Well, sort of.
I am free to spin the yarns I want to--no more socks for a while! I am free to spin or knit when I want to. The family has scattered for the long weekend, and as much as I love them all, I am free from cooking and cleaning (not that I really do that, anyway) and driving.
So what do I do to celebrate this newfound freedom. Invite people over for dinner and plan a gourmet meal. Spin samples for my upcoming seminars. Finish UFOs.
Boy do I know how to live!
I did take some time to see a couple of movies--while I was spinning. I highly recommend The Queen, Dreamgirls, and Shortbus. But only watch Shortbus if you have no aversion to penises--you see one or two--or any other material of a graphically sexual nature. Just a warning, Mom.
I took Teagan to the dog park today. She loves to see the other dogs, but is a little overwhelmed by the big ones. There were a Cockapoo and Shih-Tsu/Poodle cross there that were her size, but those Labs and Shepherds were not quite her cup of tea. Gan. Get it? Ha, ha?
Tonight is a seafood feast for me and the boys and the season finale of The Simpsons.
I said it before: Boy do I know how to live.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
It's Done!
My in-depth study is done! I put it in the mail to my instructor yesterday, and now all I have to do is wait for her comments and changes and I will officially be a Master Spinner. Huzzah! This mother has taken me two years, with interruptions for broken bones, surgeries, and strokes, but it is OVER. Yeeehaw!
No on to the next thing...I am making a series of recycled yarn samples for a seminar I will be giving at the ANWG conference in Red Deer next month. I am trying to illustrate specific techniques and ideas, but I seem to go off on tangents. I have this great big bag of scraps, bits, and just plain crappy fibre sitting in the middle of the living room, and every time I glance at it, I see a great new yarn idea. I am currently obsessed with lumpy garnet yarns, using noils and huge cuts of yarn. I have enough samples of this type of yarn for 6 seminars. I need to focus on some other types of yarns, but I clearly have my favorite.
I dont' have any pics of the finished yarns uploaded yet, but here's a shot of one of the blends being carded. Like, I said, lumpy with big noils.
I will also be teaching a spindling workshop and leading a seminar on felted knits in Red Deer, so there is a great frenzy of sorting and stacking going on in between spinning bouts. The conference is 5 wweks away, but the excitement is already building--these will be my first workshops since the Great Hippo Attack of Ought-Five, so I am nervous about getting back into the teaching mode.
Enough rambling, more spinning!
No on to the next thing...I am making a series of recycled yarn samples for a seminar I will be giving at the ANWG conference in Red Deer next month. I am trying to illustrate specific techniques and ideas, but I seem to go off on tangents. I have this great big bag of scraps, bits, and just plain crappy fibre sitting in the middle of the living room, and every time I glance at it, I see a great new yarn idea. I am currently obsessed with lumpy garnet yarns, using noils and huge cuts of yarn. I have enough samples of this type of yarn for 6 seminars. I need to focus on some other types of yarns, but I clearly have my favorite.
I dont' have any pics of the finished yarns uploaded yet, but here's a shot of one of the blends being carded. Like, I said, lumpy with big noils.
I will also be teaching a spindling workshop and leading a seminar on felted knits in Red Deer, so there is a great frenzy of sorting and stacking going on in between spinning bouts. The conference is 5 wweks away, but the excitement is already building--these will be my first workshops since the Great Hippo Attack of Ought-Five, so I am nervous about getting back into the teaching mode.
Enough rambling, more spinning!
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Just When You Think...
Just when you start getting cocky about life going your way, something comes along to f*#@ you up....
My father, who has been winning the battle with stage 4 (incurable) metastatic lung cancer, suffered a major stroke on Tuesday last week. As of this morning, he is holding his own in the University of Alberta Hospital. He is mostly paralyzed on his left side and is frequently groggy and confused, but the biggest threat right now is pneumonia. He cannot swallow and has severe chest congestion from the cancer--and the fact that he continued to smoke heavily right up until last Tuesday morning. We have been told that once he is stabilized, the best we can hope for is palliative care. A rather sad, slow close to an otherwise active and interesting life.
I spent the larger part of last week with my Mom at his bedside. I did get a fair bit of spindling and knitting done, since he sleeps most of the time, but I am wondering how I will feel about the association of his illness with the end project. Right now, there is great comfort in the work, a sense of stability even as things are spiralling out of control around me. Much as I do on any other day, actually!
I have been laying low lately to get my in-depth study done, and it looks like low is a good place to lie for a little while longer.
