So many hobbies!

Misc. Tuesday

1. I had just replaced the liner in the waste basket, so naturally, Tyr had to jump in and hang out for a while.
2. Over the 4th of July weekend, my sisters and I stopped in at a flea market.  We found a cache of truly dreadful horror movies and I couldn't resist buying one.  "Fast Zombies with Guns" was a title too hilarious to pass up.  I probably won't ever watch it since it will undoubtedly be bad, bad, bad.
3. I found a couple of places in SW Michigan where I can pick concord grapes.  I want to make jelly, grape juice and possibly raisins.  Picking won't be until around the middle of September.
4. My veggie plants currently have ripening a purple pepper, a tomato and a handful of green beans.  I have lots of blossoms on all the plants but so far that's it.
5. I'm working on spinning my 4th or 5th ounce of silk hankies, I've lost track of which.  Hopefully, when I'm done, I'll have enough to finish the silk shirt/sweater I'm knitting.
6. Maker Faire Detroit is this weekend.  I'll be volunteering to teach spinning to anyone interested.  If you volunteer, you get into the Faire for free.  The tickets are $35 apiece, hence the volunteering,
7. Hopefully, Sunday morning I'll be picking blueberries.  I want to make jam and freeze the rest.  I just hope they're open and not picked out.
   
8. I'm about to dive back into tie-dyeing.  Just as soon as the supplies I ordered arrive.  I could have sworn I still had some dyes left but I can't find them.  I must have gotten rid of them during the great Purge of 2012.
9. Going to bed now.  I'm not allowed to pick up a book or my tablet lest I read until midnight.  Man, I miss summer vacation and reading 'til 1:00am.  This whole "Adult" thing can really be a drag.
   

I finally got started on the summer sweater/shirt I'm knitting out of silk.  I've spun up a bit more than an ounce of silk hankies so far.  I expect I'll have need to spin another 2 - 3 more ounces before I'm done.  I'm knitting the sweater from sleeve to sleeve and then I'll pick up stitches and knit down to the hem.  One of my Guild members is teaching me how to knit without a pattern.  I just hope I look good in this style sweater when I'm done.

This afternoon, I bought a new addition to my slowly growing Doctor Who collection:

This will be joining me at work so I'll have a little bit of the Doctor to cheer me up while I'm working.  At least until the Doctor shows up and invites me along for some adventures in time and space.  I'm hoping it's the tenth Doctor who comes calling.

Results of our craft weekend

My sisters and I went up to northern Michigan during the long 4th of July weekend.  My parents have a cottage up there.  The goal was to spend the weekend working on our various craft projects.  Most of my time I spent spinning up the first half of the gorgeous angora/Merino batt I've been working on.

After I finished the bobbin above, I made a pair of pillowcases.  This time I bought a flat sheet and cut it up for the body of the pillowcase:

Having slept on those pillowcases the last two nights, I've learned that I need to use a percale sheet for the body of the cases.  Just any white sheet from K-Mart will still wrinkle when slept on and percale sheets won't.

I also gave my crock pot a workout.  First I made chicken taco meat (1 1/2 lbs. of  chicken, 1 1/2 packets of taco seasoning, one jar of salsa - cook on low for 6-8 hrs. - shred with two forks).  Simple and really, really tasty.  It will be going into my rotation of recipes.  Then I tried a new recipe:  Monkey Bread in the crock pot.  You use refrigerator biscuits instead of making up a batch of bread.  It took longer than the recipe called for and I ended up turning it from low to high but they were good,  I'd try it again but the recipe will need some tweaking.  And finally, I tried another new recipe, making bread in the crock pot.  I didn't care for the taste of the bread - I'd use a different recipe - but cooking it in the crock pot worked pretty well.  If you try it, you'll probably have to tweak the recipe - mine was waaaayy too wet to form a loaf - but if you follow the directions for the cooking, you'll have a pretty decent loaf of bread.  Hey, Fun with Crockpots really is fun... and tasty.

The Tour de Fleece begins

The Tour de France started Saturday which means the Tour de Fleece started, too.  I've joined Team TARDIS, Team Spindlers and Team Ashford.  I'm also on Team Crankypants.  Don't ask.  Anyway, I got tired of spinning silk hankies so I switched to this batt:

It's eight lovely ounces of 60% angora/40% Merino in the colorway Deep Sea Dream.  It's spinning up into a gorgeous single so far.

I turned my back for just a minute and when I turned back, I found this:

He really needs to be watched.  He's a total batt nut.

Jam!

The strawberries have been picked and the jam has been made.  Blueberries are next.  I got an email today from the place where I pick and the berries should be ready to pick in a couple weeks if the weather stays warm.  I'm thinking of making blueberry jam this year for the first time in several years.  I still need more Christmas gifts.

