dear mom,
i will write about the adventure tomorrow, but in the meantime, a picture of lichen.




Love,
ruth

dear mom,
went on a field trip today, and I have to take another shower before going to bed. I'll tell you about it in the morning. (hopefully some of my pictures came out.)

love
ruth

Dear Mom,
Yesterday the goldfish were enjoying the warm weather.




The got kibble for the first time in 4 or 5 months, but they were swimming slooooow.

My package came today. The weird thing was as soon as I pulled it out of the mailbox I knew what it was. Thank you! It is going to be challenging to finish the couple SUPER BULKY SUPER WARM projects that are in progress. I guess that's how it goes. Last week I finished the sweater I started while hanging out with Ron as he installed his show at Catherine's in January 2006.

Love,
Ruth

dear mom,
maybe we can call these "collaborations."




Love,
Ruth

dear mom,
so far the garden will have leeks and kittehs.





love
ruth

Dear Mom,
I had to buy seeds for a photoshoot for Noemi, so I bought things I would like to eat, and figured seeds aren't that much money, and they're on sale right now, so I might as well start preparing for this summer's potential garden. this morning with sunday morning on I started three kinds of tomatoes (regular big boy, and two kinds of cherries--one is bright yellow and one is teeny tiny), some cutting flowers, lemon cucumbers (they're round and yellow on the outside, and looked cool, I think they taste regular) and watermelons. i can't resist--the house is nice and warm with lots of windows for the seedlings, and a big sunny yard for the garden plot. the leeks i planted in the little peat pots last week are sprouting, but unfortunately are going to have to be thinned out.




the jewelry order for milwaukee is almost done, even with most of the day spent sputtering around. i wasn't sure exactly what i had done, but then i remembered that i was doing internet research on turning your dslr into a pinhole camera. and cleaning a little, and planting seeds. it was in the mid-high 50s today, and sunny, and most of our snow is gone. just the last few huge drifts are hanging in. i either have allergies or a little cold, as my nose is running backwards making my throat hurt. i have been hydrating and taking vitamin c and zycam.

this afternoon we went to wegman's to pick up pizza supplies, and the last thing i was doing was standing in the magazine section flipping through w magazine because i let my subscription run out. guess who's in it? a kid named chris rucker, who was a sculpture undergrad at uconn the same time we were (he was a couple years ahead of us). he makes furniture, and since he's friends with paul b and paul b works for the fashion photographer steven klein, chris made some furniture for him, and i'm sure that's how w magazine noticed him. it is very surreal to see someone like that in a big fashion magazine, especially since i'm the one who as aspirations of that.

one step at a time, i suppose. my work is now online at http://www.shoporangebutton.com.
love
ruth

dear mom,
worked in studio, got stuff done but not without frustrations, gave up and came inside to start the spring cleaning. had the crankies.

tomorrow will be more of the same.

love ruth

dear mom,
went to rochester today, and did about 400% more driving than we should have getting all sorts of turned around going from one suburb to another. you feel like they should connect, and sometimes they do, but to complicate matters, there are three highways that you need to be on at some point 390, 490 and 590, and I think their north/south/east/wests are all mixed up too. it was so warm that we were down to just tee-shirts.

got the box out to relish at home (in berkeley) this morning, so that's good.

have to go to bed--ron's truck has to be in hornell at the car doctor's at 8 am tomorrow.

love ruth

Dear Mom,
The other day I finished one of the sweaters I started from the book Noemi sent me a couple weeks ago. It was Lamb's Pride from my stash, so it's a little scratchy, but I can make a softer one for when the weather warms up. A shrug seems like a stupid thing to knit, but it's actually nice to have something warm across your shoulders and back of your neck. Protects you from those pesky drafts.






Love, Ruth

Dear Mom,
Sorry about not posting yesterday. You know, there just wasn't that much I felt like saying. Not that stuff didn't happen: I got the shipment out to Habit in Chicago, and ran some errands, and went out to dinner with a bunch of friends, including Nadine who swung by after going to the national clay conference in Louisville. The today was status quo tuesday, working and stuff. I needed help taking more pictures, so I finally figured out (with only a couple technical difficulties in the beginnning) the remote control shutter release. Took some one-handed action shots, then got situatted with the still life on the floor so I could press the button with my big toes and get both hands in the pictures. It was a pretty ghetto set-up, you would have laughed. The mini tripod Ron has doesn't really support the weight of the camera, so I had to support it with a log, and then at one point the dog's bowl was involved as a short lift.

