Invasives

7:30 am

                Still at the farm, now with K and Tigger. I have put barricades at the stairs of the porch so Tigger will stay on, since he is wearing his diaper and I don’t want him off the porch with it on. It will make it easier as far as going in and out goes. If he starts wanting to be on and off the porch, which he probably will (his favorite activity has always been to sit on the top of the south lawn and bark at neighborhood dogs), it will be a problem. I suppose at some point I will take the diaper off, let him onto the lawn and put the barricades back so he cannot get back on. This is why I was so glad not to have him here all week.

                Drove halfway home last night to meet K and G. She wanted the car for the weekend, so K and Tigger got into the station wagon. And we traded off three bales of hay for G to bring home. I don’t know if we’ll be able to bring any more tomorrow, it will mean tying them to the roof since the back of the car will be packed with my stuff, plus there is K and Tigger to accommodate.

                Right now the thing that is most concerning in the back of my mind is the note I just got from my aunt P. It so typifies my habitual reaction to things. She had written earlier about needing money for the company that will be dealing with the invasives in the woodlot. I had written her back to clarify how much she needed and who the check should be made out to and was waiting and waiting for a response. Meanwhile, I had finally called Mom, nervous about her reaction to needing $300, but she was fine about it. Then I kept waiting. This morning before doing MP’s I decided to give a quick check to email, and looked at work email instead of Comcast, and there was her answer, which she sent on Tuesday. I never saw it because all week I’ve been only checking the Comcast. Most of my non-work mail comes there, except a few of the groups I am on, like Meatrabbits and Techspin. I had forgotten that for some reason P uses my work email. I will need to ask her to change that. Anyway, my first reaction is that sinking, rock in the pit of my stomach feeling that I did something wrong. Not that it matters, since what she said is that she doesn’t need money from Mom yet. But then she also said, and rather firmly, that the invasives group found some on our property, right across the street, and that we need to take care of those so they don’t spread. It is true, and we do need to, and she is just repeating what the control people said to her, but it still gave me that awful sinking feeling. I’ve been a bad girl. I’m naughty. I did the wrong thing. I’m being chastised. I’m unloved and unlovable. Oh brother. The only reason I’m going on about all this (mentioning all these ridiculous things that I do know are silly) is because I’ve been reading that You Are Not Your Brain book and those are deceptive brain messages. They come up in just those kind of situations and they feel awful. My usual response it to want to hide. Or to quickly take care of the situation, frantically, make it all better. So part of me wants to go right out and start dealing with the invasives immediately, all on my own. It’s not a terrible impulse, and I think it is fine to take it on as a project, but I won’t be able to do it all alone. I will have to communicate with everyone and involve the whole gang. One more thing. Don’t suppose they’ll be thrilled and they may not appreciate P’s ordering them, but if I couch it as coming from the Invasive Control folk it will be better. And really it is not a huge issue, in the case of the stuff around the house – honeysuckle, barberry, and the bittersweet by the garage. My mistake in the past trying to cut that back is that I was being purist and not using herbicides, but we really will have to. I don’t think any mention was made of the Japanese knotweed, I don’t think it is apt to move into the woods, but it would make sense to try to get rid of the patch that is here on the street. Not sure about the huge amount by the river. And I don’t know how bad the bittersweet is down there.

                As for today. Well K didn’t seem interested in doing anything in particular, though when he wakes up he may well want to go into town for coffee and something sweet and caloric. I could do that. Then I think I will play with some of the random stuff I brought along. The huge box of “random bits.” I gathered some last night, just must now figure out how to combine and spin them. That should be fun.

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a late night

7am

                Well kind of a crappy start to the day as I didn’t get to bed until midnight so now I am tired and expect I will be all day. Maybe once it gets really hot, as it will, I will take a nap inside where it will be cooler.

                Fair meeting – exec comm – last night. It went ok, though long as these things do, and now I must write up an agenda for Sunday’s meeting so I can send it to cochair for her to look at, then to secretary so she can send it to everyone. Or maybe I’m supposed to send it to everyone. Well.

