I have probably started something that I won't keep up to date but I started to add stuff to Ravelry which would be a lot of fun except besides knit I also spin and hopefully weave. Ravelry is all knitting centred and there isn't even a decent way to show handspun. I think you're supposed to have more projects than I do, or I have projects, but they are cross-craft projects. Like I'm spinning what I think is mohair, knitting handspun and about to warp my loom. So keeping Ravelry current, much less adding back stock is problematic. After all, the knitting stash currently resides on the back deck, so not so easy to catalogue.

After spending a very lazy morning in bed, due to an extremely late night alternately crying and watching the beginning of season 10 of Stargate: SG-1 and eating chocolate chips, I levered myself out of bed, cleaned the oven and did the grocery shopping. I go on record as hating grocery shopping which is one reason the Bear did it. Ultimately the lack of junk food in the house drove me to it. My current necessary junk food is rice crackers and they have to be Sakata. Regarding Stargate, they took all the fun out of Ben's character or told him that he had killed the franchise or something because he looked distinctly unhappy in the 3 episodes I watched. Claudia looks happier than a pig in mud, but now she gets to play the person who doesn't know what's going on which is the opposite of Farscape. Third season of Atlantis is about to come out on DVD and it was a bit interesting to see the joining of the 2 shows in one ep. The Sci-fi channel is back to the beginning of Atlantis and I don't think they showed season 3 at all because in theory Prime is showing it here. When they feel like it. In the middle of the night.

Oh, and Geelong won the AFL Grand Final. Record score. Yawn.

Another week of "one day at a time." I get tired of being tired, of supposedly being on restricted work hours but still not getting home till 5PM or later because of all the additional tasks and errands that have been added to my to do list since the Bear left me. I spent a stressful (to me, though not to him) hour and a half with a very expensive lawyer whom I pray sees me as a pro bono case since we were addressing my claims concerning my lack of financial resources. I am hoping the result of the session will be a cessation of activities from the Mexicans (people in Victoria are here sometimes referred to as Mexicans since they live, after all, south of the border). I managed to lose my reading glasses 10 days ago and had to order new ones so I'm expecting a $400 hit there. I found a rare bit of Australiana in the stacks and in just attempting to get cataloguing assistance got it taken away for further research (a good outcome because I don't have to catalogue it then). I ate 2 Krispy Kremes while waiting for an appointment with my therapist (why does her office have to be right across the road from them?). The progress on the legal front has removed some of the blockage in my grieving process so I am back to crying daily and talking to him (why do I think he lives somewhere "above" me and address the ceiling when I talk to him?) I slept all this morning as I was just knocked out by the end of a week of "one day at a time." It is overcast and extremely windy so neither laundry or gardening would have been very fruitful today anyway. BFLB gave me the delight of a phone call to tell me she had a new kitten, and gushed about how cute she was. All kittens are cute; unfortunately they all don't grow up to be as cute as they started out as. I hope her little long-haired tortie grows up to have just enough of the tortie's quirkiness to give her personality and not make her a complete idiot. The Imp declined to sleep with me last night which meant I slept soundly, but she came in this morning to warm the small of my back.

I finished the scarf I wove in my "learning to weave" class by throwing it in the washing machine with another small item and putting it through the shortest cycle I could. I was not satisfied with handwashing which had still left it stiff and none of the undulating twill we hoped for showed up. The slight fulling of the washing followed by a steam press made the plain weave sections show some interesting texture, the undulating twill still didn't appear, and I ended up having to hand sew the end seams since my sewing machine balked at the thickness of the hem once fulled. It has now been turned over to my weaving instructor who is going to mount a display in the School of Art Library showing products of her classes' students. I bought Peggy Osterkamp's book Warping your loom & tying on new warps from the Woolery because I know better than to rely on my memory for doing this. Her book is full of handy techniques and points out the risky places where mistakes are prone to happen. I will need to do things like find the middle of all by harnesses, beams, reed, etc. One of the tasks I'd really like to get to this week is warping my table loom which will begin by putting together my warping frame.

I had an electronic brush with one of the famous writers I admire. David Crystal is a practicing linguist, which is rare enough that he does both academic and popular writing (unlike, for example, Bill Bryson who is a popular writer who delves into linguistic seas every so often). I am reading By Hook or by Crook which was lent to me by a friend, but I already had several of his books on my shelf, including Language Death, and Language and the Internet. I Googled him and found his home page at the University of Bangor, which my deep memory produced as Maine, when, of course, he's in Wales. I shot off an email as I am wont to do when somebody posts their email address and to my surprise got an answer back right away. My impatience with the small mindedness of academic life would have led me to failure; I am glad I found a more suitable career home in librarianship, where being a dilletante is an asset rather than a liability.

The business end out of the way first. Yesterday I cleaned. Seriously cleaned, things involving degreaser and a toothbrush. Now my hands hurt like hell so I will postpone garden work until it's a bit warmer. We supposedly has frost last night and I feel for all those people with tomato seedlings a fortnight ago in Bunnings (warehouse hardware store). My lawnmower was returned in pristine condition, but the self-propelled front wheel mechanism has died yet again. This is a 20 year old Sears mower and that plastic drive cog has failed twice and is a bit hard to source here. As if my hands weren't sore enough already I managed to catch the tips of 2 fingers in the gate when closing it. Ouch does not begin...

I found by diving into the stash another hank of the merino I am knitting the baby sweater out of and have confidence I have enough for the fronts.

