March Madness

I never wore this vest one time after I finished knitting it, not even to a guild meeting as show and tell. It was not fun to wear and didn't feel good.
It was snowing when I woke up this morning and continued to snow all day. I ended up watching NCAA basketball and turning that vest into this. It's going to be a reverse stockinette vest knitted in the round. So much for fancy.

I also decided to try my hand at knitted head-
bands. The plastic ones can be pretty tight and I'm pleased at how comfortable these are. I made them 17" long and stitched them together, not well I might add, but the seam is hidden by hair.
Alexia is on school break this week so we're baby-
sitting. DD Chris brought her out late this afternoon after the snow finally quieted down. Alexia entertained herself with her Little Petshop figures while we tortured ourselves with NCAA basketball.
This is her favorite dog, I think. I don't know actually as she had a story for every figure, including two mice she said were twins named Qwimsy and Mimsy.
She read a story to me and afterward I told her that this was a first, as always before I had read to her. She said, Uh-huh, and I was good! She's in remedial reading at school so I was pleased at her excitement. We'll read more throughout the week. Note the bear to her left. He's wearing a Cat in the Hat T-shirt and glasses.

Knitting

I was doing a memory walk through our New York City pictures from last October this evening and was arrested by this image I took when were at Fulton Market. I had been completely taken by that fascinating tower in the background.
I got as close as I could and took another shot. It was such an exciting building, and then I forgot about it until I read the article in The New Yorker at breakfast this morning and which you can read about here. No wonder I was captivated. The architect is Frank Gehry. And in case architecture isn't your affliction, he is the name behind the Walt Disney Hall and the Bilbao Guggenheim Museum.
As for what I'm spinning, I have no idea. This bump was a birthday present from Amy about three years ago. I know it's Ashland Bay but it's very dense and heavy. I'm stash busting and it's just time to spin this up, whatever it is.
I'm spinning for a triple ply yarn and in looking at this picture, I think I see a halo, as in maybe mohair? That would explain why the bump feels so heavy. It's much prettier on the bobbin than in the bump.

Knitting: I have been working on this project for so long that this morning at our knit-in, they teased me that fairies are adding to my yarn at night when I sleep. I'm knitting on it while I watching NCAA and it still seems to be never ending. How do you trap a knitting fairie?
Meanwhile, I've cast on and started my next project. Quandry. The difference between medium and large is 11 inches! I don't want the sweater to be as big as large but won't be able to wear it smaller. I've gone up in needle size and chosen medium. I think it's the wrong answer. I need to think more before I knit more. It's handspun.
Meanwhile, I have finished by February Lady Sweater from Ravelry. It's such a perfect house- weight sweater that I've worn it all evening and am swatching for another one. I wanted to wear it this morning and show it off to my knit-in but it was still wet. It started snowing during the night and talk about dedication, I drove 22 miles on a sheet of ice and then after the freeway, it was just a mess. I had cabin fever relief in a knit-in and book club - good medicine for what ails me. I drove home on dry pavement this afternoon. You have to have lived in the high desert to believe it, but it's so normal. I'm not sure I'd have gone in had I not been sure the ice was just a one-way trip.

I got home to find a book I had ordered from Amazon and that was back-ordered and forgotten about had finally arrived: The Sky's the Limit by Steven Gaines. I had read the reviews and ordered it through interlibrary loan several years ago but have been wanting to reread it - more New York City architecture (my affliction). Sandy's Book Club was after my knit-in this morning, and we talking about Packing for Mars, which we all absolutely loved - a non-fiction. The author is Mary Roach and I plan to read her book Stiff next, 4 1/2 stars out of 452 Amazon reviews. We all bring in books we've read to share so I offered The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman, rated 4 stars out of 290 reviews. When I get around to loading it to My Library Thing, I plan to give it a 4.5 rating - brilliant lovely writing. BTW, spring has not sprung here.

