Baby sweaters, shawls and socks - oh my!

Finally, another post, and a fiber post at that! :) Just rounding up all of the works in progress that I have been doing over the summer and some that I just started. First up is Laurie's master graduation present socks, using hand dyed superwash merino yarn. I didn't like the way that the yarn was flashing and pooling in the first pattern that I started with this yarn, but I really like how the second one is knitting up. Much more stripey then flashy. This was my daytime car ride project for our road trips and has kind of been put on the back burner until the baby sweaters get done.

When we were up at Laurie's family's cabin for vacation, we went to a small yarn shop in Murphys, CA called Maisy Blue. The yarn that I picked up there was 100% cashmere, lace weight. I am knitting an Ishbel shawl with it. The size will probably be more like a scarf than a full sized shawl, but I'm very happy with it. It is just amazingly soft to touch and a pleasure to knit with.

This is a little bit of a random entry but here are the pictures of silk hankies that have recently become part of my stash. The one on the far left lower corner I bought at the Estes Park Wool Market and the other three in the picture were dyed by Barbara, a friend from TYF, and given to me in a swap for some of Bennett's fiber. It was total coincidence that they matched so well! There are about 2 ounces of silk total.

And finally, the yarn for the baby sweaters! This first picture is of the yarn that I'm using for my sister, Jessica's baby, Paul. I'll be knitting him a newborn sized Baby Surprise Jacket with this superwash merino sock yarn. It's coming along nicely, I hope to have it finished for the baby shower. I also plan to knit him another sweater, but have not gotten the yarn for it yet...

Here is the yarn for a sweater that I'm making for Laurie's sister's newest addition to the family, Dominic. He was born just a few weeks ago, and alas as it is summer is not in dire need of a sweater, so I'll be making a size for him to wear when the weather gets cooler. I plan to stripe it with these three colors, it will be very cute! (I am thinking of using the pattern for this sweater for Paul's second sweater depending on how it goes to knit this one.)

(I hope you like the colors, Christy!)

The end of summer vacation

Laurie and I returned home from our last summer vacation a week ago Sunday. I've held off posting due to a combination of things, I've not been feeling well (I have costrochondritis) and the camera died up at the cabin on our trip and we've been searching for the charger since we got home and finally found it two days ago, but when I went to upload the pictures on the camera, we realized that the card reader was MIA as well, so it took some time to find that, too. So now I can post! - with pictures!

Laurie and I headed up to her family's cabin for practically the whole month of July. It was beautiful up there and we had a lot of fun doing some outdoor activities. We thoroughly enjoyed the brand new deck on the cabin. I was able to sit out in the shade in the afternoon in the cool weather spinning for the Tour de Fleece. We kept the bunnies out on the deck in their pen during the day and in the car, safe and sound from animals, during the night. Bennett had a fabulous time with the deck. Supervised, he had endless fun dashing around the furniture and hopping up and down on chairs and leaning off the balcony as far as he could stretch his little head. There were lots of binkies. :) Ella was a little wary of the deck and definitely didn't think it was as fun as Bennett did. On our trip, we discovered they both had fur mites again but there was not a bunny vet to be found up in the Sierras, so we held our breath that neither of them would get too bad and waited until we got home. I actually had the medication at home, but needed the proper dosing instructions for each of them. Bennett's mites were healing on their own, but Ella is not looking that great right now. We actually have a vet visit scheduled for today for Ella because she seems to be having incontinence issues and is urinating just about anywhere. We think that she might have a bladder infection because she doesn't seem to have control to hold her bladder, she just goes when it strikes her. This really became apparent a few days ago when I was petting her in my lap and she peed all over me, which is something she has never done before. She's always politely nipped before to indicate that she needed to be put down to use the litter box. The inside of her pen is just soaked with urine. We'll see what they say at the vet's later today.

While we were up at the cabin, we drove about an hour or so to some hot springs. This particular hot springs is run but a state park and they pump the water into pools. There is one hot pool and one cool pool, and they both have accessible lifts to get into the water. We spent an afternoon there, I absolutely loved bobbing around in the water in my life jacket (even though I surely looked like a dork :-P). It was really relaxing and the water was cool on a hot day. We also took a day trip into a little town near the cabin called Murphys. We went wine tasting and bought some yummy wine and then we went to the local yarn store. The store was more of a cross between a yarn store and a stationary/book store, but it was very nice and the owner was extremely friendly. I bought some yummy cashmere yarn that will be in the next post, and a very cute book called Woolbur, which features a really cute free spirited little sheep who wants to shear, card, spin, dye and weave differently from the herd. We also bought some little books for Laurie's nephews.

