Historic Fibers

A Perfect Day

After a kind of yucky week, I was really looking forward to the weekend. I started the day by riding my bike over to the farmer's market and was especially struck by the good smells. First there was coffee - you could tell by the smell that it was hot, strong, and not bitter. Then there were peaches, and strawberries, and melons. I kept stepping into farmer's stalls , closing my eyes, and inhaling. Everyone was practically giddy by the comfortable temperatures for a change. I witnessed a head of cauliflower try to follow a woman home. She had picked up a different head of cauliflower, and the ambitious head of cauliflower still on the pile picked itself up and flung itself at her feet. Remarkable. I've always said the veg at the market is fresher, and this proves it. She didn't take that head of cauliflower home, but if it had been me, I would have. I collected the weekly fruits and veggies, and headed home, where I organized myself for a visit to Lambtown.

Even though I've been to Lambtown several times, I've never driven myself there, so since I drove myself this time, of course I got lost. It didn't help that there was a detour through town. Eventually, I found the Dixon Mayfair Grounds, parked my car, and marveled that there was a line this year. There has never before, in my experience, been a line to get into Lambtown, and this was even the first year they charged admission (the princely sum of $2). Here's the line, stretching from the admission booth to the street:
I felt kind of dorky taking a picture of the line, but then I looked to my right and there was someone else taking a picture of the line. Clearly, I was not the only person who was astounded by this.

I arrived at 11:23 a.m., and I was supposed to meet Lisa at 11:30, so I rushed into the vendor building and did a quick lap. It took me exactly 7 minutes to buy a pound of chocolate brown Romney pin drafted roving and present myself at the appointed meeting place on time. A new record. Lisa and her friend Cat arrived shortly afterwards, and we went back to do a more leisurely survey of the vendor building. I couldn't resist another pound of roving, this time a buttery soft bag of undyed white Cormo from Sue at Cormo Sheep and Wool. We visited with Brooke of Sincere Sheep, and here she is working on her Log Cabin blanket:

Look at all that gorgeous roving at her side! She and her partners take wool from small sheep farmers in her area (Sonoma) and use natural dyes for some, and leave others their natural colors. Her yarns and rovings are absolutely exquisite, and I fell in love with some chocolate brown yarn (I have really been jonesing for chocolate brown lately). One of the things I really love about Brooke's yarn is they put the name of the sheep it came from on the label. The chocolate brown beauty is named Bodie, and in the future when I am not on such a tight budget, Bodie will be mine. I know you want to see a closer picture of Brooke's yarn, so here you go:

Be sure to upsize the photo and take a good look. There was a lot more that I wasn't able to photograph owing to there being a crowd of people blocking my access.

After a lap around the vendors, we decided to get something to eat, so naturally we headed to the Rotary's tent for some lamb ribs. We found tables in the front row by a stage for musical performers, but they were between acts when we got there, so we enjoyed our food. Then, a band called the California Cowboys got up to play some country and western music, and we found ourselves unfortunately right in front of a large stack of amplifiers. We got thoroughly blasted, but weren't done eating yet. Cat really amazed me when in the midst of all this din, she placidly pulled out a flyer for the upcoming Scottish Games that had been thrust into her hand earlier and proceeded to start folding it:

By the time the California Cowboys had finished belting out "Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys" interspersed with riffs from the theme song to "Bonanza," Cat had created this:

Talk about trash to treasure! Cat made an origami rose out of a flyer, for Pete's sake! She's pretty impressive. We ambled off to take a look at the sheep shearing, which always leaves me feeling like there must be a better, more humane way to get the fleece off a sheep. Perhaps something involving massage and aromatherapy. The sheep and the spectators would be happier, I guarantee it.

It was soon time for me to head off to my class, so I directed Lisa and Cat to the sheepdog trials and went to find my classroom. The "classroom" turned out to be a small partitioned-off area in the main vendor building, and this was my only complaint about Lambtown. There were 10 people (including me) seated on uncomfortable folding chairs to learn to spin on a drop spindle while passers-by poked their heads over and around the partitions to ogle us as we learned. I generally prefer a more private setting when I'm trying something new, and I disliked the public nature of the "classroom" set up. However, the teacher was delightful (Renee Tully from Ren Con Ranch, a Shetland Sheep farm in Placerville). And I had a blast spinning.

