buriedinfibre.com

So I missed a post. My bad, but there’s not a helluva lot happening around here right now. The weather has finally improved and I’m not all pasty white, but other that that, it’s pretty much status quo.

The monkey is back from Sweden, we still haven’t gone through the kajillion pics he took. The Festival of the Farts is on across the street making leaving the house and getting back a pain in the ass as people tend to park across the end of the driveway.

Still haven’t sold my car.

Wheels should arrive with Holly this weekend.

Didn’t bother with Tour de Fleece. In fact I don’t think I ever have. Not a big fan of watching cycling. It’s like watching golf, or bowling or grass growing.

Still not sure about HS reunion. Part of me is curious and the other part of me won’t stop screaming.

Pondering moving to a larger house.

Trying to decide the best way to kill some of my neighbours.

Reading lots of trashy novels.

Listening to lots of metal, old and new.

Thinking ’bout dyeing my hair purple.

You know, the usual.

So I’m just gonna pretend it’s last Wednesday and I’ve managed to recover completely and update the blog in a timely manner. I’m totally not going to acknowledge that it’s taken me almost a week to feel even remotely myself again or that single malt was involved in the recovery.

The monkey left for Sweden the day after I got back and will be there for another week. The house is blissfully quiet and I may never leave it. I hear there are services that will deliver your groceries, sounds good!

But where was I? Oh yeah, Oregon. I have pictures!

My friends had a nest baby chipmunks in their car that they lovingly nursed for a few days before handing them over to the Audobon people. Baby chipmunks are painfully cute. Seriously. They are unbelievably cute.

Just look at this:

Sofa King cute!

We left for Eugene and Black Sheep Festival on Thursday and got the booth set up in very good time. Then it was off to the really good Thai place for lunch and back there again later for drinks *ahem* dinner. Yeah, we totally had dinner.

Here’s Tina showing me the way to Eugene:

She’s always so very helpful!

Black Sheep had lots of, well sheep. Like these Wensleydales.

And these Shetland lambs. Again, Sofa King cute.

I managed to make a few purchases. Some pygora, a couple of spindles, a basket and a couple of wheels.

Yes. More than one wheel. Shut up already. They’re really small.

The Hansen, complete with Woolee Winder and spare bobbins. Don’t wear it out Orion!

And the Wee Spin. I couldn’t resist this little wheel. It was insanely cheap and is very much like the pocket wheel.

Both wheels are living at Holly’s till mid July as getting them home on the train would have been mildly problematic.

There was a little stream behind our hotel in Eugene that was full of wildlife. Raccoons, mallards, Canada geese and their goslings (the damn things really are everywhere) and nutria. I had never seen a nutria up close but there were several of them on the grass along the streamside path just eating grass in the sunshine. They really do look like the offspring of a beaver and an otter.

Tina also found these:

Some sort of wild cucumber. Prickly pear?

All in all it was a great trip. I had a lot of fun and got to spend time with lovely friends.

Now if we could just have some summer weather!

So I’ve spent about an hour trying to get my pics to import and I can’t get it to work. So I’ll post all this stuff on Wednesday when I can get back on my Mac.

Stupid windows netbook.

Feh.

I will be in Oregon. I’m taking the train and going in style. Did the upgrade to business class ’cause the trip takes 8 hours and the upgrade was only $20. I have to get up at the asscrack of dawn to do it, so it better be worth it.

I’ve got a small bag full of clothes and a slightly smaller bag full of electronic equipment supposed to make my life simpler. I question the last part of that statement as I’ve spent a fair amount of time over the last few days programming, uploading and charging these modern conveniences. And they’re small, but now that they’re all in one bag, they’re kinda heavy. Don’t get me wrong, four books would weigh considerably more than my Kindle, but I think the netbook makes up the saved poundage.

Anyway, I’m going to visit some friends, take in the Black Sheep festival (and maybe buy another wheel) in Eugene and then haul my sorry ass home again so the monkey can go to Sweden.

