Seeing stars

Oh, I've been little busy!

My dear Mother in Law, Beryl lives in a retirement community in Virginia's Northern Neck. She is 88 and has had multiple sclerosis since she was about 30. She's an awesome survivor. She was hospitalized for what was supposed to be a weekend that turned into 18 months when her kids were 3 and 7 - can you imagine? When she finally got to go home she was largely bedridden for many years and then had a decade or more of remission in her 50's & 60's.

When I met her she was 63, living with her husband near Boston and had taken up woodworking and learned to drive a car - again. Lest you think she's a candidate for sainthood, the second time I met her, the very first thing she said to Peter & I when we had driven 10 hours from Virginia to Boston, pulled into her driveway and hadn't even gotten out of the car yet was - Have you changed your minds?

About getting married. Both our families gave our marriage a year at best. We celebrated 25 years in October. So, there! My biggest issue with her is the load of guilt she heaped on her kids. She can still push my husband's buttons with very little effort. Granted, it was probably the best tool she had for getting her kids to mind when she was stuck in the bed or a wheelchair. But I kinda think she overdid it.

Anyway, Beryl has been living in the Assisted Living area of this place for 7 or 8 years, and they made a lot of noise last fall about moving her to the "Health Center". We weighed in and persuaded the facility to make it Beryl's choice - she decided to stay in AL. Her doctor agreed and that was that for a while. But a few weeks ago the doctor said it was time for her to move and they had her into a temporary room in 30 minutes. Without calling either of her adult children, without following the plan we carefully crafted last fall for a smooth transition.

They said they talked with her and that she agreed to the move, but as soon as she was left alone she called her daughter and said she didn't know where she was and she didn't have her pocketbook. She had been being polite and making affirmative noises but she didn't really know what was going on. Honestly. They really should have paid more attention.

This led to a great kerfuffle and 3 long days of meetings with the family. Finally they agreed to let her make the decision (again!?!) and this time she decided to move. So we've been trying to make the best of a very challenging transition.

Last weekend my husband & I drove the 4 hours down in 2 vans and spent a few days going through her things, along with having a birthday celebration for Beryl. I spent one morning with her in her old apartment going through family mementos and jewelry. She kept saying that it was just like attending your own funeral. We have to go back again this coming weekend, but I think we'll bring things to her for any consultations and decisions - we don't think she should visit her old half empty room any more.

So, two lost weekends and a lot of driving. Although we will only need to take one van this weekend, so I'll get more knitting done with Peter driving!

Knitting! I am making good progress with my many projects. I have numerous items that I am hoping to have ready to show in my booth at Maryland Sheep & Wool. I have finished my Hemlock Ring Throw - Peace Fleece worsted in a lovely green called Anna's Grasshopper.

The Hemlock Ring looked like a decidedly organic growth before blocking - but then...

Blocking is so exciting. I may wet and block this again to see if I can get the feather & fan section a little flatter. But I'm very pleased. And tempted to knit it again in fingering weight for a shawl.

I am also working on a Sea Vines Vest in Fleece Artist Sea Wool in their Peacock colorway. I finished and blocked the back - note the interesting (uh huh) pooling... I decided to knit it from one ball and just see how it went - and the front looks fine. I just bound off the neck this morning and I'm knitting the straps on the front, so the end is in sight!

Greens are hard to photograph properly, but this detail photo is closer to the real thing.

When the first boxes of Fleece Artist arrived from my MS&W order I just had to weave some of the Sea Wool - the colors were so exciting. My Baby Wolf loom was tied up (more on that later) so I pulled out my 3 foot Tri Loom and started a scarf. I probably should have used a double strand - I think it's going to draw in a lot and be tiny. I could also weave one or two more triangles and join them together to make a trapezoid... but I don't think I could have that ready for the show. I guess I'll see how the first triangle blocks out.

Did I say Fleece Artist? It' so exciting to unpack the boxes. Don't you just love Color?




