Fiber Trek: The Search for a Flock

As I mentioned in my earlier post, despite my idiotically sprained sternum, I was still all set to drive down to Chicagoville to see the ever-lovely Yarn Harlot do her book-signing, speaking, whirlwind gig. Her earlier tours I wasn't able to make it for various reasons (both small and blonde and generally cute-yet-exasperating - ahem), but this time, finally, we were able to arrange it so that I could go. Meg and Jonathan graciously offered me a place to land overnight while I was there, and so I was set. I was quite happy about this, as you might imagine.

You may recall that I also mentioned that I had decided that I would make my first pilgrimage to The Fold on my way down as well.

Well! Pilgrimate I did and, despite the flattering faith in my moral fortitude exhibited by kimd, I did not actually manage to abstain from purchasing any of the many, many, many pretties I met there. Not by a long shot.

Seriously, does anyone else think Toni could run an organlegging operation out of the back in no time flat? I mean, I've got two kidneys, after all. I'm sure I could spare one, really....

So what did I get, you ask? Well, obviously I was a woman with a mission. I simply had to get my first taste of the almighty Socks That Rock. And so I did.

This is STR mediumweight, colorway Jewel of the Nile. I've been ogling it on Toni's site for ages, and so when I stood there going, "Oh god, oh god, ohgodohgodohgod, what do I pick?" I decided to go with the one I'd been longing for the longest. (Note: Cast on a pair of Jaywalkers with it last Monday, turned the heel and started working the gusset of the first sock last weekend. Am in love. Pictures soon.)


The colors in this picture did not turn out as nicely, but I hope you get the idea. It's the best shot I could get.

In all that talk about STR, nobody mentioned to me that The Fold is apparently THE place to go for Mountain Colors yarns, short of, y'know, the Mountain Colors folks themselves, obviously. How did that escape mention all this time?! Not that I'm looking to assign the blame. All's well that ends well, I say, and the fact that they had the exact colorway in the exact yarn I've been looking for for months now certainly counts as "ending well" as far as I'm concerned. That would be Weavers Wool Quarters in Ruby River, for the record.

I can't wait to make luscious thick boot socks out of it!


Of course I picked up some fiber - this is some Colonial roving in a "Red Multi" colorway. I haven't gotten a chance to play with it yet, but I take it out every so often and pet it like it's my new pet kitten or something. (Not as far-fetched as you might think - I swear I heard it start to purr the other day. Though Caz insists that was just me.)

Of course, to go with that lovely fiber, well... I had to... you know.

My new drop spindle.
I hemmed and hawed and pondered and looked at all the many lovely spindles, all vying for my attention. And then I saw this beauty, sort of tucked behind a few other spindles, patiently waiting on a lower rack, and went, "Oh. Well. Hello then." And I pretended to consider a few other spindles, just to keep them all from feeling too badly about themselves, and then me and this sweetie wandered off to a quiet corner to get a little better acquainted.

Get your minds out of the gutter! I've been behaving the perfect gentlewoman, here. Well, mostly. There was that one night while we were watching TV late at night, but I was properly chastised for my impudence and we're going to take things slow from now on.

I'm trying to finish up the blue on the other spindle and re-read Spin It* and look at some other sources if possible (anybody got any suggestions?), so I have more of an idea of what I'm doing with regards to a drop spindle which I actually intend to, y'know, drop.

So, having met my original purchasing goals (STR, fiber, spindle), and spent all that I could afford, it was time to get back on the road.

* Ha! I originally typed "Spit It!" which I think would be a different book entirely. Entirely.

To Be Continued.....

Heart Healing

Like everyone in the U.S., and probably the world, I have been stunned by the events at Virginia Tech two days ago.

I look at my children and I see the terrible news, and I just want to hide them away somewhere, forever safe from hate or harm.

But I can't. The darkness can be anywhere and everywhere, and there's nothing I can do to change that.

Today, within about a ten minute span, I read two items - a blog entry and a news article - which brought the tragedy home to me in a way which it had not been before. The first was realizing that I have a friend who once called Blacksburg her home. The second was discovering that one of the students killed was a twin, just like my boys are. The thought of one of them losing the other fills me with agony.

