Frogs and Ravens

Quiet Season

Life these days is measured in small, subtle increments, and it doesn't seem to offer enough substance for writing. Only little drips and drops fall onto the page, instead of fluid outpourings.

The weather is quiet and overcast. The birds are few and repetitive. The routine of our days is, well, routine, centered around the needs of the cat, our bellies, teaching, and the yearning for sleep and idle moments of television.

I spent today thinking about my shoes. They are a pair of navy blue pumps from Aerosoles, with a low heel and a "kiltie" decoration across the toe. I admire the way they look on my feet, the loveliness of the blue, the contrast of the fringe and brass studs. My feet complain about their rigidity along the heel-line, and the pressure they exert on the sides of the toes (they are still new, this being their first real wearing). Walking to and from campus, I shed them in favor of my patent-fake-leather Birks; at home I shift into my house shoes, a well-loved pair of flip-flops with woven tatami soles. I live in dread of their wearing out; I have yet to find another pair with the same sort of sole.

One evening I found myself with ink-black fingers and lines of darkness under my nails, throwing ink-soaked paper towels repeatedly into the garbage. I was clever enough to put a plastic bag under the inkpot when I hunkered down to doodle in my sketchbook; I was not clever enough to anticipate that the cat, seeing me on the floor occupied with something other than her, would try to lie down on the inkpot. I am grateful that the cat did not get in the ink. I am regretful that our new rug is now marred by a spot that looks like an out-of-place shadow that never moves.

I have been cramming information about French and Spanish frontier activities into my head, fodder for this week's lectures. I am both glad that the lectures are so short, so I can do this in haste, and sorrowful that the class is too busy for a leisurely exploration of these stories. At least I am not teaching one of those thousand-years-in-15-weeks courses.

I tried cooking some black-eyed peas the other night. The pods were so lovely - long and green with purple stripes - and the peas themselves intriguing little nuggets of pale green with dark spots and a coating of green-white pith. I pan-cooked them in oil with a bit of butter and garlic, and some water to steam them. Alas, the theory was better than the practice; they remained chewy and challenging to eat.

I went to the ceramics studio last week, riding my bicycle there for the first time. The hills in town are much more daunting than they look from the car or on foot. I carved and smoothed the pinch pot and lumpy cat sculpture of last week, and began a small container out of slabs. I've given up going in there with any deliberate projects in mind; instead, I seem to be working my way through all of the skills that have grown rusty with disuse, recapitulating the process of being a new student.

When I have quiet moments, and when my hands are not tired from writing paper comments and lecture notes, I work on a moss-stitch cardigan. The yarn is a deep blue called "Blue Ink" and although the progress is slow, it is satisfying. One little bump at a time, the sweater grows.

I have little moments to write about, but I can't seem to make them add up into anything larger. It's like my life, as I think about it.

Whirling

I am plying last year's tencel.  I took 8 ounces of dyed fiber and turned it into about 1500 yards of thread.  Each yard represents one spin of the spindle, one drop and one winding - one "make".  I spun, dropped, and wound, over and over, until I had a spindle of thread.  This I wound on a niddy-noddy, bobbing and tiring my arm, to make a skein.  Then I repeated the process.

This weekend I took the two skeins and I ran them together through the ball winder, spiraling their long, color-changing lengths around an eccentricly rotating hub of Japanese plastic.  One skein resisted, turning into a multi-hued snarl that had to be rewound on a toilet paper tube, yard by tangled yard.

Now I am plying from this ball of parallel strands, twisting them around each other to make the resulting yarn lie calm and relaxed.  I spin, drop, and wind, over and over.  I am impatient for the camisole I will one day knit from the fruit of my labors, but each step is important.  I am plying, calm and relaxed, my breath rising and falling with the whirl of the spindle.

The Fiber Event

Earlier this month I made another trip to the Fleece Fair.  It was raining when I arrived, with snow (snow!) forecast.  It seems like this happened last year; Friday was warm, followed by a chilly, raw Saturday. 

In any case, there was one warm, sealed structure, two airy metal barns, and one open-sided wooden barn.  It was a good thing that people were selling warm, fuzzy merchandise; I can't imagine what it would be like if it were something like a sundress-and-straw-hat sort of event. 

An unexpectedly nice thing was that not only did I remember a number of booths from last year (most of them seemed to have returned, though not all in the same locations) but a couple of the vendors remembered me. 

There were the usual bags and balls and tubs full of roving, and tufts of fleece, and rolled up bundles of raw wool fresh off the sheep.  In all the barns were cages of angora bunnies, and one place was selling, in addition to bunnies, a tiny angora goat and a Persian kitten!  To all sides were balls and hanging skeins of yarn, wooly garments and artsy felted flowers, hats, animals and colorful lumps.  There were racks of needles, jumbles of niddy-noddies, bouquets of spindles, herds of spinning wheels, and ranks of rigid heddle and table looms.  There were a number of bars of scented soap, and a lot of knitting and sheep-themed tchotches.  One man was wandering around in a brilliant, chevron-design sweater he'd designed and knit himself, several Menonite women, many large women in dramatic wooly knits, a few people wearing shawls, and many wearing hats, gloves and scarves (see - the perfect marriage of weather and event).  In between the crowds of slower-moving adults darted children, who paused to pet rabbits, stare at spinners, and huddle around space heaters, clutching stuffed llamas and sheep, tugging on their parents' hands. 

