pointysticks.net

It’s taken some wrangling, but I’ve finally learned how our new printer’s memory card slot can transfer pictures directly to the computer. No more killing batteries while I’m transfering from the camera.

I’ve been busy washing my new fleeces little by little. Still working primarily on the stinky fleece that Mom loaned me, and the gray Lincoln fleece. The Ram X is finished and waiting it’s picking, fortunately the vm that was in it mostly fell out on it’s own.

I finally finished spinning the ounce ingeo from the fiber sampler, I’m not sure if I love it or hate it– it’s very pretty stuff. I liked the way it felt cool on my fingers while I was spinning it, I think as the weather warms up some of these new fibers are going to be a welcomed break from wool.

This is a little of the light gray wool that I washed and started carding, some how it appeared finer to me when I bought it but I really like the way it spins, I’m going to try combing a few of the clean locks and see how much of a difference in texture it might give me. I’m thinking this would be a good fiber for a rustic looking pair of slippers.

Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool?

Yes sir yes sir, I bought three bags full. One jet black fine, one course gray, and one creamy white fine.

Then Mom gave me her black fleece from last year (thankfully, it’s stinky but not ruined). I shouldn’t say gave, as in “I don’t want this any more why don’t you take it?” I mean more of a loan, as in “Won’t you wash, pick and card my stinky fleece, then spin it up and knit me something nice?”

Fine. Okay, it’s just another interesting Judyism. Instead of giving her the ole stink eye, I smiled and gave her a hug, then I tortured her a little and said “If that’s what you want for your birthday…” very sweetly. Since Mom doesn’t think (or at least won’t admit) that my time and talents are worth anything, in her mind that means by loaning me the fleece that she’s cut herself out of a real gift.

Okay, I’ll still get her a store bought gift, but if I’m going to go through the frustration of dealing with a stinky fleece I can’t help but have a little fun.

Back to my NEW playthings. I showed the utmost of restraint, (No, really I did this time!) shopped carefully, (What’s so funny, why are you laughing?) and purchased only the bare basics (Really I did.)

I bought replacement felting needles, and a sample fiber pack with ingeo, soy silk, Silk Latte (milk silk), bamboo silk, and a couple other fibers that I can’t recall at the moment. That was it– oh yes and the three fleeces that I mentioned before.

So now our kitchen sink is occupied with the second small batch of Lincoln/Ram X scraps that I weeded out of the good stuff earlier this week. I always do the funky ‘unspinnable’ stuff first and get it out of the way, sometimes there’s a treasure hidden in the scraps, sometimes quilting batts, sometimes stuffing, sometimes I end up with very pretty felt balls to give the dogs,– it’s a crap shoot (please, no references to dung tags– I do throw those in the mulch pile immediately.)

Lexi has proven herself my daughter not only in flesh but in spirit, according to Mom she only reached for the most expensive fleeces during the sale and was quite distressed because Grandma wouldn’t let her touch the unwashed fibers. That’s my baby-girl!

Josey actually managed to enjoy himself too, he’s been a long standing yarn snob ever since I allowed him to pick out a skein of the prettiest space dyed silk flagged yarn to make pot holders out of. (FYI, I did this most frivolous thing when he was first learning to knit because the cow of a clerk at my former LYS kept giving him a hard time for wanting to touch the knitted swatches, even after I clarified for her that we were in there shopping for his knitting project– not mine. She was duly horrified. Josey was delighted.) he touched and sampled to his delight. He made a little felt ball at the Waldorf School tent, I bought him a goat puppet, and when he started losing interest I let him play his game boy for a little bit while we browsed.

I have to swap out the soak water now, and after this batch it’s bedtime for me. If I can find some batteries for the camera I’ll snap some pictures and post them tomorrow– or I guess now– today.

Tomorrow is the big day. Mom’s going to pick me up and we’re going to Black Sheep Gathering. This is actually one of the few things that we can do mom/daughter and not end up in a huge emotional fuss over. Last year we went together and had a great time, she tried to get back into spinning but it doesn’t hold her interest any more.

Still, Mom likes going because of all the different crafty stuff, she’s really into craft-shows and we have some common ground chit-chat. Josey’s going with us this year too, very cool– he really liked going to OFFF last summer and found tons of inspiration for projects.

