Peanch

For the past two days I've been obsessed. Utterly obsessed with the new toy. I've been spinning like a mad woman.

I've come to the realization, which I could never do before since I didn't have a wheel, that the whole thing makes your legs hurt. Really. Of course that could be because I do a lot of sitting around all day and very little exercising. I'm allergic to exercise you see, kinda like I'm allergic to dpns if you get my meaning.

I decided that it's sorta like sitting in a recumbent exercise bike. You're sitting in a chair, leaning back and pumping your legs, except your legs go up and down, not around. When you do this for approx. 4.5 hours or so, you might get a little achy. I did take breaks (don't have a choice with rugrats around) but I finished the second set of singles and was determined to see them plied.

When I bought my wheel from Spunky Eclectic, she sent me some extra roving as a thank you. I neglected to take a pic of it and instead dove right into spinning it up. It was gorgeous, I promise. The name of the colorway was roving, but after seeing it all spun up, I'm renaming it to Peanch. Part peach/Part pink. I got a little over 200 yards from it. Its mostly balanced. There are a few little pieces that coil up on each other, but for the most part, it's balanced. You'll see in a second. What you'll see is the yarn before being blocked. The kinks should be all gone afterwards. I'll show you the finished skein tomorrow.

Ummm, pink spaghetti... Click to enlarge for better viewing

Progress has begun on the baby cardigan. I've finished the yoke section and have begun the lace work. I'll show you that tomorrow as well.

Terracotta baby cardigan

Well, we're finally getting a girl in the extended family. Yay! This family has been lousy with boys for way too long.

So, I opted to make a baby cardigan for the pending arrival. This was the project that I took on my trip to FL this past weekend. What progress did I make? NONE! I frogged the damn thing 3 times.

I was using one of Elizabeth Zimmerman's patterns (Baby Surprise Jacket) and for some reason just couldn't get the hang of it. I'm ditching that pattern and I'm going to try her February Sweater from the Knitter's Almanac instead. We'll see if I'm competent enough to do that one.

I'm not sure what happened. I looked on Ravelry and there have been thousands of these things made. So what's wrong with me?

I'm going to use Cotton Ease in Terracotta. This is perfect for this family. The mother is a real "back to nature" sort (nothing fru-fru about her) and the father loves orange.

I found these cute buttons to go with it. Aren't they cute?

Fish Bowl Buttons!

The yarn in the picture is way too bright. The actual color is really a pretty coral.

Cross your fingers that I don't screw this one up, 'kay?

New Edition to the Family!

After many long months of waiting, we have a new addition to the family!

Let me tell you a little about her.

I've been breathlessly awaiting her arrival to our home for months now. She was completely planned and she finally arrived yesterday a little before three p.m. Labor was only about an hour total. I hardly even broke out in a sweat. Easiest labor that I've had.

She's a lovely blond and quite petite. She's constantly, voraciously hungry and has/will require lots of feedings. Her brothers are so excited to have her home and have already spent quite a lot of time with her. I expect I'll be losing a lot of sleep because of her, but that's to be expected with newborns.

The Eldest's attitude toward her has been quite different than it was when we brought home his little brother. It's been much easier on him this time. He's already used to me spending a lot of time away from him and spending it on his baby brother, so this time around I don't think he'll mind at all when I spend my time with her. As a matter of fact, he's been pestering me to death to help feed her!


The Youngest just wants to play with her. I have to keep reminding him that she's just a baby and he has to be gentle with her, but he's too little to understand that. I think she's just adorable and I can hardly keep my hands off of her myself.




Would you like to see a picture of her?

Isn't she lovely?

The Shuttle Launch

The Shuttle Launch was fabulous!

We kept the Eldest in the dark about where we were taking him until breakfast on Saturday morning. It was absolutely eating him up that we wouldn't tell him where he was going. I had him almost convinced that we were traveling to Vermont though.

What was funny was that when we told him we were going to the shuttle launch he said, "And then what?" Aren't seven year olds great? You give them an awesome trip and they ask something like that. Of course, he was running on less than 4 hours sleep from the night before at that point. It didn't mean a lot to him until after he had seen it go up and after we had toured some of Kennedy Space Center.

Wait til I tell you where we watched the shuttle launch from! A rich friend of my brother's MIL let us view it from their condo. It was a SWEET condo. Like a couple of years ago cost $1 million dollar penthouse on the 12th floor kind of sweet .

