The socks from hell are completed. I still hate them. Note to self: When you start knitting a pattern that doesn’t trip your trigger–STOP! Rip it out and do something—anything else. Yeesh. Think I’ll cast on a Nanner now.
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I’m so far behind on blogging, my friends have been thinging of devious ways to get me to blog. For instance, my friend Barbara tagged me for this: The Rules: Rules are posted at the beginning. At the end of the post, the player tags 5 people and posts their names. Then the player goes to each of the “named” people’s blogs and leaves a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. If you’ve been tagged, you do the same, letting the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer. They, in turn, answer the following questions. Here we go! 1. What was I doing 10 years ago? 2. What are 5 things on my to-do list today? (Well, I have more than five, but I’ll stop there.)
and those are just the A1 priorities. 3. Snacks I enjoy: 4. Places I’ve lived: 5. Things I would do if I were a billionaire: So there you have it. Now I’m tagging Sharon, KnitSteph, Laura, ckknitter, and I knit alone. You’re it! cue Stevie Wonder OK, I know every new grandma on the planet thinks her grandchild is the cutest, but seriously, could she be any cuter??? I mean, most babies are all squinchy when they come out but look! She’s perfect! She has a little bit of wispy straight hair, all her fingers and toes, and apparently the strength to wrap anyone within striking distance around her teeny little pinkie finger. She also shows signs of being tall like her momma. Look how long this little girl is! We spoke to the new mom last night–they’re home and getting used to their new life and trying to establish a routine. After a little bit of all over the clock, Aina has settled into a routine (needing to get up close and personal with mom every 2 hours). She seems to have a good appetite from what I’m told. She’s been introduced to the resident Queen, a cat who had a strenuous dislike of the other cat in the house….until he died a little while ago…she’s been mourning him. She inspected the new arrival cautiously, gave a few supervised sniffs, and settled down on her favorite spot on the couch, apparently accepting the newcomer with good grace. And need I say anything about the effect of tiny baby girls on their daddies? Grandpa is all goofy about her from a distance, but I’m told that Aina and her daddy have a special bond already. When he picks her up she stops fussing and gives him her full attention. And he did a good job of hanging in there through the labor and delivery, which must have been hard on him (not as hard it was on Holly, though!). So, their lives are all changed by the magical, mystical, wonderful thing called parenthood. It’s a little overwhelming at first, but they’re both smart and wonderful people so they’ll get through it just fine! Here’s a picture of the newcomer with her favorite daddy: We just got the news. DH’s daughter Holly gave birth this morning. Welcome to the world, little Aina. You are already loved by three sets of grandparents and lots of aunties and uncles in addition to your parents. Your Grandma Judy is going to teach you all kinds of Pictures to follow… There were a number of plurkers who were having trouble posting pictures from YouTube, so I created this short tutorial. It’s my first YouTube experience and I’m a little dismayed at how the quality changed between what I uploaded and what YouTube processed, but it is still clear enough for folks to learn:
Just a drive-by posting to show off the fruits of my labor at the torch yesterday. Well, only the good ones. The rest were warm-up beads or to sample color combinations. In other words, “Bottom of the Lake” beads. My finger is fine today…just a tiny blister under several layers of skin. It doesn’t even hurt (the nail is pretty short now, though).
And here’s the one that cost me the fingernail and ended my session (front and back sides):
I need to torch more often! I finally found some time to torch. Since it’s been a while, I warmed up by making a couple small beads, just to check color combos. Then I tried to see if I can still make a decent flame bead. Flame beads are the some of the hardest beads I make. Not as hard as encased florals,
Since I was playing with colors, I tried making some alternate reality flame beads–using a violet base and bright lime in the flame. I guess I was inspired by MissViolet on Plurk (of Lime and Violet podcast fame). I also tried some orange and brown I have….trying to find the right combo for to match an outfit I have. The brown is perfect but the orange was nice in the rod but got too dark in the bead. Back to the drawing board. I may have to blend my own color to get what I want.
Finally, I played a bit with some super silver-saturated colors–a recent addition to the array of soft glass colors. They look somewhat like boro (but are more expensive…eek). I must have the world’s most reluctant Kronos (from Double Helix Glassworks, but I did finally get a reaction. I still haven’t figured out Olympia Rain, but I’ll keep trying. I did play with Gaia and I love it on black. It gives a lovely “oilslick” color. Very cool. I have some Nyx too, but haven’t tried it yet. As I was playing with the Gaia, I stuck my right middle-finger in the torch. Luckily, I have fast reflexes and my fingernail deflected the flame. I chilled the finger right away and ended up with only a small blister near the nail. But it did signal the end of bead time for the day. The beads are still chillin’ in the kiln. Once they get cool enough, I’ll pull ‘em out and take a picture or two. Beads are a little difficult to photograph, but what the heck!
Well, OK. That might be an understatement. My friends think I should be a better blogger. I do too. But sometimes my life gets in the way and little things slow me down. In this case, it’s some of each. So, I’ll get started and maybe hammer out a few blogworthy things.
