And Doozer is the king.
Boxtropolis
And Doozer is the king.
Month: May 2012
Box City
Wow, this week has gone by so quickly. I’ve been so crazy busy what with the upcoming move. There was so much to do! Today was packing day! The crew arrived around 9 this morning and, after a flurry of packing, our house looks rather a bit like a Minecraft game. BOXES EVERYWHERE! Of course, poor Lolly is freaked the fuck out. She spent the day cowering under the bed so she is highly suspicious about this sudden appearance of all these boxes.
While they were working, I decided to ply up last week’s singles. First (last night) I wound the single into a center pull ball:
Isn’t it pretty?
And then this morning, I did an Andean ply.
Sadly all my spinning stuff is packed away so finishing it will have to wait until we’re settled in down there, but the spinning work is done. Tuesday the movers are coming to empty our house into a truck and then we head to Florida! I can’t believe moving day is almost here! w00t!
Spinning Friday
I brought my wheel to Park Day today and after several false starts, I finally got a good rhythm going with this fiber which Santa brought me a couple of Christmases ago. Isn’t it pretty?
After watching my friend Weaver at her wheel a couple of weeks ago, I was inspired to spin the roving without breaking it into little pieces first so that the colors would be drawn out into long stretches. (I’m sure there’s a name for this, but I don’t know what it is. I might have to track down a copy of this book.) Anyhoo, now I have to figure out what to do next. Navajo ply is one option, although I’m not sure my single is appropriate for that (not consistent throughout, and not teeny tiny). If I had been thinking ahead when I started this, I would have split the roving in half and spun it onto two different bobbins, but sadly, as is my wont, I wasn’t thinking ahead and instead crammed all 8 ounces of it onto a single bobbin. (As you do.) Another option would be to do an Andean ply, but would the inevitable marling break up the long stretches of color and defeat the purpose of spinning it the way I did? Or I could just leave it as a single, although I know there are a couple of super thin bits which would benefit from plying. What to do, what to do… Hmm…
39
Today marks the start of another year of my life and brings me within spitting distance of the big 4-0, although I don’t feel a day over 28. Generally, I’m feeling pretty good and looking forward to this year. It will be a year of big changes, what with the move to Florida and all, and I can’t wait. Happy birthday to me! :-)
Weaver Is Evil
Seriously, y’all, my friend Weaver is evil. She has been on a bit of a spinning jag lately for a while now and last week posted a link on her Facebook to this etsy shop. And even though I have quite a bit more spinning fiber than I want to move to Florida right now, I went ahead and ordered anyway. Just a little, only 4 oz. But what a gorgeous 4 oz. it is:
4 pretty ounces of Polwarth top. I’ve never spun Polwarth, so it’ll be a fun learning experience too!
Flee the plague house!
Over the weekend the Norovirus which has been going around finally caught up with me. Saturday I woke up feeling kind of icky and by 830 pm I asked the Hubs to drive me over to the ER for some IV fluids and some anti-nausea drugs. It was a most unpleasant day, I must say. But now I’m almost back to my normal self, with just a little lingering tiredness. So, yay!
Yesterday I was feeling well enough to work on my shawl and can say now that I am officially into the twee triangles. It took me the entire episode of this week’s Game of Thrones to knit the first two rows. It gets faster and easier once the pattern is established, as I recall, but GAWD I remember why it was such a struggle to get through it the first time.
And so that’s an update I guess! How was your weekend? Hopefully better than mine was. Have you managed to avoid this current Norovirus outbreak or have you been unlucky as well? How is your knitting coming along?
May the Fourth!
Happy Star Wars Day, everyone! Here’s a question: what if Episode One was actually good? Like, really good? Well, BelatedMedia has some ideas. Check them out:
May the force be with you!
Oops
The Loopy Ewe had a Wollmeise update the other day and I might’ve gotten to the website soon enough to have a hank of it fall into my basket.
Oh my goodness this stuff is lovely. My intention was to use it to make Bigger on the Inside, but a) there is more purple in it than I thought and b) I realized too late that the Wollmeise is about 300 yards too short for that. Still it’ll make a beautiful something or other. Citron maybe? Or maybe I’ll triple it with some of the other Wollmeise in my stash and make one of these Color Affection shawls that are so popular right now?
Well Then.
So it looks like I let 2 whole months go by without a new blog post! And while I ordinarily wouldn’t let it go so long, I think that I must’ve needed the head space, because I am returning to you revitalized and more inspired to write than ever. So inspired, in fact, that I purchased a new blog domain over the weekend which I will move over to eventually. But more on that another time. What today needs is one of those posts where I tell you all about my adventures during the months of my absence.
Firstly, my knitting. Back at the end of March, I finished another utterly random Baby Surprise Jacket.
