Happy Birthday

Um yeah. So this is the last birthday that I will be celebrating as I feel that this is as close to 30 as I need to be. So next year I will again be celebrating #27 and then again the year after. And the year after that (which will be a very black Friday) I will once again turn 27. I am boycotting getting older. That is all there is to it! Ok so we had a nice Thanksgiving. Nice quiet lazy day with family. Nothing major happened, besides mass amounts of eating. Seriously we ate around 1 I think and I was full the rest of the day. I did have some pecan pie around 4 or so, but that was my dinner. I did not black friday shop. I did have to pick up a few things at walmart, and a pair of tennis shoes, but I waited until early afternoon to avoid the crowds. Worked like a charm. Enough about that boring stuff though.

Knitting: I am almost done with the first (or rather 3rd) sleeve for Jim's sweater. Like I knitted all day yesterday and I have 12 rows left. Plus 2 inches. Gar. I am beginning to believe that there is some sort of weird worm hole with this sleeve that keeps setting me back 2 inches. I will try to finish it this week. Then I still have the other one to knit. Plus I am wanting to work on that blankie for my special little boy. Sleeve has to come first though. I want this sweater done before Christmas. I have a whole bunch of things that have ended up in my Rav queue that I want to knit. Specifically the Give a Hoot mittens. I am IN LOVE! I think I am going see what gauge my gray handspun is and see if it works for these mittens.

Spinning Tragedy has struck the Humphrey household. My. Wheel. Broke. I wanted to have all this fun stuff to say about the 1 lbs Merino/Bamboo that I bought that came in the mail on Friday, but I spun about a yard of it and my wheel broke. I almost cried. Seriously I had set aside Saturday for spinning. I wasn't going to do anything but spin. This was like a little birthday gift to myself, just me and my wheel and lotsa fluff. But no. See this is what I am saying about having crappy birthdays. Stuff like this always happens! LOL! Oh and before the accident happened I did do a little experiment playing with a tiny bit of leftover kiwi fiber and a bit of the alpaca that I have spun up. I wish I had plied the entire amount of Kiwi with the alpaca. I am so in love with the way the colors came together. I don't have pictures right now but I will soon. I do however have a picture of the Kiwi yarn plied with itself. That will do for now. I will post more as I get more uploaded. I am not very organized today, sorry. I had no clue I was going to blog. I suppose as soon as I am done with the knitting I need to be working on, I will get my drop spindle out. I need to practice on it anyway, right? Right!

Sorry for the long post

Well all is well in my world, right now. I finally got accepted to college and will start in February. Going back for nursing. I can't wait. This means that I will be no longer be working (or at least full time) which is perfectly fine as I am working a temp job currently anyway. DH and I made the trip back to Arkansas 2 weeks ago for my dog, and the rest of my fiber/yarn/wheel. 3 days to drive 24 hours total is NOT fun by the way. Got no time to visit really, though we did go to our favorite sushi place, and I got to see my best friends baby bump! Spent a little time with my mom and her best friend and took my stepson with us for sushi. So exhausting though. Especially in that darn Jeep. Don't get me wrong I love it but not on long trips. DH temporarily fixed the window while we were there so we could almost hear the music and each other on the way home. We were supposed to take a trip this weekend to Savannah for my birthday (1 week from today), but Jim got sick and I didn't feel so hot, so we bought a tv for my MIL instead. This means we have a tv in our room for now. We will be buying another TV soon for us that is nice, but we will make due with what we have for now. We are also looking at couches to buy because we are turning the "side room" into our bedroom and our bedroom into a living room. It will be nice having a space that is ours besides just our bedroom. Ok on to the meat of the matter:

Spinning: I finished spinning up the Kiwi green Mauch Chunky roving (I'll post pictures later). It came out to be a tiny bit over 266 yards and about 17-18 WPI. I decided for yardage that I was going to go with a 2 ply, but I really liked the way the 3 ply looked better. Maybe next time, I just didn't have enough to get decent yardage out of a 3 ply.
DH and I had discussed getting a new wheel, but I have decided that I really do like my Babe for now, though I am planning on getting a few accessories for it. I want to get the skein winder that attaches at the top of the wheel. I think that would make my life so much simpler. I also need another set of regular bobbins (I think the 5:1) and I want a set of the 21:1 ratio bobbins. We were talking over coffee last night about my DH making a wheel. He really wants to design a couple that are not just wheels, but art. That's what I get for marrying an artist! LOL! I love it though. He has no real interest in spinning or knitting, but he doesn't mind crossing over his love for art to my hobbies, cuz he loves me! I have to say I am not only getting better at spinning, but I am also understanding it more. At first I could make the darn thing work and the stuff that came out could pass as yarn (mostly) but not all the foreign spinning language is starting to make a lot of sense to me. I am still struggling with the raw alpaca fleece that I have but I think if I had proper equipment to prepare it things would be going smoother. And I probably didn't get the best alpaca fleece in the world, but I still love it. I am setting it aside until I get access to proper equipment. I have probably 1 oz spun already, but I am just not as happy with it as I could be, so it is going to hibernate for a bit. The lack of my 2 lbs of alpaca and finishing the Kiwi means I am almost out of fiber. I do have a little of BFL left I believe, and some Brown Sheep Mohair/Superwash wool blend that I am in love with, only I have less than an oz. What do you do with less than an oz of fiber? I just don't know. I guess spin it and see what little yardage I can get out of it. Other than that there is NO OTHER FIBER in my house. However since my birthday is next week, I will be getting a card with a check in it in the mail from my mommy very soon so I do believe I will be putting in some orders! Yay!

Knitting: This Fog sleeve is going to kill me. I am still on the first one. I don't know why it is taking so long other than the fact that I only get to knit like 1 or 2 rows a night on it, sometimes not even that. Since we have had the sickies in our house, it seems like every time I sat down to knit on my 4 day weekend, I fell asleep. I have another one coming up though! We will see if I can get more done then. Sure hope so. I want to get this one done and a good start on the second sleeve. I want it done before Christmas. I also have some pretty "manly" yarn that I am thinking will be socks for my hubby. I want to do gloves but he wants socks. Men. I am also crocheting, yes, CROCHETING a blanket for my favorite 3 year old in the world. Spiderman blanket. I am so excited. Except for the whole crochet part. I want to get a good start on that this weekend too, if I can. Mom's Christmas gift ended up being the Creatures of the Reef shawl. I took it with me and she fell in love and so I told her that if she wanted it she could have it. I have so many other things I want to work on right now, but there is just not enough time. I did decide to join Team Knitmore for this winter's Ravelympics. I haven't decided yet what I am going to do, but I think that fair isle may be happening. Maybe. Maybe just finish spinning up the alpaca. I will be in school then too so I may not have much time. We will see. I will narrow some choices down with different time commitments and decide closer to time, what I will realistically have time for.

Entertainment: DH took me on a date yesterday to go see New Moon. I liked it. I felt it was better than the first, but neither are near as good as the books. I really think that they did a poor job of casting the movies first of all and they are just a little too emo for me. I will however see all of them. We rented Up, which I liked, but dang it was sad. I loved the little dog in it. The rest wasn't that great, but even though it was sad, it was kind of a sweet story. We also rented Land of the Lost. I really don't like Will Farrell. This movie did nothing to sway my opinion. He never shut up the entire movie. It had some funny parts, but mostly it was just dumb. I finished ready Wicked. Good book. The end seemed slow moving and abrupt, but over all I enjoyed it and would like to see the play. Lets see. I reread Animal Farm. I love that book. I really should own it. I haven't done much other reading that that. Trying to focus more on the fiber parts of my life! Hate to admit it, but I really like that stupid show Tough Love. We watched 2 episodes last night. There is a time suck and a half but it amuses me how dumb people can be sometimes to think the ways that they do. I am excited for our TV so I can start watching The Office again. Other than that our TV stays on History channel mostly.

