Just one more post

This Christmas has been really lovely. Not only did I get an amazing set of presents from Laurie's parents, I also was able to receive communion. Since it's snowy here at the cabin, it's hard to push the wheelchair uphill and in the slippery wetness. It's doubly hard right now, because my back is still so sensitive and Laurie can't lean into it to push me uphill, like she normally would. So we decided that it would be better for me not to go to Mass today. At home, we have a pyx so that if I cannot go to Mass, Laurie can bring communion home to me, but, alas, we didn't bring it with us. Laurie and her parents left for church promising to ask to see if there was a pyx available to bring to me. When they asked, a very kind couple volunteered to follow them home and bring me communion officially. It was so very nice of them to take time away from their family to come minister to me. It was really touching that they had gone so far out of their way and understood how it was important to me to receive on Christmas. I am very blessed, indeed.

So, some more catching up to do. These pictures are from our drive home from Flagstaff, after we were snowed in at the Bed and Breakfast we stayed at while Laurie was finishing her finals. The drive back with the red rock and the snow was so pretty - I'm not sure what could top snow and red rock. Some of the first pictures didn't show the red rock because there was so much snow. We stopped at a little National Forest trail head area and walked around a little. The path had been plowed, so we took a lovely walk. We even saw a blue jay just perched there on a branch, posing for us. So here are the pictures from that drive (just a few of them, I took a bunch, but most ended up to be blurry trees!)

A week or so later, we went to our Benedictine oblate meeting for December. In December, both the East Valley group and the Phoenix group get together for a little party. We were so excited to see one of our oblate friends who has moved to Ithaca, New York about six months ago! What a wonderful surprise! We grabbed coffee with her a few days later, before she left to go back to New York. It was really good to see her. This picture that is coming up is from that day. We put my freshly washed hair up in rags and this was the result:

Unfortunately, it didn't last for very long. We're trying out new products in my hair. I switched shampoos and conditioners to Burt's Bees, but they are so expensive and there is silicone in the conditioner, which I don't like. We've tried a number of other shampoos and conditioners but haven't found the right combo yet, so my hair has been a little dry lately. Our next experiment will be going back to the Burt's Bees baby shampoo we were using and try jojoba oil as conditioner. If that doesn't work, I'm not sure what our next step will be.

I better be off now, Laurie's making Christmas dinner and it looks like we'll be eating soon. She's making yorkshire pudding, green beans and roast beef. She just served a fancy cranberry/cinnamon/lime sparkler drink so we must be getting close! Homemade pumpkin pie and whipped cream for dessert! I love her whipped cream (and the pumpkin pie, too, come to think of it). The one bummer is that I haven't been able to get ahold of my family. My mom's not returned any calls or picked up her phone. Maybe I'll try just one more time. Merry Christmas to all, I hope you had as good a day as I have. Thank God for many blessings.

Another fiber post

Two fiber posts in one day! Oh my! I found where I had stashed the other pictures I had meant to post earlier and took a few more, so I thought I'd make up for the lack of posting earlier and post again - and again Merry Christmas.

First up is BFL that I bought at Tempe Yarn and Fiber. They are both 4oz. The first picture is a Barbara's Braid, hand dyed by a woman at our LYS. Second is Pagewood Farms in the color "Misty". I actually picked them out separately, but they are so alike and of the same color family that I'm spinning them together. A handful of one here and another there to make a beautiful three ply sock yarn for some socks for me (knee high socks, that is)! On this shopping trip, I also got some lovely dark, dark, almost black looking merino that for some reason I didn't photograph. I got almost 13 oz of it and plan to make Laurie some knee socks for her Christmas present. It's beautiful and they won't be getting this color in again.

We attended Expressions in Spinning just before we left for California. The topic for this month is Ireland. I saw some pictures of monasteries and in a Celtic book that we looked at mentioned Iona Monastery, which is techincally in Scotland. It's even a Benedictine monastery! On my iphone, I found an amazing picture of the monastery, where the stone wall is almost pink with the sun reflecting on it. The picture is copyright of a company called Mysterious Scotland. So, I combined two colors to make the subtle grays and pinks. The gray is Jacob wool, from what I understand, a rare breed of sheep and the pink is merino in the colorway "Begonia". They look really beautiful and very true to the picture, as you can see in the batt.

