Category Archives: Knitting, Spinning, & Weaving

Sigh

Just another day here, Gentle Readers. Tired, achy, cold the usual. Only more because the after-effects of the flu are still dogging me.

In the Good News column, I finished and uploaded my freelance assignment yesterday (it was like beating my head against a brick wall; you all know how I feel about plagiarism, and this project quoted pages and pages of another book and blew right past the concept of Fair Use, while merrily paraphrasing other original material without attribution) and I finished my first pass through the galleys of the book this morning. Now I’m doing my second quick pass to make sure the edits I’ve made aren’t stupid (and have caught a couple where I phrased the requested correction badly, thereby demonstrating that my second pass is indeed necessary). Once that’s handed in early this afternoon I’ll have to move on to the next two things on my to-do list. One is an interview for an online community, and the other is a private pro bono one-page thing to write that has repeatedly been dropped down on the list of things to do because it’s non-paying. If I can get all that done today I’m free Wednesday and Thursday to work on my own stuff. Except it’s highly unlikely that finishing both today will happen. I need to do some cello work too, both on mine and the current trial 7/8 (Cello 7, for those of you with scorecards at home).

In the meantime, what I want to be doing is knitting my lap blanket. Except I do not yet have the needles or the yarn for it. Stupid space-time continuum, messing up my plans. Well, the boy and I are home together Friday, so I have proposed a trip to the bookstore for him if he comes yarn-trawling in places like Zellers with me. (Me, the bookstore? It doesn’t have the book I’m looking for. Bah. Although I do need to get a miniature wall calendar for my office wall.)

ETA: Aaaaand… as of 12:14 PM I am done, done, done! The proofs have been sent back and I am going to reward myself with a half-hour of browsing through colour cards for yarn to try narrowing down my yarn and colour choices for the lap blanket. The I think I’ll work simultaneously on the interview and research the one-page history. (In other words, I’m going to have two documents open at the same time and use one to work-avoid the other. This is a technique that actually works sometimes.)

Sunday

I originally titled this post my usual Weekend Roundup before I realised that I’d already covered Saturday on, well, Saturday. I so rarely journal on weekends. Anywhats!

Sunday was… interesting. I want to say fun but there was Tired and Lingering Illness involved, which is never fun. I woke up with the boy around six-thirty and he tried to snuggle in bed with us but kept waking himself up by coughing or trying to pet the cat, so around seven HRH got up and took him off to do morning stuff. I rolled over and got another two hours of sleep, which I desperately needed to help kick the stupid flu. When I woke up again at nine I thought that I’d have a leisurely morning with a cup of tea and maybe knitting in the sun, but around nine-forty-five I walked into my office to get something and saw a stack of books with a sticky note on top, which reminded me that the boy and I were due to pick Paze and Devon up and go to register for the new monthly children’s Pagan playgroup that’s just starting up. Ack! So I called Paze to push our meeting time back, packed up the box of books I was donating to the resource centre, and threw the boy into his snowsuit. The info session was fabulous; not only did the kids have a fun time exploring the room, meeting other children, dancing, drawing, and playing with various things like masks and the drum, but I discovered that one of the educators running the group is a wonderful woman I know from some of my workshops a few years ago. It was marvelous to see her, and to know that she and her equally delightful co-educator were handling the group in every way I could have thought fun and appropriate. Even better, while parents will attend the first session along with the kids to help ease them into the routine, we get to drop them off for subsequent sessions, which means Paze and I get a child-free coffee date once a month!

The major drawback to the morning out was that I took my glasses off to wash my face before I left and forgot to put them back on. I only noticed when I was halfway to Paze’s house, after my right eye had felt like it was working harder than the left. I’m still not used to wearing glasses full-time. (I thought I’d been wearing them for about nine months and was at a loss to explain the not-used-to-it-yet-ness, but a quick search of my archives reveals that I didn’t get them till the end of August, so it’s only been four months. Okay. That’s not so bad.)

