I have been remiss in introducing a new member of the family. Meet Coco.



Coco was a stray that showed up outside our house last September. We have an old barn in our backyard, and there has been a semi-feral cat living under it since before we moved in. He's skittish, and never lets us get too close. We did feed him, though. When Coco started coming around, presumably for the food, she was young, and skinny, and extremely affectionate, and kept getting beat up by the resident cat.

Because she was so affectionate, she came running whenever we were outside, and of course Emma fell immediately, irrevocably in love. Though I tried to deny it, I knew I was sunk when Emma named her.

I was Mean Mom for almost a month, since we already have one cat, and didn't think we needed to take on another. Our first cat, Naia, while incredibly sweet and mushy toward us, has always been aggressive toward other cats and I didn't think we wanted to go there.



So Emma was allowed to play with Coco outside (since there were no fleas, obvious infections, or aggression), but Coco was not allowed in the house. Then Coco and Naia started sizing each other up through the screen door. First there was hissing and growling. Then there was looking, then there was sniffing. Then there was indifference. There began to be pressure from the six-year-old to let Coco in "just for a minute" so Naia could talk to her. And yes, I caved. She really is a sweet cat.



Suffice it to say that "just for a minute" turned into "just for an hour or so", then "just during the daytime", then hey presto, we have another cat.



Naia has accepted Coco far better than I would have ever thought possible. They are buddies. Naia is almost 12 years old, and has been a bit creaky for the past year. He didn't jump as easily or as high, rarely played, rarely ran, and generally acted like a senior cat. Since Coco joined the family, he plays bat-the-crumpled-paper with her, chases her, is chased by her, and is better able to jump onto the bathroom counter. It's quite a difference. They get along very well, though Naia is definitely the alpha cat.



Naia always sleeps next to my knees at night, and Coco does too sometimes, but she has particularly staked out Emma's bed.



Often as close to Emma as she can get.



Naia and Coco also are frequently found snuggled up together during the day, either on one of the cat beds, or the couch, or the very cutest, on My Chair.



One or both of them is usually on me when I'm sitting in My Chair, especially when I have an afghan.

This can make it a bit difficult to do anything on my computer, though.

I've been home a lot in the past couple weeks, since I had my hours at work reduced to zero (yes, again). I was limping long at 5-10 hours a week for a couple months before Christmas, then they said "sure, take two weeks off for the holidays, no problem", so we went to visit family. When we got back, I went into work on Monday Jan. 4, and was told that there is nothing for me to work on until probably March. Sigh.

Anyway, I've been home a lot. Hence the recorder obsession. And going to the gym every day. Which are not entirely useless pursuits, I suppose. Funnily enough, the laundry doesn't seem to be getting folded any faster even though I'm home more.

Onward to the point of this post! I did something today that I've always wanted to try. I candied orange peel.



That's three oranges worth of peel, and it is SO much better than the stuff from the grocery store! Super easy, too. I just peeled the oranges (with a vegetable peeler, so as not to get any of the white pith), cut the peels into pieces, and boiled them in one cup of water until tender. Then I added one cup of sugar and boiled until the syrup was mostly absorbed and the peels were almost translucent. I tossed them in a bit more sugar so they wouldn't stick together, and voila! They're sweet and a little bitter, and very powerfully orange-flavored. Quite nice; not overly sweet, and not gummy like the store-bought ones. I think it will be fabulous in quick bread.

I also have been playing with a new kitchen toy this winter:



I got myself a dehydrator in October, when I was given a large box of apples by a coworker. There were too many for Emma and me to eat before they spoiled, so I sliced and dried most of them. I also did tomatoes (again, excess from a coworker's garden), and several batches of beef jerky. The jerky was a huge hit with Emma and Shaun (and me) and disappeared in a blink.

After that box of apples was used up, I received another big box! Apparently, it was a good apple year in Mike's yard. I didn't think we needed more dried apples (since I'm the only one who will eat them), so I sauced the second box. I got my mom's old food mill when we were at Dad's house over Christmas, and spent a day processing them into yummy, yummy applesauce. I had 30 pounds of apples in that second box, and it made 10 quarts. I didn't even add any extra sugar, and Emma declared it was "the best applesauce I've ever eaten." That's a win.



So there it is: the remaining 6 quarts of applesauce (yes, we've gone through 4 quarts in two weeks...), a quart of dried tomatoes, two half-pints of candied orange peel, and a gallon of dried apples. Tucked away safely in my cupboard, and making me feel very smug.

Today, in addition to the orange peel, I started a batch of cranberries drying into craisins; just plunged into boiling water until they cracked, then soaked in orange juice and honey for an hour to sweeten them slightly before spreading them on the dehydrator trays. They've been in there four hours so far, and should be done before bedtime.

Once upon a time I was a little girl who played music. I started soprano recorder and viola in fourth grade, and tenor recorder in fifth grade. I stopped playing recorder when I started junior high, and quit viola when I started high school. I was tired of practicing, had too many other things going on, and was tired of practicing (did I mention I was tired of practicing?), so I didn't continue. But for quite a while there, I was happy making music. I played in school orchestras, a couple ensembles at various points, and even went to music day camp a couple summers.

