For Mother’s Day the family took me to NH Sheep and Wool. On the way out of town we stopped at Jay’s Mom’s to wish my MIL a happy Mother’s Day and 7goingon20 picked a Daffodil. Our car was obviously in need of decorating so she tied it to the antenna. 300 miles later and it’s still attached, though not as pretty as it started out.

We Watched dog trials and pet sheep and alpaca. I begged Husbeast to let me take home this little tiny Shetland lamb. It totally would have fit in my bag and it was adorable. If only my Mom had come with me, we’d have come home with a sheep because he really was almost too much to leave behind. Especially when he stuck his nose out of the pen to get at Baby Boogie and 7goingon20. Alas, we really need to get a decent barn built first (no surprise sheep aunt Nancy).

We spent most of our time walking outside of the vending areas. The kids didn’t want to be in there and I wanted the day to be good for them too. I think the day was fun because who would have a bad time petting animals and watching the dogs herd. These are things I don’t usually get to do when I’m vending. It was good. Hopefully those that I ran into and didn’t get a chance to talk to, they’ll be at another festival this summer where I can catch up with them then.

I did get a chance to say hi to a few people and to stop in and see Sheila Bosworth, who helped me pick out the pair of Bossies and a ply spindle that I posted about last week. She was busy chatting so I decided I needed to look at the spindles a bit while waiting. Who could resist? They were all lovely but I knew I wanted a Tulipwood and was just going to wait and then I saw a spindle someone else was holding…and then she put it back….. in my hand….and once it was there….. it was mine.

It’s a 21 gram Amboyna Whorl with a long Bloodwood shaft. Simply gorgeous. And I’ll wait until MA then pick out a match.  I had planned on one more pair for doing some lighter weight spinning.  Then the only pair I don’t have is a pair for lace spinning…

I made another spindle related purchase last week. Related as in, not a spindle. Joann’s had all these wonderful wine gifting containers. Perfect transport for a spindle, they’re really quite sturdy and they’re not bad looking. I chose this one because my tattoo says “live, laugh, love”. It was meant to be.

I used to just carry around my spindle in a bag and make every effort to be careful with it. But let’s face it, I’m a clutz. In all seriousness, it seems like the harder I try to be graceful, the less I am. The case is a good thing.

I can fit in a fair amount of wool and all but the big Mjolinor will fit in there.

I packed in my Lotus project and away we went. Though some may think I am traveling everywhere I go with a bottle of wine.

I is for Iris

I had one poor little Iris show up in the garden this year.

I wonder if I’ll even get to have him next year.

Thank you all for the wonderful comments on the last post. You all are awesome!

Books are a good thing. I love books, all books. I cram books in all over the place.

I’ll be one of those old ladies that they’ll come to get when I can’t take care of myself anymore and all you’ll see in my house will be stacks of books topped with baskets of fiber and yarn…..

There is a special place in the living room for the fiber loving books. A bookshelf and then they’re still all over the place.

You never know when you’re going to have to look something up. Not that I need to knit it right away but maybe I talked about it to someone, or maybe I needed to prove something to myself. Or sometimes I want to mentally knit with my stash.

I have a good stack of stitch reference books.

All the Barbara Walkers, a few Harmonies and 2 old ones from my Gram. I find these to be invaluable. I look at all of them all the time. Sometimes I’m actually designing something and need a stitch and sometimes I just want to look and pretend I’m designing something. Do you catch a theme? I imagine myself knitting a lot. I do this because in my imagination it only takes a few minutes to knit a sweater. The closet in my brain is full of gorgeous finished sweaters.

And then there are the pattern books and magazines.

A few are from Gram’s stash when she stopped knitting but most of them I’ve collected over time. You can see that I had a thing for socks, mittens, fair isle….. I run in spurts with my pattern collecting. I seem to be on a sweater spurt but I feel a lace one coming soon. And anyone that noticed my Ravelry queue last week can attest to the upcoming lace spurt. The lace spurt was spawned by my latest spindling crazy and pushed on further by Julia and her lace set up….

But back to books. I have a couple of spinning books in my library. A couple I keep at the shop because they’re good all around spinning books and I keep them at the store for people to use just in case I am out of stock. Some spinning books are good “how to’s”. Some are more about knitting than spinning and some are really pretty coffee table style books.

