Happy me!

This picture was taken by Laurie last Friday, on our yarn binge. I had them all lined up and was admiring how lovely they all were, and Laurie thought it was pretty funny and took a picture before I put them away. It's a cell phone picture, so big it's really grainy but small you can tell how happy I was!

I meant to add this in the last post, but I didn't want to deal with all the formatting, so it will be a post all it's own! Happy advent!

Yarn and fibery goodness

I've got lots of yarn and fiber and projects to share with you! The first is the totally finished Baby Surprise Jacket for my nephew, when he's born. My sister's baby shower was a month ago and she really liked it and I really like the way it turned out. I hope baby Paul gets lots of use out of it!

Finally all the buttons are on!

Last night, we had our usual Sunday night dinner with my mom and had a lovely time playing with all of her beading things. She has an extensive, beautiful collection of beads and I wanted to make myself some more small stitch markers, because all the small ones I have are on projects and I needed some more! It was a lot of fun just hanging out making things, here are the ones that I made for myself (not pictured are some I made for a person that I'm doing a swap with on Ravelry, I didn't want to post them just in case she read this and I want them to be a surprise):

Of course, the way the pictures got loaded, these are ones that Laurie made for me.

Ten little pearl ones.

Ten little mother of pearl ones, these are lovely don't you think?

Crystal ones.

This next project is one of the reasons that I needed new little stitch markers. This past week, when Laurie and I went to Tempe Yarn and Fiber for our usual hang out on Wednesday night, we oohed and aahhed at the new malabrigo sock yarn that came in. Unfortunately, we couldn't afford to buy what we were drooling over and I was a bit disappointed. On the way home, I decided to attack my stash (that's what it's there for, right?)! I was rewarded with two balls of malabrigo sock yarn in the colorways eggplant and archangel. I decided to use the archangel colorway for these socks. Before we left for California for Thanksgiving, we used one of our borders gift cards from last Christmas to get a book called "Socks from the toe up", which one of our TYF friends has and was making socks with and let me look it over. I really liked most of the patterns in the book and so did Laurie, so we went ahead and got it. So, these malabrigo sock will be my first toe up socks, using the Lace and Cable sock pattern from the book. You may have a long memory and remember that I have two other pairs of socks on the needles right now, but I decided that I wanted a pair of socks for me before I could knit anyone else their socks, selfish I know, but I don't have any to call my own... Here's how they are coming along, I've finished the toe and have just started the lace and cables that the sock pattern is named for:

On the following Friday night, we ended up buying that other malabrigo sock yarn that we were ogling (my dear mother helped us out) and here it is:

This is the yarn I fell in love with, the colorway is "abril", lovely isn't it?

This is what Laurie fell in love with, "terra cotta"

This isn't malabrigo, it's Cascade Heritage, in the colorway "tutu", we went on a little bit of a binge, this is for another pair of socks for one of the patterns in the toe up sock book. All of these pics show the one skein of yarn broken up into two balls of equal weight, so you can use up all of the yarn when you are making toe up socks - you can just knit until you run out of yarn!

Lastly, the weekend before Thanksgiving, I was able to take a dyeing class with a friend and teacher at TYF, Barbara. It was a lot of fun! I only dyed fiber and was trying to go for a tonal look on the fiber that I dyed. I hope to use it for socks, it's superwash merino wool. Along with the wool, I dyed some silk hankies, which was fun and I like the way they turned out.

Here's a blue/green/teal 6 oz bump of fiber, possibly will become socks for Laurie.

The silk hankies.

And lovely purple/burgundy/purple-black, possibly socks for me!

My February Lady Sweater is coming along, I worked on it a lot on our drive out to CA, I'm finally in the lace part and it's going quickly, a great bus and car project! I hope to have it done while the weather is still cold enough to wear it :). Also, I am in the process of plying some Pagewood Farms BFL in the colorway "mississippi mud", I have two of the three skeins plied and I can't wait for them to be all done, it's funny that so far, they all look so different! Then, I may start on the alpaca for a scarf for Laurie's dad.

