I have some close-ups of this yarn that makes me happy just to touch it.

Here’s a good shot of the encased plying. I don’t know the technical term for it,

but it makes for a much more interesting fabric when knit.

I got 3 hours sleep last night. I’m kind of loopy. Fortunately, I don’t have to go anywhere today but I do have a lot of laundry to wash, and countertops to clear.

And I’d really like to card some batts!

I ended up carding and spinning two ounces of the green batts with a much different ratio of silk yesterday, and it doesn’t look all that different from the four ounces I already had… tho’ it spun into a thinner, slightly denser yarn. And as I’m thinking about it, that may be because I plied it tighter. Hmmmm, interesting.

The one on the left is the “crayola spew.” The one on the right has a ton more green and a fraction of the red, yellow and blue that the first one has.

I do think they’ll look different from each other when knit up. They HAVE to!

So, this afternoon we’re packing up and heading out to my sister-in-law’s house for our yearly “cousins campout.” It sounds like it won’t be as well attended as last year, and the three moms that are staying overnight are all 6 1/2-8 1/2 months pregnant and already have multiple children.

I’m guessing there’ll be a lot of waddling (I’m the worst), resting, delegating to the older kids (poor Abby), and not a ton of ambitious events. (I’m going to try to knit some Green Tea leg warmers).

Still, I can’t help myself. I’m bringing the dutch oven (only one this year) and making a cobbler.

It’s looking like there is too much tweed in my green batts. I spun them yesterday and this morning, and the yarn is hanging to dry now. It’s all messy, I guess I got a bit carried away with the fulling/finishing so I’m not motivated to take a picture ’til it’s dry and I straighten it a bit.

I did get the 180 yards I was going for. Hooray!

Anyway, Nate said it looks like a crayola box threw up on it. Lovely image, no? I think that comment right there designates the yarn for leg warmers. I’ll still knit it up and see how the silk is. And I guess I’m going to have to card and spin some more to get the tweed ratio right.

Oy.

Wanna see something pretty?

I’m kind of smitten. Check out the side/back view. Makes me giddy. Nate wants a Vespa, and more power to him. He can get whatever scooter he wants and he’s the one “in the market”, but if I ever end up with one of my own, well, I’ll definitely try this baby out.

On Saturday, Nate took the family out to Snoqualmie Falls. I haven’t been there in many years. It was unbelievably crowded. We hiked down to the bottom (major round ligament pain) and when we were done, Nate hiked back up by himself to get the car to pick us up.

Clark has developed a sensitivity to loud noise. He spent all of the 4th of July with his hands over his ears, and I guess the thunderous falls were too loud as well, though it really wasn’t that loud.

We’ve been enjoying heading out after dinner when the house gets hot and outside is starting to cool off. We typically go to a park for some fresh air and shade.

I carded 4 ounces of my Green Tea batts,

still sampling, unfortunately. I’m testing out a new silk to see how it cards and knits up since my old silk is no longer available. So in the next day or so I should have it spun and I’m trying to decide what to knit it into. Maybe some picot edged leg warmers? Or a hat? Or a scarf? Any suggestions? I’m going to spin it woolen and am hoping to get about 180-200 yards out of it. If need be, I can card and spin more.

I’ve felt a little down this week. Not really sure why. Hormones, or fatigue, or something. Not very sociable.

So, here we go. Tim backed up, tested and updated my site because he rocks. It may look the same to you, but it’s totally weird on the back end. The posting part anyway. But we’ll see if we get pictures. Thank you so much, Tim and Carol! Again. This is how many times now?

Ok, so if you like foreign movies with subtitles, and like romantic movies, have we got one for you. Nate has taken to renting Bollywood movies. I’m really not much of a movie watcher, and becoming less so as I get older because there are, in my opinion, SO many more interesting and productive things to do with 2 hours. Or in the case of Bollywood movies, 3-4 hours. So I don’t watch all of the movies he brings home, but the girls eat it up.

Anyway, we just watched Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi. It’s incredible. The sweetest, most touching movie I’ve seen in a long time. You laugh, you cry (how cliche is that?). Still. I highly recommend it if your tastes bend that way at all. It does have some crazy musical numbers, but if you don’t enjoy them, it’s still worth suffering through them to see the film. The main character is one heck of an actor. Again, wow.

I’m listening to the soundtrack right now which I downloaded off of iTunes for $5. It doesn’t make me as sick as other music (remember this freaky pregnancy can’t play, sing, or even listen to music thing?) because not speaking Hindi myself, there isn’t the slightest chance I could sing along to it :-). That seems to be a real issue for me. How sing-along-able it is. I really miss singing actually. I cried on Friday when I tried to play my guitar and gagged as soon as I CONTEMPLATED singing. I hadn’t even gotten to the actually singing part.

Ok, so this is a majorly rambling post, eh?

Getting to the picture part… Here is the skien I spun from my watermelon batts. I have more batts carded, but I haven’t photographed them yet.

That seems to have worked. SO, here’s some catch-up. (It’s going to take me forever to insert all of these, ’cause I have to do it one at a time).

Liv’s dyeing and spinning experience with her 4 ounces of BFL. (Blue Faced Leister). Oh yeah, and there’s Calcifer in the background in his hospital tank. He’s all better and back in my room now.

Then there’s Veronica’s dyeing experience. She hasn’t shown much interest in spinning it.

And then there was the silk lace I spun for Carol.

Whew! I’m done. Enjoy the color, I’m going to go do something else with my day now.

I’m finding that it’s a lot harder to think of things to write when I can’t SHOW you anything. My friend is going to update my software when he has time, so it isn’t a permanent problem. In the meantime though….

We had a nice 4th of July. My brother almost blew himself and the younger children up, but since there were (miraculously) no injuries, we can all laugh about it now.

