Double Knitting

This evening's form of fibery entertainment: learning how to double knit!  Thanks to trusty YouTube and the calm reassuring voice of LiatMGat and her set of three lessons (this will take you to the first one) I'm well on my way. What fun!  Here are pics...the first I've posted using the webcam on my laptop, btw.

...and no, my hair isn't dyed turquoise like my daughter's.  It's just the "full spectrum" light bulb effect on auburn hair.  It's not bad tho'...can't say I might not try it someday.

It's still January, barely

I've decided that refraining from "catching up" since the last entry is more conducive to actually posting since the backlog can seem overwhelming.  So onward and forward!

So far this new year is shaping up to be a year of launchings.  My oldest son will be launching into living on his own come 4/1.  I'm launching into a new, semi-secret, year long, personal de-stuckification adventure on Feb. 29 (Leap!).  Finally, I've recently begun the long (for me) pre-launch process for my own website with Wendy Cholbi's Website Wish Kit, which brings me to today's pic.  One step in the WWK workbook is coming up with a Venn diagram representing what you wish for in a website, what the reality is, and where they overlap, if at all. Oo oo oo...a chance to play with art in the processing!  So here's the result:

Still getting used to the new camera so the lighting isn't quite what I wanted it to be.  Didn't realize until after I'd finished that I used a mirror image of the Mastercard logo (what does it mean?)

Not surprisingly, it's rather representative of my life in general as well as my website-to-be.

summer...?

Wow...it's September, the kids are back in school, and it's raining (again).  Think we're channeling Pacific Northwest weather in Jersey this summer, punctuated by an earthquake and hurricane Irene.

My big event of the summer was a trip to Prince Edward Island, Canada (of Anne of Green Gables fame)...thanks Dad & Linda!  This place has my ideal climate, I've decided: never gets much over 80F in the summers & lots of cool sweater weather - a must for knitters.  AND there is Belfast Mini Mills, a fiber lover's heaven on earth, not to mention wonderful people, beautiful yarns and spinning fiber (including quiviut), a tea room, fascinating fiber processing equipment, classes...yes, I'm completely enamoured!  You will get to read more about it later when our travelogue is posted but I'll try to get some pics up sooner.

Long time no see

Started a part-time job in May so, needless to say, I've had less time to knit, spin, or dye, much less post about it. But now I do have all my windows and doors framed in the kitchen and den, and baseboard, and crown moulding. Yay!  Closure! (BTW, this kitchen remodel was started over 3 yrs ago!)  This was, after all, the whole point of getting the job.

But my fingers have not been idle:

This little baby shrug for a friend's soon-to-arrive baby girl was a surprisingly quick knit and I love the shaping and crochet border. Check out DROPS Design # 0-683 if you're interested.

Judith MacKenzie's article "Paper Chase" in Spin-Off, Spring 2011 inspired me to try my hand at spinning paper.  I used sewing pattern paper as she suggested in the article and plied it with Lion Brand Collection Wool Stainless Steel.  It knits up so much softer than you would think!  Definitely need to find this type of paper by the roll...all the joining breaks up your rhythm.  Still, I think it ain't half bad for a first try.

Going public...a not so wee step

It's a little scary to me but this blog is now searchable.  People can find it.  People who will be interested, love it, hate it, think it's silly, laugh, sneer, snicker, spew coffee on their keyboards... But the people who will stay are the ones I'm really writing to, sharing with.  So here it is folks!

I also now have a little (smallest they had) banner ad.  It's the purple one over there on the right that says "Paradise Fibers".  They have an affiliate program so if you link to and order from their site through this blog I get a little something in return.  It took much perusing of Blogger Q&A's to figure it out but I'm pretty sure I won't get nabbed by the Spam Eradicator Robot for this l'il purple button.  Not many of the fiber resource retailers I might recommend here have affiliate programs so I don't think I'm in much danger of overrunning the blog with banner ads, but if you happen to find "Wee Steps" today and it's gone tomorrow, you'll know who got me!

a web presence

A mere generation ago this phrase might have evoked images of spiders, at least for anyone besides techno-geeks, but I have one now and I am neither arachnoid or technoid.  Not designed or published yet it hangs there in cyberspace, my little corner of webdom.  Shep at GoDaddy (if that's his real name) was very patient with a newbie like me, so tonight I get to play around designing my Home Page.  Progress.  A step.  And no ellipses, either.

Don't cry over spilt...latte?

OK, I didn't cry.  But when my dear STP accidentally spilled my freshly made Autunno latte yesterday a.m., I just couldn't bring myself to use a paper towel, or any towel for that matter, lest you think my hesitation came from the greener side of my conscience.  I ran to the kitchen and grabbed...a straw of course!  Yes, even at (by then) room temperature and spread unceremoniously across a toddler's tray table (crumbs & all) it's still my 2nd favorite espresso ever!  A completely undignified but satisfying solution. Totally green, too.

BTW, my all-time fave espresso is Primavera, also from OQCoffee, but it is currently out of season.

The dyeing pics...really.

Here's my dyeing set-up on the kitchen counter: lots of newspaper, Jacquard acid dyes, white vinegar, spaghetti sauce jars, chop stick for stirring.

 Jars of dye & roving in the steamer to set the color; beautiful vermilion roving drying on the radiator

Sky blue, sun yellow and vermilion roving ready to be blended with carding combs.



A rainbow of blended tufts just staring up at me, begging to be spun...alas, no empty bobbins!

Houston, we have pics!

