, UFOs and things I don't use regularly but want to keep. And mementos. Here are a few tidbits, and their stories.

Several two-sided crochet samples, and a selection of crochet flowers.

The blue and white two-sided crochet sample in the picture above is special - Mom says this piece is exactly the same as a baby blanket that Gram made for me when I was born. Mom has the blanket. The crochet flowers are something that always make me think of Gram. In my teens, she began decorating sweatshirts with these in various colour combinations, also embroidering leaves and stems, and adding a crochet bit around the neckline. They became very popular at our church, and she made them for a lot of people. I think I still have a couple, but they don't fit any more. Mom definitely has some. I now have several bags of these flowers, apparently waiting for decades for their own sweatshirts.

The ladybug dress, with matching bag. All together now: "Aaaaaaaaw!"

This was also made for me as a child. I don't remember wearing it, but boy do I hope I did. That matching baggy is awesome. I think I need to make a bigger version, like, now.

As I said before, going through those boxes was a whirlwind of emotion. We laughed, we cried, I swore, we laughed some more. And then there were the things that stopped me dead in me tracks. Take, for example, the following:

An odd colour combination for granny squares.

Mom pulled out the bag with this yarn and four sample granny squares. It was all packed away together. I can think of only one good reason Gram would try fighting with fuzzy yarn to make matching orange and blue granny squares. I did my undergraduate at Syracuse University. It was my first time living away from home, and Gram was probably more worried about me than my mother. I would get cards and letters from her regularly, usually with a $20 bill tucked inside and a post-it note that said, "Get yourself a pizza. I love you, honey." But what does this have to do with the granny squares and yarn above?

The colours of Syracuse University - and a considerable amount of my wardrobe at that time, since I was in the marching and pep bands, were, and are, orange and blue.

We could be wrong - we're guessing about her intentions, of course. That yarn is pretty old (see label), but then, she was a frequent thrift store and yard sale shopper. But other things don't require conjecture:

Handwritten notes, and monogram initials.

There are hundreds of little pieces of paper just like this one, with notes scribbled on them - colour combinations, bits of patterns, sometimes mixed with bits of scripture. Tangible reminders, as if I need more, of her creativity, energy and faith. And the occasional tangible reminders of her love. Those monogram initials? They're mine, for my maiden name. Hard to say what project she bought them for specifically. It's probably in a note somewhere.

I come from a long line of women who worked with fibre. Even today, their work continues to add colour and warmth to the lives of many, not just mine. I know, without a doubt, with the assured knowledge of one who has experienced it, that with each stitch, they were thinking of the intended recipient of their work - very often me - and of those who came before them, those who taught them. Every night that I pull out that alka-seltzer bottle of crochet hooks, I honour her memory. Every time I cover myself or my husband with one of those blankets, I am wrapping myself in the love of my grandmothers.

Cheesy? Sappy? Youbetcha. But I will never go cold, and I will always feel their love.

Whoever coined the phrase "warp speed" apparently didn't have cats

2008-11-19T03:18:00.000-05:00

So. I warped the loom. Again. After the unfortunate incident with the red warp yarn that we dyed, I picked up five balls of lovely, red, strong DK-weight alpaca.*

I warped this up the weekend before last onto a 10 dpi heddle and wove a few inches, only to realize that the loom was assembled wrong. This bugged me something fierce, so I took the warp off, fixed the loom, re-tied it and wove about five inches that Sunday night.

Monday I looked at the resulting fabric with a critical eye. The fabric was coming out a little too airy, and was not going to be as weft-faced as we want it. Since the weft yarn is our group's cochineal hand-dyed handspun from raw fleece, we want it to be prominent.

So, I took the whole warp off last Tuesday, and Wednesday night I re-warped it onto an 8 dpi heddle. I was all set to have DH help me wind it onto the loom that night, but that was not to be:

The union stages a sit-in.

Negotiations commence: Whose need is greater?

Negotiations are concluded for the evening.

In the interest of not interrupting an obviously necessary nap time, we wound it on early the next morning, before he left for work (DH is a very good assistant warp-winder-oner, no matter how much he doth protest), and I tied it up Thursday afternoon. I spent much of last Saturday sitting behind a table collecting entrance fees from people for an SCA event.

A knitted SCA combined Arts & Sciences badge. Made quickly a couple weeks ago at the request of the event head cook, to her specifications, to be used as part of a serving presentation during the feast.

During the afternoon dead time at the event, after everyone who was coming had shown up but before we could officially close down the gate, I got in some good weaving time, and had help from at least three others. In the spirit of a truly group project, I'd like anyone who wants to weave a few rows to get a chance, so I taught a few new weavers as well, and Sunday I did some more at home.

Who's happy? That would be me.

It's coming out beautifully. The natural variegation of our handspun wool shows well, and the little bit of warp that shows adds just enough red to brighten it up.

Qapla'

From the first 79 foot skein of weft yarn, we have well over a foot of fabric, 18.5" wide. We're getting 9.5 rows of weft to the inch. We need a little over six feet of fabric - two 3-foot pieces - and then it goes off to others for embroidery and finishing.

And as I finally finish this post and check the date, I realize that it is officially our 14th wedding anniversary. Happy anniversary, love.

* Which begs the question, from a historical re-enactment standpoint, can alpaca yarn be considered within the SCA period we're aiming for, i.e. loosely pre-1600 (1650-at-the-latest) Europe? The answer is, maybe. Alpacas are a South American animal, domesticated there for thousands of years. The Spanish were ~~slaughtering~~ conquering the Incas in the 1500s, meaning they would certainly have had access to alpaca. But did the European conquerers actually use alpaca? Um, probably not. Rather, the Spanish brought in their own herd animals, and it's possible that nearly 90% of alpacas were wiped out during the Conquest, the rest being saved by the natives who took them up into the inhospitable higher altitudes. All modern alpacas come from these surviving herds. Alpaca wool was not really used in Europe until the 19th century. (Note: please don't use me or these random web pages as a reliable scholarly source!)**

** All of which begs the further question - Do I care?***

*** Which brings us to the answer: Nope. I have warp yarn of the right weight and colour that will not break on me. It is not synthetic, and is in fact from an animal that was domesticated well before 1600 and known by Europeans at that time, even if they were too dense to bother using alpaca for fibre. Blows raspberry in the general direction of any authenticity police.

Shiny sale, and four random facts about me

2008-11-10T14:35:00.009-05:00

Elisem is having a sale again. Look at what I bought! I really hope someone buys those necklaces that I keep looking at, because I don't know if I have the willpower, but I do know I don't have the budget. Especially since my horn is going into the shop tomorrow!

------------------------------
And now, to get my mind off Elise's shiny things, here are four random facts about me that not everyone knows:

1 - I have been able to recite the poem "Jabberwocky" from memory since I was eleven years old. I played the Cheshire Cat in a fifth grade production of Alice in Wonderland, and following that made it my mission to learn the whole poem. Of all the multitude of useless trivia I've committed to memory over the years, this is one I'm still inordinately proud of, even though I'm still not certain that I'm pronouncing everything the way it should be. Sometimes I recite it to fall asleep. It's better than counting sheep.

2 - I was a clown for two years, around age 10-11, or 11-12. The memory of the smell of greasepaint makeup and baby oil (used to take it off) still makes me a little ill. My clown name was (in the category of OMG-I-can't-believe-I'm-admitting-this-publicly) B-Sharp.

3 - Only a couple people who knew me in high school or earlier call me by the nickname "Bird." Only my parents and siblings use the nickname "Twiz," though they also occasionally use Bird. Even my husband doesn't use either of these nicknames. I like them both, and even in my mid-thirties I wouldn't mind a bit if people used them.

4 - I wish I were a better piano player, yet I know I'll never be as good as my mother because I lack the discipline. But here's the thing: I don't want to be as good or better than her. The fact that she is a far better pianist than I will ever be is an integral part of my image of her, and it is something special about her. I like it that way, and I like her that way. I do musical things that she doesn't do. We compliment each other.

Mother's hands

The version of "The red warp story" with at least 85% less cussing

2008-11-04T18:11:00.001-05:00

I originally posted this story on Ravelry the other day, in a forum where my occasional extreme potty mouth is not only accepted but expected. I think I'm now sufficiently calmed down enough to post it here with significantly fewer strings of naughty words.*

The background: I’m working on a project with a group of friends that started out a secret, but now is not. I've been babbling on about different parts of it for months. We’re weaving a pillow on my loom, which will be embroidered, finished and presented to some fine folks by the group. Since this is for an SCA (historical re-enactment) thing, we’ve made the weft yarn and the embroidery thread from sheep to finish - some members of the group attended the shearing, we all dealt with the raw wool, some dyed it, some spun it. It looks great and is working out just fine.

Since the weaving will be done on my loom, I made the call several months ago that we should go with a commercial yarn for the warp. It will be under tension on the loom and we didn’t know until recently how the lady-with-the-wheel’s handspun would hold up. To be a little more authentic, we bought a cone of white 2-ply commercial Shetland wool and dyed it red ourselves with cochineal.

Last Saturday, I started measuring it out on the warping board. By Sunday evening, I had it 3/4 measured.

At that point, I hit a snag in the yarn, so I sat down to pick it apart. I absent-mindedly gave it a good tug.

The yarn snapped apart in my hands.

Surprised, I pulled out another bit of yarn and did a tug test. It snapped like candy. No kidding. Wanna see?

I twisted two pieces together, tightly, hoping that if I doubled it up it would be OK. Nope. Snapped like a dry twig. This is bad. It can’t possibly stand up to the tension on the loom. I have 900 yards of red warp thread that I don’t dare waste my time threading onto my loom - it will break the minute I put any tension on it at all.

Here is where the strings of cussing came in. I have edited it down to a single word that sucinctly expresses my feelings:

FUCK.