Check out the inlaid mosaics on the floor of their foyer:Framed Textiles from India

Very Ornate Dining area from Korea

Their balcony

There was a whole lot more that was just as cool, but I'm running out of room here.

The view their pad was amazing too though.

We saw a mommy dolphin with her baby, manatees, ospreys, pelicans and stingrays from the balcony.

Awwww! You could also see the launch pad as well as tons of crowds.

Launch pad in the distance

An example of the packed crowds

My camera was not too great at the long distance pic of the shuttle launch, but the vapor trails it left came out great. By the way, this was as close as you could get to the launch pad unless you worked for NASA.

The Launch

Shuttle Vapor Trail

Here's a pic that I took from inside the car as we were leaving. You see, as a good devoted sister, I always try and take pictures of the hotties I see for my brother. Here's one of a hottie and her man (notice the matching arm tatoos):

If you enlarge the above pic, check out the front fender on the first bike to the left. This was the coolest paint job on a bike that I've ever seen. I was afraid to let them see me taking their pics. Of course, I might have watched a few too many movies in the past about bikers with bad tempers. :)

Last, but not least, my favorite pic of the weekend:

My parents and the Eldest pose as astronauts

It was a great weekend, hope you had one too!

Off to Florida

Well, The Eldest and I are off this afternoon to go watch the Space Shuttle explode launch in Florida tomorrow. He still doesn't know where we're going, just that we're going on a long trip. He's going to be so excited!

Keep your fingers crossed that the launch goes as planned, especially for those dudes on the Space Station that don't have a potty right now. How awful is that? It's not like they can step outside into the woods to do their business you know. How ever are they managing? :)

Have a great weekend everyone!

Thank God for Moms and Sewing Machines!

My Mom is a genius. Yep, a damn genius.

I had a problem with Soleil, a big one. I followed the pattern to a T. Um, that will be the last time that I do that, blindly following a pattern I mean. I'm going to have to break down and do the mathy stuff every time I do a sweater. Why? What went wrong, you ask?

It was about a 1/2 inch too big on both sides. I refused to rip it out and start over cause I want to wear it this weekend. So what did I do? Steeked.

This freaked me out a little because of the cotton/acrylic that I used instead of wool. Wool would at least grab onto itself. Not sure what will happen in the long run with the cotton. It could all turn into little tiny bits of purple cotton fluff tomorrow.

I ran a seam 1/2 inch down both sides to basically take out every m1 increase that I had made in the pattern. It was still bunching up under the arms though and I could not for the life of me figure out why. I called Mom to vent and lo and behold, she had the answer. Bust Darts! Perfect!

I didn't tell you that all the while in the above paragraphs that I had been putting on and taking off this sweater about a hundred times to pin, sew and check fit and redo what needed redoing. Same thing went for the bust darts. It worked beautifully. Tell me this sweater is not the perfect fit now? Thank God for Moms and Sewing Machines!

My Soleil

Interview with Andy Paiko

I've got a real treat for you today. A few days ago on Ravelry I saw a link for a glass spinning wheel. That's right, you heard me, a Glass Spinning Wheel! I encourage everyone to go see his fabulous wheel.

Man, do I wish I was independently wealthy. This baby would be mine to drool over. Although, I could never really get it. I'd be terrified of hearing an ear-splitting shriek followed by tiny glass shards hitting the floor due to a certain two year old menace that I live with.

But! I was so in awe of Mr. Paiko's work that I just had to beg for an interview and he was gracious enough to grant that request. I had all the questions laid out, but he does such a great job telling his story that I think I will just let him say it his way...

 Shea...

Thanks so much for your interest in my work... I am so happy that the
spinningwheel is being passed around on fiber arts websites and blogs.
I know it is a tight-knit community (HA!... I just made that up, but it's
probably very stale for you).

My wheel is made of over a hundred separate hot-sculpted glass
components, fitted and cold-fused with an archival UV-curing
adhesive and steel hardware. The wood ismexican cocobolo.
The piece can be dismantled for easier transport. With the distaff,
it is 60" tall. It took me about three months of  8-hour days and
many sleepless nights to complete.

To be perfectly honest, I am more interested in the mechanics
of spinning wheels and the metaphors that may be inferred by such
a well-respected craft than the act of spinning wool itself, which
I have only seen done, never done myself. My wheel can be treadled
in a normal and comfortable manner, and fiber which has been threaded
on the bobbin and flyer will certainly take many several twists per inch.

