KrisKrafts

Silver Bell

2010-01-03T11:58:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

Yeah, I'm still here, just been very busy. I did finish my silver belle. Actually I finished it back in May. I noticed it was over a year ago that I last posted about it so here it is all finished.
Pattern: Silver Belle from Vogue Knitting's 25 Anniversary Issue. The pattern is free online.
Yarn: Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran. I loved using this yarn!

I had to order more yarn to finish it. I can't remember exactly how much more yarn I needed but I do remember it took more than what the pattern recommended.I also had to go down a couple of sizes on the needles. I knitted the bottom part of the sweater first and it was huge. I mean really huge.

I found some buttons at the local fabric store that has a celtic look to them. I like how the buttons turned out looking with the cabling in the sweater.
The only downside of this sweater for me is that it is a heavy sweater and drapes pulling downward because of it. I hope that makes since. Overall I really like the sweater and wear it whenever the days are cool enough for it, like today.

I hope everybody is having a great day.

Gale's Art

2009-07-23T17:30:00.001-07:00

I hope everybody is having a great week. I'm at the end of my summer break. It's back to school/work for me on Monday. I still don't know what I'll be doing but until I hear otherwise I'm assuming I'll be in the library.
I spun up 4 oz of Gale's Art merino roving in the proud peacock colorway.

There is 385 yards of 2 ply here.

I have another 4oz that I haven't spun yet.

I think I will try and spin the next 4 oz thinner to get some socks out of them. Maybe.

Friday Photo on Sunday

2009-07-19T05:14:00.000-07:00

Here’s my Friday photo on Sunday. Ok, I’m a few days off.

I’ve been playing around with a different blog. I decided I wanted to post more photos but didn’t want to overwhelm this blog with my random ramblings. I called my other blog The Ugly Herthen. I got the name from a drawing I did one day when I was sitting around and drawing with Dax. I'm not sure if I'm going to keep it or not. I'm still playing around with it.

Anyway, I ran into another type of blogging called, tumblr. I’m wondering do any of you guys know much about tumblr? I heard somebody say it’s a glorified twitter. It looks like a great way to show photos but it doesn’t look very organized to me. In other words I don’t see where you can tag your photos.

If your like me and haven't ever seen tumblr and your curious here are some blogs/tumblr sites that have caught my attention.
That Girl
Live for the stoke Tyde would like this one.
Black and WhiteIt looks like you can submit your own pictures to this one.
Joie De Vivre
Restart My Heart This was the first one I ran into.

Simplicity 2902

2009-07-14T10:24:00.000-07:00

I noticed I get a lot of search engine inquiries for sewing patterns I blog about. I can see why, I always like to see what sewing or knitting patterns look like on people before I spend my time on using the pattern. In reality the drawn pictures on the pattern or the pictures of the models don't really give you a good idea of what it looks like on a real person. I think ravelry has really cut back on the inquiries for knitting. But I still get a lot for sewing so here is my review on Simplicity pattern 2902.I made size 9/10 and ended up not pulling the darts in as much as the pattern recommended. I also took the straps in about an inch and they are still a bit to big. And then I moved the pockets more forward then the pattern recommended. I will wear this probably a good bit around the house or at the beach but not out and about. It's a bit on the short side. I guess if I wore some shorts or leggings under it then I would feel more comfortable wearing it other places.

I do love the pockets and thought they turned out nice.
Overall a cute little dress. Not very hard to sew together. I guess the most difficult part would be the pockets with the little pleat and binding but even that wasn't bad.

Anybody want to guess where my babies are at? Rudy took them to visit his parents for a couple of weeks. I'll give you some hints. Most the names in the area seem to have more vowels then consonants in them. With their light colored hair and blue eyes they are considered a minority, Haoles. There are no snakes there and more than one-third of the world's commercial supply of pineapples comes from there.

Friday Photo Rain

2009-07-03T06:21:00.001-07:00

We’ve been getting a lot of rain showers lately. I’m not complaining though. It’s much better than the weather we were getting a few weeks ago of unbelievable heat and no rain.
I took these pictures last Friday when I was walking on the beach.

I hope everybody has a great weekend and for those who are celebrating Happy 4th of July!