After seeing the terrible news on Monday, there had been a need in me, a drive, a desire to do something good, to fight that darkness, which can be anywhere and everywhere. I had seen Kay's post about Mother's Day Knitting, and had thought to myself, "That's what I'll do. I'll knit a blanket." But soon harsh reality intruded, and I knew that I just didn't have the ability to knit a blanket in that short period of time. After rifling through my stash, realizing I didn't even have sufficient yarn bits for a respectable blanket, I felt defeated. Like this time, the darkness might win.

And then I read Suze's blog, and at first I thought, "My God! Another one! This tragedy keeps getting closer and closer all the time!" All I wanted was to keep this tragedy far, far away from those I adore.

But then I read on, and I felt... hope. I can do something. I can make a difference. And Suze is making it possible. She's asking for 8x8" squares to be sent to her by May 5, and she will sew them together into a blanket(s?) to get them sent out for the Afghans for Afghans Mother's Day deadline.

So, I'm going to get out those yarn bits and start making some squares.

My heart needs healing, and there is darkness to be fought. I'm doing battle the best way I know how - with my heart, my needles and my wool. I will fight darkness with light, cold with warmth, and hate with love. I cannot undo what has been done, I cannot bring back those souls who were lost. But I can and will help keep a new baby, in a land far away, safe against the cold.

Suze needs 25 squares for one blanket. If you all join me in fighting the terrible darkness, how many blankets do you suppose we could make?

Sprains, Spinning and Suze Susses Me Out

(So I'm a sucker for a little sweet alliteration. Sue me.)

(This post is the first of a series of "retrospective" entries intended to bring y'all up to speed as to what I've been doing with my time the past month or two - which mostly can be summed up thusly: Knitting, not blogging. I'm going to continue to try to catch up here, so expect a few more posts that may be a little more retrospective than usual.)

Sprains

So, about a three weeks ago now, I was trying to bust the kids getting into some kind of mischief, which had included them knocking over the baby gate in the hallway. I didn't want to take the time to pick it up, so I decided to just step over it so I could get to the kid-bustin'.

Well, that turned out to be a bad idea.

I slipped, slid, and tried to catch myself on a handy door frame, only to fall anyway, wrenching my shoulder in the process. I took a little bit to regain my composure (i.e. remember that I know some words which are not, in fact, banned by the FCC), and tried to get up. Ouch. I'd also apparently pulled a muscle in my chest, a seriously undignified muscle to pull.

I spent a couple days feeling ouchy, especially my chest, but figured it was just a pulled muscle and tension and if I could just get it to relax, I'd feel better.

Well, by the time the weekend arrived, I wasn't really any better. In fact, the day Caz decided to reverse the ceiling fan direction and spray dust all over the place, I discovered that sneezing made me want to pass out, it hurt so bad. So when Monday arrived, I called the doctor's office and made an appt. to go to Urgent Care. Went in, saw a doctor, and was pronounced with what I think is the absolute silliest injury I have ever incurred, and I've incurred some pretty ridiculous injuries over the years.

According to the doc, I sprained my sternum.

Yeah, you heard me. I never knew that was possible either. In fact, a friend of mine who is a nurse said, upon hearing that, "Wow. That's one I've never heard of before!"

But apparently that's what I did. So they gave me lovely Vicodin to help me sleep, and advised plenty of ibuprofen for during the day, and at last this point now I seem to be almost back to 100% recovered. Which is good, because keeping up with rampaging twin toddlers when it hurts to take a deep breath is not my idea of a good time. Just in case anyone was wondering.

Spinning
Also about three weeks ago, perhaps even the same day I sprained my stupid sternum, I was suddenly possessed of an urge to dig the spindle I'd bought at Rhinebeck out of hibernation. It turned out I did have some vague recollection of how to spin, so I finished spinning the "practice fiber" I'd picked up at Rhinebeck and wound it off into a ball. (I need to find a good book or tutorial or something on plying, because it needs plying but I have no idea what I'm doing there, so it's set aside for now.) Then I dug through my wee little fiber stash to see what I wanted to play with next.

