Woolybuns

Springy Things

Ahhh, the faithfulness of seasonal cycles.  Winter and Spring often fight for dominance this time of year here in southern NE, but these little guys are always there for ya.  Every March, I always poke through last year's debris in search of emerging crocus and I always find them before the month is over.  What I like about this garden is it has "seasons" of its own: one end of the garden is about a week ahead of the other end.  So while that clump of crocus is just peeking through, there is this clump already in full bloom.  The garden is one of the few places I like yellow.   

Another sign of spring around here is nekkid bunnies.  This is Merry Brandybuck freshly shorn of his glorious dense and crimpy foof.  He's one of several newly clipped buns here.  I left all of them with enough fuzz to stay warm overnight when the temps still dip to chilly.  As Brattman demonstrates,I still have a few more to clip.  And then there will be under hutch clean up, once the ground dries up.  This is one time of year when I do not miss my chiropractor appointments!

Now, for this little lady, Tinkerbelle, I ask you all to think labor.  Last Friday evening, I'm pretty sure I felt baby movement in her big belly.  Her underside is clipped in preparation for kindling and I tend to clip the rest of the coat a few days after babies are born.  That way, by weaning time, the new coat is still short enough that the babies haven't destroyed it.  Most of my does kindle faithfully on gestation day 31.  That was Saturday.  She built a nice nest just where I wanted her to, pulled wool and settled in for The Event.  And that's where she still is.  Waiting.  She had a litter last year and kindled a healthy bunch on day 34.  So I haven't really lost all hope.  But I haven't felt any movement in the last couple days.  Not a good sign.  She's eating well, doesn't appear uncomfortable.  I've given her some herbs to promote labor but nuthin'.  At this point, my concern is focused on Tinkerbelle.  I have an appointment at the vet's this afternoon but I'd sure be happy if the need for that evaporated.  There are two possibilities for the vet: a shot of oxytocin or a c-section.  We can only use the oxytocin if she's ready to kindle.  And taking her to the vet for a shot will stop labor (I don't know how rabbits can decide to stop labor, but they can).  So the most likely outcome of a trip to the vet is a c-section.   And at this point, the chance of any live babies is reduced.   So come on, now, close your eyes and send strong kindle vibes.  We'll both be grateful for the help.

Update: A third possibility that I hadn't even considered.  No babies.  X-ray shows instead an infected uterus that apparently made her think she was pregnant.  The vet says we caught it in time.  She's on an antibiotic and the vet says she should recover completely and be able to have a litter in the future.  Cross your fingers!

I Think I Need Lessons On How To Do A Proper Yarn Crawl

Two skeins.  That's all I bought on the yarn crawl in NYC.  Pathetic, I know.  Kind of like going to a biker bar /dive and only drinking cranberry juice with seltzer, not even any lime cause the bartender knows how old those lime slices are.  Yeah, that's me.  Cheap date, according to the guy who wanted to buy me a drink.  But. Tempted as I was by that lovely sea silk and the koigu and the mohair/silk and and ... well, you know the seduction out there.  In the yarn shops.  Not in the bar.  I was tempted at Knitty City.   But I have my eye on something else that will take my money, so I stuck with just the two skeins cause I had to have some yarny momento of that fabulous day.  So, the two skeins, Claudia's Handpaint, 100% merino fingering weight, colorway Sea Dreams., keeping Mr. Grumpy in the garden warm. 

There was also this yarn, donated by the Craft something Council for knitting squares while we listened to the Harlot.  The squares are for Warm Up America.  I of course botched my knitting so gave up and will knit the square here at home, then mail it in.

I did get a second chance at redeeming myself in the yarn buying arena.  After the laughter of the Harlot's talk, a sock yarn maven, and I'm sorry, I can't remember who she is, plunked a couple of honkin' big garbage bags of fibery oops and boo boos on the floor and said discount and in the melee that ensued, I scored 4 skeins.  For about half the price of the 2 above.  Not sure of the yardage, not sure of the fiber.  But it's soft and the color is nice and those skeins will keep some feet or hands warm somewhere and it's yarn and without it I only had two skeins to take home.  I had to buy them.  Right?  Yeah, I know.  Still pathetic with that yarn buying thing.

But wait until you see what my money is gonna get me.

Worth The Wait

Paph in all her glory!  Her bud started unfolding a few days ago and this morning, she's magnificent.

Then there is also this.  One of the reasons I kept my yarn crawl purchases to a minimum.  I added to my Knit Picks set.  Now in addition to the basic set, I have a couple of 47 inch cables for mobious-ing, a couple other cables and extra needle points in the sizes I use most, blocking pins (knitting monogamy?  what's that?), needle size tabs so I don't lose track (why don't they put it on the needles?) and 7 balls of yarn to make the lovely Northern Lights mittens.  Yes, just in time for spring.

