Tilt-a-whirl

My buddy, Tom Clark

Those of you who are fans and friends of Tom Clark, I need you to send bone and tissue knitting white light to him, through the ether. His Big Adventure as a guide/horse wrangler at a beautiful dude ranch in Montana ended on Wednesday when he was thrown from his mount. He is sporting 8 broken ribs, a pierced lung and a broken collarbone. I contacted his mom in Idaho today and found out that as I suspected, he is on his way to or is already in her care. She is an amazing woman, who in her 80's has more energy than most people my age. She will get him through this with her herbs and prayers. You go, Mama Clark and you STAY, Tom.

The smoke lifted further up into the atmosphere today and so things have been cooler and less yucky with the covering. This gave us an opportunity to go visit mom and to meet her new roommate. I am grateful for such a nice lady staying with her. They both have the need for oxygen and seem to be getting along quite nicely. It was a relief for ME because I was dreading this visit. No problem. We culminated the time down in Old Town by visiting my favorite indy book store, which is now called Raven's Tale...who can keep up with the changes around here??? I hope that they keep up the ideas that the previous owners had, specializing in books about travel in this area as well as a magnificent collection of children's books. I picked up the Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada (so that I can finally see pictures of the bugs that are throwing themselves against the windows at night, as well as finally knowing that my trees that turn that awesome yellow that I captured in Glory are...Mountain Maple.) as well as  a gorgeous new picture book for Schnickle called Little Bitty Mousie byJim Aylesworth and Michael Hague. He has worn me out, reading Bad Kitty, for the umpty umpth time. *I* was ready for a NEW book.
  Hey, Alison, I saw a book in the Placerville News today written by a Jepson. It was a very very big book about the flora of the Sierra. Must be a cousin, yes?

Time for some spinning...

UPDATE: I heard from Tom today and he is safely in Idaho with lots of love and care surrounding him. He has posted about his brief adventure and so you can click on his blog, right over there to the left.

Hunkering down

Whew! It is just hot and the air is stagnant and brown. It is interesting that there was an article in the the paper this morning about how in the 1800's this area was like this most of the time. California is built to burn, unfortunately, and with that totally freakish dry lightening storm a couple of weeks ago, what can burn is burning. I think that mother nature is really really pissed off at the lot of us.

Speaking of that...has anyone seen Pixar's Wall-E? I have to admit to having an uncontrollable leakage from my tear ducts as the credits were rolling to the sound of Peter Gabriel's raspy voice. This may be a G rated movie but the message is hardly G rated. We's the problem, McGee.

Problems...will anyone on a Mac please tell me whether you can see the pictures from this and the last post? We can't see them here and I know that folks on Window's machines can get the pictures with no problems. A certain someone told me that Uranus is screwing our technology and what can I say about that? Check, please!

It has been quite a long while since I talked about my mother.  She is sitting in her bed at the Placerville Pines, kind of like a Chinese Empress but without the bound feet and fancy duds. I go there once a week to talk about mostly nothing that she cares about, hoping that I can have the distraction of our daughter or someone else there to deflect the energy. A couple of weeks ago she announced that she figured that she would never come "home". I said, why do you think that and she pierced me with that "I'll get you my pretty" look and said, because I am not wanted. I blushed a deep crimson and could not do more than stammer around. I told her over and over again that she had to be able to get up and out of bed unaided for us to have her back at the house. The other alternative was to bring in a full time aid to live in. She says, Oh no...I don't want anyone there and I said that we could not give her the full time nursing that she needs. She told me to Quit Talking. SLAP. Rod kept talking about how if she is not happy where she is, he could look for another place and she told HIM to Quit Talking. I was flummoxed enough to just turn into that 16 year old again...Mama ain't happy. We left her to run an errand for her and when I came back alone, to bring her the things that she asked for, she took my hand and said...Lisa? You know that I love you, don't you? Sure mom, sure...the kiss of the abuser. So, I keep a buffer between me and her. It is too painful, otherwise. The therapist that visited today said that she seems very happy and not depressed one bit. The Chinese Empress. I think that she is only unhappy when I show up.

