wordless Wednesday

Beautiful Wreck

Beautiful Wreck by Larissa Brown
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"as though we'd run out of original things to be..."

Historic reenactments are no longer hobbies for the few in 22nd-century Iceland, where all now pursue their favorite eras in costume, interacting only in the recreated past. Jen, a young linguist, brings her expertise in Old Norse language and gestures to a bold, new, fully-realized Viking longhouse scenario in a full-sensory sim "tank," where participants will be immersed in their beloved era, "minus the messy beauty of a real farm, the stink of animals and work of many hands." After they leave the tank, they will re-enter the city, where the only birds left in this dystopia are crows, and the sky glimpsed only  between tall, tall buildings.

Jen's translation of a Viking woman's diary has given her a glimpse into the reality of one farmer's wife, whose sensibility seems, to Jen, more modern than most of her time. "The sky was big today, all ice and violet," wrote this woman, who also penned a lullaby to "woods and whales and sea. Goodnight to the circle of young girls, their long braids lit by fire..."

Jen's familiarity with the language and lore gives her enough of an edge to survive when the sim tank malfunctions and flings her onto a black beach, half-in and half-out of a freezing sea, half-conscious and half-aware of the song of a whale. Rescued by two Viking men whose stinking breath shocks her ("a breakthrough in the design quality"), she begins to understand that she is not dreaming -- she truly is living the life that most of her countrymen long for. She has been transported through time.

Most of the novel takes place in that very real past, where Jen (now called Ginn) becomes a member of a clan in a longhouse ruled by a young chieftan, Heirik. His fearsome birthmark represents mystery and power to his people, but Ginn learns the facts behind the lore that has defined him. She falls deeply in love. Heirik's reluctance to love becomes clearer as Ginn's immersion in this new life becomes deeper and more dear.

The reader learns about the dynamics of the varied, gritty, loving clan members as their stories intertwine, clash, and mesh. Larissa Brown's scholarship is worn lightly. The Vikings feud, gather, and love against history and folklore, like the runes, cables, and braids of Viking design. Each character and plotline is deep and real, especially those of the the displaced, beached Ginn and the women she joins in the chores, sorrows, and dreams they share.

Readers who are fiber enthusiasts will be delighted as Ginn masters the art of the spindle from the accomplished Hildur: "she showed me how the thread was forming, how to feed the fiber, like spun sugar in my hands." Images of whiteness form the background of the story: white fleeces, like the clouds that the Norse goddess Grigg spins, the white snow that piles high outside the longhouse, the snowblooms that are harvested to make mouthwash, and the disorienting whiteout that nearly costs Ginn her life. Against this whiteness are golden vistas, green swaths, and the immense blue sky.

I was as immersed in this wonderful novel as a 22nd-century Icelander would have been in the sim tank. As a modern woman, I wanted to cut through the myths and hesitations so that the characters could live their dreams, love whom they wished, and thrive. As a modern reader, I was satisfied with the way the stories unfolded, and happy with the vivid, engrossing, well-written story. Larissa Brown has taken elements of romance, history, and science fiction, and blended them into something new, vivid, and wonderful.

(Note: I was given an ARC to review. I will definitely reread the published novel - it's that good!)


View all my reviews

from the distaff side

Disclaimer: I've never used a distaff. However, I spin. Lots. Especially since Maisie (my Victoria) and I have made friends. (Maisie doesn't have a distaff, either.) 

You can read about the origins of Distaff Day at the Book of Days. Essentially, Distaff Day marked the resumption of duties after the 12 days of Christmas, but it was often sabotaged by spinsters and those pesky ploughmen.  My favorite phrase from this article, describing how men viewed spinning: "It stoppeth a gap..." --  in other words: it keeps women out of trouble and makes a useful product. Heaven knows what trouble a woman might get into. It's enough to make me clutch my pearls.

Disclaimer: I don't own pearls.

I'm reading an ARC of a book by Larissa Brown, writer and knitting designer: Beautiful Wreck. Much of it is set in ancient Iceland, where a woman from our future finds herself - in both senses of the word. She finds herself in an alien landscape, and she finds herself as a person. Larissa Brown wears her research lightly: I found myself totally comfortable in the midst of history and language with which I'm not familiar. I'll review it thoroughly when I'm done - prepare for many stars and superlatives.