My father, who has been winning the battle with stage 4 (incurable) metastatic lung cancer, suffered a major stroke on Tuesday last week. As of this morning, he is holding his own in the University of Alberta Hospital. He is mostly paralyzed on his left side and is frequently groggy and confused, but the biggest threat right now is pneumonia. He cannot swallow and has severe chest congestion from the cancer--and the fact that he continued to smoke heavily right up until last Tuesday morning. We have been told that once he is stabilized, the best we can hope for is palliative care. A rather sad, slow close to an otherwise active and interesting life.
I spent the larger part of last week with my Mom at his bedside. I did get a fair bit of spindling and knitting done, since he sleeps most of the time, but I am wondering how I will feel about the association of his illness with the end project. Right now, there is great comfort in the work, a sense of stability even as things are spiralling out of control around me. Much as I do on any other day, actually!
I have been laying low lately to get my in-depth study done, and it looks like low is a good place to lie for a little while longer.
Friday, April 06, 2007
Sock It To Me, Baby!
The in-depth study socks are all spun, knit, washed, and on the feet of my testers!!!
Yep, that's one happy spinster!
Now all that's left is to finish mounting my sample squares and await the test results. I am proof-reading the written work for the 4th or 5th time today--and still finding typos!--and washing a few of the socks for redistribution. But mostly, I'm finished. Oh, I have no doubt my marker will have changes for me, but the bulk of the work is done and I can move on.
And move on I have--with a vengeance. This week, I have carded, documented and spun two samples for a Powerpoint talk on recyling waste fibres, then designed and knit up a soon-to-be-felted bag. Today, I am spinning for fun! What a concept!
Here they are again in all their glory!
Yay for handspun socks!
Yep, that's one happy spinster!
Now all that's left is to finish mounting my sample squares and await the test results. I am proof-reading the written work for the 4th or 5th time today--and still finding typos!--and washing a few of the socks for redistribution. But mostly, I'm finished. Oh, I have no doubt my marker will have changes for me, but the bulk of the work is done and I can move on.
And move on I have--with a vengeance. This week, I have carded, documented and spun two samples for a Powerpoint talk on recyling waste fibres, then designed and knit up a soon-to-be-felted bag. Today, I am spinning for fun! What a concept!
Here they are again in all their glory!
Yay for handspun socks!
Friday, March 23, 2007
Hansel and Gretel
The last of the major non-fibre commitments has been completed...Thickwood Heights School's production of Hansel and Gretel has been an enormous success. I designed the set, Steve built it, Lexi did make-up and Julia played Gretel. The principal referred to us as the "first family of theatre" at Thickwood Heights. Aww, shucks.
The building of the set is always an enormous undertaking with five or six really great volunteers and whatever borrowed shop space we can find. I deliberately designed things to be modular and portable this time around because we did not have a shop available to us, so I figured we'd be building in garages and basements. Fortunately, the acting principal of the high school right next to the theatre happens to be married to the costume designer for the production and, voila! a shop was at our disposal.
I did not get a lot of pictures of the set because I spent a great deal more time than expected backstage helping with frazzled nerves. We have a wonderful teacher who each year serves as BOTWA (Bridge Over Troubled WAter), but she wound up needing to focus on one particular student who had a spectacular attack of stage fright, so I stepped in as assistant BOTWA. Not much to it, but it gave chief BOTWA the peace of mind so she could focus on our nervous Nellie. It's pretty scary when I become the voice of reason.....
This is a wide shot of the gingerbread house. It is a fly, constructed of masonite with a spruce frame. The embellishments include cinnamon hearts (styrofoam), hard candies (styro balls in cellophane), and gumdrops (plastic Easter egg halves with glitter). There is actually a boatload of glitter on the whole thing, but it doesn't show well with this lighting.
Full cast shot. There were 54 students ranging from grade 4-8 in the cast. And they were great kids, for the most part. For just a few minutes, they each got to be a star and have their moment in the spotlight. Children's theatre is a special experience--go watch it, volunteer to help, or support it with donations. It'll do your heart good!
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Time
Well, after all that pissing and moaning, it looks like I will get my in-depth study finished after all. I am one sample away from having the spinning done and three socks away from getting the knitting done! How has this miracle come about, you ask? Because I decided that I was no longer going to buy into the greatest lie of the 21st century. You know the one--I have used it a dozen time on this blog....I don't have the time.
This all came about as the result of an encounter with a 4-year-old at Starbuck's. That's how the universe works.
