(mis)adventures of spindlerose

Ten on Tuesday: Things I Want to Do in 2012

1. Knit with cashmere. I have cashmere blend yarn for several sweater-sized projects in the studio. This is my year to use it. I will earn a bit of luxury knitting every time I complete a fitness goal. First up is Sabine in Superior.
2. Run a 5K race in March or April. D and I have started running again. If we survive our cold winter morning runs, stay healthy, and stick to the plan, we will be ready for a 5K by St. Patrick's Day.
3. Run a 10K race in September. If we keep training through the spring and summer, we will be ready to tackle a longer distance by the end of summer.
4. Finish 12 sweaters. This is much less of a stretch than you might think. There are at least 10 nearly finished sweaters hiding on my shelves that stalled for some reason. It is time stop procrastinating, solve the problems, and finish them.
5. Finish 12 pairs of hand knit socks and give most of them away. My sock shelf is overflowing, but socks are still my go to project for travel knitting. Since there is a lot of business travel in my future, there will be a lot of socks.
6. Spin every day. Even 10 minutes a day with a spindle adds up to quite a bit of yarn after a few weeks. Daily efforts at the wheel lead to more consistent finished yarn. My spinning focus this year is spinning for a purpose rather than just spinning. I have made myself a personal fiber club of 6 bumps of fiber that I will spin for a specific project.
7. Knit with handspun. If I am spinning with the end project in mind, I need to knit the project when the yarn is finished so I can evaluate my progress and figure out what to do better next time. I also need to make some space in my handspun bin for the other yarns I plan to spin this year.
8. Learn how to weave. The more I talk to weavers and handle hand woven cloth, the more I want to weave. I am going to start looking for a used loom in May and take a weaving class or two later in the year.
9. Go back to Hawaii with D. We have not been there since 2009. It is time for a visit.
10. Post to this here blog at least once a week. I will start with Carole's Ten on Tuesday this month, and see where that leads me.

Ten things I did last weekend

 

1. Made coils with Jacey Boggs.
2. Learned how to handcard fluffy rolags with Andrea Mielke-Schroer.
3. Turned those yummy rolags into sproingy woolen spun yarns.
4. Spun cotton on a takhli with Stephanie Gaustad.
5. Sampled seven rare breed wools with Deb Robson and put my new hand carding skill to good use with some of them.
6. Spent the last hours of SOAR spinning with many friends in my hotel room. I took pictures ofbthis, but they are all unflattering, so I'm not going to share any publicly.
7. Introduced friends to D, the little red airplane, and the wonders of aerobatic flight.
8. Watched the first half of the Patriots and Packers games.
9. Picked up big sticks so D could use our brand new lawnmower.
10. Lots and lots of laundry.

No wonder I was so tired all day Monday.

Between adventures

Blanket squares for Miss Z

Now that SOAR is over, I am shifting my brain away from fun with fiber and back to every day life. The pile I left on my desk 7 days ago is scary, but I am not going to deal with it until tomorrow. Even though I want to spend the next month spinning the rest of my SOAR samples and practicing all the new techniques I learned (coils! And cotton on a tahkli and handcarding), I need to repack my suitcase for an adventure in Texas that starts Tuesday.

I will be making more time for fiber on this trip (and in the rest of life). I'm going to toss something lovely into my travel spindle case and yarn for more blanket squares into my bag. Miss Z is nearly three, and I would like to deliver her blanket in time for Christmas. I would rather finish this one project than meet my 12 finished pairs goal this year.

Building the blogging habit

I vanished again. Sorry about that. Unpacking, working, and enjoying the end of summer with good friends became more important than spending any extra minutes at the computer. And then, once I lose the blogging habit, reclaiming it is incredibly difficult for me. Generally, I do not have much luck establishing good habits, and can only manage one new one every few months. Now that we have truly settled into the house, I have some cycles to dedicate to reclaiming my blogging habit.

I spent most of September rebuilding my wool habit. All fibery mojo left during the move. Spinning came back during Tour de Fleece, but the knitting stayed away all summer despite a trip to Sock Summit. I did finish spinning the bright pink BFL during July. I finally plied it sometime in August. The finished yarn sat on a bobbin for a few weeks. Less than a week after I wound it off and skeined it, I had finished knitting it into a small shawl.

Unfortunately, losing the blogging habit means I have also lost then photography habit. I took no photos of the pink yarn as a pile of singles on storage bobbins or as 2-ply yarn at any stage of finishing. I haven't even photographed the shawl yet. I'm planning to put it in the SOAR Gallery, though. I'll take some pictures then.

Daily posts were fun

while they lasted. I knew that posting every day in July was a crazy idea, but I really do want to get back into a regular blogging habit. It just won't be this month.

We spent last weekend blowing off steam (D flew, I read a few trashy romances) and shopping for a new bedroom set. We now have a really huge master bedroom and a lovely guest room (rather than a merely huge master and a guest room that doubles as the home office). We decided to put our old bedroom furniture in the guest room and order a new king-sized bed for ourselves. The shopping was challenging. We have divergent taste in furniture, and neither one of us has the decorating gene. I wanted something sleek and modern (this or this, for example). He would have been happy staying more traditional by replacing our current bed or purchasing something similar. While I don't mind traditional American furniture, my home is already filled with it. Our big new mattress arrived yesterday; the bed and nightstands are due sometime in October. Before they arrive, I want to paint our bedroom and invest in a few other decorating touches.

Unpacking has slowed to a crawl. This weekend, I need to empty a few more boxes in hopes of finding all the stuff I need for the two week business trip / vacation that starts on Monday. I'm headed to DC for a couple of days of meetings, then to Portland for Sock Summit, and finally to San Diego for the annual work conference.

