Well, we're still kicking. And I think we've kicked out the germs. Hooray!
I've been doing a bunch of spinning, and am plotting weaving projects, and trying to get back into the swing of things. I am going to be selling at my local Farmer's Market this summer, and need to keep my inventory up. It starts in three weeks! Eek!
Oh, and I am also starting back at work part-time on Monday. I don't know how long they will need me this time around, but any paycheck is better than none, right?
So, no pictures today, but I'll try to get some up tomorrow-ish. I just finished a really pretty skein of beaded yarn, and it needs to be seen!
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
I have never before in my life been sick enough to stay in bed so many days. Since last Thursday-six days! This bug has steamrollered me. The only time I've ever felt close to this bad was when I had mono, and I thought nothing could match that level of sore-throatedness and fatigue. Ugh.
However! Things are looking up today. The sore throat is almost gone though my tonsils are still visibly swollen and white, and the fever hasn't come back yet today even though the latest dose of Advil (I switched when the Tylenol stopped helping) was eight hours ago at 3:00 am.
Shaun made me go to the 24-hour clinic on Sunday, and even though the rapid strep test came back negative, the nurse put me on a round of antibiotics. Normally I don't condone this, but 1) I was too loopy with the pain and fever to argue properly, also it hurt to talk, 2) she said that there is a strain of strep that the rapid test doesn't register, and since my symptoms and the state of my tonsils pointed to strep, we might as well cover that base, and 3) since I had fluid trapped in my ears (from the swollen throat) and tender sinuses, the antibiotics would prevent secondary infections, even if the original problem was caused by a virus.
Whatever, I said. I just wanted to get home and sleep.
I've done almost nothing but sleep since Thursday evening. I'm tired of sleeping. I need a vacation from sleeping. I have lost a WEEK OF MY LIFE to sleeping.
But I think I'm finally on the mend. Thank goodness.
In my newly-rediscovered state of awakeness, I was surfing around this morning and found The Hunt For Gollum on YouTube. It's a 40 minute Lord of the Rings fanfilm, and is very well done. Made my day.
However! Things are looking up today. The sore throat is almost gone though my tonsils are still visibly swollen and white, and the fever hasn't come back yet today even though the latest dose of Advil (I switched when the Tylenol stopped helping) was eight hours ago at 3:00 am.
Shaun made me go to the 24-hour clinic on Sunday, and even though the rapid strep test came back negative, the nurse put me on a round of antibiotics. Normally I don't condone this, but 1) I was too loopy with the pain and fever to argue properly, also it hurt to talk, 2) she said that there is a strain of strep that the rapid test doesn't register, and since my symptoms and the state of my tonsils pointed to strep, we might as well cover that base, and 3) since I had fluid trapped in my ears (from the swollen throat) and tender sinuses, the antibiotics would prevent secondary infections, even if the original problem was caused by a virus.
Whatever, I said. I just wanted to get home and sleep.
I've done almost nothing but sleep since Thursday evening. I'm tired of sleeping. I need a vacation from sleeping. I have lost a WEEK OF MY LIFE to sleeping.
But I think I'm finally on the mend. Thank goodness.
In my newly-rediscovered state of awakeness, I was surfing around this morning and found The Hunt For Gollum on YouTube. It's a 40 minute Lord of the Rings fanfilm, and is very well done. Made my day.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Ode to a Virus
O rice bag, how I adore your heat,
To chase the fever chills,
And Tylenol, thou art a magic pill,
To cool me from one-oh-three.
The headache's throb,
And the grinding-bone ache,
Conspire to keep me limp,
Unable to read,
To blink,
To think,
And my pillow is stuffed with rocks.
-------------
Yeah, it's been a fun couple days.
Apparently I was in tears last night, because Naia (my cat) said he was going to get me some Tylenol, but then never came back. I have no memory of the conversation with Shaun, during which I think I did get some medicine, but I quite clearly remember Naia telling me he was going to get the Tylenol. He had a nice voice, very deep and soothing.
O rice bag, how I adore your heat,
To chase the fever chills,
And Tylenol, thou art a magic pill,
To cool me from one-oh-three.
The headache's throb,
And the grinding-bone ache,
Conspire to keep me limp,
Unable to read,
To blink,
To think,
And my pillow is stuffed with rocks.
-------------
Yeah, it's been a fun couple days.
