and liver-chewing, muttering, and very occasional fits of tidying to say
The tadpoles have hatched!
I have seen a green frog around, and I hope it won't munch all the tadpoles up. I think they are mildly poisonous, anyway.
This is one of my favorite times of year. In Concord,there are definitely tiny leaves and flowering tree. 17 miles outside the metropolis (okay, just polis then) we are about a week behind, and my star magnolia has just popped a few buds open. The trees are in heavy bud, and I like looking at them and seeing a kind of ghostly veil preview of their autumn colors, or a faint green cloud. One year in Canterbury in England in the 70's the weather stuck just so and we had, it seemed, six weeks of little green pearls and big yellow daffodils and clouds of bluebells, so thick I actually mistook one patch for a pond reflecting the sky.
Here it has been warm during the day and barely above freezing at night and just bug-free and lovely. Perfect weather. I haven't been taking proper advantage of it (in fact, I have been in a snit) but it was beautiful, even in my fog of evil intent and gloom. I wish we could have a summer of such low humidity...except the environment here is not adapted for that. All my wildlife is based, really, on a mosquito diet and we need moisture for them and to keep the daffodils blooming.
It was 81 this afternoon, which is going to push everything along fast. I hope it cools off again. It is supposed to rain, FINALLY, on Saturday and Sunday. Wasn't I having a party on Saturday? Why yes... I suppose if that's what it takes to break the drought so the amphibians of the area can go have wild salamander sex I can hardly complain.
How about the blackflies being a month early?
But still. The tadpoles in my puddle have made it this far and the large noisy animal we have seen lately has been a thoroughly delightful porcupine. Whether or not it is a big party, I am assured the people who can make it will be witty and charming and they will have tasty and interesting food, even if the house is less, um, restrained than I would like.
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Last warning
I am having a fiber party here this Saturday. Come after 10 a.m. and stay for a while. The mosquitoes have not yet arrived, but there may be frogs; there will be birds, trees, daffodils, a couple of cats, and roving. There will be food -- I am thinking salady things and a spiral-sliced ham and bread and cheese and chips and something sticky. We intend to have an indigo pot and some other dyeing going on, and if the weather is nice it will take place on the porch near the Hot Tub. Which works, and people may use it.
If the weather is not nice we'll stay inside, with fireplace.
Email me for directions (lauraejATTtdsDOTnet) we're about 25 minutes off of 93 just south of Concord, NH.
Although I have mentioned this party earlier, I have not made enough effort to get RSVPs, so I have no real idea if anyone is coming, which is partly my own fault. I always like the idea of a party, and I usually enjoy them in the reality, but there's something that happens in the middle that leaves me feeling like the sky has fallen. Into the living areas of my house, except the sky is not usually so obviously full of messy things (meteoric junk mail and laundry would explain a lot, though).
But inside or out we have plenty of places to sit and spin or knit.
In other news, the bear was around last night while I was still up. It is very well camouflaged for darkness and I was mostly aware that something larger than a chickadee was checking out the window-feeder (curiously, already empty). I am all for wilderness, but it shouldn't bigger than say, a large raccoon. I would probably be equally surprised to see the (even larger) moose that I know wanders around here, but moose are not omnivores and on the whole, I hope the bear leaves here disappointed. Or just leaves here. I swear it was trying the doorknobs.
If the weather is not nice we'll stay inside, with fireplace.
Email me for directions (lauraejATTtdsDOTnet) we're about 25 minutes off of 93 just south of Concord, NH.
Although I have mentioned this party earlier, I have not made enough effort to get RSVPs, so I have no real idea if anyone is coming, which is partly my own fault. I always like the idea of a party, and I usually enjoy them in the reality, but there's something that happens in the middle that leaves me feeling like the sky has fallen. Into the living areas of my house, except the sky is not usually so obviously full of messy things (meteoric junk mail and laundry would explain a lot, though).
But inside or out we have plenty of places to sit and spin or knit.
In other news, the bear was around last night while I was still up. It is very well camouflaged for darkness and I was mostly aware that something larger than a chickadee was checking out the window-feeder (curiously, already empty). I am all for wilderness, but it shouldn't bigger than say, a large raccoon. I would probably be equally surprised to see the (even larger) moose that I know wanders around here, but moose are not omnivores and on the whole, I hope the bear leaves here disappointed. Or just leaves here. I swear it was trying the doorknobs.
Saturday, April 15, 2006
Continuing to spring
The chipper shredder arrived yesterday.
One of my mother's happiest memories of the early days of her marriage is of finding my father in the kitchen, putting the leftover spaghetti into the dispoal one strand at a time.
It's like that, only much more violent. A very eager machine. Who would have thought that pile of spindly trees had so little sawdust in them? It sure does get rid of of things. It's also noisy enough I think it un-neighborly to run it more than an hour or so at a time, since I would want to hunt me down with a shotgun if I were someone else.
I still plan to make piles of of sticks, brushpiles, for small animals to live in, but not too close to the house. Right now NO WHERE looks tidy, inside the house or out, except possibly the computer screen, and everywhere also wants the investment of time and ideally money. it is quite satisfying to make some of the visual noise disappear. In a cloud of aural noise, but memory of that fades.
The egg mass is doing fine; the little black spheres are turning into commas, and the eggs are getting cloudy (I read that it's an algae and perfectly normal). This may be their father:
This is probably not their father, but it's good to see my frog puddle populated (Frogulated? ranified?) again.
We have a few very local peepers here, too, so they must think my puddle passes muster.
Doug and I and Mena walked up the hill in back to find out if the the colonial-era foundation way up there was a good vernal pond. It is; there were at least four egg masses, and great places for a cat to look cool:
One of my mother's happiest memories of the early days of her marriage is of finding my father in the kitchen, putting the leftover spaghetti into the dispoal one strand at a time.
