fiber diva

asking for help getting the word out about a free cancer-information website

2010-11-08T19:09:00.001-05:00

I'm sending out a request for everyone to visit my non-profit organization' s (National Comprehensive Cancer Network) website at www.nccn.com. Please also pass the link along to anyone who might be interested. NCCN's mission is improving care for patients with cancer, mostly by working with doctors, but now we also have a website devoted to patients, caregivers, and their families. The website includes articles on preventing cancer, getting screened, living with cancer, and helping a loved one who has cancer. We have also translated the same professional guidelines most oncologists use into patient-friendly versions (http://www.nccn. com/patient- guidelines. html). (More about NCCN: http://www.nccn. com/about- nccn.html.) We need to increase our visitor numbers by the end of November to ensure that we keep getting support for the site. All the info on NCCN.com is free, and no registration is required. So if you are interested in cancer---preventing , screening, because you know someone with cancer, etc---you can find a lot of good information there. I'm also happy to get comments or suggestions. You can email me (kaceditorial@ yahoo.com) or use the "contact us" page http://www.nccn. com/contact- us.html. (I get the comments marked General or Editorial; others go to other departments here.)

Resurfacing

2010-03-01T16:40:00.007-05:00

Astonishingly, after almost 9 months, I find I have nothing to say right now. Perhaps I'll post some pictures from one of our snowstorms this winter instead.

These are pictures from around my development, taken with my old digital camera, rather than the snazzy new one I received for Christmas. But it was still snowing when I took these and the new camera is still too new and precious to risk in the temperature changes and damp. In fact, in the view of the pond in the first picture, the blurring on the right side is actually the edge of the plastic bag I had partially wrapped around the camera to protect it.

Sure, it's pretty, but I have to tell you---I'm about ready for spring!

My first almost plane crash (I think)

2009-04-21T17:46:00.002-05:00

A couple of weeks ago, just days after two fatal plane crashes took some 16 lives, I had what I think might have been my first (hopefully only?) almost plane crash.

The funny thing is that although I'm not a courageous person---I know what phobias feel like and I have an intimate relationship with anxiety---I'm usually an ok flier. I don't know why, really. I don't like heights, and I have an active bridge phobia (heights over water, shudder). My usual response to anyone asking if I'm tempted to skydive is to wonder why anyone would jump out of a perfectly good plane. ("So, wait, the plane was up in the air, and it *wasn't* on fire? Was there smoke? A poisonous snake? No? You just decided to jump out of it. Into an empty field? Was there at least free cake in the field? No? Just wanted to jump out of the plane? . . . well, ok then.")

Don't get me wrong---I like being a coward. I figure it's safer this way. But I'm also glad that my tendency to overthink and over-worry has never managed to shake my blind faith that flying is still the safest way to travel. Other than a little concern during take-off, I just assume that the turbulence that always seems to hit just as I'm using the lavoratory isn't serious. It's just God's little way of reminding me that no matter how dignified I think I'm becoming as I age, it's always possible to die on a toilet.

But on my last trip, I had what I really think was a near-miss. Coworkers and I were flying into Providence, RI, for a business meeting/dinner. It was a blustery day and the pilot had warned us that the seatbelt sign would stay on. I appreciate those warnings, because then I am pretty much unconcerned when it is, in fact, pretty darn bumpy.

We were close to landing, about 500 feet off the ground. The turbulence was getting worse, but I was continuing to be unconcerned (the pilot said it was going to be bumpy; clearly, he knew what he was talking about). Further I (oddly enough) tend not to worry about landings. Yeah, it's silly, but I always figure that the closer I am to the ground is that much less far to fall should an engine or two fall off the plane. ("Denial"---it's not just for excusing bad dates.) I was contentedly working on the Sudoku in the airline magazine, when suddenly I visited my next-seat neighbor's lap a bit more vigorously than was, strictly speaking, polite. I would have apologized, but before I knew what was happening, we'd swung the other way and he was practically sitting in my lap.

The plane immediately started to ascend again, which was my first indication that what just happened wasn't a simple bump! According to my co-worker who'd been looking out the window, the left wing dipped down and then flipped up almost immediately and he thought we were going to flip over. "Well, we almost bought the farm just there," was his response. (And so intent was my denial that I spend a second trying to figure out why he'd be shopping for farms out an airplane window before I realized what he was telling me.) The pilot came on shortly and noted that we'd had "a bit of an unsafe situation there" as it had gotten "a little gusty" and so we were going to circle around and try it again.

Happily, the second landing, and the trip home, went without incident. I still think flying is the safest way to travel. I'm just hoping my next plane trip agrees!

digging out and coming around

2009-03-14T15:00:00.002-05:00

Ok, so what does one talk about on a blog after being incommunicado for almost 9 months? No, I didn't have a baby.

I did have a pretty interesting holiday season, though, with something of a "perfect storm" of stressful tasks, as work, family, and health issues all seemed to come around at the same time! But I shouldn't complain; I'd rather have too many tasks than not enough, and I know how many people are dealing with the challenges of too much time on their hands these days!

Now that I'm getting through the worst of the frantic-ness, though, I'm finally managing to both think ahead and look back to catch up on what I have not been doing these past months. And that paradox of looking ahead and behind at the same time (or would you call that schizophrenia ;-) explains my day, part of which I spent on a teleconference looking at ways to bring the journal I work on into the cutting-edge future of digital and online publishing.

And now I'm trying to catch up with this blog, and with some e-mails I've been owing people. But my greatest catch-up effort of the day was this morning---I took my cats to the vet. All of them. All three cats. All three cats, who weigh 11, 13.5, and 19.5 lbs, respectively (not counting the cat carriers. . . that they each need their own separate one of), to the vet.

Happily, I had help in the form of my niece, who's great with animals. Though don't ask for a recommendation from my kittys for her. They're a little angry with her at the moment. Also happily, they are all pretty healthy girls. Unhappily, though, I'm apparently not the only one in the household who could stand to lose a few pounds.

Course, I could just try to get them into the cat carriers every day. Chasing each other around the house ought to be enough exercise for all of us!

To Frog or Not to Frog

2008-06-04T17:34:00.005-05:00

To frog, or not to frog, that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the doubts and questions over whether a project is going to disappoint, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and uncertaintly and by thus opposing (or at least, by yanking the needle out of the live stitches) end them.

That is the question.

At least, that is the question I'm currently facing about my scarf. This is listed as the "Noro striped scarf" on ravelry, but I've been calling the the Brooklyn Tweed scarf. Except I've been making mine with Jojoland Melody that I bought at Maryland Sheep & Wool festival (I've totally forgotten at which booth).

Although the yarn is a fingering weight rather than the usual Silk Garden light worsted, the problem isn't the yarn. (Isn't SG a light worsted? I know it's a bit finer than Kureyon, but I don't think it's sport, exactly.) In fact, I'm loving the yarn, which as you can see from the picture is a beautiful variegated, and, which you probably can't tell from the picture, a lovely soft merino wool.

I'm just not loving how it's coming out. The stiches look uneven to me; the sides are definitely wobbly, and although I love each yarn color individually, I find myself underwhelmed by the total effect.

And since I do love how the last Jojoland project turned out, the Autumn shawl made with Rythym (pattern and yarn bought at the Pottstown Knit out in January), let's just say that my disappointment is accentuated.

Here, because I'm proud of it and want to show it off, is the shawl in progress.

And here it is finished:

and detail of the entrelac

Course the other great thing about this shawl is that it might be the first thing I've ever made that I didn't rip out and re-do at least twice.

Which brings me back to the essential question---to frog or not to frog. Maybe I just need different colors, with more contrast. Maybe I need smaller needles. Maybe I'm just tired of scarves.

And if I do frog, what am I going to do with 4 oddballs of fingering weight yarn? (fair isle socks?....hmmm) So I'm torn.

On the positive side, I'm choosing to see this not as my knitting playing up my indecisiveness and self-doubt, but as my knitting giving me another wonderful opportunity to practice making decisions on something that I'll probably enjoy either way!

Having a "delicate" week

2008-05-31T13:50:00.004-05:00

A friend of mine at work recently introduced me to the term "delicate week," which she explained as one of those weeks in which nothing seems to be going well, so that by about mid-week, even when things go ok, your paranoid little brain twists it around so that you feel like it didn't go well anyway. And so, despite surviving a difficult meeting that I'd been dreading for at least a month and that in the words of my boss's boss, "couldn't have gone better" I find myself unable to really relax.

Not helped by the fact that I gave blood this morning and had a really unpleasant experience. I give blood pretty much every 2 months, when I'm eligible again. Although I have, on the odd occasion, had to have my hemocrit checked a second time (I was deferred once---but that was when I was on the "modified Trappist monk" [0 fat] diet in prep for my gall bladder surgery, and I wasn't paying enough attention to getting iron), I'm not usually freaked out by the experience, and I don't usually have any trouble.

Today I was freaked out, though. First there was some kind of problem with my hemoglobin the first time they checked in (requiring a second finger stick), then the worker there accidentally "deferred" me because of my asthma (not usually a problem as long as I'm breathing ok that day, which I was). So by the time I was laying on the cot and I started hearing that the woman next to me had them miss her vein and have to get someone else over to try again, I was starting to freak a little. Unfortunately, I didn't take my own usual advice and let them know that I was having a rough time.

The situation was not helped by the attitude of the worker taking my blood, which started out bored and uncaring, merged into sullen silence, took a little detour to outright unfriendly, and finally circled back to muttering instructions at a point just past my left shoulder because making eye contact was apparently more than she had energy for. She never stopped back to check if I was doing ok---and maybe that's as well, because there were a couple of points where I was debating asking them to take the needle out and let me leave.

Sigh....so of course I didn't stay in the canteen very long and then noticed, as I was driving off to run my weekend errands, that the little square of bandage over the site had a patch of red...that was expanding. Now I'm not a nurse, but I kinda take the spreading red patch as a bad thing. I'm also not usually upset by the sight of blood, but, perhaps because of the "delicate week" thing, I was again quietly freaking out as I figured out where to turn around while steering with my bleeding left arm so that I could use my right arm to apply a napkin and pressure.

By the time I got back there, the bleeding had stopped again, but I did want them
give me a new bandage, since I didn't want to freak out the other shoppers or, well, frankly, myself again.

And the good news---I'm using my "delicate week" and that experience to justify going to Micheal's and using a 25% off coupon sent me by a friend (thanks, Pat!) to buy makings for more stitch markers. Because nothing says "it's ok; you're ok; next week will be better" better than shiny, sparkly jewelry for my knitting! (Ok, sure, yes there are things that would cheer me up faster and more, but I really shouldn't have a huge ice cream sundae, Gerard Butler continues *not* to call, and I can actually afford sparkly jewelry for my knitting ;-).

The luck of the Irish, and what's luck, if you can't push it?

2008-02-26T18:11:00.003-05:00

So, a friend and I are taking a little stroll around a local mall one Saturday at the end of February. Neither of us had anything in particular we were looking to purchase. In fact, we were only in the mall because we wanted to get out of our respective houses, have a little chat, and stretch our legs, and the weather was lousy. It was the kind of cold, rainy day one might expect to experience in February in New Jersey, and it probably wouldn't even be memorable but for the counterpoint it provided to the Saturday before, which had freakish, Twilight-Zone--like almost-70-degree warmth.

But, normal for February or not, it was the kind of day we did not want to spend strolling outside around the little lake-side park we usually circle, no matter how charmingly the surrounding houses were still decorated for Valentine's day.

There's probably a good reason that no poet to date has written, "the mall was lovely, dark and deep..." but we were still enjoying ourselves when we happened upon a card store. That's right, a greeting card store. A beautiful, well-stocked, nicely lit greeting card store. Very much, in fact, like the beautiful, well-stocked, nicely lit greeting card store in which I bought my ill-fated Valentine's day cards.

Now, anyone who knows me knows how much I love a card store (card/stationary stores, book stores, yarn/craft stores, and any place I may find an obscure DVD starring Hugh Jackman...or Gerard Butler). They're like Alice's rabbit hole for me. Seriously---once I'm in, I forget there is an outside world, and heaven knows when/if I'm ever coming out.

But I've just lived through the debacle of the found-too-late, unsent, now-put-away-till-next-year-so-who-knows-if-I'll-ever-find-them-again Valentine's cards, so I'm sure I'm not going to make that mistake again. I have, in fact, pretty much vowed (and not for the first time) that I'm not going to buy cards a month in advance anymore, cause I always put them somewhere "safe" and then forget that I bought them, let alone where I put them. So I'm sure I'm not going to make that mistake again. So I'm safe. Even if I go into the beautiful, well-stocked, nicely lit greeting card store, I'm really pretty sure I'm not going to make that mistake again.

I know what you're thinking. You're laughing at me. You're thinking, "No, no, don't do it! Don't go in! It's the end of February, for heaven's sake. The next holidays are St. Patrick's day and Easter! And they're both *weeks* away! You won't remember where the cards are---you never remember where the cards are!"

I hear you. In fact, the little voice inside my head was saying much the same thing. (Someday I'll write about my love-rebellious relationship with the little voice, but....not today!) Unfortunately, though, my friend did not hear you, or the the little voice. And of course, I'm useless when it comes to resisting temptation. So when my friend said, all innocence, "ooh, a card store; I need to get a birthday card, mind if we go in?" my only response was, "not at all; I love card stores."

You can probably guess the next part of the story. Yes, I did buy St. Patrick's Day cards. I even bought Easter cards! Because, as the title of the story goes, what's luck, if you can't push it?

But this story has a surprise ending---I did remember that I bought cards. I even remembered to send the St. Patrick's Day cards (with stickers...I mentioned my childish....er, uh, child-like love for stickers, haven't I?). And I haven't forgotten the Easter cards...now let's see if I actually get any written and sent out!