I did know one of the references, though: Frigg, the Norse Goddess, who spins the clouds...  In the West, we know her constellation as Orion, but to the Norse ancients, his belt is her distaff, and Venus is her star. In one article, she is "spinning the threads of time." When I am sitting at the wheel, or plying a spindle, I lose myself to the creation; my time is enhanced and - yes - useful. In so many ways.






Happy Distaff Day! And yes, that is a wombat sitting in my spinning.

Disclaimer: I don't have a pet wombat.

quodlibet **

**Quodlibet: Latin for "what pleases." Musical quodlibets can be pretty chaotic. I've decided that my posts can be, too.

First up, knitter friends, please click here and buy a copy of  K*tog: Oklahoma Tornado Relief.  You can read all about the project on Holly Barcello and Lars Rains' blog, Suburban Knits. Holly and Lars have collected projects - from socks and hats to cowls and toys  - that you can knit while making a real difference in peoples' lives. Good karma all around!

This ebook features 20 knitting patterns from 19 designers who graciously donated their work in order to support the efforts of Other Options, Inc., an Oklahoma City charity that provides food and other services to the people of Oklahoma who lost so much in the recent disasters that affected the area.100% of all profits from the sale of this ebook will go to this charity. Cost: $20.00 US

 I've been spinning on my wheel, top-whorl spindles, Turkish spindles, nearly anything I can get my hands on. Here's a picture of one of my toys - a teeny tiny Turkish spindle from Threads Thru Time. The arms are made from holly, one of my favorite woods -- sprigs of holly in the home are said to provide a place for fairies to play. (You have to act fast to catch a teeny TTT, but if you're new to Turkish spindles, start with a medium and work down.)

I've aspinnerated (taught spindle-spinning) or assisted in aspinneration for a few people lately. It's a good thing. 

  

Reading: Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan. I'll review it on Goodreads one of these days. I read it on my Nook, which means I was deprived of one of the books' delights: a glow-in-the-dark cover design. Delightful, funny, witty, and wise.

Knitting: socks. More socks. Including these socks, in a Moose Manor colorway called, for obvious reasons, "Watermelon Radish." 

I'll save the other stuff - politics, the psychology of retirement, letters, and The Great Tea Scare - for another time.

For now - please, knitters - let's help knit peoples' lives together. Thanks!

what are the chances?

I believe in chaos and randomness. Unless something can be explained by the known laws of physics and chemistry, I don't believe in it. I reserve judgement on things I have experienced - my grandma Sadie's uncanny perceptions, for example, and the time something told me to swerve out of the lane seconds before a crushed car on a flatbed came flying off. My little elephant (VW beetle: elephant because it was grey and it had a trunk up front) would have been demolished, and I wouldn't have felt too good myself.

This one, though: too woo-woo for me.

Have you ever played with one of these? They're fun. They're also uncanny. Not so uncanny that they can't be explained by pretty standard AI stuff, but - uncanny. Especially if you think you've come up with a word that isn't simple. 

So there I was, at Barnes and Noble, and I decided to play with one. I thought of an animal and answered 5 questions. FIVE questions, and it got the answer right: "hedgehog."  

Really? Enough people think of hedgehogs to add it to a toy's database?  I guess so.  Next time I play with it, I'll have to think of something really different. Any suggestions to help me stump the toy? 

Why am I even writing about this? I guess, because I'd really like to believe in magic.

Anyway, here's some eye candy for you - my latest completed handspun. This one is "Chicken of the Forest," 180 yards of Corriedale, SW Merino, and Tussah silk from Enting Fibercraft. I might combine it with the green from the last post and make a fluttery little shawl. Or, I may just add it to my basket o'handspun and pet it. Either way. It's all good.

welcoming the new

Good afternoon. It's a sparkling-clean new year, yes? Good riddance to much of the old one. In fact, good riddance to most of the old one.

Or... maybe not. 2012 was tough. I had issues. Mother Nature had issues. I had issues with Mother Nature. (Who can forget Hurricane Sandy? Not this bird, after 13 days without electricity. Not many of my friends, who lost unimaginable amounts of things, both tangible and not-so-tangible.)

But - here it is, 2013, a new number to remember to write on checks, a new calendar, a new opportunity to focus on things that matter. Like, some of the things that I gained in 2012.