Lastly, are the pictures of the brand new spindle that I got for Christmas, this morning. I haven't had time to photograph all of the fiber, it takes up a lot of space and I'm already cluttering the coffee table with books, other fiber and my computer. I'll most likely wait until I get home to give you all the wonderful details. Laurie's parents were so very generous to me this Christmas, I can't thank them enough.

On the spindle, is the beginnings of my Ireland yarn. The spindle itself is a Jenkin's Turkish Delight in Striped Ebony, weighing in at 1.2oz. It spins for so long. It's my first low whorl spindle and I'm having a lot of fun with it!

A fibery post

This won't include all the wonderful fiber and new spindle that I got this morning for Christmas. First up is my new spindle set. These are partially to replace the bolivian rosewood one that I broke the tip off of. (I'm still hoping to get that fixed by sending in back to the maker.) Both of these spindles are 12 inch ones in Lignum Vitae wood. You can't really see how beautiful the wood is in the picture, but it has streaks of blue and green and is very pretty. I've already transferred the cashmere/silk that I was spinning on the broken one over.

Next up is the fiber that I spun up for Expressions in Spinning, the My Beard poem. It's 2oz of BFL. About 140 yards of sport weight yarn, Navajo plied. This was my first every three ply and likewise my first time Navajo plying. It was a lot easier that I had initially thought it would be, so I think it will be a regular occurrence. Right now, I'm in the middle of knitting this yarn into fingerless gloves for myself. They are turning out really nice.

I know that I have more pictures of fiber on another card. It may be in the camera. I'll have to get on downloading them to my computer so I can show them off. I'm not sure when I'll photograph the wonderful Christmas presents that I just received, soon I hope!

A couple of big long posts...

Merry Christmas! I've been neglecting blogging recently. Mostly, because there has been so much going on. One example is that Laurie got a job! We found out a few days before we left for California for Christmas. She will be working at the Jewish high school in Scottsdale. The job is almost exactly the same as what she was doing in her previous job and she really likes the people she'll be working with. We think that her being let go earlier was better for her in the long run because she was able to do things like tour the school on a work day and go in for a meeting. We're very excited, she starts on January 4th, but she has some meetings on the 29th and 30th so we are going to go home earlier that we thought.

Right now, we're on the second leg of our Christmas trip. We spent the first few days with Laurie's sister and brother-in-law and their 2 little boys. It was a lot of fun. They have a guest bedroom on the first floor that is perfect for staying in. We got in after bedtime on Saturday night and Sunday morning, I got woken up to be blown a kiss from the oldest (he's 2). We celebrated Christmas dinner a little early, Laurie's sister's family are spending Christmas in Seattle, with her brother-in-law's family. It was delicious and the boys got their gifts from Laurie's parents. The oldest got a balance bike, which was a big hit and both are sharing the Thomas the train set, complete with train table and track and everything. It was really cute to see them so excited!

The next few days have been quiet. Hanging out with the boys and playing with them and lots of reading with them. We went to lunch twice and it was really convenient to get out because Laurie's sister is the proud owner of a new minivan (ok, new to us. They've had it for a little while, but we didn't know about it.) So, we didn't have to load car seats into our car before we could go anywhere.

Now, we're up at Laurie's parent's cabin for a few days before we head home. There is a little snow on the ground, hopefully enough for them to cross country ski on. We're expecting friends to come up tomorrow. We'll leave for home on Monday.

Our neighbors at home have been really nice. I went ahead with my mom's permission to order all the things that I need for the bunny! (Only 7 days left!) Our neighbor is collecting the boxes that were still arriving when we left for CA. I'm really excited to go get Bennett! It's going to be a lot of work, but it will be worth it! (Bunny kisses!)

