shot of color

It is downright dreary outside right now...overcast and damp. Roofing has been put off until next week. The painting is almost complete--aside from the carpentry/painting that needs to happen next week. I knew all this would take a while. Some of it has gone very quickly, but some has not. Even though I'm not getting out much these days anyhow, I am beginning to miss leaving the house. (It's hard to leave home when you know someone is coming over at "mid-day"--and by the time that work is done, well, the day is mostly gone!)

I am really appreciating your messages on the blog. Sometimes I write you back via email, sometimes I visit your blogs (Adriene's post on citizenship was really something!) and sometimes, I just read your notes, smile, and read them again. I read them all. Thank you for keeping me company!

I am still doing some writing and editing for work, but am trying to wind this down. I can still type but my hands are very sore most of the time. This, like most of the pregnancy symptoms, will go away--sometime AFTER the babies are born. Between now and then, well, I have to take it one day at a time. From everything I've been told, nothing is likely to disappear in the symptoms department during this last trimester. It's all likely to get worse or stay the same.

One thing I can still do is dye things. A couple of days ago, I handwashed a wool blanket and while I was at it, went on a brief spurt of handdyeing. I started with an old short white cotton blend bathrobe. This was part of a nightgown set I got so many years ago that the rest of the set is long gone. I hardly ever wear robes and in any case, a white robe wasn't so useful in our household of muddy dog paws and spills. I decided that dyeing this might make it useful. I started with some garnet colored dye. (Before you ask where I got it and what I use...the professor used to buy me lots of this dye from here as presents. I have a life time supply of random colors!)

I like these packets of dye because they are self-contained, don't sprinkle powder everywhere, and allow me to dye in a one step, afternoon process rather than a multi-step one requiring mordants, etc.

I started with the bathrobe, but since the dye is an all-purpose one for both protein and cellulose, cotton/poly blends will not absorb all the dye bath. I decided to throw in some wool for fun. I soaked too small bunches of roving (wrapped up gently with rubber bands) in some vinegar. The weird color is because I used red wine vinegar. It was close by and didn't weigh too much for me to lift. (We buy white vinegar in enormous jugs and I now find a full one of these too heavy to lift!)

Then I threw these in the dye pot along with the robe. The white wool is a Romney roving and the natural gray color is a Romney-cross wool blended with a small amount of mohair. It turns out I could have dyed more wool, but I ran out of energy after this so ended up dumping a bit of colored dye water down the drain. That's reasonably safe with this dye, as compared to dumping something scary like copper sulfate-a mordant that fixes dye to fiber- down the drain as someone recently did in rural Manitoba. That harmed their water local water treatment plant and waterways.

In these photos, I included a ball of handspun laceweight natural gray wool/mohair so you can see how the darker color takes up a richer color of dye. I happen to like the rich cranberry color to the right better than the pinkish red...but in either case, this is enough for a spindle full of yarn, or perhaps a contrast color if I am filling up a bobbin on a spinning wheel sometime in the future. The robe came out a deep rose/red color. Ideal for hospital stays and perhaps more forgiving of stains than a white robe.

While all this dried, I had a remarkable turn-around in the mail service karma situation..I think it was all the professor's good luck. Yesterday, the professor was home from work as we dealt with two different things at once. (a painter and a locksmith/carpenter) First, my package of baggy maternity dresses arrived. Hurray!!

Everything I bought still fit (double Hurray!) although it turns out that one of the dresses I ordered, in brown, looks remarkably like a monk's brown cassock. I am wearing it today and trying to liven it up with some accessories. I am also having to put my feet up all the time because my ankles and feet are swelling these days as well as my hands. I usually try to remember to take my shoes off before putting my feet on the coffee table. Please don't think I'm a big slob! This is merely so you can see my oxblood colored shoes...good for livening up dreary weather.

Second, I finally received some black discontinued Jo Sharp yarn that I'd ordered to finish a sweater...back at the end of February. Both the seller and I had just about given it up for lost. It appeared yesterday. This photo shows the yarn (in a plastic bag) along with the black sweater, the red sweater, and some green t-shirts of the professor's -- fabric I am recycling by handsewing into something new and more useful, I hope.