* Deep and deeper friendships, for example, including up-close friends who I was able to help through some bad times, and who were able to get me through my own stuff, and faraway friends who proved, yet again, that true friendship disregards both time and geography.
* A slow and astounding realization that I can do some things better than I ever thought I would. Spin.  Survive black-hole-gobsmackingly-horrible emotional whacks. Overcome a terror or two.
* A whole new bunch of music to love - Amanda Palmer comes to mind, and the awesome collaboration of Hilary Hahn and Hauschka for the CD "Silfra," a dual meditation by a master of the prepared piano and a violin virtuoso on the spirit of Iceland.
* A new musical instrument to learn and love - my ukulele.

Thirteen things I'd like to do, and/or do more:
* write here: it's fun and I forget that it's fun when I don't do it
* write my novels, poetry, journal, letters, for the pure joy of using pretty ink
* pluck a few chords and sing a few notes in the company of others
* explore new music and share it
* knit with my pretty, handspun yarn
* pick some things from The Knitter's Life List to try - stranded colorwork, for example.
* read more, and more widely, in unlikely areas
* learn to cook a few things that involve more than boiling water
* mentor more new knitters and spinners
* see my friends
* use the tools I have (spindles, looms, knitting needles), and release those I don't, or can't use
* start knitting or spinning projects if I feel like it, and abandon them if I feel like it
* be grateful and mindful

Why thirteen? Because my friend, Amy, of  Impossible is a typo, listed 13 things she wants to do for shits and giggle (not resolutions - not judgmental "shoulds") - and it looked like fun.

Let me share my last finished object of 2012: the black hole of Wingspan, a shawlette that took much more time than it would have, had I chosen yarn I could actually, you know, SEE? Unfolded, it looks like every other Wingspan. Here it is, origami form. You can decide what shape I folded.

blue and green, my comfort colors

I thought I'd post a little about the spinning and knitting I've been doing lately. 


Finally, my spinning mojo is back.  I wasn't enjoying the alpaca blends I was working on (although they might entice me some other time), but I'm loving me this Finn from Color Craze Fiber.

.








Blues and greens together are so soothing. This is a cowl I dreamed up, using "Imagination" yarn from Knit Picks in the Frog Prince colorway.

And these are the latest socks, in Zen Yarn Garden's "China Urn" colorway, based on a painting by Pierre Redoute. (I'm proud to tell you that I chose that month's colorway!) As always, the sock pattern was top-down vanilla. The green is subtle, but definitely there, working its magic.

Busy as a ------>

I've been busy, small-scale.
















This is an absolute sweetie - a custom-made spindle by Ed at Tilt-a-Whorl, with some pollen-yellow BFL. The spindle weighs 10 grams, comes in at a whopping 6 1/2 inches, and spins so fast I have to draft double-speed. 


Not that all of my projects are teeny right now, only this one. Oh, and the one on a teeny Turkish spindle. And a sock on size zero needles.


For this sock, I decided to teach myself Magic Loop knitting for socks, since Nearly Everyone loves the technique. It took me 10 minutes to learn, and 15 minutes to realize that I'm not Nearly Everyone. I loathe it. All that yanking! Back to two-circs for me, with DPNs for the heel flap and gusset. However, one of my goals for this knitting year had been "Learn Magic Loop." Cross that one off! Now to learn how to Navajo ply on a spindle...

Frogging, tinking, and who knows what else

I just turned sixty. A child of the sixties turning sixty isn't a big story, unless - it's your own story. How was my birthday, you ask? Well, let's see. I managed to screw up one knitting project, then I managed to screw up another knitting project, then I went to Spinning Guild and spun some lovely soft green stuff on my new Sworl by Jesh. 




That part was a Win. But I had to leave Guild early because it was hot and stuffy in the barn, and because the scent of soaps or something was causing my lungs to implode. I got home and discovered that our house had been invaded by ants....

Today is lovely, however. I have decided that the half-baked attempts at fixing one of the knitting disasters Would Not Do. So I've taken over the kitchen table and frogged ten rows (over 300 stitches each).  (Frogging = rip it, rip it.) Now I'm tinking one row. (Tinking  = one stitch at a time.) The stitch count will be right, and I'll do what I should have done, what I really ought to know I should do by now: I'm going to own my knitting.

Owning my knitting = knowing what works for me, and what utterly doesn't. In this case, a certain way of making two stitches into one just is not in my hands. So this time, when I start the edging, I will use another way. It won't be a Centered Double Decrease, but it'll work, and it will be pretty.


Tinking can be tedious, especially when it's 300 stitches. But - look at that yarn! It's a KnitPicks colourway called Gingerbread House. Can you see the gumdrops scattered amongst the gingerbread? Cherry, grape, lemon, orange, lime... each colour pure and sweet and satisfying. Tinking gives me the opportunity to appreciate the colors, the texture, and the fact that I'm no longer fearful about making mistakes when I knit.

