altivo | Felder did it!

Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.

Here are the 5 things

felder selected for me -

1. Weave! The thing some people do when driving under the influence [of a cell phone, among other things] -- Oh wait, that's not what he meant, I guess. The process of making textiles by interlacing threads, usually stretched over a frame called a loom. OK. I do that. Aside from those potholder thingummies that most of us made in school or scouts or whatever, I started seriously with textile weaving in 1988, though I'd been interested in it and collected books about it for many years before that. The problem is that it takes money to acquire equipment, space to set it up, and time to learn the process. Those finally came together that year when I was laid off from work and given a substantial severance package including health care for about nine months. Weaving has elements of art and design, but also intricate detail similar to computer analysis and programming, and continues to fascinate me. I belong to a local guild, participate in various events including a gallery show once a year, and just "play around" with it.

2. Horses! My attraction to the horse goes back much farther than weaving. My earliest recollection of actually touching one is from when I was about eight or nine years old. My paternal grandmother, about 86 years old by then, was living in a retirement home (what we call "assisted living" now) out in the country. They had an ice cream social kind of event on the lawn, and my father took me to see her that day. There was grandchildren entertainment, of course, including a patient black pony who was led around with various children on his back. I was afraid to ride, but my dad insisted that I pet the pony and feel his nose. I've never forgotten the soft velvet feel of his nose. I think that was the day I started wanting my own horse. It took about 40 years to achieve that, but now I have three who demand my attention and that of my mate daily. The sad thing is that there is always so much to do that I never seem to get to ride, but I still love them. I get goosebumps when I go to the pasture gate and my mare Tess comes running to greet me. She doesn't always do that, because her love for grass is probably stronger than her affection for me, but when she does it, well...

3. Sheeps! See weaving above. Weaving and spinning go hoof in paw. I started spinning the same year I started weaving. I now own several spinning wheels, a few hand spindles, and four or five looms. In the autumn of 2001, unemployed again (this is a bad pattern, no?) I got this brilliant idea that we'd find a sheep or two and do the whole process from sheep to shawl (or sweater or socks) ourselves. Not to make money at it, but just to say we'd done it. We found a cute miniature Southdown ram for sale and bought him. Went to get him with a plastic dog crate (my sheepdog took a while to get over that, it was his crate that he sleeps in and it came back smelling of sheep) and loaded him into the back of Gary's Escort station wagon to bring him home. That was Shawn, the bottle-fed lamb who became a special pet and finally left us at age nine a few weeks ago. The next spring our neighbor Toni gave us two yearling ewes who were "too small for her flock." They kept Shawn company nicely, and we learned that sheep multiply. Not as fast as guppies, but just as surely. We've lost four to various illnesses and accidents over the years, and given away three more. We have eight left now, but no intact ram among them so this should be the end of the "growth stage."

4. Books! *staggers under the weight of them* My parents said that I was already reading before I got to school. Supposedly they caught me reading aloud from the newspaper to my younger brother. I'm not convinced, but certainly I took to reading and writing very fast once I started school. I was labeled as a nerd or whatever the equivalent was in the 50s by the second year, and bullied for it until I was in college. Didn't stop me from reading everything I could get my hands on, though. The school introduced us to the public library, where they tried to restrict us to "age appropriate" materials. My mother went to bat over that, had a big row with the teacher and principal as well as with the librarian, and I was officially given the run of the library with permission to check out and read anything I could carry. So I did. Books were my favorite presents for birthdays and Christmas, especially if they were about horses (see above.) My mate and I are buried in books now. They are piled all over the house, the shelves are full, and the barns are full of boxes. Surprisingly, we can find most of them and I know almost all of what we have without using any paper or computer record. I first worked in a library while I was an undergraduate, though by then I wanted to write books. Still haven't succeeded in publishing a whole book, though I've written several now. I worked at library jobs in the 1970s full time, and after an eight year stint in data processing, followed by that layoff in 1988, I went back to work in a library software company. I decided to get my library degree then and make it official. I've worked as a professional librarian since I graduated with my master's in 1991. Books haven't gone out of style yet, in spite of what some people seem to think.

5. Glasses! Wine glasses? Beer glasses? Stained glass (no, that's one of my mate's skills, not mine.) I assume Felder means eyeglasses. Occupational hazard, and they are supposedly needed as a result of too much reading, or so they used to tell us. Everyone in my family wore them though, so I blame genetics. I got my first pair when I was in about seventh grade, I think. I got contact lenses when I was in college, but they were quite a hassle to deal with back then, and I eventually stopped wearing and replacing them. Getting old means bifocals too. Wearing a fursuit makes glasses impractical, and I'm too nearsighted to recognize anyone more than five or six feet away without correction, so I have contact lenses again. I have to say they've improved a lot since I last wore them, though I'm not inclined to use them for daily wear. My regular glasses are better for library work even now.

There. I think that covers it. *fans people to wake them back up*