Because I am lazy

No pictures. But the signs of spring are becoming almost ominous:
The state of NH suggests we take down our birdfeeders by April 1, as the bears will becoming out of hibernation. My local bear or bears is an early riser, and bent a quarter-inch steel rod in a bracket straight down, removing a birdfeeder from a height of at least eight feet. That was Sunday morning.

Sometime recently, Sarah ordered a dozen Araucana chicks, due here the first week of May.

On Tuesday, the cat and I wondered what was up because crows were making a racket. We looked out the window. We don't usually even have crows. Or a red-tailed hawk in the big tree over there... it made a few remarks about the placement of chicken coops and left.

I drove out a bit later, passing I think a doe, certainly a deer, a white-tailed deer, most of the way down my excessive driveway. I stopped to check the mail and heard a red-winged blackbird. This suggests there is at least a dampland there. Cool.

When Sarah and I got back from our weaving class , she surprised a possum, who ran under the porch.

I am not as far along in the warping as Sarah is, but I haven't messed it up yet, either. Go me!

Last night I ripped out (the first border and the second one up to half way through the messed-up second repeat of) the flower-basket shawl all the cool kids are making (see Sarah again, and the Harlot, and everyone...) and started it again in purple Rittrata. I like the homespun I was using but the object had too much fudging by the time I pulled it out, and the loudness of the yarn was not making it easier to follow the vagaries of the pattern. God willing, I will make at least two of these small shawls and get to use the homespun again. It is peach/raspberry melba colored tencel and silk I spun at least eighteen months ago, seduced by the color and shine of the roving.

My father likes his socks. My ex likes her scarf. These are gratifying things. Now I want to start a pair of socks for my contractor (though if I want him to finish up and leave, it's supposed to be a sweater, right?).

I have been giving my right index finger a rest and not spinning much (I think it has tendonitis. A copper ring, arnica, and aspirin all help). Today I am leaving for Northampton, by way of picking up an Ashford traddy Doug has bought from someone and Helen of Bay Colony Farm. Once in Northampton, I will take a two day class on Tablet Weaving at WEBS, and then go to the Smith science fiction convention. And bask in the sunlight of my daughter's presence till Sunday night or Monday.

For once I was the good guy

Yesterday my friend Doug came over to help me organize the basement, install lights, varnish the new room, demolish part of the deck. Only first he wanted to go to the Fiber Studio
because he wanted to get his friend Jackie in Florida a drop spindle (if I made Doug into a spinner and he makes Jackie into a spinner, am I entitled to 25% of her stash?).

I visited the Fiber Studio a week ago Friday (needed Sof-Twist), last Saturday(sale), last Sunday(visitors from MA), last Wednesday (to ask about wheel), last Thursday (to put the new wheel together), and then yesterday with Doug. On Tuesday, Sarah and I are starting a three hours a week for the next eight weeks weaving course. But I don't need to go there often, I can stop any time.

As it happened, they had a couple of drop spindles, and now have three fewer. We both bought silkweight Woodchucks and he got Jackie a nice Emily. I also got a small bump of silk and Merino and wandered around harmlessly. Doug found a pair of two-pitch Indigo hound combs and a couple of small shuttles and just one skein of rayon handpainted.

We went back toward my house, stopping in Henniker proper to look into the quilt shop. It is a lovely small quilt shop, and I have behaved very well there so far. Doug has a new sewing machine, but what he really wanted was white woolen flannel to dye for rug-hooking. The very nice woman uggested the Fiber Studio, but we had just been there. "Well, " she said, "Dorr Mills is just down the road."

Doug and I bought soup and apples at the grocery store and set out for Newport. Dorr Mills sells nice Pendleton clothes and blankets in a rather bleak setting, then you go into the next room... a sensual buffet of beautifully dyed woolens, well-displayed rug-hooking pattern and everything you need, including igolochokoy needles. I already have igolochkoy needles. I even already have rug hooks, because of Curlypurl, and a failed first project looking awful in a box. So I only bought a smallish piece of monk's-cloth and a small frame, which was under $15 and exactly what I knew I needed from trying it on a hoop. Doug got his flannel and a fine cat rug design and many bits and pieces.

We went back, at last, to my house and removed one box and two armloads of the previous owner's detritus. We surveyed the proposed subtractions from the deck, which will permit a decent view from the new room and provide lumber for Sarah's chicken coop (she is expecting a dozen chickies the first week of May). I tacked my cloth onto the frame and made about four stitches. Then we went out to dinner and and came back and Doug knitted another couple of row on his bunny square , and I made freeform loops out of a pile of really pretty yarn I imagine I space dyed but I can't recall ever having seen before (some things probably leave one's own stash and go to someone else's through L-Space).

