Historic Stitcher

OK, so I've been busy

2012-02-09T12:53:00.002-05:00

I bought a house.

And if you've never fallen down that rabbit-hole, I can tell you it's not easy, especially in the current economy. It's true - the banks don't want to lend money. I had to jump through some crazy hoops to get a house, and I didn't manage it until I'd seen dozens and dozens of houses, made offers on six, and started the mortgage process on three of them.

Two deals fell through due to stupid reasons within the banks. The house I bought was severly under-appraised, and we had to re-negotiate. And I had to find extra cash to bridge the gap.

The result?

A home. And a trashed credit score.

Yup, my credit score dropped over 130 points due to "too many requests in previous 12 months". Of course there were too many checks - the bank did the checking!

Crap. Good thing I don't need to buy anything big right now!

Chastized

2011-12-26T20:14:00.002-05:00

I have been informed that without my blogging, my neighbor's daughter has no clue what her parents are up to. Not that I blog about them, but apparently she is living vicariously through my blog and watching her parents' house in the background of my pictures.

Really, though, I have been so busy that I can't see straight.

I took a new job in March and have been driving an hour each way since then for work. My old job was disappearing, as the Federal facility I was working in was forced to close down all laboratory operations. I cleaned out, closed, and mothballed every lab under my control before I left, leaving significant resources to rot in labs that the government decided were no longer necessary.

My new job keeps me busy - I'm now supervising a small staff of trace analysts and a mass spectromoter. I am now a manager of my old self, pluralized. Which means I am on call 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, even when I'm on vacation or sick or whatever. It was incredibly challenging getting into the new job, but I'm enjoying it.

I bought a new car in June. My poor old 1998 minivan couldn't take the 110 mile per day beating, so I bought a super-safe, very efficient, comfortable little car. With Bluetooth, so I can make my phone calls while driving without ever picking up, looking at, or touching my phone. It all goes right through the dash on the car.

In August I went to Allegan again, with friends from downriver. We had a lovely time - we went on Friday, not on rainy Saturday. I was sick all the way home, though, from the wonderful seafood course of the fabulous French meal the night before. I guess I still have that shellfish allergy...

In September my Little Boy went into Middle School. He's actually doing much better than in elementary school. I chalk it up to a support staff that knows him well, and four minutes in between classes to run around and be loud.

In October we finally got my tiny little boat in the water. We sailed it all of twice before it was time to take it out for the winter. The shrouds needed shortened and it took weeks, leaving my little boat sitting mast-less in the water.

In November we started working on the Boar's Head Festival, a local all-churches madrigal/Christmas pageant that only happens every four (or five) years. I blogged about it taking over my house last time, and it once again consumed house, home, and life. And yet we love it.

The day after Thanksgiving brought daily Boar's Head work, and that went solid through, every day of the week, until two weeks before Christmas. The next week was spent in a panic that Christmas was only two weeks away, and the last week was spent doing everything that should have been done in the previous two months.

Merry Christmas!

I'm back!

2010 Wrap-up, part 1

2011-01-03T19:26:00.006-05:00

While I'm putting together my first-ever crafting year in review photo post, I thought I'd distract you with some pictures of other things from the end of 2010.

Finally, someone complained about tghe lack of social events on Christmas Eve morning, and we re-instated the Albionite Christmas Eve Brunch, the social gathering that was created some 10(!?) years ago when a group of friends from college figured out that the only window of opportunity not over-scheduled by our parents while we were home for the holidays was the morning of Christmas Eve. It's always been a hit-or-miss thing, and some years was completely forgone.

It took about six different tries to get it right, but we have one group shot, as yet unedited, that shows all of us who attended this year. I can't believe how big the kids are getting!

The Christmas towels weren't hemmed yet (I got that done in the afternoon) but they were packed up and pretty by Christmas morning. Always with the help... (they're sweet, and they work for treats!)The wine wasn't done yet (and still isn't!) so I bought nice chocolate instead. I have gotten no complaints about the substitution. Which makes me wonder if the wine is worth the effort after all?

I think I'm finally starting to get the hang of my new camera! Every once in a while I actually get a shot that I'm not embarrassed to admit I took myself...

And then I get doozies like this one:

I have a whole series of shots, trying to get something for my sister to put on her Christmas card where both kids are, at a minimum, pretending to look in the same direction. So not happening. It is infinitely much easier to get my "helpers" to look in the same direction.

Nope. One or the other.

And of course, Kiddo turned 11 yesterday.Really?

Wow.

Countdown and Challenges

2010-12-22T16:32:00.002-05:00

It's been... difficult... this week, trying to get ready for the holidays. The kids were fabulous, and helped me get the house in order on Saturday so we could put up the tree and decorate for Christmas in between going to a Penance service at 11am and my/Little Brother's combined birthday dinner that evening.

About 4:30, when the tree was up but not decorated or lighted, I decided it was time to head over the Mom's for dinner. That was about when the police cars showed up. And stopped in front of our yard.

One look out the window sent me flying out the door in my slippers - the neighbors on my west, who have been there for 22 years, I've watched their kids grow up, they watched us, etc. - their carriage house from 1910 was on fire.

I stood in the road with Mrs. Neighbor, watching the flames, and watching her husband move cars that were parked in front of the carriage house. By the time he got them moved, the flames were already touching the porch roof.

Over the next hour, we watched the progression as the carriage house burned completely and the fire got into the eaves and walls of the house. We have a fabulous fire department, and they pulled out all the tricks and gear, but it took 6 hours to put it out, the majority of which I watched with Mrs. N from my bedroom.

I don't feel like it's my place to show you the carnage. It's too... personal. For everyone. Despite the fact that random people feel comfortable parking in the driveway and blatently taking gawker-pictures. I haven't even felt comfortable blogging it until some of the dust settled.

The community has been fabulous, and much has been offered. They stayed with my parents overnight the first night, and moved to a hotel after that, as their grown kids started to trickle into town. We're all still a little (or a lot) in shock, and not much appears to be salvageable.

Thank God no one was hurt. Things are just that - things - and can be replaced. I've been helping to take pictures of the damaged property so they can list what they owned for insurance to cover it. It's tedious, difficult, dirty, and heartbreaking.

So do yourself, and your family, a favor this holiday season, whatever holiday you celebrate: go around your home and take pictures of everything. Every bookshelf in enough detail to read the titles, every drawer pulled open to show the contents, every closet laid out to show the clothes. Open your cupboards and take pictures of the dishes and appliances, snap a pic of the bottom of a plate to show the make if they're worth anything. Go snap a picture of your CD collection, the serial number on your computer, the label on your TV...whatever you own.

Don't tell me this isn't important, that it's too hard, that you have enough to do without adding this. If we had tons of time I would tell you to make written lists of all the information, but we don't. We're busy. So go take a hundred, two hundred pictures, whatever it takes. It shouldn't take more than an hour, especially if you have help.

Then write it all the a CD, or to a thumbdrive, or a DVD, or an external drive...and give it away. Take it to work, send it to your parents' house, your best friend's house, a safe deposit box, whatever. Get it out of your house. Because it could have been you. It could have been me. it happens, and it happens far more often this time of year, believe it or not.

And I suppose I don't need to remind you to make sure a copy of your home or renter's insurance is with those pictures, do I?

What do you mean you don't have renter's insurance??? If you're renting, you need it. It's really inexpensive, and can make all the difference in your world, should you need it. Go on. Do it. Now.

So we have two days till Christmas, and nothing is wrapped. I'm not fretting (yet), but I am getting a little antsy about it. I think I have a little better perspective on it than I normally do.

So when I was going to work yesterday morning, and I was late, and I had to go home to retrieve things I had forgotten I was getting irritated and grumpy. And I pulled onto the road by the river and immediately had to pull into the church parking lot and stare at the river.

The morning colors were glorious, and I stood there, in the cold, and took pictures of the amazing sunrise until the color faded again and I was really and truly late for work.

And I was OK with that.

Go. Take pictures.

Be safe.

search terms

2010-12-17T09:07:00.002-05:00

The most popular search term that gets people to my blog, after historic stitcher, is knitting pins.

Kind of makes sense. So how did this person land on my blog????

project sin open up them legs blogspot

December 17th?? Really?????

2010-12-17T08:19:00.003-05:00

I'm a little...flabbergasted.

I knew I'd lost this entire week.

It had rained Saturday night, snowed all day Sunday, and then dropped to negative temps Sunday night. Wayne County, Michigan is apparently too broke to send out more than four snowplows for the county, so we didn't see a plow until Wednesday.

Sunday afternoon, in the middle of the blizzard conditions, I had to drive 30 miles (each way) to pick up the Kiddo at the halfway point between my house and his dad's. Two and a half hours later, I was home. Sunday night was a good time to stay home and light a fire in the fireplace.

Monday was a snow day for the kids. By the time I got up, checked the computer, answered 3 phone calls, and used the bathroom I wasn't sleepy anymore. And it was only 6am. So I made some coffee and a pan of breakfast bars, and caught up on some online reading. And called in to work for a spontaneous vacation day. There was no way I was going to get the car out of the 6" of snow and ice in my huge-long driveway and drag my butt to work in 15F while the kids sleep and play!

So I managed to finish the Christmas towels and cut them off the loom, finish spinning the brown fluff into singles from an unknown breed of sheep (I think there's a pound of it! What am I going to do with a POUND of plain, brown, slightly itchy, unknown-type yarn????), cook real food for supper, clear the driveway (it was COLD!!!), start the clarifying of the Christmas wine, and get some knitting done. I did NOT clean the house, do all the laundry, change the sheets, or any of that other "useful" stuff others might have prioritized for an extra Saturday.

And Tuesday morning, at 2:15am, I woke up to a screaming migraine. Of the kind I haven't had in years. By three am I was hugging the toilet. I passed out around 4, overslept the alarm, and got the kids up with 20 minutes to get out the door. We made it, and I dropped them at their respective schools and drove straight to the chiropractor.

Disclaimer here: I love my chiropractors. They keep me functioning when no one else could. (About 8 years ago I got rear-ended by a pair of semi-trucks, and my neck has been..problematic...ever since. I get massive migraines, got sent to neurologists, CAT scans, you name it, and no one could stop them. Except my chiropractors. I don't trust all of them out there, but I adore mine!)

An hour later I could see out my right eye again. I even went to work for the rest of the day, (which prompted a woman at work who gets migraines that knock her out for 3 days at a time to consider going to a chiro) and got better as the day went on.

Needless to say, I've been playing catch-up all week. My neck is still touchy, there's too much to do at work, and home is a little behind, too. We have Christmas cookies to make, a house to decorate, a tree to put up, gifts to wrap, gifts to make, and I have a boatload of towels to hem. Oh yeah, and the wine needs racked for clarifying, but it's so close to Christmas that I'm starting to worry that it won't be bottled before the 25th!

Oh, and don't forget the laundry, housecleaning, and sheet-changing that I didn't do on Monday. It needs done, too.

Maybe this is why I feel an overwhelming urge to sit in my rocker and spin pretty wool into yarn I don't have time to knit...

2010-11-29T19:38:00.004-05:00

I should have known it wouldn't last forever. Itt was too good to be true. She is 17, after all.

What was I thinking? A teenage girl in my house???

It started out, and she was all sweetness and light. A darling.

But there were signs...

Then she started hanging with a different crowd, dressing differently, and wearing too much makeup.And her clothing! My goodness!! My mother would have never let me out of the house like that! And I didn't let her, either! She changed clothes after leaving the house!! I shudder to think of it!

But now it's gone a little too far. I'm going to have to put a stop to this! My son should not have to feel like he needs to carry garlic and skewers around with him!

I miss working in theatre!

Random Thursday

2010-11-18T08:56:00.002-05:00

I'm a little behind on posting, as you may have noticed. Not because I haven't been busy, but because I haven't had any good pictures to share.

I give up - they just aren't happening this week. Instead, you get randomness.

1. A post on Unclutterer caught my eye this morning: the causes of clutter. I most definitely fall into the third category, with aspects of the first and second compounding it. I'm making progress still, and working through my hyper-sentimentality and Depression-era "need" to hang onto anything that might be useful someday.

2. I culled books last weekend. I started with the pile next to my rocking chair, and moved on from there to the living room bookshelves, the bedroom bookshelf, and some of the books in the basement. At the end of the day, the kids hauled 4 boxes of books out of the house to the van and one to the car to be returned to Mom. I am proud to say that all our books currently fit onto shelves and there is NO overflow onto the floor anymore!

3. I still can't find the surface of the dining room table on a daily basis.

4. Number 3 didn't stop me from bringing the mid-gauge knitting machine up from the basement to work on a panel-knit blanket while the kids are doing their homework in the evenings.

5. The blanket was going great (after the 3rd cast-on) until the last few rows. Now it drops lots of stitches each time I try to knit a row and I spend the next hour fixing all the dropped stitches. I think I need more weight on the knitting.

6. I can't find all my knitting weights. They're lost in the knitting-machine-clutter in the basement.

7. If I can't find more weights soon, then the machine in the living room has become clutter. Crap.

8. Thanks to everyone for your recent comments. I wish I could email each of you in response, but Blogger doesn't let me. And I feel like if I answer you in the comments, you'll never see it. Suggestions???

9. I'm a little stressed this week. My other half at work, aka the Other Chemist, has put in his resignation. I'm trying to rapidly assimilate all his duties into my schedule.

10. Number 9 seems to be working. I find that kind of frightening.

11. I'm off work tomorrow for my Flex Friday (I work 9 hour days, then get to be off every other Friday). I plan to ruthlessly cull in the basement where the crafty stuff is. Now that the excess yarn is out of the way, I have more shelves and bins to organize into.

12. I'm not sure if I'm looking forward to this.

13. The Russian student who joined our family for the academic year got cast in the school play: Dracula. It opens tonight. She's more than a little tired.

14. I think I'm letting steam off by starting new knitting projects. Hence the machine in my living room.

15. I need to stop now and get on with my day.

Thanks for visiting!!

Stash Diving and Decluttering

2010-11-08T13:16:00.004-05:00

I suffer from a wonderful schedule in which I am off on every other Friday. For the last year or so I have been using that lone day to accomplish the majority of my sorting, cleaning, and decluttering.

It's a day off work, but not a day of not working.

Whatever.

This last Friday was a very busy day. I started off with the resolve to photograph all the yarns I don't want to keep *gasp* and get them listed on Ravelry. For the dual purpose of getting them out of the house and of getting a little cash in my pocket.

I started culling, and anything that I could not think of a reasonable project, within a reasonable amount of time (which for the purposes of this exercise was about 15 seconds!) that I wanted to make, then it went in the To-Go pile.

I was totally ignoring brand names, what I paid for it, what I meant it to be...if I didn't want to cast on with it now, it went. I mean, really - why did I buy aran weight cotton in my colors? Because I really want to wear a heavy summer sweater in Michigan?? Two sweaters' worth?? Super bulky pink yarn? So I can bury a baby in a sweater that weighs more than she does? I've made some pretty poor buying decisions, and I've been hanging onto the results of binge-shopping for far too long.

In about 45 minutes I had ruthlessly tossed my entire yarn stash! I pulled out bins and boxes and bags from all corners of the basement, as I had already migrated all the yarn to the basement.

I was left with four plastic bins of yarn to keep, and an enormous pile of yarn I didn't really care about.

Because for me, it really was a form of hoarding.

And when I was done, and had neatly packed the yarn I was keeping into tidy bins by weight, I phoned Jofran to gloat.

And she was duly proud of me.

And promptly sold the entire lot to a new knitter.

How much yarn are we talking? This much:

Four normal-sized garbage bags, one enormous garbage bag full of sock yarn, and a box of random cones.

It filled the trunk of the Jetta and the back seat.

I drove it all to Dearborn and left behind a huge weight from my shoulders and a very overwhelmed new knitter (who has since, I understand, sold off parts of the stash that she doesn't plan to use and recouped some of her own investment - smart woman!!)

I felt so free, so light, so happy to be getting rid of all that...clutter... from my life, I wasn't even upset about selling it at a fraction of it's value. Granted, I could have listed it all on Ravelry, and sold it off in tiny increments, running to the post office daily for a few weeks, sorting through the piles daily, and constantly monitoring my messages, and I would have made back close to 75% of my investment.

And driven myself crazy in the process. And I would still have some of it hanging around afterwards.

Instead, I dropped the whole pile into the lap of an ecstatic woman who would not have bought herself such nice yarn in a yarn shop, and nowhere near the price she would have paid.

And I'm happy with that.

For me, buying the yarn was an experience. Kind of like going to the movies, or getting a massage, it was something I enjoyed at the time, and I was glad to pay for that experience. I enjoyed it, I loved the yarn (at some point), and I paid for experience of owning it. It is no longer an asset to me. It had become clutter, and was sucking the life and energy out of me, along with all the other crap in the house and garage that I haven't gotten to getting rid of yet. I was able to part with it so easily because the yarn itself no longer held any value for me.

I have no regrets about getting rid of it in this way.

Well, I guess I do have one. I feel badly for the sweetheart I sold it to - she later had a bit of a panic-attack of the what-did-I-just-do variety.

Later that evening I felt completely guilt-free while winding this lovely cake of Schafer Anne in preparation for a new project .

And I am left with one dilemma - what in the world do I do with this?

For scale, those are 10" tiles on the floor.

I do have limits on what I'll dump on unsuspecting new knitters - so this bag remained behind.

100% wool, mega-bulky yarn in natural sheepy colors, some in dreadlocks.

Pay the shipping, and you can have the whole bag!

Quick...

2010-10-26T18:07:00.002-04:00

Where in the world did this come from???

The girl? Or the scarf??

If you guessed Russia, you'd be right on both counts.

One came for the school year, and one was sent as a gift.
Both are beautiful, and both are precious.

Thank you, Olga and Sergei, for both of them.

Airing my laundry

2010-10-25T10:52:00.004-04:00

So the other weekend we decided to take a rather spontaneous trip to Amish-country, Ohio. It was to be a cultural experience for our exchange student and a shopping trip for me. We ended up at Lehman's, where I bought several desperately needed items for the house: an outdoor umbrella-style laundry line, a folding indoor laundry rack, and a grain mill.

OK, so the last one wasn't so desperately needed. It was just really, really wanted.

That, and the butter bell, which I can totally justify for keeping the butter fresh and free of cat-tongue marks. Not that that happens. Only once in a while. But definately enough to justify a butter bell.

So enough of that.

I've been putting the clothes-dryer to good use. Well, both of them. It's been just enough rainy here to mostly-dry the clothes and towels outside, but just enough that I have to finish them in the house on the rack (sounds so...torturous, doesn't it?).

The only issue I had was mounting the umbrella-dryer. It's supposed to be removeable, so it has a plastic pipe that you have to cement into the ground and then you can lift the umbrella out and put it away when you don't need it, and even mow over the sopt, so you don't ever have to wee-whack there. Problem was the cementing and the hole-digging. The laundry needs done now, not later when the cement is dry!

Lucky for me, the pole is the same diameter as the umbrella in the middle of my patio table (which is solid cement and takes three grown people to move in two parts).

So my laundry has been hanging all weekend over the cement benches of my patio set. Looks funky, and more than a little ghetto, but the laundry is dry.

On the other side of it, I haven't used my appliance-the-dryer since late September. Liza doesn't trust it, and I hang dry most all my clothes anyway so I don't look like I did in seventh grade when I grew so fast all my pants hems were ankle-height or higher...

End of flashback.

I'm also participating in Crunchy Chicken's Hang 'Em Dry challenge, and am starting to think I might not go back to using the dryer much after October is over. I like the feel and the smell of line-dried clothes too much.

Oh, and even though you didn't ask, here's a pic of my new niece at one day old.

I was shocked - she doesn't even look like a prune! I thought all newborns were purple, wrinkled, and puffy.

And I love the little purple bow pasted to her head. Totally made me laugh!

(It's OK - it's ultrasound gel pasting it there - completely water-soluble.)

Weekend Creativity

2010-10-12T18:57:00.004-04:00

This was aa lovely, (BUSY) long weekend, thank you Mr. Columbus. I saw my new niece, Sydney, at one day old. Went sailing for what might be the last time this year. Cleaned the basement (and oh, did it need it!). I filled the outside trash can, which we never do, and filled two recycle bins, and then filled the back of the van with stuff to drop off at Salvation Army. I still have too much stuff and yarn, but I'm getting there.

And am making plans to start giving some of it away to you guys.

Oh, and I finished a batch of books I'd been working on.

The big blue one, with the nuclear plant title is one that I gutted and refilled. First time I ever tried it, and while there are things I'll do differently next time I work with a pre-used case, I really like it and it makes me smile. It's about 6.5" by 10" tall and has 5 signatures, which totally fill the casing.

The brown square one is covered in bookcloth, and measures 6.5" by 6.5", with three signatures. Both the brown and the blue are filled with Fabriano Artistico watercolor paper that I found on clearance for only $1 a sheet! I bought all they had - 11 sheets . It was a slightly wasteful project, as I now have 5" wide strips of Fabriano with the grain running in the wrong direction for binding books, unless they're really tall and narrow! But I have 11 of them, and I have to be wasteful!

The two smaller square books are filled with Arches Textwove paper. I've never tried it before, and thought I'd give it a go. These two little books made full use of five sheets, each four signatures thick. The one with brown corners is covered in a marbled-look thick art paper I had hanging around, and the corners are scraps of brown bookcloth. The other is another pretty art paper I had in the studio (ok, humor me, it's my now-clean basement!) with imitation bookbinding leather for a spine accent.

Al four books have endpapers cut from a huge map of Lake Michigan that was in the recycle bin at work. I pulled about 2 dozen different maps of the Great Lakes out of the bin and have had them rolled up and tucked away, waiting for the right project.

My motivation in getting these books bound and ready was that I was stalling in my current sketchbook and the poor thing was languishing. I wasn't drawing! I wasn't writing! And when I finally asked myself why I wasn't drawing or writing, I realized it was mainly because I didn't have my next book picked out and ready.

Now I do.

Which one do you think I chose for my next book?

A Little Bit of Insight

2010-10-04T13:35:00.002-04:00

Ever have one of those moments when you suddenly comprehend something that seemed, previously, to be "one of those things" that you would never understand?

My Calculus Epiphany comes to mind - the day, sitting in my kitchen in a rental unit in Bloomington, Indiana, talking on the phone to my then-boyfriend, and trying to do my homework. I was thinking out loud - essentially speaking my thoughts into the phone so he could help me figure out where my reasoning was wrong - and I was working through one of those long derivatives of sin sin sin cos sin and the answer is ten times longer than the problem. And as I worked through the problem, I started getting more and more excited and the pieces of the problem suddenly started looking more and more like a puzzle instead of a problem and next thing I knew, I got it right. And it was like a light going on, like the sky opened up and poured understanding on me, the angels were singing a heavenly chorus...I understood calculus!!!!!

And I fell in love with math that day.

I had another last night. But the sky didn't open up or anything drastic like that. It just kind of lightened the personal monkey on my back.

Why do I hang onto things I know I'll never use? Or things that I might need someday? Why do I live and fight a life of clutter, while others far more easily part with belongings as easily as kicking off their shoes after a long day of work?

I have a pretty full house right now, and it's wonderful. Not the clutter part, but the company and family. I have an exchange student living with us for the academic year, and that changed the dynamic of our little household quite a lot. Kiddo has been adjusting well, and I'm reminded every day of why I never wanted to have an only child but wanted a big family...

Anyway, Saturday brought us the semi-annual visit of my cousin Scott, who has played the role of Older Brother for me for the last 25 years or so. We potty-trained together when we were tots, played Dungeons & Dragons together when we were not-quite teenagers (the term "tween" hadn't been invented yet), double-dated as teenagers, visited each other in college, and have generally relied on each other to be a voice of reason through all the idiotic (and saner) decisions we've made through the years. Totally ignoring the fact that we might not be any saner or reasonable than the other on any given topic...

Last night we were sitting around the dining room table, and Scott made a comment about how we were so opposite in our approach to material possessions, as he is definitely on the lighter side of encumbrances.

He travels the world with a single suitcase and a backpack/computer bag.
And can fit everything else (that he really doesn't need but keeps for enjoyment when he's in the States) in a single truck.

I have an overstuffed house with a basement that defies empty space and overflows into the garage (in which I can't park my van because of all the stuff) and constantly struggle with purging clutter and chaos.

And it dawned on me later that night, as the comparison kept worrying at the back of my mind - how did this happen??

