It’s been a wild 3 weeks.  I’m up to my eyeballs in robots….and all the work that I usually do has been put to the back burner.  I keep telling myself that I’ll have time eventually to deal with it all…and have time to spin up another bobbin…

…lies!  all lies! There is no time!

Today I have a day off from robots, and after catching up on hours of lost sleep, and sorting out piles of paperwork, I am taking a break to transform the soft bananas that were on my counter into muffins, and planning my evening forage for caffeine.

The piles of paperwork are there…and deadlines are looming. Looks like it will be a long night tonight!

30 minutes to design and build a ball winder from scratch….possible?  NO!  well…not yet at least.

A friend at robotics decided to get a group of students to work really fast and gave them this challenge to solve.  After brainstorming a bit they decided that a ball winder could be made in 30 minutes.

Step 1: draw lots of ideas on a chalkboard.

Step 2: commandeer a cutting tool and make circles.

Step 3: mount the circles on an axle.

Step 4: Attach a slanted piece and give it a try!

Verdict:  a very good attempt for a 30 minute design process.

But it doesn’t wind a center pull ball.

Prototype #2 will be worked on at a later date I’m sure.  I have some very creative and persistent engineering friends, and they have lots of eager helpers.

Today it snowed.  This is the first snow that we have had this season.   It didn’t last long, but I captured the flakes as they flew…

…and as they landed on my sleeve…

Luckily by the time the trick-or-treaters were ready to go, the weather had cleared up nicely.

We got the house all set up for trick-or-treaters….and then picked out our costumes.

We dress up in black, with glow in the dark masks.  We scare all the little ones as they come for candy.

It’s always a big question about whether we are real or not.  Some years we have stuffed clothes with leaves and sat them on the lawn.  This year we were very real, but very still.

The evening ended up as it always does on hallowe’en….trick or treating at my grandmother’s house.  Popcorn, mulled cider, candy and apples were a warm and welcome treat for all of us after sitting out in the cold all evening scaring kids.

grandmother's 96th hallowe'en

While waiting for all of the festivities today, I had some time to finish up another robotics team hat.  This one is pushing the limits of what is a hat.

The top of the hat is a lattice of knitted strips.  It’s not the best for cold weather, but I think it is interesting, and fun.

I’m looking for the next inspiration to hit…there are lots more hats to be made!

I guess this means it is officially winter.  My colleague’s son has been spotted with the glittery mittens.

Polls are open Monday October 25th 2010 for municipal elections across Ontario.  Between the hours of 10AM and 8PM bring your ID to your polling station [Kingston poll finder], and VOTE!  In Kingston last time, less than 40% of eligible voters actually voted.

If you still are looking for information, check out the following sites.
Local Candidates for Mayor John Last, Kevin Lavalley, Nathan Wilson from Run This Town, Mark Gerretsen, Barrie Chalmers, and Rob Matheson

ETA:  I voted at 5:00 PM tonight.  I was impressed to see a line up all the way out the door at my poling station.  I was disappointed that there were no “I VOTED” stickers….I had seen some people wearing them today.  Maybe you need to vote early to get them….maybe it was just on campus..

Maybe if people get stickers for voting more of them will show up at the polls on election day.  Stickers certainly motivated people to study hard for tests in grade school.

There’s a wonderful thing that happens on Wednesdays on Queen’s University campus.  The farmer’s market rolls into town.

Students, staff, neighbours all arrive to buy fresh bread, produce, cheese, or to pick up some food for lunch.

There’s something that is so pretty about rows and rows of colourful vegetables

All are locally grown….and the apples that I got were delicious!  Next week I’ll have to bring my shopping list and skip the grocery store.

If you are in the Queen’s area check it out.  Sometimes there is a Topsy Farms booth selling yarn and knitted goods.

I woke up at 4:30 AM for no reason at all and couldn’t get back to sleep until 6:30AM….tired, I rushed to work (forgetting my lunch and realizing too late that I lost my bathing suit from when I swam last night), got to work and promptly noticed that sometime on the way I had managed to break off part of the sole of my shoe…..so I was walking around a little off kilter all morning….I got given lots of extra to do during my preparation time, dealt with many “surprise” issues, and an unexpected mini-flood…used the first part of my lunch hour to check around the pool to see if my swimsuit had been turned in (it wasn’t).

