A Week of Crazy

It has been a week of crazy, but I did get a little knitting in. The second sock from the Vilai pair is coming along nicely. Sunday night I discovered that I had only made the cable on one side. I was about six rounds past it, so I had to tink back to where the cable is made, and it isn't easy to do that in lace! You really have to pay attention when you're knitting this sock! 

Why was this past week crazy, you might ask? Well, remember that yeast infection Sandy had in his ears? We've been treating it with ear cleaner, followed up about a half hour later with some ointment to kill the fungus. I've been working that into my schedule twice a day as I was doing other things. We had an appointment on Friday with the vet for a recheck. The whole family goes for these appointments, so there we were, the four of us, in the vet's examining room. Good news! Sandy's ears looked good, but the vet wanted to do a cytology (lab) check, just to be sure. While we were talking about that, I asked if a yeast infection could be passed from one dog to another, as Dusty had been scratching at his ears for the last couple of days. I had been careful to wash my hands each time I treated Sandy's ears, just in case I could accidentally spread it from one dog to another. The vet didn't think it was likely for one dog to catch the infection from another dog, but he had a look at Dusty's ears. Sandy found it very interesting to see Dusty get his ears checked, too. Dusty's on the wellness plan, which covers office visits, dental, and heartworm/flea/tick prevention, along with a discount on tests and medications. (The young woman in grey is a new technician who is shadowing the team, learning the ropes.) 

When the cytology check was done, Sandy was proclaimed cured, but now Dusty had it. (Sigh!) We left the office with a new tube of ointment. I had already picked up a new bottle of the cleaning solution a couple of days before. So I was in for another two weeks of treating the ears twice a day, this time with Dusty.

The rehearsals for the Summer Choir intensified with a session not only on Monday, the usual time, but also on Wednesday, and both rehearsals were extended until 9:00 PM.

Our instrumentalists joined us for Monday's rehearsal, and all of them came again on Wednesday, except for the percussionist, who had a conflict. I still didn't feel ready, in spite of all the extra help we were getting from our director, Christian. He had given us a playlist on YouTube, which was very helpful.

I resolved to spend a lot of extra time working on the passages that were giving me trouble. Then our internet went down. Not only did it go down, but it was down for several hours. I could audiate (or imagine the music in my head) while looking at the music, but I'm not skillful enough to be sure I have it right, so it was distressing not to have access to the practice music during our final week before the concert on Saturday. The next day, the internet went down again. I called our provider and learned that they expected to have it back up by "noon tomorrow." It didn't actually take that long. It came back in the early evening, but it was still several hours of no access to the recordings just when I needed them most. We are speculating that the outages have something to do with the new construction taking place on the other side of the trail near us. We think someone accidentally cut a cable. Twice. I managed to get in some good practice sessions with the time I had. We were expecting company from out-of-town on Saturday before the concert, and I was still working to get the tidying, dusting and scrubbing done, so Charlie could vacuum the whole house. I listened to the playlist on my phone while I worked.

Our friends, John and Kathy, who were fellow expats with us in Indonesia in the '90s, arrived about lunchtime on Saturday, and we had a quick lunch and a long chat to catch up. When it was time to drop me off at the library for the concert, we all piled into our car and took off. They were all staying for the concert, of course. We hadn't been to the new library yet, although we had driven by it. One of the parking areas is covered with solar panels, presumably staff parking, and that was where Charlie dropped me off, after turning down the wrong street. I had to hustle to get to the door, which was on the other side of the huge building and then had to find the large multipurpose meeting room, where risers and chairs had been set up for our concert. I was almost five minutes late. One of the first things I saw when I entered was this amazing sculpture, "Juniper," by John Grade.

I didn't have time before the concert to look around, but we did later. I thought it was fascinating that they had windows looking into the book return area, so we could watch books being conveyed and sorted using a conveyer belt. Two young children were standing with their noses pressed to the glass, watching it happen. I gathered they had just returned some books, because there were children's books on the conveyer belt. (This photo is from an article about the opening of the new library that appeared in the Bend Source.)

The concert went well. We had a standing-room-only crowd in the huge magnificent "meeting room," and the acoustics were amazing. 

Christian told us we had sung the pieces better than he had ever heard us do, and the praise seemed genuine. 

(Last two photos from Central Oregon Mastersingers' FB page.) 

While getting ready to receive our friends on Saturday, I thought about the fact that they had been away from home with their trailer for 11 days, and suggested that they might like to have a shower and do some laundry, which they appreciated. During the week, somehow, the cleaning had all gotten done, and I had managed to make a batch of my Corn Salad to have with the salmon Charlie bought a couple of days before our friends arrived. Saturday night we had a late but nice dinner. We had a dry riesling and a purchased cheesecake for dessert. We talked until late into the night.

