So the media tells me that this year's flu season is off to an early and dramatic start. Sadly, this does not come as a news flash to me. You see, I am part of that early and dramatic start. (Insert sad-face emoticon of your choice here.)
Instead of plying yarn and spinning new yarn, instead of finishing up those two nagging UFO's left over from before Christmas, and instead of workshop prep, I have been laying on the couch. Moaning. Channel surfing and cruising the internet. Which was probably not wise. On the other hand, it was educational. Here is what I learned:
~Television is a mindless wasteland of Botoxed bimbos and plaid-shirted men with beards, all of whom speak in a language of bleeps and boops. They also yell a lot.
~Do not try to learn what is going on in the world from television news channels. All those are is outlets for "pundits" with "opinions", all of which seem to be about what is wrong with everyone else.
~Netflix is your friend.
~To go on Netflix you have to go on the internet.
~The internet is a series of tubes filled with cats. And people who have no basic spelling or grammar skills.
~If you are looking for angry, bigoted, uninformed, and paranoid people, go immediately to the internet. It's a virtual smorgasbord of rage.
~There is also yarn on the internet. Lots and lots of yarn.
~Sometimes it is a good thing to be too sick to get up off the couch and go across the room to where your purse containing your credit card is.
~There is also a lot of bad yarn on the internet. A. Lot. Some of it sold by those people with the bad spelling, or by the angry and paranoid. Really. You should see some of the crazy stuff people put on their Etsy pages. This is also a good reason to not get up to get your purse. Dudes, if you want to sell stuff, keep your politics and religion to yourselves.
~Do not look up your symptoms on the internet. I may or may not have actually been suffering from Anthrax.
~A cup of hot water with honey, lemon, and Jack Daniels will make you not care about television or the internet.
~You are better off not caring about television or the internet.
~Put on some soft music, knit something mindless, cuddle a kitty, and sleep. You will feel so much better.
~Most importantly, respect your body. Rest. Heal. The world will wait, and you're not missing anything.
~These lessons may also turn out to be useful when you are not sick.
And, on that note, I'm going to take a nap.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Monday, January 07, 2013
St. Distaff's Day
...or Another Excuse to Spend A Day Spinning.
Back when spinning was a "real job", St. Distaff day was the traditional day that spinners went back to work, the day after Twelfth Night. Naturally, they were thrilled to be back at their spinning wheel, and made excuses to celebrate. There is no St. Distaff, but in those days, every holiday was in honour of one saint or another, so the spinners (clever girls that they were) made a new saint to celebrate. And we celebrate to this day.
(For you non-spinny types, a distaff is a spinning tool. It is a rod or board used to hold unspun fibre, especially flax, and keep it organized and tidy for the spinner to draft from. The actual patron saint of spinners is St. Serafina, who also happens to be the patron saint of the suffering and deformed. St. Catherine is also a patron saint to those who craft with wheels, such as spinners and potters. They have their own feast days, but not today!)
My celebration will consist of a day of plying. To be honest, I have not taken the Twelve Days of Christmas off from spinning. I have, in fact, done pretty much the opposite. I have done little else. Oh, a little cooking here and there, and ridiculous amounts of bread have been baked, but mostly, spinning. I am running out of empty bobbins, though, so plying is becoming a must. I have this...
...about 300g of Wensleydale top, handpainted by Spunky Eclectic in the November Spunky Club colour way "Not So Seaworthy" (inspired by a photo of a shipwreck, presumably a flaming shipwreck). Three singles with random colour placement for a 3-ply sock yarn.
And this...
...the rest of the NZ Crossbred roving, also from Spunky Eclectic, that I had spun before Christmas. Once this is plied, I should have enough for a vest.
St. Distaff will be well celebrated around here!
And what is a celebration without a feast? January 7 also happens to be Ukrainian Christmas, which, being of Ukrainian descent, I observe with a massive feed of the family's favourite Ukrainian foods. There are holopchi (cabbage rolls)...
...and a massive number of hand-made peroghies...
Along with a big pot of borscht, some poppy seed roll, and a roast, this will be an epic feast.
I will admit that we are a day late this year with this feast. Tradition dictates that the Christmas meal is eaten on Christmas Eve on the Gregorian calendar, but family scheduling made tonight a better night to do this. And it works out just right for me. I have to hang around the house as all of the food that I prepared over the weekend slowly cooks to perfection in the oven. I have plying to do. And it's St. Distaff day, a day to celebrate spinning.
So whatever this day brings, remember to take a moment to make a little string in honour of a non-existent saint and celebrate the magic of what it is that we do when we take a fistful of fluff and turn it into something wonderful to knit or weave with. And if you don't know how to spin, hug someone who does--and maybe they'll offer you a lesson or two! And if you don't have a spinner around to hug, celebrate anyway.
Because life is good.
Back when spinning was a "real job", St. Distaff day was the traditional day that spinners went back to work, the day after Twelfth Night. Naturally, they were thrilled to be back at their spinning wheel, and made excuses to celebrate. There is no St. Distaff, but in those days, every holiday was in honour of one saint or another, so the spinners (clever girls that they were) made a new saint to celebrate. And we celebrate to this day.
(For you non-spinny types, a distaff is a spinning tool. It is a rod or board used to hold unspun fibre, especially flax, and keep it organized and tidy for the spinner to draft from. The actual patron saint of spinners is St. Serafina, who also happens to be the patron saint of the suffering and deformed. St. Catherine is also a patron saint to those who craft with wheels, such as spinners and potters. They have their own feast days, but not today!)
My celebration will consist of a day of plying. To be honest, I have not taken the Twelve Days of Christmas off from spinning. I have, in fact, done pretty much the opposite. I have done little else. Oh, a little cooking here and there, and ridiculous amounts of bread have been baked, but mostly, spinning. I am running out of empty bobbins, though, so plying is becoming a must. I have this...