And for anyone reading that I didn't get to, Have a wonderful St. Patrick's Day!

I'm here....really! And the tale of the Valentine's Day card search

2008-02-19T18:40:00.003-05:00

I am here....I've been here...just having a rough time actually making it onto the blog.

I had one of those Valentine's days---you know the kind---where I, in preparation for the holiday and weeks(!) in advance, buy a whole slew of cards, specially selected for my friends and family. I even get stickers! (I love stickers....seriously, in my heart of hearts I'm a 10-year-old girl...as anyone could tell you who's ever seen me try to swing a baseball bat ;-).
And then I stash them in a safe place, and I wait for a more appropriate time to send them. Because I think we can all agree that I'd look silly sending Valentine's day cards in mid-January. So I wait....and I wait....and I get distracted....and then I get overwhelmed (work, niece-related drama, life)...and then I forget. I forget which cards I bought for who....and then I forget that I even bought cards. In fact, I'm pretty sure that by February 8, I'd even forgotten that a holiday was coming.

So then, I'm reminded, oohhh maybe 5 days before the holiday, that 2008 will, in fact, have a Valentine's day, and that (are you sitting down?) it's going to be the same day this year that it was last year(!) (and apparently has been for a good couple of decades before that). So total was my amnesia that my first thought was, "oh, well, I guess I don't have time to get cards this..{and here is where a little glimmer of memory starts trying to poke through the fog}..wait a minute...did I....did I buy cards already? {valiant little memory, swimming salmon-like up through the current of half-forgotten factoids and useless trivia...snippets of bad 80's pop songs} Was that this year? {oh, you laugh, but tell me you've never asked yourself that question while sorting through your Christmas list searching for the present you just know you bought Uncle Jimmy ;-) }

Finally, finally, the memory hits the surface in all its exhausted but triumphant glory: yes, yes I did buy Valentine's day cards! In fact, I think I may have even bought stickers! And I put them.... yeah...that's the question {and the n0w exhausted memory sighs, "don't look at me; I did my bit" as it floats happily in a circle between my ears}.

Because of course I put them somewhere. I must have put them somewhere. I mean, the laws of physics would dictate that I put them somewhere (they can't be nowhere...it's impossible to buy an imaginary number worth of cards).

Ah, but where? Probably somewhere safe...I'd definitely put them somewhere safe. So they're not on the dining room table, where the cats could knock them off and wrinkle the envelopes. They're not with the {many} boxes of Christmas cards I bought for 75% off after Christmas but have not yet found the time to pack away for next Christmas. (Because I won't need them for another 10 months....I certainly wouldn't want to put them where they're not immediately to hand!)

And, of course, they're not in my greeting card holder-file box. Because although that would be a safe and even logical place to put them, and although it's large and there is enough room to put them there, that would be waaaaay too easy and sensible. Where would be the challenge? Let's face it, putting the greeting cards into the greeting card holder would practically be cheating! What, I ask you, what would the world come to it if we all put the things we bought and are saving into the recepticles specifically designed (and bought) to hold those things? It would be complete not-chaos! And who could live like that?

So, yeah, where was I? (no, seriously, where was I?)

Oh, yeah, the sad, frantic, frustrating search for the Valentine's cards that I knew I bought but coudn't find. And now I knew I bought them. I thought I knew I bought them. I guess I could have dreamed it....would I have wasted a perfectly good dream buying phantom Valentine's cards? No, no. I bought them. I definitely bought them.

The problem with a search like this, I find, is that it proves to me that I can be both endlessly hopeful and inexplicably stupid. Because I will look in the same place more than once. More than twice. I may look in the same place up to 3 or even 4 times, if it seems like a logical place to have put the thing I'm looking for. So, since the greeting card file is such a sensible, useful, intelligent place to have put the greeting cards, I kept looking in it. Never mind that I'd already looked there. Never mind that I'd already looked systematically between every single divider. Never mind that it's not that big in the first place. Never mind that it doesn't have even a single secret drawer.

It's like I just couldn't believe that I was stupid enough not to have put them there in the first place. Maybe I thought that I could somehow have gotten retroactively more organized? Maybe I thought that by the third time I checked, time would have shifted back into its proper flow and I would find that I did put the cards in the sensible place after all. Maybe I thought a wormhole could have opened up in the back of the file? Could the cats have borrowed the cards to look through? (they were pretty funny, and several did feature cats) Perhaps I should check the card file again, because maybe they've finished with them and put them back now? Oh....no, no apparently not.

Now, the good news is that I did, eventually, find the cards. You may be interested to know that they were in the pretty little paper bag (with the twine handles) that was sitting next to the card file. The pretty little paper bag that was just the right size and shape to hold that number of Valentine's cards. The pretty little paper bag that never quite looked in, despite having to move it out of the way (twice!) to check in the card file again.

The bad news? I found them late on Valentine's day evening.

So to all my friends and family, Happy Belated Valentine's Day! I hope it was lovely and romatic and that you all got roses or candy or reminders of how much you are loved. I want you to know that I was thinking of you. And next year, you should expect a really funny Valentine's card, complete with stickers! But you probably shouldn't expect it much before St. Patrick's day.

Minus 1 gallbladder, and recovering nicely

2007-11-21T14:44:00.000-05:00

I'm happy to say that I'm through my surgery and recovering (so far, knock wood) nicely. In fact, I've actually had less pain than I thought I was going to, though I was probably twice as scared as I expected to be. Seriously, in the category of "things you learn about yourself as you get older" I can add, "Am a serious sissy-mary about surgeries...genuine baby; total wimp; couldn't manage a 'Die-Hard'-style quip under pressure if my very life depended on it!" (And please don't ever tell me that my life depends on it, cause I just couldn't handle any more pressure when I'm that scared!)

Luckily, the folks at the hospital were very nice, and didn't seem to mind, too much, my scaredy-cat-ness. I mean, the anesthesiologist was perhaps a little annoyed when I actually made her put her hand on her heart and promise, on the heads of her children, to be sure that I was completely asleep before giving me any kind of paralytic agent, but, bless her heart, she did it. And the surgeon was very reassuring when my honest answer to the question, "so how are you doing?" was "completely terrified, thanks, how are you?"
He, of course, wasn't scared at all. Perfectly at ease...not worried about a thing. Though, when I think about it, I guess confidence is better than empathy when you are talking about the man who's about to cut small holes in your tummy to stick in knives and cameras and pull out organs. (Wow, when I say it that way....ewwww....glad I didn't think too much about the particulars *before* having it done.)
The nurse anesthetist who wheeled me down to the OR and helped get me set up was also a sweetie. (Mark was his name; interestingly, his is the only name I remember, though absolutely everyone from the woman at the admission desk to the nurse who brought me ginger ale in the holding room after told me their names. I think it was because he was so nice. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was it. The fact that he was a good-looking young man was beside the point....I'm pretty sure ;-)
Anyway, I'm pleased that everything went so well, and I'm terribly grateful for the good wishes and prayers sent my way! And now, hopefully, I can get back to the regularly scheduled fiber content ;-) (and no, I haven't gotten nearly as much knitting done during my recovery as you would think!)

Distraction strategy #34

2007-10-31T17:08:00.000-05:00

Ok, so here I am trying to prepare for gallbladder surgery in mid-November by trying to 1) avoid eating food with any fat in it at all....seriously, no fat, 0, goose egg, nada, nyet, zilch, and 2) avoid thinking about the fact that in a few short weeks, folks are going to put me to sleep, root around in my innards, and take one of my innards out! (yeah, even writing that is thinking about it more than is good for me)

So, in addition to the knitting, spinning, filling in my Ravelry profile, worrying about my niece, working (oh, yeah, that's right, I work ;-), and preparing to write a novel in a month, here is an interesting meme that I found on my Christmas Around the World downstream partner's blog:

Bold for stuff you’ve done, italics for stuff you plan to do eventually, and normal for stuff you don’t intend to do ever.

Afghan
I-cord
Garter stitch
Knitting with metal wire
Shawl
Stockinette stitch
Socks: top-down
Socks: toe-up
Knitting with camel yarn (I've spun some camel; now I just have to get around to knitting with it)
Mittens: Cuff-up
Mittens: Tip-down
Hat
Knitting with silk
Moebius band knitting
Participating in a KAL (HA! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!)
Sweater
Drop stitch patterns (Oh, I've dropped stitches....just not so much on purpose yet)
Knitting with recycled/secondhand yarn
Slip stitch patterns
Knitting with bananafiber yarn (there's such a thing as banana fiber yarn? Really?)
Domino knitting
Twisted stitch patterns
Knitting with Bamboo yarn
Two end knitting
Charity knitting
Knitting with soy yarn
Cardigan
Toy/Doll clothing (my first, and thus far only, top-down sweater, will fit a teddy bear....provided I'm willing to unstuff his head, put the sweater on and then re-stuff his head)
Knitting with circular needles (though not my favorite thing to do)
Baby items (yeah, yeah)
Knitting with your own handspun yarn (though not as much as I should be, considering how much there is of it now)
Slippers
Graffitti knitting (knitting items on, or to be left on the street) (what's the purpose of that, I wonder?)
Continental Knitting
Designing knitted garments
Cable stitch patterns
Lace patterns (my new love!)
Publishing a knitting book (ah, wouldn't that be loverly?)
Scarf (too many to count!)
Teaching a child to knit (does it count if it doesn't seem to have "taken" with them?)
English knitting
Knitting to make money
Buttonholes
Knitting with Alpaca
Fair Isle Knitting
Dying with plant colors
Knitting items for a wedding
Household items (dishcloths, washcloths, tea cosies…)
Knitting socks (or other small tubular items) on two circulars
Olympic knitting
Knitting with someone else’s handspun yarn (maybe...I think I should knit with more of my own, first)
Knitting with dpns
Holiday related knitting (meaning gifts or making holiday-themed items, cause yes to 1 and probably not to 2)
Teaching a male to knit (I don't know...if I ever meet a guy who wants to learn, I'd be happy to teach)
Bobbles (hate bobbles; I just leave them off if I like a be-bobbled pattern)
Knitting for a living (nah, it'd take all the joy out of it for me)
Knitting with cotton
Knitting smocking
Dying yarn
Steeks (aaaaaahhhhhhhhh cutting the knitting.....aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh)
Knitting art (are you suggesting that my knitting isn't art?)
Knitting two socks (or other small tubular items) on two circulars simultaneously (I'm trying these right now with the "two at a time socks")
Fulling/felting
Knitting with wool
Textured Knitting
Kitchener Bind Off (but I don't have to like it!)
Purses/bags
Knitting with beads
Swatching (but I don't have to like it!)
Long Tail CO
Entrelac
Knitting/Purling Backwards
Machine knitting
Knitting with self-patterning/selfstriping/variegating yarn
Stuffed Toys
Knitting with Cashmere
Darning
Jewelry
Knitting with synthetic yarn
Writing a pattern
Gloves
Intarsia
Knitting with Linen
Tubular CO
Freeform knitting
Short rows
Cuffs/fingerless mits/armwarmers
Pillows
Knitting a pattern from an online knitting magazine
RugKnitting on a loom (?)
Thrummed knitting
Knitting a gift
Knitting for pets (on purpose I mean, not that they haven't taken WIPs as toys already...Bad kitties!)
Shrug/Bolero/Poncho
Knitting with dog/cat hair (intentionally? though I have spun cat hair....what? like you've never stared at the cats and thought, "hmmmm, I wonder...")
Hair accessories
Knitting in public

My peculiar aristocratic title

2007-10-27T14:01:00.000-05:00

I think I've posted that I've now joined ravelry (kimberlynj, in case anyone wants to visit my small pile of finished objects and much larger [and continually growing] pile of wips), which includes a couple of the forum groups. And I have to say, I'm both enjoying and learning a lot from the Completely Arbitrary and Pointless forum (which really, really ought to be the name of a Monty Python sketch....especially if it featured John Cleese tangled up in yarn and knitting needles...hee).

For example, I'm sorry to tell you that, after taking what I'm sure is a carefully thought out, and quite possibly even scientifically validated, on-line quiz, I now know that I have only a 38% chance of surviving a zombie apocolypse (of the Night of the Living Dead or 28 Days Later variety). I would be disappointed in myself....if it didn't give me yet another excuse to eat dessert first---"diet, schmiet; since I have only a 38% chance of surviving the next zombie apocolypse, and zombies don't eat banana cream pie, I'd better have a piece now." (Yeah, the whole thing falls apart if you apply logic. Ya just gotta go with it.)

Conversely, I now know that some people can get their cats to wear turtlenecks. And I gotta say, that actually makes me feel less useful than my poor showing in zombie quiz. Because I believe that trying to get any one of my cats into a wee sweater, no matter what the neckline, would cause me more harm than any boatload full of brain-craving zombies. And for that matter, so do my cats!

But on the bright side, I have a totally cool peculiar aristocratic title:

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is:
Her Eminence the Very Viscountess Kimberly the Insouciant of Withering Glance
Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

So, what do you think my chances are of getting everyone I know to refer to me as Her Eminence the Very Viscountess Kimberly the Insouciant of Withering Glance. No? How about just "Her Eminence the Insouciant?" "The Insouciant of Withering Glance?" "Oh, that Kim, the Withering Glancer....." no, huh.

How about HEVVKIWG for short? Oh, no wait. I'm not sure I really want to be Hevkiwg.

Well, I guess I could go back to trying turtlenecks on the cats. And then you can just call me "Kimberly in the hospital" ;-)

Meme whowho?

