The Longest, Saddest Time of the Year

January, February and March have, traditionally been hard on me. The weather is dark and dreary. My surroundings are colorless, gray, and either frozen or muddy. I am so cold that it feels like I will never get warm again, and this year is even worse than usual.
Still, even during these months, I have little things to keep me happy. I am committed to updating this blog, even though I doubt anyone reads it. It still helps to be able to gather my thoughts together into some form of cohesive whole. I have this lovely little craft room, where I can lock the cats out with a board and still lbe near my husband, where I can pretend that the only things I need to worry about are my crafts, and where I can wrap myself up in a wooly blanket and crank my tiny heater. I have my sweet kitties, who are always ready to stop and cuddle, and my husband, who is also always ready to stop and cuddle.

I gathered some more acorns and caps today, I am thinking about making a string of them to use as a garland. I also picked some dried juniper berries, because they smelled so yummy.

I also have been enjoying my walks to and from school. It is only a mile there, so in the mornings it gives me an opportunity to gear up for my day, and on the way back I can meditate on the actions and events of the day and file them all away, so that when I get home I can put it all aside and relax. I also spot plenty of interesting things, like this pretty lichen.

It was so nice and orange, I knew Bunny would love it at once. She likes orange things. Also, like I promised, here are the results of Stage One of the Great Ice Installation.

Here is the ice cakes on the string. Not at all what I was expecting, but super pretty. I moved the net closer to the waterfall to see how it interacted with the spray. More Pictures tomorrow!  In the meantime, here are some of the natural ice formations around the stream. 

Do Not Leave the Broiler Unattended

....or your crab cakes will burn.
That's ok, I was afraid that they were going off anyway. Now the question of what bad crab smells like is moot.
Little Hawk let me go to the knitting store today in search of a spindle, but to no avail. For once, the little shop of fuzzy wonders was lacking. So, instead of being reasonable and waiting to go order one from Knit Picks, I bought two skeins of Plymouth and a set of size 2 double-point needles, or dpns.   One skein is a variegated pinks, and the other several shades of dusky lavender. I have succumbed to the deadly Wooly Startitis and threw a coffee-cup cozy on the needles right away in the lavender.

Ice Fishing and Other Vegetarian Pastimes

On the walk to campus, i have to cross a slightly rickety old footbridge with an icy cold stream underneath. This morning, I observed the result of a week of under 40 degree weather. Icicles. HUGE icicles lining the bottom of the bridge. I saw that they were formed by the splashing as the stream ran over some rocks next to the bridge.
This spawned an idea for a fascinating art installation/ science experiment.
I ran home for some woolen yarn, (biodegradable in case of accidents) and scissors, and found a large stick nearby. After tying a rather halfhazard series of lines on the stick, i lowered the yarn ends into the water. Hmm. Not visually stimulating enough. I retrieved the stick, retyed the yarn into a loose net, and tried again. Ahh! However, the ends of the yarn, instead of dangling in the water, floated along the surface. I retrieved it again and, after prying gravel out of the frozen path, tried again. Perfect! I wedged the end of the stick in some roots and left it. Tonight we will have a low of 12, perfect for lots of ice formation. I took several pictures before I left, and will go out and take some bright and early tomorrow morning.  I am too lazy to post any pictures tonight, as the photoshop cleanup, (contrast and levels adjustment) will take half an hour and my other computer (the one in the craft room).
I have plans for several other experiments with water, ice and yarn, including weaving yarn around existing icicles and seeing how new ice forms. There will be plenty of documentation for you all, never fear.

Fog, Blogs and Batik Remnants

The best therapy, I have been told, is to keep busy. If that is so, than I have enough therapy to last a hundred lifetimes. Between working graveyards on the weekends, being a full time student AND a full time housewife, and all of the projects I keep getting myself into, I hardly have a moment to just sit and be myself. Yoga has been very helpful, though and I had forgotten how much I enjoyed it.

Walking to school on Wednesday was an quiet and introspective experience, due to the massive amounts of fog. It was so thick that I felt like I was the only person in an unformed world, that I could reach out and impose my will on the shapelessness around me.  It was so cold that the fog had frozen like frost on cobwebs and grass. When I got to class, I finally felt cleansed of all of the miasma of misery, loss and self doubt that had surrounded me for so long.

Then a teacher took it upon himself to ruin my lovely introspective mood by telling me to be grateful that I had lost my baby because it would interfere with my studies, and that a little grief was good for my art. I wanted to kill the bastard. Luckily, I am a coward and was able to choke back my grief and rage long enough to go back to work. If I had an ounce of self-respect, I would file a formal complaint with the Dean. Luckily for him, I am to chicken to rock the boat.

