Today, I Don't Feel Like Doing Anything

Do you know The Lazy Song by Bruno Mars?  It's a catchy tune.  If you don't know it, Google it.

The first time I heard it, my...ahem...middle-aged (yes, it's true, I can hardly admit it!) mind lamented about that aimless young person who thought it was okay to lay in bed all day and do nothing.

I heard it again on another day...while driving from one appointment to the next and trying to remember to pick up cat food and call the insurance company and hoping that I got to work on time while trying to decide which major project I should be devoting my time to and and reminding myself that it had been ages since I had paid a visit to my elders and pannicking that I had left my agenda at home...I turned up the radio trying to drown out the thudding boom, boom, boom of my blood pressure. 

I thought - HEY...this kid might have something here.

Imagine a day when you could just shut everything and everybody out and do nothing....

Would the world collapse?

In the end, would it matter?

I have been a person with To-Do lists.  Yes, plural.

There's the annual goals and aims list. (Yes, I do this...on paper....and post it where I can check in.  It does sound rather......yes, it does.  In my defense, it actually helps me prioritize, make decisions and cut the unnecessary crap from my life.)

I always have a big paper notebook that is my life on paper...if I lose it, I may cease to exist.

Then there is the monthly To-Do list in four sections Art, Yarn Business, Farm, Home/Family.

So, at the start of each week, I make a week list, hopefully that along with the usual chores, work, and obligations can attack some of the monthly To-Dos.  I try to schedule some of the Art to-dos on there.

And yes, daily there is a list...this includes tasks towards to monthly goals but also the stuff of mothers and small business owners (pick up toilet paper, update Etsy listing).


My name is Norma and I have an illness.

Actually, I am in recovery.  I have the big goal list.  I made a January To-Do list, but I haven't looked at it mostly.  I haven't made a 'real' week list or a today list for a couple months now.
I began to realize that I tend to put too much on my list to accomplish, and it left me breathless.

The other day, someone posted this on Facebook. (There was no credit given, so thanks to somebody out there in cyberland.)

I'm guessing it was an ad in the window of a yoga studio.

I think it is BRILLIANT.

It's at the top of my list every day.
Which means that I will always accomplish something and if I don't accomplish this...then nothing else matters.


And...TODAY, I'M NOT DOING ANYTHING!!!

(okay...I did help with the barn chores, and I may read, knit or watch reruns of ER...perhaps a load of laundry or two...)

Winter Has Arrived

Winter has arrived this week.  Lots of snow followed by a very cold -32C Saturday morning.

I commonly get asked how the alpacas like the winter.  My standard answer is that they much prefer a cold January to a humid, hot August.  Alpacas have a lot of dense fibre on their body, so if they are in good condition, and can get out of the wind, they do fine.  Most have a fibre that is about as long as my fingers on their body.  If I stick my fingers into their side, their body is very warm.

If they kush (lay on their knees) in the straw of the lean-to, they cover any of their bare parts (which is generally just their groin area.   This is Luxor in his man-cave. He is 15 years old and he is in an area with Vivaldi, the youngest male (pictured above).  I keep these gentle guys separate from the breeding males who can intimidate them.  Their man-cave is just a little lean-to built for two so that they can get out of the wind and precipitation.   They still have barn access but they like to be out here during the day.

They drink a lot more water in the winter, because the hay is dry.  Our waterers are heated, so they don't freeze.  You'll notice sparse trails in the snow in the picture of the girls area.  Alpacas really slow down in the winter weather with trails from the hay feeder to the lean-to to the barn and then to the outside waterer.  Alpacas don't like walking off the trails...even if you are coming on the trail carrying a 45 lb bale of hay for them, they will hesitate to make way for you to get by.

The sky is absolutely gorgeous bright and blue on a cold January day.  I'm thankful that my teenager loves to snowblow and plow.  It took her and the hubby several hours on Saturday.   It was a day that I was thankful that I had 5 load of laundry that needed doing...

We are making progress on the circular sock knitting machine!  I use the "Royal WE", because hubby is a gadget guy which has really come in handy while we try to figure this out.

There is a steep learning curve and lots of figuring out.

And I've figured out what acrylic yarn is useful for....(practice tubes).  It's pretty though, isn't it?

Cranking Out of 2011

Another year is coming to a close in a couple days.  If you read my blog entry from last New Year's, you know that I no longer make resolutions.  There's a reason for that.   I don't need anything else to fail at!

So, it gives me great pleasure to show some progress on the antique circular sock knitting machine that I purchased...ahem....three or four years ago!   



In my defense, the manual is a bad photocopy of the instructions from around 1930-40.  Apparently, if you lived during those times, you would have had a neighbour who had one that could show you how to thread the thing!  The lady that I bought this from had not used the equipment.

I dug out the parts and took advantage of the extra day off work plus the good nature of my family to make this yesterday's project.

The key point that I've learned is that you first need to make some netting to hold your weights.  And before that, my handy hubby had to come up with a device to help with the casting on of the thread.  Thank goodness for YouTube...it helped us get to this point.

At the right end, you see what the netting looks like.  It is made with every other needle installed.  The rest is knit with every needle installed.  I used some 2/8 cotton that I had in my weaving stash, so the knit isn't tight like it would be with sock yarn.  We put a knot in the end to hold the weight which kept the tension.  The whole thing went well until we tried to join some real sock yarn to this.

Our next task will be to produce a simple tube with sock yarn.  There's a few steps to learn before a real sock with emerge from this contraption. 

Don't look for an update on this anytime soon.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!  2012 - can you believe it?











Peace and Joy

Well, Christmas is almost here.  Shiny coloured things all around!