Recorder was always a secondary instrument to me; I only played in school because everyone had to (though taking up tenor and playing in the recorder ensemble was extra), and though I enjoyed it I never really pursued it. Viola was what I was interested in. I felt like musician, like I was good at something. I'm sure there was plenty of screechy cacophony involved, but my parents put up with it and I think I did eventually achieve some level of competence on the viola by the time I quit.

Fast forward. I am 38 years old, and I haven't picked up a recorder since I was 13. I haven't been remotely musical for more than a quarter century, yet this has consumed me for the past six days:



It all started innocently enough. Emma is in public school now. They had a holiday program. The third graders played their recorders. It was squeaky. Kind of painful, actually. But it got me thinking, and more importantly, it got Emma thinking. I told her that I played recorder when I was little, and she asked if she could try, too.

Of course I said YES, and that we would look for my sister's and my old recorders when we went to visit Grandpa for Christmas, and we could play together. Unfortunately, my dad just moved from Maine to Kansas, and almost everything was still packed in boxes when we were there for Christmas. I know just where they were in his old house, but we couldn't find the right box in the stacks in his garage in Kansas. I'm sure they're there somewhere, but I searched with no luck.

Emma flitted off onto another tangent almost immediately, and didn't seem to care that much, but the bug had been planted in my brain. That's why, when Emma and I were in TheMegaStoreOfDoom, Volde-Mart, or, as I fondly think of it, "Empire of Evil" (OK I'll stop, I think you get the picture), last Sunday, she saw these hanging from a shelf and shrieked "They have recorders, Mommy!!", I was powerless.



Unfortunately, the pink ones were sold out. I bought these for $1.00 each and I have to tell you, they are worth every penny with plenty of change left over. Seriously, the tone on these is dreadful. Do not buy one.

I played mine (the green one) for almost six hours on Sunday night, despite the bad sound. I googled around and found this free tutorial online and went though most of it that night, because I. Could. Not. Stop. I think I was up until about 1:00. I sort of ignored the sound and concentrated on the fingering. Luckily Shaun was out of town for a conference and was not subjected to the torture that is the green recorder. Emma didn't mind because she doesn't know any better, and was just impressed that I was playing.

However, I do know better. While I don't have perfect pitch, I can tell when something is out of tune and wrong. It just sounds off to me, and these toy recorders are serious nerve-graters. Before I went to bed that first night, I had already placed an order for a real recorder.

I continued to play the green one Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, even though it sounded terrible, and so was exceedingly grateful when the real one arrived yesterday. Yay for fast-shipping eBay sellers!



I got a Yamaha 24B resin recorder. It's a student recorder, not anything outstanding, and pretty much what I learned to play on in 1980. This one cost a whole $4.45 plus $2 shipping. However, that tiny step up in price made a world of difference. It sounds like an instrument, not a outraged mosquito on crack.

The main thing I was looking forward to, aside from, you know, in-tune notes, was this:



See how the lowest set of holes is offset on the new one, as opposed to in line with the rest like on the green one? These are the holes that you cover with your right pinky finger. Well, with the green one, I couldn't even reach those lowest holes with my pinky unless I contorted my whole right hand and strained my other fingers. I don't know if I have freakishly short pinkies or what, but it wasn't happening. And even if I did get all the holes covered, the low C still wouldn't play five times out of ten. So too with the rest of the notes- random squeaking, some notes flat, some sharp, and some off by a whole tone. Ugly. I managed for four days, but it took effort.

The new recorder is made in three pieces (the green one is all one piece), and the bell at the bottom can be turned so that the lowest holes can be reached easily. The tone is a thousand times better, and I can play all the notes with ease. Well, the highest ones still take good breath control, but at least they are do-able! The tone is sweet, and richer, and in tune.

Actually, why am I even comparing these two? The green one is not an instrument, it is a cheap plastic piece of junk that is only useful for children to annoy their parents with. The new one isn't top of the line, but it is a real instrument.

I told Emma that once she can play Mary Had a Little Lamb on her orange one, she can have the white one and I'll get another for me. She hasn't done much so far, but we did do little copy-me exercise this afternoon with three notes.



I guess the point is that I surprised myself this week. I picked up an instrument again after 25 years, and I can do it! Reading music came back to me fairly easily, and I am really enjoying myself. I don't know if it will last, but I'm having gobs of fun now, and I think once Emma starts learning it will be fun to play together. Even if she doesn't play at all until third grade, when they start in school, I can wait.

Well, I'm not much for year-end wrap up posts, but tonight as I was tidying up my books for my contract spinning gig, I realized just how much yarn I have spun for Tanglewood Fiber Creations this year.

I spun a total of 689.5 ounces.

That is 43.1 pounds.

And that doesn't even include my personal spinning projects.

Holy guacamole.