Usually when I learn something new, I read everything I can find before I actually try it. But because I just had a feeling this would be something that came naturally, I did not do that this time. I resolved to just shut off my analytical brain and let the process be intuitive. For me, it pretty much was. Of course I had some lumpy, bumpy, thick and ugly yarn in the beginning, and I was absolutely convinced that there was something horribly wrong with the roving I was using. But after about a half an hour, a miracle occurred, and suddenly the roving got much better! And my singles started looking thinner and smoother. I had a huge smile plastered on my face the whole time - even at the beginning I was having a ball, although the serious concentration on everyone else's faces made me put a damper on my obvious and audible delight (I was giggling at myself a lot as I dropped the spindle or the hind end of my roving accidently caught and twisted on the yarn I was spinning). I think I can safely say I had the most fun of anyone in that class.

I ran into Lisa and Cat after class over at the Carolina Homespun booth, where Lisa was considering at Turkish Spindle. Here's a bad photo of her as she moved her head while I was clicking away (sorry, Lisa!):

My back was a bit sore and I was seriously tired, so I excused myself after literally spending my last dime on a Schacht Hi-Lo spindle and headed home, only stopping to display my marvellous handspun yarn to anyone who would look. Lisa and the woman at the spindle booth declared that my yarn was very good for beginner spinning, and Brooke said it was the best beginner yarn she had ever seen, which pleased me no end. But I suspect that there is a rule that you have to tell new spinners how good they are and how pretty their yarn is to encourage them to keep trying!

I drove home without getting lost, and Dan and I proceeded to make pizza. Our homemade pizza is better than anything you can buy anywhere, but we haven't wanted to turn the oven on with the heat. I made double use of the oven by baking a fruit crisp made from peaches, plums, and strawberries from the farmer's market while the oven heated for the pizza. We had a delicious dinner, watched some Mystery! on PBS, and called it a day. And what a perfect day it was.

First to Go

I dutifully went for jury selection this morning, and wouldn't you know, I got called in the first group to be questioned. That's the third time in a row I've been called in the first group, although they claim that names are chosen randomly. I'm not a statistician, but I am suspicious about the odds of the same name being chosen in the top 10 out of a group of 50-75 people three times in a row.

The judge, who seemed very reasonable, proceeded to ask me about the 3 strikes trial I participated on, and I proceeded to burst into noisy tears. I honestly did not intend to have this reaction, and I'm actually quite embarrassed, but it is an emotional subject for me. As I suspected, the prosecutor could not get me out of there fast enough, and the defense looked like she was really trying to come up with a good reason to keep me, but the judge made the ultimate decision and excused me. I was the first to go.

So now I'm off to buy myself something decadent for lunch, and I'll switch my energies to looking forward to Lambtown tomorrow. The weather has cooled considerably, and it will be a bearable 90 degrees tomorrow. I am meeting an acquaintance that I first met at Stitches for lunch, and then I'll have my class. Missy B will be there selling her natural-dyed wool and roving from small local sheep farmers, so I'm looking forward to meeting her and checking out her yarn. And Sue from Cormo Sheep and Wool, whom I cleaned out of 3-ply last year, will be there as well so I'm hoping she'll have some Cormo roving for my future spinning endeavors. Sue has some gorgeous natural chocolate brown roving on her website, and I should have emailed her in advance and asked her to be sure and bring some for me, but I have been a bit distracted. It will be fun to meet her again in any case, and I can always have her mail the roving. Robyn from Meridian Jacobs will be there, and I want to ask her about her weaving classes. I think weaving will be next on my list, after I'm comfortable with spinning. Oh, and of course there will be sheep to scritch and admire. I'm really looking forward to tomorrow, and I think the fibery fun will more than make up for the week's worth of angst. Hope you and yours have a great weekend too!