Catching Up

My Fisher Price Little People came today. I have been shopping for some ever since grandson Noah was here and complained for the second visit that we didn't have any. Buster ate ours when he was a puppy and the grandkids have limped along on two not-too-badly chewed ones. But it upsets Noah. I did the shop-local thing and couldn't find any, so shopped online and did no better, so went to eBay as a last resort. I saw a number of attractive auctions but the shipping and handling was between $15-$20 dollars. I know when I'm being had. Then I found this lady. I won the auction for $5.50 and paid $7.00 for shipping. She is now a favorite vendor with me!
Alexia left this behind from her last visit. As you can see, she was doing her best to play, but you really need people. She cobbled together some Lego pieces to fill in. I'm feeling like a totally remiss grandma.
It has also been hard for her that her fluffy bunny has no right eye. Buster also ate that. She put a Logo wheel in his eye hole last visit and so I decided to find something to fill the space.

I couldn't find a craft eye to sew on so I chose a star button instead. I figure the kids see stranger body pieces with cartoon Animae, so a star should be just the ticket.
I finished a bomb this week and have the perfect place to install it, but it's pouring rain and has been pouring all day, with the forecast continuing through tomorrow. I had planned to install it in the morning but now am hoping for better conditions Saturday morning.

My computer has been dragging downwards for the last week or two - not sure as it just got slowly worse. Ian and I spent hours on it and today spent time on the internet looking up key words. The culprit seems to have been a toolbar that installed in a browser update. I appear to have dodged serious malware, but will be on the alert for future browser "improvements." No thanks. I'm trying to cut down.

Ideas

I came home from our guild meeting today with mixed feelings. The Nevada State Fair is definitely canceled due to lack of funding - long story but the short version is that fair people aren't casino people so don't receive casino support. The good news is that the guild has been asked to be an informational arm to a cowboy poetry function at the Bartley Ranch county park . I think it's a great fit and perhaps will be an even better educational opportunity.

As for the picture - I have finished the triple-ply gray yarn and used it as an instruction today for the McMorran Yarn Balance. The white is a delicious treat that Amy brought me from Stitches - 2 ounces of banana fiber! and the right is Mim's irresistibly dyed Blue-faced Leicester roving. Oh, and BTW, I took my ugly pink PJ's to Show 'n Tell and said that they could go home with anyone who wanted them. Instead, they got placed in the guild raffle where they actually raised $$$
Mim and I stopped at the Dollar Store on the way home (after Starbucks). We've going to participate in a couple of craft fairs and want to sell hat kits. I typed up a pattern and now we need to weigh yardages to get an idea for yarn costs. We thought we'd package them in a plastic reusable jar, but now we need find that ideal and cheap jar. The yellow plastic strip is a swim noodle which we plan to use in a wet felt demo.

I have a library program scheduled for next month and when I saw the flier entitled Sheep to Shawl, I was surprised to learn that I will also be talking about felting and raising llamas, and I do neither. Ian does llamas, Mim does felt. Should be interesting.

Next

This is my old mech-
anical Kenmore. I bought it to recover the sofa cushions our crazy dog Cody ate. He was a highly inbred show-quality dog travesty. I was excited to get this machine on sale for under $300 dollars and figured it paid it's way since we didn't have to buy another sofa.
Fifteen years later, here is my new compu-
terized Brother CS6000I, which rated 4.5 stars in 536 reviews on Amazon. It was half the price of my Kenmore. Don't we live in interesting times? All those things in the foreground are the feet that I had to stop and understand. Most features are as expected but I do like it that I can adjust the sewing speed and it automatically buries the needle in the fabric when you stop sewing. I like a button that lowers and raises the needle so that you don't have to turn the wheel. Now if I could only train myself not to turn the wheel.


Not only am I relearning about sewing and now a new machine, but I'm becoming acquainted with pattern sizes. They have NO bearing on department store sizing. According to measurements, I should sew a size 18, but when I shop I buy size 12. I made these PJs in size large. Given the EXPENSIVE ugly fabric, I'm not disappointed to learn that I apparently am size medium.
Apart from the ugly Strawberry Cupcake colors and the bizarre stretchy cotton, the pattern was ginormous and the top was too short. So I added a strip of fabric onto the hem to make it sleepable and decided the neck was just too gapey and added some fabric there too. I'm actually not sure this rustely fabric is sleepable. It might just have been a sewing exercise. A very expensive one. It's so loud, I hope I can sleep.
I was much cheered when this book came. I'd had it in my Amazon shopping basket so when I ordered the sewing machine, I ordered this, Jenny Dean's natural dye book. It's been out of print forever. Last year when I went to buy it, it was out of print and the only copies were nearly a hundred dollars. For a book!