It's like that, only much more violent. A very eager machine. Who would have thought that pile of spindly trees had so little sawdust in them? It sure does get rid of of things. It's also noisy enough I think it un-neighborly to run it more than an hour or so at a time, since I would want to hunt me down with a shotgun if I were someone else.
I still plan to make piles of of sticks, brushpiles, for small animals to live in, but not too close to the house. Right now NO WHERE looks tidy, inside the house or out, except possibly the computer screen, and everywhere also wants the investment of time and ideally money. it is quite satisfying to make some of the visual noise disappear. In a cloud of aural noise, but memory of that fades.
The egg mass is doing fine; the little black spheres are turning into commas, and the eggs are getting cloudy (I read that it's an algae and perfectly normal). This may be their father:
This is probably not their father, but it's good to see my frog puddle populated (Frogulated? ranified?) again.
We have a few very local peepers here, too, so they must think my puddle passes muster.
Doug and I and Mena walked up the hill in back to find out if the the colonial-era foundation way up there was a good vernal pond. It is; there were at least four egg masses, and great places for a cat to look cool:
Saturday, April 08, 2006
Small Big Night, anyway
It is Big Night, when all the mole salamanders get out to their nearest vernal pool and Party, when a) it's raining, and b) it's over 42 degrees Fahrenheit. Last night it stopped raining, but there were, as noted, some amphibian activities. And probably at least two wood frogs had a private party of their own: my frog puddle is pregnant.
Friday, April 07, 2006
Hoppy (and slithery) spring
Gray treefrog.
Red-Backed salamander
It stopped raining too early for the big salamanders to come out (last year it was April 8), but the smaller amphibians are coming out. There's a peeper advertising my frog puddle.
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Pretty well
So last week I left work--
and a boss who was experiencing all the stages of grief upon being informed that the person previous to me had not distinguished between "Pastors" (the CEO of a church) and what she called "Clergy" (deacons, priests and bishops,
but she used it to to mean 'anyone who works or has worked for a church, including nuns and directors of religious education and the associate minister whom everyone likes because he/she is so much more FUN than the pastor, who is wondering when God will provide for, say, the elecric bill). These are not the same thing, when the boss is intending to send out a mass mailing to people with some power over the churches' budgets.
This week we are having fun trying to get a mailing list sorted by zip code of all these clerical types (dropping out some of the obviously-not-pastors and anyone who has given us money lately) when a) half the entries are home addresses and half are work addresses; thus, there are two possible zipcode fields, and my computer is not that intelligent, and b) the database has a hissy fit because about half the (800+) entries say "United States of America" and the other half just assume it. Almost everywhere in New Hampshire can be assumed to be part of the US. But sometime, maybe after 9-11, she found it necessary to say so.
I cannot help but think he ought to have hired someone who was better at office computing than I am--
you might say I left work_with relief_, and drove to Grafton Fibers, in Vermont by way of the areas in SW NH flood-ravaged last October. And they still are.
And Saxton's River is much farther out of the way if you take the NH back roads (with Highland cattle, though) than if you go out of your way on 91 from Brattleboro.
It was a warm and lovely day and I picked up a dozen beautiful spindles and drove another hour to Northampton, MA, and stopped on the way to Smith to get Chinese food for myself and my daughter and another person stuck behind the registration desk of ConBust, a small but tasty science fiction convention that almost no one from Smith attends except for the women who put it together. About 150 people in all.
I had eleven people in my workshop, which was free, but cost the price of the spindle if you wanted to take it home (I charged my cost because I wanted to Enable people). The goody bag of roving came out of stash, roving that I had no memory of-- what it was, where I'd obtained it. (And I still have a lot of roving...) Six people bought their spindles and I sold one to the woman who couldn't leave the vendors' room during the workshop; she (and a passerby) had lessons the next day. The one-hour workshop ended up lasting two, and almost everyone had enough yarn to be shown how to make a plying bracelet. At least one person (as reported by her roommate) who was up to her neck in running the convention, got up Sunday morning and said, "I have five minutes, I can spin!" Which was very satisfying. For both of us.
Since there are only six or seven people in the world, the male fan who came in and stated chatting about Elizabeth Wayland Barber turned out to be the ex- (but still cordial) boyfriend of the only other spinner I have encountered in archaeology field school. And he and the vendor may both come to this year's field school, which would be most amusing.
It was, however, the hottest day of the year -- a stuffy, humid near-80 Fahrenheit-- and my feet swelled up and everyone was pole-axed tired. Then the front came through, though no rain. Sunday was crisp and lovely and I was still exhausted. I spent idle moments sitting by the registration desk spinning and people watching. it was a fine weekend, though too soon over.
and a boss who was experiencing all the stages of grief upon being informed that the person previous to me had not distinguished between "Pastors" (the CEO of a church) and what she called "Clergy" (deacons, priests and bishops,
but she used it to to mean 'anyone who works or has worked for a church, including nuns and directors of religious education and the associate minister whom everyone likes because he/she is so much more FUN than the pastor, who is wondering when God will provide for, say, the elecric bill). These are not the same thing, when the boss is intending to send out a mass mailing to people with some power over the churches' budgets.
This week we are having fun trying to get a mailing list sorted by zip code of all these clerical types (dropping out some of the obviously-not-pastors and anyone who has given us money lately) when a) half the entries are home addresses and half are work addresses; thus, there are two possible zipcode fields, and my computer is not that intelligent, and b) the database has a hissy fit because about half the (800+) entries say "United States of America" and the other half just assume it. Almost everywhere in New Hampshire can be assumed to be part of the US. But sometime, maybe after 9-11, she found it necessary to say so.
I cannot help but think he ought to have hired someone who was better at office computing than I am--
you might say I left work_with relief_, and drove to Grafton Fibers, in Vermont by way of the areas in SW NH flood-ravaged last October. And they still are.
And Saxton's River is much farther out of the way if you take the NH back roads (with Highland cattle, though) than if you go out of your way on 91 from Brattleboro.