Perfectly timed with our departure, Laurie's sister gave birth to her 3rd child, another little boy, named Dominic David. We got to see him in the hospital and spend a short amount of time with him the night he came home. It was a treat to be able to see him and hold him and coo over him before we had to leave for home. Laurie is hoping to go back to CA in September, and I know that she is looking forward to seeing baby Dominic again (and the two other boys!).

I have another post planned for the crafty stuff that I have planned but I think that will happen later as it's lunch time!

Here are some pictures of the bunnies enjoying their vacation on the deck:

Back home, again.

As you probably noticed, I have taken a little breather from blogging. Laurie and the bunnies and I have been on a very nice road trip for two weeks and two days and just got back last night! I had thought that I would have more access to the internet and be able to blog while I was away, but alas, that did not happen. We've been so busy with fiber festivals, camping, family reunions, and more driving and camping that sitting down at the computer for more than a few minutes at a time when there was internet access just wasn't happening. So, really soon, I'll be posting lots and lots about our trip but right now, I'm just trying to catch up on sleep!

Bunnies' first camping trip

This past weekend, Laurie and I and the bunnies all went camping near Prescott for Sunday and Memorial day. It was the bunnies' first camping trip and something we hadn't done for too long. We wanted to get out of the heat and enjoy camping but we also wanted to see how the bunnies would react to camping before we pile them in the car with everything else and spend over 2 weeks on a road trip to Nebraska and back, camping along the way. This trip was a little mini run and we were able to fine tune the things that needed fixing and really get a good idea of how the bunnies would react to being out in nature and all that stuff. We went to Mingus Mountain, where there were electrical hookups for the oxygen concentrator that I need for sleeping. We were lucky, the campground was apparently full Sunday morning, but when we pulled in in the early afternoon, there were lots of spots!

I'm happy to report that the bunnies did great (and we had fun, too)! Bennett loved being out and in the cool air (he's in full coat right now, but we will definitely be plucking him before we go). He would half close his eyes and lean into the wind and just look totally content. Our set up was having the bunnies in their exercise pen on top of a tarp covered by a rug. We also made sure that they had a place to go hide if they wanted to, so we brought the small carrier to lounge in. At night, we set them up on top of rugs in the trunk section of the car (we have a station wagon). Laurie was hoping that Bennett wouldn't be able to hop over the back seat and get into the rest of the car, but, Houdini that he is, he did. When Laurie went to get them out of the car in the morning, he was up at the driver's seat. We are going to have to rig something so that he cannot escape the trunk. We locked them in the car for safety at night, there is just too much risk from predators and things for them to be left out in the x pen. They had plenty of cool air and hay and the small carrier to hide in, if necessary. When we packed up on Monday to go home, it was obvious that Bennett didn't want to go. He tried to forestall us by "needing" to be petted for as long as possible, after we got his harness on him.

We tried out a new arrangement for travel than usual. Normally, we put the bunnies in the large carrier and strap that in the back seat for travel, but since we're going such a long distance and it's hard to keep the cool air circulating in the carrier, we built a little bunny contraption for long distance travel. We got the largest rectangular laundry basket we could and strapped that into the car via the seatbelt. A cotton rug went in the bottom of the basket and we got a chain link dog leash and attached in to the handle of the laundry basket. Then, we carabinered the bunnies to the leash by their harnesses. It was a long leash, so we carabinered Bennett to the end and Ella somewhere in the middle, so they could still move around the basket, but just enough slack that they couldn't get out of the basket. They could pop up to see out the window (which was partially covered by a towel for shade) or to investigate what's going on in the car. They had hay to eat in a brown paper bag and some toys to chew on. Mostly, they slept as soon as we got underway. This set up really worked well. Bennett could run around and see everything and we could be sure that they were both getting enough cool air to keep them comfortable. I should add that Laurie devised a lovely way to keep air circulating in the back seat (because we have no air vents back there), she stretched a bungee cord across the roof of the car to latch on the dry cleaning hooks and we got two little carabiner/flashlight/personal fans to attach to the bungee cords and turned the fans on. It made a big difference in the coolness of the air back there. Anyways here are all the pictures...

You can just see the snow on the San Francisco peaks from Mingus Mtn.

The lovely view!

Bennett and I lounging in the shade in my camp chair. He's such a snuggle bun. Ella came out once and hung out with Laurie, but she prefers to have her feet on the ground and looks down upon snuggling.

A good view of the harnesses (and the bag of hay).

Bennett checking things out.

You can see how the chain leash and the carabiner is set up for Ella in this picture.

Just another cute shot.

Interesting pic of both Bennett and Ella. It's funny how much their fur color looks alike in this photo.

We all had a lot of fun camping and in exactly one week we will be packing up to go off to Nebraska and have lots of adventures!

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!)