Now I want to share something that some might find too private, too personal, but I need to tell the world about my wonderful Bear and why I miss him so specially much. Yes, most widows miss their husbands but he was my soul mate and we knew it almost from the start. I was delving into the closet in the den, just trying to organize and clean out, and I found one of the volumes of our email messages which he had printed out in their entirety. After 4 months of emailing we had sent 250 messages. This one was on top. Oct.2, 1990. From him. "I've fallen in love with abstract ideas before or I would have being in what I did [i.e. physics] but this is the first time I've ever fallen love with, so to speak, an abstract person. Yes, I know you are real, and cherish the reality, but it was the person burning brightly through your words those few months ago that brought me to hope I could show my own self to you. ... In my own way I can be pretty intense also.... I do have these moments when I challenge assumptions--you know that already. I hope we can keep doing that in the years we have together, darling. Keep being my burning and tantalising lady. As well as my loving and soothing wife. I love you." We didn't meet for 4 more months. We had 16 of those wonderful years that seem to have gone by in the blink of an eye, and now my heart is still torn and aching for him. When I found these letters, I cried. I have tears dribbling down my cheeks as I type, but I know how much we loved each other and holding these letters and looking at things we wrote about, brings our life back into sharp focus and makes it more real.

I recently added yet another bird book to our collection. One would think I have enough and the Slater field guide lives in the car and is our more-or-less life list as well. It's a bit tattered and torn and has gotten wet a few times, but until now I considered it the best and most useful in the field. Some of the others like Pizzey and the Reader's Digest guide are a bit on the heavy side. But when I saw the new compact edition of Michael Morcombe's guide I was seriously swayed. Each section of related birds is introduced with a page showing all the birds in the section with thumbnail illustrations. Then the pages devoted to the birds, instead of cramming 8 or more species on one page with a single static pose, are shown in multiple illustrations, often including a flight illustration (since one often only seems them as they fly away). There is a solid paragraph about each bird, a map showing its distribution and identifying when where are two subspecies that have slight variations. For example, opening the book at random, I have two facing pages covering 4 species of hawk, each with multiple illustrations, showing in flight from above and below and even in flight profile, with a description of how the hawk flies. The other thing I like is the indication of how common it is and whether it is sedentary or roaming, where it likes to hunt from and what it hunts. Maps and a description of its call. I long for the interactive day when they can insert a little chip or disc that you can press on and hear the call rather than trying to match what you heard to a person's description of it. At any rate, I bought it and with the help of another birder, figured out that we have acquired a pallid cuckoo in the neighbourhood which is not a new bird for me but I haven't seen it here, well I haven't seen it here at all just heard it. One of those annoying middling grey birds that are hard to see but easy to hear.

In trying to catch up with knitting book reviews I show you HandKnit Style from Tricoter. I bought it used and I see there is a second edition out. The designs are unusual and quite what I would call high fashion with surprising design elements like ruffles at the edge of a sleeve or alternating stripes of an ordinary yarn and a multicoloured ribbon yarn. The layout is pretty nifty too. Spiral bound so you can open it flat and the pattern folds out from the page facing the photograph the the item. My only quibble is that many of the patterns are written for small sizes only and I am not a 36 and probably never will be. Of course all the yarns are high end expensive but we know how to work around that, don't we? It sets the mind going in new directions I wouldn't have though of before and now I'm thinking of more things like stripes of BLF in the merino baby cardigan I'm knitting.

Two book reviews, phew! I am finally about 2/3 of the way through Harry Potter having given myself permission to indulge while my body recovers from garden work and my heart mends from the latest round in the settling of the Bear's estate. I am promised a call from an estate lawyer this afternoon, so must now go out in the rain to do grocery shopping. I'm glad I didn't tempt fate further by doing laundry!

Here is a not very good photo of the back of the shawl knit by BFLB. Not very good in the sense that my dear MIL is not all that familiar with the operation of a Nikon D50 SLR or how to frame a shot. It also includes far too much of the mess that is my kitchen which includes many things attached to the fridge or on top of it (my favourite biscuit tin is a Tim Tam one that says "Life's too short to eat fruit" on one side) plus part of the cookbook collection in the background. But the shawl is gorgeous and is knit from handspun, hand-dyed (neither by me) wool in eggplant purple tones that I didn't trust myself to do justice to. BFLB knits these things like I could eat Tim Tams. It hasn't been blocked thoroughly since it was squished in a box, and now will be packed away where m*ths can't get to it. (Speaking of moths, The Imp was having difficulty with her tiny brain distinguishing the shadow of a moth from the actual moth. When I finally showed her the thing flying around up at the ceiling she made herself as tall as possible as if willing herself to fly and then made a very plaintive "Mow!")

I neglected to mention last week that I am now the proud owner of a Bosworth Moosie spindle, for which you go on a waiting list for about 9 months. My name finally made it to the top of the list and I have one which does not look like what I was expecting a moose antler spindle to look like. I am glad Sheila didn't identify the source of the raw material on the customs declaration because AQIS probably thinks you have to kill an endangered moose to get an antler or that it is harbouring some germ to infect Australia's vast moose population. Actually it looks and feels like grey marble.

The other exciting news to report is that M, my weaving instructor, completely dismantled the loom in an hour. I was totally flabberghasted that she could do it so easily (until I saw her loom which is a distant cousin of mine). The rusty bolts were in fact all quite loose and what was glued together was in a part that didn't need to be dismantled. It is actually a 10 shaft loom, but only 8 had been installed, and has 10 treadles installed with 2 additional ones in the bundle of sticks the movers handed me in the night. We don't know what wood the loom is made of; it almost looks to me like American oak, but that's unlikely, and it wasn't heavy enough to be oak I think. I should try and track down the maker and find out. It is now all in pieces that would easily go through a door and I might move it all home and save myself the cost of a storage locker even if I can't re-assemble it yet since there is not yet room in the rearrangement of furniture in various rooms. I was relieved that she suggested replacing the linen string heddles with Texsolv ones because I wanted to but didn't know how "real" weavers (I don't count myself as one yet, still a wannabe) felt about the sacred nature of linen heddles.

Usually I await the blooming of the first wattle with great excitement. This year I didn't even notice the one in bloom outside my bedroom window. I think my mind has been elsewhere. I did notice however, that in the past week lambs have been popping out of all the sheep on my usual drive to work. I love lambs and I miss the Bear's particular voice he used to describe "little lambies."

