Variations on a theme of lucky.

I have not posted in a loooong time. Ten days at least. But I have excuses. (Geminis always have excuses...but I married a Scorpio, so I get extras.)

One big reason for spending no time at all blogging is that the love of my life turned 35. (There, how's that for devotedness, revealing Spiff's age to the world...but I'm three and a half years older so I figure I can get away with this and several shelves in the bathroom devoted to me and my peels/ microwhateverthehellthisisbutitbetterdosomething/ keepingupwiththehotties creams. So there. Put that in your friteuse and snarf it.)

Anyway, as I was saying before my crow's feet distracted me, the absolute love of my life and quite possibly the nicest man on the face of the earth for reasons I can't quite go into was worth an entire day of searching a major city for foie gras. Worth figuring out exactly which bird this came from and discussing with several shopkeepers in an accent I still can't bloody well understand why one animal's liver is orderable and why one's is merely readily available. Worth searching out a Margaux and paying through the nose for it (just a Margaux, not a Chateau Margaux. This is not France, people, and I am not that rich, nor did I have a week to go find it in Toronto). Worth explaining to the father-in-law what "paying through the nose" means.

He was also worth spending another whole day searching out white truffle oil and a pastry bag, plus learning how to make puff pastry for the first time (dead easy, by the way, but much easier with a pastry bag) because he wanted not cake, but profiteroles. And he was even worth telling the kid that veal rolled with morelles and white truffle oil served with a wine sauce is normal food and she should just give it a shot (she did, and rather liked it, but we think it was the lure of the profiterole with ice cream and homemade dark chocolate sauce). Worth my mother's resulting freakout when she reads this....

So my pastry puffed and my husband was happy. I did, however, manage to get some spinning and knitting done. Of course. How do you think I made it through the twenty minutes dying, hoping the hell that the birthday pastry puffed?

I scavenged the blue Spinner's Hill stuff
that refuses to look blue for either me or the camera anymore.
I told you that everything I touch is turning to laceweight.
Ted understands. Thank you, Ted.

I heard from Ted, the master laceknitter, who is, alas, blogless. He saw my laceweight, my shawl, and gave me the beautiful gift of a compliment plus a lot of information on how to keep up the good work. I'm absolutely thrilled when people do this, and Ted, I thank you for your wealth of knowledge. I expect to see cobwebs coming from your wheel very, very soon. An admirable goal. And it will be entirely your fault if a Polwarth sheep mysteriously appears on my balcony.

And here's what the blue-disguised-as-purple laceweight became:
Smiling diamonds from BW1. Look carefully,
and you'll notice the goofy grin inside each diamond.

So I was feeling frisky after that last bout of spindled laceweight, and I had just gotten lucky with a prize shipment of Kim's bunnycrack in Dandelion. I went to the wheel and got this:

The singles are laceweight.
I am speechless. Um, okay, almost.
I kind of contacted Kim for a custom order...

The resulting two-ply is more of a fingering weight,
and less even than I could have achieved on the spindle,
but I'm still thrilled with the result.

I'm also absolutely in love with this fibre. So much so that I e-mailed Kim and asked her if she would do a stronger colour for me. She did two, and thus Bundrops were born. In a week or so, I will be the proud owner of the very first bright red bunnycrack. Periwinkle too. I am sooooo lucky.

I also got a package from my secret pal, who is not so secret but we like to pretend sometimes. She sent me teal Fun Fur, and I will so get her back for this. All I can say is that she should expect googly eyes in her future. But she also sent me something that on the one hand, totally freaked me out and necessitated an emergency IM to the head of the Spindicate to find out what the hell to do with them, but on the other hand, totally thrilled me because, look, I got a bag of Cari's yarnhair!

These are dyed locks. Of which sheep, I do not know. A curly one.
You, uh, have to comb this stuff. I, uh, don't have combs.
But now I have dogbrushes.
Not the best option...but not horrible.

So after my emergency call and my emergency trip to the emergency pet store, I got something to urgently separate the fibers, because how can one wait, into this:

I'm sorry, Cari. I promise I will never,
ever try to comb your hair.
However, the locks turned nice and fluffy, eh?

So, after my adventure in carding without really knowing how (in fact, carding without real carders), I got something that I could actually spin with a spindle. I'm not so crazy that I think I can put this stuff on the wheel. Yet.

This is what Cari's hair might look like
if a dork like me got at it with a spindle.

Uh, yeah, it's laceweight. Threadweight, in fact. I'm having way too much fun,here....

And then I discovered that the drunken Canadian ponies had finally deposited three packages at the post office with notices to say that if I did not pick them up today, last notice, emergency emergency, they would go back to their senders. Except that I never received a first or second notice. Damned drunken ponies...but I managed to get this before it went back to the people who kind of conspired to make me the luckiest girl who never went to Rhinebeck, ever:

Someone found the perfect blue. Someone else
got me more of it. And the peacock queen decided
I could use a fiber fix and a little help with the spinner's hands.
Did I mention how lucky I am? I can't thank them enough.

All of this luckiness came after the other reason why I have not blogged lately. I've been working my fool ass off. Plus the kid puked all over her princess costume midday on Monday and could not go out for Halloween night as a result. She managed to pull it together to be the Halloween Princess and give out candy, and sang everyone songs, but after a month of waiting for the big night, it was a tough time for everyone. She admirably managed to have a good time despite the disappointment.

Today, I have to say that my child was brilliant, trying to read books and draw pictures and not go stir crazy while I was chained to my computer on deadline. And tonight we all hung out listening to Spiff have his guitar lesson, as usual, and all seems to be well and good in the land of Fuzzy Logic.

The massive pile of roving plus the husband's declaration that I rock do wonders for a girl's mood, I tell you. He says it's all happened because I'm wonderful. God, I love Scorpios. But to be honest, I think I'm just damned lucky.

November 2, 2005 7:12 AM  | Permalink  | Comments (32)  | Print