The Madd Dyer

"the sweet spot"

2006-07-14T05:46:00.000-07:00

If you ask any sports fan, they will tell you that the sweet spot has to do with a bat and a ball and where the ball hits the bat, and whether the bat will rotate from the handle or the tip end, or simply knock that ball out of the park. This is not about that kind of sweet spot. No sports here. THIS is a different kind of sweet spot.

I have been battling, with the help of several doctors, a bevy of auto-immune disorders for the last two years officially, and probably the past 10 years unofficially. (that means I had it, I hurt, but I wasn't diagnosed with anything at that point, so it isn't supposed to count...and that is so wrong!!!) SO for me the sweet spot is totally different than in the above baseball reference.(from Wikipedia.com)

I woke up this morning in the sweet spot. For me, and most likely others with auto-immune disorders like rueumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, and lupus....the term sweet spot takes on a totally new meaning...

As I awoke slowly and sleepily from a good solid 4 hours of sleep,(which is highly unusual and notable in itself) I noticed for a split second....that if I was really, really still...and didn't move any part of my body even a fraction of an inch...if I just stayed suspended in that one moment between being awake and asleep....for that one moment.....I didn't hurt, anywhere.

It was glorious...that one moment in time...where it didn't hurt to be me.

Those who have experienced degenerative diseases, (and the count is in the millions folks)..millions of people in the U.S. alone can relate to that statement. "That for one moment it didn't hurt to be me." I don't know the why's and how's of this mornings sweet spot...if I did I could bottle it and sell it....and be the next Madame Curie. Maybe it was to remind me, of what it was like to wake up and not be controlled by pain. Because after awhile you do forget. It can totally overtake your life. . And somehow this morning....miraculously...for a split second I didn't hurt. I am thankful. Talk about stopping to smell the roses..for a split second it was like I had my life back. For a spit second I had nothing at all to worry about. Think about that. What if life revolved around pain, and the taking of mediation? And what of the limitations that would be put on a life because of pain?

SO, why did I choose to come out of the closet so to speak and post about it? Because of the simple fact that there are millions of people out there that can't remember when they didn't hurt. They are all around you.. you just can't see them. They are in every walk of life, every job description, every neighborhood. And they keep on getting out of bed every morning. They keep on...keeping on.....against incredible odds that one day soon they won't be able to get out of bed. It's something that we need to think about. That not everyone enjoys perfect health. That one day anyone can wake up in incredible pain that will never go away....it is not a pretty thought, but it happens....every day.....to someone else. To someone new.

So the next time you see someone using a handicapped parking space and doesn't look to you like they need it....no limp....no walker....no wheel chair.... think about it. There are a lot more reasons that are not visable to the human eye, that can knock someones life into chaos, and make that parking spot a lifesaver.

It's all about the roses folks. We all need to stop and smell the roses. No matter if you are stressed and busy at work, or stressed at home with babies and children..or stresed in a bad job or marriage..or stressed because of an illness that has become a fact of life,for you or your spouse. Each and every one of us deserves the time to be in that sweet spot for just one second in time......because it can be glorious! And we get so busy that we forget......so today.....just for a moment.....stop........smell the roses......and check out that sweet spot.........for just a moment! It is a glorious place to be!

The Dispersal of a Hookers Stash............

