And Thus, Gardening Season Begins!!

Wow, its the end of April already!  Where has the time gone?  Where have I been to not notice the time passing?  I haven't the foggiest.  But I do have an explanation for the last few days!

As of Friday, the community garden is now open!  Friday was our worker bee day of tilling, and weeding, and sectioning off the plots in the garden!  T helped our garden manager stake out the plots!  Ok, in reality he held the measuring tape on a stake as she measured out and staked the plots!  But he helped out so much!  He was also my weed dumper for Friday and Saturday.  It was so much fun to see how into things he got.  We even found a dead sunflower head with some seeds left in it, and he asked if we could plant some by the corner stakes in my garden.  So if we get sunflowers sprouting I know where they came from!

So I have officially worn myself out the last 2 days, and I feel like I shouldn't be this worn out!!  Friday I weeded the community strawberry bed.  It was almost completely over grown with grass and weeds.  There were 3 adults and a few children weeding the strawberry bed, and it got done in about 3 hours.  I started building the beds in my garden yesterday (Saturday) and sifting through the dirt to find the weeds and the grass roots.  I love this community garden, but I will say I am so frustrated that most of the other "gardeners" that participated last year didn't weed their plots!  Where my new plot is situated is about 1/2 my brothers, and all of the neighbors plot, as well as 1/4 of other peoples plots along the side.   My brother's plot was fairly well weeded and clear, but these other plots are HORRIBLE!!! Especially the 1/4 plots along the side... 100% weeds and I'm not even on the 1/4 plots yet!


I have 1 bed completely dug and weeded and even planted because T was just so excited to plant carrots that I decided we could plant carrots and peas early.  So thats all cleared and planted, and staked, just need to put up my fencing.  I have a second bed dug and weeded, but not planted yet.  Still sifting through the top layers to get what weeds I can out.  Its taking about 4 hours each bed to sift and dig, and by the end of hour 2 I feel shaky and sore enough to collapse.  AND  I still have anywhere from 4 to 6 more beds to dig!! This is a speed of 1 bed per day I've been able to clear out, and if I keep this up, I won't have a garden for the entire season! Especially since its supposed to be on and off rain and with me working 4 days this week, makes it hard for me to be in the garden when D is off work and able to get the kids.  If I were to keep the bed digging to weekends it would take almost a month for the beds to be dug!  I don't know how I am going to do this!  Well POOP!! I want to get this all done so I can get planting!  As well as the need to amend the soil since I don't know if anyone actually did that last year...


Maybe by the end of all this I will have lost weight/ body fat, and be as tan as those women who obsessively tan.  HA!  Yeah right.  But I can dream!  I promise I'll take pictures of the garden tomorrow after work, and after I change and go digging!! LOL!  Here's hoping for bed 3 and maybe 4 to be dug!!

SQUEEE! Its here! Its here!

This calls for a purple day!  My birthday present is finally here!  Thank you New Voyager Trading and Paradise Fibers!

My pretty pretty spinny thingy is here!  She needs a name, but I can not think of one at the moment!

Introducing my brand spankin' new Kromski Minstrel!

Isn't she just beautiful??

A pretty castle style wheel that I chose in a Mohogany finish because I just didn't feel like spending a month or two finishing one myself because I am impatient.  Who knew?

I was supposed to play with one before I bought it, but the store didn't have any set up, and rather than wait, I went ahead and purchased it figuring I could get almost the full price back if we weren't compatible.  But I'm not seeing that happening since she can easily go from gossamer/lace weight singles to worsted weight singles with ease.  I have spun about half a bobbin full so far.  Bobbins are the thingys on her lower right hand side, but when you're spinning, there's an empty one up top.

Here's a pic of my half full bobbin.  No continuity in the yarn yet, but that's ok.  Practice practice practice!  And some of it is over twisted, which I am aware of, but it took me over a week to fiddle with the drafting and the spinning on my drop spindle, so I can assume it will take about that long to spin with conformity of size on the wheel.  Its definitely different spinning with a double treadle castle style wheel vs the single treadle saxony style wheel that my mother had when I was growing up.  Saxony style is the one with the wheel off to one side and the bobbin/flyer off to the other side.  Much much fun to be had that is for sure!  D wants me to "start yarning" and make lots of money from "yarning" on my wheel.  I will sure try!  Got to practice first!

It is so relaxing.  I didn't realize it went from 3 to 8 pm so quickly!  It took maybe an hour to build, and an hour or maybe a little more to practice treadling and get a steady pace going.  Then I spent from dinner time (5ish) to almost 9 pm "yarning" aka spinning.  I can see me getting carried away having fun and forgetting that I have to work in the morning... Like right now.  So busy blogging I look at the time and go "OH SNAP! MUST SLEEP!"  since I wake at 4:15 am.  Not for any reason but to be sure I'm awake by the time I get to the store.  And have "Mommy quiet coffee time" by myself, maybe with the cat.

I think tomorrow I will be yarning until I have to go to work!  Oh the funness of yarning!  Yes I am totally making random words up to fill up my blog!

Good yarning night everybody!

What happened Google?

