Monthly Archives: December 2009

Today…

… we get our tree after school!

Of course, first I have to get through half of this project, and spin the rest of Jan’s yarn, but still! Tree!

The boy is having a hard time understanding why we’re not decorating it till tomorrow, though. I’ve explained the need to let a real tree rest in the stand so the branches relax properly, but he doubts me; I imagine he suspects me of just dragging the whole thing out to torture him. Anyway, before we decorate tomorrow evening, there’s a visit to Santa for the boy, shopping for me, and a flu shot for HRH that has to happen after school. HRH and I will order sushi, as is our tree-decorating tradition, and the boy will probably have chicken nuggets, although I will offer him hosomaki as I always do, and maybe ebi nigirizushi.

Now, I will make more tea, get the first load of laundry going, and get to work.

Hoth Reenactment

I kid you not. The shovel is the boy’s defensive artillery.

(Yes, it’s dark at four PM, and there wasn’t a heck of a lot of sun today anyway on account of that little snowstorm we’re having. I love how the camera flash picks up the snowflakes between the camera and the boy.)

Accidentally boiled the fibre in the oven. Good thing it’s mostly mohair and doesn’t felt. In spite of this, the colours look fantabulous. Good call on overdyeing, self.

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.)

Follow Up to the To-Do List

I invoiced. I also got a new assignment (150K words non-fic, gods help me; sure, some books need to be 150K, but not most of them).

I spun about a third of a kilometer of silk, before plying. Wow. Over that third of a kilometer my learning curve improved; I figured out how to handle the silk a lot better than I did yesterday. And plying dealt with some of the bumps and loose ends in yesterday’s singles. (Mostly, kind of.) I chain-plied the last 42 yards or so of leftover single, and it’s nice. I’m glad I did the two-ply, though. I think. (Yes, that’s me, very committed to my decisions.)

Things I knew but didn’t remember: silk isn’t elastic, which means knitting with it is going to be interesting. Maybe I should have plied a silk single with some BFL or something. Except that would have altered the colour more.

And perhaps the biggest argh of the day: my LYS doesn’t have any more of the dyed fibre I need to spin up some more yarn for my goddaughter’s wrap. I’ll have to contact the other shop I know that carries it and see if they have any. If they do and they sell it in small amounts, we’re good. If they only sell it in the half-pound bags, I probably won’t get it; no point in buying eight ounces if all I need is one or two. The gift will just be a couple of weeks late.

Tomorrow is all errands and doctor’s appointments and cello lessons, and I will get nothing work- or gift-related done, damn it.

Today’s To-Do List

Write weekend roundup
(done, done, and done)

Invoice for work done
(alas that it will be a small invoice, for
US thx closed the offices and so
my assignment was not approved for five days, ergo
I was only assigned two projects in the
period of time when I usually handle three, and
also, things seem to be turning over very slowly in general
on their end, which makes scheduling hard for me)

I shall do some editing on the Poppy book, but
the main part of the day shall be
devoted to
knitting and spinning, because
Yule is rapidly approaching

(yikes)

and I have
gifts to finish.

(And yes, I confirmed last night:
I need another two ounces of wool to spin
to complete my goddaughter’s wrap.
Sigh.)