2007-10-24T16:40:00.000-05:00

Jenny has tagged me for a meme (y'know, one of those round-robin type thingies in which you answer questions about yourself and then ask other folks to answer questions about themselves). I've mostly seen these in my e-mail in-box, but I understand they're also pretty common on blogsites (yeah, I don't get out much in cyberworld, it seems).

Ok here are the rules (which I am obligated, by meme law, to print first ;-):

The Rules:
Once tagged, you must link to the person who tagged you. Then post the rules before your list, and list 8 random things about yourself. At the end of the post, you must tag and link to 8 other people, visit their sites, and leave a comment letting them know they’ve been tagged. (yeah, I'm not sure I know 8 other bloggers, so.....not sure what to do about that. I also *really* don't mind if other people don't want to play along. Cause it's not like I won't take any opportunity to talk about myself ;-)

Ok, so, 8 random things about me....hmmm....first of all, what's considered "random"? Things most people don't know? Things that are surprising or startling (thus fitting into that place in a conversation when someone gives you too much information and everyone sits stunned for a couple of seconds until someone mutters ..."yeah, um, that was....er...uh....random")? Or by random are we figuring that they just not themed or ordered? (sure, trust an editor to turn a simple meme into a referrendum on the word "random" ;-).

Well, I'm not sure, so I'm going with the last definition. (I wish I had startling, surprising, perhaps even disconcerting things to tell you about me. But...no. Not so much. In fact, I got nothin')

1. I don't have a favorite color. Which is not to say that I don't like a lot of colors. In fact, I frequently like a lot of colors together! I would just feel bad playing favorites.
2. I can not roll my "r"s. Which, when I was trying to learn Spanish in high school amounts to a speech impediment. I know---it hardly qualifies as the bane of my existence, but, because of my love of words and language and communication, AND because I generally think of myself as pretty well-spoken, I find this unaccountably annoying. I will never be able to discuss perros (dogs) with Antonio Banderas without sounding stupidly American. (yeah, that's somewhat tempered by the fact that I've since forgotten the tiny bit of Spanish I once learned.)
3. I cannot bring myself to watch the movie, The Exorcist. Can't do it. I read the book when I was about 12 (which is when it first came out) and kept imagining that my bed was shaking and I was about to be possessed and scared the livin' crap out of myself. And so I've never been able to sit through the movie. Even now, I have to change the channel quickly if a commercial for it comes on TV. I don't even like seeing the occasional parody of it on Saturday Night Live. And I like horror movies! Go figure.
4. Conversely, I find zombie movies unaccountably amusing and even sometimes endearing. Even when they're not supposed to be. (Dancing zombies are a special favorite.) Again, go figure.
5. I like raw carrots much better than cooked carrots and I hate brussel sprouts in every configuration. (hey, the rules said "random")
6. One of my grandmothers was adopted, so I'm 3/4s Irish and 1/4 who knows ;-). (Actually, she was probably Italian-American, since she was adopted by an Italian-Am family around the turn of the century, but I do like the little bit of mystery!)
7. One of my favorite things to do on vacation is snorkel. I like to swim wit da fishes. What can I say? I'm from NJ and 1/4 probably Italian---maybe it's genetic ;-)?
8. I can wiggle my nose, but only up and down. I'm completely unable to do a Bewitched-style sideways twitch. Like the non-r-rolling, this is not tragic, but annoying. I console myself with my ability to make fish-lips at passing small children.

Ok, that's 8. So I guess I had more randomness than I thought! I'm going to think about people I could maybe tag and post again later. Thanks, Jenny, that was fun!

mystery yarn

2007-10-21T13:46:00.000-05:00

So, I'm currently part of 2 swaps, in additon to the KALs. In the first swap, which I'm going to paraphrase as the Fall harvest swap, I sent at least 6 oz of fiber, plus beads and some other threads, to my downstream swap partner (Hi Linda) and received a package from my upstream partner (Hi Marianne). Now I'm supposed to be spinning my fiber (no, actually I *am* spinning my fiber; I'm *supposed to be finished* spinning my fiber), and working in the beads and whatever else I think might be fun, if I can. And then, I thought, I was supposed to send half of the spun yarn back to my upstream pal (sorry, Marianne---I'm working on it; I really am).

Brief aside---my normal lateness notwithstanding, I think the part about working in beads or other extra elements is why I'm so late getting it done. I'm completely intimidated. I've read instructions about spinning beads right onto the fiber, and even seen internet tutorials. So I should be good, right? Except that somehow I can't translate what I see with my eyes down to my fingers. hmmmfpt

But I digress. Because what I really meant to post on was a package that I recently received of a skein of plied singles---one a pretty, soft brown and the other ply a mix of red, yellow, and white. Best of all it's a really interesting texture, with the borwn thicker and the yellow/red mostly thinner. Pretty cool.
And I was expecting a skein of yarn, from my downstream pal (same as I'm sending some to my upstream). So what's the confusion, you ask? It's that this didn't come from my downstream pal. In fact, I don't think it came from any of my pals from any previous swaps either. (and I'm scrathing my head, because, I've been a member of a number of swaps....and organization isn't always my strong suit (I know, I know---you're shocked that a woman who ususally only manages to update her blog every 3 weeks claims not to be well organized---sure, it's startling to everyone ;-). So it's possible that Mallory from Little Rock, who sent me this lovely yarn, is an old pal and that I'm just blanking. But anyway I look at it, a relative stranger sent me, from several states away, something lovely she made herself.
Is this internet a great invention or what?
(And Mallory, please forgive me if I'm just being goofy not recognizing your name, and thank you for the fabulous yarn!)

"Yes, your therapist would call this avoidance."

2007-10-20T11:47:00.000-05:00

And then---"Repeat after me, 'I will not join any more internet kals, swaps, or websites that require me to write a novel in a month."'

So answered one of my knitting friends when I'd e-mailed that I'm now up to 6 mystery knit-a-longs (and all of them lace...), 2 swaps (a fall harvest fiber/spinning swap that I'm terribly behind on, and the Christmas around the world swap, that I'm really excited about), and now the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). NaNoWriMo is, apparently, November, and there is a site where you sign up to write a novel---50,000 words---in the month of November.

Probably...ok, pretty much certainly....my friend is right about the avoidance. (waving at Fleecy ) Now, is that a healthier coping strategy than denial or not, I wonder? What am I avoiding, you ask? Ah, sure, but if I told you then I wouldn't be avoiding it, would I?

ok, just kidding---the short answer is the ongoing saga of my niece and her ongoing challenges in coping with life. The long answer....no, neither of us has the time!

But avoidance or no, I'm enjoying the Christmas swap so far and am definitely looking forward to trying to pound out a (very bad, completely unedited, probably mostly unusable) novel in a month. It's going to be a mystery, based on a job I used to have, many, many years ago, when I was young, and stupid, and working in retail. (so yeah, it doubles as a horror story [with no offense meant to those working in retail, honestly---reeeeaaaalllly not the right job for me!]) I wanted to kill my boss. Which is saying something, because I was pretty even-tempered and non-violent even then. And I had the youth and stupidity going for me, too.

I had actually started to plan how...disposing of the body...hiding the murder weapon...faking an alibi...and that's how I knew it was time to get out of retail!

But I've been thinking, it's a shame to waste a perfectly good murder plan, and since I really quite like my current boss (working for a non-profit oncology education organization) and co-workers (and I really am pretty committed to the non-violence thing in real life), perhaps I will enjoy killing my old boss on paper ;-)

I'm kimberlynj at the nanowrimo site---in case anyone gets inspired to join me in my lunacy, stop by and say hello! and definitely, wish me luck!

Pay it Forward

2007-09-10T16:24:00.000-05:00

I was just visiting the blog of my previous exchange pal, Brooke, and saw this entry:

It’s the Pay It Forward Exchange. It’s based of the concept of the movie “Pay it Forward” where acts or deeds of kindness are done without expecting something in return, just passing it on, with hope that the recipients of the acts of kindness are passed on.
Here is how it works. I will make and send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment to this post on my blog requesting to join this PIF exchange. I do not know what that gift will be yet, and it won’t be sent this month, probably not next month, but it will be sent (within 6 months) and that’s a promise!
What YOU have to do in return, then, is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog.Remember, it's the first THREE who comment on the blog that they want to participate in the PAY IT FORWARD exchange.

I think this is a great idea! (of course, we all know that I love sending handmade things out to relative strangers ;-), so I'm going to play, too. I keep whining about bad news. Maybe the deal is that I have to make my own good news. Or maybe I can send good news to someone else.

So, same deal as described above. First three peoople to enter comments are on my pay it forward list! (And if I don't have reason to already know your mailing address, please e-mail me with it.)

Course, as few comments as I usually get, it might take me till early 2010 (and then even longer to get the packages out ;-)!

How do you know you have too much stress in your life?

2007-09-09T15:15:00.000-05:00

The other night, while showering at the gym, I used body lotion to condition my hair, a fact that only became apparent when I realized that I was about to smooth hair conditioner over my legs.

Darn identically shaped little tubes! I can only be thankful that the tube of athlete's foot cream is a totally different size, or things could have gotten really ugly!

Which also makes me wonder: if going to the gym regularly is helping reduce my stress level, what would I be like if I weren't doing it?

Crazy? Quite possibly! and My Christmas Questionnaire

2007-09-06T18:07:00.000-05:00

So, as if my life weren’t busy enough (or too-busy enough, really), I’ve decided I need more distraction! So, I’ve joined 3 more mystery lace KALs (one in German…which I don’t read ;-) and 2 swaps.
One of the swaps is a Christmas around the World swap (button to come just as soon as I figure out how), for which there’s quite an interesting questionnaire (below).
Since most of the swaps that I’ve done have been either knitting or spinning, I think this is a fun alternative. According to the swap moms, this is what I should be gathering to send me (as yet unnamed) pal by December 22:

something to knit from (enough yarn for 1 skein/small project)
something to knit with
something handknitted by you
something for the taste
something for the soul
something to hang on the Christmas Tree

Isn’t that fun? I love this idea, as well as the idea of using the above to highlight a bit of the local tradition where I’m from (‘cause NJ is so exotic ;-)

So, without further ado, here is the questionnaire with my answers:
1. Are you religious? I think of myself as more spiritual than religious.

2. How long have you been knitting? Would you consider yourself a Beginner, Intermediate or Advanced? I’ve been knitting a long time, on and off, but I really think of myself as Intermediate. I’m still intimidated by an awful lot.

3. Do you have any other hobbies besides knitting? Not counting KALs and swaps? ;-) Yeah, I like just about all handcrafts---crochet, counted cross stitch, polymer clay crafting, beading and jewelry making, embroidery, paper crafts. I’ve even quilled and molded chocolates. And I just bought a “learn how to tat” kit (since that was a skill I was missing)

4. Favorite color(s)? As you can probably guess from the hobby list, I have a hard time picking a favorite anything (why, yes, I do have commitment issues, why do you ask? ;-). I like most colors, and I love colorful things. I especially like jewel tones around the holidays.

5. Do you collect anything? Other than hobbies? I’m not sure if I should call my yarn and fiber stash a collection or a sickness, but I also have a teapot collection. I like lighthouse-related items, and I think my zealousness to make sure I had enough different drop spindles to work any size yarn means that I collect drop spindles now, too.

6. Are you allergic to any fibers or animals? Not that I know of. I get a little sneezy around dogs, but I think it has to be the whole dog rather than just a little hair.

7. Do you have any pets? Three cats: Emma, Charlotte, and Ellinor

8. Coffee, Tea, or Hot Chocolate? Tea! I love tea!

9. Cookies or Sweets? Whaddaya mean, “or”? (I’m diabetic, though, so I usually try for the sugar-free cookies and sweets)

10. Do you knit socks? Um….not sure how to answer that. I have a couple of socks that I’m knitting on…on and off. But since I’ve only ever finished 1 pair of socks, I’m not sure I can say, “I knit socks.” I knit a pair of sock once…does that count?

11. If not socks then what? (tell us about your favorite knits) Oooh, well, right now I’m really enjoying lace knitting. I’m an ample-sized person and I’m unnerved by fit issues, so I tend to enjoy things that fit isn’t as important with. I also love felting things.

12. Do you put up a Christmas tree? If not then what do you do? I usually put up a tree, unless I’m completely overwhelmed that year.

13. Favorite holiday treats? I love Christmas cookies, and the whole big turkey dinner!

14. Favorite holiday smells? All of them---pumkin pie baking, bread heating up, turkey in the oven, crunchy pine needles underfoot.

15. Do you celebrate Christmas in a traditional or unconventional way? Please elaborate. I think I’m pretty traditional, really. The family gets together for a big dinner and lots of presents!

16. What are your favorite holiday traditions? I like to put the tree up on Christmas eve while watching seemingly endless loops of The Christmas Story, Miracle on 34th Street, and A Christmas Carol (with Alastair Sims, of course). I try to read A Christmas Carol every year.

17. Finish the sentence: “For me Christmas is all about....” being with family and friends…stopping to enjoy the moments.

18. If you were a Christmas ornament you would be…….? Tattered from years of use, probably ;-). I think I’d be a stuffed-fabric maroon velvet star with lace trimming.

19. What was your favorite gift you've ever received? Or given? Hmm, received? Gosh, so many. One gift that is special to me, I received the year my mother passed away. She died in the beginning of November, but despite being ill, she had already begun shopping. So I actually got a pair of white sapphire earrings from my mother after she was gone. As for giving, I love when a gift that I’ve made really seems to delight someone.

20. When do you start your Christmas? Officially we start Christmas day.

21. Do you send Christmas cards? Do you make them or buy them? I do send cards (much to the chagrin of many, I think). I would love to make them, but just can’t find the time, so I buy.

