Fun with Color II

Take one bump white top (lovely soft stuff) and dye it as is; i.e. don't unroll it, just soak in water with detergent, then add to dye pot (Cushing's Navy Blue) in its now soggy state. Watch the outer layer drift apart and wonder about the inside. Once it has been through the bring-up-to-temperature and let-cool-down stages, drain it out.






Rewrap so the outside (now very dark blue) is on the inside, and the inside (now still mostly white with large flashes of pink and some blue) is on the outside. Don't bother soaking it again, it's still soggy. Make up a dyepot with Cushing's Cherry (that bluish red aforementioned in the previous post) and plop it in to repeat the heat and cool cycles.


Result:

I found the way that the various portions of each dye mix penetrated the bump to different depths interesting. I think if I were to do this again, I would pick colors that were variations of the same rather than two different colors so that the range of color would not be quite as extreme. For this experiment I did want to see the effect of the two different colors. Now to spin it up.

Fun with Color
This week, in odd moments, I've been playing with the dye pot. I don't really have space for a full dye kitchen and I don't have a good scale for weighing dyes with and, at the moment, I'm satisfied with playing with premixed colors, so Cushing dye it is. Take one pound of brown heathery Falkland Islands Rosemary wool. Add Cherry dye (a blue tinged red) and voila -

Black Cherry!













Moving on then to white roving (Bump A) I used Crimson in order to come up with this:
I'm not sure what I did differently between the two dye sessions but the second set of top is significantly less levelly dyed than the first. If I were going to use this as a standalone I would redye it and even it out but I'm not and the color variation will work well for what I have in mind.

There is a bump B of white but that is currently in the dyepot and will have to wait to take its turn on stage in due time.

A-dyeing we shall go, a-dyeing we shall go...

I've got the dye pot simmering. Light brown Rosemary wool top with Cherry Cushings. It didn't all strike on yesterday so I'm bringing it up to temp again and adding more vinegar. Waiting in the wings is white Rosemary wool top and Crimson Cushings. Should be fun.

Last week was a whirl through spring break with the kids - Easter with the PGrandPs for two days in Pennsylvania, then 3 days in MD with the MGrandPs and my nephew (age 4) and a visit with my brother and his wife (who rented a Cesna for the day and took the kids for rides), and evening visits with my sister who was too overwhelmed at work to stay and play much though she would have liked.

Taking a 4 yo to the National Zoo was fun, although I didn't remember the zoo being on a hill. You can go uphill or down - we started at the up side, so of course it was all uphill at the end. A good time was had by all and he slept all the way home.

I'm actually making decent but slow progress on the Herborgar. Part of the problem is I need to switch to wooden needles - the Addis are too slick for the yarn I'm using. Sylvia, I appreciate the offer on the walk through, but I think I'm past the setup part now where I was losing myself and into the part that's going to be much more mindless knitting. I need to take a hard look at the yarn grist I've got and the recommended grist and make an assessment of whether I need to follow your lead and lengthen the shawl a bit. My gut feel is that I do need to.

Being the compleat lemming when I finish a project, I often wind up starting the next project by picking the thing up from my to-do pile that I have most recently seen someone else doing. In this case, that is the Hyrna Hergorbar from the "Three Cornered and Long Shawls" from Schoolhouse Press. Yes, I'm using the translation also. I got the book last fall and have been drifting back and forth through it, trying to decide what first. What first has now been decided, thanks to Claudia, and I cast on two nights ago. I have quickly determined that this is not a shawl to knit while doing much of anything else. Classical music on the stereo is ok. Nothing else. I have gotten to row 21, 75 stitches, and am about to tink it back since I have made a mistake in row 20. I have enough of the pattern down visually that it doesn't take a whole lot of careful scanning of the chart for every stitch, but the middle and ends are where the action is and I've goofed it up.

This pattern is not amenable to my standard methods of keeping track of what I'm doing with lace. So far, I'm counting each side of the midline, but that will become cumbersome quickly. I'm still pondering the problem.

Sadly, pictures will have to wait until I have access to the camera again. I'm using some handspun I made with no particular aim in mind except "probable shawl". It's wheel spun, one strand alpaca and one strand tussah silk hankie. I've no idea on weight, wpi, ypp, or anything as I was a total sloth when I did this and just winged it. I'm pretty sure I have enough yardage available. Anyone want to take bets?

