Round One: Done

I just finished the last bird entry in Birds: A Spiritual Field Guide.

This completes my rough draft. There is work still to be done, namely expanding point form information in the first half of the book about historical divinatory practices involving birds into actual paragraphs (yay, haruspication!), checking facts I’ve highlighted, rewriting a rough meditation or two, and that kind of thing. Having had to cut five birds for sure and possibly five more due to art issues has brought me in at almost 8K under my target word count, which is making the most of a bad situation, as from here on everything just gets bigger.

But essentially? That’s all editing and polishing. And then I will obsessively check how I’ve presented the info in each entry, and wibble about how some things don’t fit, and how some entries have piles and piles of cultural mythology and folklore and others do not.

I have an introduction to write for the companion journal over my Easter holiday as well. I should copy my roughs to a USB key right now as well as printing them out to scribble on. And then it will all be handed in on May 2.

Now, if you don’t mind, I am going to go fall over.

Idle Schedule Dreams

Maybe it’s because I’ve felt shackled to my desk for the past couple of months and a horrible winter, but I’ve been dreaming of what I’ll be able to do when this book is handed in on May 2.

– Actually go to the yarn store, where I have not been since early December, to pick up the copy of Spin-Off Spring 2011 that they’ve had aside for me for over a month. Pat yarn. Buy spinning fibre.

– Head over to Debra’s house with an empty box to sort through her little girl clothes and abscond with some. Also, have tea like real human beings.

– Actually shop for baby things. Not that we need a heck of a lot; we’ll be borrowing used stuff from others to replace our equipment that wore out/came back damaged/expired. It’s more the principle of the thing: I’d like to actually have one or two new things for this baby. I do need to start collecting samples of cloth diapers for newborns, though, to have on hand for when the baby comes home so we can test them out and see which brands/style suit her best. Some of this has been dependent on cash flow, as well, so I haven’t been able to jump on excellent used deals on Craigslist and the like for things like infant car seat stroller frames and sets of used cloth diapers when they’ve come up.

– Nap.

– Stare out a window for a while and not feel guilty.

– Possibly do a photo session with Tamu. Do recon on photo studios for an actual family portrait, something we’ve never had done, ever.

– Start spinning the warp yarn for the baby blanket (May), and then weave the baby blanket (see, I am already planning into June!).

– Order the fabric online for the baby’s blanket that the boy wants made for her. Start assembling the bits for the mobile he has designed. (Both of these feature the boy as designer/director and me as executor. Sigh.)

– Schedule a playdate or two.

– Finish knitting the garter squares for the baby booties and origami them together.

– Go to my doctor’s appointments and ultrasounds (the regular and the extra oh-dear-you’re-high-risk ones) without feeling stressed because there’s work piling up at home.

– Play the cello. (I have one. Not that you’d know it if you lived here.) Prep for the June recital.

– Start planning the boy’s sixth birthday parties, Family Edition and School Friend Edition.

– Read.

– Sort through what baby equipment we do have on hand that is usable and needs cleaning/repacking/set up. Not that we can set anything up in our bedroom till mid-July. No, there will be no nursery till around Thanksgiving when the attic office is done.

– Do the tax stuff. That was scheduled for last month; it didn’t happen, nor did it happen this month, because there was too much work. And since we’re first-time homeowners there’s a pile of unknowns that needs to be ascertained, like what we can write off, what receipts or proof of whatevers are required, and so forth.

– And… work. Sigh. Eventually the edits on the bird book will come back, and I’ll have to address those, and I know they will not be the “oh you have six things to handle and that’s it” that the hearthcraft book had; these will need more attention. But I am looking forward to the more regular paycheque that copyediting yields. Pay vs energy/time input, copyediting gives better value than writing, I have found. That’s sad but true.

Weekend Roundup Etc

I was disappointed in the debate last night. I was hoping for actual adult discussion of policy and platform. What we got was people pointing fingers at one another. Snarking about it on Twitter with Canadian friends helped me get through it. All I really got out of it was an odd dream that I was an environmentalist active in avian preservation, and Stephen Harper personally promised me that he’d build a new habitat for penguins at the Biodome if I’d vote for him. I think the bird book is getting to me.

