And you thought I was gone...

Right. I have some new spindles to show!

2 new spindles made by Heidi, who is RestlessPeasant on Ravelry. The top spindle is the Posey, and has my spin a long fiber on it. The middle one is the Big Lotus, a bottom whorl spindle made to ply with, and the lower spindle is a tibetan-style supported spindle made by Grizzly Mountain Arts on Etsy.com. I haven't learned to spin with it yet, but ooo la la! It's a beauty!
This is also a spindle made by Grizzly Mountain Arts. It's a tahkli supported spindle, the fat part (the whorl) is made from Tiger Maple and the tip is of mesquite wood. The shaft is birch. this spindle is a LOT of fun to spin on, but I don't think I'm terribly proficient with it yet, because it takes me a really LOOONG time to spin with. I use it to spin laceweight singles and it does great!

Here's the Big Lotus, with some plied laceweight yarn on it. I love the artwork that Heidi does on these spindles!

And I've been doing some spinning, as well.

I've been participating in a "Year of the Tiger" spin a long, and you can see some of that on the purple flower spindle. It's gorgeous fiber, fun to spin, and well prepared. I hope the yarn turns out as beautifully as the unspun fiber is!

Yesterday, O and I closed on a house in Trujillo. We have sold this apartment and the car in anticipation of moving to the US in mid-May, and WHAT?? O's family finds themselves evicted from the house they were renting because the owner sold it to someone who plans to live in the house (It was a major GAAAAGH!!! moment for me.) So...being the good son he is, O decided to buy a house for them. Not like we're so well-off that we can just go around buying houses whenever we feel like it, but neither of us could stand to see his brother and his wife and new baby, and his incapacitated father out on the street with no place to go. Their income is barely enough to get by on, and they usually end up living in a little ramshackle place (like the one they were just evicted from.) Isn't it just typical that just when everything seems to be coming together, something falls to pieces and things don't turn out like we planned?

So. Nearly all our savings here in Peru went into this house, which is plenty big for everyone. The roof is good, the walls are sound, the door locks, and each person can have his or her own bedroom, even O's mother, when she comes to visit. There is a mall planned to be built not far away in the near future, so the property values in this area are predicted to double in the next few years. The brother plans to buy his own place in a year or two, and it may be that the father will not live for too many more years. If all this comes to pass, we'll sell this house and hopefully earn our money back (fingers and toes crossed.) If not, then O's family will have a place to live as long as they need it, with no danger of being evicted. The deal is that they have to make periodic improvements in exchange for living there. In theory, it's a good deal for them, and possibly for us, but in practice...well, I have my apprehensions. I've already had my experience with other people living in my house, and it wasn't good.

Don't you just love it when a plan comes together? I mean, after all...What could possibly go wrong? :o(

Dear Blog...

Oh dear blog, I have left you alone for far too long! I swear that I have not totally forsaken you for Facebook. I have taken some photos and promise to post them as soon as I find the USB cable! (Farmville has almost stolen my very soul!)

remembering

My World and Welcome to It

What a week! It's been just like the rest of my life: so full of odd little instances that it seems like my entire life is full of odd little instances. So it's like one big odd instance that lasts a whole week.

We're getting ready to move back to the US, at least I am, and to prepare, we're doing things! Yes! We're doing things! Not exactly the kind of things you might imagine, though. Behold:

Last Sunday, O and I went to get groceries at the local supermarket. We got his favorite greek-style olives that come in a plastic box full of olives and juice. They are a local product, really, Peru has almost everything necessary to be self-sufficient in the way of produce and natural resources. Anyway, these olives were carefully placed into a bag and loaded from the shopping cart to the back seat of the car. Then we unloaded all th grocery bags from the car to the steps of the apartment building. I only have so many hands, so I usually drop my cell phone and wallet into a bag with dry goods, like bags of rice and boxes of cereal, so I can carry everything up. So I did that, but somehow the box of olives got turned on its side and all the juice leaked out in to the bag they were in. When I lifted that bag to the counter, it went all catty-wampus on me and all the juice that had left the olives splashed out...into the bag with my cell phone and wallet. Oddly, everything in the wallet was totally dry, which was probably due to the fact that my cell phone soaked up a lot of the liquid, and ended up fried. Argh. Cell phone sautéed by its own battery, in olive juice.

