SNKC*
Hrm.. first a bit of help for a fellow academic:
Bloggers, stand up and be counted! Take the “Public and Private in the Blogosphere” Survey!
Here’s a hint.. if you go, snag the URL for here first (http://prioritizingtheparanoias.wordpress.com) because there’s a referral question. 
Right then.. on to the heart of the matter. I’m going to babble on about pavilions again today. Specifically, I’m going to talk about the poles we use in our French double bell wedge because it’s not the typical design (it’s not that unusual a one, either, just not the most typical).
First up, to give credit where it’s due, we did not make our bell wedge; we bought it from Midwest Tent & Bag (just the canvas); if you go to their website, you can read about the typical pole set up for a bell wedge. Neither did we make (either set of) the poles for our bell wedge; my dad, amateur-only-in-the-sense-that-he-doesn’t-get-paid-for-it all around handyman, made both our first set of poles (two uprights and a ridge pole) and our current set of poles (swingset style).
For those unfamiliar with the SCA, a brief moment of explanation might be necessary. Yes, this is a tent that we actually camp in. No, we don’t camp light. Yes, it is really as big as the dimensions list. No, it really wasn’t that much more expensive than a good modern tent. No, it doesn’t take up that much more room than a modern tent (or at least, it doesn’t have to.. ours does because our poles are *HUGE*, but that was our decision made for our comfort, not a necessity of the tent). No, it doesn’t take longer to set up than a modern tent - in fact, ours takes less time to set up than some modern dome tents.
This is one of many possible styles of period or periodesque pavilions that are used by people in the SCA. It’s not required that you use a period or periodesque tent to attend camping events in the SCA, but living for four to ten days out of a modern tent a couple times a summer gets old fast. Not to mention bloody hot. We have room to put up a full-sized slat bed in this tent, and still have space to walk around and stand fully upright to get dressed. The canvas breathes, so it stays cooler than nylon tents in the heat and humidity. No, it doesn’t leak; when it rains, the canvas swells up and keeps the rain out (you can also buy tents made with treated canvas that are both water and flame resistant).
You might also be trying to figure out why we switched from the more typical pole set up to the swingset style. It’s simply a matter of usable space. When this type of tent is set up, you end up with a floorplan that consists of a center square (or rectangle) capped on either end by a semi-circle. The ridge pole is the width of the center square, so the poles, if you’re only using two uprights, end up coming down in what would be the center of each circle where it meets the square (yes, I’m sure a diagram would help.. try this one, but note that ours has bells on both ends instead of just one), which effectively means you can’t put anything in one of the bells that extends into the center square unless it can fit on one side of the pole or the other. By using swingset style poles, the poles run along the walls of the tent and leave the center fully open.
Right then.. on we go. The key to our pole set up is this nifty little bit (all pictures are clickable thumbnails; click them to get to a larger version):
(viewed from the end)
(viewed from the top, with the ridge pole already attached)
Updated 7/14/08: Those nifty little bits turned out not to be able to withstand the torque from erecting the tent repeatedly and snapped at the end of last season. Dad took a look at the stress points and reinforced things across the ridge to come up with these instead:
This bit was custom made by Handyman Extraordinaire, aka Dad. It’s a work of genius, in my opinion. However, that said, it’s not necessary to have something this custom to make this type of pole structure work. you really just need a way to hold the two poles together at the right angle at the top of the tent and to have a way to cradle the ridge pole. Our nifty little bit just makes this a lot less fiddly. The leg poles for our tent are built around a hollow center pipe, so the little legs on this nifty little bit slide right into the top of that pipe:
Here’s the nifty little bit as it attaches to the legs and the ridge pole (which is the metal pipe extending out behind the legs that you can’t really see in this picture, but it’s the third leg of this tripod). You may notice two things at this point: a) the legs are awfully short - in fact they’re only half as tall as they need to be - because we asked dad to build the legs in two sections each so that we could pack them better; and b) the ridge pole is kinda of short, too.
