Thursday, June 05, 2008

Thunder. Lightening. Very very frightening!

I thought that maybe last night I could set up my new nifty tripod and take some fiber & FO pictures, but alas, a major major thunderstorm came through town and instead wiped out a few roof tiles {groan, we *just* had a good dozen or so tiles replaced!}, downed many branches, flooded a few roadways, and in general sent all sensible creatures scurrying inside.

While putting the Munchkin to sleep, I heard the National Weather Service break in with the following warning:
"....the storm is moving south east and should be over [insert name of my county here] in the next 25 to 35 minutes. Hail, the size of nickels or quarters has been reported with this storm. All travelers should get off the road and everyone should seek shelter indoors immediately."

And normally, while I like a good thunderstorm, this one scared the living bejesus out of me, so rather than calmly take pictures, I instead sought comfort the best way I could that evening - with a disk of Foyle's War from the public library and I cast on for a very basic brioche ribbed hat for the Munchkin with some of my (badly done) handspun - Hello Yarn's BLF dyed up in her 'Insect Wings' colourway.

And so I knit on that while the worst of the storm passed & I could relax a bit.


So, alas, this morning I've got absolutely nothing to show you as far as fleece pictures or FO pictures go. Tonight is a bust as well for taking pictures, as happily enough we've been offered freebie babysitting from my mother-in-law who is in town to lend a hand with my niece and nephew while their private school is closed but the public-school-scheduled summer camps aren't yet open - so Peggers and I are hitting up the best Indian restaurant in town for some naan and sag panner (ummmm, maybe some chana masala as well!) and then retiring to Barnes & Noble for a slice of cheesecake (him) and cup of decaf (me) and some browsing of upper-eschelon-esque literature with lots of highbrow conversation. (You know what I mean - he'll check out the latest Star Wars novel, or the latest Batman trade paperback while I search in vain for a single spinning book in the whole store or a new book on knitting that I feel like splurging on - and then I'll grab a copy of People or some other trashy mag and will sit and talk about the crazy clothes that celebrities actually *pay* other people to tell them to wear.)

To keep this from being an almost completely pictureless post, I spent some valuable work time this morning putting together the following mosaic. It was LOADS of fun, actually. The associated Flickr group is called 'thegame' and here are the basic rules:

a.) type your answer to each of the following questions into Flickr's search box
b.) using only the first page, pick an answer
c.) copy & paste each of the URLs for the images into fd's mosaic maker

Questions:
1.) What is your first name?
2.) What is your favorite food?
3.) What high school did you go to?
4.) What is your favorite color?
5.) Who is your celebrity crush?
6.) Favorite drink?
7.) Dream vacation?
8.) Favorite dessert?
9.) What do you want to be when you grow up?
10.) What do you love most in life?
11.) One word to describe you
12.) Your flickr name


1. Susan, 2. coffee, 3. Oswego, 4. bluegreen, 5. Nathan Fillion, 6. red wine, 7. New Zealand, 8. gooseberry fool, 9. Beautiful old lady from Darap(Sikkim) village, 10. laughing, 11. awake, 12. pointy stick

p.s. many thanks to both Ava & Lola for alerting me to this fun meme. And A&L - in the spirit of nice paybacks, have you seen this recipe yet for home-baked sea-salt brownies?

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

R&R

Ohhhhhhhhhhh but I've been gone a long time! I took last week off from work to give myself a bit of a break - and once I made the decision to do that, I really, really devoted myself to taking a break. I turned down several offers to spend vacation time with others (one offer involved a plane ride, one involved a bit of driving, the other was in town & involved lunch & small family members) and pretty much thoroughly resisted the urge to do any of the following while I was home resting:

* laundry
* grocery shopping
* dishes
* vaccuuming
* tidying of any sort, actually
* checking my work e-mail


So instead of doing these things what I instead devoted my time to was:

* spinning (a whole lot of spinning!)
* knitting up some of my handspun
* watching 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer' on DVD from my public library
* gardening
* taking a single, luxurious, 2-hour nap
* cooking - the refreshing & fun kind, not the exhausting kind
* dyeing roving

While I most certainly could have survived a second (or even third!) week off from work and a bit more lazing about, the time that I got in was nonetheless lovely. I did much more spinning (and gardening) than I did knitting, but I did knit & finish one fun fast little hat - now I just need to pull out my new digital camera tripod and take a (non-blurry!) picture of it. Soon - I promise.


I actually need to take a ton of pictures. The few that I took while R&R'ing (a weeny little bump of a 2-phase dyeing experiment of mine, plus my little dye experiment standard colour references drying in the breeze, a few of the garden - aren't hollyhocks pretty?, my 'Red Velvet' handspun all wound up & ready for me to cast-on) are nice and all, but not nearly enough to show what I was up to for for a full week. The last picture in the mosaic shot is of our new fence - one that we dreamt up, designed, built, and then stained ourselves, with some very kind help from my brother in law & father in law. GOODNESS but that gave us more than a few splinters & stain splashes! Not to mention a minor dent in the ol' wallet. That was a multi multi-step project - and one that is now 97% finished. The last 3% should happen this weekend, I am very happy to report, as long as we don't get rained out for a second weekend in a row.

Once I have an empty morning when I can pull out the digital and my skeins of handspun and my incredible 'savior' gifts, plus my fun little knit I will show you properly what exactly I was doing all of those nicely-quiet moments.

Of course, I could also take a picture of my pillow & blanket & the inside of my eyelids as well, in case anyone was wondering how my R&R nap went...............

;)