There is no excuse

Here I am saying I'm going to strive to blog more... And then I don't. If it helps, I've been on the computer precious little this last week outside of work. In fact, I went to use the iPad today and it was dead. Battery was sapped and I don't recall the last day I opened it and even knew the charge level.

To be honest, The Guy has once again been out of town this week. Which when combined with a shifted work schedule, threw me and the kids for a loop. Well, except the kitten, I had to work hard to throw her for a loop.


Since we tried moving all her stuff downstairs, she decided to revolt by peeing in odd places. So, once again we have a litter box upstairs and some other steps have been taken to alter her behavior, which I had a feeling was the real issue despite the vet insisting she come in to make sure she didn't have urinary tract infection.

And due The Guys absence and her need of play and time, she has gotten to learn how to go for a walk with her boys this week! She is actually doing surprisingly well with such a plan. She goes just over a mile before she is done, and seems to be a bit more mellow at home, especially when I am trying to sleep. Which is slowly increasing her chances of survival to adulthood.

She didn't wake me up last night pretending I was her private trampoline, but I did wake up the feel of fur in a personal place and realized she had crawled under the covers to cuddle. She was not punished in anyway, but was moved out of the sheets for a cuddle as I am allergic to the wee heathen.

I was getting ready for work and found her and Sullivan goofing off on our bed. Whatever keeps them happy.


The cat is not the only trouble in the house though. Late last night as I was finally getting to bed, I laid down, closed my eyes and took a deep breath. And I smelled it. It didn't smell good. I stopped, sniffed again, then started smelling my hands, my arms, trying to find the offensive smell in the dark. Finally, I got up, turned on the light and there it was... You see, Emmitt is a problem child in wanting to always lay on my pillows. He managed to pull down the covers, floor on them and get chicken shit on my pillow. The pillow my head was laying on. He's no longer allowed on the bed at all until he figures out he is not allowed on the pillows, and I need to find a way to keep the chickens away from the back door where they keep crapping for it to be tracked into the house. Damn hens...

Speaking of hens, we're getting lots of eggs. atlas 2m typically three a day. One day there was an attempt at 4 but the last ones shell wasn't completely formed and I found it broken in the nest box.

And the pears are ripening up and falling from the tree, which are bring in the wasps. And the pies.

I spent a good chunk of today making a couple pies. One for us here and one to go to the yarn shop tomorrow. If they come out as good tasting as they look, I'll share the recipe I kind of winged today. Including a homemade caramel sauce to top them. MMmmmmmhm.

Despite it all, last week I did get some spinning done.  I wrapped up The North Rim, which came out to be about 250 yards of sport/dk weight wonderfulness that I think will become something for me.

Look at those beautiful subtle colors. It's 100% combed Masham top.

And this last week in my down time I dug into this Merino Tencil, the only thing I bought from this years West Michigan Fiber Festival.

I'm still not sure what I think of the finished yarn. It ended up being about 300 yards of sport weight 3 ply. Most fibers seem to get deeper color as you spin and I feel like this one mellowed out. Grrrr, the kitten is trying to play in my lap as I type this, forget all the nice things I said about her earlier.

That's okay, she needs to get some of it out of her system before I try returning to the loom in a bit as I won't let her goof off around that. In fact, she is banned from the fiber room still. Just a precaution. I finally got the remainder of my yarn so I can wrap up this project before I attack the next one.

And I have been occasionally playing with another pair of socks. Always have to have a pair of socks, they make a good travel project for the car, or a plain, or a boat for that matter. I decided to try a hemmed top to give it a nice cushy band at the top. IT WAS A GIANT PAIN IN THE TOOKUS. Just in case you're thinking of doing the same, don't. Not that I don't like the result, but my god it was tedious and painful work on size 1 needles.

Okay, I'm done whining. I'm going to go hack into a pie and do some more weaving. Hope you all have a great weekend as mine is now done!

Let it spin baby, let it spin

Update! I know, I didn't do a good job keeping up with blown this week. But, I kept my hands busy.

To busy to type. Or even really knit of that matter. This was some Alpaca/Merino/Silk from October House that I've been sitting on for months.

It spun up into a rather limp 200+ yard 4 ply. It's supposed to be higher content of wool than it is, but it behaves like it's alpaca and silk content is higher than advertised. It has pretty luster but at this time I don't know what it will become down the road. You can see in the second photo, all those alpaca guard hairs standing up out of it.

Then there was my Bird of paradise 2 ply fractal lace weight. I ended up with almost 700 yards after I gave it a good beating to help toughen it up. There was a certain little furry beast that wouldn't leave me alone while I plyed this and there was a couple mishaps that a bit of felting in the finish work will help solve.

Why did I call it Bird of Paradise? This was one of those projects that just goes to show that I'm not a dyer and don't have that eye for color. Do you see those singles? I would never have put those colors together on my own, but the dyer did. And so did nature. Look at that bottom bobbin.

And look at this Bird of Paradise Blossom. Do you see it? Well, other than a fuzzy picture because my phone focused on the price tags on the flowering stalks in the background instead of the bloom I was framing.

And then there's the one I wrapped up last night. Another one I would have never thought to put these colors together, but they work, and it ended up much darker than I was expecting. It's a 3 ply fractal spun yarn that I'm liking though it's busier than I would usually knit for myself.

So, all the non spinners are thinking, what is this "fractal" thing he keeps talking about? Its a method of breaking up your color. In this photo of my three bobbins you can see it a bit better. See the solid wide stripes on the first bobbin up top? I broke up my roving into three equal parts. The first one I drafted out whole and let the colors run into the single as I came to them which gave me these wide color changes.  The 2nd bobbin in the lower left hand corner is the second 3rd of fiber that I split lengthwise into 4 parts to maintain the color changes, but by breaking it into four narrower pieces, as it drafted it into the second ply of yarn, the color changes were shortened. The third bobbin and last 3rd of my fiber on the bottom right was broken lengthwise down into 16 pieces. Breaking it into such narrow pieces of fiber made the resulting drafted ply's color changes come very quickly indeed so that when they were all plyed together I ended up with the yarn you see in the picture before this one. Why do all this work? Because it's so much fun... Actually, it's a method to try to make sure that your yarn doesn't color pool, or group all the colors together into huge came spots when it's knitted up. This yarn having such contrasting colors in it, I decided I needed to use this technique to make sure it would work for most projects. And because I seem to have a thing for fractal spinning lately. I;ll get over it I'm sure.

Since I'm teaching a drop spindle class at the Clever Ewe this week, I'm sure I'll get over it VERY fast indeed and return to knitting and snapping many a picture of the animals.

Speaking of which. Yep, she's a cat. Already cued in on sunny patches and what great places they are to lounge and nap. I think she's nucking futs as it was hot enough that day to not want to pant in a square of sunshine. You do that shit in January.

Today we're actually getting a break from sun as it's been cloudy most of the day and only in the mid to high 70's but that means the humidity is high just for kicks. We actually have had some rain off and on today too, which is needed. the picture above is some of the wildflowers we're trying to let encroach into the part of the lawn we don't want to keep messing with. However, we've been yanking out the thistle. Thistle and big slobbery silly dogs that want to run through the tall weeds don't mix so well all the time.

And even the word thistle makes me think of "The Thistle & Shamrock" on NPR which made me think of this song in particular. Enjoy..