Knitting with Fire

New Car

2011-11-26T08:31:00.004-05:00

If you've spent any time with me in the past year, you probably know that my truck is not as new as it was. I've missed important events because I broke down on the way. I think at one point I was towed 4 times in 2 months. I'm the kind of person who scrapes every last bit of peanut butter out of the jar before conceding that it's empty, so I made sure to get that last full year out of the truck before I began shopping for a new one. As soon as I decided to look, the engine broke out of spite.

When I started shopping, I had a pretty specific list of what I wanted in a new vehicle. At least 25mpg, but preferably better, as much storage space as the truck, better handling in the snow, standard shift, and about $10,000. (I had to let go of that last one pretty much immediately. Everything is more expensive now than it was when I bought the Ranger in '97)

It didn't take long to discover that there really wasn't a truck out there that fit the bill. I had bought the most fuel efficient truck in '97, and no car company had bothered to improve on that over the last 14 years--even better, Ford has decided to retire the Ranger.

It was weird to think about no longer driving a truck, but my needs have changed and the trucks that are still being made don't fit my priorities. So I started looking with a fresh eye. I wanted a new vehicle with 40 cubic feet of storage space, at least 25mpg, better handling in the snow, standard shift, and under $25,000.

I test drove station wagons and crossovers, but I found the answer at a Honda dealership. I had stopped to just peer in the window of a CRV. One of the salesman came right up, but when I asked about a standard shift he just sighed and said that no, it was only made in an automatic, which I had been hearing a lot. Then he changed everything. He said, "I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but MINI Cooper has a new model out called a Countryman. It's bigger so it has the cargo space you're looking for and they're all standard shift." Love it! When the Honda wasn't right for me he actually told me what was.

Behold! My new MINI Cooper Countryman.

It gets 28/35mpg, should be great in the snow with it's wide wheel base and front wheel drive, is standard shift, fits the price range, and is dimensionally transcendental.* Even better, it's made by BMW, who have been rated the most sustainable car company. Click here, and here. All of MINI's models hold positions in the top fuel efficient cars, not just one or 2 token vehicles like the other car companies. I could go on, but suffice to say environmental impact is important to me, and I did a lot of research before buying.

Look, it's bigger than the house!

I had to order it and wait for 3 months, but it was totally worth it. And because it's so small and easy to handle, when we went to pick it up I got to drive it right out of the showroom doors.

*It's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. The doctor hasn't used the proper explanation in years.

Finished

2011-11-24T09:59:00.003-05:00

We finished the roof, and before the snow flies!

And no, there wasn't anything else I was supposed to be doing at this point. I was waiting for Billy and Chris to finish the chimney flashing so we could shingle around it.

Next year we build the dormer on the other side.

Great Job Cassie!

2011-11-14T15:14:00.001-05:00

One of our theater student has made it to the semi-finals of a national vocal competition to become the "voice of McDonalds." You can read the article here: Help Music and Theater Major Make Final Cut in Vocal Competition News and Events and please do vote for her, she's a good kid and sounds pretty great too! I'm really proud she got so far in this competition.

Home Improvement

2011-10-15T21:31:00.004-04:00

We bought our house almost 2 years ago, knowing that it desperately needed a roof. We moved in 2 1/2 years ago naively thinking that a. buying a house could be done in a month if all parties were willing, and b. we would put a new roof on it as soon as we owned it, that very summer.

So we started working on the roof about a month ago.

It is important to note that since it's construction in the early 40s, our house has been owned exclusively by monkeys who insisted on making all repairs and additions themselves. We knew that the most recent monkeys were also hillbillies based on all the skoal cans, light beer cans, and perfectly useful tools we had to pick up just out of site on the other side of the fence. But now we know it's monkeys all the way down.

Chris and his brother and their friend climbed up on the roof about a week ago (after partially fixing our wiring so that the power tools would work, setting up traps for the possum/large rat living in our garage, and installing decent locks on all the garage doors because apparently people drive around looking for houses being worked on and then go in the garage and steal your tools. Classy.). They knew that there were 3 layers of shingles on the roof, which is against all sense and regulation and began doing a complete tear down. Turns out, there are actually 4 layers of shingles on the roof. This means that every roof including the original must be on there, and because every layer is cheap and installed poorly, no single layer "lasted" over 20 years. As a bonus, I found the one white shingle on the whole roof buried in the first layer, so either I get a prize or it's one of the first signs of the apocalypse along with a perfect red cow and the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem.

Anyway, as I may have mentioned, monkeys. Apparently the charming spot where our kitchen sticks out from our otherwise square cape cod is an addition. To add it meant cutting away a section of the (logically) load bearing outer wall, but apparently adding back in the proper support for the roof was less than obvious. So now the guys have to fix our sagging roof which has been carrying twice the allowable weight of shingles for the past 10-20 years. Which means I came home to this:

The basement has been jacked-up and re-enforced, and then the kitchen, so that the roof can be jacked up and permanently re-enforced. Fun.

As soon as the shingling starts I'll be right up there working with them. Until then, don't think I don't appreciate all the work these guys are doing but I'm really not sure how we're supposed to get any silverware out of that drawer...

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

2011-08-16T20:12:00.003-04:00

Well dark, anyway. I had gotten up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom--sometime between 1 and 2am. I don't bother to put on my glasses or turn on any lights when I do this, so I was blind in the dark. Our little cape cod is arranged with the 2 main bedrooms upstairs, and everything else, including the bathroom, downstairs. The first half of the journey was completely uneventful. However, on the way back up the stairs, just as I got to the 2nd floor landing, I put my foot down on...something. Felt like a sock, or t-shirt, or something else a bit soft and no particular temperature. I clicked on the light and saw something loosely coiled on the landing. A brown speckled belt? I bent down to pick it up, and with my face about 18" away it came into focus. A small snake? My stepson has 2 pet snakes, and one of them did go AWOL for about 2 months this summer, but both of them are big and more colorful than the one on the landing. It might be a stuffed snake, or rubber, but he's 20 now and that's a bit old to be leaving toy snakes laying around the house. A garter snake from outside? That came into the house and climbed the stairs just because?

As I contemplated, the little snake tilted his head at me and flicked his tongue. Ok, so it's a live snake 18" away from my face. I heard Christopher's TV on, so figured he was awake. I found out later I was wrong about that assumption, which is why our conversation was so strange. It went something like:

Chris, hey Chris there's a small snake out here.

(pause)

Is it yours?

(pause)

Hey Chris, is this your snake out here?

What?

There's a small snake out here, is it yours? Could you come out and get it?

Does it look like it's going to bite?

I don't know, will you just come out here?

At which point he came out rather blearily with a chopstick in his hand, used the chopstick to pick up the snake by the middle, and then carried it back into his bedroom. I went to bed and laid awake for another hour or so worrying about what could have happened to the snake if I had been wearing shoes.

I am so glad he's so much easier to parent these days. We even had a laugh over it the next day.

Asparagus part 2

2011-07-31T10:46:00.003-04:00

Back in 2008 I blogged about planting my first asparagus plants at the farmhouse. I followed the instructions in my father's copy of "Sprockett's Victory Garden" but only 3 of the plants came up that first year. I had to fill in the trench when I left (around the end of July) even though only those 3 plants had sprouted.

When I got back the next summer, only 2 of the asparagus plants had survived. Incredibly disappointing, considering all the work it took three of us to dig a trench 10' long, 18" wide, and 12" deep. I'm not sure exactly what went wrong. I have a feeling that I planted too deep--6" of dirt over those original roots.

This summer was my first harvest from those 2 surviving asparagus plants. it was small.

(cereal bowl included to show scale, and because it was morning)

So this summer I decided to try again, and had much better results. I planted a different variety, Jersey Giant in '08 and Martha Washington this time. I have no idea if that made a difference.

I was fairly certain that last time I had planted too deep, and filled in too much too soon. I think I followed the instructions in The Victory Garden book, but it was my dad's and I didn't have it with me, so I may also have remembered wrong. That time I planted 12" deep and initially refilled the trench with 6" of dirt. Since then I've checked more gardening books and websites and none of them say to go that deep. So this summer I followed the directions that came with my asparagus roots and re-dug most of the trench to 6" deep total, filling in with 3" of dirt until the shoots emerged.

That was successful. By the middle of July, every single root had produced a tiny fern, tall enough that I could return the last 3" of dirt to the trench, bringing it back to level with the rest of the garden.

The tall ferns at the far end of the photo are the 2 original Jersey Giants, the rest are the 10 Martha Washington asparagus I planted this year.

If all goes well I'll have all the asparagus I can eat in the spring of 2013.

Working at the Festival

2011-06-24T13:23:00.002-04:00

This is a great overview of what we're doing at Glimmerglass at the moment. There's a quick shot of me cutting at my table, and of course lots of my co-workers are featured too. Only 8 days until the first opera opens--eeek!!!

blooming

2011-06-08T20:31:00.002-04:00

This iris opened outside my window at the opera over the course of my workday.

I Did It!

2011-06-05T07:49:00.004-04:00

I finally finished James Joyce's Ulysses. I had started reading it for the first time right after college but only got about a quarter of the way into it before setting it down and not picking it up again. I finally downloaded the audio book about a month ago and read the whole thing right through. The reader, Jim Norton, was great. I can't imagine the work it took to be able to read that book out loud and make sense out of who is talking at every moment. The book is written to cover 24hrs of time, mostly following Leopold Bloom through Dublin on June 16th, 1904. Once he falls asleep in the wee hours of the morning of the 17th, the narration is taken up by his wife Molly, who lays awake after being woken by Bloom crawling into bed. The funny thing is that it takes over 28 hrs to read. I guess that's to cover the extra time we spend with Stephen Dedalus before he meets Bloom.

I was going to say that next time I go to a bookstore I will be looking for a good study guide to see what they have to say, now that I have read the book for myself, but as I checked back at audible for the reader's name, etc, I just discovered that they have a companion study guide available for download for free. Have I mentioned that I love audible?

I'm thrilled that I finally read this book. In the long run, I think I benefited from stopping when I did, and picking it up again in my mid-thirties. Having now read so many more Irish books and plays, and generally having read and experienced more over the intervening 15 years, I understood so many more of Joyce's references, and of the general attitude of the characters.

There have been several accusations against the book as obscene. It was banned in the US in the early twenties. That ban was overruled in the 30's by Judge John M. Woolsey who declared that the book was not pornographic and therefore not obscene.

I'm just as awkward talking about or defining obscenity as many judges are. There are, of course, the famous statements about how ducks look and walk and quack, and after stating that he may not be able to define pornography, Supreme court Justice Potter Stewart went on to famously say, "but I know it when I see it."

It seems to me that there is an element of easy thrill to pornography. It's supposed to be a short-cut. If getting a thrill takes as much work as leaving the house, meeting someone, getting to know them, romancing them and putting real effort into treating them properly and prioritizing their well-being, for as long as it takes until it is appropriate for the relationship to be fully consummated, then you could have just gone out and done that. To me, that fact that the book is 28hrs long, and the dirty bits might cover an hour or 2 of that time total, is proof enough that the book is literature and not obscenity. It take way too much work to get all the way to Molly's soliloquy at the end, when she contemplates past lovers and considers future candidates. More time and effort than some modern relationships, or so I've learned from television.

