fiberrant

Seems as though every time I log in to post something, WordPress begs me to upgrade to a Newer, Better Version. But I’m not so into that right now. Anyone have something different, better, more stable? At one point I didn’t have ISP access for MT, but that’s all different now.

And here I am, vegging out after a lively Father’s day weekend working in the garden. Weeding, transplanting, hilling potatoes, mulching out back of the new house where there is actually no soil - just clay and rock. Something got at the asparagus last year, and only 2 plants came back - so they’re long past harvest. But we had some very early snap peas, snow peas, almost the last of the strawberries, and shortly I’ll head out and gather some swiss chard for a greens-n-eggs dinner that’s really good.

We also started some skin salve today, from herbs (comfrey, golden seal) plus wild “weed” herbs like White Man’s Foot (which is either common plaintain or narrow-leaf plantain) and flowers (calendula) plus others which I can’t recall now … But anyway, chop them up really well, cover with olive oil, set in bright sunshine ~2 weeks, then strain out the plant bits and add “some” beeswax. [Quite the operation here: gotta have bees to be sure everything gets pollinated, so honey and beeswax are a kind of bonus.)

My schedule has changed, so I have these bi-monthly apprenticeship weekends. Which hopefully will help my home garden. Eventually - when I’m back there again.

No clue if this is coherent or not - I’ve not been very eloquent lately, more aphasic in fact - so these few paragraphs are just me, here, now. Miscellany I wanted to report: I’m trying a new pattern for that wonderful JustOurYarn cashmere, so I’m still knitting. And I traded the Chrysler 300 Hemi gas-hog (much as I loved it!) this week for a Honda Fit. That’s an entire post in itself, except I don’t have photo-edit software on the laptop (still) and it’s so cute, pictures are required … So watch for that next week. Or maybe next month.

PS - With my broadband wireless connection, I may be able to blog our vay-cay in a couple weeks, virtually live.

PPS - I’ve rediscovered music, and spend 40% of my waking hours with headphones on - everything from Bach’s unaccompanied cello suites, to Orbital’s 21st century electronica, to the Decemberists, to the Silk Road Project, to the White Stripes garage band. What’s up with that? The Chieftains share airtime with Moby, Bjork, Frank Sinatra and Pablo Cruise. Do most people stick with a genre that they like?

Now I’m really incoherent. Posting anyway. Until next time…

Sorry for the “issue” with the site this morning. Apparently my password was hacked yesterday, and they changed my index.html pages to a javascript exploit. I restored and now all is fine again. (Changed my password, too!)

Happy Mother’s day to moms everywhere - including cousin Jackie, whose son Vincent is just over a week old.

I’m still here, knitting madly, commuting over 600 miles/week, and trying to maintain my serenity. I gained much satisfaction by finishing several projects (gloves, cardigan, socks) that had been on the needles way too long. Now I want that last UFO to be done, so I can get on to the next thing (plans inspired by a too-small cardigan I bought. Pictures, measurements, diagrams and notes preceeded its return, of course.)

It was tougher than most. Seems like I got the worst of both cities’ weather, wherever I was. I’m glad to be shut of it.

Winter knitting continues. The traveling cables sweater is two-fronts-and-a-sleeve from finishing. (Sounds better when I say it that way, instead of “The back and one sleeve are done.”) I forgot to take a picture today while the sun shone (Yes, the sun made a rare January appearance again today) but maybe next week.

Except that I’ll be away next week, on an island where they have no sheep. And I’ve decided not to bring any knitting.* There won’t be much time when we’re not on the beach, or exploring, or swimming, or ??

That’s it for this quick drive-by. Sorry Mom, I’ll try to be more regular about posting! Enjoy the Superbowl tonight, if you are so inclined. And think of Lisa and Adam, down in the midst of the festivities.

*It almost hurts to type that

All is well here. We survived the holidays, pretty well actually, and now we’re hunkered down for the winter. I’m getting used to the driving routine, and sometimes give myself a treat: taking Amtrak to Albany. Paul’s folks let me use their car to drive to work, so it works out perfectly. (If only it wasn’t so expensive…)

I’ve been putting off blogging until there was some kind of knitting progress to show. But since there isn’t, and it’s over a month again since I’ve written, this is just a quick wave. There are four socks, two gloves and two sweaters in progress. One glove and one sweater are getting the scant hour I have to knit every week.

