Edited to add:  Wheeeee!  I won some gorgeous Alpaca from the Blogger Bingo prize pool.  Wheeeeeee!  I never win anything in drawings.  Wheeeeeee!  Thank you so much, Continue Reading »

So, it’s birthday season.  Scott is a year and four days older than I am, and our friend Mikele’s birthday falls right before ours, and Alan’s is right after, and then Nessa, and I can’t even name everyone else who is in the October string of birthdays.

I think I did a particularly good job finding one of my presents to Scott.

It’s a Mongolian chess board.  No, I didn’t make it.  But now that I’ve met one, I want to start doing the felt work for them.  The carving isn’t in my grasp though, so I’d need to gang up with someone.  That’s a felt tube, decorated by pressing hot irons against the wool.  Inside:

The board is another piece of burned felt, and the pieces are carved of clay, fired, and hand-painted.  The pawns are turtles,

the queens are lions,

and the bishops are camels.

Scott gave me another lunikeit, this one all silver.

The discs have stags in them–I haven’t been able to get a clear close-up of them, but they’re lovely.

My gift to myself was a trip to Rhinebeck with my friends Jayme and Janet.  It was wonderful.  I missed being home with my fellow October-babies, since we often get together around now.  But the festival was amazing.  I’ll tell you about it later.

My other present to myself is finally complete.

This second picture, with flash, gives a better idea of the color.

I wanted to wear it to the festival on Saturday, but the last bit of the pattern was giving me fits.  I broke up with this sweater over and over again at the end, and threatened it with immolation.  We’ve come to an understanding, though.  I was able to crochet the sleeves in once I got home–I have yet to become one with a crochet hook, so it takes more concentration than I can muster while surrounded by fun.  It fits well, it’s warm, the color is gorgeous, and I may actually keep it.

Mike and Tara took me to see Bruce Molsky as an early birthday present last night.  It was amazing.  I’ve blathered before  about the musicianship to be found in Old-Time.  I think Bruce leads the bunch.  Since he was playing solo last night, he really had a chance to show his range.  Fiddle, banjo, guitar, singing–and all of it so good.  As usual, I feel a bit cruel gushing about a show that the vast majority of people had no access to.  And, as usual, I’ll encourage you to go see Bruce play live if he comes to your town, and to buy his CDs, and to support live music, dammmmit.  I’m betting Tara will post her excellent photos soon, and maybe even a snippet or two of Bruce’s excellent playing and singing.  Fingers crossed.

As promised, I picked up the mystery loom this weekend from the wonderful Yorkses.  It’s a Leclerc Inca (scroll down), and therefore French Canadian.  I want to celebrate with excellent cheeses, and, er, tell me what else I should do to celebrate the loom in a French-Canadian manner . . . I’m far more prepared to celebrate things Nova Scotian. 

It’s still in pieces, but I have the manual, so I should be able to get it put together soon.  A bit of TLC will be required–there’s some rust on the reed.  And then I’ll have to get my friend Carol to teach me how larger looms function. 

I figured that I should bring a bit of wool entertainment with me to the Yorkses’, so I brought the goods to make felted soap and pincushions with the kidlets.  What a hit!  Chip and AnnaMarie had spent much of the day painting their house (she’s becoming a painted lady, Mathom’s End is), and they had to call it quits and get their hands into the wool too, of course.  I brought piles of Peace Fleece rovings and some nice handmade soaps I picked up at Maryland Sheep and Wool.  Many soaps were covered, pincushions were made, everyone ended up with very clean hands, and then we had no choice but to celebrate our creativity by jumping on the trampoline.  And as if they hadn’t done enough for me already, AnnaMarie presented me with a book on plants in Scots-Gaelic she’d picked up in Portland.  My language geeking went off the scale.  As usual, I had more than my share of fun and it was very hard to leave.    Sigh. 

And finally, the emerald green mohair cabled cardigan is very close to completion, so I should be able to wear it on Saturday to Rhinebeck.  I need to knit a few more inches of the last sleeve, block, assemble, and add the neck and button bands.  And choose buttons.  I think I can get there. 

