Love those natural fibers!!

Hi Alene -- spread the word: it's the International Year of Natural Fibers !! Word is starting to get around. I've read about it on Spindlicity and on the Martha's Vineyard & Hudson Valley Fiber Farms blog. Of course, my love of things woolly is well known but I can't wait to learn more about and see what people do with other natural fibers this year too.

The picture is of fiber and yarn scraps, mostly wool but other natural fibers, too, that I carded together to spin for Ravelry's Spin Your Scraps contest. What's going on with natural fibers down there in the desert?? ;) C

Start 'em Young, Part 2

DS spinning some pencil roving (no drafting required) -- any idea why it is underlining??

My service project

Remember a few posts back when I talked about making mittens for the homeless? I still think it's a good idea, but when I saw the low off-season prices of mittens at the store (yes, it is insane but mittens & gloves go on sale in February here in tropical Wisconsin), I wondered if I wouldn't help more people by raising some money. I've been thinking about how to do it. So here's what I'm going to try: Spin up some fun yarn in Ravelry's Spin Your Scraps challenge and knit it up into a scarf; then I'll auction off the scarf to benefit a local charity that helps homeless people in my city. So in March I'll work on the spinning!

Check it out!

New spinning books on the horizon: this summer and this fall (all about spindling!). Hurray!!

Crafter's block, plus goals update

Hi! Glad you are emerging from the winter icks. We're doing all right here. DS wants to learn to spin on the wheel so may try that soon. DD thus far hasn't done more than twirl the spindle and treadle the (empty) wheel but I'm encouraged by her early interest.

I've been having crafter's block for a while now. It took me lots of tries to get a Shawl Ministry project to stick with; it's a lap robe using the Babette Blanket pattern but in less thrilling colors. I'm smitten with the brights but they need some projects with more subdued colors.

I started a few projects with lovely cotton, but as usual, it makes me sore if it's anything bigger than a tawashi. So I'm going to weave with it instead.

The Big Rectangle? Poor thing. First I realized I had enough yarn but not in enough colors (what gives, I always have too many colors in too small amounts) . . . so I decided to weave a rectangle shawl. But that was giving me something probably too heavy (when I know more about weaving, I'll be able to get around that, I imagine). I considered this sweater and still am, along with some other wraps: Mananita, Nina, and Belinda. The trick: I need to use stash because I'm getting my fleece at the end of April and suddenly that seems soon. Must make room.

I've been doing Navajo spindle spinning and loving it. Really all I want to do is spin a lot and knit and weave some . . . so that's another challenge for using up the stash. Hmm. I was very moved a few weeks ago by a story of a homeless person barehanded; I felt a strong urge to "whip" up a zillion mittens to cover all those cold hands. But I'm not sure if it wouldn't be better to raise some money to help instead (I'm also always leery of repetitive strain injuries, so any project that involves me whipping out lots of something, well, doesn't usually happen).

Bye for now, C

Still Alive

Hi Cindy,

After well over a week of being sick, followed by DH being sick, I'm finally almost back to normal. I caught a nasty bug last month, right after DH's birthday and ended up missing 4 days of work over 2 weeks and the cough hung on for quite a while afterwards. I went to Urgent Care the second day and it still hung on for over a week. It didn't go away until I went again and got antibiotics. That seem to kick it.

Surprisingly I didn't do much knitting during all my sick time home, just lots of sleeping and resting. I've started back at it the last week or so. Today will be the first day my friend and I go down to the gym again after both of us being sick.

As you may have seen on the news we have a very important visitor in town today. Actually he arrived yesterday afternoon. It is hard to seen in this picture but there is snow on top of Four Peaks in the background (near the tail of the plane). Pretty cool. He's speaking at Dobson High, a couple of miles from our house. We talked briefly about trying to get tickets but we would have had to get there Sunday night to stand in line until 10 am Monday. They had about 1000 people show up and only 500 tickets.

I've got a post coming about some wedding knitting/crafting I'm doing for a friend. She's getting married in June and I've made few things in prep for the shower.

More soon, A

Need help with a sweater?

Try Farli's blocking service! (or perhaps she's ready to advise on button placement ?? )

Start 'em Young, Part 1

DD trying out a spindle with a leader attached. :D

2009 and lots of goals

Tee hee, so much for blogging the next day . . . hope all is well in AZ. We're doing well here. My niece L just had her 1st baby, a little boy (Dad's 3rd great-grand), so I'm thinking I need to whip out some kind of gift. I've been meaning to write about several things, so we'll see how my memory is right before lunch.

Do you make New Year's resolutions? I like the opportunity to reflect and set goals. So here are mine for the New Year (not in any special order):

1. Stick with my exer-stash goals as I make them in the Ravelry group Exer-stashers. Basically, have a program of regular exercise! In my case, also lose 10 pounds and get some cholesterol-busting eating habits.

