Dye Jobs (and a cat)

 As part of my "stop the burnout" summer*, I've been dyeing, and experimenting with how the colors play together. I'm using Greener Shades acid dyes, with fairly imprecise measurements (I don't have a dedicated dye powder scale, so I just scoop and eyeball it).  These are all on Knit Picks Bare Hawthorne skeins. No handspun in this lot.

"Rabid Peony" 

I dyed this before seeing Barbie, or it might have survived. Instead, I tried an overdye with my trusty Amethyst at 2% and a shot of Ruby, and got "Mixed Berry." I think it's an improvement.

"Mixed Berry"

Trust River Blue and Amethyst, for the win. 

"Be Cool"

This is the same hank from two sides. I was trying to see if blue and red dye made purple easily. I know my color wheel, red and blue make purple, but in practice--in acrylic paints, at least--that theory does not translate well. The interwebz assured me that the dyes mixed well and true, and they do! I was trying to achieve a version of one of those rocket red-white-blue popsicles you see around in ice cream trucks or wherever. The purple is faint, but this gives me hope that should I mix the last of my Ruby and my River Blue, I will get an interesting colorway in actual purples.

"Rocket Pop" 

"Rocket Pop"

And if you've gotten this far: one melted Patchwork Terror. It hasn't been that hot here (we've been lucky!), but it has been humid, and despite shedding another cat every time he touches carpet or upholstery, he's still wearing a fur coat.

I'm melting...

* I've been writing, too. 80K and climbing.

Where Did June Go?

Hi, my name is Kat, and I'm a workaholic. 

WIP is around 50K now. I'm trying to a) not stress about daily wordcount and b) not write every single day. You know. Take breaks. I realized that since I started it April, I'd been either working on it, or on The Day Job, 7 days a week. I am trying to persuade myself that in summer, I can work on it 4-5 days a week, and that's fine because I'm not under contract or deadline. 

I should be writing now, but it's been A Day and also blogs count as writing. Because I said.

As proof that I Did Things other than write in June, I present:

"His Golden Lair", done in Miss Babs' "Biker Chick" colorway in her Killington wool/silk (which one cannot buy at the moment? Alas). The pattern is inspired by Smaug, and I think was intended to be done monochrome to show off the stitches. It's all cables and lacework and then some serious blocking. 

I don't mind cables. I do not like lacework, and I hate fussy blocking. But it's for dragon wings, so. 

It's big, y'all. Like, 62" tip to tip. About 18" down the spine. The lower image is from its blocking phase, when I had it pinned to the wall (under a LOTR print, as it happens). You can see the lace scales a little more clearly here. I confess I'd hoped for a more intense color from the Miss Babs--punch your face orange, rather than smouldering--but I like the effect. (My intent had been to use some homespun orange wool-silk-blend, but I ran out...10 rows from the end. 10 long rows, but still. I might've said some swears.) Now I have a bunch of the Biker Chick and 350 yds of fiery homespun that match fairly closely in color and texture and what will they become. 

And now that May Grey has become June Gloom has given way to July and we're seeing the sun... I've gotten back to dyeing. 

I actually mixed the dyes back in February, because the more humid and wet and even rainy it is outside when I do this, the less powder gets all over. Anyway. The dye is called "Ruby" and I was imagining a red. Maybe a dark, jewel-tone red. You know. From the name. But just in case, I made a 2% solution and I aimed for a dark dye job. And I got...

Pink. Rabid peony. Now, I do love me some hot pink, but that is a lot. It's on Knit Picks Bare Hawthorne, so it's destined to be socks, but it was supposed to be red socks. Jury's out on whether I'm going to overdye with purple or the other red I've got made up (called "Flame". I anticipate orange rather than pink) or just leave it alone. 

And finally we have TinyCat, who has nothing to do with yarn or fiber arts whatsoever. According to the chart at the vet's she is now geriatric. She prefers the term senior, please and thank you.  She continues to shrink despite eating well, so perhaps there is a black hole of spite where her heart used to be. 

consider this your holiday letter

Happy December! If I seem enthusiastic, it is because the quarter ended last week--the teaching in the classroom part, anyway--and while I am not done with work (grading final projects, setting up next quarter's class webpage), I am at least done with the part that requires me to wear shoes for the next month.

Unfortunately I am not able to grade without typing, because that isn't much fun at the moment. Took a dive on a run the Monday before Thanksgiving--there was an oncoming bike, and I was busy watching him when I stepped into the dirt and sidewalk adjacent ground cover, rather than where I was stepping. I thought I had clear dirt. I found a pernicious root. I had time, as it tightened across my foot, to think oh fuck and then splat. A very stretched out, fully extended, but at least running uphill at the time splat.

