Evening walk ...

It's been a stressful week and I've felt a bit overwhelmed. That is odd in a way because it's been a year since I was set on my journey to relocate and this is the first instance that I recall feeling overwhelmed in any noticeable measure. Frankly, I think the prospect of the government defaulting was sitting heavy, as I'm sure it was for most people. It would have been a catastrophe. So, feeling relieved this evening about that.

Since the contractors left, the new room has been waiting for me to finish up. Yes, the painting went smoothly and quickly but beyond that it's taken me some time to figure out what I want to put in the room and how I want to arrange things. Slowly--and surely--it's taking shape but progress has lagged, or seemly so. Maybe I'm just in a hurry. There is too the fact that after such-and-such painting and redoing as I've undertaken in other parts of the house, maybe I sorta wish the rest would just sort of magically happen! Heehee. Yes and no.

Today I laid the remaining vinyl on the floor and protected the window sills with scraps of lino. I've hung perches in each window--all different, and I've fashioned and attached the bird seed shelf to the wall along with a shelf over the door and another on one wall. There are 3 more shelves I'd like to put up; need to get strips to cover the floor seams; need to hang some nest boxes; get some hay. Then they can move in! At the moment I'm thinking it'll happen over the weekend.

Of course, there was also the laptop's crash to attend to this week: The drive was irrecoverable. My laptop is on it's way to NY to get a new disk, and over the weekend I bought a tablet called "Surface". It's what I'm on at the moment. All-in-all I'm more impressed with this thing than I thought I'd be. It is nice to have the touch screen, and switching between programs and my NY desktop is faster on this tablet. It's pretty cool.

After an hour in the bird room today the stress started to abate. I had a good cello lesson via Skype this morning and a great practice at the piano before that. Today feels like a turning point in the week. Things don't seem quite so hectic this evening. Ahhh, breathe and relax.

I took a walk earlier this evening and got some walking spinning in. Yes, the pace is settling back to "normal" tonight and it feels good.

Afternoon walk 10/10 ...

A small lull as my laptop's hard drive crashed beyond repair on Thursday evening. It crashed just as I was copying this photo from my camera to the hard drive. I'm posting this from a tablet while I await the arrival of a new laptop.

At any rate, I did take a walk on Thursday, in the afternoon for a change. I'm not sure how this picture will appear. This little tablet hasn't much in the way of photo processing software. But we'll see...

Caught up ...

"Caught up." Funny phrase that: It could mean something awful or something wonderful.

I'm going to report on the wonderful. It's true I've got 'caught up' in the politics of our government's shutdown (who hasn't?, it's just natural after all) but I'd rather not take up too much space over it here ... other than to say I think the rift in Washington is indicative of a rift in the country. It almost seems that we are experiencing a "cold civil war". I hope the issue can find resolution before lasting damage is done.

Now for the something wonderful. I got 'caught up' on plying the 'walking yarn' this weekend. Hurray!

Plying has revealed that my walk spinning is pretty consistent. The second and third skeins are almost exactly the same length. The third was only about a foot short of the second. The first skein doesn't count because I had started it before my walks began. A total of 241 yards from nine walks, plus a little bit extra that was on the spindle at the start. Well that's encouraging!

Moose ...

Yes!!! I have finally seen one. It came out from the left side of the road as I was approaching the town of Dorchester this morning on my way back home from a trip to the hardware store.

OH, ever so majestic and beautiful. It made my day!



Indulge me a peeve: I would like to know why I can't call several moose meese! Goose: geese. Moose: meese. It's only logical, and I've a good mind to ignore convention in this matter!

There was no walk this morning. Too much to catch up on I'm afraid.

Morning walk ...

Sewing machine ...

I attended a reception last week in a hotel that happened to be next to a thrift store, so after a lovely lunch I popped in to browse the goods. I did not anticipate--in the least--coming home with a new-to-me sewing machine but it was only $25 and a Singer--vintage-ish. What I really like about it is that it's almost entirely made out of metal and is heavy. That's quite a contrast to my little $99 machine which appears to be 90% plastic, and very light.



This old Singer is in good shape. I opened it up to oil and it's very clean inside. It sews well too! It was missing a bobbin case but it turns out that the case in my other machine (a non-Singer) fits. To celebrate, I sewed together the first of ten panels for the quilt. Each panel will have a slightly different ordering of colors and they will end up being cut horizontally to make the blocks of the quilt.



I also bought a new iron (ruined the last one by melting some sort of fabric on it!) and was rather annoyed that it came with instructions for "first use" but no words! Just pictures! I suppose this was done so the iron can be sold in several different countries without the need for translated text. But really!

Morning walk ...

No walk yesterday because ... er ... um... I had to go shopping for bird room supplies. Plus I painted some more. Time was elusive yesterday, don't know why.

Nice walk today. I finished another 3-walk spindle. At this rate of spinning I can't keep up with the plying. Way behind on that front.