Spinning and spinning and spinning

I've spent a lot of time the last few weeks spinning, and my knitting is getting a bit neglected, so I'm on a new schedule. I would have started this last week, but I desperately wanted to finish my expressions in spinning skein for last friday that I let the knitting slide again. I'm looking forward to dusting off those socks I've been working on and really get down to business with finishing them!

I did finish a skein of my "Grandmother" yarn. I used up about 1/2 of my fiber, and I'm not really sure what the weight of my skein is, my scale isn't the best. Anyways, it ended up being light fingering, about 240 yards. From far away, it looks kind of brown, but up close you can see the reds and greens. I think that I won't spin the rest of the fiber the way I spun this, and I'm not too sure what I'm going to make it into. We'll see :).

At our latest meeting, we chose the topic of a painting. The painting that got picked is called the Soul of the Rose by John William Waterhouse. It's one of my favorites. I've decided to get out of my box a little and I chose to spin the color of her hair. I got 1 oz of chocolate brown alpaca, 1/2 oz of burnt orange merino, and 1/2 oz of cinnabar merino and have carded them together to get the beautiful red/auburn/brown of her hair. I also got and ounce of tussah silk, all white for the pearls in her hair. I'm excited that I've matched the color rather well :).

Out of the boxes

Yay! Today, the kitchen is almost completely unpacked! We were able to set up our brand new reclaimed pine wood table where all the boxes had been. It's been awhile since I have seen the table, once in Costco home store when we were lusting after it. It's truly beautiful :). I can't wait until the rest of our furniture gets refurbished, when that's done our house will be very gorgeous. Here's a pic of the new table. It's a butterfly table, so it does get bigger for when we have guests. And, we have six chairs for it.

Finally, because the table has been set up, I've taken a picture of my new Bosworth spindle. Her whorl is purpleheart wood with an ebony shaft. She's .64 oz. I've been spinning one of my "Barbara's buns" on her and just wound off about an ounce to a bobbin. We also had an expressions in spinning meeting on friday so I have a bit to talk about there, but I think I'll leave that for tomorrow because it means taking more pictures. :)

Post of pictures

Over this last weekend, Laurie really has put in some hard work into making our new place more like home. The kitchen is almost ready to be moved into - shelf paper needs to go into a few more cabinets and the pantry before we can move dishes into it. The second bedroom looks great, there are shelves in the closet and some of the boxes of craft stuff have been put away. The living room furniture has been moved in, to see if it all fits before we spend money to refurbish the pieces we want. We're both in love with the sofa and chair set we got off of craigslist. And our friend Paul came over and put together our grill for us! I think since it's been working, every dinner we've had since has been out on the grill :). So that's these next few pictures...

The wood work on our new sofa and chair.

The second bedroom (guest room/knitting/spinning/Heather's room)

One of the new chairs on the far right, it's match is in the living room right now but will be with it once everything is reupholstered.

The living room. We are reupholstering the sofa and matching chair as well as my recliner (which is oh so chic with the sheet over it right now...) If you look closely, you can also see the new computer table between the recliner and the sofa chair.

We got a beautiful orchid plant for my bathroom, one of the buds just opened.

In knitting and spinning news, my hedgehog still needs to be felted. I think that we're going to try to do that at my mom's house because she has a top loading washer and that's the best for felting. I've spun up one of the Barbara's buns that I got. It's still on my new spindle and because the new table is not out yet, I haven't taken a picture. (I might have to break down and take one.) I'm trying to spin furiously to finish off another ounce to be plied by friday for our expressions in spinning group. We'll see if that happens :). I'm expecting Mandy to come over pretty soon here, which I'm excited about because she hasn't been in the shop in awhile. Off to try to finish off that project...

The mic mishap

I'm planning on blogging tomorrow with some pictures and updates but I want to throw in this little story...