Half of me hit the dirt, literally, and that half--except for a few neat scratches on my ribs--was fine. The half that hit the sidewalk was less fortunate. I got myself up before the poor cyclist could even dismount to assist, and toddled off toward home. At the time, I thought the scraped up knee was the issue. (Running tights are tough. Not a scuff on them, but the skin underneath was shredded.) I'd caught myself on the palm on that side, elbow flexed at about 90 degrees, wrist mostly flat, and everything straightened and moved. I feared for the wrist, but it seemed fine, and it was.

The elbow, however, having absorbed a great deal of force and shock, was sprained, which I discovered about the time I got home and tried to flex is beyond that 90 degrees in either direction. Oh ho ho, that wasn't happening. 

Since then, I have learned how very many things elbows are involved in besides bending, and how very unpleasant--or impossible--some of those things become. I have also learned how much of my yoga practice relies on straight elbows. 

I have not learned that I am bad at convalescing because I already knew that, and merely confirmed the continuation of that particular quality.

I could, and can, still knit, which is good! Because I have things* to finish by Christmas Eve. 

*Like that orange octopus D&D dice-bag beside Tinycat, except that one is mine.

The First Three

This summer I took a much needed break from drafting fiction, and in between copyedits on Windscar and writing a textbook chapter, and getting on a plane and visiting my parents, I mostly painted the collection of D&D minis I'd accrued in the last year. (As I type this, I realize I should be posting them, but I'm not, so...later? I will post them.) 

I also acquired some acid dyes. I have a box of undyed handspun hanks in various types of wool (and maybe silk?--the fiber was a gift, and I just spun it.) I don't have a dedicated sink or studio, but I had always planned on using an old slow cooker to dye, rather than a burner, because I just don't have that much fiber and the slow cooker seemed neater and maybe a little easier. 

Then I started painting, and promised myself no dyeing until the painting is done, because I suspected it was going to be A Thing and I was almost a little sorry I'd bought the dyes at all, because acid dyes are toxic and fraught and why hadn't I just done Kool-aid dyes and woe, wah, at least there's a dragon and a beholder left to paint and I can put off the new hard thing.

And then the dragon and the beholder were finished. 

Honestly the hardest part was prepping the first hank, because I managed to give it a 3-hour tangle. Making the dye stock was a little dangerous--it had to happen outside, and very carefully so that the very toxic powder did not get off the plastic-and-damp-paper-towel-covered work surface--but not actually difficult. 

My first attempt was mostly blue, with a shot of purple thrown in for depth. I was trying for the kettle-dyed tonal look, so I immersed, but did not stir at all. My second batch was two hanks at once, in purple, but one of the hanks was an overdye of a bright turquoise blue/white yarn. I was expecting a less saturated color because the dye stock was less concentrated, and indeed, that is what happened. The overdye hank was more saturated on the whole, but also has bleed-through of the base color (an effect I like). Nous wants the lighter purple for a cephalopod dice bag I have promised him. 

Next up: a less saturated green, if I can manage it.

And so it is finished

Five weeks of Inconceivable MKAL, in pictures. Finished on time and on schedule, and just in time, because I'm expecting editorial notes on Windscar Very Soon Now(tm). I will be fabulously dressed while I edit, once The Patchwork Terror finishes his promenade.

 

Inconceivable!

I am a knitter, but I am a self-taught solitary who has never participated in a stitch-n-bitch or any other social knitting. I am a member of ravelry.com because that's where you find all the cool patterns, but I haven't updated a project there since The Early Days of Knitting(tm), when it was still a miracle to me that two sticks and some string could make things that were useful and beautiful, and also when I had more time to update my projects pages.

ANYWAY. I am an asocial knitter. I knew that there were things called Knit-Alongs, KALs, which sounded a lot like socializing to me, and also knitting on a schedule and usually not a project I was all that interested in. I mean, how many shawls do I need, really? I'm more of a sock and sweater girl, with a side of cowls and rugs for the handspun stuff. And then there's the subset of KAL, the mystery KAL (MKAL), in which the pattern is bought, sight unseen, and doled out with clues over the course of weeks.

I hadn't exactly sworn that I wouldn't do such a thing, but I reckoned it highly unlikely. 

And then one day, while prowling Ravelry's pattern library for something--I spotted As You Wish: An Inconceivable MKAL. My mind leapt immediately--because I am a GenX child of the 80s--to The Princess Bride. Surely, I thought, this cannot be a MKAL themed on the Princess Bride! Why, that would be... 