Summer knitting

2009-07-01T10:30:00.000-07:00

I wanted to knit something for the summer so I narrowed it down to three different projects. There was the petal halter from Interweave Knits Spring 2009 issue.
Then there was the Ogee lace skirt from Interweave Knits Summer 2007 magazine
And the last choice I had was Pink Frosting from Interweave Spring 2006 issue.

Yeah I have a lot of Interweave magazines lying around. I also have enough yarn in my stash to do any one of these projects.

I finally decided to go with the pink frosting.I’m knitting this in the round using Rowan 4 ply cotton that I got awhile back from a sale at Webs.
My knit stitches look so sloppy to me and the cables even worst. I have frogged this twice. Once because I had a twist in the cast on and the second time because I just didn’t like the stitches. Finally I went to Ravelry to look at others who have done this top and noticed their stitches were much prettier but also very similar to mine. I’ve decided to just keep knitting and love my sloppy stitches. This must be the nature of knitting with cotton?

Summer Days Photo Friday

2009-06-26T05:55:00.000-07:00

Dax and I go to the beach almost everyday.
We try to get Tyde to go with us but he can't seem to get out of bed before 11 a.m.
If there were surfable waves maybe he would get up.
But for now we have those glassy small summer waves that are good for the river rat float.

I hope everybody else is enjoying their summer days.

2009-06-23T06:19:00.000-07:00

I got this merino top roving a couple years ago while at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival from Ohio Valley Natural fibers.I don’t know how much I spun but I can tell you I still have a lot left over. My original idea was to spin enough of this to make a sweater but I’ve gotten bored spinning it so I Navajo plied it to get it off my bobbins to make way for something else. I really should invest in some more bobbins.

Here are the singles.
Here’s what I got after Navajo plying.

I thought I had about an even amount of singles on each bobbin, maybe a little bit more on one but I ended up getting 143 yards from one and 238 yards from the other. I haven’t checked the wpi but just from looking at it I can tell I spun one of the bobbins thinner than the other.
Well at least I have another 2 plus pounds of this stuff to play with to try and become more consistent. It is a pretty color and much softer then I originally thought it would be.

We got this post card in the mail a few days ago. I thought I would share it with you.If you can't see what it says, click on it to make it bigger.

I don’t know who Van is and I’m sorry he lost his cat but loved reading his lost cat card. His description of what his kitty responds to and the fact that if you find his cat he wants you to feed it then call made me smile. I use to refer to the shaking cat food box as the intenational kitty call :). It must be more unique then I thought. Hopefully he has found his cat.

Friday Photo and fill ins

2009-06-12T06:46:00.000-07:00

Dax had one of her friends over so we started the fire pit and roasted hot dogs.
As you can see Rohan will be your best friend if you have a hot dog close by.
I was thinking of calling this post desire.

And for the Friday Fill Ins
1. I grew up thinking _clowns were creppy and saturday morning cartoons were worth getting up early for.

2. The Friday Fill Ins_ was the last website I was at before coming here.

3. Why don't you _grab a glass of tea and relax some?

4. Knitting__ helps me relax.

5. Thanks for the _comments you all have been leaving. I really sprreciate hearing from you.

6. Having to cast on what feels like a gazillion times is__ very off-putting.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to just relaxing__, tomorrow my plans include planting some flower seeds__ and Sunday, I want to sit at my wheel and spin some Gale's art merino___!
I hope everybody has a great weekend!

Kwik Sew 3497

2009-06-10T11:21:00.000-07:00

I made the top awhile back. It's been getting a lot of use. I made view A, with the gather in the front, and used a cheap lycra fabric I got from Hancock fabrics.

I usually wear a tank underneath the top. It would probably work fine with out it but I feel more comfortable with the tank.

I made the size small and had to take it in around the arms. It bagged out a good bit. Maybe if I used a fabric that was less stretchy, an interlock, it wouldn't have done this. Other then that there were no other modifications that I did to the pattern.

On a different note, have you seen the Terrible Yellow Eyes blog? It's wonderful. It's an online tribute to Maurice Sendak, who wrote Where the Wild Things Are. Different artists/illustrators are posting their art work that was inspired from the book. I loved looking at all the art work, very nice.

