Beef and a sturdy red wine

For close to 30 years I have cooked under the tutelage of books by Marcella Hazan. If, as she urges, you do exactly as she directs, you are assured of excellent results. I don't always have access to the wines she wants in her recipes--like I can afford to cook with a Barbera or Barolo? I can't even afford to drink it. While she would not approve, I'm certain, I substitute much lower end South American wines and occasionally an Australian. These wines, in the price range I can afford, often don't have the depth and richness of their Italian cousins, but they're pretty damn good even so.

Today I'm in quest of a good beef stew and Marcella's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking has the simplest and tastiest of anything I've made. Mine will be made with (gasp!) the heel of an Australian wine, but with the best beef I can buy at the butcher's (never the supermarket). It will be a stove top stew, as I still don't have a working oven. 

I do have a recurring but as yet unfulfilled dream of getting under the stove, via the drawer at the bottom, and seeing if I can remove the element prior to replacing it with a new one. It is one of those jobs that require contortions that make my 61 year old bones rebel at the very thought, never mind the reality. But I rebel even more at the idea of forking out a hundred and fifty bucks to find out that this still won't get the oven working. In truth I need a new stove. This very pricey unit, a mere 7 years old, now has a wipe off surface finish--a soft cloth removes the enamel (enamel I always believe adhered to metal, but now I learn what powder coat really means--that wipes off). 

A stove/oven rant could easily take up the rest of the day. I've been baking and cooking in a 'toaster' oven for 18 plus months. And yes, that's too much fun.

So, back to the beef stew in red wine and happier thoughts....all I need is 2 lbs of flank steak stew meat, a 'sturdy' red wine, onions, carrots, celery, peas and olive oil. Yum.

A white white world

First snow storm of the season arrived overnight and what a dump it was. Nothing is moving on the street, don't even think the plows have been through yet, or if they have it hasn't made a significant difference to the state of the road. I won't be getting out of the driveway any time soon either. There's a foot of snow blown up against the kitchen door which I opened (and got a face full of blowing snow) in an effort to see if I could make it to the ash can to dump a load of warm ashes from the wood stove. Nope, there needs to be shovelling to get to the ash can. Snow shovelling will ensue later in the day because I'll need to dump those ashes if I want to keep a fire going over the next few days. 

While it is very white, windy and surprisingly cold this morning I'm toasty beside the wood stove and won't be moving very far from it for the next five months or so. 

Ah, I hear a snow plow; there he is filling up the driveways as he passes and clears the street. How nice is that? Once I had a look, I'm not sure 'nice' even in a snarky way, quite covers the four foot high bank the plow deposited at the bottom of my driveway.

I can't actually shovel to any degree anymore, maybe make a little path to the ash can or remove an inch of snow from the back porch so I don't track it in when I fetch firewood. I'm hoping Doug my neighbour is still willing to do the big stuff, haven't talked to him in a while so I don't know if he's up for that this winter. Last winter he wasn't working but I think he's now back at work.

And there's no hope today of the lovely dinner I was invited to and so looking forward to at Trattoria della Nonna in Lunenburg. The weather's too icky and the roads will be a miserable slidey mess. Sadly it ain't worth the risk or aggravation. And neither Lisa or I have winter tires.

Meanwhile I'm knitting away on the arm warmers and little fingerless mitts that are really cute in left over Noro from the felted bag project of last summer. You know, my trombone bag. It has a role in my world as a stash bag, but would easily be useful as a trombone cosy. The proportions are all out of whack. Colour's nice though... Maybe I should make a hat from the Noro too?

Fibery decor

Today I propose to own up to the fact that all things fibre is my decorating standard. The sofa is completely overwhelmed with projects, there are baskets of yarn everywhere in my sitting room (the room with the wood stove). Slightly further afield, in the living room the spinning wheels, a drum carder, swift, ball winder, skein winder and rocking chair jostle for position with baskets of fleece or prepared fibre and more baskets of yarn. 

There's no way this decor could be considered tidy in my current application of it. I do live in hope of organizing the stash(es) one of these days, or perhaps simply creating space to move in each room. Every available surface in the living room holds fibre in some form: batts, roving, skeins, balls and bobbins. I'm a busy, and clearly very disorganized little worker bee. Oh, and do spider web swags count as fibery decor? And no, there will NOT be pictures!  

