Flashbacks to Columbine

Secundus went to a midnight showing of Dark Knight Rises with friends today.  I slept well, woke up early enough to catch the end of the Tour de France stage of the day, and was mildly surprised to see Secundus out of bed before 9:00 a.m.  He was checking out reviews of the movie, which he said was the best yet, when he found and told me the news about the horrific shooting in Aurora, CO himself.  At least I never had to worry about him.  At least I was able to do ordinary things with him today, like going on a practice drive, helping him clean up after he spilled gasoline on his clothes while pumping gas for me, and trying to understand why he likes movies with dark themes so much.

Thirteen years ago last April, I was 4 months pregnant with Tertia, just beginning to come out of the haze of hyperemesis and contemplating the pros and cons of trying to eat Thai food.  We had just moved from a 3-bedroom house to a 4-bedroom house in suburban Littleton, Colorado.  It had a finished basement that we planned to use for quilting and homeschooling (I was still under the delusion that they were compatible) and it had a nicely landscaped yard with a playhouse and small swingset.  I used to let the little boys, 4 and 2, play in the backyard while I concentrated on trying not to barf.  There was an interesting odor in the house: not bad, but not really good for one in my condition either.  I think it was maybe old wood polish.  Once the doorbell rang and a kind passerby informed me that she was worried about my little boy (that would be Secundus).  "He's on the roof of the playhouse!"  As if it wasn't one of the safer places for him to be, actually.

On that particular day, I can't remember where I first heard the news about the Columbine High School shooting.  It was either TV or radio, both of which I used to have on in the background to try to occupy my mind so I wouldn't think about how wretched I felt.  They broke into the regular programming with the first reports: shooting at the school, less than 2 miles away; breaking news had reports of escaped perpetrators in the nearby park, possibly at large in the community.  I brought the boys back in from the yard and pulled down the blinds.  We could hear helicopters circling for the rest of the day and into the night.  Reports of fatalities began trickling in as I stayed glued to the TV.  I needed to understand the sequence of events, but that didn't happen for days until the newspapers pieced it together for me.  A reporter from World magazine called and asked if I knew any of the victims, but none went to our church.  I was able to point her in the direction of some of the churches I had heard were affected through my day of watching the coverage, one of them being Cassie Bernall's church.  I remember being upset that the first responders hung back for so long while evaluating the situation, and left people bleeding and dying inside the school.  It does appear that first responders in this situation have had the benefit of training post-Columbine.  People may be alive now as a result, and that is something to be thankful for.

I know at least one family affected by the shooting: a young girl, whom I remember as an even younger girl at the church we attended in Colorado, is hospitalized after taking 4 bullets, one still lodged in the back of her skull.  Please pray for Petra, that her family will once more be able to enjoy doing ordinary things with her.

There is a sense of helplessness in a tragedy like this, but for a thinking person, there is also a desperate need to make sense of it.  For the community at large, it is devastating.  The long-term effects are more subtle than the immediate aftermath, but no less profound.  I find myself thinking back to that April day today, and remembering how thankful I was to be moving out of Colorado a few months afterwards, even though it did mean a second move in one difficult pregnancy and a great deal of disruption.  I'm just as irritated as I was then by the attempts to politicize a tragedy, to posture on gun control or violent video games.  But I do feel very sad, each time something like this happens, that our society has so few mechanisms to stage an intervention for a troubled young person before a tragedy.  His own mother reportedly suspected him immediately.  We'll learn more in the coming days, but I suspect that, like the shooting in Arizona, there were clear warning signs above and beyond the shooter's clean criminal record.  Perhaps our society, without sacrificing the freedoms that we cherish (above all else?), could come up with ways of identifying individuals who are a danger to themselves or others, and acting appropriately to prevent them from carrying out that threat.

Like Spinning Cat

It was hubris.  I should have listened to the few posts about spinning cat I could find on Ravelry: slippery fibers, need to be blended with wool, tend to shed, felt and break.  Well, duh!  Of course cats tend to shed, that's why I had this crazy idea in the first place.  I should have taken warning that Challenge Day in the Tour de Fleece was on a Wednesday... and I've never gotten the hang of Wednesday, somehow.  I should have paid attention to my own screen name, for goodness sake.  Seize the wool!  Not the cat.  Cats don't like to be seized.  Cats are terribly, fiercely independent.  Especially Muffball.