Also this past week, the manuscript came back from Alexa (no, not that Alexa; this one is a real person and an excellent editor), who was doing the proofreading/editing and pre-publishing preview for the new book. After making the changes she recommended, I had to work around the internet outages to be able to upload it to BookBaby, which cost me an extra day. However, I got it submitted and received no "uh-oh" email back, so the proof copy is now in production. I hope it gets shipped out today. Here's a look at the front cover.

I find I'm more excited about this book than I have been for any of the others. 

While the internet was up and available, I made a quick check of social media. I had to laugh at what Facebook's Meta AI app thought would be a good subject for turning into a comic strip: a picture I took of one of our Finnish hand-painted sunflower dishes. (I didn't bother to have the comic strip produced.) Sometimes AI comes up with things that make me not trust it for anything important.

Also during the week, while all of the above was going on, I received an email and a text from my credit union, telling me they had put a hold on my credit card due to a couple of charges they suspected could be fraudulent. I checked them out, and they were companies I had never heard about and certainly didn't buy anything from, so I followed the recommendation of my credit union and regretfully cancelled my card, which wasn't even two years old yet! That necessitated contacting every place I had subscriptions or regular scheduled charges. I estimate that it cost me another half a day, and I'm still not done. Every time I buy something online for the foreseeable future, I'll have to put in my new card and delete the old one.

Sunday we had to hook up the trailer and back it into its space in the backyard, because the landscaper is coming today to start work on the xeriscaping of our front yard.

As if the week wasn't crazy enough, I got the news that our granddaughter Daphne was going into the hospital. She isn't expected to be there long and is doing well, but phone calls and texts were involved, our daughter keeping family informed, including one phone conversation while we were driving to the vet. It was just one more thing during an overloaded week. Did I mention that we had a Madroña pop-up meeting? No? Well, it was a nice break, and we always have to tell everyone what we were grateful for this week. I had a long list of all the crazy during the week and how grateful I was that most of the issues had already been resolved.

One more thing to be happy about: The new official trailer of LAIKA's "Wildwood" is out, and it's getting rave reviews, including this one from Gizmodo! (In case you're new to my weekly blog or hadn't read about our connection to LAIKA, our younger son, Peter is a technical director for special effects (not his official title, I don't think), and has been with them since the beginning of "Coraline." October 23rd the movie comes out, and I can't wait!

I have a lot of difficulty responding to comments to my blog posts because of technical issues beyond my control (my lack of understanding of how things work). Message me on Facebook, Ravelry, BlueSky or Spoutible if you need information.

If you have a few minutes and are willing, please go to Amazon or B&N and search for Billy: Stories from The Doll's Storybook by Peggy Stuart". Every click on the page for the book makes it more likely they will keep a good supply in their warehouse and stores. If you are outside the US, you may have a separate website for these retailers. If you have a copy of any of our books, including Emil, Mariah, Classic Tales Retold, Our Favorite Verses, More Classic Tales Retold or Billy: Stories from The Doll's Storybook, please leave an honest review on the websites, especially if you bought from them.

Where's my blog: If you want to follow my blog, go here and sign up to follow.

What's on my needles: Still working on the Vilai socks.

What's on my iPhone: Still listening to Wildwood by Colin Meloy, but I didn't get any time to listen this week. I can't wait to get back to it.

What's on my sewing machine: Still put away until the next project.

What's in The Doll's Storybook: The Writer is sick, and the dolls worry about how they will get the next story out. And who will clean the house? They work it out, of course, in Working Together.

What's my tip of the week: A silicone mat that can be used in baking is a good alternative to parchment paper, but it will need to fit your pan. I use mine all the time. I got it from Chef's Corner Store in Centennial, Colorado. (This isn't the exact one I have, but will give you an idea.) I used it on a rimmed cookie sheet to bake the salmon, since Charlie discovered our barbecue has a gas leak.

Where are my books: The stories in each book first appeared in the blog, and they are reproduced in print with a few changes.

Book #7 is in the works.

If you don't get free shipping from Amazon or B&N, buy from the BookBabyBookshop, because 50% of the price goes to St. Jude. Other booksellers pay much less, only 8%, because the vendor gets a cut. My author's page at Book Baby is here. Scroll down and click on any of the books that interest you. Find my books at Barbara's Bookstore as well, or ask your local library to order the books.

Note: This blog post was produced on the iPad and the MacBook, using the iPhone for some photos and some photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for, cleaned or broken. No animals or dolls were harmed during the production of this blog post.

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Terrible or Terrific Technology?

