SIgh of relief

My friend made it through his bypass surgery. I'll feel better when I know he's awake, which at the rate the hospital is communicating may take some time. His wife was sitting in the hospital _with_ the liaison person who was trying to get information, but the hospital wouldn't give the liaison any information and instead, called the patient and (his wife)'s home and left reassuring messages on the answering machine.

I imagine the dog was glad to hear things had gone well, though.

Sunny with cold breeze

My father usually asks me how I am and I usually tell him what the weather is like. I have known women whom you would ask the same thing and they would tell you how the kids were. Both of these seem to me to make perfect sense. I think I am fighting a cold but basically I am fine. It's fifty F and blue of sky with a few puffy white clouds. Yesterday it rained a lot.

Doug (who has another job interview coming up, although at the moment he doesn't seem terribly desirous of a different job and is treating the interviews as interesting sources of things to ask people _he_ has to interview) is away for the weekend. I am glad it's cleared up today.

Autumn is back in the Loom(less) Room. Only one more person lately has been sure she was her cat, and then realized Autumn was not the right brown tabby. I do wonder what's happening to brown tabbies in Canterbury. Sarah wondered yesterday if Autumn had been dumped for being pregnant, but since other than eating really a LOT she has no sign of such an alarming condition, I doubt this (and people are more accepting of unplanned kittens nowadays, aren't they?). Next week we will go and get tested for kitty diseases and establish whether or not she has been spayed. It would be a welcome savings, and being a cat if she hasn't been spayed she probably is pregnant. God forbid.

Friday we had a big workshop at work,for 'prophetic preachers.' My life and Div. school experiences suggest the best preachers are always trying to get better and the woman from Yale sounded excellent. I was doing hospitality and trying to keep the potato chips flowing, which was quite satisfying. Throughout this, it was Jessica's-down-the-hall's last day on the job. We had a trip to the Elegant Ewe and beer and dinner to look forward to. At 10 a.m. she had wondered if it was a bad sign that she wanted the beer THEN, and her day, of course, became more irritating. She said she was going to march down to the yarn store and give them her checkbook.

We both survived until then. Our friendship survived the even more perilous moment when Kelly and I Confronted her and said she should not be wearing ice blue and periwinkle when wearing nice reds and russets made her look _wonderful._ And the yarn she bought to make the Kimono Sweater was lovely enough to eat or roll in, and at least the rolling will be much easier when she has knit it up.

I committed a skein of Red Willow Mountain Goat because it is finally cold enough to think realistically of warm socks. I am poised to make a pair of Monkey out of what I am pretty sure is Wild Raspberry Twizzle, but that will require attention and my brain is not at home these days (or many others, actually).

On Saturday, Sarah came over to knit and hold a gun to my head. As a result of her efforts, I tidied (and she tidied) my bedroom down to floor in several places, and I started some needle-felted stars for the workshop she has, ah, persuaded, Doug and me to do for Shaker Village. Needle felting is one of the best crafts I know, in that to be vaguely competent you don't need much tuition, a fortunate thing for any students of mine (only you need not to bleed on your creation, which is less of an issue in knitting). The equipment is cheap and you get to play with colors. She left to go make scary noises for Haunted Village Tours and I watched a curiously sweet movie called "Fido," which is well worth a viewing. It's about love and fidelity and the Meaning of Life as movies usually are. Religion and ethics make brief, dignified, and appropriate appearances. And it has Billy Connelly making Lurch noises.

Why trusting the universe gives me such a headache

'When the student is ready, the teacher will arrive' and all those trusting remarks about synchronicity. I want to be that kind of person. So I say, look, universe, I have a place in my life for a cat. Nothing happens. In true American style, I haul myself to animal shelters, undertake Marten and Toby, lovely cats both with some quirks and incredibly effective bloodlust (house full of Mafia-style warnings like chipmunk head in the living room, leg in the far kitchen....). Excellent cats. I still want a nice sane kitten, preferably a queen.

