Category Archives: Cogging for Kibble

A Brief Update…

… in point form, because putting together paragraphs that flow from one to the other takes more focus and energy than I’ve got, but some of this is news worth sharing:

1. How about the weather round here lately? This has got to be the brightest, warmest November I can remember in a long time. The forecast is either sunny, or says overcast and we get clear sun instead. Today was so beautiful I shucked off my jacket for the drive home. There was truly gorgeous fog this morning, too, which was lovely to watch while listening to Glenn Gould’s 1980 Goldberg Variations and drinking tea.

2. I got to spend a bit of time with Ceri and Ada this morning, which was thoroughly enjoyable. While I was there I finished prepping my 4oz of gorgeous firey Polworth fibre. I always forget how much I enjoy stripping and predrafting fibre; I always want to jump right into the spinning. Prepping the fibre means I get to handle it and touch it and get a real feel for the staple length is, what the crimp is like, how well it drafts, how springy it is, and generally listen to how it wants to be spun. Ceri sent me home with three pounds of Honeycrisp apples. Which, if you know how big Honeycrisps are, means there are six apples. I may eat them all myself and not share them with other family members. ( “Fruit? What fruit? We have no fruit.”)

3. I had a very good cello lesson today indeed. I had to skip last week due to work, so I was concerned about how today would go, but apart from being rocky on some of the Christmas ensemble stuff in extended sixth position, my recital piece went really very well. We’re just working on speed now. It felt very good indeed to hear my teacher say, “If you’re like this now, just think how good you’ll be in another month!”

4. I am rereading The Sarantine Mosaic by Guy Gavriel Kay. I remember being underwhelmed by this when it came out, but having read Under Heaven only a few months ago, I knew that’s the style I needed to read right now, so I pulled it out. I am enjoying it very much this time round.

5. I am annoyed at my printer. It told me it was out of the black ink, so I refilled the cartridge myself. Turns out this brand and model needs to have the cartridge chip reset if it’s refilled, or it keeps reading as empty, so I had to go out and buy a whole new one. Once I’d put that in, the printer informed me it now couldn’t work because the colour cartridges are low. Couldn’t it have told me all of this at the same time? I’ve been without a printer for two weeks now and I have to wait till the next paycheque to buy colour ink, which hasn’t gone down well with the boy at all, because he has been asking for colouring pages downloaded from the Internet to colour after school. I’ll stop by the ink refilling kiosk in the local mall next time I’m there and ask if they can reset the chips; if they can’t I’m doomed to buying new cartridges every time, which annoys me a lot.

6. Yesterday I returned the take-an-existing-manuscript-and-turn-it-into-a-different-book repurposing project with trepidation, but got a “Wonderful!” from the editor almost right away. I think it’s pretty solid, but if there’s anything that requires tweaking I told him to let me know and I’d handle it right away. I also told the copyediting department that I was good to go as of immediately, then idly wondered how long I’d be between projects. Well, not long, it seems! I was assigned my first copyediting project today, to be returned in two weeks. It’s relatively short, very formulaic so it has clear coding to be done, and has already been approved by the editor so it’s likely to only need a very light hand. It’s a great project with which to essay the copyediting waters. I am ridiculously excited about it. I get paid by the hour, too, which is so much more fair than a flat fee.

7. Half an hour after I got that e-mail today, I received an offer for the book I wrote a sample and proposal for last month. It looks like it’s a go! I’m not going to give you any more than that until I’ve signed the contract, but the terms were okay and we’ve got a verbal/e-mail go-ahead agreement. This is the first kind of book of this type the publisher has done, so we’re all taking a bit of a gamble on it. It’s due in May 2011, with 50% to be seen by February somethingth. So I’ve got very pleasant work ahead of me indeed, what with copyediting and a new book.

Weekend Roundup

What a glorious weekend! The sun was bright, and the temperatures were kind enough to be around 8 degrees C (which felt much warmer in the sun). It was very good for general morale.

