Tilt-a-whirl

A shiny new tooth

Man, I was on a roll...then came a quick finger and POOF. Gone. Let's see, what was I saying?...

The nice young dentist is so proud of my fancy new crown, now that it is IN but he had the forgetful audacity to ask me if I wanted to change to temporary out, au naturelle. Uh, listen buster, remember how you had to give me TWO doses of stuff when you filed that puppy DOWN??? Bring it on. Good thing, too. He found that I had already chipped the new fancy white filling that he gave me on our last meeting. Stress grinding, I guess. That does not bode well for the durability of this new material but then I guess that it is better than a mouthful of mercury. Yeah, they are that old, some of these darned fillings. He showed me the tooth when it was all cemented and it looks gorgeous from the side and I have a metal biting surface so that I can make sparks when I gnash my teeth at night. Nah, just kidding. It was worth the discomfort and my hard earned money.

Oh, want to see something remarkable? This is The Husband's clock. He has had it for awhile and made jokes about never seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Well, last night he brought it out and put it in my face...reset. See?

I thought that you would like that...even you sweet young things. We are blazing a trail for you.

I will leave you with some color. Silk/merino top in Joseph's Coat. Mmmmmmmmmm

The Chief

Ok, I am done pacing. The troupe is gone and I have my yard back. Um, the Prince showed up at 11:30 with two younger guys...probably sons, as far as I can figure and then...here comes the big daddy, the boss, the Chief. I remember this guy from years ago...he used to be the one to go door to door to drum up business for family and now, he is the guy in the chair. Yup, that's it...the chief's chair. This guy sat and supervised the whole time that the family was sawing, hacking, climbing, resting, cutting, resting, crouching and sitting around. OY. That chair got around the yard today, as the sun did and here it sits in the place that it was left, alone without a head poopie-doo guy's rear end in it.
Now I see why they didn't make it here yesterday...it was all of the crouching and spitting and resting in between short bouts of labor. What's the hurry...

Waiting for my island prince

Jeez, I am trying to be nice but COME ON! There is a certain lifestyle that is lived by the guys that trim the mistletoe out of my poor old ash tree, it is called Pacific Island Time...yes. PIT, which stands for...I'll come when I rouse myself and because my ratty truck is parked in front of that tree, this means that I WILL come there and do the work, when I am good and ready and remember where I parked that truck. Get the picture? I waited for him yesterday and he finally came to tell me that it will be TODAY (maybe). So at 4:30 he comes by again and says that it will be today because he is parking his truck...it is almost 10 and I have been up since 5:30. SIGH

All right, on to what I have been doing during this rude silence. This morning, I traded these

For this

Yup, I have been "reminding" The Husband to plan his attack for the evening, oh, the things that can be accomplished in an hour here and an hour there and so I decided to use my pacing time (waiting for the darned PI guy) to touch up a little bit in the kitchen, which means that I painted two walls. Uh huh. Nuts. I want to get the rock out of here and so I am doing my bit for the cause.

So, yesterday. I was busy busy busy in the dye room, and this is a portion of the day's work.

Things come in waves and suddenly Santa Cruz is a colorway that people remembered that they loved or saw someone else's yarn or just discovered it. It happens like that. I was able to get some for orders and some for stock, which is nice...TKGA is looming. Yes, this is a cotton colorway and it is one of my most beloved in the sweaters that I AM NO LONGER MAKING. :o)

Now, I do wish that you could reach through your screen to feel this stuff. It is a new yarn for me, a heavy worsted silk/kid mohair that was ho-hum when it arrived. I said, we'll see, and threw it on the table for a South Pacific skein day. Well, my friends, this yarn is mmmmmmmmmm delicious. Gorgeous and soft and silky and and and. I can't wait to make it jump into the arms of the unsuspecting next month. Oh, baby.

And then there are these things. The blue bobbin is the Bluez stuff that I have been showing you. I decided that instead of doing the sparkle through everything, I would just do it sparingly through a finer ply and then do a more fluffy ply for a nice texture. It is turning out well and now I just need to plant myself in my Princess and The Pea Chair and get it finished.

Things in the Universe are moving forward for us to have our Change of Life Change of Living shenanigans. I am just thanking said universe every day for direction and opportunities and so we are getting closer to our goal. Whoopee!