I've been coming to the realization that I started holding onto things when we started moving frequently.

My parents were getting divorced, and Mom did everything she could to keep us safe and warm and comfortable, and she did a really great job of that. We were loved, and we knew it. What we didn't have was stability of home and school. We moved a lot, and I ended up changing schools nine times before I graduated from highschool, some by choice, and some by moving. (Though through a strange twist of fate I ended up graduating with the same kids I'd gone to kindergarten with, and hadn't seen for ten years.)

I found it extremely difficult to keep up friendships without the common ground of school, and all of my long-distance friendships fizzled out shortly after I moved away. It was an impermanent lifestyle, and I started to cling to everything that reminded me of my lost friends, plans, and possibilities.

Scott grew up in a small town, with the same kids, the same cousins living in the same houses, the same people working the same jobs, for years on end. He hated it. He always wanted to leave and travel. And he quickly shed the few things he owned almost as soon as he left, and hasn't accumulated a pile of junk since.

Whereas I hoarded memories of lost friendships and opportunities, he was glad to shake the dust from his boots and move on. And I think we're still working under the same thought processes we developed as kids.

I can't possibly be on the far side of 35 - the 12-year-old me is still hoarding dolls!

So what does this mean for me? I'm not sure. I've been living in this house now for just over four years, in this community for just over six. This is the longest I've stayed in one place since....I don't remember. We were in Marine City for about four years, so that comes close. And we moved into this house when Mom got re-married right before my senior year of highschool, so while Mom was here for a long time, I never really lived here for long until after she moved out and we moved in. My bedroom was in the same place, but I was away at school. A few years ago I was getting antsy to move on - I don't know how to be a long-term resident of any place! - but we stayed. And I'm glad. I'm starting to feel settled, like I have a sort of permanence here, and I'm starting to feel more comfortable shedding belongings.

Kind of amazing I never noticed it before, isn't it?

I guess the 12 year old simply needed a place to call home for the long-term before she could let go of the dolls.

Questionable Intentions

2010-09-27T07:39:00.002-04:00

So right after I wrote the last post I was struck down with the latest plague. Whatever coughing/sinus/sore throat/evil virus that has been making the rounds came home to roost and punish me for my optimism.

I didn't even work full days after that, but went home sick every day.

I'm still a little rough, but I can function again.

So.

Creativity.

I've been fighting some really odd feelings lately. I'm kind of struggling to figure out what is happening to me, but I feel a need...almost compelling... to finish my incomplete knits.

Shocking, I know.

I've always been an at-leat-three-projects kind of girl: a sock for my purse, a big project to keep plugging away at, and a complicated something-or-other, like lace, to stretch myself with. We won't discuss how many projects I have on the needles right now, but Ravelry puts it at about 8.

But I also finished a pair of socks this weekend that never even got put into Ravelry to start with.

So last spring I swatched with handspun for a sweater I want to make for myself. It languished all summer, and I dug it out over the weekend. I decided to swatch again, with smaller needles, and like the fabric better, and then put it away and pulled out an unfinished sweater and knit on it all evening!!!!!

Tell me: how many projects do you have on the go at once? What's the most you've ever had going? Or are you a project-monogamy kind of person?

I missed you

2010-09-21T10:34:00.004-04:00

Did you miss me?

For quite a while this summer I was toying with the thought of dropping blogging altogether. I've found that I keep my journals less when I'm blogging from the heart. And honestly? I can't pass a blog onto my great-grandchildren in the same way I can my journals.

First diary, first entry, the beginning of a journey!

I've been keeping journals since my sixth birthday when I received a Diary (with a little lock and key) for my birthday. The format, style, and contents have changed over the years (I no longer start each entry with "Dear Diary"!) but they have remained a constant in my life. They are so important that my mother sat down with me a few years ago, out on the patio, and asked me what she should do with them if I die before her.

I keep them all in a pile, tucked away where no one will stumble on them and start reading. I seldom go back and read them myself, but when I do, it's a huge deal. Last time I read through them, first entry to last, was...almost 10 years ago. It took me over two days of reading, at least 14 hours a day.

There's something about handwriting that brings me back to the moment I wrote it in a way that typing doesn't. I think it makes the writing richer, as the handwriting contributes to the communication of the emotion in the words. (That's my theory, and I'm stitcking to it!)

A small selection of the journals I've filled over the years...

And I've written sporadically and with less passion in the last few years.

Since I started blogging.

But now I miss you.

What to do??

I'm feeling more inspired, more crafty, lately. Whether it's the onset of autumn or a lifting of the massive load of crap I deal with regularly, I can't say. But I'm feeling a desire to make my environment more beautiful, to sew again, to be creative. And those are things that don't journal well.

So I'm going to give the blog one more go - and start sharing this journey into creativity and crafting that I'm feeling. Won't you join me?

May You Live in Interesting Times

2010-07-18T21:31:00.004-04:00

This evening, before I had a chance to think about what was for supper, a storm rolled in. I ran around the house mostly-closing windows, keeping the air flow but making sure the water wasn't coming in. The phone went out, then the power, but neither is that unusual around here in a storm.

The wind kicked up a little more, and I closed the patio doors and sent Kiddo upstairs to close the windows all the way.

It was while I was standing in the kitchen reaching for the window when I realized that the rain was horizontal. I looked toward the dining room and saw the pine tree at a 45 degree angle and started yelling for Kiddo to go to the basement NOW!!!

We stood around in the dark talking about what was happening and listening to the wild whistling outside. Yes, it was whistling. Nearly shrieking. Weird. did NOT sound like any tornado I've ever heard in Indiana (and I've seen and heard them). This was definitely a straight-line wind thing.

In a few moments it was over. It got quiet. The rain stopped.

I wandered outside. Plants and lawn chairs all over the driveway, garden straw scattered around, didn't look that bad. At first. Then I started walking around...

A huge chunk of the ancient mulberry in the front yard - gone.

It was blocking part of the road.

But the church next door lost more trees, even one that closed the road entirely.
My neighbor with a chain saw came and took care of some of the tree for me, and the local police and fire were here rather quickly - within 15 minutes. The gawkers were here first, though. The were driving through the mess before I was even out of the house! How do they DO that??? How do they KNOW?

The storm brought out all the neighbors, and we laughing and comparing stories and introducing ourselves to anyone we didn't know. We decided this was not the best way to have a block party!

In the middle of all this, Kiddo came running over to me, hollering, "Mom! Come quick! You have to see this!! It's important!!!!"

This boat, all 1400 pounds of fiberglass of it, cartwheeled across the yard and landed up against the fence.
"Smile, Mom!"

Change in Winds

2010-07-08T08:13:00.004-04:00

I've been feeling the winds, and there's a change in the air. As happens when you're sailing, changing winds make the boat bounce around a bit and the water gets choppy, but then the wind picks up again and if you're ready, you can set your sails for the new direction and cruise. (And yes, that's the boat I hang out on a lot. No, I'm not in that picture. It's not that easy too get good pictures of your own boat- you're usually on it!)

Life is changing, and I'm pretty sure I like the direction the winds are heading. I'm still simplifying and getting rid of stuff (and getting ready to load the Etsy shop with pounds of hand-dyed fiber, set up a destash on Ravelry again, and list another pile of books on Amazon) and organizing what's left, including my time.

And time has suddenly become very important to me. Both my parents aer finally retired, and having watched Mom fight all those years, working long hours and overtime, to finally retire in time to frantically biks all over the country "before she gets old", and watching young cousins battle with breast cancers, and friends lose houses to foreclosure...well, I don't want to walk that path.

I'll be debt-free this fall. Finally. My student loans were paid off last January, and I've been paying over $700 each month toward debt reduction. I have only a few more payments on the big consolidation loan, then a few random smaller debts that need paid, and I will be in the Black.

And I think, after I invest a bunch of the excess previously-debt-payment in my retirement finds, I think I'm going to try to back off the work life and invest in my private life. I have a son to raise, and a million things on my to-do list (ok, I'll be honest, it's really only in the 12,000 ballpark) and a son that's not going to want my attention much longer... I want to live my life as it happens, not wait for retirement that might never come.

So to that end, the winds are changing, and it's far more favorable on the new heading, I just have to wait for it to settle before I can settle in for the ride.

Guess what I did!

2010-05-11T19:40:00.005-04:00

Hey! Who is this?? What a cutie! Let's follow him and see where he takes us...
Let's see...we have lambs, sheep, a tool box, and a tire. What could these be for?

Sheep surgery?

Nope! it's shearing time!

Last Thursday my cousin William phones and asked if I could come and help shear his sheep. He's never done it before, I've never done it before, and last year when he was in Iraq his wife Natalie did it standing with kitchen scissors because she couldn't get them to sit. (Trust me - I laughed to tears hearing her tell about it!)

"Just pop them on their butts and then they're paralyzed and you can shear them" his brother said.

"Lie the sheep on it's side and then proceed to shear" the internets said.

"Right." we said. "And exactly how to do you "pop" a 300-pound meat sheep onto it's butt?" It's not easy. And once it's there, it is indeed paralyzed, and the it slowly starts to tip over until you're holding 300 pounds of sheep that's kind of melted onto your legs and as soon as it's feet hit the ground again your time is UP and that sheep is running away!

As we learned...there's a distinct learning curve to this whole sheep-shearing business. The first one looked like it had gotten into a fight with a lawn mower. (btw - anyone recognize the breed?)

We and the sheepies did survive the day, though I regret to admit that we sustained fewer injuries than the sheep. It wasn't easy, despite what the professional shearers make it look like.

It took us all of three hours to shear four sheep. I spent most of the day holding feet or hugging the head to keep it from running away while William wielded the Shears of Death. By the last one, though, it was looking pretty good, and William was feeling cocky enough to leave a mohawk on the head of the final sheep (She really did deserve it - she put up a fight, and dragged Natalie partway across the field. This sheep has attitude.)

Finally we skirted and packed up the wool. Lovely, crimpy stuff. One of them was so fine it felt like nice Cormo, one was very coarse, and the other two were in between.

The fleeces barely fit into the garbage bags I brought!

Afterwards, we rested for a while. William and Natalie's five kids were running around the whole time, helping, hindering, and using my camera . I think the kids really enjoyed it!

As for the adults?

We're SO GLAD this only happens once a year.

Have you ever sheared a sheep? Ever watched it? Have any advice for next time around? And what are you supposed to put on sheep-cuts? Anything?

Stressed and Productive

2010-04-30T08:57:00.004-04:00

I must be stressed, because I'm knitting socks like winter starts next week. Apparently my fingers don't care that it's only April.

At the end of March I picked up the souvenir yarn from last summer's vacation down the west coast of Lake Huron. There was a lovely, lovely yarn shop in Alpena in a gorgeous downtown, and I had the luxury of hanging out there, sans child, for a whole two hours! While that might seem a bit on the winpy side for a week's vacation, let me tell you that when you're living in such tight quarters belowdecks on a sailboat with three other people, even showering alone feels like a luxury of privacy!

Anyway, I grabbed the yarn, which had been sitting on my nightstand since August of 2009, all caked and ready to go, and I cast on. Within four days I had these:

Sorry the pics are so dark - it was evening and I was taking them anyway. The pattern is Friday Harbor from Nancy Bush's Socks for Travelling Knitters. Seemed appropropriate. The yarn was chosen for its resemblance to Lake Huron waters out in the deep parts, the blue skies, and the odd greens and browns it turns after a storm.

Well, then I fell down and these hopped onto my needles.

Leyburn socks, in Shibui Knits yarn.

Those were done in a little over a week. Which puts us in what? the middle of April? When these found their way onto my needles. Pomatomus by Cookie A. in Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn. The colors reminded me of goldfish, and so the decision of pattern was made for me.

Now, the oddest thing of all this, is that I like to knit plain, boring, stockinette socks. Whatever is going on in my head has me knitting intricate, fiddly, and attention-grabbing socks. Am I bored? Am I shifting my attentions from other things that need more of it? I don't know.

As for the decluttering, I'm almost through with the first floor of the house - there's only a little left in the dining room and kitchen, and then I move on to the basement, where my fiber studio is trying to be. And which was walkable until the cats climbed onto a precarious pile of baskets, boxes, and bags and dumped yarn, beads, and whatever else was in there onto the floor and made an enormous mess. (Think bags, yarn balls, yarn cones, patterns in plastic sleeves, and five pounds of loose vintage beads all strewn about on, against, and under a table. It's bad. Really bad.)

So I'm still here, still kicking, and starting to dream of regular postings again. Speaking of: I'm imagining a series of posts on living small - taking lessons from our great-grandmothers on living low-impact. Most information out there seems to be about living grandly (Ms. M.S. comes to mind) or living back-to-the-farm, which most of us can't (or won't) do. but what about living simpler, with whole foods, right where we are? What about living lightly, without deprivation, by taking what we have and getting the most out of it? Can we really and truly lessen our needs for consumer products without turning into hermits wearing clothes that have been patched into oblivion and eating squirrels and raccoons that wander into our yards?

I'm thinking in terms of really and truly doing something to make a difference in our carbon footprint - making an effort. Changing lightbulbs and carrying cloth bags and buying "green" products is a feel-good non-effort, and doesn't really change anything fundamental about what we're really doing in this world. It's easy, and that's why they tell us it "makes a difference." but if you carry cloth bags and change out your cell phone every year, then you're really still a part of the problem, and your cloth bag is really just a feel-good measure to make you feel better about trashing the planet.

I think our great-grnadmothers had it right, and I keep reading and looking, and the more I read, the more I see that we're coming full circle. Modern writers are telling us to eat more whole foods and grow our own and recycle and reuse and buy less and make do. Aren't these all things Great-Gramma would have told us if she were here? I want to explore some of the ways in which she did this. GG wouldn't touch some of our modern cleaning products, so why should we? She certainly wouldn't eat rubbery grey meat-like stuff in a plastic dish that gets zapped and called "food" either, would she? Why are we?

There's a Light...

2010-03-21T18:33:00.002-04:00

Hi folks. Sorry for the long absence again.

Into the Wind

You know how when the wind is blowing really hard, and you have to go somewhere, but you don't really want to be out but you know you have to, so you button up your coat really tight, duck your head, and plod along, knowing you're going to get there eventually, and you just have to keep walking?

It's been like that.

I've been making a ton of headway against the clutter that's holding me back. Every other Friday I have off (since I work 9 hour days the rest of the time) and those days have been dedicated to clearing out the mess. Sometimes I have help (thank you Carole and Jofran and Stephanie!) and other days I do it alone. But whether I'm alone or have someone standing there and packing bags and boxes for me, I make it through something. One day it was all the cupboards and drawers in my bedroom - the wall o' closet was emptied, sorted, cleaned, and over half my clothes went away in bags to charity. One day it was the basement, and three bins of yarn ended up at Knitting Night and were sold. One time it was the wall o' cupboards in the kitchen (my mom really got into the whole wall-o-storage thing when she remodeled this house!)

I've never felt so good about giving stuff away.

Boxes, bags, they leave by the carload every other weekend. I load up on Friday, after I finish putting back only the things I use, then drop off on the weekend. I realized the other day that I don't even need any of the organizing books I have stacked around here - all I needed to do was to start. Once I started, it started feeding itself, and one empty space begat another, and the next thing I know I've made it through the second story entirely and halfway through the first story. The basement is a mess again, but I don't care because I know that I'll get there soon, and that anything without a "home" is leaving. If I can't find a reasonable place to put it, I don't need it.

The best part, for me, is the end is in sight. Even on the days I don't want to work on it, I make myself. The deadline is looming, but in a good way, not in a stress-inducing way. I'm scheduled to make my last debt payment on my last outstanding debt in mid-October. And I want to make my last "payment" of clutter to the Salvation Army by the time I have the financial debt paid off.

Yes, I'm aware that decluttering is an ongoing, life-long effort. It's this first round of going through the whole house and getting rid of half of it that I want done by then. I know I'll need to go through again and get rid of the things I skipped over for whatever reason during Round One. Some stuff I'm not ready to face yet.

Lightness and Air

I feel better for doing it. The house looks better for it, too (if you look past the immediate mess from each decluttering session that hasn't found a home yet but isn't leaving...). Kiddo is a little stressed out, though he claims he likes it. I haven't touched his things, and I don't harp on him about his toys and such at all, so it's not like I'm scaring him into thinking he's going to lose everything he owns, but he seems to be a little skeeved out by the boxes of stuff leaving. Maybe, as the child of two packrats, he's got a gene or something and I'm going against it. Or it could be just general childhood resistance to change in things that are supposed to be fairly immutable - Mom and Home.

Even though it's an in-progress thing, I can see the changes everywhere I look. There's less stuff strewn around my rocking chair. My bedroom has no stuff piled on top of the bookcase. The living room looks almost...tidy. The dining room table is a disaster, as are the kitchen counters, but I take a deep breath and tolerate it, knowing it's only temporary. Until I finish going through spaces. And there are spaces, now. There are... get this... empty cupboards in my bedroom! And they've stayed empty for weeks! I have had no urge to fill them with anything!!

Why?

I don't know where this desire to purge has come from. I don't know why, either. I just know that I feel driven to do it, and have rearranged our lives and schedules to allow for it. I look forward to when I can get back to hobbies again (knitting? drawing? book binding??), knowing I will be able to indulge in them with a clear conscience, knowing that I'm not running away from my mess by playing with fiber or paper. I haven't really spun since December, and while I miss it, I'm OK with it. For now.

This is not forever. This is a phase, a life-changing period of time in which I get my shit together so I can stop living in the past and move forward. I no longer need to be tied to my past with physical remembrances. I probably won't ever need the fabric left over from the first-ever babydoll dress I sewed by myself. Nor do I really want it. But I still have to touch it and decide what is going to happen to it. It's a draining process, both emotionally and physically, but it's so freeing that it's worth every minute.

I guess it's kind of like exercise in that if you've accumulated a lot of fat/stuff, and have never exercised/purged on a regular basis before, then getting started is really difficult. There are so many experts out there, telling you how it should be done, that it can be confusing, leaving you not even knowing where to begin. Finally, though, you suck it up and head out/in and do what you can. You come back/out tired and drained, claiming you're never going to do that again, but the next day, when you feel better, you do it again. Eventually it gets easier and easier, until you realize that you can't remember life before, and you wouldn't dream of going back.

I'm finally into the part where I fell better after I do it but the process is still somewhat painful. I haven't yet reached the point where I can't remember life before I started, but the addictive qualities are setting in and calling me back whenever I take too long a break.

There's a light at the end of the tunnel, and I know it's not a train.

Sweet Deal on a Loom (and more)

2010-02-09T12:07:00.002-05:00

Remember how I said I'd been cleaning out and clearing up? Well, I don't use this loom enough to justify it sitting in my living room, and I've found a lovely little 22" cherry Dorset loom that would be a far better match for me. So I'm selling my loom to make room. It's a bargain for anyone wanting to get into weaving, as pretty much everything you need is right here, and I'll vouch that it works.

A beginner’s setup: $600

45” LeClerc Fanny (vintage 1960s) ($2000+ new)
15 dpi reed ($102)
Around 200 extra heddles still bundled ($22)
One LeClerc boat shuttle and a couple bobbins ($37)
A copy of Davisons’ Handweavers Pattern Book ($50)
A copy of The Weaving Spinning and Dyeing Book ($45)
A threading hook ($10)
A sleying hook ($5)
A Harrisville Designs Warping board ($108)

And I can toss in a couple cones of yarn, if you need it.

The extras alone are worth more than $375!

I’m located in the Detroit Metro area, and will deliver within 100 miles for the cost of gas, or you can pick it up. She does fit in the back of a mini-van, and she can be completely dismantled into a pile of sticks, if necessary.

Pics here.

Where did all the hand-knit socks go?

2010-02-05T10:21:00.002-05:00

I promised to write about socks. But it’s really hard to talk about the disposable culture of modern America without talking about oil, the nature of women’s work, and technology.
Let’s jump back about a hundred and forty years or so.

Once upon a time, men and women might leave the family farm in the teens or twenties to go work in a factory or a home for a few years to earn enough money that when they married they could buy their own farm. When they had enough, they would stop working in the factory or home of a wealthy socialite and return to the country where they could grow their food, make much of what they needed, and barter or sell off excess produce (or product) for cash for the things they couldn’t make.

Some men, and women, continued to work outside the home after marriage. Sometimes it was because they were good at what they did (like a skilled dressmaker, craftsman, or carpenter) and sometimes it was the family business (like bakers, shopkeepers, milliners). Some families didn’t work the soil at all, but bought everything they needed from others in their community (which can’t happen if no one is growing food and selling the excess) and perhaps the man worked as a banker, a merchant, or an agent of some sort. Just as there are many lifestyles now, there were many lifestyles during the industrial revolution, too.

I wish I could find the reference, but I read a few years ago that advertising was invented during the Industrial Revolution to entice more men (and women) off of their farms and into the factories by telling them that they needed more. People were told they needed to work in factories for money, so they could buy more stuff (products from those factories) with the money they earned working in the factories. Advertising was invented to convince people that there was no such thing as enough.

Faster, Better, Cheaper was the slogan of choice of mechanized labor. Mechanized labor could do the work of ten men, with only one man to watch and care for the machine. Coal, and then oil, were cheap and plentiful.

Sharon Astyk explains what happened next in a wonderful way:

… cheap energy has had the function devaluing human labor. This is fairly
obvious - if a gallon of gas can do the equivalent of four men's work digging
outhouses in one day, and the gallon of gas (plus the machine to use it, the man
to operate it and the (almost certainly subsidized) infrastructure to support
it) is cheaper, the value of the men's labor as outhouse diggers drops
to...zero. Because no one in their right mind will hire them, instead of the
machine and its dude.

Or maybe not quite zero - perhaps some people with
money to spare will see the value of hand-dug outhouses, and tell their friends,
and a small niche market will arise - but most people won't. And most of the
outhouse diggers will have to go do something else to make money. The best
money, obviously, will be in doing things machines don't do well (yet), like
helping Grandma to the potty, writing blogs about the injustices of society and
breastfeeding (oh, wait, the money for all of those things sucks... damn, the
fact that I'm not an economist kicks me in the ass again.)

You'd think that doing stuff machines and oil can't do would pay pretty well, but in fact, the fossil fuels essentially devalue all human labor - the highest paid jobs become not the ones that machines can't do that benefit society, but the ones that
enable more fossil fuel usage, because functionally, cheap energy is (this seems
obvious, but I make it explicit because its amazing what people miss) a way of
printing money - getting a lot of work done for virtually nothing is a great way
to make a profit - that's why people used to like slavery, and then they liked
fossil fuels.

In fact, they devalue human work so much you can't do the work
even if you want to - you can't breastfeed your baby because you have to go back
to work at Walmart 3 weeks after the birth (because you are needed to help the
growth economy), and you can't manufacture things things, because the things are
too expensive if they pay you a living wage - the only way they can use human
labor is to find labor that is literally cheaper than oil - by creating economic
structures that ensure that the wealth doesn't get spread around and that there
always are people who are cheaper than oil. So it isn't so much work that
machines don't do well that is valued but work that enables the expansion of
energy use, and thus, more exchange of cash - for example, being a real estate
developer paid (until the energy prices started to rise) really, really well -
because they make new markets, and make new uses for fossil fuels - all those
houses need faucets and insulation, all those suburbanites need grocery stores
and gas stations, all those new toilets need toilet paper.

(from Casaubaun’s Book, by Sharon Astyk, http://scienceblogs.com/casaubonsbook/2010/01/peak_oil_is_still_a_womens_iss.php)

And your handknitted socks just went out the window.

I see it on Ravelry all the time: discussions about why knitting pays so little. For the same reason that nurses and teachers and vital workers are paid so little while football players and CEOs get paid such enormous amounts for work that, really, does nothing.

Labor is worthless. It’s why kids have trouble getting a job, even ones that didn’t used to require a highschool diploma, without a college degree. Has anyone else noticed “qualification inflation”? While at the same time, we’re outsourcing thousands of jobs to developing countries because they are willing to work for less pay then Americans.

There’s mindset among Americans, that manual labor or any sort is considered to be pointless and worthless. We as a society tend to look down on the guy who fixes our cars, who digs ditches, who fixes our stopped up toilet. We argue over the price to do work that we can’t even do ourselves if we wanted to while simultaneously regarding that person as an inferior and trying to cheat us. (Have you looked under the hood a car lately? It’s not “dumb manual labor” to fix one anymore, if it ever was.) But then the guy fixing the car turns around and looks down on the migrant worker who travels around picking vegetables and fruit from the fields, not because he can’t pick his own veggies, but because he won’t.