There’d be more time to knit, if I wasn’t spending all my time on Facebook. It’s wonderful connecting to my niece and cousins, especially - and keeping up with Lisa a bit better, too. I haven’t even cracked my bloglines this year! Is anyone doing Blog365? I’ve BTDT, back in 2002? 2003? and it’s not in the cards for me this year.

So another useless post draws to a close. Catch you after the inauguration party!

My apologies on the long silence. This job (or rather, the commute to this job - it’s in Albany, I’m in Rochester, so it’s almost 4 hrs each way) is kicking my ass. I’m still knitting, everyone’s doing well except Tuna the cat, who passed away in late October. Her kitten, Samwich (now ~7 yrs old), is being terrorized by Sean & Carrie’s cat Anubis. Who is just trying to be friends! but Sammy doesn’t see it that way. The Bills have let us down again, but that’s no surprise.

We had a wonderful merry Christmas. It’s almost worth the angst, once the stores close and the day dawns and dammit, if we aren’t ready now it’s too late to change. We had to cut way back this year, and I was petrified that everyone would be disappointed. But no! Like the Whos down in Whoville, the joy was in each other - not the presents.

Here’s a silly little video for Lisa & Adam, Pete & Betty, Ryan & Leah, Patrick & Alsira, Sean & Carrie, and everyone who couldn’t be with us yesterday.

Merry Christmas!

more animals

This is my new office building, at 4:30 pm today.

Out of the frying pan, into the freezer. At home, we haven’t even had a frost yet. Wish I’d remembered my wooly hat!

Funny, when you’re unemployed, it seems you’ve got all the time in the world for doing stuff.

Then, you get whumped with a job. A “can you start Monday” job. A “your office will be 200 miles from home” job. And of course, a “you need to train in the office for a month or three” job.

So I’ve been working again, which is an all-or-nothing proposition for me. No knitting, no blogging, no READING blogs. I’ve grown lots of asparagus and berries, because I only check my garden once a week.

Go Bills! Squish the Fish today!

* * * * *

PS - I take back my threat to vote Libertarian again. In fact, if you’re dying to change my vote, you’ll need to do it within the next 15 minutes - because I’m about to fill out my absentee ballot. (Another of the wonders of working hours away from home.)

Naturally, since I have a real blinger of a cold, this is the week when everything happens. Most notably, I drove downstate yesterday for more interviews (same job), and I’m feeling pretty optimistic. I am too superstitious to say more than that. The won’t be making a decision for a couple weeks. I hate being patient!

The big thing today is, I have some questions I hope every Congressperson asks themselves before another revised “bailout” bill is presented for a vote.

- Have you ever been told by a used car salesman or real estate agent, that it’s critical that you sign a contract today? Did you buy it, and sign? (If you did, how dare you serve in Congress?)

- When everyone around you is losing their heads, do you tend to throw yours away too? (If you do, how dare you serve in Congress?) Or do you think clearly and calmly about a solution?

- Are you happy that you were pressured into

- - sending our troops to Iraq?
- - allowing people to be terrorized by the Patriot Act?
- - gutting the budget by passing “tax relief” plans without the corresponding budget cuts?
- - the Surge*?

- To Obama and McCain: When will you stop pandering to the polls and take a stand you truly believe in?

I’d hoped to be able to vote for a mainstream candidate this election year. Instead, the Libertarians and their Presidential candidate, Bob Barr, will most likely have my vote.

Read the latest Libertarian press release on the bailout here.
Learn more about the Libertarian Party and its platform here.

* I was stunned to hear this called a success. I suppose that bringing the body count back down to 2003 levels is enough to call it “success”.

I’ve been busy with non-bloggable topics of late: politics, finances, family issues, etc. I’m not comfortable right now with putting any of my thoughts out there. But I haven’t forgotten the blog. I’ll try distracting you with a cat picture - it’s worked before.

Gratuitous kitty cuteness

So please, everyone, rest assured that I am here, hale & hearty, but just lacking blogfodder. I’ve got a project on the needles which will be finished soon, so expect pictures in the next week or so.

I switched projects again yesterday. Although more linen will be here today, and I still haven’t finished the cardigan, the lovely Fern Lace was tossed aside for some Hillswick Lumber.

