curve ball central

What is the etiquette, exactly, of sharing bad news? Does one assume one's friends will want to know, and therefore tell everyone, as quickly as possible? Or does one keep it to oneself, in the interest of keeping everyone's lives as simple as possible? And what about those friends and connections we make only through the internet? Facebook friends, some of whom I haven't seen since I was 19 and don't really ever expect to see again? Blog friends, who live far away but have come to be familiar faces of sorts?

I don't want to burden you, but it feels dishonest to pretend everything is just as it was last week.

Joe and I are both, suddenly, looking for jobs. Joe got laid off (downsized? subtracted?) on Monday. I spent all of Tuesday pulling together materials to apply to substitute teach. I expect to be working within two or three weeks. After I get a feel for the schools around here, I'll start looking for a permanent position.

Every option is on the table: we could move far away, Joe might go back to school, or we might stay here so he can do consulting work with the contacts he's made in the last two and a half years working in green chemistry. Maybe we'll move to New Zealand. Or Belize.

My mind is filled with all the possibilities that this opens up for us. I am strangely pleased. I know I may not be quite as pleased when the money runs out and we don't know how we're going to pay the electric bill, let alone the mortgage, but for now, it's all good, and I'm loving my life at this moment.

anticipation

That's a freshly carded batt of exceptionally soft corriedale, lounging on the back of my spinning chair and waiting to be spun on my delightful new spinning wheel. It will wait until after laundry and dishes, and some schooling for the little guy.

Little and I have really shifted gears in the last week. I'm having what I hope will be a minor health crisis, and he has had several minor meltdowns, and all of that is pointing us in the direction of fewer scheduled activities. We're going to be home, and we're only going to go out when there's something we've just thought of that we really want to do.

This means we're opting out of some great organized activities and projects this fall, but it also means we'll have time for the library, the museum, trips to see his grandparents and his papa at work, not to mention time to play at home. We need our daydreaming time, and starting this week, we're going to get it. We're both excited and pleased about this change.

massive tangle

This morning, in what was to be a triumph of technology that hastened the enjoyable process of watching freshly spun skeins of yarn dry outside on a sunny fall day, I put fifteen skeins of handspun yarn in the washer. I wasn't washing them, understand. I just wanted to spin the water out of them after I'd carefully washed and rinsed them by hand in the sink.

Except I also decided to let the washing machine do an extra rinse. Which maybe wasn't so smart. Also I have a front loader, which I understand might have been a particularly bad choice. You know, if one were to choose a washing machine for its ability to spin the water out of handspun yarn.



We have now run this experiment, and there will be no need to run it ever again. Consider this my contribution to yarn science. I have attempted a crazy thing and suffered for it, so you don't have to.

For the curious, there are 12 skeins of yarn there, three of the burgundy, four of the green, and five of the natural white.

I did manage to separate three skeins from the main tangle, but I don't think I'll be knitting with any part of this yarn any time soon. There are sections in these skeins that are like tiny colorful dreadlocks.