A long parade

It seems like we have been busy every weekend for awhile, and that's not about to let up any. Last weekend, after recovering from Seattle all week, Laurie's parents flew in for a weekend visit. We had discussed what exactly we wanted to work on while Dave and Nancy were here, as we have so many projects vying for our attention in the new house. We thought that having the goal of building something to hang the porch swing on seemed reasonable to accomplish in 3 days (Laurie took friday off). Well, they worked really hard and finished way more than we could have hoped for - and only 2 trips to Lowe's! We now have lights and outlets in the master bedroom closets, the front door lock is working more efficiently, the ramp to the front door is now slipped into the door threshold to keep it from moving, we have a light in the backyard that we can turn on from inside the house, our washer tubing ? was replaced with stainless steel piping, AND the porch swing is up and working. Now, I think I've forgotten several things, but as you can see, a LOT got done in such a short time. I was even able to make myself helpful. It's so nice to live in a place where I can help cook meals and clear dishes, and just generally take care of myself. This house is by far the most accessible place that we've ever lived and I'm definitely enjoying it. Over all, it was a great visit. The only thing that was a little sad was that they didn't get to see our new upholstered furniture because it's not come back from the upholsterer yet. To add to the parade of very busy weekends, Laurie's grandparents will be coming to stay with us for 3 days on Friday. They are motorcycling in and this will be the first time that they've stayed with us. We also have Sara's wedding reception, the southwest fiber festival and a bunch of other fun filled weekends ahead of us, in October. Lots of fun to look forward to!

The real pictures

Laurie finally did give me the "real" pictures from our trip to Seattle, she's been bugging me to post them since I got them downloaded to my computer (although they are posted on facebook).

Our trip in a nutshell:

We arrived on Thursday pretty close to midnight, so we slept in on Friday. Both Laurie's brother and sister-in-law had to work so we took the bus into downtown Seattle for the day. We did Pike's place market and ate lunch there. I ate a peanut butter, banana and hot fudge sandwich which Laurie took pictures of - it was delicious! After wandering around for awhile, we took the bus into the U district to a yarn/fiber/weaving store there. While we were waiting for the bus, we saw someone get hit by a bus. Pretty random - it wasn't the bus driver's fault, it was an older woman with a walker who got hit. She was trying to bang on the back door of the bus after it was pulling away. Not a very smart thing to do. There were tons of people waiting for the buses, so we didn't get involved. I've already posted what we got from the yarn store, so I'll skip that... We met Matt and Monica for dinner at a Argentine restaurant and had some yummy south american food... Monica was a little disappointed by the food and we ducked out just as they started the tango portion of the entertainment there.

Saturday, we did the Puyallup Fair, which was a lot of fun :). We spent a lot of time looking for fiber but we did do other things! I got to pet a baby alpaca and Matt and Monica took an old western photo at one of the booths. We also looked at the quilts and knitting competitions and were a bit disappointed with the llama obstacle course. We ate all the traditional fair foods - cotton candy, candy apples, hot dogs, etc. (We were so ready to have real food when we went home!) The last thing we did was ride the ferris wheel, they let us push the wheelchair up the exit so I could get on. Monica wasn't too keen on the height and it went pretty fast for a ferris wheel. It was awesome though, we hadn't been on a ferris wheel since germany.

Sunday, we met up with one of their friends, David, and went out to Mount Rainier national park. We had a nice picnic lunch and they went for a little hike while I napped in the car. We did dinner at a good seafood place by Matt and Monica's house and watched Amelie pretty late. (Well, I didn't watch the movie - I was way too exhausted.) We flew home early Monday morning. It took me pretty much all week to catch up on sleep after we got home. It was pretty exhausting for me and I really pushed it to do the things that I wanted.