Pictures will follow. My new wheel is fine. It works. I have to go to Boston. I wish everyone a good feast of whatever sort of resurrection she or he needs most.

Spring

Snowdrops and crocus.




But Roosevelt, the last of the three guinea pigs we moved here with, has passed on. I hope he finds a nice herd in heaven.

My father's socks continue. My ex's scarf is finished! With two skeins of Sof-Twist and two and a half of Cancun, you can make a 20-stitch across scarf on size 13 needles.



I am also working on scarf that will be for me, because I have messed up the lace pattern. I could tear it out. In fact, I did tear out the first set of confusion. Why this pattern (two rows, one all purl: not rocket science) waits to mess until I have knitted four to seven inches of it, I do not know. But after the first misadventure, I discovered Portrait ( a lovely Monet-colored mohair --oh, now I remember why I don't ever buy mohair...) was not only wispy and lovely but magically _self-felting_. It does not rip out. Either I admit I have made the cat another fetching little shawl, or I live with some snarls. It's still very pretty, in a kind of cyanobacteria, primeval slime way. This picture shows the scarf before the second set of mistakes. It is indistinct, which is accurate, but not as good a color as the real thing. It's much longer now. As a first venture into lace it could be much more discouraging.





yo, respect to you, love to all


find your inner cookie
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Actually they need a gluten-free cookie. I suppose she would be slimy and very dry.

Blame Massachusetts. I have no backbone.

There were a few Thrillers who were supposed to come visit the Saturday it snowed a foot here. I advised them not to come. I thought maybe they would be able to visit this weekend. I know they had excellent reasons for not coming yesterday, but after I mentioned the sale at Fiber Studio (still going on today) you would have thought they'd have realized the dangerous position they put me in... Sarah has THREE wheels, so the voice of reason was clearly not living in this house.

I ordered a Kromski Symphony, even though my Joy still works just fine. Shame. Excess.

The one in the shop (already spoken for, alas) was so elegant, and so stable. The clear finish.
Pam thinks I should have it maybe by the end of the week.

Sunny, sunny, SUNNY!

with much melting. I love it. And there are at least two, possibly three orange-breasted nuthatches visiting my feeder, to say nothing of the usual gold and purple finches, juncoes, chickadees, and woodpeckers.

The living room is still tidy, I think because I have not sat in it. On Wednesdays, one washes rocks at the lab in Concord on behalf of the living ( the people of New Hampshire and specifically, us in SCRAP (see link at sidebar)) and the very dead, in this case say 7-9000 years ago. They sure made a mess in that quarry. We have been washing some of the returns from that dig since the summer of 2000. They are not very interesting, even as flakes of weathered gray stone go. My morale has been lifted by Dawn, a volunteer/part time contract digger part-time Wal-Mart employee, who says her mom and her friends constantly complain about her obsessive tendencies. They are so very welcome in the lab. Just seeing the neatly stacked, carefully inventoried stack of plastic bags (of horrible rocks) helps me believe we will one day finish the stuff. And then some lucky grad student can study it.

My ex came for lunch. The main reason he is my ex is that he was transsexual and is now legally Jennifer. I am making her a garter-stitch scarf in Charles' Cancun and Sof-twist. It is kind of busy but very Eastery and I just wanted to knit something in pastels. Please don't look down on me.

My father tried on the first complete sock today; I am about a quarter of the way up the second cuff and he refused to risk injury trying on the second. Since he and my mom were buying lunch I could hardly force the issue. Lovely as the Mountain Goat Moose River is, it's NOT springlike colors.

We have now completed Ellie's mittens, even to a fancy button so she can hang them to dry. The button is not a quiet color, but then neither are the mittens. She likes them. I really, for whatever reason, enjoyed twining them and having them turn out thick but flexible and still fluffy (even if working with half-alpaca for the mittens and kid mohair in the socks is making Wendy Merino seem kind of harsh by comparison).



This doesn't quite show the colors true.

Since I have been working on this entry rather sporadically, it's now Saturday rather than Thursday. Last night Sarah and I spun. Because of Yarn Harlot, the time spent preparing the fiber and pre-drafting was noticeable. Sometimes actually preparing the roving helps, unless the roving has been savaged so much by cats and carelessness that the neps are irrremovable (I know a lot about this). In the process of tidying I found a roving I dyed one day when the Sheep Thrillers got together. The Yarn Harlot navaho plies. I do not, at least yet (Sarah did, though, and it came out nicely as her yarn usually does. It's a good thing I like her).
I split the roving down the middle and then fluffed it out.

