Bent Flute

Hiaku for DIY-er

2012-01-25T16:30:00.004-05:00

Winter light is weak
for choosing a cork floor tile.
We are not smart folks.

I'm exhausted and we're not even done

2012-01-17T19:45:00.000-05:00

January 11-16, 2012

Tearing out the floor to the original planks (that are covered in glue and crap). The room is wrapped up like a bio-hazard zone.

Ugh.

It's really old floor. And it stinks.

January 12

Move the plumbing and cover up the old raggedy floor.

Luan! Luan! And the plastic comes off.

January 13-14

Sometimes it doesn't LOOK like much has happened, and the cabinets aren't actually nailed in, but they are staged and, at this point, we know that we are missing a fill piece that I scrambled to order. A great deal of plumbing work has occurred. We are relocating three lines - fridge, sink, and dishwasher. Throughout this, too, they've been engaged in some plaster and electrical work for us both in the kitchen and outside and up on the 3rd floor. So lots of work, most of it never to be seen. At this point we also know that we need 2x10" registers instead of the 2x12" we bought. Well, duh that's because the pretty ones only came in 2x12." Surely that makes sense...

Sunday is, thankfully, a day of rest. So, we went to the tile store for a few hours.

January 16

Monday was a bank holiday and I had the day off and took Maggie The Dog and Nick The Son to Gloucester to buy a big old lab table that happened to have a beautiful butcher block top.

We're using it as the top of the island. The tabletop is 6'x30." Extra stuff included for scale. That yellow...ahhh...I love that yellow but DH decided it was time for a change. I'll get used to the new color.

And we have lights under the cabinets!

And finally the sink is hooked up! Plumbing!

No, the cabinets aren't nailed in yet.

We have cork floor samples on order, the filler from the cabinet company should arrive Friday, and let's hope my sinus infection doesn't get any worse.

Being the hearty DIY-ers that we are, we're going with tile countertops that I'm installing because somehow I signed up for tile duty once way back and it stuck with me. Well, hell, I like tile and this time I get a new toy: a wet saw! Solid surface is gorgeous but so expensive it makes me uncomfortable - I can't justify the expense, even if I can afford it...which I can't. So, tile it is. Nice tiles. Big tiles, and gorgeous variegated blue/green (do not say teal) mosaic tiles on the back splash.

Progress.

And now to bed because today was a day off from kitchen work and tomorrow it starts up again.

Cheers

Some weaving is done, and a sampler.

2011-11-29T10:05:00.001-05:00

What sampler, you ask? The one I wove on the big, restored floor loom, Bam-Bam. But, I'm not going to show it off because it's about as ugly as sin except for the last six inches or so. Maybe I just show off those inches.

The next project in the queue is a standard sized scarf using three different colors of cochineal dyed Blue-faced Leicester from (sales plug) Sonoran Desert Dyed Fibers. The weave structure will be twill in a houndstooth pattern. Way cool.

Probably you'll be wanting to see the Autumn Tartan shawl (a little too big to be called a scarf). It turned out great!

oh, well, not when if first came off the loom. Ugh! Look at those ratty edges! All those threads hanging out! Actually, this is after it went through the wash. It was even more ratty when it came off the loom. Wannabe Weavers, do not despair!

Yes, I took a cellphone picture. I'm such a dork. And the color isn't quite there - the yellow is more yellow than gold. And yes, that's the headset I use for work. One of the flute players in the Flute Choir has pictures of us in concert where I am wearing this piece so I'm hoping he'll share those soon.

So there we are. The Autumn Tartan Shawl.

Don't poached eggs just make you go weak in the knees?

2011-11-22T13:15:00.000-05:00

I like eggs, clean, unspoiled by melted cheese eggs. Scrambled, fried, hard boiled, soft boiled, poached...My dad, Jim, used to make soft-boiled eggs when I'd come to visit. This is when he lived on Erlands Point in Silverdale. Let me say that Jim is not a culinary genius, but he's as good a cook as anyone else who doesn't have their own cooking show on Food Network. He's just no Anthony Bourdain. But when we dipped English muffins into those soft boiled eggs it just made my heart sing. Maybe it was the amazing view of Dyes Inlet out the picture window, maybe it was just about Eating Breakfast with Dad. I was 13 years old.

Then I discovered Eggs Benedict. Whoa, Nelly! I do kinda like a little Hollandaise on my eggs once in a while, but only if Canadian bacon and an English muffin are between it and the plate. French, Canadian, English, Holland ( hahaha ) how very international. I'm sure I thought I was so sophisticated when I ordered it. There was a restaurant in Seattle, on Denny Way, that served THE BEST Eggs Benedict and hash browns. Again, perhaps it was the atmosphere. After a concert or Rocky Horror, midnight, smoking and goofing off with friends, sitting on the patio in the summer...or on a Saturday morning. It was a 24-hr place.

Dad used to also make corned beef hash with the egg fried in the middle, which essentially poached it...and I'd stick my fork in the middle and mush it around and the yolk would ooze into all the little crevices of the hash that hadn't been crisped...

Huevos Rancheros is best with poached eggs. Try it with roja. Poached eggs are to die for on pancakes with breakfast sausage and a little drizzle of maple syrup - no drenching, just enough to get an occasional reminder that it's there.

I was surfing Chow.com for an appetizer to take to a friend's Thanksgiving dinner and ran across some ideas for leftovers...it included turkey hash and a poached egg. Sounds good to me. See how it derails me?

I have so many posts "in progress" but this one demanded to be written right now.

Curbside Delivery

2011-09-05T18:45:00.013-04:00

When Costco says "curbside delivery" that's exactly what they mean. Take it literally. The good news is that with two men (DH and Son) and a lot of motivation (Mom with camera and pom-poms), three pallets of cabinets can be moved indoors in about 30 minutes.

Considering the right way to haul this f****r up.

Answer: just pick it up.

Cabinets in the living room.

Cabinets in the foyer.

No cabinets in the kitchen today, but painting happened!

I can't begin to tell you what it's like to be surrounded by cabinets all packed in their protective cardboard shells. It's excellent solid wood so it smells nice but it's weird anyway.

Anyone will tell you that doing a kitchen remodel is stressful and draining. Doesn't matter if you're doing it because you want to, need to, or any combination of the two. In my world this takes the shape of me having trouble getting to sleep, then waking up at 3:15 almost every night and it takes a half hour to get back to sleep. Why 3:15am? Beats me but it's frighteningly consistent. I'm not even doing the work. My right arm is "gimpy" (tendonitis) so about the only way I can contribute is handing tools to DH while he's up on the ladder, taking pictures, swiping the check card at Home Depot.

Tomorrow is the first day of the new school year. DH is back to a "normal" work schedule. He also has a show opening on Sept 8th. He really knows how to load up on activities, doesn't he? My theory is that I'm carrying the stress for both of us (not by choice) so he doesn't have to this week.

I'm so tired that I have to debate whether to go to bed early or get into the car and drive one mile to the grocery store for the four items we need. It should be a no-brainer, but getting into the car is so unappealing. Maybe I'll just have a little nap...just a tiny one...

The Kitchen Remodel, Cont'd

2011-09-04T20:00:00.005-04:00

As my die hard readers know (ha, 'cause I have SO many of you), we've been picking away at a kitchen remodel in our 100-yr old home since we moved in, ten years this Christmas.When I say "picking away" I'm really not kidding. It went something like this...

2001: Bought the house, started and finished major rehabilitation work just in time to move in for Christmas: plastering, plumbing, flooring, carpeting, painting, and basically bringing everything up to code, inside and out, and making the place habitable.

2002 to 2004: OMG, what the hell are we going to do with the kitchen?! So exhausted and distracted by teenage boys and dealing with their problems that it was all we could do to make it through the day.

2005: Started drafting the kitchen plan. The kids become a little more independent, DH begins his work with FIRST Robotics, and we start to feel a little more relaxed, less exhausted, and a little motivated. Replaced and enlarged the electrical panel to make sure we could add the appropriate outlets in the kitchen, which has three really inconveniently placed outlets which had a tendency to trip the breaker.

2006: DH ripped out an entire wall of cabinets and built a beautiful wall of open shelving while I was on vacation for ten days in Scotland with my mother and grandmother. Boy howdy was I surprised when I got home. I think my exact words were "holy shit."

2007: Inspired by his success in the kitchen, DH took a break and constructed built-in cabinets in the living room (but the molding and the doors on the bottom still haven't been added, even though I bought him a NEW compound miter saw the previous Christmas because our garage had been burgled). Again, he started this while I was on a two-week business trip to India. Perhaps I need to go on another long vacation...

2008: Kitchen windows shortened. A little like a boob lift. We were having all the windows replaced (all as in 30 of them, yes, and well worth it, although to be honest there are still 8 more that could stand to be replaced) and had the guys order shorter windows for the kitchen. They still hit at the same height at the top, but the bottom was filled in so we could run counter in front of the window. Even then we knew where certain elements would reside.

2009: Moved the kitchen door three feet left of it's original position. We have always known where we would move the fridge, so this was an easy thing to add to the deck work we were doing. I think we replaced the dishwasher during this year, too.

2010: finalized the kitchen design - FINALLY! In Fall of 2010, I said to DH: just do it. I trust you, tell me when you are done. We've been futzing with the kitchen design for years, and had settled on certain things but there were details that were incomplete.

2011: This year, we replaced our gawd-awful glass-top freestanding range, whose oven thermostat ran 100 degrees too hot, with a wonderful freestanding gas range (from Craig's List!) which we just love. Of course, this also involved getting gas piped in from the street, having the gas plumbing done, etc. We also replaced the vent hood, which didn't work anyway.

Most of the electrical is complete, and the majority of the dry-walling and misc plastering is done. We'd hoped that would all be done a little earlier so we could be done with the painting by Labor Day Weekend but you know how these things go...they had to start a day late, then ran into some old-house-wiring challenges...it happens and it's no big deal.What counts is that the work is done.

The cabinets arrived today at 6pm, and we'll hold them in the foyer and living room and wherever we can find room for them until the painting and floor is done and then we can begin hanging the uppers.

13x13 Ferroker Floor Tiles

Backsplash - glass tile in "Arctic Ice." Ours are a little less saturated.

We haven't picked out the counter tiles yet but they'll be white, hopefully something with a little variation and interest, as in not just plain old white. In a couple of years, when we can afford it again, we'll replace it with solid surface Staron in Pebble Frost (probably, because it goes well with the floor, cabinets, and the glass tiles).

So there we are. The work commences at a roaring pace. The kitchen is barely habitable right now only because it's complete chaos and objects are continually changing places, like old base cabinets that still house flatware and pans. There is dust everywhere.

Pictures to come...really. They are in my camera.

This Is How It Goes

2011-09-04T06:00:00.001-04:00

This is how it goes when I spin when I spin on a spindle. First, I pile on as much fiber as possible onto the little guy. The spindle only weighs about 16 grams, but the light weight allows me to spin very fine so I can ply three very fine singles to make a thin-ish yarn. In this picture I'm referring to the second spindle, the out of focus spindle, with the green fiber. I posted this picture a few posts ago.

So, I don't really care to ply from my spindle - a phrase, by the way, wrought with meaning in the world of spinners - so I wind it off onto a storage bobbin. The bobbins I use were recommended by one of my spinning heroes, Judith MacKenzie McCuin. They are generally used by weavers for storing small amounts of yarn. Judith has a whole philosophy about how a spinner can use these bobbins in the plying stage of the game. I will restrain myself from explaining it except to say: she's so damned wise.

Anyway. I spun up a little more than what you see here, and wound it off onto one of my wee storage bobbins.

It's about 16 grams of fiber. I REALLY stretched the limits of the little spindle. There's some engineering involving rotation and gravity and twist per inch and how it translates to strength, and I read all of this in a book and was mostly lost in the math. Bottom line: a spindle can generally hold it's weight in fiber. I didn't make that up. I read that somewhere too, though not in the same place I read about the engineering and string theory (ha ha) as it pertains to spinning. Time to ply.

I wish I'd taken a picture of my slapdash "lazy kate." I'd love to know the origin of the name for the device that holds a bobbin from which you pull string/thread/yarn. I have a perfectly good one but it's very fiddly so I stuck a 3/8" steel rod into the spout of a teapot and put the bobbin onto the steel rod. It's quite silly looking and works marvelously if you only need to use one bobbin. On the other hand, if you have multiple teapots you can press them into use for multiple bobbins for plying two, three, four, or more strands into yarn. I'm using a single bobbin to make a three-ply yarn! Ahhh! It's magic! Nah, actually it's called Navajo plying and it is slick.

So many colors! My goal with this round of spinning was to see how much I could fit on the spindle, and I just used whatever little samples of fiber I had lying around my desk. There's some black alpaca, creamy white cormo, dark green cormo/mohair blend, a short length of bright green mystery wool, and some teal/green/blue targhee. I was also interested to see how each of these would spin on the wee spindle. I'm still struggling with the right tool configuration for alpaca. I have so much of this fiber that there is no shortage of opportunity.

Cellphone picture. See, this little skein of yarn isn't very big. That's what 16g plied sock-weight fiber looks like.

The neat thing about this type of plying is that you can retain the color sequences of the fiber you've spun without a great deal of thought or advance planning. I've done the "split the roving lengthwise into three pieces and spin each separately, then ply." Yeah, I've done that a couple of times and all the colors SHOULD mostly line up but so far, for me, they haven't. Maybe my planning is less than wonderful. Maybe I'm impatient (ooh, rings a bell...). Now that I've figured out how to Navajo ply it's just about all I want to do. I'll deal with the other when I begin plying four, five, or more strands.

I Weft My Heart...in a Kromski Harp

2011-09-02T10:00:00.036-04:00

There's so much to catch up on. Such as: I traded in my drum carder for a 32" rigid heddle loom. Below is my first project. The warp (long-wise) is Fannie's farmhouse sock yarn, the weft (short-wise) is Madelintosh Merino Lite. I love it. Consistent with almost all the other beginning weavers I've talked with, it took me most of the entire project to get the hang of the right-hand selvedge (edge). For some reason, I didn't have any problems with the left selvedge.

I have done a second project which I cannot discuss because it's a gift.

The third project is either a set of three towels in cotton-linen blend, for which I have fashioned a tartan pattern of black, gold, red, and yellow (which I have started to warp), or I'll do an "art" scarf with miscellaneous fibers, commercial and hand-spun. So many ideas! So much stash to play with!

I did all this in Numbers on iPad. Neat, eh?

Just because I started warping the towels doesn't mean I need to start weaving them right away. I'm warping and chaining them (mostly) one color section at a time. As I'm warping though, I realized that the edges need something before the pattern repeat begins. The pattern begins and ends with the red, but I originally wanted it to begin and end with the black, so we'll see how this turns out. Yes, I know that's obvious when you look at the picture. It just wasn't obvious to me.

Update: I finished "sleying the reed" and my calculations were off...not way way off, but off enough that I have to adjust the finished width of my towels, and add a few more ends of black on one side. It'll be asymmetrical. Sure. That's planned. I had to order another set of the same red, yellow, and orange to make sure I still had enough for the doubled weft.

In other projects, I'm working on a ring for a lovely faceted orange Mexican Fire Opal. I finished the shoulder bezel and, having sworn never to fit a bezel to the band again, I created a design where I have to shape the bezel to the band (which I finished since I wrote this two weeks ago, picture to come).

I figured out how I wanted to hang the big green pendant: on a combination of solid curved wire (a half choker) and chain, possibly with some beads in split complimentary colors - in this case, yellow-ey and red-violet. Or whatever I happen to have on hand :)

A Tool Chest

2011-08-16T09:20:00.001-04:00

I've been looking for just the right piece of furniture to hold all my variously weighted metalworking tools and I keep coming up empty handed. Sometimes there is a perfect one that is too expensive, sometimes there is one that is would be perfect if I just cut the legs off and stacked it with other similar pieces.

The latter is a solution I started to pursue a week ago when DH says, as we are reading the morning papers, "Why don't you just get one of those craftsmen-style tool chests?"

Oh. Duh. If it was a snake...Ever have one of those moments where your own stupidity dazzles even yourself?

I sat there for, oh, five minutes (a) wondering how I how in hell missed something so spectacularly obvious and (b) what my price point would be when I browsed the tool category on Craig's List.

And, voila! There's even a place to hang my green girl-y apron. And no, I don't really mind that it doesn't match the rest of the Ikea decor :) The top drawer (not open because the combined weight of open drawers threatened to tip it ass over tea-kettle) contains works in progress and found objects for future pieces.

Craig's List is wonderful.

What was lost...ain't lost no more...and other stuff

2011-08-15T09:30:00.001-04:00

Is it the most important part of my life? No. My family gets the honor of being most important. But let's face it: my technology is such an integral part of how I communicate and interact with family and friends and the rest of the world. USAir called a little over a week after we returned and said "we have your iPad!" It arrived home three days later and was promptly snuggled up on the Dexter wrap, having it's battery charged. I like my new laptop, too, but I have to get accustomed to the keyboard which is considerably different from my previous one.

...basically, it's getting an energy massage.

I included some of my latest yarn and little chachki's from our recent trip to Seattle. The yarn is three of eight skeins purchased at Linda's Knit 'n Stitch. As a newly minted weaver, I thought that these three ribbon yarn colors would look really neat in a woven object. Another skein is black alpaca for the sock yarn blankie, and four skeins of Araucania Ruca Multi, which I've started working with and AM NOT liking. More on that later.

The chachki's are Seattle icons: the Space Needle and a Washington State Ferry (on the far right). I already had the smallest on the far left from a previous trip. Seattle isn't really my hometown: I grew up across the water, a mere ferry ride away. But having lived in Seattle for many years, and spent many years traveling to and fro for work, pleasure, and education, I feel like it is. I love the city. I wish we could afford to live downtown in one of those awesome highrise buildings with the dog park on top of the building. We fantasized about that during the entire three weeks out there. And about living in my parents house because my mom has the most beautiful back yard. We had fresh, warm, just-plucked-off-the-plant every other day - walk out to the patio and there they are. Mom pinched off fresh mint to brew with the iced tea. Don't worry, Mom, I promise it won't really happen! But we've never made any secret of the fact that we really do want to move back to the west coast. It's easy to consider Seattle when the weather is gorgeous, like it was on this trip. It's much harder to consider it when the gray rainy days roll around.

Under the circumstances, it was really a lovely trip. Mom and Michael are wonderful and funny and generous and caring. Uncle Stan was, well, himself. We kind of had fun going through grandma's clothing and jewelry "omg, what the heck is that?!" "she wore this? Ewww." The women's shelters received a clothing bounty and the breast cancer society got a ferry boat load of wigs.

Mom has written volumes (almost volumes) about the odyssey of resolving Gramma's possessions, and I'm content to let her have that voice. I'm happy I was able to help because it also meant we spent a great deal of time together, just us. It's so easy to take for granted that my mother is a lovely woman.

More photos from the trip...

We love Angry Birds.

Mom is the one who got me playing this game. I returned the favor with an Angry Birds squeeze toy. We squeezed it every time we walked by, and the nieces loved it.

Jamming

Michael is really, really good. What a treat to listen to him play.

Seattle

Beneroya Hall, another reason to love Seattle. Husband included for scale.

Electronic Delays

(this doesn't make any sense unless you know that my family name is Delay)

Kingston

Okay, yes there is more to Kingston than this clock, but there was just something about it that struck my fancy.

July 4th

Crock-pot baked beans, hot dogs, potato salad, beer, strawberry shortcake. Best July 4th ever.

Gig Harbor

Gig Harbor is a very touristy sort of place, but the views are spectacular, and the air is clean, and the restaurant was terrific.

Poulsbo

Left to Right: Chris, Zuzu, Mom, Ali, Me, enjoying one of Poulsbo's finest: goodies from Sluy's bakery. They still have the best ever maple bars, no one else's comes close.For me, maple bars and Sluy's are to Poulsbo what Krispy Kreme is to the South, but without the "Hot Now" signage.

Yoga in the back yard.

One must stay in shape, mustn't one? And when the weather is as beautiful as it was, you just have to do outdoor yoga.

Mt. Rainier

We watched Rainier be gorgeous during nearly the entire return trip to Sea-Tac Airport.

Cheers!

For Gramma, From Scotland with Love

2011-05-29T23:07:00.000-04:00

Gramma thought George was so nice. He was. Unfortunately, his Scottish brogue was strong at times. From the back seat I heard a great deal of "what did he say?" from her. Mom did most of the translating.

Okay, yes, she HATED the walker but she dolled herself up just the same. You just never knew who you would meet!

One of the drizzely hours. Our energy was on the wane. By now she'd mostly ditched the walker for a wonderfully carved cane that we found on Skye.

One of my favorite pictures.

1 Fleece, 1 Tub

2011-05-29T18:10:00.007-04:00

May 19th
Today I saw some little bugs flying around my office. Since I don't keep food up there, I figured it MIGHT be the fleece I purchase at MDSW (Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival) last year. Laaaaast year. You who have purchased fleeces know what I'm talking about.