This yarn? Is crap. It is weaker than my own handspun singles. Alas, the label neglected to mention that. I thought I gave it the old tug test when I first looked at it, but maybe not. It was sold as weaving yarn, from a weaving shop, so I just trusted that it was fine. I don't blame the shop, though.** It's also entirely possible that when I bought it, I neglected to mention that I was planning to use it for warp, and they assumed I wanted it for weft. I’ve been handling it for months and never noticed, never thought to check - and since we dyed it all, I can't be totally sure if it was this weak when I bought it, or if we ruined it in the cochineal/tin dyebath or subsequent hand washings.***

Total cost? Not much. $13 for the cone and about $8 for the dye materials. And several days of mine and a couple others’ time and sweat - mostly mine. I have no idea how I didn’t notice this before now. I honestly don’t know if this yarn is useable for anything.

As I was sitting there stewing and cursing under my breath, DH, who was quietly typing and observing the whole scene from a safe distance of a few feet away, asked if there was anything I needed. “Red yarn,” I said testily and with probably not a little sarcasm. “Wool, about this weight, that won’t fucking snap when I look at it funny.”

“Anything I actually have?” he asked, with infinite patience.

Pause. A few seconds passed. “A big fucking glass of port. This seriously requires alcohol.”

I rarely drink. I’m no tea-totaler, but booze gives me heartburn, one standard glass is enough that I can’t operate machinery, and my usual reaction to being even mildly drunk is to fall asleep. But DH didn’t even blink. He pulled out the bottle of port and emptied it into my glass.

Yesterday, I made an emergency yarn run and found some useable warp yarn. It’s not really a big deal. I am moving on. But sometimes you just have to say, "Screw it. Bottom’s up."

* Yes, I know anyone could look me up and find the original post on Ravelry. That's fine. Go for it. I am not embarrassed by it, nor is all the language edited out here, obviously. I'm simply providing a buffer between my in-person full-on rants and any readers with potentially more sensitive ears. Er, eyes. Whatever. It's just a courtesy.

** I will, however, be making a trip up there next week with a friend to check the cones on their shelves and see if I'm imagining it or if it really was this weak when I bought it, and to let them know, if they don't already, that it is absolutely, positively not suitable for warp.

*** ETA: I have since found two samples that the shop sent to me before I bought the cone. They are the same yarn, in red. We decided after getting them that we would use that yarn, only dye it ourselves. I tested one of the samples and it, too, snapped with little trouble. So I'm now pretty certain it's the yarn, not our cochineal/tin dyebath.

I swear I'm not really a dyer, Part 3: Onion skins, and What the heck has she been doing all this for, anyhow?

2008-10-28T18:32:00.009-04:00

Apparently, 'tis the season to wind yarn off the spindles, ply and make skeins. Over the last several weeks I've skeined a surprising amount of yarn.

For a friend who is doing a special cross-stitch project using only my naturally-dyed handspun:
- 10 yards single-ply of the green I made by overdyeing some (purchased) onion skin/tin yellow roving in the indigo vat.
- 25 yards single-ply of weld-dyed yellow.
- 20-25? yards of single-ply white (undyed) DorsetX.
- 20-25? yards of single-ply deep blue indigo-dyed DorsetX.

She is still using the white and blue, but will give me back what she doesn't use

This weld yellow was too light for the piece - it looked nearly white next to the dark blue - so I combed out some white DorsetX rovings and did a small onion skin with alum+tin dyepot last weekend in order to try and replicate that deep orangey-yellow of the roving I bought from Brush Creek Wool Works in August. In a fit of impatient insanity, I cooked it on my kitchen stove without a face mask, inhaling a little too much heavy metal tin fumes, so I had a sore throat the next day. This is the project that I also need to make black for. I'm still working on that, but it will require cooking wool in iron sulfate. That is definitely an outside project. Just say no to heavy metal poisoning.

But Holy Crap, did I ever get yellow. It is sunglasses-worthy yellow. I left some in the tin afterbath a little longer (like, 20 minutes instead of 10) and also got some that's slightly oranger:

Someone suggested I name it "I lost years of my life so you can have this Yellow." Done.

Also, for yuks, I took some of the accidental teal that I made when I put the light weld-yellow into the indigo vat for too long, and threw it into the onion skin/alum+tin exhaust bath to see if I could bring it back down to green and replicate what I made with the purchased bright yellow roving:

Woohoo!

Also, I andean-plied a whack of 2-ply yarn to go to another friend for a different (but not unrelated) special embroidery project:

- 28 yards (56 single-ply) of the overdyed green.
- 8 yards (16 single-ply) of the deep blue indigo DorsetX.
- 48 yards (96 single-ply) of white (undyed) DorsetX.

And then there are the other things I've taken off the spindles, all in the last couple weeks:

- 103 yards more of the black superwash merino/tussah silk blend that I want to make into a lace shrug. Total so far: 461 yards. I'll definitely have 600 yards of singles once I finish this last batt.
- 148 yards of a light blue merino that I bought ages ago from Lettuce Knit - I think it was leftovers from one of their spinning classes, so it was probably dyed by Laura (Cosmic Pluto). I bought at least 200 grams, and have not even spun a quarter of it. I'm going to have several large skeins of this stuff. No plans for it yet, though.
- 18 yards of raspberry/pinkish cochineal, the resulting rolag of an early carding test on the first two batches of cochineal-dyed wool. This is all I have of this, it will probably remain a keepsake skein.
-163 yards of light green probably-merino (Eucalyptus/tin) bought at Pennsic in '06. Also no plans yet.

Yikes! That's a lot of spinning, plying and skeins for someone who doesn't have a wheel. And now I have a whole bunch of empty spindles. Whatever will I do?

Oh, I'll think of something.

A bouquet of spindles in their natural habitat

OK, so I had a spinning geek moment

2008-10-21T23:09:00.002-04:00

Last month, I skipped band practice one week* and and went to my first ever Wednesday night meeting of the Downtown Knit Collctive. The speaker was Richard Ashford,of Ashford Handicrafts (i.e. the spinning wheel people) in New Zealand. There's a picture of him addressing the DKC on the Ashford homepage - click on "our people" and scroll down a little. Or go here.

The talk was fun, and I got to see enough of the Ashford (rigid heddle) Knitter's Loom to decide that while the ability to fold up a loom with the warp on it is nice, I like my Beka's ability to handle multiple heddles a little more right now. Also, when it comes time for a wheel in my life, the Ashford Joy is right up there on my shortlist.

Oh, and I had a geek moment:

He was a little surprised by the request, but also very gracious

I assured him that a blue Sharpie marker wouldn't hurt the spindle. Also, the bit of roving on there was spun by him - he borrowed my spindle briefly to demonstrate to someone. Very nice man.

Remember this scarf? I talked about its acquisition here, when I bought it over two years ago. Shortly after that picture was taken, I attempted to set the unknown blue dye, which the person I bought it from warned me was absolutely, positively not colourfast. Boy was she not kidding. By the time I was done Raycafixing and rinsing, it was a little lighter than this roving. Two years later, without any washing, one end was almost white again.

Missing the awesomeness that was the original, I introduced the scarf to Audrey the Indigo Vat in September. The result:

A lot of indigo came out in the rinse, and it's a little blotchy, probably because 1) Audrey had been used heavily the week before and was in need of some fermentation in order to re-reduce, and 2) when I tried to set the original dye job a couple years ago, I used Raycafix, so the fabric has already been chemically treated. The colour is lovely, though, and not exactly what I expected, probably because of the residue of the previous dye.

I wanted to give the scarf one more indigo dip before I officially pack up Audrey for the season, but then we had our first light snow flurries of the season today. I am not impressed, and neither is Audrey. She has been moved inside to her winter digs in the basement as of this evening. We're going to seal her up and try to overwinter her, as long as the smell doesn't start escaping into the rest of the house.

Goodnight, girl, sleep tight! Really, extremely tight. Thanks.

Next post, hopefully, the recounting of our mid-October dye madness day!**

*Sssh!

**Oh, what the heck, here's a preview!

L to R: Indigo, Dyer's Broom, Madder

The garbage has been upgraded

2008-10-06T20:21:00.010-04:00

DH got home from work at the usual time today.

D: Come for a short walk with me. Just down the street, a couple houses south of the service station.

Me: Huh? I'm making a latte. Need coffee.

D: Is it iced? It'll keep. Grab your camera. Really, I want to know if I'm imagining this.

Me: But... coffee. It's after 5, and I haven't had coffee today. Need coffee.

I hit the button, and the espresso machine begins to cheerily grind beans.

D: C'mon, it'll only take a couple minutes. Indulge me.

When he says these words, I know he usually has a good reason, darnit. The magical machine purrs happily, pouring two shots over ice. I sigh wistfully in its direction.

Me: (slipping on sandals and jacket) *grumblegrumblecoffeegrumble*

Here's what he wanted to show me, and he was right. It made me laugh like crazy:

Okay, now I really need that latte.

DH points out that it's interesting how easily these things slip by us. You're used to all sorts of crap stenciled on these bins, so you barely notice. The only reason he noticed was because seeing the bin reminded him that garbage day was coming up, and then he looked at it a second time. I had walked by that very place twice today on the way to and from the grocery store not an hour before, and I didn't notice it. Even staring right at it from across the street this evening, it didn't clue in right away.

Apparently, we were a few months late to the party. Here's someone who beat us to it. We're pretty sure this is the same location.

I really love my neighbourhood.

Perhaps I should also keep an eye on the garbage men?

I swear I'm not really a dyer, Part 2: Walnuts and Cochineal

2008-10-03T20:30:00.002-04:00

September through November is absolutely my favourite season of the year. The weather is comfy, light jacket weather - not too hot and not too cold. The air smells fresh and crisp, not filled with the pollen of spring or thick humidity of summer. The apple trees are loaded down. The leaves are starting to fall, and they smell divine as they make that crunching noise under my feet.

