So many hobbies!

Maker Fair

Wandering around Maker Fair Saturday was interesting but the part I enjoyed the most was teaching people to knit.  In four hours, I taught four people to knit and one to do cross stitch.  I'm not the world's best teacher but they seemed to get it by the time we were done each time.  One of my students was a 16-year-old boy.  Way to go kid!

When we finished our shift, the nice ladies who ran the needlearts zone let us take home some of the hundreds of knitting needles, yarn and crochet hooks that were donated:

 

The needles are Lantern Moon rosewood needles and the crochet hook is also Lantern Moon but made of ebony.  OMG!  Lantern Moon!  Apparently, the light colored end on the crochet hook was a mistake so Lantern Moon donated a bunch of "wrong" hooks.  It is hands down the best crochet hook I've ever used and the most beautiful.  It's a size G, by the way.  The Silky Wool they couldn't use because they didn't have a swift to wind the hanks and didn't have time to wind balls anyway.  I'm not sure what I'll make with two hanks but I'm sure something will come to me.  In the meantime, it'll be welcome in my stash.

It occured to me I never showed you the quilt labels I had made:

 

My friend was nagging me to put labels on my quilts for posterity.  I finally caved and had these made.  They're a little "sweet" which isn't exactly me but I like them.  In case you're wondering about that white blotch, I fuzzed out my last name.  Now I just need to remember to actually put them on my quilts.

Something horrifying happened to me this morning.  I found a wool moth and it was loaded with eggs.  *&^%$%#@!  I had two of those huge Ziplock bags so I loaded them up with all the wool and yarn that would fit and shoved them into my chest freezer.  They'll hang out there for a few days, come out for a day or two to let any eggs hatch then it's back into the freezer for a few more days.  Hopefully that'll take care of any infestation in that bunch of yarn/fiber.  I'll be damned if I'm going to let those moths eat my wool!  I wish I'd thought of this last winter when I could have just shoved all my wool in the trunk of my car.  Now I have to do it in shifts in the freezer.  You know something, I have wool, yarn and unspun, ALL OVER MY CONDO.  It's everywhere!  I need to buy more jumbo Ziplock bags.

Yarn!

 

I just love how this came out.  I hope you can see the gradient from light green through to pink/purple.  The sparkly bits in the yarn are from the 20% silk.  Now I just have to find the perfect shawl pattern.  I have two more bobbins to ply but they're a lot smaller and if I knit with both finished skeins I'll get striping that I don't want. 

It POURED last night, which naturally means there was water in my basement, so I don't have quilt pictures.  I need someplace dry to hang or lay the quilt for its photo shoot.  I'll get a pic next weekend.

This weekend is Maker's Fair Detroit.  I'm volunteering Saturday in the needlework tent (so I don't have to pay the $28 entrance fee... yikes!) helping anyone who wants to learn cross-stitch.  It's been quite a while since I did any cross-stitch but I'm pretty sure it's like riding a bike.  Some essential, kill-the-boredom knitting will be coming along just in case no one comes by during my shift (11:30 to 3:30).  I've heard some pretty impressive things about Maker's Fair so I'm pretty eager to check it out.  Sunday it's more blueberry picking.  They may be my only blueberries frozen this year so I need to make it count.  Wish me luck that it's a productive day!

What are you doing this weekend?

Tuesday cat installment...

because I don't have anything to show right now.

 

 

I have yarn soaking and a quilt drying so I should have something to show later this week.

It's fixed

I had to have Comcast come out to my place only to tell me something ON MY COMPUTER got clicked when it wasn't supposed to be.  Now, I'm know my computer did it itself because a) I was online waiting for my email to load when it went out and b) it was something from under Tools menu that I never touch because I don't know enough about what they mean.  I can't even find now where it was.  So that's a hefty service fee for something that had absolutely nothing to do with the cable.  <sigh>

 

As of today, the Tour de Fleece is over and I have to say, I'm surprised at how fast it went.  I didn't do terribly well for Team Crankypants, I'm sorry to say.  There's always next year, though.  I've got about 6 oz. spun out of the 8 I wanted to have spun and plied.  Oops. 

It has been hotter than Hell around here the last couple of days.  Walking out of work this afternoon was like walking into an oven.  It was 98F without the heat index and about 105F with it.  The humidity was oppressive.  I don't have breathing problems and even I could tell the air felt thick.  I've tried twice to get to Joann to buy batting for my challenge quilt but I get to my car and all I want to do it get home, slip into shorts and a t-shirt and hide in my condo.  I'm trying to decide now if I want to get the batting after work tomorrow or wait until the store opens Saturday morning when it's a little cooler.  Getting it after work means I don't have to leave the house Saturday and I can start quilting Friday night.  I guess I'll decide when I get back to my car tomorrow.

No big plans for the weekend except seeing Harry Potter with a couple of friends Sunday morning and working on my quilt.  It's been so oppresive outside that all I want to do is stay in.  What about you?  Do you have any plans for the weekend?

