A Valentine's Momcation

I love my momcations.

My dh Dallas took the kids to visit Grandpa so the dogs and I got to stay at home in a quiet house for a couple of days. Don't get me wrong - I really love Grandpa, too. But I crave the peace (not to mention being able to keep the house clean for more than half an hour) just too much to pass up the opportunity. So I worked on the Etsy shop a bit, spun a bit, knit a bit, watched the Olympics a bit (kd lang singing Hallelujah made the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up), but mostly did some fibre dyeing. It is hanging around all over the house right now drying.

I finished plying the superwash merino a little while ago...

I ended up going with a two-ply. It is very much a lace weight and I still don't know what I am going to do with it yet. There is LOTS of it.

I also tried my hand at dyeing and spinning silk for the first time. This is 50/50 merino silk.

It is so soft that it called out to be wrapped around my neck. So I am knitting it up into the Falling Water Lace Scarf by Bonnie Sennott, my first try at lace knitting also.

I Must Have Been a Very Good Girl This Year

I am only over a month late, but better late than never. Santa was very, very good to me at Christmas.

It seems that I received most of my Christmas presents before the big day - a Bamboo pad that I saw when we were out shopping one day, a set of Hiya Hiya interchangable circulars that dh Dallas purchased for me when we were in my LYS, a new printer when my old one died (I still say that it wasn't a present since having a working printer isn't a luxury, but a necessity for me), a new cordless mouse (ditto about the printer), a subscription to Spin Off which I found out about early since Dallas didn't want the promotional emails going to him so he used my email address, my sister's drum carder that I purchased off her when she bought her new electric one. So when I saw a large, strange-shaped present under the tree with my name on it I had no idea what it could possibly be.

I had a good laugh when I opened it on Christmas morning. It was a bulletin board with pictures of all my presents.

And then out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed something else (I was holding it upside down at that point, afterall)...

Confusion led to realization, realization led to speachlessness, which led to (okay, I admit it) tears.

I never in a million years expected a Majacraft Rose, which is the wheel that I had decided would be my next one when the time was right. It just seemed like a complete indulgence when there are so many other places for the money to go to. Like bills, groceries, the kid's activities...  The list goes on and on.

 My sister Susan was in on it, of course.

Have I mentioned lately that I am married to the most wonderful man in the world?

And just for good measure, here are the kids emptying out their stockings on Christmas morning.

It's a Marshmallow World

It's been awhile since my last blog post. My only excuse is that I have been lazy. Winter does that to me.

Old Man Winter really made his presence known in the last few days. We had a 3 day blizzard which by its end dumped more snow in a couple of days than we usually get all January. The only saving grace is that it wasn't especially cold - just lots of snow and lots of wind. Often when we get a blizzard it seems that the wind ends up blowing the snow most of the way to Toronto. This time it stuck around making us housebound since last Friday.

We are a pretty hardy bunch here in Saskatchewan. No matter how bad the conditions are life goes on pretty much like normal, but my dh didn't even try to make it out of out crescent to go to work this morning. For the first time in 10 years the school buses weren't running. Schools were open, though. Good thing we are close enough that we could send the kids off walking with warnings about not going into any snow drifts. They were all set to protest being made to go to school until I pointed out that there wouldn't be very many kids there and therefore it would pretty much be a day of watching movies and playing in the gym.

Our backyard is very sheltered so this is a lot of snow to see back there. We shoveled out a little path for the dogs to get out there.

And in true Saskatchewan-hardy style I eventually shoveled out the deck so that we could bar-be-que for supper.

I actually took these pictures this morning, but I have been fighting to get my computer to recognize my camera all day. It seems Windows 7 doesn't like the Canon software very much.

The Bottomless Pit of Merino

I suppose that if you have to have a mound of fibre waiting to be spun that never seems to go down in volumn it could be a lot worse things than superwash merino. It seems like I have been spinning this merino forever! I kettle dyed the fibre last summer and I started spinning it about a month ago. I keep thinking that today I will get the singles finished, but when it is time to turn off the lights and go to bed I am perpetually amazed to see that there is sproingy mass of it still in the basket. Hopefully, I will get it finished today.