To my surprise and delight quite a lot of the colors in each ply spun together. The barber-poling is not overwhelming. I only wish I had more than maybe 15 grams of the roving. More dyeing is in my future. Would New England-area readers want to try to get together here with Sarah and me sometime?

After all, the Red Sox won

So I have been doing serious housework (abetted and sometimes aided by my dear daughter). Also tomorrow her father is coming to visit (the best ex-husband in the world), the next couple of days my parents are coming to visit, and on Saturday there might be a pair or perhaps even a trice of Sheep Thrillers.

So I vacuumed under the couch cushions and found a number 4 sock needle. Virtue likes a reward on the side.

Yesterday Ellie and I did Archival Tidying in the kitchen. Archival Tidying means doing things that are perceptible after more than, say three days (unlike laundry, dishes, or sweeping). She reorganized the spices (this is heavier lifting than it sounds) and I put an shelf up int he pantry so we now have real room for baking stuff (gluten-free and gluten-inclusive) and things like canned fruit. This involved Doing Something, part II, with the Mead. I went on mead-making binge last year while I was trying to find this house. One is supposed to let it age a long time, recanting it monthly. I let it rest about five months and the airlocks dried out, not surprisingly. So I was not amazed that the jug I tried last week (Part I) was kind of icky. Alcoholic, yes, but only Doug seemed to like drinking it. So I apple-jacked it, breaking federal law, and put it outside to freeze. The water ice was really nifty, in very thin wafers with mead in between the layer. I drained it in a sieve, losing about half the volume and tried some. It did not seem much more alcoholic and it tasted wonderful.

I expected the next couple of jugs to be similar, and I have set one out to freeze (in a plastic bowl). One of the other, whowever, was _delicious_ and does not need applejacking. It also had a kick like a mule; about a quarter-cup -- less than half a wineglass -- and I was anybody's. Fortunately no one was there but Sarah and I sobered up by dinner time.

Today I have stayed straight (vacuuming and alcohol don't mix) . The kittens are off being spayed and it is very quiet here.

What sort of pie am I?

You are:
Cherry Pie

You're
completely over-sexed. You're so sensual that
it's ridiculous. You can't stop thinking about
things that make you feel good. Which would be
ok, if you didn't keep leaving stains
everywhere.


Happy Pi(e) Day! What sort of pie are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

I kinda like this, I must say. Superficial though the questions were.



In other news:
Photos and comments on climate change, which is to say, global warming:
http://www.northsoutheastwest.org/
Surfaces clean of ice for the first time in 11,000 years. This is actually turning up some interesting artifacts in the Arctic, but on the whole I would prefer not to see them.

I knit nearly all the rest of Ellie's second mitten, I tidied the kitchen (a little), I spun some previously dyed roving while I tried to decide whether I should pin a bunch of fine yarn and dye it, or dye roving, and I reread _Practical Demonkeeping_. Everyone toted wood and fed it to the moderately helpful woodstove. Ellie made gluten-free battered tofu and chips.

The mitten is apparently a different pattern from the first mitten. Since I wasn't using a pattern, this is not too surprising. The first one is more beautiful and the second one fits better. I am not ripping either one.

More pictures will follow. It is indeed too damn much snow, but it is so very pretty here. I wish I had more birdseed, but I am managing to keep some going on the surface for the birds who prefer not to use the feeders. Why goldfinches are so messy that they get about half a tub on the ground BEFORE every snowstorm, limiting the resources for themselves as well as everyone else... mutter.

Why, can it be?

Yes, it's snowing again.



This postpones two Sheepthrillers' visit from MA, coming north to wrest riches and find fiber from sheep's warehouses, filling cars with warm snow-whiteness and rainbow's weavings[ed. note: ie, fleece and dyed yarn-goods], infusing the camellia and spreading sweetness [could mean some kind of dye-process or a reference to TEA, qv "The Importance of Caffeine in Fiber Gatherings of the Northeast"]; hardy shoppers, but not fool-hardy, they will wait to try their tires on tarmac, not the glarey glaze of ice and slush...



or I could just be losing it, here. They are suggesting we'll get a foot.

Which could mean I will finish my father's second sock, now up to cuff, and my daughter' second mitten, now nearly down to thumb.

