Category: Goofy Stuff

Summer Wrap-Up

Or, A Very Big Post

Now that summer is officially over, let’s get back to the monthly wrap-up posts, shall we? This summer was a bit of a bust as far as knitting goes. I got lots of other non-fibery projects done though, and enjoyed a lovely summer with family and friends, so I count it as a success all the way around! Here’s the summary:

I did no knitting at all on the True Blood Faery sweater. The current status is that I have the main body done and blocked, and I’ve started on a sleeve.

I knit about an inch on the current sock in progress. It just seemed to want to stay in hibernation.

I am nearly done with that Electric Blue High School Graduation Baby Mystery Project. I’m on the edging, about 6 rows to go, but those rows currently are at 592 stitches, and getting bigger every time around.

I spun up several skeins of yarn.

I started doing natural dyeing. Here’s the latest:

These were dyed with chopped dried madder root. The top yarn is handspun Romney, from a sheep named Rainbow, that was a gift from Dorothy* last year. I spun it up into a two ply right after she gave it to me, and it went into the stash. I was looking for something else to toss into the dye pot and found this, it was spun undyed. The roving is BFL, about 4 ounces. The color is pretty accurate, at least on my monitor.

After I pulled those out of the dye pot, I decided that there might be some color left, so tossed in the skein of rhubarb-mordanted Perendale wool that was in the August CSA box, along with 4 ounces of a BFL-Silk blend. Here’s how it came out.

That’s also pretty accurate, it’s a pale peach color. I haven’t quite decided if I like it or not, but I can always over-dye it next time I have the right color dye pot going.

Project Details:

Fiber: Two skeins of Romney wool, handspun by yours truly, 4 ounces of BFL roving, one skein of local California wool, and 4 ounces of BFL-silk roving

Mordant: The peach wool was mordanted by Birdsong from the CSA with rhubarb. I did the rest with an alum/cream of tartar mordant. I used about a 10% alum mordant solution

Dye: Chopped madder root. There was about 230 grams of the madder, I would definitely use more if you wanted to dye this much fiber and have it all come out red.

What I Learned: As the dye pot exhausts, the color changes. Duh. Madder is treated a little differently than the fennel. For one thing, it doesn’t stink like the fennel, I did this in the house without any problems. From what I read, if you cook the madder too hot or too rapidly, it will turn more orangey than red.

Here’s another summer thing. I bought a new spindle! This is sort of an early birthday present for myself. I’ve been looking at Golding spindles for a long time, and finally saw one that had my name stamped all over it.

Do you want a close up of the top? Of course you do!

Pretty, eh? The Scottish thistle is in honor of our next big adventure. We leave for Scotland** next week for a couple of weeks. I can’t wait! When I saw this up for sale on the Golding website, I knew it had to be for me.

OK, a quick list of September fiber goals and I’m out of here, or I’ll be late for church. I’m not getting very ambitious since I’ll be gone much of the time.

Finish the baby thing.

Finish those red socks.

Read books.

Enjoy the vacation.

That’s it. I’ll try to do one more post before we go, since we had a very special visitor last week that I’d like to tell you about!

*The wool was the gift, not the sheep.

**As usual, for you stalkers thinking you can steal my yarn while we’re gone, we have a house-sitter. She brings her llamas to guard the wool, so don’t even think about it.

Public Service Announcement

Kim at filleverywindow is doing her annual Knitters’ Hunk contest. It’s only into day 2, but the competition is fierce. There are some prizes involved, but mostly lots of eye candy. There was a little dust up over an uncooperative blog platform involving a do-over, so the contest is just getting started over. There’s plenty of time left to ogle vote!

In fibery news, here’s what that Army Blanket Green Polwarth is spinning up to be. It’s really a nice soft sage color. I’m not quite half done spinning the fiber, it will be a two ply when it grows up.

And here’s what’s in the dye pot today.

