Category Archives: Knitting, Spinning, & Weaving

Thursday Activity Log

Well, this experiment is working. I’m seeing that I actually use my days to do stuff, instead of feeling as if I didn’t get anywhere by the end of the day. It’s showing me that a completed activity isn’t the only way to measure a day’s success.

Today, I:

– babysat Tristan Bean for an hour while his mum had a dentist appointment (best-behaved baby ever, and I got him to sleep not once but twice!)
– went to the bank
– picked up some groceries
– went to the pharmacy for stuff
– had a meeting with our real estate agent
– stressed about house stuff (yes, this deserves a separate bullet point, because, well, stuff happened)
– didtwo three four loads of laundry
– chain-plied a full bobbin of 4oz of singles (and only ended up with 66 yards; this is insane, I’ll have to spin up even more)

Tuesday Activity Log

Today, I:
– finished the freelance thing, proofed, did the final summary report, sent it all in just before noon (and am now second-guessing myself, as usual)
– had a 47-min phone conversation
– baked bread
– plied Jan’s yarn (which went well, but not so well; I’ve got less than half the yardage I’d planned to get because the fibre was partially felted, making drafting a thin single almost impossable)
– wet-finished said yarn
– spun another 4oz of mohair/merino to make up for the shortfall
– listened to two episode of the SpinDoctor podcast (while spinning and plying)

Nice, sunny day, too.

In Which She Examines The Current Void (And It Probably Evaluates Her As Well)

So my comment spam these days tends to be mortgage and loan related. Ah, keyword searches. Why do I never get exciting cello spam when I drone on about music?

I’m sore all over today from the whiplash the life speed bump we hit yesterday. I know, I know; physical reaction to mental/emotional trauma. Who’d have thought? Fibro aside… well, no, fibro’s part of it, because I’m so drained I can’t bounce back properly. Still. Also, it sucks that therapeutic crying exhausts me. It’s a lose-lose situation.

I was looking forward to rehearsal last night, both to distract me and because I’ve done a lot of cello work this week. Except that exhaustion thing? I muffed things I can do in my sleep, and it was like a bad dream about dominoes or a house of cards: every time the celli were asked to work on a portion of music I got less accurate and dropped out more. Even on the easy stuff. And I sank deeper and deeper into that unavoidable self-loathing/numb detached headspace and general grumpiness at the world, because gods damn it, I practised this stuff, and I played it well at home. Not that it seems to make a difference when I’m playing where and when it counts, and especially not when the conductor turns around and is right in front of me to lead the celli. I just can’t do it at full speed, and it’s really, really frustrating me. We played through one of the hard parts I’d worked on my a lesson a couple of weeks ago and at the end my teacher leaned over and poked me with her bow with an approving nod. I shook my head, and I was so depressed at the end of the night that she sat there and gave me a pep talk. She reminded me of how I work within the rhythm, always being on the beat in hard passages, that I drop the right notes to drop in a run if I can’t get them all, and how I’m in sync with her bow changes. The left hand will get there, she said. She reminded me of how far I’ve come in a year, two years, and I realised that I could probably handle Scheherazade now without the problems I’d had last year. (The Hebrides overture, well, no, and there are some very similar runs in the Reformation symphony, it occurs to me now, damn you for being a pianist, Mendelssohn.) She pointed out that I drop a lot less than I would have dropped before, which is true. I appreciated the pep talk, but it didn’t lift my gloom entirely.

There’s that not-comforting-at-all adage that “What does not kill you makes you stronger,” and you know what? Maybe you don’t die, and maybe you do get life experience from all the crap, but when you have fibro it doesn’t actually make you stronger. It just keeps eroding you, bit by bit. On the other hand, it’s certainly character-forming.

I read a terrific spinning-related metaphor this morning from The Crafty Rabbit, though:

[F]ulling is a pretty good metaphor for life. You’re all ugly and uneven and imperfect and full of little bits of hay. Then you get beaten up–tossed from hot to cold, agitated with a plunger, smacked against a table. And then it turns out, after all that, that the abuse has smoothed you out, rendered you shiny and resilient. You’re still imperfect, yes, and you’re beautiful.

Fulling is the process whereby yarn or cloth gets cleaned and transformed or locked into its final form, for the lack of a better description. Some cloths felt when you do this (usually intentionally) and some yarn will, too, if you’re not wholly careful. Part of what you try to do with yarn, though, is shock it so that it plumps up and the scales on the fibre catch one another to make a stronger strand. You can’t turn a worsted-weight woollen-spun Coopworth yarn into laceweight silk by this method, but you can smooth out your Coopworth skein, plump it up, and make it stronger and nicer to touch.

It’s a good life metaphor, but this particular Coopworth skein (read: me) is tired of the fulling process and would just like to hang in the sun. Failing that, to stay in the hot bath with nice smelling soap, and have the cold immersion baths and furious agitation stop for a while.