That said, there were several points when I thought, "Wait, when was this written?" as the particular language which judge Woolsey described as "Saxon" is more blunt and coarse than I expected. Apparently I have been guilty of nostalgia,and have re-painted the past in gauzy white. Not only did my generation not invent sex or drugs, we also didn't invent those words I first heard on the bus or on the playground. Even so, when compared to the other literature of the 20's and earlier, it must have been a real shock to read those words in a novel. I was startled a hundred years later.

The novel was a lot of work, and I am now plunging into a study guide, and an audio download of a "Bloomsday" performance from a few years ago, but it was worth the work. I can see why it is often heralded as the first modern novel, or the first novel of the twentieth century.

And may I say again, I DID IT!

2011-05-17T20:17:00.003-04:00

One of the big parts of my job is making patterns for the costumes. The pattern making is what I get the most enjoyment out of, and find the most fulfilling. Of course, like most things in life, it's only about 10% of the work of making a costume, but luckily the work flows quickly, so I get to go back to pattern making once every 2 months or so.

While working on the dance concert over the past few months, it occurred to me that I had a really good illustration of the range of what pattern making is. I could get into details and try to explain the advantages/disadvantages of draping on a dress form vs. drafting using measurements and rulers, but that would bore you.

Instead I have pictures.

Even if you've never sewn before, it's probably pretty clear that this is the pattern for some kind of shirt. A simple tunic to be precise.

But this?

This is a dress. And to get a sense of scale, I should say that each of those 8 pieces is nearly as big as I am, and that in order to show the whole pattern I had to lay it out on the stage floor and then photograph it from up in the catwalks above the audience.

The Dot and the Line

2011-03-27T10:48:00.001-04:00

Have a Rabbit? Getting a Rabbit?

2011-03-10T10:43:00.004-05:00

If you have a rabbit, or are thinking about getting one, this is a great event coming this Thursday. The woman giving the presentation is a vet tech who specifically works with rabbit vets. She is great! I will be there to help, but I'm sure I'll learn lots too.

The event is completely free and there is no catch. All you need to do is call to make your reservation before Thursday and then come to the SPCA that night.

(if you click on the image you should be able to see it a little bigger and a little clearer)

Birth/Rebirth

2011-02-21T21:40:00.004-05:00

The snow receded some at the end of last week. On Sunday afternoon I found signs of new life.

This snow drop has barely lifted its head out of the snow:

Last year my first snow drops emerged in mid-March, so despite the intense cold these are 3 or 4 weeks earlier. Maybe that silly groundhog was on to something.

Also, finished but for the buttons is the "baby sweater on two needles" known to most knitters as the February baby.

I highly recommend this sweater. It was great fun to knit. It's quite easy, and every part of it fits together in that perfect way that Elizabeth Zimmerman sweaters do, thanks to her various percentage systems. I did change it to be completely seamless by knitting the body first, slipping stitches to holders for the sleeves and then casting on again across the held stitches so I could continue the body in one piece. I then picked up the sleeve stitches and knit them in the round on circular needles. I also changed the bottom edge just slightly. I always found the original garter stitch border clunky. I prefer lace patterns that provide their own edge with just a little adjustment, so when I got to the bottom edge I did not decrease as Elizabeth calls for, and I stayed in pattern, but changed the wrong side rows to plain knit instead of plain purl.

In The Knitter's Almanac the sweater is pictured with a matching bonnet, for which no pattern is given. As far as I know, EZ didn't publish that pattern, instead she describes how to add an extension onto the bonnet pattern you (of course) already have to keep the baby's neck and chest warm.

There don't seems to be all that many bonnet patterns to be had now, but this very girly sweater cried out for a bonnet, so I greatly modified the one that I have to make a matching bonnet. If it fits, and I can figure out what age of baby it fits, I will post simple directions.

Age and Babies

2011-02-07T20:26:00.003-05:00

So far, I feel I’ve spent my first 36 years being told that I’m too young. I remember a point in elementary school when a friend two years older than me used the phrase “shake it don’t break it.” When I asked, “What does that mean, anyway?” she replied, “I’ll tell you when you’re older.” It’s amazing how much a ten year old has to lord over an eight year old. It became clear to me when I was older that her answer was really an indication that she didn’t know any more than I did. I still have no idea what that strange idiomatic phrase is supposed to mean.

When Cherie Brown, founder and executive director of the National Coalition Building Institute came to the university at which I work, she began talking about diversity by recognizing everyone in the audience for all the things about each of us that make us part of specific groups, whether they are groups that are classically thought of as oppressors or as oppressed. It was a great exercise. When each group was called, those who fit into it stood, and everyone else applauded. So for instance, I got to stand for categories like female, protestant, white, heterosexual, German (which may have been part of a group of northern European countries, I don’t remember) etc. When she got to age, Ms. Brown said, “It seems like we spend the first half of our lives wishing we were older, and the second half wishing we were younger.” How true it is!

I’ve mostly glided through life not worrying too much about my age. I think part of why I’m always being told I’m young is that I tend to hang out with people older than me, and I’ve always preferred to date a few years older. So several of my close friends are grandmothers, and my husband has half a decade on me. Of course I attribute my tendency to have older friends to my advanced intelligence and maturity; you may draw your own conclusions.

It’s at my university that I feel a bit persecuted for my allegedly young age. Not so much in my own department, but it is whenever I meet with faculty from other departments, or visit another department’s office, that I am asked “are you a student or a faculty member?” Or even worse, faculty members wheedle a number out of me and point out that their children are the same age, or a little older. I think someone in the fashion department actually said, “Well, I could be your mother.” I may be reading too much into it, but I really think this is a power play of some sort on their part. Maybe the ranking of grades and degrees in academia puts too much of an emphasis on the time put in, and not enough on the accomplishments.

I think it’s almost comical that at 36 these folks are trying to make me feel too young. In truth, I am too old to become a cop, too old to audition for American Idol, about twice as old as a retiring gymnast or figure skater, too old to have a first baby without very careful attention from doctors, and just recently, the proud owner of one pair of prescription bifocals, and one pair of pharmacy reading glasses. And yet, I got carded at a university event by someone at least 10 years younger than me. Yes, we have a lot of non-traditional students, so the average age probably trends a little high compared to the average, but still. My stepson is the same age as most of my sophomores. And yes, I am too young to have a kid his age, but see the earlier paragraph about the slightly older husband.

And so I am battling for some respect and recognition at work even thought I am “too young” and battling increasing age in the guise of weight gain and gravity and declining optical lens flexibility. The CDC says the average American life expectancy is 77.9 years. I’m nearly half way. Given that, plus the fact that I can’t wear a bikini anymore, I’d really like some recognition for everything I can do now that I couldn’t do back when I could still wear that two piece.

In an effort to garner some age-based respect, I’ve been practicing perching my new tiger striped reading glasses on the end of my nose. Now I look like Janine from Ghostbusters.

So I’m dipping my toes into middle age, and we’re all careening towards old age, but what I’m actually trying to come around to is the very youngest: babies. I don’t have much use for babies myself, they’re like needy potatoes with messy diapers, but people who have them seem very keen on them. My stepson and I met at the perfect time. He was 5, old enough to tell really good stories, especially since he was still too young to fully “get” the distinction between experienced events and imagined ones. He was cute and smart, could communicate, and could go to the bathroom on his own. Perfect. I was 22. Old enough to be legitimately interested in kids and young enough to dive into a relationship with him and his father without thinking ahead to how hard it is to have a teenager while still in one’s twenties. Perfect.

Now, I don’t mean to bad mouth the whole breeding thing. Yes, self-righteous stay-at-home moms who spend all their time lecturing everyone else on the internet (while their unsupervised children set the cat on fire) are annoying, but lots of people I know and respect really love babies. The day your child is born is momentous. The fact that they start out as a baby is immaterial compared to the importance of that day, the day they come fully into life and you come fully into parenthood. I didn’t get this back when I was younger, or was distracted or something, but for the last 5 or 10 years I’ve tried to really focus on being part of the community rituals that surround and celebrate the birth of a child. Births, weddings, graduations/confirmations/bar mitzvahs/coming of age, and deaths are the really major parts of life, epic and bigger than the work-a-day world. They are the framework, and the basis for much or our crucial spiritual moments. They are also the times when family and community mobilize, and are at their very best, fulfilling their most fundamental functions. I want to be part of that for my friends and family.

And so (you knew this was coming) I knit. I don’t seem to knit as many wedding presents, and I should get back to knitting prayer shawls for those in crisis, but at this point I do try to knit for everyone I know who is having a baby. It’s funny, now that I’m past childbearing age, and even thought I claim to have mostly older friends, I seem to know a ton of people having babies right now. It’s been that way for a few years.

A few months ago I sent out this great, colorful blanket to a friend. She says the baby grabbed it right away and loved sticking her little fingers through the holes in the lace pattern. My friend Ann is great about knitting blankets for the babies in her life, and it was her great idea to make the little version, as something for the baby/toddler to hold onto while the big blankie is in the wash, or when the big blankie is too much to carry along on this particular trip to the grocery store, etc.

There are so many babies on the way right now, I had to make a list of who’s having the baby, boy or girl (if known) and what I plan to knit for them. Finished except for the buttons is this baby surprise for a baby of not-yet-known gender.

I love this pattern. This is at least the third time I’ve done one and it charms and amazes me every time. I love the way it looks with stripes, and I have no idea how Elizabeth Zimmerman ever thought her way around a garment in this direction. Just the fact that her line of shaping (decreases then increases) move from the back cuff, under the arm and onward to the bottom front hem is amazing to behold.

This is a great combination of things. I was on a friend’s Ravelry page, looking at these great robot mittens she had made, when Chris leaned over and said, “You should make a baby sweater like that for X’s baby, she’d love that kind of thing.” Thus I bought Kathryn Ivy’s Love Bytes mitten pattern and used her wonderful charts and a modification of a seventies baby sweater pattern to make this really delightful baby sweater full of robots and hearts. I totally love her pun, and the really blocky mid-twentieth century robots, and the idea of robots in love. This aesthetic is the same thing I love about the robots in Futurama—they’ve appropriate an older, dated, view of future technology, so it is both primitive/nostalgic and futuristic to our modern eye. Like the giant super computers in classic trek that take up a whole room and break down when Kirk tells them “everything I say is a lie, including that.” Actually, I think Kirk broke a sexy false eye-lashed female robot with that particular tautology, but you get the picture. I predict that ‘50s robots made out of cardboard boxes will be the next big thing after steam punk. And babies will be the recipients of my next 5 knitting projects.

New Drum Carder!!!!!!!

2010-12-18T11:22:00.004-05:00

Recently my friend Mary Ellen made reference to the happiness that can come from purchasing something new. Not just anything, but think about when you were a kid and spent months saving up allowance for something really special. I remember spending about a year saving up for my first stereo, and I loved it from the first day I had it. It seems like something changed, either from childhood to adult life, or in our culture since then. Now it's more likely that Ill spending months paying off a previous purchase, instead of saving up for the future. The last thing I saved up for was my spinning wheel about ten years ago.

Unlike many spinner I only own one wheel. I do have some extra flyers, 3 sets of hand cards, and 2 sets of combs, but they were all acquired over 5 years ago, and one of the sets of carders was used and practically free.

So when a very slightly used drum carder came up for sale by a member of my guild, I decided that now might just be the time for a new equipment purchase. I didn't save up, but I'm counting this as my up-coming Christmas money, well spent. After spending about 3 years hand carding wool for my purple sweater set, I think it's high time I treat myself to this lovely time saver.