Later that night some lady called for O, and upon discovering that he wasn't at home, she asked for his cell number. I had to tell her that I didn't know what his number was, since it was saved to my cell, I never bothered to learn it - just hit the speed dial to call him. After finding out that I was his wife, she proceeded to tell me what a terrible wife I must be, if I didn't even know my own husband's cell phone number and what was I going to do about it, and did he know that I was so slovenly and uncaring that I didn't keep track of his phone number and she was certainly going to tell him about it.

I hung up on her.

Then we sold the car. O was thrilled that he'd driven a hard bargain and gotten his price, which was really pretty good for a 1997 Mitsubishi Chariot minivan that had been rear-ended at east once and honestly needed some serious repairs. We transferred the title over and collected our money and walked back to the house, which was the moment that reality set in. OMG, it was like losing a child! O has been in mourning for a week, but shows signs of adjusting to life on foot again, or at least life on city bus.

The next day, O hitched a ride to class with a friend who lives in Chorrillos, an hour away from our neighborhood. That was really nice of the guy, but O forgot his keys in the friend's car and didn't realize it till he got home...then had to take a taxi all the way to Chorrillos to retrieve the key. He didn't get back home till around midnight. And then he told me that his taxi driver was either drunk or really tired because he couldn't drive without roaming all over the road and he kept falling asleep at the stop lights. SCARY!

On Thursday, when I stepped out the door to go to work, the doorman told me that the water tank would be cleaned on Friday about 10 am, and that the water would be off for a few hours. What he REALLY meant was that the water would be off for a FEW DAYS. The water was turned off before I got home from work on Thursday, and stayed off till this morning. Thursday night, I walked to the closest store to buy some 2.5 liter bottles of water so we'd have drinking water and something to brush our teeth, knowing that the water would be on in the morning for showers and washing dishes and whatnot. On Friday, I returned to the store to buy some more water to scrub off with. On Saturday, I went to the store AGAIN to buy water and found it sold out of water. GAAUUGH! Saturday
was particularly hot in the classrooms and I was feeling particularly self-conscious and stinky as I walked between the desks during the exams. It was more like squishing and sloshing between the desks as I sweated along. After two days of bathing in a plastic water bottle, I was beginning to feel like I'd been in the trenches for far too long. In short, I reeked. I was thankful for the end of the work day so I could get home and take a shower. Surely the water would be on by the time I got home.

WRONG.

The worst of it was that not only did I stink, but I had quite a good crop of fruit flies buzzing in and around my sinkful of dirty dishes and a pile of laundry like I hadn't seen since having surgery last year. It was too much for me, so I grabbed the last bottle of water before O could, slammed the kitchen door shut before the flies could take over the rest of the house, and took refuge in the bathroom to scrape off the top layer of dried sweat and car exhaust. I did leave the last half of the bottle of water for O...he stunk worse than I did.

This morning, before daylight, I checked for water in the bathroom. EUREKA!! We had struck water again and I leapt in the shower. After that, I attacked the kitchen with a can of Raid and scared the daylights out of the flies that had taken up housekeeping in the sink, beneath the dirty dishes. I'm sure I didn't manage to kill any of them, but I destroyed their stockpile of moldy and stinking food bits when I washed the dishes, so there's nothing worth returning for. I posted the Raid can on the window sill as a wicked reminder to any and all flies that my kitchen sink is an unfriendly environment for fruit flies.

What can this coming week bring that could possibly beat last week? Can't wait to see...

On Pronunciation, or...a Torty-un-Tord

Today's the first day in ten that it hasn't been 100 degrees in the shade, so to celebrate, I'm posting...