Here's another picture of the gumdrops. The pattern I'm using is called Ruffle My Feathers - a tailored shawlette with just a bit of fancy at the edge. I'm going to love this when it starts to get cooler and I'm wrapped in wool and alpaca, with just a hint of fancy.


At sixty, it's time that I owned my life. That means frogging and tinking, making decisions based on my actual self, reading and expressing and creating and loving and using my energies in the life I have now toward the goals I set now. Regrets... yes, I have regrets. I regret having given up the viola when I was 16. But - I live 5 miles from a store that sells and rents fine stringed instruments. I can pick up a viola and see if my hands still want to play it, if I choose. I have one promising novel in the works (in a drawer). I can take it out of the drawer and devote an hour each day to it, if I choose. 


Last time I wrote, I was in the throes of the Tour de Fleece. This is what I spun on the pansies Lollipop spindle. It's just enough for a bookmark or two.





This is the Thai spice, 200 yards of DK gorgeousness. It may become cabled wristwarmers, or a hat. We'll see. I'm very happy with it.







One more thing. The Tsarina of Tsocks has designed a monster created the most astonishing pair of tsocks ever. Hint: five people knit it at a time, and it gets steeked. A lot. (Steek = taking a scissor to your knitting on purpose.) Go look at Fronkenshteek and prepare to laugh...

The Damsel Monique goes to her first ball

Progress in the Tour de Fleece: winding the first two plying balls. Here's one. 





















When I went to Toys 'R' Us to buy the pink rubber balls to ply with, the teen-aged boy who tried to help me had no idea what a "pink rubber ball" was. It took him longer to find them in the store than it took me to wind them into plying balls.


I feel old.

sunshine, a lollipop, and pansies...

... all in one picture...  


A slight detour from the Thai Spice. This is a Gourmet Lollipop spindle, hand-painted with pansies, a mere .5 oz., and matching fluffy stuff to spin. Collecting lovely, light spindles has become an obsession. The spindles themselves make me happy.

Tour de fleece 2011

For this year's tour, I am spinning for Team Russian Underpants and Team Suck Less. My goal: to spin 2 ounces of a combination fiber (Polworth, Falkland, Jacob, Shetland, and Wensleydale) in a colorway called Thai Spice Market into DK weight, and to like it enough to give it away without being embarassed.


The spindle is a Greensleeves Damsel Monique. She spins long and true, a Blessed Damozel indeed.






The fiber is from All for Love of Yarn. 



Visit me on Ravelry and wish me luck!

everything emptying into white

Did you knit in public today? I did, while sitting in the friendly
cafe at Barnes & Noble, listening to Glazunov through headphones
attached to my lime-green Nano. I completed nearly two repeats of
Falling Water between the beginning of spring and the Baccanalian end
of autumn-- appropriate for the grape-harvest purples-and-green
colourway. This pattern + this colorway = knitting intoxication.

**longer boats are coming**

I shall be sorry to give up this scarf, but I have to, since I'm
knitting it as a sample for Moose Manor Handpaints. The pattern has
given me the confidence to tackle a more intricate lace. It includes
yarn-overs before, after, and between purls and knits, left- and
right-facing decreases, and other little maneuvers that always had
intimidated me.

Actually, that's one of the reasons I chose it: to stretch a little as
a knitter. My retirement has been all about elasticity. Some of the
new maneuvers are tiny, like learning to spin on a tiny Kuchulu
Jenkins spindle. Other stretches are long, like getting myself out of
the house to meet with friends old and new.

**everything emptying into white**

The latest stretch is huge: my husband and I have purchased a slice of
land high on a hillside, so high you barely can see the main road
below. The land is thick with trees, much of them protected. They may
not be cut down. Not that we want to - we will only clear enough for
the house that my husband and the architect designed, and a small area
for ourselves. If all goes well, the house will be ready next spring.

Yes, this is a big stretch, more so for me than for my husband,
because I never, ever imagined leaving our tiny house, never mind
building another. He is the visionary, and I have been - I'm not sure
what I've been, but I shall lace up my sneakers and keep up. It's a
good thing.

