5.29 Birthday fun

If the best gifts are those things that one would thoroughly enjoy, but would not buy for oneself...



My family does do good birthday presents!

5.26 Lacykaty

Sometimes I wonder...

I realized I hadn't posted a picture of the Lacykaty. It wasn't until I had gone the trouble of editing the picture again, and getting it ready to upload that I realized that I've already been through that process and all I really need to do is post the damn thing.

So, herewith is a picture of the Lacykaty.

Made for K of course.

5.3 Ishbel finished

Awhile back, I showed you a beginning of Ishbel. I finished it ages ago (and K instantly co-opted it), but it's never been photographed. I still need to get her to hold still long enough to get a body shot, but here at least is the closeup of the lace.

Ishbel, handspun grey Corriedale plied with Interlacements Tussah silk that had been dyed in blue/green/red/purple.

5.1 Dyeing can make me happy

About a month ago, I showed you some spinning I'd been working on. Now that I'm not working both a full time and part time job, I might be able to post more than once a month. (I make no promises.)

I mentioned that I wasn't entirely happy with the dye job on the fiber. It's now been all overdyed with the original parent colors and I am much happier with it.

We have red:

and the knitting that comes from the red (the knitting is much truer to the shade of red, but the yarn pic gives a much better idea of the variation in the color):

And we have blue:

The variation isn't quite as obvious in this picture of the blue, but it does exist in the skein and I'm looking forward to seeing how it comes out in the knitting.

I'm much happier not having such wild variation in color in my knitting, although subtle is nice. I prefer spinning lots of color, but prefer knitting with almost plain. It is a puzzlement, and it does make it difficult to knit with my handspun unless I do something about the color post-spinning.

4.4 Spinning

I have gotten a bit of spinning done lately. DHF that I dyed, not entirely felicitously. I did like the way the spinning came out.

4.3 Sunbeam shower

Tiger cat trapped in his bathtub. There's something about a sunbeam that just lays a cat out flat.

4.2 First week...

Monday: Start new job.

Tuesday: Overheard: Person 1: Everybody around here is sick. Person 2: Yep, if you sit here and just listen all you can hear is people coughing and sneezing.

Wednesday: Come home with a sore throat.

Thursday: Wake up with a headache and sneezing.

Friday: Give up in the afternoon and come home early, coughing.

Saturday: Spend all day alternately coughing and napping. I'm going back to bed now.

2.8.11 Ten on Tuesday

Ten favorite Oscar winning movies.

Hmmm...

I rarely pay attention to the Oscars. I've almost never seen the nominees before they get voted on. I usually don't get around to seeing the winners or the rest of the nominees until three or four (or more? ETA: apparently "mostly more", given how few winners I've actually seen!) years later.

I wasn't even sure which movies I had seen were actually Oscar winners.

Google to the rescue on the innernets: Best Pictures

Well, running through the list, I've actually seen 14 of them. I disliked Rocky and Gone with the Wind, leaving me with 12. Ben-Hur was ok, but nothing I'll watch again. The Sound of Music is in the peculiar position of being a movie I liked enough that I watched it over and over, to the point where the music and the movie affect me like nails on a chalkboard. I'll probably never see it again and I switch stations if any of the music ever pops up.

So... My top 10 Oscar Winners:

1. It Happened One Night
2. Rebecca
3. Casablanca
4. West Side Story
5. My Fair Lady
6. Oliver!
7. The Sting
8. Amadeus
9. Forrest Gump
10. A Beautiful Mind

2.6.11 Birdfeeder

The birdfeeder in the back yard attracts a variety of birds at this time of year - dark eyed juncos, cardinals, the occasional chickadee, and a flock of mourning doves. Since the dog died last year, we've had crows and squirrels raiding more often; the cats just don't have quite the same effect.

This visitor was a new one:

The best I've been able to figure out, it's a kestrel. They eat rodents and small birds - I'm only surprised I've never seen one at the birdfeeder before.

It stayed for about 20 minutes, and then was gone as suddenly as it arrived.

2.4.11 Apricot Bread

I finally amassed all the ingredients to make one of my favorite breads:

Apricot Bread (based on the version in Beard on Bread)

Preheat oven to 350F.