My internet is down

Sorry guys.  I'm working on it but I have no idea when it'll be fixed.  I suspect it's something at my end but for the life of me, I can't figure out what.  <sigh>

A secret project

It's what I spent most of the weekend working on.  My sister and I are doing a quilt challenge and I started and finished my quilt top this weekend.  It's a kid-sized quilt so easily done in a weekend.  It not time for the big reveal so I can't show you a picture of it yet.  I also finished the back, which is pieced, too.

I took some time this morning to work on my garden which looked terrible.  I pulled out way too many weeds and spent flowers and watered everything.  I have a tiny green tomato!  While I was watering the potatoes, I saw this guy:

 

I posted the picture on Facebook and my friend Kate said, according to her bug book, it was a Black Swallowtail butterfly.  I've got an Audobon Shell book, mushroom book and rocks & minerals book but bugs and butterflies is one I don't have.  I'll have to add it to my Christmas list.

My girlfriend and I picked blueberries on Saturday but it was pretty light picking and hot so I only took home half a bucket.  I've been eating them by the handful.  I considered picking next weekend but it's the weekend of the Ann Arbor Art Fair which means lots of traffic.  It's much more likely I'll just hide in my condo and enjoy the AC.  I love AC!

What a week!

It started last Saturday when the mechanic told me the transmission was dying.  I got an oil change, a new battery (the old one was almost dead), a fuel treatment meant to improve my gas mileage and then got a full tank of gas.  It was all mine for less than a week.  It turns out my parents had been planning on buying a new car and when I told them about the imminent demise of my transmission, offered to give me Mom's old car, which runs like new.  I want to say here that I have the best parents in the world.  I can't get a new car right now so Mom's old car is a great gift.  I am truly a lucky daughter.  I drove an hour north to Flint to meet them and switch cars and the transmission was REALLY unhappy shifting at high speeds.  I don't think it had much time left.  So now I have a new-to-me 2003 Chevy that doesn't make scary noises at highway speeds and has AC that works.  Yippee!

In other news, I discovered that my chest freezer had been unplugged (I blame the cats) for about a week.  Standing next to it, I kept smelling something nasty and sticking my hand under the lid, found that not only was there no frost, it was warm.  Crap!  I had two chunks of beef in there that had gone off BIG TIME!  As well as a lot of fruit that now has to be thrown out.  Like I said, it's been quite an eventful week.  I'm looking forward to Friday night when I can sit at home and work on a quilt.

I missed cherry season but blueberry season is coming up soon.  I haven't made blueberry jam in ages so that's at the top of the agenda along with freezing as many as I can.  I'm hoping the peaches will be good this year, too, so I can make Ginger Peach jam (thanks, Elizabeth!) which sounds very yummy, and maybe Blueberry Peach.  I've had this idea for a while of making a bunch of different kinds of jam, making some fresh baked bread and inviting some friends over for a taste testing party.  Eating fresh bread and homemade jam with my friends sounds like a piece of heaven to me.

I'm afraid I haven't been doing my part for Team Crankypants in the Tour de Fleece.  I wasn't able to spin yesterday, what with the car switching and all, and tonight was pretty much a wash, too.  I'm starting a quilt tomorrow of my own design so this weekend I'll have to switch off between spinning and quilting.  I don't want to let my team down!

Kaffe Fassett fat quarters

 

Before my car decided to go kablooey, I ordered a couple of gorgeous Kaffe Fassett fabric bundles from the Fat Quarter Shop.  One in blue and one in natural:

 

I'm really looking forward to cutting into these.  Eventually.

Specimen books

I've been collecting sheep breed wool samples ever since I took my first breed class at The Spinning Loft.  I save them in four binders:  Fine Wools, Long Wools, Down Breeds & Double Coats and everything else (silk, cashmere, bison, yak, etc.).  Each page, along with a wool description, has a lock of wool and a spun sample of a singles yarn and a 2-ply yarn.

 

I realized, though, that that wasn't enough to be really useful to me.  I needed to add knitted swatches to show just how a breed's wool feels and looks knitted up.  So last week, I started spinning up what I had of various breeds.

 

I love this picture.  These are the natural colors of the wool.  The two on the left are Rambouillet (white) and Polwarth (brown) and from top right to bottom are Gotland, Borderdale and Corriedale.  Aren't they beautiful!  I just love natural colored wool.

 

These are some of the swatches I knit last week.  Sorry the picture is so bright; I'm a lousy photographer.  Clockwise from the upper left are North Ronaldsay, Finn, Merino and Portland.  I haven't quite figured out how to store all of these swatches but I'm pretty sure I won't be putting them in the specimen books, mostly because then the books will be way too bulky.

The original plan for first thing this morning was to drive to Spicer's Orchard to pick sour cherries.  Unfortunately, I found out Saturday that the transmission is going on my car and I need to both cut out unnecessary driving and start saving for either a new car or a new transmission.  This means no cherry jam and no cherry chutney since Spicer's is about 30 minutes away and their cherries are kind of expensive per pound.  This may also mean I have to cut down on one of my favorite parts of summer which is visiting U-pick farms and stocking up for winter.  Sooo not happy about that.

Galen

 

I've gotten rid of the intermediate height bookcases yet he still manages to get to the top of my tallest bookcase (7 ft. tall).  It's a cat thing.