We had a whirlwind trip out to Rowan Tree Farm on Saturday for our annual spring equinox ritual (affectionately referred to as OsTaras) with t! and Jan, which was very enjoyable, and the next day we did a late equinox/early Easter brunch and egg-decorating session with the Preston-LeBlancs:

The bulbs HRH and the boy planted all over the place last fall are coming up, and we have discovered naturalized crocuses (crocii?) in the back garden, to our delight:

(Hello, lovely macro setting on my camera. You make crocuses look very, very nice indeed.)

I did a preliminary dye test to tint the Falkland warp fibre green to better match the Manos weft yarn. The green dye really turned the fibre an emerald, Astroturf-y green despite me using a half-saturated solution, gack. So I hauled out the hackle and blended the emerald fibre with undyed fibre in two different proportions, spindle-spun both samples and plied them, et voila; a pretty decent match, I’d say. The left photo shows the Manos at the back, a sample skein of a 2 white:1 green yarn in the middle, a sample of 1 white:1 green yarn on the right, and on the far left is the emerald dyed fibre, just for kicks. The photo on the right shows the two sample skeins laid over the skein of Manos, showing just how close my two hand-blended yarns got.

There’s so much variation in the kettle-dyed Manos that either of these blends would work, I think. Or rather, I could be a bit less precise about how much of each colour I’m blending in as I go, and it will still look lovely. Now I know that I can blend it, I could dye up about 4 ounces of green at this solution and trundle down to Ariadne Knits with it and another 4-6 ounces of undyed fibre to crank out 8 to 10 ounces of batts on the drum carder there… or I could further experiment with a much, much weaker solution of emerald green on a larger amount of fibre. Which I may still have to card with undyed fibre; who knows? It’s academic at this point, though, because I need my order of undyed Falkland to arrive at the shop first.

The bird book proceeds apace; deadline is in two and a half weeks, five days of which I am away for Easter. We had a bit of a setback last week when we discovered some of the art wasn’t available, which led to a three-level list of birds to be cut, and unfortunately I’d already written over half of them. It was somewhat demoralizing so close to the finish line, especially because I immediately assumed I’d have to find about twenty replacement birds from among the available art, but it turns out I won’t, so I’m still on track. I do mourn the loss of the research and time spent writing those entries I’ve already completed, though, especially since a couple of them were extensive. I am very tired, and I am aware that this manuscript will not be the shiny, polished thing I prefer to hand in. It’s somewhat uneven in that some birds just have a pile of folklore and superstition attached to them, and others don’t. Generally, birds that are found both in the Old World and the New World have more; New World-only birds have a lot less. It’s simply a question of the amount of time that the lore has had to accumulate. The proposed cover for the book is just wonderful, and I’ve been signed to write the intro to the accompanying birdwatching journal as well.

The book has been wringing me out, so I’ve been restless without a lot of mental focus to apply anywhere. I’ve been spinning a bit, and because I can’t seem to gather enough energy to select music I actually want to listen to I decided to try downloading free audiobook recordings. I’m working through the Librivox Sense & Sensibility right now, and I’m of two minds about it. Librivox switches narrators every two or three chapters, which is fair, but also jarring. I’m lucky in that there’s only one narrator I’ve really disliked so far whose reading isn’t very good at all (her recording level is low, in mono, and her enunciation isn’t great so a lot of the time it’s mostly a murmur). On the other hand, it’s kind of neat to have different interpretations; the change in narrator really wakes you up and makes you listen a bit more closely. I do about five chapters in a session and get through almost a half-ounce of fibre in that time. I wish my library had a decent audiobook selection.

