I'm thrilled with myself

I love figuring out things, and I'm pretty proud of myself for my latest project.

It's a decal of a drawing I did of a yarn ball with needles!

(And yes, I really did clean only the area where I put the decal, not the whole window--it's raining outside and I figure the rain will wash off the window for me. LOL!)

Here's a close up:


I got vinyl in black, white, and silver, and if it holds up well then I might attempt to sell them. The vinyl I got is supposed to last for 5-6 years in outside exposure, so it should stay looking nice for a while.

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I've had more customer quilts to do lately so I haven't been doing as much knitting as I normally do. I'm closing in on the toes of my Monkey socks, which is good. I'm also getting very low on yarn which is not so good, but I'm trying not to panic. If all else fails I'll just buy another ball and do the toes in a different color or something. It'll all work out!

I also have two other knitting projects going that I can't blog about (yet), but hopefully I'll be able to show them soon.

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I hope you're all having a great week!

Amazing shawl

I got an amazing package in the mail on Friday:

(Not the cat, the shawl!!)



Isn't that absolutely stunning?

It's from Nurhanne, the wonderful person behind Yarn Over. A while back I signed up for the Pay It Forward challenge on her blog, and this is what she sent me!

I'm almost done with the items I'm sending to my three Pay it Forward people, I'm just waiting on one thing to come in the mail to finish it up.

Isn't that an amazing shawl? I'm just flabbergasted.

Thank you, Nurhanne!!!

Alpaca Farm tour

This morning the kids and I went to a local alpaca farm, Broken Arrow Alpacas, and had a great time!

The kids got to pet some brand-new (10-day old) Great Pyrenees puppies:

And feed and pet some alpacas.






What beautiful animals!




After petting the alpacas and puppies, they showed us the bags full of sheared fiber and the roving and yarn that was for sale. I think we (the Tulsa Handspinners) bought more than half of what they had, and one of the other members (thanks Karin!) talked me into taking half of Rosie's fiber from the next shearing, which will probably be in the next few weeks. (I'm not sure which animal is Rosie but I don't think I got a picture of her.) Rosie is one of the white alpacas.

I bought three 1.75 ounce balls of fawn roving, and they threw in a bag of the fiber from the neck and shoulders. It's *so* soft!

Now I want to go spin. :-)

I hope you all are having a great weekend!

It's been busy around here!

The last 24 hours or so have been quite busy around here, getting ready for a new refrigerator!

I know, you're thinking that we're crazy to be so excited about a new fridge, but the old one was 18 years old (I bought it when my parents moved out) and it's been moved many times. The ice maker had died once and the fridge motor was running almost continuously, so I think this new fridge is going to make a huge difference in our energy consumption.

Here's a pic of the old one:

The towel taped to the counter is because there's some really, really sharp tile there and I didn't want to scar the brand new fridge. We'll be putting some wood there to keep the new one in good condition.

Here's the new fridge:


It's HUGE! 22.9 cubic feet. So far it's fabulous! We went for the freezer on the bottom and the french doors (obviously) and I think it's going to be really, really nice.

Here's DD, wanting to be the first to put stuff in the new fridge:


I'm tired. Moving food (and refrigerators) around and cleaning to get ready has made me tired, so I'm going to bed.

I hope you're all having a great week!

Pretty things

We finally had good enough weather for me to get some pictures taken this morning! All weekend was icky weather, with lots and lots of rain. Not so good for taking pictures but great for the plants. First up (speaking of plants) are some pictures of my amaryllis. This is such a gorgeous plant! Greg had been teasing me about watering an empty pot, but we finally got this: There's still one blossom to come. I'm really enjoying this plant!

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I promised better pictures of the yarn for the Yarn Dash, and here they are: This picture is in strong light and is probably the closest-in-color to the yarn in real life. (Monitors vary, of course!) This next picture shows the slight variations from the kettle-dyeing technique: It's 880 yards/100 grams of lace-weight merino wool. This will make a gorgeous shawl! (Or anything else you'd like to use it for. LOL!) Go sign up for the Yarn Dash if you haven't already, and this skein of yarn could be yours.