The kitchen is not immune from this decor style either. There's a bag of fresh fleece (fresh from the sheep!) by the door and a bucket of draining washed fleece by the sink. Gotta keep the supply coming, eh what?

Now if only I could figure out how to spin or knit in my sleep.

There's currently almost a sense of urgency to my efforts with fibre. I feel I've lost so much time. Time I've spent doing other things like making a living, and then not working on fibre projects. Then again, cruising to 62 and being a Capricorn messes with my sense of time anyway. Could be we need a bit of balance. And how bloody likely is that??? 

'Tis the season...

For 'startitis'. Oh but I have it baaaadddd! What else is a person to do with a lot of time attached to the sofa enduring a virus that simply will not let go? Come up with too many exciting projects, that's what. 

So far we have another version of the Eye of Partridge Shawl because the one I made last summer, and thought very little of at the time, has proven to be such a treasure in the wearing that I want/need to make another in a fun colour: purples, blues & lavenders. There's the Orkney Pi from a previous post.  There are three new pairs of socks, one pair completed. The arm warmers are making good progress, as is the Rhinebeck Sweater. A sweet little neck warmer in merino cashmere was done early in the week. The top down roll neck sweater in cochineal dyed merino has the neck portion done and miscellaneous other still orphaned socks get picked up and put down as I madly try to do a little of everything. It helps me feel that I just might live through this stupid endless virus. 

And just in case you are shaking your head at my knitting folly, please note that the Farmer's Almanac is calling for a 'numbingly cold' winter. I'm simply making sure that I have something to warm every single part of my person for the duration, with multiple layers should that prove necessary.

What I really want to be doing though is preparing content for my website project, but sadly there's nothing I can do to clear my head of virus & snot to make that possible at the moment.

I did spin on my Quebec wheel (aka Ida) for about 20 minutes a few days ago, but that was all I could manage for upright in several days. The new bobbins my friend Soren turned out on his lathe work wonderfully well and the wheel 'goes like stink'. Once we make friends a bit more, Ida and I, she'll be the dedicated sock yarn wheel because of her incredible speed. I'm still learning how to make my twist consistent, I think we need a good long draw technique--but she's a lovely old lady and we'll be fine once we spend more quality time together.  

Pictures of all of the above to be posted soon....

9 Gift Sock Scenarios

I recently forwarded a pair of hand knit socks to a friend, and for some as yet unknown reason I have not heard anything about how these have been received, except that the post office at least has done its part.  This leaves me with no reasonable option but to list the scenarios which have been running through my mind, namely:

1. Socks received, hated them on sight.

2. Socks received but feet have been abducted by aliens and socks don't fit the stumps.

3. Feet so precious now, married as they are, that hand knit socks from the past too embarrassing to own.

4. Socks have been wickedly 'short sheeted' so recipient can't get them on.

5. Sock recipient in a daze from recent pie eating event, can no longer find feet, so socks now irrelevant.

6. Socks immediately re-gifted (to the postman?) and original recipient too ashamed to own up to this.

7. Advancing age has made sock recipient forget that the postman brought a package, or where it was placed; possibly also forgot what socks are for?

8. Wearing socks on hands, so don't have to acknowledge socks, but will get around to saying something about the wonky mitts one of these days, working up to it.

9. Oh, those were socks? From you? Thought it was junk mail so put it in the blue box.  All gone now.

Knitting myself well

A blur of a week, what with trying to breathe past virus and the daily workout of coughing up my lungs. Significant improvement to my abs must result, as everything hurts enough.

A great week for mindless knitting to finish up projects however. Let it never be said that I do not make good use of my time, in whatever condition I find myself.

The down side of course is that as I begin to feel better, I have attacks of 'startitis' that are so frequent that more blurring takes place.  I began the Orkney Pi shawl in Zephyr wool & silk lace weight. In fact, I began it several times and may have to begin it again because I think the first round is a bit wonky and I don't want to knit thousands upon thousands of yards and millions of stitches only to see that the first dozen are wrong.  It's a ruddy trial to begin a circular shawl with ten tiny wee stitches on three needles that just won't behave.  Once I'm past the beginning it knits up beautifully.

