Etherknitter

Ten Ways to Prepare for a Big Storm

1.  Gas:  for the car(s), for the grill, for the snowblower.  

2.  Fill a large stockpot with water for drinking needs.  I told Mr. E that I wanted to put it in the refrigerator.  He asked why I would want to do that.  So bacteria would not grow in it.  What is there in water for them to eat, he queried.  The stockpot sat on the cooktop without issue.

3.  Clear the yard of anything that can blow away:  empty pots, planting and plant maintenance equipment.

4.  Clear the porch railing of all the stuff that can blow off:  plants, twine, pruners, containers of stale nuts for the chipmunks.

5.  Queue up Accuweather doppler radar on the computer.

6.  Worry about the big pine tree that I haven't taken down yet ($$$) and vow to get it removed this winter.

7.  Formulate a backup plan if said tree lands on the house.  (Call the insurance company for their list of people who remove trees and weather-proof broken houses.) 

8.  Finish doing the laundry in case electricity goes out for awhile.

9.  Laugh off the electrical issues because we put in a generator this year.

10.  Stare wistfully for days at the computer which does not have internet connectivity because Comcast lost a node that supplies us.  The generator did no good on this one, and there is only one backup:  tethering from Mr. E's phone in order to put up this post.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Ahhhhhhhhhhh..........

That is the sound of the last day, Friday.  Breaking in the new resident is done, and he is fledged.

Tis the most exhausting thing I do.  Two weeks, 60 hours per week, walking the fine line between his education and my contract of safe and exquisite care of my patient.  Tis also one of the most rewarding things I do.  

This year, it was a rare privilege to work with this resident.  The Navy paid for his medical school education, and he paid back the Navy with four years of his life.  One of those years was in Afghanistan.  (Most memorable quote:  "Don't worry, Doc, they have to get through us to get to you!"  He said that wasn't all that reassuring as the tracer fire was visible above their heads in the trench.)  He is smart, practical, mature, and will become a really fine gas-passer.

In the meantime, I have to reconstruct the shards of the life I left behind two weeks ago.  I have lost 3 pounds in two weeks (a distinct shortage of workplace graham crackers, anorexia from stress, and bedtime at 8:30pm decreases eating opportunites.  There is a lesson in there.)  Bills unpaid.  A warp that needs to be finished on the rigid heddle.  Mail that needs to be sorted.  And yegods, a hurricane that needs prep.  I was stamping out lives and saving disease yesterday.  I was unable to line up at Home Depot for plywood.  The dice are tossed, and they will come up however they come up.  

I finished Pamuya.  Must block her.  I finished FeatherDuster.  Must block her.  Must wash two sets of plyed handspun (Polwarth/Mohair from Rovings, and BFL from Lisa Souza).  Am plying long-ago-spun batt from Grafton Fibers, when they were still Grafton Fibers.  Lists are taking form.

(Aside:  I read Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love on my Kindle during these two weeks.  If I had known how self-involved this book was, I wouldn't have done it.  But as a fait-accompli, I did enjoy her TMI after all.  I have no idea how they made it all coalesce into a movie.)

A couple of life bits until the hurricane passes:

Last weekend, one of my groups had a midsummer barbeque BYOB.  Our asthmatic, 69 year old colleague plays the Alpenhorn.  I stood in the crowd, expecting to have to do CPR after his performance.  My fears were unfounded.

The deck garden has surpassed all previous performances this year.  Best new plant was a tall, spiky thing, with beautiful morning glory-like flowers.  It is a ruellia (pest in southern areas, confine it, as I have done, in containers.)  The hummers love it.  So do I.

SOAR is coming!  Rhinebeck is coming!  NEFF is coming!  Better get cracking and use up some yarn.

I drove, I warped, I wefted, I wavered

It is the year of our Lord 1350.  Only the few who possess literacy know that fact.  To most, it is irrelevant.  Recurrence of the Black Death is the most important news item passed from inn to hovel, to convent and monastery.  

She sleeps in her habit, as do all the nuns.  Blankets are thin, worn and not oft-replaced.  This irony passes through her thoughts as she awakens quickly in the grey pre-dawn.  Her primary task is healer.  She collects herbs and roots, bark, raw ingredients that go to the nostrums that will make the sisters' illnesses and pains easier to bear.  Her second task during the long dark evenings is to help the weavers keep up with cloth-making.

 She resents every moment away from her parchments.  A passing merchant sold a battered but legible copy of Galen's treatise on plague to the nuns.  She hopes to find wisdom that will help her decrease the fearsome death toll from the disease.  The making of cloth is important to the convent; winter is coming.  But the text needs to be translated, and ingredients gathered, before winter withers and covers the meadows and forest floors.  That, plus she does not like the tedium of the warp and weft.