I've got a Swallowtail Shawl started - I'm probably about halfway through. I think it needs another 10 hours of knitting. This is in Hand Maiden Sea Silk in Ocean. I've had this skein since my first Hand Maiden order, but I didn't like the pattern it came with and I just hadn't figured out what it wanted to be...until I got into a lace shawl conversation with my friend Karen and I was bitten by the Swallowtail bug! Seeing all the lovely ones on ravelry helped, too.

I can't find the photo of the Swallowtail, but I will leave you today with this lovely table runner woven by my friend William Leinbach. He drove down from Lebanon, Pennsylvania with his wife Edna to do a program for the Blue Ridge Spinners & Weavers Guild. He brought a truckload (really!) of old coverlets to talk to the guild about and a modest selection of his own work for sale. I've long admired his weaving and I finally bought a piece.


Ain't it purty? You weavers would like a closer look, I'm sure.

I need you Peeps...

I just have to share this, in case you haven't run across it elsewhere.

The Washington Post started an annual Peeps Diorama contest last year.
You simply have to see it to believe it.

Here is the 2nd annual Peeps Diorama contest gallery! And the accompanying article.

And for the proper historic context - the 2007 highlights.

A bounty of mallow, indeed.

Tempus Fugit, encore

OK, it's April! Where did March go? All of a sudden Maryland Sheep & Wool is coming at me at an alarming speed! I think I'd better get the last of my orders done tonight.

The first two boxes from Fleece Artist arrive on Friday, and the yarn and rovings are, as always, just breathtaking. Yum, yum.

And speaking of lovely, this post opens with a photo of my favorite tree: a venerable weeping cherry tree that stands beside Route 7 at the edge of the Shenandoah River bridge. Every spring, I watch attentively for this tree to bud and then bloom. This year, we have been favored by lingering cool weather, so my tree has been at peak loveliness for over a week! Isn't it wonderful? Just say yes.

Now, I promised a report on my John C. Campbell Folk School week, and photos, too. I saw my first daffodils of the year, strewn generously through the woods along the paths (look up). I was teaching a class called Knit to Felt. I brought lots of yarn for us to play with(look down)
I had seven students, including an intrepid debutant guy knitter. This is Andrew. He had a 20 minute knitting lesson the night before class started. He did a great job on his laptop bag and started a hat.
We had lots of laughs about just how big things should be Before Felting:
and how lovely they can be After Felting:
One Fabulous Fish of Wisdom:
The lovely Laura ( crashing our class from her scrimshaw class)with her needle felted mouse
Our lovely class display in 2 shots:

and a group photo of the happy knitters - I'm in the middle of the back row in the green.Can you tell we had a wonderful week? We sure did! This class had a great group dynamic, with a nice balance of talk and laughter and teaching, lots of visits to the local Yarn Circle shop, the excellent Folk School food...

I had a bit of a debacle driving down because I had planned to stay the night in Bristol VA/TN without consulting the NASCAR schedule - silly me - and I had to drive about 90 miles more than I wanted to before I could find a motel with a room available. Amazing. And a looong drive home all in one day because I taught an intarsia class at the Yarn Circle on Saturday morning. I don't mind driving all the way home in one day if I have a nice long retail therapy break in Asheville, but it turns out that I prefer more of that driving to be in daylight hours.

Otherwise, uneventful journeys. It's been busy since I got home. We are spending lots of time with our parents these days, and Peter & I have 3 sets between us. But you gotta do it while you can - spend time with them.

I've also been running a medical gauntlet. I turned 50 back in November, and since then I have had a physical, a female annual exam, a mammogram, a colonoscopy, a shoulder x-ray, some blood tests and a bone scan and an MRI of the same shoulder. Whew! The x-ray showed an abnormality, lucencies or bright spots - which are apparently a primary marker for multiple myeloma, so we had ten days of waiting for results to the blood tests and bone scan. The results were are good - no cancer. I do think it's a good idea to examine one's mortality from time to time, but I prefer it in smaller doses.

