Setting A Good Example

Well, so much for good intentions!  It was my goal to blog every week, regardless of what was going on, this year.  I missed last week, and this week is nearly gone, too.  I guess I'd better write something...

I have spent the last two weeks spinning, knitting, hosting puppeteers, writing, packing, organizing, spinning, getting cortisone shots in my knee, knitting, writing...you get the picture.  But mostly, I have been making samples.

Back when I was a newbie spinner, I took a lot of workshops.  I heard a lot of "facts".  I saw a lot of 2-yard lengths of yarn.  I heard a lot of do's and don'ts.  But I saw very few samples.

Now, there are a lot of great instructors who teach without samples, but my fellow students and I all seemed to agree that seeing how the principle being taught worked in an actual garment, or at least a swatch, really helped.  And one wise instructor even said that samples were proof that the teacher knew what she was talking about.  And, to be fair, there are a lot things that we teach in spinning that don't really need samples to back them up, or that the two-yard demo yarn will illustrate just fine.

But, do you really know what I mean when I say your stitches will skew if you underply?

Now you have a visual. (Or, at least you would if I had laid them out properly.  It's there, trust me.  Take the workshop.)

And how about explaining how a particular blend of fibres will perform in a sock?

There you go.

I have, over the past few years, accumulated quite a few samples of different types of yarn, and made samples to demonstrate certain points, but as I teach each workshop, I think of something else that would benefit from visual support.  Simply telling us to do something is fine, but showing us gives depth and substance to the words.  And giving us something we can touch is icing on the cake for tactile folk like spinners.

So, I have been spinning 30-yard skeins.  Sock yarns, S and Z yarns, overplied and underplied yarns, woollen and worsted yarns.  When I had to do this for my Master Spinner classes, I procrastinated and grumbled.  Now, each day I try to see what I can demonstrate with a new yarn.  It's been a lot of fun. (I'm sure there are a few current Master Spinner students out there who think I've gone off my nut with that statement.  Really, it's fun!  Honest!)

Of course, this means that my "real" spinning has been back-burnered for the last couple of weeks, and that I am still struggling to finish the last raglan cap on Steve's Christmas sweater. (Honestly, I have like 15 rows to go and just can't seem to get to it.  Methinks there is some procrastination of the inevitable sewing-up there!)  There are so many sample yarns to knit up, and I keep thinking there should be woven samples too.  Oh, goody!  More skeins!

So, there you have it.  I have to set a good example.  Or at least, set out a good sample.

On a personal note, because my family and friends read this blog, I got a new hairstyle this week.  After a couple of years of that funky asymetrical cut always flopping in my eyes, I went and got my bangs cut and the whole shebang layered and shagged.  May I present The New Moi:

It's much fluffier in person, which makes me happy.  And I can see the world again, which is more amazing than I expected.

And yes, those are bib coveralls.  Wanna make something of it? 

I thought not.

Stasis

Stasis means a state of non-movement or balance.  That's where I am right now--in stasis.

The rush and bustle of the holiday season is over.  The Great Plumbing Crisis is resolved and we are postponing repairs for a bit.  I have ordered supplies for my March workshops and can't do much else until those arrive.  Fibre Week is out of my hands and will unfold as it unfolds.  The traffic in my inbox has gone from 2 or 3 dozen emails each day to, well, 2 or 3.  Julia and Steve are both in heavy-duty rehearsal schedules for next week's opening of High School Musical at Keyano Theatre, so no meals for the next 2 weeks.  The weather is cold and grey and we seem to get just enough snow each and every day to make it inconvenient to go for a walk.  I have nothing "important" to do.

So here I sit.

At first, it was really uncomfortable, not having to multi-task my way through the day.  Getting one project or chore finished before moving on to the next.  It made me anxious.  Something was missing.  Or I was missing something.  In any event, it seemed very odd.

Then it got worse.  I felt useless.  I got panicky because I was only doing one thing at a time, and most of those things seemed useless and insignificant.  I got really restless and irritable.

I was going through withdrawal.

Then I twisted my knee and had to sit.  So I sat.  I made a hat.

It's a nice hat.  The pattern is Gwen's Slouch by Lauren Nell Roy (Ravelry link) and I knit it with the hot, hot pink cashmere that I spun up last month.  I held the yarn doubled, cast on on Sunday morning and bound off on Sunday night.