I'm nearly done the Hemlock Ring blanket in blue mohair that I began in August.  I think I know who it will go to, but we'll have to give it a bath and make certain it 'works' before I announce the recipient.

Once I'm upright more of each day I'll finish the arm warmers, blend yarn with borrowed wool combs to spin for the socks that will go with them.  For now it continues to be sofa time in my household, so I can stay as close to the wood stove as possible without roasting body bits. It isn't as if I mind knitting time on this order, I only mind the virus and coughing all night. Hopefully the latter will be done soon.

Post-election blahs

Wouldn't you know it, all that exposure to electors made me sick! Not from them being electors of course, but because many of them were generously sharing viruses. My theory about a virus is that it won't leave me alone until I share it with you. 

The election itself was probably enough to make me sick. In the poll I worked the turn-out was, in a word, pathetic. Less than 50%. Either nobody cares that we have a democracy or as I also heard during the day, that people whose families have lived in the same place since before Confederation refused to vote if it required them to show picture ID. I mean really, people. What's the big deal? We show picture ID in lots of other contexts. Apparently elderly rural folk find this requirement beyond obnoxious. But while others in the poll knew these folks, I didn't. In an urban or any large poll you wouldn't know the people. A requirement for identification (and there were dozens upon dozens of options) hardly seems a good reason to stay home. I think what I find so appalling about the voter turn-out, whatever the reason for it is that in so many places in the world people pay with their lives to vote and we can't get our butts off the sofa to go do this? Sad, very, very sad.

And then there was the outcome. Not a surprise but a great disappointment to me. My wish (okay, fantasy) was for a NDP/Green party coalition to run the country, not a increased mandate (albeit still a minority one) for wacko Tories who don't get the urgency of environmental issues, and in fact deny there are issues at all. I was very impressed by the moxie of the Green Party leader. One of these days Canada will elect someone with vision. Meanwhile I promise not to hold my breath until that happens.

I took a jaunt to Wolfville on Friday to look for likely properties. I'd hoped to stay overnight in the valley but felt too rotten to inflict myself on dear friends, and didn't want to share my virus there. I prefer to share anonymously so you (whoever you are) can't track it back to me.  How very nice of me, eh?

One of the highlights of my day trip though was a view of a house that meets all my criteria in terms of cuteness, breathing space, location, size, studio and office space, but fails to meet the price range I'm working with by a mere $100K. Ah well, can't have everything I suppose--but it's good stuff to be dreaming on even so.

The other thing that was a spectacular first for me was apple picking. How is it I have lived 10 years in Nova Scotia and have never before been in an orchard to pick apples? We found a U-pick place where they had Northern Spy apples as well as the usual Cortland, Gravenstein, Macintosh, Ida Red, and Russet varieties. I now have 10 pounds of handpicked Northern Spys in my pantry and as soon as I share my virus with someone and it leaves me alone, I'll make something deliciously apple-y.

Finished the chocolate lama/mohair sweater coat and it is wonderful, everything I hoped it would be. I think there may be enough sunshine today to take some photos. The next spinning project: beige lama/mohair will make a good lap blankie. I have a pattern for one that uses a variety of gansey patterns. That might be fun. Need to track the pattern down so I can figure out how I need to spin the fibre for this. 

We had hard frost overnight so that's done in the geraniums I forgot to take in last night. Ah well, I felt too rotten to bother with them and believed the weather channel that the temperature wouldn't drop below freezing.

My only activity in the last 36 hours has been to throw logs into the wood stove to try to get warm. The ambient temperature is fine, but the virus tells me that I'm still cold. No amount of wool sweater layers seems to make a difference either. Some part of me believes that if I keep knitting sweaters I'll be warmer this winter. While that works once I'm up and dressed in same, it doesn't do a thing to get me out of bed on a morning when the house is cold. I still have the oil furnace thermostat set really low as it isn't winter, but I might have to reconsider for the duration of the virus.

In my quest to share my virus anonymously I believe I'll head to 'China-Tire' for a replacement wheel for my wheel barrow--one that can't go flat. Wish me luck?

Joblet

I have a joblet to do, as a poll clerk for Elections Canada. Who knew this was such a complex task that it required a 3 hour training session and a 100 page manual? 

