Wedding Origami

No, there were no homicides on the honeymoon--we've just been a bit busy/out of touch. Chris is busy moving into our new apartment, and I started my summer job in Cooperstown immediately after our honeymoon. Since I don't have Internet access at my housing (or cell reception for that matter) I am out of touch as far as blogging goes. Now that I have battled the fancy new technology of an mp3 player, and come to some sort of truce, I can spend part of my once a week computer time on updating the blog. I loaded a bunch of pictures onto my computer a few days before the wedding, so the summer's posts from me are likely to be in the past tense.

Chris is still planning to post wedding photos, or a link to them, here on the blog when he gets a chance.

One of my contributions to the wedding was origami. I learned origami from my Dad as a kid. He did stuff like take apart the paper airplanes his students threw at him to figure out how they were folded. He also taught me the "water bomb" which he may have learned the same way. At some point my Aunt Stephanie gave me an origami book for Christmas. I loved it, but was too young to understand the directions, so when I wanted to fold something from it, Dad would follow the directions and fold it first, then teach me. I would fold it a few times to memorize it, since I could not yet read origami directions.

The wedding origami began with flowers. At least one of these is in the original origami book. I've collected a few more books and most of a calendar since then.


At this point I got concerned that the bouquet didn't look like much, and would just look like we cheaped-out on flowers. I also started to remember that flower arranging is not necessarily one of my skills. All that concern, however, was unfounded. I split these into two groups, my bouquet and my maid of dishonor's bouquet, and then began to spread them out and intersperse them with "leaves" cut from banana leaf paper.
As it turned out, less is more, which I should have realized when it comes to anything Japanese. I mean, that is their aesthetic, right? A week before the wedding, I remembered that the guys usually have boutonnieres, and a few days after that some memory of Mother's having corsages started poking in around the corners of my brain. By then I had help folding from Lisa, who was a great maid of dishonor who can pinch hit on stuff like origami flowers. She and Aaron and Derrick are all really good at tying up candied almonds in net squares, too.

Also seen at the wedding were this warren of rabbits, standing in for table favors:

See that little brown guy in the lower right? He had quite the adventure that night. I think the bright green guy on the left ended up a little sloshed too. They were on each table to declare that we decided a donation to the House Rabbit Society was way better than table favors. Rusty agreed.

Knitted Bust Dart Details

I am a big proponent of using visual information to describe something visual. Like if you need to communicate to a director what the costumes for his/her show are going to look like, a sketch is much more helpful than a verbal description, and will cause fewer tears and arguments at dress rehearsal.

Having somehow forgotten that, my last post went on and on about the bust dart I add to close fitting sweaters without ever showing you what it actually looks like. The idea took me a while to get my head around, as a sewn bust dart is subtractive, but the knitted dart is additive. In the interest of full disclosure and clarity, here, finally, are some pictures.

The dart is added by using short rows. beginning at the side seam, I knit across the front to the opposite side seam, wrap, and turn (when knitting in the round there isn't a seam, just a friendly neighborhood stitch marker). I continue knitting back and forth across the front, making each wrap and turn before I reach the last wrap and turn on that side. It's a little like a "common heal flap" in that way. You keep turning before you've gotten to the end of the row. The last pass goes only from bust point to bust point, after which I knit back across the whole row, knitting each wrap together with the stitch it wraps around, and continue knitting around the sweater as I had been doing before the dart.

In the diagram, the short rows are represented by the shaded area. The red line show the bust point to bust point distance, which would be between 7 and 9 inches for many women.
For me, a 1 inch high dart is perfect. Of course, how many rows this works out to depends on your gauge. The cotton top was knit at a fine gauge, so I worked the dart over 12 rows.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I only need to add this dart in close fitting sweaters. It's also not necessitated by bust size as much as by posture. I discovered that I might need to figure out how to knit a sweater with more distance down the front than the back after knitting my first close fitting sweater "blouse" from a pattern in one of my late 1940's knitting books. I put the finished sweater on and it looked like this: Note the bloop. When the deep waist level ribbing sat level just below my waist, there was extra fabric left in the back that blooped out rather unattractively all across the back until it petered out below the bust. I had to block the everliving crap out of the sweater to force the extra length to shrink up in the back and not poke out. Not the most elegant solution.

So how do you know if you might benefit from modifying your sweater pattern to include a bust dart? And how deep do you make it? Well, if you have the problem pictured above, you can gently pin out the bloop across the back, and then measure the depth of what you pinned out. That's the depth you need to add in front. If you'd like to figure this out without first knitting an entire sweater that doesn't fit, you can measure yourself as pictured below.

Tie a bit of yarn (preferably acrylic that you've had since childhood or was given to you as a well meaning but misguided gift--this is not a job on which to waste cashmere) around your waist. This is represented by the red line. Your waist is the smallest part of your trunk, and is probably much higher than you are currently wearing your pants, especially if you are under 30. The yarn should go there on it's own when you tie it. If not, adjust it. This is usually an inch or so above your navel.

Now that you've discovered your waist, stand as you normally stand, and have someone measure from the top of your shoulder where the sweater's shoulder seam would be, down over your bust to the waist yarn. (Which is also waste yarn.) Then have them measure from the same point on your shoulder down your back to the waist yarn. The blue line shows these measurements; the notch at the top is your starting point for each. If these measurements are less than an inch different, you're probably fine and don't need to add a dart. If the front measurement is an inch or more longer than the back, you may want to add a dart that is as deep as the front is longer than the back. If you get a difference of more than two inches, and would not consider yourself buxom, you may want to remeasure and make sure that you are really at the top of your shoulder, and not shifted back slightly.

Luckily for all of us, knitting is stretchy and therefore a much less exact science than sewing. When all else fails, knitting can almost always be unravelled, refigured, and reknit. Feel free to experiment with this dart and let me know if you do and how it comes out--I'll use your findings when I write out the pattern some time in the next few months.

I'm Ready For Spring!

Hooray for finished knitting! I started this top back in the fall, using handspun cotton that I had left over from my lace cardigan. (I had to put it down in order to knit the wedding shawl in time, and just picked it up again when that was finished.) I had maybe 8 ounces left of the cotton yarn, and considering I had gotten a long lace cardy out of only about 9 ounces, I thought I had a shot at getting a small t-shirt type top out of the rest. The finished top weighs 7 1/2 ounces. Of course the cardigan covers a lot more area, but it's knit on considerable larger needles, and in a lace pattern, while the top is knit densely enough to be worn without needing a camisole underneath. We're looking at the difference between 4 1/2 sts/in and 6 3/8 st/in. The yarn for both was spun at about 34 wpi and a grist of about 2000 yrds/lb, depending on the skein. My spinning was a bit on the inconsistent side for this, as it is my first large quantity of handspun cotton. Also, I switched to the very fast flyer for my Lendrum wheel part way through the process, when it became clear that the fast flyer was just too slow for cotton. All in all, I'm quite pleased. I've put quite a bit of shaping into this top, so that it wouldn't be bulky and "sweatery" around the waist, but would fit more like the slightly lycra tee-shirt tops I like from Target. The top is shaped with "yoke" decreases, worked around the lace pattern in a pleasing manner so as not to skew it. I also used short rows to make what is, in essence, a bust dart. I've been putting about a 1" bust dart into any close fitting sweater I make for myself for a while now, ever since the first close fit sweater I made. That one didn't have a dart. The front of it fit just fine, but the back had a big droop right above the ribbing. I ended up shrinking that droop out as much as possible with the blocking--not the prettiest or most permanent solution. The reason for the dart is that for a moderately endowed woman with good posture, the distance from her shoulder down her front will often be longer than the same distance down her back, because, well, there's a breast there. This isn't the case for all buxom women. Many larger busted woman do not have upright posture, but rounded out backs, sometimes because of the weight of their bust and how it affects their posture, and sometime because they developed a large chest young, were embarrassed, and stood with their shoulders rolled forward and sort of slumped to hide their bust. It's very difficult to relearn this bad posture as an adult. I'm not huge busted, but a little larger than average for my body type, and have good posture, which makes my bust prominent. Similar actually to the dress form's posture, except I have squarer shoulders and stand just a bit sway backed. As you can see on the form, the bottom edge is even all around. Without the short row bust dart, it would be riding up a little in front, or hanging down a bit in back.

