Vacation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, I've been on vacation for a few weeks now, and wish it would never end. Yesterday, I scoured and dyed a few pounds of polwarth fleece. I lurve this stuff. It's like heaven. I also finished my falkland lace from A Verb for Keeping Warm. It came out pretty nice for my first go. I'm planning more lace in the future, hopefully with a shetland dual coated fleece at Rhinebeck. Computer issues still plaguing me, I managed to transfer a ton of files from my broken down laptop to my desktop, so I feel good about moving forward in that respect, and I've done a lot of cleaning this vacation, even though it is never done at the same time, and the apartment looks sort of the same :(

I have a dye day planned with my cotswold locks, and hope to finish that this weekend, but had to use the kitchen today for, gasp, cooking! I've been working on another blog and hope to document my pickling adventures.

Jacob, Jacob Everywhere....

Here's my tour progress:

Finished plying this morning and whacked it when I got home ;)

Plan on spinning some Pigeonroof for Team Spin City so I can catch up a bit. If and when the weather ever cools off, I will finish carding batts and have more to spin.

Keepin' on Tourin'

So the Tour de Fleece continues, and NY spinners have met their challenge spinning in 103 degree weather! Blech. It's too damn hot. I spun up some more Jacob, and am onto plying the 2nd shade of gray.

That's all for now :)

Tour de Fleece!

Yippee! I'm in the Ravelry Tour de Fleece and having a great time! Been feeling a bit tired and achy, but carrying on :) First order of fleecy business: add in the angelina I got from Loop to the Jacob fleece I bought at MDS&W. Now I'm almost done re-carding the batts; I had 7 and now I have 3 more to go. I spun up the white jacob (1.4 oz) and n-plied it into worsted. Unfortunately, I didn't get much out of it, only 80+ yds, but I decided to stop thinking about possible projects and just see what I've got when I am done spinning. Today, I'm done spinning the lt. gray singles and will n-ply and finish them. I'll probably have closer to 2 oz of this color. There are 3 more colors to spin after that, then I can play with my Oxford. One of these nights I think I'm going to tease them so they will feed into the carder nicely.

About the carder: when I first started using my drum carder, it was kind of a nightmare. I had crappy fleece that I partially felted when I washed it, the licker-in was a micron too close to the main drum, so I was getting tons of waste on it. After I got wise to fleece and washing and carding, my spinning life improved dramatically. I can't express enough how important it is to prepare your fibers for carding. Not only do the batts come off easier when the fiber is open, but they are smoother, easier to crank and easier to spin with less waste.

As for the Tour de Fleece, I am on three teams: Team Batty, Team Spin City and Team Verb. I hope to finish yarn for all of the teams, though right now, I'm working on Team Batty. Here's my first skein:

And here is a picture of the next color(lt. gray) on the bobbin:

So there's my progress so far :)

Woolmongering is fun :)

So I procured an Oxford sheep fleece for my spinning group and just finished weighing out shares. It was lots of fun, and I hope the opportunity arises again when I can galavant around on pretty country roads, meet nice farmers, and pet the sheep. I hope to relieve my living room of it's current woolly inhabitants soon, though, as this fleece seems to be extra stinky. At least it's all bagged up and ready to go.

My camera and I are finally getting on well, and I believe that my picture-taking ability is improving, so as soon as July comes, I'll be able to upload some pics onto Flickr! Yes, I have a free account, though I'm seriously considering changing that. I started a new blog, which is sort of funny, since I don't ever post to this one, but in any case, it's called 365 Days of Pickles, and it's about my quest to can and utilize my own food. I'll be starting my pickle-eating year probably at the start of fall or winter. I haven't quite decided, but in the meantime, I will be canning like a mofo. Gotta go sell some wool :)

I'm still alive!

Wow! It's been 4 months that I've officially had fibromyalgia. Days are up and down, but lets get back to knitting, this blog is getting depressing!

I've been bitten by the sock bug and Jaywalkers are on the needles as well as some merino/silk that I dyed up into Ann Budd's Punctuated Rib socks. (Sorry I cheated on you, second Jaywalker. I couldn't wait to see how the colors knit up with my hand dyed yarn.) Still haven't finished my UFOs, but I'll get there eventually. This week, I picked up two Oxford fleeces for Rhinebeck for my spinning group, Spin City. It's exciting that I washed my share and now am dreaming up dye schemes for it :) I'm thinking autumn striped knee socks with little acorn pompoms at the cuffs. Entries for Rhinebeck using the featured breed must be 100%, which I think is not fair, seeing as I really want to blend in some glitz. It's less than 1%! I have to check Maryland S & W and see if their garments are only 100% natural fibers, too.

Life can sometimes suck...