It was a warm and lovely day and I picked up a dozen beautiful spindles and drove another hour to Northampton, MA, and stopped on the way to Smith to get Chinese food for myself and my daughter and another person stuck behind the registration desk of ConBust, a small but tasty science fiction convention that almost no one from Smith attends except for the women who put it together. About 150 people in all.
I had eleven people in my workshop, which was free, but cost the price of the spindle if you wanted to take it home (I charged my cost because I wanted to Enable people). The goody bag of roving came out of stash, roving that I had no memory of-- what it was, where I'd obtained it. (And I still have a lot of roving...) Six people bought their spindles and I sold one to the woman who couldn't leave the vendors' room during the workshop; she (and a passerby) had lessons the next day. The one-hour workshop ended up lasting two, and almost everyone had enough yarn to be shown how to make a plying bracelet. At least one person (as reported by her roommate) who was up to her neck in running the convention, got up Sunday morning and said, "I have five minutes, I can spin!" Which was very satisfying. For both of us.
Since there are only six or seven people in the world, the male fan who came in and stated chatting about Elizabeth Wayland Barber turned out to be the ex- (but still cordial) boyfriend of the only other spinner I have encountered in archaeology field school. And he and the vendor may both come to this year's field school, which would be most amusing.
It was, however, the hottest day of the year -- a stuffy, humid near-80 Fahrenheit-- and my feet swelled up and everyone was pole-axed tired. Then the front came through, though no rain. Sunday was crisp and lovely and I was still exhausted. I spent idle moments sitting by the registration desk spinning and people watching. it was a fine weekend, though too soon over.
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
At least they don't need socks
oh, very well, Doug, have it your way. People are cutting through the backyard.
Monday, March 27, 2006
Fiber fest April 22
We are having some kind of fiber party here April 22. I mentioned this last month but I think it might be an idea to mention it again. I hope some of you all can come. There is a remote chance my Loom Room will be fully functional by then, if we get the gas fake-woodstove thing connected, only 11 months after I think the second "I hope it's ready by" deadline.
Regardless, the hot tub is doing well and it may be warm enough to be outside, in which case Doug and I will mix up some dyes to play with on the porch. We plan to have food and drink.
My email, as I have not said often enough, is lauraej atttt tds dought net, if you want to repondre, SVP, or get directions.
And I must thank the fabulous Claudia LB for her gift of needles to the Smith dorm Knitting Library. I have to find a way to glue a tiny brass plaque onto each one, with the donor's name; maybe I should put what size needle it is on, too.
Regardless, the hot tub is doing well and it may be warm enough to be outside, in which case Doug and I will mix up some dyes to play with on the porch. We plan to have food and drink.
My email, as I have not said often enough, is lauraej atttt tds dought net, if you want to repondre, SVP, or get directions.
And I must thank the fabulous Claudia LB for her gift of needles to the Smith dorm Knitting Library. I have to find a way to glue a tiny brass plaque onto each one, with the donor's name; maybe I should put what size needle it is on, too.
Blogging is
so much more important than paying bills, right?
My dreadful mood has evened out. I am almost caught up at my job because the boss has been away for four days; unfortunately he's coming back and he will find more things to do that will take roughly two and half hours each.
I have been using my new elliptical trainer regularly, and while I am not taller or blonder or thinner I think after three weeks my knees and ankles are stronger. It was not cheap, but it lives in my bedroom and is very, very easy to get to, even in pajamas, unlike a class or a healthy walk outside. I hope for fat to melt away, but I will be very pleased even if I just get stonger and don't feel wifty when I leave my rut like I did on the trip to New York. I was appalled by my general unfitness and the fact that I really could not see in any detail very far. So I decided to get the elliptical thing, and I have a really great pair of glasses from Sears. I can see. And I can walk up more of my driveway without needing medical intervention.
And it has been warmer. You might as well live. In today's photos you may note an unusual effect -- _bright light_ coming out of the SKY. Very strange.
Yesterday, although it was not really very warm and only sunny for a microsecond or two, I worked in the garden.
Chainsaws on sumac and stainless steel loppers,
No bugs except for some poor cold grass hoppers
no sweat and few leaves to hide anything
These are some reasons to garden in spring...
You can see me dancing around on my hillside in a dirndl with the chainsaw.... it's electric and I had about 150 feet of extension cord going. I don't think I could dance with a gas chainsaw, as they are almost too heavy to heft. They probably work better. The loppers worked very well and gave my switch-gripping hand a rest. I got about a third done and now I _really_ need a chipper-shredder.
There were old stumps where the sumac was temporarily discouraged by a previous owner; I do not entertain hope that I will do anything but keep it to a murmur. Underneath it was a festive mix of carnivorous rose and bittersweet, a pestilential vine that strangles trees. This is not going to be be easy to make into a patch of anything else. I need something invasive and aggressive with shallow roots. It is the edge of the septic seep-field and I am not supposed to grow anything with serious roots. I didn't grow the sumac, but its very definite roots add a certain legitimacy to my desires to cut it down.
It's not that I hate all sumac; I have another patch if I need to use it for natural dyeing. I am trying to cut back a festering ridge of it so I can see a little farther downhill to a meadowy bit with a nice stone wall -- actually it grows fruitless crawling raspberry, poison ivy, bittersweet and carnivorous rose, but it looks serene from a distance. I once saw a fox there and I think a woodchuck lived under the burn pile -- which is a festering sore in itself and needs more sorting out and a truck for the things the previous owner never burned... There's lots to do here.
Like the bills and the taxes and this weekend is the Smith science fiction convention and I am also putting off getting more ready for the spinning workshop, the one I am giving, you know, maybe I should get a few things together....
Here are some scarves.
The blue and magenta one is Debbie Bliss alpaca and silk. Imagine the yellowy one twice, since I have made two of it, and imagine a purple one in the same yarn. And, visible, a Manos of Uruguay one-skein wonder, I hope; there was a yarn sale at the Fiber Studio this weekend. I only got this and one other thing, well, three skeins of the one other thing. And two very small balls of another. And a flax spinning workshop. I mean, compared to Doug I was very well-behaved.
