A Few Pics For Those Interested In My Homework

Bison....

Fibre content: 100% Bison                      Fibre Preparation: rovings

Spinning Technique: semi-worsted         Direction of twist: zzzS

# of Plies: 3                                              t.p.i. 5 & w.p.i. 20

Weight: 4.3 gm                                        Yardage: 18 yds/16.4592 m

Count: 3.82 NM    261.25 TEX               Suitable End Use: lace shawl

19 stitches 38 rows on size 3.5 mm knitting needles.
The picture just doesn't do it justice. It is soft and lovely... I'm very happy with this sample.

~O^O~

The above title is an attempt at making digital glasses.... why?... I have no idea.... just that my glasses are sitting on the desk in front of me... that's why!

I finished the Bison skein yesterday and it is very nice. I had hoped to have a picture ready of the lace square that I am knitting from my Bison skein but after school Teapot and I took the girls shopping for Twelfth Night. We didn't get back till late and we didn't have supper while we were shopping so we needed to eat when we got home. As a result I didn't get back to the knitting until later than planned and so I have a half knitted lace square. At one point I was making a Nupp (don't ask what a Nupp is) and I was trying to get a needle through 5 stitches and was cursing on it so badly that Teapot  said I should go to bed. In my defense, it was really hard to get the needle through all 5 stitches at one time. In the end, I got out my rosewood dpn with the really sharp tips and that sucker (Nupp) was finished after that. Then I went to bed because I just couldn't face another Nupp and believe me there are plenty of them in the pattern I chose. I'll finish my sample today, then I'll start the Bison blend sample. I'm not sure yet what I will blend the bison with... maybe silk.... but the silk will need to be cut. Maybe angora.... but I'm not sure if I can use angora. Maybe I'll just use cotton.  But enough about level 4 homework.

It has been chinooking here since New Years day. Last night, the wind was so high that I'm sure there were a few trees torn up by the wind. I never sleep well when there is high wind. But the temperature is high... usually at this time of the year we are looking at temperatures ranging from -30 to -15 degrees C, but this morning the temperature is a balmy +2 degrees C. The snow has been melting off the roof and is sliding off the tin roof and scaring the heck out of the kitten and the dog.  (Tootsie the little dog who has been around for five years and the old cat whose been with us for ten years are old hands and don't pay any attention to the noise at all.) The snow comes roaring down off the roof and does sound rather like thunder so it does not help us sleep easily.  There is ice everywhere and walking is treacherous. So mostly I walk in the house. (It is part of my get fit in 2011 regimen.) Last year I tried Tai Chi but lets face it Tai Chi on your own really is lame. So this year I'm just going to try walking.... The up side of this is that I don't have to learn how : ) Still walking outside will have to wait till there is not so much ice around.

Tomorrow I will post pictures of the bison.... and still there are no more rodents!

Baker Street

One of my all time favorite singers has passed away. Gerry Rafferty.... I loved Baker Street.... I still do and as I write this I am listening to it...

It is sad when the old guys die... especially when you hear the canned music of today and then think about the real music of yesteryear... Gerry Rafferty was anything but canned or fake... This world has lost a little of it richness and I am sad that he is gone...

Mwa Ha Ha Ha Ha... It's Dead It's Dead It's Dead!

A Vole.... I knew it wasn't a mouse.... after I got to thinking about it I knew it couldn't be a mouse. It ran funny like it hoppity ran instead of just flat out running. But this morning we got up and the blighter was in one of the traps that we had set last night before we went to bed. We have set the trap again because where there's one usually there's more than one. I wonder how much cat and dog food he's stolen and where he stashed it all... probably somewhere in the walls of this house. Yes this is a log house.... no he couldn't get into the log walls but the house has interior walls that are not log and the walls of the second story are 2 x 6 construction. So a little rodent could get into any of those spaces.  Earlier in the fall we heard something in the roof above Daughter #1's bedroom so I suspect that we will have to finish this renovation before our rodent issues end.

Meanwhile I started the level 4 and after 4 years of spinning for the MSP you would think that I could get a balanced yarn without having to fiddle with it but Oooh noooo... fiddle I must! Thank heavens it only needs a little more S twist. I washed it slightly last night but I will wait till I've put some more S in before I give it a hard washing. If I can get it to work then I will move on to the second question today. I didn't get a chance to work on the level 3. I'm hoping that next week will not be so crazy as this one.

Why is this week so crazy you ask... well, it has to do with Twelfth Night celebrations. Twelfth Night is Thursday evening... and we do celebrate it, so we are preparing for that... shopping is involved but only a little. For us it is the end of the Christmas season... we hang our stockings once again and hope to catch Santa on his way home (thus the shopping).  Friday we will have either another Turkey if we are up for that or a ham dinner.... this year it will be ham... and scalloped potatoes... and then after dinner is over the tree comes down and all the decorations go back into their boxes and while doing so we listen to the last of the Christmas carols.  I have a couple of CD's that have music that is specific to Twelfth Night celebrations. When we go to bed on the 7th we are ready to say good bye to the tree and the season until next year. Actually I think I enjoy Twelfth Night celebrations far better than Christmas... it is a wonderful tradition... full of richness and history.  The animals are supposed to kneel down to the star at midnight... of course I've never seen it and don't expect to in my life but it would be wonderful if something like that happened.

Meanwhile Teapot and the girls are getting ready to go out the door to school and I figure I should get ready to work on that skein of Bison.

Hopefully I will see no more of those pesky creatures.... It's dead, it's dead, it's dead....mwa ha ha ha ha!

