Today at 3 pm EST

Fibers mostly.
All the yarns are up that are going up.
In April I’ll have more sock, lace, silk, and cotton yarns.

E is for Eichhem. As in Tracy Eichhem.

Tracy is the man that makes the amazing spindles all individually cut on a scroll saw. I first saw them in 2005 but didn’t end up with one until 2006 when I started carrying them in my shop.

My own spindle from Tracy Eichhem is this pretty little spider

It’s one of the ultra lights weighing in at .4 ounces.

I’ve been spinning some silk in lace weight.An ultra light spindle with spiders just screams to be using silk.

While we’re on the subject of Tracy Eichhem and his amazing spindles, he has asked me for feedback on his spindles. Good or bad. Shaft lengths? Weights? Whorl sizes? If you have any feedback, please let me know and I’ll pass it along.

I’ve been concentrating on finding the best green smoothies I can find. I know some are thinking ew, but it’s a pretty good way to get more “green” in your diet. And believe it or not, alot of these greens are amazingly good blended into fruits. They aren’t at all what you think they’d be like. Fresh and blended with fruit they taste so different (or not noticeably at all) compared to cooked versions of the same vegetable.

One of the easiest ways to get more green is to put some spirulina in your regular smoothie. Remember with spirulina, a little bit goes a long way.

Sweet Kale
I really wanted to get more Kale in my diet, it’s one of those hero foods. I must say, it’s better as a smoothie than cooked.
3 large Kale leaves (no stems)
1 cup of water
1 peeled Kiwi
1 Banana

Fresh spring smoothie
I call it that because all I can think when I drink it is how “fresh” and springy it feels. Plus it leaves my breath smelling good.
Giant handful of Parlsey
1 cup of strawberries
1/2 inch of peeled ginger
1 cup of Cashew Kefir (water will work as well and has less calories)

Peppery
Arugula gives it a little peppery taste and with a peach that isn’t overly sweet, you get a good drink that isn’t too deserty.
1 cup Arugala
1 cup Spinache leaves
1 Peach
1 cup of water
Agave or Honey if needed to sweeten it

Hidden greens
Hidden because sometimes you can get your kids to drink a berry “shake” but not to eat their greens. Spinache is easy to hide in really flavorful berries.
1 cup water
1 cup of spinache leaves
1.5 cups of mixed berries (strawberries, raspberries, blueberries)

Each of these smoothies are blended in the blender until smooth. Nothing fancy. Just blended.

KNITTING….

I did find some knitting time over the weekend. My sprout has it’s arms attached and is at that odd looking baby sweater with fat arms stage:

The top down raglan has had it’s arms separated.

I have a lot of work to do this week so I don’t expect the sweaters to move much beyond those stages. February really kicked my butt with having a ton of work to do and being a really short month. This week I plan to have an update for the shop. Spindles, fiber and yarn.

The database came home. Sure a bunch of stuff has been deleted and changed but the majority of it is back. So now I’m working on putting the new spindles up again and all the missing info. I think it was all the well wishes from you guys. Thank you!

*EDIT* Crappers - I found the problem - It may be down again. *EDIT2* I know the problem. I now know the bug and am in the process of fixing it. Thank you for your patience. And a special shout out to Erin for helping me find it.

While I’m still on business, I’ve been dyeing for an update next week. I have about 8 lbs of BFL, 7 of SW corrie, and a few pounds of other fibers. There will be new sock yarns as well. I’ve also finally listed V-neck the as a free pattern with purchase of 3 or more skeins of 220 classic. Hopefully I’ll have some new summer yarns for the update too. I’ve been going cotton crazy. I have some lovely cotton/rayon, cotton lace, Cotton boucle, rayon chenille, and linen.

Now for the stuff you came here for… Knitting.
I’ve been working on Sprout.

It was pointed out to me last night that I said I was doing it in Ella Rae Classic but I was wrong. It’s Ella Rae Emity. So it’s only got 25% wool content. Silly me. I didn’t want a super warm sweater and I wanted something I could toss in the wash. This will be perfect. I know I’ll still probably forget and call this Ella Rae Classic again. Feel free to correct me.

Chesley is going to be starting up a Sprout along. I know I’m a little ahead of it all but I plan to make a second one with a longer body in some handspun yarn or longer sleeves in a cotton yarn. I thought I had decided, but typing it out, I just couldn’t actually commit. I’ll let you know more knit along details as they are given to me. I’m hoping this weekend I get a fair way along in my teal sprout so that I may get to a point where I can decide on the next one….

Since I finished a couple of things I of course needed to cast on a few things. I know I could have finished something in my WIP pile but I didn’t want to. Besides, other yarns and projects were calling to me.

I cast on for these before SPA:

The yarn is handspun from Spunky Club Celebration. I knit on it at SPA quite a bit and then promptly set it aside for other larger projects at home. Though I could use some new socks.

These were both cast on this past weekend after finishing my projects I blogged about Monday:

Sprout in Ella Rae Classic.

A simple top down raglan in Twilleys Freedom Spirit. I couldn’t pass up this yarn any longer. I cleaned out The Knitting Experience of all they had in this color. I thought of making Wicked but I actually swatched and didn’t like how the yarn looked in the crossover pattern.

And a little administrative note:
My website Database has walked off and left me all alone. The website looks as though its working but I cannot process anything. If you need to order something, please email me directly. If you ordered anything after 12 noon on 3-4, I never received it. Hopefully this will be fixed soon. Once it’s fixed I’ll make sure to change the large note on the front page.