Category Archives: Knitting, Spinning, & Weaving

Not the 2009 Retrospective Post

I’ve tried doing the 2009 retrospective post, but it’s very slim and I keep thinking I must be missing something really big, so I’m sitting on it for the time being.

In other news, I’m sick, which is really annoying as I’ve had to cancel two things already this year. (I think it’s two. Last year’s Cancel-O-Rama may be blurring into this year.) This feels suspiciously like gastro, which is not the way I wanted to begin the year. And to top it off I’ve pulled my back today, so I’m in a fabulous mood because even sitting hurts and I have work to do.

Speaking of which (work, not the back) I am currently in the throes of the design and layout for A Modern Cellist’s Manual, and I suspect that Emily and I are having way, way too much fun with it. It’s great to be able to chat with someone three time zones and four thousand kilometres away, and send samples of things back and forth immediately. Living in the future is very useful. It also helps to be working with someone who has a very similar sense of humour, who coincidentally loves the samples I send to her.

Our postman retired at the end of December. He let us know as we were leaving before Christmas (literally; HRH stopped the car so I could get out and watch to see if there was any mail to be put in our box). I said a heartfelt thank you for everything he’d done for us and wished him an excellent retirement, but I wish I’d known earlier so that I could have given him a gift certificate to Tim Horton’s or Chapters. He was truly fabulous, always focused but cheerful, with a dry wit. He never complained about the piles of books I used to order as research when I was on a contract. I will miss him.

HRH has already repaired the CD tower that fell apart in a spectacularly attackish way on New Year’s Day (thank goodness for MLG, Mackay, and Ceri, who were all here and who helped rescue the hundred-plus CDs and the pieces of the unit, because HRH caught it across his back and was stuck). It has been screwed into the wall so it won’t attack anyone again.

I am dragging my feet about finishing Mum’s silk scarf. It’s very annoying because I only have about five inches to go, but wow, the resistance I’m getting from my subconscious is something else again. I’m scheduling an episode of Slings & Arrows (season 2, aka the Macbeth season) per workday to watch while I knit, but even that’s not motivating me very well.

Thanks to the piles of snow we’ve gotten over the past two weeks, HRH and the boy have once again built the massive slide in the backyard that starts at the little door off the back deck and winds around the outside of the yard. The boy positively flies on his little saucer-sled and makes it about three-quarters of the way around the yard before stopping. It’s hilarious to watch.

I haven’t really spun anything this year so far, other than a sample to show the Marcs what the process entailed, but it will come. If I made resolutions, one would be to spin more and sell the resulting stuff so I don’t have to worry about what to eventually make with it and at least cover the cost of the fibre. I can spin, enjoy the process, and then Etsy it without anxiety.

And finally, I have moved my dresser out of the corner of our bedroom because the puddles of frigid water behind it and the black mold were just too much to keep up with. This way the air circulates more and will theoretically slow the problem down.

Right. Back to some editing, and then some knitting.

Weekend Review: Saturday, Pre-Solstice Edition

On Saturday HRH and I had a treat: we got to drop the boy off with his local grandparents early on, and go out all day by ourselves!

It was a shopping day, mainly. We hit the big Chapters on the West Island and found gifts for seven or eight people in one place, which shortened our day impressively. We were thwarted in our attempts to obtain the new TMBG kids’s album yet again and told them to correct the damn inventory already so we’d stop asking them to find it for us, and to prevent other people from going through the same exasperating exercise. (Seriously, people: stock’s been at three since September. Are they actually in the store? No. No one’s been able to find them any time we’ve asked for it.) Thsi time they gave us a coupon that gave us 15% off a book as an apology, which impressed us. And when we got to the cash I discovered that I had a 25% off coupon in my wallet, so the camera we bought for the boy was less than we thought it would be, and we had the swipe-twice card as well. It was a good experience; always nice to be told at the cash that you’re paying substantially less that you expected to pay.

We picked up what we needed at Omer de Serre and Best Buy with little to no pain and stress, and would have gone to the dollar store for the usual socks, mittens, pencils, and Christmas cups for the boy’s stocking except the lines were positively ugly, so we picked up our groceries instead and went home. I wrapped what presents I could, having discovered that somehow all our tags, ribbons, and bows had been thrown out in on of the several garage clean-ups this past year. Fortunately, we still had a bunch of gift bags and some usable tissue paper, and I cut up some of last year’s Christmas cards for tags.

