So many hobbies!

With the exception of a little spinning, I spent most of the weekend working in my front garden.  I weeded Friday afternoon and Saturday, pulling out 4 garden refuse bags worth of weeds.  Friday I also bought 15 bags of mulch.  Saturday was the flower giveaway that my condo association does every year.  I got a flat of 1/2 Marigolds and 1/2 Snapdragons:

And a flower box kit for my front window:

Sunday, for about 4 hours, I mulched.  I'm terrible at taking care of my garden when it gets hot outside, which happens during Michigan summers.  The garden usually looks terrible; choked with weeds.  This year I thought I'd do a preemptive strike on the weeds.  So, I in the open areas of my garden, I laid down 4 layers of newpaper and covered that with 3 or so inches of mulch.

You can see some newspaper peeking out from the far side of the mulched area.  Oh, before I mulched, I planted the flowers I got Saturday:

I also planted the red Dianthus I bought during a quick run to Lowe's for potting mix for the flowerbox.  I have a gorgeous red lilly that I planted 2 years ago and some Correopsis that come back every year so that let me to planting a red/yellow color scheme.  You can't see them very well, but there are Snapdragons behind the Marigolds.  Hopefully, they'll be either red or yellow.

I didn't get the whole thing mulched because I ran out of newspaper, plus I need another 3 or 4 bags of mulch to finish it off.  The tricky part of future weeding will be around the plants since I couldn't easily get newspaper in there before the mulch went down.  We shall see later this summer how the weeding goes.

Still, it looks pretty good with its fresh coat of mulch.  I'll need more plants to fill in the holes once all the daffodils die back.  My neighbor gave me a volunteer Foxglove that you can see in the lower left corner of the picture above.  Now I just need more newspapers...

Batty

I felt the urge to make art batts tonight.  I have no idea what to do with them.

They sure are pretty.

What would you do with them?

Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival 2013: The shopping

I bought way too much wool to spin but in my defense, it wasn't my fault.  I was seduced by the wool side.  First I was seduced by color, and cute colorway names:

The colorway on the left is called "Serenity," a reference to the now-sadly-cancelled TV show "Firefly."  The colorway on the right is called "Bigger on the Inside" referring to Doctor Who and the TARDIS.  How could I possibly turn down a Doctor Who colorway.  See?  Not.  My.  Fault.  The roving was dyed by Into the Whirled and I really want to hang out with those people.  How could you not have fun spending time with people who come up with colorways with names like "Captain Hotpants?"  (Again, a reference to "Firefly.")  I almost bought that one, too, but I managed to gulp a breath of air free of wool fumes and came to my senses... sort of.  I kind of bought 8 ounces in each colorway. 

The spindles are Bosworth spindles and I had absolutely planned on buying those.  The one on the left is a Moosie spindle.  Why is it called Moosie you ask?  Because the whorl is made from moose antler.  Yup, moose antler.  (In case you didn't know, moose shed their antlers every year, growing a new pair in the spring.)  The spindle on the right has a whorl made from Red Cedar.  Believe it or not, the spindle on the left weights more than the one on the right.

Again, not my fault, this one was truly evil and sucked me in with a glance.  Seriously, could YOU resist silk caps that look like this? 

This one did it with some amazing crimp and soft locks.  This is a bit over one pound of raw Corriedale wool.  I really wanted to come home with an entire colored Cormo fleece but that would have been completely insane so I settled for about a pound of raw wool to play with.  See, I was able to rise above the wool side on occasion.  I also came home with 8 ounces of white Cormo roving not pictured here because white roving isn't that exciting to look at and I didn't think I could properly photograph "soft."  It's virtually impossible for me to turn down anything Cormo.

Also purchased but not shown was the book "Knitting on the Edge" by Nicki Epstein (which I just saw was discount priced on Amazon and I paid full price... grrrr!),  a needle gauge/knitting gauge, a bar of wonderful lemon ginger soap and kitty snips.  Mine are in blue.

As if my vacation wasn't fabulous enough, I come home to find most of the flowering trees are in full bloom, including the Kwanzan Cherry in my front yard:

The individual blossoms are stunning:

Now if only I could figure out a way to work at home...

Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival 2013

The Festival, as usual, was great!  The weather couldn't have been more perfect:  no warmer than 73F during the day with a nice breeze and low 40's at night so the sleeping was great.  It was a bit chilly getting out of bed in the morning but it was a small price to pay for such a great weekend.

This year was the 40th year of the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival.  Those of us who were lucky enough to win a ribbon, got a special one that declared the 40th.

My skein won first place in the category:  100% wool prepared by spinner from raw wool - Medium plied yarn.  This was the yarn spun from the New Zealand Corriedale.

The day before we left, Sheri noticed there was a category for a group project.  I had spun the purple yarn above on my drop spindle a couple of years ago and gave it to Sheri for her birthday.  She, in turn, knitted it into a shawlette.  Our group project won first place.  Woot!

Sheri's knit bunny, destined for a baby soon to be born, won third place:

Most of my shopping time happened Saturday morning (purchases to be disclosed later this week).  Saturday afternoon and part of Sunday was spent spinning on my new Bosworth drop spindle.  I lucked out two days in a row and had some wandering musicians pull up some chairs in front of me and start playing:

Having some nice music to listen to while I spun was one of the high points of the weekends.

