Category Archives: Words Words Words

In Which She Takes A Deep Breath

Yesterday morning my blog started displaying php errors at the top of the screen. The last time this happened was in 2008, when my host upgraded their end and my blog software didn’t play nicely with it. I tried to upgrade, we lost the RSS feeds for a while, and the blog was broken in a way I couldn’t fix. It mysteriously fixed itself a year or so later, but having been scarred by previous upgrade attempts (the great mySQL disaster to 2006, anyone?) I resisted upgrading until I absolutely had to. Which was yesterday.

So I did. I backed everything up a billion different ways, and I struggled with an anxiety attack all day. And then after the upgrade… the blog wouldn’t display. Nada. White page. This is so common, I later discovered, that it even has a colloquial term on the boards, “the White Screen of Death.”

Anywhats. I let it go, knowing that the upgrade had worked (mostly) since my dashboard and back end were all functional. I left a note on the support boards asking for help, and Meallanmouse sent me a message with a link to more common fixes and saying she’d try to help if I needed it, which was terribly nice of her. I couldn’t do anything overnight, so I let it go.

That’s huge for me, you know, not obsessing over something I can’t fix right away. I’ve been having a lot of trouble with anxiety lately, which was one of the reasons I’m back on medication. (Which, conveniently enough, addresses my fibro issues, too, so more bang for my buck. Yay for doctors who actually trust that I know what I’m talking about, and yay for being able to admit I need help!)

Anywhats, I delivered children and ran errands this morning (I am now well stocked with tea again, yay), and when I got home, I checked my messages. Someone had answered my board post with specific suggestions, so I ran a couple of those checks and found the error in a misbehaving theme. So voila, now the blog is upgraded, behaving, and displaying, in tidy new clothes. I’m leaving well enough alone for the moment; I’ll play dress-up with it sometime later. (I miss having a photo banner across the top, for example; I’ve missed it for years and years.)

So that’s where the wee blog owlies are at. If you couldn’t see them yesterday, that’s why. But now they’re back in line and hooting softly to themselves about their new digs. We’ll spruce the place up once we’re comfortable painting the walls.

Creative Activity Distracts The Brain (In A Beneficial Way)

I think this is incredibly fascinating.

Jacque Wilson’s article is called “This is Your Brain on Knitting,” but the observations extend beyond just knitting, of course.

Crafting can help those who suffer from anxiety, depression or chronic pain, experts say. It may also ease stress, increase happiness and protect the brain from damage caused by aging. […]
Our nervous system is only capable of processing a certain amount of information at a time, [psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi ] explains. That’s why you can’t listen and understand two people who are talking to you at once. So when someone starts creating, his existence outside that activity becomes “temporarily suspended.”
“He doesn’t have enough attention left over to monitor how his body feels, or his problems at home. He can’t feel if he’s hungry or tired. His body disappears.”
The effects of flow are similar to those of meditation, says occupational therapist Victoria Schindler. Science has shown meditation can, among other things, reduce stress and fight inflammation.
Our bodies are in a constant state of stress because our brain can’t tell the difference between an upcoming meeting with the boss and an upcoming bear attack, Schindler says. The repetitive motions of knitting, for example, activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which quiets that “fight or flight” response.

And this is why I’ve become so appreciative of fibre arts in the last few years. When I’m spinning or knitting, I’m focusing on something not-me. I distract my brain from observing how achy my muscles are, the pain in my joints, the effort it takes to think through a problem. Writing is hard on my brain (no, I know everyone says that, but it’s particularly hard for me, because I’m thinking through a fibro fog), and cello asks a lot of my back and hands, which aren’t always up to the task. I used to meditate a lot, but it started causing anxiety (ironic, that) because I couldn’t quell the “I should be doing something productive now instead of just sitting here” feeling. (Fibro has done a real number on my sense of self-worth as relates to productivity, let me tell you. Do I accept that my output is necessarily lower? Yes. Do I not worry about it? I worry about it all the time.)

