The Biggest News in Years!

This week I bought something for myself that is life-changing, monumental and may even bring about world peace.  I got the biggest, baddest wool combs available. So righteous are these combs, that Iran wishes they had skipped that namby-pamby nuclear program and bought these combs instead.

We should have bought the 5 pitch English combs!  What were we thinking?

 So lethal that the CIA and some local governments are thinking of issuing permits before letting you take a pair home. Yes, they are English five pitch combs like the ones from the Middle Ages. 

Now for some background, you need to know that I've never bought combs before. Not mini combs, not  even two pitch. I've seen the videos and watched my friends use theirs, but never invested in any myself. So its like a toddler skipping the tricycle and going straight to a Harley.

But in all fairness, I don't think I made the wrong choice.  I actually think it was one of those ordained moments when everything lined up and there was a little beam of light shining on the spot where I was standing when I bought them.

So let me back up and tell you how it happened, since world peace may be at stake.  I have been curious about combs in general for years and I became interested in getting a set about three or four years ago.   I was meeting regularly with my spinning group at Susie's house,  when I would look at her wool combs and listen to her talk about how she would order a great fleece, wash it and comb the wool (as opposed to carding it) and come up with some super fine, really nice "top" (which is what the end product is called after combing). 

I'd hear others talk about the whole process and knew someday I'd buy a pair.  But being extremely frugal, as all spinners are, I have put it off for a really long time.  So on Wednesday morning, I told my husband I was going to a LYS that had just moved to a new location. He said to go ahead, and if I saw something I really wanted, to go ahead and get it. And not to worry about he price.  I told him I actually had something in mind, and he said to go for it!

Now I love this yarn shop because its the only one anywhere close by that carries real, true spinning stuff.  And my visit did not disappoint.  There was an Ashford wheel prominently displayed in the front window, and halfway back was a large table loom on top of a yarn display case.  Wow.
I said hello and congratulated Meredith on their move and said how nice the store was.  I told her I was looking to buy some wool combs and she said she only had one pair in the store. I knew this might be it.  That moment when you know you're going to throw down.

And I did.  I brought them home after meeting my son for coffee. I took him to my car   and opened the back door so he could look in the box.  He just blinked for a moment.  Anyway, they're set up in the garage now and I've already combed three different kinds of wool and spun the samples on my little Ashford spindle.  Super fine thread with no noils.  Serendipity.

Birthday Girl!

Baby mama is 28!

Last night was my daughter in law's birthday so we had the family over for supper.

Snicker cake!

My son, Josh made his sweet wife a delicious Snickers Cake.  It was awesome!! 

Josh and Amber and the cake

We have such a good time when we're together and I never, ever take these occasions for granted!

Adam and Betsy

My hubby had treated me earlier in the day to a visit to the garden center.  I endured it, I tell 'ya!  We got wicker box planters, petunias and potting mix. Just as soon as we got home, he went straight to the back yard to install the hooks to hang my planters on.

Petunia baskets

Today I got the soil and plants into the baskets.  They look so good and in a few weeks, they'll be spilling out of the baskets and wowing all the birds and squirrels that I hang out with in the back yard.

perfectly cut grass featuring newest flower bed/veg garden on right

Today I went out to survey my husband's handy work, and all of nature scattered when I opened the back door.  He had cut the grass and trimmed everything so neatly, for last night's birthday party! It looks amazing and I'm so proud of him.  He always does so many nice things for me and for so many other people.  Things most folks will never find out about, but I know.  He's a treasure.  He made sure I got a great little desk in my new sewing closet.

father and son

 He takes me out to eat if I even exhale like I'm tired.  He goes out of his way to take care of my car, make sure the trash is on the curb on Thursday night, keeps up with all the bills, and warns me when I try to do things that aren't prudent or safe.  There's nobody that's got my back like Jamie, my hero.  My knight in shining armor (blue jeans). 

The Man!

I will love this man till the day I die!

Coming out of the closet

I am such a freaky creature - I  crave order.  I'm not kidding.  I can clean and organize and forget to eat.  That's how much I crave order.

And when there's not order, I get grumpy.  When things don't belong somewhere, I am unsettled until they are in their right place.  I don't obsess (OCD) but it just bugs me and I want to make things right.
 
You know how you grab a ball point pen and it doesn't work, and you scribble on paper for a while hoping it will work and it doesn't?  And then you toss it, like its a bad pen; like someone did something wrong.  (Poor pen!) Anyway, that's how I feel when things are a mess.  If I can't fix the mess, I go somewhere else where I feel like things are in better shape.  Or someplace where I can fix things. 