Well, the cold became bronchitis but the antibiotics are kicking in. I did finish and wash and block the striped one and that's much more interesting to think about. The finished measurements were 6 ft x 23 inches.






I took a picture on the Eldest Child (she has a black shirt to wear under it) and while she doesn't care for the colors, she admitted it was a. light and b. warm. Now all it needs is a shawl pin.

I hate having colds. I hate it particularly when everyone around me has a cold and expects me to do that motherly shtuff when I just want to climb in a corner and be left alone. I'm not even getting any knitting done. I did finish a book, Eyes of the Dragon, by whatsisname. Stephen King (yes I did have to get up and go look. I'm really that out of it.) It was good. I might even read another book by him if I could be sure it wasn't a horror story, not being into giving myself nightmares.

I'm almost through tucking in ends on the stripey one and will post pics as soon as it is blocked.

I don't get it. Really I don't.

I may have mentioned before that I don't really see eye to eye with many of my neighbors. Not in the sense of not getting along with them but in the sense that I don't understand them.

I went to an open house for the family of one of Sean's friends - they were moving away. I dropped in just for a bit to visit and then to collect my son who'd been there all day. Several people had brought along goodies to share and we were awaiting the pizza that was anticipated at any moment. My next door neighbor wandered by with a plate that looked tasty and I asked him what it was - eggplant casserole. Yum. Never mind the pizza - just let me have some of that.

I was enjoying it and another neighbor from down the street, whom I had been chatting with, was also digging in, when she commented that it was extremely difficult to make, it just took hours. I was startled and made some comment to the effect that I really didn't think so. I hadn't made it for a while, but it wasn't that hard. She was rather offended (why? she didn't make it, I knew that) and started explaining just how it was made and how complicated it was. I nodded along and when she was through, mentioned a variation that I liked to make with it. This apparently was sufficient to feel that I wasn't belittling the dish and she soothed her feathers and we talked of other things.

I hadn't made it for a while and I do like it and the eggplant looked good at the store today and I'd cheese left over from the weekend, so I made it this afternoon.

2 eggplants (the larger ones, fresh and not woody)
milk
bread crumbs
romano cheese
mozzarella cheese (asiago cheese, parmesan cheese, as available)
1 can tomatoes
1 can tomato sauce
oil

Peel the eggplants. Slice into 1/4-3/8 inch slices. Dip in milk. Dip in bread crumbs mixed with grated romano cheese. Saute in oil. (Eggplant drink oil. Use a nonstick pan, but they are going to drink the oil up). Blot on paper towels.

Blend the tomato sauce and tomatoes in a blender. Grate the cheese(s) (about 3/4 cup grated cheese).

Layer eggplant slices, tomato sauce and grated cheese in a casserole dish, beginning with eggplant and ending with cheese. Bake at 350 F for approximately 45 minutes or until lightly brown on top and bubbling at the endges. A fork should go in easily.

It took 35 minutes from start of the peeling to putting it in the oven, and another 45 minutes to bake.

I just don't get the 'it's really hard and complicated' thing.

Children's books

The answer to Devorah's question is that of course Dr. Seuss's books are on the eternally wonderful list. My personal favorites are And to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street, Happy Birthday to You and Horton Hatches the Egg. oh, and The Butter Battle. and the Grinch. and The Sleep Book. Ok, so almost anything he wrote. But those are the top three. Umm, six.

Other children's books - for the younger set I like the Sandra Boynton books, which were not out when I was young but which my children adored. Also Piggy in the Puddle by Charlotte Pomerantz, and the Jan Brett books with their wonderful panelled illustrations. The school library in Asmara had a number of the Snipp, Snapp, Snurr books by Maj Lindman and I was most disappointed to not be able to find them in libraries stateside when we got back. Amazon seems to list them so it looks like they've been reprinted. My sister had some of the Noddy books by Enid Blyton and I found some of the Mr. Twiddle books by the same author which my son thinks are wonderful. These also seem to be being reprinted and I need to look into this.

For older children: My all time list has to include Diane Duane (So you want to be a wizard, etc) and Tamora Pierce, Andre Norton, and the Narnia books. The Hed books by Patricia McKillip are wonderful. And Robin McKinley, particularly The Blue Sword, The Hero and the Crown, and Beauty.