Ack!!!

Peaceful quiet reigns supreme
Munching on my crackers and cheese... lunch
Sitting on the sofa looking into the kitchen...
A small black thing runs across my kitchen...
Chewing stops.... heart stops....
Brains kicks in as adrenaline courses through my blood stream,
All animals are acounted for... sleeping peacefully
There is an extra animal in the house... too small to be anything that I really want.

Unwanted small creature running across my kitchen... ack!

Mouse.

Clearly the cats are not doing the job that they should be doing.
Phone Teapot.... "Bring home poison please...."
Will put poison in the crawl space where the only creatures that will eat it are the unwanted ones.

Where there is one there are eight... superstition... but it has always been true whenever I've had dealings with mice...

Da--!! Now I've got to kill a rodent... and all our food.... where are the plastic containers that will seal it from the pesky little creatures...

I wish our cats were not so well fed.

Da--!!

Sigh

They're gone. They just went out the door. (sigh)

Today I have to get back to my spinning for my level 4... This was an early morning and I don't know if my sleep habits have changed as I am getting older but I must say that getting up and staying up this morning is not as easy as it used to be. I always loved to get up in the morning. It was that quiet and peace that I craved... and I always was at my best and most energetic... not so anymore.  Now I get up and all I want to do is go back to bed. The bed is extremely soft warm and cuddly... but I'll never get any work done if I end up back in it so I guess I'm off for a shower... that'll wake me up and get me going and maybe a strong cup of jo to wake me up too.

Either way I'm spinning Bison this morning... hopefully it will be great when I'm finished.

This will be a short post this morning as I figure I've already lost some time to Videomatica... which Teapot joined for Christmas so that we could watch movies whenever we wanted.  The idea is to order movies from an online rental place and when they come watch them and send them back. Then order more... you can set up a list of movies and have them cued so that they come automatically... We are nothing if we're not avid movie watchers. We just finished The Pacific, (very gruesome but worth watching if you're a WWII buff, Ken Follett's Pillars Of The Earth, (I love medieval history), Sense and Sensibility (The Daughters have been getting into Jane Austin), The Thomas Crown Affair, (best con movie of all time), Sliding Doors (interesting take on duel time type movie), and Possession (I have wanted to see it for a couple of years).  That was our movie line up for the Christmas holidays.

But the holidays are over and we are back to a regular schedule... now where's that coffee and Bison. Hmmm... interesting mix... Bison and coffee. Obviously this is a weird combination... but I'm all for it so I'm off... see you in the morning and I wonder if that one will be any easier....

A Change Of Pace

Tomorrow Teapot and the girls go back to school.... and my work begins again. I will be back and hard at my homework for my Master's Spinning with Olds College. This is the time of the year when I really get down to it and work like a Trojan. (I'm not sure if that is the soldier, the horse, or the condom...) I have been looking at the two spools of Bison that I spun before the Christmas season hit me full in the face and now I'm thinking that a three ply yarn for that would be nice so I will start there with the third single for a 3 ply Bison yarn. That's in the day, by night I will be back at my level 3 homework. And I begin with cotton there. I will put down my knitting needles and take up cards, spinning wheel, charkha, and niddy noddy, and then I will try to get on top of what needs to be done for this June.  If I don't see really good progress I may decide to put off doing level 5. This is the first that this idea has actually crossed my lips, but it has been in the back of my mind. I may wait a year and do level 5 in 2012 instead of 2011. Because I want to enjoy this and not feel so much pressure that I begin to lose my desire to finish at all. I did that with Philosophy... I should have taken another semester to finish and didn't. In the end I was so burnt out that I didn't want to do anything with it again at all period. I know that burning out with me comes easily if I lose sight of my goals. It's not that I don't finish... I've never finished the race yet... but I don't want to finish and then hate it so much that I never want to look at it again. I've been on the Olds Website and there is nothing up yet anyway. Perhaps there will be such a spectacular instructor this year that I will want to do courses with that person and not do my level 5.

In the meantime, I have one last Christmas gift to finish... I am knitting a tote bag for a friend who surprised me and gave me an unexpected gift this year. That needs to be finished today... but since I am almost finished that will not be a problem.

At the end of the week is old Christmas day. It is the beginning of the Epiphany season.It is the day when all the Orthadox religions celebrate the birth of Christ (the Ukranians etc..) It is the day when our celebrations come to an end. We hang our Victorian style stockings and go to bed and wait for the magic to happen one last time. Then the next day we cook a turkey and open stockings (after school) and take down the tree while the last of the carols play... when the last decoration goes in the box and the last box is put away we turn off the music and put the Christmas CDs away for another year.... we sweep and clean and try to get rid of Murphy and his dust bunnies that are still hiding under the china cabinet and that's that.

With a look to the future, we put all thoughts of the old year away and begin thinking about exams and end of semester for the Daughters, report cards for Teapot and I just tick along doing my thing. When the Daughters stopped believing in Santa we decided that there was something bereft about the end of Christmas and so we decided to enjoy the end of the Christmas season with a celebration too. Meanwhile the daylight gets longer and the long haul of winter begins.

Last year, I had the big j.c. to focus on after Christmas... I had my level 3 homework with all the positive possibilities of that... now I'm worried.  Once burned twice shy.  This will be a difficult haul over the next four months... I will have to get down to my work and work hard.... and many long hours.

But for today... the puzzle is finished... and glued so I can take that off the table... knitting to be done.... and life starts to get back to normal.

Are you planning new things for a new year?