So.....ever since I moved my office upstairs last summer, there has been a nagging feeling that something is just not right.  Where my spinning wheel sits, how my desk is ordered, the cramped quarters and the inability to get to things without a lot of hassle.
Today much of that has been remedied.  And it feels so good!  I have cleared out things that just don't belong in my little office.  Now I've added a sewing area to the newly emptied closet. I've got the sewing machine and Serger set up, plugged in and ready for action.  Or sewing.   All the what-not stuff that's been piled around, laying in limbo without a place to land, has been put away. Or thrown away.  Done.

Its that time again!

You know what time it is!  Go ahead, say it.  Its Howdy Doody Spinning Time!  That's right boys and girls, its time to spin those silk cocoons you bought and have been waiting to spin. 

Silk Cocoons fluffed and ready to spin!

 I finally finished the recycled blue jean roving and am feeling no guilt whatsoever for starting the silk.  Its so, so pretty and I have a million ideas about what I can do with it.

Recycled Blue Jeans with and without core thread

I started with lots of hand cream because silk is notorious for getting snagged on everything in sight.  Now I just reach into the plastic shoe box and grab a little ball of silk.  They're a lot like cotton balls but the drafting is so much easier than hankies. And I can spin pretty fast, too, so it will go way faster than the blue jean roving. 

Silk Baby!

I've been busy with the garden and back yard lately. Today I painted some old oak picture frames glossy black. I think they look marvelous.

 I'm getting so excited about our new family member coming in September!  We are talking about getting the floors re-done, getting rid of the builder's grade beige carpet and getting some hardwood or laminate floors.  Something clean and without the residual life/DNA of the last 10 years imbedded in it.  Yuck.

When I saw the sonogram picture of the baby just now, while going through photos for the blog, my heart skipped a beat. I felt a catch in my throat.  My family is growing so fast now. 
When I was 20 I married and that made two.  Then when I was 22 I had a little boy.  At 23 I had a little girl. That made four of us.  My daughter married, then my son so that made six.  Now my son and his wife are having a baby and that will make seven. wow.

Life is just happening so good in so many directions.  My daughter and her husband are moving closer to us, since he got a new job about 20 minutes south of here. DD works 20 minutes north so we just happen to be the halfway point for their commutes! Now do you see why I've got to spruce up the house?

Hand Me Downs

Baby Knitting

One of my New Year's Resolutions was to read books that I didn't have to buy.  My goal was to read existing books on my bookshelf, borrow books from the library or get free books from some other source.  It has proved to be a very good challenge. Not only has it made me a little more resourceful, but it has brought books to me that I never would have read, all by my lazy self.

I am reading a book now by Norah Lofts called The Town House. Its first in a trilogy, which seems to be the flavor of the month.  Trilogies, I mean.  Only this book was written over 50 years ago and does not contain all the stuff I personally find silly and tasteless.  It is a good story, with lots of twists and turns.  And the chapter I just read reminded me of something from my childhood.

I was born the youngest of three, and we were not a rich family, although we never went hungry.  In those days, hand-me-downs were not unwelcome, and were in fact a prize for me, as every season my mom would get out the big "drum" which was a large bin that old clothes were stored in.  My sister was about 3 years older than me so there was a little gap between her outgrowing an outfit, and my growing into that particular size.

As I grew out of an outfit, it was not uncommon for my mom to "let out the hem" of a dress so that I could wear it a bit longer.  Only, if the dress was starting to fade, the "let out" part was darker and it was obvious that the dress was old.  This could be remedied with a bit of rick-rack or lace to help hide the fold that was a little faded, but not always.

The book that I'm reading references this practice of letting out the hem and it made me realize that nowadays people probably don't do that any more. My mom was a SAHM and knew how to sew anything (and passed the skill on to me and my older sister) so it was no big deal to alter any bit of clothing that needed adjustment.  Funny thing is, today it super-cool to re-purpose something!
Sewing and hand-me-downs are probably very in; I think they just call it Vintage.

Recently I decided to make better use of my sewing machine and have determined to make a sewing nook out of an extra bedroom closet.  There are a few items that need to be moved out of the closet, to make room for a small table to put the machine on, but I hope very soon, I'll be able to post some things I've made out of some old "Vintage" patterns I found in the attic.

On Sunday my kids, their spouses, our new "boarder" and my father in law joined my husband and me for dinner.  We had so much fun playing with a fake moutache, watching the Muppet Movie and catching up on all the good news in everyone's lives.  That was my Mother's Day gift, but the kids brought me these things too, and I couldn't refuse! 

Mother's Day Roses!

Mary Englebreit-O-Rama!

Action Figures

I started a new baby item last night, a soft, white baby blanket in moss stitch on size 6 Harmony needles.  I don't know how many stitches I cast on, I just grabbed about a yard of yarn and cast on stitches till there was no more yarn.  How's that for being specific?