                I did not even manage to finish the purple lichen-dyed blended with gray angora yesterday. I still have ¼ of the mix to even start blending, and the rest (12 batts that are pretty well blended) I want to mix up one more time. I think I’ll do my stretches, eat my oat bran, then get started on that. Maybe for the lichen and fawn angora I will just split it all into the 4 piles and card later.

                I think there is actually a pair of bluebirds nesting in one of the boxes, which is exciting. And yesterday I watched a hummingbird do its J flight up and down back and forth making that funny high pitched clicking sound. Very cool.

                I think the Time Travelor cd is giving me bad dreams. Too much moving around in time and then I dream about it. I also dreamt that we got a new dog and it was a little froufy thing. We were trying to figure out when to have Tigger meet it. Oh dear. AND I think there are 2 Tree of Life or whatever you call that incredibly invasive tree that was described in A Tree Grows in Brookline out by the “tennis court” (in parenthesis as it is no longer a tennis court). I will have to go look closer (I don’t have my glasses on) but I don’t think it is sumac. There are actually a number of invasives around the property. The Trust for the woodlot is going to be paying big bucks to control the invasives there, so we should help by doing it here. Maybe I will take it on as a project for later this summer. I will need to find out what herbicide is best. I think the recommended procedure is to cut them and apply herbicide to the stump. Another thought – to dig up the asparagus that I planted, oh, 30 years ago. There it is, comes up every year and no one ever harvests it, I could perhaps dig up the roots and replant at home. Of course they are smothered in weeds which is partly why they don’t get used. Boy it was sure a lot of work planting them originally. Yet another example of misspent effort, story of my life.

                I guess I will do my stretches, start the cereal cooking, meditate (if I don’t fall asleep) then write out the agenda. Then I will dutifully finish the carding and the book cd because that is what I do – if nothing else I generally finish what I start.

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cool mornings HOT days

7 am

                It is going to be scorchingly hot today but right now it is lovely. I suppose I should have gone nocturnal for these few days. Or maybe I will end up spending the middle of the day inside. I have lots of the ToDos so I guess what I will do is card now while it is lovely, then go inside to do: prepare for tonight’s fair meeting (who’s purpose is to prepare for Sunday’s meeting), work on plans for my classes, what else – well I could needle felt onto the felted purse I made ages ago. Not exactly a ToDo, but I haven’t yet touched it.

                Tonight I must drive to NoHo to the exec comm meeting. Not what I most want to do, but it must be done.

                                So what have I gotten done so far re carding? Well I actually finished the lovely light purple lichen-dyed stuff. It is light purple wool blended with light purple angora, then I quick-blended that with some gray angora and dark purple lichen-dyed wool. I will eventually spin it and ply with the light purple lichen-dyed silk. Whew. That all took a long time. There are about 17 ounces of the carded stuff. Then I spent a long time playing will all kinds of colors and I put together bags of combos to work on next. Except first next I started carding the darker purple lichen stuff which I will blend with angora. I think I will blend half with fawn angora, and half with gray. I really like them both and it will be nice to have both options. That will be fully blended. I will do as much of all that as I can today. Though I imagine it will get roastingly hot and I may not be able to stay on the porch. Yesterday, when the woman came who cleans, I actually left. I went to Friendly’s and got a sundae (how decadent) then to the library to pick up more cds since I am almost done with Time Travelor, then to the grocery store to get a few things.

                Ahhh, hummingbirds are at the feeder!

                Existential angst ramblings, a continuation of previous days: I’ve been thinking about all the things I keep wanting to do and the feeling of having not enough time (how the hell do people have TIME to do dumb stuff like watch TV???????? Or take inordinate naps and read read read dumb stuff on the computer???). Most recently I’ve been reading on line (OK, touché) about using urine in dyeing. I was thinking about how I don’t so much like using commercial (read poisonous) dyes, but that natural dyes are not that great bc they do require mordants which are not so great. So it got me thinking about whether urine can be used as a mordant. It seems like it was in some instances, but the info is kind of sketchy. Well that got me thinking about all the other things I want to try:

Making soap

Dehydrating food

Smoking food

Canning

Weaving a wool blanket

More natural dyeing

Improve my booth set up

Improve sales in any ways I can think of

And when do I have TIME?????? I guess what I need to do is prioritize. Some of those are just fun ideas, nothing wrong with that, but I need to keep that in mind. I did manage to get the loom more or less warped with the huge and much appreciated help of my friend. She came over for huge parts of both Saturday and Sunday last weekend. I knew that the only way to get that done would be to set up a date to do it. It took forever and it not in fact completely finished and I screwed up several places, but it will be ready soon for weaving. So then I well need to head to the other house to get some fabric to cut and get all ready for rag rugs. Yet another project! As if I need that! Maybe the result of this well be that I give up the idea of more rag rugs and thus get rid of all those boxes of fabric. That would be somewhat liberating. I don’t think I am ready to give up the loom because I would like to try weaving stuff I spin. That was the original intent of getting it after all. The rag rugs have been good and actually very useful practice. G was even talking about wanting a rug, maybe she would like a kind of long rag rug of her choosing.

                I bought oat meal yesterday and it is cooking on the stove, a little variation from oat bran. I also bought mouse traps and set them and all 4 had the bait eaten without being sprung! Gotta reset a little more carefully, maybe with peanut butter.

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Existential Ramblings

6:25 am

                Going to be hot this week and it already feels muggy upstairs so I am sitting on the porch to write. It will mean that when I finish I cannot look up the history of rocking chairs, or the other thing that just came to my mind and then left it. That happens all the time – I think of something and then it is gone. The house smells like mice. I just filled the hummingbird feeder and a hummingbird already found it. Today will bring more carding, though it may be sticky and unpleasant (there’s a breeze now so it is lovely). And all day long I’ve been asking myself “what is the point?” Like, what is the point of carding carding carding? I like to do it, or at any rate it feels very satisfying. I think it fills a compulsive need. It feels like I am accomplishing something, but in reality what am I accomplishing? For one thing, who will appreciate or buy the yarn that finally results? If I were doing this to make a sweater or as a gift for someone it would be different, but this will just add to my collection of skeins that I haul to booths at fairs. And oh it is so tedious and frustrating to spend an entire day at a fair with people looking and asking and saying how lovely but not buying. And what is the point of that anyway? It is not as if I desperately want to make a killing selling fiber stuff. We don’t exactly need the money. It’s just that it justifies my spending time doing it if I make money at it. It goes back to when K used to ask why don’t I sell the sweaters I make? In other words, why bother with all that if I can’t make money from it? Since after all he kills himself making so much money, I guess he figures I should, too. In some ways it is a stupid useless thing to do. How does it help anyone, contribute to the world in any way? I do like the idea of people learning about how yarn is made, where it ultimately comes from, a forgotten craft, etc etc. And there is creativity involved and that is important to me. Well, really, as I was thinking last night while I sat by the brook, I just plain like to make things. I like to be busy with my hands. I like the act of creating.  I guess by making yarn I can enable other people’s urge to make things too. Not that most of them need enabling, since the whole issue of stash hording is a problem for a lot of people. Most knitters do NOT need more yarn. If I started a business of finishing UFO’s – projects that have been abandoned - I would truly be doing a service. And to tell the truth I actually do like doing that kind of thing.  Maybe I should put out ads for that. Another thing I come back to in my circular thinking process is that I need to do more marketing. After all, if I sell more skeins I can better justify the time I spend making them. Etsy, fairs, making more kits, making my booth more appealing. Which of course gets back to enabling people. Not that it is bad getting them knitting, that is a good thing. It’s the buying so the yarn can sit around that is a problem.  Speaking of which, I have my own stash issue, with fleeces. I could probably do like B and never buy more wool, but just spin what I have and it would last the rest of my life. Anyway I’ve been pretty good lately and only bought for classes, as in what I must do now to get roving for the classes this summer. I need to contact Barberic farm about that.

