And I just couldn't keep up with it for a while!
But here I am, back again, and only a smidgen more sleep deprived than last time. I have (finally) found full time employment again, and am keeping my part time job just because I like it for as long as I can. Was thinking for only 2 months, but one of those has already flown by. Maybe until school starts again.
What have I been doing other than working and sleeping you ask?... Well really not much. As of Saturday the 30th of June, I began the Tour De Fleece challenge on Ravelry. All the TDF challenge is comprised of is challenging yourself to spin daily and make your own yarnie goodness. I have spun both days on my spinning wheel (which has yet to get a name), and this is my progress so far:
It has gone from
this lovely lump of Teal colored Merino Roving to half of a bobbin of
single plied wool the first day, and a full bobbin of single plied wool
on the second day. Eventually this week or next weekend it shall turn
into 3 ply yarn... Today I am taking my drop spindle and some plain white wool to work to spin some there.
I have also begun
constructing my brother a fountain pen roll so he can keep his most
used fountain pens in and easily identifiable location. For this i have
chosen a couple of Hawaiian print fabrics to use, and just need to go to JoAnn's fabrics tomorrow and get the threads to use. Lets just say with the new sleeping/eating/working schedule i haven't had much time or desire to leave the house to do errands. Sleeping has definitely taken priority over any other ideas I had about this summer.
Another thing I have started playing with lately is painting my nails. I know, how girly is that?! No one ever said i wasn't a girl! I have started water marbling, and love it, getting the hang of it is easy after the first very messy try. Right now my new favorite is doing a dark bottom coat, with sparkly tips, and a nice thick clear top coat. I love them sparkles! I am not much of a make up type of person, but this nails thing is a blast. I guess its another way to be creative that I can show everyone else because my nails are always with me... Or so I hope! My nails have never been particularly long or strong, But I'm trying to change that. I have been using some nail strengthener as well as a strengthening base coat that for every nail but one is helping. The single nail not seeing much improvement is my right hand pointer finger. I think its because thats the one hand and finger i do all of my poking/prodding/examining/opening with. Its still short and nubby and makes me sigh. I have gotten into the habit of at least peeling the stickers at work off with my box knife to save my manicure... that has helped tremendously. Now to get used to using various tools at my disposal for other things.
K is with her dad in Ohio for a week, just left Saturday, coming back this Saturday. I miss her already, and am hoping she's having a good time. Thinking about calling in between my jobs on my drive to see if I can talk to her. If I call when I get off work, it will be way too late to talk. Darn time zone differences.
My garden is doing amazing! I need to take pictures of it and my patio plants and show how much they have grown from earlier this year! My Juane Flamme tomatoes have even set fruit that are beginning to ripen! Yay! All the other plants are just blossoming right now. I can not WAIT for fresh tomatoes!!
Well, thats just about everything for the run down of May/June. Hope to write again before August rolls around!
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!!
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!
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.
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!
What a beautiful Friday afternoon for a jaunt into Spokompton to see the fabled Paradise Fibers! The morning started off rough with snow snow snow snow snow... And was still snowing when I left work at 9:30am. Yes, I do work early in the mornings, but thats neither here nor there at this point.
So when my ex wanted to drop off my daughter at 11 am, and we had the rest of the day to goof off and dawdle around, I proposed a question to her: "Would you like to go to a huge yarn store in Spokane with me?" And after hemming and hawing, my daughter said "Ok". It may have taken some bribing of buying her own yarn. She knows how to work the system already!
So I looked up the directions on Mapquest (BTW, never use mapquest for Paradise Fibers! It puts you at an adult warehouse in the skeezy part of town :-/ even using the actual address...) and after driving for too long trying to find the place, my hubs called wanting to go to lunch since we were in Spokane. So we went to his work, found the CORRECT place on Google Maps, had lunch, and went to the fabled yarn store!
Now where the agony part comes in:
We were there all of maybe 2 minutes when I noticed a familiar sight. The shelves upon shelves upon shelves of yarn were stored upon BORDERS bookshelves! Granted, the shelves were turned around backwards so they could be labeled easier, but still... Stab right through the heart. Headed back towards the front counting as I went... about 90% of the store is outfitted with former Borders fixtures. Tables, shelves, the CD waterfalls, pylons, even slat walls! Some of them still had the bright orange SOLD stickers on them. For goodness sakes, their CHECK OUT counter was the former Border's Customer Service Table! Still had the music ID panels on it! At least our Borders took those off long before going out of business LOL! But I did discover quite quickly, the pain of the realization was next to nothing... Was more of a "OH MY GAWD!!! They're going to fantastic use for my second favorite thing!!!" Kind of like how it took 6 months for me to get my reading mojo back... It hurts less the longer you've taken to get away from the pain.