I was using the dress form to block the top. There was no point blocking it flat after all the effort I had put into shaping it to not be a rectangle, so I steamed it on a dress form that was close to my measurements and then left it on the form until it was completely cool and dry. Blocking isn't set until it had fully cooled and dried. If you move the garment before then, you'll lose some or all of the shape you were trying to set it in.

I'm thinking about writing out this pattern for multiple sizes and trying to sell it on the internet, maybe on etsy. What say you all? Is this something you think knitters would be interested in making themselves? Do you think enough people would be willing to use the yarn info from my handspun to either spin their own or chose a suitable commercial yarn? I'm not sure how many knitter are out there who only use the recommended yarn for any project.

This pattern wouldn't be ready for sale until probably the fall, after my wedding and after my summer job. My plan would be to write it out for more than just S, M, L because last I checked, there are a lot more sizes than that. I'd like to go up to at least a 48" chest and offer petite (which mine is), regular, and long. That's a fair amount of time calculating.

Please post in the comments whether you think this would be a worthwhile pattern to write up for other folks. I've been thinking about getting some patterns published for years, and this might be a good place to start.

Getting our Stuff Together

Stuff we're making for our wedding:
lace shawl
2 wedding bands
2 origami bouquets
2 origami boutineers
table favors
centerpieces
bulletins
1974 Volkswagon "Thing"

Stuff we've finished:
lace shawl
engagement ring (that has to count for something, right?)

This isn't a problem yet, is it? We have almost 6 weeks left, and it's a small car. I guess for a little more perspective, I should look at...

Stuff we're not making for our wedding:
wedding dress (Thanks, Georgia!)
other people's clothes
other people's transportation
music
food

Wish that list was longer.

Famous

Yes, that's Rusty and I getting our 15 minutes of fame. If you're a relative of mine or Chris's, you've probably already received a copy from our parents. The article was printed in a local free newsprint magazine called "Forever Young" that highlights stuff to do in the area for folks over 50. I'm not sure if it's Rusty or myself who's supposed to be over 50.

I brought a copy to my vet and she said she would frame it and hang it in the office.

We were "discovered" at a monthly knitting night at which I had been working on the wedding shawl. A nice woman there was asking about the pattern of the shawl, and what the yarn was made out of, and asked if she could take a picture. I said sure, and next thing I knew she was asking for an interview. I expected two paragraphs as a side bar to another article by Linda, owner of Raveloe fibers, but was shocked and pleased to see the entire interview used and filling a whole page. I was actually interviewed by email, which is why there are no "ums" or sentence fragments or agregious gramatical errors.

Here is the finished shawl:

and when you compare it to the earlier pictures I posted of it in progress...You'll see the huge difference that blocking makes on knitted lace, both in how much the pattern opens up so that it can be seen, and in how much bigger the piece is once blocked! Both pictures show exactly the same area, the size of my scanner bed, and as you can see the blocked shawl is now too wide to fit.

I'm off to begin moving into the new apartment that Chris and I have rented for the three of us (Chris, Christopher, and I) to share after the wedding. I will be finished moving by the end of this month, but the boys will probably move more slowly and finish in May. I have a lot of books to lug up the stairs this afternoon.

Working out, Babies, and Beer

Today Chris and I had planned to spend a couple of hours together at the gym. I've been a member of various gyms for the past eight years or so. I was pretty regular about going back when I lived in Rochester, but since moving here to Buffalo I had tapered off to less than once a week. The first thing I noticed when my exercise dropped off? Not weight gain or fat gain (although those came later) but all my aches and pains coming back. They all vanished when I was going to the gym three times a week. The only pain I had was occasional muscle soreness from working out, which I could usually eliminate by gently stretching the affected area. The other problems that came up when I stopped exercising regularly were being more tired at night and my undiagnosed S.A.D. coming back. I hadn't really noticed I had eliminated it until it came back, but when I was working out regularly winter became so much easier to get through. And did I mention that we both love the spinning classes? Talk about a great bike ride and a serious work out!

Also in the weekend plans: I need to card the rest of my fine wools for the fleece study. We've been having a great time with it, and I love that so many of the other ladies in the class have found really great spinning and breed information on the net and have shared it. When we got together as a group to talk about what we had done so far (mostly washing and carding) someone (maybe Liz?) sheepishly mentioned that she had used her salad spinner to get as much water as possible out of each sample before laying it out to dry. Two or three others immediately piped up, "so did I!" If she hadn't said anything, would anyone else? or would we all have been too embarrassed to admit to it? I'm really learning how much good spinning relies on good fiber preparation, and will try to take pictures of my best methods to share. It's interesting too that many of us are coming to the same likes and dislikes of the various breeds, depending on how pleasant we find them to prepare and spin, as well as on the finished yarn. We all seem to love the California Variegated Mutant (CVM for short) and the Cormo. Interestingly enough, most of us were ultimately disappointed in the merino. Did we get a lackluster fleece, or is being the most famous not the same thing as being the best?

The wedding shawl is almost done. I've knitted the lace long enough and now need to knit the "cobweb frill" for the other end and then graft it on. Then of course I'll wash and block it and post some pictures. I've been fit in the wedding dress mock-up too, so it looks like I will have clothes on on May 5th.

My friend Mindy had her baby, Mason, early on the Monday morning after Thanksgiving. pretty much as soon as she told me she was pregnant I ran out and bought yarn for a classic Elizabeth Zimmerman baby surprise sweater. Mindy chose not to find out if she was having a boy or a girl, so I tried to pick out gender neutral colors that would match the nursery. One of the really sweet points of the baby surprise sweater instructions (and don't we all love Elizabeth Zimmerman's writing style?) is that she has you make buttonholes on both sides of the front, so that you can sew the buttons on the correct side after you know what the baby will be! Mindy brought the sweater in to the theatre this week so I could sew on the buttons, and Mason aka "Bootsie" was willing to model the sweater. This is a nice shot of Mindy, but not Bootsie's best photo, so take a look at happy proud Mommy.
Here's a much better picture of the little guy in new cardy. I'm glad it fits him now, when the snow has finally hit. Check out the non-gender-specific duck buttons! What a little cutie he is! I think he's almost doubled in size since the last time I saw him a few weeks ago! And of course I love him in his technicolor dream coat! I never believe a baby sweater will be big enough when I'm knitting it. Humans start out so tiny. I have to remember Bruce's wisdom: "If it fits a two liter bottle it's the right size for a baby."

