Maryland

These last couple of weeks have been hectic for me. I am beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel though and things should start slowing down after this weekend (I hope).

I was getting pretty excited about our trip to Maryland and then caught something with a nasty cough. For about a week I tried everything to get rid of that cough and finally decided it was time to go to the Dr. He gave me some antibiotics and cough medicine. All I can say is antibiotics rule. I felt so much better after taking them.

As for the Festival it went by way to fast. This was my fourth time to go to this festival and I have to say it is still overwhelming. There is just so much to see and do there. This year there were five in our group. Dax and I met up with my sister and her daughter and a friend of my sister also joined us. We camped out at Patapsco State Park. I did take a lot of pictures but wished I had taken more.

Some highlights from the trip:

-The dogwood trees were in bloom at the State Park, very pretty.

-I enjoyed meeting the couple who camped beside us. The lady was nice enough to show us some of her spindles that she collected from the festival and we got a bonus of entertainment when we heard harp music being played from their campsite. We looked over and saw the gentleman with her playing a harp.

-I really liked the Guest booth this year. It was a booth representing Medieval and Renaissance Textiles.
Bobbin lace that was being displayed at the Medieval and Renaissance Textiles booth.

Same booth, tablet weaving display. My sister calls this card weaving.

-I loved seeing all the hand knit items people who were visiting the festival were wearing.

-I also enjoyed seeing all the animals.
Checking out the alpaca or maybe I should say alpaca checking out Dax.

She must have met the alpaca's approval. She let Dax pet her.

-I have a lot, I mean A LOT of pictures of sheep from this trip. Dax took my camera to the barn with sheep in it and came back with pictures of nothing but sheep.
This must have been one of her favorites because there was several pictures of this one in the camera. She told me his/her hair reminded her of Tyde.

I however thought this one had more of the Tyde look.

The girls taking a break.

We kept to the tradition of peanut butter and jelly sandwich picnic style lunches while we were there but decided to treat ourselves to some “fair” food before we left on Sunday.

-A big thank you to my sister's friend Beth for showing us how to do Kumihimo.

-I can now say I have more roving/fleece in my stash then yarn. I think I better get off the computer and start spinning.

I hope everybody has a great week.

Not much to show

It’s been an incredibly busy week. I didn’t have much time to do the fun things that I love to do, so I have no finished objects or progress pictures and would really like to try and catch up on some blog reading today.

Yesterday we watched Rudy leave for his Boston Marathon trip, giving him our traditional Run Rudy Run cheer. We heard that Lance Armstrong is running in Boston this year. That would be cool if Rudy sees him there, which I really doubt will happen, but you never know.

Since I have no crafting pictures I will leave you with pictures of Rohan the bubble killer. I was playing around with the quality/resolution of the pictures to see if they start to get distorted at a lower quality but they seem fine. You can click on them to make bigger.

The chase is on:


Zooming in: I think he looks kind of mean in this picture :}.


Pop:



Have a great week.

On the Bobbin and Inventory

We’re down to the last few days of Spring Break for T and D. It was a different Spring Break for me because it was the first one that I had to work since they have been born. To add to that feeling weird, Rudy took the week off, so I was the only one leaving home for work.


I must say it was a very relaxing week for me though. Since there were no students or teachers on the school grounds, it was a work at your own pace kind of week. I decided to do inventory on the books. The librarian that I work with told me it hasn’t been done in years. I almost finished the inventory but there were some computer guys that came in from the county that wanted to take the system down to do some upgrades. This meant that I couldn’t access the software for the inventory. I’m hoping to go back by the school over the weekend to finish the last few books.


Doing the inventory was a bit bittersweet. It was great to find books that were labeled lost or missing but the overall number of books that has walked out the door without being checked out is a bit overwhelming. Right now the number is over 500 books. Maybe I should look at it a different way. If it’s been 3 years since the last inventory that would be around 167 books a year, which doesn’t sound as bad. I also noticed the craft books need some serious updating. I saw only one book on knitting and only one on crochet. One was printed in the 50’s and the other in the 60’s, ouch. What kind of knitting media assistant am I to let that happen? To make up for it I’ve been thinking about pitching an idea to the principal about starting an after school knitting club next year. I will also start looking around for some children friendly knitting books to put in the library. I know the klutz books are good. Dax has one and has used it a lot. If anybody has some more suggestions then let me know.