And this...
...the rest of the NZ Crossbred roving, also from Spunky Eclectic, that I had spun before Christmas. Once this is plied, I should have enough for a vest.
St. Distaff will be well celebrated around here!
And what is a celebration without a feast? January 7 also happens to be Ukrainian Christmas, which, being of Ukrainian descent, I observe with a massive feed of the family's favourite Ukrainian foods. There are holopchi (cabbage rolls)...
...and a massive number of hand-made peroghies...
Along with a big pot of borscht, some poppy seed roll, and a roast, this will be an epic feast.
I will admit that we are a day late this year with this feast. Tradition dictates that the Christmas meal is eaten on Christmas Eve on the Gregorian calendar, but family scheduling made tonight a better night to do this. And it works out just right for me. I have to hang around the house as all of the food that I prepared over the weekend slowly cooks to perfection in the oven. I have plying to do. And it's St. Distaff day, a day to celebrate spinning.
So whatever this day brings, remember to take a moment to make a little string in honour of a non-existent saint and celebrate the magic of what it is that we do when we take a fistful of fluff and turn it into something wonderful to knit or weave with. And if you don't know how to spin, hug someone who does--and maybe they'll offer you a lesson or two! And if you don't have a spinner around to hug, celebrate anyway.
Because life is good.
Wednesday, January 02, 2013
The Truth About "True Woolen"
I've been laying low and spinning for the past few weeks, with sporadic bursts of baking and holiday gatherings thrown in to keep things interesting. I've been pondering the projects I am taking on, preparing for my 2013 workshops, and writing. And all of this means I have been thinking way to much about the minutiae of our craft.
So I was deep in this place of over-thinking when the dreaded phrase that never fails to raise my blood pressure came up again. This phrase is one commonly used in technical spinning circles, but it's definition varies from expert to expert. It is a phrase that strikes terror in the hearts of spinners everywhere. And it is a lie. This phrase is "TRUE WOOLEN".
As spinners, we all want to do it "right". We want to make our yarns in the best traditional manner we can. But few of us actually understand the physics and mechanics of making the yarn, even the most experienced of us. We rely on the experts and gurus who have taught us for the correct language, the proper terminology, and the correct definition of the terms. As a teacher, I have seen dozens of people who have spun, successfully, for years suddenly throw everything they know out the window because a famous teacher told them that they were doing it "wrong".
Now, I am not a fan of the "there is no right or wrong" school of spinning, either. I do believe that some techniques are more effective than others, and that learning these techniques and refining them will make you a better spinner. And, sometimes, you have to learn the less-effective techniques, too. Learning the "wrong" thing will often help you understand the "right" thing. There are several very effective ways to make yarn, each with its own virtues and shortcomings, each with a very specific outcome. It is learning which techniques works best for the result you want that sets you free to be a great spinner.
As I see it, the problem does not lie in the "right" and "wrong" techniques. It lies in the language we use to describe these techniques. And some of the most misleading and inaccurate language exists in the phrase "true woolen".
Here's what's wrong with that phrase: "true woolen" is far too often used to describe a drafting technique rather than the yarn. Woolen and worsted are words that describe YARNS, not techniques. I cringe every time I hear someone say, "I'm working on perfecting my worsted drafting." or some such other twaddle. (Though I will admit that I frequently joke that "that's some of the worsted drafting I've ever seen!") I reiterate: worsted is NOT a drafting technique. Nor is woollen. They are the resultant yarns.
Briefly, to clarify: A woolen yarn is one in which the fibres, after spinning, plying, and finishing, lie in a non-parallel arrangement. The fibres, when examined, will be jumbled in all directions, pushing outward and making a fuzzy, lofty yarn. A worsted yarn, on the other hand, is one in which the fibres, after spinning, plying, and finishing, lie parallel to each other. These fibres will be arranged in a smooth, linear manner, pulled close together and pushing up and down along the length of a smooth, compact yarn.
What determines whether a yarn is woolen or worsted is NOT how long your drafting zone is, or how fast or slow you draft, or whether you double draft or not. It is how the twist enters the fibre and how it stays there. There are several steps to creating a woolen or a worsted yarn, which I will not go into in detail here today. Let it suffice to say that selection and preparation of fibres, spinning techniques (including spinning wheel set-up!), plying, and finishing techniques are all factors in making these different styles of yarns successfully. And the more of these steps that are appropriate to the style of the yarn, the closer to "true" woolen or worsted we get.
Woolen yarns are best spun from non-parallel arrangements of fibre, such as roving or rolags. However, there are ways of spinning parallel arrangements, such as sliver or top, to achieve a woolen result. It's just easier to start the way you intend to continue. Non-parallel arrangements will obviously be easier to turn into non-parallel yarns, and vice-versa for parallel arrangements. Drafting techniques that allow the fibres to stay non-parallel (i.e. by not pulling them out straight before allowing the twist in) will obviously keep those fibres in that configuration.
And it is at this point that I get a little testy. There is pretty much one way to draft a worsted yarn: by pulling the fibres straight and guiding twist in with your lead hand. There are several ways to draft a woolen yarn, all variations on a theme. We attenuate (pull the fibres into a thin line) and allow the twist to go where it will. We do not guide the twist in, we do not control or compact our fibres with our lead hand. We pull those fibres thin over a space of a few inches, or we can pull them out to the full extension of our arm. We can pinch fibres to control the rate at which the twist grabs them, or we can let the twist travel unimpeded. (We call the first "supported long draw" and the latter "unsupported long draw".) We can use a Scotch-tension wheel, or a bobbin-led, or a double-drive. Or a spindle. No matter how fast or slow we draft, no matter how long we pull back, these techniques all achieve the same result: a non-parallel yarn.