Yesterday, at Mass, I was on for lectoring. We got there on time and made the effort to make sure that the altar was all set for us wheeling up the ramp, without any obstacles. Fast forward to the end of the opening prayer, Laurie pushes me up the ramp and we get the lectionary and the hand held mic that I use because the ambo mic isn't accessible. Laurie wheels me around to the front of the ambo, like usual and goes back to her seat. I flick on the mic and start the reading from Joshua... No sound coming from the mic... I tap it to see if it is on (some times the sound people fix the problem really quickly and just trying again works), it doesn't. After a bit of panic, here I am in the front of the altar, very immobilized looking around for someone to come help me. I can't see Laurie and I can't see Fr. John or Deacon Don. Luckily, the sound guy comes to my rescue. After he checks the mic, he decides that it is truly not working (I could have told him that!) and heads back to the sacristy for the second ear piece mic that does work. All in all, the reading was a success. I'm told I looked poised and graceful as I nervously awaited someone to come to my rescue and then for him to come back with a working mic. Hopefully, this won't happen again. I know that I'll never not check that the mic is working again. Looking back, I was mortified but now it's just kind of funny. Needless to say, at the parish activity after Mass, I got a lot of comments. :) (It's a good thing that I'm pretty pink already, I'm sure that I turned several shades of red in embarrassment, I'm hoping that not too many people noticed...)

Moving and a little fun

Today, we are officially out of our old place. Laurie's over there right now doing the finishing touches, with the hope that we will get our deposit back. It's kind of frustrating trying to do everyday stuff with everything in boxes still. Hopefully, after a week of finally clearing out everything from the old place, we can start unpacking at the new one. That will make me a very happy girl :). The kitchen is a bit of a mess right now if you want to eat at home... Pull out a plate from this box, zip around to the box across the room for a cup (and mind you, unwrapping it from it's paper wrapping), to the fridge, microwave, oven, repeat. Our toaster oven is out of service until we find the racks that go inside. Finding clean clothes is a similar adventure :).

Anyways, my newest spindle came in the mail yesterday. I'm waiting to take a picture of it because I want to get a beautiful shot of it on our new reclaimed pine dining room table, and the table is not set up yet (well, still in boxes in the garage). She's gorgeous though, purpleheart whorl and ebony shaft, and she spins great. She came with a pouf of very bright pink, sparkly fiber that I spun up as a test run last night at TYF. This morning, I andean plied it and ended up with about 20 yarns of somewhere between lace weight and fingering weight yarn. I think that I'm going to use it to make a flower for my hedgehog. Speaking of which, the Woolflower, the hedgehog is going very well. She's been a fun knit and I'm nearing the time to felt her. We bought some yarn to make a hedgehog for my mom, but I'm not sure if what we picked out will actually work, the yarn for the "quills" seems too skimpy to come out well. I'm going to ask about it next week and probably end up returning it because I don't want to knit with 3 strands held together, just the wool and the novelty yarn together is enough to keep track of. Anyways, those are the pictures that are following. Also pictured is the malabrigo lace weight yarn that I bought last night. The colorway is "applewood" and I'm planning on plying it with the cashmere/silk that I've been squirreling away for a lovely yarn when I am worthy of spinning it.

Moved in!

Yay! We finally have internet in the new house! I've been keeping up with my email through my iphone, but it just doesn't work to use the internet on the phone for any lengthy period of time. Now, if we could only get the home phone working. Everything is still in boxes here, we're still searching though kitchen boxes to scrounge out something to eat. (Fast food and dinner out is getting a bit old.) The actual move on Friday went really smoothly and took up way less time than we thought it would. Less time = less money spent. Some of the guys that moved us on Friday were also part of the team that moved us into our last place, so that was kind of funny because they did remember us. It is so nice to have a garage! The new house is smaller, but it seems bigger, we think because there's not as much stuff crammed into places and we can put a lot of stuff in the 2 car garage that was otherwise living in the back bedroom. Basically, the third bedroom in our last place was totally a storage room that we were paying to air condition and heat and all that, so the garage is a big to do for us :). The more time we spend here in the new house, the more that we love it, I'm looking forward to getting unpacked and truly settled in here. No sign of our neighbors here, so we'll see how that goes, of course they have a lot to live up to via the standard of our last neighbors...

At the yarn store on Friday (after the movers left), we hung out and spun and there were more people there than usual, but not a lot of the usual Friday people, so Laurie got to meet some of the people I befriended at the knitting retreat who are normally Saturday people. TYF had just got in some new fiber from Pagewood Farms; the last shipment they got (which was also the first) sold out before they could get it out of the box! We got some lovely BFL, which I'm really to excited to spin. I also pre-ordered a colorway of the next shipment and I'm looking forward to that. So the colors are "rainbow" and "lilac". The rainbow is for me and the purple is Laurie's. I'm also hopeful that my new bossie purpleheart spindle is coming soon. I got an email from the makers saying they are doing the final touches... I can't wait! Speaking of spinning makes me want to get out the spindles now, so I think I'll do just that. (And we got a new pair of hand carders that are for finer fibers, they are curved too, which makes them easier to use. The other ones were ripping up my merino/cashmere.)

