I'd ordered the Fratello kit from Yarnissima on Sept 24th, thinking it would take a while to get here from the Netherlands. It turned up on October 3rd, a mere nine days later, and packed with goodies:
It comes with a skein of coveted Wollmeise yarn in a rich brown, and some chocolate. Quantum was very interested in the feather. The pattern looks very detailed and it was all packaged like a gift.
The Fratello kit was still in stock on Friday, along with a couple of others. I like the blue of the Spina di Pesce kit. The yarn feels a lot like cotton and it smells like fruit, same as my other skein of Wollmeise. Given the size of my feet, I'd have a LOT of yarn left over from a pair of socks, 574 yards is way more than most sock yarn skeins.
It's October now. My novel idea has more shape, my good guy has a face, and a sidekick, and a couple of minor quests to pull off before she faces the bad guy. I have a way to tell a bunch of back story and experiment with writing first person. The cast is getting assembled and there's a serious amount of scribbling in my plot notebook. I'm a few caramel latte's away from having it all sorted out. I love this part of NaNo. All is potential, and the grind of weeks two and three is a distant memory. We start on a Saturday this year, which is perfect for racking up a serious head of steam.
The re-designed NaNoWriMo website is online. For one month, I'll be almost an extrovert, going to weekly write-ins, posting in the regional forums, and encouraging the troops. I still have the Word Wrangler's Pointy Stick from last year.
And the Eris cardigan I planned to wear to the NaNo kick off is not finished. I have work to do...
The next day in Chicago was Aquarium day. We took the blue line into the centre of town from the airport. At least, we tried, there was a section of line closed so everyone was dumped off the train and onto shuttle buses to reach the next train. After some walking around, we made it to Museum Campus and joined the line for the Shedd Aquarium.
The Oceanarium is closed until June 2009, but there was plenty else to keep us occupied. There were some huge turtles, four foot long sharks, rays, electric eels (none of them went off), and huge crabs. But the star for me was the sea otter, because he was showing off and Hubby got video:
I love otters! When I was a child, we went to the Otter Trust (which was so successful it's now closed to the public and scaled back their breeding program), but there were no tanks you could see them swimming in, and this otter was swimming upside down, flipping off the glass wall of the tank, and gliding to the other end and flipping again. He took a breath every few laps.
We wore out the boggle gland before we ran out of fish. Two cultural experiences in one day would have been overload, so we trekked back to the hotel via train, bus, and car. We'll see the T-Rex next time we're in Chicago.
Friday morning we drove out to The Fold, about an hour from our hotel, going from city, to suburb, to country. It was a nice sunny day and we were driving past cornfields and farms, and houses. We almost drove straight past The Fold because it looked like just another house. There were whole walls filled with fibre. Dyed and undyed, blends and colours, soft and not so soft. Spindles I've heard of but never seen (Avi Wasserman and Cascabeles), and lots of spinning wheels.
We lined up a Majacraft Rose, a Lendrum, and a Majacraft Suzie Pro. Toni said I had to try the Lendrum but I started with the Rose and some merino roving from my stash. Spinning was almost effortless, treadling was easy and I was spinning really thin without trying. Next up was the Lendrum, which I admit is a nice wheel. The weird lean towards me and the bobbin poking out the back were odd at first, but it was easy to spin on, just not much of an upgrade from a Louet S10. The Suzie Pro and I did not get along. The treadling was more difficult, couldn't spin as thin, it just didn't feel as good as the Rose. I'm sure I could have mastered her in time, and I know it's a good wheel, but the Rose was just more me, and I spun for a while longer on the Rose after putting the Suzie Pro aside.
The price tag on the Rose is a fair chunk of change to dump down on a spinning wheel, especially when you already have a spinning wheel. I dithered and wandered off to explore the Socks That Rock mill ends and rare gems being packed for Rhinebeck, picking out a sky blue mill-end that was almost but not quite the blue of my old school uniform. Wandered through the rest of the store looking at yarn and fibre, picked out 2oz of gorgeous tawny Polwarth, and came back to the main room a shade too early. A minute later and Hubby would have had the box with the Majacraft Rose in the car, packed and ready to go. He'd decided while I was off dithering. He'd decided before we even left St Louis. Toni sent us off with a pillow-sized clump of Targhee fibre and threw in the skein of Socks that Rock too. The Rose is now safely ensconced in a top-secret location until Christmas. Roll on Christmas!
Driving back to the hotel, we must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. We ended up at a T junction we hadn't seen before, turned around and finally found a sign pointing back to the highway a different route than we came in on. I thought we'd never get out of there! The roads weren't always labelled and I was starting to panic because all we had were written directions and no map. Happily we made it out alive, though I'd love to go back and visit another time.
