Where does the time go??

Looking through the stuff in the bowels of my purse that used to consist of candy/gum wrappers, grocery receipts, and stolen pens but now mainly consists of yarn labels, fiber scraps/tufts, crumpled knitting patterns, and paper scraps bearing blog notes, I realized that I haven't written a blog entry about any of the clever stuff I've jotted down.

So, I guess you'll never see my essay about why Thanksgiving is my FAVORITE day of the year--any year--EVERY year because it involves Mom's gravy, Matt's smoked turkey, the usual pies, and the people I love the most--but especially this year when the celebration also involved a pile of 12 puppies, 3 llamas, several goats, and sheep.

It was pretty much a dead heat as to who was cutest--Harper, the flirty male llama, Alex and Meredith, or the pile of puppies



My tirade about how much I HATE to decorate for Christmas, but love it when it's done and so (aside from laziness) do not take the stuff down until almost February will have to wait until next year. Musings about the chaos of Christmas Eve and the thirst brought on by the ton of deer jerky and summer sausage I ate are lost to the ages. I'm sorry to have deprived the world of all that, but I do have photos.
Anyway, this would be the chaos.



And, this would be thrift store and as-seen-on-TV silliness



Kelly thinks we are laughing WITH him in his new beekeeper duds

Grandma Schneider bought the kids these great blankets with their own photos on them. Meredith's was a photo taken in Yellowstone Park and Alex's was taken on his climb up Longs' Peak in Colorado.

For the record, the ski trip to Red River we took after Christmas was everything we hoped it would be.

As is our way, we left Tulsa early in the morning at a time everyone else would say was the middle of the night and arrived in Amarillo for a early lunch at the BIG TEXAN--

It was as corny and kitchy as you would expect for an iconic Texas tourist trap.

After a detour to WalMart we were equipped with spray paint for our visit to the Cadillac ranch.

In Red River we stayed at the Deer Lodge in a dinky, but charming built-in-the-late-30s cabin where the space between the door and the frame was almost big enough to stick a finger through, and the kitchen sink leaked in what was pretty much a steady stream that required a mixing bowl catching the drips to be emptied on a regular basis. It had a microwave and coffepot, but no electrical outlets in the kitchen area to plug them in to. . . and the foolish act of using the hair dryer with the lights on caused the breaker to blow.

We spent a day at the Enchanted Forest Cross Country ski area. I've been cross-country skiing before and really loved it. However, it's been 20-some years. So, after the cursing occasioned by my stepping into the skis on flat ground subsided, I promptly traded in my rented skis for snowshoes. Snowshoeing was fun and something I'd really like to try again, perhaps at an elevation just a bit lower than 8-9000 feet.

Kelly graciously waited a LOT while I fumbled for camera equipment and air to breathe.The kids managed to get around on cross-country skis without the benefit of lessons. Meredith LOVED it, Alex a little less so. (I think Meredith was probably better at it, and that explains that).

The kids snow boarded one day at Angel Fire and two days at Red River. They liked Red River better. They could walk to the lifts from our cabin and didn't have to wait in long lines.


The latest any of us stayed up was 9:30. I think the evenings were my favorite part of the week -- having the four of us all together in one room, each with a book, must be a little bit like heaven.

There has been knitting, AND spinning, AND weaving, all subjects for a separate post.

There's more

Same ol' warp . . . this time I'm using sock yarn in the weft. I tried to make socks of this, my first attempt, actually, but there are very dark patches in the yarn and I just could not see to knit it. One strand is too fine for the thick warp, so I plied two balls together with the spinning wheel and it is just right.

I now see light at the end of the warp tunnel for this batch of blue and purple, so I'm off to scheme about what's next.

Weave Worthy??

In no time at all, I completed the scarf shown in my last post. I can't show a photo of it because it is hidden on the front beam (weaving lingo, don't 'cha know) beneath my newest production.

The star of the show is some of my hand-dyed handspun yarn.