And the photo album of the Represent Tour is now up.  If you see yourself and want to identify yourself, holler.

Sock It To 'Em

Harlot's Represent Tour - if you can make it, GO!  Yesterday's launch in NYC seriously got my giggle going and I'm sure the subsequent stops will do the same for you.  I started early, left the house at 3:41 (aka the popular O shit am), caught the 4:12 am train to Grand Central, then trekked over to Rockefeller Center.  First time I've seen NYC at 6 am.  It's still noisy!  And impressive.  And ya gotta give NYC it's due.  I arrived at the Today Show without a sign.  There, as I waited in line, was - of course - a guy selling poster board and 3 markers, buyer's choice of color, for $5.  I had a sign done in about 15 minutes.  And reports say the TV cameras flashed it to the world.   But Matt and Meredith and Al apparently didn't have the guts to ask what the hell??  Which also makes me giggle.  But the best giggle I got out of the sign was showing it to The Harlot.  She doubled over in her own gasp of giggles.  Well worth the five bucks.  And I have a plan for the sign.  Once I get it in motion, I'll tell you about it. Purling Man and Some Bunny had a much more impressive sign.  It was designed internationally and financed by Webs.   Guido (Purling Man) and Kim (Some Bunny) organized the Today Show part of the day and it was a brilliant move!  A goofy, cold, and damned early event but quite the hoot. There were about 13 of us knitters representing, including Pam from Toronto and Deborah from Zurich.  Yes, Zurich.  As in Switzerland.  She came in just for the Represent Tour.   The list of places and distances people came from should show the muggles a thing or two.   When I get to it (be patient, it was a 22 1/2 hour day from getting up to eventual bed time), I'll put up a photo album to more fully document the people who came.  And show what I bought.  (really not much, only 6 skeins.  And a book of course).

This photo I think best captures the heart of Harlot's Horde.  Stephanie imagines something and knitters everywhere run with it.  And then some pretty fabulous things happen.  Knitting Olympics, hats for babies, moneymoneymoney for Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders.  To name a few.  And what did we imagine yesterday?  The Harlot's Horde version of Hokey Pokey.  The muggles may give us all strange looks but I think they are all jealous cause we're having so much more fun than they are. 

Fiber Calls But Will The Kid?

So who's brilliant idea was it to give young adults not even out of teenage years the right to their own minds?   They come up with ideas like driving the Garden State Parkway in a major snowstorm.  And think I'm nuts because I made them take a big comforter, lots of water, and food.  They left 5 minutes ago.  As soon as the rabbits are fed, I'll be surfing the stash in search of something to experiment with.  Comfort spinning is not distracting enough. 

At least my mom is home and stable.

Hi From Maine

Mom's been in ICU all weekend, though mostly because there were no other beds available.   She's stable enough to be in a regular room, and no longer has any tubes attached.  I'm just hanging around now waiting for her to get a stress test.  Over the weekend, we were told they couldn't tell us what was going on until the stress test.  This morning, I'm told the stress test won't tell us what's going on, only whether it's safe to send her home.  That's a bit frustrating.  I had expected some info on why she's having chest pain a month after bypass surgery.  But apparently the hospital doc won't be checking that out.  That will have to come from follow up with her cardiologist.  I was introduced to a new to me concept in medical care.  The term is hospitalist.  Apparently, that's the term for a doctor who is based at the hospital to replace the need for one's personal physician to have to make hospital visits.  Well.   I'm not impressed with this idea.  It seems to be one more way to impersonalize medical care when individual health needs are best served by personalization.   

Before I left home on Friday, I finished my Spunky angora skein.  The last two hours of waiting to leave (my son joined me on this trip and he had to drive home from work, pack then get to my house) demanded a soothing, mind distracting spin.  Plying this single fit the bill perfectly.  The photo of course does not show up the color well.  But, I'm pleased.  I ended up with about 350 yards.  The color ranges from pale hint of pink to a deeper raspberry and cream color.  I'm thinking a frilly girly scarf perhaps.  My daughter cringed at the idea of frilly.  She thinks the skein should become lace.  We'll see.

Send Some Huggy Thoughts to Maine, OK?

Update #2: Mom's been admitted to the hospital ICU on a nitro drip.  She'll be staying through the weekend and on Monday, she'll have a stress test.  No real answer on what's up, other than she's having chest pain as it shows up in women (ie, she's not dscribing it as pain but the staff considers it pain).  When she's on the drip, no pain, off the drip, the pain comes back. 

Update: I talked to my Mom a while ago.  Her cardiogram is normal, blood tests and x-ray results not yet known.  Mom's alert, joking, and the tightness/chest pain is gone.  ER may admit her overnight, but I don't know for sure just yet.  Your thoughtful comments have all been wonderfully sustaining.  Thank you for that!

