Lost

Lost:

One pound of coffee...this was lost sometime last summer. After the babies were born, I went back to drinking a large strong cup of (french press) coffee each morning. This has a lot of caffeine in it. I have needed it.

Most people who know me know that I do not lose things with any frequency. I try hard to keep track of things...but I lost a whole pound of coffee.
This is, in retrospect, entirely reasonable. Anyone who has as little sleep as I have had would be losing a lot of stuff. At this point I estimate that I have not had a complete, long, full night of sleep in a year...since I had to get up every 2-3 hours starting last January while I was pregnant. (Twins in the womb don't leave a lot of room for, err, liquids to collect at night.)

I started asking everyone to keep a look out in case they found the coffee someplace weird, like in a baking pan or something. Nobody found it.

A very unhelpful person wondered if I had early onset Alzheimer's. (Really.) It wasn't funny...

The professor has been in charge of baby bottle stuff, since I am not to fully supply two babies with breast milk. He lost some very expensive plastic baby nipples, new in the package, at the same time.

The conclusion? A friend determined that somewhere, we had some nipples very hopped up on caffeine.

More recently, I seem to have lost something that upsets me more. Remember these mitts?

I seem to have lost them, too. I can't figure out if I left them somewhere outside the house (unlikely, since my hands would have been cold all the way home) or if someone picked them up inadvertently when they left our house...or??

I just don't know.

All this brings me to the bigger point. Time, at least for us right now, is not elastic. It doesn't stretch anymore. I cannot find any more of it by managing my time better. Believe me, I've tried. I am using the twins' morning nap time (20 minutes of shared sleep is a great nap around here, I don't get more of a break than that. Ever.)

We are finding it so very hard to get basic tasks done, like making dinner, or doing all the laundry, etc. Why? Well, I had a taste of what it is like to have one baby this week. The professor had to take Leo to some appointments. I had blocks of time with just one baby. WHOA! Amazing!

I could take a shower. (bouncy chair in the bathroom kept Sam amused.) I could use both hands when I put ONE baby down. When one baby napped, I didn't have to try to help the other baby fall asleep. I fed only one baby at a time. WOW.

The professor's undergraduate research mentor had twins. She told him being with just one twin was like being by yourself. I get it now. Really, I do.

All this is to say that time--time to blog, sleep, shower, eat, shovel snow, go to the bathroom, etc. is in very short supply. Having someone around to care for the twins occasionally does not allow me time to work yet, or even to rest. I run around cooking 3 dinners in an hour to feed us for the week. I try to take a shower. I rush off to do laundry...

Ooops. Nap time is over. Crying is starting. If you find my mittens...or the last 7-8 months? Please let me know!

seeing another way

OK, I admit it. Lately I've been feeling sort of burnt out on knitting...and even blogging. I'm just not very interested. I mean, theoretically I am, but I'm so busy this summer that I seem to lack the time to sit down and knit for more than a few minutes at a time. So many other things need my attention right now. Also...honestly, when Sally the dog situates herself right on the couch next to me and nudges my hand? Well, that hand ends up giving her a good scratch behind the ears instead of forming another knit or purl stitch. Then the moment is over and it's time to get up and do something else that "needs doing."

I have a pair of plain old socks going on double point needles and a nearly finished sweater waiting for me to do something about it.

When I finally admitted this to myself, I talked about it with the Professor, of course. He pointed out that, for me, I was going back to the things that inspired me from the beginning whenever I could... Raw wool, sheep, the motions of spinning or throwing a shuttle through the shed of the loom still captivate me at times. It's just that for the last several months, (or maybe longer) I've been pulling myself completely away from designing, selling, or producing knitting for anything other than personal needs.

There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think the most pressing is this--it's not fun right now for me. While of course, there are many reasons to stick with something--certainly if it's meaningful for world peace or lucrative in a way that supports one's needs financially, spiritually, socially, etc. then it may be worth "sticking it out." Sometimes, though, if it's not that crucial, it's a good idea to step back.

As I stepped back from the knitting, my office became crowded with many half-started projects,other freelance work, and ideas. Piles of things to be darned, half-knit swatches, notes from long ago phone calls abound. I need to tidy up, because my office is near the guest room and may turn into an impromptu bedroom for a small elementary school aged friend who is visiting soon with her parents.