Moss stitch  baby blanket

It's like when your mom or grandma tells you how to cook something and she says, "You know, just a pinch" or "a handful" or she pours something into a pot and says, "about that much".
Everybody wants to know exactly how to do something to save ourselves the trial and error.  Well, in my experience, that's a great big No-Can-Do!  Experience is the only way to learn, except in skydiving and bomb testing.

Harmony needles

I am learning as best I can, how to weave.  Here is what I've done lately on my rigid heddle loom.  The weave is getting better and more even.  The edges look better, too.
This is all warped with dark brown cotton crochet thread.

brown

purple

red and blue variegated

And I dyed a pound of white wool last week. Lavender!

The crimp is great and the staple is pretty long, too.

We have entered the dog days of summer and today is May 2nd. What does that say about the summer ahead?  We slept in the guest room last night because the air conditioner went out again downstairs.

We just paid nearly a thousand dollars to patch a leak and refill the freon and now it needs more work. We had an independent repair guy come by today and he was adamant that our existing unit should last 20 years and its only been 10. He said we should demand that the current repair folks stand behind their repair and not ask us to replace the unit yet.  Thank you Lord, for an honest repairmen!  Thank you Lord, for an honest anybody.
Why is honesty so hard to come by these days?  Didn't Billy Joel write a song about this already? Do we need to write another one?   C'mon ya'll, lets step it up a little!

Aw its so nice to be with you!

I sat down tonight to knit for the first time in a long time!  Wow, I'd forgotten how much I love to knit!  Things have been busy lately and I have not worked on anything at night, instead going to bed reading, catching up on emails or just watching whatever hubby had recorded the day before on TV. 
Tonight I had the chance to just do my happy thing - knit!

My old friend, the LL Bean Boat and Tote

Last week I ordered and received some degummed silk cocoons from Paradise Fibers in Spokane.  They can be dyed or spun.  I wondered if I needed to re-wet them and stretch them into hankies, but I think I'm better off just drafting from straight from the cocoons.  I love a challenge, or at least a chance to learn something new and this is one of those times! Woo Hoo!

Over the weekend we helped my son and his wife paint and move.  It was so fun to see their new place as they'd left a somewhat undesirable apartment.  We've all been there, all paid our dues.  There's nothing worse than living in a crummy apartment, and nothing better than a new place to call home! 

Over the weekend we also picked up a chest of drawers for my father in law and I spent Monday putting it together.  When we bought it, my husband and I together could not lift the box and DH is twice my size.  For a small piece of furniture from Target, it was awfully substantial!! I'm guessing it weighed about 1 1/2 to 2 tons.  Maybe more, I'm not good at guessing weights.

safety additions

I took everything out of the box and looked it over with the directions.  Feeling pretty good about it all, (how hard could this  be?) I grabbed a screwdriver and went to work putting the chest together.  OMG!  Regulations regarding safety, and all the little doo-dads that come with it are intimidating.  I never knew how dangerous a chest of drawers could be!  And there were so many parts. Good grief, I never!

lethal furniture and unsuspecting t-shirt on top

About two thirds of the way through the project, my husband rescued me with the power drill and the strength of an ox.  I was "give out"! He finished putting it together and we carried it into the bedroom, safe and sound. 

Last night we had dinner with friends and I took a photo to post on Instagram of my friend's tea pot collection. The letter "P" doesn't always work on my cell phone so my caption originally read, "A small part of my friend Debra's teat collection."  Auto correct once again doesn't save the day!

Today I worked on cleaning the garage, sweeping and de-cluttering until I had moved all the Christmas decorations to the side wall and purged a good deal of junk. Hallelujah! That feels so much better! 
So now you know why sitting down on the couch tonight with my knitting bag was such a treat.  That's TREAT I said!

Dream Weaver

The last few days I've been weaving on my rigid heddle loom.  I bought the loom years ago for practically nothing.  By that I mean that it was used, at about $25 - a steal if you compare that with the price of rigid heddle looms today and perfect for my purposes.  I only wanted to try it out and see if I even liked weaving, and then maybe use up some of my stash.

It has been well worth it, and I have made lots of little things on this frame style loom.  I have

• one heddle or reed, 
• one shuttle, 
• a small tool for picking the threads through the reed, 
• and the loom itself.  

I use dime-store crochet thread for the warp and whatever leftover yarn I have laying around for the weft.  That's it.  So I guess it makes me a weaver, sort of! 

I've also been washing fleece on the sunny weather days and I'm spinning  very little lately.  Once the weather turns nice, I tend to stay outside a lot.  Unless I'm out running errands, shopping, etc.
Which brings me to two unfortunate events that I have to share.

One happened on Monday when my husband Jamie took me to replace my cell phone battery.  The phone's about 2 years old,  but the girl at the counter looked at it like it was a See N Say and you'd think I had asked her to replace the string with the ring tied to it.

It was not a See & Say and it was not even a rotary dial cell phone.