The weekend began at 5:00 on Saturday morning when the boy woke us up in a panic because he was throwing up. We suspected one doughnut too many the evening before, but reconsidered our diagnosis to be the gag reflex brought on by a coughing jag when he demonstrated the coughing-almost-to-throwing-up again a couple of hours later. The boy snuggled in bed with me, feeling very sorry for himself, while HRH got up to made himself a pot of coffee and read a bit before heading out to get in line at the garage to have the tires changed to the winter set. He was back by 9:00, to our surprise (the garage opened at 7:00 and as it’s the weekend before Quebec law requires snow tires, we anticipated long lineups), and then he just kept going! He brought all the Christmas decoration boxes in from the back shed, tested all the sets of outdoor Christmas lights, then took the boy out to buy various caulking and sealants and strings of Christmas lights to replace the dead ones. While the boy napped (rare in this day and age, usually only when he’s ill) HRH climbed up on the roof and set the hooks, then put up the lights. When the boy got up he and HRH went for a walk to see the terribly overkill but amusing Christmas decorations on the house the next street over, complete with a Santa-piloted red biplane on the roof. (People, it isn’t even halfway through November yet!) My Saturday accomplishments were finishing weaving the black scarf then sewing the knitted hood to it, and rereading most of Sailing to Sarantium. I was pretty fried by an intense work week. I finished the repurposing project; all I need to do is finish the layout coding and I’m done, so it will be handed in right on deadline tomorrow.

Today I woke up feeling slightly dazed but good after eleven hours of sleep. I must have needed it! HRH was sorting through the boxes in his office and reorganizing things. The boy and I went out to the bookstore as soon as it opened to look for the fourth Ga’Hoole book and to take advantage of the 25% off sale for iRewards members. We finished book three last night, and last time we looked they had multiple copies of all fifteen books in the series, but today we were disappointed. I suppose they wanted shelf space for other things going into the holiday season, and the movie came out almost two months ago now, so they returned all but a few copies of books one through three, a copy of fifteen (what? I so do not understand how chain stores choose to stock their titles), and two copies of a short story collection. The boy chose the short stories and another small stuffed owl that he bought with his own money ( “I am collecting owls,” he told me), while I looked in vain for any of the books I want to read. I’m going to have to order them, which makes me sad, because I like shopping at real bookstores, and I miss it. We got home to find that HRH had vacuumed, and we all had lunch. Then I sat down to work on the programme notes. HRH called me downstairs to look at how he’d reorganized the laundry room (brilliant, and I now have a table to use for folding and sewing) and talked to me about a door for my office. I have been doorless since we moved in, because the French door we brought from the old place was 30″ wide, whereas the doorway is 32″. There was a knotty pine folding door in the storage room downstairs with beautiful stained glass insets that was supposed to go at the top of the stairs, but we never installed it because we didn’t want a door there. Well, today HRH measured it, found that it was 31 and some fraction of an inch wide, took it apart into two pieces, installed hinges on both sides, and hung them in my doorway. There are well-meant but slightly tacky roses woodburned on the hallway side, but HRH is going to sand those out. Then we shall oil the wood, and it will all be even prettier. Here’s what it looks like when the two halves of the door are closed:

And here’s my newly rearranged music corner next to it. I can reach the lightswitch properly instead of sliding my hand between the bookcase and the wall, I no longer trip over the music stand, and my cello isn’t crammed between the window and the shelves! The room feels even bigger now:

Once the doors were up, together we hung the pictures in the hallway that had been cluttering the hall table and lying underneath it since we moved in. I can’t believe the amount of work he accomplished this weekend.

Then I made cookies once I’d finished my work. (Translation programs are unintentionally amusing; Google told me that “sash dance” was “danse avec guillotine,” which made me laugh for much longer than it ought to have. I understand why it translated it that way — in French one of the terms for a window sash is a guillotine — but it’s still wrong, and just reinforces my interest in how idiom does or doesn’t translate.) Now there is a French roast in the oven, rubbed with butter, Dijon, garlic, and basil. The house smells amazing.