There is certainly not a cat in this picture, regardless of what Asterix thought there ought to be.
This is the ZigZag Hat,
which is not quite done and I have to rip the crown back and count the divisions more accurately. Could be worse.
It is probably the tidiest thing on the inside I have ever made and very soothing.
Now this is a picture of a cat. He thinks it's very bright all of a sudden, too.
My dreadful mood has evened out. I am almost caught up at my job because the boss has been away for four days; unfortunately he's coming back and he will find more things to do that will take roughly two and half hours each.
I have been using my new elliptical trainer regularly, and while I am not taller or blonder or thinner I think after three weeks my knees and ankles are stronger. It was not cheap, but it lives in my bedroom and is very, very easy to get to, even in pajamas, unlike a class or a healthy walk outside. I hope for fat to melt away, but I will be very pleased even if I just get stonger and don't feel wifty when I leave my rut like I did on the trip to New York. I was appalled by my general unfitness and the fact that I really could not see in any detail very far. So I decided to get the elliptical thing, and I have a really great pair of glasses from Sears. I can see. And I can walk up more of my driveway without needing medical intervention.
And it has been warmer. You might as well live. In today's photos you may note an unusual effect -- _bright light_ coming out of the SKY. Very strange.
Yesterday, although it was not really very warm and only sunny for a microsecond or two, I worked in the garden.
Chainsaws on sumac and stainless steel loppers,
No bugs except for some poor cold grass hoppers
no sweat and few leaves to hide anything
These are some reasons to garden in spring...
You can see me dancing around on my hillside in a dirndl with the chainsaw.... it's electric and I had about 150 feet of extension cord going. I don't think I could dance with a gas chainsaw, as they are almost too heavy to heft. They probably work better. The loppers worked very well and gave my switch-gripping hand a rest. I got about a third done and now I _really_ need a chipper-shredder.
There were old stumps where the sumac was temporarily discouraged by a previous owner; I do not entertain hope that I will do anything but keep it to a murmur. Underneath it was a festive mix of carnivorous rose and bittersweet, a pestilential vine that strangles trees. This is not going to be be easy to make into a patch of anything else. I need something invasive and aggressive with shallow roots. It is the edge of the septic seep-field and I am not supposed to grow anything with serious roots. I didn't grow the sumac, but its very definite roots add a certain legitimacy to my desires to cut it down.
It's not that I hate all sumac; I have another patch if I need to use it for natural dyeing. I am trying to cut back a festering ridge of it so I can see a little farther downhill to a meadowy bit with a nice stone wall -- actually it grows fruitless crawling raspberry, poison ivy, bittersweet and carnivorous rose, but it looks serene from a distance. I once saw a fox there and I think a woodchuck lived under the burn pile -- which is a festering sore in itself and needs more sorting out and a truck for the things the previous owner never burned... There's lots to do here.
Like the bills and the taxes and this weekend is the Smith science fiction convention and I am also putting off getting more ready for the spinning workshop, the one I am giving, you know, maybe I should get a few things together....
Here are some scarves.
The blue and magenta one is Debbie Bliss alpaca and silk. Imagine the yellowy one twice, since I have made two of it, and imagine a purple one in the same yarn. And, visible, a Manos of Uruguay one-skein wonder, I hope; there was a yarn sale at the Fiber Studio this weekend. I only got this and one other thing, well, three skeins of the one other thing. And two very small balls of another. And a flax spinning workshop. I mean, compared to Doug I was very well-behaved.
There is certainly not a cat in this picture, regardless of what Asterix thought there ought to be.
This is the ZigZag Hat,
which is not quite done and I have to rip the crown back and count the divisions more accurately. Could be worse.
It is probably the tidiest thing on the inside I have ever made and very soothing.
Now this is a picture of a cat. He thinks it's very bright all of a sudden, too.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Startitis
See, a change of scene. Now the sane person: I did finish a soft little alpaca scarf for Doug, which he likes and I hope he doesn't sweat through it too much before I take a picture. I liked it, too, since it looks tidy on the front and the back and this is never asomething to take for granted.
I have half of an inconsequential Firenze scarf for which I have misplaced the second skein. I am hoping it got left in Northampton when I picked up the daughter at school. Then I cast on a Trekking sock and a scarf and a hat. The sock will go on, in a bit. The scarf may get frogged and restarted (I was having trouble following the pattern in the midst of the conversation that day, and there is a slight fear in my heart that it may be just hideous -- the yarn is a bit odd. But will the recipient think it is hideous?)
The hat is a ZigZag hat designed by Kelly Bridges, one of the goddesses at the Elegant Ewe. It involves two contrasting skeins of Koigu or similar (I am using a blackish Koigu and a mottled red Tradewinds. because myy son has a black-red thing going on)with a rolled rim, a braid, and then a nice big zig-zag. I cast it on on Sunday and I am about half done, which goes to show that it is easy yet interesting and satisfying in its increments. And I will post pictures really soon. Knitting is good.
I have half of an inconsequential Firenze scarf for which I have misplaced the second skein. I am hoping it got left in Northampton when I picked up the daughter at school. Then I cast on a Trekking sock and a scarf and a hat. The sock will go on, in a bit. The scarf may get frogged and restarted (I was having trouble following the pattern in the midst of the conversation that day, and there is a slight fear in my heart that it may be just hideous -- the yarn is a bit odd. But will the recipient think it is hideous?)
The hat is a ZigZag hat designed by Kelly Bridges, one of the goddesses at the Elegant Ewe. It involves two contrasting skeins of Koigu or similar (I am using a blackish Koigu and a mottled red Tradewinds. because myy son has a black-red thing going on)with a rolled rim, a braid, and then a nice big zig-zag. I cast it on on Sunday and I am about half done, which goes to show that it is easy yet interesting and satisfying in its increments. And I will post pictures really soon. Knitting is good.