Ooh, I thought to myself, this needs to be washed RIGHT NOW. And if the stars hadn't been aligned just right - like tomorrow is a day off and I am feeling particularly motivated because today is my Friday, the Dawn soap and long yellow gloves were handy - then I'm not sure I'd have done it. But I did.

Guerrilla fleece washing. Wham. Done.

Step 1: Wash. Eeeeeeuuuuuuu gross!

Step 2 & 3: Rinse. Not quite as gross, and the second rinse, which I didn't capture, was even less gross.

Step 3: Dry, turn, dry, turn, dry, turn.

So I only rinsed it twice, and it's still a teensy bit dirty, but the remainder will come out when I wash the spun fluff. Spinned fluff? Fill tub with Dawn detergent and the hottest water possible. Carefully dump fleece into tub, gently smoosh it into the water to make sure it's all submerged, leave it alone for 20 minutes, drain, repeat without the dawn. Do it again. Dump it unceremoniously onto the drying rack and in three days time there's sure to be a prince. Ahem. I mean a dry fleece.
...
May 29th
After turning it over and inside out and over and inside out again, the fleece is dry and clean enough to comb and card. It didn't really take ten days to dry, but it took ten days for it to dry and for me to get my act together. DH has complained that every time he stands at the mirror he keeps getting a glimpse of Chewbacca behind him and he's very pleased that the hairy mound will be moving.

Flute Choir at the Flute Faire

2011-05-14T08:09:00.001-04:00

The Hampton Roads Flute Choir played at the Hampton Roads Flute Faire at ODU on April 16. The two pieces in the video are "Zefiro delicato" by Gary Shocker followed by Georges Bizet's "Gypsy Song" from Carmen, directed by Dr. Lori Shipley. We're played in Diehn Hall which has a nice, intimate performance space.

One of the significant others shot this nice little video, and posted to You Tube for us. No tripods were harmed in the making of this movie. Take your Dramamine.

I'm on the far (audience) right (or stage left, if you prefer), long wavy hair, playing alto flute, my "bent flute." I look very fat but it's just the big boobs. Honest.

Enjoy!

O Kitchen! My Kitchen!

2011-05-11T14:00:00.052-04:00

O Kitchen! My Kitchen! our remodeling trip is (not quite) done;
The room has weather’d every track, the range we sought is won;
The end is near, the barks I hear, the doggies all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady gas contractor, the hood large and shining:
But O oven! oven! oven!
O the crappy thermostat of dread,
Where on the curb my old range lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

...with apologies to Mom, Jane, Whitman, and Lincoln.

Like my pano pic? Notice the letters, corresponding with the narrative below...

A. These windows were longer and, in true Me & DH style, we had them shortened when we had all the windows replaced. The sill once hit below the counter-top, now we can run counter along that wall. Of course, we knew then it would be some time before new counters would be installed to cover up the, ahem, mess. Actually, we did think the window dudes would do the finish work too. Oh well. Does anyone remember when we replaced a landing window in our other house and, in between the time the old window was removed and the new window installed, we shoved the queen-size box-spring through it and up to the 2nd floor? Yes we did.

B. There was a door and we moved it to the left when we rebuilt the two-story deck on the back of the house. So, that's all unpainted plaster. Again, not wanting to do things twice, we are waiting until final cabinets are in place before we paint over the whole thing. And we haven't been able to match the yellow yet.

C. Ah, Letter C. Today's work, April and May's work: installing the gas range. We love cooking with gas and it seems every house we move into has a non-gas range. We hate operating an oven that runs 100 degrees hot. It's not easy cook "low and slow" in those conditions. We replaced the range in our last house and then sold. This time we're replacing the range and NOT selling. Ha! It's been a little more complicated, though, because we've had to open a work order with the gas company to flag the meter location, have a plumber come in to lay the inside piping, gas co. dig up the curb and run gas and install the meter, have the plumber come back out to finish the work and actually install the range and the hood...The thing you can't see in the photo is that the old range hood had this weird complicated commercial extinguishing system that scared the crap out of us and requires some specialty work to disconnect.

D. We haven't gotten to D yet, but that involves relocating sink, dishwasher, and related plumbing to below the left window, relocating the fridge and it's ice-machine plumbing, and relocating the porch light switch. Sometime this summer maybe. Or in the fall. We still have flute convention to get to.

E. Not in the photo: new cabinets which the DH is crazy enough to build himself. He has my full support. Personally, I think it's just an excuse to buy new man tools. That's what a woman would do, right? "Oh, I'm SAVING money by buying this table saw." We know that trick.

That's just life in a 100-year-old house.

I'll never, ever do it again. If I do, shoot me.

Catching up with Garrr

2011-05-07T23:30:00.000-04:00

From the Seawall Art Festival, August 2010. We had an afternoon gig, thankfully under a tent near the beautiful Elizabeth River. Water, water everywhere. Today I needed a smile, and I got it from Garrr, made with care by Jen, and I decided to trot out his picture.

Another Jen, entirely unrelated to the MisfitMoppets Jen, posted an amazing resource on her blog. The resource: Play With A Pro. Filmed masterclasses with renowned musicians. I noted clarinet, trumpet, baritone, oboe, and flute represented. The one I downloaded is Emmanuel Pahud (flute, duh). He's not hard on the eyes, for sure. But more than that he's a brilliant flutist. I learn something new every time I attend a masterclass, and this is no exception. I guess "attending" in this sense is a little different because it's a downloadable, high definition video, and it doesn't cost any more than what I'd pay to attend his masterclass in person, probably way less. Since he won't be teaching in my area any time soon, this is a total bargain...although he might be at the Charlotte convention. I'll be star struck.

VNG (our gas company) arrived around 2pm Friday and started digging up the grassy-strip-between-the-sidewalk-and-the-road (cannot remember what the hell that's called) in order to drill the path for the gas line. They were here for over three hours, installed the pipes and the meter, finished, cleaned up nicely and even put down some replacement grass seed where they dug. I thought they'd schedule it with us, but it guess it wasn't really necessary. They didn't need me at all. So, come Monday, I'll call Synergy to finish the plumbing and then we'll be...wait for it...cookin' with gas! Ha, you knew I'd go there.

Scorecard Purgatory & Other Miscellany

2011-05-01T10:32:00.000-04:00

Back in March I wrote (but forgot to finish/post):

I've been upgraded from eternal damnation to mere endless suffering. Once upon a time only one day a week was devoted to dealing with The Scorecard. Now it's two and a half days a week plus the odd 2:00 AM call with developers whose time zone is 10 hours ahead of Eastern daylight.

That was my month of March.

So, in the background Roxio is installing...and for the love of Pete it takes forever! Sheeeeeit. Oh. Because I upgraded to Windows 7 in January and am loading software as I require it. Photoshop was required soonest :) Roxio is required now because I don't like using Windows Media Player for DVDs (it's a Microsoft thing) and I can't put a DVD into my iPad. I bet there's a solution for that.

We're in green smoothie heaven. I know this probably doesn't sound wonderful, but 4 cups of spinach, 1 1/2 cups of strawberries and 1 banana in a high speed blender make 2 quarts of awesomeness. Less sodium than V8. Drink your veggies, people! Oh, I'm not doing the whole "green smoothie revolution" or raw diet thing. I just know I needed more veg in my diet.

As it turns out, that was my April, too. Now it's May, and for two months I've been dashing off posts in my head that never make it to the keyboard. I suppose everyone needs break now and then. My break is over. I'm renaming the blog, and soon I'll move it to a new address. DH and I were joking around about flutes, and he commented about my playing a bent flute (my alto flute with the curved headjoint). I liked it, so I'm using it. As always, he's The Namer. It's perfect on so many different levels!

I'm still drinking my veggies. I started doing that shortly after I started taking synthetic thyroid hormone, so I don't know if the change in my energy is because of the have a functioning thyroid, the green drink, or both. I don't care enough to mess with it - I just know that 24 ounces of green smoothie first thing in the morning and another 16 ounces or so in the afternoon and I have all the energy I need, no more crashing fatigue that requires two hours of sleep (unless I really haven't gotten enough sleep the night before, ha ha!) Better focus, too, but that's almost entirely due to the thyroid stuff. DH has discovered that this green drink thing is pretty awesome, too. He loves it after yoga. We are purchasing huge amounts of kale and spinach. It's amazing how fast you can go through the greens when you're smooshing a tightly packed four cups (or more) into a blender. Usually we're mixing kale and spinach about 50-50, then either a cereal bowl's worth of frozen strawberries and one banana, or two mangoes and one banana. Thank goodness for Costco's bulk packages. These two seem to be our favorite combinations. Blueberry plus banana is yummy, too. DH did one with avocado but I wasn't that keen, but he also used the "artisan" greens instead of spinach, and I do not like those "artisan" greens. Blech. As good as the blender is, it still has a hard time with raspberry seeds so we don't bother.

What doesn't really work? Besides the artisan greens: grapes. Maybe a sweet red grape would be better than the green ones. Romaine, surprisingly. Romaine is my favorite in salads, but for me the taste doesn't really translate in the smoothie realm. There are LOTS of recipes out there on the internet and clearly we've only dipped our toes into that water.

Other things we are doing with our super-duper blender: hummus! Chickpeas, garlic, sesame seeds, olive oil. OMG so tasty with those "Food Should Taste Good" multigrain chips (again from Costco). Tortilla chips too, the thick ones. It's my new go-to comfort food. We're whizzing the tomato soup in the blender. We'll be doing margaritas this summer. We've done an applesauce, with pears, very tasty. Watch out for pears in this type of concentration: can produce gas.

And that's the news that's fit to print.

Proof: Recalcitrant Sun Dog

2011-02-17T08:38:00.000-05:00

Tasha, not interested in leaving her spot in the sun. Not interested at all.

BE the garden

2011-02-16T09:08:00.000-05:00

"Most people, early in November, take last looks at their gardens, and are then prepared to ignore them until the spring. I am quite sure that a garden doesn't like to be ignored like this. It doesn't like to be covered in dust sheets, as though it were an old room which you had shut up during the winter. Especially since a garden knows how gay and delightful it can be, even in the very frozen heart of the winter, if you only give it a chance."
- Beverley Nichols

How I try to cultivate winter gaiety in myself, I'm giving it a chance, but I loooooooong for spring. February will tease us with warm weather - summer in the sun, winter in the shade, as Dickens says (although he was referring to March) - and follow promptly with a dastardly spell of something rainy and cold.

Aaaaaagh.

The sky is blue. Light beams into the yard and the dogs covet each patch of sunshine and give me looks of reluctance when I invite them back into the house. I feel the same way.

Each season has it's joy and beauty. I've had enough of Winter's joy and beauty. Give me Spring.

The Stranger

2011-02-10T19:29:00.000-05:00

Sometimes other people have the right words. The Stranger, from The Big Lebowski, said it (and the Cohen brothers wrote it) perfectly:

Sometimes you eat the bar,
and sometimes, well, he eats you.

Today the scorecard ate me.

Image shamelessly scavenged from http://www.asylum.co.uk/2010/10/13/police-miss-murder-as-undertaker-finds-knife-in-dead-mans-back/

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

A Chicken in Every Pot

2011-02-09T18:56:00.000-05:00

Herbert Hoover: A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.

Erin: A spinner in every home, a spindle in every room.

The Flute and Spindle

2011-01-30T08:31:00.081-05:00

Wouldn't that title be a nice name for a blog? I'm thinking of changing mine. Although, it also sounds a great deal like a 17th century pub. My life is mostly about family, fluting, spinning, knitting, and other crafty things, with occasional forays into other enterprises. Besides, I'm seeing "postcards from..." something more and more and I hate being just like everyone else. It's time for a change.

I referred to my spinning resolution a couple entries ago. Oops. No, I didn't. Jeez, I'm really certain I did. Think of this as a teaser (or a reminder). Here's the fiber I'm working with. Ain't it pretty? Ashland Bay Merino/Silk, color "Damson."

That's the spindle part of the story.

Here's the flute part (ha ha). More specifically, the alto flute part (ha ha ha ha, doesn't get old).

My DH, my darling DH, gave to me a curved alto flute headjoint as an anniversary gift. Whadda guy! He really knows how to make a girl smile. I smiled a great deal. There was just one tiny little problem...the manufacturer didn't ship the headjoint in a case...just marvelously bubble-wrapped.

Before I go on, there's a story behind this. There's always a story, right? I've owned an alto flute for about 20 years, also given to me as a gift by DH: a beautiful solid silver Gemeinhardt 10AS with lovely tone and a straight head. 20 years ago no one was making curved headjoints. I don't think they were anyway, and I probably would never have thought of it. Okay, it's not the top of the line but it sounds nice and that's what counts. I played it off and on over the years, and I really love playing it, but sad that my wrist hurt so much when I played because the darn this is so long. A different set of body mechanics needs to be employed when you play an alto, and I have never managed to get it so my wrist wasn't cocked at a gross angle. Combine that with very short arms...you see my issue.

I saw a curved headjoint for the first time when I joined the Hampton Roads Flute Choir a few years back. I got excited. I started researching. Most recently I was working with Flute World to check tenon joint diameters and lengths and inner diameters and outer diameters and so forth, I knew I'd have to start saving my dimes and nickels and twenties for a Pearl headjoint. It is the one that fit the best, according to Flute World. I had no idea what it would do to the tuning, but Gemeinhardt wasn't making a curved headjoint for purchase separately at the time I made that decision.

Fast forward. Gemeinhardt started making a curved headjoint not too long ago...like a few months ago...I think mine might be one of the first ones off the line. Back to the one tiny little problem...how to transport? We started looking at alto flute cases. Sticker shock. Holy cow! What the cuss! These things cost more than the headjoint. Jeez.

That was a couple of month ago. Last week I got an alert from UsedFlutes.com. I set up an alert on alto flutes over a year ago. Last week's alert was for an alto flute case accommodating a straight AND curved headjoint. What luck! I got it, knowing I'd have to do some modifications. That's okay. I have the tools and it doesn't involve soldering. Not that that's a show stopper...it's just extra work.


The first piece is removed. No turning back!

The case is in terrific condition. I almost felt bad cutting into it. But cut, I did, and more and more. The body and the headjoint are the only sections that require modification. the foot and straight headjoint fit perfectly.

I like how I can use my own tools. Headjoint is sitting in the
lid of the case. I'm using the flex shaft to carve out a wider
and slightly deeper curve to accept the crown of the

There was padding beneath the crook of the neck that
I had to remove and lower. I am also adding a velvet
covered shim beneath the crown end of the head for
balance. This allows the case to close securely without
over enthusiastically squishing it.

I need to carve 1.9mm into the side of the case. This
happens to be the kerf left by a heavy duty cut-off wheel.
This cut is to make room for the body of the flute and
accommodate a single layer of velvet.

That's where I've left off as of last night and I have made good progress. I don't have enough leftover velvet to cover some of the exposed wood support parts so I'm making a trip to the fabric store today. Every part should be covered with some kind of protection so it doesn't damage the finish or the mechanism of the flute. Velvet is the most common, but I'm sure there are other fabrics that would do just as well. Shims can be made out of just about anything that provides slight shock absorption. Rubber, plastic, folded cloth, felt...I have some felted wool test pieces that will make a great shim beneath the headjoint. It really just needs to be stable.

I'm winging this entire enterprise based on reasonably good mechanical assembly skills. I bet Barbara and Fred never thought I'd put their silversmithing training to use like this, but it also wouldn't surprise them. I'm not a woodworker, though, so I get a teeny bit intimidated by working with wood. I know how silver and copper behave. Not so much about the wood.

And for anyone who wants to try this themselves: your mileage may vary. You have to be willing to take a loss on the case if it doesn't work.

I will rip everything out and start from scratch if things really go south. So far, all is well.

Cya anon,
E

Warm and Almost Clean

2011-01-28T10:00:00.000-05:00

The heat pump is cured! Not before it got down to 42 degrees in the house on a couple of the coldest days this month. I praise multi-zone heating systems.

The fan fell off it's peg inside the heat pump. Really. One bolt. I mean, really.

"My computer won't turn on."
"Okay, ma'am, is your computer plugged in?"
"Is that the black snake with the prongs? It's just laying there on the floor. I smacked it with a hammer a few days ago. I think it's dead."

Humiliation is free. Heating technician labor is not free.

In other breaking news, the dryer works. Two years ago, and I really thought I'd blogged about this, we had a spectacular nor'easter which made the water table rise which flooded our basement a foot or two b and prevented it from draining for about a month. Hard to gauge how much water there was, but all of us up and down the street had our sump pumps going 24x7 for several weeks. After all the excitement we were able to determine that the washer and dryer, only a couple of years old, were goners. Whirlpool came out and said, sorry, it's flood damage and even though you're under warranty, you'll have to go through FEMA. Riiiiiiiight.

For the past two years we've been schlepping to the laundromat with clothing, soap, and entertainment gear in hand. Did you know they use re-loadable swipe cards now? Instead of cash? Meanwhile, I didn't know DH was checking to see if either of the appliances had come back from the dead, but a few weeks ago he sprung this info on me, that being the aforementioned dryer.

Me: happy dance.

It appears that by this weekend we'll also have lucked into a washing machine.

Me: happy dance, including a few tap moves.

I'm sure it's a basic run-of-the-mill washing machine but that's more than acceptable as long as it resides in my house and sitting atop two courses of cement blocks.

Right, then, on to other life tasks. Like taxes.

What Sunday Morning Looks Like

2011-01-25T17:31:00.000-05:00

Whilst I browse my favorite department store, Amazon.com. I didn't buy anything. This time.

Brrrr!

2011-01-22T18:50:00.009-05:00

The cussing heat pump is rattling like a jar of pennies and we think a bearing is on it's way to the big HVAC in the sky, so we've turned that heat pump off. Good news: two zones! so the second floor is comfortable. Bad news: it's about 50 degrees down on the first floor. Maybe colder. Really chilly down there. Instead of catching up on our Tivo recordings (downstairs) we're hanging out in my lair (upstairs).

Help me name my office/craft room/place where I spend 8+ hours of my day Monday thru Friday. I telecommute from this room. My knitting stash is here. My spinning stash is here. Sometimes my spinning wheel is here, too, but lately it's been in the dining room. My silversmithing equipment is here. My sewing equipment is here. My flutes and music are here. My ginormous Ikea Galant desk is here. And right now I am here. It's a good big room. It has no name. Calling it "my office" sounds a little pretentious. "My room" sounds presumptuous, although it is my room and DH has his room/office/playroom wherein resides his computer(s), misc electronics, big honkin' man desk, theatrical paraphernalia, and Yamaha keyboard.

I also need a name for my spinning wheel. I've been referring to it as Betty but that just doesn't have the right ring. Also, I would like to tattoo the wheel. Or, paint tattoo-type images of Koi and Japanese waves and things.

I don't know why I like this so much: So Now You Know: World's Heaviest Snow Plow, but this blogger shared an amusing caption written for an old wood block print: Cupcakes?

I upgraded my laptop to Windows 7 last week. As if I didn't already have enough on my plate what with trying to launch that darned scorecard I mentioned in the last post I wrote in 2010, oh back in August. Yes, since that time I've been pushing developers, negotiating with stakeholders, and writing project documentation all in a race to launch a new online executive scorecard before the end of the calendar year. We would have made it, too, if one of the developers hadn't (a) resigned and (b) failed to actually complete (like he said he did) some key components of said scorecard prior to leaving. He was supposed to leave at the end of December and decided to leave ten days early. What a smeg head. I worked over my Christmas vacation on this. My manager worked over her Christmas vacation on this. We discovered last week that even if the defects we found had been resolved by 12/31, we never would have been able to launch it because, lo and behold, our erstwhile developer did not build the space on the production web server and the new owner of the web server says "oh no, server not stable, can't use it, go elsewhere." No amount of escalation was able to break through that barrier. We have a solution, we repoint the URL to a different web server (found one, owner says "sure, come on in, mi casa su casa," then build the new space, load the code, and test. It was an eventful week.

But you know what? It's friggin' done. The code is complete, all the functions work, the interface is as clean as my stakeholders have allowed (we disagree about flashy thingies) and I'm getting ready for a JAD session to design requirements for the next release. I gave life to this monster but did I mention I have to feed and water it? And, I expect that sometimes it will poop on the floor and I'll most certainly step in it. This has been an enormously valuable learning experience. I've learned that it's okay to break an egg as long as you say "yep, my egg. Does anyone have a towel?"

I wonder how many other metaphors I can mix and destroy tonight. DH will be counting.

I need to upload pictures but there are obstacles. Windows 7 upgrade. Right. Photoshop isn't loaded, but I'll probably do that tonight before bed. MyPad won't sync with iTunes on the laptop. It wasn't syncing before the upgrade so not a step backward. I have an assortment of lovely photos on the iPad from Christmas and, lamer that I am, might have to...I don't know...upload them to a cloud and then download them back again. Google Docs might be the ticket and I haven't tried that yet.