My progress was impeded significantly after the show last night when a freaking madman started talking to me on the Metro and Would.  Not.  Stop.  <long sigh / > I let my freak flag fly, as a rule, so I’m used to people noticing things about my clothes or jewelry that single me out as "anti-establishment" or whatever.  I was wearing a lunikeit, like I do, and an Irish handmade spirally felt coat, like I do, and knitting, like I do.  So when the seemingly-sane man asked politely what I was making,  I answered politely that I was knitting a sleeve.  He seemed nice enough, and wasn’t drooling or trying to touch me, but I could kinda tell, you know?  He was trying a bit too hard to dress like Johnny Depp and couldn’t decide between the Edward Scissorhands look and the Jack Sparrow look.  So he asked if I was tied into the local Celtic community, and I said yes.  And he mentioned a friend of a friend of a friend we had in common and I luckily retained a bit of my natural aloof stance and didn’t volunteer too much info. . .  small talk small talk, "I’m happily married" "Oh, your husband is such a lucky man" yes-yes-but-you’re-creeping-me-out-stranger-I-am-going-over-here-now-without-you-been-a-long-day  small talk. 

And then . . . and then he started explaining that it’s really good that he is such a high level warlock so he can deal with his pregnant 3,000 year-old witch girlfriend.  Because she is very angry.  Because she was once burned at the stake.  And it’s his fault, see, because he’s part Italian, and thus (not my logic–his) responsible for the Spanish Inquisition.  And the real danger is that she is having a girl, and mother and child together are likely to burn him alive once they don’t need him anymore.  Yada yada yada.

I see.  I was a deer in headlights, lemmetellya.  It was fascinating, his crazy-as-a-shithouse-bat monologue.  Fascniating in its insanity.  To compound the oddity of his statements, he said it all with no sense of irony, doubt, or concern in his voice.  He had no doubt I would believe every word of it, and seemed truly shocked when I said I’d heard quite enough and needed to knit in peace.  If I hadn’t heard the words he was saying, I could have assumed he was talking about a rather boring football game.  The flat affect–it was strange.  I don’t know.  Maybe it’s all true, and would-be-Depp is locked in a heroic magical battle with his deranged but loving gal.  I’m not going to visit their happy home to find out.   And I’m not taking whatever he took, man.  Sheesh. It’s Monday night, man.  Gotta go to work in the morning, you know, lay off the pills.  And pick–Edward or Jack.  Not both.   True style requires decisiveness.

So, by way of a quick update, I’ve started the first sleeve for my Rhinebeck-bound sweater, and I’m happy enough with the back and the fronts.  I may need to bend some time to finish it by Thursday.  Particularly because of, well . . .

A while ago, I was hanging out with AnnaMarie at her brother’s place for the annual pool party celebrating nephew Brandon’s birthday.  Have I mentioned that my group of friends is full of siblings and old friends and we’ve all slowly married each other’s best buddies and entangled our community very tightly?  I’ve known Scott since I was 17, and we’re one of the "newly-met" couples because people remember a time before we met, let alone a time before we were together.  Anyway, AnnaMarie’s parents were at said party, and all of the kidlets were running about in a high state of cuteness, and the adult beverages were flowing, and AnnaMarie’s Mom was teasing her kids about dropping off truckloads of stuff she didn’t want anymore in their driveways, since she had stored their crap for years and now it was payback time.  We’ve all had similar conversations with our parents, right?  And then AnnaMarie said a rather impressive thing to me:

"My Mom has a floor loom she’s not using.  So she brought it to my house.  I don’t know how to weave on it, and I don’t have any room for it.  You want it on long-term loan?"

I think some margarita shot out of my nose about then.  And then maybe I jumped up and down a lot.  As some of you may know, I keep saving for a loom, and then my duplicitous truck gets jealous and requires expensive repairs, and then I have to start saving again, and then maybe I lock myself in a closet to whimper about it.  Just maybe. 

