Molly, Mom, a Finished Object

Difficult couple of weeks, but things seem calm today so I thought I'd try to do a quick blog entry.
Daughter Molly is off to college. Not sure why it hit me as hard as it did as she not far away really, and she did move out of the house a few months ago and was a student at the university here last school year. However, there is still something more....final...more real...about your child setting up housekeeping -- dormkeeping-- in another city.
Her friends had a great going-away party for her in a local park and the night before the family got together. The main purpose for that was to surprise Molly with the amazing camera her oldest brother Ian bought for her.

Her camera broke this summer and he called me to say he wanted to buy her another. I told him I knew she referred to this camera as her "holy grail" camera and he gulped and (bless-his-heart) bought it for her. Since he is in Arizona, he sent it to me and I put it in a gift bag and we got her to come to her brother Shaun's house (ostensibly to have a family good-bye with little Sophia) so he could video her opening it.

She was pretty stunned and delighted and we had a nice evening. Here's a picture of me and Molly that night:
Right now I'm regrouping from having to deal with quite a few problems concerning my mother and the nursing home. I do believe that the nursing home where my mother lives is a good one, but no nursing home is great or without problems and we seemed to have several that popped up all at once. I had just started relaxing and feeling that things had been resolved in a satisfactory way when my mother had a fall. No one witnessed it and she isn't very able to report things (especially something upsetting) completely accurately. The surmise is that she got up and her sheets might have been tangled around her feet and she slipped, coming down hard on her bottom then hitting her head on the nightstand.

I spent about 6 hours with her in the ER - nothing broken, thank goodness. But she has a nasty bruise on her lower back and had a head laceration that required sutures. All things considered, she was a trooper and surprisingly clear-headed. She did her best to avoid the conversational avenues that have led to almost all our interactions ending painfully.

Of course, my anxiety drug of choice is fiber and I have steadily continued to knit, crochet, spin and weave. I actually managed to start getting some of my spun yarn washed and set:
And I've started to spin some more 2-ply to sell. I'm very excited that the weaving teacher at RiverWools has used some of my yarn to make a couple of the sample scarves he uses when he is teaching the rigid heddle classes. Here is the display at RiverWools, showing the Ashford Knitters' Loom and some of John's scarves. Right in the front is the scarf he made with black Cascade 220 and my yarn , along with a skein of it.
And here is the shelf that Martha generously gives over to display some of my work:
I have sold a few things, but it's really just a lot of fun to get to display my little creative bits and pieces, and talk to people if I happen to be there when they ask about it.

Finally, here's an actual finished object!
Vessel for Holding Cheerfulness, 2006
Commercial yarn and wool, hand-dyed, handspun, crocheted, felted.

For this I used Peace Fleece in a lovely spring green shade (you may see a lot of this as I bought about 10 skeins from someone clearing stash) and some of that yarn I spun with jillions of leftover scraps. I used a fairly small hook and it made a firm fabric. The vessel is about 8" in diameter, 6" high. I started it with a circular piece done in even rounds and took off in freeform from there, doing spiraling rounds alternating stitch sizes and yarn and occasionally adding in spirals I crocheted separately.

The thing about freeform like this is that all the sides are different - here is a closeup view of another part:
and the inside where I needlefelted a knitted leaf (which I had already wet-felted.)

I like looking at this piece - it does a good job of holding cheerfulness....
Namaste,
'zann