Welcome to the blog of no inspiration. There must be something cosmic going on, because Bess and Stephanie are both feeling non-fibery, and they live too far away for it to be the water...


I'm getting closer to the end of my fiber diet technically, but since I've broken it a few times as far as purchasing yarn goes, I figure I'll just be allowed to start a new project if so inspired, but it must be one that comes from my current stash (which includes the yarn I bought for this tank, and the Jaeger Chamonix I just agreed to buy - but for half price). But I'm getting closer. My goal is to attempt to keep it to under 5 WIPs, with no more than 2 of them being involved things like sweaters - I can have up to three transportable projects - hats, scarves, socks - but I can't let it get as high as it is now... I love to knit, but there has to be some production going on - it can't be all process, or I'll run myself out of house and home!


The weather is either raining or that humidity so think it needs to rain, so I've been staying inside doing a lot of knitting, to the detriment of my roses. I'll have to spend a little quality time with them tonight, pruning and weeding.

Irish Gold and Peace both have lovely blooms on them, and Queen Elizabeth and Mr. Lincoln are both budding, but they're all filled with weeds and bug-eaten leaves that I'm sure they're struggling more than they need... And with the icky muggy heat I'm feeling even more grotesquely fat than usual, so we're upping the diet for a bit...



Thoughts for the Day:
(I got nothin' - please have your own thoughts)

Laura (of the birthday necklace fame) sent me this.

(No relation.) 

It's turning out to be a lovely day, despite the fact that I swear the animals around here have been pairing up and heading for the boat docks lately. Today is supposed to be lovely and sunny, and Oscar gets to spend the day outside for the first time in many days. He's probably going through Cheeto withdrawl, since the neighborhood kids haven't been out playing and sneaking him food.

Looks like I'm going to be the "Vice President" of the Annapolis Knitting Guild, which is exciting. I'd be responsible for arranging the programs, and taking over in the event of the President's removal from office, or something like that. It should be fun, but I'm taking suggestions, so if there's anything you wish your knitting group would teach you, please pipe up and suggest it. You may not benefit directly, but giving me helpful ideas is good karma. I'm already leading the next meeting on spinning, and we're going to do wire jewelry at some point. The President is taking a class on Fair Isle, from which she promises to return with wealths of information. So we've got a few months worth of ideas, since we only meet the once a month. Should be fun, I hope.

And by the way, I have a suspicion that some of my loved ones are reading on the sly. Some of those loved ones are married to me, some used to threaten my teddy bear when we were wee ones, others are in Japan... please feel free to comment! There's a section below, and the tag board to the right, and you should know me well enough to know that I'm desparate for praise, so c'mon people, give it up!

And it's a busy day, so that's all the creativity you get. And most of it was Laura's picture, so I can't even take credit. Oh well. I'll attempt brilliance tomorrow.

Thoughts of the Day:

Steven Wright - “To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism — to steal from many is research.”

Mark Van Doren - “Bring ideas in and entertain them royally, for one of them may be the king.”

It's been raining REALLY hard for many hours now. The front door leaks just a smidge, so there's water all over the carpet there. The cute thing is that Aslan apparantly enjoyed the sound, once he felt safe, because he cuddled up to me while I was knitting, rolled over onto his back, stretched out long against me, and gazed up at the ceiling, listening to the noises and purring. It was loud enough that the TV volume was up as loud as it is when GB and DSS are watching, which is when I can hear it at the other end of the house. Raining hard enough that Oscar didn't want to go out at all - I took him out to go potty, and he darted down to the back where he usually goes, dragging me along behind him. When he got there, he ran under the house, instead of going potty! I had to drag him back out, and he finally went, and we got to go back inside and "lay like broccoli." A whole evening of couch potato-iness....


Knit for a while with more of the superwash merino, playing with some color work, which is something I haven't done much of before, but would like to do, so I figured a little swatch of this stuff would be a nice test.

We didn't even walk this morning. Some of last week caught up with me I guess, and I found myself rolling over to both cats in bed with me (Aslan on the pillow, Trevor in the crook of my knee) and the clock claiming it was 8:30. Wow. And I could still go back and sleep another five or six hours quite happily. We'll see what the weather's like when I get home, and maybe we'll be able to walk. If not, out comes at least the Pilates video, and maybe the NYC Ballet Company workout as well...


Tonight I hope to finish that swatch, and then I'll go back to my Follies sweater... I'll probably have to rip back to the beginning of a section, since it's been so long I can't remember where I was, but it knits up pretty quickly. I'm using this yarn in a rich cocoa color, and putting it to this pattern:
but adding sleeves.  I've got the back done, and one of the front panels about halfway up, but that's the one I think I'll have to restart. The yarn is SO lovely, really lush and springy, and so soft... it'll be fun to work on it again, and I think adding sleves will make for a really lovely professional look.