Wait a sec. That sounds as if I was called by the fair isle’s siren song. That’s not quite what happened. I’ve been lusting after a new project. Symptoms: adding projects to my Ravelry queue; trolling yarn stores, both online and local; beginning the convoluted rationalizations required for a major stash acquisition.

To stop myself, I pulled out all my stash (ok, all my yarn stash) (well, except for sock yarn) and spread it on the floor. And there’s quite a bit there. Sweater-sized portions of Cascade 220, Sierra, and Harrisville Shetland, all the yarn for Feitelson’s Sandwater Jumper; tank-sized lots of misc. cotton; two shoe boxes of leftover Shetland, with no more than 400 yds of any color; and many leftover skeins of DK-to-worsted wool, perfect for hats, scarves, mittens, or perhaps an afghan.

I can knit for a year or more without buying any yarn.

Looking at this pile o’ yarn, I was rightly ashamed of shopping. So I convinced myself that finishing one of my UFO’s would be just penance. Irish Moss is almost out of yarn, which means I have to spin more … which will happen, but not today. Fern Lace has already been ruled out, because it’s not summer here any longer. [Looks like we'll have plenty of cool weather for Lisa when she gets here.] So Hillswick was elected.

To cure the itch for something new, I found this video showing how to hold both yarns in my left hand. I practiced all day, but it was annoying. I kept having to re-wrap and re-tension the yarn. I’m looking for the Aha! moment today or perhaps tomorrow.

What a fun game! Very entertaining, with so many highlights. Here are my faves:

Roscoe Parish’s punt return
Lee Evan’s great catch
Marshawn Lynch running, and running, and scoring
Trent Edwards does it all

As for the garden: I did a little research on cucurbits, primarily because all my early squash blossoms have just fallen right off their stems*. The answer helped with the cuke-bounty problem in my last post: many or most of the cucumber blossoms are male blossoms, and cannot produce fruit. However, a quick check revealed over a dozen fruits growing, and there’s still 6-8 weeks till the first frost.

The upgrade to v2.6 was accomplished, then I had to start tweaking. You can see the new look, for today. I’ve got much more to do, and bought some books this morning. Maybe a techie job would be better for me… No news there, yet, but I haven’t looked hard.

We’re back at the gym, again. I’m feeling great, have lost 18 lbs since May (6 lbs in August!) and I’m almost back to myself again. Stress will kill you, but first it’ll make you feel really crappy.

Garden progress is amazing. The lettuce is fairly … wet and limp, and we haven’t eaten much. In another couple of weeks I can put them out in more direct sun; the earthbox hasn’t had a chance to dry out since I installed it.
and we haven’t eaten much. In another couple of weeks I can put them out in more direct sun; the earthbox hasn’t had a chance to dry out since I installed it.

The cukes and carrots, however, have behaved much better. Three cucumber plants (Lemon cucumbers, which are lemon-sized but cucumber-flavored) have hundreds of blossoms, many of which have set fruit.

I’m collecting recipes for dill pickles (Lisa - are pickles generally gluten-free?) in case these deliver as many as I’m afraid they will.

I’ve been working all day - literally - on upgrading WordPress. Sorry for the spotty connectivity. My version was so old, I had to do three intermediate upgrades to make it work. Ugh.

Here’s an FO from July - My cherry CeCe, knit in Cascade Sierra. It’s been just the thing for quick trips to the grocery(I get cold in the dairy aisle, the meat aisle, and everywhere else they have open cold cases wasting energy.)

Still, I’m having trouble with images - and this editor is not what I had before! Much harder to use. I’ll have to see what I can do about that.

We just returned from (actually, recovered from - we actually got back late Saturday night) a road trip to Wisconsin. Did you know that “fresh” cheese curds are not refrigerated? They’re best straight from the dairy, while still warm even, and they squeak when you bite into them.
The kids were wonderfully well-behaved, considering we spent 28 hrs out of 84 in the car. They were very excited to see Aunt Laura, Uncle William and their cousins, and chattered about them the whole way there - with only two or three “when will we be there”s.

We took a walk to the nearby elementary school, and Megan showed us the creek that flooded this last spring. The clumps of grass in the tree, 8-10 feet above the water? That was the crest. She walks over this creek every day - except that, during the high water, the bridge - and its railings - were completely covered.

