The Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival!

If it's Cinco de Mayo and it's Saturday or Sunday, then the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival is underway.

Unfortunately, my allergies are keeping me from going. I don't have a car, and I'd like to think that it's the reason that I'm not going. I'd like that, because it's something I could possibly fix and maybe go next year.

But I can't kid myself. I've been having a severe allergic reaction for more than two years straight, and almost constantly for at least 5 years because of the unhealthy conditions in the HUD subsidized apartment in which I live. Going out for the day in the Spring, when the air is filled with tree pollen is nearly suicidal. I don't know. Maybe I can fix the problem with the apartment building and get better, if not well.

But back to the Sheep and Wool Fest! Or rather, back to the subject, but not the Festival.

Here's a photo of a lamb to get you in the mood.

Susan McFarland brought along a little lamb to the show a few years ago, and you can see her sitting in Susan's lap. Isn't she a cutie?

I'm at home, getting in the mood by watching You Lucky Dog on the Hallmark Network. It'll be on later today, too. It's about a woman who comes home from New York to her family's cattle farm and discovers that they've bought some sheep, too. She gets and trains a sheep dog named Lucky, and starts a designer sweater business. There are lots of border collies herding sheep, so at least I don't have to feel like I'm missing the sheepdog trials.

In the meantime, I'm finishing up some knitting projects, doing some light cleaning, and I might even do some spinning later. I might even treat myself to some chicken fried rice from the local Chinese restaurant as consolation.

*********************************

The Jewelry Project

I used to make and sell sterling silver jewelry, and really enjoyed it. I enjoyed wearing it even more.

Then Steve decided to help me by throwing out all my tools (including a torch) and what was about $300 worth of sterling silver (then). It's probably about $4,500 worth of sterling in today's prices. This, and similar incidents, is a large part of why I'm no longer married to Steve.

I've been collecting silver working tools for the past few months, and this month I splurged and spent all my disposable income on the last few tools I needed, and some nickel silver wire. It should all arrive this coming week.

From Cool Tools, I ordered an anvil that is almost a sculptural work of art in it's own right,

a sandbag,

a mallet, and protective glasses (I'm not showing the glasses).

I found a great shop on ebay called JETS Tools, and I ordered a goldsmith's hammer from them.

 Isn't it pretty?

I plan to get a chasing hammer soon, too.

All of the tools are not only superb tools for the job, but aesthetically pleasing as well. The anvil, mallet, and hammer are beautiful pieces of sculpture, and the sandbag is to deaden the noise of using the hammers and anvil.

And, of course, I ordered some metal, in this case, various gauges of nickel silver wire. Please note that although it's called nickel silver, there is no silver in it. It is, as the name states, nickel. Actually, it's mostly copper, and there's a little bit of zinc in it, too, but no silver.

But it looks great, doesn't tarnish, and it's a tiny fraction of the cost of sterling. I got it partly because I was nearly broke after buying the hammers and anvil and wanted to be able to do something with the tools, and partly because it's a really inexpensive way to experiment before making things in the far more expensive silver. Next month, I may spring for some sterling filled wire.

Oh, and while I was at it, I ordered the crochet hooks I need to make the hats that I ordered the yarn and beads for last month. It'll be so nice to get the sun out of my eyes, and look great while I'm doing it!

I hope you're having a great weekend, and that if you live in my area that you got to go to the sheep and wool fest!

Tweet

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!

I hope you've been having a happy Easter!

The temperature in my apartment is getting up near 90 degrees (again), and I finally gave up and opened the window. Happy allergies! I feel like I have flu most of the time.

I hope you're enjoying all the great Easter movies on TV, but don't miss Once Upon A Time
tonight!

Tweet

Happy Heathen Rites of Spring!

Happy Heathen Rites of Spring!

I know that Spring started on Tuesday, and it's now Friday, and I'm more than a little late.

But, that doesn't mean that my wishes are any less heartfelt.

The cherry blossom height is usually late in April, but somebody forecast that it would be a little earlier than that, and the TV station that reported that said they thought it would be at it's best around the 15th of April.

