Twists of Fate

…and found all the things I wanted to say. Well, except for the inkle loom bits.

I have absolutely rampaged on fiber and yarn lately. I will admit to being depressed. Unemployment and a lack of *knowing* what I want to do for work will do that to a girl. And the intarwebs make it so easy to just click! and voila! Another fleece, on the way to me. Click! Hey look at that. I just bought more sock yarn! Click! Groovy - yarn for two projects in the upcoming IK Fall issue. It’s totally. Out. Of. Control.

I’m wading up to the knees in boxes in my living room. It’s spilling out into the hallway. And while I am stacking, if I set everything down on the floor in one layer, I wouldn’t have a floor. And the curse of handwashing continues, which means there’s fleece in various stages of washing causing even more clutter. It’s enough to drive a girl mad.

In the meantime, I am daydreaming about what kinds of things to make with all the recent acquisitins. I need to clear all the projects off the couch (the three Hazel Rose Looms, all with projects in progress on them; the Mirabilia cross stitch; that one pair of socks from Vintage Socks; the other pair of socks I’m working on; and the recent yarn purchases because I need more yarn, right? *snorts*) and start doing a stash documentation project. This would also be a good idea because in the not-too-distant future there will be Ikea shelving. The one that’s 5×5 shelves, and the corresponding entertainment center that also has shelves. And I can put all the books recently bought (though all of them from the used bookstore) away instead of having them piled on the floor, and I could wash the yarn that’s sitting around in bags and get it put away in baskets that fit into the shelves and….

Meh. Mercury went direct in Cancer today, thank f’ing god, and I’m hoping all this emotional turmoil will fade soon. I need to get on the ball and start the job search in earnest, but I’m having a hard time focusing when I’m this down. I think cleaning/organizing/playing with the stash will help.

But I should probably wait for daytime to begin the project, eh? :D

Stitch and Pitch at the M’s game last night was interesting. $20 for parking in the stadium lot, squeezing through the turnstile and doing the stairs thing in the heat with a very impatient sister made me a fairly unhappy camper.

I didn’t see most of the game because I spent the first two innings being “yugged” (mugged by yarn) at the vendor tables. Two skeins of Socks that Rock, and three skeins of Koigu later, I wandered to my seat and spent four innings listening to my sister complain about how bored she was. The Mariners were losing badly (Yarn Harlot - your Blue Jays totally kicked our asses last night), my ass doesn’t really fit in those seats, and realizing just how contemptuous my sister is of my main hobby made for an upsetting evening. I thought it would be a treat for us to go together, but it really didn’t turn out that way.

She demanded we leave at the bottom of the sixth (”I have things I could be doing.”), and at that point I was so ready to just weep I gave in. Took us 20 min to find the car, with her glaring at me like she shouldn’t also have noted where her ride was in the garage. I had my revenge when I lit up a smoke in MY car. Passive aggressive? Sure. But it’s better than the alternatives that were running through my head.

All in all? A good lesson. I’m calling a moratorium on events with my sister through the fall. It just doesn’t work out.

The Socks that Rock is pretty though. And I got to do a parade wave on the jumbotron, which makes me 4 for 4 with the Mariners.

That’s the temp in my living room at the moment. It’s nearly 8pm.

I think I may be dying. Or melting.

You have to understand. The average temp in Seattle in July is somewhere in the mid-70s. The chocolate bar I bought for myself yesterday at Ikea melted on the countertop. I’m on the third of three floors of the building, and my apartment is oriented east-west. Great light. Lots of light. From the big ball of burning fire in the sky.

I’m looking at the Schacht Matchless single treadle I found on craigslist. It’s just sitting there. Looking neglected, sad, and underutilized. I’m a bit iffy on how to change the tension to double drive, and haven’t really played with it that much. This is a shame.

But note the temperature. I love wool, I do. But it’s over 90 degrees. I’m sucking down icewater like someone is going to try to take it away from me. I had half a dozen crackers and two slices of roast beef today and that’s all I could choke down without it threatening to come back up because I am so. Fucking. Hot.

So I’ve turned to an older past time for now. I resurrected Maiden of the Seasons I. I would rather work on The Dreamer but I can’t find her. I’d work on something smaller, but all the cross stitch stuff is in storage and I can’t be arsed to drive down there. Because that would mean getting dressed in clothing that would add to the temperature, getting in a car where the average temp is probably around 120 degrees, and mucking around with big cardboard boxes. Yeah. Don’t think so. I’ve gotten quite a bit done, surprisingly. If I actually finish this before, oh, 2008 I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go find a cooler place to sweat.