Various comments:

1. It's quiet this morning. After three days of wind roaring through the trees, the wind has finally died down to a faint breeze. All the leaves that were on the ground in the woods now seem to be either on the fence line around the dog's yard or in a swirl around the front steps. The wind has sounded like a freight train for three solid days (which leads me to wonder what people compared it to before trains? Actually a freight train sounds like a gale running through the bare limbs of the winter trees.)
2. Somehow I didn't get the memo that the offspring don't have school tomorrow. I don't think I would have scheduled my annual poke and prod for tomorrow if I had. Maybe I can sneak in a trip to Robin's farm afterwards?
3. K is a genuine 1st soprano. This amazes me - I could never reach higher than an F on a good day - she soars to A without a stop and in an argument with her brother over who could go higher (she or his trumpet) she managed to hit an even higher C# with barely a wobble. Vocal lessons have given her the discipline and support she really needed. (He was annoyed - his highest on the trumpet was only B flat).
4. Falling downstairs is not all it's cracked up to be. The visible bruises are starting to fade and the whack on my head is almost back to normal.
5. It's a sunny day (though cold) and I want to go for a walk. Better find a new book on tape though. Hmmm. Maybe a trip to the library had best come first.
6. Animals in Translation by Temple Grandin is a fascinating book. I have to get hold of another of her books (Thinking in Pictures). Her world view is very interesting and she pulls together an incredible number of different fields in this book. I got the book out of the library because people on the dog training list were discussing it and differing from some of her opinions on dogs and I see where they were coming from, but I also see (and they acknowledged) that she has a lot of really interesting material in this book on how autistic people think and how that relates to understanding the behavior of animals.
7. The red cat has developed a habit of prowling the house when everyone else has gone. Then, having checked the perimeter, he comes in and stretches up as high as he can reach and carefully inserts his claws in my leg. Having gotten my attention, he awaits being picked up and settles himself carefully up over my chest and shoulder. One hand of mine is expected to support his rear and the other is expected to begin the patting. This doesn't leave me many hands available for typing.
8. I got an A in my latest class. I am happy.

Weather
The weather has been very... changeable. This weekend it was warm and sunny. And rainy. And sunny. And warm. We went for a hike in the woods where it was muddy. We decided to hike back along the road where it wasn't muddy, instead of retracing our steps. Some mud was (reasonably) fun, but lots would have been overkill.

Then, on Monday, it thundered and poured. It was windy and rainy. Just before sunset, the clouds broke in the west and we had the first sunshine all day.
Today is much of the same, wild winds followed by much precipitation, only it's now about 30 degrees colder and the precipitation is snow. No thunder at the moment, but we are promised more.

New spindle
I've admired these spindles at Gaustad studio for some time. I never asked questions about them; the blurb mentioned "designed for flax" and I gave a mental sigh of relief. I have no interest in flax, I don't want to spin it, don't need that spindle. Then Sylvia mentioned them in conjuction with "silk". Ok, silk. I'm paying attention now.

I have the silky oak one mentioned as "good for cotton or fine silk". It is doing just fine with tussah silk. The bottom whorl slides off and you can spin with it either way. I had to take the bottom whorl off to learn to spin on it, but now that I have the trick down, it works like a charm with or without the bottom whorl. Stephenie gave me a few tips and tricks with it which helped, but the single biggest thing after "roll it up (or down) your thigh" that makes a difference is rolling it up my thigh with just the tip end, rather than the side of the shaft. This is not how I spin other thigh rollers, but makes a big difference in the wobble factor on this one. It isn't yet habit to do it with this one so I always have a moment of "what? Oh yeah" when I start spinning with it.

The striped one is making good progress. I find it amazing how different kinds of light make this particular piece look so different. The first picture available earlier was under artificial light on a cloudy day. The second picture was in bright sunlight. This picture today is under the Ott light and had to be lightened, though the flash did not feel impelled to go off.

It's now about 13 inches wide and moving along smartly. The Ott light separates the colors and make the different ones look very stark, fading out the intervening blending shades. The previous picture is much more true to what I see in person. I'll try again on a sunny day.

The Wizard of London by Mercedes Lackey was a decent book and one I will buy eventually, but not as good as some others in this series. Possibly my disappointment in it stems from the fact that I read the short stories that were incorporated in it some years ago and skimmed through those parts rather hastily. That meant that my reading was somewhat jerky, which might be why I felt the book moved in fits and starts. It might not have been the book, just me. The best book in this series by Lackey is still The Serpent's Shadow or The Fire Rose, which latter book is set in the same fantasy world although not formally grouped with the more recent books. She's done a good job of retelling fairy tales within a particular world-view context and since I love fairy tales...

