Fiberaddict's Fiber Fumblings

spent yesterday with the grandparents. They're getting old, and starting to slow WAY down. :sigh: I keep consoling myself that at least the kids had them until their late teens. (Grannie is 84, and Papaw is 86. I think. Both are in their '80s, that I know.) We'll be going back on Sunday - they had a tree cut down, and SG wants the wood. Unless it's pouring rain again, of course. :lol:

Today we (Herself and I, and some SG) "fixed" the chicken run. It's now...well....Ugly. We had a layer of chicken wire on the bottom, then garden fencing...the chicken wire has been attacked by cats and hens and was worthless, especially around chicks. Of which we have 6 that need to be OUT there, and 6 1 week old chicks and 9 1 week old guineas (we lost 1 yesterday. :sigh:) So. Now we have a row of roof tin all along the bottom of the run. Ugly, yes - but effective. I managed to smash my left forefinger with the sledge hammer.....:sigh: Fun stuff!

Passover is Friday; next week is our Spring Break. I'm printing out all our Torah Class books for next year - we'll be finished with Joshua this Friday, and we'll start Judges week after next. We'll FINISH Judges end of August, it looks like (I haven't put in our holidays yet, so it might be a little later - but not much!), then it's on to Ruth, which will take....a month, maybe? - then on to 1st Samuel. I'm printing it now, but the printer JUST borked. :sigh: Ah, well - I have a little over half of it printed, so...that's good. I'll be dropping them into PlanBook next week.

Not much else to report - except we're waterlogged and need to evolve webbed feet. :Quack!: :lol:

Ali made an interesting post, saying (basically) that Christianity is screwed up. Not wanting to blog her comments, I'm posting it here. This *might* upset some of you - but please, before going off in a ranty rage, please THINK about what I'm saying, OK? This isn't aimed at ANYONE specifically, it's just me trying to put my thoughts in some sort of order.

OK. Christianity IS screwed up. Basically because Constantine - in the 4th Century - declared all things Jewish forbidden in *his* religion. Which became the core of the Catholic church, which has become - thanks to the Protestant Reformation - the entire Christian church. Problem......JESUS, the Messiah that ALL Christians profess to follow, IS Jewish. (Which....actually explains a lot of what I don't understand in modern churchiantiy. Anyway...)

If you profess to be a Christian, you claim to follow Jesus. A JEWISH man. The JEWISH Messiah. He kept Torah. He followed Tradition. He kept the Biblical Feasts. He was Jewish. Let that sink in for a bit. IF you are Christian, you worship the Jewish Messiah.

Now. Most churches espouse "replacement theology" - even if it's not stated outright, they have the mindset that Christianity has *replaced* Judaism as God's people. I have asked for Biblical support for this idea....and have NEVER gotten it.

Oh, they try to use Paul's words from Acts...but that doesn't work. See, you have to read the ENTIRE thing, not just cherry-pick....and it simply doesn't work. (An aside: this is why I have a problem with those who claim circumcision is gone....um. That's NOT what was said. Yes, Paul said it's of the heart now...but he was talking about circumcision on adult males. It's hard, it's painful. Remember Shechem, where Jacob's sons attacked the men the 3rd day after they were circumcised? Because the prince had raped their sister, then wanted to marry her? Paul was saying, hey - don't put that burden on the adult men, because pretty soon they won't want to join us. Instead, give them a pass - they WILL circumcise their sons, in accordance with the Abrahamic covenant (which has NEVER been overturned, BTW). Anyway....) The original Gentile Christians became Jewish - but ones who believed that Jesus WAS the promised Messiah. They kept Torah. They kept kosher. From the outside, they would have looked JEWISH.

When you removed the Jewish bits from Christianity, you are left with......not much, honestly. Pagan bits creep in (just take a look at Christmas traditions. Seriously. And don't get me started on Easter....) - even though Scripture clearly states to NOT mix the Holy with the profane. But without the foundation that Jewishness gives you, there's nothing there - so things have to be added to make it "work".