Our campsite on Friday.  Friday was our slow day:  all we had to do Friday was drop off our stuff for the skein and garment competition.  After that, we hung out at camp, Sheri knitting or crocheting and me carding the wool that I spun Saturday and Sunday at the Festival.

Another high point of the weekend was seeing a Pileated Woodpecker!  Don't let the picture on the link fool you, that bird was huge!  The adults can reach 19 inches in length and their wingspan can reach 30 inches.  I have to say, he (or she) was beautiful.  We saw him Sunday and again on Monday was we were striking camp.  It was a rare treat.

I had a blast as usual.  I just adore camping!  Our third partner in crime, Rhonda, couldn't join us this year.  She was waiting for lambs to be born and had a new granddaughter who's mom needed some help with the other little ones.  She was with us in spirit, though, through copious texting.  My next big event is the Michigan Fiber Festival in August.  I've already signed up for my classes.  Between now and then, however, there will be strawberry and blueberry picking, jam making, berry freezing, a crafting weekend and my birthday.  This is my favorite time of year!

The mirrors are hung

I just noticed the square one is crooked.  Better go fix that...

Maryland prep continues

These are the freezer bag meals that I put together Saturday.  The cans are full of chicken.  Sheri joined me and we got our dinners ready for our upcoming camping trip.  We decided to each try two of them for lunch and to split them, to see if we like those recipes.  I have to tell you, I wasn't expecting them to be that good.  I was hoping but I was erring on the side of caution so I wasn't too disappointed if they were terrible.  I was suprised at how good they were.  Sheri made Ginger Lemon Chicken and I made Bacon and Cheese Pasta.  They were surprisingly tasty.  Dinners should be pretty good in Maryland.

One of the things I learned is you can make your own instant rice if you own a dehydrator.  All you do is cook the rice, then spread it out on trays in the dehydrator until dry.  You can use some pretty tasty rice and make instant rice that tastes so much better than the instant rice you buy in the.

Just to add some variety and veggies to future meals, and 'cause I felt like playing, I dried a sweet red pepper and a small zucchini along with the rice.  The dark bowl at the bottom is the rice.  Just add hot water and I have rice with my dinner.  I can't wait for Maryland!

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I had supervision the entire time:

Random Tuesday

1. The tomato seeds were planted Sunday afternoon and have already sprouted.
2. At my guild meeting Saturday, I met a woman wanting to sell some lamb fleeces from Texel/Dorset crosses.  I volunteered to scour and spin some of the fiber so she would have a sample to show.  I'm in the middle of spinning it now.
3. I am thoroughly sick and tired of rain.  I'm ready for some sunlight and some heat.
4. My trip to Maryland for some camping and R&R can't come fast enough.  If it rains, I'm going to be really ticked.
5. My daffodils are blooming.
6. This weekend will be taken up with cleaning and organizing my condo; my sister is coming to spend the weekend of the 27th.
7. There's a shelving unit in the basement that's rather worse for wear.  Worse to the point that it's listing very badly to the left.  I ordered a new metal shelving unit to replace it.  I'll be putting that together this weekend, too.
8. I need a bigger recycling bin!
9. The other day, while I was getting dressed for work, Tyr was on the bed, whipping around in a circle, chasing her tail.  I can't really convey just how hilarious it was.
10. I think I'm addicted to mangos!
    

New greenhouse

I needed some place the seedlings could hang out and grow without the cats eating them.  IKEA had this cute greenhouse that was perfect.  I repotted the pepper seedlings last night and now we're just waiting for the end of May (the last frost in Michigan is around May 31st) to plant.  This weekend I'll start the tomato seeds.

The Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival is only a few weeks away.  I'm really behind in my preparations for the skein contest.  At the moment, I've only got two skeins that are good enough to enter.  This is the first time in 3 or 4 years that I'm not going to have any spindle-spun yarn to enter.  I haven't touched a spindle in almost a year.  I need to get spinning...

Cabled

A cabled yarn is made by plying a 2-ply yarn back on itself.  It's a unique look very different from a 2-ply.  This will be very interesting knitted up.

That's all I have for tonight.  Saturday, I made a mistake on the shawl I'm working on and I haven't gone back to fix it yet.  The last couple of nights I had to run errands after work and by the time I got home, I was too tired to try and find the mistake.  I'll try and get to it by Thursday so I have something to blog about.

Finished UFO

This was Corriedale pencil roving from Crown Mountain Farms.  I plied this into a cabled yarn that's still waiting for a bath.  I'll have pictures Tuesday.

Not much to show for the weekend except this yarn and getting my taxes done.  Finally.  I really hate doing my taxes so naturally I leave it till the last minute.  Well, almost the last minute.  My Guild meeting is next weekend so this is when I have time to do them.  I'm in the clear for another year.

It was gray and drab most of the weekend.  We got some sun Sunday afternoon, which was nice, and the last that we'll see for the next week.  It's supposed to rain every day this week.  Rain does not make me happy.  Oy!  Hope your week is dry and sunny.