And here it is Wednesday already, with me already looking very much towards the weekend, when Saturday is another all mine day, and GB comes home Sunday....

Thoughts for the Day:

Proverb - “I am sure it is a great mistake always to know enough to go in when it rains.”

John Updike - “Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.”

It's been an interesting day. Raining a lot the past few days, but I decided I needed a walk, and Oscar needed a walk, and not having been accused of being made of sugar lately, I thought I'd be safe, so we went for it. Off we went on our mile, and we came back feeling refreshed and cheery, despite the dampness.


Then into his bedroom for Oscar, and into my newly finished Cotton Fleece tank and off to work for me. I'd been listening to Middlemarch on CD in the car, but not really paying attention, because the language is so lovely and rhythmic I find myself enjoying that without really hearing the words. But somehow one of the disks is missing, and that means...

Dum dum DUMMMMMMMM....

Actually listening to the radio.

And I didn't mind it terribly. The jocks were dreadful - I'm much better than they are (and they're making probably three times what I made for doing the same thing) but it's been a long time since I could turn on a radio station and not know all the words, who sings the song, what album it's on, how long the intro plays before the vocals begin, and some trivial fluff about the artist. It was really nice.

I managed to get through lunch without spilling on my tank top (miracle of miracles) and was thinking about radio in general when our afternoon traffic guy called. He and I have kind of an interesting relationship. His voice an sense of humor are almost identical to my friend Kyle, who was doing traffic at another station I worked at when I met him. Because of that similarity, I had a very hard time remembering that Craig didn't already know me well. We've gotten to know each other better in the past few months, and have commiserated on the state of radio as an industry.

Today we both vented a bit more, and we're both feeling the same way... nice to get a little agreement from someone who knows (although, as usual, I topped his worst story with stories of the station in NY) and he says he also wants to try to get involved in voice over and audio book work, so we'll each let the other know if something comes up..

So I'm feeling quite gratified, very "I told you so", which is an odd feeling since no one has argued with me.

Still hoping to figure out that weird plaid problem I had on that swatch... anyone know any good (free) patterns for plaid? The one I used gave me some lovely stripes, and I was able to alter it just enough to come up with something funky, but plaid it was not.

Thoughts for the Day:
Ric Ocasek - “The best thing you can do for a song is to hear it on the radio and to imagine what it could mean to you and then kinda forget the words. Just imagine how you felt when you heard it, if it was one of your songs. If it became one of your songs."

Albert Einstein - “You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.”

Jasper Carrott - “I am amazed at radio DJ's today. I am firmly convinced that AM on my radio stands for Absolute Moron. I will not begin to tell you what FM stands for.”

I had a lovely, peaceful, happy weekend...

GB is still in Boston, which meant I missed him, but enjoyed a bit of freedom as well. My goal is to walk Oscar at least one mile a day, but Friday night when we went for a walk, it started thundering as soon as we stepped out of the car. We saw two large dogs - a yellow lab about Oscar's size, and a mix that looked to be part elephant. Actually, he was a beautiful dog, perhaps part Bermese Mountain, but clearly a mix of several breeds. The three dogs sniffed each other calmly, and Oscar very quickly grew bored with them, and even while I was still talking to their owner, he was ready to go for our walk. I was quite pleased at this, since I want him to have as many experiences with other dogs that involve seeing, not getting excited, and then moving on, so that another dog is soon nothing to even bat an eye at. We went on the walk, and the thunder was getting louder and closer, so I decided rather than get stuck in a downpour, we'd cut the walk short. We still did about three-quarters of a mile before we got back to the car.



In the morning, I called my parents, and we went over to their house for a walk. We went to some of the bike paths back in the woods not far from them, and my dad ran back and forth with Oscar like a two-year-old. We ended up going 2.7 miles then, so I feel my shortcomings Friday were made up. I would have even liked to go further, but often my calves start cramping up, and it's quite painful. I was a dancer, I know about stretching. Doesn't seem to help.

Then I was shown a new-to-me yarn shop about half an hour from me, Leslie Solomon's Woolstock. It was quite lovely, if understaffed, and I bought a row counter, although I really want the curvy pink one I've seen, I just can't seem to find it anymore... I also bought some nice yarn for my secret pal, and literally, a ball of Aslan-colored mohair jumped into my basket - I didn't even touch it! - so I took that too. I'm hoping if I make a small blanket for Aslan, he'll cuddle with that instead of stealing my mohair WIPs... Normally he's very well behaved, but something about mohair makes him forget his manners. Even as I was knitting a little on it, he was kneading the ball. I got a few inches done, put it aside, and he spent the rest of the night sleeping on it.