What Sarah and I did last Saturday

http://www.theunionleader.com/Articles_show.html?article=51634&archive=1

an innocent comment provokes more response than she probably wanted

Sara Lamb, who bears my near-drooling admiration with characteristic grace, writes:

> Is your new book Woven Into The Earth? It's a little deep for me (I glaze over) and the pictures are all *brown* things (duh, they've been in the *earth*), but it is a great read.
>


That's the one. I used to feel that way reading about archaeology and fiber, but I can finally cope. Not that I really want to be on a dig with surviving cloth (in this country it would probably mean Colonial or later, ewwwww) but I get a warm feeling seeing that some of the dead get credit for the _immense_ amount of work they did to stay alive: all of that cloth from spindle-spun and they still had the energy to make decorative edges.
I am working with some garish handspun that struck me as not _quite_ the right gauge, so I added some nice Frog Tree alpaca to change the texture about one needle size up. In a matching purple, and I could just go take it off the shelf. No raising alpacas, harvesting fleece, cleaning, preparing, spinning, and dyeing (though all of these things are fun if you have the choice not to do them). I suppose if you add in the drive to Concord, the cost of the car and the roadways in personal and global terms (although, to be fair, I hope producing the Frog Tree is helping out some Peruvians)... not quite so cheap. But imagine the luxury we have in being able to get any color, _amazing_ , unnatural variety in kinds of fiber... a certain amount of choice in whether to wear a sweater in the first place, and in this context particularly
Knitting.
You can carry it everywhere. You can do it in bed (with blankets and a warm beverage). It doesn't have to cost too much to get started. You can make, at least in theory, any width of fabric. It's stretchy. It can be economical of spun yarn, no thrums, no need for clever cutting. Those poor Norse had to weave everything. Their loom was relatively portable (compared to a floor loom) but not something one could use on the subway or in the fields. But none of the un-citified peoples seem to have had knitting, it developed so late.
One of the reasons I do archaeology is that both the activity and the science enhance my pleasure in simple things. Digging means you get tired and dirty and your muscles hurt. The value of un-humid weather, very light breezes, sunlight or shade goes up exponentially, along with appreciation for effective bug repellant, waterproof boots, sharp pruning shears, and one's hat. Unlike the people I am digging (even when they were alive), I can go somewhere to a warm, soft bed, a laundramat, a restaurant, a yarn shop, and the Internet so I am not doing anything of these things without a fairly specialized, moderately interested community.

Even with all the nagging discontents, organic depression, political despair, need for a root canal and real and present CATS ALL OVER MY KEYBOARD (you know who you are, Abbey) I still wonder at how rich I am.


Meanwhile, it snowed again yesterday, about 8". This meant Sarah Housemate stayed home from work (she is running a week-long fiber-based daycamp; today they weave) and the peer pressure meant I had to spend the day knitting. First I turned the heel on Sock One of my father's Mountain goat socks, and gave it a nice start on a cuff: P2, K2 (twisted), P2, C1 back. The 'back' was foolish and the other on will be C 1 front. Most of two inches up. (Now it's Friday. My mother spoke to me firmly about the need to work on my father's socks before it gets too warm for him to wear them. As if. Though he does run warmer than either she or I do. Five inches up, mostly done at H&RBlock.)



This was a day of unravelling: first the sparkly camo-colored scarf I had lost affection for after about 18" (sometime I will make Cool Mittlets for myself) and a doomed hat. Last fall I bought a 2 oz bump of variegated purple-pink roving and a bag of Foxfire sparkly purple at the Canterbury Shaker Village Wool day. I pleased myself no end by actually spinning it all up the next day and started a hat for the purple-tinted daughter. It became obvious that there was not really enough yarn for a hat, even with the added Frog Tree, and it languished. RIP.

I went to cast on a quick and dirty thrummed mitten. But my copy of the OOP Twined Knitting book had arrived, thanks to Half.com, and I was forced to peruse it while knitting, which meant that I found I was making a twined mitten. Not quick, even though it was worsted on size 6 needles instead of sport-weight on size 2's. Possibly uniquely hideous. But it feels wonderful (30 grams of alpaca will do that). I am making it from the tip down, because I make my socks that way by preference, and I got to make the thumb separately and stick it on. This was fun. Since I was technically without pattern, the first attempt at thumb was an interesting failure: think reservoir-tipped psychedelic mushroom. The second try went much better, and the attachment was quite exciting until I realized I had carefully attached it upside down.



