luxe

yesterday i had high hopes of getting lots done. i had to run out and do some errands so i ended up going with jake when he got home. by that time, i had taken photos of the new batts i made and crocheted wire and beaded jewelry from a while ago that i still haven’t listed. by that time, i had a fairly bad migraine, too. when jake got back from doing his stuff, i was out of it, not feeling so good, had cramps plus the migraine. i don’t remember falling asleep, but i did and then woke up right before he went to sleep. i didn’t sleep very well and woke up early again, although i didn’t shower until about 10:30a and i made myself eat. i haven’t been so into eating lately.

today i had high hopes of getting lots done, but i feel like poo. jakie is practicing for a couple of shows he and a friend will be doing (i will keep those of you who are local posted on when they are) so i planned to tinker with the new carder and adjust it and maybe go to the nursery to get some plants and to the craft store, but i feel like poo. my head hurts, but more importantly, i feel really out of it and discombobulated, so i always worry about driving. it annoys me most once the weather is nice. it makes me feel like an 8 year old with a broken leg or chicken pox during summer vacation, you know? there are some things that you can’t push through. i decided to blog just to vent at least, even if it makes my head hurt. at least i will have done SOMETHING. although, i did actually put makeup on and do my hair. so i did do something.

here are some of the batts i made this week on the pat green carder. my louet makes a much thicker batt, and lumpy if i want, too, these are twice as wide and much finer. purdy.

xo
n.

i have blue/black grody fingernails. i did a bunch of dyeing, including some with fiber reactive dyes (i finally got the dye for your bamboo shannon!) although what was supposed to be teal, and i only used a teaspoon, looks navy. it isn’t rinsed yet, so fingers crossed. gah! i also found some “cotton” i got from little barn a while ago that i wasted 3 tubs of procion dye on, which literally just rinsed right out. why? well, because i think it is actually nylon. arseholes. i actually nearly tore my hair out over it, i couldn’t figure out what the issue was and dharma told me that it had to be treated or coated and that was why it wouldn’t take. or, it is not cotton. oh yeah, that is why i don’t order from them. anyway, i got some new colors, i tried most of them out, but had only rinsed out one roving and one bag of loose mohair (thanks chocolatte!), some ecru firestar (thanks barbe!) and some border leicester locks. i had some linen and hemp top from i dunno where that i dyed with the bamboo. i hate how it feels, so i am sure i will sell it. it is like rope. gross. so, i got all of that done today, plus a sam i am sock yarn at the yarn yentas request. cool! i will take photos and will be listing some loose fiber and some dyed top. there are some really gorgeous super saturated ones and some nice soft gentle colors, too.

i had an order from a regular that wanted more of an artyarn, except that i made it in a different batch, so it looked different and she was bummed. i actually need to make notes for myself so i know exactly what goes into certain things. i do remake lots of things at clients’ requests, or just sometimes because they are really popular. it is never just the same, though. i have several remakes to do this week. i relisted a few yarns that i have more of the fiber for, and of course all of them went at the same time, so i need to get them done and out in the next few days. not that i am complaining. i am happy to have business. i know things have been lean for a lot of people. everyone is broke.

after the dyeing, i worked on some of the softies i had halfway done. i hope to get them finished this week and they will probably have clothes, too! one of them is pink and cream striped birdie. the other is a kitty.

speaking of softies, i got the “plush you!” book which is fantastic. really a gorgeous book with some artists that i hadn’t heard of before. it is so good that i bought it twice. okay, i accidentally bought it twice. anyone who wants to swap me something for my brand new never read second copy?

i got a ton of spinning done today…about 6 hours worth and then getting some plying stuff cut, pulled apart and strung. i will probably be able to get the rest done to-morrow. i have had really bad cramps over the past week, but they come on suddenly like food poisoning. blech. i hate that stuff. anyway, i have been able to push through and get stuff done, so that is good. i have made some more neckwarmers, too.

i hope to load up new yarns and fibers, etc, to-morrow.
xo
n.

okay, so firstly, i will be udpating some NOICE stuff on luxe:
and that is just a teeny taste. a teeny teeny taste. so. go. check it out! here! each yarn order will come with gorgeous handmade stitchmarkers from my buddy katrina, as well as all kinds of fun stuff that i usually wrap up with the orders. go on, spoil yourself!

what else? well, i have a new amiguri princess for you to check out. her name is collette. she is really cute and she knows it. she was born fuzzy and his a lock of pink curly hair. she is a bear, but has no tail, oddly enough.

