Old Man Tommy

A mere one month after dear old Tommy turned 30, his eyesight went down the tubes! Poor old guy! So here are his new spectacles! Gooood Looking!

He was very astonished to find out what we all really look like!

Last night I finished my first little skein. I know it looks a little like a ratty ball of twine, but the impressive part is that it is one continuous piece of string! Then I spun it into a 2 ply yarn! I like to call it varigated weight, in some spots its fingering weight aaannnd in other spots it's chunky! It's a surprise around every stitch! What shall I knit with this beautiful ball of yarn?

We used our second set of passes to Red Mountain yesterday, for a day of relaxing on the snow! The view from the chairlifts are amazing, I have never seen anything like it! I wanted to take the camera this time, but neither of us wanted to carry a back pack! And the weather is so amazing here, I was actually swatting a fly as I was tyeing my boots up! Crazy!

On Sunday, I spent most of the day in my gardens, this is the best winter yet! Don't you all want to move here? All my perennials are poking their little heads out already. We also saw some people out on a boat on the lake on Sunday!

This is going to be THE year of the garden, I just know it!

Louet, you need a name...

Lisa? Lonnie? Louise? Whitney? If I'm going to spend this much time with something, it better have a name....

Welcome home little Louet.

My goodness there was a lot of little pieces in that box!

The wood is unfinished, so I had to take a break from the reno's to work on my louet!

It's really painful when you wait so long for something, and it arrives and then you have to watch paint dry....

Finally, I got to put it all together!

And we had a little unexpected help....

I know it's hard to tell, but yes that is a frog. In my house. In February. I don't know why we even bother with doors. Come on in everybody. Mi Casa, su casa?

Voila! Here she is! Ready to frustrate me to boundries I didn't even know existed!!!

Beeeeutiful!

She came with a full bag of wool roving to practice with....so far I have produced nothing worth taking a picture of! Tom had a spin, he did really well. He's a natural fibre artist. Who knew? Tommy Underwood, Artisan.

Hopefully, by the time we get through this bag of wool, we will be able to produce something with a little consistency. Maybe I will find a class someday too. It would be nice to know if we are even doing it right!

We picked up all the flooring for the room on Friday, its a laminate in a nice dark brown, hopefully it will match nicely with the stain I will do on the cabinet in the kitchen. But now we have a small hiccup because there is some heaving in the concrete floor that will cause some unevenness. It was hidden by a carpet seam before. We will call over the neighbor later today for some advise. He is a concrete guy by trade. Hopefully it will be an easy fix, we were planning to have the floor down by the end of the weekend!!!

Wow, that's a terrible picture! It really does look good!

Back to work now!

It's HERE!!!

In two minutes, I will be leaving work....to go home and assemble my lovely new louet!!!! Gack! I can hardly wait. I will have Tom take many pictures, and I might even post them, if there is any time left in the evening after the spinning fun is over!!!!

Can't even.. too much to title...

Holy cow, what a long week. We have been so busy.

First off, check out this loaf of bread. For 13 years I have been making mostly dense little loaves of rocks. One of my coworkers comes in every week with freshly made fluffy bread. So the secret is to add a little extra water, not as much as this of course, it hit the lid!! I couldn't hardly believe it! So, I took a picture, I knew you wouldn't believe it either. Also we added a TONNE of dill, very tasty.

We also made cherry flavored zucchini jam this week. So good.

THEN, on Monday, my washing machine decided to stop spinning. I put in a really good effort to fix the piece of poop. No really I did. I took it apart and everything. I even called a repairman to see if it was worth fixing. I determined that all the small cheaper fixes were not the problem, and then I rushed out the door to hit the stores! Priced out HE washers in all the local appliance stores in record time, and had my new sweet love of my life up and running by supper! Here she is...

Gorgeous, isn't she? Keep away yucky dryer and freezer....old geezers. You'll notice the newly painted "espartment" grey color on the wall. Looking good!

Here's the view of the new entry way beside the laundry room. For those of you who have been here, you will note I no longer have to put shoes on and go outside to do my laundry! What a treat!

We love the new door and window, the door has the little blinds INSIDE the glass! FANCY!

Here is the other end of the room from the doorway. I am all done painting the grey and the rest of the walls and the ceiling are going to be vanilla iceream and white trim. I think it will look good. A little hard to tell yet.

What to do with the pretty 70's carpet still on the floor. I'm sure a few hours with a carpet shampooer will clean that rug right up!

