Poem In My Pocket

In the US, April is National Poetry Month. This year's program to bring poetry to the masses is Poem In Your Pocket Day on April 17 (today!). I challenged folks at The Piker Press to share a poem with someone today, so I'd better come through with one myself. This one is small enough to write on the back of a business card, short enough to memorize in one sitting, and irresistibly romantic.

A Drinking Song
William Butler Yeats

Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.

Shameless

Last Friday, when we were knitting at the bookstore, Amy found that "More Big Girl Knits" was in stock. We all thumbed through it, and everyone immediately fell in love with the cabled cardigan hoodie. However, since Amy found the book, she had rights of first refusal - and she did not refuse.

So yesterday, I was pouting and stalking the book online, and found a contest on Cassknits blog that was giving away a copy. Hot dang! Full disclosure: You get more entries if you blog about the drawing. So here 'tis.

I'm shameless, but I want that sweater!

Spring, part 2

I'm in ur backyard, huntin ur wormz.

See there on the upper right? We still have a little dab of snow. Don't know about worms, though.

Since I got a super-sekrit LiveJournal account, I've pretty much stopped putting memes on this blog. This one was a little more thoughtful, though, so I thought I would share it here. I don't tag. If you like it, swipe it. It's a free internet, mostly.

10 RANDOM THINGS FROM YOUR DESK DRAWER

Open the drawer closest to your computer, pull out 10 things, and say what they are.

1. Small Fiskars scissors with super-pointy tips.

2. Some cash that needs to go to the bank.

3. A Cross pen and pencil set that T gave me shortly after we got married, so I would have something with my new name on it.

4. A tiny sculpture of two old Chinese men playing what is supposedly Chinese Chess, although it looks more like Go to me. I purchased it a porcelain factory near Guangzhou during a whirlwind tourist visit to Southern China 20+ years ago.

5. A promotional giveaway calculator with my dad's name on it.

6. A promotional ruler from the Kansas Livestock Association and Kansas CowBells. I probably got this at the Kansas State Fair when I was a kid in 4-H.

7. A USB number pad to use with the laptop. Extremely useful when preparing taxes.

8. A picture of our late cat, Zeb.

9. Two canisters of film.

10. A little plastic doohickey that holds a roll of stamps. I rarely use stamps these days, and certainly not often enough to justify buying 100 at a time, so I threw it away, and selected...

New 10. A pocket magnifying glass purchased when my eyes went all wonky a couple of years ago.

Nothing Beats BEEF.

Of course, whenever there is a photo shoot, Katie wants to get in on the fun.

Action shot!

Spring's advance team

Chucker is back!


Spring may now commence.

We're melting! Melllllllltinnnng!

We've had three days of temperatures in the 50s, and finally, we have some serious snow meltage. The driveway ice is gone. The huge bumpy spread of ice near the storm sewer on the corner is gone. Sidewalks are mostly clear. The sun has been shining. When I left tai chi class tonight, it was warm enough that I didn't even wear my coat.

So naturally, rain and snow are on the way for the weekend.

Three years of blogging fun

It's been three years since I started this, the blog I never wanted to have. Whadya know? It turns out the hedge shaman was right, and it is fun to have my own little public corner of the web.

Despite spurts of warming, winter is still dragging on. Occasionally, though, I see a bright flash through the window.

Katie keeps things lively inside, always surveying the environment...

She even gets brave and ventures into scary places from time to time.

In totally unrelated news, I have the Peek of the Week in the Piker Press this week. It's a picture I took of Fleetwood, Oklahoma, a now-defunct town where my dad grew up.

In other unrelated news, Happy Birthday, Bubba.

Not a photojournalist, part 2

More pictures from the cell phone...

They remodeled the men's room at my office, and for a few days we saw this first thing when we got to work.

When you go grocery shopping after and ice storm, you may have to beat the ice off of the shopping cart.

The view from my office window. Melting snow and a degree of shelter makes this rooftop an irresistible spot for pigeons. The pigeons are not actually blurry in real life. These two gray ones are Fred and Ethel. They act like they own the place.

Why I'm not a photojournalist

In the first place, it took me almost three months to offload the pictures I took when Hillary Clinton showed up at the place where I was eating breakfast one peaceful Saturday.

In the second place, I wasn't expecting a Famous Person to interrupt my enjoyment of bacon and hashbrowns, so I didn't have a decent camera, just my cell phone.