I can start the second mitten, I figure, after I cast off my father's sock. The second one of those is done up to the heel.

Clarification

Actually, it was my car insurance, and that seems to be because of a mutual misunderstanding. I didn't know they wanted me to fill out everything again. This doesn't really make me feel more comptetent, as I think I am actually more likely to need the car insurance than the house insurance, please God, well neither if You don't mind, and I gather I must feel quite guilty about the railings, and I hate self-panickers and now look at me. On the plus side, it's much easier to fix. So a little trip to the insurance company is in line with the trip to Concord today to make appointments at H&R Block and for the car's oil change and checkup. (And buy supplies for the snowstorm. Kitty litter, mostly.)

There are a lot of reasons living in the centuries before the industrial revolution look good, despite the risks of dying practically weekly of plague, famine, and war. And the lack of chemical dyes,the Internet, and digital cameras.

On a happier note, I got the book on the Norse Greenlanders and it is superb. The binding is good, the paper is good, the editing appears to be good, the content is way coool. The pictures (printed on a very fine semi-matte paper) are very clear; there are diagrams of almost every weave discussed, and clear discussions of all the weaving tools found in Greenland and some other Norse sites. Two garments are diagrammed on graph paper (a hood and a dress). The writing is clear and interesting and accessible, and the writers clearly care about the people who were behind the artifacts they are examining. If you are a costumer or a scholar or a fan of weaving in different circumstances from the ones we enjoy now, this is a delicious book. Now I need to figure out why I should make a ten-gore dress.

Possibly TMI

You are loose tea!

Congratulations, you are proper tea. You sneer at
teabags and blanch when someone suggests
microwaving water to steep your succulent
leaves in. Tea like you deserves respect. You
probably have a British accent on certain words
and use words like "sort" and
"bloody".


What sort of tea are you?
brought to you by Quizilla


Friday was the worst day in recent memory. First I had the kind of pointless e-mail chat that reaffirms one's despair at one's persistent heterosexuality (my family and and friend accept it, just deal), then the insurance company cancelled my policy because I haven't put a railing on the end of the porch where the aboveground pool was, now removed. It is WINTER and no one goes to that end of the porch, or indeed any part of the porch. I hate insurance companies and I feel I am doing a worse job of being a grownup every year.

Then I drove to Northampton to visit the daughter, who was not feeling much better than I was. I hoped to visit Helen, once again, but before I left I had to eat (a really good idea) and I had to make the fish tank power filter work again so as not to come home to braised catfish (and a fat happy betta). My companion on the road, NPR, discussed end-of-life proxy decisions (be very specific when you tell your daughter what you want), interviewed a man with the early stages of Lou Gehrig's disease, discussed Terry Schiavo _again_.

Is it too much to ask that they not headline their stories by saying "Another dramatic day in the life of a paralyzed Florida woman"? In her family's life, sure, but the whole point is that Ms. Schiavo does not have, as far as we know _she_ knows ANY kind of days, let alone dramatic ones.

After that Robin Young discussed the approaching demise (assisted, probably) of her 19-year-old Chihuahua, and a Boston Globe reporter read a column about the approaching demise (probably assisted) of his Golden Retriever, who sounded like Sarah's dog Haylie. By this time I wanted some assistance in demise myself, but the Science Friday was good until I drove out of the broadcast area and listened to The River, where idiot youth sang about cheerful sex, which I will probably never have again, and frankly if nothing else it would sort out the kink in my back.

Then I got lost in Hadley and stymied by the traffic and threw in the towel visiting Helen for the second time and I hope she still likes me.

Life got better as soon as I got to Smith, where Eleanor welcomed me and she and a bunch of people were ruining their expensively educated brains watching mindless rot -- not even anime or reality TV, which teaches us how others react under stress, but a _foreign_ production of some chick lit called Pride and Prejudice. Shocking. Because I had left my father's socks in NH, I had to get a small project, so I sneaked off to WEBS. I behaved fairly well, I think.



There I taught a nice person to spin, with a bit of luck ruining/enhancing her life. I got some discounted Wensleydale (I wish it were not being closed-out) and started a Twined Knitting sock. Since I have no pattern it will be an experiment. So far all I can tell you is it needs a huge number of stitches and I do love Wensleydale yarn.

(This is not accurate: I can tell you that you should cast on more than the canonical eight figure-8 stitches, since although TwinedKnit is lovably elastic, it is not stretchy the same way as a regular sock toe and you need to start out with about fifteen stitches or your toe will look cleverly like a stave church.)


