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

Gone and probably forgotten!

So, yeah..it's been months, years, decades..whatever. I've decided that Ravelry has an adverse effect on blogging in general. I mean, either you've posted yourself silly discussing whatever knitting or fiber issue you have on their forums or already uploaded pictures of projects because of course, having those pics link from our photo hosting site onto Ravelry is just well..

Let's just say we love Ravelry *cuz I do* and leave it at that. I had a few friends nudge me gently about this old silly blog so I decided to update it a teeny bit in the interest of staying sharp. (blink)

I know it's been a long time but I've been spinning..whoooooo! My partner got me a wheel for my birthday and after spending a couple of weeks looking at it blankly in terror I've begun to spin. I love it! I've read alot about spinning and whats funny to me is that I could not handspindle (dropspindle) for 2 years more than a wierd twisting of a yard or 2 here and there. Once I started with my wheel it ALL began to make sense and I am totally in love with my wheel (Thank you, Jack, my love!) AND my high whorl spindle which is carrying some Icelandic in a brown beautifully but slowly!

Ok, Blogger is being a butthead demon (some things never change) so y'all are stuck with the awful pic of me spinning with the adopted dog clinging to me like I'm the second coming.

Spun out!

It was a really exciting week for me - I had to spin what seemed like MILES of yarn on my wooden-dowel-old-CD spindle for my Tuesday night class at Loopy. I worked very hard and finished the required 120 feet during my lunch break that day. I went to class only to find no one else had made their yarn! Pah! I got to spin on 4 different wheels that night and it was comical. I had twist for miles and nothing drafted for it! Out of the 4 I tried, I think I liked the Ashford Joy the best but it was really brief trials, just 15 or 20 minutes on each. I'll have to go back and try some more!

Below is some of my spindling - the green on the right is shetland that I learned has been carded but not combed, which explains why I have such difficulty trying to work with it.

And here is the distaff I made with my first spun yarn:

I also finished the Branching Out scarf just in time for mom's birthday - I blocked it this morning (the birthday is TODAY) and put it out on the balcony to dry. I'll get pictures of that up Monday. Needing mindless knitting for public transportation, I grabbed this:

Only to find that I had grabbed the WRONG size needles once I got on the bus. ARGH! Once I got to work I tried to utilize a pair of chopsticks:

Clearly that didn't work very well. Finally an understanding co-worker lent me their car and I ran out for needles on my lunch break. I ended up carting the Miski home (I am LOVING the Marisol yarns!) and instead started this hat. We are off to take Mom to My Pie - I can't wait to see how she likes her scarf!

Another Hat!

I'm happy to report that the Mirasol Sulka worked up just beautifully into a lovely hat. It is so yummy to work with that I've had to FORCE myself back to mom's birthday scarf that must be finished by the 29th. (Feh! I'm so mad at myself over the scarf, I'm continually miscounting and having to tink) I want to finish a nice gift for her though; she's bringing me back WOOL from Ireland and if I know my mother she'll say "Oh..that doesn't look like very much, I better get several!" My stash is drooling in anticipation of such esteemed foreign travellers!

As you may have noticed, I haven't 'quite' mastered the art of blog-buttons just yet but I'm working on it.

Slowly.

We're off to the casino tonight to celebrate our friend Debera's birthday. I could give a hoot for gambling but Jack gave me fun money..if I don't spend it all I can buy more Marisol on Tuesday at my spinning class......The spinning class was cool - Meg's a great teacher but I Am A Klutz. I can't get that whole drafting while spinning thing yet. I draft a bit then spin it (badly) then draft a bit and on and on. Still I persist. Heh.

IMG_1233, originally uploaded by yarnballer.

http://www.mirasolperu.com/mirasolx.swf

Projects and Yarn!

This is my ever growing shawl and first effort at 'lace' knitting.....below is THE BAG FROM HELL, my vacation yarns and my yummy wool and spindle. Oh yes, and the Skully facecloth and finally finished wonderful table runner!