And somewhere between the cast on and the bind-off, I realized that I was relaxed.  That it was okay to spend a Sunday knitting a hat.  That the world did not need me to keep it rotating. 

I had forgotten how that felt.  It feels kinda nice.

It's all good now.  I can spin and knit and read and get caught up on movies I haven't seen and just sit.  I am in stasis.

I know I won't stay here for long.  Things are going to get ridiculously busy again in about another week or so, and March will be a gong show  (I expect to be home for 6 whole days in March!)  But it's nice to sit and be comfortable sitting.

Or sit and spin.  And knit.  And just enjoy what I'm doing at the moment.

Stasis.

Innovative New Tool!

Do you face challenges when plying?

Are you tired of your traditional Lazy Kate?

Then why not try the all new Lazy Cat*?  The innovative new plying tool that is guaranteed to make plying nearly impossible and add 3% cat fibre content to every yarn you make?

Not only will the Lazy Cat* slow those bobbins right down and keep your yarn from inconveniently becoming plied, it is a fabulous way to remove the smile from any spinner's face.

And when you are fed up with your Lazy Cat*, it can be removed with only  minimal hissing and scratching.

*Patent Pending

No animals were harmed in the making of this blog entry, though the temptation was there...

Would You Like Some Cheese?

Well, that was a waste of a perfectly good two weeks.  If you thought there was some whine in the last post, you ain't seen nothin'yet, as the man said.

First, though, some fibre content and the good news...

I got my SSZ black silk/merino plied.  Just over 500 yards, 15 WPI, and 6 TPI.  It will eventually be the warp for a rigid heddle project, but I have to make the same yarn spun the traditional ZZS first.  At least, that's the plan.

Then I got this all plied and washed, too...

...the Louet Northern Lights from this post.  Super bulky and cushy, there are about 14oo yards of 4 WPI at 2 TPI.  It's all washed, and it took it 3 days to dry, but it's now waiting in a bin until I can get the design muddled out.  Here's a sexy close-up....

I love the colors and there is a sheen to the yarn that is absolutely fabulous!

Now on to the whine..in my last post, I alluded to a lingering head cold. It went away.  It was really just a sniffle, sort of a ripple on the surface of my immune system.  Little did I know that it was a preview for the upcoming tsunami... 

Steve came home about 2 weeks ago with a little sniffle himself.  Which turned into a monster headcold overnight.  And for 2 days he laid on the couch sneezing and coughing.  I soldiered bravely on, making soup and making sure there was plenty of Kleenex in the house.  Then, a little tickle began at the back of my throat.  I started to sneeze.  Hard.  My eyes got red and watery.  And the headache set in.

Being the stoic type, I marched ever onward.  There was laundry and spinning and correspondence to see to.  So for three days, I tried to pretend nothing was wrong, all the while munching cold and sinus pills, echinacea, and vitamin C tabs.  On day four, I gave up the fight.  I didn't even try to get out of bed.  I surrendered to The Worst Cold in the History of Humanity.

There are not words to describe my misery.  I had what we suspect was the dreaded H1N1 in November and was livelier than this.  For four days, I barely opened my eyes.  I had the most amazing sinus headache--my migraines are so much more pleasant than this headache was.  I had goo built up in the passages in my ear, so the room spun uncontrollably at times.  I lost my voice to post-nasal drip irritation.  I couldn't inhale.  It was gruesome. 

No fever.  No chest symptoms.  Just a head cold.  And ten days later, I am still struggling to recover.

AND AT THE SAME TIME--yes, there is more...

You see, sometimes, when the weather turns really, really cold, the sewer gas exhaust pipe on our roof gets blocked by ice.  This requires us to get the maintenance crew to come and unblock the pipe, which sometimes takes several days to happen.  And while that pipe is blocked, we invariably get not only the delightful aroma of sewer gas drifting through the upper floor of our house, but an airlock that prevents the upstairs toilet from flushing properly and slows the bathtub's drainage to a trickle.  This happened just as we were about to go away for a few days after Christmas.

So, we left it.  We figured the weather would change or we would get someone to fix it once we got back in the new year.  This turns out to have been a bad plan.

