Day By Day

Yes, things are quiet. I’m sorry about that. I’m tired, I’m on new medication and it’s a struggle to get used to it, and there’s stuff I have to get done before I jot things down here. And by the time it’s done I’m exhausted and can’t string two coherent words together.

Cello is going well. My teacher is patient and sympathetic about what I’m handling right now, for which I’m very grateful. We had a cello sectional at orchestra this week, and that went much better than I expected.

Work is… problematic. Trying to focus with the fibro was bad; trying to focus on it while working through the period of adjustment with the new medication on top of the fibro is harder. I know it will all even out in the long run, but when I repeatedly forget the sentence I’ve just read it doesn’t feel like I’ll ever be able to get past it. I can do bits of the repurposing project at a time, but trying to remember where other thematically-similar material is in a 200-page document when I’m muddled by medication is frustrating and depressing. I’m doing work on the book proposal and sample chapter away from the computer, which is great to a point, but I’m going to have to come back and start organizing it into something coherent at the computer next week. I finally gathered up the courage to take down the old pro website and upload the new iWeb one after a few more tweaks, too, and I’m very happy with it. I aced the copy-editing test, and start with that department at the beginning of November, too.

Spinning proceeds apace. I’m starting to get used to Lady Jane, although I’m still experimenting with her. I’ve plied the Shetland with silk thread from my local Fabricville, which went very nicely and yielded about 230 yards of lovely soft black yarn. Lady Jane spins the wood violet-coloured BFL I’m working on beautifully, too, and I’m interested to see how that chain-plies. I like it so much that I’ve planned to make a wrap out of it, so I stopped by Ariadne to buy the second 4-oz braid of the colourway so as to have enough.The drive band seems to be stretching and getting floppy, though, and I originally moved the mother-of-all to account for it, but then the treadling got stiff. I checked with Bonnie and she gave me the go-ahead to move the MOA as close to the wheel as possible and then trimming the drive band, and now it treadles beautifully with no stiffness at all. The new drive band just stretched, I think. I still have to check my spinning books to see what they say about adjusting Saxony wheels in Scotch tension, as it’s completely foreign to me. I like the Scotch tension a lot, though. I don’t know if I’ll have the courage to try double drive before I give her back.

I’m still trying to find a comfortable angle at which to spin, though. My knees seem to complain if I’m sitting straight on or at too much of an angle. Interestingly, I’ve switched my fibre and twist-controlling hands. Usually I hold my fibre in my left and pinch with my right while drafting straight back from the orifice past my left side, but I reverse my hands on the Saxony and draft in front of me to my right, at a right angle to the orifice. Speeding up my drafting has been a challenge; there have been a few slubs in both the Shetland and the BFL. I’m still not wholly sold on the idea of DT, though. At least I don’t think I am; I’ll try something on the Louet next week and see how odd ST feels after a week and a half of DT. It still just feels like another method, and I don’t know if I have a preference for one over the other. Overall I feel like I’m not good enough for a Schacht-Reeves, but I also know something like this would last me my entire spinning life and give me lots of room to grow.

I also accidentally taught myself how to knit Continental-style (I think; I haven’t formally checked against a video yet) and finished half a replacement handwarmer for the boy that way. (He lost one and was devastated, so I knit a replacement, and of course someone found the lost handwarmer at school, so now we have one in reserve against the next time it happens.) It happened when I wondered what feeding the yarn over my left hand would do, and then I saw that I didn’t have to actually wrap the yarn over the needle; I could just sort of flick it up with the needle tip. The first few stitches were awful but by the next row it looked just like the other way. I fact, my tension was better and my first finger wasn’t locking up.

Meallanmouse lent us the first season of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and the flickering issue we had with the last set we tried to watch is still there but not so pronounced as to make it impossible to watch like last time. I don’t know if it’s the different discs, the new TV, or the Blu-Ray player, but whatever the reason we can actually watch it this time without both of us getting headaches, so we’ve stuck it out and are enjoying it immensely. HRH and I watched the first two episodes together and then decided that yes, the boy would adore it, so we introduced him to it the next day and rewatched those episodes with him. Now we get to watch an episode every day together after HRH gets home before supper.