New location!

Well we got moved. Not to Florida like originally planned. After some things happened we ended up in Georgia with my inlaws. Things are going well here. My father in law is in the early stages of Alzheimers and there are days that are better than others, but for the most part all is well! I really like it here, but I don't have all my stuff here yet. My husband moved here 3 weeks before I did leaving me to take care of all of the stuff at the house. We sold just about every thing and have about 5 boxes of stuff and my dog at my mom's house still. I am hoping that maybe we will be able to go back next weekend and get the dog and my wheel. I haven't been working so I should have plenty of time for knitting but most of my stuff is at my mom's house. I did bring my shawl but left the pattern there accidentally. That was the ONLY yarn I brought with me. Since I was having to fly to Georgia, I had to really limit what I packed and that just didn't include yarn. :( But my bestest friend in the whole wide world was kind enough to send me my pattern and a dose of yarn! So I finally got my shawl finished! Yay! Ok I still haven't blocked or woven in ends yet, but that will happen soon! I do start working on Monday which I am really kind of bummed about. Don't get me wrong, we could use the extra money, but I really like being home. Oh well it was fun while it lasted. So I have not spun anything since well before we moved. My wheel is safely at my Mom's as well. I wanted to sell it and buy me a new one, but that just didn't happen. Oh. Besides all the hustle and bustle of moving, we have decided that it is time for me to go back to school. I will be starting in February (hopefully) and will be pursing a Bachelors in Nursing. So the job that I am taking is only a temporary position. My husband doesn't want me to be working while I am going to school, which is good for me because I have so many things that I have to do and not enough time to do all of them in! I have some things that I want to knit. And a pair of slippers is one of them. Jim's 90 year old grandfather wants me to knit him a cushion for his walker thing. It has a seat and he wants a cushion so when he sits down it will be comfy for him! LOL! I have many other things on the knitting front that I would like to knit. A shawl for my mom, my BFF, my MIL, and something for my little nephew (BFF's son) and her baby on the way. Ok actually there are WAY more things than that, but those are the ones I am going to be focusing on. Oh and of course finishing my hubby's sweater! LOL!

MMMM..... Fiber....

Knitting The Creatures of the reef shawl is coming along nicely. Slow, but steady anyway. The seahorse/crab chart is complete. I haven't been working on Jim's socks much lately because, well the shawl has my undivided knitting attention right now. I absolutely love working on it. There will be more of these in my future!

Spinning We were out on Sunday looking for chopsticks (who knew that a nice-ish set would be hard to find) and ended up in Pier 1. I love that store. Anyway we started looking around and I sat down in one of the chairs. I mentioned to Jim that it was almost perfect for spinning. It was just a little too deep. I am a little on the short side and I don't like deep chairs. I want something I can rest all the way back so I can sit up straight. If I can't reach the back then I slouch. So he looks at me and says to try a different chair. Next thing I know I have tried just about every chair in the store. The sales lady is helping and everything. Well I found it. It is the right heighth and depth. It kind of comes around the sides of the back and feels like a hug, but the back isn't in the way. It was love at first sit. So we bought it. We weren't going to buy any furniture because we are moving in December and we are pretty well getting rid of what we have, but I guess we are also buying a truck, so it doesn't matter. The chair can move with us. I moved my wheel back downstairs to the living room and have been attempting (unsuccessfully) to learn long draw. Everytime I think I am getting it, something happens and I realize that I am not really getting it at all. But I am not too frustrated. I know it will come in time. I spoke with the gentleman from the alpaca farm not far from here and he told me about the spinning guild that meets about an hour and a half from my house. They meet every third Saturday so I am going to try to make it down there next month. It is kind of difficult since my husband and I share a vehicle, but I am going to go anyway! I am hoping that someone there can help me. I am very self conscious of my spinning. I didn't take a class or anything to learn, so it makes me a little nervous that they will tell me I am doing it all wrong. I guess if I am, someone ought to tell me though! I spin a fairly balanced yarn at this point and although it isn't as thin as I would like it to be, I am still learning. Anyway. I am taking my stepson to the alpaca farm with me on Saturday and we are going to get to tour the farm and meet the alpacas. I would like to come home with some fiber, but since my husband put in his two week notice at his steady paying job so he can start his sales job full time, it may not happen. I am glad he is going to be doing the other full time, but when you start working for mostly commission, it can be a little scary. I have full faith in him though. I am hopefully going to be teaching my stepson to spin soon. I told my husband that I feel confident enough in what I am doing that I think I could teach him correctly. He has asked several times. I think I am going to try to get a new drop spindle at some point and give him the one I have now. It isn't great, but I don't know if he will stick with it or not. Fingers crossed.

