Fun with a drumcarder

While Laurie was away this last weekend in California, I had some fun dyeing fiber. Yesterday, a friend at our little yarn store (lys) allowed me to borrow her drum carder while we where there, hanging out and knitting and spinning. Another friend at Tempe Yarn and Fiber let me take her drum carder home to finish my carding project! So, I have been having lots of fun carding up some of what I dyed. The main project I'm working on with the drum carder is the mohair, silk and merino wool that I dyed in 4 different colors. First, I carded the different fibers that were all the same color together. Here's what one of them looked like on the carder...

Here's what each of the colors turned out to be. Notice that I got 2 batts per color.

Lastly, I decided to card the colors together a little bit and here's how the batts turned out...

I'm really happy with it and plan to start spinning it up (on my Kuchulu!) this evening whist I listen to an audiobook. It looks like the colors of a sunset, another friend at ty&f suggested to me and it might end up as a shawl. We'll see how it spins up and I'm sure I'll be posting the results of the spinning as it gets spun up. Tomorrow is Expressions in Spinning, and I'm looking forward to showing and spinning some of the other fiber that I dyed for the "wildflower" with the group. A big thanks to Debi and Barbara for the loans of the drum carders, I couldn't have done this project without their generosity!

A new home

Tonight we got one step closer to getting the bunnies out of the "bunny room", otherwise known as the second bedroom and into roaming what will eventually be the bunny zone in the house. (There will be a no bunny zone, namely in the dining room and living room, almost everything else will be bunny territory.) The big step? A future bunny house, located in the entry hallway. We have been looking for the perfect hutch or chest of drawers or sideboard to turn into a bunny house for Bennett and Ella, so their headquarters are not located in the second bedroom as much, so we can use it for guests and such. Also, we think the bunnies will want to be where we are and that's mostly in our bedroom, so we wanted to set them up with a little home base. So, here's what we bought off of craigslist tonight:

As you can see by the picture, both Ella and Bennett liked playing in it. The cabinet has a shelf that will be fun for them to jump and climb on. We're planning on cutting an entry into the "hutch" for them, but it is yet undecided where. I'm really excited! I've been stalking craigslist for a long time searching for something that would be perfect and I finally found something in our price range that fits our decor. Now to solve the Bennett has taken to liking to chew on cords problem...

Fun new toys!

On Friday, my new spindles came in the mail! These are the birthday spindles from my mom which I had planned to special order but it ended up that the spindles I wanted were in stock! Lucky me! These are both Jenkins Turkish spindles, I should have taken pictures of both of them together so you can see how small the Kuchulu is. The Kuchulu is the first one in the pictures, the shaft is purpleheart wood and the whorl is hormigo negro wood. Apparently, hormigo negro wood is native to Guatemala and is used there to make marimbas. It weighs in at 9 grams (.3 oz) which is absolutely tiny! I love it, as you can see I've been spinning a lot of the merino/silk blend that came with it to give it a test drive. The second one, a Meadowlark, is just as beautiful and a delight to spin with. The wood for the whorl is pink ivory and weighs in at 21 grams (.7 oz). It's been hard to choose between two amazing spindles as I've been acquainting myself with both of them. They join their sister, my Jenkins Turkish delight spindle that I got for Christmas.

(ETA - Here's a pic of my whole Jenkins family: the Delight, Lark and Kuchulu)

Yesterday, I played with some more kool-aid and fiber in the beautiful cool morning we had, while awaiting Laurie's return from the airport. This time I went for more dark colors and I really like the way it turned out. The fiber is Wensleydale wool, I dyed about 4 oz of it.

I included this picture because you can't really see the dark purple in the other one, the other looks very pink, which is really not what it looks like in real life.

And here is the Wensleydale fiber that I dyed on Thursday. (I promised a better pic than the one I took on my cell phone!)

Ella

Ella is famous on Disapproving Rabbits again! Check her picture out :)... Ella

This week has not been very kind to Ella. Her fur mites just seem to be getting worse and worse and she's loosing a lot of fur. She bald in many places. I keep brushing the hair out because our vet told us to and it seems to give her some relief from the itchiness even though we rarely see her scratch at it. We've doubled the dose of her mite medication this week after a call to the vet. She's been so good at sitting still for the long grooming sessions and I feel so bad for her. Hopefully the meds will start working really soon.

Meanwhile, I have some cute pictures of her...

Ella noshing on hay in the hay box. She actually climbs into the hay box. Once she got stuck in there and I had to rescue her out the top and another time, she made a little nest for herself in there so we've put a little grill inside so she can't climb in anymore. It was really cute though.

Another disapproving glare...

Cute sleepy bunny!

Spinning and dyeing and knitting, oh my!

