So many hobbies!

How do they know?

The fortune cookies that arrive with our order of Chinese food.  How do they know what they know?  Tuesday's cookie, that I ate today, had a fortune that read, "You won't be bored for long!  New adventures are on their way."  Inspired by How to Make a Living Without a Job, I've been working on some of my ideas for self-employment.  I'm counting on that fortune to be right!  I've completed the basic design of my sheep breed specimen sheets and sent off requests to ALOT of breed associations requesting photos.  I've already gotten several very nice replies including one woman who thought it was a fantastic idea.  Personally, I have to agree but I might be a little biased.

Tuesday night and Wednesday, I plied the Merino/bamboo singles and the yarn turned out amazing.  So shiney!

 

Merino/bamboo is my new favorite fiber combo.  I like it even better than Merino/Tencel.  I've ordered 5 pounds of 60/40 Merino/bamboo to dye up for my store.  I can't wait to play with it and see how it dyes up.

 

Unfortunately, these pictures don't capture just how gorgeous this stuff is or the subtle shading that occurs within the yarn.  You guys will just have to come visit me to see it.  <big grin>

Tomorrow I'm shipping a lovely chocolate brown Corriedale fleece off to Stonehedge Fiber Mill for processing into roving.  When it comes back, I'm still deciding if some will go up in my store.  I suspect that most Etsy shoppers are looking for colorful and not simple brown roving but we shall see.

Seli in repose

 

Seli was half in, half out of the couch quilt today and looking so cute, I had to share.  Happy Wednesday!

More winter spinning

 

The bobbin on the left was spun Sunday - more "Red Maples" from Winterhaven Fiber Farm.  I've been plying them tonight and the plied yarn looks pretty good.  I'll have a picture of the finished yarn later this week.

I think Spring is finally on its way:  I ordered my summer seeds yesterday from Seed Savers Exchange.  This year I'll be growing "Empress" bush beans and "Gold Medal" tomatoes.  The tomato is an indeterminate variety which means it doesn't stop at a predetermined height but just gets taller and taller.  Staking will be a must.  I'm going to try growing a zucchini in a pot but I'll just buy a single plant or try and scam a seed or two from someone who's already planting them.   Mmm, zucchini, summer tomatoes and fresh green beans.  Heavenly.  What will you be growing this summer?

Economy still biting

Our Guild fleece sale was this past Saturday and while I had a great time working with my fellow guild members, our sales were way down from where they usually are.  On the one hand, I didn't sell very much of my roving but on the other, that means I get to keep and spin up these for myself:

 

I dyed these up Friday after work and as soon as I saw them dry, I wanted them all to myself.  I used the dry dye powder method which is why the one on the left, which was on the bottom, is lighter than the one on the right.  One great thing about this method is I should be able to reproduce the results pretty easily.  The wool is BFL and I'm thinking they'll make a great pair of socks.

The rest of the unsold roving will go up in my Etsy store starting tonight.  I've got a couple skeins of worsted weight yarn going in, too.  I'm also going to be adding some of my hand bound books sometime this week.  A few are blank books but I've also got three that are letterpress printed as well as hand bound.  The fourth is a collection of linocuts with some letterpress printed pages.  I need some advice though:  should I try and set up another store for the books or just expand my store's inventory?  It will be much easier to just use the store I have but "Middle Kingdom Fiber" doesn't exactly make one think of books.  There's also the slight possibility that I might add some bead embroidered jewelry in the future.  Opinions and advice, please.

Still a slug

Last night, even though I knew better, I picked up the new Patricia Briggs novel that I've been waiting for.  Next thing I knew, it was 1:00 am.  Damn!  I managed to stay awake at work today but once I got home, it was Seli, me and the couch for two hours.  Aside from some dinner and uploading more music to my iPod, tonight was a wash.  I don't want to leave you pictureless however, so here's a shot of the shell sampler I'm giving my Seli-sitter as a thank-you:

Winter doldrums

I need your help.  I'm having a really tough time this week with SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) and the fact that the Michigan winter is dragging on and on and on.  Stinkin' winter!  I'd like to ask a favor of everyone who reads this post, especially the lurkers who usually read and move on.  If you'd share, I'd like three things from you:  

1. Tell me your favorite thing about where you live.  I'm also curious to know where you live - heck, I might just move - but if you don't want to tell, that's fine, too. 
2. Tell me something nice and/or happy that happened to you today. 
3. If you've got a quote you really like, please share.

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you already know I don't care much for my job - which isn't making coping with winter any easier.  The people I work with are okay for the most part, I'm just really, really bored.  I sit on my butt in front of a computer all day doing really dull data entry.  Watching paint dry is more exciting.  I would love to be my own boss but I'm still working out how to do that... and our economy stinks which also doesn't help.  I started reading a book today called "Making a Living without a Job."  The author described me to a tee.  It was cool.  I'd love to have a conversation with the woman because she already knows what I'm going through.  If you've ever thought about pursuing your passion and becoming your own boss, I recommend this book as a read.