Behold, the Fancy Kitty Kitten Drum Carder:

The lovely woman who sold it to me decided that her life was too short for fiber prep, and she could happily spin prepared rovings from now on. I don't blame her--our guild has several very talented dyers who sell their work. I've decided that life is too short for hand carding. Either way, she was so over fiber prep that she gave me a bag of fibers she had planned to blend on the carder, and a partially finished batt.

The thing is that I like dying, and while multicolored rovings look great, and make for very attractive multicolored yarns, they necessitate very simple knitting. What I've discovered about myself is that the knitting is my primary goal, and I prefer to work with simpler yarns that allow for more complex knitting. I've made the mistake of trying to do colorwork or cables with visually complex yarn, and it just becomes a muddy indistinct lump that I spent a lot of hours on. So for me a drum carder makes it possible to buy a fleece and dye sections into related colors I can then card together for more subtle heathers that will still allow cables or lace to dominate visually. Or I can dye for individual skeins of closely related solids for a fair isle.

Of course this will lead to buying fleeces. But it saves me the cost of shipping and processing, which is what I used to do. And did I mention it saves me the time of hand carding to blend colors? Life is too short for hand carding.

So I ran home, put the drum carder on the kitchen table, cranked up my audio book, and started cranking fiber through.

I quickly discovered that I had questions, and that none of my spinning books had answers. How do I only own spinning books that refuse to address the drum carder beyond acknowledging it's existence?!?!

For instance, as I worked, there was a lot of fiber staying on the licker-in. I kept trying to remove it and feed it back through, but it kept ending up there. Then I realized that what was on the licker-in looked like this:

Could it be that unlike hand cards, drum carders separate out the neps and short crap? I checked the internet. The internet had way too much information, but it seemed to confirm that yes, it did separate this stuff out on purpose! So I stopped trying to undo the help the Kitten was offering, and put that crap aside.

I already know from my fleece study experience that I prefer to flick card first, removing as much of the short and tangled wool as I can, before either carding or combing. It seems the same will be wise with the drum carder, and produce the kind of smooth batts I prefer to spin.

Eventually, I made this:

and this:

with the fibers the original owner was so kind to pass along. I was a bit dissatisfied with dizzing the blue roving off the drum. Too much fiber was left behind, so I will probably tear the pink batt into strips or into a roving to spin. It was way too time consuming to diz off some of the roving, and then still have to remove a small thin batt of what was left. It will be much faster to remove everything together as a batt and then deal with it from there.

At this point I got excited and went off on my own. I love to spin cotton, and a little while ago a friend gave me this:

a bale of cotton. That puppy must weight 20 pounds. I was going to hand card punis from it, but that was going to take the rest of my life. The carding cloth on this Kitten looks just as fine as on my cotton hand cards, and if it all goes to hell I might waste, what, one or two ounces out of 20 pounds?

I didn't really find any guidance on doing this, but I was also too cocky to look. In the name of science, I experimented.

First I fed in the cotton in the usual way:

and about half of it stayed on the licker-in. Not good. So I added it the other way I'd been shown, directly onto the drum as I cranked.

This was much more successful. 3 or 4 times the amount added in only left this:

on the licker-in.

I removed the batt, split it, and recarded in thin layers a few times, just like with the first 2 batts.

Then I had to decide what form the carded cotton should finally take. A batt seemed too big and loose, and like it might fall apart before it ever got to the wheel, so I tried 2 things.

I dizzed off a roving which was generally frustrating. So then I tried rolling the batt around a knitting needle to make a puni, just like I would have done with hand cards.

I got 4 fairly thick punis from one batt:

as opposed to this mess of roving from the other:

I got in a little time on the wheel this morning, and as I suspected the punis are quite nice to spin from, but the roving is a bitch. If I wasn't an experienced cotton spinner I would have thrown the roving out the window! At this point I'll still spin it up just to see what I get, and keep examining how the 2 preparations work. I may try making the punis just a little smaller to compare, but by and large this will now be my go-to for prepping that bale of cotton.

So thanks very much for the drum carder! Now I need more time to knit and spin. I don't suppose I can do that this week instead of putting up the tree, making cookies, and cooking Christmas dinner for both sets of parents? I thought not.

Magic Hat has won me for life!

2010-11-20T10:18:00.002-05:00

As you may have noticed, I like beer. I like beer so much that later today I plan to bottle 5 gallons of it. Next weekend I will brew 5 more gallons, which should be ready to drink just in time for Christmas. For the last few years now, I have been using my bonus day off to celebrate "beer Friday" while the rest of America makes me ashamed with their behavior on "black Friday." But I digress.

Even though most of the time the amount of home brew I have on hand can be measured in gallons, I do still buy the occasional beer. I definitely have favorite breweries, and seasonal beers that I look forward to each year. Every year I buy at least 4 12-packs of Magic Hat, each of their 4 seasonal mixes, in order to try all of their "Odd Notion" series. I really like their brewing style, and they use the Odd Notion series to showcase some pretty interesting brews that they've been playing around with. They take risks with this series. Last winter's notion was a pleasingly sour Belgian ale, and if memory serves they've also done a barley ale, some interesting wheats, and various beers with unexpected ingredients. This is a company that regularly brews their summer ale with beet juice, so you know you're in for an interesting and bold treat when they share their experiments! Best of all, after I've tried each new Notion, I can go to the website to find out what it is, give my feedback, and read through the other feedback.

As you can see I look forward to these, so imagine my sadness when I tried the Fall Odd Notion and it was BAD. I don't mean, "not to my taste," or they used an ill-advised ingredient. I mean it had gone off. Now in the long run, this was super instructional, because as a brewer I've read through the various descriptions of what can go wrong with a batch of beer and what each problem tastes like, but it's difficult to truly describe a flavor in words. Now I know one of them!

I contacted Magic Hat because, given their quirky emails (yes, I'm on the mailing list), their willingness to share their experiments, and their desire for customer feed back, I figured they would genuinely like to know that something had gone wrong with a batch.

They responded right away, shared with me what had gone wrong (again, great information for my own brewing) and then offered to comfort me with swag.

Within a week or two, I got a lovely package of cool beer stuff. Behold:

Not only am I comforted, but I will be their customer for life!

Most of the time, when a company has truly done me wrong with piss-poor service or shoddy merchandise, I can't even get a decent apology, much less a replacement and a coupon or two for my trouble. I've almost given up complaining. Almost.

With Magic Hat I hadn't even complained. I really was just informing them that something had gotten past them, because if it was one of my brews, I'd want to know, especially if my later batches would also be at risk. Even so, they immediately explained and offered what they called a "care package." How great is that?

So hooray for small businesses, and people who are able to do a job they love, who hang onto their passion for it, and truly give a damn about the people who ultimately use and enjoy their product!

So if you like beer, go pick up some Magic Hat and think of me. The winter Odd Notion is great! I'll be raising a #9 every year on my birthday, 09-09.

Thanks Magic Hat!

Puppet Boots!

2010-11-01T21:35:00.004-04:00

I recently made vinyl work boots for a puppet. I actually made the whole outfit, but it's the boots that make me jump up and down on the inside. I made them at work. I was not screwing around, making puppet work boots was in fact what I was getting paid for.

I love my job.

Dear Internet Trolling Robots

2010-08-25T12:34:00.004-04:00

I love robots, I really do. I read stories about you. I watch movies about you. I cry at the end of The Iron Giant every single time. I made a beer and called it "Benderbrau" because Bender did in an episode of Futurama. I've known the rules of robotics by heart since I was 9, see:

A robot may not injure a human being or by inaction allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey any orders given to it by a human unless that order conflicts with the first law.
A robot must not allow itself to come to harm unless doing so conflicts with the first or second law.

But, internet trolling robots, you need to respect that this is a (mostly) knitting blog. I support robots knitting and knitting robots. I encourage on topic comments. If any knitting robot has comments, questions, or experiences to share, by all means do. If anyone who is knitting a robot wants to discuss their project, especially whether circuit boards function better in ribbing or lace, by all means share.

But robots peddling viagra? You are not welcome. That will never be an on topic comment on this blog. I'm terrified to think what happens when a robot takes any such medication. Neither do I need internet trolling robots stopping here to share information on how to chat online with naked foreign women. Again, why would you be interested in such things?

So this is a direct order, from a human, to all robots: Do not post comments here that are off topic, or that you wrote late at night after your english language circuits had shut down for routine maintanance. Do not start with badly worded compliments to my blog, even if you carefully inserted the 4 most frequently occuring words and tags, only to continue with an add for "male enhancement." Not only is this off topic, it's not what knitters are looking for on the internet. It may be what everyone else is looking for on the internet, but not us. What we're looking for is a pattern for a hat that fits a 9 month old and is covered in bunnies, or a good source for polwarth wool that can ship tomorrow, or an answer to whether or not it's a good idea to knit lace in 100% alpaca. When we see naked ladies online we feel bad for them and cast on a sweater.

You have been ordered. From now on no robot may post any off topic comment here unless doing so prevents a human from coming to harm. Even so, it will be deleted.

Spinners guild reveals reasons ‘why ’

2010-08-23T09:43:00.001-04:00

This was a really nice article published in the local "Bee." Unlike the Buffalo News reporter who interviewed many of the same people and got much of the information wrong, Naomi Spencer was really lovely and attentive, and wrote an accurate, interesting, and articulate article about our local spinning guild.

Spinners guild reveals reasons ‘why ’

Knitting and Beer, What Could Be Better?

2010-08-11T21:50:00.008-04:00

I was recently asked, by a very young reporter, how long it takes to make something if you start by spinning the yarn. There are of course 2 answers to the question. There is the answer in hours, and there is the answer in years. Interestingly, these 2 answers do not work out to the same amount of time.

Case in point: I have finally finished my purple sweater set. Upon our third summer together, my friend Rachel looked at me working at my spinning wheel and said "Isn't that the yarn you've been spinning the entire time I've known you?" Lucky for her, I wasn't at a good point to let go and throw my niddy noddy at her.

How many hours did this set take? Well, I started with white roving: 2 pounds of wool and 9 ounces of silk. I spent a day dying the wool in 4 separate shades of purple and painting the silk in the 4 shades sequentially. The most time consuming part was that I then hand carded the 4 shades of wool into heathered rolags before spinning them. The combination of carding and spinning may have taken as much as 200 hours. It felt like longer. Then I knit 2 sweaters, that probably took about 100 hours (these are hugely estimated numbers). I think I spent about 10 hours making the lovely dorset buttons. So all told that would be 310 hours and a day.

How many years did this sweater set take? Well, as best as I can remember I started in the summer of 2002 or 2003 when I bought the wool in Delphi NY. I finished this past June. That's 7 or 8 years to complete a sweater set. Over those years I had 3 different "school year" jobs. We went through 4 costume directors at the Opera. I lived in 4 different cities/towns, had 4 apartments, got married, and bought a house. That's way more than 310 hours and a day.

After finishing in June, I figured I would put the set away until December, but we had such a weird summer that I wore it on July 1st and was quite happy to have it. Since that day it's been over 80 every day.

There have, of course been other projects during that time. In fact, anything on this blog or on my Ravelry page was made during that time. Plus there's all the other hobbies.

I love when my very different interests in some way intersect, overlap, or inform each other. Like how the garden feeds the rabbits and the rabbits supply the compost that feeds the garden. And the spent grains from brewing feed the compost feeds the hop vine makes beer. Or when Queen sings about relativistic time dilation. Or how when a math/science student takes costume construction I can point out that the balance points on a sleeve head are the 2 points on the curve where the second derivative equals zero. And now I have a new one: a knitted beer label. This goes way past drinking and reading while knitting for relevant hobby interaction. Check it out:

I'm quite pleased with the result, although I had to save it from an unfortunate earlier stage where the lemon looked like a cupcake. Some of my labels fall flat, but I've made a few in the past year or so that I'm really pleased with. The beer was good too.