she aspired to be a chiropractor, her specialty being fish, birds and snakes, but realized that chiropractics and these sorts of animals are a deadly combination. deeply discouraged at the animal carnage, as well as the destruction of her dreams, she turned to gambling.

she has a gambling addiction, her game of choice? yatzee. she is a poor loser, going utterly nuts when she loses, curses, accuses everyone of cheating and throws the dice across the room. ironically, she herself is a cheater, has magnetic dice and is really poor at math so most often, she loses anyway. additionally, when she wins, she dances around, shakes her fuzzy butt and acts snarky. it is difficult for her to find anyone to gamble with her, so she frequents old age homes and rips off septegenerians and older, taking advantage of their poor memories in order to cheat and get extra turns. how wrong is that?

she eats nothing but scharfenberger chocolates with at least 85 percent cocoa, and dissolves this in her triple espressos. i know. crazy stuff. especially when you are only about half a foot tall. hardcore.

her favorite colors are pink (like her hair) and purple.

additionally, i spun some loose mohair singles that are just amazing to do some amiguri with. i am curious to see how they will look, but i think, judging from how good cheapo fun fur feather stuff works that well that mohair would look amazing. i have something on my hook right now and then the mohair will be next.

yesterday our friend jason and his girlfriend came down for dinner. we grilled out (of course) and grilled pineapple (my fave) which is amazing if you haven’t ever had it. it is awesome alone, but would rock on icecream or custard. so good. just slice em as you like and lay em right on the grill. i also cut some zucchini lenthwise and marinated it in balsamic vinegar with some salt and pepper and a bit of oil and it was really yummy. we went for icecream at rita’s after that and my stomach had started to really hurt by that point, and yeah, i ate a kid’s cup anyway. we got home, i was trying to upload photos, but kept falling asleep, so i had a headache and couldn’t see right. i took a shower. whilst in the shower, my stomach started to feel bad. really really bad. i spent the next hour and a half (i think) sitting on the toilet with the garbage can in front of me trying to talk myself off the puking fit. fortunately, i didn’t blow out my bloodvessels in the eyeballs. i woke up with a sore throat and a funny stomach. not haha funny. gah. i think i just can’t eat pineapple, as much as i love it, the acid does bad things to me. i have such a lame stomach. sheesh.

off to update. go…now!
xo
n.

so, i didn’t go to sheep and wool. in less than two weeks (eeeeeeeeee!!!!! yaaaaaaaayyyyy!!!!) we leave for vacation for a week, and whilst on that vacation, i need to pop by my most favorite yarn shop in savannah, wild fibre and drop off yarn for them. i just couldn’t justify spending the money on the trip to sheep and wool, which was 99% to see you guys. that said, i hope i can organize a get-together for at least a small group of us that live on this coast, even if just for a weekend. i would love to even do it here. a sleepover? awesome! there are lots of really nearby hotels, too, for those that are not into staying at people’s houses. let me know if you think you might like to come up and do a weekend, or even a few days during a week if that works better for you. jakie goes to sleep early during the week, and i am home during the day working, so that would work too, for those who are self employed. keep it in mind. anyway, it worked out well that i didn’t go because i had insanely bad cramps and a headache, etc, etc. i am still having that fun. ah, to be a woman. and just after the damn full moon.

despite feeling like poopies, i have gotten some stuff done. some really lovely yarns, i packed up a bunch of orders and i need to post off some international orders (4 to australia!!!) to-morrow and hopefully still get some dyeing done. should be fine. i spent the day doing orders and then i ran out of ink in the printer so i didn’t get to make it to the post office in time to mail everything out. gah! anyway, the rest will go out to-morrow.

we switched the cats’ food from nutro (”natural” really expensive cat food that is expensive) which was one of the brands that was made by menu foods and recalled. we only use the dry food, and it was only wet recalled, but i still feel really bad about feeding them crap food. expensive crap food. anway, we picked up an organic food, which pavel doesn’t want to eat, although the girls ate it like treats. he is super finicky and tends to eat nothing meant for cats except for the dry food they had been eating before, which he has eaten since he was a baby. he wouldn’t eat kitten food even. seriously. he went from milk, to mush to adult cat food. i think if he could have skipped from milk (or just had milk FOREVER) to hard food he would have done it. anyway, jake is concerned that he isn’t eating, although he hasn’t been begging for food, and i think he would be. plus, i was downstairs getting a snack and saw him waiting for peeps to finish eating, so i think he is eating it. if anyone has any suggestions for organic cat food (dry, otherwise they gobble it like pigs and barf) please drop me a comment. the only other option is the raw diet and i am concerned that i am too slapshot to do that for them. plus, i would only want to feed them organic meats, which is a pain to get a hold of around here. although, from what i hear, non-organic meats are still probably better than the crap in their “natural” nutro we gave em. so. hm. i am a bit worried that pavel wouldn’t eat it. also. so. my cats eat so much better than we do. big time. better. i should eat their food.