Sylvia tagged me for the book meme. I will always talk about books.

1: Name five of your [many] favorite books Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein, Gilliane by Roberta Gellis, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and Dear and Glorious Physician by Taylor Caldwell. These I read and reread and never tire of.
2: What was the last book you bought? For myself? America Knits by Melanie Falick, a book I read several years ago from the library and wanted for myself but not at hardback prices. In paperback now and the last thing I bought with the gift card my daughter gave me for Christmas. For the kids, more recently, I bought Messenger by Lois Lowry for K (related to two other books she had read and liked) and Dragon's Blood by Jane Yolen for S.
3: What was the last book you read? The last book I read... As in finished? Ummm - I'm in the middle of Martin the Warrior, reading it to S, and I started New Rules by Bill Maher and Why is the Foul Pole Fair by Vince Staten after picking them up at the library yesterday, and the Road to Underfall by Mike Jefferies as a bedtime story, but the one I finished most recently must be Desiree by Roberta Gellis which was my most recent bedtime story.
4: List five books or authors that have been particularly meaningful to you (in no particular order). Andre Norton got me into science fiction and then into fantasy and for years I read everything she wrote. Robert Heinlein was another I read everything by and has always been extremely thought provoking. Stephen Jay Gould has been my hero for explaining things in science in terms even a casual lay person could understand, particularly in putting science in its historical context. Roberta Gellis and Georgette Heyer are my favorite romance authors, in their different ways, because the serious research that underlies both their bodies of work shines through.
5: Name some books you’ve been dying to read but just haven’t yet. I dunno about this one. Most of the books that I really want to read but haven't yet aren't published yet. The last Harry Potter book comes to mind. The next Magdalene la Batarde book by Roberta Gellis, Chains of Folly. The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde, which is apparently out now (as I look into this) and which I need to get from the library since I laughed myself sick over his earlier books.

The 50 book challenge was something I ran into on Jarret's blog last year and had to go figure out. Technically, it seems to be a challenge to read 50 books in a year. Phah, child's play. I chose to interpret this as a challenge to read 50 new books in a year, not counting those I reread for old times sake, which adds up to many more than 50 and which were cluttering up the list. I'm doing this because I like to read, and because I like to share the books that I read with others, and because I've been losing track of some of the titles that I've read and having a list in one place wouldn't be a bad thing.

(Memory is a funny thing. I generally remember the written word. But if my mind is convinced I have another way to remember something, it cuts out duplication. What was the name of the book of cowboy short stories I read which was always on the middle shelf at eye level in the third stack back on the right in the Howard County main library before they built a new main library in downtown Columbia and shifted all the books around? I still don't know. But the stories were really good, particularly the one about the guy who had a store and could get anything you needed and another guy tried to stump him and eventually ordered a wife. Or the science fiction book that was in the center section (on the other side) of the end of children's fiction in the same library- that one I eventually tracked down mentally (The Secret of the Marauder Satellite by Ted White which sounds very Hardy Boys-ish but was pretty interesting) but so far the cowboy stories is a lost cause. So having a list of book names might not be a bad idea.)

Should I give a blurb on each as I finish them?

Progress is being made on the striped shawl. I'm dithering over how much yarn to save for the border. I've moved from thinking "i have plenty" to thinking "i better get spinning". Spinning would be good because I'd like the border to be fairly monochrome AND if I take out the skeins that are currently appropriate, the balance of the shawl swings to darker than I'd like. SO... I think I need to rid the spindles of the blue silk and go back to spinning BFL.

Knitting has been going on swimmingly. I'd been neglecting the jaguar for the knitting, but this is becoming bad for the wrists. I'm making myself stop and do stitching in the evening, partly because I don't want to lose momentum on the jaguar and partly because I really need to not knit. We're down to the nose now, at least in outline.

I trundled over to the shop and let her persuade me that lavender is really a shade of grey and will look just peachy keen under the jaguar's chin. I remain unconvinced, but this is why other people's color designs always look better to me than my own. He's really looking almost 3d in this pic isn't he?

I hate showing people stuff that isn't working - but if I don't take pictures of it, it's difficult to discuss why it wasn't working post facto. So. That being the case, i.e. no I didn't take any pictures at the time...

Once upon a time, about a year ago, I bought a bump of red/yellow/orange blue faced leicester top. Lovely stuff.