Did I really think this creature would make a good fiber animal? If domestic longhair cats in general were a good source of fiber, don't you think we'd all be more familiar with cat yarn in the knitting world?  Don't you think maybe there would be cat farms where kitties were raised to supply fiber for the hobby spinning market?  Maybe even a reasonably priced cat-fiber sweater in the Land's End catalogue?  But I thought I would be able to do it.  Because I'm so special and talented.  I had visions of blissfully spinning a soft, fluffy laceweight yarn, maybe fine enough to make a lovely lacy "smoke ring" style cowl.  Ha!  I saved her fur for over a year.  I washed it gently.  I combed and brushed it as best I could, picking out clumps that were too matted.

Cats attack your spinning wheel when you're using it.  Apparently their fur has an aversion to being spun on the wheel.  So I tried a spindle.  A spindle is a little like a cat toy.  I think the fur tolerates that because it is curious about the toy, just like the cat would be.  I managed, with lots of clumps and lumps and breaks, to spin all the fiber up on a spindle.  Never mind that it was not the lovely fine yarn I had envisioned.  Never mind that parts of it looked like a dryer, cleaner version of the hairballs that occasionally get deposited on my floor.  I finished spinning that ugly lumpy yarn because I'm just as stubborn as any cat.

I was determined to ply it right away.  Maybe salvage what I could of the challenge and come away with enough to knit a cat toy.  Or a cat finger puppet.  So I wound the single onto my right hand to make an Andean plying bracelet.  There wasn't much; I made the bracelet before the circulation was completely cut off to my middle finger.  And then... I lost the other end.  I couldn't find it.  So I started winding the end I did have onto a bobbin.  And I discovered something.  You know how cats always land on their feet?  Well, cat yarn always breaks right about at the halfway point.  Or at least it did this time... only I didn't know that yet.  So I wound the rest of the yarn onto the other spool-like item I had handy... the handle of a cat brush.  THEN I plied the two yarns together, back onto the spindle.  It worked, kind of.  I mean, I have a little bit of cat yarn.

I wound it off.  It's about 15 yards.  That's how much yarn I got from more than a year of saving Muffball's fur.

Some cat owners will tell you their cat sheds enough to knit a whole new cat.  I'm here to tell you that's not true, even though I thought it was.

What do you think?  Enough to knit a cute little kitty finger puppet?  Maybe after my feelings have recovered a bit from the ordeal?

Humph.  I'm going to go spin some wool.

The Making of Yarn

The Tour de Fleece is when I kick into production spinning mode.  Last year and this year I estimate I made about 80% of my handspun yarn during this one 3-week stretch.  I like the idea of "spinning Tuesdays" but it hasn't worked out as a regular thing I do.  But I'm pleased to report that all 2.5 pounds of orange-dyed superwash wool has now been spun and plied.  This bowl is the final 12 skeins, about 800 yards all told.  When the Tour reaches the finish line I'll have to take some more photos.  And then I'll have just a few more days before I start knitting my Ravelympics project with it.

I started this new braid of combed Targhee top from Sweet Grass Wool.  I've never spun Targhee before.  I'm thinking I'll try to Navajo-ply this to keep the color progression in the finished yarn.  My N-plying is far from perfect yet.  I've noticed I'm not really a technically proficient spinner at all.  I just make yarn the way it feels right to make it.  Our Knit Night has had to relocate away from the local Starbucks for a few weeks while they renovate; I spun this at the Starbucks cafe of the local Barnes and Noble.  Felt awfully self-conscious dragging my Traveller into the bookstore!  But I was in good company.  I don't get a chance to spin socially that much, and I enjoy it.  I got a chance to see Patti spin on her Lendrum, Stephanie on her Hitchhiker, and Carol on her Turkish spindle.  She also had a Russian support spindle, which is beautiful.  Now I want one!

This is "challenge day" in the Tour, and here's my challenge, to be started as soon as I fill the first bobbin with a little more Targhee.  This is Muffball fur.  You remember Muffball?

She's grown some since this was taken and the above fur is combed and brushed (I don't own hand-cards) from over a year of saving her fur.  She's like one of those primitive breeds of sheep or musk ox that you have to collect the clumps of fiber from wherever they snag: the carpet, mostly, but sometimes I find them on top of a table!  Since it's summer she's been having hairball problems (she's a longhair even though in this photo, when she was a kitten, it was shorter).  She has the most adorably soft fur, like angora or cashmere.  I think the fiber is from her undercoat mostly -- it's fairly short hairs.  There was one time last week where I captured her for a much-needed brushing session and actually cut out two large felted clumps under her kitty armpits.  Poor thing!  I'm looking forward to the challenge of spinning kitty fur.

