Swanknitter

2011-12-12T12:05:00.004+11:00

I really wore myself out last week because my head was convinced that I was back to full strength while my body very much was not. I did a lot of walking, especially around the newly enlarged mall in Belconnen, partly to get new lights for my Christmas tree. Putting the tree up was part of my mind set of being on the road to recovery so, although it's a bit late, it's up and that's what counts. Fortunately the Imp shows no interest in the tree or its ornaments, although I never put anything breakable or edible on the bottom. I have had a cat that ate all the straw ornaments so I am cautious.

The weather is stuck in some other time dimension. We've continued to have rain (thunderstorms yesterday) and it's only around 20C and not very sunny. I've said it before but it's still true: this is not normal for Canberra in December. The garden loves it. The beans are blooming. So are the tomatoes but the weather doesn't suit them.

My BBBBs have been American Jezebel and Language Death and they have both been too stimulating and I haven't been sleeping. The David Crystal book inspired me with his rationales for multilingualism, including that being bilingual stimulates your brain. I have studied a long list of languages but the only one I feel comfortable in taking up again is Spanish, partially because it is an "easy" language. It's not hard to pronounce, it seems closer to Latin which helps me out, and I did study it intensely as recently (ha) as university. I have more years invested in French (5) but I can still read it with the help of a dictionary. So I got some simple Spanish stories for my Kindle and a dictionary for my iPhone and am going to try reviving my Spanish neurons. Even tho I taught Swahili in grad school, not much of it remains in my brain and I have little opportunity to use it. At least with Spanish I can read labels on stuff imported from the US! For those who only know me in the Swanknitter persona, I got a masters degree in Linguistics & Non-Western Languages, specializing in African languages and before that studied Latin, French and Spanish. Lack of jobs in the field shunted me into library work. I love learning languages, but they are like puzzles to me; once I figure out how they work I lose interest so rarely become fluent without constant exercise. My new BBBB is Foreign Devils on the Silk Road, which follows on from previous BBBBs about Central Asia. My Kindle book is another Neal Asher Ian Cormac novel, Line War.

My dear MIL is coming for a visit over Christmas, which overjoys me. I haven't seen her in over a year due to my knee. Once I got the word on the cataracts, driving to Sydney to her new home seemed beyond me and would put off a reunion till sometime around June next year. So seeing her over the holidays is the best present ever. Each year without the Bear is hard. I hope someday it won't be so raw.

I finished the handspun sock yarn for D. and It turned out really well, with the colours lining up almost exactly in plying. I finished a pair of Opal cotton socks last night and bought up 2 more balls of it (since I found out it was discontinued and I really like it). The last pair was grey/blue/pink and the next pair will be coral. I am spinning some brown wool of unknown origin but those blankets deserve stripes. I finished spinning what I think was 4 oz. of wool/silk/mohair blend in autumn colours. Have no idea what I'll do with it!

2011-11-30T12:08:00.005+11:00

When I went to the supermarket yesterday, I passed their array of fresh flowers and was blown away to find this huge bouquet of peonies. I miss my US peonies terribly so to have these to admire is brilliant. I don't think I have soil suitable for them here. I don't think thay will last long; they've already gone from bud to full blown in 12 hours.

In the process of researching 17th century America for genealogical purposes, I am reading American Jezebel by Eve LaPlante, about Anne Hutchinson. I'm not a very religious person. I was raised in the Congregational church, which was my choice for my family, made when I was 7. Since this denomination is descended from the original Puritans, I expected to find some chords to resonate in the story. I cannot say that today I am a Christian because I no longer believe in many of the basics of Christian faith but I do try to follow the ethical standards. I am now totally dumbfounded to find that the founding fathers of Massachusetts, who left England for religious freedom, became totally legalistic and narrow in their beliefs in the new world and prosecuted Anne Hutchinson for her differing opinions on points of theology. Of course, much of it boils down to the fact that she was a woman, who was supposed to be silent and obey her husband. Anne was brought up as an independent thinker, and one who believed at a deeply emotional level about how "salvation" is achieved. I don't believe in heaven or hell and I'm not sure what I think about what happens after you die. Sometimes I believe in karma; sometimes I think you just die. Of course these are the same legalistic ministers who banished my ancestor Roger Williams, so I shouldn't be surprised, but I was. The original society of Massachusetts in the 17th century is not quite how we were taught in school. I'm not sure those controlling ministers should engender the respect that they get as "founding fathers."

Canberra's weather continues to confuse me. We got 90mm (almost 4") of rain last week. Last night the thunderstorms started around 6PM and are still rumbling and raining at noon the following day. I have a small lake in my back yard and I would love it to stop raining long enough for me to pick strawberries, etc. The garden loves it and the weeds like it too. I need to get my gutters repaired but the guy can't fix them until it stops raining!

The cataract problem continues to bother me. If I read too much or do too much close work in the evening I often get a headache. Apparently cataract surgery is a simple process so I'll go ahead with the weaving course. I continue to have a weak back, but I'm doing exercises to strengthen the muscles. I have a weak lower back originally because I am missing part of a vertebra. I am told this is an extremely mild variety of spina bifida; it just means my lower back hurts when I lift things the wrong way.

2011-11-20T02:09:00.004+11:00

It's 2 AM and the Imp has woken me up twice since I turned the light off. It's our first really warm night this summer and I think she thinks I should be awake to share it with her. No thank you. I may have to eject her from my bedroom (and lose air circulation) if she won't settle down. Aside from walking around on me and demanding to be petted, she yowls.

The knee progresses but the back is still weak. I walked three city blocks on Friday and was barely able to keep upright at the end. But I also worked an hour in the garden mulching and weeding and was sore but managed to actually accomplish something. I'm getting good returns of strawberries but the spinach has given up in the heat. One of the varieties of pea has finished but another is still coming in if this hot spell passes.

My city visit was to see my optometrist because of semi-constant headaches, especially when I try to do close work. I feel like I'm straining to see. The verdict was unexpected: cataracts, when I was expecting new lenses. I see the surgeon in Feb just before the next weaving course. I hear the recovery time is short so I may be able to do both. The next weaving course is on textural weaving like waffle weave and seersucker, both of which I wanted to learn, so I really want to take it. I can drive now but don't trust myself in locations like city traffic (I know you who snort that Canberra has city traffic but we have sufficient concentrations of bad drivers). I think D doesn't want to relinquish driving my car but it's nice to have somebody there to take up the slack when I tire myself out. It's only been a month since surgery so I am entitled to longer recovery time.

I'm reading Martin Cruz Smith's Three Stations on my Kindle and have downoaded Steve Job's autobiography. My BBBB is American Jezebel about Anne Hutchinson, She co-founded Rhode Island with my ancestor Roger Williams based on radical ideas about freedom of religion and payment to the the Indians for taking over their lands,

2011-11-01T12:29:00.003+11:00

I am alive, I'm home, I can walk and I am sitting almost comfortably at my desk with my feet flat on the floor and knees bent. The right leg is still relatively weak after not being used for 6 months, but it gets stronger every day. I can walk without support but I still do my exercises. At the strong encouragement of the physios in the hospital (including the physio from hell I met on my first knee replacement), I made an appointment with a physio closer to home and got some additional exercises from him. Since I've only been home a week I think I am doing well.

At right is the only knitting I can show for the last month, a pair of socks from Noro's Kureyon sock. The colours are obviously a knockout but the yarn itself is rather harsh feeling and is spun no better than my handspun. If the wow factor of Noro is the colours, I can dye yarn just as striking. I've started a new pair of socks out of Opal Cotton in greys and soft pink.

My spinning output has been the one pound of 50/50 merino & tussah silk in a deep forest green. I got 4 hanks out of the pound from Yarn or a tale which cost all of $21, but I haven't counted yardage yet. It's very soft and is a sport weight. I've been thinking of knitting one of those long skinny scarves that people seem to wrap around their necks these days and this silk mix would be a good candidate. The next spin will be some superwash merino in hot pink, neon green and turquoise for the sock hoon, D.

My other preoccupation since I've been home is the release of Coldplay's new album. I am a very devoted fan of theirs and would love to see them perform live. I'll have to keep my ear closer to the grapevine to find out when or if they are coming to Australia and try my best to get a ticket. I know nobody else my age or younger who shares my musical tastes so I'll go alone if I have to. I've been watching a lot of their Youtube videos and phrases from their songs are running around my head 24/7. Any Sydney folks out there who would go with me?

Speaking of which, while I've been home, I've been thinking a lot about this blog. The person for whom I wrote is no longer here. I know I have a handful of devoted readers but they are not interested in knitting and spinning for the most part. This blog may have passed it's use-by-date. Facebook connects me with a lot of my friends that wouldn't read my blog. This platform may become more irregular and be confined to crafts, books, movies and such. Once again I ask for feedback altho I know who most of my readers are. Anybody anonymous please let me know why you read?

Book reports: I finished In Siberia by Colin Thrubon and it was just as interesting as all his other travel books. He goes to places ordinary travelers wouldn't and seeks out unusual people. This was a picture of post-Soviet Siberia, which is crumbling like many of the other bits of the Union. He visits prison camps and Old Believers, Lake Baikal and the Amur River. I am now reading both Language Death by David Crystal, which invigorates those latent linguistic routines in my brain, and Will the Boat Sink the Water? about the plight of the peasant in rural China. For regular reading, there's Steven Saylor's Judgement of Caesar, and on my Kindle some ripping space opera.

2011-10-14T10:21:00.002+11:00

Here I am on the almost-eve of my surgery and strangely, even tho I have been longing for the surgery to replace my knee for 5 months, I am consumed with anxiety. I always have increasing panic when waiting for sugery that is scheduled for a future date. I hadn't a twinge when they wheeled me into theatre every other day when I was in hospital. Now that I'm sitting at home waiting for the day to roll around, I've got knots in my stomach. Irrational but that's the way I am. Were the Bear here, I'd be in tears begging to be kept home. Do I actually want to clump around on crutches and/or a frame for any second longer? No, but the thought of surgery makes me frantic. I had such a bad time with the pain management when they put the right knee in the first time that I dread the possibility of not sleeping for 3 days again. I haven't been able to get in touch with my anaesthetist to go over what he thinks he's going to do with me. I have implored my surgeon to make sure my normal medication regime is not changed. I can't do anything more on that except stew. The wound is completely healed, and the rash is almost finished healing. It itches a little.

Otherwise, I read. Steven Saylor's The Judgement of Caesar is one of the series about Gordianus the Finder. This one takes place (so far) in Egypt, almost from the death of Pompey. I find Saylor's Roman novels some of the most readable of its genre. I'm still In Siberia while going to sleep.

I've finished spinning and plying the dark green merino/silk, and am trying to regain use of 2 bobbins by plying a bobbin of white alpaca with white wool. I haven't tried this before and it will turn out a lace-weight yarn. Next out of the box is some hot pink/neon green/turquoise superwash for socks for D. She has been beavering away on socks and likes the most vivid colours. I have almost finished the Noro socks. The yarn is gorgeous for rather harsh on the hands with very little give, making my hands hurt after knitting an inch or so.

I ask again why I write this blog. I know there are a handful of devoted readers but the reason I began this blog has passed away. The remaining readers have a more varied interest in me: old friends, relatives, fellow bloggers, fellow spinners, etc. I'll keep going for you but don't expect a new post for a while.

My wonderful gardener turned up last weekend and did some more weeding, planted beans, and put stakes up for the peas. I've gotten a few meals of asparagus although the bed is full of couch (weed grass). My apple trees are blooming so I hope I get a decent crop (like 6).

2011-10-05T11:45:00.002+11:00

Finally I am clear for knee replacement. The nurses declared me healed and discharged in the AM, Plastics did the same later, and my surgeon was all smiles and ready to go. I knew everything would go OK but it was still stressful awaking the verdict of the various medical professionals. Not to mention getting in and out of cars and clumping around on crutches. So on Oct 17 I am in John James Hospital to get a knee and resume my life. It's been over a year since the initial injury and I will never get that year back but I'll make the most of the rest of my time. It is trying to be spring here and the flowers have come and gone (except my apple and pear trees which are currently blooming) but the rest of the garden awaits me. What will the Imp do if she doesn't have me to sit on all the time?

2011-09-30T03:06:00.002+10:00

Insomnia. Just when I think I have it beaten, here I am at 2AM too awake. My GP had me try melatonin on top of my regular sleeping medication but I can't detect any improvement. I read some on Colin Thubron's In Siberia about Stalin's work/death camps, had the Imp settled in my armpit and thought my day-long headache would appreciate a rest. Wrong. The cat started snoring like a tiny feline trumpet, my breath was wheezy and congested (a common condition), and I had songs from West Side Story running through my head from the last episode of Glee. So I gave up, got up to take something for my headache and a bonus sleep aid and pulled out my faithful iPhone. I was amused to find that my prescription sleeping pills are illegal in the US and that I was forbidden to bring them into the country. That would effectively bar me from re-entry since I can't sleep without them and sometimes not with them. I wonder what they propose I do in order to visit my homeland. I know the last time I accidentally went over without them I was miserable and sleepless for a week until J posted them to me.

Otherwise, the news here is good. My wound is almost completely healed and I expect Plastics to set me free next Tues. I see my surgeon the same day and I think the Oct 17 date will become confirmed for my new knee. I realize recovery will take longer this time but I'm very motivated.

I've been reading Stephen Fry's autobiography which makes me realize what a brilliant mind he has even if he did go off the rails in his youth. As a girl brought up in the 1950's it was also a window into all those childhood boy things I always suspected happened whether one was gay or not, but polite male authors never spoke of. Stephen tells all and this girl at least went through similar emotional and physical explorations, but I was too much a Good Girl to ever stray from the very straight and narrow. Except smoking at 16 which I don't recommend.

I have also read Larry Niven's Destiny's Road which I enjoyed quite a bit. No, it isn't up there with Ringworld but is quite a good read. One of the Bear's leftovers. The Orchid Thief was a disappointing mishmash of personal experience with Florida's orchid community and environment and a historical background. Considering the orchid mania of Victorian times, this minor incident hardly counts but it is a window into a section of the plant world unknown to most of us. I used to occasionally accompany my mother to preserves in southern Florida in search of birds and I therefore know a little what they are like (hot, wet, and full of bugs but spectacular).

Here in Canberra we had torrential rain and high winds today, which are shredding my wisteria before it can properly bloom. My apple trees are blooming and I managed to pick enough asparagus for a meal last week. Next weekend I should have my gardener back to plant beans. The peas and lettuce look good A's much as I can see. But spring is toying with us, giving us some lovely days and then retreating leaving us shivering.

2011-09-12T09:23:00.007+10:00

Last night I spent two hours watching shows about 9/11. I obviously was not in the US when the disaster struck but I still get very patriotic about my birth place and got very teary-eyed at some points. 9/11 seemed to bring out the best in many Americans: their courage under attack, their help to fellows in distress, their dogged persistence in rescue and the resolve it gave the country that we were not going to become a nation of victims. I certainly don't agree that the logical future involved invading Iraq and I doubt there's a chance of truly battling radical terrorists with an army anywhere, but we tried. The efforts of Homeland Security to make air travel safe are completely over the top and Timothy McVeigh proved that home-grown radicals can wreak havoc, so the solution can't be simply to put armed guards everywhere. I was so upset to listen to radical Muslim clerics declare that the US would not rest until every Muslim was dead. Our whole nation is built on exactly the opposite of that and only Muslims declaring jihad on America has changed our feelings about religious freedom. I am still very much American and I miss my homeland very much sometimes. I think Americans get a bad reputation overseas because in some cases we are frightened of foreigners since we can be insular. Our country is so big and has such diversity that going overseas is not the rite of passage as it is many other places (like Australia). I was terrified on my own even here because I knew I was in a different culture and didn't want to be thought ignorant or foolish when I opened me mouth. Maybe we talk too loud because we all talk at once at home and are not used to other cultures. Whatever; I've gotten off track. I felt such kinship and shared pain for the people who suffered through the attacks of 9/11 and it's that feeling of kinship that pulls me home even when I know I can't live there again.

Swans news: They won their elimination final against St Kilda! The played really well for most of the game and really bottled up the Saints. Ryan O'Keefe kicked 4 goals and I usually wince when he's kicking for goal because he can be inaccurate. But as the coach said, when a player is hot, he can do miracles. Goodesy was hot as well and the young bunch played very well. We play Hawthorn on Friday night (I hate Friday night matches) and their star forward is injured so we have a chance to get a little closer to the Big One.

I've been reading like mad. I finished the first three volumes of the Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell and I am debating whether to buy the last three. Book prices being what they are, I could buy the last three on Amazon for half what they cost me here. But they are just military sci-fi about space battles and I think I'll go on to something new. I've started The Soul of a Chef which is about the Culinary Institute of America and I'm somewhat disappointed to find how focused they are on French cuisine. These days it pays (here at least) to know as much about Thai, Chinese, and Italian cuisine as French. Some of the course is very pedantic, but I guess knowing how to make a perfect stock is critical. I don't make veal stock because I don't cook classic French anything. Pasta and stir fries are more my speed and desserts my passion. I am reading The Man from Beijing by Henning Mankell. He is the author of the Kurt Wallender mysteries but this is not in that series. I am finding it very suspenseful, similar to the feeling in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo but with less violence (at least so far). My BBBB was The Crack at the Edge of the World by Simon Winchester, which is about the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Over half the book is about the geology of America and for that I recommend John McPhee, who can make geology interesting. I was a bit deflated by this book, because John McPhee is better at geology and the chapter on the earthquake itself was a dry recital of facts. I'm now reading The Orchid Thief, since I love orchids.

In the middle of the last paragraph the nurse came to dress my wound and this one said it was almost healed over with just a few pin head holes. This is the first concrete assessment I've had. Every nurse says it's looking better but nobody has told me it was healed over before. This surely means surgery on Oct 17th is a go and I will walk again!

My gardener worked all weekend and has cleaned out almost all of the veggie beds. We have run out of room to get rid of the weeds and you can't compost most of these because they wouldn't get killed in a household compost bin. He also cleaned out the fish pond and cleared out ivy at the front. He may bankrupt me with his work ethic, but he will shortly have weeded everything that needed weeding and will have a break to let the weeds grow back!

2011-09-05T14:06:00.003+10:00

No, there's nothing new around here. Surgery is still scheduled for Oct. 17 and I think I might make this one. The wound is looking a lot better and is small so I have hopes it will heal by then.

Swans news: we made into the finals and will play St Kilda in Melbourne Saturday night. It is an elimination final and, while in theory they could win, I am expecting an early exit. I am pleased they did as well as this given the number of new players. It proves we can bring up new talent and win without Roos. Our first Irish import Tadgh has announced his retirement. I've watched his entire career and it's been a great one. I have to admit there are names in the records list I don't know, because I don't watch the matches because I get overly excited. This can be dangerous for someone in my condition.

My great news is that I've hired a gardener. Actually I am paying a foreign student from the ANU to work in my garden doing what I can't. He worked most of the weekend and not only got my peas and greens (lettuce, spinach, swiss chard) planted, but he completely remodeled my overgrown pear tree, bring it back to reasonable size. He has an orchard of 300 fruit trees at home so I trusted him to know what to do and he did exactly what I wanted. He also cleaned out the ivy and vinca underneath it and cleaned out the vinca smothering my hellebores under the wisteria. He will be back next week to continue the cleaning out of the veggie beds. He thought it was safe to plant the hot season crops like pumpkin, but we're still having frosts and it isn't safe for another month or two. He's also said he will clean out my fish pond and get it running which is something I have never gotten my lawn mowing person to do. My plum tree is in full bloom and I have narcissus in bloom. Unfortunately the last people to weed my garden eliminated some of the daffodils planted in the herb bed.

I have made a little progress in my genealogy, getting death certificates for my father's parents. I was hoping to find where my grandfather was born but all I got was "New York". I think it's Albany but New York didn't begin registering births until 6 years after my grandfather was born, so I'm out of luck there. I will have to rely on census data unless the city of Albany has records. I'm adding siblings where I can, hoping to make more connections.

I have had my adoration of Stephen Fry rekindled by watching his live performance in Sydney on cable. There are heaps of video clips on YouTube of hysterical sketches with Hugh Laurie and I've put the DVDs of their BBC shows up on my queue on Quickflix. I need a dose of silliness until there's more Big Bang Theory to watch.

2011-08-24T20:20:00.002+10:00

Yes, it's been eons. And the saddest thing is that nothing has changed. The wound on my leg is not yet healed. It has completely filled in the gaping hole that had been there, and all I need now is skin covering over, but I'm not going to have surgery in September in this condition. I saw the plastics folks yesterday and afterwards called my surgeon's office and cancelled the appointment for next Monday. No point in going in, have him look at it, and reschedule the surgery. So I rescheduled over the phone for Oct. 17. I may just need a padded room if I'm not ready by then, but another month should do it. As you might imagine, I am going bonkers being cooped up. So Monday S came to visit and I got into the garden and actually weeded a bit which I paid for later. Today D and I went across the border into NSW in search of sock yarn (I have created a sock knitting monster) partly because the utilities folks cut off all services to my house for 6 hours. I was exhausted by the time we came home (I only bought one ball of yarn but also a much needed replacement pin cushion) and more or less collapsed for several hours when I returned to a house with power. I read, I watch TV, I sleep, I play on the computer. I've made the first real genealogical steps by writing off to Connecticut for death certificates for my father's parents. I've made contact with a member of my maternal great-grandmother's family who sent me a photo of the family with my grandfather as a child. That branch of the family is Canadian so I guess I'm one quarter Canadian. Otherwise there is very little to blog about that I would dare share with the anonymous public. I've had my blog used against me once and I don't want to get into that situation again. Sorry about that, dear readers, but not everyone in cyberspace is nice.

2011-08-08T10:19:00.003+10:00

At right is the latest pair or socks, completed last night during the Masterchef finale. I have to admit I was glad Kate won and hope she continues to grow as a chef. I'm not worried about Michael or any of the other finalists because they will get opportunities without actually winning. I have been so frustrated at not being able to cook while they were creating marvelous dishes. Don't think I'll add a cooler of liquid nitrogen or a paint sprayer to my kitchen, but I have bought a mandoline.

Earlier this year I posted that I was considering moving back to the US when I turn 65. Waffling back the other way, now I think I won't. This medical adventure has been a wake-up call to me to reinforce how much quality and, most importantly, free medical care I have access to. Aside from the rather superficial trials of not having a private room with all associated conveniences, I got excellent medical care in The Canberra Hospital. Sure there were some not so nice nurses, but that is the nastiest thing I can say about it (aside from the appalling food). I shudder to think how this would have played out in the US, much less how much 5 weeks in-patient and now 4 months out-patient care would have cost me. Besides the medical side of this, I like my house and once I get more renovating done I can close off a guest suite and use the rest of the house for my own devices. I was going to have to put in a new kitchen anyway before I sold it, so now I'll remodel it for my tastes and needs. I now also know that I have one friend I can totally rely on through thick and thin so I don't feel quite so alone. The thought of all I'd have to do to move was beginning to really oppress me so I feel somewhat relieved. I could easily change my mind again but now I'm enjoying the wattle in bloom and looking forward to the Swans getting through the season in one piece.

2011-08-01T19:45:00.003+10:00

The fact that I haven't posted simply means that there has been no progress to post about. The nurses continue to come (but twice a week now, not 3 times) and tell me the wound looks good, but the fact remains that it is still there. I can only hope that it heals in the next four weeks so my surgery can go ahead. The thought of being put on hold for another month is almost too much. When I'm feeling OK emotionally, I can remind myself that it's not cancer or something else potentially fatal; when I'm depressed, I feel like I've been sentenced to eternal house arrest. Yes, I've read, watched TV, knit, researched family history, but I am limited to my house and can't even do much within the four walls. If I could cook, or weave, or work on the garden, or work on fixing up the house, it wouldn't be so frustrating. Today D told me my neighbours across the street (whom I don't even know) asked if I was all right because the car doesn't move. I am tired of the Imp glued to my armpit trying to lick my neck, or rolled up like an armadillo in my lap. All right then. If all I can do is whinge, I should shut up.

2011-07-21T01:59:00.001+10:00

Well, my last post might have given you the impression I am depressed. I am; the continuing postponement of my surgery makes me feel like it's never going to happen. The nurses telling me the wound looks clean and slowly getting better is old news. I want it healed completely. Now my ever sensitive skin is developing a sensitivity to the adhesive on the wound dressing which results on a nasty rash which also needs to heal. Depression means I hurt more and I either can't sleep or can't pry myself out of bed. Most of my "friends" have forgotten about me save for the ever faithful D who sometimes drops by to bring in the mail and hang laundry. I would be utterly lost without her. Meanwhile I am subject to the tender ministrations of The Imp, who wishes to thoroughly clean my face and neck and chew on my hair if available. I'm trying to discourage this as the cute factor wore off long ago. She sleeps in my armpit if the photo makes it into the post.

When I get up to watch TV in the living room, I'm either spinning forest green merino/silk blend or knitting one of 2 projects: socks (green Opal) or my resurrected pink silk shell. I've finally made it to the armholes on the latter and it would be nice to finish for warm weather. The silk has a lovely drape and I hope it will look as nice as the photo with the pattern. I'm also enthused about another shell pattern for Berroco Seduce, which I bought 2 hanks of on my last blow out US trip. So I ordered a few more to make a summer top out of the gorgeous blend of silk, linen, rayon etc. In a brown/gold and turquoise colourway. While pawing through the boxes of the stash I found such lovely stuff to knit with. I must apply myself.

2011-07-21T01:50:00.001+10:00

2011-07-15T14:21:00.002+10:00

Trying out posting via iPhone because I'm lazy. I have been very busy getting household chores done (aside from playing Zombie Farm on said iphone). I got the windscreen crack repaired, getting various household tasks fixed (my cutlery drawer has been sitting on the counter because its rails were broken).

I saw my surgeon yesterday and as expected the date for the knee replacement has been put off another month till September 12. I'm not surprised because I know he won't operate with the slightest wound. I am so tired of waiting for the bloody thing to heal and there is nothing I can do about it. It's tiny but still there. Every one says it looks healthy but it just doesn't close.

So I knit, spin, read, watch TV, go out occasionally when I get stir crazy. I don't even wear the brace any more. I'm going to do some solid evidence in the genealogy search by sending off requests to New Haven for my father's birth certificate and my grandfather's death certificate. I've had contact via Ancestry with a Page family descendant, which is kind of cool.

2011-07-06T10:39:00.004+10:00

No news is good news? Nothing much to report except the wound has not healed so I am still in lying around mode. My surgery has been postponed till Aug. 10 and I am praying for quicker healing. The plastic surgery folks have put me on a silver based cream that supposedly promotes healing and I hope it works and fast.