And that’s because, like the legs, we needed to be able to fit it into our car. So the picture above shows how the ridge pole connects in the middle - there’s just a pipe sleeve over both ends of the pipe that gets bolted with that large eyebolt (which is an awfully handy place to hang a lantern).
So, when you put the tops of each side of the legs together with the ridge pole, you get this:
At this point, the ridge pole is about mid-shoulder height on me (I’m about 5′6″) and the legs are about 10 feet apart. The next step is to drape the canvas over the top of the poles:
.. and then pick up one side of the tent (we usually start with the back because the first side you pick up is a little easier, so it’s better to pick up the heavier side of the canvas first) and attach the bottoms of the poles:
Nifty, eh? Huh..? Oh.. you want to know *how* we attach the bottoms of the poles, too? Oh, fine..
As mentioned above, the poles are built around a hollow center tube (the light grey extending from the wood), so we just drop in a bit of smaller diameter pipe and slide the top and the bottom of the poles together. Strictly speaking, the short bit of pipe is probably not entirely necessary, but it’s nice to know that if the poles got rocked really hard, there’s something more than just that little sleeve holding them together.
To finish with the poles, we just repeat the above with the other side - lift up and attach the bottoms of the legs.
Ta da!Free standing bell wedge without stakes! While the tent is mostly stable at this point - meaning that no one needs to stand there and hold it up while someone else runs around pounding stakes - it’s not really anchored; a good strong wind from either end would cause it to fall to one end or the other. So the final step in securing our tent is to stake it out (not shown because we were just putting it up here to be able to clean and repair the damage mentioned yesterday; we also normally put down a tarp as a ground cloth under the tent, but I knew I’d be hosing it down and didn’t want to have to deal with the tarp collecting water since I knew we wouldn’t be fully staking it). We use 12″ metal stakes and start with the four stakes at the base of each leg, then stake out the center of each bell to get the tension figured out; the bells each stake out about another 4-5 feet from the center square on our tent. The rest of the stakes go in pretty quickly and without much of a fuss.
All totaled, I think we can get this tent up in about 15 minutes, including staking it out depending on the ground we’re trying to drive stakes into. Setting up the inside takes a bit longer - mostly because our camp bed takes about 15 minutes itself to put together - but I think we can, if motivated, get our full kit set up in less than an hour, including the pop-up kitchen fly and table. *shrug*
If I remember to bring my camera to our next event, I’ll try to get pictures of the inside once it’s set up - including positioning of the bed where we have it now and where it used to have to be because of the upright pole placement. And if there’s a great hew and cry, I’ll try to get assembly pictures of the bed (another Handyman Extraordinaire creation).
*SNKC = Still no knitting content.
“That’s funny.. the damage doesn’t look as bad from out here.”
First, I need to distract G because the main part of this post is likely to make her confiscate my pavilion for mistreatment. So here are some photos from my garden at the moment (click the picture to load a larger version).
Yellow daisy-like flowers (no idea what these are; they’re tall and perennial and bloom like that all summer long)
Magenta hollyhock (we have several colors of hollyhock scattered in amongst the rose bushes that line our garage)
Stray morning glory? I just noticed this little guy this morning over along the side of the house by the water meter.. the vine doesn’t look like a morning glory, but the flower sure does!
These are the Gerber daisies I got for the blue pot for the front yard. They’re doing wonderfully there! I really love how much color they add to the front yard.
This is how I know the little stray guy along the side of the house looks like a morning glory.
The first garden box - Walla Walla sweet onions are really the only things visible, but there are also three kinds of pepper plants and two types of basil planted in there.
Those are tomatoes in the middle (Big Mama variety, I think) and garlic. I think there’s also maybe carrots or radishes in there, too.
The last box (far left) has the Yellow Pear tomatoes and some summer squash; the other has the Sun Gold tomatoes and either carrots or radishes, what ever’s not in the second box.