And then a loom fell from the sky into my pocket.  It a figurative sense, of course–no hospitalization required and no smashed looms.  And then I had some actual big thinking to do.

We live in a pretty small house, so I’ve been wrestling with the "where the hell am I going to put a floor loom" questions.  But AnnaMarie has gently prodded me with the "Weren’t you saving for a floor loom?" questions, and also the "I don’t have any room for a loom either, you know, so come get this thing and make me stuff" statements. 

So maybe, just maybe, a floor loom will come to stay with me this weekend.  I think it will have to live in our bedroom.  I have no idea what kind of loom it is, though it’s apparently some sort of four-jack. 

I think I may just swoon.

My sweater feels betrayed.

I do not intend to be cruel.  But I can guarantee I had more fun than you did last night.  Unless you were where I was, that is, and only a few hundred people were.  Specifically on the correct side of the 9:30 club.  For the Old Crow Medicine Show show.  Hot damn.  Red hot skillet licking good. 

Now, I know not everyone has the love for old-time music and dance that I have.  That’s also how I know that, well, many many people are nutters.  Sure sure, not everyone grows up with the stuff.  Because failing to appreciate this makes no living sense to me, once you find out about it.  Firstly, bad musicianship just isn’t tolerated.  People who can’t play tunes don’t tour as old-time musicians.  Their instruments would be confiscated and donated to people who want to learn to play.  The minute pop-music-incorporated decides to give a damn about actual musical talent, I may look in its direction again.  Until then, I’m sticking to the worthwhile traditions and innovators.  Also, Old-time is the first truly American music, and it’s tied to blues and bluegrass and rock and rockabilly and folk.  And it’s tied to Africa and Ireland and Germany and Norway and Romania and many many other places.  And it’s still alive and kicking, as the Old Crow boys demonstrated last night. 

And thanks to Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, T-Bone Burnett, Bruce Molsky, The Be Good Tanyas, Uncle Earl, the Old Crow boys, and too many other geniuses to mention, Old-time is getting real play these days.  This happens every fifteen years or so, and it’s a joy when it does.  It’s kind of strange this time around, having college-age kids with no previous experience of the stuff show up and lap it up.   Most of them will release it quickly and grab the next trend, but some of them will turn into true pickers and some will turn into true dancers, and that will keep this tradition alive for another fifteen years. 

Scott and I showed up early to grab a railing spot upstairs, and Mike and Tara came in soon after as did John and a few of his friends from work.  For whatever reason, we lucked into just the right spot.  The people on the stage right balcony looked like they were heavily sedated.  They weren’t dancing.  They were just kind of standing there, dumbstruck, for most of the show.  Stage left was a sea of dancing, singing fans.  I’ve never seen such a split in a crowd, but I was glad we went the right direction, because I really hate being scolded for dancing to a  . . .  wait for it . . . dance band. 

Now, I’ve been spreading the Old Crow gospel since Greetings from Wawa.  But we’d never had a chance to see them before, because they kept picking Baltimore over DC and playing on weeknights.  Stupid free will.  I was so happy to see how hard the guys were playing.  By our count, Ketch went through four bows.  Four bows.  The harmonies were tight, Ketch and Willie each hit a few steps here and there.  The one gospel song they played was played as a dirty blues, which may my evil little heart fly.  They played pretty much everything I wanted them to play, and they played it well, and the crowd ate it up.

It was a great ride, and I want to go again.

Ok, gotta stop.  I’m sure Tara got some good pictures, and I can’t wait to see them. 

One last thing–Wild Asparagus is playing the Glen Echo Contra on October 22nd.  It kind of makes me want to cry since I most likely can’t go, what with Rhinebeck and all.   So I beg you to go for me.  Big fat sigh. 

I am not, in point of fact, all talk.

I am mostly talk, but not all talk.

Our new refrigerator is in place, on top of newly-laid tiles.  And our hero Mike came by and did some lovely finish-carpentry for us over the weekend.  Ahhhhhhh.  We may finish the kitchen before, you know, any of the nieces or the nephew leave for college.