Over the course of several months, and with the aid of two spindles, the bump became quite a number of skeins, comprising approximately 1500 yards with an average of 3000 ypp. This has been destined to form a shawl, but I haven't been able to agree with myself on a pattern. Multicolored yarn does best in a simple pattern; complicated lace patterns get lost in the changes of color and vice versa.

The Stonington shawl seemed to offer a possibility. I began knitting. And knitted and knitted all the time assuring myself that this was going to work. Stonington is a garter stitch Shetland style with a simple block in the center and a relatively plain border. Sadly, this is where a picture at the time would make more sense of the narrative. This is the remains of ripping the Stonington try - it had gotten to the point of having it's cross section of 145 stitches and had moved on to a reduced number (approximately 70) before I threw in the towel and ripped.

Changing colors in the shawl would have worked had the repeats been shorter, but having wildly varying depth of stripes as the triangle grew and then shrank again was not a pleasing sight. J hates watching me rip stuff - I didn't let me see me do that one.

I spent some time poring over shawl books and finally decided that for the length color repeat I had, I wanted something with unchanging row length and a very long row length at that. The Knitted Ruana in Cheryl Oberle's Folk Shawls is an excellent example of handling the color changes in long thin stripes, and The Rebozo from the same book gave me a pattern to launch off from.

The last problem was simply the fact that for such a long length, (at 5 stitches to the inch, 320 stitches is over 5 feet long, not that it looks like it, unblocked) I really needed to use a provisional cast on. I'll add a narrow border all the way around and remove the waste yarn later.

The stripes are still there, but much narrower and more pleasing to the eye. My eye at any rate.

It's out there somewhere in the snow and the darkness... Lurking and waiting...Why, it's... it's...

The Abominable Snow Pup!
Waiting for his girlfriend the little lab from next door. Sorry buddy, she ain't comin' out to dance tonight.

I've never been particularly good about making sure I start with the same amount of fiber for each spindle and this time I wound up with an unconscionable amount of single left on one spool. This lead to searching for information about an Andean plying bracelet which I found here and that led to this which looks like a mess around my wrist, but which in fact is such a plying bracelet and worked perfectly.

This was actually my second attempt at the technique and having succeeded once, I had to get fancy. The red/white/blue had been done as a three ply and for whatever reason, I had run out of one bobbin altogether and had about half as much on the second bobbin as the third. So, I did a bracelet with the long single and plied it together with the short which worked out very nicely as far as singles length went but I will say that three plying using a bracelet for two of the plies and a single from another bobbin rather calls for having three or four hands for tensioning purposes instead of just two. I suppose it would get easier with practice but the experience didn't leave me with the burning desire to run out and get more practice so I'm not sure it will get any easier. It was, however, successful. The red/white/blue is done and I get to move on (back) to other things, like plying the silk and angora and plying the wild raspberry and...

Having gotten to the jaguar, I realized that I never really finished collecting up threads for this project. I knew I was missing one of the oranges - the source of the little dots left here and there in the upper portion of the head. I didn't realize I was missing all four of the greens for the eyes. Those I went and collected today.

While looking through the bag o' threads to decide which ones I had vs. needed, I found a lavender-y purple. Why is that in there? I ask as I toss it back in the bag. I made my list of threads needed and trundled off to the local Jo-Ann's (chosen from the list of possibilites due to the need for ordinary sewing needles as well). I ran down my list of threads while pawing through the jumble of lazy susans with floss-on-sale. The last thread on the list, once I found it, was the lavender purple I had rejected without checking its number.

So, where exactly does lavender purple go on a jaguar?

The jaguar has finally moved somewhat beyond the stage of its last picture, and of today, we have the sketches of eyes. This is important, because just beyond the eyes is the halfway point of the piece. It will be several days work to finish up just to the eyes, however.

Working over-one, I find it important to observe little niceties of stitching that I sometimes like to ignore in stitching over-two. It's not that it isn't important in stitching over-two, it just doesn't make as visible a difference. One is that it is important that all stitching moves in the same direction - start at the top and work down or start at the bottom and work up but don't change direction.

Another is that when stitching over one, it makes a huge difference for me if I stitch a row of stitches (all the same color) one half at a time and then return stitching the other half. Much neater tidier work. Oddly enough, this is not true with stitching over two. Then I do tidier work stitching one complete stitch at a time. Based on comments from others when this was discussed in a stitchery forum, many people find this dichotomy to be true, thus proving (again) that when taking or giving advice, it's necessary to be very careful you know what the basis one is working from.

