Tangled and Warped

Maybe you can tell from some of the pics this past week or two that I have been busy, busy, busy dyeing, spinning and getting prepared for this weekend.

I just wanted to remind everyone that Western Ave. Studios is having open studio sales over the next two Saturdays, Dec. 1st and Dec. 8th from 10AM until 6:00PM.  I will be in Studio 306A from noon until 6:00PM both days.  We will have wine, and munchies so please stop by and say “HI!”.

As an extra incentive I also wanted to remind the knitters out there that Classic Elite Hub Mills happens to be in the very same building.  Convenient huh?

If you need directions check out the Western Ave. Studio website here.

So come and do some holiday shopping - you will get to support local starving artists, and it’s a heck of a lot better than the Mall!  Think about it… does Macy’s serve wine and munchies while you shop?

Here is my finished felted bag (the Lucy one) with a bird of paradise needle felted on the front. I am really happy with the way it came out. I need to do more of these.

Here is the first skein of handspun from our dye day earlier this week - I am feeling the love.

I just needed to add this.  Have you been to a Taco Bell lately?  Well at lunch I just got the urge for a Grande Soft Taco.  I love the sayings on the taco sauce packets.

“Help! I can’t tell where I am.  It’s dark and I can hear laughing.”

“At night the sporks pick on me.”

This was a totally predictable, schmaltzy movie. The music was good and you get to watch  Jonathan Rhys Meyers for an hour plus.    It’s sad, but don’t bother with the tissues, it’s not a tear jerker by any means.  There are some funny lines, Robin Williams plays an excellent Fagan character.

If you like light romantic schmaltz that ends in happily ever after or if you are like me and would pay $5 for a matinee to sit in the dark, eat popcorn and watch Jonathan Rhys Meyers or you have to take a couple of 10-13 year girls to the movies, I would give this one a B- and recommend it.

On the fiber front…

The roving is dry and I started spinning some of the rainbow colored one.  I would love to get a couple more skeins ready to sell for this Saturday.  I also need to finish the smoke ring, the second Lenore sock and I would like to finish 3 pairs of fingerless mittens before Christmas.  Ya right…. I am starting to panic.

After stuffing ourselves on Thursday with turkey, stuffing, cranberries, green beans, mashed potatoes, gravy and pecan pie we rolled ourselves over to the studio to do some fiber dyeing with some friends.

Roving packages steaming away

Hanging to dry

Christine’s Dyepot

Colorful rovings

OK Amber, I know I did some rovings with Salmon (orange) but didn’t get any back with orange…. hmmm and I know I did 13 bumps of superwash - and only got back 7 …  I also got 2 bumps of I think it’s the BFL..  Can you check yours again?

I have a lot to be thankful for this year. I’m relatively healthy. I have a job (sure I hate it, but it pays the mortgage), I have a roof over my head, I can feed myself, my kid and the cat(s), DD has just about everything she wants or asks for - yes she is spoiled rotten. I have almost reached SABLE with my stash. I have friends and family that I love. So yes I have a lot to be thankful for.

But I am angry - so angry I could spit tacks. I am so angry at our government. Not only for starting this stupid unnecessary war, and then keeping it going at the expense of 10s of thousands of live, and even more wounded and permanently scarred soldiers and civilians alike. I am angry at the gullibility of our the citizens who still think 9/11 was perpetrated by Saddam Hussein. But after the news I heard last night I am not only angry I am ashamed of our government. Why? Because they continually spew patriotic drivel about ’support our troops’ when in fact they themselves do not.

Here are some of the ways our government is supporting our troops.

Almost half a million of the nation’s 24 million veterans were homeless at some point during 2006. More than 25 percent of the homeless population in the United States are military veterans, although they represent 11 percent of the civilian adult population.

The SEB office of the Pentagon is sending dunning letters to soldiers that were wounded during active duty, and were then discharged because they were no longer physically able to serve and now the Pentagon wants part of their signing bonuses back! Read about it here.

And let’s not forget the fiasco at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Lest you forgot or didn’t know - read about that here.

Then there are the existing Federal rules that force disabled veterans to give up their military retirement funds in order to receive disability benefits. In other words every VA disability dollar a vet receives is deducted from his retirement pay.

The list goes on and on. Meanwhile we’ve spent $611 BILLION so far on this war with little or no accountability to where that money is going. I suspect it’s lining the pockets of Halliburton and Black Water and other no bid contractors. Did you know that 51% of your tax dollars are being spent on the military? The estimate is that the Afghanistan and Iraq wars have cost each taxpaying family approximately $20,000 so far. Imagine what you could do with that extra $20 grand… pay your oil and gas bills? Pay for that shopping spree the president sent us on when this all started? There has been no accountability for these billions of dollars, and yet the government continues to short change the very men and women they keep sending into this endless conflict and tossing them aside like trash when they are no longer able to serve.