And there is knitting progress.  Print o’ the Wave is clearly lace.  See

Not the best half-assed temporary blocking I’ve done, but you get the point.  It’s the prettiest dish-towel I’ve ever made.  I might even keep going until it’s long enough for, like, a big place-mat.  Or an ascot.  But only if she says nice things to me.

The sweater back is complete:

The left front is past the half-way point:

The yarn is from Kiparoo farm, in Maryland, which is a lovely place.  It’s a hand-dyed emerald green wool mohair blend.  I heart it.  It’s very silky, and not at all scratchy to me. 

Now, things are going to get a little scary.  I’m all about honesty, you know, and not everything is pretty lace and soft sweaters.  Some knitting is scary. 

Take this sock, for instance.  I don’t have proof, but I’m pretty sure Trekking made the yarn out of ground-up clowns:

Honestly, it’s the section right above the needles I hate.  Red and orange and lime green all mashed together.  I’ve knit far past this point, but I think I’m just fooling myself.  I took the sock to knitting this weekend, to warn the others.  And some of them are obviously deluded.  Many, many seemingly sane knitters said this is a lovely colorway.  And then maybe they said I was cracked.  But then again, we can’t really be right.  We knit with Tom.  And Tom knit this.

He actually knit it quite some time ago, and he travels with it.  Which I take as evidence of some very frightening pre-meditation in action.  I live in fear, as should you.

Run for your lives.   

Rhinebeck is coming.  Rhinebeck is coming!

And Rhinebeck coincides with my birthday.  I’ve never been there before, perhaps because I hadn’t reached the appropriate level of obsession.  The current plan is for Janet, Jayme, Lisa and I to all road-trip to Poughkeepsie together.  I originally had train-based thoughts, but we did the math, and driving leaves a lot more money for fiber in our pockets.  Not that I intend to shop, because I don’t need fiber.  Nope.  Not me.

There are all sorts of plans in the works for meet-ups and bingo.  But I demand that you celebrate with me.  I will, somehow, acquire a cake.  And I will bring liquor that mixes easily with beverages available in hotel vending machines.  So tell me, what kind of cake do you like?  And how many of you like vodka drinks, and how many like rum drinks?  Do not speak to me of gin.  Gin makes a man mean, and it makes a Meangrrl even meaner.  "Everybody booze up and riot!" is only a funny party phrase in the abstract, you know.  In concrete terms, boozing and rioting are very bad for wool.  But adult birthday celebrations require cocktails, and I’m buying.  Have cocktail shaker, will travel. 

I have, I swear, been knitting in preparation for Rhinebeck.  I can even insert photos once I go to the trouble of downloading them.  I’m trying very very hard to finish a simple cabled cardigan I started last winter, before Scott’s accident.  I tried to knit it once he was home and recovering, but I just couldn’t, because I had serious gauge issues for a while there.   Hence the months of socks, with some socks thrown in for good measure, all knit very tightly, and with frequent finger-tip soreness issues. 

I just cast off for neck on the back, piece so I think it’s possible to finish.  My newfound sweater dedication has left Print o’ the Wave fallow, but that’s ok.  I’ve also had some serious consternation with a would-be Trekking 100 sock.  There is far too much ground-up-clown in the colorway.  A few rows of lovely marled color, and then red-yellow-green muddy Clown detritus.  Bleh.  I’ve already frogged twice.  The yarn may require surgery. 

All of the knitting faces two forms of competition, though.  We are, again, working on the kitchen.  Learn from me, friends.  Do not trust a Swede, no matter how friendly she is, to have total control over the auto-cad kitchen design process.  Swedes think Americans buy ridiculously large refrigerators, and said Swedes use all sorts of trickery to foil the large refrigerator conspiracy.  Not so bad a concept for a family of two, of course, choosing a smaller major appliance to avoid wasting electricity.  But you can’t install what you can’t buy.  We found exactly one fridge that would fit into the slot we left for it.  So, our old fridge moved to the garage last night, and Scott tiled the slot for the new fridge.  Just a little more tiling and grouting to go, and then we really dedicate ourselves to begging our wonderful friend Mike to do all of the complex trim work.  If the begging doesn’t work, we’ll just kidnap Lisa and refuse to return her until he comes with tools.  Sounds desparate, I know, but we’ve been slogging through this kitchen remodel since, well, 2001? 