Does anyone else out there make jam?  If you don't, you should try.  It really isn't hard and the stuff you make yourself is SOOO much better than the crap you buy at the store.  I've been a jam snob since I was a kid.  First Grandma made jam for us, then Mom made it and I've been making it every summer for probably 30 years.  (God, I feel so old!)  So if you've never made jam, try it.  You don't have to pick the fruit yourself.  If you don't have access to U-pick farms, buy some fruit at your local farmer's market or, at the very least, at the grocery store when the fruit is in season.  You'll be amazed at how good you own jam will taste.

My new great-nephew

This is Leo, my new great nephew.  My niece has been wanting a dog for quite a while now and she finally wore her parents down.  Leo is a Hungarian Vizsla.  Vizslas are hunting dogs, pointer/retrievers to be precise.  They are very smart, very gentle and incredibly sweet. 

And the puppies are ridiculously adorable!

Leo isn't the first Vizsla our family has had.  We still tell stories about Red, our first dog, and he's been gone a good 20 years.  Man we loved that dog!

Maddie and Leo are already fast friends.

For the rest of my family, here's a little video:

 

I got a package today...

Lambs!

Sheri and I drove to a friend's Saturday to hang out and to visit this year's lambs.  The lambs were uber soft and extremely curious.  They would chew on just about everything:  my shirt, pants, shoelaces, my camera. 

We missed seeing them when they were first born but a month and a half later, they're still pretty cute.

As you can see, they really love Rhonda.  Of course, she's the one who gives all the lovin' and, for one lamb, the bottles.  One of the lambs was rejected by the ewe so Rhonda feeds her every four hours.

Saturday was also a craft day for the three of us.  I was planning on warping my rigid heddle loom but managed to leave the heddle at home.  Fortunately, I brought the silk with me and finished spinning my first ounce of hankies.  Sheri worked on the bookmarks she was weaving:

These are the first two she's woven.  I think they're gorgeous and she's got enough warp left for a couple more.  I'm really impressed with these bookmarks.

What I'm reading

Little House in the Suburbs:  Backyard Farming and Home Skills for Self-sufficient Living

I still haven't given up the idea of having my own house, either in the country or in the 'burbs.  This book holds basic info on gardening, keeping chickens and home skills, like soapmaking.  The writing is entertaining and very approachable.  It gives me ideas of what I want, and frankly, how much land I'm going to need as a bare minimum.  I still want an asparagus bed, a few fruit trees, a couple rhubarb plants, bees, a garden, some blueberry and raspberry bushes... hmm, the suburbs might now have enough land for me now that I think about it.  Oh, I have such dreams...

You would think, after so many Christmases with my dad under the kitchen sink, that I would know not to put too much down the garbage disposal.  Yeah, apparently not.  Thirteen and a half years in my condo and I've plugged the kitchen sink for the first time.  I tried plunging and that only got me soaked, and let me tell you, it was truly disgusting.  Then I tried Liquid Plummer.  Nothing.  And now I can't plunge because the darn stuff in sitting in my sink and I'd rather not burn myself.  <sigh>  I have an appointment with Roto Rooter tomorrow to have my drain snaked.  I really wish I would have watched when Dad did it so all those Christmases ago so I could do it myself now.

It's strawberry season and I'll be picking on Sunday.  We're supposed to have a sunny, warm weekend so the berries should be beautiful.  Sunday afternoon, I'll be making Strawberry jam.  Since it's also rhubarb season, I'm thinking of making Ginger Rhubarb jam, too.  So much jam, so few opportunities to eat it.  I always end up with far more jam than I can possibly eat.  Guess the family and friends will be getting jam for Christmas this year.

Spinning silk

I've got 3 ounces of silk hankies that I started spinning Saturday.  There's a woman in my Guild that spins silk and knits shirts/sweaters on the fly.  She starts with a drawing and then pretty much makes up the pattern as she goes along.  She's promised to teach me to do the same.  So, I started spinning the silk hankies, which is slow going.

If you're not careful, attenuating the silk can be very rough on your hands.  Silk is extremely strong and stretching out the hankies can hurt if your not careful.  It's going to take me a while to spin up those three ounces of hankies and even then, it probably won't be enough to finish the simple summer shirt I plan on knitting.

I have so many projects that I need/want to work on right now.  There just isn't enough time in the day.  There's the silk hankies to spin, a quilt design to sew, strawberries to pick, jam to make and berries to dry.  Not to mention a house to clean.  I love having lots of projects to keep me busy.

While relaxing after work yesterday, I saw a Ruby-throated hummingbird.  He was beautiful.  Galen just thought he looked tasty.