We came home to a partially-flushing toilet and a slow-draining bathtub and a forecast of above-zero temperatures.  That meant we didn't have to call the maintenance creww, which, in the past, has turned out to be a great big hassle most of the time, anyway.  So we didn't.

And then the toilet stopped flushing.  It just filled up with water and overflowed.  The bathtub ceased to drain.  At all.  There was much mad plungering and bailing, all in vain.  It was the weekend.  There was no maintenance crew to call.  Steve was sick, and I was beginning to feel a wee bit punky myself.  Then Julia went into the downstairs bathroom, which is directly below the upstairs bathroom.  When she came out, she asked why the ceiling was bubbling in the bathroom.  A brief inspection, followed by a ginger poke at the bubbled paint on the ceiling, resulting in a sudden downpour of sewage into the downstairs bathroom.

Buckets were grabbed and every available container was pressed into service.  I stood, valiantly, under the downpour, catching the mess in what ever container came to hand while Steve cursed above my head, trying to bail the upstairs toilet and stem the flow of water.  Every towel in the house was put to use.  There were tears and curses and all manner of drama.  Then we went to bed.

The next morning, the maintenance crew was called and they mosied on around that evening, climbed the ladder, rattled a hook the exhaust pipe and asked us to check the toilet.  This resulted in another deluge in the downstairs bathroom.  Mr.  Maintenance diagnosed the problem as the ice jam being too far down the pipe for them to reach and promised he would be back in the morning with some brine to pour down the pipe and fix things once and for all.  Steve decided he would try snaking the drain line to see if there was a problem there, too.

The promised brine showed up late the next day, and when I checked the flush this time, there was a mighty bubble and a rush of sewer stink, and a slow, gurggly drain.  Huzzah!  And I sent the maintenance crew on their merry way.  I was so excited that I ran upstairs to flush the toilet again, and that's when the real trouble began.  Not only did it rain in the downstairs bathroom again, but water started to come out around the base of the upstairs toilet.  The wax seal under the toilet had given.  It was too late to do anything but sulk that night, and both Steve and I were well into our nasty colds by this point, so we decided we would get a new seal and lift the toilet the next evening and repair it.

So, twenty-four hours later, with a mercifully stuffed nose, I helped Steve lift the toilet off the pipe and remove the old seal.  There was water right up to the top of the drain, which is not right, so Steve thought he would send the snake down the drain while we had the chance.  Two minutes of snaking, and a clump of something furry, resembling a drowned rat, came up.   It seems that the airlock had created something of a vacuum that sucked all the debris in our drains up to a turn in the pipe and made a massive dam.  Furball removed, the water miraculously drained.  We did not examine the furball too closely, but it did contain, among other stuff, construction garbage that must have been there for the 30 years since this condo was built (because I'm sure none of my children would have flushed nearly 2 feet of baling wire).  The toilet went back onto its new seal, and all has been well since.  Except for the massive hole in the downstairs bathroom ceiling that we are waiting on an insurance quote for...

That was when I decided to stop getting out of bed for a few days.

But I'm up and around now, and while I am not 100%--there is still some congestion that makes my inner ears suddenly malfunction and dizziness ensues, and a mild lingering sinus headache on the left side--I'm trying to catch up.  So many wonderful opportunities have come my way this last few weeks, and I couldn't say no.  But I did have to say "later".  And now later is here.

Whew!  Thanks for letting my get that out of my system.  And for those of you who held on until the end, here is a gratuitous pet picture to cheer you up...

You just know Teagan the Wonder Schnoodle is thinking, "Oh, the crap I have to put up with around here..."

My Glass of Whine

...has been half-empty for the last couple of days.  I'm feeling quite trapped in the house by the cold weather, and I seem to be caught in a never-ending spiral of housework that is keeping me from spinning, or doing anything else interesting.  Everyone I know seems to be in a crisis, recovering from a crisis, or anticipating a crisis.  Add a lingering head cold, a sore knee, and a plumbing problem that seems to have no other viable fix than to burn the house to the ground, fake our deaths and move to another country, and you have quite a case of the Oh-Poor-Mes. 

I spent the morning drinking coffee and feeling unusually pessimistic that things would never improve, even though they usually do.  Even a beautiful morning view like this did nothing to cheer me up.

