I really do plan to write. Really I do.
In the mean time follow this link to come kitty cuteness.
Follow this link to some koala cuteness.
Knitting continues for the Harry Potter Knit and Crochet Housecup Challenge. Days off from the store are immanent. Blogging will occur - along with lovely gardening if the rain decides to stop. Everything in the garden is growing amazingly, including the weeds. It's all good though.
Ok. Ravelry has changed the lives of so many knitters, self included, in so many different ways. For instance, right now I am deep into the Harry Potter Knit/Crochet House Cup Challenge. Basically, you sign up before the start of term, get sorted into Houses, once classes are posted you pick projects and knit for points. There is so much more to it than that, but that's enough explanation to get by.
One of the things I love about the HPKCHC is the sense of community. You really get involved with the people in your house. Another thing I love about it is that it is getting me knitting. For once I will post pictures quickly, then give explanations later. It's very close to the kids' bedtime so I think pictures will do fo now.
This is from last term. It is the only project I managed to do. The assigment was to make a normal item in miniature.
This was this term's first assignment for Muggle Studies. We had to knit something that was inspired by a muggle tv show or movie. This is Jayne Cobb's hat from Firefly.
This is what I handed in today. For Defense Against the Dark Arts we were practicing the Protego charm and had to creat something that provides protection. This capelet sort of thing protects me from the spring chills that pop up sometimes unexpectedly.
More info and pix forthcoming!
Last week I took the kids to see Susan at the Hudson Valley Fiber Farm. The kids were off from school, I took off from the store and I wanted to have a fun day out. We were hoping that there would be baby sheep and goats, but there were just some very, very pregnant sheep and goat mamas-to-be. We had a great time, as we always do when we see Susan. The people kids loved all the animals. One goat in particular decided that Maeve was yummy and nibbled on her shirt and hair incessantly. It was rather cute! The pictures are stuck in my camera 'cause the cord is at the store.
Because we didn't get to see any babies, we had planned to go back when they started arriving. Well, I was happy to read this. We planned to go back out to the farm after the kids' first day back at school to see the babies. I thought the kids had a good time the first time we went, but today was amazing! The kids got to hold the two new babies, Arno and Bell! They were so happy, and all of them, Maeve included, were so gentle with the babies. Again, pictures trapped in camera, coming soon.
When we got home Fiona made us French Toast for dinner. It was really good! My girl can cook! I have to say that I really love breakfast foods for dinner. And fluffy French Toast is just delish.
When we were at Susan's I picked up yarn to dye for the store. 30 skeins of perfect Cormo yarn, ready to be dyed by yours truly. I just have to decide if I want to stick with my turkey roaster or get one or two stainless steal pots. I may want to try two color dye jobs which would be much easier with two pots, as opposed to dyeing twice in the roaster. I also picked up some of her new sock yarn for my own personal use. I see some time spent on Ravelry trying to pick a project.
Susan Gibbs, of Martha's Vineyard and Hudson Valley Fiber Farms, wrote a bit about the UN declaring 2009 International Year of Natural Fibers. You can find her post here. I'm going back there right now to follow the links.
For those of you who are unacquainted with Susan, she is just amazing! Check out her blog, because if I told you everything she does, you would never ever believe me. You'll be hearing more about her here, because I am going to be getting her yarn to dye for various events and I can tell you I am sooo excited! Check out her photos. I'm sure that she takes the best pictures of the most beautiful sheep and goats, not to mention those gorgeous dogs. She loves her animals and they produce amazing fiber. Now go. Go, go, go.
I have actually been knitting quite a bit lately - and even finishing some stuff! It turns out that my inability to stay awake once the kids were asleep, and therefore my inability to knit more than one or two rows of a very simple projects, was due to a sinus infection. Mind you I ignored the exhaustion and sinus pressure for two weeks thinking that I was just a little run down, that it was the weather, it was because I was cold so often (much to catch up on, but the propane truck couldn't make it to the house, the tank was almost empty so the temp in the house stayed loooow), any number of excuses. F got sick so I took her to the doctor and made a tag along appointment. Turned out she had the cold, I had the sinus infection that held on through two rounds of antibiotic. Next time I can't keep my eyes open despite a pm cuppa several days in a row, and my face feels like it's too full of wool, I will get my tuchas to the doctor!
So, now about the fun stuff! I have finished (and this is from memory so I hope I don't forget anything) 2 neckwarmers (one I whipped up off the top of my head), a Stolen Moments Shawl (although I guess my gauge was off so it's a bit small, more like a Stolen Moments large-but-not-too-long scarf), a Calorimetry (I'll check the spelling later) and something else, but I need to look around the house and check Ravelry because I can't remember now.