I still have done very few of the the tasks I wanted to do this week except for pruning one of the fruit trees while my MIL held the ladder and pulling some weeds (a great way to take out frustrations and anger over things one has no control over). I am making progress on getting to things in the computer room, collecting bits of dead computers to recycle, throwing out 5 year old issues of Scientific American, etc. My good buddies at ADFA Library not only took all the Civil War books but also said they'd take all the rest as well and send what they didn't want to the local book charity anyway. That will make things much easier and when the shed has been emptied of books there might be room for bags of alpaca or even a dismantled loom.

Well, I thought I'd catch up by posting some photos to prove I really do have a loom. I lost the camera in the every-changing mess that is this house. I know I'm making progress on it but it sure wears me out. Here is my new baby, to the left as she is sitting in her 5-star accommodation at the storage unit. Note the two warp beams, with the original warp of what looks like white wool knitting yarn. To the right is looking through the loom at the shafts hanging in place (after I'd re-attached them), and above is looking at them showing the string heddles, and looking down to the treadles. 8 in place and there are 2 more that could be added. 45" weaving width which I think will be enough to keep me occupied. The great meeting of the minds did not take place yesterday as my weaving instructor preferred her day off, which makes sense, so we are doing our inspection on Tuesday and I will ask her where to try and dismantle it. If it can be taken into 2 pieces and slid through on its side I think I can get it in the back door. Otherwise my only option is my dining room. Do I turn my dining room into a studio formally? That's where all my things like drumcarder and table loom live at present but I was so hoping to turn the back bedroom, which is a bit far from the bathroom for guests, into a proper studio looking out on the garden.

I've been in a pink mode in spinning and I am not usually a pink person. So I have pink Masham (left) on the Roberta and pink Wensleyday and BFL waiting in the wings. The effect of spring and all these flowering trees? And I got a lovely (to make a gross understatement) package from BFLB with some absolutely delicious dark grey cashmere roving from the Michigan fiber fest as well as a gorgeous shawl she knit me because I am so hopeless with lace. (My dear MIL is also knitting me a shawl, feather & fan, so I must look exceedingly pitiful in this lace shawl arena). Photo of shawl to come when MIL arrives from Sydney tomorrow for a few days and can point the camera at me for a change.

I was supposed to be taking a week off to recharge my batteries but I have not stopped, going full tilt and eventually had to cry "uncle" (why uncle?) and took a nap yesterday. I tried to lure the senior cat into the bedroom to have a truce of a 2 cat bed. but she took offense at something I did, hissed at me and left. I think she has arthritis because she moves cautiously and stiffly and I know how I feel when I move like that. I haven't working in the garden or potted tomato seedlings or washed the kitchen floor or ironed. But I did vacuum and managed to hang a picture in my bedroom that had been awaiting hanging since before the Bear got sick. I actually used the little electric craft tool he bought me to drill holes in a picture frame and put in screw eyes. It's from a poster from art exhibition the NLA did a few years ago with painting done by a colonial painter named J. Skinner Prout and is a very early scene of Hobart. It took my fancy and was offered as a discard since we had kept a few more copies than needed. I feel a great sense of accomplishment at doing this simple task all by myself.

You may remember me saying I spoiled myself by buying tickets to the Powderfinger/silvershair concert to be held in Canberra. It was last night and I am glad I went but I was slightly disappointed at the venue. A large tent was erected on a grassy area on the north side of Old Parliament House. It was an all-ages concert and began at 6.55. I stood in a queue to get in for 45 minutes (I didn't realize till later that it didn't matter if I got in early) so then had over an hour to wait for the concert itself. It was freezing cold and windy and I was wearing my full length black leather duster (coat) with jeans and a skivvy (turtleneck) while there were under 18s wearing skimpy no sleeves tops and thongs. Then I discovered there was no seating. None unless you were in a wheel chair. I bought my outrageously overpriced T-shirt and stood. and stood. I eventually went to the St John Ambulance tent and asked if I could just sit down for a while. They were very nice and I ended up chatting to one (over the deafening fill-in music) and he turned out to be a baseball freak and wanted to talk to me about baseball. Sigh, Americanism follows me everywhere. I bought an overpriced not very warm hamburger and came back. Finally the noise of the crowd hinted that something was going on but it was only roadies. I went and stood at the outside edge trying to lean against a pillar. The crowd was pushing me further and further into the sardine mass in the area in front of the stage. I didn't want to go there but people just kept pushing in. I eventually was unable to move and had to balance myself in one little island of space. Delightfully loud, the kind of loud that makes your internal organs ring. But my knees were having a hard time keeping me balanced while not moving. I eventually bailed and sat with the ambos again for a while. But then they started playing stuff I really wanted to hear and I went back to the edge of the crowd where I could see the band easily if not the video show behind them. It was really awesome to watch them do the songs I really knew and loved. And I was no longer cold!! As long as I had room to move around, my knees were OK and this morning I am in less pain than I was on Saturday.

An aside on this rock show, the first I have been to in many years but not the last now that I am not afraid of going by myself. There were "older" folks there, some accompanying youngsters, some seemingly like me, just there for the music. There are always obnoxious gits like the 2 6' 5" goons who were more interested in picking up girls and getting pissed (drunk) than seeing Australia's leading rock bands perform. I wanted to see them perform live (and wasn't disappointed) but these guys had their backs to the stage and were dancing like doofusses. Reminds me of a Clapton concert I went to in Cleveland where a young kid was so drunk he spewed (threw up) before the concert even started and had to leave. When you pay $100+ for a ticket, I wouldn't think that getting drunk would not be your first priority; you can do that anywhere. Oh well, young people these days... As I said to the ambo my first rock concert was the Rolling Stones first American tour in 1964 where we teen aged girls stood on our seats and screamed the whole time.