Just kidding, it's totally going to the dump. Or I might just light it on fire right in the yard.

I know by now you are thinking, holy cow, they really busted their butts this week, they must be exhausted...when did they knit. Well don't you worry, I not only knit this week, but I completed a project. However, it turned out really good except that it is made for someone with a really tiny head??? Anyone? Any takers? I put a little limegreen button on it....it's made with alpaca....really cute.

Free shipping......it's so lonely.....it needs a head to keep it warm. Please don't let this little hat suffer....

I can hardly believe my eyes

A mere 712 days after it was purchased....

...the door was installed! It looks awesome, Tommy is turning into a master carpenter. Maybe someday he will build me a house. I painted that wall "Vanilla white". I have decided to go with a creamy white and charcoal grey color in that addon room and I will try to carry that on throughout the house. Maybe a little yellow in the kitchen.

We also started painting the ceiling in the add on last night, the same color, vanilla. We are using this new Benjamin Moore paint called Aura, the primer is built right in, so you just go ahead and paint. So far it looks great, I'm pretty impressed with the coverage.

And I finally finished my socks last night! I knit the Sunday Swing pattern off knitty. It was a really nice pattern and fits just perfectly! It was my first time knitting the heel with a heel flap and gusset, it looked a little weird, but it fits really nice! Onto to my next project, and Vintage style hat, made out of dark blue alapaca....mmmm. Just knitting with it is glorious....what a lucky head this will be!

I noticed on another blog that you can put a ravelry button on your page and have you WIP bar showing. But I cannot for the life of me get this to work. If anyone out there in this world wide web can give me instructions or tips, I would greatly appreciate it!

My internet has been dropping horrendously since Friday...I was wondering if it is related to the Olympics and all the extra people on the servers? I clearly have no idea how that works, all I know is I have a dial tone, so why the !$#@ isn't my internet working!!!! Hopefully this will clear up soon! Like in about 14 days. Go Canada.

The First Official Skein

Here we go! The final installment of the saga of Tom's first skein of yarn. I suppose I should give the history of the fibre that we are using also. Did I do that already? I need to start reviewing what I right before I start blogging.

Oh well, I'll say it again.

This yarn came directly from Tommys' "Nanty". About 20 years ago they owned a farm and had some sheep as well as other animals. When we stopped to visit her a few weeks ago, I got to watch this 70 year old Nanty crawl into a little teeny hole in her basement and start tossing bags of fibre out at me! It was pretty amusing. Most of it is not really usable anymore but perfect for practising! And fun to know it came from the "family" farm!

So here is the first picture of Tommy wrapping the yarn from the bobbin around the back of a chair, obviously we don't have a skein winder!

Then we tied little bits of yarn to hold it together, at this point, if you let go the yarn will twist up into a bunch of little squiggles!

Then we have to wash it, but we just got it wet this time.

Then we hung it up to dry, and hung a brick from it to keep the tension! Everyone pause here to feel envious of my beautiful blinds and wood panelling. Nice isn't it?

Then a day later it was dry, and we have to put it in the shape you see on the shelves at your local yarn store! This has always looked terribly difficult, and when my skeins come undone I had no idea how to retwist them. But I found the instructions on ehow and it was really easy, watch this!

I know, I know, look at the yarn, not me...I still have a few Xmas pounds to lose. We are working on it. (Tommy has some too, FINALLY) Salads for lunch every day this week!

Here it is! Looks good I think! Nice Spinning Tommy!

If it was summer we might have tried some all natural dyeing. But maybe some other time.

Now....what to knit???

Impulse Spinning

I made a purchase today! I ordered my wheel! I can't wait!

And on top of that, I was in Nelson today and discovered and new store that has yarn and roving and spinning materials! What a find! They had drop spindles in stock, so of course I bought two! I have heard that if you take a spinning class your teacher makes you start on this kind any ways, and it spins much slower and gives you time to draft the fibre!

Dorian was very helpful in monitoring the speed of the spindle, he was a little too eager in slowing it down! Surprisingly , Madeline was not interested at all!

We started out with the carded wool from Toms' aunts' sheep, but I quickly got impatient and moved onto the alpaca fibre, mmmm, soft!

Tom is going to need some first aid shortly, he has rope burn on his fingers. Ever seen someone spin wool in leather gloves?

Hmm, what can I knit with my HUGE bobbin of yarn???