Well, I've been a busy spinner, knitter and now dyer recently. In my last fiber post, I showed the Pagewood farms Mississippi Mud BFL that I'm working on for expressions in spinning, and I've been dedicatedly spinning that up. I have to say that I wouldn't have picked up that fiber if not for the group, but now I'm really loving it.

Also for the expressions in spinning group, I had a little dye day for myself today. Laurie's gone out of town to visit her family (I was supposed to go with, but, alas Laurie had somethings to take care of this week that she wasn't anticipating and our plan of driving out there became Laurie flying out there for 3 days. I'm bummed, I would have really liked to see her family, as it's been since January. If all goes as planned, we will be seeing them in June, which is not that far off.), and we were able to get a microwave so I could dye things in the garage without making a mess in the house, so I pulled out the Kool-aid and had a lot of fun. I was actually dyeing for two projects, the first one in the pictures is for expressions in spinning, wildflowers. I was picked for the topic of "plants" and had a beautiful picture of wildflowers that Laurie and I took on our second wildflower hunting trip (I don't think I've posted any of the pictures from that particular trip). I kind of turned that topic around and dyed the fiber colors that reminded me of Laurie and our roadtrips. Let me warn you, it did not turn out as planned, but I still like it and it's all good. Also, I took these dyed fiber pics with my cell phone, which is not the best quality. I'll be retaking and posting them when I get the good camera back from Laurie when she gets home. The colors I used were a blue/green (turned out) for the color of our car, brownish (turned out) for the dirt that gets on our car on our trips, dark purpley/black (didn't turn out) for the road and our favorite color, dark pink (turned out) for the color of our roadtrip journal, with some white in there for snow. Here's the picture:

This second fiber is silk, mohair and merino wool that I'm going to card together. I dyed each fiber type in four different colors and when the fiber types are all carded together, I'm going to card together the colors for a lovely shawl. I'm hoping that it turns out beautiful...

On the knitting front, I've started a new pair of socks. These will be a gift for Laurie for her Master's degree. The fiber is superwash merino and bamboo and was handdyed by the owner of our little yarn store, Tempe Yarn and Fiber. The yarn is so colorful that I chose a relatively simple pattern so the two didn't get muddled up. You can enjoy the pattern that the yarn makes, with the simple embellishment that the pattern adds. They are coming along nicely...

I'm expecting two new spindles in the mail in the next few days. They are birthday gifts from my mom. I was expecting to have to special order them, but when I went on the maker's website, low and behold, there were the two spindles I wanted in the woods that I wanted. So, I ordered them and I'm really anxious to have them here already. In anticipation of getting them, I got a little bag from Tempe Yarn and Fiber to put them in. It's also working well as a sock project bag until I get the spindles. Both pictures are of the same bag, just inside out!

In other fiber news, Laurie and I had been planning a road trip out to Nebraska for her family reunion in June. I found out that the Estes Park Wool Market is happening the week before the reunion, in Estes Park, CO. We would be driving through CO anyways and I'm really excited to go to this fiber festival. Jumping up and down excited!!!! My younger brother, Nathan, is also going to join us on the first part of the road trip (he is going to fly home when we get to NE). Needless to say, I'm really looking forward to this trip!

From Sister Hand Grenade of Loving Kindness

I know that up until now, I've never posted anything too overtly political, but I came across this article today from a thread on Ravelry and couldn't help but post it. It's about a new political group, the Unitarian Jihad. I'm Sister Hand Grenade of Loving Kindess, to my fellow Unitarian Jihadist brethren. :)

Unitarian Jihad

And if you care to join, you can get your official name here.

A fiber post, finally!

So, with the aquisition of the bunnies into our household, my fiber endeavors were curtailed a little bit. I have been doing a little bit of spinning, mostly during the spin and knit along at our LYS, but not much else. Now that we're all settled in and Bennett's healthy again I've been doing much more. I drag a chair into the bunny room and sit and spin and listen to my audiobooks and hang out with the bunnies.

We had an Expressions in Spinning meeting last week and it got some lovely Pagewood farms BFL to spin up for it. The topic was famous movie persona and Scarlett O'hara was picked. I chose this fiber because it reminded me of plantations of tobacco. It's lovely colors and not something I would have immediately picked up for myself normally, which is part of the whole reason for the group. I'm not sure what it will become but here is the picture of the fiber:

I also just received my Easter gift from my mom, a new Bosworth spindle that is simply beautiful. It's .77 oz, tulipwood whorl and a long Ebony shaft. Yesterday, at TYF, I brought it to show everyone and ended up getting to spin up some silk bells, which I had never spun before. I hope that I will be able to get more beautifully dyed silk hankies or bells to spin because they were lovely.

Talking about spinning now makes me want to go spin, so I'm off to do that. Spin happy (if you do) and be well :).