Sewing and quilting Did I just say quilting? Yup. One of the things that I thought I would never do, and here I am addicted to the fabric store and finding more quilting patterns than I could ever possibly make! My best friend in the whole word quilts and I finally broke down and asked her to teach me. Really it isn't so bad, except I think I am going to have to modify the pattern just a tiny bit because I should be getting enough out of the fat quarters to make 3 squares, and I am finding myself coming up just short. I am measuring and cutting everything correctly, so I don't know what is wrong. But I don't care really. I am also thinking that instead of making it 5 squares by 7, I am going to make it a little more even. 35 squares means that I would have an orphan square. I am a little on the OCD side and I think it would drive me insane. So I am thinking 5X8 squares. As far as sewing is concerned I completed my first ever top. I have sewn other things, but never clothing I actually intend to wear. There were some last minute alterations that I needed to do, and the alterations didn't come out so hot, one side is a tiny bit crooked but I am the only one who has noticed, but it is done! I haven't decided how I am going to go back and change it to where it is perfect, but I have to tell you I love to sew! Not just a little either. It is not as much fun to me as knitting, but I believe that there will be many, many more hand sewn clothes in my closet. I need a dress form. Not just for sewing. I would like one for knitting so I can work on patterns a little easier. It is hard to see what something is looking like when it is ON me. I never really thought that I would want to be designing clothing of the non knit variety, but I do! I guess I just want to do it all. But knitting and spinning are still more fun for me and I still intend on them being my focal point. I doubt seriously that I will ever try out for Project Runway, but I think that I will have many made for me clothes in the future.

Well off to knit! It has been a long stressful day and I need some relaxing!

Shawl update no pics

Well I am almost through the seahorse/crab chart. It is taking me quite a while to get through it because I haven't gotten to knit NEAR as much as I would like to. I was hoping to get more than two rows in yesterday. My best friend and I were sewing yesterday and I didn't know it was going to take us until 11PM last night to finish the blouse we were working on. I will post a picture at some point. The shawl is getting much easier though. Really the pattern is not difficult at all, just easy to not pay attention and get lost. The stitch markers are a tremendous help. I will definitely use them again. I will also probably be knitting this shawl again in the very near future for my mother. Maybe. If she is nice. I am kind of sleepy and we are going to see the new Harry Potter in a little bit so I am going to keep this short and sweet for now. I am either going to take a nap or knit. Or both.
Have a happy week!

Creative Juices are FLOWING!!!

