Not alot!

I don't have alot of great pics to share unfortunately. Things have been uber busy here though, my family came to visit for a week, I've registered for school, I'm up at 4:30 because of the dog...hurrah!

I've been knitting like mad and never seem to get anything finished. I'm working on Nadine, the sweater from hell for what seems like years and continually fail to get it right on putting together the finished pieces. I am taking out a side panel for the FIFTH time beecause I can't get it right. Me. Not the yarn (although that was the culprit the first 3 times). We sidestepped that by substituting sock yarn in a matching color and then I very neatly assembled the panel..upside down. Here I went again, picking out nearly 90 stitches of Kitchener and cursing like mad. This last time, it's just puckered and I can tell I didn't pick up stitches as neatly as I could have, hence go round #5.

I've done a few preemie caps, have a dog snuggie on the needles, did a couple of crocheted gnomes..Mostly I've been spinning. The spinning goddess smiled upon me and allowed me nearly a laceweight in a merino, something before unattainable for me..yay! I am plying it with a fine, sparkly thread and it's lovely. Rather it was before it began falling apart because I failed to give it enough twist to begin with. ARGH. I re-spun it and this time it seems to be holding its own much as I'm holding my breath every time I sit down to ply a few more yards. It truly is lovely if I can just finish it before spinning guild tomorrow.

Thats my news, not much at all.

New Wool!

There's new wool all around here on the home front or will be! I will have new 'wool' tomorrow after I go and get my hair put into dreds, something I've wanted to do forever! I'm getting tiny ones and hopefully it won't make my hair so short I look umm...strange. We'll see.

I had new wool going on in the sweater I'm knitting, Nadine from French Girl Knits. It's a llama/cotton blend that is delightful to work with. I'm a little worried about drape though, I did a hat out of it with a lacey sort of pattern and it is softened and lost in the translation. At any rate, I have the 2 side panels done, they double as shoulder straps and more boring sweater parts I don't think I've ever knitted. They made reverse stockinette exciting when I started the connecting center panel. Truly.

I belong to this Thrifty Knitters n Spinners group on Ravelry cuz I'm often broke and looking for ways to get more bang (or fiber) for my buck. One morning I was reading along as I had coffee and behold! Right there in the "Cheap or free fiber" thread was a lady in CO who Had Enough Wool. Really. She had All She Needed. (this is an alien concept to me but ok). As a result, she had 3 fleeces to offer, either half or whole for little more than the cost of shipping. I danced, screamed, waved my hands and sent off a PM hoping to snag the gray one. It arrived today, all in it's smelly, skirted glory. I've put it aside until next week when my friend Mary can help me lay it out into a sheep but of course I had to grab a few handfuls to wash.


I'm not sure the camera does the smoky, silvery gray justice but this thing is to die for. I spun it out in the washer and it should be dry enough to spin in the morning. Oh fiber goddess, you are truly divine...

Raining/pouring...

My new basket supposedly made in Ghana to decrease the poverty levels and create financial independence amonth the women there..LOVE this basket, seriously.

It's been a 'rains and pours' kind of day, kind of couple days really. Knitting guild last night and I think the swap went pretty well, everyone seemed happy with their gifts. Nancy made me 3 cloths in chocolate and lime that were just lovely! They seemed so thick as to be double knitted and I immediately rolled them up into a basket in my guest bath, see? I hope my swap person liked her stuff - of course I forgot to take pictures before I sent it along, stupid me! I made her a Grrlfriend Bag and tried to make her a blue row counter bracelet with limited success. It was pretty though!


Jack has been working hard at designing me a skein winder in her garage and nearly has it figured out. She made me this small prototype and finished it yesterday and I'm pretty proud of her for it. I wound a little alpaca I'd tried to spin into a mini skein on it tonight and it turned out really well also. See how small it is in relation to the tennis ball? From this experiment we have decided we'd rather have a full size winder that was not a windmill style, rather a table style. She is putting a long bolt on the end so I can wind from my spinning wheel bobbins if I want.


I've been knitting a Wooly Wormhead hat in cotton to celebrate my upcoming dred-dom, Meret. This was interrupted by some yard work I tried to do today. I had the big green city can rolling it around the backyard for bits of tree I'd trimmed all over the yard. Took a step forward with my right foot and stepped onto the giant lid..lid slid forward, wheels turned, can began to tilt and I'm trapped on this wild escaping trash can thats sliding all over the place. Lovely. Ended up on my left shoulder (and my face) in the yard with some serious contusions and swelling. Double effing lovely. I get my dreds on the 12th and it will take around 3 hours to do. I'm excited because I've wanted them FOREVER!