there are some hilarious video snippets on mtv (i love run’s house. love.) and i looked for em and found the people that make em, and make other fantastic videos and commercials. you can check em out here, along with their other work, which is excellent. including “metal and matzo” yah! check it out here. i promise you will crack up. the mtv thing is called maturity is overrated. it is creepy but really funny. i know that none of my dear readers are feint of heart, you are all badasses, so i feel confident you won’t be upset by this. if you are, however, don’t watch em. you have been warned.

okay now. wanna see some photos, at long last?

they aren’t listed yet, probably to-morrow. let me know if you want any and i won’t list em. some of the fiber that i did these yarns from is not listed yet and is still available, so if you want something, let me know.

so, for the yarn and fiber club, i have hammered out the details (i think). for the yarn club, you will get a 4 oz skein of superwash merino in either sportweight or fingering, your choice. you can either pay for 3 months up front for $75 which includes shipping, nice wrapping, and lots of fun freebies. what kinds of things? well…handmade stitch markers, and i don’t mean the keychain kind with a bead hanging off. i mean handmade ones. probably a different pair with every order. there will be a few different extras in each order. it will be good stuff, i promise. for those that can’t fork out for 3 months, they can buy just one month at a time, but it will be more expensive, and may not have room. i think i can set up a payment on paypal once a month, in which case you get a spot for sure, otherwise, it just depends on how many people sign up. the fiber club will be a similar gig. depending on the kind of fiber, you will get between 3 and 4 oz of fiber, plus extra spinning stuff, and extra freebie stuff. as the name “luxe” indicates, i only do really soft wonderful fibers. i am hoping to do some blends, but i recently got in 80’s merino (CRAZY SOFT), as well as my superwash, which is also incredibly soft and wonderful to spin, baby alpaca, kid mohair, silk, soy silk, bamboo, soy latte (milk protein), ingeo, silk, and lots more. i plan to do some yarn kits that will have all of the fixins to make an artyarn like mine! how fun is that? i will include everything you need except for hands and a spinning device. i will be sending the group email out to-morrow (and this time i won’t accidentally sent it to everyone without a blind copy. i feel like such an arse) so please make sure you let me know if you are interested because i will be dyeing this week. so i will be doing a batt/blended fiber club, a regular fiber club (top) and the sock yarn one, as well.

here is an example of the freebies, although i am thinking about selling them on etsy, too. i made these into hair clips as well as the pins i have been doing. i want to do some headbands and other thins, in addition to having them to go along with yarns. they look way darker in the photo.

okay, i think i am getting loopy. pop by my flickr to see what else i have made lately.

mwah. mwah. mwah.
n.

look at the dirt in my eye and on my face! when i took a shower, the water was actually dirty! hardcore!
rough night. needless to say. i have been overdoing things, i know, but my mind is willing, even if my body is not. i have more dyeing to do but i should probably attempt to take things a bit easy this week because maryland sheep and wool is this weekend and if i am lucky, i will have made myself sick by then. you too, donna! take it easy, lady! i get to see her to-morrow i think. wooot wooot! we are so different but we have a really fun time together. very easygoing. you know how with some people there are lulls and you have to think of things to say or do? that doesn’t happen. she is a good egg. me likes her. mwah!

anyway, i was going to do some dyeing but was pooped out so i thought that i would do some spinning instead because i haven’t done a lot, etc, etc, so i did one yarn and plied it and then thought that it was so lovely outside, i would drag the louet onto the back porch and spin out there. we have a swing with an awning on it, so i figured i would do it on there so i didn’t burn the hell out of myself. um…spinning on a swing is really really hard! it reminds me a bit of sitting on one of those yoga balls or something. standing on a log in water. riding a unicycle. right zeeps? i bet you can ride one! anyway, i came out of it with a really sore neck and back. i wish i knew a message therapist that would do work for yarn. seriously. i mean it. or, i could get zeeps to ride a unicycle over my back? nah, that might cripple me. so, in closing, i don’t advise it. use a chair. that doesn’t move. i spun 4 big bobbins of yarn today. more than a pound of fiber. pretty good, eh.

on the riches you know the show with eddie izzard (woooooot!) and minnie driver? well! one of my most favorite actors evah…clancy brown! was on today. i hope he is on more episodes. oh brother justin.

i am sleepy and scattered, so off i go.

oops, i forgot, i got tagged by anja! i need to figure out who to tag though. hmmmm.