The universe, doing rather badly by some of my friends --last summer's woman with lumpectomy has just finished radiation, doing fine, now her husband is having bypass surgery on Halloween; you wonder if the fun ever stops and then you hope not, to say nothing of all of Southern California) does not have time to cough up a kitten.

A sweet cat shows up in Canterbury Shaker Village, whom Sarah feeds and cultivates. After some days and some discussion, the cat strolled into the cat carrier (! ?? !!!!) herself on Monday and began to spend a quiet few days in quarantine here, provisionally named Autumn. Sarah put up a poster.

We had the slightly weird, mostly okay last archaeology lab before said cardiac patient's surgery last night. Sarah appeared and said the cat's distraught owner had turned up, clutching the poster and saying "Miss Tucker ran away just after I moved here, I'm so glad you found her, her brother misses her so much!" Sarah drove to my house and picked up the cat and I reflected how tired I am of loving beings that are not mine to love. (You can insert the appropriate Christian, Buddhist, fatalist remarks about how _everyone/everything_ is on loan, etc, but some beings are on even less of a loan than others.)

Turns out the cat I have been calling Autumn is not Miss Tucker at all. So Autumn is going to spend the next few days in Sarah's bedroom in Canterbury, not amusing her two queen kitties one little bit. Doug and I are trying to remain open to either bonding with Autumn or being delighted her people have her back (this cat has been deeply loved, unless she is a Bodhisattva cat). We have two brown female tabbies lost in the Canterbury area in the last couple of weeks, God knows where Miss Tucker is, and her brother still misses her.

I wish I weren't thinking about this. All the time.

It's Blog Action Day (it will be on Monday, anyhow) and the theme is the environment. At the very least, both the goldfinches (and the other passeriforms and aves in general, and in fact life on Earth) and the fiber bearers (sheeps and camelids mostly, most of whom are domesticated) need fairly specific ones. I had not realized that the two in my title were so opposed, one being wild and one being mostly domesticated. One being part of the ecology and largely dependent, one being a part of the ecology that gets really a lot of technological help and, given enough, will degrade the environment in which it lives well beyond the area's capacity to carry it.

I love a good polarization.

People are part of nature. We are a reflective part of nature, which allows us to do things to our environment ("I could farm here if there weren't so many trees"), and eventually to consider what it is we are doing ("I can't farm here now that it doesn't rain... I wonder if it has something to do with the lack of trees?"). The latter has only become widespread as people have spread into all the habitable ground and the effects of intense exploitation have become unavoidable. It is only a recent part of human life to HAVE TO consider ourselves part of our environment; most of the human experience has been about most becoming part of the humic layer real soon.

I like people, many in particular and quite a lot of things about us in general. We are learning so very much about how it all works as we realize how easily it can all stop 'working,' in the sense of 'working the way we like it, with food, air, water, charismatic fauna and flora,not too much dengue, a good place for Moore's Law to operate.'

There probably need to be fewer of us and we really really must take Stuart Brand's words to heart: We are gods, and we may as well get good at it. There is nothing we can do that does not matter. (This is frankly a drag.)

I have been weirdly cheered by Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Maybe something will go better. The whole world situation suggests that none of the Marvel superheroes (or the DC ones), the Mission:Impossible team, UNCLE, or the Avengers are answering their calls (go Google them yourself if you're so young you don't know).

If I have a talent other than ineffective kindness and grammar-fascism (I rather like this link but the site may be crap)it is biblography. Not much idea how you should live, but lots on what you might read:

Historical and relevant (and not terribly encouraging):

The Long Summer, By Brian Fagan. You settle, you get used to the climate, you grow, the climate changes. Most of you die or migrate. Repeat.

Collapse
by Jared Diamond. Do trees prefer totalitarians?

A Forest Journeyby John Perlin -- really brought home to me that you have to burn something.

1491 by Charles Mann. What was my face before my great-grandparents immigrated? The only book on American history I have really been excited by.