Speaking of babies, my cousin Laura should be having hers any day now. I am planning a trip to the home brew shop today to buy ingredients I hope to brew tomorrow and would really like to invite my cousin-in-law Steve to come along. He was really interested when he found out that I'd been brewing, and I would love to share the process with him, but he's Laura's husband, and i think that if I have lured him away with beer when she goes into labor, there might be trouble. Right here in River City. So I'd better save the invite for the next batch when I'm just luring him away from feeding and diaper changes.

I'm trying to decide what kind of beer to make for my next batch. It's between a German Rauchbier, a Scotch Ale or a Scottish Ale. I've never had a Rauchbier, but have only read about them. They're made with a smoked malt and have a smokey character. It's thought that the first one brewed was a mistake--someone left the malt drying over the fire for too long! Scotch Ale and Scottish Ale are actually two different things. Scottish Ale, is well, Scottish, but Scotch Ale is actually Belgian! I didn't learn this until I've started reading brewing books and I'm sure I've had and enjoyed both, but now I don't know which is which! And of course I think that some beer companies label a Scottish Ale as Scotch, just to add to the confusion. Ah well, I may just take the recipe book with me and choose in the store. I'll definitely post about the results.

Happy Birthday to Mom!

Every year my mom asks for knee socks for her birthday and for Christmas. This is because a) Mom is always cold and b) knee socks are hard to find (except at Hot Topic) and can be expensive. We used to comb Erie and Niagara counties for stores with knee socks and tell each other whenever we found one. Then I learned how to knit. Now Mom gets lovely hand knit knee socks every year in the color(s) of her choice. I get to pick or design the pattern. I think she has about a dozen pairs now.These are based on a pattern in Nancy Bush's Knitting on the Road. There aren't a lot of knee sock patterns out there, so I tend to modify other sock patterns to a basic knee sock shape that I know works for either my mom or I. Mom really likes her socks to stay up without slouching, so I always sew elastic thread into the ribbing at the top. The only pair that stays up without elastic is a pair that is covered in tiny cables.

So Happy Birthday Mom! Enjoy the red lace socks!

Fleece Study: Washing the Wool

I began learning how to spin about 8 years ago. At various times in my short spinning career I've heard talk of fleece studies: a group of spinners gets together, collectively buys several fleeces, and then splits each fleece up and distributes it among the group. It's a great way for an individual to learn about the wool from different breeds of sheep without committing to a whole fleece from each one. This method works best with a large group, and although there was talk of doing a fleece study in my old guild, I never managed to get into one. Happily, I've sort of fallen into one here in Buffalo. I've been bringing my wheel along to a once a week informal knitting group at Raveloe Fibers. A month or two ago Donna asked me if I'd be interested in joining the fiber study she was starting. Would I!!!

I have to give big kudos to Donna for starting this whole thing and organizing it. I don't know how she initially found out about it, but she has discovered a much better way to do a fleece study, which is to start at Jacqueline Bland's website. Jackie does all the purchasing, splits up the fleeces into 1 ounce samples--all in little sandwich bags, and mails it out to you, complete with a binder full of information and worksheets for each breed represented. Had we done this on our own, the twelve of us in the group might have purchased 6 fleeces, and might still have been overwhelmed. By doing Jackie's study we will each get to work with samples of over 40 different fleeces, and did I mention the binder full of info?

Our plan is to work with all the information we can find in books and on the internet as well as learning from our own experience and from each other. I'm posting my process here as a resource to the group and anyone else who may find it helpful. I realized after our initial conversations that many experienced spinners have only worked with prepared roving and have never had to begin by washing or carding their wool, so I've included these photos to help illustrate that part of the process. Here's what I began with. At the top left is the box that contained the full study. Two larger bags of samples are still in it. To the right of the box is the third bag of samples and below the box is the binder. To the left on the hardwood floor are baggies of the first four samples we're working with, Cormo, Merino, Rambouillet, and Polwarth. The book is The Alden Amos Big Book of Handspinning an invaluable tome on the full subject of spinning. I find myself going back to this book every time someone in the group asks just about any spinning question. Also pictured is a digital kitchen scale which I used to weigh each sample before and after washing ( to determine just how much of my dirty fleece is dirt) and to weigh out the right amount of soap to use. That weird long white net type object is a bath poof that has had it's inner tie clipped. That was one of the brilliant suggestions from Jackie. If you take apart a poof you get a really long mesh tube, which is perfect for keeping small samples separate while washing.
Here are the four samples ready for the first scour. I opened up each sample by pulling the wool apart and spreading out any tangled together locks. Then I stuffed then into the tube one by one with lots of space for each to move in and a knot in between the samples. I tied a piece of red yarn at one end to identify it as the beginning. I wrote down the order of the samples starting from the end with the red yarn so I could keep track of them throughout the process.

If I were washing a full fleece, I would have filled my bathtub half full of 110-120 F (43-49 C) water and scoured it in about 1lb batches with 4oz of orvus paste in each tub full, but since the samples here only add up to about 4oz of wool, I filled the tub to about a quarter full and used 2oz of orvus.

I did make one big mistake on this first batch of wool, which was that I underestimated the alkalinity of orvus paste. I added a significant quantity of washing soda, which made my scouring liquid much too alkali and damaged the wool. The washed wool broke easily when I held either end of a lock and gently pulled, and tended to break when I carded it, making for a lumpier preparation than I wanted. I washed later batches with just the orvus paste and got squeaky clean wool with no breaks.

The water temperature is important, as it has to be hot enough to melt the suint in the wool, but not so hot as to damage it. 110-120F is ideal. It's best if you use a thermometer, but in a pinch you can tell that you're in the ball park if you've used tap water hot enough that you can't keep your hand in it for very long.

For the first scour, fill the tub with water, add the orvus paste (2oz for a quarter full tub, 4oz for half full) and drop your dirty wool in one end. Now slowly herd the wool from one end to the other with some sort of stick or pole. This is a slow herd to move the scouring liquid through the wool with as little agitation as possible so you don't accidentally felt it. It should take you about a minute to get to the other end of the tub. Herd back to the beginning and forth and back one more time. I started this batch at the right end of the tub and am moving it to the left. You can see that the water it has already passed through at the right is pretty filthy, while the left end of the tub is still clear. If you are washing a lot of wool (like a whole fleece) you can pull the first batch out and set it in an old strainer to drain while you run one more batch of wool through this water. After the second batch drain the tub. Since I was only washing one batch, I drained the tub right away while the wool was dripping in the strainer.

