Panic Ville

Ok so this morning I'm in Panic Ville. I kept waking in the middle of the night last night and thinking about things to come... and things that should have come and time and how it slips past in a never ending eddy making you worry about missed deadlines. 

Upcoming events include a spindling course that I am teaching to several members of my guild. They are paying for this course (and no I don't get paid for this : (  because it is a fundraiser for the guild). It is the first time that I will actually teach a proper workshop so I have been getting ready for this with worry in my heart and anticipation in my mind. For the last few days I have been getting together photo copies and fibre. I have been preparing for any number and types of spindles showing up in my class and it has been no small task. I prepped fibre for two days so that all my students would be on the same page. From pencil rovings for beginning so that they don't have to draft or with a minimal amount of drafting to batts and rolags I've got it all. The rolags were the worse. I spent hours forming rolags from Polworth wool I had dyed a while ago and I ended up with a blister on the inside of my finger. (That doesn't mean that I'm carding wrong it just means that I have no thumb on my right hand and a blister formed when I was carding from holding the handle between my first and second finger. Yes I was gentle and no the teeth of the cards did not touch or dig in and yes I was like a bird.... I did it right.) Anywhy when I had prepped all my student's fibre this is what I had...

This picture doesn't have all the fibre I prepped but it had lovely colour so I had to add it here.

This picture has all the fibre I prepped.

Meanwhile I have spun lots of cotton but I still don't have enough for the level5 requirements. I am about 30 yards short. This is what I have....

I'm really proud of my cotton skeins. They look awesome.

So why am I in Panic Ville?  Level 4.  It has been on hold all week. I was supposed to have the flax and Lopi samples done by the 1st of March but that has not happened. I have been up to my ears with all this other stuff. But now that I've got the cotton spun and I have to wait until my cotton order arrives before I can spin more I have a little more time on my hands.  Today I have to do a little work on my spindle course that I will be teaching tomorrow and then it is time to catch up on write ups for my level 4 homework. So that means that once again I have to wait until Sunday before I cane get back to spinning flax. Line flax.  5 samples using various methods and then on to the 2 Lopi samples. That will put me behind a whole week. Argh!

When I get in Panic Ville I do have a tendency to go on a bit so excuse me for that today BECAUSE I'M DEFINITELY IN PANIC VILLE.

(,) vs (...)

Daughter #1 has been writing. She says she is writing a book. She is on page 75. Daughter #1 thinks that she is some kind of aficionado on writing skills. (har har har)! I've read what she writes and while for a fifteen year old she does very well, her spelling is atrocious and her punctuation is even worse. So I found it rather hilarious when she came along yesterday and had a look over my shoulder at what I happened to be writing at the time and gave me a few hints.  I admit, I am not the best writer in the world and there is a lot for me to learn. I find that keeping this blog really helps me learn more about writing.  My sentence structure leaves a lot to be desired and God knows my spelling is periodically pathetic, still I had to laugh when Daughter #1 said that I should stop using so many (...) and put in (,)  instead. I turned my head and gave her a look that must have said, "Who the heck are you to be criticizing your elders?" (Take note, I said "elders" and not "betters"). She then told me that (...) has a tendency to make me seem like I fell asleep mid sentence.  My reaction went something like this: "!!!!????"

You see it had never occurred to me that (...) would appear to make me look older. Falling asleep mid sentence is something that people who hardly know if their in the world or out do.  I think of myself as fairly alert... I don't have Narcolepsy or anything. I always considered (...) to be a pause in thinking with a slight change of direction in thinking too. So I had a think about this off and on all day... as a matter of a fact, I had a think about it a lot even at night which means, that I over slept this morning and had a big rush job getting breakfast on the table for Teapot and the girls.  I think what is happening is that I have now become so fast at typing that (...) is an opportunity for my brain to catch up with my hands. I know that makes me sound like I type really fast... but generally, I don't type fast, especially when it comes to copying text.  When I am typing my thoughts, my typing skills over the last 8 years, since we purchased our first computer, has gotten faster than my hand writing. That means that lots of times I'm not thinking about my hands at all, just typing the thoughts as they come to me.  (...) gives my brain a chance to catch up.

Daughter #1 also said that (...) might make me sound like I forgot what I was about to say.  This too seems to make me sound like I'm incoherent. I totally disagree with that. (...) is a way of pausing and turning ones sentence slightly. (,) gives the writer a natural pause in a sentence and doesn't change the direction of the sentence at all... but (...) changes the direction of the sentence and gives the reader an indication that a new idea is forming as a result of the previous one.

For example...
I always thought that my Daughters would love me and give me respect... but I now realize that all Daughters are put on the face of the earth to challenge you and make you wonder if you are a nutcase.

