Dyeing not disasters

Wow - I haven't posted since Monday, which isn't so long for me - but I just have so much I want to share - where to start?

Well, I guess the obvious place would be with the promised pictures of the merino tencel that I plied up with bright orangeness. I had a few comments from some of y'all that the colour was OK - well... trust me it really wasn't. The eye searing orangeness with the delicate rose and blush was just so Wrong.

My daughter came over the other night (after I'd done the overdyeing) and I showed her what the whole horribleness had started off as. She took one look at it, said, "And you plied the whole thing? And you knew how wrong it was?!? Oh my god mom, you are retarded!"

Well, yeah, there is that - but I wanted to see how much 3 Joy bobbins would fill on my Skipper bobbins (still not all the way full btw) - and I did fix it - I mean look! Isn't it pretty now? It reads as a lovely tomato red. There are still shocking orange bits to it, but with the darker reds combined, well it works, I can knit with it, and I like it! It's 650 yards of a light worsted weight. No idea what it wants to be when it grows up, but I'm sure it will figure itself out.

I also got some photos of the rest of the fiber that I dyed. Took them out to the shrubberies to get some pics in full sunlight - talked to my neighbors for a bit. They don't think I'm too crazy, but the people that were walking past the Mexican restaurant the night before where I took the pic on the cactus sure looked at me funny.

Here it is all laid out. From left to right:

BFL in blues and greens. I was so happy to see that, it's about 8 ozs. I'd totally forgotten that I had it. It was in the kitchen in the pile of wool that I've been meaning to dye. I do love to spin BFL. I also had some superfine merino in that batch that I didn't even bother with - I mean, it's OK - but I don't like spinning it all that much.

4 ozs of Optim in darker blues and greens. Mmmm optim. I dyed it in the same batch with the silk that is right next to it. There's about 8 ozs of the silk. I'll probably end up doing separate plies with this stuff, and then plying it all together.

The red blue and green space dyed fiber is the other batch of merino/tencel that I just dyed. It will probably go well with something, don't ask me what yet.

Next to that is red and blue superwash merino, that will most likely get turned into my first pair of handknit/handspun socks. I've never ever knit a pair of socks out of my handspun. I know, I know... it just has never come up.

And last - but certainly not least is some mystery wool that I think is my favourite of the batch. No idea what it is, probably some Corriedale or something similar.







And here is the progress on the Azalea shawl so far, looking a bit washed out - but still it's progressing nicely!

I've done more work on it after the picture was taken, it's now down into more of an aqua colour - 12 repeats! I'm sure I can get at least 1 more repeat, but with triangular shawls like this, as the rows get longer the yarn starts to get eaten up at a rather alarming rate. Still, it is going to be big enough. I confess that I was slightly worried that 612 yards wouldn't be enough for a full size shawl for me - but holding it out from the center it is already covering my wingspan. I'm hoping to have it done and blocked in the next couple of days, you probably won't see it again until it's final unveiling.

Whew - there's more - lots more - but I'm going to try to get on with my evening now, and sign off for this installment with a sunflower shot that I got outside the Mexican restaurant by my house.

Dyeing disasters

So what do you do when you find two lovely gorgeous coordinating colours of a blend that you haven't tried before? Well, if you're me - you decide you want a three ply, and wouldn't a lovely orangey peachey colour look nice with the pinks? Yeah right!

I totally screwed it up. Totally not knittable in it's current state - nothing I could ever wear. Man, it was bad. I'm pretty pissed off with myself - I mean I plied the whole thing. Three full Joy bobbins plied together. Took me hours. And I just kept going. Part of that was because I was curious about how many Joy bobbins I can fit onto one Skipper bobbin - but doh! Not to mention that the plying is not my best ever - For some reason the Skipper was just clattering along in a very annoying fashion - I'm hoping it's just that one bobbin.

