Category Archives: Knitting, Spinning, & Weaving

Treading Water

I’ve been having trouble recently trying to keep up with things and not sink under a general miasma of depression. There’s great stuff happening — the pre-approved mortgage which now allows us to act on the listings we’ve been researching for the past year, I’m writing again (baby steps, baby steps), great weather — but I’m struggling with the good old self-worth issue again. I’m dealing with a lot of general pain and achyness, my back is screwed up again, sleep is back to the waking-up-a-lot-and-not-hitting-deep-enough-cycles, and I seem to be saying, “Is [insert goal or activity here] worth it?” a lot more than usual.

Cello is currently freaking me out. Not only is there a lot of pressure at orchestra with new music that’s pushing us past our comfort zone again, but my teacher’s studio year-end recital is coming up and I’m uncomfortable with the lack of prep on the ensemble pieces. This isn’t necessarily me; a lot of people have missed the group classes for various reasons, and so our group pieces are all over the place. There’s that whole obstacle of the opening two notes of my solo piece which isn’t helping. Overall, it’s the pile of work that’s making me freeze like a deer in the headlights. It doesn’t help that when I do work on stuff, especially for orchestra, it doesn’t seem to matter or make a difference.

Most of my freelance assignments are coming back with requests for tweaks or rewrites, which isn’t helping my self-confidence at all. Monday I was ready to chuck it all and just spin yarn to sell on Etsy or something, because I obviously couldn’t handle my job, as light as it is. Rather surprisingly for me, I was proactive and wrote an e-mail to the coordinator I’ve been working with the longest and pointed out that I was getting a lot of revisions, and what could I be doing better? Her response was reassuring: I had been really strong for a couple of years, but had lately been developing a weirdness concerning one particular part of the manuscript evaluations I do, and she pinpointed it for me. I’d successfully addressed the not-positive-enough problem that had popped up in my work earlier, which was good to hear, but part of what had made me ready to give it all up on Monday was a criticism that I was being too positive now. (This has happened before; I’ve been corrected on a couple of things and applied them to the next few assignments, only to have my corrections pointed out as incorrect for a different reason. Frustrating, but all valid.) We talked about the new problematic issue and it was somewhat of a relief to hear that she didn’t know how to fix it either. A solution would have been nice, but both of us brainstormed a bit, and we’re trying a couple of different techniques to see if we can adjust things. I came away from it feeling a lot better, or at least I wasn’t writing up a resignation letter in my head any more, convinced that they were about to fire me.

I got two inches cut off my hair last week, which helped somewhat. Now when I look in the mirror I’m not cranky. I went to the salon around the corner that I’d tried just after the boy had been born; I’d felt neutral about it then, and still do, but it’s thirty dollars less than the salon that the stylist I’d been seeing for the past three or four years moved to. What she was charging at her last salon was pushing my budget; the new place made it impossible for me.

I spun two ounces of BFL in a pretty purply colourway; it’s one of the Fleece Artist braids that I picked up in Mahone Bay last summer, and reminds me very much of the colours inside a mussel shell, a couple of cooler purple shades with touches of pinky-browns and a bit of old rose-silver. It’s not quite long enough for what I’m aiming for, so I weighed out two ounces of tussah silk and started spinning that to ply with it. A handful in, I realised that the natural honey color of the tussah was lovely but was going to ruin the colour effect, so I messed about in the kitchen with my dyes and ended up with a truly gorgeous one of a kind colourway that will complement the BFL nicely:

It looks a bit muddy in the photo (silk doesn’t seem to photograph very well) but it’s got the same colours the BFL has, only sort of in reverse weight: mostly warm pinky-browns and blueish silver with the cool purple tone. I’m not sure exactly what it’s going to look like spun up and plied with the BFL, but I know it’s going to look beautiful:

I wrote 1200 words the other night, and five hundred yesterday before the boys came home and there was no hope of focusing. I think I’m going to have to draw up a schedule so I can check things like a half-hour of cello off, an hour of writing, some spinning or dyeing work, and block off time for whatever assignments come my way. Crossing things off a list make me feel much more secure regarding my time management. Last week I was attacked by naps pretty much every day, which didn’t help my productivity (but obviously rather important). So far this week I’ve avoided that, but I don’t know how long I’ll be able to continue avoiding them if I’m not sleeping at night.