The hardest thing about knitting is the decision paralysis that grips me while starting a new project. I can’t just grab a nice yarn and start something randomly; I have to calculate yardage and ask myself if I’ll actually use the finished product (or if I know someone who can/will), think over the yarn’s construction and figure out if it’s appropriate for the item, and so forth. And then I have to grapple with the whole “but what if I do it wrong?” panic. Once I’ve started, things settle down, but even working through those questions comes very close to fight-or-flight for me. It’s not limited to knitting, either; it’s the same with fibre. There is a lovely braid of dyed Polwarth/silk blend that Ceri bought for me. Is it gorgeous? Yes! Will I love spinning it? Yes! Have I spun it? No, because what if I spin it wrong somehow? What if I make pretty yarn that is utterly unusable for anything I might ever want to make? What if I chain-ply it and decide after it’s done that I should have done a traditional three-ply, or even a two-ply?

The entire article is interesting to read and makes several observations about crafting in general and its connection to dopamine release, the use of leisure activities/crafting in therapy, and the benefits of stimulating several areas of the brain simultaneously.

In general, this is what a lot of crafters — knitters, weavers, painters, miniature railroaders, people who build RC aircraft — already know on a subconscious level. It’s calming, it makes you feel good when you complete something, and it’s an easy way to give your brain a break. It’s just interesting to read about it in more scientific terms, and to see what therapists and doctors have to say about it.

Spring Concert Announcement!

We’re presenting our spring concert this Saturday evening! This one really crept up on me, because I had to take a month off from cello and orchestra for several reasons. But suddenly, it’s concert time!

This concert’s theme is Musical Gems:

    Mother Goose Suite – Ravel
    S̩r̩nade Op 7 РR. Strauss
    Concerto grosso op. 6 no. 1 – Handel
    Symphony no. 40 in G minor – Mozart

It is also dedicated to George, the eldest member of our cello section, who passed away two weeks ago. He was one of the original founding members of the orchestra, and a fascinating, philosophical man with a very dry sense of humour. He will be missed.

The concert is taking place at 7:30 PM on Saturday 29 March 2014 at Valois United, our orchestra’s home, which is at 70 Belmont Ave (corner King) in Pointe-Claire. Admission is $10, free for children 18 and under. The concerts usually last just about two hours, including the refreshment break. There is a map as well as public transport info on the church website. Children of all ages are always very welcome.

In Which She Tries Not To Laugh

Owlet is sick. She’d been moody and prone to bursting into tears over tiny things in the latter half of last week, but Friday she manifested a full-blown, terrible cold. Friday bedtime and Saturday nap were awful experiences for everyone. She was so sick she just moaned and screamed for ages, stuck in that cycle that toddlers can’t break sometimes, and once she was asleep Friday night she woke up pretty much every hour moaning, “Noses running, noses running.” Poor bunny.

Then, of course, the clocks went back on Saturday night. She’s old enough now that we don’t have to spend the week leading up to a time change shifting the schedule by ten minutes every day to be in line with the new settings. Still, the first nap of Daylight Savings Time is always tricky. We put Owlet to bed, and she kept getting up. (I would like to blame the time shift for this, but she does it often.) I’d put her back to bed four times, and told Sparky to be quiet half a dozen times. I heard a bang from her room, then silence. Maybe she just whacked her hand into the wall while turning over, I thought. It was quiet for a little while longer, and then bang again; it sounded like she was hitting a drawer or something. I opened her door with a little more power than I should have, because I was getting cross with both kids… and there she was, sitting on her little potty, falling asleep with her head nodding to the side, where it was hitting the side of her dresser.

I picked her up, pulled up her leggings, and tucked her into bed. I don’t think she even woke up. It was all I could do not to laugh; she was so determined not to sleep, and she looked so funny.