The rules
Start with 7 random facts/habits about yourself
People who are tagged have to write their 7 things on their blog
Then choose another 7 people to get tagged and list their names
Don’t forget to leave them a comment to tell them they
have been tagged and to read your blog

only 7 random things? sheesh!
1. i have the most sensitive nose and taste buds. i can smell bad things intensely and get bad bad migraines from it.
2. if i eat blue cheese, or anything that has blue cheese in it, i get sick in minutes. when i was a kid, i didn’t know that i couldn’t eat it and would eat doritos or chips at any opportunity, and they all have both blue cheese and msg in them which also makes me sick and i would get a migraine like nothing you have ever seen. bad bad stuff.
3.i love matzo with butter and vegimite. love. i eat it one row at a time.
4.my grandparents on both sides are from white russia. they came to south africa as children.
5.i was born in capetown, south africa. i didn’t become a us citizen until i was 12 (i think).
6.i love berries. all sorts of berries. i could eat raspberries and blackberries until i get sick. and i have. seriously. i have raspberries and strawberries in my garden. the strawberries are unreal. ask the squirrels, birds and rabbits. they enjoy taking a bite out of the perfectly ripe ones. sigh. eat the whole thing! geez. rude!
7.i have watched general hospital since i was in 3rd grade. i tivo it. i don’t watch any other soap and have no desire to. they seem stupid to me. odd? yeah, i reckon, but there aren’t talking chimps or psychic babies or anything, so it seems reasonable. sure, people come back from the dead sometimes, but there is usually a good explaination. right?

nighty night.
n.

the photos i meant to post didn’t show up for some reason…so here are some for the ladies (and fellas, if you fancy)…
hot gardener:

and at the beach last year…

and how about for the lady kitties out there? okay, here is pavel and papa crashed out…

sooooo. today, got up, did dyeing, some sockyarn (6 skeins) a bunch of 2 oz bundles of the soy/merino fiber, 4 oz bundles of superwash merino and to-morrow i need to dye the rest of my merino and some more sock yarn for the sock of the month club i will be starting. i am doing a batt and roving of the month club also. oh, i also dyed a couple of yards of wool felt. i have yet to see how that looks. i forgot to cut it into sheets before dyeing it, so it may be more muted than last time. i dyed all of the aforementioned stuff in my vintage electric roaster, which is really rather large. i piled roving in and got the dye throughout and then put layers of plastic grocery bags to separate color layers and then the next layer and on the top, i had the sock yarns wrapped in plastic wrap on top of plastic bags and mesh. i will let you know if it worked out okay. the sock yarns were fine, i was running low on saran which was why i didn’t wrap everything up. i wasn’t sure what temperature to set it to and it seemed to be getting way to hot, so i turned it down to 150 degrees, the lowest temp and left it on for about an hour and then turned off the heat and let it sit for a few hours. i will post photos to-morrow. i hope the weather is dry enough to hang things up outside. some of the fiber came out soooo pretty. i used the orchid purple, which is a more pinky purple and olive drab with some rasberry mixed in and that olive drab is from the gods. you can put it with anything and it looks fantastic and adds depth. i also did a sock yarn with the olive drab and avacado for jake. it looks purdy. fun, but still something a boy could wear. i knitted up some of my own sockyarn and i have to say it looked really pretty. i love the louet gems yarn but it is so expensive (worth it, but expensive) that i am not sure if people woudl be willing to pay the difference. the superwash i use now is really good, but the louet has a nice sheen to it. anyway.

i went to michael’s after picking up the car from being inspected and got maroon and purple silk flowers to use in a yarn for my brother’s fiance. i hope to have some time to spin tomorrow. my hands are really hurting me, so i am going to try not to use them at all tonight. sob!

i emailed nava to tell her that i loved her book and then had looked for her fine art work and it is just lovely. i would love to see it in person. i think it is really rare that a photo can really give you that great of a vibe of how the work is in person, but in her case, the work is very tactile, so i imagine it is super duper incredible in person. anyway, we have emailed back and forth several times and she is so incredibly nice. i told her that i feel really out of the loop in regards to my fine art and how to go about approaching galleries, etc. she gave me loads of great ideas and it made me realize that it scares the crap out of just about everyone to do it. not just me. i am probably more confident than i deserve to be, i always have been, even with work that really wasn’t so good. at all. yeah. i admit it. i guess that when you are passionate about your work, that passion just makes it look extra rosy, you know? anyway, i dropped out of the art world for fear of being so disappointed in the people that run it that i would want nothing to do with it. for that reason, i didn’t go for my MFA. i have a big back and forth about being a professional artist because i have manic spurts and then have short periods where i need a break. the thing is, just like spinning and knitting for a living, it is a job. you don’t get to only do it when you are into it. that is called a HOBBY. savvy? anyway, once again, i am astounded by the amazing degree of open hearted generous women out there.

