Knitters, I'm sure you can relate. I just followed a link to this video, from Ravelry to Your Tube. I always thought the song was brilliant, but never knew there was a video for it, until now. Listen to the words carefully and enjoy!
The Sweater
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Saturday, September 20, 2008
$75.00
You know the stories. You've spent years trotting in and out of antique and consignment shops in search of a working spinning wheel you can afford. You hope to be lucky, like your spinning friend who found a perfect, intact, working-condition Country Craftsman wheel in someone's trash by the roadside and took it home, and now has another gorgeous wheel in her collection. (True story, and I don't begrudge her one bit, but I still wish something like that would happen to me with, say, a Timbertops Chair Wheel, or a Martha?)
OK, so this isn't as good a story as the lady who adopted a Country Craftsman from someone's garbage, but it's ALMOST as good. Look what came home with me today!
I had taken Daphne to a local antique shop on a whim, just for a lark, since gas is expensive and we need to have larks closer to home. In the very first booth I found this wheel. I looked it over and it seemed good. I looked at the price tag and it seemed even better. Only $75.00. True, the whorl had some chips in it, there was only one bobbin, and its distaff was missing, but...$75.00? No matter what kind of a wheel it was, I knew I could get it running in a matter of minutes. What to do? Well, for starters, make my twelve-year-old crawl underneath the thing and see if there was a name on the underside.
There was. I was astounded, picked the wheel up, and tilted it to read for myself.
"Country Craftsman."
Holy sh*t! I have wanted one of these for a very long time, and thought I would never find one I could afford, now that the builder has retired.
Near one of the legs is carved a number 2. Could it be that this is one of his earliest wheels? Does anyone know if the maker did indeed number them as they were built? It was an exciting enough find as is, but if it's an early wheel, that would be even more exciting!
And I still can't believe it was only $75.00!!!!!
While googling in search of spare parts, I found ads for used wheels like this, for sale. $450.00 and up!
I shan't complain about not finding this for free in someone's trash. $75.00 vs. $450.00 and up? Well, that's the kind of math I can do VERY quickly.
Jeeze, I have paid more for some of my spindles than I did for this wheel! (Golding...koff...koff...)
Now am on a quest for a replacement whorl (though the chipped one does work) and some extra bobbins. I may have found a source already, but if anyone else knows of others, please give me a holler via the comments.
And for a musical suggestion I really feel I must make, please visit Doveman and listen to his song "Castles," which is on his streaming player. This is my second favorite after a song called "Ghost" which he is not currently streaming. If you know who Nick Drake is and love him, as I do, then you will find that Doveman's voice is even more poignant. His lyrics aren't the easiest to decipher, due to the intentional softness of his vocal presentation, but you get most of them through earbud headphones. And this young man is someone whose voice you WANT to hear that intimately. Trust me. And once he's in your head, he stays there, and you don't want him to go away. I have been starting most of my workdays in the past few weeks with listening to his latest CD, "With My Left Hand I Raise The Dead." It really is a stunning piece of work. Please check it out when in a quiet, reflective mood, and you will love it. I've been thinking for awhile now, of building my own music compilation to use whilst having Reiki, or treating myself, and you can rest assured there will be some Doveman songs in the mix when I finally get around to putting it together. I can't tell you enough, how glad I am to have found this fella.
OK, so this isn't as good a story as the lady who adopted a Country Craftsman from someone's garbage, but it's ALMOST as good. Look what came home with me today!
I had taken Daphne to a local antique shop on a whim, just for a lark, since gas is expensive and we need to have larks closer to home. In the very first booth I found this wheel. I looked it over and it seemed good. I looked at the price tag and it seemed even better. Only $75.00. True, the whorl had some chips in it, there was only one bobbin, and its distaff was missing, but...$75.00? No matter what kind of a wheel it was, I knew I could get it running in a matter of minutes. What to do? Well, for starters, make my twelve-year-old crawl underneath the thing and see if there was a name on the underside.There was. I was astounded, picked the wheel up, and tilted it to read for myself.
"Country Craftsman."
Holy sh*t! I have wanted one of these for a very long time, and thought I would never find one I could afford, now that the builder has retired.
Near one of the legs is carved a number 2. Could it be that this is one of his earliest wheels? Does anyone know if the maker did indeed number them as they were built? It was an exciting enough find as is, but if it's an early wheel, that would be even more exciting!