The model and it's proportions are all taken from Eric Corran's book,
"Understanding the Spinning Wheel", pg. 168. It will be on display in
the window of the Portland, OR, Museum of Contemporary Craft this
coming June with an accompanying video of it in use (which I am
editing right now and hope to post on youtube soon). It is for sale at
$22,000.

I saw this quote, right after I finished it, coincidentally, which rather
succinctly sums up the otherwise ambiguous reasons behind my
creative impulse: "EVERYTHING CAN HAPPEN. EVERYTHING IS
POSSIBLE AND PROBABLE.TIME AND SPACE DO NOT EXIST. ON A
FLIMSY FRAMEWORK OF REALITY, THE IMAGINATION SPINS,
WEAVING NEW PATTERNS." -August Strindberg, from "A Dream Play",
as interpreted by Ingmar Bergman in "Fanny and Alexander".

I have been making glassware and sculpture from glass since 1994
when I was 17. I have apprenticed several craftsmen over the years, but
have taken very few classes and for the most part, am self-taught. I do
occasionally take commissions if contacted.


Hope this answers your questions...   Feel free to post any of it.

Cheers!   -Andy

Thanks so much for the interview Andy and I look forward to the video!


UPDATE: Go here to see the video!

New Stitch Markers

I want to share with you a couple of things that I made this weekend.


First, I made these little guys. There are actually eight of them, but only three are camera hams.

Hippo Stitch Markers

I fell in love with these Blue Moon beads when I saw them. Here's a close-up shot:

And last, I was still in the mood to play and so made this little set of earrings:


Cute huh?

What I did on Memorial Day Weekend

What a fabulous weekend! Why?

1. I sold a fish tank and made $200.00!

2. On Friday I sold a barbie and made $203.50!

3. I sold a giant display cooler and made $25.00!

4.Thanks to the above three things,

I ordered my new Fricke Spinning Wheel!!!!

5. I did some more knitting!

I've split the neckline and I'm working my way up.

6. In a few minutes I'm going to see a movie!

7. I did some crochet!

Barefoot Sandal! Once I get the kinks worked out, I'll post the pattern.

What a great weekend!

Memorial Day Weekend Edition

I had the most amazing morning. We went to the Veteran's Cemetery here in Marietta for the placing of the flags on all of the graves. There were boy scouts everywhere. A slew of them.

Did you know that there are over 18,000 graves in there and that the oldest date from the civil war and go through every conflict since then? It took 10 minutes flat for the boys to have a flag on each one. I'm not joking, 10 minutes flat. Simply amazing.

The Eldest salutes the Soldier's Grave

They had some re-enactors there, but not the ones you usually think of around here in the South. Nope, not the civil war ones, these dudes were the first ones, Revolutionary War re-enactors. For your viewing pleasure, here's a posterior pic:

Revolutionary Booty Pic

How in the world did girl's ogle the gents behinds back in the olden days when they wore these types of uniforms? And don't tell me they weren't lookin' either, cause I won't believe it.

And not to be left out, The Youngest spent his time trying to uproot all the flags:



Sorry for the hazy pics, all I had was my camera phone since I forgot the real camera.

I swear that I've been knitting and will give an update soon.

Oh! Forgot to mention, I'm $203.00 closer to my wheel! Someone bought the barbie I had listed. Yay!

Awards, but they're just not for me.

There was little knitting today, but a whole lot of visitin' going on today. Today was honors assembly at the Eldest's school. He got several awards (all A's and a Reading award) and had grandparents on hand to watch him walk across the stage and get his certificates and medals.

Take a look at the pic I took of it. His school principal is an amazon woman. She's over 6 foot and wears heels. Even bending over to give him a hug she's huge, and I don't mean huge in a fat, mean way either. She's just a big, tall lady. I feel so short and small next to her especially when she wears heels too. But anyway, where were we?



I went into the class after the assembly and saw one of the boys just crying away at his desk. He didn't get anything at all, poor thing. He's had a tough time this year with his schoolwork, some of it because he has a hard time getting the concepts, some because he doesn't get everything done that he needs too. It's hard to know what to say to a kid in those situations. I just hugged him and told him that I loved him and left it at that.

Hopefully, if I get motivated and I am left alone long enough tonight, I'll have more knitting for you tomorrow.

