Summer weddings and looooooong road trips.

My brain isn't firing all of it's little fiery things...synapses? Whatever...so rather than some of those 9th grade English class paragraphs with a topic sentence, some exposition and a nice summary sentence at the end, I give you: a list.

Item 1. People like to get married in the summer. Is this because we have lots of pagan friends who don't like to sanction their love within the site of some bearded old guy who lives in a house full of stained glass windows? Who knows, but we drove 12 hours each way to attend a wedding in Tennessee last weekend and we'll be driving for 4 days (2 there, 2 back) to attend another wedding in Massachusetts this weekend.

B. Manimal and I experienced a moment of truth when we looked into the back seat and saw this: We are parents...driving a minivan with kids in the backseat. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

3). With the exception of some youtube vids of baby animals and disconnected minutes of random children's programming at friend's houses, Pete has been a TeeVee free baby until this trip when I borrowed a DVD player to bridge the many hours of boring, strapped in riding. It took him 1/2 an episode of Elmo's World before he mastered the phrase "More TV please!"

* Roadtrips are good for knitting:

This sweater was featured on the cover of Mothering Magazine a few months back and I've been obsessed with it ever since, so when we got the book in at Woven Art I knew that I was obliged to knit one...plus I haven't actually knit anything for Soon-to-be yet, and that seemed inexcusable. It's almost done...one more seam and some buttons to sew on.

Eff: HOW THE HELL DID I GET SO PREGNANT? And how am I going to survive the next two and a half months? Ragnarson was an extremely aggressive little fetus, but I swear he wasn't this big. Soon-to-be seems to favor a more deliberate pushing and stretching motion as opposed to his kick boxing brother, and I can't decide if it's better, or worse. Sometimes I won't even realize that the uncomfortable sensation in my stomach is baby related until I look down and see the distinct shape of a noggin sticking out from under my rib cage.

Six: I forget what if anything I wrote about the "sewing nights" that I used to host in the years before I joined the breeders, but on the off chance that I mentioned him, I'd like you all to give a rousing congratulations to our old Totem Male, Yammer the Onner. He finally found a good woman to take him in hand and mold him into the man we all know he can be. Awwwww.

Yellow: Ragnarson has turned into a crazy talking fool. I know that it's unreasonable, since I have watched him grow from an inert lump of newborn into a crazy walking-talking-jumping down the stairs two year old (as of two weeks ago...), but every new thing still blows me away. Intellectually I realize that my infant son will someday be an actual Man (or Manimal rather, since he does take after his Papa), but conceptually I have yet to grasp that my son will grow up. A random selection of things that shock me: sentences like this one "Water, please, water big cup, that one please water," the increasing coordination and agility that lead to things like escaping from the gated off front porch, and climbing up on the counter, selecting and peeling a banana, and the fact that his favorite place is the library, and his favorite people, the librarians.

Ragnar...only 30 hours of driving between me and a normal life.

Guess whose got a new camera?

That's right...me!

Ragnarson loves looking at pictures of himself, and he's chanting in the background "big kid! big kid!" since maybe you all missed the fact that he's all big and grown up.

But we have a serious blog problem, although there's still a few months to sort it out. According to my 1/2 way point ultrasound (which was a month and a half ago, where does the time go?) I can't go on calling baby (sorry, big kid) the first Ragnarson anymore, since in the beginning of November I'll be asking you all to welcome Ragnarson the second. There's nothing wrong of course with having numbered children, but it's just not for me.

So just what the heck are we going to call these little guys?

Ragnar...breeder of men.

Dear Ragnarson...

Hey little man. You know I love you right? I just wanted to get that out there, since you might have over heard me say somethings that we both know I didn't really mean. I realize that you're becoming more cognizant, and so I've been making an effort to watch what I say around you...such as not referring to you as "a jerk." I just wanted you to know that I'm trying okay?

So you're getting a little older, and I feel like we can sit down and talk man to man about somethings that need changing, or mom to man, or whatever.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is...this no nap thing? It's killing me man. Nap time is my recharge time. Nap time is the time where I do crazy important things like unload the dishwasher and eat lunch. Nap time is mommy time, okay? So if you insist on not taking naps then some other stuff if going to have to change. Like spending all of your "awake" time velcroed to my leg? Yeah, that's got to go. And the constant whining when I can't immediately decipher what you want, it's getting old, so old. While we are on the subject, I'd like to mention that you might be better understood if you spoke in English instead of Japanese, because quite frankly, I don't speak Japanese.

