The Fiber Diet

After some consideration and picking at the skeins, I think 4 more of the skeins I washed on the 4th are a loss. 16oz of potluck roving in a really interesting coral sort of color, probably gone. Sigh. That's nearly 2 pounds of fiber I spun and cannot use. I found that Paradise Fibers still has the shetland in the same color, and some similar silk and merino blends. Nothing quite like the potluck, but there were a couple of things on there that might be a good replacement, plus they have gotland at a really good price (that's the fiber they used for the Lord of Rings movies), and the LYM would probably love to have a Frodo scarf made out of that.

I speak of replacement fibers for one very good reason...all of these skeins were destined for Christmas gifts, except the shetland, and I'm supposed to be on a fiber diet for the year. After going through my (thankfully diminished) fiber stash last night, I don't have suitable replacements for the potluck or the silk and merino blend, and nothing I can approximate the shetland with. Yes, I have plenty of actual yarn, but again not in the right colors or weights for the people I had in mind. So what to do? Is this little washing machine disaster a good enough reason to break my no-fiber vow, at least to the extent that I would be replacing fibers, not actually buying new ones to add to the stash?

Fiber disaster!

It's amazing really, I've been spinning for years and yesterday was the first major spinnig related disaster to strike. And given that I'm a huge klutz, this is kind of a miracle.

Anyway...I coulnd't sleep yesterday so I got up at 5 in the morning and decided to wind off all the yarn I had sitting on bobbins. 16 skeins of yarn, all spun up since the start of the year. Then I decided to wash the yarn to set the twist. I put everything in wash bugs, dropped in the landry machine to soak, and walk away, only to discover 10 minutes later that we have the only washing machine on the planet with a soak setting that....agitates.

WTF?!

In what reality does the soak setting agitate?! Really?

So now I have 16 skeins of felt. Well...actually...only 3 skeins are totally hopeless. Tragically, two of them are/were beautiful laceweight shetland I had planned to make a Faroese shawl out of. Four of skeins may be salvagae if I can pick the strands apaart. The rest of them had just enough alpaca or whatever else blended in that while they did felt, it's still useable yarn.

Suprisinly, I wasn't all that upset about the whole sad situation. Disappointed, yes, but remarkably calm all things considered.

My gardening didn't actually go a whole lot better. I got the stupid box hedges out, then we tackeld the awful 8 foot phalluc holly bush. The stump is still in the hole and the flower bed looks like a minuature mine fleid. You know, like gnomes had a trench war or something. Hopefully I can get the rootball hacked up enough that we can get the damn thing out of the hole. I have a bunch of realy lovely plants to put in, and I want to get to the fun part!

Pantyhose rant

This is random but I hate, I mean HATE pantyhose. Especially the cheap-ass pathetic excuse for pantyhose sold at Target. Seriously. $6 and you can maybe get two wearings out of them before they shred. Not run. Shred. I know I'm not exactly Kate Moss but really, there's not that much friction going on that these things would shred the second or third time out.

If only I could really be a hippie lawyer like the LYM says I am and stop shaving my legs and wear Birks to work...and maybe also get in around 9:30 instead of 8...

Oh so lazy!

So I have been quiet for way too long. At least the last 4 weeks (ack) of that was not entirely my fault, stupid Cox locked out my web account right after I moved and won't unlock the user name so I had to move to blogspot. Which is probably easier anyway and has prompted me to change my template and all, but still, it's annoying. Having to remember which webrings I was in and find the code for them in a huge pain. At least I think I have that all saved on my machine at home.

Anyway, things are going pretty well. The LYM and I seen to have gotten pretty well adjusted to the cohabitation thing, the animals are mostly ok with each other, and the house is starting to look pretty well pulled together with all of our stuff in it.

I've even been knitting away on my UFO's! I've got about half a sleeve and a roll down collar left on the brown cabled sweater I started last summer and about 3 inches of cuff left on the first of my Liberty socks (Liberty because I got the yarn on sale at Liberty of London when I was there in 1997). In going through the pile of UFO's I did discover that the cat had chewed on a lace bed jacket I'd been working on. Unfortunately the chew holes were all over the place and too numerous to patch, so I scraped the 4 inches I had done. It was only 4 inches of knitting so I think there's enough yarn still to start over with the same project, especially since once I pulled the needles out I discovered the thing was WAAAY too big. We'll see, I might end up using a whole different pattern, there was a really cute kimono jacket in the spring KnitScnene I'd like to make and I think this yarn will work. It'll be a little lighter and more open that would be nice for a light spring/summer wrap.

