Fiber Musings

Is it just me or does anyone else feel a bit like a blind man in the famed fable, The Blind Men and the Elephant when it comes to the Mars landers? A whole lot of speculations and assumptions are being made about Mars based on a very limited amount of information.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking the science, but I just think we need to be a little more cautious before making these assumptions.

Back to regular programming. I finished the first sleeve, except for ribbing, of the V-necked raglan. I’m getting pretty excited now that I’m so close to finishing it. I forgot to pick up some black yarn on my way back to the office from a morning seminar. One more sleeve, and a few more inches on the body, and I’ll be done. I was down to the last 2 skeins of the yarn and decided to finish the sleeves first, and use the remainder on the body, for as long as it lasts. I should have more than enough. Even then, I still want to finish it out with a solid colored ribbing (black).

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As I said, I’m suffering from short attention span. Here’s a sampling of what I’ve been working on during the past couple of weeks.

Clockwise from the upper-left:

1. “designer yarn”: thick & thin, lightly spun hand painted merino, plied with finely spun silk (same colorway)

2. woven samples made with new Hazel Rose Looms. Pink square is kool-aid dyed wool (see KA Experiment #2). Brown is one ply llama and one ply wool.
3. glove/wrist warmer with the primary colored hand painted wool; handspun singles. I haven’t decided if these will be plain wrist warmers or fingerless gloves.
4. Hemingway. This is the little sweetheart that gave us a heart attack last week. Doesn’t he look adorable here? He’s doing much better now, thank you. Tons of energy and constantly in our faces to get lap time.
5. spinning samples of wool from Carolina Homespun, and knitted swatches. On the right is an eggplant merino/tencel blend. The grey brown are her special blend. Top of the middle piece is the same as the one on the left, all light brown wool. The bottom of the middle piece is the dark brown wool. The middle section of the middle piece (redundant, eh?) is one ply of each.
6. V-neck raglan of my own handspun (see bobbin. I’m thinking of edging this with commercial blank yarn.
7. Cul-de-sac. This has been stalled since I put it down in the Christmas knitting finishing marathon. I need to set aside some focus time to figure out where I left off.

Hopefully, I’ll find the wherewithal to finish these sometime this century.

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Sorry I haven’t been able to post any pictures lately. I just haven’t had the day light hours to take any pictures. Not that I really had anything to show. I’ve only had the attention span to knit couple of rows here and there. I’m still working on the raglan, knitted top down, using my own handspun. I’ve also started a fingerless glove with the primary colored singles that used to be the Klein Bottle hat.

But I did notice that there’s a Rogue knit-a-long brewing at Amber’s. I haven’t been much for knit-a-longs, but this is one beautiful hoodie. I just love the way the cable is worked around the neckline. I may just end up signing up for it. But that will be right in the middle of the move (2nd one in 6 months — I’m going to shoot myself), and I’ll be at the Gig Harbor Winter Retreat in mid-February. I don’t know whether I’ll be able to have time to find the yarn. Although I’m thinking Cascade Paztaza would work well. I think I can get the right gauge if I change to size 8 needles. Although the Peruvian Collection Wool at Elann would be nice too. What’s everyone using for this sweater?

Oh! Look what Martin bought me! It’s the Quilt Weaver’s Set from Hazel Rose Looms in Australian Lacewood.

See? Attention span of a gnat.

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He came home this morning, and is starting to perk up. Waldo was pretty worried about him this morning. He gave Hemingway a thorough sniff-over when Hemingway first got out of the crate.

The current theory on the seizure is caused (indirectly) by the new diabetic cat maintenance food that the vet put him on last week. It may have stabilized his blood glucose level to the point that he either doesn’t need his 2x daily insulin shots anymore, or we may need to adjust the amount that we give him. In any case, he’s cuddled up against Rosie Toes now and purring.

Thank goodness.

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Warning: No fiber content here.

Not much is happening here. Life has gotten a little too interesting, and not much time for fiber activities. Our old Volvo didn’t pass smog inspection, so there was a mad dash to get a new car. But it was hung up in Oregon during the big ice storm, because we bought it through our credit union up there.

We had looked at a small Yacht Club back during the summer as a possible place to replace the community that we had at The Center for Wooden Boats in Seattle. It was a great group of people to just hang out with, share our passions with boating, and the public programs. The membership coordinator called us up 10 days ago to invite us to the monthly dinner meeting. When we walked through the door, we found out that we were there for the initial interview. Whew! By the end of that, Martin was roped into teaching the Junior Sailing program the next morning, and we were invited on a cruise out this past weekend. I think we are still reeling from all that.

On top of that, we heard from our landlord last week that he is in a housing crunch of his own, and want to move back into our place. We need to vacate premises by March 1st. Ugh! We haven’t even settled in yet! But the good news is that we haven’t fully unpacked yet, so there’s little packing to do.

But the really good news is that found another place. It’s less than a mile away, and scads more room. It doesn’t have the beautiful koi pond, but it does have lots of patios for whatever I feel like — reading, spinning, knitting, or napping. Perhaps we can install a little burbling fountain for meditation purposes.

So, everything culminated this weekend. The cruise out, the sailing instruction, and we took delivery of the new car. All we were waiting for was finding out if our application for the rental was accepted or not.

Today, we signed the lease. Yea!

When we finally thought that we could breath again, Hemingway went into a diabetic seizure again. Martin made a run to the kitty emergency room this afternoon. Hemingway is spending the night at the ER, with a glucose IV. He’s not stabilizing on his own like he did last time. Now, we just wait.

Just in case you think that I’m complaining. I’m not. It just has been a heck of a 10 days. We are still reeling from all of this.

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