Oh Dear, Oh Dear, Oh Dear!!!

I feel like the rabbit in Alice In Wonderland... you know, the one that is always checking his pocket watch for the time. How has four whole days gone by without my writing... I can answer that one easily... I have been head down and arse up getting work done and I feel satisfied in saying that I am making great inroads into the piles of work which have been languishing for over a month.... problem is I just have gone all over the place and don't know whether my head is down or my arse is up! I am finished the next section of questions in my level five books and written them up and gotten them in the book today. I have decided to leave behind the TPI questions for the time being since they were daunting and really keeping me from doing any work at all. So today I started at the end of the questions and working my way back. No I haven't decided to work on the 50 hour project yet even though that is the very last question.  No I started working on the dye section. Yes I have done work on it before and some of it is done. But very little of it was in my books though the write-ups were done. I had one question that was not done at all and so I decided to sort out the whole mess and get it in the book and looking good. I didn't quite get it all finished but I am making progress there too and to be honest I am very pleased with one question in particular. I had to dye skeins of cotton in the primaries, the secondaries and the tertiary colours of the colour wheel... then I had to make a colour wheel with my skeins and it turned out better than I expected...

The greens in this picture are barely distinct but for some reason I couldn't get a picture that showed that. Then I dyed a section of cotton roving with Procion dyes and that is my first time using fibre reactive dyes. I had to dye a section of cotton roving and then spin a two ply yarn from some of it. I have to say that the colours came out lovely and bright. Cotton can be very dense and does not always take dye well but this was not too bad. Still there were some naturally coloured parts to the roving that I dyed.In the end I was very pleased with the result... it lent the skein I spun some interest.

Here's a little better shot of the yarn I spun...

After I finished what I could of the Dye section I moved on to the section on novelty type yarn through using spinning techniques and I managed a nice 4 ply cable yarn and got it finished. Then I decided to catch up on book work and it will take a little more work to catch up on all the book work that needs to be done.

So the result of all my confounded work is that I am in a terrible tangle because I should have just kept right on going with the tpi questions... now I have spinning from all over the place that are partially in the book and tonight I'm so tired that I can't make heads or tails of it.... On top of all that Daughter #2 is going through a Phantom Of The Opera love stage. She has watched it over and over again and right now she is watching it and to be honest I want to take a baseball bat to the T.V. !! I guess I'm just tired and need a break... so this is my break.

Teapot just made tea and I think I will go put my feet up and drink tea for the rest of the night... and finish my work tomorrow. Yep... now I just have to find a place where I don't have to listen to opera... (I actually love the Phantom Of The Opera... but not tonight)!

So I will try to get back to writing here a little more often even if it means writing about my boring spinning and stuff. ( I wonder if I'll get in trouble for saying that! Eh RG and MF and CJ)! And tomorrow... I will just have to sort out another bit of the mess that is my homework books... when I'm not so tired.

 See ya...

Offline For 24 Hours

We can't quite figure out why but for twenty-four hours we have not been able to use our computer.  I thought that the batteries in the bluetooth keyboard had died but apparently not. This has led to the most unexpected and somewhat disconcerting experiment. I got up today knowing that I wouldn't be able to use the computer.... and yesterday I had finally struggled and man-handled the T.V. and it paraphernalia out to the sunroom but I hadn't plugged it in. This meant that today was a day of forced silence. I quietly sat all day working on level 5 homework. I am making inroads into that but it was so quiet that for a good portion of the day I was able to pretend that I was deaf.... there was barely a sound and no radio to occupy my mind.

Over the years I have wondered if I would be able to survive in the wilderness on my abilities alone and after much deliberation I think I could... but I'm not sure if I would be in as much comfort as I am now. Still, there is a lot to living on one's own and providing for ones needs.  I don't know if I could do it without some access to grocery store even if it meant only twice a year.  I would also need access to medical since when my back flares it's really impossible to do anything without drugs. But otherwise I've always maintained that I could survive if really pushed... After today I would have to say that I might not be so sure of that. I sat here quietly for hours on end and at the end of the day I wonder if I would get used to it and enjoy it or if I would be insane within a week... probably the latter.

As for level 5 I am back in the saddle again after a hiatus of 4 weeks.  I am once again cruising along at a rate of speed that would make even the most experienced spinner jealous... (snork)!!! Well, ok so that's a slight exageration... but I am making progress... no doubt as I go along you will hear about it.  All is quiet right now except for Narmin who is trotting back and forth across the living room hopeful that I will soon be going to bed. He will not go up without me... Teapot has gone and so have the Daughters but in the kitchen is a pot of cotton and some Procion dye doing their thing.... I will be having a quick check on it in a few minutes and then I am headed to bed too.  I might even post pics tomorrow... if it turns out alright.