Mother's/Father's Day Gift

It's a little late, but today I get to show you the Mother's Day gift that I had the children make for their Grandmothers. This would also make an excellent gift for dads for Father's Day.

This is Reverse Pen & Ink/Painting. You do all the writing and painting on the back of the plate:

The names have been removed, but I wanted you to see where they went instead of just blurring them out.

This is so easy! Here's how it was done.

1. Get a clear, glass plate. Ours was square, but round works great as well.
2. If you have any writing to go on the plate, do it first. It's a bit tricky. To get it right, I took a sharpie and a piece of paper. I wrote the Name 1 down. Then, turned the paper over and traced what I had written, again using the sharpie.
3. Next, I placed that side of the paper under the plate. Your plate should be face down! Trace the backwards name onto the plate. When I was done, I flipped the plate over and checked to see everything written the correct way. I continued with any other names or phrases and did them the same way.
4. Now for the next layer. I had the kids dip their hands into acrylic paint and then put their hands on top of where I had written their names. This did not go over so well with the Youngest. He absolutely hates getting stuff on his hands. I had a tough time keeping him from wiping his hands on his clothes. It was a full on wrestling match as a matter of fact. Acrylics and clothes don't mix well. I'm just sayin'.
5. Let that layer dry. Then I followed up with the background color.
6. Last step - Apply a sealant. I used spray on polyurethane.

Done! Simple huh?

New WIP

I have begun yet another WIP, Soleil, from Knitty.

Easy peasy so far. I'm adding an extra repeat of lace at the bottom to make it a smidge longer. I don't like where it's been falling on most folks who've made this over at Ravelry. See, that's the genius of Ravelry. You get to see how a pattern looks all made up on a bunch of different body types. Then you get to seethe and hate on all the gals that have nicer bodies than you. :)

I'm doing this in Knitpicks Comfy again since I love the way the last Comfy tank feels. The colorway on this one is in Blackberry. Usually my camera hates purples, but it seems to have gotten over it for this photo shoot. The color in the photo (at least on my monitor) is fairly close to the actual color of the yarn.


The first tank pattern I picked up was the Lelah tank. Very pretty, I was going to add wide straps to it. But. I couldn't get anything to go right on that one. I hated the way the lacework looked on the needles recommended. Way too wide. The pattern on the site is not correct either. I will revisit it later when I feel like sitting down with a calculator to get the needle/gauge/cast on number thing going. So, on to Soleil!

This tank could be similar if I took the lacework all the way up to just under the breasts, but I think I like this one as is.

Once again it's been proven that I'm getting old. The Eldest went with his Dad on Sunday to a Braves Game. They were chillin' in the seats and rockin' out to the music being blared over the loud system. A song came on and he asked his dad "Is that a 60's song?" Uh, no son, that's an 80's song.

That night, the Eldest was telling me about it. I asked him which song it was. "I don't know the name, but they said Hanimah." I said, "Hanimah?". Yep. Ha-ni-mah.

Have you guessed the song yet? Panama. By VanHalen. From 1984. You know, the one played on the oldies stations.






Back to knitting tomorrow! :)

Table Legs Make Great Pillows

This can't be comfortable...

Table Legs Make Great Pillows

Silly Puppy

Have a great weekend!

Hemlock Ring Blanket

For my 250th post, I have this to present to you:

Hemlock Ring Blanket

This baby turned out gorgeous and matches my kitchen floor nicely don't you think? On the last row before the edging, I ended up with 504 stitches on the 40 inch cable. If I had had any more stitches to put on it, I think the cables would have exploded.

It turned out to be approximately 52 inches in diameter and took 131 pins to pin it all out. I used quilter's T-pins to do this. The T-pins are far stronger than regular pins and very easy to work with.

You should have seen me blocking this on The Eldest's bed last night. I had my measuring tape, a bucket full of pins and one cat (to supervise my work of course) all on the bed. I stretched and tugged and pinned and tossed the cat. Then I stretched and tugged and re-pinned and re-tossed the cat off the bed all over again. It went on for quite a while. I have much stronger arm muscles now. Everyone should try cat tossing for super toned muscles.

I measured each section and made sure that the measurements were the same for each of them. The fan part, from the center hole to the fartherest tip measured 26 inches. The fan, from hole to bottom of the dip measured 20 inches. It took a lot of fiddling to get this all uniform, but it worked beautifully.