Maple SurpleHave you ever wondered about how maple syrup was made? Well, I got the chance to visit a neat place this spring and find out more about
Even though the day was gray and hinted at mist, it was wonderful driving down Wisconsin’s country lanes and arriving here. The smells were wonderful! It’s a pancake breakfast but more!
The first thing you see are lots of trees. Tapped trees. Maple trees.
To tap the tree, they pound in a small tube with a bump on it that holds the pail.
One problem with the old collection method is the amount of…er….stuff
But enough about making maple surple! One of the best things about being there (apart from spending the day with my hunny, his sister
And there were hay rides! You got to ride on a “hay” wagon behind the tractor while the proprietor gave the history of the farm, talked about the process, and showed some of the equipment. It was fun! The little kids enjoyed it the most, but some of us older kids liked it plenty too! Oooh, and there was a sweet treat I’d never tried before. Can you believe it? They made maple syrup cotton candy! It is to die for. I do not lie. In addition to that, they had the store open and you could bring in your own container or buy one from them, and
So, next spring, if you’re in the west-central Wisconsin area in April, keep an eye out for the S&S Sugarbush open house and pancake breakfast. It’s so worth the trip! In one of the recent sneakups at The Loopy Ewe I bought a package of fiber to spin. It looks like this: The color is Burn and it was dyed by Lone Star Arts and it’s Superwash Merino. I love spinning merino wool but I haven’t tried spinning Merino. I’m thinking that I want to spin this to be a two-ply sock/fingering weight. I was curious to see how long the repeats were so I layed out the fiber to get an idea. As you can see, Red is the predominant color. Yummy…I love red so I’m happy with predominant red in this fiber. So back to spinning for socks. I know I want to spin it a bit on the firm side to reduce wear. And thin because it’s to become a two-ply sock yarn. I also want the have fairly short color repeats so I want to split the roving in half, then halved that, and then one more time to get a fairly fine strip of roving to spin. I figured I’d start with a smallish piece and spin a ply, put it on a card so I could remember the twist angle and thickness, then play a small bit and see what it looked like (put that on the card too so I could remember the tpi that looks best for the sample skein. So I took my little strip of roving, predrafted it a little, and started to spin on my Louet S-10. Or does this look like the pictures in the biology book when the little swimmer wins the race and enters the egg??? |
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Oh yeah…and a maid. Maybe a LIVE-IN maid.
it! The place is in Wisconsin and it’s called S&S Sugarbush. In April, they have an open house so the city folks can come out and see what goes on there. 
Smaller trees only had one pail, but larger ones had two. There was a steady drip…drip…drip coming form the taps. It doesn’t hurt the trees. Many of these trees are quite old and have been tapped numerous times. 
The tap goes just far enough into the tree to hit the cells that are carrying sap from the roots to the branches where the nutrients and moisture will help fill out the leaves, which then start the process of photosynthesis. The sap starts to “run” when the nights are cold but the days are sunny and start getting warm. In this case, early April. They gather up the sap and pour it into larger containers and when they’ve collected from all the trees, they strain the sap and put it into the sugarbush…that’s the big vat that gets heated to boil the sap until it becomes maple syrup. It’s hard work, intensive and, especially in the old days, backbreaking and a little scary. They used to heat the sap in wood-fired sugarbushes. If it got too hot, it could boil over. Boil too long and you have a big batch of maple sugar. Not long enough and it’s not good syrup. Hard to control the heat that well with wood fire. This place has newer technology, though. It’s gas-fired! 
that also drops into the pails along with the sap. Now, there’s a newer way to collect the sap. The blue bags with a cover keep the sap cleaner and keeps out more of the dust, twigs, and bugs than the pails. There’s an 
even newer way….they tap into the tree, and hook all the trees up with high-tech tubing and a suction pump. It’s pumped right into a sealed collection point. Much cleaner, but sadly, not nearly as picturesque as the tin buckets. On the other hand, given that it takes 40 gallons of sap to make just one gallon of syrup, I can understand why they don’t want to keep lugging and dumping pails, straining the sap, and repeating the process over and over until they have enough to boil.
and our niece) was the pancake breakfast! People came from miles around. You stand in line and order (with or without blueberries) and they cook them there on an outdoor grill along with some of the tastiest sausage (I later learned it was venison)! Back to the tables and dining al fresco–cold milk, hot pancakes, butter, and all the syrup you could stand to pour on. Yumm! I was trying to take it easy because I’m trying to get “unfluffy” but sometimes, ya just gotta go with the flow and eat salad later. This
was one of those times. 
get newly created, super duper high class MAPLE SYRUP right from the big spigot. Oh my….we bought a gallon. The people who run the place are friend of our niece, so it was quite fun to chat with them a little during our meal and afterwards. Seems we had just missed the bear sausage made from the bear shot by the young friend of my niece. Now that would have been tasty! 