The second scour is just like the first scour, same amount of water and soap, same temperature, same herding with the stick. The only difference is that the water will be much cleaner because most of the dirt and suit came out in the first scour. If you are washing a whole fleece, you can put two batches of wool through the second scour bath too, but this time let the 2nd batch be the first so it gets a shot at the clean water.

The rinse water should be the same temperature as the two scours. You can do the herding again through the rinse. I have to admit I wandered off to make a cup of tea and let it sit still for a minute, then herded a bit, which worked out just fine. If doing a whole fleece you can put two batches through the rinse together.

Pull the clean wool out of the rinse water and let it drain. After it has drained you can grab all the knots together in one hand and fling the whole dripping mess around in big circles letting centrifugal force (actually a combination of centripetal force and straight line motion) remove most of the water from the wool. Either do this outdoors or leaning into your shower with the curtain most of the way closed to protect you and the bathroom from getting soaked. I laid out the clean wool on a towel on top of a drying rack in front of my radiator and it was dry within 24 hours.

Check out how white the clean wool is. I laid it out on the same bathroom rug so you can see the color difference between dirty and clean.

This is all pretty much Alden Amos's method as laid out in his book. I've given more specific information about the brand and quantity of soap I used and how I dealt with the samples instead of a full fleece. He goes into much more detail about each step and why it's necessary, which is definitely worth reading.

An Apology to Skiers

Except for the freak storm back in October, Buffalo has had no snow this winter. You may have heard all kinds of horror stories about Buffalo in winter, but I'm here to tell you: no snow. This is the view out my costume shop window of the beautiful fake deco police station. This was taken last week--January! See how sunny it is, and notice especially the perfectly clear roof and sidewalk. Why hasn't there been any snow this winter?Because I bought new winter boots.

Porter Fit For a Founding Father

I've just bottled my third five gallon batch of beer. Lest you think I'm going through an awful lot of beer since my birthday, let me point out a few things.

1. A five gallon batch of beer usually works out to two cases plus up to six extra twelve ounce bottles. For some reason the Pumpkin Ale filled less than two cases, only about 20 24oz bottles instead of 24+. I think that I lost some of the nicest part of my wort by not draining the soggy pumpkin more thoroughly. Next time I will drain the pumpkin for an hour in the colander, then add that to the fermenter, then add the yeast. Yes, more time lapsed before adding the yeast can add to the possibility of contamination, but an hour isn't excessive, and I am good at working under sanitary conditions and avoiding cross contamination, probably because of my fiber dying and my science background. When you learn to cook from a father who's a chemistry teacher, you can't help but think to yourself "never return a re-agent to it's container" and resist putting the little bit of flour you didn't use to flour the cutting board and knead the dough back into the flour canister. But I digress.
2. I need to start a new batch with enough of the old batch left to get me through two weeks or so of fermentation and up to two weeks of bottle conditioning before the new batch is ready to drink. I started the new porter when I still had a case or more left of the pumpkin ale. At this point I still have at least 6 24oz bottle of The Great Pumpkin Ale left. That's the equivalent of 2 six packs which would be enough beer for my consumption for at least 2 weeks.
3. I have shared or given away a fair amount of homebrew. In fact, since I am finishing my fourth week of unemployment and have spent it going out to eat way too many times with out of town friends, I may be too broke to actually purchase ingredients for hummus or guacamole for the new years party we're going to tonight. Homebrew to the rescue!

So, on to the new brew! I love porters, which are rather hard to find. What better beer to brew than what you can't always buy? I do adore the new "Edmund Fitzgerald Porter" made by the Great Lakes Brewing Company but it's hard to find. They also make one called "Burning Lake" in honor of our own Lake Erie.

My very first one gallon batch of beer was a porter kit, and it was fantastic. It didn't list exact amounts of ingredients provided, or what kind of hops, so I found a recipe which used many of the same ingredients in an effort to come close.

The recipe, which I modified only a little from my recipe book, is for a molasses porter made in honor of a porter made by a Mister Hare of Philadelphia. The actual recipe does not seem to have been preserved, only the letter from George Washington requesting that there be some ready for his visit to that city. So the brewers who wrote the book took the liberty of making their own recipe and naming it in honor of Mister Hare.

I'm getting better at using the graphics programs on my computer, and for the first time have managed to put the computer lettering onto my scanned-in drawing. I swear this took me longer to accomplish than knocking off the Stuart painting with water color pencils at my kitchen table. I have renewed respect for Chris and what he does every day in his job. The help file for the paint program is written with the idea that the user already knows how to use a graphic design program, or may have used an earlier version of this one, so it only tells you what's new for this version. I can't find definitions for any of the terms it takes for granted. I know damn well what a vector is in the real world, but since nothing on my screen is in motion, and there are no x and y coordinates given, and there is no graph present with an arrow on it, and they refuse to give definitions, I have no idea what these fools think a vector is. Can you tell I hate when people in other fields think they can redefine scientific terms to mean what they want them to mean? It all depends who's in charge, you or the word. Don't even get me started on the way people use the word theory in the vernacular. It's completely opposite of its proper scientific definition. This is part of why so much of the American public still can't grasp the fairly simple theory of evolution. Science education in this country is terrible. Don't get me started!

Anyway, take a look at my lovely new beer label. I'm quite proud of it and think it's the best one so far. I have high hopes for the beer behind each label too.

Marvel especially at the computer generated text right there on the bottom of the picture in the space I left for it.

I've started drawing my labels while the wort is in it's initial one hour boil, so it's a good use of that time and I'm busing thinking about beer then anyway. I just have to remember to get up every few minutes and stir. Like the last batch, this batch also boiled over and made a huge mess and had to be split into two pots in order to finish the boil with no further incidents. Apparently my big soup pot is too small even for a partial boil if I use any more than 3 lbs of malt extract. Since that last batch included an entire pumpkin, and this one used twice that amount of extract plus a cup and a half of molasses, not to mention more than a pound of grain before the boil, I have come to the conclusion that my soup pot just ain't gonna cut it. Now I have a big canning pot I use for dying that would be perfect, but making beer in a dye pot is a good way to poison your family. Don't do it! If you do, don't you dare come sue me after you get your stomach pumped. I just told you in writing not to. So there.

Anyway, I checked a few thrift shops for more canning pots (that's where I originally got my dyepot) but there were none to be had. Then I went into Big Lots in kind of a funk after trying on bras (if I get the 34d, I have to make sure I don't accidentally buy a minimizer*, if I get the much easier to find and almost the same size 36c, I have to carefully search the rack to find one that's not a push-up bra. Can someone tell me why there's no inbetween? Why I can't buy a bra that provides support without the intention of changing size?) and there in Big Lots, with a sort of heavenly glow surrounding it, was a 20qrt stock pot for only $9. Now, I sometimes get a little lost in the English system of measure, but I can see that the 20qrt pot is almost twice as tall as my soup pot, and I'm pretty confident that I've calculated 20 qrts to be much bigger than 2 gallons, and therefore perfect for boiling two gallons or so of wort without boiling over. A 20 qrt pot should in fact be a 5 gallon pot if I'm right about the whole "quart" thing actually implying that a quart would be a quarter of a gallon. I'm still not sure about pints. If they're half a quart (which is what I'm pretty sure they are) why can't they be called an eighth? Ok, I've just remembered, in our system eighths are only for measuring pot, not pots, even though if I understand the Arlo Guthrie song correctly, really large quantities of pot are measured in kilos. Maybe because they come from countries that use the metric system? Glad I'm not a drug dealer, this is needlessly complex.