Weekend Roundup

It was a lovely weekend. It felt like it went on forever, such a nice change from wondering where the weekend went. The weather was spectacular, which helped a lot. Our windows were open all the time, and the scent of the lilacs from over the back fence is just heavenly. I’m enjoying it, even though I know it’s all two weeks early. Normally we’d be gardening in weather like this, but as we now have our official pre-approved mortgage and are looking for a house on the south shore this summer (yay!), we’re not planting annuals or doing the vegetable garden this year. The extent of our planting was scattering wildflower seed in the front and side gardens, and trimming the deadheads off the tulips.

First thing Saturday morning HRH and I went to get our passport photos taken. And wow, in this day and age of digital cameras, it’s five minutes and done. They even showed us the digital pictures and asked if they were okay. Then we went to the library for our new library cards, and the boy got his photo taken because it’s been two years since the last one, which is almost half a lifetime ago for him. (I got to keep mine, because I don’t change as rapidly as he does.) It’s been about six weeks since I’ve managed to get to the library, so I paid my lingering fine and grabbed a couple of new releases.

Saturday morning I had one of those cello lessons where I almost reached the point of tears because I couldn’t play an open D followed by an open A. Yes, you read that right. I hate the opening bar to pretty much any solo piece, and the Lully gavotte is no different. I’m too forceful, I’m lifting the bow, I’m not articulating properly, where’s the contact between bow and string at the tip of the bow… I could go on. Two stupidly easy notes, open strings. And yet I can’t do it properly.

While I was celloing HRH took the boy to the toy store so he could buy a Playmobil airplane with the sixty (!) dollars he’d saved up in his piggy bank. They picked me up from my lesson and we stopped over at Ceri and Scott’s place so they could sign our passport applications as guarantors and references. Back home we had a light lunch and then everyone kind of rested, the boy on purpose and HRH and I somewhat unintentionally. I started measuring the warp for a new project on my warping board and managed to completely overestimate the finished length, so I measured two feet more of warp than I needed, which meant I ran out of yarn very quickly. In self-defence I must point out that this is the first time I’ve used a warping board for a full-length piece, and zig-zagging back and forth in a small area makes a length look much shorter than it is when you stretch it out. I redid my calculations and saw that I’d been overly generous with my calculation of loom waste, but even if I’d been measuring the two-feet-shorter version I’d have been short of yarn. I would have to buy another skein of it, which was mildly annoying because I was doing this to use up this particular yarn. Other really frustrating things happened too, like the skein tangling terribly while I wound it into two centre-pull balls, and then the centre-pull balls tangling terribly. (This last is particularly infuriating because centre-pull balls are supposed to eliminate tangling.) Coven was cancelled that night, so I had a hot bath and went to bed.

Sunday morning we were all up stupidly early, so the boy and I headed out to buy that other skein of yarn. When we got home the boy and HRH mowed the back lawn, and then we all went out to do our weekly grocery order. After lunch we were ambushed by naps, and when we got up we went out for a bike ride! The boy biked to the local schoolyard and HRH and I walked our bikes behind him, and he practised cycling on a flat surface. Next trip the training wheels come off, because he hasn’t quite figured out that he needs to go fast enough so that he won’t fall over without them. But as this is the second time he’s used his two-wheeler (rain and the busy have prevented us in the past month) he’s doing pretty well, and is understanding steering and braking and putting a foot down on the ground when he stops. There was a bit of not wanting to try because it was hard/scary/required attention, but we worked through that. And he loved that we had our bikes out with him, too.