I saw a tutorial online today for turning altoids tins into pinhole cameras, so I was thinking about that this evening, and I think I am going to experiment and see if I can convince the digital camera it wants to be a pinhole. I think if I turn everything to manual and go with an untimed shutter speed with a pinhole lens cap over the lens, it might work. Or I could probably take the lens off and put a pinhole cap over the resulting hole. I bet that would work. I'll keep you posted...

Love,
Ruth
p.s. there are a billion stars out tonight, but it's too cold to enjoy them.

Dear Mom,
Not much to report. Watched Sunday Morning and knit, and then Ron got back from school and needed to run errands in Wellsville so I went too. I still need a change of scenery that isn't Wellsville or Hornell, but it looks like the end of this week we'll go up to Rochester; Ron needs more Baltic Birch plywood. Then this afternoon I worked in the studio until dinner, when we made pizza. Isn't life exciting.

Love,
Ruth

Dear Mom,
Your images are amazing. I am glad you risked llife and limb and camera to take those. It's especially amazing to see how the ice fizzured and made patterns on the inside. It's really phenomenal.

On a side note, I heard back from another boutique, this one in Milwaukee Wisconsin. (!)

It finally stopped snowing, but it's pretty blowy. Today we almost had to make a trip in to Rochester for supplies for Ron's class, but then he found a local alternative, and I know it was better not to drive during the last few hours of the snow storm, but I was kinda sad. I was looking forward to a change of scenery, even though I know time is better spent in my studio. So that's what I did today, and Ron finished one of the pieces for his show.

Good night.
Love, Ruth

Dear Mom,
ARG! More fucking snow! I worked in the studio today, and Ron worked at school (on school things). I had a killer headache this morning, but I think that was from this storm moving in. And then, to top it all off, Ron called from the gas station in town at 9:30pm to say his truck couldn't make it up the hill at the beginning of our road so he was walking the last two miles home and it would take a while. Well, it's only 18 degrees, and even though he told me not to come get him because then I'd get stuck too, I drove part of the way and waited for him. Finally he came up the road, and he said he thought I was a poacher, sitting there parked in the middle of the road with my headlights on. I am, I told him. A Man Poacher.

Love,
Ruth

Dear Mom,
Yesterday we emailed so much I totally forgot to post. And now it's 12:20 am, so I'm going to have to keep it short. I went to see a movie at school tonight about the kids of Darfur, and then an old student was back in town playing a music show. It was nice to hang out at school, watching kids do their thing.
Has your bad weather arrived yet?
Love, Ruth

Dear Mom,
Scientists have discovered what's behind the phenomenon of people "hearing bed calling".




Love,
Ruth

Dear Mom,
Thanks.
Love,
Ruth

Dear mom,
Nothing all that interesting to write about today. Now I'm tired. Isn't my body supposed to think it's only 8:30?

Keep your fingers crossed for a very productive, non-distracted day tomorrow.
Love,
Ruth

Dear mom,
My knitpicks needles came today! (Thanks!) I switched my sweater over to them, and it seems to be going well. When I was knitting you your Blue Egg, I was dying using the needles I had, so I went to The Weaving Works to buy sharper ones, and the lady there told me you're not supposed to change needles midway through a project. Well, you're not supposed to take apart sweaters from the GAP to turn into shawls for your mom, either, but I'm just crazy like that. I keep thinking of her telling me that as I switch needles every day on this new sweater.

I heard back from another store, so YAY this has been a productive week on the jewelry venue front. If I could just finish with other responsibilities so I can get back in the studio...

Love,
Ruth

Dear Mom,
Worked on taxes, and for a treat we're going bowling with Dallas and Chloe, and maybe other people too. Not so much a treat for Ron, but he didn't help with the paperwork anyway.
Love,
Ruth

Dear Mom,
Now that I've taken the sleeve stitches off the needles, my stitches aren't sticking so bad. Let's see, I started that sweater Monday night, and I'm a couple inches past the armpits already. The pattern is written in a clear manner, but I think I've found another errata. I guess that is one of the risks of knitting a pattern right when it's released. I'll try to take a picture tomorrow. I've sort of knit myself into a coma, if you can't tell.
Love,
Ruth

Dear mom,
My Denise Interchangables came today! And not a moment too soon--N sent me a new knitting book with my mail, Stefanie Japel's Fitted Knits, and I happened to have yarn in the stash that matched one of the sweaters. I had cast on and knit the first three inches watching tv Monday night (it's bulky, can you tell?), and the two size 11 circulars I had were not the right length. One was way too short, so the stitches were jammed on so tight I couldn't count them, and the other was so long that it's only working temporarily. The sweaters are mostly knit from the top down, and I haven't taken off the sleeve stiches yet, but I already switched over to my new Denise so I'm ready. I had to rip back a few rows because the directions aren't written so the cables on the front are mirrored (like they are in the photograph), but I fixed it and have moved past.

