Glanalaw - delighting in pure song

Sorry about the long silence on the blog.  I've had so much going on that ought to be blogged about - which means I haven't had time to do it!  Briefly, though, a few highlights... 1.  I went to the CiRCE conference with my mum.  Fantastic.  I'll probably be posting more about issues I've been thinking about since this -- so much food for thought! 2.  Survived my second tornado.  (Or possibly not an actual tornado.  But really big storm, anyway.)  It took the roof off one wing of our hotel at the conference.  Naturally our room was on the top floor.  But we were blessed - no damage to any of our belongings.   Here's a link to coverage of the damage... 3.  I had a birthday, and two of my friends had their babies that same day.  Yay!  I like babies! 4.  I've been dog-sitting the past 10 days.  Normally I enjoy dog-sitting.  But not this time. 5.  One of the dogs is okay, mostly. ...

A month or so ago I bought some wool fiber on Etsy (from Gnome Acres , who specialize in dyeing slightly nerdy colourways.  I got the yarn for the Phoenix socks from them as well.)  The colour scheme was inspired by the opening credits of the latest season or so of Doctor Who - swirling blue and purple, and it was called Into the Vortex. As I started spinning it up I was fascinated by the way the act of spinning mimics the motion of the vortex animation - the constant mixing, swirling, and separating of the various shades of wool.  Even in the singles this is evident.... and in the plied yarn, even more so.   One skein ended up pretty evenly mixed, with the blue and the purple plied with each other most of the time.  The other one is much more distinct -- long sections of mostly-blue alternating with long sections of mostly-purple.  I haven't yet decided if I'm going to try to mix them together - a few rows from one skein, a few fro...

Sorry for the bit of blog silence, you guys.  I worked all weekend (and when I didn't work, I slept.  Good plan, I think.) Also, it finally rained.  Torrentially and with the hugest lightning storms I've ever seen.   This makes the power go out at work.  Power outages at a movie theatre = lots of irate movie-goers.  As if we turned the power out on purpose.  Sigh.  (An aside: if the weather is going to be like that and disrupt my work, the least it could do is to produce Thor for a few minutes... Chris Hemsworth at our theatre would make it all worth it.) Not from this week.  But representative. When I wasn't dealing with customers who couldn't get it through their heads that no, I cannot sell them concessions, because the power is out and my computer is down and I can't open my register, this happened. Time Vortex yarn.  Finished now.  Pictures soon. And this happened.  (Probably it also happened while I was de...

Finally all the elephants are finished and on their way to their new owners! I love how they all have a personality - they are knit from the same pattern, in the same yarn, and sewn up in the same way, and yet they manage to be very different. Sad eyes. The baby - a little unsteady on his pins. Bashful   Calm Out for a walk.  Incidentally, you can see why we're under a fireworks/burn ban -- the whole place is dry and crispy :/ All these new elephants were made for specific people and are already sold.  However, the pink elephant (who wanted to join the parade) is still available in my Etsy shop .  And should you want your own custom-made elephant, feel free to ask!  These were knit in the cotton-blend yarns from KnitPicks ( here  and here ), but they'd be lovely in a washable wool as well.  I can do any combination of colours your heart desires :-)  I think these would make fun baby shower gifts, or even a birthday pres...

On Saturday, the Phoenix Sock and I went on an adventure to Nashville. It was Beethoven day.  We left around noon (Esther drove, mostly because her car has air conditioning and mine does not -- or it does, but only when it feels like it, which is about once a month.  This meant I had plenty of knitting time, though!) We arrived on time despite part of the highway being closed and the resulting traffic.  Dress rehearsal went quite well (though I do not feel that when a choir is to sing Beethoven's 9th, it is sufficient warm-up to run up the scale, remark to the sopranos "There's your A!" and then descend to lower ranges for the rest of the warmup.  (And besides, we have to sing high B's as well.) The maestro was in rare form for the rehearsal.  It was sort of an open rehearsal, for which they actually sell tickets -- it was strange to have an audience and yet be occasionally stopped for notes and nit-picking.  We started with the final mo...