Catch up

I ended up having to go out and get another card reader… the good news is they are cheap and now they have writable functionality so I can use my xD picture cards for backup.

Here are some photos of the stuff I’ve been spinning…

This is some of the roving I dyed – spicy pumpkin, golden yellow and black.  You can see where the black split a bit and made blue then blended with the yellow to make green. Kind of cool, not what I was going for, but still cool.

I think I’m going to name this color All Hallows Eve, as it reminds me of that time of year.

This is some more of the Merino Superwash.  On this I used Watermelon and Kiwi.  I really love how the superwash takes up the dyes.

Here it is spun up in a single.  I love the way it plyed up.  I think instead of calling it Watermelon, it looks more like a Raspberry Lime Rickey to me.  Picks of the finished skeins still to be taken.

As you may have guess DD is home from Rock and Roll Camp.  The show they put on was incredible!  Here are some pics from the show.

 

These girls all had really awesome voices – here they are singing ‘Fever’ acapella.

Here she is playing Bass.

Here are all the girls singing Be My Baby by the Ronnettes

And after the show with their instructors.

Blissful silence

DD survived her trip to the emergency room and was safely enscounced at camp last Friday.  Of course we started a little late, and then we hit a major traffic backup due to an accident on the Mass Pike.  I knew I should have gone out Route 2!  But we were only about 45 minutes late arriving. 

We quickly emptied the car of her belongings.  I have no idea what she packed – but I hope she has some clean clothes, bedding and a toothbrush!  It’s already Thursday and I haven’t heard a peep out of her, so I’m assuming all is well.

My cousin Jen arrived on Saturday afternoon on her way to a Photography Workshop in Maine the following week.  This is the same cousin who has the OCD Cleaning genes and cleaned my basement out last year dressed in WHITE sweatpants and was not only still white but managed to organize and clean out the basement in 2 hours.

This year she decided to go for the kitchen.  When I came down Sunday morning at 6:30 am she had already taken the refrigerator apart and it was cleaned and she was putting it back together.  Then she started on the cupboards.  You would not believe the mountain of trash that is sitting out at the curb as I type.

While she did the kitchen, I took apart the living room – stripped and washed all the slipcovers.  I love slipcovers.  I really, really love the denim slipcovers on the sofa.  I vacuumed and shampooed the carpet, washed down the walls.  By 2pm it was time for Jen to leave and I was completely exhausted.  So I lay down on my nice clean sofa, in my nice clean living room, looking into my nice clean kitchen and started reading Harry Potter – Deathly Hallows. 

I read it straight through the night and finished it around 6AM with a few naps in between.  I will not post any spoilers and will only say it had a very satisfying ending and I liked it.

I took Monday and Tuesday off as well, so I’ve been busy spinning up my hand painted rovings and I’m loving them.  I went looking for my camera and I think DD must have packed it and taken it with her.  I still cannot find the video camera.

I had also completed the 3rd clue in the mystery stole…. only to find a spot way down where I zigged when I should have zagged….  I know I’m eventually going to have to frog it and start again, but it’s just sitting right now, because I cannot deal with that.

Being on vacation and not checking emails can be a blessing – I apparently missed all the bru-ha-ha on the satanic speculations of the MS3 Theme.  Now, I’m going to go off a bit on organized religion and if think you might be offended stop reading now. 

Recently there was a bruhaha locally because my towns Business Association who has a festival every year on or near the third weekend of September.  Well apparently someone failed to check and it falls on Yom Kippur this year.  Yes, it’s a shame, but it certainly was not maliciously anti-Semitic.  And to change the date now would cause a lot of money to be lost and contracts to be broken.  So the person, who organizes this, publicly apologized for the oversight, promised they would be more sensitive in the future, but explained why it was not financially feasible to move the date this year.  But still she’s been raked over the coals for this oversight. GET OVER IT PEOPLE.  Stop whining about it already.

Last I knew, Yom Kippur is a day of atonement, reflection and sacrifice.  And you have FREE WILL! You get to choose what you want to participate in.

Then recently my friend Lucia made some observations on religion and politics.  You can read it here.  Again, don’t go if you are easily offended.

Now, I have to say, that as a practicing witch/pagan, that I do not believe in sin, evil, Satan, the golden rule nor do I ‘relate’ to patriarchal organized religions.  But I believe that since we all have free will to choose our own belief system, and the right to practice our spirituality that I will not and cannot judge you for your choices.  I only ask that you extend the same courtesy to me and others. 

