Patience is a Virtue

Patience, Persistence and Perseverance

Patience
The capacity to tolerate delay, trouble or suffering without becoming angry or upset.

Persistence
The act of continuing, firmly or obstinately in an opinion or a course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition.

Perseverance
Continuing in a course of action in spite of difficulties or with little or no indication of success.

I am hoping that this little mantra will help me in my journey from the edge...

I’m feeling overwhelmed again. I have been overtaken by the events in my life. I know damn well that it’s my own fault. But I just don’t seem to know where the relax button is. And as a consequence this post will reflect two things: my life is crazy and random. So on with it…

Kromski News
When last we spoke of the Kromski spinning wheel, I was feeling a bit of spinning/llama angst. Having waited for the teacher to appear, and the roving to arrive from “out west” somewhere on a slow truck to Carleton Place, I am going on Thursday to the Mississippi Black Sheep Gallery where Susan is going to give me the “what for” and “how to” on the mysteries of Scotch Tensioning. And while I’m at it, I think I’ll ask her about brushing the llama so that I’m not spinning from the butt end. I know this makes little sense to you. It barely makes sense to me, frankly. It’s a new language for a burgeoning art form (for me), but I am taking heart that help is less than a block away. And I’m really looking forward to having a good gab with my neighbour while I’m at it.

So stay tuned for more spinning news.

Dying Yarn
In the absence of newly spun-by-me yarn, I thought I’d try something new with items I had lying around the house. I have wanted to try dying yarn for a while now and after doing some research on The Dye Pot, I took the plunge. Of course, I can never start with something simple. I wanted to get rainbow yarn. Yes, all the colours. And I wanted it vivid. Hey, you can’t fault me for aiming high. So I soaked some Briggs and Little natural yarn in some dish soap for an hour, measured out 20 drops of red, yellow and blue food colourings into separate cups of vinegar with ½ a cup of vinegar and got out the slow cooker. I wound the skein of yarn into the pot, poured enough of the soaking water in to cover the yarn and then added the dyes (a third of the pot for each), put the lid on and let it simmer on high for 3 hours. It did not result in a rainbow, but I am really pleased with the results and I am making Maine Morning Mitts for myself. (I’ve never been so excited about Easter coming before and all because I can buy more food dyes really cheap after it’s over!) I’ll save acid dying for summer time experimentation!

New Furnace
Remember back in, what October when I had a bad smell in the house and called in the duct cleaners…well, it took 3 months, but the new furnace has been installed and it seems to be working really well. I mean, the house went down to 50 degrees F while they tore out the old one and fitted the new one, vented outside, ran some new duct work and decided that a new chimney liner would not be necessary, and it only took 15 minutes for it to come back up to temperature and it didn’t burn the house down in the first 24 hours. Although, you may not be aware of this but, new furnaces are dipped in oil during manufacturing so that they won’t corrode before installation. So when you ignite them for the first time, the whole house fills up with smoke for about half and hour. And they have to vent the sucker with plastic pipe which they glue together with contact cement. If you are sitting in the right place in the house, you get high as a kite while you are trying to stay warm. Which didn’t make what I was doing any easier.

WIP Update
And what was I doing while I was high as a kite on glue fumes? Unravelling a monster snarl in a lovely ball of Handmaiden SeaSilk. For my Eunny Jang Print of the Waves shawl. I now understand the word “Patience”. It took 12 hours of picking, unwrapping, threading in and out, squishing the snarl from one side of the ball to the other, removing fluff that I was wearing off the delicate strands of now slightly fuzzy yarn that costs $40 a ball!!!!! Someone had better be paying attention to me when I say this: I will be buried in this shawl. I’ll have to be, to make all the effort worth it.

There are other things in the works.

Here is a sock I got done with some awesome Kaffe Fassett sock yarn. Sock yarn is expensive, but as obsessive compulsive hobbies go, my fibre fetish is giving me socks that wear like iron. Right now I’m wearing one of my first pairs and they are almost 10 years old. Not bad for a ball of string and some pointy sticks. Yes, I know I could buy a pair from Zellers for a buck fifty, but they have those gawd-aweful seams in the toes and the wear out too fast. Anyone who has had hand made socks understands.

I am also working on a hat for Bruce to wear skating on Sunday next. Or should I say, I’m about to cast on that hat. (Which means it is unlikely that I will have a second Maine Morning Mitt by that time. Only two hands. And one of them is injured.) Which leads us on to the next topic.

I’ve Broken Myself
I get carried away. I have too much fun. I do too many things. I should be tied to a chair with duct tape. You might just as well gag me too, so that you don’t have to listen to the foul language that would ensue from not being able to do the 10 billion things I like to do. Remember the marathon of music on Boxing Day? Did I fail to mention that? Yeah, Bruce and I went to our friends’ Cindy and Ross’s for a little music party on Boxing Day. We played for 7 HOURS. Imagine that! It hurt me is a kind of lasting sort of way. When I got back to work after the holidays, I had to get a new trackball and start using my left hand to mouse because typing was burning me. I do a lot of typing. You are reading this, so you know I type a lot. Playing the drum was also burning. And knitting is hurting too. And my back is out a bit. (It has been for 20 years).
So, I’m going to physio. Twice a week for 6 weeks. And a friend in the music community is coming over to try some Reiki on me. Tonight in fact. I’m quite excited about this and will tell you more about that experience later.

Stay tuned.

Reiki Elation
Well, may I recommend having a session of Reiki for pretty much whatever ails you. This hands-on healing method is really something else. It involves the channelling of energy though the body so that it can get into the congested and knotted areas of your tissues. Read more about it here. After a little over an hour, I felt balanced, rejuvenated, and virtually buzzing with energy. It was a wonderful experience that has left me (the next day) feeling calm—shocking, I know—and quite serene. I know that my back is still out of whack, but despite this, I feel that I’ll be better prepared for my next physio appointment and should get better results.
Organized Chaos
For those of you who have been to my house, you know the place is busy, chaotic and not in any way feng shui. By that I mean there are toys and balls of yarn and books and music, etc. all over the place in semi-organized piles. Don’t get me wrong. I can find stuff (usually, although there was the time I cleaned the office and threw away the children’s birth certificates…ah, good times), but I become overwhelmed by my surroundings from time to time and unlike other aspects of my life, I can conquer the mess (periodically). So in an effort to rationalize the kids’ play room, Dad and I went to Home Depot for lumber and we built some shelves.

And I liked them so much, that Bruce and I went to Canadian Tire and bought a new $35 book shelf for my knitting and design inspiration books to live in the living room without cluttering up the floor and fainting couch. It won’t take long to fill it up. But it feels really good to be able to browse through the patterns without having to lug them hither, thither and yon because they are always so reluctant to go back to yon.