Not exactly as sick as I thought I was going to be (I even rescheduled a dentist appointment in the expectation of Nose Goblins that never quite got it together in strength, dammit), but still under-the-weather enough to be sluggish. I've got a ticket to "King Tut" for Monday, though, so watch me be prostrated with coughing by then.
So, the weekend: Mum had started coming down with The Cold on Wednesday, but since I hadn't been able to find alternate transit up to Wisconsin for the WCKG retreat, we decided to make a weekend of it and headed out Friday afternoon, managing despite Mapquest's best tries at losing us in a godforsaken cow-hole somewhere to make it to scenic New Glarus only half an hour after dinner had started. Out of respect for the guest lecturer, Shetland-lace expert Hazel Carter, I restrained my initial impulse to take off after dinner to watch the Doctor Who season two premiere which some thoughtless non-geek had scheduled the retreat on top of, and instead listened dutifully if a wee bit distracted to the presentation on the history and construction of Shetland lace shawls. At least, I think that was what it was about, I really oughtn't to have stayed up all night the night before... Fortunately for my geekly proclivities, the meeting broke up just in time for the late repeat. (As to the show itself: I suppose one must give Tennant the benefit of the doubt for now, but so far I still prefer Eccleston's portrayal of a fragile veneer of manic humour that could blow at any moment to Tennant's more comic interpretation of the role; if he can manage to turn the dial back a little from "out-and-out farce" I'd be a little happier about it, I think.)
Saturday I had been placed into the afternoon session of the yarn-dyeing class, but still managed to wake up at an unholy hour for no good reason anyway, and decided to have a look around scenic New Glarus after a breakfast that tilted heavily towards the "pastries" food-group. Scenic New Glarus, it turns out, is so small that the grocery store across the way from the hotel still hires disaffected local teens to bag their groceries. After driving around for about ten minutes the City Mice said "bugger this" and headed out to view some of the other local sights, such as the allegedly large shoe-store in Black Earth and the fabled Mustard Museum of Mount Horeb, which would have been more interesting to me if I had any particular fondness for the condiment, but did rate high enough on the kitsch scale to occasion the dreaded "I'm so blogging this" aside from This Writer.
The yarn-dyeing class took place at Blackberry Ridge Woolen Mill, a small operation that processes fleeces into yarn for small independent sheep-growers; there were no actual sheep on the premises, alas, so you will be spared that whole sideline of off-color remarks. After being left to sack and pillage the mill's yarn-shop for a while as the morning class finished up, the afternoon group got the shearing-to-yarn tour of the mill's machinery and then settled in with dyes and brushes to hand-paint the skeins of plain natural yarn we'd ordered beforehand. This method takes hours; while I appreciate the precision that the control of using brushes brings to the process, I think I prefer the techniques I've developed for my own small dyeing operation, which though more random have their own charm in the results and aren't nearly as physically back-breaking. Nevertheless, it was educational, and once the yarn arrives in Chicago after its trip through the steam-setting process, I do foresee being satisfied with the end product. And even more appreciative of why handpainted yarns cost what they do than I already am as a fellow dyer.
After the class, many of the retreat-group split off to attend a formal dinner in a nearby hamlet. Mum and I had declined to sign up for this separate event, since through the magic of the internet I had predetermined that everything the restaurant served had at least one ingredient in it that I can't or won't eat (don't get me started about mushrooms, for example), so after doublechecking that scenic New Glarus still had no restaurants to speak of, we said "screw it" and headed up to Madison. (And if I'd been thinking about it, I ought to have planned ahead to see if any locals wanted to join us, but such is life with Attention Deficit Disorder, alas.) We managed to find our way through the rampaging herds of students to a decent place (the Nepalese restaurant that![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ashnistrike had dragged me into last WisCon, in fact, which I still can't remember the name of but found my way back to by sight), and despite it taking an hour to get back to scenic New Glarus in the dark, considered ourselves much better-served than staying in town would have gotten us.