Pretty good fiction:

Forty Signs of Rain
Fifty Degrees Below
Sixty Days and Counting, all by Kim Stanley Robinson.


Link to a list of links for Blog Action Day.

Well, it's still raining

And I suppose I can't protest much, but I will if it rains all week and all weekend, too. The leaves up north were lovely, and they aren't bad down here, but it's the kind of gloomy weather that makes you not care, even if you can see the leaves. I did, however, get the Octoberfest blog entry up, once the State remembered to bring the chip into work. I hope to get a better link but the generic site one will have to do.

Sarah and I met and knit for an hour after work since I am having social withdrawal after all the people last weekend. I know, if I were sensible I would go to Rhinebeck, but the house might fall down and I would be really, really broke, and even more overstashed than I already am.

My cat thinks it's time for me to go to bed and he is probably right.

In the works

I am back from a really lovely long weekend in the White Mountains digging holes and taking pictures of dirt and rocks (soil profiles and artifacts). I have most of an entry written and I hope to get it up at the NH Underground blog this evening (no link until there's something to see), after I have retrieved the pictures I want from the State, Whose camera I was using (the rocks and dirt belong to all of NH, after all).

I have finished my mother's socks.

My milk stout, upon mature consideration, is undrinkable.

Corned beef hash is unknown in France and not widely known in Quebec. It's very tasty.

Keum Boo is not all that much fun if you are not an abstract person and keep trying to make _things_ with scraps of non-adhering gold leaf.

Hold a good thought for Doug the housemate, who has an interview possibility.

Deep breath

I made spaghetti sauce before work. I stayed calm at work (so did my boss, even though he had forgotten I was leaving for an early weekend) and I am told the #10 envelopes will work fine. DEEP BREATH.

Jessica at the end of the hall has a new job, so she will be LEAVING ME ALL ALONE THERE in early November. But I'll be fine, sitting there in the dark.

I punted lab and went to the supermarket to get healthy snacks and the cocoa Dick forgot. And cat food and Kitty Litter (not the TM kind)and Asterix's drugs and a bottle of propane for the Tripod of Orodruin, which boils one's tea water real quick of a frosty morning. And some of it all is in the car and soon, honestly, I will get the rest.

Probably not much updating will take place in the next four or five days. Some knitting, with luck.

Better

I am still employed and my boss is uninjured. The poor man wasted a ream of 11x17 paper (one side had one orientation, the other had another; America is not ready for this)and said he felt sick, and I thanked him for making me feel better. We also had a tacit truce because he has not figured out Microsoft Publisher and I have (to some extent).

I am not ready for Octoberfest and not really happy with the gold on the ring I am Keum-booing (a Keum Boo-boo?) but life is okay.

Here is a really spectacular hummingbird picture. I didn't take it but it lifts my heart.
And Here. The photographer is a firespotter and there's a story about him in the newly-free New York Times.

Perhaps it will get better

Okay. The weekend was great. I also acquired gingko leaves to play with in the silver clay. I returned home and went to work to find that the 200 envelopes I ran through the magic mail function had the wrong return address on them. My boss, already unhappy because it took me so damn long to generate the list he said I ought to have been able to make in a few minutes, got to stick 200 return address labels over them on Friday night.

He also found we had roughly 10% of the envelopes you put in when you send an appeal out. This resulted directly in my printing and stickering 2000 self-addressed envelopes yesterday. Even 500 is a lot. I called to find out what size envelopes the mailer wanted. She said bigger was better, 9's would do. Staples does not have 9's, so I got 10's. 4/5 of the way through the boss suggested the 10's would stick out of the mailer. I said she said bigger was better, and Staples had no 9's. He said I ought to have gone somewhere else and not assumed (he barely managed not to make his usual remark about how assuming "makes an 'ass' of 'u' and 'me,' " which I didn't find endearing the first time). I don't think there is anywhere else in Concord.