That’s the first round, and there’s four ounces of Lincoln wool 2 ply handspun that I did awhile back, and four ounces of unspun BFL roving. Once that’s out of the dye pot, I have a hank of rhubarb-mordanted yarn that Birdsong sent in the first CSA shipment, and four ounces of BFL-silk roving to toss in. It will be interesting to see the difference in the two batches, if any.

Once again, it’s impossible to capture reds with a camera, at least with my mediocre photography skills. That’s close, but it’s a little bit less orange and more garnet in real life. The dye plant is madder root (but not from my CSA box).

Last but not least, a cat photo for your enjoyment. I heard some rustling around on my desk yesterday, and here’s what I found.

I guess Will likes a messy desk as much as I do.

Sometimes The Spammers Are Right

I sometimes glance through the comments that get tossed in the “spam” folder, just to see what the latest is. The current batch was largely in Russian, so who knows. Here was one that got my attention:

Well made blog :) great at expressing yourself.. Now all you gotta do is update update update!

Well, no kidding. I guess I better do just that.

Let’s hit the weather first and get that over with. We had about 2 days of summer this past week, and it’s in the high 60’s today, though it looks suspiciously like it’s trying to rain. Crap crap crappity crap. So far the pattern is that if I’m working, the weather is great, if I’m off, it generally sucks. I have a boatload of relatives coming this next weekend, so hopefully we’ll impress them with some nice weather. My sisters and their spouses are coming Saturday and staying a week, so there will lots of laughs, shopping, drinking and eating going on. And perhaps a rousing Mexican train tournament if it rains and we have to stay inside.

Next up, spinning. Let’s just say I haven’t done much this week. I do have some photos of a couple of things, one done, one in progress. Here’s the done stuff.

The spun yarn will be knit into something for John. He laid claim to this when he saw it spun up. It’s one of the monthly fiber shipments from Spunky Eclectic, and it’s Targhee wool, the color is named Flannel. It is nice and squishy soft, and not scratchy at all. I haven’t gotten around to weighing this and figuring out the yardage, but it’s probably a heavy worsted weight. I’m thinking mittens and a hat, there might be enough left for mittens for me as well, there was 8 ounces of the fiber to start with.

Here’s what is on Seamus, the wheel.

Pretty, isn’t it? The fiber is from Wolf Creek Wools, which sort of cracks me up. The shop, Sweetgrass Wool, is outside Helena, Montana, about 3 miles from the house I lived in there. Of course it wasn’t a fiber or yarn shop then. And I was neither a knitter or spinner then, so it wouldn’t probably have made any difference to me at the time. The fiber is 75% Blue Face Leicester and 25% tussah silk, color is Wild Berry. This is spinning up beautifully. I have about 4 ounces of it, so it will be a little scarf or neck warmer or something girly.

On the knitting front, no photos. You guessed it, still the Electric Blue Imaginary Baby Thing. Poor little Jace will be unwrapping this at his grade school graduation at the rate I’m going with it. Maybe it can be converted into a backpack or something. And I’m not knitting anything else much at all, so nothing to see here. Move along.

I almost forgot, we went to a Mariners baseball game on Friday. It was part of a late birthday present from last year for John & I from his kids. I did take the sock to knit, and impressed a kid that looked about 6 or 7, and got a “cool!” out of him when I showed him it would be a sock. Unfortunately John was in charge of taking the sock-at-the-ballpark photo, and for some reason that escapes me, deleted it from his camera. The home team lost dismally, but it was a glorious evening, and we had good seats in the front row down the third base line, and it was all good. John’s son and daughter put together a terrific picnic lunch that was far better than the usual ball park food. Here are a couple of photos.

It looks like a good time was had by all.

That’s all folks, I’m off to work on the Imaginary Electric Blue Baby Grade School Gift.

Oops…

Or,
April Wrap-Up
I can explain. There are a lot of reasons for the brief blog absence, but here’s the main one.

I finally made it into the 21st century and got an iPhone. To say that I’ve been captivated by it would be an understatement. I can finally get rid of all those little bits and pieces of paper and the paper so-called organizer that is NEVER in sync with anything else around here.