The book has been made into a movie, which you can see the trailer for here.

Photo Friday and fill ins

2009-06-05T11:55:00.001-07:00

Wow two posts in one week. It must be summertime:).

Here is a dandelion I took a picture of when I was in Maryland.I very seldom see dandelions where I live at. Maybe they don't like salt in the air. I do love them when they are in this stage. Don't you just want to pick it and gently blow all the little white things all over the place?

There is a blog called Friday Fill Ins and since I'm in such a participating mood I decided to put my fill ins in the blanks. Go ahead give it a try and see what you come up with.

1. Home sweet home.

2. My favorite thing for dinner lately has been anything that somebody else makes.

3. All Rohan did last night was bark! bark! bark! Tyde had some friends stay over and they had him all playful and barking.

4. A nice long walk will cure all woes.

5. I'd love to hear some good news.

6. When all is said and done, then what.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to not cooking, tomorrow my plans include drafting a pattern for some shorts and Sunday, I want to finally get some spinning done!

I know this is suppose to be a craft blog. I'll get to it, someday :).

Last day

2009-06-03T18:20:00.000-07:00

The last day of school for T and D was last Thursday. I took this picture when I went to pick them up. The amount of buses they have always amazes me. Dax said she once counted them and got up to 26. A big difference from the elementary school they went to that had a whopping 3 buses.

However today was my last day. I wanted to participate in Dawn's, from Today and Everyday , self portrait month. She has a goal of taking a picture of herself daily for the month of June and has asked anybody who wants to do the same. I will not be taking pictures daily but did want to participate. So, I decided to let my self portrait be me in my little library. I’ve been using this week of no students or teachers to do inventory and to get the library ready for the next school year.
It’s a bit bittersweet for me. It's been a busy year and I’m so looking forward to the summer break but also my job is being consolidated. I guess that’s what you would call it. There are several schools in our area that are dealing with low numbers of students and the county is having a hard time with budgeting. Because of this it was decided that any school with an enrollment of less than 400 students will be sharing media assistants, (that’s me), technology specialists and Vice Principles. We have around 380 students. I don't know the pre-k students very well. They usually come in the library before I get there but for the rest of the school I know every one of them from kindergarten up to sixth grade.
I don't know what it will be like next year. But I do know it will not be the same.

I will really miss this job. I have absolutely loved it.

Sheep and Wool Festival Day 1

2009-05-24T08:07:00.000-07:00

Well my one main thought when I went was no more fleece. I quickly broke that thought within the first hour of being at the festival. Dax and Sierra wanted to get some socks that rock yarn from the Fold and while they were waiting in line a lady walked up with a bag of alpaca. She was showing it off and letting me feel it etc…. Finally I asked her where she got it and I told Dax and Sierra I’d be back in a few minutes. My first purchase was 2 lbs of alpaca from Ameripaca. Ok it’s not a whole fleece so that doesn’t qualify as fleece right?

Here's Sierra and Dax listening to some music while we take a break.

Dax got a camera as a Christmas/birthday present. She spent a lot of her time taking pictures of animals while we were there. Also she just finished those fingerless gloves when we were on the airplane. The pattern is a free pattern called fingerless gloves musica. Here is the Ravelry link.

This was one of my big purchases Tilli Tomas rock star yarn. It was on sale but still very expensive, at least for me. I have a specific project in mind for it and it was discounted at the festival so I tried not to feel to guilty for buying it.

More purchases for specific projects the Kiparoo Farm Celtic Lace is for a pattern I got last year called the linen wrap blouse and the other linen, I can't remember where I got it, is for a market bag.

Oh, and I bought more alpaca. I was so drawn to the brown fleece this year. I saw so many pretty browns and when I saw this 1 lb cria (baby alpaca) fleece I bought it. Can't you see how upset I was for breaking my promise to myself not to buy more fleece :).

Patapsco Park

2009-05-16T12:03:00.000-07:00

I decided to do the post on the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival in sections. This year I was heading up to the Festival with maybe a few specific items I wanted to look for but it wasn’t like I was going to be upset if I didn’t find them. I simply wanted to go to be around a lot of other people who enjoy fiber crafts as much as I do. I did tell myself I was not going to buy more fleece because I’m up to my ears in fleece as it is.