I finished measuring the warp for the new project, and I’ll wind and sley it today so the loom will be ready for weaving when I feel like it later this week. Today is also slated for writing and transcribing for my own work, making bread, and practising those two damn notes on the cello.

Weekend Roundup, Mother’s Day Edition

At my cello lesson on Saturday morning I shared my concerns about the Bach Gavotte with my teacher. A month working on it alone did me no favours. I recorded it a day or so before the lesson and hated what I heard. It just wasn’t smooth enough at this point in the game. And with so much work to do for orchestra and the ensemble recital pieces… well, I said I thought the Lully would be a better choice, and she fully supported me. So we proceeded to work on different bits of it, including a full ten minutes just playing the first two notes trying to get the articulation just right. She switched me to something else just in time before I lost it.

I know I can play the Bach at the Christmas recital. But it was my goal for this recital, and we mangled the timing. I feel better about the decision, but I’m still really disappointed.

I came home through the rain, picked up the boy, and we went to get my new reeds for the rigid heddle loom. The lady was wonderful. She reps Ashford, Majacraft, and Schacht out of her home, so if I need pretty much anything in the way of spinning or weaving equipment from any of the major companies (other than Kromski, who of course makes the next wheel I want, sigh) I’m covered by her and my LYS. I was there for about twenty minutes talking to her about things, and admiring the cherrywood Baby Wolf loom set up in the corner of her living room, warped for tea towels. She’s pretty much got me convinced to do the guild thing, even if I can’t make regular meetings. It’s amazing how meeting one kind, open person can change my mind. She told us about the upcoming cultural rendez-vous at the end of the month at Stewart Hall, one of the two cultural demonstrations/festivals they host per year, so I’ll go over with the boys and check it out. The guild is going to have things set up for demonstrations and an open house, and she said she’d show me their looms and projects.

Then we stopped by Ceri and Scott’s house, and the boy played with their new Prince of Persia Lego set while Ceri scrutinized the baby blanket and told me that it was wonderful and perfectly acceptable for gifting, which made me very happy. She also sent me away with a bottle of red wine, bless her. The boy and I shared soup and a sandwich at Tim Hortons, and then went to Pointe-Claire village to pick up chocolates for the various mums and mum-figures. After that we went to the little toy store after lunch so he could buy something with his twenty dollars, and he chose a Playmobil policeman on a motorcycle. He had enough money left over for a single figure, so he walked up and down the aisles looking for something, and then finally stopped, frustrated. “What are you looking for?” I said. “Mama, I need a girl police to go with this,” he said. The only policewoman figure they had was in a two-pack with a robber, so I paid the extra so he could have his “girl police.” Also, bonus bad guy for them to apprehend!

We got back home mid-afternoon and HRH went off in the car to run his errands, and the boy has a rest. He’s fighting a cold, and needed it despite the late naptime. I woke him up an hour later, and made dinner for him. While he napped I started weaving on the warp I’d done on the rigid heddle loom earlier in the week; I had new reeds to experiment with, after all, and so I needed to use up what I had on the loom! I’d played with combining warp threads of two different grists and an empty slot, and for weft I used the coloured Lion Homespun yarn I’d first tested the loom with in April. It wove up brilliantly, the warp threads making a lovely variation in texture, and the Homespun behaved perfectly as weft. I finished weaving it that night, but didn’t cut it off the loom till Sunday morning. (I think it’s a table runner, and I think it’s a wedding present for someone. I’m going to have to start making two of everything, because I want to keep this, too!)

We received or tax refunds in the mail on Thursday (yay!), so on Saturday night after the boy went to bed we treated ourselves to a sushi dinner while curled up in front of the TV, watching episodes of Castle that Karine had taped for us. (Yes, HRH found an operational VCR languishing in a storeroom at work, so he liberated it; now we can watch tapes again!)