I will take pictures and post them with links. I will, and soon, because I now am taking 2 days off from the store a week. I was really going nuts, nothing was getting accomplished at home or work, it was just too much. This is the second week with my double days off (last week I still felt like a lump from the SI so I didn't get much done) so I am really trying to catch up on things and get somewhat organized and a routine going so I can get back to doing things I like - like blogging and finishing knitting project, cooking food for the family that requires more than boiling water/turning on the oven and opening a box. I love the convenience of open and heat meals, especially now that I can find healthy ones, but when it's every night it gets kind of old.
Well, the day must start! I got F off to school already and I am going to go swimming after dropping off M, so I have to get organized. I can use the Vassar swimming pool as an alum, and I an determined to take advantage of the opportunity! Also, I get to hang out with some of my favorite people when I am there, so what could be bad?
Added after saving: Just remembered about the title - because of all the knitting and some dry skin I have a cut on my thumb and I have found it difficult to cast on with a band-aid. I was going to go somewhere with that when I started writing but I got distracted. I think that's a good thing. I guess I should put the title in once I'm done. Just a thought.
...I decided to post. I had started a post soon after we lost power a little while ago. I'm sticking it in here as part of my catch up.
It's a snow day! Or an ice day. In any event, no school so no pick ups. We lost power last night and actually had fun. The lights started blinking, then went out. We were looking for flashlights and candles when they went back on. We were rushing around collecting light emitting objects when the lights went out again. Thanks to a box of Shabbot candles I've had since 1998 we had light (it was really nice!) and we watched Spiderwick Chronicles on our charged (yay) portable DVD player that we have for vacations. When the lights went on we filled drinking water containers, did the dishes, made trips to the bathroom while we could still flush because we were convinced that the power would go off again. Everything stayed on, but we decided we liked how calm it was with the lights off and the candles on so we turned off the lights, lit the candles and turned the movie back on.
As it turned out, we were really lucky. Some of our friends were without power for days. We just had an adventure.
I've been starting a lot of knitting recently, spurred on by friends and Ravelry. At the moment I have a shocking number of projects on the needles. I have two lace shawls just started, a simple lace scarf (Stolen Moments Shawl), a project yet to be started for a KAL/contest, and a cardigan. That's just the active pile!
I got a new computer! This is good news, but it is the result of sad news. My old computer bit the dust. I had beened warned, so I was all backed up, but it was still a shock.
You can ask the kids. I don't turn up the heat. Their pleas for warmth fall on deaf ears. Just thinking about the heating bills makes me shiver! I wasn't really bothered until I realized that being cold and staying wrapped in a blanket was keeping me from knitting! I had to find ways to stay warm enough to knit, without turning up the heat. Mind you, even if I did turn up the heat, our first floor is so badly insulated that it wouldn't do any good anyway. So, here are some of the ways I found to stay warm enough to keep the needles going:
Hot Drinks
I have rediscovered hot tea for purposes other than taste and caffeine. It really does warm me up and keeps the hands toasty, too. Good for knitting in a chilly living room.
Hot Pads
I got a hot pad with clove and other pumpkin pie spices in it so it smells good. Few minutes in the microwave, put it on my shoulders (it's ever so nicely shaped to sit snugly) and it warms me up.
Long Underwear
This is my next clothing purchase. I love long underwear but have none. Don't know how this happened, but it did. They do keep you very toasty and can be sooo soft. Warm and soft - what could be bad?
Cozy Robe
A number a years ago David got the warmest coziest fleace robe for a holiday present. It's now mine. It has the Hogwarts crest on the back and I love it. Ipulled it out from it's summer home in the basement with the extra blankets and it's doing wonders for my evening knitting.
Wood Stove
We have been planning on getting one of these for a while and I think this is finally the year! Not only will it warm up the one of the coldest rooms in the house, the Living Room, it will have that lovely wood burning smell. I love the smell of a fire in a fireplace - or wood stove.
Now that I have my arsenal of warmth, I can knit myself something toasty to wear!
I'm posting without proof reading so please forgive any typos.
Ok. The title is silly, but please check out my friend Susan's blog entry and follow her links. I think that Bonobos are now my favorite primates, and we all need a favorite, don't we?
Well, it has arrived. Our last morning on MV is here and we are all very sad to leave. Well, the kids and I are very sad, David is kind of fine with it. He's not so much a beach and hanging out kind of person, although he will miss the endless Frisbee games with Emmett.
I will try to catch up on stuff and then expand with details when I load the pictures. There is still a little packing to do and Fiona has some shopping plans before we get on the ferry.