So. Here were the April goals.

I have some Corgi Hill  True Blood Red fiber that I started last summer, spindle spun. I’m going to get half of it spun up.

The wheel project is that Spunky Eclectic fiber. It’s Targhee wool, the color is called Flannel. I’ll show you a photo next time, it’s gotten dark here and photos just aren’t working tonight. I want to FINISH that!

Get the bodice done on the Faery sweater, and start a sleeve.

Really, those damned brown socks that I’ve been knitting forever need to be done. I promise that if I don’t finish them by the end of April, that I will burn them in the backyard in a spectacular sacrifice to the goddess of knitting. Really. I’ll take pictures.

And how did I do? I got part of a batt of the red fiber spun, but nowhere near half. I didn’t come close to finishing the Targhee fiber. I have an excuse for both of those, which I’ll show you later. I’m very easily distracted, as most of you know if you’ve been following me for very long.

I did finish those brown socks. Thank God, I’d have hated to have to burn them in the back yard. Besides, it’s been raining here so much that I doubt I’d have gotten a fire started.

I didn’t come close on the Faery sweater. Here’s where I am.

So I did actually work on it. I’ve gotten most of the left front done, I only have a few rows left before I can put it on a holder and work on the back section. At this rate I might finish it in time to wear for NEXT winter.

I did read a couple of books, and I also did 8 blog posts in April. Plus several levels of Cut The Rope on my new phone. Don’t even ask.

And what was that excuse for not getting any spinning done, you might ask?

That’s 4 ounces worth of a very dirty Romney fleece, from a sheep named Peggy. Here it is getting a bath:

And here it is, much cleaner:

I think I’ve officially lost my mind. I have another pound of this, but can’t quite face it at the moment.

How about goals for May? I probably should set some before the month is over.

I really want to finish the body section of the True Blood Faery section.

I want to finish the Targhee spinning.

Blog more.

That’s it. I’m not over-reaching this month.

So if anybody has some cool, you-can’t-live-without-them iPhone apps, let me know about them in the comments. Just remember, for every game recommendation you send me, I’ll get that much less knitting done.

World Grits Day, 2011

Well OK, it was Thursday, not today, but we did have grits, and I took a photo to commemorate the event. Kris tuned me in to this several years ago with her Grits & Sticks contest, so I included knitting in the photo.

That’s a nice plate of shrimp grits, with the first rosé wine of the spring, and my True Blood Faery sweater. You will notice that the wine matches the sweater.

I’m clearly not going to reach my April goal on this project, which was to finish the bodice and start a sleeve. The whole thing is knit in one piece up to where it divides at the armholes. I was pretty sure I had gotten to that point already, but I keep knitting and knitting cable rows, then measuring and getting the exact same number. I still have about an inch to knit on the bodice before it splits, but I appear to be in limbo at this point.

Last but not least, the spammers have gotten more clever lately with the comments. My spam filter is pretty good, it rarely misses a spam comment, and even more rarely dumps a real comment in the trash. I do glance through them before I permanently delete them, mostly just for laughs. Here are a couple of the recent ones that make me laugh. I’m excluding all of the comments written in Russian, since I would have no idea what I was posting.

Can I simply say what a reduction to find somebody who truly is aware of what theyre talking about on the internet. You positively know tips on how to convey an issue to light and make it important. Extra folks have to learn this and understand this aspect of the story. I cant imagine youre not more popular since you positively have the gift.

Well, thanks!

Hello there, Are you going to be publishing a follow up piece? My husband and me have squandered some time browsing over your web page and surprisingly enough you touched on some thing we had been discussing only the other week with our accountant. We often notice ourselves quarrelling over the smallest of issues, isn’t it childish? At any rate we wish you greatest wishes from the Usa.

Sorry, no marriage counseling here.

This looks to be a very active website. How do you manage to keep up with filtering out all the comments?

Good question, good question.

I’m off to get some stuff done, have a great weekend!