I chose this lovely blue roving,


which was part of the wonderful array of fiber Jonathan had given to me from his stash after Rhinebeck. I'm not sure what it is, but it's got a much longer staple length than the first batch of fiber I'd been playing with (which I think was Corriedale or Romney, I can't recall now), and I'm loving it to bits. Just... love love loving it.


See how pretty?

I've just about spun up all of it I have, and now I'm wondering what on earth to do with it. I've put enough twist in there that it'll need plying, but... will there be enough yardage then to actually knit anything up out of it? I have no clue how to gauge how much is on there as yet, so I guess we'll see. But I do know I'm way too eager to try knitting it up to consider hanging onto it for any length of time.

I also decided that, as I was plotting a drive down to Chicagoland to see The Yarn Harlot, I would include a stop by The Fold to finally buy myself some Socks That Rock and look into a new spindle. This one has been nice, but it doesn't maintain its spin for very long, which is making it hard to figure out how to actually spin beyond using the park-and-draft method.

And when I'm not spinning, I just want to look at pictures of handspun yarns - most recently I've been working my way through the Twisted Knitters group blog, to see what kinds of cool things people have been doing. Some seriously gorgeous stuff there.

Suze Susses Me Out

So thinking that I had nothing to blog about (yes, I'm a dope, leave me be), when I saw Suze doing up a nifty interview meme on her blog, I decided to throw my hat in and ask to be interviewed. And here are her questions:

1. What aspect of your personality surprises people the most?
It's either the sudden, massive bouts of shyness that afflict me more often than I'd like, or it's the bizarro mix of precision and slobbery which is me. My house is a pit, but I know where absolutely everything is. I'm a total nitpicker about grammar, spelling, usage, but my bookcase is a jumbled mess. I cannot sleep if my bed covers are not carefully aligned, but I never make my bed in the morning, and I can never seem to keep up with my laundry, no matter what I do (and the dirty clothes constantly escape the hamper). I think it confuses a lot of people, but mostly it comes down to this - I am not a half-assed kind of person. I do things either whole-assed, or not at all.

2. Do you play any musical instruments? If so, what? If not, what would you like to learn?
I don't, though I did play clarinet and saxophone in junior high. I liked saxophone a lot, but had been discouraged from playing it because I was told my hands were too small, so I'd taken on clarinet as a compromise, except I hated it. I never practiced, spent most of my time in the school band in the last chair (or, for a while, in the second-to-last chair, because there was actually someone in band who was even more unwilling to practice than I was), and never even managed to memorize how to play the school song. My parents let me start taking lessons on the sax a year or two later, but I really didn't like my teacher, and again took to never practicing, and so eventually gave up on both. I did get really good at playing the theme from M*A*S*H on the sax, though.

I've thought, over the years, if I'd ever like to learn a musical instrument again, but so far nothing has really caught my fancy. If I ever get back into music as more than just singing along with the radio, I'll probably stick with voice - I was in choir for years and loved every minute of it, and would love to see if I can walk the first-soprano talk. Or some other mangled metaphor. grin.

3. What's the worst hairstyle you've ever had?
Easy - the Annie-ish perm my mom convinced me to get in 6th grade. Simply dreadful. I've got a really round face, and the perm made me look like Annie getting the Violet Beauregard treatment. (Well, except for the blue, which probably would have made it a little more palatable, really.)

4. What's the most annoying piece of parenting advice you've ever been given?
Any variation on, "You know, they're going to have to learn _______ eventually." It's become less in the past year or so, but for a while there, I felt like I was hearing it all the time, and usually about things that were, at best, only slightly age-appropriate. Most of the time it was stuff that was well advanced of where my kids were, and so all I wanted to do was reply, "Yes, and they're going to have to learn how to drive eventually too. I'd best get moving on that as well, I suppose?" It wasn't so much the people who maybe didn't know that much about what's appropriate for what age of baby that bugged me, but more the people who used that phrasing as code for, "You know, you're going to have to stop coddling them eventually." They really got my dander up, I tell you whut.

