Baby Behind the Lens

My 2yo baby Beverly (whom we affectionately call "Betsy") (seen here upside down) LOVES to take pictures. She fancies herself some kind of photographer, though most of the time she has one of her little bitty fingers in front of the camera lens.

Sometimes, though, she manages to get her grip correct, and takes pictures, which I call "B's Eye View" pics.


Tonight I am going to share some of her latest.

Today we were carding some fiber batts for Diantha's Fluff4ewe shop at Etsy. When we were done, I saw B up in a chair with the camera and wondered what she was doing. She said, "Carder!," and by golly she was right.

She took an interesting picture of her own delightful face. Pretty eyes, Betsy!

My DD#1's husband's friend Mark has a birthday tomorrow (Happy Birthday, Mark! [waving]), and we are all supposed to converge on DD#1's house for some more new-home-improvement and chili lunch. Mark is supposed to be there.

I didn't know what to get Mark, but I do know he has been known to enjoy a nice, refreshing beverage. So I got the idea today to make him a felted beverage cozy out of the sleeve of a recycled sweater. I needed a bottle for trimming the cozy to make sure it would fit.

One doesn't need to look long for a model bottle, even along the side of the road if necessary. So I am not completely sure whose bottle this was, but it wasn't MINE. Really.

A quick wash and it makes a perfect form for drying a hand dyed cozy. Some dye, drying time, and a few buttons later, and we have a man-cozy suitable for the most discriminating guy. (I took this one. Sorry B, no credit here!)


Last thing B did before playing in the toilet just before going to bed tonight, was to take a pic of Mom crouching down to help someone get her finger (once again) off the lens.


Good night, B!


And sweet dreams of taking wonderful pictures!

Sheep Grease, Vegetable Seeds, and Glue

Tomorrow is National Agriculture Day. That is the point in the year when our hard-working farmers in this country have produced enough food to feed the entire country for the year. Our 4-H group is having a big to-do at a new, large grocery parking lot. The Cattleman's Assoc. is bringing major farm equipment and cattle. They are apparently going to do a barbecue. Our 4-H in this county has been deemed the most active in the state, so we are going to have demos on large-scale farming, sheep shearing, etc.

The other day my younger kids and I started an exhibit board. On one of the 3 sides, we have large letters (which I outlined and
they colored in with crayon) saying, WHAT can I grow? Below which we have more than a dozen seed-packet tops glued on, with some of the seeds for that fruit or vegetable glued next to them. There are more packets than what show here. Glued on. Lots of glue.

The center says, "How Do They Grow?" and has pictures and drawings of a seed from sowing through all the stages to harvest. We used a tomato plant as the example because it is easy to grow and recognizable.

The last section says, "What Can I Plant Things In" and has multiple pictures of container gardens. Everything from Cubist-style planter box, to a garden (complete with corn!) in a horse watering tub, to strawberries growing in 24-0z. soda bottles, to tomatoes in urns, to squash in a baby pool. The idea being that we can demonstrate that you don't have to be a large-scale farmer or have an extra acre lying around to grow food... and you don't have to be dependent on a large-box grocery store for everything you eat.

Our family grows herbs, onion sets, and tomatoes in a large claw-foot, cast-iron tub. Tuesday the Old Farmer's Almanac sent me an email saying to Plant Peas on St. Patrick's Day... so since we don't have anything else growing right now, and nights are still cold (which peas don't mind), we planted some. And Black-Seeded Simpson lettuce, and green onion sets. We put the ends of an old wooden crib between the tub and the side of the house, for a trellis for the peas.

Back to today. Since the group is going to have a sheep-shearing, they also wanted a display that shows what wool is useful for after it is sheared. I have a drum carder, and 3 of my daughters and I all spin and knit. So I am taking that to set up, along with some washed fleece and some dyed fiber and some handspun yarns we have made, and our current knitting project (particularly the bossy one), so that people can see that you don't always have to make something the color of oatmeal or shaped like a sweater. So today I dug around in the shed and filled 2 large mesh bags with about half a sheep with all the lanolin and dirt in it, and processed it several times in soak cycles in my washing machine.

Speaking of which, I have to go get the sheep out of the machine and dry it on Air Fluff or we will have the wettest wool going tomorrow.

I hope the weather is dry!