I've been reading Peter Hamilton's Void series on the Kindle and have started the final volume. I like it but it does seem overly complicated. Too many threads to keep untangled. Sometimes I think authors, especially those sci-fi writers who produce doorstop volumes, forget that readers so not sit down and read their books all in one sitting and might get confused by dozens of characters who disappear for long stretches. My BBBB is Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick. Very different story to the one taught when I was in school. Most of my ancestors came to the new world in the Great Migration of Puritans in the 1630's but I have one who came on the Fortune which arrived a year after the Mayflower. It is very ironic that the people who left England because of religious intolerance instituted the same religious intolerance as the rule in their Massachusetts colonies.

I am in the clutches of Masterchef again which is very frustrating because cooking is out of the question at the moment. I am more of a Nigella Lawson cook than a French Laundry type cook, but I'd love to be making soup and bread this winter. But I can't carry anything very easily with the walking frame. Carrying a glass of liquid into the living room is perilous, so standing at the stove is impossible. I can read cookbooks and dream.

A few random thoughts: I am appalled and shocked by the earthquake in Japan but the ones in Christchurch, NZ, touched me more in some ways. I've visited Christchurch and the video of the destruction of the centre of the city were unbelievable. This week I'm full of affection for my Aussie home and don't want to leave but the opinion changes and will continue to change over the next few years. I am loathe to leave my garden. I suffered from a case of dermatitis from a new hand cream a couple of weeks ago; that is, my hands got a painful rash with blisters and I now, weeks later, still have skin peeling off my hands. I have very sensitive skin and any unfamiliar cream or lotion can potentially make me break out in a rash. Knitting or spinning is hard with shredded skin all over my hands. I have also been sharing my house (in addition to the Imp) with ceiling animals. I'm pretty sure I had possums at first but they were gotten rid of. Now it's rats, who are persistent. I have had weeks of listening to rustling in the ceiling despite exterminators' efforts to poison them. They are attracted to my nice warm heating ducts.

2011-06-14T12:28:00.007+10:00

Latest socks for your viewing, the red ones for D, my chauffeur, friend, and the one who keeps me sane. She may have become so fond of my socks that she will take up sock knitting for her own feet.

Greetings from the currently horizontal viewpoint of Swanknitter. Some days I see no good reason t get out of bed and subject my non-knee to clumping around on the frame. I've been poking around on my genealogical pursuits, watching TV, and reading. Also refreshing my musical preferences. The Google doodle for Les Paul's birthday sparked an online outpouring of music, one of which was "Hey, Jude" performed by the lead singer of After Edmund. So I spent time watching their videos on YouTube and ended up buying their EPs. Listen to their "Dance like you're from the future" and try not to wiggle. I am a collector of little-known alternative bands. They can join the likes of the Caesars and Sunny Day Real Estate on my iPod. Having said that, I mostly listen to podcasts on my iPod. I recently acquired an inexpensive iPod dock so I can listen to podcasts in bed.

TV ranges from documentaries on the African rainforest to detective shows. Just finished watching a short series of a British show called Second Sight about a detective who is losing his sight. Aside from it starring Clive Owen (heart-throb), I can deeply sympathize. When I do stay in bed, I usually don't put my contacts in, and therefore my eyesight is way off from 20/20. My vision cannot be corrected by glasses, so wearing them at least lets me find my way around the house and read (barely) but contacts are yet still imperfect. Commercial TV is Masterchef, Hawaii 5-0, the end of the season of House and Glee.

Swans news: Somehow they are 5th on the ladder. J and I enjoyed pizza while watching them demolish Brisbane 2 weekends ago. They were playing inspired footy, which we all know they can do but frequently can't produce. It doesn't look like I'll make it to a match this year unless they make the finals and get a home final, which is the only time I'm willing to Homebush.

Book reports: Finished Pegasus Descending by James Lee Burke. His novels are all very dark and end messily, but I want to find out how they turn out as much as I enjoy his writing. Trying to start Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. One of the Bear's leftovers that sounds interesting enough to try. My BBBB on colonial Massachusetts is almost done and I have my eye on a book about the Mayflower as next in line.

2011-06-03T23:38:00.003+10:00

I can't remember whether I have explicitly posted in my blog that I am contemplating a life-changing move in the not-too-distant future. Some of my readers I'm sure know, but other may not. I am considering moving back to the US when I turn 65 and am eligible for Medicare there. I waffle back and forth about this, being sure one day and very uncertain another. There are monetary pros and cons, leaving some good friends behind for the sake of other friends who go back much further into my past. Every time I go back to the US it's like slipping on a pair of comfortable shoes or gloves. Even tho I hate the climate, it seems natural. I don't have to explain our electoral system or educational system, or wonder if I'm going to say something stupid. And I wouldn't have possums in the roof again.

Despite living in Australia for coming on 20 years, I still am acutely aware that I am not a true Aussie. I don't have the emotional/cultural link that makes people sing "Waltzing Matilda" or naturally go solemn about ANZAC Day. I love the country and the people but I know I don't really belong and, when I lost the Bear I lost my anchor. While I do understand their electoral system and educational system, I think the US version is better. I like the climate, but I'd love to be able to garden the way I want to, which is impossible in Canberra soil. If I go back the blog will die, at least in this form. It will be easier to phone friends than blog. And I hope to be nearer some of those friends that this blog has been aimed at. I'd like to have this settled before my brothers shuffle off. My biggest concern is relocating the Imp, but I expect she's tougher than I think she is.

With the US economy and especially housing market in the doldrums, my Canberra house bubble will serve me well. But there are all those hidden expenses lurking and I certainly don't have the house in sale-worthy condition yet. Need both knees to function and some cash to flow for that The recent encounter with the Australian public health system has been enlightening if the worst I can complain about is the food and the occasionally cranky nurse. Would I get the same in the US for no out-of-pocket expenses? Can I live with footy only on the internet? I know the Chapel Gull Handweavers Guild just turned 50 years old so there's a community to join.

But still weighing pros and cons is hard. If any of my stateside friends were waiting to come over here for a visit, I encourage you to get planning because I may not be here forever.

2011-05-24T10:38:00.004+10:00

To start today's post, since there's precious little to post on, I'm sharing some of my spinning efforts of recent times. To the left is blue-faced leicester and it is definitely more saturated greens than is showing up on my monitor. I showed you the in process version on Feb 19. I've got 3 good hanks of it and I think it will knit up beautifully as soon as I can get through all the other things either in process or in my mind.
To the right is 190 meters of 50/50 silk and merino and it is pink shaded grey so the color this time is more true. My problem is the walking frame I have to use to get about the house. My hands are so sore and spinning just adds to the situation.

Which brings me to the state of my knee. I saw the plastic surgery doctor and my surgeon. The wound is very small, but it's still open so no surgery. It's been rescheduled for June 30. Fortunately my surgeon seems equally eager to solve my problem but won't operate with an open wound.

The cat has once more called the tune this morning in demanding to look out the window which forced me out of bed to open the drapes for her. I've acquired an iPod dock so I can listen to podcasts without headphones. I've also had Foxtel installed in my bedroom since I'm looking at another month lying around. I can't really get my leg straight in my recliner. Although the brace doesn't allow me the really bend it, the position is uncomfortable.

Book report: Finished Bellwether by Connie Willis which was fun but dated (written in 1994 and treated the anti-smoking campaign as a fad). A true description of corporate life and its new plans with acronyms. Going back to Wonderful Tonight, the autobiography of Pattie Boyd, the one time wife of George Harrison and Eric Clapton, both of whom I worship. I was hoping for some insight into their relationship but instead it's a recounting of well-documented events. I find it bizarre that they were together for 8 years before she mentions wondering why she hadn't gotten pregnant. I haven't gotten far enough to be sure that was the cause of the failure of both marriages. She seems oblivious to the fact that Geirge was a musician and was actually creating while noodling on a guitar.

2011-05-15T21:53:00.005+10:00

Well, it's been a long and for the most part boring time here at home. I can go nowhere without my frame (indoors) or crutches (outdoors). I will have to admit that there are days when I don't see the point in getting out of bed because I'll only be able to clump around and make my hands hurt even worse. I'm reading a lot and watching TV. The nurse is now visiting Mon/Wed/Fri to change the dressing on the wound. The last time I inspected (felt) it, it was about as big around as the tip of my pinkie but still had some depth to it. I see the plastics folks on Tues and my surgeon on Thurs with the hope that we can proceed with surgery as scheduled for May 30. Then I will have a knee back and can start walking again. I will be so glad to be out of this brace as well, which is another reason I've sometimes stayed in bed, because it slides down my leg every time I get up to walk. So I spend a lot of time ripping velcro off and replacing it.

Swans news: They trounced Port Adelaide on Sat night to win by 60 points. I was expecting the worst and therefore opted to watch a DVD but I did catch a few great moments. Goodes is good, when he kicks straight. One of the imponderables in AFL is how a player can manage some kind miracle shot for a goal and yet standing right in front of it, he misses. Only the footy gods know.

Book report: The new C.J. Cherryh "Foreigner" series novel Betrayer arrived in the mail and was read through as fast as I could devour it. Now, of course, I want the next one, but will have to wait another year or so. This series is about the only one where I cannot wait for any cheaper edition and buy the hardback as soon as it arrives in Amazon. The series is totally addictive but start with the first one if you want to get into them because at this point there is zero calendar time passage in the alien environment; one starts exactly where the last one left off. My BBBB A Perfect Red by Amy Butler Greenfield was fascinating and I love reading about dyes and colours. Think of what our world would look like without the vibrant modern dyes we all take for granted. Indigo, madder, onion, walnut, or that little beetle from Mexico. I am now reading Colonial Massachusetts and need to go back and plot my ancestors on the map of the colony. I know I have one ancestor that arrived on the Fortune, which was the next ship after the Mayflower, but lots that arrived during the Puritan exodus of the 1630's. I'm reading now about how new towns got established and new churches. I was surprised to learn that not every person joined the church. I had the impression it wasn't voluntary, but all it did was separate the "saints" from the rest the the population.

Winter seems to have arrived here judging by how cold I was last night despite having put the wool blanket on the bed. The forescast for the week is for minus digits every night this week. D came over to change a light bulb for me today and we got my doona out because I don't want another night like that. I also have possums in the roof again, snuggling up to my ducted heating no doubt, but the possum man is supposed to show up Tues AM. I say "supposed" since the last one didn't and can't be bothered to return a phone call. Winter in Canberra always means whooping flocks of currawongs which The Imp finds fascinating, though what she'd do with one if she caught one would not in the best interests of either party. She is burrowed under the covers at night too.

2011-04-28T13:28:00.003+10:00

Just a quick post to tell you I'm still alive. Clumping around on the frame sucks; it also makes my shoulders hurt. The bloody brace insists on sliding down my leg (gravity, you know) so there is much ripping of velco strapping to try and get it fixed. I can carry practically nothing so taking a drink into the living room is a careful balancing act. The nurses say the wound is healing nicely but I still can't see it for myself (nor am I sure I want to) to make my own judgement. All I can hope is, that by May 17 when the plastics people look at it, it is healed.

Over the extended Easter/Anzac Day Holiday I had to get into the car and be driven to the nursing clinic to have my wound dressed. Today the nurse said it is healing well enough to take a step back in wound care. I don't know the technical specifications of all the various wound treatments they have these days, but I'll grab any piece of good news I can. Otherwise D is chasing up a mix-up in my disabled parking permit. Soon I'll settle down with the BBC and watch the wedding.

2011-04-14T18:01:00.002+10:00

I did it! Home sweet home. Many many thanks to D who has been a life saver for me going way beyond the assigned task of caring for The Imp for 4 weeks. She's done my laundry, brought me emergency supplies, and even mastered driving my car which turned out to be suitable for getting my leg in. I am listening to blessed quiet, lying in my own bed and am trying to put all the stresses of today behind. Even tho the decision was made early in the morning, we didn't leave the hospital till 4PM. Turns out it was my surgeon who disagreed with plastics about my wound and he was finally convinced it was OK. I had 31 staples removed from the front of the knee (where the prosthesis was removed) and will have a district nurse come in every other day to change the wound dressing. I will be on antibiotics for 3 more weeks and then I don't know what happens. Tonight I am just glad to be home and just want to sleep (after Grey's Anatomy) with nobody waking me up at 7 when they do rounds. I have a grey cat on my shoulder purring loudly.

2011-04-11T17:15:00.002+10:00

Great news, readers. I'm going home soon! Within a few days. I've been taken off the IV antibiotics. I've spoken with social work about arranging for help with cleaning etc. I have a new walking frame that's smaller and easier to manage. I will have to have a nurse come in every other day to dress the wound, which is shrinking quickly. I am so thrilled to be able to sleep in my own bed without the constant noise of hospital equipment (like the beeping IV that's going now). Lean Cuisine will taste divine after what I have been served here.

The Imp will be over the moon and we need some serious face time. As long as she stays off the knee!

2011-04-08T09:50:00.003+10:00

Greetings from hospital. Three weeks today and my going home date might have moved forward. Plastic surgery came to look at my wound (the spot where the abscess was) and decided I didn't need a skin graft. That would knock 2 weeks off hospital stay. But today I missed speaking to the surgeons because I was in the shower and I need their input onto the issue before I can make any plans. I can get up and move around but that's no surprise to me as I have done this twice before. What remains is the infection, whether it can be treated by something other than IV benzylpenicilin every 4 hours. That may still be the sticking point. They take blood regularly which not only checks for bugs (altho being on antibiotics should suppress that) but checks my hemoglobin which can be low. I have a bloody big brace on my right leg to keep it straight.

Meanwhile I struggle with hospital food. Last night's dinner looked like dog food. If I didn't have friends bringing me fruit and goodies, my diet would suffer. My room mate turns her TV on and falls asleep, leaving me listening to infomercials. Thank Amazon for my Kindle which is the envy of all the nurses and my constant companion. I am rereading Peter Hamilton's The Dreaming Void now that his trilogy is complete and available on the Kindle. I have DVDs to watch and watch Torchwood season 2. I can't wait till we get season 4 on UKTV. I want my Foxtel! A hospital is an incredibly noisy place. At night to cancel out the TV in the next bed I have an app on my iPhone that plays ocean wave sounds all night. I am also extremely annoyed at my mobile phone carrier which has very intermittent service here and only for sms, no voice of all the 3/4G whiz bang stuff.

2011-04-04T09:20:00.001+10:00

Well, it's truly been a while and this time lots has happened. Over two weeks ago the strange lump on the back of my knee started to ooze. The idiot infectious disease specialist I saw a week prior to this said I would be fine till my scheduled surgery on the 28th. No, I saw my surgeon who told me to go to the emergency room in the main public hospital and that he would call and arrange my admission. Public hospital because they were better equipped and had more services available for home help. D and I frantically prepared for the unknown and then I waited 9 hours for a bed. The next few days passed without my awareness. I was in ICU due to low blood pressure (a common problem of mine) and was only really conscious 4 days later when I was moved to an orthopaedic ward.

Here I've been for almost 2 weeks. The knee replacement has been removed and a “spacer” put in that is not a knee and feels very weird. I can't put weight on it. I have a staph infection which being treated with huge doses of IV penicillin. I am having horrendous problems with my gut and nurses unfamiliar with IBS don't help. This is a world that revolves around “opening your bowels” and I can't on cue. I have a whiz bang vacuum wound dressing on the back of my knee. My spacer was replaced last week since it was doing something wrong. Man, that hurt. I now can have the wound dressed on the ward rather than going into OR.

I am both terrified and bored. Stressed and dying to go home. D is taking good care of the Imp but I miss her. Everything hinges on the staph infection being knocked out so a skin graft can go on the back of the knee. I will try to post now that I have wi-fi connection. I expect to be here another 2 weeks. Since I can't put weight on the leg, going home isn't a simple matter.

2011-03-13T11:43:00.003+11:00

Once again the only thing I have to talk about is my knee. I had a very unsatisfactory visit with an infectious disease specialist on Friday, who merely looked at the swelling behind my knee (without any of my documentation apparently) and took a photo with his phone. He then pronounced that 1) it was infected, 2) surgery was not going to fix the problem, and 3) I would always have a swollen knee. I find this strange especially when he declined to drain the fluid and sent it to pathology (he dismissed the lack of infection on the first test on the basis I was on antibiotics at the time) which would make it clear before surgery whether it was or was not infected. He was unconcerned with the amount of pain and difficulty I was undergoing, just said I could manage for another 2 weeks. Now I have this ridiculous swelling that makes it hard to bend my knee and I think it will pop without any assistance. I am going to put in an urgent call the my surgeon on Monday since he had said he hadn't wanted to be presented with it just as I was wheeled in for surgery, and he will if it's not drained before then. It would also decide the issue of infection as I am off antibiotics. Sincerely, dear readers, I am terrified that on the 28th they will cut my knee open and find infection, because the treatment after that would be extremely difficult. What they do is removed the entire knee prosthesis and clean diligently, then put a spacer in and send me home on antibiotics. Two months later they do another knee replacement. In my heart of hearts I don't believe I am harbouring an infection but I could he wrong. How I could take care of myself without a knee for two months is beyond considering. Positive thoughts please and prayers if you do that sort of thing.

Otherwise not much going on. Getting lovely fresh green beans and tomatoes. The pear tree is loaded with pears but it remains to be seen whether the parrots will leave me any. They've cleaned off the top completely, I'm reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Vegetable Miracle and find it so inspiring. Her reasoning about the vegetarian issue is something I'd like to hand any vegetarian who tried to convert me. Her descriptions of the vegetative year bring back to me the huge garden I used to have in Ohio. We never bought veggies because there was always fresh or home frozen available. It was such a joy to see the rows of jars of applesauce, tomatoes, pickles and jam.

Book report: finished The Bookseller of Kabul and found it intriguing if disheartening for the issues of women's rights I have already written about. The mere thought of thirteen people all living in a 2 bedroom flat, especially and the head of household and his second wife have one bedroom to themselves and the rest of the family from grandmother, brothers, and offspring all sleep in the second. These are middle class Afghanis for whom life at least doesn't include malnutrition or illiteracy. My new Kindle book is Wake by Robert J. Sawyer and I'm not far enough into it to give a verdict. I gave up on Neal Stephenson's Baroque cycle as it was just too, well, Baroque. Also all massive doorstop tomes. So I'm on Barbara Kingsolver instead. My BBBB is A Perfect Red by Amy Butler Greenfield, which is about the pursuit of red dyestuffs.

We are having gorgeous weather and I wish so much to be out and about in it, digging in the earth if only to pull weeds. Instead I'll go back to elevating my leg and reading about gardening. I hope wherever I end up in the US has community garden plots because I think I'd go mad if I couldn't grow a few tomato and zucchini plants and a few rows of beans.

2011-03-04T11:42:00.004+11:00

Finally a FO (finished object) that is not socks. It's a vest from Cheryl Oberle's Folk Vests featuring X-and-O cables, knit from Brooks Farm merino & mohair blend. It has taken me forever to finish it, and I really mean the finishing bits, like around arm holes etc., because the body of the vest was knit ages ago. I suddenly feel like knitting again and pulled from the stash some Cascade 220 I bought on my last long trip to the states with BFLB and found a shrug pattern on line in Ravelry. I also pulled out some handspun for a hat and some exotic linen/rayon/wool blend for a simple summer shell. I've already started a new pair of socks, this time just wool in white with blue dots, I am also plying the green BFL I spun a couple of weeks ago and it's gorgeous. Am I up to trying my first lace creation?

My knee has been the focus of all my attention the past couple of weeks with the news going from good to bad to good. Behind my knee (where of course I cannot see very well) is swelling just like in the front, except the back gets compressed when I bend my knee, as I am while sitting at a desk. I can't leave it straight or I'll lose range of motion. So the swelling has been squeezed into hard ridges across the back of my knee. I'm not thrilled by this but figured it would sort itself out when the problem at the front of my knee was fixed. Then one bit started to swell further, became sore and even bled a little. So I took myself to my GP who took one look at the icky mess and called my surgeon. I went in to see him last Thurs and he fussed about it, drained clear fluid out of it, and put me on antibiotics. When I returned to get the expected bad news that it was infected, I was surprised (as was the surgeon) to learn that there was no sign of infection in the fluid drained, and in fact the swelling in the back of my knee has returned to its previous ugly but benign state. Just to be on the safe side I'm to see an infectious disease specialist next Friday. Otherwise the schedule of surgery on the 28th is still a go. I have a very annoying patellar clunk and soreness with swelling.

Other than that I have been reading. Finished Russell Wiley is Out to Lunch by Richard Hine on my Kindle. It is a comedy of the life in a corporation with all the games played and the players who should be familiar to anyone who works in a place with more than 10 employees. It had a surprising happy ending that I didn't see coming. I am plodding through Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson and the jury is out on whether I'll stick with it and its 2 following tomes which make up his Baroque cycle. A semi-historical novel about Isaac Newton probably fit the Bear perfectly but I'm finding it slow going. I started as BBBB Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, but it's about growing vegetables which is far too interesting (to me) for bedside reading. I am reading The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seirstad on my Kindle. It reveals a lot about what goes on inside an Afghani family and the relations between men and women. Frankly, I find it very difficult to relate to these women who are brought up expecting to be sold like cattle, to have no life outside the home, who are often illiterate, and have no rights. Even without the Taliban, a woman's life in a strict Islamic society is very alien to western women. Even the Amish have the year off to find out whether they want the western lifestyle or not, but women in strict Islamic states are hidden and their lives are so constrained as to be impossible for me to understand. I have been watching the BBC series The Frankincense Trail which is hosted by an English woman but, when she enters Saudi Arabia, almost all her freedom is lost: she must dress a certain way, cannot drive, cannot be seen in public without a man as her guardian, etc. The women she meets in their luxurious shopping malls try to convince her the life inside a burqa is not so awful but the cultural mindset that believes that is what is right for a woman is beyond my comprehension. It would seem that the mere sight of a woman's face drives Islamic men so overwrought with desire that they cannot control themselves, so women have to dress as not to offend. Again, I read these books but I cannot understand how this culture exists, but I am trying to understand.

My veggie patch is producing beans, zucchinis, and tomatoes. The patches not currently under cultivation (that is, about 60% of the garden) are full of weeds, mostly couch grass. My lawn-mover says he has an employee who wants work and will come over and weed for me, but I don't envy her. Couch is the very devil to get rid of and will only find a new way into the patches from the lawn.

2011-02-19T10:17:00.005+11:00

Today you get photos and not much more. Above is my crepe myrtle which has bloomed gorgeously for the first time in I can't remember how many years. It's amazing what getting rain for a change does. It now obviously needs a hard prune but I was afriad to do that when it was barely hanging on with the drought. Of course, I am also drowning in weeds which I can't seriously attack, but you win some, you lose some.

To the right is the BFL I mentioned on Dec. 30, one bobbin full
and some of the unspun roving so you can see what
I started with. It's a delight to spin and I hope I get enough to do something nice with it. Lovely shades of green. The other spinning has been alpaca: I've spun and plied a hank of white, and I have a bobbin full of brown. There will always be alpaca. I have the last bag of white to sort through and it has had moths in it. I am throwing out more than I keep and have added moth balls to the bag. Fortunately all my stash but a little is in plastic tubs and safe from insects.

To the left is a close-up of the socks I just finished out of the hand-spiun merino & bamboo. The way the colours mix and flow is really gorgeous and completely derived from the spinning and knitting process. I have to say it's prettier than any store-bought (IMHO) but store-bought is more uniform in thickness and has extra stregthening in it (usually nylon). I didn't reinforce these and we'll see how they wear, but I haven't yet worn out any socks. That's the virtue (?) of having many pairs of socks: you don't wear any one pair too heavily and they stay "healthy" longer. I am patching a previously knit pair at the moment (botched the heel when they were knit) and then will start on a pair of store bought yarn socks. I do have a stash of sock yarn that's a bit intimidating. In some ways this is like when I used to make all my own clothes. I didn't have some of the little finishing details that commercially sold clothes had, but they were my choice of fabric and colour and design. I always knew I was wearing one of a kind, and it could have been a Vogue designer pattern and now what was on the racks in a department store. I had a white linen Mary Quant design in 1969 that was so cool.

I was hoping to post a picture of the cabled vest but it needs blocking and I just haven't gotten at it. It's finished, just not photogenic.

2011-02-08T10:37:00.003+11:00

I saw my surgeon last Thurs and am finally scheduled in to have it opened up and fixed -- but not till Mar. 28th. That leaves me with almost 2 more months of pain and reduced mobility (plus another month or so afterwards). A little Googling showed me that patellar clunk syndrome, which sounds all too bizarre, actually occurs in about 4% of TKR patients and it caused by a build up of scar tissue on the back of the patella. That part is easily fixed. Of course we don't know what went wrong to begin with, but my rheumatologist figured it out in 15 minutes yesterday. I hadn't really liked her after the avuncular manner of my previous dr, but she proved with her knee assessment and willingness to do battle with the pharmacy gods that she is good. My GP has gone away for 2 weeks without notice, and I was reluctant to try and explain my need for drugs to a stranger at his clinic, so I asked my rheumatologist if she'd do it, which would also save ma a wait in the clinic. She got me my scripts and saved me another painful outing. I've ordered groceries delivered today becaus I just couldn't face pushing a trolley (shopping cart) around the supermarket.

Sort of a book report: I started as my new BBBB Angel in the Whirlwind by Benson Bobrick to get a fresh course on Revolutionary America. I had to put it aside because his description of colonial era American did not match what I knew from my own genealogy. It was the same "the settlers came and settled" and even that there was not much interaction between colonies. I now know that between arrival at Plymouth and the revolutionary war my ancestors moved from Massachusetts to Rhode Island to Connecticut to New York and up the Hudson. Maybe the various governments didn't converse but the people were on the move. I've tracked one line back to the early Dutch settlement of Albany which is about as "ethnic" as my tree gets. From my grandfather's WWI draft registration, I found he worked for a company which made machinery for the newfangled cardboard boxes that were replacing wooden boxes. From his WWII draft registration I found he never became an American citizen but remained Canadian. How he got from Canada to Michigan and why he sold the farm in Michigan and moved to Niagara Falls, NY, is still a mystery. Before I came to Australia and honed my ear to new dialects of English, I would have said Canadians sound just like Americans. Now I hear differences in my surgeon (he's Canadian) and on TV. I watched a doco on David Thompson who explored and mapped the western half of Canada and realized how much Americans don't know about Canada. Since I'm carrying a few drops of Ontario blood, I should learn some more.

New BBBB: Deluxe by Dana Thomas about the popularizing of luxury brands. Non-bedtime reading is Michael Connolly's The Reversal on my Kindle and Ken MacLeod's Newton's Wake, where I am sounding out Glaswegian in the far future.

In typical Aussie weather behavior we went from 38C to 9c in a week. My poor tomato plants!

2011-02-01T12:37:00.002+11:00

While it's gradually approaching 38C or close to 100F, I am SO glad I installed air conditioning last summer. I just got inside from hanging a load of sheets on the Hills Hoist and this weather can dry them in about 15 minutes. I have been resting my knee, frankly, because it hurts. I never know when the knee cap is going to move freely and when it's going to stuck and then clunk. I can walk alright but any distance is tasking. I can't wait till Thursday and my surgeon's review, and hopefully a date for surgery. I reluctantly cancelled the weaving course. In fact, in my search for a project showed me so many projects I could do on my own if I just was physically able. That was the plan for retirement anyway. The thing on the loom is no longer of interest, so, when I am able, I will cut it off and rewarp it.