Common Threads met at Georgette’s on Thursday. Georgette is working on her second Mother Bear Project bear:

Lynda finished her sheep baby sweater:

I finished Appliqué Panel #2 for the Delectable Pathways quilt. Here it is with the embroidered skinny stems:

All of these projects are definitely low-tech. However we used some more-complicated technology on some fiber.

Lynda came over on Friday to help me work on the llama fleeces. (I have six.) I’m going to share the finished fiber with her, and she is going to help me process it. My wonderful DH made me this fiber sifter:

It’s wire mesh inside a wooden frame. It was supposed to go on top of our two saw horses, but DH needed them for the doors he needs to sand and finish before autumn winter arrives. Lynda brought over her kayak stands, which are a little higher, but we sat on stools, so it worked. We took the whole contraption and a bag of fleece, and set up under a big tree, so the stuff we didn’t want could fall on the ground. We brought over the trash can, but with a slight breeze, you can’t control all of it.

Another friend gave me three llama fleeces over a year ago. This past June she gave me three more (from the same animals). Lynda and I decided we had better get busy. she was gone part of the summer, then we were gone, then DH needed to buy the materials for the sifter, and finally, he needed to make the thing. Anyway, the project got delayed until our first cold weather threatened.

Lynda and I thought it was a good idea to process a small quantity and spin it to see if it was even worth the effort. We daubed small clumps of the fleece on the wire mesh, allowing some of the dust, vegetable matter (VM) and short cuts to fall out. Then we attempted to get the guard hairs out of the clump we had just finished daubing. Most of the time, all of the guard hairs came together in a point on the outside (the side away from the cut edge). We were able to pinch the tips of the guard hairs together and pull the soft, highly crimped fibers away from them. When we decided we had worked long enough, we took what we had, washed it and laid it out on the sifter to dry, covering the top tightly with an old sheet. It was dry Saturday morning. Lynda came back after lunchtime on Saturday, and we ran what we had through the drum carder, a Patrick Green “Deb’s Delicate Deluxe,” which is designed for soft, fine fiber like alpaca. Llama is pretty close to alpaca, once the guard hairs are removed. We ended up with eight batts like this:

We divided the batts between us, so we could each give it a try. We never got it weighed, so I’ll have to weigh the finished yarn. This is only a small fraction of what we have to process, though. Stay tuned!

That's it for the "terrific technology." Now for the "terrible" part:

I’ve had two days of technology hell this week. The first day was Thursday (DH's birthday), when Skype kept crashing, the B&N website wouldn't accept my password or DH's, resulting in problems getting his Nook (my present to him) set up, and then the Twitter Refollow site went down just when I wanted to learn how to use it. Friday there were no problems, but Saturday I updated to iOS 7 on my iPhone and ran into a delay between typing a character and its appearance. Eight seconds worth! Then I also got another password problem, which was coincidental, but especially disturbing since I couldn't type the password easily with the delay. Then I ran out of minutes on my phone while I was talking with someone from Apple. Then I had trouble adding minutes because of a glitch in my carrier’s website.

After I rebooted my phone several times and was ready to try to do a restore, my friend Lynda came to work with me on the llama fleece, and I had to stop.

I thought I would try to sign up for Google Voice, which would give me additional minutes for free, because it works through the Internet, and I have unlimited data. But when I put in my phone number it wanted me to choose my carrier from a list provided. My carrier wasn't on the list, but there was no way to close the window. I finally figured out how to add minutes to my phone, so I called Apple back. The iOS 7 problems were fixed up in no time.

Back to Google, I lied and chose Verizon from the list of carriers, which got me to a window where I could choose to have a Google number instead, which seemed to be the only alternative. Now I should have unlimited minutes on my phone, as long as I call from Google Voice. We'll see how it works. So far, I'm loving iOS 7, except for the weird colors.

What's on my needles: Waffle sweater, Dogwood Blossoms.

What's on my loom: Empty, while I decide what to start next.

What's on my Featherweight: Still the Delectable Pathways quilt.

What's on my wheel: Ready to start the llama. The Full Circle “Caramel” is spun and plied!

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Just finished Pittacus Lore’s I am Four from the library by way of the OverDrive app. I’ve just started Peter West by D. E. Stevenson, from Audible. Also reading the eBook, Imperfect Pairings by Jackie Townsend from BookBub on the Kindle app.

What's my app of the week: Flashlight from iHandy. We had a power outage Tuesday, which threw a lot of things off. The power was back on when I went to Park City Singers practice in the evening, but when we came out, the lights weren’t on in the parking lot because the timer was offline because of the outage. Hooray for instant flashlight!

What's in my wine glass: Salmon Creek Merlot, 2011, in the big bottle. Just because I needed it!

Note: This blog post was produced entirely on the MacBook, using the iPad and iPhone for photos and photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for or cleaned.