I was sitting and visiting with my friend Bill, knitting merrily away on one of my sample socks in between sips of my half-sweet, non-fat, extra hot caramel machiatto, when I noticed a wee poppet staring at me. I smiled at her and said hi but, ever cautious of parental paranoia, left it at that and continued knitting. Her mommy collected her $5 coffee and came over to see what her offspring was up to when the little girl asked "What is she doing, Mommy?"
It had never occurred to me that there may be people who didn't know what knitting was, so I was a little floored by that innocent little question. Mommy told her that I was knitting, and I invited Mommy and little one over to watch. I explained that I was making a sock out of wool from a sheep, and that this is the way people used to make all their socks. I showed her the old knitting rhyme "Through the fence, gather the sheep, back again, off they leap" to make a stitch. Little missy was very impressed with this trick and I had to repeat it several times. Then Mommy said the thing that really stopped me in my tracks..."I used to do that, but I just don't have the time anymore."
What?!?! You don't have time to knit?!?! What about while you're watching TV, or waiting at the pre-school to pick up your precious little girl? Or while you're standing in Starbuck's, waiting 10 minutes for a cup of coffee?
So off go mom and tot, and Bill and I resumed our conversation and the matter was dropped. But my mind being the rather circular thing it is, the thought kept popping up--who doesn't have time to knit? I kept coming up with opportunities to get a few rows, or even a few stitches, in. While supper is cooking. In the drive-thru line at your local fast-food joint. Grocery store lines, doctors' offices, while reading bedtime stories, travelling to and from the city, on the bus in town, instead of endlessly blogging....
Then I decided that I too wasted precious moments, or found excuses to be distracted when something became challenging. And that that was enough of that. So I started telling people that dinner would be ready when it was ready and that they could walk instead of getting yet another ride today. And I put my money where my mouth is...I knit while I sit and wait. I knit or spin in front of the TV--which isn't that great of a change, frankly! I do not stop spinning because my kids or my dog come into the room. And I set the challenge of getting current things done before I start any new projects, fibery or otherwise.
And now I am one spinning sample and three socks away from being done. There is still the wear-testing to do, but I even have that organized and ready to go.
So, the moral of this story is : You have the time if you want to do it.
Just do it.
This all came about as the result of an encounter with a 4-year-old at Starbuck's. That's how the universe works.
I was sitting and visiting with my friend Bill, knitting merrily away on one of my sample socks in between sips of my half-sweet, non-fat, extra hot caramel machiatto, when I noticed a wee poppet staring at me. I smiled at her and said hi but, ever cautious of parental paranoia, left it at that and continued knitting. Her mommy collected her $5 coffee and came over to see what her offspring was up to when the little girl asked "What is she doing, Mommy?"
It had never occurred to me that there may be people who didn't know what knitting was, so I was a little floored by that innocent little question. Mommy told her that I was knitting, and I invited Mommy and little one over to watch. I explained that I was making a sock out of wool from a sheep, and that this is the way people used to make all their socks. I showed her the old knitting rhyme "Through the fence, gather the sheep, back again, off they leap" to make a stitch. Little missy was very impressed with this trick and I had to repeat it several times. Then Mommy said the thing that really stopped me in my tracks..."I used to do that, but I just don't have the time anymore."
What?!?! You don't have time to knit?!?! What about while you're watching TV, or waiting at the pre-school to pick up your precious little girl? Or while you're standing in Starbuck's, waiting 10 minutes for a cup of coffee?
So off go mom and tot, and Bill and I resumed our conversation and the matter was dropped. But my mind being the rather circular thing it is, the thought kept popping up--who doesn't have time to knit? I kept coming up with opportunities to get a few rows, or even a few stitches, in. While supper is cooking. In the drive-thru line at your local fast-food joint. Grocery store lines, doctors' offices, while reading bedtime stories, travelling to and from the city, on the bus in town, instead of endlessly blogging....
Then I decided that I too wasted precious moments, or found excuses to be distracted when something became challenging. And that that was enough of that. So I started telling people that dinner would be ready when it was ready and that they could walk instead of getting yet another ride today. And I put my money where my mouth is...I knit while I sit and wait. I knit or spin in front of the TV--which isn't that great of a change, frankly! I do not stop spinning because my kids or my dog come into the room. And I set the challenge of getting current things done before I start any new projects, fibery or otherwise.
And now I am one spinning sample and three socks away from being done. There is still the wear-testing to do, but I even have that organized and ready to go.
So, the moral of this story is : You have the time if you want to do it.
Just do it.
Friday, March 02, 2007
Sigh
I just read over some of my old posts and I have discovered a pattern. Great bursts of work on the in-depth, followed by whining about how I have no time to work on it. Sigh. I have become repetitious. I hang my head in shame.
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