I hope all are having a good Christmas. I am a blessed girl this year. We do Secret Santas with Laurie's family and Laurie's father drew my name. I got everything on my list, which was extremely generous. I'm planning on doing a knitting and spinning post soon, I've got lots to post about. I'm looking forward to a family tradition - the making and eating of cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning. We're heading to Mass at 11am. Off to see about doing that second fiber post...

Snow, snow, snow...

On a whim, Laurie and I are up in the snow right now :). Laurie had been tracking the weather recently and at the approach of a huge winter storm in northern arizona, we loaded up the car and drove out to a lovely bed and breakfast near Flagstaff. We came up a day earlier that we had anticipated because we were worried about being caught in the beginning of the storm, driving up Monday morning. It's a really good thing we did. Yesterday and last night, the storm laid down 2 feet. It was blizzard conditions by noon. It was beautiful. We were here alone in this big, lovely, warm lodge watching it blow and snow outside. I've been spinning to my heart's content and Laurie's been working on the last of her finals. With any luck, she'll be done tonight and we can both spin together. Last night, the power when out in the blizzard conditions, so I was spinning by candlelight by a roasty fire in the fireplace. The power was restored in the early hours of the morning, so we're enjoying the lit Christmas tree and the cozy surroundings right now. Everything is so beautiful covered in snow. Unfortunately, the cross country ski place is closed and won't open until Thursday morning and we're leaving tomorrow morning. It's been quite a relaxing and lovely getaway. Just what we needed with all of the stress that's been going on lately.

When we get home, tomorrow, I'll post again to fill in what's been going on this last week or so. It's hard to be on the computer here and not spinning and enjoying the beautiful surroundings, I really hope Laurie will be able to have a little fun here, too!

Oh dear

Laurie was laid off today from school even though we had thought that she would be employed until December 17th. We're really praying for a good result from her job interview this week.

Catching up a bit

Mostly, over the last week or so, I've been sleeping a lot and hanging out in bed to try to alleviate the pain in my back. I went to the doctor a week ago friday and basically, came up with the "I have no idea what is going on" diagnosis. So, I'm getting set up for an MRI and a biospy and see what the heck is going on. (We are pretty sure that our lymphedema theory is not what's going on.) That and the meds keep me pretty sleepy and saying some pretty funny things :). Once I was talking to Laurie just before I took a nap and finished the conversation as if we were talking on the phone and then giggled about it for about 10 minutes afterward.

Our Thanksgiving was very nice, we went over to our friends Paul and Debbie's for dinner around 3. Everyone brought a traditional dish and there was lots and lots of food that was all delicious. After, we went over to my grandparent's house for dessert. Laurie made a delicious pumpkin pie out of the pumpkin that we bought and roasted after Halloween. It was very yummy :). We went to both places with about 4 bottles of heavy whipping cream and came home with none for our leftover pie. That's a lot of whipped cream! Of course, we did make three different kinds of whipped cream - carmel, egg nog, and regular.

So, let me catch you up on my spinning things now, (I have been knitting but I failed to take a picture of what I've been up to.) First, are the pictures of the bunnies. One of these brothers will be coming home with me soon! The woman whom I'm purchasing it from sent me these pictures to hold me over until I can come hold them. They are so cute!!

Next, I've been support spindling the first batch of bunny fiber that I got at the fiber festival from the bunny lady. The spindle's almost full! It's so soft!

Next, I just received a new shipment of angora fiber and I'm blending it with some merino that I just got to make a beautiful, soft, amazing pair of socks for myself. I love the color that the two fibers make together, a heathery purple. The first picture is the angora, then the "Wine" merino wool and the last the first batt I made of the two of them and what I've spun up.

Last is some handpainted BFL that I'm spinning up for Expressions in Spinning. This month, we're spinning up a poem by Shel Silverstein, My Beard. It goes:

My beard grows down to my toes,
I never wears no clothes,
I wraps my hair
Around my bare,
And down the road I goes.