The start of lots of posts: Bunny update

It's been awhile since I posted, mostly due to busyness and travel and being sick. Laurie commented to me that my last post was rather dire and that you all probably think Ella's dead or something now. Well, she's not, her leg has totally healed since I posted, and she didn't pick at it and even though she hated the e-collar, it kept her from pulling anymore stitches out and it healed very nicely. Laurie and I took the stitches out ourselves, and I was pretty proud of us :). Recently, though, Ella's been having trouble breathing. She's had an upper respiratory system infection since we adopted her and the last two time that we tried to treat it when it got bad, the antibiotics didn't seem to do a thing, so we've opted to not stick her with needles for the antibiotics anymore and see where the infection takes us. It's definitely getting worse - you can tell that she's struggling to breathe pretty much all of the time. I have no doubt that eventually the infection is going to turn into something fatal, but right now she's eating with gusto and loves her greens and being petted, that it's not the right time to put her down. If there comes a time when her quality of life seriously deteriorates, I think that it will be time to let her go. For now, we're just giving her loves and keeping her warm (she lost all of her fur again to the mites and is butt naked right now, although some hair is growing back in, slowly). Here are some pictures of her in her e-collar, she was seriously cute in it:

Exactly a week after Ella's accident, we came home to a sick Bennett. He was "scanning" moving his eyes back and forth all the time, and falling over when he tried to walk. I was really worried that he had a stroke or chewed a cord that had shocked him and that it would be permanent, so we called our vet after hours. We have a fabulous vet, he called us back 15 minutes later and we had the calm reassurance of just and inner ear infection. The next morning Laurie picked up two antibiotics for him and we just finished off all the medicine this week. Poor guy was really miserable, he kept wanting to do his regular bunny activities but would fall over and crash if he tried. We kept him in the exercise pen so he wouldn't try jumping on things or moving around too much, the scanning is a result of vertigo. Luckily, Bennett is resilient and he is back to his old self. In fact, I caught him on top of Ella's cage this morning - naughty boy! He really is such a love bug, he'll nose you if you aren't petting him with both hands! Did I mention he's also really spoiled? :) We went away to northern CA for Thanksgiving and the bunnies stayed here because Ella's not fit to travel and it was pretty cold. We had our former neighbor come and watch the two of them and she gave them a treat of a growing plant of mustard greens, which Bennett is really loving. Eileen and Bennett got along really well (there were treats involved) and I'm sure he'll miss us when we go to San Antonio for Christmas but I know he will be in good, loving hands. Here's a pic of Bennett looking disapproving, but really he's loving Laurie petting him:

Healing thoughts for Ms. Ella

This will be a short post, and I have lots more to say but we're having a bit of a crisis with Ella. On Wednesday night, I was grooming her back legs and felt something catch in the comb, thinking it was just a large mat that needed tending to, I went looking for it. I didn't find a mat, I found a quarter size laceration below her hind leg. So, off we went to the emergency vet and had it sown up, because she doesn't have sensory perception in her back legs and because the fur mites have greatly reduced the quality of her skin, we are worried about infection. She managed to get the e-collar we were sent home with off last night and bit off two of the stitches - the wound is still closed and we're heading off to our vet office this afternoon. Please send healing thoughts her way, poor girl, we're doing the best we can to keep her comfortable and healthy.

Bunny pictures

There has been a sad lack of pictures around this blog, lately! Here are some bunny pictures to make up for that...

Bennett's been cuddly boy lately - I'll snuggle him close to me and pet his nose and ears for a while and then put my arm around him and he'll just stay there, all cuddled up with me for as short as ten minutes and as long as an hour. Most of the time, I'm either laying down for or getting up from a nap when he does this - it's so cute but it makes me feel guilty that he doesn't have a friend to cuddle with when I'm not around. I keep telling him to wait until Thanksgiving - when we bring Maisie home!

Anyways, here's disapproving Bennett (he doesn't give this look very often but you can see his displeasure at an empty food bowl...)

Mr. Bennett all stretched out and cute, but mostly I put this pic in because you can see all his lovely angora fur.

And *poof* there goes all the fur!