For now I will say good night and head to bed since the sound of silence (the fridge is quietly running and the clock is ticking but that's all I can hear... except for Narmin...) is beginning to get to me... I'd rather listen to Teapot snore...

See ya...

Perplexing Questions

1. How do you get rid of spring-like temps....

Answer: Blog about how spring is in the air and there are birds twittering and the ground is drying out but that there's still mud everywhere.... yup... that will do it.

2.  Why do farts smell worse in the shower.... (this is Daughter #1's question...)

Answer: I don't know... I try not to smell them...

3. Why are husband's unwilling to help with good questions by reminding you of the lousy question your Daughter asked the night before....

Answer: ???

I'll leave it there since you can tell from this what kind of morning I'm having... I think I'll go back to bed and sleep for a while maybe then I'll wake up and have a better start to my day.

Swimming

Two weeks ago I started swimming with the seniors. I enjoyed it so much that I am headed off again this morning. Last time there were only a couple of other swimming and I basically had the pool to myself for the first hour. The second hour there were more people there but that first hour was awesome. I did 30 lengths of the pool which is almost a kilometre of swimming. After I had finished I got out and went and sat in the hot tub for about twenty minutes. I can only describe it as wonderful. The sun had been shining in full twenty foot high windows over the hot tub and I felt like a million bucks. That's what I'm heading out to enjoy today... no sun though. Today it is cold and grey and -13 degrees... the coldest day we've had for a while. Brr...

I finally have my floor loom ready for weaving... it took getting out all the parts that I hadn't figured out last fall and laying them out on the floor and reading the instructions one step at a time... it worked! I now have a working loom with a beater bar and reed. I'm ready to weave. Yahoo!  I was starting to wonder what I had gotten myself into.... but it's all good. Come summer I will give the loom a nice coat of paint and I've finally decided on a colour.... plum. A plum coloured loom... yep that sounds like me! Just nutty enough... for what... I don't know.

So I've just finished my tea so I guess I better go get dressed and fish out my swimsuit and shampoo and towel etc...

Yep, going swimmin'

Covered In Snow

The ground is covered in snow this evening... a far cry from the sunny skies of this morning when I could hear that woodpecker pounding out his mating call. Outside, snow is falling in an effort to remind me that winter is not over yet.  Sheilah's Brush I guess... always it snows this time of year. But at 7 p.m. it is still daylight.... so I know that this won't last cause this much daylight at this time of the day can only mean one thing... spring is coming.... right!

I'll go spin a while... maybe when I look up next time, the snow will have stopped. (Yeah right.... dream on eh?)

Frozen

Everything this morning is frozen... it is -5 degrees. All the pools of water that were around are now frozen over into sheets of ice, which are good for skating on. The ground which was almost bare is now white from the hail of the previous evening storm. I expect that since there are blue skies and not a cloud to be seen that by mid-day there will be a vast thaw happening. Still the storm of last night will probably have lingering effects for a few hours. Last night, I knew nothing of how cold to which the temp were dropping because I went to bed in sheer exhaustion at 9:00 p.m. and totally conked out. After nights and nights of the werewolf thing I guess I couldn't stand it any more.... I slept soundly all night and feel pretty darn good today.. all because of my wonderful night of sleep. 

In the last month since I went off to the Blueberry I haven't really written much about what things I have been doing in the way of spinning etc... but in actuality I have been working a little... not so much on homework although even a little has been going on there... though I do admit that I have really fallen behind. (I still believe that I'll get finished because I really do think that I have not that badly fallen behind but still level 5 has been hanging over my head and I do get mild panic attacks when I think how spring is just around the corner and I still have so much left to do.) However... I digress... I have been working. While at the Blueberry I spun three 100gm bags of alpaca and merino blend rovings and while I didn't quite get them all finished, I did almost see the end of the stuff. The spun fibre has been staring at me for weeks now, and begging me to finish them,  so yesterday I decided that it was high time to free up some spools. First I  finished spinning the singles, which didn't take a long time since there was only a little left.  Then I plied it once and for all and got it finished.  I must say that I am really pleased with the results. As you can see above, there are three skeins...

It is a fairly textured yarn but it is quite nice. I even had enough left on two spools after the first spool ran out to spin 75 metres of two ply yarn...

Aside from that I have been a knitting a lot lately... While at the Blueberry there was concern that our (the NPSW Guild) comfort blanket project was falling short of the desired results so I came home with a bit of a bee in my bonnet about getting some comfort blankets done.... so I started in and I have to say that there is progress in that area too...

