Suddenly, September

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

*sigh*

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.

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.

On the moment of silence between the *squelch* and the *splat*

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.

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

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.

Comforts of (a) home

A perfect latte, with an iced tea chaser

I think our new house is finally starting to feel like home. Naturally, we haven't finished unpacking even the things we plan to unpack. I am utterly unable to do my own work here yet, since it's far too easy to become distracted. I'm also beginning to resent having to leave the house to go anywhere... like, you know, to school, in order to work. One of my friends recently suggested, "... I think you should teach it not to eat the humans. Badly trained houses can be as bad as libraries -- except libraries spit you out eventually." Wise words, I think. So, I'll work on that.

Add to this more misunderstandings over the last month with my supervisor, Lady S, and all this combines to mean that I haven't written a thing on Big D in months. Months. October, to be precise, when I worked frantically to pull together a conference presentation. My Next Written Thing for my committee is so late it's almost early again. Blah.

At least the cats have settled into a routine, even if I haven't. They quickly established their respective nap spots. Ford can most often be found on the bed, but when he's feeling sociable, he joins us in the living room and sleeps under the coffee table.

Apparently, this is comfortable. Who knew?

Tiger's favourite spot is on the top of the couch, where he has his very own Tiger-sized dent...


... although sometimes he prefers the afternoon sunbeams from the back door:

Yes, the chairs are there specifically for the cats

Our backyard is lovely, and I'm told it will be full of leaves and greenery, and possibly even flowers, come summer. The previous owners seem to have been outdoorsey-types and took good care of the yard. There is some debate about the nature of the tree in the middle of the back yard.


I say we have a well-pruned pussy willow tree. Daniel is suspicious. But there are fuzzy grey buds on it that look for all the world like pussy willow catkins. The buds were there where we moved in November and have never gone away, even in the coldest of cold. See?


So in the meantime, while I kill myself with NOT working, I try to enjoy the little things that make me feel more at home. Our espresso bar, with the Fully Automatic Espresso Machine of Much Awesomeness, for instance.


In the background there, you'll see that the previous green-thumbed owners also left us a potted orchid, which I thought was very sweet. There's an excellent chance I'll kill it, but I'm trying not to. At first, I was ever-paranoid that it was poisonous and the cats would try to eat it, or that it would die as soon as I poured water on it. In the weeks after we moved in, I tried to give it away more than once, but each person who said they would take it left without it. I've now resigned myself to having an orchid in the house. The cats are not at all interested in it, for now, and it's in a place where they don't jump up. If that changes, of course I'll rethink keeping it.

I think it's a phalaenopsis (I lost the little plastic thingy that said what it was). The two existing (pink/white) flowers finally fell off after several weeks, another bud appeared but never opened, and then it, too, went away. Am I supposed to do anything besides water it now and wait for it to hopefully flower again? Should I cut off the old flower spike now that it's finished this bloom cycle? Guess it's probably worth a trip to a nearby nursery for orchid food and advice.

I am so hopeless with plants. They require a patience that I lack - something people find amusing when they look at my hobbies (needlework, knitting, general wool-wrangling) and the type of research I do, all of which is highly detail-oriented and requires a lot of patience. But I assure you, growing plants requires a very different kind of patience - the kind where I must cede control over to nature. Keeping an orchid and having unknown things grow in my backyard continues to remind me that there are things I absolutely cannot control, which has been some comfort while I continue to stress out about my lack of work productivity.

At least there is wool. There is always wool. This wool is more of the neverending supply of Dorset cross, prepped by hand into combed top using my single-pitch Viking combs and a diz. I've slowly begun to wash the remaining two fleeces again, now that I can navigate the stairs to the basement and get to the laundry sink.


the newest spindle, a Forrester, walnut, no hook

Picture, thousand words, blahblahblah: The Knitting Spot

Crazy Aunt Purl has asked her blog readers to send her a picture of their knitting spot. I, needing little encouragement to procrastinate on the work I should have been doing for the last week and didn't, was more than happy to oblige. In fact, I took several pictures, which I now present here, with commentary.

SIDE NOTE: In Fall 1993, the beginning of my final year at Syracuse University, I took Intro to Archaeology as an elective (point of fact: Best Elective EVER). As our major project, we were asked to create an archaeological artifact list of our dorm room. In other words, imagine that in October 1993, a volcano erupted and buried Syracuse, New York. You are an archaeologist a few centuries later who has broken through the roof of a buried room, which has been left spectacularly intact buried under the volcanic ash. Give a complete artifact inventory, and speculate about the life of the room's occupant.

It's amazing what people can learn about YOU by studying your living space.

This is My Knitting Spot:



Tiger, asserting his Feline Right-By-Birth, moved over to my spot the moment I got up to take the picture. I habitually occupy the left side of the couch, because there's a little table there where I can put scissors, yarn and drink, and it's a good place for the OTT Lite. Stacks of magazines on the table are sorted and tossed every so often, or more likely when they fall over. Notice the wallet, cell phone (charging) and ever-present Starbucks Venti Caramel Macchiato peaking out from behind the OTT Lite. This is where I sit as soon as possible after coming home. I drop my things (backpack to the right) and check email (laptop computer on the coffee table). It's also where I work, knit, stitch, watch TV and spend most evenings.

