So much fiber, so little time

A pox on badly wound skeins

So, no postings in a while, because I've been insanely busy with paid work. But now that it's warm enough to knit while waiting for the bus, I decided to wind off a skein of sock yarn for a commuting project. Unfortunately, it was a badly wound skein, so it took more than an hour to untangle four ounces of yarn. Sigh.

Fortunately, I let the left brain/right brain split take over: the left brain snarls and swears at the tangles while the right brain and hands placidly untangle the mess. Of course, once I'd finished, I decided that the stitch pattern I want to use needed a different colorway, but that skein was less trouble.

Spring is here?

I love this picture from the Telegraph of sheep herded into the word "spring". Note the ovine wandering out of the dotted "i" in the second picture - definitely a black sheep in spirit, if not in color.

On the other hand, in my neck of the woods, we got four inches of very heavy wet snow yesterday, and today the temperature hasn't risen above freezing. But the robins are going to town on worms floating out of the swampland in the back yard. There must have been fifteen of them at the "all you can eat" buffet!

And for more English sheep fun, visit this BBC game. You might want to turn off the sound, but I find I react faster to sound than to sight.

Graphics geeks are easily amused.

see more crazy cat pics

A tree no more

The maple that appeared in recent photos is now just a pile of sawdust. It had been unwell* in the last year because of damage from a really bad thunderstorm in 2003, so I called in the tree guys. They estimated, given the local storm damage, that they'd get to me in two to three weeks. In a mystery of space and time, they came the next day. But, no, I'm certainly not complaining!

*I love the phrase. It reminds me of one of my favorite lines from My Favorite Year: "Ladies are unwell, Stone. Gentlemen vomit."

Cock-eyed optimists

These are my psychotic daffodils, which are growing in the midst of snow, sleet, ice and deluge. I'm sure their good buddies, the crocuses and snowdrops, are also out there under the snow, but they may float away before they get much taller.

Happy effing birthday

My day started sometime before 6am when I discovered that the hose had blown off the sump pump during the night. Result: a seriously flooded basement, so I ran downstairs to reconnect and drain. (Side prediction: knee-length nightgown and rubber boots will appear on all the catwalks this season. Ooo la la!)

The downed branches are from the Tuesday's ice storm. Today we've been wavering between heavy snow and freezing rain. Frankly, I'd prefer the snow.

And it's a short weekend because DST begins. Grump, grump, grump.

Ghost tree

It's been snowing like crazy, and this is one of the maples outside the front door, photographed hand-held at night. Given the weight on the branches, I'm contemplating keeping the heat up a bit overnight in case the power goes out.

The gloves are finished (in fact, I've been wearing them everyday for the last week and a half) and I've been knitting swatches with the Webs tencel/merino. Interesting stuff - I can see a spring cardigan in a stitch pattern that maximizes the shine.

Procrastination project

I used the excuse that I lost a Polartec glove to knit a pair rather than work on the shawl. Here's glove #1. #2 is up to the pinkie and should be finished in time for the morning.

I'm also trying to figure out a weave structure that I saw on someone's coat fabric. Unfortunately, she was too far away for me to count threads, so I just keep messing around in Fiberworks. And I succumbed to temptation and ordered a little bit of Webs' new merino/tencel yarn - it just kept whispering "scarf" to me. And I hate weaving scarves :)

Ravelry

Just a note - the whole Kewl Kidz Klub of ravelry is astoundingly annoying. I can't track links back to it because I'm not in the club? Sorta blows out the world wide web concept.

(As if I ever wondered why I had no use for ravelry ... Wish I could ban links from there, but then I'm long-term actual WWW. It just ticks me off to pay for bandwidth with no tracking. Phhht!)

Blocking woes

On Sunday afternoon I washed and pinned out a small shawl. Now, in the winter, the only cat-free flat surface is in the basement on top of the chest freezer. OK, fine, it only took me about 15 minutes to pin the little bugger out. On the other hand, it's not dry yet. Sigh.

CSI: Animal Crime

This week I'm taking care of my neighbor's cat and two goldfish - except that today there is only one goldfish. The cat keeps shtum ...

Biting the bullet

I've been putting it off, but I guess I can't any longer: today is the day to frog the shawl edging. At least I have some DVDs to watch ...

In the meantime, I'm baking some chicken right now and bread later.

Why, yes, I am still alive

Things have been a little crazy around here. I'm working three part-time jobs and spending another large chunk of time on some volunteer work. Hence the blog silence.

Some fiberish things continue. I set out to finish the silk shawl that I put on hold over the summer, but once I worked the edging all the way around the first side and then some, I realized I would run out of yarn. So I redesigned the edging to be narrower, but was and am too disheartened to frog it. (There's a lifeline in place, but still ...) In the meantime, I've knitted another item to submit to the next One Skein Wonder book. All it needs is blocking and a few more words added to the pattern.

Proof

OK, I've been touting the Hearthkit, so here's a loaf baked on it (displayed, of course, on a handwoven towel in natural colored cottons :) It's a whole wheat buttermilk bread weighing in at 21 oz / 600 g, and it doubled in size while baking. Yum, nice sammich bread!

Bits and bobs

I've only been knitting small things lately, although there are larger projects brewing in my head. The most recent work is a pair of ribbed bed socks in Keesmere. See, despite the new furnace, I still don't heat the house very much, and shoving bare feet between a comforter and a futon can suck the warmth right out of them. At any rate, It certainly makes me understand the colonial bed warming pan and the British hot water bottle! The other knitting is just a mind-numbing swatch to weigh and estimate yarn usage for a pattern that needs to be sized up.

Oh, for fun and good works: I've gotten hooked on FreeRice. It's a website set up to donate 20 grains of rice for every correct [English] vocabulary word you pick. So far, my word geekiness has managed 2500 to 3000 grains a day. This is much more fun than the charity sites which accumulate funds by the single click!