I find it no longer amusing that our political circus is coming down to how religious you are and in most cases how Christian you are.  I am tired of having ‘this is a Christian Country’ being foisted upon the REST of us who don’t think the USA IS a Christian country. 

There are 19 major religions in this world, and 250+ minor ones.  I would speculate that most if not all of these and maybe more that aren’t on the radar is being practiced here in the US.  This is a poly theistic society.  So when someone suggested regarding the town fest that next year we check the calendar so that no one’s religion might be offending, I’m thinking do we account for 19 major religions and not the minor ones – where does one draw the line as to who you offend and who you don’t? 

This is why the separation of church and state is so important.  So that we have an equal opportunity of offend everyone.  No, I’m only kidding.  It comes back to FREE WILL people, blessedly our forefathers understood this concept.  It’s time to start using your brains to think about your choices, your religion, and your spirituality and perhaps you don’t have all the answers, but if it works for you fine.  Just don’t expect or insist, or assume (because we all know about ASS-U-ME right?) that what works for you is going to work for me or everyone else. 

If we were all cookie cutter brainless grunions then maybe, but we are unique individuals who are fallible, in our wonderful uniqueness, celebrate it.    

Last night at knitting my lack of belief in the golden rule was brought up.  Now just to review the golden rule state the “You do unto others, as you would have done to you” - my problem with this is what if someone doesn’t want done to them as I want done to me, then wouldn’t that be offensive? 

This is why the wiccan creed works for me.

Harm None and do as you will.  Back to FREE WILL Baby!  As long as you don’t hurt anyone and don’t hurt yourself, you are pretty much free to do whatever you want… sort of a libertarian ideal. It works for me.

So go out there and play nice, be thoughtful, and start taking care of each other.  Stop putting labels on people and dissing them if they don’t fall into your set of labels.  Instead, invite them over for a cuppa tea, go to lunch with them, join them in a knitting group.  But don’t let your fears dictate your life.  Face them and you might find out that there is nothing to fear at all.  And for Goddess sake stop listening to people who try to define your world under such a small label as a religious affiliation.  They aren’t being honest with you, they just want to control your thinking process so you don’t have to think. Expand that label until you reach humankind then expand it a little more.  And for Hecate’s sake start exercising that brain a bit.

Midnight Emergency Room Visits and Stitches

StichesOriginally uploaded by witchypooh

Last night I was just drifting off to sleep, when DD came bursting into my room crying about bleeding, she then fainted on to the floor. Once I got her into the bathroom and was able to assess what happened (stabbed herself accidentally with some old kitchen shears) and how bad (it was bleeding pretty good and it wasn’t closing up).

So I throw on some clothes and it’s off to the hospital emergency room at midnight. Don’t you just love those trips!?  Yes I did remember to grab my knitting.

An hour and a half later, and a bit more calmed down DD and I got to go home with three little stitches, some bacitracin and a band-aid.

Only one more day – 24 hours until I drop her off at camp. I think we will make it, although this might make playing the guitar a little bit tougher.

Dyed Roving

Dyed Roving

Originally uploaded by witchypooh

Here is some of the rovings I dyed last week.

Fiber Dyeing Day

Sister Dying Day

Originally uploaded by witchypooh

Here is my sister, Fiber Artist Extraordinaire, and our dyeing setup in the backyard.

No I didn’t run away

I just took a few days off, and I really do have lots of pics, but I cannot find the card reader right now so I cannot transfer them off the camera and on to the PC  Don’t you love it.

Wednesday we managed to get in to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.  We really, really liked it, and I really, really want to fly on a broom and a dragon.  I really, really do.  The special affects were great, and I think we are going to need to see this on the IMAX screen in 3D when DD gets home from camp.  Prof. Umbridge was a delightful caricature of all the teachers you’ve ever hated.  And Luna Lovegood was perfect.  I don’t want to post any spoilers, so I’ll just leave it at that. 

The last HP book comes out soon and DD will be at camp, so I won’t have to share it.  And best of all I can make time to read it since I’m almost caught up on Mystery Stole 3 – I keep wanting to call it Mystery Stole 3000 – after Mystery Science Theater I guess.  The theme definitely has something to do with insects and/or bugs.