No, not "inconceivable," but so irresistibly cool a notion that I clicked on the link, and then the next thing you know, I'm looking at (and pricing, yikes) yarn and harrassing Nous for opinions about various colorways. I posted on Facebook (a semi-serious "talk me out of this idea, it's kinda A Lot, right?"), which garnered a lot more enthusiasm than I had been expecting from both knitters and non-knitters. I even took the mad step of joining the project message boards (though I want it known I have not actually posted a voidspit thing yet). 

To the surprise of no one, I bought the pattern and got a kit from Frabjous Fibers and Wonderland Yarns.  The name of the colorway is "Battle of Wits," which I chose partly for the the purple and the speckled hank and partly for the name. The first clue drops Feb. 22, and I hope by then to have cleared at least one of my outstanding projects off the needles, because I'm gonna be on a schedule, people. 

Expect to see updates. 

mended

When there is absolutely no way to invisible repair the clapotis, repair it boldly. The patch keeps the same pattern, but sets it at an angle, and adds an extra corner at the bottom because why not. 

And! Nearly a year after tearing a hamstring, I'm back road-running. The healing period was spent running laps up, around, and down the 7 flights of parking structure, which kept the cardio and let things heal and made other things stronger. (Of course I did not rest.)

I also changed my gait completely, a mix of necessity and intent, which I'm given to understand one shouldn't do? Or something. Whatever. I am far happier than I thought I'd be to be running again. I look forward to it, even.

And! It doesn't hurt. I had forgotten what that's like.

I came late to running--in my 30s--because I'd always believed I wasn't built for it. I pronate pretty badly on a heelstrike, which is my "natural" stride, and end up pulling my body weight forward, rather than pushing off from the ball of the foot. Turns out I could, and did, muscle my way through for a while, with a scattering of IT and piraformis injuries (treated with months on an elliptical). But the hamstring, boy howdy. There was ouch and then there was ouch and then there was literally unable to touch my toes. Like, could not. Pain override.

It was the yoga that clued me in, hard. I couldn't do things I'd always done. A quick search told me what this was. Torn hamstring! Tendon?! I had to let that heal. And that meant I was going to have to stop running.

I was terrified. There was no gym access! Walking isn't enough! I'd get...well...fat.

And here let it be said: this is not about fat-shaming. This is about body dysmorphia and eating disorders.

belated

( ...originally typo-titled "bleated," which might be kinda appropriate too)

I was going to write about getting the vaccine when I got the second dose two weeks ago (Pfizer). I had imagined--based on my unexpected emotional reaction to the first dose--that I would have Feelings. First shot, we'd gotten a spot unexpectedly, because a coworker posted on Facebook that a nearby vaccine site was accepting appointments right now for educators and we jumped on that. After that jab, I realized how much stress I'd been under, and how even one shot made me feel like...not that things would return to normal, not that everything was okay now, but...like there had been a pressure, a discomfort to which I had become so accustomed I no longer noticed it, and now it was gone. I noticed the negative space of it, the place it had carved out in my psyche. I thought that the second shot would herald a return of that feeling, but it didn't. I was just relieved. 

That was two weeks ago. If there is such a thing as officially vaccinated, all the immunities as in place as they will be... we're there. Our region is coming out of restrictions, things are reopening, and great! But I am in no real hurry to go back to the restaurants I haven't been to in over a year. I've grown accustomed to the take-out sandwiches on Friday "date night." It feels weird to think about removing a mask in public. And eat in public? Egad. Visiting a zoo might be nice. Or a museum. Or a store that isn't faithful Trader Joe's. But be around people? No, thank you. My latent agoraphobia has taken root this last year, hard.

(I better get over that before classes start in the fall. Because barring a new pandemic, they will. We've been super lucky here--the UCs have shut the fuck down and stayed that way for in-person instruction. How delightful to have official policy dictated by science and public health, instead of political toadshit.)

And I wasn't going to write about any of this, sweartogod. I was going to write about The Patchwork Terror and how, in his quest to eat all of Tinycat's scarfed-and-barfed breakfast, he chewed a big chunk out of the first clapotis I ever knitted. And how I did not quite freak out because he's not Idris: he shreds and gnaws whatever he eats to tiny pieces, even wee bits of kibble-treats, so I was pretty sure he hadn't swallowed long strands. (He never did throw up a damn bit of it. Where has it gone? The obvious answer--through him--has not manifested. He either reduced that wool to tiny pieces and digested it along with his food or it's still sitting in his gut, making itself into the grandmother of hairballs.) 