.. and here are some photos of the mildew/mold/something nasty chewing damage to our double bell wedge pavilion.*
Before any treatment:
This is the back center panel, in the lower right as you’re facing the tent. This is the smallest of the actual holes and is surrounded by some canvas that while not actually torn is structurally weak.
This one’s the other side of the back center panel. The damage is much worse here and this is actually the most badly damaged place. The seam that runs through this patch is seamed around a piece of canvas strap which has also deteriorated in at least one place. You can still see the duct tape we used to patch the hole this past weekend in this shot.
This appears to just be stained.. the canvas does look or feel weakened, but we’ll need to keep an eye on it.
Ditto here - no apparent damage, but something we’ll need to watch.
This spot lines up with the spot that’s the most damaged on the back when the pavilion is folded and in storage, but it’s in the door flap, so it’s somewhat less critical. Still, the entire bottom of that panel will need to be patched.
And after some scrubbing with a 1:8 mixture of chlorine bleach and water (as recommended here, from a referral from G), rinsed and left to dry overnight:
The scrubbing opened up the hole a bit, which I expected given how deteriorated the canvas was, but the stain is significantly reduced and I’m pretty sure that anything that might have still been living in the canvas eating away at it is now dead.
Again, this is the worst spot; it’s about 18 inches across to get to solid canvas and at least 40 inches high.
So far, this one still appears sound. The spots above the stain are grass, not holes!
Not to bad. I think this is my “favorite” of them just because the black squiggles from where whatever it was died.
*cringe* Yeah.. not as bad looking as the back, but still a pretty major patch.
The canvas on the front right and back left appears to be fully sound, but the holes in the back center left and right and in the door will need to be patched. The smaller patch is only about 10 inches square, but the two larger patches (the back center left and the door) will require a patch about 18 inches wide by about 40 or so inches tall. The back center left is complicated by the fact that it spans one of the seams of the pavilion (but fortunately not the seam that bears the bulk of the stress from the ridgepole) and I don’t think I’m brave enough to try that one on my own, but we’ll see how I feel after doing the others.
*We discovered the damage last weekend when we went to load the car to attend our first camping event of the year. It’s entirely our own fault - we have a hard-packed dirt garage floor and left the canvas bag the pavilion was stored in sit directly on the floor over the winter and spring. something decided to eat it. The pavilion is structurally sound (we used it last week with just some duct tape to seal the holes in case of rain), but that’s mostly because the rot missed the four main seams that bear the most of the stress. It also helps that we use a swingset pole arrangement (I’ll likely post some pictures of that in a few days) so unlike a normal bell wedge, the stakes don’t have to put the canvas under as much stress for the tent to be stable. Yes, if we leave the stakes loose at the points of wear, the tent sags a bit there, but I’ll deal with a little sag to not have to replace the entire pavilion!
This is one of those occasional “educational policy” posts..
Last Spring, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) and the National Association for State Universities and Land Grant Colleges (NASULGC) convened several task forces to begin working on bringing their proposed Voluntary System of Accountability(sm) (PDF) effort into reality. The VSA(sm) task forces now have a preliminary draft template (PDF) that’s up for comment and feedback as to the feasibility of what’s been created.
There were a couple of guiding principles the Student & Family Information Task Force used in creating this (preliminary draft) template which are pertinent to the data contained in the first two and a half pages:
- The first was that the data should be based off common, pre-existing sources of data. To accomplish this, when ever possible, the template is built on data from the Common Data Set and/or IPEDS and uses formulas and macros to pull the bulk of the data for the first two pages directly from the Excel version of the CDS.
- The second guiding principle was that the data should be presented consistently from institution to institution. The draft of this template includes a uniform set of tables and charts that will auto-generate when inserted into the Excel CDS file. There will be some points of customization (e.g., the use of the school logo in the first page header and the ability to imbed links to institutional web pages), but the idea is for each institution’s VSA(sm) to have the same information in the same place so that (for instance) pages from several institutions can be printed and placed side by side for comparison by prospective students and parents.