Adherents of the "true woolen" draft insist that we must draft quickly and with little control, relying on "double-drafting" (another bugaboo--don't get me started!) to smooth out our yarns. They sneer at slow, controlled drafting, or at "supported" drafting as being less than traditional and resulting in inferior yarns. They tell us that other methods make our yarns "too tight for woollen", or worse, the dreaded "semi-woolen". They tell us that woolen yarns must be, by definition, uneven in the singles, lumpy and slubby. They tell us that we cannot make a lace-weight or thin woolen, that woolen must be thick to be lofty. They are wrong, or at least inaccurate, on all counts. The simple fact of the matter is, if you do not guide the twist into fully parallel fibres over a short, controlled space, you are making a woolen yarn. Tight, loose, even, uneven, thick, thin, semi-, hemi-, or demi-, WOOLEN.
I think it is time to put a stop to this nonsense. We have got to stop labelling one drafting method as a "true woolen" technique, and we have to start looking at what the language of our craft means. Let's stop using the word "woolen" to talk about drafting and start using the proper words like long-draw and short-draw. Let's stop quibbling over "supported" and "unsupported". Let's make the yarn that we want to make, in the best way that works for us and stop putting false labels on the way we do it.
Lets make yarn that is true for us.
So I was deep in this place of over-thinking when the dreaded phrase that never fails to raise my blood pressure came up again. This phrase is one commonly used in technical spinning circles, but it's definition varies from expert to expert. It is a phrase that strikes terror in the hearts of spinners everywhere. And it is a lie. This phrase is "TRUE WOOLEN".
 |
| Spot the "true" woollen. C'mon, I dare ya! |
Now, I am not a fan of the "there is no right or wrong" school of spinning, either. I do believe that some techniques are more effective than others, and that learning these techniques and refining them will make you a better spinner. And, sometimes, you have to learn the less-effective techniques, too. Learning the "wrong" thing will often help you understand the "right" thing. There are several very effective ways to make yarn, each with its own virtues and shortcomings, each with a very specific outcome. It is learning which techniques works best for the result you want that sets you free to be a great spinner.
As I see it, the problem does not lie in the "right" and "wrong" techniques. It lies in the language we use to describe these techniques. And some of the most misleading and inaccurate language exists in the phrase "true woolen".
Here's what's wrong with that phrase: "true woolen" is far too often used to describe a drafting technique rather than the yarn. Woolen and worsted are words that describe YARNS, not techniques. I cringe every time I hear someone say, "I'm working on perfecting my worsted drafting." or some such other twaddle. (Though I will admit that I frequently joke that "that's some of the worsted drafting I've ever seen!") I reiterate: worsted is NOT a drafting technique. Nor is woollen. They are the resultant yarns.
Briefly, to clarify: A woolen yarn is one in which the fibres, after spinning, plying, and finishing, lie in a non-parallel arrangement. The fibres, when examined, will be jumbled in all directions, pushing outward and making a fuzzy, lofty yarn. A worsted yarn, on the other hand, is one in which the fibres, after spinning, plying, and finishing, lie parallel to each other. These fibres will be arranged in a smooth, linear manner, pulled close together and pushing up and down along the length of a smooth, compact yarn.
 |
| For the uninitiated, worsted is on the left, woolen is on the right. |
Woolen yarns are best spun from non-parallel arrangements of fibre, such as roving or rolags. However, there are ways of spinning parallel arrangements, such as sliver or top, to achieve a woolen result. It's just easier to start the way you intend to continue. Non-parallel arrangements will obviously be easier to turn into non-parallel yarns, and vice-versa for parallel arrangements. Drafting techniques that allow the fibres to stay non-parallel (i.e. by not pulling them out straight before allowing the twist in) will obviously keep those fibres in that configuration.
And it is at this point that I get a little testy. There is pretty much one way to draft a worsted yarn: by pulling the fibres straight and guiding twist in with your lead hand. There are several ways to draft a woolen yarn, all variations on a theme. We attenuate (pull the fibres into a thin line) and allow the twist to go where it will. We do not guide the twist in, we do not control or compact our fibres with our lead hand. We pull those fibres thin over a space of a few inches, or we can pull them out to the full extension of our arm. We can pinch fibres to control the rate at which the twist grabs them, or we can let the twist travel unimpeded. (We call the first "supported long draw" and the latter "unsupported long draw".) We can use a Scotch-tension wheel, or a bobbin-led, or a double-drive. Or a spindle. No matter how fast or slow we draft, no matter how long we pull back, these techniques all achieve the same result: a non-parallel yarn.
Adherents of the "true woolen" draft insist that we must draft quickly and with little control, relying on "double-drafting" (another bugaboo--don't get me started!) to smooth out our yarns. They sneer at slow, controlled drafting, or at "supported" drafting as being less than traditional and resulting in inferior yarns. They tell us that other methods make our yarns "too tight for woollen", or worse, the dreaded "semi-woolen". They tell us that woolen yarns must be, by definition, uneven in the singles, lumpy and slubby. They tell us that we cannot make a lace-weight or thin woolen, that woolen must be thick to be lofty. They are wrong, or at least inaccurate, on all counts. The simple fact of the matter is, if you do not guide the twist into fully parallel fibres over a short, controlled space, you are making a woolen yarn. Tight, loose, even, uneven, thick, thin, semi-, hemi-, or demi-, WOOLEN.
I think it is time to put a stop to this nonsense. We have got to stop labelling one drafting method as a "true woolen" technique, and we have to start looking at what the language of our craft means. Let's stop using the word "woolen" to talk about drafting and start using the proper words like long-draw and short-draw. Let's stop quibbling over "supported" and "unsupported". Let's make the yarn that we want to make, in the best way that works for us and stop putting false labels on the way we do it.
Lets make yarn that is true for us.