Frazzled, I checked my car for my bathing suit, found a rotting banana in the trunk (don’t know how long that’s been there!), I drove home to eat my forgotten lunch and check here once more for my bathing suit.

It’s nice to sit down and breathe on a day like today.

I ate my lunch.

I found my bathing suit (it must have flown across the room when I unrolled my towel).

I’m heading back to start fresh for the afternoon–with a different pair of shoes!

Fingers crossed I will survive until the end of choir practice at 9:30pm.

Added at 10:00PM

Swimming was just what I needed, followed by dinner with a friend, and time for knitting before choir practice.  I guess it’s all about balance.  Without the crazy time, you won’t appreciate the calm.  What’s best is that there’s always a fresh start tomorrow.

After work today, I was sitting down to spin some new fiber.  It is lovely and dark, blue, black and green.  Out the window, it appeared to be sunny, but then I heard rain, and loud rumbles of thunder.  It wasn’t just rain, but a torrential downpour of rain.  Big drops of rain.  The kind of rain that soaks you to the skin in 10 seconds flat.  The kind of rain that makes giant puddles that cars splash through and you can see their wake.  The rain obscured the view of distant trees and houses, and all the while, the sun was still shining.

I could hear kids screaming about a double rainbow, but I only saw one.  I’m not sure if it can be seen in the picture, but I know that it’s there.

The most amazing fluffy clouds passed by leaving a clear blue sky.  We must have been on the edge of a pretty big storm.  I’m amazed how fast it came and went.

Back to the spinning wheel I go, now that the stormy excitement is over.

This is what is going on outside my window….

car alarms are honking….wonder if they got hit by lightning….

I was outside on my balcony before the rain started, watching the sky light up!

(not sure where the lightning is in this one…hope it’s not hitting my building!)

I came inside when it got too scary.

I really enjoy the high speed aspect to my new camera!

I wasn’t really sure what I’d end up making when I picked up this ball of handspun.  I was pretty sure that I’d be making something that didn’t come in pairs, since I had no way of knowing how the stripes or colours would distribute themselves across the ball.  So…socks and mittens were out of the question.

I knew that there’d be stripes of some kind–with handspun from painted roving, you can’t really escape it!  I decided to try knitting Laila (ravelink), a baby sweater that I created for friend’s of mine when their little Laila was born.  It is a top-down, placket neck, raglan sleeve, seamless sweater, knit in the round.  I love it because it requires very little finishing, and shows off stripes really well.

I also wouldn’t have to worry about the front and back being two very different colours (some of this yarn is very orange, and some is very green).

Being swatchless has its advantages–I knit, and make things, and usually they turn out the right size for someone….the problems arise when I try to make baby clothes.   I don’t have access to many babies, so I’m at a loss as to their proportions.  To this end, I brought the sweater to my mom–a fairly conventional knitter who works to gauge, from patterns that have sizes on them.  She measured what I had against some of her 6 month sized sweaters.  This one seems about right for a 6 month old.  The neck opening is very stretchy, and so is the body.  I left the sleeves wide until the cuff, decreasing only 4 stitches over the entire arm.

I had wanted to do garter stitch at the sleeves and around the body just like I did at the neck.  Garter stitch is so much more brainless to knit than ribbing…but I found that the bottom edge of the sweater started to flip up when it was edged in garter stitch.  I ripped back, did a few rows of K2, P2, ribbing, and it seems to lay flat now.  I’m not sure if the flipping up is due to the garter stitch, or the twist in my spinning–it was not a balanced skein, but with me, it rarely is!

All that remains for this sweater is to pick out the most adorable little buttons.  I’m thinking that I might go for wooden buttons, or black buttons, or maybe three different coloured buttons….there are so many options….I’ll bring it along to the fabric store and see what speaks to me.

And now….I’ll have to wait for a knitter to have a baby sometime in the spring or summer….I don’t think a non-knitter would fully appreciate all the work that has gone into this creation!

Thanks to slimchicken (etsy) for dyeing the roving.  It’s lovely!