Behind the couch (second-hand from an aunt, actually a love seat, biggest we can fit into tiny basement apartment), is the wall-o-cds. It extends off to the left. A little bit of the completely mirrored wall behind it can be seen poking out to the right of the CD racks, with the reflection of things off-screen. Moving further right, the "unwatched" DVD stack. I've mentioned our DVD and CD obsession before. So, photographic evidence now. Hanging on the side wall in the corner is another CD rack shaped like a lizard. Cute, gift from my mother, not a bit practical as far as volume goes, but I like it. We're actually thinking of packing away most of the CDs, now that the entire CD library has been ripped to the IPod.

The backpack is leaning against an old TV stand, which serves as another place to acumulate piles of papers and more junk. Underneath it we store some computer peripherals. You can also see the pet brushes that serve as my wool carders, until I can afford good ones. Box of little hand sanitizers on the table. Next to the backpack, on the floor, a pile of books with a new board game on top. Hanging on the wall above the TV stand is an old poster of this painting that I had up in my dorm room over a decade ago.

Wedged between the little end table and TV stand are the knitting WIP bag (lower, canvas) and the spinning WIP bag (upper, black with pattern). Two plastic bags perched on top contain this past weekend's spinning purchases, in full view so that the husband could see the evidence when he came home. I'll detail those in a later post, but they include alpaca and some hand-dyed silk hankies, woo!

Under the end table, photographic evidence of the other cat, Ford, in the form of shredded bits of paper. It's a hobby with him. I think that was once a pizza flyer. He hangs out under there sometimes.

Now then, no "knitting spot picture" is complete without a view of what one sees from the spot. So I give you My Knitting Spot View:



Ford is occupying his normal spot, front and centre, on the coffee table, and will surely kick both remotes off the table as soon as he stretches back out, as is his way. My computer on the left, husband's computer to the right. (He usually takes it to work with him, but today was a "running late" day.) We have a wireless hub in the back of the apartment, so both laptops can be online anywhere in the place.

Against the far wall, the television setup. More DVDs in front of it and on top of the left speaker. These are "what we're working through now." Also in front of the TV is the new MacMini, for which the television also serves as a monitor, and below it is the TV-tuner thing that allows it to take an incoming television signal and view it through the computer, and also record shows. This setup is intended to replace the aging VCR and DVD player, which are still there and will be sent away once we work all the bugs out of the new system. (The silver mouse on the coffee table is for the MacMini, the keyboard is under the coffee table.) There's also a PS2 under the TV (hiding behind my monitor), and you can see the end of our old telephone, which I insisted stay accessible for when the power goes out and the cordless phones don't work. Found that out the hard way.

To the right of the stereo (and the cat thing on top of it), PS2 games and Oh-my-God-More-DVDs. Help me, please, I'm being buried in them. Small pile of take-out menus under the Star Wars movies. To the far right, you can see the corner of my stash storage boxes (mostly cross stitch patterns and knitting supplies). Hanging above is an Animaniacs lithograph bought many years ago - a storyboard of the "I'm Cute" segment, signed by the voices of the Warners. The cats like to sleep on top of those boxes, in front of the print.

Hanging next to the Animaniacs print (from a light) is a dreamcatcher, hand-made by a local woman as part of a stash exchange. She didn't have stash to trade, and this is what she offered! It's neat, and by far my favourite trade ever. Above the TV us my finished and framed Teresa Wentzler "Unicorn". Better picture can be seen here.

A word on the wallpaper: Yes, I know it's nasty. It was here when we moved in over 12 years ago, and it will most certainly be here when we move out in a couple years. We couldn't be bothered to deal with it - we are renters, and I have an aversion to anything resembling construction projects and home improvement, being the daughter of a contractor (meaning: our house was always the last to be finished - the bathroom was under construction for years.)

To the left of the TV you can glimpse a corner of the door to the kitchen. Another Venti Starbuck's cup is clearly visible. I hope it's empty, otherwise, um, eew, gross. It's sad, this addiction.

Two final notes: The big white plastic bag below the stereo contains board games, used yesterday by my husband at a gathering and not yet packed away. I mention it because Tiger has a plastic fetish, and unsurprisingly chewed off a corner of the bag some time in the night, and then promptly puked it up with his breakfast this morning. On my bed. Yay, laundry time.

Finally, on the floor in the bottom right corner: that white and black thing is Fuzzytail, or Ford's Most Beloved Toy. It was his first toy when he was a kitten, over 11 years ago, a strip of rabbit fur that originally had a piece of wire inside (removed immediately so he wouldn't hurt himself) and a rubber band string to hang from a stick and make it bounce around (chewed through in first 5 minutes). Fuzzy tail is getting a little bald on the ends from much licking and playing, but he persists.

So there we go. Enlightening? Er, maybe not. But a good way to spend an afternoon? You betcha.