I've Finally Done It

2010-07-30T14:19:00.004-04:00

After years of planning and writing patterns down and then chickening out, I've finally put up a group of patterns for sale on the internet. Anyone can now knit or crochet a recycled t-shirt rug just like the ones I sell on Etsy and use in my home. You can buy one through the Etsy link in the left side bar, or through Ravelry by clicking this button: Why all the hesitation and procrastination? Well, I hate selling stuff. I still remember everyone who yelled at me when I worked retail, and that was selling stuff whose workmanship or undiscovered mistakes were not my responsibility. Now I'm putting stuff out there that I made. I am now directly responsible to the buyer. The biggest thing that gives me pause about all of this is that I know that some women can be really nasty, especially about buying things and especially about a perceived slight. There are women out there who will try to take down a dyer's entire business because they bought 2 different hand dyed rovings and felt they weren't a close enough match. I don't need that. I'm not sure what's wrong with us as a gender. It seems like a man who felt he hadn't gotten what he paid for would yell once, or punch once, or (in the case of the internet) post one angry comment, and then forget about it and go on with his life. Whereas a woman who feels cheated, at least one of the nastier ones, can spend weeks, months, or years stewing in that emotion and actively working to take down someone's entire business or even their life.
This idea isn't new to me. Look at all the stories of teenage girls whose boyfriend was "stolen." Read "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett. No really, go read it. It's a great book. I'll wait here.

* * * * *

That one shows that it's especially bad to cross a rich white southern woman with nothing else to do.

So how did I finally overcome all this adversity and post the damn pattern? Well, I've now sold 8 handmade items on etsy and no one has demanded a refund. Over 30 people have knit the 2 free patterns I posted here on the blog and linked to from Ravelry. A few have asked me questions and all seemed to be able to finish successfully with the answers. One found a mistake in the pattern and pointed it out in the nicest way possible. No one died. No one even yelled at me. I hate being yelled at by strangers.

So I've taken the plunge. Four people have already marked the pattern as a favorite on Ravelry and 5 have viewed it on Etsy. We'll see if anyone buys.

Injured

2010-07-21T12:28:00.003-04:00

I work with my hands. My work is delicate, requires great precision, and is often repetitive. Sometimes I spend all of a 12 hour day standing at my cutting table (well, all but lunch, dinner, and breaks). I have known other costume technicians who have gotten repetitive stress injuries like carpal tunnel or series back problems. I've always made an effort to pay attention to my posture when I work, to switch hands when I can, and to change tasks as much as possible throughout the day because I dread these injuries and the possibility that a serious one could take me away frommy work forever.

So what injury has kept me from typing for 2 months, seriously curtailed my work for a month, and *gasp* kept me from knitting?

Sitting at a damn desk.

I thought sitting down for spells in between the standing to pattern, cut, and teach would only benefit. Little did I know that after 17 years of making costumes it would be managing a shop and spending time at my desk creating class materials, doing committee work, and sending and replying to emails that would finally injure me.

It took the whole summer and lots of careful stretching, but I am fine now. I can knit again, and garden, and type or mouse on my laptop.

Then I went into school yesterday to begin prep for the coming year, sat at my desk for maybe a half hour to make sure all my files had been transferred to my new computer, and replied to maybe 3 emails, and pain shot up my arm.

I won't go back again without the new office chair Chris got for me. The adjust-ability should help as I've been using a straight back wooden chair at my desk for the last 2 years. The desk does not seem to adjust heights so I need to focus on adjusting the chair.

If anyone out there knows something about office ergonomics and what position I should be in at a desk, please send me a link!

This Is Why You Haven't Seen Me For the Last Two Weeks

2010-04-26T09:50:00.003-04:00

I've been working overtime for the last two weeks getting the spring dance concert on it's feet. As you may remember, I make all the costumes for Buff State theater and dance productions. Much of this concert is designed by our faculty designer, but you'll see 2 student costume designers as well. There are over 20 students dancing in 7 pieces by 4 choreographers, and man is it fun! I mean, did you know Miles Davis recorded some funk in the 70's? I had no idea. If you're in the area please come see the show; it's well worth it! As you can see from the poster performances are this week, Wednesday through Saturday evening, with one matinee on Saturday. The ticket number is there along the side. Prices are really reasonable and there is a student rate (with proper i.d.)

Come see what I do all day!

Even Tough Guys Love Bunnies

2010-04-16T13:23:00.002-04:00

Planting Hops For Homegrown Beer

2010-03-28T09:57:00.004-04:00

So here's what I wanted to post about my hops:

Hops are not the main ingredient in beer. They're a spice that gives beer the high sharp bitterness that is a feature of styles like India Pale Ale. Hops don't go as far back in brewing history as water, malt, and yeast do. In fact other spices were used earlier, and still are used by homebrewers and breweries. Hops do have a preservative effect, which is why India Pale Ale, which had to last through a long slow ship ride from England to India, is so much more heavily hopped than most other styles.

This is a hop rhizome of the fuggles variety. Fuggles seemed like a good place to start as it is most common in English Ales and is featured in my annual Great Pumpkin Ale. As you can see, I do everything by the book.

Chris did the heavy work of pounding 5 ft stakes into the ground to support the trellis. Here he's mounting the trellis to the stakes.

I made a hill in front of the trellis and dug a 6" trench down the middle of it (like the book illustration shows), but then I departed from any instructions I've read to add the secret ingredient we add for any new plant, be it plant, root, or seed. We have 3 rabbits working night and day to make this ideal fertilizer. Unlike other manures, it can be added directly to the garden without composting first, so I gathered some up and mixed it into the bottom of the trench.

The root in the trench, new growth pointing more or less up.

The hill covered up again. Grow little hops, grow! Hop vines can get 30 feet long by harvest time, so I'm sure I'll be running twine from the top of our beautiful trellis up to the chimney by July or August, and then doing some of my harvesting from the porch roof.

My Friend Lisa Does Everything First*

2010-03-28T09:42:00.003-04:00

A week and a half ago I went to my local homebrew store and ordered a hop rhizome. Then I went to the garden store and bought a trellis. My plan was to spend this weekend installing the trellis and then plant the rhizome as soon as I got it, taking lots of pictures so I could have a record of the first days of this large perennial vine for my sake, and so that I could blog about it.

I got a call on Friday that the rhizome was in, so I could pick it up, put up the trellis, and plant the hops on Saturday, just in time for today's predicted rain.

I woke up before Chris on Saturday morning, so I pulled the laptop into bed with me and went to the blog I always read first, to find that Lisa and Robb just planted their hop vine, and blogged about it on Friday.

Lisa and Robb also bought their house a few months before we did, and put their garden in starting in December, and are about to raise honey bees, which I'd love to do but can't because of a seriously allergic family member. She also started brewing beer a few years before I did.

Man, it's a good thing I like her so much!

*For this rant to work, please ignore the fact that Lisa is older than I am, so is not necessarily doing these things at an earlier stage of her life, and also ignore the fact that Oakland California's growing season starts just a bit earlier than Buffalo New York's. Do go look at her blog, it's great!

Happy Family Rainbow Array

2010-03-26T13:14:00.006-04:00

Last month, we had a great time at Raveloe celebrating Chinese new year with the annual Happy Family party. We had great Chinese food which I ate too fast to photograph.

As in other years, we layered fiber, rolled it up like a jelly roll, and cut/ripped it into sections for each of us to take home.

This year we began with the fibers we brought, and then layered Linda's offerings in rainbow order.

I love the way the striation shows at the edges:

This year Linda offered the use of her shop's wildcarder to run the results through in order to make a slightly smoother preparation than previous years. She has challenged us to spin and knit socks with this year's fiber, so a smoother preparations will be great for a less "novel" yarn appropriate for socks.

I made a lumpy singles last time, this year I may ply the yarn either with itself or with a solid like black. Most likely I won't know until I spin and knit some samples.

Signs of Spring

2010-03-13T22:45:00.004-05:00

The snow has only just receded, and already we see this:

Every year it is the emerging snow drops that re-assure me that I have truly gotten through another winter without killing myself. Yes, there is a future, and life will return, as will sun and outdoor parties and grilling and homegrown vegetables. The date of Christmas was chosen to supplant a pagan holiday, but how wonderful that the resurrection really did occur in spring. I'm not sure if this is particularly relevant in the holy land (now that I have a passport maybe I can go find out) but man is it significant here!

The receding snow has also uncovered our compost pile in all it's glory.

Given that it has probably spent most of the winter frozen, this is as big as it's been. I keep reading up on compost, but was never convinced that mine was creating the heat I had read about. Well, turning it in 40 degree weather released steam! I am totally in love with my compost pile. In it I see the future. Future rich soil and better healthier veggies from our garden. I think a lot of other people see a giant pile of rabbit turds. I don't mind though, in addition to kitchen scraps and garden waste we've had 3 rabbits working hard all winter to improve our crappy clay soil. And apparently the wild rabbits have been reading gardening books, as they've left quite a lot of their own fertilizer around our loan cultivated rose bush.

Romance

2010-03-01T22:14:00.003-05:00

This is the most romantic poem ever written by author Tim Pratt. I wish I had written it, especially the verse about time dilation. I think I would replace the verse about Zombies with one about Chris's promise to me that if I'm ever turned into a vampire he will stake me, thus saving my soul. Just ask him, it's up there with whether or not I would want a feeding tube.

Speaking of Chris, he lost an interesting wager last night over the gold medal hockey game. He is now obligated to take a Canadian friend to dinner here in the US, but must do so wearing a team Canada jersey.

Winter Wonderland

2010-01-12T18:00:00.006-05:00

Thanks to Christmas money I finally have a new camera. It has way more functions than I've had in the past, so I'll have to spend some quality time with the manual, but even without intensive study, I can take some beautiful pictures.

And let me say, it has been beautiful here lately!

This is the view out our kitchen window:

And out the living room window:

Chris has begun converting most of our backyard into a Japanese style garden. We stained the existing fence and porch (both had been left unfinished) in a color combination inspired by pictures of Japanese interiors and gardens. I absolutely love how those colors and forms look with the pine trees and the artfully applied layer of snow. Under the snow is a kidney shaped area of colored stones and a few areas of plantings, all bordered by large stones or small bricks. It's already a great place to sit around our raised fire pit, and we'll keep adding to it each summer. I plan to install an arbor or trellis in the flower bed just beyond the porch for a hop vine. The hops will be surrounded by the odd combination of roses and yuccas.

California, eat your heart out!

Obscurity in the age of the internet

2010-01-03T10:16:00.004-05:00

Every so often I check out how much the internet knows about me by typing my name into a google search. I haven't done this in years, in fact not since getting married and changing my name. For some reason I woke up this morning with the burning desire to find out what the internet says about me--whether I'm living a public or private life. Apparently, I've kept pretty private under my new name, because I found almost nothing about me. In the first half dozen or so pages, Google images only had one image, the watch cap pattern available on this site, and the only web result was a link to my bio at the college for which I work.

Here are the impostors using my name on the internet:

a porn actress from Hungary for whom this is most likely a stage name
a brush fire in Australia
a series of skateboard designs
a woman spinning fire (i.e. burning stuff twirling at the ends of chains)
and a lovely South African flowering heather

I'm not sure whether I'm disappointed or relieved to not have shown up on rate my professors yet.