But also, ferfuckssake, I was upset, too, at the destruction. The loss. That clapotis--hours and hours of knitting, out of a indie-dyed colorway--is irreparable and irreplaceable. Of course PT was, is, more important, and I would set fire to the clapotis myself to keep him safe, but he's also fine, and fortunately not inclined to chew on textiles unless someone has thrown up on them first. This is a one-time catastrophe. 

But then, as I began writing, I realized--the worry, the fear, the anger, the guilt about being angry over a ruined thing on which much work had been spent, the grief over what was destroyed--felt familiar. This was a fresh wave of it, sure, but that's why I noticed it, after so long being numb to it. It's what I felt last spring. 

Anger. Fear. Guilt. That sinking, sick feeling of knowing something is irreparably mangled, and there is nothing to be done for it except figure out a way to salvage what's left: make it, if not beautiful, at least defiantly functional. Somehow. Wabi sabi. (And even if it's not beautiful again, ever--the clapotis will be warm. It will be of use. And it will be a story). 

I wish I could say that I think the world, post-pandemic, post the 45th president, will be like this clapotis. I don't think it will, though. We can't wabi sabi what's happened. We won't be past BLM because we're not past white supremacy. We can't get past anti-science insurrectionists because they're still crawling all over the Capitol. We can't even get people to take the fucking vaccines. I don't know how that sort of damage becomes functional again, that it can be patched. I hope I'm wrong. I don't know what happens if I'm not.

In the meantime, I have a clapotis to mend. 

From the scraps...

It began as the "what do I do with leftover handspun?" project. Some leftovers of blue/purple silk blend (which wouldn't felt well) plus and then a lonely partial ball of a pale grey-pink gradient which was not silk, but a BFL blend (that would also not felt well)... 

...plus a skein of OMG PINK (silk blend? maybe?) and some beautiful sunset-colored Polwarth M. gave me for my birthday (which felts like a bad boy),  and then just knitting in a spiral until we get this. 

It's all M's dye-work. 

Obviously Murdercat approves, so what else does a rug need?

 

still here

You would think, what with all this enforced home-bound-ness, that there would be more blogging. I am not however one of those people bored in my confinement, in need of lists of binge-worthy streaming series. I am probably working more, because online teaching is, in fact, a bigger PITA than one might imagine. There are reasons for this... the transmogrification of one's in-class, group-wide activities into asynchronous, single-person activities that teach the same skills (I tried break out rooms in Zoom for group work...once. And while I am usually a proponent of multiple tests before failure is declared, not this time, because the groups in which there was failure crashed so epically I can't do that to those students again. The end.). This means I end up modeling the writing, and since the uni class is about imitation as a vehicle for learning to write, that works on a pedagogical level in theory. In practice, eh. The writing is probably a little worse this quarter, on comparable assignments. We're about to start the edible auto-ethnography, which has remained stable since F19, so I have a much wider base for comparison. I predict it won't go as well as f2f quarters, but I hope to be surprised.

That said, my uni class surprised me by asking for synchronous classes, which saves me the work of a video, but is still more actual work than standing in front of a classroom. It's like... you know when you watch the late-night comedy hosts doing their shows from home? And there's those beats where there should be audience reaction, and a pause, and you can see the host pretending he's hearing laughter or reaction, and carrying on like he's totally gotten his feedback anyway? But that energy's not there. Colbert or Noah didn't get it. He's... guessing. Faking it. Acting on faith that people laughed and he can just go on without any of the micro-adjustments live performance requires.

Teaching online in Zoom is like that. Oh, you say, but you can see their faces! --You cannot, if their cameras are off, and many of them do that. Even if the cameras are on, you can't really see what is happening. Smiles, yeah, those are nice--but the blank looks, the confusion, when I know I'm not getting through and I need to change tactics--I don't get that feedback, either. I'm performing to a dead room. (Interestingly, even if they won't talk in Zoom, they will chat. So I end up responding to chats out loud. It's so...weird.) But that's what they want, so I hope they are a) learning and b) deriving some sense of normalcy and comfort from the ritual.

It's not all bad, and I am certainly grateful for a job, and I feel for my students. I don't mind my own discomfort if it's helping them (I mean, that's fucking teaching anyway). But I am just not as good of a teacher in this setting. One of my colleagues--another experienced teacher--likened it to publishing your shitty first draft. All the experimenting, no time to revise, no way to fix the ugly bits until next time...while hoping there won't be a next time, and feeling queasily certain there will be. Fall, at least. (I have a new course prep for fall, so that will be double fun. Zombies are about to make a comeback, I think, in my genre-centered syllabus. Most of the horror of them had been stripped out in recent iterations--zombies as metaphors, zombies as characters, not zombies as harbingers and victims of pandemic. Now that fear of infection is back.).