And......why is it that so many Christians are anti-Semitic? I mean....Jesus IS Jewish. Why, oh why, do they HATE the Jews? How can they function with that kind of disconnect....I mean - really? How can you claim to follow Jesus, and yet support a 2-state solution? (Seriously, how can anyone claim to follow Jesus, then scream for Israel to GIVE UP land that GOD HIMSELF gave to THEM?????? I just......I can't think that way.)

It's not just Christians, either - the Messianics are also messed up, but in the opposite direction. They want to be TOO Jewish.....:sigh: Yes, Believers are grafted in - adopted, if you will. IF you believe that Jesus IS the Messiah, then, in God's eyes, you ARE one of His chosen...which IS Jewish. Which goes against most of what modern churches teach...but it's all there, in the Bible (in the Torah, even, which makes it more "real". The NT was never intended to be held to the same holiness (for lack of a better word) as the Torah/OT was. The NT was, basically, commentary on HOW to live a Torah-based life for those not raised with it. Gentiles, in other words. The Jews that believed didn't change how they lived - except they shared the news of Jesus with everyone they met. They were *still Jewish*.

:sigh: I have more, but it's hard to catch to put into words. I'm also trying to frantically get a Physics course set up for Himself - we are 1 week (or so) from finishing Chemistry, and he told me Monday that he really, really HATES this author. :eek: So, I have been googling my little eyes out. I found a promising looking, Homeschool-designed Physics course ( donttouchthephotons.wordpress.com ) that he said looked "OK", so I have been scrounging up the money to get the books. :grumble: Thank the Lord for eBay and HPB.com! 4 books ordered, for under $20. 3 to go....but I think we can get started with just these 4. :sigh: Ah, well...

Shabbat Shalom! Please keep the comments civil - I don't block, but would like to be able to have a discussion about this, not screaming fights.

Weather's been typical Texas - go from 80s on the weekend to 30s during the week. No wonder we're all sniffling - the trees don't know if it's Spring or Winter! And they're tentatively predicting "snow" next week - whatever *that* is. :lol:

Herself is set up for oral surgery next Friday. Fun times - the dentist was very nice; he explained everything to her so she's prepared. Nervous, but OK. *I* need to stock up on ice cream.....

Called the IRS; seems that they are "double checking a lot of returns due to identity theft". Um...OK, but WHY did you tell me you deposited my money, then changed it to "Your refund has been delayed"...because, IF you deposited it, like you said ON THE WEBSITE on Thursday, WHY, then, on Monday did you change it to "delayed"? It...doesn't make sense. The agent was nice, but even he hemmed and hawed when I asked that....:sigh: 60 days. We have to wait 60 days now - of course, it MIGHT get sent out sooner, but I am not holding my breath.

Kilt hose: Got to round 8 on the leg, but ripped it all out this AM. I had somehow buggered up the pattern rows and was off on 2 of the motifs; decided I couldn't live with the fudge, so RIP. I'm now up to round 2.....with markers EVERYWHERE. We'll see.....I seem to remember ripping a LOT on the first one, so this is par for the course.

School: We finished Latin 101. We're taking a break from Latin for the moment; we'll start up again in a week or 2. I need "light" for a bit.....so we're focusing just on the basics. :sigh:

Not much else.....guess I should get books together so we can start our day. Laters!

because it was fun!

1. Yesterday was Comic Con! I have quite a few photos - I need to see if I feel comfortable posting them, as Herself is plainly ID'able (she's OK with it, but.....I am not. Not really, anyway.) Suffice to say that there were Daleks aplenty, and she got her photo taken with all of them. :lol: We "met" Dalek Tim, who said "Hello" to me (THAT photo is hysterical, because I didn't expect it to turn the eyestalk to me and say "Hello". It was a hoot! We talked to a group that is producing a fan-based Dr. Who series (Soldier Stories) online - sounds fantastic.

