a finished sock upon my lap.

If I die before I wake;

that second sock I won’t have to make.

Since impulse buying is (part of) what lead to my cluttered life in the first place, that means that staying with Flylady would present way too much resistance. I’m a path of least resistance kinda girl.

I’m not squishy or gooey and don’t fall into purple puddles but the change to my inbox does make me a little sad.

Fortunately I have some gorgeous handpainted bamboo/merino blend roving to console me.

The picture I took came out okay, except the colors are much more vivid in real life.

The yarn when plied is destined to become a Baby Surprise Jacket for Lexi. I know she’s no longer a baby, but it doesn’t take much tweeking to embiggen the pattern to fit a 5 year old.

I haven’t put forth any serious spinning effort in a while, every once in a while I grab my spindle and work on the reddish brown baby alpaca but the wheel has languished in the closet since August.

Opal knows what it takes to get a girl spinning again and put it all in one care package for me. Caramels, warm hats, comfy socks, and of course yummy roving. Thank you Opal!

Not pictured is the HK notepad, the coolest cabled hat ever (I’m not taking it off) or the caramels (because I’ve eaten them and they were yummy) or the gorgeous bracelet (note to self, buy more batteries for camera.)

Aren’t the amigurumi the cutest ever? Lexi loves them so much (according to Lexi they know all the funniest lines from Finding Nemo, it’s rare to find such movie loving crocheted sea dwellers.)

The roving is called Evil Clown, but spun up I think it is more “kind hearted Gypsy princess” than white faced carnie gone bad.

On other fronts I was called an “elitist b*tch” because I commented on how many knitters and spinners had cool blogs. That’s almost as good as last week when I was called a passive agressive control freak, not sure what that was for, or what the writer hoped to accomplish so I’ll go on assuming that the writer of that message had a psychotic break of some sort. This is the best I can do since I’ve given up on the cussing words.

I was offline just after the inauguration (power outage) but I did watch the inauguration ceremony and President Obama’s speech online prior to the outage and I made some notes when it was was clear I wouldn’t be able to comment until the lights came back on.

First and foremost is that I have a dim recollection of the National Lampoon’s “The lost white house tapes” and I half expected, half hoped that there would be a swearing out ceremony for George W. (perhaps Jesse Jackson could have delivered it.) I was rather disappointed that there was no swearing out ceremony.

Second was that the hot phrase on Fox News, was “a peaceful transition of power”– their correspondents must have said “a peaceful transition of power” at least 20 times in the ten minutes that we actually watched the live feed online. So much so that I figured that Fox had gone with the “If you can’t say anything nice, say nothing at all” bit of wisdom.

MSNBC was much better, and still it was a little creepy coverage-wise. There were many comparisons between Obama and Lincoln and Obama and Kennedy. As nice as those comparisons were, I figure it’s not good luck to compare a newly elected president to two presidents who, when all is said and done, are most famous for being assassinated. Don’t jinxy Obama!

(Yes, I am just superstitious enough.)

I suppose I do.  I suppose deep down inside of me, deep deep down, in the darkest recesses of my soul there’s a part of me that must force the rest of me to spend my precious spinning time in unpleasant ways by promising me that I will like the finished yarn. I just hope that part of me isn’t a liar. I hope I’m not yanking my chain here.

I also wonder if that part of me has a knitting counterpart. I don’t think it does. I think the knitting part of my soul is much more territorial about it’s time. It offers no false and fleeting hopes. It doesn’t make me persevere by promising that I’ll like a sweater that is obviously ugly. I wish the knitting part of me would go down to the spinning part of me and kick its ass.

At the very least I wish the spinning part of me would stop looking at the pathetic unfilled bobbin of cotton yarn and shut up.

I started this shawl the evening before the house broke. It’s out of lace weight handspun gray alpaca and the pattern has been spawned from my tiny aching brains. I spent way too much time staring at fiddlehead ferns and the laced patterns on the chickens, so this pattern which has elements of both but is not completely reflective of either emerged.

If I were judge it at the moment it would be destined for a good ripping and I would salvage the yarn now. But there’s something about blocking that gives me hope that it’ll turn out, at least enough hope that I’m graphing a record of the construction praying that it’ll be a desirable pattern, worthy of this much effort on my part.

I added about 5 rows to it in the wee hours of this day. Now, I feel like that’s something to blog about.

Oh yeah, and I applied to continue my education. I’m seeking an AA with a business concentration. Cool huh? C’est tres cool, mes amis.

(Oui. My francais is hideous, thank you for noticing.)

If you wouldn’t mind praying to the dark overlords of financial aid, I could use whatever intercession can be mustered on my behalf. Thanks, I appreciate it.

I noticed while listening to Lime and Violet that while they raved over yarns that the word “cheap” came up again and again. This is in no way a criticism against them, it just stuck out in my mind and makes a good example– that they didn’t really mean cheap as in inferior, they meant cheap as in inexpensive.

But the word association is there. Cheap really means both inexpensive and inferior doesn’t it?

Value doesn’t really reflect the cost. Nor does it always refer to the usefulness or even the investment of materials and time. Value is subjective most of the time.

Value is affected by the world around it. Which should cost more: A gallon of gas that gets you around town or a gallon of milk? It really depends on which you need more at the moment.

Is a handspun yarn less valuable than an equal yarn from machine manufacture? Some would say yes, because the machine manufactured yarn is more consistent. Some would say no because the handspun yarn is unique in having a human touch.

Is a sweater more special from a handknitter than from a machine? Should it cost more if it is knit from an original pattern? Or should it cost more because the pattern is from a world famous designer?