We stayed at Patapsco State park. Dax and I left on Thursday. We flew up and met my sister and her daughter who drove up with all the camping gear. I had to work on Thursday and Dax had school so we caught a late flight. The sun was setting as we flew towards the north. This was my view for most the flight.This was Dax’s view.

Because we came in a day earlier then what we usually do it gave us all day Friday to hang out around the camp site. I’ve been running again and was determined to try and keep on my schedule even though we were out of town so I got up on Friday morning to run. It’s hilly there. I mean really hilly. It felt like mountains to my Florida legs but I managed.

When I left Florida there was a prediction of some rain. We decided that we should hang a tarp over the tent to help waterproof it. Here is Cyndi and Sierra tying the tarp up. Nothing like team work to get the job done.

This is what we ended up with and started referring to it as the cave.
The tarp gave us enough space over the picnic table to sit while it was raining and boy did it rain.

Even though it was lightly drizzling on Friday we ignored it and went hiking down some of the trails. It is very pretty there. I had seen some deer on my morning run but did not have a camera at that time. Here are some pictures we took when we were walking around the park.

They also have some playground areas. This one is the closes one to the campsites. As you can see you are never too old to play at a playground. That was kind of a role reversal. Cyndi and I were playing on the swings while the girls were taking pictures. There was another playground further away from the campsite that had more equipment, monkey bars etc.

Here is proof that Dax got Sierra to do the Caramelldansen with her.

We ended the day by making a fire which needed some umbrella assistance to get it going because of the rain but the girls did manage to get it going.We had to have the fire to make some smores, of course.

Next post Saturday at the festival…..

Simplicity 4282 another apron.

2009-04-10T11:56:00.000-07:00

I made this apron for my sister. For some reason I kept thinking of that movie Enchanted when I was making it. You know the movie that has the main “princess” like character singing and cleaning with the help of rats and ahm roaches.

I have to say I wasn’t very happy with it. It was the binding on it. It gave me fits. It kept bunching up on me.
Finally I got in a “whatever” mood and just finished it and gave it to her. I figure since it’s already kind of a sloppy job she should feel comfortable about getting spaghetti sauce stains on it or craft paint or whatever she might use it for.

To keep in the theme of things here’s a picture of Dax and I at Epcot’s flower festival. We were in France smelling the perfume flowers and saw Aurora just standing there by herself. Usually there is a long line for Disney characters so we both looked at each other and said let’s go get a picture with the princess. That's my bayerishce socks I have on there.

Btw, it you love gardening and plants then you should really try to get to Epcot for the flower festival. It’s absolutely gorgeous.

Peanut Butter Balls

2009-02-14T05:51:00.000-08:00

I know peanut butter has been put on the list of bad foods lately but I have to say it hasn’t stopped me from eating it. I love peanut butter. I eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at least 3 times a week. It’s my food that I eat when I’m hungry and in a hurry.

Now if you add chocolate to the equation then all the better. So with that being said this is what I made for my sweeties on Valentine’s day.

They are peanut butter balls (pbb). I got the recipe from here and they turned out great. The trick to getting the chocolate to stick to the pbb is to make sure the pbb are frozen. Also make sure the chocolate is good and melted.
If not it will just clump to the pbb. I can see adapting the recipe in the future to make it seem a little healthier, maybe adding rolled oats and raisins or something.

Dax was telling me about a group of friends of hers, (all girls) that has decided that they were going to celebrate Valentine’s Day by getting all dressed up and going out to eat at McDonalds. Then they were going to wait till midnight and go to Walmart to buy all the VDay candy that goes on sale, LOL.

I hope that you all have a great Valentine’s Day, no matter how you celebrate it.

Challange

2009-01-14T16:32:00.000-08:00

Wow the weeks are going by just as fast as ever. I hope everybody else is able to keep up better then I have been able to.