Wicked speryts
So you know, I have already remembered to take the motherwort, and I hope it helps. I used to get PMS in advance. I still do. But the last couple of months it's also been great fun around the first couple days of the period, WITH cramps, thank you, and yes, I have wished myself and quite a few other people dead.
So I hope I feel better soon. I think I might like a few days on the Gulf of Mexico but no one would go with me and I wouldn't like them anyway if they spoke to me or breathed or anything pushy like that. I can't think of much else I would like, although sleeping more and not going to work would be on the list.
Kind people whom I like ask me how I am and I try to manuever around the fact that if we talk about anything consequential I will probably cry, and nothing new is the matter, except that last week I could work in the garden and this week I could get frostbite.
I think I am also at the part of New Job where I have been there for four months and I feel like I should know everything and I don't. It feels like every day something new comes up that I ought to have done, and every week I find out new things I hate about Microsoft Outlook. It must be nice to be whomever it was designed for.
It is indeed nice and sunny. I know there are people out there going for walks and seeing interesting birds. I think it's too damned cold and I am tired of that, too.
I do have a couple of snowdrops and some optimistic birds telling one another about sex and territory.
So I hope I feel better soon. I think I might like a few days on the Gulf of Mexico but no one would go with me and I wouldn't like them anyway if they spoke to me or breathed or anything pushy like that. I can't think of much else I would like, although sleeping more and not going to work would be on the list.
Kind people whom I like ask me how I am and I try to manuever around the fact that if we talk about anything consequential I will probably cry, and nothing new is the matter, except that last week I could work in the garden and this week I could get frostbite.
I think I am also at the part of New Job where I have been there for four months and I feel like I should know everything and I don't. It feels like every day something new comes up that I ought to have done, and every week I find out new things I hate about Microsoft Outlook. It must be nice to be whomever it was designed for.
It is indeed nice and sunny. I know there are people out there going for walks and seeing interesting birds. I think it's too damned cold and I am tired of that, too.
I do have a couple of snowdrops and some optimistic birds telling one another about sex and territory.
Sunday, March 12, 2006
First garden-exhaustion of the year
It was warm again today, though not sunny, and rain was forecast. Unusually, I got my act together and went outside to work in the garden, with the result that I was shot to flinders by 1:30.
Doug had announced his intention of mowing over the hillside to get all of last year's goldenrod stems, etc. I think the birds have got all there may be to get off these stalks, and we knew we would not discommode too many grasshoppers (there are a few, small brown ones who must have hibernated) and no toads at all this time of year. So I marked all the daffodils coming up with pin flags (which actually looked pretty festive, a remark about how little color there is this time of year) and Doug mowed the daylights out of almost everything in sight.
I pulled up two huge bags of God-awful trailing raspberry out of the strawberry patch, pulling up relatively few strawberries, and there were actually some that lived through last summer.
Then I mowed through a hug patch of crown vetch, reduced by winter to a wispy hay that Doug raked into a good position so I could reduce it to dust. I love my lawn mower. It helps itself go up hills. It eats small sticks. It is not exceptionally heavy or deafeningly noisy.
The good thing about gardening this time of year, where it isn't too muddy, is that it's not too hot to wear all-leather gloves. We got no sunstroke, and no bug bites. The only trouble was that those raspberry roots that were lower than about three inches were set in ice, and would not come out. I do think, however, that I have slowed it down and it shouldn't take over the strawberries again for at least a couple months.
Then tonight I spent way too much money on the Stark Bros. catalogue. I am usually threatening to evict Doug as soon as he finishes unpacking, but now he has something to hold over me. I am going to need help digging holes.
Doug had announced his intention of mowing over the hillside to get all of last year's goldenrod stems, etc. I think the birds have got all there may be to get off these stalks, and we knew we would not discommode too many grasshoppers (there are a few, small brown ones who must have hibernated) and no toads at all this time of year. So I marked all the daffodils coming up with pin flags (which actually looked pretty festive, a remark about how little color there is this time of year) and Doug mowed the daylights out of almost everything in sight.
I pulled up two huge bags of God-awful trailing raspberry out of the strawberry patch, pulling up relatively few strawberries, and there were actually some that lived through last summer.
Then I mowed through a hug patch of crown vetch, reduced by winter to a wispy hay that Doug raked into a good position so I could reduce it to dust. I love my lawn mower. It helps itself go up hills. It eats small sticks. It is not exceptionally heavy or deafeningly noisy.
The good thing about gardening this time of year, where it isn't too muddy, is that it's not too hot to wear all-leather gloves. We got no sunstroke, and no bug bites. The only trouble was that those raspberry roots that were lower than about three inches were set in ice, and would not come out. I do think, however, that I have slowed it down and it shouldn't take over the strawberries again for at least a couple months.
Then tonight I spent way too much money on the Stark Bros. catalogue. I am usually threatening to evict Doug as soon as he finishes unpacking, but now he has something to hold over me. I am going to need help digging holes.
Saturday, March 11, 2006
Sheep-Shearing at Shaker Village
I had been wondering, given that they only have two sheep, how it would go and whether anyone would come.
Given the breezy weather in the 50's (sweatshirts! no hats, no mittens!) and the human desire to get out of the house and go somewhere pretty,Sarah lucked out. She deserved good luck because she had made careful preparation: she had lined up a bunch of volunteers, and she had rented sheep. Actually, some 3 or 4 Tunis sheep, including a ewe with twin lambs, came with the shearers. They were a woman who knew a lot and and man who did the shearing. Althoung with the sheep, they brought (and used, powered by bystanders) a really fine mechanical set of shears with a hand-cranked power-source, from sometime early the last century, perhaps?
Note the weird and very successful iron jointed arm attaching the shearer to the grinder. The crank part made a fine noise, more threatening than a sewing machine but not too different.