Well on to some fiber stuff. Pictured in this post is some BFL roving that I got with my wheel. There is a pound of this stuff and it is spinning up nicely.


I had decided to take stock on my yarn and fiber supplies. I want to get an idea of what to look for when I go to Maryland. I was amazed to notice that I think I have more roving then yarn. So I need to get spinning before I even consider adding more roving.

As for my list, most of the roving I have is un-dyed so I’m going to add dyed roving to my list of things to look for, along with some dyes so I have some color to play with the roving I already have. I would also really like to see if I can find some of that pencil roving and of course I will look at the fleece. Well I can see that my list is starting to get long. This is just the list of things to look for in the spinning department, oh yeah add bobbins to the list. I need more of those to.

I hope everybody has a great week.

Bayerische

Since I am probably the slowest knitter in the world it is no surprise that Bayerische is not only still on the needles but is not even half way done. On the up side I am oh so close to being half way.

I only had two skeins of yarn for this project. I was debating about doing one more repeat but decided that I would try and get a pair of socks out of what I had. The pattern warns that these socks eat up yarn. This is how far I got with one ball.
Hmm, obviously that little amount of string was not going to finish this sock.

I started looking on the internet and made an order from The Loopy Ewe.

Wow, did it get here fast. I was very impressed. Then when I opened it, I started to feel like it was my birthday. The yarn was wrapped up, a little hand written note was in the package and some small strips of sample yarn, very nice.

Maybe I can have the Bayerishes done by the end of April, maybe.

In other news I’m going to Maryland for the sheep and wool festival! Wahooo! Can you tell I’m excited? Plane tickets have been purchased, camp site has been reserved and finally I asked for time off work. Now I'm going to go find my calendar so I can mark off how many more days till the festival.

I hope everybody is having a great day.

New Look 6678

Thank you for all the comments on the Easter egg dyeing. The dye did stick and WOW are they bright colors. I was so impressed that when I saw Easter egg dye on sale after Easter I couldn’t get to it fast enough.

I finished sewing the shirt I had sitting around. I had posted about this project when I first started and found it posted on March 23, 2007. This surprised me. A year, this project has been sitting around for over a year. I really need to try and stay focused a little more.

New Look pattern 6678.
I had issues with the collar. The collar was a bit big and would drape outward. I had to make it smaller and adjust the neckline to make it lay flat. Because I shortened the collar it caused a lot of gathering around the neck arm area, which makes the sleeves look puffier then what I think they are suppose to be.
The bottom part of the sleeve is also bigger looking then the cover of the pattern but over all I really like it. I have worn it a couple of times already and I got a lot of nice comments on it. The main reason I think I get a lot of compliments isn’t the style of the shirt but the color. It seems to bring out the color in my eyes.

To add a pet photo to the blog, here is Rohan asking if anybody wants to play ball with him.

I hope everybody has a great weekend.

Easter Eggs

We dyed some Easter Eggs yesterday. Tyde went surfing so it was up to Dax and me to get the job done.


We only dyed 12 eggs and noticed we had little cups just sitting there with dye in them. So, I grabbed some wool that was sitting by the drum carder. We couldn’t resist putting it in the little cups with Easter egg dye in them.


I didn’t pre-soak the wool so I left them sitting in the dye overnight. I will steam them today. I hope that will be enough to make the dye stick. Dax is hoping to add this colorful wool to her collection she keeps for needle felting.

Here’s what we had with a sample of one of Dax’s needle felting creations. I call her the White Lady because Dax used white for her skin. Dax often refers to her as Lady Big Nose II.


Rohan is hoping the White Lady will be in his Easter basket. Unfortunately he was disappointed.

I've been dyeing

We have had a nice weekend. Yesterday was a busy day. First there was a Community Spring Celebration that I voluntereed for. When I first woke up I thought the weather was going to be awful for it. It was very cloudy, windy with the threat of rain, and it was cold. But then the sun came out. The wind stayed but the sun made all the difference.

Then the first of the soccer games for the Spring season started. Dax's team still got beat but not as badly as before. We were so pleased to see the improvement. The team they played was the same team that beat them in the Fall 16-0. This time the score was 5-1. See the one, they actually scored a goal! The first part of the game was closer then it sounds it was tied at half 1-1.