Later Wednesday evening several of the knitting ladies of Chelmsford and Nashua all gathered for our first Stitch n Pitch night at the local Lowell Spinners game.  What a blast – the night was perfect (no rain) and the beer was cold.  The game was great (we won!).  If you want to see some pics until I can locate the card reader, check out Jennifer’s blog here.  I thought I was smart to bring a simple sock in progress – but Nooooooo.  Somehow I managed to put the gusset decreases in the middle of the top of the foot. rrrriiipppppiiitttt!

On Thurday, the sun was out and it wasn’t too humid, so my sister and I spent most of the day dyeing fiber in her back yard.  She was dying umpteen skeins of mohair for the upcoming Lowell Quilt Festival.  She sells these yarns in her gallery.  I, on the other hand dyed up 7 – 6oz. bumps of merino superwash, and about 6.5 oz. of corriedale and a couple of oz. of merino rovings.  I put them up in 6 oz. bumps since that is approximately what you need for spinning up sock yarn.

Here’s a list of the colorways/dyes (Procion) that I used.

• Sapphire Blue – Raspberry – Cotton Candy
• Tangerine – Black – Spiced Pumpkin
• Iris – Ice Blue – Wedgewood
• Watermelon (flecked with some black) – Kiwi
• Olive Green – Tobacco – Golden Yellow
• Azure Blue – Avocado – Coral
• Robin’s Egg Blue – Cayman Island Turquoise – Stormy Grey

The Corriedale I dyed all Amethyst and the Merino I did in Wisteria.  Some of them came out better than expected, some not so much.  But it’s so hard to tell what the finished product will look like.  It’s really cool to see how fibers take up the dyes so differently.  I also have to say that Henry’s Attic Superwash really takes color very nicely.  I’ll be anxious to see how this all spins up and plys.

I first soaked the fiber in cold vinegar water (1/3 vinegar, 2/3 water) for 20 minutes,  then I remove as much of the water as I can from the rovings.  I then layed each bump of fleece out in a big ‘S’ shape.  I tried to keep the colorways simple by only using 3 colors for each bump of roving.  After I made sure the sections were saturated with the dye, I moved the roving skein over to a big sheet of plastic in the sun.  I let these sit overnight until most of the dyes were exhausted, then I rinsed them all in luke warm water.  Reds and Turquoises seem to take forever to rinse clear.  Once these are spun up I will use a shot of vinegar in the water when I set the twist and that should finish setting the dyes too.

I think I’m all set for sock yarns if the ice age ever comes in my life time.  I figure I’ll be able to trade warm socks for food if necessary.

I still have pink, blue and green splotches on my legs from our dye day, so I probably should have worn long pants to work today, but I didn’t.

DD and I went to see Don McLean at Boarding House Park on Saturday.  The is part of the Lowell Summer Music Series.  I really love this venue.  The acoustics are really good, and there is something special about sitting outside on a beautiful summer night listening to some good live music.  Of course at the end of the concert we were all standing and singing “bye bye Miss American Pie, drove my Chevy to the levy but the levy was dry… “  I cannot believe that not only do I know all the words to this song, but so does DD.  I’ve got tickets to see the Indigo Girls and Bob Weir and the Ratdogs later in August.

Sunday, Jennifer and I went to the Knitting and Crochet Show in Manchester, NH.  There were so many vendors there and so much stuff it was hard to restrain ourselves.  We did find a good deal on Tess Designer Sock yarn.  I was so tempted to get one their gradient knit kits, but I didn’t.  I also had to come home with some lace yarn, an Orenberg triangular shawl pattern, Lace Addi’s, and a Grafton Fiber bump.  The Grafton Fiber bump is gorgeous – it looks like the color of faded blue sea glass. I guess I need to start spinning more regularly.

Only 4 more days until camp!

And now for a little note about karma.  My dishwasher crapped out about 5 months ago, so I’ve been doing dishes by hand and I don’t really mind because I kinda like slopping around in soapy water.  The pump was shot  and the top rack kept falling out of the track, so it was going to cost me about $250+ to get it fixed.  Which is almost half of what a new one would cost, so I was thinking about whether I was going to buy a new one, or spend the money on getting it fixed.   What do I get in the mail last week? A Recall! It’s a good thing I stopped using my dishwasher because apparently they occasionally burst into flames.  So I called the number, verified my model number and serial number and they will be sending me the paperwork so I can get a $300 rebate on a new dishwasher!  Put that with what it would cost to fix it and I’m getting a new dishwasher!  Woohoo!