In the third place, whenever you hear the words "media throng", you'd better believe it. It was insane.

It was early December. Oprah was in town, campaigning for Barack Obama, which of course had the media wetting themselves with excitement. Hillary had her mother and daughter with her for the weekend, hoping to grab their own slice of the "Hey, girl" demographic. I was interviewed by a CNN stringer who asked me how Oprah's endorsement of Obama influenced me, an undecided female. Umm, not at all. I work for a living, so I never see Oprah. I'm more influenced by the gal in the next cubicle at the office. She lives near me and votes in the same precinct and goes to the same caucus. We've known each other for years, so I listen to what she has to say about candidates. Oh, and she's not a multibajillionaire trying to convince me that her problems are just like mine.

Hillary...


Chelsea...


and Mother Rodham.

I got better pictures once they stepped away from the windows and into the fabulous lighting of the professional TV cameras. Unfortunately, they were looking the other way.

V Day

T and I went out for dinner last night, "to beat the Valentine rush", he said.

Then we went out again tonight, to a neighborhood restaurant near our church, after I had my second tai chi lesson.

I had leftovers from both, so I can feel the love all weekend long.

I really like the tai chi class. We also do some qigong at the beginning, sort of as a warm up. I think if I can remember the movements long enough that I can practice them consistently, it will loosen up my back and shoulders. I'll try to practice every day, and see if the massage therapist can tell a difference next week.

A slow start for Lent

Lent got off to a stumbling start here. We had a snow storm starting Tuesday, and the pancake supper at church was canceled. The snow stopped Wednesday (we got about eight inches), but by the time I figured out that I don't really know how to use our new snowblower, it was to late to make it to the Ash Wednesday service.

At least I came up with a To-Do and Not-Do list for the next six weeks, but even it is in jeopardy.

1. Do not start any new knitting or other crafty projects. This one is already on the ropes. I made a chemo cap for one of T's coworkers, and she asked if she could order another one. She's a sweet lady, one of T's favorites, and this is her second go-round with cancer. How could I say no? I'm pretty sure God will understand if I amend this one to say "No new projects for myself."

2. Avoid entertainment news. Granted, it's hard to avoid it entirely, especially when it's right there on Yahoo News, but I don't have to watch the stuff that is on TV when I get home from work. The last time I tried this, it was a Paris Hilton backlash. Now, it's Britney. I think she's at the point where we all just need to look away.

3. Observe Meatless Friday. Between salad bars and bean burritos, this one is pretty easy.

I wasn't sure about this last one, but T had a meeting tonight, and that convinced me to....

4. Take a Tai Chi class. Our church is offering a six week class during Lent. Tonight was the first class. The instructor started by saying, "First, tai chi should never hurt. Second, the only way to do it wrong is if it hurts." That's my kind of exercise. I like the class, and am looking forward to going next week.

Has it been a month already?

I've been a bad blogger, and I blame Ravelry.

Ravelry is the new must-see site for knitters and crocheters, still in beta and invitation-only. It has forums and wikis and what not, but the really cool part is the databases - of yarns, of patterns, of projects. Users can enter all of the details for their projects, including pictures. Then, if you have, say, one ball of Noro Silk Garden yarn, you can search for that yarn, see the projects, narrow the search, and get a pretty good idea of what can be done with the yarn.

The thing is, to get a picture into Ravelry, I need to store it in Flickr. So I upgraded my Flickr account, and started dumping my yarn pictures there. Once that is done and they are linked to Ravelry, I'm tired of them and don't want to re-do them for Blogger. Feel free to go look at them in Flickr, though.

I have finished three hats (one a chemo cap for one of T's friends), and this little beauty:

My co-worker had a baby boy in early January, and this is his "welcome to Iowa winter" gift.

Snowed under

We had snow every weekend in December. Since we live near a river, we get a lot of wildlife tromping through our yard - deer, rabbits, squirrels, raccoons - and thus see a lot of tracks in our snow.

I was perplexed, though, when I saw this:

It wasn't a footprint, but a raised area, presumably a burrow. And they were all over the front yard:

A little research with Professor Google suggested that it might have been a shrew tunneling through the snow. I've never seen a shrew in our yard, thank heavens, but it wouldn't surprise me.