A day away...

Well, tomorrow's the big day! We're finally moving into the new house! Yay! Yesterday, I camped out there to help out a little. We needed the water turned on to the house so that the carpet cleaners could come before we moved furniture over, so I napped on our twin air mattress on the kitchen floor (really the only floor that wasn't going to be cleaned) and waited for people to arrive. It happened that my social worker had scheduled a meeting with me for that day, so she got to see the new place, although it was a little weird conducting our interview in the kitchen with the air mattress on the floor. (To be honest, she was a little worried that I had spent the night like that, so I had to reassure her that Laurie would not neglect me like that :).) We tried several times get the water turned on, something about the water still flowing in the house, it was a little cryptic. Anyways, the water's on and the carpets are clean, I even made it to knitting/crochet night at East West Exchange to hang out for awhile. Then, I collapsed into bed.

In other news, Laurie's had a bit of a job change and her schedule is changing, too. Right now she works 10am to 9pm Monday to Thursday and it's now switching to 7:30am to 4:30 pm, 5 days a week. She is now officially "science teacher" and "assistant principal". It's going to be a rough fall, with work and her masters stuff but Laurie really likes the new woman at work that she'll be teaming up with. So all is happy, and very busy here :). Off to bed with me, I think Laurie's going to be last minute packing all night. The movers come at noon tomorrow.

Oh - We have an oblate friend who really needs prayers right now. She's just had surgery for ovarian cancer and is not doing well at all. The doctors give her a 20% chance of surviving 1-2 years, even with chemo and another surgery. She also had a stroke about a year ago. So, if you could keep her in your prayers, it would be appreciated.

Why I should have posted last night and didn't

Or this could be "Heather and Laurie are crazy enough to have gone antique shopping yesterday in over 110 degree heat..." or "Yay! We're finally home owners!!!!!!!!!". Anyways, we are finally home owners and yesterday, instead of waiting by the phone anxiously to find out if the loan funded and we could actually go into our new place without breaking in (to be fair we did have the keys...), we went antique shopping for new stuff for our new place! It would have been really fun if it was like, November here. But even with the excruciating heat, we managed to find some really neat stuff! I don't have any pictures of it yet, but we bought a table that will be my computer table, 2 arm chairs and Laurie's out right now buying a sofa and chair off of someone from craigslist. Very exciting! I'm looking forward to seeing it all put together!

In spinning news, I finished spinning the singles for my "canyon" yarn but I've only plied a little bit of it. I didn't get a nap yesterday (part of why we ended up in bed exhausted at 9 at night) and so I didn't have the patience needed to ply all of it, instead I made a little mini-skein so that I had something to show to the spinning expressions group last night. All my hard Tour de Fleece work and I'm still not finished yet. But I do have to say that spinning 4 oz just on a drop spindle is ambitious. This month, I'm only going to do at the most 2 oz, so I have time to spin other stuff, too. My canyon yarn ended up about fingering (sock) weight, which is great! It's my second skein of finished yarn ever and here it is:

Like I mentioned, our spinning expressions group met last night, and even though we were beat, we participated. This month, we're spinning a member of the group's grandmother. So, I'm doing a rose garden in a little bit muted colors because I'm adding about half and half of some white merino/cashmere to it. (So it's half 80/20 Merino/cashmere put together with merino/silk.) It looks really pretty and it's sooooo soft. I wanted to work with the cashmere a little bit, too because I have some cashmere/silk that I want to spin into something gorgeous and want a bit of practice with it. So that's the next couple of pictures.

The little yarn store we love and frequent got some new fiber in yesterday and Laurie was sweet enough to let me get some lovely BFL (blue face leicester) that was beautiful, natural color. I've been goggling over BFL in little shops on the internet and was jealous of a friend who had some at the retreat so I'm really excited about it. It's 4 oz worth :).

And last are the pics of my new spinning/knitting journal. I'm excited about it, too, because I want to keep track of what I've spun with little samples and keep track of everything. It's hand-bound and will be perfect for what I want to do with it. There are even little pockets and graph paper for yarn labels and such!

Today, we're heading over to TYF again for the Tour de Fleece group picture :). It'll be fun!