Finished, finished, back on the needles, finished

   So,  I actually finished a bunch of stuff.  A little hat that goes with the sweater I knit my Great Niece Annalise last Christmas ( 2008).  All the holiday gifts, including the guy sweater, which nearly got sewn together, but upon a final fitting was dis-membered, again, 2.5" added to the already orangutan length sleeves, reblocked, and  is about to be shipped off to Ohio with all the other forgotten stuff.  The mittens, scarf, socks for almost everyone, and a couple of odd things plus a lovely Multnomah shawl.  Yep, all done.  And spinning as well, I am about to Navajo ply 3 full bobbins of Three Waters Farm BFL.

                                                                           And what else has been happening around Chez Foster?

Well, having the Kid and his girlfriend here for weeks and weeks was wonderful and a real diversion from my daily routine.  Amanda learned to knit and is already on her third project.  She's a natural, and I am sure once she returns to school in NYC she will find lots of knitting diversions. Snow has been happening and as a result of the snow I have been skiing and snowshoeing.  Daily snowshoeing is really fun, challenging and invigorating.  We have new trails this year, miles and miles of trails, all cleared and pretty well marked.  And of course I can't get lost because I have my two trusty corgis along for the ride and they know the way through the woods perfectly.  And Riva does not bushwhack.  She always sticks to the marked trails.  But even if I got lost they are all  carefully plotted on the GPS.  Of course I would have to actually bring the GPS and figure out how it works if it is to be of any real help.
  As a further diversion I have been working my way through all 7 seasons of "Northern Exposure".   I remember when we first started watching the show back when we lived in Colorado.  We thought that the whole thing was pretty interesting  since we were living in a particularly rural part of Colorado.  Little did we know that in a few short years we would be heading to the Last Frontier ourselves where Mike would be doing exactly what Joel was doing on TV.  I just started the 4th season and I have to say that I am really enjoying the whole thing.  I am not a big fan of commercial TV, and until the last couple of months I have totally avoided watching anything on the Networks.  That has changed because I now have a DVR and can tape and watch stuff at my convenience (without commercials!!).  I have been watching "Accidentally on Purpose" and "Modern Family"  Both have their high and low points and neither can really compete with either "Northern Exposure" or "Dharma and Greg"  which are the only two shows I have really watched consistently over the last 20 years.  Well, I admit to a slight BBC addiction, Monarch of the Glenn, Father Ted, My Family, Ballykissangel, and of course Trailer Park Boys, yep, I watched that one faithfully and then got it again on Netflix. But now BBC has fallen victim to Gordon Ramsay mania and I don't watch it any more.
  So anything new on the needles?  One looooong lost project, the Swirl Shawl in Jojoland Melody.  I am half way through the 3rd row, meaning I am exactly half way through the shawl.  It is infinitely fiddly and tedious, but I am sure it will be gorgeous if I ever get it done.  I am not really a huge fan of Modular knitting, but I think I liked the Koigu Log Cabin Vest a bit more that the swirl shawl.  I just swatched for the Tea Leaves Cardigan and actually got gauge with the recommended needles. ( and I even washed and blocked the swatch!)

Once in a Blue Moon

   So, that's about all I am managing to write lately.  I envisioned the Blue Moon of last night, the first New Year's Blue Moon since 1990 to be really auspicious; to be the harbinger of better times ahead, to be the end of war, global warming, religious intolerance, and narrowmindedness.  Sorry, wrong Universe.  Well, I am hopeful that better times really are on the way.
   Resolutions; why bother.  I have never really made resolutions. I guess the closest I got was a couple of years ago I did the "Year of knitting from your stash"  Since purchasing sock yarn was exempt , I survived the year, barely.  I may actually change the focus of my knitting this year and lean a bit toward larger projects, sweaters, a couple of vests, some felted projects.  Part of this is related to my wrist issues, and my desire to knit at a slightly larger gauge.  Of course part of it is everyone I know has enough socks, hats, gloves and scarfs to each clothe a small country, so small projects are somewhat undesireable.  My second focus has to be to knit more of my handspun. Now that I am learning to purchase, or to dye more fleece or roving, I have enough of each yarn to make things larger than fingerless gloves.  I have several bags of more than a pound of each batch of wool, so I guess I need to get on to those spinning/knitting projects. And Weaving.  Yikes, I dunno about that one.  I am  not a good weaver.  It is a bit fiddly, mathematical and easy to screw up for my taste.  I am going to sell one loom, for sure, and probably keep the Harrisville 36" and make an attempt to actually weave something that is not just, well, awful.
  Anything else, personal, social issues?  Will I loose 20 pounds, journal every day, cut back on beer and coffee, drive for Meals on Wheels, accept the 100 Mile Challenge and become a locavore.  I doubt it.  All good ideas, but realistically I seem to be barely able to keep my head above water following  what I have done the past few years.  Oh, I know I'll read more Library books and spend less money at Borders.  There , I feel better. Happy New Year!

