much time doing nice things

I haven’t even been able to bring myself to write, since I’ve been doing all these other things around here that I like so  much. yesterday was pretty much the perfect day.

first, I got up with the sun, made coffee and tackled finishing off the bobbin I’d started the night before, and then plying it.

easier said than done, four hours later!  first the plying ball wouldn’t cooperate, then everything got tangled and I spent a lot of time getting it untangled. 

but the spinning looked better than it ever had before and I didn’t want to lose it.

sure enough, around 11 I emerged from the struggle with 120 yds at 16wpi, right on target. it was still too squiggly in places, which I don’t really know why. especially since I have no way of knowing how much twist I lost in the untangling part, but a lot.  I had spun it with 3 twist treadles to one release treadle (is there a notation for that?) but I had to untangle so much, who knew? still, when I put it on the niddy it came to 120 yds and when I took it off, magically  it was balanced, somehow, and I adjourned to a gorgonzola omelet and read for the rest of the afternoon.

when it dried I had this:

16wpi

120 yds

so my first two real skeins were 100 yds of corriedale at 12 wpi (top) and 120 yds at 16 wpi. the Tour de Fleece starts on sunday and runs through the sunday I leave here, so what I do before then will be practice for spinning up the café au lait fiber I got for daedalus.  i’m thinking it just might work--even considering the carving class I’m taking right in the middle!

I fired ash up again when the guys came out for chores and spun another bobbin until the fireflies came.  then I put that one on the kate, and will do another bobbin this evening so that tomorrow morning I can make two plying balls and see how they ply.  (still don’t want to chance the disaster that was plying from the kate the last time I tried that!  streamers all over the place!)

spinning until the fireflies come out is just about the most perfect thing I can think of these days.  so I have been doing that and not writing about it.  today I slept in, possibly a result of the benadryl I took at 4am, and then made coffee and futzed around here until I went down to town around 11. stopped by silva gallery on the way in, where I gave the last two pairs of soxes to pam and we chatted, mostly about local drama I didn’t really need to get involved in much. then I went to yarn circle, where that pam, karen, and becky walker were having lunch, but I barged right in anyway.  did a little chatting and a little knitting, a little email checking, and then left to do errands, which consisted of mailing my little/middle checks to the bank and grocery shopping.

and that was today, until I came home and put everything up and made myself some mid-afternoon spaghetti with tomato basil sauce and ingles’ barbequed chicken legs, and had a glass of pinot noir. and here I am. Michael gave me the first cuke of the season, and I bought some tomatoes and a vidalia from the stand.  I have peaches and blueberries and a big seedless watermelon.  I have hot dogs and apple pie and chips for the upcoming holiday.  And I have my book, which I’ve finally gotten into (Anathem, which took about 200 pages and well over a year to engage me, but has finally done so, and i have some 600 left :) what more could one ask?

Flickr Tags: brigadoon,spinning

first sunday

still socked in with fog.

awoke with the headache, still, but I seem to be able to control it with coffee (which I didn’t really do yesterday morning for some badly formulated reason) and a combination of alternating ibuprophen/acetaminophen and gualfenesin.  I realized too late that I hadn’t brought any pseudephed and I don’t know that I can get it in north carolina; still, I almost simultaneously realized that since gualfenesin thins the guck in my lungs, why not in my head too?  at any rate, it seems to be working, and I got up at 7 to this:

there’s ash, patiently waiting for me. but instead I went out on the porch and caught the meadow in fog.

so thick you almost can’t see the barn!

but it’s 8 now and already that fog seems to be lifting.  look!  the barn!

my head is still good.  I think the vacating can begin! :)

Flickr Tags: brigadoon

silva soxes 2011

ta-da! pair no. 10!

i have enough left over for another pair and maybe a half, but i’m done for the year!  it’s may!

ten pair at silva gallery! yay!

Flickr Tags: silva soxes

latest soxes

Flickr Tags: soxes

air!

at last, the air conditioner i bought last fall for the front of the house is in!

i did it myself, all 75 pounds/12,000 btus  of it!  it wasn’t hard at all, see it peeking up there in the painting space, behind the table?  no longer will i be forced into the bedroom for two/thirds of the year;  the energy saver thing says it costs around $100 per year to run. we shall see.  but it’s cooler already! :)

Flickr Tags: home,ac

spring break easter morning

deanna reminded me yesterday to start the bread, so i thought i’d document step 4.:

this is just after it rose for the final 2 hours and i poked a hole in it to see if it was ready.

it was, so i and threw some cornmeal over it and  pulled the hot pot out of the 450F oven

plopped it in

put the top on and baked it 30 minutes.  then i took the top off

and baked it another 30 minutes, then pulled it out.

et voila!

not bad for the first loaf of the year, and it couldn’t be easier: three minutes yesterday, two more this morning while making coffee, and this last bit done while pouring another cup (including pictures.) it takes more time to go to the store!

