a simple yarn

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”        —CS Lewis

The gift of the Korean teacup prompted a never-before-pondered realization.  I reach for a particular cup depending upon the mood.  I wonder if I am alone in this?  Hmmm…. I don’t know what it says about me psychologically, but I am sure that the drinks taste all the better for the lovely cup they’re in!

My daily cup of morning cappuccino bliss reposes in this cheerily, daisy-ed, oversized cuppa.  It’s a friendly start to each day.

In the evening, however, the cappuccino-shared-with-Husband-Will reflects the warm and pleasant aaah-end-of-the-day-and-the-kids-are-in-bed ceremony.

If it’s going to be a  day at home with many cups of tea in the offing, I naturally reach for this, whose mate sits in Holly’s kitchen in Dublin.

If I’m feeling under the weather and need a more medicinal treatment, this warm-yet-down-to-business-striped-nurse stands bedside.

When I’m rather blank and need a dose of inspiration, I find I pass other cups by for the more elaborate Irish artisan pottery cup.

And if ever the Queen or some other royal enters my cottage, I will naturally pull out the fancy Russian fine china cups.

So, after reflecting upon my own palette of cups, I wonder what your favourite cup is?  Better yet, why not send me a pic of your favourite cup and I’ll post a mosaic of them!  And even better yet, as we’re entering the festive season, I’m spontaneously thinking as I write this that I’ll give a 100gram skein (which is about 192 yds) of Irish Kilcarra aran weight yarn, randomly number generated, to one owner of a cup photograph, anywhere on the globe!  I’ll accept emails with pics until 6pm EST Thursday, 4 December, and pick a number that evening.  The result will be posted on Friday, 5 December, and the pressie will be enroute that day to beat the Christmas rush!  Photos can be sent to cheryl@asimpleyarn.net.

I can’t wait to see your personalities reflected in your cups!

It’s not the warp winding, loom dressing or weaving that trips me up…it’s the detail work.

I’m not sure, but I don’t think I’ve been gadding about.  You wouldn’t know it by the unfinished bits and pieces laying around though.  So while Wednesday is still a few days away, it’s time for a little catching up.

This scarf has been done…meaning ‘woven’…for a week or so.

But it’s the fringe-twisting…

and the photo-taking that seems to distract and de-rail.

Before busier days arrive, it’s time to get it up on Etsy.

Whew!  Now I know why Santa has all those elves!

…to overcome my unreasonable fear of the Metro.

Okay, I’ve been on the London Tube.  I’ve ridden the Dublin DART & LUAS.  I’ve even navigated the Moscow Metro.  But I have not been able to bring myself to climb aboard the DC Metro system.  It took Gina-Of-The-District to lure me into DC with an invitation to the National Gallery of Art.

It was worth every flutter of the heart and every fear of heading the wrong way.  Just wishin’ I hadn’t forgotten my camera.  Good ol’ iPhone…

The one and only Leonardo da Vinci on the North American continent.  Ginevra de’ Benci looks as enigmatical as Mona Lisa, wouldn’t you say?

I like a thrifty artist, using both sides of the ‘canvas.’  Ginevra reverse view…

Vermeer, always a favourite.

And a new interest…Flemish Peeter Neeffs The Elder’s view of Antwerp Cathedral.

You think he’d get tired of me and visit someone else.

There must be a mathematical equation in this somewhere…the more hurried I am, the less progress I make.  What should be looking like this—

Is looking more like this—

And what currently looks like a cheaply striped bargain basement bath towel, will soon to be a cool tri-colour houndstooth soft and woolly scarf.

I wonder if loom wrangling will ever be an Olympic sport?

…only different.

Husband-Will went to South Korea for a few days.

Three words escaped from my lips—‘cones of silk’.

Granted, he was busy meeting the Minister for Justice and Korea’s version of Jay Leno, which admittedly limits the time to hunt for silk.

He gave a valiant effort…but, none to be had in those short days.

I think he made a lovely substitute.

…Non-Photograph-On-Friday.

I really like this scarf.

The problem is I can’t photograph it.  Yes, I realize you are looking at a photo here, but bear with me.  I have tried time and again resulting in

a) blurry photos
b) washed out photos
c) that-certainly-isn’t-red-but-more-like-pukeish-orange photos

The latest attempt last Sunday found us visiting friends, and Husband-Will agreed to take along his camera.  Marble-Of-The-Greenwood also agreed to don the scarf and pose for pics.  Come home.  Transfer photos to Will’s iPhoto and then the  %$@@!%$*& photos refuse to transfer to my computer in any shape or form—only readable in teeny tiny thumbnail size.  Even the blog sized photos here are pushing the pixel envelope and certainly won’t work with ‘we-need-1000-pixel-width-Etsy’.  Grrrr……

If I keep repeating the mantra, this will all go away.  I love my Mac…I love my Mac…I love my Mac…

So, I guess this scarf is gonna be gifted for Christmas since it’s destined to be photo-resistant.

do you think every kitchen in the 1950s had one of these?

I really like these stools.  So practical, they seemed to occupy every vintage kitchen in America.  This one, too, is about 50 years old, or so my neighbor professed as he chucked it into his trash pile.  Being a skip (read ‘dumpster’) rat by nature, I clamped onto it, bartering a few homemade cookies in exchange.  Okay, I’m sure I could have had it for free but the cookie offering seemed a neighborly thing to do, right?

