06.29.07

Back home

Posted in travel at 10:57 pm by wendy

Safe and sound.

Speaking of safe and sound (well, relatively) Digit is back! Welcome home miracle cat! I love how he looks like Greebo in this top picture.

I had a fantastic time in Portland and Eugene.

I shopped like I don’t think I have ever shopped before. I’d say my plastic is sore, but I just checked the card balance, and wow. Less than I thought. I’m going to have to go through my bag of receipts and make sure everyone has gone through–it seemed like a lot of people had a Paypal virtual terminal type thing going on, most needed the street number, card verification number, phone number and zip code, others needed the street name & city too. As a merchant, I looked at that and thought, ‘holy cow, I can’t see people having the patience for that at a show or faire!” but as a customer, I was like, “Whee! Cool stuff! Who cares?” It takes a second to write it all down, I didn’t have a problem with it and didn’t see anyone else fussing about it either. I’d be curious to hear what you all think about it.

Anyway, the spindle above was purchased direct from Spindlewood. Quite a few vendors there had them, in the woods you can see on their page, but this manzanita burl square whorl with wenge shaft just grabbed me with its gradation of color. I love manzanita and its little dried apple-tasting berries, it’s a big feature of local ramblings. I liked talking to him and his wife, it’s my favorite thing about these kind of markets this opportunity to meet the people who produce the stuff we love, and the people behind the online shopping.And of course, one of the best things about leaving is coming home. Packages come…like this one from Dawn of the Knitter’s Coffee Swap, yum. (click on it to go to its flickr pic and see notes)

And the best thing ever about coming home… I have a lot more about BSG and the trip, but until then, this picture sums it up.

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06.18.07

A Day at the Fair, etc

Posted in random, spinning at 10:41 pm by wendy

(wow! what a creative title!)

I went to the fleece judging at the San Diego County Fair Sunday with Heidi and Lionel and Sophie; it was a fun day.
I went last year (pictures in a flickr set here).

(pictures from this year here)

I really like listening to the shepherds talking and the judge and all that. I didn’t realise it until I went through the piccies from last year, but there where much fewer entries this year. Still some serious gorgeousness going on. I snagged me some:

   And like last year, I’m thinking of the ones that got away.But I have a fair amount of raw wool already…plus Black Sheep this week, gotta take it easy, wait and score some of the doubtless premium fleeces that will be at BSG.

But, because I’m a dumb@ss, I’ve got classes during the wool sales, so I’m not sure how I’ll get my hands on them.

I’m in the final countdown of getting ready to go up–cleaning, laundry, packing…avoiding those by blogging & browsing…

and carding….

(red BFL, orange & red tussah silk & black dyed merino)

Um, I guess I should have a picture of the yarn here. Whoops.

Anyway, back to BSG.

I’ll be up in Oregon from Wednesday to Wednesday, the 20th to the 27th and I’m going to try the whole “roughin’ it” thing. Well, relatively. Remember, I’m used to sleeping cradled in the arms of love and all.

I am so excited!

I’m taking Shearing On Your Own, Meat Cutting, Organic Certification for Fiber: Standards, and Emergency Treatment & Prevention. Wheeee!

I’ve been hesitant to try and make plans beyond the classes, but it’d be fun to meet up. (I got some good tips for fun things to do in PDX from vj and in Eugene from Martha and I’m looking forward to wandering and exploring with little plan) Call my cell at 892-9055 (area code 619) if you’re game, or if you see me walkin’ around all befuddled, please say hi. I don’t know if I’ll have e-mail access, but I probably will find a way (or face deleting a bajillion spams when I get home).

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06.16.07

Five Years

Posted in love at 10:30 pm by wendy

The traditional gift is wood. Heh, heh.

There are certainly no words to say how lucky I am.

I don’t think I could have packed up Mom’s place and pushed through all the needed arrangements without him, his strength and love, and that amazing restorative embrace.

Every day I love him more and more which seems impossible–there must be some sort of inverse law of love and loss.

When you lose someone, you can’t imagine it will ever stop hurting or that incredible squeezing grip in your chest will ever let up. But it eases, even if gradually, and even if it comes back even stronger some days, that easing is something which seemed impossible.

And when I knew with Nick, we knew and it was like a lightness of being loved absolutely and it felt like there couldn’t be anyone luckier or happier, and as clichéd as it may be, with a heart more bursting. But it just gets bigger and bigger, how can that be possible? It’s not like Nick gets sexier and sexier every day.

Oh wait, yes he does.

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06.09.07

“Today we continue part four of the agonizing pain that is my life…”

Posted in books, dogs, entertainment, knitting, spinning at 10:35 pm by wendy

A week ago, I stepped off the curb while unloading the car and managed to put my left foot wrong. It did a crazy 90° angle to the leg thing and went CRACK! Fast trip to Nausea City and later, Cankle Town. Whee.

Check out the blood pooling/swelling and bruising –

   The flash kind of flattens out the bruising colors but looking at my ankle made me feel really squicked out. Here’s what it usually looks like:    I did cancel what I had to do that afternoon, and iced it, but the next day there was too much stuff to cancel so I put it in a hiking boot.   It’s stiff in the morning, but otherwise fine.

