Some answers

No M for the wedding. Boo. I guess this makes deciding on apparel easier; now I can just tell Bev "Get a nice dress in this color" and take Michelle shopping once she's gotten it. This week we need to e-mail photographers and get vest sizes and research online ordainment. I'm trying not to overload on stuff-we-need-to-do; I started crying in the shower last night worrying about stuff. And I'm not even all that stressed about it. It's That Time of Month, I suppose. Also it's the day before my three-month evaluation, the one that determines whether I get medical insurance or an unemployment check, and while I don't think it's my fault I've been feeling both useless and bored at work I worry that feeling such means I am such, and then why would they keep me? It's definitely time for some chocolate and a good book.

Oh, yeah. And I discovered why we seemed to be running out of spoons so fast. I noticed three on Eric's desk yesterday and said, "Would you take those spoons downstairs?" He started to gather them up to comply; then he found the handle of another peeking from under the voluminous piles on his desk and found, in the end, seven more of them. Ten spoons. He cleaned his desk last night. Apparently I'm going to have to enforce this ritual more often than twice a year.

The nonexistent captions

I keep meaning to take pictures so I can put them up here. But I don't do it. So I'll do it later and expound now.

The text to go with the nonexistent pictures: I feel like it's all spinning, all the time sometimes. And I don't even have a wheel yet. Here are my hand-spun, hand-dyed, hand-knit handwarmers, which I love beyond imagining. Don't even start with me about the colors.

And here's the first of the yarn for Eric's hat. I also love this yarn beyond imagining. (Wait until I have kids, the superlatives will get worse.) It's super-soft and fluffy and much more even than I had been afraid of. I also learned things on this yarn, most importantly, I think, how to find out what a balanced yarn is supposed to look like. I even wrote a pseudo-article on it, which I may look at again in a few months and clean up and consider sending somewhere.

Turns out socializing is good for you: I went to a Metroparks History Department volunteers meeting yesterday, to talk with the volunteer coordinator and see if it was something I wanted to help out with. Turns out it is, very much. They depict the mill and the canal they have as they were run in the 1850s, so they teach the volunteers about household chores and tinsmithing and blacksmithing and cooking and doing the laundry with the wringer, and have them act it out during the summer and through the fall. (The regular staff does the actual working of the mill and the lathes.) They were much excited to find out that I already knit and sew and spin. And I actually got to try a spinning wheel for the first time, and confirmed my suspicion that I need a castle (upright, non-handed) wheel, because the Saxony (traditional, Sleeping Beauty type) ones are right-handed and I do, indeed, spin left-handed.

On New Year's resolutions: I've gotten the baby quilt designed and most of the template pieces cut out, I've done some writing, I've sent Eric out gaming so that I could have an evening to myself. I'm still worried about all the things that need doing, but I'm working on lessening that (both the worry and the number of things). Next I need to sign up for time off for my wedding shower in April and my wedding in May, and find out how to get someone ordained.

To ring in the new

Christmas went well. I got some good things (including The Bread Bible and a great stone mortar and pestle--I got two, actually, so I traded the steel one in for a kitchen scale, which is also great), and so did Eric, and everyone seemed to like the presents we got them. Mom and Dad appreciated the miniature tree and stockings I sent them, as they never got their boxes of Christmas decorations from the old house, and Bev was delighted with the candles we left for them. Dinner was good--though I learned that preshredded cheese does not work for my mom's potato-cheese casserole. (At what point does it become mine?) We visited people and played games and had a good time.

The week between then and now was also good; it was very quiet at work, and I regained my health and munched my way through most of the popcorn tin. (Ahem. But I love this stuff at Christmas, and I only get it at Christmas.) I spent some time at work writing my 2006 Annual Review, which was longer than I expected, and my goals for 2007. It's been an interesting year, and I have some interesting goals.

In 2006, I started out unemployed. In February I got engaged. In April I went to Korea to visit my family and my mother's homeland for the first time ever. In May I got a job that I turned out to despise. In June I bought a house. In August Eric started school for his education degree. In September I quit the old job and got a new one. In November we heard that my cousin's baby has trisomy 18. That's not much of a way to end the year, but they're doing as well as they can, and otherwise things look good for both our families.