A Friday Fibre Post

I’ve finished spinning the first two ounces of the Rambouillet. Oh, lawks; this is the sweetest thing. It’s like creamy Merino, only better, somehow. (Without going into a major digression about breeds and history, Rambouillet is essentially a offshoot of the Merino breed, created by breeding Merino with French or German sheep in the eighteenth century, and handles very much like it. I find it a bit silkier.) This is the “Wistful” colourway from Squoosh Fiber Arts. Her dyeing and preparation are spectacular, and her fibre is absolutely going on my list of things to stalk in Ravelry destash RSS feeds.

I thought it would be more like the first photo, pale olive greens and crabapple reds with some barklike grey-brown. As you can see for the second photo, it’s got those colours in it, but overall the browns and pinks became more predominant. I find how dyed fibre spins up fascinating. It rarely behaves the way I expect it to. I’m going to preserve the colour changes in this by chain-plying it to a heavy fingering weight. (I am lazy and have not measured the WPI of the single, but my eye and experience tell me that it should yield a heavy fingering weight after chain-plying.)

The wheel continues to work well and is a pleasure to use. I’m testing out the Scotch tension this time, since I’ve tried and like the double drive setting. And it wasn’t until I read the article on flyer wheels in the latest issue of KnittySpin that I realised durr, if I can set it up in Scotch (flyer-lead) tension by putting both loops of the drive band over the flyer pulley and the brake band over the bobbin, it’s also possible to set it up in Irish (bobbin-lead) tension by putting both drive loops over the bobbin and the brake band on the flyer. I’m sure this hasn’t occurred to a lot of people, since Irish tension is considered the most basic and limiting of the three settings. Having trained on a Louet, which is bobbin-lead tension, I know it’s not limiting. It just doesn’t occur to most people to use it if they’ve got the preferred Scotch or double-drive options.

Oh oh oh! Hey, gentle readers! You know that I am not a knitter, right? I knit very basic things like scarves, but somewhat badly. Well, I’m having a baby, and while there are spinning-then-weaving projects in the works for this event because that is my forte, I thought it would be kind of neat to actually knit something for her, all myself. I know plenty of fabulously talented knitters and I am aware that there are already two or three blankets on the go for the Owlet, as well as hats and variously snuggly things (plus a quilt!), but I wanted to knit at least one thing myself. It wouldn’t be heirloom quality, not by a long shot, but it could be cosy and pretty in whatever colour I chose, and it would mean something to me.

So I did. This is the Owlet’s Daffodil cardigan:

It’s a plain old garter stitch cardi done in a soft yellow Pima cotton yarn. I used a pattern for 3-6 mos and modified it to fit a 0-3 month old. (Yes, that’s me, converting a pattern I haven’t yet knitted before I can see how it works, with little to no understanding of how knitted objects are put together. I change recipes before testing them as per the written instructions, too.) It seems to have worked. I may add a couple of rows of crochet in pale green cotton to the bottom as trim. (No, I do not crochet at all. See how fun this is? My enthusiasm far outweighs my skill.) I forgot to put the buttonholes in when I knit the front because I was paying such close attention to making sure it matched the back, so I made button loops for the lovely buttons I bought for it instead. I love how rustic this is, with the bumpy garter stitch and the little wooden buttons.

My next project is tiny little boots in pale green Pima cotton, made from garter-stitch squares that you fold up like origami to magically make a shoe shape. There’s no point in taking a photo, because at the moment it’s only three four-inch-long rows of knitting on a needle. But hey, garter stitch squares! That is totally within my skill set!

And for fun, here is a snap of the test samples I did for the blanket I’ll be weaving for the baby. I spun test skeins of Corriedale, Merino, and Falkland, and have chosen Falkland for the warp to use with this lovely green Manos Clasica yarn I bought to use as the weft. Thing is, I didn’t know if I wanted it to be weft-faced, which makes it more green but creates a stiff fabric (left), or a more balanced weave, which drapes better and feels softer (right). I like the visual of the left, but prefer the feel of the right. I may try a dye test on the white Falkland warp and see if I can get it a pale willow green that matches one of the paler variegations in the Manos; then it will vanish more into the warp colours, and I will have my cake and eat it, too. The Falkland fibre I need won’t be in at my LYS Ariadne Knits for at least a month or so, so I’ve got time to mess about with dye tests on the sample Falkland skein I spun. I designed this to use a fingering weight warp so the green of the weft would be predominant no matter what, but I’m wondering if spinning a fluffier two-ply Aran weight to match the Manos wouldn’t be better. I have some Falkland left I could spin a sample of that with, too. (I theoretically could use the Manos as warp, too, but I don’t think I have enough for both warp and weft, and it’s a single instead of a plied yarn, which fares less well in respect to the beating of the heddle; a single gets worn away more easily than a multi-ply warp does.)