 I think back to her birthday, last August, when her best friend from the Opera days called to wish her a happy birthday. Mom listened and then just put the phone down on the bed. I thought that she was talking all of the time that I left her alone but realized that she had just laid the phone down without hanging up. Her friend called back, horrified. She told me to put my mother in a home. I laughed it off at that time, figuring that this was my lot in life. She put HERSELF in a home. She was never a warm fuzzy woman. She would get perturbed at the kids because they did not fawn all over her but they were scared to death of her. I was the only one that could be Cinderella. They are polite but only see her as a kindness to me. Sad, isn't it? This woman created this life and is now happy enough with strangers changing her diapers and bringing her food. I never thought that I would see the day that the Steel Trap Mind would allow this. There you have it but there is still enough of My Mother in there to scare the crap out of me.

On to nicer things. I took a new shot of the fabulous Ultrafine Merino handspun that was in the last post. This is the fiber that goes directly to Italy for the mills over there and my friend Melissa scores an itty bitty amount of it for we spinners. It is unbelievably soft and that is that. Oh yeah and this fiber costs almost 4 times as much as plain old superfine merino but who's counting? :o)

I have a Guest Spinner now. Christine the Cheeky Redhead has finished a second project for me and so it is about time I showed you what she did with the first Superwash Merino in the Evah-glade colorway. I am going to have Holly put this and the other yarn up on the site very soon. Most of the skeins that Christine spun are about 100 grams and 205 yards,at what I would call a sport to DK weight. A couple of them are a bit more dramatic in their coloring, like the one at the top, but the rest are pretty much the same look. This will give you an idea of how this fiber spins up, if you have been staring at it in the unspun form.

It is a lovely job.

One last confession. I became hooked on The Bachelorette this season. I guess that we all became hooked on it because once Deanna whittled the pack down to the last few guys, we were pulling for Jason from Seattle. What a stunning shock to see that she chose Jessie, the equally sweet snowboarder from Colorado. I was sick for Jason, glad that she eschewed the slightly off-kilter Jeremy and very happy for the couple that look to be very much smitten. The last two men really put their hearts on the line and I am glad to hear that the sweet and handsome young dad from Seattle is not beyond repair after this heartbreaking ending. I can only imagine that he is going to have a crowd of women following him everywhere like in those Verizon commercials with the techs hanging out of the trees. Women in the audience last night were swooning. There you have it. A day full of confessions. It must be the hot sweaty smoke...

Do you remember the day?

I am talking about the day that you got your first tricycle? I never had the privilege of owning such a thing, growing up in a place where the streets were too narrow or whatever the excuse was that allowed my mother to deny me such a pleasure. I got some of that pleasure back in spades yesterday when the little kid sidled up to his Retro Red Radio Flyer. He turned his back on it at first, being totally overwhelmed with the idea of it. He kept turning around for a quick glance and then back around he went. We finally stopped staring at him and he walked around and around it, not daring to touch this thing. I came back in here, in the office, where I could look out into the driveway. Hmmm, what's that? Could it be? He touched the tassels and a HUGE grin pulled in my favorite dimple on his cheek. SCORE! Grampy found the kid in himself as well.

Somehow, I think that Rod became a kid again at that very moment. What do you think?

It is a good thing that these guys got to have these moments outside yesterday, before the air quality people gave another red alert day. This is just crazy. In all of my long life in California, this is the longest that I remember days like this, choking on smoke. My heart goes out to all who are living on top of this stuff and have already lost their homes. The heroic firefighters just keep going and going and going and I just do not know how they handle the pounds of particulates that are hanging in the air. Our local Starbucks (yes, I admit that I LIKE THEIR COFFEE) had a red wagon piled high with donations of coffee destined for the firefighters up north of us. We taught the Schnickle about how important it is to give our thanks and so a couple of bags of coffee went on the pile yesterday. THANK YOU to all of the men and women on the fire lines. We who live in the forests blow you kisses.