My poor high school class...so the district froze the grades. Whatever they had by March 12 is what they have, unless they raise the grades. We have to provide assignments that will let them do that, but we cannot penalize students for ghosting the classes. The directive from On High is to offer material that they want to show up for, which puts a shit-ton of pressure on us. If we're ghosted, then the failure is ours, right? Be more fun! I am fortunate: my class is D&D, and while we are not going to finish their home-brew collaborative adventures, we are going to do pick-up games for the next month during class time, during which yours truly will DM for whomever shows up. I kinda hope the ghosting continues, because I can do a game with 4 or 5, but if everyone decides to come, I will... um. Fake it.

But I have made some things. That bag of shredded up yarn has now become yarn. Soon it will become a rug. Order from beautiful chaos.

ghosting

Ha ha yes clearly doing well at this "post more regularly" business.

I have things I want to say, but prudence dictates otherwise, so I will instead tell you that:

a) the HS class of budding D&Ders survived their first dungeon, having bypassed one whole segment of it with a Clever Plan(tm) that would've gotten them killed if someone hadn't been a little free with the rules and also they hadn't had some crazy-amazing ideas. My ranger(s) got to kiss The Princess (like The Doctor, really). The wizard was reunited with her beloved Bryce. All ended reasonably well. Now they have to write their own adventures (collectively, in small groups) to run for another small group.

b) I have been invited to give a talk about gender, politics, and power in HOW RORY THORNE DESTROYED THE MULTIVERSE at UC-Riverside on April 9 to grad students in English (I am imagining these are mostly creative writers, because I am long past the days of writing and delivering academic papers on any subject, please and thank you). I am responsible for 90 minutes of content, and while I am sure I can read very slowly, I am reasonably sure I'll have to come up with Stuff(tm) to say to round out that time. Which I will. Somehow. Magically. Perhaps by sacrificing to the gods of academic discourse.

c) HOW THE MULTIVERSE GOT ITS REVENGE is scheduled to come out Oct. 6. Cover art forthcoming when it's finalized, but I can say--it's super awesome.

d) because my weekend isn't going to spent doing the thing I had set aside all the time to do, and I hope/pray/exhort the gods that I will be busy with it next weekend instead, I sent a last minute text to the Rat and said "let's game this weekend instead of next!" and she is currently moving heaven and earth to make that happen (she, and her patient and wonderful wife, on whom the burden of childcare falls when the Rat is down here slaying monsters). We're all kinda looking forward to this session--the end of the first major arc, the beginning of the second, and the time we acquire a new character (so that everyone's gonna be playing 2, but that is what happens with tiny groups and big-ass campaigns, and Nous and the Rat are pros) so that we survive what comes next. I feel a little like a cheat running pre-written adventures, but it frees up the bandwidth for book proposals, where I actually do have to know wtf is going to happen in advance.

e) Kaiju-kitten has matured enough that I can spin again without having him attacking the wheel and ransacking the fiber, and so this is happening. The bag of fiber is a bunch of different dye lots and fiber combos (wools only, all from the amazing dye pots of M. at Blarney Yarn) all torn up into little bits, to be spun at random, like a grab-bag of colorful goodness. The results are...double-ply hanks of colorful goodness, that will all probably end up being a throw rug.

So yes. Happy Leap Year. I have a game to prep.

Summer ends. I grimly face my wyrd.

So.

Murdercat found the sun

The summer of time measured in "X Days Since Last Time I Went Among People" (X=2, but this was a social week) is drawing to a close. The HS starts tomorrow. The uni classes hold off another month, but really, if I am back in front of any classroom, summer's over. I'm having those little surges of panic, like I'm forgetting something, or I've squandered my time.

I translate this feeling to myself as "did not write most of a novel this summer." I'll probably be doing that next year, assuming the apocalypse spares us. I have ideas. They will possibly require research. So I counsel myself to patience.

I did write other things. Two syllabi, two websites for those classes, and I have been listening to Critical Role S2 in prep for the third syllabus (HS S2020) because seeing a rules-oriented D&D 5e game is actually research. I even, gasp, playtested a module. Unheard of in this group of home-brew plots and epics, but it worked out. I am still wrangling with how in five hells I am going to teach a thing I have been doing for 30 years (mostly in AD&D 2e, house-ruled to our eyes) to teenagers who may, or may not, have played before. Or run a game. Or faced the rules. But that's a challenge for which I have a couple months left to prepare.


