Don't Take Hubby to Buy Bullets

I started out today making pancakes and mentally planning: take shower, take walk, card alpaca, card corriedale, dye some merino, take pics of the rest of the handspuns, put B down for a nap, list handspuns on Etsy, make dinner, make quilt block. Richard was off for the day.

I said to him, why not call Frontier Firearms and see if they have .380 bullets? We have been looking all over for them and they are very scarce. So while I cooked, he called them and told me they had them.

Now I am going to go get bullets. He says, why not take me with you? I said, when I am done I am going walking... I would have to drop you off back here. He says, oh no, I will just go with you. Why don't we bring the kids? It will be FUN!

Oh dear, I should have known. After we bought bullets (this man complains about what groceries cost), he says, hey why don't you walk the Walmart in ____ instead? There are pawn shops nearby I could go look in. Why? 'Cause this wasn't Run Around Stupid Places Day? Because I hate the Walmart in _____... it gives me hives just to go in that store? Because I have a whole day planned and it doesn't include pawn shops?

We ended up going to the town my daughter lives in, and walking the HUGE Walmart there, while hubby and the youngest 2 kids hung out and Betsy fussed about not wanting to be there. Then visited daughter, since she was nearby. She has some of her art in a local shop. She says, let's you and Diantha and I go see the shop! (It is a 1/2 mile drive and the shop is 1000 sq. ft... how long can that take?) So dh says, I will go to Big Lots and Hammers and oh by the way, where are the local pawn shops?

Two hours later, he wasn't back. Des was going to make dinner... Italian sausage hoagies. So I called him and asked him to bring another package of sausages and buns from the grocery... we would just make dinner here! An HOUR later he shows up with sausages.


We got home at after 8 PM. I got the alpaca and 2 oz. of the Corriedale carded and the shower taken. So much for MY day. Moral of the story: Don't Take Hubby to Buy Bullets.


By the way, that Corriedale is AMAZING. It washed up from a deep tea-dyed color to white with tiny little bits of pale yellow. I carded only 2 oz. of this fleece, and LOOK at how HUGE it is! I took this off the carder, and it poufed out. I stuck a ruler down in it for reference... it is 3" thick. This batt is about 10" wide (the carder is 8" wide so you can see it really fluffed) and about 22" long. This is one really squooshy batt. Can't wait to spin with some of this stuff!



And speaking of can't wait to spin, Veronica (who is 10) decided a few days ago that she must try her hand at spinning also. I gave her a roving ball, showed her how to park and draft and let her have at it. Here is a pic of her 1stspun, which is about half the 4-oz. ball. And the 2nd pic is the 1stspun, the roving, and what she has spun of it on the 2nd go. Bravo, Veronica!!

My LIttle Kitty

Alright! Today I got the Little Kitty brand "Kitten" model drum carder that I just ordered on Monday. Wow, that was FAST! and I LOVE it!! It is oak construction, with an 8.5" wide drum that is 8" across. Just for fun I took a little each of 3 fibers I started to spin together a while back: a green Merino, a yellow/orange/slightly red Merino, and some red wool that had only been carded once. Ran them through once, and again. Here is the batt laid out flat...

and here is another view, folded in half lengthwise and rolled up. I think I will like spinning from the batt better than what I was doing, just pulling a little bit off each roving at a time. The carder works very easily. I watched some videos on youtube the last day or so, and so taking to doing the carding was also easy.


Today's block was an hourglass... also known as an X. Tomorrow's block is a string of X blocks put end to end, as a border or something for the Stupid Penguin Quilt. So what I did, was do my own thing again today, but tomorrow I am going to do 4 little bitty X blocks like the calendar shows, and put them together for my block of the day. Here is what I came up with today though, and I think it ROCKS. LOL.


Richie was off today, and worked on our bathroom a little. And I got pics of the Corriedale fleece I just got, and the Llama fur I got last November. The Corriedale fleece is 4 garbage bags full. Altogether about 40 pounds. Now you see why I "needed" a drum carder! Right now it is a dark-beige to pale-caramel color, so I think when processed it will be white.

The Llama is a silvery color, with a lot of dry hay in it. I actually hadn't opened the box since I got it in November, because it was compacted in the box and I knew I would never get it all back in! But curiosity got the best of me! I think it will clean up really nice. Can't wait to wash these and see what comes of them!

Tomorrow at 2 Des and Tony are going to look at a house, potentially to buy it. I think I will ride along. We've bought several houses (some of which were The Money Pit), so at least I know some pitfalls to look for that they might not think of.