My neighbour's late summer-early fall flowers are incidious, the morning glories particularly so. While the yellow daisy-like things are perfectly happy spreading their sunny goodness into my yard just enough but not too much, the morning glories have long since scaled the fence and are now happily wrapping themselves around my pine trees, air conditioner, the yellow flowers, the drains... whatever they can reach. They're so lovely, I don't have the heart to evict them.

Last Monday, I think I finally figured out cochineal. We dyed the warp for the not-so-super-secret project using Lilies (1990: 132-33) modern cochineal scarlet recipe, and got the red we've been looking for all summer. Holy Crap, is it ever stunning. We got close to this with the last batch a few months ago, but that was using washed-but-otherwise-unprepped wool. There was undoubtably still some lanolin in it, which explains why sections of it came out very light, where the dye barely penetrated. This warp yarn is a commercially-prepared Shetland, probably chemically scoured and bleached. It sucked up the dye like a vampire.

In the meantime, another lady has been spinning up the weft yarn from the three batches we did over the last year, while still others keep her supplied with rolags. She gave me the first couple skeins, freshly plied. So here is our warp (bottom) and weft (top) for the not-so-super-secret-project (a pillow, 18" x 3ft):

Once I get the lozenge twill samples off my loom (need to finish weaving those! ack! only a couple more...), I can start doing tests with this. The final fabric will be weft-faced, since the weft is spinning up nearly twice as thick as the warp. That's fine with me - I have to wonder if the lighter, bluer-red colour of our weft yarn isn't close to what a pre-1600's European dyer would have gotten with cochineal, using alum or light acid solutions (vinegar, fruit juices), before the mid-1600's discovery of using tin to produce a brilliant red.

So the short story: if you're dying fleece with cochineal and you want that amazing scarlet, make sure there is not a trace of lanolin in the fleece. Wash it like you have never washed a fleece before. If you don't want to dye spun yarn, at least prep it into rovings, and dye those.

I tried a black walnut dyebath last night. I need a tiny bit of black for The Project, no more than a few yards. I took a handful of the teal, which was originally white Dorset dyed with weld, then put into the indigo vat for six hours. We put some of this into the last cochineal exhaust bath and got the following, which I guess I can say with authority is a colour found in nature:

Honestly, what colour is that?

I then put that into a "tea" of crushed black walnut husks that have been sitting in water for a week.

Not for drinking

I also added a couple locks of the dark blue. Lilies (1990: 184-85, 29) recommends mordanting with oxalic acid and ferrous (iron) sulfate to get a good black overdye with black walnuts. I do have powdered iron sulfate here, but neither DH or I relished the idea of the house smelling like rotten eggs last night, and I don't have oxalic acid.

After an hour in the dyebath, neither batch of wool was an acceptable black. I'm going to let them soak in the pot for a couple days, but I suspect the iron-oxalic acid thing is in my future. Examples that I've seen of unmordanted, black walnut-dyed wool are usually lovely golden browns, so I'm not surprised that we're not there yet. I have lots of black walnut soup, though, no worries.

The indigo vat, whose name is officially Audrey (as in, "Feed me, Seymour!"), has been fed several mushed-up bananas and a fresh dose of stale urine, and the heating pad is now on, since our night-time temps are going down to single digits. I'll add 1/4 oz. more indigo tomorrow, and hopefully a few days with the heating pad will get the fermentation going again for reducing more indigo. Audrey has a date with some friends of mine in a little over a week.

I swear I'm not really a dyer, Part 1: Indigo, and Battling the Squirrels for Walnuts

2008-09-26T13:13:00.003-04:00

Here is what the indigo vat looks like with things soaking in it. It is still going, with the aid of the heating pad and not-yet-freezing temps. I will feed it next week (probably some store-bought plums - our tree is finished for the season, but my vat really liked the plums), and then pack it off to a brave friend's house where it will sit and be cared for until our mid-October BYOP* Dye Madness Day.

I'll have to get a picture of the scarf once I've washed it out. It came out stunning.

In the meantime, I've been spinning some of my indigo-dyed fleece into a weight hopefully appropriate for cross-stitch in single ply, and satin-stitch embroidery in two-ply.

Indigo blue with a creamy white Dorset filling!

I've picked up some walnuts from the ground, but it looks like I missed most of them when they first fell. They're no longer green and ripe, but black. I certainly wouldn't eat the nuts from these - they sat on the ground in the rain for days and started to go a little moldy - but I've been told I can still use the husks for dying, so I picked them up anyhow.

The squirrels got all the good ones, believe me. If it's green and still lying on the ground and the squirrels haven't taken it, it's bad and already has bugs in it. They know these things. They've been kind enough to leave small piles of walnut husks on the stones and chair, so I've collected some of that, too. It's all currently soaking in water to make a brown "tea" for dyeing. I need a little bit of black, so I plan to overdye a handful of the teal.

Every time I go near the walnut tree, a voice above my head starts chattering and cursing at me in ... squirrel. Of course, I could probably score half a ton of good walnuts if I broke into their stash inside my front awning. They should admire my restraint.

Coming in Part 2 this weekend: Walnut experiments and the last cochineal dyebath.

*Bring Your Own Pee

The frog has a point

2008-09-12T21:07:00.006-04:00

Since I got a medium blue colour on white wool after a single six-hour dip in the indigo vat, I put in half of the weld-dyed yellow from last September. Six hours later, I had a lovely deep teal. I let the vat rest for a couple days to re-ferment and reduce some more, then I tried a little more of the weld yellow, this time only dipping it for a minute or so. Again, no luck, it came out a light blue. Not even teal, that time.

Left: Weld yellow before going in the vat.
Centre: Weld yellow after six hours in the vat.
Right: Weld yellow after a minute in the vat.
Obviously, not the greens we're looking for.

Between attempts with the weld, I also tried a different approach, carding together some of the dark blue with a tuft of a friend's yellow roving (I think that was also weld), and spinning it. The result was... greenish? Maybe if I squint, it will look more green. Nope, not going to work.

Sigh.

Not the best video quality, but my favourite performance.

It's become clear that it doesn't take much time in the indigo vat to overwhelm my weld-dyed yellow. Re-reading Lilies, he recommends that greens using indigo+yellow be dyed by doing the indigo first, then mordanting the wool and overdyeing with a good yellow dye. I was beginning to fear that I would have to make time for a yellow dyebath before the weather turns, in addition to the final cochineal batch that I need to do sometime this coming week. But did I mention we have to card out all that cochineal red so that another lady can spin it later this month? And once it's spun, it goes on my loom to make a pillow, hopefully woven by November, so that someone else will have time to sew it together and embroider it in December using the blue, green and white that I'm spinning by hand? And everything has to be done in early January?

And, um, let's not forget that I have real work that I'm supposed to eventually be getting back to. Soon.

Right then. I don't exactly have tons of time here to experiment with with yellow overdyes on my blues to get a nice leafy green. A friend has a bagful of onion skins for me, but I've never dyed with them, and if there's one thing about my dye experiments that I do know, it's that they never, ever come out exactly right the first time, especially when I really need it. I expect I'll end up with orange on my first onion skin dyebath.

In a last-minute desperate move, I pulled off a little piece of that stunningly bright (almost heading toward orange) tin-mordanted onion-skin yellow that I bought from Brush Creek Wool Works at Pennsic. Four quick dips, each less than a minute, gently swish it around a little, air it out for 5-10 minutes in between. Quick vinegar rinse. Wash in warm soapy water. And suddenly...

What I started with, and what I ended with.

...the goal no longer seems quite so far away. I separated out half of the roving and went to town. It's now drying in the basement. If I have time later this month in between everything else, I'll try the onion skins with tin myself. I might even get a chance at another weld dyebath in early October, but what I dyed today will be more than enough green. And even though I didn't do the yellow, I know who did and how, and I can live with that.

As a wise frog reminded me today:
I'm green, and it'll do fine. It's beautiful. And I think it's what I want to be.

Never saw the sun shining so bright...

2008-09-04T20:06:00.000-04:00

...never saw things going so right.

In front, single dip, six hours in the indigo vat. Behind it, three minute-long dips.

And this is the rest of the six hour batch after 12 more hours in the vat

The vat is now resting in order to ferment a little more and re-reduce, in preparation for its weekend date with some weld-dyed yellow.

On to the green.

Partaking of the Bruised Plums of Paradise*

2008-08-25T07:17:00.015-04:00

This is a special bulletin of the Magpie Telegraph Alert System.

Elisem, who is not only a jewelry maker and artist of immense talent but who also shares my birthday, is having a birthday sale. Not only that, but she's once again offering a draw for a gift certificate to those who spread the word and let her know about it (see that post for the details).

This time around, my pocketbook and I would like to thank the person with exceptional taste who bought Going Under the Hill. My credit card company and bank, on the other hand, are surely disappointed that I won't be going into further debt with them.

A few other things I'm coveting to an almost alarming level: Knock Three Times and Say Athena Sent You, Rose of the Vineyards, and (a little smaller, but shockingly adorable) Treasure Box.

Someday, I will end up with one of her very long linked necklaces, and a necklace-crown. Not today, though.

Another person whose jewelry I like very much, and who would probably appreciate the traffic, is Katie, aka Dragon's Den Jewelry.

Go on. Covet. Buy if you are so inclined and can. Elise's sale goes until September 1.

This has been a special bulletin of the Magpie Telegraph Alert System.

************************************

In other news, we definitely have a plum tree.

This is after Saturday's good-sized harvest

A very full plum tree.

Yum.

We harvested three bags of mostly-ripe plums on Saturday and dropped them off with my mother-in-law to take along for her Sunday family visits. I'll get more today. They're a little tart, and absolutely yummy.

The over-growing nature and layout of the backyard - in particular the outrageous recent growth of the magnolia - means that our plum tree, unlike our neighbour's, is mostly in shade. Thanks to this year's record-breaking rainfalls**, we have an amazing bounty of plums, and thanks to the shade, ours aren't ripening quickly on the branch, while the neighbour's are very ripe. She doesn't seem to be interested in picking them, which means the local critters aren't eating ours.