On Friday I am going to Collierville with my friend Mary for a school's Pioneer Day. We're going to demonstrate spinning and I think knitting and it should be alot of fun! I like spending time with Mary, she's very smart and funny and her studio just makes my mouth hang open.

Last but not least here's my funny girl. She follows me everywhere and barks incessantly like someone just blew helium into her gut. Times like that I don't mind that they had her de-barked so much.....

Meerkat in Memphis!

What a Handsome Fellow!

Our friends from Chicago were visiting last week and it was a great chance to see some of the things Memphis has to offer that of course we've been too busy to just stop and visit ourselves!
We went (of course) to the Zoo and it was a BEAUTIFUL facility! Almost all the exhibits contained running water and overall it was clean and friendly and didn't cost an arm and a leg and some quivit for entry. This guy stole my heart along with the other meerkats there..between they and the lemurs I am smitten!

Yesterday I mowed for the first time this season..saw something wriggling, wriggling like mad and swooped on it. Baby bullfrog I nearly chopped into soup! Yikes! I gathered him up and of course in his distress he 'peeped' at me repeatedly while I carried him through the house insisting to Jack that we put him into an aquarium. Jack convinced me to release him next to the pool however. We were also in the pool for the first time yesterday - water temp was 77 and It Is Not Even May. Woo Hoo, take THAT Chicago!

Our Spinning guild met last Sunday and did the 2nd half of our program on silk that Mary was teaching. We soaked cocoons, pulled out baby silkworms and their 'ahem' leavings, stretched them over frames we'd built, reeled silk onto cardboard and dyed a layer of silk hankies all in one afternoon! Some of my new friends were there and it was fun to sit and chat with them also! I don't feel as if I learned much other than how to remove the worms from the cocoon honestly..there were alot of participants and it was difficult at times to hear but I had great fun and brought home a little sample pack of all the offerings for my spinning notebook!

I've been deadline knitting for 2 weeks and most of it is swap/secret pal stuff that I can't post pics of until after our Knitting guild on Tuesday. I have 2 projects going for that plus the sweater from French Girl Knits that I don't have any decent pictures of yet.

May 9th is All About Women and I'm excited about being there in a spinning/knitting capacity in the 'life' section of the convention, where women learn about ways to enjoy life and just have some down time. On May 1st I'm scheduled to help my friend Mary with Pioneer Days at a school in Collierville with a spinning demo as well. Fun!

Ok, enough for now. May 1st is NOT that far off and I also have 35 of Jack's Department Heads and Managers coming to our house that day for a quarterly meeting which means 'get busy'!

One more pic - Buddah helps us keep it in perspective (to his belly, that is!)

Pearl after a bath

I went over my wheel Pearl with some fine sandpaper and a bottle of wood feed/cleaner today because she's going to be travelling just a little and needs to look good and I think she does! Her wood is really coming into it's own after some care and removal of old paint and decorations.

This was a good spinny week for me - Mary's package arrived from the Butterflygirldesigns Spindle and Fiber Club and it's a beauty. No pics yet but it's a flower shaped spindle of gold flecked glass and 3 oz. of Tuscany fiber which is exactly what it brings to mind..golds, rusts, deep reds and wood tones. It's 1.3 oz and very fast from the little twirl I gave her!

Our friends Nancy and Chris arrived last night from Chicago and it's SO good to see them! They are our first houseguests and the closest thing we have to family as a couple. They also brought Artemis, who is recovering from bone cancer and chemo with an expermental drug treatment. Artemis is 120 lbs of very loving Rottie and it is great to see her looking so good although our little dogs aren't sure how to act!

I am knitting a secret swap gift and knitting like mad to meet next week's deadline. I had started a pattern and it was looking very strange and scary so I opted to start something else less experimental for my swap partner. Once I finish I'll post a link to the pattern cuz I thought it was just the coolest concept EVER and it's very fun to knit!

I also need to post pics of the guest bedroom now that it's finished..it looks awesome even if I did do it myself! Jack has been busy with her new tools and made stretching frames for my spinning class on silk for myself and a new spinner that's joining me today. They are nifty and I'll take lots of pictures today.

It's a monsoon out there..I love the storms but jeez..I'd like to unload my wheel without trying to protect it.

