Almost Wordless Wednesday - Building a Tomb

This weekend our church is having a big drama production. For the little kids, they're having a "Mystery Weekend." The kids will go to different stations in our Satellite sanctuary and get "clues" to what happened on Easter.

Today Des, Diantha and I went up to the church and spent the afternoon building a tomb.

Here are some pre-blocking pics of my TwitKal (Twitter Knit-a-Long) shawl. It's knitted of Merino/Bamboo handspun & has 48 hanging jewels. It will be about 6 ft. wide when blocked.

Oh and I got a new motorcycle today, a GS650 Suzuki. Which I very kindly let 18yos Artemas pose on for the pic. :D

Tales Left Untold

So last week was really busy, and there were things I didn't write about. I know you all really missed out. And since today has been a slow news day, I thought I would write about them now.

One day last week, we went to a guy's farm, who has been a 4-H Volunteer Leader for like 40 years, since his kids were in it, and now his grandkids. He told me he had some sheep fleeces in a barrel in his shed, and if I thought I could use them, to come get them. So R and the kids and I bundled off early in the morning and went down to his farm. What he had, were 3 full Corriedale fleeces: One white/brown mottled, one black, one gray. 33# of smelly, lovely, soft wool. We wrapped it in a bedsheet and rode around in the car, smelling like sheep.



I processed out the gray fleece already. See it? --->




Wow, beautiful long wool, very soft.

I dried it on a rack over my clawfoot-tub garden. --->



And carded some of it, to send to a friend of mine. And listed some uncarded in Diantha's shop, Fluff4ewe.

Ok! On to something else!

In a little town called Loudon, just up the road, there is a former school for sale. it is built on a hill with 3 acres of ground. On the ground floor on the front of the building, facing downhill, it has 3 large classroms, each with 2 doors into them. Very easy to divide into 6 LARGE rooms. I take it on the back side of that floor are the bathrooms, kitchen, and boiler room, since that part of the story is underground. The top floor is like the bottom, except on the back of the building there are 2 classrooms with bathrooms between. Then there is a T which is a foyer with long hall upstairs, and an office or room with a half-bath downstairs. Because we are more curious than is good for us, we stopped and let the girls look in windows. They want us to buy it. "OH! It would be SO cool! We could have rooms for all our crafts!!"

ROFLOL. We have a history of buying bad houses and fixing them, though it takes years. YEARS. My dh is not into construction, and he is reluctant to undertake any project, or finish undertaken projects. That doesn't phase him in the least. He said, "It would take a fortune to run the place, and what would you do with half the building? It is 9000 sq. feet!"

I said, you get a grant and make it a "Center for the Arts." You teach spinning and weaving and knitting and quilting and painting. You charge $100 for 6 weeks of lessons and a "gallery showing" at the end, limiting class size to 10 or 12 people for each course, and do it again in 6 more weeks. See? No problem!

On the way through town, we saw a little old wooden house, abandoned. Attached to it was a brick 3-front little "strip mall." He said, "Now there is what you do that in... have the 3 fronts as classrooms and the 2-room house as Gallery/giftshop." Again, curiosity winning over discretion, we stopped and snooped in windows. The middle shop was FULL of bags of wool! Well you know City Hall was on the back side of the block... might find out who owns the place and see if they want to part with some wool.

Turns out the guy who owns it works at City Hall. One of the ladies in there says, you might try to call his house... his wife is probably home. Ok, so that turns out like this... she has been wanting to do just that, with the little buildings downtown. Said she has dreamed of doing an Art Center type of thing, just didn't know anyone to partner with, who could teach the stuff. So we are invited to her Alpaca farm this week to talk about it, and see her animals! What fun!

Alright, totally unrelated. I got a Treasury for Easter, called Empty Cross, Empty Tomb... Resurrection Power! I don't talk a lot about my faith. I try to live it and pass it on to my kids. But I am so totally unworthy, and humbly grateful, for what Christ did for us, and I hope this helps show it.

We had a GREAT Easter. Des and Tony and the kids came down, as well as a guy that Des and Tony and I used to work with at Sonic, and his girlfriend. We had ham and other yummy stuff, then hid 75 stuffed plastic eggs in the yard and let the kids hunt them. Because my own extended family was not here, no one complained about the food or ranted half an hour if there was food they didn't like. And no one yelled at the kids for acting like kids in the grass. A good time. In the pic, the middle kid is the girl next door. The grandbabies are to the right. I have 3 older kids, not pictured. And Beverly wanted to wear her Chucks with her dress. LoL!

In the evening, I got a T West called, That's Some Great Grass (Gotcha!) it has all grassy items, including a wonderful soap we have listed in Richard's Rossoaps shop. We also added a new soap today, called Leather Up! It actually smells like leather. Mmmm!

Until Then...

I have other stuff to blog about tonight, but until then, I thought you might enjoy this Shine article on The Top 10 Worst Foods of 2009. I am happy to report I didn't eat a SINGLE one of these. But that's not sayin' much...

Well today I reached 200 sales in my My7kids Yarn Shop at Etsy, less than 9 months after my first sale ever! Woo Hoo! My current series of recycled yarns I am putting up is called Man-swers... things like Put The Seat Up, Walk the Stupid Dog, Mow the Lawn, Be Nice to Her Mom. I could probably do this one for a while.

Meanwhile I also put a new item in my HeartFeltFun Boutique at Etsy. It is a little felted basket or bowl with a rolled rim, built-in handles, and beads. I knitted and felted it out of one of the handspun yarns that were sent to me from Japan to donate to our Youth Center. I hope it sells quickly so that some little girl can have a darling Easter Basket!

Yesterday in our rainy-day travels, I took some pictures out of the car windows. This picture on the left is the Bull Run Steam Power Plant run by TVA just on the North side of Knoxville. It is HUGE... the building alone (at the base of the taller tower) has 12 stories of platforms on the outside, and it is dwarfed by the steam stack and tower. The steam was such a great contrast to the dreary sky I couldn't resist this pic, even through the windshield!

You may notice across the bottom of the stem plant pic, the continuous "cloud" of fluffy white. These are the dreaded (or coveted) Bradford Pear trees that are so ubiquitous here. These trees do not bear edible pears, but in the Spring they bloom entirely white. The fall of the blossoms could, I guess, be referred to as our last "snow." Then they are covered in the most audacious chartreuse new leaves... which develop into glossy deep green, wonderful shade. In Autumn the leaves turn scarlet red to deep plum.

They are all over the place, as evidenced by this picture of a major intersection in Knoxville, at Cedar Bluff Road and I-40 Eastbound. And, there are 5 of them in my yard. Oh so beautiful but I think the flowers stink (smell like vitamin B1) and the pollen has me acting like a mouth-breather for weeks. Hey, beauty has its price.

One more picture of community beautification for those of you not lucky enough to live here. All over the place, on the sides of highways and overpasses and in medians, some soul with foresight planted (or caused to be planted) millions of daffodil bulbs. This hillside isn't in full bloom yet... that will take a couple weeks. But for several weeks in the Spring we are treated to these cheery yellow blooms, just about everywhere we go. Guess you only have to take the time in your commute to actually notice them.