Last weekend the boy went down town to McGill to participate in a research study, and was very excited about it. They video the interviews, and apparently when they asked him if he knew why he was there he chirped, “Of course: I’m here for an experiment!” with a little double hand-flip thing as if he was displaying something, and cuted the researchers right out. The next day we went to Ada’s naming, which was lovely even if I did leave out an entire paragraph of introduction at the beginning. If you have to drop something, dropping the least-essential bit is the way to go. It was a beautiful day with good weather, fabulous food, and excellent company.

Okay, you’re caught up with my endlessly scintillating life. The rest of today is work where I can between laundry and the long list of errands before Thanksgiving weekend.

What I Read In September 2010


Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay
Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon (reread)
Memoirs of a Master Forger by William Heaney (aka Graham Joyce)
A Star Shall Fall by Marie Brennan
Enchanted Glass by Diana Wynne Jones
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
The Night Watch by Sarah Waters

This was a top-notch month. The only thing I had a problem with out of the new books I read was The Night Watch, which felt a bit distant and never really grabbed me. I kept comparing it (quite unfairly) to Connie Willis’ Blackout, the last WWII London book I read. (And this has just reminded me, oh frabjous day, that part two, All Clear is, is due out in three weeks!) Under Heaven was a very nice surprise since the last two or three Kays have left me wanting something a bit more, and also because Asian history (or alternate riffs thereon) usually aren’t my thing. The language was lovely. The Hunger Games lived up to the piles of excellent reviews that made me avoid it as being overly popular since it was published. And Enchanted Glass was just perfect in that particular Diana Wynne Jones sort of way.

The boy and I finished The Guardians of Ga’Hoole: The Capture and are two-thirds of the way through The Journey now.

Doctor And Otherwise General Update

The boy and I made our annual pilgrimage to the doctor yesterday. And it is a pilgrimage indeed, because it’s now a 100-km round trip. Find a new family doctor in our new area, you say? Ha. There is a severe GP shortage in our province, our new neighbourhood is reputedly particularly bad for GP waitlists, and I intend to keep our awesome family doctor until she retires, thank you. Besides, so long as I combine the doctor trip with other errands out west like visiting or shopping or a cello lesson, it’s fine.

The boy now weighs 42 lbs and is 110 cm tall (oh, Canada, how we love you, operating with one foot firmly in Imperial and one in Metric). I enjoyed his appointment because he could answer the doctor’s questions himself: Does he wear a helmet when he rides his bicycle? (Yes, and now he rides a two-wheeler, and the first day he almost fell off this side, and then that side, but then he did it, and he and Dada had a race, and he can ride without balancing on training wheels, right Mama?) Does he drink a lot of milk? (Yes, and Mama found milk boxes at the supermarket, so he can take milk to school! [Mama bought a small Rubbermaid straw bottle to pack milk in instead, because the milk boxes are stupidly expensive. Mama is also seriously considering investing in the dairy trade, or failing that, buying a cow.]) Does he always wear a seatbelt in the car? (Yes, of course, but there are no seatbelts on the school bus, they just have to sit in the seats and not move.)

I am not dead. I am, however, back on my fibro meds, and have a couple of tests to schedule. Back on the meds means I will be loopy for a couple of weeks before it all settles again, but hey, I am loopy without them, kind of stumbling around and unable to focus on much, so at least this upcoming loopy will be working towards something better.

I’m drawing up a proposed table of contents and a sample chapter for a new book that my editor suggested to me. I’m really interested in the idea and concept as it was presented to me, so we shall see what happens. More as that evolves.

I finished spinning the three one-ounce batts of gloriously soft black Shetland that Bonnie gave me. Some of it is overspun because I lost track of how quickly I was treadling, and I might have done better if I’d gotten to know Lady Jane with a fibre and preparation I’m more familiar with, like my standby Corriedale combed top. The Shetland was lovely to work with regardless. I might ply the resulting light fingering weight single with black silk thread to make it go farther, then knit lace fingerless gloves or something. Chain-plying it seems a waste. Whatever I do with it, I might run it from one bobbin to another to even out the twist first.