Sunday morning I once again woke spontaneously at an outrageous hour, this time from a nightmare that our television was melting, and decided to get up and go in order to corner the market on the hotel's complimentary pastries. There are some advantages to being the first one up, it turns out. (And yes, we did grab a few for the road, one of which even made it as far as Janesville.) After breakfast came the retreat's other class, on double-knit mittens, which I had initially been less enthusiastic about taking than the dyeing workshop (I don't wear mittens, generally) but agreed to for the sake of learning the technique for future use. The teacher, Blackberry Ridge's owner Anne Bosch, was a little doubtful about my choice of two brightly-colored handpaints for my mittens, but pleased at the speed with which I picked up the unusual construction method. And, I can now report, mitten #1 is finished as of last night:
Whether I'll ever get around to making it a mate I don't know, since my brain is complaining that it's "already done that" and anyway I'm not a big mitten wearer, but we'll see.
About halfway up the thumb gusset, my brain decided that it had had enough of being out in the sticks and announced that it was heading out of Dodge, so we said our goodbyes and started for home, this time not adhering to Mapquest's approximation of the local geography; and indeed, it seemed that the reverse trip to the interstate went a little faster when we weren't having to interpret what ".2 miles" actually meant when you were wheels-deep in a pasture. We made two stops on the way back, the first at the Belvidere Oasis where I noticed on the way out that one of the options in the smooshed-penny machine was Ernest Hemingway, for some lunatic reason --
-- and then a brief detour into the vortex of Woodfield for a trip to the Apple Store there, since I had realized when the mouse-port cut out again right before I left Friday that I could simply bypass the whole question with a wireless Mighty Mouse, since Gaius was born with built-in Bluetoothy goodness just waiting to find a use. (Verdict: scrollball tickly at first, but has already reached "how did I ever live without this?" status.) And yes, I have named this wireless voice in Gaius's head "Six". Y'all would have thought less of me if I hadn't. :)
Oh, yes, and I almost forgot Hazel Carter's "new Brit in America" story about going to a garden store and asking for turves, which got her some funny looks until a slightly brighter bulb came up with, "...You mean sod!" {pauses to let![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
grahamwest explain The Funny to anyone who didn't see it coming}
So, the weekend: Mum had started coming down with The Cold on Wednesday, but since I hadn't been able to find alternate transit up to Wisconsin for the WCKG retreat, we decided to make a weekend of it and headed out Friday afternoon, managing despite Mapquest's best tries at losing us in a godforsaken cow-hole somewhere to make it to scenic New Glarus only half an hour after dinner had started. Out of respect for the guest lecturer, Shetland-lace expert Hazel Carter, I restrained my initial impulse to take off after dinner to watch the Doctor Who season two premiere which some thoughtless non-geek had scheduled the retreat on top of, and instead listened dutifully if a wee bit distracted to the presentation on the history and construction of Shetland lace shawls. At least, I think that was what it was about, I really oughtn't to have stayed up all night the night before... Fortunately for my geekly proclivities, the meeting broke up just in time for the late repeat. (As to the show itself: I suppose one must give Tennant the benefit of the doubt for now, but so far I still prefer Eccleston's portrayal of a fragile veneer of manic humour that could blow at any moment to Tennant's more comic interpretation of the role; if he can manage to turn the dial back a little from "out-and-out farce" I'd be a little happier about it, I think.)
Saturday I had been placed into the afternoon session of the yarn-dyeing class, but still managed to wake up at an unholy hour for no good reason anyway, and decided to have a look around scenic New Glarus after a breakfast that tilted heavily towards the "pastries" food-group. Scenic New Glarus, it turns out, is so small that the grocery store across the way from the hotel still hires disaffected local teens to bag their groceries. After driving around for about ten minutes the City Mice said "bugger this" and headed out to view some of the other local sights, such as the allegedly large shoe-store in Black Earth and the fabled Mustard Museum of Mount Horeb, which would have been more interesting to me if I had any particular fondness for the condiment, but did rate high enough on the kitsch scale to occasion the dreaded "I'm so blogging this" aside from This Writer.