Yarn Dash

You may have noticed the Yarn Dash graphic in the sidebar. If that's what brought you here, welcome!

Hint for those of you who haven't spotted the "found" graphic yet: keep your eyes on the sidebar and don't get distracted by the socks. ;-)

Here's a little preview of the prize I'm contributing:



It's lace-weight yarn, kettle dyed by me. More pictures and details tomorrow when the sun is up.

If you haven't joined yet, go sign up!

Happy Easter!

Yesterday was a gorgeous day here, and we planted a whole bunch of flowers. I'd wanted to put up some hanging baskets in the front and I found some self-watering pots that were perfect. I put some hangers on the posts in the front, and in a few weeks the pots should fill out and I'll have pretty trailing petunias!


Greg mowed the lawn after I took that picture and it looks really pretty.
The perspective in that picture is a little off—I promise the house doesn't have weird angles the way it appears to!

In other planting news, the potatoes survived the cold snap last week and are thriving:

The dogwood in the front is also pretty with its pink blossoms:


And yesterday we got a patio set! I'm so excited! The next project is to build a pergola-type thing for some shade. We decided not to get an umbrella since the winds here aren't kind to umbrellas. We've seen a lot of glass-topped tables smashed because the wind grabs the umbrella (even when it's closed!) and tips over the table. This set is all metal and matches the bench that I bought almost 8 years ago.


As you can see from the pictures above, yesterday was a beautiful day. The rain/thunder started at about 1:00 in the morning and the rain hasn't stopped since!

We had a fun (but quick) Easter egg hunt this morning, and the Easter Bunny brought Lego kits for the kids. Ryan got a dump truck and Gillian got a Darth Vader ship from the original Star Wars movies. They've had a great time putting them together today.

I hope you've all had a great weekend, and Happy Easter!

Finished socks

I have two finished pairs of socks to share!

First, socks that I made for my Aunt Louise. She got them earlier this week, and they're a *very* late Christmas present:

The yarn is from KnitPicks, their Essential Kettledyed in Grasshopper. The color in the pic above is slightly off; the yarn is more of a yellow-green.


The second pair is my Traffic Island Socks that I was test knitting for a Ravelry friend, RedScot.




I really enjoyed the pattern but I can't say the same thing about the yarn. It's Walk Away from Yarn Bee, the Hobby Lobby brand. It has a thread that runs through the center of the plies and it was a real problem as I was knitting. It didn't stretch like the rest of the yarn so the wool/nylon plies would build up around the center thread. I ended up breaking the thread whenever it would become a problem, which was about every two or three yards.

Hopefully the yarn will hold up, but I'm not holding my breath. I gave it one star out of five on the yarn rating on Ravelry, and that one star was because I really like the color patterning.

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I have so many things I need to finish and work on, it's hard to choose what to work on next. I knit two rows on my Hey Teach sweater, and I need to get back to working on that now that both pairs of socks are finished. I also have some quilts that need to be done (neither are mine), and hopefully I'll start on those this weekend.

I hope you're all having a great week!

International Wear A Mustache in Public Day

All right, I know that's not an official event, but my friend Calista declared it to be, so we celebrated.

Here's my mustache at the beginning of the evening:


And Calista's 'stache:

She actually wore it all day and said she almost caused a few wrecks because people were staring so hard. (She drives a bright yellow car, so with the car attracting attention and then people noticing the mustache, she was getting a lot of interesting looks!)

It was tough to drink my coffee with my mustache, but I persevered.


Rori got into the act, too!

And finally, all three of us. I think next year we'll twist some of the other knitters' arms and make them wear mustaches, too!



That was one pathetic mustache by the end of the night!

I hope you all had a great April Fool's Day!