Here's a picture from the game. Not the best picture but I liked it because you can see that the cruise ships are in port. That's the Disney ship behind them. This is their home field.

On to the dyeing, I picked up some un-dyed yarn at the Maryland sheep and wool festival in May. The yarn is 50% angora 50% wool from Tess' Designer Yarns. It was on sale because it was un-dyed. I can’t remember but I think it was on sale for half the price at the time. My plan was to dye it myself and use it to make the Sideways Knit Short Sleeve Top pattern (scroll to about halfway down the page).


Before


I was going to use Jacquard dye but the color I had was more turquoise then what I wanted. I ended up using royal blue rit dye .

After


I hope everybody has a great week.

Time Out

I had decided to work on Chuck’s Cabled socks first because I thought they would knit up faster than the Bayerische. They have given me nothing but trouble, Arrrr.


I got this far on them and decided to run some yarn through them to see how they would fit. I could get them on my foot but it was really tight. So I frogged them and tried again with bigger needles. That didn’t work for me either. I didn’t like how the yarn looked with the bigger needles so I frogged them again. I then decided to add a stitch of the black color between the main cables. This added four stitches to the sock. But it also left a span of 4 stitches to carry the gray yarn on the back. I usually do not carry the yarn on the back any further then 3 stitches at the most. These stitches are purl stitches and there might be a way to hook/twist the back yarn with purl stitches but I don’t know this method. This started to frustrate me so I have put them to one side and started working on theBayerische socks. I have not given up on the Chuck’s Cabled socks but I think a break from them would be good for me right now. We will just call it a time out.

Dax has a performance this weekend. It’s some kind of Orchestra competition. I’ve never been to one so I’m not sure what to expect. I do know she has been practicing more than usual for it.




If you didn't notice she seems to have adopted my Ruffle jacket. We had some cooler weather this week and she decided the ruffle jacket was perfect to keep the chill away. She told me she got a lot of compliments at school on it.

Nice Weekend

We’ve had some wonderful weather this weekend. Soo, I dragged Rudy and Dax out to Rockledge Gardens Nursery yesterday. I really love going there and just walking around all the plants. But this time we also made some purchases. We got a blueberry bush and some flowers. They’re still in their pots right now. I keep moving them around the yard to try and decide where the best place is to put them. With all the trees we have put in the yard it’s beginning to become hard to find a good old sunny spot.

Rohan seems to really like Dax’s roses she picked out. I kept trying to make him aware that there are thorns on the bush but he kept sticking his nose in them any way.

He looks curious doesn’t he? I don’t know if you can see it in the picture but his whiskers are all perked up. He spent most of the weekend chasing lizards and squirrels. Maybe he thinks there’s lizards in the roses.

Other than playing with plants I spent a good bit of time sitting outside knitting. I want to thank you for the comments on which socks I should knit. I finally decided which sock to do.

I decided to knit Chuck’s Cabled socks,



And Bayerische.


How’s that for being decisive? Now let’s see if I can finish at least one of them before the deadline.

Have a great week.

Forever socks

Finally I finished these socks.
I made them for my mom. I have started to refer to these socks as the forever socks, because it felt like it took me forever to finish them.
Yarn: Tofutsies
Needles: Size 2
Pattern: Pomatomus.

For my next project I am thinking about knitting Eunny Jang’s Bayerische socks for the Febuaray sockdown on Ravelry’s Sock Knitter’s Anonymous group. It’s either that one of her Chuck’s Cabled socks. I like them both. I’m on the fence for either one. What do you think, which do you like better?


We also had a celebration this past week. Guess who turned 15?
Yep we celebrated Tyde’s 15 birthday. Time sure does fly. He now stands taller than me but not quite as tall as Rudy.

And, here is proof that you can still get a 15 yo to smile on Dumbo.
Ok, I think his aunt’s antics is what got the smile but we have photo proof that it can happen.

Jan

Wow, January sure did go by fast for me. I was hoping to have not 1, not 2, but 3 projects done this month.

Here’s project 1.
Umm, not done, but close, veerrrry close.

Here’s project 2.
Umm, I had some collar issues so not done either, but oh so close.