I began the blanket project by going through my stash and finding a bunch of mohair that I hoped I could put together in some pretty way that would make comfort blankets sing... I started with a forest green mohair and knit a large triangle and when I ran out of that fibre I realized that nothing I had would look good with it so I bummed from a friend a couple of cones of mohair in brown and beige... raveled out the green that I had already knitted and started again. This time I started knitting with more purpose... and so far this is what I have...

I really like the meandering pink line through the whole project... the pink certainly brightens all the bland colours... it is a little more than 1/4 finished....

Then I got going on the pink... (of which I had the most in any colour)  and I knit a huge triangle.... and it looks like this...

 I know it kind of looks purple but its not... still it is a cool pink not a warm pink....

Anyway I was telling the Knit Night ladies about this project and one of the ladies was looking over my project and said that she had a mohair blend that I might be interested in so the following knit night she showed up with the biggest spool of mohair and a huge piece of crochet work that she had done and never done anything with and asked me if I wanted it.... needless to say my mind went wild!
Her piece looks like this....

 So I have this great idea.... I'm going to take her piece and my piece and put them together and then I will need another piece like the pink one I've already knit and two small blue pieces and then I will put them together this way....

With a white fringe around the edges... I think it will make a lovely comfort blanket....

So as you can see I have not been sitting idle... today I am making a futon couch. I know this sounds weird but it's true and since my sectional couch is now gone... we have nothing to sit on except for a couple of old ratty chairs that need some TLC.  It will have to stay like that for the moment... but I am working on level 5 today.... in between everything else I have carded some fibre in preparation for a sample... but more on that tomorrow. In the meantime I have bread ready to be put in the pans... so I had better go and get some of this outstanding work done.

See ya tomorrow with more on the wool front....

Oh and by the way since getting on this computer a few hours ago (I've had several interruptions.. ) it is now starting to melt outside and is not quite as frozen as it was.... I even hear a wood pecker working at that hollow tree again.

Thunder And Lightning...In Winter?

This has been an odd day. For starters I'm having lingering werewolf attack since last night I went to bed at 10:30 p.m. and by 12:00 a.m.I was awake again and I had began to feel the pressures of level 5 homework and not making large inroads into it... so I came downstairs and spun yarn till 2 a.m. Meanwhile the truck has conked out again because of a bad starter this time.  So Teapot spent his morning with a friend under the truck replacing the starter with a new one. I made a pot of red lentil soup with pre-cooked honey garlic sausage, carrots, red and yellow peppers and tons of garlic and pepper and a little tomato to flavour it up.  By the time Teapot and his friend were finished with the truck they were ready for a bowl of hot soup and some home made bread. Meanwhile I am teaching Confirmation class to a 13 year old gal who comes to my house each Sunday afternoon for lessons. It has been a few years since I have done confirmation classes. In some ways it feels strange to have the reigns of church business in my hands again after being away from it for almost three years. Still, I feel I am doing my part.  I had stepped away from organized religion for a few years because I found that the work of the church and the work of Christianity don't always go hand in hand... it is difficult to be a leader in the church when sometimes you just want to stand up and yell... "Hey, this is not right!!!" Too political, too organized, and not really always the Christian way taken... sometimes churches can be mean to people and they sometimes can be thoughtless, and hurtful... I'm not always sure I want to be a part of that.... Sometimes the way of loving care and thoughtfulness are not the ways of the church... I'll leave it there... my opinions are mine... and I really don't want to influence anyone except for the better through action... and only then when the person has decided to be influenced of their own free will... then it is not coercion.  I hate coercion!

The oddest thing about today though, without a doubt, was the weird storm that blew through here a little while ago. Thunder, lightening, hail.... it was just like something you would see on a mid-July day... not something you see this time of the year.  I don't think I have ever seen a mid-winter thunder storm. And let me tell you, the lightning bolts rained down in a ferocity unexpected. With the ozone depleted, and water tables disappearing, with plagues of Pine Beetles and dry summers, with wars and red Northern Lights and Dec 12 and the end of the Mayan calender pending..... it all seems a little too Armagedonish for my liking.  Makes me think I should build an ark or something.

So here it is supper is going to be ready in about five minutes. (A more strenuous gourmet supper you have never seen... spaghetti and sauce from a bottle with a bagged salad on the side... oh so tough to make.. snork!) The day has almost ended and I am happy to say that I finished the fibre that I started at the Blueberry a few weeks ago... 450 metres of 3-ply alpaca merino blend grey yarn and about 75 metres of 2-ply of the same stuff... washed and hanging to dry... now I can really start the level 5 and 3 homework again with a clear mind. Tomorrow I will be starting TPI.. oh joy oh bliss... my favorite!

I hope you've had a lovely Sunday with no thunder and lightning... unless you like that kind of thing...