My weekend - Sunday

Well, we got up bright and early this morning for a very exciting cause!  (Drumroll please...)  We bought Laurie a spinning wheel!  Yay!  We've been wanting one since she learned to spin in January, but they are a little pricey and the one that she uses at the little yarn store was up at $650 new and $400 used (not including shipping or anything...), so we've waited.  Laurie really likes the Ashford Joy at the store.  Happy for us, an Ashford Kiwi came up on Craigslist from a woman in Prescott that was very reasonably priced.  So we drove on up there.  She was very nice and very surprised about how young we where :).  Laurie got to try it out before we bought it and it treadles just like the Joy, so it's a keeper!  It's beautifully painted, about a year and a half old and it really good condition!  I'm so happy for Laurie - I know it's been a little sad for her to watch me spin with my spindle and having to wait for yarn store days to spin.  And even that's not a sure bet- the Joy's pretty popular and she doesn't really care for the other wheels she tried (which makes the kiwi very exciting).  I'm so happy with my spindles and it will be good to see her happy, too!

We're planning on leaving this Thursday night for CA, for Matt and Monica's US reception and spending about a week there in Northern California.  I know for sure we'll be seeing Christy and the boys, but we are also hoping to spend some time up at the cabin.  We're bringing the wheel so Laurie can enjoy some spinning relaxation!  I think it would be beautiful to sit in the cabin with her and just spin.  We haven't been to the cabin in a while and I'm looking forward to it.  Anyways, I'm supposed to be napping, but couldn't sleep with all the good news.  Laurie will be home soon, I hope.  She's taking some students to church this evening and my mom's out of town, so no Sunday dinner.  We have lots of leftovers from this weekend, as we went to the Prescott brewing restaurant that we really like in downtown Prescott, which has the best homemade cream soda and veggie pot pie!

My weekend - Saturday

On Saturday, we had a very good oblate meeting.  Our leader and one of our fellow oblates are at a conference right now for all of the Benedictine Oblates in the country.  We've been getting daily reports of the news from that.  It was a good, quiet meeting.  We were in Chile for the last Chandler meeting, so it was good to go see everyone again - especially to tell them the good news of the genetics stuff...  We did kind of skirt around the house situation, though.

Laurie ran some errands while I napped after the meeting, and we have a new addition to our furniture.  We bought a beautiful reclaimed pine table with 6 chairs and Costco home.  It's a beautiful table that we looked at a little while ago and were torn on getting it.  It's a butterfly table, like the one that we have now but much bigger and prettier!  It should arrive in a few weeks - hopefully, we'll soon to have a new house to match!

After church, we went out with our usual Saturday night church dinner group and then went shopping.  We finally replaced our dead toaster oven (mostly because I keep burning my hands on the stove)!  We also got a very nice new pair of shoes at DSW.  A happy but busy day!

My weekend - Friday

Well, since lots of things have happened since my last post, so I thought that I would do three separate sections to get all caught up...

The real estate news is a bit discouraging.  The house that we looked at when the Chicago house fell through countered our offer and as we were preparing to counter to come to a deal, they decided that they weren't in a financial position to move out of their current home and into a new one.  Big bummer for us because it's one of the nicest houses we've seen as far as wheelchair accessibility.  Our realtor is out of town and the person who is supposed to be filling in for her has not returned any of our phone calls.  There are 2 places we've seen online that we really like but can't go see them because of the realtor situation...  And they're owner occupied so they will probably go off the market fast.  Big sigh - I'm sure the right house will come along, it's just rather frustrating waiting.

On to better news - Laurie is staged for a promotion to a "principal" position at her school.  She's writing a proposal right now about how to integrate her job now into her new responsibilities, so that's exciting.  And she's done teaching anatomy for the summer, so our schedule goes back to normal!

On Friday night, we attended a workshop at our little yarn store, which was a lot of fun.  It's called expressions in spinning and basically, it's a way to broaden your creativity with your spinning.  Every last friday of the month, we'll gather to spin on a topic.  Our topic this month was canyon.  What you imagine a canyon to look like in your yarn.  It was fun to really get to play with colors - it made me really want a drum carder (but they are soooo expensive...), but I did learn how to use our hand carders and I really like the colors that my is blending to.  The pictures are of my fiber before and after blending.  The peach and the pinkish blend are merino wool and the purple is a merino/silk mix.

 

Tempe Yarn and Fiber was having a "stimulus package", we bought a little more than usual for anticipated projects (or stuff that I liked and had the birthday money).  The next two pictures are of some yarn that we bought to make fingerless mittens to send as a thank you gift to Tia Marina, Monica's aunt, whom we spent time with when we were in Chile.  It's a superwash wool.  Also, there is some 100% Targhee wool in a colorway that I really liked.

This year, I'm going to participate in "Le Tour de Fleece", as spinning event that follows the Tour de France!  The goal is to spin on the days of the race and to set personal goals to achieve during the race.  I'm planning on spinning every day and trying to really master spinning merino. :)  I'll have lots of practice with the merino I bought for the expressions group...  And a little silk in there to rev the difficulty up!  Lastly, this is the pic of my birthday fiber, 6.8 oz of Merino wool, tussah silk, BFL and sari silk - it is even more beautiful that I was expecting!