It’s been a wonderful weekend. It feels good to be going into a new week this refreshed and positive.

In Passing

I’m handling several deadlines at the moment. I’ve got a major project deadline next Monday, which really means I need to be finished on Friday and then do a final proofread pass on Monday. This has been a four-month long repurposing project, where I’ve been taking a manuscript and rearranging it to make something different. It’s pure editing, and I’m thankful to have had the four months, because there was packing and moving in there, plus the horrible, horrible fibro aftermath. A lot of this project has been turning pages and scrolling through a document, thinking about where to put what in order to have it make the most sense thematically. And since thinking has been hard, no thanks to the fibro fog, it’s been challenging. I’m almost done, though, and I feel very positive about it. Apart from the OMG-deadline-deadline-deadline! panic that’s setting in right on schedule, of course. I’m also struggling with my “But it could be better!” crisis that hits me before I hand a project in. Sure, it could be better. It could always be better. Or perhaps not better; perhaps different is a better descriptor. Most creative types could poke at things forever. You don’t actually finish things; you just let them go.

I’ve got a concert in ten days, too, and I’ve got deadline panic setting in about that as well. I’m not where I wish I could be for this performance thanks to the fibro backlash I’ve been suffering this fall, and I’m having the crisis about sitting second chair that I regularly have every two concerts or so. I love the music on the programme, though, which makes up for a lot. I’m also handling a deadline for the programme notes, which slipped my to-do list a week ago and now I’m having to shove that into moments between work on the major freelance project to get them done ASAP so that they can go along to the next people in the production process.

I’m having issues with a supposedly relaxing hobby, as well. I don’t know why I try to knit things, sometimes, I really don’t. My project notes on Ravelry for the hooded scarf I’m trying to make look like this:

18 October: Planned:
* Hood: garter stitch with Lion Thick & Quick yarn on size 11 needles (for a denser fabric to better protect ears from the wind)
* Scarf: garter stitch with Lion Thick & Quick yarn on size 15s (for better drape)

First go:
26 Oct 2010: Hood finished and immediately frogged. The fabric was too stiff. I swear to gods I swatched with the 15s and the fabric was too loose, so I went with the 11s, but sometimes swatches lie. No, they lie most of the time, actually. Sometimes a 4-inch swatch doesn’t tell you how a 12 x 20-inch piece of knitted fabric will behave.

Second go:
* 28 October: Hood knitted on size 15s; cast on 30 stitches with Lion Thick & Quick (this worked, hurrah)
* 3 November: Doing the scarf part as a One-Row Lace Scarf in the Thick & Quick on the size 15s. If it’s not long enough by the time the skein ends, I’ll pick up stitches and knit some Bernat Harmony onto each end.

Third go:
OKAY FINE. Look, here’s what’s happening.
* Early November: Knitted a One-Row Scarf with an entire skein of Lion Thick & Quick, as above. It was a better drape for the hood, so it got folded and seamed and the original garter stitch rectangle hood got frogged.
* Nov 7: Cast on for the scarf with the Bernat Harmony held double on size 15s, which drove me crazy in about three minutes. Frogged it. Cast on size 11s with a single strand of Bernat Harmony, knit a couple of inches. Felt too thin. Frogged.
* Nov 9: Gave up on the knitting and warped the Kromski Harp rigid heddle loom with the Lion (with a draft something like 10-0-2-0-2-0-10-0-2-0-2-0-10 to create the same sort of visual impression that the One-Row Scarf creates when done in bulky yarn and left unblocked), and started weaving using the Bernat Harmony as a warp.

The good news is that the woven scarf looks as if it will work out just fine. Which is also good for my sanity, because really, you know? I can’t even handle garter stitch rectangles properly, let alone an actual pattern. I should just stick to spinning and weaving to relax. Speaking of which, the 8 oz of BFL I spun on Lady Jane has all been chain-plied on my Louet S15, and I have 522 yards of fingering weight yarn:

Very pretty. It will be made into a wrap for me (except I obviously SHOULDN’T KNIT IT, which means I need to think about a weaving draft instead). I wish I could shake the feeling of being irresponsible when the fibro is at a point where I can’t do much other than sit and get some spinning done. It uses a totally different part of my brain and conscious mind than work does.