Perfect Blueberry Muffins

Sometimes when you change a recipe and make it your own it can be a real miss.  This turned out to be a big hit.

Shift together:

2 cups of all purpose flour

2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

In another bowl:

Cream with a mixer on low speed

1/2 cup butter (room temp)

1 1/4 cup sugar

cream together until fluffy

Add 2 eggs one at a time until each one is mixed in

Add 1/2 cup vanilla yogurt

Add the zest of one lemon

Mix well

Add 1/3 of the dry ingredients at a time and fold into the wet ingredients,  leave a few tablespoons of the flour to dust the blueberries with so they don’t sink to the bottom.

2 1/2 cups of blueberries, take 1/2 cup and mash them before adding them to the batter and dust the remaining ones with the reserved flour.

Fold all the blueberries into the batter.

Preheat the oven to 400F

Use some vegetable spray to coat the muffin tins and fill each cup about 2/3’s full.  Sprinkle the tops with raw sugar.

I used my big muffin pan and baked them for 25 minutes, a regular muffin pan would probably be about 18-20 minutes and even less time for a mini muffin pan.

When the tops are browned nicely and you can put a toothpick in and see no raw batter they are done.

Loosen the edges of the muffins and tip the pan out onto a cooling rack.  Now wait about 5 minutes for them to cool to eat, otherwise the molten hot blueberries will burn your tongue.  Don’t ask.

These muffins were tender and tasty, the perfect muffin.

I am somebody!

After patiently waiting I finally got my invite to Ravelry.  YAY!  Now will see if I can get everything inventoried from my stash.  I hear you laughing out there!  But this week, will be a short one.  Work from home tomorrow, then vacation days for the rest of the week.

Wednesday is the Stitch n Pitch at the Spinner’s Game with some of my buds from knitting in Chelmsford and Nashua.  I’ll be bringing socks to knit so I can watch the game and blab while knitting at the same time.  It also happens to be Jimmy Buffet night and the give away is an Insulated Knitting Bag (cooler really).  It should be a blast – if you are there, look for the Knitter’s of Chelmsford and Nashua to be up on the scoreboard.  We’ll be up in the box seats near the press box.

I should have a new memory card by then so I promise to take pictures.

Thursday I’m checking out a local Tai Chi class.  I finally found a Tai Chi class in the evening at the Plum Blossom Academy , near me so keep your fingers crossed that it works out.  I need something very low impact to get this big old body moving a bit.  I love Tai Chi and it will be fun to start it up again.

We also have to go see Harry Potter at some point the first day or two of it’s release.  I’m actually thinking of buying advanced tickets to see it at the IMAX in 3D.  Has anyone seen any of the Harry Potter movies at the 3D IMAX?  Did you like it or hate it?

Saturday we are seeing Don McLean as in, American Pie, in Lowell, MA at the Boarding House Park.

Only 11 days until camp…

DD and I had a little sit down and she is ‘trying’ to speak civily to me.   It’s all I can do to keep from reaching out and smacking her.

Let’s see – what did we do this weekend?

Oh, I made a couple of batches of strawberry jam – I think I got about 12+ half pints to bring home – the rest I left with my Mom and Dad, since I messed up their kitchen making the jam.  I think we cooked up about 8 quarts and because they were so juicy, ripe and sweet I only added about 1/2 of the sugar the recipe called for.  Now keep your fingers crossed that is sets up.  It tastes really good, not too sweet.

This year Mary and I HAVE to make salsa.  We missed making it last year and I really missed having yummy homemade salsa all through the winter like we usually do.

Sunday of course was Ms. Jena’s wedding shower.  I got to meet Dave’s Aunt Dotty and what a hoot she is!  She’s this little 80 year lady – who barely looks 60!  And what a hot ticket she is.  Then there was the plates of homemade italian cookies they brought – oh my they were yummy.  You can keep the cake, I was quite happy to be standing by the cookies, thank you.

I did spin a little on Friday, when DD and I watch the Illusionist.  What can I say, I love Edward Norton.  The filming was really dark and gloomy, and the story was fun.  Two thumbs up from us. 

Teen-aged girls suck

I have mentioned this before I’m sure.   I was going to post some photos of works in progress today but SOMEBODY took my camera and LOST misplaced the memory card!  I am a happy camper right now.