The MRI showed 4 different tears in the right shoulder, and the bone doc said I could try some alternative therapies or go for surgery with an 80% likelihood of improvement. Them's pretty good odds, but after thinking for a few days about what it would be like to do without my right hand & arm for 4-6 weeks, I've decided to put off the surgery until at least September and return to my acupuncture & Chinese medicine friend and look into physical therapy and some carefully selected Qigong - exercises that don't involve shoulder rotation!

I'll let you know how it goes.

Next post - knitting updates and probably some yarn porn!

Personality Plus!

I came across a link to this test at Jennifer's blog. Some of the questions were difficult to answer, and as I went through them, I felt that my answers were showing me to be very timid and structured - so I was surprised by the results:

You Are An ISFP

The Artist You are a gifted artist or musician (though your talents may be dormant right now). You enjoy spending your free time in nature, and you are good with animals and children. Simply put, you enjoy beauty in all its forms and live for the simple pleasures in life. Gentle, sensitive, and compassionate - you are good at recognizing people's unspoken needs. In love, you are quiet and sweet yet very passionate. You love easily. You have an underlying love for all living things, and it's easy for you to accept someone into your heart. At work, you do best in an unconventional position. You express yourself well and can work with almost anyone. You would make a good veterinarian, pediatrician, or composer. How you see yourself: Sympathetic, kind, and communicative When other people don't get you, they see you as: Incompetent, insecure, and overly sensitive

What's Your Personality Type?

I think most of this is true! (pediatrician?) I definately need an unconventional job - although I guess I have one already, in a way. I dreamed early this morning that I was in a room with a group of people I didn't know and we were taking turns introducing ourselves. But when it was my turn, there were people talking and coming in & out of the room. I was frustrated and embarrassed by their lack of respect. I began several times and then stopped and got mad but didn't say anything.

Then, for some reason I started talking and kept talking in spite of the lack of attention. I started talking about my job with Bluemont and how I get to talk with artists and school staff and parents and help them arrange wonderful assembly programs for schools and what a great job it was.

I woke up and felt quite puzzled by the whole thing... I do think my job is pretty cool, but I have worked for Bluemont for 23 years and I've had a very hard time focusing on my job for the last several years. I think I really need to do something else, something more creative, and yet as a couple and a family I need to help keep Bluemont afloat for the next few years, until we get our girls through college.

So, yeah - it's a cool job, an unusual job, but I tend to be deeply ambivalent about my realtionship with my job. There are so many other things I would like to be doing with my time. Singing, weaving, knitting, spinning, dyeing, teaching, selling yarn, making things...

I am just back from a week at the Campbell Folk School, teaching a Knit to Felt class - more on this soon!

Update - Spinning Adventures

In January, I had the opportunity to go the the John C. Campbell Folk School as a student for a class my friends Norman Kennedy & Martha Owen were co-teaching, called Cultural Enrichment in the Spinning Field. This was an advanced week class, and there were 14 lively students.



It was an opportunity for us as spinners to review basic skills and request demonstration and tuition of any particular skills we were interested in. I learned to spin a thick single, (here resulting in a thick 2 ply!)improved my grasp (literally!) of hand spindling and learned to spin on the long Navajo spindle.

We did some natural dyeing, watched Norman's spinning slides, participated in a wool waulking,

and visited the local yarn store, the Yarn Circle.

Here is Norman showing a sweater and scarf that he knit from yarn which he spun and dyed with vegetal dyes:

And here is our display for the student display at the end of the week:

I stayed over and went to a Robert Burns Supper in nearby Murphy, NC on the Friday night and then we had an informal tea at the Yarn Circle on Saturday for some of the local fiber folks to meet Norman.


It was a great week and went by far too quickly, as special time always seems to fly.