22. What is your favorite Christmas dish? I love them all!

23. Carolers are at your door. What do you do? Sing along! And then hope I have treats available to give out. I have a little house, though, so if there are more than 3 of them, I can’t really invite them in.

24. When do you open presents? Christmas eve or Christmas morning? Christmas evening, actually, once the family is all together and full of turkey!

25. Do you celebrate with family or friends or both? With family on the holiday itself, and with friends as much as possible in the days before and after the 25th.

Well, that’s me! I’m looking forward to meeting my pal and starting to collect goodies!

spider barf and the perils of knitting lace

2007-07-30T17:44:00.000-05:00

One of the projects that I've been working on lately (lately....obsessively....one of those ;-) has been the mystery stole knit-along. I've been working in a Skacel merino laceweight in black, from my stash. (clue 1 finished---even unblocked, I think it's nice)

I honestly can't remember why I bought black laceweight, almost cobweb weight, in the first place, since 1) black isn't my color and 2) it's hard to see in such a fine yarn.

All things considered, though, I think it's coming out nicely. (a little more detail---this isn't blocked, just stretched out a bit with my fingers)

Or it was, until I took it on a trip with me to Atlantic City. I'm afraid it didn't respond well to the sea air---or maybe I really need to avoid staying up till 2 am playing penny slots and then trying to knit the next day! Although the first several days included days of relaxed knitting, by the end, the stole spent the ride home in time out.

While responding to a joke from my sister, I managed to jerk my hand and pull the needle out of a whole 10-stitches of the stole. (If you were anywhere near NJ, you may have heard my sharp intake of breath from where ever you were at the time.)

Worse, I ended up losing 8 to 10 rows of that section before I could get anything back on the needles. Even worse---I have not been using lifelines (I don't need no stinking lifelines.....I'm an idiot!)

I can't put in lifelines after the fact (perhaps it's possible, but I can't do it), and I'm not ripping out all that work! So, I try to "fix" it. That's not too bad, right? "So the hole is a little large....so the yarn is wadded up a bit around the hole. That's not too bad," I tell myself.

So, I decide to move on, even though I can see it's not really right. "It's a long stole," I say to myself. "What's a little spider barf among friends?" I say.

Sigh....fine. It's not right. I can't leave it like that.

So I decide to just ladder back on that one little 10-stitch section. I get out my little crochet hook, I circle the bad section on the chart so I can try to work out the pattern. I gently place a spare needle into the stitches that are ok, just below "the problem," and I ever so carefully work the pattern back up (complicated by the fact that I've never laddered back up in a lace pattern and have, basically, no idea what I'm doing---but I do it). And I get:

(hmmm. Well, it's not spider barf anymore...but it's definitely not the pattern.)

But it's better than it was, right? And I'm still not ripping out all that work. So I did a row....and I stretched it out to see how bad the "funky" section was....and I lied to myself about how noticeable it was....and then I purled back a row, and streched it out again and asked myself again, "who's going to notice that once I'm wearing it? And the rest of it is so pretty!"

Come on---Who's going to notice one little unpatterned section among all those little flowers? And the anwer is---Me! Me---It's me! I will! I'm the problem! I will notice that @*&)#&%section every single time I work on the stole, touch it, or wear it, and I'm liable to notice it in my head if I even just think about it! Sigh.....sometimes it's not easy being an*l-retentive!

So of course I ended up tinking (my black Skacel merino practically blinkin' cobweb-weight and did I mention it's *black* yarn) slowly and painstakingly (and I do mean *pain*stakingly) back (the now *12* rows) to get to where the pattern was correct. Sigh....again!
Ok, I should have just tinked back in the first place. Ok, I wasted time.

(unblocked again, but you can see how it's coming out)
But at least I have no sections of spider barf.

(Sigh) I'm not sure which of us (the stole or me) is grounded, but I'm pretty sure that one of us is!

Spinning my wheels, and spinning my wheel

2007-07-16T16:38:00.000-05:00

Speaking of wheels, the new car (still running well, by the way, and getting quite the summer workout) is not the only "set of wheels" I’ve bought recently. I’m also the proud owner of a Majacraft Little Gem spinning wheel.
(here investigated by Charlotte and Emma)
I picked the Little Gem for a couple of reasons, maybe not the reasons you'd expect. First, because it’s so cute and small, it won’t take up a lot of space in my little house. Second, because the wheel doesn't have any spindles or holes, I thought it was a little safer for kitty paws. Kitty paws are, naturally, attracted to holes, spaces, and gaps, especially when they are going in a circle, really fast. And I didn't want anyone to get hurt trying to "catch" the spinning spaces.

Course, I will still need to be careful of the kitty paws and the belts…..and the bobbins….and the roving ….sigh….. (Charlotte really likes the leader)

Finally, I did look at other features, such as portability and versatility, since, again with the small space, I’m not going to be collect different wheels for different projects, as I’m a bit likely to do with my spindles! (It is pretty, isn't it?)

Buying a spinning wheel and a car in such close spacing to each other, it was natural to compare the processes somewhat. So for anyone interested in the which purchase was more fun, I give you a matched set of Top 5 lists:

Top 5 Reasons Buying a Car Is Better than Buying a Spinning Wheel:
5) I didn’t have to wait for 3 weeks after paying for it for the car to arrive from New Zealand.
4) You can’t store extra stash in a spinning wheel.
3) No “special ankle action” is needed to make the car’s pedals work.
2) It’s impossible to find a spinning wheel with a sunroof.
And the number 1 reason buying a car is more fun than buying a spinning wheel:
1) At no time after the car purchase did I have to take out 2 sets of instructions and a screwdriver and say to the dear friends who were helping me,” what do you mean there isn’t a diagram---this part has to go somewhere!”

Top 5 Reasons Buying a Spinning Wheel Is Better than Buying a Car:
5) The spinning wheel won’t take the next 3 years to pay off.
4) No matter how delusional I am, even I can’t pretend that spinning the car’s wheels counts as aerobic exercise. (Does making lace-weight yarn burn off more calories than bulky yarn, or vice versa?)
3) At no time while researching, testing, or ordering a spinning wheel did I have to sit across from a sales manage and repeat, “no, seriously, I am NOT going to buy the wheel today.” (And that’s true even if when I wasn’t going to buy that wheel that day.)
2) You can go as slow as you want without anyone honking, or as fast as you want without getting a ticket!
And the number 1 reason buying a spinning wheel is more fun than buying a car:
1) I don’t care how tight the turning radius is, you can’t make yarn with a car!

Adventures in car shopping

2007-06-20T17:46:00.000-05:00

So, about the car---the car is actually a happy story, not that I thought that when I was in the throes of buying the thing. I'm telling you with a sigh---I hate car shopping! Hate it. This, in a nutshell, is how I ended up having an 11-year-old car with 157,000 miles on it to trade in. Not because it was a classic. Not because I couldn't bear to part with it (though I did think is was a good car and was sad to see it go). Not because people didn't encourage (ok, push, with varying degrees of subtlety) me to buy a new car. (I mean, even my mechanic starting telling me I should get a new car, and I'm pretty sure my old one put his kid through private school). No, it's because I HATE car shopping.
The simple fact is that I'm not "a car person." Usually when people ask me what I want in a car, my honest answer is "an engine that starts every time I twist the key, and seats." Ok, sure, a radio is always nice to have, and working windshield wipers, although not thrilling, certainly have their place in the grand scheme (not to mention rain and snowstorms).

But, not being a car person, I just keep thinking it's a lot of work and a lot of money, and I can't bring myself to feel a sense of adventure. I'm not a huntress, stalking her quarry across the flat plains of the new car lots, snarling my way through the tall grass of car salesmen; I'm not a cagey entrepreneur, using her steely nerves to out-negotiate the next Donald Trump wannabe to get a killer deal; I'm not even a latter-day Philip Marlowe, tough talking the gents and dames of the car business through a haze of old cigarette smoke, with the sharp tang of whiskey still on my breath.

I'm just a simple woman, who'd like to buy a decent car, for not more than she has to pay. Seems simple, doesn't it? If only......

I started out with quite a bit of internet and library research. But the sad fact is that no matter how many numbers one has looked up in a book or on-line, eventually---all the happy "Buy a Car Without Haggling" magazine articles be darned---eventually, you will find yourself sitting across from an intently staring "sales manager" saying, "no, really, as I told the salesperson (15 times at latest count, in fact [Yeah, I wish I were exaggerating.]), I'm really not going to buy the car today. Really, I'm still shopping."

Shopping. I was shopping! Have these people never heard of shopping?

I'm a woman---I shop! It's what I do, and I'm good at it!

But, apparently, car dealers are unfamiliar with shopping. Oh, they've apparently heard the word. But they don't, as in simply do NOT, understand the concept. Shopping, to them, apparently means, "look at the car, sit in the car, buy the car." What is that? That? Is not *shopping*.

Car dealers, I found, have no clue about shopping. They don't understand the "browse." They are distrustful of the "considering stare" (as you wonder how long it will take for the two-toned interior you currently think of as "interesting" to start to annoy the bejabbers out of you). And the concept of "seeing everything before I decide"? Is an anathema.

It seems perfectly reasonable to me that even if the first car I see is a nice color with an options package I can live with, I must still wander through the rest of the lot, looking at all the cars (of the model I'm considering). Even the cars with a different engine type (6 cylinder, for example). Even the cars that are a color I originally said I didn't want. They just don't get that.

And you can't explain to a car dealer (at least I couldn't) that you do this, not to delay the sale, or to wear them down, or even to cast doubts on the quality of the first car. You do this because you must. Because you might miss something that you like better. Because you might decide that, from a distance, the white one is kinda nice after all.

Or as I finally explained in exasperation to one particularly persistent sales guy, "look, I visit a dress three times in a shop before I invest $50 in it; I'm certainly not going to spend three years of monthly payments on the first car I put under my butt!" (Again, I wish I were exaggerating.)
Finally resorting to the bane of relationship breakups everywhere, I mournfully explained to a sharp-faced sales manager, who I'm sure didn't mean to stare at me as if I were a strange and tiresome new breed of bug, "It's not you, it's me; I just really need more time."

I'm pleased to say, though, that I got through this little experiment in annoying the customer as a sales technique, and eventually found a nice younger fellow who did not insist on talking about monthly payments or leasing, but just sat down and negotiated with me on the bottom line price of the car that I wanted (after wandering patiently behind me, with nary an eye-roll, as I looked at every single Sonata on the lot!).

And I ended up with a decent car, in a color I like, for a price my research told me was reasonable. And, it came standard with an engine that starts every time I turn the key, seats, a radio AND windshield wipers (as well as curtain side airbags). I had to pay extra for the sunroof, but I'm ok with that.

Time Flies and Times Change

2007-06-13T16:56:00.000-05:00

Trying not to wait so long between posts, but it's been busy here in diva-land. Since around my last post, I've bought a car, finished and blocked the scarf for my scarf pal, had a mini-vacation, had a spinning wheel delivered, and, after much sturm, drang, and consternation, had one of my nieces move in with me.

Of course, that last thing is the biggest, but since it's a long story, and a long story not all of which is mine to tell, I'm going to give it an abbreviated mention for the moment. I'll just say that she's been having some trouble finding her way in the world (complicated by a learning disability and some other issues), and yadda, yadda, yadda (as Seinfeld would say) so now she's staying with me.
After some initial trepidation on both sides, she and the cats have reached a wary detente, and Charlotte even let her scratch her head the other night. Since I have cat-loving friends who think Charlotte is a figment of my imagination, so consistently does she hide when strangers (ie, people who aren't me) come over, I'm taking that as quite a positive sign. Other than that, we're taking a day at a time.
The other changes are happier, and I'll post about them tomorrow.

Late, late, late report from Maryland Sheep and Wool!

2007-06-01T17:00:00.001-05:00

Well, I'm certainly taking my time to report on it, but I had a terrific time at my very first Maryland Sheep and Wool festival, despite some family worries that came up just as our happy little group was getting to Maryland. My sister, who'd had hip-replacement surgery in late Feb and seemed to be recovering nicely, developed "extensive" blood clots in her lungs, and, instead of her planned trip to Florida with friends, ended up taking a trip to the emergency room on that Friday instead. In fact, I almost ended up going home as quick as I’d gotten there (and thanks so much to Pat for offering to drive me back!). But she and other family members assured me that she was in good hands and doing ok and that I should stay.

I’m happy to report that she’s not only out of the hospital again now, but also doing well, and back to rehabbing her hip. (In fact, as she mentions with some pride, she's now walking up to .73 of a mile!)

As for MS&W, I really enjoyed myself. With all the crowds, I was really glad that I had experienced friends to follow along with. With their help, I think I managed to see just about everything that was there. Including a number of handsome sheep. Some of these guys were so cute, I had to be reminded several times of that wonderful old truism: "people who live in townhouses shouldn't shop for sheep." Not even really tiny little adorable ones (or are these goats?)

And if the sheep and goats were tempting, the bunnies were even more so. Of course, there is the question of how the cats would like the bunnies. But I'm pretty sure the cats would loooove bunnies. (I'm only afraid they'd love them to death!) The larger question is how the bunnies would feel about the cats. Ultimately, I was able to resist, partially because I genuinely believe that I'd never get a bit of fiber off the bunnies (because Emma would groom them bare before I even started to pluck!) and partially because (and thanks, Rosie, for reminding me ;-) although we could probably make room in the car for a compact spinning wheel if I found one I wanted, we really had no way to transport bunnies.