Only one thing to do really at this point, and that's overdye. I did that after I got home from work tonight. Just threw a bunch of red into a big bowl and threw it in the nukerwave. This skein probably weighs about 10ozs is the good news. And now it's just basically red - so that's good - but those colours that I started off with? The first two that I bought at Lambtown I am mourning them, and kicking myself a bit. Don't get me wrong - usually when I'm dyeing I'm not going for any particular effect - color is good. I like color - I like to mix colors up - I really have fun with it. I think a lot of my problem is that I'm not used to playing with "real" dyes - and I overdid it big time. No pictures of the overdyed version yet - it's drying.


I had a hellatious day at work on Friday, and I did something that I haven't done in so long - I just can't even remember the last time it happened. I stopped off at Borders on my way home - picked up a book (Phantom by Terry Goodkind), got home and took to my bed. My son is off camping with my family, and my boyfriend was down in Southern California - so I had no interruptions - nobody wondering what was for dinner, asking me questions, talking to me, nothing - no distractions of any kind. I dove headfirst into that book, totally escaped from my own reality. I read a lot and knit a little on my Azalea shawl, finished the book Saturday in the early afternoon. .

I emerged from my book and cleaned the house - did all the laundry - mopped floors, scrubbed toilets - the whole cha cha. Boy it felt good to get all that done! I haven't been home much lately, and I just haven't gotten to all the deep cleaning stuff in too long. Clean sheets, less muck, whew.

I haven't spent an entire weekend at home in a long long time - I really needed that.

Saturday night the BBE called and asked if he could bring anything - I said sure! Dinner. He did good. I didn't want to mess up my nice clean kitchen and I was tired. It was just a take and bake pizza and a couple of premade salads, but hey, I didn't have to cook and mess up my nice clean kitchen so it was good.

Sunday I spun the whole bobbin of the orange merino tencel from hell, and plied it together into the wrongness I pictured above. Yep - I'm still kicking myself.... Oh well, live and learn.

Tonight I went home to do some dyeing. I wasn't even planning on overdyeing the orange yuck, but I got one look at it in natural light - and just knew. What I was planning on doing was taking lots of pictures and dyeing up the Optim, the rest of the merino tencel, and myabe some silk. Well - I dyed all of those and I found some BFL to dye, lots more silk, some other mystery wool and some superwash merino. I think I probably ended up dyeing 4 pounds of fiber.

I fully intended to take copious amounts of photos of all the different steps that I did and show some kind of tutorial - but wow - is that hard! I really have to wait until my daughter is around or something. I love taking pictures, but having to stop where I'm at and take pictures in the middle of dyeing silk and optim blues and greens, or some bfl blues and greens and pinks - wearing latex gloves? I honestly think that it's just something that isn't possible for me. I did pretty well up until the point where I actually started dyeing.

There's a picture of the vinegar that I used.

A picture of the bowl that I poured the red dye into before I overdyed the assault to my retinas. Pictures after? Well, I already said it's drying and it's dark outside - I will get some pics - good ones (hopefully) after it's all dryed.

There's a pic of a stainless steel bowl that I poured the green dye into.

There's a pic of the Merino/Tencel waiting to have dye poured on it.

After that? Nada - nothing - no enchilada.

Also there's absolutely no guarantee that I will be able to identify which fibers are which. There was one that started off as a mystery - but I can't remember what colour I dyed the superwash merino - that could be interesting! I think it's the really dark red/blue/green.... Better try to do a felting test I guess.

So the good news - I'll have lots of fun fibers to spin up. Photo ops galore. No more retina assaulting orangeness. And the fun of trying to figure out which fibers are which. Sigh - I need a photographer - and a stunt knitter would be kinda nice too!

The Azalea shawl is 10 repeats in - no new pics, sorry - but it's coming along nicely! I'm firmly into the blue, getting closer into green, and FO-ness. Still loving the flow of the pattern, and no bumps in that particular road.

Just a tiny butterfly on the flowers by my work

Heads or Tails

The start of my Azalea shawl out of my handdyed two ply silk.