The boy is doing much better, thank you all for asking and sending your get-well wishes. He’s as good as new after the scarlet fever, although he’s still on the amoxicillin till sometime next week. Our bad colds are also pretty much things of the past, thank goodness.

Right. Back into the fray.

Wedding And General Weekend Roundup

I conducted my sixth rite of passage ceremony of the year this past weekend. (The current score is two weddings, four baby blessing/namings, if you’re filling in a scorecard.) It was a particularly meaningful one, as it united two dear friends whom I’ve known for a combined total of about forty years in front of 120 people, and it was beautiful in several respects. The wedding party (and some of the guests) chose a medieval/Renaissance theme for their dress, and the effect was very pretty. We told the boy everyone was dressing like knights and ladies and he got very excited, so I found him a small basic shirt and HRH made him a wooden sword and shield that he painted and varnished, which were a huge success. Had we more time, I would have tracked down some Buchanan tartan fabric and made him a tiny kilt to match HRH’s, but my local fabric shop yielded nothing but every other tartan under the sun and I didn’t have time to go into town to track some down.

It was really special to conduct a ceremony for an audience of that size. The compliments we got on the ceremony were very gratifying, and went beautifully apart from one or two minor hiccoughs. I’m used to being in the north for a ceremony, so of course west is to my right, yes? Except I was in the west, so south was accidentally designated west, and west was, well, west prime. I believe the two pieces of music for the attendants’ entrance and the bride’s entrance were switched, but it worked very well. And in general, it was just wonderful to be able to priestess such a special ceremony for people whom I love dearly, and then to see so many old friends and spend time with people I don’t see often enough. Also, it’s always great to see one’s friends all dressed up. The boy had a wonderful time running around with a small army of children, too.

There was car drama this weekend, too. We had a nor’easter hit Friday afternoon and evening, and our car chose that particular time to die. The battery, we discovered, was the original one, and no longer held enough of a charge to turn the engine over, even when boosted by another car. What was curious was that all the accessories such as headlights and radio still worked. Fortunately HRH’s parents were on their way over to stay with the boy while HRH and I went to the wedding rehearsal, so they rescued us from sitting in a parking lot in the storm and took us home, then helped call a tow truck for the car (who hooked its leads right up to the engine in the back and kicked it into operation, though it tried to die whenever HRH slowed for a stop sign). HRH bought a new battery but we didn’t have time to install it before we left (very late!) for the rehearsal in my inlaws’ car. The next morning HRH installed the new battery and everything worked perfectly. As the tow driver had said, seven years on the original battery is a pretty darn good run. As much as it played havoc with our schedule this weekend (we had to cancel the boy’s follow-up appointment with the behavioural psychologist researchers at McGill on Saturday morning, which disappointed both of us) we’re very, very thankful that the battery didn’t decide to roll over and die on our Thanksgiving drive either to or home from southern Ontario.

I finished my proposed table of contents and a sample chapter for a book project my editor asked if I’d be interested in writing, and she likes it, so we shall see if it’s ultimately approved. It’s a relatively short book that would be due in May of 2011, it’s a topic that interests me, and it would require research, something I love to do. I’m in the home stretch of the repurposing project as well, due on November 15.

The boy is doing splendidly. School is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do, get him excited about discovering new things and giving him tools to do it on his own. He sounds words out everywhere, and makes lists of words that begin with the same sound. His drawing skills have gone up a level or two as well; he uses a pencil to draw an outline and then colours it in carefully, and his art is getting ever more recognisable. He loves taking different things and mashing them together to make something new and creative, and that goes for three-dimensional building toys as well as two-dimensional art. He’s coming home with poems and songs, French words and rhymes, and it’s wonderful. He has even done two book reports; the kindergarten version, anyway, consisting of drawing a map of the places in the story or a picture of something he learned from the book. These reports are kept, and they eventually form a record of all the books the child reads from the school library. He loves school, and I love that he does.