If the 10's don't work I am going to offer to resign. I can't stand much more. We communicate badly; he can't believe I don't think and remember everything the same way he does. Much of the time, he knows a lot more about running a non-profit (not surprisingly). I am also doing things like forgetting how to do weird things in Word in less than six months. Some of this may relate to a certain amount of stress, since we are running on the boredom-punctuated-by-panic business model.

He is right, we ought to have had more envelopes on hand. If there were anything to say on my side, it would be that he has been saying we would be sending out a mailing since the beginning of August, and as of yesterday at 5 pm, he had not yet written the copy. The inelasticity of my brain has not allowed me to make it automatic that the word "Mass mailing" should lead to a nice complete list of useful stationery, since I tend to think "Oh God, ACCESS," even though Access is behaving a bit better for me (after nearly 2 years, we are beginning to get along better).

He also wants me to be responsible for tidying the supply room, which is unfortunate because he has a much lower threshold of messy and if he didn't go in and tidy it I would know what we had on hand. The disposition of the boxes changes daily and not always in a useful way. I think it is nice for him to have something concrete to do and if he wants to disarrange the supply room it's fine with me, although I wish he would not hide things.

I had planned to leave work at two, go to the grocery store, the bank, and pick up some more fresh silver clay,get the cat's prescription, then go home, make spaghetti sauce to freeze for the archaeological weekend, use the gingko leaves in the clay before they dry out, and do a major kiln firing, as well as cut an intricate piece of gold foil for the class tomorrow (today).

I left work at about 5:00, reached the bead store at quarter past five (it closes at five, I thought it was six, but not always true...), but the nice woman had already let a family in and we all promised to leave quickly and we were all cheery and happy. I drove to the bank, endorsed my checks, and found I still hadn't got my ATM card back in my wallet. I drove to the vet, who closed at six, arriving at five past. I went to the small local grocery store which has a poster of the local buffalo it sells, perfect for dig spaghetti sauce, only it is usually out of buffalo, it turns out, which makes the times I have bought it there before relatively unusual. I bought cholesterol-laden, ecologically unsound ground cow and went home. It was 6:30 and I didn't actually do anything productive except help Doug throw back the tide of dangerously full wine bottles in central New Hampshire.

Mittension of Rovaniemi

Actually, it was a fairly laid-back class; we were quiet because we were _busy_, thank you.



Susanna Hansson is a good teacher and a fun and pleasant person, as well as one of the most astoundingly fluent non-native English-speakers I've ever encountered. I was happy that she has encountered and used correctly the fine word schlep, which my years at Brandeis taught me was best translated (when used as a noun) as 'A steamer trunk full of rocks.' She did have a good deal of stuff with her.

And though the room (rather harshly lit) was full of knitting teachers there was a familiar face who picked out a familiar colorway:



I don't seem to knit as loose as I once did, as 000 needles turned out to be unnecessary and 1's were fine. I think either I am growing up or my drugs are perfectly balanced because I restarted once because I screwed up the first row and ruined the cast-on, at least once; then I learned I hope for the last time that if you're knitting in the _round_ you read the chart normally (like a typewriter, for you antiquaries) instead of boustrophedon;then I just plain read the chart wrong and skipped a color repeat: and yet I was not crazed or suicidal, or even the least complete in the class by the time we gave up and shopped, being at WEBS after all. I'd have a picture of my partial cuff but I pulled it out again this afternoon because I would really like to do it right. But I may try it again in sport instead of fingering and with a whole line of different colors because I managed to get the first and second and third pale greens mixed up.

One particular thing struck me: Susanna was discussing Saami weaving and one thing led to another and there I was talking about Women's Work, the First 20,00 Years,which some of you may recall my mentioning other times. Anyway, one of the WEBS employee-students went and fetched the four copies in the store and people bought three of them. My kind of fanatics.