You can lead a horse to water...

2009-11-08T23:02:00.003-05:00

A good friend just had surgery at our local cancer hospital and research facility, Roswell Park. When we went to visit her, we parked on a street facing the hospital, looking directly at a huge entrance with the words "Roswell Park Cancer Institute" in an arch above it. An employee (still wearing his id tag) was coming out of the hospital towards his car parked in front of us. He was perfectly framed by the words "Roswell Park Cancer Institute." In his mouth? A cigarrette.

He lit it as soon as he got into his car.

And we didn't have our camera.

Messing Up At Work

2009-10-07T22:43:00.003-04:00

I am so glad that when I make a mistake at work it does not make the news. Here in Buffalo we’ve had 2 recent, very prominent work mistakes.

The first mistake was in one of the first Buffalo Bills football games of the season. I won’t even try to explain in detail, as my attempt to describe football plays is equivalent to the folks who see me spinning on my wheel at events and say to their children, “Look what she’s weaving,” or the people who explain the Devil’s Hole with, “gravity sticks you to the wall.” Instead, I will just say that it was the end of the game, the Bills were in the lead, and this player made a choice that allowed the opposing team to win. Most of the people I’ve heard talking about it believe that the choice he made was not what he was coached to do. Two local teenagers decided to express their dissatisfaction with his final play by vandalizing his lawn with a word that cannot be said on the radio.

This week, a prisoner briefly escaped from the holding center. Apparently he got out through a roof access hatch that was supposed to be locked. The guard who was responsible for locking it and checking it has been suspended.

Both incidents made the news for multiple days.

It seems to me that the football screw up was pretty minor—an error in judgement at the worst possible point in the game. No one was hurt, and he has been kind enough not to press charges against the lawn vandals. The jail screw up had huge repercussions, including a (thankfully) successful manhunt for an escaped prisoner who was deemed dangerous. Of course this one was a serious mistake, but honestly, I can’t count how many times I’ve left the iron on when leaving a costume shop at night, and I know I forgot to lock the door at least once. I wouldn’t even think of those things when trying to list ways that I’ve screwed up at my job. Thank goodness I’m not a prison guard.

My biggest mistakes in my job, as far as I can remember:

1. I accidentally shattered all the buttons down the front of a jacket with a hammer. Really, this was an accident, I was using a hammer and die on another kind of closure behind the buttons and didn’t notice until each and every one was in pieces.

2. I scraped an opera singer’s leg with a safety pin, drawing some blood. She was really gracious about it.

3. I cut the short wide man’s vest out of the fabric meant for the tall thin man’s vest. This one really sucked, because they were both intricately patterned fabrics, and not only had I taken the time to match the center fronts, facings, and pocket flaps when I cut the wrong one, but I had to figure out how to do it again with the scraps to cut the correct vest. I managed to fix it without having to declare what I had done wrong, or ask for more of the expensive fabric, but when I admitted to this months later, my co-workers told me that I had acted really squirrelly that day but they couldn’t figure out why.

4. I made my stitcher Larisa spend a full day beautifully pin-tucking the yoke of a Victorian nightgown, only to be reminded in the fitting by the designer that it was supposed to be made out of a piece of ready made lace fabric, no pin-tucking required.

5. In my very first costume shop internship, after declaring my great math skills, I miscalculated the length of fabric I needed to pleat and had to go back to the first hand and tell her it was too short. I thought it was the end of the world; she told me to figure out how much more was needed and make sure the seam was hidden behind a pleat.

6. I can’t even count how many times I have accidentally snipped a hole in a garment or myself.

7. My hands are covered in tiny scares, either from the aforementioned snips or from iron burns.

8. Neither can I count how many times I have bled on a costume.

9. In my first job, as a wardrobe mistress, I almost never got all the girls completely closed into their dresses during their quick change. In my defense, I was 17 and completely untrained. However, I am still complete crap at wardrobe.

10. Also in that first job, I put a rosary through the wash. If I was Catholic this would be a much bigger worry for me.

11. I flooded my shop and the downstairs hallway of the building it is in 3 times, thanks to a faulty washing machine. The first time was after 7pm on a Friday, and I had to call the after hours maintenance guys to come clean up after my mistake. It’s super embarrassing for your students to see you shop-vac-ing up a giant puddle you created. It’s also a lot harder to remain scary and intimidating to them after that.

12. I altered a suit coat in a crappy manner, and made it too tight.

13. I distracted and interrupted Wendy Wasserstein during the dress rehearsal of the first and only opera for which she wrote the libretto. When she turned towards me, and I realized my mistake, I blurted out "I'm sorry, I thought you were someone else," and scampered off into the dark again.

None of these made the news. None of them caused a death or an emergency, and only one resulted in injury. Many of them have led to really great learning experiences. I don’t think anyone I’ve worked with would disagree that I’m really good at reweaving holes in fabric. Most were made by moths or cigarettes, but a few were made by me.

I’m thankful every day that my mistakes at work are private, and most can be fixed with a seam ripper, new buttons, or a needle and thread. I can’t imagine what it’s like for surgeons, whose mistakes could end in a loss of life.

I’m also glad that my work mistakes aren’t open to the criticism of every arm chair quarterback in Buffalo. The last thing I need is a bunch of guys who can’t thread a needle discussion at length how I should have chosen a double dart instead of a single, or how the sleeve isn’t hung quite right.

Update

2009-09-21T20:47:00.002-04:00

My appologies for the lack of recent knitting posts. You see, my digital camera went digital kaput a little while ago, and what with being about to make the largest single purchase of our lives, I can't really justify a new one until we've written all those checks for the house. I may need to practice writing so many words in the written quantity line of a check so that I am ready to do it on the day.

Here are a few pictures taken when we first moved in back in the spring:

We expect to close in mid-October, so I finally feel safe posting pictures and saying that, "Oh yes, it will be ours."

Since the photos were taken, we've completely removed the chain link fence closing in the side yard, painted the garage, patched the roof, and done various inside repairs. We're beginning to create the Japanese inspired backyard Chris has envisioned and we've done a lot more planting, including some glorious sunflowers Chris has planted throughout the property.

I will try to scan some knitting to share soon.

About Grandpa

2009-09-16T19:02:00.001-04:00

Recently my grandfather died. He succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease. I don’t usually use this blog for highly personal writing but there are some memories of my grandfather that I would like to share in a more public way.

Grandpa was 92 years old when he died. He grew up in the small town of Seymour Indiana, a town with a full page of Stuckwisches in their phone book. His family, like my other 3 grandparents’ families, were farmers. At that time, farm kids only went to school through the 8^th grade, after that they were needed on the farm. My grandfather became the first person in his family to go to high school. Not only did he earn the first high school diploma in his family, he also went on to college, graduate school, and a PhD in chemistry. Grandpa began the family tradition of paying for his children’s bachelor’s degrees completely, with the understanding that the kids would take over the cost of their education beyond their bachelor’s. My father always referred to this as “the only trickledown theory that works.” Two of grandpa’s children have also earned doctorates, and I am one of the few members of our family with only a bachelor’s degree.

Grandpa used to joke that he had to go away to college in order to meet a woman he wasn’t related to. My grandmother grew up in Blairstown Iowa. She wanted to go to college, but her father believed that there were only 3 reasons to go to college: to become a minister, to become a doctor, or to become a teacher. At that time the Lutheran church did not ordain women, and my great grandfather apparently didn’t believe women could/should become doctors, so grandma became a teacher. If you google our last name, you will find many teachers. Many Stuckwisches are listed on elementary school, high school and university websites as teachers and staff.

Our first relative in this country in the Stuckwisch line came to escape German conscription. The story that has been passed down to me is that he knew someone who worked on the boat coming here, and that person helped him to hide in a pickle barrel, at least until the ship was beyond turning back. What no one in the family can tell me is whether or not there were still pickles in the barrel. No one else thought this an important enough part of the story to pass down. My father and both of his brothers were able to avoid Vietnam: my dad by becoming a teacher (an exempt profession), my uncle Steve due to a minor medical exemption, and according to the other two, David got out because he was lucky. His birthday was one of the last in the lottery. Also according to Dad and Steve, David was always Grandma’s favorite. As you can see, for the most part I come from a long line of draft dodgers. Even so, Grandpa tried to enlist in the air force during WWII. When they found out that he had a chemistry degree, they told him they didn’t want him, that he would do the war effort more good by finishing his doctorate in Chemistry and working here. He did work for Kodak during the war which he was not allowed to discuss at the time. We found out later that he worked on aerial color photography for Allied planes.

From Kodak my grandfather moved on to the academic world. As a chemistry professor, he worked at several universities and moved the family around the country a few times, which is probably part of why my aunts and uncles are scattered all over the US. He finally retired from a position as provost and executive vice president of the University of Miami in Florida. After retirement, he still preferred to live in university towns and hang around the universities there as much as they would let him.

About 10 years ago Grandpa moved back to the town of his birth and renewed an old friendship with a woman named Elsie. They had grown up together, and at one time Elsie and her late husband had double dated with Grandpa and Grandma. When we visited, Elsie would come with us to get Chinese food, which she loved but her own family didn’t much care for. At some point folks around town began to talk, possibly because there were other widows who “had their caps set” for Grandpa. I remember Grandpa’s frustration when he declared “We’re not fornicating, so it’s none of their business!” I privately thought that it still wouldn’t be their business even if fornication were involved.

By contrast, my maternal grandmother, who had a very similar upbringing, stayed in the house she moved into when she married my grandfather, in a small town here in western New York. Grandma DeVantier had been willing to buck social norms when she was young and newly married. In her small German Lutheran town families sat together in church on Sundays. When she moved with her husband to his neighboring small German Lutheran town, she discovered that they still sat with all the men on one side of the church, and all the women on the other. Apparently she integrated the church by sitting with her husband. I was so proud when I first heard that story. By the time that I knew her, Grandma DeVantier had become much more concerned about what the neighbors would think, and whether the other teenage girls were wearing clothing just as weird and outrageous as I was. Apparently if I was at least one of a crowd wearing a fashion she found ridiculous, it wouldn’t be so bad.

In February of ’08 Studio Arena Theater closed its doors and I lost my job. I went to Washington DC for 10 weeks of work and then to my recurring job at the Glimmerglass Opera. Those jobs held off unemployment for 5 months, and thank God I happened to be married to a guy with health insurance, but after Glimmerglass, in the fall of ’08 I had nothing lined up. A friend told me that a suitable position would be opening up at Buffalo State College, and I began to contemplate a major life change: I could continue freelancing around the country in professional theatre, affording me little time with my husband to whom I had been married for less than a year, or I could make a switch from professional theatre to academic theater. This would be a big change, and there were lots of things to take into consideration, but I couldn’t help but think about the contrast between the 2 grandparents I knew the best, Grandma DeVantier and Grandpa Stuckwisch. Grandma had stayed in a small community. The young people she knew were family members, and as she grew older she was not challenged to go beyond her comfort zone or continue to interact with young adults. Grandpa had lived the life of a college professor, actively pursuing new knowledge and new research and interacting with many, many young adults over the years. I see in myself the tendency to become set in my ways, and finally a bit afraid of change or new ideas, and I didn’t want that. Grandma DeVantier, whom I loved dearly, was clearly concerned the first time she saw the Simpsons, a show the rest of the family loved, including our family members who had also stayed in their small German Lutheran town. I remember around the same time watching a Monty Python marathon on TV with my brother Wade. Grandpa was visiting us and came into the room to see something that I’m sure would have scandalized Grandma DeVantier. Grandpa just commented, “Those guys are wacky, aren’t they?” and moved on.