Taking it to the curb

That was our day yesterday, well, The Husband's day, mostly. He is trying to imagine what it will be like to actually MOVE all of this stuff that he "needs" and I am envisioning it living it at someone else's house! The Daughter is threatening to turn him in to that cable TV show where they bust you for having too much stuff and then make you rid yourself of it. I do that on a regular basis with myself, whenever there is a stressful moment, I go through things and weed...not The Husband...NOPE. He is a professional packrat and so that is why I am ever so proud of him for making two piles yesterday, one for today's curb (useable stuff) and tomorrow's, which is the day for C R A Double Pea. I feel like mimicing one of those high haired preachers...Yessss suh! Can I get an Amen! Well, I'll give you an amen with a little a...a start, a crack in the "don't open the garage door" collection process. The poor guy...he wants to have a woodworking shop and what with show material, Dye-raj and general storage, he doesn't have a chance, which is why we need to get the rock outta here. Don't you think?

Stuff making it to the curb and what happens? My favorite mustachio'd, brown shorts wearing, dog cookie wielding dude drives up to the house...here comes the dolly...three, three huge boxes of you know what coming to the 'works. Yup...the C R A P goes out and the vacuum is filled with yarn. I think that is a good thing, don't you?

I think that there must be little birds tweeting to one another out there because certain kinds of yarn are moving, and in certain colors, which leads me to believe that there is a Psst round robin going on. I hear that Miss Wendy is having a lace hoo hah, which is inspiring a lot of people to pick up weensy yarn and give it a try. Very nice, very nice...I just did a Psst in the ear of my yarn guy and in a week I will NO LONGER BE OUT of it. (last skein just threw itself into a pot a few minutes ago)

I promise pictures of stuff tomorrow. I am just up to my armpits in ideas and work and so the camera is resting.

Thanks to all of the well wishers on this whole change of life change of living thing. It is exciting and scary but full of wonderful possibilities. I want to be closer to The Grandfetus and will have that opportunity. Oh yeah , speaking of the GF and his/her Mama...wow, I saw the pooch yesterday and it is indeed poochier than last week. She said that she is feeling her hips loosening today. Hahahaha...that's what she gets for being NARROW, I tell ya...gotta work on them child bearin' hips for December!

A month of Sundays

That's what it feels like, this waiting period in our life. We decided against driving up to our future home area yesterday, opting for more normal pursuits like cleaning the garage (no mean feat, that) and going to see Batman Begins, which was a bucketload of fun, I must say. I found myself grinning from ear to ear at the cleverness of the story, wild imaginative scenery and effects and just a whole bunch of Top Drawer actors, who made this movie WAY more than a dumb comic book. It was more on the Graphic Novel level...very dark but very interesting in every way. I give it a "worth the darned $9.50" rating. :o)

I must say that I take it as a compliment when I can get the heart of a crime novelist pumping...Vicki, you crack me up. I am certainly not embarking on a Flying Fish-a-thon but have found myself alchemizing the Bluez merino that I showed you. It was just boring to me...I couldn't leave it alone, turning it into Starry Bluez. As usual, it is reading a little bit light.

Here you have it on the Rose. Subtle...

I did do a little noodling with the leftover dye from the Mardi Gras colorway and thought that I would see how it translates to a few old friends. Not bad, I think. That is Fingering merino, Tosca and Jacob's Ladder, for fun.

Knowing that I had to get a run of Olive Tones merino ready for spinning for a client, I decided to do one in my new favorite (I know, I keep saying that and I haven't spun it yet...I can JUST TELL) Blue Faced Leicester. Fluffy. That's it...fluffy.

On to another subject. I got an info kit in the mail yesterday from Amtrak and their Capitol Corridor passenger train line. They are going to have a Stitch and Ride car again, this time to Oakland for the TKGA/CGOA hooptidoo in Oakland (California). It should be big fun for those in the valley who don't want to have to drive and they are encouraging businesses to donate stuff to goodie bags and door prizes, to make it MORE fun. I just might have to cough something up! If you are uninitiated and want to find out more about this thing, go here to get info or to buy tickets online. It is a two-fer on the weekends, which is very nice indeed.