I’ve arranged to buy a friend’s used iPhone in January. It just makes sense. It will replace my iPod, my cellphone, I will be able to make voice memos with it (something I dearly wish I could do easily while driving), record cello lessons and practice sessions with it (something I can’t do with my first-generation iPod Touch), play podcasts away from the computer without having to find speakers to wire into it (again, the first-gen Touch doesn’t have a built-in speaker), and take decent photographs with it. All I need is a pay-as-you-go voice plan, because I work at home and use wifi, so a data plan would be pointless. It means I don’t have to buy a Mac-compatible microphone that the Mini will recognise or a new camera (I may want a better camera than the iPhone eventually, of course, but it will serve my basic needs as well as or better than the eight-year-old borrowed camera I’m using now, and the battery will last longer!).

What else? I think of things to journal about now and again while I’m doing stuff but don’t have a chance to make a note before I forget them.

It’s getting colder and colder. I got an earache from the wind at the boy’s bus stop the other day, so I am knitting a hooded scarf. The house seems to be holding heat pretty well. I’m about halfway through spinning the 8oz of wood violet-coloured fibre, and I’d better get a move on if I’m returning Lady Jane in a week and a half. I pulled out a piece of fabric I’d woven early this year and laid it over the middle of the white chair in the living room, because it’s getting coffee drips and crayon marks on it as well as general dirt from cats and people, and I quite like how it looks. So does HRH, who, when I said I would weave a wider piece to cover the whole chair, suggested I weave another matching one to go on the settee. (The sheepskin is currently on it, and Nixie won’t touch it; she stretches and contorts herself to step around it. Odd little cat.) Good thing the yarn is a Zellers standby. This time, though, I’ll use the same yarn for warp and weft and weave it on the 32″ rigid heddle loom, and make the weave a bit less loose.

I had a cello lesson today, and orchestra is tonight. I’ve tried to avoid driving out there twice in one day, but it’s an exception; my teacher’s substitute schedule went haywire. Cello is going all right. I feel like I’m on the verge of grasping something and I can’t quite do it, or even put it into words. I feel as if I’m juggling a trillion tiny balls — rebalancing bow hand, rebalancing left hand, minute shifts with thumb, practising vibrato, minute movements of the left elbow to readjust left hand, large movements with right elbow to propel the bow while not allowing the wrist to get the upper hand (so to speak), minute adjustments to extensions from one position to another… and then handling subtle dynamics, being musical, and precise with phrasing on top of it all. Sometimes I almost get it. Then I have to think about one of the balls and a bunch of others drop. I”m trying to get into the habit of playing the cello first thing in the morning before turning the computer on to handle correspondence and news, and it’s tricky because it takes my hands and fine motor skills a while to rev up in the morning; always has.

Okay; that’s all I’ve got right now. Time to go meet the boy.

Thanksgiving Roundup

We drove down to spend Thanksgiving weekend with my parents. It was simultaneously the best and the worst drive we’ve had. The worst, because it took us an hour and forty-five minutes to get to Kirkland. The best, because after that it was clear sailing. We left after HRH and the boy got home, which meant we hit the highway at about 4:15. Sure, that’s the beginning of rush hour, but we accounted for that and even so it should have been okay… except there was an accident on every single highway we took: on the bridge into town, on the 20 west, and on the 13 north. The 40 west was just slow.

Once in Kirkland we flew at our usual speed, though, and really enjoyed the deep colours of the trees lining the road. The boy got to watch a small light plane take off at the private airstrip, keeping pace with us as it taxied and lifted off. We picked up dinner and ate in the car, trying to catch up on some of the lost time. When night fell we pressed our heads against the passenger windows and watched the stars, tracing patterns in them and talking about constellations. The boy napped on and off, but didn’t actually sleep much. We arrived around 11:30, about an hour and a half after we’d planned thanks to the slow start. But everyone slept hard, and the next morning was bright and sunny and surprisingly warm for the season.