I also wrote several things for the release of How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse, which is coming out in October and of which I am so damned proud I can't even. There will be a lot more about that coming up.

I've also spun a lot of wool. This batch is made of unrelated bundles of fiber in complementary colors, mixed together and spun at random. There's camel in there, various sheep wools, who knows. It's becoming a rug as we speak.

I have knit several socks in prep for the holidays. The godson is getting 4, none of which will match, at his request. They are also glittery yarn, also at his request. He is almost 5.

 I have rediscovered longsword training, and am pleased that I haven't forgotten my drills and that I've gotten so much stronger since I first learned them twenty-odd years ago. It is also a sadness, because the friend who was my first teacher died from a massive, surprise heart attack a few years ago, just north of 40, and that knowledge still shocks me whenever I recall it.

I have failed to convince my husband that we need another kitten. As Murdercat, almost 4, tries to coerce Tinycat, almost 12, to play with him, resulting in chunks of hair everywhere and a lot of feline yelling, I feel like the argument just sort of makes itself, but... the husband remains unmoved.

yes sir yes sir one bag full

So that bagful of related fibers I started spinning last entry is, well, spun. I've got roughly 750 yards of worsted in a BFL/silk/I dunno, something woolly blend. I was expecting more purple and blue; I am a little surprised by the prevalence of the golds and greens. I think the greyish cast is mostly from variations of lavenders plus the light in the room, and that, when it's knit into whatever it becomes, the overall effect will be more purple-y. 

This is my contribution of beauty to what has otherwise been an ugly couple of weeks.

now is the autumn of your discontent

I am feeling cranky and at odds with... everything? Not really combative, more restless. Like I should be doing something but I'm not, and whatever I've forgotten/am neglecting is going to bite me in the ass. This is what happens when Type A personalities have nothing on the immediate agenda. I'm like a border collie without sheep. Pretty soon I'm gonna start chewing on the furniture and digging in the garden and okay, letting this metaphor go now.

Part of it's the university teaching quarter starts in 2 weeks, but the HS class already started, like, a month ago, and I'm in that limbo between working my ass off and having something to do one day a week for 3 hours. My just-finished novel (RORY TWO)  is off at my agent, and I haven't gotten the editorial notes on the first book (formerly SRP, now How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse, aka RORY ONE). I'm not writing anything at the moment. Not that I don't have ideas. It's just I don't want to go launching into a new project when I know revisions are coming.

Instead, I'm spinning a lot of fiber (like that bagful on the right. It's, like, 4-5 hanks of compatible colorways all mixed up to be spun out at random).  I'm making Christmas socks (2.5 pairs of 5, or halfway done!) and bingeing Netflix and Prime series. (The Good Place has to be one of the best things in a long time.) We've gone hiking a couple of times, now that things have mostly stopped burning. But the last couple of weeks I haven't had anything I had to do except the HS class.

Maybe that's it. I'm freaking out because I'm not under any deadlines. I'm...taking a vacation. It feels weird.

the spiral rug

Or, that time I successfully felted BFL blend handspun. BFL is, IME, a PITA to felt. Merino, Icelandic... look at it crossways and it felts. My last rug, even with a merino strand, required two rounds of agitation in hot water and throwing it at a floor (that works. It's magic.).

So. Before felting:

 Note the stitch definition and the large gaps between threads; I deliberately used a bigger needle than the yarn weight called for in hopes that the extra room would allow for extra agitation in the felting process.

Also note that amazing blaze of color in the center. I think all four skeins were the same colorway, but the first and last were definitely a different dye lot. (The first might be a different colorway; the orange is pretty distinctive. I don't know because I get fiber from M's excess stash and it's not labeled.) Anyway, also note the grey striping makes it seem wavy and wrinkled, but I assure you, it's flat.

I was so damned happy to be done with this rug that I forgot all about bagging the project and sticking a towel into the cycle to give it something to felt against. I just threw it in hot with a drop of Soak and let it go. Maybe that's the secret, although everything going through the washer for the next few days is going to sport tufts of wool.

I wish I'd remembered to measure it... unfelted, it was about 36 inches in diameter, I think. Here's a before and after with Murdercat for scale.

blue (balls) and fiber therapy

Grades are done (ish. Still to be submitted, after someone in admin fixes the fuck up so that I actually can submit them.) These fine blue balls are waiting for me. The amazing M, she who has so much fiber her husband does this little cheer when she gives it away to me (she's an indie-dyer, among her many talents, and she's always trying stuff out), gave them to me. Each of those balls is about 8 oz, or half a pound, and Arachne knows how much it'll spin out, but I bet it'll be enough to get me through season 3 Poldark for sure.  And then there's the 4-5 pairs of socks to be done by Christmas. So much knitting. But knitting is therapy. Knitting is "oh look, I am done with a thing, and the thing is objectively A Thing That Is Good."

