Tangled and Warped

The Magic Circle
John William Waterhouse

Tonight is the night when the veil between the worlds of the dead and the living is the thinnest.  This is the time to remember those who have passed over and to honor their memory.

Tonight is the beginning of the new year.  This is the time to let things go, to rid yourself of the old ways that no longer work for you.  It’s time to reflect on where you have been and where you need to go.

 Have a very Merry Samhain.

You know it’s fall when the trees start looking like this…

And you get to go to festivals with lots of these…

Is that just the cutest face?!  Can you believe these babies are only 9 months old!

And you get to ease the ride from hel with friends like these…

Here is a fuzzy photo of my felted witchypoo hat.  I love the way it came out, but I think it’s going to be a work in progress as needlefelting is just too much fun and I keep thinking of more things I want to add to the hat.

And here is a new pic of Darling Daughter, actually SMILING!

Don’t be deceived she looks cute and innocent doesn’t she?  Don’t let that smile fool you.

And last but not least… you know it’s a Rock’in October when the Red Sox sweep and win the World Series!  Way to go Red Sox!!!

In a nod to Dave for his spectacular Asswatch Wednesdays, we bring you Asswatch Red Sox!  YA BABY!

 Beckett

Varitek

Pedroia

The game last night was awesome!   LET’S GO RED SOX!

Friday, October 19^th at 1:23am.  I’m just starting to nod off having managed to stay awake from the adrenalin rush of watching the Red Sox kick Cleveland’s butt.  GO SOX!  Suddenly the windows are rattling and the house is shaken and the cat’s freaked out.  Then I hear a big BOOM!  I jumped out of bed check to see if something had hit the house.  I’m continue to lie there waiting to hear the sirens to try and isolate where the explosion happened.  As I nod off (no sirens) I wonder to myself if that was an earthquake.

Well yes indeedie it was an earthquake, 2.5 and the epicenter was about one mile from my house.  Now that was exciting.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsus/Quakes/ne00001027.php

I had the entire day off Friday to run my errands and to get ready for the big trip to Rhinebeck!

Saturday, October 20, the alarm is set to go off at 4:50 am.  The bus leaves Woburn at 7:00 sharp.  I have been tossing and turning all night, so flip on the news around 3:45 and snooze.  I wake with a start – everything is dark.  Very dark!  No TV on, no night light shining from the bathroom, NO ALARM – I fumble for my watch – 5:00 am, no electricity.  10 minutes behind and I am fumbling for a lighter and a candle so I can shower by candlelight and quickly get dressed, hoping everything matched.

I toss everything into the cooler and head out the door to pick up my sister.

7:00am the bus rolls in and we roll out with it.  We also had the pleasure of Geekpixie and her friend Rachel for company.

Now I have to tell you first how disappointed I was with the bus tour.  First of all the bus what not a coach bus, but a just a step up from a school bus… read, extremely uncomfortable, especially for what turned out to be the extremely long trip from hell.   The back was loud from the engine, and the seats had the wheel bumps making it uncomfortable for such a long trip – and a looooonnnnnggggg trip it was.

Our next clue came when we looked up from chatting and realized that we were not in Worchester, but BOSTON!  We had just left Woburn and should have been heading west/southwest…. Why were we coming east into Boston to which was clearly an extra 30-45 minutes out of the way?

We finally arrive at the fairground gates after noon – clearly over an hour later than the scheduled 11:00am arrival time.  We see the gates had actually opened at 9:00 am so we are wondering why the busses weren’t scheduled to leave earlier.

We get to the gate and there are no maps, no show information, no schedules (this would have been a nice thing for the organizers to have together to hand out to us.  Now we are flying blind having never been to the NY Sheep and Wool festival before.  But it’s a beautiful day so we wander around, getting sucked into the crowds.  Some buildings are so hot and crowded we barely get to see anything as we are caught up in the crowds.

Finally around 2pm things start to thin our a bit so we circle back to the ones we think we’ve missed.

There was so much to look at it really is a feast of fiber.  Being on a budget, I didn’t want to buy stuff I could get locally, nor did I buy anything that I could have mail ordered as NY has a 7% sales tax and that would cover shipping in most cases. 

My sister finds what she was looking for. Indigo dye.  She’s going to Peru in February with my cousin as a chaperone on a school trip and Indigo is one of the suggestions to bring the host family.  Cool!  We also got some cochineal bugs to try the next time we dye.