So, as you might have noticed, I have an awful lot of stuff going on with all my projects right now. Between the two wheels, and my spindles, not to mention the bagillion WIP's that I'm knitting right now. I've been splitting time between work, home and my BBE's house for a while now (almost a year actually!). My wheels are at home, and I always have at least one knitting and a spindle project that I schlep around with me to work on when I'm not at home, so I've been doing a lot of spinning at home - which works nicely except that I tend to do most of my crafty work at home, and have been feeling like I'm not getting much done.

I decided to try to mix things up a bit, and when I have the time to get a little work done bring it on in more of a random mix. So after dinner I've been flipping a coin - heads is knitting, tails is spinning. Then if I get heads I further refine my choices.... For a knitting night I flip again with two projects in mind - new project/old project. For spinning it's big wheel/small wheel.

Well, the last 4 nights in a row have been knitting. How does that happen? Ask any mathemetician it is not probable. Apparently I should have been able to do a bit of spinning done since last Saturday!

But I did finish my P90!! Whoohoo, finished objects are so good.

I also started my Azalea shawl (pictured above) out of my handspun rainbow silk, which I'm liking very much so far. The coin has fallen to the Azalea shawl for the last two nights.

I mentioned that I've done this shawl a couple of times already, and I'm finding it very soothing. I like the pattern (obviously, this is the third version!). I love the symmetry, I love the look of the flower petals radiating out of each other. I love the general flow of the pattern. It is very intuitive, I don't have to concentrate too much on it, and it just comes out looking very pretty. Other bloggers have called it mindnumbing - but I like mind numbing - bring it on!

If I ever get to spin on my Joy again I've decided that I'm going to go ahead and spin up the merino tencel blend that I dyed the other night. I had been thinking that some kind of orangey rosey colour to go with the other two bobbins that I spun last week? I think it was last week anyway - time is flying by these days - I'm so busy I don't have time to think straight half the time.

Anyway, when I was dyeing this I just couldn't see the yellow tones that I wanted, so I added some straight dye powder into the mix. Hung it up thinking, it'll work out ok - well, when I got home the next night this blinding brightness greeted me from the shower. I still think it will be alright. It will definitely be interesting! I'm planning on spinning it a bit finer than the other two bobbins, if of course I ever get to spin on my Joy again. And hey, at least it's not all blue all the time!

I had a comment on my last post from Tallguy asking if I could name the flowers that I post on the bottom of a lot of my posts.

I take a lot of pictures on my walks - it brings me a lot of joy. I've found myself looking at the world in a whole different way since I got my camera. I really enjoy taking pictures of things I find pretty! Does it detract from the image that I capture that I don't have a name for it? The obvious Shakespeare quotation comes to mind...

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

I will try to let you know what they are from now on - but there are a lot of them that I just don't know - the best I can come up with is wildflower for the one pictured at the bottom of my P90 post. The one before that was some wild irises and a rose - but those are pretty obvious.

This one is a macro of a Lychee - we have a tree right by work and I got some nice shots of some ripe ones that had fallen off the tree. Very evocative of the Merino Tencel that I dyed the other night.

P90

Pattern: p90
Yarn: Jonelle DK cotton/rayon from John Lewis (uk)
Mods: Quite a few. I subbed the recommended yarn, and did it in two solid coloured stripes - just 2 row garter stitch, at the top I did some wider stripes of the grey. I made the top triangle quite a lot longer than called for in the pattern, (36 rows vs 24). I changed the decrease in the center top. Probably a few more that I can't think of right now - but it's done! And I love it! You can see the pics better on my Flickr album clicky on the link up there to your left.



More to talk about - no time! Have to go feed the ravening teenage boy.

Have fun!