Pain, Pain, Go Away

I woke up today in almost no pain around my middle. I should have known I would pay. It is my history with these kidney stones, that if I don't have pain in all the normal places, I have it in my head. I have had a headache today so bad it has had me in tears. I have taken aspirin in triplets every 3 hours to no avail. I have wished someone would shoot me. About an hour ago I took a vicodin... and I feel marginally better. I hope this stone passes soon, because we only have 8 of those left.

So today I got a yarn done. I had a customer write to me and say she could just kick herself for not buying my Will Scarlett yarn last August, and did I think I could re-create it? So I wrote her back and told her the only thing I had available was a 100% silk in the correct weight and color to take the dye I needed for it. I quoted her a price and she said she would take it.

OY!! I started unraveling that sweater and the yarn was completely un-plied. Like 6 threads of silk just running together. I spend quite a bit of yesterday and about half of today (with my head throbbing), plying that yarn back together with a drop spindle. Tonight it is dyed and hanging in my bathroom. I will stick to my original price, because I could not do the skein without 3 knots. But I think I am going to throw the rest of the sweater away, silk or not.

I did another yarn today, luscious worsted weight Angora in pink, red, deep red, and purples. Hopefully it goes up in the shop tomorrow.

I did 2 blocks today, an Annie's Choice for yesterday
(even though I didn't have to do one) and the Ocean Waves the calendar called for today. I did it badly, marking it off my Quilts-I-Want-To-Do list. LoL. The Annie's Choice is the one with a pointy black (I know it looks navy blue) pinwheel in the middle and purple points around the edges. The Ocean Waves is the one with the triangles up the middle. Both of these blocks are 6.5" square.

Tonight we played with the drum carder some more. I have decided to card half that black/brown/blue roving to spin from the tweedy, carded batt... and to spin the
other half of the yarn from the roving, which will give me a random, speckled effect when knitted. I don't think I will ply them together, but rather knit a project in stripes of one yarn and then the other. I think it will be interesting to see how different the same wool, same colorway will look.

Remember my felted slipper of the yarn I spun from little balls of purple mystery wool that weren't carded? Well tonight we carded some of them. I have enough of them left to do 2 batches alike, for 2 carded batts alike. I didn't use any of the balls with the little hot pink nepps in them for my slippers. This should be a really fun yarn when it is carded. Might be destined for a hat and gloves or something else fun and visible.

Squaring-up Tutorial and stuff

A friend of mine mentioned that she LOVES to quilt but HATES to square up. So do I, but I have found through painful experience that it is a necessary evil to those of us who like our quilts to match up. So I have provided here a short tutorial on it. Click pictures for full-size to make captions readable. Use your "back" button to come back to read the rest!


Whatever your size block is supposed to be finished, you will need to add 1/2" to it, to account for seam allowances. For instance, a 6" block in a quilt squares up to 6.5". Most things that need to be squared will have a diagonal line in the block (though not necessarily). Find what measure the center point of your block would be found at... using our example of squaring to 6.5", the center point would be 3.25". (These hourglass blocks are being squared to 3.5", so the center point shown in the pics is 1.75".) Put the center of your actual block at the center point of the size the block should be.


Put one corner of your ruler at the beginning point of your block. (I line up the diagonal line from the center measure to the top right corner. If you are left-handed you would put it at the top left corner.) Then be sure your other corners will cross the diagonal of your block at the finished squaring measure on the ruler... 6.5 inches down and 6.5 inches wide and the point where both 6.5 inch measurements meet (mine shown are at 3.5" at all points). Cut up the side and across the top, guiding the rotary cutter AWAY from your body and keeping your fingers OUT of the way!!


Pick up the ruler... rotate the block 180 degrees so that the two UNCUT edges are by the hand you cut with and across the top. Once again line up your center point and outer corner points with the measurement you want the block to be. Cut again, up the side and across the top, guiding the cutter as before and keeping your fingers AWAY from the cutter! TADA!! Perfect little units for your quilting pleasure!



And on that note, here is my block for today. Ain't it cute?


Also, I messed with my drum carder more tonight. Well actually we did a LOT of other things today but I am giving you the Reader's Digest version because I want to go to bed! LOL! Anyway, remember that roving that I overdyed with black the other day, and I said I think it is the character Joe Morelli in the Stephanie Plum novels? Well I decided that instead of spinning it from the roving and having random little sections of color, I would card it and see what I got. I have an opinion, but I am taking votes. Which do you like better? The roving or the carded batt? Leave a comment! Thanks!

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.