The data and elements that are not from the CDS/IPEDS (mostly on pages 3 & 4) are still under discussion by the VSA(sm) Task Forces and may change. You may also note that the Undergraduate Success data are not simply the typical IPEDS graduation rate; the VSA(sm) teams are working with the National Student Clearinghouse on a means of providing this expanded set of success rates to institutions.
If you work in higher ed - or are a parent or prospective student who will be trying to decide which institution to attend - please take a look at the draft template and provide your feedback to the task forces; AASCU is hosting several public forums on their website specifically for the purpose of gathering input and feedback from others. Please take a moment to voice your opinion on what is increasingly becoming an urgent issue in higher education.
Finished Sockapalooza Socks
See, I told you there’d be a post with knitting content today. 
I spent the weekend camping in northern IL at an SCA event. This was the first event I’ve attended in quite some time where I had no responsibilities, official or unofficial: I wasn’t running a tourney, I wasn’t teachin any classes, I wasn’t holding “office hours”, nothing. It was glorious. I had two projects I wanted to really put some time in on - the first was to finish my Sockapalooza pal’s socks and the second was to try to finish spinning the Clun Forest lamb’s fleece so I could have it ready to play with some period dyeing that will be happening on Artisan’s Row at another SCA event next week.
While I did succeed in finishing the socks (as a reminder, this is the Baudelaire pattern from Knitty, knit in Wildfoote in the Ragtime colorway on US1 needles):
(Click picture to load a bigger picture.)
.. I’m still plugging away on the Clun Forest fleece. I did get some solid time spinning on Saturday afternoon and evening, though, so it should be at least finished through the singles stage in time to play with some dyeing stuff, which should make plying it sort of neat, too.
Visible support.
Sorry to disappear for a bit only to reappear briefly with another no-knitting content post (that will come pr’bly tomorrow), but I think this is important.
You’ve got to watch this video. Thousands of people are attacked every year because of their sexual orientation, and there’s still no federal hate crimes law to protect them. This video is a very powerful statement on hate crimes, and I couldn’t help but pass it on. I think you’ll see why.
There’s a bill in the Senate right now that would address this heartbreaking problem, and we only have a few weeks until the vote. It would mean a lot to me if you could take a minute to watch the video and write your Senators, and then please, please, spread the word. I really believe none of us can sit this one out.
I wear two of those little silicone bracelet things regularly. The blue one is for the National Urea Cycle Disorders Foundation in honor of my niece who was diagnosed late last year with Ornithine Transcarbamylase Deficiency (OTC). The purple on is for the Matthew Shepard Foundation because I believe that it is important to take some visible and daily stand against hate crimes. I can’t solve the problem of hate crime, but I can do some small things to make it a visible one, one that can’t be ignored or hushed up. Writing and calling my elected representatives and asking them to support the Matthew Shepard Act is one of those things. Won’t you please do it, too?
Edited to add: I received the following response from Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman and I thought I would share for those who might be interested in where he stands on this important legislation (and yes, I’m fully aware this is likely a form letter, but it still states his views and confirms that he does intend to support the bill):
Dear Me:
Thank you for taking the time to contact me concerning the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act (S. 1105 ).
Minnesota already has similar laws and it does not appear that there have been problems in its application or enforcement. Accordingly, I am inclined to support this at the federal level.
As you may know, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007 (S. 1105) was introduced by Senator Kennedy (D-MA) and referred the Senate Judiciary Committee for further consideration. This legislation would provide resources to law enforcement officials to enhance prevention and prosecution efforts of hate crimes. Companion legislation (H.R. 1592) passed in the House on May 3, 2007.
Thank you once again for contacting me. Please do not hesitate to contact me on any issue of concern to you and your family.