Abi

Flotsam

Last year we had some pretty major flooding happen in the area. My BBE's sister had a box wash up into her yard, and tried to find out who it belonged to, with no success. She told the BBE that maybe he should come and take a look, because it looked like it had tools in it. Well, we went and took a look, and what did I see? Well, there were 2 pairs of electric sheep shearers, 2 big ball winders, a wooden umbrella swift, some kind of a rug hooking machine - and a couple of other things that I couldn't even identify! She's held on to the box for quite a while now, and needed to make some room in her shed - so we went over and grabbed the ballwinders and the swift, all were quite mucky and the swift was missing some of the connectors to hold the arms. And you know what the weird part about all this is? She lives about a block off of the Freeway - there are no sheep or any other type of fiber animals within miles and miles of here!

We took everything to the BBE's shop and cleaned them up, and he fixed the swift for me too! We took these puppies apart, and cleaned every piece we could get to. The BBE even took the metal guides and ran them on his grinder with the wire wheel to get all the pitted rust off.

Now I have 3 ball winders (the one I have at home is just one of the little blue ones) and 3 swifts/skein winders. I've been working with one of the little Japanese metal swifts, which hasn't been ideal for bigger skeins. One of my niddy noddy's is just too big for the little swift, though I can make it work fairly well if I put my arm into the bottom of the skein and wind slowly. My Japanese metal swift is mounted on my bookshelf pointing out into the living room, so that worked for me, but not as well as having a lovely huge swift!



I love that my new wheel has a hole at the top to accommodate a skeinwinder - and now this new (to me) swift. I love a lot of things about my new wheel though, so I thought it was time to take her outside to get some more pics. It was getting a bit late in the day, hence the long shadows....


Boo is not happy about the new wheel, and he is even less happy about the new swift. I've got it folded away at the moment, but all this stuff is just "too big". I'm sure he'd be better about all this if we had a bigger place, but I try to keep Skipper in my room as much as possible, when I'm not using her.












Here's what I've been spinning. Remember the Merino/Tencel blends that I bought at Lambtown? Well, they've turned into two full Joy bobbins - about 4 ozs each. I'm having a bit of a quandry as to what I'm going to do as far as plying is concerned. They're fairly fine singles, and I could simply just ply them together. Or I could spin up another bobbin of undyed merino tencel blend that I bought the same day - or I could dye up that Merino Tencel (I'm thinking an orangey/pinky colour - fairly bright, more on the orange side - but with pink thrown in for good measure - if, of course I can manage to get that right!). And of course - I have 8 ozs of the undyed merino tencel blend so I could even dye both of those up some kind of coordinating color to go with this current stuff, and then spin and 2 ply those together to be used in a project.

On the Knitting front:

I started another Azalea shawl from Marianne Kinzel's First Book of Modern Lace Knitting with my rainbow dyed silk last night. I'm only doing 2 repeats this time - working back and forth. This will be the third time I've knit this pattern. The first time I did three repeats, and didn't make it nearly big enough. The second time I knit 4 repeats and gave the shawl to my grandmother (I tried to take pictures of it before I gave it away - the only one that came out halfway decent became my blog header!), this time it will be just 2 repeats, which I'm positive will block out to a nice triangular shawl shape.

Also, I have an FO to show off - next post I promise! I finished the P90 top, which I am tremendously pleased with! It is maybe the most flattering knit I have ever completed. I need to go jump in the shower so that we can go do a phot shoot. Stay tuned!


And have fun!

Foo Dogs

Foo Dogs
Originally uploaded by abiknits.

Basically I'm just testing out the "blog this" feature on Flickr right now. What a great site Flickr is - I just wander around looking at some of the most amazing photographs... Very fun.

This is one that I took a while ago, I just love the property that I live on - these were installed close to a year ago now I think.

My daughter called yesterday to tell me that she's planning on moving to North Carolina next month. I'm not doing so good with this news. It's so far away!

Almost done with the P90 now, should be able to finish it off tonight, and then playing with the new handspun!! I think that the first thing that I cast on is going to be with the cable 4 ply.

All for now...