The supporting cast is found resting on the bench, namely the same blue and purple wool warp as in my last post along with a tiny bit of left-over ribbon yarn of uncertain parentage, some rayon fancy stuff, and a soy-wool blend that is really chunky and really soft but impossible to knit with.

I am finding it nearly impossible to get anything else done, ie. prairie dresses for my nieces that still need to even be cut out, and niece Emily's jacket I promised TWO birthdays ago. (have I already blogged about this? I do feel guilty, which could be assuaged by actually DOING the sewing)

Anyway, I'm mighty proud of the result:

I told Kelly he could have this scarf for a gift exchange at work, but am seriously reconsidering that offer. I foresee having trouble letting someone else who might not REALLY, really, really appreciate handwoven have it. Actually, I think weaving will foment in me a judgmental tendency which may (ok, will) cause me to categorize people by whether they are weave-worthy, or not. I kind of (kind of????) already do that with knitting. I haven't worked out the exact calculus between knitting and weaving. It is possible one could be weave-worthy but not knit-worthy or vice versa, it takes a lot of work to be judgmental so I've got some details yet to work out. I have tentatively named this latest character flaw the craft caste.

I have not neglected knitting in favor of weaving. I've completed my bono kimono sweater (Loops Pattern) knit of stash yarn. It is washed, blocked and ready to be seamed up.

I participated in a pincushion swap on Ravelry and made these two to send to a gal in England. The dress-form one was a lot of fun, but the felted teacup was a pain in the rear to make and I slopped glue all over so it was a better idea than result. I haven't heard from the recipient, so maybe the glue was still wet--oops!

So long -- UGLY

As previously reported, I wound some wildly bright red and yellow yarn (called warp) on my loom and began to weave. I flipped through a book and followed different weaving patterns pretty much wily-nily, just to see what would happen. This did.

After about 5 feet of this experiment, I realized that I had wound on waaaaaay more warp than was prudent and, even worse, I had exhausted my ability to tolerate the colors.

Since I had seen a thread on Ravelry about weaving with chenille, I thought I might try that. I used up the left over bit from my mother’s birthday gift and got really jazzed about how the bright blue muted the warp colors and how luscious (yes-luscious) the fabric felt.

Then, I started picking around the stash looking for something else to use. I spied my very first lumpy-bumpy over twisted handspun. I was going to save it for posterity but it also happened to be my very first dye experiment (spelled m-i-s-t-a-k-e). Criminally ugly, it was never going to be used for anything because it looked like clown barf.
Something amazing happened when the Ronald McDonald colored warp met clown barf yarn. The ugly completely disappeared.

Watching that happen was exciting. Kind of like watching your kid win a race, score (or prevent) a goal, OR watch a photo develop in the darkroom, but not as stinky (that goes for all 3 examples–kid athletes smell bad).

The possibilities!!!!! Ugly can be obliterated through weaving!?! Who knew?

We gotta get the word out.

Uh-Oh . . . I feel an(other) obsession coming on.

So, of course (of course!) I stayed up half the night warping the loom again with the idea of using more of my hand-dyed handspun. And here I go again . . .

To confess: I may have screwed up a bit on my calculation of the warp measurement. I thought I’d warp enough for two scarves and figured a little more than 7 feet each would be generous, considering waste. In the light of day, I realize that in my enthusiasm I probably warped on too much. It was late and I can’t quite remember what I did but I HOPE I didn’t measure 7 yards for each of the two scarves. Surely NOT--That would be 42 feet. It’s entirely possible –it was a whole LOT of yarn.

Bye-Bye-B-Day

Just ask my kids, I am not one to make a BIG DEAL out of birthdays, much less my own, BUT I'm making an exception for myself this year because I'm 50 and I got such an interesting array of gifts.

There is, of course, the loom--Kelly said I could get it so he wouldn't have to shop--that worked out well for both of us. Since I've been weaving, or trying anyway, Kelly has gotten full control of the remote.

Then, there was THE card from gal-pal, Beth (sorry about the photo fuzziness):

Followed by THE plaque, also from Beth:

Honestly, they are funny but I just can't figure out why she gave them to me. HA!