In Which She Thinks About Pregnancy Stuff

There are some thoughts I need to write out about this, because I’m trying to work out how I feel.

A couple of people have asked if we announced the pregnancy when we did because we couldn’t hide it any longer. This amuses me. People, I have been wearing maternity clothes since Christmas. That’s three months earlier than last time. I am built like a stick; my body shape starting changing pretty early this time round. Granted, my winter sweaters are loose and bulky, but I didn’t go out of my way to swath myself in disguises or anything, and I went out threeish times a week to mingle with the masses, so I wasn’t holing up at home to avoid being noticed. No, we announced it when we did because we finally had good news from the doctors about the health of the baby. (It occurs to me that people aren’t noticing as much as they might because of my initial body shape: I have a very short waist, so I’m basically ribcage/baby right now, and that’s not as noticeable as it might be if there were another four inches of space between the two.)

Long-time readers will remember that we didn’t publicly announce our first pregnancy at all via the Internet; we told people in person as we met them. This resulted in some people being told that we had a baby before they knew I was pregnant, thanks to the boy arriving two months early. But one of the reasons I didn’t share the news last time was because I didn’t want to be treated any differently. I was curious to see if our approach to sharing the news this time would support my previous suspicion. Sure enough, now that they know, there are people automatically assuming that I am differently-abled in some way because I’m pregnant. I am the same person the world has been dealing with for the past five months. Nothing has changed. In the interest of full disclosure, I am a bit slower getting in and out of chairs, cars, and bed, but that’s about it.

I find this fascinating, as well as exasperating. I can explain fibro till the cows come home, and although people say they think they get it, it’s a hazy, vague understanding. But tell someone I’m pregnant, and they jump to the assumption that I must be exhausted, my back must ache, I must feel sick all the time, and so forth. That’s how I feel the majority of the time thanks to fibro. Pregnancy was and is a breeze for me, possibly because I’m used to this sort of thing. (In fact, I feel better fibro-wise now that I’m pregnant. Go figure. This is not a serious option for long-term fibro treatment, though, people; we’re stopping here at two kids!)

I guess what it comes down to is familiarity. Everyone knows someone who is/has been pregnant, so they have some level of direct experience with it. Millions of women do this; we have a cultural perception of pregnancy and what it does to someone. Fibro? Not so much. There’s a reason why a lot of FM/CFS sufferers default to an explanation such as “It’s like I have the flu all the time”: it’s a common experience people can draw on to get some idea of what you must be going through. That cultural perception of pregnancy isn’t universally applicable, though, and that’s what drives me crazy. The experience is not one size fits all; everyone’s pregnancy is different, affects them differently, and impacts them differently. I appreciate the fact that people are upping their solicitousness and concern, but it kind of frustrates me that I’m being placed in a box marked “Pregnant” along with the general assumptions that rattle around inside it. We all pigeonhole people and situations, myself included — it’s human nature, and it helps us deal with things efficiently — but as often as I can, I try to evaluate every new situation and individual, and not default to assumptions. It just feels weird to have people dismiss fibro because they don’t have experience with it, and overemphasize pregnancy for me.

Okay, enough of that. Here’s something wacky.

Last fall I figured it was about time to get my eyes checked again. It has been about five years since my prescription changed, twoish since I started wearing my glasses full-time, so I was due. As usual, I procrastinated, so I got pregnant before I went in for a checkup. And then it was Christmas, and there was travelling and other family health issues, and it fell off my to-do list. My eyes started acting up in about January, and I remembered that I really ought to make that appointment with the optometrist.