As for goals, here are some of my major ones:

1. Take more time to do the things I want and need to do--writing, crafts, cleaning--rather than give way to shared time. In this past year I've spent a lot of time doing what Eric wanted, or things that we could both do, rather than doing things on my own. I don't think that was wrong, necessarily, but I've been dissatisfied with it, and I think the only way to be less dissatisfied is to give up some of my shared time (which I do love) and take back some of my individual time.

2. Related, I want to be less dissatisfied with myself in general. I spend a lot of time being critical of myself, listing all the things i haven't done, need to do, have failed to do in the past. To-do lists are a good thing, but only so far.

3. Get through the wedding.

4. Write fiction. My two projects that I haven't finished (and want to work on), and just generally get back into the habit of it. I think I'm at a place, mentally and physically, where I can do that now.

5. Write nonfiction. There are some things I'm interested in doing, and I want to pursue this, at least a little bit.

6. Continue spinning. I'm really enjoying this. I've already told Eric he's getting me a spinning wheel for my birthday. (This way he gets me something I really want and he doesn't have to worry about picking it out. Also I'm going to pay for most or all of it.)

7. Continue crafting. I have baby quilts and curtains and socks to make--though nothing urgently, which is a luxury and one I'm enjoying right now. But I like being both creative and productive, and there are some things I want to practice and accomplish.

8. Continue yoga and get into some other regular exercise. I turned out to like yoga a lot more than I thought I would (because of its lack of aerobic effort). I got a yoga mat for Christmas, and that would also be excellent for pilates, which I liked and got out of the habit of in the past several months--see #1.

I think that's doable. I have an "Annual Review 2006" file (also others, under various names, going back several years). I did okay with last year's goals, but that's partly because I didn't set myself many because (a) I was feeling depressed about life and (b) I never finished writing the review. So 2007 has higher standards set for it. I think I can meet them.

And now, to eat French toast and do dishes and fold laundry and get ready for a small but pleasant New Year's party, with food and friends and games and sparkling cider. Welcome, 2007.

Merry Christmas.

The cookies are baked and decorated (if somewhat sloppily, owing to a bad roll of tape rendering my clever parchment-paper decorating tubes useless). The potato-cheese casserole is prepared and in the oven. (It tastes better the next day.) The presents are wrapped, even Eric's to me, and Brenda's house has been decorated and her tree lavishly ornamented. The cold has been reduced to the cough (annoying but endurable) and a little sinus pressure. I think it's gonna be a good Christmas here; I hope it's the same wherever you are.

Hack cough cough hack wheeze gasp cough

I may hate a cough more than any other cold symptom. Especially a dry one like this. I am not confident I'll be able to sleep in more than one-hour segments tonight. The various medicines I'm taking don't seem to help. Yuck yuck yuck.

Tomorrow morning we're going to the bank. Then grocery shopping (I figure at this point the sooner we do it, the better), then possibly visiting with the mothers to cheer them up regarding what may be an extremely suboptimal Christmas schedule. All the while chugging tea.

Solutions

This cold began weirdly. First with a sore throat, which isn't all that weird. Then, an absolute lack of stuffy or runny nose (which is) and instead an inability to stand up without dizziness and nausea. Then more sore throat and cough. Now it's finally coming into the nose. I have found that drinking hot tea keeps my throat soothed and the cough at bay--but I have to keep drinking it. I am extremely hydrated right now.

The yoga yarn, on the spindle, was ridiculous. When I get home (I’m at work, with an ever-shrinking amount to do) I’ll post a picture. It was around two ounces, 160 yards, which is not in the least an unreasonable amount of yarn. But this was not what a spindle is supposed to look like with yarn on it. There's a hook somewhere at the top, but I couldn’t see it because it was blocked by the excess of yarn. Sometime in 2007, I am getting a spinning wheel. I've been researching them the past few days and I'm thinking a Lendrum, because it's versatile, left-hander-friendly, well-made, pretty, and relatively cheap (for a spinning wheel). That's assuming I buy new. But I'm absolutely not buying anything fiber-related until February, and probably not getting the wheel until my birthday (in April), so I can also look around for used. The yoga instructor (who adored the yarn) promised to keep an ear out for me. Next is Eric's hat yarn, and then some gift yarn while I experiment with different techniques. I think E would like some, and the old needlework group (they still meet, they told me at Marie's shower, though they often play cards rather than working on their projects) would appreciate some, I think--the thought, if nothing else.