A bit of steel wool, water and elbow grease, with a future splash of paint—cream and black as originally intended—and my kitchen soon will be sporting a new step stool.  That would be a ‘nice-and-isn’t-it-lovely’ story if it ended there.  But as irony would have it, let’s back up a few hours that same day…

Coffee morning with Bt takes me to a breakfast shop at a crossroads somewhere in Maryland.  The front porch, decorated with the essential-warm-and-inviting-autumn-harvest-décor sports a sage green vintage kitchen stool.

‘How cool,’ I say, ‘I love these things!’ And we proceed to reminisce about our grandmothers’ kitchens and the like.  ‘I haven’t seen one of these in donkey’s years!  One of these days I’m going to have to hunt one down, because I’d really like to have one in my kitchen.’ And so I ramble on and on.

A few hours later find me walking the children home from school and as we pass the neighbor’s rubbish pile, voila…a vintage kitchen stool like I haven’t seen in yonks staring back at me.  (Anthropomorphically, I realize that stools don’t have eyes and therefore can’t ‘stare,’ but still…)

And there you have it, another little serendipity in this season of thankfulness.

‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’ right?  I think it’s equally true to say—‘Don’t judge a yarn by its skein’.

Long ago and far away I received this skein of yarn from Donyale at Indulging My Inner Knitter in the one-and-only-Knitter’s-Treat-Exchange.  It’s a very nice yarn with its burgundy and wheat coloured theme.  And so it sat.

The time came for that skein to be transformed into a ball, and oh my goodness…!

During the winding, separate colours magically blended into lovely, rich, deeply autumnal warmth.  Why has it been sitting on my shelf for so long!?!  Immediately I regretted not having knit them up into socks or something long ago, but now I’d committed it to the next weaving project.  Drat!

But happily, it’s making this multicoloured-warp-single-colour-weft-simple-twill project come to life.  It’s partnered with lighter, vibrant chartreuse wools for a framed edge and an equally chartreusey linen and fuzzy weft yarn combo.  It should be fairly soft and drapey…we’ll see.  Kinda wishin’ my hair was brown again, not gray, so I could wear this colour…  Curses!

Unless I kill ‘em first, that is.

The ball began to roll when Marble-Of-The-Greenwood gave me fresh herb plants and cool retro vintage spice jars for my birthday.  It’s a continuation of the freshly cut herb kick I’m on at present.  And now, with colder temperatures, I’ve collected what I can, dried the bountiful harvest and brought the rest inside for potted fresh herbs through the winter months.

There’s just one problem.

I am an unreformed indoor plant serial killer.  That may be due to the sad-but-true fact it doesn’t rain inside the house and I have to manually water the poor dears.  And having a shockingly short memory results in dried shriveled sticks in pots.

But this year’s gonna be different.  (I keep telling myself…)

To show how dedicated I am, I’m potting these darlings in antique canisters and using my best lightweight drainage secret compound (better known as Styrofoam).  I’ve created a permanent home in our sunroom to ensure they’ll be happy and healthy.

Now realistically, if we want to benefit from this toil, I’ll probably have to pay one of the Kiddies to keep ‘em watered…

Ah, the breakfast of champions.

I had a bright idea…well, it seemed bright at the time…I’m not so sure now.

Preface:
There is one small change to make in this space, as I realized during my mini-break.  A simpler way to life places different emphasis on crafting, fitting it into the bigger picture of life.  So, what used to be ‘Craft on Thursday’ is now broader in scope as ‘Simplify on Thursday’.  But that wasn’t my ‘bright idea’…

Hang On…A Regression Digression Before We Begin:
Avoca Café do lovely scones.  My favourite…sun-dried tomato and cheddar cheese.  Add a bit of cream cheese and a dollop of tomato chutney…yum!  Was thrilled to find the recipe in one of their tasty cookbooks.  (You realize I understand that it is not the actual cookbook that is tasty, but rather the outcome of the recipes, right?)  Of late, or at least I should say toward the end of our time in Dublin, Avoca had also started to add heaps of healthiness to these scones…poppy seeds, sunflower seeds, and pumpkin seeds.  And so the (ahem) ‘seed of an idea’ began to germinate in my head.

During jack-o-lantern-carving time, I was inspired to save the pumpkin seeds.  To be honest, I do this every year.  I muck out the pumpkins, decide I will be frightfully frugal and save the seeds for a bit of healthy snacking.  A splash of oil, a pinch of salt, a bit of baking and presto, nutritious nibbles, right?  Except, no one eats them.  Not even me.  You see, the thought of savory pumpkin seeds sounds better than they actually taste.

However, I vowed to overcome the let’s-just-chuck-‘em-in-the-compost-bin inevitability.  This year would be different.  After mucking and sorting the slippery little devils, I dried them in a warm oven sans oil and salt.  This year (heh, heh) I would use them in a recipe that I already love…those Avoca savory scones.  How simple!  How economical!  How prudent!

Hmm…I gotta confess what I didn’t count on was the time it would take to shell those pesky pips.  So what’s the outcome for me?  What might cost $3.99/pound will at this rate cost—taking into consideration the state minimum wage of about US$7.00/hour—about US$75.00 for approximately 7 ounces of seeds.

Sigh…frugality doesn’t always come cheap now, does it?