I was thinking that the pinks and beige's remind me of cold, red toes and noses and a bare bottom. :)

A particularly ouchy week

I've kind of put off posting this week because I'm not having a particularly happy, good week. Last week, when I showered, Laurie noticed a new lump on my back. We're pretty sure that it's another blocked lymph node causing problems, but it is acting a bit different that the one in my neck. For one thing, it hurts really badly all the time. Even just running your hand over my back right now is very painful. So, I've been favoring that side for a week now and all my other muscles are protesting. My PCP hasn't been in the office all week, so hopefully we can get in contact with her today and see what's up. It's just frustrating to be in pain and frustrating to not be able to do the things I want to. I was trying to spin laying down last night with the heating pad. :)

In other bad news, we found out this week that Laurie won't have a job starting December 17th. That's about a month away (some people have assumed we mean next year, but no, unfortunately). Having just bought a house, we are not too pleased. The whole school is shutting down. It seems that they have realized half way through the school year that they don't have enough money to complete it. They should have closed the school in June and even though they own some property free and clear that might pay for the rest of the school year, the board of trustees for the school aren't wanting to sell it. Not only is this bad for teachers and staff losing their jobs, the seniors expecting to graduate in May are pretty screwed. Because the school was on the block system, they don't have enough credits to graduate this year at another school. So, everyone is scrambling to try and fix the credit issue and apparently, some parents and former parents, have offered to try to keep the school open. We'll see what happens. There is one glimmer of hope in this, there is a position open at a school near us that Laurie really would fit into very well, so keep us in your prayers, I know that God is in this somewhere and there is a reason for this. God is good and will get us through this. It's just been a long week...

A goodbye, some fiber and vegetarian hunting

Well, yesterday, my turtle, Athena, was adopted by a new family. She'll be well taken care of and be a beloved pet for another little girl. I'm a little sad that she's gone, but we haven't been taking very good care of her - especially when we lived in our last place and I couldn't get into the room that she was living in. I'm confident she's in good hands and the new family said they'd keep me updated on how she's doing. Here's Athena's goodbye picture...

Laurie and I had a big dinner party last Saturday with our church dinner group and some of their family members. Dinner was fabulous, we had a belgian ale pot roast beef stew, yorkshire pudding, and roasted vegetables. Basically, all of our favorites and it was delicious. When we were shopping for dinner at Trader Joe's we found the coolest thing! Brussel sprouts still on the stalk! I took pictures while Laurie prepped them for roasting, she called the zeal in which I photographed the sprouts the equivalent of vegetarian hunting. :)

Lastly, an update on knitting and spinning. I've started 2 new knitting projects this past weekend. One is the alpaca February Lady's sweater that I'm using the alpaca from Chile to make. It was a bear to try and wind into balls. We ended up with a tangled mess that Laurie's been picking apart. I think we're going to try wrapping it around something like a chair before trying to wind again because the hank is too big to fit our yarn store's swift. I also started the first project I've ever used my own handspun for. I'm knitting up a little kerchief with the lace weight silk that I just finished spinning. It's going really fast and the pattern's been easy to memorize so it's been a good out and about project. I also just got some new fiber. The purple in the pictures is BFL from Pagewood Farms in the colorway "River Rock". The second picture is of a BFL/silk blend that I got from Spunky Eclectic. The colorway is called "Joshua Tree" and I'm totally in love with it. I'm planning on making a pair of stocking with it and I'm really excited about it. I also got a little bit of Wennsleydale wool handpainted in the same color as the BFL/silk combo. I've been curious to try out new fibers and Wennsleydale is new to me, and I'm looking forward to try out spinning it. I'm going on a fiber diet for about a month or so now, I have so many projects to do and I really don't need more fiber. I do have sad news, my 12" russian spindle sustained an injury, the top broke off in my bag. I'm very sad about it, but I'm working on getting a replacement and also making a bag to protect the future new ones.

PS. Laurie said I could have an Angora bunny for Christmas!!!!! I'm so EXCITED!!!!!!!