I have good news, too. One of the places I recently sent my catalog responded that they are interested in my work. Yay! I'll be in Chicago! http://www.habitchicago.com

Love,
Ruth

p.s. C'mon, that baby sloth is cute. It has what cute overload calls Eye Capsules. And it looks like its elby-bones are on backwards.

Dear Mom,
The windchill this morning in the next town over was -35 degrees.

That is just not right.

love,
Ruth

Dear mom,
Well, I did it again. I didn't meanto forget yesterday's post, in fact it was composed in my head, but then I remembered when I was in bed for the night, computer turned off.
It has been a surreal weekend with Ron not here. My friend Dallas came over Saturday evening for dinner and a movie, but it turned in to dinner and help with Ron's birthday present. She left late, and then couldn't leave at all--her truck was totally stuck in the driveway, and then it died, too tired to make the effort in the cold, windy, 2am moonlight. So she stayed over, and in the morning after hanging out a little bit we went out to move her truck. She pushed the accelerator in, and that's where it stayed, completely slack. So I called Dan, because Dan knows everything, and he described where to look for the throttle cable on the engine. We went back out, and found it, wiggled it, and fixed it. Then we had to figure out a way to get her truck off the sheet of ice, and eventually we succeeded. I was hoping she'd be stuck here longer, but she had to pick up a friend first thing this morning at the Rochester Airport, so it was imperative that she was able to leave.
Yesterday I got to do whatever I wanted, so I knit and watched bad movies on tv and worked on Ron's present. I went to bed early with the idea of getting a lot accomplished today, not only a day off but probably my last day home alone. First thing this morning Ron calls about a problem, so I have to make a bunch of phone calls. Seems good. At about 10 I started working on The Present. Then the UPS guy calls, saying he has a package but knows it's not a good idea to come down the driveway, so I'm to meet him at the mailbox in half an hour. Then the FedEx guy shows up, and I throw on my coat to make sure he doesn't come into the bad part of the drive. I go out to the driveway, and phew, he knew when to stop. I congratulate him, and he says he thinks he came a little too far and is indeed stuck, can he borrow the shovel? Sure, no problem, so I go back in the house. Except I can't, I'm locked out. Fuck. It takes me a little while, but I finally locate the spare. I put the package inside and go out to see if he needs help. We work on shoveling and stuff, to no avail. He asks if we have a tractor, and I say, yeah, but DON'T BREAK IT, IT'S NOT MINE. He figures it out and starts plowing. Then he gets it stuck. I see the UPS guy, so I run down the driveway to meet him. Can you pull out the FedEx guy? I ask. He backs his truck down, but then the tractor gets unstuck, so the UPS guy leaves. The wind is blowing so much snow that the guy's truck is now unbearably stuck in the drift, so he comes inside to call for a tow-truck. The nice Mennonites who I mentioned in a previous post say they're on their way to get him, so problem solved. Then Ron calls. The electrician who came this morning was a total asshole, so Ron sent him away and called someone else. At this point I have not heard back from him about guy number two.
I was so full of anxiety, and I knew Tanya had played hookie from school, so I called her and talked for a while. After that, I check my email, and Corey has invited herself and Claire over after work, so I start my list of things to do today with the vacuuming. The one I use for the rugs dies periodically, which is what happened right before I started writing you. I guess I should go see if it has come back to life yet.
I think that's all that has happened in the last 2.5 days. I'll let you know an update from Ron when I get it.

Love,
Ruth

Dear Mom,
Sorry that I missed posting yesterday. Stitch n Bitch turned into No Stitch, All Bitch, and I didn't get home until late.

This morning I was organizing my sewing caddy, and in the bottom was the receipt for my machine, the caddy and all the notions. April 14, 1986. My sewing machine is 21 years old. How is that possible? I'm not 21 years old. :)

love,
ruth

Dear Mom,
Well, I finished both sleeves of the uber-bulky sweater, got the collar picked up and a round knit, but I had to rip it out because I need to adjust the stitch count so the ribbing works. The only thing going for this sweater is its immense warmth. I have a little issue with the actual fabric--the gauge is correct, but the stitches aren't very tight, so there are areas of the sweater that pull and you see the guts of the stitches. Maybe it'll be cuter once the collar is on. Or maybe it'll look better once it's blocked. Maybe the yarn fluffs up; sometimes that happens. I guess that's it for now. We rescheduled Stitch n Bitch from tonight to tomorrow night, so I can show you progress on the two current projects soon.
Love,
Ruth