I'm sorry...was that confusing?  You were expecting to see the pics?Understandable.  All I did was the first wee steps of actually remembering to find the camera and take them in the first place...document a little piece of process.  Now actually getting them on the big computer and learning how to post them, that's another few wee steps.  Using the big computer actually feels bigger than a wee step.  I have considerable resistance to using it, especially for anything visually oriented, because 1) it never quite seems in focus, which makes my eyes and head hurt and 2) at some point the color mysteriously became ultra saturated, which makes my eyes, head, and psyche hurt.  AND neither of these respond at all to anything I do with the monitor settings.  Even Joe can't fix it.  I suspect a visually impaired poltergeist.

This process I documented was dyeing roving, actually. Thanks ever so much to rexenne and BlondeChickenYarn for their YouTube videos that nudged me into just do it mode.  The roving is for practicing color blending with carding combs (snap! forgot to take pics of that part), so all the tedious aspects of dyeing (consistency of color, repeatability, etc) were moot points.  Yay!  Free play!  So now I have a nice box full of rainbow-hued tufts made from just sun yellow, sky blue and vermilion rovings.  Or we could go art school and say I have completed a carding technique color study.  Either way, can't wait to spin it! (pssst! Did you catch the other wee step? Adding links!)

And yes, there will be pics...eventually.

BTW, we are now using "snap" as our expletive of choice since the STP has added "cwap" and "tupit" to his repertoire, which is so incredibly cute that it's well nigh impossible to keep a straight face.

COSTUMERY

Yes I stole the word from (three guesses) Havi's blog.  Well, Halloween having come and gone it does seem appropriate that my link hopping would end up at "Costumes".  Such a great idea. Costumes to mark boundaries, to be more aware of your capacity, to "put on" a quality that helps you get something done  (particularly yucky dontwannas) but also taking it off at some point, temporarily appropriating an identity.

For years now I've talked about having some kind of red garment (apron, hat, vest?) that would indicate to even my little kids that any further requests or complaints would land you in your room or Mommy/(not so)Sweetie was going to lock herself in hers.  It's a very tangible way to acknowledge where you are vs. where you think you should be.  It's a way to warn let people know where you're at vs. expecting them to mind-read.

So the corresponding VPAs are:

• some sort of approach-at-your-own-risk kind of garment, easily donned and doffed, not too scary (for the STP), fun but still means business
• similiar hat for washing dishes...vacuuming...OK any kind of house work
• ideas for how to incorporate a timer into all of this

Change of subject...had a great Monster discussion with Wonder Twin.  More on that later...

Having practically inhaled McLaren's book I promptly returned it to the library.  Weird since I really want to go back and visit many parts of it.  Had in mind that I'd order it ASAP then oops, no dolla'.  So, spent time on McLaren's site looking at books he likes, which led to looking at more books and reviews on Amazon.com (addictive) and then to looking for titles I could find at my library. Result: am now almost finished gulping down Phyllis Tickle's The Great Emergence, an amazingly short and satisfyingly meaty "The Church and Western Civilization 101" up to the present.  Really, it makes you feel like you got at least a semester's worth of smart with relatively little effort...and that enjoyable to boot.


And, Small Toddler Person (henceforth to be referred to as STP until I come up with something better) discovered the Connect Four game, which is why I've gotten to read so much and cook dinner, too.

Some VPAs:

• a used copy of McLaren's A New Kind of Christianity 
• stumbling upon (read no long hrs of searching for) something equivalent to The Great Emergence for Middle Eastern history
• an occasional nanny/housekeeper.  I don't care if it's wimpy.  I want one.

Not going to use Havi's complete format yet, with "How this could happen" and "My commitment" sections, tho' I see their benefit.  Just getting stuff out of my head and increasing my comfort with asking.

McLaren on Christianity

On a roll today (actually I'm avoiding taking Ethan with me to Sam's).

Started Brian McLaren's book A New Kind of Christianity  last night and am definitely getting sypathetic vibes. Lisa was right...he is articulating (at least getting closer than anyone else) the disconnect I've been negotiating between what has worked for me and what I thought (and evangelical Christianity teaches) was supposed to work.

Wow.  That sentence came out rather concisely and without editing.  Maybe blogging is a good thing.

Personal Ads

I love Havi's Very Personal Ads.  And I love that they work...for her, for a lot of people she knows, maybe for some people I know, too (Cindy?)  Don't want another notebook right now, even though I love a new journal, so I'll try them here.  Some will  be big ads, some small.  This is a place to start, just go, not over-think, by-pass paralysis of analysis.

Some biggies:

hopeful, self-sustaining systems for a less chaotic house, feeding my people, closure-ing house projects, which will result in (?):

more time for sustaining things like: creating, thinking, reading, talking to monsters, practicing/learning yoga (OK, maybe you start the sustaining practices and the other stuff falls into place...leap into the abyss, so hard to do)

non-constricting routines for said sustaining things

ways to simplify without forcing my family to do something they're not ready to

another paradigm for mothering, particularly Ethan, that frees me from seeing him as the obstacle to all of the above

another paradigm for money, for the same reason

a way to get out from under this house.  not necessarily to move (big pain in the angst) but some way not to feel so burdened by it.  ways to brainstorm this that don't automatically push Joe's fear buttons.



Some smallies:

a cd /mp3 player that will play the wonderful downloads, like De-Stuckification Station, +not new, +small, +good sound. (OK, I can put them on my phone.  when?)

a good soup pot with a heavy bottom so I don't have to use (and wash) the hunkin'  big stock pot, preferably used.

A finished thing. Really.

I finished my submission for the Cloth, Paper, Scissors 2011 Artisan Search tonight...much relief and satisfaction.  Will post pics here but for the meantime they're at http://www.clothpaperscissors.com/media/g/artisanstitch/default.aspx .