Knitting, with Dogs

Spinning guild retreat

I spent last weekend at the spring spinning guild retreat.  We had cool weather, good food (and plenty of it!) and lots of silly laughs and giggles.  I actually spun up all the fiber I'd brought with me.  (I didn't bring all that much, but I usually WAY over-estimate how much I can do.)

Here's my bobbin:

I also FINALLY had time to use my Tabacheck Tibetan Spindle with the spindle bowl I got from Knitwitch. 
Top view:

Side view:

As you can see, it has a little foot on the bottom.  This GREATLY increases the stability of the bowl.  I've spun with spindle bowls that lacked this feature, and lemme tell you, it can be a challenge.  There's also some non-slip stuff on the bottom, which also helps keep the bowl in place.

It's a little harder to see the indentation in the center of the bowl for the point of your spindle -- another EXCELLENT idea!  My previous spindle bowls also lacked this feature.  If you've been itching to try a supported spindle, you couldn't do better than to put one of these little bowls under it.  My spindle spun like a dream with it.  Thanks to KnitWitch for a great product!   Highly recommended.

I do have dog news.  My dad had a dog named Lucky.  Lucky kept Dad company for most of the last 9 years.  When my dad died, it pretty much fell on me to take Lucky in, since I'm the dog person in the family.

Lucky was both spoiled and fat.  And when I say fat, I mean FAAAAAAAAATTT.  According to Dad's vet, Lucky weighed 70 lbs. at one point.  And Lucky is smaller than Jasper or Bouncer.  Jeezopete. 

So Lucky's been on a strict diet.  He's losing weight, and honestly, he's fitting into the pack here pretty well considering he's never lived with anyone other than my dad, and never had to get along with other dogs before.  He's a bit of a resource guarder, but we're working on that. 

So here's my pack as it stands right now. L - R:  Lucky, Bouncer, and Jasper.  I am WAY outnumbered by the males in my household.

Match it for Pratchett

I've had a couple of times in my life where, for no good reason I can tell, I've resisted reading a popular author's book series.  The first one was Patrick O'Brian.  Once I broke down and read the first book (and got over the confusion caused by all the Age of Sail terminology), I was hooked, and happily followed Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin through the whole 20 book series.

The other author I resisted for ages was Terry Pratchett.  I don't know why.  I think I thought the Discworld concept was maybe a little twee (I hate twee) or something.  I finally broke down and picked Hogfather as my first Discworld book to read.

Well.  I knew the books were POPULAR, but nobody told me they were GOOD.  Pratchett has a keen eye for society and life, and a sharp and witty writing style.  He loves to riff on the idea of Story, or on stories about Story, and I eat that stuff up like ice cream. 

He's good, people.  If you like fantasy with humor and insight, read him.

Terry was recently diagnosed with a rare form of early onset Alzheimer's.  (He's only 59.)  He recently donated £500,000 (about $1,000,000) to Alzheimer's Research.  Now Pratchett fans are getting together to match Terry's donation.  I saw a headline yesterday that 10,000,000 of us baby boomers can expect to be affected by Alzheimer's in our lifetimes.  My dad was affected too.

So let's put some support out there for Alzheimer's research.  You lose your SELF with Alzheimer's, and that's ever so much worse than just losing your LIFE. 

Match It For Pratchett is one place you can go to donate.  In the US, you can donate at the Alzheimer's Association site.  In the UK you can also donate to the Alzheimer's Research Trust. 

It could be any one of us facing this disorder, and it's not nearly as well funded as cancer research.  Older folks tend to get short shrift where medical research is concerned.  But EVERY ONE OF US will be OLD some day (barring accident or other disease), so it behooves us to support research like this.

Do it for Terry, and do it for yourself.

He came, he saw, he got shaved

Today was the day Dear Robert got his head shaved for St. Baldrick's foundation. 

It started out as a motivational thing for his store.  They had a particular metric they were trying to meet, and Dear Robert said if they met it, he'd shave his head.

Well, they met it, but instead of just shaving his head, he decided to use the event to raise some money to fight children's cancer.  Thus, St. Baldrick's, which is a fund-raiser. Folks donate money in support of people who have their heads shaved in solidarity with kids who have cancer.  The money goes to cancer research.

Ok, here are the pics.  At the site:

He's been letting his hair grow.  This is a very 80's look on him.  :)

First cuts:

About this time, I was thinking, hmmmmm... not sure if this look is going to work.

Fortunately, it looked better almost right away.  I thought he was starting to look like the little man on the poster.  :)

And voila!  I think he looks hot.  :)

Dear Robert's mom couldn't bear to watch what was happening.

There were a good many other folks there getting their heads shaved, including this guy who really got into the "wearin' o' the green" spirit:

And there was a family with 3 members involved:  the son and dad, who got shaved, and the daughter, who got 10" of hair snipped.  The son went first, and the barber let him help shave his dad.

All in all, a good day.  We then went into the pub and celebrated with Guinness and sandwiches.

Many, many thanks to all who donated, and if anyone missed out, there's still time to donate to Dear Robert!    He's almost doubled his initial goal!

Back home, and a fundraiser

I got back home to Dear Robert and the dogs Sunday night.  So another stage of the process is done.

For the fundraiser:

Have y'all ever heard of  St. Baldrick's?  Folks volunteer to have their heads shaved in solidarity with kids with cancer, and to raise funds for children's cancer research.  Dear Robert has decided to participate this year.  He's going to have his head shaved on St. Patrick's Day (March 17) this year, and is looking for donations.  He's letting his hair grow out, so it there will be a pretty dramatic change when he gets his head shaved.

If you're interested in helping out, go to Dear Robert's page and make a donation. 

There may even be prizes available.... (hint, hint)

A slow continuing

The simplest of bridges, a promise
that you will go forward,

that you can come back.
So you cross over.

It says you can come back.
So you go forward

But even if you come back
then you must go forward

I am always either going back
or coming forward.  There is always

something I have to carry,
something I leave behind.

I am a figure in a logic problem,
standing on one shore

with the things I cannot leave,
looking across at what I cannot have.
--Girder, by Nan Cohen

We've spent the week cleaning and sorting through my dad's things, starting to get all the paperwork in order, tossing lots of old stuff.  The man apparently never threw away a birthday card or Father's day card from any of us.  We've found cards we gave him in 1976.  (He dated some of them.)  We've found a bazillion old pictures, most of them in moderately bad shape.  We've scratched our heads trying to figure out which of his sister this old picture might be, or if that young man was one of the folks from Florida or was he from the Griffin bunch?

Most of the time I live in a little bubble of present time.  All this retrospective stuff has really brought my age home to me.  I realize now in a way I never did before how close to the end of WW2 I was born, and how long ago that was.  I'm one of the oldest of my family still alive now.  I remember things that even my close-in-age brother doesn't remember. 

It's a little daunting.

We've got most of the house and ground sorted through and ordered now though.  My sister will go back home today, and back to work tomorrow.  My brother will go back to work next week too.  I'll stay down at my dad's a little longer and tend to a few things that are left, as well as keeping an eye on the house.  When we finish this stage of the process, it'll be sad again.  Just one more ending to go through, another stage completed and finished forever.

I'm about 4 rows away from finishing the Adamas shawl.  There are a lot of errors in the knitting, I think, but I'm going to leave them.  It'll stand as a memory of the time I sat watching beside my dad in the hospital, and in the time we cleaned out his house after he died.

He would have been 84 today, March 2.