Adventures in Scrabble

I haven't played Scrabble in ages, so this weekend when I noticed that Jag had a Scrabble set among his piles of games, I challenged him to a match.

My luck with tiles started out bad and didn't improve much. It turns out that "Eaaaizt" is not a valid word to describe "a follower of Eaaa".

This set wasn't much better, unless I had wanted to work in some kind of "Old MacDonald" reference, or possibly the name of an insurance company.

It later became clear that I should have kept the "G" and that I was subconsciously thinking about biscuits.

Despite being left with an unusable "Q", I squeaked by for a 6-point victory. Here's the slightly risque finished board. I wonder if some kind of psychological analysis can be done using peoples' Scrabble words. In case you want to take a stab at it, Jag was responsible for "nude", "nun", and "dirt" and I'm on the hook for "teats", "bolus" and "pox". And yes, "gi" and "ria" (Jag), and "ye" (me) are all valid words.

Thanksgiving weekend

Thanksgiving weekend has been whizzing by. On Thursday, there were 6 for dinner at the parental household and the usual yummy feast.

The Thanksgiving table, pre-feast:

I forgot to take pictures of the food before everyone sat down, so here is what you get when you interrupt the munching with your camera flash. We had turkey and gravy, stuffing inside and outside the bird, Robin's cranberry sauce, Greg's 2 kinds of green beans (the almond and blue cheese ones were my favorite), Greg's cornbread, squash casserole and rolls I made, candied sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, and cole slaw. For dessert, pumpkin pie and a pecan-chocolate-bourbon pie that turned out to be more of a chocolate chip cookie pie. We all ate until we were nearly comatose and waddled home.

Jag and I had a quiet Black Friday at home and didn't buy anything except some groceries.

I knitted some more on the Dad Secret Project, and finished a hat made from the bottom two Uniquely Yours batts, which were full of sparkly angelina. I had a lot of fun spinning the batts into some wacky thick and thin singles. In general the batts were great, but it turns out that I am not a fan of the multicolored wool neps that were added to the black batt. I spend too much time picking neps OUT of yarn to want to put any IN, and they don't actually stay spun into the yarn. My house looks like it's been the site of a rainbow mini-hailstorm, or possibly a tiny clown explosion, and I'm sure the hat will be shedding neps into my hair and the surrounding environment for months to come.

The hat still needs a decorative button on the flap and Jag feels it needs a multicolored pompom, so I have a little more finishing to do before I can wear it. A haircut would help too, since it looks a little ridiculous with all my hair hanging out of it.

I've also been working on a Christmas gift for mom and dad, who should *****NOT CLICK HERE*****.

Perl says, "FEED ME".

For HLF

When I first heard about the open position at my new employer from HLF (getting a lead on a RTP job from someone in California is pretty funny), I promised that I'd send her some handspun yarn if I got the job. Well, I got the job, and this weekend I managed to spin and ply 2 bobbins in the "Black Watch" roving she picked out. In the meantime, HLF has bought a drop spindle and has been spinning up a storm, but she's still getting this yarn whether she wants it or not.

This is a bit of a tease, since the yarn was still drying this morning and wasn't really ready for pictures, but here are some photos of the roving and singles stages:

I have to say, it made a nice, soft, squishy 2-ply. I'll probably not post the pictures until she gets the package, since it's more fun for her to wonder what the yarn looks like.

I got my wheel in late July. I've knitted up and given away some of my handspun, but I've definitely reached the "What the Hell am I Going to Do With This Yarn???" stage of my spinning life. My current pile of no-particular-use-in-mind handspun is shown below. I thought it would take a whole lot longer than this!

Long, long week

Last week was my first week at my new job. My coworkers are all great, my new boss is way cool, and I even already knew a couple of the folks there, but for an extreme introvert like me, a new job is incredibly stressful. Being paraded around to meet people, trying to remember names/titles/roles, trying to get familiar with the environment without being a pest to your new teammates, trying to prove that you're not an imbecile who just managed to put on a good show during the interview...let's just say that I was really glad when Friday rolled around.