Wednesday Log

We suffered another crushing disappointment today, the second in two weeks (and much worse than the first), so yeah, not so much with the productivity. I wish I had more energy to deal with the waves that life’s throwing at us.

In the meantime, today I:

– updated househunt spreadsheet
– researched more houses
– beta-read awesome spy story
– wove a bunch of blanket (didn’t measure, but it was at least a foot)
– scoured the oven (like scrubbing the bathtub, this knocked me out for a couple of hours)
– spun the rest of Jan’s fibre (I will ply it later this week)
– practised
– put aside the new freelance assignment till tomorrow, because I was in no way capable to wrapping my mind around it

The honeysuckle is just beginning to blossom, and the clematis is a day or so behind it. And the buds on my rosebushes are starting to open, too. The backyard is going to be spectacular for the boy’s birthday.

In an effort to cheer myself up I dragged the spinning wheel outside, changed into a halter top and my short jean skirt, and spun on the back porch in the sun while listening to my iPod. It was nice. Except now one of my arms and shoulders is sunburned, while the other is not.

I pulled my wooden cello bow out yesterday, the one with the cracked frog that I retired because I was afraid it was going to break. I’ve been using the fibreglass one that came with the 7/8 instead. I played with it all afternoon and really liked the feel of it; everything was easier. Then on a whim I pulled out the scale I bought to weigh fibre, and holy cow: my wooden one weighs 71 grams, while my fibreglass one weighs a whopping 83 grams. I used my fibreglass one today and it felt like I was sawing at the cello; I switched to the wooden one at the end and it danced. So I’m taking the wooden one out of retirement, and I intend to use it until the frog disintegrates.

Tuesday Log

Today my accomplishments included:

– business calls
– wove five inches of a new blanket
– did the programme notes
– translated the programme notes
– edited the recital programme
– practised for fifteen minutes (better than nothing)
– went out to buy the boy’s birthday present and some decorations for the party this weekend
– practised for another seventy-five minutes (trying to get the runs in the first movement of the Mendelssohn up to speed; working the pretty singing cello we’ve-got-the-theme moments of the second… in other words, going from first to seventh position, whee; plus my solo for the recital, and all my recital ensemble stuff)

Things that helped: Ceri has been sending me periodic e-mails reminding me to fret, which always makes me laugh. I acquired a Tolberone bar while out shopping for the boy’s gifts, and that also made the day happier.

Things that did not help: My first Quiznos experience. Yes, sandwich boy, I really do want a small ham and cheese on brown, with no spreads or sauces, and only lettuce. Asking me three times in disbelief doesn’t mean I have a low IQ or a communication problem, and your tone was, frankly, rather insulting. I’m the customer; I know what I want, and what I want is a sandwich not dripping with the excessive glop sandwich-makers pour over it. Just because I don’t want you to drown it in crap doesn’t mean I’m an idiot. Also, I didn’t want it toasted, and you didn’t ask; you just threw it in the oven. So you failed mightily in securing a return customer: instead you ensured that I will never walk into one of your franchises again.

On the schedule for tonight: Remembering to breathe.

Weekend Roundup

Yet another insane weekend. Househunting is incredibly draining.

Friday afternoon the boy and I dropped HRH off to install gyproc while we ran errands, had ice cream, and visited our local LYS so I could spend my Mother’s Day gift certificate. I came home with a selection of some lovely fibre and a couple of little knitting tools (because you know I knit so much). Upon return I discovered that I’d mis-programmed the timer on the bread machine so the pizza dough was only just starting to mix, which meant that the dinner I’d planned was shot. I was about to defrost some hamburger meat and make spaghetti sauce when HRH suggested ordering pizza instead because we were pressed for time, and I gave in. As we were putting our shoes on to go to that night’s game HRH listened to the two message on the phone and we discovered that the game had been cancelled, which made both of us rather cranky. We ended up watching another three episodes of Chuck with Blade, who had come down stairs to be the Designated Responsible Adult On Site while we were out.

Saturday was a solid list of house viewings. Anyone who’s done this knows how exhausting it is. We got back around three-thirty and HRH did a whirlwind housecleaning while we waited for his parents to arrive, as they were babysitting the boy while we had an actual date night out. They arrived later than planned, so we pretty much ran out of the house. Dinner itself was lovely, delicious Italian eaten in the company of Ceri and Scott. The plan was to go see the new Prince of Persia film afterwards, but when we got to the theatre they were on the verge of selling out, so we all looked at one another and decided to go have dessert instead. We toyed with the idea of playing Rock Band, too, but we were pretty much all exhausted and went home.

