still life...

life is mostly still inside la maison gnu. the cats are napping in their favorite spots, my favorite animator has his nose to the proverbial grindstone doing storyboards for an upcoming animated series, and i... well... i'm playing with strings and things.  shocking, i know.

i have a new jumbo flyer upgrade for my spinning wheel (thanks, sweetie!), and i've wasted no time in filling up one huge bobbin after another. i finally got around to plying the Bluefaced Leicester fiber i was spinning at the time of my last post. it's dyed in a colorway i'm calling Old Orchard (named after one of the streets in my neighborhood)...

this is some of the brunette fiber from my 2014 fleeces. here, i layered it with several shades of blue from my box of colorful things, tossed in some bamboo fiber, and added some brightly-colored silk threads (recycled from the weaving of silk cloth for saris). a quick pass through the drum carder resulted in a pretty tweedy effect...

then there's the salt-and-pepper Shetland/BFL (also from the 2014 fleeces) which i blended with (roughly) equal parts Alpaca fiber. i'm torn between dyeing this one either a sapphire(ish)-blue or a copper(ish)-orange, though i am quickly falling in love with this unexciting shade of oatmeal(ish)-beige...

the figurine of the spinner is one of two spinning-related keepsakes gifted to me over the years by the mother of my favorite animator (she's actually the mother of two animators, as both of her boys are crazy in the industry). this one is a flax spinner made from corn-husk, and the other one (not pictured) is a miniature wooded spinning wheel. she brought them with her from Croatia to France (where my favorite animator was born) and, later, to Canada.  the corn-husk figurine was presumed lost for a number of years (it had, in fact,  been "borrowed" by a relative), so it was passed on to me for safe-keeping.

in other news, it's New Year's Day and snowing in Montreal. even more shocking, i know. we may not have had a white Christmas, but we've more than made up for it in the intervening days. i've made zero resolutions for the new year (unless you count the ongoing effort to add a bit of color to my life). i did, however, decide to bow to the absurd suggestion of possibly... maybe... perhaps... challenging myself to a post-a-week year!!! [it was either that or go with my original suggestion of abandoning the blog altogether.] so, stay tuned for a whole lot of pointlessness from this tiny corner of the universe, and have a truly awesome New Year.

where no sheep has gone before...

i stumbled out of bed at around four o'clock in the morning, made my way to the kitchen, filled the kettle, grabbed the nearest passing cat, and headed for the window.  it's so worth living with insomnia if it allows me to be present when Venus makes her majestic climb across the pre-dawn sky, laying the path for the later-rising Sun. the dot of light grows brighter with each day, inspiring a feeling of immense awe (once you get past the initial dread that it might be some extra-planetary object headed directly at your kitchen window). it's one of those moments that leaves you feeling insignificant against the backdrop of the cosmos and thankful for the experience.

prolonged sleep deprivation has a tendency to resemble inebriation. at least, that's the way it usually plays out in my life. having spent the past five or six days with a few hours (at most) of sleep each night, it's fair to say that i'm not all there...not that anyone had ever accused me of such a thing. i don't mean the big things,—like not being in the right state of mind to drive a car or operate heavy machinery—but i wouldn't trust myself to butter toast with a plastic knife in this condition. it would not end well. this feeling of total disorientation has only been made worse by the recent time adjustment and the corresponding shift in daylight hours.  the sun has moved to a lower position in the sky, and dusk suddenly seems to follow hard on the heels of the dawn, leaving me with the realization that the only thing worse than sleeplessness is sleeplessness when there seems to be so very much night.

we spent the middle part of the day wandering around the neighborhood, running a few quick chores and stopping for a leisurely lunch at the amazing new(ish) gourmet burger joint down the street. i even had the wholly uncharacteristic experience of going into my favorite yarn shop and walking out without buying a single thing. madness, i know, but i was in search of a pattern that seems near impossible to locate, so we returned home and i immediately set about finding a replacement pattern if i expect to get anything knitted by Christmas.  that's when things started to get crazy.