Random Wednesday

I get to do laundry tomorrow. Our new washing machine and dryer arrived today. The installers did not fully connect the dryer due to problems with the vent hose under the floor. D and I (mostly D, really) swapped the new hose we pulled on Sunday for a different new hose and got it all connected despite a few challenges.

I am amazed the the in laws a) got dry clothing out of their dryer without b) burning the house down. The fire hazard plastic dryer vent hose that we removed was packed solid with lint and riddled with holes. Before pulling new vent, we vacuumed as much crud out the sub-floor space as we could.

My scaredy cats did not enjoy the appliance installation noises at all. They have adjusted to the usual house noises, but anything unusual still sends them under the covers or into the closet.

I cannot find the box containing the batts I planned to finish on the Schacht-Reeves duing the Tour de Fleece. I wish I had moved it in the car with the spindles and their fibers. If I don't find it by Saturday, I'm picking something else out of the spinning stash challenge bin.

The new suburban housewife schedule is kicking my butt. I'm up early every day because all the bedroom windows face east and I have to drop D at the train station. I wouldn't say I've turned into a lark, but I'm definitely not an owl anymore.

Diving in

Today's NaBloPoMo question is "Do you like to dive into things or take your time getting acclimated?" For me, it depends on the context in which I'm answering the question. When swimming, I usually ease into the water slowly even though I am ultimately happier if I dive in. I remember fearlessly diving off of the high dive at the city pools when I was young. At some point around middle school, I lost that fearlessness.

When crafting and cooking, I dive in. When I get a new spindle, new fiber, or a new wheel, I start playing. Eventually, I settle in to sample and plan for a project, but I love those first moments of spinning for the joy of it. Unfortunately, the bins of fiber in the new wool room that I've spun a few grams of are evidence of this tendency. With knitting, I'm even worse. I quickly succumb to the shiny new projects and abandon them as soon as I hit a small roadblock, things get boring, or I've learned what that project had to teach. The huge collection of odd socks and nearly finished sweaters provides that evidence. For example, I started the Ruched Yoke Tee from the Spring 2011 Interweave Knits in late February. I knit furiously for just about a week; I was traveling and in love with the yarn and the pattern. I finished the yoke, reached the point that I needed to do a bit of math for bust darts, and have not picked it up since (unless you count putting all the yarn, magazine issue, my recent measurements, and the sweater in progress into one place as I packed to move).

Professionally, I am more inclined to take my time getting acclimated. When working with colleagues, partners, and customers, taking that time is important to building long term relationships. When I first started in my field, I frequently dove in and ended up with bad client relationships because I did not fully understand the problem I had been hired to solve, or—more importantly—the people for whom I was solving a problem. I also coded myself into corners because I did not properly plan large projects. When I am working on projects, this becomes procrastination more often than not. Today it took me most of the morning to get started on a project; once I started, I made good progress. Someday, I'll learn that just starting the work on big projects gets them done much more quickly than waiting until I have a large block of time to start and finish in one setting. Then again, if I have not learned that less by 41, I wonder if I ever will.

Paddling

D and I successfully re-lanuched the S.S. Daisy (who knew that the canoe had a name?) this morning. Draconian measures were required to breach the security protecting the vessel. The cables securing S.S. Daisy were quite cunningly hidden by the native flora. In addition, growth of the native flora (the tree it was locked to) provided tension on the cable which prevented access to the vessel. As reported yesterday, we needed a crowbar to remove the cable from the tree.

Unfortunately, there were many deaths during the initial launch.  The S.S. Daisy tipped several times and was flooded prior to emergency action by the crew to right the vessel.  During the flooding all of the animals (spiders, ants, etc.) on board were unfortunately lost at sea.  The ship's owners released a statement:  "We regret that lives were lost, however all paying passangers and crew were safe. However, we are not responsible for and can not account for any stowaways."

While out, we were spotted by a park ranger who chastised us for paddling without life vests (thankfully, he sent us home without issuing a ticket). We shopped this afternoon for personal flotation devices so that our next excursion will be legal.

Swimming

The gorgeous kitchen is not the only reason we bought our house. The view from the master bedroom and access to Lake Cochicuate target="new" played a big part in the decision. When I wake up in the morning, I feel like I'm in a tree house. On nice days, I roll a yoga mat out on the deck to greet the sun.

For swimming, we have steps that lead down to the water and plans to put in a dock to make swimming easier. We had a few friends over for a barbecue tonight and some of them braved the stairs and our unimproved lakeshore and went for a swim. After dinner, D braved the underbrush to rescue his family canoe. He took it out for a brief paddle and declared it lake-worthy.

I have plans for an early morning paddle and dip in the lake tomorrow.

Tour de Fleece 2011

I am a couple of days late starting my Tour de Fleece spinning. I plead moving and unpacking insanity. I really meant to spend a few minutes spinning on a spindle Saturday and Sunday, but I didn't.

My goals for this year:

Finish pink BFL on a spindle

Finish pink and purple polworth on a spindle

Finish green Abbybatts on the Schacht-Reeves

Finish blue alpaca blend on the Joy

Pick something else from my personal fiber club bin to spin

My excuse for not spinning is that D is an unpacking slave driver. But, the kitchen is fully unpacked and everything has a temporary home. I need to do some serious cabinet rearranging, but we did not take the time to adjust shelf heights as we upacked. To a large extent, we put everything where it would fit and not where I want it long term.

We have also unpacked as many books as we could into the tiny library. Before I get to spend time spinning tonight, we need to do a quick organization pass in the office so D has someplace to work for a few hours tonight and I have someplace to work tomorrow.