On My Knees Again, and, A Little Pet Yarn

Ok yesterday we went to the new Chinese Buffet here in town. They had TONS of food, most of which wasn't all that Chinese. Now I am THE ONE. Who always gets the pepper butt, the bone in the stew, the bay leaf in the soup, the hair in the sandwich. Even the tooth in the sweet potatoes (that is a WHOLE other story). So when they brought the PILE of fortune cookies (there were 11 of us at table), I reached in and got one. The Burnt and Broken one. And, though still sealed, it didn't even have a fortune in it! What does that mean?

Even though their cookie didn't have a fortune, apparently their food had TONS of MSG in it, because I spent most of the rest of the day in an MSG coma. No really. When I eat MSG, I must... sleep... it... off.......

I slept 4 hours. Then I still felt like I had strychnine poisoning in my muscles, and my head was stuffed with cotton wadding. And the headache, which very closely resembled the kidney stone headache I had just had for 2 days. Along about 7 PM I took an antihistamine, a couple non-aspirin (about an hour after some real aspirin), and a shower hot enough to make my skin red. Then I felt almost human again.

I spent part of Friday, and part of Saturday re-plying a silk yarn that a person had special ordered from me. I had quoted a price for it, and spent WAY too much time having to ply that yarn. Then yesterday I dyed it and went to re-skein it, and got it tangled. Spent about another 2 hours untangling that yarn. I hope she LOVES it and buys it IMMEDIATELY. I threw the rest of that sweater in the trash.

Yesterday wasn't a block day on the calendar, but I made one anyway, because I only needed ONE to finish my Sally Sweet quilt. Somewhere above here is the block. Today wasn't a block day either, because it is the intro pic of the next quilt. So today I cut my sashings for Sally. In this terrible picture, the side-to-side sashings look like they are too short, but that is only becauce the blocks are not all sewn together yet. They will be fine, trust me. And this is the quilt in it's entirety. Now! On to something else!

I put up several yarns today. One is called 8th Grade Romance because the colors reminded me of being in 8th grade, writing the latest heartthrob's name over and over on a notebook in red, pink, and purple (fruit-scented) markers. LoL!

I also made a little pet yarn. I had these bits and balls of fiber from recycling a charcoal wool sweater, and wondered if they could be put to use after putting them through the drum carder. What I found out was, they got studk between the tines of the carder. So I thought I should put something else through the carder, to see if the wool bits would stick to it. I looked around and my eyes lit on that box of unprocessed Llama fur.

So I washed (several times) and dried the fur, picked it, carded it... which didn't get MOST of the wool bits out of the carder. I spun it up into this little funky yarn that reminds me of Ermine fur (white with little dark bits) or maybe Dalmation Puppies. It is incredibly soft! To feel that fur in the raw, I would never have thought it was this soft, but you could just about roll around naked in this stuff. Not mine, get your own. The skein is only 20 yards of about worsted weight, so it would only make cuffs around mittens or a hat, but it is so cute. Hope someone likes it enough to buy it.

Someone in my house (but of course NO one in my house, LoL) put a plastic can of thawed, concentrated White Grape Peach juice either on top of, or crooked in, the refrigerator. Who are these people? Did I actually teach anyone in my household to put juice away like that? Am I crazy?

So tonight after picking Richard up from work, I went to get something out of the fridge, and the can crashed to the floor. The top popped off, spewing the stickiest GUCK all over the floor, the inside of, and UNDER the fridge. I mopped and mopped and mopped on my hands and knees, with several changes of soapy water, all the while remarking what a bad housekeeper I am.

It occurred to me that in my lifetime I have spent WAY too much time on my knees, doing things that I didn't really want to do or cleaning messes I didn't want to clean or just doing, you know, whatever since I happened to be there. And I had the thought, that perhaps if I spent more time on my knees talking to The Guy who holds all these events in His hands, I might not have to spend as much time in the muck.

But then again, maybe not. This is my life, after all. And, my floor is still sticky.