We also saw a bit of Americana: an original McDonald’s restaurant, #129, with the original sign and arches. A nice counterpoint to our trip to the mall in Appleton, where all the stores (except for the store with the Green Bay Packers gear) were the same as every other mall in America.

More highlights (sorry, no pix): Laura’s birthday dinner at Fratello’s - a really nice restaurant on the waterfront; the Oshkosh B’gosh outlet store; Pierce Manufacturing, where they make fire trucks for communities all over the hemisphere; lunch (and German Chocolate ice cream) at Culver’s.

Fooled ya! No more work for me (not me, not now, at least for a while). The breakup is over, we’re all still friends (geez, one of the worse things about working with women - we need to be BFF) and now I can get my head together. Fortunately, I can take a week or two to get my head together before starting a new job search.

And what does any fiberholic do when she needs to get her head together? KNIT! And spin, too, of course.

This is last week’s BFL from Gales Art, exactly 56 ounces, almost 175 yds. The colors are exquisite, with one of the kelp-y greens exactly matching this seedum in my front yard.

I obesssively split the roving (with three color repeats) in half, then quarters, and put together the quarters by weight so there’d be half the yarn in each skein. This is what’s left, or, what went into the first skein - it’s exactly the same, see? So I’ll get matchy-matchy socks from it. (Crossing fingers.)

And then there’s CeCe. No pictures, because she’s a big mess of unblocked lace, all bunched up on a too-short circular needle. Not that there hasn’t been any excitement. Let me count the ways:

1. Misreading the part about where to “mark the pattern” to match the lace across the raglans, once the pieces were joined together
2. Completely forgetting rows 1 & 2 of the pattern, for much of the body and nearly all of one sleeve
3. Changing the center st in the pattern from sl1,k2tog,psso to sl2tog,k1,p2sso - which sticks out like a sore thumb
4. Realizing that I’m knitting cotton - and my row gauge after blocking is quite a bit different than pre-blocking. So add on another 15 body rows, and 25 rounds on each sleeve.

Sigh.

No pictures, because we’re not on the best of terms. It will never be “perfect”, but I corrected many many problems yesterday, and worked all the way back to the “join pieces together” section. Now that we’re decreasing 4-6 sts every RS row, it’s going faster and faster… my favorite part of any project! So look for pix soon.

I actually remembered the day this year though - happy 6th blogiversary to me. If the last year had been more than monthly posts, I’d be prouder.

I’m on vacation, probably for the rest of the summer, so I’ve got time. Enough for a little blogging, a little picture-downloading, and some great gardening skill-building.
So what’s been good, these last few months?

A thrilling trip to FL where I drove from Tampa to Orlando through incredible driving rain. Makes me wonder what a hurricane must be like. Then back to Clearwater for a visit with Adam, Molly and Lisa (plus Jake the talking wonder-cat, but no pictures.) Wonderful early-morning trip to Honeymoon Island, where we looked and looked for the beach cleaner - but either he was on vacation, or he hadn’t been kept after all.  We made several trips to Lisa’s LYS, doing much damage to my charge cards, including 4 oz of this beautiful BFL from Gale Evans, destined for sock yarn. (I just started spinning this yesterday, 1 1/2 oz done, and I think I’ve got the hang of it.)

Immediately upon my return, spring was almost done springing. You can’t blink your eyes in Rochester, I tell ya. I did get a couple pictures near the end - our tiny Korean or French lilac (no matter what its provenance, it smells like absolute heaven), and a rare shot of Tuna rolling in the warm grass. Since that day, she’s only gone outside to eat the grass, and remains on the cool kitchen floor the rest of the time.

Next up: Two graduations - Paul’s nephew Scott (Hobart & William Smith), complete with pipes, drums, pomp, curcumstance, and light rain; and my niece Brianna (Wayne Central), during a much better stretch of weather - and under a covered amphitheater. Much more sensible! The lily is from my garden, and it’s called Mona Lisa - for the two members of the family who couldn’t be with us on this special day.