Now see, this is why I need to keep up with the blogging. I finished another big weaving project this fall, and I can't even remember what month it was. I think it was mid October. Could have been November. Honestly, the past couple months have been a gray blur.

One fun thing about this project was that I finally got to use my end-feed shuttle, which I bought two years ago and haven't done more that play around with. I tried it a couple times, but either the weft yarn was too thick, or the warp was too narrow, or I was scared of winding the pirns, or whatever. I finally worked out some of the kinks with this project. It really does help with the selvedges, especially in combination with using a temple. In this case, my high-tech temple consisted of a weight tied to a string, hanging off a paperclip, hooked into the edge of the web. Worked a treat.

Anyway, here are some pictures. This was a two-shawl warp, of 2/18 super fine merino, threaded in a point twill pattern of my own devising. Both shawls used the same threading, but had different treadlings. The warp sett was 25 epi, and the weft about the same. The weft was mostly the same 2/18 wool as the warp, with accent stripes of handspun, the hand dyed merino/silk singles I spun a couple years ago and named Sapphire and Amethyst.

The first shawl used the Sapphire singles, that I first used for the fancy twill shawl.



I put five stripes of the blue, of varying widths, at each end. A bit fiddly to change weft yarns that often, but I like the results.



The diamond pattern of the twill is the same across the entire shawl, I just placed the stripes at different points in the treadling to take advantage of the parts of the pattern and create variation in how the stripes look. Overall, a success.



The second shawl used the Amethyst singles, first used to make the triple bird's eye shawl.



For this shawl, I took a little different approach. There is a ground pattern of a fairly simple diamond twill, but the wider accent stripes use a different treadling. The tie-up is still the same, just the treadling changed. I also made the accents different at each end, just for interest.



The left side has three stripes, the narrower of which are the same treadling as the background diamonds, with the wide center stripe using one repeat of the modified treadling. The other end of the shawl has two full repeats of the modified treadling.



I wasn't sure how this would look, but I think it works. I really like it.


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And here's the commercial: These will be available in my Etsy shop, once I get some better pictures.

So here I go. I'm working through the backlog of photos from the past couple blogless months, and I think I'll start with the earliest ones.

In early October Emma and I went with my dad to a family reunion in Phoenix, Arizona. My great-aunt (my maternal grandmother's sister) was celebrating her 90th birthday, and family from near and far gathered. The familial relationships were complicated- there were first cousins, first cousins once removed (two different sets, different generations, from different branches), second cousins, aunts and uncles, and great-aunts and great-uncles. I haven't seen some of these people in thirty years, and some I had never met before. It was fun. There were a lot of us there, about 30 I think, and it was tricky to keep everyone straight. There were four generations of my mother's extended family line represented. I so wish my mom and grandmother could have been there.

Emma and I drove to Salt Lake City and met Dad, then we drove together in his car to Phoenix. I've never traveled in the Southwest at all, except fast along I-40 when we moved to Washington, and was awed by the scenery. We drove over the Hoover Dam, which was quite impressive,



and we got a good view of the construction of the new road bridge downstream of the dam, too.



Salt Lake to Phoenix was a VERY long day, through very pretty country. I've said it before, and I'll say it again - the United States is a beautiful land of incredible variety. I regretted the fact that this was to be such a flying fast trip, just a long weekend, and there was no time to stop and look at things more closely.

The most exciting thing for me about Arizona was the cactus. Prickly pear, barrel, cholla, organpipe, and I don't know what all. Very cool. And you know what?



Saguaro really exist!! They are tall and they branch, and are fantastically real. Did you know that they have to be 50-75 years old before they branch for the first time? Amazing. And sobering. The desert is a fragile ecosystem.

After the birthday party/reunion, Dad and Emma and I took a different route back to Salt Lake City. We went north to check out this famous landmark of the southwest we'd heard about a time or two. You may have heard of it as well....

After we'd been driving a while, we started noticing this big crack in the ground.



It just kept getting bigger and bigger, and was joined by more and more cracks, and eventually we saw this near a parking lot.



We got out of the car to see what we could see, and...

well...



Great merciful heavens.



There really are no words.



The Grand Canyon is something that everyone should see at least once in their lifetime.

We saw a tiny little piece of the South Rim (that's the Desert View Watchtower, above) for a tiny short time, and it was still a breathtaking sight that I will always remember.

Nothing since OCTOBER? Two and a half months since I posted? Really? I think this is the first time in my five years as a blogger that I have actually missed an entire calendar month.

Bad blogger.

I have been doing things, really I have. November was a weirdly disjointed and apathetic month, as was December, and though I was doing things I mostly felt like hibernating. I'm kind of glad that we're almost to a new year, a new decade, and a fresh start. Even though December 31 to January 1 is only one day following another, it seems like it should be a time to take a deep breath and start again. Or whatever.

There has been weaving, and spinning, and knitting, and crocheting, and even traveling. Lots of good stuff, eminently bloggable, I just haven't done it.

Baby steps, right? Posting tonight is a start. Not every post has to be in depth and profound. I just need to overcome inertia and go.

See you tomorrow!