NO!!

It's been since Feb 9th? sheesh! Time flies when you are having fun or not. This is what I have been doing:
Yup, the Bohus. I am done with the yoke finally and it's been exciting. Sometimes 4 colors per row and you have to actually read the numbers on the yarn. duh. I panicked once when I ran out, but it was an operator problem. I don't know why I thought #102 looked like #177.

Birdie says hi from her sunbeam.

Work has been consuming most of my energy while I have had the flu. ugh. This flu is the same one that I have had twice before, but I got through it without a sinus infection nor pneumonia. I did stay home one day and was in bed most of the day. Today, a breakthrough. I have my own voice back instead of the code in my hed one. Still coughing a little, but I see the end. It just lasts a month, no matter what you do.

I have also been spinning. Well, mostly plying. I had a big basket of yarn spun that needed to be plyed and so I whipped it out on the trusty Louet. I will be travelling with that wheel in April to a retreat where I hope I can spin as much of 4 dye exchanges as I can. This reads as well, maybe one dye exchange. The last few have been 2 pounds each. The last one I spun was the reds. I have blues, yellows, a multi color one from years ago and the new one that is everyone doing 3 colors and most of the exchangers did it in the pot like I do my dyeing. Lots of great colors!! Oh, what am I spinning? Some pretty dark chocolate alpaca that will be plyed with the Black Hills Gold yarn from the Crosspatch girls.

Somehow, I might have bought another wheel on eBay. How does that happen? This one needs work and I love to do that. And actually, I have Mr. Judy interested and he's been cleaning up some pieces. He's doing a great job too. The wheel is a Swiss wheel reportedly from Austria, but I think maybe from Switzerland. It has a distaff that is still dressed with flax. I don't know how old the flax is, but it looks old and there is a little bit of linen spun on the bobbin. It will be fun to spin on and might be for sale although Mr. Judy says not. He wants me to keep it. If he has the room at his house, then maybe. ha!! He doesn't have any idea how this addiction starts. heehee

So, life goes on here and I am now going to go knit and listen to President Obama. (and thank the gods that it's not that other #@** in office now--I am still feeling pretty good about living through the last 8 years even though some things are completely messed up)

Ta

J

No Pictures yet

We had no sun for most of the weeknd. It was quite warm on Saturday though. Birdie went out and roamed the neighborhood a little. She was stalking a Flicker in my neighbors yard. Of course the Flicker took very little notice of her. There was another Flicker on my front lawn snacking on ants and other things she could find. I finally decided that she was the female and the one in my neighbor's yard was the male. He kept squawking every so often just to let her know where he was. ha!

I was organizing some living room chair projects on Saturday and guess what I found? Yup. Yarn #102. ACK!! I emailed Solveig asap and told her I was stupid. Plus it was not the color I had been using. So, I tinked back half a row and started again with the correct color. The best thing about this knitting is that all the colors look ok in the knitting. Don't ask me why I couldn't read the difference between #102 and #177. duh

I got my quilting out last night and finished one border piece of a Sampler that I am working on. Two more pieces to go, then that top will be done. It was the only thing I could half concentrate on last night when I finally admitted to having the flu and not allergies. Uncle. At least the flu "broke" last night and now my head and lungs are clearing out. This means having a huge supply of Klennex on hand and some Fra'angelico to sooth my throat and break up the crap in my lungs. ugh

And we had more snow this morning. Just a little though. Most in the mountains. yay. It can stay up there from now on as far as I am concerned. I am getting cabin fever. I filled my bird feeders yesterday and it was truly cold out there. sheesh. The birds are happy though and I was considering the happy little weed heads everywhere. Time to go out and spray vinegar on them. I don't feel much like mixing up Weed-b-gone quite yet and the vinegar will work perfectly. All the Morning Glory I can kill at this early date, the better. As well as the pea vine, wild geraniums and heliotrope weed that I can find. I am not sure of the last name of weed, but it has the most nauseating smell when the flowers are fully blooming and I have heard that most people don't like the smell of heliotrope because of the same reason.

I could go out and stick some sugar snap pea seeds into the ground soon. And get ready to start some heirloom tomatoes under lights as well. OOh, and order some purple/blue potatoes. Yummy.

So, that's it for today. I guess I need to tell some people about this new blog, huh?

J

Two days in a row

Yup, two days.

I am still battling allergies, but think that our storm is now here, things will get better. Hot food and scratchy food like toast and granola bars are getting me through it. Plus plenty of rest and sleep.

I was knitting along last night and ran out of one the of colors on the Bohus sweater. Ack! I will write to http://www.solsilke.se/ (Solveig) from home tonight for some more. I don't think I used more than I was supposed to, so ?? I can wait. She is pretty fast on shipping. The knitting has been kind of frustrating for me, mostly because of the 14 different colors sometimes with 4 colors used per row and me not paying attention and I haven't done colorwork for a very long time. I will be pleased to move on to the solid dark green for some mindless knitting. For now, I can go back to my oatmeal colored vest and the man's indigo dyed sweater.

We have rain today and maybe snow tonight. Our little respite is over. It was over 50 degrees yesterday so let the snow and rain come and just get it over with. I have surely loved wearing wool socks and vests and sweaters though this winter. My office is a refrigerator and huddling around the space heater is a year around thing. I am the only woman here and they are all hot blooded guys, so they think I am pretty funny wanting to be warm. They complain that my office is so hot or why am I wearing my coat? doh.

