Bits and Pieces of Life

Living with ME/CFS and endometriosis. Working in human services, playing with string in my free time. I'm also a wife and a mom and a nerd.

[yarnaddiction]

More Tour de Fleecing!

99 yards of 3-ply, 20 yards of 2-ply. I have some singles left on one bobbin that I plan to wind into a center pull ball and do as another 2 ply.

(CBD massage oil and sleeping in splints are a girl's best friend)

[dragon-in-a-fez]

Canada has given the English language some top-tier words I wish other countries would adopt. anyway I'm off to the parkade in my toque and bunnyhug

[hollowedskin]

Can we get a definition of these? They sound like things that if I just googled them I would get an approximation, but that there are really specific parts that a generalisation won't cover.

[weirdoughnut]

Parkades are car parks/multi-storey garages, above and/or below ground. They may or may not have fees, but they typically do. Uncommonly, parkades will have spaces just for small cars; most (if not all) have a handful of disabled parking.

Toque (pronounced "tuuk" ("oo" sound) or "took" (like the verb*) is a French loanword approximately translatable to "beanie". Toques refer to knitted caps specifically made for winter. This typically excludes smaller beanies used primarily to accessorize; you can still refer to any knitted cap as a toque and be understood, but some may side-eye you. The sincerity of this side-eye is a potential flag for how nationalist a Canadian is.

I've never heard bunnyhug used organically in a sentence, but it rings a bell. As per a 2023 study (Wikipedia), it seems to be a Saskatchewan thing; some Western Canadians may also use kangaroo jacket, referring to the pouch-like front pocket, but at that point I have to wonder if its all the Australian migrants they get in Alberta. "Hoodie" is a more popular synonym.

* This pronunciation is more rural/metro Canadian. (Yes, rural towns and gigantic cities are prone to having a significant population with the same stereotypical accent, while mid-large cities just skip out on it. This may or may not be untrue in Saskatchewan and BC. Welcome to Canada.)

[auressea]

*rolls up sleeves* alllllright! I'm wading in with some other 'Canadianisms'. there's "Loonie" and "Toonie" ,"Mountie", "Canuck" and "Hydro". {location and region DO matter AND also, whatever cool slang is going on with teenagers is always "new"} *I'm born and raised Canadian West Coast.

Indigenous words: canoe, kayak, toboggan, anorak, husky, igloo, malamute, parka, muskeg, mocassin, and mukluk.

Skookum, Tyee, (the) chuck, geoduck, , Chinook, (PNW) Toronto is prone to generating a LOT of it's own jargon. They're famously 'full-of-themselves' as the 'center of the country'. (jk) many words that OTHER countries think of as stereotypical to Canada, are really from Ontario. Of course there's Québécois; which is NOT spoken universally across Canada. it's a fantastic dialect of french and truly unique. the East Coast also has many very specific dialects and regions idioms from their origin populations.

[iplaywithstring]

East coast- we don't say bunny hug but we do say chesterfield (for a couch), door yard (front yard)

There's also a lot of Acadian loan words but that really depends on the area

[golden-pothos]

I bought a fleece!!! It’s a BFL and abt 3lbs and from a sheep named blue it’s so gorgeous

I love the crimp structure it’s so pretty :) any tips on processing BFL are greatly appreciated I’ve never processed a fleece before!

[uoftentimes]

Hello! Congratulations on such a beautiful fleece!

How you process it depends a lot of what you like! Personally I like a fair bit on lanolin in my fiber, so for anything that is not out right sticky with lanolin I do a cold wash process

However! Many folks do not like this! To find out try washing a small section in a cold method and the other in a hot scouring and spin them up. Or for some people even just feeling the washed fiber will tell them a lot, especially if they hate the lanolin feeling.

Here is are a few videos of processing with a hot scouring method

And here is a video of someone processing BFL post washing.

How you want to prep the washed fiber is completely up to your preferred spinning methods/what tools you have available.

A lot of carding can be done with inexpensive dog brushes and you can always just open up the locks and spin like from the lock. Personally I find long stable length fiber tricky on carders but that might just be me!

Each preparation method will want to spin in its own way!

I would definitely not stress about finding the perfect method, but rather experiment. Maybe Pull off a section and try a few different prep methods? When I am processing a new fleece type I normally do that and do a handful of test spins to see which is like best. Nothing is more disappointing that putting dozens of hours in the prep that it turns out you hate to spin!

Personally for BFL I like a combed prep, but spinning from a well cut lock can be quite similar as the fibers are all aligned still. Combs are wonderful but if you cant find them used they are quite pricey.

I hope this helps some!

[fountaindrinker]

nobody tell my incoming nephew but i made him a baby blanket

[milkweedman]

So the bats I'm spinning for TDF this year require a little bit of prep

They come with some BFL on either side (probably as a barrier because trying to pull straight southdown off of carding cloth without it ripping to shreds is very difficult), which for all the other colorways I've bought from this shephard is great, but with this one it has kind of a candy cane effect once spun, which isn't what I'm going for.

Luckily it peels right off. There's some stray BFL but not enough to bother me.

I decided to just process all of the batts at once so that I don't have an extra step to cause executive function problems later.