This past weekend, I spent a day in class with Patsy Zawistoski. The class was Understanding High Tech Fibers, and we got to spin with a variety of manmade fibers, including Tencel, rayon, bamboo blend, nylon, Ingeo, Angelina and Optim. Patsy was delightful and so full of great information. I learned a vital thumb roll, and really enjoyed trying out all these new fibers. I am generally such a traditional purist, but it's great to stretch into new territory from time to time. I particularly liked handling the Tencel and the Karaoke bamboo blend, but the Optim ultra fine wool was like spinnin' buttah!


One more fiber note - I got an order from Fleece Artist in this week, and it included their newest spinning fiber - Sea Wool roving! This fiber takes dye beautifully, and the roving is put up in a pair of roving strands that are a little thinker than standard pencil roving. I took 50 grams and divided the strands - I've spun one strand and when the other is spun I will ply them and see how the colors line up - it will clearly show how consistent my spinning is - or isn't!

This fiber will be for sale on my eBay store this week - I have two colors, Marsalaand Pansy, and I also have some undyed.
I will have more at our Peace Weavers booth at Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival. If anyone wants any particular Fleece Artist or Hand Maiden yarns or colors, speak now - I'm sending in my MS&W order this week!

Our Miss Wiley

In our family, we have had Pembroke Welsh Corgi dogs for many years. We have had five corgis over the years. Our first corgi was a red & white we named Scallowag, who was a wonderful dog but could not be cured of wandering and so eventually we had to find him a new home located farther from a 4 lane road. We had our fluffy tricolor Tessie for many years, and she & Scally produced a litter of puppies with a little help from the vet. Years later she developed cancer and we had to have her put down - which was very sad, but we were assuaged somewhat by the puppy spirits of young Rupert who had come to our home by way of the local animal shelter.

Someone pushed Rupert under the fence at the shelter when it was closed and drove away. He popped back out again and wandered down the road to the nearest neighbor, who kept him out of harms way until the shelter was open again. They called us to see if this might be one of our pups - they said they had a full grown female red & white corgi. I went to see this dog and found a half grown male! I asked if anyone had looked under this dog yet - being so low to the ground, he wouldn't bother to lift his leg to pee until he got a little older.

I knew when I saw him that he belonged in our family, but we had to wait over a week until the official two weeks had passed, and then he came to live with us. That was about 10 years ago. Rupert is my Buddha Dog.

We had a young female tricolor we called Zora for about a year, but she developed a bad habit of running after cars. We kept her close to the house for 6 months or more after this started, but one day she was accidentally left outside during a thunderstorm and bolted towards the highway, a half mile away. She had been lucky before, but not this time.

About 5 years ago we saw an ad in the local Valley Trader for a free corgi and called the number listed. This family had a female red & white and they were looking for a home with no female dogs, because she fought with the females at their farm. We brought her home and she fought with Rupert over food, but with some patient training she learned to stick to her own food bowl and not to lunge on every treat that was offered.

She was the most expensive free dog we ever had, with two complicated surgeries and a few other doozie vet bills, but she was a sweet dog and settled into our home well. She and Rupert have been buddies at home and at our office for 5 or 6 years. They have been to the beach with our family and enjoyed occasional hikes. In October they accompanied Peter & I all the way to the top of Old Rag Mountain - a long, steep hike for two short-legged dogs!

Wiley has been slowing down over the last month or two, but she started to really drag about a month ago. The vet ran some blood tests but everything looked normal. He suggested pancreatitis or a tumor based on a small abdominal swelling. He suggested feeding her twice a day on a mild special food and adding some supplements to her diet. This seemed to help her a little, but her appetite was indifferent for the last week and then Friday she stopped eating and drinking altogether.

Saturday she couldn't walk, and that was heartbreaking. Peter & I stayed close to her all day Saturday & Sunday. She was calm and mostly quiet, getting up out of her bed occasionally to totter around. Rupert watched her closely, and barked if she got stuck under furniture, alerting us to come and help. Eventually we put her in the dog carrier so she could burrow into the corners safely, and on Sunday evening she passed away.

We will miss her. She was a good dog and a sweet presence in our lives.