And then I paused. What if it wasn’t my vision alone? What if it was the pregnancy? It isn’t unheard of for women to report major vision changes during pregnancy; there are people whose eyes have significantly improved or worsened permanently due to it.

I didn’t notice any sort of change in my first pregnancy. This one, though; whoa. I can now get away with not wearing my glasses at all most of the time. In fact, I have to take them off while driving a lot, because they make my distance viewing slightly blurrier. Reading from a book is mostly fine, depending on how tired I am, and ditto for the computer screen: I can go glasses-free earlier in the day, but as the day goes on and my eyes get tired, I have to put the glasses on again. The main problem I have discovered is that I have developed the habit of taking a pair of glasses off and putting them down if they’ve started straining my eyes, and then I can’t remember where I put them when I need them again hours later.

So in the end I think I’m glad I didn’t get that optometrist appointment before the pregnancy happened, because if I’d spent all that money on a new prescription that was just going to change anyway, possibly permanently, I would be pretty cranky. (No, HRH’s health insurance doesn’t cover eyes. Or dental, despite the atrocious amount of money he pays for it.) I’ll make an appointment for this coming fall instead.

What I Read in March 2011

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
Locked Rooms by Laurie R. King (reread)
The Game by Laurie R. King (reread)
Unnatural Creatures by Sarah Monette
The Bone Key by Sarah Monette
Helping Parents Practice by Edmund Sprunger
The Sea Thy Mistress by Elizabeth Bear
Late Eclipses by Seanan McGuire
Grail by Elizabeth Bear

I am cranky. Nowhere in any of the advance store previews or ads that I read was A Discovery of Witches said to be anything other than a standalone novel. As I read it I kept thinking, “The pacing in this is odd. Decent story, but where is it going?” which became, “How on earth is this going to be wrapped up in twenty pages?” Turns out it’s to be a trilogy. I hold marketing to blame. Also, there’s not a smidge of mention anywhere in the book itself, not in front or back matter, that says it’s to be anything more than a single book. (I just dug out the book jacket and on the inside flap in pale letters it says it’s the first of a trilogy. Man, that rankles.) I will be reading the others in the trilogy, just so we’re clear; I find a lot of the central ideas very interesting (especially having just gone through a crash course in genetics).

Stopping By To Say Hi

I am swamped with work. I have a month to deadline, and hospitals and doctors have eaten up a lot of work days in the past couple of months. I have to add April to my list of Months In Which I Will Have No Time To Do Anything So Please Don’t Ask.

Here’s a scattershot report of the past week:

1. You know that whole “maybe now that I don’t have to visit so many hospitals for tests and consultations I can get work done?” Yeeeeeah. Guess where we spent Tuesday? That would be checking out the emergency ward of our local hospital, because HRH got ambushed by a wicked kidney stone. The hospital and staff seem very nice. HRH is bruised and recovering from medical trauma.

2. We went in to Le Melange Magique this morning to bid farewell to Debra, the owner, who after nineteen and a half years decided that she had other things to do in her life. From the moment she told me of her plan to sell the store in January I have been behind her one hundred percent. She’s pulled off some pretty amazing stuff in the past twenty years, and deserves her retirement from the metaphysical business and eventual refocusing on a new career. I admire her immensely, both for what she built, and for moving on when the time was right. And I am thrilled that a couple of my friends have bought the store; the administration team is going to be terrific. The store is in good hands.