Well, it's official. I've been diagnosed with fibromyalgia. I knew it was coming, so it wasn't a surprise, but it's definitely going to take some getting used to the idea that I will be chronically ill to some degree for the rest of my life. The Golden Boy, (my rheumy) gave me 50,000 ius of Vit D to take for the next 8 weeks. He offered cortisone/novocaine injections, but I politely declined (something to the effect of "Hell no!")
I started an exercise regimen doing 10 minutes of yoga in the am to stretch out my f*ed up body and it seems to be helping. Today was day four. I also am trying to do a video which is basically walking around my living room for 15 minutes and then I've walked a mile two to three times a week. I think it's geared for the "Sweatin' to the Oldies" set, but hey, it's at my ability level for now, so a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. In order to stay motivated, I've developed a sticker-based motivational system where I get to put a number sticker in my agenda each day if I've attempted to/completed exercise. Just getting to put a sticker in my book is reinforcing enough, because it means I get to use the next consecutive number. If I miss a day, I have to start over from one. For days where I do the walking exercises or other new/challenging/different things, I get to put extra sparkly stickers in addition to my number on that day. I think that when I reach milestones, I will decide how to reward myself. For now, I think that I will exercise with a friend, or find a new video or something exercise-related to keep me on track and exited about my progress. I've also been eating a little better, making sure I eat breakfast and more fruits/veggies throughout the day. I have an appointment with a PT on Friday, and look forward to it. The therapist is a good colleague of the Golden Boy and seems really friendly. Hopefully, he'll work out some of the knots in my shoulders/neck/back and it will help when I exercise.

No knitting lately. Been tired and my fingers and hands hurt, especially today after wrestling with an adorably cute but dangerous pinching student with autism. I think my fingers got bent back somehow when I was trying to get him to sit down in his chair instead of inflicting the deadly Vulcan pinch on me. Is it Friday yet?

Good Weekend

So I had a good weekend at Loop! I spent Saturday with Loop and Friends, spinning the last of my Verb powarth and my Valentine's day batt. Today I finished the second batt, plied it, and knit myself a hat! I'll be damned if I don't have some new handknits before winter is over! Because my computer is acting up and freezing every two seconds, I'm not about to try to take pictures or anything. I'm lucky I'm able to post at all. This better resolve soon, as it will seriously cut into my Ravelymics duties!

Now in Brown!

Well, now Miukats come in brown, hair that is. Goodbye red and hello brown. Caramel brown. I think I picked that color because I was hungry... Just waiting for my hair to dry so I can see what a bad dye job I did on myself. The dye ran out before I was done, and I squished and squished and tried to get it saturated all the way through. At least the gray is covered. In any case, I had a nice weekend eating red velvet cake and making my friend spin. I got one bobbin of Verb dyed Polwarth spun and still have to spin another bobbin of brown Polwarth so I can finish the yarn for my Danish tie-shawl, which is actually my Ravelympics project. Bye for now. Watching one more episode of Farscape and bedtime for me!

Down Day :D

So today I decided to have a down day. Magicstix and I will go to our fave fiber spot later and get our fix on. I have a secret Valentine's day Batt Swap in the fancy kitten group on Rav and have to get some supplies. I'm very excited about it. We also have a batt swap tonight that I have to card some shit up for. This whole phobia I have of late about taking crappy pictures is really affecting my blog and my Rav page. I have to figure out how to take better pictures. Then I can get on my Etsy store...

In other news, hubby has been saving pork bones for the last year, and while I was obsessively cleaning out the freezer, I decided they needed to become stock or leave. It's just roasted bones and tomato paste with mirepoix, leeks and bay leaves, since I don't have any herbs right now. As of now, it's been simmering for about 4 hours, and I'll probably leave it till about 8 o'clock. I also have split pea soup simmering for dinner, complete with smoked bones and pork shoulder. I can't wait!

Vacation savings is up to $30! I'm hoping to put aside $20 each paycheck. That would mean it will take roughly 10 years. Take into consideration that maybe one day I'll get paid more, and maybe I'll control my fibery urges around the holidays, that might be shorter! Yeah. Maybe it will be for my 45th Birthday! Then again, maybe life will really suck and I'll have to spend it all on bills, or on a new old car. Then I might go for my 60th Birthday!!!

Lastly, we finally ordered a new futon with bonus cash from xmas. It's coming on Monday. Hubby has been really weird and talking to our current futon, saying things like, "You wait 'till Monday, you'll see..."

O Blog Where Art Thou? (2010 version)

It's that time of year again when I claim I will write in my blog more. Comparing last year's blog with the year before, I believe I was successful. I think my posting increased by 100%. This year my goal will be more specific, i.e., I will post at least bi-montly, but will shoot for weekly. I think that's a decent goal. That will hopefully ensure that I don't have to write posts like this, apologizing to my two readers about why I haven't been around. In any case, fiber pursuits have been going well. Mostly I've been floundering around with stuff, here and there, but spin-ins at Loop have been giving me much needed spinning and relaxing time the last few months and I've actually been able to play with my Verb fiber, quite successfully, I might add. Over Christmas vacation, I decided that magicstix and I will go to Scotland, so an exciting new feature on my blog will be a vacation savings counter. I'm excited to report I have $20. In 15 years, I may have enough to go for two weeks....