I love snow.  Kayo loves snow.  Scott loves snow.  And we never get enough of it in these parts.  Finally, we got a few inches on Thursday.

I boogied out of the city just in time to miss the truly torturous aspect of snow in the DC area–the terrible traffic–and settled in to some great fun over a long weekend.

Blanket fun.  It’s finished.

And it’s fantastic.

The edge isn’t entirely tamed, but then again, neither am I.  I’m fine with it.   Still, I’ll show you  a  well-behaved square.  I don’t post photos of friends on bad hair days, so it makes sense to offer the same courtesy to this friend.  I’ve spent more than a year working on this blanket, and its made up of scraps from my friends’ knitting and mine.  It’s a woolly memory-book.

I still plan to embroider a few of the bland, solid squares, but that’ll be icing on the cake, and it doesn’t need to happen before this takes up a spot on our couch.  It’s washed, and quasi-blocked, and toasty on my feet.

In addition to blanket time, I put in some serious bag-making time.

A blue African block print with a gold pinwheel reverse.

A blue floral batik with a pale blue marble reverse covered in tiny spirals.

Probably the prettiest fish print I’ve seen (I’m not one for juvenile fabrics, but the leaf-work on this–yowza–it’s a retro dreamworld, man!) with a fuschia figured reverse.

A green and blue batik, with a lavender and blue script reverse.

A deep blue small-figured batik, with the same script reverse.

And a green mottled sprig print with a mauve nouveau-inspired geometric reverse.

I have a few more cut out and waiting to be sewn up, and more fabric waiting for cutting.  I can’t believe I’m still so enamored with these little bags.  Maybe I can keep the crush going long enough to save up the proceeds for a loom or a sock knitting machine.

Birch, from Indo-European bherja, or “bright.”  Shining, blazing, burning, shimmering.  The Lady of the Forest.  Cousin to Beech and Oak–the three trees I need most in my landscape.  Oak galls for ink,  beech and birch for paper, two for mast, and all three for inspiration.  The trio was seen as a family in Ireland: Father Oak, Mother Beech, and Birch their daughter.  Birches have eyes, and they seem to know so much.

We know the word is immensely old, because its name in so many languages is clearly descended from that Indo-European root: beith in Irish, bedwen in Welsh, bouleau in French, bjork in Icelandic, bhurja, or “paper” in Sanskrit,  betulla in Italian.

One of our oldest forms of paper, birch bark fights rot and mold, preserving both the tree and the words entrusted to its sloughed outer bark.  Birch products have long been used for leather-tanning in Russia, canoes and buckets in the Americas, as a fan or scourge in Finnish saunas, as an anti-inflammatory tea, as a self-shaping splint–wrap a broken arm in wet birch bark, and it will dry to a strong, reliable cast that releases its anti-inflammatory chemicals through the skin.  It’s the traditional May Pole tree, the haven and food for the larvae of many butterflies and moths, the flavoring to dozens of traditional, hallowed drinks.

My mother brought us this  betula nigra as a tiny sapling right after we bought our home, and watching it grow from a tiny twig to this strong, upright standard in our yard is a great source of joy to me.  It does practical things for us, like drink up some of the standing water that gathers in our yard, protecting our house and saving several of our other trees and plants from root rot.  It shades us.  It hosts birds and butterflies.  But it also seems to represent us so flatteringly–two trunks joined together, one a bit shorter, reaching upwards.

A is for antler.

Antler knife handles, and knitting needles, and spindles, and buttons, and baskets.  Most made by friends who have similar antler fixations.  I particularly love finding shed antlers in the woods, often obscured in the leaf litter.  The marks left by bucks scraping the fuzz off their growing antlers are surely the most elegant graffiti any adolescent males make on the planet.  If only we could be as gracious about our growing pains.

So I’ve been having a good time making bags, like I do, but also being very frustrated by the difficulty of finding natural light to take pictures in.  So I broke down and bought a pop-up light tent.  Now I have to figure out how best to use it.  I started playing with it this afternoon.  In theory, you put the article inside on some background, and then light the whole white tent from the outside, and thus illuminate the item in diffuse light and avoid the problems associated with flash wash-out.  I’m not terribly likely to buy photo-specific lamps, so today I was trying to play with ambient light by positioning the tent around the place.

Ok, bored now. 

See, I made a bag in an oak-leaf print with a gold linen lining, and a red abstract petal design with a kooky olive and tan and maroon lining.