This is also the first time I've reused labeled bottles from previous batches. When I've reused bottles from commercial beer, it's been a real pain to soak off the labels--at least from the American beers. English beer labels come off more easily. Apparently American beer companies use stronger glue on their labels because Americans like to keep their beers ice cold in coolers full of ice at picnics. My homebrew labels came right off within 30 seconds of soaking in warm water and sanitzer because I applied them using a brilliant bit of advice, also from the recipe book--glue them on with milk. I brushed milk on the back of each label with a pastry brush and stuck it on the bottle. It stays on in the case and in the fridge, it comes off with no hassle when it's time to bottle the next batch. Brilliant!

That's what's in the little teacup, milk! I love little tricks like this. It's like when I learned you could spit-splice wool yarn to join a new ball. Brilliant, and less sewing in of ends when it's done.

There was one problem with the pumpkin ale, which I'd like to mention. The yeast seemed underactive. I didn't feel like the specific gravity was down as far as it should have been when fermentation was over, and even though I bottled over a month ago, the beer never fully carbonated. The first few bottles were hardly carbonated at all, so I put the remaining bottles on my radiator, thinking the process might just be going slowly in my 65 degree apartment. That did help, and I'll probably do it will any batch I brew in cold weather, but while the ale finally tastes right, it still doesn't pour with a head. I'd describe the few larger bubbles on top as looking more like dishwater bubbles. Now I opened one of the porters yesterday even though they were just bottled a few days ago, and it had a head! A nice creamy head with very small bubbles, much like what a Guinness draft has by the time it's been brought to your table. This leads me to believe that the problem with the pumpkin ale might not be temperature, or something wrong in the brewing process, but just a bum batch of yeast. I used a different brand for the porter to test if this was the case, and I think my results confirm that it was. I'll have to look at the bum yeast packet again at the brew store to see if it's meant for higher temperature summer brewing, but I think it may just have been a little old or otherwise flawed. They're living organisms, so of course yeast would vary from batch to batch, and lose quality over time. I may avoid that brand in the future.

I started keeping a beer journal as soon as I began this process, so that I can keep track of things like batches that don't carbonate. It's a good practice so I can look back over old recipes and use the information to improve future ones. I do the same thing with my dying. It's even easier with the dye book because I can keep a sample with the dye formula attached and use it for a launching point if I want to make a similar color later. And of course in both cases I can also keep track of mistakes or less successful outcomes with the hopes of avoiding them in the future.

Since Mr. Hare's Porter is already so well carbonated, I think I'll bring some of both it and The Great Pumpkin Ale to tonight's party. Drink up party goers, and Happy New Beer to all!

*When I spell-checked this entry, "minimizer" wasn't in the dictionary, so blogger suggested that I might have meant to write "moneymaker" instead. Definately changes the meaning.

Merry Christmas everyone! These are the only snow flakes we'll see in Buffalo this year, but we can still enjoy the feast!

Happy Christmas to you and yours, and a safe and happy new year!

Stuff's Getting Done

I've noticed that my interest in a project seems to peak somewhere in the middle, and then taper off drastically until at the end I never even mention what I'm finishing. So in an effort to show that I do finish what I start, I present to you an array of recent knitting, all finished.
I used to donate hats gloves and mittens to various charities through the Rochester knitting guild. The organizations that received these donations were always very grateful, but usually added a shy request, "The colorful hats you ladies knit are really very nice, but our male clients would really like just plain black." Every year I try to do at least one of these to donate. I always use superwash wool, because I know from my own experience walking around Buffalo in winter that wool is way warmer than acrylic, and I'm guessing that someone who's situation is less than ideal is pretty unlikely to be able to handwash their hat, mittens, etc. I love the technology of machine washable (superwash) wool, and can't understand why so few of my local yarn shops stock it.

The hat is a basic watch cap knit in brioche stitch. Usually brioche is knit flat, which is what was done in the original pattern I used, but I hate putting seams places where they're not needed, and in the case of a hat, the seam usually shows when the bottom is turned up. It's a little tricky to convert brioche to the round because of the odd sort of slip stitch it uses, but luckily someone published a pattern (in interweave knits, I think) in which they had modified it for stitching in the round, so I used their modification and made the hat.

Each Christmas the Salvation Army makes it possible for businesses and organizations to "adopt" a family whose circumstances have left them unable to afford Christmas presents for each other or a big Christmas dinner. This year the theatre adopted a family with four young children, so a co-worker and I decided to knit mittens for all of them. My two pair are for two boys, ages 3 and 5. I used a free mitten pattern I found at Afghans for Afghans. I like to use my full arsenal of knitting techniques to make each project, even the simple ones, as nicely made and finished as possible. Whenever I make something that starts with ribbing I always "cast on in rib" as I did here, which is why the bottom ribbing sits so nicely and does not flair. I also make sure that my ends are well worked in, especially in something like this which will be going through the washing machine (superwash wool again. I love that stuff!)
My pal Charlie Horse usually just wears a tee shirt, but when I saw him during our freak storm in October, he looked awfully cold, so I knit him a new football sweater. He plays for UB where he is currently a student.I finished Chris's scarf while we watched Donnie Darko together on his birthday. He has been wearing it constantly since then, although I don't seem to have any photographic proof of that, so you'll just have to take my word for it. I had gotten a fair amount knitted on my wedding stole before I had to put it down to do the Christmas and birthday knitting. This picture is a great illustration of why blocking is so important, especially with lace. Take a look at how wobbly and dimensional the unblocked knitting is. Also, the lace pattern is hard to make out. Now look back at the second picture in this post. It shows the same lace pattern after blocking. Not only is it flat, but the lace pattern has been opened up so that you can see it clearly. It's also quite a bit larger after blocking. Washing and blocking are what makes a knitted fabric stop acting like a bunch of stitches and start acting like fabric.

At the moment I'm working on Mom's red birthday socks, but on the off chance that she looks at the blog before her birthday next month, I won't be posting any pictures of them until after they've been given. All the knitting blogs seem to have that problem right now! Also finished are the tatted snow flakes for this year, which I'll post pictures of after they've been given as gifts for Christmas.

There's a new batch of beer in the fermenter that I can bottle in about a week. I'll be writing about my recent beer adventures in an upcoming blog. The Great Pumpkin Ale will be served with Christmas dinner this year.

Some Photos

I just got my film developed, so here are some photos relating to previous posts. Toronto's fabric/fashion district is marked by an interesting bit of sculpture. This giant thimble sits on the corner of Spadina and Queen St marking the beginning of the fabric district.

Back in September when we biked from Lockport to Rochester and back along the canal path, not only did we get to see the place where the canal goes over the road, but also the northernmost point of the canal. We plan to take a short honeymoon after getting married and before I go back to the opera for the summer riding another section of the canal. Maybe Rochester to Syracuse? Then after my contract is over we may have time to do Syracuse to Little Falls. That would leave Little Falls to Albany as the last leg.