Rainbow of silky goodness

So I finished spinning and plying the rainbow silk that my sister and I dyed last year using Easter Egg dyes. Basically I put 4 sets of roving side by side on saran wrap and poured vinegerated (Look mom, I made up a word!) Easter Egg dyes in a very long colour progression. This particular yarn came from one of these rovings which was 100% silk. It has grown up to become this 616 yard 2 ply skein that starts off pink and changes to violet, blue, and green - with colour variations inbetween...

Pretty? I sure think so - it's telling me that it wants to be a triangular shawl, not sure how big it will end up.

I'm being Very Good and not casting on any of my handspun until I finish the P90 that I'm working on, which is pretty close to being done.

Here's a not-wonderful picture of half of it. I'm doing both sides the same so that it will be reversible, and also because I do like a low back on my tops. I used the same type of yarn as my No Gauge Swatch Top - Jonelle Shine - 50% cotton / 50% rayon, with a nice drape. I've made a few mods to the pattern as well - nothing major, and I'll list them when I post my done photo.

The other half is done up to the armhole on the right side - so not too much longer until I'm done. I really like it so far. I'd love to do another version in an all over variegated at some point... Maybe the Merino Tencel that I'm spinning on my Joy.


So yesterday I was able to finally get my neighbor to a proper yarn store (Dharma Trading) - thank God! She's really caught the knitting bug, and has made 2 garter stitch scarves so far. It's hard because when I first taught her how to knit I was very happy to grab something out of my stash to get her started. But as it's gone along, it turns out that she's very particular about what colours she wants to work with..."Don't you have this in a red?" Or if it is the right color, then she wants to know if I have it in cotton. Sigh!

She's really going through a really rough patch right now, and we all know that the knitting - it helps when you're going through hard times. I'm happy to try to help her through this a bit - but the going through my stash? Talk about testing my patience.

So anyway, she was finally convinced that my stash is probably not the best place for her to shop and I got her out of her house for the first time in days. She was thrilled to walk into Dharma - I mean she had that intake of breath - and the ohmygod reaction that I think most of us are familiar with. And then she went straight for the fun fur. Lots of fun fur. Yarn with squiggles and hairs and sequins, oh my! And Addis to work with. She's loving the Addis. And I'm loving the fact that I am no longer going to have to worry about her not being able to find what she wants in my stash! I mean - I had most of it shipped home from England - there's a lot of stuff in there that has sentimental value. Stuff I bought on vacations, to Wales, to Malta, to Scotland etc....

Anyway - I guess that's about it for this post. More next time!

And now for some prettiness. Just some purple cone flowers growing up by the main house.

Blogger quiz

You Are 7: The Enthusiast

You are outgoing and playful - always seeing the happy side to life. You're enthusiastic and excitable. You love anything new. Multi-talented, you do many things well... and find success easy. You prefer to keep things light with others. Opening up is hard for you.

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Yep - sounds right to me!!

Confetti wool 3 ply

I took this picture (above) a couple of days ago. Reason No. 289 for the neighbors to think I'm crazy. If I want to take pictures in daylight I wander around the property to find a likely spot with decent light. I wonder what they think of all this sometimes. I mean, it obviously doesn't bother me too much to let the neighbors think I'm nuts - or the workers in the office building across the street from where I work, or the people that see me on my walks everyday... But I do wonder what they must think sometimes.

At the back you can see the colour progressing spindle (which is now full), in the center is the Confetti Wool which I've just finished - and in the foreground is another colour progression of silk on one of my Joy bobbins.

I was told that the Skipper (Schippertj) was really a wheel that was made for spinning a nice bulky yarn. I've gotten so far away from spinning a nice bulky yarn that it's not even funny. I don't know if y'all have noticed - but I've been doing a lot of spinning and putting together a lot of plies just lately - and it takes an awful long time to spin up fine yarn. And to get enough to ply together to make anything useful? Well, it takes about forever. So I've been on a bit of a mission to spin up a bulkier yarn since I got my new wheel.