Labor is so devalued that picking the food we need to survive is considered to be below our dignity. As is wiping the shit from our own aging grandmothers who can’t get to the potty. Or breastfeeding our children (Don’t you dare do it in public! You might be arrested for showing less skin than the teen walking by!)

We view affluence as no longer having to do physical labor: when you’re rich you don’t have to clean your own house, cook your own meals, do your own laundry, nurse your own kids, even raising them can be farmed out to nannies and daycares! Growing your own food is not something an upstanding middle-class person would do - It’s something those poor folks on the other side of the river/tracks/city line do because they can’t afford it.

So why would you knit your own socks? Why would you waste your valuable time and effort doing something instead of thinking something? Why aren’t you figuring out more ways to consume fossil fuels? That’s where the money is, you know. Only by using up our resources can you get ahead, get beyond the need to do any kind of physical labor.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the bidet makes a roaring comeback. Then you wouldn’t even have to wipe your own ass.

Let's Talk Socks

2010-01-05T19:51:00.003-05:00

And disposable clothing.

Socks have become, in modern American society, the ultimate disposable clothing item. Sock got holes in it? Pitch it. Go buy a new pack of six pairs at the SuperMart for $5. When you wear through those, go buy some more. If you're really frugal, you might use them as rags around the house before you pitch them, but you'll still consider them cheap, disposable, and plentiful.

Which would not be the case if we weren't using cheap labor and lack of environmental controls in China and India for mass production of these cheap cotton socks. Ask an elder, though, if they'd consider socks of better quality, made domestically, and pay more for them, and they'll tell you they never want to darn another sock for the rest of their lives.

So whatever happened to quality products, which cost money that you have to save up, and then they last you a lifetime? Or that you labor over, repair when damaged, and then use as scraps for another utilitarian project later?

Oh, yeah. Silly me - that went away when people started specializing, labor overseas was cheaper than local, and people decided that cheaper/faster/better was true.

Knitters have it figured out, though. We knit socks. We darn them. Some of us even get hold of castoff sweaters and unravel them and knit new garments (including socks) from them. (They're the ultimate in frugal!) I would certainly not want to earmark 400 yards of 100% cashmere yarn for socks, but if I unravel a cashmere sweater for the yarn? Fair game, and I have a pair of cashmere socks. Awesome! Would I darn a hole in one? You bet!

I currently have 2 pairs of Kiddo's jeans hanging in the basement. They have holes in the knees, and after washing them I hung them to dry so I could mend them easier (the dryer would totally fluff the edges and make it far more difficult.) And yet, he'll probably be the only kid in school with patched jeans.

Why is that?

I think there are two reasons for that:

1. jeans are cheap, abundant, and readily available, and
2. no one knows how to mend them anymore.

If you want to get really realistic about it, then there's

3. no one has the time.

The time issue is a big one.

We're all running around, trying to "earn a living" while not having time to just live. Who wants to waste some of the precious time between work, soccer practice and piano lessons for the kids, and grabbing a quick bite to eat before rushing home to run the vacuum and get the kids in bed. If they're lucky they might get to watch some news on television, or a program before falling into bed to go do it again tomorrow.

When, in a schedule like this, are you going to darn socks? It's easier and quicker to grab a new package next time you're at the SuperMart. I've even met some who have bought new socks and underwear and thrown away the dirty ones while on travel because they thought it was cheaper and easier than using a laundromat!

When it's cheaper to replace your underpants than wash them, there's definitely something weird going on in the economics side of things!

So let's go back to socks.

I wear both handknit socks and good quality wool socks in the winter, and handknit socks and no socks in the summer. I have cotton socks for summer wear at work when I can't wear sandals (darn caustic and acidic chemicals!), but they're handknit. I did buy some of what I thought were quality cotton socks a few years ago, and they lasted a whopping two years. My handknit cotton socks I made the same summer are still going strong and look like new. They cost more, they have my own labor in them, and they make me happy every time I wear them. And they are lasting a long, long time. Will I darn them (if they ever need it)? You bet.

I don't believe that cheap, abundant socks are a forever thing. China is growing, India is developing, and we're running out of overseas locations with cheap, exploitable labor. They want to be consumers, too! Isn't it the example we've been setting as the ultimate goal - to be consumers??

There's a lot more in here that I want to get talking about, and we'll explore them in some upcoming posts. I want to talk about economics, and why we use cheap foreign labor. I want to talk about how this is not a sustainable situation and how we're starting to run out of countries to exploit. I want to talk about household economies and how we can make small changes in the way we run our households to support more sustainable industries. I want to talk about the future of cheap clothing, how we got here, and where I think we're heading. I want to talk about over-specialization and the loss of wide-ranging skills.

And how it all comes down to how you treat your socks.

What do you want me to talk about?

Why push technology?

2009-12-30T17:57:00.002-05:00

I am, by my nature, someone who likes to do things the long way. The anti-technology way. The old way. I like handsewing, embroidery, knitting by hand, cooking from scratch, canning. I like to let a fever run its course (though I am ever grateful for medical technology for those things that tea and sleep cannot cure!) and I like to keep things as simple as I can.

To that end, I tend not to use the dishwasher, we don't watch television, and we don't play a lot of games that require electricity or batteries. I do use a washing machine, though I have washed clothing by hand. I use a dryer, too, but at least half our laundry hangs to dry every week. I just don't care for crispy towels. We use electric lights, but we dim them to "fake" nightfall every evening. And I obviously use a computer, though again, I try to limit its use in our daily functioning.

And we've done well.

In graduate school I had no television or radio, until some friends felt sorry for me and descended on my rented condo with tv, vcr, radio/cd player, and I don't remember what all else. And I graciously thanked them, then when they'd left I rearranged the furniture to hide them behind a chair and used them all of maybe once a semester.

When we moved to Michigan five years ago, I had no appliances, and was again gifted with the extras of others. We soon had an enormous microwave oven, a toaster oven, a 13" tv, a vcr, and I still had the radio from grad school. We didn't really watch tv all that much, though. But again a friend felt sorry for me (don't know why - we were just fine) and gifted me with a 21" tv/vcr/dvd combo unit. I have used it quite a bit for movies over the last four or five years, and it has served us well.

When the Detroit area went digital last year, I didn't even try to buy a converter box. I didn't take a voucher for a free one. I just plain didn't want or need it. Why have one if we'll never use it??
I was recently offered a used 40" hdtv for free and refused. I don't want the tv as the focal point of our living room. And I wouldn't use it enough to justify its presence. Our little combo unit sits unplugged 90% of the time.

There are so many wonderful things we can and do do in the evenings and weekends, that we don't really have time for tv. I'm not just saying this - I truly believe it. I'm quite happy and content without broadcast television in my life. I don't think I'm missing anything, and Kiddo has been quite content, too. He can and does watch tv at his dad's house, and that's fine. If that's what they want to do together, let them enjoy it. Here we read, play games, craft, talk, and otherwise entertain ourselves quite well. Kiddo even tells people who are shocked by our lack of technology that "we don't need it - we don't have time to sit and watch other people do things."

But is it an uphill battle? Am I shunning the world at large? Do I really need to be in contact and have this stuff beamed into my house on a daily basis?? Am I a bad parent, neglecting the cultural education of my son because I don't provide network television to him?

Apparently his dad thinks so - he bought me a digital converter for Christmas.

While I am aware that the intentions are good, as were those of my wonderful and generous friends, do I really need this? Am I that out of touch that I must watch television? Or it is more like a drug dealer, and they only want me to watch because they do? (Come on, just one more hit, er... program).

How do you deal with the modern age and technology?

It's my fault

2009-12-27T17:25:00.002-05:00

My sister is due to give birth to her second child on January 1st, 2010. She's been ready and waiting for several weeks now, and is getting frustrated with the child who is comfy where she is. Kiddo is rooting for her to hang on a little longer so Little Sister will share his birthday on the 2nd.

I didn't tell her I'm knitting a shawl for the baby.

And it's not done yet.

So it falls on me to get knitting on that shawl and get it finished, since babies don't come until their knitting is done, right?

I'm not sure I'll be able to finish this week!

Oops. Sorry, Ali. I'll try!

Is this thing on?

2009-12-22T17:53:00.002-05:00

*tap*tap*tap*

Hello?

Ok, I think it's working.

I've been gone for a really long time, and have been very busy. I kind of dropped out of all social circles, stopped blogging, and even stopped commenting regularly on the blogs I continued to read. I pulled us out of as many commitments as we could get out of, and stopped running around every evening.

In short - I disappeared.

And I'm OK with that.

I've made so much progress toward finding my center, I'm getting so much more happy with myself and my life, and figuring out what is important to me. I've gotten rid of a number of non-productive activities, and added some that are more meaningful to us. My desk is uncluttered for the first time since I was...six? I have a small pretty envelope with receipts and papers I need to process, but there are no towering piles of paper threatening to take over my house and bury me alive. I've not yet conquered the clutter-beast, but I'm making progress and that makes me happy.

So I think I may be experimenting with blogging regularly again. I'm not sure what format it's going to take, since Ravelry has taken over the knitting part of my blogging. I just feel silly logging projects at Ravelry and posting them here - like I'm looking for praise or bragging or something. I know a lot of people do it, and I love reading about it, but I don't think that's me.

What I would like to do is start sharing some of my thoughts and notes on homekeeping and stitching and such that I have been keeping for the last two decades. I'm discovering so many more resources on the internet, so many books I couldn't get my hands on even five years ago.
And I'm poring over them, and gleaning so many insights into life and work in years past.

My joy, I'm finding, is in making the connections between letters and books and journals and history and following those threads through to what we do today, often without thinking. I love perusing the homekeeping manuals of a century ago and comparing them to modern versions. I love to pursue to details and tidbits that I find intriguing and interesting, and put them together with values and traditions to discover a new way of looking at things.

I would like to post these things, with the references from which the information comes, and start a conversation. I want to debate and discuss what I find with others who may or may not see the same things in the same words. I can't promise a schedule - I don't want to commit myself to anything right now. But I do want to play, to explore, to share, instead of always keeping these wonderful discoveries to myself.

What do you say? Are you in?

Excerpt

2009-11-15T10:27:00.003-05:00

I've been so busy with NaNoWriMo that I haven't really had time for fiber arts. In between writing sessions, which are getting more and more frequent as I get into the story, I managed to play off 90% of the frog hair, which now clocks in at more than 1500 yards of 2-ply laceweight silk, and measures at close to 7000ypp. I think I'm a touch insane?

Anyway, please enjoy the following excerpt from my novel-in-progress. I'm having a great deal of fun with this, and can't wait to get back to it each day, as the story gets more and more involved and the characters keep evolving into such full, rich personalities. I never know what's going to happen next!

enjoy!

edited: to fix formatting of excerpt - still not fantastic, but, hey, it's a first draft!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Matt,” I said flatly. “What do you want?”
“So it's true.”
“What is?” I asked suspiciously.
“You have a kid.”
“Yes,” I said warily. “So?”
He stepped out onto the porch. He looked good. He had been working out, and living in California had done wonders for his pale complexion. He had a nice even tan, like he spent a lot of time on the beaches and in the sun. He was dressed in dark jeans with sharp creases down the fronts and a tight, short sleeved black tee shirt that showed off his sleek muscles. He had his hair cut into a low crew cut, totally unlike the lanky long hair he'd worn in college and had it gelled in spikes across his head. I guessed that if I were to touch it, it would make me bleed it would be so hard.
He stared into my eyes with an intensity I'd never seen before. “Is she mine?”
“She's mine!” I declared hotly.
“Who's her father?” he asked pointedly.
“She doesn't have one.”
He cocked one eyebrow at me in that way he had that meant he was questioning my integrity. “Really?” it was more a statement than a question.
“What makes you think you fathered a child, you arrogant prick?” He visibly flinched. Good. “We had sex, what? Once? On our wedding night? Before you decided you'd rather go at it with the best man?”
He turned and walked over to the porch swing. The house was an old Victorian with an enormous porch on the side facing the water, and a smaller porch on the side facing the street. There had been a swing hanging from the ceiling of the porch on the street side as long as I could remember. He shoved the swing with his foot then turned to me again.
“You haven't answered my question.” he said simply.
“And I'm not going to,” I said. “You can leave now.”
“Your mom invited me to dinner.”
“Well, I'm un-inviting you,” I said hotly. “Good bye!” And I turned and walked into the house, slamming the door behind me.
“Where did Matt go?” my mother asked sweetly when I sat down on the floor to remove my boots.
“To hell, I hope.” I answered bitterly.
Before I could even make it to the kitchen, there was a knock at the front door. I stormed back and whipped the door open. “What?” I demanded.
“I need to talk to you,” Matt said. “You have to listen to me.”
“I don't have to do any such thing,” I declared.
“This doesn't have to be so difficult,” he said calmly. “I need you. Both of you.”
“Go to hell,” I said and slammed the door.
A moment later there was another knock on the door. I ripped it open with the wrath of the Furies. “I thought I told you to get the hell out of here!” I yelled as I opened the door.
Mike blinked back at me. “Slow down there, Firecracker!”
All of a sudden I felt completely deflated and exhausted. “Oh...shit.” I stammered.
“I could come back later, if you're busy,” Mike offered.
“No, it's fine,” I mumbled. “Come on in.”
“Thanks,” he said, carefully stepping onto the rug at the front door. “did you know there's guy sitting in your porch swing?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks.”
“No problem. Are you busy? Should I come back later?” He offered again. “Maybe next year?”
“No,” I said. “It's fine. Really. What's up?”
“Lauren?” my mother's voice called from the kitchen. “Is Matt staying for supper?”
“No,” I called back,
“Who's Matt?” Mike asked.
“The guy on the porch,” I answered.
“Why not?” my mother called back.
“Why's he out there?” Mike peeked around the doorframe.
“Mommy! Look at me!” Katie demanded from the stairway “I'm a fairy princess!”
“Is it always like this?” Mike asked.
“Because!” I yelled to my mother. I turned to Mike, “Yes.”
“I think I should go,” Mike hedged toward the door.
“I can fly!” Katie chirped.
“No!” I screamed as Katie leaped off the stair landing with an angelic look of total belief on her face.
“Ok, then,” Mike turned back. “I won't.”
I leaped toward Katie and she hit me dead center. I gasped as all the air burst out of my lungs, and I hit the floor with her on top of me. We fell to the floor in heap of crinoline and sparkly beads.
“Mommy,” Katie scolded. “You interrogated my flying!”
My mother came trotting out of the kitchen. “What on earth was that?” she demanded.
I lay on my back, closed my eyes, and the tears started to fall. I couldn't stop them. I had had such a crappy day, and now I was lying on the floor in a pile of pink tuutuu and glitter, and I couldn't stop.
“Are you OK?” Mike was kneeling next to me. “Don't move. Does anything hurt?”
I shook my head. I felt hands extracting Katie from the tangle we were in and my mother's voice in a low tone soothing Katie, who was also now crying.
“Ren?” Matt was now inside the house. “What happened? What's going on?”
At that moment the absurdity of it all hit me. I was lying on the floor in my mother's house, crying, after getting hit by a flying seven year old wanna-be fairy princess with my gay ex-husband and the co-worker I had a crush on standing over me. Could it get any more insane?
“Yo, what's going on?” The screen door slammed shut after Kevin, my little brother, and I started to laugh. At first it was just a giggle, a kind of snort as the laughter started to escape, and the next moment I was laughing hysterically, the tears turning to tears of laughter, until I thought I was going to pee in my pants from the hilarity of it all.
“Is she ok?”
“I think she has a concussion.”
“Is laughing one of the signs of head injury?”
“No, but I can't see her pupils, either.”
“Should we call an ambulance?”
“For laughing?”
“Mommy? What are pupils?”
Finally I laughed myself out, and lay there, exhausted. My face was wet with tears, and I could feel dampness in my hair by my ears. I opened my eyes to see five concerned faces looking back at me.
“Feel better?” my mother asked, with an odd tone in her voice.
I reached up a hand and a firm dry one grasped it. I pulled myself to sitting, and turned my back to the wall before realizing I was holding Matt's hand. I dropped it and scowled. I rubbed my face, trying to dry my cheeks. I must look a fright after all that.
“Well, then,” my mother said. “I guess I'd better put another leaf in the table.”

Announcement!

2009-11-03T17:54:00.002-05:00

It has come to my attention that I am being charged with neglect of my blog.

I must plead "guilty."

This summer and autumn have been intense, and I have done a lot in the way of personal and physical decluttering. I hope you don't take offense, but I kind of withdrew in multiple venues, not only in blogging.

See, it started quite some time ago, a little over five years ago, when I moved back to Michigan. I moved into a tiny little house, and we (Little Boy and I) re-collected and re-grouped and I started to figure out where I was and what was going to come next. I threw everything we didn't need in everyday life into a storage garage and paid to keep it there.

Three years ago we moved into this larger house, with on-site storage, also known as "garage" and "basement" and I continued to ignore and procrastinate on the Stuff. I couldn't park in the garage, and I couldn't use the basement for anything but doing the laundry, but I managed to ignore it anyway.

This spring I decided I'd had enough. All summer and fall I've been decluttering my life - in terms of time, stuff, space, hobbies, stuff, wardrobe, and fiber. And did I mention the stuff? I had more stuff than I could possibly need in this lifetime, and I got tired of it.

I'm still tired of it, but I've been incredibly successful at selling it, giving it away, and tossing the junk. Only last week did I turn the corner, and start finding empty shelves and drawers around the house where I've gotten rid of so much stuff that there's spaces where I don't have anything to put there...and I LOVE it. An empty drawer in my desk! A shelf in the kitchen! Empty floor in the basement!

And I've been so focused on this process, so involved with living instead of planning that I kind of lost track of some things. Like my blog. And some friends...

And for all of this, I apologize.

I have to admit that the lack of blogging at some point went from being a case of neglect to a case of conscious choice, and it was mostly that I wanted to focus on me and my little family, and not on what I wanted to tell all of you or what would make a good blog-story.

And the truth is: I missed you. I missed all of you! And I don't want to quit you. I want to keep blogging, in some capacity. I can't get on a tight blogging schedule right now, as I am again doing NaNoWriMo (I love it!) and I am not going to let blogging compromise my novel-writing.

So maybe, in between chapters, when I'm going cross-eyed from writing fiction, I'll sneak in and update you on some of the wonderful projects and things we've done since last I filled you in.

Can you forgive me??

Accounting

2009-06-21T20:36:00.002-04:00

Kiddo's been gone since Friday afternoon...and I've done nothing on the list of things I wanted done while he was gone. Instead, I have played, spun, visited, watched movies, slept, eaten out, and drank too much (once, last night at dinner. My gin and tonic was made as a double when I asked for a single. And I drank most of it before the food arrived. Glad I wasn't driving!)

Then today I woke up with a massive headache, and have spent most of the day fighting off the migraine. now that it's nearly bedtime, I might be finally winning. Of course, the 2.5 hour midday nap doesn't make bedtime come any quicker.

So I guess the accounting for my time indicates that I am unwinding. And I assume I will eventually get around to being productive at home...but doesn't finishing half an ounce of frog-hair and finally setting up for bobbin #2 count for something? (The first bobbin has two ounces on it, and it's not even 2/3 full.) And for kicks, Jofran tried to use a McMorran balance on the frog-hair, to see if there would be enough for the Peacock shawl, and a plyback nearly 8 feet long didn't even move the balance. She's guessing there'll be enough.

I've had it. I'm heading to bed. Maybe I'll crawl into the bath first... and hope that tomorrow I can be a bit more useful and maybe find the vacuum. I might even use it!

Loading up the Etsy Shop

2009-06-16T18:27:00.004-04:00

I'm getting busy again, and have been getting a backlog of fiber and stuff for the Etsy Shop. So tonight I finally started taking pictures and getting them online. Thus, no delving into history tonight. (But since the Kiddo will be gone for a week, biking across the state with my mother next week, I should be able to throw up some more philosophical stuff and get deep again! Be sure to stop by her blog and encourage my Kiddo in his first big, multi-day ride!)

But if you'd like a sneak preview...

One new Batt Boy Batt: "Darkened Rainbow"And handmade crayons. Three sets of three crayons each, all made from Crayola wax, each unique and special! (only one set is shown here, the rest are in the shop.)

I have a huge box of vintage hats and purses I will be posting in the shop in the next week, and some of that fiber I've been taunting you with will be showing up, too. I'll be sure to let you know.

Thanks, as always, for coming by.

Oh, and Sara? The cheese tastes good - like farmer's cheese, sweet with a little tang. Very yummy. And I make yogurt all the time, and bread, too. It's all experiments in microbiology as far as I'm concerned! The trick is making sure you've got the right microbiotics in the mix - as anyone with sourdough starter gone bad will tell you!

Ghost Stories!

2009-06-15T08:17:00.003-04:00

Antonia started it, but Alwen put my attention on it - ghost stories.

Unlike them, I am somewhat sensitive, but don't really see anything. I feel things, and get "that feeling" on occasion, but certainly don't walk around seeing auras and ghosts all day! But oh, that house in Indiana!

We bought an enormous brick house on Ohio St., in Terre Haute, Indiana in 2002 from the son of the owner. The owner, Virginia, had fallen down the stairs and died later in a nursing home. Virginia moved into that house when she was 9 years old, and lived there with her grandparents, and later her husband and children, until she died in 2001 in her 90s. Her son wanted nothing to do with the house, or the contents, and lived on the east coast. He and his daughters cleaned out some personal effects, clothing, and papers, but left everything else in there, and we bought the place, as-is.

This was an enormous house - 3600 sq.ft, not including the full 7' tall basement and the ballroom-like attic. And every inch of it was stuffed with the remnants of 90 years of one family living there. I found the grandmother's junk drawer and utensil drawer in the kitchen right next to Virginia's junk drawer and utensil drawer. Nothing ever got removed or replaced unless it was complete trash, and even then it might stay.

We knew from stories from the son, and from neighbors, that it was not always a happy house. Virginia's husband had died when he fell down the stairs some years before. Her grandmother had died in her bedroom on the second floor. (And if you're into architecture, this house was where I learned about the Coffin Door on Victorian houses, as it had one, as one of the FIVE exterior doors I was paranoid about locking every night.) I didn't get evil vibes from the house, though, and so we moved in. On top of Virginia's Crap, as it became known.

The first night I was in the house (my now-ex-husband moved down there 5 months before me to rewire and properly plumb the house) I was in Virgina's old bedroom, which we had decided was to be our room, and I was setting up the baby crib for our then-2 son. While I was working with the hardware and such I saw a bright light out of the corner of my eye, and then there was an explosion next to me. I screamed as bits of glass flew all over me, and he came running up the stairs to find that the ceiling fixture had "fallen" off the ceiling and landed next to me on the footboard of our bed where it shattered. We figured it was Virginia saying "hi."

Turns out it was her grandmother. Over the next two years we had many encounters with the grandmother, particularly in her bedroom, which became my sewing room. She didn't like my then-husband one bit, and would flutter in his ear and appear in the corner of his eye while he was removing the wallpaper from the walls (that was what passed for household division of labor in those days - he had to strip the wallpaper and wash the ancient paste off the walls, and I would repair the plaster, skim coat them, then finish.) She unnerved him a little, but never bothered me except for the one time when she fluttered in my ear. I said hello, and she left me alone after that, in what became my favorite room in the house.

The house had lots of walking noises, several roving cold spots, and eventually was the final straw in my already-failing marriage. The grandmother finally stopped pestering us at all after I asked my parich priest to come bless the house and he performed a release of spitits ritual and blessed the room.

When my step-father, Pop, died suddenly, I cried myself to sleep. The next morning I felt he was bugging, pestering me, and he wasn't stopping. Finally I ended up sitting at the piano, and he made me play Fur Elise for him, and I felt him leave about halfway through, after I'd played his favorite part. He used to sit and listen to me practice for hours on end, and would encourage and critique and be my number one fan, and I learned Fur Elise for him, and worked on getting the style the way he wanted it. I haven't played it since that morning. he has been known to play pranks and leave notes, too, like the time we came home to find the thermostat turned up to 90F right after we booked a trip the the Caribbean. And when Mom was having some woodwork done in the living room, she was worried about matching the stain since he had custom-blended it himself back in the day. And a ragged slip of paper showed up in his handwriting with the recipe on it, and nothing else.