Apparently I was in tears last night, because Naia (my cat) said he was going to get me some Tylenol, but then never came back. I have no memory of the conversation with Shaun, during which I think I did get some medicine, but I quite clearly remember Naia telling me he was going to get the Tylenol. He had a nice voice, very deep and soothing.
Sunday, April 04, 2010
I really don't see how it is possible that 2010 is one quarter done already. I really can't fathom it.
Anyway, onward. I have been jamming again: 4 pints last Friday.
This is Strawberry-Lemon Marmalade, tweaked a bit. Holy buckets. Folks, if you are at all a fan of strawberries, and have ever wanted to try making jam, you have to make this.
My tweaks: I used frozen strawberries rather than fresh because that's what I had, 1/2 cup of lemon zest (instead of 1/4 cup), and 1/2 cup of fresh-squeezed lemon juice (instead of 1 tablespoon). I used a microplane for very delicate, fluffy, tender zest shavings.
(Have you tried a microplane? They're GRATE! Har, har.)
I was made aware of this recipe on Ravelry, in one of the canning groups, and resisted for almost a week before I broke down and had to make a batch. I really need to start using more jam, because I have so much already in my cupboard. It's just so much fun to make, and so tasty. Of course, excess jam wouldn't so much of an issue if the other members of my family were open to using something, anything other than specifically Welch's Grape Jelly. Seriously, Emma and Shaun won't touch anything else. Emma tries the jam when I make it, and says she likes it, but then won't eat anything but Welch's Grape on her daily school-lunch PBJ. There may yet be hope for her, but I've just given up on trying to broaden Shaun's horizons. Picky eaters. Sigh.
This jam (it's not really what I think of as "marmalade") is so good. The extra zest and lemon juice I added really amps up the lemon flavor, while still leaving the primary taste impression of the jam as strawberry. The microplaned zest means no bitter zest chunks, and the marriage of these two flavors is sublime.
I also wanted to show off some pickles I made in February. I had about half of a large bag of carrots in the fridge, which were approaching the end of their storage life- don't buy in bulk unless you're going to use in bulk! They weren't at all bad or mushy yet, but I knew that we'd never use them up before they were. I made a roast with 'taters and carrots, but there were still too many left, so I decided to pickle them. Result: 4 pints of yummy pickled carrots.
These were made using the leftover brine from my pickled mushrooms. In order to ensure that the brine was acidic enough to safely preserve the pickles, and to make up the full amount of liquid I needed, I added an additional cup of vinegar, 2 tablespoons of salt, and half a cup of water to the brine when I boiled it. I sliced the carrots to the height of the jars minus a half inch, blanched them in the boiling brine for ~30 seconds and packed them in the jars. I brought the brine back to a good rolling boil and then filled the jars, put the lids on, and processed in a hot water bath. The ones I snitched on canning day were great, and today I finally opened one of the jars to sample the finished product. YUM! This was a tasty way to avoid throwing out 1.5 pounds of carrots.
One last item to report on the food preservation front:
A neighbor gave up six large steelhead trout, gleaned from a local hatchery's spring spawning program. These are (hatchery-bred, river run) fish that were caught but not used as spawners, and would otherwise have been wasted. My neighbor called at 10:00 at night, asking if we wanted some. She had 40+ fish, and was calling around to distribute them to the community. Of course I said yes, and so trotted across the street to collect some. They were way bigger than I thought they were going to be. Each fish was 2+ feet long, and weighed approximately 8-12 pounds. They didn't even fit in my sink.
So there I was, gutting fish at 11:00 at night. I was going to fillet them, but after making a bit of a hash of the first one, I realized I was too tired too tired to do a good job, and settled for gutting and removing the heads and tails. The fish were so big that I divided each in half. Those six fish tucked in my freezer will give us twelve meals.
Anyway, onward. I have been jamming again: 4 pints last Friday.
This is Strawberry-Lemon Marmalade, tweaked a bit. Holy buckets. Folks, if you are at all a fan of strawberries, and have ever wanted to try making jam, you have to make this.
My tweaks: I used frozen strawberries rather than fresh because that's what I had, 1/2 cup of lemon zest (instead of 1/4 cup), and 1/2 cup of fresh-squeezed lemon juice (instead of 1 tablespoon). I used a microplane for very delicate, fluffy, tender zest shavings.
(Have you tried a microplane? They're GRATE! Har, har.)