Yesterday, when I began to think about cleaning, I came upon my very favorite length of straight needles. (Short-- like me!) To give you an idea of scale, the set with the row counter on it are about 7 inches long.

It was warm, so I put up my hair with another pair of needles while thinking about things.

I knit another swatch. Top photo...with handspun, that is a size #2(2.75mm) needle with three ply handspun. Skinny yarn!

I took some time to remember why I liked these needles in my hands.

Today, I took a walk in the sunshine to the hardware store and the grocery store. All of a sudden, as I hefted my (reusable) bag of groceries over my shoulder, a sweater design came to mind. That doesn't mean I have to rush off and sketch it, or knit it, or even swatch it...

but it's nice to know those ideas are still there. It just seems like those little musings are more like cats than dogs. Like cats, they don't usually come when called.

Spinning my wheels

I've been really busy this week getting ready for this weekend. This is the direct opposite of most people's schedules--who wouldn't want to rest over the weekend? Apparently, not me-- so here goes:

Yesterday, I got to lead a family service at synagogue. This is only an hour long, but when working with people ages 3-adult, you've got to have a lot up your sleeves. It went very well, but by the time I came home, walked the dogs, and did things like eat leftovers for dinner, I was exhausted. I did try to have a conversation with a friend on the phone yesterday and I'm afraid I sounded entirely incoherent. (Meanwhile, the professor helped out at the service with the kids 10 and under in the AM and then rushed off to help someone move his belongings to his new house. Luckily, he got there after all the hard work was done!)

Oh--I also supervised the making of not one but two apple chocolate chip cakes, as the professor undertook dessert making for today's festivities.


Today I'm off to teach a spinning workshop at the Manitoba Craft Museum. I'm pretty excited. I've assembled these kits for each spinner. Here's what they look like:

In 14 reusable grocery bags:
One handmade low cost spindle (made by the professor and me)
4 oz of Romney white wool
4 oz of Romney cross brown wool
1 oz of a cherry blossom pink wool/alpaca/mohair blend
Information on skirting a fleece, washing a fleece, basic spinning info and a postcard each on Knit Green and Fiber Gathering and a free knitting pattern...

I'm bringing along some other kinds of both raw and washed wool, processed and unprocessed for them to check out and they will be able to "shop" for other things to spin from that.

For those who misunderstood the depth of my wool stash? I didn't buy any wool for teaching this class. Instead, I was able to empty two packing boxes. If I actually get 14 students, that would be just under 8 lbs of wool that I'm divesting myself of, and that's just in the bags! I'm probably bringing 2 lbs more for the "shopping" part of the class! Last I heard, I had 11 signed up, and apparently people do appear at the last minute. I'm perhaps overprepared...but who knows?

When I get done teaching, I may be able to scoot over to visit our neighbor. She's a Polish grandma who invited us to call her "Grandma" in Polish when we met her. She's turning 90 this weekend so there's an open house to celebrate. We'll bring one of the cakes.

Then, we get to go to a Spring Equinox potluck dinner at the professor's department head's house. (A department head is equivalent to his boss) We'll bring the second cake.

We've had to skip a couple of other things that were also scheduled for this weekend...including a philosophy discussion group that we both thought sounded fascinating. There's only so much you can manage in one weekend! Winnipeg is a pretty social (and intellectual) place!

The professor's car is currently being repaired so it will be up to Canadian inspection standards. (That's called being safety-ed here. Maybe it's spelled safetied?) So, right now we're a one car family, which has required more preplanning and money and time budgeting than we'd expected. The professor even figured out how to take the bus to work. It's busy around here.

I'll end with another special treat left in our house. When you move into an old house, sometimes things get left behind. We'd found a pair of knitting needles in a closet, but better yet is this picture, done by an artist called "Dougherty." This picture was hanging in the landing on the way to the basement. It's not a particularly scenic staircase, and we mostly do laundry and visit the freezer in the basement. I love this little chance to admire art on the way downstairs. Click on the image here, and look at the front porch. Perfect for a spinner, don't you think?

PS: I hope to get back to talking about knitting soon. I'm currently working on world's slowest sock project, and I've finished that scarf a mentioned a while back. Neither is photographed or ready yet for the big time!