Month: January 2014

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Finally: Rain!

Waking up to the excitement of rain this morning. It will do little to help the horrible drought we’re in, but it is a drop or two in the bucket, and California will take every drop it can get. It did not keep us from taking a two mile walk, but we ended up soaking wet and were glad to get into a warm house.

In my future today is spinning. I started last night and could not get to sleep because I did not get enough spinning in. At the Foothill Fibers Guild Meeting last night Lisa Souza gave a presentation and we all succumbed to the fiber fumes she brought along and I ended up with two 4 ounce bundles of fiber made of 50/50 bombyx silk/fine merino in the colors petroglyph and water gardens. And here I was going to show restraint until Stitches. Really?!

As promised I will show you the Steve West shawl, but, and this is a huge but, there is no way I can take an appropriate picture in this rain or the dark house, so you’ll have to settle for an awful blocking picture. But even with the colorful distraction of the mats you might get the idea.

I just found out the Tibetan monks are in town for their yearly visit. One of their projects is a sand mandala they then destroy to show the transitory nature of material life. The last part of this sentence is plagiarized. I’m always in awe that these folks take so much time to create these exquisite paintings knowing they will not last.

Yesterday when I was contemplating destroying/unraveling the shawl I saw a similarity. Except I did not know beforehand I might destroy the shawl, and it took me way more time to knit this shawl than it takes the monks to do the mandala. And there would have been a totally different message in my destruction. So perhaps I’ll quit the comparison.

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While I’m doing photos, let me show you a small shawl I made for my friend’s 96th birthday:

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I will only show half of what I bought last night because one of the colors did not photograph well at all. That’s a shame because it is most unusual and my favorite one.

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And that’s it for today. Some cooking and lots of spinning and Netflix waiting for me.

One more photo. Did I ever show you my Schacht Matchless? If I did, well, it’s well worth another look.

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Whatever Happened?

Do you ever go to a blog and then see that the last entry was a month, a year, a decade ago? Then wonder what happened to that person? Did they die or just made a switch to facebook or some other social network? I fantasize about them, give them their unique stories depending on the mood I’m in. But honestly? They probably only got caught up in their lives, like me.

Why has it been over a month? Well, the holidays always play a trick on me. They go by way too fast. I always remember my childhood when the days until Christmas took forever. Feeling and shaking the boxes under the tree, just knowing the day will never come. Nowadays that day comes way too fast. Probably how my grandmother felt trying to get the presents together.

This Christmas was kind of cool as Hanukkah came so early, I got to relax and not worry. I leisurely knit on anything and everything I felt like, no pressure.

Then the days between the years arrived. That’s what my grandmother called the time between Christmas and New Year. Always a strange state of mind for me. Sort of like being a lame duck president, this time is the lame duck time of year. No way one can get last minute stuff done one had high hopes for at the beginning of the year. And no need to start anything new, since there is time. It’s that time of year when I get hopelessly confused about what day of the week it is, too.

I eventually just give up and wait for New Year’s Eve. That carries lots of baggage for me. For no reason whatsoever I feel that night should be significant. I try to ignore it every year and then panic and make last minute plans. Having become a little smarter with age I made some plans ahead of time. I invited a couple of friends that feel the same about this strange evening. We had a meal together and then played board games. Board game is more correct. We played ‘Dominion.’ Yes, still my favorite game.

January has been speeding along, but I don’t mind because I’m going to Stitches West. I even signed up for a class: Saami Mittens. Let’s hope the yarn fumes are not so overwhelming and I’ll survive the experience financially intact.

I have been knitting Steve West’s shawl called Bolting. I used 4 skeins of fingering weight yarn from Blue Ridge Yarns called Transitions. That’s 1200 yards in case you didn’t know. At the end one row took as long as a TV show, about 40 minutes and more of Netflix streaming. I’m sure there are way over 800 stitches to the row. And I even made the shawl bigger as I noticed I have some extra yarn to play with. Not such a great idea. It’s blocking right now, but you have to wait until tomorrow when I get to upload the pictures. This is written on the iPad which doesn’t allow me any fancy maneuvers.

Nothing happened to me except life carrying me along.  Looking for my next big project is my biggest challenge at the moment, so life is good.

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