And I finally made a bag for myself: a green batik paired with the oak leaf print.

Sewing is more fun than lighting sewn things–that’s what I learned today.  Also, I learned that I hate removing really thick, old wallpaper paste from walls, and that no amount of vacuuming ever catches up with our pets. 

Now I have to think of something to photograph that starts with "A."

We have a wonderful regular visitor these days.  I took this photo through our living room window.  Our friend here has been spending a lot of time in a snag in our back yard. I wish I could put out a hawk feeder, but I don’t think it works that way.

The small linen quilt is nearly done, but I did a few things out of order, so I need to backtrack a bit.  The linen blocks are not quilted heavily enough.  I noticed this, of course, after I began binding  it.  Of course.

So I’m going back to quilt some more before finishing the binding.

Still, I’m pretty happy with the overall look of the thing.  I quilted the black squares pretty randomly–sometimes stitching down the stems of the leaves, and sometimes quilting around them in narrow zig-zags.  I used stitch in the ditch for the first pass on the linen blocks.

Now if only I can find more of the right green quilting thread . . .

On the way home from work today, the woman sitting next to me on Metro asked me about the needles I was using to knit my kilt hose (wooden Options), and we struck up quite a conversation about knitting, Britain, knitting in Britain, kilts, and the like.  And, as if that weren’t good enough, the woman sitting directly behind me piped up about how glad she was that my seat mate asked about the needles because she was curious too.  And then she added knitting in Peru, Andean spinning techniques, and yarn types to the discussion.  So the three of us talked on the Metro (people don’t talk on Metro) about knitting all the way to Vienna.  Knitters rock.

Remember the linen quilt?  Well, that small version with the black leaf-printed blocks is sitting upstairs with a back on it, fully machine-quilted.  All it needs is some binding and a home.  And, after months of searching, I found something to sash the big version with.  It’s amazing what I can get done when I only have to go to work a few days a week.

Coincidentally, the second in the pair of kilt hose is now as far along as it was when last I ripped it, so it looks much like it did in that post with the linen quilt.  And the edging on the sock yarn blanket is moving along quite well.  I’d show you, but I don’t know much about sunlight these days.   I keep whining about that, I know. Remind me about missing the sun next summer when it’s trying to cook me again.

Also, I made bags and then shipped bags to their new owners.  I don’t think I’m approaching the online sales thing with the right mindset–sellers grief must be pretty rare, right?

I am, however, approaching Books for Ears with the right mindset.  I added a review of The Master Butcher’s Singing Club and Jeanne added one for Anansi Boys.   I hope people are reading, but I don’t have a clear idea of the stats yet since the site is new.  I hope it goes over well, though.

Last New Year, I decided to take a long break from buying books.   And, not so coincidentally, during the last year I bought an iPod with a lot of memory using my unspent book money, and then developed an obsessive audiobook habit, supported entirely by my local library.  My perennial dilemma–knit or read on the metro?–evaporated.  Knit and read is a much better option.

Two of my dearest friends are also obsessive book listeners, and one suggested an idea, and conversations bloomed, and suddenly: Books for Ears.   It’s still embryonic, but I have a feeling it’s going to be a lot of fun.  I just added a review for Oryx and Crake. 

Happy New Year.

Before I blather on about unimportant minutia . . . my friend Scott Hull is in desperate need of a liver again.  He is now in the number one slot of the liver transplant list at John’s Hopkins.   His cousin Marcus donated a big healthy chunk of liver to Scott last fall, but transplants don’t always go as planned, and Scott needs a full donor liver, and he needs it now.  Please send him good thoughts as he waits for a liver–it’s a strange thing to pray for someone else to donate an organ, I know.   If you are an organ donor, thank you.  I owe you some cookies.  If you’re not a registered organ donor, please consider becoming one to help wonderful people like my friend and his family.

And now I’m going to blather on about unimportant minutia, because I can’t actually go to the liver store.

Those bags I’m making?  I’ve been trying to churn them out,  and using scraps counts as cleaning, so that’s a plus.  Anyway, I listed one that I really really really wanted
to keep, but figured it was more important to fill my Etsy shop than to keep something I could reproduce, at least in a similar form.  Yep.
I’m that dumb.  It sold (yay!) so I had to send it off to its new owner, who is not actually me (sigh).  Godspeed, perfect little spiraled batik bag.  I hope your new owner is kind to you.