As I contemplated embarking on a new life in a college community, I knew I wanted to hang on to that mental flexibility that I saw in Grandpa. I wanted to continue to pursue new knowledge and understanding, to appreciate new ideas, new comedy, and things that were intended to be shocking, without pulling back into myself, resisting, and withdrawing into a long established comfort zone. Grandpa was one part of why I made the choice to move into academic theater, which puts me very far outside my comfort zone, at least to begin with. I want to benefit in the same ways that he did, and retain the same mental youth and flexibility that I think he could at least partially attribute to life in a college community.

Sew A Mile In Our Shoes

2009-07-16T19:03:00.008-04:00

La Traviata is in it's final orchestra dress rehearsal tonight. Glimmerglass has a tradition of putting full sets, costumes, and lights on stage much earlier in the process than most opera or theatre companies would. The advantage of this is that the designers can continue to refine their work to a much higher level and designers and director can better take inspiration from each other's work and react to it. From a costume point of view it also gives us even more time to custom fit the costumes we make for the singers.

The disadvantage to this schedule for us in the shop is that we have about half the "standard" amount of time from the point at which we do a first mock-up fitting to the point when we need to put a wearable costume on stage. This year we did that in about a week and a half instead of the customary four weeks. So we find ourselves needing to make design and fit changes to garments we're still scrambling to finish. The challenge is to continue to work to Glimmerglass's high standards while making these deadlines.

One of the most time consuming costume details my team has created this summer is a skirt made of layers and layers of tulle, covered in tiers of tulle ruffles. (If you've forgotten, tulle is a soft net, most available in nylon.)

The numbers involved in this project (and remember they all translate to many hours of labor) are truly impressive. The inner layers which support the skirt include 8 layers of tulle, each of them 10 yards (30 feet) around. That took most of a 50 yard bolt of tulle. The ruffles are gathered onto a tulle base. In most fabrics a ruffle twice as long as the base to which it's sewn would look plenty full. Tulle has an amazing ability to gather, so a traditional 2:1 fullness looks less than skimpy. We ended up using a double layer of tulle for the ruffle, and gathering it 8:1 at the bottom, slightly less as the layers move up the skirt.

I cut the tiers by neatly wrapping the full yardage around a long cardboard card. Then I cut the correct tier depths through all the thicknesses with a rotary cutter. This probably saved hours of time over marking and cutting 13" from the bottom edge of 40 yards of net, then going back and doing it again for each of the rest of the 5 tiers.

The cardboard in the middle definitely made this process easier.

As mentioned, the tiers get fuller as they go down the skirt, which you can see by the varying thicknesses of the wound and cut net. The topmost ruffle is on the left, the bottom on the right.

At least a half dozen costume technicians worked to gather, pin, and sew the tiers down to their base.

The finished skirt includes 220 yards of ruffle, all cut, gathered, and assembled in just a few days. That's on top of the 80 yards of tulle that hold the skirt out in its full shape. The hem underneath the bottom ruffle is held out to a circumference of over 3 yards by all of that tulle. I'm quite pleased with the final results, and my fantastic team!

3 Steps Forward, 2 Steps Back

2009-07-16T17:39:00.003-04:00

It's been very busy here at the opera, but I have had at least a little knitting time. I've finally finished spinning the purple yarn I've been making for as long as Rachel has known me (she so kindly pointed out this summer) and have started knitting it into a sweater set. I often make my own patterns, which certainly carries it's own satisfaction, especially for those of us picky about fit, but for this set I had planned to use a pattern I already own in a 1950 knitting pamphlet. I think I had intended to spin the yarn to match the gauge given in the pattern (not sure, as my intention dates to about 2006) but while all of the balls of yarn are fairly consistent* with each other, they are not, in fact, the right grist for this pattern. So I had to do a very small rewrite of the existing pattern to match my actual gauge. Still faster and easier than writing the whole pattern, right?

This is how far I got under that plan:

Knitting in the round affords lots of chances to try on a garment as it's being constructed, and correct errors well before the end. This was my try-0n point, the point at which I instantly regretted second guessing my original instinct to knit 5" of ribbing. The pattern (authentic 1950 you recall) only called for 3" of ribbing, and although I knew better, I deferred to the pattern at 3" because I was sick of knitting 1x1 rib. Also, the body increases were too close together and the body itself a bit looser than I had hoped for (or indeed than they appeared on the model).

So instead of keeping 8" of the wrong thing, finishing it and hating it forever, I ripped out 5" of body back to the original 3" of ribbing.

Discouraging to do, but from this point I knit the additional 2" of ribbing I should have started with, and reworked the body shape and size to something much more flattering. At this point I've rewritten the pattern extensively, almost equivalent to just writing my own in the first place. Almost. I'm still trying to mimic the look and shaping of the original, but fit my non-1950-model-body.

* As a point of fact, I am incredibly proud of how consistent my grist is on 2 1/2 pounds of fine yarn spun here and there over a 3 year period.

A Recent Bit of Clarity From My Husband

2009-03-23T13:57:00.002-04:00

"Frat boys are just rednecks who can't fix cars."

Look Ma, I Made a Wort Chiller

2009-03-01T18:32:00.003-05:00

I can't help but do it myself. I don't know what in my life brought me to this point; I'm sure some of it is German frugality, but if I can figure out how to make something instead of buy it, and it will save me a few bucks to do so, you better believe I'll make it. I already make my own beer, but I've been lusting after a wort chiller for a while now. For those who don't brew, a wort chiller is a means of quickly cooling boiling wort (beer before the addition of yeast and therefore alcohol) to a temperature of about 75* F. This needs to happen quickly because the wort is designed to be an attractive food source for yeast, and is therefore also an attractive food source for every other microorganism in the house. So as soon as it's cool enough one needs to inoculate the wort with the beer yeast so it can out compete any other microorganism that's looking for a free ride.

Right now wort chillers are selling for $60-$120 in the store, and I just haven't felt I had the capital to spend on one, but a few weeks ago I was thinking about it again, so I grabbed a brewing book with instructions for making one and tagged along to the hardware store. I meant just to price the materials, but when I saw that I could make my own wort chiller for about $35, and we had a 10% off coupon, I was sold.

It took $35, a screwdriver, and 20 minutes, and behold:
Up until this point I've used the fairly cheap method of setting the pot of boiling wort into a sink full of cold water and changing the water every few minutes. This take 30 minutes to an hour to cool from over 200*F down to 75*-80*F. I figured a wort chiller would make that just a little faster. Boy was I thrilled when I used it last weekend and discovered it only takes about 10-15 minutes! I was almost resentful of not having enough time to clean up while cooling my wort. Almost.

Instead of placing the brew pot into a sink full of cold water, now I set the copper coils of the wort chiller down into the brew pot for the last 15 minutes of the boil (to sterilize it). Then I just remove the pot from the heat, hook up one end of the wort chiller to the faucet, make sure the other end is set to drain into the sink, and turn on the cold water. Brilliant! I wish I had made this thing 2 years ago!

Sometimes I find human beings incredibly disappointing

2009-02-11T22:14:00.002-05:00

Before I begin today's rant, please read this press release: SPCA Rescues 100+ Animals From Buffalo Apartment. Go ahead and read the whole thing, take some time looking at the pictures. I'll wait right here until you're ready.

Read it? OK good. Here goes: I adopted my rabbits from that SPCA. As far as I can tell, they were part of this rescue in July. Make sure that you look at the pictures. After adopting, I began volunteering at the SPCA to do as much as I could for the rabbits waiting for adoption and for the families who might wish to adopt them. There is space at that particular location for about 8 rabbits, and although a few get adopted each week, and most wait only a month or less to be adopted, there is never an empty cage. As soon as rabbits get adopted out there are more to take their place. Many of the rabbits that come in in such big groups are fostered in volunteer's homes until there is room for them at one of the shelters. There is no lack of really nice bunnies who need good homes.

Neither of the cases I've linked to seem to be issues of active abuse, they both seem to be cases of extreme neglect. How on earth could anyone live with animals every day who were this sick because they weren't being fed, because they were packed in too close and fought each other tooth and nail, and/or because they needed vet treatment they weren't getting? How can a human being allow animals to suffer like this, right in front of them? I have seen rescued rabbits with their ears chewed off because they were stuffed into a cage with lots of other rabbits, none of them neutered, and little or no food. At that point, it's a fight to the death. In some of the cases I've read about nationally, rescuers came on the scene to discover a number of dead animals in amongst the living, or they rescued animals who were so sick and so close to death it was deemed most humane to euthanize them as soon as they were rescued.

Again, what human being can do this? What part of them is so fundamentally broken that they can blind themselve to thier animals' suffering? The couple being charged in the first story I linked to have been quoted in the news as saying that they hadn't done anything wrong. Did you look at the pictures?! WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THESE ASSHOLES?!?!?!?!?!?! I'm sorry Mom, but I can't express my feelings on this without the cursing. And now these poor animals have a long road to recovery as they get medical treatment and wait to be given the chance to be adopted into new homes. I'm still spending time each Thursday night with rabbits who came in as part of that rescue in July. I'm also seeing rabbits who were born in the shelter because their pregnant mothers were rescued in July. And now we have more rescued bunnies who did nothing to deserve their crappy circumstances.

I love volunteering for the SPCA. I have a great time playing with the rabbits every week, getting to know their personalities, and getting them to open up to human contact. My visits with them are also intended to help them combat the stress of being in the shelter, which is not the easiest situation for a rabbit. I've only been able to get one rabbit adopted out since I started, but I could tell that he went to a great home. The mother and son who adopted him came back to buy him more food and hay and said "hi" to me, and told me what a good time they were having with him. I'm so glad I could be a little part in making an improvement, but it feels overwhelming when I compare getting one bunny adopted over the course of 3 months with an influx of dozens of miserable abused rabbits who all need decent homes.

I will not give up. I really enjoy the rabbits at the shelter, and it's amazing how sweet a rabbit can be, even after horrendous treatment. So I will continue to volunteer. Although I got Rusty, the best bunny in the world, from a breeder, I can't imagine ever getting a rabbit from a breeder again so long as there are so many rabbits in the shelter who need homes, and so many more waiting to take their places. I will continue to donate to both the National House Rabbit Society and the New York State House Rabbit society. I will continue to buy my rabbits' food and supplies from the Eerie County SPCA, to donate my time, and to donate money whenever I can. I will continue to introduce friends and family to our rabbits, and to work toward educating responsible pet owners about the joys of rabbit ownership. Rusty was so awesome that our vet used to introduce him to anyone who came in and thought that they didn't like rabbits, or weren't interested in them. She called him "The Bunny Ambassador" and would let them offer him a treat so that he would run right up to them and let them pet him. He just loved it at the vet's, which was great considering how much he was there!

If you're looking for a pet, please check your local shelter, there are lots of wonderful animals looking for homes. If you're looking for a rabbit, check your shelter and your local chapter of the House Rabbit Society, and if you have the means, please make a donation to any of the organizations I've linked to, and buy a rabbit a little time.