2. Learn more about weaving. I am really liking the low-tech weaving I'm exploring with my rigid heddle loom and a homemade warp-weighted loom (more on that in a future entry). Remember the Big Rectangle? It was nothing but fun to work on but had the bad luck of being started right before I learned about my congregation's Shawl Ministry and got the bug to spin a fleece and also do more weaving . . . so long story short, the Big Rectangle is now a weaving project, loosely based on its knitted ancestor. Go ahead, say I told you so. :D

3. Continue my exploration of baking but not just with yeast breads that my family can't embrace. ahem.

4. Start saving for some of those big vacations we dream about here so that we don't have to rely on imaginary money.

5. Explore some of the Asian and Indian recipes in our cookbook collection ;) Also, in the fall, try to find a use for everything in the winter storage share, maybe even the turnips this time (gulp).

6. Make some mittens for homeless people in keeping with my desire to do something to be part of the "new age of responsibility."

That should give me plenty to work on besides all the other stuff of life. I'd better paint the bathroom pronto. love, Cindy

Before the kids wake up . . .

I thought I'd toss a few pictures up and try to catch up on blogging! First, two pictures of he lovely Estonian lace socks DH bought for me from a charity fundraiser at his work: they really are from Estonia, cool, eh? I wear them in bed on chilly nights (like last night! It's about 15 below now, 6:30 am, and schools are closed cuz of wind chill danger).

Next is a HP-inspired hat I made for DS top-down so that it is the size I intended. Yay!

Also here is the lovely Faroe Island roving I got at the Sow's Ear as my first "exer-stashers" reward. I joined an exercise support group on Ravelry to support my New Year's resolution of very regular exercise and healthier eating, partly so that I can lose those last 5-10 pounds I've been wanting to get rid of but mostly because I need to lower my cholesterol some.

We took the kids to Cave of the Mounds a few days after Christmas, and we all loved it! It was the first visit there for the kids.

More soon (perhaps tomorrow cuz the wind chill warning lasts through midday Friday), C

Birthday Scarf

Hi Cindy!

Last Saturday was my mom's birthday. I didn't get anything knit for her beforehand so I decided to try a wet felted scarf. I chose approximately an each ounce of cranberry and charcoal merino plus a mix of coopworth and the mystery wool I carded when I took my first spinning class. Probably about 4 ounces total.

I laid a vinyl tablecloth down and used bamboo place mats and old nylon curtains to lay the fiber on. The bottom layer I placed horizontally with the red and grey distinctly separated by white.

The middle layer was only the white, running vertically.

The top layer I mingled the red and grey more with the white between the layers. I then went down the entire mass and started working it over. I had a massage roller with with tiny plastic nibs all over to first work the fibers together. I then folded the nylon curtains over and rolled the mass in the bamboo place mats. I then rolled them back and forth several time, checking frequently.

After felting the layers together, fulling the full piece with hot water and rinsing, I soaked it in vinegar water to get the final bits of soap out before tossing in the dryer for about 15 minutes. This gave it the final bit of fulling before I hung it to dry. I worked on the piece for about 3 hours total and then it took another 2 days for it to finish drying.

I showed my friends at work and they were all impressed by it. It started about 6 feet long and probably 15 inches wided and ended up about 5 feet long and 12 inches wide. I wrapped it up yesterday and sent it off so it should only be about a week late. I used a Knit Picks catalog for the wrapping and for a bow, with a little bit of a Patternworks catalog.


I cut several knitting catalogs into strips last week and made a paper chain for my friend CG's cubicle. Her birthday was on Sunday. She took a picture of them before she took them down so I'll eithe post it here, along with the crown I knit her, or post it on my finished Ravelry projects. It was pretty fun.

Hope you are staying warm! More soon, A

When Good Projects Go Bad

Hi Alene, and Happy New Year to you and yours. We had a nice Christmas with most of my family coming over on the 21st. DH's dad visited earlier this month so the gift extravaganza was spread out. As for me, I received yarny things from the family: the new Mason Dixon book, 2 skeins of wool yarn from a favorite farmer's market vendor, and the 2009 Spindlicity calendar! Thank you for my gift certificate; I look forward to spending it as soon as possible :D

I've recently had 2 projects go bad. First was a pair of mittens that I was improvising but they came out way too wide with a too narrow thumb and a too short cuff. Methinks I'll frog them and try again with a little less improvising. The 2nd one is the bedsocks I've been making for the Shawl Ministry. Here's a lesson to pass on: don't try turning the heel on a new sock architecture while watching Wall-E with the pattern book on your lap, no notes, a cuppa coffee on one side, and a 4-year-old asking "Why?" repeatedly on the other. Also it is not easy to make socks to fit an unknown pair of feet from a previously untried pattern. Well, duh.

Am contemplating my New Year's resolutions; post on that soon. Bye for now, love, Cindy

Year End, and a Beginning

Hi Cindy,

Hope you had a Merry Christmas! We went up to DH's parents in Cottonwood. I got off at 12:30 last Wednesday and then headed to Scottsdale to pickup BIL. After trying to set up his new printer we headed back down to our house to pack the truck. DH didn't get off work until the regular time, 4:30. His bosses are scrooges. Traffic on the drive was pretty light. We got up there in less than 2 hours.