It's not that I didn't know that. It's just that when I'm faced with any animal that is cute, cuddly, unusual, or furry in interesting ways, I can totally forget my common sense. I want it, and I sometimes have trouble resisting, no matter how dumb, stubborn, or inappropropriate to my lifestyle said animal is. This explains why I owned a lizard that I had to buy live crickets for for about 6 years. (Oh, wow. Come to think of it, that also explains much of my dating history, too.....hmmmmm.)

Anyway, speaking of wheels, I never did decide on one when I was there. I think I was overstimulated. (Picture a small child in a candy factory!) I just had too much that I was trying to look at, fondle, and mentally calculate how much room it would take up in the car. Course, that didn't stop me from "visiting" with various spinning wheels as we wandered!

But we didn't only wander. I also had a great time sitting on the lawn at the fairgrounds, seeing what everyone was working on.

So, thanks everyone, especially Pat, for driving and coming out of her way to get me and take me; Pam and Justin for helping make room for me in the car; and (last but not least) Rosie and Sarah for being great roomies and patiently dragging me around! Can't wait till next year!

Focusing on the future!

2007-05-02T15:23:00.000-05:00

Again, what a while it's been since I've posted, so what all has been going on. The sad news---I did attend the services for my colleague who passed away. I have to say, though, that it was such a celebration of his life---and such a life well lived---that I'm glad I was able to attend. If anything, I wish that I'd known him better!

Another effect memorial services almost always have on me is to remind me of my consistent, but not consistently acted on, resolution that I should get out there more---take more risks, pursue more passions, walk down the "road less traveled" a little bit more often. "Life rewards action" at least one TV psychologist says, and although I'm not a big fan of TV psychologists and pundits in general, I think that's true. 'Course, sometimes life rewards action with a kick in the teeth (is what the TV pundits forget to tell you in their bestselling self-help books)! But I guess that's the risk you take. I read somewhere recently that human beings tend to regret more what they didn't do than anything they did, and I think that's true, too.

So this would be where I tell you about the latest risk I took......yeah, that's what I mean by not consistently acted on! I do have one risk I'm proud of, though. I volunteered to write a patient information article for work, despite the fact that I haven't really written in a while and don't regularly write as part of my job. I was a little nervous about it (ok, ok, I was really quite nervous about it!), because there's always the chance of messing it up royally and having the powers that be above me decide I'm an idiot.

So I'm pleased to say that, although it's still going through channels (and may be completely unrecognizable by the time it arrives at it's web-based destination), thus far it's been met with compliments and, even more tellingly, only minor edits. So, score one for the postive power of risk!

Another event I'm excited about, not that there's any risk with this one, is my attending the Maryland Sheep and Wool festival this coming weekend. This will be my first MS&W, though I've only heard good things from the knitting friends I'm going with (who are old hands at it). I'm excited about seeing more things that maybe haven't been available at the knitting-focused events I've attended thus far, but I'm also trying NOT to go crazy. In an attempt to limit my "spending like a drunken sailor" I'm again making a shopping list:

a niddy noddy

hand cards (maybe---I think; I still have probably 2 lbs of Coopworth fleece from the breed swap to process, but am I really going to be ordering a lot of raw fleece?)

roving (no, I don't need more roving....but....well....I'm going to a fiber festival for heaven's sake. Of course I have to buy some roving!)

a spinning wheel (yeah, not exactly a little purchase! Well, at the very least, I'm going to test drive some wheels)
spindles? I'm keeping my options open. Because it's not like I don't have quite the collection of spindles already, but, again, see "fiber festival"

Now what are the chances of my sticking to that already generous list? Somewhere between "slim" and "no chance at all" I'm thinking.

In other news, the tote exchange III has finished, and my pal swears she likes the tote I made her! With everything going on in my personal life, I've decided I can't help host again, but I have signed up to participate. Because I really enjoy making totes, and I really enjoy seeing what totes other people make for me!
I'm also working steadily, if slowly, on my scarf for the International Scarf Exchange IV. I need to get the camera out and I'll post pics and more on how it's coming along.

Excuses, excuses!

2007-04-10T12:36:00.000-05:00

I was going to post my many reasons for not being able to post more often, but, really, what difference does it make why?

It has been a bit of a tough spring in diva-ville so far, not at all helped by the fact that it's spring by the calendar but not by the thermometer! Can't complain too much about the weather, though---at least it didn't snow on Easter here. I do feel for my poor daffodils, though. They started to come up when it was warm in February, then just stopped through the remaining bitter cold winter days, but managed not to freeze. Then the mild days in March brought them blooming forth, only to get mired in frost again. Poor things; I swear I can see them shivering in the mornings when I leave for work!

In other bad news, in addition to some unrelated work tension, I'm sorry to say that we've lost another dear colleague, this time to esophageal cancer. I work for a non-profit oncology information organization, and he was a physician who'd worked tirelessly throughout his long career to improve patient care for people with cancer. Which makes his death from complications of cancer all the more painful, I think, and proof that none of us are immune.

So, if you'll forgive a little public service announcement in my effort to honor his life's work by getting the word out there every way I can: take care of your health!, and make sure that you go for screenings on a regular basis. My organization is primarily for health care professionals, but the American Cancer Society has information on prevention and early detection of cancer.

And now I return you to your regularly scheduled fiber-related "programming":

I'm not sure if I ever posted my pics of the singles that I made from the fiber my spin to knit pal Holly sent me. I'm actually pretty proud of it, since I usually ply, and this is just a little overspun ;-).

And this is the start of the scarf for my mystery skein swap partner. This was taken a while ago---the scarf is finished and just waiting to be blocked. The white and brown were Debbie's handspun, and I added the purple and maroon and worked it in a modular pattern. I enjoyed it, but like so many things I take on, I will say that the next time I think I'm going to do something that involves changing colors every block like this, someone please remind me that I don't like changing colors every block! I think it did come out cute, though, and I really enjoyed working with the different handspun!

The promised pictures of my cats

2007-04-04T12:40:00.000-05:00

First, thanks Sarah and Beth for your kind comments on the tote bag. I'm still trying to figure out whether the polite thing is to e-mail you or add a comment of my own, so I decided to thank you in this post.

Then, a request was made for me to post pictures of the kitties, and it's not like I don't have pictures of the kitties, so here we go:

This is Ellinor, who I have clearly disturbed from a nap (which she thinks it's not polite to do for anything other than treats).

Charlotte was, apparently, birdwatching, but she looks no less annoyed. Though that may be just because she doesn't really like having her picture taken. She's trying to convince me that she's in the witness protection program, but I think it's just that she doesn't like the flash!

Emma just thinks it's funny!

Progress on some fronts

2007-03-31T15:11:00.000-05:00

Well, the good news is that I finally got my tote for the International Tote Exchange III sent out to my partner. Nothing like cutting it close, though---I sent it yesterday via express mail for a deadline of today! The bad news is that because my partner lives clear across the country, they couldn't guarantee that it would get to her today, even using the "more than $20 to send a package" express mail.

Since the tote has been knit for quite a while, and even felted for a while, you may well be wondering what took so long. And the answer, as it frequently is when I'm procrastinating (which some would tell you is really my favorite hobby), is that I couldn't quite figure out what I wanted to do to finish it. I realized when I first went to put it together last week that I'd messed up the handles by felting them separately instead of sewing them to the bag first so that they could felt together. And that, dear reader, is the lesson of actually reading the #*$&(@ directions first, instead of thinking that I know what I'm doing! (A lesson I should have learned in the first grade, but, apparently, didn't!)

So I spent a good couple of days debating with myself what I should do about it, whether it was worth redoing any or all of the bag, definitely didn't have time to do the whole bag again(!) (besides which, what am I, crazy?) I finally decided that the answer was to get some of those cute plastic handles that I'm always seeing in stores and thinking I should figure out a way to use.

I ended up cutting the felted handles up a bit to make the tabs that I slipped the plastic handles under to attach them to the bag. I also found a couple of cute silver buttons that, I thought coordinated nicely with the colors in the Kureyon that is threaded through the tote. (the tote is one strand of Kureyon in black, grey, and bits of other colors, and one of Patons classic wool, held together)

And I added a knit flower made from the Kureyon Here you see the finished product: And here is a close-up of the flower, which is a detachable pin, in case my pal doesn't want it on the bag. Kinda cute, if I do say so myself. I really hope my tote partner likes it and the goodies inside it. These include a knitting notepad, magnet, some Debbie Bliss cotton/cashmere, Burt's Bees hand creme (which I really like on my terriby dry skin), and of course a big ol' bag of chocolate!

The other inclusion, which I'm also a little proud of, are the hand-made (by me!) stitch markers. It was a bit of a learning process (don't look at the shapes of the loops!), but I think they, on the whole, came out cute, too. (Feel free to "oooh" and "aaahh"---heaven knows, if you don't, I'll have to ;-).

Pleasant week that wasn't quite

2007-03-15T16:06:00.000-05:00

Just sharing a little, since I keep swearing I'm going to post more often and then not quite managing to post more often (sigh). Despite weather in NJ that warmed to lovely springlike temperatures (before a predicted frosty, snowy, sleety weekend) and a professional event that pulled away most of my office colleagues (wearing jeans to work--yay!), this week has been a tense one for me.

I have reasons for my stress, but it occurs to me that life is going reasonably well (knocking wood). So I was wondering to myself why events that aren't really more stressful than usual seem to be putting me quite more out of sorts than usual. And a possible conclusion came to me while I was explaining my seeming ambivalence about spring to a friend. On one hand, I love the extended sunshine, going out with only a light (or no) jacket, and the smell of damp newness that greets spring in the NE United States. But I frequently find myself tensing at the advent of warm breezes and rebirth that spring signals.

Why? I think it's because spring also means the end of winter, and the end of a kind of social hibernation I allow myself in winter. When in winter I think something like, "Do I actually want to apply for a PhD program? Do I have that kind of stamina?" or "Wow, car's getting old---I really should start looking around for a new one." I almost-automatically smother the questions with decision not to decide....till spring. After all, winter appointments with faculty, to investigate the possibility more, might need to be cancelled because of bad weather. And no one wants to truck from car dealer to car dealer in frigid temps, in and out of cold cars, no opportunity to run the air conditioner (without risking frostbite). Besides, in winter I have the holidays and then a series of family birthdays to worry about.

"No, I'll wait till spring to think about it," I tell myself, confident that when spring finally comes I'll feel that much more capable. In spring---when my heat isn't constantly running and I'm worried about how much that bill will be, and I'm fretting about buying a new car in bad weather, and the short days drive me inside where I can surround myself with light (if artificial) and cats for comfort---I'll be ready to bloom with the rest of the world. Spring cleaning will be a welcome task and I'll charge ahead with renewed vigor!

Except....except...this year that renewed vigor seems a bit slow in coming. When I was a kid, I always thought that butterflys must just love breaking out of their cocoons, spreading newly grown wings and achieving flight for the first time. My wings are hardly fledgling, but I guess flinging yourself in the air is always a bit scary. But I'm trying to take a lesson from the season, and take joy (rather than worry) about the wealth of possibilities I seem to be facing now.

That, and I'm going to try to spin more.

Tales from a spin to knit swap

2007-03-12T11:12:00.000-05:00

Well, finally got my February (ahem) spin to knit package out to my poor, patient downstream pal! This is another silk-merino blend (50-50) that I made from laps dyed by Leah at Yarn or a Tale. This is spun on a hand-spindle, one of the Bosworth midis, but I managed about a fingering weight throughout most of it. I also sent some samples of different rovings that I've bought in the months since I first started spinning, but I didn't get pics. I haven't checked to see if Brooke (my downstream pal) has gotten it yet, but I'm hoping that she'll like it when it comes in.

And since I'm being so late, I'll finally post the great yarn and goodies that my upstream pal, Holly (from Oceans of Fiber), sent in my February package that she actually got to me in February! (Wow, people who send Feb packages in Feb.....I'm overwhelmed by that level of organization ;-).

And not only on time, but this is really fun yarn. When Holly and I started corresponding, she wasn't sure that my tastes aren't quite a bit more conservative than hers, and that still may be, but I just love the colors in the yarn she sent me. I'm not sure the pictures do it justice, really. It's also quite a bit softer than I think the pictures suggest. Along with the yarn, Holly sent me this lovely batt, called Mermaid, to spin up, too. It's a blend of different fibers in gorgeous bright shades of of blues and greens. Mermaid is very much the right name for it. (this is the spun yarn and the batt together.) I'm now trying to decide what to make with them that will do them justice! I'll keep you posted!

Well, that's what I get for waiting so long before posts

2007-03-01T18:08:00.000-05:00

See, I took so long between posts that I completely forgot that I'd already posted the yarn I sent to Debbie! Pfft. The ol' memory is not what it used to be, I'm afraid. Or I should say that it's not what I remember it being....whether it was ever as good as I give it credit for is anybody's guess!

So, I'll try to post pictures I'm pretty sure that I haven't already posted. Here is a shot of me at my sit-n-knit, working on the red scarf for the red scarf project back in February. I was so late getting that scarf off that I'm starting work now on the scarf for next February. Don't laugh; it's my best shot at actually getting it done and sent off in time!

This yarn is some of my handspun, from a 3-oz batch of Ramboulet roving that friend Pam (who seems to have given up the spinning bug) gave me. Here the spun yarn is in the front with a bit of unspun roving in the back.

The interesting thing about this was that the yarn came out self-striping, with consistent sections of pinkish, pink and blue marled, etc. Because I Andean ply (or perhaps because I'm just not that clever at it yet), usually I have a difficult time getting any consistency to how colors come together in the plying stage when I'm working with variegated dyed roving. I can't seem to control it, probably in no small part because I can't seem to predict it!

