Leftovers

Late yesterday afternoon, having returned from the Camano Island Community/Senior Center's annual Corned Beef and Cabbage dinner (in celebration of St. Patrick's Day), I felt sufficiently recovered from Friday's dyeing adventure to clean up the rest of the evidence and, with the leftover dye, color some lucky bits of fleece that I had been soaking.

I took bits of color and carded them together, then sat down and spun two samples, one a very thin laceweight that is supposed to be pastels,the other a slightly more substantial mix of different blues.

Somehow, even after two washings, a good two-day soak in Synthrapol, steaming, washing and rinsing in hot water, this fleece is still a mite greasy. Therefore, I have no idea what this yarn will really look or feel like once I get the stubborn lanolin out.

I also knit up a sample of the spindle-spun koigu-colored results from Friday, and was pleased with the somewhat-subtle yet softly-stripey swatch.

Some might wonder what I have planned to knit or weave with all these dyed fibers. Me, too! For the moment I am just coloring like a kindergartner, satisfied and pleased with just having the colors in front of me to ponder.

More about Me...

So far I suppose I have made my time in Spain seem like a wonderful adventure full of fun and friends (except for the evil Wives). I prefer to dwell on that part of it, it is true; but there were many situations that slowly accumulated into a black cloud that threatened to destroy me.

First, there was the Alex Situation. Every time the squadron promised us the guys would be returned to us by a certain date, the date would be moved further away as it approached. I felt like a starving prisoner before whom a piece of savory meat was being dangled and moved every time I got close enough to practically taste it.

Besides that, as the Gulf War approached, gas-- heating oil, that is, was being rationed. It was winter and it was cold. Our furnace was not very efficient, and our house was big. I found myself scrambling to find oil or to get ration coupons from people who didn't need them. I would have to load my two 55-gallon stinking dirty barrels into my rusty old Spanish car and drive around the countryside trying to find gas stations that still had oil. I would often get lost and if I were not so terrified of being approached in a language I didn't understand very well, I would have just pulled off on the side of the road and had a good cry. Instead, I just kept driving until something looked familiar.

Since we had converted and then reconverted the furnace, it was none too stable. One night I was in the office, the kids having gone to bed, when I heard a small explosion and smelled fire. Sure enough, I ran down to the garage to find a small electrical fire, spawned by the exploded converter. I doused it with a blanket, but was afraid that it would start up again, so I called the base fire department. Did I live on base? No I didn't. I was told to call the Spanish fire department. I told them I didn't speak Spanish and all I wanted to know is what should I do-- should I worry that this would start again? Should I unplug it or would I get shocked? Could there be other fires that I couldn't see? The man at the other end repeated that I should call the Spanish fire department and hung up. I stayed awake most of the night worried that the house would catch on fire, having nowhere to go and nobody to turn to.

We had acquired two dogs, littermates conceived of a german shepherd and a black lab. Hortensia, the landlady, playfully suggested we name them Tarzan y Juana, and so Tarzan was the huge black lab-looking one, and Juana was the german shepherd looking one. Unfortunately, Juana was a bit mean and very territorial. After a few weeks, she refused to let me into my own house, and I was afraid she would attack the children who came over for piano lessons. For the first and only time in my life, I took a young dog into the base veterinarian, who put her down.

On the way out of the vet's, we noticed a very small puppy who needed a home. He was an ugly little thing, white with black spots, short haired, taken too soon from his mother, but we adopted him and named him Cervantes.

Also on the way out of the vet's office, we noticed a new structure being built. I found out soon enough that it was a new morgue, being built in anticipation of the thousands of casualties that were expected to be forthcoming from the Perisan Gulf.

The one friend that lived close enough to do things with, Becky, moved with her husband to Las Vegas, where he had his dream job of being a test pilot.

While I was teaching piano lessons, Sherah and Randy had strict orders to play either outside or in their rooms, but never to disturb me during lessons unless it was an emergency.

One day while I was teaching, Randy knocked on the French doors that came into the living room and I asked him, "is it an emergency?". He said that it was, so I told him to come in. He stood there, first on one foot and then the other, seemingly unable to come out with an account of his emergency.

"What's the matter, Randy?" I asked, a little impatiently.

"Well...." he began slowly, "I was feeling a little sick and so I laid down on Zachary's bed..."

Zach and Randy had twin beds. Randy's was closest to the window. I was envisioning this as he was speaking. "Did you throw up?" I asked with concern.

"No.... I was just laying there and, well, I heard this sound." he went on.

"Did something fall off the closet shelf?" I asked.

"No... it was just this sound, and then I looked up and... well... the curtains are on fire."

At this, my little piano student ran out the front door and I ran down the hall where, indeed, the curtains were blazing away. Luckily I had put flame-retardant curtains there or it would have been far worse. I pulled a blanket from the closest bed and after a few minutes had it all out. The wall was black with smoke but it didn't appear that any structural damage had been caused.

Apparently, my little son had been bored and decided to play with the matches that were kept by the gas stove. We had a heart-to-heart, to put it mildly.

The one real "trip" that I took with the Wives was to a place called Pedraza, that had a small castle. They went for the antique shopping, I went for the experience. The mountains I saw on the way are very different from any in the U.S. They are craggy, black, not quite rocky but certainly not forested either. As we drove on the Spanish freeway, I saw an eerie scene. In the grassy median between opposite directions of traffic, a Mercedes convertible stood still, and in it was a woman who I am quite sure was dead. Nobody stopped, nobody paused, they just whizzed by as if she were not there. I pointed it out to the driver of the car I was in, who simply dismissed it with, "well, I don't habla, so I wouldn't be any help..." and went on.

Posted by Sheila at March 14, 2005 08:34 AM Posted to Dyeing | TrackBack