Soon on this shelf of spinning books, will be my book. Interweave signed me on at the beginning of the year and I’ve handed in half already. The book will be published in the spring of 2009 and will be a how to book that covers yarns from singles, to plies, to novelties. That makes it sound short but really, it’s going to be jam packed. The book will be a good collection of all the yarns I want to go on and on and on about. With lots of pictures and good how-to’s. My hope is that it will be a really good keeper. I have a feeling I’ll have to edit pages out, I’m a little wordy and want to include it all. I swear I could write a 500 page book and still miss yarns that I want to talk about.

Every time someone online is yearning for a good how to intermediate book I keep wanting to tell them to hang on, it’s coming. So now you know. Hang on, it’s coming!

Not like you need a recipe for rice porridge. It’s been one of my choice breakfasts of late. Sometimes I have a Kale smoothie and sometimes I have porridge. Basically for dinners we will use one cup of rice (uncooked measurement). I will make 2 cups though. When supper is done, I’ll add 2 more cups of water to the rice left in the cooker and turn it on low for another 30 minutes to an hour. Until all the rice has gotten fat, split and starts to break down into what looks like porridge. This will be breakfast for a few days. It keeps well and reheats just fine.  If you’re looking for a quick breakfast, this is a good candidate.

I take a bit of the porridge, add some syrup or honey and a few cranberries or strawberries if I have them. There we go. Simple yummy breakfast.

Speaking of yummy….

That’s the Enchanted yarn I’ve been spinning from Enchanted Knoll’s Batt club. The real name of the batts I think were Wood elves… Don’t quote me on that, I never get it right. The shawl pattern s swallowtail. I have 450 yards spindle spun up and plied, I have another 100 or so of singles that are waiting for the last 100 so I can ply them. My spindling time was low when club was shipping (I work in the morning instead of walking on the treadmill). Hopefully I’ll finish up spinning this week, though I probably won’t need them since the shawl calls for less yarn. I might actually get 2 projects out of it or maybe modify the shawl to make it larger…..

And for those celebrating - Have a Happy Cinco de Mayo!

I had to get a new mug for my desk. Or rather, you could call it an old mug. It’s from my stoneware days as a potter.

It’s not to drink out of though. I had one jar that held pens, DP’s and the spindles. The Spindles had started to take over so I had to get a new mug.

In case you haven’t been paying attention lately, I’ve been on a big spindle binge. Well, I’ve been on a spinning binge in general and I don’t want to drag wheels around. So I’ve really latched onto the spindles a bit more. I take them wherever I go and I spin spin spin. I keep a bunch at my desk because some programs take a while so I spin while waiting. Sometimes I spin while readiing blogs or Rav (that is when I get a chance to do either).

The latest (and last until I get to fiber shows) are the Bosworths I just got in. I decided that if I’m spinning so much, I need spindles in pairs. It was a real revelation for me. What I do is make singles, pull fiber off to make another set of singles and then ply them. I’m ok with it, but I thought wouldn’t it be cool to have 2 spindles that were the same weight and spun the same and then I could ply from that. It was a real “aha” moment for me.

So I contacted Sheila and she helped me out. This is my new set of Bosworths:

Midi Red Cedar and Sapele Mahogany (22g) to make singles and a Maxi Tulipwood (58g) for plying. They are without fiber at the moment because I can’t decide what I want to put on them. Or rather what the outcome I want is.

I’ve decided I want more shawls so that’s what all this spindling is going towards. And I prefer to spindle spin from batts. And I prefer to have shawls that are at least fingering weight. Any thinner and they feel too delicate for me. I wear a shawl for warmth more so than fashion. Anything lace weight just doesn’t do anything for me…. This all led to me deciding I had to make the Lotus Blossom.

Which led to this fiber:

And I had to sample it with the spindle at hand which is a fantastic Greensleeves Katherine’s Cup. You can see the yarn isn’t extremely even:

Which is what I was going for with the layered batt. I wanted it to be mostly greeny/grey with sparks of black, pink, burgundy, and a touch of blue in it. The way that the Lotus shawl is, I think it will lend itself quite well to this. And it will be a thicker one too. I’m spinning up a sport weight or so.

I’ve been carding like crazy lately so it shouldn’t take long for me to find something else for the Bossies to do….

Speaking of carding, there will be an update this afternoon. Keep your eye out for it. There are batts from me, Batts from Franquemont Fibers, More top, and of course the colorway sale of the month color goes up.

oh, and if you want to see more of my spindles, check out my new SPINDLE GROUP on flickr. I’m trying to be organized.