The other thing competing with the knitting?  Lost.  Lisa loaned us Season One on DVD, and then a whole weekend disappeared.  I got some sock knitting done, but lace and cables require looking, and Lost does not allow eyes to leave the screen.  It is a jealous master.  Season Two is coming from Netflix.  Send help. 

On Sunday, we went to the National Museum of the American Indian.  Bill and Shirley were so happy to see how well everything came together for the museum.  They live just outside a Ute reservation and have been active in the Nine Mile Canyon Coalition for years.  Shirley was also a Latin American Studies major in college, so she’s the right person to go to NMAI with.  She knows a thing or two about a thing or two.

I should point out that you’re allowed to take pictures inside the museum–I wasn’t being a rebel, here, or breaking any laws.  I should also point out that I’m in the midst of some image-heavy blogging, here.  Sorry if I break your computer’s brain.  If it’s all too much for you, just stop after this photo.  I went to a new museum, and I felt like this guy the whole time.

(In a “my mind open, I like spirals, I am listening to whatever you need to teach me” kind of way.  Not in a major head wound, very strange sunburn kind of way.)

I didn’t take any exterior photos–there are other people who’ve done such a good job at it out there.  Suffice it to say, it’s a breath-taking structure, and the grounds are planted entirely with native species from specific regions of North and South America.  And the front doors are made of glass and covered in images from petroglyphs.

Once inside, you find a lobby with great handmade boats.  I fell hard for the boats.  This, of course, is an Outrigger.

And this is a totora-reed boat used by the Aymara people, who live in Peru and Bolivia.

Once we stopped drooling over the boats, we went to the top floor of the museum and worked our way down.  The first exhibition is a cross-section of different tribes’ views of cosmology.  The center of the exhibit is all about stars.  It opens with a glass sculpture of Raven capturing the sun in his beak (sorry–can’t remember the artist’s name).

And closes with a cast glass sculpture called “Raven Steals the Moon” made by a Salish artist named Ed Archie Noise Cat.  If you look closely, you’ll see the phases of the moon on the outside of the piece, and the raven there on the Moon’s brow.  Gorgeous work.

The displays are relatively dark and thus difficult to photograph, but trust me when I say that this museum is a fiber-artist’s paradise.  There are amazing examples of beadwork

(This one is Cree)

Weaving

Tapestry

And fiber-related metalwork

Sweet little llamas.  Teeny, they were.  And gold.

And that’s just in the first exhibit.  Which also had some wonderful skulls for dia de los muertos

(For a sense of scale here, think ginormous.  Bigger than the biggest skull you’ve ever seen, by far.  It had its own weather system.)

And a great calendar.  It wouldn’t have been right to leave out a calendar, after all.

The next exhibit was heartbreaking in spots.  It depicted the havoc wreaked upon North and South American peoples by the coming of Europeans, eschewing Western histories of the conquests in favor of native histories.  It was a sort of reclaiming of history.  Shirley was particularly happy with this section.  It also covered the strides some tribes are making to reclaim land, repair what’s broken, and make things right for themselves.   Not so cheery, but still full of beautiful material culture.

Spinning supplies

Yarn painting

More weaving

And just generally beautiful things.

I’ll pick this as a completely arbitrary stopping point and continue in another post.

As I was saying, Bill and Shirley, Scott’s aunt and uncle the llama-ranchers, were in DC last week for a conference.  We got to claim them over the weekend.  Like most people, we get stuck in the daily work-cook-clean-sleep routine, and forget what our hometown has to offer us.  When guests come to town, we get to remember what this region is all about.  And this time, I remembered my camera.  I remembered my camera in a way I haven’t for years.  It may take a while to show you just a piece of what we saw.

