Valerie is awesome

Well, Valerie can help with just about everything. She helped me figure out how to spin my short little Bison down fibers (very small drafting triangle), and turned me on to blogging with my phone. AND, while I was seeking her help, she helped someone else with her knowledge of print color, graphic design, and teenage psyche. Pretty good, eh?

Spun Yarn

I finally have my own spinning wheel, and I love it!! I entered some yarn in the county fair and got a blue ribbon, but I have a better picture of the yarn that I spun up to make another Monmouth Cap. I love handspun. What can I say more?

Pirate Hats!

No, not that kind of pirate hat.

I've been knitting for re-enactors. Here is "Mad Pete" in a monmouth cap I knit:

Here is "Cross" in a thrummed cap I madly finished for him. Mine's the one on the right.

I'm loving making these hats as authentically as possible in wool, color, and construction. What fun!

Dyeing to Knit

I have all of these fun pictures of my knitting. I've just looked back at my last posts from over two years ago, and there are so many unfinished projects that I've now finished, and new ones that came and went. I don't have much that's interesting to say, so I'll just post a few pictures. This is yarn I dyed at the recent knitting retreat at my local yarn shop. It was so much fun! I always wanted to dye, but I had no idea how much. I have so many things in my head now that I want to try!

These are "subliminal socks". First, we were to write messages on the sock blanks that had meaning to us or to the person for whom we would knit the socks.

Then we unravelled the yarn into hanks.

Finally, we knit the yarn up into beautiful (or crazy!) socks!

I'm back!

It's been three months since my last post. How does so much time go by so quickly? But in the interim of no knitting and no blogging, I turned a big belly into a beautiful baby boy! Yeah!


So I don't know what to call all of my children on this blog. Everyone seems to have great nicknames to protect their children's identities. Valerie's Post explored her take on the phenomenon, and I've been deciding what to call my kids besides, "the three-year-old" or "my oldest". How do you approach this if it doesn't come naturally?


My knitting has suffered from never having two hands free, as has my typing! However, I have completed my first felting project! I got to turn this...



...into this!


It's so cool to actually experience the before and after.




I used my three-year-old (what will I call her?) as a model for scale.
The pattern is the Squatty Sidekick from Knitting Daily. Now my 9-year-old wants one too.

What Have I been up to?

A sigh for the untouched "Avast" sweater.

Well, the baby is due in less than three weeks. Could this possibly be true? I've just discovered the secret to making the end of the ninth month go quickly. If you put of ALL baby preparation, you will suddenly be hit by a sense of absolute panic, and you'll hope that time passes more slowly. Wow do I have a lot to do! Of course it doesn't help that a big event makes me think that I could accomplish what I can't otherwise: having everything in my home and life organized and clean all at the same time. Yeah, right. I've decided my biggest goals are making room for the bassinette in my bedroom and ordering a nursing bra. Of course today is my 2, no 3 year old's birthday, and Tuesday is my boy's birthday, and I'm helping my mom finish with finish work on her cabin this weekend, and, and, and.


This all leads to the fact that I haven't touched my knitting needles in a week. I have touched the crochet hook (a blanket for the baby), and I've carried my kintting bag around, but otherwise, nothing. *SIGH* I started these socks too, and I would so love to work on them.

Happy PI Day!

If y'all didn't know, today was PI day....you know, 3.14, March 14? This holiday must be celebrated by eating pie, of course! This was my second pi day, as I just learned about it last year. I just had a fantastic day of pie, intermingled with high stress of a science fair and minor crisis for my Mom.

On a low-fat diet and everything, I managed to love pie day! (OK, I cheated a little). For lunch, we had beef and chicken pot pies, chocolate pie, pecan pie, rhubarb pie, huckleberry pie, chess pie (wow!), and lowfat Blueberry Crumble pie. This all enjoyed with some fun and intelligent women that I don't get to see enough of. (OK, OK, of whom I don't see enough?)

If that wasn't enough, for dinner (late, after the science fair), I had an AMAZING low-fat beef pie with a crust that was made from potatoes+ that was made especially for me by another caring friend, then had a little blackberry and banana cream pie for dessert. What a day.

I've completely neglected the many knitting projects I have going, but the picture at the top is most of the stuff I have on the needles right now.