Several adventures, to Stonybrook Park, Keuka Lake, and out to visit the grandkids. Too busy playing to take any good pictures of them, natch. But an awesome shot of their captured cicada (and yes, we sent him off to … do what cicadas do. Mate, lay eggs, and wait seven years underground, right? At least this one got his 15 seconds of fame…

So, I’d better think about making myself presentable, eh? This lying-about-until-noon is delicious, but not getting any weeds hoed, packages mailed, porches swept, laundry folded. But taken in moderation, it is good food for the soul.

FINALLY I’m sitting at my computer this morning for my own pleasure, and I figured out what was wrong with the pattern link on the Orenburg lace page. The pattern itself has not been updated - there’s a little “issue” with Acrobat on my new computer. But I’m testing OpenOffice.org, which has a built-in PDF exporter. I’m also looking at cutting down the size of the chart, but that might be tricky. The center section doesn’t have a handy repeat.

In garden gnus, the sugar snap peas are blooming! They’re taller than me (and the trellis/netting they’re to grow on). According to my calculations, I should be expecting to start harvesting July 4th.

The roses are at their peak, and as beautiful & aromatic as ever. I think I’ve figured out why they’re so much less prolific than they were when we moved in. The maple tree, in the back corner of the yard, has at least doubled in size, and (now that I’ve seen the yard in mid-day sunshine) the roses, raspberries, peonies and Shasta daisies are in full shade. I should say, ex-Shasta daisies, because they were very thin 2 yrs ago, almost gone last year, and completely gone this year.

I’d hate to have to lose that tree, and the nice shady corner in the yard, but we’ve less than 1200 sq ft of backyard. Now, 700 sq ft of sunny yard. I’ve got to put in some raised beds, to make better use of the space.

Time’s gotten away from me. The site even went dark for a couple days, because I haven’t even been looking at email. Real life is kind of stressful right now, nothing disastrous, but cumulatively more than I could handle gracefully. Nuff said.

Some knitting’s been happening. I’m on the first sleeve of CeCe; started the body of Hillswick; and in Florida I bought some linen yarn (Euroflax Sport) and started Annie Modesitt’s Fern Lace Twinset. No FO’s, though.

Motherly bragging: Sean’s band, Man v. Moon, won the “Battle of the Bands” finals and have some great songs (you can here a couple on their site). Staffan made the Honor Roll, and won 3rd place in the intrascholastic Math competition. And Lisa is amazing - you can see here just how much she does, and how well!

While I’m looking on the bright side, I’m thinking about the other 1,096 times I’ve posted here over the last 6 years … It’s amazing how many times I’ve thought “When did X happen” - and found the answer here. I may be irregularly for a few weeks, but I will get my mojo back. (Thank you for your patience.)

A couple inches of thick, heavy, wet snow coated everything Friday morning, and made me glad I live here. So beautiful! By Saturday afternoon, most of the snow coating the trees had blown off. But these bushes (in Meridian Park, down by the canal) look just much like cotton ready to be picked.

We had a great walk yesterday, through woods & fields, on paths we’d never seen before. The sun was shining in a deep blue sky, and it felt much warmer than it actually was. We walked for an hour, then stopped for hot subs on the way home. My favorite kind of day.

Some progress made on CeCe … It’s been frogged twice, once because I cast on too many sts, once because I misread my gauge swatch. I’m knitting in Cascade Sierra, 80% cotton/20% wool, and I machine-washed and -dried my swatch. As I expected, there was significant shrinkage in the length, but not much in width, so my gauge is 5% small length-wise. I could block it to gauge, but then I’d have to block it every time I washed it. Which would never happen, of course. I’ll add a half-inch before shaping for the neckline, and call it done.

Progress on the Kauni, too. The sleeve and neck steeks are crocheted and cut; sleeves are picked up; and I’m knitting both sleeves at the same time, split at the center underarm, and steeked between them. It was tough to manipulate the circular needle for the first 2 inches or so, but now it’s coming along quite well. And the sleeves will match!

I stopped knitting last night, because the sleeve decrease rate seemed way too shallow. But now that I look at some FO sleeves more closely, I can see that it’s a wide sleeve, gathered sharply at the cuff. I like the look.

A rare picture of Samwich, our shrinking violet. Usually she hears the camera turn on, and she’s off like a shot. But yesterday afternoon she spent hours at the window, watching this mourning dove as it sat on the roof. It finally flew away about dusk, and we could all get some rest. Soon spring will be here, the window will be open, and she can watch birds from the roof - instead of watching birds on the roof.