I was made aware of this recipe on Ravelry, in one of the canning groups, and resisted for almost a week before I broke down and had to make a batch. I really need to start using more jam, because I have so much already in my cupboard. It's just so much fun to make, and so tasty. Of course, excess jam wouldn't so much of an issue if the other members of my family were open to using something, anything other than specifically Welch's Grape Jelly. Seriously, Emma and Shaun won't touch anything else. Emma tries the jam when I make it, and says she likes it, but then won't eat anything but Welch's Grape on her daily school-lunch PBJ. There may yet be hope for her, but I've just given up on trying to broaden Shaun's horizons. Picky eaters. Sigh.
This jam (it's not really what I think of as "marmalade") is so good. The extra zest and lemon juice I added really amps up the lemon flavor, while still leaving the primary taste impression of the jam as strawberry. The microplaned zest means no bitter zest chunks, and the marriage of these two flavors is sublime.
I also wanted to show off some pickles I made in February. I had about half of a large bag of carrots in the fridge, which were approaching the end of their storage life- don't buy in bulk unless you're going to use in bulk! They weren't at all bad or mushy yet, but I knew that we'd never use them up before they were. I made a roast with 'taters and carrots, but there were still too many left, so I decided to pickle them. Result: 4 pints of yummy pickled carrots.
These were made using the leftover brine from my pickled mushrooms. In order to ensure that the brine was acidic enough to safely preserve the pickles, and to make up the full amount of liquid I needed, I added an additional cup of vinegar, 2 tablespoons of salt, and half a cup of water to the brine when I boiled it. I sliced the carrots to the height of the jars minus a half inch, blanched them in the boiling brine for ~30 seconds and packed them in the jars. I brought the brine back to a good rolling boil and then filled the jars, put the lids on, and processed in a hot water bath. The ones I snitched on canning day were great, and today I finally opened one of the jars to sample the finished product. YUM! This was a tasty way to avoid throwing out 1.5 pounds of carrots.
One last item to report on the food preservation front:
A neighbor gave up six large steelhead trout, gleaned from a local hatchery's spring spawning program. These are (hatchery-bred, river run) fish that were caught but not used as spawners, and would otherwise have been wasted. My neighbor called at 10:00 at night, asking if we wanted some. She had 40+ fish, and was calling around to distribute them to the community. Of course I said yes, and so trotted across the street to collect some. They were way bigger than I thought they were going to be. Each fish was 2+ feet long, and weighed approximately 8-12 pounds. They didn't even fit in my sink.
So there I was, gutting fish at 11:00 at night. I was going to fillet them, but after making a bit of a hash of the first one, I realized I was too tired too tired to do a good job, and settled for gutting and removing the heads and tails. The fish were so big that I divided each in half. Those six fish tucked in my freezer will give us twelve meals.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Still making progress on the doily, though I took a few days off. Here it is with 35 rounds completed, and 14.75 hours elapsed.
I have five rounds left. Then each point is worked separately, followed by three rounds of single crochet worked around the entire thing. It's going to take a while.
I do like how the zigzags look, though!
I have five rounds left. Then each point is worked separately, followed by three rounds of single crochet worked around the entire thing. It's going to take a while.
I do like how the zigzags look, though!
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
So. Weaving.
The more I weave, the more I like it. When I started weaving as an adult in 2002 (not considering for now the potholders I made as a child, and the set of placemats in high school art class), I didn't like warping. For many years I didn't like warping. Measuring the warp, then sleying the reed and threading the heddles and winding it on, and making sure to get the tension tight and even.
Too fiddly. Too time consuming. Too tedious. Just let me get to the weaving part, already! Throwing the shuttle is fun, using the beater is fun, watching the pattern build is fun. I came to weaving from a background of hand needlework (cross stitch, hardanger), so I liked hemstitching and finishing the woven fabric. But if I could have had someone do all my loom preparation for me, I would have been ecstatic.
Over the past couple years or so, though, things have subtly shifted. Somewhere along the line, I no longer found sleying the reed to be irksome. Then a few months later, I realized that threading the heddles was OK, too. Time consuming, yes, but not in a grit-your-teeth-and-just-get-through-it way. And I don't have problems achieving even tension while winding on to the back beam, or tying the warp to the cloth beam. I am enjoying the whole process, not just actual shuttle-throwing part.
I still find measuring warps to be the least enjoyable part. But I have high hopes that this is changing too. I didn't think twice about throwing a warp on the loom for Emma, right after cutting this one off.