The black splotches are the only places where his fur was going back in after we plucked him. I think it was the hot weather that we are having combined with a molt that left him very bare and pink! (You can see in the picture above, him saying "Mom, really? You have to take a picture of me like this?!?! Come on - give me a little dignity!)

And one of my all time favorite pictures:

Now, Bennett in his Halloween costume... Cowboy Bennett!

Lastly, yes, Ella still lives. It seems that she's decided to pull through :). She's very happy in her cage and also very much loves to come out for loves. Here are some pics of her (she's going to be a princess for Halloween, but we don't have any pictures of her in her costume, yet):

Catch up on knitting and spinning!

I've been a busy girl lately with knitting and spinning, here's a catch up on my latest finished projects...

First is my Ishbel shawl, which I got the cashmere solid purple yarn for up at a town near Laurie's family's cabin. Ultimately, when I was knitting it I decided that I wanted to do more lace repeats than the smaller size of the shawl recommended. I ended up doing one more set of repeats of the lace pattern than the larger size called for and decided to hold my breath that I would have enough yarn to finish it. Alas, when I was nearing the end, I realized that I did not have enough yarn to finish the shawl and I was either going to have to frog it all back to the extra repeats I did or figure something else out. I figured something else out in the end, when we were in Jerome, Laurie and I found some beautiful 100% silk handpainted yarn and bought it because it matched so well and seemed to be the answer to the problem. It worked out beautifully if I may say so myself. :) The silk adds a bit of weight to the cashmere on the edge and helps to hold the shawl on. I love the two yarns together and I'm excited to wear the shawl out somewhere soon. (Please let it cool off here!) Here are the pics:

This project has been done for a little while, it's the Baby Surprise Jacket that I knitted for my nephew, Paul, who is due late December. It's knit in sock weight yarn so it will be small enough for a newborn to wear, and is also superwash, so it can be thrown into the washing machine. Laurie isn't quite done sewing the buttons on, the pictures show 3 buttons, but there will be 5.

And finally, some spinning...

Here is my very first wheel spun handspun. It's Pagewood Farms, in the colorway "Butterfly". It's two ply (although I had set out to make it three ply - I didn't put enough twist in some of the singles to be able to chain ply it, alas a learning experience!), BFL and it's definitely lace weight or smaller. I still have the second halves of the bobbins to ply up, and then I think that it will be a small shawl (can you see I'm on a lace craze lately?) or scarf. I was thinking of giving it to my mom, but she doesn't have the best track record for taking care of hand knit things, so I'm hesitant to give her a handspun, hand knit item that can't go into the washing machine... Maybe I can spin her some superwash fiber sometime and not feel so bad about it's mistreatment. I ended up running this skein through the wheel a second time to add to it's plying twist, it looked barely plied when I was skeining it and I'm glad I added the extra twist because when I soaked it and lightly thwacked it, it has come out just slightly unbalanced, leaning toward under-plied. It is beautiful :)

Camelot!

So, yesterday was my first horsemanship lesson at Camelot! I was so excited and happy to meet everyone :). I did a lot of listening and talking - and a lot of showing off knitting projects - Mary and Michelle, the executive director and principal riding instructor, both knit and I just finished my cashmere/silk shawl and got to show it off! Everyone is so nice and if anything hit me big time it was number one - what a great community that I'm entering and number two - I have a lot to learn! Before this I've never taken horseback riding lessons, even when I was an able bodied person, I only did occasional trail rides, Andie and Jess where the horseback riders in our family. I think that mostly happened because when I went through my childhood "horse phase" we couldn't afford lessons for me, but could when Jess and Andie went through theirs. I definitely have unfulfilled horse dreams :), and I think that they are about to be made reality! Yay!