After Woolstock, we went to Clover Hill, right around the corner from me. I didn't buy anything there (restraint beyond belief) but ran into a little girl learning to knit. She'd gotten the first few stitches, gone home, and forgotten it all. Her mother didn't knit at all, so they decided the best thing to do was to go back to Clover Hill, plop down on the floor, so when they needed help, it was there. I chatted with her a bit, and a few minutes after I'd moved on, she came running around the corner asking for help. I came back, and saw that she'd dropped one stitch, and double wrapped another. I explained that the double wrap is called a "Yarn Over" and is an advanced move, so she was clearly going to be a great knitter if she was doing things like this already! (sure, we all do it when we start, but she seemed proud) She was knitting a scarf for her father for Christmas, and after I fixed those two stitches, I put another row on so she'd have solid ground, and we chatted a bit more. What a great gift for her father, and how sweet of her mother to encourage her daughter so much that she was willing to sit on a floor in a shop for a hobby that wasn't even hers....

Sunday was all me... I slept late, played with the boys, rented two girly movies that I knew I would never see with GB around. I knit, I spun some, but wasn't enjoying the wool/mohair - more predrafting than I was in the mood to do - so I spun up the last of the superwash merino from Jen. I also made a swatch using a pattern that claimed to be for plaid. The swatch looks great - it's 8x8 inches, and is very funky. It is NOT, however, plaid. So hmm... I'll try to find another tartan plaid pattern, and try again with this yarn... I must say I do get a kick out of the orange, pink, and yellow all together. Too day-glo to wear, but a very fun, sunny, cheery combination nonetheless.

When GB gets back we've decided we'll go see The Village for "Date Night". I think M. Night Shyamalan is brilliant, and really enjoy his work, and him, in the few interviews I've seen of him. And I see the movie is the cover article in Entertainment Weekly this week, so I'll read that in a few minutes. I read an article that says he's got one more "secret" movie in the works, but he also plans on doing a movie version of The Life of Pi, which I happen to be "listening to" right now - started it last week. It's really quite interesting, and a pleasant book so far, and the character is from the town Night was born in.... In thoughts of The Village, I watched The Sixth Sense again last night, and wandered off to bed with the boys, sleeping soundly.



This morning, I woke happily, and called up Jeff to sing to him on the air. I did a Marilyn Monroe impression - a very breathy "sexy" version of "Happy Birthday" and when we finished with that, another dear friend from NY had heard, called the station, and we talked on conference phone for a few minutes - not long enough - with me making snide comments into Jeff's headphones so he laughed on the air. Payback for all the times he did it to me!

So it was a lovely few days... and now I'm back to work. Alright... I'm ready for it, or at least a few days of it.... I'll be ready for another weekend by about 3pm tomorrow, I'm sure...


Thoughts for the Day:

Steven Wright - “There aren't enough days in the weekend.”

Proverb - “A good rest is half the work.”

Very rarely in life do you find friends that are there when you need them, even through all the twists and turns on your path. Generally, people come into our lives as we need them, and then as we grow and change, our friendships do as well. We run into those old friends we haven't spoken to in awhile, and there's a period of awkwardness as we try to sum up the past years of our lives in just a few moments. We struggle to converse, and then they're gone, to be "updated" with the same awkwardness the next time we happen upon them.

But sometimes, if you're lucky, someone falls into your life that grows and changes with you, the blessing of permanance is given, and those friends are there in our hearts forever, even if they are physically across the country, or across the world. You can go months without speaking to them, but when you do again, the time between you vanishes.

I am amazingly blessed to have a few friends like that. Two of them have birthdays this weekend.

I moved halfway across the country, into the snowbelt of New York State, alone except for the cats. When I did that, I found my "second husband." Someone who I fought with, who took care of me, made me laugh, laughed with me, helped me move three times in 14 months, rescued me three times in two weeks when I locked the keys in my car with the engine running and three feet of snow on the ground, and made me cry when I had to say goodbye to him. "Chemistry" is something that is almost indefinable in a public relationship like actors in a movie, or partners on a radio station. Jeff and I had more chemistry in five minutes together than most people get after years. Working with him was the ONLY thing that kept me going at a very abusive workplace, and I'd go back to doing a morning show with him in a heartbeat. When I moved back to Baltimore with GB, it was tough to keep in touch. But we just talked a few weeks ago, for almost two hours, and the chemistry was still there, he still made me laugh. I wish I could be there today for his birthday, because I know his wife is probably throwing him a great party. But I had to hand him off to Joe, albeit capable hands, and I know that he'll be in my heart even if he's not in my town. I love you, Jeffy! Happy birthday!


Jeff's the cute one... 