I won second place for my Foliage hat that I entered in the Martha's Vineyard Agricultural Society Fair! And really even cooler is that Fiona won a first and a third for a Malabrigo scarf and a hat that she designed herself. It had started out as a scarf, ended up a square hat and then when she put it on she thought it looked like it had ears so she embroidered a cat face on it! My friend Susan won first place for her goats so it was a good year at the fair.
We did get to help Susan and Patrick with the goats one morning which ended up being a real highlight of the trip. The kids got to ride in the back of Susan's farm cart out to where the goats were pastured which was a fun and bumpy ride. Each of my kids got to feed three Susan's kids that are still on the bottle and I have to say it was adorable! They had a drinking race and Sweet William won for the first time ever! We then helped Susan and Pat move the fence. At first we tried to keep the goats inside while we moved it, but when we saw that it was hopeless we let all the goats out stopped trying to keep the goats in. After setting the fence back up and getting most of the goats back in Sweet William, no doubt still high from his milk drinking victory (and really just acting like a goat while Emmett did a fabulous imitation of a very inexperienced herding dog) wouldn't get into the pen. He is such a little cutie that I figured I would pick him up - and after checking with Susan that it was ok, I did. I really wouldn't mind picking up all my fiber that way, in an adorable little warm bundle. Sweet William was not really all that happy about this however and showed his disapproval but swinging his little horned head around. After he connected with my ear, and took to wiggling a lot, and getting his foot caught in the fence, I finally got him back into the pen with his compatriots. I am blanking on the names of the other two bottle fed babies, but I will make sure they are all correctly identified in the photos.
I actually got quite a lot of knitting done while we were here. I didn't finish anything, but started an awful lot. I even had a bag of Sheep Shop 2 delivered from the company so i could start a sweater that is in the most recent issue of Knit Scene. The ladies at the front desk of the inn really got a kick out of it as I asked on a daily basis if my yarn had arrived. The woman I had spoken to before we came here knew to ask. I didn't know what address to use to have it shipped because the address on the package changes depending on the carrier and sometimes the post office get a little confused here apparently so I really had that package over-addressed. It got here though and I can't wait to put pictures up and update my Ravelry queue and all of that.
I can't put off packing any longer as check out is in 35 minutes. I will have fun putting up all the vacation photos when I finally get them onto the computer. I will be at the store bright and early tomorrow, but I will try to get the pictures up soon.
So long until next year Martha's Vineyard.
Ok. I guess if I sat down and kept track of the things I do each day, and I plan to, really, I would be able to give a chronologically accurate description of what I've been doing. But, as it stands I will just write it down as it pops into my head and hope for some semblance of order.
I had mentioned that we were going to help Susan with the morning chores for the goats. After not waking up on time, and taking longer than expected to get the kids through grabbing a breakfast on the run, I actually got service on my cel phone and saw that I had a voice mail. This in itself was cool because after changing cel phone service a few months ago I didn't realize that I had to set up my voice mail. I thought it would at least automatically go to that recorded voice. apparently not. While in Connecticut, people were trying to get a hold of me and getting weird messages that made it seem as if I didn't have cel phone service at all anymore. I called AT&T to find out that my voice mail had expired because I hadn't signed on to it in time. After sorting that our and trying to find a place where I had service to jump through a few hoops, I got my voice mail set up. Mind you, I got service on a very windy beach so I could only hope that I had heard the computer voice correctly. So, when I listened to my first voice mail, I thought the vioce said I had 200 messages. Instead it had said 2 unheard messages. When I thought it was 200 I could only hope that it played the most recent ones first! Well, to make a long story just a little bit longer, it was Pat of Susan and Patrick fame saying that they had forgotten about needing to be at the West Tisbury Farmers Market so they had to take care of the goats at 5:30 and hadn't thought that we wanted to start our day that early. I had to agree. I do draw the line at 4:30 wake ups, even for fiber animals. So, the kids and I took our breakfasts back to our cottage and watched Animal Planet.
We went to the Farmers Market and I got to buy some of Susan's yarn. The stuff we had dyed the day before wasn't dry yet, but her colors are so pretty. I hung out with Susan and Harry while David and the kids did the whole farmers market thing and went to the playground. the playground is a good old fashion one with one of those spinning rides that have been deemed too dangerous and likely to cause law suits in most other places. My kids had a bast! i am so bummed I forgot the camera cord for the computer. Grr Arggh!
There is much more to say, but the family is waiting. My BIL and his wife arrived yesterday and we are off to another Farmers Market. Maybe we will get some food this time!
I promise links to everything when I don't feeling so rushed.