Long time no blog

   It would be Politically Correct for me to say that I have been swept up by the Holiday Spirit, and too busy to blog.  Well, that could not be further from the truth.  I have no Holiday Spirit, other than the one that  seems to be giving me subliminal messages to carry something along the lines of an AK 47 every time I need to enter a store during this oh-so-festive season.  I am not fond of Holiday music.  I don't have a favorite Holiday movie, though I did watch Love Actually the other night, a movie I actually do love, but it didn't do much for my  bah- humbugedness.  My Holiday shopping involved 6 gift cards from Barnes and Nobel, a bunch of Grafton Cheese and some Lake Champlain Chocolates.  I also bought my husband something totally awesome  that I just knew he would absolutely love.  But he found it.

  On a happier note, I have continued some happy spinning projects.  But on a pretty sad wheel.  My Majacraft Rose has spun miles of yarn with me, and some of her more delicate parts have worn out in recent weeks.  In the course of replacing them, a couple of other bits and pieces fell apart, from fatigue or perhaps mis-handling. She is now all put back together and is happily plying some smokey, rosy BFL from Moonlight and Laughter.   This fiber was not particularly easy to spin, but it was a challenge I needed and really embraced.  Recently I have spun a bunch of merino/silk, some bamboo, and some bombyx silk. Those fibers are all slick  and therefore relatively easy to spin.  They were all two ply, spun and plied with a wollee winder.    Mindless spinning bliss.  BFL, for several reasons is my favorite fiber to spin, but it is not always simple.  This particular fiber was a bit tuggy, therefore had to be separated into fairly slim sections and pre-drafted vigorously in order to keep the color bands intact.  Some of the color bands were shorter than the staple length of the fiber so I had to be particularly vigilant to keep those colors from fanning out unevenly as I drafted.  Honestly, had I not paid attention the whole thing could have turned to muddy brown.  Instead, I spent a bit of time separating and pre-drafting and ended up with a spectacularly vibrant, but subtle yarn.  I love it.  This is not a time consuming process at all, and as a result the spinning goes much faster than it would if I had not pre-drafted.  I would hazard a guess that it all comes out close to the same time-wise , and the final results are well worth the time spent on fiber prep.

  Knitting is coming along nicely,  I even have some left over gift type stuff that could possibly be emergency presents, if only I could think of anyone to give them to. I am not saying that my projects are all completed, just that there is a light and 10 days at the end of the tunnel.  My husband, who has even less Holiday Spirit  than yours truly was moved to make 13 pepper mills.  Last year he made rolling pins.  He works in a gifty, friendly office.  More power to him. 
   I actually went to Webs last week and bought yarn for a sweater.  Now, I need yarn for a sweater far like I need another hole in my head, but every January I knit a sweater, I have enjoyed them all, wear them, and I just wanted to keep up the tradition.  I am making the Tea Leaves Cardigan by Melissa LaBarre.  I am using Madelinetosh Worsted in  Norway Spruce color (variagated deep blue-green).
  It is 2 pm and I am going to take a nap.  My youngest child gave me about 20,00 new grey hairs yesterday.  He returned home from college in Ohio for his 6 weeks winter break.  Before he left Ohio he bought 2 new snow tires to replace two of his 4 bald-ish tires.  I noticed this morning that they put the tires on the back of the car.  He has a front weel drive car.  Oh, well, he made it here.  He left Columbus at noon ( instead of his planned 7 am start, naturally) and drove to Vermont, straight through, arriving  in the middle of the night.  He is blissfully still asleep.  How do kids do that?

