I BOUGHT A WHEEL!!!!!

I decided on the Ashford Kiwi, purchased it from Nikol at the Harveyville Project and am now stalking the UPS tracking site, which only tells me "in transit" and "on time". *sigh* PLUS I'll have to wait until Hubby gets the pieces stained and put together. Plus I've spun up all my fiber, so there will need to be a bit of fiber purchasing made as well! WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

For now, I'm trying to knit up all the yarn I've spun so far on the begged, borrowed and rented wheels I've tried out. I've decided the orange yarn I made is really ugly yarn. Not in the cake, it's GORGEOUS in the cake. Just knitted up it's fugly as heck. I've just finished a scarf that I think helps it be the best it can be. I'll get pics soon. It's not as horrid as it was in sweater form, thank goodness! I've still got 3 balls of this left over, it may just sit on a shelf as it is looking pretty. We'll see.


I've also got 4 skeins of this stuff, not sure on yardage, just got a niddy noddy so will skein it up on that and measure it out. I spun it thicker, it's a light chunky weight and SOFT as cloud farts. I totally stole that phrase from Teri, who thought it was a bit icky so changed to something more appropriate....or was it soft as angel farts? Can't remember. Either way it's SOFT, man! I've got no idea what this bit of lovely will become, guess it depends on how much I've got. Maybe a hat and cowl or a bunch of cowls? Maybe I'll just walk around with it wrapped around my neck as is.


And, I've apparently caught something from the lovely Tiennie who always knits 4-8 of every project in every color of the rainbow. Probably fitting, since it's her pattern! I'm now working on BOTH my 2nd AND 3rd scarves in the Old Shale Scarf (ravelry link) pattern. I loved the red one (Vatican Pie colorway, baby) that I gave my sister in law so much, I've got about half-way through with mine. THEN I need to make a scarf for my mother in law also, so am making one that's thinner (only one full repeat with a half repeat on each side) out of some Socks that Rock. I'm also knitting my scarves in the garter version of the old shale pattern, basically the same, just with no purls. This pattern is unbelievably quick and fun. I'd highly recommend it. Who'd have thought sock yarn scarves would go so fast? I've got a sudden urge to knit 6 hats now for all the family....



Wow. I've gone from a knitter with ONE or maybe TWO scarves for five years to one that'll have one for every day of the month. AND it's almost SPRING for cripe's sake. I think I was so scarred from the first year I knit of making 28 (YES TWENTY-FREAKING-EIGHT) furry scarves. not that there's anything wrong with furry scarves, my eyeballs itch just thinking about all that fun fur. woah. I just got chills. Yes, I realize I have a problem. I'm ok with that. Just don't make me knit anything hairy, ok?

Felted Knee Pads and Calcium Pills

Well, I felted the wild & crazy thing. I thought I would felt it, fold it and make it into a purse with 2 pockets. HOLY CRAPAMOLY that thing felted THICK and HEAVY! It must weigh 5 lbs. There is no way you could haul that thing around and call it a purse. I've found a new thing for it to be. I am apparently in need of knee pads, elbow pads and probably big toe pads. I don't know how I'm going to make it as an old lady. I fall down ALL the time now. If these bones get brittle, they're gonna be snapping like twigs unless I outfit myself with some serious padding or become spontaneously graceful. Just in case, I'm adding calcium pills to my morning routine.

Yesterday I took a trip (quite literally) to the local grocery store. Only needing a few groceries, I used one of those short carts. On the way out, enjoying the sunshine, I was not paying very close attention to the cart. (Seriously, who does? How hard is it to PUSH a SHOPPING CART anyway?) Well, said cart's front wheels hit a divot in between the sidewalk and parking lot. I ran into the cart HARD, cart flipped over and pretty much took me with it. (Don't know why I grabbed onto a flipping object to try to get my balance.) SO, dented cans are rolling along the parking lot, I'm laying on my face STILL holding the handle of the cart and people are just WALKING BY me. One old man did turn his head to me with a strange expression on his face. I thought he'd at least ask if I was ok, or OFFER TO HELP ME OUT. No, all he did was say "wow," and not with much enthusiasm either. Cripes. It wasn't just a little losing-one's-balance-stumble, this was a spectacular flip and fall and I was actually LAYING on the GROUND with the breath knocked out of me. I must have been on the ground for over a minute. Two young stockboys finally ran outside to help gather both me and the groceries and I took my dented canned goods, dented milk jug and dented knees, elbows and toes home.

I'm used to falling down, I do it all the time...roller skating, ice skating, icy parking lots, normal dry sidewalks, stairs in my own house, etc. The only strange thing was that I bruised both below AND above my kneecaps. How do you do that? I must have really crammed myself into that cart before the flip. wow.

Other than creating new bruises, I ended up getting busy at my knitting and spinning projects as well last night...


Plied two extra large bobbins of purple heaven from fiber bought at the Yarn Barn. I've got another 2 lg bobbins' full yet to spin and have to return my rented wheel on Sunday, so will hopefully crank the rest out this weekend.