I met Laura when I was a freshman or sophomore in high school, when she was in a play with my brother in college. They were the best of friends, and soon Laura came to be my friend too. She is everything I want to be when I grow up - traffic-stoppingly beautiful, amazingly kind, generous, talented beyond belief, brave, sincere, loving, and funnier than any beautiful woman needs to be. She is in Japan right now, away from her husband, family, and old friends on a 13 month tour at Disney Tokyo. Remember the name Laura Hodos - she's got at least a few Tony's in her future, I truly believe that. Her birthday's tomorrow, and she tells me some co-workers in Japan are taking her to dinner. She may not be near George or any of those silly American's who love her here, but she's in our hearts, too! Happy birthday, Laura!


Spring in Japan 

Oh, and just to make sure there's SOME knitting references here, this is what Laura will be getting in the mail any day now, knit by me!


Necklace & Close Up 



Thoughts for the Day:

John Glenn - “For all the advances in medicine, there is still no cure for the common birthday.”

Susan Brownell Anthony - “Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory.”

I did not a single fiber related thing yesterday, unless you count leaning over to the edge of the couch to make sure that crunching noise was Oscar chewing on his bone, not on Fiona. It was. Didn't spin, didn't knit... Didn't have the energy. I'd wanted to come home and take a nap, but I haven't given Oscar a good walk in a few days, and not only is that not fair to him, but it's not fair to anyone else in the house, as he's much easier for the cats and me to deal with when he's had a good walk. So I forced myself to take him to the park, hooked my pedometer onto my pants, and set myself at a one mile minimum. We walked 1.03 miles from the car, around and back to the car. Ha! But I was hurting and exhausted by the end of it.

I did sleep last night, and woke up fairly easily, when my cell phone alarm went off promptly at 4:50 am. The one GB and I use is even more fickle than I am, and despite the fact that we are two highly intelligent individuals, it seems to go off when expected only about 80% of the time. I personally feel one should be smarter than an alarm clock, but for fear that throwing the thing away would acknowlege that I am, in fact, NOT smarter than the alarm clock, it is allowed to live.

So up and at 'em I was, feeling quite like this day wouldn't be so bad. This is the guise morning people get themselves into. It is so easy to wake, we forget that we will actually have to stay awake and answer stupid questions and deal with irksome minutiae later in the day. And I was apparently fooling myself even more than usual, since my natural downtime is around 3pm, but today, I was struggling through sitting up straight at 9am. I was at the point where I was burning up and sweating and feeling nauseated, because the energy it was taking to stay awake was too much to keep the rest of my body in order. I handled what needed to go live on the air at 9:30, went into another office that has a cheesy, very 70's futon on it (you wouldn't believe it unless you saw a picture, which I'll try to take tomorrow.) and set my phone for 10:15. I was promptly what they refer to as "out cold". Nearly 45 minutes of sleep, which is impressive not just because it normally takes me twice that long just to fall asleep anyway, but because less than 10 minutes after my waking, my general manager walked into the building. I doubt he'd have cared so much that I'd been taking a quick nap, understanding the circumstances, but it is something that goes gravely against my work ethic, and I would have felt ashamed. Now, I feel slightly guilty, but enough better that I realize it was the only thing I could have done.

And tonight, I will go to bed early, and sleep as late as I want, as the part-timer is back tomorrow.

Thoughts for the Day:

Velvet Underground - I am tired I am weary I could sleep for thousand years A thousand dreams that would awake me Different colours made of tears.

Sir Philip Sidney - Come, Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace, The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe, The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release, Th' indifferent judge between the high and low.

William Shakespeare - Sleep, that sometimes shuts up sorrow’s eye, Steal me awhile from mine own company.

Dying for a nap, I took a new quiz, instead:


You are interchangeable.
Fun, free, and into everything, you've got every
eventuality covered and every opportunity just
has to be taken. Every fiber is wonderful, and
every day is a new beginning. You are good at
so many things, it's amazing, but you can
easily lose your place and forget to show up.
They have row counters for people like you!

Pretty accurate, I think... and I love that the needles are stuck in a big blob of Manos - a favorite yarn of mine!

You can take the quiz, too - it's listed in my sidebar towards the bottom.

Back to work!

What a morning! The part-timer is off today and tomorrow, so I had to do his morning shift in addition to my own (since PTB apparantly don't realize that maybe hiring more than one and a half people to run a radio station might be a good idea.) It means two loooong days in a row, from 6 am to after 6 pm, and I technically don't get lunch breaks because of things going on here at various times during the day, but I can sometimes sneak out for a few minutes between 2 and 3.

I had the alarm set for 4:50. That usually makes some people flinch, but I am actually a morning person by nature (though you wouldn't know it lately) so waking up around 5 generally isn't all that difficult for me. I took care of what I needed to, and went to bed last night, double checking the alarm before I got into bed. This morning, Trevor meowed gently in my ear, I stretched luxuriously, and rolled over to look at the silent clock.

