howdy!

Now I'm a little embarrassed when I see how long it's been since I've updated this blog. While day to day life has gone by during this time, I now have 2 pieces of news. The first (and most exciting) is that I'm going to be a grandma! I've known for a while, but my daughter and her husband have made the news public on their blogs so now I can share. Of course, this means that I can knit lots of cute little clothes! I've started on a couple things, but I'll wait to share until the projects are a little further along.

The other interesting new development is my Ashford rigid heddle loom. I've had it now for about a year, but I got a stand for it for Christmas from my husband and it is so much more comfortable to use now that it's not sitting in my lap. I also recently got the book Textures and Patterns for the Rigid Heddle Loom by Betty Linn Davenport. This is a great book for working with the rigid heddle loom. It has so many patterns! I've always liked stitch pattern books for knitting , and this is one for my loom. I keep mentally going through my yarn stash thinking of new ideas from just looking through this book. My plan of action is to work my way through the book, creating projects from the patterns in the book. I just finished the table runner above in a weft pickup pattern. The yarn was Lily's Cotton and Cream, and the weft float pattern gave the runner just a little extra zing. I think the pattern worked well with the self striping yarn. Next up are samples with warp float patterns. If they turn out, I'll post them here.

Lollygagging Around

I used this word at my work the other day, as in "we aren't very busy today, and I'm just lollygagging around", and I was told by an older man that I must have learned this word from my grandma. I suppose I did, but it's a fun word, one that I like to use. It pretty much explains the state of my mind today. I do have to work, but not until 11:30, so this morning is pretty much lollygagging time. Not enough time for a project, to much time to be in a hurry.

Maybe this lollygagging is reaction to the stress the last couple of weeks. My daughter got married about 2 weeks ago, in a beautiful, fun wedding. There was a little rushing around just before her wedding to get things done, hems on dresses and flowers cut from gardens (and train tracks) on the morning of the wedding, but all in all I think the wedding ceremony went off as my daughter and my (now) son-in-law wanted. The weather was beautiful for an outdoor ceremony, and there was lots of friends and family attending. You can see pictures on my daughter's blog copperheart.

Sadly, not everything happening lately is happy. My father died before the wedding, when he fell off a ladder doing home repairs. He probably had no business up on a ladder, being 75 years old and on blood thinners, but he wanted the painting done his way, so there he was on a ladder. It was a very sudden and very untimely death. Everyone in my family will miss him greatly and I would like to thank everyone who thought of us and supported us after his death.

I have been doing some knitting and spinning, now that "The Dress" is done, but that will have to wait for another post, cause I have to get ready for work, and stop all this lollygagging around.

(Okay, one wedding picture)

Day off!

It's so nice to have an unplanned day off. This one would have been a half day at work, because I work Saturday, but since I worked 3 hours extra on Monday, it became a full day off. And what did I do with this free time, why fiber stuff of course! It was a pretty productive fiber day if I do say so myself. The first order of business was working on my daughter's wedding dress. If you have seen her blog copperheartdesigns, you know that she is getting married this summer, and she is doing most of the decorations herself. It's going to be a very artistic, very cool wedding. I volunteered to make her wedding dress. I hope that's a decision that won't come back to bite me in the butt. She picked out a fairly simple pattern for a sleeveless tea length dress with a gathered cross over bodice and bias skirt. It has a fairly wide waist band and ties. The main fabric is a light cotton with a white on white pattern of paisley and flowers. My daughter picked out a bright peacock or sea blue for the waistband and ties to contrast with the main fabric. It's a bias cut, so it took a little fiddling to get the patterns pieces lined up properly which took a while. I cut out the main fabric, but my back couldn't take any more bending over the kitchen table, so I quit for the day. I do have some time before the wedding.