It will also require considerable stamina. I must arrive at the polling station location, a rural fire hall, at 7:45 am and remain there until the ballots are counted, probably by 9:30 pm. To en-sure this, I will be called by someone at 6:15 (how nice is that?).  

I am required to bring sufficient food and water to get me through the entire day. I may have call-of-nature breaks but every time either I or the DRO are  away from the table, voting will stop until we are back. I have a long list of tasks, hence the 100 page manual. The only thing I don't have is the big responsibility and I'm grateful for that. For example I may not touch a ballot at any point in the process. That's the DRO's job. Thankfully I have plenty of other papers and forms to touch or I might have a problem with that (big grin!). 

I have already voted so I don't have to concern myself with my basic civic duty on the day, only the advanced version, aka poll clerk, which will make me the stunning amount of $167.00 which works out to what? $11-12 per hour? What I will say is that it is interesting to understand this part of the electoral process, and I expect to be a very, very tired old fart when it is done.

Okay, I have a 'thing' about....

...ripping out knitting projects. In the last few weeks I've ripped out three projects to keep myself on track with knitting everything twice. So far so good, eh?

...pens. As a writer I can never (never!) have too many nice, good, fancy, or expensive? pens. Same goes for notebooks, printer paper and watercolour paper.  Oh, and mechanical pencils (what's with that?)

...garlic. It's autumn. Winter isn't far away. One can never! have too much good garlic to approach a winter's worth of cooking and soup making.

...good olive oil. If I have several litres of the tasty stuff I'm rich, well olive oil, garlic, onions and chili flakes.

...blankies. I've been cold in winter, as a child and latterly as a younger adult. I have more blankies now than anyone requires, just in case.

...food in the freezer, even if it isn't edible. There's comfort in having a full freezer, even if it is mostly frozen compost now.  If push came to shove, I'd still be able to eat, I just wouldn't enjoy it all that much.

...the pantry. It should always contain plenty of canned tomatoes, tuna, beans and tetra packs of broth.

...having plenty of toilet paper on hand. Nothing worse than being too poor to have tp when you need it, that and tissues for one's runny nose.

...the fibre stash.  One can never have a stash of spinning fibre or knitting yarn too vast. I never know when inspiration will strike and in winter it can be days until the yarn store opens or the post-person delivers your project order.

...the wood pile and kindling.  Can you spell warm?

...hunkering down. As soon as the weather cools I knit sweaters, socks, hats and count my wealth in terms of all of the above.  Looking good this year, in spite of not having a job.

You know you're onto something, when...

It has taken about a month but with my +T3/-T4 experiment well underway I'm finally back to my project work.  Hurray! And oh, what a project this is proving to be: book, workbook(s), web site(s) and workshops. Everything I wrote this morning gave me another five items for my 'to do' list. The good news is, this is fun; okay, my idea of fun. And to have the brain engaged at long last as well as the motivation and energy to do the work--I'm positively dancing with glee.

Once I've had a run to the grocery store and a cup of tea afterwards, it's back to the desk(s) (laptop desk and desk-desk) to continue my progress today. Yowza, get outta her way!

Dyefest 2008...the first

Since the 60's or 70's I have been interested in natural dye materials and the beautiful colours they produce on wool and silk. My experience until now has been with onion skins (of which I have plenty as I usually go through 35 to 50 pounds of onions in a winter). Over the summer friend Pia and I bought a box of more exotic dye materials I'd only previously read about, never worked with. Our treasure box included alkanet, cochineal, tumeric, indigo solution, cutch, and logwood, plus a quantity of mordant chemicals. We were like kids in a a very big candy store.

Pia and her husband Soren set up a terrific dye workshop in the bottom of the barn. We had two gas rings, one was a turkey deep fryer in a previous life and I think the other was perhaps a sauna heater. There were four dye pots of various sizes to work with, at least a dozen plastic buckets; water from a long hose meant we didn't have to haul water to the barn from elsewhere. Given the number of dye pots we ran over the course of the event, a count I place at 16 give or take a few and not counting soaking baths or mordanting baths. My count is based partly on the amount of yarn and fibre I brought home and partly on memory of the number of cochineal, logwood and alkanet baths we had trying to exhaust the dye. Pia still has several buckets of usable dye liquor to work with, but we were exhausted and had to end the festivities so we could get back to the rest of our responsiblities and lives. Oh, but it was so much fun!