After communing with my loom, I now need professional advice on disassembling it.. There will be a meeting of the weaving and wood working minds on Saturday morning to discuss whether it can be disassembled. I am thrilled to have acquired such a loom at what I consider to be a bargain price. Now let's see if I can get it into the house! I am taking next week off because I am so tired and need to get more things sorted, do garden prep and hope to warp my table loom. Heck, I'd just like the time to sit down and read Harry Potter.

Yeah, I know. Another week. First off may I say the word that dominated this morning. Pain. I knew exactly why since when I woke up my quads (the muscles down the front of one's thighs) were rock hard and as clenched hard as they could be. Normal meds did nothing. I tried an extra dose of Neurontin, and was then able to get enough sensation besides the P-word so I could do my muscle relaxation routine which eventually gave me back my legs. Why were my quads complaining? Usually has to do with being on my feet too much but I can't say what really was that much. I think I am feeling what the lack of having a second person has done to my life. No more errands he runs; I have to do them all from grocery shopping to picking up the cats' Science diet cat food to going to the post office, etc. Inside there is no back of pair of hand to hand me what's on the other counter or bring me the tape measure or help by vacuuming etc. If it gets done, I have to do it. Yesterday all I did was bring the cheque book up to date, pay some bills on line, complete filling out my tax form (online) and get his ready to send to his accountant. That and the stuff like laundry. I took a nap from 5 till 8 and then watched some DVDs. So why do my legs hurt so much? If this much activity make this much pain I am in big trouble and I may be forced to down-size this house because walking around in it tires me out.

The exciting news is my loom arrived! I was sitting in my counsellor's waiting room when my mobile rang (and nobody ever rings me). It was the movers telling me they were 90 minutes away at 4 PM. The storage place closes at 6PM. Much frantic ringing around, J and I stuffing Krispy Kremes in for sustenance and recruited an extra body to lift and we all got the the right place to unload and take possession of my loom. It obviously hasn't been used recently but it has a label on it saying it was made in 2001. 45" weaving width, 8 shafts and 10 treadles. Many broken ties and the heddles are linen not Texsolv (rats). There are lots of extra heddles. There is an 8 dent reed on the loom and a very rusty either 10 or 12 dent reed as well. There are 2 warping beams, and you can wind on the cloth beam from the front without having to release the back. It was sort of in the process of weaving but the cloth had been cut and the warp tied off (looks like knitting yarn). I pulled the whole thing off so I could see what was what. Some shafts had come undone (it would have helped if the seller had secured them in some way) but I got the all back together which would have been infinitely easier with a second person on the other side. The tie ups are all a mess as many had come undone because the plastic buttons that help them link to the treadles had disappeared. There is a big bag of those and more cords of various sorts. I can see where glue has been added to bolts and I hope we can undo that. There are also a lot of rusty bolts in need of WD40 or something to get them undone. Even though it's been neglected for a few years I am sure it will weave beautiful things in the future.

I just stepped backwards about 3 steps emotionally. On Thursday I received a letter on behalf of the eldest child inquiring as to the assets of the Bear's estate. This is the same first born, Daddy's favourite, overachiever, perky and helpful 27 year old who was with me when the Bear died and helped me clean up his bedroom. I feel like I have been stabbed in the back by the one person in that part of the world I could trust. If the inquiry had come from the 3 adult children, I would have known where the origin was, but this just blew me out of the water. She had already sworn in front of the entire family including her dying father that she would trust me to allocate benefits for the children and now I get a letter from a probate lawyer. There is no estate in terms of vast pools of liquid funds. There's the house I am sitting in, the mortgaged land in Victoria, and his super (pension) funds. That's it. Being on a disability pension, I don't earn enough to pay all my bills as it is. I can only pray that the lawyer tells her there's no point in trying to find more money and that any reasonable judge would rule in favour of a disabled and cash-strapped widow over adult children who are capable of supporting themselves. At any rate, a black cloud has descended as this churns away inside. I had better watch every penny from here on. I have also taken the advice of another widow at work and booked myself in for counseling beginning on Monday.

I was sufficiently tired and depressed to take a nap at 6 PM which lasted until 10, which I didn't anticipate. I got up and read my email and surfed the net a bit and went back to bed at 1AM. Woke at 9, ate breakfast and went back to bed. This is classic depression behaviour for me--sleep until it all goes away. I decided I must get some exercise and take advantage of the lovely weather so I went out to the garden and cleaned out one raised bed of its winter weeds and then dared the ladder to prune some of the worst of the plumcot back. I eliminated one whole main branch that had no flower buds and was aiming at the back fence. Even though the rear neighbours made great strides in restraining their shrubs, I want the tree to grow in our direction not theirs. I have lots of Earlicheer narcissus and the original plum is in full bloom and full of bees. I was chastised severely by the male of the fairy wrens I had seen about the place and I think they have nested in the Cecile Brunner rose bush at the corner of the back yard.

I began some comfort spinning last week grabbing some hand dyed Masham roving from All the Pretty Fibers. Masham isn't particularly soft, but it is long stapled and I am spinning it super fine. It is very pretty soft rose pinks ranging from bright to dusty rose.

The senior cat's coughing is getting worse. I worry but there aren't any options especially after the last trip to the vet left me with a 4 figure bill.

The Trekking socks are finished and as you can see from the photo they don't really have any repeating pattern, just gradual changes. This would be a good way to make interesting sock yarn and the colour changes all happen because one of the plies in the yarn changes colour and this happens in very long sections. I have cast on sock from the green merino & silk I spun not so long ago but I think they won't be for me. Think on this and cast on some cotton socks for the rapidly approaching summer. I also am starting a baby jumper for my English penpal's granddaughter and I am going to use some green variegated hand dyed (not by me) handspun merino with some leftover green superwash for ribbing. I am suddenly filled with a need to knit with my handspun which is A Good Thing.