I spun a heavenly skein with 4 ounces of my watermelon batts last night. It’s really very pretty, and I’m excited to do something with it, but I didn’t get as much yardage as I expected.

Um, what else?

I’m starting to look pregnant instead of just big. That’s kind of fun. It still depends on what I’m wearing.

I have a shipment of new dyes scheduled to arrive today and I’m excited to try some new colors.

I guess that’s it. TTYL.

I’m trying to figure out what exact color of green it is. Moss green, maybe? I didn’t have a recipe for juice that both used the things I wanted to use, and that I had all the ingredients for, so I made one up. I started with 4 carrots, and their tops. Added half of a fat cucumber, half a red bell pepper. Some kale, some celery… and then added an apple so it’d taste a little better. It probably made 16 ounces of juice, which is lot. I’m working my way through it. My stomach has been unhappy all morning, so I’m hoping I can keep it down. But it sounded good. Fresh. Full of vitamins, etc. Maybe it’ll give me some energy.

Liv finished spinning her colorful yarn from wool she dyed. It’s really pretty. Veronica kettle dyed 4 ounces of wool. Kettle dyeing is SO much cooler than handpainting, which I find to be tremendously tedious. And I hate throwing away a handful of plastic wrap when we’re done.

I’ve spent the week primarily spinning, dyeing, cleaning the house and enjoying the kids, now out of school for the summer.

I’ve been working on a new batt color, and while I love the base, my tweedy bits don’t quite match it. That’s the thing I’m finding with the tweed aspect of my batts. If the color doesn’t come out JUST so, the whole color scheme is off. Like my boysenberry silk. It needs just a TAD more red in it to be perfect with my salmon base. And it doesn’t have it. It’s too purple. So I’m going to bag it up and save it for another base color, a nice green perhaps, and I’m dyeing some mahogany to see if that fits the bill.

I’m having a heck of a time coming up with an additional color. The light green I’d envisioned isn’t all that great. So what now? A blue? Light or dark blue? Maybe I’ll keep the boysenberry and add the mahogany? No matter what I do, it looks like I need to cut down the amount of silk for this colorway. I put the same amount in the salmon base that I did in the purple, and it looks messy.

We may break out an origami kit later in the day if we get bored.

Being pregnant and sick and having my joints all go to mush with that lovely relax-hormone-thing has made it difficult to keep up with my fish tank. I believe it had been 3 weeks since I did a water change when last night I noticed Calcifer had some deep red spots on his headgrowth. I called the man I bought him from, and was given some things to try. He has bacterial infections in his head. Lovely. I’ve lifted him out of the water and dabbed the red spots with peroxide on a Q-tip. I need to go to the store and pick up some Neosporin cream, not ointment that I can rub on his head once a day if I can dab it dry enough that it’ll adhere. I can set up a hospital type thing in some buckets and treat him with a general anti-biotic bath but seriously, I’ve never had good luck with bath treatments for things in the past. And I have a call in to Goldfish Connection to see how fast we can get their medicated food here (mine’s old) and what it’ll cost me.

Lame, lame, lame! If Calcifer pulls through this, I think I’ll be better about those water changes. It’s just so HARD lugging 5 gallon buckets of water around when it’s not so easy to walk anyway.

WordPress isn’t letting me upload photos today, so you get another long, wordy post with no pictures. Sorry.

Yesterday was the yearly picnic/BBQ/end of year party for the 3,4,5,&6th graders. We were up at Kayak Point which is gorgeous. The weather was lovely and it was very relaxing. I have some great pictures.

Friday, Carol and I are going to the Black Sheep Gathering. I’m so excited! Tho’ I’m not sure how comfortable I’ll be on my Thermarest 5 months pregnant in a tent. It’s only one night, and the grass is usually really long and cushy. Nate (and I, for that matter) would like to know why Fiber Events hate men. Madrona has been over Valentine’s Day the past few years, and this year, Black Sheep is over Father’s Day. Which is why we’re coming home Saturday night instead of Sunday morning. How hard is it to avoid family holidays when planning these things? Enquiring minds want to know.

So that’s that I guess. I’m just plugging along, worried about my dumb fish, looking forward to my favorite getaway of the year this Friday.

Oh, that reminds me! I like to go to Black Sheep with my wheel empty so I can wander the tradeshow, find something I like, and spin it. So I made myself finish that bombyx silk last week. It’s really lovely, and you should have seen me trying to stretch that skein between my toes to get a picture. That I can’t post. I’m going to keep trying.

I got about 400 yards from 2 ounces, and there was some waste. Some of it was pretty matted and lumpy. It didn’t draft well at all. I’m looking forward to knitting something relaxing this weekend.

Jello Jigglers. I can’t get enough of ’em. Jello and ham. Yum. Tell your friends.

Still feeling a little better, but really tired. I was in bed most of yesterday simply because being out of bed was too tiring. It feels so pathetic. This morning, after taking the girls to school, I’m going to dash to Costco to get some basic food and supplies before the fatigue hits in ernest.

Then maybe I’ll pick through the rest of my dyed silk so I can get these purple batts finished. I think everyone is tired of the wool and drum carder taking up the breakfast bar and one of the islands. It’s really in the way.

I started spinning the silk,

then cut into the tip of my drafting thumb while making dinner two nights ago, so that’s on pause for a bit. I think it’s going to be really pretty. There’s variation in the color that I wasn’t expecting. I didn’t feel like switching over to the accelerated head, because it involves a wrench, so I’m struggling to get enough twist into the single on the fastest whorl and am kind of kicking myself.

Oh, and Jean, the cookies were great with tea, thanks! I had them with some unsweetened Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime that night. Hit the spot.