I now have the house festooned with brightly coloured skeins and fibre, while I wait none too patiently for it all to dry. Today anything that is still damp can go outdoors to finish drying, and I suppose I should get the dyepots out of the car and into the garage for storage. Though really I hate the thought of putting them away. I have so many more ideas of things to try, but as I now don't have any skeins left to dye, I have my work cut out for me this winter to get a lot of spinning done for the May 09 dyefest. Then again I could 'cheat' and order in a quantity of undyed yarn?

Perhaps now that my initial excitement has been worked through I can actually plan projects to dye as Pia did. All I wanted this time was colour, any colour, because it was all so exhilarating.

I do have 8 x 113 gm skeins of worsted weight merino dyed in the brightest cochineal we got (a vest perhaps?); 6 x 50 gm skeins of mohair for a shawl in another version of cochineal that was more purpleish and one skein of Polwar

th sock yarn dyed a soft lavender from the alkanet bath. I also dunked my Polwarth shawl into the purpleish cochineal bath and it is a lovely colour now.

So, there I sat in the lawn chair I had the sense to bring, crunching up alkanet roots into small flakes.  Then I ground the cochineal bugs to a fine powder in a blender for two different approaches, the bright and the purpleish.  Both were soaked overnight in jars to bring out the most colour possible from this rather expensive material ($45 for 225 gms of bugs!). Our entire treasure box, clearly, was a fabulous gift at $50 split between us.

The learning curve for this neophyte natural dyer was big, very big. I don't think I could have had more fun and I'm sure I haven't since my dear friend Kate Waterhouse (1899-1995) introduced me to natural dyeing from local plants (on the prairies) in the early 70's. The sense of wonder and magic she shared has stayed with me. I remember coming into her house and poking my nose into pots simmering on the stove, never sure whether it was a dyepot or dinner! We read then about things like cochineal and indigo but these materials were completely out of reach to us and we could only dream over the pictures or descriptions we read. I know that Kate was with me in gleeful spirit during the dye

fest and I thought often of how much she would have loved this experience.
Pia and I, once we had a dyepot ready and filled with fibre or yarn, would take turns poking it with tongs just to glory in the colour and watch it take-up into the fibre. I think we spent the entire time with great big silly grins on our faces. I don't think fun and delight gets any

better than that. 

And here's the help...aren't they lovely?

Beginning a Journey

For a number of years I have been living with a hypothyroid condition, as well as the jolly Addison's that manifested in 2001. Is there a relationship between years of untreated hypothyroidism and collapsed adrenals? All too likely it seems.

I have been taking Synthroid for the hypothyroid situation for a decade, but never really felt well, better definitely than before medication, but not what you'd call either energetic or happy. I have little enthusiasm except for knitting which requires very little movement or thinking. My approach has been if that's all I could do, at least I'd do it very well. And so I have.

But, what of energy, enthusiasm, clear, focused thinking and sustained work? Dream on girl--that seemed long out of reach and the best I could do was accept the situation and make the best of that too. Resignation has become my middle name (I don't actually have a middle name so I can use whatever I like as the situation warrants). When faced with something I believe cannot be changed, I do what every relatively sane person does--try to live with it and get on with whatever is left. After the Addison's diagnosis my world became significantly smaller as I learned to accept massive weight gain (50 to 60 pounds) and much less energy without any capacity for sustained work or movement (such as gardening or beach walking).

Recently help and encouragement from friend Pia has given me new hope in an area where I believed nothing whatever could be done. Synthroid you see is only one of 4 thyroid hormone components of a healthy thyroid. In the 70's the T4 hormone was isolated, synthesized and became the accepted treatment for hypothroidism. Thinking was that as long as we had T4 in our systems enough T3 would be converted in the body to provide the essential amount of that.  Before the 70's everyone with hypothyroidism was treated with desiccated thyroid from pigs and this contained T1, T2, T3 and T4. Enter the miracle of chemistry which believes that one component could stand in for the lot and if those of us taking T4 alone didn't feel well, continued to gain weight, have trouble concentrating, focusing, getting out of brain fog or being capable or motivated for any sort of physical activity, well--that was our personal moral failing and nothing to do with treatment protocol. 