Cya anon.
Erin

New Year, New Blog Goal

2011-01-12T06:04:00.000-05:00

That being "do more blogging." We'll see how that works out. I sure do like the idea of doing this while sitting in bed, though, and it might be the perfect incentive.

Christmas at Mom's in Silverdale was relaxing and lazy and full of good cheer. We walked through their neighborhood of Klahowya, visited one of the best yarn stores I've ever seen (Linda's Knit n' Stitch has a WALL of Koigu, dude), spent some time with my grandma and Uncle Stan, we ate Ivar's at the airport before we bothered to pick up our luggage, and didn't go to Seattle at all. We did some shopping, naturally. One must aquire accessories for one's new toys. Best Buy was conveniently located across the parking lot from Costco. The Silverdale Costco positively dwarfs ours here in Norfolk. You could put two of our Costco's inside theirs.

Note to Mom: My Costco has that yummy sheep's cheese and hopefully not just for the season.

Our plan this year is to really get moving on our kitchen remodel, but we'll be doing it in stages. We agreed to sacrifice some important events this year to make this all happen. This weekend we'll be scouting ranges, and two base cabinets. We badly need a new range, and the base cabinets allow us to make the first major modification: moving the sink from the peninsula to the wall and getting rid of the butt-ugly peninsula. Did I say butt-ugly? What I really mean is grossly, sadly, spectacularly butt-ugly. Hyperbole: not a thing of the past.

So unless I get a really spectacular bonus (I did well but not five-figures-well), and no more horrible automotive issues, I won't be getting a second spinning wheel this year, I will only be going to a little fiber festival locally, and am scaling back my fiber purchases this year. It's not a fiber diet, just a tightening the belt thing. DH is giving up a couple of conferences, although we might still be able to do the yoga teacher training.

Meanwhile, I've been configuring the heck outa my new iPad. I love these apps right now:

Flickpad because I can see all photos my friends have posted this by the week to Flickr and Facebook.
Flipboard because I can do basically the same thing with this and the blogs I follow as I do with Flickpad. Flipbook formats it all into a magazine-like format, which is very lovely. If only I could drop Flickpad into Flipboard...
Angry Birds. What's not to like? It's so fun!

And I'm going to stop right there and post the damn thing! And by the way, typing on the iPad isn't nearly the headache I thought it would be. It works just fine, thanks.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

I'm in the scorecard business again

2010-08-08T09:16:00.002-04:00

Remember once upon a time I mentioned that I had a j-o-b? Most of the time the stress or worry from my job doesn't interfere with life outside the office (other than the fact that I telecommute). This week, though, has been a little different.

I picked up some new responsibilities at work recently. One is to propose and manage enhancements to a monthly scorecard, and the other is to actually OWN and manage the scorecard. Since the time I began working on the enhancements, the scorecard has gone to twice-a-month. Getting the scorecard published isn't particularly time consuming - oh, sure, at first it is because I'm learning all the ropes, but soon enough it'll be second nature. No, the real challenge about this scorecard is that even though we have a stated service level to get the scorecard published by the 10 calendar day of the month, in reality we are trying to get the scorecard published ASAP. Which means that as soon as all the data is ready to be validated, at least two people have to drop what they are doing and make this the #1 priority in their day. If there are errors, the developers have to make fixing it the #1 priority of their day. After it's been reviewed, then I have to review the scorecard and physically upload it to the appropriate directory, and then generate a scorecard communication and have it sent to the scorecard audience. And that becomes my #1 priority of the day.

So you guessed it: twice a month at least four people have to go through a scorecard fire drill.

My frustration is that ASAP isn't a service level. The 10th day...that's a service level. If we can get the scorecard published by the 5th day, or the 6th day, or whatever, then we should say so, and plan to that. There has to be wiggle room for correcting errors, and unanticipated delays, but from a business process point of view, this shouldn't be a fire drill.

And yet for some reason I've yet to fathom, we haven't fought back hard enough, or with the right arguments, to change the situation. And oh by the way this is not a customer-impacting event. There are others who depend on the information that is produced through the scorecard, but they can't really plan either because we produce it on a different day each month. There is a trust that develops when you bring consistency to a process. You can count on certain things happening at certain times. The garbage is always picked up Thursdays. Mail is always delivered by 5pm daily. Street cleaning is done the 2nd Wednesday of the month. And maybe it's just me, but how can I plan anything around a delivery date that changes for each cycle of an event? Does it do me any good if it's earlier? What if, as the recipient, I can't get to it until the 9th or 10th day anyway? Producing it on the 5th or the 7th doesn't do anything for me. Is the 10th day really the best service level? I don't know if we know that for sure.

I'm still trying to put together the right argument. This is helping.

And here's another bit: because of this self-imposed-by-the-team fire drill, I am probably electing to NOT take a planned vacation day Monday so we can "maybe" produce an update if a certain set of data is published because that certain set of data wasn't available to us in time for the fire drill. If we were marching to our original 10th day SLA, it wouldn't be an issue and we wouldn't have to do this twice. I'm still up in the air about Monday. I don't feel good about it, though, and I actually lost some sleep about it last night. It's been a very long time since that's happened.

What's special about Monday? Nothing, really, just an opportunity to spend some time with a couple of women I like and a road trip to the Outer Banks for the day. That's not really the point, though. More, the point is that this is a brand new (as of last week) set of responsibilities for me and I don't want it to fall apart the first time I take time off.

On the other hand, this isn't life or death. I think I'll take the vacation day as planned :)

Yogurt, Revisited

2010-07-22T16:59:00.003-04:00

I think I finally got it! The last quart of yogurt I made (before I made the one last night) I shared samples with VaPurl and Knitstx (aka Vicki and Cheryl). So I only had a little left and was compelled to make more. Twist my arm. I had read on a cheese making website that recommends holding the milk at 185 degrees for 10 to 20 minutes for yogurt. even if you are using store-bought milk that's already pasteurized and all that. Apparently this process prepares specific whey proteins to help produce a thick gel. In most of my previous attempts there was no separation of the whey. Well, actually, there was once when I accidentally let the milk cool too much and heated it up again...

Well, sure, okay, let's try that, says I.

Wow! Whey! And the yogurt WAS thicker. And I decided that instead of pouring the whey off I'd drain it through LOTS of cheesecloth to achieve the good thick consistency I would LIKE to have once in a while. It's easier to use it with fruit when it's thicker, I think. Anyway, it's in the fridge. I think I finally have a winner.

Adventures in Old World Crafts Part 2

2010-07-18T09:59:00.001-04:00

The arrival of a pound and a half of freshly shorn and processed 100% Cormo wool top from Juniper Moon Fiber Farm lit a small fire under my ass. This is not dyed fiber. It's a beautiful creamy, pale ivory. I watched this fiber get separated from it's collective owners in April, and eagerly awaited my share. While I do like the natural color, I will want to color some of it.

Enter the old world craft of dying fiber!

Oh, well, maybe not soooo old world, because I'm using acid dyes and cake decorator's dyes. If I were TRULY old world I would be using cochineal and indigo and brazilwood and dandelion. But not this time. Eventually, but not today. A girl has to draw the line somewhere.

Oh, the adventure of dyeing. I'll try to avoid all the obvious and not-so-obvious puns but you have to know they are there.

The first round was done with a product called iDye. It's a union dye, which means that it has combined the appropriate types of dyes for both animal and plant fibers. You can either use it on the stove top or in the washing machine. I used stove top. The dye pack dissolves in water, so you just drop the dye pack into a pot of water with 1/3 cup of vinegar, add the fiber, and heat to barely a simmer, then hold it at a simmer for about 30 minutes. Drain, wash the fiber, and hang to dry. You'll find, when you use this dye, that it doesn't "exhaust" the way other dyes do. That's because of the "union" quality. The animal fibers soak up dye meant for protein fibers, and leaves the plant dye behind. So there's this huge pot of colored water. It's confusing, especially after reading extensively about exhausting the dye, which means that all the color has been absorbed and leaves behind clear water. I really wanted to try some kind of tonal color. Among fiber enthusiasts it's referred to as tonal or monochrome, and there is subtle variation within the color, as opposed to a solid color with no variation. It can be very pretty. Yarn referred to as Kettle Dyed has this quality. I decided to start with Deep Orange and then over-dyeing for a very brief amount of time with Fire Red. I also chose to not pre-wet the yarn. Pre-wetting, whether you do so with or without additives, helps the fiber take up the dye. I had read that using dry fiber was one way to create more random variation in tone because the fiber will absorb the dye.

The thing with acid dyes is that the equipment you use cannot be used for anything else, ever. It has to be dedicated pots, stirs, etc. I used a cheap dark blue enamel-coated pot from Wal-Mart, like that granitware stuff. You don't realize how dark it is until you get it into a kitchen with poor lighting and dark, dark dye.

I wish for white enamel or stainless steel.

Results: more red than expected, but there was some orange observable. Let me tell you, too, that dye goes everywhere, and it looked like someone dyed. Ha ha. I couldn't resist just one.

Food dyes don't have the same constraints as acid dyes. They are non-toxic so it doesn't matter! Easier to clean up, too, actually.I have cake decorating dyes from a previous fascination with cake decorating. Problem was I had to make a cake in order to decorate it. Just for fun. So I had all these colors and who knew they were so great for dyeing fiber? It's pretty straight forward: mix up about a 1/2 tsp of concentrated food coloring with about 2 cups of hot water (hot helps it dissolve), apply to fiber that's been pre-wetted in a room-temperature 1:3 vinegar to water soup, gently squeezed and laid out on plastic, and then heat set in the microwave in what I call the 2 minute method: 2 minutes on high, 2 minutes wait, 2 more minutes on high, or 2+2+2. The colors came out beautifully. The execution by the dyer (me, and maybe the dyer should be executed but not today) is questionable but if I keep practicing I think I'll get it a little more finessed. I have lots of natural fiber, so I'll have lots of opportunities to practice.

I had Spectrum Gel Food dye on hand, and used 1 tsp violet for the purple, 1/2 tsp super rouge for red, and 1/2 tsp orange. Yes, I'm kind of into the red side of the color wheel. The first two skeins were my hand-painting experiment. You lay out your pre-wetted fiber and apply color to it. Sounds simple enough, and it really is. The trick is (a) deciding on your colors or color sequence and (b) mixing them up and (c) getting them where you want them on the fiber. I got (a) and (b) but (c) was definitely challenging. I've seen pictures of dyers using sponge paint brushes, and it seems like a good idea - a little more control. I might try that next time. So the violet was more royal blue than violet, which has given my skeins a somewhat patriot look, especially since I missed a couple spots. So the color sequence goes something like this: orange, red, tiny patch of white, blue, tiny patch of white, red, orange. The base fiber was bright white superwash (meaning it CAN be machine washed) wool that I spun and twisted into a 3-ply yarn. It's a sock weight yarn, but I wouldn't knit socks with it because of how I spun it. I would, though, do lace with it. I'll definitely add it to my current "sock blanket project." Or maybe I will defy convention and make socks anyway. Just for the helluvit.

The color is a little messy but I had fun with it and I learned some things. I made lots of notes.

I had leftover dye, and used up the orange and the red over-dyeing some ugly fiber, and the violet to over-dye a pale pink cowl that I knitted. The pattern is beautiful, and the yarn is gorgeous, but I don't look great with that much pale pink next to my face. It's just not me. However, that violet...that VERY BLUE violet, broke and the variation it created is not attractive at all so I'll have to run that one again. I'm wiser, now, and it won't take me two hours to decide my strategy.

Did I mention that I did this the same night I did the goat's milk yogurt? Man-oh-man I had some creative energy going. DH is in South Carolina for the week. Is there a connection? I'll let you decide. I'm thrilled that he'll be back Sunday night.

Update: I wrote this last weekend, and when I got the yarn wound into a ball, I decided that I hated it. So, I went back and dyed over it with blue. It's a little more monochromatic but it still kinda sucks. If I overdye it one more time it might become black-ish, which might not be such a bad thing. The yarn itself is pretty lovely, if I may say so myself, having spun and plyed it. I like how the orange and the red run together. I like how the purple/blues go, but I don't like how all three are co-existing, and therein lies my lack of knowledge in color theory. Yeah, yeah, I have the color wheel and I can figure out what is complementary and tertiary and secondary and all that. Values and tones and saturation...this is where I am weak. Ok. I get to keep working on it!

Doggie Pictures

2010-07-11T13:22:00.005-04:00

Because they are cute, and they sleep cute.

Tasha, under my desk.

There's a dog here...

And she finally lifted her head when she heard the camera click.

Adventures in Old World Crafts Part 1

2010-07-11T09:51:00.002-04:00

There is a certain satisfaction to engaging in crafts that might be considered "old world." They are the kind of crafts where you make a thing almost totally from scratch. I like making things that are commercially available but don't really meet a specific need. Too expensive, wrong style, whatever. And there is some other element I can't define, that is satisfies some elusive personal need. Sometimes it succeeds, like spinning. Sometimes not so much, like my latest foray into yogurt making.

I am not making yogurt because it's cost effective. It's not. Not even a little bit. I'm making it because my blood tests show that I have a significant sensitivity to everything cow's milk-related. Yeast is also a major player, but that's not really part of today's story.Sensitivity is different from an allergy. Allergy is immediate, sensitivity is delayed, and might be characterized as a "slow response allergy." Martin Healy, an Irish naturopath and acupuncturist, has written a couple of books about this.

First off, I wasn't able to locate any non-cow's milk yogurt at any of my local stores. Soy products are temporarily off limits until the middle of August so that wasn't an option either. You see my dilemma? I even went to the Organic Food Depot and they have everything BUT that. I learned later that I didn't look hard enough.

Back to the yogurt. First I went in search of a cow's milk-free yogurt culture. Custom Probiotics had one and I shelled out my earnings for a paltry amount of culture. Big bottle, tiny amount of...looks like very fine sawdust. It dissolves in liquid so it must not be sawdust.

Experiment #1
Get the goat's milk. I didn't order the culture until I knew I had a source. My good friend and fellow enabler VaPurl belongs to a CSA and obtains fresh goat's milk on a regular basis. She obtained a sample for me, 1 quart. Perfect. Fresh goat's milk has the most delightful taste! I was genuinely surprised at how wonderful and rich it was. Anyway, into my pot goes the milk, I followed the instructions from my yogurt book to the letter, added my culture, and popped it into my yogurt maker (really a yogurt hibernator...if it were really a yogurt maker it would heat up the milk and add the culture for me, dammit). Wait four hours. Check. Not set. Wait another four hours. Check. Not set. Wait another four hours. Check. Not set, but it was decidedly think. Kefir thick. Take it out of the yogurt maker, stir it, put it in the fridge.

Result: thick, lightly tangy in a good way, goat's milk. I wouldn't call it yogurt the way we all think of yogurt. But technically I guess it was because it had all those good live cultures. Very usable, though, and I put it on cereal, fruit, and added it to my post-workout recovery drink which made THAT taste like an creamcicle. Wow! Then I ran out so it was time to contemplate how to obtain more goat's milk.

Cost of 1 quart of goat's milk (not including the cost of the yogurt maker): $55.00

Experiment #2
I figured out that I could order a case of pasteurized goat's milk from Organic Food Depot. So I ordered a case of Meyenburg Ultra-pasteurized low fat goat's milk (cut me some slack, it's what they had). I have 12 quarts of goat's milk taking up space in my fridge. We'll be making cheese, too.

So, last night here we go. Milk in the pan, add 1/3 cup of dried goat's milk (to assist in thickening),heat it, cool it, add the culture, put it into the yogurt maker, wait ten hours. I learned my lesson the first time.

Result: thick, lightly tangy goat's milk. Same as the first time. I'm beginning to think that either I'm doing something wrong or my culture ain't for shit. I checked the temperature of the resulting "yogurt" and it was within specifications, so the incubator is okay. The only variable I really can't control is the culture. Everything was spotless clean, which is a rarity in this house but I was fanatic about the pot, the utensils, the incubation container, and everything used to make this stuff.

For Experiment #3 I will try using goat's milk yogurt from Organic Food Depot. Ah. Yes. When I was picking up my order I realized that they had this huge refrigerated room in the back of the store, not just the small wall of shelves for perishables. Then I found out that they carry goat's milk yogurt as a stock item. So I'll try using some of that for the culture this time and see if that works. If it doesn't, then it's me.

Cost of the second quart of yogurt:$38.00 At least the price went down.

Newport News to Baltimore, Train #94, Track 1

2010-04-27T16:04:00.005-04:00

I really love riding the train. Today I'm taking my second ride, this time to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, or MSWF.

When I first heard about MSWF, I thought it was up on the Eastern Shore, and I thought it was...well...probably pretty lame and small time.

Little did I know.

This is a big deal, probably second only to the NY festival in Rhinebeck. Folks just call it "Rhinebeck." MSWF is alternatively referred to as just "Maryland Sheep and Wool." As in, "Are you going to Rhinebeck this year" and "No, only Maryland Sheep and Wool." Go figure. I know people who go to multiple festivals each year. I just go to Maryland. Although, if I were in the vicinity of one I would go. There are two other festivals I would like to attend, though, and are on my wish list. One is SOAR (Spin-Off Artists Retreat) in Portland, OR, and the big jewelry conference in Albuquerque, NM. Artistically, there's a great deal going on west of the Mississippi and another compelling reason, among many, to move back West.

MSWF ain't small time and is anything but lame. There are a couple hundred vendors spotting everything from raw fleeces to spinnable to fiber to pinning wheels to needles, yarns, dye supplies, and, yes, sheep and goats. There are herding demonstrations (missed it last year, WILL watch this year), Alpaca available to pet, Llamas too if you can get close enough without being spit upon. The angora bunnies are fluffy and adorable. And fast. Last year I helped catch an escapee. There are lamb kabobs galore and I can't bring myself to eat it. I'm not big on lamb anyway, and eating them during a sheep festival seems a little weird. Not wrong or right, just weird. For me. Y'all do what you want.

I cannot help but compare last year to this year. Last year: complete newbie, totally overwhelmed. Doesn't mean I didn't spend some money. I bought my first 3 ounces of merino/silk fiber and an awesome tote bag. I got home and realized pretty quickly that the only thing to do with that fiber was spin it...but with what? And so it began. First a spindle. Then a little more fiber. Then a new magazine subscription (Spin Off) and a bunch more fiber. Then a spinning wheel, then DH gives me three pounds of beautiful Gotland locks, and now I have to buy more tools to manage that (oh darn). It takes over your life. I was totally unprepared for how attending the MSWF would alter my world.

This year I'm a pro. Or, at least not a complete newb. I have a wish list of yarn and the hope that some of the big name yarns I want are marginally on sale through the larger vendors. It's mostly sock yarn because I dig knitting socks, and love using the thinner yarns. Why yes, I think I will get some spinning fiber. I've been saving up for this. I went on a yarn diet so I could splurge at MSWF. And I have a pantry full of yarn so I'm not exactly starving. I was only planning to get a couple of tools - a really nice Golding spindle, a pair of Signature Needle Arts knitting needles (or at least eye ball them, they look delicious). I thought about getting a Charisma print, they are so so so cute. And I want to test some of the spinning wheels. A wheel is not in my budget. Nothing that large is in my budget unless it washes and dries clothing.

Until last Saturday.

Knitters are enablers, and they love shopping vicariously. The very definition of a modern major enabler: Knitter. Spinner. Vicki. Probably crocheter too but that's a different breed we don't discuss.

Saturday was the Sheep Shearing Party at the Juniper Moon Fiber Farm. Shepherdess Susie has done an outstanding job of creating a relaxing, fun, and informal environment for us shareholders. I know that raising sheep and goats is serious business but when we all decend onto her farm you almost wouldn't know it. She smiles. She laughs. She invites you (insists, actually) that you remove your shoes before you enter the house. No sense in tracking sheep dip everywhere.

So,: Kent, me, Cheryl & Rick, Vicki and Cuin, Romelda & John...we're sitting around in our folding captains chairs, laughing and talking about everything, and somehow we get to the topic of drum carders. We're fiber freakazoids so this isn't exactly a stretch. Drum carder=expensive piece of equipment that brushes shorn sheep locks into beautiful spinning fiber...and no, you can't just use a hair brush BUT I TRIED. A drum card is to spinners what a pneumatic drill is to a mechanic. You can use a wrench, but the pneumatic drill is so much more efficient. Anyway, turns out Vicki is in the market for a "little" drum carder. Let's call. it a sporty little compact, like a Prius. We throw idea that around for awhile, and she says how the one she really wants is the Lexus. I suggest how it would be cool to have five or six people buy "drum carding shares" to make the price palatable and be able to afford that Lexus.