Monday, December 17, 2012
WE vs THEY
I have met the enemy, and he is us. ~ Walt Kelly
On Friday, December 14, the unthinkable happened. A young man walked into an elementary school in Newton, Connecticut and shot and killed 20 young children and 6 staff members before taking his own life. As the drama unfolded, we also learned that before this climactic act of violence, he had murdered his own mother in their home. This was a terrible tragedy, a terrible day for the whole of Newton, the whole of America, and the whole of the world.
But what has struck me as even more terrible has been the response to this shooting.
As human beings, our response to that which hurts us is to lash out. To, in effect, hurt back. We react to bad news first with denial, then with anger. It seems to be how we are programmed. And we need somewhere to direct that anger. We place blame. We find a villain.
Some are blaming the guns. Guns ARE a problem. Guns serve one purpose. They are tools of death, and too many people take the use of them far too casually. But guns are not THE problem.
(Sidebar here: Could someone please explain to me, in a calm, rational manner how the ownership of semi-automatic weapons designed to kill large numbers of enemy combatants efficiently equals personal freedom? Really?)
Some are blaming the lack of services for the mentally ill. It is true that there is a dearth of care for those with mental and emotional issues. We understand so little about mental illness and about our own minds that it is easy to look away from it, and to cut funding from budgets, because there is no cut and dried solution. Again, a real problem, but not the only problem.
Some have tried to blame the mother. After all, SHE bought the guns. SHE was a "gun nut". SHE was divorced from her husband and raising a troubled son alone. What those people seem to be forgetting is that SHE was a human being, doing her best, who was also a victim of this violent rampage. NO ONE, no matter their faults, deserves that.
Still others are blaming the media. The media "glamourizes" these terrible events. No, they don't. It is the media's job to answer the five W's: what, when, where, who, and why. We want to know what is going on around us, and the media is our connection to that information. The media's biggest failing is that, when it cannot give an answer, it makes something up to keep you interested until the truth comes out. THAT is the problem with the media. They can't just say, "We don't know, but we'll tell you later when we have some facts." because people will turn away and their sponsors will not have anyone to slog Cialis and laundry detergent to. Again, a problem, but not THE problem.
And some are blaming the lack of enforced prayer in schools, because God does not go where he is not invited. I'm not even going to go there.
The terrible tragedy in Newtown is, sadly, just another terrible tragedy in a long line of terrible tragedies. This year has seemed particularly bad for mass shootings, suicides amongst bullied teens, atrocities committed by governments against their people. (Or maybe it's all just the media's fault for reporting it.) This year has seen a lot of talk about stopping shcoolyard bullying, as bullying at the government and corporate level has reached an all-time high. This year has seen the horrible divisiveness of the US election, the violence of the election in Quebec, and the awfulness of the red-neck rhetoric in the election in Alberta. This year has been a year of WE versus THEY. We must fight the other side, be it bullying, the opposing political philosophy, the different religious belief.
It strikes me, as I look at the events of last Friday in sequence with all the other events of 2012, that the problem with the world is not guns, or mothers, or media sensationalism. It is us. We NEED to find a bad guy, a scapegoat, an OTHER.
We have a WE versus THEY mentality. Good versus Evil. Right versus Wrong. And in order for us to be the ones who are right, the OTHER has to be wrong. Right-wing versus left-wing, rich versus poor, black versus white, pro versus con. There are two sides to every argument, and no middle ground. And it has to be a full-out, cage match battle to the death. No surrender.
So, what if we changed the terms of engagement? We want to have WE versus THEY. It seems to be our human instinct. Okay...how about we redefine who WE and THEY are?
Several great philosophies have proposed this: There are only two human emotions, love and fear. When we act, we are acting from either one or the other. Acting from love results in charity, acceptance, and kindness. Acting from fear results in anger, cruelty, and violence. Acting from love is hard, because it requires us to look inside ourselves and see not only our strength, but our weakness and helplessness, and to accept them. We can then see the weakness and vulnerability in others, and accept it. Acting from fear is easy, because we look outward at what we fear and we can blame it and make it the enemy. We do not have to accept it, we can battle it, strive to hurt it. And if we cause fear to someone else in the process, all the better, because then we are not alone in our fear. The more fearful we are, the harder we fight and the louder we yell.
When we lash out at blame the shooter, the NRA, the media, we are responding from fear. We were helpless to save those poor children, we feel impotent, we are fearful. So was that young gunman. He reacted to that fear the only way he knew how. He was helpless and impotent and fearful, he strove to fight that fear with violence in an attempt to feel less fearful and more powerful. He shared his fear, and spread it, not only amongst the students of Sandy Hook, but throughout the world. He multiplied his fear, giving him power and sapping ours.
WE can respond from love, while THEY continue to respond from fear.
When we respond with love, if we feel compassion not only for the victims of the shooter, but for the shooter himself; if we understand that the more aggressive one's actions are, the more fearful they are; if we forgive our perceived enemies, WE become the strong ones. We accept that we are not perfect, therefore our view of right and wrong are not definitive. We accept that another may see things differently, but that does not change the rightness of how we see it. We understand that everyone has the same weaknesses that we have, and that their perceived power is actually the manifestation of their fear. We no longer feel threatened by them, and we become stronger.
Here is what I propose: The next time something happens that makes you feel helpless and powerless, accept that you are powerless. Cry. Curl up in a fetal position on the floor. Let that helplessness wash over you. And then get up and dry your eyes and do something kind for yourself. Make a cup of tea, take a hot bath, go for a pedicure. Then go do something kind for one other person. Hug your child, let someone in ahead of you in traffic, pay for the next person's coffee. And move forward. Do not cling to that thing that made you helpless. Look forward to tomorrow. Tomorrow will bring its own challenges, but you will be just a little bit stronger, because you did not let fear win today.
When WE approach the world with love, we are not battling an external enemy, we are battling the fear inside ourselves. WE do not need to do harm to others to win. WE need only to accept that they are as weak and as powerless as we are. And then we see that THEY are as human as we are, and that they are not the OTHER, they are just as much WE as we are.
