Ordinary Time

We celebrated K.'s birthday tonight. How on earth can this child be twenty already?? We love you very, very much!!

Always in late spring I feel starved for color. Whole there are a few things blooming (thank you, forsythia), it is still pretty a monotone of brown things outside. This explains my newest weaving project. My loom had been empty too long, and I decided I just wanted to weave something pretty. I went through my stash of weaving yarn and found somethings that will satisfy my need for pretty and colorful.  It was those variegated skeins on the right that I needed to work with. I'm now working on planning the color changes and doing all the number things, then I will be set to start measuring the warp. It will be a throw... or maybe two depending on how the amount of yarn holds out.  One of the reasons why my loom was empty for so long is that I am consumed with my English paper piecing project. I have a lot of little octagons basted, so I decided I could start playing with them to find a design. (I think playing with hundreds of little pieces of color is one of the biggest draws ...

Today was sheep shearing day. More accurately, it was E. learns to shear sheep day. I hired the shearer who came last spring to come and teach me how to shear, with the idea that she would help me learn on one, then I would shear the other three over the next couple of weeks. At its most basic, this is exactly what happened. I'll start with the sheep I sheared.  First a before picture. Pay close attention to Kaspian, the sheep in the middle. He is the one I ended up learning on.  The skin side, which is also the projected, clean side, of Kaspian's fleece. And the naked boy after being sheared. It gives you some idea about how much wool the sheep grow.  But what about the other three? We'll, it turns out they won't need to be sheared. I'm thrilled! Shetland sheep are considered a primitive breed, which means that they maintain genetic traits that more domesticated breeds no long have. Among these traits is the one that creates a break in the wool so that the sheep ef...

And we protested. Some of us went to downtown Chicago, some of us went to out smaller, local protest. J. and I both wore out Melt the ICE hats (there were quite a few). The wind was cold and wicked, so wearing a wool hat was good in a couple of ways.  Our local protest: It's harder to see numbers because this protest stretched for nearly a mile.  And the Chicago protest. It is good to protest inhumane policies. It is good to stand with others who also believe current policies are inhumane. My favorite sign from today, which I didn't get a picture of, was: Peace is not Quiet.  We can stand up, we can make noise, we can speak goodness to evil, we can protest peacefully, but what none of us can do right now is be quiet. 

I think we've all settled back into our routine after I had been gone for a bit. I think I've even readjusted my sleep schedule. The end of the semester for those taking college classes is starting to loom, which means there was a lot of studying around the house today. L. gamified the process by creating on the computer a spinning wheel which listed everything that needed to be done and for how long as well as adding in some fun things. Thus, a totally randomized schedule was produced. I don't think at 16 I would have thought of that. I bought some strawberries at the store this week because they were on sale, and this morning I opened the refrigerator to discover chocolate covered strawberries that Y. had made. We had them for dessert tonight. We don't live in walking distance of anything, so it is extremely rare to have someone ring out doorbell. It actually kind of disturbed people because it happens so infrequently. Today it rang and everyone looked at me as if to ...

After D. graduated from college last spring his plan was to get a job, work for a year, and apply to grad schools. And he did all that. He and P. have been sharing an apartment in Chicago, and D. spent the fall applying to grad schools. After the new year, the response letters started to arrive. As is usual in the school application game, some were acceptances and some were rejections, but he had enough acceptances that he needed to choose between them. He went to each school tour and then had to make his decision.  A couple of the schools were in Chicago, and while we would love to have him here, I think he made a very good decision. I'm very happy to share that in August D. will be heading off to Troy, New York to start a PhD program in chemistry at Rennselear Polytechnic Institute. We are thrilled for him and extremely proud of his achievements. We are also going to miss him terribly being so far away.  I know everyone always asks what kind of chemistry he wants to do. It's...

I got in late last night after a really lovely trip to visit my mom. It was a lovely visit despite the 108° temperatures. We went out to eat. We cleaned out boxes. We went fabric shopping. And I saw a good number of friends that I don't get to see nearly enough. Plus, I read four complete books.  The first was an N. K. Jemisin book called The City We Became. I checked it out from the library because I liked her trilogy that begins with The Fifth Season so much. It's speculative fiction and for the first third I had to just keep reading despite not really having any idea what was going on. It was very much a matter of trusting the author. The book is very much a love letter to New York City while at the same time being a pretty sharp social commentary. If you appreciate speculative fiction, I recommend this to you. I have the sequel sitting in my pile waiting for it's turn.  Then I read a book on animal communication followed by The Correspondent by Virginia Evans which I t...