So it's been a week without a blog. A week that has for the most part passed uneventfully. It seemed that last Weds meltdown knocked something loose, or the subsequent upping the dosage of Luvox helped (I'm back on my regular dose now), or something. I had been keeping a journal when I had a lot of pent up stuff I couldn't get out and I found that writing it became harder because it meant I had to re-hash those feelings of the day instead of letting them pass. So no more journal. I can now look at his photo on my bedside table and smile rather than sob. I've worked in the garden, thrown out 2 more boxes of paper, found that we really didn't need a 4 drawer filing cabinet (which is cleverly constructed of 2 2-drawers stacked on top of each other) so I can take one for my studio. There is a used book seller going thru boxes of books as I write, and I should actually get some money out of the hoarded mess.

I rented a storage locker for the loom and had to get a bigger one than I had thought because it wouldn't get through the door of the smaller unit. I hung around all weekend waiting for a call to say the movers were there only to log on to my email on Monday and found that they came but couldn't get the loom through the door of the truck. I had supplied the movers with dimensions but for some reason they tried to get it through the side door of a truck rather than the rear. So we are on for next Saturday we hope. I also sincerely hope M can help me take it apart to put into a smaller (cheaper) unit or even move it into the house. I went to the ANU open day and found members of the guild being shown the computer-controlled loom by M. I really hope the guild really becomes a true spinners AND weavers guild and not a ladies chat group. I bought an apron with the ANU logo and a celtic knot design screen printed in red on a black background.

I've been listening the Syne's Weavecast for the past day and have gotten really inspired to weave so I will really and truly warp the 4 shaft once a little of the clutter is gone. I hate to dump old computers in a skip, but what else can you do? I still have piles of floppies to look at to see whether there's anything important on them. I spent hours unintalling game software to sell, but was unable to find his book database. If it's there, it's hidden well. I also discovered by opened one of the boxes that hadn't made it to the shed that he had interfiled sci fi with other stuff, some of which I did not want to sell, so I now have to go through the boxes in the shed retrieving things I want to keep. Yes, this means when I cark it, somebody will have books to deal with but at least I don't have my college text books. Just LOTS of fibre.

This has been a very difficult week. After I posted on Saturday I had another late night breakdown. Sunday I felt almost hungover, pressure-type headache, tired, etc. Monday I had to work a weird schedule because I just could not get out of bed to be at work at a normal hour. Yesterday morning I forgot to take my meds, a fact I didn't discover until much later. I felt typically miserable at work, was crying at times, finally went home with nausea and cried and cried and... Finally I called the social work contact at Canberra Hospital who promised she would pass on my needs to the community (Belconnen) client service people who would call me back. It's 24 hours later and I haven't heard back. After the phone call I slept for about 4 hours, got up, ate, read science fiction, read email and watched mindless TV (all comfort activities). By this time I had discovered why I had felt so awful all day. The person I talked to at Canberra Hospital questioned my ability to increase my anti-depressants and I told her how hard it was to go down that path and that it would take months just to get the appointments made. So I self medicated by taking another half dose of Luvox, and I do seem to be on a more even keel internally with that. I really felt out of control and the slightest thing would send me off. Today I worked a bit in the yard--hung out wash, cleaned up the last of the berries (but don't think I'm finished!), cleaned up the results of my rear neighbour's tree clearing (much welcomed), weeded a little in the strawberry patch, found a few spears of asparagus, and found mint getting into my raised veggie beds. Inside I brought in 3 boxes of Bear memorabilia from the Shed, and among very old and musty university teaching (I think) notes, lots of letters to Betty which I extracted for her, more notes of meetings 17 years ago, half written on pads of paper, etc. I will probably never need a pad of paper ever again. He often wrote on 2 or 3 pages and then it got bundled into a lot of other stuff. And throughout these days I have still been doing paperwork for him, like the car finance, and getting things ready for the last super claim. I have an appointment for someone to come and look at the books, am making arrangements to get the Civil War books moved and trying my best to get 2 J's to come over to my house on Friday because it will be our 16th anniversary and I don't want to be alone.

On the loom front, I have booked a mover and now have to rent a unit to put it in. I so wish I had it where I could see it, play with it, just know it was mine but I just have no room now. I am such am impatient person and that's one of the biggest character flaws I battle. I hate waiting. However, I would have waited years for the Bear, had we had them. Waiting the 5 months between when I left him after our pre-honeymoon and when I returned for our wedding was agony and lots of phone bills and online activity.

We have also had very bad behaviour by the Imp. She got out the front when I was taking things to the recycling bin and when I caught her I smacked her as hard as I dared along with much scolding. She got out the back when i brought the Bear's boxes in, and I chased her down and scolded her and gave her grass to eat. Then I made a second trip to shut the shed and she dashed out again and this time I smacked her till she squawked and told her how bad she was. I am torn about whether trying again to put a harness on her (should I be successful which is doubtful) would only encourage her in believing that outside is an OK place to be. Is it just novelty? The hunt for grass? Her general impish behaviour (I'll do whatever I like whenever I like)? Burmese don't live as outdoor cats and her inclinations to race off at high speed mean I can't let her to meander even supervised. She'd be off and up a tree or over a fence much faster than I could follow and she has no fear of anything. She is now asleep on my left arm but will be dislodged when I hit "publish post."

I may have been a bit premature in my "light at the end of the tunnel" declaration of yesterday. I did my crying in the shower this morning with more of the questions "why him?" and "why me?" which are the continuing unanswerable questions. I don't believe that he was chosen by any higher power no matter how much I wish it were that easy to answer those questions. It is merely a fact that I am still struggling to learn to live with.

I know I talk about the running warfare between the Senior cat and the Imp. Then they go and pull a stunt like at right, where you might even believe they tolerated each other. Actually there was a lot of growling from the Senior cat (see her shaved belly?) and I think the Imp jumped up to blindside her and then decided to go to sleep. However, they are in my chair so this cozy scene will be disrupted. There have been no Swans reports because that's a still raw area and I can't bear to watch without him. J & I still SMS each other during the matches.