                Time for a new topic? But what? I didn’t sleep so well last night, I felt like my brain was going going going all night long. I did the sitting on the porch just vegging thing again, but then before I actually went to bed I checked email and wrote to Aaron. And earlier in the day I had other things to deal with – specifically the email from P about the invasive control and the need for a check from Mom. At least it is for $300 and not the full $1200. I need to call her this morning about it and I don’t want to. So many things I just don’t want to do, including think about fair stuff or think about work looming in 2 more months or anything else except carding and listening to The Time Traveler’s Wife. The cleaning lady is coming today and I am debating whether I should leave, do a grocery run, go to the library to pick up another book on cd. Part of me does not want to, it’s kind of the same that I resent having to spend so much time making and eating meals. A big advantage of TMI, no cooking or cleaning, but the truth is that one still spends a lot of time dealing with eating. Why does time seem to pass more slowly there? It feels like it is zooming by here. 2 days gone already, only 3 more and then K comes, then there is really just one more day and I must go to the fair meeting. And before that I will have to pull together an agenda and get Deb to print it out.

                I think I will head inside so I can access my blog page and look up the history of rocking chairs.

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morning

6::15 am

                Here’s a new idea  - write MP’s right here in bed immediately on waking up. I am trying, while here, to go with the cosmic flow –wake up and go to bed with the sun. well, sort of except that the sun rises pretty darn early right now. I went to bed last night without turning on any lights. I sat on the porch flick carding some dirty wool through Fresh Air (which was about superman), then I sat on the front porch for a while just vegging which was lovely, then once it was getting pretty dusky I just went to bed. And I slept pretty well, so I’m thinking that idea of vegging before bed is a good one. So often I am busy with something, whether it is reading, or doing something on line, or seeing a movie, until just before I go to bed and then I have trouble getting to sleep. Whatever I was doing runs round and round through my brain and I can’t relax. This was far better.

                Ok, I confess, it is kind of lonely here, but I don’t mind. There is plenty to be busy with, and I have the radio and cds to listen to.

                Carding, as usually happens on my fiber retreats, is kind of frustrating. I did the pale pink stuff blended with the pale pink lichen dyed angora. That went fine, just card, then split and card again, and repeat. It is pretty good now. Next I want to blend in the darker purple and some gray angora. Trouble is that the darker purple, which is a lovely color, is the stuff that is dirty. Lots of VM. I started picking it out and realized that was too time consuming and I couldn’t get it all so then I started in with flicking it. Also very time consuming, though it will make the carding go much much faster. I think the final blending will not take long. Then I can move on to something else. Well, I will still need to do that 2 ounce blended bit for D. In fact, maybe I will just card all the lichen stuff up. I don’t really want to blend it with anything, as I prefer to be able to say that it is all “natural” with no commercial dye.

                Am I bored with blending stuff and even with spinning? Well, no, I wouldn’t say that. It is frustrating to work on it all with the uncertainty that anyone will buy any of it. Marketing. Gotta work on that and it is the hard part. Some of it is fun and creative, but some of it feels very tedious. And gets discouraging.

Other less fun ToDos: get a fair exec committee meeting together. Plan out my class (oh dear, that is starting to make me anxious. I should really find some older kid that could help me out). Those feel  like work, but I will do them in between carding so maybe they’ll be more like a break. Carding is kind of tedious but it doesn’t feel like work. Btw, speaking of tedious work like things, I spent a long time yesterday morning reading all those posts about how to fix the jumping cursor, I even saved a document with lots of them, and then I uploaded that program, seemed like there would be a problem, but when I restarted the computer everything seems fine and it is NO LONGER JUMPING!!!!!  Yay! I still thing I should upload McKafee to this computer.

                Reading: I brought You Are Not Your Brain which I started yesterday (already listened to the beginning on tape, but I figured I ought to review). Also brought Ambassadors and the book about it, but I have not opened them. I did listen to more of Martin Chuzzelwit which I adore. Almost reading. Not really. And I am still listening to The Time Traveler’s Wife which is kind of interesting. And I listened to Joe Donahue on the radio because his voice is so cheerful and soothing. Now I think I will meditate and make oat bran but not burn it today. I still need to clean that pot!

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A POST!!!!!!!

2012-6-18 Monday

7 am

              writing again because i have a lovely new little computer and so am inspired!