The yarn-dyeing class took place at Blackberry Ridge Woolen Mill, a small operation that processes fleeces into yarn for small independent sheep-growers; there were no actual sheep on the premises, alas, so you will be spared that whole sideline of off-color remarks. After being left to sack and pillage the mill's yarn-shop for a while as the morning class finished up, the afternoon group got the shearing-to-yarn tour of the mill's machinery and then settled in with dyes and brushes to hand-paint the skeins of plain natural yarn we'd ordered beforehand. This method takes hours; while I appreciate the precision that the control of using brushes brings to the process, I think I prefer the techniques I've developed for my own small dyeing operation, which though more random have their own charm in the results and aren't nearly as physically back-breaking. Nevertheless, it was educational, and once the yarn arrives in Chicago after its trip through the steam-setting process, I do foresee being satisfied with the end product. And even more appreciative of why handpainted yarns cost what they do than I already am as a fellow dyer.
After the class, many of the retreat-group split off to attend a formal dinner in a nearby hamlet. Mum and I had declined to sign up for this separate event, since through the magic of the internet I had predetermined that everything the restaurant served had at least one ingredient in it that I can't or won't eat (don't get me started about mushrooms, for example), so after doublechecking that scenic New Glarus still had no restaurants to speak of, we said "screw it" and headed up to Madison. (And if I'd been thinking about it, I ought to have planned ahead to see if any locals wanted to join us, but such is life with Attention Deficit Disorder, alas.) We managed to find our way through the rampaging herds of students to a decent place (the Nepalese restaurant that
ashnistrike had dragged me into last WisCon, in fact, which I still can't remember the name of but found my way back to by sight), and despite it taking an hour to get back to scenic New Glarus in the dark, considered ourselves much better-served than staying in town would have gotten us.Sunday morning I once again woke spontaneously at an outrageous hour, this time from a nightmare that our television was melting, and decided to get up and go in order to corner the market on the hotel's complimentary pastries. There are some advantages to being the first one up, it turns out. (And yes, we did grab a few for the road, one of which even made it as far as Janesville.) After breakfast came the retreat's other class, on double-knit mittens, which I had initially been less enthusiastic about taking than the dyeing workshop (I don't wear mittens, generally) but agreed to for the sake of learning the technique for future use. The teacher, Blackberry Ridge's owner Anne Bosch, was a little doubtful about my choice of two brightly-colored handpaints for my mittens, but pleased at the speed with which I picked up the unusual construction method. And, I can now report, mitten #1 is finished as of last night:
Whether I'll ever get around to making it a mate I don't know, since my brain is complaining that it's "already done that" and anyway I'm not a big mitten wearer, but we'll see.
About halfway up the thumb gusset, my brain decided that it had had enough of being out in the sticks and announced that it was heading out of Dodge, so we said our goodbyes and started for home, this time not adhering to Mapquest's approximation of the local geography; and indeed, it seemed that the reverse trip to the interstate went a little faster when we weren't having to interpret what ".2 miles" actually meant when you were wheels-deep in a pasture. We made two stops on the way back, the first at the Belvidere Oasis where I noticed on the way out that one of the options in the smooshed-penny machine was Ernest Hemingway, for some lunatic reason --
-- and then a brief detour into the vortex of Woodfield for a trip to the Apple Store there, since I had realized when the mouse-port cut out again right before I left Friday that I could simply bypass the whole question with a wireless Mighty Mouse, since Gaius was born with built-in Bluetoothy goodness just waiting to find a use. (Verdict: scrollball tickly at first, but has already reached "how did I ever live without this?" status.) And yes, I have named this wireless voice in Gaius's head "Six". Y'all would have thought less of me if I hadn't. :)
Oh, yes, and I almost forgot Hazel Carter's "new Brit in America" story about going to a garden store and asking for turves, which got her some funny looks until a slightly brighter bulb came up with, "...You mean sod!" {pauses to let
grahamwest explain The Funny to anyone who didn't see it coming}