Sunday afternoon I went through the Nigella Bites cookbook that Aurora lent to me, and we made tiny pork meatballs and tomato sauce from it for supper. In return I gave her a pile of beginner flute books on permanent loan to help fuel her newly rediscovered passion for her flute after taking several years off. I am thoroughly enjoying being a music-enabler for people. I stopped by my luthier this weekend to drop off the last trial 7/8 (you know, the one I got in early December that was due back the 26th, but they were closed for two weeks? Yeah, that one.) and it turned out that they had a new 7/8 that had arrived, so we just switched the cellos in the case, scratched out the old serial number and entered the new one on the trial contract, and I went back home with another cello. (I’d kind of been looking forward to having only one instrument case in my office, but hey, I take the 7/8s when I can get them because they’re hard to find.) I took it out as soon as we got home and it’s just lovely: a deep chestnutty-red colour (none of the orange stuff I dislike!) with two little knots on the front that look like dimples. It’s certainly my second favourite-looking instrument so far in this epic search, the first being the chocolate-amber one that was bought out from under me back in May. I played the first section of the Lee sonata, and from what I can hear from behind it the sound is nice, too — much more focused than the last 7/8, and certainly well-balanced across all four strings. We’ll see what happens when I bring it to my next lesson and my teacher plays it for me so I can hear what it sounds like from in front of the instrument instead of behind it.

Once the boy was in bed HRH and I headed out to the initial session of the first RPG I’ve been involved with in two moves. (I can’t remember what that translates to in years. Long enough that I have no idea where my dice went.) I baked focaccia, which vanished awfully quickly (note to self: next time do a double batch), and brought my knitting, which turned out to be a brilliant move on my part. I got a good quarter of Bodhifox‘s hat done, finishing the bronze portion and switching to the blue. (I may have done about five rows too many of the bronze; we’ll see. It won’t matter in the long run, but at the moment I am critical of the decision to do a full four inches instead of three and a half.) It was great, because I got work done and could focus on what was going on in everyone else’s turn in a way that I hadn’t expected, and didn’t get bored or drift off to sleep (not from the lack of interest in the story, but from Teh Tired and Sique). Knitting keeps one part of my brain busy as well as my fingers, so my mind doesn’t wander from what’s going on. It’s really interesting. The only drawback is that I’m mildly concerned that I may distract other players, although Karine did make a successful roll to save against Fascinating Shiny Things when the flashing needles began to relax her overmuch. Too bad I didn’t get to the row where I needed to start decreasing, because she wanted to know how that would happen.

(I suspect I will be knitting many scarves. Or maybe I’ll find the yarn for my lap blanket before the next month’s session and work on that, because it will be straight stockinette and easy to do while being engaged in other things. Yes, the lap blanket it shall be.)

It felt really, really good to be sitting in the room with close friends, working through a story together, even if my rolls did suck. I need to get myself back into rolling-multiple-consecutive-sixes-on-my-Force-die fighting trim. Also, steampunkian horror with an awesome soundtrack! What’s not to love?

I am cautiously optimistic about the day. I feel not quite at one hundred percent, but pretty close. I’m still cold, but that’s not unusual at the tail end of any illness of mine. My chest doesn’t hurt when I breathe any more, which is very welcome indeed. So I’m going to close a few tabs in my browser and make myself another pot of tea, go curl up in the living room in the sun, and finished the freelance assignment that’s due today. Tomorrow I finish and hand in the proofs of the book, and then the next two days are scheduled to work on Orchestrated. As a test run my cello lessons have been switched to alternate Friday nights and Saturday mornings, so I have all day on Thursday to work for now.

I think that’s it. Have an excellent day, Gentle Readers.

Yet More Wiktory!

The tassels are on. The eight-foot-long Gryffindor scarf is Officially Complete. Proper pictures to come. (Ravelry is down, AUGH!)

A sneak preview:

Because of course the damn cat can’t leave the wool alone, even when it’s all knitted up. What is it with my cats going crazy for wool? (Not yarn, the wool itself. Roman and Maggie once chewed a hole in a pure wool cardigan of mine. Roman was particularly bad, and used to roll and drool all over it.)

Remember, the cat is ginormous. It may be an eight-foot scarf and eight inches wide, but when it’s on HRH it will look like a normal scarf. It will still be impressive, but not as impressive as it is when I unroll it on the floor.

ETA: Ta-da!

And if you know how big HRH is, you know exactly how wide the scarf is:

Mischief managed. That’s one very happy geek man.