The boy helped me choose what to spin next. I’ll do the four ounces of hand-dyed BFL top from Ariadne Knits in purple and green like wood violets, and spin it finely enough to knit a light wrap for myself. I may think of doing a single plied with a silk thread binder on purpose this time, although my original plan was to spin it super-finely and chain-ply it to preserve the colour changes. We’ll see.

It’s the day of the boy’s first Terry Fox run, so we talked to him about who Terry Fox was and why we honour his memory by having a run to raise money for cancer research every year. Today also happens to be the semi-annual blood drive at HRH’s college, where he encourages as many of the kids as possible to accompany him to the collection area. Talking about these things segued into a discussion about what a hero is, a very interesting conversation to have with a five year old. I wonder how many other families plan to take their kid to the local blood bank offices on their seventeenth birthday to get their blood donor cards. The boy is very impressed by Terry Fox, and drew a picture of a fire-fighting plane for him this morning before he headed off to school.

Okay, back to work. I’ve got a document open for notes about this new book as they occur to me, and I’m about to open the repurposing project. It should be interesting, as I took an allergy/sinus pill this morning and have been in that wonky state that pseudoephedrine always sets me in ever since. Thankfully, the gastro/nausea has faded. I’ll set up a plate of crackers and the rest of the duck pâté that we didn’t finish on Sunday, put the bread in the oven, and bury myself in work as best I can till I have to meet the boy.

Five Things

1. The boy and I have library cards. I am a tiny bit disappointed in our local library’s offerings. Of course, I do have to keep reminding myself that the megacity’s libraries are split up into a dozen places, and I can borrow books from any of them. Still, our initial impression was somewhat lacklustre. In other book news, I have finally read The Hunger Games and it was brilliant. So brilliant that I fully intend to abuse the Scholastic book club at the boy’s school and order the next two books at prices much lower than retail prices. My editor sent me a couple of books as belated housewarming presents, both of them fun: one’s a Star Wars memoir, and the other is an unofficial Harry Potter cookbook, which has lots of really good British-themed food in it. I made breaded pork chops from it for supper last night, and while they were not absolutely identical to the delicious ones that t!’s Ukrainian Babas used to make at Easter, they were much closer to them than I’d ever managed before. I’m looking forward to trying the multitude of individual meat pie recipes in it throughout the fall.

2. The weekend saw us sharing a huge Harvest feast with other local like-minded individuals. There was so much food; the courses just kept coming out! I was particularly fond of the mushroom soup, the leek-artichoke dip, and the tomato pesto, all of which I must remember to get the recipes for. The seven different kinds of homemade bread were spectacular. The company was likewise wonderful. However, just as I suspected, it totally killed me energy-wise, not that I had a lot to begin with.

3. I am now officially babysitting Bonnie’s gorgeous 30″ Schacht-Reeves Saxony wheel for a month. ‘Lady Jane’ is a true lady, being very patient with me and working beautifully right off the bat (batt? heh heh heh, a little spinning humour, there). Bonnie also gave me three batts of beautiful black Shetland wool she’d processed herself, and they’re deliciously soft and fluffy. My initial impression of working with double treadle is that I have to treadle very gently. Part of this is due to the fact that the drive wheel is almost double the size of my Louet wheel, so I have to move much more slowly to get a similar result. The other part is, of course, that one foot isn’t doing all the work any more, so I have to divide the movement between the two feet. I also have to remind myself that the heel-toe movement on the Louet treadle doesn’t work on the Schacht-Reeves. I don’t dislike the DT, and I suspect it will come in very handy when I gather up the courage to try spinning Meallanmouse’s cotton again, but it hasn’t been a lightbulb/angels singing kind of revelation yet. It’s just a different technique. The wheel moves perfectly well using only one of the two treadles, too. I have it set up in Scotch tension, and I like it. Double drive is more than my brain can handle right now. Overall, my initial reaction is that getting a larger DT wheel would be a decent idea, to open up a lot more possibilty in my spinning.

