Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Pavers are here

I thought it was cold the other day but it got a little colder so I started the day with some hot chocolate.

Both the kids had school off today. Tyde spent it surfing in his new wet suit. Dax spent it sleeping in and going to the library.

As for me and Rudy we started the pavers. All the blocks arrived yesterday. It took two truck loads to deliver it.


Now we just have to lay them out. I can honestly say I will have no problem getting to sleep tonight. The combination of colder weather and physical activity should prevent any problems in that area, not that I ever really have any problems getting to sleep. This is how far we got yesterday.


I decided to start the sock from the yarn I spun. Here it is. It is a little more bulky than what I prefer but I will finish it anyway. It seems like I haven’t finished a project in a while so maybe the socks will make me feel like I’m making some progress.

Saturday, November 18, 2006

Burr, it’s cold outside today.

Well it’s nothing like what DancesWithWool is going through but it’s cold to me. I think the high is suppose to be around 70 today, which is nice but the low last night was in the 50s, brrr.

Dax’s soccer team is doing the end of the season tournament this weekend. So the weather should be perfect for them. I’m getting kind of antsy for the season to end.

Speaking of Dax she got the blue ribbon for her science project (1st place) at school. I was impressed and it probably helped that one of her judges was a knitter. She was originally going to see if vinegar works as a mordant. She used some natural dyes to dye wool yarn. Oh she also did a batch using wilton icing food coloring stuff. One batch she just dyed, the second batch she soaked in vinegar before dyeing and the third batch she soaked in alum before dying. After they dyed she divided each group and washed the heck out of one group. Surprise none of them faded except the wilton dye. It faded a lot. She didn’t like her question because of her results so she changed her question to does adding alum or vinegar affect wool yarn when dying. She did this because it did affect the color she got. To me it seemed a little to much going on in her project. I kept having to bight my tongue and not tell her what I think she should do. I guess it turned out fine because the judges seemed to like it and better yet her teacher liked it because she got an “A”.


Moving on to the house project, Dad came down a couple of weeks ago and helped things move along. They managed to move a huge pile of dirt into the back yard. The kids think it is great. We do live in Florida and there really isn’t much as far as hills go here so with the pile of dirt in the back the kids like to play on it. They take the skim board and stand or sit on it and slide down. Who needs snow when you got dirt. Although I have to admit snow would be a lot cleaner. The dirt pile was created to make room for the pavers. They are supposed to be here on Tuesday.

While Dad was here Rudy also spent some time and finished the bathroom. It’s all done. He even put the towel rack up.


Friday, November 10, 2006

It seems like I will never get to the end of my green roving pile. Maybe I got to much of it, nah. I took the second bobbin of the green singles and tried Navajo plying it. I read about it when I was on the Yarn Harlot's web page. She linked to a web page called The Joy of Handspinning that gives a good demo of how to do it.


On the left is the green stuff in two ply on the right is the green stuff plied using the Navajo plying technique

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Halloween

I managed to finish Dax’s costume. The costume was one of the easier ones that she has asked me to make, but there is just so much going on that I waited till the last minute to get it done. Anyway here it is. She called herself lavender lady.


I’m very pleased that she was happy with the results. I wouldn’t work with her original choice because it would be to expensive. So I made her come up with something out of my fabric stash. All in all, it worked out.

And here they are Lavendar Lady and Wild Thing.


We also managed to get the pumpkins carved.


I did make some progress on Dax’s sweater. She tried it on and said the section that is fair isle with the diamond pattern near the top is to tight. So, I ripped it back to try and give it more give. Here’s a picture before I ripped it back.