All early morning chores done and family out the door, so I settled in for the final leg of spinning the Spunky angora I've been blending.  Then came the phone call.  Mom's on her way to the ER in an ambulance.  My sister's not sure how serious this is but tightness and chest pain 37 days after quadruple bypass surgery certainly isn't a good sign.  Right now I'm just waiting until the ER staff does it's thing and I can find out more.  I threw laundry in as much for something to do immediately since falling apart is probably not going to be helpful.  I called my son and if I make a flying race up to Maine today, he's coming with me.  I need to wake up the younger one to see if he wants to go, too, although DH has to work in NJ on Saturday and someone has to take care of buns.  Warm healing thoughts gratefully accepted!

Rudeness Antidote

Monday night with temperatures plummeting and wind beginning to rage, I went to class where my classmates and professor workshopped my story.  That means each of them opined on my writing, then handed me a copy of my story with their notes and 300 word response.  I also picked up the three short stories others have written for next week's workshop.  At the end of class, I tucked them all gratefully into my notebook, then put that and the hefty textbook in my nifty NETA tote/backpack already stuffed with the Pogo sweater in progress and off into the cold dark I went.  In honor of the Arctic's visit, I decided to snuggle into the hood on my jacket.  That movement sent my improperly carried tote/backpack flip thud to the pavement, and whoooosh! all those pages my classmates and professor handed to me flew into the night.  Shit!  Irreplaceable stuff.  I clamped my hand on what I could but the wind is fleeter than I.  Suddenly, someone swooped down upon my little drama and frantically scooped up my fleeing pages.  I got every one of them back.  My rescuer?  A stranger who shivered in the night without a jacket to help me.  He was too cold to hold him there long enough to give a proper thank you, so I don't even know his name.  But I won't forget his kindness.  And I'll honor it by passing it along to someone else in need. 

Flowers and Fiber and Fun

Phalenopsis won the race.  Yesterday morning, I woke up to her two oldest buds in that ready to burst stage and an hour later POP!  The buds burst.  They are not quite in full bloom yet but should reach that within a day or so. 

Perhaps inspired by the orchid color, I abandoned all WIPs yesterday and plunged into some Boogie bounty I picked up at Spa 2006.  The 2 ounce bits in different colors gave me experiment materials.  I had originally planned to pull them apart into strips and spin them alone. But that's not what's happening.  I decided to blend so out came the sad looking dyed pink angora and the hand cards.  I'm measuring out equal amounts of wool and angora by weight - by volume is impossible!  Angora is so light weight, equal volume with wool is skewed.   I fluff up the dyed angora, a delicious and rewarding process in itself.  Those sad felted looking clumps, like the orchid bud, just burst in fluffy soft mounds.  Next step: charge the card with wool.  Not too much now.  The process really does move along faster if you use small amounts.  My scale's smallest measure is point 2 ounce (it will do grams if I want), so I separate wool and angora into piles of point 2 ounces each, then eyeball it to come up with about 4 roughly equal piles.  After the card is charged with wool, I add the fluffed angora. I do about 4 passes through the hand cards.  If I were carding only angora, one or two passes would be enough.   I end up with a tiny little batt which shows the varigation of the wool, so I separate the batts into depth of color sections and then draft those into small chunks of roving which allows me to maintain the varigation in my spinning.   So far, I've got about half the fiber carded and about half of that spun.  Whether I ply it on itself or perhaps ply it with a similarly blended single from the yellow/orange/red chunk of Spunk remains to be seem.  No idea what I'll do with the resulting skein.  It's entirely possible I'll have it for sale at New Hampshire Sheep and Wool.

Freaky People

With all the jaunting to and from Maine in the month of February, I'm seriously behind in blog reading and responding to comments.  I'm sorry!  I'm trying to catch up.  One of the themes I'm seeing in blogland is rude people abound.  So I'm going to share this creepy little experience a female relative told me about yesterday.  The young woman went to Target to buy some socks, found a good deal on a bra that actually fit, so grabbed that and some panties, too.  At the register, she put the items on the counter and waited her turn.  A family of man, woman and young child get in line behind her.  The man suddenly pats the bra she had on the counter and says with a grin "I bet that will look good on you."  I'm quite sure she gave him a horrified look, to which he responded "Yeah, I know, I'm a flirt."*  I bet we are not the only ones who find that exchange not only not flirtatious but just down right dirty pervy and disgustingly inappropriate.  To any guys too stupid to figure this out on your own, here's a clue: unless you're emotionally close enough, it's hands off the underwear, whether she's wearing it or not.

*ETA:  She told the guy in proper tone he was not a flirt, he was a freakin' pervert.