2006-07-12T21:30:00.000-07:00

It's a known fact that I hook rugs, and that I dye wool when I can get my hands on it. What may be an unknown fact is that I live in the middle of a desert. Today it was 110 degrees...tomorrow is predicted to be a whopping 115. Don't let them kid you with that "but it's a dry heat" business....it is still so hot that I am SURE that GOD never intended humans to live here...all that aside....I live 100 miles away from any large city. This quaint little western town has a weekly rodeo, numerous opportunities to rope a calf....many quaint eateries and western honkytonks... yet no real source of any kind for wool..so I have three choices 1.is to order off the internet...which is just not in my budget at this time and 2 is a wool hunt in the only 2nd hand store in town, where you may find if you are lucky one wool skirt..usually navy blue and one mans wool shirt...if you are really lucky it's light plaid that you can overdye. SO a wool hunt here is really nonprodutive.(yet I continue to check weekly hoping that someone suddenly discovers a hoard of woolie clothing and donates it). (hopeless hoping I know..yet I continue to trek to the store in the heat every week). AND 3 is to beg all my friends for the clothes off their backs every winter! I also belong to a rug hooking e-group...and the other "hookers" talk about having a stash.....a stash meaning a large chest of drawers or a closet. or both a chest and a closet!!..stuffed with wool just waiting to be dyed and hooked into a masterpiece. I am new at this and handicapped by my location (and lack of budget for internet buying) and I was inquiring of a post regarding the dispersal of the stash of a long time hooker....(doesn't that sound kind of dirty??? it doesn't sound like all you'd find was a bunch of wool does it?.)..yet that was what was for sale and I inquired making a small joke about being "stashless". A very nice lady from Pennsylvania sent me an e-mail and would I like her to gift me with a box of wool??? DO snakes slither and cows moo...yes please!!! was my reply...... and this week it came........It was heaven........delicious hand dyed colors that I couldn't even begin to describe,and plaid, plaid and more plaid....then pendleton plaid!!(two whole shirts!!)......the more I dug into the box the woozier I got!!! I looked at the pathethic little pile of wool on a shelf in the corner of the living room......and to this overflowing box of wonderful wool......and sighed with contentment......alas........I FINALLY HAVE A STASH......AND to Joan in Pennsylvania: Thank you kind lady for your generosity!!!!!

I fell out of bed.....On the wrong side !

2006-07-03T04:43:00.000-07:00

I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, no that's not accurate. To be truly accurate, I fell out of bed on the wrong side this morning! I have been doing that a lot lately....And it is no fun at all.

I live alone, I have not cat,dog,flock of sheep nor children at home to blog about...so there are long spaces between my blogs because what you have left living alone is blogging about the truly personal.....and I just haven't seen any reason to do that. My life isn't all that interesting lately.

SO this morning I fell out of bed at 4 am....which has become the usual for me. For some reason I am falling out of bed frequently. So in my groggy half asleep state I pick myself up off the floor and turn the laptop on and take my pain pills while it warms up and loads...............and hit a couple of the blogs that I regularly read and for one reason of another....missed yesterday. .. I should have started with the Panopticon because Dolores would have had me laughing within seconds and my day would have started off so much different.! But no....I actually read that one yesterday so I clicked on another one. And there all the talk was of knitting washcloths and all the wonder therein..........And the posts were giddy little blurbs about oh....I found sugar and creme here ....and oh....I found it there.....All the way through the remarks..all were the same giddy little entry's..... At some point I must have growled....because I found my mind racing as my fingers were scrolling so that I could leave a record of my having been there too!!!..........and then I got to thinking..........you can't post that on someone else's blog!!!! These people would be aghast............oh, hell......I said. (Right out loud, to myself.) I'll post it on my blog..(realizing of course that no one will read it)........but I will have had the satisfaction of getting it off MY chest....and perhaps I can start my day over. ...

I wanted to say hold it ladies, don't get your knickers in a knot!! Sugar and creme is abundant at Walmart. Every color. Small balls and big cones of the stuff sits on their shelves.And the reason this so is because people have been knitting dishcloths, or washies, or worshies...what ever you want to call them for 30 years. Ask my grandmother, the knitting sensi of our family!!! 30 years she has been cranking out those babies for everyone in a very large Irish catholic family.

This wondrous awakening of the Jr. League of knitting is because two people wrote an expensive knitting book that included among other projects, the very same wash cloths that I have seen all my life. I have been away from knitting...and with a recent injury and time off work have returned...so I have been browsing the bookstores to replentish my library of essential knitting books. I got an encyclopedia of stitches, a great book on antique socks .....and I looked at this $29.00 book with the dish cloths in it and gently smiled to myself and put it back on the shelf......and chose instead a little knitting humor for $9.95 to round out my shopping day.