I've recently been asked to teach a pronunciation course. To prepare for this, I've been attending some workshops with a very fine teacher of pronunciation here at the institute. We teach American English here, and in examining the way words in English are pronounced, I find myself turning words and their pronunciation over in my mind...over and over. I disagree with some of the ways she says words are pronounced, a very small point really, because English pronunciation in the US is so influenced by the region and prevalent cultural group of the local area. She says that A, as in RAN is pronounced with almost 2 syllables, like RAY-AN, where as I (being from the High Plains area) say it with just one syllable, as A. Just AAAA. No AY-A. Just AAA. And the -ing in bring, something, thing, wing, and ring...I pronounce that almost like EEEENG, long E and NG. She says it's pronounced with a very short i, similar to THIS, IN, LIFT. She learned her pronunciation in the Deep South, and I grew up in Colorado. With all this regional difference, I wonder if the students will be confused.

Along with that, as I think about pronunciation, I have in my mind the story that my parents used to tell us when we were all kids. How it kept coming up, I can't remember, but we heard it numerous times. We always laughed uproariously each and every time we heard it...here it is, in a nutshell:

When my parents, Tommy and Phyllis, were in school, they knew a little boy named Johnny, whose last name escapes me now. When he was little, Johnny mispronounced his words, never learning to say his "K", "G", "F", or any other sound that required him to move his tongue from the ridge behind his teeth. So he used the "T" and "D" sound a lot when he spoke, calling my mom "Tyllis" instead of Phyllis. He never had the opportunity to go to speech therapy, but he could make himself understood and besides - he was so darn cute when he was in elementary school, so Johnny never learned the correct way to pronounce most of his words.

Time passed, and everyone grew up and tried to be cool, even little Johnny Whatsisname (gads, I wish I could remember his name!). The girls were wearing their hair in tall bouffant 'dos and wearing red lipstick and black mascara, and the boys were rolling cigarette boxes in their t-shirt sleeves and rolling their pant legs up so their white socks would show. Johnny's parents got him a 1941 Ford coupe to drive around, so cool. So very cool...until he opened his mouth.

Johnny never did learn to pronounce any sounds that required him to use different points of articulation in his mouth, aside from his old stand-by, the ridge behind his teeth. He wanted to be cool though, and boasted about his "Torty-un-Tord" (Forty-one Ford.) Everyone, even my mom, thought he was funny. Plus, he had the hots for my mom. So one day, he pulled up beside her with the '41 Ford and offered her and her friends a ride in his car. They all piled in, with my mom in the front seat, my dad as one of the pals in the back. Johnny leaned over to my mom and put his arm around her shoulders, puckered up, and (being the suave, smooth-talker that he was) said, "Div us a tiss, Tyllis!" While the pals in the backseat laughed so hard they couldn't sit up and gasped for breath, my mom gave him a look that said "Drop dead, jerk", exited the car and ran, mortified. You know the look I'm talking about.

Funny how after these more than 60 years, old Johnny is still remembered, but not as a cute little kid with a speech impediment, nor as a cool teenager in a hot car. We all remember him as either the moron, or the poor unfortunate, who never learned to pronounce his words correctly.

Crochet Video - Not What You Might Think...

Lion Brand's Knitted Menagerie

You've heard of "The Glass Menagerie", right? Well...


Lion Brand made a wonderful display of large knitted and crocheted animals at the Craft and Hobby Association convention in Anaheim, California last week. Pictures of some of them can be seen here. They even had knitted plants!

I can't imagine the amount of work that went into this project, but I love the results, especially the peacock.

Safe - For the Moment

I have a confession to make...

When I was a child, a monster hid under the bed, only on MY side of the bed. My older sister may have had her own monster on her side, but I can't be sure. She never spoke of it. I don't know if it is common knowledge, but monsters often live under the beds of children. As I grew up, the monster stayed, but made itself less obvious, probably because of the increased activities of 4 adolescent girls. Still, at night, I had to stand back from the side of the bed and LEAP, from a distance of about 3 feet, into bed to keep the monster from grabbing me by the feet and dragging me under there so he could feast on little kid meat. And of course, COVERS were the only thing that actually kept me safe through the night. I was so thankful that I had my magic covers to stand between me and certain death at the hands of the monster under the bed. Without covers, it could have reached up and snatched me away in my dreams.