Sincerely,
Norm Coleman
United States Senate
Welcome (back)!
Hi there! New digs. No, no particular reason other than that I wanted to try something new. *shrug* The old posts from my Blogger blog have all been transferred, but the links in the sidebar from the ABC-along from last year still link to the Blogger posts. I might fix it; I might not. *shrug*
Moving on, I’m overdue to deliver a picture of the wonderful goodies I received last week from Crystal, my Fiber Swap partner:
(click to make it bigger)
It’s really quite a cache and I can’t wait to free up one of my spindles (or buy more? *grin*) to try out some of this gorgeousness. She sent me a sampler pack of plant fibers, which I am all ga-ga over because I’ve really wanted to try to spin plant fibers, but have been really hesitant to buy a bunch in case I can’t figure out how to make it work. In the little ziploc bag is some cotton (in lint form and some carded), soy silk, and flax - just enough to get a feel for how it all might work without committing to several ounces without trying it first! The heathered brown is alpaca (yes, I know, it’s staying in the plastic to keep it drool-free until I’m ready to spin it up) that Crystal carded herself. The multi-colored bunch is merino - which she *apologized* for because I’ve worked with merino quite a bit before, but my goodness! I work with it because I like it and I’ve never worked with anything so wonderfully & colorfully dyed; I can’t wait to spin this up and see how the colors work in the spinning and how it will turn out when plied. The incredibly soft and luscious blue is Colonial roving. It’s to *die* for it’s so soft. I’ve never worked with Colonial and I’m really, really looking forward to trying this stuff out (hopefully I’ll be able to spin it up into yarn that’s as soft as the roving is)!
This package was perfectly timed, coming on the heels of my recent adventures at Cottage Fibers in Kansas City with Cate & Sara: I worked on spinning up the Clun Forest lambs wool that is currently occupying the drop spindle Cate sent me so that I can free it up to try out something new and it’s been going very well. I’m hoping to get enough to two-ply it into a skein that can be my first dyeing experiment to be used as accent in a pair of socks. I’m also trying to figure out a way to go somewhere to test drive wheels.. I sort of tried one out at Cottage Fibers, but I need to go somewhere when I have more time and a larger variety (though for a smaller shop, Cottage Fibers had lots of wheels!) so I can really get a feel for the differences between wheels.
As I mentioned, I made some decent progress on my Sockapalooza IV pal’s socks at the cabin and have continued to work on them some this weekend. Here they are, as of sometime this afternoon:
(click to make it bigger)
For those who might just be joining in, these are being knit from Brown Sheep’s Wildfoote in the Ragtime colorway (the color on the Brown Sheep website really isn’t accurate for these skeins.. the photo above is color accurate on my monitor) on US1 needles. The pattern is by Cookie A. - Baudelaire from last summer’s Knitty. I think that by more or less random planning I managed to find both yarn and a pattern that is right in line with what my pal said she wanted (which I won’t detail here lest she stumble on over here accidentally!) and even though I feared they might be too small and not stretchy, they fit me pretty well and she has feet that are almost exactly my size.
This post is not what it seems.
We returned from the cabin yesterday. I already miss it - and not just because the breeze off the lake made the mid-80-degrees days not just tolerable but actually quite pleasant. Our house is hot and sticky and even though we get periodic breezes through the upstairs open windows, it’s still too hot and sticky to contemplate knitting anything with wool or spinning anything with any possibility of sticking to moisture in my hands (like the baby camel & silk tends to).
My Fiber Swap box arrived while we were out. It’s quite lovely and has lots of fun things to play with - including samples of cotton and soy silk and flax which I’m unwontedly gleeful about (or will be once it’s not a sauna in my house) - and I will take pictures and post in more breathlessness about it all soon, but in catching up on the headlines from the last several days, I came across an article stating that the number of persons living with HIV/AIDS in a county near us went up in 2006.