Here’s project 3.
Yeah done, but the designated wearer does not like it and has a slight request. She wants me to lower the bodice. To do this I will have to take it all apart re-cut a new bodice and then put it back together again. Umm this one might not be done till 09.

On the up side I’m almost done with project 1 and 2. So I should have a good start for February.

Also if you didn’t notice I’ve been playing with photoshop. That software can do some really interesting things to pictures. Dax is lucky I didn't make her shirt totally neon :).

Have a great week!

fetching

Remember the purple stuff. It’s the purple roving that went back and forth between my sister and me. The last time I saw it I had finally spun it and sent it to my sister. Well, some of it has made its way back to me. For Christmas my sister gave me these.


It’s the purple stuff all knitted up as fetching, pattern is on knitty.com.


Thank you Cyndi for making these for me, I love them!

We're Back

I bet you didn’t know we left. Actually we have been back since Monday but I’ve been so busy trying to catch up that I haven’t had time to post. I took Tyde and Dax with me to meet up with my sister’s family for the Disney marathon weekend. The plan was for my sister and I to do the marathon, but we didn’t.

My sister has been my running buddy for every marathon I have done. I’ve lost track but I think we have done 6 full and 2 halves together, one of those half’s she did the full and I did the half. About two months ago my sister found out that she has some major knee problems. The Dr’s are telling her she is going to need a knee replacement but because she is considered too young for this she needs to make what she has last longer, which means no more long runs. Due to my lack of training and my lack of motivation to do a marathon without her I decided to pass my numbers to Rudy. Of course he had to run without the chip time. To run as a 40 something female would have put him on the podium. For those family members who try and keep up with his times he finished in 3hr10min.


Even though we didn’t do the marathon we went anyway. Sam and the kids did the 5k at Animal Kingdom. Then we spent the rest of the weekend visiting the theme parks. I made zebra hats for the 5k and my sister made some awesome tie dye shirts. The center has the shape of a Mickey Mouse head on them. She found directions on the internet for the tie dye shirts. Here’s a link for directions. I would like to try doing this in the future but maybe use some kind of other shape for the main focus, maybe a dragon, unicorn or fairy or something.



I hope everybody has a great weekend!

Cold

In the middle of the night, actually it was early in the morning around 4:00 a.m., I smelled something that didn’t smell right. It woke me up out of my deep sleep. My eyes popped open and I immediately said “something is burning.” Rudy must have been still asleep because he did not respond. So, I got up and started walking around looking for the source. I was trying to be quiet but Rohan was following me around. I don’t think a dog knows how to be quiet. Just the thump of his happy tail on every wall, floor chair is enough to wake up the whole household but I was on a mission, I wanted to know what was burning. I checked the oven it was off. I checked the computer. We once had a fan expire and something melted in the computer and it smelled bad but it wasn’t the computer. I walked in every room trying to pin point the smell and couldn’t. Finally I gave up and went back to bed. Of course Rudy was awake by then. I’m going to blame it on the dog for waking him up. Since he now comprehended what I was saying I once again said, “something smells like it is burning.” He then replied, “ it’s the heater”. “They all smell a little funny when they first kick in”.

Oh, duh.

We have officially used the heater in the house.

Cheers

Happy New Year!
I hope everybody has a happy, healthy year to come!

Rohan hopes you have a year full of big, juicy bones.


If you haven’t already seen it then go check out Duirwaigh “A knock at the Door.” A nice slide show to help start the year. If you have already seen it then go see it again. If your like me you will enjoy watching it over again.

Gifts

Here are some gifts I wanted to share with you. One is beautiful and the other just surprised the heck out of me. I love them both.

This one is from my mother-in-law. It’s a sheep quilt that she made. It is so soft.


Some close ups of the sheep.

Aren't they cute? The flowers are little buttons.




Here is the gift that surprised me.


It is from Rudy. One of the reasons this surprised me is because Rudy has shown no interest at all in my spinning or knitting. I didn’t even think he knew what a drum carder was. I quickly thought my sister must have helped him out on this gift but when I asked her she said no. He must be paying more attention than I thought :).

One of Tyde’s friends was over and saw the drum carder sitting on the table. He ran up to it and said, “Oh, cool, this looks dangerous.” I think I better put it away some where when he is over.