Susanna and Lene will have a article in PieceWork this coming winter sometime and The Secret of the ColorChange Will Be Out. It will still be a lot easier to learn with kindly human tuition. I can't show you over lunch. It is really absorbing and those folk (you know, folk tradition) were awfully clever.



Everyone picked colors that went with what she was wearing.

I behaved fairly well at WEBS except for the five skeins of sportweight alpaca... And I have almost finished my mom's second sock!

I am about to go to WEBS (slightly more than halfway down) and be out of my depth, but I am sure I will have a good time anyway.

Here is how I've been: As the week went on, I became more and more impatient with Being at Work. Usually it's just a dull throb but this week it became acute, until by Friday I wanted to snap "Oh, get a HOBBY! and stop talking about things I already know and just LET me ALONE so I can DO my JOB!" The boss is in one of his slightly manic moods where the forest is thick and he is concentrating on teeny little leaves, while complaing that we must make it through to the other side in the next ten minutes. It makes me anxious.

Down the hall, Saisquoi did her job in seraphic calm. It is a comfort when you know someone understands why you're making Igor "The-Marsther-ith-MAD! MAD, I tell you!" faces and full-body gestures all the way to the bathroom.

The weather decided to be strange. Along with peri-menopause and heat sensitivity from SSRIs and being fat, I hate high humidity. I hate all of these things and all of them are active in my life. So it was 65 degrees F (usually a well-enough behaved temperature, if not clammy)with about 90% humidity and my knees were sweating. This was toward the end of the week; it had been 90 F+ and broken records on Wednesday, not your dry heat either. It's better now; I am wearing wool socks for the first time since about March.

On Tuesday I had a pleasant but not very productive silver class. On Wednesday I had a fine time at lab, where we gave Dick an atlatl for his birthday because I was tired of listening to him try to explain how they work. The atlatl is the way most of the projectile points were are occasionally lucky enough to find were used to kill food
or in other parts of the ancient world, food. His wife won't let him hang it up over the mantelpiece with the little brackets made of dead deer-hooves. I can't really blame her.

Thursday they had promised the weather would break, but it did not. I went to tea at the home of friend's mother, and it could not have been nicer. The most English home I have seen in the New World, with (honestly) horse brasses and blue-and-white ware on the walls. And zucchini bread, which was a nice touch of inculturation (I suppose they might have zucchini bread in England, but I rather doubt it).

When I got home I found Effectively Blogless Sarah had, as she promised, come to visit. And tidied the whole downstairs. I kiss her feet. I said I would make us something to eat and she pulled the quiche out of the oven. Sarah is welcome to raid my stash anytime (which she has only done with encouragement, I hasten to add. As far as I know. The stash is such that quite a number of things might be disappeared before I notice. But don't get any ideas, I am going to do the Ravelry penance/inventory soon, I mean next week, I mean in mid-October...).

I have finished one of my mother's socks. Taking a class is hardly the same as starting another project, is it? I mean, I have no choice about the timing. Or buying supplies...

The Kool-Aid is tasty

In particular, I finally Did Something with my Ravelry invitation (Jess told me I must have signed up for a beta tester several years ago. I have only the vaguest of memeories of doing so). Just ankle-deep, of course. I joined Facebook last week; it has been great for being in touch with my friends of the later generations. Like, I hear 40% of Facebook are over 35, but I haven't run into anyone my age. My father is 80 and possibly the oldest person on it; one of his friends invited him.

Both of these are addictive timesinks. At least Ravelry has the prospect of doing me some good; my stash is bigger than I am and some kind of fearless exploration would be a good thing. I wish there were some kind of book thing (any suggestions?) I could add to this blog; Facebook has an 'I'm Reading' app that ties into Amazon, which I would feel guiltier about if I were not one of their frequent flyers.

I forgot to mention I bought just a very small Icelandic fleece at Wool Day. Moorit. I would enjoy it just for the pulling-into tog and thel goodness.

Honestly, I will take some pictures soon.