Sunday morning we woke up to snow. I was pretty wiped, so HRH did the groceries. Before he left I got my Mother’s Day presents. The boy had made a card and “nests” at school, a stupidly delicious chocolate-peanut butter-Rice Krispie thing pushed into tiny foil tart shells, with peanut M&M “eggs” in the nests, and HRH gave me a card and a gift certificate to Ariadne Knits. The boy had an early lunch and a rest, and while he was napping our friend John came by and dropped off a big storage bucket of Lego, including some truly awesome specialised pieces, a robot, and a tonne of figures and horses. The boy was thrilled when he got up (which he did moments after John left, as if he has some kind of new-Lego radar). We let him dig gleefully through it for about half an hour, then we went over to HRH’s parents’ house. I stayed for half an hour and then had to leave for our monthly group cello lesson, which went relatively well for me up till the last ten minutes. I hate it when that happens, because those final minutes colour the whole thing. I went back to the south shore to rejoin the family, and we had a lovely Mother’s Day dinner, with a really nice red wine and a lovely cake for dessert, before coming home and collapsing in bed.

Weekend Roundup

Everything seems to have happened on Saturday. The first half of Saturday, at that.

Saturday morning I had my first cello lesson in just under a month. Suddenly I had to decide between the Lully gavotte and the Bach gavotte for next month’s recital, which felt slightly unfair because we’d set the deadline at the last lesson and I haven’t had a chance to work on it with my teacher since then. I really do want to play the Bach, though, so my teacher said we’d do it. On the way home I second-guessed myself and was sure I’d made the wrong decision, and I’m still fairly certain I’ll blow it badly. But then, I’d feel the same way about the Lully, so I can’t win either way. In the lesson we worked on the upper body being free to move from side to side with the elbow-led bow stroke, which felt very awkward and wrong, but it did create some very nice sound. I think I’m too locked up when I play, so my teacher’s trying to get me to loosen up while still being aware enough of my body to control the sound.

Things to remember: Keep fingers aimed more toward the bridge instead of parallel to it, remember to use the back of the thumb instead of only the side in thumb position, don’t shortchange the last note before a new bow or phrase, stop leading RH movement with the wrist (my teacher was also initially trained to do this and her teacher still calls her on it, so I don’t feel as hopeless about this as I could, although I still feel pretty hopeless indeed), and the speed of the shift needs to match the speed of the song.

I raced home from the lesson to pick up HRH and the boy, stopped by the grocery store to grab cold meats and cheese and bread, then went to Angrignon Park for Tristan’s naming ceremony. (Yes, two naming ceremonies in one week.) It was lovely. Very different from the previous week’s ceremony, which was more formal in the setup and dress. This one was a circle of friends around blankets, balloons in the wind, and a baby who decided to protest the delay in feeding. We did a couple of fixes on the fly (a dandelion for the flower, the candle went out so I used the cloud-covered sun as the light) and there was laughter, which always blesses a ritual. And I finally got to use part of the baby-blessing ritual I wrote for my second book, which was intended to be used for the boy, but he ended up arriving early and in the race to keep up we never got around to holding a naming ceremony for him.

When it was over we all hauled out our picnic stuff, sat on blankets or camp chairs or around the picnic table, and ate. The boy ran around with MLG (fencing lessons with sticks; I love my friends) and a younger boy whom he decided needed looking after, so he kept feeding him, much to our amusement. HRH and I got to play with a cheerful ten(?)-month-old, who proceeded to impress his mum by trying to take steps on his own (with support, of course) and feed himself, and rather capably, too, for someone who didn’t do it regularly. And his mum asked if I’d do a naming for him, as well! It was so nice to just sit and relax with friends, and watch kids play, and nibble at stuff. A couple of hours later the threatening clouds eventually started spitting actual rain so we all packed up in about five minutes and headed for home, where we put a movie on for the boy and I was ambushed by a ninja nap.