At home I made lemon meringue pie for the co-coven Yule gathering later that afternoon. We will never again buy the No Name pie shells (in the interest of full disclosure, I do have to say that I usually buy the Tenderflake shells if I buy shells at all HRH picked these ones up). I baked the first one and it came out of the oven in pieces, although it had gone in as one unit. I rescued the second shell before it did the same. Homemade lemon pie filling is delicious, especially when one uses brown sugar instead of white; it has a lovely butterscotchy undertone. Piles of meringue, thanks to the stand mixer. In fact, the recipe made so much filling and merigue that I layered the pieces of the first shell in a baking dish, poured the remaining filling over it, and covered it with the rest of the meringue. Of course, this means we have a lemon pie here, and I have no idea when we’ll eat it.

We packed the upstairs neighbours into the car and got to the hosts’ home for the co-coven party, and it was just lovely. Good company, good food (sushi! Chinese fondue with the best broth I’ve ever tasted! duck and bison meat! an absolutely fabulous hot spinach and cheese dip om nom nom!), lots of laughing, very social cats, a great simple but important ritual, and an all-round wonderful time. Our gift exchange was reduced from the usual baked item and a gift for our Secret Santa exchange to a single “make or bake” item (money’s tight all around), and as luck would have it I drew HRH’s name. On Friday I knit him a striped cup cosy for his take-out coffee (he always forgets his reusable travel mug at school) from the leftover yarn I used to make his Gryffindor scarf last winter, then I hand-felted it so it could be washed without a problem, and it was a hit! (I was told later that it also fit beer bottles, which amused me.) I was the only person who made my gift instead of baking it! I got a tin of very excellent Rice Krispie squares (no cat feet were involved in the making of them, I am assured). We had to scurry away to collect the boy so that his bedtime wouldn’t be too insanely late, but it would have been wonderful to sit and laugh some more.

The boy was sitting quietly in his grandparents’ living room looking at a book when we arrived, all bathed and in his pyjamas. They’d had a wonderful day together, decorating the tree, baking cookies, and playing. We also collected the turkey for the next day’s festivities, and a lovely evergreen swag that my mother-in-law made for our front door. Back home we curled up in bed and read the first chapter of Prince Caspian together, and then it was bedtime. Everyone needed sleep, because Sunday was to be our local family Christmas celebration!

Self-Defence

I just had to post something else, because looking at the last post was driving me crazy every time I opened my browser. I’m almost done the weekend roundup and the boy’s 54 mos post; I’m pecking at them and I’m kind of tired, and as the days go by I’m less interested in them, you know? This is why I try to journal ASAP.

Work news: Now that we’ve confirmed it, I am all backflippy to announce that I am doing the book design for Emily Wright‘s upcoming A Cellist’s Manual. I am thrilled to be working with Emily on this project, and to be working on a book about one of my main interests and areas of… er… I can’t call it expertise, but fifteen-years-of-familiarity doesn’t roll off the tongue too smoothly. Anywhats, yay for Emily, and yay for book design, and yay for working on a super awesome cool project!

Scarlet fever update: Still alive. Am I not infectious yet? Am I not infectious yet? Am I not infectious yet? How about now? Now? Maybe now?

Technology: Apart from discovering iChat and iDisk (thank you, Emily) I gave Google Chrome a whirl this morning. I am surprisingly impressed with the speed. Unfortunately the Mac version is only in beta and none of the extensions and add-ons function in it yet, so I’ve binned it for now because I cannot, cannot, cannot use the web without an ad blocker. The end.

Knitting: I played hooky yesterday because this project is going sooo slooowly. That’s because the yarn I’m knitting it with is terribly thin (mostly; it bulks up here and there and the unevenness is also preventing me from getting into a rhythm). Yes, that’s right; it’s going slowly so I didn’t work on it much yesterday. And yes, it has a Christmas deadline. I have never claimed to be logical.

Spinning: I spun up 2.5 oz of the packing fibre my bobbins and kate extender arrived in while knitting-avoiding and did my very first three-play yarn, huzzah! I chain-plied a leftover single and when the boy got home I had him help me mix up some purple dye to colour it, and he was very excited about dipping it in and putting it in the microwave and rinsing it afterward. It’s very purple indeed, and the boy loved the whole process.

Weather: Holy cats, it got cold fast. It was about minus thirty C last night. It was plus seven C about ten days ago. That’s kind of sudden. Above-average temperatures to way below-average temperatures; uh-huh. No climate change happening, my foot.

Holiday countdown: Two days till we pick up what few gifts we’re buying this year, groceries, and the first Yule celebration; three days till the local family Christmas celebration; five days till our godfamily Solstice sing-song and celebration; six days till we leave for Toronto; eight days till the other family Christmas. Which means that yes, I am doing a full Christmas dinner on Sunday. I have to keep reminding myself of this, because the rest of my brain is firmly convinced that I don’t need to worry about that sort of thing for a week.

There you are.