I know there's more, but that's it for now. But if you think about it, pretty much every religion in the world acknowledges some kind of a spirit world with which we can communicate in one way or another. Just the fact that the priest was prepared and unsurprised, and had multiple levels of alternatives surprised me! I suppose it shouldn't have, but it did.

We don't know everything yet, but we sure like to pretend we do!

If you have a story of your own, feel free to add it to the comments! And Dan, if I missed any good ones about Virgina's house, please chime in!

Inadvertant Cheese

2009-06-10T18:53:00.004-04:00

Little Boy came outside to tell me that the milk tasted like cream and was thick. OK, I figured, he's 9, right? It's only milk, right? I'll make it into yogurt tonight, since I just bought fresh milk today.

Not happening. Milk in its way to being yogurt does not look like this. This should be a pot of bubbling frothy white stuff, not chunky white stuff with yellow in it!
The scientist in me was interested...I couldn't ruin it any further, so why not play? I tried to stir it.
Ick. Curdled milk.

Wait a minute...! ould Great Grandmother's mother have thrown this out? It smells sweet, not sour, and it curdled up all by itself, so...

Following in the steps of our Foremothers, right?

I boiled it, then ladled out the chunks.
Left behind was yellow, pus-colored liquid. I believe this would be the whey?
So what to do with it? Ricotta!!

I added 1 Tbs of citric acid, and got more curds!!
Poured that through a makeshift cheese-cloth of linen napkins...
Hung it up to drain...
And I'm still waiting for it.

I tried to follow some online instructions to make the curds into mozzerella cheese, but I cooked them too long and got hard curds (and burnt my fingers something fierce!), so I packed it into a bowl, and we'll have farmer's cheese instead.
In the end, there's about 1/2 cup of ricotta and 400mL of farmer's cheese. Not too bad for the last of the "sour" milk!

So the interesting thing I found, after getting the mess in the kitchen mostly cleared up, is that if you do a search for cheese recipes, they all seem to call for fresh, new milk without the slightest hint of being "off". Makes sense, right? But did our foremothers really throw away or feed the pigs with imperfect milk? Or did they have some good use for it? Is this a case of lost knowledge or of my refusal to accept anything as "spoiled"?

Turns out, if you go check the old cookbooks, all the cheese recipes I found call for starting with sour milk!

Learned something new/old today.

2009-06-09T17:30:00.002-04:00

Remember when you were a kid, and it was so hard to keep track of time? You hadn't internalized "time" yet, and summer days sometimes felt like a week, and a week felt like a month?

I've had a few days like that lately.

Friday night, after working all day, I visited a few local garage sales, and discovered that there were lots of garage sales that weekend. So on a whim I decided to drag all the stuff out of the garage that was waiting for donation and slap a sign up.

It worked. I got rid of half the junk stacked in the garage and made a decent sum, as well as knit lots of rows on Gansey, Jr. and got sunburned. All the big stuff disappeared, and I'm not disappointed. Not to shabby for not planning!

Saturday afternoon we went to Mass, since Sunday morning we had to be on the road by 5:30am, which came awfully early. We were scheduled to be water safeties during the triathlon my mom was running Sunday morning (which means we paddle around in kayaks and spot people who bit off more than they could swim). Sunday morning didn't dawn...it thundered. And lightning-ed. And rained.

The race started late, after several "all hands to cars" calls. When it finally started there were 2-3 foot tall rolling waves on Lake Erie, 60F water, and 60F air. I got rolled by the waves twice, another safety got rolled by his own wife (who was swimming and grabbed the side of his kayak) and the double with Kiddo and his Grampa was the only one that stayed upright. Kayak skirts might have helped a little - the waves were rolling over the bow and into our laps! Both times I rolled were from waves washing over the side of the boat and into my lap, swamping the kayak. Fun.

By Sunday afternoon I was whupped. We came home and read on the couch all afternoon before going to bed early. Kiddo slept like a rock.

Yesterday was back to work, then down to my cousin's house to pick up this year's llama shearing!!!!!! I got almost all the crias this time, so keep your eyes open for some wonderful spinning fiber coming soon!

I'm loving the sunshine and cool weather, and happy at the progress on my projects. I managed to get the Kiddo to start clearing out his toys to make room for some new Legos I bought at a garage sale last Friday, since really all he needs is Legos, books, and K'Nex to be happy, and not piles of random stuff he's outgrown. He believes it, and wants the new Legos and I want the space cleared, so we're on the same page, sort of. (And the new Legos were an incredble bargain! A couple of $100+ sets for $14 each!! I bought a bunch...we both like Legos.)

Thank you SO much for all the wonderful stories you've been sharing! If you haven't seen them, please go read the comments from the last Home Arts post - you won't be disappointed! I'm working on the next post in the Home Arts series, and am having so much fun with this! I'm glad you're enjoying it, too!

Pass It On

2009-06-04T20:20:00.007-04:00

I chatted with my mother this evening, when I picked up the Kiddo from her house. (She had taken him on a 30 mile bike ride today. He wasn't tired out.) I told her what I had written, and my point of view on how I was raised: that when young the home arts were emphasized and when I was older I was encouraged to go to college, get a degree, and be able to support myself.

When I was young, I wanted to live like that forever. I have wonderful memories of juicing tomatoes out on the picnic table, getting them ready for canning. I thought cutting the corn off the ears was the coolest thing ever, watching the sheets of kernels fold away from the cob. And it tasted amazing in February. I used to love to look at the rows and rows of jars neatly lined up on the shelves in the pantry down in the basement - every one of them packed by us, grown by us. Dad would sometimes let me drink some of the tomato juice with him (that, and the butterscotch candies on the mantle were his, and were untouchable without invitation) and I learned to love fresh (or jarred) tomato juice with a bit of salt and pepper. (V8 tastes so fake to me)

We lived in a farm house, but didn't keep the farm. We rented the house from the owner, who lived elsewhere. So the fields around us were farmed, sometimes wheat, sometimes corn, occasionally soybeans (this was before they were such a big crop), and the barns stood big and white around the property. It was a lot of yard, and dad mowed it.

We had two gardens - one behind the house next to the field, and one across the driveway perpendicular to the road. They were HUGE, and covered far more square footage that the house and garage combined. We grew potatoes, tomatoes, corn, beans, and all kinds of good stuff. We had a Concord grape vine that make awesome grape juice (I didn't like to eat the skins, so I would peel them with my teeth and eat the sweet insides). I certainly can't forget walking long rows of potatoes with a jar of gasoline in my hand, picking off the potato bugs and dropping them into the jar. I hated killing them, but they were killing our food - the food we were going to eat until next year. Later in the season, Dad would walk along the row with a pitchfork and turn over each plant, and my sister and I would scramble to dig in the soil to find each and every potato and put it into the bushel basket, making sure that we didn't put any in the bushel basket that had been cut by the pitchfork.

We would pick raspberries in the summer, strawberries from the U-pick farm, more grapes from Grandpa's house, pull long straight carrots from the soil, and eat from this bounty all year. (Somehow, the cherry tree that I so loved to climb never seemed to yield much fruit...)

And then, of course, there was The Deer. (It's still a bit of family legend) The Deer ran across the road in front of the car (full of kids) driven by Mom's cousin, it jumped the ditch, hit the fence, and broke it's neck. we drove home, Dad called the DNR, and they gave him permission to kill it and keep the meat, if he wanted. He did, and split the meat with the cousin who was driving. That's when I learned how butchering works, and the different cuts of meat, as I assisted by sorting the cuts into the yellow buckets on the floor while Dad did the cutting up, in the basement. (I don't remember how he carried that thing down those steep stairs!) And it was my job to pick the hairs off as I sorted.

All this, and more, was "normal" to me. And it still stands as my example of how to live sustainably and self-sufficiently. And it's what I still am striving to return to.

From my mom's point of view, this was how she was raised. She loved it, staying home with us kids, gardening, sewing our clothes (I didn't mention that part, did I? She sewed most of our clothes for us) For her, this was the way to raise kids. She learned how from her mother(who learned from her mother, and so on, I'm sure, though the centuries, since that's how that kind of information usually gets passed on.)

Mom was very good at...being a Mom. She taught me to sew, to bake, to can, to garden. She showed me how parenting can be a relaxing, wonderful, happy occupation. We would play with cousins, roam the yard, try to peek in the barns that were always locked, and generally explore the outdoors around us. It was this example of motherhood and raising children that instilled in me the desire to be a mother myself.

I hear stories about and from women who never learned these things from their mothers. Some of them actually refused when asked, and told their daughters "no." They didn't want their daughters to grow up to be housewives.

And that's where I think Women's Lib went wrong...instead of offering the business world as an option, an alternative to being a housewife and mother, the business world became the only choice for many women, simply because they never learned the home arts from their mothers.

One of my (random) hobbies is reading old homekeeping manuals and cookbooks. They started appearing in about the 1830s, and are still being produced today. These books offer an amazing peek into the lives of women of the age, in what they assume you know, and in what they presume to teach. By reading through a cookbook from a different era, one can read between the lines and infer so much about the life they led - does the cookbook have recipes calling for exotic spices? Powdered sugar? sugar? honey? How about eggs, milk, butter? Does it have recipes for making butter? Some even remind you to wash the cow's teats prior to milking, using a blue cotton washcloth, not a white one (intended for kitchen use only). You've really got a gem on your hands if it tells you how to make the washcloth!

By following these books through the decades, you can actually see the transition away from knowledge passed on from mother to daughter, and to young women in need of education in the home arts. As the decades progress, the information becomes more and more basic, more fundamental and less "icing on the cake", until finally you reach a modern cookbook or homemaking book, and we are taught how to make a bed and hang clothes on a (plastic, machine-made) hanger. Reading between the lines (and in a few other references on history and the industrail revolution), we see that the need for this information comes about because young women are no longer staying home and learning this from their mothers; at about age 16, many young women left home to live in dormitories and work in factories until they got married. Then they would set up households with their new husbands, and take up homekeeping, some as late as their mid-twenties.

Fast forward a hundred years, and mothers are refusing to teach their daughters how to keep a home. And hence we need a book to tell us how to make a bed and handwash dishes. (Not me, personally, Mom - you gave me lots and lots of practice at those!)

What was your experience? Did your mother teach you how to keep a house? Garden? Sew? Or did she refuse? I'm finding the comments from Tuesday's post to be fascinating and engaging...I hope we can continue to converse on this.

Amazing

2009-06-03T20:29:00.002-04:00

I am in awe of the responses I've received to yesterday's post, both here and at Wardrobe Refashion, where I initially posted. I had no idea I was going to strike a chord with so many people!

You guys are amazing - please keep up the conversation, and I will refrain from opening a new topic until tomorrow or Friday. I would like to see where this leads.

If you're interested, we have a rather lively discussion going on about this post here.

Home Economy

2009-06-02T20:56:00.002-04:00

Today's post is an excerpt from a post I made over at Wardrobe Refashion. Please excuse the re-use, But I have every intention of going further into this over the next week or two, and it seemed a good way to start here, too.

-Erika

I've been looking into and reading up on the devaluation of the home arts in American Society (Yup - we're going deep again!) I don't know anything substantial about other societies, so please feel free to chime in and tell us if what I'm about to say is relevant, or not relevant, where you live! Please - I want to know!

The thought is that, in light of the crashing American Economy, folks seem to be finding their way back to the "home arts" in droves. They're sewing, thrifting, gardening, repairing rather than replacing, and driving their cars longer than they normally would (since when is a two-year-old car "old", anyway?) My point is that enough people are finding economy that we could nearly call it "trendy" around here.

Now, this shouldn't be such a big deal. During World War II, nearly every home and vacant lot had a victory garden growing food for the war effort, so more of the farmers' food could go overseas to support the troops. There was no call for victory gardens when we invaded the Iraq and Afganistan. Still isn't. we've been told to buy our food and support the farmers.

During WWII, there was mass rationing of commodities such as silk, aluminum, steel, eggs, and butter to support the troops and the war effort. There has been no call for that here now, and people get upset if prices go up by a tiny amount. We've been told to go shopping to support our manufacturers so they can make more.

Now we have banks collapsing, major corporations are going under, and credit is dried up completely unless you have significant cash on hand already, despite the bailouts by the federal government. Can you guess what's coming?? We've been told to go buy stuff to support the failing Economy.

Stay with me here, I'm coming back around to what we do here, promise!

The thing we're not seeing in the news is that there are really two Economies here in the US, and just about every other industrialized nation: the Formal Economy, and the Informal Economy. The Formal Economy is the one we keep hearing about in the news, the one that's ailing and we need to go buy from major corporations to "support". The formal Economy is Big Business and Corporations, and making money for the execs and investors is key.

By contrast, the Informal Economy is smaller, and exists in probably every society on the planet. It's the trade, barter, talent, home economy, or whatever you call it where you are. It's buying small, local, trading, doing favors, loaning things (and money) to friends and neighbors, and generally benefits all involved by the fair and just barter of goods and services. Have excess tomatoes in your garden this year? I'll help you paint your house for a bushel of them! That kind of thing. I once traded a doctor's treatment for painting her office for her. We both benefitted. I also traded sewing a Tudor-style court outfit for a man who plumbed my new bathroom, some years ago.

As people lose their jobs and can't find new ones, a problem especially prevalent in here in Michigan (the official unemployment number is 14%, but when you add in the people working part-time when they want full-time, and the folks who have just given up, the number went over 26% a month ago!) we find more and more people bartering. More people are shopping at the thrift stores. And more people are planting gardens.

So what, right?

Here's the so what part: it's entirely possible, that with a contraction of the Formal Economy, more people will go hungry than during the Great Depression of the 1930s, simply because of the lack of self-reliance and home arts. during the Great Depression, it was common, normal, and somewhat expected that if you had any yard at all, you grew some food. You knew how to sew, how to be frugal, and how to take care of your own. And in a worst case scenario, you most likely had family somewhere on a farm who could take you in.

That's not going to happen now. I've seen clothes thrown in the trash for want of a zipper. I've had people bring me shirts at the alteration shop because they couldn't sew a button on it for themselves! Most people don't have gardens now, and wouldn't know how to grow, can, or preserve the food if they could grow it. It's just not common knowledge anymore.

And then there's the public message: Go Shopping.

If I'm hungry, and don't have a job, why should I care about the Economy? Because Everyone will suffer if the Economy fails, we're told. In other words, we're being asked to sacrifice our credit ratings and families, and potentially our houses (to foreclosure) to save the Almighty Economy, so Others won't suffer.

Which economy?

I think everyone here at Wardrobe Refashion already "gets it." It's not about being trendy, jumping on the bandwagon, or even necessarily about getting unique fashion. It's about doing things for yourself and your own. It's about pride of accomplishment, making do, making up, and getting off the treadmill of buying "stuff" that supports large corporations and underpaid overseas workers. It's about keeping it local, keeping it real, and developing a skill set that has gone unrecognized since the Economy was invented (by men, to their standards and benefit, and using criteria they deemed important).

Home Arts disappeared even further with the women's movement and Power Women in the 1980s. The feminist women's rights movement got co-opted and turned into something it was never meant to be: it was supposed to be about freedom of choice in lifestyle, and it became anti-home. A woman had no value if she stayed home with her children, and that has remained in force until very recently with the trend of young housewives and mothers reclaiming the value of raising children and making a home.

In reclaiming the home arts as valuable, worthwhile, useful, and fun, we're reclaiming our informal economy, our home economy, and putting it back into circulation.

It all starts small. With one person. One pillowcase turned into a dress that a child is proud to wear. Made by hand is made with love.

And with Love, we can rule the world.

The Flossing of The Bricks

2009-06-01T19:16:00.004-04:00

An annual event round these parts. Or at least, it's supposed to be. It hasn't been done here in at least four years, though, and was far overdue. So I spent all day yesterday flossing them.

What's that? You've never heard of brick flossing?

I'm sorry. I'll elaborate:

Ages ago (it seems) my mother did some major re-landscaping on the property. It started with the gazebo (which holds a story all its own...) which became an island in the grass. She designed a patio and a walkway leading to the gazebo, all built from brick pavers.

And it was good.

Until the grass got into the cracks...
This has been a recurring problem ever since, but did not dissuade her from having the driveway done in the same pavers. Those will happen another day.

To floss the pavers, I use a giant WaterPik - the power washer. And I blow the crud out the cracks with the pressurized water. When finished, it looks like this:
So lovely and neat and tidy! Unfortunately for me, a long way from done!Never before did the gazebo look SO far away from the patio!

But persist I did, and managed to clear the entire path and the patio.
And power-washed the front porch (lichens+moss+porch=black, dark, ick) to boot. All in one day! Now I have to replace the sand between the pavers (much easier than getting the ick out!)

Needless to say, there has been little to no textile progress around here. I spun on the turquoise silk some more, but it loks about the same as the last photo (the downside of spinning super-fine - progress is not very visual).

Bad Momma Day

2009-05-28T20:18:00.003-04:00

Last night, the Kiddo was sick after supper. He had a bellyache, and a headache, and got really congested almost as soon as we started eating. I assumed he was having seasonal allergies and had eaten something that disagreed with him. By the time I went to bed he was moaning and crying, and finally he threw up. After that he felt fine, slept through the night, and, and got up chipper and normal.

It's over, right?

Wrong.

Kiddo was fine tonight. We ate dinner, he went back to homework. Within minutes he was complaining of being congested and feeling like he needed to vomit. I got him up to the bathroom and then started thinking....

we had leftovers toight
of yesterday's dinner
he got sick both nights
right after eating
congested, stomachache, headache, vomiting

I left him in the bathroom and checked the fridge. The pesto I used in our supper? Cashews. His #1 allergy.

We're lucky he didn't need the Epi-Pen!! I used about 2 Tbs of pesto in the dinner that fed both of us for 2 nights, so that's what? 1/32 of a tsp of cashews??

I gave him ipecac to speed up the expulsion process, and he was happy as a clam within 20 minutes. All done.

But not hungry.

Nothing like feeding your kid allergens for supper to earn a Bad Momma award, is there?

(For what it's worth, it was yummy. Pine Noodles and Weeds (aka spaghetti broken into small pieces with pesto, goat cheese, cherry tomatoes, and steamed spinach))

Turf Wars

2009-05-27T16:22:00.003-04:00

While vacation was dandy, coming home was not. And not in the usual way, either.

When we left I hadn't made my bed. I planned to change the sheets as soon as we got home, and Chaka likes to sleep on the sheet, and I seldom let him, so I left it all rumpled and the blankets piled up. When I got home, it was still rumpled with the blankets piled up, and there was cat hair all over, which I expected. (I can't have 4 cats and not expect there to be a little fur...) What I didn't expect was wet blankets.

Ick.

Someone had peed on my bed.

Knowing my cats as well as I do, I had already wondered what was up with Rotti - he was acting really, really skittish and scaredy-cat. Kiddo was getting a kick out of making noises every time Rotti started poking into something, just to see him jump! But I didn't suspect him...would you?No, I guessed the culprit was Chaka, my big, old, half-toothless boy. (His head is about the size of a softball) He long ago claimed my bed, and in the household routines around here, he defends it quite fiercely. I suspected that Rotti had moved into my bed and Chaka was marking his territory.

Later that night, when Rotti didn't crawl into bed with me and nestle behind my knees, but Chaka was curled up next to me and purring loudly, I knew I was right. Yesterday morning when I got out of bed, Rotti curled up next to my pillow and Chaka threw a kitty-hissy-fit and chased him off.

Yup, definitely Chaka.

So now I'm using the enzyme cleaner to get the scent out of my quilt and blanket and sheets (I buy by the gallon.) and using different bedding. I got lucky in that the blankets were piled up high enough that even though they were soaked, and the foam mattress topper got wet, the mattress itself was dry. (I enzymed it anyway, to be safe.)

Oh, and Alwen? This one's for you:Rotti's tail is ALL undercoat fluff. It does always look like that. Except when he's spooked - then it's bigger!

Spins like cashmere...

Oh my Goodness

2009-05-26T21:00:00.003-04:00

I am TIRED!

Spent a lovely Memorial Day weekend with friends and their family at their cabin in central Michigan. Gorgeous weather, wonderful food, fabulous place, friendly people... no complaints.

I did a little sketching, played in the lake with the kids, vegged out in the porch swing, ate too much, knit very little, plied some yarn, read a novel, and then some. Didn't sleep much, but what else is vacation for than sucking every moment of pleasure from the days and nights?

Since I have little to report, I'll share a few pictures. My camera didn't do much service, and I haven't received the pics from others yet, so there's only a few.

We were at the end of a cove in the lake, so while it looks narrow, the lake is to the right and out of view. This made it quite safe for the kids to fool around in the paddleboat and the rafts and not need to worry about currents or getting too deep or too far. We simply restricted them to staying "inside the cove" without a grownup. Bug and I took that paddleboat out of the cove and paddled all over the lake - until he was too tired to paddle!
I spent quite a bit of time just relaxing in the old bench swing glider thingy. Wonderful place to get a little (but not too much) sun and enjoy the view.Every night came the bonfires and (of course!) the s'mores.
And the view out from the porch to the lake...
Thanks, Carole, for such a wonderful, wonderful weekend!!!!

New Obsession

2009-05-19T20:56:00.003-04:00

I'm hooked. I found a new obsession.

Watercolor sketching.

I've never considered myself to be a painting-type person. I couldn't see myself standing at an easel dabbing at oil paints. It's not me.

But I used to draw. Quite a bit, too, but never considered myself to be an "artist" in that way. My "art" usually involved fabric of some kind.

Enter watercolor sketching.

I love it. I love the black ink lines, the washes of color, the not-perfect-ness of it! There's a whole spectrum of sketchers out there, ranging from a couple of bold lines to indicate an entire scene, all the way to what I would call "finished paintings." It's somewhere in the middle that I want to be - somewhere where I can scribble down my impressions of where I've been, what I've seen...and have the ability to convey the memories and mood. Something that photographs have consistently leave me feeling disappointed about.

I'm not that good. You're not going to see my pictures in a gallery any time soon. But I'm having fun and learning and splashing down images. I'm seeing the colors and lines around me better than I did before, and I'm starting to see the world around me a little differently.

So now my journaling, which I have been doing on and off since my sixth birthday, includes pictures that don't involve a camera.

I haven't decided yet if I'm going to share. Just know that it's wonderful doing it.

Ooh! Ooh! I bet it would be an awesome way to convey the depth of color in fiber!! I'll let you know if it works.

New Socks!

2009-05-13T19:14:00.004-04:00

I finished a new pair of socks today, and Blogger is being stoopid, so I guess you get to see them sideways. I needed new cotton socks for summer, and wanted ankle-height this time. Sockotta again.

Earlier this week I finished "editing" a pair of jeans. This is the first time I've attempted to make my own jeans, and I like the results a lot. They haven't been washed yet, so they don't have that "industry-made" look to them yet. And they probably won't ever, since they don't fit right.

A friend helped me to do the pattern, and a couple of mis-adjustments got made after the muslin, and... well, they just fit crappy. That, and I've lost a bit more weight (yay!), so they really don't fit now. It's all OK, though. I think of it as practice, and that I learned enough to make my own jeans, if I ever get the fit right!

As for Little Boy, we're having some power struggles lately, in the Rules Are Not For Me way, and he's in danger of failing 3rd grade for lack of turning in work. He's plenty smart enough, he just doesn't seem to think that doing the work on time and giving it to the teacher is worth the time or effort. And now, only a few weeks from the end of the school year there's a pile of unfinished work and he's got the concentration abilities of a gnat. Somehow he believes that if he sits at his desk and stares at the wall long enough, then time will be up and Rumplestiltskin will have come and the work will be done.

Can someone ask him to come and do the laundry and the dished for me when he's done with Little Boy's homework? Please??

Getting my Geek On

2009-05-09T20:00:00.002-04:00

The last few days have been rather fun, in a way I used to have fun, back in the day.

Little Boy's dad came and got him yesterday, and I've been going it alone for the weekend. And for once, I'm actually enjoying it and being productive! I've been puttering about the house all afternoon after running errands this morning. I finished sewing a pair of jeans, started sewing a couple of changing robes for some kayakers, did some laundry, tidied the kitchen, and helped move some (big! heavy!) furniture. It feels good to make some progress on projects that have been sitting around, stagnating, for what feels like forever.

Yesterday, though, was Geek Day.

I've always been a bit of a geek. I love science, followed the space shuttle launches and landings as a little kid (I still have the scrapbooks I made from newspaper clippings), and I always wanted to know why. (There's another story in that, but I'll save it for another day) I guess my child didn't fall far from the tree?