Which is good, because oh, my various gods, this everything-since-January has sucked for so many reasons. A friend of mine, former officemate for years, died unexpectedly at the end of March. That was total toadshit. She'd just retired last year and while I missed her like hell at work, I knew she was out there being nona to her grandkids and adopting dogs and just, like, having fun and stuff.

Then, fuck you, April, we had two parental surgeries. First: Nous's dad, unexpected brain surgery (he fell. There was bleeding. They figured it out when he kept falling and having trouble walking). Second and third: My mom, knee surgery, the first for the actual fixing the joint, and second because it infected and they had to go back in and scrape things out. We didn't go back because, well, we're adjuncts and however good the benefits (we have them. That's something) and the union (until something crap comes from Janus, it's strong), we don't get actual sick time or vacation, so... anyway.  Nous's dad recovered nicely. He liked his time in rehab; he had a new audience for his jokes (he's the only extrovert in the family, poor guy). My mom is recovering, but her attitude is far wobblier.

The HS students give teacher awards. But I was provoked.

So...  I didn't have much left for students at the HS who were dealing with murdered friends and school shootings all over and general teenageriness. I had even less left for the ostensible adults in uni who sit in my office and explain that they just can't write this boring essay, they just don't do well on things they don't like, it's who they are. (While assuring me it's the class, not me, that they hate. I assured them back: I don't hate you either, okay? But your grade is sinking like a sinking thing, kid, so you better find it in yourself to adult and write the fucking essay. I didn't say fucking. That time.) There are moments when I feel like a crap teacher, which I know is, well, crap, because I'm good at this job and they have to meet me partway or it doesn't work. And there have been amazing students, too, just stellar. They are the reason I keep doing this job, right there.

And, and, I wanted to be done with the draft of the WIP by now, but HA. No. Even making wordcount on the days I scheduled for writing, no. I am at the stage where I am convinced it's totally awful, which, haha, is incidentally the place where I did trash a whole manuscript a couple years ago because it was total shit, so... this feeling is not without precedent or merit, though I don't think it will apply to WIP. I just have a much harder time dismissing feelings of failure with the writing than I do with the teaching.

So yeah. Looking forward to spinning my balls.

the ninth ring

I actually don't remember my Dante well enough to say  if there even is one that deals with weather in Inferno. If there isn't, there should be. I mean, it was 91 degrees at 6AM in late October, on its way to triple digits. (And in the time it took to write this post, yes, we hit 100).

I just finished the first draft (as opposed to the zero-th) of WIP,* which is not really IP anymore, but also is because it's not finished. But it's tacked together enough that I can send it to Nous, and send it back to The Rat, who read the subzero-th version already, and eventually, to The Mighty Agent. I have, like, 40K in scrap notes, which is what I had for Enemy, too. The detritus of world-building. The ways plot could've gone, and didn't. Still way better than the aborted 93K novel from last autumn. No, WIP is not book three of On the Bones of Gods. That manuscript has a name (Ally) and will be forthcoming in 2018, barring disaster. Expect much fanfare as the details become more clear. Expect the revisions on that to be eating my head soon enough.

I had started to post about the MeToo hashtag--

--which I participated in on Facebook (and not on Twitter), but--well. I didn't have anything to add, you know? There are so many of us, and so much overlap. I was struck by the number among my friends who hesitated to post (myself included) because we didn't think our experiences were serious enough. Catcalls and creepers and men from whom we could walk away without penalty didn't seem legit in the face of the assaults other women reported. That's toadshit, of course. I did not encounter any of the assholes some of the others did--the men whose comments made it about them, the women who said this is shaming, or not enough, or too much, or elevating victimhood, as if we are all asking for pity. And wait, what? I don't feel shame because some dude pulled up beside my twelve-year-old self and exposed his penis to me, or because some guy slapped my ass, or because a guy assessed me as fuckable (or not, depending on the encounter). I feel anger. I always have. And anyone who thinks I should feel something other than that can shut the fuck up--

--but decided I should work on this Tolkien class I just agreed to teach at the high school during the spring semester, which is a particularly long 17 class days of 2.5 hours each and no, we are not watching the LoTR and The Hobbit trilogies in their entirety. (Although that remains an option, I guess. But if I can't get the damned films done in one class, what's the point?) I had been intending to teach Zombie Lit, for which I have a syllabus already prepared, but the students I guess wanted Tolkien, and the boss asked who wanted to do that, so.... I am now researching, finding excerpts, coming up with (or borrowing) lesson plans. These are creative writers. We can do some cool shit. But it's also a lit class, so we don't do a lot of writing, which means I will need to PDF (it is too a verb. Shut up) all manner of things. Eventually. Not today. It's too hot to fight with the scanner today.