So imagine my amusement when this showed up on my horoscope this morning:

Rather than being a pessimist, embrace the happy moments around you. This attitude will make you feel better. There is no good getting upset over things out of your control.

You know you are a grumpy panda when even the great sages at mytelus.com start noticing.

So let's embrace some happy moments, shall we?

First of all, the workshop line-up for Fibre Week 2010 is finished and up on the website.  Huzzah!  My rather scattered fall made the tasks of getting all of the instructors sorted out and the schedule arranged a little more difficult than it should have been, but the information has all been passed on to the fabulous team at Olds College and they have managed to make sense of it all and put together what looks like another amazing week.  You can check it out for yourself right here.  (I have to add my thanks to Otto and his team at Olds for all their patience and support at this point.  I would still be flopping around in a pile of papers if not for them!)

Secondly, the Christmas knitting is almost done.  Yes, I am well aware that Christmas was two weeks ago.   But the Christmas knitting is usually finished in March, so I consider being one sleeve away from the end of this year's batch a personal triumph.    As usual, I did not have the sense to take photos of the work, except for this one:

The pattern is Eunny Jang's Tangled Yoke Cardigan from Interweave Knits Fall 2007 and I knit it up in that yummy, yummy alpaca/silk/cashmere blend I had spun in November.  The yarn was a joy to knit,and aside from a few issues with the fact that I do not read charts carefully, the knitting went quickly.  Okay, there were a lot of issues with my inability to read each line of a charts carefully, which led to the Tweets about the Celtic Cables of Insanity.  This is in no way a reflection upon Ms. Jang and her pattern, but should have been the first clue that things were slipping around the edges of my mind.

The sweater turned out to be stunning, in spite of my best efforts to ensure otherwise, and was much appreciated by Miss Lexi.  I'm hoping to see a picture of it being worn someday (hint, hint?)

The other gifts included a Moebius wrap for my sister that I liked so much that I'm making one for myself out of the same yarn, and a hat for Brendan.  Promptly wrapped and shipped off to Edmonton, without a photo shoot.  D'oh!

My third little happy thing actually involves a project that got bumped from the Christmas list pretty early on.  I spent the last couple of days spinning up the cashmere for a hat for Miss Julia and I now have about 225 yards of lovely, is somewhat pink, 3-ply fingering weight yarn to knit up...

Mmmmm,mmm,mm!

So I've made some nice string, gotten some knitting done, even set up the loom to finish those tea towels I started last year.  My household is all suffering from the same cold I have, and we are all red-eyed and snuffly, but we are together and wearing handspun, handknit goodies to ward off the chill.  The forecast is for warmer weather, which should resolve the cabin fever and the plumbing problem for a while.

And I have three weeks of clear calendar to spin in.  Things start getting nuts again in Mid-February and the teaching season kicks in in March, but, for now, there is time for me to spin.  What could be better than that?  Okay, maybe a working bathtub, but what else?

Today is St. Distaff day, also known for some bizarre reason as Rock Day, the day when spinners and weavers traditionally return to work after the Festive Season, so it seems appropriate that I set aside everything that's bugging me and sit down at the wheel.  There is a bulky yarn to finish up, some Merino/silk to ply, and some guanaco calling my name from the stash.

Well, what do you know?  It worked!  I'm in a much better mood.

I'm gonna go spin.

In With the New

Happy 2010!  We managed to make it through another year--some of us more gracefully than others, but here we are nonetheless.

We celebrated the changing of the decades in Edmonton, with family.  There was much laughter--perhaps a little too much--along with fondue and, well...

...shoes.  Really sweet shoes.

At this time of year, so many of us pause to reflect on the year that has passed and examine its events and their impact on their lives.  Every time I tried to do this, I felt a little overwhelmed.  So much has happened that my wee brain cannot process all of the data at once!

Let it suffice to say that 2009 was a year of transitions and flux.  So many changes in my life and the lives around me.  So many babies born, jobs lost, couples married.  So many new ventures, successful and otherwise.  So many illnesses diagnosed (too many!), new friends made, old friends lost.  So many adventures embarked upon, and much travelling to new and exciting places.  So many new knitters and spinners converted.  To list everything that happened in 2009 would take longer than it did to live it!