Vicki is a world class enabler. I am too. We do it to each other. I bought a netbook and she drooled, then bought a netbook. She had a wheel, and I drooled, then bought a wheel. this is the big stuff. Let's not even talk about the small stuff. I learned my skills from the Mother of All Enablers, my DH. "Of course you want that honey. Go ahead." "Just get the whole thing, no sense in paying more for bits and pieces." You know these people who encourage you to do it, spend it, grow it, make it, attend it. And it's fun, so I'm not complaining. Vicki got to see my maker in action. I am not complaining too much about the Lexus drum carder I will likely take home with me from MSWF. There are, in fact, more expensive drum carders out there, but a girl must draw the line somewhere, even this girl.

I bet I get to spend more time with Vicki. Because why buy it now when Erin has one?

Farm Day at Juniper Moon

2010-04-24T07:19:00.005-04:00

I'm spending the day with Brandon and his siblings. Click the photo to see more, or go to Juniper Moon Farm "Farm Blog" for more unbearable cuteness. Disclaimer: This photo was taken by ShepherdSusie, aka Susan, the owner of the farm.

It's been a busy few months, and I vertigo for one of those months (just now recovered, thank you very much) so I'll get to updating this...oh, next week probably!

4.27.2010 Update: We had a great time! I have pictures of goats and lambs leaping and scampering and they are all on the other camera at home because I didn't rush to the computer with the CF card as soon as I got home. I went to bed.

When In Rome...or Greece, if you like

2010-02-14T11:45:00.001-05:00

I procrastinated about this post. I've spent the last month thinking about blogging, what it is about, what it does for me, what my blogging might do for others. I have not led a unexamined life. In fact, I'm definitely guilty of over-examining. I don't know when it happened but sometime recently...a few years ago?...I lost my taste for over-examination. For taking stock every damn day of every damn thing. It's exhausting. I have better things to do with my time. I'm evolving into having a simply examined life. Because, let's face it, what is blogging? Examining...in public. A form of exhibitionism. To paraphrase a much-maligned company's(1) catch phrase, What do you want to exhibit today?

(Why yes, today we have footnotes.)

Shall we put this into perspective? When we were smokers, DH and I would spend HOURS on the front porch talking. Smoking and examining, examining and smoking. And then analyzing ourselves and our motives, out friends and their lives and their motives. Almost daily.

We stopped doing so much of that when we stopped smoking. There was a catalyst, eh? And it didn't even hurt.

I should have made an outline to follow because, after stepping away for an hour to wind off some new yarn, have a cuppa Joe, and listen to DH explain the complexities of creating momentum against a soccer ball from within a minimum amount of space (he needed to think out loud to someone)...well, I sort of lost my place. Which is okay because there's a part two to my disjointed thoughts.

I have this friend. Let's call her Maureen. That's her name. No changing names around here to protect the innocent, and she's anything but innocent, ha ha ha. I asked Maureen why she didn't come read my blog very often. Apparently, I talk about fiber and knitting too much, two things she's not at all interested in. Ok. I hate Facebook, which is where she lives HER life, and probably wonders why I don't visit out there so much.

But this is sort of what led to a little recent self-examination; not about blogging per se but more about how we share our lives and at what point do we fall on our collective swords and follow our friends on Facebook and Twitter and their blog and the lot, as opposed to actually communicating with them on a one on one basis. But the question is more basic than that. Do I want to know the outer sheen of Maureen's life, as exposed and exhibited through Facebook where I can see that she has killed three dragons and is sending me a drink, and is going to go to bed now, or do I want to know what's going on in her heart and mind? (Answer: the latter.) I don't know if if you can really KNOW someone through Facebook. I guess it depends on what a person posts, but I dare you to have a long stream of ideas on Facebook. And don't get me started on Twitter. Life encapsulated in under 144 characters at a time. Now we can all submit our own soundbites to the world. Shit.

Lest my friends who use Facebook are offended or get defensive by my little rant: get over it. I am guilty of a little hypocrisy. "We all have our hobbies." I heard Shelley Binder(2) say that at the Hampton Roads Flute Faire yesterday and thought how wonderful a comeback it is and was determined to use it immediately.

Back to things. So here I sat, spinning quietly and thinking about whether I should expand my writing/ranting topics, or just STFU(3) and carry on. And I'm thinking about this fiber that I'm spinning that my friend Ashley gifted me. I don't know how I lucked into a friend as nice as she is but dang, she'd give you the shirt off her back if she thought you could use it. Anyway, she gave me this Superwash Merino top that she didn't care to work with. I think we have different spinning styles, her and I, so for me this was a nice, nice fiber to work with. I spun three bobbins of singles that I started plying as a sock/fingering weight 3-ply. I just wound off, a few paragraphs ago, the first 258 yards of this beautiful plied yarn.

Merino: wool from Merino sheep, very soft, not exactly cashmere but probably the most affordable of the yummy soft wools on the market.)
Superwash, or SW: a process that somehow changes the quality of the wool in such a way as to allow it to be machine washed. If you have something that is "machine washable wool" it's almost certainly been processed by what we fiber fanatics call "superwash." As a knitter there are minor trade-offs to using SW, as in: it doesn't felt so don't use it for felting projects, and don't expect to be able to join broken ends with spit.

Top: "Top" is the result of a fiber preparation that uses combs, very sharp spiky combs, to separate long yummy fibers from short not-as-yummy fibers from shorn wool. You've heard that "long-stapled cotton" is super soft. Long staples, or fibers, are soft no matter what the fiber. A basket of natural ivory colored wool top looks a little like someone's guts if they were fluffy and ivory-colored. I'm really not kidding.

And no kidding, I'm thinking about all this, including those definitions, as I'm spinning because my mind just...you know...wanders. Not unlike this blog post. It's quiet, I'm NOT listening to the radio, DH is somewhere (doing robotics or across the room working at the computeror in the kitchen), and the only sound is the occasional screech of a YouTube video, the hum of his laptop fan, and the constant quiet swoosh of my spinning wheel. It's unbelievably pleasant.

And finally, after three bobbins of singles, I realized that spinning and knitting is such a big part of who I am right now that it would be insane for me not to talk about it. So is making jewelry and so is writing in this format. So is playing the flute, my very longest running habit. Every few years the primary focus of my obsessions changes but for now: fiber, flutes, silver, writing, pretty much in that order. There it is. For awhile, none of them had any prominence but I finally learned that taking care of myself meant engaging in these activities because they make me happy.

At the end of the day, isn't that what's important? Know thyself.

Footnotes

(1) no, not Toyota. Microsoft. Gosh, do they even still use it?
(2) Shelley Binder, PhD, University of Tennessee, flutist, recitalist,clinician; attended her master class at HRFF.
(3) "shut the fuck up"

It's...so...white...

2010-01-30T10:10:00.005-05:00

All that snow the forecasters have been suggesting we might get here in SE Virginia? We're getting it this time. Every time I look out the window, which has been frequently over the past few hours, I'm struck by how very white it is. And really it's more like shades of gray, but my brain goes "whoa, white." This is a stay-home-and-not-feel-guilty-about-doing-absolutely-nothing kind of Saturday. Nothing, that is, except for knitting, spinning, computing, blogging, drawing beads on little pieces of sterling wire, charging our respective portable media devices, watching movies, making soup, napping, reading, and paying the neighbor kids to shovel the walk every six hours so the mailman has a route to the mailbox up on the porch. $2 per boy (three boys) plus a cup of hot chocolate. Such a deal.

Through the back door to the back yard. The first view of the snow the dogs had.

I must tell you that the Camellia on the left looks like it's slightly taller than the Camellia in the center, but it really reaches as high up as the 2nd-story eve of the house behind it, and for perspective the fence there is about four feet tall.

The view from the front porch, and I admit that my first thought when I saw this car motoring along without it's lights on was "you dumb-ass, why are you out driving in this weather?"

View from the back porch to the back yard.

My cast iron rooster bell. I bought this years ago in New Mexico at a junktique store and I have a fondness for it whose origin is unknown and I can't shake. We took it down from it's post when the porch was rebuilt and haven't put it back up yet. The photo isn't turned the wrong way; the rooster is lying on the porch rail.

Them's the photos for now. More to come if I can find my boots to go wandering around the neighborhood.

Soupy Sunday

2010-01-17T21:22:00.000-05:00

Not only the weather but in the kitchen, too. There's only one thing better than tomato soup and artisan bread for lunch on a blustery winter day. Today certainly qualifies as blustery. Windy, rainy, gray, and cool. I can't say cold because it's in the mid-50's.

What one thing is better, you ask? Homemade tomato soup and homemade artisan bread. And I haven't taken food pictures in a while. It is time.

I've really Martha'd myself. No, wait, to do that I'd have had to grow the tomatoes and sow the wheat. Never mind. I think I could probably do both these recipes in my sleep. I've made the tomato soup two or three times and it is simple. On the America's test Kitchen website, it's the "Creamy Creamless Tomato Soup."

The bread was even simpler, ingredient-wise, but sneaky. I tossed the first batch because it never rose. I'm almost certain that my yeast was old and dead. The second batch didn't rise as much as I'd hoped, but both times I felt the dough was just a teensy weensy bit too dry. The second batch rose (enough) after I let it sit overnight so I baked it this morning. Hmmmmm...the smell of fresh baked bread in the morning? There's no word for it, just a sound of drool.

Let's be clear: I do not have a professional oven with steam injection. My oven runs 100 degrees too hot, is a piece of crap, and I got this result anyway. It tastes as good as it looks. I started another one tonight. I can do this from memory. Well, mainly because I've prepared three in the last three days. A scale is very handy, and I added an ounce more water because I am convinced that the house is so dry the flour just needs that extra bit. Unlike the summer, Virginia does not have a high humidity problem and, because we have forced air everything, our abode is pretty dry. Nor-easter's not withstanding.

Both recipes (and the one for the croutons) are from the guys at America's Test Kitchen, aka Cook's Illustrated aka Cook's Country. I don't get what the difference is but the food is so good that I don't care. The soup is a little involved. It helps justify what we spend on kitchen equipment. In this case, dutch oven and blender. We simplified by using the stick blender which does a perfectly adequate job of whizzing the soup into smooth tomato-y perfection. I can't recommend the KitchenAid stick blender highly enough. There's a place for blenders, and a place for sticks. This recipe suggests using a blender, but using the stick leaves you with fewer dishes to clean, and I don't think it took any more time to get achieve soup smoothie.

Canned whole tomatoes (shocking, I know), white bread, onion, garlic, bay leaf, red pepper flakes, brown sugar (just a tiny bit), olive oil, chicken stock. That's it. We've used plain canned tomatoes, we've used tomatoes canned from a friends garden, and we've used a combination of canned whole and diced tomatoes. Someone had a hankering and we had what we had in the pantry. All of them were fine. In fact, in the first version all I had on hand were whole toms with basil. I plucked the whole basil leaves out but there was still a tiny bit of basil flavor and it was nice. We've used Pepperidge Farm country white, sourdough bread, and Inn Keeper's Whole Grain bread. I thought the whole grain bread would leave lots of seeds but they got whizzed, too. If you tasted them all side by side you could probably tell the difference, but I think it's probably marginal.

I cut the crusts from the bread thickly and used them for croutons. Toss with oil, season with salt and pepper, bake them at 400 for a few minutes until they look good and golden or dark golden, let them cool, serve with soup.

Almost No-Knead Bread
Creamless Creamy Tomato Soup

This looks like a fun project: Macaroon Knitted Purse

Have some fun

2010-01-14T08:06:00.003-05:00

I love this. Siraz: Is it a cheese? or a font? While everyone else is playing Bedazzled, I'll be over here playing this game:

http://cheeseorfont.mogrify.org/

And here's DH in his new extra-long stocking cap in Norview colors to keep you busy in case Cheese or Font is boring...

And then...poof!...there was Christmas

2009-12-28T22:00:00.009-05:00

It really really snuck up on me this year. I mean in a way that it has never snuck up on me.

I probably say that every year, come to think of it.

Two Wednesdays ago I said "holy shit, Christmas is a week and a half away. Holy shit!"

Cards: Done, sent.
Gifts: uhm...got some for DH
Shipping: shipping? what shipping?

This is the first Christmas where Patrick isn't here to put up the tree, so I put up two mini-trees side by side on the console behind the sofa. I just couldn't bring myself to do the big one. Could just be laziness. 9 feet of majestic Monterey Spruce, a beautiful thing when it's up. Not as beautiful sitting in it's box in the dining room. It's in a box in the dining room. For the last four or so years, though, it has been Patrick's family duty to bring the tree up from the basement and assemble it. I informed him that he will have to resume this task for all subsequent Christmases. He didn't fight it. Smart kid.

Got fleece?

Ain't it purty? This is all from one sheep - or one type of sheep, Gotland, and the three pounds of gorgeous locks that DH gave me still have a bit of lanolin in them. Tigger's don't like "spinning in the grease," so I have some washing to do, which I started tonight. This group was part of round two. I only have a little colander so I can only do a little at a time. The first round was almost a disaster when I didn't separate the locks. Whadda mess. This time I separated BEFORE soaking and I didn't have to spend 20 minutes afterward teasing them apart. Aren't those colors something? It's even better in person, but this is tedious work to bring them into spinnable format. Soak, soak, rinse, rinse, dry.

Here's the drying stage, tucked into the shower in the spare bathroom. Finally, a use!

I just can't get over the colors and the luster. I don't know whether to separate them or spin 'em all together. I'll need suggestions.

No, I haven't spent my entire vacation spinning and working with fiber.

I trotted out the tools and made earrings and a pendant for Kat using freshwater pearls she had from a broken bracelet. I finished those tonight and thank goodness had a chain for that pendant. I see from this picture I could have done a better job of polishing that pie shape. Too late now! Dime included for scale :)

DH also gave me a share from Juniper Moon Fiber Farm. Funny thing about that...I had purchased a share for myself back in October! So now I have two shares.

Moving right along. We have a new tradition: open all the holiday cards on Christmas Day. Yay, that's actually a lot of fun...watching them stack up then opening them all and looking at photos that family and friends have included...then I hung them on the mantel with the stockings.

The guitar necks are from Rock Band, which we all played Christmas Eve. I played drums. It was hysterical, especially because we didn't have the drum sticks so I used wooden mixing spoons. I'm sure that was a sight. By the way, I suck at drums on Rock Band. So, don't rely on my musicianship to translate. I've got rhythm but you wouldn't know it.

Ok, that's a wrap. Oh. And, go out and rent Inglourious Basterds. If you like Quentin Tarantino, it's a major hoot. It almost resembles a Coen brother's movie. But...not.

Really, there was a Thanksgiving

2009-12-23T12:53:00.002-05:00

And I started writing about it. It involved:

a turkey (not BBQ'd) and the standard trimmings at my SIL's in South Carolina, although there wasn't a traditional pumpkin pie to be found in the lot
lots of driving
lots of knitting in the car
hot dogs and chips at Maureen & Walt's place in Summerville
lots of knitting with my nephew
lots of eating

I had this big ol' other post that was very funny that I just never got around to finishing. So, there it is.

And then there's Christmas.

In What Format Is Our Lettuce?

2009-11-30T19:26:00.004-05:00

DH: "in what format is our lettuce?"
The geek in me howled and then with a straight face I replied that the spinach was small form factor and the romaine was tall and cylindrical, and both green. If you don't see the humor, bummer for you.

Sumter Wine Festival
From the events brochure: "Brown will present an exclusive 'real-time' tasting of his famous wines live from his Napa Valley vineyard through Skype technology." Tell me...don't you want to know how he'll use Skype for wine tasting? And why is real-time in quotes? Is it not really real time? Aren't "real time" and "live" supposed to kind of go together?

My 13-yr old nephew has converted the guest room of my sister-in-law's house into a crafting room. Painting, knitting, crocheting...he calls it The Craft Shack. Knitting friends: he has started a small yarn stash and already has blown through one organizing method in favor of another. Oh dear, another yarn junkie in the family. What ever shall I do?

Me, at dinner last night with DH's Naval Academy roomy of 20-odd years ago: "Yes, as a matter of fact, I am a Democrat and I do want a public option." Much heated debate ensued. Thankfully, we didn't discuss religion, or spend too much time on the cost of his Maserati. Bob: I like you anyway!

Show & Tell

2009-11-23T22:50:00.001-05:00

This is way too adorable. Knit-themed cupcakes. Not your standard knit cupcake, lemme tell ya. While you're at it, go here to Juniper Moon Farm's blog, where I ran across the knit-themed cupcakes. This post has a Hey Jude flow chart that is wonderful.

Meet Tasha, the backseat driver. Believe it or not, she is just small enough to sit behind me in my ergonomic work chair. She loves that I telecommute, but this situation prevents the chair from achieving it's full purpose in life. And yet it hasn't complained. Yes, she does actually prop her head on the arm of the chair. Yes that is her right paw dangling lazily off the seat. She's a goofy gal. We're a good team.

So, DH bought me a Lendrum spinning wheel for my birthday. Meet Betty, the wheel. Tasha, whom we met above (again, for some) felt she needed to art direct the photo shoot. Not sure how the name "Betty" happened but it did. Too much Mad Men? By the way, Don Draper is Maureen's boyfriend. If you aren't Maureen you won't get that joke. Or, maybe you will...Next to Tasha is the lazy kate I also got. If you look closely, you'll notice a piece of driftwood perched behind the front maiden. In English, that's "top-front of the contraption behind where that vertical post thingy is." That is my makeshift "hold the fiber while I'm off doing other life things" tool. The wheel doesn't have the attached orifice hook so I can't wrap my in progress work 'round it. However, this brings us to...(next slide, please)

The Orifice Hook. This happens to be the humongous plying head with the humongous orifice which makes everyone else look like 90-lb weaklings. So let's put this into a little more perspective.
Better. This hook is about 4 1/2" long, and the spiral head is just shy of 7/8" diameter. If you operate in metric (which I do when I'm working in metal), that's 11.5 cm long, with a spiral diameter of lets say 22 mm. I had a makeshift one I made from a paperclip but the head was so small that I was having difficulty controlling it. 14 gauge copper, Chainose pliers, a hammer, and a little flex-shaft-driven polishing and we have my little copper beauty. I can tuck the in-progress fiber into the spiral and, if I don't want the thing just dangling around, I can hook it on the drive band. I also had to repair the cable that attaches the footman to the treadle. While the part was on order I managed to concoct another 14-gauge copper thingy to operate in its place. Thank goodness that was fast, though, because it was a little rough. But it worked!

I'm so MacGyver.

One last picture...my yummy purple Mountain Colours "Heather" targhee. 2 3/8 ounces, 265 yards. I think that would be about 1700 yards per pound, rounded down. DK weight. This is only my second 2-ply EVER, so it doesn't suck too badly and it'll only get better. Oh, come on, let's be real about this. The first skeins are horrible. It's really uneven but it is balanced, and it's hanging up drying. I see fingerless gloves in my future...

*can we just all think of something other than "orifice"? Really? Orifice? Wouldn't "aperature" be nicer? It's not that I'm a prude, but...orifice? Most of the parts of a spinning wheel are strangely named...mother-of-all, maidens, orifice, orifice hook...well, the other parts aren't so bad, like treadle and drive band and table and wheel and footman...orifice? Really? Can I start a revolution?

No. pun. intended.

One more thing...Mom came to visit and The Nor'easter That Ate Virginia swept through and the power was out for a few days and it didn't completely suck, especially when DH tromped through the rising tide in the basement with garbage cans on his feet. Nope, no galoshes or boots or waders, and we didn't get to go to silversmithing class or Yarn For Breakfast. The former was cancelled, and the latter was in conflict with showers at the gym. See Mom's post for the gory and not-so-gory details, soon to come when she arrives back home. She's at my brother's in Wisconsin at the moment. Mom: did you find the tartar sauce recipe in your email? When I say minced, I mean really minced. There's a special mouth feel (gawd, foodie talk) when it's minced. Just crunchy enough. Not too crunchy.

The Lame Post

2009-11-04T07:30:00.003-05:00

I stalled after Williamsburg Consort (aka Band Camp). I'm tired, frustrated, angry, disappointed...and it keeps me from having fun with my bloggy self. None of the tired-frustrated-angry-disappointedness has anything to do with Consort, as we call it. Consort was a blast. It challenged me as a musician and it was a pleasure to play under such a professional conductor. An absolutely joy. It's the difference between an 18 micron Merino and grocery store twine. There's simply no way to connect the two. So that was terrific. I learned some great things from Janet, the flute section leader. I'm already seeing improvements from the advice I got from her. It inspires me to keep playing.

The tired-frustrated-angry-disappointedness (oh hell, let's just call it what it is: TFAD), the TFAD doesn't mean there aren't events to look forward to in life. My mother is coming to visit next week and I'm excited-anxious. We're titivating like crazy. Actually, I think we're beyond titivating and have moved into full on spring (fall) cleaning. I sweep the back decks at least once a day. That's something.