My parents took us up to the Halton Trolley Museum, and we spent hours there, riding all the operational trolleys, having a hot dog picnic, and strolling through two huge sheds of old trolleys and streetcars. It was the perfect day for an outdoor museum like this one. The sky was that perfect autumnal blue, the sun was golden, and the colours on the trees of the forest through which the tracks wound were quintessentially fall. Our last trolley ride was on the 327, an open trolley car from the late 1800s, and the motorman asked if it was our first visit. When told that it was, he told the boy he could ride up front with one adult, and that was such a treat. The sun and the smell of the leaves, the sound of the wheels on the rails and the soft grind of the pantograph on the wire above were wonderful. Trolleys are so relaxing. The older ones had exquisite stained glass accents, pendant lighting, glowing woodwork, and lovingly restored plush or leatherette seating. In the sheds we found an old green trolley that used to run through our own neighbourhood between downtown Montreal and Granby in the 1930s to the 1950s, a trip that would take about two hours.

The next day was just as beautiful as the day before. The boys washed the car, and my cousin and his family came over for Thanksgiving dinner, at which my mother excelled as usual: Beef Wellington (for ten!), roasted heirloom carrots, fennel, and potatoes, French beans, rolls, and for dessert there were butter tarts, pumpkin tarts, and a lemon pie. There’s nothing like seeing a huge roast wrapped in a crust come out of the oven like that. And for hors d’oeuvres before it all there were three cheeses, smoked salmon, and three pâtés, and there was a lovely Henry of Pelham red wine. Seriously, it was divine. And it was great family time, too. Mum had some leaf garland and ghost-making crafts lined up for the kids, bless her, and I love spending time with my cousin and his family. We washed all three kids in the tub together (we’ll have to stop that at some point, but right now they’re still young enough to think it’s a big treat and they look forward to it) and off they went home, and the day was over.

The drive home the next morning went really well, too, although it’s always harder going home because everyone’s had an intense couple of days and late nights. It felt wonderful to come home to the house after our first trip away.

Tuesday was a decent cello lesson, where we started working on my piece for the December recital. It was nice to hear my teacher say that it would be ready with no problem after a bit of a late start on it. I did work on it this past spring on my own thinking I’d play it at the spring recital, but we ended up not doing it because we missed a month of lessons due to various things.

It’s Halloween in two weeks and I have to finish designing the boy’s costume. The costuming was hidden behind We Are Going Away For Thanksgiving Weekend and The Wedding The Next Weekend, but once we’re past that it’s clear sailing. His school photos came in too, so we’ll have to sit down and go through the website to choose a background and order them. I’m personally leaning towards a traditional non-photo background, because I find the photo backgrounds really detract from the person in the picture.

Fibro-wise I am starting to settle with the meds again. It’s hard to get up in the mornings, a side effect I remember very clearly from last time. I need to adjust the time when I take the pills, otherwise I’m groggy for too much of the morning. Work is going well, too; I got a lot of writing done today on the sample entry for the proposal due next week, and it’s the best work day I’ve had since before we moved.

There you are. That’s about it so far.

Day By Day

Yes, things are quiet. I’m sorry about that. I’m tired, I’m on new medication and it’s a struggle to get used to it, and there’s stuff I have to get done before I jot things down here. And by the time it’s done I’m exhausted and can’t string two coherent words together.

Cello is going well. My teacher is patient and sympathetic about what I’m handling right now, for which I’m very grateful. We had a cello sectional at orchestra this week, and that went much better than I expected.