Pictures? Why would I have taken pictures?

A delightful note on boredom as an anthropological item.

I figure I am reasonably contented these days but the fact is I am reading way too much and the house has descended from barbarism through savagery and is dipping into chaos. One reason to find solace in Robin McKinley is that the space inside a book is tidy, and also not my problem.

Except that we are in a drought, the weather lately has had some perfect days. It managed to be pleasant for the Canterbury Shaker Village Wool Day, where Doug and I go and spin. This is a very small atypical wool festival, in that the demonstrators far outnumber the vendors, and the visitors often know _nothing_ ("Is that a spinning wheel? Do all spinning wheels look like that?").

I am finally beginning to recognize some of the people I don't know from blogging, like the woman whom I taught to spin four Wool Days ago. She would pop up and say "Hi! Remember me?" and I would gulp and say, "Um, no...." She managed to imprint on my adamantium skull at Spa and even though I couldn't recall her name I knew who she was. Hi, Pam! Maybe we'll get solid on your name next.

My parents came up from Boston and enjoyed the sheep. I dragged them the extra hundred yards to see Gina Gerhardt (whom I just Googled and ended up with my own blog entry (down a ways) as the top pick. Gina, your profile is TOO LOW)'s flax braking setup. I take spinning and even weaving pretty much for granted (unlike most of the visitors, which is why they are at Wool Day), but flax processing is rare. My parents were gracious enough to be actually interested, and Gina was gracious enough to let me play with her stuff and demo it for them. She was a hoot, actually, and yelled at me for not remembering _everything_ she had taught me a year ago. Since I failed to remember _her_ when I saw her at Fiber Revival (you would have thought the hank of flax on her wheel would have been a hint) this was particularly funny. (I do usually recognize my parents.)

I have roughly enough silver equipment to furnish a small craft fair, and no apparent time, no apparent space, and a tendency to freeze. I am taking a Keum-Boo on Argentium class and messing around in Keum-Boo with silver clay and it's _magic_.

I will post this and go to work and hope to update more soon. But this weekend, because I need another project, I am going to Northampton to visit the daughter and take the Rovaniemi Mittens workshop at Webs. Why, given that I have maybe 12 projects ongoing and am not that great a knitter in the first place? I blame the Harlot. Show me a lost art and I am anybody's. (Raider of the Lost Art...)

Art and fear and housework and !@#$% global warming

Finally, something to which I can find washing catfood cans preferable. I blame Sara Lamb for starting me down the silver clay road to ruin. Sending me back to hang with the vicious, friendly, vegetarian bead store owner, who happened to have classes... chainlink jewelry with beads. Doug, my so-called friend, dragging me with him to a wirework class (at the Fiber Studio! Even in a warm fuzzy place full of fiber, the sultry gleam of brass and copper and silver. Carol is giving another class there Nov. 11). There are books on enamelling out there and I already have a small kiln.

Sadly, as the equipment and materials and books piles rise, so does my apprehension. I know, this is neurotic. But I really needed to clean the kitchen up last night, and I am really happy I did, and I still managed to go play a bit. I am making a cross for my ex (I know, the ex has me, who needs another cross?), whose birthday is Monday. I want it to be nice. The design options are vague: no stones. "Make it look maybe like a tree." What, it's a cross, and it's teeny, and it's silver. And I am not rich in technique or experience. I am trying a couple of things involving carving a Sculpey mold. As always the work was not nearly so intimidating as the anticipation. It may not be what the ex wants, but it will be small enough to put in a drawer if necessary. And I _will_ finish the tea cosy by Christmas.

Imagine how hard it would be to start if I were an industrial-size metal sculptor.

Meanwhile, we are having a drought. Two months and counting since there was any significant rain. I top up the frog ponds from the well, wondering how the aquifer is holding out. NPR woke me up with a cheery tale from the BBC about rising sea-levels in Bangla Desh leading to refugees in Assam. Assam is where the tea I like best comes from. AND the human suffering, yes. As good as the wakeup last week about the Huichol being done out of their peyote by drug tourists (one of whom didn't sound completely evil, either).

