Hi Blog

Apart from memes and auction publicity, I guess I've got nothing going on. I am clinging to each day by my fingernails - counting down the 9 days left til a much-anticipated 3 whole weeks of vacation. There is much in the way of real-life stuff that needs to get done before then.

I am not knitting - choosing instead each night to collapse on the couch and watch tivo-ed Ghost Hunters episodes and let my mind float disembodied like the paranormal beings they seek out. I was spinning, but even that feels like it takes too much energy right now. I have lofty dyeing goals - I bought a good amount of naked fiber and have so many ideas that I actually feel crippled by the choices.

I plan to bring my wheel and tons of fiber on vacation with me, though dyeing will have to wait til I return. Knitting will come on the trip too, nothing big, just socks and some odds and ends I'm trying to finish up.

And for eye candy - a mosaic of my Macro-May photos on Flickr.


I plan to post once more before I leave, but just in case life gets in the way - See you in July!

Give a Sister a Hand

One of our sisters is in need. PippiKneeSocks and her family are having a rough time of it. Amy of Spunky Eclectic has coordinated an auction with all proceeds going to Pippi and her kids. The current items up can be seen here and include a really gorgeous whopping 9oz batt from Indigo Moon (no longer in the biz, so very rare) some delicious yarn and I've donated my kit for the Bee Fields shawl - pattern by the fabulous Anne Hanson, and yarn from WoolyWonka Fibers.

Go and bid, get some nice loot and help out a wonderful member of our community. There are about 24hours left on these items, and keep watching Amy's blog for even more coming.

Meme, or Cop Out, you choose!

Linda tagged me, and I'm short on time - rushing to get away for the long weekend, so you get a meme!

The rules of the game get posted at the beginning. Each player answers the questions about themselves. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

1) What was I doing 10 years ago?

Living in Winter Hill, still living like a college student despite being 4 years out of college and being married for almost 2 years. Just a few months away from achieving my career goal of becoming a badass UNIX systems administrator.

2) What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order:

(its late in the day, so some of these are done already - hooray!)

• cutover a test environment to use a new cobol compiler environment (done!)
• document the above, because I'll forget how I did it if I wait til next week (done!)
  
• Pack up me and two kids so we're ready to leave for the Vineyard at 4:30 am tomorrow.
• Not succumb to exhaustion before I accomplish above goal.
• Get to bed as early as possible.
  

3) Snacks I enjoy:

chocolate, salt & black pepper potato chips, strawberry twizzlers

4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

• Retire from IT work.
  
• Start dyeing and spinning for fun and money, hopefully not needing the money would make it stay fun (?)
• Move somewhere - coastal Maine or perhaps Martha's Vineyard
• Renovate the house on the Vineyard.
  

5) Places I have lived:

South Shore of Mass., Somerville Mass, North Shore of Mass. Thats it.

6) 5 peeps I wanna know more about:

If you feel like playing along, I always love seeing people's responses, but I won't tag anyone!

A Little Diversion

I made a little detour into the sewing world this week. When I saw this sweet little bag tutorial posted I knew I just had to make one. Long ago I dabbled with quilting, so I have a tiny little stash of fat quarters, and this was a snap to whip up during an extended naptime.


It is very wee - just big enough to hold a skein of yarn, or if I let the blues in it remind me of you know who, then perhaps a couple little tea samples? I had fun browsing my little fabric stash, and just might whip up a few more - I think they'd be handy to have around for impromptu gift containers.

Recharged, if only for One Day

The past 10 days has seen every single member of our household getting sick, in one form or another, sometimes in pairs. I escaped all last week unscathed, just needing to play nurse to the ailing ones. I started feeling oogly myself on Friday, but felt well enough Saturday to spend the day at NH Sheep and Wool.

It was a bounty of fiber and friends, and I left feeling so much better for having taken a day for myself. Even though it certainly wasn't restful, it was marvelously energizing and stands out as the best day I've had in quite some time.

I won't bore you with my list of purchases (they're in my Handspun tab in my stash on Ravelry), or a big link fest of who I enjoyed the day with (you can see some of them in my photos on Flickr here) but I do want to share one purchase, which was so serendipitous and really sums up the carefree easy going day.

I was walking with Manise near the end of the day, she was taking me to see the fleece she had bought earlier - a stunning grey CVM lock she was brandishing hinted at wonderful stuff. She was explaining how this vendor didn't bring any fleeces to sell that day, just ones that were being picked up. In the booth, there were two big bags stashed behind the register - Manise's glorious crimpy, lanolin-y silver-gray with a big SOLD tag on top, and another: black with brown tips, a Romeldale - I couldn't help but bury my hands in it, wondering who had scored this beauty (I'd been eyeing black fleeces all day, this was the best yet). Manise started chatting with Nancy, the owner of the booth, and it came up that she actually hadn't sold this one. Imagine that! We all can guess the outcome. I'm the happy owner of that stunning fleece. It was summarily dropped off at Friends Folly booth for washing and carding (I wailed to Cheryl - "its like leaving my baby at daycare!") and the best photo I have of it is my lonely lock that I kept to remember it while it is away.



My hope and plan is to make a worsted 2 (maybe 3?) ply, enough for a nice wooly sweater for me. Its been a fantasy since I started spinning to go from fleece to sweater for myself, and with the washing and carding being done for me I might just have the stamina to pull it off. Only time will tell.

A big thank you to all the wonderful people I spent the day with. I truly wish we had more frequent occasion to do this.

The Winner Is...

I felt quite bereft last night with nothing on the wheel - I was tempted to close the poll early and just start spinning. I restrained myself though, so now I get to start pre-drafting the lovely "In the Navy Now".



Here is the yarn resulting from my red dye job that I named "Creeper" in honor of the Virginia Creeper leaf photo that inspired it. It came out a little less bright than I expected, but I really love it. Got about 220yds of worsted from 4oz. Note that all my recent dyeing has been wool from a pound of "Corridale cross" that I got free when I bought the Rose - I traditionally dislike Corriedale, but this stuff has a hand much more like BFL to me, so I've really loved spinning it.



I also realized I never shared the yarn that came from the sparkly blue batts I had carded up. Probably because I don't really like it. The wool was from one of the first fleeces I purchased, and from a breed of sheep designed for food, not wool, so its not soft and kind of a strange texture - harder to spin than I'd expected. Probably won't be using much of that again. But it was fun to play with the carder and might as well practice on crappy wool right?

Choose my Adventure

Ok - I finished spinning my Creeper roving (the red one) from my dyeing last week. It is still drying, so no photos yet. But, I can't decide what to spin next, so you get to choose:



Poll order matches the photo order top to bottom. I will take votes through tomorrow morning sometime. Vote early vote often!

[Poll Closed!]

It seems adding the poll script screws with my header for some reason, so please excuse the ugliness - it will go away when I pull the poll tomorrow morning.