These things are hard to quantify. It’s also hard to decide if crafters selling their goods cheaply are undermining the value of artisans goods which are priced based on fair labor. On one hand I’m not offended by the hobby spinner that just loves to spin selling her yarn at just above material costs, on the other hand I’m also trying to make a living and find that cheap (inexpensive and inferior) does do some damage. Not just to the pricing structure of handspun yarn, but also to the reputation of handspinners.

It’s funny in a sad way. I have several yarns I felt great about making. And when they were finished I loved them. It was hard for me to get them ready to sell because I could just see all the potentially wonderful things they could make. Measure, weigh, quantify and value– plus photograph and write descriptions. The whole time I was very optimistic.

Suddenly it just stopped. No one bought anything. Dead. Nothing.

Damn.

So over time those yarns became a source of guilt for me. Why did I bother to put so much time and effort into something so lovely and carefully made only to have nothing come from it? And then to hear compliments over it just started grating on my nerves. Compliments are awesome and I really do need the recognition sometimes, but they don’t buy food or pay the mortgage.

So I listed one of my favorites on eBay for less than half of what it is worth. And it didn’t sell. I reduced the price again. Still didn’t sell.

Now the yarn is on etsy for even less. I just want to move out the old stuff to make room for the new. It might seem like a good time to be a little bitter, but bitter isn’t my best shade so I’m hopeful; even though this is pretty difficult for me to sort out.

I’m not into cut-throat business models or giving myself slave wages, and pricing down so much does make me feel like I have to justify my decision. However, I need at least the materials costs in my stock back in order to pay for new materials and keep going on.

I have to change something.

I have no idea what I’m going to do with it, beyond just staring at it reverently.

I also finished spinning another 8 ounces of the moorit Shetland, and started on 8 ounces of the white Shetland. I have also kept plugging away on the Icarus shawl, although I’m only to the second graph.

My husband really has to stop hoarding the camera. And start moving his stuff off the memory cards. I was pretty ticked to go through all the trouble of getting the camera, finding fresh batteries, laying out my treasures carefully– only to take a single picture and find the memory card full. That stinks.

Months ago Matt started grumbling that I was not taking pictures off the memory card, and he could never use the camera. So I thought I’d be cool and kind of pile up pictures in my mind and then take them all at once in a marathon style instead of a snapshot here and there. It’s just futile. I waited and waited. Finally, I just asked him to take a picture of something here or there, he’d grumble “What, now you can’t use the camera?”

Which leads me to say something along the lines of it’s not using the camera that’s impossible, just using the camera, his computer (to which the printer with the card reader is attached), and finding memory or batteries enough to use it.

Which leads to him saying something along the lines of how he’ll just drop everything (even though he is usually not doing anything when I ask) and take the picture since it’s so damned important.

You can probably guess this doesn’t completely halt the conversation. It usually ends up going on for some time much longer than it would have had he simply a) taken the picture and put it in the shared file as I asked or b) just let me use the camera in peace in the first place– since it is his pictures habitually undeleted on the memory cards and not mine.

And shall we talk of leaving dead batteries in electronics? Should we, as husband and wife, have that little conversation Darling?

In the greater scheme of things I know stuff like this probably shouldn’t be such a big deal. It’s just annoying.

Since I’m doing some flat knitting (the Icarus shawl) and I’m a continental knitter I had to inspect the wrong side to see if have the row clusters.

Someone else pointed out that it’s because the tension on the purl row is usually different than it is on the knit, and suggested that using a different wrap and pinch through direction or even a second needle of different size would even things out.

Guess what? My knits and purls are the same, so no row clusters.

Cool.

Maybe this means that Continental knitting is more cooperative to lefties.

Or that I am better at adjusting my knitting tension than I thought.

I’m on the third repeat of the first chart of the Icarus, so it pretty much looks the same but larger at this point.

I’m at somewhat of a quandry as to what to spin. I want to finish spinning the cashmere, but it takes so long and I think the fiber has some mysterious asexual reproduction going on in the zip baggie. I swear there is more cashmere in the baggie.

Matt bought some small dog slickers for me to play with, they have the regular wire brush pad with the exception that every forth wire is about 3/10th inch longer than the others– so they are great for cleaning my drum carder and get everything off of the carding cloth. Even loose bits of silk noil come up with no argument. This is nothing short of a small miracle for me since cleaning the darned thing is such a pain I avoid using it when I can (and thus avoid washing and picking wool to card) just so I don’t have to clean it.

I am so glad that I finally stopped stressing out about graphed lace patterns. Now I just stress out over my failing eyesight, global warming and my inability to count accurately.

I was up in the air as to which yarn I wanted to use, the gray alpaca or the Moorit Shetland– I am glad that I chose the Shetland.

Staying up until the wee hours with a Great Dane has it’s advantages though, I finished my Brooke’s Column of Leaves Scarf, which I think is going to end up being my sister’s for Christmas if I can get my ducks in a row. You’ll have to wait until I block it for pictures, it’s really a lovely pattern though and really fun to knit. I definitely want to make a second one (for me, because unlike Greta I’m selfish.)

In moving things off the floor I found the work bag that has Josey’s blanket in it, so I’m working on that now. The funny thing is (and I’m sure this is related to the fact that it’s Lion Brand “Homespun”) I didn’t even realize I’d lost it. Okay, maybe I did but did not really care so much because the idea of knitting something for him in wool would be much more fun.

The house (other than the one leak) is totally fine, even if it does flood a bit in the yard and the shop (the water is just a puddly thing and doesn’t seem to be getting any deeper so I’m not going to stress out about it.) So really the only thing to do is to keep myself entertained and wait for the dog pillow to come out of the wash and dry.