Will let you know how it goes!

Back to Normal? Whatever That Is

About yesterday... yeah, some of you are right. Yelling at hubby doesn't help. And don't get me wrong. I don't do it very much. For the most part, we dwell in abnormal and almost sickening harmony. In fact we get along SO well, our older kids say we think we are still dating. I tell him it is my goal to wear him out to the point that even looking at another woman is WAY too much trouble... which could be why he doesn't get more done around the house. (Disclaimer: You can believe this or not. Hard to tell on the internet, what is true and what is not... and probably over half of what you read falls in the "not" category. But some things are bizarrely, against "normal" odds, true. You can decide. LOL) But sometimes I just get fed up past the point of patience. Fortunately for us all, it isn't very often.

A little about our "new" house. It is 1450 sq. ft. It has one large bedroom and bath, which we now share with Beverly. Then it has 2, smaller bedrooms (maybe 10x12each, one shared by 2 of my boys and one shared by 2 of my girls) inside the house proper, and another small bathroom near them. Then out on the end of the huge screened back porch, someone before us made another, small bedroom, that Allen uses. It is perhaps 8x10. Other than the porch (which is about to become something else), we have NO garage, no attic, no basement. We have EIGHT people living here, and 4 working cars (and one that needs to be sold for $300) in the driveway. So you can see, we have NO room to spare for the junk.

Ok, on to something else. Yesterday my Beverly (whom we affectionately call Betsy) put a "chair" behind the couch, sat down with a notepad and wrote me a picture or a letter, depending on her 22-month-old interpretation. I thought she was cute, so I took her picture. And yes, she is *really* tall for her age.

Today we all got up not as bright and quite a bit earlier than usual. I took hubby to work, bought donuts, got all the kids up, and forced them like the MEAN mom I am, to go to the next town over and give a speech at the homeschool group 4-H meeting. Veronica took first place in her grade level. Artemas, who was SURE he was going to do this ONE time ONLY, also took first place in the High School level... so next week he and Veronica are expected to go give their speeches in the Regionals. ROFLOL! Artemas said, "You said I only had to do it ONCE!" I said, "That was before I knew you would WIN." I told him it is the same as in the Back to the Future movies, where they go back and change something, and that changes so many other things in the future. Winning first prize changed getting out of ever giving a speech again. Oh I am the MOST terrible mother in the WORLD!

I also finally picked up the 4 Corriedale fleeces that I donated to the group for. Each trash bag must have 10# of fleece in it, easily. It is unprocessed, so there is a lot of lanolin in it. But wow. I now have 40# of Corriedale wool and 10# of llama fur to process and turn into... something. I am trying to find a reasonably-priced drum carder, so I don't have to buy hand cards and do 50 pounds of fiber by hand.

After a brief hiatus at home, we picked up Richie and treated him (and us, LoL) to Burger King for supper. I had the new Angry Whopper, which isn't as hot as the Jalapeno SuperSonic they used to serve at Sonic when I skated there. But, not bad. Made my eyes water. The kids think I am funny, because whenever something makes my eyes water, I pretend to think of sad things and cry. Well, they think I am pretending anyway. But I make a big show of it, wailing "That's so SAD!" and they all go, mom, you are so funny.

We went grocery shopping. Always a joy. I buy Peanut butter by the vat and hamburger by the cow and a henhouse full of eggs (5 dozen flat) at a time... and the cashier always wants to know HOW many kids do I have? LoL. Grocery day only comes every 2 weeks at my house so it is always somewhat of a celebration. For the next 3 days we will have LOTS of stuff for them to get into and then for 10 more days after that, we will have "real" food. And for one day, we will scrounge. LOL.

I got my block for today done too. The calendar says it is the Lovely Lola block, but since I am a fan of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum, and her sidekick is Lula, I am calling it Lovely Lula. She loves Chicken too. So there. Mine doesn't look like the picture but I like it better anyway.

Tonight has been TV night... first Bones on Fox, then CSI on CBS, then Burn Notice on USA. I am not a big TV person so it makes me happy that they have put almost all the shows I like (I really only watch CSI New York other than the 3 above) on one night so I can only have a sitting-down guilt attack once and get it over with.

I do have ONE skein of recycled, cobweb weight 100% cashmere drying in our bedroom and a mega-skein of Pittsburgh Steelers yarn soaking in dye, so I guess I don't have to guilt myself too much. It has been a productive day.