I also got quite a bit of spinning done today. I finished two more skeins of some mystery roving I've stashed for a while.I still have the rest of the roving ball in the picture to finish . I hope to have enough yarn for a sweater for me when it's all spun. I bought the roving several years ago at the Wisconsin spin-in, and I can't remember what booth I bought it at, or what kind of wool it is. It spins really easily with a long draw so it's short fibered, and it isn't soft like merino so I think it's probably from a down sheep breed. It's very bouncy after it's washed though. I have a v-neck cardigan that I made for myself years ago that has seen better days, and I think I'll use this yarn to make a sweater to replace it.

2nd Useless piece of information

I am the one who named our dog Nimrod, and now I'm sorry 'cause he acts like a (sigh) nimrod.

Easter Leftovers?

The leftovers I have aren't food items--they're Easter egg dyed wool. See? This wool was dyed with the dye leftover from our family egg dyeing evening. I separated the dyes into two groups-blue, turqoise, green, teal in one group, and purple, pink, and red in the other group. I then used the oven pan method of dyeing from the book "I'd rather dye laughing". The pink/purple/red turned out just the way I thought it would, but the other dye pan turned out mostly green.I don't know what happened to the blue dyes, they just didn't seem to take hold on the fiber. The wool is from a romney fleece I bought from a fiber shop in downtown Fond du lac called The Woolgatherers. This is a fairly strong romney, but it has a really nice shine, and it's not too coarse. I've combed some of the wool, but I haven't started to spin it yet. I couldn't resist dyeing some of the wool with the easter egg dye. Now I just have to get around to spinning the wool.

So as I mentioned in my last post, my daughter has tagged me. While I will not pass the tag on, 'cause I don't want to, I will pass on some useless information about my self.

Useless info #1--I hide and hoard chocolate. I'm not sure why, since it's just me and my husband now, and he doesn't eat chocolate. Maybe I hide chocolate for the same reason that a dog hides his bones. I think deep down I'm afraid a chocolate thief will come looking for my candy stash in the night.

Check back soon for more useless information about me!

Doldrums

As my daughter told me in my comments--I'm a slacker. I'm such a slacker, I'm not answering her tag--not today at least. But it's warming up outside, and the days are getting longer and I think I'm getting out of the doldrums. Just like Milo in the Phantom Tollbooth (my favorite book when I was a kid, by the way), I'm thinking of things and I seem to be moving along.
In new developments, I've been invited to join ravelry. Yeah! It's going to take me a long time to get all my wips on the site, not to mention my stash. Oh well, maybe ravelry will help me keep track of all my stuff. Yeah right.

cold cold cold

How cold is it? Cold enough I would just like to see zero. Negative numbers are just so negative. I have one dead car (mine) pushed into the road so that we can get the older beater van out. It’s still running, even though it’s 10 years older than my car. Oh well, it’s not supposed to last much longer, the cold that is, not the van. The van seems to be indestructible.
In the good news dept. it’s Packer game day! Yeah! Go Pack GO! To make it even better, I finished some socks today that have sort of kind of packer colors. See?
Also in the picture is the 'mandatory' knitting blog cat. Her name is Pouncer and she doesn’t do anything cute, she just curls up on blankets and sleeps. I just woke her up when I took the picture.
But the socks are done after hanging out in an unfinished state for an ungodly amount of time. That’s cause for little celebration. Now if the Packers win that would be great!

Now let the Straightening begin

So Christmas came and went and I did not get my projects done. Except for the shawl for my sister-in-law, the only finished Christmas projects were sewing ones. What is wrong with me? I just don’t know. The afghan for my Mom, --- unfinished. The vest for my Dad, -- unfinished. Even the socks for my brother, -- totally unfinished. To add insult to injury, my knitting projects are scattered from one end of the house to the other. All my carefully hidden yarn was moved because of Christmas decorating, and piled into heaps in the attic. In my regular knitting areas which are now disaster areas, I have many, many false starts that have to be pulled apart and restored to ball status. January is shaping up to be one hell of an organizing month.
But on the other hand, I did have a very nice Christmas, and I did get the quilt for my niece done. See:

You can’t see it in the picture, but there are frogs in the blue fabric. My niece is just crazy about frogs. So I did get one project accomplished this Christmas. Now I’m just going to have to spend all January straightening up. Now for next Christmas......