Junebug on a String

Those of you who are Lime & Violet listeners know that back in the early fall, I bought Jester.  Or, at least, I bought all of Jester’s hair.

It’s the first time I bought a full fleece, completely unprocessed, straight from the sheep.  One minute, it’s a fur coat for an animal, and the next, it’s in a bag and waiting for you to take it home and do something with it.  It’s kind of neat, in a weird, Fiber Person kind of way.

I was pretty excited about Jester’s haircut.  He’s a dark brown/black/dark brown-grey -ish cormo sheep, and his hair weighed, unwashed, around four and a half pounds.  Which is quite a bit for a haircut, really.  Even washed, when all the heavy lanolin and little bits of Farm that was embedded in the hair was rinsed out, we’re talking over three pounds of fleece.  And it was, for all intents and purposes, my very first “raw” fleece.

Now, some of you aren’t fiber people, so let me explain:  Yarn doesn’t get to be a sweater before it goes through a rather lengthy process.  It doesn’t even get to be yarn until it goes through a few long steps.  The fleece needs to be washed, then carded, then pulled out into spinnable fiber (and picked over for shortbits and knots and the like), and spun into a single thread, then put together with OTHER single strands to make what you’d think of as “yarn”.  And then it still needs to be knit into some kind of Thing, since the wearing of unknit yarn tends to chafe.  (And is highly unflattering, unless you have a very particular body type.)

What this means is that when a Fiber Person buys a raw fleece, straight from the sheep, that Fiber Person is going to get a whoooole lot of very intimate time with that fleece before it’s anything resembling a shawl or sweater or socks or whatever.  You want bang for your buck, it’s the way to go, really.  (For instance, three pounds of commercial yarn will cost you more than a hundred bucks in most cases.  A sweater’ll take a month of knitting time.  Contrast that with a fleece, which was forty bucks, and has *already* been three months of daily fiber fun, and the stuff’s not even all carded yet.  It’s like the cheapest Fiber Entertainment EVER.)

Anyway, I’ve digressed into exposition.  My point was, initially, that carding a full fleece worth’s of fiber is a loooong process.  A very long process.  You’re essentially taking little bits of clumpy fluff and brushing it until it’s little bits of fluffy fluff.

I’m doing a little bit on Jester every day.  Usually just a couple of cards’ worth, in the morning, while I wait for the coffee to brew.  And aside from the benefit that I can suddenly feel my bicep muscles from all the daily exercise, I’m to the point where I can see the light at the end of the carding tunnel — there’s maybe two or three weeks’ worth of fleece left to card daily, and then it’s all about the spinning.  (Which is going to be every bit as slow, and every bit as daily, I think.  Three + pounds of fiber in skinny little single plies is going to be a fairly long process, too.)

Because I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, I’m finding myself wanting to speed up.  Just to GET IT DONE.  To check this thing off the list and move on to the next phase of processing.

What happens, though, as a result, is that I overload the carders, putting just a little too much fur on one or the other, and it doesn’t card as easily.  It fills up the tines of the cards (which, by the way, look a whole lot like big, flat dog brushes, for the uninitiated), and they just slide right past each other, not affecting the loaded fibers at all.  I end up having to peel the clumpy fiber off one of the cards, and doing half of what I loaded, in order to make any effect on the Jesterhair at all.

This morning, I found that to be fairly illustrative of a whole lot of things in life.  Especially in my own.

Without relaxing, and doing things in a patient, focused manner, things just start to slide past each other ineffectively.  You FEEL like you’re doing something, but the stuff you’re doing is getting such diluted attention that it’s not REALLY getting done.  It ends up taking much more effort while you peel back some of the Stuff, focus on the amount you SHOULD have been focusing on to begin with, and then carding up the rest you had to remove.  It may actually be making more work than it would have been if you’d just been patient to begin with.

I’m neck-deep in two huge projects right now.  Most of those black-pen items over my desk are related to one of two projects.  They’re getting checked off, slowly but surely.  I’m not sure if they’ll be done by tonight, but a whole lot of progress has been made, “t”s have been crossed and “i”s have been dotted, and the year’s being tied up in a neat little bow.

The thing is — much like carding up Jester — the lists are giving me one tiny bit of fluff to work with at a time.  The singular focus is preventing me from loading too much on the carding paddles, even though the end is in sight and I really WANT to do EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW PLEASE KTHXBAI.

In a way, I’m forcing myself to move at Nature’s pace.  One thing at a time, with all the singular attention it takes to force a flower to bloom, or for a sweater to emerge from a sheep.