Ten on Tuesday

I don’t think I’ve ever done one of these. Usually I discover the TOT topic on about Friday, and by then it’s too late. This week’s topic is Ten Reasons To Be Glad It’s Spring, and who doesn’t love spring? So here goes. This is courtesy of Carole.


1. Baby ducks! We’re a ways out yet, but this little pair of ducks has been hanging out, so I expect they’re getting ready to make a nest. It’s cute how the guy duck stands guard while his lady swims around and eats.

2. The smells of spring. I love that damp leaf smell as everything warms up.

3. Spring flowers. The first things up in our yard are hyacinthoides. They grow wild along our driveway, and if they’re in sun they’ve already started to bloom in places.

4. Longer days. This is the reason we celebrate winter solstice so vigorously around here. Sooner or later we start getting more daylight.

5. Less rain, eventually anyway. It’s been a pretty typically rainy winter here, and I’m ready for a little sunshine.

6. Walks in the woods without a bazillion layers of warm clothes.

7. The dogs will get to play in the lake soon!

8. Chirpy birds in the morning. It’s only been in the last week or two that we’ve had a little bird choir to wake us up in the morning. We have a pair of Steller’s jays making a nest in our trees again this year. They’re more raucous than chirpy, but welcome anyway.

9. Willie the cat loves spring because he gets to start spending more time outside. He’s been absolutely nutso the past 2 weeks being cooped up inside with spring rains.

10. The farmers markets open in a few short weeks! Mmmmmm…green garlic, sorrel, new spring lettuces. I can’t wait.

What do you love about spring?

Even I Was Surprised…

At how many places I’ve been!


visited 34 states (68%)
Create your own visited map of The United States

The rest of the world* is little less well-travelled:


visited 18 states (8%)
Create your own visited map of The World

I have to laugh a bit at Canada. If you’ve been to one town in Canada, apparently you’ve seen an awful lot.

And here’s that map with some of the placed I’d LIKE to go!


visited 54 states (24%)
Create your own visited map of The World

So where have all of you been?

*Edited to add Morocco to the places I’ve been! Thanks, Kris, for noticing that, and you get the good memory award!

Spindle Purse

This will be a quick one; John and I have symphony tickets in the big city tomorrow, and we decided to go up tonight and spend both nights. We’ll see the sights, eat some good food, relax and have a little mini-vacation to celebrate Valentine’s Day. I had to work on the “real” day, so this compensates.

I’ve been trying to find ways to safely carry a spindle around without wrecking it. While I was dredging out our pantry this week, I found this.

In case you’re wondering what that is, it’s a wine bottle carrying purse. It has little “feet” on the bottom so it stays put without rolling around, a carrying handle, a strap inside to hold the wine bottle, and it came with a corkscrew. My sister gave me this for Christmas a couple of years ago. Since I really don’t carry wine in my purse that much, I haven’t really used it. I was about to donate it to the Goodwill pile, when it dawned on me.

Absolutely perfect. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner.

And in knitting progress, here is a teaser photo of Big Pink.

I’m getting close! I’m now doing the endless i-cord bind off row, on about 650 stitches. It’s very tedious but actually goes fast, especially with a glass of wine by your side. I am about half done with the bind off, then I have to weave in a million ends, then it’s done done done. I can’t wait to get this mailed off so I can show pictures. Stealth knitting isn’t really much fun for blog readers.

I’m off to pack for the weekend, hope you all have something fun planned as well. I might have a tale of wool fumes to tell next time…

Ten on….

What? I missed it again. Oh well. It will be Ten on Saturday, since I’m hopeless about keeping up with these things. This one is my top ten favorite health and beauty products. I’m not actually sure I have ten, since I’m pretty simple when it comes to these things. Let’s see.

1. Cetaphil liquid soap. If I use anything else on my face (like soap) for more than a few days, my skin starts to fall off. I hate it when it does that.