SG got autographs from Nichelle Nichols (the original Uhura) and the actor who played Ti'ilk (Stargate). $80.....:wince:...but he wanted them.

It was fun - even though we stood in line outside for 1.5 hours (AND we had purchased our tickets online!!!!). I overheard Security say that 11K people were there - not sure if they meant AT that moment, or Saturday total - it was PACKED. To the point that *I* started freaking out a little. Still, it was fun - both kids enjoyed it.

2. Heard from Skutt! It IS a Skutt kiln; built sometime between 1960 and 1980. It needs a Lot of Work, according to the tech....I am waiting to see what the estimate is before moving forward. I also asked my potter friend to give me her opinion. We'll have to pay for the repairs piecemeal no matter what; I just don't want to pay MORE than the kiln is actually worth, y'know? And I don't want to pay for something it doesn't really *need*. So....we're in a holding pattern there.

3. Bought more yarn for Himself's kilt hose from a Ravelry member. I gotta say, the Lord is good!! And I apparently *did* rate a miracle, because - Miracle of Miracles!!! - the dye lot MATCHED mine!!!! (You have NO idea about how big a deal this is! See....yarn is dyed in batches - might be large ones, but still, finite batches. Each batch has it's own dye lot number; it means that all the yarn with *that* number was dyed at the same time, in the same pool of dye. I bought my yarn last March from a store in WA state. The destash came from a lady in Indiana.....and all of the "new" yarn is the exact same dye lot as my original set!!!!! What are the odds???? I'm telling you, God is GOOD!!)

3a. Speaking of Kilt Hose, I am 3" away from starting the toe on #1. :Sigh: Kid's got big feet! Still, I can see the end of this one....one more to go.

4. Not much knitting will be done Thursday. The Perot has a new exhibit opening this weekend - The International Exhibit of Sherlock Holmes. Members-only days are Thursday and Friday, and we are going! Yes, I'll be in my Sherlocked shirt.....I don't have the socks done yet, but that's OK. I'll probably do them in March. Maybe April....so many socks, so little time. :lol: The kids are kinda excited - this is a forensics "lab" type exhibit. Should be fun!

Our IRS refund is due to hit Tuesday. Gotta pay the taxes, then I get to go buy a new washer and *hopefully* my replacement KitchenAid stand mixer. Won't have much "fun" money this year, but hey - at least the taxes are paid, right?

Gotta skitter - got knitting to do!

Herself has been feeling sick, so I've spent the last 2 nights on the futon (for some reason, when she's feeling "off", she wants to sleep on the sofa. :Sigh: And she wants Mama near. :big sigh:

She's not feeling TOO bad though - right now the kids are doing their Home-Ec class. This week, it's Carrot Cake from scratch...and my kitchen is a disaster area. *I* am staying out of it - I will advise, I will demonstrate, but I am NOT doing the actual baking/mixing/reading of recipe. That's all on them. So far, Himself's done the dry mixing while Herself's done the wet - I had to shred the carrots, because the food processor kinda scares *both* of them. :snicker: It should go well with tonight's dinner - I put chili in the crock pot this AM, and it smells FABULOUS.

2.5 repeats to go on the scarf! I can see the light!!! :lol:

I need to stay off of Ravelry a bit.....see, Rav has a function where you can look up patterns/yarns and see what people have done with them. You can also look into people's stashes to see what the yarns look like under different lighting conditions. However.....Rav also has a function within "Stash" called "For Sale or Trade". :gulp: VERY dangerous, that is!

I, um...well. I scored a "Lucky Jack" Tsock Tsarina kit from a destash, and the pattern for "Lobster Quadrille". And an online friend picked up "York and Lancaster" for me from the Fiber Festival this Weekend (I think it's the "Big E", but I'm not sure.)...so I have 3 Tsocks coming. And another I've inquired about. :sigh: I need to step AWAY from the forum. :lol: (I LOVE Tsocks. They aren't normal mindless knitting, which is why I like them. And they're always inventive!) Oh, and I have a few more marked for later.....