My finds include:

1.      8 oz. roving of merino cashmere blend – it’s beautiful!

2.      8 oz. of this cool roving with bits of silk noils blended into it.  The colors are kind of funky – pale yellowish green roving with lime and orange noils.  This should be fun to spin.  The colors are really outside my normal comfort zone of purples and blues.

3.      A present for my sister (maybe Christmas, maybe birthday but I am not telling)

4.      A needle felting sampler

Oh! And my sister picked up one of the Bosworth’s little spindles.  It’s tulipwood and just beautifully balanced.  She got the hang it again.  It’s been a long time since she’s done any spinning.  She even got her little Wendy spinning wheel out of the attic and is dusting it off and oiling it up.

By 4pm we are fading and get in a short line for a fruit smoothie.  We find a shady spot to rest.  I knit; my sister spins on her new spindle.  We decide there isn’t much else we want/need so decide to head back to the bus.

The entire time I only ran into Julie and Minestrone Soup and Christine!  I also saw Juno giving her just a quick passing hi!  We had met at the NHSW through Ruth (who I totally missed in spite of desperately wanting to see Woolybaby).  I also missed Lucia, and Liz and quite a few others.  Sorry I didn’t make it to the Ravelry gathering, but there was so much to see, so many people and so little time.

Back to the bus.  Fortunately my sister and I had planned ahead and pack ourselves a cooler full of snacks and a bottle of wine for the trip home.  I’m sure the others on the bus that had planned to eat at the rest stop wished they had done the same.  Our hopes of a quicker trip home were soon dashed when the driver didn’t make the turn onto the NY State Thruway or the Taconic State Parkway… no we took Route 22 – a single lane, windy road through the Catskills and Berkshires.  Also remember this wasn’t a coach bus so there was no personal lights so no knitting or reading.  Not good.

We finally got on a highway (Mass Pike) in Ludlow and the bus finally stopped at the Palmer rest area around 8:00pm.  I’m sure people were starving.  It was also clear that the 4 hour ride home was going to take a lot longer.  They did try to get the Sox game on the radio to no avail.

One last complaint about the bus trip from hell.  The person that was leading the trip would stand in front of the bus and make announcements.  We couldn’t hear and in spite of us shouting asking for her to speak louder, we couldn’t hear anything over the din of the engines.  It would have been nice if she had made the effort to walk back to make sure we knew what was going on.  Bottom line?  I will never use this ‘service’ again and definitely would not recommend it.

Who knew there was a name for it?  Apparently this is also the method the harlot uses, see here!

Being a semi-self taught knitter I just thought I had modified the English method for my own personal knitting style, since it didn’t seem to match the continental or throwers styles at all.

Only 2 and a half days until Rhinebeck! I better start packing!

What a crazy weekend…  Friday we watched the Red Sox game.  I kept text messaging the score to my brother in Albuquerque, NM.  He was at the annual Hot Air Balloon festival with my nephew, Jeffrey.

Saturday was fun filled too.  I got up early to get the roast into the crockpot.  I was really in the mood for pot roast.  Friends were coming over around noon for our annual trek to the Watertown Bead Show.

Here is what I tossed into the pot.

1 small bag of carrots, cut up into 1-2 inch chunks

1 small bag of parsnips, cut up into 1-2 inch chunks.

2 small onions peeled and sliced into thick (1/4 inch) slices

salt and pepper the 2.5 lb. pot (chuck) roast and seared in olive oil

a couple of crush garlic cloves

a couple of handfuls of sliced mushrooms

1 tbsp. Dijon mustard

2 tsp. greek seasoning

1 cup of apple cider

2 beef bullion cubes

Cooked on slow for a couple of hours, then bumped up to high for about 3 hours.

I served this with:

fresh greenbeans, cooked for a few minutes in salted boiling water to keep them crunchy.

buttered and added some olive oil and the juice of one fresh lemon, then tossed with

sea salt, greek seasoning, fresh cracked black pepper and chopped fresh mint.

and

Roasted potatoes (yukon gold) in 1 inch pieces, tossed in olive oil, fresh chopped rosemary, sea salt and fresh cracked pepper.

Unfortunately I had invited a new friend and failed to remember he was vegan… at least he was able to eat the potatoes, green beans and rolls.  Oh and the apple pie for dessert.

I used the perfect pie crust recipe from this month’s Cooks Illustrated.  Using vodka for part of the liquid worked great.  The crust was yummy.