[ravelry]
It just needs a wash and 3 little buttons. Of course this cute little jacket needed some matching bootees, too.
[ravelry]
And so there you go. Very cute. But in between finishing the BSJ and the bootees, my fibery doings took a bit of a detour.
I finally got off my lazy ass and warped my loom. Seriously, the whole time I was asking myself why I waited so long. It’s not that hard, you guys. Really. It only took about an hour to warp this project and then it was about 2 or so hours of weaving.
[ravelry]
Of course I neglected to get a photo of the finished product before I delivered it to its intended recipient, you’ll just have to take my word that it came out beautifully. And, it was so much fun that I made another one.
[ravelry]
As you can see, I have a lot to learn about weaving still. But first and foremost this project taught me that weaving sock yarn isn’t necessarily the best idea. Plus, my skein of Saami had a lot more orange in it than I remembered. Still, it’s warm and cozy and very colorful and cheerful. I’m thinking this is perfect for E, if I can get him to wear it.
When I was finished with all that weaving, I kind of lost my knitting mojo for a while. To say that I am sick of the Orange socks is a bit of an understatement. I even tried to force myself to work on them, which we all know never works to endear a project and make it more fun to work on. Plus I was a bit bored with baby sweaters, to be honest. All I could think of was how I wanted to make another lace shawl like the one I’d made for my sis. Ultimately I accepted that there was no denying lace’s siren song. I acquiesced and cast it on.
[ravelry]
It’s actually quite a bit larger than in that photo. I’ve already increased again and am almost finished with this middle section. Then it’s on to the twee little triangles which gave me so much trouble I enjoyed so much the last time. I can’t wait!
Now, on to other things. March was kind of a strange month. My husband went to Florida for business for two weeks in March, leaving the kids and me to our own devices. We celebrated Pi Day:
And I took the boys up to Kent Falls to enjoy the March Heat Wave of ’12.
Yes, they are hot and sweaty and wearing shorts. I think it was like 80° that day. But, as is Connecticut’s wont, the weather turned cold again and we are back to wearing layers and wool.
It was so cold, in fact, that the favors for the outdoor wedding we attended on the 31st of March (the Mister’s cousin’s) were fleece blankets. No pictures of all the frozen attendees, sadly, but I did get a couple of shots of my little cuties in their tuxedos.
It was a black tie optional affair, and we optioned the shit out of it. Here we are back at my MIL’s place afterward:
Matchy!!! OMG we all look so tired. Not the kind of regular tired that you get when you’ve been working for a living, but a fancy sort of tired from being strapped into an uncomfortable bra and wearing pinchy shoes for hours and hours. (Good gravy my hair is straight. I know for a fact that I set that shit with hot rollers before we left but by the time we arrived at the wedding it had already reverted to its natural state: straight straight straight. Gah, stupid hair.) We had a lot of fun anyway and we looked damn fine too.
And then it was April. April was a rather busy month here. We celebrated Easter with another family in New York and had so much fun that future Easters have been ruined for us. Here we are setting off fireworks.
Because that’s how we roll, bitches.
Hubs went away to Florida on business (again) the following week, but it was too cold to do anything fun with the boys while he was gone. Mostly we hunkered down and got ready for the next week. Remember how I said we are moving to Florida? Well, the day after the Mister returned from Florida, I got in the van with the kids and drove down to find us a place to live.
OMG you guys I loved it down there! I am so much more excited for our move than I was before, I can’t even. Have you seen these beaches?!
This is in Ft. Lauderdale. The sand was soft and deep and the view was gorgeous. The waves are enormous though (well, compared to Long Island Sound). Everyone is going to need swim lessons.
[wiki]
These guys live in the canal behind our new place (all the water there is heavily managed and so there are canals and man-made lakes and ponds everywhere). Yes, they are considered a bit of a nuisance down there, but aren’t they cute? That big male on the right was making quite a show of himself for the little female that came with him over to us to beg for food. Birds are strange and feral ducks are even more so. We also saw a flock of ibises and tons and tons of little Indo-Pacific geckos. The kids are hell-bent on catching the little things, which reminds me of the alligator lizards which are common in southern California. I spent many happy afternoons with my friend Jen hunting (and failing to catch) one for a pet. Speaking of alligators, we did not see any alligators, although the realtor assured us that due to our proximity to the Everglades conservation area (literally less than 5 miles away) it’s fairly certain we’ll see an alligator in the canal or even our yard at some point. So yeah. And, even better? There is a nature center just around the corner and down the street from where we’ll be living. This move is going to be a good thing for us. I can’t wait. Only 28 days to go!
And here is Doozer because he hasn’t been on the blog in a good long while.
And now you are all caught up. What have you all been up to?
Knitting Interrupted 