ETA:

There's more blue and green underneath, you just can't tell.

Our last Christmas shopping occurred Wednesday. Yay! It was pretty painless. We went shopping last Sunday, in a moderately bad press of people at the mall, and even though I was sicker, Eric got tired of shopping first. When I said, back in July, that I wanted to work on Christmas shopping in September he scoffed. He expressed horror. He expressed disdain. Sunday I suggested working on Christmas shopping in September next year and he promptly agreed. (We did actually start Christmas shopping in September, at the rock and gem show; we just didn't follow up and finish it.)

When we were out, we discovered that those Visa/Mastercard/AMEX gift cards that work just like cash? They require a $4-$6 activation fee. We were going to send one to Eric's sort-of-sister in Las Vegas (because she just had a baby and what they need now is really money), but we've now decided that we'll either get them a Target gift certificate or just giftwrap some cash.

Last night was cookie making with Michelle. Aside from intervals of impassioned coughing, it went pretty well, though Michelle definitely still needs improvement in the paying-attention-to-the-recipe department. Bev called while we were on the third dough, a gingerbread (she’s going to let me borrow her veil, and also she has donated her old car, which she bought from me exactly four years ago yesterday, to ALA because she has a new car), and Michelle was content to proceed by herself, with the occasional whispered “Yes” or “No” from me when she asked whether she should use the low mixer setting or had she mixed it enough. Once I hung up she announced she was done. I looked at the scrawny, soggy dough and decided to do an audit. She had added only one quarter of the required one and three-quarters cups of flour, half the molasses, and no sugar at all. We fixed that and watched “Muppet Treasure Island,” and then the mothers took her home (with a bike, but she won’t know that until Christmas) and I wrapped presents and went to sleep. I woke up twice, coughing, just like the night before, but at different intervals. My coworker today (one with whom Eric and I are going to double-date, in order to see whether we can reduce a waiter/waitress to tears through sheer pickiness) said I sound better than I did yesterday. This weekend should be a pretty lazy one, so maybe I’ll actually be feeling better by Christmas. I’d take that as a present. It hasn’t been a very festive Christmas season, but I’d settle for health at the end of it.

I hate being sick.

I have stuff to say, but no energy to say it. I've got Eric's cold, complete with relapse and lingering cough. Yuck. I hope to be well by Christmas. The yoga yarn was a success; I didn't get a picture of it in the skein but you should see it on the spindle. When I'm better. Or at least less tired.

The best thing I learned today

Saying "Customer Service Representative" as soon as the smarmy automated guy in the Toledo Edison automatic telephone menu starts talking about the main menu will get him to say "I'll transfer you to someone who can help you" immediately.

Yoga yarn, part 2

This is the roving that I dyed last Monday:


And here's what half of it looks like today:


I had debated on whether to split the roving many times, to make stripes, or just the once, to get a two-ply yarn that would go continuously from yellow to green to blue. But I really wanted the one color change, so I split it just the once. Then I realized I only had about two ounces and that might not be enough to make anything, and should I Navajo-ply each half separately to make into two matching yarns, because then Katie could finish the ends of something or make matching wristbands or something? I finished spinning this half of it yesterday (while watching more Alton Brown DVDs, an early Christmas present to Eric) and spooled it onto the back of my chair, which charmingly is just about a yard around, and found that this little skein contains about 200 yards. That's enough to do something with. I could still Navajo-ply it and its twin, which would give me two 70ish-yard skeins, but now that I know there's enough for a hat or a lacy scarf I'm happy to just make the one big skein. So I've got slightly over a week to spin the other half, ply and set.

In the meantime, I've been doing a little writing, plus decorating the house, doing housework, making earrings for Michelle from Santa (imitations of some earrings she saw at a craft show we went to Thursday that she couldn't have because she doesn't have pierced ears), and taking care of my poor sick fiance. He's feeling marginally better, but I'm starting to seriously consider Dad's recommended remedy of honey, lemon, and whiskey.