Another good thing: the book What Should I Do With My Life by Po
Bronson. My friend Rachel lent me her copy and said it would change
how I think. She was right. Unlike self-help books, this is a peek
into the lives of people who have made changes that succeeded or
failed, or failed to make changes, and therefore stalled. These are
real people, and I see myself in them all. (Like everyone, I contain
multitudes. I also live one-half mile from Walt Whitman's birthplace.
Handy, that.). Thank you, Rachel.

**on the road to find out**

Today's soundtrack has been "Tea for the Tillerman" by Cat Stevens. It
may not be a roadmap, but one could do worse than dreaming of a house
built from barley rice with a protective red-legged chicken.

gobsmacked and proud

Sandi Wiseheart featured my little piece of handspun yarn on her blog.

And the card I sent.

And what I wrote.

Namaste, Sandi. 

 

Tikkun Olam, 15 yards at a time

I spun this for Sandi Wiseheart’s Prayer Flag project.

The day I read about the project, I received a Golding Le Fleur spindle (purpleheart wood) cushioned in fiber. The spindle is a mandala, and the fiber had enough bits of red and orange to pluck out and spin on their own. 

Sandi asked if we would like a particular blessing attached to our yarn. Yes, I would: tikkun olam, “heal the world.”

From the website for the magazine, Tikkun:
We in the Tikkun Community use the word “spiritual” to include all those whose deepest values lead them to challenge the ethos of selfishness and materialism that has led people into a frantic search for money and power and away from a life that places love, kindness, generosity, peace, nonviolence, social justice, awe and wonder at the grandeur of creation, thanksgiving, humility and joy at the center of our lives.

Kind-of a big job for 15 yards of handspun, but - you never know.

ch-ch-changes

This 

is now this.

This

is becoming this.

Happy new year!

Wait - it's the end of January. Where have I been?

I've been adjusting - to being retired, and to so many things. So, so many.Change is a bitch.

I almost decided to abandon the blog altogether because - well - it wasn't quite the dividing line between two parts of my life, as I always thought it was.

However...

Here I am, here I'll stay. 

To that which I have left behind, let me say adieu. I hope you are well, I hope you are happy, and I want you to know that being out of that particular gravitational force is the one thing about retirement that is a total win.

So what's new? Well, I have a different spinning wheel now. Gidget has moved to her new home, and I have a new friend, pictured above - a Louet Victoria whose name is Maud. She's as camera-shy as I am, so you may only catch glimpses of her, but she is a joy to have around. Trust me on that.

To be continued. Really.

spinning in a barn; or, nobody doesn't like Sara Lee

One of the promises I made to myself and my friends was that I would spin in a barn once I retired. Well, I checked that off my to-do-when-I-retire list last month, when I became a member of the Spinning Study Group of Long Island, which spins in a barn every month.

Two things had been holding me back. One: Wednesday night meetings would have been a huge energy drain if I had to function on Thursdays. Two: I was not sure I was, really, a spinner.

My spinning friends have disabused me of that doubt, as have my own hands. I can spin. Sometimes, I can make singles that even I recognize as not-bad. More important, though, is the sense of knowing that my eager hands and a spindle (or Gidget) + fiber = yarn, and that my days feel incomplete if I have not followed that equation for, at least, a little while.

My current spinning challenge is an Abby Batt, very pink, very sophisticated in its composition. I started to spin it on a Greensleeves Damsel Monique, a lady of balance and beauty that I can trust to spin long and true while I handle the fibre and coax it to become thread.

Abby Batts are a challenge to me because they are so sophisticated. Merino and BFL are easy. All of the fibers are the same length and consistency, and I can draft away with ease. But Abby Batts throw surprises at you: a tad more silk, perhaps, or more alpaca than merino in the bit you're drafting. You have to be mindful of the fiber in your hand. That's not a bad thing, being mindful of a blend of softness, but without a spindle as reliable as a Damsel (or a Golding, or a Bosworth featherweight), I would not be able to focus as well.

This pink is telling me that it wants to be a lacy cowl or a smoke ring. I hope I can finish it by winter.
(The pink is hard for me to photograph - you can't see the white silky strands....)


Spinning in a barn was a pleasure -- so many people, so many wheels and spindles! So many people I know from the Panera group, or Ravelry forums. And such a sense that there's so much to learn about spinning and myself in a larger social setting than I usually brave.

Now, for Sara Lee. It's not really about Sara Lee. It's about this:

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us -don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog! -- Emily Dickinson

Yes, I retired last month. I can't tell you, yet, what I feel about being retired, so let me tell you, instead, about what I ate on my last day at work.