I told you how much I liked the Trekking sock yarn I was knitting and you see why you would expect the result on the right from the yarn on the left. If you like the colourway it's colour 101.









I was a little naughty in buying some sock yarn, but it doesn't count in the knit from your stash pledge. The top is Madelinetosh superwash merino in colour "bark" and the bottom in Schaeffer Anne (superwash merino, mohair and nylon) in a staggering 560 yds., colour "bright earth"

I feel very weird. I'm at the point of a cold when you don't really feel miserable but you aren't nearly back to full strength and you have this annoying cough. But that's not why I am feeling weird. I just balanced my bank account. My account. In my name alone. And I screwed it up the first time, but now I don't have anybody there to say "Help!" to, so I did it over and over until I got it right. (It helps to read the statement closely) The house is very quiet. No one will come home tonight and give me a kiss and a cuddle. And I can say that (at this particular point in time) without bursting into tears. I may cry in 15 minutes, but right here it's a tear-free zone and that's what's weird. I don't miss him any less but I am beginning to see that there is life. A very different life than what I had planned, but a life. I'll have to see what being a widow with two cats is like. I can eat broccoli and artichokes all I want and I will never have to watch someone make a cold baked bean sandwich. Well, never say never. I cannot imagine what man could fit into the impossibly big slippers of The Bear and I doubt there is such a person, but then I didn't know he was here until the internet brought us together. I sincerely doubt I will ever find another soul mate. They are unique by definition, aren't they? It would be nice to have him back, and healthy. No nasty livers and I'll tolerate all his mess in an instant.

On a completely different note, the Imp is hereby put up for sale. Price TBD. Last night I looked down to find her wrestling with a tube of hand-spun singles. Then I went to take out the rubbish, in my dressing gown (bathrobe), and she decides running out in the dark would be fun. Cursing the darkness, a candle will not help you find a grey cat at night. So I had to find my way next door and borrow a torch (flashlight) and called her. By that time she had decided this wasn't as much fun as she had thought it would be and was up on the porch. Throw her inside, return torch, go back inside and crawl back into bed. What's the lure of Burmese again? Oh she makes an excellent hot water bottle, even if we do fight over who has the main part of the bed. And she's very cute when she asks to get under the covers and lies along my side with her head on my shoulder and goes to sleep. Then again she brings me twist-ties to play with on top of me at 5 AM. Fortunately she's seemingly unbreakable so throwing her off my lap means she bounces. She's very soft and loves me very much. Maybe I'll keep her anyway.

I'm back! I'm sorry if I worried anybody out there by disappearing for almost a week. Friday my dear MIL told be she was coming down after a very erratic phone call with me on Thursday night. I knew I was babbling and out of it but couldn't stop myself and she astutely read that I needed company. She was here for two and a half days and simply having someone with me while watching TV was wonderful. I had a major meltdown while she was here but having someone to vent all my helpless and needing feelings to was probably life-saving. She also knows I will get through this because I am strong even if I don't feel like it.

One of the things I tried doing was ripping out superfluous hardware and other stuff but in the process I lost my internet connection. I am not supposed to kneel so I ended up with two bruised knees and several bruises on my arms from crawling around in the multicoloured spaghetti under the desk where the Big Computer sits. I finally gave up while talking to my ISP and they referred me to a wonderful service (CHCSS) who dispatched a wonderful person who spent 2 1/2 hours removing excess accounts, putting Brian's documents in my name, reconnecting me to the net, etc. There is a lot less in start up now so it doesn't take a year to start up any more. Any wives out there who rely on their husbands to make sure they are connected to the internet, force them, by threat of anything you think they value, to show you how the computer or computers are configured, what any passwords are that you may need should something happen to them, get them to put it in writing and update it routinely. Nobody should have to go through what I did for the past 6 weeks just because he thought he was immortal.

On Friday C and I went to the annual craft fair. I tried reining myself in on buying quilt stuff because I am a long way from making a quilt but the fabrics are so alluring. I only bought a few. I bought the Brandon Mably knitting book because I had been wondering about it for some time and wanted to see it before plonking down $35. It has several designs I'd knit in a flash and intarsia doesn't frighten me. If you like Kaffe Fassett designs, you will like this book. I want it for inspiration if nothing else. No, I won't be knitting them in Rowan but I should start keeping a list of what I need to knit one of them (a vest I think) on me so when I stumble across a sale bin, I'll know what I need.The nice thing about intarsia is that it does NOT end up double weight like fair isle does. I was thinking of using my stash of tapestry/needlepoint yarn to use up odds and ends of colours in a design like these. I also bought odds and ends like the pattern for the wire necklace that I bought the supplies for last year, some scissors, a compact fluouro daylight bulb in a wattage high enough to be of real use. There were no spinning supplies, but the ladies with the Procion dyes had a bigger booth this year. There was some yarn but mostly very expensive European lines. I got some Jawoll sock yarn because I liked the last bit if it so much; this time it's only solid camel brown but I need more brown socks (as well as more blue, purple and green socks).

I have more knitting book reviews to come but whatever task I tackle, I get very tired very quickly, and any standing takes its toll on my legs. So now I will go lie down for a while and hope I get the energy to go grocery shopping either later today or tomorrow.

I have surrendered to the pain and fatigue. I didn't go to weaving last night and have dropped the class. I just can't concentrate sufficiently for 3 hours to make the class worth either my while or have the instructor helping me all the time when there are other students to help. I went home after my Bowen therapist unlocked all my knots and got rid of the headache I'd had for 2 days by unkinking my neck and shoulders. I picked up a box of books from Amazon and one was Being a Widow by Lynn Caine and she lost her husband to liver cancer as well. Everything she said in the first 25 pages just rang in me like a bell. It was all exactly what I was feeling and going through. That's when I decided that I needed to get my body back under control. I tried to take a nap but was awakened by my SIL who was answering my email about coming to visit. I cried a lot to her and promised to arrange something. Now that my class isn't occupying one night a week, I can go whenever I want. I'd like to get some more of the paperwork sorted out, but maybe next month I'll have a handle on it.