An ice storm and power out are a good chance to figure out what you can do without electricity. We picked apples for Chris's Mom and myself. After the power came back on Chris and I baked pies.

Chris pealed, cored, and sliced the apples with the cool little gizmo while I made the crust and mixed the sliced apples with sugar and spices.

Rusty sat under Chris's chair waiting for fallen apple peels until we took pity on him and gave him his own bowl of peels.

Pontius Pilate

Here he is in all his evil Roman glory: Pontius Pilate. Don't think that the crowd forced some nice civil servant into crucifying Christ, from all other accounts of him, Pilate was brutal, even by Roman standards. According to James Carroll in Constantine's Sword: the Church and the Jews, "Even by the standards of brutal Rome, Pilate seems to have been savage. When, six or so years after the death of Jesus, he wantonly slaughtered Samaritans for gathering to venerate Moses on a sacred mountain they associated with him, Pilate was recalled to Rome."

The puppet really captures that, don't you think? His chest is hollow behind his gold decoration, and he is without arms until the puppeteer's bare arm slithers out to snatch the pearl Artaban offers him to free Shamir. He's all draping fabric, gold decoration, and hollow framework.

(Ok, I don't know why blogger is refusing to display the entire picture, but if you click on it you should be able to see it full sized in another window. Sorry about that.)

Puppets!

I don't often talk about work when I'm not there. I figure most folks aren't really interested in the nuts and bolts and dull details of making costumes when they could get a couple of tickets and see the finished product on stage being worn by actors who are talking about something much more interesting. The show I just finished building before Thanksgiving is an exception to that rule because, well, puppets!

Each December almost every Regional Theatre in America does a Christmas or holiday show. When I lived in Rochester that meant six consecutive years of Christmas Carol. Thankfully, when I moved to Buffalo I was saved from Dickens. Studio Arena picks a new play each December, and in fact couldn't do Christmas Carol if it wanted to, because another theatre down the street already does Christmas Carol every year, and well, what city needs two? On the same block? There are other community theatres, etc, that also produce it, but they're miles away.

This year's Christmas offering is based on the teleplay of a TV movie produced in the eighties which was based on a short story written by Henry Van Dyke over 100 years ago. In fact, you can read what is apparently the entire short story on the internet at this website, so I won't go into a synopsis. Just go read it. I'll wait here.

Ok, if that was too long, the gist of it is that Artaban was to set out with the other wise men in search of the messiah, but fell behind because he stopped to help someone, and spends the next thirty three years searching for Jesus, but missing him and using the jewels he had intended to give him helping the other people he finds in need along the way.

The adaptation written for Studio Arena is very theatrical in presentation. The story of Artaban is being told by peddlers, apparently recent converts to Christianity (then called "the way") in 68 AD. They tell it secretly because by this time The Way is seen by Rome as separate from Judaism, which was marginally protected, and Nero has just blamed the early Christians for the fires that ravaged Rome. Yes, those fires, the ones he fiddled through.

Anyway, the peddlers have traveled along the silk road through India and back , and use theatrical traditions they picked up along the way, including shadow puppets and almost life sized bunraku style puppets. These puppets are controlled by one to four puppeteers who are also visible behind them. The puppets were designed and built by Michele Costa, an amazing local puppeteer who has brought puppet shows to schools as well as art galleries and the Buffalo Fringe Festival. She received a Henson Award a few years ago. If you look down the listings of awards that year, all the other recipients are from New York City or L.A. and then there's Michele's listing for Buffalo NY. Here work is totally amazing and worth catching next time you see her listed here. I hear that she has a website but I can't for the life of me find it. If anyone else can, please let me know so that I can post a link to it here.

On to the puppets!

As I said, Michele designed and made all the puppets. My shop dressed the puppets, and built the costumes for the puppeteers and human actors in the rest of the show. These are some of the puppets whose costumes I draped.


Shamir, who Artaban saves from slavery. Her head and both arms are controlled by puppeteers. You can see the sticks that move her forearms and hands sticking out the back of her sleeves.

Ann and her baby, whom Artaban saves from the slaughtering of the innocents. My friend Tessa, who came in as a second first hand and ended up taking over for the second draper, is standing in for one of her puppeteers. In Ann's case the puppeteer's arms go through Ann's sleeves and the puppeteer's hands become Ann's hands. This is actually how most of the puppets are operated. The puppeteer who works Ann's right hand also operates the baby puppet, whose arms and head both move when he/she cries.



Tessa--I have magi photos for you!

Passhur is a blind man who can't be healed by Artaban ( a physician as well as magi) but comes back to Artaban after he has been healed by Jesus. This puppet has no legs because he is tied onto his puppeteer at the waist, so that the puppeteers legs become the puppet's legs.

Because blogger is consummately unhelpful, as I was deleting unwanted text, the photo of Pilate was also deleted, and apparently "undo" is a lie. Blogger has refused to reload the photo into this post, so the nasty Roman governor will have to have his own post. Also, I ran out of film before getting all of the puppets, and may post a few more after I get the next roll developed.

If you're in the area and want to see the show, it runs every day but Mondays through the 22nd. Check out Studio Arena's website for details.

My Kitchen Smells Like Beer

In an ongoing effort to make simple things more time consuming and slightly cheaper, I have begun brewing my own beer. This is something I had been considering for years and after I brewed a gallon of fantastic porter from a kit I was given as a gift, well, I was hooked. My second 5 gallon batch is in a secondary fermenter in the corner of my kitchen and will with any luck be bottled this weekend.

For my birthday in September I asked my family to give me gift certificates to the local homebrew supply shop, Niagara Traditions Homebrew. From them I bought an easy and cost effective kit and brewed 5 gallons of stout. I used a prepackaged brewing kit for ingredients and got a nice, basic, roasty sort of stout. Brewing from a prepackaged kit is akin to making a box cake, and perfectly serviceable for a first batch.

When I started my second batch I had to label the first so that I could tell them apart. I didn't give the stout any sort of cute names since it wasn't an original recipe, just a kit, but I did browse the internet for an appropriate picture.

For some reason I have always associated the word "stout" with suffragettes. I think it's something about the determined and impenetrable bosom. This photo is accompanied by the word "stout" in bold letters on all the remaining bottles. My plan is to cellar the last bottle or two of this and every batch to drink at some later date, possibly to compare a year's worth of beer at a time.

The batch waiting patiently in it's fermenter next to the rabbit cage is a pumpkin ale made according to a recipe in the book my friend Cat gave me as a gift at the end of the summer. It was fun to make as the recipe included a whole pumpkin. I used one from my Dad's garden. Pumpkin ale makes an unbelievable mess when you are trying to slop it from the brew pot where it was recently boiling through a colander and into a fermenter (i.e. 5 gallon white plastic bucket) placed on the kitchen floor. I splattered the floor and cupboards with hot sticky sweet wort. Please never do this in my mother's kitchen. I don't mind a quick mopping up at 11 o'clock on a Sunday night, but the sight would have given her a heart attack.