6:09.

In a mad dash, which included happening on some underwear, a skirt and top that actually coordinate, throwing the dog outside (I think I managed to latch his rope) and grabbing the silk for the scarf I'm working on, I was out the door and down the road.

That's right. Grab the silk. Food? Nope. Drink? Naw. A shower that would freshen and refreshen me? No time. But silk? I had my priorities straight.

Last night I didn't spin at all, mostly because I decided I needed to knit exclusively for a while. I ripped both the wool/angora/alpaca homespun hat I'd been knitting, and the silk scarf, deciding that part of why I wasn't working on them was I wasn't happy with the results. Must've been true, I tried something else with the hat, and finished it! I think it looks really cute. It's a tiny bit smaller than I'd like, but I'm limited on yarn for it, so I've got it stuffed with blankets and stretching to see if that helps. It looks adorable, and is softer than you could believe. It'll be nice and warm, too... I'll try to get a disposable camera today and get some pictures of it up soon. If not, I'll definitely get some once the digital camera (and GB) are back in the state.

I also knit a small swatch of the White Buffalo to sample felt. I'm working on a huge bag out of it, and boy, am I glad I test-felted! I have a strap and a half done, and was going to do the body in a tartan pattern maybe, but this stuff furs up like crazy when felted. You would think they would warn you about fur like this. I put a swatch into the washer and pulled out a muppet. So no fancy design for this bag - I'll do simple stripes, maybe go as exotic as a zig-zag, and take a razor to the bag when it's felted.

Meanwhile, here I am knitting on the silk, and just not happy. I think it's time to frog. It's not working for what I want for that special gift. My fault, but forgivable - it's just not spun right for a super thin scarf, too bulky... So this gets the heave-ho, and onto some other project (goodness knows I have plenty of others!) while I think about what I want that gift to be.

Thoughts for the Day:

Robert Frost - “There's absolutely no reason for being rushed along with the rush. Everybody should be free to go very slow.... What you want, what you're hanging around in the world waiting for, is for something to occur to you.”

Kahlil Gibran - “Happiness is a myth we seek, If manifested surely irks; Like river speeding to the plain, On its arrival slows and murks. For man is happy only in His aspiration to the heights; When he attains his goal, he cools And longs for other distant flights.”

I've been sitting here wondering why I have such a hard time choosing a knitting project to just stick with. I'm not a slow knitter. I could have easily finished that green tank in under a week, had I committed. Three months later, and it's finally done. And there's a pair of socks that I started when I lived in New York... so that's a bare minimum of 10 months. For SOCKS! There are UFOs all over my house, but not because I'm slow, not because I'm having a hard time with the patterns... I honestly couldn't figure out why.

And then my gaze slid ever so slightly to my left at my desk. Where I literally have three DIPs. (Slight poetic license there. If a knitted Work In Progress is a WIP, wouldn't a half-finished drink be a DIP???)

I have a Diet Vanilla Coke, a liter bottle of Aquafina (with lemon juice added) and a bottle of Steap Green Tea Soda (lemon dew flavored). I couldn't decide which I preferred, so I have all three going. For similar reasons I had oatmeal and tuna fish for "brunch" today. (not together, just as part of the first meal of the day)

So - stay with me here - I think, possibly, just maybe, I could be fickle.

That sound you hear is the noise my husband makes when he has a coronary from trying not to scream "no shit" at the top of his lungs.

I like doing it all. I like working with the big huge bunny-ear yarn of the Blizzard sweater. I like the springy feel of the Classic Elite Follies yarn... I'm loving playing with all the different fibers I've been spinning, and seeing the colors of the silk yarn, and playing with the different patterns... I like it all. So why shouldn't I do it all? Simultaneously? (hey, I've got dexterous toes, do you think I could learn to knit with them? Think of all the WIPs I'd have going then!)

This is probably part of the problem in my career. I'd like to be on the air, play in the production studio, and still have TONS of time to play with the cats, without neglecting the dog at all, knit some, spin some, plus I'd really like to voice some audio books on the side. You know, in my abundant spare time.

Now, I should probably be clear that I am not fickle when it comes to men. Of all the husbands I know - mine and other women's - mine is the only one I want, and not just because he does the laundry. I suppose that's what made me work through all the hard times he and I had, because for me, it was never him or I'd find someone else, it was always him or just be alone. There is no other man out there for me (this fact is independent from the fact that no one else will put up with me!).

But when it comes to what I wear, what I eat, what I drink, what I knit...

Yeah, I'm starting to think "fickle" might be pretty on target.