Finally, in the tradition of Crazy Aunt Purl, a cat picture with a caption:

The Obligatory Paper and Cat Update

Blogs are funny things. In my case, for instance, it has the ability to remind me how much I've done in the last year, while simultaneously and in technicolour detail demonstrating exactly how little I've done in the past month. Neat.

The paper is not yet written. In fact, the draft is only marginally longer than it was a month ago at this time. My EPAWS (Eternally Patient and Wonderful Supervisor) is still exactly that, and I'm not certain how she continues to respond to my weekly assurances of "it's going well" and "soon, I'll have a big section to you soon" with nothing but serene calm and "just keep working at it, as long as you're working, I'm not worried." And I am indeed working - except I write three sentences, reread them, highlight two of them and turn them into footnotes. This is the first time I've written a paper in Word, and I seem to be enamored with and have a newfound respect for Word's ability to handle footnotes with ease. The paper is probably 1/3 - 1/2 footnotes right now, which would be funny if it weren't completely exasperating. But I'm working. See, working, can't you tell?

There was a horrific paper SNAFU last weekend, though, which involved me putting the Word file in the trash and emptying it (accidentally! long story! everybody's nightmare!), some hyperventilating and tears, and the purchase of a file recovery software in record time. In the end, nothing major was lost save for a little time. All is now back to staus quo, and EPAWS and my husband are gently but persistently reminding me to back up more frequently. We've also discovered that when I'm panicking, I apparently develop an overwhelming need to compulsively check my email and delete evil spam messages:

Me (with increasing hysteria): "But can't I just check my email? Just once? I probably have, like, 30 spam messages sitting in there in the last 10 minutes, with more accumulating! Please?"

Husband (very patiently): "Dear, you know that any use of your computer right now decreases the chances of your Very Important Document being recovered intact. Here. Use my computer."

Me: *sniffle*

If only I could channel that obsessive-compulsive streak into a need to do dishes or vaccuum or scrub the bathroom spotless. But I digress.

I visited my family in PA the weekend before last. All I can say is, it's not really a visit home until the PA State Police have knocked on someone's door. Just the average family chaos, you know. That story has been filed away for telling at a later date.

Ford, my knitting model of the previous entry and normally fuzzy, snuggly grey ball of hugs and occasional Holy Terror, spent a reluctant day with the vet today, returning victorious (i.e. he repaid their 6x drawing of his blood with his drawing some of theirs). He is currently recovering from battle by napping on the coffee table between the two laptop computers so that the fans blow warm air simultaneously on his belly and bum.

Ford was diagnosed diabetic in late March. For two months now we've been valiantly struggling to get his insulin dose regulated with occasional morning blood tests, to no avail. Despite the fact that the vet originally felt he was "not a good candidate for a blood-glucose curve", I insisted. Doing a BGC involves a full day at the vet, where they administer his insulin and test his blood every two hours to see how his system is metabolizing it. But an accurate result involves the cat being calm, relaxed and eating normally throughout the day, which are only three of the long list of things that Ford will not, under any circumstances, do while at the vet.

I ended up going over at mid-day at their request to see if I could get him to eat. He did, but only once he was out of the cage and allowed to roam free in a room, and after I pulled out his favourite china plate (yes, really) and a can of moist food. I also had to help them get him in and out of the cage while I was there, because he was, in their words, "Not very happy with us right now". That is vet-code speak for much hissing and growling and swiping with claws.

The vet is glad we did it, though, because we learned:
1) that the insulin is working fine (insulin resistance was a concern)
2) his urine always reads high for glucose even when his blood sugar is in the normal range or even a little low (this can sometimes happen, and means that urine tests aren't a very good indicator of how well he's regulated)
3) we might be able to decrease his dose (YAY!) if we can control his diet better (*sigh*), and
4) that his claws are, indeed, still very sharp (he got the poor vet pretty good on the arm, hazard of the job, I guess).

Now that he's home, he's reverted to his normally angelic, snuggly, hungry self. He gave me no problems for his evening insulin shot, he chased and was chased by Tiger for a bit, and he later feigned perfect innocence when he kicked a mug of water off the coffee table while "stretching". The mug was followed by a nearby magazine, which landed in the water, followed by a half-dozen CDs, which didn't. Although I'm pretty sure he was aiming for the water. Dat's my boy.

It has not escaped our attention that his name - unsurprisingly inspired by Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - can also be used as an acronym for Force Of Random Destruction.

Actually, it's been a bad couple of months for us at the vet. Or, good, if you're the vet, because I think we're contributing considerably to their new equipment upgrades. Tiger (age nearly 13) started limping sometime in late April. When it hadn't gotten any better by last week, I loaded him up and took him over. He was treated to much prodding and some x-rays, with the conclusion being that he has a touch of arthritis in his left rear ankle. Some anti-inflammatory meds later, and he's doing much better, though he'll probably have to continue to use it sparingly for his remaining years. They LOVE him at the vet. They can poke and prod him to their heart's content and he never complains or makes a sound. They didn't even have to sedate him to get him to hold still enough for x-rays. What a trooper. I will have to get some pictures of him up here soon.

So, this has turned into a cat post. And just like that, it's June. See? Blogs are funny things.