To recap this project:

Pattern: Jared Flood's (aka Brooklyn Tweed) Hemlock Ring Blanket
Yarn: Cascade Ecological Wool
Color: 8087
Needles: size 10
Time begun: May 3, 2008
Finished: May 14, 2008

The project goes really fast until you get around row 67 or so. After that it took a minimum of 15 minutes to do each row and a max of about 25 minutes. The edging took the longest time to do.

Took me a whole 11 days to complete. Now imagine how much less time this would have taken me if I didn't have a two year old menace running around the house and demanding my attention 24/7!

From Birds to Blobs

We now go from yesterday's birds to todays blobs:

Hemlock Blob

The hemlock is finished! Yeah! I now have to block it and pin it out. The best place that I have to do this is the Eldest's bed. So tonight, he will be "Camping out" on the floor in his bedroom so that I can get this baby blocked and dry. I'm so excited!

I know I promised pics and details of the Mother's Day project, but it will have to wait. It hasn't gotten to my Mom yet. So, details to come.

Bird babies!

This morning I was having some tea and looking out the bay window in our breakfast nook and noticed some bird activity. You see, we had some birds move into one of our bird houses. They, in turn, had a family of birds, but I haven't been able to identify them yet.

Usually the mom does a quick in and a quick out of the bird house. She's a typical busy mommy, she has things to do you know. So I haven't been able to see what kind of bird she is. Last year we had a family of chickadees. This year?

Well today I got a real treat. I saw a bird sitting in the hole of the house. I knew it wasn't the mom, she never sits still. I grabbed the camera and went in the back yard. You wouldn't believe how close I got to the baby. I could have reached out and touched it, no joke. Mommy bird was up in the branches cussing me out. I was good, I didn't touch it. But I wanted to! It was so freakin' cute!

I got some great photos. Take a look. If anyone can identify them, please let me know!

Click to enlarge - check out his little feet!

Just checkin' out the neighborhood

Mommy bird

Not Monday, Fiberday!

Today was take a break from knitting day. I'll pick the Hemlock back up again tonight, but I just couldn't look at it this morning. I'm up to four hundred seventy something stitches per row and it's damn depressing. Takes forever to go around it once. It's fine on the interesting rows with yarnovers and psso's and ktogs and stuff. But the plain stockinette? Not so much.

So. Today was a fibery kinda day. I'm still slogging thru the pretty stuff that the Eldest and I dyed. It's turning out great and my spindling is getting much better. But. It takes me a while to spin on the drop spindle. You can see the fiber progression starting in the top right corner of the photo and going counter-clockwise. Roving, split roving, pre-drafted roving, spun. All while watching episodes of Time Team, a British archaeology show that I've been watching online and that I'm totally addicted too. It's hard being a history geek sometimes.

Not Monday, Fiberday!

I want a wheel so freakin' bad! I could spin so much faster.

I've put stuff up for sale on Craigslist to try and earn the money for a wheel. I've only managed to sell one thing so far, a crib. No one seems to want the 55 gallon aquarium and a ton of aquarium equipment. If you know anyone in the Atlanta area interested, let me know! I put a porcelain barbie for sale up on Ebay. No takers so far. Can't get rid of this either and it would be great for a party.

I did sell 3 skeins of bamboo yarn on Ravelry. Oh well. It'll happen sooner or later, something's got to sell sometime.

Lest you think...

...I'm not Knitting, well, I am!


I've been knitting like a madwoman, at least, as much as my achy wrists and fingers will allow.

I've been concentrating on the Hemlock Ring Blanket mostly. I felt like I was making amazing progess for a while there. Then I got to row 62. This row and the next four took me a full 15 minutes to do each row. By the time I got to row 72, each row was taking me 20 minutes. Why? There are 312 stitches per row. This circle is getting out of hand. It'll get worse. Row 82? 376 stitches. Not looking forward to it. there are a total of 87 rows for this blanket. I have instructions to make it bigger, but I don't think I'll be able to handle it. Throw size will be just fine thank you.

I feel like I'm on a treadmill and going no where really fast. I try knitting quick, then I tense up and then my arms and wrists and fingers all go kaput and I have to stop.

Anyway, here's a few pics of the lovely brown monster. The second and third pics are the most indicative of the color.

Feather and Fan Section

Center was placed over a bowl so you could see it better:

Enlarged Leaf