When I grew up, I got married and moved away, escaping the monster for a few years. But eventually, the monster tracked me down and once again crawled under my bed. I didn't see it, but one evening after a particularly stressful day, I felt its presence and had to leap into bed again. Imagine my chagrine. Twenty-something years old, and I had to leap 3 feet into my bed. I lived with that monster under the bed until getting divorced several years later. I managed to give it the slip again when I moved out and moved around for a few months. I moved into my own house in Cheyenne, and still manged to elude the under-the-bed monster.

PHEW!

And then I moved to Peru and got married to O, confident that the monster under the bed would never, ever be able to follow me across North, Central, and South Americas. And, until last night, I was sure that the monster hadn't figured out where I was, and maybe had even forgotten about me.

...end of confession...

I didn't feel that monster's presence, but last night in the middle of the night, when Celeste crept under the bed to her usual cool summertime sleeping spot, a struggle ensued with what I could only conclude was indeed the monster. She must have caught the monster unaware, and was about to catch him off-guard. For a few intense moments, there was a short battle that included some little barks and growls, and whimpers, some kicking, and then Celeste launched her most lethal attack yet - THE DEADLY GREEN GAS. There was a final kick to the mattress and the bed frame, a vicious growl, and then a soft sigh. Mercifully, a breeze came through the window and carried the remnants of the gas out...or maybe it was the monster, finally vanquished, that created the breeze when it leaped out the bedroom window to escape the deadly fumes.

A short time later, Celeste emerged from under the bed, rumpled and bearing a few dust bunnies (a sure sign that the monster had been there) on her coat, and crawled up onto the foot of the bed to sleep the deep sleep of a triumphant warrior. Luckily, she hadn't been suffocated by her own gas attack, which is always a danger to the novice monster hunter. Mission accomplished. The monster under the bed is gone - until next time.

A picture of Kaiser

Here is Kaiser, with his hair growing back, although still quite short. Here's the link to Donna's blog post about him.

Update on Kaiser

Today, Donna sent me an e-mail about Kaiser:

Asunto: RE: Kaiser
Enviados: 20 enero 12:53

Hi Kathleen, kaiser is actually beautiful! I was starting to think I would never see him as a well dog again. He loves to take walks with his team of "walkers" who cater to his his whims. First walk of the day is at 6 30 a.m. to the lake and back! Will be posting fotos on my blog soon!

D.

This makes me soooo happy! Thanks to everyone who donated on Kaiser's behalf! When I see the pictures of Kaiser, I'll post a link so you can go see them!

Yoga Dog

Scam stuff

I got this in by e-mail today:

£1,500,000 BRITISH POUNDS WINNER!!!.‏
From: Liverwood Promotion (brookss@bellnet.ca)
You may not know this sender.Mark as safe|Mark as junk
Sent: Tue 1/12/10 7:32 AM
To:

Dear Prize Winner, £1,500,000.00 British Pounds Winner in 'January' New Year 2010 Promo Draws: This prize was AWARDED to your E-mail Address by Liverwood Promo. CLAIMS Reference Number: LIUK/5020/0261/20 Reply to ( extolfinance5@aol.co.uk ) Extol Finance, For Enquiry: Telephone: 0044-70-3183-3488. United Kingdom. For claims,FILL THE FORM BELOW:YOUR NAME: ADDRESS: TELEPHONE/CELL: AGE:COUNTRY:NATIONALITY:OCCUPATION: You can also Fax this message with your E-mail to Fax Number: 0044-84-4774-2128 Thanks for your response for Claim.Liverwood PromotionLeicester, United Kingdom

Then I googled them and found this:
The e-mail here is just one type of the thousands of scam e-mail variants sent out each day by 419 scammers. If you've received an e-mail even remotely similar to the one on this page or if you have arrived at this page via an internet search resulting from an e-mail that you received, I can 100% guarantee that YOU HAVE RECEIVED A SCAM E-MAIL!

Fiberwebs

I've been doing some spinning...