I don't want this to seem imbalanced, or like I'm placing all the responsibility on you, so here's what I'll do for you. You can keep your "half" (by which I mean the middle 2/3rds) of the bed, as well as the use of the floor, every square inch of it, for your toy storage. I will continue to launder your clothes, at the rate of three outfits a day, and keep the cupboard supplied with a combination of healthy and not-so-healthy snacks (I wonder which one you'll eat). I will even change the batteries in your noisy, blinky sound and light extravaganza toy, which yes, I have been "forgetting" on purpose....see? I'm really trying to open up here and take responsibility for my...uh...imperfections. I will make myself available for half hour to hour long stretches of book reading, toy piling, and airplane riding, as well as continue to supply the go-go power for those leisurely stroller rides.

In exchange I ask only that you give me a two hour stretch in the afternoon where you sleep, or play quietly by yourself so that I don't go stark staring mad. That's it, just two hours once a day.

So how about it little man, do we have a deal?

I remain sincerely,

Ragnar...yo momma.

Fun with kitchen garbage...

But first, I wanted to show you the hat that I knit from the really bright skein of yarn in the last post. I intended to post this the very next day, since that's when I knit it...honestly I think the yarn was still slightly damp. My first Navajo Ply...a little over spun, but look! Handspun stripes. How stinkin' cool is that?
And now! Fun with kitchen garbage. I have a few personality traits that Manimal finds incomprehensible, and sometimes downright irritating...there are more, but I repress them. He has no idea how much garbage I haven't hauled home off the side of the road...I was thinking for awhile about scavenging couch cushions from all the nasty old couches that get hauled out to the curb...the couch is awful, sure, but there's probably some good foam in that cushion. I come from a long line of garbage pickers.

Anyway, for the last year or so, I've been saving my onion skins in a mason jar, much to his confusion, to say the least. He even asked, in a tone of voice that some might have described as derisory, if I was planning on transporting this jar of garbage to the new house with me. Of course! That's valuable dye stuff.

A long time ago, one of my mother's friends told me that the key to dying with onion skins was to have "a lot" of them.
Turns out that one mason jar, so packed full that you literally can not fit one onion skin more, plus another overflow jar, when turned out into my largest "common use" stock pot (not the mega five gallon stock pot in other words), is A LOT of onion skins. This is probably a 3 gallon pot, and it's two thirds full of onion skins.
But, oh lordy, look at that color! I'm still sort of flabbergasted by the whole thing, and I'm sure that the man of my heart will be disappointed to learn that I am not only going to continue saving my onion skins...but now I'm on fire to experiment with all sorts of other things that usually go down the garbage disposal.

Here's the quick and dirty if you want to try it at home. Apparently no mordant is needed when dying with onions skins, so all you have to do is put your skins in the pot, simmer for an hour (don't boil, as that apparently can ruin the pigment), then strain out the skins, and add your yarn. Simmer for another hour and then leave over night. Voila!
For comparison I brought out the skein that I dyed with walnut husks. I thought that was amazing at the time, and I suppose it still is for something I picked up out of my backyard, but the onion skins definitely take the cake.
"What? Are you taking pictures of something? You must be confused, because I was standing behind you, and obviously there is only one thing worth taking pictures of around here. Silly momma."

Ragnar...getting in touch with her crunchy granola side.

Fibery Goodness...

Long time readers might possibly remember the "free wool" sweater. This is a sweater that I have been working on, literally, for years. The history, briefly: "free wool" from a local mutton farmer, remarkably nice for "meat" wool, I picked the shit out of it myself before sending it to the mill to be washed and carded. This was early in my spinning career, so my only option for spinning it was on a drop spindle (which I made myself, not bragging, just mentioning it as part of the story of how attached I am to this baby). I am not a huge fan of two ply yarns, so I spun it as a three ply, which ended up being a sort of sport weight. I started spinning it into my fantasy sweater, that is, a cardigan, cabled, with a hood. It started out being Fiona Ellis's Celtic Icon, but I wasn't a huge fan of the cable on that sweater, so I substituted an Elspeth Lavold. Ran out of yarn half way through, and was rescued by a friend who happened to have some lying around in a closet. Did I mention? Drop spindle, three ply?

So what did I do last Friday while I should have been working in the studio?

I frogged it.