Hubby is also taking me to visit The Fold, I'm excited! I have budget to spend from my failed attempt to visit the Maryland Sheep and Wool this year. The Fold have some great fibre, plus Socks That Rock yarn and spinning wheels... I want to try the Majacraft Rose and Suzie Pro. The Schacht Ladybug would be fun too but I'm not interested in buying one of those. I've spun on an Ashford Kiwi and a Louet S10 so far, Rose and Suzie feel like they would both be an upgrade.
I've wanted to try Majacraft wheels for a while because they're made from rimu wood. When I went to university, Dad made me a jewellry box from a piece of rimu wood he picked up when we were living in New Zealand and carried around ever since. It's beautifully made with a slightly curved lid and a lock set into the front. I keep the key on my key chain even though I never lock the box. It's not the hardest of woods, and Majacraft wheels seem susceptible to dings and dents because of it, but it has a lovely orange glow. I've looked for rimu spindles but no-one seems to make them.
Please click on the dragon eggs while I'm gone:
Elwood: It's 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses.
Jake: Hit it.
Hello, my name is Ali and I'm addicted to the Lego Star Wars game on the XBox 360. The first four levels are complete and I have everyone on the Millennium Falcon en route to the wreckage of Alderaan. I'm not solving all the puzzles and I keep accidentally killing Chewbacca and C-3PO, but I'm having a great time!
We had the other Lego Star Wars (Phantom Menace, Clone Wars, and Revenge of the Sith) on the original XBox and when we first played that one I spent a clear half hour pushing Jar Jar Binks off a cliff and giggling as he fell apart in a shower of Lego bricks. How can you resist that?
A reserved copy of Lego Batman will be waiting for me on Tuesday...
The Large Hadron Collider near Geneva will be out of action for at least two months, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) says. Part of the giant physics experiment was turned off for the weekend while engineers probed a magnet failure. But a Cern spokesman said damage to the £3.6bn ($6.6bn) particle accelerator was worse than anticipated. The LHC is built to smash protons together at huge speeds, recreating conditions moments after the Big Bang. Scientists hope it will shed light on fundamental questions in physics.
On Friday, a failure, known as a quench, caused around 100 of the LHC's super-cooled magnets to heat up by as much as 100C. The fire brigade were called out after a tonne of liquid helium leaked into the tunnel at Cern, near Geneva.
The likely culprit is a faulty electrical connection, but they'll have to warm up that section for repairs, then cool it back down before the collider can start up again. Nothing's going to happen until it's all fixed. The universe is safe for another few months at least...
I have a misbehaving plot bunny. It arrived all enthusiastic with a NaNoWriMo 2008 t-shirt on, and now it's just loafing around and not contributing to anything. I have a great bad guy with a cool back story and an actor lined up to play him (David Anders from Heroes), but my main character is all blah. I need a morning in a coffee shop with my notebook (the paper kind, not the MacBook kind) and a caramel latte to pin this one down. It's about time travel, and time travel stories usually irritate me to read, let alone write. I want this story to align with what I believe is possible about time travel, and I'm picky.
We went to a test drive event at the weekend with 17 car lines to play with. I drove a Saturn Vue Hybrid (virtuous but bland), Hubby took out a Mustang (nice growly engine but cramped inside), and we both drove the gorgeous Mazda RX-8 (rotary engine LOVE!). Also sat in a honking great GMC quad cab truck (WAY too big for me to drive), and a Smart Car ForTwo (horrible). Got in my Mazda3 on Monday morning marvelling at the copious legroom, the capacious cargo space, and the great acceleration. I am driving exactly the right car. But if someone wants to give me a Mazda RX-8, I'd like it in red, thanks!
The Post-NaNo writing group has one last meeting before November's novel writing madness, and my story is four scenes short. I know exactly what goes in those scenes and I like the story, it just needs the actual writing, which is the least fun part of being a writer. The most fun part is having written the thing and thinking "Good, that's done, I don't have to do that again" which lasts all of five minutes until the next idea pounces on you and demands a story to play in, or a new scene, or a whole new character and a completely different direction.
My current spinning is not inspiring me. The hand-carded Polwarth and the pin-drafted Cormo will become Navajo-plied mini-skeins to make way for something else on the wheel. Probably the Gales Art black BFL I got from The Loopy Ewe. The huge fibre box in the back bedroom is alarmingly full; I need to spin from the fibre stash for about a year to clear space. I also need to get a tetanus shot because it's been at least a decade and my flick-carder has sharp teeth. I already stabbed myself in the thumb with it.
