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A new look coming soon!

I am taking two weeks of vacation starting tomorrow. Now those of you who know me, you also know that most of my computing is done at the office, not at home.

In fact those of you who work on computers, know that once you are home, that’s it. There is no more computing, unless I really have to get something done….!

So starting the evening of Friday I am on a total computer blackout. Well, not total, but it sounds good no?

and just because you are all dying to know, I have a list of the stuff I will be doing on vacation….Yes, a list, but only because DH asked for it, and I always do what he asks me to do!

So here is the list:

House Projects

1. Rearrange/organize the study, including using the bins, clearing the top of cases so that it looks nice and figuring out how to keep the space a bit neater….because it’s the first thing people see when they walk into the house. This should be no more than half a day.
2. Clean up Living room….big pile of stuff that needs to be taken care of. No more than half day.
3. Replace at least the bathroom faucet, and decide whether to hire out the kitchen or do ourselves. Half day
4. Re-organize the sewing room and make it safer for Rowan to sleep in there….I also want to start her napping in there, so she gets used to it. I will need the time to do this, and will probably need to put all the bins in the living room while I re-organize. Part of this may involve culling magazines for instance.
5. Put away the big bins in the master bedroom in attic, along with toddler play station. This could be done now.
6. Replace blinds in family room because they are falling apart.
7. Clear rocks from back into side yard
8. Posts in back, and at least one crossbeam for Rowan’s swing, possibly dig out the patio area in preparation for sand and stones.
9. Finish planting under maple in front, it still looks a bit raw.

   Creative projects

10. Finish quilts that are in progress, and make quilt for Brynn’s room as I think that this will free up space in sewing room. Potentially I could free up a bin that right now has quilting stuff.
11. Dye yarn for business and post on sites
12. Generally spend time spinning and knitting
13. Get out the knitting machine and make some summer sweaters on it to use up some of the yarn I have…..
14. Make new template for blogs
15. Teach Peter how to blog?? Maybe a daddy blog??
16. Make new blog/website for business or on etsy/ebay

    Personal Health

17. Take vitamins everyday-have not been doing this
18. Take shower everyday- have not been doing this
19. Swim everyday with and without kids
20. Take naps
21. Generally restore my own health so that I don’t have PVCs, as well as get started so that momentum can carry me through when I return to work
22. Dentist appointment Tues 1pm

Really exciting stuff, ain’t it? But hey DH has now said that he will call his two buddies about the backyard and maybe get them to help build it! So I might actually have some shade in my back yard.

And you notice #14, of course? Yep, that’s right a new template for the blog, thus the not total blackout of the blog. So you all can look for the new look coming in July!

And knowing me, if something extraordinary occurs while on vacation, i will post it anyway!

Ima Yank!

You Are 0% Redneck

I’ll slap you so hard, your clothes will be outta style.You ain’t no redneck – you’re all Yankee!

How Redneck Are You?

I’ll bite!

Dilly Dally Knitter posted this and it sounds interesting. It’s a meme!

Rules: Please leave a one-word comment that you think best describes me — it can only be one word long. Then copy and paste this into your blog so that I may leave a word about you.

Flat Scout, cotton, heel-sickness, and photocopiers!

You too can host Flat Scout, who is one hot babe! Just go here, and soon you can offer to host her! http://www.flatscout.scoutj.com/

The blue socks are in their heel phase, with one heel on needles and almost done, and the other awaiting it’s heelectomy. So naturally since my blue sock heel is on sock needles, that is when my lovely dear Rowanberry decides to pull the needles out of the knitted cotton and elastic stitches so that she can knit. And then when admonished for said needle removal with a “Bad Girl!” (I was tired and it was late and I have much more experience with dogs and cats than with children), she looked at me like ‘AS IF’, grinned and giggled, before diving for the knitting again…..This is after getting herself tangled up in the ba’ of yarn earlier in the evening that required both DS and I for extraction. (ba’ is babyish for anything round and interestingly fun to play with, usually by throwing it wherever).

I am so in T-R-O-U-B-L-E.

Did I mention that she’s not even 15 months old yet? But, hey, at least Rowanberry wants to knit and spin, unlike Bro who has the attention span sufficient to make less than half a Knifty Knitter newborn size of stitches.