So yesterday I realized that I get another point on the Geek Scale because I'm running Linux on one of my (several) computers.

Then yesterday I hacked Linux to get it to do what I wanted. More points.

And last night? A date with my stepfather to see the new Star Trek movie. Definite geek points. And for what it's worth? Great movie. I want to see it again. Already.

And yes, I do have signed photographs of several ST actors. From back in the day, when I went to cons.

Sometimes I think it was another life, something I read in a novel. It couldn't have been me, could it? Going to cons? Playing RPGs? Staying out till late, drinking Mountain Dew?

I think I'll go back to spinning my frog-hair silk and listening to NPR now.

Friday already?

2009-05-08T08:42:00.000-04:00

I've been a little out of it. My co-worker calls it "glassy-eyed" and he's probably right.

Last Wednesday I was coughing enough to hurt. Thursday I stayed home sick. Friday, too. Saturday I slept. Sunday I went to Urgent Care because I wasn't getting any better. No pneumonia, but I have bronchitis. They got me breathing properly again, and sent me home, and I've been hopped up on codeine ever since. As in, last night's dose won't work out of my system until after noon the next day! I only took 1/8 of the prescribed dose last night and I still slept like a rock and got up groggy. Fun stuff.

And now that I'm healing, I have almost finished a pair of socks I started last Thursday when I was too tired and sick to think. Plain Jane Sockotta socks. I needed more summer cotton socks for work, anyway.

And now it's Friday and I' m not positive where the last 10 days have gone. They've flown by, and I'm facing another weekend.

At least I'm not facing a Monday!

Just Because...

2009-04-29T19:17:00.003-04:00

I'm apparently not busy enough, I've reloaded my Etsy shop with llama fiber. This is the last of the 2007 shearing, and the last of the fiber that's been processed by Zeilinger's.

The destashing has been going well, if the pile of boxes waiting to be mailed tomorrow are any indication. I'm feeling much better about the stash now, too. As I clear out the yarn I don't plan to use, I'm finding yarn I forgot I had! And since I have no plans for that, either...it's listed. I put 25 yarn lots up on Rav today, and some were claimed within minutes. Yay! Tomorrow I hope to start listing the stash fiber I'm not going to spin.

Also tomorrow, I'm hoping to put a few new things into the Etsy shop. There's been a delay in the Special Secret Project, and since I'm accumulating so much dyed fluffiness, and taunting you with it...I thought I should give you a chance to claim some for yourself. I'll let you know when it goes up.

Though I admit, I now have another problem...
He runs off with sealed Ziploc bags, too.

Fixing the Problem

2009-04-28T17:00:00.002-04:00

I've been obsessed the last few days with getting rid of stuff. I took a medium-sized box of quilting fabric to work today and let the receptionists duke it out over the cottons and calicos. I took my knitting down there to watch them at lunch - it was fun!

The strangest part of this though? I'm not a quilter. Never have been.

Tomorrow I'm taking them a box of needlepoint plastic canvas. Nearly 15 pounds of plastic canvas.

One box a day and I'll get there, right?

I've also been culling the stash in a big way - pulling out entire boxes of yarn I haven't looked at in years and just listing it. Finally, there's more in my Trade/Sell page than in my Stash page. I went upstairs after work, pulled out a big bag and three small boxes and took pictures. My goal is to keep only what I love and have plans for. If it doesn't talk to me, if I bought it om impulse and have no idea what to do with it, if I don't love it - it's gone.

I even had a nightmare last night (I haven't slept well since this started. I'm getting sick and headachy from lack of sleep) about yarn! I dreamed that someone sent me a nasty email in which she whined that "the website said all your yarn was FREE!!!!!"

Crazy.

In any case, if there was something in a picture the other day that caught you eye, check my stash page and see if it's there yet. And if you don't see it, don't be shy about asking after it. I really don't want or need to keep all this. I like spinning too much.

And Mara? I'm keeping most of the sock yarn. They do need replacing now and then. You can only keep it if you're going to learn to knit your own socks. Then I'll give you a set of needles to go with it, and lessons. <3

I have a problem?

2009-04-26T14:11:00.003-04:00

I'm embarrassed.

I can't believe I'm posting this, either. (Mom, if you're reading, just close the window and walk away...you really don't want to see this. Honest.)

Hi. My name is Erika and I have a problem.

I'm addicted to fiber. And I have to admit that I didn't realize the extent of it until I was challenged on Ravelry to show my fiber stash. Someone (several someones, actually) wanted to know what 200# of fiber stash looks like. And I decided to add in my yarn stash. So I really don't want to know how much is here. And if you see something you like, make an offer, because I'm feeling rather sick to my stomach right now, looking at this.

Here I am, trying to simplify and make life less cluttered, and I've been accumulating stash like there's not going to be any more wool or silk produced ever again. I am so totally prepared for the sheepocalypse, I could spin for the rest of my life and not finish with this stash.

I really am feeling sick about it.

Now, for the tour:

Welcome to my living room, where the "soon to be handled" and "in process" fibers reside. Next to the couch we have a wicker basket, topped with another wicker basket, topped with sweaters to be frogged for the yarn (why???? why do I feel this compulsion????) The top basket holds an abandoned sock pattern and several spindles, along with a bag of yak down.
The bottom basket holds this:
and then some.

Across from the couch is the weaving loom, wtill holding the remaining Christmas towels, unwoven. You can see under the loom where I cut a bunch of them off, so I could hem and give them out at Christmas, but I never finished the rest. And so they sit.
Next to my favorite chair, the chair Mom bought for me when I was enormous-pregnant with the Little Boy, is my current projects. And another basket full of fiber. That basket weighs about 35#. It's pretty stuffed. You can see the edge of the tapestry loom in front of the fireplace. Why I need to start playing with a tapestry loom when I can't/haven't finished last December's weaving has me stumped. Any and all good explanations currently being accepted...
The main stash is in the basement. Here we have two bins and a bag. One bin is roving and top for the Little Boy to make batts with, one is random wools, and the bag is stuff I dyed for the Mystery Project that hasn't been carded yet. The box right behind the bag holds collections of batts for the Mystery Project That Requires Lots of Pretty Fiber. Note the treadmill and the edge of the weight machine - they are NOT covered in fiber. I actually use the treadmill year-round, since I can't stand running outside in freezing cold or blazing hot.
Here's the big one: the Wall o' Crafts. The wall is lined with shelving, and there's an old table in front that holds that carder and whatever I'm working on right now, which includes book-making. At least I have somewhere to work on this stuff without junking up the dining room. the "stuff" on the weight set is my balance ball, which is stored on the seat, and the cover for the carder that keeps the cats from brushing themselves on the carding cloth.
Elsewhere in the basement I have stashed fibers. Here's a bag of clean wool I've been slowly carding.
And in the "closet" in which I store out of season coats and clothes there's another stash of box and two barrel-shaped containers. I didn't pull them out for you. Not going to.
In the main room is the knitting machine. It sits in front of the shelf of fabric, with a couple bins of coned yarn topped by two boxes of coned yarn.
So are you getting uncomfortable yet? Or is it just me?

There's a bathroom in the basement that seldom gets used. The shower hasn't been used in a few years. not for showering, anyway. It holds raw fleece now. (And a small amount of fiber from sheep Shed Studio, waiting to be dyed).

The garage holds the raw llama fleeces waiting to be cleaned and carded. These are what I sell in my Etsy shop and on Ravelry. My cousin raises them, and I process and sell the fiber. Awesome fleece! There's a little over 100# here.
On to the knitting...

each drawer is just under 3' deep.

as is the closet.The guest room holds the rest of the machine knitting stuff, and a bit more yarn.
It also holds the pretty dyed fibers I've posted here as I dye it up. Those boxes are full.

I think that's it, reserving the projects I'm actually knitting on right now, which total 4, I think.

I'm horribly aghast at the volume of wool and fiber I've accumulated. I find it disturbing. I have so little time for actually playing with it, making things, that it is exccessive. If I played with fiber all day, or was ploughing through it, I might consider this to be reasonable, but I think I have passed S.A.B.L.E. (Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy). Unless I get to be the first person to reach the ripe old age of 234.

I've seen pictures online of other people's stashes, some smaller, some making mine seem tiny (I seem to recall one where her knitting yarn completely filled her master bathroom, rendering it unusable...) but I think the fact that I'm uncomfortable with it indicates that I have too much for me.

And yet...every bit of it has the potential of being a finished object, gives me inspiration and ideas. Which of those ideas am I willing to part with first??

Greening Day

2009-04-23T12:31:00.000-04:00

Unlike Earth Day, which happens according to a date on a calendar, there's a very special day that happens once each year in early spring. It's a little unpredictable, and sometimes you don't notice that it's happening until it's already gone. It happened on Tuesday here. I noticed. And I mentioned it to my mother.

And she said "It's what day?"

Greening Day.

Haven't heard of it either? That's OK. My son's dad invented it. (Hey, if Hallmark can make up holidays whenever they feel like it, why can't he name a day that is special without having cards to celebrate it? his own private pagan holiday....)

Greening Day happens when winter is getting old. The daffodils are blooming, the crocuses are bobbing in the breeze, the snow is gone, and the grass is still dead and brown. There are no buds on trees yet, mud still fills low areas, last fall's leaves are still caught around the edges of buildings and fences, and you're getting really anxious for spring to finally arrive.

And then it rains. And it rains, and it rains.

And if you're lucky, you might notice that the air is a little brighter, the drear is a little less dreary, and there's a greenish cast on everything that's wet. If you're not that lucky, then you saw rain, rain, and more rain.

And then, when the rain stops, suddenly it shows: the buds are on trees, the grass is tall and green and needs mowing, there are shoots standing up in the flower bed where yesterday there was nothing.

Greening Day.

It took me a few years of watching to understand the signs our foremothers probably took for granted. Now it's time to put in peas. Now it's time to clean up the yard. Now it's time to start thinking about what color of flowers to put in the pots on the front porch. Your steps feel a little lighter, the sun feels a little warmer, and you can finally let out that breath you've been holding for spring.

It happens at different times in different areas. It's a very local holiday, and should be celebrated everywhere. It happened here on Tuesday, 2 days ago. And I celebrated by laughing in the rain.

Greening Day.

Have you had yours yet?

Hair of the Frog

2009-04-19T18:50:00.002-04:00

This was a lovely weekend. Little Boy's dad picked him up about 15 hours late, but it got fabulous after that.

Saturday morning, bright and early, I was running to Ann Arbor, MI on fun errands.

First stop: Hollander's! I'm still geeked about bookbinding, so I went out there for some proper supplies. I perused, and ogled, and fondled, and dreamed. I've never seen so much beautiful paper in one place! As a self-identified paper-lover, it was a heavenly experience (I was the kid playing with carbon paper and envelopes, and playing "office" so I could play with stationery and stuff.) I finally pared down my choices to what you see below: some colored waxed linen thread to replace the jewelry hemp/candle wax combo), an awl (instead of a big needle soved in the handle of a sewing tool), some needles sized appropriately for the linen thread, a 3/32" punch for the leather, a book on bookbinding (should probably start learning properly, right?), and a CD/book combo on William Morris designs (I'm exploring some patterns for tapestry). What's NOT in the picture are the enormous sheets of gorgeous paper I bought to play with. Only 4, but they were worth it.
Right outside Hollander's was the Kerrytown Farmer's Market. So I did some of my shopping. Jumbo farm-raised fresh eggs. Fresh bread. Homemade doughnut. Mmmmm.

Then it was off the Trader's Joe's for me, to get the rest of my groceries. More Mmmm.

Spent the rest of the afternoon sitting on the back patio spinning frog hair and getting another minor sunburn.

Can you see that? How about a scale?

Want a real measurement? The smallest line at the top of the picture on the Spinner's Control Card is 40wpi.

That line looks enormous, doesn't it?

I've been spinning for hours and hours this weekend, and I can still see the leader-yarn. I have a four-ounce bag of this lovely dyed silk, that's screaming Peacock Shawl at me (here, for non-Rav folks.) It'll be 2-ply when I'm done. About the weight of sewing thread. The pattern calls for 150g/1500m of laceweight yarn. Think I'm going to have enough? I can't get more.

Bookish

2009-04-16T19:29:00.004-04:00

I was feeling a little bookish this week. And last week, too, to be honest.

A few years ago I made handmade books as Christmas gifts. (I didn't take any pictures, of course.) Then I promptly gave every last one of them away.

Last week I started eyeing the pretty papers I'd folded back then, all stacked up and ready to be punched and sewn. And I started eyeing the leathers sitting there in the basement, waiting to be made into something, anything! And, well, I started looking at bookbinding sites and blogs again. Next thing I knew this book showed up in my mailbox.

And now this is sitting on my desk. (Please ignore the dust. I'm too tired to re-take the picture.)
It's completely made from things I had around the house (so shoot me. doesn't everyone have good leather and craft supplies hanging around??).
It's the braided spine sewing, and it's the stitching pattern I've had in my sights for several years now. Don't know why I didn't purchase the book sooner, it was so clearly written, I had no problem doing it.
It's a wrapover book, with handmade paper (not by me) for the pages.
Now I'm not sure what to do with it. It's one of those things that I simply wanted to make. Not because I wanted the item, but because I wanted the experience of making it.

I used the natural edge of the leather, and the hole was kind of a neat feature of the natural edge. To my hand, the paper is too stiff for the soft leather, probably because I folded it across the grain 3+ years ago when I didn't know any better and it doesn't drape in my hand the way I think that it should.

After a crappy day at work, it felt good to come home and make something nice.

Making Lists

2009-04-15T18:49:00.002-04:00

And getting things done.

I pulled another disappearing act after the huge Saturday post, and have been making enormous progress on the home-organization front.

Sunday was all fun and family and friends, being Easter. It was lovely, and I got my first sunburn of the season while enjoying the sunshine on Mom's patio after brunch.

On Monday, after working all day, we came home and cleaned house, from top to bottom. I tried something a little different with the Little Boy this time, and made each of us a list. On his I listed out each specific action for a chore, and mine was just a normal list. We worked off the lists, and I didn't have to nag him to do stuff, just remind him to choose something else off the list. He could procrastinate on the things he didn't want to do, but I was happy because everything he did do was something I wanted done anyway. So we both won.

Tuesday I fell into a black hole after work and finished reading Lean Mean Thirteen by Janet Evanovich. I've been sucked into the Stephanie Plum series, big time. I started them near the end of February, and finished last night. All of them. Including the "between the numbers" books. When's the next one coming out???

Tonight we tackled the basement. The dungeon. The Place to Shove Crap I Don't Want to Look At. It's certainly not perfect yet, but I have workout space, and a table to do fiber on, and someplace to sit and sew... and a huge pile of stuff to give to charity. Now we're hungry, and I'm tired.

Oh, and remember these guys?

Yeah. They're getting bigger.
The weirdest part about getting the house cleaned up is that I can't seem to get used to it. It's freaking me out a little. I'm not used to this much open space. Seems...weird.

Embroidery Explorations

2009-04-11T12:46:00.005-04:00

I recently fell into a conversation on Ravelry about embroidering period clothing for reenacting history, specifically within the SCA. I was once an active member, and have lapsed in the last five years as a single working mom trying to keep my head above water and the house passably clean (Not always successful, but trying!) Since I thought some of you might be interested in this, I'm posting my embroidery projects here along with a small amount of the history of them.

Long before I was obsessed with knitting, I was obsessed with embroidery. Particularly historic embroidery. I studied it, went to museums to examine it, searched every reference I could find to understand it, and I tried to reproduce it. Some things I finished, others are still languishing in corners and cupboards, waiting for me to get the inspiration to finish them.

Some are languishing because I later learned I was doing something "wrong". Others are sitting there because once I met the challenge of the project, I didn't feel compelled to finish it (for whatever random reason).

Some (completed ones) are lost. I loaned out the garb for a Ren Fest last summer, and it was never returned. (We'll forgive her, since she has cancer and 2 young girls...) Some that are gone were photographed, and now the photos are missing, too (No idea on that one...I'll have to dig deeper into the Piles 'O Mess around here).

In the SCA I played Lady Playne Jayne (I earned the "Lady" title during my time in Indiana with the Shire of Strikkenwoode), a merchant-class woman (my now-ex-husband was Hans Hannibal Hutter von Hutterhofen, advisor to the Holy Roman Emperor). As Playne Jane, I didn't look plain a all, and usually skirted the edges of sumptuary laws dressing to the nines in English garb with German influence (from HHHvH). I loved making the fancy outfits and finding and creating the details that set me apart from the herd.

One of those details was that I was wearing coifs before anyone else in the area. I know they're seen pretty regularly now, but I was rare back then. I had a fine linen one for when I dressed up for court, and a coarser linen one for when I was merchanting (I made and sold garb, too). And then I got the wild hair (hare?) to embroider one, like the period examples in museums. I chose this one, because I had found more available documentation on it than any other one that caught my eye at the time. (Credit for the following photo goes to an unknown internet poster years ago, she took this in the V&A Museum. If it's yours, let me know and I'll credit you)The coif was worn over the hair and under any outer hat. Some have been found totally plain, others are elaborately embroidered, and there are plenty of examples in museums to show that just about every embroidery technique of the period (1580-1610) was used on them. Some look professionally done, others are obviously amateur-stitched. They appear in portraits sometimes, but most often, being worn on the back of the head, they are out of sight and unpainted.

Using a light table, I layed out the pattern on linen and drew it on the fabric with a permanent fine-point pen (totally period). I stitched it into a frame and got to work.

Then I guess I got bored, because this is what I found in the embroidery box. Not even close to finished.
I stitched with red silk thread, following the lines and "speckling" the open spaces. Teeny tiny work.Striking, though, yes?

Part of me wants to finish it, just to say I did. And part of me thinks that there's no point, since I have no opportunity to wear it. Kind of like the next one:

I went through a blackwork embroidery phase, and starting embellishing all our linens. I was obsessing over portraits of people with blackworked linens. It was most popular a little earlier than my persona (around 1575), but I couldn't resist making some "antique" linens to show off. (What? Isn't that what all the embellishment was about in the first place? Showing off??) Lots of blackwork showed up on collars and cuffs, and often (earlier in the fad) in stripes down the front and back of the shirt/chemise.

Again, with silk on linen. I pulled the design from a portrait and went at it.

I got as far as box-pleating the ruffs onto the cuffs, but never built the shirt. I did a really wide, elaborate blackworked collar band, but can't find it right now. So sad.

Another little experiment I found in the box was this one:
Three tiny rows of stitching, 12 stitches across. Cross-stitch. I had just returned from an exhibit at the art museum in Detroit on English Embroidery, had taken lots of pictures, stood in real close taking notes and drawing sketches, and was fascinated by the stitch-count I found. Some of the finer embroideries were done at 43 stitches to the inch. The example I tried was 41, and after those three little rows I had a migraine. Compare the size of one row of stitching to the date on the penny. Then go look at a penny real close...scared yet?

The next bit I'll share with you was my (unfinished) pride and joy. The Sweete Bag. A sweete bag is one of those things we have in museums that nobody can agree on exactly what they were used for. They're usually elaborately embroidered little bags, often with an attached pincushion. It's suspected that they held fragrant herbs and spices that could be held near one's face when the "less-washed" folk were nearby. Some think they were for holding small items. I agree more with the first hypothesis, since the extant examples are not (in my opinion) distorted enough to suggest they were used for carrying anything heavy, ever.

This one is done on linen canvas, in silk and metallic to mimic the original (again, trying for a reproduction, not an "inspired by") and was never finished.
The frame its tacked to is about 7"x14", and I've never removed it. It's (period) tent stitch, 36 stitches to the inch.

I lost track of how many hours went into this project. I finally bought a period-ish embroidery stand to hold it because it was wearing me out. The multiple needles in the upper corner were so I could thread several colors and stitch until I ran out before cutting threads and threading needles again.
I wish I could find the rest of my projects, both finished and unfinished. Or the pictures, even. I have all the documentation somewhere, and it bothers me that it's "lost". I can't even find the picture of the original sweete bag!

I'll keep up the search, and post more as I find them. If you're still reading, thanks for hanging out.

Behavior Patterns

2009-04-10T10:28:00.000-04:00

I've noticed something: the busier I am, and the more commitments I have, and the less free time I have, the more I obsess about projects. I want to research textile history, start projects, learn something new...anything but deal with the things in front of me.

I washed the dished this morning for the first time since Saturday. Saturday! It's Friday, folks, and I've had dirty dishes sitting in my kitchen for almost a week. I'm almost embarrassed to admit it, but since I've been loading most of them into the dishwasher every day, it wasn't quite as bad as it could have been. But still. Ick.

So what did I want to do this morning? Play hooky and learn card weaving. Finish an old embroidery project. Finish the Kimberley sweater in time to wear it for Easter (it stalled at the weaving in 50,000 ends/sewing it together stage). Clean the house. Sit home and drink tea. Spin yarn for the first time in over a month. Play with the new tapestry loom that hasn't even been delivered yet!

I didn't. I went to work. It's hard to get motivated, though, when the sun is shining and my wanna-do list is growing longer by the day. I finished my taxes last night, and e-filed, which takes an enormous weight off my shoulders, even if I did have to write a check to the State of Michigan (it was for less than I would spend on a couple skeins of sock yarn, so I don't feel too badly about it...)

Tonight I'm working at the last fish fry of the season, and the clean-up will be a huge task. We have to clean up and pack out all the supplies we use, clear out the leftover food from the fridges, and make sure everything gets distributed to the proper places (leftover uncooked food goes to the food bank). And the kitchen has to be spotless.

I'm getting really antsy and obsessing over the excess stuff in the house. I look around and see things I don't want to keep, and never seem to have the time to get it out. I'm considering putting an empty box in each floor of the house, and every time I run across something I don't want to keep, just toss it in there and swap out boxes when they get full. It might be the least-stressful way of getting it out, since I never seem to have the time to clear out a whole cupboard or closet in one go.

Thanks for the encouragement lately, in the comments. It's affirming to come home to messages from you guys letting me know that I'm not a complete lunatic. Just a partial one.

I have so many things to do, pictures to take, and posts to make, I just can't seem to keep up with my ambitions. Kind of depressing to not have time to play.

On the bright side, the sun us shining, the nights are cool, and it's going to be gorgeous weather all Easter weekend. I'll be baking tomorrow for Sunday brunch, and cleaning house, and maybe playing a little. Sunday afternoon is totally free and clear for whatever I want to do.

And I haven't decided if I should make hot cross buns, a brioche (with an egg in it, of course), or what. I always bake something special for holiday brunches. It's tradition. It's also tradition that I shake things up with different recipes, and not stick to always making the same thing every Easter/Thanksgiving/Christmas/random birthday. But I always bake. If only I could find a local store carrying the flour I use...for some reason it's disappeared off the shelves of several local stores I used to get it at! Not good! White whole wheat flour is not an easy thing to find, and it has to be fresh, not rancid...every year that it's harder to find gives me a little more fuel for buying a grain mill and a 50# bag of hard white wheat.

But that might be a bit much. Yes? No?

Technology

2009-04-09T12:05:00.000-04:00

The Home Computer

My parents are not the most tech-savvy folks around. They're not stupid - not by a long shot. But somehow they seem to have...issues...when technology is involved. Take their home computer, for example. It runs slower than my first 286 processor. Click on a link and go get a cup of tea before it loads. And this is their new computer, bought when they got tired of fighting the old, "slow" one. It's on DSL, and there's nothing wrong with the line, it's just their computer. I have no idea what's running in the background, how much of their processor is bogged down with random programs. But I do know that my government-issued computer, with "updates" and "improvements" shoved down the wire to it almost every night runs faster than their brand new brand name computer.

The Phone

Last summer my mother biked across the United States in 50 days (5 rest days). It was her great adventure, and she wanted to figure out how to record her experience to be able to share it with others. This was not a spontaneous trip - she had to register months in advance, train on her bike all winter, and generally prepare (including figuring out how to pack everything she was going to need for almost 2 months into two tiny duffle bags weighing less than 30#, combined). So why was it 48 hours before her plane left that she decided to blog and bought a tiny little phone with a keypad so she could blog on the road?

It took the better part of the next 2 days to get things up and running, and her last days were a panic-frenzy of trying to get her out the door. The phone didn't connect to the internet properly, she kept breaking her template on the blog (how?!?), and she couldn't email her entries from her phone...until 1 hour before she left. She still called me every day for the first week or so, and emailed me regularly, to pop in and fix her blog layout, which she somehow managed to mess up every couple of days.