Resources for thyroid information include The Thyroid Solution by Ridha Arem and this website.

I am now on the second day of a very low, introductory dose of T3. I cannot truly believe how I feel and don't yet trust it (why would I, given my history?). I feel awake. I want to move, I can focus my thoughts, I'm not lethargic, uncaring, or dull.  Who is that I wonder? And what can she do with her life now?

Today, the answer is, not that much. The weather is rotten with the remnants of tropical storm Hanna saturating the air and giving periods of deluge besides. There is little light, it feels like dusk, that's how dark it is. But it's the weather--not how I feel--that limits what I do with this day. Wind and driven rain, and my newly delivered firewood, uncovered as yet, is getting a thorough soaking. Damnation.

Hey, if my eyes are that open, I could give that microscopic silk another go--assuming I can actually sit still long enough! Actually I want to see about finishing a vest I began last winter which would be perfect as the weather cools into autumn. I only have a bit of the collar and trim left to do, but in worry that I'd not have enough yarn I put it aside. I've recently had a new idea to deal with not enough dyed handspun yarn so now I have the confidence to finish it.

Knitting with paper clips?

I have a quantity of very fine silk. Think fine sewing thread. The last use for this silk (oh, so many years ago) was in an 8 harness silk satin that I wove 55 inches wide at 90 threads to the warp inch and about 60 to the weft inch. The fabric was beyond glorious but of course without a market for this elegant stuff I had to cut it up and then painted on it; for a few years I sold it as small paintings until a gallery owner told me that nobody cared what I painted on. Sigh.

So I have had a few dozen of these massive cones of silk waiting for a project or two worthy of them. In my current knitting follies I am attempting to knit lace with this yarn. I'm knitting on needles about the diameter of paper clips, 1.75 mm, working on a sample from Sharon Miller's book, Heirloom Knitting. To say this is a challenge would be significant understatement; maybe not on the order of threading a loom at 90 threads to the inch, but challenge enough even so. I made a mistake on the first attempted yarn over and dropped a stitch so now must go in quest of a very very fine crochet hook to resolve that issue--if I can. Yes, thanks, I already know how nuts this is, no need to share that with me, I'll take it as given, shall I?

Will I ever make anything beyond a lace sampler? No idea. I have a serious stubborn streak where fibre challenges are concerned and a pathetic desire for bragging rights in this area as well.  So I may well persevere in spite of all the clear indications of folly, at least until my eyesight gives up.

On needles of much more sensible diameters (4 mm; 5.5 mm and 6 mm) I'm making excellent progress on the Rhinebeck sweater, the lama/mohair jacket and a mohair version of the Hemlock Ring Blanket; so perhaps the silk lace idea is comic relief?

Late summer thoughts

I have two sweaters on the needles which is sure indication that my hard-wired thinking about fall has kicked in as a result of several cooler nights. I'm grateful for the coolness because it is more pleasant to knit wool or mohair when I'm not suffocating in the heat and humidity. I've already mentioned the lama/mohair jacket which is coming along nicely. Thursday I began the 'Rhinebeck' sweater from A Fine Fleece in a superwash/bamboo blend, in a deep red-bronze colour. Yummy yarn and an easy pattern to knit. Pictures to follow as soon as there is a bit of sunlight. Which reminds me I need to set up a photo shoot place indoors soon for woolie projects and other things.

I'm having a lazy morning after several challenging and sleepless nights. Not sure what had me awake but I resolved many of the world's problems in the course of these hours, if only I could remember what I came up with. The entire week had a rotten smell to it, waking and attempting to sleep. Need some tweaking in my meds no doubt and I have a plan, perhaps even a 'cunning plan'.

Another cunning plan is underway to make not quite enough lama/mohair into a finished sweater. I searched the stash and found fleece that is dark and has a longish staple. I will spin that into a singles and then ply it with the last of the lama so I have enough yarn for sleeves. I think that will look okay. I'm loving the texture of the knitting for this piece, but it is most definitely a fall jacket. In fact I suspect it will be warm enough for winter camping in the high Arctic, but happily won't be required for that as I have no current plans to take me to the frozen north.