I had to put my silver belle to one side for now to work on these.Last year the 7th graders at Dax’s school made a blanket for charity. The idea was that all the 7th graders made a knitted block and then volunteers crochet the blocks to make them 8x8 squares and then pieced them together. I’m not really much of a crocheter but I can do it, so I volunteered to help out. The blocks were hilarious; most of them were not square at all. Anyway they asked if I would be interested in helping out again this year and of course I was excited to be asked. Aren’t these (uhm, I guess you can call them blocks) interesting. I call this one the deranged tomato.
This one I call the dripping mask. One of them has a little flap thingie. I'm not sure what to do with that.

I’d never call myself an expert knitter but I wouldn’t exactly say I’m a beginner either, but I can tell you these little blocks are very challenging to me :). It is so tempting to redo them but they really need to be the kids blocks so I'll try and work with what they gave me. Hopefully I’ll have them done in a month or so.

On to other news I went ahead and purchased plane tickets to go to the Maryland sheep and wool festival. I was thinking that with the issues with the economy and prices of gas going up etc.. I would not be able to make it this year but I saw Southwest had a great deal on tickets last week. So, I couldn’t resist. My flight plans are made and wahoo, I will be going again this year! (Happy Dance)

For those who are wondering, Rudy participated in the Disney marathon last weekend. He finished 119th overall with a time of 3:06:19, actually it was a 3:04:19 but they put their foot across the chip mat two minutes before the start of the race so it registered them as running already. I'm sure there will be some complaints about that. They did a little blurb about him in the florida today paper. I had to laugh when I read it mentioning him mixing up his nutrition and training. As I was reading the article I looked across the room at him to see that he was eating chips and dipping them into some kind of cheese sauce. Yep, that’s Rudy give him something to dip with a beer or a bowl of ice cream and he’s a happy guy, not exactly what I'd call marathon nutrition ;).

A day of fishing

2009-01-05T17:03:00.000-08:00

Well today was back to work for Rudy and I. The kids start back to school tomorrow.., but Sunday was a day of fishing.

I caught a monster of a trigger fish and made Rudy take a picture of it. They don’t normally get this big.

Rudy of course had to catch at least one yucky shark. Sharks rob your bait; they will also chump on any fish you catch while you are reeling it in. Some friends told us shark is good to eat. So we gave it a try once when we caught a hammerhead. Turned out we didn’t agree with them. The meat is squeaky imo. Oh, I can’t forget to mention that once you catch one they are hard to get off the line. Their skin is tough so it is hard to gaff them and then trying to get the hook out of their mouth is quiet the work out.

When we got back into the port to load the boat up we saw the Disney Wonder cruise ship heading out. It’s one of my favorites in the port, a very pretty ship.

All in all it turned out to be a good day of fishing. We caught several trigger fish, some snapper and some sheephead. Although to Rudy’s disappointment we did not catch any grouper or cobia.

Well that was the end of our holiday break, not to bad of a ending.

Happy New Year

2009-01-01T15:22:00.000-08:00

Have you ever heard of the Dear John letter; well the Dear blog letter is beginning to rival the Dear John letter. It goes something like this…

Dear blog, I am so sorry that I abandoned you over the last few months but I just don’t have enough time for you…

Yes I’m another one of those bloggers who has let their blog slowly disintegrate. There just doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day to get all the things done that I would like to do, but I have missed my blog. So I’m back :).

As for knitting I’m still working on my silver belle. Here are some progress pictures for you.

If you haven’t noticed one of my resolutions for 2009 is to not be so neglectful to my blog.

I hope everybody has a great 2009.

Summer review

2008-09-21T08:21:00.000-07:00

Whenever I haven’t blogged for awhile it gets overwhelming on where to start at so I decided to do a summer knitting wrap up since fall is here. I did a lot of spinning this summer so I’m very pleased with that but my knitting…, well it didn’t live up to my expectations.

I thought I had finished the sideways vest but after blocking it I noticed that one side was longer than the other. I kept thinking how could this be? It was all even before blocking. With further investigation I found the problem. This vest is knitted by casting on stitches for the front side and binding off for the other front side. I hope that makes since. Anyway my binding off stitches are much tighter then my casting on stitches. Arrr, I’m not sure what to do with it. My sister suggested to try doing the bind off with a bigger needle. I had already tied the ends in so taking the bind off stitches out was a bear but I did get them out. I think I need to do a swatch and play with the bind off which I haven’t felt like playing with so it has been abandoned. It is still sitting there waiting for the final bind off. Does anybody have any experience with how to keep the bind off stitches loose? If I use a bigger needle should I go up one or two needle sizes?