4. The stupid sinus cold I have been managing over the past week has been joined by mild gastro, which means I’m cancelling my cello lesson. It’s somewhat difficult to concentrate with this level of nausea. Unconnected to this, the boy and I have our annual checkups tomorrow. My family doctor is now 50 km away. It’s still worth every minute and every kilometre of the trip. Fibro-wise, I am in the process of realizing, internalizing, and accepting that things are going to be bad for a very long time, and my major issue is going to be with feeling useless, which always frustrates the hell out of me. Trying to stay positive has its own energy drain, which is also ragingly frustrating.

5. I’m chipping away at my current contracted project. I think I’m about halfway through the second draft. As there will be about four drafts, I can say I’m just about halfway done, which is great because I began it seriously at the beginning of this month, and as I have just over six weeks to go I’m ahead of schedule. I’m enjoying this repurposing project, where I take an existing manuscript and turn it into something else.

I think that’s all I’ve got. I have to call my cello teacher.

Out Of Step

I’m having a lot of trouble finding my rhythm these days. I’m tired, my focus is spotty, I’m panicking at to-do lists of sensible, manageable length, and oh, how I ache.

Nice things are happening, of course. The boy loves school. We have friends coming over for Settlers of Catan tonight. We have a Harvest ritual and feast on Saturday that someone else is organizing and hosting. On Sunday, we get to go see the Guardians of Ga’Hoole movie. Nothing wrong or drastic is happening. I’m just having a lot of trouble dealing with the fact that the fibro is really, really bad right now. I can’t seem to get a grip on it, and I think that’s what’s really driving me crazy. I feel like I have to pull up my socks now that the move and settling in are done, and I can’t. I’m chipping away at my current contracted project, but I haven’t signed back on to my previous freelance pool because I know it will knock me dead if I try to do both at once. Reading is difficult, because I’m having trouble sinking into the worlds in the books (except for the latest Diana Wynne Jones, Enchanted Glass, which is brilliant and just the thing I needed). And I guess it all comes down to feeling frustrated and useless, something with which I do not deal well at all.

A lot of my day is taken up figuring out what’s the most important thing on my to-do list and doing that and perhaps the second-most important. For example, despite a long to-do list today, I know that I have to go to the bank for a bank draft, to the post office to mail it out, and to buy the ingredients for tonight’s dinner and Sunday’s entertaining. Everything else, like anniversary gifts and present-shopping, can slide to tomorrow morning. In fact, now that I think about it, I may let the bank draft slide to Monday, because I have to buy two and I haven’t heard back from the second individual yet with a confirmation on the exact cost, and making two trips is a dumb idea for me. Actually, yes; that is what I will do. I feel much better, now.

Enough of that.

In brighter news, I was completely blown away yesterday by a friend’s generous offer to lend me her Schacht-Reeves Saxony wheel for a month. I was talking to her about my indecision regarding purchasing a double treadle or single treadle Saxony when the time came, and out of the blue she offered to not only lend me her double-treadle wheel to work with to help me decide, but to drive it over to me from southern Ontario this Sunday. I am continually stunned by the generosity and thoughtfulness of my friends. And I’m so incredibly thrilled to have the opportunity to work with a Schacht-Reeves for an extended period of time. They’re such high-quality, classy wheels, and I could never dream of owning one; they’re just too expensive. This will be a real treat.

All right. If I go do the groceries now, nice and slowly, I will be able to rest once I get home.

Third Update: Work & House

Let’s see, what else. I’ve been working. I started back last Monday, and have been diligently moving words around in a document, making something completely different. Most of the time I think it makes sense, but sometimes I suspect that I’ve totally lost the train of thought I’m constructing through it. Well, that’s what the next step of editing is for: checking to make sure it flows. I did that copy-editing test, so it’s on file now, and unless I really flubbed it I should be good to go. I’ve also been redoing my pro website, which is ridiculously easy with iWeb. So easy that it was almost done the day I began, except I had to run out to cello, and I haven’t been able to finish up. Well, that’s not entirely true; it’s done, I just haven’t trusted myself enough to upload them. I started on the Owldaughter site, too.