Geez!  Well anyway, they didn't carry the battery I needed but suggested that I go someplace that carries batteries of every shape and size.  Okay, fine.  So we left and went to the other store, and they didn't have my battery either but could order it from the North Pole (not really) and it said should be here by Christmas (okay that was close to the truth).  Actually it will be here on Thursday afternoon.

The other unfortunate event happened right before Easter when we were at the mall in the men's cologne section at Nordstrom's.  A very nice lady from the make up dept. walked over to me and suggested I try their eye cream which was great for puffiness and dark circles.  Really?? You came over to me, at my age, without being asked and made that suggestion?  Really? I thanked her for the sample and left.

Oh, I almost forgot one more. And this one's good!  I was checking out at the grocery store the other day, when the boy behind the cash register, who was about 8 or 9 years old, hit some keys towards the end, that started the receipt rolling like a slot machine.  Finally he rolled up the receipt with all the coupons generated, handed me the receipt and said thank you ma'm, have a nice day.  When I got to the car I looked to see what he'd done. He'd gone back and given me the Senior discount on every item.
I really did not care to get that 10% discount, but thanks for noticing, young fella!

Open the floor for discussion

Lately it seems there has been a firestorm about the topic of women, working outside the home, inside the home or both.  I'm sure you have an opinion, but that's not what I want to talk about right now, so just hold that thought. 

What I want to talk about is the amazing speed at which I can knit baby things!!  I wasn't knitting when I had my kids, and over the years I have made a few things here or there, but lately, I am finding all sorts of things to knit for wee little ones!  And they all go so fast.  So much faster than socks or shawls.

Look at what I made in an afternoon!  I hate to think what this would have cost at Baby Gap.  Its made of silk, handspun and handknitted on size 15 needles at 2 stitches per inch.  That's some honking big stitches compared to the little booties on size 2 needles!!  Can I get an Amen?

I woke up super early today, as I always do, and I decided to do some spinning.  I have this leftover cedar colored wool that I'm spinning super fine on my Kromski. 

When I don't know what else to work on, I find spinning to be one of the most relaxing and meditative activities around. 

Another thing I love is going outside and yesterday I spent half the day at a local botanical garden, walking the trails and enjoying the early spring blooms.  There are all sorts of man made sculptures and art pieces, but nothing improves on nature if you ask me.  I have to share a few pics!

This is so therapeutic for me, especially when I have a lot on my mind.  Thoughts run together sometimes and I have a hard time sorting out the difference between
a) my hormones,
b) life in general, and
c) other people's problems. 

They all look like like a mess at first, until I have time to clear my head and think straight.   Peace and quiet  help me put things in their proper category, so that I can label the stuff and not touch it if its not mine.

*Other people's problems are none of my business, so I'm best just to leave well enough alone. 
*Hormones can be adjusted with chocolate and caffeine, so that's easy. 
*And then there's life in general.  Things I want to do something about, but have no real  means to change the situation. 
At those times I  pray and wait.  Yesterday was one of those days when I had to let the quiet seep in and do its work.  By the end of the day, nothing seemed as bad as it did in the morning. 

Family Affair

Grandma's china and silver

I love special occasions and this weekend I had the chance to feed my family on real china and real silver, a first for me! The china belonged to my mother in law.  Her brother was stationed in Japan during the Korean War and he brought her back this beautiful set of Noritake dishes. Our Easter dinner was simple but got rave reviews which is a lesson for all young cooks out there.  Tried and true, traditional dishes are good for family events. (Save the experiments for small affairs, don't ask me how I know this!)

I have lots of memories in my small mind, of family dinners with and without drama.  My three most vivid are these:
1. Broccoli casserole topped with potato chips made by my grandmother back in the 70s, which I  lost later that night calling Ralph on the big white phone.

2. Biting into a piece of buckshot,  eating what must have been deer meat; I'm supposing someone tried to pass this off as beef, but I made the deduction that this might not be true, thanks to my handy-dandy Nancy Drew detective skills.

3. Playing outside with my cousins and running inside for a quick drink from someone's large red Dixie cup. It was not watered down coke or iced tea as I presumed,  but instead was Boone's Farm Strawberry wine. I know this because of the warm feeling I got once I swallowed approximately 4-6 ounces in a single gulp.

Papa, Josh and Amber

Betsy and Adam

Our discussions are lively these days and I have a tendency to change the subject like a crazy lady, whenever I feel the topic has strayed into inappropriate territory.  I got this skill from my mother, and I'm sure she got it from her mother.

My garden is growing very well, in spite of the unusual weather.  Here is lettuce, spinach, kale and Swiss chard.  I also have planted turnips and sweet potatoes, they're doing great too!

spring garden greens

I washed and felted the booties for my future grandchild.  Love them!

wool baby booties

And I'm plugging away with the pink shawl.  No hurry here - the priority is low until next fall.