2. Olive oil skin moisturizer. My skin is so dry it’s ridiculous. In the summer I wear a sunscreen over this.

3. Sweet Libertine eye shadows. Seriously, I have about a million different shades. Go get some, they’re fun.

4. Whatever shampoo is on sale at Costco. Really, I think it all comes out of the same vat at some factory in Oklahoma. I also use whatever conditioner is on sale. I actually only wash my hair about twice a week (my hair is as dry as the rest of my skin) so it takes a long time for me to use up a bottle. I tend to collect the little bottles of conditioner at hotels and use them in the shower.

5. Everything Balm. This stuff is awesome for hands and anything else that’s dry. I even buy their wood balm for my spinning wheel and spindles.

6. Rosebud Salve. I always have a tin of this with me.

7. Water. Drink plenty of it, it’s the best skin care product ever.

8. Sunscreen. I don’t worry about it for work days, since I’m inside all day, but any other time I have it on. When I’m out in the sun for more than 15 minutes, I wear the strongest SPF I can find in the closet.

9. Lots of fruits and veggies (in my tummy, not on my face!). This along with all the water does more good than all that other stuff. I can’t ever remember to take vitamins, so eating them is a must.

10. Red lipstick. It’s about the only color I wear. One of my favorite memories of my mom was watching her put on red lipstick. It was the only color she ever wore as well. My latest favorite is Chanel Coco in Gabrielle. It’s expensive, it’s red, it stays on.

There. Next time I’ll try to hit it on a Tuesday, but don’t hold your breath.

Friday Funnies

Today’s Friday Funnies are brought to you by my webstats thingie. These aren’t necessarily the most common search strings that get people here, but they are the funniest I’ve found recently. Here they are, in no particular order.

1. Knitting istake on mitten ( I’m assuming that was supposed to be “mistake”)

2. Betty Crocker knitting (I was once the B.C Family Leader of Tomorrow, after all)

3. Handsome soldier (Huh? Oh yeah, here’s mine)

4. Family Leader of Tomorrow Betty Crocker (again!?)

5. Sauerkraut spindle. (This one just baffles me. I’m not really sure at all what they were looking for.)

6. Drooling dog tricks cookie. (Right. I have no clue either.)

7. Knitting While Drunk. (I’m not sure whether to be embarrassed or proud.)

8. Shawl of commiseration. (I couldn’t find this pattern on Ravelry, but there really should be one.)

9. How many stitches are in a 1000 meter spindle. (That’s one very long spindle, honey.)

10. Knit a human nose.

11. Bizarra knit blog.

12. I’ve disappeared. (I can’t even imagine what they were really looking for.)

13. Reading a tape measure for a dumbass.

14. Pee blog knit. (Some days I don’t even get that much done.)

15. Knitting mistake forgot some rows. (Yup, I’ve been there.)

And last but certainly not least:

16. Insane asylum knitting.

I hope I’m never committed to an asylum, but if so, I’m definitely taking the knitting with me.

Nothing To See Here…

Angie, move along. I’m just not posting any baby-knitting related photos. If you need something to do while you’re waiting for me to finish it, go here. My husband sent me this link, it’s a terrific time-waster. It also might be a little politically or socially incorrect at times, so I’m not going to take any responsibility for any of you who might be easily offended.

The Big Pink Thing that I can’t show photos of is coming along. It’s huge at this point. I have 512 stitches on the needles, and 20 rows left, then the bind off. Not only that, the rows increase in length from here on out. Terrific. Next time any one of you guys has a baby, you’re getting a gift card to Babies-R-Us.

Since I can’t show photos of what I’m knitting, you all get food. Here’s the sauerkraut in action. The second time around, we had it with pork chops and noodles. I soaked the kraut in water after rinsing well, and it was much less salty this time.

And here’s my breakfast today. I know you all are sitting on the edge of your chairs wondering what I have for breakfast. When I’m working, it’s two hard boiled eggs and a thing of yogurt. I can pack it up and take it with me, eating it later when I actually get to work. I am not a morning person (there’s a news flash for those of you in my family), so I have trouble eating anything until I’ve been up awhile. I’m not really a fully-functional human until about 10 AM, and some would argue not even then. My husband, a confirmed morning person, learned a long time ago not to shake me awake at 7 AM asking “honey, honey, it’s a beautiful day, do you want to get up and go do something??” Honey, honey, shake me again, you might lose an arm.

