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...

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!)

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

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!

WOW!

I swear, I didn't realize I'd totally abandoned this blog! No way has it been a month since I posted anything!

Actually it has - I was depressed over losing Louise (thanks for the kind thoughts, everyone!) and then we had a little vacation trip to D.C. and then the re-entry into the real world after vacation..bleh! Time just flies!

So, D.C. was cool, I'd never been there. We stayed in Baltimore and commuted each day to see different stuff. My sweetie mapped out a trail to several different yarn stores and very patiently spent an entire day driving me to them and waiting while I prowled around. I bought some souvenier yarn here and there but really didn't go crazy. I 'did' treat myself to a pair of Lantern Moon wooden needles that I loved!

I finished 3 dishcloths on the trip as well as forging ahead on the table runner I was making. BAG from hell. I knitted like crazy to finish this thing and was soooo excited about felting it and 70 dollars worth of yarn later um...it just doesn't work right for me. The straps won't stay over my shoulder and it now sits home hanging over a doorknob. Lovely decoration. Pffffffffffttttttttt.

Stitches Midwest was here last weekend! I began knitting after all the cool classes had sold out but I went to the market on Sunday. I ran across Franklin, this great guy who is doing a photo shoot of a thousand knitters. I was really, REALLY shy but worked up the nerve to sit for him. He was funny and very easy to talk to! The best part of the market was finding the ladies at the wool coop booth and getting a lesson on a drop spindle with some lovely green shetland. OH YEAH! I've been dying to learn to spin but know better than to bring home a wheel before I've exhibited the correct fortitude to Jack by learning the cheaper version first! I'm still struggling with tension and stuff but it is such an awesome process and I feel incredibly smart for trying! Ha! Modest too!

Ok, that's enough psycho babble for now. Here are a few pictures I happen to have downloaded to my work PC.