Sunday was a very quiet day. HRH ran around, though, getting the summer tires put on (to our dismay, the sound the wheels were making was not entirely the winter tires; seems the bearings may need repacking, too) and heading over to his parents’ house in the afternoon to lay the new bathroom floor. Not having the brainpower or the energy to do much, I pulled out the spinning wheel and spun up two more samples from the January Phat Fiber box (yes, I’m only a third of the way through the samples; I’m making this last). I also wove in the last few weft ends on the baby blanket I wove for the last naming ceremony, and machine washed it to block the weave. I want to run it by Ceri first to make sure I’m not going to embarrass myself by gifting it (there are a couple of errors where a warp thread didn’t rise or lower properly so there’s a skip, but while I can see every one of them like they’re circled with blinking red lights, others probably don’t). Actually, I wanted to weave instead of spin, but since there was nothing on the loom, I didn’t. I had nowhere near the mental focus or energy required to wind a warp then get it on the loom. Maybe this week. I finally got a copy of Betty Davenport’s classic Hands On Rigid Heddle Weaving, which didn’t reveal anything earth-shattering to me, but did clearly outline the process of warping from back to front, which I will try next time instead of direct warping.

Hey, my new reeds ought to be here at the end of the week.

Ceri lent me her point-and-shoot camera (I am discovering that a manual setting on a point-and-shoot is a rare thing, which makes me sad because I’ll have to pay more for it), so I can show the blanket off and the stuff I’ve spun over the past couple of weeks… once I have the energy to set it all up and photograph it. And in other random fibre arts news, I thought the size 4 Harmony tips for my circular needles from KnitPicks were faulty; one kept falling right off the cable, the screw not catching at all. I thought I’d have to contact them this week so I could keep working on my sleeveless sweater without losing stitches when the cable fell off the needle, which is what happened on Friday night. But I remembered that I had a second set of size 4 tips, which came in the full set I bought after testing a separate pair of tips and cables, so I tried one of them instead. It turns out that it’s the cable that’s faulty, not the tip. I tried another 24″ cable, et voila! The previously suspicious tips are just fine. I could call them for a replacement cable, but I have three other 24″ cables (one other from the original pair I bought, plus anotherpair from the full set) and I doubt I’ll ever have them all in use at the same time.

Finally, for dinner last night I used Karine’s garlic-teriyaki pork slow cooker recipe, and it was fabulous. Slow cooker recipes are usually simple, but this one was gleefully easy. Definitely a keeper. Next time I’m going to caramelize onions and fry mushrooms to toss on top of it before the sauce is poured over top at the table.

In Which She Natters About The New Rigid Heddle Loom

So what was using the new rigid heddle loom like, when I was at my parents’ house?

When I told Ceri that the warping had gone really quickly on the new loom but the actual weaving was slower, she mused that it was a case of “be careful what you wish for.” Not so much “be careful what you wish for,” I told her, as “wait to see the reed before you choose a really fluffy yarn that might not fit, moron.” (She laughed, bless her.) Seriously, it was a classic case of not using the right material for the equipment you have. Or would have later that day. (Of course I can knit bulky yarn on size 3 dpns! It will just be… challenging.)

The yarn I chose before I saw the reed was a soft acrylic called Homespun, and it’s essentially a low-twist single wrapped with a very thin binder thread. It’s such a pretty yarn that I was cranky about how the reed was yanking it around; it got caught against itself or on the slightly rough edges of the reed a lot so I had to manually poke the shed into place thread by thread with my fingers each time I changed the heddle position. Not even that got me down, though. It got faster as I went, because I got used to how roughly I could handle both the yarn and the reed while poking the shed into place. With a lower dpi reed, it would slide beautifully. Kromski reeds are over $50 each, but the Ashford ones fit beautifully (as many Kromski weavers have attested to online, thank goodness) and the Ashfords are $25 plus shipping. We don’t have a shop that reps Ashford in Montreal, but there is a woman in Pointe-Claire who is a private rep. I’ve already talked to her about buying 5 and 7.5 dpi reeds to supplement the 10 dpi reed that came with the loom, as I want to use heavier yarns for my upcoming projects, and the fluffy Homespun I used for the sample, too. I was on the fence about one or the other when she pointed out that shipping was going to be the same whether I ordered one or two, so both it is. She says she uses the 7.5 dpi reed most often, switching to the 5 dpi for thicker handspun. It’s good to know I’m on the right track. Also, hurrah, I have ordered a real heddle hook and a reed-sleying hook! No more trying to fit the round crochet hook through a narrow slot!