Then there is the Ugly sweater. I got the bottom part of it done and tried it on and it turned out a bit snug on me. This is the back view. I didn’t want to give you guys the Buddha belly shot ;).It’s my fault I was thinking the cotton yarn would bag out and not snap back so I knitted it to be slightly smaller. My first reaction was to see if Dax would take it but she wasn’t that interested in it so it has been abandoned to for the time being. It's a good chance this one will be heading to the frog pound. Well unless I can lose say 20lbs or so :), yeah probably the frog pound.

So after these disappointments, which are leaving ufo’s all over the house, I decided to not deal with any of them and cast on a new project. I’m working on a free pattern from Vogue’s Knitting magazine called silver belle.

There you have it, it’s been a summer of UFO’s. Let's hope the fall will be a little more productive.

Have a great week.

Eye Candy Friday

2008-08-22T10:08:00.000-07:00

We saw this little guy on the beach yesterday.

Our latest weather must have taken its toll on him because he didn’t scurry off when he saw us. I was beginning to think he was dead but if we got to close he would show us his pinchers to let us know to back off.
I was thinking of provoking him more to get a good picture of his pincher but I figured he probably had a bad enough day so I let him be.

Saturated

2008-08-20T15:27:00.000-07:00

This is my Fay report.

Fay came for a visit on Tuesday and she has brought a lot of rain with her. I don’t ever recall seeing so much rain. It has been constantly raining, sometimes harder than others but never stopping. The news is saying that Cocoa Beach has received over 22 inches of rain and to expect another 4-6 inches. Fortunately we live in a low flood zone so we are not having any issues with flooding. Other than that there is not much to say about Fay. There are some small gusts of wind but nothing major, no power outages for us, just sobbing wet rain.
I heard a guy on the radio this morning say that even the best of houses will leak under these conditions. So we did a house inspection to look everything over and I can report that the house is water tight. There are no leaking problems, yeah. I guess all that tyvek, the sticky bonding stuff around the windows and that unbelievable heavy waterproof paint we used on the blocks when building the house has paid off. Whew.

I hope everybody else is staying nice and dry.

Apron Swap

2008-08-17T07:54:00.000-07:00

I received my apron from the Sew Obsessed Ravelry apron swap on Friday. My swap partner was Marie from knittedgems blog or knittedgems Ravelry. She did a wonderful job on the apron she made for me.

Unfortunately I only got two pictures of the apron. I had to use the timer thing on the camera because the kids were still asleep and Rudy went for a bike ride.
Rohan became intrigued with the beeping noise of the camera. This one is when he noticed the beeping.After that the only pictures I could get using the timer was a close up of him.

The note with the apron says she made it from an old jean dress and the other fabric came from a small local Ma & Pa store. I love that she made it from recycled fabric and that it is denim. The denim will be very durable which is much needed for an apron being used by me ;). The buttons she put on it alternate between white buttons and red heart buttons that coordinate with the red fabric very well. It makes it very charming and I can’t help but keep thinking of that saying, “home is where the heart is” when I look at it.
Marie also sent a leather hair barrette that she picked up at a Ren Faire. Thank you so much Marie!

Random stuff

2008-08-06T06:11:00.000-07:00

Well this post will probably be all over the place and there are no pictures. I’ll call it my random post. I was doing good there for awhile and actually posted at least once a week or more. But lately my mind has been in other places then the blog and I haven’t been inspired to post. My intentions have been good though, I have even been lugging my big old camera around thinking I will take some pictures of maybe this or that but haven’t clicked it once in the last week or two. I think I have been having a bit of the end of the summer blues.

I go back to work on Thursday, tomorrow. I’m going to miss the summer. I love having time to spend with the kids and to knit, spin, cook, go to the beach or whatever. The down side of all this is that I don’t get paid when I don’t work. Life is such a catch22. You either have the money to do things and not the time or you have the time and not the money. Anyway I think I’m done mourning for the summer of 08. I’m actually starting to get excited about seeing the kids at school and beginning a new year with them.