On the plus side: the mozzerella recipe from the Kingsolver website works, if you have a source for rennet (Sarah, in my case). With tomatoes from the farmers' market and olive oil from the daughter's sojourn in Italy on the homemade bread. Yum. I nearly want to eat more healthy.

The hummingbirds left after Labor Day. They were insane, and like Etherknitter, I miss them. I would not have believed how noisy they are.

Reading: Janet Evanovich (Stephanie Plum, not the stuff with cars, and not for the first time; brain candy), The First Fossil Hunters(brain whole-wheat bread).

Two things I learned this summer

One is important and should be generally known: Original Ban Roll-On Deodorant, applied liberally over poison ivy, eases itching A LOT.

The other I learned this morning: Sometimes when your trousers are harder to button than they should be, they have haven't shrunk, and you haven't gained. They're inside out.

Revival was EXCELLENT

I have been on a go-slow with the knitting this summer (it was too hot, I have too much stash, I want to make stuff out of silver...leading to self-castigation for having too many hobbies, a messy house, a depleted bank account, and no finished objects, it feels like, ever, in any medium) and did not connect this with an increasing tendency to gnash my teeth and mutter. I knew I missed the lively social life of digging (is it lively, if you are grateful for one another's company, happy to eat together, and stagger off to bed at 8:30, totalled on two glasses of wine?). So I began to think what impractical thing might help and there was Julia.
For some reason the plea for chairs brought it to life for me and I decided to go to the Revival. After a summer of relative chastity, I spent too much money at the Elegant Ewe (the Woven-Stitch Kimono-style sweater in Noro)on Friday, and I feared this was the beginning of a binge. I was mostly okay though -- fortunately, there were not too many vendors at the revival and 4 oz of roving and a pair of needles is hardly anything, right? And I blame Cate for the roving; I was looking for help when I complained that there was a completely unlike-me colorway (neon green +) of roving at Heather's booth, and damn if three minutes later Cate didn't decide she needed to see it. And then she suggested we could make matching socks (although I think she may make four little ones instead of two big ones). It does spin like a dream.

It was wonderful to see people from faraway Northampton and people I know and like whose last names and homes I have no idea of. And Kelly's baby, to say nothing of Kelly. I have almost met the Island Pond Spinners enough to recognize them now.

I noticed that similar makes of spinning wheel seemed to clump together. No Majas were in evidence, but more Schacts than I would have expected (they don't seem very portable, but I must be mistaken). Three darling Victorias, some Lendrums, our small ode to Joys (three in a row).

Sarah felt bad because all around her people were spinning wild colors and she was doing white. She is intending to make a handspun, naturally-dyed Bohus sweater and spinning white for a LONG TIME is part of the deal. I can't wait to see it. It will be my own fault that that will take longer because she decided she also needed to knit the Kimono thing (which the Ewe really needs to put up on its website). I spent Sunday muttering until I finally just gave in and knit instead of doing anything useful, and Doug is knitting a new floor for the chicken coop, I think the wood is 4-ply...

Real life. Bah.

She blogs, but not very often -- trying to catch up

Okay, it's been busy. Only not really. I came back from the last week of digging on August 4. We never did find anything but the foundations of a good-sized wall. Tidiest early Americans EVER.

It was very hot. It was very humid. It was harder to cope with than the greater, though dryer, heat of last year, even though we had patches of shade sometimes this year.

While I was digging (except for the first week when I thought I would die, that I was too old, that I had fibromyalgia, and then remembered to take aspirin/ibuprofen/ something like that BEFORE going out to dig) my knees and back became perfectly good and did not hurt particularly. Both places are getting cranky again now I am home. I don't really know what to make of this, as I do not really want to go be a contract digger.