Anyway, on to more interesting news. It turns out my new nephew is due in May, not March, so I have plenty of time. I spent the afternoon sorting fabrics into piles all over the floor to see how many batik remnants i managed to steal from my old roommate, the Quilting Queen.  I have decided on a quilt with a plain square background in blues and greens, then I will applique orange and red koi fish on top. The hand quilting around the fish will imitate ripples, with a celtic braid around the edge. It's gonna be about 4x3 feet.

I am almost done with my sister's legwarmers, although I was disgusted to discover that the two balls of yarn I got were from two different dye lots! One is a pale cream, and one is a slightly more beige cream. I am highly annoyed and will most likely have to overdye with coffee or tea. Is salt the correct mordant for tea?  I will have to check.

Fluff

Little Hawk invited company over for the weekend, so I spent all of Friday tidying and even bathed Mew and Coraline. A little watered down conditioner, well rinsed, made them soft, soft, SOFT. Then I sat in front of the mini-heater and brushed the kitten until she was dry. I had a huge pile of fluff afterwards, and I think I will save it until I buy a spindle this week, so I can practice spinning.
I finished the cotton brocade sock, and cast on the second. This one will be teal with burgundy dots, the reverse of the first one. I also cast on a washcloth with baby cotton, since I realized that my brother and sister in law are having a baby in March, and I want to have a pile of lovely things for them. I plan to have as many washcloths as will come out of this skein, a few hats, and a quilt. I am going to go through my fabrics tomorrow and decide what to use for the quilt.

Now I am going to go join Little Hawk and Mew in a nap.

Back in the Saddle

I managed to go to class today, and planned a crocheting session with Bunny, Kitten and a grad student who I have not known long enough to give a proper blog name. After that, I wandered home through campus and gathered up a big handful of lovely fat acorns.

 With these, I plan to make a whole basket of these: 

Also, I am in progress on some socks that are turning out to be a lot of fun. They have a knit one stitch, slip one with yarn on the right side, knit one pattern that ends up turning into a bunch of tiny, interlocking triangles. I am knitting it up in a worsted weight cotton, and it looks like a Turkish brocade.

I just finished up a hat made with a pile of scrap yarn for a friend who gave me a teapot for my collection. It is primarily wool, with a cotton hem so it's not too itchy. 

 Last but not least, I had to show off my button stash, now tripled due to Bunny's generosity.

Eyas

This post is rather long and rambl-ey, so I will start with the TL;DR.
I was going to have a baby. I am not any more.

I skipped my period in  December, and began to get a bit suspicious. I was also starting to wake up nauseated. Little Hawk refused to get prematurely excited, so off we went to Walgreens and came home with a fancy digital reader. Ding! Negative. We decided it was too early to tell and promptly forgot about it.
Then I skipped my next period. I was definitely having morning sickness, was exhausted all the time, and was very hormonal. Since my nausea ended about 4 every afternoon, I was glowing, and as happy as I have ever been. Three more negative tests later, Little Hawk and I were confused yet excited.  We did a teensy bit of name discussion and decided that the odds were in our favor.   After all, several knowledgeable people had told us not to rely too heavily on tests. So we went to the doctor for a blood draw. Little Hawk was fully on board at this point and was rushing to kiss my belly at every opportunity and whisper messages to the "maybe baby."
We were both so tense, we didn't get any sleep the night before. After drawing blood, the doctor told us that we wouldn't find out until Monday, but that a preliminary urinalysis suggested that I had an infection. Terrified that an infection would explain away the nausea, we rushed to the internet. Nope. Uti's are often a symptom of pregnancy. We returned to being excited. So excited.  SO SO EXCITED.

Then I had a miscarriage on Friday night.

I spent the last three days locked in the craft room and knitting, and if the socks I was finishing acquired a certain amount of tears, they won't be harmed by a bit of preshrinking. I was doing fine until we turned on the tv- and the channel had a show on where they were delivering a baby. Little Hawk and I both broke down in tears.
While we both understand that this is one of the simple truths of trying for babies, it doesn't make it hurt any less. I managed to go to work this weekend, but couldn't bring myself to go to class on Monday and face all my friends who were so happy for us.
We're going to be ok. Eventually. In the meantime, I'm going to cry into my sister's unfinished left legwarmer. Bamboo yarn doesn't shrink, right?