Well, I live outside DC, which means that the cherry blossoms come out earlier in the city than here because the city leaks so much heat, and it's warmer there. But, even so, the cherry blossoms are in full, glorious bloom right NOW!

***********************************

The Future of Knitting Content on this Blog

As I've mentioned before, I got involved in a knitting forum called Knitting Paradise. The link is to sign up for their newsletter. Here is a link directly to the knitting forum.

There are people from all kinds of backgrounds and skills on the forum, and they mainly discuss knitting, problems they're having with knitting, crochet, spinning and weaving. You'll get a better link if you sign up. There are also sections of the forum for photos, so you can show off your best work, a section for swaps and to sell stuff you no longer want, a section to just chat about stuff in general, and more.

Well, people keep asking questions, and I keep answering them. Oh, by the way, if you have any questions about knitting, I can probably answer them, just ask a question in the comments.

And after I've answered questions, I have had people ask me for more accurate directions (i.e., a pattern) for how to knit something.

So far, I've committed myself to writing and publishing two patterns: comfy socks pattern, and a Christmas stocking pattern. They seem to be stuck on a socks thing.

Anyway, on the subject of the comfy socks pattern, there was a general discussion of socks, and I mentioned that my daughter told me about diabetic socks. These are socks that are marketed to diabetics (who are notorious for having foot problems) because they've been engineered to avoid foot problems for people who have diabetes. A friend recommended them to her because, although she doesn't have diabetes, they were the most comfortable socks that he'd ever worn. She tried them and agreed that they were super comfortable.

Well, she described them to me, and what qualities they had that made them so comfortable, and I've been working on duplicating those qualities in hand-knit socks. I've been knitting them for a couple of years, and refining the formula little by little. They're not quite as good as the commercial socks sold for diabetics, but they're getting remarkably close.

You won't find fancy stitches and designs or lace and cables on these, but they are good, handsome socks that hug the foot where it's needed to keep from producing blisters, are loose over the toes to provide comfort and wiggle room (but still snug enough not to fold over and cause blisters), have deep enough heels that they won't slide down in your socks, have legs that won't droop and fall down, and have have a cast on at the top of the leg that's stretchy enough that it will go over your heel without a fight. These are handsome, good looking, everyday socks that will feel great on your foot. And they have a lot of techniques that you can apply to almost any other sock pattern to make them more comfortable.

I have one more thing that I want to test before I actually write up this pattern. That means I want to knit and test wear at least one more pair of socks before I even start to write this. So, you can see that this will not be out instantly. In fact, the more I think about this, the more it sounds like a small book rather than just a pattern. There's a lot of work that's already gone into this, and it's definitely going to be a pattern I feel like I have to charge for.

I read about a woman who's writing and selling books on the internet, and she's making a fortune at it because she's selling the electronic books for about $2. It doesn't take a lot of thought to realize that selling 5 books (or patterns) at $5 each isn't as good as selling 100 at $2 each. So, I'm planning to assign lower prices to my patterns to gain some volume (this doesn't apply to my printed patterns, which also cost money, up front, to print).

But this pattern will be a short book, with lots of photos of construction, and with instructions written out so that even beginning sock knitters can turn out excellent socks from the beginning. So, the pattern/instructions will still be a more robust price. I plan to keep it under $10, but I also plan to make it a treasure-trove of how to knit socks for beginners, with a pile of tips, tricks, and new ways to make socks comfy. So, you'll be getting every penny's worth!

I plan to test a different type of sock yarn, and take lots of photos while I'm doing it, then write it all out, lay it out and make a PDF. That's a lot of work, considering that I won't have the money for the new sock yarn I plan to test until the beginning of next month, and it's so hot in my apartment, that knitting is giving me heat stroke, and it's going to get much hotter in here in the next month. It's 80 degrees outside, which means it's about 90 degrees in here. It usually reaches 110 degrees in here long before they turn on the air conditioning.

As to the other pattern, I want to get some yarn and knit a stocking while taking photos of the process as it unfolds for the pattern.

I'm going to quit, now, because Blogger has stopped functioning.

