busybusybusy

I somehow forgot it was Friday last Friday, and I’ve been running around like a madwoman in my attempts to get ready to go out of town, so my snow post is half a draft. But my car service (my parents, who are nice enough to drive past & pick me up on their way south) will be here in half an hour and I’m not quite ready. So, in case I’m away from the internet for a week, have a lovely belated Solstice. There should be lots of pictures and such next week.

 

still swamped

Okay, some of the swamp is the recent weather, but I’ve been trying to fit science in and around packing and moving. I should really have started the culling/packing/cleaning process weeks before I actually did…so this week is especially Not Fun. On a positive note, though, my new place has lots of light.

This is part of the kitchen (and the view out the back windows):

And this is a lovely present from a college friend. I think she said she got it in Scotland. It arrived yesterday and improved my mood about a hundredfold.

 

awww, poor Mel

“If I hold onto the noisemaker, she won’t leave!”

I’ve been working a lot and running around like a crazy lady recently, neglecting my poor, dear cat. I’ve even had the nerve to come home after work and then go out again!

Except for the weather, I had a pretty great weekend–I went to a party on Friday (going-away party, alas, for two awesome people) and a wedding dance (contra, English, and Scottish) on Saturday, which convinced me that I need to actually learn Scottish dancing at some point. My feet are slow learners.

The weather, however, meant that I had to pull the air conditioner out of the hall closet and rearrange the living room so I could set it up. I had been so hoping to not need it until I move next month… (I’m moving a whole five blocks this time. Same zip code, though, unlike after my last (four-block) move.)

Gotta run now, but there should be a Tour de Fleece wrap-up post soon.

 

random wednesday

• New knitting content will be delayed.  I swear I have 2.5mm needles and more than one set of 2.75mm, but they’re hiding.  And my mini-swatches (15sts, 4 rows) say that 2.25mm is too small and 3mm is too big.

• Adamas continues to grow.  I’ve been very impressed at how much it does so when it’s my carry-around project, so, despite the fact that it’s a bit big for carrying everywhere, I’ll probably keep doing that for a while.  And I appreciate the simplicity of the lace pattern more if I’m also trying to pay attention to other things.

• I saw a very interesting sweater (on a person) at the art museum last Friday: it looked like a Fair Isle-type sweater with the pieces inside out, so the floats were on the outside.  It made me wonder if it’d been made by a very proud knitter….but I wasn’t feeling outgoing enough to ask about it.

• It took about a week, given how much time I was spending either at work or out with my parents, who were in town, but I finished carding my February Spunky Club fiber into batts:

These are mostly all the New Day corriedale, but I added some tussah silk, some icicle (dyed red/orange/yellow), and a couple of teensy bits of sari silk. I’m plotting a few color combinations of my own to dye and then card, but it’ll be quite a while before I have time to act on said plans.

• Getting up early is really, really hard.  It’s great for my work schedule to have a walking-to-work partner, but my sleep schedule has not caught up well enough for me to fit in much pre-work running (the only time of day that works well for me), and housework is taking extra tolls.

• Lack of time for basic housework does mean that I finally tried the Vietnamese chicken hoagie from Fu-Wah (my local deli) last night–it’s not bad, and I like the inclusion of cucumber in addition to the pickled carrot & daikon, but I think I still prefer the tofu version.

 

I need to start knitting more socks

I finally have shoes that are perfect for wearing with them.  These are my shoes for Too Cold To Not Wear Socks (below 40ºF) While Too Wet To Have Exposed Sock Toes.  (This isn’t counting the waterproof hiking boots that I also use as snow boots when there’s snow.)

(Yes, I am too lazy to hem my jeans.)

(Socks pictured are these, my most-worn handknit socks.  Not just because they were the first pair I knit for myself.)

 

the dark side of programmable thermostats

I don’t have control of mine. My landlords set it up for theoretically optimal timing for people with “normal” work schedules. It woke me up this morning, as it often does, when the heat came on to warm it up from my preferred temperature to a few degrees warmer. I had a couple of things I wanted to try online in what seemed to me to be the middle of the night, so I got up and opened the laptop, but I’m about to head back for a bit more sleep.

First, though: I’m going to be in NYC this weekend, so if you are, too, especially if you want to see the Calder exhibit at the Whitney, let me know.

 

stupid spinny question: why is top called top?

I just got home from a party, and I was checking my gmail, and one of the sidebar ads mentioned “spinning top”. Being a wee bit obsessive, I was thinking combed fiber until I saw the word Hannukah and realized they meant dreidels. Anyone know why “top”, though?

 

random sunday

• I was spinning on Friday, while in line at the Post Office.  As I sent off a box of fiber, I had a nice conversation about knitting and spinning (and how I go to Sheep and Wool Festivals rather than Stitches) with the woman working at the counter, who’s knit for much of her life but never gotten into spinning.

 

• I was knitting on the trolley on Saturday night (spinning is for waiting for the trolley, not riding on it), and I got into a conversation with the woman sitting in front of me, who’d learned to knit as a girl but hadn’t knit much recently.  So I directed her to a couple of my favorite local yarn stores.  

 

• Knitting really cuts into spinning time.  However, knitted objects are much more useful than skeins of yarn…so I’m trying to take advantage of the finishing kick I’m finding myself on.

This is the second headband I’ve made out of the skein of Aurora that was a birthday present last year.  I love them both.  And I’m plotting ways to make really sparkly handspun.  (Yes, the pile of sparkly bits for blending should prove great fun, as soon as the drum carder actually shows up.  But there may also be some sparkly thread for plying at some point.)