Life is change, and this year was well-lived.

I have learned through the years that, like a roller coaster, life will go where it's supposed to, and it's best to just hang on tight and enjoy the ride, no matter how scary.  And on the first day of 2010, the first day of a new decade, I'm clutching the bar of the roller coaster cart and closing my eyes as it climbs that first climb.  I know that when the car reaches the top, the ride will begin again and all I can do is hang on and scream when I need to until the car rolls into the boarding platform.  And I'll stagger off and maybe throw up a bit, then yell "Let's go again!"

Or, who knows?  Maybe this year I'll decide to ride the Tilt-a-whirl instead.

"Tis the Season...

...for warm, woolly socks,  long nights lit by candles, and marathon knitting!

As I have mentioned before, I am not a big fan of winter weather.  And the last two weeks have reminded me why, with a cold snap of temperatures in the minus forties, before the windchill.  Top that off with a couple of power outages that shut down the fan on the furnace, and you have one cold, cranky woman on your hands.  However, this nastiness has given me an excuse to wear all my little self-indulgent socks that I've been knitting.

Now, I knit a lot of socks.  There is always a sock-in-progress in my purse, for those moments when I am waiting in line, sitting in a coffee shop, or stuck in traffic.  There is usually a half-knit sock on the coffee table, too.  But do I personally have a large collection of hand-knit socks?  Of course not!  I don't really know where all those socks I knit go--kids, Steve's sock drawer, friends, I suppose--but sometime last winter, I realized that I had only 1 pair of my own knit socks, and they were looking pretty threadbare.

So on my travels over the spring and summer, I collected a few little skeins of, shall we say, indulgent sock yarns.  Alpaca blends, silk blends, superwash Merino--handpainted and luxurious.  Mmm, mmm, mmm.  And then I used the hours in airports, on airplanes, and in the passenger seat  to actually use these yummy yarns.  I made myself some socks.

First, the alpaca blend.  Handpainted yarn from Alpaca Plus, 60% alpaca, 20% wool, 20% nylon. The knitting was done in May and June, mostly on planes while I did my little stint in the US.  These socks did sit in a drawer for a couple of months, but I'm wearing them now!  They are warm and have developed a slight halo from the alpaca that makes them feel super soft.

The next pair I knit were a Merino/silk blend from Red Fish Dyeworks.  The four-ply yarn was a little on the heavy end for socks, and a little dear with 5 skeins costing about $85, but I wanted the colors together.  I do have enough for about 2 more pairs of socks, so the cost will even out when I get those guys knit.  I knit these during Fibre Week and into early August, using my basic sock formula and a simple Fair Isle pattern.  I must admit that these are my current favorites--the combination of the silk and the bright colors make me happy every time I put them on.

                                     

And last, but far from least, are these beauties.  There was a great frenzy of knitting in August, getting the first sock finished in about 2 days, then...nothing.  I cast on the second sock in early October and knit about 3 inches of cuff, then...nothing.  Then it got to be 30 below, and I decided to sit in my house and knit.  I finished the second sock on a Sunday afternoon two weeks ago.  The yarn is handpainted by Mary Ann at Three Waters Farm.  I loooove the colors! And these soft, comfy socks have gotten a lot of wear this past couple of weeks.

So, my toes have been warm and very stylish during the cold spell.

The other "up-side", if there could be such a thing when it is 40 below, is that there was no way I was going out into that weather.  This turned out to be an up-side because that meant lots of time at home to spin and knit, and with the Big Holiday fast approaching, this was an added bonus.  I do not buy a lot of gifts anymore, but I do knit and weave a lot of gifts.  The more time at home, the more on top of the Christmas list I get.  There is one Really Big Project that is moving a little slower than I would like, but otherwise, the dreaded Christmas knitting is under control.  (Touch wood!)

The long dark nights and the cold, cold weather have not been very conducive to a festive state of mind around here, but things are looking up.  We are having a heat wave of -23C today, and the Christmas baking is done.  The tree is up, and there are even a couple of gifts wrapped.  I ventured out yesterday to the post office and the mall, two place I usually try to avoid this time of year, and everyone I met was cheerful and helpful.  And the dark drive home at 3:30 p.m. was lit by Christmas lights. 

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

And my toes are warm.