Ravings from a Danish City at Night

Heatwave...

1:42 in the morning and still over 25⁰C /80F in my apartment despite open windows and the ventilator on high all day...

Can't sleep... too tired to spin, knit or weave, too hot to handle wool, fibre, yarn fabric anyways...

Actually looking forward to the promised thunderstorms, hope they cool down this place...

Last day at school before the summer holiday

Another school year is ending. As usual with a lot of meetings to plan this and that and everything with a lot of "to do"-lists being created for the next school year.
Which for me will be a double return to school. Or so I was told by my boss.
I'll be studying for my teacher's license in math,chemistry and technology.

We now return to our regular programming...

... or at least that is what I hope.

Frankly, I have no idea what happened. I've taken blogging breaks before, but nothing this extreme. The last six/seven months were just one big "Bleh! I can't be bothered."

Knitting... Bleh! I can't be bothered! Not a stitch in half a year. All my WIPs are still WIPs.

Weaving ... Bleh! I can't be bothered! Not a pick in half a year. My loom is folded away, pushed under the bed with three-quarters of a warp still sitting on the warping frame.

Bookbinding... Bleh! I can't be bothered! My Etsy-store, RedThreadbooks, has been languishing without new product for half a year.

For some odd reason however I could be bothered to spin a lot of yarn. And not just my usual stuff.

I putzed around on Etsy hopping from store to store and found this fibre batt.

Absolutely not what I usually spin. Too disorderly, mixed, unruly, too much yellow and funny bits. No idea why I bought it. Maybe just me being bored and trying for some shopping therapy.

The yarn turned out surprisingly interesting. Two skeins of singles, one skein of two-ply.

Not exactly my usual stuff, and sofar my only inspiration what to do with it is as pattern weft in some future, yet-to-be-declared, weaving. But what ever it gets to be, I'll let you know.

I tried spinning a cable yarn with somewhat mixed success.
To be technical this is a 2x2 cable yarn, (Black Bamboo x Black Shetland/Silk)x(Black Viscose x Black Shetland/Silk). The shetland and the bamboo spun heavenly, the viscose was on the other end of the spectrum... Originally imagined as a sock yarn, its rather dry hand and very bleh! colour have sofar banished it to the stash.

Inspired by the Shetland, I tried some very fine spinning with a Shetland sampler from World Of Wool, currently my favorite fibre dealer, the bane of my bank balance and premier enhancer of my fibre stash. Just what I needed...

Grey, moorit, white and black shetland fibres spun and plied.This is the finest yarn I've spun sofar. Definitely lace-weight with about 25 wpi and over 200m/220yards per 50g/2ounces. Those four skeins and some Icelandic from my stash are planned for some weaving later in the year, so more about them later.

I'm now out of my knitting/weaving/crafting/blogging funk again. And I have a lot to do.

There are several people I owe long-promised packages and accompanying apologies. I have to re-build trust and re-gain readers. I have to put myself "out there" again and show off and tell about what I'm doing. Not an easy job, especially on the trust and readers, but I cannot but try.

So to show that I'm really coming back, here's my first FO, finished object, of the year: the Humbug Cushion from Rowan Magazine 45 knit with the Rowan Denim that came in the Renewal Gift.
It still needs its hot wash and the shrinking tumble in the dryer, but it is done! The rest is easy, I'll cut a rectangle of unbleached muslin for an inner liner, stuff that to shape with some filling, then wrap and sew the knitted cover around it.

You might wonder: why a cushion? I need something simple, straight-forward, no-nonsense knitting. This cushion is a straight rectangle, no shaping, no fancy stitches, yarn-overs or cables, just knits and purls to get those back into my hands and into my brains.

More soon, and this time I mean it.

Ding!!!

As of today, I'm level 41...

And if you get that reference, you're as much a geek as I am. ;)

A warning to cat owners...

From Lolcats:

Congratulations America!

Congratulations America on your new President.

Two good things I see for the immediate future:
1. No more domination of the news cycle by campaign/election news.
2. No more vitriolic campaign/political ads/speeches/robocalls, at least until the next big election.

Nothing like it...

'It' here meaning waking up with a murderous headache and rushing to the bathroom to throw up. It isn't a hang-over, it isn't morning sickness, just a some stupid bug I got over the week-end. It got better over the day, living on weak tea and insipid toast.

It of course hits me when I have the more important classes with my students... All that stuff I'll now have to squeeze in sometime else.

Hopefully back to work tomorrow or latest Wednesday. Can't let them doen.

Open for business!!!

Once upon a midnight dreary...

'The Raven' by Edgar Allen Poe.

A Halloween classic. That mixture of dread, hope, dark dreams and visions that Poe could express so well.

Printed on heavy paper, pamphlet-bound, cased in midnightblack Japanese silk and blue patterned Italian art paper.