Yoga creativity

I had yoga tonight. It's something that the mothers and their friend and I have been doing, every other week (except two weeks ago), since September, and while I wouldn't have said I needed it--I'm pretty stretchy anyway, due to ballet then and pilates now (well, a much more recent then)--I've been enjoying it very much. The instructor, Katie, also knits, and she's working on her third book and looking for an agent. She always has a lot of energy and warmth, and I enjoy having her over. (We do this at my house; she used to have classes but stopped because the rent was too much. She says if she had my house she'd do classes out of the living room.) Today we talked about a sweater she designed herself, and how she hurt herself helping a friend, and in the actual class we did a bunch of stretching. And I felt like being creative. I told her this, and she nodded and said, "Isn't it great?" When they left I dyed some merino/tencel into a springy blue/green/yellow colorway to make her a Christmas present. I've got one spindle free, I can do it in two weeks. And I wrote about six hundred words on Shoelace--switching POVs helped a lot. And I made my poor sick stressed fiance laugh. Maybe there are more reasons than I thought for making time for exercise.

Craft babbling will now commence. With pretty pictures!

This is the merino-silk roving that I dyed with what Eric tells me is Prussian blue:

The plan is for me to spin it on my new spindle, which came today--finally, after three weeks; I wrote yesterday to ask what was taking so long and the spindle maker wrote back to say his wife's grandmother had died, he was sorry for the delay, and I felt lousy. But it's a lovely, lovely spindle, the Quantum Butterfly in padauk.

Here the roving is tied at the one-third and two-thirds marks, because I want to make a three-ply yarn and I don't spin evenly enough to trust a Navajo ply and I figure the way to waste the least will be to divide the roving into thirds while it's still relatively easy to handle, not when I've got six hundred yards of single. The card is my sample, and it confirms that I love this fiber, this color and this plying choice. It's probably going to come out to be about five stitches per inch, which is reasonable for a hat and doesn't tax my love for the recipient too severely.

I also finished those extremely cute baby booties for Marie's baby, but it's too late to go take a picture now. These booties are now going to be my stock baby shower gift, I think. Each one took about an hour to make and the set hardly dented the ball of yarn.

I hear rain outside and I hope that weather.com meant it about not getting down to freezing tonight. Tomorrow will be bad enough without icy roads. Saturday I plan to go to Jungle Jim's after the shower and spend a couple of hours there, then head back up for house maintenance and Christmas shopping and such. At work tomorrow I will be doing not much, as usual, but that might change next week. We'll see. And I might be watching someone perform a long test, though she hasn't seemed particularly welcoming--though not unwelcoming either--and I hate to push myself in like that; but I may as well try to earn my paycheck by being pushy as not.

Okay, that was a tangent I didn't mean to get on, and it's late. Sleep beckons and I answer.

Wandering, on lamed foot.

I was thinking, maybe I don't write here much anymore because I write those e-mails home to myself most days from work, but I did that before and was also posting much more. I don't know what it is. I haven't been motivated to write much at all, other than self-indulgent journal entries, which you'd think would be a natural fit here, but apparently not. I'm trying to decide what's going on with me regarding writing, what I truly want to do and what I truly can do. Part of it is scheduling: me rearranging my life around Eric's. I can't help it; he's got more demands on his time than me, and I want to spend time with him. Maybe I can work whenever he's at school or doing homework or something. Maybe I should forget it. Only Shoelace still wants to be written and I read what I've got and it's honestly not that bad, and I have a couple of article ideas I'd like to get down, and there was that neat story I planned out but haven't finished, and Finity's Edge could be great fun if I developed the backstory a little more, and--James said his new girlfriend (who is a vegetarian, and was most polite at Thanksgiving; I hope she sticks around a while) is also a writer, and she's great at ideas but not so good at the execution. At the time I thought of offering to help her, but now I'm not so sure I could be any use. (He also described an idea they'd talked about and he said, "Don't steal this idea or I'll get in trouble," and then later, "I told her that I'd do one of two things: if she wants to write it I'd help her, and if she decides she doesn't I'll give it to my sister." It's not my kind of idea, but I appreciated that.)

Meanwhile, I'm sitting here with one sock on, wondering where the time goes (Dun Morogh, I'm afraid, at least partly) and whether my sanity would be better served by throwing out my extra yarn. Marie's baby shower is this weekend, you see. And I have the most wonderful soft yarn left over from the stupid gift I gave Gabe last year and I wanted to make her something. Only I already made her a quilt, and she crochets so a hat seemed pointless. So I thought, socks. It's probably hard to crochet socks, and last I spoke with her she wasn't a very advanced crocheter so she probably hasn't turned her hand to it--though she might during her maternity leave. Now I'm wondering if I shouldn't have just bought her some of the yarn.