The Netbook

I must be slow to learn when it comes to Mom and technology, because I agreed it would be useful for her to own a netbook for her trips, so she could blog easier. So she went out and bought one. A week before she left for her trip to Florida to bike.

The netbook was a bust, and wouldn't get online, even when my brother-in-law, the IT specialist, spent half a day fiddling with it. (I must not be too low, because I stayed FAR away from her and the new toy!) She eventually took it back to the store, went elsewhere and bought a different brand. Bill got it online wirelessly, and on LAN, and off she went to Florida. (I just noticed a connection between her technology binges! She buys a new "toy" every time her bike has been shipped off ahead of her travelling!! Bingo!) She got down there, and...nothing. No internet.

Fast forward a few weeks, and the netbook has been in my hands for about 3 days now. I have devoted 2 evenings to it, flashed the BIOS, installed updated drivers for the wireless card, searched the internet for solutions...and found that there are a LOT of people having problems getting on the internet with their Acer Aspire One netbooks. (Which leaves me wondering, of course, why make a netbook that can't get on the net?? And why they get such good reviews??)

I've about had it. I can't think of anything else to do to this thing short of wiping it's little brain and reinstalling everything, including the new BIOS, the new drivers, and hurling it out the freaking window. Unfortunately, it weighs so little I think it would bounce off the glass and come back at me.

I'd been considering getting a netbook for me, so I can write more, but after fiddling with Mom's, I'm not so sure anymore. I was looking at an Asus eeePC, the company that started making netbooks to begin with, and I'm second-guessing myself, bigtime.

Maybe I should just get Mom a nice pen and notebook (paper) for Mother's Day. It's less painful, cheaper, and requires fewer service calls.

I've been busy again...

2009-04-08T11:05:00.000-04:00

I worked 19 hours in the first two days this week, and still had supper and kid-stuff to do. I'm a wee bit tired.

I did manage to get a couple fleeces washed, though. Two Shetlands and a llama cria. This should be interesting (and fun!) to figure out what to do with them. I have two or three more Shetlands to wash, a corriedale, and an English Leister waiting in the wings. Well, in the basement shower, anyway. e don't generally use it for showering, and I can hide the fleeces behind the shower curtain.

So there's fiber everywhere.

Last night I grabbed some of the off-white Shetland I had finished washing, to see what it could do. Roddy tossed himself into the fleece and started grooming it. Of course. (And he did NOT want to let go!) I hand-carded a couple rolags to test-spin, but I'm thinking I might like it better drum-carded into batts. This particular fleece is a bit long, and not dual-coated like so many of the fleeces I seek out.

I'm still fondling the grey-black Shetland. It's a dual-coat, and it's gorgeous! It's from a ewe, over 5 years, and the long outer coat is greying. It's the under-coat that has me in love. It's black. Pure black. And it's downy soft. I'm thinking it needs combed out and spindle-spun into laceweight for another Shetland shawl. The longer hairs will make perfect embroidery thread! Long, smooth, lustrous...comb them into top and have at it.

The colors I brought back from Rhinebeck! All different colors!! White to black to grey to tan to brown...and a couple of two-tones. Some will get overdyed, but many will stay in natural tones. I want to spin for a Starmore sweater, and I'll overdye in the fleece to get the tweedy shades. You can't get the same effect when you dye in the yarn, in my opinion. I like the random different colors of fibers all mixed together to get the shade you really wanted. I have 2 other partial Shetlands already clean and fleece-dyed. I needed more, though, to make a whole sweater.

So my hands are shot. Hot water + Dawn dish detergent = angry skin on my hands. We discovered over 20 years ago that I'm allergic to Dawn. But it's the best for washing fleece. So I suck it up and do it. And try to keep my hands out of the water as much as possible. I have a system worked out that works very well for washing, gets the crud out, and keeps my hands mostly dry. (let me know if you want a tutorial or something, it's only 2 dishpans, Dawn, and a spatula...and a couple dollar store mesh bags). I've never written a tutorial, and I've been told that my fleece-washing method is "all wrong" and "will definitely cause felting". Huh. I guess that's interesting, because I haven't felted a fleece yet, not even a llama cria, which felts if you look at it crooked. I've also been told that I'm killing lock structure. Interesting. I can lay out the fleece and sort it when it's _clean_ after washing. And it looks like it came off the sheep's back. Only cleaner.

Oh, well. To each their own.

But don't tell me "never", cuz I'll find an exception. Somewhere.

Exception

2009-04-03T11:43:00.000-04:00

This morning on the drive to school (I drive a carpool in the am, if I haven't mentioned it before) one of the kids coughed. I politely reminded her to cover her cough, as we really didn't appreciate sharing. Which started a whole conversation on "I know your mother taught you to share, but what should you keep to yourself?"

It got icky.

We decided that coughing was definitely a no-share, as were hands, tongues, and opinions. Then the kids got going, and we ended up with a large category we called Germs, for lack of a better name. This category included coughs, sneezes, retainers (don't ask), backwash, spit, toilet fluids, and a few other things I think I'm blocking from my memory. They'd keep throwing out these random gross things, and I'd keep tossing it into the Tongues or Germs categories, and they'd laugh and think of some more.

Yeah, it's gross, but it gets their minds working in the morning. And it makes sense. The world might be a nicer place if we all kept our germs, hands, tongues, and opinions to ourselves.

Except with that special someone with whom you _want_ to share tongues, hands, and germs. But that's beyond the morning conversation for a group of Catholic elementary school kids. So I didn't bring it up.

An example of an Opinion better kept to myself.

No fooling

2009-04-01T14:44:00.000-04:00

I woke up yesterday morning with four cats and a kid in my bed.

The cats are usually there. The kid had been sleepwalking. He was thoroughly confused when I woke him for school, had no clue where he was, didn't remember getting there. I remember hearing the toilet flush and the Kiddo crawling over the foot of my bed before tucking himself in.

So I went over to the school yesterday morning, to talk to the teacher about Monday's field trip. And I got double-teamed by the teacher and the principal, dressed down, and told in no uncertain terms that it's my fault it happened the way it did. They felt no responsibility whatsoever.

And there's nothing like getting treated like an imbecile with no license to parent. In full view of the class.

No way was I going to work that upset.

So I called my friend Carole, and she put the kettle on. We talked about it, drank tea, and tried to figure out how to deal with this. There's not really much I can do, but sometimes it helps to vent and get it out of my system. She made me a lovely enormous salad for lunch, and I set her up with a knitting machine for a while. She's fallen in love with it already, and all she's done is knit a huge stockinette square. I installed a new sponge bar in the ribber this morning, so she can start playing with that whenever she gets a chance.

And I'm slogging through today, having discovered I need to go to the funeral home today after work. A wonderful old man who lives here, and is incredibly generous with the hugs and kindness, passed away on Monday. He was a fixture at the local bakery in the mornings, and loved to make the other old men jealous by getting hugs (and maybe even a cheek-peck kiss!) from me whenever I would stop in for a chocolate chip muffin. He went to my parents' church, ushered there, and has known me since I was a teen, even though I didn't know him. he always remembered my son's name, and offered a high-five to him whenever we saw him. He was cavalry in WWII, and proudly proclaimed it on his bumper sticker and license plate. I'll miss him a lot.

Nexus

2009-03-30T19:53:00.002-04:00

Today started out so hopeful...ice on the windshield, coffee in hand, kid on a field trip...

My son was left behind at the school while his entire class went on a field trip. They claim he never brought in a permission slip. There was also no notice in advance of this problem, no note home, no note in his homework notebook which the teacher looks in and signs every day. I'm nearly positive I sent it in weeks ago. So what did they do about it? They sent him to sit with first grade all day. He's in third.

So he got brought to me at work, earlier than I usually pick him up, because the other mom was picking up her kids and grabbed mine, too, since he'd had a wasted day. She was a parent/guardian on the trip (a kid-corraller) and didn't realize he'd been left behind until they were too far gone to change anything.

And I can't shake the feeling that the teacher didn't want him on the trip. He can be a handful and a half sometimes.

I checked his folder and notebook. No notes. No messages. Nothing.

Except some homework assignments due this week. That aren't even started.

We spent about an hour this afternoon, after coming home from work, with him in my lap crying. he'd had a bad day. We went round and round about when was he going to get his work done if he went to swimming this week, since it's the last week of swimming this session, and finally I let him go.

Where he jumped into the pool, when he wasn't supposed to, and landed on a girl's face.

Hard enough that she had to leave the pool.

Then I find out that this wasn't the first time he's hurt somebody during practice. No one had told me. The mother promised she'd pray for me.

Then he got into a fight with some other boys in the locker room after practice. Twice I sent random dads waiting in the hallway in there to kick him out. I banged on the door (it was locked) and he finally came out. Why were you in there so long? I asked, pretending I didn't already know. I took a long shower he told me.

Do I look that stupid??

My kid is the bully, isn't he? My son is turning into the child that every mother dreads, the one who gets labeled as a "problem" and the mother pitied or scorned as unable or unwilling to control her child.

One of the new IT guys at works calls me Nexus, because if there's a problem, eventually he'll find me in the middle of it. The Nexus.

I'm beginning to believe it.

March: in like a lion, out like a...lion?

2009-03-30T11:33:00.000-04:00

March came in with cold temps and winds a -blowing. March is going out with...snow.

I had to scrape my windshield this morning. Not frost, not thin ice, but thick white stuff frozen to my windshield. Like, winter-stuff. The ground was white, and it was definitely on the "crispy" side (in terms that Scott and I came up with years ago...) When we were sitting at dinner last night, as the sun was setting, I noticed that there were large white fluffy snowballs falling from the sky. "Falling" being a euphemism for flying in every-which direction while being whipped around by a wind strong enough to rattle the windows in their panes (and yes, re-glazing them is on my to-do list.) Then the thunder and lightening started. Usually thundersnows only happen around here in January!

For projects, I have nothing to show. I spent close to 5 hours cleaning the house on Saturday, all the way to scrubbing the kitchen floor on my hands and knees. I couldn't take the mess we've been living in, and started in my bedroom, worked my way through the upstairs, then finally made coffee and something to eat when I started on the downstairs. I quit when I hit the basement floor, and started carding wool. I made 10 batts out of over a pound of hand-dyed wool, 2 color-batches.

Then a friend came over, and I made homemade pizza, and we sat around and talked after the kiddo got to bed.

Sunday morning I was exhausted, sore, and really thirsty (gotta love that after-effect of mead). I didn't do anything but read after church, and finally got around to making some bread for us to eat this week, and a pot of potato-kale soup out of some veggies on their last legs. I was starting to get afraid of the potatoes...they kept looking at me! And I taught Kiddo how to play Monopoly. After he declared he loved the game, I informed him that I had tricked him, and he'd just practiced both math facts (adding on the dice) and money (I had him make change regularly). Sometimes it's fun to be the parent!

So I'm still stiff and sore this morning, back at work, and ready for the Kiddo's last week of swimming practices. We really need a few boring evenings at home.

Almost Spring

2009-03-26T09:21:00.002-04:00

It's supposed to be 50F today, though it might rain a little at some point. It's finally starting to feel like spring! I don't think I would appreciate spring in the same way if I lived somewhere without four distinct seasons...after dealing with the snow and ice and cold I LOVE spring! Even though I love winter, too!

Tomorrow night is the Kiddo's last swim meet. Feels like the last 2.5 months have been forever and so fast, both at the same time. We've adjusted to the chaotic and busy schedule by changing our routines and letting some things go (like vacuuming the cat hair...) and preparing other things in advnace (like suppers for the week). Some of these habits I want to hang on to, others (i.e. vacuuming) we should probably not keep, even if the cats like the vacuum machine to remain idle.

I'm having a hard time sticking to my committment to have only one major knitting project and a pair of socks on the needles simultaneously. I currently have 5 projects in progress.

Kimberly is waiting to be sewn together in good lighting, then needs a collar and button bands. Not so much work, but being as she's all black, I need to have good lighting to seam her well.

Tamarah is in timeout in the kitchen drawer. I haven't touched her in weeks.

The current socks are a PITA, and they're also in timeout in the kitchen drawer. They're two-color stranded socks, and I was getting tired of having to think while knitting socks. I love the pattern, and think the socks are going to be awesome, but...yeah. Stranded socks. Maybe not my brightest idea.

I can almost ignore the Hobbit Socks as a learning experience, except I put them on my Ravelry Projects page, and they stare at me, unfinished, every time I update a project and make me feel guilty for abandoning them as Hobbit-size socks. That, and the lone unfinished sock is sitting on my knitting machine. Reminding me every time I want to sit down and knit something.

Then there's the comfort project. The tote-around and knit-whenever project. Another gansey. Kid-sized. For Christmas. it's kind of like knitting a sock...it's roundy-roundy, on sock-sized yarn, and there's hardly any thought to it right now. I started it last Thursday night, and I'm through 100g of yarn already. I expect it to take about 500g. It's fast, fun, easy, and comforting. And I'm designing on the fly. Somehow I fretted and studied and calculated Bills' gansey to death...and this one I'm comfortable just zipping along, designing as I go, and happily, blissfully, just knitting. Go figure.

I have yet to even take pictures of all these projects, but I'll be sure to post them when I get them taken.

Sunshine Makes Me Happy

2009-03-22T18:19:00.003-04:00

I can be blue as all get-out, but when I'm sitting in the sunshine, soaking up the rays, I can't feel bad.

Once I go back in the house, though, is another story. It's almost like I feel good in direct sunlight, but I can't hold that feeling for very long.

So when all else fails, I alternate sitting in the sunshine with getting things done in the house.

I was a busy girl today, and managed to not only find my kitchen counter, but soak up some rays, knit on a new project (no pics yet), get some laundry done, make bread (baking right now), and get a pot of chili started for supper.

Oh, yeah...

And I dyed a little bit of wool.

Four batches, all lovely and soft, three batches of which are color-coordinated-but-not-the-same. A new feat!

As you can see by the long shadows, the day is getting on here, and the colors are not as pretty in the picture as they are in real life. Of course.

And the clock is ticking...the destination of all of this lovely wool will be revealed!

All in good time...

Impending Changes

2009-03-21T19:17:00.003-04:00

In keeping with my attempts to remove the things I'm not using, and in trying to surround myself with the things I love, I have been busy.

Today I bought new underpants (#28 on The List, if you care).

I also have been arranging this lovely, lovely barter:

A KnitKing Bulky PC knitting machine, with a boatload aof extras (not shown)...
...for this: (sorry it's sideways!)

Ten treadles, eight harnesses, 6 reeds, four shuttles, and a long, long trip with FedEx.

She's not in my hands yet, but I am SO looking forward to meeting her in person!!!

Not sure what's going to happen to Fanny, yet. She's a bit recalcitrant in general, and I don't know yet if she's going to share nicely. We'll see if I need to find her a new home or not. Fanny is better at rugs and tight warps, but Herald is going to be wonderful at patterning and fun stuff!

Yay for bartering!!!

mulling things over

2009-03-20T12:01:00.000-04:00

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. Looking around, thinking, evaluating clutter, thinking, running around, and thinking. Among a few other things. I'm having lots of thoughts about what happens next. My job probably will end in about a year and a half...where do I go then? It's part and parcel for being a government contractor, and this is quite a bit of notice for the government, so it's not that I'm complaining. It's just...I'm finally getting settled into life here, and I'm not ready to leave.

I have it pretty good here. I have flexible hours, understanding bosses, family nearby, a great school, wonderful friends, an awesome house, a job I'm good at (usually) that (often) allows for thinking outside the box, decent pay, a short commute, full benefits, access to the water...I could go on and on. Yeah, I whinge about things from time to time, but that's just whingeing. It's what happens now and then.

For the most part I have a really good life here with my son.

I'm starting to get a bit strung-out over the job-ending thing, though. I'm feeling panicky about paying off debt and getting my daily expenses down. I'm getting antsy about getting rid of the clutter I don't want, need, or use. I feel an enormous need to pare down my and Kiddo's things to a much smaller, more manageable volume.

And I want to run away sometimes. But that's more from running around like a crazy person all day, every day, week after week.

I guess you could say I feel an unconscious need to lighten the load. Like I'm preparing for something. But I don't know what it is. I don't feel a need to get rid of my weaving loom, or my spinning wheels, but I feel like my yarn stash is too big, I have more books than I really want to keep, I have too many unnecessary dishes, clothes, and just...stuff. I removed an entire paper-box (like offices get reams in) of toiletries and products and stuff from the bathroom closet the other day...it felt good.

I crave simplicity.

And in the process of all this, I found I'm not so much into reading blogs anymore. There are three that I look at daily now, where before there were dozens. I keep thinking my life is too boring to blog, and find myself going yet another day without a post. I'm introverting (is that verb-able?) and withdrawing from a lot of the social things I was doing, while still maintaining and enjoying a few select social activities. I'm limiting my projects to far fewer UFOs than I've ever had at one time, yet still starting the ones I adore and ripping the ones that don't make me happy. (And of all weirdness EVER - I miss the NeverEnding Torso Sock?!?)

There's so much going on in my head...all the thinking and ideas and things I want to do. And I can't get to most of it. There's too much other stuff to do. I don't feel right giving it all to you guys. I don't even know all your names, yet I tell you so much! (I won't get into what it's like to have one comment per 100 blog hits on a regular basis...and not even know who most of the readers are.) I'm not thrilled that I can't email commenters back directly (Thank you, Blogger), and I don't always have a good way to answer in a post. Comments always seem to make me smile, though, because someone took a minute or two to type out a few words in return.

Maybe doing a bit of wool-dyeing this weekend, and making some lovely cheerful colors will improve my disposition.

IdiditIdidit!!!

2009-03-15T12:32:00.002-04:00

I knit a new pair of socks!! (pretty, yes?)On my knitting machine!!!!
First successful pair on the machine. Ever. Short row heels and everything!

OK, so the colors on the ribbing are weird, but I'm not complaining at all. I received the yarn on Friday afternoon, and by Saturday breakfast I had a new pair of socks!

In case you were wondering what I've been up to lately. The learning curve on making socks with a flat bed machine, with ribber, is really, really steep.

I have a feeling I'm not going to have much of a sock yarn stash soon.

Swim Meet

2009-03-11T10:09:00.000-04:00

We've been running around like crazy folks this week, with swim practice and meets, and Scout banquet tonight... we're tired, but it's good. We're getting there, and getting used to the schedule.

My computer at work seems to finally be working, so maybe I can get around to doing what I'm hired to do! It gets more than a little annoying when you're supposed to be working and can't. I don't like sitting around doing nothing.

Last night was another swim meet for the Kiddo, and it was a stellar one for him! He swam the best and fastest he's swam yet! He didn't come in first or anything yet, but he's thrilled that he wasn't the last one in for a change! He finally figured out that to win he has to swim fast...not like in practice. He figured it out, and did a fantastic job! He placed fourth in one event, but I don't remember the stats for the other 3-4 races he did. I was writing out ribbons.

It's one of the things they do in this league - every racer gets a ribbon for every race, with their name, the event, their time, and stuff written on the back of it. Three of us moms sat at a folding table on the side of the pool deck and wrote out hundreds (literally) of these ribbons as the kids raced. There were between 75 and 100 kids there, and each one raced at least 3 times, some of them in relay races where 4 kids raced in turns...meaning there were 4 first place ribbons to fill out, four second place, etc. And for every kid who raced but didn't place, they get a Participant ribbon with all the same info on it. My hands are still cramping after writing all those ribbons with cheap-o skinny ballpoint pens!

We got home about 9:00, and he was hungry (of course), I hadn't had supper (after working until it was time to go to the meet), and the cats were screaming at me for their supper. They were so hungry that Chaka, my old man of a cat, shoved a kitten out of its bowl and ate its food! Usually Chaka gets fed upstairs as soon as I feed the kittens and Isis, but he couldn't wait.

Tonight is the annual Scout banquet, so we'll be home late again.

I have no idea when Kiddo is going to get homework done this week! Thursday is swimming practice again, Friday I work the Fish Fry at church...and then we're back at the weekend. Craziness!!

Jest Fun

2009-03-06T16:55:00.003-05:00

The last few days have been rather interesting.

We've been in a state of chaos at work with the replacement of ALL computers. At the same time. Nobody's been able to be productive, we've had multiple temporary contractors running around the building, and now that they're done? The computers don't all work correctly.

Go figure. This is the government we're talking about.

We've spent a couple weeks in a preparatory panic, trying to get all information off of hard drives, finding the disks and licenses for all the software packages we use, etc and on and on. I had to be assigned an external harddrive for all the computer modeling and data archiving and databasing I do as part of my job, so mine was a little easier than some, but I still had to hunt down some legacy software and licenses.

WARNING: Geek Alert! Feel free to skip to the next section if you're not into tech humor!

I use Quatro Pro pretty regularly, as it used to be the standard and I haven't finished making new data templates and statistics spreadsheets in Excel yet. So when a coworker in a neighboring office found a set of 5.25" diskettes from the Good 'ol Days, for Quatro Pro for DOS (the first spreadsheet program I ever used...) and gifted them to me...well, I've had them on display and gotten more than a few chuckles out of them.

Today, though, I had a little fun at the expense of one of the temp contractors. The fellow working on my computer was quite friendly, and we'd been chatting all morning during the software installations. He spotted the disks and we talked about all the different changes in computer media over the years. A younger temp came in while he was holding the disks, and the fellow working on my computer told him to go find a 5.25" external drive so we could install the software. He presented the work order listing all the software going on to my computer, which stated just "Quatro Pro", as proof that these disks needed to go on my brand-new laptop. The young guy kind of nodded and pretended that this was all normal, and then left to go find the drive! The guy at my computer hollered after him "make sure it's USB!!!"

It was kind of funny. We laughed. The guy fell for it. We expected that he would walk away and then get the joke...until a higher-up came in and asked if we had requested a 5.25" external USB drive.

We flashed him the goofy pack of disks, and it took him a minute to realize the joke, but then he laughed with us.

It took a couple of hours before we let the other guy in on it. He had been wandering the building, asking where he could find one.

Later we found out that a different computer guy had been looking to buy one for the office just last week...the joke was on us!

Anyway...

Kimberley Update

During all the computer chaos at work I had to spend long hours sitting near my desk and logging into my computer on command as they loaded and changed things and rebooted the thing over and over and over. I managed to finish all the edging and half the inserts on Kimberley while waiting and chatting and playing pratical jokes on temporary workers.

So tonight I came home and soaked and pinned out all the major pieces, hoping that they'll be dry so I can finish putting it together. As I stuck the last pin into the last piece of seriously curled stockinette I looked over and there was Rotti, neatly plucking out all the pins in the first piece and stacking them in a neat little pile in the middle of the piece.

I would have taken a picture, but I refuse to replace as many pins as that kitten would have gotten out in the time it would take me to run downstairs, get the camera, get back upstairs, and take a picture. So again, no pictures, but I'm getting closer.

Pacifying

2009-03-03T18:47:00.000-05:00

OK, so I don't have pictures of the Starmore yet. It's still blobs of black. So I will attempt to keep you entertained and not sending the Scottish Knitting Police to knock down my door and take away me away in Shetland wool cuffs (on second thought, that really doesn't sound so bad!)

I recently had an affair.

It was love at first sight, and I had to have it, had to do it. It was one of those things that just sweep over you, drown you in desire, and leave you wanting more. I know I'm not the first, and I probably won't be the last...

but I did it.

I knit a freakin' Noro two-row scarf.

And I loved every minute of it, and considered doing it again as soon as we were done.

But then I decided against it. Let's face it - there was something better in my future, something worth saving myself for...

I had a date with Jade Starmore.

Quick Knit!

2009-03-03T08:13:00.000-05:00

I started knitting a sweater on Sunday afternoon, two days ago. Kimberley, from A Collector's Item, by Jade Starmore. Really, a pretty sweater, but lots of stockinette...so I broke out the knitting machine.

Last night I cast off the second sleeve. The fronts, the back, and the other sleeve were done on Sunday. I started hand-knitting the edgings last night and am halfway done this morning. I have to knit the inserts, block everything, sew it together, and knit the collar and it's done.

I'm in shock that I got through the bulk of a sweater that quickly, and it's one that I've been wanting to make for quite some time! I'm getting very excited about this! And the coolest part? I only had to knit each piece once, with the exception of the back, which took an extra half-try to get the shaping right at the hem edge.