Holey socks, batman

R.I.P. Favorite Socks
    I have been  knitting socks for a long time.  I may have knit socks when I was a kid, don't remember, but my mother certainly knit socks, and I still have one whole and one partial sock that she left in a drawer when she died.  I meant to finish it for my sister and I didn't.   Now my sister is gone, as well, and I am sorry that I am the WORLD's worst procrastinator.  Anyway,  Wednesday I wore my all time very favorite pair of socks.  They are made with yarn that I bought at the Dublin Country Store in Dublin, New Hampshire.  I love the colors, the yarn, the pattern , but most of all I love wearing the socks.  Don't ask why, I don't know.  They are just my favorite socks.  And now they have a gigundo hole in the heal.  Not darnable.  Worn out and good only to keep as a memory.  I used the rest of the skein to make a baby hat, which I still have, but my daughter has dibs on it, just in case she ever has a baby.  At least I have the memories.
  So where have I been?  Someplace exotic; someplace I needed my passport to visit; someplace they do not speak English.  Don't get excited.  We went to Montreal for our first ever child free Thanksgiving.  We were married on Thanksgiving, may, many moons ago, just so that we would have the day off.  But for the past 20 odd years we have just celebrated Thanksgiving.  This year we celebrated putting up with each other for all these years by going off on a Romantic Getaway.  And it wasn't half bad.  Montreal is a lovely city, with a fine metro system, and lots of cool galleries and fine restaurants.  We did not go to a hockey game, though I wanted to give it a go, but we did go to the Biodome, Insectarium and Botanical Gardens.  It was fun.  I was glad to get home.
  Stealth and not so stealth knitting.  The Herbivore went back on the needles, and is off again.  I made it 2" bigger all around, made more mistakes and blocked the heck out of it using blocking wires, thereby accentuating all the mistakes.  I like it better.  I got buttons for the basketweave scarf, and actually sewed them on!!  Miracles cease...  I finished half of each stealth project, even took them to Montreal.  Forgot the charted pattern for one and ran out of yarn on the other.

  And spinning.  I have spun up a storm.  Just now finished some lovely roving that I got at Brattleboro Fiber Festival a couple of weekends ago.  Really yummy and necessary as I need to make a baby sweater for Riva's teacher.  Probably before she figures out that Riva, though 8 years old, has never been to school before.  Maybe I can blame it on the fact that she comes from Texas. ( Riva is a corgi, in case you are worried.  She started school last week.)

A Rant, a confession and some fiber content.

   The Rant. It is hunting season in Vermont.  Not my favorite season.  Hunting season, to someone like me, is endless.  We have Youth Weekend, Ladies Day, Bow Season, Black Powder Season, Doe Day, Bear Hunting, Moose Lotteries, Regular Deer Season  aka Gun Season, Coyote season and twice yearly Turkey season.  I am sure there are more, but quite honestly I don't keep up with it all.  However I do stay out of the woods and that makes me inordinately crabby. I like the woods,  I actually own, me personally, over 100 acres of woods which are criss-crossed with wonderful trails just waiting for me and my lovely corgis to visit.  We hike and cross country ski and snowshoe on theses trails.  My son mountain bikes these trails.  But for most of November the woods are strictly verboten, to say nothing that I would be a freaking idiot to head into the woods in Vermont during any sort of remotely ordained hunting season.  Now, to add insult to injury, my land is posted.  That means every 50 yards , all around my land ( 2 3/4 miles of perimeter) there are florescent yellow signs, signed and dated by me, that say no hunting, fishing, shooting or trespassing. I then register this land (and pay money to do so) with both the town and the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife.  And yet my neighbor stopped by the other day to tell me that as soon as I left for yoga the other morning three guys in full hunting regalia headed off into my woods carrying, you guessed it, guns.  Maybe they were lost, my neighbor said.  I will not share what I said.
   The confession.  I have never shot a gun.  I have no desire to do so.  I actually believe that  a great deal of what is wrong with the world involves guns, and could be solved if all guns vanished right this second.  But, if I was given a gun, just for one shot, I would be more apt to shoot a hunter than a deer.
    The fiber.  I have been knitting.  Stealth projects that I cannot talk about, except to say that they are actually going to be finished before the holiday season.  I have been spinning, and even have a whole pile of  yarn  washed and dried and selected for projects. I actually found the unfinished sweater for my son.  One of the reasons that I was unable to finish knitting the darn thing is because I could not find it.   It was in a canvas bag in the abyss. That is what my family calls my sewing room.  I am a happy knitting fool, and my wrists are happy because I am no longer knitting cotton socks on size 0 addi turbos.  Nope, no more, get used to sport weight socks,dear.
   Okay.  One final confession.  Remember that gorgeous  wildflower honey BFL that I spun a few weeks ago?  I said I would make a scarf to wear with my grown-up-lady-camel-hair coat.  Well, I never wear that coat.  Oh, I wore it once last year when I went to a wedding.  But usually is sits in the closet, unworn and lonely.  It is just too dressy for my rural lifestyle.  So I actually bought new a winter coat to go with the yummy golden fiber that I spun.   The coat is chocolate brown.  It is a coat my mother would have approved of.  I can't describe it except it is hi-tech meets the car coat of the 50's.  I'll take a picture.  But what does that say about my personality; that I would buy a whole new winter coat to go with 4 oz. fiber that I spun to go with a totally different coat that I never wear?  And, I haven't even knit the scarf yet.  I haven't even chosen the pattern, but I guess it better be a good one.

Thankful Thursday, again

   Maybe this is too easy.  But this entry really has some knitting content. I have really enjoyed reading all the Thankful Thursday Blogs from others, even when they have nothing to do with fiber.