No, this is mostly about the triplets. They turned three months old last week and we haven't seen them since July 28th. They broke up and she didn't waste any time requesting child support, and also didn't waste any time telling him he couldn't see the babies, for any number of reasons which all equal no visits.

My best friend moved to South Carolina. I love her, I question her judgement on this, and I support her 100% because that's what friends do. Exciting for her, not so exciting for me. Now I'm just whining.

The Hateful Project is in someone else's hands now, more or less, while I finish my not-quite-as-hateful-project. Remember...Erin doesn't like managing projects. Strangely enough, The Hateful Project has gotten alot of recognition because on paper it returns a ton of productivity hours back to the teams involved, and this is big bucks. So, yay. Ironic. It doesn't make it any less hateful, though.

The uncomfortable part about wrapping up projects is that there isn't anything waiting in the wings. What happens when my six sigma project is done? What happens when The Hateful Project is done? I like having something to look forward to (remember that phrase...I'll come back to it...maybe not today, but sometime, and it troubles me...the phrase, I mean).

DH (Dear Husband) started rehearsals for Brave New World last week. I think he gets to "get nekkid" but we aren't sure yet. He really likes working with this group partly because of all the suzuki theater method they use in rehearsal. I couldn't explain it to you. It's a little weird. Sort of like competitive yoga, but not.

So, this post is about me saying: I'm here, the last few months have been a little crappy and I've mostly been trying to just deal.

This one time, at band camp...

2009-09-12T22:05:00.003-04:00

Tomorrow I schlep myself, my flutes, my music, and a week's worth of clothing to Williamsburg for what generally amounts to band camp for adult musicians. Never having been to a real band camp, though, I can only assume. We're staying at the Patriot Inn (remember, Williamsburg: Colonial reenactments, Jamestown settlement, home of the College of Williams & Mary, archeological digs, etc.) rehearsing about 8 hours a day for five days and performing two concerts. The whole enchilada is called Williamsburg Consort, and it's by invitation. I got connections, see.

It's only 45 minutes away but with the amount of rehearsing it doesn't make sense to drive up there every morning before 8am and drive back home every night after 9pm. Through the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel, which at any given time on any given day will have some 30-minute delay. Name a reason and it probably has happened or will happen. And there wasn't an "off-campus" option. I'm rooming with my flute buddy Amy.

My lips are going to go numb and my arms are going to fall off but I'll probably have a wonderful time.

In other news, this is the first year that Old Dominion University (ODU) has had a football team in I don't know how many millions of years. Actually it's been 69 years, according to the website. They had their second home game tonight, or so I heard. I think the fireworks I hear outside are from some ODU football celebration. We won, and I can't even believe I'm interested in trying to understand this whole college football thing. It took me an hour to figure out what division they are (FCS, formerly Div I-AA) and how that compared to, say Michigan State (yeah, right, even I know that Michigan State is, like, the bomb). So, anyway...we're 2-0. Woohoo. All season tickets are sold out, too.

I forgot to mention: some of our favorite people are students at ODU, including Kathryn "Kat," and Kent, a friend works there, we love to hang out in the student union (Webb Center), and it's five blocks from our house as the grackle flies. 3/4 of a mile if you drive.

This is also the first time ever that I've mentioned sports in this blog. It might be the last. Let's just wait and see, shall we? I don't do sports but we're all pretty excited about this ODU football-thing. We usually only get excited about sports when the Army-Navy game rolls around (Go, Navy) or during Olympics season (Go, Ice Skaters. Go, Gymnasts). Did you know you can get one of those football-shaped blue and white foam stress balls, the kind you squeeze like a maniac, at the Shell gas station up the road. It has the ODU Monarchs printed on it in gold. For only 5 bucks. Is that real gold?

Phun with Photoshop

2009-09-10T23:23:00.002-04:00

I was playing with digital image color correction last weekend in a way I never have. For some reason this chapter in my favorite Scott Kelby book, The Photoshop CS2 Book for Digital Photographers, completely escaped my notice. At the time I probably thought I knew it all and I didn't need it. I'm too stupid to figure it out myself really. I swear I'm going to go through ALL my old photographs and color correct them.

Right after I finish that five year plan. In Trebuchet. Or Poor Richard. Cooper Black, perhaps?

The "before" is on the left, "after" on the right, screenshots from Adobe Bridge. The photos don't show up as large as they used to, but clicking on the photo will bring up the larger version and the corrections are more apparent.

Waves and Vegetation

Color corrected. It's amazing what just a little bit will accomplish.

Bird

These little guys just skitter around all over the place. Color corrected and sharpened.

Splash

Color corrected, cropped, sharpened. I like the effect you get with a long lens. It looks like there really is this wall of water, which there sort of is but it's exaggerated by the 300mm lens. Or whatever I have it set to.

Bird Sans Trash

Major work in addition to color correction and cropping and sharpening...I had to remove this stupid piece of trash from the photo. I lid of some sort, like from a Pringles can or something. I was so caught up in trying to capture the bird that I didn't see anything else. So that was a little tricky but fun.

Curl

I think this is my favorite. I sat on the beach and took dozens of shots to get this one, with the shutter set to burst. Color corrected, cropped, sharpened. This was inspired by a beautiful book of photography called Waves by Steve Hawk. I pull it off the shelf every time I hang out at Barnes & Noble but haven't been able to justify the purchase. There is another book, called Beaches, that I just don't care for as much. The Sea/Day by Day looks promising. If you didn't know, you'd think you could be anywhere in the world, instead of little old Ocean View, Virginia.

Sitting

I had unlocked the car, pulled open the door, looked up, and saw this right in front of me. I don't know who they are but they looked peaceful and a little romantic in an everyday kind of way, which is my favorite kind of romantic. Simple and unfussy. Color correction, cropped, sharpened. I sharpen everything a little. Most of the time I just think it looks better. I can always undo it if it doesn't look right.

Before we moved here in 1994 I could barely pick out Virginia on the map. I just never paid much attention to the East Coast. Now I can name many lovely things about the state, not the least of which is it's proximity to the center of the political and naval universe, not to mention vast expanses of water. Which is really kinda cool in a geeky sort of way. It's weird, though...my brother, who lives in Wisconsin, the upper Midwest, also lives near vast expanses of water. I was reminded of that when I was looking at his lovely photos from Lake Michigan. In fact, Wisconsin has a surprising amount of shoreline. I'll have to look that up. We all live near major water - me, Mom, Sister, Brother.

Wow, I'm definitely going through a beach phase. I posted all these photos to Flickr.

Soup or...

2009-09-05T15:50:00.000-04:00

Harris Teeter has impressively expanded their salad bar menu. For lunch we had a coastal South American country.

Cone of Uncertainty

2009-08-31T20:00:00.000-04:00

We were not in it.

By "we" I mean Hampton Roads. By "it" I mean the projected path of TS Danny, which us weather watchers have been hoping would strengthen and throw up some severe weather, but not enough to make us evacuate. The projected path has bands and it's all known as The Cone of Uncertainty.

By "us" I mean Nick and me.

So every few hours we're checking out The Weather Channel or Wunderground. I've lost some faith in TWC's integrity ever since they started pretending to do "morning show" type stuff. Now that Al Roker is involved...well, gimme a break, huh?

But I love the term "cone of uncertainty." I intend to use it liberally.

Speaking of liberally, we are cooking liberally from our America's Test Kitchen cookbook. We love the French Onion Soup, and have mastered the art of cooking a whole chicken in a covered pot (chicken en cocotte) . Sounds straightforward, and it is. The question is: why doesn't EVERYONE cook it like this? It's so simple and makes the best gravy and the meat is tender and juciy from the thigh to the breast. Oof, is good.

I'm so late with this post...T.S. Danny is a dim memory.

Combing After Bill

2009-08-29T13:53:00.000-04:00

Bill, the hurricane that whipped up a few waves and some riptide warnings and left some fun debris. Here's my haul from today's 30 minute walk on the beach...The red bits look like they are from car taillights, and probably are. A couple of funky little pieces of iron. A whole shell - some type of whelk maybe? A beautiful flat triangular shaped rock. A heavy piece of pottery. The propeller looking thingy is the hinge end of a very large (probably clam) shell.

This beach thing is fun. It's probably a good thing that I didn't start doing this 15 year ago.

Today's Quote

2009-08-24T05:45:00.002-04:00

"I am working on my 5-year plan, but still choosing a font."
Michael Anderson, from his blog profile at tp.oma.
http://theportfolio.ofmichaelanderson.com/about/

Today's Quote

2009-08-23T11:51:00.000-04:00

"It’s ok if there are better players than you on your team; sometimes your job is not to be brilliant yourself, but to enable others to be their best."

WENDII, http://www.manager-tools.com/2009/08/cricket

Action Swatch

2009-08-18T20:06:00.000-04:00

Some knitters complain about swatching, that it's time consuming, or that they don't need to because they already know what their own gauge is because it's so consistent. Be that as it may, swatching is a valuable exercise to ensuring the sweater or sock you are knitting doesn't become that nightmare object that you knit for size 32 but it turned out to be size 50.

And do you notice that when you do screw up gauge, it's often on the side of too big? Why don't we ever accidentally knit it too small? Well, I'm sure there are knitters who do that, too.

So have fun with your swatch! After you've knitted and counted stitches and rows and determine that yes, you were right all along, put that swatch to good use. If you are really on top of your game, you'll intentially swatch to about the same size every time and after several years will have enough swatches for a small quilt. Or a large quilt depending on how prolific you are. HA!

Action Swatch #1 is relaxing with a cup of coffee on my desk.

I spun this yarn from a 50-50 merino-silk top sample that I purchased at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. For non-knitters, that's fiber consisting of 50% merino wool and 50% silk.

This was my very first spin, by the way.

Action Swatch #2, in Lion Brand Cottentots, is holding down a small table. It doesn't say on the label that it's that strong, but clearly it's doing very well. Not only that, it's holding up a small box of found objects, a measuring tape, and the leg of freshly knitted socks. So fresh they haven't been blocked.

Action Swatch #3 is in residence as a cover for the Blue Faced Leicester I have parked on my drop spindle. This was a sock swatch for the very first socks I knit, of Regia something or other, a cotton/wool/nylon blend. Very sturdy stuff which in the hand doesn't feel like it would be that comfy but on the foot is very nice.

Door to Shore: 35 Minutes

2009-08-08T19:35:00.006-04:00

I'll grant you it's kinda gruesome, but this was the scene of some dastardly crime at the oceanfront this morning. I don't know if any actual crime was committed, or how all these fish died...but they are very dead. Might have been someone's bait.

This morning I went to the oceanfront to take my morning constitutional, as in the Virginia Beach oceanfront, that bastion of touristy tackiness. I've been going up to the Ocean View section of Norfolk, the Chesapeake Bay version of the oceanfront.

Whatever.

Anyway, OV doesn't have the great white expanse of sand that the oceanfront has but it's really pleasant, not as many persons, and the beach combing fairly decent. Yesterday I ran across a beached porcupine fish and many blue crabs that had been picked over by the seagulls. I guess they were tossed up by the storm from the previous night.

It takes me 10-15 minutes to get up to Ocean View. I thought, well, the oceanfront isn't that much farther...so I timed it. 35 minutes, door to shore at 31st street, including finding a parking spot at 6:55 am which, on a Saturday, wasn't difficult. The punchline, and I swear there's a point, is that when you live that close to the ocean, it's really dumb not to spend time there. However, I'll reserve my oceanfront time for the Labor Day to Memorial Day season, and stick to OV for now.

1" = 3 miles or something like that. The red star is Home Sweet Home. Despite the proximity to several rivers, none of them have beaches for walking. Sad.

Beach Bumming

2009-08-08T12:19:00.002-04:00

I walk on the beach a few times a week and it's a special, wonderful moment in my day.

Life In Triplicate

2009-08-07T05:56:00.002-04:00

My friend Maureen came up with that line, and I had to use it.

And it got me thinking that there are a lot of things that come in threes, or have three parts, or involve the number 3. It turns out that 3 is a significant number that turns up, well, just about everywhere. In design, three is the minimum number of objects needed to create visual tension. Many schools of philosophy include three-way ideas, such as Aristotle's 3-in-1 idea (Mind, Self-knowledge, and Self-love), or Francis Bacon's three tables (presence, absence, degree).

Things that come in threes, involve three, etc:

My newborn grandkids, the most perfect little people in the world
Flute Trios
Good luck
Bad luck
Little Pigs
Billy Goats Gruff
Blind Mice
Bears (Goldilocks and the...)
Wise Men
Wishes
French Hens
Half of a knitted 6-stitch cable
Catholic Holy Trinity
Wheels on a tricycle
Movements in a sonata
Holiday weekends
Pigs In A Blanket
Months in each season

Image zones (not to be confused with the Zone System)

First odd prime number

Dimensions

Dog Night

Populations in Plato's Utopian city

Tic-Tac-Toe

Stooges

Phony dollar bills

Waltz time

Bean Salad

Is the third unique Fibonacci number

Cheers
Social group types in Great Apes

Meals a day

The adhesive company that makes sticky notes

Tenors

Geological divisions of the Earth

Strikes
Outs

Tolkein's rings

Days between Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection

Asimov's Laws of Robotics

Distinct species of the genus Homo

Semicircular canals in the human ear

Types of galaxies

Leaves on a Shamrock

R's

Letters on eight of the eleven numeric buttons on a touch tone phone

Power states: on, off, pause

Points in a right angle

Types of relationships between database table

A type of bet, and also the money positions in a horse race

Hat trick

Times that something is attempted

Hat worn by soldiers in the American Revolution, and also by Chelsea Pensioners in formal dress

A crowd

The Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes

Of a kind

Peas in a pod
Names in Neil deGrasse Tyson's name
Time a lady
Musketeers
Amigos
Faces of Eve
Questions (Monty Python and the Holy Grail)
Shells (Demolition Man)
Cherries on a pawn shop sign
Light bulbs (three-way)
Company
Short blasts or signals from a ship meaning "I am operating astern propulsion"

What are your three things?

Monday, Aug 3

2009-08-03T06:22:00.002-04:00

A quiet weekend. Grace is home with Nicole. Jacob is still in NICU but is holding his own. All Gabrielle's digestion issues appear to be resolved, but both her's and Jacob's internal temps are being monitored. However, everything is looking good. Nicole is spending a lot of time at the nursery, and Nick is also spending as much time as he can at the nursery, too. He adores his babies.

I saw Jacob and Grace this weekend. They look lovely :)

Two Travels Behind

2009-07-30T08:38:00.004-04:00

The birth of the triplets disrupted the review I had started of photographs from our recent vacation to Callaway Gardens and mine and Kent's jaunt out to Lynchburg. It's been a very busy two weeks. Here are a couple of shots from both those vacations with the promise of more to come here and in Flickr.

Leslie

Kent

Taylor loved the marshmallow roast

Jane, watching beach games

Did you know that Callaway Gardens is the shooting location for southern segments of The Victory Garden?

First Bottles Outside the Nursery

2009-07-29T08:42:00.002-04:00

Nurse & Gabby

Nick & Grace

Gramma Erin & Grace.

Both girls drank up over a full ounce, a good showing. I got a little spit up on my shoulder. I'll never wash that shirt again.

Some of the details

2009-07-28T20:47:00.005-04:00

Grace, 3o minutes old.

Dying for details, are you?

The babes were born shortly after midnight on the 28th, and they were all a little over 5 lbs. Amazing for triplets. Nicole was about 34 weeks, I think. I was joking in a staff meeting yesterday that unless she spontaneously went into labor that she had scheduled a c-section for August 3rd. Damned if she spontaneously went into labor, though she didn't realize she was in labor until the contractions were very close together. We all theorize that she must have a high tolerance for pain. She barely had enough time to call Nick. Nick called me, and we arrived about 45 minutes before the trips were delivered. Nicole's mother is on staff at the hospital, and her aunt is a maternity nurse, so there was a lot of traffic when they were born, and Aunt Dawn managed to get the babies lined up in front of the nursery window for all the post-delivery business they do. I didn't get to see all that when I had the boys so this was fun.

We went home around 3am, and Nick crashed on our couch so he could go to work early. Nicole's sister stayed with Nicole last night at the hospital. Kent hustled me out of the house early to visit Nicole and the babies. Jacob is in what they call Level 2 nursery picking up extra oxygen because his saturation levels are little low. The girls are in good shape, and Kent and I were there for the first out-of-nursery feeding, that was so fun!

They'll be in the hospital for the rest of the week, go home Friday. I want to do more but I don't know what, and she hasn't asked for anything. Her family is very large and she has a lot of support. I guess we'll see how things pan out.

One day at a time!

Say Hello to Gabrielle, Jacob, and Grace

2009-07-28T09:41:00.004-04:00

Gabrielle, Jacob, and Grace, about 30 minutes old. July 28th, 2009.
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/november19/sets/72157621749945185/

Triplet Watch 7/7/09

2009-07-07T09:03:00.002-04:00

Nicole is carrying as if she is 42 weeks. In reality she's 31 weeks. Doctor says "any day now" and gave her her first steroid shots to help develop the babies' lungs. That's all I know for now. Here's her at 28 weeks, posing for the camera at her June 14th baby shower. Nothing there to scale, but she's only 5'1".

Think I'll Go Eat Worms

2009-07-05T14:46:00.005-04:00

Despite the fact that the cheese in the enchilada photos looks like little orange and white worms (oh gross) , thank you for letting your mouth water down your front, Mom :) I think we could write a fabulous cookbook, as long as we improve on the food styling.

No new news about the triplets.

When I'm not cooking, or knitting, or at work, or watching Rescue Me, I'm making jewelry. So far: a brooch, a ring, three pairs of earrings, and a bracelet and three pendants in progress. The bracelet...has been challenging. I guess it's my lot in life to embark on a project so far outside my league. It applies to work (that story is for another post) and jewelry. On the other hand, "it's a great learning opportunity." Harumph.

For the record, I'm not a project manager, as in: I hate doing project management. Which doesn't mean I don't like working on projects. Don't confuse that with outlining the steps of a small crafty project. And in the realm of jewelry projects, this is kind of detailed. But there's no comparison. The latter (outlining steps for a small crafty project) is infinitely more palatable. And you know what? People make assumptions. "Oh, you can do that? You must be a really good project manager. Hey, here's one for you..." Buyer beware! Don't let them label you as a "project manager" no matter how thrilling it might sound, or how much more money you might make.

But I digress. And I'll probably just lift that entire paragraph as the lead to my rant post about project management. But that's Not This Post.

This is the bracelet. 10 stations for 5 stones and 5 mixed media resin pieces, one box station, and one box clasp. 12 hinge pins for 12 hinges comprised of 36 independently soldered tubes. Yes, you are supposed to say "holy shit!" to the business about the tubes. Was it a pain in the ass? Most definitely. Would I do it differently? Probably not, but I'd use different fire. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Last summer I picked up a back issue of Jewelry Artist magazine. I ordered it because on the cover was the most beautiful hinged bracelet. Over and above the fact that I thought the construction and choice of colorful quartz was gorgeous, I'm a sucker for hinges in jewelry. Hinges provide nifty kinetic opportunities. Hinges are also impressive, but that wasn't a driver. They are just cool. Like jazz. Cool. Dig?

So I says "Hey, Barbara." Barbara, wonderful Barbara, is my silver jewelry master/guide/yogi/instructor/mentor. "I want to make something like this."

Barbara says, "Okay." Silly Barbara.

I have three square pieces of some kind of jasper Kent brought back from MIT. Two pieces of rectangular apatite that I picked up at a local bead store. Visions of interesting resin-with-embedded-pieces dancing in my head, a la found object art. Some wood bits with polka dots in a color that goes with the jasper and apatite.

There is lively and repeated discussion in the Ganoksin forums about whether to design around a stone, or design around an idea. My personal opinion is that...it depends. In my limited experience as a jewelry designer (dare I call myself that? so presumptuous!) I've done both. The bracelet was designed around an idea, and I refined it based on what I had in my stone collection. The brooch was designed around an idea, and I found The pearl earrings were about trying a technique, the "messy bulky wrapped loop," technique, and then I chose the stones. The chandelier earrings were designed around the red beads in a beading class. A pendant was designed around two stones that look good together. Another pendant was designed for some extra pieces of silver I had lying around and a nearby stone that looked like it belonged, although it began with a circle of square wire that was waiting for a purpose. Another pendant was designed to experiment setting stick pearls. but you could make an argument that I designed around the stones and mixed media because I didn't formally draft the design until I had those in the right order. Hmph.

In other words, the chicken and the egg mysteriously occur ed simultaneously and any attempt to determine which came first just takes all the fun out of it. There is something to be said for those who enjoy the debate. Kent.