My instructor this season is Michelle and she and I totally hit it off right away. Between Harry Potter, plastic sheet protectors, the front of my curriculum notebook and lots of other things, we are a good match! My horse that I'm working with is Cayanna, she's beautiful and a Halflinger. (Hmmm, I just realized that I haven't linked you all to their website, here's the website and here's Cayanna's page.) As you can see from the pictures and description, she's a draft pony and their driving horse. Yesterday, I learned some basic horse safety info and got my curriculum and homework for the week (I have a test next week!) and groomed Cay. She was kind of grumpy, she's a mare and they can have their time of the month and be hormonal just like us and she didn't like me grooming her flanks. There are several different kinds of brushes, and they all do different things - a brush for combing manes and tails, loosening dirt, flicking off that dirt and a dandy brush to polish things off. Next week, I'll be learning how to lead a horse with the wheelchair. I will actually be working with Scout, one of their geldings, because Cayanna has a mind of her own and can be bossy with new students and it will be easier to learn with Scout. Apparently, the only thing that Scout is known for is trying to eat during lessons. (As an aside right now, I'm in the bunny room with Bennett and he's being hilarious, totally acting prissy and prancing around. He just laid down with his front feet all the way forward and his tail in the air - if only I had a camera. Now that I've said something about it he immediately jumped up like - why are you laughing at me?!?!?) Anyways, speaking of the bunnies, Michelle totally wanted me to bring in Bennett to say hi, she thought it was really cool that we road trip with them and they are litter box trained (ok Bennett is - but it's not Ella's fault that she can't control it, although she did go on me a few days ago and I was furious - it sprayed everywhere on me, I had to change all my clothes - ick!) Both Michelle and Mary have dogs that hang around the office and barn, we met Mary's dog at the intake interview - a great dane, and I met Michelle's dog, Bella, a chihuahua, yesterday. I'll have to bring Bennett in sometime when I'm not taking the bus out there, when Laurie has some time off. The season is long - it ends May 26th, so I'll probably have at least one time when Laurie doesn't have to work and we could take Bennett and show him off :). We have a creative transportation system in place to get me to Camelot which is in really North Scottsdale, pretty far from Chandler. I take the bus to Laurie's work and then she takes "lunch" and drives me out there. My lessons go from 3-4 pm and she has a class that start at 2:55 pm, so she drops me off around 2:30 pm and I sit and knit or help shred thirty year old documents for them. Yesterday, Laurie had to drop me off much earlier, the whole school was doing AIMS/PLAN/PSAT/etc and she had to proctor the kids with accommodations for the tests. Our little system works out well, and Michelle told me that lots of their students have creative transportation stuff like me, so I didn't feel so badly about hanging out in the office.

After Laurie picked me up from Camelot, we went over to TYF, and hung out for a bit, not as long as we normally do on Wednesdays but our friend Mandy came and I was excited to see her and show off my cashmere shawl to all of them. (Which reminds me that I need to photograph it to post! It turned out gorgeous and I'm really proud of it. Now that I'm done with it, I'm going though lace withdrawal, I was working on my February Lady sweater and was totally bored with it, even though it makes a good bus project. I'll have to start some new lace soon, I have some 100% silk that is calling to me...) By the time we got home, I was exhausted and had a huge headache, it was only 7:30 pm, but I got into bed and laid down until it was gone. Laurie and I ended up in giggle fits when my head finally felt better. I think I said some pretty silly things, and she kept repeating them to me until I couldn't breathe I was laughing so hard. I was good to laugh with her because the night before we had fought pretty badly and I was really angry with her. Angry enough to go sleep on the couch (which I will NOT be doing again anytime soon). Even though my intention was to go to bed early because of my big day the next day, I ended up up most of the night, either uncomfortable on the couch or just awake fuming. Believe me, a night on the couch fixed the angry thing. Laurie said the next day when we talked about it that she was glad that I am so feisty because I probably wouldn't be doing this horsemanship program if I wasn't. So it's all over and forgiven, we just make each other very angry sometimes. Definitely though, the couch got it out of my system, it was the first and (hopefully) last time I do that!!!

I think that about sums things up for my first day at Camelot! It's going to be hard work, physically and intellectually, which I'm totally up for - I hadn't realized how long it had been since I'd taken a test, so I'm a little nervous about remembering everything, because it's a lot of information all at one time! I'm looking forward to getting out of my comfort zone and I think that this will reap me benefits I can't even yet foresee. Well, I'm off to look at lace patterns on Ravelry!