Fiber Fool

August, despite all the craziness, has ended up being a rather productive one in terms of Project Spectrum. As I mentioned on Sunday I found I enjoyed looking at items and deciding if their non-neutral hues were desaturated enough to be a neutral. At what point is a sage green a neutral? How about the amber color of beer, neutral or orange? I suspect I wasn’t so consistent, I think it depended upon my mood a bit. In fact, looking at the month’s mosaic that is darn colorful, isn’t it?

I had to sneak in another 9 photos that I captured between Sunday and now. There are images there of some handspun. That does mean that I did get those singles plied yesterday. The Jacob (the light) needs washed and the twist set yet, but they got done. There is also my ancient car (a 1993 Probe) that has been quite trusty as of late (knock on wood). Oh, and we had Thai food early this week and that involved the very neutral Thai custard with sticky rice and the white flower was on every table there. Oh, and the locker room at the Senior Center pool where I do water aerobics is very neutral except the really bright lockers.
Further progress has been made on my to-dos for this week. My skirt is done except the hem. The directions recommended letting the dress hang overnight to let the bias stretch out before hemming. Anyone have good tips on placing the hem when you don’t have an extra set of eyes or hands to help? One of the many books I have checked out from the library mentions pinning some chalked string in a doorway at the height from the floor you want your skirt to be and then you brush against it to mark the hem level. Any thoughts on that method or a better option?? I’ve love to hem it this evening so I can wear it for a knitting lunch tomororw… And, then I would have an FO Friday too!

I have made some progress on my projects for this week. Above you can see that I finally got to the casting on portion of the design project. I’m soooooo excited for this one I can barely contain myself or make myself go to bed. Since I’m so excited though I think I may try to get it published so I’ll only be able to give you undiscernable glimpses of it. Sorry! That does mean I got the charts completed. I actualy had about another two inches done on this piece and discovered that my gauge wasn’t as tight with my handspun as I typically get with commercial yarns on this size needle so I had to rip back. But I didn’t mind because I know I’m going to love this thing when it is done which means I want it as perfect as I can get!

I did get the singles off the bobbins and into center pull balls so it is just a matter of sitting down at the wheel to get them plied. So that has progressed slightly.

As for the skirt, I *still* haven’t sewn it. The fabric is pressed and ready to cut. I consulted with one of my sewing gal pals yesterday afternoon about sewing garments and she gave me some tips and helped me discern some of the confusion I had about the cool two-tone skirts in that pattern. So, I think if I get my act in gear I may still get two skirts sewn before the trip. I am going to make sure I have at least one done. It’s a good goal and motivator.

Reading has slowed drastically. I think partially because I have so many of these other projects in the fire. I don’t think it is a measure of the book, but really 75 pages isn’t a great place to make judgements about a book either. I do suspect that Still Waters is not as good as say Ashes to Ashes or Dust to Dust because it is the first published novel by Hoag. But, we’ll see.

Well, I think I’m going to try biking to/from water aerobics today. I’m going with money in my pocket to take a break between water aerobics and biking home uphill. I’ll go get a bagel and then if I still think I need more rest before biking home I’ll stop at the gelato/coffee bar and knit some. Wish me (and my butt that hasn’t been on the bike for a couple of weeks again) luck!

Well, I did make *some* progress on two of the items in yesterday’s photograph, though I was hoping for at least three, but the design project I was kicking my butt yesterday. The charting and the figuring for at least two sizes was making my head explode. So since there isn’t much of any interest to show you I’ll catch up on my logging of movies and books today…

Well the first book I finished last week was A Good Yarn by Debbie Macomber. This is a follow-up to her first knitting-related book, A Shop on Blossom Street. If you enjoyed the first, you will likely enjoy the second though I would recommend leaving *plenty* of room between reading them because really they are the same book with a different cast of characters. However, even though the cast of characters have a different set of problems from the first they are part of the same formula - roughly the same ages etc. It was a good enough light read, but I’m glad it had been a year or more since I had read the first book.

Prior to this set of books I had read just a couple of Macomber’s books and now I’m curious of each of the “series” suffers this same problem. Anyone out there more familiar with Macomber and can shed some light on the other series she has?