But in this case, I was able to split the relatively small amount of roving right in the middle to pre-draft, and I was very careful to follow the same pattern with the colors. Though I have to admit that I had no idea I'd managed any real consistency until I knit it into a small bag, then felted, as a thank-you to Pam for this and a bunch of other roving and spindles she gave me. (Sorry, no pic, though I did think it came out kinda cute, if I say so myself )

Still catching up

2007-02-28T16:54:00.000-05:00

It's been an interesting month in diva-ville, with a variety of family stresses and mishaps to deal with. So to avoid going too far into my travails, I'll post some pretty pictures of spinning projects I've been working on. This is the yarn that I spun for my mystery skein swap. I sent this to my lovely pal Debbie in Wisconsin, and she is going to knit something for me from it. She also sent me some lovely handspun, that I am working on something special for her with (more pictures later).

And this is the 50/50 silk/merino that I spun for the spin me a treasure swap, for Anja in Finland. I tried to do a thick/thin thing, though I'm not sure how sucessful I really was. Though Anja was very gracious in her thank you!

You learn something new every day!

2007-02-15T18:21:00.000-05:00

Or at least I do! (well, ok, at least most days ;-) Today I learned that I can download pictures from my camera to my work computer without installing the special, came-with-the-camera-and-they-make-it-sound-like-it's-the-only-software-that'll-work software! In theory, at least, that's going to make my posting go quite a bit quicker. In reality? Well, I'm still as likely to forget either the camera or the little cable thingy that connects camera and USB port on any given day as to remember them both.

But to celebrate, here are some pictures to catch up on previous posts. Here is the yarn that I spun for the January present for the Knit to Spin swap. Although I sent the yarn in January, I'd actually spun it several months before. You can see how uneven I am in terms of texture. It's also pretty thick at that point, ranging from a worsted at it's thinnest to a super bulky at it's thickest. Still, despite its flaws, I think it came out pretty overall. This is a picture of it on the spindle. Looks a lot darker here; not sure why.

And here is the yarn I sent my pal Debbie for the mystery skein swap. Both are silk/merino blends. The top, in blues, is 30/70, bought from the Copper Moose on Ebay, and the bottom (oranges) is 50/50 laps from yarn or a tale, an etsy shop. Again, I'm pretty uneven, but I really liked the colors; all Autumn hues. Both yarns are pretty soft, and the orange, which I spun maybe a month after the blue, while still uneven, is thinner, running from a sport to bulky. I'm still working on getting a consistent worsted. It just doesn't seem to be happening.

Report from last weekend's retreat

2007-02-12T18:25:00.000-05:00

I’m late reporting on it as usual, but we had a great retreat at Rosie’s in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, weekend before last. I really enjoy these knitting getaways, and though it’s really only been a couple of years and we only manage it two or three times a year, it feels like I’ve known my knitting retreat buddies for ages. Amazing how comfortable I’ve come to feel with them; at least it amazes me, since it often takes me a while to warm up to people.

And, bonus, it was my birthday on Friday, so I decided not to feel guilty for indulging in a sundae at Friendly’s Friday night. Now don’t ask me what excuse I used for all the noshing I did on Sat and Sun, or all the Girl Scout Cookies I’ve been eating since. (Drat the clever co-worker who actually brings the boxes into work with the “pay as you eat” envelope on the side. Because I can resist the order forms with the little pictures, no matter how politely worded, but the actual boxes full of actual cookies, actually sitting on the actual counter? Make me run to my actual purse to see if I can actually scrape up $3.50 for a box of thin mints….sigh…..)

But I digress. In the effort to help the retail-willpower—challenged among us (and yes, I am talking about myself; how did you guess?) who are trying to a) save a bit of money and b) avoid having to move out of our houses to make more room for the stash, we decided not to go out at all Saturday. The lovely Sarah brought soup and cheese for lunch, and I even managed to contribute more cheese and bread.

I’d planned to bring homemade (sorta) bread from my usually trusty bread-maker, but unfortunately, my yeast must have been too old. Despite the nice bread smell that filled the house on Thursday night, when I opened the bread-maker I found not a light and fluffy loaf of honey-wheat berry bread, as I’d hoped and the package promised, but an unlovely, hard round substitute cannonball. Not having a cannon handy, I tossed it and vowed to just buy some. Rick, Rosie’s husband, gallantly braved the snow to pick me up at the train station (because my car is old and I’m a coward) and stopped with me at the local Dutchway. He even bought a new package of yeast (because I really need to learn to get to the point of my stories quicker!).

Then for Saturday dinner, Pam made yummy lasagna, and Pat made brachiole (steak rolls; I eat them much better than I spell them). And of course, Rosie made her wonderful French toast for Sat breakfast and eggs and potato casserole for Sunday’s breakfast.

And we did knit. I don’t want to make it seem that we only ate. Of course we knit! I also spun a little and finished a little felted purse that I’d made for Pam as a thank you for spinning supplies she’d given me at our last retreat. I was pretty proud of it, since I’d spun the yarn for it from some Romney roving that she’d given me. And no, I didn’t get a picture of it.

Sadly, I forgot my camera for the weekend, but I do have some pictures from a retreat last year, when the backyard was covered in snow, very much like it was this time. I've scattered them through this post. oh, and of course Angel (Rosie and Rick's one indoor kitty) taking a nap. Cause what good is a snowy day without a cat nap?

Exchange update

2007-01-29T13:44:00.000-05:00

Last night I finished the red scarf, which I'll do the final touches for tonight and send out tomorrow, along with my skeins for "spin me a treasure." And just in time, because tote exchange III is starting in full force. because there are quite a few of us who volunteered to be hostesses, we each have only 13 or 14 people to monitor through the exchange. I've now gotten my "downstream" pal, who I need to contact, and heard from my "upstream" pal. And I have successfully matched my 14 partcipants and sent out pal assignments.

So the next step is deciding what to make! I was originally thinking about not doing something felted this time, but my pal is a working mom with 2 kids who sounds like she does a lot of active, outdoor stuff. So I'm back to thinking about a felted bag! Either something roomy or a maybe a backpack. Honestly, the constant companion bag sounds like it would work for her, but I really don't want to do 2 of the same thing, and I made one in the first swap. Oh well, I guess I'll keep looking for patterns.

I'm also still deciding what to make for Debbie, for the mystery skein swap. Over the weekend, I bought a copy of One-Skein Wonders, which has a number of cute patterns. 'Course, I'm hindered by not knowing what size she is (and I don't want to go too crazy with fitting, anyway), but I'm hoping that I can find something I want to make for her.

catching up

2007-01-26T17:34:00.000-05:00

Still trying to keep my resolution of posting on the blog at least once a week, and stil failing miserably!

Anyway, to catch up a little bit on what's going on in my life, I seem to have had a run of bad/stressful news lately. I tend not to see a silver lining in having lost my mother almost 10 years ago, but at times like this I do see one: I think I'm less rattled by times like these, when the tough events just seem to pile on. I keep thinking, "I'll get through it; I've gotten through worse." 'Course, probably part of the getting through comes from having had a great relationship with my mom, and some certainly comes from my mother's handed-down, wonderful Irish/Italian pragmatically hopeful stoicism.

But I don't want to dwell on the bad or the worrisome. So I'll suffice it to say that I could really use some good news right about now (feel free to share, if you have some), and plunge back into the world of fibery pursuits by talking a little bit about my various projects.

First up, I'm working frantically on trying to finish my red scarf, for the red scarf project, a drive of the Orphan Foundation of America. I'm making a bias scarf designed specially for the project (not by me!) and available here. I'm having my usual problem of feeling like I'm making great progress and going like gangbusters and then holding the scarf out and seeing that it's only about 2 inches longer than the last time I held it out and looked at it. Sure, sure, 2 inches is 2 inches, but you'd be surprised how long 60 inches is when the foot you thought you just finished turns out to be just 2 inches. But I need to get it mailed out in Jan, so I'm planning to get it finished over the weekend, come heck or high water (as my much-missed mom use to say)!

And around working on the scarf, I'm also finishing up several spinning exchanges. I'll post more about those when I get the pictures out of the camera.
In the meantime, here's a pic of the silk/merino that I sent my spin to knit pal for Jan. It's spun on my first spindle, the Cheap Sheep from Grafton fibers, and Andean plyed, which is the only way I know how to ply! My pal Brooke seemed to like it, or at the very least, she's polite enough to have posted good things about it on her blog! I'll be spinning another skein for her in Feb, and I'm still trying to decide what that ought to be.

Just a little note about spindles

2007-01-13T15:45:00.000-05:00

Because one of my swap pals was asking what spindles I have, I thought I'd post a bit about my burgeoning spindle collection. I stared out with a cheap sheep from Grafton fibers, and I have to say that I'm a big fan of it. I did a lot of spinning and learning on it, with a variety of fiber types, before I decided that I was probably going to keep spinning, so it would be ok to buy more spindles.

The next I bought were a couple of Bosworth's "bossies." I love the spindles but I seem to order challenging wood choices, because I ended up waiting a good while for the first 3 I bought (two middies in paduak and purplehear and a cute little mini in pau amarillo) and a second order seems to be in limbo. Course the spindles themselves are fabulous, so I guess it's worth the wait.

The most recent spindles I've bought (just before the holidays) were an Emily and a Lizzie from Mielke farms. Also very pretty spindles and also good spinners. I also like plying smaller singles with the Emily. In the middle, I seem to have collected four other spindles, two gifts and two tht I bought at Stitches East, but I'm not sure what any of them are. The ones I bought are on the smaller side---about the wieght of the Bosworth minis and smaller diameter than the Lizzie.

It's funny---all the spindles have their different features, but I have to say that I like all of them, and enjoy spinning on all them. I think the next additions to my collection will be either from Golding ring spindles or a Kundert, both of which I've heard good things about on the spindlers and spindlitis Yahoo groups.

International Tote Exchange III Starting!

2007-01-12T14:49:00.000-05:00

I'm interrupting your regularly scheduled lack of posting from me (ack, sorry---been a busy January so far) to bring you the following announcement about the Tote Exchange III. I was one of the hostesses for versions I and II of the exchange, which really came out of the scarf exchange, and I'm planning to continue to co-hostess for III. What's it about you ask? Well, read the announcement below. I'm also going to see about putting up a link and button on my sidebar (but we all know how quick I am with the new technology! )

It's time for International Tote Exchange III. So how does it work? You will make a tote/purse/handbag for your Secret Pal and a different Secret Pal will make a tote for you. The "totes" can be big or small, knit or crochet, felted or not - whatever you want to make. If you are interested please read the sign-up process, rules and schedule (found here) and then, if still interested, send an e-mail as described in the process. SIGN-UPS END JANUARY 24, 2007!!

Wishing everyone a joyous holiday and New Year

2006-12-22T14:22:00.000-05:00

Stopping to wish everyone a joyful holiday season and a very Happy New Year. The fiber diva is (temporarily and somewhat regretfully) trying to turn domestic diva for the Christmas holiday, since the whole diva clan is gathering at my house for Christmas dinner and presents. Which, of course, means a flurry of cleaning, shopping, cooking, and decorating for me in the next several days. Which also means that I must first move all the fiber out of the living room!

To give an example of what I mean, here are the pics of the fleece from the breed swap that I mentioned in the last post.
You can see the bag of unwashed fleece here. I did wash a bunch and send the 32 individual baggies of locks to the breedswap "mom." Which means I only have......about 2.5 pounds left to wash! Yeah, don't ask me why I thought I'd need a whole 3 pounds of fleece for 32 locks.

Of course, more fiber in the house is never a tragedy. The fleece is from a Coopworth white lamb. I don't think I'm terrible efficient at washing, but it is coming out a lovely off-white, definitely losing a lot of dirt from the raw fleece you see in the pictures, and pretty soft. I even managed to spin a little from the locks, though I think I'm either going to borrow or buy inexpensive cards to finish the rest of it. I say "inexpensive," because as much as I value having had the experience of processing fleece from it's raw form, I've decided that I don't really want to keep doing it. I'm happy working with processed roving. Speaking of which, this is roving that I used both for the roving and for spinning short lengths. And yes, I apparently thought I'd need 3 lbs of this to make 32 one-oz bags and 32 yards of spun yarn. I mean, I was plying it, so I guess it's reasonable that I'd need.....yeah, like 2.2 lbs. But I'm going to spin up the rest of the roving and try making felted slippers. I might even try dyeing the yarn once it's spun. But this is a nice silver-grey, so I think it will make nice slippers this way or combined with the white.

And finally, I'll leave you with a visual explanation of why the fleece has had to live in the car for a while. This is Emma...chewing on the plastic bag full of roving. Because the roving has been processed and so contains much less lanolin and what I call "sheep smell," Emma is more interested in the bag here. But the fleece? She loves the fleece, and I mean, loooooves the fleece. It's like the old joke---"with this much sheep smell, there's gotta be a lamb to play with in here somewhere," and she will dive head-first into the box of fleece if I turn my back on her for a moment. Worse, invariably when I pull her out of the box, she's still licking her lips and making (kitty) yummy sounds. "No, no, bad kitty, mustn't eat Mommy's sheep!"

And with that, I wish you all a very happy, healthy, and fiber-goodness--filled New Year!

The good, bad, and genuinely tragic (or where I've been for the past couple of weeks)

2006-12-18T19:59:00.000-05:00

The last several weeks have been a mixture of good, bad (well, not so good, but otherwise it doesn’t pun on the old movie title), and the genuinely tragic.

I’m going to start with the last, and get it out of the way. At the beginning of last week (December 10), one of my colleagues was killed in a plane crash. He was a great guy, a down-to-earth physician who was invariably kind, thoughtful, and good-humored. Adding to the tragedy was the fact that he was a vibrant man, who seemed always hearty and full of life. All of us whose lives he touched (and we are many) have been just reeling from the loss.