Anyway. I need to see why the kitchen's gone quiet, and start thinking about lunch.

Hope your weekend goes well!!

It's been busy. Dr. for SG on Wednesday, shopping yesterday. This AM, the kids are cleaning the doe barn (so school will start LATE).....it's been a wild week.

I spent the morning printing out and collating Mystery of History, Quarter 2. The book still hasn't printed, but the publisher has made Q2 available - both the book and the workbook - for download to those of us who pre-ordered, so at least I CAN teach World History. I wish they'd let me download all of the workbook, because I'd prefer to print it out at once, but hey - at least I'm done thru lesson 42!

I have to say, I love Planbook! I love that I can go ahead and set the entire year up, then if something comes up I can bump the lessons. Or, if we get so into a subject we read ahead, I can pull back the lesson order. It's great - and I LOVE having everything set up ready to go. I also like that I can set up lessons per kid, if I want, and print out just their plan for the week/month - we tried that last year. Himself LOVED it, because he could do a week's worth of work in 1 or 2 days if he wanted to. Herself, however.....can't handle that much freedom. Oh, well - it was worth a try. :lol:

Not much else to report. The scarf is about 1/4 done, my leg is still black-and-blue, the goats - oh, yeah. The goats....we did lose the gray cashmere boy. :sigh: Everybody else is doing well, though - Frosty is starting to gain weight - which is good! - and the barn is being cleaned as I type. I need to stack firewood, but it hurts to walk much, so that'll have to wait. :sigh:

Ah, well - such is life. Shabbat Shalom!

Herself is MUCH better today, thank you! She slept soundly last night, and woke up ready to take on the world. Or at least, Canton Trade Days. :lol: I'm glad we went today instead of tomorrow; we found a "new" vendor (new to us, anyway!) that carries mostly old-fashioned hand-tools. Like the planes SG has been hunting. For reasonable prices.

A few weeks ago, SG showed me a video of Chris Schwartz (some big woodworking guru) - he was using a plow plane. SG remarked that he'd like one, but new they were in the $500+ range (the one Chris was using was $1700. !!!!)

Anyway, we're browsing the booth...and I see not 1 but *2* plow planes. 1 had a bunch of blades with it - but it was priced a little out of our budget. SG sighed and bought a Stanley plane, a...something else, and an old oil can. I asked the guy what was the least amount he'd take for the bells-n-whistles plane....and he said, well, I take checks, you know, and let me see...how 'bout $100? I had my checkbook out faster than SG could say "Yes". :rofl:

SG has promised to finish my weaving cabinet soon. He also offered to buy me the 2 broken-down spinning wheels another seller had....problem is that only 1 was almost complete. And...it's gonna cost more than the thing is worth to get it to usable condition (it's missing the Mother-of-All, the flyer and bobbin assembly and the wooden screw blocks needed to tension the missing MoA. SG can't do metal smithing, which is necessary for the orifice and bobbin rod.....we *could* purchase an Ashford flyer unit, but it wouldn't match and might not even work correctly on the old wheel. :sigh: It was a pretty thing....but I won't spend $100 on a non-fixable beauty prop. :big sigh:

Ah, well - we had fun. And Herself still feels good!

I've been lesson-planning. Looks like our Home Ec course will be on Mondays - it's a non-full day (ish - Friday is our light day, but I want to keep it that way for Shabbat-prep). We're starting with scrambled eggs - that way she can cook *something* decent right out the gate. I have the Jan/Feb 1998 issue of Cook's Illustrated which has "fluffy scrambled eggs", "Best Bacon" (we'll use either Turkey or Beef bacon, of course!), Jewish Rye Bread, and Carrot Cake - that's a whole month, right there! :wink: We'll do a lot of it later in the day, so that supper will be taken care of - she learns to cook and *I* don't have to prep dinner. Win/win! :lol: I have 9 issues of Cook's Illustrated and 7 issues of Martha Stewart Living (I know, but - she's got good ideas.) - that should keep us busy this year! (And, we might do more than 1x/week. We'll see.)