 

(i gotta get that countertop grouted…)

Flickr Tags: food,bread,boule

der blaue spinnrad

a norwegian blue (!) slanty i bought from the bradenton craigslist for $70 and gas money:)

obviously, while a great color, the horrible cobalt paint has got to go: i’ll be spending spring break getting it gone.  finnsheep has almost her twin, painted in proper blue.

i can use it for a guide, although i may change up the shade a bit…

but most importantly. it has forced me to take mystery back down, so i can replace bonnie on the perch.  maybe i can bring myself to try again.

Flickr Tags: spinning wheel

whoever painted this…

really needs to be shot, only they’re probably dead so why bother? but my spring break, in just over a week, looks like it will be spent rescuing this blue slanty, making her truly blue,

not ghouly blue!!’

      

Flickr Tags: spinning

the latest soxes

  

sending the latest silva soxes to the silva gallery tomorrow.  it was gonna be just two, but then the green stripedy ones also finished themselves.  these are in shorter sizes, for more normal folk.

Flickr Tags: soxes

just hosting again…

this has nothing to do with anything.

silva soxes seven

Flickr Tags: knit

how cool is this??

my ball winder arrived from etsy!  can you believe they once made these and somehow they died out??  it’s just perfect:  it’s pure vintage, i’d say somewhere from the 1920s-40s?

i had never seen one before and always wished something like it existed; i’ve been winding my yarn by hand as the winders i’ve seen were either aesthetically atrocious or/(and)  cost hundreds.  but this vintage tool was reasonable, and not a spot of plastic on it. just painted wood and a metal gear with a rubberish washer, it works (and looks)  just like hand rotary eggbeater:

and makes this yarn-egg!

yes, center-pull if you want that.  what could be sweeter?  why on earth did they ever go away and, even curiouser, why isn’t somebody making them again now?  in exotic floofywood, anointed with hand-pressed fleen juice, even?

 

eta:  plus, operated strategically in its yarn-free state? it could make such an eloquent gesture for those times when words simply will not suffice…

Flickr Tags: knit

the last day…

of my 4day weekend.  today i must clear stuff away, do things like change the linens, plan my observation lesson for thursday, and get some knitting in, as well as practice spinning before i forget again. somehow i lost an entire day yesterday when i just never got up, but instead read in bed all day and kept falling asleep for long periods.  the day before i’d spent all day learning about spinning and making a total fist of it, which is apparently normal. (i was supposed to go to the spinning group again yesterday, but i was asleep…)  friday, of course, was sitting around waiting for the car day.  and that was my 4day weekend.  so today i  must do sunday chores.  sigh.  the real spring break is just about a month away…perhaps i can get the painting on the front door and kitchen wall done then.

 

to do:

put away laundry

launder linens

change linen

swif floors

clean bathroom

unload dishwasher

straighten up kitchen, etc.

spin

plan lesson for observation

“new” toast!

my “new” toaster arrived, and the ongoing purge of plastic from my home continues.  it makes two normal sized pieces of toast (have to cut our modern slices of bread in half! so what does that tell you?) by turning that knob on the side to open the flappy doors.  to turn it on? plug it in!  what a concept!.

the second best part, apart from the aesthetics, is its footprint is about 1/4 of the cuisinart 4slice box it’s replacing.  wish i could get rid of the microwave it’s sidling up to there, too, but even though it’s more than 15 years old it still works fine (except its carousel) and there’s really no need to replace it.  and, of course, i do use it more than just about anything else (quick boiling water for coffee, etc.) so it makes no sense to get rid of it.  i’d like a much smaller one, if not less powerful, since this one takes up the whole of that counter, really.  needless.  but until this one conks, it’s here for the duration.

4day weekend

they moved spring break to just before summer because of testing month (yes, month) so they gave us a 4day weekend in march so we wouldn’t run amok.  whatever.  can’t fool mother nature:  aunt eleanor’s lilies have come up in front of my house this year—sometimes they do, sometimes not.  this year these came back.

pardon me…

just parking this here so i can share it with the gang on ravelry, move along, move along…