       1.  I am very thankful to have some actual knitting done.  Holiday gifts, idle projects completed.  Enough done that I can actually start all new projects with virtually no guilty secrets hidden away.  Well, maybe one...  I finished the Herbivore scarf.  It has some horrible mistakes.  It is smaller than it is supposed to be, by a lot.  But quite honestly I got sick of it.  Because of the way I knit I don't do well with k1p1 knitting or with seed stitch, and I learned that K1bp1 just does in my wrists, murders 'em.  Won't do it again.  It looks great, though.

      Finished the basket weave  scarf, found buttons at the fourth store I looked in, and actually attached them.  Love the scarf, but I can't keep it.

     Finished the endless socks.  You know who tried them on and now they have vanished so that there will be at least one thing under the tree. Found needles to start a new pair of travelling socks; Regia sport destined to be boot socks for the Girl who always has cold feet.
     2. What else am I Thankful for?  My mother.  I know I have spent decades complaining about her.  She is undoubtedly the reason I gleefully got on that boat and moved to Alaska; good and far away from Vermont.  My mother instilled in me, and in my sister, many good qualities, independence, curiosity, love of the outdoors, and a general skepticism of the status quo.  My mother was particularly skeptical about two things, organized religion and politicians.  Probably with good reason.  It is because of my mother that I am a good cook.  My mother DID NOT COOK.  Fortunately my father did.  I grew up eating grilled cheese, apples and brownies, the only things my mother ever mastered in the culinary realm.  She cut the apples into "bird's nests".  I still eat them that way.
     But most of all my mother taught me to love books. She was a voracious reader, and an adventurous reader .  She  read books in French,  when she couldn't find what she considered competent translations.  And she read to me.  I am not even sure that everything she read to me was appropriate, but I loved it anyway.  My mother bought me every single Newbery Award book until I was about 35.  Honestly.  When I became a children's librarian she continued to buy them for me because she figured I needed them for work.  I still try to read the Newbery books every year although I agree less and less with the choices as I get older.
   I have to share this verse from Strickland Gillian's poem "The Reading Mother".
               You may have tangible wealth untold;
               Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
               Richer than you I can never be-
               I had a mother who read to me.
   My mother died Feb 11, 1997.  She was 90 years old and lived at home alone until a few months before she died.  She was a piece of work, that woman. 

Thankful Thursday

   This is something new, and I have read a couple of blogs today that practically brought tears to my eyes.  These blogs were by knitters, but not necessarily about knitting.  Quite honestly I have much to be thankful for.  If I had a propensity toward Christian sentimentalism I would say that I am truly blessed.  But, as a lapsed Unitarian I guess should say I am one lucky chick.  Here goes, what I am Thankful for:

  1.  First and foremost my dearly beloved husband.  He not only supports me ( financially as well as emotionally), he puts up with me.  How he manages to do that with relatively few complaints I really don't know. I am not an easy person to live with, but then again, neither is he.

   2.  My children.  I am particularly lucky in this category.  Each child has  his/her idiosyncrasies, but none of them has landed them in jail, rehab or the witness protection program, yet. Both of them seem to be doing exactly what my mother expected of me; paddling their own canoe.  One is still in college, but he seems to be on the right track so far, though I might encourage him to buy a powerball ticket once in  a while. The other is earning more money  per year than I ever imagined, and she actually likes what she does. ( The third kid is Bob the Boyfriend, he has been around  long enough for me to feel a sense of ownership; he owns a bar, need I  say more?)
   3.  My pets.  I know, that is pretty silly, but I have two corgis and three kitties and I spend a lot of time with them.  I enjoy them and they love me, unconditionally.  Of course, I feed them, walk them, clean their litter boxes.  True love.
   4.  Yarn and fiber.  I worked at jobs off and on for 36 years that where just that, jobs. Some better than others, but I only had one job that I was really passionate about, and that was also my most problematic and stressful job.  But I was good at it, and I was appreciated.  Now I spin , knit and weave.  Well, maybe not so much weave, but I have good intentions.  And I am pretty darn good at it.  I am beginning to really understand the spinning process, to experiment with unusual fibers and non-standard spinning methods, and to actually attempt to use the millions of miles of yarn that I have produced.  Every day I look forward to spinning and knitting.  Maybe not so much weaving, yet.

   5.  My home.  I am in the unique and unusual position of  being the 7th generation of my family to live in this house.  Yep, my 6 times great grand-father homesteaded this Vermont hillside in 1783, the house I live in was built in 1791, and has been added onto in 1835, 1938 ( by my father) and 2002( by my husband).  That is pretty darn special.

   And for all these things I am eternally grateful!