That, and the squirrels are far more enamored with the black walnut tree (aka "The Stinky Nut Tree") hanging over the back of the yard from another neighbour. If I get it together enough, I'll collect some black walnut shells for dyeing.

Low-hanging black walnuts. They smell. The less ripe they are, the more potent the smell. Also, they are sticky.

But the moral here is: the more plums I pick now, the fewer will be squished into the ground in a couple weeks.

I took the loppers to the plum and magnolia on Saturday and almost immediately regretted it. I only took off a branch or two on each, and only new growth branches that I felt were seriously heading in the wrong direction, but I seem to have re-emphasized the lopsided nature of both trees. Both have already been pruned heavily in certain areas, and I think I just added to the weirdness. I'm hoping they both figure it out and send out slightly more well-behaved branches back into those areas next year, but somehow I doubt I'll be that lucky. Nature is nothing if not persistent, but it also never quite does what I want or expect.

*Title from "The Bruised Plums of Paradise," earrings by Elise Matthesen, currently living with me. The earrings, not Elise.

**Seriously, five times more rain than Vancouver? Hell's bells, man, that's just wrong.

I love it when a plan comes together

2008-08-17T02:57:00.015-04:00

The super-secret joint knitting project that I last blogged about here was finished and delivered shortly before I went on vacation. All parties involved are (pick one or more:) pleased, surprised, happy, relieved, in recovery, totally into the bright colours.

A group of four knitters (me, Sarah, Lydia, Tanya) and a crocheter (Liisa) in my graduate department pooled our collective string-wrangling prowess together and made an afghan for another grad student (Christine), herself a knitter, who was having a baby. Er, make that had a baby, a few months ago, and a very cute one at that. I don't make a habit of putting pictures of other people's kids up on my blog, especially without explicit permission, so you'll just have to trust me.

I can, however, post some pictures of the finished blanket. Well, mostly finished. I think this was before the crochet ends were woven in. The "finished" pictures all feature a very cute infant, whose mother I will have to speak to in-person before I go posting his adorable mug willy-nilly all over the innernets.

Yarn: New Bernat Satin. Very light and soft, 100% Acrylic, 100% (the most important thing!) puke-washable

Each colour of square contains a different pattern. The patterns for the squares are from this book of knitted baby washcloths. We used six red rocking horses, ten orange butterflies, eight yellow duckies, six green bunnies, four blue sailboats, and two purple baby carriages.

Each of the knitters took a colour and pattern, according to how fast we thought we could knit and how much time we had over the next several weeks. I'm always looking for a good cause for procrastination, so I jumped on the ten orange butterflies that evening, while Lydia took the yellow duckies. Tanya took the red (and eventually also the blue), and Sarah took the green. I finished relatively quickly (yay, procrastination!) so later on I also did the 2 purple squares. For those who are interested in such things, we got almost exactly four squares out of a ball of yarn.

For yuks, here is the "napkin layout": After Liisa proposed the project and we all signed on, Lydia, Liisa and I made the initial covert field trip to Mary Maxim in late February to pick out yarn, look for some patterns, and then sit down somewhere with food and figure out the logistics. Finding the washcloth pattern book* was an inspirational lucky turn, and "somewhere with food" ended up being the foodcourt of the mall, so between bites of my A&W rootbeer and burger, I sketched out the general game plan and layout on a food court napkin.

All the best plans are drawn on a napkin.

We were, of course, hoping the squares would all turn out the same size... but realistically, four different knitters all getting exactly the same size squares? Not likely. Lydia did some blocking, which helped, but Liisa was the star who took all the squares and made them fit together using the wonderous power of crochet. She even managed to do it while keeping our original layout intact. Here's a closeup of her excellent crochet border.

All hail the magic of crochet!

*I'm not usually one for the simple washcloth patterns, but I think I might have to get this other booklet by the same designer.

The grass and sunlight are woven in for free

2008-08-14T01:54:00.005-04:00

I'm home from Pennsic. This year I camped in a new location with a different group. (I-79 side of the Serengetti rather than on Runestone Hill). Being with a small group was quite a bit different compared to the 40+ people in my encampment last year, but I did miss the other group a little. Our encampment was so quiet. Well, OK, quiet in some ways. I haven't completely passed judgement on the location, but I could definitely have done without the almost constant air horns and jack brakes from the highway.

However, it was nicely flat (a bonus, seriously), shockingly convenient to the merchants, main food court and A&S tents, and I did not miss climbing the steep part of the hill every day. I did miss the sound of drums coming up from the lake all night long, though, and the feeling of being more at the centre of things. I'll have to wait a couple months until it's in long-term memory before I decide if I liked the good parts of it enough to camp over there again.

This was taken shortly before tear-down, so the camp fence and lanterns are already gone.

I played in a very excellect pickup dance band from Sunday through Tuesday. I'm still not a spectacular recorder player, but I'm starting to be able to hold my own on melody and play most things up to speed, which makes me happy. I still need a lot of work on recorder, though.

At heart, I suspect I'll always be a brass player. I believe I ~~want~~ need a sackbut. Possibly before the natural horn. Some day.

I was pretty good about not buying too much. I did have to pick up the obligatory spindle:

Yes, it's a heart. Yes, the pink felt baggie came with it. It would make me sick if it weren't so darn pretty.

...and the traditional couple of bags of naturally-dyed roving from Brush Creek Wool Works.

I had to get the red. Their cochineal red with tin mordant is almost exactly the colour we got. In fact, these were the reddest bags of the batch - the rest of her selection were noticeably lighter. I suspect the evenness of her colour compared to ours is because she dyes rovings, not raw fleece of questionable cleanliness. Her cochineal with alum mordant roving was close to our raspberry batch. It makes me feel considerably better to know we got what the pros get with our cochineal dyebaths. Oh, and that yellow? Onion skins with tin. Really, how awesome is that? Onions are the new neon.

I also picked up a pretty thing for my hair, a tiny hard leather pouch, two small handbound leather journals (with handmade paper! and refillable! one for me and one for Daniel to use as a sketchbook), some herbs for a friend and tea and honey - nothing to break the bank. No looms this year, thanks, and I even passed up on the expensive but lovely closed-toe shoes. I walked past the harps and sighed.

Once again, Dread Viscountess Seelie offered rigid heddle weaving classes, so a lot of my second week was spent weaving and generally playing with string. This year we were re-creating several specific archaeological textiles on the rigid heddle loom, using the multiple-heddle technique she taught last year. A few of us offered up our looms as teaching looms, so in all we had five looms going with different warps. We all wove a few inches on each pattern. All designs were woven on standard 20" Beka SG-20 rigid heddle looms, using either two or three heddles as required (3 or 4-shaft patterns), and no pickup sticks.

First a 1-2 Rippenkoper. This is a three-shaft design, requiring only two heddles. Basically, it switches between a 2-1 twill and a 1-2 twill, weft-faced to warp-faced, and also reverses.

Next, a rosette twill. This is 4-shaft design, done using three heddles.

I think this might actually be the back, but I like this side better.

And finally, my absolute favourite, the Jorvik 1336 (i.e. "Coppergate") textile. A honeycomb, or wabengawebe with a twill. I messed up the pattern more than once, being highly distractible on a good day, even more so there. A couple times I only did one repeat of the pattern, and once I did three. But I definitely want to make some long pieces of this one and do something with them.

Front of an apron dress, perhaps? Hmmm.

There was also a loom with a standard 4-harness twill warp, but since I did the twills and double-weaves last year, I didn't do more of those. One of the looms had to go back with its person early and we ran out of time, and since I was planning to put that very warp onto my loom at home, I was asked if I could weave up 5-6 samples to send off to the instructor and others in the class. It's definitely no hardship! I'm learning a lot, and getting the warping experience I was looking for.

So, now on my loom and weaving up nicely, a 2-1 Lozenge. This one is another three-shaft pattern, so it only requires two heddles.

Sample one of five. Or maybe six.

There really is something to be said for sitting under a sun shade, warping looms with a group of women, chatting with the person across from you, muttering the count of the warp thread quietly between sentences... "Here's the three. So, did you guys get wet last night? No, I was very dry - two fours coming through - but it was freaking cold when I woke up at three in the morning. Is that sixteen? OK, tie that off."

Someone might have caught a video of Seelie weaving in one of the classes, in which case I'll definitely post a link. Most of the drafts for these patterns can be found at the complex weavers medieval textiles study group, in the section on the textiles discussed in Lise Bender Jorgensen's book. The Coppergate textile draft is from Thora Sharptooth's site.

Aside from the RH weaving, I didn't take too many classes - one exception being a viking wire weaving class. I got to make a necklace, and wire-wrap a bead. I need to finish it with a hook for it to be completely done - but the part where you pull it through the drawplate is so much fun. It's like magic.

What do mean you don't go to Pennsic to weave?

I leave you with this. It was visible from Currie Road, near the west gate.

Everyone goes to Pennsic, didn't you know?

Post-Pennsic Weaving Post coming...

2008-08-13T10:52:00.002-04:00

... as soon as I get home this afternoon. While I begin to tackle the mounds of laundry.

My God. The laundry.

hides under the blanket again

Things I Can't Get at Home

2008-08-01T10:58:00.008-04:00

I am in PA. One would think I would be at Pennsic, since it is well underway, I have a medallion, and my Very Medieval Tent is set up in our campsite over there, looking very medieval indeed.

One would be wrong.

I'm at my parents house, the house I grew up in, sitting at the kitchen table. The kitchen has been redone recently, but the table looks exactly the same. For some reason, when Mom, Dad and I sit at it to play cards, we sit around it in exactly the way we always did: Me with my back to the door and fridge, Mom to my right, Dad to my left (or directly across the table).