The (...) turns the sentence and gives the reader an indication that the result of the sentence is changing somehow.  This is different from the (,). The (,) is used thus:

Daughter #1 challenged my brain today, by suggesting that I might be using punctuation in a particularly wrong way.

So you be the judge... Do I use (...) wrongly or does it add to my writing in a uniquely helpful way?

I bow to the force of popular culture... (,) vs (...)!

I'm Sick Of This Cold... Period

-27 again this morning and too cold to go out. I think I will hibernate today and spin cotton. Yes I'm still spinning cotton. When I finished I had 276 yards of plied cotton. I then spent a good hour digging through every bit of this that and the other thing looking for small samples of cotton that I had gotten at workshops in order to come up with enough to finish the cotton spinning today. I spun about half last night and will spin the other half this morning and hopefully have enough to finish all my cotton skeins that I will for the level 5 course supplies. I have ordered cotton and a new Tahkli and some Schacht Cotton cards....

Do you folks remember that I had ordered cotton cards from the Howard Brush company last year and that I had gotten them in the mail and was waiting to open them on Christmas morning?  Yeah, well I got a terrible shock when I opened them and discovered that they were wool combs and not cotton combs... I sent them back and got a refund. I was so ticked off that I decided to wait and think about the cotton cards. Boy am I glad I did. I talked to Joan Ruane (Joan is like the cotton queen) about the damn things and found out that she hates the Howard Brush cotton cards. So it is a good thing that I didn't get them. I just ordered the Schacht ones and though they are just too unwieldy, Teapot has said that he will cut them down for me and adjust them to the size I want. I don't know why I didn't think of that before.

Speaking of Schacht... they have a new wheel on the market...

It is called the Sidekick

OMG (I just have to be modern and use this stupid acronym) it is the neatest little wheel... I think I am just going to have to give this wheel a try.  I think I might like it almost or maybe even as much as I like my Majacraft Gem.

My toesies are still freezing. This sunroom really needs some flooring as the subflooring is bitterly cold. I can't wait till spring and we get time and money for the flooring. Brr!

Still looking at cars...

This is the one that I want...

but this is a close second.

In the end they probably both will be sold before we get a chance to get serious about either one.

I'm off to spin cotton and hope that I can get enough to finish this wee project.... because I'm really wanting to get back to the level 4 homework. Hmm... : (

Hope your day is toastie warm.

Computer Buddies and Cars, and Cotton

My computer buddies, who I call Spiro and Jiro looking on the very cold weather... brrr!

We are looking at second hand cars... our truck has over 200,000 kms and we are starting to feel that it might not be as reliable any more. So we are looking around at a variety of different vehicles.  One of them is right here in our own backyard. But the price is a little higher than we would like and it is a bare bones car with nothing... nodda... nar ting at'all... So we have started doing a little research on other vehicles. Hmm... it is a hard decision.

While I hate the thoughts of taking on another vehicle... it means more gas consumption... we are not able to sell our truck considering that it is the vehicle that hauls our water.  But it is old and it is getting to the point where we don't trust it anymore.  What a dilemma. We are looking at several different vehicles. A 2009 PT Cruiser that we will have to drive quite far to buy... A Ford Focus ZX3 that is a little older and we are not sure about that. A Nissan Versa.... also not sure because it is farther away and the one that is closest to us is a Pontiac Vibe and it is two doors down from our house. But it is a manual transmission... Teapot and I have not driven standard for twenty something years. EERK! I'm afraid that I might stall out constantly or slam into something that I shouldn't slam into. Teapot is obviously not sure either because he downloaded instructions on how to drive a standard and has been reading them for the last few nights. EERK!  Stand by and I'll let you know how this goes.

-35 degrees C this morning.... brrr! The sheep are huddled.... The Alpacas are huddled....and Honeydew and Mishka are huddled... I haven't been up to check on the lamb this morning but hopefully she's huddled with her mom.  Even the horse is standing quietly with her blanket on her. All around the air is crisp, cold, and clear. I'm thinking about socks.... cause my toesies are cold this morning and that is a rare occurance.

Cotton spinning is coming along nicely but I'm not quite finished. I have a little more work to do this morning.  Last night I stayed up till 11:00 p.m. and spun away while everyone else headed off to bed... while doing so, I listened to CBC Radio and a show called Ideas. It was really interesting to hear. If you are into Podcasts you can go here to read more about it and download the Podcast... the guest speaker is French thinker Rene Girard and he is talking about his philosophy of man and how we are intrinsically competitive and how we try to overcome that and base society and our values on religion. He uses history and literature as a way of proving his theory. Awesome program... I have questions about it but I can see how he came to his theory... still I wonder why some people opt to not live in society and go off on their own... I would love to sit down with him and have a conversation about it. It is rather worrying if you believe it but as with most theories of human behaviour you can come to a belief of your own and completely negate everything he says... I call this the "Stick-your-head-in-the-sand-syndrome."