Smith was full of friendly young women who thought I was cool because I know about comic books and offered to drive several of them to WEBS to feed their habits. Ellie and I did a little essential shopping and had an underspiced Mexican dinner, with (for me) a Margarita made of higher-shelf Tequila and Cointreau, noticeably better than the lower-priced spread. Then I slept on the spare mattress on her floor.

In the morning we took three people to WEBS -- Eleanor came for the ride, as she is well-fixed for wool, though she mentioned that she would like it if I knit her some gloves. I would love to make her some gloves, which might be finished as soon as April, but I am concerned that, in the meantime, wearing only the fingerless ones I made her for Christmas will result in frostbite that may adversely affect her typing.


Fortunately I have started one already.

Later we participated in a rather poorly designed psychological experiment, went shopping and lazed around, knitting or reading or playing the Sims. And had a tasty but not over-spiced Tibetan dinner, after which I went back to NH.

Now I am back home and Sarah

is cleaning my room because she gets upset when I am sad about insurance. She is kinder than I deserve, which is the whole thing about kindness. And we are eating the Easter candy.

At least it is sunny, though with a wind that will take your hair off.

Matt,dammit, now I have to make a backstrap loom and I had to get this children's book called _Angela Weaves a Dream_ and how the hell am I supposed to go on with my journey into Scandinavian mittens (and how did I end up there? I hate Scandinavia. Only I don't. I just hate some of the weaving, for ghodsakes who makes dishtowels with twee little designs on them? Lutherans?)?

I suppose it would be a nice change for the summer, given that mittens lose some of their immediacy when it stops snowing. Assuming it ever does.

I spent Tuesday with Sarah' sister's dog Haylie, a 10-year old saintly Golden Retriever. She started having seizures last week. Her vet believes these are related to a tumor in her spleen or brain sending clots to to her brain -- such tumors are common in aging Goldens. I feel bad about this and I hardly know her. Sarah and her sister have grown up with her (and their mom has known Haylie longer than her current husband and she's had enough loss this year already). Fortunately the phenobarbital eems to be making Haylie feel much, much better. But they wanted her to have some company while it took hold, so I dog-sat Tuesday and Sarah went Wednesday.

So Wednesday, we had lab. After spending time with Haylie (a charming dog, but low in conversation ) and Sarah's being away there for Tuesday night, I was looking forward to lab and people and rocks. Dick, however, wanted me to scan about forty slides. This takes several minutes apiece, in a separate room. I did get the first three inches of my father's second sock done while the computer worked. (I am not sure how big the second half of the first one should be.) Doug brought me tea, which was kind, even though the computer room was about 85 degrees and the scanner kept overheating and crashing. Far away, I could hear merriment and laughter coming from the happy slave quarters as they washed and catalogued some rocks and tidied down to strata of flat surface I have never seen before.

Then Matt came in and asked how a loom works, anyway? He was reading about Aztecs. I knew they would be backstraps, and then I went Googling... I found some lovely sites:

http://www.coreknowledge.org/CKproto2/resrcs/lessons/52K_Maya.pdf
http://www.mythinglinks.org/Geise~MayanWeaving.html
and printed out the second one for him.
Because Matt likes to live dangerously he said, "But LAURA, I was asking about AZTEC weaving, and this is MAYAN..."
"Matt, would you like me to cut your heart out with an obsidian dagger?" I asked. Dick voice echoing from the next room offered, "I have one you can use."


Today I am going to have my tattoo tarted up and going to see my parents and measure my father's foot again. I am afraid the socks are going to be too big, and since I think I am ready to turn the heel on one of them...

[Later] I did have my tattoo tarted up, and I will have pictures soon as it has finished healing. Since it is not nearly so much area as the one on my other arm it is not as painful or so far itchy. My tattoo artist, Mulysa is fun to be with and I cannot think of anyone I would prefer to have hurt me (sorry, guys). Being tattooed on the shoulders hurts rather like the moment before you (or at least I) tell the cat to use velvet claws, dammit! only it goes on longer. But without getting any worse. The one just over my ankle hurt more. I got far enough on the second sock that I could turn the heel and find it needed another centimeter when I applied it to my father's foot. He made me lamb and served me fresh raspberries, and I got to see my mom's pictures of the Central Park Gates.

A fox went out on a snowy day

The fox who has been leaving tracks around here finally crossed a field of view when one of us was watching. It was a small, dainty, healthy-looking red fox who looked up at us--on the deck outide the bedroom--appeared to note the make of our binoculars, and then go on. Congratulations to it and its English relatives; I am sure something can be said on both sides (Rita Mae Brown is no fool), but I imagine it's a better day when you are not pursued by hounds.