The yarn above is my most recent, the MW merino from Laughing Rat. It will be socks. I have finished one of the socks from the merino and bamboo recently spin. I didn't maintain a fine enough gauge when I spun it so I had to go up a size in needles from a 1 to a 2, which I view as a spinning failure. Because I had an alpaca scarf as a weaving goal i am spinning white alpaca at the moment. Very glossy and long locks. I have no idea how it will turn out when plied as yarn.

Bits and pieces from recent musing and activities: heard Timbuk3 on the radio yesterday which prompted me to go and look up their albums on iTunes and download my favourite of their songs "Sample the Dog." Train's song "Soul Sister" made me go look for Mr Mister/Richard Page and found on his website an additional Mr Mister album RCA declined to release after their 2 big LPs back in the '80's. And Richard had a new solo album so had to buy these. His solo album Shelter Me is a favourite. That doesn't mean I don't listen to more current music, from Eric Clapton to Pearl Jam to Snow Patrol. Watched an Aussie movie set in India called The Waiting City on DVD last night. About a young couple going to pick up an adopted baby and the resulting tension and fractures while they wait. Worth a look if you find it. February means the return to prime time of all the American TV I usually watch from Glee to NCIS. I had been filling my evenings with Foxtel, either documentaries like the 4-parter on Captain Cook who is a god to Australia, or just police dramas like Lewis, or the weird Being Human on UKTV. I admit to being a video/TV addict. Since it's when I knit or spin, why not? I am having trouble still with my contact lenses, mostly them getting stuck to my eye so I have to constantly remind myself to blink. Makes reading hard sometime. Almost finished Museum, which really a series of monologues from staff talking about whatever they liked so very uneven and gives very little in the way of detail. I hope that Rogue's Gallery will be better. Flood ended very improbably and I was not impressed. I have started Newton's Wake by Ken Macleod.

Just to remind you that footy season is looming, a bit of eye candy in the form of a hot and sweaty Swan Adam Goodes. The NAB Cup (preseaon) setup has 3 games played between the Swans and the 2 new clubs in Blacktown in Feb, but I think we'll give that a miss since it's an all day affair and I feel for the players if it's as hot as it is now.

Given the scant feedback I got on the fate if the blog, which was all positive and affirming, I guess I'll keep emptying my brain of trivia periodically. Perhaps since most of the feedback was from non-fibre folks, I'll keep that at a lower level, but still post on it, because it's very important to me if not to you.

2011-01-23T13:46:00.003+11:00

Friday I was told the weaving class was on and that I would probably be having knee surgery soon. Does the surgery preclude the class participation? Can I miss a few weeks and still do something meaningful? I have spent a lot of time looking at weaving projects in my books and magazines. I would like to use my handspun but my teacher is not enthused about that. Alternatively, I have found a pattern for a series of twill towels that might make a small dent in the stash while letting me practice with my favourite weaving pattern. I'm addicted to twills, so this could be fun.

The surgeon, Dr A, finally admits that there's something mechanically wrong with my knee and believes he needs to open it up and look at it, possibly to adjust my kneecap, possibly to tighten or adjust something else in the knee. It's been 6 months and the knee is still hot and swollen, let alone painful especially when he pokes at the knee cap and says, "Does this hurt?" This time I will demand to speak to the anesthesist prio to surgery so I don't get in the mess I was in the last time. For me, the news I needed surgery again came as a relief.

Spent a little time last night Googling the Bear and found a very touching memorial written by somebody I didn't know that echoed what several other of his co-workers had said. I didn't know his email short-cut for "evil twin" but that was always an in-joke with us. Unfortunately most of what I trawled through was for the actor of the same name who actually doesn't spell his name the same way but the whole world seems to have overlooked that fact. He and the Bear are probably distantly related, but it was a little strange reading all these posts about people who harboured secret passions for the actor who is built about as solidly as the Bear was. I also fired off email to a couple of sites that still had him alive and active to try and remove his name.

Finished Brass Man and started on The Algebraist by Iain Banks, which I replaced paper with Kindle versions so I can read it easier. Am reading Flood by Stephen Baxter in paper It is about sea levels rising and subsequent chaos. BBBB us now Museum, a behind the scenes look at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I didn't visit it as much as MOMA when I lived in New York. My slightly outrageous 9th grade Sunday school teacher once took the class on a field trip to look at the Egyptian stuff. (Same teacher taught us all to make wine which became a science project one year) I'd love to return and look at their costumes, but that is a some day trip.

I watched Nine on DVD last night with zero expectations except I loved the cast members (including Judi Dench, Daniel Day-Lewis, Nicole Kidman and Sophia Loren). I was underwhelmed by Chicago despite everyone else adoring it, but quite liked this musical. Penelope Cruz as sex kitten mistress was outstanding. And Daniel was wonderful as he always is, becoming Iralian to suit the role. Other movie adventure was to see The King's Speech with J which was very well done and Geoffrey Rush was his usual self. How does Australia produce so many good actors? When Guy Pearce pops up as the Duke of Windsor or in The Hurt Locker I try not to jump. When he appeared at the end of The Road, I shouldn't have been surprised.

I have heard crashing silence from you readers about the continuation of the blog, except a couple I knew read it. Is it worth the effort to do this instead of emails? Still writing so far but I'd really like to know who's out there.

2011-01-13T17:54:00.006+11:00

It has been an amazingly soggy time for Canberra in January. It has rained every day this week beginning with a Sunday thunderstorm. I have taken my GP's concern over my swollen leg to heart, and have been spending most days with the leg elevated and gradually the swelling did go down for the first time in several months. This gives me some hope that there is some kind of resolution to the still swollen knee. The knee is not as sore, but is still warm to the touch and quite swollen. I now will get up and about in small doses to give me exercise without further damage.
To the left are some of my first apples. I was wondering how to tell if they were ripe and found one on the ground today and gave it a bite. Scrumptious! I don't know what cultivar they are since I bought a 3-way grafted apple tree and the 3 branches weren't labelled. These are on the small size (but it's a very small tree), about the size of a peach and with a good crunch. Unfortunately I also discovered that the birds had eaten all of my President plums before I even knew they were ripe. They are having at the older plum tree but this year they can have them because I'm not making jam or sauce to sell at work any more. I am getting beans and zucchini so summer is officially here.

To the right is a close-up of the scarf I've knit for X2 who is feeling the cold in Maryland. It was knit sideways using different strands of various hand spun wools I had accumulated. There is white and brown alpaca and some camel down as well. It turned out so well I might knit another, since it didn't take long. I have filled a bobbin with green BFL, and have been wrestling with the dregs of a bag of supposedly white alpaca. Someday all the alpaca will be clean. I have't found a way to tidy this stuff without getting alpaca and dirt everywhere, even with my lap covered in an old bathmat.

Today I joined a new adventure by acquiring an iPhone. My old mobile (cell) had given me long and faithful service, but I really wanted some of the apps like maps, and the photo capability of the camera on the iPhone. I am stumbling around on it learning to type on the teeny keyboard (but it sure makes texting easier) and need to learn which apps I need. I inadvertantly took a video of the Imp looking grumpy because I woke her up.

I finished Mortal Remains and am reading The Brass Man by Neal Asher on my Kindle. I really should read something in paper but I love my Kindle!

When I look at my blog online, it's hard to believe I've been doing this for 5 years. The person I started it for has passed away, but I know there are friends and family out there who read this. Sometome I'd like some feedback telling me what you like or don't like and whether you wish I would publish more often. I would if I knew anybody cared.

2011-01-03T03:21:00.002+11:00

Happy New Year to all. Sydney fireworks were great (both times) although the still air led to a cloud of smoke obscuring the bridge during the grand finale. Worth waiting up for every time. One year I'd like to afford to be on a boat right under them as they go off.

2010-12-30T23:38:00.005+11:00

So far it's been a quiet and somewhat lonely holiday season here at Chez Swanknitter. I treated myself to a Christmas feast of a selection of cheeses and smoked salmon with crackers followed by brownies, accompanied by a cleanskin Reisling. Today was the first really hot day of the summer, that is, hot enough to turn on the a/c. After all the rain earlier in the season, right now we could use some. The berry bushes are covered in black jewels of flavour. I made a batch of jam, but I've also enjoyed several bowls of berries with cream. These are loganberries and some boysenberries. Their new growth is so enthusiastic this year that it's hard to get near to pick them.

The past few days I've had a recurrence of the knee problems I had before my replacement. I have no idea what has caused this, but the knee is sore and the muscles are spasming again. I think I overdid a bit in my rush back to normalcy and need to take it slower. It's very difficult when so many things cry out for attention not to get into action. My major downfall and character flaw.

I finished In Defense of Food, which should have been a magazine article instead of a book. If you've read The Omnivore's Dilemma, you will know what Michael Pollan is about. I believe him and would like to follow his precepts, except sometimes is difficult to eat the right food when you don't know where it has come from or how it was grown. That's one reason I'm so passionate about my veggie garden. I started The Algebraist by Iain M Banks but my hands struggled with its size. This is the first time I am seriously considering buying the Kindle edition of something I own in paper. I am reading Kathy Reich's Mortal Remains on the Kindle instead.

I think I've reached my destination in the family tree business, altho there is still lots to do yet. I got back to William the Conqueror thru yet another bastard line. So lots of baronets and influential Normans in the tree but I don't need to go any further back than that, but need to document the intervening links. Fortunately there seems to be a fair group of fellow genealogists working the same lines.

On the fibre front, I am knitting socks for myself out of the merino & bamboo blend I spun recently, I am knitting a winter scarf for X2 out of various natural coloured wools. It's knit the long way so there are stripes for each new yarn, It's in seed stitch and is almost done so I'll get a photo before I post it. I could not face any more alpaca to spin so poked around in the stash and pulled out a gorgeous hand painted rope of BFL (blue-face Leicester) in gorgeous mossy greens. It's from Briar Rose and of course it's a dream to spin. I have to pace myself with the spinning and knitting because altho I love doing both, my hands often tell me the next day that I over did it. See a pattern here?

Over the holidays I learned that another dear friend of mine going back to grad school at UNC had passed away the day after my sister. She was only 72. She was first an instructor when I was studying African linguistics, and helped me learn Hausa, which is an extremely difficult language. I got good enough that I could read literacy pamphlets and write simple stories but I am sure I don't retain a single word. She became a friend and we kept in touch through the years. I was unable to meet with her on my last trip to Chapel Hill due to family obligations (hers) and now I know I missed the last chance to see her. She was one of the friends I was hoping to move back to be near.

2010-12-20T17:25:00.005+11:00

I haven't died but haven't had much interesting to post about. Canberra has had epic rain and many plans to do things in the yard went by the wayside as I watched horizontal rain hurl itself at my house. I am still doing knee recovery and I had a minor set back as I fell in the front yard and landed on the bad knee. I only tripped and I landed softly but there is now a swelling on my swelling and a faint purple tinge. I've also had many nights when I didn't get to sleep before 3AM which puts a dent in the following day. I thought I'd share some photos today from recent activities. The cupcake tree is from J's 40th birthday party which was 2 weeks ago. I thought both the concept and the photo were nice. I've also been to the movies twice, once for Tron Legacy which I was underwhelmed by but D liked. Yesterday J and I attempted to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and got booked out of the first place we went so had to fill time with eating pizza and other things until we could go to a later screening. It was raining and everyone decided to go to the movies. As we sat in traffic betwen pizza and movie, the thermometer at the ABC office said is was 9C. That is NOT summer weather in Canberra and, while I'm very glad of the rain for my garnden, some sun would be welcome too. It's supposed to get nicer this week before the next wet front hits us on Christmas Day. The movie was very good even if it's a shock to see Harry Potter all grown up. I have also acquired the extended version of Avatar on DVD which should give me something to watch over the holidays.

The socks at left are my latest FO (finished object) and are knit out of a yarn called Tofutsies which has both soy and cotton in it. They are very soft and will make good summer socks, should we ever get summer. The Aran vest is on the home stretch as I finish off the seed stitch borders on neckline and sleeve openings. I've promised X2 a scarf knit out of the various different natural coloured wool I've spun so I rounded up 5 different wools, and two colours of alpaca.

The photo at the top was taken in 1915 in Niagara Falls, New York, and is of my grandmother Charlotte Rhone Hotchkiss and her mother Josephine Tyler Rhone. The genealogical trail has been my main occupation while it rained. All the American ancestors are well and truly documented and I definitely go back to Massachusetts in 1635. I am still on the trail of the further back and trying to untangle the mess that people have made by entering wrong data on Ancestry. My librarian self wants to do authority control on all these names, when the Radcliffs spelled their name 4 different ways. I thought I was descended from the Count of Anjou but it seems that the person I am really descended from was (ahem) born out of wedlock, but, as things happened back then, still was an influential Norman ruler. I am hoping that whoever did the research on these folks on the Wikipedia knows what they are talking about because I'm taking their word for some of this. Of course, there are the occasional clanger like someone born in England in 1011 and supposedly died in Zimbawe. Don't think so. They were still in "the world is flat" zone in those days.

I read Janet Evanovich's latest on my Kindle and will start Kathy Reichs soon. Meanwhile I'm read In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. I promise to give up junk food next year now that I know what some of the ingredients do to you. I'm basically a cook from scratch person so I don't eat a lot of the food products he describes and I definitely eat a lot of fresh fruit and little meat. I never eat fast food like McDonalds and I don't count artisan pizza (or home made) as junk. I have some guilty pleasures because I like the crunch of chips but I must be strong. Not to mention I need to shed weight gained while I was not allowed to get any exercise. I hope I'm allowed some fresh berries with cream because I've got LOTS of berries.

2010-12-08T16:38:00.004+11:00

It's been more resting of the knee and therefore not much to write about. I am desperate to clean house and work in the garden but am forbidden. Meanwhile I've been burrowing away on Ancestry and to my utter astonishment have multiple lines on my mother's side that are traced back not just to the founding of New England but back 600 years of English history to the Norman invasion. I find this completely mind-blowing. Apparently (the documentation search will now follow) I am descended through a semi-noble class of folk, not high enough to be more than a Sir or a baron but someone who was sheriff of an area or the king's representative. I have been plowing through a whole branch of the Dean family, who leased part of the Forest of Dean from the king and paid him 3 shillings a year for it. Many branches are from the western part of England, Shropshire, Cornwall, etc. although there was one branch that ended up on the Welsh side. You may address me as the Baroness de Corbet. Ha. At least I would have had servants.

Canberra has had almost 2 weeks of rain. Sometimes downpours, sometimes passing showers, but more rain than I have seen in 20 years. We have full reservoirs for the first time in a very long time. My plants all look healthy although I now do battle with snails. I've had several lovely suppers with mounds of fresh peas which do taste better than frozen. If only you didn't have to plant so many of them to get a decent serving. I've also had a few bowls of strawberries & cream. The jasmine has popped into bloom making the yard fragrant. I'm about to start getting berries as the first of the canes on the front of the shed are beginning to turn dark, and it is usually around Christmas when I'm drowning in berries. I turned some of the lovely rhubarb into a delicious cake for J's birthday. Rhubarb and berry jam?

I have also spent a lot of time not sleeping, as in going to bed at the usual time of around 10.30 PM and still being wide awake at 2AM, or 4AM, night after night. It's thrown my whole body out of rhythm and nothing seems to help. I take the normal dose of sleeping tablets that are supposed to work within an hour and read my BBBB, but nothing happens. Said BBBB is currently Collapse by Jared Diamond, who wrote Guns, Germs, and Steel, another great work of social history. So I get up and try to do something boring. One night I was washing dishes and cleaning the stove at 2 AM. Sometimes it's genealogy. I end up sleeping the morning away to make up.

Otherwise I am glued to my Kindle reading Neal Asher's Polity Agent. He writes the most energetic and imaginative space opera and it's always fun to read his Cormac novels. I've got another one on the Kindle along with Janet Evanovich's latest and the same of Katheir Reichs. I must address the paper book backlog soon.

I have spun some brown alpaca and need to ply it. I've almost finished a pair of summer socks and am in the home stretch on the brown vest. I looked at the black alpaca and think I probably need to card it, becase it isn't long enough and is too slippery to spin from the lock. I am going to sign up for the weaving course at the ANU that I took before, this time working on a project, either double weave or a complex twill. A double weave table runner might be something good to do with supervision. The same teacher will be there so I am in good hands. Classes don't start till March so I can do some looking for projects in the meantime.

2010-11-26T15:19:00.004+11:00

I am shocked that so much time has slipped away from me without a blog post. Not that there is that much new to post about. My knee is healing slowly but still has some frightening symptoms. The swelling at the back of the knee is hard and resists bending. On the front, if I bend and push back, as in pushing a chair away from a table to stand up, that knee joint feels like it is coming unstuck and then pops back into place. Scarey and painful. My surgeon said that was just the plastic cartilage slipping into place but it just feels wrong and frightening. I have been sleeping a lot, too much I'm sure, but when my activities are so restricted, there is only so much reading and watching TV one can do.

On the fibre front, I have been spinning brown alpaca and I've almost gotten to the bottom of the bag of unwashed alpaca. I came in one day to find the Imp asleep in the bag of alpaca which was not appreciated. Very soft to be sure. I've plied the pale grey Shetland, and need to wind it off. I had promised it to BFLB to knit a lace shawl but it looks like I'll have to teach myself to knit lace. I am knitting myself a pair of socks out of Tofutsies yarn which has a soy and cotton component and is quite soft. Blues and purples. I have also started on the last piece of the vest, knitting from the armhole to the shoulder of the left front. This has taken far too long, but I got out of the habit of knitting and need to give myself a kick by finishing something.

I am now "officially" retired, having started receiving pension payouts. I finally hired someone to do a partial cleanup of the front and back yards. He is also mowing my lawn while I am laid up. I managed to get the bare minimum of plants in the ground: tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, pumpkin, and beans. The peas planted in Sept. are now yielding pods and there's lots of rhubarb. If I could stand in the kitchen long enough I might make a rhubarb pie.

Reading takes up a lot of time. I read Zero History by William Gibson on my Kindle and really liked it except it didn't seem to be "about" anything. I'm now reading Polity Agent by Neil Asher on the Kindle. My BBBB of Oracle Bones was finished and I recovered Good Wives from under the bed and finished that. The research done in court proceedings, wills, letters and other documents to describe women's live in the northern part of New England 1650-1750 was very pertinent since I have a number of ancestors in that window and I have yet to do research on their lives. Current BBBB is The Meaning of Everything by Simon Winchester about the OED. I am now reading High King of Montival by S.M. Sterling so I can send it to X2 for his reading.

My genealogy is back to a Johannes Quackenbush who lived in Albany NY around the last quarter of the 17th century. I know from my history reading that the Dutch had trading posts there to trade with the Iroquois for furs so the influx of Dutch names shouldn't be surprising.

2010-11-08T11:14:00.003+11:00

Nothing's been posted because there's precious little to report on being confined to zero activity. My knee did get better but cranked up again once I put weight on it. The dr now suspects a stress fracture and I had a bone scan on Friday to look for it. I am afraid that the recommended treatment is more bed rest. The fact that it does get better seems to indicate that rest does help. I am determined to get a minimal garden in: beans, tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers and pumpkin. I weeded enough of one raised bed to uncover the strawberries and make room for beans, and started on the second for tomatoes and zukes. I've got a garden person in to clean up a lot of the mess that was beyond me, like removing dead trees. I'll have him mow the lawn until I'm back on my feet, though I can certainly afford for him to continue. I can't stand up long enough to cook so I've been living on frozen dinners and grilled cheese sandwiches, having my groceries delivered. Very boring.

Otherwise I read, watch TV, play mahjong, card alpaca, spin alpaca, etc. I've finished J's red & white socks and started a pair for me out of Tofutsies, the soy/wool mix, in blues and greens. I need more summer weight socks and there's plenty to knit in the stash, so I plug away. I finished the Sean Williams & Shane Dix Echoes of Earth, but was suitably unimpressed to read the rest if the trilogy. I am now reading William Gibson's Zero History on my Kindle and am loving it. Simultaneously I'm reading The Dragon Scroll by I. J. Parker, which is a murder mystery set in 11th century Japan. Have almost finished my BBBB Oracle Bones, about modern China.

As expect BFLB only lived to see Nov 1, which was her & St. H's wedding anniversary. I did get to talk to her once but she had little voice power. H told me she was smiling and mouthing words back but her lungs were too far gone to speak. She passed relatively peacefully leaving us all bereft. I will try calling St H to keep in touch. I was so glad the hospice let her have the cats with her. Duke probably thought all the fuss was over him.

2010-10-23T15:00:00.003+11:00

1980 was probably the peak of my adult life, although I didn't know it then. I was healthy, very happily married, in my dream job, and the future looked bright. As the '80's progressed bad things happened. My mother died of breast cancer in 1981 and I felt numb with pain for about a year. She was 74. A few years later I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and began the dance with pain. At the same time I did my right knee and had the first arthroscopic surgeries. Shortly there after, I was diagnosed with kerataconus and started the routine of eye exams and new contacts every six months or so until I had both corneas replaced in 1989/90. During the end of the '80's, my marriage fell apart as my husband was away on business more and more, and I was more consumed by moving up the food chain at work.

Enter a brief interlude when I met the Bear, shed my old life, and ran away to Australia. Bliss, aside from financial pinches until I reentered the workforce determined to be a drone. Then fibromyalgia struck me with its fairy wand and I knew serious pain, daily pain, pain that ruled my life. I really missed my friends back in the US because I had so few friends of my own age and background here. I cannot fault the dear friends I made working at the Library and they have helped me survive a lot, but I'm old enough to be their mothers. I lost one of my US friends who shared chronic illness in the early 2000's and it hit me very hard. She was one of the inner circle and losing her was a blow that took a long while to recover from. Then there was the Bear. You blog-readers know what I went through 3 years ago and I haven't recovered yet. Then there was my sister this year. On the visit to the US for her memorial service I made sure I made time to see BFLB in Ohio, who has been suffering from kidney cancer for 10 years. I never dreamt it would be the last time I saw her, probably the last time I will speak to her. In the past 2 weeks the cancer has caught up to her and the doctors have run out of miracle treatments (and she had her share of whiz-bang medical technology used on her). As of today she is in a hospice and is unresponsive. BFLB is also one of the inner circle, the one who was my knitting guru, the one who managed the dream of building a house in the country on a nice block of land. Her husband, St. H., was a good friend to the Bear and the four of us enjoyed our visits together. Now I worry for St. H. because he has to go through the deepest valley of losing your true love. He's known this day would come for 10 years but I don't think that makes it any easier then it was for me who only really knew what was happening the last 2 weeks of the Bear's life.

I feel like this has been cumulative and I don't know how to handle any more grief. But I also know that being of a certain age means you know more people who are likely to leave this plane in the coming years. I'm not a religious person so I have no firmly held beliefs as to what lies after death. Their spirits all live on with those who loved them; maybe that's what life after death means. But we who are left behind feel an awful hole in our souls where that bit that was bound to them leaves with them. I will always love those people listed above and still think about my mother almost daily. I still wake up thinking the Bear is still here. Think of your loved ones and cherish those still with you.

On my own personal battle, my surgeon has instituted 2 weeks complete rest for the knee, trying to let it heal. I hesitate to speak too loudly but after 4 days, it is less painful and slightly less swollen. I sincerely hope this most annoying restriction works, because I am going mad being kept away from my garden at the peak of its neediness.

2010-10-05T13:07:00.005+11:00

Today we start with photos. To the left is the last of the black alpaca, now sorted, deseeded and clean.

Some of it is long enough to spin from the locks, while other bits will have to be carded. It was very soft when I was cleaning it so I have high hopes of the end result. I am currently spinning some of the pale grey Shetland I brought back from the States.

To the right is the superwash merino/bamboo
blend I spun a while back. It feels very light
so I am hoping it will make decent light weight socks.

I finished Rainbows End and enjoyed it completely. Especially as it takes place in San Diego which is one of those places I'd love to live (and we almost did via the Bear's job). I am now reading Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, which sometimes feels like I've read it before but then a lot of his images have been "borrowed" by other authors since it was written 20 years ago.

I had my doctor's visit today and he is still mystified by why my knee remains swollen. He aspirated (stuck a needle in) it and drew out some fluid to be sent off to the lab. I have to get another X-ray and see him in 2 weeks. We are hoping there is no infection because that would be very bad but what else is going on is a mystery.

I spent a very lazy day in bed yesterday while thunderstorms threatened but never materialized. Today is warm and sunny and my knee feels even worse after being stuck with a needle. So much for gardening. My car is covered in pollen and windblown wisteria blossoms since that is in full bloom. My baby apple trees are blooming, as is the pear. The backyard is alive with the humming of bees.

Today is the first official day of retirement. If it weren't for the knee, I would be dancing in the street, or at least in the backyard. Instead here I am writing in my blog, feeling depressed. I have been thinking about the Bear a lot as his birthday approaches. I keep going over what I could have done to prevent his early demise. What if I had thrown a tantrum early on and threatened to leave him if he didn't stop drinking? He would have known I'd never leave him. Should I have accompanied him to the GP every time to tell him what the Bear didn't? I think of all the wonderful times we had and then the image of him in the oncology ward comes up and I lose it. If he were here there wouldn't be a thought in my head about going back to the US, but that seems my best option now. Meanwhile I can still sometimes smile and think of my dear boy.

2010-10-03T11:04:00.004+11:00

This Friday was officially my last day of work. Thursday was the last day I was physically present and had my going away party. The kind folks I worked with combined enough money for me to buy a Kindle (Hooray for the weak US dollar!) as I discovered my weakened hands are having trouble holding books. It don't mean I will stop buying books because I can't imagine a knitting book on a Kindle! Best sellers I don't intend on keeping can be in digital format. While I really enjoyed the work I did, I was having more and more difficulty actually making it to work. I could have done large chunks of it from home but that is frowned upon for OH&S reasons. What difference does it make to the end project if I do authority work lying in bed?

My current difficult-to-read paperback (bound tightly and printed into the spine) is Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge. I had admired his earlier stuff but thought he had retired or died, so finding a new book as of 2006, that is actually about digitizing library books is a treat. Wearable hardware and constant connection are among the future (2025) as he imagines it. I almost think that free wireless broadband access should be a utility that everybody should have access to.

The genealogy research has so far gotten me back through the Stanton line on my mother's side to the Puritans who came to New England in 1635. I've learned about the Revolutionary Battle of Long Island (which I don't remember from school) and wonder if some of the mysterious movements of some ancestors to Canada were because they were Royalists. Ancestry is a very deep well of information and the farther back you go, the more people are related to you. I am technically an only child but I now have thousands of relatives.