It's very strange, these long-term habits.

What is even stranger is that I'm sitting at this table, in this chair, and I have internet access. There is an unexplained, open wi-fi connection that my laptop picked up automatically without asking - suddenly it was downloading email. There's really only one neighbouring house physically close enough to account for it, so my suspicion lies there. I try not to make a habit of borrowing wi-fi connections, except under dire circumstances, so I'm trying not to use it too much or even think about it, lest it disappear suddenly. But I'm also a little delighted that I won't have to pay for internet access over at Pennsic while I'm here just to do an email check every couple days, or run the 5 miles into Butler to a cafe for free access.

The connection is much stronger if I park myself between the grand piano and the Hammond B3 in the sunroom, which I like to think is due to the overwhelming power of such an awesome confluence of keyboards.

I'm also avoiding the work that I'm supposed to be getting done, which is why I'm at the house and not in the tent. So, here is a montage of a few things I can't get at home. From L to R: Frosted Chocolate Vanilla Creme Pop-Tarts, a Butterfinger bar, (American) Mountain Dew, Strawberry Quick powder, Pepperidge Farms Mint Milano Cookies, and handwritten notes from my Mom, with hearts and smiley faces.

Sugar overload

Don't worry, I won't eat it all in one sitting. The cookies are to share with Mom, and the Strawberry Quick is entirely for Daniel. To be fair, I could probably find Butterfinger at home if I knew where to look, but lately, even the places that sell Nestle chocolate bars haven't had them. This flavour of pop-tarts, my only pop-tart weakness, are sometimes even hard to find here. I haven't seen them the last few times I've been down, and the last time a friend offered to bring some back with her for me, I got S'Mores (nope, not even close). The Mountain Dew is just one of those goofy things. I always loved Mountain Dew. Canadian Dew did not, until quite recently, contain caffeine, and the version with caffeine at home has a special name and still doesn't taste the same. I don't drink it, ever. This is probably related to the general cross-border Coke/Pepsi thing. American Coke is made with high-fructose corn syrup. I've never liked it - I grew up drinking Pepsi. Canadian Coke is made with real cane sugar and is wonderful and amazing, but Canadian Pepsi is icky.

And because I'm more than a little homesick, and I miss my Daniel and my fuzzy boys, here are a couple shots I took while playing with the silly features on my old digital camera a couple weeks ago. They were still on the camera when I emptied it just now.

Everything looks better with the polarizing filter!

Okay, enough dawdling. Back to work. I want to be at Pennsic tomorrow!

It's official: We have a zombie plan. Thanks, JoCo.

2008-07-13T23:45:00.014-04:00

It's only official when the folder is in the household business filing cabinet.

What do you mean you don't have a zombie plan? That's just crazy talk. Every family should have one.

I'm sorry, I can't divulge the contents of our household plan to survive a potential zombie apocalypse. Secrecy is key.

We were reminded of the need to formalize our zombie plan after last Wednesday's Jonathon Coulton show, with Paul and Storm, at Lula Lounge:

Will you be a fast zombie or a lethargic zombie?

We had a dinner reservation - our table was very close to the stage, which delighted us. The food at Lula, btw, is stunning. Amazing. Excellent. Also: the mojito menu is longer than the regular menu, and the food is so good, you won't notice. How can you argue with that?

The show was magnificent, with much audience participation. There were water jokes, zombies, fuzzy lobsters and lots of piratical "arrr". The digital video cameras were out in force - those kind souls who shot and posted footage have accumulated some good citizen karma for helping make the rest of my week that much more bearable. There were so many wonderful moments of the evening, I couldn't possibly list them all. There were a lot of favourites, but this serene cover, with Paul and Storm, of Birdhouse in Your Soul stands out.

And speaking of Paul and Storm, their opening set was a blast of awesome to set up the evening. I would go see them again in a heartbeat. Among the highlights was a new song, "Live" (high-tense-front-vowel-i) for the first time live (high-lax-front-vowel-i).

Such a tender ballad, it brings a tear to the eye

At least when I skip band practice, it's for a good reason.

Seeing red. Finally.

2008-07-08T14:00:00.012-04:00

Some friends and I are seeing red. We have been dyeing with cochineal, repeatedly, and with mixed success. I don't think we quite have this cochineal thing down yet, but we're getting better. Um, maybe.

The goal: Enough red wool to spin 1400 yards of singles in a good, strong scarlet, to then ply into 700 yards of 8-12 wpi yarn for the weft thread of a not-really-super-secret-anymore-but-I'm-still-not-advertising project that will be woven on my rigid heddle loom later this year. Since we can get a good 500 yards of singles out of a pound of raw fleece, that's 3 pounds of wool to be dyed. We have to do it in 1-pound batches, which has advantages and disadvantages.

We've done four, yes four, batches of cochineal since last October. Below, from L to R, are batch 2, 3 and 4 drying in my friend's pine trees. I don't have a picture of the first pound, which we did last fall, but for that first attempt we used alum-mordanted wool and a dash of tin added mid-dye to the cochineal bath. Half of that batch had previously been dyed slightly yellow with spinach, the rest not. The spinach portion is a little nicer, but both came out a beautiful scarlet, nicer than even the rightmost (closest) batch here.

Christmas in July? The colours are a little more neon pink here than in-person

As you can see, our dye batches are varying in colour dramatically. We won't be using batch 2, the furthest left, because, ugh. It was our first attempt at tin-mordanted cochineal, which is supposed to give the best scarlets. We tried a version of Lilies cochineal scarlet #1 recipe (Lilies 1990: 131-2), and it was going flame orange. When we added the recommended alum, perhaps not as "carefully" as recommended, the dyebath turned a mucky brown, and the wool a dirty, blue-red.

That experience scared us off the tin a little, so we returned to the alum mordanting for batch three. That's middle batch, above, which came out more raspberry than scarlet. The right batch, dyebath #4, is scarlet (despite this picture showing as bright pink), but lighter than we want, because the dye didn't take to parts of the fleece (perhaps it wasn't scoured enough? Hmmm.).

I pulled a couple sample tufts out of batch 3 and 4 to try a test spin after they dried.

L (batch 3) alum-mordanted cochineal, with 1/2 oz. tin and a dash of tumeric (for yellow) added late in the bath. R (batch 4): Tin and cochineal, one-pot method (Lilies 1990: 132-33), with probably a touch of alum from the previous dyebath still hanging around on the pot and stir-stick

In total, we have a pound of deep raspberry and two pounds of light-mid scarlet that are usable. The plan is to blend together the different dye batches when carding it to get a colour something between both. The two test tufts above give this:

Still not quite the red we're looking for, but this is a 50-50 blend of raspberry and scarlet, and I think we'll be blending it more 33-67% in the end

We'll also need warp thread. I've made the decision, after much deliberation and agonizing, that our handspun DorsetX is simply not going to be suitable to use as warp thread for this project - at least, not the way we'll be spinning it. It will mostly be prepped using cards, not combs (necessary because several people are involved, and handcards are the more common item amongst them), giving a woollen, not worsted yarn. This will make a fuzzy, sticky warp. I also can't confirm that the 2-ply will be strong enough for warp, even on a rigid heddle loom. The test singles definitely weren't.

So in late August, we'll be dyeing another 900 yards of white commercial yarn with cochineal for the warp. It might or might not work: varying colour is one thing when we'll be carding together the different dye batches. But when we dye the skeins, they have to be the colour we want, the first time. Precedent says that we simply don't have that kind of control over the cochineal. So, we'll try it, and if it doesn't work, we'll buy a cone of scarlet warp thread.

In preparation for a weaving frenzy this fall, I've warped up the loom to get some badly needed weaving practice. It seemed a good way to use up the Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece that's been in my stash for years:

The necessities for warping a loom: loom, yarn, coffee, chocolate and yarn ~~tangling~~ wrangling assisstant.

Finally, an indigo vat update. Throughout the unseasonably cool and wet Southern Ontario June, no fermentation has been detected in my vat, although it's still mighty stinky. After consulting with an experienced vat-maker, our guess is that although we had a couple weeks of toasty warm temps in early-mid June, the evening temps around here still go down to 14-17C (in the 50s-60sF), which is causing the vat to cool off too much in the evening and is preventing fermentation. The recommended solution (since I lack a 24/7 firepit):

A double-boiler setup using a fishtank heater. Interesting note: fishtank heaters, even saltwater ones, are not rated for urine, and putting the heater directly into the vat would kill it in short order. Hence the double-boiler. Thank you SharonAnn for that hard-won bit of wisdom, and for being a great indigo vat consultant.

After a couple weeks of this, and several consistent warm and sunny days out of the last seven lacking light rain, thunderstorms and hail, I am starting to smell the unmistakable - and surprisingly pleasant - barnyard-like smell of fermentation under the ever-present stench of stale urine. It's still far from ready, and I'm not entirely convinced that the heater, which has a max temp of 85F (something about not wanting to cook fish?), is warming up the water as much as it needs to be to really encourage things to grow. But it is encouraging. I stir it gently every day or two to get the indigo powder off the bottom of the vat and encourage the chemistry to start. If nothing happens after a week of it staying warm 24/7, then I'll feed it a couple dates.

I still want to believe

I'm not certain how long I can hold on the illusion that I am not really a dyer. I still maintain that this is all about the educational experience, and a single goal. Let's forget about the fact that I'm still contemplating collecting chicory from the roadside, I have weld seeds about to be planted, and that failed attempt to get green from carrot tops a couple months ago... stop laughing. I'm not a dyer. I'm a spinner and weaver who dyes out of necessity. And I am learning quite a lot.

I mean, seriously - did you know that saltwater fishtank heaters weren't rated for urine?

The Power of Dad

2008-06-21T12:22:00.009-04:00

Things have been surprisingly busy around here. Mom and Dad visited last weekend. It's always great to see them of course, but even more so when they come here, because Dad comes bearing power tools, years of building fixit experience, and a burning desire to Not Sit Still. In this case, he also brought us the second half of our housewarming gift: a 16-17 ft. telescoping stepladder (the cordless drill was Part One).