Virtuous

I have further caught up on the holiday backlog of e-mail and cleaned out most of my in-box, I have yogaed, and I have celloed. I am very pleased to see that my cello skills haven’t completely crumbled in my two-week hiatus. In fact, wow. Positive proof that my two months of lessons have made a definite impact and improvement. The Lee piece sounds excellent, especially considering that this is only the third time I’ve played it. But in the interest of full disclosure and humbling myself, the piece from the Mooney book sounds awful: I can’t get the damn rhythm of “Erik’s Minuet.” I subdivide, I count, nothing works. Argh. It figures I’d stumble on the easy piece and whip through the more challenging one.

Now for a snack (because I had an early lunch before celloing), and then work. I think I’ll do the first half of the proofs today, or however far I get so long as it’s at least five chapters. Drat; I need to download and install Foxit on this computer so I can mark them up if necessary.

And later, when I need a break (and I will, because I remember what page proofs are like) I will sew up the ends of HRH’s scarf and put the tassels on, because I went over to Ceri and Scott’s house last night and Ceri gave me a J crochet hook of my very own. The test tassel I did was too long, so I’ll need to find an intermediate-sized book to wrap the yarn around. And in other knitting news, I did indeed frog those two inches of hat last night; I cast the Softwist yarn on my size 8 Addis instead, and wow. I prefer bamboo needles to metal, and I thought the slippery yarn on the super-slick metal Addis would be a match made in hell, but it’s spookily easier, somehow.

Right; Foxit has downloaded. Time to install and get to work.

Finis!… Except Not

I finished knitting HRH’s eight-foot-long banner of Harry Potter geekitude, AKA his Gryffindor scarf, yesterday morning. I turned it inside out, wove in all the ends, and blocked it in the basement. The tassels were supposed to go on last night.

Except I do not have a crochet hook with which to do them, and everything else I suggested to myself also did not work. (Christmas tree ornament hook! Candy cane! Unbent paper clip!)

Argh.

I suspect I will be pleading with Ceri to allow me to stop by tonight in order to collect a crochet hook. Or possibly Mousme, as she may also have the smaller size circular needles I need for Bodhifox’s hat. Because after two inches of ribbing and stockinette, it is clear to me that I need to start over with a smaller needle size unless Captain Fox wants a hat that looks like lace. Stupid yarn. (It’s very pretty, really, but not his type of thing.) My gauge swatch lied AGAIN. You see why I cannot trust these things? [ETA: Oh, aha, I have a size 8 circular needle. It’s an Addi Turbo, and I don’t like it as much as my bamboo needles, but I’ve got one and that’s what’s important.]

We had some Family Dramah over the weekend (two separate incidents, actually) and as a result some of our weekend plans were skebarded. The one good thing about the Dramah is that everything is better than it was pre-Dramahtic Incidents. HRH said that this holiday would go on record as being One Day Too Long, although I suspect it was actually a good five days too long and we were all gritting our teeth for those final days until none of us could take it any more. We ended the holiday period by taking down the tree and decorations last night (in about thirty minutes, bang zap pow!) and watching The Empire Strikes Back (the original theatrical version, thank you very much).

And now, the first thing I get to do before I settle down to write is submit an invoice for my December work! What a lovely way to begin the work week.

2008 In Review

Things I Did In 2008 That I Have Never Done Before:

– finished, submitted, and handled the edits on my fifth book (there is only one fifth!)
– received only SIX edits/queries on that book
– took up cello lessons for the second time, after a ten-year hiatus (there is only one second time!)
– knitted not one but THREE complete objects
– wrote a synopsis and outline for a YA novel in one afternoon
– then pretty much finished writing that YA novel within six months once I started
– joined not one but two social networking/contact sites (Facebook and Ravelry, to add to last year’s Shelfari and Last.fm)
– started shopping for a new cello, something that is going to take me years to do before I find The One
– voluntarily left my former luthier and moved to a new one, with whose services I am very happy indeed
– headlined a Pagan festival as a special guest along with Serena Fox of Circle Sanctuary and presented a workshop on an intro to hearthcraft
– adopted a kitten from the Animal Rescue Network (that’s for the ARN thing, because I have certainly adopted kittens before)
– baked my own bread for an entire year (thirteen months if we count from when I started, which was November 2007)
– gave a guest lecture at the university level
– made a specific trip to meet someone I met via the Internet
– performed a handfasting for two of my dearest friends (yes, I’ve done a legal wedding, but this was a purely spiritual ceremony)
– performed a baby naming/blessing ceremony for another set of dearest friends, the subject of the ceremony being my second godsdaughter
– stopped using shampoo entirely (having a baby did wacky things to my body chemistry, and while some things were good, the uber-sensitivity my scalp developed to sodium laurel/laureth sulfate was the worst; I now use a silicone-free mild conditioner with the occasional baking soda/water mix instead, and my hair is happier, too)