I've had two dream in a row where i was working on a cruise ship. What does this mean? I'd do the cruise around Hawaii again in a heartbeat.

I watched the movie District 9 on DVD last night and found it very disturbing. The new improved Peter Jackson seemed to think it partly a comedy, but this from a man who used to make splatter horror films. I've lived in the southern hemisphere long enough that I can understand South African English better than I can some of the varieties of the King's English I hear on British TV. I thought it a cheap shot to paint Nigerians as the bad guys instead of using native black South Africans. Politically correct but a cheap shot. I encourage watching the movie but be prepared for unpleasant ethical responses as well as a lot of shooting and splatter.

I was planning on a lot of garden work but we have rain forecast for the next 3 days. Maybe I'll just start my squash seedlings and do housework.

2010-09-26T12:33:00.002+10:00

I am just in from mowing the lawn. I am pooped but my knee is no worse than it would have been walking around inside. I am itching to dig up all those dandelions I mowed and trim the edges and weed the veggie beds and finish the berries and.... but I won't. There is more asparagus to pick and I generated a lot of clover mulch for the various beds. I was momentarily stalled when a flock of about a dozen silvereyes descended on the two junior plums which are in bloom. It never occurred to me that they were nectar eaters but those sharp little bills are perfect for sticking in flower blossoms. As long as I didn't move they were happy to hop from flower to flower, hanging upside down when necessary, drinking their fill about 8 feet from me. When the flock devolved to two birds I apologised and restarted the lawn mower.

My knee has made no progress from my last post. I went in to work on Thursday to attend the festivities around the Director-General's retirement from the Library. She is a very nice person and she will be missed. I spent the rest of the time getting signatures on my exit documents proving I didn't have any books checked out or laptops borrowed. That involved walking all over the Library so I left a little early and went to pick up my new contacts. They are a bit uncomfortable but new lenses always take a while to break in. They are also green, so my eyes are their natural colour for the first time in my lens-wearing life.

I have D's second sock 75% finished and I have been switching over to finishing off the black alpaca while watching the fourth and final season of The Unit. It was one of my favourite TV shows that was shown sporadically on Aussie free-to-air TV and now pops up on cable. The characters are so well acted and the plots a constant string of James Bond/Bourne exploits. Sure, I know it's not real, although the writers came up with the idea about holding captives on a ship at sea before it was known the CIA was doing just that. I suppose 4 seasons is all that could be expected, but their final season spent a lot of time in Afghanistan, which is an ongoing series of its own. I'll have to make do with Burn Notice.

My current reading is The Road by Cormac McCarthy, which so far is bleak.

My genealogical investigations turned up my great-grandfather working at the Schenectady Locomotive Works according to the 1880 census. Sometime after that the family moved out of New York but the 1900 census was burned in a fire. Good Wives has also shed light on early New England life where the upper class employed the lower class to sweep their floors and mind their children. The idea of the communion of the town only stretches so far and didn't stretch to equality of the sexes much less to class rank. It seems that the Puritans only wanted to escape parts of Old England.

2010-09-21T00:17:00.003+10:00

There has been no blogging because I have done nothing but lie around and heal. I attempted to go back to work last week and almost made it through two days but then couldn't get out of bed for 3 days. My doctor doesn't know what is going on but thinks it will "settle down" in time. It does seem to be very slowly getting better. The redness (not bruising but a red discoloration) had subsided a bit and the swelling has gone down a little. I have swelling in the foot on that leg, which to me means there is something going on in the knee, because I had a lot of trouble with that after the surgery. It gets very stiff if I stand or sit for any period of time, and getting it mobile again takes some concerted effort. I have full range of movement and weight bearing; it's just sore and swollen and stiff. This has been very discouraging and means that I will not see much of work up to my last day before retirement. To be honest, I think there's a whole lot of things going wrong with my body at the moment and I think they may be related to stress that started up when my sister was dying and has not let up since. The combination of the trip in the US, coming home and immediately seriously injuring my knee, and simultaneously facing the end of my working life (however much I might be looking forward to having my time my own) has taken its toll. My right arm from shoulder to hand is very sore (muscles not joints). I am depressed in the sense that I recognize the clinical signs, and depression from being unhealthy leads to feeling worse. Now that I am still living in a house with a garden, I'm dying to get out and play in it but all I've managed to do was plant some peas. The lawn could feed a sheep or two. Since I am unable to physically do any of the things I wanted to do when I had all this free time, I feel pretty useless. The cat and I lie in bed while I read or nap. I get up in the evenings for TV and knitting. This has gone on for far too long. I'm going to attempt a minor excursion tomorrow just to see if I can. Grocery shopping last week nearly killed me. I did get the electrician in to replace all the light fittings which look much nicer, especially the light over the kitchen table; I didn't realize how dim it was in there until I had a new lamp. I must try to get to my optometrist and pick up replacement contact lenses as one has a chip and the other is just too old and gunky.

Swans news: They lost to the Bulldogs in the second round of the finals. It was a tight match and they only lost by a small margin but the Dogs just fought harder than my boys did. A sad end to Roosy's coaching career but at least he's going to stay around the club so his mentoring role can continue.

Book report(s): I finished the series that began with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo tonight. The second and third novels should be read as one and don't expect the same sorts of fireworks as in the first one. I literally could not put the last one down tonight until I finished it. There was a bit of bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo in the middle made difficult for me (who has a horrible time remembering names) trying to keep all the Swedish characters straight. Definitely worth the read but I wouldn't be surprised if people get turned off during the second & third because you want to shake these people and tell them to pay attention. My BBBB The Great Game is also finished and I've started reading Good Wives by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. I've gone from Central Asia in the 19th century to New England in the early years of settlement. Since I've found so many of the strands on my family tree all go back to settlers in Massachusetts in the second half of the 17th century, I thought I'd read about what life was like for them.

2010-09-06T14:38:00.004+10:00

There has been little to report because I have been unable to do much the past couple of weeks. My knee has still been very swollen and painful and
I have been unable to sit at a table or desk for any significant time. The doctor now does not know what is causing the problem. There is quite a bit of discolouration (not bruising) on the knee. It is gradually getting better. I was thinking last week that I might make it back to work this week but I didn't think I could sit at a desk for 5 hours. It feels pretty good today, but the test will be how it feels tomorrow. I have had some mystifying blood test results so I am due to see the doctor again this Weds.

My photographic contributions to the blog today are the latest pair of socks finished, which are not very interesting but some times we just need socks. The floral arrangement is from the back yard: daffs, hellebores, and Earlicheer narcissus. Fortunately I no longer have a flower eating cat so I can enjoy having flowers inside.

The garden needs attention desperately. We've had lots of rain and there is a lot of weeding and probably a lawn mowing needed but I am not yet up to that vigorous work. I picked one stalk of asparagus today!

Swan news: We won our elimination final in spite of ourselves. As is often the case, they fell asleep in the third quarter and almost had the game snatched away from them. We had stunning exhibitions of players running into each other, passing the ball to the opposition, hitting the goalpost, and other unpleasant tactics. However, I am very pleased with how well the new boys are stepping up and making a real contribution. Losing Kirk (as well as the god-like Roos) will be tough but things don't look as dim as I thought they would be at the start of the season. Our next match is against the Bulldogs, whom we beat 2 weeks ago so in theory we should be able to progress in the finals.

2010-08-29T00:39:00.004+10:00

Well, it's not a bone ripped lose. The piece of bone seems to have been there all along and I've just manged a soft tissue injury to my knee. I can already feel it on the mend and I intend to live the last week of my working life at work. I can sit now without undue pain and walking is pretty OK but I get stiff in whatever position I leave the knee in for any substantial period. Today I worked a little while on the berries and all my leg joints from ankle upward are complaining about the balancing act I have to do to prune and tie them up. I will spend a quiet day with the laundry basket tomorrow making dent in ironing.

Swans news: Despite my doom staying they played an impressive last two matches and are in the finals with a chance. Since the young players are stepping up and playing as the were part of the machine, I'm trying my to get too excited. I'd still love to go but have no companion and should go buy tickets on Monday.

I've been spending my evening sorting through black alpaca, removing the short cuts and VM and putting the mostly clean stuff in a bag to wash. This the end of the black alpaca and I have a few ideas floating around to for turning it into something useful.
In the meantime I've been reading Pushing Ice by Alasair Reynolds, the beginning of which is more accessible to new readers of his work, but it gets plenty weird toward the end. I've also been pushing my family histories back to them all arriving in Massachusetts around 1630. I guess it was inevitable they all married each other.

2010-08-20T21:51:00.003+10:00

Well, I don't know if my medical news is good or not. When I saw my surgeon on Thurs. he said those words I have heard several doctors say over my body: "I've never seen anything like it." I haven't torn my ACL because I no longer have one. It appears from the X-ray that I have ripped a piece of bone off my leg. How is a mystery and I had a C/T scan today to get a better look at the offending area. Should this actually be the case, there is no cure but rest and healing, another 4 weeks of it. I also have to be sure I don't lose range of motion in the new knee while the bone heals. I may be lucky to get a week back at work before I retire. This is not how I imagined my career at the Library ending, with a whimper, to be sure.

Next week will be the 19th anniversary of the wedding of me and my Bear. It seems a long time and just yesterday. I still can't believe I've been a widow for 3 years. Life throws strange things at you, some spectacularly good and some woefully awful.

2010-08-15T11:10:00.004+10:00

Knews of the knee: It's amazing how your horizon shrinks when you're injured. I was planning and thinking years ahead last week and now my life is aimed at Thursday when I see my surgeon. He has always been speedy in scheduling procedures so I hope this agony has an end. From my Internet research I think I have torn my ACL while putting on shoes and don't know if it's because the knee replacement isn't totally healed. So It's the RICE routine (rest, ice, compression, elevation) and judicious use of painkillers. I have a TV with DVDs (Dexter, Weeds), my Macbook with videos (Grey's Anatomy, Torchwood). I guess voting next Saturday will be an adventure.

It seems that I neglected to post that my battle with Wooly Knob Fiber Mill ended when they delivered the fleeces they had processed to BFLB's place the day before I left. I had brought vacuum bags and we managed to squeeze the fleeces into my luggage. There are 4 Shetland fleeces and a BFL and are beautiful: soft and lovely to spin. I have just finished spinning the merino/bamboo blen, so I might take on one of the Shetlands next. Some shades of fawn, blank and white.

I've enjoyed the benefits of our HD sports channel to watch baseball two mornings in a row. I miss baseball so watching any team is fun. Remembering the cadence, the language, the overwhelming statistics, remembering my childhood being linked to baseball (it was the only sport my father watched). My first husband taught me how to boxscore baseball and took me to my only major league games and frequent college games in the Chapel Hill. There a relaxed atmosphere of baseball that is different from cricket. It took me several years to stop comparing the two sports. The memories flood back but I won't bore you. 50+ years of watching it.

Swans news: somehow they managed to win yesterday and despite themselves remain in the eight. They don't have a hope I think of winning against the top of the ladder teams so they won't last the finals. I hope J and I make it to more matches next year.

Book report: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, who wrote The Kite Runner. It is the story of two women in Afghanistan from the time of the Soviet invasion to the rule of the Taliban. We women of the affluent west with our TVs and dishwashers and comfortable, independent lives with law and culture supporting us have no idea what our sisters under the rule of Islamic fundamentalism endure. No doubt there are women in the west who live with brutal violent husbands but the law, in theory, is on the victim's side. In Kabul, women have no rights and women get their freedom only by turning the violence against their oppressors and then paying the ultimate price. The book is an agonizing and often depressing read, but one that reminds us perhaps of why we are fighting in this country against these brutes who believe they have divine right to abuse women. Men who demand artists to paint pants on the legs of flamingos because that much bare leg, even on a bird, is a sin.

2010-08-07T18:50:00.004+10:00

Well, my first week home has been less than fantastic. The hardest part of the flight home (except for Qantas having no record of me paying for my ticket) was the long progression out the door of the plane, down an endless ramp, through Immigration, waiting through the last of the luggage to snag mine, an endless queue through Quarantine, an endless walk to drop off luggage for the flight to Canberra, a long wait to get on a bus, a long bus ride and another endless walk to the very last gate to get on the plane. While the chill in Canberra was a welcome change from the humid blanket of the US. I was glad I had acquired a jacket overseas which I could easily pull out of my suitcase.

I have then suffered through the worst jet lag I have ever had. Whether it was partially my medical conditions aggravated by lack of sleep or whatever, I was nauseous, extremely tired, headachey and in pain. Just as it was starting to lift on Friday I injured my right knee. I don't know how I did it. I think it is just a soft tissue strain of the still healing tissues. I was very pleased with the new knee's performance on the trip but today I am in agony. Rest, ice, and waiting are all I can do. All the muscles that had stopped hurting when the knee was replaced are now reminding me of what they are capable of when annoyed.

The Imp became a limpet for many days, sleeping with me and trying to attach herself to me whenever I sat down, which led to a few disagreements about what is permissible. Of course she wants to camp on my knees now. The wattle is indeed in bloom, I saw snow on the mountains and we've been having lots of frost.

Book reports: I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo on the trip and it is a great thriller. I watched the movie on the plane back and was very disappointed. All the nuances of the characters were smoothed out an a happy ending supplied. Read the book but skip the movie. I also just finished another ethics-based sci-fi by L. E. Modesitt Jr, Adiamante. While you can always tell where he is going in his novels, the journey is enjoyable. This trip resulted in zero books purchased and no food either.

2010-07-31T00:10:00.004+10:00

Well, I told you I wasn't going to post while I was away and I've just about met that promise. I arrived at point of entry a day early as BFLB had to go to her health care professionals to start a new drug trial today. So I get a day to unwind, get the vision of miles of interstate out of my head, and prepare for the flight home. I got to see just about every one I wanted to to see, but I have been sick with a chest cold for a fortnight and, as predicted, it is lifting just as I am about to step on a plane and be exposed to a new group pf germs. So I coughed my way through several states and reluctantly left the reception after my sister's memorial early. The service was moving and funny and sad, although I could have contributed a few things about being the "little sister" of the person the friends remembered. Instead my brother and I got weepy in one of the back pews in her Lutheran church. She was the dynamo that kept a lot of relationships going, including our dysfunctional one, or rather created a family out of people only half related.

There have been few days while I've been here when the temperatures were below 90F and the humidity is like a wet blanket. This is why I don't travel to the States in summer. I did have one lovely midwestern day in Ohio and got to see an enormous golden moon lift above the corn. I finished one sock and started its mate, but the humidity really makes my hands hurt.

Of course, every one here including my two brothers wants me to come back here, just as every one in Oz wants me to stay there. I am still torn on the issue but for now (until the health care situation here shakes itself out) I still call Australia home. I especially miss the Imp. It will be lovely to lose the grip of humidity and see how far the wattle is blooming.

2010-07-09T15:39:00.003+10:00

As one might have expected, my sister did not last long with that diagnosis. Like the Bear, she passed on within a month, dying July 2. July 1 was That Anniversary and to have my sister follow close behind was a like a hammer hitting me twice. Here I was supposed to be taking time off to prep the house and I didn't get much of that done. I got a cold then which kept me in bed for several days and the remaining time has been spent frantically planning a trip to the States. My sister's memorial is the 17th.

BFB has her own rocky journey. Her blog is here. I couldn't go to the US without checking in on her so I'm doing another rambling road trip that gets me to see a few folks at short notice while probably leaving me flat. I'll be back the beginning of August and this time I don't promise to blog on the road. It's a test drive of my wits and new knees. I did have the very pleasant experience of the dr's receptionist verifying my birth date when I rolled up to his surgery because she couldn't believe the person standing in front of her was the age on my records. I must be doing something right because this happens quite frequently. I guess the fatigue doesn't show, or all the sleeping I do to compensate has other benefits.

2010-06-27T13:18:00.004+10:00

Where have I been? Working, thinking about my friends and family so far away, trying to get ready for retirement and downsizing, knitting socks, watching Masterchef Australia. I love to cook but this season they seem to be aiming more at restaurant style foods and not stuff I'd whip up at home. Like pigeon with truffles. Instead I made a pot of curried cauliflower soup and have the makings for more pumpkin soup. In winter I live on soup, bread and fruit, usually pears and mandarines. At least the Masterchef trio have allowed desserts into the competition, and there are fewer contestants who have never made pasta/meringue/pastry/mousse as they had last year. Unfortunately the show airs right at the time I would normally be eating my dinner and therefore I am sometimes skimping on my dinner meal in order to watch other people cook.

I've been reading too. Whipped through William Gibson's Idoru, which wasn't as good as the others I have read recently (i.e., Pattern Recognition), and Janet Envanovich's Finger Lickin' Fifteen, which was a hoot as always. I am now in Darwinia by Robert Charles Wilson. Of course, there can't help but be comparisons to the S.M. Stirling change saga but there's a very different tone due to the time when the change took place: 1912 vs 1998.

I spent yesterday driving all over Canberra shopping and today feel like I've been run over by a truck. I bought a granite mortar & pestle (I know--how have I cooked this long without one?) and a rug for the living room to replace the grotty thing in there now. My challenge is how to get the old rug out and the new one in without getting assistance to move furniture. And what will the Imp think of it? I also bought new ceiling light fittings for the lounge and bedroom and ordered a new pendant lamp for the kitchen. I spent a lot of time fruitlessly looking for a new kitchen table. Everyone wants to sell dining room table for 8 and I just want a square or oblong table with simple wooden chairs for my kitchen. It is out there somewhere but I tramped around a lot without finding it.

Thinking about my sister also got me back on the genealogical front, adding details about the maternal line. Ancestry just added a lot of land titles and I found my great grandfather's land grant in Benton, Pennsylvania. I also found out how the exotically named Naomi LaPorte ended up marrying into the Rhone family line: French refugees, which is perhaps where my mother's myth that we were descended from General Lafayette's family arose.

The next 4 weeks are to be spent cleaning out junk. I'll get a skip on Monday and start heaving stuff in it. No time to be sentimental about rusty tools formerly the Bear's. I can't use them and nobody else wants them so out they go.

Swans news: They played horrendously Sat. night against the Pies and lost badly. Somehow we manage to stay in the 8 but playing like that won't keep us there. For the first time I saw Roosy totally lose it at quarter time and give them an earful. They deserved it. Back to watching the other team play and an accasional defensive play. J and I turned off in disgust after our usual round of sms-ings.

Spinning: I wound off 450 m. of plied white alpaca that looks pretty darned spiffy if I do say so. Somebody suggest I try selling it online but I don't know if that is worth the effort. I do seem to be spinning faster than I can knit and I already have a LOT of yarn in the stash. Once I finish the socks currently under construction I can get back to serious knitting. I'm plying another lot of the red I've shown previously and I've plucked from the stash a hamk of SW merino from Laughing Rat Studio in a colourway called house finch: purple brown and blue.

In 4 days it will be July 1 and the third anniversary of his death. It seems like yesterday and yet feels like an eon. I could never have pictured myself living alone and making major decisions about my future by myself. Not having someone smarter than you to bounce ideas off makes me unsure of myself sometimes. I seem to have accepted that my future will be a single one, but there still isn't a day that goes by that I don't wish for him back. "What if" is pointless but and easy game to play. I miss him.

2010-06-14T10:17:00.006+10:00

Just wanted to check in to tell you where I've been. Since it's a long weekend here (Queen's Birthday) and I can now stay with dear MIL, I went to Sydney for 2 days. We had our usual fun time, eating Chinese food, watching animation DVDs (The Incredibles and Shrek) and I went to see the Bear's final resting place in the cemetery. It was my first chance to see the plaque I had ordered. I also took the opportunity of using the maps I downloaded for my US GPS device to find my way around Sydney. I never drove in Sydney when the Bear was alive because he knew (or believed he knew) all the back roads to get around. I sometimes had a hard time convincing him that they might have built new roads since he last lived there (like the Eastern Distributor). But now I have a GPS device named Mandy who can direct me to where I want to go. She doesn't always use the most direct roads but she does get you there. She got J and I to Kensington and she got MIL and I to Watsons Bay. And why Watsons Bay? Anybody knows that one: Doyle's. I've eaten there many times since 1986 when X2 and I managed to get from Kings Cross to Watsons Bay to eat at this fabled restaurant. It hasn't changed in all the years, except the prices have gone very far up. Having said that, I had the most perfect (and huge) piece of barramundi and their awesome chips, and didn't begrudge the total. To the right is our view of Sydney CBD from the beach and you can see what a gorgeous day we had, even if it was a bit windy. Above to the left is a view of the Heads from the top of the hill going down to the Bay.

MIL and I are already planning another trip, maybe going into the city so I can stock up at David Jones food hall, or even go to Galaxy bookstore, as if I needed more sci-fi to read. I have to keep kicking myself repeatedly to remind myself that I am trying to reduce the number of books in this house no matter how Amazon or other places try to entice me.

I am almost finished with Deceiver, which is the latest in C.J. Cherryh's Foreigner series and is so engrossing that you could easily just sit down and read in one sitting. But then I'll have to wait a long time for the next one. I'm operating under the rule of reading big books first, so I will tackle hardbacks before paperbacks. My BBBB is now The Great Game, and it progresses a bit faster than I'd like in a BBBB, but it is fat. It's about the battle between Britain and Russia over the routes in Central Asia where the two empires came into contact, with Russia flexing it's muscles and Britain defending India. Of course, all a precursor to events of today, or even yesterday when Russia invaded Afghanistan leaving a mess behind.

Home again and housework calls, things like laundry and cleaning the kitchen floor. And weeding the book stock as well.

2010-06-10T15:41:00.004+10:00

Ok, then, the high-knit-content post. To the right we have what I have been spinning for the last few weeks. It's wool, I can't remember where I bought it, but I think somewhere on one of the jaunts with BFLB on my last trip to the states. I've spun and plied a full big bobbin and am on my way to doing it again so I should have enough of it to make something like a vest. The yarn is rustier red than it appears on my monitor but you know the drill about monitors & colours. It's really nice to spin and easy to do if I pre-draft it because it was pretty compressed.

At left are my first hand spun socks. I posted the photo of the sock wool a while back and they are now socks (as yet un-worn). I cleverly placed the socks for the photo so the foot of one is covered. I was unsure of the yardage on my spun wool so the first sock got feet made from leftover wool from commercial sock yarn, but I did have enough to knit the entire sock for its match. Not much left over. I should be careful to spin more finely in the future to squeeze the 400 yds out of 4 oz of wool. I bought some pretty SW BFL in purples and plums for socks (I can't seem to find enough purple socks in my drawer) and I have some SW merino, bamboo and nylon to spin as well. That's in green and brown and blue.

I was going to post a photo of one of my mother's sweaters that I am reluctantly going to discard but the light wasn't catching the details in the cables. The sweater is about 35 years old. I learned to knit late in life because my mother always kept me supplied in knitted clothes (no socks, tho). The sweater in question is a rose red and is covered in cables with rib sleeves. It is knit in acrylic because at the time it was knit I was living in North Carolina and had little use for heavy knitware. I've worn it regularly over the past 35 years but it is developing holes and I can't easily match yarn. Now that I know how to knit I can see all the mistakes, especially the cables that went in the wrong direction. I wore the sweater happily for 15 years without knowing there were mistakes in it which should prove something. Now I need room for new products of my own needles, so I will bid it good bye. It owes me nothing in wear, and I have a much more substantial example of my mother's knitting that is of the same vintage, so it is not the last product of her needles. I only learned how to knit and purl as a young person, and could knit scarves, but that was it. Knitting patterns were entirely in a foreign language and I got easily scared by the dire warnings from the yarn manufacturers about what would happen if you didn't use their yarn. Now I'll knit anything but lace and hope I'll conquer that someday. I used to think socks were impossible and now they are mindless.

Swans news: They lost again to Hawthorn but won a gusty match at the SCG against Essendon last week in similar conditions to the match J & I attended, i.e., rain. They fought back from behind and really played hard to grab the game away. This weekend they play Port in Adelaide at night and I am uncertain whether they can manage this. Let's hope they don't listen to my uncertainty and gloom and rise above.

2010-06-08T23:33:00.002+10:00

I had planned to post a heavy-knit-content post with photos of what I've been working on but I got some news yesterday that has knocked me sideways. My sister was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and has months to live. I have non-traditional family with children of different parents all calling each other sister and brother altho we are not, and we have relatively large gaps between ages. The person I refer to as my sister is the other child of my mother by a different father, and I grew up with her for my younger years. She is 14 years older than I. We only became relatively friendly after our mother died and we are not what I'd call busom buddies. I would have expected my elder brother (different mother, same father) who is 85 to go first. But my sister G has fought off breast cancer, which killed our mother. The chemo probably triggered the leukemia and the prognosis is not good. I was surprised how hard it hit me. I just got off the phone with her and she is doing as well as can be expected, and does not expect to see me before the end. I will go over for her memorial and she told me to wear a nice dress (!). When I told her I don't own a dress, she permitted me to wear slacks. While I had decided not to go to the states this year, it looks like I will be anyway, under different circumstances.

I didn't get much sleep last night and hope I can do better tonight.

2010-05-30T09:52:00.003+10:00

When the Bear and I got married 19 years ago, Uncle John gave us a novelty garter with a musical charm that played the wedding march. There is something about the electronic warbling of that thing that instantly irritates and/or intrigues cats. Every so often when I'm digging in my underwear drawer, I activate it and the cat goes bananas. Bear, I still miss you every single day and have only just made it to not crying every day. Pink's song "Who Knew?" makes me cry because it makes me think of his leaving me. No he didn't leave me on this plane of existence but he's just as gone and three years is rapidly approaching.

I'm reading a fascinating book, Foreign Babes in Beijing by Rachel Dewoskin. Aside from its witty observance of China and her fellow foreign babes, it is a startling view of a person who did something most of would never dream of doing. Admittedly Rachel came from an American family deeply involved in China from her childhood, but you or I would not just take off for Beijing on any job we could wangle just to go live there with our university level Chinese. It would be like me deciding to go to Nairobi because I speak what I know is a smattering of Swahili. To top the whole foreign immersion experience, she signs up to be an actress in a TV soap opera (whose title is the book's) to play a version of herself as seen through Chinese eyes, which is hardly flattering or even accurate. All Westerners smell of milk? I recommend this book highly as a view into China that would be hard to get otherwise. I am fascinated with modern China and Japan, especially how they are incorporating Western idioms into their culture. (My Ph.D. thesis was going to be on how modern technology had been expressed in Swahili) Culture clash is one of the things I find fascinating, even in science fiction. One of the best is the "Foreigner" series by C.J. Cherryh, latest volume just out.

Yes, I do speak a smattering of Swahili. In grad school I specialized in African linguistics and learned Swahili and Hausa, and took classes in Twi and a Bantu language. I actually taught Swahili for a year. It's a relatively simple language to learn, if you can call a language with 9 noun classes and whose verb tenses are expressed by adding a syllable in the middle of the verb. Of course, none of this gets you a job in the real world, hence I fell back on my original (i.e., from junior high) plan and became a librarian. I've been a librarian of sorts since 1976 and it's taken me many places and I've made lots of friends that have changed my life. After all I met X2 in a library, and met the Bear only because my work institution happened to have the creaky frame that was the Internet in 1990.

