Bored to tears at Best Buy, while Mama handles the dead video camera issue.
Alright – for those not following me on twitter, I am now among the ranks of those with netbooks. The sacrifice (as I don’t have the budget for buying a new netbook) was my beloved video camera. continue reading…
So as usual Sunny and I were at Starbucks for our Thursday Spinning night and we were attracting the attention of plenty of casual and not so casual observers.
Sunny got several laughs at my expense as I muttered under my breath in a tone out of “Rain Man” ‘business cards, yes I think I need business cards’ as I was asked often about where to find my yarn, and how to get more information about spinning etc… continue reading…
Isn’t this pretty! I’m really excited about the season finally showing it’s colors. I’ve been watching the green poke up through the ground along side our property line and have been hoping that we’ll see some bright yellow some time soon.
And there you have it!
No new spinning pics for you today – I’m working on the same Rambouillet that I was working on last week, and while I am not dyeing it today, I will be doing so in the next few days, after I ply it and determine if I’ve gotten a couple hundred yards of it spun. continue reading…
Well this last month has been interrupted by first a trip to Las Vegas to visit my brother and mother, and then coming home to my family getting some sort of gastro-intestinal flu. I’ve become way too familiar with my washing machine, but in that time that my Whirlpool front loader and I have had together, I’ve made a discovery you would think that I would have already known.
My washer has a spin only cycle.
Yep. I will now be able to process more wool at home (oh I can hear my husband groaning over that now…) and I can spin out the fiber that I’ve dyed.
The drying time has been an issue here as we just don’t have space, but it now appears that we will be able to get more dying done, and I won’t have to worry about my nosy neighbor calling the city to say my house is covered in an odd stringy substance.
It is April, and there are Daffodils showing signs of being ready to bloom all over the place and the weather is just getting so beautiful out… I am fielding more interview calls for QA Manager positions, and I’ve taken on some new clients for web-design. At the end of the month is the CT Sheep and Wool Festival that I will be going to with Sunny. In between all this I’m working on getting my Etsy shop re-stocked, and consider getting a production wheel.
That would make 4 wheels for those who are counting…
I’m actually considering selling my Colonial Wheel. I don’t have space to set it up and it really deserves the room to be on display. I guess I’ll have to give that some thought. I know that I really want the jumbo flyer for my HitchHiker Roadbug from the Merlin Tree and hope to pick one up at the CT Sheep and Wool fest.
In the mean time, since I’ve discovered this new setting on my machine, I will be stocking the Etsy shop with hand dyed, locally processed sliver! I’ll announce when I’ve done my latest updates there.
It’s really nice, with my daughter getting ready to start homeschooling in earnest, it’s been a relief that we have the Etsy shop to supplement income. Homeschooling can be done very inexpensively, but we’re making sure we can provide our kids with the tools they need to succeed in the world – as it takes money to make money, I am hoping we can cover some of her foundations costs this year with the profits from TGTreaasures.
So – we’re home, it was a heck of an adventure and my kids are happy to be home, and I even got back to my Thursday evening spinning – something that just hasn’t happened in a while due to my spinning partner in crime being in her first trimester of pregnancy (she’s out now and finds out tomorrow if she has a baby boy or girl in there *grins*.)
If you are around Bristol CT on Thursday night and want to come spin with us – please do! We meet up at about 6:30 PM and are there until they close up. This week is iffy as to if we’ll be there or not, but other weeks you can definitely find us there.
So that silk and merino/tencil I promised pics of?
I had hoped to post more when I was in Las Vegas, but my little Diva didn’t get as much done on her homeschooling programs during the days like we’d have liked, so before bed at night this became a frequent visage in the window…
She’s a bright little cookie and has figured out how to use my cell phone as well. She has started texting folks, not content to work on her homeschool website, – no she also wants to Text Daddy, Auntie Reesa, Grandma, and a few others. It makes things a little challenging as she’s got my phone figured out better than I have.
