Twenty-Six: 52

 the 52 project.
Portraits of my main squeezes, every week.

O, this week you…

…made some new friends. They are off-the-hook sweetness. Conveniently, they live next door.

…took some nasty spills. We think you may be having a growth spurt and are not sure where your limbs are. Fortunately, you have remained in one piece and nothing keeps you down for long.

…are missing your best friend so very much. This is the hard part about summer vacation. Some people go on them.

…went out in the rain, after bedtime, in your pajamas and rain boots to splash around  during our mini-monsoon and to run a boat down the culvert. It’s still stuck.

C, this week you…

…have had it with being The Injured Guy (and also with any continued documentation of being The Injured Guy, hence the still life I found on the kitchen floor today).

…probably did a little bit more than you should have because see above.

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*tap tap*…is this thing on?

Are you there, Dear Readers? It’s me, The Delinquent.

Or maybe, The Down. Or, The Drowned In So Much Rain Methinks the Sun Will Never Shine Again. Perhaps it has been too few mornings with said sun peering through the trees, or the two weeks+ of miserable head colds in this house, or maybe I am sharing in the longing as our seedlings get leggy trying to reach the outdoors. Whatever it is, I have not felt inspired to do much more than mope. A pile of dirty dishes is enough to make me want to cry. I don’t even know how many days ago it was that I took the above picture (in between the last long string of rainy days and this one), but at least it reminds me that the sun is still there somewhere, behind the Wall of Gray Formerly Known As the Sky (is there a symbol for that?).

These guys cheer me up a little. They have attitude. They also live under artificial sun at the moment, so are unsympathetic to my plight. But, you know, they’re Cute and sometimes they like to tolerate a snuggle.

The goslings pretty much live on Mars. They come when I honk, even though C can produce a much more realistic honk than I. When they grow up, they can live in one of the many lakes that are forming out on the back 7. I’m thinking about growing feathers and webs, myself, so I can live there, too. It certainly isn’t looking good for vegetables at the moment, so learning to eat grass and bugs might find it’s way onto my To Do list for the summer.

But, lo! I haven’t been entirely useless. Above are some of the goodies I have been updating the shop with this week. More to come this evening. Click the photo and it will take you to the shop, where you can play until the sun comes out again.

Oh, and THIS: *Saturday, May 21 from 10am-3pm*
Jamaica Fiber Festival @ the Jamaica Town Hall, Jamaica Village, VT. Local fiber folk with their wares, alpacas and bunnies, oh my!

I’ll be there with lots of everything. If you’re local, it’s a sweet event. Please come check it out!

Oh, and it’s INDOORS. (thunderstorms in the forecast, you know).

The Good, the Bad and the Freak Out

The Good:

Spectrum Shift (props go to Banadura for the awesome squishy-soft handspun)
Love these.
I love them for myself, but will be selling them at BBB, anyway.
Will make more.

The Bad:

This is the bulky flyer for my Lendrum.
This is what happens when you’ve done something really horrible in a past life and the Craft Gods want you to suffer.
Chronology of Disaster of Epic Proportions:
-Happily finish up a bobbinful that I’ve spun on the bulky flyer.
-Remove flyer assembly and place in basket on the floor.
-Basket tips over just enough to topple out said flyer assembly.
-BULKY FLYER BREAKS IN TWO PIECES.  A week before BBB! It fell less than a foot! 

Turns out, the flyer is made up of two perpendicular pieces GLUED together. No dowels, no rods…nada. How much did I pay for this? So, it went into traction, after the husband drilled and added dowels for stability. Brilliant, no? Yes. BUT, there’s no way to really "true" it up at home. It will get me through the week now, but there is a slight wobble and I will need to order a new part tomorrow. And I think I will also have to purchase the damned expensive special carry bag for my wheel and it’s accoutrements, since I suppose the lesson learned is that you don’t carry around specialized pieces of equipment in a woven basket. The thing must have been ready to go for a while if it broke so easily. Totally my fault, methinks, but seriously…only glue?
So, anyway, yeah…take care of your tools or stupid things like this happen at really inconvenient moments.

