Pretty!

This is one of Ginger's batts I spun up. Wool/alpaca blend. Absolutely gorgeous!

Dyeing and Spinning

She's Here!!!

She treadles like a dream. Takes no effort at all which is a GREAT thing for my arthritic ankles. :) I haven't spun any yarn on her yet as I had to get back to work but I will definitely give her a test drive later today.

see anything you recognize? :-)

My Wheel!

I'm so excited! I just got the tracking info for my spinning wheel. It will be here on Tuesday. SQUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

And just for future reference, friends and family feel free to send me fiber for any birthday or holiday. ;) Raw fleece is great too. I just lllllloooooooooovvvvveeeeeee the smell of raw wool. Does this make me strange? Oh well ... who cares. :) I'm trying to talk Brett into letting me add an animal or two to our crew that produces fleece. (Short dog and cat hair and chicken feathers aren't so good for spinning.) So far all he has said is that I have to build the fence myself. At least it wasn't an outright no. :)

I've finally discovered how to have wonderfully peaceful uninterrupted time for myself. This week I have been going to bed early with the boys and then getting up a couple of hours before everyone else. Tuesday and Wednesday I spun yarn on my borrowed wheel (thanks Ginger!) for two hours before the rest of the house woke up. It was absolutely the best way ever to start a day. Today I actually got up and exercised before everyone else got up. Not quite as fun as spinning but still made me feel great. After the mood I was in for most of last week I decided I had to do something different. More on this later ... time for me to head to my oral surgeon checkup. Hopefully he will agree to change my anti-inflammatory. Anaprox and I are not getting along so well anymore. I'm hoping for ibuprofen as I know I can handle lots of that.

Great Idea

I'm submitting my "big baby birth stories" to this site: www.unnecesarean.com. I think it's a great idea. If you have an "unnecesarean" or "big baby" story to share, please do so. We women really need to help each other out with this increasing problem in our medical community. C-sections seem so common place and are handled like they are nothing at all but I know so many women with serious physical and emotional issues due to c-sections they were forced in to.

Movin' On

Today is Houston and Brody's first day at their new daycare. We were driving 28 miles each day with the old daycare. It was convenient when we worked at G_ _ but now that we work from home and gas is over $4/gal it has gotten expensive and much less convenient. I was really hoping for something to pop up and present itself. And then guess what happened .... an in-home daycare literally popped up right down the road. I'm talking less than a mile away. I was a bit hesitant about it but after visiting and talking to the owner several times we decided to go for it. The boys did really well this morning and I think they are going to like it there. Houston will only be there until he starts The Blake School in about six weeks but Brody will be there, hopefully, until next September when he is old enough to start The Blake School. I'm anxiously awaiting picking them up in about an hour to see how their day went.

I'm so excited I feel like a little girl going to Disney for the first time ....

I'm getting a spinning wheel of my very own! I'm so excited I think I could cry. :)

Louet Julia

YARN!

After what feels like forever and a day ... I finally did some yarn and roving dyeing. :) I experimented with a new technique I came up with on the yarn and most of it turned out great. Not so sure about the bright green one ... makes me think of Kermit the Frog. All of the yarn was dyed using the same four colors that I mixed up myself. The different shades in the yarn are due to different concentrations, mixing and the different fibers.


100% superwash merino roving


75% wool/25% nylon


some sort of wool ... can't remember right now


peruvian highland wool


75% merino/25% nylon (this was actually an overdye ... i love it when mistakes turn into gorgeous yarn)

70% merino/30% silk


wool ... not sure what kind

Patterns I Heart

I was browsing through the most recent issue of Interweave Knits a few weeks ago and found a pattern I absolutely loved named the Apres Surf Hoodie. Now my time for uninterrupted, focused knitting like that required in this pattern is pretty much nil so I'll probably just admire the photo from time to time. Well today I was browsing the internet (as I tend to do probably more than I should) and I found another striking hoodie pattern that I loved named Riding to Avalon. Now I just have to find myself a copy of Knitscene Fall 2008 Issue when it comes out. So after looking at the patterns I realized they were both designed by the same person ... Connie Chang Chinchio. She is truly a knitwear designer after my own heart. You can see more of her patterns here and she has a blog here.