I sat cross-legged on the floor with it flat in front of me for the first bit, but wove most of it with the loom propped almost vertical against a wingback chair, like a tapestry loom. If I’d known how much I would enjoy weaving with my frame upright, I might have seriously looked at the tapestry looms that occasionally pop up in the marketplace forums on Ravelry.

Anyway.

Back home, I went out and bought new yarn (the definition of irony is searching high and low in Oakville/Burlington for two specific yarns in specific colourways and not finding them, then locating them by accident in the local Zellers at home), thinking to make a blanket as a gift for the Wiccaning I’m performing this weekend. I made sure it was a lighter-weight yarn so I wouldn’t have the sticking-in-the-reed issues I had with the Homespun. I ended up with Bernat Softee Baby, which is a sport DK weight, and lovely, light and soft to touch in the ball, but tangled terribly while I was windign it into a centre-pull ball and several times when I was warping, necessitating an emergency trip back to Zellers to days later to buy a second ball. And it doesn’t stick in the reed. Instead, because it’s slightly fuzzy and is made of thin, thin plies, it shreds as the heddle moves up and down. I’ve had two warp threads break already. On top of that I’m having tension issues, and I suspect the finished product will be something I do not want to give to anyone. Besides, it’s not going to be ready for today, because I had revisions on a freelance project that ate up half a day and lost time; and on top of that I had to rearrange the layout of the back warp rod, which meant I had to take the back warp off and sort out all my loops, redistribute them among the apron rod ties, then slide it back on. This did not help my tension issues. I think it’s about a third done.

The accent yarn I’m using, Bernat Satin, is fine, though. Two inch-wide stripes warped along the length, two to be woven in across the width. It’s a tiny bit thicker, not as fuzzy, and it’s holding up much better than the Softee Baby stuff.

Here it is, warped and beamed and ready to go:

I would have taken more pictures of the project in its third-complete state for you, but our digital camera has suddenly developed thin lines across the image, like horizontal blinds. Not only does it have lines across the entire image, it can’t seem to calculate the proper light balance any more. It was fine Thursday night, but when I picked it up to take a photo Friday morning, poof. No accident, no misuse, nothing; just mysteriously no longer functioning properly. I looked it up, and apparently this is due to a faulty sensor used in production around 2004; there was a big thing about this a couple of years ago when they all started failing. Our camera is three years old, but I’m going to call Canon on Monday morning anyway, and ask them what they can do about it. If they can’t or won’t do anything, then a new one is only about $130, and we’ll replace it when our tax refund comes in.

Anyway, there’s about a foot woven. I’m using it horizontally instead of vertically like I did at my parents’ house: I’ve clamped it to the coffee table, and I sit on the chesterfield to weave here. I might have gotten more done yesterday, but a new project landed and I got half of that done instead, because I’ll finish it Monday morning in time to invoice for it. I can always mail the blanket to the family, if it’s suitable for gifting when I get it off the loom next week.

Home Again

I’m back from my week with my parents, being company and an extra pair of hands for my mum, who had a hip replacement. She’s doing impressively well, and thank you, everyone who asked!