A third thing that helps is making sure that one's thread is not too long. This may sound simplistic, but every time you start or stop a thread, you have to worry about the process of doing so. Repeatedly threading one's needle gets on some people's nerves. And WASTING THREAD is the bugaboo of some people's lives. I've seen people explain at great length the contortions that they go through to preserve a piece of ripped thread for re-use.

I'm sorry people, life's too short. Thread has a maximum number of passes through fabric before it visibly frays. This maximum number is based on how rough the fabric is, how close together the holes are and how many other stitches have already passed through that hole. I'm using 1/6th of a section of floss, cut in approximately 15 inch lengths. Floss comes 6 yards at a time and costs between 30 and 50 cents per hank. I use short lengths, and if it tangles or goes wrong and has to be ripped, I get a new piece.

The last thing that's true about stitching over-one really applies to any counted stitchery: Count and count and count again. Right now, at the bottom of the left hand side, there's another run of black stitches that needs to go down about 15 or 20 stitches. I'm tempted to just keep going with black, finish it off and be done with that color. I won't do it though - past experience tells me I'm going to get burnt if I do.

Counting for counted cross stitch works much better when you can count in two dimensions. When a new run starts down out into unexplored territory, it works much better if you can triangulate your work so that it has been count checked in both horizontal and vertical space. For example, when I started the left eye, I positioned it based on the orange bit just above it. As soon as absolutely practical, I confirmed its position by counting sideways to the bit coming down the nose. The bit extending south of the left eye is now confirmed only in one dimension. Any further extensions past that point are past my comfort zone for one dimensional exploration. It doesn't sound like much, but it means quite a lot when you get down farther later on and discover that one dimesional exploration was one stitch over and two stitches too long. How much other stuff have you got based on it by then that now has to be ripped?

Cross stitch is not particularly a creative outlet for me. I love doing it, but it's all about precision and following a pattern and making it look right. There's a part of me that is very satisfied with tweaking the surroundings of a pattern to make it mine and then being able to go with the flow that someone else has prepared. I used to do ccs during my break when I was working at one software company. My program manager one day asked me why, and I told him I enjoyed it because it was a lot like programming - very precise, very neat, and often very detailed. It was better than programming because I never had to rework it based on changing requirements.

I've noticed that I go back to doing ccs when other parts of my life are chaotic, with ever changing demands on my time.

So. 2005 is gone and 2006 stretches before us. "Resolution" time. The only problem with that is that I made all the resolutions I wanted to about 2 months ago and now the only resolution left to make is to get myself back on schedule tomorrow. The relatives have been visited, the tree is coming down today, the kids and the husband head back to their respective places and I need to get my butt in gear to finish Homework 3 and Project Section 1 before next week Monday when class resumes.

The house is somewhat cluttered with the debris of the past two weeks, but all in all I have hopes for the next month. The biggest thing that happened in the past few weeks is the acquisition of new storage units. The book shelves are put together and the books are out of the boxes in the dining room and into the shelves. This left room available for the dining table to actually go into the dining room and the china cabinet to go as well. There are 3, count them, 3 drawers in the cabinet, which is wonderful as, while I love the new kitchen, the only thing it really lacks is drawer space. I knew I didn't want a desk, I wanted cabinet space but I let them overrule me, and now I'm paying for it. The only real point of the desk was to have a place for a phone and when they screwed up and didn't put in the phone jack, well, whachergonnado.

My sister was a sweetie and turned me loose in the local spinning/yarn store to pick out my present. I waved her toward their specialty shelves and said anything there would be just dandy. So I now have a bump of merino/bombyx and two bits of flash to play with. I hadn't ever seen the flash in person - it's fun stuff. I have to get her a spindle to play with. I check out their bumps and recommended one for a beginner to try. All she needs is a decent spindle to start with. I'm sorry, but I don't recommend an Ashford boat anchor for beginning. Oh, Sheila...

It's snowy outside but beginning to rain and I doubt by tomorrow that there's be much white left. It's been a white Christmas for once but the better part of our snow season lies ahead of us, not behind. (The year we moved to Rochester, it was 60 F the day John arrived on 2 Jan. The next day it turned cold and it snowed for 34 days in a row after that.)

The rest of the day is going to be cloudy and flat, to end in rain, but it started out with a bang.

Merry Christmas.