Something Random

I didn't sleep very well last night but I had the craziest dream that kept continuing every time I went back to sleep. In my dream we had chickens and ducks living in the house with us and we spent every minute of every day running around picking up eggs and saving them from breaking. The birds just kept laying eggs all day long so I found myself basically standing in the same spot turning around and around picking up all the eggs that kept appearing before me under the couch and next to the tv and on the piano and on and on and on ....

Gifts Galore!

Birthday gifts tend to dwindle a bit as we age but I really racked it up this time around. I got a yogurt maker from Papa & Miss Nancy and a food dehydrator from Dad R. I've already made some yummy yogurt and have pretty much eaten it all already. I can tell I'm going to have fun with that. For my first round I added honey and vanilla extract. I really liked it but Brett and the boys thought it was too plain. I mixed in some strawberry preserves and they loved it. Next round is probably going to include some blueberries I have in the freezer from our trip to the u-pick blueberry farm. And I've set aside some tomatoes I picked from the earth boxes this week to turn into sun-dried tomatoes with the food dehydrator.

Getting two kitchen gadgets that I've had my eye on was plenty enough but I also got a pretty good chunk of cash to get my spinning wheel fund started, thanks to my mom and Dad R. YIPPEE!!! My wonderful spinning teacher Ginger, from Hanks, is helping me find a used wheel to purchase. She also invited me to come to the shop when she's there and spin on one of the class wheels which I plan to do as soon as I can schedule it in.

Fun Birthday Weekend

Brody & Houston ready to go watch fireworks

We headed down to Bradenton for my birthday weekend. My cousin Matt and his fiance Karla and her parents as well as my cousin Lindsay all came into town as well. It was really great to see everyone. We watched fireworks on Friday, my mom had a gathering at her house on Saturday which also happened to be my birthday and then we hung out at the pool on Sunday before heading out to the beach for dinner. We actually managed to have nine of the eleven living Anderson cousins there on Saturday. I think it might be the biggest number of us together in a really long time.


Lindsay, Matt & Me


Back row left to right: Tommy (my brother), Donny, Traye, Matt
Front: Eric, Missy, Me, Lindsay, Robbie
Missing is Jay (Lindsay's brother) and Kevin (Matt's brother) as well as the two cousins we have already lost, Carl & Stacey (Matt & Kevin's brother and sister)

So you think that's a crew ... check it out when we add significant others and kids ...



And I must say, we make some pretty darn cute kids in this family. :)


Brody & Juliana


Houston, Austin, Brody & Juliana


Brody, Austin, Houston, Carly, Juliana, Alana


And here's Aunt Lori, Lindsay, Me & Karla at dinner on sunday


Matt & Karla

Socks for Seeley

Word is out! Check it out here.

And thanks to my Aunt Karen, I now have the perfect idea for my note to David/Seeley. Hee hee. I'll share when I'm done. Think Dr. Seuss. ;)

Something Spacey

Send your name to space on the Kepler Mission. And here's a great activity for kids and adults alike.

LOOK ... It's a Finished Knit!

I can't believe I actually managed to finish a knitting project within the given deadline. That doesn't happen very often these days. My "Socks for Seeley" are done and now all I have to do is write the note to accompany them and send them off to Erin who is so graciously putting the package together and sending it off to David Boreanaz aka FBI Agent Seeley Booth on the Fox show Bones. The knitting was the easy part. I accomplished my goal of knitting some "crazy socks" as his character is fond of. Now what do I say? "Hi. You don't know me but I knit you some crazy socks. Hope they fit. Please wear them on the show if at all possible." Um, yeah. Gonna have to work on that. I've never in my life sent anything to a "celebrity" and while i'm totally excited about sending the socks, the note is another issue. The other knitters in the Socks for Seeley group are cracking me up with all their wishes for the socks. This is going to be a really cool package. I just hope it doesn't creep him out. All we really want is to see our socks on the show since it is a bit of a theme with his character and hey ... we're knitters. And now there's some talk about knitting something for Emily aka Bones so she doesn't feel left out. She's apparently a vegan so we will have to be a little more creative since wool is out. I'm thinking a cotton or linen handbag if we actually decide to go ahead with the plan.