None of this is going to undo the terrible things that have happened. We cannot bring back those 28 people who died on Friday, or the 250-some-odd who have died of gunshot wounds since then. We cannot undo the harsh words that were Tweeted. But we can move forward and choose to apply our WE versus THEY instinct in a more constructive manner. We can choose to battle from a Love versus Fear standpoint instead.
And maybe, just maybe, if enough of us fight from love instead of fear, we won't need guns, or mental health services, or angry words, or blame. Maybe, just maybe, we will cease to be WE versus THEY and just become US.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
50 Shades
Ten days from today is the first day of winter (or the end of the world, whichever comes first), but I am already suffering from the winter blahs.
I'm really not a cold-weather person, in spite of the fact that I have lived in a cold-weather climate all my life. I tend to bundle up and hibernate for the wintery months. I am not a snow enthusiast, and the long, dark nights make me lazier than usual. But the thing about winter that drags me down the most is the grey.
When I look out at my garden, which is my favourite place on the planet in the summertime, all I see is grey. Even the spruce trees outside the gate take on a greyish tone in the cold, grey light...
The view out my studio window offers even more grey...
My usual cure for all the grey is to spin and knit bright yarns. But this year, as the darkest day of the year approaches, I find myself immersed in grey, even in my work.
Yup. Every single thing I am knitting right now is...you guessed it...grey...
A shawl, a sweater, and a mystery Christmas project. All grey.
And over on the spinning front, things are not much better. I'm working on samples for a few projects, but mostly, I'm combing a lovely Gotland fleece. A lovely GREY Gotland fleece...
So, to break the monotony of the unrelenting grey, I spent Sunday spinning a fabulous hand-painted roving from Spunky Eclectic. The colourway is called Undertow, all blues and greens, my favourite colours. Dyed over a grey NZ Crossbred fibre. And as I spun, guess which colour dominated. Yup. I now have this glorious blue-green-GREY 2-ply woolen yarn...
I surrender. I am just going to have to ride out these grey days.
But I would like to point out that the title of a very popular book has it wrong. There are waaay more than 50 shades of grey. And I appear to be knitting them all.
I'm really not a cold-weather person, in spite of the fact that I have lived in a cold-weather climate all my life. I tend to bundle up and hibernate for the wintery months. I am not a snow enthusiast, and the long, dark nights make me lazier than usual. But the thing about winter that drags me down the most is the grey.
When I look out at my garden, which is my favourite place on the planet in the summertime, all I see is grey. Even the spruce trees outside the gate take on a greyish tone in the cold, grey light...
The view out my studio window offers even more grey...
My usual cure for all the grey is to spin and knit bright yarns. But this year, as the darkest day of the year approaches, I find myself immersed in grey, even in my work.
Yup. Every single thing I am knitting right now is...you guessed it...grey...
A shawl, a sweater, and a mystery Christmas project. All grey.
And over on the spinning front, things are not much better. I'm working on samples for a few projects, but mostly, I'm combing a lovely Gotland fleece. A lovely GREY Gotland fleece...
So, to break the monotony of the unrelenting grey, I spent Sunday spinning a fabulous hand-painted roving from Spunky Eclectic. The colourway is called Undertow, all blues and greens, my favourite colours. Dyed over a grey NZ Crossbred fibre. And as I spun, guess which colour dominated. Yup. I now have this glorious blue-green-GREY 2-ply woolen yarn...
I surrender. I am just going to have to ride out these grey days.
But I would like to point out that the title of a very popular book has it wrong. There are waaay more than 50 shades of grey. And I appear to be knitting them all.
Monday, November 26, 2012
Back on Track
Okay, so maybe the title of this post is a wee bit optimistic. Perhaps it should read "Getting Back on Track. Slowly. Very slowly". But the point is this: I am trying.
So, to get you up to speed, here's how the latest derailing went down...
I went to Disneyland. Via Vancouver. Where things went slightly sideways.
The trip to Disneyland was one we have been promising ourselves we would do for years. We wanted to do Disneyland at Halloween, as well as go to Universal Studio's Halloween Horror Nights and Knott's Scary Farm. We are kind of into the Halloween thing around here, and the Disneyland thing, so what better family vacation could we want. The family is growing up and moving on with their lives, but we managed to coordinate dates and the long-delayed trip very quickly became a reality.
Steve and I decided we would load Miss Julia into the car and drive out to Vancouver to meet up with Brendan and Lexi, who both live out there. The plan was that we would all fly to LA from there after a few days of relaxing in Rain City. The drive through the mountains was lovely, with fall colours and misty skies making a every turn on the road feel like driving into an Impressionist painting...
We arrived in Vancouver on a cool, rainy Sunday evening and spent Monday afternoon visiting some of our favourite spots. In keeping with the Halloween theme of the trip, we decided that we would ride the Stanley Park Ghost Train while we were in town, and toddled off to get tickets for that night. We met Miss Lexi and her Significant Trout for a quick dinner, then set out for Stanley Park.
And this is where is all goes wrong. Driving through downtown Vancouver, we were hit by a driver who ran a red light. We saw him at the last minute, and Steve did his best to avoid being hit, but he nailed us on the rear wheel-well and rear panel of the car, doing significant damage. We were bounced around a bit, Steve said his neck hurt, a few heads were bonked, but overall, we got off lucky. The driver who hit us continued on his merry way without stopping. However, several witnesses, including a Trans-Link bus driver, all stopped. Police and ambulances were called. It was a BIG DEAL. One witness went to the trouble of pursuing the offending driver and getting his full license plate. The police response was quick and supportive, the ambulance crew friendly and thorough. If we had to have a car accident, this was the best possible way for things to happen.