Birthday girl

I've had a pretty good birthday, today!  We didn't really do too much out of the ordinary, went out and had a yummy dinner at Wildflower and brought ice cream treats with us to the yarn store this evening.  Laurie even got off work a little early (even though we have to go in tomorrow)!  My mom called and sang me happy birthday - which was pretty cute and sweet.  We're going to celebrate with her on Sunday and have birthday cake :).  Just waiting for a rental movie to download from itunes and then off to bed for the bday girl.  Two other things of note that happened - I received the most beautiful fiber in the mail today as a bday gift from Laurie (she gave me her card early - last night, which of course, made me cry).  I will have to post a picture of it (the fiber, although the card was very nice too) so all of you can enjoy how lovely it is!  Also, Laurie signed the necessary paperwork for putting an offer on the new house that we want, since the Chicago house fell through and was a little shady.  We'll see how things go!  Off to go watch a movie now...

A three band-aid day

Lots of stuff going on right now, yesterday I had an appt with a geneticist down at the county hospital to discuss the MEN 1 stuff and to answer some questions that Dr. Skinner couldn't really answer for Laurie and I.  It was a very interesting appointment.  Laurie couldn't be there with me because her schedule is all wacky while she is teaching and not doing the academic coach thing.  (They were taking the boys up for a hike and she went up with them.)  The doc was really sweet to me and answered all our questions. :)  She agrees with my endo doc that I probably have MEN 1 and we're going through all the genetic testing for that right now.  It takes 2-8 weeks to get any results.  Even if the test comes back negative, I'll be retested every year.  The test is only 80% accurate, so I still might have it even without a positive test result.  On a totally unrelated genetic disease, we wanted her opinion about the origin of my POTS.  She AGREED with Laurie's diagnoses of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome for me.  We now know that the onset of the POTS was not random but built into my DNA.  It also explains a lot of what is going on with my body (ex. spraining my ankle walking).  So I managed to get not one but two genetic diseases!  Makes a lot of sense in the big picture.  Anyways, all of this is good news, even if I got really really tired from spending half the day in the dr's office.  To top it off, they stuck me 3 times to get the blood necessary for the genetic testing. :( very sad!  One of the sticks the vein blew and then blood clotted around the needle and it hurt like hell.  My poor hand is still swollen and black and blue and needing to be iced.  I should go do that now, actually...  Spinning last night while Laurie took her class aggravated it.

More new toys and some bad news down at the bottom

While I was waiting for Laurie to come home from work and pick me up to go knitting (and spinning) at Tempe Yarn and Fiber, I was playing with the camera.  I couldn't help putting in a photo of my box of goodies... Here's the luxury fiber box from my class on wednesday! :)

Also, I was taking pics of my very brand new spindle that came in the mail today!  It's .84 oz made of aspen and painted from Spinsanity.  I'm hoping to use it for light weight plying, but it did come with a bit of fiber to play with and I'm having fun with it!  I must say though, that my Golding is still my favorite so far, we'll see what happens when my Bosworth gets here...  Here are the pics:

And Laurie and I had some bad news today.  Our house buying plans fell through.  We were supposed to close on Monday, so that was a bummer.  I guess we'll just have to see what's next for us.

Spinning fun

What is that?!?!?!

This should you ask yourself, is my very latest bit of spinning...  I took a luxury fiber spinning class last night, and this is what I came home with on my spindle.  (In the box sitting next to me, however is some amazing yummy fiber!)  What you can see in this little spun cocoon, is spun bamboo (the white stuff) and sari silk (the feathery stuff) and the grey stuff coming out of the little hole on the side is alpaca.  All together, we spun the list above as well as tussah silk, cashmere and silk, camel down, and cashmere merino.  Lots of fun spinning, lots of new stuff to try!  Most delectably, the little box of .55 oz cashmere silk that came home with me!

Home again...

Well, we've returned from Chile safe and sound - we've been home a bit over a week, so it's taken me awhile to recover and actually get to blogging...  I got sick when we got home and spent several days just sleeping.  It was a wonderful trip, though!  I am so happy that I was able to go and we had so much fun.  It was really cool to go and stay with people who actually live in Chile and get that experience and not just the typical tourist stuff (which we did a little of).  All the people I met there were wonderful and kind and the wheelchair was not a big deal at all.  I have so much to say about our trip - 10 days is a lot of stories...  But for now here are some pics - this one is of me and a woman in the main yarn store that we went to in Temuco.  As you can see, I'm loaded down with over a kilo of yarn that we bought.  She was so sweet, she loved and admired my spinning and knitting and wanted me to stay and work there!

The next, was the reason for the trip in the first place - Matt and Monica's wedding.  This is a pic from the reception, dancing.

And in the not related category, here's a pic of my first handspun yarn all skeined up!  (Not the same spinning I brought to Chile, though... I brought my Golding, which is now being sent back to me from getting broken :(, but I'll have it in time for my spinning luxury fiber class on wednesday!)