Well, I have given the Real Estate guy all of my wishes and it seems that he will run with them. Should I also ask him if there is a spinning guild up in the Shingle Springs area? I might as well order up everything that I want, as long as I am at it, right? It would be nice to move into a real live community instead of having to pry the closet spinners/artists out of the woodwork by blogging...although I have met some really wonderful people this way. I have a fantasy of having enough property to have get-togethers like the kind that Helen From New Hampshire experiences wherever she goes over there on the other coast. It took a long time for the other closeted artists/artisans to either come out to each other or just move into town, when we first arrived in this seemingly conservative bastion of a town. Now, there is a wonderful co-op gallery and art show and I will be sad to leave that portion of my life. I just hope to find such a community in the mountains. Step by step.

A happy day today

Now there's something that you weren't expecting out of this den of drama, eh? It's true. I hoisted up my courage and talked to my mother about the possiblity of moving out of the Bay Area and finding property with either an existing second home or room to put one and moving us all. She actually thought that it was a good eye-dee-yah. BOINGGGGGGGG. That is the sound of me shrugging off the shackles of How Can We Possibly and donning the garb of Why Not. I'm not saying that this is going to be an overnight occurance but we will be closer to The Daughter and Grand-fetus (who will be a breathing person by that time) and still out of the rat race and noise that permeates our lives. Enough. Now I will be looking forward to each thing that I do that will bring me closer to what I want for the next phase of my life...

Oh, I am TOTALLY in love with the Blue Faced Leicester and those of you know-it-alls that are nodding right now...thank you. :o) I got a couple of different projects into the pot and onto the table and here are results. First, I have an old favorite colorway, which will be wonderful for your 100 ounces of Flying Fish, Vicki. Seriously, it is like Goldilocks...not as mat as the Merino and not as shiny as the Wensleydale. I really really really can't wait to spin this stuff. REALLY. I have a feeling that I will run through the "bump" in no time flat, turning it into smaller bumps of color.

South Pacific

Now, onto a new colorway. I took it from my Sunset Blvd. cotton colorway but in this incarnation (I also did a run of silk/merino) with the BFL I want to call it Mardi Gras. It looks like how I feel right now. Joyful and full of hope.

I wanna be a cow-boyyyy

Anyone remember that song? It is stuck in my head right now, for some darned reason or other. I kept thinking that I should write something about wanting to run away with the circus but that is not accurate...I want to pull up my tap root. I want to drag it onto a truck and move it someplace where I can be a cowboy if I wanna. Maybe a Sheep boy...nah, I don't want to give shots and drench and stuff like that. gag. Vicki seems to think that it all sounds like a good idea and I guess that the manic portion of this up and down week makes me think that it is all possible. Of course there are the Widdah Wimmen and THEIR issues...talk about tap roots. Oh my goodness, the joy of being only children...yes, both of us. What were they thinking, these women? Hell, what I want to know is if there are so many of us Only Children in this generation, then how did this get to be such a big ass generation of kids? ( oh, by the way, have you noticed the baby boom going on right NOW??? Howey cwap!)

The Grand-fetus said hello to The Daughter today. Yup...the little thought bubble became the magic butterfly/gas bubble...the quickening. So it begins...the Pooch or Sprout as Angela sez, is coming along nicely.

Ok, so yesterday was kind of crummy but interesting. I kept getting distracted and not doing a lot in the dye room..no new colorway yesterday (it is cooling today) and so spinning and imagining myself out of the Bay Area mania was consuming me. I did manage to finish this.
And I admit that because of the stress, I really did spin it a little bit tighter than I should have and consequently plied it at the same rate. It will be one heck of a sturdy yarn and with a good whacking and manipulating will be fuzzy and non-droopy. Joyce, this is not for you...this was the smallest of my bags and so it will go into stock for Oakland. Yours is next.

I tell you, blue is just so foreign to me, not turquois-y blue but denim/sky that kind of blue. Lisa K had to rattle my cage a couple of years ago, asking me to invent Denim, because it was nowhere to be seen in my palette. Why? I dunno...it doesn't call to ME but it calls to a bunch of OTHER people and so I need to remember that. (especially if I am trying to finance the new lifestyle...cowboy, remember, cowboy.) I dyed this merino a week or so ago and thought that I really liked it in the pot and then when it dried, I was bored silly with it. Now, today, for some reason, seeing it in the bin with all of the little balls of other color, I like it again.