Anyway, that’s my big news.

Whee.

If I was a better blogger I would have shaved my ankles before Nick took those pics. It’s definitely time for the waxer; it’s getting on bikini season and when I look down there I see this.
I’m pretty sure that’s not sexy. Nick is a real trooper.

Snuggly symmetry.

It’s The Big Bunny’s birthday today and we’re just taking it easy and having a mellow day. He had to work last night and has to work tonight, but today is a day for snoozly love.

Knitting and spinning

I’ve been in a bit of a knitting/spinning funk. I zoomed through pieces of Sophie’s Kai Cabled Sweater, but stalled out because of a Realisation.     Yes, the yarn shortage epiphany.     I’ve been making it longer, since she’s a baby Amazon, and I think that barring a miracle, I don’t have enough yarn to finish the other sleeve and collar.

I won’t be short by much, but I’m pretty darn sure I’ll be short…so I’ve stalled out, as if delaying it will deny it entirely.

So I’ve been knitting on a sock for my Sockapalooza pal. A bit. I’ve had a really good run of one-day books (you know, the ones you end up reading all in one day, sometimes even at stoplights) lately though, and strangely, my reading has been almost themed.

The Book Thief (the story itself is riveting, but the “Death” narrator kind of brings a big disconnect, breaks up the flow, and is kind of a cheezy melodramatic hook the story could have done well without). A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian–funny, charming, frustrating, sad, and utterly enjoyable, you can see everything. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress–gripping with beautiful imagery. And in here as well, various pickups and putdowns of Everything is Illuminated and The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, which are certainly fun, but just haven’t managed to grab me like the others, haven’t been one dayers. In all of these, totalitarian regimes are nearly a character themselves.

I finally read I Married Adventure. Wow. What a charming book, and a bit of a time capsule. You know that part in King Kong with the scary natives? They lived that. (link is to Amazon and a version with a different cover. Mine is the cooler 1940 version. ;))
I picked up Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns from the library and cried my way through it on Thursday. It’s brutal and oppressive and frustrating like The Kite Runner, but there’s more hope, more love. And no anal rape. Yay.
Yesterday I read Water for Elephants, and that’s a great summer read, really fun, really sweet, but some heartbreaking parts, especially if you dwell on them.

I’ve spun a bit.

I took the Polwarth locks I bought over a year ago and carded them into rolags and spun them up.

There were a lot of pale colors, so I carded the pale like colors together for one bobbin, and the stronger colors for another bobbin. I’ve never carded more than one or two rolags at a time, never really enjoyed it before, but this was fun.

Maybe it was blending the colors, just letting it go as an experiment, so I didn’t care when my clumsy carding prep made for neps, and I spun thick and thin and let them stick out willy nilly to be tacked down later by the ply, but it was really enjoyable. I don’t think I have the discipline in prep to create consistent color blends in large amounts with handcards though, for that, I’m going to need a carder.

I spun and plied with a lot of twist (well, a lot of twist for me) but it doesn’t look like that much of an angle on the bobbin, because it is wound on under tension. (I spun the singles on my Victoria and plied with Heidi’s Joy, since my third bobbin is still with Elton the woodworker and I didn’t feel like winding off into balls.)

When released and wound onto a niddy-noddy, it looked like this:

Usually, to finish my yarns I just give them a quick wash and rinse and hang them up to dry.   Sometimes I’ll full them a little bit if I want a more durable yarn, but it’s been more along the line of reasoning of “beat the cr@p out of them now so they can take a lot of cr@p later” not any consistent logic based on staple length and crimps per inch.      But I read Judith MacKenzie McCuin’s article in the Summer 2007 issue of Spin-off magazine and thought I’d try out her theory (she specifically mentions Polwarth as being a weird exception to the staple length rule, so I thought it must be kismet).

So I beat the bejeezus out of this skein. Superhot water, lots of soap, cold rinses. I ended up reskeining it, because I think there was some shrinkage and some bits stuck together. Some dye came out in the water, but not much especially considering how hot the water was.

3.3 oz, 216 yards

There was considerable plumping up and fuzziness, all told.    Parts that had more twist and were spun finer didn’t full in the same manner.    I don’t think this is a necessary way to finish a yarn spun, but is definitely another option to finish for a certain effect.

BTW, if you haven’t seen the new Spin-off, you should definitely check it out.

The Type As of the spinning world will find the Fractal Stripe spinning article appealing, plus I liked the Yucca fiber article(s), and of course, the aforementioned finishing yarns article.

But…the first thing I turn to is always the “Your Yarns” feature, and that’s missing.

Plus, no Spinning Basics article, which is probably the second thing I look for, despite being a relatively new feature. I know they recently did a poll, so maybe I’m in the minority, but I hope these changes aren’t permanent.

Speaking of a series, here is part one in Dogs Using Toys as Pillows:

Crivens with wheels behind her, Love Monkey beneath her.

Belu appeals to the power of the Internets. “Please don’t let them wash my dirty fluffy ball!”

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