A ladder is absolutely essential around here with our high ceilings. Even with a stepstool, DH can barely change a lightbulb without risking serious injury. For me there's no chance. Heaven help us if the smoke alarm had gone off in the last six months. I was considering a nerf crossbow.

Come to think of it, that's probably still not a bad idea. scribbles a note

Dad is the type of guy who has to be kept busy. He loves puttering around drilling and fixing things and generally being extremely helpful. It's his idea of a vacation, if you can believe it. So, to encourage him to visit (we do also enjoy his company, after all) and lest he end up knocking down and putting up walls (it's been known to happen - not here, though... yet), I keep a small list of short-term projects he can play with when he visits.

Within two hours of their arrival, before DH got home from work, Dad had the bathroom fan out of the ceiling, cleaned and back in, purring nicely, a far cry from its previous wake-the-dead-rattle. When DH got home, we unloaded and moved a piano.

The next morning, Dad assembled six drawers for our Ikea wardrobes. We saved those for him (Ikea = DadLego: last time he spent a morning happily assembling our cheap Ikea shelving in the basement). After that, he and DH tackled the air-conditioner, which wasn't running since over the winter something chewed through the wires outside that connected it to the thermostat. It was a 2-person job to run the new wire, so it went onto the DadFunList. I now have air-conditioning again (they both received many hugs and kisses for that, in addition to a fresh round of iced tea).

Then Dad found the loppers and cultivator, and he and DH (bearing the weed-whacker and push-mower) went to town on the jungle growing in our backyard and started plotting the demise of some excess foilage. As the day wound down, he was devising ways of helping me keep up the heat on my indigo vat.

It's OK, he left us a few things to do - the smoke alarms need to be replaced (and now can be, thanks to The Ladder), and we need to get up into the crawlspace and put down some insulation before the fall. Of course, once DH showed him Google Sketch-up, they started excitedly brainstorming ways to tear apart and redo our kitchen. The two of them together are... scary.

I am the luckiest girl ever. I know this. I supply building materials, food, and a constant flow of iced tea, and things happen around me. It's like magic. It's the Power of Dad.

And did I mention I now have my piano?

1978 Baldwin Acrosonic spinet, French provincial style

This is the piano I learned on, ca. 1978. My sister has the piano she learned on (from my grandmother's house). Not to be outdone or without keys, Mom has her "pet rock": a Petrov grand (early on, Dad heard and parsed "Petrov" as "pet rock" and the name stuck). They were so pleased at the notion of recovering some floor space that they loaded the spinet into the trailer and delivered it personally. They've been waiting for me to have a place for it for nearly 15 years. It went into the house much easier than expected, and without serious injury to any person or property.

Now if only I could find all my sheet music. I am missing Chopin, and yet I have two copies of the Bach. It's inexplicable.

In spinning news, I recently scored some lovely new spindles from Butterfly Girl Designs. They are, from L-R, a pair of interchangable carnelian stone whorls on straight shafts, a murano foil whorl on a dark wood shaft, and a black lip mother-of-pearl whorl on an asymetrically carved shaft.

I made a special request for these spindles: shafts without hooks. I've discovered that I prefer using a half-hitch to secure my yarn to the spindle rather than a hook, and BFG was more than happy to help me out. At some point, I would love to get one of her openwork Italian resin spindles, and another multi-whorl set in a nice stone.

The carnelian whorls being used together. Wool is DorsetX, as thin as I can spin it.

I love these paired sets - the whorls are interchangable. Each one can be used separately or together, anywhere on the shaft (high, mid, low), and they would make great supported spindles. No sooner had I bought the carnelian pair than she listed a stunning blue goldstone pair. In the past, she's also had paired sets of rose quartz and hematite. But more spindles will have to wait for a while, I think.

Finally, the first full skein, 135-ish yards, of plied worsted-to-bulky "Berry Berry Nice" yarn: my earliest spinning (the pink tin-mordanted/brazilwood-dyed wool) plied with DorsetX. There's still an equal amount of pink singles left, and I'm spinning more DorsetX to probably make another skein of this.

Whew, that was a lot. I say naps all around are in order:

VAMPIRE CAT SLEEPS DURING DAY

Sale on shiny things! Sale on shiny things!

2008-06-06T23:04:00.007-04:00

This is a special bulletin of the Magpie Telegraph Alert System.

Elisem, who is a jewelry maker and artist of immense talent, is having a sale. I have accumulated my share of Eliseian shinies over the last while, and I love them all. I highly recommend checking out her stuff. And buying some, if you're able and interested.

Some ~~lucky bugger~~ wise person with great taste bought a necklace that I've been coveting recently, called Odd Dinosaur Out. In all seriousness, whoever you are, my pocketbook thanks you. Profusely. I really couldn't afford it right now, and you saved me considerable agony over that fact. It's too awesome a necklace not to be out there being worn.

Of course, then there's the marvelous sculptural necklace Bordertown Runway Queen, which is even more outside my budgetary constraints. But, damn. I mean, wow.

Seriously, go forth and oooh and ahhh.

Right then, my work here is done.

This has been a special bulletin of the Magpie Telegraph Alert System.

The wildlife needs a nap, too

2008-06-04T08:28:00.004-04:00

The backyard is teeming with life. The magnolia tree has lost all its flowers and is now green and leafy. The grass, in the patches where there is grass, is growing. The wildlife is... napping?

Springtime is hard work

I watched this squirrel for nearly half an hour, while it dozed lightly on the fence in the shade of our downspout. When it finally woke up, it made its way down the fence into the shade of a pinetree and posed for a few minutes. I particularly like this one:

This is my better side

I love how its paws are crossed in front.

With the unseasonably cool month of May and first week of June, my indigo vat has not yet started to ferment and reduce, and so it remains stubbornly blue. I've been reassured by people with experience that this is okay, as long as it isn't so cold that things frost. Nothing will happen until the weather warms up - the temperatures need to stay up for several days in a row, and the jar needs to feel as warm to the touch as a heated baby bottle. It finally got there a couple days ago, sitting in the direct sunlight in 26C (that's 79F). That level of warmth lasted a day, and now we're back to room temperature or below, and more rain. But I am patient. The sun will prevail.

I want to believe

I'm still spinning the black superwash/tussah silk batts. I recently figured out that my niddy-noddy is not only designed to skein yarn, but also measure length. If I use the short centre-stick, a full wrap is exactly one yard. Talk about a lightbulb moment. (I think the long centre-stick makes a three yard wrap, but I'll have to check, it might be two.) So now I know exactly what my yardage is. So far I have 220 yds. in singles, and an little more left from the first 38g. bag.

Niddy-noddy: Best non-essential tool ever

I guesstimate I'll get 300 yds. total from the first bag, and then I have another bag of the same amount. Since I want a 2-ply yarn to make a lacey shrug or shawl, that gives me 300 yds. total, which isn't quite enough for what I want to do. 600 yds. should do the trick.

One option is to either make a trip to Purple Purl or call Black Lamb and see if they have more of this colourway (Purple Purl is where I bought it originally, but Black Lamb had several bags of it at the Knitter's Frolic and might still have some). Or I could just go with my original plan of mixing up this black baby alpaca and more of the silk colourway myself to ply it with. I'll probably try a little of the alpaca and silk, ply a small skein and see how it goes before I start scouring the city for more baggies of Pat's Colours batts.

The last week has been, in a word, brutal. I've been trying to make progress on my proposal, and I am failing spectacularly. Things came to a head with me canceling a Very Important Meeting with Lady S. and the committee yesterday. I've never been in this situation before. I'm sure this will have administrative repercussions. It would be so easy if I didn't care. But I do care. I care very much, in fact, and I want to do this so badly - but I want to do it well, I want to do the topic justice, and I can't do that in my current state.

I've come to the realization that I need to see to certain long-term health issues, and that they can simply no longer be put off. They are affecting my every moment, waking or sleeping. Everything in my life - work, hobbies, family - is suffering for it. So, I have temporarily put my committee, my work and several other things, excepting a few small obligations, on hold. The initial appointment has been made and will happen this afternoon. It's the best I can do. It's the only thing I can do, and it has been a long time coming.

It can only get better. It will be better.

Why I Spin, or, The Smell of Home

2008-05-28T04:35:00.002-04:00

I used to card wool when I was, like, 8-12 at the home of a family friend. She had a spinning wheel and they raised sheep and angora rabbits. She would sometimes set the kids to carding, if we were willing, to give us something to do while the adults played bridge. Their family did the local 4-H stuff and several fairs each summer, and sometimes my family went along for a nice, wholesome, inexpensive day out. I also washed my first fleece with them - although, it was still on a live sheep that was being prepped for show (For the record: The sheep did not take to it kindly, which was why it was “the kids’ job”). My mother’s favourite mittens came off her spinning wheel and needles.

My childhood was, in retrospect, mostly idyllic.

Naturally, I got older, and forgot everything I knew. I moved away to a large city for university and an even larger city after that. I remember asking my grandmother to teach me to knit when I was in high school or college, to which she replied, “Oh, honey, you can learn that from a book a lot faster than from me.” A few years ago, still mourning her and using her old needles, I did just that. Grandma Helen was a gem, but not really one for the patient teaching. It was probably for the best.

Not quite two years ago while I was visiting my parents, I spent a couple days at a medieval event that is held very nearby. I was pleased to have a chance to spend some time with my then 19-year old niece. I also wanted to experience this large event that seemed to have grown up with me. I had watched - from the road - as it expanded over the years. I crashed in my niece's teeny-tiny trailer, which she graciously shared, and she served as my guide for part of a day.