Knitting, spinning and such

Well, I finished the hedgehog, Woolflower, in time for the family reunion party, so she's off to a child getting the services from Ronald McDonald house. She was a lot of fun to knit and create. Laurie did the needle felting of the eyes and nose and mouth. She turning out really nice and we found out that we can felt things in our front loader washer! Here are the pics:

This past week, we met with our Expressions in Spinning group. I finished my skein for "The Soul of the Rose" painting. It is 100% tussah silk, lace weight yarn and I have about 290 yards. I found a beautiful kerchief pattern on Ravelry and plan to start knitting it up as soon as I get this yarn wound into a ball! It will be my first project with my handspun.

Our topic for this month was favorite movie and they drew my name out of the hat! I chose the first Harry Potter movie, because it's definitely one of my favorites and it was so close to Halloween that it seemed appropriate. I found some beautiful gray-white cashmere/silk fiber that I'm spinning up on my Russian support spindle, the color looks like Dumbledore's beard. I'm trying to spin it as finely as possible, hopefully it will be around cobweb weight and I can make a little shawl out of it.

A drappt day...

We have a friend with MS that always refers to her Dr. appointments as "drappts" all said as one word. Yesterday, I had an appt with my PCP. She's wonderful and her clinic had the H1N1 vaccine available to give to me so I got it. According to the AZ health dept website, it's not even being offered to clinics yet. This has definitely been a time when being a part of the county system has been in my favor. I just need to wait out the 2 weeks before the vaccine really works! Not that I'm not still going to be really careful about using my hand sanitizer and stuff but it's a big relief to have gotten the vaccine without long lines and fighting for it, all I had to do was ask. Anyways, about three weeks ago (maybe 4?) Laurie noticed that I had a bit of swelling right above my left collar bone. When you palpate the area, you can feel a mass and it's a bit sensitive to be touched. Last week, I had a CT scan so we could see what's going on because it's getting bigger. So, I was a little worried about finding out the results of the CT yesterday. Turns out it's not anything really big. It's most likely that I have a swollen lymph node that's blocked or something and the lymph fluid that would otherwise be filtering through it is backing up causing the swelling. We're going to wait and see if it changes, and if it gets bigger, we're off to see the ENT doc again. Right now, the lymph node is only 1 cm, so it would be a bit of a needle in a haystack to do a biopsy of it, that and the location is not great for doing that. So, we'll see. It's kind of started feeling achy a little bit all the time, so we'll see what happens with it. I'm very relieved it's not something major! Well, that's the end of the medical news for now, I've got some fiber related stuff that I'll do in another post... Trying to decide if I want to post or spin...

Bunnies! (and other fibery related stuff)

Yesterday was probably the closest I'll ever be to having an angora bunny. We went to the Southwest Fiber Festival in Amado, AZ yesterday and had a fun day of fibery goodness. By the time we left the festival, the woman selling the angora bunnies knew me well :). I almost asked to hold one, but settled for lots of petting while begging Laurie to let me take one home with us. She said no. Even so, I came home with the closest thing, 2 bags of angora, one 2.6 oz of white and one 1.6 oz of black and white. And, they were going to harvest one of the bunnies today and the bunny lady is going to send me what they pluck in the mail. That'll be about 2/3 an ounce. I can't even begin to tell you how soft this angora is. It's really like petting and snuggling with a bunny - I can't wait to spin it!

Here is one of the angora bunnies they were selling, but not the one I'm getting the fiber from. Laurie texted me this photo while I was in class to tease me!

My 1.6 oz of black and white angora, the white angora wasn't much to look at, just a pile of soft white fluff. I might need to open the bag up and touch it just one more time...

4 oz of merino/silk in the colorway "Laguna Agate"

2 new spindles

The very first thing that I did at the festival was take a class. We spent the night nearby in Green Valley, so we didn't have to make the drive really early in the morning to get me to the class. The class was called "The Joy of Spindle Spinning". It was a mixed class of newbies and more experienced spinners. It was fun and I learned how to spin cotton! I think my recent practice on camel down and yak really helped. The class materials included a bead spindle (the one in the bottom of the picture) and some pima cotton, corridale wool and some merino, all in white so I didn't photograph all of them. You can see in the picture some of the spun cotton on the spindle. The second spindle in the picture is a coin tahkli spindle. I'm kind of thinking I might try to spin the angora on it. It spins very fast and it was a good price so I got it. (If you are wondering what the white thing in the pic is, we were spinning these supported spindles using a little shell as our spinning bowl.)