I forgot (again) to take a picture of the fibre after dyeing so will have to make do with a photo of some it after doing some predrafting. I separated it and predrafted to keep the colours a little more true. It is a mix of deep blues, burgundy-red and deep purple.

I started out with 200 grams of fibre and I have the fine singles on 2 bobbins.

My dilemma now is that I don't have a clue what to do with it. I chain plied a bit of it (bottom with more blue) and did a small amount in a 2-ply (top example). There really isn't a lot of difference in the diameter, but it is still unwashed. The chain ply is also spun a little tighter.

I haven't had the time to do a lot of knitting either, although I did get the Wensleydale I dyed cast on and started. I am finally getting a lot more adventurous with my socks and breaking away from all the stockinette. I have trouble finding a good pattern for my handspun yarns. Anything too lacy or with too much open work doesn't seem right with a 3-ply yarn, especially Wensleydale. This Wensleydale is knitting up quite surprisingly soft, however.

I ended up using the Socks of Kindess recipe and I am very, very pleased with how they are looking so far. I sacrificed a bit of the luster with the Navajo ply, but the colours are knitting up incredibly pretty - subtle enough that the pattern isn't lost, but with enough variation to keep it interesting.

Hallowe'en

Katie had a great time this Hallowe'en - birthday party on Friday, Hallowe'en party Saturday afternoon, treat or treating Saturday evening. But Sunday - fever of 102.

Playing Catch-Up

I am taking an intermediate spinning class at my LYS, Golden Willow Natural Fibres, and really enjoying it. I had thrown my older, much more portable camera into my bag of fibre weeks ago, but kept forgetting to take it out when I was at class. Last Thursday I finally remember that I had it and so I took it out to take some pictures and found that the memory card was full. There were pictures on there from over a year ago. Can you tell that I really hate that camera? If someone in the room so much as breathes funny the picture will be out of focus. But I did find a few pictures that weren't too bad.

This one of Christopher, Katie and Dallas is from last July when we were at a Saskatchewan Roughrider football game. Saskatchewan is home to the most fanatic football fans on the planet. The local saying around here is that we bleed green. Life pretty much stops in Regina when the Riders are playing. Even my 94 year old grandmother, when she was still alive, would watch the games. Instead of lullabys we sing the Rider fight song to our babies.

We love our 3-down football.

These next two pictures are from the end of August on the day before school started. It was a very hot day so we said good bye to summer with a bunch of friends at a pool and park. What I wouldn't give for some of that hot weather now.

Christopher has always been my water baby.

And finally the pictures from last weeks spinning class. The topic for the class was spinning cotton. I had a couple of "aha!" moments where all of a sudden the cotton started to spin properly, but they were few and far between. My sister Susan was having better luck with spinning cotton on her wheel with the lace flyer and bobbin attached.
Shannon, on her brand new Babe wheel.
Our class instructor, Deborah, showed us how to use a charka.
From left to right: Carol, Deborah, Shannon and Amy (who was a natural at spinning cotton on a wheel). As you can see, Golden Willow is a wonderful place to just drop by to sit and knit for awhile.

Next Thursday is our last class and hopefully I will remember to not only take my good camera, but also remember to use it.

My Memory is Just Not What it Used to Be

The other day I pulled out some fibre that I had dyed this summer and found that I didn't have a clue what kind it was. And then I had two skeins that I had spun and couldn't remember which was which. So either my memory has seriously deterioated or I had dyed and spun more than I thought I had. Either way it was time to start organizing a little more.

I am taking an Intermediate Spinning class at my LYS and a couple of weeks ago we covered wraps per inch. So my project yesterday was to get all my spun fibre on bobbins and get some proper records made.

Obviously, the little key chain that the bobbins are on is not going to last very long, but it was interesting for me to see my spinning progression as I have them in the order that I had spun them starting with my very first finished yarn.

Good thing for the blog because otherwise I wouldn't have remembered the order in which I had done them.

The Andalusian socks are coming along nicely. I haven't been rushing to finish them as I am in the process of spinning up some more fibre. When I had first finished the yarn and weighed it I only had 76 grams, which confused the heck out of me. I should have dyed well over 100 grams since I know that is the minimun that I need to finish a pair of socks for myself. I couldn't figure out how I lost so much in the dyeing and spinning process. Well, turns out that I didn't. I just lost it in my mess around my knitting chair.