The Freak Out:

You-Know-What is in one week!
I’m in pretty good shape, I think. Lots of scarves, lots of yarn, but I still feel like I need to work on lots more of everything. There are about 30 ornaments that are cut out and embellished…just waiting to be sewn and stuffed. I would like to take photos of my favorite pieces…just because, but I may not get to that. Especially if we try to move this week. We were going to try to do it last week…ha, ha, HA!

In other news, we had snow today:

I’m making a funny face, but ignore that and notice the yummy Wooldancer yarn in my scarf. I was saving this swap yarn for a blankie project, but now the amazing natural fiber fabric store in town is selling gorgeous wool…as in, I can just buy a length of woven wool fabric and have a pretty inexpensive, incrediby warm and beautiful blanket. No knitting required. So, now I can knit up some things for sale with my formerly-hoarded-for-blankie-project indie-spinner stash.

Shortly after the above picture was taken, our snow turned into RAIN. Awful, awful stuff. Now we will have a nice sheet of super-dangerous ice to drive on in the morning.
I want my snow to stick!

Ooooh…the power just flickered off…yikes! weather! Must be time for bed.

ABC meme-ness,…and stuff

Accent: um…northern California girl?

Breakfast or no breakfast: Always. Lots of it.

Chore I don’t care for: Cleaning bathrooms. Really, any cleaning involving sponges and water.

Dog or cat: Cat. A fluffy one that leaves dreadlocks all over the house.

Essential electronics: Laptop and the stereo. Yes we live in the dark ages and still use CDs, records and…cassettes.

Favorite cologne: What’s cologne? Essential oils I use: sandalwood, vetiver, black coconut.

Gold or silver: um…steel?

Handbag I carry most often: What’s a handbag? I carry a Timbuktu messenger bag (from back when they used to let you design your own)  

Insomnia: Yes.

Job Title: Artist? Mama? Neither of which I get paid for.

Kids: One three-year-old crazy bean.

Living arrangements: 200-year-old farmhouse.

Most admirable trait: Resourcefulness. Without it, we’d be starving.

Naughtiest childhood behavior: Stealing, although I hate the term “naughty,” (in reference to children, anyway).

Overnight hospital stay: Never.

Phobias: Elevators.

Quote: “The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself.” Lao-Tse

Reason to smile: My boy. Our garden. Good friends. Hope. (I suppose that would be reasons).

Siblings: 2 step-sisters, one a Mofo Maven, and the other a Roller Derby Queen.

Time I wake up: Between 5:30 and 6AM. I wait as long as possible to get out of bed, though.

Unusual skill or talent: Lately…hoeing. Yes, my back hurts. Usually, thought, it’s turning a pile of fluff into a beautiful piece of functional art.

Vegetable I refuse to eat: Cauliflower. I’ll eat it, but I think the stuff is awful. Besides, I think white vegetables are creepy, unless they’re roots.

Worst habit: Internet.

X-rays: Mouth.

Yummy stuff: Chocolate. French indigo lentils. Pecans. Kombucha.

Zoo animal I like most: It’s a tie between the Sun Bear and Otters.

I post this because I have too much to say right now, too much I’ve been thinking about, to make a real post. The state of of things (in this country, in the world) are weighing heavily on me and I’m in the midst of major life decisions that terrify me and give me hope all at the same time. We have had two glorious days of rain, thankfully, and all is dreary, wet and gray. In the moment, I can be happy. When I think outside of it, I feel paralyzed.

I carded the wool for this yarn, infusing it with Prayers for Rain. They were answered, and my seeds are happy:

Prayers for Rain corespun bits of everything, including wools, flax, sari silk and easter grass.

Market tomorrow. Off to spin.