But the Ecstasy! Oh the ecstasy of yarn! Yaaarrrrn!! Ok, I may just be a yarn zombie in disguise, but yarn is so much fun! They have more yarn packed onto one floor than I have ever seen before! And all sorts of brands. Elspeth Lavold, Frog Tree, Colinette Jitterbug, Kollage, Louet, Cascade, and lots lots lots lots more. They even had an upstairs for the spinning wheels and spinning supplies. And Oh. My. Gawd. So much stuff to look at! It did help me narrow down my desired spinning wheels though. Seeing them in person helped me visually because the size is not really comprehensive when you're shopping on the internet. The pictures make them all look the same size, when in reality, one is super tiny and the other is not.
So now the Hubs has decided I need to take a spinning course (that Paradise Fibers happens to offer) which familiarizes you with the wheels and parts, and should help me decide which one I want to find myself using frequently. I don't know if Hubs is thinking this through. I think he's thinking if I make my own yarn that I won't have to buy more yarn. But then I have to build up my spinning fiber stash so I can make all the pretty yarns to use... And that in itself is just as expensive as buying all the pretty yarns...
And so, my shopping excursion ended with buying some more sock yarn for myself, and a skein of worsted weight PINK yarn for K. I avoided spending more money on needles I don't need, but the desire was great. Almost made it home with some Addi Turbo Lace needles in sock sizes. Almost made it home with Sox Stix. But in the end, my rational mind won the battle of the "You don't need this, you already have plenty at home" argument. Amazing!
And so, I conclude, that Paradise Fibers is a dangerous place for a yarn and spending diet, and that I must leave in order to be at work on time this morning! Everyone have a wonderful weekend!
I hate falling in love with yarn I can't afford. Its like wanting the car that has all the upgrades until you look at the price sticker and have a heart attack.
I have fallen in love with the Hazel Knits Club exclusive color ways. Which, BTW, you can purchase if you're enrolled in the upcoming clubs. The hard part is deciding which one I just can't live without. I want them all! ALL I SAY!! Because they are that awesome! I just wish I had two hundred or so dollars to spare for said yarn. I can save up... That's a moot point. But it doesn't flow with the "have it now" mentality we all have. And besides, now we're needing to save up for other upcoming items. Like a new, bigger car for me, or say... new baby clothes.
We've told the grandparents involved, and now we tell the world... Hubs and I decided to add a third child to the mix. Nothing YET, but its in the plans to start trying in the near future! One child is super excited, the other... well... he says that he's the baby, and no having more unless its a robot. Well guess who will have his heart broken when its not a robot :( But he has been asking why our cat isn't having kittens. And why we can't just put her parts back in so he can have a kitten from her. And how are kittens made? And how do they come out of her tummy?... Oh the joys of having a curious 5 year old! But in order to satisfy his baby wants, he wants a baby cat. A good healthy way to satisfy the baby rabies.
On crafting fronts, I finished another pair of socks! Don't know if I will try to sell them, or give them to K who is begging for them. We shall see!!!!
And its hilarious, there is a reflection along the top of the sock blockers of the corner of the ceiling! I spent almost an hour gazing at it trying to figure out what the reflection was! They were fun to make, but I did get bored towards the end, so I made them a small size so they would be done quicker. Fits child size 4 to women's size 6-7! Now on to 2 more sets of socks I am making. Another "just to challenge myself" and one for a friend who requested hand knit socks.
As far as gardening news, I just received my last shipment of seed packets for the year. I want a million bajillion tomato plants! Ok, not really. I just want to try out new breeds to see what I like and what I don't. I also want to try canning my own tomato sauce and maybe making spaghetti sauce this year! Save money... Or try to anyway. We are such spaghetti fiends here that we're going to need a lot! Which reminds me, instead of buying yarn, I should be saving up to buy the canning pot to use on our stove, since we need a specific one. Oh the joys of being American. Want want want... Time for me to get my priorities in order!
Ok, off to get my priorities straight. Maybe just my house straightened. Either way, I'm off to save the house from itself! Have a wonderful week!