After I watched the sheep-rassling, I went inside. There were enough people wanting know what the carder was and how the spinning wheels worked that I barely had a chance to demonstrate the spindle, and I didn't notice that 10 am to 2 pm neatly overlooked lunch. Apparently they had over 200 people come through. I think Doug and I did some fine enabling, particularly of a young man of maybe 10, who really got into color-blending on the carder while we taught his mom and dad to spindle spin. He said, "I have a loom at home I haven't done much with lately. Now I want to go home and use it." He planned to get his mother to spin for him, which we said was fine but he could also learn to spin himself. His father said to his mother, "There's a loom in our house?" We suggested they should go to NH Sheep and Wool. She said she thought she would prefer getting herself a spindle in Peru. A family I liked.
Then Doug and I went home and had tea with my parents, who had arrived in spite of warnings about the condition of the house and were found chiseling detritus off the stove and washing the sink. Not the dishes in the sink, which were now in the dishwasher, but the sink. These people are welcome any time. It was after 3 by then but still warm enough to sit on the porch in the sun without special protective clothing.
They refused to stay for dinner so Doug and I were forced by our exhaustion to go have a tasty supper in the village.
Given the breezy weather in the 50's (sweatshirts! no hats, no mittens!) and the human desire to get out of the house and go somewhere pretty,Sarah lucked out. She deserved good luck because she had made careful preparation: she had lined up a bunch of volunteers, and she had rented sheep. Actually, some 3 or 4 Tunis sheep, including a ewe with twin lambs, came with the shearers. They were a woman who knew a lot and and man who did the shearing. Althoung with the sheep, they brought (and used, powered by bystanders) a really fine mechanical set of shears with a hand-cranked power-source, from sometime early the last century, perhaps?
Note the weird and very successful iron jointed arm attaching the shearer to the grinder. The crank part made a fine noise, more threatening than a sewing machine but not too different.
After I watched the sheep-rassling, I went inside. There were enough people wanting know what the carder was and how the spinning wheels worked that I barely had a chance to demonstrate the spindle, and I didn't notice that 10 am to 2 pm neatly overlooked lunch. Apparently they had over 200 people come through. I think Doug and I did some fine enabling, particularly of a young man of maybe 10, who really got into color-blending on the carder while we taught his mom and dad to spindle spin. He said, "I have a loom at home I haven't done much with lately. Now I want to go home and use it." He planned to get his mother to spin for him, which we said was fine but he could also learn to spin himself. His father said to his mother, "There's a loom in our house?" We suggested they should go to NH Sheep and Wool. She said she thought she would prefer getting herself a spindle in Peru. A family I liked.
Then Doug and I went home and had tea with my parents, who had arrived in spite of warnings about the condition of the house and were found chiseling detritus off the stove and washing the sink. Not the dishes in the sink, which were now in the dishwasher, but the sink. These people are welcome any time. It was after 3 by then but still warm enough to sit on the porch in the sun without special protective clothing.
They refused to stay for dinner so Doug and I were forced by our exhaustion to go have a tasty supper in the village.
Thursday, March 09, 2006
on a cheery note
My daughter does not knit, but I like her anyway. Alert readers may have noticed I am fond of the other women on the hall in her dorm too. Many of them knit. It would be hard to describe a Smith student as underprivileged, but the individual young women don't generally have money to burn. They knit for each other and for charity and they are financing part of the Smith science fiction convention (ConBust, another undertaking dear to my heart, and my daughter is actually involved in that one) with the proceeds of a craft fair.
Since I end up driving people to WEBS whenever I can when I am there, I usually have a ball or so to wind myself. While I was holding someone immobile with her hands out I had the (to me, at least) brilliant idea to endow my daughter's dorm with a swift and a ball winder. This grew into The Knitting Library.
I think it will look like a large box, with some donated yarn, some donated needles, and a three-ring binder to hold some patterns and some lists of good places to go online and Dulaan flyers and how to dye with food coloring in your illicit microwave and so forth. We think it should be in the custody of a senior and passed on when she graduates with some ceremony. The house has great esprit de dorm (yes, they do like to sleep, but that wasn't what I meant), so I think the Library will remain vital even after I stop dropping in on it.
If you want to unburden yourselves of any yarn or needles or patterns, this will be a good home. I am composing a bookplate type label, and since I keep my short and circular needles in a three-ring binder full of labelled Ziplock bags, you can have a set of needles donated in the name of a loved one or something, the full college endowment experience but without the bricks and brass plaques.
Or if you have a child away from home in a communal setting you might want to endow a knitting library yourself.
Since I end up driving people to WEBS whenever I can when I am there, I usually have a ball or so to wind myself. While I was holding someone immobile with her hands out I had the (to me, at least) brilliant idea to endow my daughter's dorm with a swift and a ball winder. This grew into The Knitting Library.
I think it will look like a large box, with some donated yarn, some donated needles, and a three-ring binder to hold some patterns and some lists of good places to go online and Dulaan flyers and how to dye with food coloring in your illicit microwave and so forth. We think it should be in the custody of a senior and passed on when she graduates with some ceremony. The house has great esprit de dorm (yes, they do like to sleep, but that wasn't what I meant), so I think the Library will remain vital even after I stop dropping in on it.
If you want to unburden yourselves of any yarn or needles or patterns, this will be a good home. I am composing a bookplate type label, and since I keep my short and circular needles in a three-ring binder full of labelled Ziplock bags, you can have a set of needles donated in the name of a loved one or something, the full college endowment experience but without the bricks and brass plaques.
Or if you have a child away from home in a communal setting you might want to endow a knitting library yourself.
Knit on, regardless
So I have had a couple of days paying the dues for membership in the "No, of Course I'm Not Bitter[most of the time]" Divorced Persons Club (if you need the link to the NYT storythat set me off, go look in Enchanting Juno's comments) and I went to archaeology lab to wash rocks (and incidentally introduce two of the sweetest, cutest, most-likely-to-get-you-booked-on suspicion-of-Dealing pocket-sized tenth-of a gram scales, on which we weigh flakes of rock) and see the new issue of American Archaeology, which has a very nice story about SCRAP, my NH archaeology outfit, and used one of my pictures. Printed full-page, in color, and credited to Laura E. Johnson.