I have been doing a lot of spinning lately but these skeins have had requests that prompted them. I had that really really big project using the magnificent Ultrafine merino in Petroglyph. I can't believe that I spun over 2000 yards of two ply yarn but there you have it. We'll see how much of it goes to live with Betty and how much will then be up for grabs so stay tuned on the website.

I also did a fun project using the new Blue Faced Leicester in Aww-tum. This is an 8 ounce skein, using two "littermates" from the first dye run I did with this colorway on fiber. I think that it is just on fire. Sue has first dibs! and has just taken it.

Rod and I were on our own on the fourth and so I decided to take a real day off, which meant that I did not come in here at all to check email and take care of orders. I know...SHOCK! We decided to take the hybrid out on a day trip and so we headed up and away from town on Newtown Road, headed past the staging area of the Pleasant Valley parade (you know, the kind with kids in wagons) and on up Sly Park Road toward Pollock Pines. We hung a right at the beautiful reservoir lake and drove onto the surprising and almost deserted Mormon Emigrant Trail (hey Alison...how many of your relatives rattled along this road before it became a fantastic paved road?) and on up to about 7500 feet to a point where the native trees at this altitude and particular area are what looked like Noble Fir or Silvertip...you know, MY kind of Christmas tree. I know, this place is just right up there. Who knew? We got on to highway 88 and headed east to travel through the mountains and some more than spectacular vistas of firs and bare granite. The smoke was at bay here and so the day was one of open windows and deep breaths. Once we got down into the Carson Valley, we marvelled at the beauty of the place and then hung a left and went up and over the Kingsbury Grade, which is a magnificent mountain road that takes up past Heavenly and down into the east end of South Shore. I'm telling you, this is a beautiful and magical place we live in.

We headed up highway 50 and went all of the way to the really really funky old old old goldrush/silverrush town of Virginia City because Rod wanted to check out the steam train that runs there. Of course we drove smack dab into the midst of an old fashioned home town parade and so we vowed to come back another day, when we would have the privilege of wandering these streets and taking a ride on this wonderful train.

Now I am back at work and readying things for another group of folks heading up tomorrow. It will be cool and lovely inside the studio. Not to worry. I want to see spinning wheels whirring, people!

Cough Cough Gag

What in the WORLD? We had such a lovely lovely day at the shores of the south fork of the American River on Saturday. We took the Schnickle and his mama down to the spot where the S-Man and his Grampy tossed rocks into the river, just for the Halibut. There were oodles and oodles of big fat rubber rafts, each with a load of 7, that spent a good amount of time getting their bearings or jumping into the water or just splashing one another in front of us, there in the quiet part of the river, in Coloma. Yes, Coloma...the place where the Gold Rush began and the place where the sand still glitters a bit.
 

These two are just two peas, I tell ya. It doesn't seem possible that the Schnickle is only 2 1/2 when I hear some of the hilarious things he comes up with. He adored telling me a funny story and then retelling it 6 more times with the addition of HAH! to let us know that it was still a great joke.

Needless to say, we had a most magnificent day with just enough sun and fresh air. It was the late afternoon that tore it for us. Hmmm, hot hot hot and weird out. The clouds kept blowing in, threatening SOMETHING. They gave us something, all right...boy oh boy. We heard them roll in and the dry lightening storm did its damage. Over 600 fires were started here, in this bone dry state (I know...those of you in the Mississippi basin are saying...SO???) It is dry dry dry out there, so dry that our fork of the Weber Creek is drying up and it is not even July! Let's just say that I am thankful for a prolific well and a lifetime of water conservation practices, which keep me from putting in Water Features and lawns and crap like that. Unh uh. It is BROWN outside, brown because northern California is burning. Any wonder why we understand the Aussies so well? Bush fires...grass fires...all the same. Welcome to Summer. The Tahoe basin Angora Fire was just a year ago. Rod has been doing good forest management close to the house but we have a great deal of our forest that needs a good going over...and not by Mother Nature.