I will take current pics this weekend of projects on the wheel and needles, I need to update my Ravelry pages anyway. I did update those pages a couple of weeks ago, but haven't taken any pics of the oatmeal vest. I bought this wonderful wool from friend Jo at Notlwonk Springs who was at our retreat this summer. I spun it and am now knitting. I haven't done that for a long time and it's fun to do a project from fiber to finished in a short amount of time. I am knitting yet another vest from Folk Vests. The Clock Vest. I have really enjoyed getting back to more complicated cables and the colorwork. I have to think about it all and it gets my mind off work and all the things I probably should be thinking about or doing. ha! not

This weekend, I will be learning how to do fusible applique. I probably have done this at one time or another, but this is a full quilt top. Friend Jill, has been doing this same project this way and I wanted to use some of the huge pile of handdyed fabrics that I accumulated during a lot of years exchanges online. Our applique group leader calls it "lick and stick" I love that description. I hope pics of that project will happen this weekend as well.

Oh, I ended up with two new tires yesterday. I have had an unreasonable number of flat tires over the last year or so. It is a danger of working around building materials I guess. So, these tires were just shot. I was going to get two new ones before travelling this summer, so I just ended up with them early. Just in time to drive in snow. sigh

Ta for now.
J

Current knitting

Well, I keep forgetting that I can blog from work (don't tell anyone I work with though) and so will need to forward pictures to myself so that I can blog. whew

This is my current knitting project. I am so loving it and I have only 10 more rows to get to the boring stockinette stuff. Of course this isn't me. It's the Wild Apple pattern Bohus sweater. Love the angora yarn. So pretty!!
This next picture is where I would truly love to be:

The beach at Kona. sigh Can't you just feel the warm 70 degree breezes? I can

What else have I been doing? Oh, stuff. Working, eating, going to the gym to work off what I am eating, watching my reality tv shows, getting quilting projects out to get started on them again, spinning and plying yarn and knitting. You know, boring me stuff.

Yesterday, I had a little excitement. I had to get a new water pump for the truck. And today will get a slow leak in a tire fixed. I know, you and I both can hardly stand this much excitement! The weather has been so mild this last month, I know that we are in for a snow storm soon. My allergies are so bad this week. I don't think the inversion has much to do with it, but it might. There is mold in the air. This is my biggest nemesis.

Today I go in for my annual boob smashage. ugh But, at least I am not tender like I am sometimes. That will show up good for me too. When things are tender, then my cysts show up and they usually make me have an ultrasound too. I can do without that.

I am hoping to get to the point where I can post most every day. That will be a huge change won't it? But, I like to share. :>)

ttyl

New for 09

Well, here I am again. A new home for a new blog. I hope to be posting much more often as I can do this from my place of employment on Blogger. yay I tell ya that when I get home from said job, I am usually too tired to stare at the computer for anything more than checking my email. whew.

I spoke a few months ago about clearing things from my life that were toxic. Well, I think I have succeeded finally and in the process have slowed my life down. Things were just whizzing by too quickly and I wasn't enjoying anything to the maximum enjoyment level that things that mean something to me deserve to be enjoyed! There have been times of actual boredom on weekends. So wierd. I don't know how to deal/cope. lol Of course, I find things to do or else just sit. What a truly wierd thing. I have time to read and to do the applique that has dropped to the wayside for too long.

I have a lot of pictures waiting in the queue. I need to add some of them to my Ravelry spot as well. I have finished some things and started a few more things. I am hoping to be able to join the 12 sweaters group that Margene started. My rules are probably slightly different from other knitters though. I am allowing sweaters and vests for me or for the man and using only stash yarn. I also will purchase no yarn this coming year unless it's to finish something when I run out. So there. The last time I did that, I purchased no yarn and no fiber. It worked very well for me. Oh, I can spin more yarn for any project that "has" to be made. That all should keep me plenty busy. ha!!

Work you ask? Yup, still working and enjoying the job. They treat us like real people and share the wealth. This keeps employees there and sometimes for their entire careers. What a shock in this day and age of just moving from job to job. We have the best benefits and a great example of how we are treated is the trip that the man and I just got back from to San Francisco to attend the Christmas party. Yeah. Airfare, hotel, transportation, party. Paid. It was a quick trip, but we had a great time. I won an iPod Nano at the party. I was gobsmacked. My name was the first called. woohoo!! I did take exactly 2 pictures. Both of the Pyramid building and they are above.

The man and I escaped to Zion Park for Thanksgiving/my birthday last month. It rained the whole time pretty much and we enjoyed every second of it. We were at my favorite place to be in Springdale, Flannigan's Inn . We ate Thanksgiving dinner at the restaurant there called The Spotted Dog. Wow. What a special dinner. We got there just when they opened and had the place to ourselves for most of the time. It was a traditional dinner and we had a wall of glass to gaze at the red rocks while we ate. Loved it.

Christmas has gone now and I am glad for it. For some reason it seemed like a bother more than anything. I enjoyed Christmas Eve with The Jackson family where we all donated either food or other items to the food bank or The Road Home That was nice. This year has been full of thoughts of dear departed Jay and so has been tough for me. It's been 6 years and I guess this time of year will always be hard for me. That's the way it goes. I will be filing for my SSA Widows Benefits soon and this might have been what triggered so many memories and thoughts. But, who knows? I have just been soldiering through it. Nothing else to do about it.

Gosh, I think that's about it for now. Back to my knitting and spinning. This is a very happy blogger. :>) Ta