A Few Sheep Shy of a Farm

Warning: Very Little Fiber Content & Lots of whining ahead!

YUCK!

So I spent last night with a migraine and got virtually nothing done and woke up this morning with the cold that DH has had since late last week!

YUCK! YUCK! and YUCK!

We have a major meeting happening at work tomorrow and Thursday so I have to be around and today we are preparing materials so I have to be here . . . . and I feel like blah!

Perhaps Friday will be a day when I wind up staying home?

You may have noticed by now, but I get very whiny when I’m sick!!!!!

I went across the street to the lunch place and got a big tub of chicken soup to have later today and I’m having a carton of Tropicana Immune Defence OJ this morning . . . but I can’t take any cold medicine cause it makes me too tired or too wacky depending on whether it is non-drowsy . . . and I have to be able to get about 800 things done today!

My wheel is still in pieces and now who knows when I’ll get it done . . . the sock projects haven’t seen much action, the baby blanket hasn’t been touched in a week and my WIP basket is looking more like a UFO basket lately!

Oh, and I’m starting a Garden Club! The kids (my 3 cousins, A and two other neighborhood muchkins) are going to be getting together once a month from April to October to have a garden club. Our first meeting is this Sunday (since my other plans were canceled) and we are going to talk about composting, make worm compost boxes and plant some seedlings for them to grow until the May meeting. I have a whole lesson plan worked out for them with a rough idea of what we are going to do each month. The challenge will be making it hands on enough to keep the boys happy. All three are very active and have about a 3 second span for holding still! One of the things we are going to do this week is go digging for earthworms, that should make the boys pretty happy! Actually I think this is really going to be fun. I really like the idea of teaching these kids about some earth friendly gardening practices and giving them a chance to do something they don’t ususally do. 2 of them never do outdoors stuff that doesn’t involve a ball, nothing like gardening at all so that will be a challenge but I think they are both going to like it.

I also plan to have some “contests” with prizes and certificates at the end of the time we are together. . . . things like best composter, best seed starter, biggest harvest, most creative reuse of household stuff . . . and who knows what else I’ll come up with. Of course, given the ages I’ll be sure that they each get a ribbon for something . . . .

Okay, got to go do some presentation materials. . . . more tomorrow if I can.

Is it me, or do the weekends go by far too fast?

It seems like yesterday was Friday! There was just so much to do over the weekend that it flew by! I suppose the migraine I had for most of Saturday didn’t help much . . . .

I got a bit more done on the wheel, though it isn’t finished quite yet. . . . perhaps this week? I did very little knitting over the weekend, just a few rounds on the hand-dyed socks and that was about it.

I did find more wool moths and a worm in the closet, in the sweaters yesterday. The good news is they don’t seem to have spread to the fiber stash! All the sweaters (even the cotton, for good measure) went out on the clothes line for a few hours yesterday afternoon. . . . and will be going out on a regular basis from now on, even over the summer while they are packed in storage!

I alos spent a good part of last night making lavender sachets to stuff into everywhere there is wool. I’m going to have to make a lot more of them to finish the job! Ah well, back to the non-fiber portion of my world. . . .

TGIF

Its my favorite day again!

I’m even leaving work about an hour early today! Unfortunately, its because I have to take the cat to the vet, again. She has a recurring absess from a Coyote bite, 2.5 years ago . . . . they think there is still a piece of something in there which is causing it to reopen from time to time . . . This poor cat, she’s been poked and prodded and shot full of antibiotics about 6 times now. Not very fun for either of us.

I did work on the wheel last night. I’ve gone over most of the smaller parts and the bench with the green scrubby thing . . . and given most of them 2 coats of wax, rubbed in between each coat. There is a scratch or two from the pets jumping on it while it was on the floor, not good. I’ll be taking a little bit of fine sand paper to those at some point, but I really want to get it back together before anything gets lost . . . I’m focusing on getting the bench and legs and treadles finished tonight so I can put that much of it back together.

I finished the first of the kid socks and I’ve cast on for the second. The foot looks a little wide to me, but I’ll have to borrow a little foot to see . . .

Well, have a good weekend!

Wow! This week is flying by!

My poor spinning wheel is still in pieces in a pile on the floor, not good! Perhaps I’ll spend some time tonight working on her. There have been several evenings in the past week or so where I really would have liked to sit down at the wheel and so some spinning but couldn’t . . . . something I’m going to have to fix very soon.

I did work on the kids socks that I’m using to try out a new sock technique. I’m doing them in a nice, plain vanilla Regia sock yarn so its easy to see the stitches and see what is happening. None of those funky striped things for this project. Once I understand what is happening and how this goes together then I can play with stripes or stitch patterns, but for now I want to be able to see what is going on. I turned the heel last night. It was interesting. Very different then the pattern I have been using. My conclusion is that it is a much more technical heel that what I’ve been doing. I’m curious to compare the fits on both heels to see how much difference there ulitmately is, though I can’t compare it personally as these socks aren’t going to fit me. I’m going to have to borrow some little feet . . .

The best part about trying this pattern out on kids size socks is that it isn’t nearly as intimidating as trying it on my own size 9s or on DH’s size 10.5s. These are done on only 40 stitches and go nice and quickly and if I were to screw it up there is so little to it that frogging wouldn’t be a big deal. I may use this with my student. She is doing her first pair of socks now. I have her doing them toe up, two at a time on Addi’s using the same heel that I’ve been doing until now. She is almost ready to start the heels, perhaps tomorrow if she gets any time to work on them tonight . . . I think she is likely going to want to do 1-2 more pairs this way for the practice and to make it stick and then I’m going to have her do a kids pair top down on dpn with the “new” heels and toes I’m learning so she can compare techniques. . . . teaching can be so much fun, watching as something comes together in someones thought process and seeing that moment when the “get it” for the first time! This is something I may have to do more of in the future . . .

Still working on the baby blanket for my new niece or nephew . . . slow progress but I’m about 1/2 way through the 2nd skein. The way I figure it is if I just do even one pattern repeat a day I’ll be done with this before the weather really warms up and I can start the matching sweater . . . . Which I’ll have to design myself as the pattern didn’t come with a matching sweater . . . at least I have a very big gauge swatch to go by

Well, back to my filing project . . . . Have a great day!

Okay, so far no takers on the silk worms . . .

A came by last night for a while. She has a book report to do for school on a fairy tale. Her teacher has asked her to do “Three Billy Goats Gruff” but she is going to ask to do a different story, one that is fiber/spinning related. She is going to see if she can do either “The Wild Swans” or “Rumplestiltzkin” since both are more related to her interests.

We went on a field trip to Barnes & Noble to get copies of the stories. I came home with several books of stories, things from when I was a kid that deserve rereading .. . . including an old favorite . . . .

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0395159903/ref=sib_dp_pt/103-2299886-1927865#reader-link

This was one of my favorites as a kid. Funny how you can forget something like that only to have it come back in a snap when you see the book again.

Anyhow, In rereading some of the Nursery Rhymes and Fairytales, the old ones that is, it struck me how many of them had something to do with spinning or fiber. Now I’m going to reread lots of them . . . .

In knitting news: It occurred to me last night, that if I want to start trying some new (to me) heel and toe techniques I could just knit a couple pair of kids socks, quick and easy and lets me try out the ideas! So I now have a pair of socks from plain off-white regia on size 2 needles started. I’m only a couple of rounds into them but don’t think they will take very long . . . .