Maybe.

Afterall, if that volcano erupts in Iceland, he either won’t be going anywhere or won’t be coming back. I should take bets on it!

Next post will have pictures. Promise.

I have a very special love/hate relationship with my car.

I love my car. It’s small, fast and I can take the roof off when then sun comes out. Not to mention it’s wonderful fuel economy.

BUT

It leaks. And it’s that charming shade of Honda red that fades like a mofo if you look at it funny. Someone’s looked at my car funny a fair bit.

These things in mind and factoring in that the monkey sort of hates my car and has done since I bought it, we went car shopping.

The monkey has a 3 year old Mazda and the dealership was having what we laughingly now call a “SALE!” for previous customers only. We thought this might be a good opportunity to buy a new (or new to me) vehicle and forgo a winter of me whining about the horrible frozen state of the interior of my car.

I spent some time online researching certain models I was interested in and narrowed it down to two. Two incredibly different cars, but just the two. The Kia Soul and the Mazda 3 Sport. We started at Kia sans appointment and were almost immediately whisked into a Soul of the model I wanted and off on a test drive. I almost to hate to admit how much I loved it. I loved it a lot. It was much bigger than I thought it would be but it drove and handled like a very small car. It lagged a bit on hills, but this was the very base model and I haven’t had an engine that small for a very long time.

Then we were off to Mazda, where, despite our appointment, we had to wait. Quite a while. Then we had to wait some more for the car (not the model I wanted even) to be gassed up. Now, don’t get me wrong, it was a nice car. Very peppy, really responsive, almost too responsive for my taste. It was what I refer to as, “twitchy”. I’m not used to twitchy and don’t much care for it. My car has power assist steering and that’s fine with me. Before it, I’d had armstrong steering in all my other cars. I don’t mind showing the car the way. The brakes were equally twitchy. I almost put the monkey through the windscreen at one point.

And really, I was already in love. With the Soul.

After surviving the bit of pressure the salesman tried to apply, we went home where I decided to sleep on it.

The decision I came is this: I’m going to fix up my car. Disassemble the rear end and fix the leaks and repaint it. I’m thinking of doing the painting myself. I’ve sprayed auto paint on guitars, this is just a larger surface which actually makes it a little easier.  Pretty sure I can manage it.

I’ll give my car the winter and see how it does and then decide on a new car or not. The 2011 Souls will be out by then too. Maybe they’ll have a new model with a DOHC 2.5L engine…

On a completely different topic…

I have simply lovely friends! Feeling pretty lucky today as this arrived in the post:

An awesome knitting bag, beautiful fibre and hand balm that smells good enough to eat. I managed to get a pic before I drafted the fibre and started spinning it with my Whirling Dervish. Stuff feels just amazing!

Thanks Leslie! I can’t wait to see you at Black Sheep. Where I might be making another wheel acquisition…

It was a mostly quiet week. One where I didn’t to meet deadlines due to severe knitting pattern reading fail. But the weekend was busy and full of people.

I spent Friday cleaning up and Saturday morning cooking in preparation for some friends from Seattle and some locals coming over. I made cake, a couple of loaves of bread, spinach pie and soup with leeks from the garden. It was a good spread made even better when our local friends brought fresh from the boat spot prawns. The monkey BBQed them with the flower buds from the leeks in a little olive oil and salt. They were delicious! The leek buds were like a cross between asparagus and onion rings. Really tasty and something I never would have though of if my brother hadn’t suggested it. He’s brilliant.

Now we’re all waiting for the chive buds to pop up.

The next morning we went down to the beach for some much needed exercise for the humans and the dog. Almost everyone had a camera…

We were there later than usual so Gir had to make nice with other dogs. Something he did with various amounts of success.

We managed to hit a pretty low tide so the herons were out in force and mugging for the cameras.

Even with my little pocket camera, I managed to get some lovely shots. They really seemed to be posing for us.

These two circled around us making graking noises as they fought for the same fishing spot.