To my credit, I did just finish the Steap while typing that, so it's really only two DIPs.

Thoughts for the Day:

George Bernard Shaw - The fickleness of the women I love is only equaled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.

John Muir - When we try to pick anything out by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

My penance for buying yarn before ending my fiber diet was that I wasn't allowed to spin again until my Cotton Fleece tank top was completed. 
 
Guess what?

It's DONE! 
 
I didn't spin a lick Saturday - and I FINISHED THE FREAKIN TANK TOP!!!
 
Hoorayyy!!!

Here's a closer pre-blocking shot of the aran cable, where it splits for the cables up the neckline, plus the seed stitch edging.

It took about two and a half skeins of Cotton Fleece to make, and I got them cheap off e-bay! 
 
Plus, I really want to get moving on some of those other items, so I got a good deal done on the scarf I'm making from the silk I spun the other day. 


Lovely - even if I am biased!  Unfortunately, I was more than halfway through spinning the silk when I read an article that said that silk puffs up a great deal after being spun, which meant the yarn I spun ended up much bulkier than my original intent.  So there's a lot less of it, and the scarf isn't going to be as long as I'd hoped.

This much only took about an hour...    I'm thinking I'll get some cream or white silk and alternate stripes, or something like that, to add bulk.  Maybe do it in the multi-directional scarf pattern from Threadbear so that it's actually triangles of color... we'll see.  I want it to be perfect and beautiful, as it's for a very cherished soul in my life, so I may scrap what I've got and start over with something new. 
 
GB is in Boston for work now, which means the next few days I'll be engourging myself on the Patsy Z videos I borrowed from Bess. 
 
I spun up some more of the superwash merino from Jen - this stuff is to die for.  I really think the next fiber I buy will be more of this from her.  It just takes my breath away, and everytime I move to another fiber and then go back to this, it washes over me again how talented this woman is!!  I just sent her an e-mail requesting some special colors, but it doesn't count as breaking my diet, because I really don't want her to rush at all, my request should be way low on her priorities, so I might possibly be off my diet by the time she can get around to it.  What I spun up this weekend was a bright pink, and I'm going to try to learn tartan by doing an 8" square of that plaided (? made into a plaid-like pattern) with a rich orange and bright yellow.  Fun, sunny colors...  If the plaid works, I think Oscar might get a tartan felted jacket for winter.  He's got such a short coat, and it's harder to be scared of a dog in clothes.  Not that anyone who's ever actually met him has been scared of him.
 
I did start spinning a blend I bought of e-bay called "Prairie Fire" or something like that.  It's mostly red wool, blended with some black wool and a little white mohair.  Tricky to spin, and will require some extra predrafting (I'll try to take some pics of that, too, but it involves buying a disposable camera and taking a ton of shots,so it might be a while...)  The singles from that look lovely, and I think it'll be lovely as a yarn and sweater...
 
It's amazing to watch these everyday items move through all the various steps of their creation!

Thoughts for the Day:
 
Eleanor Roosevelt - “It is our freedom to progress that makes us all want to live and to go on.”
 
Francis Vincent “Frank” Zappa, Jr. - “Without deviation, progress is not possible.”

Isn't technology lovely? I'm trying to get a little button on for the KR blogring, which will hopefully get more people reading this, since I'm oddly desparate for comments. I put everything in its place in the template. I click "preview" - lovely, it's there, in place, lookin' smart.

Then I save everything, go to the blog itself, and it's not there.

So I think "I must not have saved, and I go back to blogger, and open it up, and it's all there, saved. I "preview" again. Yep, wow, that's a sharp lookin' blog....

And opening the blog again... still no button.

I'll give it sometime. Maybe it needs to do some soulsearching before it can display the button in all it's glory.

It was the cute green button, too.

I caved.
 
I had to.
 
I discovered a sale on some discontinued colors of Calmer.  Including the bleach white (by the way, it is absurb to discontinue a true white in a yarn.  I mean, honestly.)
 
So I got a ball of Pool, a ball of Night Sky, and two balls of White, which should be enough for the tank.  And I'll never have the chance to get them again, so I really had no choice.  Right?
 
And it's okay that I slipped a little, because I will use this character flaw to create something beautiful and lasting.  Good will come of it.
 
Thoughts for the Day:
 
Wendell Phillips - “What is defeat? Nothing but education, nothing but the first step to something better.”
 
Unknown - “You must think of failure and defeat as the springboards to new achievements or to the next level of accomplishment.”

Temptation, thy name is Adrienne Vittadini.
 
I saw this tank top in a magazine a few months ago.  It burned into my brain with the heat of a thousand suns.  And then when Eilene had me touch her Rowan Calmer yarn (I swear, she was like a dealer - "go on - just touch it!  It''ll make you feeeelll gooodd...") I knew that it belonged with the pattern for this tank. 
 