On Saturday, we went to a mini-Celtic fest at a winery in Culpepper.  Tinsmith was playing, and Tuatha made an appearance thanks to Dark Mary, so we figured it would be nice to pop in.  I actually got a lot of knitting done on Saturday, what with the driving and the hanging out in the lovely weather.  But I frogged it all (hence some of the frustration I mentioned.  “Ground-up Clown” is not a colorway I need in my life, or on my feet).

The grapes were beautiful.

The wine was, well the wine was crap.  Sorry.  It was crap.  But the music was great.

I love being friends with such a good band.  I’ve been friends with members of bad bands in the past, and it’s an uncomfortable thing, lemmetellyahsister.  No fun trying to hide your distaste for your pals’ shite tunes.  No fun at all.  I love being able to look this quartet of people in the eyes and say “That was a great set!” and really mean it.  Ahhhhhhh.

Here’s Rowan. looking cool while chatting with a fan, post set.  Rowan has a thing about taking pictures of people, and I really hate to be photographed (Dad’s a photographer, plus some other stuff) The only way to defend myself from Rowan’s lens may be to turn mine on him.  So nyeeah.

Mostly though, I am in love with Brooke’s banjo.   I want to sent it flowers.  And buy it chocolate.  And maybe write it a song.  Brooke, Rowan and I actually had a short discussion about doing some song-writing together . . . I wonder if instruments can be wooed that easily . . .

It’s an antique Bacon.  That in itself makes it deserving of love.  But it’s got fantastic tone.   And great mother of pearl.

I remember talking to Brooke once about how being a banjo player brings the Nashville big-haired rhinestone-loving glitz out of a girl.  Brooke’s not a frilly person.  Neither am I.  I doubt either of us has a sequin to our names.  But show us some shiny crap on a banjo, and whooooo-weeeeeee!  Get the aqua-net!

Her banjo has really gorgeous carving on the heel

But I’m not just after the banjo because she’s fancy.  I love her working roots too.  Look at that head.  She’s been around, and it’s part of what I like about her (still talking about the banjo, here).

Look at that cascade of brackets.

Brooke told me to play this beauty on Saturday.  She may as well have told me to go ask Bruce Molsky to dance.  Actually, I wouldn’t think twice about asking Molsky to dance–he’s just a musician, and I bet I can out-step him.  But I’m sort of star-struck by this beauty.  I wonder if she likes me . . .

I don’t deserve to play her, because I still simultaneously suck and blow as a banjo player.  Please know that I’m not being self-effacing, there.  I’m really not playing in public yet.  Because I never practice, in part because of something I’ll get to in a minute here.  And also because I am obsessed with the freaking wool.  One day though, I hope to earn its equal.

Now I’ll point out more proof of my tenuous hold on sanity.  I love banjo, obviously.  I’m also allergic to nickle.  It’s why I have to be very careful in selecting knitting needles, and why my body occasionally reacts badly to my wedding ring, which was handmade by a dear friend out of white gold.   Gold always has nickle in it.  So let’s take a look at the brackets again.

The brackets on just about every open-back banjo in the country are nickle-plated.  Do you know how much that sucks for me?  In fact, it sucks for most people.  Brooke isn’t allergic, and look at those top brackets, where her arm rests.  Look right to you?   Nope.  One of Brooke’s students has a worse allergy that I do.  She regularly has huge terrible reactions to her banjo, and yet she keeps playing.  I haven’t found the right banjo-strap/arm covering/motivation combination yet.  But I will, one of these days.  If not, someone will confiscate my banjo, and I’ll be sad.  Sigh.

Next: the Smithsonian.

Not dead.  Swamped at work.

Bill and Shirley, the keepers of the llamas-in-law are in town, so we’re showing them some great things about Virginia and DC.  I even managed to take pictures.

I’ve been working away on Print o’ the Wave, on some sock ideas (which all get frogged), and on a circular needle hanging holder (which I may burn at the stake).  Frustration abounds.