It was adorable. I still feel bad for her, though; she’s just knackered by this horrible cold, coughing so hard that she sounds like her lungs are being ripped out by the roots, and while she’s getting a bit better, I suspect she’ll be home on Monday, too.

March Break Date

I’ve been struggling with a really bad bout of depression this past week, so I’ve been pretty quiet. Most of the time I’m fighting bursting into tears for no apparent reason, and just feeling really, deeply sad.

I handed in a project yesterday, and today Sparky and I went out on a date day, as it’s his March break week. We dropped off a bag of cloth diapers I sold, I deposited my paycheque (yet again, gone as soon as it hit my account — someday I will be able to enjoy it being there for more than a minute or two), and then I took him to our bookstore, ostensibly to pick up the next book in a series we’re reading together, but my ulterior motive was the 20% off Lego sale they were running. I thought his eyes were going to fall out of his head when he read the poster. So since I’d encouraged him to bring the twenty dollars he’d saved up, he had a $25 gift card, and he had a $10 reward for one hundred practice sessions of cello (we keep track!), he walked out with two books, one each from a series he’s reading, and two Lego kits.

Then we went into the adjacent Starbucks and I bought him a hot chocolate and a Rice Krispie square, and he read one of his new books while having his treat. Seeing him so happy was really nice.

I had a wonderful moment while we were in the bookstore. We’d gone through the Lego and the younger chapter book section, and had ended up in the 9-12 area. We were both sitting on the floor, our coats open, and he was reading aloud to me from one of the books he had chosen. I sat there, smiling at him, not really hearing what he was reading — he was reading way too quickly, so I couldn’t understand the individual words. He does that when he’s super excited and eager to share something, and usually I rein him in, but this time I didn’t worry about it. I just listened to his voice, and watched him bend over the hardcover book, holding it open with one hand and gesturing with the other as he read aloud to me. I didn’t have to worry about rushing him anywhere since we had the whole day together, and I didn’t feel like nagging him about his reading. I just enjoyed sitting there with my son, listening to him read a book aloud to me, both of us being happy about being there together. It was a very special moment, and I have no idea how long we sat there, to be honest. I only suggested we move on when another mum and her daughter came along and I felt like we were in their way. I wish we had more time for things like this together.

In Which She Shares Her Excitement Regarding Processing Fleece For The First Time

I’m going through a rough fibro patch. Everything is achy, my hands can’t grab things correctly and I have reduced sensitivity in my fingertips, and my energy levels are about equal to sitting in a chair and not doing much else. There are other crappy things going on, and I’ve had to drop cello lessons and stop going to orchestra for a while as well, so I don’t get my one evening away from the house. I’ve just handed in another work project that was fun but draining, since it was a book of home DIY renovation projects and all the measurements needed checking and formatting, and I have been handling a yucky sinus cold through it, too.

So I thought I’d share some of what’s been interesting me lately.

Last fall my friend Stephanie bought a couple of fleeces at a fibre festival, and asked if I wanted to share some. I bought a pound of brown Corriedale fleece and some white Lincoln locks as well, and she shipped them up to me in November. They sat in their ziplock bags till this month, when the Ravellenic Games launched in concert with the Winter Olympics.

As you know, Bob, The Ravellenic Games are a fun event where you challenge yourself to do something fibre arts-related between the opening and closing ceremonies of whatever Olympics are being held. There are fun categories for knitting, crocheting, spinning, and weaving, and permutations thereof, and the point is to really challenge yourself somehow: do colourwork for the first time, teach yourself a new skill, or plan to do a huge project in only two weeks. My online knitting group of mums decided to call ourselves Team Coconut Two-Sters this year (long story, but the name partially came about because one of our awesome mums is a graphic artist, was bored at work one day, and started doing deliberately bad Photoshopped images of our two-year-old kids in coconuts), and this is my team avatar!