i have lots of thing i need to take photos of, weather permitting, tomorrow and if i can get my dyeing done, photos taken, i would like to do a bit of sewing. i have a slew of patterns that amy butler sent me and some designs i have sketched up, too.

i strung a gazillion flowers onto different threads for the upcoming yarns and i popped into tj maxx before i ran home. i need summer shoes, i am attempting to not wear any gross shoes anymore. at the beginning of the summer, new flip flops. i tend to wear nicer ones and it is hard for me to let go of em, but i am doing my best. i picked up a pair of wedge sandals that have this squishy nice footbed in them. they are a bronzy color, but i am not sure if i will keep em or not. i will walk around the house in them and see what i think. there were tons of really really cute tops there, too. if i make a bit of money this weekend, i will buy some new summer clothes. mainly i just need some tops. i will make some more skirts and hopefully some dresses, if that is realistic. i need a swimsuit, too. i am not sure if any of the ones i have fit. i need a cover-up or two, as well.

i grow sleepy. i am fighting myself not to knit or sew or embroider or type anymore. i am behind on blogs, but too sleepy to read em. oh, also, whilst dyeing, i listened to lime and violet for a while and actually rather enjoyed it. it was more like listening in on someone’s conversation, but while i was busy, it wasn’t really a big deal. they manage to bounce off of each other really well without any one of them seeming to be more dominant that the other. which is a really good thing. i would really like to work on my luxe podcast that just goes along with my blog basically. has some clips of what i am doing, or tutorials or whatever. maybe some footage or photos of me in action, dyeing, spinning, whatever. i think that there needs to be more things like that around. methinks.

oh! i almost forgot! michael’s recently got in a martha stewart line of stationary, craft supplies, papers, boxes, frames, all kinds of things and they are just gorgeous. honestly, they are really reasonably priced for the quality. it actually kind of reminded me of amy butler stuff. there is ribbon and …if you have a michael’s nearby, go check it out…i can’t find a link. sorry. really lovely, though. and i am a snob. so take my word for it. you might pee in your pants a bit. they have these “collector” boxes for displaying stuff that are different colors and have a scalloped design on them…so many things you could do with them. they are a bit pricey, but so purdy. if i was rich…

thanks for all of your sweet comments on this and the LJ bloggy. you guys rock. and you made jake blush. he loves it.

xoxoxoxoxoxo

first, let me just say that for some reason, i don’t get an email to tell me that anyone has left a comment on the blog. it is really odd. at first, i thought i was getting no comments (although it is true that i am not getting nearly as many as i used to, which is a bit odd…) and then i realized sometimes is says 0 comments, and there are some, or it just doesn’t alert me. dunno what to do about that, though.

here is sedgewick, the baby owl love creature from lookwhaticando.etsy.com that i got for my niece’s 4th birfday. she loved him and slept with him and her bunny and pulled the felt back to expose the whole eyeball for when he is “awake”. happy birfday sweet girl!
i want to get one , too. when i have some cash…okay, any cash at all…i will get myself one, maybe a bunny. they are soooo cute.

here are some journal pages for you to check out…some kitty faces…the natural fallback when i have nothing else to draw…

there are some other journal pages on flickr if you feel like seeing my scribblings…

kahlo has been trying to get a job as my intern (i think she go the idea from you, shannon!) but all she really wants to do is lay on yarn and eat it, so i keep it in my studio…
what were we winding up?

bunny foo foo yarns and melange yarns, which are the bunny ones, with more crazy stuff thrown in, but no bunnies. i have a few skeins availabe which will be listed to-morrow, so let me know if you want one. i have some other fun ones coming, too!

otherwises, not much. i have been super tired lately, having horrible horrible nightmares, as always, but really scary ones. they are like horror movies, but i am in it.

off topic, i am watching supernatural, a surprisingly cool show and they have all sorts of good music on it, including mark lanegan one of our household’s all-time faves. really fantastic.

barbe and i are planning to do another podcast on saturday. she found a conference calling thingy that we can use, and i have not tried to figure out how to do anything fancy like i promised i would. bad bad me. sigh. i have done close to nothing this week, it seems like. although, i guess that isn’t really the case.