Even recognizing that life goes on, it’s been a bit hard to get back into planning for the holiday season, even knowing that’s what he’d want for everyone.

Which brings me to the bad/not so good, which is how I’m feeling about the holidays so far. And I love Christmas, and don’t hate winter. I’m especially looking forward to the winter solstice (Dec 21), when days start getting longer….even if it is in increments.

I’m not even close to ready, though I’m pleased to say that I did get out a number of Christmas cards. And it’s before Christmas. Some people even have their cards now (they tell me), a full week before Christmas. Sure, sure, chuckle if you want, but I think that’s a record for me. To give you some perspective, last year I gave up completely and just sent New Year’s cards…the week of January 2nd.

And on to the good---I finally sent in my stuff for the breed swap I’m participating in. Considering the deadline was November 20, I was getting a bit nervous that the organizer would give up on me! Thank heavens 1) she’s patient, and 2) I’m not the only terribly late person!

The swap involved 32 of us each picking a different breed of sheep, researching it, and gathering physical materials for it. I did manage to e-mail the research in almost on time. The physical materials are 1) some washed locks, 2) 1 oz of roving, and 3) 1 yard of spun roving. The organizer will then sort it and compile binders with the research and packages of roving, locks, and yarn. Heaven bless her; although we each made a small financial contribution to defray her costs, we also keep telling her to let us know how much more it costs! I had a hard enough time just getting my own stuff together, let alone compiling for 32.

My breed is Coopworth, which I actually have no personal connection to. I just wanted to join, but decided kinda late. Coopworth was the first breed I encountered (when searching “sheep breeds”) that wasn’t on the list as already taken. But it seems a nice breed. The resulting yarn isn’t exactly next to the skin soft, but I enjoyed spinning it. I'll post pictures in a bit. Blogger is being difficult again.

Thanksgiving break, or the joys of ignoring your in-bin in favor of eating turkey for 4 days!

2006-11-27T12:39:00.000-05:00

Thanksgiving at the fiberdiva house went well, I'm happy to say. Between my 2 sisters, one bil, one brother (with accompanying sil), 2 nieces, and my dad, we have a pretty full table. This year I did pretty much all the cooking, but my sister and 1 neice came early to help with the peeling and cutting. My brother and sil usually take Thanksgiving and I get Christmas, but this year I may end up with both, since they are having some work done on their house. I'm crossing the Christmas bridge when I come to it, though, and in the meantime, I'm refusing to worry about cleaning and decorating and cooking and finishing almost-finished objects to give as gifts until at least December 1 (and no, no one should point out that that's only 4 days away, thank you very much!)

In the meantime, I thought I'd finish up posting my exchange pictures with the tote photos that blogger decided not to post last time. First are the pictures of the tote that I made Chrissie in Singapore. This is tote in pieces on the drying board. and a photo of my trying to decide if 3 flowers was too many. Of course, the photo of the finished bag confirms that it's not, in fact, too many. The flowers were from a Noni bag pattern, but the bag itself is the Kiss bag from Sally Melville's book on color, using just 2 colors---Patons classic merino (in black) for the background, and Noro kureyon (don't remember the colorway) for the contrast. I used the two-handed stranded method on circular needles. With this technique, the yarn in one of the hands will tend to ride on top, and show more in the finished project. In this case, I wanted to kureyon to show more. You can't tell from this picture, but since I couldn't remember which hand needed to hold the "showier" yarn, I had to do a little experimenting at the bottom. Even worse, I now can't remember again. Yeesh! This is where a knitting notebook might actually come in handy, if I could remember to use one instead of just buying pretty notebooks for that purpose and then leaving them unused!

I found this bag a frightening, for 2 reasons. Not the applied I-cord bind off, which I've used before and feel pretty comfortable with. And not even the 2-handed stranding, which went well once I'd figured out what my hands were supposed to be doing (though, that's probably true of most new skills ;-).

No, my main worries with this were lining (ack, even though I sew a little), and applying the grommets for the strap. (Double ack---no---No punching holes in my knitting. I don't care if it is felted!) I don't have a picture of the lining, but it turned out that neither thing was that scary once I got them started. (ok, I was nervous the entire time I was doing the grommets, but I think it came out nicely.) In fact, I like the look of the grommets so much that I might use them more often, rather than trying to remember to make buttonholes in the fabric while knitting.

But again, I'm really pleased with the whole bag. In fact, I'm thinking of make something similar for my sil and one of my nieces (probably not the same shape, though---like to vary things a little bit, and I do have that noni pattern that I bought just for the flowers ;-).

As for my bag from Louise in Maryland, I got this great felted bucket bag with felted flowers and "vines." Louise used magnetic clasps on either side of the tote, and plastic handles, which I've never tried before. Also, I'm not sure if you can tell from the pictures, but the centers of the flowers are very stylish black buttons! Louise also lined the tote. She actually did me one better, because (you can see from the below picture) her lining has pockets and machine-stitch embroidery! Pretty cool. I also love the little feather butterfly on the blue flower (above). The open bag photo also shows the goodies---flavored coffees, a cute mug, and a chocolate spoon---that Louise included with the bag.
And here's another shot of the bag and all the goodies included. I took this bag to Stitches with me, and got a lot of compliments on it (you can see why), but I was good and didn't try to claim it as my own work ;-).

Although I've enjoyed the swaps, and you can see what great stuff I got, I'm trying to resist joining any more for alittle while. I'm currently finishing up a breed swap (more on that later), and I have a couple of spinning swaps about to start shortly. I think between those and the holidays, I'm probably going to be busy enough for a little while!

Wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving

2006-11-22T12:25:00.000-05:00

Want to wish everyone (ok, ok, the 2 or 3 people who manage to wander past my blog) a very happy and healthy Thanksgiving. And just for giggles, here are pics from my (finally!) finished scarf and tote exchanges. First the scarf exchange:
This is the scarf that I made my pal, Kate, in Australia, and that, I'm happy to say, reached its intended recipient without any postal issues at all (yay)!
I don't know that it's the best thing I've ever done, but the yarn (silk rhapsody by artyarns, which includes a strand of silk and a strand of silk/mohair, run together) and the colors really are nice. The lace pattern was interesting, because it's not just the same number of stitches each row. Which is why it's blocked with scallops---they are really supposed to be there.

And then the wonderful scarves from my "upstream" pal, Deborah, also from Australia. She made me two (both modeled here by the shelf bear from the powder room, who also usually sports my minatiure top-down sweater. The purple and pink one is a lovely feather and fan, and the maroon is an openwork, both in mohair. Very, very pretty, and we're starting to get weather cold enough to wear them!
And a beautiful surprise that Deborah also sent: This gorgeous purple and blue handspun yarn! She had started this with the idea of making the scarf out of it, but ran out of time. So, lovely woman that she is, she sent the handspun to me. I just love it, it's such a beautiful color range.
And I'll post about the tote exchange in the next post, since blogger has decided that it's tired of putting up pics for me.

More pictures from my travels

2006-11-21T13:38:00.000-05:00

Well, it's been an eventful couple of weeks, and I'm just finally getting the pictures uploaded. First, here are a couple from Stitches East (11/2-11/5). I keep saying that I'm not going to take so many classes, and then I end up taking just as many classes! Ok, maybe I took one fewer this time. My favorite class from SE this year was domino knitting with Vivian Hoxbro, who is a very nice lady. She told the class that she was planning to take a break for a while and stay in Denmark until late next year, but if you get the chance to take a class with her, I'd say go for it. Here's a picture of Ms. Hoxbro showing off a domino-knit class, and next to it is my in-class project. I'm seriously considering turning it into a hat, despite how bright it is. ... or maybe because how bright it is---I figure I'll be easy to find in a crowd!

Another resolution that I wasn't able to keep (along with not taking so many classes) is not buying so much yarn, and definitely not buying any more kits---since I have so many now that are just waiting to be worked on. But then, last day of the marketplace, and the Harrisville designs booth, which does the Hoxbro patterns and kits, decides to have a sale. Sure, the kits weren't cheap and the 10% off didn't exactly make the one I wanted cheap, but it was a sale. And the word sale just...well, it's like a little temporary lobotomy, I think. Especially when sale and yarn are used in the same sentence . I'm convinced it's some kind of Pavlovian response. Perhaps I'm being kidnapped in the night without my knowledge by sheep-hearding aliens and conditioned to buy more yarn (and now roving and spindles).....hmmmm.

Or maybe I can just resist anything but temptation! But anyway, I ended up with the Ida vest in a lovely periwinkle colored silk-wool blended yarn. Well, at least the wool-peddling aliens have not messed with my color sense. (It really is pretty yarn.)

And even more pics from vacation!

2006-11-14T10:05:00.000-05:00

Still quite behind in my posting, and I do promise to write about Stitches East (11/2-11/5) and the knitting retreat (11/10-11/12), but I first wanted to get some more of the shots from Cape May up. The Christopher Gallagher house, which my little book on Victorian architecture tells me is the Second Empire style, is a private residence not far from the the Washington Street mall. Since it's not a bed and breakfast, we didn't get a chance to tour through it on either the "Inn-terior" (yeah, I don't write 'em; I just pass them along) or "Historic Haunts" tour. Though I have to say that if I were a ghost, I might want to haunt it just because!And it definitely gets a little creepier when you peer at it from a different angle!
Speaking of ghosts, this porch chair on one of the stops on the Historic Haunts tour (I'm afraid I've lost track of the name) is reputed to be haunted. Apparently, one of the former owners of the house, a slightly crotchety ex-military man, still setting of an evening, enjoying the cool sea breezes.
The Queen Victoria Inn, on the other hand, apparently does not still house any departed former owners, despite being used as a guest house from the 1930s through the 1980s (and being painted white for a good 30 years, which I would think that any self-respecting Victorian era ghost would object to!). However, according to its current owners, a second building across the street that is now part of the bed and breakfast does have a spectre or two. According to male guests who've stayed on the top floor, several of the ladies who lived there when it was a brothel are still looking for husbands to take them away from the life and have been known to tap on the doors of the guest rooms. When the inn keeper (a woman) stays on that floor, on the other hand, she rests quite undisturbed, or at least that's what she tells us
And finally, just for fun, I just thought the flower-decked streetlamp on Decatur Street made a nice composition.

More pics from vaca

2006-11-08T14:48:00.000-05:00

Trying to catch up, I'm posting a couple more pics from vacation.
Here's the famous Cape May lighthouse from a boat we'd taken around the Cape. The scenery wasn't bad, but the best part of the ride was seeing the many dolphins that apparently are so used to seeing the whale watching boats that they practically swim right up. I've heard of dolphins riding the pressure wave created in front of the boat by the water it's displacing, but these also seemed to really enjoy "surfing" on the boat's wake. It was a hoot to watch them. This is just a nice shot of the empty beach. I liked the way the fence made shadows in the sand.
And finally, 2 shots of Cape May point (the southernmost tip of NJ) at sunset. The structure out in the water in the first picture is the Concrete Ship. It was one of 38 experimental ships in WWI made of concrete because of the shortage of steel. This ship, the Atlantus, was a prototype that actually was put into service. After the war it was decommissioned and stripped. In 1926, it was towed to Cape May to be used as a reef (I believe---I've read about it but am still not sure what the plan was exactly). But it broke loose in a storm, drifted to Sunset Beach and got stuck to the point it couldn't be moved. And there it stayed as a local landmark. The amazing thing to me is how eaten away by the relentless surf the hull has become. My family have been going down to Sunset beach since I was a little kid, but I haven't been there for a couple of years and in just that little time, it seems so different. Ah, the impermanence of human-made structures! In the second picture, you can see the ferry that runs between Cape May and Lewes, Delaware, in the background.

Pics from vacation (better late than never)

2006-11-02T13:05:00.000-05:00

Well, big new from the tote and scarf exchanges. First, I got both my tote and my scarves (plural)! First, on Halloween, I checked my mail, and there was my package from the lovely Louise, my tote exchange pal. She made me this fabulous "evening garden" tote, with beautiful ruffles and flowers on the front. Just in time for Stitches, where I intend to take it to show it off!

And then, I came home yesterday to a package tucked into my screen door, all the way from Australia, and opened it to find not one but 2 (count 'em, 2!) lovely scarves. The first is a beautiful lavender and pink lacey mohair feather and fan pattern and the second is open-lace pattern in a deep magenta (one of my absolute favorite colors) with beads! So, so pretty. And to make it even more special, Deborah included a huge skein of her beautiful purple and blue hand-spun yarn, which is both beautiful and really soft. I'm just thrilled.

I've taken lots of pictures of both tote and scarves, but probably won't get them posted until Monday, since I'm heading off this afternoon to the aforementioned Stitches East and will be away from the computer all weekend. (and have work I'm frantically trying to do before I can leave!)

But in the meantime, I finally have pics from my vacation to the beautiful seaside town of Cape May, New Jersey. Ok, so I'm running anywhere from 2 weeks to a month behind in posting pics of things. I think we should focus on the fact that I am managing to post ;-).
This is the view from the hotel room. Course in the summer, that beach would be full of beach chairs, umbrellas, and people! I love the beach in the fall, though. With a crisp breeze and very little to interrupt the sounds of the surf against the sand. You can feel the wildness of nature, that even on a beautiful, calm day, there is still power in the ocean, waiting just below the dappled surface, for the next raging storm.