Gathering the requirements/technical specifications, in which our hero measures her wrist, the stones, determines which tube thickness looks best, and what type of clasp will be used.
High level design (HLD), in which we make a pencil drawing using the specifications and ask the all important question: does it work? does it look good? are the pieces in a pleasing order, and answer the question: are you sure you want the bracelet to be this long? (Answer: yes, I like my bracelets loose, and it matches the length of another favorite bracelet.)
Low level design (LDL), in which we figure out how much silver we need, how tall the bezels should be, does Barbara have right sized tubing or do I need to purchase from Rio Grande, what gauge to use for the bezel backs, gauge for the hinge pins, how to approach the actual build, and again answer the question: do you want the bracelet this long? It seems really long. (Answer: my wrists are big and I like my bracelets loose. It matches the length of another favorite bracelet.)
Build, in which our hero begins the tedious process of measuring, sawing, soldering, resoldering, resoldering, fussing with her creme brulee torch (and which we eventually discover is completely inadequate for this kind of fine detail work).

Build is taking a looooong time, because every time I get to the stage where I am doing the rough polish I have to boomerang back to build because a hinge snapped. Over and over and over and over. And I stopped doing some of the work at home because I got busy with other things and unenergized about the whole thing.

Then I got energized again, and it broke. During the build stage, The Bracelet has popped apart many times. A bezel popped off when I started setting the first stone. Ah the joys of learning to make complicated jewelry. It doesn't LOOK like it should be complicated. Stations and hinges and a clasp. What's the big deal?

En-chee-laaaa-das

2009-05-16T20:42:00.015-04:00

This was an awful week in the world of Me. Primarily work-awful, but allergy/sinus infection/head cold awful, too. But instead of spending my time venting, I thought instead I'd share my Enchilada recipe, and along the way maybe some of the vent will...vent.

Triplet update: All is well, all is normal. Nicole is cranky, Nick is excited, I'm bored knitting baby things after only three little hats and three sockies. End of July is the expectated due date. The babies are fraternal, not identical, and one of the girls has Mom's name as her middle name.

Red Chicken Enchiladas
This is a medium-hot to hot enchilada dish. You can make it more or less spicy by adjusting the mix of enchilada sauce and adding or eliminating jalapenos. A little chipotle sauce sprinkled on top of the sour cream when you serve adds an interesting smokey note. We use Búfalo Chipotle.

This recipe began almost 19 years ago, right after Kent and I were married. We had gobs of leftover champagne from the wedding, and we were in the mood for Mexican...enchiladas, specifically. We boiled chicken breasts in champagne and allspice, and used that in the enchiladas. The recipe hasn't changed much since then, but it is really based on a recipe I received from my mom for white chicken enchiladas. I don't think this bears much resemblance to her original recipe, or if she even remembers it, but I speak the truth. I seam to recall thinking "roux? eewwww, I think I'll just substitute red enchilada sauce." Mom will deny all of it. She now has a wonderful enchilada recipe from my brother which is similar in spirit if not in specifics to mine. We both created our recipes independently of one another. Must be genetic.

We buy a better champagne these days and prefer to drink it rather than use it to boil chicken. Although if it goes flat...

3 or 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, boiled, baked, or somehow cooked, your choice.
(or one of those deli-rotisseried chickens)
(or deli-rotisseried turkey)
(or leftover baked chicken)
(or a combination of any of the above)
*the pictures show the turkey option
1 cereal bowl of shredded white cheese
Think monterey jack or Oaxaca quesadilla cheese. Mozzarella is a little too rubbery and mild for this. The Oaxaca is a little saltier than mozzarella, and shreds beautifully, and jack is a good old stand-by. Pepper jack would be interesting.
1 cereal bowl of shredded cheddar - we use our store-brand sharp cheddar
If you want really cheesy, double these amounts
1 cereal bowl of chopped not-green bell peppers
3 fresh green onions, chopped (or one small onion, chopped and sauteed)
2 or 3 fresh jalapeno peppers, finely diced
2 10-oz can regular/mild enchilada sauce
2 10-oz can hot enchilada sauce
1 pack of a 12 to 20 medium-sized flour tortillas
not the super-ginormous ones, you know what I'm talking about.
Sour cream, salsa, and more chopped green onions as toppings
One 13x9 glass baking dish and, possibly, one 9x9 glass baking dish.
The tortillas fit perfectly side by side like little soldiers in the Pyrex dishes. Whether you use one or two depends on how much meat you have. A rotisseried turkey yeilded enough for one 13x9 pan of enchiladas. You'd probably need two rotisseried chickens (they're pretty puny, yes?). With four chicken breasts, we always used the 13x9 plus the 9x9.

Get your chicken cooked up, removed from it's bones, shredded or chopped, whichever is appropriate. I like chopped because I get a cleaner bite when I stick my fork into the cooked enchilada. If you don't like getting shredded poultry in your teeth, go with chopped. If you really dig the acting of using two forks to shred up the bird (and I know those who do), then knock yourself out! Put the chopped or shredded chicken into a large bowl.

Chop up your bell peppers, onion (we used sauteed white onion in this photo), and jalapeno, and dump it all into the bowl with the chicken. Shred the cheeses and put most of that into the bowl. Reserve a large handful of mixed cheeses to sprinkle over the top. If you are using green onions, reserve a couple tablespoons of that to sprinkle over the top, too.

Everything should be in your big bowl, so use your hands or a big wooden spoon or some implement and fold the ingredients together so everything appears to be well distributed. This is now called The Filling.

Open the cans of enchilada sauce and mix them together. I use a 4-cup glass measure because it has a spout. Lightly oil the glass baking dish(es) (yes, Pam and it's type work fine) and pour a just enough sauce in to coat. Tilt the pan around so the sauce clings to the bottom and sides. It helps extract the enchiladas when it's time to serve.

Stir a little enchilada sauce, say no more than 1/2 cup, into the big bowl of The Filling. Hands, big spoon, tossing in the air (dangerous but also effective), whatever stirring method floats your boat. The purpose of the sauce in The Filling is to bind it together some while you are getting it into the tortilla.

Remove the flour tortillas and heat them.

There are several different ways to heat up these tortillas. The objective is to soften them so they don't crack when you roll 'em around the filling. My favorite way, time consuming though it is, is to cook them over a flame. No pan needed. This works best with a gas burner, and you just gently and slowly flip the tortillas back and forth over the flame. It cooks the floury taste out and warms them up nicely. These don't need to be COOKED and charred up, just warmed. Don't go nuts. However, the fast trick is to wrap the stack of tortillas in a barely damp towel, and zap them for a minute (on high) in the microwave. Or wrap them in aluminum foil and keep them warm in the oven. It isn't as culinarily romantic but it's effective. My heart thinks the stove-top cooked ones taste better but I'm probably wrong. Warning: don't do this with an electric stove top or a glass/ceramic/smooth-top stove top. You have to have the heat up a little higher to achieve the same end and they are likely to stick if you aren't careful. Trust me on this. And anyway it's still just not the same.

Okay. Now you have warmed your tortillas in some wonderful romantic or wonderfully efficient way, and you need to set up a little assembly line. I go from right to left: bowl of The Filling, my stack of tortillas, my empty pan(s), and a big spoon.

Take off your jewelry, this can be messy. I like to use one of those big soup spoons, or a small serving spoon to do this. Scoop a couple of spoons of filling into the center of the tortilla. Carefully roll up the tortilla and place it seam-side-down into the baking pan. Keep doing this until the pan is full. If you have extra tortillas and extra filling, use the 9x9 dish.
**If you have leftover tortillas but no leftover filling, save them for quesadillas or make your own chips.
**If you have extra filling but no extra tortillas, this stuff is great on these grilled nachos. I give them 5 stars.

All the tortillas are panned up; pour the remainder of your sauce over them to coat. Use a spoon to spread it around. The edges of the tortillas need to be coated or they get hard and crunchy. Unless you like that :) Live dangerously. Sprinkle the reserved cheese and green onions over the top.

< Kent's two cents worth.

Bake in a 350°F oven for 30 minutes, or until the top is nice and bubbly and the enchiladas are heated through. Remove and let rest for five minutes or so while you get out condiments.

Enchiladas, cooked, having a rest >

I recommend sour cream, a fresh chunky salsa, maybe a few more green onions. Black olives are tasty, too.

Yum!

Tre Bambini

2009-04-17T21:23:00.004-04:00

This is what Tasha does when she wants something. Will you look at that sad little face? "Erin, I'm a starving little dog! When will you ever feed me?"

Well, Mom's been wondering when I was going to "put pen to paper" on this topic. Kent and I are expectant grandparents of triplets!!!!!!!! Oh, you want proof you say? well, check this out:

Count 'em: Baby A (Boy), Baby B (Girl), and Baby C (Girl). I think that's how it worked out.

Nicole is five months preggers and is as big as a house (must have picture, that front porch is really something) and carrying like she's going to deliver any day. Nick says it's all baby weight, except for that front porch I mentioned.

I'm the Knittin' Grammy (much better than Gramma and I need to distinguish myself - Nicole's mother can be Gramma). For my part, I've bought baby clothes for a boy and two girls, knit three preemie beanies, and am working on a little sweater for when someone gets to about 6 months. Everything was always way too big for either of the boys when they were little, and they were kinda little when they were little. The sweater looks ginormous compared to what I THINK should be the right size, but I'm just going with it. Blankies? No, I'm not knitting any blankies. Not yet anyway. Heck, I'd have to knit three. That's a lot of blankies. No, I'm interested in sticking with quick projects.

Yeah, yeah, I know the arguments. "Well, knitting a blankie is fast, it can just be garter stitch with a border. You can crank it right out." How boring is that? It just isn't for those of us with a short attention span. I can be fairly tenacious with more complex items. They are interesting. They hold my attention. If you go out to Ravelry and look me up (erinkristi, but I guess you have to have an account to do that...Flickr has a Knits folder that has all the photos I post to Ravelry), and look at my projects, you'll see this lovely black sweater in stockinette. Gorgeous, yummy Jaeger Extra Fine Merino...it's a UFO.

For the uninitiated, non-knitting readers: UFO is, in knitting parlance "UnFinished Object." It's surprisingly apt.

Anyway, the purple and white striped sweater could work for any of them, but it's going to scream "girlie" after I add the pink and yellow doo-dads. After the sweater are some booties, then another sweater, then more little sockies, then another sweater. The bambini will probably birth sometime during the latter part of the second sweater (at least I didn't call it a "sweatie") or the beginning of the second set of socks.

This weekend I'm buying diapers at Costco.

I don't know when Nicole's baby shower is. Lester (one of Nick's friends) told Nick that Nick will have to be "Nicole's bitch" during the baby shower. I told Nick I thought Lester was pulling his leg. Lester is a sweet guy, and at the top of our list of Nick's Friends We Really Like. Lester has a bit of a sense of humor, and it's quite possible that he's pulling Nick's leg right out of it's socket. But then, it's been a very long time since I've been involved in any baby showers, so maybe that's the way it is these days. The Funky Stork has a cute article about having a celebration for the expectant dad. Actually, it's a cool site and all about the Dad part of having a baby. Their logo is especially slick, and the whole place is very Manly Man. They don't mention a thing about the dad being the mom's bitch during the shower ;)

I tagged this as photography, too, because I hate how my photos of yarn and projects turned out! ugh! Did I forget all my skills? Does my lighting suck? Well, the lighting clearly does suck, and I tried to fix it using a low-end image editing tool (stoooopid). It's not the fault of the image editing tool. IrfanView, which is my absolute favorite quick image editing tool for tasks that don't require Photoshop, doesn't do the kind of heavy lifting that these photos required. I use IrfanView for cropping, sizing, lite editing, and viewing all manner of weird image formats because it's very fast. Small application footprint. BUT: don't give it images whose white balance so screwed up that new images are required. I think that's where we are with these. Shame, too, because I spent quality time on that activity. There are few things on which I'm willing to perform this level of rework. My photography of my yarn. No, I just can't let it go. This is a problem of Erin versus The Flash. I will win.

Yes, we have no snowbrerro

2009-03-03T14:05:00.003-05:00

The weather outside was frightful...when we were at my mother's in Silverdale over the Christmas holiday. Kent identified the snowbrero, a round patio table with a round planter in the middle of it. Covered in snow, it resembled a sombrero, just in case you didn't guess that.

I brought this up because I was reminded of it when it snowed around early March in Norfolk. Of course it didn't last long, but it was about the only snow we saw around here and it's, ahem, exciting when it happens. So anyway, I had started this post at that time...well...it was a diversion. More important things have come up in the meantime...to be continued!

Old House, This

2009-02-10T07:16:00.007-05:00

If you ever again hear the words"We're buying a fixer-upper" come out of my mouth, take me out back and shoot me because clearly I've lost my grip on reality. It seems like just when we're ready to make an improvement, something breaks and we end up spending money on that broken thing, and the improvement is delayed once again.

No, no, nothing major happened. It was just a small sequence of events in a 100-yr old house. The the two-year-old dishwasher died...again. A year ago the motor had to be replaced. Under warranty. Now it's the "harness assembly." Not under warranty. A basement drain backed up. This happens when the wind blows from just the right direction, pushing the bay and it's tributaries inland, which makes it harder for the runoff to drain properly. A new pump station was installed a few blocks away but the problem has actually gotten worse. These events have all come together at the same time, but I don't know if they are causal. In any case, I did a load of laundry yesterday and there's rinse water all over my basement floor. I was reminded of this awful cycle of horrors. Houses always cost so much more to maintain than I expect in both time and money. Makes condo living look veeerrrrrry attractive.

Okay, the dishwasher wasn't part of the "old house" thing, but still...

One Year Later...

2009-01-21T10:48:00.004-05:00

Yes, it's been nearly a year since I posted a blog entry. I feel I've lost a certain anonymity that I prized for so long. Is the time for anonymity gone, and am I being completely unrealistic? Probably. Maybe I don't know how to be who I am online. And yet it feels pretty good to lay down some words and walk away.

In other words, I'm ambivelent about this entire blogging thing. And maybe that's exactly who I am and I just don't need to apologize for that. An epiphany a day it good for the soul.

Much Ado About No Snowthing. We were scheduled to get 2-5" of snow yesterday. It stopped in Raleigh and then went out to sea. I know the state border is a virtual boundary but you'd think it was physical the way the storm just bumped along it. All the schools were closed. City services were closed. Many people got a four-day weekend out of it. To this storms credit, about twenty-three snowflakes fell in the driveway. Can you have snow that is less than flurries? We did. For five minutes. The 2009 Blizzard That Wasn't.

Compare that to the fourteen inches of snow we got over Christmas at Mom's house.

MANY projects underway. Two pairs of knitted socks, two knitted hats, a 10-link bracelet, three pendants. Not much photography at the moment but I think that'll be picking up a little. I'll at least photograph my projects.

FSW Flute Convention

2008-02-20T06:05:00.005-05:00

Was it everything it was cracked up to be? For one day, sure. Did I mention that Susan cheerfully drove Amy and me to DC and back, and that Kent and David dropped us off and picked us up at her house in Williamsburg, respectively? Did I mention that Mary allowed the three of us to bunk in her room Friday night? Amy and I, variable that we are, were thinking eh, maybe we'd stay through Sunday. Or maybe i'd stay through Sunday and Amy would go back Saturday night with Susan. Or maybe we'd both go back on Saturday. In the end, we figured we'd seen all there was, attended the clinics we were most interested in, and decided that an extra weekend day was worth hitting the road Saturday night. So, we came back with Susan. We relied on so many people for this! Susan, David, Kent, Mary. Big kudos to them all for their helping hand.

In other news, I officially report to a new manager in a different team. Haven't met the new manager yet, but I have plenty on my plate because me and my duties moved, lock stock and barrel, over to a new team that specializes the stuff that I do. Analytics, trending, etc. More on this as it develops.

Nick is NOT moving to Maryland in March. Erica is moving to Norfolk in May.

Too much computer, not enough other

2008-02-19T06:19:00.005-05:00

That's what it feels like, anyway.

We're still camped in the dining room because it's the only place to spread out and record the record albums and have both laptops on the table. Yesterday I recorded the Village People's Macho Man. This one wasn't mine. In fact, I can't seem to find any of mine, like my Music Minus One and a handful of others I've been carrying around for 20-odd years. Nonetheless, we have an interesting collection that includes all of Kent's mother's collection. Remember these great classics?

Right, then. At any rate, I'm spending a lot of time converting our old record albums to mp3s. We have a few 45s, and a nice stack of 78s.

I'm still working on acquiring the Miyazawa in used form. J.L. Smith is sending a PA-202 with the MZ-6 headjoint, and Katies Flute Shop is sending me a pre-owned 300RH, today's 402. I had no luck at the DC Flute Fair. I still keep coming back to this 402. On the other hand, there was good sheet music to be had.

The music project I having looming is a duet for Flute and Alto Flute from the Mikado. I found a piano reduction and from that I (we) will transcribe a piece to play for the Flute Choir Recital Night in May. Or a piece already written for Flute and Alto Flute if I can't make this work. I haven't given myself much time in my opinion. We shall see.

Knitting wise, I actually finished a block and began another block of the modern quilt scarf that's been hanging out in a bag on my floor.

The Fairest One Of Them All

2008-02-09T19:54:00.000-05:00

A name that makes hearts of flutists everywhere sing good...good...good...good vibratioooooooo...ba...ba..badop....

At the Hampton Roads Flute Faire today (faire....who the h-e-double-toothpicks calls it a faire!) J.L. Smith & Co. was there hawking flutes. I tried, I liked, I took a one week trial. Miyazawa!

This is the fairest flute of them all, and I tried them all.

No, seriously, there were about twenty flutes on the table, and I tried twenty flutes and I kept coming back to this 402. So I decided to take it out on trial for a week. Tonight I don't get to play because of Nick's party, but tomorrow I will play many hours. Next weekend is the National Flute Convention in DC. and just maybe I can find this flute in a price range a few $$$$ lower than the new one I'm trying out.

Hanging out with like-minded people is inspiring on so many levels. During yesterday's YFB I refined an idea for stitch markers that a certain secret pal is gonna love, and came up with another earring design. Then, yesterday during the Bonita Boyd concert I came up with an earring and bracelet set based on the railings around the concert hall.

Regarding this concert. I could skipped hearing the Bach Sonata in E minor for the umpteenth time. She's a fine musician but there wasn't anything particularly outstanding that any other good musician couldn't have done. The Poulanc piece was really nice, though, and she shared an interesting story about the composer, that he was the black sheep in his circle of friends (Les Six) and considered the least likely to succeed. As it turned out, he succeeded just fine, thank you very much, and his flute sonata is very popular among flutists. I think I have a copy, too. She also did an interesting contemporary piece at the end that sounded a like scale exercises, but I'm going to look into that.

I arrived at the thing in a foul mood, though, thinking that I'd missed all the good clinics in the morning. I certainly missed the competitions, which I'd have dearly loved to have seen, but wonderful Susan informed me that I arrived in time for the really good stuff, and the rest was, well, Amateur night at the Bijoux, as a very dear friend is fond of saying. Please not that that's my characterization, not Susan's. HOWEVER, there was the table of J.L. Smith flutes. After our concert we swarmed the table. Swarmed, I tell you!

Susan saved the day, and I slept well. On with the day!

Life Is Good

2008-02-08T09:20:00.001-05:00

I might have time for an expanded post this weekend. In the meantime:

Silversmithing: Awesome! I've learned to saw properly, build and solder a bezel, sweat soldering, care and feeding of tools, and I've designed and been approved on my first project, ordered my metals and gems for it and two other projects in my queue, and started cutting the pieces for Project 1, the Seattle Skyline. Nothing if not predictable, eh?

Robotics: In full swing. Kent spends all day Saturdays and most weekdays after school working with his robotics team on the design and build. Next weekend is a practice session in Richmond. The following weekend is Ship Week, where they crate the finished robot and ship it up to Richmond for the Regionals in March.

Knitting: I haven't done shit since the silversmithing class started in January, although to make up for it I am in this Scavenger Hunt Knitter Swap/Secret Pal thing which is lots of fun. It's mentally time consuming, though, and it may be a while before I do another one. In any case, some lucky woman is going to get a bit of handcrafted-ness that's a result of the silversmithing class, hahaha! I'm still working on the black turtleneck and I have pictures to post.

InvenTeams: Looked at flights to Boston in the late June time frame for the final presentations at MIT. Ouch. I'm hopeful that those prices will drop a little as it gets closer. In the meantime, the team is forging ahead without too many obstacles.

Flute Choir: Saturday 2/9 is the Regional Flute Fair to be held at ODU. I'm manning our table in the afternoon, then we have a concert in the evening. There's a Master Class sometime during the day that I didn't audition for but which I'll attend. I look forward to meeting more flutists from the area.

Kent's #2 Masters: Time consuming.

Nick: is wishing for a kegger but only gets to host a small birthday party for one of this friends. Erica is well and visiting for a couple days.

Patrick: Enjoys working at Tread Quarters and is considering a second job in the same field, a friend's independent repair shop.