There will never be enough time in the day, she muses.  God's work is never done.  She resolves to sleep less so that more can be done.

Her span is short.  It matters not whether she was taken by plague, by wolves in the forest while gathering plants, or by an abscessed tooth.  Her energy was returned to the origins, and remade. Some belief systems call it reincarnation.  How we identify the process matters not.  She returned to a vastly altered civilization in the 20th century.

There is no memory in the energy stream.  There are only shadowy forces and urges that drive us forward.  She became a healer.  She made cloth by knitting.  And she could not understand why any sensible, sane person would delve into warp and weft.  

That is why it took me into my middle age to take a weaving class.  The Midwest Fiber Festival demonstrated possibility.  Lynn enabled.

Webs, August 7.  Beginning rigid heddle weaving.  I had fun.  

Warping was less dreadful than I had feared.

Virgin Scarf, 8/7/2011
Yarn:  Madelinetosh merino, DK, 225 yds x 2            with leftover 
Colorway:  Cousteau
Loom:  Schacht 15" rigid heddle Flip
Dent:  10
Measurements:  7" x 66" direct warp, approx 6.5" x 60" scarf 
Sett:  10

I have to knot one end, overstitch two errors, and call it done.  

I am told I am not allowed to whine about selvedges.  

Forward from here:  Lynn has lent me her Schacht rigid heddle loom.  I purchased enough Mission Falls cotton (Mission Falls!  Wah!) to make four dishcloths.  Mr. Etherknitter is all hot to trot.  He wants me to buy a floor loom so he can play with textures.

The brakes are currently firm to the floor.  

 

 

 

 

Summer

To me, this is the essence of summer.

I have ways to feel better about this.  Mr. Etherknitter's family helped.  

His rockin' mom did some research.  She arranged dinner and a show.   Can you predict what kind of dinner and show a lady in her 70's (shhhhh) would come up with?

How about scrumptious pizza and David Wax Museum?  We ventured out to the Chicago 'burbs to find a new pleasure.  

David Wax and Suz Slezak are a Boston band.  He went to Harvard, she to Wellesley.  Last year, they organized a grass-roots campaign, winning a write-in contest to get them included in the Newport Folk Festival.  Stole the show.  This year, they were invited back.  The NPR link has last year's performance (great), and, even better, this year's.  

He went to Mexico for a music fellowship.  She plays donkey jaws as a percussive instrument.  Don't squinch your eyes in doubt.  It works.  (The bones are a traditional Mexican instrument called a quijada.)  She also saws a mean fiddle.  Their music is infectious.  If you can find a performance where you live (the website has their schedule), GO.  They are even better in person.  I started out "ho-hum, what has Mr. E's mom gotten us into THIS time", to leaning forward, to edge of my seat, to foot-stomping and clapping and hooting.  Don't ever say I didn't let you in on a really great secret.

Our trip to the northern 'burbs included a tasting.  Nope, not wine.  

F.E.W. Distillers set themselves up in an old garage.  Numerous permits later, they purchased two stills:  one for white likker, and one for brown.  One of the owners conducts the mini-tour.  When they went to the garage to inspect it as a site for their business, it was still a chop-shop.  He described several men finishing off a car in the corner, while swearing at him in languages he could not identify.  (When he bought the building, their jobs were over.)

The stills are beautiful.  Copper.  Functional art.

I do not recall why they named the business F.E.W.  I'm sure it was so they could say, "Have a FEW."

Travel helps knitting progress.  The body of Volt is done.  Attached I-cord is a new skill, so I swatched it.  Using scrap yarn isn't always the best idea.  I grabbed some leftovers, snatched up two doublepoints, and knit a square.  

I nailed the live edge.  The side edge wasn't as easy.  I could feel dismay bubbling up.  So much for deciding to think about it when the time came.  Identifying the stitches to pick up was tough...close together, indistinct.

I sighed.  I put it down.  I picked up the shawl instead.  Relief.  The side stitches, with medium sized needle and tiny yarn make for easy spotting.  It needs a cautionary lifeline, then interminable attached I-cord, then done.  I'm thinking Rhinebeck shawl, as a goal.  (Lesson:  swatch stuff that looks more like what you are knitting even if practicing for simple technique.)

The final FEW picture is gin hot off the distillation column.  The distiller swipes his finger through the stream, tastes it for flavors, and adjusts the still (too fast? too slow?).  The end result is pretty darn good.