I am working on some designs right now for a line of knits. I am on a lace kick right now so they are starting out as a few different lace shawls and then maybe I will go on to a few sweaters and maybe some socks from there. I am just sketching on them right now. I still have some decisions to make as far as what I want them to look like and all that. I am in the middle of knitting a shawl right now that I would really like to finish first. I am excited because I have never done much designing before so this is going to be my first "real" design. I have done some small stuff before but nothing on quite this big of a scale before. It feels very good to get this creative side out and exercising it a little bit. I am also wanting to spin the yarn for these. At least for the final products, not necessarily for the "trial" ones. I have colors that I am working on in my head that my limited amount of colored pencils is just not allowing me to show on paper right now. Mostly because I am thinking probably doing heathered colors since I LOVE heathers. I have one of the colors pretty well picked out, just have to spin it up and go. I might play with some dying next weekend. I don't have much time during the week right now to dye. My supervisor just had a baby so I have to stay an hour later at work every day (OT for me!) and it really cuts into my evenings. Plus I am usually so exhausted that by the time I get done exercising and eating dinner, it is time for bed. I may try to soak some yarn tonight and have it dying while I exercise tomorrow. LOL! Maybe I will take my crock pot to work with me and dye there! It is just going to be a very small amount because I am experimenting with it. I need to buy some more fiber. *sigh*

The Creatures of the Reef shawl is coming along nicely. I finished the first chart last night and ran a lifeline. I am three rows into the second chart. I have to say I really enjoy this pattern. It was designed by Dorothy Siemens and she has several others that are very lovely. I will definitely be knitting the peacock feathers shawl, maybe later this year. I may try to get a blog post going later on today or tomorrow on what all I will be trying to knit for the remainder of 2009. It will be kind of short right now because we are going to be moving in a couple months and I am trying to not buy much yarn/fiber right now so that there will be less to pack. Since we have a soft top Jeep we can't rent a pull behind UHaul and we don't have much we want to take with us. Most of our stuff will either be sold or donated. We already donated what amounted to 6 or 7 lawn sized bags of clothes, and there are still more to go! Oh and there was close to one bag of unmendable, stained, or otherwise undonatable clothes. So basically if it is not in my stash now, it won't be for a couple of months (maybe I will buy enough to knit another shawl). I am trying really hard to destash what I have now. I am knitting an afghan for my aunt to destash and I am going to do a couple of charity projects as well, if I have enough yarn that I can do it in. I have lots of single skeins. The rest will probably be donated or something. Just keep my good yarns.

I am feeling like my brain is working a lot better right now than it was. I wonder if it is because I have cut way down on the amount of carbs I eat. I really hate admitting that because I am a self admitted carboholic and I kind of miss my carbs. I am doing pretty good on my diet. Not that I have been perfect, but even the times that I have been "bad" I have limited myself and, well, I am proud. It has taken a long time for me to get to this point, where I am in control of what I am eating. I think I am driving my husband crazy with it though. He is the one "helping" me with the diet and there are times when I get kind of cranky when all I want is a big bowl of pasta. I don't mean to make him feel bad. I really do appreciate what it is that he is helping me do. It is getting easier and I have been losing weight. I haven't done so hot this weekend. I haven't worked out once and I have had steamed WHITE rice twice and I am not admitting what I ate at Village Inn with my dad the other morning. Pancakes and fried potatoes may have been involved. But other than those minor setbacks I am still good. Oh and I have not had enough water this weekend. Oh well. I will drink some in a bit.

Creatures of the Reef Cast on--- again

After the unfortunate accident last time with my pretty beachy shawl, I have decided, finally, to start over. All 400+ stitches have been cast on. The set up row is done. I am already running a lifeline. I think I have decided to only run one at the last row of every chart, but I may do it more often than that. I may do an additional life line after every WS row. Decisions have not been made on that yet. I hope that I can get this thing going pretty quick. I would like to get it done very soon. I have a couple other projects that I would like to get going. I have an afghan started for my aunt. It is just basic crochet granny squares that I am making out of Red Heart and Caron Simply Soft. She will need something machine washable and I have had it in my stash. I wish I had really nice stuff to make something for her with. I need to find some good baby yarn. I want to make a pretty baby shrug for my cousins new baby, Emma. I would also like to find something to knit for Becky's baby that is about to be born or has just been born. I don't know what to do for him. I have some pretty green cotton yarn left over from Jacoby's baby sweater that I knit. Maybe I will make baby Ryan one too. I don't know because I really want too work on this shawl and I tend to be a pretty monogamous knitter. When I worked on it before I got through the first 3 charts pretty quick, but I wasn't using lifelines then. Lifelines take me forever to place. Oh well. No big deal. I have plenty of time to finish it.