I de-cluttered the pantry, and declared the space reserved for my fiber arts pursuits– Matt asked why and I said “It’s like money in the laundry, whoever does the laundry gets to keep the change.” and he asked me “You do?” (I’m not surprized that he doesn’t know this little coffee table rule, since I’m not certain he knows where the washer and dryer are.) Then I showed him the livingroom closet– and told him that he could put his ‘indoor’ hobby stuff in there since his models probably wouldn’t fair very well in the pantry (waterheater is in the pantry, so it does get warm in there). He’s satified.

Some people should not be allowed to use the internet.

My husband bought (or thought he was buying) a “new in box” Star Trek model off of eBay, we typically don’t deal with money orders but I told him to go ahead and bid. We saw, we bid, we won. Then we sent the money order, money order was received and cashed, package was sent.

Nope.

Instead comes a little box in the mail, from the seller, with some fishing spool things in it.

Contact seller, let him know that there’s been a mistake. Okay, so he sends the model out. Wait, couple of days later we get it, it’s not new in box. No instructions, parts taken off of the sprue, some painting done of the hull of the Enterprise NX01 and a few smaller parts missing.

Seller emails me (since it’s my eBay identity– my husband doesn’t have one of his own) and TYPES IN ALL CAPS A P!$$Y EMAIL.

That’s no way to do business. He wants us to reimburse him because he misquoted shipping (okay, might have happened without the other screw up), wants us to send the wrong package back to him (going to do that anyway) without reimbursing us for the postage, and then gets in a huffy because because I haven’t made it a personal priority to go to the Post Office just for him.

I just sent him a calm if slightly chilly reply email, telling him that I am more than slightly dissatisfied with both the transaction and his attitude. I have 100% positive feedback for all of my transactions, both buying and selling– I really hope this guy isn’t going to mess that up for me.

Up late listening to Coast to Coast, tonight’s guest is pretty boring so I’m in here, on the computer, looking for inspiration. I’ll go back out into the shop in a while and tinker some more with my knitting in a few minutes.

Maybe I’ve meantioned this before– but insomnia while wrecking havoc on other aspects of my life is actually pretty good for knitting and spinning projects. I wonder if I could claim that I have a nocturnal spindle?

There’s nothing like the stink of sour wool is there? Fortunately, it turned out to be only the laundry bags I use for washing the wool– what a relief.

Here’s a picture of my Lincoln fleece warming up on the table out side, I actually covered it with an old fitted bed sheet to keep the sun (and birds) directly off of it while it was warming after taking this picture.

The three boxes for the left are for my sorting, there’s only about 8 pounds of grease wool here so one box is otherwise unfit for spinning stuff and the two others are respectively for the light silvers to midgrays and dark midgrays to nearly black.

Since I threw away the stinky laundry bags I’m going to have to do all the washing by hand in the kitchen sink.

Matt does not appreciate it when I use the bath tub for washing wool, although he loves his socks and hats, he also likes (and I quote) “Soaking in the tub without having to remove livestock first.” Well, we might have issues with that once we buy a farm, but since we’re in the suburbs I’ll concede for now. (It would probably make his skin nice and soft with all that lanolin though.)

I’m going good today. Got caught up on a bunch of housework yesterday and pulled out the spinning wheel (this is a borrowed Ashford Traditional– I think.) I don’t really like it, it’s hard to treadle and I don’t seem to be able to get the tension to work comfortably for me (even after spinning and plying two monster skeins on it) I keep hoping that I’ll sit down and it’ll just click in my head and my hands will absolutely love the way works– but I don’t think that’s going to happen just yet.

After much debating and agonizing– I think I’m going to keep the Scholar after all, I like the treadle set up (the little leather foot hinge needs to be replaced now) the size is right (small like our available space), and I actually miss spinning on it. The wheel is unbalanced, it squeaks and clatters, it needs some new screws, nuts, bolts, and a drive band but it’s mine– free and clear, and until I find something that works for me, I’m stuck with the little bugger.

Patti suggested that I tole paint it, so as to make some association other than “My mom’s divorce wheel.” I’m thinking about it– not a bad idea. And since Wal-Mart expanded their craft section I was able to buy oodles and gobbles of new paints to replace my old dry and gunky nearly empty bottles.

Black Sheep Gathering is coming up next weekend and last year I didn’t take any cash with me.