This is just appalling to me. If anything this is a lesson that I learned from the Vietnam Era. Even if we detest the war and hate everything that is being done internationally in the name of our country, we still must respect and take care to honor our Vets. And sadly it appears that we are failing them once again. Shame on us.

I have written to my representatives and can only hope that this congress gets off their butts and does what we sent them there to do. Stop the damn war, and take care of those that served. Then we can start the impeachment proceedings of the thugs, liars and thieves that are running this government.

Sorry for the rant… it’s just been building inside and the more I hear about how we keep letting down our soldiers the more enraged I get.

So when you are sitting around with your friends and family tomorrow, giving thanks, be sure to include those who are serving our country now and those who have served in the past.

Knitting? yes I am knitting - sometimes I feel like Madam Defarge knitting away through the French Revolution. I’ve almost finished knitting my second Lucy bag. Then I can felt them. I’m almost finished with one of the STR Lenore socks. AND I’ve started knitting and designing a smoke ring out of the gorgeous merino silk I spun a few weeks ago. If it comes out and nice as I am envisioning I will post the pattern.

Yup it’s the first snow of the season.

I found this up on Ravelry.  Just too funny

It’s Garrison Keillor’s Radio Show from Saturday 10th - at 9 minutes in (you can scroll to 9 mins in the real player thingy) - called ‘Lives of the cowboys’ (or something similar). Goes on for about 10 minutes.

Link here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/listenagain/saturday/rams/2300.ram

I am still laughing!

Today one of my oldest longest friends is undergoing a double radical mastectomy.  This is her second bout with breast cancer.

Please pray, send healing vibes, reiki energy, whatever force you believe in to her in San Diego.

Chris we are all pulling for you girl…  just think! you will be a perky B-cup in no time!

It’s always good to finish objects…  especially when there are so many other things to fill that space and time.

This weekend was Woolyheaded’s baby shower.  What is cuter than a sweet little baby?   She is the cutest thing and getting a chance to have a newborn snuggle up to you and to smell that new baby smell… well it just doesn’t get much better than that does it.

I managed to knit and put together my very first EZ’s Baby Surprise Jacket.  Let me just say that EZ may be the knitting goddess, but her instructions suck…  But I did persist and managed to get this jacket knitted and put together in under two days.  Yikes

I used worsted weight wool.  Remember back in September 2006 I won some gorgeous yarn from Roxanne?  No?  I’ve had in my stash and kept pulling it out and fondling it nicely, finally it told me what it wanted to be.

Here are the photo steps of putting together an EZ BSJ

This is the amoeba stage.  It’s all knit in one piece and doesn’t look like it’s going to turn into anything recognizable.  It’s all done in garter stitch so it knits up quickly.

From the amoeba stage you match points A to A and B to B and voila you have what appears to be a baby garment.  MAGIC!

Add a few (five) buttons.  I was actually amazed to find perfectly matching buttons.   And once you’ve sewn two seams, tucked in the ends and blocked it out, you end up with this!

Ok so  it was still a little damp from the blocking, but I got it done and Mom seemed to like it and I’m sure it will fit baby sometime in the spring.

I also finished knitting my socks that I knit from my handspun superwash merino that I dyed in the roving state. Remember this?

The actual color is closer to the above photo, but I turned it into socks.  And there was even a little yarn left over.

That was the euphemism that we used the morning after the college kegger. You remember? Praising the porcelain god, yawning in technicolor.

This is the barf batt I also got at Rhinebeck. Don’t ask what possessed me, I was in the mood for things unique and different - this batt piqued my interest.

It has bits of silk (bright orange and lime green) interspersed through it.

I’ve been practicing and getting better at spinning a thinner single. I’m pretty comfortable spinning 2-ply fingering weight which is perfect for socks.

But I needed something to play with - I wanted to try spinning some lumpy bumpy funky stuff. So Barf Batt was the fiber of choice. Here’s a sample.

I think this will look great knit into a bag or hat to be felted. But it is fun to spin.

But still I am drawn back to the finer things of life and fiber. And what could be finer than some lovely Merino Silk from Chasing Rainbows.

It’s spinning up nicely too.

And yes, I did get a new camera. The Fuji just wasn’t cutting it, and I wanted something smaller that took better, higher quality photos for not a lot of money. I got an HP Photosmart 7.2 megapixels. I think in spite the fact I am photography challenged, this camera is actually taking decent photos.