let me preface this by saying that i've been passing a lot of my time lately (re)watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. in my defense... it's not my fault.  my favorite animator challenged me to take a few weeks away from what he likes to call rape and murder television, which pretty much left me with nothing else to watch (and i wonder why i can't sleep at night). i consulted the long list of shows i hope to revisit at some point in time, and this one just jumped out at me. why, you ask? why not, i reply!  don't get me wrong.  i watched the show during its original run, but i've probably only seen about half of the episodes, as i was far too cool in those days to be a die-hard fan. no, seriously, i was. but, back to the story.

there i was, searching on Ravelry for a scarf pattern i'd encountered some months ago (i couldn't recall the name of the pattern, or the designer, or the magazine), when i came across this. it's a bat'leth. a knitted bat'leth. a knitted bat'leth scarf. my favorite animator and i were falling off the couch laughing at this point. that's when i exclaimed, "i can't believe thirty people actually knitted it". we laughed some more, he headed back into the studio to work, and i grabbed my wheel and returned to the fiber i'd started spinning earlier in the day.

i hit play on some random You-Tube-recommended podcast and spent the next ten minutes realizing how little i cared about whatever they were talking about, so it seemed as good a time as any to  watch the next episode of TNG. that's the point where things went completely bizarre.

let me just say that i am usually only kinda paying attention to whatever i may be watching when i'm at my wheel, so i was more than a bit startled when i thought i heard the words "spinning wheels" in the distinct voice of one Captain Jean-Luc Picard. what??? the spinning ground to an abrupt halt as i reached over to hit rewind, and there it was again.  "fifty spinning wheels". he was reading the cargo list of a ship that'd left Earth two hundred years prior, and the gear on board included fifty spinning wheels. what??? then Data chimes in with "spinning wheel... a device used for spinning yarn or thread which consists of a large hand or foot driven wheel". what??? so, i took a minute to compose myself and returned to my spinning and my show, my attention equally divided between the two at this point. a few minutes go by, and they beam a bunch of people up to the Enterprise, and the newcomers bring with them several chickens, a goat... and a sheep! a sheep covered in lovely, fluffy fleece... on the ####ing Enterprise! but wait, it gets crazier. a few more minutes go by, and Picard's talking to the refugees in the cargo bay, and behind him there's a couple spinning wheels. then the camera angle changes and there's another spinning wheel in the far corner and next to it, there's a great wheel (one of the really tall, old-fashioned wheels you use while standing up). WHAT???

at this point, i had to get my favorite animator to verify all of this insanity, as there was the distinct possibility that i could be hallucinating from a lack of sleep. there was also a woman among the refugees wearing an obviously hand-knit sweater. i hit pause and started studying the arrangement of cables and bobbles as my favorite animator smiled in amusement.  [i have been known to follow strangers around in order to get a closer look at their knitwear]. "you should write up a pattern for something like that", he said. "who would want to knit such a thing", i replied. "well", he said, "i know where you can find thirty people who'd get a kick out of it".

when Autumn leaves start to fall...

the sudden transition from worst-of-Summer to deep-Autumn temperatures has taken a mighty toll on my being. i have been utterly and completely unmotivated to do anything this past week (other than refill my hot water bottle and climb back under the down blanket).

in all fairness, it should be noted that i generally despise Summer... and this one was a very odd Summer indeed. Spring (which is more like late-Winter in these parts) lingered well into (what should have been) the Summer months. i wore my favorite winter boots right through late June, before digging up a pair of sandals from the back of the closet. even then, it was advisable to keep a light sweater handy as evening walks tended to be a bit chilly.  then August hit and it went from winter-blanket to too-hot-to-sleep overnight.  but that didn't last for long, as we did the whole winter-blanket to too-hot oscillation several times over during the next 4 or 5 weeks.

then my mom came to town for the long (and insanely hot) Labor day weekend, and she left mid-week, taking the last of Summer in tow.  since then, it's gone from refreshing to  somewhat-chilly to (downright) cold. i am having nightmares at the prospect of heating this (suddenly too large) space during the long winter months, and my strict, year-round dress code of tank-tops has been abandoned for warm sweats and thick socks.

so you find me, perched on my favorite couch, long-panted legs tucked under a small blanket and sock-encased feet propped against the hot water bottle. anything to delay the inevitable turning on of the heat. of course, this is my favorite time of year. the air is crisp most days.  there is the occasional fragrance of a wood-burning fireplace drifting on the breeze. and, most importantly, there is wool!!!

i have literally been daydreaming about all the woolly things i want to procrastinate over make in the coming months.  i cannot wait to get my hands on these two new yarns (the creation of which will probably be the subject of my next post... once i talk myself into sorting through all the photos i took along the way).

but, first, i need to finish this project that's been in hibernation for the past two months. there's no rush.  Autumn's here and i am in my happy place.