Then I picked up the next Stuart Woods Orchid book featuring Holly Baker, former MP now chief of police of Orchid Beach, FL, Orchid Blues. This was *awesome*! I wanted to call my mom at about midnight her time and yell at her for getting me started on this as there is a HUGE plot twist within the first twenty pages that had me reeling! I couldn’t believe. I should have believed it, but it seemed too unreal.

It seems this series deals mostly with fringe groups. The first had to do with a highly secretive “town” within their town that no one knew anything about. This one had to do with a secret town that was on no maps that was rather curious. I’m not normally big on stories about militia groups or other types of fringe groups, but I have loved and devoured these two books and can’t wait to read the next two!

After the previous heart racer I decided something lighter might be nice so I picked up this coffeehouse mystery (learned about from Chris and Chaos) by Cleo Coyle. On What Grounds is the first in the series. It probably isn’t a “must read” but it was a fun and light niche mystery. It did make me want to learn more about coffee. I’m pretty new to the world of coffee (having gotten my first coffee maker for Valentine’s Day) and would love to learn about the different beans and the different roasts and all that. Not to mention, I’m sure I have plenty to learn on how to brew a cuppa properly. So, yesterday I checked out a couple books on coffee from the library. These I don’t think will be hugely helpful as they are mostly recipe books, but they both have some introdutory material. Then I have a few other more substantial books requested through Prospector (regional ILL) that I’m waiting on. It is always kind of fun to get your interest peaked to read some more non-fiction. Mostly my non-fiction selections revolves around my art and craft pursuits.

As I mentioned yesterday I’m not onto the first Tami Hoag, Still Waters. I’m only about 50 pages in so far, but it seems okay for 50 pages. We’ll see how it shakes out.

This past week we dusted off a few old favorites that aren’t sooo old. It was fun to watch these films that we hadn’t seen in such a long time.

Mystery Men is just hillarious and it was a blast to see Hank Azaria again not to mention Jeanane Garafalo, W. H. Macy, and Greg Kinnear. It did make me want to be Baby Bowler for Halloween, LOL! A costume design I don’t think I could pull off - especially on a budget. You can’t be Baby Bowler without the skull in a pink tinted translucent bowling ball can you?

Tortialla Soup is just a lovely movie about the evolution of family and it focuses on food. It won’t matter if you ate a five course meal before you watch this movie, when it is over you will be craving really good Mexican! It is based on Eat, Drink, Man, Woman by Ang Lee but set in LA with a Mexican family at its center.

Then on Sunday night we wrapped up the weekend with a lighthearded romantic comedy classic for us - A Big Fat Greek Wedding. That so could be our families in that movie! Thankfully we both came from large families so it wasn’t quite the shock that John Corbett’s character had. DH’s family was still a little crazy the first time, but now I love them all - now that I know who it is who is hugging me anyway, LOL!

Sunday afternoon on a whim we did end up seeing a matinee at the theater. We ate near there and as luck would have it Accepted was showing in just ten minutes or so and we had been talking abou wanting to see it. We were a little scared. It could be *really* bad, but it could be *really* good like The New Guy.

Well, we both loved it. We declared it this year’s The New Guy and figure we’ll probably need to make room for it in our DVD collection at some point. We did leave wondering how much of Lewis Black’s character was scripted and how much of it was him just going off. We’re betting most of it wasn’t scripted. I guess we may find out when the DVD comes out.

I guess if you aren’t familiar with The New Guy I haven’t helped you in deciding whether or not to see this film. There is a band of friends in high school that didn’t get accepted into college for fall, whether it was that they chose poor essay subjects or they put all their eggs into one basket, there are five students that do not have post-high school plans figure dout and one of their friends who does. Out of desperation, one kid decideds to fake an acceptance letter, but knows in order to dupe his parents they need a web site. Well, word of this school spreads due to the web site and before they know it, they have their own college on their hands. A non-traditional one by all means, but a college nonetheless. It is a fun, campy movie about underdogs that makes you laugh (and groan a few times).