It is bucketing rain here and I have gotten over the novelty and am glad the reservoirs are filling up, but I'd really like to get in the garden to tidy it up. I know I'm going to have to hire a professional to do the ultimate clean up, but there are weeding and pruning I could do. I dug some potatoes to put in the pot of split pea soup I have on the stove and had to prune back a rose bush to get at them. I also retrieved another pumpkin, this time for use as veg not soup. In the supermarket yesterday I bought "buttermilk scones" hoping for American biscuits and, while the texture is about right, there's something off in the taste. Too sweet too. I was intrigued by frozen sweet potato fries until I read the label and found out they were imported from Canada! How on earth did sweet potatoes from Canada end up in my frozen food aisle? Canada is of course famous for its sweet potatoes.

2010-05-23T11:11:00.004+10:00

Swans news: yesterday J and I went to Sydney for the day to watch the Swannies play. Before details of the day I will explain how we managed this. When the Swans first sent out membership materials for Canberra members, they told us they were changing the package, due for the most part to the ACT government no longer forking over a share of the money to hold the match at an ACT venue. This had reduced the number of matches being held in the ACT. The Swans instead offered us a package of one match in Canberra (last weekend's match vs the Bulldogs which I missed due to illness), one in Sydney at the SCG and one in Melbourne. Both J and I thought that a decent bargain and paid our membership. When the actual sign-up package arrived, the match in Sydney was at ANZ Stadium, which is the huge arena built for the Olympics. You have to walk miles from public transport or even from the entrance to your seat. I called the membership office and reminded them that they had promised us SCG tickets. After much rustling of papers on their end, they acknowledged that yes, they would honor the SCG promise. So, we signed up. When the final membership package arrived, the materials all said ANZ stadium. I got nowhere with trying to contact the membership office online but J took the matter further, partially because she was already angry at them holding a night match during Earth Hour. Somehow she managed to wangle us 2 member's tickets to a match of our choice at the SCG. I feel sorry for those Canberra members who didn't get this opportunity, but I was very satisfied.

So yesterday we did a one day excursion to Sydney, which started off on the wrong foot when my alarm didn't go off and I had to throw myself together in a hurry. Fortunately, due to some precognition, I had gotten everything ready the night before, down to socks and underwear laid out, so I was only a little late. We stopped in Marulan for game snacks (don't ever buy them at the venue) and discovered that the BP in Marulan was selling Krispy Kremes. Thus fortified, we continued and actually made it to the park & ride site (UNSW carpark) without getting lost. The Bear, who knew Sydney intimately, always drove in Sydney and I never paid much attention to details, and they've built new roads since we used to go to Swans matches. We took our bus to the SCG, went to the members office, retrieved our tickets and discovered we had the option of sitting in the Ladies Pavilion.

When I was hoping to get match seats in the SCG, sitting in the Ladies Stand was my dream, built in 1896, it epitomizes to me the charm of the old SCG. This was also our first view of the new SCG since construction was competed. The Victor Trumper Stand (named after a legendary cricket player) had completely absorbed the area formerly known as The Hill. which used to be simply grass and where the unwashed masses watched events and where the loudest commentary on any match's proceedings emanated from. It is all very spiffy, which is why I wanted to sit in the old part of the stands. We got 2 of the last remaining seats undercover (the skies were threatening) and settled in.

Somewhere along the line I had overlooked the fact the the Fremantle Dockers were no longer the walkover they used to be. It looked like cocaine was not the only drug of choice among the WA player community, because these guys were seriously large. They dwarfed our lads and won most contests where mere muscle ruled the day. The umpires didn't help either. We also were missing several key players. Craig Bolton is injured. Mumford is on suspension. Keneally left early, and Jude Bolton and LRT were cycled on and off the field. Henry Playfair did well and kicked his first goal. Official match summary here. In the third quarter the heavens opened and it rained almost the entire rest of the match. I have never before had the luxury of under cover seating so I was very glad we had manged to sit in comfort. Got the bus back to the car and drove home, stopping in Marulan for burgers. I was safely home by 9.30.

The outing only confirmed and refreshed in my mind how lovely going to Swans matches at home in the SCG is. And why tickets to ANZ Stadium are to be avoided (except for finals). There was a decent turnout (about 70% capacity I'd guess). The crowd was lively until the downpour (and it really rained). Nobody in our area was drunk or obnoxious. I think next year J and I might opt for a 3 game SCG membership and buy our Canberra tickets because there are times J can't go to matches here and I don't like going by myself.

I spent the beginning of the week sick with some sort of lurgie (bug) that sapped what strength I had and gave me a sore throat instead. I slept a lot, read a lot, made the Imp infinitely satisfied with me being held captive. My best book of the week was Marion Halligans's The Apricot Colonel. She usually writes about Canberra, so it was nice to read with an idea on my mind's eye of where she was. It would be lovely to have Tilly's as your local drop in spot. The Fog Garden was the first novel of hers that caught my attention, and since it was about a woman whose husband had just died, it planted a subconscious thought in my brain. Never assume that life will always proceed in the fashion your are planning.

Work on Thursday really tired me out, so I am not going to push with anything today so work tomorrow will be bearable. I finally got the brush fencing that screens the front entrance to the house repaired. One more step in renovations. Now I can get at the front garden more seriously.. I noticed that the fencing guy had tromped thoroughly on my iris, so I might sacrifice them rather that trying to figure out how to incorporate them into the landscape. If you don't know and love iris, they don't do well and look scruffy.

2010-05-14T11:08:00.003+10:00

It's sort of been back to work altho I miss a day here and there. I get very tired easily and forget about that problem till I hit a wall. I still am not stable enough to do much yard work and winter has arrived in Canberra. We've had several below zero mornings and frost everywhere. The garden really only needs a tidy and put to bed for the winter so I'm not stressed about that.

This link was passed on thru one of the lists I'm on as a way to get rid of your stash. If I didn't already have a washing machine on its last legs, I'd be tempted to try. All that alpaca would make a spectacular rug. I'd have to do some deep thinking to figure out how raw filthy fibre could end up as a flat shape of any design.

I continue to work on getting the house ready to go on the market, which involves everything from painters to new light fixtures. So far I'm not getting very far since we all know tradesmen don't answer their messages or don't actually submit quotes after they have been to see you. I hope to move into a smaller house with minimal garden, but still have room for my crafts, etc. I have a new mantra: I need a skip.

Book report: I finished Neal Asher's The Line of Polity which was a rip-roaring space opera full of androids and space ships and all that stuff. The sci-fi equivalent of popcorn. I'll probably read more of his; I found a box of book I had packed while moving things out of the Bear's room and found another of his. I also found several books I had forgotten I'd bought so saved me buying them twice! I am now reading Sheri Teppers' Raising the Stones. Her novels are frequently about relations between the sexes but set in some far off imagined space, and told with great sublty, like a flower slowly opening. Her best, Grass and The Gate to Women's Country, are, to me at least, classics. My BBBB continues to be Eleanor and Franklin and I gound a biography of FDR in the box of books.

I must thank S for introducing me to Eat Your Books, a site which has indexed hundreds of cookbooks. You can now have access to all the recipes in your own cookbooks without trying to remember where you saw a recipe, or having a new (or old) ingredient and need a recipe for it. I am waiting for a promised load of a lot of out-of-print books since a lot of my cookbooks date from the '70's and '80's when I cooked a lot more and gave frequent dinner parties. One of the problems I'm having in looking at new houses is my Danish oak dining table which will sit 10 with the leaves out. I haven't given many dinner parties since I got here, but I would like to again so I don't want to sacrifice the table. Besides, I made needlepoint seat covers for the 4 chairs, and have a china cabinet full of bone china and crystal that goes with it.

Tomorrow J and I go to see the Swannies play at Manuka Oval (i.e., in Canberra). The team has already been hit by injuries so our stellar start to the season has stuttered. But we'll be there to cheer them on. Bradshaw has been outstanding and was an inspired trade. In an after-match interview a couple of weeks back, he admitted he hadn't learned all the words to the team song. For you non-Aussies, an AFL team returns to the locker room after a win and gathers in a circle to sing the team song, and all the fans in the stands sing it at the end of a win as well. Strangely, many AFL songs are American in origin with the words changed. Ours is the Notre Dame football song with the words altered.

2010-05-07T08:39:00.003+10:00

I truly outdid myself this week in the tired and befuddled stakes. Wed. is a non-work day that I should really take as a rest day. But there are things an adult has to do in their normal life and non-work days are the only times I have for them. So instead of resting, I had two business appointments on Wed. which involved driving all over Canberra. I got up on Thursday morning believing somehow it was Friday. So instead of going to work I went to my GP, which is what I planned to do Friday morning. I was sitting in the waiting room feeling tired to the point of nausea. On the way home I suddenly realized that I had lost track of Thursday. Fortunately my boss is convinced I shouldn't be working 3 days a week to begin with and my job is less than essential. So I went home and slept for 4 hours. If the fibro pain don't get you, the fatigue will.

I also had a minor fall last Saturday, simply due to vertigo induced by too much bending and turning. Getting up with a knee not in action was interesting, especially with somebody knocking on the front door at the same time. I was very stiff the next day and now have a lovely purple bruise on my bum. My new knee is otherwise progressing beautifully and only needs some more time internal healing and losing a bit of swelling and it will be the equal of the left knee. There is little pain and it's so nice to be able to walk and stand. My hip no longer hurts too.

We've been having a lot of rain here. It's so unusual that I keep being mystified by this strange noise on the roof. We used to go for months without rain and now we are sodden. Of course this stage of my garden needs no rain, and my lawn has grown into a prairie again. I'm still not confident about my ability to push a lawn mower so it will have to stay that way. The Weather Pixie is having some system problems and I hope she will re-appear.

2010-05-01T23:19:00.004+10:00

I attempted to return to work last week, and while the work experience wasn't a disaster, I managed to have it all catch up to me when I pretended that I was back to full functionality. You know, like when I forget I'm sick and do way more than I should. I am reluctantly coming to the conclusion that I cannot work and simultaneously do any work myself on prepping the house for sale. It's work and let somebody else do it, or not work and do things myself. So for the time being I'm hiring people to do things like paint the exterior, do some garden maintenance, etc. I'll take some time off and work at cleaning out and boxing up things for that scaled down minimalist look that seems to matter for house sales. I also have been having trouble getting to sleep. The little twinges of pain that I can ignore when I'm moving around come out to play at night and I still can't sleep on my side.

Today D and I took advantage of the beautiful weather and went out looking at display homes, just out of curiosity and for ideas about decorating (although I don't think I'll take the idea of attaching an entire animal hide to a wall as art). We saw houses that were too small, houses that were too big (and way too expensive), and at least one that was just about right. What I would give for a new kitchen done the modern way. I don't think I'm in danger of redecorating my house so I don't want to leave, because there's a lot of garden that needs to be maintained and I'm just not up to it any more. It did hit home to D today that my downsizing would mean an end to berry jam, but my fans will have to resort to the shops or gourmet food provenders and pay a lot more than they have been paying me.

Swans are currently #2 on the ladder having defeating Brisbane tonight. I did not watch because I also managed to fall today (simple vertigo) and am feeling rather battered. Knowing my body, I'll be sore tomorrow but the bruises will take a few days to appear. I decided instead of raising my blood pressure watching footy I'd coddle myself with British crime dramas.

Book report: Raced through Edge of Evil by J.A. Jance, which was recommended by X2 and it was a ripping read. I'm back at fat sci fi with The Line of Polity by Neal Asher, who is another of the new wave of British space opera producers. I think I have read another of his altho I can't remember which one. I've managed to read 150 pages of this in 2 days so I think that means I like it. This is the second in the Ian Cormac series but I don't think I've read the first. Since he's horribly prolific, I imagine I'll work my way through them. I wish I read quickly enough to get books out of the library, but with the exception of quick shots like the Jance novel, it usually takes me far longer then the library borrowing period to read a book.

2010-04-21T10:34:00.008+10:00

Just to prove I have been doing something while sitting here, the hank above is the 4 oz of BFL I bought from Sheepish Creations in January. It was a pure delight to spin but then BFL always is. I haven't gotten my hand on any of the superwash version but I think it would make superb sock yarn. I was surprised at how what looked like small patches of colour in the roving managed to spread themselves out over the entire hank.

It's been a long slow grind here, but I'm close to being back to functioning normally. Last night the muscles in my right ankle and lower leg decided to go berzerk on me and they are still sore today. I know this is a transient thing (unless this is how the problem my sister is suffering with started) so I will push on. I was going to try driving today and going to grocery shop, but I'll stay home and iron instead. My main problem with the knee is stiffness after being in one position for an extended period. I can sit at a table or desk with my feet flat on the ground but getting up and walking afterward is awkward. I am supposed to go to work next week and it's the sitting at a desk part of it that may hold me back. I also get tired quickly but we al know that FM can be blamed for that as well.

I have been knitting too and these are my latest socks. Opal Neon in red, red, and red, with a little orange and pink. I've started a new pair using the hand spun blue yarn I finished a while back. My first hand spun socks! I also received my copy of Knitted Jackets and it has several designs I like. I have enough pullovers but not enough vests or cardigans/jackets, so that's where my knitting will go. The Irish XO vest it done to the arm holes so I feel like the end is in sight.

My Swannies have been doing very well. J took me to the markets and retired to my house to watch them thrash the Roos on Saturday. There were patches of beautiful flowing football when the team played like a well oiled machine. And this with a team that we still had to watch with player list in hand to answer the "who's that?" questions. Some of the new line up like Bradshaw and Mumford look like really valuable trades. Hannebery was outstanding. We're in 3rd place on the ladder with 3 wins and one loss.

Book reports: I finished Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. It started off promisingly with altered geopolitics, nanotechnology revolutionising society and, for the characters of the story, high 19th century Victorian Britian being the social standard. But somewhere along the line, as the central character grew up, the novel lost its way and sputtered out in a very unsatisfactory ending. I have his Baroque cycle in the to-be-read section and I hope it doesn't leave me disgruntled as well. Eleanor and Franklin is almost too interesting to be a BBBB. I was surprised to learn that Eleanor was very shy and self conscious, due to her atypical upbringing. She was also very conservative in some ways, being in favour of Prohibition and against women's suffrage. She never forgave Franklin for his first infidelity and therefore for most of their public life they were estranged. She still loved him deeply but could never forgive that loss of trust. I'm now reading S.M. Stirling's The Sword of the Lady which is the 5th novel in his series about the US after the Change. The series is quite addictive. I have the latest Peter Corris calling to me, and the latest C.J. Cherryh Foreigner novel due out in a week or so, not to mention the other things in my bookcase. I will be sorry to give up my reading time when I go back to work.

2010-04-07T12:06:00.003+10:00

I have been thinking about fibromyalgia a lot since my adventure in hospital and the way my body continues to throw pain at me all beyond "reasonable" amounts for the action involved. I had my staples taken out yesterday and, while on the scale of painful experiences, this should have been low, I was a basket case. Some of it is natural squamishness about medical procedures, some anxiety about what would or could happen, and some is just unreasonable pain reaction. From MedicineNet.com: "The cause of fibromyalgia is not known. Those affected experience pain in response to stimuli that are normally not perceived as painful." It's so hard to explain why you are in agony when you look and act like a normal person, and even when your rational brain is telling you the pain isn't really as bad as the sensations you are perceiving. I am beginning to think of it as neurological and not rheumatoid-ish. The only medication currently working is Endone, which I understand can knock normal folks out, but with me, it just takes the pain away for a couple of hours. I am now only taking one or 2 a day unlike the regular stream I was getting in hospital.

Meanwhile, I read, watch TV, knit, do my exercises, and otherwise manage healing. It's hard to believe that 2 weeks ago I was being operated on and today I am walking around the house and feeling more or less OK. (Of course, I am always in pain but we don't talk about that)

2010-04-03T15:56:00.003+11:00

Just a quick update to let you know I am alive. I came home from hospital after 6 days and bypassed rehab completely. Apparently they were short of beds and they started me on exercises while I was still in the surgical ward. I was up and dressing myself at 3 days. I did go through a nightmare ride with pain management. The anesthetist didn't really understand fibro pain. I got a spinal injection of morphine instead of a general and that was supposed to cover all my pain needs for 24 hours. After 12 hours I was climbing the walls and begging for my own meds back. Instead I got a morphine pump and still was withheld my normal meds and sleep aids. I didn't sleep for about 3 days until they pulled the pump, put me back on my normal meds, but the on-service dr couldn't believe I still needed sleeping pills so wouldn't give me a full dose. To be fair to the anesthetist, who came to see me later, she really didn't understand how pain works in fibromyalgia, that the pain is in my brain not really in my muscles. I just wish these folks had looked at my medical history, spoken to my GP even, to understand that I had been on the regime for years and that they couldn't just start playing around with pain meds because they thought some arbitrary dose was sufficient. They also dispensed the meds at their convenience and since I am so dependent on several of those drugs, a three hour delays could make me cranky.

I also loathed the hospital. The nurses with few exceptions were super. The food was horrible. I had friends bring me fresh fruit because there was none on the menu and few veggies either. One day I ordered nothing but sandwiches and they were a bit concerned, but I had my fruit and tomatoes. Nothing to drink but coffee, tea, juice or water. The beds had very thin mattresses on a metal base and I had that to add to sleeping problems. That was also my reason for jumping at the option of going home. My nice soft adjustable bed let me sleep for 10 hours straight and also to elevate my leg to reduce the edema.

I am slowly working on the knee, trying to balance bed rest healing and exercises to gain flexibility. It already feels so much better to stand on than the old knee. I am eating out of the freezer. The Imp is delirious to have me back but she doesn't understand why she can't sit on the right side of my lap. On the other hand we have had many games of fetch and lots of petting and cuddling,

2010-03-17T09:28:00.004+11:00

Today you get thought hot off my brain, as long as I can remember what it was I was going to say! Some may know I have a Masters in Linguistics, or that I was ABD (All but dissertation) on the road to a PhD in Linguistics. My field was sociolinguistocs which usually got short shrift in formal linguistics because of the reign of Noam Chomsky, with whom I disagree almost entirely. Chomsky viewed what actually came out of the mouths of speakers as insignificant compared the the black box of language in the brain. Besides the fact that brain research has shown that language is not a black box (read Oliver Saks) unless you consider the brain as a whole as the black box, you know as well as I do that people from different places speak the same language differently. Most commonly this is in pronunciation. I have learned how to spot a Kiwi (New Zealander) in 25 words or less. There are certain phrases that Aussies quote as telling signs, but I hear it in the change of different vowels. "Definite" come out as "difinit"

I've been collecting Australianisms since I got here and add new ones every week. Last week I heard "the duck's guts" meaning "everything" or maybe "kit and caboodle". Now I didn't stop and quiz the speaker about whether this was something his mother said and where she was from, but this was new to me. To Americans, "to take a squiz" or "hit for six" may be as mysterious, but they are now as part of my vocabulary as "the whole nine yards".

What prompted today's post was reading Meg Swanson, who is practically a god to us knitters, write about the enormity of Elizabeth Zimmerman's contribution to knitting. I should give up on "enormity" whose dictionary meaning (Mirriam-Webster) is "an outrageous, improper, vicious, or immoral act" but is almost universally used today as "a huge amount". I can see people needing a noun to use from "enormous" but "enormity" ain't it. But I might as well forget it as I have forgot my battle over less vs. fewer. In linguistics classes, especially grammar and meaning forums, you would frequently be given sentences that you could signify as ungrammatical, and in papers read in conferences votes could be taken about whether sentences were grammatical or not (and what about that black box, Noam?). I have to restrain myself from correcting people or even grilling them on where a phrase came from (dialectology, very not-black-box). Written language is even worse and it's not just non=native speakers who mangle it. Yesterday I got an email from the Library's own book store apologozing for getting a "sir name" wrong.

I've got a lot of phrases from my mother, but I've lived in Australia long enough that I can't even tell now whether I'm using American or Aussie terms for things. I remember my first problem with "haberdashery" which in the US means men's clothing but here means what Yanks would call "notions", those extra bits and pieces for sewing, like tape measures and needles. Americans rarely lose their accents here, but my vocabulary is a dog's breakfast at the moment.

I am also crushed to find out that the only day President Obama will be in Canberra will be the day after my knee surgery. I was ready to stand outside the US embassy and wave a flag but I won't be able to now. I'll be physically close since the hospital is just a mile away but not good enough. Rats.

Another friend is now fighting cancer, and I have been told I better get used to this as I get older. There are a few people my age or older who are disgustingy healthy but for the most part nearly every one I know of my age has some medical condition that they are battling. I know our genetics is not wired for us to live this long, so naturally things start to fail with age. Medical science can keep us alive longer (see BFLB's blog) but the cost in dollars and angst and pain is not insignificant.

Apologies that the Weather Pixie seems to have disappeared again. I haven't removed the link in hopes that the site revives as has happened before.

2010-03-12T14:38:00.005+11:00

Today you get photos. Above is the result of my spinning some of that really long alpaca I showed you before. I spun directly from the locks and it was pretty easy and it seems to be a really firm yarn, due to the very long fibres. I may try it as warp for a scarf.

Next is a shot of my crepe myrtle, one of the many things planted by the precious homeowner in ridiculous places. This is between the two driveways with my next door neighbour. The drought has been so bad it hasn't bloomed in years but all the rain that we have had here has finally coaxed it to bloom. It's right against a utility pole as well, and sometimes gets the not very gentle attention of utility folks. The other pink shrub in front is an oleander which blooms no matter what the weather.

Since I've mentioned rain, I'll tell you that we got 60 mm. in one day this weekend. Thunderstorms and lightning (very very frightening) (sorry, I couldn't help it) and torrential rain. My back yard was soggy and no lawn mowing got done. Today was supposed to be sunny but isn't; it's overcast and breezy and I hope we get some sun because the lawn now needs to be mowed. I have larvested some more potatoes, and continue to get tomatoes.

And here is my main knitting project at the moment, the X & O vest from Folk Vests, knit in a mohair and natural brown wool given to me by BFLB. It's knit in the round, and around me is a long way. Each row seems to take forever. I need 6 repeats of the X and O cables to get to the armholes, and I've done 2. I'm using my Knitpicks Options needles with a long cord.

I am very dissatisfied with how much weight I've gained. Back to what I was before I went on a brand name diet and lost 30 kg. I am not eating all that much and don't snack but I know it's because I am not getting enough exercise. The problem at this particular point is that exercise, even walking, makes my leg muscles spasm and hurt. This is only solved by rest. Only 11 days to my surgery and I hope this will let me walk naturally for the first time in years, and also be able to target weight loss. Since I've decided to postpone my next trip to the states, I need to work on fitness, just to take the trip, even without weight loss.

2010-03-07T10:56:00.011+11:00

I have just looked out the back window into the garden and saw a flock of about 15 silvereyes. They are so tiny and travel in flocks, so you can be surrounded by a dozen tiny twittery jewels. They are common in my back yard, but seeing them sitting in a row on the back fence is not common.

I now have a scanner that works and I have a bunch of old photos to scan and potentially to share with my unknown readers. This is the noble Haile Selassie, when he was still a kitten and not yet noble. He was my first cat and in some sense my favourite cat. He had a very grave and quiet personality, although he was good at cat soccer with a crumpled piece of paper. He lived first in ex-1's dorm room at my uni, then with my parents for a year until we found a place that allowed pets. He moved to Washington from Chapel Hill, and then to Ohio where he finally succumbed to old age at 18. He was loving without being demanding or clingy, a good lap cat and tolerant of the kitten we later introduced into the household. The kitten worshiped Haile so there was no conflict and Haile's nobility at having this small orange thing follow him around and sit next to him was charming. I though all cats were like that and I was very surprised to discover each cat has its own personality.

Here are the almost-Olympics socks, which I finished a few nights ago. I have since started a new pair, back to wool this time, in Opal Neon which is red, several shades of red but red. I am halfway down the leg on the first one. I have also been knitting on the Irish vest but one row is a very long one, since it's knit in one piece. Lots of seed stitch and cables. Unfortunately, I am discovering that after an evening of knitting knit/purl in either ribbing for the sock or seed stitch for the vest and my hands are quite sore the next day. They don't hurt while I'm actually knitting so I refuse to give up, but I try (even though it's excruciating) to do nothing for a little while at least while watching my evening TV. Doing nothing does not come easily to me.

To the left is the produce of my garden from yesterday's work day. I was digging up weeds near the potatoes and noticed they were dying back, so I dug a little further and produced about 8 potatoes, some of which I had for dinner last night. I thought that the eggplants had succumbed to the weather but they had produced fruit even if it is small. Likewise, I thought the beans had given up, but when I looked deeper, I found beans! And of course, a selection of tomatoes, from Black Russians to yellow cherry tomatoes.

Books: I raced through Sue Grafton's U is for Undertow in record time. I am beginning to bore with her style and this one I felt was contrived. You could tell from the way it unfolded how it would end, and Kinsey's chance of being at the right place at the right time was a bit too convenient for me. I am also tired of being stuck in 1988. I am now reading William Gibson's Spook Country, which is spare and elegant and makes you feel slightly off centre.

I am slowly getting the house ready so I can go off to hospital and then recuperate. I washed my bedspread today since yesterday's rain never materialized and now find the forecast for today is 40% chance of rain. I hope it will dry without another rinse. If is stays dry I may mow the lawn. I'm arranging to get my car repaired while I'm unable to drive. My Foxtel box is full of movies and other things of interest. I enjoyed Monarchy which showed the Queen as a very alert and energetic lady, although I still wonder what's in that ever-present handbag. She alone must support the millinery industry of the UK, not only by her own use, but by all the people she receives wearing hats as well.

2010-02-20T16:29:00.004+11:00

Unfortunately, life is back to boring routine leaving little to blog about. The girls went blackberrying again this AM but the berries had passed their peak in the rain and we left with little to show for our efforts (and I fell once). The rain totalled 130mm in my rain gauge. I have lots of pumpkins and the lima beans are climbing vigorously. I had to mow the lawn for the first time in months due to the downpour.

The Imp had her annual vet check and has been put on a diet. I thought she looked a bit chubby and her weight has grown too far. No more "Fussy cat" food for her. Maybe I need to play with her some more.

I have been enjoying the figure skating at the Olympics. I am not officially in any knitting Olympics groups, but I have been charging along on the lime green socks because I can knit on them without thinking. I adore figure skating and we hardly ever see it here in Oz. To make up for that, I am watching all of the cable broadcast stuff, from Estonia to China, seeing all the skaters, not just the top ones which you'd see in the USA. Therefore, I have seen many pairs and men (so far) fall on the ice, which was practically unheard of in the 80's when I was seriously into skating. I have never skated myself, having discovered early on that ice is very hard. With my balance issues (I can't even use crutches) skating would be one big bruise.