As I was talking with my friend yesterday, we realized that most of the people we went to elementary school with lived in families who had lived in Arizona for a while. Many people had grandparents who also lived in the area. The Phoenix area was not the city of transplants that it is now. As my mother and I have visited various friends today, I realize that they, too, are all long time residents. My friend, who still lives in the valley, says it is very rare that she comes across people who didn't personally move here. I'm not even sure where I'm going with this except to note the phenomenon.  I've also been helping my mom go through some boxes that have been stored since my grandmother passed away twenty-five years ago. A couple of them included some family history which has been interesting to look at. One picture shows my great-grandmother and my grandmother (on my mother's side) when my grandmother was eight, standing on a train platform about to leave Chicago ...

I spent the morning at the Desert Botanical Garden with a friend I've known since first grade. We actually spent more time catching up than paying attention to the gardens, but I did take a couple of pictures for you.  This is one of the many Palo Verde trees which were in bloom. And another picture from the butterfly garden which has only species native to the area. The rest of the day was spent with my mom visiting other friends and helping her sort through ~13 boxes which had been stored in the garage.  Today's high temperature was 108° F (42° C). It's not spring, it's summer and it feels exactly like the summers of my childhood. I've never felt nostalgic about the summers of my childhood temperature-wise. In true form, the weather back home was very pleasant and my family was in t-shirts. At least it is still cooling off at night, so the mornings aren't bad. 

This morning when I headed outside to feed the horses, it was 10° F (-12° C) with a wind chill of -3. It's not really the weather one wants to see in March. Tomorrow night I fly to Arizona to spend the weekend with my mom. I always look forward to this trip which often has the added perk of warm weather to tide me over until spring finally arrives here.  So there's warm and there's hot. It seems the Southwest is going to be having a heat wave while I'm there, with temperatures around 102° F (39° C). While I know that the first few days will feel lovely after that ten degrees business, I also know that by the afternoon it won't exactly be sit outside and read weather. I'm not really complaining. I grew up there and know that 102° in March is actually pretty manageable. But it does seem a bit extreme to experience a hundred degree temperature difference in 48 hours (if you start at that wind chill figure.) I will say that it is better than pouring rain which has a...

I am so close to being done with the making the actual skirt I have been drafting the pattern for. Here's what I have done. The front: Notice the fly zipper. I have made so many fly zipper over the past two weeks. I think I all paid off because I'm happy with this one. The front has pockets with a nice lining.  This is the back. You can tell where I left off sewing today. I'm finishing the seams where the yoke connects to the panels which is why this hasn't been pressed yet. It will lie flat once I do that.  The back also has went pockets which I drafted to fit my phone. Here is the pile of 14 (!) pattern pieces I had to draft in order to make this skirt. I'm not sure I realized how involved my first drafting project actually was. That's probably for the best.  Tomorrow I'll finish the yoke, see the side seams together, do the waistband, and then hem it. It shouldn't be too hard to finish. I would love to be able to pack it for my trip to Arizona to visi...

If you are a fan of Elizabeth Peter's Amelia Peabody series, I have another series to recommend to you! Last week I was browsing the library's new book shelf and grabbed a mystery that looked vaguely interesting. It was the first in a series, so I assumed it was a new series.  I've been reading a lot (that would be a lot even in terms of my own voracious reading habits,), but I have also been very quick to put down a book that is not holding my interest. (I'm up to nine books on my 'did not finish' tally so far, and that's just for the past two and a half months.) I had just set aside three books in a row, so decided to start the mystery that I had grabbed.  I ended up loving it, reading it in just two or three days. At the end of the book there was the beginning of the next book in the series. This was thrilling because I didn't have to wait for it, it was already here! I did a quick catalog search and discovered that the first book was not as new as I ...

Yesterday I wasn't feel well, so took myself to bed, because catching up on sleep is usually my cure all. It continued to prove true because I was fine thus morning. Then this evening, J. and I had planned to go out to dinner since we couldn't actually remember the last time we had done that. I wanted a good hamburger, so we headed to one of three small downtown areas east of us along the Fox River.  Well, when you don't get out much, I guess you become unaware of events. Events such as the weekend before St. Patrick's Day. It took us a minute to figure out why parking was proving to be so difficult. When we did find a spot, the loud people wearing kelly green were our clue. We made it to the restaurant we were heading to, which was a pub type place. I opened the door and the noise, the crowd, and the overwhelming amount of green made me close it again and said no.  [This is not an age thing. I have never ever enjoyed loud and crowded restaurants even in my 20's.] W...

In my continuing effort to be 'the fun mom' thus spring break, there were some people who wanted to take a trip to Kline Creek Farm near us because I had seen there were lambs. This farm raises Cotswold sheep, an endangered breed. (I would love to add some Cotswolds to our flock, but I'm afraid with current accomodations we are full up.) It's still fun to go visit lambs, though, even if they aren't ours.  Five lambs had been born so far, two who were old enough to be with the other ewes, and a set of triplets that were pretty recent I think. There are a lot of pictures because I had a couple of photographers who were smitten. If you live in the area, you should go visit them.