             At the farm. Very quiet, very blissful. I woke up (must add, slept fitfully) around 6 and just lay there listening to the birds and looking at the greenery out the window. And thinking. Not of anything particular, just letting my mind wander which is one of my favorite things to do.

                One big disappointment that I must state and then let it go. Apparently the freezer in the apartment turned off at some point, I don’t know when or for how long, but long enough that all the rabbit in there (now refrozen) is spoiled. I had planned to make a stew early on and eat it all week so that is not happening. And I really don’t want to think about all the work that was involved in butchering what looks like several rabbits. Not to mention their lives gone to waste. It rots (so to speak) but I must let go of it. Of course I will have to make a run to the grocery store at some point and think of something else to eat. I did bring up 2 loaves of bread I just  baked, and ….. the mice got into them! Just a few nibbles….

                Right now I am going to see first if I can get connected to the internet, then if I can figure out how to deal with this jumping cursor.

                I’m going to try the easy solution first – put a magazine over the touchpad. But I don’t think that will solve it, as I really don’t think I am actually touching it.

                I think this will be quite awkward bc I have a small book covering the touchpad but it makes it hard to reach the space bar. Which may indicate that I truly am touching the touch pad without knowing it. Hmmm. I think there is something I could also download. Or I have the book now just using the front cover and that is better. I could duct tape something that I take on and off. How awful is that thought – duct tape residue all over my lovely new laptop. And there is some program one can download, might try that.

                I think now I must eat some oat bran and start unloading the car and spreading fiber all over the house!

Ok burned the oat bran. Installed this freeze program to solve the jump problem and it might have caused a windows problem…… well. Time to unload the car.

                To continue.  I made more cereal. I restarted the computer. Now I will see if the jumping cursor is better. And I have been carding carding carding. Pink – lichen dyed. Why do I always do pink? I’ll do this, then I’ll do the darker lichen stuff for Delia, then I can play with other colors. Maybe play with the scraps since I brought the whole box of them. And SO FAR the cursor seems to be working just fine……. Hope hope hope.

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chilly!

7:45 am

                Brrrr it’s very very chilly as in 8 degrees. Sounds more interesting in celcius though I don’t know that offhand. Don’t have to go in until late today, since I am staying for my spinning class until 10. Early afternoon we have a meeting for 200. I don’t know yet if we will be having any student TA’s, or what our schedules will be or anything.

                I did my first tutoring yesterday. It went well, or at least I enjoyed it and he seemed engaged. We’ll see if he finds it helpful as time goes on. And it would be nice if I could hear something from his teacher about what he plans to focus on. I just went over some really basic stuff about energy, the purpose of photosynthesis, atoms and molecules, things that I hope will help him understand what his teacher is talking about better.

                As for this morning, I must do buns, meditate (I have decided I am going to TRY very hard to meditate twice every day in the hopes that it will help my stomach), pull things together to leave (need to get bobbins and a dye pot to bring for class) and then I hope there will also be time to finish spinning the white angora I have on the old lendrum. I spun a bunch of it last night at Webs. There were a lot of new people there. I guess that is a good thing. In fact, 2 new people were at First Person Sunday night too – wow, expanding my social circle I guess. One person last night sat and spun away on a drop spindle quite intensely. Another did that also, then she had one of the demo wheels and was trying that but had trouble, so I finally helped her with drafting. Then there was a young couple who have somehow just been bitten by the spinning bug. They went to a bunch of ag fairs and saw spinning and it looks relaxing, so now they bought a wheel and need to figure out what to do with it. It seems funny to be in a place where you can be struck by something and just decide to take it on all in a whoosh. There’s no way right now I could take on some big new thing. Or if I did I’d need to rearrange a lot of other things – give a lot of other things up I suppose. Well, they did not bring anything to spin with so they just watched and asked questions. I picked up a friend who brought knitting, but she did not actually do any, she just sat and talked with another friend and looked forlornly at her knitting instructions because it has been so long since she was working on the mittens she brought, that she cannot remember where she is or what needs to be done. She is going to come over Fri for tea (while I must wait for the furnace folk to come service the furnace) so maybe I’ll suggest she bring it and I can help her. 

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