i am zoning out, so i am going to go and do some drawering, etc, etc.

warm fuzzies
n.

okay, so i have bunnies on the brain after doing the bunny yarn and attempting to find some plastic bunny beads to do more, to no avail. i got the smart idea that i would make a stamp, stamp some shrinky dink paper and then make my own damn beads. although i think they would be too small, so i may make em out of fimo. it would be easy to do and extra one of a kind. and i have the awesome jacquard powders to make it irridescent, too. hm….so that will be to-morrow, i imagine, when i am too tired to do upright work. although i have no idea where my clay tools are from my clay school days, so i will need to use whatever i find. no biggie. so wanna see the bunnies on the brain…well some of em?
here is the first one, on an eraser and you can see it is not the greatest, but i haven’t done one of these in a looooong time and i used linoleum blocks which require more force which actually helps in not making accidental cuts, like the soft speedcut ones or erasers do…

here is the next one, much bigger, but it looks like a dead bunny due to the body position to me, anyway:

and here is my gorgeous new ring from ashley…my hands look really gross and rough in the photos, and i swear they aren’t! i have unphotogenic hands. who knew? i need to make sure to moisturize more before i get witchy hands. anyway, my wedding band was my granny’s original band that i had sized. it is not something i ever would have picked myself, but i love that i have something of her to wear all the time. she is still alive, but lives in australia with all of my aunts and uncles and cousins, so i rarely get to see her.

the stone and the opal spin! she has loads of stuff in her shop, earrings, necklaces, bracelets, rings, cufflinks and will do custom things too, so go over! and it is so reasonable! get it before she becomes really famous. i am telling you. go. buy. go! where? ashleyjewelry.etsy.com. as lovely as it looks in the photos, it is just such amazing crafts(wo)manship. and as someone who was horrible at metalsmithing in college, i know what it takes to make things that are this seamless.

i know i said i was working on a logo for the fluff-a-licious.blogspot.com podcast and actually do have a graphic designer working on some stuff, but i embroidered this in the meantime and will see how it looks as a button or banner. what do you guys think? my penmanship is baaad, i have noooo slant to my writing at all. as a kid, i was bumped from 1st to 2nd grade midyear (which marked the beginning of my hatred of school) and missed most of my writing classes and always had really bad writing. it isn’t ugly, just really hard to read. they made me turn my paper sideways to add slant, and it didn’t help, my writing is perfectly vertical and flat and because of the stupid teacher making me turn my paper, i have to do that to write now. grrr. so the cursive for the embroidery is not as nice as it could be, but i did my best. and i suck at embroidery. i am sloppy. anyway, please let me know whatcha think. of course barbe will get the biggest vote, but please be honest. don’t be nice just to be nice. okay? i can handle it.

we got the new bed! it is sooo high. it doesn’t seem as soft as it did in the store. we will have to sleep on it for a little while and if it seems too hard still, we might need to exchange it. when the bed guys came it was snowing and the tromped snow and salt all over the place, left the front door open, unbeknownst to me, and after they left, i couldn’t find kahlo, who was really freaked out about the whole men tromping around, taking our bed, etc. i imagine she thought we were moving or something. anyway, i was freaking out looking for her. i finally found her in the bin in the bathroom closet that i keep my sleepy clothes in that pavel normally sleeps in there. when i found her, she was so freaked out that the snoot fur was wet! she was sweating poor lady! i had to pull her out of there against her will and she walked back and forth before finally checking out the bed. everyone is find with the bed now. except for us. the cats may forbid us to exchange it if we did want to. hmf.

i also did a few yarns today, all with loads of flowers. i don’t do a few flowers. i do a flower ever few inches. seriously. tooooons. i got some really gorgeous “silk” flowers and while i was pulling them apart to use, i realized that they are sort of a fibery paper and i know that no one is going to wash their artyarn creations a zillion times, but i didn’t want it to potentionall fall apart. i agitated some of the flowers with water and they didn’t fall apart, but still. photos of the new yarns as soon as i skein em, and they will all be listed this weekend.

i also dyed a big bag of baby BFL locks in avacado green, mauve and iris. i ran the dishwasher full of dishes, and sealed the zipper bag and put it in, so hopefully nothing bad happened. the locks are not super long like mohair, but are sooo soft and are really fine delicate little curls. they would work really well for doll hair and any other crafting stuff, and of course i love to spin them into yarns or ply em in because they are sooo soft and not so bulky. purdy. i will be doing more colors too. and i have a bunch of loose mohair dyed in different colors and other loose fiber, some of it from homestead farms which i was disappointed in. it will be okay for batts, but after getting such wonderful fiber from frenecreek, it just doesn’t compare. sometimes the washed loose fiber from homestead will be a bit felted. what is up with that?