This is the worst thing that ever happened to me and from the book I may have at least a year before I feel anywhere near human again. I am the grips of this horrible feeling which only another widow can really understand. Please bear with me. My fiber world does help me and I knit socks and watched TV last night with cats on my lap. That's my comfort zone.

I don't want to worry anyone by going silent. I've been busier than a one-armed paper hanger, to use one of my mother's turns of phrase. I have also learned that one day of cleaning/sorting/filing/whatever leads to massive leg pain knocking me off my feet for my legs to recover. I have almost finished going through the books separating the sci fi, from the books in our general collection, from the books going to charity (remember he never discarded a book back to the the 1960's). The Civil War books are going to ADFA who are glad to get them. For some obscure reason, our public library refuses all donations so they will go to charity. I've been filling out forms, making phone calls to find out what forms I need to fill out, getting photocopies of documents to attach to the forms. I am astonished that some organizations require practically no documentation and others require everything and then some. I will have someone over to try and hack into the Bear's side of the Big Computer. I've made the first steps in sorting out finances, but all of this takes time. I haven't dealt with the car or real estate yet, partially because I don't know what will be coming in from his estate.

On the other side there is the loom in Melbourne. I am still trying to find out how to get it shipped from there to here. The only door that it will fit through is into the dining room which is not what I want. So it will go into storage while I play with the 4 shaft loom, refurbish the Bear's bedroom (which I can barely stand to look at now) into a proper guest room with new carpet etc., and turn the back (formerly guest) bedroom into my studio. I have a plan of how I might be able to get the loom into it, but I'll ponder that until I get other things under control. Once the books are out of the computer room and the Bear's former bedroom, I can rearrange things.

This may sound all very heartless to describe but believe me it is extremely difficult to deal with every one of these decisions and I cry every day. I still simply can't believe he is gone. I am always tired and try very hard not to think about him too much because I just break down and the pain is raw still. Going to work is almost a relief in that I have something to focus on for a those hours. Anybody reading this should immediately go the the person you love and tell them that they are loved and give them whatever the appropriate gesture is, whether it's a hug or, as we used to say, tonsil-sucking. What I would give for another cuddle, another kiss, another hand-holding.

I gave up on Conquistador and am reading The Prodigal Sun which is very good and even written by an Aussie. I have many boxes of books waiting patiently to be read.

This has not been a very good week for me. I feel very zombie like despite enjoying a very pleasant night out with J eating wood-fired pizza and watching the new Harry Potter movie. I feel very disconnected, like I am going through the motions and the only time I am fully engaged is when I'm crying my eyes out (and there has been some of that,along with not sleeping). I am trying not to get exhausted so have cut back what I try to do in a day, but the paperwork is never ending and I have yet to do anything about his car or the bank. A lot of it involves walking from one end of the mall to the other, and sorting books and paper involve standing, and my legs hurt.

The Imp escaped today and I was nearing panic but didn't want to let it into my voice. I discovered that, instead of heading next door which she had started off towards, she went into the front yard instead. She squawked when I picked her up but seemed to be glad to be back inside as it has been rather raw and cold this week. Sunday is a Swans match here in Canberra and the high is expected to be 10C so I'm glad I had my Swans parka dry cleaned.

I have a FO and it's even a handspun FO. The ribbed hat is done and I have been wearing it this week. It is warm and soft and just covers my ears. Now that I have straight hair, I have no fears of hat-hair, and may knit another one in a different colour. My only other knitting is my Trekking socks where I have finished the gusset decreases and am onto to foot (of sock 1).

The senior cat is home from hospital! And despite a whopping vet bill and a shaved tummy, seems none the worse. The diagnosis is tentatively lungworm which can be spread by mosquitoes. She will have to get 2 more shots a week apart. If this doesn't work, we'll try steroids, but there are no obvious signs of any other underlying condition. The Imp hardly ate while her elder companion was away; Miss Pink Nose scarfed down almost a full serve of fish stuff, had a drink and peed copiously. I have known that she won't pee at the vet's and this sure sounded like 3 day's worth. The vet-smell is making the Imp very hostile.

My eye is still bothering me. I left the lens out until I had to drive and now the lens feels very scratchy. Going without limits me to things not involving reading, so I moved stuff from room A to room B, boxed books, ironed, and started a vat of split pea soup. Just to keep the weather unpredictable, we had thunderstorms this afternoon.

I have been trying to process some of my free alpaca. I started out on the lightest which is almost white when clean. The key words here are when clean. Alpacas like to roll so I expected lots of dust. I didn't expect quite so much VM in the form of burrs, grass seeds, pieces of twigs, bark, who-knows-what that are embedded in every lock. I went through enough for a mesh laundry bag and washed it. The water was black. Repeat 4 more times. Now it is cleaner but still dirty at both ends and lots more VM still present. The good news is the fibre is very soft, almost 8' (20cm) long in places, and should look great when spun. This sounds very much like the filthy fleece but I've got 6 trash bags of alpaca! I would be open to offers of taking some of it off my hands.