So it’s spring, shearing season is upon us, and more than likely I will be going back to the same farm in June to pick up more fleeces. Sunny and I are going to wash them out in her backyard this time though, so when we send them off for processing we’re not paying an arm and a leg for processing gunk out that we could do ourselves. We also hope to do a bit more dying together than we did last summer. We’ll be doing as much as we can outside in the shade as she’ll be getting rather large by then…
I am really excited for both she and her husband – this is their first baby, and my Husband was best man at their wedding. As her husband’s a police officer in the next town over, there are very few odds that we’ll ever have pictures of him posted here, but for future reference, I’ll just call him Kel here. Kel’s a pretty good guy and I’ve known him for ages… I don’t think he really grasps what we’re doing yet with the spinning though. *grins* When his house is overtaken with yarn, as well as all the baby paraphernalia I’m sure I’ll get partial blame.
I am looking forward to the CT Sheep and Wool festival as well. It is the 100′th anniversary of it, but I can’t find a functioning website for it anymore. Which completely stinks. I know it is happening though – and on April 26, Sunny and I will be there. I’m hoping that Claire can make it too – it’s a small enough venue that we may bring my little Diva and if Claire brings her daughter, I expect they will play well together, leaving the adults to be able to oggle spinning wheels and fiber as well as let Sunny get a chance to try out several types of spinning wheels to see if she likes one over another… until then she’s using mine and really enjoying it – when she’s not having tension problems. 
And speaking of Tension – I’ll have a whopper of a tension problem tomorrow if I don’t get to sleep now. I’ll be bringing a wheel with me to my daughter’s dance class, so I should get some sleep now.
Until later!
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| From the Diva’s first Day at Dance School |
Monday my daughter had her first day of Dance School.
Talk about mommy shock. She was more than happy to have me leave her while she learned, pranced, tippety tapped, and tumbled…
The day also included discovering that at 3750 miles I do not have to get my car serviced (wait to 5K now,) so I ran laundry and of course before we left for her first day with Miss Tammy, I pulled the following shades out of the dye pot:
Wood Rose 8oz
Green/Purple 8oz
Moss Green
Sunrise Yellow
Varigated Butterscotch 4 oz
Cherry Red 4 oz
Bubblegum Sherbert Mohair Locks – 2oz
I also explained to my mail man what the heck all that stuff was hanging off the porch. He had no clue what roving was, and spinning was a foreign concept to him. He wondered why I was getting “Art Supplies – Wool” shipped internationally. Ha. 
See you’re never too old to learn!
On the wheel right now I have some white Corriedale, on the bobbin I have some Cormo/Angora, Baby Bluez, and candycorn. The last two are Merino and Merino blend.
Tonight I need to take new pics of everything in stock plus the new things I want to stock tomorrow at my Etsy store. I have an Advertising slot for Thurs… and I need the store brought up to snuff.
Tomorrow night I will set out to mordant the following shades – no nifty title to the roving yet:
Red
Dark Green
Light Green
Yellow
Orange
These are for a custom order for a baby blanket. Hopefully she likes the shades I generate out of my dye pot – its going to be one of a kind however, and for that baby I can’t think of anything better
I also have to get my fiber swap out to SweatPeaFibers over on Ravelry. I think I have enough lovely stuff dyed up to surprise the heck out of her. (pleasantly so I hope, I hope.) I’ve still not heard from my August swap partner, and hope that the fiber made it to Singapore fine. She’s not updated on Ravelry or her blog lately, so it’s hard to tell.
And on top of that I have two small ones who have discovered that with their tiny little table and chair set they can use the chairs and treadle Beaky while I’m at work. They both want to learn to spin so much and still The Diva is asking for her own wheel for her birthday. I think Rhinebeck this year may have us on a search for a DT Pinkie. Anyone out there know of a vendor who’ll have one to demo?
CT Sheep and Wool Fest – April 26, 2008