Anyway, the pattern I'm using is a free pattern that I modified the first time for Gabe's almost-two-but-still-catching-up-to-babies-his-age-born-on-time feet, and now I'm trying to modify it again for a newborn-to-three-months and I have no idea whatsoever how big their feet are. I don't know whether the socks for Gabe fit or not. Probably Bev just tossed them in the garbage when I left. (This year's present for Gabe is sitting in the craft room. I ordered it and it came too late, so I asked Dad to get me something to leave at Thanksgiving and I'll send this for his birthday and pretend like I'm really worth something as an aunt.) And I'm not a creative knitter anyhow; the best thing I've ever done was the mouse cozy for M. (I need to write up that pattern and send it to Knitty.)

So I'm going to work on that. But it's already practically Wednesday. Granted, I don't have plans for the rest of the week, other than covering the faucets before it starts to snow again and take my antibiotics--the reason I am wearing one sock is that I have an infected ingrown toenail and I was soaking it, per Dad's instructions. I sat in the urgent care clinic tonight (because I don't have insurance yet) and started a hat, using this yarn, because I only had my circulars with me and there was no way I was going to submit to the frustration of knitting a sock on a circular, but then I came home and realized I really wanted to do the socks, plus the hat was huge. Now I realize that this yarn is not that rugged--it's a sort of chenille--and I should cut the part I already knit, but will that leave me enough yarn for both socks?

Thanksgiving, by the way, was nice. Dinner itself was mediocre but the company was good, and I enjoyed seeing Mom and Dad's new house and getting advice from them on finances. They're currently snowed up; the Seattle area, after the wettest November ever, got a huge snow/ice storm last night and it took them six hours to go the twenty miles from Mom's work home, so this morning they stayed home and drank coffee and watched movies. I approved. We ended up taking the early flight out, which shorted us on sleep but was otherwise good; and we ended up delayed an hour by ice on the flight back (a precursor of that storm, apparently), requiring us to run through O'Hare to catch our flight. But we made it back and so, eventually, did our luggage, so all is well.

All right: time to knit a few rows on the sock, and see where I am; time to open up Shoelace, and consider switching POV since I think I've stayed too long in Risse's and that's why I've stalled out; time to go shower and then put Neosporin and a fresh Bandaid on my foot. Time to take action. I see it but I don't always do it. I suppose that's the way with most of us.

Grr.

Flight delayed two hours. Now we're taking the earlier flight. Do we go to sleep tonight or not? It's such a conundrum.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm off for Thanksgiving in Seattle in a few hours, attended by disgruntlement that the perfect present I ordered for Gabe didn't come in time (I should have had it sent to my parents' address; I dind't think of it at the time) and the visit is so short; happiness that I'll see my family and my parents' new house; and errant thoughts of airline security people confiscating my bag of trail mix because the raisins look like gel to them.

Setting my sights on 2009

Eric and I talked tonight (now that he's recovered from a bout with gastroenteritis) about his school and our future. The way things are now, he's going to get his certification in 2009. We'll be moving to the West Coast--the current shining star of my ambition--that summer. He'll finish his degree that fall. I wrote this down, along with "Wedding: spring 2007" and "First child: summer 2008 (may vary)."

It just seems an awfully long time from now. It's the tail end of 2006, so I suppose it's really only two and a half years--and I've been here a year already--but I want to be there. If it weren't for Eric, I would be there now. I'm going to have spent the majority of my twenties in the Midwest. There's no good reason this should bother me, but it does. I never wanted to live in the Midwest anyway, except as someplace new, and now it's no longer new. (Though the shouting I heard from my neighbors every time either UM or OSU--I don't know which--did something notable in the game today was something I haven't experienced before. Also, I think someone stole my doormat from my front door. That's never happened to me before either. Now I'm concerned for the spindle I ordered that was supposed to come this week and hasn't.)

The other thing that bothered me about this plan I wrote out was that I didn't figure in it, except for the wedding and baby parts. I need a goal. I think. Most of my emotional trouble lately has been from the lack of a goal--or at least my perception that I need one and don't have one. And moving to the West Coast isn't a good one. It's pretty short-term, for one thing, when you get down to it. It's only two and a half years away.