It has been beautiful outdoors this last week, and so I use a pretty shade of golden yellow to represent the sunlight that has been gracing our porch lately!

Alright Google, whats the matter??  I absolutely CAN NOT access blogger, or google.com from my desktop computer.  Gmail is perfectly fine.  Double-U, Tee, Eff???  I like using my desktop for doing my blog.  Much easier than scalding my lap with my laptop as it heats up and has no where to displace the heat.  On a side note, I have started spinning with my spindle... Like... All the time!  Love it while I wait for my spinning wheel.  I have this pretty pink and purple dyed roving I bought a long time ago when I purchased my spindle, but have never done anything with it.  Now is its time to shine!  I got a fair amount spun this week, so much I had to take it off and wind it on a cardboard toilet paper tube.  Yes, sounds disturbing, but not as bad as you'd think.  And yes, it is recycling as well.  I saved a bunch of cardboard tubes to use as seed starting pots, but got lazy and left them where I put them by the garage door.  So when my spindle got too full, I transferred the single plyed yarn onto it.  Now to make another bit so I can ply them together! Sa-weeet!

I am so excited to be getting a spinning wheel.  I ordered it on Sunday after I got my gift card, but it hasn't shipped out yet.  Or at least if it did, the update was never posted.  I am going to wait patiently until tomorrow after I see the UPS guy drive through our neighborhood.... And if he doesn't stop at our house, I am going to call and ask "WTF man?!  Website said shipped out in 24 hours... email said 48, unless something like 'sold out' happened, but that I'd get an email!"  Maybe their shipping person is sick or on vacation.  Maybe the wheel was sold just minutes prior to my purchase, and they're secretly out of stock in the mahogany color.  If that were the case I'd totally tell them to go ahead and send me either the Walnut or refund me the extra $ and I'd get the unfinished and finish it myself.  But any sort of communication would be super duper nice right now.  

See, I'm in the middle of what I have dubbed as "Exhaustion week".  AKA I helped my brother move Thurs thru Sat (even after work!), worked Friday & Saturday, Sunday was a big hoopla with the Easter and Birthday celebrations (all day event), then 3 more days of work, and now tests and school, and children activities tomorrow, as well as being shark week for me... Hormonal as all get out, which means I'm ANGRY.  Not at anything or anyone in particular, but just plain old angry.  Everything is making me angry.  Drivers, my dog, my cat, my family, some random stranger walking thru a parking lot.  I am just ANGRY.  And LOUD because I'm ANGRY.  Its rough, and I'm trying not to be LOUD at the family, but some times, like right now I just want to holler at the top of my lungs.  I have gone out for lots of walks, and am thinking maybe an hour to walk and contemplate by myself tomorrow would be wonderful... BUT.  All those activities! GAH!  Oh, wait, my husband has tomorrow off.  Hmmm... maybe if it is still nice outside.  But of course, with my luck it is saying it is going to rain.  Oh and not to mention that my phone died last week, took 3 days to get a new phone, and 3 more days to get the # transferred over.  Just. A. Pain.


No real knitting to speak of this week.  Got frustrated because I started a project for a friend who wanted a pair of hand knit socks.  Then she up and disappeared, hasn't spoken with me for over a month now.  Found out she moved without so much as a goodbye.  Guess I can sell the socks on Etsy or something.  Maybe.  These were specially altered to fit her.  Was in the process of knitting the feet of her socks.  Now they're tossed on the unfinished pile because she can't come and try them on to make sure they fit.  Maybe I will just rip them out again and make hats.  I don't know, at a loss about it right now.


Ok, well here's hoping things are better tomorrow.
 

Oh the joys of spinning!

So last night I had the pleasure of going to Paradise Fibers for their hand spinning class, to learn to spin some wool on my spindle.  I have tried by myself and watching on youtube and other random sites.  But I just couldn't get it.  The drafting and joining the wool parts confounded me.  It just didn't make sense, and didn't look like what they were doing on the video.

Last night was a class with Rachel, daughter of the owner of Paradise Fibers who was able to show me how to draft better, and smash the join together and make it spin together.  It was a great night of laughing and talking.  It was a very fun night!  Can't wait to spin some more yarn soon, just want to purchase some pretty colored wool.

I have been saying that I want a spinning wheel for the last few months, and D is encouraging me to buy one, with the agreement that I take some spinning classes to get more comfortable and make sure its something I want to do.  I took my first one last night, and there are 2 more classes for learning on wheels at the end of the month.  Now I need to decide on what model to buy!  I have 2 models picked out, one which I had the chance to spin on last night, and one which wasn't set up.  The Ashford Traveller castle style spinning wheel and the Kromski Minstrel, also a castle style spinning wheel.  The Ashford Traveller was set up, and I got to spin a little on it.  It was very comfortable, and really quite small compared to the old style saxony type that my mother had.  But I've had my heart set on the Kromski Minstrel for a long time.  I'm not sure why, because its very pretty, but taller than the Ashford.  Maybe its the draw of the more worked wood.  The spokes of the wheel are turned and very ... pretty.  Very much a gorgeous piece of furniture as well as functional machine. 

Oh the decisions!