I'll leave you this morning with a picture of my cotton....

I am off to ply this cotton... and hopefully I have 450 yards... then on to line flax.

Trivia And Trivial

I spun a lot of cotton yesterday but I still have more to spin so will be concentrating on that today.

Trivia Alert:
Did you know that Wiener Schnitzel is breaded veal cutlet and not hot dogs at all. Did you know that it comes from Vienna, Austria?  I didn't know that until just now when CBC Radio had their trivia question for the morning... I had to look it up... you never know what you are going to learn.I don't know why it was important to tell you that... I just found it interesting.


It is still cold in this neck of the woods. A balmy -28 degrees as I'm sitting here. The year that we moved into this house we had a freezing day... we moved in on the 10th of March and it was -32 degrees... it was really horrible. I think this year is going to be very similar... we will be waiting for spring still in May.

No new lambs yet which is good with these temperatures still dipping. I am hoping that the forecast is wrong and that we will be getting warmer temperatures as the week continues. The wee lamb born last week continues well. She is fighting her mother who is a desperately bad mom and tries to shake off her baby every time she tries to nurse. I had hoped that last year was an anomaly but apparently not. For some reason some ewes just don't want the bother of feeding their lambs. Last year this ewe had twins and she was the same then too. One of her last year lambs is doing fairly well and the other is very small. Not what I would call a good mom. I hate to see them ignoring their babies. This year she only birthed one and that is a good thing. We have her in the shed which is very small, we do that to force her to nurse her baby and so that the baby doesn't have to work so hard to latch on, but she still stomps and tries to shake off her baby every time the lamb tries to suck. Generally those lambs get pooped on (literally pooped on), a lot because they have to chase their mom and nurse from the back (between the legs) when the mom is not expecting it. It doesn't make for a good mom or a healthy lamb. I have kept the mom only because she is my only pure blood merino. I am hoping to get a good fleece from her and then I won't breed her again (she'll be able to retire and just provide fleeces). Meanwhile, the other ewe (who goes by the name of Fanny), who is also left to give birth is an awesome mom.... the complete opposite to Queen (the above mentioned ewe). Fanny has always given twins and they are always strong and hardy though usually a little on the small side. This doesn't bother me since my animals don't get a lot of the green feed since we do not have lots of pasture... they are mostly fed on hay all year round and we only put them on grass in the spring before the grasshoppers eat it. Also Fanny is part Shetland which is a breed that tends to be smaller anyway. I'm assuming that her lambs tend toward the Shetland rather than the BFL/Merino which is what she has been bred with.  Clear as mud?

Currently we have ten sheep but two are promised for meat so we will be butchering those later in the spring. I am thinking of getting rid of one of my rams. He is a freak and constantly freaks out and has a good run at the fence whenever anyone happens to look at him. He is not a nice animal. Tending towards stupidity! Twice now I've had to extract him from the fence when he has taken a run at it and gotten his head stuck... he's just too stupid for words.  I'm not sure if he will be butchered or if I will sell him. Maybe someone else can get better behaviour from him.

Anyway that is a little update on lambs and weather... not much interesting going on so I had better go listen to the news about the Oscars... (go Colin... he's my favorite actor anyway)... and spin that cotton.

Grey Sunday

I'm just about to go and sit with my knitting for one hour and then on to the cotton.  I am determined to get this cotton done and off the wheel by tomorrow evening.  Outside the temperatures have dipped to -27 degrees. It has been snowing for two days though you can't really see any accumulations. It is very fine snow but it is blowing too and that makes for an eerie day. The wind is howling around the house and I keep watching to see if Fanny is going to drop her lambs. I hope she doesn't because it would not be good for her wee lambs to have to suffer this cold and wind chill.  But she is due at any time so we wait and hope the the temps warm up soon.  I took pictures of the snow but it just doesn't do the weather justice.  You can't take pictures of wind and cold and that is as much of what is making this morning so blah.  While I'm glad we are still getting snow, (mostly because we need the snow pack to help restore the water table after the last few years of draught), I am sorry to see it so cold.... I just wish it was a little warmer like -4 degrees C. Doesn't this look brrrr....

It makes my nose cold just looking at it.

I think I'll go listen to CBC radio and have some tea and knit on a scarf for a while... before I spin cotton. See ya... and I hope your Sunday is milder than mine.

Getting In Touch With My Inner Pink 2

I'm thinking that after all this is not so bad... at least it is not Barbie Pink. Yuck! Tomorrow I may feel like puking but for today I'm ok with it. I think I'll try snuggling socks next.