Break Away

I am writing this from The Cornelius House--our favorite vacation rental in Newport, Oregon.  Unfortunately,  it's for sale, so it may be our last time here.  Fortunately we have enjoyed staying here with our group of excellent friends several times, so really I shouldn't complain.

Newport is the home of Oregon's largest fishing fleet.

We come and cook tons of excellent fresh seafood which we purchase at Local Ocean.

We spend a lot of time playing games and looking at the view. Today we have an excellent gale blowing in from the south to watch through "our" picture window.

Or maybe we even spend some time writing on our blog!

The Cornelius Club

Fresh Coho and Shrimp Risotto

Or not.  Maybe just keep eating.



The Cornelius Club (invented by me): Good artisanal white bread, wasabi mayo, spinach, red onion, tomato, GENTLY GRILLED FESH ALBACORE, and BACON!

There's No Place Like Home

That was a very pleasant vacation seeing some new towns like Bloomington,

and Indianapolis;

knitting--and finishing-- my Knit-1-Below leg warmers in the rental car on the way through Ohio;

being taken care of by my folks for two weeks back at the cottage on Lake Erie;  

eating the original Buffalo wings at the Anchor Bar;

and hanging out in good old Wash, PA.

 I say "good old," but, dang it has really grown with all this natural gas drilling and fracking going on.  I almost fell out of the car driving around -- there are OUTLET STORES for goodness sakes.  There were people from OTHER COUNTRIES in the AT&T store. Seriously astounding.

Anyhow, we made it back only an hour late on United. The trip out on American was perfect. And the staff was friendly (and existent). I'm so glad American is flying into Eugene now.  We are definitely going to continue to try to avoid United. 

Anyhow, anyhow, we got back and the next day I went to Eugene Textile Center to get a cone of black 10/2 Pearl cotton to go with my other Lunatic Fringe yarns which I had left from my Fiber In the Forest doubleweave class with Madelyn VanDerHooght last spring. Now, that was a totally awesome class, and I learned a ton and a half, but it was seriously a bit over my head. I was so excited about weaving after that though that I was acting like a crazy chicken. I knew I needed to do something a little more basic, but what? Did I want to try to do handspun? Did I want to try some more basic dish towels? Wool or cotton? Did I want to do different threadings? So many options! Of course the result was, I didn't do anything until now.

While I was toiling back along the rails to trails bike path from Ridgeway to my folks' cottage on Silver Bay on a cranky old bike one chilly day on vacation I kept my mind off the sore parts by planning out my next project.  Doing multiplication while riding is recommended only on easy trails!  I finally decided to use the beautiful Lunatic Fringe Cotton for some multicolored dish towels where I could try different treadlings on one tie up. I used our delay "due to weather" in bright and sunny SanFrancisco, to type up my plan on my iPad.  My mental math was right, I was pleased to find. 

I grabbed my tiny warping board, which I have taken apart, and screwed it to the fence with the sides a yard apart to make it bigger.  Now this worked great the first time I did it, last spring for FITF,  

but this time the screws (which I had not too intelligently put back in the same holes in the fence) started stripping out on the right side so that edge started leaning in and the threads kept sliding off the pegs which are a little shorter than I would like anyhow since it is only a small warping board. I just kept powering through because I didn't know what else to do.  Of course the last half of the warp ended up being about 8" shorter than the first half.  If I hadn't been in a panic (did I mention I was outside and it was getting dark and I had to go to my piano class?)

 I might have realized I could just stop that warp and start a second one for the rest.  I know that's what "people" do for big warps, but "I" have never done that in my vast warping experience (I think this is warp #5).  It turns out I could even have done the colors separately.  So much to learn.  I had "heard" all of this, but it's not until you really experience something that it thoroughly sinks in.  Next time I will think in smaller warp chunks (392 ends was probably a bit much for my short pegs even if they hadn't started to come out of the wall) and be sure my warping board is really secure. Oh, yeah, and don't start later than 12:30 pm.  

It was hard to chain t off the board because of the sliding issue, but I managed it.  Whew. 

I suppose 8" of loom waste is a very small price to pay for the education.  

The saga continues in the next installment!

Another Go at Blogging On the Go

After that first mobile blogging attempt I went out of WiFi land for awhile, but now I am back in civilization! It's hard to believe but my mom and dad actually have WiFi at their 200 year old farmhouse now. It's not that the house is old that makes that hard to believe of course, it's that it's my parents!

Right now, I'm showing my mom how to use a touchscreen.  She loves it.  Look out internet, here comes Susan!

**********

So using the full blogger website didn't work very well at all, so I have paid big money ($5) for an app: here goes.

Well that was easy.

On The Road

I have never tried to blog on my mobile tablet device, so I am about to find out how it works.