Now back to this freelance assignment, which I received last night, started this morning, and want done by the end of the day so it can be approved and I can include it in tomorrow’s invoice. (Why the rush? Because accounting saw fit to change the freelancers’ Dec 28 invoice deadline to a Dec 18 deadline. Grr. Also, I got all the material to start on Emily’s book this morning, and I want to be working on THAT, not THIS.) I need to think of something to make for dinner tonight, too.

Weekend Roundup: Saturday With A Side Of Friday (backdated)

Most of Friday is detailed here.

When the boys got home I pulled myself together and we headed over to the mall for the boy’s Santa visit. We timed it well; there was only one person in line ahead of us, and several piled up behind us while we waited. The boy chattered about what he was going to ask for, and instead of the train he’d been talking about for weeks or the airport he’d recently begun considering, he suddenly decided he wanted a racetrack. He uncharacteristically went shy when it was his turn, and we all had to coax him along to even begin talking to Santa; he wouldn’t sit on his lap but eventually climbed on the stool once he’d started talking non-stop. As always, the Santa and elf on duty were fantastic with the kids, and the photographer was great as well. In this miraculous digital age he took three snaps and allowed us to choose which one to keep.

While the photo developed at the one-hour place the boy and I took HRH to the flu clinic in the mall and left him there while we mailed a little package and went to Renaud-Bray to pick up a couple of small gifts. We were on our way to the car when we remembered the photo, and went to collect it.

Once home we baked some chicken nuggets for the boy and started decorating the tree. I was supposed to attend a cookie exchange party, but officially bailed due to dizziness and light fever (and in retrospect wasn’t that a good idea?). HRH put the lights on while the boy and I unwrapped all the ornaments and laid them out in like groups. The boy hung a handful of special ones (among them his Lightning McQueen ornament and the X-wing ornament MLG got me years ago) and then it was bedtime. Speaking of MLG, he agreed to stop by and take the yarn I’d spun for Janice and the Rice Krispie squares I’d been able to salvage from the Cricket-catastrophe along with him to the cookie exchange party, for which I was fervently thankful.

HRH ordered our traditional tree-decorating sushi dinner, we ate, and by that point I was so exhausted that I could only sit on the chesterfield and watch him hang the majority of the remaining ornaments. This is a big thing, because I’m the chief ornament hanger, and direct the show. Not this year. I was so tired I couldn’t even bring myself to worry about where things were going. We left the tiny ornaments that go on the ends of the branches and the wonderful icicles Jan made for the boy to finish hanging the next morning.

Saturday morning I got myself to the dress rehearsal for our annual holiday cello concert, which was excellent. Our duet got an appropriate impressed response from the other students (yay us!), and the group pieces were really nicely blended. Our teacher had made macaroni and cheese as a light lunch after the rehearsal was over (this was inspired by the fact that every time her two youngest students did an exercise perfectly she’d put five pieces of macaroni in a jar; the goal was to collect as much macaroni as possible before the concert!). I left feeling really confident about the concert.

When I got home I told HRH I wasn’t going to ADZO’s surprise party, scheduled for late that afternoon, and eventually he agreed to take the boy alone. I was cranky about missing yet another social gathering, but I would have been crankier if went, because I was tired and achy and had a nagging headache. (Again, in retrospect, an excellent decision, what?)

On to Sunday!

Scylla And Charybdis

I’ve had an occasional dry cough over the past week. It got rather annoying last night, and today has developed into one of those when-you-cough-your-head-feels-like-it’s-about-to-explode kind of things. Then about an hour ago I developed chills, which led me to take my temperature, and hey, fever. Joy. And I have somewhere to be tonight, an event I swore up and down that I’d be attend come what may.

Rock and hard place: Go to the event, drain what energy I have, possibly pass this cold along to others right when the holiday season is about to get busy; or stay home, rest and focus on getting better, and conserve what energy is left for the recital this weekend?

So my plans for the evening are officially cancelled, which makes me extremely irritated because of the aforementioned promise to attend. Plus I feel, you know, sick. I will go to the mall with the family to be there for the boy’s Santa visit, but then it’s home and bed for me after sitting on the chesterfield watching HRH and the boy do the first round of decorating the tree. The most important thing this weekend is the recital. It’s not like my solo can just be skipped if I can’t attend; I’m duetting, so if I can’t be there, my partner loses out on her show piece as well. I am hereby declaring all my other non-essential social stuff this weekend cancelled as well.

I should have known the day was a write-off when I made two pans of Rice Krispie squares for the party tonight and came into the kitchen to find Cricket standing in one pan, licking the squares in the other. What a waste of food.