2 cups [loosely packed] dried California apricots (on the east coast these are harder to find - most everyone carries the Mediterranean which won't make the bread I like).

1 cup boiling water, poured over the apricots to soften them. Wait about 30 seconds and then start pulling the apricots out of the water and start chopping them. I usually just pull a few at a time out, but if they are getting mushy, go ahead and fish them all out at once. Save the water.

Measure the water - add enough to have a full cup of water again.

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 c sugar

2 eggs

Mix water, soda, sugar and eggs together.

2-3/4 c flour

3 tsp baking powder

1 c black walnuts (As with the California apricots, the black walnuts are needed for the proper taste. They're somewhat hard to find around here, but my sister gave me a package for Christmas. )

Stir dry ingredients into wet ingredients.

Spray two loaf pans with cooking spray. Divide batter into pans equally. Bake for 45 minutes (until risen and dark golden). Let cool on a rack and enjoy.

1.21.11 Frustrations

1. Our new(er) computer goes to sleep when not used, to be woken up with a tap on the power button. The screen on the computer goes to sleep before the computer does, to be woken up with a wiggle of the mouse. If one sits down to the computer and thinks that the computer is asleep when it really is only the screen, and therefore taps the power button, the computer powers down instead of waking up. No amount of shrieking - "No you stupid thing, wake up, don't shut down" stops it from its mission at that point.
2. I've been slowly culling a set of books from the shelves, for the purpose of handing them to S as his next series to read (the Belgariad by David Eddings, FWIW). I had all of them except the first one located. Last week, in a fit of AHA! I found the first one and handed it to him. All of the rest of them have vanished. They are not in my bedroom, not on the shelves in the living room or the dining room, not in his bedroom, not in the office...
3. I miss having a dog. The squirrels have decided that a cat is insufficient protection to make them leave the bird feeder alone. I have threatened to send J and S out on some dark night to pee all around the perimeter as the dog used to do.

1.18.11 Ten on Tuesday

10 favorite games from my childhood:

1: Jigsaw puzzles. When I was very young I would do them until I was bored with them, then I would turn the puzzle pieces upside down and do them again sans picture. As we got older, we would get a big puzzle for Christmas and spend the week between Christmas and New Year's doing puzzles on the card table. As we finished each one, we would spread newspaper over it and start the next one because we couldn't bear to take them apart as quickly as we wanted to start a new one.

2. Life. We usually didn't finish the game, which was just as well because that way no one got hurt feelings over not winning.

3. Chinese checkers. We got quite good at it. I suspect nowadays a 6 year old in practice could beat me hands down.

4. Rummy. Gin rummy, rummy 500... We went backpacking a lot to cabins (all the camping and distance from people, none of the sleeping-on-the-ground-on-a .5 inch mat). Card games were easily portable and endlessly amusing.

5. Solitaire. FreeCell (which we simply called solitaire), variations on FreeCell, Clock Solitaire, Pyramid Solitaire, Idiot's Delight... I had a book of 101 solitaire games and we worked our way through it. Cards: See above.

6. Rte. 29. A game we made up, involving riding our bikes round and round the court we lived on. One person was designated "Mother", the others were children who were allowed to start riding when mother arrived and had to stop when mother called their name. Some years later my mother expressed her amusement at this game; we lived in a small development off Rte. 29 and to go anywhere one had to drive - all of us children spent a lot of time being driven places and having to wait for our mothers to pick us up or drop us off.

7. Tag and Freeze Tag. Excellent for working off large amounts of excess energy.

8. Red Rover. I adored Red Rover. Are kids allowed to play it nowadays?

9. Four Square. Bouncy rubber balls, a game where skill rather than size counted (being the smallest in my class, this was an important factor to me on the playground), what was there not to love?

10. Clue. We didn't have a game of clue, so it was a prime favorite when we could talk our friends into playing. They of course, having the game, were bored with it and it wasn't an easy job convincing them.

1.16.11 Weather relativity

Saturday was a busy day for S, involving much hauling from place to place. It started with him needing to show up on the other side of the city for his NYSSMA solo.* S's band solo is always in January and in five years, I have not once driven to solofest in sunny weather.