I'd give you a picture, but it would be just a blob of black.

Yes, I'm getting into sweaters my mother can't/won't steal. She doesn't wear red or black, so this one and the last one are both safe from her. Now if I could just get her to give up the black, white, and tan one she has that has sleeves too long for her...maybe I'd call it even on a handknit.

Still Here!!

2009-03-01T18:42:00.005-05:00

Wow! A whole week passed again?? I'm in a bit of a daze over the speed with which my days have been disappearing lately. A lot of that time has been spent looking at this:

And watching for this:

The Kiddo's swim season is in full tilt, and it's keeping us busy 4-5 nights a week. He has practice Monday through Thursday 4:30 to 5:30, so we have to leave home by 4 to get him there and suited up before practice, and usually don't get home before 6:15 or so. The it's homework, supper, whatever family time we can snag, and bedtime. While still squeezing in Scouts, mother being gone again, and normal life (cleaning, cooking, eating, sleeping, etc.) It's a lot.

And then there's a fiber. I've been dyeing again, and plan to continue to dye every Saturday for some time to come. The potential venture, about which I am not saying much right now, is incubating, and requires a lot of fiber for food. I've been carding, too.

Remember this from last week's dyeing session?
It looks like this now.

Nine 1.8oz batts, all blended to match, while still retaining individuality and character. They'd make an awesome sweater! I hope they do!
Since I can't bring myself to make self-limiting fibers, mostly because I dislike having only an ounce or two of a fiber and not knowing what to do with it, I tend to think big. I don't mind suffering through the monotony of making a ton of the same thing, partly because I know that the nine (or whatever) that I'm making are IT. I'll never repeat them exactly the same. I won't be making "standard" colorways, but will be producing "batches" that are unique, but in quantity enough to make a complete project. I think in terms of sweater-amounts, regardless of final use.

So the rest of last week's dyeing has been weighed and packaged for short-term storage, though not photographed in beauty sessions. The batts are in the bottom of the box, bagged with air to avoid compression (as if more fluff on top of fluff would compress it...) and to keep the kitties out. I might adore my kitties, but potential customers might not! And the results of this week's dyeing? Three batches of color. I'm getting better with the food-safe dyes, and have started pulling saturated color out of them, using a few tricks.

Some of these are going to be left as top, others will be carded into batts. The shiny strip you can see in some of the top is mohair, not quite blended into the fiber. I love it. It's so shiny and glossy, and takes the dye differently than the wool.

I started knitting a sweater on my knitting machine today, too. Since Sundays are for playing, and not for working... I'll share more later!

Exercising Futility

2009-02-23T16:36:00.002-05:00

I am so frustrated.

Little Boy came home from school with none of his work done. Again. So we are (again) not at swimming, for which I paid a reasonably large sum of money for him to be on the team. There's a meet on Wednesday, and he (again) might miss it because he's (again) doing daytime schoolwork in the evenings.

I nagged and bothered and forced him to do his schoolwork on Saturday, despite begging to do it on Sunday (we all know where that ends up!). Then on Sunday when I asked if everything was finished and ready to go, he (again) found work he "forgot" to do the day before.

It's not like I ask him to remember what work needs done! He has a notebook in which he writes down assignments, and there's a checkbox next to each subject to mark off when he finishes.

This shouldn't be so difficult - but he comes home with checks where things aren't finished, no checks where things are finished, and just plain doesn't write down continuing projects, like book reports, except on the day it's assigned.

I'm out of ideas, I'm tired, I'm frustrated, and I can't make him do work at school if he doesn't "feel" like doing it (today's excuse). Yet he came home and is quietly working through the work while I ignore him.

I don't get it.

Busy Girl

2009-02-21T18:05:00.004-05:00

I got tired of the pile of boxes full of undyed wool in my dining room. They've been sitting there for a few weeks, since Sonya sent them to me to dye for a venture we're considering.

So this morning, after coffee and breakfast, I got to it. I would the long rovings into skeins and tied them off. I made piles of smaller pieces that didn't skein well. Separated the pin rovings from the full top. I made it through about half of what she sent to me, which is only part of the 65# of wool we bought together. The postage doesn't tell me how much each box weighed, and I can't weigh it until later, because it looks like this now:
I completely filled the available drying space in my basement with dyed wool. And I spent most of the day, well, about 8 hours of it, creating this mass of color. I was experimenting with a different dye than I'm accustomed to, since it's winter and I don't have a well-ventilated dye studio out of the house, and I prefer not to poison myself, my son, or my cats.

So, for a guided tour of the product of my day!

The greens! Kettle-dyed random small lengths of roving, some wool, some with mohair, all pretty.
The Cracked Pot. I managed to completely crock the dyes on this batch of kettle-dyeing, and I actually like the result.

I sampled some of this as soon as it was dry enough to handle.

This stuff is the full top, kettle-dyed again, some with mohair, mostly just wool. All soft and lovely to touch.And then there are the skeins of roving... Some are completely one piece, others are made up of multiple strands to make a bigger skein. Since I tend not to believe in doing things small, there are three dye lots here - three skeins of one colorway, three of another, and four of the third. I get so irritated when I want to make something large and there's not enough fiber! So I aim for sweater-quantities when I spin, and when I dye.

And when I was done? The sun came out after a long day of snowstorm.

Roses compliments of Cousin Kathy, who makes bouquets for nursing homes out of unsold flowers donated by local stores. No one's ever given me 2 dozen roses before! I smile every time I look at them.

Ick

2009-02-18T19:53:00.002-05:00

Feel free to skip this post and not read it. Guts and ick, though I'll keep it generic.

This morning was my lovely internal exam, to look for why I've been getting so sick in the gut the last few months. The only "off" thing was an irritation in my stomach. Apparently a vegetarian diet (high fiber, lots of fruits and veggies) does my body good.

The "clean-out" for said exam, however, did not do my body good, and I was shaking and cold and sweating, and generally a mess yesterday. Not fun.

Anyway, it's good to know that there's nothing major going on in there - no ulcers, no cancers, not even any "minor" issues, except for the stomach lining irritation. They biopsied for that, to see if it's something pre-ulcer-ish or what.

All in all, it went better than I expected. I've had some bad experiences with checking on my digestive system, like waking up during a procedure, and stuff like that. I was more than a little apprehensive.

Best news? I probably won't have to go through this again for another 15 years.

Spontaneous Sunday

2009-02-15T17:23:00.002-05:00

Sunday morning, early, at the frigtening hour of 7am, Mom called me. I wasn't quite awake, but I wasn't exactly asleep, either. I was covered in kitties, since the Little Boy was with his dad this weekend and they missed him.

She told me to pack my gear, that she was coming to pick me up in half an hour. Gear? Uh, yeah. Sports gear. She and my Kiddo were signed up for an indoor triathlon in Milford, MI. She asked me about it a month ago, and I said no. I'd been sick, I was tired, and I'm still scared of overdoing it.

Come on, she said. I'll be there in half an hour to get you.

OK, so long story short, I completed my very first ever triathlon. Actually, all three of us completed it, and it was Kiddo's first triathlon, too.

We were quite proud of ourselves.

The folks running the event thought it was pretty neat that we'd come out, all three generations, to run their race. They asked for a picture to put in the paper!

After the race, Mom drove us to a local outlet-type store where she'd seen really long jeans on clearance for $5. I found 2 pairs of jeans, and a pair of chocolate brown cords. I paid $7 each.

When we got home, my sister was sitting in the driveway, with her husband and my sweetheart nephew. They brought about 14 bins of books for Kiddo to read! She's a teacher, and recently got switched from 3-5 grades to K-2, and she wants to store her enormous classroom library she's accumulated! So they're all in the garage, except for one bin, which is currently being read through by my son.
And I got a little baby-time. Nothing, absolutely nothing, beats baby-hugs! (OK, so he's hugging mama here, but I liked the picture!)

Jeans

2009-02-14T13:31:00.002-05:00

I got up this morning when the kittens started playing "tackle" on top of me at about 7am, and headed down to the sewing area formerly known as my dining room. Put on the kettle and got to it.

By 11am I had a completely sewn and finished pair of jeans.

That don't fit.

Somehow I have yet again managed to underestimate the round protrusion behind me. Cut me a little slack, in that I don't look at it regularly, but still! I thought we covered this last weekend when Jennifer helped me make my patterns! But my backside was NOT covered in these jeans, and I had a horrifying case of camel-toe in the front.

I've made some alterations to the pattern and totally deconstructed the upper half of the jeans in an attempt to salvage them, but I'm beginning to think this pair is "practice" and call it a loss. It's about $12 in fabric and $6 in thread, but there are so many things wrong with the fit on the jeans, in so many different ways, I just don't think it's going to happen.

Crap.

I really need new jeans.

shifting focus?

2009-02-13T10:18:00.000-05:00

I've noticed a change over the last year or so in the way I look at making things. For most of my life I have gone through phases of focussing on a particular technique/craft and during the phase I would do that technique/craft, and only that technique/craft, to the exclusion of everything else. For example, I went through an embroidery phase about 8 years ago, and was looking into taking classes through the Embroiderer's Guild of America. I did tons of embroidery, in every type and style, took classes, and worked intricate designs, just because I wanted to and I could. Once I reached the point of proving I could embroider at 43 stitches/inch, it started to lose its appeal for me, and I started with the segue into knitting, which has occupied me quite thoroughly for the last few years.

Lately, though, I am less satisfied with being engrossed in a craft to the exclusion of all others, and more interested in what each craft has to offer my current needs.

I hate shopping. Clothes never fit me correctly, and if they do fit right when I buy them, they usually don't fit after I wash them, even if I avoid the dryer. I have spent most of my life wearing ill-fitting clothes, and never really feeling good about it. So I tend to have a ton of clothes, and none of them fit right, but I don't get rid of them, because then I would have _nothing_ that fit close enough. And the few things that are reasonable don't coordinate the way I think a simple, classic wardrobe should.

I want a few, nice, well-fitting pieces of clothing that all go well together. Is that too much to ask???

So I went shopping last weekend.

For fabric.

I bought 7.6 yards of denim, in the wash I like, with 2% lycra the way I like them, and the thickness of jean I like. I also bought enough fabric to make 4 blouses. They are all in the coordinating colors I want. And on Sunday afternoon my friend Jennifer (a seamstress!!) came over and we made patterns and slopers for me, based on my current measurements and the basic, boring styles I want to wear. I really don't care if every pair of pants I own is from the same pattern, as long as they fit well and look nice! Same with blouses. I cut out a pair of jeans to truly test the pattern on Sunday night, though I haven't had time to sew them yet, and a blouse which is now half finished.

I am also envisioning a few sweaters and vests knit up in coordinating colors so I can layer comfortably year-round. I want a casual-but-nice-looking jacket to layer with, though a cardigan might do the job, and one nice jacket to throw over whatever layers I'm wearing to dress it all up another notch. And to go one step further, I bought fabric to make a knitting bag that won't clash with any of it but doesn't look to matchy-matchy.

And I need more socks.

I really, really want to purge out everything that "sorta" fits that's taking up space in my room and have only the things that do fit. That desire has been creeping up on me for some time, and I pulled out the sewing machine, not because I was dying to sew, but because I knew I had the skills to make what I wanted for cheaper than I could buy them, even if I could find them in a store. I know I can make the coordinating sweaters I want, too.

So for probably the first time in my life I care about my crafting not for the process, but the product. I've explored them in theory and technique about as far as I care to right now. I'm a good seamstress. I knit well. I embroidery beautiful things. But how many samplers and technique-based projects do I really need or want???

I want clothes that fit, and I intend to use all the different things I've played with over the years to make what I want.

Too bad I'm having such a hard time deciding on my basic colors!!

party to murder

2009-02-12T09:09:00.000-05:00

Two days ago when I reached for the Ghirardelli chocolate bar I had left on my office desk I discovered that someone else had been tasting it. Without my permission. And that someone had very small, sharp teeth.

I was disgusted. A mouse, at work, in my office. Eating my chocolate, no less. Eating the GOOD chocolate and ignoring the M&Ms!

When I shared the information I was told that I was not the first to report a problem with a chocolate-loving mouse. Apparently the receptionists had had their secret chocolate stash raided my little thieves with sharp teeth only a few weeks before. So a trap was set in my office in what was considered to be a "likely" place to catch it.

This morning I walked into my office, and in the semi-dark there was a fat brown mouse in a paper-tray, staring at me. We stared at each other while I picked up the phone and called the lunchroom, where I had seen the maintenance guy only a few minutes before. We stared at each other while I waited for Bill. It got bored staring, and ran around the tray trying to decide if it should run or try to hang on to the M&M it was eating in the paper tray. It decided to leave.

When Bill arrived he was holding a bag containing a dead mouse he'd just pulled from trap in the mechanical room downstairs, and we watched as the critter ran this way and that, and hid under and behind file cabinets, my foot rest, whatever it could find. It was fast. I checked the trap under the bookshelf and found that the peanut butter was gone and the trap hadn't been set off, so I whacked it with the broom and pulled it out to be reset, and Bill left to get a second trap and bait them both. I was invited to bring in the kittens and work with them in my office today with the door closed. I was seriously considering it, and was trying to figure out how to get them here, since I had just dropped off Isis and Chaka at the vet in the cat carriers only twenty minutes before.

Then my Brian, the other chemist, came in, and we watched the thing come out and stare at us again. So I grabbed the broom and he grabbed my empty trash can. I scared it out from behind the file cabinet and Brian popped the trash can over it.

Now what?

Bill came back, set the new traps, and he and I slid cardboard under the can so we could flip it over and get it out. Bill carried it out to the loading dock, and gathered the bin liner, keeping the mouse in the bottom. I pulled off the cardboard, and he swung the bag and whacked the mouse on the loading dock. Three times. Ick.

The dead mouse was tied into the bin liner and tossed in the dumpster.

There. I confess. I helped to kill a living creature.

A creature that stole my chocolate.

My good chocolate.

Personal Responsibility

2009-02-10T20:09:00.002-05:00

People who know me pretty much know that I am a passionate, and rather opinionated, person. Those opinions are open to new information, but when I get into something I tend to research it, find all sides of an issue, and then feel comfortable in defending or promoting it. I can go off on all kinds of weird tangents depending on the subject (it's that whole wide-view-mind thing again...) and feel pretty comfortable in my position.

Of course, change the information available and I can change my opinion. That's what an open mind is all about, right? Or is that wishy-washy?

Either way, I try very hard to instill in my son a sense of personal responsibility. Repercussions are not punishments, they are the natural result of decisions he makes. If he makes different decisions, he'll get different results! For example, I have taught him that it's not ADHD that makes him behave the way he does, but that it's his decisions on how to behave. And while he may be quite smart in some ways, God balanced that with a weakness in some other way, like in self-control, so that means he has to work harder at it than most of his friends, like they have to work harder at science than he does. So the better he is at something, the harder he has to work at something else. Make sense?

So when a friend brought up a litigation suit in conversation today, I got quite upset. Apparently there was a child who was trying to chase the bus (he was late), tripped on his backpack, fell under the bus, and was killed when he got run over. Freak accident, right? Like the girl down the road who got run over by the tractor at 5 years old when I was a kid? (So maybe stuff like that didn't happen in your neighborhood, but I was a rural farm-type kid, and threre were several accidents, dismemberments, and/or deaths during my first few years in school...) Anyway, the mother is (apparently) suing both the bus driver and the school district over the loss of her son. Because she believes they are at fault.

I don't begrudge a mother her grief. And I certainly don't claim to know all the facts, I wasn't there, I don't know her, and I couldn't find a single reference to this on the internet, though I searched long and hard. But I tend to not blame the bus driver, nor the school district.

The bus driver did not, most likely, negligently drive over a child she knew was there. The school district certainly didn't intend for this to happen when they created neighborhood bus stops instead of picking up each child at their house. (Last I knew, only rural kids got picked up at home, anyway.) And then there is the tidbit that the mother drove her child to said busstop and sent him out to chase the bus as it left.

Maybe it's just me, but I still believe in freak accidents.

I also believe in personal responsibility, and the fact that we all, regardless of age, have to face up to the consequences of our decisions and actions. I'd be awfully freaked out if I watched my son follow my instructions, and get hurt or killed from following them! I've certainly made stupid and bad decisions that I've had to live with.

What I want to know is when did we stop taking ownership of our decisions, both good and bad, and give away that personal power? When did Americans start relying on others to make our decisions for us and sterilize our existence??? Was it the McD's coffee suit back in the day? The advent of warnings on everything, including my new carving knife that told me Caution: Cutting edge may be sharp? (It had better be! It's why I just bought it!).

It's my observation that we as Americans have this expectation that our government, or our businesses, or the corporations, or whatever, is going to protect us and keep us safe. We have thousands of frivolous lawsuits in the news, awarding millions of dollars to people for their blind expectation that others are at fault for their bad choices.

But how can we take ownership of our good decisions, if we don't take ownership of our mistakes, too? If someone else is at fault when things go wrong, then who do we blame when things go right??

I was raised to know and understand that the world is a big and dangerous place, and that no one is going to care about my safety and well-being more than I will. No husband, no knight in shining armor, no government, no doctor, no teacher, not even my parents. I am responsible for the decisions I make, both good and bad, whether I like it or not. I make mistakes. I accomplish difficult tasks. I get lazy and let things slide. I can't blame an illness, a disease, a person, a country, a drug, nothing.

And while my heart weeps for that mother, and everyone who has endured tragedy, freak accidents do happen. We do make choices with horrendous consequences we can't possibly imagine at the moment we make them. Our world, if we want freedom, is still a dangerous and deadly place, no matter how much litigation and lawmaking gets done on our behalf. We seem to expect children to suffer the consequences of their decisions and actions, while allowing adults to litigate their consequences away.

Own your decisions. Own your life. Own your freedom. As soon as you give away your decisions and expect someone else to make them for you, you've lost your freedoms. You gave them away.

Your dignity left at the same time, and took your self-respect with it.

Spinning Fun!

2009-02-06T17:27:00.003-05:00

Merino/Tencel, 50%/50%, purchased by Sonya at Rhinebeck.
Spun by me.
Two-ply.
4oz. 225 yards.

Like it?

What should I do with it?

Ketchup on My Socks

2009-02-06T16:52:00.004-05:00

Thanks, everyone, for the e-hugs and support you've all been sending my way! Checking my mail is so fun when there are comments from you!

While I've been really busy lately, not just with the Kiddo and my random illness, I've also been knitting. While I was sick enough for a while that I couldn't even knit, I did spend quite a few days sitting at home dazed and knitting. I finished up two pairs of socks last week alone!

One pair is for me. Knit from cotton/wool that Stephanie, a friend, brought back from Czech Republic a year and some ago. As much as I love wearing cotton/wool socks, I hate knitting them. My hands do not like them at all. But they're done, and they're on my feet right now.

Pair #2 is for the Kiddo. Remember when we knit up blanks on the knitting machine and dyed them with food colors? I finally got the socks for the Kiddo finished. He says they itch. They're made from superwash alpaca, so maybe they do, but he better wear them anyway!

I got sucked into/volunteered for the Machine Knit Garment a Month Knit a Long on Ravelry (try saying that 10 times fast!) I pulled out the Brother KH-910 again, and got to playing with it. I made some swatches, I knit up the skirts for my friend Stephanie's daughter's summer dress She's a bit slow on getting things finished, what with working part time, commuting from Ohio, and, raising a toddler and an infant, that a long, stockinette skirt would have taken until long after the child grew out of it! So I used the machine.

That got my confidence up! If I could do the shaping and such for a skirt, why couldn't I do a sock on the knitting machine?! <<>>

After several attempts, in which several yards of yarn was irreparably harmed, I came up with this:It might be nice if it weren't as hard as cardboard and sized for a Hobbit! I had intended to do the ribbing by hand, as I didn't want to seam the cotton/wool sock, but once it settled overnight, I realized it was never going to get ribbing. Since I don't personally know any Hobbits, nor humans with a foot as wide as it is short, I intend to frog it and make another the right size. for now I call it a "gauge swatch" so feel free to pretend along with me that this was the intended purpose, ok?

I'm going to go play around with them again this evening, as I've been itching to get back to machining socks. I love having a sock in my purse at all times, so I have something mindless to knit when waiting in lines and such, but something about running them up in 45 minutes on the knitting machine is so...attractive! I could never have to buy socks again! And still have time to knit sweaters!

It's not cheating. It's a totally different art that happens to make a very similar result to another art, which I also happen to fully enjoy. I think I've spent more time learning to use the machine than I did learning to knit, and I still don't use it as well as I knit. So what does that tell you?

Trying

2009-02-06T11:02:00.000-05:00

It's been a rough week.

Since about the middle of last week the Kiddo has been off his medication for ADHD. He's been taking Concerta for a couple of years now, and over the last few months I've watched my Little Boy spiralling downward into weird and bizarre behavior and reactions. He's been pale, with bags under his eyes, but can't get to sleep at night. Super-tired in the mornings, and a bear to get dressed and fed and out the door - completely unmanageable until the drugs kicked in. Evenings were almost as bad - he was out of control, couldn't remember a list with one item, and was hyper bouncing off the walls at bedtime. If I had a penny for every time he said "oops!" or "I forgot!" I'd be rich.

When he started having intense mood swings and cycling them, and having extreme emotional reactions to normal events, I got scared. When his prescription ran out last week, I let it. And I made an appointment with his doctor, even though we weren't due for a few more months.

In short, she approved his going off them, and recommended that I talk to the school about alternative methods of dealing with his distractability. So I talked to his principal (who firmly told me that my child "needed" medication to function?!?!) and I'm meeting with his teacher this afternoon.

This week has been a roller-coaster. On Monday he was so out of control that he spent the better part of the school day at the table in the hallway, trying to work and getting nothing -really, NOTHING - done. He brought home every lick of work he was assigned at school. We spent almost 4 hours trying to get him to focus well enough to get it done, and missed swimming. Tuesday he brought everything home again, and missed swimming. Three hours of homework. By Wednesday I was nearly crying. How were we going to function?? He walked in the door Wednesday after school and declared "No swimming again" and got to it. But it was less than it had been! And he got it done!! In an hour and a half!! Last night was even better - very little homework.

He's getting less tired, sleeping better, and was so proud of himself yesterday for focussing and getting things done AT SCHOOL!

Last night, thinking all was well, we went to bed. I woke up to a heart-wrenching "MOOOOOOMMMMM!!!" Groggy and not awake, I saw the house was all lit up - he had a bunch of lights on.
"What? What's wrong??" Was the house on fire? Had he hurt himself??
"All my pants are too tight in the waist and too short!!" He wailed.
"What??" Total confusion on my part.
"None of my school pants fit!!!"
"What are you doing?" And why?????
"Getting dressed for school."
I checked my phone. "Baby, it's midnight."
"oh."
"Go to back to bed, Sweetie." I could hear him crying in his room. "Come here." He came into my room and sobbed into my shoulder in the dark.
"I thought you came in and got me up!"
I sent him back to bed, and he changed out of his school clothes, turned out the lights, and went back to bed. Where he slept soundly for the rest of the night.

He did remember it all in the morning, too.

I really, really hope that this stuff gets out of his system soon.

What Happened?

2009-02-01T14:46:00.002-05:00

I just lost almost an entire week.

So what I remember is that on Tuesday at work I ate some raw almonds and chocolate-covered dried cherries for my mid-afternoon snack, like I do very frequently. Nothing new about that. But that afternoon I got a weird feeling in my stomach, like the food was sitting there and not moving on - like there was a lead brick in my gut. Fun.

So by the time I left work I wasn't feeling terribly well. I picked up the Kiddo at my mother's and went home. I fixed him some food, and crawled into the shower, hoping that it was a migraine and the shower would help. It didn't. I crawled into bed and waited for the Kiddo to finish supper. By about 7pm I was doubled over with sharp pains right under the edge of my ribs and wrapping around to my back, following the line of my ribcage. I called my parents and Mom took me to the ER and Kiddo went back to their house with Grandpa for the night.

Eight hours later we knew I did NOT have pancreatitis or a tumor, and they discharged me with a prescription for an antacid. Brilliant. I called my doctor, and she was out. For the week. Appointment on Tuesday morning is first available.

Fine. I stayed home from work on Wednesday, having not got home from the ER until 4:30 AM. Slept a lot of the day. Thursday I still couldn't eat without getting more pains,so I called my doctor's office again, and they got me in with the Physician's Assistant.