Anyway, as you may have guessed, I've been showing pictures of the scarf I started Friday and finished on Saturday. I twisted the fringe on Sunday, using my standard method of pinning the hemstitching to a line, then separately twisting two bundles of warp threads a certain number of turns with the fringe twister (in this case, 70 turns), making an overhand knot and pinning it to a second line and snugging the knot to that length. When I take the pin out, the two warp bundles ply themselves into a nice round firm fringe. By using this pinning method, all the fringes end up the same length.
I wet finished it by agitating for 75 seconds in the washing machine, checking on it at 30, 45, 60, and 75 seconds. I know from experience that this yarn fulls/felts well and very quickly. For this project, 75 seconds was exactly the right amount of time to get a scrumptiously soft and plush fabric that is still drapey and just delicious.
The yarn is Jaggerspun 2/18 Superfine Merino, with seven accent stripes of Jo-Ann Sensations "Bamboo," which is a boucle yarn made of bamboo rayon with a nylon binder. It's a bit Muppety if used by itself, but looks fabulous as an accent. This is a great way to use small amounts of novelty yarn.
The weave structure is a simple 4x4 straight twill, with doubled floating selvedges. I love how the boucle loops poke out and stand up from the fabric. They were smooshed into the weave a bit on the loom, but the wet finishing brought them out beautifully. The sett was 24 epi in an 8 dent reed, with no special accommodations made for the boucle.
in the reed: 10" x 68"
off the loom: 9.5" x 63"
after finishing: 8" x 58" plus 5" fringe on each end
The scarf weighs 2.9 oz (84g).
The more I weave, the more I like it. When I started weaving as an adult in 2002 (not considering for now the potholders I made as a child, and the set of placemats in high school art class), I didn't like warping. For many years I didn't like warping. Measuring the warp, then sleying the reed and threading the heddles and winding it on, and making sure to get the tension tight and even.
Too fiddly. Too time consuming. Too tedious. Just let me get to the weaving part, already! Throwing the shuttle is fun, using the beater is fun, watching the pattern build is fun. I came to weaving from a background of hand needlework (cross stitch, hardanger), so I liked hemstitching and finishing the woven fabric. But if I could have had someone do all my loom preparation for me, I would have been ecstatic.
Over the past couple years or so, though, things have subtly shifted. Somewhere along the line, I no longer found sleying the reed to be irksome. Then a few months later, I realized that threading the heddles was OK, too. Time consuming, yes, but not in a grit-your-teeth-and-just-get-through-it way. And I don't have problems achieving even tension while winding on to the back beam, or tying the warp to the cloth beam. I am enjoying the whole process, not just actual shuttle-throwing part.
I still find measuring warps to be the least enjoyable part. But I have high hopes that this is changing too. I didn't think twice about throwing a warp on the loom for Emma, right after cutting this one off.
Anyway, as you may have guessed, I've been showing pictures of the scarf I started Friday and finished on Saturday. I twisted the fringe on Sunday, using my standard method of pinning the hemstitching to a line, then separately twisting two bundles of warp threads a certain number of turns with the fringe twister (in this case, 70 turns), making an overhand knot and pinning it to a second line and snugging the knot to that length. When I take the pin out, the two warp bundles ply themselves into a nice round firm fringe. By using this pinning method, all the fringes end up the same length.
I wet finished it by agitating for 75 seconds in the washing machine, checking on it at 30, 45, 60, and 75 seconds. I know from experience that this yarn fulls/felts well and very quickly. For this project, 75 seconds was exactly the right amount of time to get a scrumptiously soft and plush fabric that is still drapey and just delicious.
The yarn is Jaggerspun 2/18 Superfine Merino, with seven accent stripes of Jo-Ann Sensations "Bamboo," which is a boucle yarn made of bamboo rayon with a nylon binder. It's a bit Muppety if used by itself, but looks fabulous as an accent. This is a great way to use small amounts of novelty yarn.
The weave structure is a simple 4x4 straight twill, with doubled floating selvedges. I love how the boucle loops poke out and stand up from the fabric. They were smooshed into the weave a bit on the loom, but the wet finishing brought them out beautifully. The sett was 24 epi in an 8 dent reed, with no special accommodations made for the boucle.
in the reed: 10" x 68"
off the loom: 9.5" x 63"
after finishing: 8" x 58" plus 5" fringe on each end
The scarf weighs 2.9 oz (84g).
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