The site redesign was co-prompted by Adelina and Debra. I did an author co-appearance with Adelina for the Melange’s nineteenth birthday (nineteen! an independent bookstore turned nineteen!), which was hugely enjoyable. In catching up, we discovered that we’d bought houses within ten minutes of one another! I asked her who’d done her site, and she admitted to doing it herself with iWeb, which spurred me to sit down with it and try it out, since my site hasn’t been touched in over a year. When I went Mac my comfy CoffeeCup software no longer worked, and I didn’t have the energy or focus to teach myself a new Mac-based one, but iWeb is so ridiculously easy that it’s practically magic. Debra then contacted me for up-to-date bio info for the Yule Fair prep, since the bio on the site is woefully out of date, and that was the final kick I needed to get to work on it.

We hosted a lovely birthday dinner here yesterday for my mother-in-law. They brought steak and salad, there was wine, and I made a very delicious cake. (Note to self: Use three egg whites and two whole eggs in this white cake recipe, make a quarter of this recipe for caramel filling and add a teaspoon of vanilla and a couple of pinches of fleur de sel, then do a really creamy buttercream frosting. Simple, tasty, and just what Mom likes.) HRH and his dad ran wiring to the side door, so now we have an outdoor light there and can see to unlock the door. They also fixed the bank of pot lights in the family room that blew when the cats got into the hanging ceiling a couple of weeks ago.

Also on the house front, we have discovered that we do not, in fact, have a heat pump. We have central air conditioning, with forced air that can better distribute the electric heat. But quite aside from the forced-air-not-heat-pump issue, there was a wire disconnected in the thermostat which was why our heat wouldn’t go on even when we tried to trigger it by setting it for stupidly high levels. So that’s been fixed and clarified now, too.

It’s been such glorious weather this month. Mostly sunny days with cooler nights, with that wonderful golden-tone light, while the leaves are only just barely beginning to change colour. There have been a couple of spectacular thunderstorms, too, with glorious lightshows over the seaway that we can watch from our front porch. We’re really loving the house. We’re still trying to find our rhythm in certain ways–for example, I still haven’t figured out where to do my cooking prep efficiently in the kitchen, as we seem to lack enough continuous counterspace–but that’s minor. I’m starting to take photos of the inside to post for everyone who’s been asking to see the interior. A lot of it doesn’t photograph well, unfortunately, and I’m working with an eight-year-old camera that tends to focus on things I don’t want in focus, or doing odd things with colour or bending images.

There you are; we’re all pretty much up to date.

Second Update: Cello & Fibre Arts

Orchestra’s back in session, as are my cello lessons. The programme of the fall concert is going to be fabulous. The theme is ‘intercontinental’ and we’ve got a smashing variety of Eastern European dances, Italian overtures, and French suites. Lovely stuff, and lively. Equally lovely is the fact that it’s not as technically challenging as the last concert. I adored the last programme, and it really pushed me to work hard, but it’s nice to be able to relax a bit and focus on musicality. (Fall concert, November 20; mark your calendars!)

Lessons are going well so far, too. I was worried about an eroded skill level after a month of no practice because of the move (two days does not count), but I’m not as bad as I expected. I need to get my head back into translating squiggles on paper into finger and bow movements—it all feels kind of sludgily slow at the moment—but apart from that, my tone was very pleasant, my bow behaved, and my elbows and shoulders and wrists were doing what they were supposed to be doing (most of the time). I sounded like… a cellist. So far I’ve had two private lessons and one group lesson, in which I spent an hour and a half sight-reading Christmas carols, much to our delight (group rehearsal is all about practising group pieces for whichever upcoming recital is next). There’s a seven-part arrangement of Greensleeves that knocked our socks off; it’s glorious.

On the fibre arts front, I’ve been spinning some plain Jane undyed Corriedale for a month, but even though I’m close to finishing it I may bundle it away and start either the delicious violet, blue, and green Projekt B dyed BFL I got from Ariadne Knits when Ceri and I took Ada on her first yarn crawl, or the stunning ‘Iris’ Romney braid I got from Feeling Sheepish and have been hoarding. It was chilly at the bus stop on Friday morning and the poor boy was pulling his cuffs over his hands, so I offered to knit him a pair of fingerless mitts. He chose white (yes, such a sensible colour for little boys’ outdoor accessories) and I knit them up on Friday for him. They’re very white and a bit feminine-looking, so I told him we could dye them whatever colour he wanted. “Yes!” he said, excited. “Like… dark white!”

Well, I tried.