Rocket Roving

Rocket Roving on Etsy

Feltable Wool in MOTHER EARTH - hot poor method for slightly muted colors
3 of these, 4 oz each



Wool/Nylon in PURPLE HAZE, 3.625 oz




Wool/Nylon in MOTHER EARTH - cold poor for more vibrant colors
3.5 oz

Crafty News

So i've been racking my brain lately trying to think of something I can do to supplement our income while waiting for business to pick up. We have enough work to keep Brett busy 40+ hours per week but not enough to keep me that busy. I figure while Brody is at daycare and Houston is in private school I better find a way to bring in some more cash. Thing is, I don't want another "career". I don't want something I have to dedicate a lot of time and energy towards just to quit when things pick back up. I considered waiting tables just because it's easy, i've done it before, i could work a few lunch shifts a week and still do all the "mom's taxi service" stuff. That would also leave me a couple of days to be in the office doing the things I do. I could do some teaching or tutoring but with that comes a lot of preparation and time that I don't really have for the money I would make. So long story short ... Brett and I talked about what would be the best thing and we came up with something that we think will fit our life pretty well. See I already have the skill and talent to dye yarn and roving that other people like enough to buy so why not step it up a bit? That's where the title of this post comes in ... Rocket Yarn has always been a side thing that I do when I feel like being artistic. I just pick colors as they come to me and don't worry too much about producing lots of stuff. Well that is about to change. I have lots of exciting ideas and i'm looking forward to seeing how they pan out. I'm going to dedicate one (maybe two) days a week while the kids are away to dye up yarn, roving and project bags. I have a website in the works too. And to get things started I put some things I already had on clearance in my shop and managed to sell most of them over that past week. Hopefull that's a sign of good things to come. Now I just have to figure out all the technical things like getting a wholesale license and stuff like that. Anyone that has experience/advice ... i'm all ears!

The Vibe

I so love the new car. It's a 2004 Pontiac Vibe with 59,000 miles. Not too shabby for $9,600. No more Pathfinder payment and now have a car that gets 30+ mpg. Yay! :) It figures after having the Pathfinder for sale for over two months the calls would start coming in the week Houston started school. One vehicle for this family is no fun! We fixed that though. I knew I wanted a Vibe after doing a ton of research over the past couple of months. It's a joint venture between GM and Toyota. It's a Toyota on the inside (drive train) and a Pontiac on the outside. They get great reviews on all the car review websites (cars, edmunds, kbb) and won an award for being a used car "best bet". I think Dave Ramsey would be proud.

Yippee! :)

Bye Bye Pathfinder

She's on her way to Valdosta, GA. She was a good one and I'll miss her but I won't miss the payment or the gas mileage. :)

Houston's First Day of School

Last night as Houston was getting ready for bed he said "Mama, I'm so excited about going to my new school tomorrow". He was busting at the seems. He had a hard time falling asleep and kept asking me to talk about what was going to happen on his first day. I laid with him scratching his back while telling him how it was all going to go. After lots of tossing and turning and me going through the story from us "waking up before the sun" to pulling up to the front door of his school where his teachers would get him out of the car about four times, he finally fell asleep. Then this morning I went in to wake him up and he popped right up and started talking about how excited he was. He was such a trooper. He flew right threw the morning routine and got all dressed up in his dress blues. I wasn't sure how the drop off was going to go but he hopped right out with the help of his teacher and walked right in to school. They do what they jokingly call their "valet service" which is really nice. I did pretty good too. Only cried a little. :) I hope he has a great day.

Houston's Birthday Weekend

Ready for School

I can't believe my baby is going to be 4 years old tomorrow. Where did the time go? He's been trying on his school uniform just about every day. He's so excited about his "new school clothes". This is a picture of him in his dress blues. They don't wear them very often ... just on special days like certain holidays that school is in session and semester exams but they do wear them on the first day of school. Brett and I went to orientation yesterday and we are so excited about The Blake School. I think it's going to be great! We got to meet his teachers ... his regular class teachers Miss Roni & Miss Lori who happen to be a mother and daughter team as well as his music, art, spanish and PE teachers. I think it's so great that they start spanish from the beginning. All students are bilingual by the time they graduate from The Blake School. How cool is that?

Going for Socks

Remember this roving? It's a superwash merino/nylon blend. I braided it, soaked it and then spot dyed it while it was still braided. I mixed up three different colors (an earthy green, an earthy blue and chestnut) and poured them on the braided roving randomly about 2-3 tablespoons at a time. Tied it in a plastic grocery bag and microwaved it in 2 minute increments. After it cooled overnight I rinsed it well and let it dry.