I loaded myself up, though I tried to hold back from too much roving; most of the lot I bought last year is still sitting in my room mocking me.  I bought: a silk "hankie" dyed in a range of deep, rich browns; several ounces of tencel dyed in blues and greens; a skein of laceweight bouclé mohair in varigated blues and greens; a skein of brown and black alpaca yarn (both mohair and alpaca skeins intended for shawls); a copper fibula shawl pin; two Bosworth spindles, one large, one small; a "skein" of roving in blacks and greens; some knitting needles, both straights and circulars; and a skein of cream laceweight for D.  There's enough here to keep me busy for months.

Then I drove home in fluffy rain, er, fleecy rain... no, I have to admit it, snow.  The smaller birds were on the porch, the "fluffy rain" was accumulating on the daffodils, and I could hear it striking the leaves and the blades of grass - a peaceful, skittery sound.  It was still snow in April, however.

Fleece Fair 2006

Fleece Fair 2006

Fleece Fair photos are up!

(Click here to start at the beginning - this one is in the middle, though it's the best representative picture.)

In A Word

The Fleece Fair is...

AWESOME.

(More later. I'm still giddy from overexposure to fibery goodness - and it's a full day tomorrow!)

Fleece Fair

I think this would make a cool excuse for a weekend road trip, while D. is away at a conference. Time to check the oil in the car...

Garden Insanity

I've ordered seeds!

This is what I'm getting:

Dye Plants: Hopi Red Dye Amaranth, Indigo, Madder (also Maroon Coreopsis and Hopi Black Dye Sunflower).

Herbs: Lemon Basil, Thai Basil, Chocolate Peppermint, Black-Stemmed Spearmint, Peppermint.

Fruits and Vegetables: Snowy White Eggplant, Paint Dry Bush Bean, Cherokee Wax Bean, Mitla Black Tepary Bean, Satsuki Madori Cucumber, Bird's Nest Gourd, Rouge D'Hiver Buttercos Lettuce, Emerald Oak Looseleaf Lettuce, Red Deer Tongue Looseleaf Lettuce, Charentais Cantelope, Moon & Stars Watermelon, Oregon Giant Snow Pea, Sweet Cal Wonder Bell Pepper, Cocozelle Bush Zucchini, Butternut Squash, Stella Blue Squash, Red Currant Cherry Tomato, Red Calabash Slicing Tomato.

Grains: Four-O-Seven Quinoa.

Flowers: Maroon Coreopsis (also a dye plant), Scarlet Flax, Hopi Black Dye Sunflower (also a dye plant), Miriam Edible Sunflower, Sweet Peas, White Sweet Alyssum.

I know this looks like a HUGE lot of seeds. I figured I'd rather have them than not, and it was getting impossible to decide. I'm also probably only going to plant one or two plants of each kind, rather than several. (Only ONE (ONE!) zucchini!)

The seeds (and some plants) are coming from Seeds of Change and The Thyme Garden. (The Thyme Garden is a really cool place; they'll do organic catering and host weddings, too.)

Looking Up At the Podium

Behold! I have been through the Knitting Olympics and emerged with a completed vest!

Completed one day late that is, some time after The Apprentice.

Yet I am done, and can now mail this vest to my mother for her birthday (which was in July). More pictures documenting the process below the fold. Be sure to note the piece of yarn in this picture. I will say something about it later.

And... The Knitting Olympics Commence!

The Knitting Olympics Athletes Pledge

I, a knitter of able hands and quick wits, to hereby swear that over the course of these Olympics I will uphold the highest standard of knitterly excellence.

I will be deft of hand and sure of pattern, I will overcome troubles of yarn overs and misplaced decreases. I will use the gifts of intelligence and persistence (as well as caffeine and chocolate) and I will execute my art to the highest form, carrying with me the hope for excellence known to every knitter.

I strive to win. To do my best, and to approach the needles with my own best effort in mind, without comparing myself to my fellow knitters, for they have challenges unique to them.

While I engage in this pursuit of excellence and my own personal, individual best, I also swear that I will continue to engage with my family in conversation, care for my pets, speak kindly with those who would ask me to do something other than knit, and above all, above every stitch thrown or picked, above every cable, every heel stitch, every change of colour, I swear this:

That I will remember that this is not the real Olympics, that I'm supposed to be having fun and that my happiness and self-worth ride not on my success....

but on my trying.

(oath c/o Stephanie, who inspired all of us engaged in this divine madness; flame button c/o Carole.)

Olympic Training

FWI for all you knitting Olympians: I'm passing along a link to this post about avoiding strain and carpal tunnel syndrome.

c/o Stephanie, who warns that submissions must be in by midnight (the Olympics list is killing her and her assistants -- it's almost 3000 knitting Olympians! Fear us, non-knitters!).