Pick Me Up

Poor Rebekah has had an unusually awful streak of bad luck. She is the kindest woman in the world, and has been hosting the Critter Charity Drive. You would think all the good karma she has generated would make her exempt from incipient horror, but no such luck. I suggested that she needed to do something nice to take care of herself, because when things are going badly sometimes we forget to do the self care. That got me thinking about what kinds of things I do for myself. So the question today is: Without blowing the budget or your diet, what do you do when you need a little comfort and luxury?

First I thought, well, knit of course. But it seems that when things aren't going well in my life, things aren't going well in my knitting either, or maybe it's the other way around. It could be that when things aren't going well, little obstacles in my knitting that normally wouldn't bother me seem much more discouraging. Perhaps looking at knitting books and visiting the stash to plan a project would be uplifting.

I also find rereading a favorite book that I love can be helpful. It always feels luxurious to me to read something that has absolutely no bearing on my research - something fictional and frivolous. I often return to childhood favorites in times of trouble, like Louisa May Alcott and Laura Ingalls Wilder. Watching a favorite movie can also provide a relaxing interlude. Or listening to music that you love with the volume turned up really loud while wearing headphones, lying in a darkened room with a cool compress on the forehead. Snuggling with the furry friends is always comforting - mine always seem to know when I am unhappy and they come to lend solace and support.

What do you do, without breaking the bank or blowing your diet, to take extra special care of yourself when things aren't going well?

Shades of Grey

I have no definitive news on the jury duty front. I started the day by running over to the local yarn store, the one I don't like, to get some wooden needles so I could knit something while I waited. I ended up buying some Colonial rosewood needles, which were prohibitively expensive, but I was feeling sorry for myself so I got them. I didn't have a chance to see them out of the package, since this particular store keeps all needles behind the counter, where you have to ask for them and examine them under the clerk's watchful eye. This is only one reason I dislike this store - they give the impression that knitters simply can't be trusted. There was also that incident back when I was a very new knitter when an employee sold me some completely unsuitable yarn for a project, knowing full well it was completely unsuitable, but she just wanted to unload some yarn that had been sitting around for too long. After the sale had been rung up, the employee gave a gloating little smile and made some remark about how the owner would be pleased she'd gotten rid of that yarn. Not okay.

Anyway. I bought the needles and got them home and took them out of the package - size 1 (2.25 cm), 8 inches long. They felt pleasing, and not at all like toothpicks, which is what bamboo needles usually feel like to me. But they were so long and bendy,so fragile that I knew I would have to be extra-cautious in handling them. I had some lovely Trekking yarn that I have been hoarding, so I thought that would be a soothing fiber for the day. Off I went to jury duty.

Usually these things are black and white. You are put on a jury or you are not. But not today. Apparently this was a casting call for a trial that will last about a month, and is for a very serious crime. Not drug possession, thank goodness, and as Lynne informed me in the comments yesterday, California now has a special Drug Court that handles those cases. I think that is great, and I even peripherally know a Drug Court judge, although I didn't know what it was all about. My friend Lacy, who is an attorney, had some dealings with Drug Court when she worked representing parents who might lose custody of their children due to their personal problems. Apparently every effort is made through Drug Court to rehabilitate these clients and they really try to provide a positive and supportive environment for people who are facing those issues. So things have improved, although these changes were not applied retroactively, so the young men I saw in my earlier jury experiences would not be subject to the new rules. But I digress again.

The only reason I was called to court yesterday was to fill out a questionnaire that attempted to assess my suitability for this upcoming trial, which will likely be fairly high profile. About 2/3 of the people who were on the panel with me applied for hardship releases, which meant only a handful of us who knew we didn't really have a good excuse for not doing the trial filled out the forms and were sent away until Friday, when voir dire will begin. Voir dire is the fancy name for jury selection, and this is where the attorneys question prospective jurors and reject some, and choose others. I filled out my forms with complete honesty, and I truly was not trying to game the system one way or another, but I do believe my cynicism about the legal system came through loud and clear, which will probably make me undesirable to the prosecutors and desirable to the defense. We'll see on Friday.