I finished Nine Dragons and it was one of Michael Connelly's best. Where Harry goes from here will be very interesting and new territory. I have turned at last to the next S.M. Stirling, The Scourge of God, in his series of The Change. I find them really engrossing and full of detail. The initial trilogy was top notch and I hope he can maintain the momentum. For my BBBB, I have also finished American Colonies and have turned for a change to Eleanor and Franklin, since I realized when visiting Hyde Park how little I really knew. To read in the first page that the Roosevelt ancestor started out in Dutchess County by buying Beekman Swamp, and my great-great-grandfather was born in Beekman, I felt a tie already.

2010-02-13T12:03:00.007+11:00

I'll skip the grovelling abut how I haven't posted. The only valid excuse I have is that I am trying to stay away from the computer for physiological reasons: I have edema in my legs that gets so bad I can barely walk sometimes and sitting for long periods doesn't help. I have to do it at work, but I don't at home. And there are other tasks at hand that involve standing up. We went blackberrying in the mountains a couple of weeks ago and I therefore made blackberry jam. It is the season for zucchinis of blimp proportions and while my own plant hasn't produced any, I have another source. Thus I make zucchini pickle relish, which has some rather addicted fans. Lots of standing.

The photo at left is to demonstrate that both residents of the house are birdwatchers. There are a lot of baby birds around and The Imp appreciates large noisy birds on her front lawn.

The only news I have is that I have a date for my right knee replacement: March 24. So in a little over a month I'll be back in hospital for about 10 days and home for a month. The X-ray showed up a strange growth looking like a second knee cap above the real one. My surgeon said (obviously) that he couldn't tell what it was till he looked at it but now that I know it's there, I can feel it. Oh, and I fell on my right knee again, tripping over a garden hose. but it's mostly a scrape of the sort we got as children and has left no lingering aches.

We have had very unusual weather for Canberra. While I say this, I have been looking at all the photos of Washington in a blizzard, since I have several close friends there, one of who I talk to daily. I actually miss snow. I grew up in New York and remember lots of snowy days, wearing snowsuits to school and rubber boots, sledding down the modest hill near my house. Even 12 years in Ohio didn't dampen my enthusiasm, especially with a fireplace to make things toasty. I don't like driving in snow, especially when so few people know how to drive safely in it, and I don't like that feeling when you put your foot on the brake pedal and the car continues on its original course. Here, however, all we've had is rain. After so long without it, you forget what it's like to be damp. Last night it rained all night, and we had 40mm in the rain gauge this morning and now it's raining again. My tomatoes and pumpkins will certainly appreciate it. Too bad it's too late for the beans. We officially had one of the hottest Januaries on record.

I mentioned a few posts back about an attack of buying spinning fibre on Etsy and here are some of the results of that late night splurge. The batt to the left top is called "Cashmere Camping" from JAHtsemer.esty.com, the bottom pouf is alpaca from Alpaca meadows, the two spirals are Rambouillet from cjdelights, the purple hank is merino & tussah silk from Birds Nest Yarns and the far right is merino and Tencel from Woolgatherings. My fingers itch to spin. However, finances will not be tempted this way again. I will not succumb to insomniac shopping again even when the Aussie dollar is so strong. Besides, I have 2 bobbins of the long brown alpaca spun and I'm dieing to see what it looks like as yarn. In the meantime I am knitting my lime green cotton socks.

Book report: I finished Alistair Reynolds' The Prefect and really liked it. A very far future mystery and a real page turner. I've read most of his work and he is one of the best of the new breed of what seems to be called space opera, but I would just call hard science fiction. With so much of the sci-fi sections in bookstores taken over by fantasy, it's sometimes hard to find good stuff. Another advantage of letting Amazon suggest things, but I rarely buy a new author without being able to read the front and back matter. I'm not as bad as the Bear was, since he read the end of novel before the beginning. Heresy! I understand Reynolds has a new novel out but I will attempt to stay away from bookstores for a while. I've started Michael Connolly's latest Harry Bosch novel, Nine Dragons. I expect to race through it like I do most of the series.

2010-01-29T10:27:00.005+11:00

To the right is what I bought from Sheepish
Creations when they were having a sale. Two hanks of BFL but no choice of colour. I am not disappointed.

I have been very careful not to spend money and then I had a visit from my dear MIL and she is a bad influence. We spent most of Weds at the mall, doing things like going to Medicare, having lunch, seeing Avatar in 3D. But she was very taken with the product of my bread machine. I explained that it would only do one type of bread and that it had no "bake only" cycle which is what I need to make sourdough in it. She also decided that my toaster was too old (it was yellow plastic and bought about 15 years ago and can be temperamental). She decided she would buy me a new toaster (it you are thinking Cylon you know I can relate) so we went off to Myer while in the mall, and we chose a toaster and she also replaced my electric knife which had died a while ago. It is much easier to cut homemade bread with an electric knife. While we were in small appliances I took a look at bread machines and of course fell in love with one of the most luxurious models. MIL insisted that I needed it and I succumbed. This one will do everything except slice the bread and butter it. We had to come home and do a test loaf before we went out to dinner. It is faster than the old machine, has a "bake only" cycle and you can even specify how you like your crust. It produces a loaf that is more standard in dimension than the tall loaf produced by the old Panasonic. Oh, and BTW, MIL wants the old bread machine! I am now testing the new Breville on pumpernickel which the old machine made bricks of. My credit card took another hit.

I have not been sleeping well, or rather, I have not been sleeping. Falling asleep before 2AM is the exception, not the rule, and though I needed to see my GP, I simply could not get up at 6AM today after not getting to sleep until 3AM last night. You see, I am now back to walking around malls, working, etc. and my legs have started to hurt again. I spent a day taking the ornaments off the Christmas tree while MIL was here which of course is all standing, What do I do when I can't sleep? I try reading. I toss and turn, I play Mah-jong, read blogs, have toast. None of those worked last night so I headed back to Etsy and naughtily bought spinning fibre. The LAST thing I needed but my will power is very low in the early morning. Too bad I can't swap some of the alpaca for it. I have started spinning the long alpaca straight from the locks and, I might be wrong, but I think this is strong enough to be warp. I of course need to sample, but 6" long fibres tightly spun feel strong enough for warp if they can stand abrasion from the heddles and reed.

I have cast on the Irish XO vest from Cheryl Oberle's Folk Vests in Brook's Farm moorit wool & kid mohair (a gift from BFLB) and a pair of summer socks in Katia Mississippi 3 in lime green. I am rethinking the cabled cardie as another simpler pattern has caught my eye and I am in the mood for something simple. There's also the possibility of knitting Girl Friday in Berocco Softwist Bulky which I bought at half price on the last trip to the states with the Bear.

Last evening I was alerted to some commotion in the back yard involving a lot of unusual squawking. I took myself and the camera outside to find the plum tree festooned with juvenile king parrots. They didn't really care about me so I watched the parents feed and fly off, and the babies retire to the power lines in the back. I could walk right up to them and snapped away hoping to get the action of the parents regurgitating food into a baby (just as big but dependent). Unfortunately it was so far into dusk that I only got silhouettes. This is the first time I have seen young king parrots in my back yard so I am glad that all the Cheeps have produced new parrots. I also heard on a podcast at work yesterday that superb parrots are making a comeback and I now know that they are in my neighbourhood as well. They prefer a particular type of acacia which I should research.

2010-01-24T22:01:00.003+11:00

The day before Australia Day is about to dawn, I am finally back on-line. I have been sick for 2 full weeks, and only now am not totally exhausted. Back to work tomorrow, still coughing a little. I'm sorry I deserted my reading audience but there was nothing left to write about unless you want to know how many boxes of tissues I went through. I managed to tack a cold on the end of the infection so I ended up blowing my nose a lot even though my head was clear when the infection started.

I finished Mappa Mundi and it ended as a good thriller ought to, although I still can't believe the main premise of the science part of it would be manageable in our lifetime, and the novel was set pretty squarely in the present day, with a few computer whiz bangs to make it all work. I raced throug C.J. Box's Open Season, which is the first in his series on a fish & game warden. A real page turner even if you did sort of see it coming. I tried reading a straight novel, and found it too close to reality for me. I didn't want to read about somebody else's unhappy childhood when I have one of my own. So I've started Alastair Reynolds' The Prefect, and while I don't remember a lot of the details of his universe, it feels more comfortable than 1954 suburbia. I read to escape, not dwell in the past.

It's been a blue day here as I miss the Bear most on Sundays because we had a Sunday routine that I can't replicate by myself. My dear MIL arrived this afternoon for a 3 day visit. She is always welcome here. We'll go see Avatar together and take down the Christmas tree.

2010-01-17T00:26:00.007+11:00

Good news or bad news? How about good: here are my completed knitting projects pushed along by enforced house arrest. The shell is knit out of Cyrstal Palace Choo-choo yarn, in the colourway actually featured at Yarnmarket. I picked up balls here and there until I had enough for the shell. I have a weakness for ribbon and there's more in the stash. It took my a very long time to finish this which has nothing to do with the pattern or the yarn, just intertia. It fits, but will be worn under another layer for my aged modestry. The other is my second attempt at lace (that is, successful attempt) and is only feather and fan in Touch mohair. It is soft and scrunchable and I don't think I'll block it. It went in with the moth-balled winter stuff. I am next starting on a cabled zip front cardie, which will require me to sit down quitetly and establish the pattern. Out of medium grey handspun in sorta bulky weight. I am also going to start a vest an I'm leaning towards a Chris Bylsma design. Trying to use a gift from BFLB of merino and kid mohair in a toast brown. What can I say--I'm addicted to cables.

Healthwise, no good progress to report. I continue to cough and wheeze. I saw my GP on Friday morning and he said the hospital was not needed but put me back on steroids and more antibiotics and wants me off work and to see him on Tues. So I cough and wheeze and am generally tired because I can't sleep because I cough and wheeze. The steroids do make my RA better--my hands are much less inflamed but I still can't get my rings on, so I guess the joints are still stuffed. Without steroids, the RA in my sternum would be screaming by now and I'd have to be on steroids. I have a lung infection that is apparently going around and causes weeks of coughing. Coughing is my friend, because I am still coughing gunk up, but it's not fun. I am very tired and would love to nap, but find myself parked in from of the TV watching National Geographic and BBC dramas. I enjoy Torchwood, Innocent, Carrier, Eureka, and The Story of India. As you can see my tastes are eclectic and I trhow in the odd nature documentary or sci-tech explanation. No day time soaps for this viewer.

I am also still on my quest for perfect bread. I bought one sourdough starter through the mail and have 2 more on order. I am reading Classic Sourbough
which seems like a very sensible and down to earth approach. I watched a show on The Food Lover's guide to the Planet (Nat Geo Adventure) about bread and they showed 4 different breadmakers all using live starter and not bread yeast. May not all be classic sourdough but live starter seems a good start. Tuscan bread is a favourite and that's what they do. Ed Wood also goes someway to demystify flours. There seems to be a blokes network for sourdough on line where women seldom are heard, but I made sourdough for years in in North Carolina without serious analysis and I am sure I can do it again. Good bread is the staff of life. When I'm not miserly eating low-fat yoghurt for lunch, I eat bread, cheese and fruit. I don't find that excessive.

I am reading Mappa Mundi by Justina Robson, and while the plot is racy, this is one where the Bear would say the science doesn't hold up. I cannot believe that they would have cracked the link between physics of neurochemical reaction in the brain and control of personality/will in our life time. Yes, it is a horrendous idea but the science doesn't convince me, all though the conspiracy theories and good vs evil is intriguing if implausible.

2010-01-12T10:59:00.005+11:00

A brief post for those of you who care about my health. I am once again knocked down by a mystery illness. No mystery about the symptoms, just origin and cause. The cough I developed last Friday by Sunday was keeping from sleeping and I was developing a chest so wheezy that the noise of that was alarming, When I woke up at 6AM Momday I decided to do something and went back to the clinic to see any doctor. He put me on Ventolin and antibiotics and told me to go home and rest for a week. I am still coughing but the little I cough up seems to help with the wheezing, as does the Ventolin. I finally got some sleep yesterday. I can really only not cough by sitting up so I have watched a lot of TV (a plug for Foxtel) and finished the ribbon shell finally. It shows a bit more flesh than I should at my age but over a light T shirt should do well. I wove ends on the lace scarf, so I shall have to pull my wits together for a new project. I want a around the house cardigan or a vest out of my handpsun so I shall have to brave the studio's pattern library.

2010-01-09T17:55:00.004+11:00

The first week back at work was not thrilling, but then I didn't have high expectations. Unfortunately the collection development people thought the crap I had was wonderful and a valuable addition to the catalogue (groan) so I am forced to catalogue it. How a 1960's catalogue of machine parts can arouse so much interest is beyond me, but I serve an apparently weird clinetele.

The visit with SIL and BIL went fine, with the stand-out in their estimations was my pumpkin pie. Huh? Since they have no such thing here, it must be as exotic as a pavlova is to an American. BIL voluntarily took on a piece of home maintenance I have been unable to deal with (back screen/security door sticking) by removing the door, adjusting its wheels and cleaning out the tracks. The last bit I could have done but not the rest. Thank you, G.

We are in another patch of 35C+ temperatures, until Tues or Weds they say. I shudder to think of my electricity bill but I am able to do stuff around the house with a/c where last year I would have been flat on the bed sweating. Instead I managed to iron, and poke away at genealogy. I have no berries except blackberries which have outdone themselves. I may actually accumulate enough to make jam. I have lots of green tomatoes but no ripe ones. The pumpkin vine is beginning to expand and my last lima beans are up. I've had one cucumber but no zucchini.

Reading The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman and while he's very excited and enthusiastic about the global economy, I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. Yes, isn't convenient we can buy cheap clothes from China but should we? I realize that there isn't much hope of resurrecting the garment industry in the US or Australia, and we reap the benefits every time we shop, but there has to be a down wide to this. The Chinese worker is making much more than they would have pre-globalization but are they going to want more? Are we ready for China to deal with a middle class with greater aspirations than buying cheap knock-offs of designer labels? Since I tend to shop at K-Mart I am at the bottom of the food chain, but I worry about the big boys throwing punches above me. I don't think the flat world is a fair world, maybe fairer than it was but a lot of people lost jobs along the way and I don't see former clothing workers re-inventing themselves as designers of bleeding edge aerospace components, just because that's where the jobs and money went. I know I couldn't live without constsnt Internet connection and that has a wider reaction than me being able to do genealogy research at a distance. Something to think about and watch in the future.

Meanwhile I have suddenly developed a nasty chest cough with no other symptoms to help excplain it. I coughed all night and don't look forward to doing it again and would like it to go back wherever it came from.

2010-01-02T16:35:00.004+11:00

Greetings to 2010. For once I did not stay up to watch Sydney fireworks, which I understand were their normal stupendous standard. Instead I went out to the movies with D to see Avatar and then came home and uncorked a bottle of bubbly, had some cheese & crackers, and talked until nearly the magic hour. I have never put a lot of emphasis on when the clock ticks over the a new year, but I do like Sydney's fireworks, which why I usually stay up.

As expected I have spent major portions of the week off work sleeping, sleeping and then taking a nap. I also spent almost 3 hours waiting to see my GP which I hadn't anticipated but there were already 8 people ahead of my on his queue before I got there, and I got there before he did. When it wasn't raining it tended to be hot, so I haven't done as much outside work as I would have hoped for, but the garden chugs along without me. I've done the occasional weeding and re-typing of tomatoes, put bird netting over the plum tree, and got no berries at all. It was either too hot or too cold and they just didn't mature. My neighbours did a halfway job on cutting back the overhanging shrubs--just the minimum they could do to meet the letter of my request, but not enough that we won't be back to square one next season.

Then there was the problem I had putting up the bird netting. A couple whom have been close to the Bear and I since I came here came over. Since he is tall, I asked for assistance in putting the bird netting on the plum tree; I had already had one cockatoo shredding tree and green plums. When I reached out to get the ladder to climb up for my end of the netting, I failed to notice a wasp nest under construction under one of the rungs and I got stung 3 times in rapid succession. I don't react well to insect stings (especially wasps), and insects will sting me and leave everyone else alone (I was the only person stung at this time). I expected swelling and irritation but more than 24 hours later and my forearms and right wrist/hand were very swollen, red and hot and the swelling was progressing rather than receding. So I called the toll-free health network and spoke to a nurse who advised me to see a doctor within the next 4 hours. By this time it was 7PM New Year's Day. Fortunately my clinic was open and there were only a few other people there so I was in and out, with a script for Prednisone and an antibiotic (just in case). Today most of the swelling is down, but the back of my hand is worse and bending my wrist is like trying to bend an overinflated balloon. I expect another dose of steroids will fix that. My SIL and hubby are due to visit in Tues and I'd like to do a little more cleaning before they arrive.

I did go through the huge box of the Bear's slides, which indeed went back to the 60's. I found the wedding photos from his first marriage. Luckily I have been in contact with his first wife so I could ask her if she wanted all the slides of their honeymoon (she said no). I scanned and kept every photo of the Bear and/or the rest of the family. This took about 2 days.

Finally, as if I need to, I'll give a huge plug for Avatar. It literally blew me away. I almost don't want you to go to the site and download the trailer; I want you to go with zero expectations, as I did more or less. It is so real, so overwhelming, so vivid, so imaginative. I felt I was living all those science fiction novels I had read about first contact. We didn't go to the 3D version but now I think I want to see it again, maybe in 3D this time. I had to remind myself (when I was not totally embedded in Pandora) that this was animation. Those wizards at Weta in Wellington (NZ) outdid their Lord of the Rings and I know when Avatar comes out on DVD I will wait for the 5 disc ulta-extended edition and may even spring for a Blu-ray player for it. If you go to the website, try to do so after you see the movie. Don't spoil all the wonderful surprises that are there for you to see with eyes wide open. and jaws thoroughly dropped. I dreamt about the movie that night and I can't wait to see it again. One thing I am very glad about turning 60--I can get into movies cheaper. Thus my suddenly going to movies all the time! D and I spent a lot of time gasping at each other. "That was so amazing/fantastic/overwhelming/wonderful!!"

2009-12-25T12:46:00.002+11:00

Merry Christmas! I've been absent and I have no excuse but surges (mostly down) in my mood and unbearable heat. I swear I must have insulted the weather gods by installing air conditioning, because we have had more multiple day stretches of 35C and over before Christmas than I have experienced in 19 years in Canberra. While the a/c makes daily life a lot more pleasant, I'm still loathe to turn on the oven and I actually lose my appetite when it's that hot. Also, I try not to be greedy with my a/c and only aim at 24C (I am still arguing with the thermostat) which is really too hot for me to sleep in comfortably. I'm a sleeper who likes a chilly room and lots of blankets to burrow under, not a stuffy 24C. So I haven't been sleeping and not eating much, my right leg is giving me fits (a euphemism for pain) and I've been depressed. Oh, and the garden is nearly cooked. No berries to speak of, although I do have lemons. For Christmas day I am delighted that we are having good steady rain. Not cheery, or covered in snow like parts of the US, but needed badly. Above is my Christmas tree, each ornament has a story, and it has few lights this year because 2 of my strings had died. Since I brought them with me from the States and they weren't new then, I can't complain. I'll buy some new ones for next year. The Imp has taken to chewing on the lower branches, which I don't get, but so what else is new? The angel on top was a gift from BFLb, there are many animals (especially bears) native to both the US (squirrels, cardinals) and Australia (emus and wombats). My Christmas presents to myself were sourdough starter and a lapis lazuli square spindle. My dear MIL gave me the latest Harry Potter DVD and a seafood cook book. I have a tray of mangoes so I suspect I'll make mango jam either later today or tomorrow.
This is the skein of Optim from Conjoined Creations I've been spinning and it does feel like silk. Instead of finishing the several projects I have going, I suddenly decided to knit a mohair scarf, so a feather and fan scarf in pastels is 3/4 done. I hope to use the next week to finish off at least two of the projects languishing. But my first priority for the holiday break is sleep. I am now going back to bed with the latest Kathy Reich mystery and hope I fall asleep. Christmas dinner is going to be cheese and smoked salmon on crackers, cherries and mangoes, and pavlova for dessert.

2009-12-13T18:19:00.004+11:00

Today you get ruminations of my mind from the past few weeks. I went through a spell of severe depression that lasted a little less than a week. I cannot discern a reason but as one person put it, when the things you enjoy doing no longer give you joy, you know you're depressed. There seems no way out, you are at the bottom of a deep hole and only want someone to fill it in and leave you. I cannot deny that I still grieve for the Bear every single day. The emptiness he left in my heart still hurts. But this was a more generalized black spell when nothing felt right, I hated my job and my life and nothing seemed to be worth waiting for.

Now I feel really good and am revelling in summer in Canberra (no, I don't like 36C but I have a/c now!), watching parrots destroy silky oaks (see right) which are in full bloom at the moment, eating beautiful cherries which are the signature fruit of December, enjoying clear dry days and cool nights. I've managed two full active days and one day of rest for my weekend, so that this week should not be a repeat of the disaster of last. I will promise to remember to take my meds every night and not be knocked out like I was on Thursday (on a day when all power was cut off due to electricity pole replacement). I spent time on Saturday tidying up the berries, which are not doing very well this year because on my neighbour's overhanging shrubbery, predation by possums, and the erratic weather. My tomatoes are doing well and the peas are done. I'll eat the last of them tonight.

I have finished the bag of long brown alpaca. That leaves one full of brown and one of white, and half a bag of black. I will be carding more white soon so I can spin it. I knit for 3 hours last night on the silk shell which I suppose makes some progress although it's hard to tell without measuring. The marker went past my fingers several times so I know the roswe of 220 stitches were going by. Tonight is the season finale of "Glee" (sob!) so it's back to DVDs and Foxtel. I have finally found a mate to go to the movies with on a regular basis and we've seen two movies ("Time Traveler's Wife" and "9") in the past fortnight. Her tastes match mine and she has a flexible schedule. If the price of growing old is getting into the movies cheap I am happy to declare my age! For the benefit of my opinion "The Time Traveler's Wife" was a very literal version of the story told in a linear fashion, without any of the personality shown in the novel. While I love seeing Eric Bana nude, read the book. "9" was another wonderful Tim Burton animated gem that was so much fun to watch and I was just marveling at how one determines camera angles for animation.

2009-12-09T15:48:00.003+11:00

I have been going through a very bad patch of not sleeping and therefore feeling like crap the next day, and not sleeping again in a constant cycle. During this time my white noise machine died as well, but I have been making do with a fan. Apparently the only source for them in Australia is to make babies sleep, so that's where I have ordered my replacement. I finally slept through the night (mostly) night before last and finally feel halfway human again. I also managed to forget my meds one night in there but, unlike most other occasions, I could not sleep the next day to make up for some of the horrid withdrawal feelings. I don't know how people cope with FMS without drugs. Either they have much milder cases than I do, they don't work, or the are very stoic. I get to a point where I lie in one position for X minutes and then the pain of lying like that wakes me up, I turn over and sleep another X minutes, repeat ad nauseum. That's when I sleep at all and am not up at 2.30AM drinking sherry and trying to bore myself to death reading about 17th century Virginia.

There are two new books in the house that have once again inspired me to do things I don't have time for. One is Woven Shibori by Catherine Ellis. I had seen photos of the results but I couldn't imagine what "woven shibori" actually meant. I am a big fan of shibori as I have ranted in earlier posts, culminating in my purchase of a vintage shibori-decorated kimono several years ago. Because I am afraid the Imp might try climbing it, it is not on display but hidden away in a wardrobe (pity). Woven shibori means you weave the strings you will pull to make the shibori pattern into the cloth rather than gathering the cloth up with stitches afterwards. Obvious some shibori patterns are impossible to do this way, but the results in the book are mindblowing and I look forward to the day when I can try some out.

The second book is Respect the Spindle by Abby Franquemont (of Abby's yarns, link to the right). I wish I had had this book when I was learning to spindle spin. It explains so much and inspires so much. I love my Roberta electric spinner but I love spindle spinning too. I happen to favour Bosworth spindles, but in my first blush of love affairs with spindles I bought quite a few I really don't use. I have just commited to buy a lapis lazuli square spindle from Butterflygirl because it was beautiful. Before I could even click on it to buy it, somebody else bought it. Fortunately she was able to make a twin. I've never used a bottom whorl spindle; I like swan neck hooks, and I prefer a notch. There are some spindle makers who simply refused my requests for those last 2 features and I don't buy spindles from them. I am spinning camel down at work on a Bosworth mini; camel down is so short I can't imagine having enough control on a flyer-driven wheel.

For light reading I've finished Alan Steele's first two Coyote novels and am about to start Coyote Frontier.

2009-12-01T18:23:00.006+11:00

When I was growing up, my mother had a darkroom in the basement. She had several impressive cameras and was always taking pictures. The photo on my blog ID is hers because I was a very cute toddler. She shot a lot of black and white and slides too. When she died (1981) and my sister and I went through her things, we found slides but not a single black & white negative. I don't have any idea what happened to them; mildew in Florida can destroy a lot. I have a couple of prints that were mounted for entry into photo shows, and framed them to remind me. Her Kodachrome slides are just as good as they were when she shot them, some of them now older than I am. I recently acquired a slide scanner to digitize some of the hundreds of slides I have and the photo above was one of hers. What prompted me to finally get a slide scanner (aside from the price coming down) was finding a huge box of the Bear's slides, some of which supposedly go back to the 60's. The other thing is that my mother's hobby became mine in the late 70's & 80's (before my eyes got bad). I had a darkroom in the spare bathroom and printed and sold a fair number of photos. I remember going to the "serious" photography store in Ohio and X2 saying the chemical smell was awful, but to me it just reminded me of my mother and having prints drying next to the washing machine.
This is one of my photos and I should have scanned it sideways and rotated it. I shot mostly landscapes and wildflowers and my "signature" shot was the vertical slice of landscape. This was taken near Lexington, VA, and of course both slides lose something in the scanning process. Full professional scanning of hundreds of slides is beyond my budget and I'd be happy just to have access to some slides that make me happy as well as seeing what the Bear was taking pictures of before I knew him.

If the story was the weather last week, well, it's the weather again. We had an abrupt turn resulting in very cool days and nights and lots of clouds with occasional rain. My poor garden won't know what season it's in. The cool weather veggies like asparagus and peas loved it but the cucumbers look a bit bewildered. I even had to turn the heat on last night as it was 12C and one small cat is not sufficient heating.

I've been finishing off a bunch of spinning projects to free up bobbins. I bought this lovely roving, which is merino, bamboo and nylon from Fat Cat Knits, colourway called Duck pond. So I plied and wound off camel down spindle-spun, silk (the last of the spindle spun) and plied the lovely Conjoined Creations Optim. I am almost (and I mean it this time) done with the bag of brown alpaca. Another night or two flick-carding and it will be done. Then I'll drumcard some more white so I can spin enough to ply with the full bobbin already done. I've been plugging away at socks in the meantime.

