long nights.....

long dark cold winter nights! feeling like it's time to start preparing to celebrate the Winter Solstice (in 16 days). bring on the candles and green boughs.... bonfire and dancing!

devil sheep

living dangerously on the island of Crete, Greece

(thanks, Tracy!)

your list

for spinners/knitters... here's something for your wishlist: "all new Homespun Handknit" from Interweave Press, by Amy Clarke Moore. it has some really sweet projects in it, several of which i have already bookmarked!... quick and easy, down and dirty.. my kind of projects. seriously, i really like this book and i have absolutely no connection with this book or any hope of financial gain. just sayin' i like the book. i have the original of this book published umpty years ago and used it a lot... this one's better.

a definition

rogue |rōg|

noun

1 a dishonest or unprincipled man : you are a rogue and an embezzler.

• a person whose behavior one disapproves of but who is nonetheless likable or attractive (often used as a playful term of reproof) : Cenzo, you old rogue!

2 [usu. as adj. ] an elephant or other large wild animal driven away or living apart from the herd and having savage or destructive tendencies : a rogue elephant.

• a person or thing that behaves in an aberrant, faulty, or unpredictable way : he hacked into data and ran rogue programs.

• an inferior or defective specimen among many satisfactory ones, esp. a seedling or plant deviating from the standard variety.

verb [ trans. ]

remove inferior or defective plants or seedlings from (a crop).

ORIGIN mid 16th cent. (denoting an idle vagrant): probably from Latin rogare ‘beg, ask,’ and related to obsolete slang roger[vagrant beggar] (many such cant terms were introduced toward the middle of the 16th cent.).

**** ETA

if you were going to use this word in the title of your book, do you think you might check the definition just to be sure it says what you want it to say???... or, maybe she did?

catching up

busy week.... Kate came down tuesday and i didn't go to the fiber-heaven warehouse with her, showing amazing restraint! Wed. we went to NW Wools so she could talk to Linda about a custom dyeing order, then to lunch, then to clinic to take care of my headcold which went rogue and became pneumonia.... better living thru chemistry with antibiotics and prednisone and oh, yeah, the cough syrup! then Chris and kids came down and we had bd dinner for Kate at the chinese restaurant in Banks, with her family joining in! tgiving feast at Jen and Maggie's with most of the tribe there... great dinner and amazing desserts! Kate went back on friday with the kids and Chris stayed to make raki with Jim... good job! i just laid around and coughed... and behold... today on day 5 of prednisone, it has finally kicked in and i'm now at last feeling way much better than a sack o' dog mess. in fact, headed out soon for a round of shopping (not for gifts... this is household essentials like coffee, bread and juice)

while in Crete, Kate and i found a wonderful shop with linens and i got this table runner. it's linen with embroidered ribbon flowers and is really beautiful. nice thing about a table runner is it's less likely to get food and wine spilled on it, thus avoiding frequent washings... a good thing.

a couple of weeks ago, i picked these flowers from my garden. gotta love the mild PNW weather. not much left now tho... too much rain. but here's the photos to keep the vision alive!

the pitcher is one of my faves and was a huge bargain at good will... like $5.

mitts for Zylie

i did manage to do a little (very little) knitting while in Crete. happened to have some bright and pretty BFL yarn and decided to knit mitts for Zylie and used a different approach since i wasn't sure how many sts. to cast on. made 'em flat, then made a gusset thing from wrist to thumb to make them fit, left a place for the thumb and grafted above that for the hand portion. picked up around the opening and made a thumb. worked out great... and she loved 'em! considering the amount of yarn that went with me, i could have made at least 6 pairs of socks, a scarf and maybe another pair of mitts. but where yarn is concerned... it's always good to have lots!!

playing catch-upf

the last week we were in Crete, there was a raki-making party. Tracy (from pdx) was with us for a week that Chris and Kate were there, so she got in on this event. they were distilling the grapes that we helped "smash" the 2nd night we were in Vamos.

this is the still, outside of a large and quite nice taverna. the fermented grapes go in the kettle (the dome-shaped thing on the right), the steam goes thru tubing which is submerged in the water tank (behind the ladder), and the raki comes out thru a pipe... it's down low on the left in front of the tree. and that's the making of fire water lesson for this evening.

Aristotles was intrigued by the fire.... and stayed back a respectable distance from it.

the decor inside the taverna was interesting! this is the head of a critter which i think was a goat hanging on the post in the corner. (ummm.... rustic!)

on the wall beside the fireplace. fascinating... and i wish i could have found out something about it.

and the cozy fireplace. above it is a wood cut-out of the island

Crete. and then the ever handy rifle used to shoot into the

air as part of the evening celebration... late evening ....after lots of wine and raki!

we had a nice Greek dinner while the distilling was going on,

and it was an ok evening, but not at all like other raki parties

we have been to.... mostly Brits and Dutch. nothing wrong with

that, but missing the authentic Greek flavor we've enjoyed

previously. and no gun shots!!

the kitten

the stray kitten - Hercules.... well, turns out that it's a she-kitten, so i changed the name to Herculina. She still needed the power of the big name. By the time i left, she had become so tame that she'd crawl up on the chair with me when i was sitting on the patio! and she had fattened up (that's a relative term as she wasn't really fat, but had added enough weight that she wasn't just skin and bones any more!) on milk, yoghurt, cheese and meat scraps! and i miss her and hope she's gotten enough of a start that she can survive. Xanthippi said she'd go by and feed her when she was on her rounds to feed other strays around Vamos.

fiber news

Kate has opened her Etsy shop and has some really lovely handdyed spinning fibers and yarns for sale. I know you will love her work... I sure do. and i'm delighted that she will keep Woolgatherings going while i enjoy being retired. I hope she'll have as much fun as I did!