It’s all about letting things unfold.

Yesterday, J sent me a link to this chart of the past decade in icons.

I can. not. beLIEVE that it’s been ten years since some of this stuff.  This whole past decade has gone by like a blur.  Some of it feels like it just happened yesterday, despite the fact that sometimes it feels like things are moving at a snail’s pace.  I was twenty-eight ten years ago.  I remember feeling like thirty was fast approaching, and then I’d have to grow up and get serious, because who could be thirty and still be bumbling around trying to find a place in life?

Ahem.  Apparently, the same can be said for forty.  Good heavens.

Ten years ago, I was in southern California, drawing pictures of palm trees, writing books and gearing up to teach classes, and I had a *plan*.  A five-year plan.  A five-year plan that I threw out the window to move to Seattle on a dime (which, really, was the best thing I ever did), and which facilitated a brand-new five-year plan.

I didn’t count on five years going all wonkified and landing me in the midwest again with a broken knee and a broken heart, but life’s weird like that.  Everything for a reason, and apparently, that reason was to drop Lime in my lap and tie us together forever.  (She’s the best friend I’ve ever had, and for good reason.)

If anyone had told me, ten years ago, that today I’d be sitting in North Carolina, on a purple bed, putting together packages of hand-crafted perfume to go to people all over the world, and talking mostly-weekly to a huge audience about knitting…?  I’d have giggled and thrown a glu-stick at them.  I’m an artist and a writer, stupid, I’d have said.  I don’t even LIKE perfume.  And I don’t know how to knit.

Ah, the sweet life’s path.  How you twist and turn.

*  *  *

Speaking of time — I sat down last night and got to the section of my planning where I do the actual scheduling of stuff.  All the lists are made for each of the projects in the pike, and now it’s a matter of deciding when that pike needs to be opened.

I figure I can sleep around January 3rd or so.  Until then, even breathing is on a strict time schedule.  We’re talking fifteen-minute increments here, and I’m still choked with Teh Busy until at LEAST the 3rd, and after a brief respite to catch my breath, it’s on to the next huge thing from the 4th to the 15th, then ANOTHER bit of crazy from the 15th to the 30th.

Then things start to even out.  To be fair, this Crazee is from the move this Fall, and all the subsequent downtime and cocooning.  That’s the big problem with having a lot of ideas, and a lot of good ideas, going all at once — any little ding in the schedule and it throws everything off into a whirlwind, and if it’s a big ding…well…you don’t get to sleep until the third of January.

Thing is…despite the busy, and all the crazee that comes with it, I really do love my life.  The crazee makes me focus a lot more clearly on the little moments inbetween the activity, where the Good Stuff happens.  The emails from people who love what they get.  The phone calls and texts from friends.  The quiet moments where one of the dogs comes and lays his/her head in my lap and just looks cute as the dickens.  You get a chance, when things are nuts, to really test the Important Stuff(tm) in your life — to see who stands by you, to find out what’s important, to see where you have a chance to grow and change for the better.

It’s during the times of deliberation that you get to stretch your mind.  It’s during the times of action, though, where you get to test your mettle.

This morning, I’m casting on a sock.  Which, really, is nothing new around here, but this time, I’m casting on with a bunch of other people, for a very good reason.

Lisa, also known as YenForYarn on Plurk and Ravelry, was diagnosed with stage 3 ovarian cancer last month.  On December 29 (today), she begins her chemotherapy treatments.  And since all the knitters of the world can’t just up and fly off to where she is, we’re picking up the DPNs and casting on one of her patterns.  It’s a small show of support, but the good vibes — they’re some powerful stuff.

The endeavor was organized by CJ Kopec, of the amazing CJ Kopec Creations, which, if you’re a Lime & Violet listener, you probably already know about.  We talk about her a fair bit.  She’s the purveyor of the Roving Of Awesome.  She asked her newsletter subscribers (which you should be subscribed to — there’s good stuff in there…) to pick one of Lisa’s patterns and cast on today.

Now, granted, this is probably short notice for most of you knitters reading this right now, but it’s not too late.  Good vibes don’t expire, thankfully.  Hop on over to Ravelry, and take a look at her designer page.  Grab your favorite pattern and some yarn, and vibe away.

It’s stuff like this that reminds me why knitters are the coolest people on earth.