We woke up to snow coming down and the radio saying 1-2 inches expected. 1-2 inches expected (in NY) means, leave 10 minutes early. My sister (in MD) had 1-2 inches expected a few weeks ago and the school system closed for the day.

I couldn't help thinking of the time when I had just moved from MD to CA. In March. I was chatting with the program administrator just before leaving for lunch. She looked out the window and suddenly exclaimed - "It's raining! Oh, darn. I was going to go shopping at lunchtime and now I can't."

There you have it: Weather relativity.

*The New York State School Music Association arranges for the opportunity for the music students, both vocal and band, to be evaluated once a year in a standardized setting. The local high school uses the midterm and/or final exam requirement as a way to prod the students into attending NYSSMA - if you do a solo, your assessment from that event is your midterm or final with no further testing required at the school. K&S have always chosen to do the solofest. **

** The vocal students have the choice of solofest or being evaluated on a solo by their regular teacher. A few of the vocal students each year choose to take an F rather than sing a solo for anyone, which boggles my mind just a trifle. As a music student myself in high school, I understand the difficulty of making oneself sing a solo but I would have gone to the stake rather than voluntarily get an F. ETA: This happens at the class level where the students are no longer taking music because they have to - it's an elective class. Presumably, they take the class because they like to sing and think they do it well?

1.14.11 Fawn alpaca/wool

Fawn colored alpaca blended with wool. This is part of a bump I acquired at November's spinning guild meeting.



Originally part of the shepherd's stash, he was destashing a bit and I lucked out. This is really nice roving and I'm getting some more practice on woolen spinning.

1.13.11 Snowy day again

We were to get snow until noon - it might have quit by 3, but it isn't a sure thing yet.

The spruce tree is almost visible -

but the grass is looking rather weighed down.

1.12.11 Three to six inches of snow

Which turned out to be eight to ten inches of snow = shoveling the driveway four times today.

Sore shoulder.

1.11.11 10 ways to be more organized...

1. Uhhhh....

2. Better check with someone else.

There is a certain organization necessary in order to keep track of four people's schedules. Unfortunately, I think that all of my organizational talents get sucked up in this necessary practice (Monday: S-Cub Scout Assistant, K-Show Choir Intern, J-Networking Mtg; Tuesday: (1st Tuesday E-CE Mtg);K-Vocal Choir;S- Scout meeting; Wednesday: S-Cub Scout Asst,K&S: Music Lessons,... All days S-track practice getting out at random times... and So it goes.

All the organizational slots in my brain are fully occupied and I look seriously forward to reducing the number to two people, one of whom I will not be responsible for making sure he gets anywhere on time.

I've taken up a practice I saw recommended and it helps: Start each day with a list of three things to be done. If those three things are done, the day was a success. If more things are done, it's lagniappe.

1.8.11 New beginning

I plan to knit with the Polwarth skein, but the last skein of last year has been lying on the kitchen island (where it was set after the cats dragged it out of the knitting basket) and every time I passed it, it called my name. I have approximately 650 yards of grey corriedale (pindrafted top spun sort-of long draw/sort-of point-of-contact) plied with Tussah silk from Interlacements. The Interlacements top is one I bought years and years ago because I liked the saturated colors, but then couldn't stand the randomness of the colors. I finally divided the colors into green/blue and red/purple. I have another, smaller skein of the grey with the red/purple.

Ishbel is in progress.

1.7.11 Finished skein

Four hours of plying later, I have a finished skein.

I was rather pleased with the consistency of the three plies. I plied to the end of the shortest single. This is what I had left over from the second and third:

Having washed, salad-spun, and hung the skein up to dry, I have hopes that I can measure the finished yarn tomorrow afternoon. Then I'll have some idea how much yardage I have to work with.

1.6.11 First spinning of the year

I dyed the red and blue in separate pots. The remainder of the red dye pot was used to dye another stray piece of top. My first spinning of the year has resulted in this:

I'm spinning it short draw and, after a bit of sampling, decided that I needed to make a three ply rather than two. I've taken the red end from the red/blue top and am making a third single. I briefly debated chain-plying, but I didn't want to lose the length. The third single should be finishable tomorrow - maybe I can even start plying. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have a fingering-weight when I'm done, but I haven't sampled the washed yarn, so I'm not positive yet.