Lets see on the spinning front... well I haven't gotten much spinning in. I am still working on the Kiwi colored Kraemer Yarns, Mauch Chuncky roving. 60% New Zealand Wool, 40% Domestic Wool. I love it. Really it isn't my favorite to spin, but the color is so pretty on it. I have decided to make it 3 ply so it is going to be a little thicker than I would like it but since I have no clue what it wants to be turned into, it really doesn't matter at this point. I was going to make it into a sock yarn, but the 2 ply was just not right. I made it a 3 and it was amazing. I haven't checked WPI on my sample yet, because it really doesn't matter to me right now because I like it 3 ply no matter what size it is. That is probably a bad habit, but it is what it wants to be so I am not going to fight it! : )

As far as my nonfiber life is concerned, Jim has been painting a motorcycle for a friend. The guy stripped the paint and everything before hand. We had some set backs. There was some shipping problems with the paint. We ordered the primer and a couple days later, the actual paint. Lets see this was just before Memorial Day. It took the primer a week and a half to arrive and the paint like 2 and a half weeks. The paint was apparently not in stock. I finally had to call to see why I hadn't received a tracking number. She said it was because they ran out of paint (several days after I had ordered, btw) and they would have more that Friday. I was not very please with the fact that there was no email or phone call or anything saying that it had been backordered so it was very frustrating. The paint actually didn't get here until the first day of our Florida trip. Jim was wanting to have it finished before we went on vacation. So there have been some set backs, but it is all done now. There are no more motorcycle parts in our kitchen. We have our garage back, although Jim said he was going to clean it out today and since his is upstairs napping and we are leaving to go swim before the birthday party in about 15 minutes , I don't see that happening today. Oh well. He isn't painting the bike anymore so he will have cleaning the garage tomorrow to look forward to.

Florida was amazing. Our discovery trip went really well. We found some apartments that we like. Now we just need our lease to be up here and find jobs there. I have my resume done and ready to go. Since I guess our lease isn't up until October 1 (how did we end up with a 13 month lease?) we have PLENTY of time to do all of that. We have decided that most of our stuff is not going with us. We already have a buyer for the 62' TV and our queen size bed. I need to make a list of the rest of the stuff that we are selling for our buyer. She said she wanted to know what all we were getting rid of because she may want more. That will at least pay for the trip there. I am debating selling my wheel. I can't make up my mind on it. We would like to have everything fit in the Jeep. I know that sounds crazy, but most of the stuff that we have we don't want anymore. Most of it is stuff from our pasts that we don't want. Like the TV was kind of a symbol of his bachelor days. It was kind of a rebelion against his ex. Stuff like that we just don't want. We have donated a bunch of clothes. There will be more. I am hoping to lose some serious weight and then I will be able to fit into some of my cute clothes again. I didn't keep much that doesn't fit. But there is some. I am trying to work through my stash. I don't have much and what I do have is mostly crappy acrylic. I wasn't allowed to buy nice yarn when I was with my ex so I really don't want most of my yarn either. Books are going to be the hard part. I love my books. I love my bookshelf. I am probably only going to take my favorites and my knitting books/mags with me. Like one box of books. I can do that. I am going to weed out some of my books and what is left will go in a box in mom's house for when she moves. We went through our movies and got rid of about half. We took them to the used game/video store and traded in for a couple new games and movies. Since we don't have cable anymore, we NEED movies! At least our favorites.