I love my doctor. She's awesome. She's thorough, she's smart, she cares, and she looks for what's underneath instead of just giving prescriptions for the symptoms. Her PA is so much like her I could cry. The PA spent almost an HOUR with me! She didn't laugh when I told her why I never filled the antacid prescription (because a "must be gas" approach in the past cost me a gallbladder, jaundice, and pancreatitis), and she asked LOTS of questions.

I left the office with a pint less blood, a vitamin B-12 shot in me, 2 prescriptions for antibiotics, and one for a probiotic. Really. She ordered a bunch of blood tests the hospital didn't do, and wants to do a "GI reset" by killing off what's in my gut and starting over. I'm desperate enough to agree. I haven't had an antibiotic in almost 10 years, and I'm taking 2 strong ones, including one for parasites.

Thing is, it's helping.

I expected to be all sick and nasty and get the "normal" reaction to antibiotics, but I'm feeling better for taking them than I did before. Guess she was right. Some wrong bacteria got a foothold and the healthy, digestive bacteria was getting crowded out. We'll have some more answers when the bloodtests come back. Hopefully before my appointment on Tuesday.

I'm not back to normal yet, but I'm eating again, which really helps. Go figure. And I 'only' lost about 9 pounds!

So I haven't been to work since Tuesday, I've used up all my sick time, and some vacation, to stay home and try to recover. I'm still tired, but I can eat some. And an entire week just disappeared.

If it tells you anything, I was too sick to knit, even socks, until Thursday evening.

Quick poll

2009-01-23T10:04:00.002-05:00

Am I a mean momma, or a resourceful momma for sending my Little Boy out to dig in a snowbank to find his birdfeeder?

He has the day off school, so I'm trying to work at home on a paper I'm writing, and he's bouncing off the walls. So I sent him outside to "find" the birdfeeder he left on the ground before we got 15" of snow...and the snowblower piled more on top of it.

Crap - he just found it. Now how do I keep him out of my hair for a few more hours?

A project!!

2009-01-22T18:39:00.002-05:00

Are you in total shock?

A few weeks ago we tried an experiment. Little Boy ran up some long rectangles on the LK-150 knitting machine out of superwash alpaca sock yarn I bought on eBay a couple of years ago. Nice stuff, but I certainly don't need 5 balls of white superwash alpaca socks! So one day when he was pestering me to insanity, I cast on a couple dozen stitches and let him have at it. Once in about the middle he managed to inadvertently cast off (haven't we all when using these things?) so we ended up with two, slightly uneven, skipped-stitch rectangles. Of which I did not take a picture.

What I did get a picture of was what we did to the rectangles: we colored them with Wilton's icing colors. We had a Pokemon set of icing dyes, which are bright and primary: red, green, yellow, and black. But when you forget the vinegar, and crock the black in the microwave? You get pastels.
The black crocked to a gorgeous lavendar I couldn't have achieved if I'd actually tried. The green crocked, too, and became a fantastic teal. The red went pink, and the yellow stayed bright (why do I keep typing yelly?).

Then what?

Socks, of course.

I am infinitely amused by the color changes. The finished sock looks completely different from the blank, and I am having far more fun than is normal in sock knitting. I have been cruising along on these, knitting nearly half a sock per day, when I do knit, and loving it.
I am knitting them on 2.0mm needles (size 0 US) and the yarn is so fine and warm and soft...

I want to keep them for me!

Oh, and the other fun thing about these? The knit fabric reminds me of seersucker in that it is all crinkly and bubbly from re-knitting the squiggly yarn. I know it will smooth out again once I wash them, but for now I am pleased and amused.

No, it does not take much to amuse me.

Excuses and blame and avoidances

2009-01-21T19:37:00.003-05:00

1. I've had the intestinal flu for almost 2 weeks. As a result, I am tired, crabby, and moving very little. I've had to go to work all this time, and deal with it, while starving from lack of solid food and listening to my body make audible noises as it freaks out over my having ingested something with nutrition in it. You'd think that this would mean I'm skinnier, but no. I had to pull out the fat pants, as anything slimmer was painful to wear. Fun times.

2. The Little Boy has started on a swim team. Practice is Monday through Thursday until April. Every week. Plus meets.

3. Little Boy also has failed to deal with school assignments as they are assigned, and after nearly three weeks of telling me there was "no homework" I was informed yesterday that his book report and poster are due tomorrow. Reference #2 above. He missed practice tonight.

4. Cub Scouts is also one the schedule in a big way, and the number of events each week between now and March is nearing insane. Added to #2 above I think it crosses over the line.

5. I finished a sweater, have worn it twice, and have had someone take pictures. Said picture-taker is significantly shorter than I am (who isn't?) and the pictures look like I have the world's tiniest head on the world's largest body. I'm not posting them.

6. I sold more yarn!!!! (An entire sweater's worth of handspun) Thank you, Diana! I'll bring more to the shop as soon as I can breathe!

7. I'm almost done with the first sock of the sock-blank-dyeing-experiment for the Little Boy. I started it on a whim last Friday after I finished my Summer Socks. Yes, I know summer was over quite a while ago, but I'm really working on getting my works-in-progress down to a reasonable number. I currently have only 3 (!) active knitting projects: The sock-blank socks, Tamarah, and an Estonian sock I intend to frog, unless someone out there wears a size ten shoe and has incredibly short legs?

8. I read my book for January: A Year in the Merde. It was fun, and So very non-PC!

9. I have a toe in time-out on the knitting machine. I tried to machine-knit a sock on the Brother KH-910, and got as far as the toe cap before getting a strand caught on the wrong side of a gate peg and inadvertently making an enormous tuck stitch. Not quite what I wanted in a sock, so it's in time out for a while. I need to finish it and its mate before the end of the month for the Machine-Knit-a-Garment-a-Month Knit-a-Long on Ravelry. (Was that enough hypens, or should I add some more?)

So all in all, I'm tired, busy, and productive. Not really a bad way to be, if you think about it, right?

Shamelessly Pilfered from the Internet...

2009-01-16T09:13:00.002-05:00

...And slightly modified to suit my location.
It was a balmy -12F this morning when I left the house. Windchill of -20F.

WINTER IN ~~SOUTH DAKOTA~~ MICHIGAN
Author Unknown

It's winter in ~~South Dakota~~ Michigan
And the gentle breezes blow
Seventy miles an hour
At twenty-five below

Oh, how I love ~~South Dakota~~ Michigan
When the snow's up to your butt
You take a breath of winter
And your nose gets frozen shut

Yes, the weather here is wonderful
So I guess I'll hang around
I could never leave ~~South Dakota~~ Michigan
'Cause I'm frozen to the ground

Some days, the cat loses

2009-01-14T19:39:00.002-05:00

This has been one of those long, boring, responsible days. Paying bills, going to work, fixing a nutritious vegetarian supper, washing dishes...no time to knit. And I can't find my socks. Really. Anyone seen a pair of pink/white/grey nearly finished socks in a gallon-size Ziploc baggie?? Neither have I in far too long. It has me tempted to start another pair! I really liked the lost ones, and hope I find them soon. They're the yarn Stephanie brought back for me from her trip to Ukraine/Germany/general area, and I want to wear them!

Of course, leave a child to his own devices while you're sitting at the table paying the bills, and he's bound to amuse himself. That's part of the charm of having the kittens - they all entertain each other.

Unfortunately for the kittens, he's a bit smarter and bigger than them, and her gets ideas.

A hysterically laughing child came running down the stairs chasing a kitten and a flash of orange. It took me a minute to realize that the frantic flash of orange was a kitten. A kitten with an orange bandanna tied to its tail.

He wanted to see if it would chase itself.

The poor thing was a freaked-out wreck by the time I caught it. It was flipping around, trying to lose the orange fabric firmly attached to its butt, and skittering everywhere. Kiddo got sent to his room while I caught and released the orange-butt-victim.

It calmed down after a little loving and cuddling. And its been playing quite happily all evening since, so I assume its not scarred for life, but now I'm at a loss as to what should be the consequence of doing something so...thoughtless and cruel.

Sometimes, having another adult to discuss these things with would be really helpful.

AHA Moments

2009-01-13T19:41:00.002-05:00

Ever have one of those days where seemingly unrelated events suddenly fall into a pattern?

It just hit me, about five minutes ago. The connection between last Thursday's stomach cramps at work and yesterday's stomach cramps and today's called-in-sick-can't-leave-toilet-proximity gastro-evacuation.

The almonds I bought last Wednesday. The big box store brand 3# bag of almonds. I ate them last Thursday, and I ate a bunch of them yesterday. As a vegetarian, I eat a lot of nuts. They're a healthier snack than chocolate, add protein to my diet, and well, they taste good.

Sucks to toss 3 pounds! But there's no way I'm touching them again. Can opened food be returned to the store?

On a different note, I had an AHA moment with the Fiber Trends felted clogs I've been working on. (These stupid things are SO addictive! Watch out! I'm almost done with another pair...STASH-BUST!)

They went from this:
To this:
In two loads of laundry.

Too much fun, and he loves them (Notice he's willingly wearing handknit socks).

Apparently they slide on the hardwood floors well.

He likes the garish colors, too.

2009 Goals (in no particular order)

2009-01-11T16:04:00.005-05:00

~~finish or frog all remaining UFOs in my stash~~
limit myself to one large knitting project and one pair of socks at any given time
finish weaving the Christmas towels before Halloween
finish making the Christmas wine before Halloween
only buy yarns I truly love, not just because it's on sale
pay off all non-house debt
continue eliminating the things we do not need or use
focus on controlling paper
no clothing purchases that are not in line with a simple, refined, everything-fits wardrobe
~~separate holiday decorations into labeled bins~~
participate in the Ravelry Machine-Knit-Garment-a-Month KAL (January: Hobbit sock; February: Kimberley (hybrid); March: Bearfoot socks)
say no when I mean no
sometimes say yes when I might otherwise not
backup my harddrive
get rid of fabrics I'm not going to use
yell less
hug more
smile more
finish NaNoWriMo 2008 novel
participate in NaNoWriMo 2009
post more pictures in my blog
blog more regularly
post more tutorials/research in my blog (once/month?)
knit more with handspun
take Bug to at least one Cub Scout camping event
alter clothes I'm keeping so they fit properly
get rid of clothes I don't like/ don't fit
~~replace underpants~~
get rid of mismate socks
continue decluttering
finish garage piles
sell road bike
clean grass out of pavers in the driveway and patio
mulch with wool
plant a garden. again
bike commute in good weather
sail
race (sailing)
take sports equipment I don't need to used sports equipment store
take bubble baths
take inventory of knitting needles
remove extra dishes from the kitchen
polish Bug's shoes once a month
polish my shoes once a month
file weekly
pay bills weekly
update financial software weekly
donate toiletries I don't want/use
make sofa cover
spin from stash
read a book each month (January: A Year in the Merde, Parenting With Love and Logic, Dewey; February: One for the Money, Two for the Dough, Three to Get Deadly; March: Four to Score)
keep dining room table clear
weave something besides the Christmas towels
finish one scrapbook
try something new
give up one "hobby"
vacuum fridge coils
re-caulk the bathtub
take more pictures
print more pictures
take care of me
take care of Bug
take care of my home
update my resume
build the llama fiber business
sell dyed wool
sell carded batts
build a website/shop
get the muffler replaced on the van
get the airbag light checked on the van
take care of my stuff
use a budget
get rid of yarns I won't use
clean out front hall closet
take care of my money
use more coupons
shop the sale ads
shop less

Another Snowy Sunday!

2009-01-11T13:49:00.002-05:00

We got another round of snow yesterday, and we're sitting in about 6", with more snow and sold weather until at least Thursday. I'm loving it!

I kicked the Kiddo out the door (imagine the old cartoons of Calvin and Hobbes where Calvin's mom tosses him outside, butt-first...that was us this afternoon) to play in the snow. He'd been inside all day yesterday during the snow, reading. Today he was a hyper-pants, and as such got his rear end tossed outside for a while.

I spent nearly all day yesterday cleaning my living room. Really - one room. The furniture got moved, and the Christmas tree came down, and the floor was vacuumed and washed. I organized the living room spinning stash and it looks all nice and tidy in there. Almost...not lived in. It was part of my de-cluttering phase, and it needed it. The rest of the house isn't caught up yet, but it feels so good to have one more space cleared of excess junk and stuff. Last weekend we did both of our bedrooms, and managed to keep them tidy during the week. The biggest challenge is the Kiddo's Laundry Fling, which happens twice a day when he changes clothes - the laundry gets tossed as he takes it off, and it could end up anywhere in his room. We recovered an entire load of laundry from his bedroom last weekend, including about 12 pairs of socks! (After he'd been complaining "Mom, I don't have any socks!!" for weeks...)

On fiber - I have not yet done the blending of dog and llama, as I hardly get at-home time during the week. I'm really tempted to blow off all the bill-paying and food-cooking that I usually do on Sunday afternoons and go sit and spin. I haven't spun in ages, and I'm getting really tired of always doing what needs to be done, rather than what I want to do!

Ah, the joys and trials of adulthood.

Speaking of which - yesterday while doing the laundry, I reached out to pull the handle on the washer to start it, and the whole plastic handle popped off in my hand! With that one little piece, all hopes of controlling the washing machine starts, stops, and cycles, zipped out the door and into the snow. I used pliers to turn the little round metal stick the handle used to be attached to, and pried the plastic clip that used to hold it on to get the washer to start...but that's not going to be a good long-term option, I think.

So out came the Crazy Glue, and I'm going to go try to clip it back on and see if it works, but I think I need to do a little online shopping for the part soon!

Again, adulthood.

Slipped Up

2009-01-09T08:38:00.001-05:00

Please excuse the brief absence - Life happened. Well, Life and Fiber Trends Felted Clogs.

I have the adult and children's versions of the pattern, and they've been sitting around in my patterns for, literally, years. I'm on a bit of a stash-busting kick right now, trying to knit down my stash a little. While I've not yet reached SABLE (Stash Amassed Beyond Life Expectancy), I do have quite a few yarns hanging around that I'm not so sure I'm ever going to use for their intended purpose, and leftovers from projects, and whatever. So I pulled out the Clogs pattern and grabbed a few balls of random yarn.

The first pair has been a total PITA. I ever-so-brilliantly looked at the yarn requirements for the children's pattern and completely skipped over the part where there are different yarn requirements for different sizes. Go figure, makes sense, all sizes are not created equal. So I knitted one up, then started the other. It was during my knitting group at work on Wednesday that Stephanie noticed that the balls of yarn in my knitting bag didn't look nearly large enough to finish the slipper on the needles that I figured out what had happened. I did NOT have another ball of yarn that color, and one solid-color slipper and one multi-colored slipper just didn't seem right, at least not when one is solid purple and the other would be half red. So I frogged the outer sole of the finished slipper to finish the main body of the second slipper, with the intention of making red outer soles for both. (Just because they're stash-busting doesn't mean they shouldn't match!) So yesterday I knit with Stephanie at lunch again, and borrowed from Peter-slipper to make Paul-slipper.

Last night as I was getting ready for bed, curled up to knit with kittens attacking my toes (said toes were wiggling under the blanket purely as distraction from the yarn in my hands) I discovered I had left the pattern pages at work on my desk.

I did what any knitter would have done - I walked to the cupboard and pulled out the pattern binder, found the adult pattern, and cast on another pair in different yarn.

And no, I haven't fixed the too-long sleeves on my Nantucket Jacket yet. I've been analyzing the situation, and I think I'm going to attempt major surgery by removing the extra length from the cast on edge, and not re-knit the whole thing.

Wish me luck!

Hair of the Dog

2009-01-07T10:39:00.001-05:00

If you guessed that the picture of my latest spinning venture was dog hair, you're right. And it's been interesting.

Someone I know wants to knit a gift for a family member using the hair from their dog, as a kind of memento. (The dog is still healthy and alive, and running around, it's a sort of pre-emptive memento) I was given a plastic grocery bag of fur from the dog's latest shearing, and I promptly did what any of you would have done: I shoved it deep under the pretty, more attractive, more alluring spinning fibers in my queue.

Well, time is up. The yarn is needed by Sunday, and I hadn't touched the fuzz. So I dug it out and shooed the kittens away. (They're awfully fascinated by this crinkly bag of odd-animal-smelling stuff!) I reached into the bag and pulled out...short, slick hairs. Tried again...more of the same.

So I'm trying (madly) to spin 3/4" long slick dog hair into a yarn fit for wearing?

I tried blending with merino wool: ended up with pretty batts that incorporate the fur, but aren't exactly the same color as the dog. Not even close. In order to get a cohesive batt I had to go 50/50 with the merino, and it altered the color so much that it won't be recognizable as the same animal's fur, though it's a LOT easier to spin!

Next attempt, tonight, is going to be blending with llama. At least with the llama I can match the color closer (having about 100 pounds of it resting in the garage!)

So at what point is it no longer yarn made from the dog? At what percentage does it become "wool with dog"?

On the other side of the coin, every time I spin any yarn, there is cat hair incorporated into it, when does that become "cat yarn"?

Busy weekend!

2009-01-05T19:43:00.003-05:00

My Nantucket Jacket is finally at the stage where I can sew it.

And I have. Well, most of it anyway. But the sleeves are too long. The only part of the thing that doesn't fit! So I have to rip the seam out, shorten them, reknit the sleeve cap, and sew them back in. Then I can finish sewing it up! Blah!

On Saturday we went playing. Kiddo wanted to go ice skating for his birthday, so we invited a friend, and went skating at the local ice rink. (Michigan is full of them - lots of figure skating and hockey around here!)

Even the baby was out on skates for about half an hour. I took him around the rink a time or two very. slow.ly. I hadn't even realized they made skates that small! Shows what I know!

Later, he was zoned out, noshing on Cheerios. So tired!
I've seen a lot of baby Felito* this week. A friend of my sister and brother-in-law is in the hospital, very sick. Mom and I have been tag-teaming the child care so they can be there for their friend. Hence the lack of blogging, and of knitting progress.

The summer socks are still not done.
And I've started this:

Anyone care to guess what this short and fast spinning project is? It's probably not what you think it is...

Little Boy No More

2009-01-02T20:52:00.004-05:00

I can hardly believe it! I gave birth nine years ago. It doesn't feel like nearly that long, yet here he is as proof.

He has always been precocious, and if it was mechanical, he wanted to figure it out. He wasn't even a year old and was already fascinated and obsessed with the piano.

He has a personality that requires him to be himself, and he feels a need to express it through actions and dress, and was already fussing about his clothes at two.

He had perfected The Look by age three.

And yet at four, his excitement and joy at the simple things in life, like dressing as a frog for Halloween, simply radiate from him. It's so contagious!

And his pride, at five, from graduating from kindergarten...
...couldn't keep him from expressing his individuality during the class shot (Yeah, he's the third form the left, how did you know?)

Yet, his handsome smile gets me every time, even at six. (And I love it when I can hold him still long enough to get his hair tamed!)

By seven he could no longer contain himself for pictures, and the unbridled joy still makes me giggle. (It looks so much like his frog picture above, I can't help it!)

Even when relaxing this last summer, cruising on the boat, he is always in the moment, and loving it.

Happy Birthday, Little Boy! Not so little anymore, are you?

Nine years old. You're a joy and a challenge, and I wouldn't have it any other way!
I love you, Kiddo!

The Stars Aligned...

2009-01-01T20:19:00.003-05:00

The decades collided. Welcome to 2009!

And none of us is particularly flattered by this picture. But we are all gorgeous in real life. Really!

The last few days have been a riot. I watched my nephew, the fabulous Felito* last night so my sister and her husband could go out. He's such a happy baby! even when he's a cranky-pants, like he was last night, he's awesome.

Also last night I had a houseguest - Mo. She's the one on the far right in the picture above. We haven't seen each other in absolutely years, and I found her online recently! We reconnected, and she came to visit from Chicago-land, where she's living and working!!

Today we were visited by another friend from Albion College (where we all went, at one time or another, I refuse to mention years at this point), Louise! She brought her kids form the west side, and everybody played nicely for a few hours. That's her daughter, my goddaughter, sitting in my lap. The boys took the picture.

I cast off the Nantucket Jacket yesterday, and it is currently soaking in the kitchen sink. I can hardly wait to get it sewn together! Finally! The first sweater I knit for me that isn't going to be co-opted!! (Mom won't wear red...) It's so pretty, even in pieces. I made a few modifications, though, so I'll put them in the project profile on Ravelry.
OK, so it's not the prettiest thing when it's in the sink, but I'll show you soon!! Promise!!

Also - I've decided to make a list. A list of all the things I want to accomplish or experience this year, and I'm setting the goal at 100. Books to read, projects to knit, fibers to spin, whatever! I'll post it here when I get it done, so you guys can all help me stay on track. It's a new idea for me, I'm usually very private about these things. But I have so much I want to do, and clarifying them to myself, and others, might help me actually stay focussed on what I really want, instead of succumbing to the infatuation of the day.

Hope your year is off to as wonderful a start as mine is! And thanks for being here!

I'm Back!

2008-12-30T21:26:00.002-05:00

My power was restored today, about 3pm. Finally.

But I have to say: I am somewhat disappointed. I was really enjoying the power-free life. It was nice having a quiet, dark neighborhood. It was relaxing to have candlelight, and to be restricted to different evening activities with lower light. I slept so beautifully the last few nights, with no ambient light, no nightlight for the Kiddo...just sleep.

And kittens, of course, but that's a given.

I think we behave more naturally when we have no artificial light. We get tired and sleepy when it gets dark. We wake up when it gets light. We start winding down with the sun, and I think we'd all be a lot less crabby and in a hurry if we lived like that. We'd probably be a lot healthier, too, but I have no proof of that besides the scads of people around the world who don't live in the center of the industrialized world, eat natural real foods, and spend a lot of time outdoors!

It's dark here now, and I'm still awake, lulled into a false sense of daytime by the incandescent lights in the dining room. I'm more wired than I should be at this time of night. Far more awake than I was last night, or the night before. I noticed years ago that the lights in the house affected my sleep, and started winding down in the evening by turning off the lights and graduating down to the little lamp in my bedroom. Without the power on, I wound down with the sun, sat by the fire spinning for a while, and then conked out, in the dark, after blowing out my candle.

Do you think they'd turn my power off again, if I asked nicely?

A little late

2008-12-30T11:11:00.002-05:00

From 19 December 2008, my snow-day birthday.

Update on the power outage

2008-12-29T15:49:00.001-05:00

Power outages in my area peaked at 230,000 on Sunday.

And my power _should_ be restored by Wednesday.

Off-Line

2008-12-29T15:40:00.001-05:00

I've been in the dark for over 24 hours now. I was going to blog on Sunday morning about how I spent Saturday afternoon and evening helping my big, burly, goatee-d bald male friend sew fuzzy pink pajamas for his little girl, but early in the wee hours of Sunday morning I had no option. The power went out.

We've been dealing with some pretty strong winds here in southeast Michigan, as a result of the weird and wild weather. After all that snow recently, the temps on Saturday were into the 50F-range! Crazy. We've had fog and rain and incredible amounts of water from melting snow...and then the cold front came in, with straight-line winds over 50mph. I was lying in bed on Sunday morning listening to the wind that had woken me up, and could hear the storm windows squeaking as they tried to pry themselves off the house. It was scary - I was sure a tree was going to come down! I have a CO detector in the upstairs hallway, so it screeched when the power blinked out, screamed a long time when it came back on, then screeched again when the power went out for good. I reached over and called the power company hotline to report the outage, thinking if I called early I would be higher on the list. Ha!

By 9am there were 110,000 people out of power in metro Detroit.

By 11am there were 180,000 people out of power.

By 3pm, when my parents came over to hook up a generator, I didn't even ask.

So I've been out of power since yesterday morning, had no cable (which means no phone, since I have a cable phone), and no hot water (high efficiency gas hot water heater doesn't run without the little electric fan running on top of it!) except for the few hours a day when the generator is hooked up. It has spent the day at a friend of my parents, heating their house and chilling their fridge, and will come back this evening to do the same duty at my house. It's big enough to run the furnace (gas) and fridge, but not enough to run all the normal evening power-sucking appliances and lights, so we're living lightly, and bathing quickly.

On the other hand, the neighborhood is quiet, houses are dark, and stars are visible. It's kind of nice...

till you hear all the generator motors running.

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-24T23:43:00.002-05:00

I send you all good wishes and the hopes that Santa sent elves to finish all your projects while you slept!