I hope you have a great weekend!

Tweet

Happy Veteran's Day!

 Happy Veteran's Day!

I hope you've been having a happy Veteran's Day! I intended to post something for it earlier in the day, but I've been so exhausted the past few weeks and especially yesterday.

****************************

Since I live in HUD subsidized housing for senior citizens and disabled people, November is time for our yearly inspections.

Since I have some environmental allergies, I asked about air conditioning before signing my lease, and they lied, or at least made it sound like the apartment's environmental conditions were completely different than they actually are.

The result is that I was sick for about 50% of the first year I was here and the time I've spent sick has been longer every year. About a month ago, after four courses of antibiotics (this year), and an emergency room visit (which cost Medicare about $3,000!) I finally got to be reasonably well, about two weeks before they shut off the air conditioning again. I've had some high temperatures in my apartment and my choice was between heat stroke with the windows shut (it's been 110 degrees in my apartment with the windows open) or an allergic reaction that's likely to give me severe sinus congestion with a high probability of another infection that could have me taking antibiotics again for another year or more.

There are no good answers here, except getting a portable air conditioner, which the manager strictly forbids, no matter how sick it makes tenants.

So, I'm coming up on nearly two years of feeling like I have flu almost nonstop.

The result is that my apartment is not as neat as I would like it to be, so I've been cleaning.

Inspection was on Thursday, early in the morning (when I'm usually so sick I'm still asleep). I was really, really afraid that they'd evict me, but, to my great relief, I passed the inspection.

I don't want to talk about this anymore, though, because it's just too depressing.

*******************************

In the meantime, I'm doing some minor art to be printed for a friend who is actually going to pay me for it later in the month! And, as if that weren't good enough news, I also have a commission to knit some Christmas stockings, plus they're adding on a few extra, which will boost the total amount I get for that.

So, I've been pretty busy.

**********************************

Tuesday, I ached all over from my exposure to ragweed, but I went out and voted anyway. I felt like somebody had beaten me up by the time I got home! The bus stop I used is right next to a thrift store, and I went in because I had a long wait until the next bus.

One of the neat things they had was a small wing-back chair. Now that I know I'm not going to be evicted (at least not for another year), I plan to go back tomorrow to see if it's still there. I really hope so. It's comfy, and the arm rests don't bash my elbows like my current chair. I really hope nobody else has bought it before I get the chance!

************************************

As far as knitting stuff is concerned, I've been knitting Christmas stockings on commission, and Christmas presents, which I can't show here. So, I'm very boring as far as knitting goes, and probably will be for a while.

But I hope you've been doing some great knitting and I wish you a fabulous weekend!

Tweet

Guess I'm Not Sweet... I Didn't Melt

The air conditioner isn't fixed, exactly, but things are much better, and I didn't melt.

Well, I kind of had a melt down from the allergies, but I'll survive.

Somebody did something intelligent. Although they didn't really get the new air conditioning unit installed over the weekend, they did get it delivered on Saturday, and managed to hook it up even though it was still sitting on a flat bed trailer outside the building. They completed the connections Sunday morning, and it's been sitting out there functioning ever since.

That's a photo of the unit sitting out in the parking lot from Sunday afternoon. I know it looks odd. I took it at an odd angle looking almost straight down on it from the 4th floor. But there are flexible pipes and cables running out of it that you can't see because they were cut out of the photo by the window frame.

I shut the windows and after two or three hours it got down to 80 degrees, and has been between that and about 75 degrees ever since. Very livable.

Unfortunately, with the windows being open for a while, and especially with the fan going in the window, it filled my apartment with grass pollen, particulates and other allergens, and I've been fighting with the allergies ever since. I could barely breathe yesterday! It's getting better, but it was so warm that I wasn't sleeping well, and allergies always make me sleepy, so most of what's left of the allergies is the sleepiness at this point.

So, I think I'm just going to take a nap and feel better.

Have a great week!

We're Having a Heat Wave...

Not only are we actually having a heat wave, but the air conditioning in my apartment building is out!

It's dead, Jim!