What do you think? (I just hope that I wrote down what I flung into the pot...)

The Blue Faced Leicester came today and all that I can say is mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. It has been in the pot and on the table today and I love the fact that it truly lives between my other two favorites, Merino and Wensleydale. Gawjus.

I am leaving you with this picture. Freddie The Freeloader, or FT for short, is our free spirit cat friend. He lives at the end of our court, hanging out at my neighbor's house some of the time but at our house most of the time. Some nice stranger altered him years ago and he is who he is. He likes to do the low crawl onto the bed at night, usually once I am sawing logs after a long day. I usually burst into flame some time in the night and of course I have help with the heat, FT on one side of me and Sugar Pie on the other. They seem to LIKE the heat...me? Not so much. Duuuuuuude, go over THERE and bug Daddy!
He is very mellow, this FT and was cool when Tank was his size...just stand there and the rampage and sniffing will go away. NOW, the poor guy, if he stands still Tank will mash him. He just waits until Tank goes to bed and that is when he makes his stealth move up onto the bed. Now, isn't it nice that the cats sit on the table? This is not cool and no one ELSE has this happen in THEIR house, do they? These poor cats NEED the surfaces above the floor to keep out of the line of fire from The Thundering Herd...cats.

One of my favorites

Here is some more color for you color junkies. I did a run of Bird of Paradise yesterday because I had a skein of kid mohair to get out and there is no way that I am going to do a run for one skein, soooooo...the Lion's Share of color went into the pot for one of my favorite colorways to spin. I have done lots of projects with merino but it was time to give my beloved Wensleydale a spot in the pot and so here you have it.

This is one of those colorways that look like a whole lot of nothing to people when viewed in the roving but once spun, it is a beautiful, warm glowing yarn. There really is a method to my madness! Tomorrow, I want to delve a little bit into new colorways, since I am going to have a morning before the Blue Face Leicester shows up. Oh yeah, I also ordered a kid/silk yarn...not the lace weight but a bit more substantial for us REGULAR people. It should be yummy and I can't wait to introduce it at TKGA. Fun and distraction, that's what I need, fo' sho'.

The baby alpaca is coming along nicely. It is such a pleasure to spin it right out of the bag and the only sign that it is unwashed is that tell-tale gunk that builds up on my pinching fingers of my left hand. (Yup, draw with my right.) I can't wait to get this stuff plied up and into the bath so that I can see just how fabulous it REALLY is...

Choppin' Brocco-layyyyyy

Yeah, that would feel good, right about now. What do I do? I whack back unruly bushes, just like a certain Rancher Who Runs The World. Ugh. Yeah, full moon and a roller coaster life, what could be better??? I grab the hand clippers and cut back the crazy black walnut tree that is losing its mind in growth and now is losing its leaves to something weird. Chop chop chop...plotting, hatching, scheming. So, do we move, where do we go, what will The Husband do? Stuff like that. It is the mantra for the mojo that will get me through another day of uncertainty. The most calming aspect of my life is what I do and what I surround myself with. How can a person feel unruly and scared with weightless black baby alpaca in her hands and on her wheel? I ask you.

Yesterday was a good dye afternoon and I was able to finish off most of the orders that were on my mind. I don't know how people juggle a lot of UFO's because if I don't finish something, it hangs around right at the edge of my peripheral vision, taunting me to just TRY to concentrate on someting else. I had to pull these guys off of the wheel, to make way for the beautiful black fleece that Gabby wore to shows last year. (Thank you, Lin )

I must be trying to store nuts for winter, I tell you. I went hog wild and did my buying for the coming TKGA market and the summer of labor ahead of me. Normal stuff...yarn and fiber. Well, some new fiber snuck in there...I bought a bump of Blue Faced Leicester Top to play with! Yeah, I decided to broaden my horizons (let's not talk about the extremely expensive cashmere and alpaca and silk/merino and and and waiting to be dyed) and get a third sheep breed into the pots for people. I certainly fell in love with the sheep I met (oh, I am a woman...I can say that I LOVE sheep and no one can squint their eyes, dammit. ) at MS&W, renewing the lust that I have for those longwool critters. I do love spinning fine stuff but the longwool hits me full on in the chest with longing. I fell in love with it way back when I learned to spin when I had Corriedale and Linclon/Finn to play with...Corriedale sold sweaters but the Lincoln Finn sold Art Pieces. No doubt about it...it must be the UNH to the chest factor. That is why I love the Wensleydale for ME and now will love the BFL as well. (I am holding on to my Border Leicester fleece...the brown one that I spun with the Tencel went home with collectors, right away...)