Meanwhile, I do NOT have the February doldrums, I just want to be able to weave like Sara Lamb and use colors so I feel amazed. I gather the way to get better at something is to do it, rather than stare dully at the loom in the bedroom (Kromski harp), the loom in the living room (homemade with rollers), the loom with the stuck warp-weighted loom-warp on it (Dickinson inkle), or the disassembled Leclerc waiting for the loom room on the front porch. Or the Little Inkle from TornadoWoods, or the article in Spin-Off about silk ribbons.

I spun some essentially camo-colored Romney and I just love that wool. It is a whole different way for life from yak, even if it isn't as seductive to the fingertips. Now I am making a silly and un-delicate scarf with the camo-colored yarn and some nylon camo colored flash. It feels nice, anyway. Sort of the polar opposite to Sarah's beautiful lace.

I went snowshoeing again. If it's in the 20's, I seem to need a nice warm sweater and maybe a hat. No gloves unless I am dumb enough to get my hand in the snow. This seems to be true when there's no wind; I haven't been out on a windy day. I can't quite make out what is so very beautiful: sometimes, I like the look of a crazed window-dresser going mad with the canned flock-snow. It looks too good to be true. Other times I think it's the slimming down of color and texture: white, black, brown, gray, and green, with occasional accents of pale beige from the beech leaves. It made me want to knit Scandinavian mittens. The contrast accents the lines: upright trunks and horizontal branches, and the horizontals are outlined in white against the background. And the light is very clean, because there is so little moisture in the air (and no bugs).


One of the neatest moments the other day: Sarah and I were trying to locate the woodpecker we could hear tapping away, and we found you could feel it (and hear it) all the way down the tree. I had never felt a woodpecker before. I wondered if he (I think it was a female Hairy) could feel us damping the vibration when we had our hand and ears on the trunk, about 50 feet below.

Meanwhile, I finished Sarah's Noro socks and continued to z-spin yak. I think it's z-spin, it's the the Other one, the counterclockwise direction, so I can s-ply it and see whether that makes twined knitting any more amenable. Yak feels wonderful and looks kind of yuck spun up. And it isn't stretchy so it looks dead as yarn. I think it will make a nice mitten, though. Now for some Wensleydale, also in the Other Direction. I gather some cultures saved their spun-the-Wrong-Way yarn for witchcraft, but as usual there were no details, like how one defined witchcraft that day and what the 'witch' had in mind. Maybe it was just a desire to make a mindfully different 'field' around that yarn, just leaving a place for something other than the unvarnished everyday. Or to trap the particular, like the light in the snowy forest.

Bad Girl (sneak a biscuit)

I blame the Web. I was wandering around in SCA costuming sites, wondering if the fiber fellowship there would be worth having to develop a persona (and be polite about those of others)and read about the 10-gore dress from Herjolfnes. From that site I found a link to Poison Pen Press, which despite the name is a very respectable organization run by a charming woman to whom I used to give all my money at Darkovercon and similar places. I haven't been to any science fiction conventions in awhile, so I have saved a lot of money on hotels,admission, tranportation, jewelry... so it was a very reasonable thing to order the book on the burials and archaeology and clothing from the doomed colony on Greenland. Yes, you can get it from Amazon, but even 'used' would only have saved $2 and Devra is a sweetie, as well as having way too many books about mediaeval and ancient clothing and cooking and brewing and life in general, as well as the fiction of Diana Wynn Jones and Caroline Stevermer. She provides a valuable service just finding these things, and I have never purchased a dud from her.(I also ordered the book on life along the Silk Road.)Can't wait till it gets here. The Hrjolfness book is practically a professional expense.

Sarah's socks are nearly done. They would have been if one ball, the second, had not had about 3" of sock cuff worth more yarn than the other. I used some of the excess to make a swatch, which I washed and dried and all that happened was a very slight fulling and a delirium-inducing increase in softness. So I am unravelling the swatch and undoing the cast-off and making both socks a little taller. Picture to follow as soon as I find the card reader.

If I have a cold, I will not be pleased. There must be some other reason for sitting here and sneezing and snuffling.

Note My Heroism: There is perhaps 3/8 of a cup of milk left in the house. Rather than having, as I would usually, my fifth and sixth cup of tea (with milk) I am saving it for when my daughter gets up, since she is nearly as addicted as I am.

