9.28 I just have a few to go...

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9.25 The 3 dwarfs are here...

Grumpy, Sneezy, Sleepy...

It's been oddly busy and dull here. I'm annoyed at various people and institutions. I've dumped flickr/yahoo since they can't figure out how to accept payment from me and keep telling me that I need to change something (unspecified) about how I am paying them. The final straw was the follow-up email they sent me Question: How was our customer service? Answer: Piss poor. Response: Dead silence. I'm giving photobucket a try for a year, but am disinclined to want to learn a new interface, so it's a struggle make myself get started.

Bloglines is finally going tits-up so I'm transferring my blogroll to google reader. All sorts of op-ed pieces will tell me that RSS feed aggregators are so old school, but frankly, I like having my blog feeds all in one place. It's annoying to move them one at a time, but I'm fixing up the dead-ends as I go and dumping the ones that haven't updated in three years (waving sadly goodbye to some people). I am adding a few new ones, so the list is likely to be longer than it was.

I wish the weather would just settle into fall - ramping up into summertime heat (93 yesterday) and then dumping into fall (62 projected today) is playing havoc with my sleep cycle.

I've been harvesting potatoes and carrots and tomatoes and eggplant. The eggplant has taken the recent string of chilly weather unhappily and may not continue with the dozen or so inch long eggs. The tomatoes I planted this year were Black Cherry tomatoes. They are a nice little cherry tomato to eat out of hand, but not acidic enough for my primary use for tomatoes, which is with cottage cheese. I think I'll switch back to the Sungolds next year.

We had a nice, if chilly, time at the Fingerlakes Fiber Fest. We ran into some people serendipitously but the weather wasn't really encouraging for lounging. The alpacas and the angora bunnies and the shetland sheep were wonderful as usual. The Artichoke French guy was there, but the line was always a dozen people deep, so we tried the lamb sausage people instead. Very tasty. I did buy a few things, but it's all very dull picture fodder - packets of dye stuffs and a couple of packages of beans from the bean soup ladies. We were mostly looking for things for a friend of mine and I did my best to enable her. She tried a bunch of spindles but decided she likes the Tracy Eichheim she's borrowed from me best. She did get some lovely CVM/silk to work on spinning next.

9.7 Ten on Tuesday

Ten things to do before the end of summer...

1. School supply shopping.

2. Changing of the guard in the garden - out with the parsley and the lettuce; in with the broccoli and maybe some cabbages.

3. See about harvesting the potatoes. It's my first year with potato grow bags and I'm curious to see how it turned out.

4. Put the boat in storage. This means a trip to the Hudson Valley where J's brother puts it in his shed for us.

5. Harvest the Northern Spy apples and get them put in the freezer.

6. Revamp the garage once the boat is out of it. I think we can toss the umpteen shoes and boots that K&S have outgrown, dispose of the oddments of fish tank stuff we haven't used in three years and re-arrange the garden tools.

7. A walk or two along the shore of the lake (Ontario), before the cold winds of fall make that undesirable. It's amazing how cool the lake breezes can be even when it's really hot.

8. Finish up the hats for fall soccer viewing. My standard go-to hat for winter weather is a spiffy red-and-white, to go along with my red coat. S's school colors are blue-and-gold. I got shunted into the red-and-white-school-colors seating section last year, apparently based on the hat I was wearing. People looked at me funny when I cheered the keeper making a save against the red-and-white team. This was not a problem at all games, naturally, but I decided I needed a blue-and-gold hat, regardless of my coat color.

9. Finish up the shawl on the needles. I'm tired of looking at it.

10. Finish up the cross stitch on the q-snaps. Ditto. Although this has been hanging about much longer than the shawl has.

9.4 Random babble

I'm so glad it's moving into September. The temperature outside is 67F and we have the windows open and I'm actually wearing long pants vs. shorts for the first time in, oh, what feels like six months. Probably really only 3, but when one is hot, time drags.

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K is at a car wash fundraiser. She went to it dressed as though today were yesterday (you know, when it was still 89F). I took pity on her and went back after a while with a jacket and sweatpants.

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J is working on the car (the power steering suddenly has no power steering fluid). He has just come back from the store (for the umptieth time getting tools and parts and...). He found himself in the plumbing aisle at the hardware store, chatting with a fellow getting plumbing parts. I'll spare you the recitation of their conversation, except to say that at some point the guy's eyes glazed over and after a blank moment, he said "you must be an engineer".

I fell apart laughing.

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It's September so it's only two weeks to Fingerlakes Fiber Fest. I don't need any fiber, I don't particularly need any tools... Tell me why I'm going again?

oh, right. Never mind ;-)

I'll be there on Sunday because I have to work the gate for a couple of hours. I'm still debating whether I want to go on Saturday too. I suppose I ought to look at the schedule.

9.2 Serendipity

I went to dyeing at the Genesee Country Village a few weeks ago. It's the first time I've gotten there this summer and I suddenly realized I didn't have much to take to dye. I'd like to dye the other end of the Zephyr cone, but I can't until I've finished the Dayflower. I've dyed up all my other whites/naturals in yarn already, and short of going out to buy more or getting cracking on spinning some naturals, all I had left to dye was fiber. So... top it was.

I chained a length of it, and when I got there, realized I had forgotten any cheesecloth. Since we're dyeing in open kettles and the fibers get knocked around a bit, it's a good idea to wrap up any fiber in a cheesecloth sack to help reduce felting and/or drifting apart. I borrowed a bit of cheesecloth that had seen previous duty. The white top went into a tin mordant bath in the yellow cheesecloth, and when it came out, the color on the cheesecloth had transferred to the top directly touching it. Having taken a good look at what I then had, I decided against putting the top into the tansy bath waiting for it and put it directly into the indigo bath.

It isn't what I started out to do (tin/tansy/indigo) but I like the result.

The grey will have to wait its turn.

8.31 Ten on Tuesday

Ten ways to lighten my mood:

1. Go to the African Violet or Orchid Show.

2. Read a frivolous book.

3. Snorgle a baby.

4. Put a lively jig on the CD and dance while doing the dishes. Best done when my kids are not at home as their jeering snickering annoys me again.

5. An audiobook on the MP3 and my spinning wheel with something long draw. Or short draw as long as it isn't too slippery or matted or VM-y or...

6. Soak in the jacuzzi. Possibly with company of the right sort. Kids and cats are out.

7. A nap in front of the fan. Or the fire, depending on the season.

8. Sit and knit.

9. Laugh with my kids. Or a friend. Even long distance is good.

10. Watch a funny movie. Or dig out the Looney Tunes.