My other projects, quilting and knitting, have been taking a bit of a backseat during the Tour.  But I am in the final, beaded section of the Rose Lace Stole, a.k.a. Lady MacBeth. (Using last week's photo since I haven't been taking pictures of it).  I should really have someone take a photo of my hands after knitting for awhile: stained fuchsia with the Wilton's food coloring I used to dye the cashmere.  I'm still trying new recipes from the Madhur Jaffrey cookbook, too.





In quilting I'm laying out my July UFO challenge quilt blocks (same picture as Monday).  My machine quilting setup is back together with replacement parts, but I still haven't reconnected everything and plugged it in for a test drive.

I should have enough blocks for at least an 8x8 layout.  That will be a nice lap or wall size.  At this point I don't see making enough blocks for a bed size quilt; any extra blocks can just be saved for next year's Cedar Tree crumb signature quilt.

S'Mores Pizza

After watching several episodes of "Cupcake Wars," Quarta had a brilliant idea last weekend as she was making pizza for us.  There was enough extra dough for her to try making a dessert pizza, and she decided to make a S'Mores flavored one.  And it was delicious!

She was a little disappointed to see the flyer that came a few days later for a S'Mores pizza from Papa Murphy's.  She honestly came up with the idea on her own.

Design Wall Monday and Tour de Fleece Report

I took down the purple arrowhead blocks to make room for my July UFO project.  OLD log cabin blocks from a scrapbusting project ... hmm ... maybe 8 or 9 years ago?  It's amazing how much better all my quilts look from across the room.  I'm serious... up close I have a hard time seeing the light/dark patterns as I'm laying them out.  I guess this is what we need a design wall for, right?  I have more blocks to lay out... we'll see how many more I'll need to make, or whether some will get orphaned.  Oh, and I am almost finished putting the new parts on my Grace Frame for the Megaquilter.  The tracks, especially the ones on the carriage, were cracked a lot more than I realized.  I cleaned it all off with a soft cloth and had Daniel lift it back onto the carriage.  Now I just have to reconnect the "brain" and hope it still works.  Lots of machine quilting needs to get done.

Saturday on the Tour de Fleece...

And yes (drumroll please) the final plying is done on my orange superwash as of the 3rd hour of TV yesterday.  I'm washing the skeins now, giving them a good thwack, and hanging outside to dry.  I am currently dithering as to what I should spin next.  Targhee?  BFL? Merino with silver? Undyed Romney or Wensleydale?  Hemp?  Silk?  Whatever it is, it won't be orange!  I've got about 1800 yards altogether of the orange, enough for a sweater.

The Tour de France has been exciting.  Some nefarious individual put tacks on the road yesterday, right at the summit of a steep climb.  It caused a large number of punctured tires, seriously delaying the 4th place man, Cadel Evans.  Fortunately Bradley Wiggins, wearing the maillot jaune, showed decency and courtesy, keeping the rest of the peloton in check so that the overall standings didn't change.  I'm not generally a big follower of sports, but I'm really liking the Tour.  Most of the riders seem admirable and dedicated, and of course the countryside is incredibly beautiful.  Check out the series of still pictures from the Atlantic.  Daniel said there should be a fiber arts tie-in for major league football, and then I might be interested.  No, actually, probably not.  I have guys to tell me about the highlights, that's enough!

Stash Report:

Fabric used this week: 0 yards
Fabric used year to date: 50 yards
Added this week: 0 yards
Added year to date: 28 yards
Net used for 2012: 22 yards

Yarn used this week: 0 yards, making progress on Lady MacBeth
Yarn used year to date: 3406 yards
Yarn added this week: 858 yards (12 skeins in Tour de Fleece, the rest of the orange)
Yarn added year to date: 3196 yards (all handspun, not purchased)
Net used for 2012: 210 yards (I really need to finish knitting something!)

Randomday, the Klutz edition

It's Randomday again, when I attempt to make a blog post out of chaos.

In the Tour de Fleece, the days are starting to blur together in a swirl of orange.  This was Wednesday's spinning and plying.

This was Thursday's.  I'm plying two like strands with one unlike strand for all these skeins, and have used up 1 of my 5 colorways.  I'm coming up with names for the colorways like 1: Classical Era Copper, 2: Trademark Infringement Caution, 3: Olympic Torch Flame, 4: Bronze Age (with Mycenean Patina), 5: Ancient Embers.

And this was yesterday's.    Over the three photos you can see the progress on the little Kuchulu.  I was spinning parrot green Wednesday but now am well into peacock blue, moving towards cornflower.  Another two days of spinning might finish up all the orange and let me do something else with my wheel and its 7 bobbins.