Laurie's parents arrived here on Thursday night and have been helping us out with projects around the house. So I have lots to catch you up on still... But it's pretty close to nap time so I think I'll leave that for tomorrow. :)

Loot from the weekend in Seattle

Well, I was going to post a bunch of pictures about our trip to Seattle to see Laurie's brother and sister-in-law, but Laurie stole all of the pictures we took off of the memory card before she gave it to me so I can't do that right now. :( Instead, I have pictures of the yarn/fiber/spindles that came home with us! (Which is just as entertaining to me!) Without giving too much info on exactly what we did, I don't want to repeat stuff with the pictures of us later, I can tell you that we went to one yarn shop in Seattle and went to the Puyallup Fair, which had an artist in action store (one of the arts was spinning...) Let the pictures begin!

This is the KCL Woods spindle my mom bought me, she came in the mail the day we left for Seattle, I'm looking forward to trying her out tonight. 1.4 oz cherry whorl and bloodwood shaft with carved shell inlay - I love her, so beautiful!

We found these perfect spindle bags at Pike's Place Market. (The one in the back was a must have - with the bandaids and Rx bottles :) )

The next couple of things we got in the yarn store in Seattle, The Weaving Works. 1 oz white angora.

2 skeins handspun BFL - I'm blanking on the colorway.

3 buttons for my sister's cowl, when it is finished. They are very cool, they change color from green to pink in different light.

1.2 oz Paela spindle made by True Creations. (This is resting on something very important that I'm super excited about and will talk about in a bit...)

This pic starts the fiber we bought at the Puyallup Fair. A "Tussah silk top sample pack" including 1/2 oz skeins of tussah, honey tussah, brown cashmere/tussah, white yak/tussah, baby camel/tussah.

My new pride and joy... a Romney lamb fleece!!! 6 pounds of unwashed but very clean fleece, all ready to be washed up and spun! It's my first fleece, and Laurie is planning to spin up some of it too but I'm sooooooo excited about it! I carried it around the fair in a garbage bag all day (after a very long hunt for fiber...) and had no trouble bringing it back on the plane!

Here is just one lock of the fleece. It's a beautiful brown and will probably spin up darker than that. We got a whole lesson on how to prepare the fleece to spin and I can't wait. Obviously, 6 lbs is a lot of fiber, but I couldn't get a good picture of how much there is! It will last me quite a bit of time! We were also told that it is a very good fleece, not only because it is so clean, but the strength of the locks and crimp is really good quality as well. When I say "clean" I mean that there's almost no vegetable matter, poop, or other things the sheep might have rolled in during it's lifetime. But, it still needs to be washed so all of the grease comes out of it. Right now, it smells like a barn when you get close to that bag, but I'm very much enjoying it and can't wait to be spinning it. Well, I'm supposed to be napping and I'm so exhausted from our trip I'll probably sleep all week until Laurie's parents get here on Thursday. So back to bed for me!

A new post

I haven't posted in awhile, so I have a bit of catching up to do... Laurie and I are leaving for Seattle tonight to visit her brother and sister-in-law. It's kind of funny because my sister who lives in Seattle is in Chandler right now. I'm excited about the trip! Hopefully, the weather will be nice and cool and it won't rain (ok - hopefully it won't rain too much). I think we might go to see Mt. Rainier, Laurie's never been. Also, we are going to a little sheep farm outside of Seattle and on the way to Mt. Rainier. It will be lots of fun and very cool fiber-wise.

I've started spinning the tussah silk that I got with my last expressions in spinning gathering. It represents the pearls in her hair. I'm hoping to make a beautiful lacy headband with it or see how much yardage I get and maybe make a silk handkerchief, we'll see. It's lots of fun to spin :).

I also finally started Matt and Monica's wedding gift, a hand knitted throw in green. It's a vintage pattern so it's a little hard to read, there are different abbreviations for stitches that are old school. I'm hoping the 3 inches of moss stitch goes quickly because it's rather boring. But it is a good mindless project as a break from the socks I'm working on. And once I start the "real" pattern it will be a fun and beautiful project. I hope they like it!

In other news, I saw the geneticist yesterday. I had hoped for a definitive yes or no on the MEN 1 thing, but nope. The testing is not completely accurate in all cases. Although the test came back normal, there is still a 25% chance that I have it. The geneticist thinks they should treat me like I have it, because I have all the clinical symptoms and with the family history there is a pretty big likelihood that I have it. She recommended I come back in 5 years to be retested, because the field of genetics is growing so much that in a short period of time, they might find all the genes involved. Oh well, it would have been so nice to have that yes but on we go :).

