Happy Holidays!

The kids and I are in Idaho, and my parents' house, as is my sister. It's darn cold here--around 20 degrees F at the moment--with lots of snow. The kids are loving it! (The pic above is my parents' British phone booth that they brought back when they moved back from England.)

The day before yesterday Gilly made a snowman:


and Ryan had a good time investigating the tree:



Yesterday was the Great Dyeing of 2010. Last year Karen and my Mom helped me dye the roving that I spun into yarn for my Bono Kimono (which just needs to be blocked and then seamed), so this year I told them I'd help *them* dye.

We dyed six pounds of roving.

The four braids on the left are my Mom's Polworth roving, and the three on the right are some of Karen's Polworth.


The pink/orange/purple on the left are Karen's merino/mohair roving, and the ones on the right are the rest of the batch of Karen's from the pic above.

Here are the rovings before we braided them:

And another gratuitous shot on the drying rack:

We've been busy indeed! :-)

ETA: I've gotten a couple of questions about what rovings are. They're basically long lengths of fiber that's been cleaned and the fibers have been aligned so that they're (mostly) going in the same direction. The proper name is actually "top" but "roving" is a more commonly-used term (although it's not correct--"roving" has the fibers *not* aligned). Here's a good explanation.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

I'm so full I can barely type. :-)

Greg made an amazing turkey, as well as really, really, really good red-skin mashed potatoes from our garden!

I hope all of my fellow Americans have had a fabulous meal with great friends!


Yesterday I looked out the kitchen window and saw a cardinal. It wasn't bright-bright red yet, but it was still very pretty.


The kids' project for yesterday was to decorate the tree (which they talked me into setting up Sunday, the stinkers). Ryan did most of it, and he did a darn good job!


It's a little early, I know, but the kids are trying to squeeze the most out of the holiday season. LOL!


Happy Turkey Day!

Happy Independence Day!

Happy (late) Independence Day to my fellow denizens of the U.S.A.!

I slept for most of the day (I've got a sinus infection, I suspect), and Greg took the kids out to buy fireworks. They came back with quite a haul!

Here are the kids, with their chairs in the middle of the cul-de-sac, enjoying the neighborhood display:


That's Greg on the right, lighting a sparkler for Gillian, with Ryan in the background.


They got some of the bigger fireworks, and it was cool to have them right above our heads. I got two neat shots:





I even got a picture of Greg:


This is one of our favorite fireworks. It's a Purple Rain Fountain:


They go for a surprisingly long time. The kids had a great time with sparklers, and with a really long shutter speed I got some fun pictures.


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On the knitting front, I finished a Laminaria shawl and sent it to my dear friend Kathy for her wedding, which was Friday. I don't have any pics of her (yet) but here are some I took before sending it:




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I'm participating in the Tour de Fleece again on Ravelry, and I spun up some beautiful fiber that my Mom and Karen bought for me:




The color isn't *quite* right on this pic, but it's too pretty and shiny to not share:



And here's the final collage I posted on Ravelery:


I hope everyone has had a great weekend!

More Christmas Stuff

What a great day it's been! I'm sitting in my new chair on a chair pad that doesn't hurt my feet, there are fantastic smells wafting through the house (it's great to have Karen here sharing her gourmet skills!) and the kids are in heaven playing with new toys.

What does my new chair look like, you ask?

I'm definitely spoiled! ;-)

My desk area is slightly more messy than normal, but if I told you it's cleared off most of the time I'd be lying.

Speaking of new toys, Gillian and Greg spent 5.5 hours (Greg timed it) putting together Gillian's Lego kit she got for Christmas.

Here they are, working on it this morning:

In the picture Ryan is waiting (ever so patiently) for me to help him with *his* Lego project, a dump truck. I think it took us about 30 minutes, although I wasn't timing it. One of these days he'll put his OWN Lego kit together. LOL!

Here's Gillian with the completed Lego kit:


One of the gifts for the kids this year was knitting, fulled clogs. The fit on both pairs needs to be fine tuned, but that'll come tomorrow. Here they are:


They seem pretty happy with them!

Here are some of the gift I got:

That's a sling for my bowling ball from Karen, and a great mini journal and pen from Aunt Louise. I didn't manage to get a picture of the neat earrings and wine bottle cork she sent.

This is a wonderful kitchen towel that my Grandmother embroidered:

Isn't it great?

My sister, Dr. Karen, got the Starmore book for me, as well as Neil deGrasse Tyson's Death By Black Hole. (I showed it to my Dad and he's reading it now, so I don't have it in the picture.) Also in this picture is a set of soaps from my MIL and a set of seedless preserves from my Uncle Scott and Aunt Carol. I told you I'm spoiled!


This next item is just wickedly cool. My parents took one of their old spinning wheels to a man in Montana and he makes these niddy noddies and their cases by hand. His name is Steve McEwen, and if you want his address, send me a message.

Here's the case:


Here's the niddy noddy with the pin pulled out to release the yarn that's been wound. The pin on the thong goes through the cross piece and holds it in place during winding.

Mine is made of burl maple and Karen's is made from oak, we think.

Here are some more presents. The body wash and scrubbing mit are from my MIL, the three lotions are from Karen, as is the tube of alpaca (more about that in a sec), and the bag is from my parents.

Here's a detail of the alpaca. It's 8 ounces of adult black alpaca, and it's just luscious!


Karen also gave me 42 ounces of Finn roving, which is going to get dyed and hopefully become a Bono Kimono (Ravelry link). It's more yellow in the pic than in real life, but it's certainly not white-white-white like the snow.


The snow has been rather surreal! It's so bright during the day that I didn't even turn on the lights in the bedroom until it was getting dark. Impressive!




Stay warm and enjoy the weekend!

Merry Christmas!

It's been busy in the run-up to Christmas, so I've been enjoying being lazy for the last few days.
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day have been wonderful!

Here's the tree before Santa came:

See those two big boxes with the striped paper? Those are mine. LOL! The bottom one is a wonderful new computer chair (that I'm sitting in while posting this -- it's fabulous!), and the box on the top is a new set of pans! I'm pretty spoiled.

Here's after Santa came and filled the stockings:

This is one of the ornaments I made this year:

I used my Cricut machine and a file I downloaded after seeing it on the Sure Cuts A Lot list (the software that allows me to create files and cut them using the Cricut).

We managed to hold off the kids from opening presents until 7:30, although they sure looked over everything until we let them have at it.


Karen is looking out the back door at all the snow (more about that in a bit).

Christmas wouldn't be complete without a holiday apron, right? Here's the one I made last week, as a prototype for one I made for Karen:


I mentioned snow. Yes, we got some!
It started out as rain, then became frozen pellets of ice (but not quite hail), then turned to snow. Here's when it was ice:



After dinner, this is what we saw:




The kids about popped. Grandma took pity on them and went out with them for a few minutes, although they didn't last too long (it was COLD and really windy).

Here's my new set of pans!


Hopefully later I'll have some more pictures to post. We need to take a picture of some of Karen's aprons (she got four!) and my gorgeous wooden swift, among other neat things.

I hope you're all having a wonderful Christmas, and a happy holiday season!