Speaking of spinning, I am doing this….empowered as I am by my 3 days locked up with Judith MacKenzie MacCuin. That is COTTON, on a WOOL wheel. Those of you who spin know of which I speak. But I am doing it.

On the left are the singles spun from the punis on the right. On the punis from the bottom up are a 2-ply, 3-ply and cable yarn. The fiber itself I believe is some cotton that Kristin gave me, having despaired of ever having being able to spin it.

She is even now preparing herself for knitti-kari. We will mourn her well, even as we divvy up her stash and wheels.

So of course, now that I am conquering this fiber, I am thinking about digging out every bit of cotton in the stash which includes the fiber similar to what is on the wheel that I plan to ply with this, the recycled blue jeans cotton, and the organic cotton that I tried to dye.

(You should know that organic cotton effectively does not dye, but does darken nicely the moment it comes into contact with soda ash)

Chocolate and Raspberries asked what yarn the blue sock yarn is. It is elann.com Collection Esprit from elann for 2.75. If you order some, let me know because I want a few more balls myself, so that I can knit my summer sock wardrobe, since the white peds all somehow wind up in DS’s drawers.

I almost forgot to mention that I may be getting a new wheel….a Louet this time. Kristin has spent the last few days doing the Holy Dance of Vindication that I who have tried very hard but not so well to hide my disdain for the Louet direct drive wheels am in fact considering the very same. I am getting it for novelty yarns, because my lovely Minstrel just does not have the hooks for it. And if I tried to change them, I am almost positive that I would have to buy a new flyer due to destruction of said hooks. Also she is just too delicate. I need a man around to spin those larger yarns with dangley bits. So naturally I thought of Louet.

Finally, I have today photocopied my boss’s sweater because it has this really cute edging that zig zags back and forth. I also plan to write a letter to Xerox that their Document Center is ideally suited to knitter’s purposes, and in fact will photocopy clearly enough to find the hole in knit fabric up to and including gauge of 17 sts to the inch. I am sure they will change their entire marketing plan accordingly and then hire me as their head of Marketing and Advertising, paying me a huge sum of money to do so.

But don’t worry, I won’t forget the little people. And when I write up a chart for the pattern, I think that I will post it here as an exclusive.

Somewhere in the Med…

There floats a ship sorely in need of some order, upon which rides the Panopticon and Dolores. You simply MUST read this entry, it is hilarious!

Anyway, other than Franklin’s most recent entry, this day is shaping up to be totally blase. I completed the second blue sock last night, and now get to put the heels in.

I am on vacation from work starting the 23rd for two weeks, and had originally planned to go camping for a few days, but now I am thinking that I should do nothing but stay home and enjoy the family, get some sleep and rest. I also would like to clean up the sewing room, and possibly spend a lot of time spinning since it’s so relaxing.

I think the main part of this overwhelming weariness is simply lack of sleep, and what sleep I do get is interrupted. Take last night for instance.

I came home from knitting and went to bed about 11:40 (which admittedly is late) and then Sis woke me up for nana at 12:35, because she missed it before bed. Then at about 4:25a, she took a dive off the bed, while crawling around in her sleep like she does. After scooping her up and back into bed, she woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 6:17, much to my uncontained delight. More nana, then I sent her out to find dada, but she took a pitstop at the cat bowl which is in the bottom of the back of the hall closet, which is supposed to be latched but apparently Bro’ did not do that….so short pitstop to eat some cat food, which contains ash. So crawl out of bed to latch the door and send her on her way to Dada. Back into bed and close my eyes, at which point a feline finds something entertaining and starts scrambling around the bedroom rug, managing somehow to sound like a sick water buffalo in its death throes. A quick hiss has no effect whatsoever…..

So yet another night of not enough sleep.

See ya.

Same Sex amendment

Normally, I refrain from political commentary here, but tonight I cannot. Tonight in knitting group, we got on the topic, and were discussing, when one member got up and stormed out. Certainly if anyone was uncomfortable we could have discussed something else, at her request.

Anyway, as a result I am a bit riled up and decided to post here.

The same sex amendment to the constitution is wrong on so many levels. Our forefathers set up separation of church and state as a fundamental principle. Keep that in mind since I am going to completely ignore the religious issue, as it has no place in the Constitution or US government. Period.

“Marriage” is at its core not a religious institution, but rather a socio-economic and political tool to secure political alliances, ensure paternity of children(when maternity should be sufficient), and ease inheritance and tax collection. Always has been, always will be.