In other news, the Iowa Caucus is over and all of the presidential candidates have left our fair state. We no longer get relentless phone calls or stacks of promotional mail from Hillary and Mitt and Barak and Rudy. (As a politically diverse household, we get pitches from EVERYONE.) In fact, the day after the caucus, we got NO mail and NO phone calls. It was better than Christmas.

Also, as soon as they left, the weather warmed up and the snow started melting. Seriously.

Look at this sweet face. Is this the face of a kitty who would eat the new growth on the dracaena I have been trying to resuscitate?

Why yes, yes it is.

Early Christmas

T and I pretty much pick out and buy our own presents, so there won't be much surprise when Christmas rolls around. I did get a couple of gifts I wasn't expecting, though.

My knitting friend Nancy gave me this cute little bumblebee tape measure from Lantern Moon.

Yesterday, I bugged out of work early and joined Margie and Amy at a 50% off sale at a local yarn shop. I looked and looked, not seeing much I had to have, and then I saw this:

It's a Jordana Paige satchel, the same style Carin and I armwrestled over when she visited last summer. And it was the last one in the store, and it was half off! *swoon*

Obviously, it became my little gift to myself.

It holds a ton o' stuff. In this picture, it has two socks, two scarves, and a shawl, and it still has room for more.

After realizing yesterday that I haven't finished any knitting projects in ages, I decided to suck it up today and finish the i-cord handle for the Blue Jeans Purse.

I'm going to add a lining to it, but knitting-wise, it is done. And darned cute, if I say so myself.

[L a s t] [w e e k ' s] [w e a t h e r]

We had rain. We had ice. We had sleet. We had snow. We didn't have it as badly as some folks. Our power stayed on, and our trees stayed mostly upright.

A couple of days later, the sun came out and the ice glistened prettily.



Each day, the snow in our yard showed new animal tracks - deer, rabbits, squirrels, and who knows what else.

Off topic: I was involved in an online discussion recently about various types and sizes of memory cards. For the benefit of those involved, here is a picture showing the relative sizes. From left: xD card, USB drive (this particular one is a converter for the micro SD), SD card (also a converter), micro SD. The micro SD fits into the back of my cell phone, and the converters allow me to move the data (pictures, usually) to my computer. I need to do that one of these days, so you can see my picture of the back of Hillary Clinton's head.


[edited 26 April 2008 - I tweaked the title because I've been getting hits daily from people who really want to know how the weather has been. Not that I mind having them stop by, but it seems cruel to disappoint so many seekers.]

Weird weather we're having

We started getting weather alerts on Thursday about the ice storm coming on Saturday. T and I were both off today, so we planned to hunker down at home with a pot of chili.

I heard it raining and sleeting when I woke up. That continued all morning, interspersed with occasional bits of snow.

We didn't bring the newspaper in until noon. By then, it was buried in the stuff.

It warmed above freezing in the late afternoon, and we decided to try going out for dinner. Our side street was still mucky, but the main roads were just wet, not icy. Parking lots still had a lot of slushy gunk, though. It was like walking through a Slurpee.

And yes, this is excellent weather for knitting - but I didn't take any pictures.

November is over, and so is NaNoWriMo for another year. This year (ta da!) I'm a Loser. I'm certainly not going to play the "I'm a winner just for trying" card. The requirements for winning are clearly spelled out, and I did not achieve them.

I'm not really upset that I lost, though. I knew going into November that there were a couple of extenuating circumstances that would make it tough to write 50,000 words. I did write just a hair under 20,000, which is still a nice hunk of writing. I went to a couple of write-ins each week, including one last night. I got to know some of the local Wrimos better. Most amazing, I unearthed some characters and situations that I would like to keep working with. Since I Don't Write Fiction, this is breaking new ground for me. So for those reasons, I consider the month's attempt a success.

Katie has her annual check up with the vet next week. I hope Dr. Lisa doesn't notice the laser implant in her left eye.

Go elf yourself

Go. See.

Spindler true confessions

Here is my spindle collection.

At the back is the homemade spindle from my "Sheep to Scarf" class. In the front, from left, are a handmade spindle from Annie May's eBay store, a Louet, a tiny Cascade, a Schacht convertible, and an Ashford. The two on the left were gifts from Amy. The Cascade was a souvenir from Minneapolis. The Schacht came from Rose Tree in Ames, because I thought I might want to compare top whorl and bottom whorl spinning with decent spindles, although I have not yet tried it as bottom whorl. (Non-spinners: The whorl is the flat piece. Top whorl or bottom whorl refers to where the flat piece is in relation to the stick as you are spinning.) I have absolutely no recollection of obtaining the Ashford. Maybe at the sheep and wool festival a couple of years ago? Stitches Midwest? Yarn Barn? I honestly don't know. I like it a lot, though.