Since we're discussing my list of cunning plans I have one as well for a 50 year old sweater I own. It was made for me by my Oma van Veen when I was twelve and doesn't quite fit anymore. So here's the plan. I'm going to unravel the sleeves and use the yarn to knit panels between the front and back to attempt to convert this to a vest. I've always loved the colour of this sweater and refused to throw it away simply because it no longer fits all that nicely. The yarn is still beautiful after all these years. I think I now have sufficient knitting skill to pull this idea off; if not I'll unravel the whole thing and do something else with the yarn. Wish me luck.

I seem to have sweaters on the brain at the end of August (it happens every year). It isn't cool enough for sweaters and probably won't be for a month or more if we're lucky and have a nice autumn on the East Coast.

Yesterday was a sad day for CBC radio 2 fans when we heard the last of our favourite programs and program hosts. Disc Drive has been the sound track of my life for 23 years and Jurgen Gothe has entertained me with his witty rants and quips for all that time. Whatever CBC comes up with, they won't be able to match JG for content or audience loyalty, I'd bet on that. The Last Show yesterday was a lovely nostalgia piece that made it a tear-jerker finale for me. Those of us for whom CBC is the sound track of our studio/working lives take these things very hard. I wish I could believe CBC programming knew what it was doing, alienating such a loyal following of listeners in a misguided attempt to attract newer ones. I doubt it will give them joy and then there will be new calls to dismantle the Corp. Great work and vision guys, I'm impressed (not!).

Of All Things...

It is my son's birthday today. Thirty eight years ago he came into the world, ass-backwards and has pretty much, to my great delight, lived up to his entry potential. He has a wicked wit, lighting fast comebacks and is so creative and such a fine writer I'm envious and proud at the same time.

Happy Birthday G. Mommy is proud of you, always! I'm drinking a margarita in your honour today, hope to share a pitcher with you soon and be impressed by your cookery skills: I'm so looking forward to that.

The process

This is what I like.  I have an idea for a project, in this case, a sweater.  I have a fibre stash so I go stash diving to find something likely to make a sweater.  I start spinning a lama/mohair blend, do a swatch (yes, occasionally I do have some kind of fit and actually swatch).  I settle on a gauge and go back to the wheel and spin masses more yarn, ply it and knit.  In a month or six weeks I will have a sweater, made absolutely from scratch (well maybe not, I have this fibre as roving, not raw fleece); but for the sake of my argument I'll say from scratch.  It takes a while to spin enough yarn for a good size sweater but I'm making excellent progress.  Have the back knit and the yarn spun for the front so far; a couple more bobbins and I should have the yarn for the sleeves spun up.

No, it is not cheaper and certainly not faster.  But it is great fun and immensely satisfying to someone endlessly fascinated by what she can do with fibre. And I never stop dreaming of the next thing and the one after that...gotta try that; wonder what that will do; can I make that work at this grist or that gauge. 

Next project: excavate the stash and find the Border Leicester fleece I bought last summer to see what I need to do to it in preparation for the natural dyefest planned for next month.  I need a good think about what I want to make with this fibre as it is very yummy to spin; what I decide to make may influence the colour I'd like to dye it or not.  I now have half of what I need to do basic alum mordanting; tomorrow I need to find cream of tartar somewhere, hopefully at the grocery store.

Some nights I can't sleep for all the projects dancing in my head.  Go figure....

We may have a problem...not!

This morning I got a copy of A Fine Fleece by Lisa Lloyd.  I have now had a quick flip through this beautiful book and I want to make everything in it.  Not only that, but I want to start right this minute, allocating fibre stash to projects and deciding what will be dyed with natural materials and what will get the Magic Carpet Dye for colour.  Then I want to spend the next three months spinning that up and getting going.  I want to do this without the least bit of personal restraint or consideration of things like meals and showers.  I want to dive in and play and play and play until I have everything knit up and wearable. Oh for heavens sake, how am I going to do that?