One of the events is the Fleece to FO (finished object) Long-Track, where you spin your yarn and then knit it into something. Stephanie and I decided this was a great occasion to each process some of our fleece and do something with it. Since the timeframe was limited, I decided to spin a bulky yarn and knit a pair of mittens. (Since I’m knitting mittens, they also qualify for the Mitten Moguls event, hurrah!)

Processing fleece means washing and prepping it for spinning. The fleece I started with was exactly the fleece that had been shorn from the sheep, greasy and dirty. I started with a cold water soak to dissolve most of the basic dirt, which sank to the bottom of the dishtub I was using. Check out that dirty water. And this is just a water soak, no soap! The silt at the bottom of the dishtub was icky.

Then I did a hot water wash, with original Dawn dish soap. (It’s a classic for washing fleece, because it really goes to town on the lanolin and grime.)

I did two washes, and I think I either washed too much at once or didn’t let it soak long enough, because after the fleece dried it was still somewhat sticky. I wasn’t sure this was wrong, though, since this was my first go, and I carded up a bit and tried spinning it longdraw from a wee rolag. It didn’t draft well, and I didn’t know if this had to do with the stickyness of the fleece or my carding technique. Figuring a second wash couldn’t hurt, I gave it another soapy bath, and when it dried it was much softer and fluffier.

Here’s what it looked like as I began to separate out the locks from the dried fleece.

I carded about two-thirds of the clean fleece in the week leading up to the Olympics. Since I don’t have hand carders or a drum carder (someday, someday) I used a pair of dog slicker brushes. I left a lot of the nepps and second cuts in, because I wanted a tweedy, rustic yarn. (Also, I didn’t want to lose any more weight/fibre.) I picked out a lot of the vegetable matter as I carded, but I’m only human and some got left in, to be picked out as I spun.

I had a pile of rolags, ready to go on the day of the opening ceremonies!

I spun two bobbins’ worth of singles, and plied them that first day. It turns out spinning bulky yarn goes really quickly! I’d done some sampling before I began and I’d originally wanted a bulky single, but that wasn’t working well for me, so I spun slightly lighter singles and did a two-ply yarn instead. When I measured my yarn I discovered I only had about 60 yards instead of the 100 I needed, so I spun up the rest of the rolags over the next day, realized I’d need even more fibre, and spun the rest of my clean fleece. I didn’t want to waste time carding them, so I just teased the fleece with my fingers till it was loose and even more fluffy, and spun right from handfuls of that.

It worked just as well, and I got the added bonus of the yarn having tiny little bits of curly crimp popping out here and there. I was done spinning by the second evening, and cast on my mittens the next day.

Here’s what the yarn looks like! I love how the paler tips of the locks contrast with the darker fleece from closer to the body of the sheep, and when spun it creates a beautiful variegation. That’s a bulky yarn at 4 WPI (wraps per inch, as marked on my handy little WPI tool, there).

I’d decided to knit mittens because I’d never tried before, though I’ve knit socks and so I figured the sock-knitting basics would carry me through the cuff and hand of the mitten, and only the thumb gusset would be new. (For those of you keeping score at home, that’s processing fleece for the first time, carding it for the first time, and knitting an item I’d never knitted before in a limited timeframe. Optimistic!) I found a pattern and began, frogged it and tried again, then found a different pattern because it still wasn’t working for me. The second pattern was wonderful, and I knit the first mitten in two evenings, and the second in another two evenings. And I used just over half the yarn I’d spun; I’d panicked for no reason after all.

So then there I was, halfway through the Olympics with my goals reached, and this extra yarn. I should use that up, I thought, and looked for a hat pattern on Ravelry that used less than 100 yards of bulky yarn. I found one and cast on. The brim is knit separately on straight needles, then seamed together to make a tube, stitches picked up along one side, and the crown is knitted in the round from there. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

Part of that big brim gets flipped up and pinned in place with a brooch or a button.I have the perfect button for it, I think. If I finish in time, this will qualify for the Hat Halfpipe event.