Now I discover there is a great awakening in the knitting world (upper echelons only)......And the new wonder is dishcloths!!! Who knew?? I think that I will write an expensive book about the handy little towels that gram made to go along with the dishcloths..........they hang on the door of your oven,so handy for reaching! .......the Jr. League of knitting might be amazed all over again..!!!! And this time I would be the one laughing all the way to the bank!!!

Gee...............I feel so much better now!!

Inept?? TOTALLY !!

2006-06-19T06:15:00.000-07:00

I have been having some technical problems here. Most are due to the fact that it appears that I cannot follow even the most simple of directions. I couldn't get on to my own blog for two weeks, and then accidently hit the right button and wham I am posting again! I joined a web ring, gave them the wrong website address(well in my own defense it was 3 am when I was doing this..so that may have been part of the brain rot problem!) Then totally lost it when trying to copy and paste their logo stuff to the site.(copying and pasting just isn't the same as when I was in kindergarten in the dark ages!) I think I should stand in the corner with my windows for dummies on top of my head!! Maybe something will sink in. Any way I'm
blogging again . I have had some very good tips given to me for posting pictures.so... hopefully there will be something to see soon! And I am enrolling in a remedial cutting and pasting class as soon as I find one in my neighborhood!

Where are the Pictures??

2006-05-15T11:52:00.000-07:00

I have spent the entire morning uploading some pictures of my quilts to Flickr so that I could place them here for all to see. Then once I had it down to a simple manuver I was going to photograph all the rugs and pillows I've been hooking and my spinning so that I could start to add some pictures. Well......do you see any pictures??? No??? Me either!! I copied and I pasted......and I copied and pasted and then I copied and pasted again ......and NOTHING!......no pictures moved from flickers page to this page. After several hours I gave up........I really need a gin a tonic......but I will settle for a nice nap! If anyone has some easy hints for me I'll be checking back after my nap!

I'm SPINNING..........!!

2006-05-13T10:30:00.000-07:00

Here is where I do my little snoopy happy dance (which friends have assured me that I really do)....happy...happy ...happy....spinning! me! who would have thunk it??ME thats who!!! Obviously my spindle finally came in the mail and I have been practicing. I read the book and tried it, then read the book again and tried it.... then went to interweave press and downloaded 2 articles on spindle spinning and tried it again!!! I AM SPINNING!.......what does it look like you ask??? (you had to ask didn't you?) (masochist!)....ok........most of it looks like crap ...fat...uneven...pencil thick....but some of it is actually ok...looks what I would expect new spinning to look like. I realize that this is not an instant gratification type sport.......it's like playing the piano (which I don't do with any great success either)...practice, practice, practice. So that is just what I am doing. I am setting aside an hour in the am and sometimes an hour in the pm to do this practicing....and I can see that it is getting easier (I'm not quite as clumbsey as I was at first), and I can see a difference in the product that I spin.......it's coming along . And I am SOOO glad that I tried it. I ordered a book on hooking with yarn....Nantucket hooking to be specific..and this gal is doing what I want to do.....she is spinning her own yarn and dyeing it and then hooking with it. So SEE, I am not anwhere near crazy like my friends thought.......other people are doing it too. When a friend found out that not only was I hooking, but that I was spinning too he asked if the next thing would be sheep in my backyard?? I pointed out to him that I have read several internet sites on sheep, angora goats, and angora bunnies and that if I find a place to live where I can keep a little flock of wool makers that I would definataly be buying a few!! And the offshoot is that there will be sock yarn too.......in any color that I want.(see the learning to dye paid off too)... This keeps looking better and better all the time. I also ordered the magic loop. I have in the past done 2 kneedle socks and have done a few 4 needle socks with success, but usually I need a valium or a few glasses of wine to get thru the 4 needle thing! I'm hoping that the magic loop really is magic and that I can start turning out socks by the zillions. My great grand-father used to knit argyle socks in the winter (in the sumer he was too busy being a farmer). He's the one that taught my grandmother to knit. And she bless her heart is the only one that had the time and patience to teach a left hander (me) to knit !! So I can carry on the tradition of knitting socks...think I'll stay away from argyle though!