Of course, bound with a Red Thread.

Size: 15 cm or 6 inches high, 11cm or 4.25 inches wide, 0.6 cm or .25 inches thick, 16 pages.
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Should auld acquaintance be forgot,...

Everyone knows the first line. Most know the first verse, but after that it often breaks down into 'hum-hum'hum' until the next chorus.

This New Year's Eve you can belt it out with the best of them straight out of this Small Poetry volume of the same name.

You get two poems here. 'Auld Lang Syne' by Scotsman Robert Burns and 'The Death of the Old Year' by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the English Poet Laureate. I kinda like their juxta position.

Printed on heavy paper, pamphlet-bound, cased in red, patterned Japanese silk and grey, patterned Japanese Chiyogami art paper.

Of course, bound with a Red Thread.

Size: 15 cm or 6 inches high, 11cm or 4.25 inches wide, 0.6 cm or .25 inches thick, 16 pages.

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If you can keep your head when all about you...

Two poems, 'If' by Rudyard Kipling and 'Which are You?' by Eller Wheeler Wilcox in a small volume I call 'Encouragement'.

You might call it 'Get off you a**' and leave it for that lazybones as a small hint. Or it might be a 'Well done!' and left as an appreciation. How you interpret it, is all up to you.

Printed on heavy paper, pamphlet-bound, cased in blue, patterned Japanese silk and tan and turquoise patterned French art paper.

Of course, bound with a Red Thread.

Size: 15 cm or 6 inches high, 11cm or 4.25 inches wide, 0.6 cm or .25 inches thick, 16 pages.

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When you were a tadpole and I was a fish...

Not all love poems are sappy-sweet or erotically-hot. Some are clever, witty descriptions how a love evolves, from that first meeting to those long evenings of companionship.

You could use it as a gift to that special someone, just a small token of your love, maybe together with a reservation at the same New York City restaurant mentioned in the text.

Printed on heavy paper, pamphlet-bound, cased in grass-green Japanese silk and green, patterned Italian art paper.

Of course, bound with a Red Thread.

Size: 15 cm or 6 inches high, 11cm or 4.25 inches wide, 0.6 cm or .25 inches thick, 16 pages.

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From fairest creatures we desire increase, ...

William Shakespeare.

By many considered the greatest English, if not World-wide, writer and playwright so far. His works have been translated into all existing languages, even into Klingon.

This volume features his sonnets #1 to #12.

I plan on eventually publishing all his 154 sonnets.

Printed on heavy paper, pamphlet-bound, cased in grey Japanese silk and red and blue, patterned Italian art paper.

Of course, bound with a Red Thread.

Size: 15 cm or 6 inches high, 11cm or 4.25 inches wide, 0.6 cm or .25 inches thick, 16 pages.
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You probably guessed it. I've opened my own Etsy-shop.

I'm crafting small volumes of poetry, bound in silk and decorative papers. Just the right size for a small gift or a beginning poetry library. At US$ 8.-- a booklet, not expensive either.

Thus also my post about Copyrights earlier.

Now I just need to spread the word...

More joys of being diabetic...

I got my semi-annual invite to the dentist a few weeks ago. After some re-scheduling caused by my school hours I sat in that chair and got a rather bad surprise.

After years of nothing worse than a bit of tartar and a subsequent cleaning, the dentist now found two cavities...

She took an X-ray to be sure.

It revealed that in all I had five cavities...

After a short interrogation re my dental habits and my general health status I was informed that Diabetics not only have that increased gum disease risk that I had been told about, but also a far higher chance of caries than the main population. Something I had not been told about.

Luckily she had an opening the same morning, so I got two of the cavities filled directly. Next three on next Wednesday.

While I was a bit extra nervous, as I didn't know her yet, she had the best touch I've had in a dentist so far. I didn't feel a thing, not even the needle for the anesthetic (yes, I'm a total dental wuss.) or that blowing-cold-air-into-open-tooth-thingee they so like.

Afterwards the receptionist handed me the bill, I handed her my credit card. So much for those new shoes I wanted/needed to buy. Ah well, next month.

Phlogiston to the Rescue!!! or Teaching, Renaissance-style

Each year we get new 'first-graders' as we call them, new pupils starting their first year at our school.
Each year the first half year is very tightly scripted so they can switch specialization line if they want to.

Each year The Renaissance is a big topic in science education, the start of the Age of Reason, rational thought winning over religious superstition, The Scientific Idea, hierarchy of hypothesis, theory law, all that.

Each year I go to my cupboard and pull out my Renaissance costume, a scriptorial munk paradocically, and start a two hour show on alchemy, its develeopment into chemistry and several of the major figures involved.

They were somewhat sceptical at first, but really got into it. The ideas around Phlogiston especially had them thinking.

(Yes, yes, I know I really should have ironed it, but I didn't have the time...)