A Bad Day and Some Yarn-y Explanations

Yesterday was an exhausting day. So today I got up with hopes it would be better, but no.

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nwound, hand painted, and reskeined a new yarn and got the biggest tangle in it... turning a 15-minute job into a more-than-an-hour job.

Eldest ds calls from work (11 miles away) and says, By the way, I forgot my lunch AND the belt to my pants, can you bring them?

On the way out of the house, my eldest dd calls and says, that saw and sander Tony was gonna borrow? Since you are going to be out, can you meet me and give them to me? (Always a joy to see my grandbabies, so sure!)

Called the bank to ask for a new debit card, my old one expired yesteterday, and they tell me I am overdrawn. WHAT? turns out a draft that was scheduled to be taken out of my account on the 3rd (scheduled that way to be sure to always be covered by an automatic deposit that goes in on the 1st...), the bank decided to pay for us "early"on the 27th, when the auto-deposit wasn't in there yet... 2 Overdrafts @ $35 bank charge each... and the bank says, "Oh well!"

Our ins. just called, the renewal is in 2 weeks... they finally added eldest ds's Reckless Op from last year, and the premium went UP over $700 for 6 months... bringing the total to almost $1800 for 6 mos. WHAT? so she drew up quotes, Progressive was cheapest with $1200, but unlike the other companies, make you insure a kid as soon as they get a permit, not regular license. So now she has to requote with 2nd ds on there, since I just got the paperwork from their "school" to get his permit.

The quilting deadline that was like a guillotine yesterday, feels more like an Iron Maiden today. Gonna be a late night tonight, I can tell ya already.

So, I got the very last of my Thanksgiving yarns up today. I didn't add Thanksgiving in the title, because this first one is a good lead-in to Winter. Also I have used a wicker chair as my background for my yarns, because it is earthy and visually interesting, without being distracting from the yarns. But for Winter, I am going to use white fluffy batting to look like snow. I am not sure yet if I like it or not... jury is still out on this one.

I say all that to lead up to the yarn. I called it "Early Snow," and it is nearly white, with little hints here and there of the palest blues. A wonderful yarn, very fine but warm, with wool, rayon, angora, and cashmere. YUM-MAY!

The first year we moved up here to E TN from FL, we came in October. Didn't know anyone, didn't have an umbrella school or regular church or any social connections really. We really only got 3 TV stations (badly) too, so entertainment was limited to what the 8 of us in our little pod could dream up, or videos. Our first Thanksgiving, we had our feast, spent the evening in pursuit of hobbies, and I put the kids to bed. Went to do the rest of the dishes... looked out the kitchen window (our entire house was on the 2nd floor), and there it was... SNOW! Big, fluffy flakes floating silently and peacefully down, covering the side field and irridescently lit by a distant neighbor's sodium light. After having not seen snow in nearly 20 years, it was like magic.

I have recently posted a few yarns that have more acrylic than I usually pick up on my sweater-scrounging expeditions. I am not a yarn snob (REALLY), but I am into the finer fibers, and like to recycle them so that other dirt-road-broke people like me (WHAT? see 1st paragraph, LoL) can actually afford to knit with something nice.

But these few new yarns still have some wool, or silk, or mohair. And really, really, I don't go to all the bother of unwinding a sweater, skeining, weighing, hand dyeing, reskeining, and listing yarns that I don't LOVE and think other people will love too. I personally knit at least a guage swatch out of each sweater I "rescue", just to see how it knits, if it breaks, is it wonderful?

So if you are a yarn snob (you know who you are, LoL), don't look down your nose at some of the yarns in my shop. Really if they feel wonderful, look beautiful, and are a joy to knit with, I am going to harvest them and sell them. And if having a little acrylic makes them easier to care for, isn't that kind of a bonus? I still promise, these aren't your "megamart" yarns.

So come visit my Etsy shop sometime, I am sure you will find a yarn that calls to your heart. The link is right up there on the left! :D