I promise pictures will be forthcoming! I'm spending tomorrow knitting and gardening and grilling tri-tip (apparently a CA phenomenon that can only be found at Trader Joe's out here)and hopefully starting my first real bonsai project.

News updates

The latest news is that I am currently moving in with the LYM and will be starting a *paid* internship at an actual law firm tomorrow morning. Hurray!

Trying to get the dog and cat to live together in something approaching peace has been no picnic. The cat is still hissing at the dog when he gets too close to her, and the dog is still eating the cat's food, which pisses the cat off to no end, but mostly I think I'm more stressed about the whole situation then they are at this point. Once the cat stops crying in the morning we should have some measure of peace in the house and all will be well.

Aside from moving and trying to keep the cat and dog in line, I've not been up to a whole lot since school got finished. There's been quite a bit of spinning, some knitting, and generally loafing around and relaxing, which I desperately needed. Between than and aikido, kendo and iaido I've been keeping myself pretty busy. All in all, things are looking up and going well, and I am remarkably calm all things considered.

Now I must get back to unpacking. I brought over all my bathroom stuff and I have no idea where to put it all. The master bath is tiny (like a postage stamp tiny, smallest bathroom I have ever seen in all my life. I think the potty closet in my old apartment in San Francisco was bigger than this whole stupid "master" bath), and there isn't much storage space in the other bathroom either so my collection of bath products looks even more absurd than it really is. I'll figure it out. Creative storage is always fun.

What can you do?

Well...I'm two hours away from my 3rd exam and for some reason all I really want to do is knit. Or at least play with yarn. I started a washcloth last night and I really just want to finish it. I'm using Crystal Palace chenille and the star shaped dishcloth pattern from Mason-Dixon Knitting (which you can get here). So far so good, I did have to frog back the first couple of inches when I realized my gauge was waaaaay off and I needed to use size 6 needles instead of 8. The smaller needles made the chenille much easier to deal with too, so it's going pretty fast now. It might also help that I went from using Addi's to bamboo. I'm the only person I know who slows down with Addi's. They hurt my hands for some reason. I'll stick with my nice bamboo, wood and Denise needles thanks.

Anyway, no luck so far on the job search. All career services had to suggest was calling around to public defenders and judges and offering to work for free. Which isn't really going to work, I have to pay rent and eat somehow. I've pretty accepted that I will be losing my apartment and putting most of my stuff in storage. Where I go from there is anyone's guess. I guess it depends on where/if I can find some sort of work, what it pays, and whether or not the LYM decides shacking up is a good plan or not. We both want to live together, we practically do anyway, but neither of us wants me to move in because I have no choice. Hopefully we can work something out, and I won't have to pack my cat up in the car and drive back to CA for the summer to crash with the 'rents.

Edited to add a link to this amazing site where you can get hand-blown glass drop spindles and some really amazing glass knitting needles. *lust*

A sick joke?

Nope, just my life. My first final is Thursday. This morning I found out my summer job plans have fallen through. Yesterday I found out my car needs about $800 worth of work to pass state inspection.

No job, no car (well, ok, the car will be back sooner or later but still), and impending brokeness. Great.

Why do these things always seem to happen around finals?

How am I supposed to find a job now, when everyone who wanted to hire pretty much did that two months ago, and I have exams to deal with? Please. Enough already!!

Now I shall return to my outlines in the hope that I can salvage my sad GPA and thereby my career...

I'm ok!

Just that time of year...

Aside from finals starting next week (the first is on Thursday, a week from today, arrggg!!), life is good. Stuff is going really insanely well with the LYM, I got promoted again in aikido, the weather is getting nice, and I got to re-landscape a whole flowerbed last weekend at the LYM's house. Digging up over a ton of rocks was way too much work (someone had put down landscaping rocks as a ground cover, then covered the rocks with a 3 inch layer of mulch. WTF?!), but it was good to get outside and do something other than read for part of the weekend. I needed that. And for some reason I find digging in the earth very relaxing and comforting. I love the feel of well-tilled (and relatively rock free) soil in my hands as I plant things.

I did manage to re-injure my thumb last week, which made the gardening slow and somewhat painful, and has slowed me down a lot. Stupid thumb. I'm back in a splint for the next two weeks at least, which is annoying to say the least. At least all I have to do is study, so that's something. It just gets hot with this thing stuck to my hand and wrist all day long.

I'll post more when I can, for now it's off to my internship and then class, then aikido. Crazy days.