i am getting really sleepy. i have had a headache all day and i woke up early this morning for the delivery after having horrible nightmares about jake having an accident and i couldn’t find him at work and when i finally did find him, it wasn’t jake, but my horrible piece of crap ex. and also in my dream, my mom was cheating on my dad with a 20 year old sport tuned car dude (you know the kind that have souped up hondas or vw and wear visors and pants falling down and listen to bad music and…you know the kind) and when i confronted her, she said that my dad knew, and he would just have to deal with it and it made her feel young. my mom would certainly not cheat on my dad, and if she did, it wouldn’t be with a kid. it would be mandy patinkin or someone else with a hairy chest. so odd. any ideas on what that meant? and prior to all of this stuff happening in the dream, i had my usual version of some post apocalyptic nightmare scenario with everyone trying to get to somewhere else and i was too tired to move but had to keep going. in most of my dreams, i am exhausted but can’t stop.

why do i barely get comments lately? am i boring? what? huh? too busy for me?
ok. so tired.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
n.

and this one matches!

wow. where have i been? well. here. we are getting our new bed to-morrow between 9 and 1 and so i had to clean up the disgusting mess i have made of our bedroom. really gross. jake’s side is fine, but mine…it sort of has taken over the whole room, really. i need to make sure that i don’t let it accumulate again. i seriously was embarrassed and disgusted with myself and jake had to help me because i got overwhelmed and felt upset and sick. i am such a pig. so, i packed up a few more orders today and went to the post office to pick up my new rings from the most fantastic etsy seller, ashley and whilst i didn’t take photos of me awesome gorgeous amazing beautariffical rings, i did make a little thingy with one of her rings and a necklace, i must get a necklace! and then two toys i am considering for my almost 4 year old niece’s birthday (although i would love to have them myself!) which are super duper cute. the links for both of these artists are at the bottom there. pretty cool? the ring i got has an opal on it (my birthstone) and she made the ring custom for me because my fingies are smaaaall. too bad my butt isn’t small. ah well. feet and hands are better than a tiny head i guess. anyway, this is the cool thing…it is on a pebble and both the pebble and the opal spin! not like a whirling dervish or anything, but they move. so cool. and then i asked for a love knot ring because i had one as a kid and she just threw it together and sent it to me. it is so cute! i will wear them forever!

after the bed comes, i am excited to be able to do some actual…WORK! woot woot! keep your fingers (or rather, fingies) crossed that i feel up to it. i rearranged the bedroom a bit. i had this shitty ikea bookcase thingy as my nightstand because it is too narrow to fit one and it fell off of the wall a while ago while we were out of town (and fell on the sleeping housesitter spilling all of the crap that was on it all over her.) so it has been leaning precariously against the wall. on garbage day, people will tend to take stuff that is the least bit useable, or not, so hopefully someone will want it. i moved a regular bookcase over and got rid of most of the shite that was in the bedroom and moved the cat perches around (2 big ones, one that is attached to the window sills, 2 cubes and 2 cardboard scratchers. that is a lot, eh? we have 4 windows in here, so the cats enjoy checking out what is going on in the neighborhood. pavel loves to chat with the birdies on the wire outside, chirping at them. it is very cute. he also ducks down when they fly by.

tonite on BBC america eddie izzard’s newest special “definite article” is on and he has a bit about how if pavlov was trying to do his bell and food experiments with cats he would not have been famous. and it was really funny. we love eddie. he is so cute. such a big head that man has. i think i mentioned before that there is a new show on fx called “the riches” starring eddie and minnie driver! it looks amazing. fx has some really good shows. i have mentioned “dirt” before with courtney cox, which is fantastic, if a bit rough in some bits. also, i saw the next episode of the black donnelly’s last night which was really good. that probably means it won’t last long. that seems to be the way it goes, no? oh, also! on bbc america there is a robin hood series! how cewl is that? i will keep you posted whether you like it or not.

i finished a “fluff-a-licious” embroidery last night and meant to take photos of it and didn’t. sigh. i will. i will. i swear. and new batts, too. i swear it. and some new yarns. i am desperately looking for plastic bunny beads like i used for the bunny yarn to no avail. i found some on ebay for a fairly high price…for plastic fricking beads, but what can ya do? i found foam beads, which i have used before and work pretty well. i may pick those up. also, at michael’s i found little easter egg beads that will be cool, so that is probably the next yarn on the slate. i have a lot of locks from frenecreek that need to be dyed and i will probably list those by the ounce.