Here you can see I've split the roving up. The top right braid is half of the original roving. The top left pile is part of the first half i'm spinning. The bottom pile is part of the roving that has been pre-drafted in preparation for spinning. I love how the colors pull in spot dyed roving.



Here is the (slightly overspun) single i'm working on from the first half of the roving. I blame the fact that it was 6am and I had not had any coffee yet. I was also spinning in low light so as not to wake up the kid sleeping on the couch right next to where I was spinning. I didn't even realize how overspun it was until I saw this picture on the computer. I'll just have to be really careful when I ply so that I don't end up with coils in one of the plies. I play to ply this tightly so it shouldn't be a problem to get that extra twist out.



I'm super excited to finish this yarn and start knitting myself a pair of socks from it. It spins so easily ... just like buttah! I'm aiming for a DK or Sport weight yarn. We'll see how that works out. It might end up a little bigger than I was planning. :)

Fay

Well crap. Seems as if they now think Fay is going to swing back and come right over top of us.

The Problem with Dyeing & Selling ...

Is that most things I dye, I want to keep for myself. Certainly not going to pay for my crafty habit that way! Here's some of the superwash merino/nylon roving I dyed yesterday. Hello socks! I forced myself to list a few things in my etsy shop today so we'll see how that goes.

Spinning Fun

Remember this?



It turned into this ...

Pictures to Share

Simone Olivia ... she is such a cutie pie and looks just like her daddy, Andre.


Andre & Stephanie came to visit us a couple weekends ago. It was really great to hang out with them again. Here's a pic of the happy family, unfortunately taken in poor lighting and it's a bit blurry too.


Brody's new look. :)

it didn't turn out so bad after all ...

the roving didn't felt after all! and it got even prettier when it dried. i got a little goofy taking pictures today but i had fun with it. :)

Rocket Roving Experiments

The picture doesn't really do justice but oh well. I think I may need to stick to superwash roving for my shop. I'm going to spin one or two of these up and see how bad the fiber sticks together. I have a feeling it may be bad. :(

Texting

So i've never been much of a text messaging person. Maybe sent three my entire life. Well we just changed our cell phone plans and I now have unlimited text messaging. Anyone care to play? ;)

Getting So Big!

Chickens

I realize I haven't done any garden or chicken updates lately. Bad news on the garden ... entire thing was eaten by a fungus. I actually had to buy squash at the grocery store last week. Just makes me sick to my stomach to talk about the situation. After the frost and the replanting and then a hale storm that sent the corn and okra down and their sides and tore big holes in the leaves of everything and then the over fertilizing "incident" ... we overcame it all only to end up with some corn and green beans and have everything else eaten by a fungus before it produced anything. We decided we need to do some rotation planting and probably move the garden to a different spot next time around. I can't believe it's summer and I'm buying squash, zucchini, cucumbers, etc. Just makes me mad.

On to happier things ... the chickens are getting big. Should only be another month or so before we have eggs. Will be interesting to see how many hens we ended up with. The Bird Man's breeding and incubation techniques supposively yield a 5:1 ratio for hens to roosters. We got 4 so we're hoping we got really lucky and got all hens. Not sure how we're going to explain it to the boys if one or more of the chickens disappear. Not sure how I'm going to deal with it myself either. I'm certainly not going to eat something I've been feeding by hand. It's things like this that will push me back into being a vegetarian.

Here's a picture taken several weeks ago.



Apparently my recent chicken picture taking didn't turn out so good. I'll have to take more and post later but i'll leave you with a couple of pics that will give you an idea of how big they've gotten.




Guess what? Chicken butt! :P (sorry ... just couldn't resist. i do this to houston quite often and it makes us both laugh. me: "hey houston, guess what?" houston: "what?" me: "chicken butt!" real mature, i know. )

Rocket Yarn

Well I finally made another delivery of Rocket Yarn to Hanks last Friday. I decided to play with a new base (merino/silk) this time around and also veered from my typical dark earthy colors a bit to play with some pastels. All in all I think it turned out pretty good. I also did some kettle dyeing with my newly evolved technique (top picture) and was very happy with the results. Almost wanted to keep those four for myself. :) So happy to be getting more crafty time lately. Now that i've delivered a batch to Hanks, I need to dye up another batch to list on my Etsy site. That and I have something else in the works .... hand dyed roving. Rocket Yarn Fiber? Rocket Yarn Roving? Rocket Roving? hmmm ... i'll have to work on that one.