This picture captures some of the projects I’m looking towards for this week. Today should mark the beginning of the first Tami Hoag mystery, Still Waters. It should also mark my casting-on with my hand dyed and hand spun BFL yarn for a new design, hence the design notebook in that photo. The two bobbins mark all the spinning I’ve done in August (terrible, terrible), but it is some of the samples I got from Cathy back in April for my birthday. I plan to get at least these two plied up and hopefully spin some of the other samples. I figured in honor of the neutrals it would be a good reason to dive into these guys. Plus, I wasn’t feeling inspired for any specific projects by any of my rovings so it made good sense. I’m also going to finally jump in and sew. I did a bunch of ironing this weekend in preparation and have been going over some of the patterns and feeling slightly confused. So, I decided to start with the plain bias skirt (the bottom right of the schematics). I’m going to sew it out of some Gilmore Girl blue linen (if you watch GG you know why I call it that - Lorelai and Rory are dressed in it often because it makes their eyes really pop).

This weeked was glorious! Especially so weather-wise. I got to wear my Gentleman Socks on Friday, I wore my Balance Socks on Saturday, and my Flatiron Socks yesterday. It looks like it should be cool enough to wear yet another pair of handknit socks. One thing I noticed though was that my socks don’t so much match my wardrobe. I either need to choose different sock yarns or I need to think about my sock yarns when buying clothes :-) There is one thing that I noticed while wearing these socks thought - they make me feel great! It doesn’t matter that I knit them myself, they make me feel special to wear them. They put a smile on my face and keep my often cold feet nice and warm, but not too warm even when we do finally climb into the low 70’s. I *love* wearing my handknit socks!

There was also more book reading and movie watching that I’ll write about later in the week.

This morning was especially cool and makes me think forward to fall! The house is down to a cold 64 degrees, but we’ll be glad for that when we work our way back up to 90 degrees on Thursday. Our outdoor thermometer was reading 45 degrees this morning at 7:30am! Brrrr! Blissfully so though! The other senesors around town were reading in the low 50’s as you can see in the image above.

I *love* fall! It is finally coming! Yeah!

Today I head to Aqua Susan’s house after water aerobics to do some work for my first (and likely only) paid sewing gig. She needs some adjustments made to a window treatment of some kind. I’m not real clear on what it will require right now nor do I know how much I’ll be paid, but it’ll be nice to do this for Susan too. It’ll be nice to get a few extra bucks in the pocketbook though, no matter how little.

Well, this is the last Sunday of August and it is not only the last Sunday of neutrals, but also the last Sunday of Project Spectrum, at least for now. There appears to be some talk of another round with perhaps some different twists to it in the future.

The mosaic above contains mostly things that I came into contact with this week that were neutral, though I did throw in a few other items that are older and didn’t get share due to the traveling this month. I kind of enjoyed having a “neutral” month because it made you analyze are what point something crosses over from being neutral to being a “color.”

In honor of the neutral month of August we went to the Odell Brewing Company’s tasting room yesterday to sample their beers with our friends Anne and Rod. We hadn’t been since January, but I had been itching to go back because I had taken a fun shot of the taster tray with our friend, Eric’s, camera and I’ve been wanting some of my own. It seemed a good excuse to make sure we went before the end of August so I could capture the images for Project Spectrum :-)

I’m not a big beer drinker, but I tasted all of them. I preferred the nitro versions of the Cutthroat and Levity. I liked the Easy Street Wheat and the 5 Barrel Pale Ale as well. Anne and Rod came over afterwards and brought a growler of 5 Barrel and we cut into one of DH’s cheddars and ate our bread machine Poolish (the starter and final loaf are featured in the top mosaic). Then they introduced us to the hilarity of Venture Brothers. It was a good day.

For more info on the photos in the mosaics see the following: 1. Condenser Mic, 2. Wood, 3. Computer Keyboard, 4. Planer, 5. Wood Mallet, 6. Sparrow, 7. DK Gentleman’s Socks, 8. Sun Catcher, 9. Poolish, 10. Bread Machine Poolish Bread, 11. Candle, 12. White Good ‘n Plenty, 13. Gelazzi Light Fixture

1. Full Odell Taster Tray, 2. Odell Brewing Company Glass of Water, 3. Nitro Cutthroat Porter, 4. Empty Taster Tray