This is the side table in my living room--it seems disporportionately messy. I am stuck on sleeves (second sleeve for the black sweater and first sleeve for the red sweater) and can only knit a few rows a day because of my swollen hands, but it LOOKS like I'm being really busy as a knitter! Either that, or really slovenly...!

If you live in a place where spring hasn't "sprung" yet (like me), I hope this shot of color brightened your day. If you're currently enjoying the end of daffodil season? Well, maybe you should keep that to yourself for a bit....don't rub it in!

Sometimes it rains

...and you don't realize you're in the middle of something bigger than a rain storm. When I wrote my last post, I was saying ...ok, we had a little rain here. I was maybe understating the situation. Winnipeg was on the national--and then international-- news. I know this because my sister-in-law in Virginia emailed to ask if we'd been flooded out.

So far? No problems at our house, and we have a lovely sunny day right now. That's good, because over 500 homes in the area (and many more unreported ones) are busy taking all the ruined stuff out their basements. HERE is a photo of what things looked like.

It's supposed to rain again starting tomorrow. Uh Oh.

The student that is visiting here has been exploring our connections. In April of 2007, we both went to hear the Yarn Harlot speak in Lexington, Kentucky. Last night, our resident student looked up the Yarn Harlot's blog post from that day. Take a wander over there...and you'll see, first, a photo of a woman in a bright blue v-neck top, holding up stripey socks. Our Resident Student is the red head to her left in the photo. (No, we didn't know each other yet.)

Keep scrolling down, and you'll see a photo of me in a bright red wool sweater. It made sense when leaving my home in the cool early morning to make the 2 hour drive. It was darn warm when I arrived in Lexington. Here's what Stephanie aka Yarn Harlot said:
(Joanne)
Who I know in from the internet and was trying her best to look like a Canadian (that was the plan...right Joanne?) wearing her very best woolies. Fabulous socks...yes? (It was hot in Kentucky. Joanne looked - besides fantastic, like I always do...warm.)

Note: the Fabulous Socks are available here in case they distracted you.

Anyhow, at the time of that event, I had no idea that I was yearning to live in Canada. Now I do live here! I also had no idea that Resident Student would become one of the Professor's research students, and eventually live on the third floor of my house while visiting Canada.

Connections are sometimes a long time in the making, huh? It took years (and a persistent undergrad) to see the long strands of yarn that connect all these events!

Here's the kicker. Back when I was undergraduate at Cornell, I often thought they'd made a mistake in accepting me. It was sometimes such a struggle--I felt stretched sometimes academically. One cold and dark Saturday evening, I promised myself that if I studied at the library for a couple of hours, I'd let myself go out afterwards. As I trudged to the library, I looked up. In every single window, at each library desk, I saw a student studying. It turned out sometimes everyone else felt the way I did. I wasn't alone in feeling like maybe I wasn't good enough to be there...and that I needed to study on Saturday nights.

Today I got an email from a student intern at the Cornell Alumni News. She asked if she could interview me for the magazine. I was so excited and surprised! Good thing I was sitting down. Apparently, 15 years after graduation, I am worth interviewing. Wow.

If I had to rate all this? Living in Canada, not having a flood at my house, or this interview? I'd be hard pressed to say which connection is best.

Nah. Just thought about it. Probably not having a flood is best.

Too bad it's going to rain again soon. I am just hoping to avoid a flood...

rain rain all around

It started raining here just in time for the weekend. Winnipeg doesn't have an enormous amount of precipitation compared to, say, Kentucky. In fact, when I looked up yearly averages, I found out that it had half as much. (Winnipeg has 20 some inches of precipitation a year as compared to 40 some in Bowling Green, KY.) Therefore, a big rainstorm can be an event here.

This might be because we live on the prairies, so when it rains, there is nowhere for the puddles to go. They become ponds or lakes...here's a smaller puddle that I could see from our house. Crossing the street can sometimes be like fording a fast running crick in the middle of a storm.

Last night we (the professor, our resident student and I) went out for Greek food. We walked to the restaurant and settled in for a leisurely dinner. We tried to draw it out as the sky got dark -again-and it started to pour. Unfortunately, even after a cappucino (for me) and a big slice of cake (for the professor and his student) it was still raining. It was even leaking and raining inside the restaurant! We pulled on our raincoats and hats and set out.