Steve was assessed as having a neck injury and whisked away to the hospital for further testing. I was the only licensed driver who knew how to drive a standard, so I was left with the car while Julia went with him. I stayed with the police for a bit and called the insurance company before determining that the car was drivable, then we crept over to the hospital. Steve had shown all the symptoms of a heart-attack on the ambulance ride over, so they had whisked him away into a treatment room the second he got there and he was being monitored. It was determined that he was not having a heart attack, but was in shock and that he did, indeed, have mild whiplash. He was given a fistful of painkillers and sent on his way.
It was at this point that I looked at my watch and realized we still had time to make it to the Ghost Train. So we went to the Ghost Train...
...and it wasn't until we got back to the hotel that we actually spent a few minutes looking at the damage to the car. It didn't look bad, but it was then that it hit me that we had had a very close call.
We spent the better part of the next morning dealing with several departments of our insurance company, negotiating the particulars of getting repairs on our vehicle, then we jumped in a cab to the airport and went to Los Angeles.
Disneyland was awesome, all decked out for Halloween...
Knott's Halloween Haunt was a blast, with 13 haunts to visit...
And Universal Studios was fabulous...
My Mom flew in and joined us for a few days...
...and everyone had an amazing vacation. It was wonderful to have the whole gang together in The Happiest Place on Earth. It was a marvellous week of escape and fun.
But, before we knew it, it was over and back to Vancouver, and reality. Our insurance adjustor dropped the ball on arranging a rental car for our return, and we wound up stranded at the Vancouver airport. Six tired travellers, stranded.
Steve managed to procure a stretch limo to get us all to our hotel, and got everyone sorted out and sent to bed. We got up in the morning to discover that there had been any number of SNAFUs courtesy of our insurance company's bureaucracy. After much phoning, miscommunication, phoning again and yelling, we finally got our hands on a rental van to drive home while our car was in the shop. So, the next day, we loaded up the car, tucking Brendan and his gear in, too, since he was headed to Edmonton for work, and set forth.
Now, no trip to the Coast is complete for us is complete for us without a stop at the Krispie Kreme in Delta, which we have worked into our route out of the city. And while we were there, we figured we would stop for a quick lunch at the McDonald's in the same parking lot. Not the most nutritious of lunches, but not the worst thing that happened to us in Delta...as we were driving out of the parking lot, a guy backed his ancient Suburban into our van.
The whole thing seemed like a bad joke. Fortunately, Steve kept his wits about him and dealt with the driver, who tried to claim we had driven into him, until he saw the van-full of witnesses. His tune changed pretty quickly, insurance info was exchanged, then we were off to a local office of the car rental company to file a damage report.
We got home without any further incident, rolled into Halloween, then November. I got the paperwork on Fibre Week finished up as we awaited word on what was going on with our car. We were sort of in limbo, with a dented mini-van. I have spent much of the last month of my life waiting for phone calls, looking up information, answering the same nine questions over and over again. I have been juggling two accident claims, medical claims, unexpected travel expenses, and a mountain of paperwork. What I have not spent much time doing is the things I love. My work, my writing, my spinning and knitting. This has caused me great consternation.
We finally got the word that our car was going to be ready over the Remembrance Day weekend, but that we were expected to drive the rental van back out to Vancouver and drive our car back. By this point in the year, a scenic drive through the mountains holds a little less appeal, and the day we were planning to set out brought a massive blizzard through central Alberta, so we put the trip off a few days. We wound up heading out for Vancouver on November 13, just about a month after the accident.
I have to say that I was more than a little anxious about the drive and about revisiting the scene of the crime, so to speak, but it turned out to be a good thing. Both Steve and I needed to get a sense of normalcy back, and we did. We got our car back. We hung out on Granville Island and ate fish and chips. We had sushi with Miss Lexi. We walked on the pier at White Rock. I wandered the yarn shops. I went for coffee with the remarkable Astor of knittingAstor.com. Everything was lovely. It turned out to be a bonus vacation.
As we headed back toward home, we had a wee bonus side trip, courtesy of my friend Lynn, who arranged for us to visit shearer Joh Walker and her family's flock of assorted Down breeds in Fort Langley. When I got my fingers into the fleeces, I was back to work. The accidents, the stress, the aggravation at all of the bureaucracy, all melted away with the first whiff of lanolin.
There is still a ton of paperwork and we are being passed between insurance companies like a rotten egg. But things are straightening out. We have our wee car back, and we are settled in at home with no more sudden road trips in the foreseeable future. We are back to what passes for normal around here.
So, after a month in paperwork hell, I am getting myself back on track. I have Christmas knitting that needs to be done. I have some very exciting projects coming up in the next few months. I have some great classes to prepare for. And I have some spinning to do.
So, to get you up to speed, here's how the latest derailing went down...
I went to Disneyland. Via Vancouver. Where things went slightly sideways.
The trip to Disneyland was one we have been promising ourselves we would do for years. We wanted to do Disneyland at Halloween, as well as go to Universal Studio's Halloween Horror Nights and Knott's Scary Farm. We are kind of into the Halloween thing around here, and the Disneyland thing, so what better family vacation could we want. The family is growing up and moving on with their lives, but we managed to coordinate dates and the long-delayed trip very quickly became a reality.
Steve and I decided we would load Miss Julia into the car and drive out to Vancouver to meet up with Brendan and Lexi, who both live out there. The plan was that we would all fly to LA from there after a few days of relaxing in Rain City. The drive through the mountains was lovely, with fall colours and misty skies making a every turn on the road feel like driving into an Impressionist painting...
We arrived in Vancouver on a cool, rainy Sunday evening and spent Monday afternoon visiting some of our favourite spots. In keeping with the Halloween theme of the trip, we decided that we would ride the Stanley Park Ghost Train while we were in town, and toddled off to get tickets for that night. We met Miss Lexi and her Significant Trout for a quick dinner, then set out for Stanley Park.