This time around I came up with a label design while I was boiling the wort. Having realized that my computer graphics skills are limited, and remembering that I don't own photoshop, drawing allows me much more control over the finished label, and is probably faster too. I may make a secondary label for the back of the bottle listing ingredients, alcohol content, and a warning not to drink beer if you're knocked up, but this is the finished front label.

As fermentation progresses I need to take regular samples of the beer and read them with a hydrometer to determine if fermentation is complete and I am ready to bottle. Since it would contaminate the batch to return the sample to the fermenter, I have been happily drinking each sample to see what it tastes like so far. Since the carbonation will be added in the bottle, the samples are flat, but otherwise it seems like it will become a medium bodied ale, somewhere between a brown ale and a red ale, with an added pumpkin and spice flavor in the background. Also from my tasting I have a feeling that the folks who wrote my recipe book are much fonder of hops than I am, so I will be cutting back on the hops content of any of their other recipes that I brew.

The stout was brewed with mostly malt but some sugar in the wort, and sugar for bottling. I find it lighter in body than I would like, so the pumpkin ale has only malt in the wort, although I will still bottle with sugar. If that doesn't give me the amount of body I want, I will make a porter next, and if that still doesn't do it I will have to start indiscriminately adding more malt to all my future recipes.

I also desire a scotch ale in the near future.

If I bottle this weekend the beer will be ready to drink the week after Thanksgiving. Drat! Next year if I do another pumpkin ale I'll need to start it in early October. This year's batch will be served as a Christmas beer.

What Canada has to offer

Finally, some knitting to show. Much progress has been made on the satin angora/soy silk/cashmere stole. I knitted several swatches of it quite a while ago, but was unwilling to post them or choose one until I had found the embroidered fabric for my wedding dress. Chris and I spent two Saturdays looking for fabric, first in Toronto, especially in Little India, then in Hamilton. Fabric we liked completely eluded us in Toronto, although we did eat some great Indian food and dim sum, and spent time in Lush and in our favorite Toronto comic book shop. Luckily Hamilton came through for us, and also gave us the chance to eat pierogies and schnitzle and shop at IKEA.

My knitted swatches accompanied us to the shops. My sketch of the dress accompanied us on the second trip after Chris reprimanded me for not having it on the first. He got a post it note version for the first trip.

All of the stitch patterns shown are from Barbara Walker. The top pattern is rose trellis lace, then razor shell or new shell, then feather and fan or old shell, with cobweb frill finishing the bottom. The second picture shows sunspots and ogee lace. I loved the cobweb frill as soon as I knit it. This will be perfect at either end of a long rectangular stole. It finishes the ends nicely and is so much more elegant than fringe for a lace stole. I've been swatching the ogee lace for years, trying to use it somewhere, but it's been either the wrong scale or looked wrong in the yarn I was using. This is where I finally get to knit it. I was pretty sure ogee lace was the pattern I wanted as soon as I had knit it, but I wanted to wait to see what sort of shapes the embroidery made on the fabric for the dress: whether it was curving like the ogee or more geometric like the rose trellis. Interestingly, although all the swatches are knitted on the same needles, I think the ogee pattern will need to be knit one needle size larger, even though all the other patterns look lovely at this gauge. Just goes to show you how important swatching is! I blocked all the swatches too. I've learned the hard way that you have to block a lace swatch to get an accurate gauge and to see what it will really look like when finished.

We looked at a lot of fabric, none of it quite what we wanted, until we found this in Hamilton, just before the shops closed.

What you're looking at is an embroidered and beaded net with a scalloped border. The right side is laid on a black card so you can see the detail in the embroidery. Each flower is filled with five bugle beads in the petals in shades of silver and gold. The left side is laid on a natural color silk similar to the silk satin which will be the main fabric of the dress. I didn't try to buy silk satin in Canada because silk is sometimes tricky to bring across the border. I don't know the details; it has something to do with country of origin even though we can often buy the same fabric from the same country here in the US. Whatever the reason, it's easier to mail order from Thai silks in California, although the shop owner in Hamilton looked disdainful when I said so.

One of the things I liked about this fabric was it's mottled appearance. Western wedding dresses can be painfully dull in their monochrome. Chris tried to talk me into a pale blue dress, which is when I realized I did want to get married in white-ish, but with a little color and interest. This was one of only a few off-white fabrics that included some subtle color and variation. It also goes well with the stole, don't you think?

After we bought the fabric we wandered into Yarnopolis, which stays open a full hour later than the fabric stores. We were high on the excitement of finally finding what we wanted, and finally having one concrete thing accomplished towards getting married this spring, and Chris, who has excellent taste, fell in love with a skein of Manos del Uruguay yarn. Since he is the world's most interested and helpful groom when it comes to buying dress fabric, I couldn't say "no" to his big brown eyes (which look so good with this colorway). I started knitting him a scarf that night.

You should know if you haven't knitted manos yet, it's lovely to knit. Very co-operative, and it feels wonderful running through my fingers. He's a lucky guy, and since it's an easy scarf pattern, he'll soon be a warmer guy. Good thing since it snowed today.

Still Standing

As you can see from Chris's previous post, our freak storm did an amazing amount of damage to almost every deciduous tree in the affected area. A few days after the actual storm, when we were all still without power, Chris realized that there was a city resident we needed to check on.

The 300 year old sycamore tree reputed to be Buffalo's oldest is still standing. The second picture was taken after the storm. The tree did lose branches, some of which apparently damaged a car or two, but the tree is still huge and healthy and standing. I would have been very sad if my neighborhood had lost this resident, and just think how the owners of that home behind it would feel if that huge tree demolished the house!

Most of the deaths attributed to the storm were traffic fatalities, because for the last week hundreds of traffic lights have been without power and therefore dark. I don't know if people forgot that a non-functioning traffic light is an all way stop, or if they just didn't care, but driving was pretty treacherous for a while, especially in the city. However, the round about that we usually refer to as the "wheel of death"? Well those things work just fine in a power out.

The Perfect Storm

This should've been posted right away, but there was no internet to be had for about a week around these parts. For those of you who don't live in Buffalo, or don't understand it's crazy weather - the following is what happens when Lake-generated snow squalls form when cold air, passing for long distances over the relatively warm waters of a large lake, picks up moisture and heat and is then forced to drop the moisture in the form of snow upon reaching the downwind shore. We like to call this delightful manna from heaven: "Lake Effect" snow.

Buffalo - Friday, October 13th: 6am

This is the view that greeted me when I stepped out of Erica's front door in the morning before work. I shoveled about 6ft of snow the approximate weight and consistency of mashed potatoes, and then realized I wasn't going anywhere. Even if I could've shoveled my car out, there was no way to get it down the street.

