The luck just outside our door

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

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*

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.

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"

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

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

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 henchmenTAs, 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.

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

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)

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

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*

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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...

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.