Doglettes: Cute, cuddly, wonderful, always hungry, and at this moment, napping on a dog bed to my left.

Life is good.

Winter Is Here!

2008-01-25T07:07:00.000-05:00

I'm being beat about the head and shoulders from multiple parties for not updating, so I'd best get to it! ;)

35 degrees and holding. Seriously, this morning's temp is today's high. In other words, COLD! A quick trip to J. Jill last weekend with Uska produced some lovely flannel jammies and a great sweater, so I'm ready to stay warm. To be perfectly honest, I've been wearing both to work all week. Fortune smiles on the telecommuter: only the dogs see it and they have no comment.

The scavenger hunt is on and I get to spoil a lovely person whose name and location will remain secret. I'm very excited!

I haven't worked on the black turtleneck much due to the demands of the silversmithing class, which I must say is awesome. I've decided on my first project and it's been blessed by the instructor: a representation of the Seattle skyline as a brooch. It's a skyline I've been fascinated with for years and have taken many pictures of it from the Ferry (all of which I no longer have, and that's a long story for another time). Barbara, half of our instruction team, had a lovely suggestion to implying the water of the Puget Sound. I'm still considering whether to add a stone, what kind, and where. Top of the Space Needle, maybe. And the piece contains the Kingdome, which has since been replaced by a new stadium.

Please send prayers out to my friend, Jim. Jim, and his wife Kay, have been a very close friends of my mother's for over thirty years, and I spent much time at their house while I was growing up. They both have meant a lot to me, and I have always held up Kay as a model of what a woman could be and could do. Jim has been active in a variety of pursuits, most recently archeology (he's been on many digs!) and photography. He's a terrific photographer, and some of my favorite images come from him. Jim is dying of cancer and I'm so sad to see such an enormous life pass from this world. Mom says the end is very close. If you're reading, Mom, I got your email and I'll send cards.

Comment Moderation

2008-01-12T05:37:00.001-05:00

Oops. Okay, if you commented and didn't see the comment publish right away, that was my bad. It's all fixed.

Knitting Scavenger Hunt Profile

2008-01-10T06:49:00.000-05:00

Mom, I know you're waiting for something more substantial. Just know that I'm getting to it! I start my silversmithing class Saturday, I have work up to my eyeballs, and I'm still not quite over my sinus infection. I have to certify a production fix Friday night so I might have a little downtime during those hours. In the meantime, here's some required information for the Knitting Scavenger Hunt Swap Thing.

1) Do you knit, crochet or both? How long have you been doing it?
I knit, and I've been knitting for 14 months.

2) What is on your needles right now?

Black turtleneck sweater from Classic Knits by Erika Knight, in Jaeger Extra Fine Merino DK
Skinny long-wise scarf to be adorned a la Kristin Nicholas, in Cherry Tree Hill's "Springtime" colorway
Modern Quilt Block scarf, from Knitting Daily (and Folk Knits) in the pattern's colors, in Kid Silk Haze.

3) What is the most frequently used tool in your knitting bag?
You mean besides my pattern and needles and yarn? It would have to be my stitch markers. Man, I use them for everything! A very close second is my flexible cloth ruler that I can poke pins into.

4) What are your 3 favorite yarns (fiber type or brand)? What are your 3 least favorite?
Favs: Cherry Tree Hill Supersock Merino, RYC Cashsoft (all weights), Lorna's Laces Shepard Wool superwash (all weights).
Not Favs: Lion Chenille Thick & Quick Print (bleeds too much), Lopi (too scratchy), Lily Sugar'n Cream Crafter's Cotton.

5) What is your favorite color?
Blues/Purples. I've said in the past that I don't care for purple (YFB pals have heard me say that!) but after I went home I looked through my stash and I have more purple than any other color!! So, that said, I revise my statement: Purple isn't a color I usually wear. I don't think there's a color I really detest, though, except anything camouflage.

6) If you had a 5 minute shopping spree in your LYS, how would you plan your attack?
I'd probably go straight to the Cashsoft and grab about 20 skeins of whichever color grabbed me first, enough so I could knit something major, like a sweater. If I still had time, it's straight to the Cherry Tree Hill section and their yummy colorways.

7)What is your favorite FO and why? (post a pic if you have it!)The dreadlocks hat, I think, because it is so funky. I don't wear funky much because it draws so much attention and that makes me uncomfortable. And yet...I totally dig this hat. There are two, actually. I knit them in a bulky wool/silk yarn. The first one was with the yarn doubled. It's a very heavy hat for MLH (My Loving Husband). The second was single stranded, pictured, but not long enough, This yarn isn't that resilient. Despite all that, I love these hats. Be nice, now, I shot the model one with my camera phone. Here are two more: the heavy one on MLH, and the lighter one on Kat.

8) What are your favorite things to knit/crochet?
Socks seem to be a recurring theme, but I'm still a newbie and haven't tried everything yet.

9) Do you collect anything?
Books and maps.

10) What are your five favorite things (not necessarily knitting related)?
In addition to knitting:
Reading Playing flute
Time spent with my husband and kids - all of us together in the same room is such a rare treat these days.
Time spent with my girlfriends - knitters and non-knitters alike
Photography

11) Are you on Ravelry? What is your ID?
WeeBitEccentric

12) Do you drink tea/coffee/cocoa?
Herbal tea, white tea, Coffee (not flavored), sugar-free cocoa

13) Favorite Sweets?
My mother's shortbread sugar cookies, almond cake, plain old cheesecake, and fresh fruit. It's high season for clementines right now and I can't get enough of them!

14) Any allergies?
I'm highly sensitive to soft, flowery perfumes; I start sneezing and my eyes get watery and I turn into a puddle of mush in about ten minutes. Hay fever occasionally knocks me on my butt.

15) Do you have pets? kids?
Two dogs, Maggie & Tasha, both age 7. Two boys still living at home, Nick and Patrick, 21 and 19, respectively. All are potty trained.

What kind of knitter am I?

2007-11-21T11:39:00.001-05:00

This is how I behave in all my creative endeavors!

What Kind of Knitter Are You?

You appear to be a Knitting Adventurer. You are through those knitting growing pains and feeling more adventurous. You can follow a standard pattern if it's not too complicated and know where to go to get help. Maybe you've started to experiment with different fibers and you might be eyeing a book with a cool technique you've never tried. Perhaps you prefer to stick to other people's patterns but you are trying to challenge yourself more. Regardless of your preference, you are continually trying to grow as a knitter, and as well you should since your non-knitting friends are probably dropping some serious hints, these days. http://marniemaclean.com

Take this quiz!

Quizilla | Join | Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code

...Sort of

2007-11-18T12:47:00.001-05:00

I thought we'd have maybe at least purchased the range by now, but we've been interrupted by K's Bat Boy rehearsals, insofar as Hell Week has run three weeks and they opened two nights ago. I think we'll probably be able to move forward again. Of course, now we're practically into Holiday Season. You know how I know? Because that's when Food Network begins their serious holiday food programming. Emeril did Thanksgiving variations last night. I don't watch very often but he makes me laugh when I do. Paula was doing a pumpkin cheesecake, ohhhh yum! Food Network is a good knitting companion.

My vacation starts Monday.

Getting back into the swing of flute playing wasn't as difficult as I'd imagined, though there are challenges. My chops aren't what they were. My tonguing is pretty sloppy. In the past I remember thinking how difficult my flute is to play, there it has more resistance than I care for, and that the tone was never as bright as I'd wanted. Well, gosh, that's because it's gold plated, duh. And because of the latter I've never really complained aloud. But...I played a Jupiter recently and loved it. Big bright sound, very centered, as Amy said. I like that sound in a flute. So I'm looking around at what's out there. I think I may just rent some flutes and see how I like them. It's not going to do anything for my tonguing but that's okay. Maybe I won't feel so tense when I play it. I feel like I'm always pushing against my flute, at war with it. And this other one...wow, it was like liquid. No fighting required. What to do with the old one? Give it to K, of course. K took the alto flute out and we discovered that one of the keys is not seated, so off it goes tomorrow to Calamus for repair.

The Christmas knitting is coming along. If I said anything more it wouldn't be a surprise! I've been Tivo-ing like a nut so I have goodies to watch while I do all this knitting. Monday is the WHRO cocktail reception at the Vintage Kitchen. I've never been to a cocktail reception although it's probably not much different from a Dining Out (a Navy event). Fun dress-up time! Tuesday K meets with a contractor to discuss porch repair and siding options. Thankfully, I'll only be there for a brief time before I run off to Yarn For Supper fun. It's just better if K handles these types of things: I'm too trusting.

Did I mention that my vacation starts Monday?

I added some goodies to the right hand side of the blog. One is a widget that publishes my shared Google Reader items (only Harvard Business Review so far) and the rss feed to one of my favorite blogs/podcasts.

Vacation. Monday. Yes.

And so begins..

2007-10-28T21:05:00.000-04:00

...the kitchen remodel of 2007-2008.

Thinking optimistically that we'd tackle a piece at a time, we think we'll first do the eight-foot wall with the range.

We went range shopping today.

K is checking out the "prosumer" ranges at East Coast Appliance. Far left is a new Electrolux 36" dual fuel range. Very, very nice. The other is a 48" Viking with built in grill. Also very nice. The Viking really sings to us but it's way too wide. On that wall we can really only accommodate a 36" range. I spent time tonight mapping the kitchen on grid paper.

We'll probably go with the Electrolux unless we decide to not piecemeal this. If we wait then we might splurge on the Viking. That Viking, by the way, is a scratch/dent model. The scratches are on the sides and back which no one will ever see. Shopping for ranges can be fun. They can also be a pain in the neck. We kept refining our requirements. That part wasn't fun.

In other news, Christmas knitting is coming along splendidly. I can't say anymore or I'd give it all away! I join a flute choir in November after my flute comes back from the shop. They aren't rehearsing this Wednesday so the next get together is Nov 7. Cool. It's like riding a bike. K is pleased. I'm pleased. I was stunned to realize that I've had this flute for twenty years and that in those twenty years I've never once had it really thoroughly overhauled. There are bent springs, the pads need replacing, and it needs a new head cork. I'm so excited to play it now that my arthritis is under control. My chops, though, are sadly out of condition.

Bat Boy The Musical is limping along and still scheduled to open mid-November. K is very frustrated by the whole thing. Actors not showing up for rehearsal or dropping out, director who isn't actually trained in theater (he's a psych major). K was cast in a terrific part but didn't at first feel he could sing it; there are some high notes for a baritone. He's coming along, though, and is more optimistic. The show strikes me as similar to Angry Housewives.

Today was the Head Of The Lafayette (HOTL) race. Patrick cox'd for the women's open masters fours (four rowers) race, and they won first place!! I'm so proud of him! He's been coxing with the Hampton Roads Rowing Club women's team for a couple of years now. The ladies adore him. He also sat in with the Maury High junior varsity men's fours because they were short one man, and they landed sixth in their category. I don't know how many boats there were...but the Maury JV men have never been that great. Nonetheless, Patrick had a marvelous time. The fun thing about HOTL is that it's an open race, not a high school only race, so they have colleges, high schools, and independent rowing clubs are going head to head. It's always the Sunday before Halloween and teams often dress up. There is always a good turn out. I love being able to walk up the block with my chair and watch. The course's big stretch runs right in front of the neighborhood :) The weather was perfect: just a little chilly, with a beautiful blue sky.

I Didn't Knit This

2007-09-14T07:37:00.000-04:00

But I sure wish I had. It's soooo beautiful, and that yellow/gold is really fetching. The photo design and knitting is work by Anne Hansen of Knitspot.com. I was thinking "what a great gift for someone for Christmas!" Yeah, Christmas 2008, I think, because it takes me a long time to knit lace. Socks, though, I'm digging socks for sure. Three pairs so far, and the last pair, the ones I wrote about, were really satisfying to knit. I have three projects lined up right now: a beautiful wildly colored scarf in a mohair/silk blend, a pair of yummy thick socks, and another beret. The socks and the beret are quick but that scarf is going to take some time mostly because the two most common colors in it are out-of-stock and back-ordered in every online knitting shop I visit! I guess the thousands of us who receive the Knitting Daily newsletter all had the same idea: "wow, gorgeous, must knit now, must order yarn." It uses eleven different blocks of color in various configurations.

Moving right along. Erica proposed to Nick, who said yes, and so they are getting married...in a couple of years. Their plan is for Nick to pay off a couple of bills and move to Maryland in early 2008. Which means I now I have an even better excuse to visit Maryland, a state I really like. I'd love to move to Baltimore but that's just not in the cards at this point. Patrick, on the other hand, is in New Jersey doing some engine repair training for the Army. This will provide him with another skill set and more reservist options. Apparently Fort Eustis doesn't have much call for large equipment operators. His MOS (military occupation something or other) was merged with another MOS so he also has to expand his skills to fit the new MOS. Nonetheless, they are both gainfully employed, they've learned painful lessons about credit cards and money, and will hopefully both be in college between now and 2012.

Rehearsals for Bat Boy, the Musical (as in Bat Boy from Weekly World News) began early last week. Kent is playing the role of Parker, Bat Boy's father-figure. Parker is not a nice person but he has a couple of songs. The show opens sometime in November, I think.

That's the news for now. Summers are pretty slow but fall and winter are shaping up nicely! Just for fun, have a pink caddy (picture

Nick & Erica

2007-08-12T08:43:00.001-04:00

A nice picture of Nicholas and his girlfriend Erica.

Apologies In Order

2007-08-12T07:57:00.001-04:00

Yes, apologies are in order. It's been two months since my last blog confession. I've been very neglectful. Figured it out yet? I go in spurts. Two things: I haven't wanted to spend any time in front of the computer and it's been so danged hot that even the second floor, usually comfortable, has been hot, too. Mostly, though, I haven't wanted to spend any more time in front of the computer than I have to.

I'm working on another pair of socks. I really like socks! The sock at left is not a finished sock at this point. I'm about half-way completed with the instep and will start the toe-shaping shortly. I have a lovely finished pair in variegated light blue but cannot find them anywhere! It is my mission to locate them so I can WEAR them. Sheesh. So, yeah, lots of knitting. I have another pair of socks on needles in a different patter, same colorway, and I completed a beret for Jane last night. I'm working on a simple triangular shawl in a really lovely rayon. I had one single skein so I'm just keep going until I run out. I wish I could get more.

Mr. DancesWithDogs is down in South Carolina all last week and this coming week. School is starting up soon. He said he has wife-withdrawal. I have husband-withdrawal, too.

Oh. I know another reason I haven't blogged much...nothing to write about. LOL

A Woman Alone

2007-05-31T07:16:00.000-04:00

I propose that women, dining alone in a hotel bar, are ignored by service staff. I propose that when Renee joins me we'll be hovered over like crazy, but until then I'll be virtually ignored. I can't propose whether it's American women or just women in general, but there is another woman here in the bar who is periodically alone, too. She has had her traveling companions joining her periodically, and it appears she is experiencing the same thing. So I don't think I'm exactly imagining this. Yesterday I noticed that unless I actually am able to make eye contact with the waiter or barman, then they will avoid looking at me.

It's pretty irritating but it's the culture, I think. Either that or I didn't tip the waiter enough yesterday. Is a woman with a laptop such an oddity? Perhaps that is a part of it. I ordered a chicken quesadilla a half-hour ago. I have to leave in ten minutes. It's not here yet. Last night, at the all-night hotel cafe, I practically had to walk up to the waiter and shake him to get services. When Renee joined me he practically prostrated himself to help us, and she thinks it's because she's in business clothes (suit). Actually, she sticks out like a sore thumb, 5'10" and blonde and thin. So duh, hard to miss. (Update: as soon as I started tipping extra I've been waited on like a queen, alone. HAHA!)

What day is it? What time is it?

2007-05-30T06:59:00.000-04:00

We're so confused. Day is night and night is day. We awake at 2pm local time and go to bed at 6am local time. We operate on East Coast hours, so as far as I, and the rest of the bank are concerned, I'm having a breakfast of cheese and crackers and a cappucino in the hotel bar. Otherwise I'm stuck with something heavy from one of the other hotel restaurants. On the one hand my body senses it is morning, but on the other hand me eyes see that it's late afternoon and getting overcast. The sense of time, or lack of, is disconcerting. It should be ok, logically, but it's still weird.

The hotel is buzzing with "after work" activity. A caucasian man across the room, speaking French into his Blackberry, is having a chilled glass of white wine with what look like a basket of fritos (though I'm sure that can't be right). Seasons, the bar and lounge, is open until midnight, and spans two rooms across from one another. I am in the main bar area. Across the hall there is a case of sweets and other small groups of people computing or having tea or enjoying their first beer or wine of cocktail of the day.

When we were driven home last night there were mosquitos in the car. The driver had been standing around chatting it up with the security guards, and had left the door open. Renee and I fought bugs all the way back to the hotel. Last night I dreamed of batting mosquitos and hanging on for dear life as Renee drove us through the lawless Hyderabad traffic. I'm told it's worse in Bangalore and Chennai. My first India dream!

We've spent very little time outdoors. Probably a good thing since the temperature is hovering around 100 F.

It's Hot in India

2007-05-27T17:00:00.000-04:00

Hey, it's hot in India.

Ya think?

And really really foreign. I know that sounds odd, and kind of obvious, but it's foreign in every sense of the word. Scotland was different, but I wouldn't call it particularly foreign. I don't think I can really describe it.

The flights were good. Business Class rocks, and I'm officially spoiled. Watch movies, knit, sleep, then we're in Frankfurt. Watch more movies, knit, and sleep a little, then we're in Hyderabad. A few weeks ago a woman at Barnes & Noble saw me buying a book about India and told me that what struck her most when she got off the plane was the smell. It's different, for sure, but not as offensive as I'd imagined. Not so far, anyway.

Did I mention that India is hot?

Helipad behind the Taj Krishna hotel, from my window, 3pm IST

We arrived last night at 1:00 AM India Time. It took forever to get our bags, and I think we accidently grabbed a bag that belonged to someone else! Woops. I didn't do it. We'll be working standard East Coast hours, so we're trying to stay with some kind of East Coast schedule. So, while it's almost 6pm in Norfolk, it's 3:15 AM here and I will be going to bed by 4AM. I think my brain is just going to have a difficult time with this. We'll get up around noon, see a bit of the city, then head to the site at 5pm. Monday is Memorial Day in the US, but there is no holiday here.

I've started uploading pictures to Flickr. http://www.flickr.com/photos/november19/. Some of the newest are first, but click on the group called India.

iHubby wants a name change

2007-02-16T16:32:00.000-05:00

I've been referring to the Love of my Life as iHubby. Turns out he ain't so crazy about that. So, we need a new name for him. I was thinking of The Teacher but I'm looking for ideas. He's probably reading this sentence and thinking "hey, 'Love of My Life' works for me - LOML."

Yeah, it's this weird sense of trying to maintain some sense of anonymity in a very non-anonymous world. It makes me happy whether it works or not.

Coming Up For Air

2007-02-16T16:02:00.000-05:00

Life at work...no, let's call that work at work. Work at work has been very busy since Feb 1 and I've been putting in some very long days. If I got paid for overtime I'd be pretty wealthy this week. Alas, I'm salaried. The weekdays look like this:

Work
Come home, eat dinner (maybe)
Do Homework
Sleep
Work
Come home, do homework
Sleep
etc etc etc...

...and the weekends look like this:

Sleep a few hours.
Do homework.
Sleep a few more hours.
Do homework.
Work.
Sleep some more.
Do homework. Think about knitting.
Work - oh crap, it's due Monday!
Sleep, dream about knitting.

...since February1. I think, finally, it's all settled down. What exactly does that mean? Our team doubled. After the MBNA merger project activity wound down last month, a bunch of people were given notice. I don't know how many but there were a lot. It happens. This is corpirate America and it was a merger. Everyone knew it was coming. At the same time, the SCM team (that's us, software configuration management) needed five new associates. We hired out of the folks let go five people on January 31 and since then have spent every day training, briefing, refining presentations, running mock boards...really, this wouldn't all be such a big deal if it weren't for the fact that I and one of my peers are launching two brand new configuration governance review boards...and some of these new people are going to run them! I don't think I've ever done anything like this so fast and furiously in my professional life. And all these little "gotcha's" kept coming up at the last minute. On the other hand, I don't think I've ever worked with a group of people with so much professionalism and elegance. We achieved so much. We lucked into a situation, hired terrific talent, and now we're pretty much ready to go for our governance board launch next week. I can't quite believe we chose the day after a holiday, but at least it's a minor holiday.

Two months ago I set aside today as a vacation day so I could take advantage of a four day weekend and spent the last few days making sure that there were absolutely no loose ends. Well, turned out there were a few and I answered email for a couple of hours this morning and made sure a few reports made it to their final destination, but all in all I think we (Karen, Janet, Teresa, Steve, Dal, and I) will all have a relaxing weekend with very little to worry about.

I feel like I've finally come up for air.