GLBT individuals have the right to secure the life, liberty and happiness the same as straights. This means that they should see the same benefits of a secure relationship that straights do:

They should get the same tax benefits of marriage in no other way even though they are in committed relationship and may be supporting one or the other at various points in their lives.

They should inherit like a straight couple even with correct legal documentation. A spouse’s right to inherit in event of death without a will is incontrovertible. There are many cases where proper wills are contested viciously by angry familes or families in denial about the deceased’s sexual status. Only the same inheritance rights as straight couples will do.

They should have spousal pension, medical and dental benefits. What would you do if you were refused spousal pension benefits?

They should have full access to medical care and their partner’s bedside, without having to get a lawyer involved. Durable power of attorney can be contested by ‘concerned’ families who may have been estranged as we know from the Terri Schiavo debacle. There are also instances where partners with power of attorney are illegally refused access to their loved one by the personal beliefs of medical staff. Would you want to be kept away from a dying spouse’s bedside?

All I want is for two people who love each other to be able to spend their lives together the same as other couples. There is already too much hate and discord in the world for us to stand in the way of a little love. And I think that any couple should be able to adopt. Too many children grow up without love for us to say that GLBT couples can not adopt. Children don’t care about sex, they just want to be loved, and being GBLT does not make someone a deviant or pedophile.

Finally, the main reason that this is wrong is it is a policy of hatred, intolerance and inequality, which goes against every last word, every letter, every drop of ink on the Constitution. And anyone that preaches them in this country is unAmerican. There, I said it.

Now as for the argument about gay marriage threatening the sanctity of marriage in this country.

Come on folks.

The rate of marriage in this country is exceeded by the divorce rate. The sanctity of marriage is being threatened not by gay marriage, but by the degradation of the middle class, the CHASM between the rich and the poor, less vacation, more work, less job security, more outsourcing, fewer jobs for those outsourced that pay actual living wages, infertility, the need for families to work multiple jobs to make ends meet while decreasing the amount of time that families can spend together, rising gas prices, increased school activities for children leaving less time for eating dinner together, longer commutes, shorter tempers and the lip service that politicians pay to family values, while cutting access to medical care, raising taxes, going to war, exposing undercover agents, stealing elections from the people, and giving huge federal subsidies to Corporate America.

Divorces happen because people do not have time for each other or for their children, the nerves are fried to the point of collapse from the stress of living in a society gone wrong in many many ways and instead of fixing those things, the current administration would leave you to believe that everything that is wrong is the gays’ fault, or the Arab’s fault, or Communists or people with brown eyes, brown hair and funny accents.

It’s all a red herring, folks, sleight of hand…..look at my hand, while I raise middle class taxes, Voila tax cuts for all, while I do nothing to curb the rank greed of Big Oil as they milk you dry.

And guess what? You have fallen for it hook, line and sinker, folks. But if you ask me real nice, I will rip that nasty hook from the side of your little fishy mouth. Look over there, this won’t hurt a bit.

Trust me.

I have the one skein sock blues

Here are my blue socks for the Cascade Fixation KAL, that are in the forever phase.

For those of you who are confused….one skein, one pair of ankle socks.

The photo shows the 1st completed sock, the second half completed sock and the remaining yarn.

And no that red line is not the Navaho Spirit Trail as you might thing, but the landing strip for the afterthought heel.

See ya!

Oh, and I found this: http://knittychat.sadevil.org/cgi-bin/irc.cgi

Bad Photo Alert!

All, I took a bunch of photos of small things last night after dark and so they are not great photos, but I am posting anyway, so that you can see what’s been going on!

This past weekend, I took a 3 day workshop with Judith MacKenzie MacCuin, who apparently has a thing for Scotsman (but really what’s not to like), through the spinning guild. It was a long workshop with lots of spinning, and I learned alot, but am still trying to figure out what all I did learn….you know how that goes.

So I took photos of my samples in their handy dandy notebook pages…..and here they are. The big learning coups from the weekends were:

Learning to adjust my wheel for fine spinning…basically on my Minstrel, that means putting on the small whorl, and then loosening the tension screw until the flyer does NOT turn when treadling. Then I tighten it up to be just catching the flyer. That is where I should spin the fine fibers….