I spun up about a half a bobbin of Confetti Wool - a soft wool with bits of silk thrums carded into the roving (another purchase from Copper Moose). It's a good deal, and I bought a lot of it about a year ago (it was on sale!). So when I got my purty little Skipper I decided to give it a go with the Confetti, hoping to get a bulky designer (newbie) type yarn.

I only spun the half a bobbin because I was getting a bit bored - and of course the bobbins on my new wheel are ginormous (which is so awesome!), and I have new scrummy stuff that I want to spin up, so I went ahead and wound this wool into a lovely little yarn cake on my ball winder, fully intending to ply from both ends of the center pull ball cake.

When it was time to start the plying my brain did an about turn and decided that I should Navajo ply instead. I started off with a nice chain 3 ply when I remembered that I don't really like Navajo plying. Darn. Now what?

I remembered that I'd spun up a couple of spindles of this confetti about oh, a year ago - and had just wound them up on storage bobbins until I could get an idea of what I wanted to do with them, so I went and rummaged around my Monstrosity of a Stash and found them. I had spun up one big honking spindleful, and another smaller spindleful - No way I was going to have enough to 3 ply the whole shebang together. But I decided to just start anyway - merrily plying away from three strands. Of course the smaller bobbin gave up the ghost pretty early on. No problem - I'll just grab the other end of the center pull ball and keep going. Even the fuller (more full? ) spindleful gave out pretty quickly - so I was back to Navajo plying.... Yep - this skein has been 3 plied every which way - and you know what? You can't really tell which parts are which in the skein. Though I could very possibly change my mind about that once I start knitting it up.

Here it is in all it's glory - 185 yards of very soft Confetti Wool - 3 plied in every direction. As you can see it's not as fine and even as most of my stuff - but that's a good thing! I have absolutely no idea what in the world it is going to be when it grows up - but that's ok too! This was some spinning for spinnings sake, and I'm sure a project will find it soon.

And now - for some random prettiness.

Spinning - lots of spinning

I finally finished spinning the next batch of cable 4ply - the new yarn is pictured here on the left - with the cable 4 ply that I did back in June. I only had enough of the original blue wool silk blend to do one ply on this latest batch. The first batch came in at 411 yards - this new batch is 450 yards. Both weigh somewhere around 140 grams each. I'm hoping that I will have enough to make an actual project of some sort now. I figure that the second batch took me just over a month - and at least 1800 yards of singles. I averaged 50 yards of spinning per day.

Here's me spinning the first ply on the ferry on the way to San Francisco - that's San Quentin in the background. This was one of the first pictures that I've gotten of me actually spinning. Funny how that works when you're the "photographer" of the bunch - not many pics of yourself - just everything and everyone around you.

I take my spindle everywhere with me, and will spin in the supermarket, the bank, the ferry, festivals, street fairs - you name it, I'll spin there. It annoys the high heavens out of my teenage son - but hey, it's so easy to embarrass the heck out of teenagers, and I have to have some fun right? I mean I get to put up with the moodiness, the dirty laundry strewn all over the house, the joys of getting him to take his turn at the dishes, and all the other trials and tribulations associated with being mom. If my spinning is a problem for him, well - that's his problem.

I thought it would be nice for y'all to show pics of the different stages of this particular yarn. I am always so pleased to see what the fiber looks like before spinning. So many times you only see the finished product, and as a spinner I really appreciate being able to see where it all started.

This is my Copper Moose American Beauty - my favourite spindle. It's about 1.5 ozs - I can usually get about 450 yards of singles on it when it's full. Two of these will basically fill up a Joy bobbin. This is the only ply of this batch that is the same as the first batch.





This is the other wool/silk blend (70/30) - from the Garden of Eden colourway from Copper Moose. It was much different than what was pictured on the e-bay - a bit disappointing, but still very pretty. It's being spun on my latest spindle acquisition - a zebrawood American Beauty (I loved the first one so much that I bought another).










I needed to dye some silk top to go with this batch - I used blues and greens, using Landscape Dyes.