The garden got a good going-over by Bambi and his sister, Boopsie. They decided to have a nice tasting session and so here are a couple of the plants that they eschewed!

Oh yeah...Rod surprised me with a bit of whimsy, since I have been mooning over the goats in Wild Fibers magazine, lately. Even these guys could not protect my garden.

Baaaaaaaaaah...cough cough sputter.

Too Bad, So Sad

Well, NUTS...we found out that the Fabulous Fiber Fest in Santa Monica has been canceled. I am so sorry for the promoter, who says that her health is the stumbling block. I am sorry for all of us, who had found a way to come to the Southern California without having to go through the Expensive PITA that is the Juried Craft Show down there. There are three of us, Sheila and Michael Ernst, Robin Senour of Sacred Laughter and of course yours truly and the Mister who are escapees from that world..well, Robin is still going so I can't lump her in with US. :o) I am sad that I won't be able to see all of the wonderful and loyal people who have waited for us to come back, after we eschewed the two shows at the Civic. Now we have nothing down there. Boo HOO!

I feel a door close and ask where the draft is coming from...last year when I was wait listed for Black Sheep, I figured that perhaps there was something else afoot...hmmm, it was THIS place. One year exactly, tomorrow. I wish Sheila and Michael and very successful show!

Now then. We went to the fair this weekend, Rod and I. We went by OURSELVES as grown-ups and got to see a band from our youth, Pablo Cruise. It was a treat to find them at the El Dorado County Fair and looking and sounding so great. We also got to meet the people that I spent the morning with today. I finally found the members of the Hangtown Fiber Guild and today I went to my first gathering and enjoyed the heck out meeting the people in this group. They did so well at the fair that they one first place of all of the exhibits.  Perhaps NEXT year, you will find me hanging out at the fair, too!

Here is some stuff that I have been spinning for someone. It is some Ultra Fine Merino fiber that is dyed in the Petroglyph colorway. This is the first big bobbin (probably about 7 ounces) nesting in pile for this evening's spinning. It is so soft and delicious.

I have another shot here for you. This guy came out of that huge pile of logs that the backhoe deposited in the behind the house this winter. I was working at the computer and saw Rod coming across the driveway cupping his gloved hands and raising his eyebrows at me. Hmmm...who could it be now? Toadalicious. He now lives down by the creek. Isn't he KEWT?

A lovely few days

Well, they made it! All of the way up and over the Sierra from Lake Tahoe to Placerville. You can find out about the Highway 50 Wagon Train here. http://www.hwy50wagontrain.com/ We were thrilled to hang out in the parking lot of the Mountain Democrat on Saturday morning, listening to wonderful country music, a fellow who sang traditional songs while teaching about the origin of such songs and the instruments that he used, as well as the funny and LOUD gunfights put on by the local re-enactors. A hotdog and a beer and we were all set. It was a wonderful day.

Sunday was spent at our first Rivercats minor league baseball game. This is the Sacramento team that feeds into the Oakland A's. Lauren treated us to the tickets and we had fun eating a lot of ballpark food, sporting new and groovy hats and a big orange foam finger. What else could be so great on a Sunday? It is a terrific ballpark, with all of the trimmings. This is Dinger, Lauren and Schnickle!

Monday was another big day, Chez Souza. The first wonderful group graced us with a visit, coming up from the valley. These 7 ladies tested the theory that if we built it, they would come. Thanks so much for piling into the cars to make the trek to the woods. The Schnickle even made an appearance when he was sent home from school for being a Biter. Awww, nuts. It was cool though, being able to share the real kid with some real people. Rod snapped a photo of the bunch of us to commemorate our first official visitors. Many thanks, Ladies. Many thanks.