Which is a bit of an understatement; the number nearly tripled. (Which, in and of itself, is somewhat mitigated when you realize that the total number of persons living with HIV/AIDS is in the low 20’s, but the rate of increase is still somewhat of a shock.) According to the article, a large portion of the increase is due to an “influx” (can 2-3 people really be considered an “influx”?) of people to the area who were already diagnosed - so it’s not a three-fold increase in the incidence of HIV/AIDS infections, but rather an increase in the prevalence of persons living with HIV/AIDS in the region.
And then I read the comments to the article (if you do this, read from the bottom up as the newest comments are added to the top). And as is not all that uncommon when I venture into the comments, I was rather horrified at the ignorance and prejudice displayed therein. But that’s not really my point either; rather, I was reminded by something someone mentioned in passing in one of the comments of a rant I’ve been wanting to write for a few weeks.
It sums up to this, in short: If you trust the security of your blood supply to self-disclosure of potential risk factors, you’re negligently naive. (I warned you this post wasn’t what it seemed.) While the FDA’s policy of “self-deferral” to keep men who have sex with men (MSM) from contributing to the nation’s blood supply *may* reduce the 1 in a million chance of someone contracting HIV from a blood transfusion (which is not insignificant given that there are, in an average year, about 20 million blood transfusions in the US), it relies on the self-identification of MSM as such.
And.. well.. even with the change in terminology and the targeting of MSM who do not identify as gay or bisexual in media campaigns, there is a relatively substantial population of men (apparently especially African American men) on the down low - substantial enough that they are believed to be the primary reason that the incidence of HIV/AIDS among heterosexual women has been on the rise. So.. knowing that, I fail to understand how a policy of self-deferral - which will undoubtedly succeed in keeping a large number of HIV-negative self-identifying MSM from attempting to give blood - is going to do anything to protect the blood supply from the uncounted (but believed to be large) population of MSM who don’t identify as such.
It’s a farce. Rather than admit that the blood supply is at risk of contamination, the FDA would rather reaffirm the stereotype that homosexual and bisexual men constitute the only population with significant enough risk of spreading HIV to warrant the prevention of their contribution to the blood supply - in defiance of the facts that the proportion of new female HIV cases has been steadily rising over the past decade and that 80% of new female HIV infections are transmitted through heterosexual sex. By playing on the fears of the uneducated public, the FDA is knowingly contributing to a false sense of security regarding the US blood supply.
Don’t get me wrong - I’m not advocating for the abolition of the maintenance of the US blood supply, or for more stringent restrictions as to who is deemed worthy of contributing; rather I’m arguing for an admission of the actual risk inherent in the system and an abolition of restrictions that are based on fear and prejudice.
Travel Knits
Okay, so before I run away again (this time for vacation up to my parents cabin), I thought I’d post some finished objects and progress pictures from the things I was working on while I was traveling the last couple of weeks.
First up are the finished Lorna’s Laces toe up socks in Bucks Bar:
I bound off the second one a little too tight, but since I’d already cut the thread and woven in the ends, I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to try to go back and fix it or not. They come up almost to my knees as they are, though, so I could also just choose to fold them down or something. For some reason I’m really not in love with these socks, though, so I might also just hang onto them for a gift or donation. *shrug*
And there’s the second washcloth I made from the Euroflax Linen. It ended up being a fraternal twin to the first because I wasn’t paying as much attention to the pattern when I started knitting on it and made the first row of squares a couple rows too short and ended up having to improvise a bit to get it to come out the right size.
That’s the toe of my first Sockapalooza sock. I’m actually almost to the heel turn on it now, but forgot to take a new progress picture this morning when I was out taking pictures with Gnorm.
And finally I brought the Foxfire Baby Camel and Tussah Silk with me so I could participate in the Spindler’s Spin-in-Public day (first Friday of every month) at the airport in Minneapolis during my layover. I think I’m doing okay with it, but it isn’t quite as even as I’d like and I think it might be underspun, but it could just be that it needs to be livened again. I still have more than half the original bag to spin and it’s already quite a bit of yarn, so I’m hoping to get enough out of it to do as a two-ply that will end up about fingering weight for a shawl or scarf.
