Archive for May, 2009

The other day I coughed up the dough for a 12 pack of 1 quart canning jars and a huge (21 gallon I think?) canning pot.  Like, so huge it exceeds my largest burner size by about 2 inches.  Holy wow.

Since I finally got my grubby little hands on these nifty jars, I decided to give space dyeing a dry with my rovings.  I L.O.V.E. it!  It’s so fast and easy it’s insane!  There is NO handling of the fiber while it’s cooking so it comes out as  nice and fluffy looking as it went in.  I am supposed to be able to get 7 jars in the rack thingy, but I can’t seem to position the jars correctly.  I can see myself getting a roving dyed every day with this method.

I’m hoping I can perfect my kettle-dyeing (roving) with this huge pot as well, since I’ll have more manuvering room.  I love kettle-dyed roving!

I’m about to update my knitting tips page, so keep an eye out!

Not much … I haven’t been doing much of anything for the past week.  I wish this laziness would go away!

Yesterday I managed to start working in my craft room* – just rearranging a tad and organizing.  Adding art … I’m really loving being in here now.  I’ve collected things over the years, and they never really had a place.  The knick-knacks just didn’t fit in anywhere else in the house so they got put away.

*Note: I’m not sure what to call this room anymore.  It used to be the sewing room, and I still call it that out of habit.  But I don’t sew anymore ….

Yesterday I came across Amy Brown’s website, where I bought several open edition prints from, way back before I had children.  Suddenly I remembered all those long forgotton items!  I had 3 prints stashed away, and an ornament I bought with my $30 inheiratance from my grandfather.  Yes, $30.  I didn’t know him well, but I still needed something special to remember him and that was it.

Last year I bought a sheepy yarn bag from Down 2 Earth Diapers.  I just loved it so much, yet I knew it would be toy more than anything else.

And then there are all the art projects from Abby.  I have my favorites that I keep, and they were just kind of lying around the house.

Well no more!

I added 3 new rovings to my Etsy shop today:

Merino/Tencel (top two)

Seawool (bottom left)

Merino (bottom right)

Just got a nice sized order from them today so be on the lookout!  It’s alot nicer than I expected it to be!  If it’s a popular seller, I may keep it stocked on a regular basis.

First off, Happy Mom day to all my mommas out there!  We undertake the hardest and most rewarding jobs in the world and we deserve a day of recognitiion.

On that note, I don’t expect any recognition.  I’ve learned that my husband thinks it better to wait until I ask if he will ever acknowledge the holiday.   He seems to have finally come around though, as he woke me up this morning with a kiss and a Happy Mother’s Day.  Then we headed out to lunch, where  I informed him that I had taken my gift into my own hands and bought 8 oz of fiber from Selah, so he didn’t need to buy anything for me.

We wound up at Lowe’s for some PVC pipe I needed to make a longer niddy noddy, and he bought me a Magnolia tree!  (Our yard is in desperate need of landscaping)

Now if only he would have cleaned the house, it would have been perfect!   But I suppose he really did need to mow the yard … All together it was a nice day – the best holiday/birthday I’ve had that was for me in a long time.

I hope all you other mom’s had equally great days!

I finally have Abby doing some chores.  She actually loves to help out, except if it means picking up her toys – then all you hear is ‘I need a break.  Mom, I’m tired.’   So I started a chore chart for her – she does a chore, she gets a sticker.  After 7 stickers, she gets a dollar.  Right now I have her cleaning the table and her room.  She’s also emptied the dishwasher for me, but that makes me nervous.

Is it bad that secretly I love her doing these things, b/c it means less work for me?  :baghead:

I added a new category to my gallery devoted to my customer’s finished objects made with my yarns or rovings.  So if you’ve ever purchased from me and finished something with it, I would just love it if you could please allow me to use your image to display in the gallery!

Also, while I’m at it, if you are a member of Ravelry, I would appreciate it if you could stash your yarn/fiber from me under my brand name.

If you do either, I will give you a discount of 10% off your next order from me!  In the case of Ravelry, you will have to comment here, email me, or send me a PM on Ravelry.

As promised …

On the potty training front – I’m afraid Matthew has decided he didn’t like the constant reminder’s of ‘do you need to go potty?’

My son is just a bit over two years old, and I still rock him to sleep.  Some may think that he is too old for this, but I treasure it.  His soft little check nestled against my neck, the sweet little boy kisses as he tries to prolong sleep – it’s heaven.  Well, sometimes not, like when I want to go get some work done and it’s taking an hour and he’s still blowing raspberries and trying to tickle me, but I digress …

Anyhow, as I was putting him to sleep last night, I was trying to think up a colorway to dye up after he was asleep.  I knew I wanted to kettle-dye it as it’s faster and I haven’t felt up to hand-painting lately.  You see, I have a good amount of neck, shoulder and back pain and I visit a chiropracter weekly for this.  I started out going 3x a week for a month, to twice a week to a month, and I had just weaned down to once a week for a month when Richard lost a whole lotta hours at work.  I thought I would do my part and cut out expenses, so I cut out the chiro visits.

This was a mistake.  I pretty much reverted to how much pain I was in back in November when I started getting treatments, all in the span of a month.  I have since started going back weekly.

So where was I?  Oh yes.  I’m not feeling up to hand painting just yet so I knew I wanted to kettle-dye yarn.  I’ve wanted to do a pink & purple colorway for awhile now, so I thought about adding in some turquoise.  When I finally got to the dye pot, I added silver on a whim.  Once I saw all of the colors together, it just so strongly reminded me of my daughter Abby.  At 1AM I was trying to name the yarn and all creativity had run dry-  I originally was going to name it Abbyloo (Abby’s nickname).  It didn’t fit though, so I slept on it and came up with Firstborn this morning.

Tonight I am dyeing another new colorway, again one I was inspired to try while putting my son to sleep.  I caught a glimpse of the toy rocket he received from Santa last year and thought it would look nice on yarn.  So stay tuned for Retro Rocket tomorrow!

And I leave you with this lovely baby alpaca/merino yarn I spun up for a friend in a fiber trade.

I finally managed to get my previews up before the night before a stocking, whoo hoo! There are all the rovings from my previous post, as well as a couple of custom listings.  I hope to get some yarn dyed in time but I’m not optimistic on that one.

In knitting news, I finally made myself a scrubby and a ball band dishcloth!  They have both been in my queue on Ravelry forever, but I finally manged it.  I love knitted dishcloths, they scrub just as well as anything plastic or disposable you’d buy from a store, but you can use them over and over and throw them in the wash when they’re yucky.  And what’s better than cleaning with bright, cheery, hand knits?  Nothing!

On the homefront, Matthew is now potty-training!  YAY!  I am sooo excited he is doing this, and so young!  He’s at least a year earlier than Abby was.  He needs constant reminders but he can control himself pretty well.  I got in some lovely trainers from Jessica of Utopian Dreams for him yesterday and they are, for lack of a better word, stellar!  Her sewing is phenomenoal and the trainers work wonderful.  I can’t wait until I don’t have to use diapers anymore!  5 years of it, and I’m ready for it to be over.