(Sábado) what the eff...

i was trying to come up with a good subject to wrap up my week of posts, when one pretty much fell into my lap.

allow me to paint you a picture...

it was a lazy Saturday afternoon here at casa gnu.  following a late lunch from the new Pho place around the corner, we retreated to the nearest cozy space (he grabbed a cat and a brush and headed for the balcony...

 and i grabbed a basket of yarn and assumed a crossed-legged position in front of my laptop).

when what should drop, quite literally, from the sky but this little guy...




so i run to grab the camera, cause that's what one does in these situations, and i start snapping away.  i was moving in to get some closer shots when this happens...

in case you missed it... it looks left, looks, right, then raises its large antennae thingies and bares its fangs.

through the lens, it looked like something from a Godzilla movie. i swear i even heard some hissing, but that might have been me shrieking with fright. at this point, my favorite animator's behind me laughing his head off while i'm screaming, "it's gonna eat my face", over and over again. trust me, you would have done the same thing.

this is when the situation went from interesting to downright frightening. being the caring coward that i am, i suggested we move it to a different location, lest a bird (or one of the cats) kill it.  the maple tree seemed like a good enough place, since it probably fell from there in the first place, so we he picked it up with a piece of paper, leaned over the railing, and deposited it on the nearest leaf.

it was a bit breezy out, so it took him a few seconds to get his bearings, then he turned and wandered off into the canopy.

after a bit of Googling, it seems to be the caterpillar of the White-Marked Tussock Moth (Orgya leucostigma).  it's a potentially destructive pest to a wide-range of trees, which is probably why our maple looks like swiss cheese.  beyond that, it is poisonous! the hairs are hollow and contain a toxin that is released on contact (similar to the noxious stinging nettle).  the effects can range from a severe rash to respiratory difficulty on par with an asthma attack.  so, i've more or less ensured the survival of a tree-destroying, poisonous pest. yep.  pretty much.

(Viernes) finished objects...

i now live around the corner from my favorite yarn store—like, literally around the corner—and i haven't been in there even once since we moved more than two months ago.  shocking, i know.  i did, however, find it necessary to pop in for a visit on that snowy day when we first came to view the apartment, and i may have bought enough yarn that day to make a cardigan (for myself, but it doesn't count cause i was celebrating the pending move). i may have also popped back in a week or so later when we came to sign the lease, and i may have bought enough yarn to make another cardigan (for my mom, so it, also, doesn't count).

during the first visit, i saw a sample of this cardi-type garment on a mannequin and i instantly saw my mom wearing it (she's fashionable like that).

the (unnamed) pattern was designed by the store's owner, and she was offering it for free with the purchase of the yarn. so, of course, i had to go back to get it. [i was trying to steam out the fold lines on the back, but my piece of garbage steam iron chose that moment to self-destruct... after being used like 2 times since i bought it a year ago... but i digress].

i may have also experienced a total meltdown during the last week of pre-moving preparations, prompting me to rip open multiple boxes till i found the appropriate yarn to start this other cardi.

the pattern is Kara by Cecily Glowik MacDonald.  i was listening to marathon amounts of the The Fat Squirrel's podcast (more on that at some later time), and she made one for herself in a lovely green, which reminded me that the project was lurking somewhere in my Ravelry queue.  it's a Summer-friendly 97% cotton yarn from my stash.  the main attraction of this pattern is that simpler-than-it-looks lace and the very breezy wide collar/ribbing.

i made the sleeves shorter than the pattern suggested (check out my super-neat seaming)...

i made this for me, but i'm sending it off to my mommy... cause i love her... plus it gives me an excuse to make another one for myself.   everybody wins!