The read, blue, and black sparkly stuff is Vardo, from Farm Witch. The brown skein is handspun of wool from Maggie's Farm, Inc.





And a little bit of crocheting. The beret is of handspun Flickabunda wool that I got from Maggie's Farm.









Hmmmm...I thought this would be the underside of the beret, but...

Sherlock Holmes, the movie - no spoilers here

Allow me to rave a little about "Sherlock Holmes":

I think this is probably THE BEST movie that Robert Downey Jr. has ever done. I don't usually like Robert Downey Jr, nor do I like Jude Law, but I have to say that in this movie, they were both brilliant! It's a fun movie, although set in dark and gloomy London, similar to the set of "Sweeney Todd, The Butcher of Fleet Street". The music is great, the story is great, and the acting is wonderful.

If you haven't seen it, RUN, don't walk, to the nearest theater showing it!

Sorcery and Cecelia, or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot

I just finished reading "Sorcery and Cecelia, or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot", by Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer. I've been looking for a good book to read ever since I finished the last Septimus Heap book. This one wasn't too bad!

The story takes place in Victorian England, and is comprised of letters sent between two cousins, Kate and Cecelia. Kate is in London, "coming out" this Season, being 16 years old now, and Cecelia is at home at Rushton Manor in Essex. The two correspond throughout the Season, and disclose secrets about the strange goings on in their lives. Both are intrigued by magic, but both are forbidden to study it by their ever-watchful and extremely proper aunties, Elizabeth and Charlotte. Forbidden to study magic, they are unwittingly drawn into a subversively sorcerous plot to destroy Thomas, the Marquis of Schofield (who is a magician in his own right), and his friend James Tarleton (no wizard, but an extremely loyal friend of Thomas.)

The story line twists and turns, drawing the reader deeper into the recesses of the tale, revealing humor, intrigue, and two different plots. After readng the story, I read the afterword at the end of the book with the two different authors, and discovered that the entire story was indeed written in a series of letters. The two authors had entered into "The Letter Game", in which they collaborated on the development of the main characters and the setting and the timing (when the story would end), but each created their own plots and additional characters, and did not discuss them with each other. After the letter game ended, they got together and revised, refined and created a more readable and understandable story, then dashed off to an editor. It wasn't originally intended to be published - it was just for fun. The letters are long on fun and gossip, full of creativity and wit.

I enjoyed the book immensely. I think it would be fun to play the letter game, too! I wish I could find someone who was interested in playing. What fun it could be!

What were they thinking???

Every so often, I take a look at some of the links other people have on their blogs. Sometimes they give me pause, sometimes they make me gag, and sometimes they make me wonder just what on earth they were thinking. Here are a few:

People of Walmart
(this one made me go check my wardrobe and throw out those leopard print tights - so tacky! - that I wore with my pre-worn polkadot hotpants and plaid belly shirt.) Personally, I do shop at Walmart sometimes, but there's something about the place that encourages some to get creative with what they're wearing.

For Your Entertainment
(this one makes me grit my teeth)

Cake Wrecks (It takes a special talent to be a cake decorator, and some of us just don't have it.)

One Sly Fox

One Sly Fox

Wow! Almost 3 years blogging!

So, yeah, my 3rd blogoversary is coming up in January, and I am busy thinking up things to do to celebrate:

a) I could have a give away

b) I could make a resolution to blog more often and have a giveway

c) I could have a contest and have a giveaway.

I think I'll probably have a giveaway no matter what. Just need to come up with something cool to give away. Fiber? Handspun yarn? Something hand knit or crocheted? Or maybe some commercial yarn (be warned - it's all synthetic) or a creation from that?

While I'm thinking, why don't you think about it and tell me what you think? Then i'll compile the ideas and see what I can come up with!

Merry Christmas!

I wish I knew Bailey! I have visions of Celeste in the same snowy bliss next winter!

Hmmm...

Okay, I'm all for cleaning up the environment, but let's do something about the exhaust from gasoline and diesel engine cars first and put everyone in a vehicle that uses clean energy. THEN I'll think about getting Celeste a job, but I can't really think about eating my pet for Christmas Dinner. Found on Yahoo right here.