Mobius ring update

So. Debby Hoffmaster wasn't able to make us Mobius rings in white gold. I asked our friend Carol, and she recommended two places, http://www.handwovenbands.com/ and Abracadabra. I wrote to both. The first wrote back: "Sorry, but I don't even know what Mobius rings are." The second wrote back, "Sure!...They start at $660." So a big no on both.

I turned back to my trusty friend, Google (during work today, because there wasn't a lot to do, even with a potluck in the middle of the day--I'm quite happy with my new coworkers culinarily) and tried "mobius ring gold" instead of "mobius strip ring" or "mobius wedding ring" and came upon a few sites I hadn't seen before. One is J. H. Breakell & Co.. They have a ring that's just about perfect; but it's in yellow gold. Another is Gideon Weisz. I'm particularly in favor of this one because of the other rings he's made--benzene? Protein? Only DNA could make it better. I've written to them both and I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

The Tussah silk came yesterday (extremely fast turnaround time, nice people) and I'm now again contemplating spinning and knitting a shawl of it for my mom for the wedding. This would theoretically give me six and a half months (Christ, is that all I've got?) to do it, which shouldn't be impossible at all. I'm hesitating, but I'll probably do it--but I'd have to spin first and dye later, since we still haven't picked final colors yet.

Being bad

I have discovered the spindle Eric's hat must be spun on: the Quantum Butterfly. (He would also appreciate the Foo, but it's a laceweight spindle and I do not love him enough to knit him a hat at nine stitches per inch.) This is merely because I am a geek and he is a geek, but that's fine. I ordered the spindle but have no idea when it will come. I also ordered four ounces of Tussah silk, but I know that will come this week. I have very much got to get started on the dyeing of all this white, white fiber I have.

(Okay, I do love him enough. But only if it were, for some inexplicable reason, absolutely necessary. And it's not.)

My cousin Jaime wrote to say that her unborn baby will probably not live past birth. Is it terrible of me to wonder whether they'll use the same name for their next try? I'm sure it is, but I can't help it.

We did some Christmas/birthday shopping over the weekend, and also went to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. It was fantastic, just like last time, and made me think I really ought to get out my guitar (and change the strings already; it's been a couple of years at this point). I want to create music. I want to create a lot of things. I also want to be very lazy and idle, and that's the essential struggle.

Food and fiber and forgetting and finances

We went to the Beirut last night for my first-paycheck celebratory dinner. (Incidentally, when I received my check stub I looked at my bank statement and found it hadn't been deposited yet. I checked again yesterday and it still hadn't, so I wrote a worried letter to the finances person and she wrote back saying kindly that the first check was supposed to be live, had I gotten it? I'll be depositing it in a couple of hours. And no more questions to the finances person.) Eric won't eat Mexican or Thai or Indian with me, so I'm glad he likes Middle Eastern. (Lebanon counts, right? There was a time at my old job we discussed that, but I think the consensus was that it was really only disputed because it's mainly Christian.) It was good, except for me spilling my extra tin of tea by putting a pat of butter under it to soften and then not thinking to remove the butter before it melted. But we decided that Aladdin's, a new place in a more convenient location (though it feels more like a cafe than a restaurant), has better tabbouleh and falaffel and, Eric says, shish kafta, so I guess we've got a new favorite Middle Eastern food place.

While we were there we both noticed a nearby mother taking her tiny, weeks-old baby out of her carrier and holding her close. She was small and frail and dark-haired and had a tiny active curious face. We looked at each other, stricken, and Eric said, "The courthouse is open on Monday." We seriously fail the baby test.

In the summer, when I made that thick brown hat of my own homespun, Eric had tried it on, said he looked very J. Crew, and mentioned he wouldn't mind having such a hat if it were less scratchy. So when I went to the Michigan Fiber Festival in August, I bought some merino/tencel and made swatches of that and some merino/silk I already had for this purpose, and he chose the merino/silk. Last night I mentioned something about the hat, and he said, "What hat?" I explained, and he still didn't remember. I persevered and repeated the project idea and he's still in favor of it, so I'll be dyeing some fiber dark blue ("Gray," he said yesterday when I asked what color he wanted, just to be sure. "Or green." I said, "Last time you said blue." He said, "I did?" and then told me to surprise him, that either one was fine) and spinning it soon. Only I don't like the spindle I have to do it on. Heavier yarn requires a heavier spindle, and my heavy spindle is a bottom-whorl (and very simply made and decorated by someone who sells them on eBay, and the decoration is already coming off) and I think I'm coming out in favor of top-whorl. So I want to buy a new one. I was concerned about the expense of it, but then I got a hefty raise with the new job and it's been a while since I bought something just for myself. And as for Eric objecting, forget it. He won't even remember in a few days.