I always seem to be looking for a cliff to jump off of. I've been doing yoga on our Wii Fit. Last week I was teaching neighbor Carrie to knit and it came up that she was recently certified in Astanga yoga and has just started a yoga class out here in our valley. I went to my first session tonight. It's at the Ross Creek club house and we couldn't start until we got the woodstove going. I realize now there are many schools of yoga and I'm just happy to have this one class opportunity. I've only seen pictures of people in yoga poses so I had no idea that yoga is so difficult, requires so much flexibility and physical stamina. I know I need to make it a daily practice, as soon as I know how to do it. I ran for many many years and I thought that was hard, but this is hard. Harder.

The Good, the Bad and the Beautiful

I got home tonight to discover my sewing machine has arrived - that was quick! I want so much to tear into it but I'm drained from errands and book club. We ordinarily have an hour of discussion, but we had read The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver and the discussion went a half hour over. I don't know how teachers do it, day in and day out. I'm drained after facilitating an hour of discussion. This is one of the best sessions we've had in a long time and if you are a fan of the book and care to know our thoughts, you can read them here.
I needed some decom-
pression knitting so spent some time with my February Sweater this evening. I thought I might have enough length on the sleeve to knit the garter end so tried it on. I had picked up the stitches and was knitting the sleeve on the wrong side. I can't deal with it tonight.
I decided I needed some happy knitting so spent some time knitting on another bomb. I've decided to stockpile a few and then see what happens. Tomorrow is another in-town day, starting with my haircut at 10:00 and ending with Knit 'n Kabitz for a couple hours at 2:00. I try to keep town trips to a minimum since it costs about $10.00 in gas, but I need my girl Wednesdays. It's cheaper than therapy. I guess I'll meet my sewing machine on Thursday.

Snowbound Some More

The forecast was for rain, which we enjoyed listening to last evening, but this is what we awoke to. This is the day I'm supposed to take a picture for my seasons file, and as of yesterday all the snow had melted. This is not proving to be all that representational of the weeks, maybe the season?
I have thrown myself into sewing and proving a couple of patterns so I know how wide I need to weave the fabric to make them in my own yardage. I don't want to weave and waste and even worse, I don't want to weave and come up short! I just got this email from Amazon:

The following items have been shipped to you by Amazon.com:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Qty Item Price Shipped Subtotal

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Amazon.com items (Sold by Amazon.com, LLC) :

1 Brother CS6000I Sew Advanc... $169.99 1 $169.99

Shipped via UPS
And what is this, you might wonder. I went to Goodwill Bargain Bin last week where clothing is priced at $1.50 per pount. I was looking for blouses to cut buttons from and instead found these great cotton mens shirts in nearly new condition. I only cut buttons from the one Ian didn't like and there is one very ugly shirt with ugly buttons that we both agree must go back. So I got 10 shirts and a set of buttons for $7.37, which is a lot less than the $14.76 I spent for three sets of vintage buttons at Junkee.
We had Alexia this weekend. I uploaded a video which you can see here. I was so disappointed that the embedded code only showed half the video after taking an hour to upload. Anyway, she's pretty easy to entertain and so are we. She spent a couple of hours on the Wii Fit and I'm telling you, that might look like a game, but it gets the heart rate up.

I think she should get extra credit for playing while wearing her mother's outsized t-shirt and PJ bottoms that won't stay up. The towel is because she said she was sweating like a buffalo, and then she wondered if a buffalo could sweat. She will be staying with on week days including overnight, for a month starting March 21st. That's her break for year-round school. We'll see what this pair of grandparents are made of.

Change of Plans Again

The sample is done, sort of. I had six broken warps in my 7" sample and then when one of the broken warps that I'd put on a weight broke again, I cut the whole thing off and cleaned off the loom.
The sample looks like nothing on either side. Since the draft was for a sinking shed loom and I was weaving on a rising shed loom, was I supposed to reverse the treadling? Anyhow, in the future I'll stick with Anne Dixon's book since the patterns are written for my looms. I've loved all the towels I've woven from it. So yes, it was a learning experience, and in more ways than I had anticipated.