I really enjoyed this Counterfeit Gospels Game on the Honey and Locusts blog.

Today I had a fall.  I lost my balance while painting on a stepladder and fell backwards.  Amazingly, I did not spill the can of primer I was holding.  It gave me a flashback to last summer when I fell while holding a glass aquarium and didn't break the glass.  Fortunately this time I didn't need medical attention afterwards.  But I've decided that we need all new painting equipment after painting the house last summer: stepladder included.  It's just too wobbly to be safe anymore, especially for me with my vertigo.  The girls' room is back to normal after the drywall repair; the living room has been primed at least.

Why would there be two people in human history with the name Engelbert Humperdinck?

Marathon spinning during the Tour isn't really possible for me; I've taken my wheel to Starbucks twice, and outside on the back deck about 3 times, but most of my spinning is done while watching/listening to TV in the evenings.  I'll then take the daily photo in sunlight the next morning.  Yesterday I was so drained after taking 8 separate trips with our 2 teenage drivers (4 round trips, I supervised two and Steve supervised two while I was in the back, which might be harder) that I didn't even care that there wasn't an episode or two of Hell's Kitchen to watch.  I sat and spun while the Fox News Channel wound through half of Hannity, Greta Van Susteren, and into The Five before feeling I was unwound enough to even attempt sleep.  When I'm accompanying a student driver, my right leg is almost constantly pressed against a nonexistent brake on the passenger side.  Why do you think that is?

From The Five, who were kinda punchy last night:  George W. Bush cannot be both an idiot and an evil genius.  Mitt Romney cannot be both an out-of-touch rich guy and a macchiavellian schemer.  The Obama campaign has apparently branded something that Mitt Romney never did but that they'd like people to think he did a "felony."  I'm still not clear on what the "felony" was supposed to be, but here's what it was not: arming Mexican drug cartels.

I like the Fox News channel coverage just fine, but I could certainly do without the Cialis and prostate ads.  Really, do they think women don't watch the news?  And that we don't get disgusted by the sight of 20-year-younger women gazing adoringly up at their "distinguished" partners?  Or the old men bragging about how they can now sleep through the night, as if they were just emerging from infancy.  Why can't there be some ads for ordinary things that everyone consumes... like, I don't know, potatoes or shoes?  You'd think I'd wandered into the spam folder of my email program, only all the ads were in English.  I wish they had spam filters for television ads.

It occurs to me that the Tour de Fleece combined with the political season would be prime time to spin some Romney .  And I don't know if any political cartoonists are even aware of the fact that there is a breed of sheep named Romney, but I think Romney the candidate has a sheep-like face that really is calling out for someone to take advantage of that connection.  You heard it here first.

Hachee in the Crock Pot

It's summer, you say.  Too hot for heavy meat and potato dishes?  Not hardly if you have my family to feed.  I'm going to share with you my all-time favorite meat-and-potato dish, known to my side of the family as Haichee.  But I looked it up and the official, Wikipedia-recognized spelling is Hachee.  It's a recipe common in the South of Holland, where I was born, and my mom got the recipe from friends we visited while we were there when I was 7.  It was a very common Sunday dinner meal in our house ever afterwards, and Mom always served it with boiled potatoes that you could mash up yourself with your fork to your own preferred degree of ... mashedness.  In the summer it's great with cottage cheese on the side, along with sliced fresh tomatoes and a big tossed salad.  The changes I made to this dish last Sunday were cooking it in a crock pot instead of stovetop, and adding chopped Swiss chard (because I love greens cooked with meat and I'm sneaky about using them up like that).  Other than browning the meat first, which you can skip if you like, it's a very easy dish to throw together.  And the beef becomes falling-apart tender, and the vinegar and bay gives it such a homey yet exotic flavor that you'll love it as much as we do.  So here goes...

Haichee/ Hachee

2 pounds beef, cut into chunks for stew
3 pounds onions, chopped (I used 2 large onions but 3 would have been better)
3 or more bay leaves
butter
about 1/3 cup apple cider vinegar
salt
pepper
optional: chopped greens, carrots, other seasonings such as curry powder or cayenne pepper

Brown the beef in a few tablespoons of butter in a frying pan.  When meat is browned on all sides, add onions and brown them slightly too.  Transfer to crock pot.  Add bay leaves, some glugs of vinegar and other vegetables or seasonings as desired.  Cook on low for 5-6 hours.  Serve with boiled or mashed potatoes. 

Note to self: 2 pounds of meat is not enough anymore.