Two things:

First, while I was there I read pretty much a book a day. Here’s what I inhaled:

Boneshaker, Cherie Priest
Safe-Keeper’s Secret, Sharon Shinn
The Red Door, Charles Todd
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, Alan Bradley
The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag, Alan Bradley
Chill, Elizabeth Bear
Odd and the Frost Giants, Neil Gaiman
Blackout, Connie Willis

And I’m two-thirds of the way through Sarah Monette’s Corambis, too.

Second, and perhaps what most of you are waiting impatiently for, is the loom.

This is what it looks like, all folded up (with a Useful Cat for scale):

And when unfolded (Helpful Cat is Helpful):

There are no pictures of what it looks like when warped, but I’m sure if we wait long enough, that will occur, yes?

This is what the 16×16″ sample square I wove when I got it, though:

That’s Lion Brand Homespun; the cream colour is Deco, and the variegated colourway is Tudor. It’s incredibly soft. It is also not appropriate for a 10 dpi reed, because it’s about 6.5 wpi and bumpy like a boucle, so it kept catching on the slightly rough edges of the plastic reed. My fault; I hadn’t seen the reed before I chose the yarn for my experiment, and the grist of the yarn really calls for a reed with more space between the dents (a lower dpi). The yarn is also very fluffy, which I think contributed to the catching issue. Still, it made a spectacular fabric that’s warm and drapes beautifully, and I’m going to use it again when I get a new reed with a lower dpi. (Which will be very soon; my local Ashford dealer is checking stock for me right now. Yes, Ashford; their much-less-expensive-than-Kromski-reeds fit the Harps, hurrah.)

There you are. What am I using the sample square for? Well, the boy has already used it to cover two very feverish stuffed bunnies to help them get better, every cat as curled up on it at least once, and Nixie was tucked in with it last night. It is nothing if not versatile.

Tidying Up

I’ve been gathering my things from where they are all over the house in a slow-motion preparation for decamping tomorrow morning. Tonight Dad and I will kitbash a box for the loom out of wine boxes and pack it up so I can check it on the train home.

I finished the sample weave yesterday around lunch and cut it off. It’s exactly what I expected from the yarn, soft and drapey and gorgeous colours. Except I don’t think it will work for the project I had in mind, so I shall file it away for when I want to weave a soft, fluffy throw for myself or my mother instead. The only problem is the reed is too small, so I’ll order one with larger dents and it will be lovely. And so of course I bought a completely different yarn for another project, sweetly-coloured yarn of a weight that will slip easily through the reed I’ve got while I wait for the new reed to arrive. (Of course, neither of the craft stores I went to had either of the yarns I was actually looking for in the colourways I had chosen from online colour cards. Which is how I ended up with the soft, fluffy yarn that didn’t fit my reed in the first place. And the new yarn, too.) I also whipped up a carry case for the loom, but it’s a bit floppy because the folded loom is narrower at the top than it is at the bottom; it will need stabilising. For now it will be good padding inside the shipping box.

I picked up a couple of books for the boy today, and treated myself to Connie Willis’ Blackout for the trip home. I bought Elizabeth Bear’s Chill and Sarah Monette’s Corambis earlier this week, but I finished Chill this morning (yes, another riveting read; I love how Bear uses language) and I don’t seem to be in the right headspace for Corambis yet.

And I just had lunch out with Cats and Jenn, whom I met via LJ, and they are thoroughly delightful people with the right kind of sense-of-humour, and we have already planned to meet up again next time I’m down. It occurs to me that we should have gotten photographic proof of so much awesome in one place for Bodhifox. I had the most wonderful jasmine-lemongrass tea, served in a little silver teapot and a tiny yellow tea glass.

One more sleep till I’m back with my boys. It has been a lovely trip.

ETA: We have just kitbashed the shipping box. It looks godawful, but damn, it’s strong. And Dad did a final wrap with light spinnaker cord for a handle. It’s extremely solid, and very impressive. If the train people reject it on looks alone, I shall take off a shoe and beat them.