Happy April 16th!I

I'm so glad I am not the tax person in our house. I would totally be running to get to the other side of the international date line to get my taxes mailed! I would need Superman to fly around the world and spin it backwards to make time go back.

Anyway, I'm recovering from my major surgery very nicely. I had that cyst removed on Monday morning, and by Monday evening I was running up and down the street begging people for drugs. If I lived in a nice neighborhood, there would be more doctors, and if it was a crummier neighborhood, there would be drug dealers. But alas, just regular people on my street!

But today I am better, I'm barely even whining any more. I'll have to find something else!

That's really all I have to say today. I did some spinning the past couple of days, but no pics yet. I have some really delightful brown merino that is very very soft...it smells like maybe it came from the home of a smoker, but that is getting less icky, so I think it's going to be okay. I'm doing a strand of brown/light brown/grey plied with a strand of white. I'm going to make myself a nice stripey sweater for next winter.

Vest Day

It's Friday! I get to spend the weekend with my boys at the KJCL convention...that's the Kentucky Junion Classical League...basically a meeting of Latin Clubs. I'm so proud to be the mom of language nerds! Granted, if they had their druthers, they'd have choses to learn German or Swahili or something. But one thing about being a Latin nerd, you get to go to parent-sanctioned Toga parties! The meeting is in Lexinton and involves activities such as Certamen (I think that's Jeopardy in Latin, not sure how you spell "Alex Trebek" in Latin) and a chess tournament. I am bringing a good book and some crocheting.

This is me at my desk at work. I had to do the long armed self portrait thing because I don't have the timer on my camera figured out and there is noone else here yet. I can see that it is time for a haircut and some sun on that fishbelly white skin. Spring, anyone?

I've decided to do something with Granny Squares. I've always kind of turned up my nose at the GS...it seems so...Granny-ish. Not interesting or sophistocated. Recently, however, I've seen some interesting things made with GS's...maybe it's the colors that make the squares less...square. At any rate, I've gathered up my purple, teal and variegated acrylic yarn and a crochet hook to bring to Lexington this weekend. A nice, mindless project that can become something small or something bigger...we'll just see!



This is the vest I made of wool that I dyed and spun myself. I'm so proud of it! I modified a pattern from the Berroco website...I think I might have made it a tad bit longer, but I was so afraid I would run out of yarn. Besides, my boss assures me that with my new slenderer figure, a shorter top is okay. This was knit from the bottom up and I had to divide the stitches at the neck to make two sides (duh)...If I had used one ball of yarn all the way to the divide, the neck would have looked really weird with two different yarns, so I decided to do a kind of a landscape deal with the yarn...make one side be a little bit behind the other. I think this gives it a bit of a wrapped look. Anyway, I like it.



I was almost out of yarn for the back, so I added some commercial yarn (Lion Brand worsted wool) that I dyed with some of the same colors I used for the wool I spun. I guess it works, I don't know. I wear a sweater, jacket or lab coat over this most of the time, anyway, so the back doesn't show all that much...at least not to me, since I can't see it from here!

Friday's here!

Okay, it's finally Friday...I know, this was a short week, so next week is probably going to be hell, having to work all five days. Maybe it will snow and I'll have to stay home with the kids! I did hear a rumor that it's going to warm up a bit here in sunny Cincinnati...so no snow, but that's okay if it's going to be warm!


I'm posting pictures of the 'basket' that I knitted and felted and spun...my friend Linda in Hamilton gave me a big old bag of carded wool that she'd had prepped from several years of leftovers from spinning. She calls it the Beast. I spun it thickly and knitted a big giant hat, sort of, to make my bowl shape, crocheted some handles and tossed it in the washer on the hot/cold cycle for a couple of trips. Then I tossed it in the dryer for a while, put it on top of the dryer wrapped around a real basket for a few days. I think it could be firmer if I sent it through the wash/dry thing again, so I might try that this weekend. But for now, I love my Beast Basket, and it's holding some yarn implements next to my spinning wheel.