For morning break, my dear friend K brought in two of the coffee cakes I love, filled and/or studded with nuts, fruit, and cheese. I ate a piece (cheese and fruit), drank a cup of Darjeeling tea, and spindled pink Abby Batt while we all talked. It was awkward - endings are awkward --  but the cake and company were good.

I did not eat lunch.  By 3:00, the must-be-endured Last Break/Last Cake/Last Whatever began.  Some of my own wishes (i.e., no fuss) were respected, so there was no fancy banner, no bunch of balloons, and no camera.  (Yes, my loathing of being photographed is pathological. Deal with it.)

There was, however, a cake. One glance at it and I almost laughed out loud because it was so, so obviously not for me. No, it didn't overtly say anything inappropriate like "congratulations on winning the islandwide bowling trophy." No, but its implied message was clear: "Don't let the door hit you on the ass on your way out," spelled out in whipped cream and strawberries. Not literally spelled out, let me again assure you, but it might as well have been: I hate strawberry shortcake.

I hate whipped cream. And my friends know it. 

Whomever chose this cake chose it for himself, for his own celebration of getting that damned annoying crone the hell off of his staff. I cut the cake and handed him his piece myself, and he enjoyed it. 

I'm glad. Really. Life is too short to begrudge anyone the cake he loves best.

done, and done

No, not the blog, although one might think so, since my posts have been so infrequent . My career. Buh-bye. New York State offered an incentive I couldn't refuse, and I didn't. I'll be over and done, 10-4 good buddy, on 10 September, at least in this incarnation of a career.

I was dithering until last Tuesday, when my therapist provided me with clarity, and a mantra. Should I leave now, should I wait until November, blah blah blah... and she said, "Teabird, you're done."  She's right. (She doesn't really call me Teabird.) I'm done.

I.Am.Done. I.Am.Done. I.Am.Done. I.Am.Done. 

Done is good. A job well and truly done is good. Time now to breathe, and move on.

What have I been doing? Reading, some. I've read the first two Sookie Stackhouse novels on my eReader, and I'm listening to Saturday by Ewan McEwan. I bought the e-book of Lives Like Loaded Guns by Lyndall Gordon, the new biography of Emily Dickinson, and started to read it today.

Writing, some. Mostly letters, some rather tardy. My friend Stoneview inspired me to join Postcrossing, which I did today, and my friend Madame Purl inspired me to take up crewel embroidery, which I shall as soon as I get the design I've been drooling after considering on eBay for a month. 

Spinning, some. I've spun another big hank of the Teddy Bear roving and more of the AbbyBatt, and almost finished the shawl I was knitting when last I mentioned knitting.

Spending, some. I've just ordered a tiny inkle loom from here, and I'm looking forward to some loomtime with Penny (not to mention scritch 'n' snuggle time with Shadow Ninja).

Fretting, some. That's my nature.

And - beginning to see possibilities for adventure, learning, growth, facetime with friends, and maybe even productive uses of precious time. Just beginning. I don't want to jinx anything.

Over to you.  Are you retired? Are you going to retire soon? What does "retire" mean to you? I really want to know.

Oh, by the way: this spindle was designed for me by Yorkieslave, whose purse puppies have become an obsession (and a growing collection). This one depicts a fossil, in amber, one of my favourite things. Amber is wonderful for a spindle, for jewelry, and for an object of contemplation. It's also good for a reminder of what not to be...

p.s. - this post is for Carrie, who prodded me to write it... go over and wish her a belated happy birthday!

a little obsessed

AbbyBatt on Golden Snitch spindle from Yorkieslave.

Green fluff on Bossie spindle.

White fluff on a Spindle by Ray.


Actual words will resume one of these days --

plain Kate

You are called plain Kate,
And bonny Kate and sometimes Kate the curst;
But Kate, the prettiest Kate in Christendom
Kate of Kate Hall, my super-dainty Kate,
For dainties are all Kates, and therefore, Kate,
Take this of me, Kate of my consolation.

  The Taming of the Shrew, 2. 1

Kates don't get much more plain than this. Curst? I'll let you know. I'm about to try plying for the first time, since I've now got two bobbins' worth of the lovely Louet Northern Lights spun up. I have ordered a Lazy Kate, but it has not arrived, so I decided to improvise. 


(Doesn't my Bee have a built-in Kate? you ask. Well yes, but I lost it...Don't even ask how one loses something that is built-in. Please.)