Gotta re-boot the laundry. Hope y'all have a great day!

but you'll have to wait. I was *planning* on having Firebird #1 done *today*, but....Dr. Who and knitting from charts simply do NOT mix. :lol: And today...well, we have an outside class that's going to cut into today's knitting time. Not a big deal, but....the sock won't be finished (probably) until Sunday (I don't knit on Shabbat.) And SG finished another darning egg - I need to post that, as well. (He's getting better - he even added some pretty touches to this one!)

I also really, really, REALLY need to make soap - like, SOON. Paypal is supposed to keep track of inventory...but it kinda sucks. I have it set to notify me when I get down to 5 bars of a particular scent.....and it sometimes doesn't do that. Yes, I can visually verify - but when you have a batch that you think is "enough" and it sells, well - you kinda need to get it restocked. :lol: (NOT a bad problem to have!) I have a LOT of soap curing, but not of all my scents - some are new, some are fail-batches, and some are personal. So, soap-making gets moved to the top of the Must Do list and knitting gets moved down. (Since it takes 6 weeks to cure, I need to stay on top of the soap situation.)

At least this time I remembered to update the website with "out of stock" buttons. :blush: Which reminds me, I *really* need to get the new soaps listed - as I said above, I have a *lot* that's not on the site yet. :sigh: and :lol: (First world problems, right?)

At least I did my Shabbat cleaning early today! And dinner's already planned...so at least I am ahead of the game there!

Gotta skitter! Shabbat Shalom!

so, we went to the Perot! NO crowds; we got to see all the exhibits and spend time with Grandpa, who went with us. It was a good day!

I took a "back to school" photo, but the kids asked I not post it. Ok...but it's funny. The Perot has a dinosaur fossil on display in front of the ticket kiosk. Both kids stood in front of it, and right as I went to snap the photo, decided to play fight. :sigh: and :lol: Typical!

Am about halfway down the leg of my Impressionist socks. Have a photo:



The yarn is lovely to knit with, the pattern is very very easy and intuitive. I like how the colors are working with the lace, but I'm not totally sold on the pooling I'm getting. I looked up the yarn, and it seems that this is typical of this yarn, so :shrug: I'll live with it. It's a nice, cushy sock so far!

The washer is fixed!!! All it was......HImself had overstuffed it when he did his laundry and one of his shirts got in between the drum and the...whatever, and wrapped around the pump. :sigh: We've gone over laundry rules again.....but I have a washer!!!!!

Busy day - and I'm tired. Laters!

Just got an email from Mystery of History - Vol. IV will be shipping in late Sept/early Oct! Because I pre-ordered, it included a link to get the 1st Quarter of the Student Reader (the textbook) and the 1st Quarter Activities/Tests/etc. Guess what I've been doing? :lol: My printer is gonna hate me.....ah well.

I'll be sitting down with PlanBook in a bit and getting this scheduled. I LOVE schedules.....I like being able to just open and go - even though it takes a whack of time to do it all at once, it's how I prefer it. That way, *I* don't have to think once we get started schooling "for reals". :snicker:

I really, really like MoH - in fact, it's the one set of books that a) I went back and purchased the previous volumes (we started with #3) and b) I will not be passing on. Sorry, but...I LOVE these books. The author has been pretty good about keeping her church doctrine out of them (although some sneaks in....but not so much that it's annoying. I don't have to do a lot of editing - and I appreciate that!)(Yes, they're Christian. *I* appreciate that - but she hasn't gone overboard like some I could mention.)

It rained all day yesterday! We didn't get a whole lot - just about 1" - but up North of us they got 11". Nope, not a typo - 11". :blink: Thank God for it!

Gotta get started dropping stuff into PlanBook - Shabbat Shalom!