I like the two blues shown on the model.  But also maybe a pink and orange... and lavendar and plum... Red and burgandy?  I'm thinking Blush & Flamingo, Chiffon & Joy, Slosh & Tinkerbell, and Amour & Coral....
 

I can't help it, it just makes me shiver! I want one in each colorway!
 
In other news....
 
umm...
 
yeah, nothing.
 
Trying to finish the tank, to work myself ever closer to the end of the fiber diet (new running tally at the bottom of my WIPs chart in the sidebar - I have to complete at least half of the projects I have up there now before I can buy new yarn or start a new project.)
 
Just joined Audible, and I'm about 2/3 through The Time Traveler's Wife, which I'm really enjoying. 
 
GB got a refresher course in knitting, so he can take his cotton and needles when he goes to Boston for work next week.  He's making dishclothes.
 
Blogger changed it's format for posting again, and I swear it took me till this far down on the post to figure it out.
 
Oh, and according to the screen, I have a comment from a few days ago, and I can't seem to see it, so if you commented, I'm not ignoring you, but there is a tagboard just to the right here, and you're welcome to post here.  
 
Work is .... dull, irritating, frustrating, boring, un-satisfying....  No need to continue, I think.
 
So there we have it.
 
Maybe I'll become inspired with depth later on and post something.
 
Or maybe I'll be too busy dreaming about this tank....
 
I can't give in... I can't give in... I can't give in....
 
Thoughts of the Day:
 
Earl Wilson - “Ever notice that the whisper of temptation can be heard farther than the loudest call to duty.”
 
Matthew Henry - “Many a dangerous temptation comes to us in fine gay colours that are but skin-deep.”
 
Orlando A. Battista - “Temptations, unlike opportunities, will always give you second chances.”

By the way, for those of you knitters who claim to be amazed at my ability to design (which IMHO is really just stubborness about having other people - even a far more experienced knitwear designer - tell me how to make a sweater) Stephanie made an excellent analogy in her blog today.

And I just got off the phone with a PTB, who says that after we finally tracked him down, S has put himself back on medical leave until at least August 24, and I'm back in charge, and doing a great job, and the station sounds great and they know it's not S causing that now and blah blah blah. So there we have it.

S's accident was on my husband's birthday. This news comes on my father's... coincidence?

I'm just barely awake right now, after a long night of many strange dreams. I read once in college that people who remember their dreams often make good artists, performers, and teachers. For some reason, a person who remembers dreams also tends to be good at relating to and connecting with other people. According to that article, remembering dreams "often" was something like once a month. I remember dreams around once a week, or more.

Two last night.

In the first, which had me much more disturbed, I was visiting someone that I barely knew, and they wanted to show me a "new room" of theirs. We opened the door, and they'd turned the room on it's side, so that when the door opened, we were looking down into the room.

Only the room was filled with sea water, and in it gigantic fish were swimming around. Fish about 8 feet long, with sponge-y looking flaking orange skin. We were warned not to go too near them or they would eat us. I remember falling into the water, and flailing about to get out of the way, and kicking at the fish to keep them away from me. When I kicked them, I felt bad that I might have hurt them, but also grossed out because they were so spongey my foot sank into their flesh a bit. I woke up in the middle of the night feeling lost, and claustrophobic and confused...

It took some time to drift back to sleep after that, but when I did I had a dream that was much more vague - I remember much less detail about it. Fighting, anger, loud, sharp noises (like smacking, not really gunfire type noises) and shadow-y darkness.

So I guess neither of those would be something I'd want to talk about in a job interview, huh? I woke up feeling very insecure and strange, and found myself having to double check everything I did, after I put my glass of ice tea in the pantry and walked out of the house with Oscar sitting calmly inside waiting for me to put his leash on for our walk. I think I got things straight eventually.

Took Oscar for a walk (in his new purple harness that he loves) with Mary and a friend Denise who I haven't seen since early high school. Denise has gone through a LOT since then, and I think was shy with me because she wasn't sure how I'd take things. Last time I saw her, she was a sweet, beautiful young teen, who had her whole life ahead of her. Now she's a recovering addict with a son that she can't have custody over, a criminal record, and a very hard life. I'm proud of her for fighting as hard as she has, and not just giving up.

And the PTB are getting almost as fed up as I am with S, as he failed to show up Tuesday, or Friday. He actually sent an e-mail to one of the hosts of one of our Saturday shows saying he didn't feel well Friday but everything would be taken care of. That's all we know - he never took care of any of what he was supposed to, and never let me know what needed to be done, so I spent a lot of time scrambling to figure out what he'd already set up. Today I'm told if he isn't here by 1pm (three minutes from now) I'm to call and let them know, and one of the PTB has begun tossing words like "job abandonment" around.