I realized as I was cleaning up my work area that my favorite loom of all, Maudie Mae, is covered with dust and neglected because I keep trying to weave on Goldie, perhaps trying to rationalize my spontaneous purchase. I love how easy her tie-up is to change - but I don't love her. I was so frustrated yesterday morning, I emailed our guild prez and told her I needed to find a new loving weaver for Goldie. She exchanged a couple of emails and I was reminded that my friend Lauren, who is an art teacher at the industrial arts complex of Reno High, is trying to introduce her students to fiber arts. I emailed her to see if she would be interested in the donation of a loom and she was ecstatic. So am I. Goldie is going to have a wonderful new home as an introduction to weaving for high school art students. I know that Lee Ann, who loved this loom so much, would approve.
So while I was running errands yesterday, I picked up an inexpen-
sive utility table at Costco and now this is how I'm using the same space.

Last night at the tail end of our guild meeting, Nisha modeled two jackets that she recently finished from her own yardage. She has always maintained that she weaves to sew, which is her first love. The jackets were so stunning that I forgot to pull out my camera. She's shy about her sewing so this was a spontaneous surprise. I've been on a couple of retreats with her where she was weaving to sew and that's where the seed was planted. Her clothes are hot. No blanket on Kimosabe, baby. No sir.
I've finished my first garment with buttonholes in years. The buttonholes were such absolute torture, that after an couple of email exchanges with Theresa, I decided it might be time to shop for a new sewing machine, which I proceeded to do. We exchanged a couple more emails on sewing machines and I ordered the one we agreed on this morning. It makes buttonholes!! I bought vintage buttons for this and they're wonderful. The buttons cost more than the cloth.
Hancock's had a sale yesterday and I picked up these patterns. I think I they are all that I need for the time being. The first jacket that Nisha modeled she noted had a matching skirt, but that the fabric was so bulky that it made her look fat. I doubt she weighs 100 pounds so that's serious and a warning about what you sew with yardage.

I bought five pieces of fabric but I think I'll start with these two pieces of cotton. I also bought three pieces of rayon because I want to be seasoned with difficult fabric by the time I cut into my own yardage.
In the time being, I've decided to cut up and sew some nauseously ugly pink plaid that was my first purchase after I decided to sew again. Here's my story. We're in the Supershuttle from La Guardia and everyone is talking about their plans in the city, mostly what plays they're going to see. Out of the blue my mouth blurts, I'm going to Mood. The response: no way, shut up, you're not, seriously. So I had to do it. I was completely unprepared so I bought four yards of this obnoxious pink plaid stretch cotton. I had to go to New York to get something that ugly?!! And so I'm making it into pajamas.
With some help.

March Forth

I am so happy to say goodbye to February, which I consider to be a replay of January. I loved Theresa's dishtowels. She said the pattern was rosepath from Marguerite Davison's book. I decided to weave a sampler of rosepath for future reference. I thought it would be smart to build up a sample library.

The reality is that my weaving bears no resem-
blance to the photos in the book. I've tried two samples and they're both no-gos. I've decided to weave a little more on the pattern and then cut it off. My guild meets this Thursday evening. I'm hoping someone can see what I can't. I've checked and doubled checked the treadling and threading. I was hoping for a learning experience. Maybe??
And my finished cotton blouse needs button-
holes. I bought my sewing machine about 12 years ago to make covers for the sofa cushions our crazy dog ate. After all these years, I just last year returned to sewing shapes. My machine came with this mash-up of a button hole maker. I'm trying my best to make sense of it. I learned to make zig-zag buttonholes when I was in 4-H. And tonight I read Theresa's report on how cheap fully loaded new sewing machines are. I think there's a boat I am missing.
A llama poop-pile update: If you look in the foreground to the right of center, you will see that our llama girls successfully located their spot. I saw a satellite view of our property last year and that pile is visible from outer space. Think about that.
A spinning wheel crisis update: Here is my new mother-of-all - thank you Allison! She picked it up for me at Carolina Homespun's booth at Stitches. I am back in business. I thought I might need a new wheel but here I am at work, I mean play, for $26.
We have so many birds. Ian keeps the feeders full, which is rough in this kind of weather. I thought you'd get a kick out of the quail tracks at our front door. I never tire of the quail - they are infinitely amusing.