Which is not my name. Try the third president, not the 36th, okay?
There are just days you can't win.
They misspelled the author's name, too. He has 2 L's.
And their website doesn't load.
Which is not my name. Try the third president, not the 36th, okay?
There are just days you can't win.
They misspelled the author's name, too. He has 2 L's.
And their website doesn't load.
Friday, March 03, 2006
really, I have left for work
Tonight I am zooming to Northampton to see the daughter and then zooming home Saturday afternoon, when, of course, I will take the cardboard blocking the entrance of my house to the recycling center and tidy the downstairs and sort and put away the laundry... or maybe I should stay in Northampton until Monday morning.
I was faithful to the pink sweater during the Olympics and am now about 1/3 done with both sleeves. And I made a little fuzzy Firenze scarf, because it was 14 st across, in garter stitch, and so much fun I have the yarn for another one for the daughter and a third promised for someone else. Firenze is on sale at the Elegant Ewe. It is not a serious yarn and has no natural ingredients.
While I was getting an 18" circular for the sleeves, and incidentally the second batch of Firenze, I started fondling some Debbie Bliss alpaca silk and talked myself into a small very squishy scarf for Doug the housemate. Right now scarves seem to be like potato chips and I want to eat more than one.
Pictures will follow.
I was faithful to the pink sweater during the Olympics and am now about 1/3 done with both sleeves. And I made a little fuzzy Firenze scarf, because it was 14 st across, in garter stitch, and so much fun I have the yarn for another one for the daughter and a third promised for someone else. Firenze is on sale at the Elegant Ewe. It is not a serious yarn and has no natural ingredients.
While I was getting an 18" circular for the sleeves, and incidentally the second batch of Firenze, I started fondling some Debbie Bliss alpaca silk and talked myself into a small very squishy scarf for Doug the housemate. Right now scarves seem to be like potato chips and I want to eat more than one.
Pictures will follow.
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
if you are not busy a week from Saturday
there is a very small fiber event at Canterbury Shaker Village. I will be there, as will Sarah, of course, and who knows who else? I don't think there will be vendors. At the rate things are going, they're going to have to glue the fleece right back onto those sheep; today it was about 3 degrees F (that's TOO COLD in Celsius) when I woke up.
Sometime in April -- we'll say the 22nd -- Doug and I and the cats would like to have a Fiber Day, with food and perhaps a dye pot or so outside. Because we think it might be warm then. Easter is the 16th. There could be Easter-Egg-Dye Dyebaths. We can chat about the upcoming NH Sheep and Wool. Please think about whether you might come, and I will send anyone directions. Concord is about one and a half hours north of Boston. Henniker is sort of outside Concord, but not on the way to or from anywhere but Keene. The hot tub may be fixed by then, but that would be for people only, not for fiber.
In other news: Boring Anglo Girl makes Tamales! Angla? Anyway, they were easier than I thought and delicious.
I started with the recipe on mexgrocer.com and cut it in half. Most unusually I happened to have some actual chicken broth, made with garlic, onions, and GINGER!! (lots of it) from last week to mix with the masa harina.-- It is most unfortunate, but I think maybe the zest of the broth actually made a difference in the finished product. I usually just use water when things call for broth. I suppose that's why they make Bouillon-- and most of a rotisseried chicken. I had carved the chicken and I put most of the meat (for longer than necessary) in the Cuisinart with half an onion and a half a bunch of parsley, incidentally inventing the world's best chip-dip.
I did not have corn husks. I think asking us to buy corn husks in a package is a perfectly accurate insult to the Anglo cook*. I used parchment paper. I plopped masa onto the parchment paper, smoothed it out with a spoonful of salsa, and plopped chicken mixture onto that. Then I attempted to roll them, with too thick a layer of masa and too much chicken, not very envelopingly, but got them covered with parchment paper, and then I steamed them in my Chinese steamer for about 35 minutes. Heaven. All I need is the strange orange oily sauce, which I imagine is achiote. Mail-order achiote is on its way. I blame Rick Bayless for a lot of this, but the tamales were my fault entirely.
*You know how many Americans it takes to go ice-fishing? One to cut the hole and fifteen to push the boat in.
Sometime in April -- we'll say the 22nd -- Doug and I and the cats would like to have a Fiber Day, with food and perhaps a dye pot or so outside. Because we think it might be warm then. Easter is the 16th. There could be Easter-Egg-Dye Dyebaths. We can chat about the upcoming NH Sheep and Wool. Please think about whether you might come, and I will send anyone directions. Concord is about one and a half hours north of Boston. Henniker is sort of outside Concord, but not on the way to or from anywhere but Keene. The hot tub may be fixed by then, but that would be for people only, not for fiber.
In other news: Boring Anglo Girl makes Tamales! Angla? Anyway, they were easier than I thought and delicious.
I started with the recipe on mexgrocer.com and cut it in half. Most unusually I happened to have some actual chicken broth, made with garlic, onions, and GINGER!! (lots of it) from last week to mix with the masa harina.-- It is most unfortunate, but I think maybe the zest of the broth actually made a difference in the finished product. I usually just use water when things call for broth. I suppose that's why they make Bouillon-- and most of a rotisseried chicken. I had carved the chicken and I put most of the meat (for longer than necessary) in the Cuisinart with half an onion and a half a bunch of parsley, incidentally inventing the world's best chip-dip.
I did not have corn husks. I think asking us to buy corn husks in a package is a perfectly accurate insult to the Anglo cook*. I used parchment paper. I plopped masa onto the parchment paper, smoothed it out with a spoonful of salsa, and plopped chicken mixture onto that. Then I attempted to roll them, with too thick a layer of masa and too much chicken, not very envelopingly, but got them covered with parchment paper, and then I steamed them in my Chinese steamer for about 35 minutes. Heaven. All I need is the strange orange oily sauce, which I imagine is achiote. Mail-order achiote is on its way. I blame Rick Bayless for a lot of this, but the tamales were my fault entirely.