* * *

Only a few days left on the MUST DO EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW sprint.  I’m putting stickers on packages, punching holes in bags, and tying bows in ribbons at the moment, which doesn’t seem like all that much, until you realize I’m doing a thousand of each.  My fingers will look all gnarly like pretzels by the end of today, I’m sure.

It’s a good thing I’m blogging now.  I still haven’t figured out how to type with my mind.

I should schedule that for August.

* * *

Oh, oh, oh!  I forgot to mention, too…

I got the stupid mac/pc thing fixed with the patterns for Chroma.  AND I got squared away with the ISP so they no longer think I’m some random spammer sending out PDFs of Doom to random strangers.  All the email woe (which wasn’t really “woe” inasmuch as “learning experience”, and “omg wtfisISO990ANYWAY!?”…) told me that there had to be an easier way, and vo-ah-lah…

I set up a Ravelry store for the patternybits.  (JUST for the patterns ordered separately, sans scent.)  I’d been planning to do that for Gaiman and Mountain Sole support anyway, but this kicked that need into high gear.  (See what happens when you get random project ideas?  You end up having to learn brand new things.  And, really, that’s not all bad.)

So it’s all set up, and if you wanted Lobster Bisque or Mermaid’s Dress, they’re over there now, delivered instantly via that kind Ravelry folks’ brilliant delivery system, which does not involve my ISP or any flagging systems.  (Ignore the text.  I still need to change my profiledealie, I think.)

(And, really now…what spammer sends out random knitting patterns to people?  And moreover, how can I get on THAT mailing list, huh??)

For those keeping track of such things, you’ve probably noticed a whole lot of quotes from Thoreau ’round these parts.  And Emerson, though they’re fewer at the moment.

The last week of the old year and the first week of a new year are my busiest weeks of the entire year.

I consider this a good thing.

It’s not so much a business thing (though stuff is often crazy busy with people spending Christmas money, or finally doing  something for themselves after making it through a season filled with the expectation of perfection and social obligations, which I totally understand…), as a personal one.  This is the week I clean up all the OLD year stuff, take some stock of where I’ve been and what I’ve done, and get set to launch off into the NEW year with a whole lot more direction.

No matter where it is that I think I’ll be at the end of a calendar year, I always find myself in new and uncharted territory.  Again, I consider this a good thing.  It means I’m taking risks, venturing out from the safe and the comfortable, and trying new things.  (It also means I make mistakes, sometimes spectacularly big mistakes, but if you’re going to sin, sin boldly.  As Mark Twain said, Good judgement comes from experience.  Experience comes from bad judgement. It’s all a learning experience, this life.)

People have asked me from time to time what I do to prepare for stuff like this — a new launch, a new project, a new year.  And I wish I had some deep and meaningful insight that would set the productivity world on its ear, but really…what I do is pretty simple.  It’s just a more in-depth version of what I do pretty routinely throughout the rest of the year, on a grander scale maybe.  But for those who asked:

First, I sit down with a notebook and a pen.  Or the laptop and the iphone, now that that’s an option.  (Secret:  I still use the notebook and pen, too.  There’s something kind of tactile about it, and I tend to remember things I write down, rather than type.  I type it, too, since all my to-do lists are digital, but for that initial brainstorm, I keep a notebook there, too.)  I make a list of all the stuff that isn’t finished from the previous year.  I also make a separate list, which I keep on Evernote, of things I DID finish, because sometimes, that’s a harder list to make.  (I tend to finish something and then forget it, which isn’t really patting myself on the back for it, which makes that whole going forward thing harder sometimes.  If you don’t know what you’re capable of, you can’t reach further, blah blah blah.)

Once I have the projects in a list, I start in with the to-do lists.  What needs to be done and in what order?  Who’s helping with it?  Who do I need to check in with?  What’s been done and where is it located?  All those kinds of questions.  Again, it’s a big picture kind of thing.  You have to know where you are in order to know where you’re going.

Once the specifics are done, I can set aside the practicals.  I start looking at the past year and figuring out what I did right and what I could have done better, and what was an unmitigated disaster.  (And there are always some of those.  It’s relative — I didn’t blow up any buildings or run over any puppies, but there’s always something that needed a different kind of attention.)  I try to figure out what the year was trying to teach me.  I think that’s kind of important.

So, armed with the new list and timeline (I put it all into Things, a program I talked about on the old blog, I think.  It’s got a synch-thingie with the iphone and it means I always have my STUFF with me.  Makes me very happy. And never bored.  As if that’s an issue.), I start organizing.  Things (not the program) tend to get disorganized if you’re not on top of them, and I tend to forget things sometimes.  So I do all the year-end stuff now — accounting and organizing all of the completed project stuff into folders, and clearing out all the crap that accumulates on the hard drive and making new 2010 folders for the stuff that *will* accumulate next year.