A Word About The Future

2009-02-08T15:08:00.005-05:00

Lately, I’ve been downloading some classic science fiction from Audible. I finished “The Robots of Dawn,” by Isaac Asimov and am more than half way through “Player Piano,” by Kurt Vonnegut. Both stories were written in the mid-twentieth century and set in the future. Vonnegut’s is in a near future that could be now, and Asimov’s is in a far flung future in which humans have colonized multiple planets and built “humaniform” robots who can do much of the hardest work and are kept in check by the three laws of robotics.

Asimov predicts a world with interstellar flight, advanced robots, and sexual morays vastly different from those of mid-twentieth century earth. Vonnegut predicts a much closer world in which efficient machines have taken over most human jobs, so that only the very intelligent are employed as engineers and managers, only a tiny proportion of the population has the chance to go to college, and even secretaries and barbers need a PhD to be qualified for their jobs. Everyone else must join the army or work on a road crew and settle for government pay.

The thing that amazes/annoys me is that neither one of them, in all their intelligence and imaginative capacity, conceived of a future world in which women could fill roles beyond wife/lover, secretary, or homemaker. There are no women taking significant roles in the work force or in the course of history in either novel. Are the 1950’s really so far away? Both these men were very intelligent, but boy did they get it wrong about human potential. I mean, I don’t have a single robot to my name, but I’ve had a significant job since finishing college. My family relies on my income just as much as my husband’s. In fact, I’ve been gainfully employed in my field since before finishing high school. I also have a high (erroneously labeled as “genius level”) IQ and a physics degree, both of which would have placed me in a desirable position in the world of either book. But no, women figure in both books as objects of attraction for the main characters, secretaries, or wives whose sole function seems to be party attendance and social climbing. In Player Piano, most housework is finished in seconds by automated machines, but still the women do not work. Yes, most of the populous is underemployed in this story, but the men are still sent out to do something.

I’m hoping that both authors changed their minds over the course of the next fifty years. Both lived long lives but are now dead, so I’ll have to take this up with them in the after life. (Both were secular humanists, so I’m not sure we’ll actually be able to contact each other in the after life. Maybe there are day passes to other eternities?) I won’t stop reading their books, but I sure do find science fiction stories written by women to be a relief after this stuff!

I've done it!

2009-02-07T21:06:00.003-05:00

After about a year of procrastination, I've actually listed stuff for sale in my etsy shop. I don't know why I've put this off except for an irrational fear of buyer dissatisfaction, or people arguing with me about whether I deserve a living wage for my time. But enough griping! You can check out my shop here. I'm still adding to it, and will hopefully continue to replenish once I see how each category of item sells. I can't allow myself to do any more etsy knitting until I finish Mom's incredibly late birthday socks. I do however have a large stash of tee shirts I can make into rugs if other people like them as much as I do!

Also please check out my friend Margaret's shop and make her rich, and friend Emily's shop which includes some amazing resin pendants.

As for Mom's socks, they are much further along, and I hope to either interest Knitty in them or sell the pattern in my etsy shop.

Knitting Slump

2009-02-01T14:55:00.006-05:00

Now that it is over I will admit, I have been in a knitting slump. This is the first time this has ever happened to me. I'm usually thrilled to to be knitting a project from start to finish, while thinking about and planning the next, and maybe spinning for something still 3 or 4 projects away. I spend time knitting every day. At some point in August, my enthusiasm crashed. Multiple days went by in which I didn't knit. Not one stitch. I had no idea what the next project would be. I had a friend with a baby coming, but kept putting off choosing a pattern and buying yarn.

I'm not sure how the slump happened, but I think that this was a factor:

Although this sweater is actually finished, I'm dissatisfied with the results and therefore never took a finished photo. There are things I need to change about the fit, and honestly, it may just not be the right sweater to make with this yarn. The other problems are fixable with some fitting, pinning, and re-calculating, culminating in ripping out most of the sweater. Frustrating. Disheartening.

Then I started the baby clothes. Now, the pattern is super-cute, but somehow knitting it was less than satisfying. I blame this almost entirely on my state of mind going into the process, not on Debbie Bliss's cute pattern. However, for me there are several things about this pattern that are my less favorite things in knitting: flat knitting, sewing, and intarsia, which I keep doing because I see so many intarsia designs that I love, and it is only when I begin to knit them that I remember how much I hate the act of knitting intarsia.

I could have converted the pattern to be knit in the round. I often do, but for some reason thought it would be a bother this time. And yes, I do sew for a living, and teach other people to sew or sew better, so you may think that sewing shouldn't be on this list of stuff I dislike, but here's the thing: anything one does for 40+hrs per week, no matter how much one loves it, feels like work. Doing it in on ones time off feels like unpaid overtime. In addition to that, I think that knitting a garment piece by piece and then sewing it together misses one of the great things about how knitting structure differs from sewing structure. In knitting, one is making the fabric as one goes, and therefore is not limited to what can be done with flat pieces. One can make tubes and shapes and attachments as intrinsic parts of the fabric, instead of manipulating it later. Also, one can avoid the unnecessary bulk of extra seams. There is a great place in the dress where Ms. Bliss makes use of this by decreasing fairly severely in the row after the skirt is finished. The effect is of a skirt gathered and then sewn onto the bodice, but it is done skillfully all in one piece and without a bulky seam around the little one's middle. I often wonder if designers are asked by their publishers to write their directions for knitting several pieces flat instead of making use of knitting in the round and picking up pieces off of the main body, like picking up a sleeve around the finished armscye and knitting down circularly toward the cuff. If any published designers stumble across this, would you please share your experience in this matter?

Now that I've complained about the baby clothes, let me also say that I can credit them with helping to end the slump. Towards the end of the baby knitting, I did something I never ever do, which is to cast on a new project before the old is finished. I'm not sure exactly why I did it, except that I had an idea for writing a pattern and wanted to start working out how I would go about it. I worked some of it out on paper, but quickly needed to get onto the needles to finish thinking. I would like to make a square baby blanket for my cousin's baby on the way, in a feather and fan pattern, that radiates out from the center of the blanket. The yarn was a gift from the students in the first play last fall, and the colors are, I think, to my cousin's taste. The challenge is to increase rather often in a very regular lace pattern, and keep the increases in harmony with the overall pattern. I think it is quite successful so far, and hope to submit the pattern for publication or sell it through my still empty etsy shop. That bit of procrastination will need to be it's own blog post.

After getting the blanket far enough under way to solve the patterning, I finished the baby things, and boy are they cute. I'm so happy I made them, and really, I don't know why they were part of the slump. (Remember what I said about only remembering that I hate intarsia when I am doing it?)

And finally, thanks to the slump I purchased yarn and cast on for my mother's birthday socks way too late to have a hope of getting them done on time. Even the yarn harlot would have been hard pressed to manage that deadline, and she knits much faster than I do. Mom's socks are also an original design which I am very excited about and again, am hoping to submit for publication. The whole pattern is not yet visible in this pic (I keep ripping them out and knitting them bigger) but it is beautiful after a few repeats, and since these are knee socks they will feature some really clever shaping down the back of the leg.

These are the final proof that my mojo is back. I hope to make good use of it on Wednesday when I teach a group of friends how to knit a mobius scarf. All that time Dad spent showing my brother and me how to make mobius strips is finally paying off.

100 Life Experiences

2009-01-05T23:05:00.003-05:00

I got this from Mary Ellen's blog Yours 'til Niagara Falls.

(Things I've done in bold.)

1. Started my own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than I can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland/world
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sung a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched lightning at sea
14. Taught myself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown my own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitchhiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of my ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught myself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had my portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had my picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a lawsuit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee
100. Rode an elephant

So what have YOU done?

Vandalism Update

2008-12-17T23:53:00.004-05:00

The Fire Family Living Room, Wednesday evening Crews finished repairing Friday night's bunny vandalism today. After installing new connections, or "rubbers" as wheel-maker Gordon Lendrum termed them, the repair crew added metal springs surrounding each piece, in hopes of thwarting any future attempts at vandalism. "You've got to keep ahead of these rabbits, always fixing and re-enforcing, otherwise the living room could go to hell in a couple of weeks, and that would bring the property value, and the whole neighborhood down faster than you can turn around," said project foreman Joe Sixpack.As crews were cleaning up, someone spotted a rabbit eyeing the new connectors. This reporter was able to get a photo of the rabbit who, in this reporter's opinion, appears to be prime suspect Pepper Fire, out on bail and currently awaiting trial. Pepper's lawyer could not be reached for comment. "We wouldn't have to do so much clean-up if these trouble makers went to jail like they're supposed to, but the bleeding heart lawyers always keep them out. It's a real shame for the neighborhood. This used to be a nice neighborhood," said Sixpack.

Bunny Delinquents Charged With Vandalism

2008-12-14T11:29:00.004-05:00

December 14, the Fire family living room. Early yesterday morning, police were summoned to the living room to investigate a reported act of vandalism. Police were led to the spot by distraught owner, Erica Fire. Ms. Fire explained to the officers that she had been giving the living room “a quick tidy” when she initially discovered the damage to her 10 year old Lendrum spinning wheel. “I pulled a cardboard tube that the rabbits had been chewing on out from under the treadle. Normally the treadle wouldn’t have moved, but this time it fell all the way to the floor,” said Fire.

On further investigation she discovered that the connecting piece from the treadle to the footman had been severed. After a brief inspection, Detective David Rodriguez stated with some certainty that the connection had been chewed, most likely by a lagomorph. Upon further questioning the Fire family revealed that Pepper Fire had been seen lurking in the vicinity about 12 hours before, possibly “casing” the wheel. After her arrest, Pepper went before Judge Richard C. Kloch, where she entered a not guilty plea. Bail is set at 5 carrots, a large broccoli head, and a bale of timothy hay. Charges are pending against her brother Dutch Fire who the police, at this time, characterize as a material witness. Dutch is currently awaiting trial on a previous charge involving several pillows and an expanse of carpeting.

Vandalized spinning wheel causes great distress.

Frank Lipinski, the court appointed lawyer for both rabbits, hopes that he can convince Judge Kloch to go easy on the rabbits, in light of their troubled upbringing. “These aren’t the sort of fluffy bunnies you read about in stories, who come home at night to a mother with chamomile tea and dandelions. These rabbits grew up in squalid conditions, packed in with nearly 50 others, surrounded by excrement, and often going to bed at night hungry. In their short lives they’ve already been diagnosed with e. cunniculli and the snuffles. Even though the SPCA was able to rescue them from these deplorable conditions, and place them with the Fire household, there is no record of psychiatric evaluation or attempts at positive rabbit role modeling for these two. They don’t have the tools to make moral choices right now,” said Lipinski. Neither rabbit could be reached for comment.

Judge Kloch seemed unimpressed. “Yeah, we’ve all got problems,” he said, “but the law applies to all citizens equally, regardless of how many carrots they missed out on as kits.”

A court date is set for January 26th. The courtroom will be closed to cameras and other recording devices. “I don’t want this to turn into another OJ style media circus,” says Kloch.

Foxfibre

2008-11-23T15:49:00.004-05:00

I'm in love with handspun cotton. I've been spinning cotton one and off for a few years now, and the sweater's I've knit from handspun cotton are some of my favorites. I've been looking at Foxfibre cotton for years now, and finally bought some a few months ago. I don't think as many people spin cotton as other fibers, so I offered to teach a cotton spinning class at my local shop.

To get ready for class, I pulled the Foxfibre out of my stash and started spinning for some colored washcloths. I had a very early version of the color "breeder's green," so when the roving looked more mustard yellow to me, I figured it just wasn't perfected yet. But then I remembered reading something about the color getting deeper with washing in hot water. I looked it up and discovered that it's a matter of boiling the cotton for an hour with something alkali, like washing soda. I boiled my finished skein in a gallon of water with 1/4 cup of washing soda and the results were amazing.