Anyway here was the result. I was kind of worried when I saw how big the BFL pile was (basically the same size as the southdown !), but I weighed both and theres approximately 350 grams/12.5oz of southdown and 80 grams/2.75oz of BFL, so the BFL's volume is almost entirely air.

I'm thinking if I finish the southdown with time to spare (which I ought to), I'll blend something with the BFL and spin that next so that it doesn't take up tons of room in my storage. It has lots of flecks of red in it which should be an interesting effect, just have to figure out what to blend it with.

(And yes, this huge pillow of southdown batts was extremely satisfying to squish)

[loomingtranssexual]

i’ve been up to a lot but this tea towel i wove today is the most important thing

plain weave on a mixed straight twill & point twill warp, i might post the twill ones but this is honestly my favorite of the bunch lol. i love dense warps i love rep weave & shadow weave & this is…. not really either but those two brain cells are definitely rubbing together.

ok back to reblogs see you in a month probably

[iplaywithstring]

Another offer on another house has been submitted. We will hear if it's been accepted within 48 hours

I found a used car that is the same model as my old one but one year newer that is priced within the payout amount we got from insurance - going to look at that today.

Also selling my floor loom today - recognized that a table loom will be better on my joints.

And then maybe? things will slow down a bit and there will be less things to figure out?

[iplaywithstring]

Fun things to consider - when you're in the midst of buying a house and one of your kids is in a car accident where no one gets hurt but your car is still a write off and you're getting a payout that will help getting a new car but you can't add a loan or your mortgage won't get approved

[luna-azzurra]

What helped me write trauma better is remembering that the nervous system learns predictions. If danger used to come after quiet, calm can feel threatening. If kindness used to come with a price, kindness can feel suspicious. So healing is not just “they know they’re safe now.” Healing is the slow, annoying, deeply unfair process of teaching the body that the old prediction is not always the present truth.

[brenyi]

morales on the floor but at least we have crafts

[lacewise]

If someone ever tells you they’ve “reached a good place to stop” in lace they either mean “the thread is running out and I don’t want to do a changeover” or “I’ve done something I shouldn’t and have decided to make it my future self’s problem”

[the-fibre-stuff]

See, *this* is how you know that lacemakers have more patience than the rest of us. Knitters just announce that their project is going into timeout.

[disabled-dyke]

begging everyone this disability pride month to stop using just ‘CFS’ when you’re talking about myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS, because unfortunately ME is also just a word). CFS, chronic fatigue syndrome, completely misrepresents the full disease, making it seem like it’s just ‘tired all the time’. please look up dr fauci’s smear campaign against this illness and why CFS was chosen as a name.

[iplaywithstring]

Friendly reminder to periodically clean out your weaving bench because you never know, someday you might be selling it and have to clean it out and you don't want to be overwhelmed and horrified by what you find in there

[iplaywithstring]

Does anyone else get foot spasms that put their toes in odd positions?

That's not how my toes usually look and i cant move them. It's quite painful (like a Charlie horse) but doesn't usually last more than a couple minutes. Sometimes it's so bad I have to pop my toes back into place.

It's been happening a lot lately and I'm not sure what to do about it.

[hawksongweaving]

Experimenting with joining infinity scarves! This joining is two scraps of vintage lace made in New England (at least according to the label on them at the thrift store, but I tend to trust that thrift store) and a hand embroidered patch made by one of my favorite regular customers. I'll work on cross stitch while I'm at Markets and she'll come see my progress and hand me some of her newest work "Now don't say no, this stuff won't do me any good just laying around. Go and make something with it." (So much of my business is based on saying "Yes Ma'am" to older women!)

[ayeforscotland]

To miscarriage anon (cw miscarriage, pregnancy, birth, stillbirth):

I lost my daughter at 36 weeks. I also lost a much-wanted pregnancy at 5 weeks. I have given birth 3 times. I don't have tags routinely blocked but there are some days when any of it - even mentions of pregnancy - are too much. I come on here for fun and to relax, and if some days I need to protect myself that bit more, I'm grateful to the bloggers who tag appropriately and let me do that. And that 5 week pregnancy? Yes, they were just a ball of cells, but they were *my* ball of cells with a whole lot of joy and hope attached. I am 100% pro choice, but the idea that early losses can't hurt or have lasting effects is just ridiculous.

💙💙💙💙💙

[iplaywithstring]

Pregnancy loss - especially early loss - can be what's called "disenfranchised grief" because the loss isn't always acknowledged, or when it is, it's seen as less of a loss or not a "real" loss.

It's especially complicated in pro-choice spaces, because so much emphasis is placed on the right to choose that it can seem like there shouldn't be a connection to the baby as a baby, because that feeds into pro-life propaganda.

The reality is, it's a baby when the parent decides it's a baby. People who choose abortion can also feel grief - even when it's the right choice and there isn't a sense of regret. The feeling of loss is recognizing the potential, the possible future that will never exist.

A newer understanding of grief that I've seen recently is that grief is all the love that we didn't get to share/experience. That's true no matter the gestational age or the circumstances around the pregnancy loss.

[iplaywithstring]

sometimes, you just have to shovel shit.

Life will dump shit on you, and it's not your fault but you've still got to shovel it, because the only other option is to drown in it.

and it's exhausting and it's unfair and it would be really nice if you didn't have to shovel the shit, but the reality is that's what you have to do.