Work is… problematic. Trying to focus with the fibro was bad; trying to focus on it while working through the period of adjustment with the new medication on top of the fibro is harder. I know it will all even out in the long run, but when I repeatedly forget the sentence I’ve just read it doesn’t feel like I’ll ever be able to get past it. I can do bits of the repurposing project at a time, but trying to remember where other thematically-similar material is in a 200-page document when I’m muddled by medication is frustrating and depressing. I’m doing work on the book proposal and sample chapter away from the computer, which is great to a point, but I’m going to have to come back and start organizing it into something coherent at the computer next week. I finally gathered up the courage to take down the old pro website and upload the new iWeb one after a few more tweaks, too, and I’m very happy with it. I aced the copy-editing test, and start with that department at the beginning of November, too.

Spinning proceeds apace. I’m starting to get used to Lady Jane, although I’m still experimenting with her. I’ve plied the Shetland with silk thread from my local Fabricville, which went very nicely and yielded about 230 yards of lovely soft black yarn. Lady Jane spins the wood violet-coloured BFL I’m working on beautifully, too, and I’m interested to see how that chain-plies. I like it so much that I’ve planned to make a wrap out of it, so I stopped by Ariadne to buy the second 4-oz braid of the colourway so as to have enough.The drive band seems to be stretching and getting floppy, though, and I originally moved the mother-of-all to account for it, but then the treadling got stiff. I checked with Bonnie and she gave me the go-ahead to move the MOA as close to the wheel as possible and then trimming the drive band, and now it treadles beautifully with no stiffness at all. The new drive band just stretched, I think. I still have to check my spinning books to see what they say about adjusting Saxony wheels in Scotch tension, as it’s completely foreign to me. I like the Scotch tension a lot, though. I don’t know if I’ll have the courage to try double drive before I give her back.

I’m still trying to find a comfortable angle at which to spin, though. My knees seem to complain if I’m sitting straight on or at too much of an angle. Interestingly, I’ve switched my fibre and twist-controlling hands. Usually I hold my fibre in my left and pinch with my right while drafting straight back from the orifice past my left side, but I reverse my hands on the Saxony and draft in front of me to my right, at a right angle to the orifice. Speeding up my drafting has been a challenge; there have been a few slubs in both the Shetland and the BFL. I’m still not wholly sold on the idea of DT, though. At least I don’t think I am; I’ll try something on the Louet next week and see how odd ST feels after a week and a half of DT. It still just feels like another method, and I don’t know if I have a preference for one over the other. Overall I feel like I’m not good enough for a Schacht-Reeves, but I also know something like this would last me my entire spinning life and give me lots of room to grow.

I also accidentally taught myself how to knit Continental-style (I think; I haven’t formally checked against a video yet) and finished half a replacement handwarmer for the boy that way. (He lost one and was devastated, so I knit a replacement, and of course someone found the lost handwarmer at school, so now we have one in reserve against the next time it happens.) It happened when I wondered what feeding the yarn over my left hand would do, and then I saw that I didn’t have to actually wrap the yarn over the needle; I could just sort of flick it up with the needle tip. The first few stitches were awful but by the next row it looked just like the other way. I fact, my tension was better and my first finger wasn’t locking up.

Meallanmouse lent us the first season of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and the flickering issue we had with the last set we tried to watch is still there but not so pronounced as to make it impossible to watch like last time. I don’t know if it’s the different discs, the new TV, or the Blu-Ray player, but whatever the reason we can actually watch it this time without both of us getting headaches, so we’ve stuck it out and are enjoying it immensely. HRH and I watched the first two episodes together and then decided that yes, the boy would adore it, so we introduced him to it the next day and rewatched those episodes with him. Now we get to watch an episode every day together after HRH gets home before supper.

Last weekend the boy went down town to McGill to participate in a research study, and was very excited about it. They video the interviews, and apparently when they asked him if he knew why he was there he chirped, “Of course: I’m here for an experiment!” with a little double hand-flip thing as if he was displaying something, and cuted the researchers right out. The next day we went to Ada’s naming, which was lovely even if I did leave out an entire paragraph of introduction at the beginning. If you have to drop something, dropping the least-essential bit is the way to go. It was a beautiful day with good weather, fabulous food, and excellent company.