Cute bunny pictures

I've been taking lots of pictures of the bunnies lately and have quite a few very cute ones! Not too much has been going on with them. We took Ella and Bennett to the rabbit rescue adoption day this past weekend to say hi and to get nails trimmed. Bennett didn't really like getting his trimmed and put up a pretty good fight. While we were there, a woman brought in 5 or 6 nine week old baby bunnies that her bunny gave birth to unexpectedly and she couldn't keep them. They were really really cute, and no we didn't come home with another bunny!

We made a purchase at the adoption day that I'm really excited about because it means less hay everywhere. A woman was selling a hay rack type box that we ended up buying even though it was a little expensive. You fill it with enough hay for about a week and it sits right up against a litter box, for nibbling and to catch any hay that falls out. I took a few picture of it to show what I mean. Ella really likes to rearrange things, so I ended up using velcro to stick the litter box to the front of the hay box, so she couldn't move the litter box out from in front of it, since Bennett initially took to pulling hay out of it for sport. We're not putting hay in the litter boxes anymore, because they can munch on the hay from the hay box while in the litter box, so it doesn't get spread all around the room anymore! (In the pictures, you can see that quite a bit of hay has fallen into the litter box, Bennett thought it would be fun to pull out as much hay as possible from the box. He hasn't done that again since then and right now, there is hardly any hay in the litter box at all.)

And onward to the cute bunny pictures...

"Hhhrumpfhh!"

Ella after shredding the grass matt that was in the nesting box. The box is hers now and she had to do some redecorating.

Bennett has been doing some funny things lately. When he stretches after a nap, he'll put one leg out and point the toe and the the other and point his toe, and then stretch back on his hind legs. Here he's pointing his toes as he rests, we think he might have been a ballerina in a past life.

Sweet cute Bennett mouth.

Adorable Ella nose in the camera.

Ella is so ashamed of us, it brings her to tears...

It's been awhile

I've been sick with a cold this week, so I haven't posted until now, but I do have several bits of very happy news to share. The first is that Laurie has completed her masters degree! Her final project was emailed to her advisor on Friday last week and the hard copy was finished and fed ex-ed to Marymount Sunday night after printing out almost 300 pages of hard work! I'm very proud and happy for her and glad that has put in so much work and it has paid off for her. Yay, Laurie! We went out to celebrate with our friends Saturday night after church and had a very yummy meal at Lucille's BBQ, I must say that I adore their biscuits!

The other exciting news is that my sister, Jessica, who lives in San Antonio, is pregnant! I'm so happy that I'm finally going to be an Auntie! I've had to jealously eye Laurie's happiness at being and Auntie and it's finally my turn! I couldn't be happier :). Jessica just barely found out, so my niece or nephew won't be making his or her entrance to this world for awhile yet, but I'm anxiously awaiting it! I'll finally have my own baby to knit and spin for!

Mostly, I've been hanging out with the bunnies and spinning in the evenings. The last few weeks, I've been taking the bus into Tempe to go to Tempe Yarn and Fiber to hang out with spinners there. Initially, we were doing a spin and knit along but that has ended and we just meet to hang out together and spin and knit, of course. It's been fun because it's not the usual people who come on Friday nights and it's not as loud as Saturday nights at the store. Laurie usually swings by to pick me up after work, which works very well. There is a Ramen noodle restaurant that opened along my route to TYF which also sells boba drinks, so I've been stopping and getting some boba thai iced tea, which has been a yummy treat. I haven't had boba since we lived in San Francisco and this restaurant makes good boba. Unfortunately, the delicious thai place across the parking lot from TYF has closed, we will definitely miss them and the pineapple fried rice. :(

Healthwise, other than the cold I'm fighting, has been pretty much the same. Still getting more and more weird bumps and we still have no answers. I'm going to see the dermatologist in August, and see if they have any suggestions or will do a biopsy for me. We're thinking what's going on with these lumps of swelling is that my connective tissue layers are separating and fluid is collecting between the layers, causing the swelling and the pain. Possibly a punch biopsy would show that the layers are separating, but even if we do have a definitive diagnosis, I'm not sure what could be done that we're not doing already. When Bennett was sick, we moved the bunnies into our room, next to my side of the bed and I was climbing over the foot of the bed to get in and out of bed. In the process of doing that, I managed to hurt my knee (pretty easily done with the EDS and the fact that I've hurt my knees before). Well, it's been getting worse lately and I had an X ray today to make sure that I didn't break anything. I'm quite the sight, though. Wheelchair bound girl with bandaged knee and a bandaged ankle. I sprained my ankle over the weekend while I was favoring my knee, oops. My PCP laughed at my appearance at my appt on Monday. We'll see if the knee is broken somewhere or if I'm going to need further imaging to see what's up with it. It hurts quite a bit, but I'm still crawling around on it to do my bunny chores for better or worse.

I have a bit more to say, but I'm going to break it up into bunnies and fiber and do two more posts, hopefully tonight.