They have to completely replace it, and if everything goes perfectly, they should have it up and running late on Monday.

But then, when does anything ever go perfectly?

I'm hoping really hard for Monday though.

It was 80 degrees in here yesterday, and it's 85 today. That doesn't sound so bad, but it's uncomfortable.

They've been around four times to try to evacuate me! I had to sign a release saying that they had explained to me the dangers of dehydration and a whole list of other problems that I could have because of the heat, and that I still elected to stay.

All this would be reasonable except that we've had a week or more of 90 degree plus days almost every Spring and Fall without air conditioning since I've been here. It's gotten to 110 degrees in my apartment already, and the response I've gotten when I complain about it is "So? Open a window!" Those temperatures happen even with judicious opening of windows and the use of fans, though!

Every time I go to a doctor, they always say "Turn on the air conditioner and keep the windows closed!" As you might guess from all this, I have allergies to tree pollen (Spring), ragweed (Fall) and grass (most of the time). So each Spring and Fall, I have to choose between being slow roasted and having an allergic reaction that sets me up for being sick most of the year.

They said that if it gets too warm in here, the fire department may force an evacuation, and then I won't have any choice.

If the fire department does force an evacuation, I plan to make a note of the conditions and if (when) they're exceeded in the future, call them and either get the AC on or get evacuated!

In the meantime, I'm probably not going to be blogging much, so don't be surprised.

I hope you're having a weekend that's much cooler than mine!

The AC Is On!

The air conditioning is on, and it's not a moment too soon!

It's only going up to about 70 degrees today, but that means it'll be somewhere between 80 and 90 in my apartment without the AC. And it'll be warmer all the rest of the week.

But the real reason is that my post nasal drip was so bad last night that I didn't get much sleep because I couldn't fall asleep because I kept feeling like I was drowning. And I woke up today, not only with a sore throat, but the kind of sore throat that feels like someone's in there cutting it up with a knife.

But there were a lot of noises around 2:30, and for a moment I thought someone was knocking at the door, but it was just the temperature changes affecting various parts of the building because the AC was on!

*************************

I happened across the strangest animal on the internet today. It's a pig with the coat of a sheep! You really have to see this! At first glance, I thought someone had done something weird with PhotoShop, but after reading the story and looking a little more closely, it looks like a real wooly pig! I wonder if there will be any pig fiber at the Sheep and Wool Festival.

************************

There will be a new Doctor Who on BBC in America on Saturday! They will repeat the first new episode of the season, The Eleventh Hour, and also show the second new episode of the season, The Beast Below.

Find listings of what's playing over the next few weeks here, and a listing of all the Doctor Who episodes up until this season and most of the new episodes here. You have to scroll way down to see this (new) season's episodes, and they don't have all the names up yet, but it does help.

If you read that second list, you'll find that the weeping angels will be back in a two part episode, and it will be written by Steven Moffat, who wrote the original weeping angels story, Blink! I have yet to find anyone, whether Doctor Who fan or not, who didn't love Blink!

*************************

I have to get going. I need to take more antihistamines and decongestants!

Hope you're having a less allergy-ridden day than I am!

No Air Conditioning!

Yesterday, about 4 pm, the temperature in my apartment passed the 80 degree comfort mark, headed up, up, and away.

I turned the air conditioning down (toward cooler) and fully expected the situation to right itself. It didn't. It's been no lower than 80 degrees in this apartment ever since about four yesterday.

I talked to my neighbor across the hall this morning, and she said that the maintenance people had been up all night, and they kept muttering phrases like "no water pressure," and "we're still not getting pressure."

The heating and cooling in my place is provided via water pipes set into the cement floor. They send warm or cool water through the pipes and the building stays a comfortable temperature, theoretically. In practice, it works pretty well, except for those times that the weather is changing back and forth, and they haven't fully changed over to air conditioning. This building tends to stay warm, though. With the heat and AC turned off, it still seems to either generate or hold a lot of heat. And the next few days are supposed to be around 90 degrees.