I have rediscovered Tolkien fans, though. Whew. Also too hot to get into that right now. But let's say I'm gonna have to watch the 3rd installment of The Hobbit and I intend to have beer and ice cream when I do it. Self-medication at its finest. (I'm going to hope Smaug wins, and write fanfic in my head where he does.)

rug therapy

Friend T, she who makes amazing pastries and cooks like fucking Top Chef, said she could never knit because it requires too much patience. (And I think...but you make pastry by hand. And you make fancy food that requires attention. I don't understand how you don't have patience).

And I said--pff. It's not patience. It's therapy. When I feel like I have control of nothing, and/or when the writing's gone to shit, I impose some order on unruly sheep fur and feel better about things.

It has been a summer in need of therapy, and since I acquired BRUISE and a spinning wheel in July...

I made this rug.

The BRUISE was spun, then plied, then knit (garter stitch) double-stranded with a single-ply merino in a truly 80s electric blue, and then felted. And although it is supposed to be my rug, for when I work at my desk...Skugga wasted no time in deciding it was his. We'll negotiate, cat.

WAR BANDAGE: the coaster edition

So here they are. The WAR BANDAGE coasters. There are... eleven. I know. I still have some fiber left, but it's a 2-ply version, rather than a single-ply (which these are), and I am not sure yet that I want it to to become coasters, or something else.

Anyway, I acquired the Sidekick partway through this project. Note the bottom four coasters: they were produced on a kick-spindle, which produced a finer thread. I also spun them differently; instead of peeling a strip of fiber off the hank and spinning the whole length, I was doing color-specific chunks. All the red together, blue, etc. So you end up with the gradations of color at the end, when it's knit. They're all flatter, thinner, and lighter than their later siblings, too.
The Striped Seven were single-plied on the wheel, using the long strips of fiber from the entire hank, so you get the long repetitions of color. The yarn was thicker, too, and not as even as the kick-spindle (learning curve!), so there is more variation in texture, and a thicker coaster overall.

Felting was harder than it should've been. Hot water, agitation...I mean, when I am not trying to shrink something, it's easy. But when I set out to do it, somehow I end up having to do it twice. There is still more stitch definition than I expected, especially on the Striped Seven, but I think that is also a feature of using too-small needles in the coaster itself, and thus having a pretty dense fiber before attempting to felt. On the other hand--these suckers are heat-proof and they will soak up a small ocean.

I also understand why a coaster might be $20 now, if you did the work entirely by hand. I didn't prep the fiber, or dye it; all I did was spin and knit, and I am guessing each individual Striped Seven has about 45-60 minutes of work in it. The kick-spindle four have more than that, because kick-spindles are slower.

my borrowed sidekick*

So M. came over with a Schacht Sidekick spinning wheel on Friday, and I had a little religious experience. Or, like, I spun 2 oz. of wool in an afternoon instead of in 2 weeks on my trusty drop spindle. M. very patiently walked me through how to unpack and assemble the wheel and all that stuff that the instruction manual covers, but which I will learn better by observing, and then doing. Because as soon as she left, I had to change a bobbin and belts fell off wheels and there was physics** and I had to consult videos, but goddammit, I figured it out.

And! She brought me WAR BANDAGE 1.0, which is really...not war like? I mean, there's no blood. It's black/purpley blue instead. Blueberry Bandage? Bruise? YES. We shall call it BRUISE. Anyway, I have like 8 oz. of that, too, which will be something like 800 yds at the end, and who knows what will happen?

(Prediction: a conflict of duty vs. desire. I have a merit review file and four syllabi and the godsrotted WIP to finish this summer and all I want to do is spin yarn and binge watch Netflix.)

*There is not a good word in English for 'that which has been lent to me'. Loaned sounds like I was the agent of the loaning. Borrowed sounds like I asked. I need a word that means 'M. offered and I leapt gratefully upon the chance and clutched it to my cold little heart.'

**I took astrophysics in college, after I took astronomy; but I never took basic physics, like, ever. I took two years of chemistry in high school instead.