This is the last bit of yarn painting that I did...probably the last of the year.  Interesting that these two skeins were painted using the same three colours: burgundy, olive and golden ochre.  The one you see on the left had the dyed applied with distinct colour repeats and little overlap.  On the skein shown on the right, I applied the dyes randomly throughout the skein and the colours mixed quite freely.

On a cool crisp day, the hayloft is one of my favourite places.  I'm not sure what it is about the hayloft that is so comforting.  Perhaps it is the peace in knowing that my alpacas will have enough to eat until spring pasture time.  It could be the quiet stillness and isolation of the hayloft is a good place for reflection.  It might be that the hayloft is a drawback in history, that the skeleton of this post and beam barn reflects decades of honest, hard work by farm families.  Our full hay loft is the result of the labour of two farm families - one who produced the hay and ours that put it up.

Peace

It doesn't matter to the herd that they eat the same hay from fall to spring...every new bale that gets brought out gets the same reaction.  It's like throwing candies into the middle of a kindergarten class.

Joy

I Wish You Peace and Joy at Christmas and always.







Miracles Happen: An Update

I was thinking of someone the other day, when I was reminded of the theme of my post from last Christmas, called Miracles Happen.
So I reread it.

Here's an update...

The young man in the hospital beat incredible odds and a dismal prognosis.  He came home.

The soldier whose last tour in Afghanistan ended just before last Christmas is expecting my friend's first grandchild!

My friend who spent last Christmas worried about her diagnosis was told that the cancer treatments worked.

And the weight that was on my shoulders is lightened by others.  There are angels among us.

Sometimes, miracles happen.

I still Believe.

December Trials...

The snow has finally arrived!  Oh, sure...it's pretty.



 But why couldn't it just fall on the lawn and not the driveway?

Last week was a fun week of white-knuckle driving...black ice, then deep snow, frozen mounds of slush on the highway.  (Note to self:  if I'm worried about getting out of the driveway, I should perhaps stay home.)

Winter has arrived and, if history repeats itself, it will stay for 5 months.  I better get used to it.
It's time for me to look in the mirror and say "Suck it up, buttercup". 

Here's my latest handspun, handpainted, homegrown baby alpaca yarn on my umbrella swift.

The handpainting or handdying process makes a mess of the skein organization, so usually I will wind the skein from the swift to either a ball winder or a skein winder.  In this case, I needed to put the skein on the skein winder in order to measure the yarn.



I was lucky to buy this old skein winder off of a friend who salvages old fibre arts equipment, fixes it and resells.  Along with the swift, it's a valuable tool of my craft.  While my skein is on the skein winder, I can figure out how much yarn I have in my skein and from their determine how it compares to yarn standards in terms of yards per pound or meters per 100g skein. (yes, I have a metric to imperial conversion calculator!)  This is important to know if it will suit a weaving or knitting project, and whether I will have enough to complete the project.  





These are my two newest skeins. 

I can usually achieve a nice balanced handspun yarn.  This latest spinning project was a challenge.  I was using up some wonderfully soft cria fleece that unfortunately had a lot of second cuts from shearing and VM (vegetable matter like hay and twiggy things) in it.  I wouldn't sell that fleece because of that but the fibre itself was way too lovely to throw out (after all, my little cria spent a whole year growing it).  When you start with 'problem' fleece, even with careful preparation, it's hard to end up with rovings that just glide through your hands at the spinning wheel.  While spinning, I had to keep stopping to pick out clumps of crud.  Then, I decided to use my electric spinner, which I am still getting used to, to ply it.  I ended up with yarn that almost has the appearance of a boucle yarn...not what I planned but I think it will still create two shawls or large scarves for a couple of people that I love.  I'm excited to start those knitting projects.

Wet Sundays are Good

Today is a wet Sunday in November. 

It's 10C today.  This is somewhat odd for our climate.  We've had an incredibly warm fall and have had no snow to date...none.  Not even freezing rain.  Usually by this time, we've had one or two days where the school buses are cancelled.  I'm not complaining.  I know the snow is coming.  In fact, the weather network says that we'll see it mid week.  I have my snow tires on.  I bought new winter barn boots.  Our cut firewood is piled and ready.    When the cold and the snow come, we'll likely be living with it for 4-5 months, so I will count my blessings for the extra time to prepare.

There's no obligations today that we need to leave home for.  I picked a couple jobs that needed to be done and we worked as a family to get them done.  One job was to replace the mailbox post that was run over by the guy that delivered our logs last month.  That was a rather big job, but it's done!

Now our day is meant for relaxation.  Comfy clothes, hot chocolate.  I've got some handspun yarn soaking in preparation for handpaint that I might get to later.  We might watch some of Season 1 of The Waltons that I brought home from the library.  Family is coming for supper...picking up Chinese food on the way.   Total relaxation is on the agenda!

I am knitting a very simple, long scarf in 100% alpaca of the highest quality.  In Canada's grading system, this quality is known as "Grade 1", but internationally, the fibre used in this yarn would be called "Royal Baby".  Whatever it's called on paper...you can just refer to it as "holy cow, that's soft".

I tend to knit pretty simple patterns because I'm not a very advanced knitter.  However, this scarf is absolutely beautiful in it's simplicity.  As I was knitting it, and thinking that it was such a simple pattern (knit 3 and purl 1 in 2 combinations, that's it!) and yet, the outcome was such a gorgeous scarf.

In reality, it is the yarn that makes this scarf a classic beauty that, with proper care will serve someone for a lifetime.  It will become softer with wear as the fibres in the yarn relax and bloom.  The rich natural colour of the fibres will not fade over time.  The same scarf pattern, if knit in a cheap, manmade fibre would simply not produce a classic piece. 

Knitting is labour intensive.  If you knit, you do because you enjoy it.  But it's your labour, your skill, your time.  Choose beautiful yarns made from natural fibres to create timeless classic knitwear.