Spun out

Happy new year, everyone! I'll start off with that.

Last night, I was at Noel's house with Justin and Meridel, and we rosed, budded, and thorned a reflection of 2009.

Last year included so many brilliant, beautiful, and happy things, and also a lot of horrible things. But then I suppose the point of rose-bud-thorn is that, like Meridel said last night, the thorns end up sometimes changing their mind and turning roses for the next year. They are places to look for buds in.

I spent New Year's with my sister and her friends Erica and Jenny. There was talk early in the evening (that is, Carrie Paulette, around 9:30 PM) of going to a masquerade ball. This didn't end up panning out, but Erica did have the supplies to make polymer-clay masks! That was an unexpected and unfamiliar project for me. The mask I made ended up being a little too brittle to be practical, but then it was the first time I'd used polymer clay in years, and never had I tried to make something wearable out of it before.



I finished spinning my first ball of yarn! On December 27th, I worked hard to finish first the spinning and then the plying of the whole batch of roving. Plying means spinning two already-spun yarns together to make a thicker, stronger yarn. You ply the yarns with an opposite twist to the twist with which you spin the two component yarns, so the two twist directions neutralize each other and give you a yarn that doesn't crazily curl!

Once I'd plied my yarn, I needed to wind it on the back of a chair, measure it, and tie the skein. Then, I washed the skein in just a tiny bit of detergent and water, which set the twist of the yarn so that it wouldn't unravel when I released the tension on it.

Then, Momo, Dad, and I left to Kansas while my yarn dried. I returned on December 31 at 5AM and wound this ball. Yay!!! I'm pleased and super excited to try knitting with it! Right now, I'm thinking about doing a hat with it.

In other knitting news, the other day Laura modeled the leg-warmers I'd knitting for her so that I could awkwardly take pictures of her wearing them. I inserted these into the pattern I'd written, and then I posted it.

Once I'd uploaded the pattern, I submitted it officially to Ravelry, and so now the pattern shows up on my Ravelry profile as one of my "featured designs." This is really exciting for me! I'd really like to continue writing patterns and hopefully doing something that somebody will enjoy.



During 2008, my big project was Picture of the Day. I took pictures each day of anything significant, and at the end of each day I chose one picture to represent the day. I had artistic pictures, goofy pictures, and pictures of things significant that had happened. Anyway, I put these all together in a folder and labled it the Pictures of the Days. In 2009 I didn't do this anymore and took correspondingly less pictures. But since January 1st, 2008 my camera is basically perpetually in my pocket.

I missed Picture of the Day last year. So this year, I'm starting it up again. Here's my Picture of the Day for January 1st, 2010:


It's Noel doing the dance from Bride and Prejudice. YAY!!!!

love, Jimmy

Back from Boston and breaking the blog

Okay, so here is the Break Blog. This blog is meant to help motivate me, because here's the deal:

Last summer, I went on the Carleton English program to Ireland. We traveled around the West, read Ulysses in Dublin, met Seamus Heaney, sauteed a lot of vegetables, and very much more. But because Carleton has that strange rule that you can only attend 12 terms during your four years there, all of us on the Ireland program have to take a term off sometime this year. So I'm taking off the winter term, during which I'll be hanging at home and visiting Carleton as much as I can.

I really want to be productive during my super-long old break, and I've got lots of projects I want to embark on that I've been wanting to for ages, just haven't had the time. Now is my chance.

But I realize this self-motivating business is harder than I'd like it to be. So I'm blogging my break, posting my projects, and hoping this will somehow motivate me to keep up the pace! Mostly though, this blog will do nothing if you guys don't read it and squabble when I don't post! Because no post possibly pertains poor productivity!

Thank you all so much!

love, Jimmy

ps: This picture is the Picture of the Day from December 19, 2008. I just got home from Boston this afternoon and came home to find the Christmas lights set up again. They made me think of this picture. : )