The one true highlight of the week was, of course, this.

The sick kitty curtailed my social life to a surprising extent, and I was so tired in the evenings I wasn't really up for much in any case. I did manage to do some dyeing here and there, with the results shown below. I've started doing oven dyeing instead of microwave dyeing, and I'm enjoying it a lot. Far less mess, and really great color blending.

I also took the Tropical Sunset superwash merino off my Etsy site and decided to spin it myself. I love very bright colors, and I had a feeling this was another dye job that only its mother could love (I really do love it!). The finished product is a 2-ply, and I'd put the weight at sport or so, although I still need to do the WPI and yardage count. I hope it's enough for some crazy-ass socks.

The roving:

The yarn:

I neglected to post better pictures of Jag's weaving project. It really turned out great, especially after washing/blocking, which softened it up amazingly.

Not the quiet finish I had hoped for

After getting back from Virginia, my plans were to vote, then spend the remaining time this weekend cleaning the house, doing laundry, and dyeing up some roving and maybe some knitting/spinning/weaving. I got the voting part done yesterday (after spending an hour standing in line at Triangle Town Center!), but the rest has fallen by the wayside due to an unexpected illness in the kitty herd.

Miranda is the most vocal and social of my 4 cats, and she had been unusually quiet since my return. After I returned from voting, I tried tempting her with a treat, which she took from my hand, chewed on, and spit out while crying. Ditto with some canned food. I got worried, since I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen her eat anything since I had gotten in on Thursday, so I called the vet and managed to get an appointment for the same afternoon.

It turns out she has a mouth infection, pretty common in FIV+ kitties. She got some sub-q fluids (mostly to make ME feel better, I think) and antibiotic and painkiller shots at the vet, and now I'll be sneaking more antibiotics into wet food twice a day for the next 2 weeks. She's eaten an entire can of the special super-palatable squooshy prescription food since yesterday afternoon (with great gusto!) so I think she'll be doing much better in a few days once the antibiotics have really kicked in. She was feeling well enough to escape from her quarantine area in the downstairs bedroom last night, because I woke up this morning to find her curled up in bed beside me. At least I know she has no hard feelings about being stuffed into the carrier yesterday.

In the meantime, some fiber progress. Jag finished up his weaving project, so I promptly claimed the loom and worked on an experimental project with warp stripes. I used the only skein of Noro I've ever bought as weft, plus all but a few yards of a skein of Paton's merino in purple and most of a skein of silver-gray Elann Highland wool for the warp. I was pretty tired and slapdash while working on this, so I'm more pleased with the colors than the technical execution, but I still love it. And I know now that I absolutely have to weave a wool blanket now. After washing and blocking, this is the softest, warmest table runner ever! I have big plans for buying a bag or 2 of closeout yarn at WEBS or Elann for the blanket.

My recent spinning has involved 2 more 2-ply yarns. The first is the "Biff Spilled Sangria in the Swimming Pool Again" BFL, which I spun into a fingering weight yarn that I planned to use as sock yarn. It's actually too thin for my taste, as I prefer heavier sock yarns, so I may just knit lace with it.

Before and After:

I also dyed up some Louet Coopworth top recently. I was NOT happy with this fiber. It's full of vegetable matter and it's in super-thin, raggedy, flat sliver, which IMO is not combed enough and is full of snags and neps. I dyed up 8 oz in 2 colorways, but I just wasn't going to be comfortable selling this stuff, so I've kept it for myself. The first one I dyed in various leftover purples that I squirted randomly over the wool. After spinning, plying, and finishing, I have to admit that it made a pretty nice yarn, softer than expected. It's a DK-worsted that will make some nice sturdy mittens, I think, maybe with some Kristen Nicholas-style embroidery.

I've also finished up part of the Dad Secret Project. Everyone BUT Dad, click here to see .