I've had the windows open all last night, ever since the outside temperature got lower than the inside temp. But it's about 80 degrees in here, and 85 outside, so the windows are now closed. I don't need to import warmer air. The drapes are also closed to keep the afternoon sun out, which is a big offender in the warming-up department.

Not much knitting has been happening due to the warming effect caused by actually knitting something, so there's no news there.

I think I'll lie down with a book (Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince).

Stay cool!

Two Days to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival and the Air Conditioning Is STILL Not On!

There has not a wisp of cold air that has come out of the air conditioning vent so far! I called the apartment office and learned that there was a "little problem" yesterday with turning on the air conditioning, and that they were still working on it.

Fortunately, the temperature outside is a bit below 60 degrees with rain, so my windows are open (still), and the fan is blowing in high levels of oak pollen.

***********************

I talked to Lynn on the phone, and she was just pulling into the driveway at the dentist's office. I wish her the best of luck with that.

She plans to come down here tomorrow. I said I thought she'd arrive around late afternoon or early evening, and she said she hoped that she'd arrive earlier than that.

I can't wait!

*************************

The way I'm feeling, I don't know how well I'm going to get around the Sheep and Wool Festival, but I really want to try. I'm really starting to get excited!

I have a lot to do before the fest, so you probably won't hear anything else from me before late Sunday.

Have a great weekend!

*************************

Addition:

There will be three episodes of Eureka tonight on the SciFi Channel this evening. It starts at 7 pm here, so you might want to check your local listings early. Oh, and later on (actually tomorrow morning), the Doctor Who episode will be The Fires of Pompeii.

Help!

It's been around 90 degrees in my apartment since Friday. I spend around $100 per month on non-prescription medicine and nutrition to keep me in good health. The temperature in my apartment melted that medication! It's a gooey, disgusting mess! The stuff that escaped is now living in my refrigerator, and I wish I could join it.

They'll be turning on the air conditioning tomorrow. That means that they'll spend the day turning it on (they tell me it takes eight hours), so it'll go on Wednesday evening, but it won't cool down until sometime on Thursday (if I'm lucky), but more likely Friday. That means I'll have been in 90 degree temperatures for 5 (probably 6, possibly 7) days. If someone did that to a dog, they'd be prosecuted by animal rights activists. 

In the past, this has gone on for a week or two in Spring, and in Fall.

I live in government subsidized housing for low income seniors. The maximum you're allowed to make and still live here (and be considered low income) is more than three times my income.

When I looked up heat exhaustion on the internet, it told me to do what my landlady said to do: go somewhere else. In other words, they're telling me that this place is not fit for human habitation. Another thing they said to do was to spray water on yourself. I went to do that last night, and discovered that my skin was red all over. I looked like I had the beginning of a bad sunburn.

One of the things that the landlady said to do is keep my windows open.  I've tried that, and it doesn't cool the place off. Last night, I had the windows open and was blowing 70 degree air into the apartment, and it stayed at 90 degrees. The building itself is so hot that putting cool air into it is not cooling it off.

What the open windows will do is give me a good dose of tree and grass pollen, plus mold spores. My eyelids feel like they're a quarter of an inch thick. I can hardly open them. And my system is so full of histamine that I can hardly keep awake.

When I used to be allergic to tree pollen and ragweed, I had time during the summer to recover from the tree pollen before I had to contend with the ragweed. But, back around 1998, I developed an allergy to grass pollen, thereby converting three whole seasons into a nightmare of illness. These allergies, combined with the extra big dose of pollen in the Spring and Fall that I've gotten here the past two years are truly disabling.

I'm hoping I can find someone in the Northern Virginia or DC area that has a stand-alone (portable) air conditioner that they no longer need or want that they would either donate or sell at a low price. It won't help me now, but it will in the Fall, and next Spring it might give me a chance to spend a reasonably healthy year.

I am not allowed to use a window mounted air conditioner, but I can use a portable one. They're hard to find, though, so the chances of finding a low priced one are correspondingly low. Feel free to send a contribution through the button in the sidebar. Any help will be gratefully accepted.

I'd like to say something witty and fun, or at least interesting, but I just don't have the energy.

Keep cool!