Within a few moments, our feet were sopping wet. Then the wind turned. The rain went down the neck of my raincoat. Worse yet, it somehow went up the bottom of my raincoat and within minutes, my linen pants were about 3 lbs heavier with water than I'd expected. When we got home, every piece of clothing had to be taken off and changed. I took a hot bath to warm up. The professor slipped on the basement steps--wet from a drippy raincoat--and hurt his toe enough to draw blood. It was a damp situation... We all seemed ok with staying indoors and giving up on the evening relatively early.

From our third floor we look out on the top of a building. This is what it looked like between rainstorms. The flat roof is literally full with rainwater.

This afternoon I am volunteering at the Manitoba Craft Museum and Library for Doors Open. I'm bringing along some spinning, since I imagine the crowds may be small. The rain hasn't let up, and although Winnipeggers are hearty folk, I suspect most people would rather take a nap at home than wander through the city in the rain. We'll see!

Today the professor and his student are working on bottling up the homemade wine that he's been making in the basement. It's a good weekend microbiology project...including collaboration with a colleague, who is loaning them some equipment. (It's always nice to feel I help to support nontraditional science learning at home!)

rain & recovery

This weekend was my first opportunity to go out and about as an "author" at the Southern Kentucky book fest. First, there was the authors' reception. We donned business attire. I had a glass and a half of wine, awkwardly talked to a few writers, spilled a mushroom canape down the front of my black dress, and couldn't wait to go home to eat cereal for dinner on my couch! Meanwhile, my (normally shy) professor managed to talk to the president of his university, a dean, and Kevin Clash, or the Sesame Street puppeteer better known as Elmo.

Saturday went better. On Saturday, there was an all day "book signing" event, as well as panel discussions. At the beginning of the day, I saw the enormous stack of 20-some books and felt worried. I brought my knitting and spinning and settled in for the long haul! To my surprise,nearly everyone who said they might come to see me--did. It was fun to see my friends walk away with a signed copy of the book...and I got to do some fun inscriptions. (One book was inscribed to the friend and "the Eleanors"--that's what we call her chickens. The Eleanors provide us with eggs every now and again, I am grateful for their hard work!) Another book was bought as a present for a shearer whose photo is in the book...another fun inscription. Finally, one of the models bought books for several relatives..and I got to mention how beautiful she was in each book I signed. :)

It was also the first time I saw complete strangers rush up to the table, grab the book, and look down, pasted to the photos, and clasp it to their chests. That was my cue... "Are you a knitter!?" Their faces would light up. It was an amazing experience.

The panel discussion went well, despite a distinct absence of an audience. It was a weird combination of speakers (4 cookbook writers and me) and topics. I'd begged some friends to come, and whew, thank goodness they did! Afterwards, the food writer from the Lexington paper thanked me for inviting folks. The audience was about 8 people, and I knew 6 of them!

I returned to my "station" and spent the last hour of the festival with my drop spindle, spinning. The crowds had thinned so fewer people stared! I managed to sign and sell all but one book. I think that could be called a success? The professor took me out to dinner and I was in bed by 8:30. Turns out it's hard work smiling and being nice for that long...

Today's a day to recover. I've snapped a couple of photos of my most recent spindle-spun project for you, which I finished a couple of days ago. This is a combination of Polwarth wool/Silk from Aurelia Wool in British Columbia, Canada and Cut Silk Waste (usually for paper making, embroidery, etc.) from The Handweavers Studio in London. I buy these odds and ends as souvenirs when I travel. Then, by serendipity, I discover they match each other nicely. I hand carded the wool/silk blend with the colored cut silk waste (it took less than 45 minutes), spun it up on a Crown Mountain spindle (mine's ebony) and then plied it. It's about 40 yards of yarn, I think...perfect for knitting into some scribble lace with some Sea Silk yarn in the same pearly shades. You might be able to see the ball of yarn in the back of the photo.

Today I spun Shetland wool on my Canadian Production Wheel, listened to some folk music, and enjoyed staying home!

As an aside, I've really come to appreciate a rainy day. Both dogs just sleep nearly continuously. (when compared to highstrung barking and chase from window to window? Give me rain! It's quiet AND it makes the flowers grow.)

The book signing made me wonder--how important is it to you to know or meet the author of a book? Is a book signed by the author more valuable to you? What do you think? I'm curious...