In other news, for those keeping score at home, the package originally delivered by UPS that they demanded $58 is processing fees for, which was then returned to sender, sat in a warehouse for a while, finally released to her after she called to find out where it was (total time: five weeks) and re-sent to me via USPS? Got here yesterday afternoon. Seven days, cheaper shipping fee, no delay or bureaucratic mess or extra costs. Take that, UPS. The lazy kate extender and two extra bobbins all work beautifully and I’m thrilled. The sender wrapped it all in ten ounces of three different kinds of roving to protect it; that’s almost a pound of spinnable fibre. I am absolute floored at the effort and energy she put into this at every step.

We got the tree yesterday. We paid more for it than I wanted to, but it’s truly a lovely tree and in very good condition. We’ll decorate it in stages over the weekend.

Finished spinning Jan’s yarn, plied it, and set the twist this morning. 188 yards of home-dyed heavy fingering weight mohair/merino with which she will knit a lightweight scarf:

I was supposed to give it to her tonight at the party; I’ll have to find some other way of getting it to her.

Otherwise today I ate, napped, practiced, and tried to read; this cold is killing my focus.

Decisions, Decisions

Yesterday went straight to hell when I left for cello. The lesson itself was great, but it was an hour-long bright spot in a three and half hour-long nightmare of hatred and traffic, the highlights of which were taking three times as long as it should to get to my teacher’s house (I’d planned for twice as long), and waiting twenty minutes on a corner at a stoplight in Ville St-Pierre until people on the street I was trying to turn on to stopped running the amber light only to stop almost n the intersection, and left room for me to turn onto the street I needed to be on. (I am leaving out the people who shoot along the shoulder of a road past a line of cars and then try to merge into the lane of traffic they just skipped because it was too slow for them [hello! you are part of the problem!], the idiocy of rerouting due to construction and not marking the reroute clearly, and the fact that it should only take fifteen minutes to my teacher’s house then thirty from there to pick up the boy.) The boy didn’t get to bed till eight-thirty; we were still eating at seven-thirty, his usual bedtime. The best part of the latter half of the day was snuggling in bed with him under warm covers in the dim room lit softly by his tiny glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, listening to Matt Haimovitz’s recording of Bach’s first solo cello suite while the boy rested an arm around my neck, tucked his head next to my cheek, and fell asleep.

But today is a brand new day, and it is snowing mightily with gusts of enthusiastic wind. Environment Canada has an official weather warning out for high winds and piles of snow in a comparatively brief period of time. And my big conundrum of the day is:

Do I start the freelance assignment, or do I spin Jan’s yarn from the fibre I dyed?

The freelance assignment is only due Monday. It is, however, really long. Jan’s yarn, on the other hand, is due Friday night, and will entail something like 275 yards or a quarter of a kilometer of spinning the singles, which will then need to be plied.

Actually, what I’ll probably do is half and half. I need Jan’s yarn to be done by Thursday night so I can set it and hang it to dry on Friday, and if I don’t at least open the freelance assignment and handle the first quarter of it (a separate file with a bunch of marketing info) I will feel very guilty, which will make me cranky.

I wonder if orchestra will be cancelled tonight.

ETA: Woo-hoo, orchestra’s cancelled! Not that I don’t love orchestra, it’s just, well, a night off sounds lovely.

ETA even later: I do not like how this is spinning up at all. It’s so pale that if ‘autumn pastel’ were a colourway, this spun fibre would be the illustration in the catalogue next to it. I’m currently overdyeing the remaining 1.5oz with more rust, gold, and a cup of brown dye. The tones need to be deeper.

Quickly

The boy has officially grown two inches in six months. No wonder we had to get him new pants. He is in all respects quite healthy, and is inching up everywhere on the percentile graphs.

We had a lovely lunch out after his appointment, and shared a ham and cheese sandwich. He ate most of his half quite happily, too, despite the lettuce I had to remove and his doubtful look at what I casually called “sandwich spread” but which was actually seasoned and flavoured mayo. Ha. Then he demolished most of a Boston Cream doughnut (eating it top down, from the icing into the middle; you had to be there). I had a decaf mocha with whip, and they even drizzled a bit of chocolate syrup on top without asking me. It’s the little things that make me happy.

He’s now off spending the afternoon with Pdaughter, whom he hasn’t stayed with in about five months, and is very excited about it. I’ve been home for almost an hour, and in a few minutes I’m out the door again with the cello for a duet rehearsal, then I get to fight traffic and construction back to Pdaughter to collect the boy. Good thing it’s not a bath night, as we probably won’t be home till 6:30.

(The spun silk is drying beautifully and the twist has evened out with a few snaps. I dyed 2oz of the mohair/merino in my lovely Autumn Gold Leaves colourway for Jan last night and let it sit overnight to absorb as much dye as possible. I rinsed it in heated water today and the green didn’t bleed! I may have hit upon the right mix of vinegar/heat/pinch of salt/absorbing time.)