There was THIS t-shirt from daugther Meredith:

Son Alex came to visit--No Photo

This pitcher and honey dispense is from my parents:

The Sock Monkey from my brother --as the label says: For ALL Ages.

The last photo is the stuff I got from my swap buddy in the Ravelry "Sew Obsessed" group pincushion swap. My buddy is from New Zealand and in addition to two beautiful pin cushions, she sent a bunch of cool stuff representative of New Zealand, including the most tasty strange confections called Pineapple Lumps.

for loom the bell tolls

{{Insert groan here}}}

That really IS the best title I could come up with for this post. My extraordinary lack of linguistic creativity is a direct result of having acquired the loom of my life last Wednesday. So, of course I’ve been up late and up early to get acquainted and spend some quality time with her, which has left me a little dull witted.

Here she is

Isn’t she a beaut??? Here are her specs. She is an elegant older gal, a LeClerc NilArt loom with a 60 inch weaving width and 8 harnesses. All that means she can do a whole lot of weaving, but I gotta figure out how to make her do it. I bought her from from Sue of knit night. Fortunately, through the efforts of Sue, her hub--Victor, and my brother Matt (who, by the grace of high school marching band, even happened to know Victor) she made the trip to her new home safely and was correctly assembled here in an orderly fashion.

Sue gave me this bunch of yarn for practice.

Since these shades do not appear elsewhere in my stash (or perhaps in nature), I am suffering no anxiety about wasting the yarn on the mess I’m making trying to learn to weave. Actually, in the photograph the colors aren't really so bad--it usually works the other way for me.

AND, in other news:

I attended the K.N.I.T. (Knitting Needles In Tulsa) Guild workshop on Saturday which was taught by Sally Melville. Although I’ve attended a number of knitting programs, I had not taken a workshop. I’ll definitely take more. I’m told that others don’t quite compare to Sally’s. I don’t know if that is so, but I do know that the entire day passed quickly. I was entertained and inspired.

The workshop subject was creative use of your yarn collection or some such title. So far the creative use of the two lovely stash yarns I chose to begin this journey required the expenditure of over $75 at Loops for . . . more yarn. It's all good though because after I knit this project my stash will be down a net 3 1/2 balls. Lets see, I had to buy 7 balls of yarn to reduce the stash by nearly 4 balls of yarn. Now THAT'S stash busting. I bet, given enough yarn, I could get the country out of the financial mess it's in . . . Tell Obama I should be appointed Secretary of Treasury.

And, that brings us to my favorite part of the program . . . the "what now" story . . .

I was to bring a dish to a luncheon at work. I made a BIG deal of the fact that since I am now (since Sunday, at least) 50 years old, I can, entirely without embarrassment or apology, bring a jello dish to share. So, I mixed up a BIG bunch o'jello and stuff . . . AND, you guessed it--

LEFT IT IN THE FRIDGE. So not only was I completely empty-handed at the luncheon, but I now have a fridge full of fairly useless jello.

AND the winner is . . .

The news is finally out. The photo chosen for the Knitty.com calendar is this one:

This was selection “c” in my blog contest.

Between the blog comments and the ones posted on Ravelry, there were 13 votes. The overwhelming majority (10 ) correctly picked “c” as the calendar photo. 3 people picked “a” – no one picked “b” – and 3 said they liked “d” the best. (The numbers don’t quite add up because although some said they liked “d” best, they cleverly figured out that it was not actually a contest submission).

AND so, the names of the “c” pickers were placed into a hat (a knitted hat at that)

AND the winning name was very ceremoniously plucked from the hat after MUCH ado and other stuff

(Isn't Kelly cute? The scarf, which is NOT handknitted, was his own touch)

~~~~~~~~~~~DRUMROLL~~~~~~~~~~~~~

THE WINNER IS

KAT

Congratulations ! Please either send me a private message on Ravelry (I’m anniam there too) or email me (schmom8889@gmail.com) with your address and this lovely yarn will be mailed to you----post haste.

Thanks to all who played.