Polluting pets: the devastating impact of man's best friend
by Isabelle Toussaint and Jurgen Hecker Isabelle Toussaint And Jurgen Hecker – Sun Dec 20, 3:23 pm ET

"PARIS (AFP) – Man's best friend could be one of the environment's worst enemies, according to a new study which says the carbon pawprint of a pet dog is more than double that of a gas-guzzling sports utility vehicle.

But the revelation in the book "Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living" by New Zealanders Robert and Brenda Vale has angered pet owners who feel they are being singled out as troublemakers.

The Vales, specialists in sustainable living at Victoria University of Wellington, analysed popular brands of pet food and calculated that a medium-sized dog eats around 164 kilos (360 pounds) of meat and 95 kilos of cereal a year.

Combine the land required to generate its food and a "medium" sized dog has an annual footprint of 0.84 hectares (2.07 acres) -- around twice the 0.41 hectares required by a 4x4 driving 10,000 kilometres (6,200 miles) a year, including energy to build the car.

To confirm the results, the New Scientist magazine asked John Barrett at the Stockholm Environment Institute in York, Britain, to calculate eco-pawprints based on his own data. The results were essentially the same.

"Owning a dog really is quite an extravagance, mainly because of the carbon footprint of meat," Barrett said.

Other animals aren't much better for the environment, the Vales say.

Cats have an eco-footprint of about 0.15 hectares, slightly less than driving a Volkswagen Golf for a year, while two hamsters equates to a plasma television and even the humble goldfish burns energy equivalent to two mobile telephones.

But Reha Huttin, president of France's 30 Million Friends animal rights foundation says the human impact of eliminating pets would be equally devastating.

"Pets are anti-depressants, they help us cope with stress, they are good for the elderly," Huttin told AFP.

"Everyone should work out their own environmental impact. I should be allowed to say that I walk instead of using my car and that I don't eat meat, so why shouldn't I be allowed to have a little cat to alleviate my loneliness?"

Sylvie Comont, proud owner of seven cats and two dogs -- the environmental equivalent of a small fleet of cars -- says defiantly, "Our animals give us so much that I don't feel like a polluter at all.

"I think the love we have for our animals and what they contribute to our lives outweighs the environmental considerations.

"I don't want a life without animals," she told AFP.

And pets' environmental impact is not limited to their carbon footprint, as cats and dogs devastate wildlife, spread disease and pollute waterways, the Vales say.

With a total 7.7 million cats in Britain, more than 188 million wild animals are hunted, killed and eaten by feline predators per year, or an average 25 birds, mammals and frogs per cat, according to figures in the New Scientist.

Likewise, dogs decrease biodiversity in areas they are walked, while their faeces cause high bacterial levels in rivers and streams, making the water unsafe to drink, starving waterways of oxygen and killing aquatic life.

And cat poo can be even more toxic than doggy doo -- owners who flush their litter down the toilet ultimately infect sea otters and other animals with toxoplasma gondii, which causes a killer brain disease.

But despite the apocalyptic visions of domesticated animals' environmental impact, solutions exist, including reducing pets' protein-rich meat intake.

"If pussy is scoffing 'Fancy Feast' -- or some other food made from choice cuts of meat -- then the relative impact is likely to be high," said Robert Vale.

"If, on the other hand, the cat is fed on fish heads and other leftovers from the fishmonger, the impact will be lower."

Other potential positive steps include avoiding walking your dog in wildlife-rich areas and keeping your cat indoors at night when it has a particular thirst for other, smaller animals' blood.

As with buying a car, humans are also encouraged to take the environmental impact of their future possession/companion into account.

But the best way of compensating for that paw or clawprint is to make sure your animal is dual purpose, the Vales urge. Get a hen, which offsets its impact by laying edible eggs, or a rabbit, prepared to make the ultimate environmental sacrifice by ending up on the dinner table.

"Rabbits are good, provided you eat them," said Robert Vale."