PS - thank you Norma, Elaine and Cathy for the birthday wishes. :D They helped. A LOT. I will respond to your comments as soon as I stop threatening to swamp my keyboard with sweat. Ew.

by the letters FH (Fucking Hangover) and the number 4 (how many ibuprofin I just swallowed). Well, that and how many different kinds of booze I had last night. A mini-tour of the world, which stalled at Scotland. Meh. I did visit the Caribbean (rum…arrrrr!), Mexico (Patron tequila), Ireland (a shot of Bailey’s over ice) and finally Scotland (McClellan scotch, neat dammit! heh…neat peat. I’m obviously stilil a little tipsy.), and it was the best trip a girl could have while she’s looking for work and needing a clean drug test in the event of a hiring. Or so I figure.

Amusingly enough, this is my horrscope for the day. This one (from astrocenter.com), is usually freakishly accurate:

You might find that your head is simply throbbing - either physically, mentally, or both. Perhaps there is no logical explanation for it at all. Much of your focus is centered on your skill in thinking matters through rationally. Unfortunately, there is a major blockage that is hindering your ability to process your thoughts. Work through this internal hurdle before trying to deal with external issues.

Ya THINK?!?!

One of the drawbacks of being a moonchild (Cancer sun) is having to deal with the emotional swings hither and yon that result from the moon wandering into a different sign every couple or three days. Yesterday’s aspects apparently didn’t really do much for me, and in fact had me at “emotional meltdown I hate everyone bloody buggering fucking hell people SUCK!” mode. Add a lifetime of shitty birthdays, with more than a heaping serving of PMS and voila! Recipe for a meltdown. The nacho cheese people should take note at how well it all melts down with this recipe.

I find it very difficult to get close to people, and sometimes it takes building up courage over 100 days to reach out and ask someone if they wanna get a coffee or something, you know, if they’re not too busy and their dog’s feet doesn’t have a fungus that needs treatment or they think I’m not really an alien sent here from another planet to learn the ways of Earthlings. Most of the time I feel like the world is coated in Teflon, and I just sort of…slide off everyone and everything. Can’t make a dent, no matter how hard I try. Can’t make a connection, can’t spark an interest for ME in anyone, can’t leave any sort of cosmic grafitti tag that says “I WUZ HERE!” as proof that I do, in fact, exist outside my own head.

355 days of the year, I’m OK with living in my head. My birthday is one day where I need, I absolutely need some kind of acknowledgement that other people do, in fact, see me. Rarely does it happen, and while I am trying to break the cycle, this year the aspects were against me.

Ah, challenges.

You know what cool thing I discovered yesterday though? That NOrma (yes, THAT Norma!) and I share a birthday. She definitely did hers with more grace, style, and a significantly smaller dose of humiliation. Because she’s Norma and everyone loves her (with good reason, I might add). I can only assume she was a lesson for yesterday, in how to gracefully do…something that I am having a hard time figuring out because my head is, in fact, throbbing a bit but also because it’s pre-coffee and I barely know where my ass is located. It’ll come to me later, like a flash of heat that’s either the light bulb going off, the burn of my humiliated blush, or possibly sunstroke. Occasionally, there isn’t much of a difference between the three sensations.

Oddly enough, this horoscope from DailyOm (which is a lovely service, especially if you do in fact sign up for the DailyOm) has similar advice for today:

You may feel overly sensitive today, and want to withdraw from the world. You could find yourself feeling nervous and insecure about yourself or your abilities, which could make you feel out of place no matter where you are. If you can set aside some time to work through these feelings, you should find yourself enjoying a much more peaceful state of mind.

For once I’m taking the stars advice and if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to crawl back under a rock now.

Happy birthday to me.

Not much happening here. I may order pizza and a 2 liter of coke and spend my evening drowning myself in Jack & Cokes, because this is never a very good day for me.

On a fibery note? Shetlands: how can such small sheep produce so much stinkin’ fiber? I unroll the fleece and it just seems to grow and grow and grow….

Hope y’all are having a better day than I.

Man, PMS is kicking my ass all over the mat today. Not even KT Tunstall’s Black Horse and the Cherry Tree is helping get me out of my funk. And that’s usually a sure fire cure. So I’m obviously beyond help today.