Plied the final bobbin of wool from Daisy the sheep that Teri brought home for me from the Wamego shop.


Sewed up and refelted the accidentally-felted sleeveless sweater into a cute little bag, knitted and felted an icord handle to boot. I'll probably give this to my cousin's little girl. It's adorable. Not nearly as adorable as the original sweater, but ah well.


Frogged BY HAND the tubey sweater I knitted long, long ago. I also hand-wound all the funky pinkish yarn into skeins, soaked them and hung to dry.

I also made 4" square swatches of both the daisy spun yarn (from an earlier spun & wound skein) and the grey frogged yarn above. I don't think I've ever in my life knit an entire 4" square swatch. I'm totally a swatch cheat and usually only make my swatches about 4" wide by 1" long. I also wet and blocked said swatches. I've never done either of those things before.


My goals for the weekend are to finish spinning & ply the rest of my purple fiber and to darn a crapload of socks. My sock drawer has recently gotten quite empty. I'm down to maybe 3 pairs without holes. If I put it off any longer there won't be any socks left to wear!

Have a good weekend everyone! I'm going to just try not to fall down. :)

Patriotic Knitting, Farm Babies and a seriously ugly wip

One of my friends at work is the father of a marine that recently graduated from the USMC boot camp. He's getting some training and then will most likely head out to Afghanistan within the next few months. I loved the opportunity to join the ranks of people that have knitted for the armed forces throughout history. The Marine Corps is very specific about the gauge and quality of yarn used for these patterns. If you don't know a marine personally, feel free to knit some and send to the USMC Museum which will send the helmet liners along to men and women that will greatly appreciate them.

You need to use 100% wool. As EZ used to say, wool is warm even when wet and will also not cause any harm if there's live sparks or fire near the helmet liner. I used washable Mission Falls. Marines prefer desert tan colors, but black will work also. These are modeled by me, so I'm sure they'll look much more official on a real marine. Marines rock. The pattern was well written and fun to knit as well.
USMC Museum info and USMC Helmetliner Pattern

OK, now for those asking (hello Chery) there will be NO FARM BABIES!!! I must apologize to my friends here in KC as they've heard this story at least 42 times. You know, I still laugh till I cry each time I think about it. I can't believe I didn't blog about the Farm Babies Incident....

Mexico, Oct 2008. My hubby and I got to go to Cabos San Lucas for a holiday/training session for the hubby's company. (My company does training in Minneapolis in the WINTER, I heart my hubby's company!) One night while there I saw the man at the most drunk level I've ever seen him. The man has a few beers here and there, but rarely gets to a level of stupidity like when he relaxed in Mexico. The man was drunk as a skunk, but with style. Part-way through the night, he came up with this great idea.......

J: Baby, we should have a BABY, baby!
ME: WHAT? (spewing out drink, choking and falling off barstool...good thing there was a lot of sand to cushion the fall)
J: We need a baby! We should have a baby. Let's make one tonight, RIGHT NOW!
ME: WHAT? NO!.... (much unintelligible reasoning followed)

I'd distract the man, we'd head over to yet another bar for yet more fruity and rum filled concoctions and it'd come up again....

J: BABY, we need a BABY!
ME: Do you remember our kids? OUR FOUR CHILDREN? How we're outnumbered? FOUR CHILDREN! (I was physically shaking the man now)

Time would go on. Again it would come back..

J: We need a baby. We NEED a baby. Our baby. It'd be so wonderful to have one together, baby.
ME: What about our farm, honey? We're supposed to move to a farm after our FOUR CHILDREN leave the house for college, remember? the FARM! Dang, can't have a baby. See?
J: Silence. Pondering expression on his face.....
J: Baby, it could be our FARM BABY, BABY!
The rest of the night, he would just look at me, smile and say "our Farm Baby, Baby!"

Let's just say that I made doubly sure to take that little orange BC pill each day while there. The next day Jeff felt like hell and had absolutely NO MEMORY of the whole FARM BABY idea. To this day he thinks I made it up. I found a few of his coworkers to tell him he was, in fact, rambling on about some farm baby.

OK, it's totally lame here in type, but in person, I can totally mimic his words and expression. It's wet-your-pants kind of funny. TO THIS DAY all I have to do is say "farm baby" and I laugh till I cry while he walks away rolling his eyes.

The only farm babies that will join our lives will be of the cow/sheep/chicken persuasion. Holy crap. Another child? Now? wow.


OK, I don't know WHAT the hell this thing will become. All I know is that I like it. I really, REALLY like it. It was this idea hatched in my brain back in yarn school 08. It didn't QUITE turn out how I expected it to, but I'm ok with that. I spun up some thick & thin singles, dyed it in apparently horrificly jarring colors and it's going to be felted. It may or may not turn into a felted bag. Or maybe I'll find an old black or grey sweater at good will, felt it and use this as accent material to sew up a felted bag? Or I may just pull it out at knitting functions just to see the knitters go "WOW!" and jump back. Nothing freaks out a knitter working on a perfectly normal sweater like a spectacularly fugly mix of colors swung out before their eyes. You know it's spectacular when your knitting friends have to fan their faces to get the vision to clear. Wow, indeed. When asked "WHY?" last night I said, "Well, I'm trying to learn to live with color." (I usually dress in black, white, tan, boring colors) I was told "Maybe you should learn to RUN AWAY from the colors!" Who knows what it will become? Maybe it'll get a bit muted when felted.