I finally realized that there were just too many problems with it, and as I am always telling my students, it's worth it to rip it out so that you end up with something you really love. Firstly, I learned to spin making this sweater, and there were at least three distinctly different weights of yarn in it. Secondly, the wool that I got from my friend is just different enough in texture that I know it will bug the shit out of me. Thirdly, in the four years that I have been working on this my gauge has changed signifigantly, making one half of the front and inch longer than the other, and one sleeve an inch and a half longer. Forthly, I have a lot more experience with sweater design now, and I feel like I can make something that I'll really love.
So here is about half of the sweater yarn (still haven't ripped it all out yet). The yarn on the right was the "heavy" weight that isn't going to be a part of whatever I ultimately knit out of this. Turns out having undyed yarn in the house was just too much of a temptation, and I found myself out in my backyard at 5 o'clock in the evening, picking up last years walnuts to dye it. It didn't turn out quite as dark as I'd hoped, but I'm pretty amazed by the results. This is my first experiment with natural dying. I have some onion skins that I've been saving, and I think the "light" weight has a date with that dye pot.
And finally, I spent some quality time with my spinning wheel this weekend. I was throughly sick of the project that I have been working on, so I bought a little splurge package of roving at Woven Art. It had very distinct bands of color, so I abandoned my usual "long draw" method and worked at keeping the colors as separate as I could...of course when I was done I couldn't bare to ply it with anything, so this is my first experience with "Navajo Plying." There are some overspun sections, there are some "coiled" looking sections...but over all I am totally in love with it. I was actually intending this to be the first of the "pay it forward" items, but when all was said and done the skein was only about 50 yards long (navajo ply definately robs you of some length), and I wouldn't want to give someone a skein of yarn that wasn't long enough to knit something out of.

Besides, I have a pregnant friend, and I think a baby hat would be just the thing to show off those stripes.

I am so impatient to knit with this that I am going into the bathroom every half hour or so to "see if it's dry yet," (that would be fondle it, since of course I know it couldn't possibly be dry yet.)

Ragnar...such a god damn hippy.

Saved Seeds...

I am an amateur seed saver. I think it was hearing about Monsanto and the terminator gene that got me all fired up...plus spending money every spring on seeds at the garden center.

Anyway, the thing about saving seeds is that there are a crap ton of seed in...oh say, a tomato. So while I might want to grow 6 or 7 black plum tomato plants in my garden, I definitely don't want to grow 200. And seeds have a shelf life....plus I'll be getting more this fall when I do the seed saving thing again.

So...if you are a gardener type, and you want some seeds send me an email and let me know your address, and what kinds of seeds you would like. I can't guarantee the varietal, or the viability of these, so plant at your own risk.

I have:

Tomatoes: These first ones are getting a little old, and they were from tomatoes that I purchased at a farmer's market. They're heirloom varieties, but I don't know exactly which ones. I also have relatively few of these so it might be first come first serve.

Orange: this is a medium sized tomato that's bright orange when ripe.
Yellow: same as above except canary yellow.
Purple: I think this is a smallish tomato and I think it's more like purple streaked.
Pink/Yellow: This was a great sandwich tomato, large and ruffled and very tasty. I suspect it of being a variety known as German Pink.
Green Zebra: Smallish sweet, has green stripes with yellowish green flesh when ripe.

I also have some Green Zebra seeds from last year. I'll probably mix them together for distribution purposes.

Also from last year I have some

Brandywine Tomato: Large, ruffled and sweet.
Black Plum: Just slightly larger than a "cherry" variety, very nice for salads, frustrating for sauces since they're so small.
and a tomato that I'm calling the
"Volunteer Plum" since it was growing in a community garden space that I took over last year. This may be a good old Roma, but it was a very productive, good sized plum tomato.

And in the non-tomato category there is

Sugar Baby Watermelon, this was from the CSA, but it's an heirloom so it should breed true. Small green skinned, pink fleshed watermelon.
Acorn Squash
Butternut Squash
and Calundula which is a daisy like flower, edible and medicinal, an annual but it reseeds itself like mad so plant somewhere that it won't matter if it spreads a bit.

So let me know if you want any and I'll try to get them in the mail by the end of next week.

jessyhenderson(atsign)gmail(dot)com

Ragnar...domesticated and shit

Knit it...

I seem to have been avoiding the old blog lately. Fairly often I think "maybe I'll blog" and sometimes even sit down at the computer before thinking "ho, hum, but what would I say?" I think it's called "the first trimester," it's when everything seems harder than it should and you really just want to stay in bed for...six...more hours.

I do have a bit of homework to do. I want to introduce you all to the "knit it forward" ladies: yberry (who hasn't done her cut and paste post yet, naughty naughty Ms. Berry), Sarah (who went to high school with me...that should be interesting), Obsidian Kitten (who used to live here in Michigan, but ditched us for a fancy life in the big apple...we forgive her), NancyAnne (my BOSS), and Andi (quilter, mother and knitter extraordinaire).

For you (lucky? only time will tell) ladies, I have a short questionnaire:

Are you allergic to anything? Food, fiber, anything.

Are you mortally offended by any colors? What about colors you love? Answer carefully, I am bloody minded and evil.

Is there something missing in your life? A potholder maybe, or a nose cozy?

Post your answers in the comments....

Ragnar...just that lazy.