Christmas day was cold and rainy and we didn't hardly even go out of the house. DH's parents aren't in to the whole gift thing so we didn't really have gifts to open. We did get his brother an IPod Shuffle. He's really excited about it but his computer is so old and slow that he's coming down tomorrow to set it up. We had snow flurries on Friday which was a lot of fun. Actually it was more snow clumps, kinda like hail but out of snow. We went over to see DH's grandmother on Friday. She is 95 and still hanging on. She is very frail and doesn't get out of her room much but is still pretty with it mentally.

On Saturday was the big grand opening of the light rail in the valley. We've had to deal with the construction for the last 3 years. I've tracked down these pictures since I don't have any of my own. This first one is right outside my office.

The crowds for the grand opening were pretty ridiculous. They're giving free rides through today and it has been jam packed. They estimate 100,000 people rode on Saturday, 50K on Sunday and the last 2 days have been just as packed after the morning commute.

DH and I took the train into work yesterday. We have a bus that runs just down the street from us so we take that to downtown Tempe. From there we catch the train to Phoenix. DH has to transfer in downtown Phoenix but it goes right past my building with a stop less than a block away. Morning wasn't too bad but going home was jammed.

DH met me downtown and by the time he got on we were basically sardines. We did stop in on Mill in Tempe to have dinner before catching the bus back home. It takes slightly longer but once the tourists clear out it should be pretty nice. The train runs on street level and goes with traffic so they don't stop the cross-traffic when the train comes through.

Since it's been free the last several days everyone around the valley, plus all the visitors in for the holidays and the two bowl games, are trying it out. There were whole families riding it from one end to the other. The line is 20 miles long, the longest in the country to open at once. The ride is smooth and quicker than the bus line that previously paralleled it.

There were celebrations all along the route on Saturday and Tempe's ended with fireworks over the lake just after sunset. I'll keep you posted how it goes for commuting after all the tourists are gone.

Happy New Year!

A

A Quickie

Hi Cindy!

Now that it's been over a month since I last posted I thought I'd throw up some pictures and then write something later. Here goes. First up, Salmon Carpacio plied.
Next: Roasted Red Pepper Soup


Here are two pictures of the wet-felted bag I did the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Not perfect but I like the flowing, organic nature of it.


A cowl I knit for Shinkai: The neck portion is the Birthday Cowl and the bottom portion is from Poinsettia (Knitty Winter 2008). It is from Malabrigo Worsted and the color is Red Pearl.

Finally a simple Ribbed Beanie for Sokai, Cascade 128 Tweed. Love it!

Merry Christmas if I don't write beforehand! A

Mystery Spin-Along

Hi Cindy!

Love all the pictures you've been posting! You keep making up for my slacking. Thanks for the magazine subscription! Your card had gotten pushed between election flyers and I found it yesterday when I went through the mail. We tend to pick out the important stuff and let the flyers and junk mail pile up for a week or two, or three.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago I am participating in a Mystery Spin-Along at Tempe Yarn and Fiber. Since the owners' daughter recently graduated from culinary school they decided to go with a food theme.

Instead of being on a fiber diet, we're indulging in fiber and whipping up some food-inspired yarns. In our fiber pantry we received twelve different colors to mix and create our pallets for each recipe.

Our first recipe was Marinated Salmon Carpaccio. We received the recipe along with their suggested mixing proportions.


It was then up to us to blend the fibers however we wanted and then spin up the yarn. Some of the participants have drum carders or hand cards but I have neither. I fluffed first the fibers for the salmon and then the ingredients for the dressing and spun them separately.



Next I will ply the singles together. Unfortunately my wheel is being a little cantankerous and isn't wanting to take up on the ply. I think when we built it last year we got the drive band too long. I have the set screw all the way in and the drive band still has plenty of slack. I need to take the plunge and cut it to a better length. I'll tackle that tomorrow after work.

Recipe 2 is "Chilled Red Pepper Soup", Recipe 3 is "Pears with Avocado and Lime" and Recipe 4 is "Focaccia with Feta, Pesto Tomatoes and Olives". I have all the fibers separated out but I only have four bobbins so I don't have enough to have everything spun waiting to be plied.

Tomorrow we will get recipe 5 and I'm waiting to see what it will be. We have not yet had a main course or a beverage. And I was trying to imagine what dessert will be. I bet something with blueberries since we got a small piece of navy in the pantry.

On December 5 we will have a Show-and-Tell at the store to see how everybody's yarns turned out. I'll make sure to post a link to it when they have the pictures up. Some people are also posting in the "Fred Made Me Do It" group on Ravelry.

I will close this now. I have some pictures of knitting to post one day soon as well as more cute cat pictures and some of our orange tree. The fruit gets closer to ripe each day. Probably around Christmas it will be ready to pick.

Take Care, A