And this is where is all goes wrong. Driving through downtown Vancouver, we were hit by a driver who ran a red light. We saw him at the last minute, and Steve did his best to avoid being hit, but he nailed us on the rear wheel-well and rear panel of the car, doing significant damage. We were bounced around a bit, Steve said his neck hurt, a few heads were bonked, but overall, we got off lucky. The driver who hit us continued on his merry way without stopping. However, several witnesses, including a Trans-Link bus driver, all stopped. Police and ambulances were called. It was a BIG DEAL. One witness went to the trouble of pursuing the offending driver and getting his full license plate. The police response was quick and supportive, the ambulance crew friendly and thorough. If we had to have a car accident, this was the best possible way for things to happen.
Steve was assessed as having a neck injury and whisked away to the hospital for further testing. I was the only licensed driver who knew how to drive a standard, so I was left with the car while Julia went with him. I stayed with the police for a bit and called the insurance company before determining that the car was drivable, then we crept over to the hospital. Steve had shown all the symptoms of a heart-attack on the ambulance ride over, so they had whisked him away into a treatment room the second he got there and he was being monitored. It was determined that he was not having a heart attack, but was in shock and that he did, indeed, have mild whiplash. He was given a fistful of painkillers and sent on his way.
It was at this point that I looked at my watch and realized we still had time to make it to the Ghost Train. So we went to the Ghost Train...
...and it wasn't until we got back to the hotel that we actually spent a few minutes looking at the damage to the car. It didn't look bad, but it was then that it hit me that we had had a very close call.
We spent the better part of the next morning dealing with several departments of our insurance company, negotiating the particulars of getting repairs on our vehicle, then we jumped in a cab to the airport and went to Los Angeles.
Disneyland was awesome, all decked out for Halloween...
Knott's Halloween Haunt was a blast, with 13 haunts to visit...
And Universal Studios was fabulous...
My Mom flew in and joined us for a few days...
...and everyone had an amazing vacation. It was wonderful to have the whole gang together in The Happiest Place on Earth. It was a marvellous week of escape and fun.
But, before we knew it, it was over and back to Vancouver, and reality. Our insurance adjustor dropped the ball on arranging a rental car for our return, and we wound up stranded at the Vancouver airport. Six tired travellers, stranded.
Steve managed to procure a stretch limo to get us all to our hotel, and got everyone sorted out and sent to bed. We got up in the morning to discover that there had been any number of SNAFUs courtesy of our insurance company's bureaucracy. After much phoning, miscommunication, phoning again and yelling, we finally got our hands on a rental van to drive home while our car was in the shop. So, the next day, we loaded up the car, tucking Brendan and his gear in, too, since he was headed to Edmonton for work, and set forth.
Now, no trip to the Coast is complete for us is complete for us without a stop at the Krispie Kreme in Delta, which we have worked into our route out of the city. And while we were there, we figured we would stop for a quick lunch at the McDonald's in the same parking lot. Not the most nutritious of lunches, but not the worst thing that happened to us in Delta...as we were driving out of the parking lot, a guy backed his ancient Suburban into our van.
The whole thing seemed like a bad joke. Fortunately, Steve kept his wits about him and dealt with the driver, who tried to claim we had driven into him, until he saw the van-full of witnesses. His tune changed pretty quickly, insurance info was exchanged, then we were off to a local office of the car rental company to file a damage report.
We got home without any further incident, rolled into Halloween, then November. I got the paperwork on Fibre Week finished up as we awaited word on what was going on with our car. We were sort of in limbo, with a dented mini-van. I have spent much of the last month of my life waiting for phone calls, looking up information, answering the same nine questions over and over again. I have been juggling two accident claims, medical claims, unexpected travel expenses, and a mountain of paperwork. What I have not spent much time doing is the things I love. My work, my writing, my spinning and knitting. This has caused me great consternation.
We finally got the word that our car was going to be ready over the Remembrance Day weekend, but that we were expected to drive the rental van back out to Vancouver and drive our car back. By this point in the year, a scenic drive through the mountains holds a little less appeal, and the day we were planning to set out brought a massive blizzard through central Alberta, so we put the trip off a few days. We wound up heading out for Vancouver on November 13, just about a month after the accident.
I have to say that I was more than a little anxious about the drive and about revisiting the scene of the crime, so to speak, but it turned out to be a good thing. Both Steve and I needed to get a sense of normalcy back, and we did. We got our car back. We hung out on Granville Island and ate fish and chips. We had sushi with Miss Lexi. We walked on the pier at White Rock. I wandered the yarn shops. I went for coffee with the remarkable Astor of knittingAstor.com. Everything was lovely. It turned out to be a bonus vacation.
As we headed back toward home, we had a wee bonus side trip, courtesy of my friend Lynn, who arranged for us to visit shearer Joh Walker and her family's flock of assorted Down breeds in Fort Langley. When I got my fingers into the fleeces, I was back to work. The accidents, the stress, the aggravation at all of the bureaucracy, all melted away with the first whiff of lanolin.
There is still a ton of paperwork and we are being passed between insurance companies like a rotten egg. But things are straightening out. We have our wee car back, and we are settled in at home with no more sudden road trips in the foreseeable future. We are back to what passes for normal around here.
So, after a month in paperwork hell, I am getting myself back on track. I have Christmas knitting that needs to be done. I have some very exciting projects coming up in the next few months. I have some great classes to prepare for. And I have some spinning to do.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
In Which We Get Caught Up
Wow. It's been a while.
It's not that I've forgotten I have a blog, it's just that I haven't had much to say. (I KNOW! Scary, huh?)
Okay, it's not so much that I haven't got much to say as that I have lots going on that I can't really talk about yet because it's in the still-working-the-bugs-out stages, or that it's someone else's story to tell first. There are patterns and projects and things going on here that I am very excited about, but nothing is quite ready to see the light of the day just yet. Let it suffice to say that there is much planning and spinning and knitting and writing going on around here.