Bed now.  I'm late.  Again.  I had a long nap with Seli after work so hopefully that'll help tomorrow.  We're ordering Chinese for lunch.  Yum!

Six more offerings

Not much to say tonight.  I did some dyeing this weekend and went to my guild meeting but aside from that, it was a pretty quiet weekend.  I'll leave you with some photos.  I like the last two the best.

   

 

 

If wishes were horses...

 

Tuesday's dye job baked and dried.  The two lengths of roving are layered one on top of the other.  The one on the left was on top of the one on the right so it absorbed more dye.

SOAR's classes aren't thrilling me this year.  I made the mistake yesterday of looking at the summer classes offered at the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina.  I am a sometimes bookbinder and Penland is offering a class this summer that I would LOVE to take.  It's a class taught by Daniel Essig called "Textured, Painted & Bound." (Go here and look at the first class of the second session.)  I have the vacation time (it's a two-week class) but, sadly, the funds are lacking.  Aren't they always? 

Gearing up

My Guild's winter fleece fair is coming up (2/21) and I've started dyeing roving to sell.  I used Val's method of dyeing with dry powder and so far I've had mixed results, more from my learning curve than from the method I'm thinking. 

 

You can see where some of the red dye didn't disolve and spread.  I think if I add a bit more water, that won't be a problem in the future.  This batch - two 4 oz. lengths of BFL - needs to cool over night before I wash and dry it.  I have high hopes.

These two were dyed Sunday night.  The first is a Merino/Tencel blend and the second is Superwash Merino:

 

 

Neither of these really grabs me but beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I've learned that what one person dislikes, another might love.

As promised, I took better shots of the yarn I plied while on vacation.  The first is the cashmere/Polwarth blend.  It may be getting a blue bath at some point.

 

And this one is the llama I've been spindle spinning for the past few months or so:

 

The list of workshops and retreats for SOAR 2009 is now out.  I'm not sure I'm excited enough about them, though, to spend the money and effort required to travel from Michigan to Oregon, schlepping my wheel along with me.  More perusing of the lists will be necessary before I make my final decision.

It's good to be home

As much as I love going down to Sanibel Island and spending time with my family, it's good to be back in my own space and sleeping in my own bed.  I had a great time with my parents and sister and visiting with my cousins from Texas who had the condo two doors down from us.  Hi, Lucia!  The weather was cold for that part of Florida (they had record lows - one morning it was 30F when we got up!) but it was sunny and still much warmer than home, at least during the day.  My sister and I spent a day in Fort Myers (the day it rained) and visited our favorite restaurant, Sweet Tomatoes.  That place has the best salad bar I've ever seen and at this time of year, I'm craving a really good salad. 

My parents, on the drive down, stopped at my SIL's parents' place and picked up my new wheel:

 

A 10-year-old Ashford Elizabeth.  She's beautiful and spins like a dream... well, she did after I oiled the heck out of her.  She sat unused for 10 years and was dry and creaky as a bone.  Actually, she hasn't been used since they tested her at the Ashford factory.  Isn't she gorgeous!?  I took 4 ounces of Merino/bamboo from Winterhaven Fiber Farm down and spun nearly the entire 4 ounces in just a few hours.

 

Merino/bamboo spins almost as easily as Merino/tencel.  Lovely!  This is the Red Maples colorway, BTW.

 

I also spun up the 1.5 ounces of Polwarth I brought with me.  I was going to spindle spin it to ply with the cashmere I spun a few months ago but decided it was take too long... and the Elizabeth was calling to me.  Again, it spun up in almost no time and I turned around and spindle plied it with the cashmere:

 

Of course, before I could ply the cashmere/Polwarth, I had to clear off the spindle which I did by plying the llama:

 

I'll have better pictures later after I've washed both spindle-plied skeins.  Um, I just realized how much spinning/plying I did.  Wow!  I didn't take any vacation-related pictures this time.  I didn't spend as much time on the beach as I usually do because it was so cold and when I was inside, which was much of the time, I was either visiting while spinning or knitting or I was napping.  I really needed to catch up on my sleep.  Sleep is nice.  Oh, and I also got to watch some of my shows on TV:  Bones, Leverage, Fringe and NCIS.  It was nice to see them in real time since I either have to wait until they come out on DVD or try and find time to watch them online.  I've added Fringe to my list of shows after seeing it for the first time last week.  It's a newish show dealing with the weird and the strange.  I'm rather fond of weird and strange.

So, it's back to the job tomorrow.  My guild's Winter Fleece Fair is coming up later this month so I'm starting to dye roving to sell.  What doesn't sell at the Fleece Fair will go up in my store.  It's time I restocked.