We split up in the afternoon, and I wandered around for several hours, in and out of merchant booths, people watching. My old memories of sheep, wool, fairs, farm shows and pioneer festivals (especially if it had a blacksmithing demo - Dad was all over that) began to work their way up to the surface as I walked. Some of the smells were there: grass, dirt, sweat. Fried foods from the food tents, complete with the teenagers who made spare summer cash working them. I had friends who did that every summer in high school. I spent one memorable summer week volunteering for charity at a dunk tank at the county fair, myself.

There was something missing. A smell common to all of those summer events, modern or historical. The smell of the animals. Something clicked in my brain. Yes.

I turned around, walked determinedly back into a merchant booth and left with a drop spindle and some roving. This seemed a good compromise; I had been thinking about it for a couple weeks. I had never spun before, but I knew I didn’t have room for a wheel and couldn’t, at that moment, do what I did remember (washing and prepping fleece). Worst case it would make a nice display piece. I netted another bag of roving, a book, and a second spindle from another merchant a few minutes later because I didn't know if I would be able to handle the fancy low-whorl one I bought originally. Tired of walking, I bought some iced tea and plopped myself down under a shady tree overlooking a sea of tents. With the ever-present sound of drums and laughter as a soundtrack, I had at it for a while.

My niece found me there a little later, in our pre-arranged meeting spot, trying to practice joining, a few feet of impossibly overspun yet still lumpy yarn on the spindle. I must have had the most content look on my face ever.

"I didn't know you knew how to do that," she said.

"I don't. Er, I didn't. Well, not for a long time, anyhow, since I was, like, 10 or 11. And then I never learned how to spin, just card wool."

"Oh. Well, it suits you. Like you've been doing it forever."

"Thanks, hon."

24 hours later, my spindle, iced tea and I were sitting under the same tree, joined by a pound of lovely RomniX fleece. Earlier in the day, I had found myself sitting in a tent with a handful of ice, chatting with a lady and admiring the piles of lovely fleece surrounding her, wrapped up in sheets and peeking out in bursts of browns, cremes, whites and greys. My new fleece was washed, but it still smelled a little sheepy. I didn’t have carders or combs, so I spun a little straight from the locks. And quite suddenly, with all those smells together (sheep, grass, earth, iced tea), all was right with the world.

Sheepy Goodness is not a common smell in a large city, unless you know where to look. It had never occurred to me to try. But it's a smell I've known since childhood. My niece and I woke the next morning in our cramped accommodations to the sound of a cannon shot (ooops, missed the opening ceremonies of war week, I guess). I rolled over in my sleeping bag, and came face-to-face with the fleece. Again, there was the smell of grass, and earth, and sheep.

I knew I had finally come home.

And so that's why I spin. Because when I spin, no matter where I am, I am home. My drink of choice while spinning is still iced tea, and I’ve determined that I prefer sharp, pointy combs to carders. I’m in no hurry to get a wheel. I have processed a fleece straight off the sheep. I continue to acquire more drop spindles at an alarming rate.

It feels like I've been doing it forever.

The only knitting request he's ever made...

2008-05-22T20:43:00.004-04:00

...is finished. Here's the completed Season 12 Dr. Who scarf. I wove in the last few ends and put on the tassels Tuesday evening. It has already been slept on by the cats, so I guess it's officially done.

Total unblocked knitted length without the tassels and not under tension: 15' 6"

The tassels add about 4" on each end, and when worn, its own weight will always cause it to stretch some. On DH, it's wearable by looping twice, unless he wants to trip over it:

He really prefers to be behind the camera, but he's a good sport

I've requested that he not wear it dragging on the ground, as is traditional. This is not about it getting dirty or damaged, because that's going to happen no matter what, and patches on a Dr. Who scarf are traditional. However, he does take a bus, subway, several escalators and an elevator to work. Under those conditions, a dragging scarf could be... unfortunate. I don't think I'll block it. It doesn't need any help to stretch, and it looks more authentic like this.

I continue to spin the black superwash merino/golden-brown tussah silk batts into laceweight singles. I tried out my new tulipwood nostepinne to wind the first spindle-load into a centre pull-ball.

At least I finished something, even if it wasn't my Big D proposal revisions, which were "due" a week ago. I vaguely remember a time when deadlines meant something...

My laptop, iced tea, and a bucket of pee...

2008-05-15T20:33:00.003-04:00

Why does seem that I get the most poetical when it involves pee?

I am enjoying having a table outside, although I really do need some kind of a shade, so that I can work out here. A laptop in direct sunlight is next to useless. A black laptop in direct sunlight is just begging to be allowed to overheat. But even a few minutes out here with lunch and a drink is better than sitting in the house on the couch all day!

Ford is more annoyed that I'm not inside feeding him than he is wanting to be outside

The black rubbermaid container, with its well-fitting lid, contains the 2-gallon glass jar (with - you guessed it - a lid), which is serving as the indigo vat. The temps have warmed up slightly over the last few days, and it's sunnier, so I'm hoping to encourage fermentation and try to get the indigo to reduce even though we won't be up to daily warm summer temps for a while yet. The black bin retains heat much better than the white bucket, particularly in direct sunlight, even when the outside air is cool overall.

In fact, I removed the jar from the white plastic bucket entirely, because it seemed to be working overtime at keeping the jar cool, even when the whole contraption was inside the black container. The air inside there is toasty-warm when I open it, but the white container and the liquid was still very cool to the touch. No chance of fermentation like that - let's hope this move does the trick and that we get some critters to be fruitful and multiply in there soon. Grow, little friends, grow. I'll continue to monitor it daily - if the jar warms up over the next few days but I don't see any sign of fermentation by next week, maybe I'll add a couple chopped dates.

The lilacs are just about ready to go crazy. Sigh. Why do lilacs have to be so pretty and enticing, and yet make me so miserable?

Hello, allergies. As if you weren't bad enough already.

I am trying, and failing spectacularly, to get my Big D proposal revisions done. They were expected today, which is obviously not happening. I'm crossing my fingers, because no one has come looking for them yet. The committee meeting is on June 3, which means even if I give it to them next Tuesday that still gives everyone their two weeks to read it - but that's not the point. I was given today as a deadline, and I agreed, and I didn't get it done.

I hate this part so, so much - the part where I have to work myself into a frothing frenzy of self-loathing to get anything done. Every time, I swear to myself that it won't happen again. Never again. I'll work on it every day for an hour, maybe two, and before I know it, it will be done, all with less stress and none of this insanity of late-nighters and mental meltdowns. And yet here I am again.

Dammit.

Our weekend anthem

2008-05-12T13:23:00.002-04:00

...just some oak and some pine and a handful of Norsemen...*

So, we made an IKEA run this weekend, and finally picked up some patio furniture. Nothing fancy, but within our price range, and I like it better than the crap that we found in every single box store from Home Depot down. I might also get a small parasol that clips onto the table so that I can sit out there with the laptop and still have a hope of seeing the screen. Or something.

Which brings me to work. I'm on a deadline this week. I turned in a substantial draft of my Big D proposal to Lady S. in mid-February and received extensive comments from her on it in early March. It would have been nice to have done those revisions in March, or even April, but a conspiracy of family obligations and other work has kept it off the table until now. I finished the piles of grading last week, took a couple days to get myself in order, and now I have several days of straight writing and revisions to do.

This means, naturally, that I'm writing a blog post, making a latte, finding reasons to poke the cats - who are miraculously leaving me alone right now when I should be working - and looking wistfully outside at the indigo vat, hoping that it is starting to ferment.

Okay, okay, I'm going...

*Here's the studio recording, but I do so love watching Jonathon Coulton's** live performances. Of course, if he did a concert in Toronto, I wouldn't have to be content with YouTube, would I? Go on, click that link and add to the demand. Toronto is only 6th on the list right now.

**Who is this guy? Go here. Listen to The Future Soon, Tom Cruise Crazy, Chiron Beta Prime and Code Monkey. If you're liking it, listen to Re: Your Brains, Skullcrusher Mountain, and (if you're OK with NSFW and a lot of cussin') The First of May. He also wrote the closing credit song for the video game Portal. If you're still really into it, go to Eventful and Demand him. Then come back here, because I like you.

Not so much with the May flowers here...

2008-05-08T11:38:00.002-04:00

This was the backyard in on April 26, before last week's cold snap encouraged the magnolia flowers to begin turning brown and start dropping petals.

The buds on the unknown tree opened and became this:

Perhaps a wild cherry? Still not sure.

The little white petals are now peppering the ground after Saturday's torrential downpours, and all the flowering trees will soon be going green. Also, the yellow tulips had some company. Several reds opened a few days later, and a pot of purples came from my mother-in-law. I transplanted them, but I'm not certain they'll survive.

Yellow and purple are bare stems now, but the red are still going strong

The lilacs aren't open yet. I'm actually thankful for that. But we are enjoying the magnolia tree.

And what is this innocent-looking white container?

Not kitty litter

In all honesty, I wouldn't open that if I were you. Not without a mask, gloves and a strong stomach. I'm still in shock that I'm willing to open the damn thing. We'll see how long my will holds out. About as long as I can hold my breath, I suspect.

That's right, I officially started the indigo vat on Monday when I added the indigo to 2 gallons of increasingly stale urine and left it well-covered in a sunny spot. Inside that innocuous white bucket is a 2-gallon glass jar with a plastic bag tucked around the lid. Twice a day, with well-gloved hands, I am supposed to reach in there to swish and rub the nylon stocking containing the 3/4 oz. of unreduced indigo powder that is dangling inside it. This encourages it to dissolve and reduce in the urine. Other than that, I let it sit in the sun and hope it starts to ferment.

I'm hoping that with slightly warmer temps this week, it will soon begin fermenting, but realistically, it's probably still a little too cool outside to get it warm enough, so we're looking more like weeks instead. Unfortunately, the sunny parts of the yard are the closest to the house and neighbours. The area where I envisioned the vat residing (i.e. far away from civilization) is in cool shade much of the day.