I did get a few things finished over the summer. This...
...Fiori Di Sole, by Rosemary Hill (Designs by Romi), in Manos del Uraguay Manos Lace (70% baby alpaca, 25% silk, 5% cashmere).
And this...
...Emily Shawl, by Mandy Moore, in handspun and logwood dyed paco-vicuna.
And much knitting of Halloween-themed projects that have yet to be photographed.
There has also been much sitting in doctors' offices and hanging out at labs going on. I came home after Fibre Week feeling even more wrung out than usual, but I wrote that off to the burn-out I was clearly suffering from and went on. But, even as I rested and got my head back in order, my energy didn't come back. I have had ongoing issues with headaches and nausea, and was always tired and short of breath. I slept late, and was ready for bed again by suppertime. I was tired and irritable and anxious. I basically had a bad case of the blahs.
So, off to the doctor I go. And his first response was: menopause. He wrote me a scrip for anti-anxiety meds and got ready to send me on my way, then decided it had been a while since I had had any blood tests and that we should check all the usual things--blood sugar, cholesterol, iron, hormones. Oh, and while we're at it, let's get some ultrasounds and a mammogram. I walked out of the office with a big fistful of requisitions and started making the rounds of the labs. (And I DIDN'T take the anti-anxiety pills!)
And, lo and behold, a week later, the good doctor calls. Something showed up in the blood tests. No real surprise there. I have ALL the risk factors for Type 2 diabetes, and a family history of cholesterol issues. And guess what? Blood sugar and cholesterol: textbook numbers. What DID show up was a vitamin B12 deficiency causing a low red blood cell count, a condition sometimes called pernicious anemia. (Love that word "pernicious"! It's synonyms include sinister and devious. I picture a Snidely Whiplash kind of anemia.)
Pernicious anemia is easily treated with vitamin B12 shots, and the doctor assured me that I would feel better after the first shot. And I did. I am now well into the series of shots prescribed and I'm back to my old self again. After having the pharmacist give me a couple of the shots, I took over and I'm doing them myself. No more headaches, energy is up, and even the daily aches and pains that I had gotten used to are gone. (Seems like nothing will cure my irritability, so I've just decided to roll with that.)
Yay.
Except.
Pernicious anemia and vitamin B12 deficiency do not occur spontaneously. They are symptoms of about elebenty-billion other problems. So we are now going through that list of problems, one by one, eliminating the possibilities. We have narrowed it down to either a digestive issue (possibly celiac) or a bad reaction to pain killers that I took for the Kraken earlier this year. Or both. Or neither. As each set of test results come back, new ones are ordered. And so it goes.
The testing, however, will just have to wait a couple of weeks now, 'cuz I'm going to Disneyland!
It's not that I've forgotten I have a blog, it's just that I haven't had much to say. (I KNOW! Scary, huh?)
Okay, it's not so much that I haven't got much to say as that I have lots going on that I can't really talk about yet because it's in the still-working-the-bugs-out stages, or that it's someone else's story to tell first. There are patterns and projects and things going on here that I am very excited about, but nothing is quite ready to see the light of the day just yet. Let it suffice to say that there is much planning and spinning and knitting and writing going on around here.
I did get a few things finished over the summer. This...
...Fiori Di Sole, by Rosemary Hill (Designs by Romi), in Manos del Uraguay Manos Lace (70% baby alpaca, 25% silk, 5% cashmere).
And this...
...Emily Shawl, by Mandy Moore, in handspun and logwood dyed paco-vicuna.
And much knitting of Halloween-themed projects that have yet to be photographed.
There has also been much sitting in doctors' offices and hanging out at labs going on. I came home after Fibre Week feeling even more wrung out than usual, but I wrote that off to the burn-out I was clearly suffering from and went on. But, even as I rested and got my head back in order, my energy didn't come back. I have had ongoing issues with headaches and nausea, and was always tired and short of breath. I slept late, and was ready for bed again by suppertime. I was tired and irritable and anxious. I basically had a bad case of the blahs.
So, off to the doctor I go. And his first response was: menopause. He wrote me a scrip for anti-anxiety meds and got ready to send me on my way, then decided it had been a while since I had had any blood tests and that we should check all the usual things--blood sugar, cholesterol, iron, hormones. Oh, and while we're at it, let's get some ultrasounds and a mammogram. I walked out of the office with a big fistful of requisitions and started making the rounds of the labs. (And I DIDN'T take the anti-anxiety pills!)
And, lo and behold, a week later, the good doctor calls. Something showed up in the blood tests. No real surprise there. I have ALL the risk factors for Type 2 diabetes, and a family history of cholesterol issues. And guess what? Blood sugar and cholesterol: textbook numbers. What DID show up was a vitamin B12 deficiency causing a low red blood cell count, a condition sometimes called pernicious anemia. (Love that word "pernicious"! It's synonyms include sinister and devious. I picture a Snidely Whiplash kind of anemia.)
Pernicious anemia is easily treated with vitamin B12 shots, and the doctor assured me that I would feel better after the first shot. And I did. I am now well into the series of shots prescribed and I'm back to my old self again. After having the pharmacist give me a couple of the shots, I took over and I'm doing them myself. No more headaches, energy is up, and even the daily aches and pains that I had gotten used to are gone. (Seems like nothing will cure my irritability, so I've just decided to roll with that.)
Yay.
Except.
Pernicious anemia and vitamin B12 deficiency do not occur spontaneously. They are symptoms of about elebenty-billion other problems. So we are now going through that list of problems, one by one, eliminating the possibilities. We have narrowed it down to either a digestive issue (possibly celiac) or a bad reaction to pain killers that I took for the Kraken earlier this year. Or both. Or neither. As each set of test results come back, new ones are ordered. And so it goes.
The testing, however, will just have to wait a couple of weeks now, 'cuz I'm going to Disneyland!
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