When I get back from Seattle, I promise some new pictures... I finished the merino/alpaca blend that I was working on and Laurie liked it so much that we bought more of those fibers and I'm going to spin enough to make her a pair of leg warmers. I also have a new spindle in the mail (oh how I want it to come today). We're going to the Southwest fiber festival in october and I'm signed up for a joy of spindle spinning class that I'm also looking forward to. Well, I better go check that I'm all packed for the trip - I wouldn't want to forget my fibery projects, if I did I'd be very sad...

A change of plans

Well, as it turns out, I'm not in Sonoma right now at the family reunion. We had quite the crazy morning yesterday. We got up early and showered me and packed me all up. Whizzed over to the pharmacy because I realized that I didn't have enough of one of my medicines to get me through until Monday, found out that their computer system had crashed and had lost that particular prescription and the pharmacist spent about ten minutes frantically trying to find the hard copy of the script. He couldn't. When we made it over to my mom's to pick her and my brother up, she was still out taking the dogs to doggie day care, so we sat in the car, waiting for her to pull up... We waited and waited and waited... My brother finally came out of the house and realized we were there in the driveway and we got loaded up with the suitcases. My mom finally got home and in the car at about 9:10ish and we drove through some pouring rain and a small river on the freeway to the airport. Did I mention that our flight was set to depart at 9:50? We parked and went in the airport. It seemed silly to try to run with me to catch the plane, so I pretty much knew at that point that I wasn't going. Mom and Nate flew standby a little later in the morning and got there safe and sound. To tell the truth, I wasn't that heartbroken or upset about not going. I've not been feeling well all week and although I'm feeling good now, it probably would have turned out that I would have gotten sicker and would have been miserable. I felt badly though because I know my mom was excited about having me go and she really was very sweet to offer to push me around the farm and take me without Laurie. I think it boils down to I love her and didn't want to see her upset by me not going.

We had the upholstery guy come and look at our furniture to give us a price quote on reupholstering the sofa and chair and the recliner. We were really excited about him coming out because we've seen work he did for a friend and he told us that he could fix the springs in the couch too and touch up the woodwork. We were even more excited about the price he quoted us! So Laurie and I went to Joann's after the airport fiasco and shopped for the fabric we want on our new furniture. We found some that we absolutely love! It was even 50% off! So here are the pics:

Here's the fabric for the sofa and matching chair

The fabric with the woodwork.

The fabric that is going on the recliner, it's really soft too even though it looks kind of rough.

Today and tomorrow

I'm going to have to post fast, we are right about to go to bed tonight and get up early in the morning to get me and my mom and brother all flown out to Sonoma, CA tomorrow. The plane leaves at 9:50am, and my mom isn't all that punctual and with the wheelchair, things always take longer, so I'm going try to minimize my stress level by thinking of happy fiber thoughts from tonight. (Did I mention that Laurie's not accompanying us on this trip... and that it's on a non wheelchair accessible farm???? Deep breaths.... Hopefully family will be helpful with this particular problem...)

Happy fiber thoughts....

Tonight, Laurie's coworker, Erin, joined us at the yarn store, which was a lot of fun. Laurie was giving her some spinning lessons and she was generally enjoying Tempe Yarn and Fiber's great people. She was really sweet and cute and will probably spin her up something in the future :). Apparently, she had a wonderful knit hat that somebody took from her and she was trying to recreate it by spinning yarn for it, which was a good first yarn pick because it was very lumpy bumpy and she wanted it that way.

Barbara of "Barbara's Buns" came in today with a whole bag full of dying that she had been working on. I scarfed up some lovely hand dyed silk (a little over an ounce) and nearly had to fight for it! Lol poor Tim. I also got some more of the dark chocolate alpaca that I'd been using for my "Soul of the Rose" yarn (which I had been drooling over and loving spinning). So overall a very happy night - may the happiness last until Monday, when I get home!