One of the things that I find so difficult about legal proceedings is the black-and-whiteness of it all. You are provided with selective evidence, and asked, based on that evidence and only that evidence, to answer a yes or no question. There is no room for nuance, for extenuating circumstance, for consideration of factors that mediate relative responses. No allowance for shades of grey. This is hard for me since I've spent the past several years learning to identify those shades of grey and put them in historical context. And what this means is that even though I feel the matter under consideration should come to trial, it would be emotionally difficult for me to be the one to consider it. I will if I am asked to, but frankly I'd rather not.

As I sat in the courtroom, listening to instructions, I knit on the cuffs of a new pair of socks. The color of yarn, appropriately enough, was gradated shades of grey.

Joan of Arc Has Jury Duty

Here's another reason why I hate July - every 2 years, like clockwork, I get called for Jury Duty. The first time it happened, I was put on a jury to hear the trial of a homeless young man who had been caught in possession of illegal substances (drugs). Not selling them, not breaking into someone's house or car to support an illegal drug habit, just possessing them. The young man,it was revealed in the course of the trial, clearly had mental problems. To make matters still worse, California voters, the stupidity of whom cannot be underestimated (think Arnold Schwarzenegger), instituted a "3 strikes" law not long before, so people convicted of their third crime would spend the rest of their lives in jail, whether or not the crimes were violent. You guessed it, this was the young man's third strike. There was no getting around it. His other crimes had also been drug possession, and it just killed me (and kills me to this day) that this young man will be in prison for the rest of his life for the "crime" of being a threat to no one but himself. I feel a great deal of disillusionment with our so-called "justice" system, and a great deal of guilt for being one of the people who put him where he is.

The thing is, in my opinion prison is so rarely the best answer for people who break the law. In this case, I truly believe that young man needed mental healthcare, which he isn't going to get in jail. He probably also needed a rehab program, which he will not get in prison either.  The court wasn't asking the right question, which to my mind would have been, "How can we best serve the mission of helping this person become a self-supporting, law-abiding citizen?" Instead, the question they felt was more important was "Did this person have possession of illegal drugs?"

Fast forward two years. I'm called again for Jury Duty, and put on a jury for someone who possessed illegal drugs. The defendant is an impoverished young man of color. And I'm sitting in this court room that was clearly designed to intimidate, with the (white) judge sitting higher than everyone else, passing judgement like God almighty, and I kind of snapped. When he got to the part about asking if any of the jurors felt themselves incapable of applying the law, I raised my hand and told him exactly why I was disillusioned with the society that had put us all in this position, and I questioned why the law seemed to apply unevenly to poor people of color versus white middle class people (everyone in the court room, except the defendant, was white). The judge looked at me imperiously, and then deemed me "unsuitable" for this case, and sent me home. Everyone in the court looked at me like I was an alien as I left the jury box, but I didn't care. It was pretty obvious to me that the young man was going to be convicted, but I didn't want to be responsible for doing it. And I don't think anyone is any safer or the world is any better because he is in jail.

So fast forward again two years. I got a jury summons for today. I called last night, praying that the recorded message would tell me that my group was dismissed, but no such luck. So I'll go to that same intimidating court room today, and how much do you want to bet I get put on a jury to hear a trial about another impoverished young man found possessing illegal drugs? The one thing you can count on is that if it happens again, I'll do my Joan of Arc speech again, because I'm never voluntarily going to add to the guilt I feel about sending that first young man to jail.

To add insult to injury, they don't allow metal knitting needles in court, so I'll either have to forego knitting, or go buy some wooden needles. Justice system, indeed.

Just Sit Quietly

Well, this was an uneventful weekend, owing to the heat (111 - a new record!) and the dire admonitions from the powers that be not to actually do anything. There were sporadic warnings on the television that it was a Spare the Air weekend, so we weren't to go anywhere in the car (Delay Errands! Minimize Trips!). There were also dire warnings about the possibility of us running out of electricity due to a Northern California power plant being offline. So the entire state of California was instructed to sit quietly with their hands in their laps and do nothing requiring use of any energy whatsoever. The irony of the warnings coming over the television just occurred to me.