And then there was an issue with a small experiment and a leaky iron.  I dyed some twill ages ago to make something for my husband, but the resultant fabric was far too bright for him.  And I wanted to figure out whether or not the abandoned fabric would make a good inner base for the bags–I hate to waste fabric.  But I worried the fabric would crock, so I planned to make a pale bag and machine wash it–to see if Synthaprol could save the day, and so I could definitively answer any questions that arise about washing the bags.  If fabric crocks in a washing machine, it’s easy to make sure the dye doesn’t set on the other fabrics near it, don’t cha know.  But when a crocking fabric is soaked by a puddle from a leaking iron while a person is off making lunch, well, the damage is harder to erase.

Doh!  It  now has a blue cast in spots.  Whoops.  I guess that twill needs another purpose.  The bag is still cute, though.  I guess I could list it as a second.  Or keep it.

While we’re speaking of blue . . . a better photo of those imperfect  socks:

With a bright teal  toe.  Thankfully they’re decently photographed now and I can finally wear them.  Sunlight is a rare thing here, these days.

I studiously ignored the sockyarn blanket for weeks (WEEKS!) while working away on gifts.  But now Christmas has past, and I can only spend so much time chained to the sewing machine making sock bags. 

Speaking of sock bags, I’m almost done with a big batch of sock bags.  I’ll try to post photos, but there is no sun at my house when I’m here these days, and I feel silly carrying my knitting and sewing to work to photograph them in the city.  But that may be my only option.

Where was I . . .  returning to personal knitting means I just finished round one of the blanket edging.  13,400 edge stitches done, only 13,400 knit stitches and a few scant hundred stitches with a darning needle between me and a finished blanket.  Ahhhhhh.  So close!

Also, I cast the second of the kilt hose back onto the needles and all seems to be going as planned.  Fingers crossed.

And, perhaps coolest of all,  I just signed a contract for Etaine, Anubh and I to perform again at the Pennsylvania Celtic Fling the last weekend of June 2008.  Woot!  We have twice as many sets as last year.  Which may freak me out just a little bit, because we can’t really double the amount of material we perform between now and June.  I’m going to go hide under my nearly-finished blanket now–excuse me.

For anyone keeping score, it may seem as if I’m not all that close to this year’s goal of reading a large portion of the unread books in our library while simultaneously avoiding purchasing books.  Well, we’re nearing the end of 2007 and I’ve actually done quite well.  I bought a few books that were planned cheats–the new Harry Potter and some knitting books (which were exempted–though I was still very restrained) including  Clara’s astounding masterpiece and the newest Yarn Harlot.

And now, I’m giving myself a few gold starts for seriously considering a few books I was either not terribly likely to enjoy before checking them off my list, or that, upon reflection, I know I’ve read.  Some are Scott’s and not really to my taste, and some are things I’ve had for a really long time so was fuzzy on, and some are things I read but don’t really feel the need to review.

• John Thillman, Civil War Cavalry and Artillery Sabers It’s a reference, and, you know, I don’t collect Civil War swords.
• Jwing-Ming Yang, Shaolin Long Fist Kung Fu.  No one wants me taking up Kung Fu.    I am, for all intents and purposes, made of spun sugar.
• Adam Hsu, The Sword Polisher’s Record: The Way of Kung Fu.  Ditto.
• Bertrand Russell, The Principles of Mathematics.  I suck at higher and conceptual math.  After all this time, I think I’m ok with that.
• Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism: The Classical Tradition.  I don’t want to read any more Mises or other econ until I get to go back to grad school.  That’s fair, right?
• H.A.Rey,  The Stars: A New Way to See Them I’ve read it.  About a bajillion times, probably, as a kid.
• CliffordRoss and Karen Wilkin with Edward Gorey, The World of Edward Gorey.  I’ve read this.   I think I was hoping I hadn’t, because I miss Gorey so and, sadly, even a man that eccentric is apparently incapable of writing and drawing from beyond the grave.  Sigh.
• Johannes Kalter and Margareta Pavaloi, Uzbekistan: Heirs to the Silk Road.  This is a big, gorgeous art book full of amazing textiles.  I’ve used it as a reference over and over again, and love it, but am not likely to read it cover to cover and review it.
• Ann Yonemura, Hokusai: Volume One.  Another art book I stare at without reading cover to cover.
• Henri Cartier Bresson, America in Passing.  Photography.  I love it.  Nuff said.
• Kate Jennings, Ansel Adams.  More photography.  More love.