Promise Fulfilled

Last night heralded in a new season. Gone are semi warm days, lights are finally making lots of sense. And now I’ll admit to loving all the little christmassy lights everywhere in December. Forget all the consumer hoopla, but give me your lights. Just the thought of January and February with the colorful lights all being gone and the dreariness. No, will not go there now, but instead fully embrace the garish decorations.

Before going to bed I took some pictures as points of reference for the morning, just in case it would be needed.

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Yes I know, not very impressive. So let’s catapult forward to this morning:

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Same tree, more snow. I love the quiet, the reverence nature forces on us. Taking deep belly breaths. Yes….

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I love the do not disturb sign nature has hung out, but I also love to see a sign of my existence by disregarding the sign. Others are no better and soon there are footprints and hoof prints and paw prints and tire prints and….

This is a day to learn navajo plying or chain plying as some call it. At least I think they’re both the same. It’s a bit difficult to work on two skills at the same time. I’m getting used to the wheel, but have so much left to get accustomed to. Which whorl to use, getting the right tension, treadle and foot rhythm, drafting, on and on. And then there are plying skills. Of course that assumes I had the skill to make singles to begin with. But ever impatient I’m forging, or rather, forcing my way toward yarn.

A new spinning wheel would seem sufficient to most as a project. But we’re talking about a Gemini at work here. I signed up for level one of the masters knitting program with The Knitting Guild Association.

Impatiently waiting for my chosen yarn to arrive to knit my projects with. Did I say this is only level 1? This might never go any further than level one because level two requires putting your seaming skills to the test. If I’ve never said it before, rest assured there is nothing more hateful in life than seaming, for me. There is a physical aversion that is so strong that I can show you parts of a finished cardigan, at least finished in that all knitted parts are done, that still sits in a basket because I’m avoiding seaming. It’s that bad alright. Oh, it has been resting there for years. 8?

On to navajo ply in a winter wonderland.

There’s Something in the Air

While in southern parts of this Earth people are celebrating the warmth of summer, we’re heading into snow. It could not have been any more obvious today. Shopping for oil for my spinning wheel, my brand new Schacht Matchless spinning wheel, yes, you’ve read right, I took the plunge a few days ago, more on that later, back to the store: there was this special atmosphere, almost christmassy, holiday like. Every store was crowded and everyone was getting ready for the big one tonight. Everyone was acknowledging one another instead of the typical everyday stupor people are in, running around without noticing a thing. We’re all into this together today. The promise of snow, the usual electricity outage that accompanies the first snow, the magic. I like that, it gives me hope. As I’m typing tiny little snowflakes are falling. Mind you, not a lot, and no winter whiteness yet, but we’re promised to be enjoying it tomorrow.

I’ve been so neglectful of this blog. Yes, I did write a few entries, but only in my head. As it has been getting colder the room the computer lives in right now isn’t heated, so writing for an extended period of time becomes unpleasant.

And there have been some unpleasant experiences I had no idea how to share. Still not sure how to write about it. Best I’ll give a link to the news story at the end.

As many know, our son Toby was on the Tahoe Hotshots this year. The most amazing time in his life and though the work was excruciating hard and difficult, he was thriving. The party on the evening on the last day of work was accordingly full of fun and singing and playing and whatever young guys do after a hard season of work. As Toby was heading back home with his girlfriend driving, others were headed back to the barracks with their designated driver. But then the unthinkable, unimaginable happened. And here I’ll take you to one of the online stories: yubanet story.

There have been no follow up stories so far and I’m left with speculations and a million possible scenarios but nothing making sense.

My life besides obsessively checking for news every day of the accident consists of fiber. Recently I’ve started hosting an evening of knitting for members of our fiber guild. It’s been a blast. And lots of holiday knitting. Hanukkah having come so early this year has me relaxing now.

Our daughter Liana came for Thanksgiving with boyfriend and we had a wonderful time and she got reacquainted with knitting.

My wheel is calling loudly to spin some more. Gotta abide.