Things I Did in 2008 That I Am Proud Of:

All of the above, plus:

– performing in my second “public” cello recital ever (“public” is in quotation marks because it was for a bunch of people I don’t know, but was in a private venue)
– cutting my hair to above-shoulder length after having it very long for years and years
– joining a new RPG for the first time in, um, a number of years that I do not remember
– teaching myself a new hobby/skill (knitting!)

Good Things About 2008:

– meeting Bodhifox in person at the Fearsranch and proving beyond any doubt that he is a kindred spirit
– the boy being accepted part-time into a wonderful preschool (and subsequently coming home counting in French, singing songs I have not taught him, and bearing lots of art not proposed or initiated by me!)
– discovering the novels of Barbara Cleverly
– joining the local library, thereby cutting down my book purchasing
– the loan of the Mystery Cello from my cousin, the turn of the century German cello that requires about 5K$ worth of repair before it is restored to a playable state
– meeting Brendan Myers and having dinner in Old Montreal with him and other like-minded souls
– meeting Serena Fox at the Hamilton PPD 2008
– a fabulous co-coven spiritual retreat at Samhain, so awesome that there are now three planned per year instead of one
– the resolution of the ongoing tension with the unbalanced downstairs neighbour: She voluntarily moved out! The entire building is much, much happier and more secure
– a lot of spending has been curtailed/refined/refocused: We make all our own bread and take-out has returned to a real once-in-a-while special treat
– a good crop of veggies harvested from the garden (not enough to last the winter — not even half a month, actually, but the thought is there)
– being diagnosed with fibromyalgia (you may think that would be a Bad Thing, but having that diagnosis was a very good thing because it clarified so much, gave me a plan for dealing with it, and allowed me to move forward)
– adopting Gryffindor and seeing him and the boy romp together
– two dear friends giving birth to lovely little girls!

Like last year I’m sure there’s more, of course; a lot of this year was good. But these are what stand out in my memory. Possibly more than anything else I am more thankful for my friends, appreciative of them and their strengths, proud of their accomplishments and successes, and love spending time with them. This is light-years beyond my enochlophobia and agoraphobia of previous years. I’ve become a lot more comfortable with myself, and trust myself more. I’ve also further refined my stop-spending-time-with-people-who-drain-me technique, with excellent benefits to my psyche and physical health.

Not-So-Good Things About 2008:

– my very dearest and oldest cat Maggie went to the Summerlands after seventeen years of love and companionship
– the pregnancy book was cut from the fall publishing lists and is on hold indefinitely
– losing Emru to leukaemia
– learning that the repairs of the Mystery Cello would require over 5K$, which shelved the project indefinitely
– ongoing financial balancing (the credit line is still looming over us, but everything else is okay)

How Did I Do With My 2008 Wishes?

– Rediscover my CD collection

Er, well. At least I didn’t bring a whole bunch of new ones into the house and ignore the old ones. This year everything kind of languished. I’d cull except every time I look at the CDs to sort through them I remember exactly what’s on each one and know that I might want to listen to it someday. Argh. My CD buying has really, really dropped off sharply in the past few years because I don’t hang out in music stores any more, nor do I go see movies and become enchanted by their scores.

– Make time for practising my spirituality in a more aware fashion

Not so much. It’s not that I’ve lost what I had, just that I did want to make a specific effort to do more things with awareness, and I didn’t get there.

– Make a stronger commitment to practising the cello

We have a winner! I mean really, how much more serious does it get? I’m taking lessons again after a ten-year hiatus, and still sitting second chair in orchestra. I am very, very proud of this particular resolution and how it has manifested.

– Let up on the second-guessing of the decisions I make, and the self-doubt I feel about my work

Still chipping away at this one, but it’s going to be an ongoing thing till the end of my life. I do feel a lot more confident about my ability in general, but I still have those slippery moments of Oh gods this sucks and why am I trying? I’m trying because it’s a first draft, and the subtlety can be woven in later.