Tomorrow...we take the Schnickle to his and OUR first El Dorado County Fair! I tell you, I am finally feeling like a member of the community and we are mighty proud to be Placerville residents.

Eye Candy

I finished spinning this stuff last night and my legs were vibrating when I finished loading the plied bobbin on the Rose. 7.2 ounces of yummalicious BFL that, after looking at it today, in the skein, decided that it needed to be called High Desert. I think that it is a perfect name.

Now then, I don't know if you have noticed the cute little button over there on the left, the one that says something about a NEWSLETTER. Mmm-hmmm. People have been signing up for my mailing list forever and I have dilly-dallied around with email notes every once in awhile. Welllll, the other day, Holly helped me to create this awesome newsletter with pictures and links and everything! Whoopee! If you would like to be kept up to date once in awhile about the new stuff or sales or incentives or anything like that, just click on that button over there and sign up! The gist of the newsletter was that we are excited about being here for a year this month and in honor of that, I am offering free shipping to the states and discounted shipping out of the country...IF you use the magic word, "Anniversary1" in the comments box when you order this month.

One last thing. Remember the passel of wild turkeys that hung around this winter? I call them The Daters because they were group dating before the gobblers started to show off. Well, one of the girls got knocked up :o) and brought her four cute little babies down to the feeding station tonight. Oh my word, they are the cutest little things! They can FLY already...too cool. Mama brought them right up to the back porch and with the open window, I got to congratulate her on her progeny. They hung out for about 20 minutes and ambled off. This is the third bird type to return to us with their babies. Last year, a couple of magnificent grossbeaks came to the feeder for awhile last summer and then disappeared. We also had little junco's all winter and within the past week there have been oodles of both types of birds bringing their babes to the back yard. It thrills me to no end because the land was pretty much bereft of birds last summer. NOW, we have the trees alive with song and are saluted by the hummers and robins and goldfinches. What I worried about, having no birds come out of the canopy, turned out to be silly. I have begun to build a garden and they are coming down to investigate. Thanks to Mother Nature for a magnificent show. It's all that I could have hoped for.

The Wagon Train is coming!

We get a couple of newspapers here at Chez Souza. I have to walk all of the way down there to get them in the morning and today the headlines were bold about Mr Obama, in the Chronicle and also in the Sacramento Bee (this paper is going to go away). Yup...politics. I pulled off the blue wrapper of The Mountain Democrat and there was the picture to thrill me to the marrow...the reason that I moved up here.

When I read that this annual event was going to be happening on a Mommy Weekend for Mr Schnickle, I could not wait to participate in the festivities. We were up here a couple of weeks later last year and so this is the first year to be a Placerville resident, cheering on the arrival of the wagons (there are fewer of them this year, due to the costs involved in such an endeavor) making the trek from Nevada, west on highway 50. This photo shows the wagons heading west toward Echo Summit and that is Lake Tahoe in the background. Thrilling. I just know that I will get all teary eyed when I see them this Saturday, rolling in to town for the festivities that welcome them, there in the parking lot of the newspaper, the oldest in the west. I just love this stuff...

So, I promised photos of color, didn't I? Here is some garden color, to begin with.

Let's see, how about some handspun yarn? Here is some BFL in Mardi Gras.

Here are some new colors of Queenstown. Poiple, Garnet and North Sea.

That is all...you may now talk amongst yourselves. :o)

LA and plastic surgery...

I am feeling my age a bit more these days, having an issue with the finger that lets my husband know that he is Number One on occasion...trigger finger. The loss of estrogen is finally catching up with me now and there is not one thing that I am willing to do about it, cuz I am not going under the knife or having some obnoxious poisonous crud shot in my skin to stop wrinkles. Those lines are from living, laughing, loving and scowling.