Ok...I have ordered...wait for it...well, I will have to wait for it...S O C K yarn. Yup. It will be coming when the mill gets it finished. There you have it. Just like lace yarn for the eensy people, I will have genuine wool/nylon sock yarn in my pots and on the table, even though I won't knit with it. No lace yarn, no socks, no combs...CAROLINE .

Want something pretty to look at? Here is Sugar Pie at 5:30 this morning. She likes to come and go through my poor ruined (thanks to Sasha's BIG HEAD and cats squeezing through it) mini-blinds. SIGH. She loves to sit here and contemplate which creature she is going to torture for the day. Sitting in front of HER is my stash from NZ...brown, brown, beige, brown and brown. This of course was before MS&W and the course of life that drew me back to fleeces...colored fleeces.

Finally, I leave you with a picture of the Enormous Ones, Dippy and Dopey, The Thundering Herd in repose. (they are usually a flash of teeth and slamming bodies so how else can I find them to photograph?) Tank is now a week shy of 5 months. What do you think...he has grown, hasn't he? No more baby stuff...he is losing molars and working on a lot of sticks dragged from the yard, to facilitate the entrance of the new Big Boy Teeth. See...I leave the back door open as much as I can on days with fine weather...I get the carpet sweeper out at the end of the day and pick up all of the mulch in the living room...it saves furniture and shoes.

Thanks again to those of you who know who you are (huh? What is she saying?). Rod and I are on this roller coaster together but I am still having to maintain my "center", so that the creativity can go on. The kind words and encouragement are like salve. I know that we will be fine...we just have a few more hills and valleys to rocket through on our little coaster car, before we figure out what we are supposed to do next. :o) In the meantime, there is a nice pan of merino soaking, waiting for an application of Sky Drama. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Happy Father's Day

Yes, it WAS. Thank you all for your kind words and encouragement. The Husband appreciates it SO much and so do I!

Now, on to fun. I got the new Wensleydale photographed nicely...the Deep Sea. Here it is.
Kind of a blue/green funnelcake!

We had a productive morning today...it is amazing what the fear of the unknown will do for peeling one's eyes and helping you to see what is REALLY IMPORTANT, like sweeping the driveway and vacuuming the house and cleaning the kitchen and and and, all before 10. We were on fire, baby. I just told The Husband that no matter what, we were going to have to get organized (it gets a little chaotic around shows, with packing and unpacking and production and so the house was a P I T.) Having The Daughter and Son-in-law come down to go to an A's Game was the perfect incentive...de-Pit-ify, and FAST. Here is The Daughter. She is 16 weeks along now...

Oh, and here is...Tah Dah, The famous Grandfetus!
AKA The Pooch. Yup...really silly, I know, but that is OUR little pooch...number one grand baby, gender still unknown. :o)

The weather held out for us at the game and we had the best time cheering and hollering and generally blowing off steam, under the guise of rooting for the home team. Now that the food vendor guys wear the day-glo green shirts, they are easy to keep track of, much to the joy of The Daughter. She is narrow but was hunting down the Malt Guy...making certain that she tracked him and tracked him until he was in shouting distance. Not me...I found the Chip-wich guy. (an ice cream sandwich with chocolate chip cookies on the outside...naughty business! YUM) Yup, caution to the wind, baby.

Back at home, The Thundering Herd did very nicely, unsupervised for the hours that we were gone, which gave me hope for show days next month. Little Tankie-poo is holding his water. Hooray!

I leave you with two California Natives (other than The Husband and Me) in our garden.
Our scruffy little State Flower, The California Poppy.

And...

the stately Matilija Poppy...flowers like fried eggs, over 5 feet tall. I love love love them.