She’s now lost all internet privileges until the memory card is found or she performs enough chores to pay for a new one.

Only thirteen more days until I get to dump drop her off at camp.  I’m very much looking forward to 7 days and 6 nights of quiet contemplation, knitting, spinning and cocktails with friends.  Not to mention coming home to a sink free of dirty dishes, clean bathrooms with no wet towels on the floor,  a clean kitchen floor and no dirty dishes, glasses and garbage in the living room.

On the spinning front, I’m still working on the pound of black shetland, no end in sight.

Knitting?  I’m working on the Mystery Stole 3.  Actually I’m getting really frustrated, not with the pattern, I love this pattern!  It’s the Skacel Laceweight Merino.  I’m not sure if it’s the actual yarn I hate, or just the fact that it’t black and I hate knitting black.  My eyes just cannot see that well anymore.  So I frogged the whole damn thing.  Just in time to get Clue #2.  I do have some natural I could use, but I also have some of Spunky’s laceweight merino which I love, Love, LOVE but a) I’m not sure if it’s enough – 880 yards would be cutting it close; and b) it’s handpainted – really cool handpainted with bright yellow, oranges, peach, and a bit o’ green – AND the chartreuse beads look AWESOME with it.    So what the hell, I’ll take the chance and pray that there is either some place in the pattern to skip a repeat (or two).  Please say a little blessing that there is enough because I did the first chart with it last night and it looks really good.

I still don’t have a guess on the theme yet, but I’m feeling very gothic, or victorian about it at this point.  It’s very much a trellis of sorts and very pretty.

Oh my I just read Harlot’s blog – the squirrels are apparently knitting sweaters from her fleece now ROFLMAO!  Well at least they are being productive with it.

In case you may be wondering why I’m not ranting and raving about Scooter’s Big Reprieve right now it’s because I’m just too mad and every time I try to write about it I come off like a raving mad woman.  Maybe that’s because I am raving mad about the entire past 6+ years with this lying sack of shit war pigs administration.  Must stop now, blood pressure going up.

So everyone have a nice weekend – I’m going to make strawberry jam.

Lazy Summer Days

Friday was a work from home day.  It’s been dead at work, so I actually got caught up on laundry and chores and I even got some knitting in.  I started on my MS3.  I’m using Skacel Merino Lace in black and silver beads.  I really love the way the silver beads stand out but I am not liking the gauge.  Sigh.  I need to go down a needle size I think.  So even though I’m at line 89, I am ripping out today and starting over again.

So instead of showing progress pictures of my knitting, I will share with you pictures from my little garden.  Yes it needs to be weeded, but I just love these climbing roses.  I planted them in front of this big piece of drift wood that we brought home from Hermit Island several years ago and that one of the several brackets I found – don’t you love the pentacle in it?

 And here are the window boxes.  For some reason I’ve always had a hard time going Nasturtiums.

 

 Later I ran out to do some errands.  I was driving down to Trader Joe’s in Acton and was just about to the intersection of Rte. 119/2A and Rte. 27 when this little fawn ran out into the middle of the road.  I stopped as did the motorcycle coming in the other direction.  As we sat there, the mother poked out her head and came into the road, followed by a second little fawn.  Then off they went in a flash into the brush on the other side of the road.   This is a pretty busy intersection and it was the middle of the day so to say I was surprised to see such wild life in this place at this time of day is an understatement.  But it made me smile.  It also made me realize I need to get a cellphone with a camera!

That evening DD and I went with friends to watch the fireworks at Devens.  The moon was full and bright, the night was cool and dry and the fireworks were spectacular.

Saturday, I got my kitchen cleaned – and floors washed.  With DD off at a friends birthday party. I managed to get some prime spinning time in.  Notice in the background my hydrangeas came back!

 This is some of the black shetland I purchased from the Copper Moose (ebay) – it’s very soft and it’s spinning up beautifully.   I did some more spinning on Sunday at Greeley Park in Nashua with my knitting friends.  I didn’t feel like knitting socks, nor was I going to bring my MS3 with beads and charts and try to knit that and have a conversation, so spinning was the choice of the day.  Although we were threatened with an occasional dark cloud, the sun came out and it was a lovely cool day for sitting in the park with friends.

Weekends go by way too fast, especially in the summer time.  Oh, and if aren’t eating the local strawberries now, you are crazy.  They are devinely sweet and juicy this year.  Get some while they last.