For the most part, we complied. We didn't go anywhere, it being too hot to ride a bike. And we didn't do much of anything, but we did run the air conditioning. I mean, get real. It's 111-freaking-degrees-outside. Today will be much the same, with increased dire threats of rolling blackouts. I got some work done on both the cardigan and the cotton socks, but I still haven't replaced the batteries in the camera yet. That would take energy. I do need to go to the post office today, and I suppose I'd better get cracking before the blackouts hit. And yes, I'm driving the car there and back.  But after that, I promise I'll sit quietly with my hands in my lap and not do anything that requires any energy.

Exhausted

We had a great time on Dan's birthday, but it plumb wore me out! 40 is such a big birthday that I really wanted everything to go well, and it did, but apparently all that anxiety about rotten ol' Mercury ruining everything left me completely drained. Plus, it was a very active day.

We rode our bikes to the train station and then took the train to the Bay Area, where we switched to transit. The ball park was still a good hike from the station, and we could have switched to another transit option, but the weather was so nice that we walked the half hour or so it took to finish the journey. The ballpark where the Giants play is absolutely gorgeous - perched right on the edge of San Francisco Bay. There were stunning views, and cool ocean breezes. It was warm enough not to need a sweater, but cool enough that I could wear one comfortably, so I did. Heck, who knows when (or if) it will ever be sweater weather again!

I brought the camera and had planned to regale you with images of this glorious stadium. The first thing we did was get some garlic fries. They are french fries topped with little chunks of minced garlic and parsley, and are absolutely sublime. Of course, I had to take a picture of them, and the camera informed me that my batteries were dead. Rats! Still, that was the only real glitch of the day. I'll just have to ask you to imagine the views of the bay with the city beyond, the clear blue sky with hazy clouds, and the happy birthday revelers eating garlic fries. We had excellent seats, which I probably paid way too much for, but the location was perfect on the first base line, under an overhang so we were in the shade. The Giants were behind until an exciting bottom of the ninth inning rally, whereupon I may have jumped up and down and squealed with glee. They won!

After the game, we hiked back to the transit station, then picked up the train and came home. We got back to Davis around 6:30 p.m., so the temperature was pleasant for riding our bikes back home. I then made a steak dinner (most of the work was already done in advance, so it was a fairly easy process), had birthday cake, and collapsed to watch some of Dan's gift DVDs. The next day I was completely worn out from biking, hiking, jumping and squealing, and had an anxiety hangover from trying to do everything humanly possible to make sure the day was a happy one. As for knitting, I did tote the cardigan along for the birthday festivities, but never got around to a single stitch. I made up for it yesterday by doing two more buttonholes.

This weekend will be insanely hot again, but we don't have to go anywhere and it looks like the heat will break in time for next week's Lambtown fiber festival, with temps in the low 90s. Perfect weather for learning to spin! In the meantime, the cats are the only ones around here enjoying the heat:
The humans, however, are enjoying the air conditioning! Have a great weekend and keep cool.

On This Day

On this day, July 19, 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton held the first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls. More importantly, 40 years ago my husband Dan was born! Today I'll share some of my favorite pictures of him to celebrate the happy event. We have all sorts of fun activities planned for the day. We're going to take the train to San Francisco and catch a Giants ballgame, then take the train home. After that, there will be videos to watch (I'm giving him the fourth season of "Northern Exposure" - we already have the first three -  and the full 12-disc box set of  "The Lord of the Rings" movie trilogy), a steak dinner, and an ice cream cake for dessert. I think everyone with a July birthday deserves an ice cream cake.

The cats will help him celebrate by using him as furniture:
While we don't exactly have "favorite" cats, Dan and Cheddar have a special bond:         

And Cinder thinks he is pretty special, too (even though she's really my girl):

With all that time on the train and at the ballpark, I'm going to need a knitting project. I'll probably take the cardigan and make some more buttonholes. I might even start on a sleeve or two. Everything I know about knitting cardigans, I know from knitting Dan's Garter Stitch Aran:

And lots of things I know about being a kind and generous person, I know from watching how Dan treats people. Even though he has worked at his current job less than a year, his coworkers called me to find out what kind of a birthday celebration they could hold for him at the office, and I gave them the inside scoop in his likes and dislikes. It was so thoughtful of them to want to do something nice for him, but I'm not surprised. He does nice things for other people all the time, expecting nothing in return.

