No Tangled Webs Woven Here

The loom? She's warped.


It may have taken all morning and most of the afternoon, but I got the job done. I watched one video about 10 times before and during the work of warping. I don't know why, but the directions that came with the loom are just plain dumb. The video was a Godsend.

I'd like to point out that I may be a little dense myself. That's fingering weight yarn for my first project. I think a wiser novice weaver would have selected a phat yarn. The warp yarn goes from top to bottom and is stretched fairly taut across the loom. I used Socrates in dark gray. It's so soft. The middle piece with the slats is the heddle and shifts the yarn's position when I pass the shuttle (the piece wrapped in pretty yarn) back and forth. The heddle also beats the yarn into place after each pass. The weft yarn is moved from left to right and back again, over and over and over. I chose a variegated yarn from Lorna's Laces in beautiful shades of gray, black purple and blue. It's striping on the loom which thrills me to no end.

As you can see, I' haven't gotten too far, but considering how long it took to warp the loom, I'd say I'm making progress.

Not Enough Bottles of Beer in the World

Today I'm going to play a little game. I'm going to set up a little scenario, and I'd like you to attribute some comments to one of the players.

Imagine the scene: Rudee has spent the day cooking a very ethnic birthday feast for her husband who worked all day long. She slaved over the stove making grape leaves, fatoush, lebneh with cucumbers and rice pudding. For the heck of it, she roasted a chicken in case some of the guests didn't want her grape leaves. She thought of everyone.

At around six PM, the small party of guests arrived including Rudee's son, daughter, her daughter's boyfriend, MLTL and lastly, the guest of honor. By seven, they were all partaking of the meal and Rudee was seriously working on her second beer. So now the stage is set and the evening of wit and repartee begins in earnest.

Who said these things?

1. "Rudee? Are you really part Belgian? No kidding? Really? Because if you really are, I found some Belgian cheese at the Italian market and I'm going to buy you a hunk the next time I'm there whether you like it or not.

2. Be sure when you read this, you let it all run on in one sentence to get a feel for what I heard:

"Rudee?are you drinking beer?you know, I used to drink beer, but I haven't had a drop in thirty years. my wife used to drink a lot of wine in fact she was quite a wino. what kind of beer are you drinking? you don't say? it has pumpkin in it? isn't that your second?

3. "You know Rudee, my father used to say only a Jew eats at the table with his hat on." Now picture that Rudee had a guest at the table who did indeed have a hat on during this very casual dinner and you also need to know, this was a blanket statement indicating both hat wearers and Jews are rude in this man's eyes. I never noticed or took offense.

I'm giving you three guesses at who had worst manners at dinner. If you guessed it was the same one who bought his son a used and pilling sweater at the flea market as a fiftieth birthday gift, made derogatory remarks about his dead wife and Jews, slurped his food, smacked his lips and chewed with his mouth open, you'd be right.

Next time, if there is a next time I invite this dolt, I'll start drinking hours before he gets here. Instead of the cheese, I hope he can find me some Belgian beer.

He's a mean old bastard.

The good news? The hat adorned young man figured out the directions for putting my loom together. For that, I paid him with an edible care package.

The old coot got nothing.

Directionally Challenged

Yesterday, I picked up my loom from the yarn store. It's kind of nice to get a late Christmas gift, but today, I'm challenged just putting the pieces together. Most of the loom is one piece, but I have to put on dowels and apron rods. So I've picked up the pieces and put them down a dozen times today already. The photos in the manual that came with this show just one half of the completed loom and not the other, and it shows how to put together the dowels and apron rods, but not how they attach to the loom.

In between attempts at putting the six parts of the loom together, I'm rolling grape leaves and making rice pudding. It's someone's fiftieth birthday at my house today, and since we know I'm older than that, you can surmise I'm not making my own birthday dinner. I'm making the time intensive dinner for someone else. I'm thankful that at least this meal is not one I need directions to make. I could do it blindfolded and half asleep.

That should come in handy.

Humbling

I simply can't imagine what the people of Haiti are going through right now. A little earlier today, I was watching CNN and listening to an audio report by Anderson Cooper who was talking about the mass graves where no attempt at identification was made before bodies were placed there. How sad. It's such a tragic situation.

I'm hopeful the help these people need will get there soon.

I'm sure by now that those who would donate to a humanitarian support mission have done so by now. I know that my family has. We gave what we could to MSF (Doctors Without Borders). They really do excellent work. I'm amazed at the generosity of doctors and nurses who donate their time or make careers of working in such extreme conditions. I wish them well and pray for their safety.

Yarn Diet

Rudee's new kitchen and the reason she is officially on a yarn diet.

Tonight I had to call the yarn store and tell them to put the yarn they were holding for me back on the shelf.

I can't afford it...not when I have home inspectors to pay, appliances to select and window treatments to buy.

It's all over now except the signing of a gazillion more pieces of paper. We close at the end of our lease here in March and once again, we'll be moving.

Being no fool, I'm going to start packing now.

Anticipation

After signing a gazillion forms, the ball is now in the listing agent's court. It's been awhile since I've signed mortgage documents, but it's clear that industry is not in least bit green. There were more pieces of paper and signatures for making an offer on a home than I gather to admit patients into hospice. You know, if you really think about that, it's quite an astonishing statement.

Of course, with the deed done, I'm second guessing things tonight, but really? The house is pretty much perfect and I can envision my things fitting there quite well. In my mind's eye, we, and the yarn, are all but moved in.

To help keep me occupied while I anticipate being laughed at for our bid, I started to look up quotes from Winnie the Pooh. I loved Owl in the original movies. He was always so preposterous with the things he said, but at the same time, very polished sounding. My search took me to IMDB where I picked up these lines from Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day:

Owl: This is just a mild spring zephyr compared to the big wind of '67. Or was it, uh, '76? Oh, well, no matter. Oh, I remember the big blow well.
Piglet: I'll remember this one, too.
Owl: It was the year my Aunt Clara went to visit her cousin. Now, her cousin was not only gifted on the glockenspiel, but being a screech owl, also sang soprano in the London Opera.
Winnie the Pooh: [muffled, with a honey pot in his face] Thank you, Piglet.
Owl: You see, her constant practicing so unnerved my aunt, that she laid a seagull egg by mistake. Whoooooooo!

I've seen that video 800,000 times. No lie. It's a particular favorite of Rachel's and we would watch it over and over and over again.

Have you seen this video, or heard the voice of the actor who played Owl? It's the same actor (Hal Smith) who played Otis Campbell, the town drunk, on The Andy Griffith Show. To my ears, they sound nothing alike.

If you're bored enough that your still reading my nervous drivel, Hal hails from Petoskey, Michigan.

Who knew?

Since it's obvious we all need something to do while we wait to hear the news, here's a nice little song to serenade us:

I always thought Carly Simon was a beautiful woman. I saw her once on the ferry going to Martha's Vineyard. As pretty as she was in photos, this woman was stunning in person.

Now, where in the world did I put the Pepcid?

Holding My Breath

We found a house.

The house.

Wish us luck. We're putting an offer in tomorrow at 3:30PM.

Oh, God. I'm nauseous.