And I still can't believe it was only $75.00!!!!!
While googling in search of spare parts, I found ads for used wheels like this, for sale. $450.00 and up!
I shan't complain about not finding this for free in someone's trash. $75.00 vs. $450.00 and up? Well, that's the kind of math I can do VERY quickly.
Jeeze, I have paid more for some of my spindles than I did for this wheel! (Golding...koff...koff...)
Now am on a quest for a replacement whorl (though the chipped one does work) and some extra bobbins. I may have found a source already, but if anyone else knows of others, please give me a holler via the comments.
And for a musical suggestion I really feel I must make, please visit Doveman and listen to his song "Castles," which is on his streaming player. This is my second favorite after a song called "Ghost" which he is not currently streaming. If you know who Nick Drake is and love him, as I do, then you will find that Doveman's voice is even more poignant. His lyrics aren't the easiest to decipher, due to the intentional softness of his vocal presentation, but you get most of them through earbud headphones. And this young man is someone whose voice you WANT to hear that intimately. Trust me. And once he's in your head, he stays there, and you don't want him to go away. I have been starting most of my workdays in the past few weeks with listening to his latest CD, "With My Left Hand I Raise The Dead." It really is a stunning piece of work. Please check it out when in a quiet, reflective mood, and you will love it. I've been thinking for awhile now, of building my own music compilation to use whilst having Reiki, or treating myself, and you can rest assured there will be some Doveman songs in the mix when I finally get around to putting it together. I can't tell you enough, how glad I am to have found this fella.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Mr. Subversive - NOT!
Hubby took a break from rebuilding the deck on our house a couple of weekends ago, to read, and rest his fat capitalist arse on my chaise. Seems our daughter is reading Abbie Hoffman. Hubby couldn't resist picking it up from the dining room table, and he read me excerpts while he relaxed in a way that would not have thrilled Abbie at all, I would venture to guess. I mean, look at the setting! If there were a revolution now, no matter how idealistic and liberal we are, we make a decent living and have a few of the trappings thereof, and are therefore The Enemy. [sigh]
From what hubby read to me, though, it's pretty clear that some of the old tricks Abbie would have employed to Get Free Stuff back in the day would not work at all now, in the computer age. I mean, can you imagine someone trying to sneak on board an airplane nowadays? Just wouldn't happen. So, "Steal This Book" if you like, but don't expect to gain anything from it but a view into a bygone era.
To continue the hippy-trippy theme, remember my Grateful Undead sock blank from a couple of entries ago? Well, I did decide to unravel the thing and wind the yarn into two separate balls, which I then skeined and washed. Here they are. I have finished knitting the socks, but have not washed them yet, so no photos now. They are coming, though, and maybe as soon as this weekend, if I can get my act together.
Some recent spinning now. This is a strand of Terra Bella Spun's "Drifter" plied with a single of commercially-produced dark brown wool/camel. I couldn't bear the thought of getting only enough 2-ply from this one-of-a-kind roving for a hat, so I decided to stretch the yardage by incorporating the brown. I forget exactly how much I ended up with, but if I recall correctly, I think it was over 500 yards. I ought to be able to make something semi-substantial with that. Socks and matching fingerless gloves, maybe? I have enough hats and scarves to sink the Titanic. Oh, well, it will tell me what it wants to be when the time is right. But I must say, the handspun is stacking up, and so far none of it is talking.
So, in the meantime, my daughter has come up with a project for me, which I may regret taking on. She got a gander at the latest Patternworks catalog and left it open on my desk with a note: "Mom, I will pay you to make this for me." A long, tight tunic with stripes in many colors, and a scrunch-neck, all in stockinette stitch, and effin' POM-POMS at the end of the drawstring for that ridiculous neck. Given the way she treats her clothes, I was not seduced into buying the recommended Mission Falls yarn the pattern calls for. Oh, no. It's KnitPicks all the way for this baby. The colors won't be exactly the same but they'll be close.
Och, Jaysus, I wish the kid would learn to knit for herself. This is already starting to feel like an "I want this out of my life" project, but maybe, just maybe it will be more fun than I am anticipating. I can only hope.
As for my chaise, I suppose this was inevitable. Roisin the Queen, aka Cleofatra. She growls at me if try to remove her. I love her. She's such a bitch.