2009-11-22T13:22:00.004+11:00

I know I need more sock yarn like the proverbial hole but I spotted this on Etsy and couldn't resist. It's hand dyed superwash Blue-faced Liecester, which is one of my favourite wools. From Stash Up Yarns, thank you very much. Meanwhile I am knitting away at some wool/cotton blend socks from Bendigo Woollen Mills. They don't advertise that they sell sock yarn, so you have to hope they have it when you're there. I am also knitting the sleeveless shell out of silk/rayon blend. It's knit in the round in plain stockinette and is rather boring.

The real story here has been the weather and I am soooo glad I got air con installed. Friday we reached 39C (according to my weather station), which is somewhere over 100F. It's gotten somewhat cooler (only 32C today) but the weather gods can't decide whether to give us a thunderstorm or sun. I have gotten all my plants in the ground bar some rhubarb seedlings and mulched everything to keep them cool, damp and snail-free. I won't have any pumpkins this year because they kept disappearing and I gave up. Why rhubarb seedlings when I planted 2 rhubarb roots this spring? They weren't red! This is the second time I've planted rhubarb only to get the variety that isn't red. It tastes the same but it just isn't real rhubarb to me if it isn't red. I picked all the peas off the first planting of peas (Early Crop Massey) and had a feast last night--they were so sweet and tender. The second crop was Dwarf Blue Bantam and they didn't come up so I replanted some of the Early Crop but they are struggling in the heat. The third crop was Tendergreen and they are doing well and filling out their pods now. The asparagus has stopped for the most part. Beans doing well and I must stake the tomatoes. I will have to plant lima beans somewhere when there's room from the peas. My citrus has set fruit but I don't know yet what's what. One of the great vigorous branches it produced turned out to be from the root stock and not the grafted bits, so it got pruned off. I have pots of geraniums and portulaca and hanging baskets of nasturtiums on the back deck. Aside from lots of pruning and weeding and judiciously watering or praying for rain, it's now up to the plants to perform and produce.

Yesterday I got my new awnings installed and they look spiffy. Instead of white with green stripes (or rather grunge with green stripes), I have green with tan and brown stripes. and the side I see from inside is solid green and completely blocks the sun. The funniest bit was the reaction of the Imp when the installer took down the awning of the window she was sitting it. She nearly exploded trying to get away. Since I got an unexpected $900 dental bill (I knew I was going to get a bill but not that much) I may postpone replacing the brush screens at the front till next year.

Today is the anniversary of the shooting of JFK and probably the day a lot of kids my age suddenly entered the adult world. Killing the President of the US is such a cowardly and obscene act and I can remember that day vividly. The principal of my high school told us the news over the PA (I was in Latin class) and that was the first time I ever went to a Catholic church. I think it was Sue who took me with her to pray and light a candle. I was so shell-shocked and that day and the following ones are etched in my memory. I watched a movie last night that J gave me for my birthday because it is a musical using Beatles songs, Across the Universe. The movie clearly showed what the end of the '60's was like for kids of my age, altho J is of a different generation. It showed the hippie life, psychedelia (loved Bono as Dr Robert) and the anti-war protests, culminating in the general university strike of 1970. So much changed in American culture in that decade that many younger people take for granted today, from political activism to feminism to tie-dyed T shirts. I felt truly alive and like I was growing in every way then; we thought we were creating a revolution and I suppose in some ways we did. However, I am not the only person in my age bracket who looks at their present life with a feeling of disappointment. Sort of "Is this all there is?" after a lifetime of work. We thought the future would be different, and it is and it isn't.

2009-11-14T12:58:00.004+11:00

I promised studio photos when I cleaned up the studio. That doesn't seem to be high on the list these days and I feel like I owe my loyal readers (whoever you are) promised content. So, at left is part of the right wall. Out of view further right are bags of alpaca, more of Robin's fleece, and a wardrobe with miscellaneous other textile stuff such as dyes, quilt fabric and a half done quilt, my sewing basket, an unwashed fleece, etc. The bookcase houses all of my craft books, and behind the doors at the bottom, boxes of magazines. I've dropped all my subscriptions except Interweave knits and Handwoven. I seriously have enough patterns and ideas. The two white bookcases have my coned yarn (weaving) stash. Most of it mill ends since shipping fibre from the states costs the earth. The black thing with the red patch is an apron from the ANU School of Art, and the white thing is the Bear's old lab coat. Between the bookcases covered with a plaid cloth is my inkle loom, which I have also neglected. It has a second warp of my hand spun and dyed English Leicester which I intend to make a tote style bag out of. In the blue plastic bag in front of the back bookcases is clean brown alpaca. Beyond the bookcases is my spinning stash (5 plastic boxes).

Turning left and taken from the opposite end of the room are my two looms. They are on a cheap door bought at the hardware store for $20, which is supported by the Bear's school desk and a filing cabinet. I was thinking I'd have room for my sewing machine but that was before the 16-shaft arrived. The 4 shaft is closest to the camera and has my sad tea towel on it. I haven't warped the other one yet, but a tea towel I bought from Laura Fry is draped over the breast beam to taunt me. Since they each cost a whopping $200, I don't feel as guilty as if they were expensive and neglected looms.

It's unfortunate that I get spurts of energy and ideas when I don't have the time to do anything with them. Plus the old fibro thing makes me so tired all the time that, given the choice, I usually take a nap instead of doing something interesting. That or do chores around the house. Today it will be ironing. When I retire and can wear T-shirts eery day instead of trying to look halfway presentable at work there will be no ironing.

2009-11-11T10:20:00.005+11:00

Life is boring. At least most of the time. I do the same things over and over and sometimes am at a loss for content here. I get up and go to work (boring), come home either directly or via some other route (shopping, dentist, etc.), cook my dinner, watch TV while knitting or spinning or carding alpaca. Repeat. Now that I've got all my veggies planted, it's wait and watch them grow. We're in a patch of heat that is beastly late in the day. My rejuvenated weather station tells me it's been over 30C every day this week. I keep the house closed up and the drapes closed all day and turn on the a/c when I got home, just until the sun goes down and then open the house up again. One of the unfortunate features of the house is that it is surrounded on the north side by paving, plus a large area in the back (east). When all that surface gets heated up, it radiates heat back at the house for some time.

I've got all my plants in, the last being pumpkins (butternut). My yellow squash plants, loving raised from seed, have simply disappeared. Even left a hole behind. I planted some new seed but I may have to live without yellow crookneck this year. Aussies don't know them. My peas, the first planting at least, have pods. The second planting is blooming, and I'm running out of stakes for the third planting. I'm eating lots of asparagus. I should have some strawberries soon if I beat the snails to them. The bramble berry plants are in bloom, and my back fence neighbours have promised to cut their shrubs back, but not till December. My citrus is a fountain of scent and is surging with new growth.

Book report: Rebels of Babylon by Owen Parry, one of his Abel Jones Civil War mysteries. This one takes place in New Orleans where Mr Jones's nose is constantly out of joint about the laxness of the Union forces, the decadence of the natives, the plight of slaves, and practically everything else about New Orleans. But then, that city wouldn't be comfortable for our righteous Methodist Welshman in the best of times, much less during the Union blockade. I started reading these novels because the Bear did, and this one was left over after the big book clear out, since I hadn't read it. I enjoy them even if Abel's pious manner can be tiring. I know I need new reading matter like the proverbial hole in the cranium, but I had a gift voucher for Borders, so I got the new Janet Evanovich, Michael Connelly, and Kathy Reichs.

My MIL sent me a clipping of Maggie Alderson's column from the SMH about tails, as in cats' tails and their expressiveness, and her own desire for a tail. I also have thought that a tail would be a wonderful method of expressing one's emotions, altho the logistics of sitting on one always bothers me. If you follow the anatomy of a cat, you'd be OK. The Imp gets into moods when she gets what I call the "windscreen wiper mode" when the tail lashes back and forth with great emphasis. Since I don't know what's going on in that brain I don't know why these spells occur or what she is trying to express. Since they can come on when she's doing nothing but standing on the basin in the ensuite, having demanded a drink straight from the tap, I remain mystified. She is getting more vocal but I can't decode "Mao!"

2009-11-03T08:36:00.004+11:00

I must do penance today. I mowed the lawn yesterday after a 3 week hiatus. All the rain we've gotten had made it look more like a hay field. Once I finally got the knack of starting the mower, mowing was a Herculean task. I could do one pass through the lawn and have to stop and clear grass (or more commonly clover) out from under the machine since it just couldn't push the lush growth out of the blade area. So I man-handled (I ain't no man) the mower into places where I could restart it and restarted it about 15 times. Got lots of clover for mulch. But today my back is telling me I should not have done that in one go, but really needed to do it in stages. I know one of my many flaws is being pig-headed about these things. After all these years of living in pain, it still sometimes comes as a surprise to wake up and be sore all over. Just like I used to be surprised ever month I got my period. Duh.

I also disregarded my pledge about not using the air con unless it was beastly. 86F or 28C is not really beastly in my standards, but I was so hot from my exertions that I turned it on. It felt so good especially when I had to follow my shower by blow-drying my hair. In the future there will be smart climate controls that will only heat or cool the room you are in, instead of cooling the whole house so I could turn a hair dryer on myself.

Finally, I have been neglecting the Imp. All that alpaca has resulted in no lap for many nights in a row and she's needy. Also warm nights mean no blankets to burrow under. My MIL says she's got me wrapped around her little finger (paw?) but I know she's a powderpuff under that gun metal grey exterior and she needs attention.

So it's a cool holiday morning, and I'll take a pill for pain and go back to bed. We had a late thunderstorm last night that dumped enough rain to overflow the gutters again so the yard will be soggy (that's my story and I'm sticking to it). Of course there are a million other chores I could do but most would make my back hurt even more.

Another thing I am pondering: The Happiness Project. As one of the suggestions is getting anough sleep, I cannot agree more. I am always tired and never get "enough" (whatever that is) sleep. I am still grieving but trying not to hang on to the Bear to the point of morbid obsession. I just miss him and 58 was still too early to die. Working on the things that get in the way of happiness would be a noble goal although a cure for fibromyalgia would help.

2009-11-01T12:25:00.006+11:00

I have been blessed with over abundance. I have started writing this entry at 1AM because I can't sleep. Being tired does not always lead to sleeping. Today I was patting myself on the back as I went to put the next to last (ha) of clean brown alpaca with its similar lot in the studio. While there, I decided to address the problem of garbage bags of alpaca springing "unexplained" holes by re-bagging them. It was then I discovered that, in addition to another bag of white, which I had expected, I had another bag and a half of brown and only half a bag of black. Alpaca has a true black unlike most wools aside from shetland, so I don't mind the relatively short staple length of the black. But all this very filthy brown! A lot more prep work on it before it's usable. This lot at least (the half bag) is long lustorous locks, with shine and a length of 4-5". I have dealt of this type of alpaca before and I haven't come to grips with carding it. It's either spin from the lock (a recipe for uneven results) or carding thru the drum carder but having to cut the longest locks. If any one would like some truly filthy brown alpaca to try their finishing techniques on, please leave me a comment. I haven't felt like knitting but I finished the brown/beige Regia cotton/wool blend socks. Started spinning a lovely hand-dyed hank of Optim from Conjoined Creations in jewel tones. Feels very much like silk and don't know how it will ply.

Other chores accomplished today included cleaning out the gutters along the driveway of tea-tree debris, which breaks down rapidly to sprout weeds, spreading snail bait to protect seedlings, cutting asparagus, going to the supermarket, fixing the remote sensor for my indoor/outdoor weather station (no mean feat), rejoicing in the return of my ill lawn mower to I can now cut the meadow which has sprouted in the back. I now have more seedlings to plant and lawn to mow. The tomatoes are doing well and the early peas are blooming and all the beans have sprouted. I have cukes and pumpkins to plant and maybe more tomatoes, altho there are 8 already, mostly not red ones but orange, black and Green Zebra (my fabourite flavour wise). There's always weeding and mulch and fertiliser. This time of year I'm flat out.

Due to giving us Melbourne Cup day off and taking Monday as leave, I have a large window to get sll this done, despite temperatures predicted for 30C and late thunderstorms. It threatened that today causing me to rush out and take in the laundry but then no precipittion followed the thunder.

I went to the movies earlier in the week and have been listening to the audio-book for The Time Traveler's Wife, in anticipation of seeing it. Altho I am pleased to see Eric Bana as the male lead, I am dubious about the transition from printed to film. The two characters have very amusing internal voices and the whimsy of that cannnot be translated easily to film. I gave up on the sci fi I was reading as it had too much physics in it and trying to follow it (whether it was real physics or make believe) msde my head hurt. Instead I am reading Owen Parry's Rebels of Babylon. I've read quite a few of his but have missed a couple. Another plug for Better World Books, since I picked up a novel that turned out to be the 3rd in a trilogy and Better World had just what I needed, and a sale of 3 books for $15. All recycled library books which I like because it's sometimes hard to hold dense paperbacks.

2009-10-24T10:11:00.005+11:00

This is a catch-up post just to clear my mental decks of bits and pieces. I have almost finished the bag of brown alpaca, at least the flick-carding part of it. I have given myself a few little cuts from errant passes with the carder and they of course instantly got dirty. They are not healing well, although this morning they look a bit better. I didn't card last night but knit socks. No doubt The Imp was glad to have my lap back. I think one more evening of carding and the alpaca will be done. I've found how to fix the carder (I think) so I can start carding white to spin.

I've had a bricklayer in yesterday to patch the holes outside and in. The Imp was beside herself with curiosity with what was going on behind closed doors. He was not the tidiest of men (is there one that is?) and I had a major job of cleaning up bits of mortar left everywhere. It's a good thing the rug in the lounge room is not important.

I've got a quote and put in the order for new awnings out the front. I ordered a canvas cover in green with beige and brick stripes. It cost over four times what it cost the last time to recover the awnings. I wasn't expecting that. I have a quote on replacing the brush fence screen at the front of the house. I like the screen as it gives the front some privacy. Once it's done I can clean out the hole that is supposed to be a fish pond and maybe even get it functioning. That will be the end of my renovations for now. I've spent more money than I anticipated but the exterior will be done except a bit of painting and oil sealing the deck.

We've had lovely warm and spring-like weather and I have all my vegie plants ready to go. I hope I can get them in the ground this weekend. I don't think we will have another frost even if the "official" safe date for planting tender crops out is Melbourne Cup day (1st Tues in November), as Memorial Day was in Ohio. My seedlings of cukes and melons are ready to go as well. I'm missing the heirloom tomatoes, and I especially like "Green Zebra". I still have far too many tomatoes. The citrus is in full and fragrant bloom. The junior plums are covered in fruit. I have one iris in bloom but there are lots in the neighbourhood. I'm tempted to leave notes in the letter boxes of the homes of the best iris and ask for extra rhizomes the next time they divide them.

I had lunch with old friend J (I have a LOT of J's in my life, but I don't want to add names) at Old Parliament House yesterday. It was such a lovely day that we ate outside. They have added a little gourmet kitchen shop with locally produced olives and over-priced eggs. They also had waratahs in red and white and I couldn't resist. They are so spectacular. In the gift shop for OPH I got kookaburra and emu Christmas tree ornaments to add to the menagerie on my tree.

Some of you who are my closest of friends and who read this blog may have been aware that, after my trip to the states last year, I was thinking of retiring back there to be near X2 and the other folks I miss. Due to a large number of things, including the parlous state of the US health system and my complicated medical conditions, I have abandoned that idea. I know what's what here. I still love Australia, while I miss many people and things American. I can only hope my various pensions leave me enough room to take a trip over there periodically. And please, you in the states, you are more than welcome to visit here. The plane trip is not that horrible and the end result is surely worth it to see this astonishing country, if not just me.

Book reports: I have finished both Out of Mao's Shadow and The Age of Homespun. They were both extremely interesting books that expanded my mind considerably and I recommend to anyone. Continuing in my China theme I have started Lost Daughters of China as my BBBB. I am halfway through Janet Evanovich's Fearless Fourteen and Stephanie is certainly fearless as always. As usual the plot is bizarre and the action never stops, nor do the laughs.

2009-10-19T10:09:00.003+11:00

What appears at left is not just a skein of handspun wool, but a very carefully designed skein of sock wool. Wool and nylon blend, tightly spun and plied. Looks damn fine if I do say so myself. I wish I had more of this wool to spin in decent colors. Whatever possessed me to pick out yellow and peach is a mystery. I got it at Bendigo several year ago and haven't a clue as to which vendor.

No knitting to report on as I have been working through the bag of brown alpaca (which annoys the Imp because it means I have no lap) and can see the end in sight. I was trapped in my studio on Friday as I had air conditioning installers taking over the house and cutting off the power. I was going to card alpaca but discovered the drums on the drum carder had bedome misaligned somewhere along the line and I couldn't figure out how to align them. Ashford's helpful staff in Cooma told me to go online and look at their website, which I couldn't do without power to the wireless router. So I was forced TO WEAVE, and weave I did, a whole 4 cm. But it is weaving and it looks so nice and listening the "loom music" of shafts and beater was a joy. I hope I don't have to wait for similar circumstances before I get back at it.

I am totally out of commission as far as doing anything productive today. The installation of the a/c revealed a hole in the outside of the house where the old furnace was. I need to find a bricklayer but I also wanted to assemble bricks for him to use and I know I had bricks. So I spent Saturday accumulating bricks from various palces around the house, which also involved cutting/pulling the vinca next to the main shed where I knew there was a pile of bricks. At the end of this exercise I was knackered. Sunday I managed to stagger to the markets for supplies. By luck or because I was too weak, I couldn't start the lawnmower so that chore remains (as does the ankle high green patch in the back yard). I did just manage to plant 3 rows of beans (Romano, Tendercrop and Gourmet's delight) before collapsing.Today my feet and hands and very sore and I am still very tired. A day of rest is called for. My peas are now all up and need some supports. I had asparagus for dinner last night and the rhunarb roots I planted are already sending up leaves. Since the rest of the week's weather forecast is for a daily increase in temeratures to end at 28C I may be ready to plant tomatoes etc. soon.

I'm reading Out of Mao's Shadow by Philip Pan which is fascinating and bizarre. Watching the Communist party deny things that everyone could see and forbid people from talking about what everyone knew is so alien to what we in the west take for granted. Now that they are battling the Internet, it's a now world that they don't seem able to conquer.

2009-10-11T17:09:00.006+11:00

I am hoping Blogger will let me post some photos without losing them, which it often does. At left is my new front porch which replaced a very bizarre structure left by the previous owners. It had two levels, with a half-a**ed pergola overhead, was made with the wrong sort of wood, constructed poorly, and the steps were merely piles of bricks. The new porch has a handrail and only two steps and is all at one level so it makes getting large things in and out a bit easier. I was ashamed of the old one when the occupational assessment team came to the house post surgery; the bricks and no handrail were an accident waiting to happen. My back steps have also been replaced. And there is much sun because I am standing where my monster "pencil pine" or tall narrow juniper used to be. It was beginning to heave the pavers and causing a trip hazard. There is a pile of woodchips where it was. When I shift the chips to the front and assess the hole, I want to plant a deciduous shade tree (not too big) because the left window is the living room and it faces west without the shield that my street tree gives the rest of the house.

Next at right is a heap of clean brown alpaca that I washed
last night. I spent about 4 TV nights sorting out the nasty
bits and flick cardings the ends of the most promising locks. It's much shorter than the white, rarely getting over 2" in length. I have also been spinning the rest of the white batts I had made and filled up another bobbin. I have lots of white to card, and now brown as well. The brown was just as filthy as the white was; the first wash water was the same colour as the fibre. There is another 3/4 of a trashbag full to go.And lastly but never least is The Imp. She spends most evenings on my lap while I watch TV and has never interfered with fibre tasks. If I leave the comfort of my recliner and therefore remove her, this is what I am shown when I return. And do not think she wants her belly rubbed. She most adamantly does not and I have to wrestle her out of the chair so I can reclaim it.

I have spent my weekend ironing, shopping, gardening, sleeping, and yesterday suddenly was struck by a desire to work on my 4 shaft loom. I had to rethread it once more and sley the reed at the same time, but it didn't terrify me the way it used to. The studio is still a mess so no photos of that yet. My little furry assistant helped out by knocking most of what was on the table between the looms on the floor.

I mentioned before my love affair with rock. I have been watching a BBC series called "The Seven Ages of Rock" and I cannot get my head around what they are talking about. I know the Brits have a completely different view of rock than Americans do, and naturally the Brits claimed they invented it. The first show was the birth of rock and supposedly covered 1965-1969. According to this show The Who were the first real rock band, there were no American bands mentioned except for the black blues artists who influenced bands like the Stones. There was not even a passing mention of that band from Liverpool known as the Beatles. The second show was about art rock which supposedly included psychedelia altho drugs are hardly mentioned in either show. The bands covered were Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Velvet Underground, Roxy Music and early Genesis. That's it. When talking about the idea of concept albums or music being dramatic, nobody seems to remember Tommy by the previously mentioned band The Who and I distinctly remember the furor it sparked in the early 1970's. What about Sgt. Pepper? I don't know if I want to watch the rest of this series altho there are some wonderful interviews. Watching Jack Bruce describe how he came up for the opening riff for "Sunshine of your love" was worth the pain, also to find out that Ginger Baker is still alive.

2009-10-07T09:49:00.003+11:00

A long weekend (Labor Day) and I didn't manage to post. My headaches seem to have passed, so it was probably only a minor concussion which has no care but taking Panadol. I was very tired on Saturday, did a lot on Sunday and paid for it on Monday. I am still very tired and have not slept well in ages. I'm back to the old rotisserie nights when I sleep on one side till it hurts and wakes me up, and I change position until the other side hurts, repeat ad nauseum. I was on my feet a lot on Sunday doing the weekly shopping plus a trip to the local garden centre. I got 2 early tomatoes, just because they might be all gone when I do my major garden purchase. I got lots of peat pellets into which I planted all my tender pumpkins, melons and squashes, those that I must raise from seed because they aren't available from commercial sources, such as yellow crookneck summer squash, fancy melons, etc. Altho I am not sure why I plant fancy melons because I rarely get any results. We have had rain off and on for almost a week which is very unusual, and I hope it means the summer won't be bone dry. I've bit a very large bullet and am installing ducted reverse cycle heating & cooling (a heat pump to the Americans). This is mostly because I am not sure that the furnace has another year in it, and I would really like to be able to function when we have days of 45C. In the past it meant I laid around and perspired, but I could actually continue normal activities with a/c. Plus it adds to the value of the house. Right now it's supposed to be mid spring and we are due for a frost tomorrow, so who knows what the summer will bring.

One of the things Aussies usually have to contend with in spring is swooping magpies, who are only protecting their nests. I have never been swooped and I have lots of maggies in my garden but they also come and help me garden. I'll be weeding away and look up and there's a magpie standing 6 feet away waiting for me to uncover something edible. I had to almost shoo him out of the way of the lawn mower last week (much rain equals much growth of greenery). I also noticed that the possums have eaten almost all the leaves off my climbing rose (Cecile Brunner). I don't think there will be any lasting damage but there are several small birds (wrens, silvereyes) that would like to nest in the protected depth of a rose bush and are now left in a glass house.

I did manage to take 2 computers to recycle and then had a grieving spell for another part of the Bear which has left the building. How can I feel emotional attachment to a computer? Because he lived in front of that computer for years. It had gotten so unstable that I had to delete files en masse becuase Windows crashed so frequently. I don't think anything extremely personal or work related was left and, having seen the mountains of computers at the recyclers, I don't think anybody has the time to revive a hard drive. I forgot there was an extra drive on the system and found a lot of the stuff I wanted to save there. But it took days to do all of this.

Work has been incredibly boring lately and there are many days I just want to take a nap during the day. All I am doing is catalogue the dregs of a private collection (and I do mean dregs) and do authority work. I have been changing subject headings for "handicapped" to "disabled" for weeks. There are so many different headings and so many with subdivisions that it's never ending. Yes, there is a global way of doing this but I don't have access to the software, and those that do are too busy with more important things. I used to say proudly that I love my job but not so much lately. I am also being moved to a (potentially) much noisier location without my consent or even being informed which annoys me. My boss usually keeps me in the loop but not this time.

Knitting has taken a back seat to spinning. I've plied the sock wool, and am spinning the batts of alpaca I had carded. There is so much left to wash and card that the mind reels. I'm going to have to devote evenings to picking over alpaca to wash or I will nevet get it out of plastic bags and turned into something usable. I keep finding things I could weave if I had the time which is also annoying, and another reason for wanting a/c.

2009-09-27T09:27:00.004+10:00

The damage to my car has been repaired and I have my darling back, but ever since that seemingly minor bingle (a minor accident, one of my favourite Aussie terms), I've been getting headaches. Nothing blinding, no signs of anything wrong in my back or neck. I am seeing my GP this week so I'll ask if there is any test I need. Maybe just a very mild concussion but it takes the edge off my view of the world.

The weather here has been bizarre. We've gone from highs of 24C to a high of about 8C yesterday, gale force winds, rain, dust storms (we made US national news I hear), and snow in the mountains. Poor Floriade must have their blooms a bit tattered. My apple trees and pear tree were getting ready to bloom but I don't know that they will pop until it get warmer. It's kept me out of the garden even tho the lawn needs mowing badly. My peas are up and I am enjoying asparagus.

I was hoping to get in the studio during the enforced indoor spell but instead I have been wrestling with the Big computer to get stuff off it so I can take it to recycle this week. Since it crashes every time I do anything, this takes a while. I've also spent time shredding 15 year old bank statements and other such antique documents. I'll have lots of mulch for the garden when I'm done, but these activities took most of yesterday.

I have been spinning Robin's wool and have a bobbin full. Time to ply my blue sock wool. I have knitted one round of the fair isle vest. I got the Dover reprint of Alice Starmore's Fair Isle knitting book which gave me some ideas about what to do about steeks espicially for armholes. I've done about half the top of one of the new socks.

Music is very important to me and I am firmly still age 18 when it come to most of the music I like. X2 and I were moaning about having to buy all the Beatles albums for the third time (vinyl, 1st gen CD and now remastered). We also were enjoying Cheap Trick's live performance of Sgt Pepper. A very satisfying product, considering it has never been performed live in its full form. My tastes lay mainly in power pop and what apparently is called emo because it expresses feelings. My iPod is full of bands like the Honeydogs and Five for Fighting but I'm a big fan of Eskimo Joe and Coldplay as well. I got out the Bear's big Altec Lansing sound cancelling headphones and spent yesterday listing to music while I shredded. I am bemused when iTunes classes some of my music as pop, some as rock, and some as alternative and I don't think there's that much difference in style. It's not like I was listening to Mariah Carey or Metallica. I'm always looking for indie bands and Notlame and CDbaby are favourite hunting grounds.