Though perhaps a judicious appliction of a Double Stuff Oreo poultice would help?

Moods like this, I’d usually go out for a drive, just to get away from myself and my own personal gloomy moodcloud. But I usually crank up the music and blast some tunes I can sing screech along to. And…I can’t find the fucking CD player. My car is a 1990, so no CD player in the dash. Just the radio.

I should’ve asked for an iPod of some flavor for my birthday. Or a gift cert to Ikea, since I need new shelves and a way to organize the yarn/fleece stash as it displays an astonishing grasp of entropic cascade failure and responds by exploding outward at an ever increasing pace.

Why yes, I have been watching too much Stargate.

Not a lot of fiber content, except that I’m trying my best to work out how anyone can complete a square on the Hazel Rose Loom Quilt Weaver’s square in 10 min. *boggles!*

OK, it’s been a little while since I posted. Time gets away from me sometimes, especially when unemployed.

I’ve been busy though. Made another batch of raspberry jam with a friend. Have plans for many more canning things, though I took a break from it for the past week or so. I’ve been reading and knitting along on socks for a while. Started with another astrology group. And am nearly at the end of the DVD run of SG-1, though *koffkoff* S9 awaits viewing.

Anyway, I continue to work on the fleeces piling up here in my home. This one is an East Friesian fleece from True Ewe Farm in Flint Hill, VA. The jury is still out on just how smart it is to belong to yahoogroups like FiberBuyandTrade, FleeceforSale, etc. I’ve run into so much trouble since I joined those lists…. You can see the raw fiber here in this picture. I gather from the original ad that True Ewe Farm is a fairly new farm, and that the wool is a secondary crop after the milk & meat from this breed. I’ve been working off that assumption in evaluating the fiber.

Considering these sheep live outside, and aren’t specifically a handspinners flock, I think the fleece was in great condition. I like the fact the farm uses homeopathic treatments on the sheep, and were I closer I’d love to buy some of their cheeses. Anything not riddled with anti-biotics = happy me. There was some colored wool included in the box, and I’m not sure what that was from. Flock markings? Accidental dye from something? Regardless, it went into the trash when I rolled out and skirted the fleece to my own tastes. Loss from my skirting was probably about seven percent of the total, though that’s just a rough estimate. Since I handwash all the fiber, I probably skirt more aggressively than some would. It takes forever to do a batch by hand, so I try to only get the primo stuff.

I did test a few locks from different areas, and two had noticeable tender spots. As long as I’m not using this for rope though, I’m sure it’ll be fine. :-D There were a number of second cuts - less than in some fleeces I’ve gotten, a few more than I’d like. They all shook out very easily though, or are fell out when I spun the wool dry in ze salad spinner. It’s one of those things a skirting table would probably take care of, but it’s not a huge deal. VM was pleasantly low (what little there was shook out/came out in the spinning), crimp was variable throughout the fleece, and while there was a faint hint of “milk” odor to the wool, it definitely smelled better than other fleeces I’ve received. Sheepy, homey and fabulous!

And while I was sorta dubious about how the wool would wash up (me and white wools sometimes have an adversarial relationship, though I think it was the Merino that really scarred me), I was very pleasantly surprised after my usual routine of two cool soaks, one hot wash and two hot rinses. While some of the tips are still faintly brown, the main body of the fiber washed up into a nice mellow off-white. I suspect it’ll be even clearer once spun and the yarn re-washed. The grease content was what I’d consider in the “medium” range, but washed out easily. You can see in this pic the washed and dried fiber in the corner, along with a couple of small buns of combed top from my mini-combs.

I actually took the time to sample the fiber I combed. I’m not the best spindler, but I do love my Moosie from Journey Wheel, seen here. I think this fiber is probably not quite soft enough for me to wear as a sweater, but I do plan a hat, mitten and scarves from it. It’s very bouncy, light and lofty, and has a ton of spring to it. I know you can’t get a really good idea from the picture, but it has been a pleasure to spin so far.

Until I get bigger combs, a lot of my fiber is destined to be processed on the drum carder. I think it’ll work well for East Friesian, as long as I take it slow and don’t force/tug it so much that it stretches/bounces and snaps.

All in all, I think I’m really going to enjoy spinning up this fiber. It’s a nice, bouncy and springy medium wool, and I look forward to working with it! If you’re looking for something a little different, and a fiber not really readily available here in the US, I’d definitely recommend True Ewe’s East Friesian!