3. The boy attended his first group cello class on Sunday, and it went very well indeed. He saw seven or eight other kids, ranging from his age to late teens, playing, and was thoroughly energized. He played open strings that fit into whatever the other kids were playing from the Suzuki repertoire, and I saw him imitating their bowing rhythms and pretending to move his left hand fingers on the fingerboard like they were doing, too, which is huge because he’s been resisting left hand work; he just hasn’t been ready yet. My teacher lent us a basic first cello performance book that uses the Twinkle Variation A rhythm for the young “soloist” along with a piano and second cello accompaniment, which sounds like “real music,” and we have played “Wintertime in Russia” and today we played “Carnival in Rio.” Sure, the young soloist in question is playing an open string over and over, but the piano and second cello move around and use different keys, and as a result different moods are created. “Wintertime in Russia” really sounded Russian; “Carnival in Rio” sounded like a gentle samba. He loves playing with me, and I think the fact that we’re playing “his” music makes a big difference to him. And he’s doing a good job maintaining the rhythm, and watching for cues to stop, too.

4. We’re in the last few days before the spring concert this Saturday. There are some things I still can’t get, mostly cues that feel sudden to me, and I can’t do any more work on them on my own because it’s about fitting in with what’s happening in the orchestra. I can play the stuff on my own. It’s understanding where to come in that’s throwing me. And as usual I feel awful, because I’m right in front of the conductor, and I feel like I’m personally letting him down when he suddenly turns and cues me and I miss it. I know it’s coming; I know, and I’m physically prepped, and then whoosh it’s gone. I am definitely proud of conquering some stuff I was struggling with up till last week, though.

5. The baby (whose code name is Owlet, dubbed thusly by the boy) is big enough to be visibly bumping my tummy around from the inside. It is amusing.

6. Yes, the baby has a name, or one so far, at least. No, no one’s getting to hear it until she’s born. Partly because, well, it’s ours right now, and partly because if it really doesn’t suit her when she’s born, we don’t want to have to explain that we’ve changed it. She has actually had a name since a couple of days before she was conceived, when the boy casually mentioned to us at the breakfast table that he was going to have a baby sister, and this is what her name was going to be. Two weeks later I showed HRH the pregnancy test, and when the boy asked what it was, we told him it was the baby he’d ordered. It’s an unusual name, too, one we’ve never heard before. We have no idea where the boy found it; we know no one with that name, there are no kids at school of that name, it hasn’t been in any books or films we’ve seen or read. We suspect he made it up, although HRH has since found it online as a variation or diminutive of another name. We really love the fact that he’s so voluntarily involved with this baby. He’s taken on the task of designing the nursery theme as well, and has proposed several crafts for us to do to create mobiles and blankets and so forth.

7. I got the mock-up of the cover for the bird book, and it is absolutely exquisite. It’s easily my favourite of all my book covers. It looks like an old botanical illustration, but with birds. The tentative release date for the book and the companion journal is January 2012. (If I ever get it finished, that is. I’m going to have to start adding another work day on weekends, probably Sundays, to hit my deadline. Stupid doctor appointments. At least I only have two scheduled this month.) (She said with great emphasis, glaring at the universe.)

8. I need a new laptop. The borrowed iBook is running Panther (2003, boys and girls!), Safari crashes on it repeatedly when I try to access half the research pages I need to access, and it is, alas, very slow. I can write a rough draft of one entry on the iBook in the time it would take me to write two polished entries on the desktop. My original plan to buy a secondhand iPad on which to write has been morphing into a less-exciting plan to buy a secondhand Macbook, which will serve me better in the long run for switching between documents and online research. Not that I can buy either until my delivery cheque is issued to me after I hand the bird book in. (The point that I will not need to switch back and forth so often once this research-heavy book has been handed in has not escaped me. I have three months to decide which to choose, in which I may be able to borrow an iPad for a day or so to test it out.) Yes, I do have an old Windows laptop, too, but it dates from about 2003 as well. I should see if I can update its browsers and such.

That’s all I’ve got right now. I have to go turn the oven on to bake today’s bread, and get at least one bird done today (this morning and early afternoon were errands and such). I got four birds done yesterday, which was heartening. I’m looking at the number of birds I have left, and at the remaining space within my allotted word count, and thinking that I need to stop going into so much detail. But I’m still stuck on the “can you flesh this part out more?” request that came back after I handed in a sample with my proposal, so I’m adding as much as I can. It can always come out later, but as time is beginning to be of the essence, I may have to dial back to basics.