Fuzzarelly's Amazing World of Non-Drinkyness

It IS amazing how much a person (me) can get done when one is not knocking back 8 or 12 Coors Light every day. Also, when one isn't constantly pouring depressives into the bloodstream, one's depression gets better. Hello. I am Einstein. When I started drinking again it was like the times I started smoking again - I knew that I was going to quit with the only question being when. I quit smoking for the last time in 1996 and maybe now I have quit drinking for the final time. I satisfied my curiosity and also got to enjoy ice cold beer on a hot, sweaty summer day once more.

Yesterday, I drumcarded several batts of lovely brown alpaca. I knit on the pink mohair shawl and it now measures 33" square. I also got out the pot and dyed 4 ounces of white angora, 4 ounces of white alpaca and an ounce of tussah silk. Used burgundy and navy blue to get a yummy berry color. It's almost dry this morning and I hope to get it blended later today.

Spun a sample of the brown angora and achieved a single that measures about 2400 yards per pound. The alpaca is really easy to spin. I can barely wait to spin the silky Al Gora (har har) blend.

Kelly Bob and babies are thriving - touch wood. They grow so fast! At three weeks, they are eating solid food and drinking from the water bottle. Here's a shot of little Hopalong. If you look closely, you can see fur growing on his slightly deformed right front leg. He keeps up with his siblings, running around and playing.

Murgatroyd had a play day in the front yard yesterday. With a girl around, Percival stays close. Sometimes he will run back to the barn to hang out and mark his territory. (As far as he is concerned, everything is his territory.) He let's me pick him up and take him back to his cage - no problem.

Heizen, on the other hand, has had a taste of freedom and he loves it! Screw that cage, he says. He stays in the yard but he runs away when I try to gather him up, the little shit. I'm going to have to get a dip net to capture him. Here he is relaxing around 9 o'clock last night.

AN INCONVENIENT PUN

I came up with an environmentally friendly blend of alpaca and angora. I call it AL GORA.

Har har.

I'LL JUST HAVE A LITTLE TASTE...

The only good thing about hot weather is eating ice cream right out of the carton. Mmmmm...ice creeeeaaammmm.

In my opinion, the best part of summer is over with by the 4th of July. After that, it's all about hibernating in a dark room with the air conditioning on high. Sweetie, on the other hand, just recently took off his arctic long johns (like last week) but is still sleeping under either the sheepskin or the polar fleece quilt with the sheep fleece batting. By the beginning of July he's just getting thawed out.

However, it wasn't hot today. It was perfect weather - high of 75, partly cloudy with a northerly breeze. But I'm still eating ice cream right out of the carton. And not drinking beer.

ALPACA YO BAGS...

Today's blog is sponsored by those good vinyl purveyors at Blue Moon Records who bring you "ALPACA YO BAGS AND KICK YOU OUT THE HOUSE" as recorded by the Lapin Chanteuse, Fuzzarelly. Available on 78 or 33 rpm wherever fine music is sold.

Had a busy day! Lynne came by to visit me and Murgatroyd, who has settled in with her bun mates, and to pick up my Fanny. The LeClerc loom, that is. Then went to visit Kristen at Flatwoods Alpaca Farm. I'm going to try to hand process some alpaca fleece for her. What we're going for is free range, organic, minimally processed fiber. Crank crank crank goes the carder...

Here's a shot of just a few of her gentle, odd looking creatures.


Then I splurged and went to Goodwill for some new clothes. Found 4 cotton, rayon or linen dresses for $17. One was a real find - a vintage hippy dress in perfect condition! It's a One Size Fits All (HA HA) made in Bangladesh from what I have always called Indian Bedspread Cotton. Note those lovely 70s earth tones! I am totally delighted. I mean, this thing is practically an antique! Just like me! I would have killed for one of these back in the day.



The other notable one is a beautiful pink linen/cotton sheath. Just wait until Laconia sees me walking the dogs or bunny wrangling wearing one of these. Summer, here I come!



Oh, my eBay vinyl came yesterday - School's Out by Alice Cooper. I gave away all my Alice Cooper albums to Chipmunk Alice back in 1974. Why? I don't know except maybe I thought I was too cool for him anymore. The music has held up remarkably well.

SHAWL OR NOTHING

SHAWL OR NOTHING

Har har! (I crack me up.)

Sweetie has had a couple of days off - meaning that I have had no access to the computer. (Note to self: Add to the honeydew list and get him out of the house next time.)

Went to the Friendship Spinners meeting today and had a great time! Lots and lots of people there and exceedingly excellent food, and I would love to show you pictures of it all but someone forgot the camera. I have issues with cameras. My first husband, the Pyg, was a professional photographer, (among other things to which I may refer from time to time,) which means that he spent a lot of money buying film, taking pictures, developing pictures, renting equipment, renting a studio and so on and sometimes he got paid in return. Anyway, he had a way of intimidating the crap out of me whenever I would try to take a photo on my own. (He also made fun of my singing and tap dancing efforts.)(And my poetry.) It was years before I would even use a simple point and shoot camera. Three years ago, Sweetie got a digital, hoping I would "get into it" and take shots of my art. (Yes, I am or was an artist. I'll share on that later.) The thing gathered dust for ages until last year when I began selling fiber on eBay and HAD to use the digital. Turns out that it is not so scary and I am not so bad at it. Still, it isn't second nature to grab for me the camera whenever I go to places of interest.