Sunday morning the boy woke us up at five-fifteen for some reason. I left the house at 8:30 for a cello lesson at 9:00, followed by a two-hour group rehearsal at 10:00. I then raced home, picked up the boys, and we went househunting again. I ended up spending an awful lot of time outside in the cold rain, what with getting the boy to run around to keep him busy and working off steam and inspecting exteriors. It was longer than we expected, and on the way back into town we debated whether or not to attend the Preston-LeBlanc singalong that was about to begin. None of us were really in the mood: we were cold and wet, we weren’t dressed for it, I hadn’t had the time to buy the ingredients for the dish I had promised to bring let alone cook it, and we were all exhausted. But it was important that we at least make an appearance, empty-handed though it was, and I’m glad we did because a whole slew of other people cancelled. When we arrived I was wrapped in a warm pashmina and given hot tea to counter the cold chill I couldn’t shake, and after some nibblies we all felt much better, and we ended up staying two and a half hours instead of only half of one.

Both the boy and I had hot baths when we got home, and he fell asleep about five minutes after we tucked him in.

Weekend Roundup

Busy end to a busy week. Gah.

The kindergarten orientation went brilliantly on Friday; when the boy’s name was called he hopped up and trotted out of the library to get his nametag and wait in line without even looking back. There is another boy in his class with his full name, and one with his nickname, so things should be very interesting. (There are also two Scotts, a fact the boy finds very interesting. He thinks it’s fun that someone else shares his name(s), too). If the stars align he shall have one of his old preschool educators as his teacher, although the second kindergarten teacher is very nice as well.

We enjoyed our own school tour, and our orientation sessions about school life and rules and such. Looks like HRH may join the parent committee that handles things like planning events and upkeep and such things, and I will likely volunteer at the library one day a week. Every single teacher and administrator we met was cheerful and open, and the school had a wonderful vibe to it. We’ve made the right choice. We eventually met the boy in a kindergarten room where he showed us all sorts of things with great excitement, like building toys in bins and caterpillars in little containers that the current kindergarten kids were studying.

After that we walked the boy back to preschool and I went to run errands and set up in a coffee shop to handle the interview questions that I’d been poking at for a couple of weeks, and HRH went back to work. He picked me up a couple of hours later and we went back to preschool for the boy’s play, which was hilarious. The educators and kids did a fabulous job on the sets, the costumes (that parents helped with those), and their lines. The kids were all animals on a farm, and the boy was the billy goat. Then we all had a feast of classic summer backyard picnic foods, and I wish we could have stayed longer.

My cello lesson went really well, something that surprised me. Apparently the key is to be exhausted, because then you don’t overthink or tense up.

Saturday morning we went out and got the boy new sandals (these are size 11, his old ones from last year were size 7, what are we feeding him?) and shorts, picked up groceries, and hit the library for some books on trains — no, robots — no, spaceships! — and I collected the pile of reserves i had waiting for me. That afternoon I had a group cello rehearsal where everyone was finally in the same place and we played through pieces we’d never really rehearsed before. I wasn’t as on as I’d been the night before.

Going to see the weavers at the cultural rendez-vous in Pointe-Claire over the weekend did indeed get dropped, as did the boy’s monthly pagan playgroup meeting on Sunday morning because we were scheduled to go to another series of house viewings. The last one we saw was hard to pull ourselves away from: it was all polished glowing wood inside, just like an old cottage or farmhouse, with an exquisite new kitchen and bathroom, with two bedrooms upstairs under a peaked roof that had painted wooden floors, one of which could easily be split into two for two smaller bedrooms. But it just wasn’t big enough; we really need a basement and somewhere for my office, and this house had neither. Well, it had a basement, but I felt like I had to duck, and HRH could barely fit through the door to the very awkward stairs down. It would have been storage and nothing else. In fact, the last time HRH went down he cracked his head really badly. Later he joked that it was the house slapping him and saying, “I’m all wrong for you!” It’s sad when you really love a house but can’t do anything about it because you’d need to severely alter it just to live there.

When we got home I had to scurry off yet again for a cello rehearsal, this one a private accompaniment rehearsal. And while my first go was rocky in the intonation area, I adjusted my endpin, played through it twice more, and declared myself rather happy with things, somewhat to my and my teacher’s surprise. I think playing this piece with the piano accompaniment is easier, somehow; it gives me something on which to to hang the cello line.

HRH and I started watching the first season of Chuck this weekend, which we are enjoying immensely. I had no idea HRH had borrowed it, but I am hoping we can borrow more.

Monday I finished polishing the interview as I planned, even though I discovered to my chagrin that it had been due on the Friday, not the Monday as I’d plugged into my calendar and schedule. The interviewer sent a polite note asking if I wanted to reschedule as I was finishing up, and I felt like an idiot for my error. But It got done, and handed in, and I received another request for an interview that day for a different source, due in three weeks.

And finally, Monday late afternoon and evening I finished warping the loom that has been languishing in various in-between stages for the past few weeks. Hurrah!