And, are you ready for this? that is where I should spin cotton on my wool wheel. Yup, COTTON! If you look carefully in the sample photo, you will see that I spun both Sally Fox Organic cotton and some Nancy Finn handdyed cotton on my wheel. With a little more practise, I could spin up all the cotton in the house.

Playing with America Bison (not buffalo as some of you may think). Yep, I bought 2 ounces with which I will spin and make something for my mother who is gangbusters for anything Indian. I don’t know what I want to do with it. Maybe I will make a little pillow with a Bison on it knit out of bison. With the bison I made a lovely cabled yarn which you will be able to see in the samples somewhere.

Bison is a lovely fiber, very soft like Cashmere, but also very sproingy and robust. And it dyes up spectacularly. Judith showed us a ball of it that was dyed a lovely rich dark red that almost was lighter than the natural color of the bison which is quite a bit darker and browner than the photo at right.

Interestingly, apparently there were partners that started bison in the marketplace, one of whom has the fiber–like 2000 pounds, and the other holds the patent, which is apparently for the process of getting the guard hairs out of the fiber, which never should have been granted by the Patent Office, since the process was already in use for other fibers in industry. It would be like patenting the process of shearing sheep. (Just plain stupid)

I think that we should pool some funds together and break that patent, as doing so would lower the cost of bison from the staggering $20 an ounce to something more reasonable like $10 an ounce.

But enough about bison.

The other thing that I took away from the class was corespinning. You know those lovely yarns that have intact locks hanging from them, but are just so lovely. Well, we learned to do that. So last night, which was my first opportunity, I got out the wheel, some cone yarn and my Cotswold locks and spun this. It’s about 30 yards of cotswold locks spun onto a synthetic binder. By the way, unlike the ones that you see at some of the shows, this skein is as light as a baby’s breath.

Finally, I learned that I am really a worsted spinner, but woolen was fun too, just a bit more frustrating. And I spin very fast, which I attribute to my wheel and my treadle speed.

Really, if you can take a class from Judith, DO. She is an older lady, learned to spin from Coast Salish ladies who spun everything on their leg, and grew up spinning. She has seen spinning change quite a bit, and has so much information about spinning, where the fiber comes from and anything else that you could be interested in. She spent time in the Middle East, the Arctic, South America etc studying textiles and just has so many stories and interesting things to say. Even if you don’t feel that you have anything to learn, take a class to hear the stories.

So there it is.

On the calendar today is a ribbed shell, kind of plain and simple, but seems to be a fairly useable pattern. The pattern is from Knitability.

Thanks Secret Pal

I got my first Secret Pal package last week, but due to the aforementioned issues with Blogger was unable to post the details….so here it is…. with black spray over the addys to protect the innocent, although some would argue that I am far from innocent!

The card, which is VERY cute….knitting and cats go together, well like knitting and cats!

And inserted into the card are these little stickers of itty bitty pudgie people….How Cute!

And to help me navigate the slings and arrows of redheadedness, a Handbook!

Yes, Redheads have their own handbook! Who knew!? But really, since I read it cover to cover that night, it is pretty interesting. Did you know that a very high number of American Presidents have been redheads, but that the last one was Ike? Maybe that is what we have been doing wrong, we have been voting for non-redheads and *gasp* putting them into office!

So in the best interest of American politics, I am announcing my candidacy for PotUS. Now, I need to find a party to nominate me.

And *****drum roll*****

3 skeins of Claudia Handpaint….in MY COLORS. Secret Pal done good! She picked the very colors that I would have selected! And in a yarn that would be a indulgence for me! How did she know!

But of course, I am looking at this luscious yarn and thinking that I have not the foggiest clue what to do with it. There is like 182 yards per, making it like 600 yards. A tanktop, a scarf, Clapotis, what to do? So Suggestions are very welcome from anyone that has a fantastic idea.

Sadly,

**sigh**

the package did not contain any of the following:

Brightly colored high heels with translucent plastic spikes to wear with my fish net stockings.

A refill of either my condom collection or the recreational pharmaceuticals to refresh my cheap ‘work’ purse.

OR other sleazy accoutrements to help me do my day job which consists of slaving for money, making me a member of the worlds second largest women’s club.

Disclaimer: Despite literary references pertaining to the sex worker industry, the author does not currently work in that august industry, nor does he/she have any previous association with that industry, other than to walk past a strip club in Bangkok once on the way back to his/her hotel from the temple.