Contrary to the tone of recent posts, I am not all that chirpy. I find myself desperately keeping busy so I can't stop to think and then get exhausted. Even pretty mundane tasks have a heavy emotional load in the background. I get weepy at least once a day and today it was in the middle of weaving class when I realized there was no-one at home I could enthuse to, that he would not me picking me up from class, that I was making plans that he wasn't part of. It's at times like this when the sledgehammer hits my heart again and if in public I lose my composure. I may have 30 years ahead of me without him and I just can't come to grips with that idea. He was going to be with me forever; I would die first. After all I have the compromised immune system, am always falling and will break something one of these times, I have accidents with knives, probably should not be driving at night, even back and forth to ANU. I am the accident waiting to happen and he was my rock. My very sanity often literally depended on him comforting me. I can get seriously depressed and he would know what I needed. What will I do now when the blackness closes in? Admit myself to hospital and be tainted by that in my medical record? I know I've got lots of people around me who care about my but they aren't my Bear.That's the base line that I don't know how to live with. Yet. I hope it's "yet." In the meantime my total inability to concentrate tonight led to a zillion mistakes in my warp probably rendering it useless to the other people with whom I'm sharing warps. It's one thing to mess up your own warp but we are sharing warps in this class. Plus I am always extremely slow at threading so everyone else is ahead of me. I'll have to go in early next week and make up time.

Poor Penny is in hospital overnight. Her cough has been getting worse and I wanted more tests run. She may have lymphoma, but we won't know until she has an ultrasound tomorrow and gets test results back. She has no other symptoms besides the cough, has a good appetite, is still as affectionate and hefty as ever, but the cough has been gradually getting worse. She's almost 16, which according to the chart in the vet's office is 80 in people years. It may be a slow decline as I would have little means to try and medicate her on my own; she's too big and way too ornery. I think Chi needs a "normal" cat as a playmate, something like a tuxedo cat or a tabby, maybe even a boy now that they seem to have fixed the male urinary tract problem which plagued my first two cats.Somebody to sit on her when she gets too rambunctious. She is sleeping on my left arm and dreaming of eating something; much lip smacking and chewing going on.

Saving the best for last, although one can never tell with ebay whether this transaction will go according to plan, I bought a serious loom, an 8-shaft, 12 treadle, sectional beam countermarch beauty which in the photos looks very Scandinavian. It is in Melbourne so I will have to get it shipped back here and it will have to go into storage until I get the household rearranged and have room for it. I've decided to make the back bedroom into my studio and move all the fibre equipment out of the various corners I've stuck it in and have a nice sunny room with room for a loom or 2, my sewing stuff, stashes, and reference tools.I will still spin in the lounge room, and knit as well but the drumcarder doesn't have to be in the dining room, does it?

I was listening to a podcast of ABC's All in the mind about genetics (nature v nuture): The 2007 Alfred Deakin Innovation Lecture: Nature? Nurture? What makes us human? by Matt Ridley. The speaker described a discovery of the occurrence of a bit of DNA which can influence how a person reacts to stressful events. You are not born to be depressed, but perhaps you are born with the potential to become depressed when stressed. I would not be the slightests surprised to learn that other slightly variant strings of the DNA molecule showed the potential for other conditions, especially those like RA and FMS which sometimes seem to be triggered by a physical assault to the body, sometimes a bad case of the flu, sometimes a motor vehicle accident.

Another favourite podcast is The Splendid Table which is full of laughter, doughnuts, and delicious food ideas. Some of the other food broadcasts are a bit pretentious to me, while this one can tell you the best place to get 5-way chili in Cincinnati. They also have a free email for an easyy midweek meal. Unfortunately with the season reversed, some are not appropriate for a Canberra winter: when I'm thinking of split pea soup and they want me to make potato salad. But good recipes have no use-by-date, so there's always next summer. On the other hand, when a new book coms out, the author is interviewed on all of them. So NPR Food will have the same interviewee as The Splendid Table and so on.

I was moaning to my MIL about all the stuff that still needed sorting out, like books. She told me to close the door to the Bear's bedroom and get to when I could. Ignoring her advice but intending to follow it, I went in just to get rid of some stuff I knew was discardable (conference notes from a meeting he went to in 1990) and of course that got me started. If I want the sci fi/fantasy/mysteries to be bought, they have to be at least sorted to exclude my books that ended up in there, or books of his I haven't read yet. I also put most of the civil war books together. What do I do with a shelf and a half of very old physics textbooks? I looked up to find the Imp supervising from the top of the wardrobe. I really must read more but I tend to fall asleep; perhaps I need a thriller.

You may have noticed a trend in my knitting. I don't have UFOs because I don't even start things. I haven't started the alpaca vest but i've got the materials an pattern right here. I've started the red tweed jumper twice but am going to postpone the top-down raglan because I am going to wear the Bear's jumpers around the house. I will start the Christmas baby jumper which I have decided is going to be stripes in white, pink, purple, and yellow Merino Bambino if I can keep the Imp from snagging balls of yarn out of the bag. It I put the other stuff away I'll have less clutter around my chair.

Round 15: We were beaten by the Weagles by only 12 points playing in Subiaco. They were still making stupid mistakes but were better than I've see them play against a hard side like WCE. I was trying to carry on a conversation on the phone to J (there are a lot of J's in my life and I will not distinguish at the loss of anonymity) while simultaneously yelling at the TV.

I didn't sleep well (again) and my legs were screaming when I woke up so I may go read and probably fall sleep. I think the book I'm reading isn't interesting enough. Seems a bit simplistic (S.M. Stirling's Conquistador). The BBBB Empires of the word is wonderful, since it not historical linguistics 101 which would have concentrated on the structure of the languages while this book talks about the social and political history of languages. This side of linguistics gets short shrift in traditional grad education because of the influence of Chomsky who pronounced dialects as mere performance variations and that we have our language hardwired in the brain. Therefore you don't learn that the Egyptians and the Canaanites exchanged diplomatic letters in Akkadian, a language dead in the sense that nobody spoke it, but it was still used. This is the side of linguistics I really loved and Ostler got on my good side by declaring Swahili a real Bantu language (the Bear argued it was a creole and I told him no creole would keep 8 noun classes). Having once spoken Swahili gets you nowhere except to know that they were really speaking it on ER when Carter was in the MSF field hospital in the Sudan.