The Yarn Harlot says she now only ever wears brown on airplanes, so given that she and  I seem to share a propensity for spilling coffe on ourselves, I decided to follow her brilliant advice.  The best part was that, since it would have been OK to spill, I never even did so all day!

I did take a picture of my knitting in LAX  (using the camera on my mobile tablet device) while we waited for our flight.  Let's see if I can upload it to the blog now.

*****time passes. I attempt to use a googleplus app to backup and access my camera roll on my mobile tablet device*****knock me over and fan me with a brick; it actually worked!

RIBBING FINISHED--about to begin K1, K1below vertical stripes

Seth and I were the only ones doing anything other than just sitting/eating or looking at their phones or other mobile devices (she says self-righteously as she taps away on her mobile tablet device on the coffeeshop's free wi-fi.

So we spent the night at the Grant Street Inn in Bloomington, Indiana. It was very nice and conveniently located. Of course most things are pretty convenient here as it's fairly small.  Actually it's a really lovely Midwestern mid-sized town.  Lots of nice shops in the downtown area.  One of which was a very nice LYS called Yarns Unlimited just off the courthouse square.  I had a moment of fear that it had closed because the street numbering was weird--even numbers on one block and odd on the next.  It is at 115 Walnut and there was an empty storefront next to 118!  Luckily we persevered.  I bought 3 skeins of locally dyed organic cotton/bamboo worsted weight yarn.  Ohh I'll take a photo! 

*******time passes, photo taken, photo uploaded ******

******oh crap,  just lost another 1/2 hour work on this--photos, writing, the works******

  We are here to meet a student to help get his bass all set up nicely and then we are stealing it to put it in the instrument competition at the Violin Society of America convention in Indianapolis.  Seth is 

almost done and the Soma coffee shop has gotten about 10 bucks out of me, and I  am about to throw this mobile tablet device in the trash.  I think it's time for some actual hands on leg warmer knitting time!

******* got Seth, got bass, ate a a sweet place called Finch's Brasserie, drove to "Indy", ensconced self on couch of adorable little VRBO 2 person house in a regular old real neighborhood just south of downtown , heated up ginger tea from Soma; now to find out if maybe this works better if not sharing wireless*******

Well, I got the links to work, but you just can scroll up and down at all. And on the MTD (mobile tablet device) there are no up and down arrows on the keyboard. I am going to try again to get the pictures in here.

*******manages to add 2 pictures in "only" 15 min.******

It is DEFinately time to put down the MTD and pick up my DPNs!!!

Fiber Financed My Fair Foray

In Washington, PA, my hometown, and seat of the county government we had an awesome County Fair.  There were so many animals and exhibits it easily took all day to see everything. I don't know if it's still awesome as it was in the 1970s an 1980s, but The Lane County Fair seems shockingly small to me given the square miles of Washington county are 861 and Lane County comes in at 4,722.

Anyhow, I decided to do my bit for the exhibits and entered 10 things in the textiles show.

We had fun treasure hunting for my 10 items.  I just had to fix the collar on this one though!

Hey, lady, read the sign!

In Wash., PA, you got a free day pass for entering--here you still have to pay your 9 bucks to get in. So I was very excited to see all the ribbons I won.

My cash prizes added up to $33, which was exactly enough to pay my and my friend Dominique's way in, buy a funnel cake, and ride the ferris wheel!

We could hear Pat Benatar playing her show from the ferris wheel.  That was pretty cool for us girls of the 80's.

Crooked Seamed Scottish Bear didn't win anything, but she did enjoy watching the world go by from the safety of her glass case.  She was, however, a little concerned with the psychiatric health of the purple crocheted snowman given the heat that week.

I received 3 First Place,  2 Second, 2 Third, an honorable mention and a Donor Award.  

There's no band night, or demolition derby, or truck pulls or anything at the Lane County Fair, but it's better than nothing, and a pretty good deal for just doing my bit!  If you are reading this from Lane County, enter some things next year to bulk up the exhibits.

Just be sure your entries are not a nice as mine!

Rose Cottage is Open for Fuzzy Fiber Fun!

   Step right in.

 Lamby and Minky will welcome you and protect your head from the stair corners.

Can you tell I'm excited about the ironing board and ex-ironing board bookshelves?

 Piper's Corner

All the curtains are "up- cycled" hand-pieced quilt tops that I got at St. Vincent De Paul's!






Cool old glass shades from Hippo Hardware.

Rosie says, "Don't just stand there, go check out the upstairs loft."

 It's hard to back up far enough to get good photos up here.  I love that I fit so much craft stuff under our little ol' antique rope bed.





The bed doubles as a handy workspace, but I'll clear it off for you if you come visit.

I'm looking forward to it getting even more overgrown! 

Window is open, hoping that Bumbles will figure out she can go in and out. See the back of the curtains show all that cool hand-stitching some spirit quilter did just for me?
 Come visit. I'll make us some tea and we can craft the afternoon away!