We'll see how it goes. For now, all I'm willing to say is that it is certainly... pungent.

You've won this time, double-knitting! But I'll be back!

2008-05-03T11:31:00.003-04:00

A couple weeks ago I was pondering idly as I trudged along on the double-knit hat I started for Daniel last month, wondering what simple, even, repeatable pattern of contrasting colourwork I might start in another inch or so. As I thought, I realized that I had cast on 142 stitches. Divided by two, because this is double-knitting, meaning half the stitches are the outside layer and half are the inside - this gives 71 stitches in each colour: a beautiful prime number which is not evenly divisible by anything.

I sigh. So much for an even, repeatable pattern, I think. I wince a little due to my inner OCD, but whatever, I think, it’s not critical, and I’m not ripping it out. I've done too much of it, and it seemed to fit OK when he tried on the headband the day before.

I mention my little quandry to Daniel, intended (non-knitter husband) recipient of the hat. "Uh-huh," he says, eyes focussed on his computer screen, reading.

A couple minutes of companionable silence later, and he looks up at me. “Can’t you just, you know, add in like two more stitches in there or something?" he says. "That would give you 144. Then you could do an eight-stitch pattern. A couple more stitches won’t really change the size, right?”

“Er, you mean increase,” I say, blinking at my knitting stupidly and mentally smacking my forehead. “Um, yes. Right. Thanks, honey.”

Well, I’ll be. He doesn’t know knit from purl, but I guess he does listen sometimes!

Two M1s later (one in each colour), which would conveniently be hidden by the brim that folds up, my cheeks were somewhat pinker, but I now had 72 stitches in each colour, a nice, divisible number. My OCD was satisfied.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Fast forward a couple weeks. I have ripped out and restarted the double-knit hat. Once I was 6 or so inches in and had him try on the headband again with the brim flipped up (oh, but for the camera! There were balls of live yarn hanging off it and peach acrylic through the live stitches!), he reported that it was a little tighter than he liked. I was afraid of that.

I used a long-tail cast-on, and I had repeatedly started with too little yarn. With this method, you cast-on with the main colour 2x the number of stitches needed for one side of the hat, and then you divide the work into front and back by starting a second ball (of, say, the contrast colour) on the first round, purling every other stitch and keeping the yarns separate as you normally would in double-knitting.

By the third try at casting on long-tail, when I finally got 142 stitches on the needle and still ran out of yarn, frustration kicked in. I figured screw it, that should be good enough, I'll see how it goes, right? I also wasn't completely happy with how the long-tail cast on looked at the brim edge of the hat, which I plan for him to wear folded up. The cast-on edge stuck out strangely:

Using long-tail cast-on, a very visible cast-on edge

So I sucked it up and pulled it all out before I got any further. There is honour, I remind myself, in fighting valiantly but admitting defeat and readying oneself to do battle again another day. At least I now know what doesn't work.

One month on the needles, 7 inches of tube double-knit, 10 minutes to pull it all out and re-ball the yarn.

And then, three tries over five hours one evening last week to get it cast-on again the way I wanted. My brain and fingers could not work out a provisional cast-on to a spare cable, and that seemed like the best way to proceed, since I was going to pick up the stitches later, right? Bah, I finally got it on to some waste yarn. Guess I'll have to practice that.

This time, I did 84 stitches in the provisional cast-on with a needle one size larger than before. This should make it sufficiently bigger, but not monstrous, and I can come up with a 2, 6 or 12-stitch pattern to repeat.

Using provisional cast-on, the bottom edge runs smoothly into the contrast colour

The neat thing about using a provisional cast-on to start double-knit is that after a couple rows, you can fold the cast-on edge up and bring the live stitches that are on the waste yarn onto the working needle, picking up one between each stitch already on the needle. And suddenly, you have two-layer knitting and a beautifully smooth bottom edge with no obvious cast-on seam.

OK, so it's not a brand-new discovery or an Earth-shattering epiphany, but at least I'm pleased with myself, even if I did have to learn it the hard way!

When Knitters Frolic

2008-04-30T01:25:00.000-04:00

What I bought at the Knitter's Frolic last weekend. "Full disclosure", that's my motto.

- Niddy-noddy (tulipwood), shawl pin (holly) and brooch (black Africa Wood), a dozen tulipwood bottons, and five other buttons (from L to R: spalted maple, Africa Wood, tagua nut, deer antler and sea shell) from that wonderful Ontario woodworker who was next to The Purple Purl's booth. I got his card. He sells his buttons through Purple Purl. I had to stop, I could have gotten in so much trouble at that booth.
- 2-pitch mini-combs by Roger Hawkins (of Peterborough, Ontario), a 900 yd. cone of 2-ply white shetland (soon to be dyed in a cochineal bath) for weaving, and The Handweaver's Pattern Directory from Gemini Fibres. Oh wow, I love this book and I've barely dug into it. I look forward to putting my rigid heddle loom through its paces.
- Maroon and green "young adult mohair" locks from Wellington Farms (Elora, Ontario): I think I'll mix this in with some DorsetX eventually to spruce it up and keep it interesting.
- Sock Blockers from In the Loop, I think.
- Alpaca roving from the very nice couple from Quebec, enough to make a pair of socks if I spin it sock weight.
- Porceline pansy buttons, can't remember from where.

It was my first Knitter's Frolic. I only went for the shopping, and then primarily because I had arranged to pick up an order from Gemini Fibres there, but it was fun. The TTC strike allowed me to build up a little car-ma (HA!), and I got to meet LittleMousling and IndigoDragonfly, both from Ravelry.

I think the thing I liked the most about the frolic seeing so many local shops, farms and craftspeople. The selection was great. I hear they're planning to expand, and are looking for a larger venue in the future. I can't wait.

I also ran into a friend I hadn't seen for years - turning around to the sound of my name and seeing Nancy was the best part of the day. We first became acquainted through a cross-stitch BB many years ago (my email archive says June 1999, Nancy! Um, does that deserve a "woah"?), and there we both were at the Knitter's Frolic, buying spinning supplies! There was much co-enabling: I encouraged her with the spindles and roving at Gemini Fibres and Black Lamb, she did the same for me at the woodworker-button guy, and now I have a Niddy-Noddy that I wouldn't be without. Our pocketbooks are lighter, but it was good, solid enabling, the kind that stash hoards are built on. Because what are knitter/stitcher/spinning friends for?

Does the TTC feel the love yet?

2008-04-28T17:35:00.005-04:00

This is bound to offend everyone in one way or another, which is probably why it made me laugh.

I will only say this once: I do not dispute the transit workers' right to strike. But seriously - was there any reason the union couldn't have sat on the vote results and waited two more hours, until the end of subway service Friday night, to call the strike? And in so doing not stranded thousands of people downtown at midnight on the second warm Friday night of the year? Was there a really good reason why they absolutely had to shut down public transit with 90 minutes notice, considering that the "angry and irrational public" they were so concerned about facing wouldn't have known any better if they had just kept their collective mouths shut for 90 more minutes? Forget that they promised 48 hours notice. But 90 minutes? Announced at 10:30 pm, when people who get up early to work on a Saturday are already, wisely, asleep?

Any reason other than someone at the union must have lost their minds?

Didn't think so.

I have pokey sticks. Do you have pokey sticks?

2008-04-25T00:18:00.002-04:00

These skewer-like objects were in the far back corner of backyard. I like how they're arranged so... jauntily.

With this last week of actual spring weather, our backyard is at last alive. Let's give a warm welcome to the very first flowers brave enough to open:

I feel like they should get an award or something.

A few days later, the small tulip patch revealed itself to be...

...happily yellow!

The magnolia tree is flowering nicely, and should be in its full glory of pinkness in a couple days:

I don't care if the blooms go away in a week, I love it.

My mother-in-law has identified the two types of bushes along the sides of the yard. There is forsythia down both sides, and what she assures me are lilacs along the left, closest to the house. The forsythia is mostly open and it's pretty, I suppose, but I haven't completely decided if I like it or not.

The lilacs could be a problem. I'm one of those weird people who strongly dislike the smell of lilacs. I think this is because from age 7 to 13, I had to catch the schoolbus at Oh-My-God-O'Clock from the end of my neighbour's driveway in the shadow - and smell - of their untamable lilac bush (which is still there over 25 years later, I kid you not. Even my Dad's backhoe couldn't kill it. The thing is a beast). I personally relocated our bus stop two driveways up the road in my teens because of that thing. Lilacs remind me of early morning ickiness, long bus rides on bumpy roads during which I always became motion-sick, and having to constantly duck flying insects. The smell still makes me mildly queasy and I sneeze a lot.

Lilacs getting ready to bloom, with magnolia in the background. That bright yellow sticking out over there is one of the forsythia bushes.

However, we're leaving everything in place this year so that we can see what all is here before passing judgement. It's all lived here longer than we have, after all. If we decide to dig anything out eventually, I have people who will take them.

There are also still some unknowns. For instance, I'm not certain about the identity of the tree along the right back fence. It needs pruning and is beginning to do battle with the magnolia:

Any ideas?

There is also a small patch of daffodils and a couple other probably-flower things I'm not sure about. I'm about half done with the raking after several hours last weekend. The yard was covered by at least one season's layer of leaves and pine cones, among other things:

Evidence of a neighbourhood cat. I've already seen one, wonder if that's who got this bird?

I've also dug out five lengths of old copper pipe, a piece of siding, quite a bit of plastic and a rawhide dog bone. There are a lot of rocks, including what looks like an attempt at a stone pathway that is partly buried and partly removed. The previous owners' dog also liked to dig holes. There is little to no grass.

But there are pokey sticks. Daniel says if someone breaks into our backyard, we can at least poke them with pointy, rusted pieces of metal. Maybe I'll arrange them around the indigo vat, which I plan to store in the back corner of the yard, as far away from civilization as possible.

Overall, I think this yard thing is going to be fun.