At the bottom of the picture is the original roving, at the top is a washcloth knit from the yarn after treating it. Look at the color difference! Now that's green! Man, better living through bio-chemistry. I wish I knew how and why that happened. I'll try to get my Dad the chemist on it. I got a little more foxfibre in two other colors to use in my class. I can't wait to see how much they change.

The story of how Foxfiber was created is fascinating. You can read about how Sally Fox crossbred wild brown cotton with domestic white cotton to create a sturdy viable colored cotton. She was even able to breed several different colors out from that original brown. And she grows all of it organically. I think I need to buy enough to make a dress.

Why I Love My Work

2008-11-13T22:18:00.002-05:00

The other day, I spent most of my work time online, first researching depression era feedsack dresses, and then at a motorcycle parts page, among other things. The best part is, I wasn't screwing around--that's what I was supposed to be doing! Both were research for "Grapes of Wrath" coming up in the fall. OK, so that explains feedsack dresses, but motorcycle parts? As you may recall, Rosasharn is pregnant throughout the book, so we'll need to make a pregnancy pad for the (hopefully not pregnant) student who plays that part. I like to use open cell air filter foam for padding, as it has a nice texture and memory, but more especially because it dries quickly after washing or sweating. The motorcycle place sells sheets of foam so that if you have a vintage bike you can't get new filters for, you can create one. I love the spirit of that all on it's own, and am giddy with the idea of further re purposing the foam for a pregger pad!

A Little Perspective

2008-10-27T21:37:00.008-04:00

The Republican party just spent $150,000.00 on new clothes for Sarah Palin. When it comes to politics and government, it's easy to let very large monetary figures wash over you. With a national debt in the tens of trillions of dollars, it can be difficult to remember just how large a sum $150,000.00 is.

On my way to work this morning I started calculating to try to put this kind of clothing budget into terms that intersect with my life and finances. After all, I make clothes for a living. The largest costume budgets I've come into contact with have been for operas. I don't handle the money or purchasing, so I don't usually know the exact budget of each opera on which I work, and I especially keep myself ignorant of the per yard cost of most fabrics before I cut them up. However, I do know that the costume budgets are generally in the tens of thousands of dollars. One of the first operas I worked on had a budget of $20,000.00 which the designer not only went over, but tripled. Even so, let's figure from $20,000.00 to $60,000.00 to costume an Opera. In all fairness, that budget does not include my or my crew's income, so add in between $9,000 and $13,000 for us. So an Opera could cost from $29,000.00 to 73,000.00.

Operas have a chorus. Sarah Palin does not. Operas are often opulent, chronicling the lives of the rich, or even of royalty. The Palins claim to be a down-to-earth household run by a hockey mom and a laborer. Operas are opulent. We are told that Alaska is not.

Somehow it costs two to five times as much to clothe Sarah Palin for the last few weeks of a campaign than it costs to create costumes for an entire Opera which will run for 2 months and be rented out in perpetuity.

Here's another point of view: how long does it take to earn $150,000.00? The median income in the US is a little over $40,000. At that income it would take almost 4 years to earn $150,000.00. More, if you'd like to still have that much after taxes. For me, I'd have to go back to the beginning of 2004 and continue to the end of this calendar year to have earned that much. To take home that much, probably back into 2001. I'm one of the few people who even save my tax information for that long.

Finally, what if I had donated to the Republican party? I don't donate to any politicians, and it would be a cold day in hell before I supported a Republican campaign, but lets just suppose for a moment that I had. My charitable donations usually range between $20 and $100. If I were to donate to a politician or political party, it would probably be in that range. I know that's a pittance compared to donations from corporations and wealthy individuals, but it would be a lot for me. If I donated, it would be to further the cause, to get the word out, to raise voter awareness of my candidate, to fund studies crucial to the campaign. It would not, in fact, be to buy clothes for someone who already has an income to buy their own clothes. In the face of $150,000.00 what would my donation even buy? Shoe laces? A pair of panties? Maybe socks? I mean, I can only guess that with at least 2 Operas worth of funding they're buying the most expensive clothes possible. They can't be spending it on more items than she'll wear before they become unfashionable next season.

If I were a republican donor, with McCain falling further behind in the poles, I'd be livid to see my money spent this way.

Of course, after being given the clothing, and wearing at least some of it, Ms. Palin has decided to say "no thanks" and go back to her old wardrobe. They claim she will not keep them but eventually donate the clothes to charity. I'm betting it gets overlooked and she keeps them. Just like she was able to keep and spend all the money she accepted for the "bridge to nowhere" to which she later said "no thanks." Maybe this is more of the same.

For that kind of money, every stitch of that clothing better be American union made.

Priceless

2008-10-27T21:13:00.007-04:00

I've always felt a little bad that I didn't choose an education and career path that could save the planet. I did well in Math and Science in high school, but decided instead to go into theatre. In fact, when I interviewed for admission into Boston University's theatre conservatory program, the 2 men interviewing me looked at my grades and test scores and asked why someone so intelligent wanted to go into theatre. To this day, I don't know whether or not they were serious. I chose to make costumes partially because of a small but growing talent for it, but also because it presented a challenge that I couldn't always solve on the first attempt, unlike most of my other academic subjects. It was probably the first time I didn't just choose the easy path. Eventually, I did go to a college where I could double major in theatre design and physics, but before anyone gets impressed, remember that it's a physics degree from art school!

The point being that, for the most part, making costumes will do very little for the environment. Even though I use all my pencils down to stubs, and tape my larger scraps of paper back together to make patterns out of, by and large what I do does create a small but significant bit of waste (if anyone has use for small fabric scraps, speak up! They're just filling landfills). We also use electric lights and equipment with a fair amount of energy draw and though I wish it were othersiese, all of that nice hydroelectric power from Niarara Falls gets sent all the way to New York City, while or power comes from coal, nuclear, and other nastiness that makes the city of Niagara Falls smell like acid rain.

I had all but given up on my work having any sort of positive environmental impact until just a few days ago. Now that I'm working at a college, it's important to me to cultivate some student stitchers, both to get the show done and because the whole point of college is learning, and this is what they can learn from me. In that interest I've gathered up the students who have expressed interest in learning about costumes and am teaching them how to sew. Some have a little sewing experience when they come to me, but I have 2 right now who had never picked up a needle before I showed them how to thread one, knot, and begin sewing. I set up one of these girls with a series of buttons to sew. After a few questions and approval of the first button sewn, I left her to them and returned to my work. After a little while she got a call on her cell phone. I heard her tell her friend that she was busy sewing buttons and then state, "I guess now when the button comes off one of my shirts I won't have to throw it out."

Score one for the planet!

New Bunnies

2008-10-15T21:46:00.004-04:00

Our family lost Rusty the wonderbun back in May. I haven't posted about that loss because I haven't been able to put into words what an amazing rabbit he was, or how much his loss hurts. Also, I've felt the need to keep that loss fairly private. I don't think Chris or I can bear the hurt and anger of reading some stranger posting a comment like, "Oh come on, he was just a rabbit."

Have you ever heard someone who has had lots of a certain kind of pet always talk about one in particular? They may have had 5 dogs over the course of their life, but there's just one they always tell stories about, and talk about how great he/she was and how much they miss him/her. Rusty was that pet. Maybe I can illustrate it better than describe it. This is a quick video I took of Rusty in the last year of his life.

Not only did he regularly come when called, but Chris could get Rusty to chase him from the kitchen to the living room every night before his dinner. I only wish I had gotten a video of the chase.

We still miss Rusty very much. I especially miss the way he used to sleep on our bed each night near my feet. That being said, we did finally take a trip out to the SPCA a few weeks ago to visit quite a few rabbits who were there, waiting for good homes. We spent time with several rabbits, and decided that one rabbit would never be able to fill Rusty's shoes, so we adopted a pair.

Introducing: Dutch and Pepper. These two are litter mates, male and female, who were already bonded. They were rescued from cruelty/neglect at the end of July. We're not sure how old they are. The SPCA thought 5 months, but our vet suspects younger. We started out by putting them into the cage together with Rusty's old litter pan, which sort of worked, in that they used it, but they also picked 2 or 3 other spots in the cage to use. after reviewing the litter training bits of the House Rabbit Society website and talking to our vet, we added a second litter pan. Now they use only the pans, and often sit in them as if they're sitting in matching armchairs. They also currently have a litter pan in the living room for when we let them out, but we're hoping that when they're a little older we can eliminate the room pan. I mention all this because one of the first questions we're asked about pet rabbits is whether they're litter trained.

Dutch is the male rabbit, and mostly black; Pepper is the female and has more traditional dutch breed markings with her white shoulders and feet. We've been greatly enjoying their antics, although we wish they were more comfortable being touched. Right now, they love to come up to us, bonk us with their noses and even put their front feet on us, but they're skittish about being touched. This will change over time, as they get used to humans. It's frustrating right now, because they're so cute and we want to pet them.

Dutch's specialty is speed:

Cabled Socks and Finished Fleece

2008-09-19T19:59:00.004-04:00

I do still knit. Check out these socks from "Socks Socks Socks" that I just finished. Love the color, love the cables. Didn't love the fact that the pattern was written to stop cabling 2 inches before the toe decreases started. It looked weird with all that blank space, and made even my size six wide feet look weirdly long and pointy, so I ripped back and continued the pattern until the toe decrease started.

Check out the duck in the background between my toes.

And for those who think that Buffalo's weather is unappealing, just look at that sky and water. Chris was kind enough to embarrass himself by participating in a public sock photo shoot in the middle of a park along the Niagara river. Oh, and this is after he was nice enough to buy me a lemon ice. These were taken last weekend on a beautiful sunny warm but not too hot day in mid-September. For the record: the upper Midwest is much, much colder than Buffalo, and Syracuse NY consistently gets more snowfall. The only reason Buffalo has the reputation it does is because the stupid football team plays in the snow belt in an open stadium. The rest of us live and work outside the snow belt.

I finished spinning the fiber study yarns a while ago, but it wasn't until getting home from my various freelance jobs that I was able to wash, measure and label the last skeins. What beauties! This is the whole study, all finished.

Right now, I'm planning to keep all of these samples in this form, so that I can use them as reference for how each breed looks and feels when spun. If I want to know how it knits up, I'll knit a sample, but I may return the sample to a skein when I'm done. I just find these so useful, especially in conjunction with the notes I took as I worked through the study, and the breed information that came with the study or was provided by Chris (spinner, not husband). Plus, they make for an incredibly appealing group of objects.

hefeweizen tidbit

2008-08-09T13:00:00.003-04:00

Interesting tidbit about hefeweizens. I’ve thought for years that I don’t like Blue Moon, an American made Belgian Witt, or wheat beer. Turns out I don’t like it in bottles. On tap it’s great! I’ve also discovered over the years that I’ve only really liked hefeweizens that were brewed at the restaurant I drank them at. I thought maybe it was a matter of freshness, so some time last year I brewed one of my own. Mine was good, but didn’t have the full fruity character that is characteristic of a true hefe–often described as a taste of banana and clove. Then I re-read something in a brewing book about Germans rolling bottled hefe on the table before opening it to mix the yeast in. I tried it with mine. What a difference! There was the flavor I was missing! If only I had re-read that before we were half way through drinking the batch!