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)

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!

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.

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.

Crafty Time

I am finally getting enough settled around here that I have time for a few fun things like crafts. I saw a wreath in a magazine (out of more expensive materials) and decided to improvise my own for Halloween:

I think it turned out ok for less than 8 bucks in materials and I've fixed the odd lump on the side of the wreath.

We went to the Farmer's Market here for the first time yesterday; it was the Harvest Festival weekend so everything was gloriously fall-ish and beautiful. I got some mini-pumpkins and gourds to put this on my front porch:

I'll post more pictures soon of the market! There were sheep (and sheepdogs herding!) as well as a petting zoo with a llama and a psychotic camel, among other animals. The displays of pumpkins and mums were absolutely beautiful and I have some great shots to share. In the meantime here is Jack and I in front of one of the displays.

Memphis

Different city and state, same pissy Emmy. Good to know some things don't change.

It's been awhile but we have made the move, complete with 3 unhappy felines and the moving company from HELL. Boxes were crushed, items were shattered, movers were rude bastards that refused to do anything the contract stipulated. This included putting back together the furniture they dismantled for no real reason other than it had thousands of fiddly pieces of hardware to keep up with (they didn't, btw). It's been a slow process but we're getting closer to fine and I simply love the house. The link below has various pics of the house, furniture and neurotic cats if you're interested.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30701943@N04/

Most of my knitting time has been in the car running here and there to spend money on things for the house. I haven't really gotten into a consistent routine yet and it's sort of bugging me. I 'did' finish one of the Forest Canopy Shawls I'm knitting and blocked it yesterday. I think it's beautiful! Now to finish the one in fingering weight with beads. THEN..if I'm really feeling insane I want to start another in a sport weight for a special knitting friend/mentor of mine for Christmas. We'll see. In the meantime, here's a couple of shots of the shawl in the lovely sunshine in our backyard!

I'm also trying to run an online KAL for The Great American Afghan on a group, ILoveKandCAlongs. I'm working on square 1 (not my favorite of the bunch) and like everything else here, it's slow but sure. Krista at Loopy was wonderful about helping me choose colors, I'm sure I drove her insane! This is what we finally settled on:


I'm a little discouraged about the KAL and the group in general, honestly - there are like 4 people that post and the rest of the members either aren't reading or don't care to participate. Neither of those options is a good thing to me but I don't know how to change it! At first I thought it was the season, summer is a slow knitting time but summer is long past. I can't make people read or post or knit for that matter but it is a little discouraging.

All of that said, I'm liking it here so far. We live on a nice cul de sac with friendly neighbors and it's so wonderful to be running around in shorts in October! I'm working on Halloween crafts for the house in between unpacking (and cooking!). I'm looking forward to a Halloween where there are actually children coming to the door! It's been years since I experienced that living in Chicago.

Ok, I've probably killed enough time for now. Off to keep trying to organize my craft/knitting stuff in the spare bedroom so it's reasonable!