I do a little organizing physically, too.  Not as much as I do a little later in the year, when I’ll know what I need to access on a regular basis, but just the basic kind of clean-out.  Get rid of things that no longer apply, or aren’t useful, or are from activities we’ve abandoned for one reason or another.  Take an inventory of things like boxes and bags and tissue paper and yarn — see what I’m low on and add those to a list.  That kind of thing.

Once all that’s done, it is a MAD DASH SPRINT to get AS MANY THINGS on that “unfinished” list done as HUMANLY POSSIBLE.

No, really.

You wanna see some kind of whirlwind?  Come to my house between Christmas and New Year’s Day.  It. Is. Insane. I barely sleep, there’s take-out in the fridge, and a giant list on the wall over my office desk with things checked off in red.

I generally think that the fewer things you drag over into the new year, the better.  It’s like capping off the old year with a hefty dose of success, and to me, that’s a good way to start in on the new calendar.  So I get a little crazy.  (Er.  A little craziER than usual, at least.)  But it means that all those things that have one or two small little details to take care of are DONE, and I can start 2010 with a schedule un-bogged-down with the last vestiges of old projects.

Which is what I’m doing now.  I’m taking a break at the moment, but this morning, six projects got completed.  Or at least parts of them did.  Parts that have been sitting on the to-do list, waiting for attention, and now…I freed up the mental space to focus even better on the other parts that need more attention.  It’s amazing how well it works.

Oh, and one other thing — I always try to answer every blessed email in my inbox (or do whatever it is that the email was sitting there reminding me of…) on New Year’s Eve day.  Inbox zero for the new year, baybee!  Ahem.

(Does it mean I’m a total geek that I get into this stuff so much?  Don’t answer that.  I know, I know.)

At this time last year, I was driving through a giant snowstorm in Missouri, on my way back to Iowa.  I remember being in Kansas City, being completely unable to see the road, and thinking that if I was just living in North Carolina, I wouldn’t have to try and navigate that godawful storm.

A year later, and we’re here.

Life is strange and wonderous, isn’t it?

* * *

It’s Christmas Eve!  Merry Christmas, everybody.  2010 is shaping up to be a freakin’ milestone year from the looks of it.  Huge new launches, a whole new place to explore, and considering how huge this year was (for better or worse), I can’t even imagine what’s going to happen next year.

There are years that ask questions and years that answer them.  2009 answered a whole lot of questions, and asked a whole lot more, and if 2010 answers the rest, we’re golden. :)

Just a few of the things on the plate for next year:

1.  L&V is getting a whole new face and a brand-new playground.  Now that we’re back to having 100% pure Lime (yay!), the old site and stuff just weren’t cutting it.  We love our listeners, even the ones that say they don’t listen (WE ARE TALKING TO YOU, LA.), and this year, we’re hoping to give back a little.  It’s sinking in that we’ve got one of the biggest listening audiences in knitcastland, and while it still boggles us both a little, we’re working on figuring out how to make sure y’all are recognized for being the coolest knitters ever.

2.  Recaf is going interactive.  Check back after about March.  You’ll see what I mean.  It’s freakin’ cool.

3.  Oak River Township’s finally on the front burner after mid-April.  Until then, there are collections being blended, stories being written, and a team being assembled to help with one of the most awesome concepts we’ve ever attempted.  Every scent tells a story already….just wait until you’re writing them, too.

4.  KnitLife should know about the Smithsonian thing in June.  Which is about the same time as Mountain Sole will be gearing up to launch with patterns and much music and travel journally goodness.

5.  The Gaiman Project, Fates Three, is restructuring the way we’re delivering patterns, and the three of us are talking about when would be a good time to launch that, too.  And there *may* be another author in the works.  I’m getting together with him after the holidays and will know more then, but hooboy…it’d be awesome.

6.  Personally, when I’m not working on all of that stuff (which isn’t often), I’ve got the Chroma thing, inspired by 500 Pencils, that is really freakin’ intriguing.  (See the previous entry for more on that.)  A couple of people with other talents (I’ve got scent and socks covered….) are talking about doing something similar, and while it’s a sporadic/when-you-have-time type thing now, it inspires the living daylights out of me when other people grok the concept and want to play along.  (Wait until you see GoddessJoy’s jewelry on the same themes.  You. Will. Plotz.)