I think I just saw TWO Red-Breasted Nuthatches on my feeder. They are one of my favorite birds(I say that about almost all my birds, but I get the RBN rarely, and they are shy).

Something bent the birdfeeder post (maybe 1/2' thick cast iron hammered about 8" into the ground) about 45 degrees. I would have thought it was a bear, but the feeder itelf is untouched. Sarah suggested a turkey might have flown onto the top of it[ZZZPPROOingOingOing]. At any rate, the turkeys now eat very daintily out of the birdfeeder, which is weird.


Because We Have No Life

Too Much Wool, whom I don't even know, took over my body the other day and made me buy Beth Brown-Meisel's Making Ganseys and I decided to make the sampler. My housemate decided we should have a knitalong, and promptly stayed up late getting two inches ahead. This could get ugly.

Despite this, I am almost done with her Noro socks. I visited my parents and measured my father's foot. He has a long, slender foot, so although the sock will be seventeen meters long, it is only 48 stitches around, barely wider than my mother's or my own socks. I wish I could try it on again before I start to make the heel. And I am not sure whether to do the Simple Socks heel as written or try to find the directions for short-row heels that were not written by PGR ("wrapped stitches") and worked fine the last time back when I knew where the directions were. K3tog makes a lump.

The weather has been beautiful and warm the past three days. Sitting on the porch, wearing a T-shirt, knitting outside warm. Apart from spilling about a pint of off-white paint on a wall-to-wall carpeted floor, my days have been good. The first twined mitten is as finished as it is likely to get until I take it, and ideally its still 3/4 unfinished mate, to go see Donna the teacher and ask her WHAT is UP with the decrease. I pulled the end out four times, which is eleven rows each time of twined knitting, which take about twice as long a single-end knitting (decreasing from 56 to 12 stitches). It corkscrewed. It just looked bad.

Despite this, and depite the anxious pleas from its unfinished mate, I am starting another pair, intended for a Christmas present. With a Latvian braid and a three-color cast-on I doubt that I am the first to unvent, but I hope not the last. By the time I get to the tip of those, I imagine I will have finished the green ones. It is Wendy Merino, from The Wool Room in Antrim, where the very sweet Mrs. Hennesey had ordered me the book on spinning dog hair and when I went to pick that up, I had to get the Wendy because I had never seen it anywhere else and the colors ravished me... and just a few ounces of Wensleydale (wool, not cheese). So I spun up some of the Wensleydale Friday night.

I had been reading another book on natural dyes, which I like very much since it has so many very mundane and local plants to try. The author mentioned, in passing, that you could get interesting reults adding ammonia to the end of an onionskin dye bath. This was too much to resist, since we DO have onion skins. We save them for Sarah's fiber and dyeing demonstrations and almost everything either of us cooks involves an onion (except, so far, dessert). I presoaked some onion skins and yesterday, as the fun part of the day (after Doug and I finished painting the walls of the to-be-rental apartment and I poured the paint on the carpet, not that I am dwelling on it), we dyed three miniskeins and some of Doug's silk hankies.



The skeins go "onion skins in aluminum pot" (as they all were): slightly bolder onionskins with a splash of ammonia added to the end (it turned the liquor a lovely burgundy); and onionskins with a dash of tin salts added at the end. The hankies look even more like dead leaves than the yarn, and I look forward to seeing what Doug does with them. I am thinking trim on a white sock for my yarn.

I went snowshoeing

I bought snowshoes on Tuesday, when I was in Concord and found a sale at Eatern Mountain Sports. Yesterday was very sunny and about 17degrees F. It was hot in the sun and much cooler in the shade. I have never been snowshoeing, but it seemed like a very practical idea. I took my binoculars, my camera, and my cell phone (so my mother wouldn't worry. She also provided the very warm-flannel-lined jeans I was wearing.)I hoped I would get to skitter along the top of the snow like a water-strider, but this was not to be, at least not on this very fluffy snow. Asterix tried bravely to accompany me, but he sank in up to his kitty shoulders even in my trail, so he went home. On snowshoes, I found I was sinking in to about the same depth as the local turkeys;



in fact, I followed their trails and found that they picked quite a good path, slightly prepacked. Since the ones in my driveway walked where I had broken the snow I figured they wouldn't mind if I reinforced their trails. The exertion going up the hill in back of the house was enough to keep me warm. It was lovely. The light was spectacularly clear and pure.

Branches of one of the three bigs oaks:


Nice weird drift: