CaySwann

Incremental Updates: Part 2 - Sailing, Job, A Fall, and Projects - I know, you all want photos of Hogwarts, the tokens for my apprenticing, and the Coronation event, but I worked late (so I can leave early tonight), and I'll have to attack the photos at home this weekend.

Back to the Adventures:

Sailing - After Coronation, Nate and I, Mel, Adrienne & Jeff, and half a dozen other friends went out for salad buffet and socializing, before the 3 of us drove back to the apartment. We spent a lovely couple of hours just collapsed in the living room, post-event, chatting and having a blast. I left dear Nate to sleep on the couch, while both us girls retired to our respective bedrooms and passed out pretty early.

Sunday morning, Nov 11, I was awake much too early, so I snuck through the house quietly unloading the car without waking anyone up. Got showered, dressed, house picked up, and the coffee going before I saw a peep from either roomie or our houseguest. I love mornings like this! These are my favorite! I always feel like I'm attacking the world correctly when I stay up late, get up early, and get more done.

On this same note, I was inspired to read Proverbs 31 recently. Here's just a few of the verses that really touch my heart (quotes here from JPS):

10. A woman of valour who can find? for her price is far above rubies.
13 She seeketh wool and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands.
15 She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth food to her household, and a portion to her maidens.
18 She perceiveth that her merchandise is good; her lamp goeth not out by night.
19 She layeth her hands to the distaff, and her hands hold the spindle.
22 She maketh for herself coverlets; her clothing is fine linen and purple.
24 She maketh linen garments and selleth them; and delivereth girdles unto the merchant.
25 Strength and dignity are her clothing; and she laugheth at the time to come.
26 She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and the law of kindness is on her tongue.
27 She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.

Mmm. That's my inspiration. That's who I want to be.

Okay, so back to the narrative: Once Nate and Mel were awake, Adrienne was also awake and phoned to have us meet her for breakfast. Mel was already eating, so Nate and I went to meet Adrienne for pancakes, and after a bit Mel joined us just for the social company. I love lazy Sunday mornings with friends!

Then for the modern fun of the day: We went sailing with friends for a post-wedding reception in the States. Two friends got married overseas earlier this fall, and upon return they through a wedding reception on a tour around the harbor. It was absolutely FANTASTIC to be on a ship with my "shipmates," standing in the prow, singing our "sailor songs." I also took lots of photos of the trip, so those will be forthcoming, too.

Working Again - Somehow many of you hadn't caught that I landed a 30-day contract. This is the job for which I had a string of phone interviews. Since Fri Nov 9, I've been working a good ol' "9-to-5" in LA. In fact, I work in a tower overlooking LAX, where I'm up on the 16th floor. My side of the building faces the ocean and the airfields, so when people get up to stretch their legs, invariably we stand at the windows, looking out all the way past Venice, Santa Monica, and Malibu, or watching all the planes come in over LA basin. When the air is clear, I can see downtown easily, and I need to get out a map to mark off how much of LA county I can view from up here. It's astonishing. For the past several days, however, the fog has locked us in. So there's absolutely nothing to see, just barely the air traffic control tower and the Thanksgiving traffic ramping up.

I'm also becoming the queen of driving across the LA basic without hitting any snarled freeways. I love my Blackberry phone, and I *super* love Google Maps for mobile phones. I can dial up the local freeways, zoom in and out on the screen, and get live traffic feeds on the map. When the freeway is snarled, I just hop off the freeway and cut across town on all those "grid streets" that normally I never drive on. Fortunately LA is awash in criss-cross grid streets, and with my Google maps I get anywhere I want without sitting in much more than a few red lights. (Or at least that's how it feels to me!)

Friday's Big Fall - Last Friday night I went up to "The Nates" house (where Nate and Nathan live), to have dinner with the boys, Ellen (who lives in the back cottage), and their friend Adam joined us. Ellen and I are both textile geeks, so we spent some time after dinner going through her fiber stash, and then we headed back inside from the cottage to the main house. And that's when I took a HUGE fall down the stairs. Well, not properly "down the stairs" -- there's a porch, one step down, and then the ground. However the stair is a board with a space before it, and I stepped into the space in the dark, in heels, carrying a bag of stuff. I went flying, landed on my left hand (to break my fall, right?), and completely knocked the wind out of me. Apparently I scared Ellen considerably with my fall, and she ran in to get help. By the time the boys were outside to help me up, I was breathing and talking and laughing, and just trying to recover my dignity. That's not to say I didn’t get completely banged up and scuffed, oh gracious did I! But it humored me to no end, and I hate to be a burden on anyone. *giggle*

Inside, Nate cleaned up the scrapes, I got dizzy, and they had me on the couch, feet up, getting myself back together. I seem to have jammed the elbow and shoulder something fierce, but with ice and time, it's recovering mostly fine. I still have to stretch and make myself get better (just generally stop babying it), but I'm optimistic I'll be better in no time.

I did have to spend the night on their couch, rather than drive home, which made for a relaxing long evening, just hanging out chatting with Nate and Nathan. I love visiting those guys!

Nate had to be up before 6 am to go to an SCA event early Saturday morning, so I got up early too to say goodbye to him, hello to Bruce (who was coming in from work, picking up Nate, and driving off to the event).

Good Ship White Star - My all day Saturday fun was at Theresa and Alan's house. We got together after noon and I didn't head home until 9pm (missing Bardic circle, but babying my arm), and we coded a new website! Behold, the Good Ship White Star dot com, it's dot net! (No, that's a Homestarrunner joke). Theresa installed the primary software on Friday, and then we customized the code and filled it up with content all day, including a full photo gallery website for everyone to load their event photos. Many of the photos are ones you've already seen on Cayswann.com, but Theresa also loaded several years of her photos online too.

Cooking and Quidditch - Sunday was Quidditch practice in the afternoon, so I spent my morning shopping frugally at the Farmer's market and cooking food for the week. I've started really eating right again, now that I have this office job for a month, and been losing weight again doing it. All my rings were back on their original fingers, and now I've lost 5 lbs and the rings have all moved up a finger again, just to keep them from falling off. Yay me! And in fact, yesterday morning was the final pound that pushed me over that number that was elluding me for the past several months. I have to give Nate some credit there--he simply suggested I might drink fewer sodas, and he's right. So I dropped out nearly all the diet coke entirely (can you believe it?!?), and been drinking water with just a tiny splash (maybe a tsp for every 8 ounces of water) of juice for the past two weeks. At first, I could hardly believe how MUCH water I was drinking: I think I'd been dehydrating myself perpetually before. But now the water intake has leveled off, and I'm eating right, walking nearly 1-2 miles in the office per day, and losing the weight again. Yippee.

Arts and Sciences Monday - Monday night was an Arts and Sciences night, normally held at Meala's place, but she was suffering from a power outage so we moved it last minute to my apartment. It ended up being Aliskye, Medb Renata, Meala, and myself. Aliskye and M.Renata got to brainstorm and hash out lots of issues and solutions they're facing in their leadership roles, and Meala and I painted. She completed another Dolphin scroll promissory, and I completed my entire stack of "fix-it" promissories. When I was Royal Scribe, all the painted blanks came in to me. I sorted and inventoried them, brought them to events, and calligraphed them for Their Majesties for court. Sometimes there would be painting mistakes (the wrong color on an award medallion, a splotch of paint, etc.) so I would set those aside to be repaired and then put back into inventory later. I think I painted nearly a dozen pieces, all just minor fixes. But now my repair pile is down to zero, and I have a stack of awards to deliver to Lorccan. Yippee.

Returning to Knitting - Earlier in the year, Jeff and Adrienne's friend Terry (who's now my friend, too) came and stayed at our apartment when she was in town after a work conference. Since I couldn't send a knitting and textiles friend home without some of my spinning, I gave her some of my silk. When I finally caught up on her journal last week, I found this picture of my work with some more yarn with a shawl pattern (my spinning is the darker two skeins):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/90429730@N00/1159948395/

And here some of my hand-spun is turning into knitting:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/90429730@N00/1188805374/

Dude. Just seeing my yarn go into a project has finally done it for me.

Last week, I dug out some knitting books off my own shelf. (Of course I own books on how to do crafts that I haven't really spent any time learning yet! What a silly question!) At first I got the hang of long-tail cast on and what I thought was the knit stitch, but in fact it was the purl stitch. Silly me, I did an entire garter-stitch square with purling. I'm watched my dyeing and my spinning and my plying turn into a future blanket right before my very eyes. At one of the dyestuffs retreats, I did a varigated yellow/pink/blue hank of roving, then at home I spun it on my wheel. (I mentioned it here in my journal, with photos.) I navajo-plied the yarn on my wheel, to keep the color-repeats together, and now I've started knitting the yarn. It's bulky and weird, and uneven (because I'm not really thrilled with my wheel -- I'm much more accomplished on the drop spindle) but dude! It's my dyeing, spinning, plying, and now knitting! Cool beans!

I went over to Adrienne's one evening while she was working on some sewing, and she watched my knitting and sorted out my problem with knit versus purl. I completed my first square, casting off successfully, then started my second square, successfully knitting and purling. Then when Medb Renata was over, she helped me examine and understand what I was doing (apparently I do a cross-over or twist my knit stitches each time, consistently), and so once again I've learned something more about this thing called knitting. I'm hoping that this will teach me even more about being a spinner, as I learn how yarn behaves in knitting.

* * * * *
And finally, something silly. This "meme" has been going around with a few friends. I rarely do this on the journalscape side, but I thought everyone would appreciate this one.

Using Google images, answer these questions.
1. Age at next birthday