I had spun some on the purple fiber before, like, a year ago. Earlier this week I finally took it off the spindle and made a little fist sized skein out of it. Then, I prepped some more of the fiber, using my new "predraft the heck out of it" technique, and spun it on the same spindle. Vive la difference!

The first yarn is on the left. See how it is fat in spots and really thin in other spots? Look how much more consistent today's batch is in the Extreme Closeup.

I'm pretty pleased with myself about this one.

My young friend Lillian commented recently, assisted by her mother, that I should be careful not to suffer a similar fate to Sleeping Beauty whilst spinning. No needles are needed with drop spindle spinning, so I am probably safe.

Katie would disagree, though. I keep my spinning gear in a small Rubbermaid box. A few days ago, I took out a spindle and set it on top of the box while I fussed with the fiber. A spindle full of yarn has some characteristics that are irresistible to a kitty - it rolls funny, it has stuff she can grab onto, and the little bit of fluff at the end looks sort of like feathers. So naturally, she had to make a grab for it.

And conked herself right in the head with it.

She yelped and ran away. Then she turned around and bitched at it some more, before skulking off to another room for some private time.

For two days, if I so much as touched the spinning box, she was on high alert, backing away slowly and leaving as soon as possible. She relaxed a little bit today. She even sat on the bed while I took the picture of the spindles - but she stayed well away from them.

Today in History: November 29th was my mother's birthday. She's been gone almost 4 years now. Her housekeeping lessons are implemented chez moi on a hit or miss basis, but she gets all the credit for teaching me that You Can Make Things, and for never once telling me that one of my creative ideas was stupid or couldn't be done.

Thanskgiving snow

On Wednesday, it snowed all day. On Thursday, after Thanksgiving dinner, T and I went for a walk on a new section of trail along the Des Moines River.

We saw a bald eagle, but were not quick enough with the camera to get a picture.

Meanwhile, at the house, we were growing some impressive icicles on the garage.

I don't know where the finches are hiding now, but their nest is full of snow.

I noticed the other day (when it was shirt-sleeve temperatures) that the lilac was budding. It had started leafing by the time the snow came.

Spinning 101

Since the last time I tried spinning, I have acquired a couple of books about spindle spinning, and another spindle, once again courtesy of my friend Amy. She had a "learn to spin" kit with a some luscious teal roving, and had decided she was not going to learn to spin with it.

The roving is SO my color, that I knew I needed to get much better at spinning before I attempted it.

I bought a hunk of "ugly" roving to practice with when the KnitWits went to Minneapolis a couple of years ago.

This is a fairly compact little rope of fiber. It needs to be loosened up so fibers can slide past each other easily. The process of stretching out the amount of fiber that will be spun is called drafting. Loosening and stretching the fiber before you start to spin is predrafting.

Everything I read about spindle spinning, in books and on message boards, suggested that you can't predraft the fiber too much. I started by loosening the rope laterally, until it was a flat, thin sheet. (At the bottom of the picture, you can see the ropey part for comparison.)

(Sorry, no photos of the rest of the process. I was home alone.)

Then I pulled off a section about two inches wide and started tugging it gently lengthwise to start the fiber slippage. When I had an long airy tube of fiber, I attached it to the spindle and started spinning.

I used the "park and draft" method, which gives newbies a little more control. I spun the spindle to build up twist in the yarn, then stopped it with my knees or on the floor while I fed more fiber out. The excess twist travels up the new fiber. Repeat, repeat, repeat, until the strand of yarn gets too long, then wind it onto the spindle and do it all again.

One of the fun things about dyed fiber is that it's really hard to predict how it will look when it is spun. As I said, I wasn't crazy about this roving, but the yarn is sort of pretty.

The learning curve of spinning is learning how to make the yarn the same thickness and with the same amount of twist. I'm not there yet, but at least some parts of it look like I want them to look.

I shall keep working on it.

I spent Thanksgiving with my two roommates, for whom I am truly thankful. Also, we managed to cook a modest sized meal, for which I am also thankful.

Blue = snow

Winter is here!