My big exciting news at the moment is on the Doubtful Sound front. I managed to bridge an enormous, troublesome gap this past weekend, and have now got 350 consecutive pages. I'm aiming to wrap it up around 500 pages, give or take a few, so I guess I'm in the home stretch at last. Now, here's hoping the wrap-up doesn't take longer to write than the whole rest of the book! If you've been reading, thank you. And if you have any thoughts on whether or not I should try for publication on this one, I'd appreciate your feedback. I know there would be a lot of work to do, to tighten it up enough to inspire a publisher to take a chance. But I feel like I need to try one more time before I either a) drop dead or b) turn into an old, driveling idiot who can no longer string a sentence together.
I gotta go cook supper now. I don't wanna cook supper now. Waaaaaaaaah!!!
From what hubby read to me, though, it's pretty clear that some of the old tricks Abbie would have employed to Get Free Stuff back in the day would not work at all now, in the computer age. I mean, can you imagine someone trying to sneak on board an airplane nowadays? Just wouldn't happen. So, "Steal This Book" if you like, but don't expect to gain anything from it but a view into a bygone era.
To continue the hippy-trippy theme, remember my Grateful Undead sock blank from a couple of entries ago? Well, I did decide to unravel the thing and wind the yarn into two separate balls, which I then skeined and washed. Here they are. I have finished knitting the socks, but have not washed them yet, so no photos now. They are coming, though, and maybe as soon as this weekend, if I can get my act together.
Some recent spinning now. This is a strand of Terra Bella Spun's "Drifter" plied with a single of commercially-produced dark brown wool/camel. I couldn't bear the thought of getting only enough 2-ply from this one-of-a-kind roving for a hat, so I decided to stretch the yardage by incorporating the brown. I forget exactly how much I ended up with, but if I recall correctly, I think it was over 500 yards. I ought to be able to make something semi-substantial with that. Socks and matching fingerless gloves, maybe? I have enough hats and scarves to sink the Titanic. Oh, well, it will tell me what it wants to be when the time is right. But I must say, the handspun is stacking up, and so far none of it is talking.
So, in the meantime, my daughter has come up with a project for me, which I may regret taking on. She got a gander at the latest Patternworks catalog and left it open on my desk with a note: "Mom, I will pay you to make this for me." A long, tight tunic with stripes in many colors, and a scrunch-neck, all in stockinette stitch, and effin' POM-POMS at the end of the drawstring for that ridiculous neck. Given the way she treats her clothes, I was not seduced into buying the recommended Mission Falls yarn the pattern calls for. Oh, no. It's KnitPicks all the way for this baby. The colors won't be exactly the same but they'll be close.Och, Jaysus, I wish the kid would learn to knit for herself. This is already starting to feel like an "I want this out of my life" project, but maybe, just maybe it will be more fun than I am anticipating. I can only hope.
As for my chaise, I suppose this was inevitable. Roisin the Queen, aka Cleofatra. She growls at me if try to remove her. I love her. She's such a bitch.
My big exciting news at the moment is on the Doubtful Sound front. I managed to bridge an enormous, troublesome gap this past weekend, and have now got 350 consecutive pages. I'm aiming to wrap it up around 500 pages, give or take a few, so I guess I'm in the home stretch at last. Now, here's hoping the wrap-up doesn't take longer to write than the whole rest of the book! If you've been reading, thank you. And if you have any thoughts on whether or not I should try for publication on this one, I'd appreciate your feedback. I know there would be a lot of work to do, to tighten it up enough to inspire a publisher to take a chance. But I feel like I need to try one more time before I either a) drop dead or b) turn into an old, driveling idiot who can no longer string a sentence together.I gotta go cook supper now. I don't wanna cook supper now. Waaaaaaaaah!!!
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
What Color is your Freakin' Parachute?
#2F4F4F |
Your dominant hues are green and blue. You're smart and you know it, and want to use your power to help people and relate to others. Even though you tend to battle with yourself, you solve other people's conflicts well. Your saturation level is lower than average - You don't stress out over things and don't understand people who do. Finishing projects may sometimes be a challenge, but you schedule time as you see fit and the important things all happen in the end, even if not everyone sees your grand master plan. Your outlook on life is dark. You're generally a pessimist and everyone knows it; you're the one the come to when they don't want the sunshine blown around, they just want to straight truth. You can miss good things in life if you make up your mind too early though. |
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