I’ve been working on a swap package. I joined an apron swap from Ravelry’s Sew Obsessed forum. The apron has been finished for awhile but it’s just sitting there. I’ve been trying to think of something to put with it as a gift but nothing is coming to me. I decided to not tell the person I have her and I’ve been spying on her. She has a Ravelry account and a Flickr account but I’m not getting a lot from it. I will probably wait till the deadline till I send it just in case I can find out more about her. I wish there was a questionnaire to go with this swap. I would have liked to know if she likes tea, coffee, beer, candles, candy, or favorite yarn, anything. Maybe I’m just not a very good spy.

Speaking of spying Dax started a Raverly account. Of course I put her in as a friend and I can see everything she does while on Ravelry, it really makes me feel like a spy to see what she is doing. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

Did you know McDonald’s fillet o’fish comes with half the cheese that it use to. Yep, I usually get the fillet o'fish with tomato added when I eat there. I have to open up the sandwich to scoop off the excessive amount of tartar sauce they put on it. While doing this I noticed I only had a half a slice of cheese on my sandwich. When I mentioned this to Rudy he looked at his and told me he had the other half. Maybe if they really want to save money they should consider putting less than a pound of tartar sauce on the sandwiches ;).

I finished the sideways vest but I need to block it.

The kids have a dentist appointment today which might be a good time to get Tyde to do some school shopping. The guy really hates being inside a store. I think all he needs is some shoes. He took his shoes off on the last day of school and I haven’t seen them since. He probably needs some socks to.

I didn’t join the Dish Rag Tag this year. I also didn’t join the Ravelylympics. I guess I’m not much of a joiner lately. However Dax did join the Ravelylympics. She will be knitting with team teen.

I got to meet with some other knitters in Titusville. It was a blast! I laughed and touched yarn and laughed and even met some other spinners. I also drank some wonderful tea and ate a blueberry scone. Well I didn’t eat the scone till I got home. I was too busy taking everything in to eat it while I was there. The group meets at Sunrise Bread Company on Thursday mornings. They are a great group of people. I knew one of them thru her blog, but the others I had never met. Regardless they made me feel welcomed, which is saying a lot because I’m usually a bit shy in large groups and keep to myself.

Dax has been reading the Twilight books by Stephenie Meyer. I find this so funny. I haven’t read the books but I’ve read enough reviews to know it’s a vampire, teen, love story. Dax is the one that will do eyeball rolls when there are kissy scenes in movies.

Thanks to Dax I’ve heard all the Fablehaven books by Brandon Mull. She read all three of them to me this summer while I was spinning. I really enjoyed them and will try and get them in the school library. I have to confess it was interesting to have your child read a book to you instead of the other way around.

Well this is getting to long so I’ll stop here. Have a great day!

Nothing but spinning

2008-07-19T05:43:00.001-07:00

I started seeing the posts in blog land for the Tour de Fleece but decided not to commit. That doesn’t mean I’m not involved. I’m a very active spectator. And like most spectators that are admiringly watching all the participants I couldn’t resist doing some spinning too. Here’s what I got.

This is the sheep 2 shoe kit from The Fold that I picked up from MSWF.

It is super wash merino, and is called Rainbow. The roving in the kit is incredibly soft and I absolutely loved spinning it. This had to be the most buttery stuff I have spun so far.
However, I think the results I got should be called Rainbow Gone Wild. I didn’t exactly follow the directions of how to divide the roving and spin it. Ok, I didn’t follow the directions at all. I divided the roving different then what it said and I 2 plied it instead of 3. I two plied it because the yarn came out thicker then what I was wanting. Then there are the colors. Wow, the colors are all over the place. I knitted up a swatch and I could see no pattern at all with the colors.
I’m not sure how I feel about it. I do know that I will not use this to make socks. Well, not at this time. I’m putting it into the stash for now.

I also finished spinning this super wash merino I got from Little Barn at the festival.
It’s funny because both rovings said they were superwash merino but there was a big difference in how they spun. I guess it depends on the sheep, processing, how it’s stored etc. Not to say this wasn’t fun to spin. It was just a different quality then the other roving.
This one is just plain vanilla so to say. It will work great for socks but I might dye it at some time.

I hope everybody is having a great weekend.