(Note the bike rack - insert laugh track here)

Buffalo - Friday, October 13th: 8am

As you can see here, the snow plows still never came, and the driveway and street are still buried. In this picture you can see an entire tree uprooted and lying across the driveway that leads to the parking lot of a large apartment building across the street. You'll notice in this picture as well as all the rest: the leaves are all still green! We didn't even have autumn yet. That is what made this storm so brutal - it hit so early in the autumn that all the added surface area from the leaves on each branch allowed the the heavy heavy snow to just clump on the leaves of the trees. Eventually the limbs or entire trees would just buckle & snap under the weight. Had the storm hit November 13th, there would likely have been no damage at all. In the evening on Thursday, when the storm had dumped a foot of snow, and was still falling: all you could hear was the loud crack of limbs breaking, followed by the whoosh of the snow laden branches crashing to the ground. About every 20 seconds you'd hear it, and with nobody out driving, and the snow absorbing much of the ambient noise of the city, it was pretty eerie. As it turned out, all those falling trees and limbs blocked roads and snapped power lines, causing nearly everyone to lose power. Something like 300,000 homes were without power.The snowfall in Buffalo was about 2 feet. Amherst had about 2.5 feet, and North Tonawanda had about a foot and a half.

Buffalo - Friday, October 13th: 4:30pm

So by 3:00 or so on Friday, less than 24 hours after the storm started: the snow had melted enough so that you could drive car down many of the streets. Unless they were blocked (see above).

North Tonawanda - Saturday, October 14th: noon

By Saturday in North Tonawanda, you could barely see any snow left on the ground. All the downed tree limbs heaped on the sides of the roads made NT look like the hedgerow country of WWII Normandy, bristling with Nazi machine gun nests! Man, I miss being a kid.

I think the area worst hit was Amherst. Most residents of NT had power restored by Sunday, 3 days after the storm. Much of Buffalo had power back by Monday or Tuesday, but most of Amherst didn’t get their electricity until the following weekend. I think by now ( 10-24) there are only a few hundred customers still without power.

Our family did pretty well during the storm. We have a fireplace which kept us warm, and a propane camping stove for cooking. Erica & Rusty came to stay with us for a few days, which was great. My parents realized that they sleep better when the house is slightly cooler. Our house is well insulated, so setting the thermostat to 68° means it’ll coast at 70°-72°. With a little inspiration from the storm, I convinced them to turn the thermostat to 65° to save some money and make things more comfortable.

As it turned out our family really enjoyed the time together around the fireplace. Who knows, maybe we’ll turn the heat down and do that every Sunday.

The first time is important

When you're 22 and starting to date a guy you really like, there are some things to consider. You have to decide what you will and won't do with him, and after how many dates. Right away might put him off, but waiting for years until you've really fallen in love, taking the plunge, and having a terrible experience that makes you realize you're incompatible? Well that's a pain I didn't want, so I waited only a few dates before getting out my knitting in front of Chris. (What? What else would I be talking about?)

I knew it might be a little weird, or might freak him out, but I really liked him, and I needed to know right away if he was ok with my old lady hobby. We were in his bedroom at his parent's home, getting ready to watch a movie he'd been telling me about and wanted me to see. As he got the video tape set up (this was almost ten years ago, after all) I quietly got out the socks I was knitting for my Mom for Christmas. They were the Ukrainian socks from Nancy Bush's Folk Socks. In fact, that's the pair pictured on the front of the book.

Chris took one look at me knitting and excused himself (politely) from the room. I had no idea what was going on. Did he leave to laugh at me? To figure out how to get rid of me? To get his own knitting? I had no idea, and that made me nervous, so I kept knitting.

He finally returned with his mother in tow. He pointed at me and said to his mother with glee, "Mom, look what she's doing!" She looked pleased, and he was obviously happy about it, and I was confused, so I kept knitting.

They explained to me that his mother's mother (Grandma Sorri) was always knitting or crocheting, and had made a lot of the stuff around their house. I was in. I could keep dating him, could now allow myself to fall in love without reservation, and could bring my knitting along anywhere. The movie was good too.

When the Yarn Breaks

When I learned how to spin, my teacher Louise did something I did not appreciate at the time. In the second or third class, after we had spent some time practicing the very basics of adding twist to fiber and could make a basic join if we had to, she made us intentionally break off our fiber supply from the forming yarn and then join back on again. We did this every yard or so for most of a bobbin. I remember feeling inexplicably resentful as I did this exercise, thinking that my teacher was wrecking a whole bobbin of my (free with very inexpensive class fee) yarn I was trying to make. I felt this way because up until that point I had dreaded having to join when the yarn broke or I got to the end of a length of roving. I knew that whenever I plyed my earliest spinning the singles tended to break at the joins I had made. So because I was not good at joins, and it was difficult for me to make a good join, up until that point I had avoided them as much as possible. Louise made me face them, and do them over and over, until I could make a good solid join that did not break. She also taught me that when I got a thin bit in the yarn I was spinning, which would most likely break at some later point because it was weaker than the yarn surrounding it, I could choose to break off my fiber supply and join just ahead of the thin bit, drafting back over it thus adding enough fiber to make it just as thick and strong as the rest of my yarn.

At the beginning of the two year "Crossways" bible class I recently completed, my teacher Sue told us that she had really been struck by a passage in a book by a Christian author she respected, in which he stated "Life is supposed to be hard" and the sooner you accept that the sooner you can properly cope with what life throws at you. I felt the same sort of indignant resentment I felt when Louise made me break off my yarn on purpose. Although I've always known that Sue is a very wise woman, I did not appreciate her words until fairly recently. Life before the fall may have been meant to be easy, but not since then.

Four or five years ago I read two of Wally Lamb's novels. They are excellent stories, and both follow main characters whose lives become, over most of the course of the novel, much harder than mine has ever been. I read both as audio books, and at the end of "I Know This Much is True" the reader interview Mr. Lamb about the novel, his life, and his writing. When asked why his characters went through such amazing difficulties, and why it was the hardest part of their lives that Lamb wanted to focus on, he said something pretty interesting. He did write about characters who faced much greater hardships than he ever had. He hoped he never would go through what they did. But if he had written about characters who always had everything go their way, we never would have found out what they were really like, or how strong they were. He felt his characters were most interesting and engaging as they struggled. It wasn't hardship and suffering that made them interesting, but what they became as they coped and came through the most difficult events of their lives that made them worth writing and reading about.

I think this is why I view his novels, which in synopsis may sound very depressing, as being really very positive.

I recently had about a five year span in my life that went very smoothly. It might look uneventful to some, but my difficulties were small and easily solved or endured, and I was quite happy with that arrangement. Over the past two years things have been a little tougher, and I often feel that resentment again, because I believed that life was meant to be as it was before the fall. As I watch the yarn break I'm learning that life may have been meant to be perfect before the inevitable fall but once we fell the intention changed. The solution wasn't to restore humanity to it's garden of Eden innocence, thereby avoiding the problem. The answer is to solve the problems, not avoid or rewrite them. That act of salvation for humanity involved more suffering than I ever wish to know.

In the fallen world I live in, I do have to keep facing my problems; I can't avoid them, and don't really get to be indignant about them because Sue was right. Life is supposed to be hard. It's supposed to challenge me.

And the yarn full of joins? It held together. Thanks to Louise, my joins are strong. I've learned that breaks and joins are just as much a part of making yarn as drafting and adding twist. I can now reap great enjoyment and relaxation from the whole process, and consider my spinning a source of solace, joins and all, when the rest of life has gotten me down with it's trials.