Tried a new knitting group

2006-10-19T15:30:00.000-05:00

After hearing all kinds of great stories from others about knitting groups that they attend, I've been a little jealous, and looking for a knitting group in my area. And it looks like I finally found one! Last night I went to a "Come Sit and Knit" group that's close to where I work, as in less than half a mile and about a 1-minute drive. (I could have walked, except it was nighttime and I didn't want to). I found them through meetup.com, which isn't just knitting or fiber arts related. I ended up joining a couple different groups, some of which aren't that close to me, but this is the first event I attended.

I enjoyed it. Despite the fact that I was the only newbie (to the group) and pretty much everyone else knew pretty much everyone else, folks were friendly and pretty welcoming. Our hostess even had pumpkin pie with whipped cream, and let's face it, I'm pretty much going to feel friendly to anyone who gives me a rocking chair to knit in and then offers me pie! There were about 6 other knitters there, all women, diverse ages as far as I could tell, and it seems diverse skill levels and years knitting.

I'm often amazed at what a great connector knitting is. I'm sitting amidst of group of strangers, in the basement of a woman I'd never met before, happily showing off my half-finished gardenias for the tote I'm still trying to complete, eating pie, and chatting about who's making what. And it never occurs to me that I maybe shouldn't feel comfortable, these people being strangers to me.

What is this power of sticks and string? I can't think it's just me who automatically assumes someone is approachable just because she (or he) is knitting.

Back from vacation

2006-10-16T10:53:00.000-05:00

Well, despite my vacation's being relatively short, I did appreciate being away for a bit. I might even feel rested. I spent a couple of days in Cape May, New Jersey, a lovely Victorian resort by the ocean. I took many, many pictures, a function of having a digital camera with a memory card that lets me take more than 300 pictures before it needs clearing off.

And in other news, I took my laptop and the software that came with the camera, and even managed to successfully install it. Now I'm able to download the pictures from the camera to the laptop, without the stop at Rite Aid to copy pics from the memory card to a CD, which is how I've gottten pictures to post before.

Course, I still have to actually sit down at the laptop and do the downloading AND I have to then write the pics to a disk so I can bring them to this computer (so much faster) and put them up here. Which is my long-winded way of saying that I don't have pictures of vacation to list yet. But they're coming.

And in the meantime, I do have some pictures of spun yarn that I had put on disk before.

This is the modular "sampler" made with my first spindle-spinning efforts. Actually the yellow in the center row, second column from the right was the very first spun yarn. The fibers were samples given out in a class that I took during the Knitting Guild of America (TKGA) meeting in July in Pennsylvania. The class was actually on working with unspun fibers, so I doubt this is what the teacher had in mind for them (my apologies there).

This is colonial wool in a pretty blue color that I bought from an e-bay store. (It's sitting in my lovely felted tote/basket my pal Sue from the first tote exchange made for me.) I thought I was spinning a worsted weight, but it's really a bulky by the time I plied it. This is the first yarn that I "set the twist" on, and then I wound it into center pull balls. But now that it's ready to be used, I have to say that I'm a little intimidated. What to make, what to make with about 500 yards of unevenly bulky blue wool yarn? hmmmm.....

This is blue-faced leicester yarn that I'm in the process of spinning, that might actually be worsted weight. I still have to do wraps per inch for it. Though as uneven as my yarn still is, I think I'll have to take measurements from several of the skeins and average them out. I also still have to set the twist for this one. I might have to hang a little weight from some of these skeins as well, since I'm still not quite getting balanced yarn yet.

Spinning tales of cashmere

2006-10-06T10:56:00.000-05:00

Still working on the pics, but I wanted to post my experience spinning a little sample of cashmere that I bought after last weekend's spinning class. Can I just say that I'm spoiled? After an ounce of cashmere, the merino blend that I thought was so soft just last week? Just not that thrilling now.

BUT, it really is interesting to see how the properties of different yarns affect how evenly I manage to spin them. I know---this is not news to anyone with more experience spinning than I have. Cashmere, beautifully soft, separates very easily, and slides against itself really easily. For me, that meant having to be pretty careful when predrafting and making sure I had a decent twist while spinning. On more than one occasion, I move my hands up a little too fast and heard the tell-tale thump of the drop spindle becoming a little more drop than spindle!

But it also meant that my spinning was pretty even throughout, something that I'm still struggling with ordinarily. When I moved to the merino blend, I had to pre-draft a little more diligently and work harder not to have the bumps of fiber that meant I was pulling out too much fiber in the draft. The wool's tendency to hold on to itself a little more also meant, though, that I didn't need as hard a twist to prevent the fibers pulling apart and the spindle dropping.

I really am going to try to get some pictures up. I might buy another ounce of cashmere, too, when I go back to the shop tomorrow for the second (and last) spinning class. Because I really need to make something to wear out of the this, and I'm not sure I could manage even a lace handkerchief scarf out of 43 paltry yards of about dk weight yarn!

More (non) progress on the scarf exchange

2006-10-05T15:01:00.000-05:00

Trying to sort out and keep up with the various exchange projects I'm involved with.

For the tote exchange, I'm now working on the seemingly endless I-cord straps for the bag, interspersed with Noni-type camilias in red, only one of which is (almost) done. And I'm thinking, too, about making at least one black one with a red center. I'm also debating about permanently attaching them, or putting them on a pin back, so my tote pal can take them off the bag, or even use them as pins if she so desired. More versatile, yes, but will that make the flowers less stable on the tote itself?

And on the scarf exchange project, I have ......not much progress to report. In fact, I might just have made negative progress. When I was a kid, I always wondered about imaginary numbers such as negative numbers. I remember thinking that as much as I disliked math, it was unkind enough of teachers to make me figure out real numbers without creating imaginary numbers with all kinds of strange rules.

But since I started knitting, I think I understand the concepts of negative and imaginary numbers so much better. Because the number of rows I've done on my scarf are both imaginary, and, if you consider how many times I've frogged the very concept of what I'm doing, definitely negative.

What's the problem, you ask? It's that I think I've changed my mind yet again. As you may remember, first I was going to use the koigu from the stash. Then I decided I wanted something silkier and found a sale on some Cherry Tree Hill fingering silk, with maybe a pattern from Lavish Lace. So I ordered the yarn. Decent plan, right?......sure. Except that in the meantime I wandered into a yarn shop and across some Artyarns Silk Rhapsody in this lovely combo of blues and greens and just couldn't resist it. So now I'm thinking that I'll use the silk rhapsody with either the Touch of Whimsey scarf or the Column of Leaves scarf that some of you were so kind to recommend back when I was using the koigu. sigh.....but notice that this is all what I will do (and not what I have done...except for the spending part!).

Late again!
(Ok, I've tried three times to upload images and three times they haven't come through. I'm going to try again later.)

spinning class and other stories

2006-10-02T11:37:00.000-05:00

The spinning class went well, though I have to say that it wasn't as detailed as I'd thought it was going to be. But on the plus side, we also learned carding (ok, but I still don't see myself buying raw fleece anytime soon), which I wasn't really expecting.

We started on the drop spindles, but that wasn't as much of a challenge because I've been spinning with a top-whorl drop spindle for a couple of months (thanks to Laura and Rosie at the last ample-knitters retreat). But it was a chance to use a bottom whorl. In fact, the shop that held the classes had recently sold so many of their spindles that we ended up working on hand-made spindles created from cds and dowels. (Plenty of places on the web show you how to make one those if you are interested. This one was the first that came up when I searched.)

I must say that I still prefer the top whorl that I've been using, but it was interesting to try something new. I also enjoyed working with freshly carded rolags. I still prefer the processed rovings and batts that I've been working with thus far, but, again, I liked getting to try new things.

In fact, in the interest of trying new things, I bought several 1-oz packages of different kinds of fiber to try spinning. The verdict thus far is that yak down, although soft enough, is the devil to spin, unless I'm just not understanding how I'm supposed to be doing it. I've put it, and the camel down that I haven't tried spinning yet but that looks very much like the yak down, away for a while. Maybe I'll try it again when I have more experience! The soy silk is easier to spin than the yak, but, boy, is it slippery. I think it requires a different strategy altogether. The cashmere, though, that's some good stuff. In fact, it's spinning up so soft and even that I'm wondering about just using it in singles, which I've never done before. I still have to "set the twist" I understand, and I'll have to dye it, since it's a bright white that I would never actually wear. But if the first oz comes out nicely, I might buy a second oz and try making a lace scarf of it.

I didn't get the chance to get the camera out over the weekend, but I'll see if I can't post some pictures in the next couple of days. The second part of the class is next Sat, when we'll work on a bit more wheel-spinning, plying, and dyeing. I'm looking forward to it!

Still working on my tote project

2006-09-29T13:53:00.000-05:00

Well, several weeks of having this blog has shown me that I'm not any more reliable at posting to it than I am to writing to friends, though it's honestly not for lack of caring. So while I have a few minutes, I thought I'd post an update on the various projects that I'm working on.

I'm still swatching for the scarf exchange. Still on the fence about whether to use the koigu (below) or wait for the silk to come in. (which still hasn't come in.... pfft)

So in the meantime, I'm trying to finish the tote exchange project. It's a felted tote from Sally Melville's book on color (book 3 of the Knitting Experience), made with Paton's classic wool in black, threaded through with Kureyon. I've taken a number of pictures of the almost finished bag, from both the inside and outside.
The inside pics were for the tote exchange blog, because I accidentally let my pal know who I was. (It's not that I don't understand the concept of "secret"---it's the mechanics that seem to throw me.) So I haven't wanted to show her the actual bag, just tease a bit. But since I'm not sure anyone has really found this blog yet, I'll post the outside pics here as well.

Course, they're still pretty close up. I took them with the idea that I could still post them without giving too much away. Maybe I will. When finished, the bag will be felted, and then, because my pal likes the Noni bags with the big flowers on them, I'm making several roses in the kureyon to felt and sew on.

Otherwise, I'm excited about taking a spinning class tomorrow and next week. More on that (including pics) in my next post!

(non) progress on the scarf exchange project

2006-09-22T15:00:00.000-05:00

One of my works in progress is a scarf for the international scarf exchange III, and after ascertaining that my downstream pal (who's in Australia---how cool is that?) likes 100% natural fibers, I picked out a nice Koigu 100% merino from my stash. I was excited because I even had 2 skeins in my pal's liked color of green (with traces of other colors she also said she liked). I picked out a pattern and got ready to start.

So I wound my yarn into center pull balls, and I've been working on a swatch using some leftover Koigu in another color and.....I'm underwhelmed. Y'know how you get an idea about something in your mind and no matter how "ok" the thing that you're working on is, it's just not going to make you happy because it's not what you have in your mind? Well, I think I want to make my pal a scarf that has some silk in it.

And the Koigu , while even a little glossy looking, just doesn't have any silk in it. And I love Koigu, which I've used happily on other projects. But I think I have to recognize that this combo of yarn and pattern is just *not* going to make me happy right now.

'Course the bummer is that I'd previously declared a moratorium on ordering new yarn until I've used up some of what I have in my stash. And, other than some Cascade fingering silk in the wrong color, I don't really have anything that I think would work for my pal in my stash.

What a dilemma!?! Or at least it would be if I had any willpower at all.

Happily (or unhappily, depending on whether you're my secret pal or my scale), I don't. So I've gone ahead and ordered some Cascade fingering silk in better colors and some Marjaana (I think) wool-silk blend. At least it was all on sale. Perhaps when it gets here, it will be nice and tell me that at least some of it wants to be a scarf and what pattern it would like to be worked into. In the meantime, I think the Koigu is going back into the stash. I don't think it's too disapointed. I think it really wants to be gloves anyway.

The inescapable pictures of my cats

2006-09-14T11:59:00.000-05:00

Until I manage to get the pictures of my current projects out of the camera and into the computer, I thought I'd give the perhaps 3 people who've accidently wandered by this blog something to look at with pictures of my cats. Because they're cute, and I love them, and, well, it's not like I didn't warn you there'd eventually be cat pictures!
This is Ellinor, my alpha kitty and the grand dame of the three:

This is Charlotte, who's a little more nervous, but very sweet: And this is Emma, my wild child:

About computers, frustrations, and old projects

2006-09-12T17:49:00.000-05:00

My first post looks so forlorn all by it's lonesome, so I thought I'd add a bit about some already finished projects that I actually have pictures of. Although, it's really not taking the pictures that holds me up. Taking the pictures I can do. Posting the pictures I can do. It's downloading the pictures off the memory card and out of the camera into the computer that has me stumped.

For the pictures of the bag I knit for the first scarf exchange (I participated in; really the second scarf exchange) and the first tote exchange, I ended up taking the card to a drug store and copying the pics to a disk there. It worked fine (if slow), but it's a step I don't really need to take, since the software to download the pics to my computer came with the camera. I really just need load it onto my laptop.

So why don't I, you ask? Fear, FEAR, I say. For as long as I've had to work with computers for various jobs (and I have, and I do) and as comfortable as I've become editing and even working with graphics (and I am), when there's not an IT department backing me up, I'm terrified that I'm going to somehow kill my computer. Maybe it's wishful thinking for all the times I've been frustrated and wanted to not so much kill my computer as torture it slowly until it begs for mercy. Unfortunately, I've never been able to find little feet on the thing that I could hold to a fire!

But hope does spring eternal. I have faith that I will, eventually, gather my courage and install my software. After all, I even have a blog now. (though it took me 3 tries to get that stupid little emoticon to sit where I wanted it!)

And in the meantime, here are some photos of old projects to tide us all over. Above is the scarf and hat I made for the previous scarf exchange, and below and to the side are the two sides of the last tote.

just getting started

2006-09-09T13:16:00.000-05:00

Being something of a "late adopter" (according to my marketing classes), I've resisted starting a blog for a long time. But I'm finally persuaded by the number of knitting and spinning friends who's blogs I read and enjoy. So here goes---taking the plunge. Wish me luck!