Patience may be a virtue but............................

2006-05-09T15:35:00.000-07:00

I have never been any good at it. I am waiting for four different parcels.......I have ordered 2 rug patterns and supplies from 2 different places (including my drop spindle).....and I am waiting and waiting!! I am used to ordering clothes and QVC stuff and having it come in 3-5 days. This is going on 2 weeks+ and still waiting. Of course it doesn't help that I live in the boondocks....it's not the END of the earth...but you can see it from here!!!! It's a good thing that I can't just run down to the store and pick things up because I would have been there and back several times over by now!!..but then I would never have ordered on the internet in the first place (HA). So here I sit by the door waiting for the UPS guy.......at least I'm getting in a lot of time hooking!!!!....no housework though....I might miss the knock on the door!!!! Excuse me now.........I have to get back to waiting!!!

Dyeing Surprises

2006-05-05T07:21:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons I love to dye is that sometimes you get what you were aiming for a sometimes you get a nice surprise. I went on a wool hunt yesterday........and that is not all that easy in Arizona..but I managed to "score" six 100% wool skirts in large sizes (more fabric!). So I decided to try and dye them in the washer with Black rit instead of one at a time on the stove with my expensive little envelopes of dye. I took each of three skirts apart,2 navy blue and 1 bright,cherry red.......and into the machine they went with the whole bottle of black dye. Now never having dyed wool in the machine before I didn't want to adgitate it too much for fear of felting, so I let it soak and did a lot of stirring and rinsed it 2 times and then pulled out 1 black skirt piece, 1 burgandy skirt piece (very dark and rich color) and 1 NAVY piece! ha......... when I got all of the wool out and looked it over, one entire skirt...which had been clearly labeled 100% wool had totally taken up none of the dye. ALL the other pieces were either the beautiful burgandy or a deep black....so clearly this skirt was perhaps not 100%.....????? Now I wish I had dyed them before I took them apart....so that the lables would still be in the skirts and I could see what brand didn't dye!...it will remain a secret. This wool has one more chance to become black when I dye it on the stove over the weekend....otherwise I give up. The other three skirts were 1 black, and 2 grey " tweedy"....so they get to stay as they are. Not a bad score all and all for Arizona......where they don't even know what wool is...these skirts must have come from a snowbird, or someone who moved here from the cold weather and realized after our mild winter that they just didn't need them anymore. My tiny little stash is greatful for their generosity!! And I just love the Burgandy which was the real surprise of the day!!!

NO HARLOT ?????

2006-04-30T02:01:00.000-07:00

I got to pull a "MOM" today.........and it felt really good......and I know that had she been with me she would have laughed so hard she'd wet her pants when we got back in the car!....to explain.....several years ago I flew home to NY for Thanksgiving. I had been in Nevada and was doing a lot of quilting with Debbie Mumm fabric. Mom loved the fabric and we began a quest to find some in her neighborhood. Every store we went into had never heard of Debbie Mumm....and Mom did this whole act on who she was and how big she and her fabric was on the WEST COAST.....like we were some sort of jet setters or something...she went on and on....it was hysterical..........so today I go to a Barnes and Noble in Phoenix looking for the Yarn Harlots books....they had never heard of Yarn Harlot. I tried Stehpanie Pearl-McPhee ? no dice. I said Knitting rules???? ah........that sounded familiar so they looked it up on the computer and off we went to find 2 copies of each book ! Big supply ! Then I got to play Mom and explain who Stephanie was and how hysterical her writing is and about her blog...and how she was on a coast to coast book tour and would be in Phx soon...I really laid it on ...it helped that I was "dressed" for a day of shopping and not in my usual uniform of t-shirt and shorts! I think I pulled it off......and even if they didn't get it....I did....and I'm sure that if she was watching.......mom was wetting her pants! Do angels wear underpants?? I hope so!!