I’m kind of hoping that some scientist somewhere will invent the 40-hour-day in 2010.

I might need it.

Hooboy.

:)

Merry Christmas again, everybody!  Have an extra sugar cookie for me.

Inspiration often shows up when you least expect it, spawning from the most unlikely of places.  Some people say they get their best ideas in the shower (which, for years, led me to believe that there was an ingredient in shampoo that was like MAGIC IDEA OIL or something), and some only get ideas late at night, and some, like myself, tend to get them like shots out of the blue, seemingly random, when they really should be thinking about something else.

Like, ferinstance, what to make for dinner.  Ahem.

Anyway…

The other day, Teri came over and told me that if she was made of money, she knew what she wanted to get me for Christmas.  And when prefaced that way, I was fully expecting some kind of livestock, or a super-hi-tech chicken coop, at the very least.  But instead, she pointed me to the 500 Pencils website.  I believe she saw it on Martha or somesuch.

The heavens opened up.  The angelic chorus sang.  Tiny cherubim landed on my shoulders and began licking my ear.

It was, in short, awesome.

Consumed by the lustlike desire to draw everything in five hundred part Kodachrome, I poked around the 500 Pencils website for something like an HOUR, reading all the color names.  Trying not to make up stories in my head about them, since most of the names are equally as awesome as the colors themselves.  I posted about them on Plurk, and tried to justify spending $33 a month for the conceivable future (it’s a nearly two-year subscription) on something we can’t eat or live in.

In the resulting comments on Plurk, my imagination went a little crazy.  I mentioned something about getting the set and doing a scent for every color.  Or a sock pattern.  Or something, even if that was just drooling all over the set at regular intervals.

Someone mentioned that they weren’t sure they wanted to smell like Lobster Bisque, one of the colors.  This one, in fact:

And, again undaunted by that whole literal thing, I mentioned that soup is a winter thing.  And that lobster pretty much equals Maine.  So if you think about it, it could totally be the scent of a Maine winter — crunchy snow and ice, dry evergreen branches, woolen mittens and the faintest wisps of cast-iron woodstove smoke, all set on a backdrop of the Atlantic shore, with cold salt air just barely perceptible in the background.

It was too good of an idea.  I ran off from the computer and made the scent, adding in a little spice for warmth and just the right dose of black pine (which is *not* pine-sol pine, btw) to give it some depth.

And since one good idea deserves another, I grabbed the stitch dictionaries and whipped up the sock you see above, in a very simple and easy to do Seashore Rib, modified for socks.  (Picture *has* been photoshopped to look a little more like the pencil color, and to mask the real color, which was dyed for another project that isn’t quite live yet.  I wanted to pimp this particular yarn base and dyer, however. :>)  I took the pictures just a few minutes before the snow started here in North Carolina (an odd occurrence in and of itself), and now it’s up on the Oak River site if you want them.  (You get the pattern free if you buy the scent.)

Better still, I emailed the company behind the 500 Pencils club, and heard back from them today — they like the idea of this, and I’m angling to get some of those pencils in my hot little hands at some point, so I’m definitely planning to do more of these scent/color/sock things in the future, when I’ve got more time.

Sometimes, inspiration just comes out of seemingly nowhere.

I love when that happens.  Even if it’s around pencils and soup.

It was time for a change ’round these parts.

With the change of residence, and the (soon enough) acquisition of chickens, life’s changed enough that the old blog just wasn’t cutting it anymore.  Much better to start anew. :)

The title, for any non-listeners who might be happening upon the new bloggybits, comes from an incident earlier this summer, where the son of the people with whom I was staying got it in his head that he needed to tie a string to a junebug’s leg, let it go, and fly it along like a pet on a leash.  While this was a perfectly logical idea at the time, the poor junebug was not nearly as impressed, and wriggled free from the thread pretty much instantaneously, leaving a bewildered ten-year-old (who, incidentally, wouldn’t touch the bug himself and had his mother and grandmother tie the string for him, which was a comedy of errors in and of itself) to look for….more junebugs.

When I questioned this particular action, his grandparents told me they used to do this all the time when they were growing up in southern Virginia, and blamed it on the lack of cable television.

(I still don’t have cable, by the way.  Nor have I been bored enough to tether bugs to myself with thread.  I think perhaps it’s my upbringing.)

Lots more, coming soon.  Thanks for dropping by.  The Weird Magnet(tm) in my forehead appears to be operating at peak efficiency, so the stories should keep on coming….