Monday, March 30, 2009

Monday Already!

I'm not sure where the weekends go! I did manage to finish a square for a chemo-afghan and Jack dropped it off at Hank's for me on Saturday. I also frogged back mohair lace (sigh) a few rows to find out where I was on a pattern I'd put down for a bit, Voyager Stole from Elann that I'm making for my mother for Mother's Day. (I have too many projects going) I don't know why this picture insists on being sideways..just turn your head to the right and you'll get the idea....

I finished the Lemur King for Jack. ARGH, the knitting was easy..the putting together, see for yourself:

I stripped the original warp off of my pvc loom and started a simple strap for my Traddy. Angela showed me this ingenious strap she wove that she just ties on and it makes a shoulder strap for her wheel! When not in use, it just falls out of the way to the floor! This is the first foot or so of that:
It's going to be interesting because the loom really isn't designed for longer pieces but I wanted it all woven at once for strength. If you look you'll see the 'V' shaped improvs, we'll see how it works in reality. Right now it's holding a tight enough warp for weaving easily. Here's another pic of the pretty colors (Peaches & Creme cotton)

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Trying to keep up!

I've decided to 'try' and keep up a little with blogging here - there's SO much I'm doing, spinning, knitting and I've gotten really lazy about uploading pictures and messing with Blogger. Sorry about that.

This is Jack and our new dog renamed Sarah..they are howling at the moon together while Kasey looks on in amazement. (and me, I never heard a person howl quite like that)

This is some yarn I spun recently. An Etsy seller named Michelle is on Etsy as Knitkass. She is like the nicest person EVER in my book. She sent me a part for my brand new wheel I'd broken without ever talking to or meeting me! Wouldn't even take postage! I got her first handspindle from her store along with this fiber. It's hard to tell but it has a little 'glitz' in it also, and my technique is getting SO much better! Yeah!

This is my first spindle and fiber from the Butterflygirl Designs spindle/fiber club and I'm loving it so far. It's merino/bamboo/firestar blend and I'm going to do it in a SAL challenge on Ravelry. Again, the pic doesn't do justice, the fiber has this gorgeous blue/green sparkle to the bamboo that looks amazing with the black merino. The spindle is Italian Resin and I adore it.
Here is a picture of Sarah - she is ALL Jack Russell and has adopted me as her forever person. The former owner had her de-barked (ugh, I don't want to know details) but it's made her sound really funny, like she's sucking helium right before she barks, heheheh.

Other than this stuff, you can always find me hanging out around Ravelry, most often on the spinning boards. I'll try to get better about keeping up here!

Friday, March 20, 2009

Finally Friday!

I don't know what I'm whining about, being home all the time means Fridays are not nearly as big as for those who work outside the home! I'm really tired lately though, not sleeping well so perhaps I'm dreaming of a sleep in on a Sunday morning...

The keyword around here is S P I N

It's all I want to do. If I'm not spinning on my wheel I'm playing with spindles. I've jumped into trying Merino even though it hates me and I can't spin it. I've stopped looking at my stash as if it's gold and I'm poor and stopped being afraid to try it (for the most part)

I do still have a lb of forest green merino I won't touch but that's for laceweight someday. Right now I'm trying for laceweight (and getting fingering) on a light spindle from Butterflygirl Designs that was part of her fiber/spindle club.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Insomnia Sucks

Here I am at 3:52 am blogging. ?? Hello?? Normal people SLEEP at this hour. They aren't drinking coffee and wishing they could crank up the spinning wheel without making my partner crazy with it's adorable little 'click' as it goes round n round.

I think the fiasco with the alarm people has caused this. Yesterday he arrived 2 hours late to do our install. Ok, fine..you needed a ladder and you're clearly a kid. I began to have reservations but continued to do the laid back, nice client routine and listened to him explain that this was his first ever install by-his-lonesome. Uh-oh.

6 hours later he calls for reinforcement. God only knows what he was doing all that time since I was a little consumed with the new dog we just adopted. Her former 'mom' had come by to do a house visit and brought her because our first interview went well and she felt good about us overall. The reinforcement arrived, saved the day and left again. Now I've had this green kid in my house for 9 hours. NINE HOURS of a stranger, even worse a sweet, nice stranger that you can't be rude to. UGH. To top it off, they discovered in hour 8 that some contacts already in place on our windows were wireless. A call to our sales guy resulted in "Tell them the wiring for that is an extra $45 a window. ($45 x 5 above and beyond our quote means Jack is not a happy camper) We in the kitchen heard "I'm not mad YET but either you're going to fix this or you're going to experience MAD" They fixed it but jeez..it really pisses me off that the guy thought we'd just bend over and say thank you to over $200 in cost not quoted. By the way, the keychain remotes were never programmed. He was prepared to stay another hour (!!!, keerist Noooo) to try and do it (hadn't done that before alone either!). We politely kicked him out until today.

At any rate, the dog is a sweetheart. Her name is Hero and she is 4. She's a Jack Russell that immediately began to run like the wind with our other dog, Kasey.


I've been spinning ALOT. This is my homemade tensioned lazy kate, taken from a web pictorial (thanks, unknown web spinner!) and my plied, kool aid dyed yarn that I'm in love with.



Here's my new, gorgeous, huge diamond that my wonderful Jack bought for me. Speaks for itself.


Here is the DIY weaving loom I built because I don't have enough fibery stuff to keep me busy. I need to find more