After the class, we wandered around the festival, it was relatively small but there was a lot to look at. I drooled over some KCL Woods spindles, one of them was made of mango wood, which was really cool. I petted the bunnies several times. After making it through the circle of booths, we attempted to find something to eat. Unfortunately, we were unsuccessful. Even though there was a restaurant that was supposed to be selling food, they were turning people away, saying that they only had one chef. If there had been food we would have stayed a bit longer. (Apparently, Laurie overheard a guild woman (the Tucson spinners and weaving guild put this festival on) saying angrily that the restaurant had promised to provide food and was not too happy that they were turning people away. I guess they had the no food problem last year too, and the solution was supposed to be provided by the restaurant.) So, we made one more pass, bought a gift for our friend Mandy who couldn't come with us and got some very cool felted placemats for our table and headed home. It was a very fun day and we made it home in time for church, even though we were really exhausted.

Our hedgehogs are to be turned in next Saturday, so I really need to get cracking on making those flowers and felting Woolflower. I'm off to do some knitting!

A Nebraska weekend

As I mentioned in a previous post, Laurie and I were in Nebraska last weekend for one of her cousin's wedding reception. We had a lot of fun. Rachel and Andy, Laurie's cousin and cousin-in-law (?) took Friday off work so that we could go out and see a little bit of Nebraska. We went to the pioneer village in Mindon, NE. We got there a little late in the day but we saw a lot of cool things. They had a whole spinning section and a home furnishing display that featured our newly reupholstered couch and matching chair in the "1930's" display of living room furniture. That was very cool. We saw old cars, a sod house, and a whole building worth of antique appliances. The whole village was pretty much empty and it was funny because inside the buildings were freezing cold and that made outside seem much warmer that it was - although the sun did come out in the afternoon. After the pioneer village, we drove into Kearny, where Rachel went to college for a few years and got the whole tour. We ate at a brewery in Kearny and then headed home. (By home, I mean we were staying with Rachel's sister and brother-in-law, Sara and Scott, in their lovely home. It was the most accessible of all the relative's houses. They set me up in a twin bed on the first floor and it was just perfect and really thoughtful of them to do that.) The wedding reception was Saturday and we drove with the bride and groom (Sara and Scott) to the restaurant. It was a big group and the food was excellent. Andy and I got the best dish, the three cheese tortellini. I got pretty tired by the end of the reception and went to go lay down in Rachel and Andy's car for awhile. We had steak and some genuine Alaskan salmon for dinner that night and Laurie and Rachel made the rainbow cake for dessert. The cake was perfect - Laurie even managed to get the colors all lined up on the top and bottom layers. All the cousins stayed up late playing the game catchphrase, which I had never played before and had a lot of fun! Sunday, more relatives came over to Sara and Scott's for a less formal get together and we all just kind of hung out as a family. Sunday night we all divvied up the leftovers and ate them all! We spent Sunday night in a hotel near the airport and took the shuttle in for an early morning flight. The whole trip was just so much fun. It was so good to see Rachel and Andy - I absolutely love having them as company and hopefully, they'll be able to come visit us sometime in February. So here are all the weekend pictures!

Out front of the pioneer village are me, Andy and Rachel.

Andy explores the convenient recipe card drawer on one of the first microwave ovens.

The whole reception group.

Me, Laurie and Nancy (Laurie's mom) with the bride, Sara.

Rachel and Andy amid the baking.

The cake (and some silliness)!

Cut rainbow cake.

The chefs with their creation.

On a side note, yesterday, my new russian support spindles arrived in the mail. They are beautiful and the test spinning on them has been really great. I'm spinning some camel down on one of them right now. They made me wish that I had begun my support spindle spinning with them, but who knows, it might be my experience and familiarity with support spindles now that makes using them so delightful! They are Bolivian Rosewood, one is 12"and one is 14" and there is a matching spinning bowl.