Alpaca

A friend recently gifted me with a couple plastic grocery bags of raw Alpaca seconds (from these trash bags full she was gifted with!) Since my experience with less-than-processed fiber is minimal, I decided to try and flick a bit to see how it looked after I messed it up, I mean worked with it. I'd been told it was still quite full of vm so I put down an old pillowcase to catch the fallout and got started. I didn't know Alpaca had no lanolin until my friend told me! She also said I could spin directly from the wool but I wanted to see what it looked like before and after flicking. (I also didn't feel particularly like spinning right that second!)

Lump O Alpaca- I think the crimp is lovely (especially for free fiber!


One little lock

Nice shot of crimpola, gad I love it

pile of fiber with nice 5 inch staple


Thirds (I guess..this is the stuff out of the brush after flicking) I am always a little horrified at the 'waste' but I guess I'll learn.

Finished little basket of fiber

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!

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.

Promised pictures!

My stitch markers from Cat

(very difficult to force them to all look at the camera at once!)

Marking the important boxes...

My new drill/screwdriver thingee!

See how small?
Bleh..my former living room

My beautiful wheel
(had to sneak that in again)

Insanity

That's what I have in my life right now. Job insanity, house insanity,

MOVING INSANITY.

I kid you not. We move in 10 days (that until recently was like 20 days and suddenly things change) I am in full blown "throw it away" mode, only bother to Freecycle stuff I really know is of value that someone might want and leaving the rest in our alley neatly exposed for the time honored Chicago tradition of Alley Shopping (aka dumpster diving).

My house is an utter, total wreck. Our 3 cats have become schiztoid alien monsters darting around our ankles, entangling us dangerously every time we begin to move with a box. They're freaked out because they've done this before. They know there's a whole new house coming for them to inspect (secretly fear) , a new (GASP) cat bathroom spot (which is almost the worst fate EVER for a cat) and the absolute WORST fate, a C-A-R-R-I-D-E-I-N-T-H-E-F-R-I-G-G-I-N-C-A-R-R-I-E-R (aka Alcatraz, Prison, Nylon Death Sentence)

I want to kill everyone here except the Pleco in the fishtank. I feel sorry for him, I think he's slowly starving while the grotesque black moor greedily grabs his algae tabs. He and I could cohabit happily right now, I think. (he is formally known as a Rubber Lipped Plecostomus and I'm prolly spelling the P word wrong, so what)

I've had a little job stress recently that expands my feelings of murderous lack of patience to an explosive level. I can only applaud my partner, Jack. She is acquiring the patience of a saint in dealing with me these days. Working all day and packing all night makes Lis a cranky monkey.

I have pictures to post but of course now that I have a new computer I can't find most of the software for my stuff, like my camera. I took the pics tonight (including the yet neglected cat stitch markers from my friend) and will upload all of them tomorrow without fail with very little dialogue.

Good news in my world is that I have tickets to hear the Yarn Harlot speak in Oak Lawn, IL in late April, actually the night before the Margaret Cho concert that Jack and I are going to. We also have tickets to Cyndi Lauper (hmmmmm) who has the B52's (squee!) opening for her in June and a Chicago Philharmonic event in May.

May? WAIT..that's my Avon Breast Cancer Walk.

I need to start training to knit simple socks while walking. I will kill the women I walk with if I cannot occupy my hands for 39 miles. In addition I have Lorna's Lace's breast cancer donation colorway here to use! I would love to be able to memorize one of the ribbon sock patterns I've seen to do during this walk but that might be stretching it..k2, p2 ribbing might be best.

Good news again..Jack bought me an early Easter prezzie. I've been grumbling about disassembling furniture here and I have a brand new, very cool electric screwdriver sort of thingee. It has many many lil bits that fit into it's hex drill bittie thingee, it reverses to unscrew with the touch of a finger and it's so totally comfortable in the hand. So much so that I performed weird and uncomfortable machinations to photograph this for you. Something to look forward to tomorrow. (All of you butch women laughing at me for my description of the hex drill opening can kiss my arse-ask my butch, I'm so anal about my tools it makes her look careless AND she works for Home Freakin Depot!)

So far I'm at 27% of my goal for my breast cancer walk which I guess is not so bad with 2 months to go! I worry a little since I had to sign to guarantee 1800 bucks on Walk day whether or not I'd fundraised it but I think there's time. We'll see..

Until next time!

Oh wait, that's tomorrow with the pics..nearly forgot, getting old, yanno.

Lis

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!