I have been knitting on the shawl. Here is a shot of it on a string and laid flat with a yardstick for scale. Unblocked it is 30" square - 900 square inches done out of the 2304 needed. You can see an inch or so around the edges where I began the second skein, the one with fuchsia and red. Subtuttle but effective.



I am liking the pattern and have decided to stay with it throughout, only switching to a shale pattern for the last 6" or when I begin the third skein.

Fuzzarelly came out for a romp yesterday and this evening. She and Percival had a rendezvous.

ENOUGH DOWNERS, ALREADY

All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact, barely presentable. - Fran Lebowitz


I'm feeling better today. Took a shower, washed my hair and put on clean clothes. I know this must sound routine for most of you, but for a depressive personality, doing these things is sometimes most remarkable. Recycled cans and cardboard and bought groceries - lots of good-for-me food and no beer. I exercised on the elliptical trainer and did some push mowing. (That used to be how I kept my squirrellish figure, before the shop and before Sweetie bought the lawn tractor.) (Before beer.)

So. I've been making steady progress on the pink shawl and with cooler, less humid temperatures, have been able to sit on the porch to knit. I love my porch. I love watching the bunnies play. Sometimes the cats play with the bunnies. Sometimes the dogs play with the cats. It's endlessly fascinating, like an aquarium. Okay, girl, FOCUS - you were writing about the shawl. Yes. Here is a close up along with the pattern and the last bits of the hot fuchsia. Like you can tell anything about it except it is pink. I'm up to about 320 stitches, meaning if it were laid out flat it would measure 27 inches square.

Are you impressed with my skill? My tenacity at keeping to a large project? My clean table?

Here is the wide shot. I ask you, how can two grown people create such clutter? And this is merely the kitchen table. I can assure you that the rest of the house is more of the same. No wonder I'm depressed.



Murgatroyd is doing well. She enjoys running around the yard with Percival. Percy likes it, too, I think. The back story as to why I was so taken with the Toeless Wonder is that one of the new babies, soon after he was born, got a piece of Kelly Bob's wool wrapped around his front leg. By the time I found him, the leg was a swollen, pink, sausage-looking mess. Crap. What to do with the little thing? The book says to cull (read KILL) the kit but if you know anything about me by now, you know that killing it was not an option. I left him alone for a week, dithering, then began massaging antibiotic ointment on it twice daily. Lo and behold! The foot is healing! Looks like one toenail is lost, but the pad of the foot is healthy pink and there is the slightest bit of white peachfuzz growing in. I am loathe to name babies when they are so young, but Hopalong, if he makes it, would be good.

THIS IS JUNE 6TH

Today is June 6, 2006. Some folks are associating the date with 666. Come on people! Enough with the Da Vinci Code, numerology, Revelations crap. IT DOESN'T WORK! IT IS A POINTLESS EXERCISE IN VANITY! Ahem.

Anyway. Today is the 62nd anniversary of D-Day. What an incredible horror that must have been for those poor soldiers. I can not even imagine it.

Today is also my mother's birthday. If she were alive, she would be 74 years old. I can only imagine what she would look like. White hair, maybe dyed blonde but certainly styled, and slim as always. A little frail but still active and dancing and socializing. But in my mind's eye, she will forever be my mom from when I was a teenager. Tall, slim and blonde. Smoking, slightly profane, and funny. Wearing those cat eye glasses with painted on eyebrows and drinking a cold beer of an evening. I miss her so much. Still. Even after 32 years.

She must have been so unhappy, so depressed, so extremely without hope to have taken that overdose of pills chased down with liquor. To have planned it the way she did in order to have the time alone to accomplish the deed. To leave not only me but my seven year old brother and two older brothers without her. For many years I blamed myself. I should have seen some sign - I should have been a better daughter - I should have done something differently. I was in my thirties before I could admit how angry I was with her for leaving us. Me. I needed her. It was also at that time that I was able to view my parents as just plain, regular people, and not some bigger than life, sacred icons - MOMMY and DADDY writ large. The towering presence that SEES ALL and is PERFECT. They were, after all, just people like me, dealing with their own demons and doing the best they could. Still, I wish she hadn't done it. I wish she were here now so that I could call her or visit and hear her voice and laughter. (Wish in one hand and crap in the other - see which one gets fuller, faster.)

I still grieve for her and all of the 'what might have been.' I love you, mommy, but I know you are okay.

I , too, am okay. I turned out pretty well, all things considered. (All of your kids did. You'd be proud.) I sought help when my depression was urging me to follow in your footsteps to end the pain. Your lesson to me was that I didn't want to leave my loved ones to deal with the grief and aftermath of a suicide. Here I am all these years later still crying because I miss you. I couldn't do that to my Sweetie and brothers and friends.

So, not to end on such a downer, let me share a memory of days gone by. My period, the "curse," started when I was 12. It was 1969. Mom took me to - I think it was Bob's IGA in Huntington, to get me a "sanitary belt" and "sanitary napkins." How quaint. Here is a very informative history of tampons and napkins. http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mtampons.html