5. Name 3 things that make you smile.
I could cheat and name each of my menfolk, but I will combine them into one thing - my family, and say that bodies of water for watching, swimming in or boating upon are always wonderful, and of course fibery goodness makes me happy.

Thanks for the questions, Suze!

It's Hard to Be Hoppy When You're A Toddler

Man. Easter is such a rough holiday, it seems. It doesn't help that once again the weather has thumbed its nose at us, and prevented us from doing something lovely and spring-like (and free! and open 365 days a year!) like going out for a nice walk or playing at a park or flying kites or something.

Still though, something about the combination of toddlers and a day that kicks off with a sugar bonanza
just spells disaster, even if there are no heartbreaks or other traumas in the course of the day.

But when Grammy and Grampy are here for a visit, and the boys are just smitten-in-love with Grampy,

and then Grampy has to go away again, and we won't see him for probably another month at least... well, suffice to say the three-and-a-half hours between his departure and the time we got the kids to bed were almost full-time crying. I've never seen these kids this messed up before, seriously.

At least there's good news on the yarn front.

These eggs that I dyed last night (I'm a terrible mother, and will spend eternity in Mommy Hell - instead of dyeing eggs with the kiddos, Caz and I took shameless advantage of the free grandparental babysitting and went to see The Host yesterday afternoon, but then I dyed eggs anyway, because I'm kind of a nutbar like that),


turned out to be such great colors, that I knew what I had to do. I grabbed up a half-pound hank of Henry's Attic Kona Superwash, soaked it in a 3:1 water/vinegar bath for... gosh, probably an hour - we were busy getting stuff ready for today, too. Then I laid it out on a bunch of plastic wrap and Caz and I sat across from each other at the kitchen table and flicked Easter egg dye on it with forks. I should have taken a picture of it in process, because it was cool, but it was like 1 a.m. I totally was not on my blogging game at that point.

Anyway, nuked on high 2 minutes, let rest for 2 minutes, nuked on high another 2 minutes, then rinsed in warm water, squeezed a bunch of the water out (so nice working with superwash yarn for a change! I took a ridiculous amount of flauting the rules and wringing to my heart's content) and hung it in the bathroom to dry. See?


The pink didn't turn out as nicely on the yarn as it did on the eggs. The egg dye kit I used (a Sesame Street version, of all things) instructed not to put vinegar in the pink dye, but to put vinegar in the other four colors. Well, when it came time to dye the yarn, I hemmed and hawed and ultimately decided to add about the same amount of vinegar to the pink that had been added to the other colors. I'd figured the instruction not to add vinegar was because the pink was so fierce to begin with, adding vinegar would just make it too insta-stick for the average home user, but I think I was wrong. I think the vinegar washed out the color somehow - broke it down or something. I'll know better for next time.

I think I might drag the kids to Target tomorrow to see if there's any more of these kits on sale, because these colors really do kick hoop. I'm thinking maybe something in a self-striping for whenever I do this next.

In the meantime, I'm waiting for the Easter egg yarn to dry the rest of the way, and then I'll wind it and see what sounds good to do with it. Part of me is thinking knee socks, the other part of me is thinking that since it's like 250 grams of yarn, I could easily make socks for me, plus have enough left to sell/gift to someone else. We shall see.

Anyway. I've got like three or four entries backlogged here, that have been just awaiting pictures. I finally got a bunch uploaded and will go through and get the posts sorted soon - I'm hoping to get caught up by the end of this week. Though I will be busy - I'll be going to Madison Knitters' Guild tomorrow evening, and out to dinner with a friend on Wednesday evening, and I'm considering going to see Anne Lamott at a local bookstore on Thursday, but we'll see if the week really supports that kind of thing.

"Gosh, Thorny, you're going out a lot for a mother of toddlers married to a man who works second shift. What gives?" Ah ha ha ha, gentle reader - as of Friday my husband no longer works second shift! New job, new possibilities for, y'know, a life and shit! I'm pretty excited about it.

Hope everyone had a Happy Easter!!