– Remember frequently that I am a wonderful, kind, talented person

Not sure about this one. I got a lot better at saying If someone has a problem with this/that, then that’s their issue, which kind of connects to this wish because I don’t expend as much energy worried about what people think of me. I have definitely gotten better at telling myself that I or what I do is cool when it is. I still can’t accept a compliment gracefully, and I still dismiss too much of what people say about me when it’s nice things. I am getting better at being happy and/or satisfied with myself and I what I do, though.

– Focus my time so that I don’t waste as much of it

Lists have been my very best friend this year. Learning how to say no now that I understand how to manage my energy thanks to the fibro has helped immensely, too.

– Take up formal study of another spiritual path to complement the ones I already practise

Yes, but not in the way I’d expected/planned to go. This ended up being a focus on Germanic spirituality instead of Druidism. There’s time enough for it all in my life.

– Take care of my body so that the chronic pain thing doesn’t negatively impact my life, as it’s beginning to once again (I’m hoping it’s the damp and the cold that’s made it increasingly bad over the past month)

Another winner! Having a firm medical diagnosis of fibromyalgia went a long, long way to understanding how my body was working and how to deal with it.

Wishes for 2009:

– Further refine and develop my cello skills
– Finish and polish and start querying Orchestrated
– Keep on writing
– Start making all our own pasta
– Plant, harvest, and preserve more vegetables from the garden
– Save more money (I did end 2008 with a nice balance in the bank but it’s earmarked for cello stuff in the future, and while it sits there it collects interest, hurrah!)

========

If I had to assign a value to 2008, I’d say that again, it’s been an overall good year. Looking back at 2007 I see that I didn’t note much about how tense it was financially for us and how much of an effect that had on our day to day life and relationships within the family. That stress was much less present this year, and HRH and I have done a lot of repair on our own relationship. Things are certainly better than they were last year, for which I am very, very thankful. In 2007 my default mood was frustrated and tense; in 2008 I learned to let that go, both through the understanding that stressing just creates more stress, and as a result of things getting better job-wise for HRH and the general financial situation easing. Of course, with the market plunging as it is and the publishing industry closing doors and freaking out quietly behind them, I will likely not sell another book for a few years, but my freelance work keeps a steady trickle coming in.

May 2009 be even better for us all!

Going In Circles

Today’s agenda included going to two yarn shops, one in the morning and one after the boy’s nap (different opening hours on New Year’s Eve day, you see).

This morning’s mission: A success! I picked up a skein of the Berroco Softwist in Ginger, and found a substitute for the discontinued Jasper in the Berroco Ultra Alpaca, which is slightly heavier and has twice as much in the skein (a good thing because I’m going to knit this hat with a double-strand of both yarns) although it lacks the pretty sheen the Softwist has. It’s still a gorgeous yarn and will look lovely with the Softwist; I’m looking forward to knitting with it. I picked up a new size 10 circular needle to start it, too, as my current one is being used for HRH’s scarf. Came home, opened the twisted skeins, wound them into balls (from both ends, so I have two balls of each), much to the interest of Nixie and Gryff, who behaved themselves impeccably (except for that one swipe made by Gryff, for which he apologised).

Put the boy to bed for his nap. Came out, rubbing my hands together with glee. Now, to cast on! I bet I can get a good third of the hat done before the boy wakes up! Bodhifox needs this hat before spring comes!

I bought the wrong length circular needle. It’s a 24″ cable, not a 16″.

*facepalm*

So… all that, and I still can’t knit till the boy wakes up and HRH returns with the car from his errand. I could try sliding the stitches off the scarf’s circular needle and onto straight needles to liberate the circular size I require, but I suspect I will only make a hash of it and create more stress that I don’t need.

If I’d picked up the ball of correct-dyelot Jo Sharp that I saw while I was at the first yarn shop I could be knitting the second half of my black scarf right now. Or a skein of grey super chunky wool to start a slipper. But I didn’t, because I wanted to get them at Ariadne.

Augh. Lesson learned: Buy it where you see it.

I will write instead. Mutter, grumble, and grr.

On the positive side of things, I can now successfully and reliably purl. Go me!