I had finished knitting my Witchypoo hat and had finished felting it up.  I looks awesome so far.  The brim is a bit heavier than I had wished for, but it will suffice.  If I were to do this again, I think I would do something different for the brim.  The rest of the hat looks awesome.

I started needle felting on it and picked up some really cool sterling silver things to embellish the hat.  No pics until it’s done.

By the time we got home from the bead show, the dinner was almost done.

For appetizers we had brie cheese and crackers with fig and ginger preserves.

I don’t think any of us went hungry.  LOL

Unfortunately I tried to watch the Sox game after everyone had left but couldn’t stay awake.  It was for the best that I missed the extra inning blowout.

Sunday I got the kitchen back in order, and the dishes all put away.  I  even managed to make it to Borders Nashua for Sunday knitting.  I even got to meet some new knitters,  well actually new people who knit - it appears that they have been knitting for awhile.  Nice to meet you ladies!

This coming Saturday RHINEBECK!!!!

Congratulations to Jena and Dave

 Yes we vandalized their car (it’s all washable)

Knitters were spotted (here)

 And here too.

It was a perfect day and a beautiful wedding.  I wish you both the best of luck as you finally! start your new life together.   I got a good feeling about the two of you!

The leaves are just starting to get that tinge of color. Every turn in the road will occasionally surprise you with a tree or bush in full blown technicolor. It’s one of my favorite seasons. I love when it’s warm and the sun seems to give everything a golden glow. I also like when it’s grey, rainy, dank and damp. It’s the perfect put-on-a-pot-of-soup weather and I just want to immerse myself in all things fibery.

I just got my confirmation/reminder for the Rhinebeck Yarn Safari. This is going to be soooo much fun. I’m getting ready for the winter. I’m planning on lots of big snow storms that keep me inside with all my fibery stuff to spin and knit.

This weekend is going to be really nice in the weather department, which will be perfect for the big wedding on Saturday. Darling Daughter is really excited to be singing at the reception. She chose the song “Come Away With Me” by Nora Jones. She really does an awesome job and it’s a really perfect song.

Speaking of DD’s singing. She’s been practicing ‘Fever’ by Peggy Lee too. Apparently she sang it for the rest of the chorus and nobody else wants to go out for the solo now. I’m just so happy for her. That she has this big talent that gives her something to be proud of. It just blows me away that she has this big, sultry, adult singing voice.

She’s doing really well with keeping up with her school work and I am really looking forward to the first progress report coming out next week. I’m really hoping we have something to celebrate.

Speaking of celebrating I have a finished object. My Just Like a Peasant Hat . I tried to take pics with my camera phone but they didn’t come out at all. Photos to follow.

Some notes on my hat: I did it in Malabrigo worsted - using only a single strand. The only alteration I made to squeak this hat out of one skein was I only cast on 16 stitches for the band instead of 20 and I did a K1, (P1, Ktbl) repeat to end and this made the width almost the same as the 20 stitches and it looks just fine. It took one complete skein with only a few little scraps for the birdies left over. Because I did it single stranded it’s a little more floppy which is what I was going for.

Last week sucked, but the weekend was so much better.

I spent most of the day Saturday at my sister’s Western Ave. studio covering for her and her studio mates and spinning.

Note the basket in the foreground filled with my handspun sock yarns

It was a blast, especially when Brian came by and showed off his completed shawl. Gorgeous!

Sorry for the blurry photo, I must have been way too excited.   But trust me it is gorgeous!

He was sweet to hang out with me and spent a couple of hours knitting while I spun up the last of the merino superwash roving. I need to get me some more of that! I just love how it spins up. We are going to work on planning a dye day soon.

Sunday, I went back over and checked out some of the other artist’s studios. Now I want one too, but I decided I need to find a space that has a big old sink in it for dyeing fiber. Someday, when I win the lottery, or sell my child to the gypsies.

I’ve also been working on a hat. A felted witches hat to be specific. More to come when I get a little more done. I’m using Maggie’s Rags Witch Hat pattern as a base right now. Then I plan on felting the hat and then embellishing it with needle felting and other shiny, sparkly, frou-frou stuff.

Then Sunday night I got the opportunity to go to a Niki Tsongas rally to see Bill Clinton speak. What a guy, he really does know how to connect with an audience. I wish I could just keep voting for him. I love Bill, he is the quintessential politician.

Yes that is Bill with Deval Patrick

I have to say, Bill is looking good, and boy can he connect.  I love this guy!