i was on one of my coffee blogs (seriously. no really) and found this crazy new alarm clock that cooks bacon so you wake up to the smell of bacon. seriously. aptly named
wake’nbacon.

and then on jess hutch’s bloggy:

my noggin aches and i feel grumpy so off i go to try to chill out.
smooochies.
n.

okay, so some awesome linkies…a wonderful new drug that will solve every problems you can imagine havidol and then, for the lomo fans, and moleskine fans, a really cool new journal that you must check out…here and i found it all via barbe’s link to some really cute embroidered things that say rude stuff on this wonderful site notcot.com. so fantastic. how did i never hear of it before?

yesterday i FINALLY got my package for the french spin me a treasure swap. let me say that it was so worth the wait. so. worth. the. wait. my partner was none other than…laine zin zin!!! no way! no. way! i got a gorgeous mohair yarn. pink. me loves pink. i imagine it as a wrap or something. and a whole bunch of really cool plying threads. oh my. thanks so so much! i loooove it! i am sorry i complained. i just thought i had been forgotten. had i known it was you…i would have patiently waited. anyway. yay!

and then, for my spin to knit swap, my final package came and it is no other than carry, the of the knitwit podcast she sent me chocolate sheep including a black one that were yummy! plus, two little books of her patterns (how cool!) plus this bright red variegated yarn. i will probably make it into a neck, i think. anyway, thanks so much carry, and i will definitely check out your podcast!

what else? well, i dyed a bunch of fiber, mainly loose fiber, and then two batches for a couple of custom orders. i used merino that wasn’t superwash, plus other loose fiber and the colors are so much more muted than with the superwash, even with the citric acid. i seriously was stunned, even though i know. i am used to having to dilute everything way down, but it dyed much lighter than the dye appeared. still gorgeous but much lighter. anyway. i got mohair from rhlindsay, it is just uncarded, but is rather soft and washed. it has a good bit of vm (vegetable matter for the non-fiber peeps out there) in it, lots of brambles and burrs and such. i also dyed up the rest of the loose polypay that i had from homestead farm, it wasn’t so great, but i can put it in batts and it will be fine for texture. i also used the rest of my washed targhee, some loose merino in brown and nataural from lindsay that is a short staple, but the chocolate brown looked fantastic with the pink, again, for batts. i have it all over the kitchen. i reuse my zipper bags as many times as possible before they expire, but i manage to poke holes in them via the dishwasher rack. i was thinking about it, and unless the zipper stops working, i could really just tape up the hole with duct tape. hm. any ideas for a more environmentally sound thing to use instead of those bags? i use them an average of 4 times before they don’t work, the zipper breaks, etc. i thought of maybe just using the plastic grocery bags we get. we use em for scooping the cat litter, and i think at giant eagle, you can return them in a box, but i wonder if that would be any better than what i am doing? is there any kind of waterproof gallon or bigger sized bag that i could close well that would be biodegradeable? it is all this watching the living with ed about ed begley jr (really a funny show) and just the general state of things, like the 70 degree days we had in january, that makes me attempt not to be really bad. i could use shopping bags, but they don’t degrade either. i would be better off taking them back to the store. we never throw them away without using them, or anything.

oh! the bird in the attic! jake and i went up there, birdie actually slept last night, i was worried that he was dead, but at the rescue place, they told me that they sleep at night, and like they said, he was up as soon as the sun come up, tapping tapping tapping. anyway, when jake got home, we went up with a towl and the cat carrier, he had eaten and made a huge birdseed mess and really, in the winter, i imagine he was excited to have so much food and water! there was bird food in the water and seed all over the place and jake put the towel over him, scooped him up carefully, we put him in the carrier, he kept sticking his head out of the cage and sticking his beak out. he got his head semi-stuck at one point…we took him outside to see if he could fly. i was worried he wouldn’t be able to. he peeked out of the carrier, went right out into the grass, looking for bugs or something for a few minutes and then flew into the eve of the house behind ours, the gutters fells down, so there is a big hole going into the roof, so loads of animules live in there. anyway, he was fine, and we were happy. jakie is a hero! i looked online to see what the bird was, but couldn’t find anything. he was about the size of my hand, and black and gray spotted with sort of blue on his head. a longish black beak and small black eyes. and surprisingly laid back for a birdie. good guy.

not much more to say, i have a headache and i am a bit tired. i actually got a few bobbins of yarn done, so an update is forthcoming. woot. woot.

smoooch. smoooch. smooch.
n.