One Down, Two to Go

2007-02-04T12:28:00.000-05:00

Despite the fact that today is Superbowl Sunday, that title is in reference to the last three sessions I have until graduation. So. First session DONE DONE DONE DONE. I'm so happy. I slept in. I knitted in bed. I surfed a dippy website. I checked email and I even posted a comment to my little sister's blog - without feeling guilty that I should be doing homework haha. We have a week off, then it's into a math class, which, by the looks of the workbook, should be ok. I'm actually excited. Most of what I see in there I've encountered either in knitting, photography, or business. A little algebra, a little trig, a little statistics and probability which I had to bone up on several years ago anyway...and I have the iHubby, Mr. Math.

It's cold and drafty today, although blue skies and sunny! I'm cuddled up with the beautiful scarf/shawl Mom gave me for Christmas. It's a hot chocolate day, a day for me. It's a day to hang out with iHubby. We may venture up to Yorktown later this afternoon to lend his LegoRobotics kit to a teacher up there. It's only about forty minutes away, and I'm pretty sure I can talk him into dinner at Nick's Riverwalk Restaurant. That's like going from Silverdale to Port Orchard. Or is my memory failing already?

Anyway, iHubby is down in the kitchen singing "I Feel Pretty" and making turkey Manwich. It's warmer in the kitchen than up here, so off I go!

Avoiding Homework

2007-02-02T22:08:00.000-05:00

Today in Collinsland I am avoiding homework. I have two papers to write, and a discussion board response to post, and I just can't bring myself to do them!! I'd rather do just about anything than homework right now. So far I've: read Mom's blog, commented Mom's blog, fixed the commenting on my blog (I think), looked at knitting patterns, read other peoples comments on Mom's blog, napped, had dinner, painted my fingernails, cleaned up my computer desktop and changed it's wallpaper...all in all I've been farting around for two hours. And now I'm blogging.

PROCRASTINATING.

I have this book: "Break the Procrastination Habit NOW." I've finished one chapter. Lawrence, my Study Buddy (he's a stuffed dragon) isn't any help at all. Even my solar RadioShack calculator is more interesting than doing homework right now and it doesn't even do tricks. And isn't half as cute as Lawrence. But I really gotta because tomorrow is the last day and these things have to be turned in.

HAHAHAHAHA!

Socks, socks, and more socks

2007-01-24T20:32:00.000-05:00

When last we visited, I was bemoaning what has become known as The Pink Sock. Singular because there may not be a mate. After the snapping-the-DPN incident, I backed away from The Pink Sock and waited impatiently for my metal DPNs to come in. They have and my store messed up the order. I asked for #1 and #0, but I got #2 and #1. I can live with this and I still want the #0 but it can wait a wee bit. So. I've picked a new sock pattern, swatched, got gauge, and started in on it. The ribbing at the top is done, now I've started on the leg. This is a very simple sock for two important reasons.

The yarn is a stripey pattern
see important reason number one.

So. 2x2 ribbing takes a very long time, and I've decided that I don't like doing ribbing so much. But as long as the ribbing isn't more than an inch I can live with it.

What else is going on in Collinsland?

Kent: is totally preoccupied with FIRST Robotics and the upcoming March regional competition. Eats it, sleeps it, breaths it. He's also teaching after-school middle-schoolers how to build web pages, and he loves it.

Patrick: is applying for jobs all over the area, has drill once every six to nine weeks, hangs out at the boat house erging, and is impatiently waiting for the weather to warm up so he can get out on the water.

Nick: has decided that living out of his car is not the end of the world. I disagree and wish he would make different choices.

Maggie Dog: tolerates her little sister, Tasha Dog, and still barks annoyingly at the mailman even though its the same one we've had for the eleven years we've lived in this neighborhood.

Tasha Dog: annoys the snot out of her big sister, Maggie Dog, and only barks annoyingly when Maggie Dog does.

Erin: besides knitting when time allows and surfing knitting blogs and discovering new patterns (moments to do any of this are all too rare), spends a lot of time reading environmental science and biology but not by choice. I have a B in env sci, and a C in biology because I missed turning in the very first paper because I thought it was due on Sunday instead of Saturday.

My First Sock and What I've Learned

2007-01-17T07:42:00.000-05:00

As I knit my merry way on a sock (turning the heel wasn't so trauamatic as I'd thought) I have learned a couple of things and I'm not even finished!

I knit tight.
I thought I might have to go down a needle size from 2, but realized it wasn't the yarn: it was me!
5" wooden dpns DO snap in half, even if they are Brittanys.
I must really be twisting that puppy. I've been trying to lighten up, but between the tight stitching (really, I don't even pull the yarn that I know of) and maneuvering around the other three needles...snap! I'm sure it's not normal.
I like socks!
There's really something about knitting a sock. I think it might be that it's shape becomes apparent so quickly. Or that I have another chance to get it right (the second sock, its mate)
I've been circular knitting on the WS
Instruction: Row 1 on RS *K1, slip, K1, slip* repeat between *; Row 2 on WS, purl all.
Erin thinks: hm. right side? oh dear. there IS a right side and a wrong side. Not that it matters TOO much, but there is now a three-row ridge where I made this discovery and attempted to correct. I think I'll rip out the ribbed top until that row then knit back up.

All this learning and I haven't even finished the first sock! I'm ordering metal dpns for socks.

A Little Blog Vacation

2007-01-08T05:46:00.000-05:00

Also known as, studying like hell to finish my degree. I have five classes left and I'll finish in April. Don't expect to see a whole lot here between now and then but I'll try to do periodic progress reports.

Stocking, Knitting Finished

2006-12-30T11:02:00.000-05:00

It's done! It's done! Almost. Ok, the stocking is completely knitted, but there is cleanup, blocking, and darning Kent's name onto it. But, the big news is that I finished all the knitting early this morning after feeding the doggies and before Jane and Helen left.

The Week After

2006-12-28T06:49:00.000-05:00

Nick joined us Christmas Day. Yay! I was very happy and feel a great weight of worry has been lifted from my shoulders. Any more said at this point would be overkill so I'll leave it at that for now. He tells me his email address DOES work but he hadn't checked it in a while so it'd been disabled. He tells me he's re-enabled it.

The Christmas Stocking is coming along like gang-busters. The pattern numbering was off by 25 from the numbering listed in the instructions. I just had to figure out where. My math stinks, so this wasn't as easy as it sounds. After that got sorted out I read through the instructions (mind if I start calling this a recipe?) three or four times. And then another three or four times. Remember, this is my first exploration into socks (cue music from Journey to the Center of the Earth).

Most sock recipes call for doing the heel before the rest of the foot, from what I can tell. I finally figured out that this recipe calls for marking the heel with scrap yarn, knitting the rest of the foot to the toe, then going back to the scrap yarn, picking up stitches and separating the scrap from the rest of the foot and then knitting into the gusset. Humnph. Here goes nothin.' I'm about five rows away from the toe, then it's back up to the heel.

iHubby: Wow, that's really long.
Me: This part here? It's the foot.
iHubby: Oh.
Me: See, you have to knit to here, then do this, then go back here.
iHubby: Oh. (starting to glaze over - but he's so wonderful that he pretends he's not)
Me: And look inside, this is the way intarsia is supposed to look in reverse.
iHubby: You mean not like the spastic spaghetti where you did the, uhm, "reindeer"?
Me: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Then I asked him if he wanted his name on it. "You can do that?" asks my beloved. "Yes," I answer, and suddenly I'm the Knitting Queen of the World. It's good to be the Queen.

Really really: pictures soon.

Flaming Sticks

2006-12-23T11:52:00.000-05:00

12/12/06
That's the name Hubby dubbed my knitting needles: Flaming Sticks. Stealth Project #3 is too big - way way out of gauge. I forgot to downsize the pattern when I upsized the needles. Maybe THAT will become a purse, too. I'm about three hours away from completion so I guess we'll see how badly oversized it really is.

Those three hours will be today because I'm home with a sinus infection, this season's first, and I'm going to try to to see the doctor and get much needed antibiotics. I can take Tylenol Sinus until the cows come home but the infection won't go away without the really good drugs. Since this is such a perennial thing maybe she'll just call it in to the pharmacy (hoping, hoping). Today is the team luncheon, too, which I also really want to attend.

12/23/06
Gooood antibiotics took care of that sinus infection. Then I sprained my hand. My hand caught on something and my middle finger (Mom, remember the one that I broke in middle school?) was pulled to far back. So far back I thought I'd broken it again, which after x-rays turned out not to be the case. Nonetheless, the pain was pretty substantial, and now most of the swelling has gone down, and there's a lump in the middle of my right palm. That really put the kibosh on a lot. So did the loss of my Christmas mojo. It disappeared. I think I got it back two days ago but up until then I was thinking I'd just skip the holiday this year.

So, Family-Who-Are-Reading-This, I (we) have gifts that I want to send but they'll be late. Sorry! Like the good little corporate manager that I am, though, I'm already thinking of ways to mitigate the likelihood of it happening again next year. It might involve visiting someone for the holidays. Or starting Christmas early, ha ha!

I have continued to knit, albeit slowly (it's been easier to knit than to mouse and type). All the stealth projects are completed. I've started working on a Christmas Stocking as my entry into the sock world. I've been told that knitting a stocking is a good way to learn; you use the same techniques but on larger needles and yarn. I've also found some nice patterns, so right now I'm swatching for gauge (knitting a 5" square piece using the recommended needles and yarn and stitch to see if my stitches/rows per inch are accurate for the piece). Since it'll be going on someones mantel, gauge isn't as critical, but it's good practice, especially given that two of the stealth projects came out in woefully wrong sizes!

I'll be dropping a note to Nick via his car windshield to invite him over for Christmas Day. He didn't respond to my last note so I don't know if he'll respond to this one. That's ok. He'll do whatever it is he's going to do, and eventually he'll bring us back into his life when he's ready. If he's anything like me (and he's alot like me) that might take several years.

Stealth Project #2 - Finished

2006-12-04T06:35:00.000-05:00

Alright, stealth project #2 is done. I just started the swatch for stealth project #3, which I changed my mind about three different times. It's more of a "which one can I finish first and get the biggest bang for my buck?" I still have the Publisher project to complete (if I call it something else you'll guess what it is), which I can do in a weekend. Then the Scotland project for Grandma, which I also can finish on either a weeknight or a weekend. If everyone get's Harry & David this year it means I wasn't able to finish it all!!! I seem to be the only person in the house who is into this "hand-crafted gifts" thing this year. Oh well, it gives me pleasure and hopefully will give pleasure to my recipients, too.

Back & Forth, Knit & Purl

2006-12-02T07:03:00.000-05:00

Yes, it's been a while. When things start getting rough, I stop blogging. Mom would say I should blog more when things are rough, which may be true...but not my native habit.

Round after my last post I retaught myself to knit. What insane bee was caught in my bonnet? I don't know but I'm glad I did it. More on that later.

The thing is, that last post was about a week and a half after Nick up and disappeared again. Sort of. He stopped going to work. He stopped coming home. That was bad, and we got calls from his boss for several days until Bill was convinced we didn't know where Nick was. Which we didn't, but I think at first Bill may have thought we were protecting Nick from him. Then Bill called to say that a car had been stolen from the lot and that Nick had "deleted the key from the key vault," whatever that means. That didn't look too good. We haven't heard anything about that since, so he may have been bluffing to see if we'd cough up Nick. Since we couldn't, we didn't. For a few days we thought he might actually be missing...but we kept seeing traces that he'd been visiting while we were at work. Things left out, doors left unlocked, a soda can lying around where none had been previously. Ok, he's staying at the Redgate Nick's, we thought. ("Redgate Nick" is the name for his his friend Nick who lived on Redgate Ave, and that was our way of distinguishing one Nick from the other in conversation). I drove by Redgate Nick's place, now living with a couple other friends in our neighborhood, and there was Nicholas' car, his little black Nissan Sentra 200SX.

I tried (once) to reach out. I left a note (sealed in a ziplock baggy to ward off the damp) on his car window, which he got (I drove by several times to see if he'd plucked it off the windshield), but which he may or may not have read. He's doing everything he can to stay out of touch and at this point I'm just going to respect that. The other night, though, and I thought this was kind of funny, we found little hairs in the bathroom sink. He'd come by to shave and, as usual, didn't rinse the sink. I laughed. Three weeks ago I'd have had an emotional meltdown over the little incident, and would have been very blue for the following two days. This is, I think, where the knitting comes in to play.

When Shanon and I ventured to Charlottesville we sent into a yarn store. I was enchanted and curious. So, about Nov 10 or so, I was at Michael's Arts & Crafts store getting supplies for Christmas gifts. I found myself in the knitting aisle and stood there for a long time, looking at the yarns, the needles, and fiddling with some of the books, and I went for it. Picked (what I thought was) a simple pattern from a $3 booklet, got the needles and the yarn and a little bag of "gotta have" tools (stitch gauge, pins, measuring tape, needle caps, etc.) and went home and tried to figure it out. Between the instructions in the booklet, the videos on http://www.knittinghelp.com, and my own smarts, I managed to figure this out enough to make something. I can't say what it is because it's a gift but I'll post a pic after Christmas.

This simple object was knitted in the round and felted. Call me ambitious, devil-may-care, stupid. The first version of the object failed to meet my expectations. So I tried again, this time being very careful to cast on the correct number of stitches!!! But I learned many lessons from this first foray:

Felting is fun!!
Felting hides a multitide of sins, such as suspect seaming and boo-boos when binding off.
Felting shrinks pretty well vertically (stitches running up/down) but not much horizontally (side-to-side at the row level).
Wool yarn bleeds. Just ask my bras, which I threw into the wash with this little fuschia thing.
Knitting in the round is not nearly as difficult as it sounds. In fact, it's pretty easy, although the needles are shorter and I like them a little longer.
I'm prone to dropping stitches.
I can watches a marathon of CSI or Law and Order SVU for hours when I'm knitting.
It's incredibly relaxing, and meditative (when not watching tv).

And, most importantly, it helped me get through the last few weeks, including Thanksgiving, with Nick MIA and Patrick still in Fort Leonard Wood.

I've since made a hat which is waaaay too small for anyone but Alison's baby doll. It also fits my model skull. Now I'm knitting three other things which I can't discuss because they, too, will likely be Christmas gifts if I can get them finished in time to avoid overnight Fed-Exing! I have a bunch of projects, small ones, lined up for the next year. I'm abuzz with ideas and want to knit every pattern I see! No, this isn't eclipsing photography. I can't take photos all day long, every day. But knitting fills the gaps and then some. haha!

Kissy Kissy

2006-11-07T15:33:00.001-05:00

Kissy Kissy
Opportunity favors the prepared. Shannon and I were driving into downtown Williamsburg and spied this little paddock off the side of the road. We thought those sheep were nifty looking, and the light was wonderful. I turned around a few blocks later and we parked beside the sheep and started taking pictures. This one happened so fast I wasn't sure I'd even gotten it in focus.
Originally uploaded by ErinKristin.

Annapolis Weekend

2006-10-14T04:27:00.000-04:00

Today we're off to Annapolis for the weekend and Kent's 20-yr reunion. Nick and the doggies are watching the fort. Saturday is a Tailgaiter before the homecoming game (I think Navy v. Duke or something). I don't know that we'll stay for the entire game because frankly neither of us is all that into football.

ciao, baby!

Childhood Favorites

2006-10-06T05:28:00.000-04:00

Potato pancakes. Not the grated ones...real pancakes with leftover potato water and bits of mashed potatoes.
Quiche. My mom's recipe. I trust no others.
Rain on the tin roof of the Fellowship house.
Wiener Boats. I've never been able to duplicate it just right.
Christmas Cookies, with frosting.

What a Moronic Presidential Press Conference! By Fred Kaplan - Slate Magazine

2006-08-23T07:38:00.000-04:00

What a Moronic Presidential Press Conference! By Fred Kaplan - Slate Magazine

Ok, this is my favorite article this week. It makes me want to run to Canada. Fast. This is so embarassing. We must be the laughing stock of the world to have re-elected someone so blatantly incompetent. And yet his administration let's him get in front of reporters and say stuff like this. Gosh, I'd want to keep him locked in a closet. Wait. I already do want to keep him locked in a closet.

Patrick's Letter, August 9, 2006

2006-08-20T20:36:00.001-04:00

Hey.
I think I'll use a red pen today. So Nick's birthday is in seven days. I think I'll slip something in this letter. A check for $150...because I have it to give away.

Well we started BRM on Monday...and we qualify with our rifles on Tuesday. Good stuff. I sent graduation info to you and Ashley, spread the word to everyone else. I'll tell Jordon the 411.

Let's see...I have been chosen to assume the responsibility among 3 other people to memorize basic army knowledge, such as navigation, medical, the uniform...the whole nine yards...to acquire prestigious awards that go to only one platoon. So...pretty much, me and three other people in my platoon are representing the whole platoon.
(ok, I have no idea what he just said here...Nick says it basically translates as Patrick and three other soldiers represent the platoon at a contest with other platoons and the game is to have more knowledge about the regulations and army basics than the other platoon representatives.)

Let the light shine.

Love,
Patrick

Patrick's Letter, August 6, 2006

2006-08-20T20:36:00.000-04:00

As usual, Patrick's letters begin with...

Hey.
This is the new stationary I bought (it's blue bordered with the US Army crest on the left side, and says United States Army on the right side, and the edges are blue that fade in to white). And the spandex is unbelievable. It's UnderArmour so I wouldn't expect anything less.

So we had a PT diagnostic today. i did 61 push-ups and 76 sit-ups...and ran my two miles in 13:14. I need to work on my push-ups...get a faster sit-up pace because I had about 24 more without stopping. The 2 miles...is 14 seconds too slow. I'm shooting for 300+ points on my final PT test and I'm gonna get it.

We zeroed our weapons today. Half of us actually zeroed and the other half couldn't get 5 of 6 consecutive shots in that 4 cm (diameter) circle. The target was a piece of paper 25 meters away with a sample target that is the approximate size of full target 300 meters away. I actually have one (he enclosed it in his letter!). It's not mine, though. It took me 9 rounds to get my weapon zeroed, whereas some people it took 968,473,216,577 bazillion rounds and still didn't zero. It's alright, though. I won't be the one being held back because I couldn't qualify. (I don't know what zeroing a weapon means...)

And I had a butterfly land on my hand and stay there for a good 4 or 5 minutes. I took that as good luck like...luck that couldn't get any better. I mean...how often do butterflies land on people? Twice for me for as long as I can remember. A bunch of guys called me a pussy. Then I called out, "is that why I can fire an assault rifle and you can't?" Still got me a soft-ish heart.

Love,
Patrick

Cool Things from Slate

2006-08-20T11:59:00.000-04:00

Does Israel's attack spoil the cease-fire? By Jesse Stanchak - Slate Magazine

One of the many things I love about Slate.com are the "Today's Papers" titles. If you don't know about Today's Papers, it's a daily email that highlights what the major newspapers are headlining and summarizing their coverage. By majors, I'm talking primarily about Washington Post, LA Times, NY Times, and sometimes USA Today. It's a lot cheaper than actually subscribing to the physical paper or surfing to each of their sites. By the way, Slate is owned by the Washington Post.

Wednesday: Diss-Arming (The Washington Post leads with Hezbollah reiterating it won't disarm or really withdraw)

Thursday: No Farewell to Arms (Lebanon's government, as expected, ordered its army into the south after it hammered out a don't-show don't-search deal with Hezbollah)

Friday: Tapped Out (federal judge ruling the president's warrantless wiretapping program is quite unconstitutional)

Saturday: Cease To Exist? (wire services reported early Saturday that Israel may have broken the ceasefire that took hold Monday by launching a raid in eastern Lebanon)

Sunday: Kofi A-None Too Pleased (all lead with an Israeli strike on a Hezbollah bastion in Baalbek, Lebanon, an act United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan considers a violation of last week's cease-fire agreement)

So what's all this about? Well, I'd forgotten that I can "blog this" using my right-click menu thingy and I'm all about that right now. I'll get over it soon.

More Conspicuous Consumption

2006-08-15T21:20:00.000-04:00

New washer and dryer time! Woohoo! It seems so sad to get so worked up over a new set but these are really nifty, quiet, smart, and have a huge capacity. We didn't just do this out of the blue, though. This was all about the fact that our dryer had been dead for over a month, and this set is >15 years old, and geez I'm sorry but I don't enjoy hanging out at the laundromat. I wish we had as nice a laundry space as this but, truth be told, it's in the dark, spider-webby basement of our 100-year old house. But it's a very sweet set!

And Nick...broke his wrist :( He see's an orthopedist tomorrow for a cast. It's a small fracture at the end of his ulna and he's had it in a brace since Saturday - the folks at PatientFirst wanted a radiologist to read his X-ray because they weren't sure if it was a break or not. His health insurance doesn't take effect for another four months so this really is a major bummer for him.

All the news that's fit to print!