Ahem. Right. Breakfast. Here’s what I had.

This was actually yesterday, but you get the idea. Tea, in one of my favorite teapots, and toast with Nutella spread. Where has this stuff been all my life? This is actually a fancy-schmancy gourmet version that we got at the Pike’s Place market, but it’s the same thing. Costco now has Nutella in huge jars, so I should be set for awhile.

We’re off on another adventure soon. We are going to Puerto Vallarta tomorrow for a week, and since our flight leaves at some ungodly hour of the morning (see note above about me not being a morning person), my sweetiepie got us a hotel room close to the airport for tonight. Of course I have all the knitting lined up, and I do know where my sunglasses* are, but other than that I haven’t even started packing. I better get a move on. We’re taking the Mac Air, of course, so I might get to post while I’m there. I plan on doing very little except hanging out by the pool and knitting Big Pink.

Adios for now!

*I find it amusing that sunglass sales in the Pacific Northwest are actually rather high, considering how rarely the sun shines here. My theory is that we lose them during the long rainy stretches, so we buy a lot more than say, Floridians.

Lewey!

No knitting today. I’m still doing pink pink pink. Angie, if you’re trolling around here thinking you’re going to see something, think again. I’m not showing nothin’ till it’s done.

So you get dog pictures. Lewey got a toy for Christmas from John’s sister Ena. I neglected to get a photo of it when it was in one piece, and now it’s too late. It had a very tough nylon canvas shell, hard as a rock. Indestructible, the tag said.

There, that’s done!

We’re off to do our least favorite part of the holiday season: putting the decorations away.

Bah, humbug, I say.

New Year Fiber Resolutions

I hope your NYE was swell and fabulous! Ours certainly was. We had a little pre-dinner cocktail party in the lobby of the Westin Seattle while we were all (10 of us) waiting for our rooms. While we were there, we tried to scope out the best possible party to crash after dinner. The hotel lobby was jam packed with people coming and going, many with cases of booze, platters of delicious looking things, and coolers full of who-knows-what. It seems that this place is a happening joint on NYE. We are probably 8 blocks or so south of the Space Needle, and we all had high-floor rooms facing the Needle, important for the fireworks that took place later.

After we got settled into our rooms, we went across the street to the Icon Grill restaurant for a lovely dinner. The place was bustling, and nicely decorated for the holidays, adding to the festive spirit. After dinner, being the old farts wild partiers that we all are, we went back to our respective rooms with plans for naps and to meet at about 11PM for the fireworks show. The latter was pretty spectacular. At exactly midnight, the Space Needle lit up like a Roman candle for eight minutes, accompanied by an enthusiastic musical show. We had little food nibbles that everybody brought, along with a variety of sparkling beverages. We all managed to stay up and talk for another hour, then gave it up and called it done for the old year.

This morning we’re having breakfast up the street, then back home to get those black eyed peas done for luck.

Here are some photos from the evening:

Now for those resolutions. I’m terrible at NY resolutions. They don’t usually last a month around here. So I’m not doing any craft resolutions, except one. I’m going to try to do a new set of fiber-yarn goals at the beginning of each month. I did sign up for the 11 mittens in 2011 challenge on Ravelry, but I have no real illusions that this will last. My goals for January? Here they are:

Finish at least two spindle spinning projects that are languishing, a blue/black merino/bamboo blend that just needs plying, and some merino silk that has been on the spindle since last summer.

Finish the Big Pink Baby Thing.

Finish the pair of socks on the needles, an embarrassingly aged project.

Work on the True Blood Faery sweater. I’d like to finish the bodice section by the end of the month.

Finish the mittens (dog mittens) that have been on the needles since last year, and start the first pair for 2011.

There you go. Have a great weekend!