Two days before the end of the dig I got a couple of very small patches of poison ivy, much less than most people. I did not get horrible dripping pustules, but the patches did propagate random very itchy dots all over my body. These finally stopped itching a week later, when I heard Deb was not going to need chemotherapy after her lumpectomy. I like good news.

I believe that was also the night we had guests.

Dark they were and golden-eyed.

On Wednesday, my daughter got back from her trip digging in Italy (she landed in MA late Tuesday night and stayed at her boyfriend's parents' home). She was not impressed by the administration of the dig but she learned to use a pick and found some pottery and tiles and was in Italy. She liked to cook before she went there (and has not been exceptionally lucky as far as the food she got from the places she studied) and within about half an hour of my arriving home after work, she and her boyfriend and I went to the Henniker farmers' market, where she made crooning noises over the tomatoes. I am very fortunate.

On Thursday, we got her a new driver's license and a cell phone and she was able to take a deep breath because she existed again.

On Friday we visited Sarah in Canterbury to get some rennet (enzymes are sensitive to heat. It is excellent ricotta, though) and we went for a walk through the Shaker Village gardens. This was closely followed by a trip to the Shaker Village vegetable stand, since the little yellow cherry tomatoes were addictive. I began tidying and OBD began cooking for my birthday party (scheduled for Saturday; birthday on Sunday). Friday and Saturday were both gorgeous, with lower humidity than we have had lately, which was good because it had been too miserable to do anything as lively as decluttering

My parents, my ex, and Dick and Deb arrived in the late afternoon and found they had lots to talk about. The daughter and the boyfriend worked through the first course (fresh and delicious bruschetta, bean salad, and mozzarella-and-tomato with basil) working on the pasta, but were able to sit with the rest of us (Doug the guests and me)outside for the second course. She is prone to stress over cakes, but loves making them. Her gluten-free chocolate cake is better than most people's conventional. Her father has always made beautiful cakes (the year of the giant cardboard apatosaurus you could hide several kids in, matched with the cake with the blue Jello pool with a plastic plesiosaur, is unforgettable) and they made me an archaeology cake.



We had the cake inside as the waether was actually cool, though the mosquitoes remained active. All afternoon the hummingbirds parted people's hair. Excellent party.

Butterflies all over

I went to get my camera so I could show off the bracelet I made this week, but I was hijacked by some unusually amenable butterflies (names are links). They really do like bergamot and buddleia, and oregano. It's glorious here, more bumblebees than you can count. Still too hot, though.

Eastern Tailed-Blue


American Copper


Atlantis Fritillary


Two-Spotted Skipper


This one I haven't figured out yet. There are also Monarchs and cabbage whites and pale yellows


And daylilies and frogs.


I can't begin to do justice to the hummingbirds, them with their special-effect flying and dysfunctional family life. There is chittery cursing everywhere and deeply-involved dive-bombing high-velocity chittering UFO's. Flying knots. I worry they will be so intense they'll forget to miss my eyes.

Update update

I finally wrote something about the archaeological field school, to which I return tomorrow night for the last week. I have been having a decent time despite spending this week at work instead of in the field. It has been sickeningly hot (which I am handling worse and worse) and I am glad Doug and everyone survived. All cats are well and the archaeologist's lady has been getting better after her lumpectomy. Every time I move my right arm I think of how glad I am to be healthy right now. Aches and pains, yes, many, though MUCH better once I remembered to take Ibu or aspirin first thing in the morning as well as after the damage of the day occurred. Opinion now suggests the muscle spasms in back were stress-related, since they got better on the the dig and went away altogether in Quebec. I have not had them back this week, though it was very definitely low-key semi-productive at work.

More soon, perhaps tomorrow.

On vacation

For the next two week sI am on vacation. The weekdays will be spent digging, and I will likely be blogging them from New Hampshire Underground. Any crafty things will probably get put here. I do wish I would sleep later henceforth, lovely and quiet though it is. And the cable internet was a wonderful surprise.