Okay, you’re caught up with my endlessly scintillating life. The rest of today is work where I can between laundry and the long list of errands before Thanksgiving weekend.

Doctor And Otherwise General Update

The boy and I made our annual pilgrimage to the doctor yesterday. And it is a pilgrimage indeed, because it’s now a 100-km round trip. Find a new family doctor in our new area, you say? Ha. There is a severe GP shortage in our province, our new neighbourhood is reputedly particularly bad for GP waitlists, and I intend to keep our awesome family doctor until she retires, thank you. Besides, so long as I combine the doctor trip with other errands out west like visiting or shopping or a cello lesson, it’s fine.

The boy now weighs 42 lbs and is 110 cm tall (oh, Canada, how we love you, operating with one foot firmly in Imperial and one in Metric). I enjoyed his appointment because he could answer the doctor’s questions himself: Does he wear a helmet when he rides his bicycle? (Yes, and now he rides a two-wheeler, and the first day he almost fell off this side, and then that side, but then he did it, and he and Dada had a race, and he can ride without balancing on training wheels, right Mama?) Does he drink a lot of milk? (Yes, and Mama found milk boxes at the supermarket, so he can take milk to school! [Mama bought a small Rubbermaid straw bottle to pack milk in instead, because the milk boxes are stupidly expensive. Mama is also seriously considering investing in the dairy trade, or failing that, buying a cow.]) Does he always wear a seatbelt in the car? (Yes, of course, but there are no seatbelts on the school bus, they just have to sit in the seats and not move.)

I am not dead. I am, however, back on my fibro meds, and have a couple of tests to schedule. Back on the meds means I will be loopy for a couple of weeks before it all settles again, but hey, I am loopy without them, kind of stumbling around and unable to focus on much, so at least this upcoming loopy will be working towards something better.

I’m drawing up a proposed table of contents and a sample chapter for a new book that my editor suggested to me. I’m really interested in the idea and concept as it was presented to me, so we shall see what happens. More as that evolves.

I finished spinning the three one-ounce batts of gloriously soft black Shetland that Bonnie gave me. Some of it is overspun because I lost track of how quickly I was treadling, and I might have done better if I’d gotten to know Lady Jane with a fibre and preparation I’m more familiar with, like my standby Corriedale combed top. The Shetland was lovely to work with regardless. I might ply the resulting light fingering weight single with black silk thread to make it go farther, then knit lace fingerless gloves or something. Chain-plying it seems a waste. Whatever I do with it, I might run it from one bobbin to another to even out the twist first.

The boy helped me choose what to spin next. I’ll do the four ounces of hand-dyed BFL top from Ariadne Knits in purple and green like wood violets, and spin it finely enough to knit a light wrap for myself. I may think of doing a single plied with a silk thread binder on purpose this time, although my original plan was to spin it super-finely and chain-ply it to preserve the colour changes. We’ll see.

It’s the day of the boy’s first Terry Fox run, so we talked to him about who Terry Fox was and why we honour his memory by having a run to raise money for cancer research every year. Today also happens to be the semi-annual blood drive at HRH’s college, where he encourages as many of the kids as possible to accompany him to the collection area. Talking about these things segued into a discussion about what a hero is, a very interesting conversation to have with a five year old. I wonder how many other families plan to take their kid to the local blood bank offices on their seventeenth birthday to get their blood donor cards. The boy is very impressed by Terry Fox, and drew a picture of a fire-fighting plane for him this morning before he headed off to school.

Okay, back to work. I’ve got a document open for notes about this new book as they occur to me, and I’m about to open the repurposing project. It should be interesting, as I took an allergy/sinus pill this morning and have been in that wonky state that pseudoephedrine always sets me in ever since. Thankfully, the gastro/nausea has faded. I’ll set up a plate of crackers and the rest of the duck pâté that we didn’t finish on Sunday, put the bread in the oven, and bury myself in work as best I can till I have to meet the boy.