*You know how many Americans it takes to go ice-fishing? One to cut the hole and fifteen to push the boat in.
Sunday, February 26, 2006
They want to know why we blog
The Washington Post is asking why people blog. It's an interesting enough article, wondering whether blogging as an activity has peaked and among whom.
Here's what I sent them:
Blogging seems to be the natural successor to the yahoogroups and email lists I was on a few years ago. When blogs came along, several of the most interesting writers to SheepThrills (a list for spinners and knitters) more or less with drew their energies from the group. Whether this made a bigger ecological niche for yammerers and outright jerks or whether it was simply a time that more mouth with less brain began signing up to lists, the lists I had been devoted to, derived support from, learned neat stuff on and participated in gossip (the friendly kind) with lost their savor. Bloglines made it much easier to keep up with the people I liked once I didn't have to click on a long list of links to see who had updated.
That's more about why I read blogs than why I write one, but the two are connected. You can participate in the discussions that break out on 'comments' pages without a blog of your own, but you need your own page to get support and insightful comments for your projects, to show pictures of projects, parties, patterns, piles of booty from fiber shows (and historic snowfalls, good sunsets, cats, links to the Washington Post, recipes, charity projects like Dulaan). Having my own blog encourages me to pay attention to the projects I actually finish; I think many crafters lose sight of what they really have done, and see mostly what they wish they had finished or that they had never started. I also know, from the friendly notes I get in 'comments' or as email, and above all from the rare face-to-face meetings with other bloggers and readers, that people are out there cheering for me. The details of knitting and spinning and dyeing are esoteric enough that it really matters to get support and enthusiasm from one's peers (and superiors). Watching a new project sweep through the blog community (The Birch Shawl, the Jaywalker Socks) would amuse an epidemiologist; getting to see them expressed in Claudia's orange, or Theresa's blue, gives me a fresh look at the possibilities.
I wish more of my non-knitting friends blogged, and that my kids at college would write more in their LiveJournals (to which I am privileged to have access. God knows what they are doing on other lists). Blogging is less personal than a phone call, but it's more convenient for me and probably for them. If people I know well write even obliquely of trouble in their lives, I can call them or write them off-list. At the very least, checking someone's page can be more frequent and detailed than a Christmas card, even if it's only the same level of communication. My LiveJournal is more private than my Blogspot publication, and I say sourer, truer things on it. I don't give it out to very many people
Finally, I write a small blog about the New Hampshire State Conservation and Rescue Archaeology Program, a non-profit, quasi-autonomous governmental organization. In the summer, during the field school, I send some version of diary to various audiences by email. The SCRAP blog is potentially seen by strangers, so I restrain myself, trim the diary, and ask permission of the state archaeologist (who runs the program and the digs) before I post anything that might be more sensational than accurate. I hope it allows some of our occasional volunteers to keep in touch with the community, and that it allows some of the rest of the interested public to get a look at what we do.
Blogging is an expression of the Web as Back Fence rather than Infobahn; it enlarges my community.
Here's what I sent them:
Blogging seems to be the natural successor to the yahoogroups and email lists I was on a few years ago. When blogs came along, several of the most interesting writers to SheepThrills (a list for spinners and knitters) more or less with drew their energies from the group. Whether this made a bigger ecological niche for yammerers and outright jerks or whether it was simply a time that more mouth with less brain began signing up to lists, the lists I had been devoted to, derived support from, learned neat stuff on and participated in gossip (the friendly kind) with lost their savor. Bloglines made it much easier to keep up with the people I liked once I didn't have to click on a long list of links to see who had updated.
That's more about why I read blogs than why I write one, but the two are connected. You can participate in the discussions that break out on 'comments' pages without a blog of your own, but you need your own page to get support and insightful comments for your projects, to show pictures of projects, parties, patterns, piles of booty from fiber shows (and historic snowfalls, good sunsets, cats, links to the Washington Post, recipes, charity projects like Dulaan). Having my own blog encourages me to pay attention to the projects I actually finish; I think many crafters lose sight of what they really have done, and see mostly what they wish they had finished or that they had never started. I also know, from the friendly notes I get in 'comments' or as email, and above all from the rare face-to-face meetings with other bloggers and readers, that people are out there cheering for me. The details of knitting and spinning and dyeing are esoteric enough that it really matters to get support and enthusiasm from one's peers (and superiors). Watching a new project sweep through the blog community (The Birch Shawl, the Jaywalker Socks) would amuse an epidemiologist; getting to see them expressed in Claudia's orange, or Theresa's blue, gives me a fresh look at the possibilities.
I wish more of my non-knitting friends blogged, and that my kids at college would write more in their LiveJournals (to which I am privileged to have access. God knows what they are doing on other lists). Blogging is less personal than a phone call, but it's more convenient for me and probably for them. If people I know well write even obliquely of trouble in their lives, I can call them or write them off-list. At the very least, checking someone's page can be more frequent and detailed than a Christmas card, even if it's only the same level of communication. My LiveJournal is more private than my Blogspot publication, and I say sourer, truer things on it. I don't give it out to very many people
Finally, I write a small blog about the New Hampshire State Conservation and Rescue Archaeology Program, a non-profit, quasi-autonomous governmental organization. In the summer, during the field school, I send some version of diary to various audiences by email. The SCRAP blog is potentially seen by strangers, so I restrain myself, trim the diary, and ask permission of the state archaeologist (who runs the program and the digs) before I post anything that might be more sensational than accurate. I hope it allows some of our occasional volunteers to keep in touch with the community, and that it allows some of the rest of the interested public to get a look at what we do.
Blogging is an expression of the Web as Back Fence rather than Infobahn; it enlarges my community.
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