So we'll see how that goes. Taking Dad out to dinner tonight for his birthday. I was going to give him the Fathers Day card that I never remembered to mail to him, but I forgot it when I left the house. No surprise. At least it's not in the fridge. I hope.


Thoughts for the Day:

Unknown - “What orbit of the planets has put you and me in this place, at this moment? Where time takes a breath, and we dance on the edge of our dreams?”

Hans Sachs - “All poetic inspiration is but dream interpretation.”

Edgar Allan Poe - “Dreams are the eraser dust I blow off my page. They fade into the emptiness, another dark gray day. Dreams are only memories of the plans I had back then. Dreams are eraser dust and now I use a pen.”

I've been knitting in very faint increments the past few days. Well, okay. The past three weeks, to be exact. Since Fiona's arrival. I've become obsessed with the magic of fur-becoming-yarn. I'm working on some alpaca now, which just came home this week. I bought it before I had Fiona, and dropped it off at MD S&W to be processed into roving by Zeilinger's. I asked for a light wash, but I think they stressed the light, and not the wash, part of that, as I find myself picking out Vegatable Matter every few inches or so. But the roving itself is so light and airy, I don't mind the VM at all.. this will make beautiful yarn. I'm spinning a dark fawn color now at a light worsted weight, the color of caramel candies (quick poll: is it CARE-ah-mell, CAR-ah-mell, or CAR-mell?) I have about three-fourths of a pound of that, and another pound and a half of white. They will be used together to make a poncho or shawl, I think.

Some of that white will be spun slightly finer - sport-weight-ish - to match the weight of some yarn I already have. At last year's Knitter's Retreat, I swapped for about a thousand yards of a rich nutmegy-pumpkiny-gingery orange alpaca yarn, soft as the devil. I want to make a sweater of this, with a stripe of the white alpaca, and a thin stripe of a super pale robins-egg-blue. I can see the sweater... I just have to knit the sweater!

Last night I met with and decided to join the Annapolis Guild of TKGA. I've been thinking about rejoining for a while, as I really do think I'd like to do the Master Knitter's program, and the magazine that comes with membership is quite good. And I sort of stumbled across this one, but did enjoy the meeting last night - a variety of different levels, and a small but friendly group. One of the women there, who was teaching us about knitting with beads, casually mentioned that she owned a shop. Turns out it's The Drafting Zone in Bowie MD, which was one of our favorite booths at MD S&W because of some unbelievable customer service. I'm now looking even more forward to a chance to visit her shop!

I've been playing around with different spinning positions, hand positions and speeds. I've "accidentally" done long-draw a few times and it's been lovely. The times that I've done it on purpose, it's come out quite uneven. But three or four times my attention has been distracted, and my hands reach far back, and I'll look back to my spinning, and *poof!* two different spinning points, fuzzy fluff between, and lovely, even yarn being fed into the flyer. When I try to do it on purpose, it's uneven and a bit awkward.

It's amazing how often we get in the way of ourselves doing miraculous things.

Thoughts for the Day:

Gary Zukav - “Trust allows you to give. Giving is abundant. Trust allows the experience of bliss. Bliss is awakefulness. Trust allows you to laugh. Laugh at the richness, the beauty and the playfulness of the universe. Apply consciousness to this process and all roads will lead to home.”

John Greenleaf Whittier - “I pray for faith, I long to trust; I listen with my heart, and hear A Voice without a sound: 'Be just, Be true, be merciful, revere The Word within thee: God is near! 'A light to sky and earth unknown Pales all their lights: a mightier force Than theirs the powers of Nature own, And, to its goal as at its source, His Spirit moves the Universe. 'Believe and trust. Through stars and suns, Through life and death, through soul and sense, His wise, paternal purpose runs; The darkness of His providence Is star-lit with benign intents.' O joy supreme! I know the Voice Like none beside on earth or sea; Yea, more, O soul of mine, rejoice, By all that He requires of me, I know what God himself must be.... I fear no more. The clouded face Of Nature smiles; through all her things Of time and space and sense I trace The moving of the Spirit’s wings, And hear the song of hope she sings.”

PICTURES PICTURES PICTURES!!!


Aslan spinning on Fiona. He likes that they are the same color. Plus, he's allowed to sniff and touch Fiona, but Oscar isn't. Being better than the dog is always better. 

Just luscious to spin, the colors here look a lot brighter - it's really deeper, jewel toned silk yarn. It will be a scarf for a very special friend. 

Pop a zipper on this puppy and it'll be a change purse! (Husband's foot for scale) 

Trevor's very favorite hang out is on top of the dishware cabinets. This way he can look down on us all like the royalty he is.