And this one seemed to be practicing his ballet moves:

Just another day at the beach with wonderful friends.

Yeah, I know, it’s Tuesday, for the second week in a row, but hey, at least I did it. I was actually thinking pushing the post back a week, ’cause really, it’s been pretty flat around here.

But I didn’t and now you get to suffer through the dull that is my life! Woohoo! Aren’t you glad you came?

It was a long weekend around here and since we did get some good weather, we though, “hey, we should spruce up the yard”. This involved two days of pulling weeds and grass out of the ginormous flower bed we made last year. The various crap we yanked out of there will fill about 6 yard waste bags.

The results were mostly worth it:

I’m loving the new patio. It’s given us a lot more usable outdoor space.

And the blooming wisteria is making my workshop look like a cute little cottage right now.

As if there wasn’t enough pollen around here with the rhodos and assorted bulbs, the fan palm had to get in on the action.

We bought it the first summer after we moved in and it’s as tall as the roof now. I guess it’s proof that we really do live in a little micro climate.

I’m glad we got that bed weeded. Also glad the neighbours didn’t call the cops when I screamed this morning bending down to deal with the laundry. Apparently my hams and glutes are less glad about all the gardening.

Next on the list is the $%^&ing book. Really need to get on that…

This blog post may contain language that some find offensive.

May contain? Who am I kidding, It WILL contain very strong language.

Suggested listening to accompany: L7’s “Shitlist” from Bricks are Heavy.

It might even degenerate into what the monkey has cheerfully dubbed “Lara’s hockey tourettes”. Which I usually save for bad Canucks games or apparently playoffs series involving the Blackhawks, but really, the furnace repairman warrants this, kind of a lot.

So. Let’s get started.

OMFG!!!

Dude! I dragged my sleep deprived ass out of bed at the asscrack of dawn so I could move books, shelves and barricade pets into a room to be out of your way and you couldn’t manage to show the fuck up?!

What the fuckitty fuck is your damage?

We’ve been trying to get you to finish the job you started for a year and a fucking half. Just do the motherfucking work and go away! Really. We don’t want to see you again. If I thought I could get a syphilis addled crack monkey to do this job, I would hire it over you. You’ve made it so it would cost a small fortune to get anyone else to do this job and you won’t fucking do it.

And now you think it’s fine that you don’t show up because of rain?! We live in Vancouver assmunch! It rains all the freaking time! And now you have managed to “fit” us back into your surprisingly busy schedule at the end of June?!! Wow! Thanks ever so fucking much you bastard son of a mutated warthog.

I feel slightly better now.

eta: Hey lady at pool shop if you called my number before and got Mrs Doogan, it was more than 14 years ago. Pretty sure I know my own phone number after 14 bloody years. This woman has now called 3 times insisting that she has the correct number.

2nd eta: She has now called 6 times and accused me of fraud. I have blocked the number. Unbelievable.

Is it worldwide fuckwit day and someone forgot to tell me?

With the return of lovely sunny weather and longer daylight hours, the cats have been waking us hideously early. Rather than try to sleep, (we’ve tried it, they just keep waking us up) we’ve started taking Gir down to the beach for a nice long hike along the sand, if it’s low tide, or the rocks and seaweed, if the tide is in.

Gir loves low tide. He sprints along the sand, wades through tide pools and has now discovered the doggie joys of rolling in dead stinking sea life. He is a regular dog. He even tried to chase a bunch of eagles. Don’t worry, they had no fear of him. Quite the reverse, they seemed to be trying to decide if his harness was a handy carry handle, like on a take-out carton.

When we’re there at a tide change, we get to see the herons gathering at the mouth of the inlet to catch fish.

They were just starting to come in when I started taking pictures.

And then a juvenile eagle swooped down out of no where, scooped a fish out of the water and flew off. It happened so fast that I wsn’t able to get a really clear picture of him.

That’s the eagle in the centre of the frame. The herons were all squawking and clearly pissed that he had disturbed their peaceful hunting.

I love where we live.