The Age of Homespun is not what I was expecting. It is a response to a speech, given much after the colonial and Revolutionary days, that romanticized the days when women did spinning and weaving to clothe their families. Her method is to take an exhibit of early New England artifacts and analyze both the object and its construction and its place in the social and economic life of the people who created them. For example, an Indian made purse with porcupine quill decoration leads to a discussion of the level of skill not only of the creator of the item but of the Native Americans the new settlers came in contact with, and a discussion of how the two groups interacted on many levels. There are lots of quotations from diaries showing, for example, how women would spin or weave for each other, would buy commercially prepared (imported) cloth for their Sunday best but also wove acres of homespun for domestic use. A father left his land to his sons but his movable property to his daughters and was careful that each daughter had both linen tablecloths as well as more mundane textiles. This is a scholarly work with much research evident behind the text, but it makes fascinating reading for anyone interested in textiles.

On the light side of reading I have been going through S,M, Stirling's alternative history trilogy that begins with Island in the Sea of Time.

2009-09-20T10:51:00.003+10:00

I was out exploring the shrubbery in the front yard and discovered that our flowering peach was in bloom. Most of the time it looks nearly dead but then it surprises me with blooms. It never should have been planted under the towering street tree, but I'm thankful it's alive and still produces blooms. The flowering quince is also in bloom; there is a red one planted way too close to the letter box and various self seeded salmon-coloured ones around the rest of the front. The juniper is gone completely now, leaving me with a pile of wood chips to move. Then I'll find out how big a hole I've got to work with. I will need a deciduous shade tree there to protect the living room windows from afternoon summer sun. I may get a new awning to match the others over the other west-facing windows. The fabric on them is probably 12 or so years old and has gotten grubby. Note: do not buy awning fabric that is chiefly white. It won't stay white. Next time it's green with white stripes instead of the reverse.

The week started off with me being hit from behind in the stop-and-go which is Parkes Way on a commuting morning. I lost the light over my number plate (license plate) abd I couldn't tell what happened underneath. So Friday I turned my dear red car over to the insurance people and am driving a rental Yaris which I loathe. For one thing, there's no place to put my left foot. It's an automatic and the supposed place for a left foot must hve been designed for a pixie so it forces my ankle into an uncomfortable position. It also doesn't like going up hills and I have a rather high one between me and the city. This should only last a week (please).

Having picked up said rental car, I went over the the ANU to get my latest addition: a 16-shaft table loom which cost me all of $200. It seems that they are upgrading their looms and selling off the old ones. Once I cleared off the door (table top) in the studio, there is barely room for the 2 table looms. Once I get rid of or stow the remaining junk, I'll post a picture. I've brought the spinning stash in from the deck and moved an old bookcase from the computer room to house coned yarn. Seeing it there makes me want to weave instantly, but of course, the garden has first priority at this time of year. I'm cutting asparagus and weeding mostly. Something has been eating my heirloom strawberries and I don't know who.

On the knitting front, I've swatched and am ready to cast on a simple shell in Ella Rae silk & viscose which is a lovely dusty rose colour. I finally got the right size needles out (altho I worry that they won't be long enough for the task) and cast on the fair-isle vest. Having finished a pair of socks for me I cast on another pair, also Regia cotton/wool blend this in the cream to light brown range.

It struck me this morning that I have been living by myself for over two years, which is longer than I ever have before. I've learned to get things done even tho not to the standard I used to have when the Bear took on some of the more labour-intensive tasks, like mowing the lawn and grocery shopping. I'm preparing to recycle the Big Computer that was his plaything leaving me with just the Macbook. I've made two major purchases now on my own, a new car and a new computer. If I can maintain strength and energy, I can continue to live like this life. Two years ago I felt completely helpless. It's now my junk that clutters the table and my dirty clothes I must wash. It's a miracle to me I'm still alive. Don't think I'm not grieving because I see him everywhere.

2009-09-13T15:19:00.002+10:00

I can't remember whether in other years I noted the arrival in spring of the pallid cuckoo to our neighbourhood. I only know it because of its very distinctive call; I don't know that I've every seen one but they are very nondescript bird anyway. Spring is upon us in a rush. All the plum trees are in bloom and I had to mow the lawn (flat area of weeds) yesterday. The big juniper at the front door was cut down this week and I await the stump grinder before I can seriously tackle refurbishing the front. I have asparagus coming up and the citrus is looking like it's ready to come out of hibernation. The down side of all this is that after throwing myself into garden cleanup up I get totally wiped out. Even if my legs would hold me up to do more weeding, my hands hurt quite a bit. I might have to fork over some $$ to a garden maintenance person to help out so I can enjoy the good parts and not be exhausted all the time. It is actually 24C today which is quite a change in a short period of time. Now we need rain. My peas got planted before Monday's showers but more would be nice.

I'm also making progress on cleaning out the cupboards in the computer room. I unearthed yet another box of old photos and a box of old financial statements like phone bills from 1995. I want to make that room into a proper bedroom when it comes to selling the house, to make it really a 4 bedroom house and not a 2 bedroom with 2 junk rooms.

Yes, I have been paying with genealogy and love reading old documents about how one ancestor was disinherited by his father for his drinking and neglect of his family. They weren't all saints like Roger Williams.

I know this has become a weekly blog but, my dear friends, I am just so tired all the tired, if not in real pain. If my choice is to blog or to take a nap, you don't have to be very smart as to which I'll pick. Matter of fact, that sounds like a good idea right now.

2009-09-06T14:22:00.003+10:00

Spring has truly sprung. I just went to the garden centre (replacement rhubarb crowns, new gloves) and my car was nose-in to a clump of grevillea in full bloom. The blooms were being fed on by a pair of white-plumed honeyeaters, who not only were eating but took 2 seconds to mate every now and then. Very common bird but still nice to see them a meter away than through binoculars.

I've spent the past week in bed with a cold but am feeling OK now. It is extremely important for me to fight off a cold before it settles in my chest since my sternum reacts badly to a chest cough. I've been busy clearing weeds in the garden and am planting peas. I have 3 stalks of asparagus up which I have supplemented with some from the markets. There is a big bunch of very fragrant Earlicheer narcissus on the counter. One of The Imp's redeeming features is that she does not eat flowers like The Senior Cat did. She does, apparently, like pumpkin soup.

Of course genealogy takes a lot of time but it's fascinating research and colonial American history is a lot more interesting when these are my people I'm reading about. I'm back into the 1700's on several lines but some have brick walls. I know my grandfather existed and have birth and death dates but can't find records on him partially because I don't know where he was born. New York, I think.

2009-08-26T11:17:00.004+10:00

I have an excuse. I've been bitten by the genealogy bug. I've been searching my little heart out, getting records in order and data input into MacFamilyTree. I've found a photocopy of my great grandparents marriage certificate from Sedgley, Staffordshire and his obituary from (I think) the New Haven (CT) newspaper. I've been trawling cemetery records and trying to find what the country names are for the various place names. I am totally astonished to find that on both sides I go back to pre-Revolutionary War settlers, and perhaps descended from Roger Williams on both sides. Therefore I am getting more interested in colonial American history. My BBBB is The Age of Homespun by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich which is a social history of material culture in colonial days. I thought it was all about weaving but so far chapter have been about Indian baskets (and the colonists relations with the natives whose land they stole) and furniture (and how property was inherited by male vs. female children). Do I have time for a new time eating hobby? No, but I've got the itch now.

There is nothing exciting to report on the knitting front: just socks our of a rather tropically coloured Regia (pink, orange and blue) cotton/wool blend. Spinning has been Robin's wool, and now sock yarn (wool & nylon) in shades of blue. I have wanted mindless knitting and neither finishing nor starting a project is mindless. Socks are.

Spring is starting to show: the willows are getting green and my daffodils are almost open. I weeded Saturday to make room for peas and we then fell into several days of exceedingly windy weather so I haven't done more. The berry bushes are all pruned and attached to their trellis (if I can only keep the possums from eating the leaves). I've got permission from the council to take down the juniper at my front door. It is heaving the paving underneath and becoming a hazard. Another not so cheap task to do on the way to tidying up the front of the house.

Social networking is all well and good and I am on so many discussion threads and other time consuming sites, but I keep thinking I could be actually doing stuff instead of nattering about how much I adored the latest Torchwood series or what I'm knitting. I'd even prefer to read (Saturnalia by Lindsey Davis) than live online because there aren't enough hours in the day to do all of that and clean, iron, vacuum, wash dishes, do laundry, get groceries, etc. And sitting for extended periods give my legs the fits.
I am trying the Ming method of pain relief and it does help but it's counter productive to stretch all my muscles and then spend hours in front of the computer, especially when work requires me to do that already. If I do too much walking around, my legs hurt; if I do too much sitting, my legs hurt. Do you see my dilemma? Hence no blog for a while.

2009-08-07T11:43:00.005+10:00

At left is the Imp with her two newest possessions. I replaced the old scratching post that had gotten beyond repair and, wonder of wonders, she prefers scratching this post to the furniture. (The chair in the background has suffered through many cats) It has a pedestal to pose on and is all round satisfactory. The tunnel was a shot in the dark and it's the best $ I've ever spent on cat toys. She adores it: runs through it, grapples with it, pops out the holes on the side, just sits in it. It makes a wonderful taffeta-like noise as well. The catnip mice I tried at the same time were ignored.

In case you think I've stopped knitting, here is the first of D's socks. It's a Regia Kaffe Fasset colourway. I am almost finished with the ribbon shell (altho I found it on the floor this morning and I hope it just fell and was not subject to cat investigations). I am thinking about knitting a very cabeled Dawn Brocco pattern from my handspun but was worried that I hadn't enough. Today I dove into the stash and found 2 more large hanks of grey wool. The wool chosen for the jumper is similar in weight but is varying shades of grey.

Book report: I have finished Green Thoughts and, while it was interesting in the way serious garden writing is to serious gardeners, I found her extremely opinionated in strange ways (were American stawberries full of flavour in the 1980's? Why are tree peonies given such a bad review?) and in other ways very unskilled. How many years had she grown tomatoes without knowing they had to be pruned and tied to a stake? If it's not written in one of her reference works she deems it impossible. She wants some authority to give her instructions on grafting instead of experimenting. She might have considered her extension agency, or today one would Google grafting but she sits and waits for instructions (preferably from Europe because Americans are clueless).

I have also given Spin Control by Amy King more thorough read and found descriptions of some types of spinning I haven't had described much. Core spinning and plying with commercial thread or yarn is something that might be useful in the future. I think there is not enough attention paid to basic spinning, or rather intermediate level. Very little about how different fibres behave. I'd like to have some more about control of fine fibres. The assumption is also that you spin on a standard wheel. No bobbins or electric wheels.

Next in the queue is The Age of Homespun, which fits in nicely to my family history research, where I am trying to find Clement Cornwell's (b. 1798) father. Here I was sitting in the middle of Duchess County last October for Rhinebeck unaware of the family ties there. I should have gone to the historical society. I now know there was a town named Beekman in Duchess county but there's lots of work to do to tie little pieces of information together.

I was all prepared mentally for a day of shopping, groceries, markets, off to look at lighting fixtures and fireplace inserts. My body refused to come to the party and my planned brief excursion for groceries was pulled out into lots of standing and waiting and now my right hip hurts. So today will be spent on sedentary activities (maybe some genealogy!) and tomorrow I'll go to the other side of town to look at lighting. It has also gotten very windy which always puts me on edge. The Weether Pixie should have her hair tossing around.

2009-07-31T08:51:00.005+10:00

This fibromyalgia thing is quite unpredictable. When I feel good it is only an invitation to do more than I should which causes me to fall in a heap. I thought I was managing it well and felt good on Weds. Thurs morning I could barely move. I haven't slept well in ages due to the pain waking me up many times in the night, and then I search for a position which hurts less (and fight with the cat for the rights to that position). Even after staying in bed all day, I hurt so much that in the evening I took one of my breakthrough pills (Endone) and even it didn't knock it all out. Retracing Weds, I realize I was on my feet nearly all day (the only sitting time was eating my lunch and filing my taxes) and my right leg simply won't take that. I sincerely hope that the knee replacement solves that problem. I now can feel my left leg is relaxed and pain free, while my right is tense even while sitting. I was going to see my GP this morning but still am too sore to motivate me so I'll make an appointment to see him Tues arvo.

Because my hands hurt as well I haven't been knitting as much as I should. I am on the home stretch on the ribbon shell and am motoring down the foot of the first of D's socks. I want to start the fair isle vest but need some quiet time to establish it first. Maybe I should have a few hours watching cooking shows on Foxtel and get it going. This cooking bug (a common side effect of watching Masterchef (and Julie was the right winner)) has inspired me to make stir-fries and other more complicated dishes with my chicken breasts instead of simply grilling them. I had chicken and mushrooms in slight cream sauce last night. I am essentially a lazy chef and hate washing pots and pans (both because it's hard on my hands and I can't see where they are dirty) so I tend to cook simple things. But I am also a good cook who has been holding back because of those disabilities. So now I've added bok choy to my shopping, have finished off a bottle of oyster sauce, and have another batch of cauliflower soup for lunches. The Bear did the washing up and I miss it.

The loom is scheduled to be picked up on Sunday. I hate to say good bye to it but had I known how much kneeling it needed I never would have bought it. A Schacht Mighty Wolf is more what I need. I have spun another lot of Robin's wool and need to ply it. On the Roberta at the moment is sock yarn (superwash wool & nylon) in shades of blue.

I have finished Orson Scott Card's The Worthing Saga and have moved on to Scott Westerfeld's The Risen Empire. This is the first of a multipart, and is one of those novels told from multiple view points and from different time periods. It's not hard to follow but the jumping around sometimes is distracting and you have to keep track of where this character was the last time he/she appeared. I don't sit down and read in long periods, more likely 30 minutes here and there, so this sort of novel is more difficult and, since you don't get a chance to get swept up in narrative, there's less impetus to just keep reading. You know you'll get switched off target in a page or two anyway. My BBBB is Green Thoughts, and while it was written a while ago (1980's) the passion for gardening and organic gardening at that makes for anything but boring reading. It does arouse nostalgia for my garden in Ohio with its peonies and daylilies. Pointless to try those here, although the daylillies might make it if watered. while listening to one of my favourite podcasts To the Best of Our Knowlege earlier in the week, I hit their podcast on slavery. There was an interview with the author of A Crime So Monstrous, E. Benjamin Skinner, and with a woman who discovered that her family were slave traders in Colonial America. I sincerely hope I don't discover that in my own searches. I have found my great-great-great-great granfather in the Dutchess County NY Militia during the Revolutionary War.

2009-07-26T16:23:00.003+10:00

My weather pixie thinks it's raining and, because it appears as it's about to that I did not go to watch the Swannies play today here in Canberra. That and the fact that my partner in Swandom is sick and decided it was too great a risk for her to go. Going to the footy alone isn't much fun, even when the heavens aren't steel grey and threatening.

The other half of the story is I am catching up from my DMIL's visit to pack up her china to take to Sydney and as part two of that visit, to put The Bear in the cemetery in a niche next to his grandfather. This visit was physically demanding (lots of time on my feet followed by a 3 hour drive each way) but emotionally draining. I haven't been sleeping well, probably because this event was looming over me. My right hip has been killing me, making sleep difficult. I think it's connected to the bad knee so I hope having the second knee replaced will end my torment, but in the meantime, I am sleepless and in pain. I thought I had prepared myself for the cemetery but I had to choose wording for the plaque and I lost it again. I have lost the fact that his mortal remains were here. I know he isn't in any way attached to them, but this is another tear in the connective tissue holding us together. My MIL wanted his chess set so I went diving in the the cupboards in the computer room and came up with first a huge box of his slides. They are all in labeled slots, but his handwritten guide did not match what was actually in the compartments. Since he kept everything, there are slides supposedly going back to 1961, but I couldn't find the early ones. A bright day and I'll try to sort some of them. While I'm sure they meant something to him (although he never looked at them in the 16 years we were married) I am not intending to keep his honeymoon snaps from 1971 with 57 photos of Hong Kong harbour. I eventually found the chess set, and it went north with the china and his genealogical jottings. I think the chess set came from that visit to Hong Kong.

I saw my rheumatologist this week, the new one who has replaced my old Dr B. She was only interested in my arthritis and I kept trying to tell her that the fibromyalgia pain was worse than the arthritis. No new advice except to rest periodically and not to do too much, but at the same time I should get exercise. She did write a script for "breakthrough pain" and my hip has caused me to use it once already. I haven't been knitting terribly much because my hands have hurt too much. Still working on D's socks and the ribbon shell.

2009-07-11T14:13:00.003+10:00

I brought home from work what I do on my breaks. (I have software (Guardian) installed on my work computer that forces me to take a break every so often by locking the keyboard. This is so I don't completely ignore my doctor's recommendation not to sit and type all day. Actually he would have me work only 20 minutes without a break but I'm far too impatient for that.) When Guardian locks my keyboard for about 4 minutes at a time, I spin silk on a drop spindle. The unspun fibre is in the foreground and my Bosworth mini spindle is at the rear. I am not a very good spindle-spinner and have not gotten past park-and-draft which I am using on this tussah silk. Silk is very strong and no doubt would withstand actually dropping the spindle, but it is also very slippery and flyaway and subject to noils, which parking lets me deal with. I brought it home so I could ply using the cop on the spindle and what's wound on the nostepinne. A previously prepared sample is at left. Spindle spinning is very slow especially when you're used to an electric wheel but is well suited to difficult fibres. I have another Bosworth mini with camel down on it. The camel down is so short that getting a twist into it is difficult without the control of park and draft. The tussah silk is so flyaway that I sometimes am covered with whisps of coral floss, especially when I'm wearing black.

I was going to wind the yarn for my forthcoming fair isle vest today. It's a kit from Mountain Colors that I bought at the Yarn Barn last year and comes with 2 contrasting hand-dyed yarns. Skein one flew off the swift and on to the ball winder. Skein two displayed multiple ends, probably meaning it got cut somewhere and I didn't see it when I was exploring in Sue's barn of mysteries. It won't matter to the knitting but the winding off is a nightmare. It makes me wonder if string theory could be true and it does explain how the universe is put together. The Bear could have told me.

BTW I obviously did not go to Sydney this week; the cemetery had no time for us on Friday. It will now be the 24th of the month.

2009-07-04T23:31:00.003+10:00

This is a post to try and make it up to all you loyal (?) readers of my earthshattering prose who have been denied that pleasure for so long. I have no excuse except life got away from me and there was always something more pressing (not more important) that had to be done even if it turned out to be sleep. I did myself in a couple of times in the past 2 weeks and therefore lost a couple of days of "normal" life. So here I am with a brief summation of what's been happening here. As you can see, I finally finished Cables After Whiskey and I am very pleased with it. The sleeves are slightly short (I never remember that my arms are longer than the norm) but that keeps me from getting wet in the sink. It's not too heavy to wear to work and I've gotten quite a few compliments on it. The next project is either a cabled zip-front jacket-type thingy or a fair-isle vest. I have the yarn and pattern for the vest but the pattern is written for back and forth knitting and I want to knit it in the round and steek it (EEK!) and I'll need some thinking for that. I have the back of my ribbon shell finished and have cast on for the front. I am spinning Robin's wool (why would one thing it odd to be spinning while watching Pink videos?). I've sold the big loom and have taken it apart for transport by its new owner. I wish so much that I could have used it but the knees are just not up to it. I actually spent some time in the garden today and planted out spinach and silverbeet (Swiss chard) seedlings. (Side note, The Imp is in my lap and keeps trying to get up where she can climb up me and the Macbook has a very sensitive track pad that she keeps stepping on). The asparagus is finally manured and mulched. I have strawberry plants from Diggers to plant may tomorrow if the weather permits. We've had a very unusual winter so far with many gloomy cold days and quite a bit of rain. I did see snow on the top of Mt Ginnini yesterday but there have been days when the mountains have been invisible due to low cloud. My arthritis protests.

For BBBB, I finished reading Mother Tongues, and am reading Green Thoughts by Eleanor Perenyi, which is about gardening and feeds my desire to have a decent garden this year. I hope the forecasters are wrong about predicting we are going into an El Nino season because I had my fill of hot and dry last year. For non-boring, I am reading Orson Scott Card's The Worthing Saga and am struck once more how effortless his prose flows and how quickly he draws you into his plot.

This week DMIL is coming down from Sydney and we are taking the Bear's ashes up to the family plot to be next to his grandfather. I think he would have liked that and I couldn't think of a suitable place here. Since this is the only communication I have with his children, now they know as well as the rest of the world. The second anniversary of his death hit me much harder than the first did and I was overcome with black feelings that escaped the box I try to keep them in. I do miss him tremendously and still think he'll be there when I wake up in the morning. Nobody can ever feel another person's grief because it derives from a shared life but 58 was way too early to die. Maybe that's why I can't sell the land in Victoria: his soul is still attached to it and hasn't let go.

Otherwise life goes on. I go to work, I do grocery shopping, I do laundry, I cook and clean up the ensuing mess. The Imp is now asleep as I type but we both need to go to bed. I do have an old friend in my life who has returned to keep an eye on me and make sure I take care of myself. A side benefit from my trip to the US was many revived friendships and this one seems to be important to me.

2009-06-18T12:38:00.005+10:00

This is what has been keeping us occupied at the Library for the past week or so. It's a Southern Boobook owl who has taken up daily residence in trees planted in the "light wells" that give natural light to work areas below ground level. Therefore while he is sitting in the middle of a tree, he was at eye level from the ground floor of the Library. I've heard boobooks before but never seen one until we had our very own library owl.

I've been wandering around online after reading everything on Knittyspin and was very taken with Della Q's bags. However, knitting bags are something I have more than enough of. I am sewing CAW together and should hve a photo soon. I will be casting on socks for D since I finished socks for my boss. They were knit from an Opal yarn that somehow had the stripes repeat at exactly the same place in the 2 socks without my intervention. I never care about stripes matching in socks and assumed this yarn woud be the same but it wasn't.

I have been pushing hard with the cleaning out and managed to sweep all the fallen wisteria leaves out of the garage and neighbouring areas and put them down as mulch. I've also emptied the computer room filing cabinet to get it out of the house. Then when I clear out the cupboards in that room I can get my tradesman in to replace the grotty home-handy-man shelving with a proper wardrobe and then 3 of the 4 bedrooms will have BIRs (built in 'robes = closets). I'm also in the market (waiting for a sale) to replace the hanging lighting fixtures in the dining room and kitchen eat-in area. Meanwhile, all this activity has resulted in very painful leg muscles (again) so I am forced the "rest" which I am not good at.

2009-06-13T11:26:00.003+10:00

The minute I posted the "poor me" bit I regretted it. I grew up with food on the table and clothes to wear, I got an excellent education and never suffered any abuse except emotional abuse. It took me decades to feel like I was a person worth being on this earth but now I can recognize that I have friends and family who love me. I will never complain about dancing lessons again (except how pudgy I was in a blue leotard).

My fall seems to have been worse than I thought. I landed sort of twisted with my right side coming over my left. My right knee has a lovely bruise which makes it hurt even more that it did. I haven't even past the 3 month mark that my surgeon gave me as the minimum for replacement of the right knee, but I feel like running to him and saying "Fix it!". I am exceedingly stiff all over but the knee is by far the worst. I am not going to exert myself much today and hope I can encourage healing by heat. I went out when my thermometer said it was 2C (our high yesterday was 4C) and did a massive grocery shop which will hold me over until later in the week. At least it's sunny today, which it wasn't yesterday. Let's hear it for solar gain!

I washed my sample skein of Robin's wool, and as I suspected, there was some oil and/or dirt left in the wool. When washed it bloomed quite a bit and I think will be best spun to an 8 ply or DK weight. When I remember how long the fibres are and draw them out instead of inchworm worsted spinning, they flow well, despite the odd noil, left because of the fineness of the fleece. Since I have a huge bag of this and another like it from a different sheep, I'll be spinning it for a long time. I truly view my stash (including the library) as my retirement fund. While I've drooled over lots of stuff on-line the only thing I've bought is some undyed novelty yarn to dye.

The Imp is asleep in the dining room (which faces north into the sun) but she's positioned herself in the one patch of shade. I expect she'd toast in full sun.

2009-06-11T15:41:00.004+10:00

Sometimes the grind of living with fibro and RA is just too boring and frustrating to find anything to write about. I take handfuls of pills (or forget to do so as I did last night) but I still live with pain. My right knee has been swollen and painful for a couple of weeks due to nothing I can think of. It has suddenly turned into winter with highs in the single digits and the right knee hates that. But even when I'm bundled up in woolen jumpers and my ultra warm ugg boots, I still hurt. It's a struggle to get up and go to work and I mean that literally: it's the routine of getting dressed, getting a lunch put together, driving through traffic, etc. that I find tiresome. Add on to that all the miscellaneous bits and pieces like going to the chemist or the post office or pushing unwilling trolley through the supermarket. On top of forgetting to take my meds last night, I fell on my beautiful new front porch and landed hard on my left side. I was holding an armful of stuff besides my purse and my camera, and it was cold, and I was trying to get my keys out, and make sure The Imp didn't zoom out, and I just twisted my foot in my shoe (not my ankle, thank g) and splat. Without a knee to help get me up i scrabbled around a while, until I decided a knee was necessary and used my new one. It may not have been good for it but the right one hurts far too much to try that. Now I am sore all down my left side and both hands seem to have gotten involved. I stayed home due to the lack of meds, but I couldn't sleep much because of the pain. This is just one day, one typical day, which is why I have so little to blog about. I don't mean to whine or play poor me, because it's just plain boring and I never know how to answer when someone really wants to know how my health has been. Pain, insomnia, fatigue. It was so much easier when I had the Bear, because he picked up a lot of the slack and did a lot of the more difficult things like hanging laundry and grocery shopping for me.

The only fun part of life at the moment is watching Masterchef Australia. I now know I would never ever try to run a restaurant, which at one point was a fantasy for me. I never could figure out how a chef could guess how many meals of which sort a dinner crowd would eat. But the show has revived my flagging cooking interest which had descended into a very boring (there's that word again) routine of fish and vegetables. I did make a pot of Brunswick stew which I became addicted to while being part of a Virginia family for 15 years. I didn't add game (hard to find a squirrel around here and even rabbits are hard to come by) and my made up recipe tends to be on the spicey side, with liberal amounts of pepper and hot sauce, and the corn must be white corn. I have had to resort to growing my own butter beans since they don't exist otherwise here and I bring back shoe peg corn in tins from the US. I practiced on buttermilk biscuits last night but they didn't rise enough. Too much handling, I suspect.

I am reading Augusten Burrough's Running with Scissors, and while his childhood was way wackier than mine, I recognized the undercurrent or "this is not how childhood is supposed to be". I was miserable listening to my parents fight all the time and being told "No." to every request, while simultaneously being ordered to do things I didn't want to do. Why do I have to take modern dance lessons when I want to go horseback riding? Why do we have to drive to Florida at spring break when I'd rather have braces? My college years were some of the happiest in my life because I was out of that environment. I never knew a truly loving family until I married DH2.

My left cheek is starting to hurt so I must have hit my head too. If I'd fallen on the old front porch, it probably would have fallen apart under me.