I figured that if I took cash I’d buy a bunch of stuff and run out of money.

Still, I bought a couple of fleeces (yeah, they take checks– no one warned me about that). My mom bought a fleece (which she’s going to give to me because she STILL hasn’t gotten around to doing anything with it– that’s going to be fun to sort). Then she bought carding combs for me for my b-day (next month I’ll be 21 years old for the eight or ninth time) and we both bought spindles, little chunks of processed fiber. Buttons..knitting needles.. You get the idea.

Since it’s sunny out while I’m still thinking about it I’m going to go skirt a couple of my fleeces.

This has been the most mind numbing morning. First, I woke up early– usually, I don’t wake up before my son. So I took advantage of the opportunity, fed Lexi and watched the most splendid sunrise I’ve seen in ages; then I grabbed my note book and scribbled a few random thoughts, made my weekly lists, doodled, and sipped coffee.

Then all sorts of unholy chaos broke out. Josey decided that singing in the bath at the top of his lungs was a really good idea, the phone started ringing, the dogs started barking, a sales man started knocking on the door, and all while I’m in the middle of changing Lexi’s diaper. So I did what any rational person would do.

I finished changing Lexi’s diaper, grabbed the extension in the kitchen “No I’m not interested in switching long distance carriers..”, threw table scraps to the dogs, answered the door “No I don’t let salesmen into the house for demonstrations… No I’m not interested in your cleaning system…”, put my Alien Fashion Show cd into the player, turned the volume to high, and started dancing with my baby girl.

This amused the grumpy bug for a few songs, but then I had to turn the volume back down and get her ready for her nap.

So here I am– Josey’s doing school work, Lexi’s napping, I finished 4 pages of writing, 16 pages of editing and formatting, a few rows of mindless knitting and doing my best to avoid the HUGE stack of papers that I need to file.

I should also bill some customers, but I haven’t decided if I can actually call customers that haven’t paid me for OVER A YEAR customers or just people that take advantage of me. I’m going to make a conscious effort to make today good. Wish me luck.

Isn’t he just the cutest? I had to lay out some of his hats around him to show them off.

I bought him a Lion Brand knitting loom at first, but that was too big (and I think the work went too slooooow for his tastes) so when we were at the craft store I told him he could have the little blue loom if he thought using a smaller loom would help. It did, and he’s made a couple of baby hats so we went back to the craft store and he now has one of the long scarf looms and a whole set of the round looms.

Now, the boy fancies that he’s a hat maker and wants a webpage to sell his hat. Okay, frankly– sounds like a very good homeschooling project for the summer. Who knows? Maybe he’ll actually do well in his business.

My dentists visits went extremely well. I have lost one filling and have one teeny tiny cavity. I did have to go in two seperate visits to have the cleaning finished, but my teeth look so good. And I’m really proud of myself, this was the first time EVER that I’ve had anything done without being sedated at all. It wasn’t too bad, there were a couple of moments where I thought I might freak out, but I kept control and stayed calm. I have to go back next week for the fillings, but I’m cool.
No knitting work to speak of, I tried to start a new pair of mindless baby socks with some scrap yarn but I was out of it that I frogged and knit, and frogged and knit.. until I just rewound the ball and decided maybe I should give it a rest.

So as you can probably tell, I got into my blog and started rearranging my template (!–java script errors were driving me NUTS–!)

Not another mom rant.

Okay, sort of another mom rant. She brought me eight or nine teddy bears to clothe to give to “the grandkids” (meaning the spawn of my sister, step-sisters, and myself) for Christmas. I was DONE with Christmas gifts last month and if I recall correctly she said that no one (meanomg her) wanted handmade gifts from me anymore for any occassion since they (meaning her) did not know how to gauge the cash value in order to recipricate the gifting.

Since I made the resolution that I was not going into the craft store (or on eBay) without a specific list of needed materials, and I was NOT going to go through spaving (spaving is “spending to save”) on art and craft materials until I’d culled, decluttered, and finished the copious amounts of UFOs found in my various stashes (Who am I kidding? The whole house is one big stash of arts and crafts that we just try to live around.) I’ve completed some major projects and tons of little ones.

Well, have to boogie– in about an hour I have a dental appointment so if I manage to put in a slightly disjointed entry tonight you’ll know it was just the drugs.