Resolutions

Well, it's pretty obvious that I am not particularly good at blogging daily. It's actually been a frustrating theme this summer, I can't seem to make myself do anything on a daily basis, whether it's eat right, exercise, spin, knit, or do a load of laundry.

I am reading pretty voraciously. I bought a Sony Reader a few months back, and the library's ecollection has become one of my most-visited websites. I'm working my way through several series of romance and mysteries, and I'm currently reading the campus book club selection, even though I can't make next week's meeting.

I'm trying to catch up some on podcasts, because I have a bad habit of getting behind on those. My very favorite that I tend to listen to as soon as I can after it posts every week is an NPR podcast called Pop Culture Happy Hour. I discovered it over Christmas break, and it's just fun. The Monkey See blog hosts it, and the blog (and its host) is a favorite as well.

I'm hoping to kick myself into updating my ravelry notebook in the next day or so, I've finished several projects that need to be documented. There will be knitting pictures then.

Trying new things

One of the things I learned at Stringtopia was how awesome Jacey Boggs is. Jacey blogs and does other stuff at Insubordiknit. At Stringtopia she taught me corespinning and boucle. I still have to practice my boucle. I'm working on it. (Did I mention there wasn't much spinning right post-Stringtopia?) This is my class sample.



The other stuff she was teaching was awesome too. So when I found out she was teaching at Midwest Fiber and Folk, I signed right up. Cables and Crepes was the first class, and Thick-and-Thin and Coils was the second.

I'm going to start with the coils. Coils are AWESOME.

Here are my class samples. Jacey's very good at breaking down the various steps of these yarns.


Thick-and-thin and coils are both rhythmic. I really like them. And coils are a really nice outlet for the control freak in me. I can make them Just Right, and it's awesome.

Here are the coils I spun last week:


They're better. Imagine that!

I don't have my class sample from the Cables and Crepes class. I kind of struggled in there. Balance is very important in cabled yarn, and I'm not used to paying a lot of attention to balance, because sometimes extra twist in one direction or another is useful, and it takes a lot of imbalance to affect a finished knit fabric by biasing it.

But I was determined not to let my unsuccessful class sample keep me down, and I came home and spun this:



Which is pretty good in places, if not as consistent as I'd like. I'll continue to work on it.

So, to conclude: coils are awesome; cables were way harder than expected, but gratifying to get rightish. Jacey is brilliant and fun and I will definitely take classes from her again, and I bought her video so that if I want to try other things, I can see how she does it. (And holy cow, SO MUCH stuff to try in that video!)

squeaker

It's still the second for a few minutes, right?

So, for the Tour de Fleece, I started today by going through my spinning WIPs and figuring out what was what with them. Today I spun a touch on three of them, two spindle projects and one on the wheel.

There are seven projects altogether, three on the wheel and four on spindles. Lots to do, but they should be plenty to keep me occupied this month.

Mid-year, the first of something

Happy Canada Day!

It has occurred to me that I have not been blogging. And sure enough, today I looked and saw that I have posted a grand total of FIVE times so far this year.

People, this is unacceptable. I need to do Something. July, then, is going to be a blog effort month. I plan to try and post something every day. There should be things to post. I have experiences. The Tour de Fleece starts tomorrow, and while I haven't figured out just yet what I'm spinning for it, I'm going to spin for it, you bet. So there will be embryonic yarn pictures, at the very least.

Today, since it ended two months ago and I haven't blogged it yet, here's my ONE and ONLY picture I took at Stringtopia:


There are various things that should be noted about this picture.
1. Yes, that's a Sidekick. It's lovely and smooth and ooh. I kind of want one.
2. No, those are not my feet. Not actually sure whose feet those are. Everyone was told to "try the Sidekick," but we were actually spinning some gorgeous silk for Shelly, one of the amazing organizers behind this event.
3. There is a beer in that ice bucket. It is very likely a New Glarus beer, because the awesome Tracy (woolwine on Ravelry) brought a bunch to share. Spotted Cow was one of my favorite beer discoveries last year at Knitting Camp, and I will be bringing home some later this month. This means this is a picture from Saturday evening.
4. This is the ONLY picture I have, and it's blurry, and of something nonsensical. The whole experience was an amazing pile of information and sensory overload, and I barely remembered to take my camera out. There are other accounts that really cover this all so much better than I can or will. See Melissa's posts, or Iza's or Lisa's or Mandie's.
5. I have not spun as much since Stringtopia as I think I should have. Part of this was that I came back and had finals and finishing the semester, and then the last run at my 500 miles, then houseguests for the 500, and then I went on vacation. Which gets me almost to now. Except that this past weekend I went to Midwest Fiber and Folk, which was just as fantastic in the information and educational aspects. And now I'm going to go spin some coils.

Have a great July, all!

The agony of de feet

Just kidding. Sort of. My feet are really not what's bothering me. I'm two weeks out from the Indy 500, and my personal 500 isn't going to be done in two weeks. I am 428 miles in. I walked 28 miles in the last week, and while I can try that again a time or two, it's not going to be enough to get me to the end. I'm tired from this past week, and I want to get things done this week that will require that energy.



Pictures are from the NCAA 4Kay, which Mandie and I walked (and ran a little) at the beginning of April.

So I'm keeping going, even though I'm not going to make it. The spreadsheet has been effective. Now I'm trying to figure out if I try for the same thing next year.

In like a Lion

I'm on spring break now. It snowed yesterday.

I was talking to Mandie the other day about how I'm not in love with any of my knitting projects right now. She said "you get this way every year." Which, a quick blog check shows, is true. It's understandable. Winter is fading, so things like legwarmers and scarves seem silly to keep on with, but spring isn't really here yet, so shells and tank tops aren't reasonable either.

Anyway, that's my story.

But that said, I realize I've taken pictures of things and not posted them, so here's a quick photo dump:

Thick socks from Twisted Fiber Art Duchess in Ravelry:


And a lightweight sweater-in-progress:

it's going to be the Featherweight Cardigan, someday. That's my handspun green stuff, as seen last fall.

You would think that would be perfect for this interstitial time between winter and spring, and it is, but as it's biggish and slow and mostly stockinette (and I'm still in the yoke, so the rows just.keep.getting.longer), I'm going a bit stir-crazy with it at the moment.

But like I said, it's spring break! I'm planning on spending some good time with the above sweater, and I'm hoping to get past my funk by knitting some small stuff. I have a minor queue of baby things for deserving beloved babies born last year, today supplemented by the purchase of this book at the yarn shop. (Amazon says they don't have it till May, but knitting books are often available to smaller (LYS) retailers before they have wide release. I also want to knit Duck, which looks tough and like a lot of fun (seriously, it's a technique-heavy little pattern, and oh so cute!).

I'm still walking. It's going to be close, but I'm more than 300 miles along, and I'm hoping to walk a LOT this week as well!

Declawing Valentine's Day

I really want to be one of the people who like Valentine's Day. Ostensibly it's a nice holiday about loving the people in your life. And I can definitely get behind flowers and chocolate. But something about the insane pressure and expectations that get put on the holiday really bugs me.

My now husband also feels that the holiday isn't all it's cracked up to be. So once upon a time, when we had been dating not quite a year, we were coming up on Our First Valentine's Day. We compared our ambivalent feelings about the day and came up with this solution: we were going to get each other the most stupid and disgusting holiday stuffed animals we could find.

I combed the mall in the town where I was in grad school and he went to Wal-mart. I got him a monkey. It's pink and pink. It's called Trembles. It vibrates and makes a loud screaming monkey noise and it cracks me up. He got me a snake. It's red and pink with a goofy smile and a heart pattern down its curly length. It cracks me up too. We exchanged them 8 years ago and have not come up with an equivalently awesome observance since. So we don't do Valentine's Day.

I don't think it's misanthropic for us to opt out of the holiday. We don't really, I buy chocolate and (my favorite) SweetTarts Hearts. And I do wish people would have a happy and low-stress day tomorrow in a treat-your-friends and treat-yourself kind of way.



And Trembles and the Love Snake wish that for you too.