Even the weather is giving us a little break for the occasion of Dan's birthday - forecasts say it will be 99 degrees! You know it's been hot when anything under 100 seems like a treat. But we're grateful for the slight cooldown, and will likely make good use of it with a bike ride in honor of Dan's interest in vintage bicycles. I really hope it will be a happy day, worthy of a great guy's birthday. Happy Birthday, Dan!

Button Progress

Our AC got fixed yesterday - hallelujah! Dan has such a great phone voice that when he asks for things, he usually gets them. The repairmen had another appointment close by, so they stopped by our house and it took them less than 10 minutes to sort the problem out. There is a pipe that runs from the AC unit to the outdoors, and apparently some spiders had crawled up inside and built webs and nests that collected all sorts of schmutz and clogged the pipe. The repairmen used an air compressor and blew out all the stuff, and voila, we had an appropriate place for the condensation to drain. Of course, that didn't fix the hole in the ceiling, but that is really less of an immediate concern. We're thinking a nice ceiling medallion will fill the void, so to speak. And we needed to replace the light fixture anyway.

The cardigan is coming along nicely. I did the armhole decreases and the neck decreases on the left front, and had to rip them once to get everything just right. I don't usually work with such bulky yarn, so it was a learning process to figure out how rapidly to decrease so everything would fit correctly. Then I placed the buttons on the left front, and started the right front, matching up my buttonholes to the buttons. I'm sure lots of other people do this, but I always use a small shirt button on the backside of the larger, "public" button to stabilize it. You have to make sure both buttons have the same number of holes, and it is a little fiddly to get the thread through both buttons on the first pass, but after that it goes quickly. Here's the backside button:

And here's the front:

I usually knit a few rows, then button everything up to see how much further I need to go before the next buttonhole. It seems to work well. Today, the friendly postal carrier brought me my new needles so I can start the sleeves soon!

Mercury Retrograde

I really don't believe much in astrology, or maybe I just doubt the competence of most astrologers. My daily horoscopes rarely bear any resemblance to my life, and they are rarely even entertaining to make up for their lack of accuracy. However, I believe firmly in the evil powers of Mercury gone retrograde. Apparently this happens when a planet slows and stops its forward movement and goes backward. When it happens with Mercury, things start going wrong.

I don't pay much attention to the periods when Mercurcy is going retrograde, i.e., I don't mark them on my calendar or even know when they are coming. But when things start going wrong in distracting numbers, I check to see if Mercurcy is retrograde, and generally it is. So last week, a number of annoying little things went wrong,and I found out that Mercury has been retrograde since July 4. That explains quite a lot. Rather than get all whiny on the blog, I just sulked in silence, waiting for it to pass. But this weekend, when the air conditioning went spectacularly wrong leading to water coming through the kitchen ceiling and shorting out the light fixture, I figured I'd better check in and let you all know what was going on. There is a two foot hole in my ceiling where the light fixture used to be and where the soaked sheetrock came down.  It will be 107 degrees today, and we can't use the air conditioner. Dan called the repair people we usually use yesterday and left a message. When they hadn't called back by 9:30 this morning, I called them and got a fairly discouraging response. I called every other air conditioning repairperson in the phone book, and got the same discouraging response (one of them actually laughed hysterically at my request to get someone over here pronto, or at least today). Dan again called our usual repairpeople and gave them a stern talking-to, since we probably could have booked someone else had they let us know they couldn't come today. They promised to try and send someone.

Meanwhile, I have two knitting projects on the needles - a pair of cotton socks, and a thick, bulky sweater. Guess which one I'm working on? Correct! The thick bulky sweater! This is further evidence that I have truly gone 'round the bend. Today's saving grace was once again brought by my friendly postal carrier. I have confirmation that I am booked for the drop spindle class. Hopefully I will have returned to sanity by then, or close to it. Because Mercury will go out of its retrograde pattern on July 29, the day of the class. What a great way to celebrate!