Knitting bulky things goes quickly, so this should be done by the closing ceremonies, no problem. Mittens are easy, I have discovered, and I will knit more. (Not right now, of course, but in the future, certainly.)

So that’s my adventure with processing my own fleece and working with quickie handspun. I can’t get any closer to doing it all myself unless I actually shear the sheep.

Owlet: Thirty Months Old!

Owlet is going through another level-up in language; it’s just more precise in general. (Except for ‘pinnanose.’ “Play pinnanose, Mummy?” I almost don’t want to teach her to say pee-yan-oh, because hearing her ask to play “pinnanose” makes me giggle inside every time.) She’s slimming a bit (thank goodness), and her legs look longer as a result. She looks more like a little girl now than a chubby toddler. I had to buy her a new snowsuit (the second one this winter) one size bigger, with longer sleeves and legs. She’s wearing size 4 jeans and tops, and I have no idea what her shoe size is; she’s worn size 9 boots all winter, but I bought them large on purpose. Her two-year-old molars are finally IN, thank goodness.

Her favourite colour is “pupple.” Her favourite foods are yoghurt (‘yodirt’), gravy (on anything — I have to keep a container of it in the fridge to pour over anything at a moment’s notice), her Shreddies and Ohs (her word for Cheerios) with milk in the morning, and “TANDIES!” after supper. (She gets two M&Ms for dessert after dinner. She tries to ask for them after breakfast and lunch, too, but that’s not happening.) She dips her whole hand into HRH’s coffee and licks it off. He caught her gently putting my wineglass down the other day. She looked at him and kind of smacked her lips quietly.

She’s working on issuing commands, often at inappropriate times. She occasionally tries to put people, things, or cats into time outs at random moments, or scolds them sternly for something they did ages ago that she suddenly needs to work through again in her mind.

She is very into Hide and Seek. Like most toddlers, she is somewhat unclear on the concept, but loves what she does anyway. She’ll hide in the same place that she found Sparky just about every time, and of course he finds her right away. We had to explain to him that he needed to pretend to look. “Why? I know where she is,” he said. Well, buddy, we knew exactly where you were when you played it at her age, too, but we played along.

She is also very into playing babies: rocking them, giving them bottles, and burping them. Her imaginative play with her Fisher Price animals and her ponies is starting to take off, too. There are general storylines that are followed: one pony gets a crown or something, runs to everypony one by one and says, “Look! Look!” and the other pony says, “Oh, you look so pretty!” Then they run to the next pony together, and so on. With the farm animals, one of them comes running to me and says, “So-and-so pushed me.” We have to go through the process of calling the offending party over, asking if it pushed the aggrieved party, reminding it that we don’t push our friends, and requesting an apology.

She had a bad cold at the end of January that had her home from school for a week, and triggered a nasty round of croup. If I’d known her entire class was coughing, I’d have sent her back two days earlier; I was doing the good parent thing and keeping her home to avoid infecting anyone else, but it turned out they were all sick already. Oh, well. We had fun doing groceries, and watching Sesame Street, and making lunches and scones together. One day I had to drop off a round of daycare cheques for the next couple of months, and they sent home a craft for her to do that the other kids had done earlier in the week. She loved doing her “homework” while Sparky did his. She played with the iPad way too much while she was ill, and I had to institute a detox when she went back to school; that did not go over well at all. There was about a week of screaming before and after school, but then everything settled, and now she’s back to books and toys in her down time, thank goodness.

Her favourite books at the moment are Thomas’ Snowsuit by Robert Munsch, and the Oliver Jeffers books, particularly The Way Back Home. Her favourite song is “Let It Go” from Frozen, which she sings remarkably clearly, surprisingly on-key for a toddler, and does all the motions she’s seen in the video. Her favourite parts to play out are when Elsa builds the ice palace, and when she pulls off her crown and throws it away. (Sparky is also in love with this song, and sings it particularly well.) She is going to absolutely love the film when we get it on DVD.