I spun them up on a Spinner's Choice spindle that I like to spin silk on. It's a slightly smaller whorl diameter, but you just get so much yardage from spinning 100% silk that it works fine to go with the wool/silk blends that are spun on larger spindles.



















With a cable ply you ply 2 singles together as a set - then 2 other singles on another set (I ply on my wheel - we're talking a lot of yardage here!) Then take both of the yarns that you have just plied and ply them together again in the opposite direction.





I plied the first two bobbins on my Joy - the bobbins were close to being full... Then I took the two Joy bobbins and plied them onto my Skipper. Wow! It works sooo well for plying - I am even more in love with it now. I mean, this is two fairly full Joy bobbins, and it doesn't even come close to being full. And would you check out the size of that orifice! (stop sniggering Monkee!) But it really is huge. I keep trying to make a nice thick homespun single on this wheel - it's not working yet.





And here it is all skeined up outside in the sunlight. It is so hard to get the pictures of silk blends that are representative of what it really looks like - but hopefully you get the idea.

Big Trees

I mentioned in my last post that I'd waffled a bit about going to Lambtown because we were having a family picnic up at Armstrong Woods, near the Russian River on Sunday. This was all planned by my lovely Grandmother. Now Grandmother is the person who first taught me how to knit, and when I was about 7 we moved to the same town where she and my Granddad lived, so my brother and I spent a very good proportion of time at their house.

Grandmother was small and quiet. Granddad was large and very loud. He was always working out in his garage, whistling and building things. He had a couple of huge table saws out there, and boy what a racket he would make. He had a big loud booming voice, and liked to make me jump! I was very slightly terrified of my Granddad when I was little, so I'd hang out in the house with Grandmother a lot. (Not that he was scary or mean in any way - just loud and boisterous).

Now my grandmother just could not abide having bored whining kids around. She was very good at organising projects for us. She is totally and absolutely responsible for teaching me how to knit. It's funny though because my dad and my mom both knit as well - but they knit continental, and GM taught me how to knit in a throwing style. If I'd get stuck at home and ask my mom how to purl or something I'd get really frustrated because she just didn't do it "right".

When we'd go over to her house she'd have little lists of chores for my brother and I to do. I remember that I got to do a lot of dusting at her house. I don't know how many times I'd be in their room quietly dusting nicknacks when my Granddad would walk down the hall, and yell - "My mamma don't allow no jumping on dat bed!" Used to scare the daylights outta me, and boy I sure would jump (not on the bed of course). It was just his way.

Anyway - enough of the backstory. Back to Sunday and we had a family picnic up at Armstrong Woods. GM's nephew was out visiting from Illinois, with his wife, their two sons and daughters-in-law. I don't really know that side of the family too well - but my dad, and my mom and step-dad - all 3 of my brothers, my sister and her boyfriend, and my daughter and the Boo were all there too. And of course we can't forget about the baby of the family - little Zane - here he is being held by my brother Jared (his uncle). Isn't he just the cutest?



We all went for a walk from the picnic area to the outdoor ampitheater. We found a fallen tree on the way. It's so hard to give any kind of a sense of the hugeness of the redwoods - I mean saying that some of the trees are 300 feet tall says something - but I don't know - those numbers just don't mean as much as seeing what a fallen tree looks like with people walking along the top of it.





Here I am with my daughter and my sister at the ampitheater. We sure had fun!

It's very hard to explain - but there's just something that is so soul fulfilling by going and spending even an afternoon in the big trees like this. It had been a while since I had gone.

And yes, I did knit the top - I call it my galloping horse top - because it's got so many mistakes that you need to be riding a galloping horse to get away with it - but it's Colinette Wigwam - my own pattern, which I'm thinking of updating.

Just wait till you see the new yarn - I haven't started knitting anything with it yet - but it's going to be beautiful. The silk spinning is coming along nicely - both on the wheel, and on my spindle. And I just plied up the confetti wool that I'm spinning on my new Skipper wheel - three ply!