It isn't as though I don't have a rather extensive WIP (work in progress) knitting queue mounded on the end of my sofa already and in several baskets besides. I wonder how many socks I have on the go? Six? Eight? More?  Shawls? Only 5, not to worry. Nor am I lax in terms of spinning queue--I'm currently working on a dark lama/mohair blend for a sweater which I've begun to knit; laceweight mohair for shawl(s); qiviut laceweight for a scarf or small shawl; sock yarn; and Gotland for my first gansey.

Okay I see the problem.  I need several more lives and need to be able to live them concurrently. What? that's not possible? Why-ever not? Somebody should get on that--and hurry will you.

Just because I stopped weaving (oh, so many years ago) doesn't mean I've in anyway lost my passion for fibre. And weaving, you're on my list for when I, umm, retire.

I can't possibly wear, or use all of this stuff I'm making myself so being on my friends list may prove quite beneficial.  You can start a wish list in the comments, but I can't promise anything by a specific date--I'm much too fickle a spinner and knitter for any such thing. You've figured that out by now I suppose?

Three months and counting

Oh the joy of paid unemployment! I'm having the best summer in five years, even though the weather has been too humid for me to get outdoors much, or move more than my knitting needles some days. Summer is a great time to knit socks, preferably with an oscillating fan nearby slowly moving air across my person. I don't even have to be upright to knit socks--bonus!

There is a bit of work being done of course. Not enough, but some. We'll ramp that up in the next few weeks and get the book draft done. I also have a web site draft and a couple of workshops in draft.  Stay tuned for that!

Wednesday I had an energy audit done on the house by a guy from Sustainable Housing. I knew I had a lovely wind tunnel effect going and that air leakage was so pronounced I did wonder if there were actual walls behind the wallpaper in winter.  Now I have proof!  Apparently I have all the energy efficiency of a tarpaper shack with paper windows.

So this perhaps explains why I spin wool and knit sweaters, shawls and socks at the rate I do--I need them to keep something approaching warm for at least 8 months of the year.  That said, I'd not be happy in a warmer climate as I do enjoy wearing wool sweaters and socks.  My biggest complaint about the air leakage and lack of any insulation is that it costs so much money to pretend to be heating the house.  I don't mind the thermostat set at 16C, but I'd prefer not to pay (or require help to pay) a king's ransom for heating oil to achieve that stupendous amount of warmth.  And the costs are rising at phenomenal rates: in 2000 I paid 54¢ a litre for heating oil; now it is in the $1.10 range (I'm afraid to call and ask for the official cost, and the tank is near empty).

Now I do have a wood stove, a very pretty and efficient blue Pacific Energy, and without it I'd be really cold.  This heating source works best when I'm home during the day so I can keep it going and I sit in the room where the stove is located.

My mind is on winter heating as a result of the energy audit, but today we've got a pleasant summer day, big fluffy clouds, a bit of a breeze and about 25C.  Too bad there was no way to store up summer heat for winter use.  

And just in case you thought that cobwebs had no earthly use (except for spiders of course) I can report that they do show air movement rather well as pointed out by the energy audit guy. That made me chuckle.  Good thing he wasn't looking at dust bunny drift, that might have been embarrassing.

Hemlock Do-Over

I decided that since I like the yarn so much, that once I ripped out 80% of the throw, I might as well pop it back on the needles, albeit larger ones this time and try the thing again. This is in progress and looking better, less bunched up around the pattern and slightly more stretchy. Does this mean we have an actual 'throw' in the making? Stay tuned, I just don't know at this point.



Today I received a surprise (thanks Jane!) of a pretty deep orange organic cotton yarn and Brittany birch needles on which to knit it. I believe this is destined to be an orange cat with perhaps a little white on the paws. If it turns out I have to knit it twice (see previous posts) the yarn will take it and not complain. Nor will I because the entire cat project (including whiskers!) will be significantly fewer than the 550 plus stitches of the recently frogged throw.

I'm still enjoying knitting the Hemlock pattern and for sure I'm better at it than I was in the first go-round. Oh, but what I'll do for practice. Maybe some day I'll be good at reading patterns and then following instructions; I'm certainly acquiring a reasonable facility with knitting.

The sky is falling...

Yes, it is. More than usual this humid summer. It has been falling (in the kitchen) for some years, but this summer it is a positive snow storm of falling sky. And this year the 'texture' that some folks I know like, is more on the floor than on the ceiling. Living in interesting times....