 

 

And I finally, finally finished this hat that I started about a year and a half ago.  It’s Lorna’s Laces worsted in Carrot, purchased as extra/backup yarn for my Olympic Socks.  It’s a really simple hat, just varying heights of ribbing, but I started the decreases too early, twice, and then it sat around for a while.

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Pictures of new yarn and a blocked Swallowtail will show up soon.  (*bounce**bounce*)

 

life is good

• I went dancing on Saturday, where I got to see people I hadn’t seen in too long.

• Anju and I went to Longwood Gardens yesterday. (Pictures will show up soon–I took about 150.) They have some incredible grounds and greenhouses. And there was a special thing of treehouses.

• I finished my Swallowtail Shawl last night.

It obviously needs to be blocked, but I was very happy to be able to wear it today, for my birthday. I had an excellent day.

 

weekend highlights

There were definitely some snags to my weekend, and things that went somewhat wrong (drive up taking an extra two hours, for example), but I had a wonderful time overall.

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I learned, among other things, that camping in 30º weather is kinda fun, as long as one is appropriately prepared.  (I felt much better about the huge pile of stuff I packed–particularly the extra sleeping bag as supplemental sleeping pad–when I woke up on Saturday morning, all toasty and warm.)   And I’m also happy, yet again, that my circulatory system is highly functional–if most of me is warm, my extremities do pretty well, too, so I never quite got to the point of putting on socks.

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When I parked my carshare car at the festival yesterday morning, the woman who parked next to me seemed really surprised that I’d travelled so far to get there.  It was totally worth it.

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(I have what I hope are better foliage pictures. They should show up on Friday.)

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I love campfires. It was great to hang out with the Third Street Ravelers on Saturday night, when the people I was supposed to be camping with fled to places with heating. (I approve, quite heartily, of my friends not freezing.)

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The festival was mobbed. This was on Sunday, which was much less populated than Saturday, but there were still lots of people everywhere.

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I wasn’t expecting to see fiber-related cars after passing the I-87/84 exchange, but I saw this car on rt. 206 in New Jersey.

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It was dark by the time I got home and settled, so pictures of all of the stuff I bought will have to wait.

 

busy, busy, busy

I’ve been busily working on science and on my swallowtail shawl. In case I don’t have time to post again before Rhinebeck, let me just say now that y’all should say hi if you see me there. I’ll be carrying a Vermont Public Radio shoulder bag and wearing one of these things.

The photo is from last week, on my way to work.

 

real food rocks my world

I spent much of last week away at a conference, and I’d been even busier than usual in the week or so before we left, and then Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday evenings went into antisocial ignoring-the-world so I could recover from the overstimulation of the meeting. Wednesday…oh, yes, Wednesday evening was a little cleaning and then reading the book I’d picked up from the library. Which meant that last night was the first time in far too long that I actually Made Food. (It’s fall. I eat a lot of apples/asian pears in the fall, with either peanut butter or cheese. Not the healthiest thing ever, but fast and tasty.)

I think it was partly the stop at the farmers’ market that did it. I bought chard and an eggplant, plus a yam and some lettuce, some lamb and some more apples and asian pears.

And I have now had three meals of Real Food (defined as requiring washing and chopping of veggies).

A salad! It’s been a while since I’ve seen baby greens at the market, and I don’t really eat anything else. Partly because I like getting mixed lettuces/greens and partly because I prefer the texture of the younger leaves. So it’s also been months since I’ve made a green salad at home. (Yes, the bowl is mostly full of lettuce, with a bell pepper on top.)

Vaguely-Indian chard/squash/pepper stuff. It would’ve been over rice if I’d had enough rice, but the whole wheat couscous is pretty good with it. This isn’t my best Indian-ish food ever, but it’s not bad.

And tonight, I stopped for tofu on the way home and ended up getting a head of broccoli as well. (I also discovered a pepper in the veggie drawer of my fridge.) I’d been wanting eggplant with tofu in black bean sauce, but it’s even better with pepper and broccoli (and hoisin sauce), too. Yum.

Restaurant and catered and truck foods all have their places, but real, homecooked food is far superior. It’s nice to be back to it.

 

two things

1. Go read this. And this. And then e-mail or write to the HHS.

2. I went up to NYC this past weekend, to hang out with my parents. And I finally managed to get myself to the Yarn Tree. (This requires being in Brooklyn on a not-Friday with some extra time.) I have to say, that was perhaps the second-nicest yarn/fiber store I’ve been to so far (after Shuttles in Boulderish, though I may be shorting NEFA a bit because I didn’t really know what I was doing when I went there). So many kinds of fiber I hadn’t seen (or noticed, at least) yet! Lots of colors of basic wools! And, not least, a table and chairs in the middle of the fiber/spinning room, so my parents didn’t get impatient. They actually seemed interested in some of the things with odder names or appearances, like the silk cocoons and silk hankies, and they agreed with me that the Kundert spindles were very pretty.

I had planned to buy very little–maybe an ounce or two of some unusual fiber that I hadn’t tried before, but nothing much. Instead, I, um, bought a lot. Including a spindle.

I had been thinking I wanted a new spindle that was heavier than the two Bosworth Midis that I’ve had for three years. This isn’t that (it’s 1.2 oz, between the 1.0 and 1.3 of the Midis), but I love it.

The fiber that’s already on it is the targhee I bought.  (Also YUM.)  I haven’t yet tried the silver baby alpaca or the merino/yak or the masham, but I’m looking forward to them. And that beautiful merino/tencel on the left is from JulieSpins (jsandell on Ravelry); it just happened to show up on my desk yesterday.