WIcked at Webs

2006-04-28T07:11:00.000-07:00

The Madd Dyer has been busy dying lots of nice wools for a new rug. Rich blues and purples for sky and water and yards and yards of shades of browns,golds,and bieges,........for sheep !!! Seems only right to use my wool to hook a rug with sheep........like a never ending circle. I have purple fingers because I tore a hole in my gloves....good thing I'm not in the frozen north where everyone would think they were frostbit (is that a word??) Not a chance of ice in Phoenix as its already getting hot, and way too early for me. Seasonal diversons are backward here. I hook rugs, knit afghans and make quilts in the summer because I hole up and stay out of the heat with the A/C as low as I dare. In the nice winter weather I ride horses and do lots of dyeing because I can still hang it out to dry and its ready to go quick as a wink. Sox are a year round vice. You just can't actually wear them between April and October. It is ok to knit them though...and I'm stocking up because I plan to move out of this blastfurnace before next summer rolls around. I spent the morning at Webs because the Harlot...(the Yarn Harlot) made me. It sounded so wonderful on her blog and the pictures made it look like christmas! I looked it up on the web and got my invisible shopping cart and off I went..it is even big on the web !!I shopped!! So I am going to start spinning....well I didn't get my wheel yet..but I did kind of like one or two..I have to think that one over and I really would like to see one in person before I buy it..so..I got a drop spindle and some wonderful, wonderful wool!! Now lets see if I am coordinated enough to figure it out by myself....as I don't think I could find a spinner in this wasteland of a desert!...If I could teach myself to hook rugs,make quilts by hand and dye wool....maybe I can figure it out. Wish me luck!!!

2006-04-20T13:09:00.000-07:00

The Madd Dyer

Up the Proverbial Creek

When I bought my first rug kit and the wool was so inferior that I would have been better off using a WWI blanket I resolved....no more kits. Then I saw a kit online..it was done with yarn and from a very reputable copany. And I wanted to try a rug with yarn ,I so got it and hooked it right odrwn to the last corner only to find that the checked pattern was off by 2 extra squares,which threw the whole pattern off ! So I conntact said national comapany and their reply was gee we don't know. We have never had this problem before.By now I have figured out how to fix it...with a little help from a quilter with "fresh eyes". But still remaining is the fact that this company which gladly took my $139.00 for the kit just abandoned me when I was in dire need of help. May all your contacts with supppliers go better than this !!

I dyed a soft green wool today for rose leaves for a new Folk Art pillow....I love it when the color comes out to just what you were looking for! Perfection!

Appliqued Coat to Dye For

2006-04-17T15:10:00.000-07:00

No dying for the madd dyer today. I spent all day looking for pictures of WIP and finished works. Most of my older stuff is in storage, but I do have what I've made in the past year. Now I can try and upload them tonight. Brenda thanks for the great coat idea! I can't wait to get started. Maybe we could start a trend with what did you call it? old coat thursday? I'll have to go back to your blog and see. For a wonderful applique coat go to kinshipincolorandwool.typepad.com. You will NOT be dissapointed! And the hooked rugs are just beautiful too.

In the Beginning...........

2006-04-17T03:41:00.000-07:00

I did it ! I think ! maybe ? creating a blog is no picnic for a computer illiterate baby boomer. Now all I have to do is figure out how to "fancy" up my blog and add some links and pictures. Well, one thing at a time. I have accomplished this .......and tomorrows another day! Any tips for the illiterate blogger??? I'd welcome any suggestions! Jenna