I feel like I must write about this today because I happened to lie down on the couch with Mom's Maine Coon for a little rest. I turned on the tube and here was General Hospital, a soap that I have watched off and on since I was a teenager but had not tuned in for well over a year. There was quite a bit of reflection on the screen and normally this would help me to zonk out for a minute or ten, simply because I would be lulled to sleep by the sound of the talking and not the sight. I heard the voice and focused a bit, recognizing the sound as coming from Jackie Z, a long time actress on this soap and someone that I had seen many times in Santa Monica when we showed my work at the Contemporary Crafts Market. Well, the voice was there but where was Jackie? I just winced when I saw the person that the familiar voice came from because this was a strange version of the woman who had some character to her face. Jackie got mugged by a plastic surgeon. I am not saying this to be mean. I was truly shocked and would have loved to tackle her before she ever got near whatever butcher did this to her.

Why do we as women of a certain age, whether in the arts or just in a certain society feel that it is necessary to allow someone to cut, nip and tuck us into some sad version of ourselves, all in the hope of remaining "young enough" to compete with much younger actors. I blame Hollywood, once again. Jackie was a beautiful woman of a certain age, just like several other actors that are no longer the young ones. Who is telling these people that they are not worth anything if they don't paralyze their faces or plump every line and lip bit? I, for one, love to see a beautiful face with character...someone like Julie Christie or Jackie Bissett.

It just made me sad and mad, all at the same time.

Alright, I promise to step off of the soapbox and show pictures of color and fibery goodness tomorrow. Until then...keep yer chins up, girls.

Guilty Pleasure...

I have to tell you that I am sad to see the end of one of the best seasons of American Idol. There, I said it...I loved last night's show, all the way down to the uber hokey and WTF moment with the USC marching band doing a Tusk with the strange little man in the white suit, doing the medley of his "hit".

Those of you who have only know me for the last 25 years never saw the young woman who would probably would have given one of her kidneys for the opportunity of this crazy franchise. Yes people...I used to be a singer in a bunch of bands, when I was young and cute and po'. Those were the days but when I got to be 30 and had not Made It, I grew up and got busy knitting...the rest is history.

So, back to Idol. I love David Cook. The weird thing is that as much as I felt his star quality, I almost hoped that he would NOT get the nod, so that he would not have to sing some hokey, dumbass song concocted by a contract writer. I wanted him to just stand there, singing his heart out with things like Billy Jean (yes, I have it on my IPod, thank you very much...and like a teenager, I played it over and over because it was THAT good.) and his version of Hello. He was very much at ease last night and probably because he figured that the boy wonder had it sewn up, he relaxed and had a LOT of fun with ZZ Top and all of the other stuff that he sang. My ear went up when I heard Seacrest say that someone won by 12 million votes and that this had been a circuit breaker. Hmmm...could it be? Nah...it is going to be The Boy.


Stars, more stars, hilariously silly bit by the unlikely Pips and then GEORGE MICHAEL. Oh my word. It stopped me spinning and moved me into the big chair in front of the TV. I was spellbound. None of us had seen him in a long time and my daughter and I both said...he looks ill. He looks capital I ill. Then after the first few croaky notes ( he said that he had a cold), the most phenomenal song began to emerge from this man. I saw tears streaming down Paula's cheeks and I must admit that I got choked up as well. The man brought the house down and what better way to lead into the reading of the card that blew everybody's mind...David COOK. Oh my word, I felt like he was MY kid...and what a moment for his mother. This man is no kid...he is an old soul with the most remarkable stage presence and I can't WAIT to see what comes from him, as an artist. I hope that he takes care of his instrument and stands up to the schlockmeisters when shaping his career. To me, this was a really really sweet moment and it literally brought tears to my eyes.
  Guilty pleasure? Yes, utterly. I had a grin from ear to ear and did not want it to end. Wow! Wow and congratulations to a fine young man who went through the process of this grueling test and emerged as himself...always himself.