Such a pretty bloom

How do you selfless giving-away-of-the-knitting people do it? I knit this for my sister in law. I dearly love her and know she will enjoy this. I am not even a lover of the color red as accessories for myself, but I totally want to KEEP it. A little voice inside my head keeps saying, "MINE! MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE!" So, I will do the right thing, since I already showed her the scarf in progress, and she'll be wondering if I show up to family events wearing said scarf. Going to give it to her tomorrow.

I actually still have almost enough of the yarn to make another one for myself. Going to cast on tonight.
Pattern: Tiennie's Old Shale Scarf
Yarn: Collinette Jitterbug in Vatican Pie colorway. Yes, vatican pie. I know, I giggle each time I think about it.
Needles: sz 7's
Modifications: Knit in garter stitch instead of stockinette. I love garter stitch and it will help as I don't think the sister in law will block it if she washes it again.






OH, and we're in the process of buying a farm! 91 acres, a tiny farmhouse, a few outbuildings (one of which would make a fabulous dye lab/craft home), a spring-fed pond and well. It's about 10 miles south of Garnett, KS. NO, I won't be moving there any time soon. We're hoping to move after the youngest 2 go to college, about 10 yrs from now. YES, we'll be spending lots of weekends and summer get-aways there. YES, I'm totally excited and YES I'm also buying major amounts of bug spray. I'm also going to wear my hot orange Mexican Cowgirl hat every time I go down there. SO. FREAKING. EXCITED!

Thoughts of wooly animals grazing on the hills have entered my daydreams, but I'll have to get over my issues in dealing with things that poo. I'm just now getting used to the children, you know. Animals? Yeah. Someone has to feed them, water them, clean them, clean AFTER them, give them medicine, keep things from EATING THEM and clean up the poo. I'm proud of the fact that most of the 4 children now mostly take care of themselves in that area and am not sure if I want to start all that up again as soon as we send the last ones out of the house. I think I'll just read the blogs of those with animals for now.

Joey on one of his inventions at the lake this weekend. A make-shift zipline. Rope, a hill, a hook and a handle from some water-skiing equipment. And the bad mom of the year award goes to..........ME! Seriously? There's a beer bottle right in the corner of the picture. Yes, he's zip lining down a rope (that at least a tree trimmer tied the knots in) over chunks of wood and cement blocks in the winter while his mom's downing a coors light. Boy, motherhood doesn't get much better than that, does it? Cripes almighty. I do actually feed, nurture and look after the children now and again. No worries.

Your White Trash is Showing....

I apologize for the last wimpy entry. I was outnumbered, half deaf and quite overwhelmed. Scary White Trash Mama came out about an hour after the last post. OH yeah. YELLING Scary White Trash Mama, who is definitely NOT afraid of 9 yr old boys. Damn I do love her. Let's just say by 10:30pm all boys were either in beds on the floor or couches in the big tv/fireplace room. They all realized it was in their best interest not to upset the system. Or to upset the Mama. Lights were out, voices were at a whisper. Calmness reigned. I let them watch cartoons and as long as children stayed in their proper beds and voices didn't get loud enough for me to hear them upstairs, they could stay up as long as they wanted. They were all out cold by 11:30. Slept till at least 7am! The next morning they were totally behaved, normally squirrely boys. They played video games, legos, race cars and said "please" and "thank-you" at breakfast. I even overheard the boys comparing notes on how this was the "best sleepover EVER" so apparently I didn't scar them for life. I was able to sit and spin all morning with a smile on my face. Scary White Trash Mama rocks! I do love my alter ego's.

Note to self: The next time each mother jokingly (or totally serious in one case) gives me permission to beat upon her children, I need to ask if I can give them a little bit of benadryl instead. :) OK, OK, I'm totally kidding now. It is a pretty thought, though. It's really a miracle anyone ever comes to our house, isn't it?

Ok, this is totally a summer project for me. A table top at a local bar & grill had a design all made of BEER BOTTLECAPS! How cool would a table of Mike's Hard Limeade bottlecaps be? How much fun would it be to GET all those bottlecaps? I see many very, VERY easy knitting projects ahead for me this summer. Friends don't let friends knit drunk, and all that. right?


My poor-woman's niddy noddy. The key to it is to insert an old-time long, skinny metal knitting needle or tunisian crochet hook inside the bobbin and then the winding takes MUCH less time and effort. Of course, I didn't hit upon that little idea until the 10th bobbin I wound. Yes, I have a real niddy noddy in the plans for hubby to make for me and I have friends that have some I could borrow, I just was ready to skein up some yarn at 1:30am. What's a girl to do? It worked fabulously.