While we were in Kansas City, Cate and Sara invited me along to go to Cottage Fiber with them, which was well, well worth the trip. Cate got some pictures that I’m hoping she’ll get a chance to post soon. It’s a great, great little shop tucked in an out of the way studio space and it has undoubtedly the best selection of spinning fibers of any shop I’ve ever been to (which admittedly is not many, but even Cate and Sara were impressed and they’ve been to that most holy of fiber events - Rhinebeck!) and some really beautiful old wheels. I really can’t recommend this shop enough - if you ever find yourself in Kansas City you really really need to check them out and pet all the gorgeousness yourself!
I managed to escape with only a very small stash enhancement (modeled below with Gnorm):
The ball of roving is about 2.5 ounces of cashgora in a really rich red/orange/copper colorway (Cate got the other half of the ball) and the little packet has 4-5 beautifully dyed silk hankies with some amazing copper accents. I’ve never spun silk from a hankie, but the owner of the shop (who’s name I didn’t get; terribly bad manners, especially since she opened her shop up special just for us!) gave me some quick instruction and I’m looking forward to getting it started. Maybe if I end up with enough of it I can ply some if it up with the Foxfire.. I realized after we left that I forgot to get some of the amazingly soft angora bunny roving she had, though, so I will have to call and see if she’ll mail me some.
Oh, and my fiber swap pal - Elsje - got her package and appears to like it, so that makes me very happy! It was really hard not to hang on to all that fiber, but I’m glad she likes it. The fiber swap packages were all supposed to be sent off by the 5th, so I’m really hopeful that mine will show up today before we hit the road for the cabin!
In one last bit of mailing news, I’m shipping Gnorm off today to his next destination and all the goodies that I’ve picked out for my next pal are neatly tucked into his box awaiting delivery to the post office. If you missed what I got from Stephanie, I posted about it all over on the Knitting Gnome Swap blog a couple days ago. I really really love everything she sent - especially the tea which is really honestly truly my favorite and she had no way of knowing I even knew about Market Spice (I lived in Seattle for three years between college and grad school) - and I’m bringing the Yarn Pirate yarn with me to the cabin just in case I finish my Sockapalooza pal’s socks so I can start right in on some lusciousness for me!
Another quickie..
Gnorm arrived from Kirkland, WA while I was in Kansas City! I was afraid that would happen, but I think things will work out okay. I’ll get a chance to take him around a bit today and tomorrow morning before packing him up and sending him off on his merry way again tomorrow afternoon.
I’ll post pictures of my recently finished items, and a progress shot of my Sockapalooza pal’s socks hopefully sometime this evening. I did some minor stash acquisition with Cate & Sara in Kansas City, though, and there’s a photo of Gnorm checking it out in the post linked above. It’s truly gorgeous and I’m contemplating looking for another lightweight spindle so I won’t have to wind off the Firefox silk & baby camel to start the cashgora! And I also need to contact the shop owner and see if she’ll send me some of the angora bunny fiber that I meant to grab, too.
Gotta run!
Connected to: WestinLobby
Just a quick update before I dash off to facilitate two back-to-back sessions this morning: I’m better now, not that I wasn’t before, but being here this week has reminded me not only that I *do* accomplish quite enough for a single person office, *and* that I know a lot more people in this field than I realize. Those are both reassuring salve to a crispy IR director!
In other news, conference knitting proceeds apace: the toe up socks are complete, as is the second linen washcloth (even if it is a fraternal twin to the first). I even cast on last night for my first Sockapalooza pal’s sock! I’ll try to snag some pictures between sessions today, but no promises! I am running off for a bit of a yarn crawl with Sara & Cate this evening, and that might just mean there will be no time left to post them today.