I bet some marketing person has called it INGEOnious.

The ingeo kicked my butt.

It's pretty, it's shiny, it's soft, but I am putting it away until I am a more experienced spinner. It's got a very short staple length (the length of the individual fibers), which makes it difficult to work with (and also confuses me because, hey, it's manmade, couldn't they have made it longer?), and a strange squeaky stiffness to it, which caused me at various points to try to tug gently to make the yarn even and have nothing happen, then tug slightly harder and have it all come apart. It broke apart as I was quick-plying it, which is why I decided to try knitting a sample plied and one unplied. The plied one was reasonable; the unplied one--well, there are a lot of ends on it. Putting it away now. I wonder if the soy silk I picked up at the fiber festival has similar properties. However, I know that wool is much much easier to spin, and I still haven't finished all the green BFL (though did I mention I finally finished and plied the laceweight? It's not quite laceweight anymore, at least not in all places, but it's got a nice sunset color to it and it's very fluffy) so I think I'll recover my ego with a little work I know I can do.

Food for thought.

I spent a couple of hours in the kitchen today, making Greek green beans (since I had several shoebox-ripened, starting-to-wrinkle tomatoes to use up) and butternut squash soup. I made it with sauteed onions and garlic and leftover white beans and fresh rosemary off the plant in my window (and I put the remains of the sprig, since I didn't use it all and started from the bottom up, in a cup of water to see if it'll form roots) and it's divine. I'm so incredibly pleased with myself it's disgusting.

Eric, however, just thought the soup was disgusting. That's fine; I already knew he doesn't like squash and I had had no intention and made no overtures in the direction of suggesting he try it. Apparently he felt this was insufficient security, though, and made some comments on the unpalatability of squash in general and this soup in particular. So I got mad at him, because he insists on meat at almost every meal and do I ever say that that's disgusting and I don't want any and don't ask me to try it? I do not. I say nothing, except for the occasional comment on how he feels funny if he doesn't get meat, even if he's had plenty of protein. I did not point this out, but a little later he apologized, and made no comment on the soup when I had it at dinner (he liked the green beans), so we've got peace there, at least for now.

He's also reading a book about religion and atheism (Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion), and it made me wonder about how people approach belief, of that sort and any other, and specifically food. Twice at work I've had people look at my lunch (ratatouille and vegetable pancakes, respectively) and say, "Are you a vegetarian?" and I think it's interesting that they believe only someone who doesn't eat meat would eat that sort of food. Eric's dad seems to take my vegetarianism personally. (It might be because his doctor told him to stay away from red meat because of a potential heart problem.) So does his mom, in a slightly less pushy way--but she still says things like "Jenny, I wish you ate meat, because this steak is so juicy and tender and delicious, it's the best thing in the world," and I wonder why people truly don't get that it would not be delicious to me. I don't try to convert people to vegetarianism, partly because it isn't a religion to me--which, honestly, the meat-centered food culture I live in feels like sometimes--but mostly because I know they have no interest and I can't create that in them. And also because I know they will feel annoyed and persecuted if I try--but nobody seems to think it a problem when they do it to me. I wonder how many people truly try, or are able, to see how another person might approach things.

Obviously this is a pretty petty thing to get all heavy and hung up about, and I'm not really. I just have a good meal in my tummy that I don't want scorned. When I get pregnant and people start pushing me to eat meat for the baby I'll probably do more ranting about it, but that, happily, is at least eight months away (because even if I got pregnant on the honeymoon I wouldn't know for another few weeks) so I think I'll just let my wonderful soup settle and think about catching up on the craft backlog. (There are also curtains I bought that need to be shortened and shelves that need putting up. But more importantly that ingeo I bought several months ago is calling my name. I hear it's difficult to spin; we'll see.)