whackadoodle coconut

this has been a rough month for a lot of people and my life has been no different.  I will apologize now and then again in advance for the break that I've taken and will be taking for the near future. in the meantime, I have been doing some knitting, spinning and overall crafting so I will leave you with this - singles on the spindle ready to ply   2-ply ready to wash ahh nothing like coffee, cookies and gaming for a day well played top it off with a Russian Standard martini and cucumber check out cookinator.blogspot.com for recipes

I look forward to the weekend.  Sleeping in, relaxing, hanging with my beau.  Oh yeah and endless gaming, spinning, knitting, a little house chores, and not really doing anything grownup! What are you're plans for the weekend?  We are expecting rain this weekend, actually for about a week now and nothing, except a few drips! there's been a lot of this going on lately...  and some of this too!

yesterday I blogged ever so briefly about a pair of mittens I was working on with my kool aid dyed yarns and I had to rip them out because I would have to be a tiny tiny person to wear them comfortably.  I restarted them afterwards and spent a few hours delightfully knitting and listening to my podcasts for the morning before costco opened. here's what transpired - the underside of the mitten, you can see where the thumb goes it's knitted afterwards by picking up stitches that are on hold the outer portion of the glove, I love the pattern and the varying dyed yarn that you can see as darker and lighter color here's the oh so sad part, my mitten is so big, well long I guess is a better way to describe it I don't know why the photos do this - so annoying, but if you turn your head you can see that the marker is only halfway down the chart and I still have more to knit (refer to previous picture so see the sizing snafu!) So basically, I've ...

over the long weekend, I took some well deserved relaxing time to spin some fluff (a whole 2 ounces in one weekend!), knit a mitten and then rip it out, because only a small child could wear it (and I am not a small child nor have the hands of a small child), dye some yarn with kool aid. The easiest of them all much to my surprise, as I write this was dyeing yarn with kool aid. 1.  buy kool aid ($3.00 worth, okay I got a little out of control picking colors) 2.  wrap 100% wool yarn into skeins (I did 4-1 ounce batches) raw wool wound into skeins   3.  soak in water and vinegar, you don't really need the vinegar, but I wanted really deep clear colors 4.  I did the coloring in two ways and found this way to be easier and I could forget about it and come back later.  Also, the fiber absorbed all the color and didn't have any rinse out. - place skein into a 4 cup measure cup - measure 1 cup of water and add kool aid packets in desired colors, ...

This past weekend was my birthday and I had a great time!  Friday, J and I stopped at Ostrich Land in Solvang to check out the ostriches and emus.  This was on our way to Village Spinning and Weaving shop on Alisol to get my pre-birthday present of TONS of fluff.  More on that later. Loved the Ostrich Farm, one of the coolest things I've done!  I love feeding "wild" animals.  Last anniversary, we fed the giraffes at the zoo - very cool.   Then we purchased some fluff and head out to the next adventure.  I had my favorite soup on the weekend, plus John made me birthday enchiladas.  MMM YUM!   So far this week, I've spun some fiber, dyed some fiber and relaxed away a few lazy days.  AAHHHH - so nice!   

Last weekend my family and I went out (again) to Sizzlingogi for lunch and topped the afternoon off with a little Doc Burstein's ice cream, and a stop to the Old Town Quilt Shop across the street.  Needless to say, we had quite an old timey weekend. I took a search queue and found this rather funny interpretation of Sunbonnet Sue in which she meets her demise in several ways.  And now let's take on Tuesday!

Just a quick not to say hello and share what I've been up to - Apple Picking at Gopher Glenn Gopher Glen - See Canyon Road Loading up the car with 15 lbs of apples! Korean BBQ at SizzlinGogi yummy pork jowl cooking on the grill And a fun Halloween Party at the local Children's Museum waldo, Japanese lady, a ladybug and the exterminator

I don't recall posting these little pink mittens I designed over summer.  They're called thumbalina, made from Patons bamboo yarn in magenta.  I also made a pair of socks for a friend from the same yarn and with the left over, I did the mittens.  Now I love inventing things and usually they don't turn out so well as these did.     What you should be looking at is the narrow slit in the thumb in picture 2.  I had been contemplating the idea of designing mittens, because over the last couple years I always thought that mittens were really just the toes of socks with a little tube on the side where you put your thumb...oh yeah and no pesky heel gusset.   Here's the good part.  I was listening to the WEBS broadcast that I subscribe to on my iPod and they were interviewing Kristin Nichols who will be teaching a glove class in the near future.  About halfway through, WEBS asks her about using a smart phone with gloves on and that yo...

there has been a bit of a heat wave, that is coming to a close in my hometown.  it has been aweful for October, but not unusual.  we occasionally have warm weather into October, but I don't welcome it or hope that it happens.  In the meantime, I have been trying to stay cool and avoiding any activity that makes it feel warmer than it is. stay cool!

this week has been a little busy since I went out with a friend early on and then took a couple days to spin some yarn and watch the last couple Bond movies I had before returning them.  my latest spinning was an adventure to say the least.  I had a lot of trouble getting the fiber to attach to the leader and almost gave up, but the last try was successful and I went ahead and worked up about an ounce of practice. yesterday I plied them together and what I had thought was going to be a muted rainbow of sorts, it turned out really "fall-ey".  by this I mean, the colors while separate didn't take too much of a scheme, when spun and plied, resulted in a very pumpkin color.  I was disappointed, if you get right down to it.  I tried a new plying method, chain plying or navajo plying.  It's a way to keep your colors together when you are spinning stripey yarn and still produce a 3 ply (like) yarn from singles. I certainly didn't master the technique by any me...

the latest adventure in photography.  Ari and I headed to downtown SLO for some 32 photo shots of some pretty challenging images.  I have yet to be able to edit and ween down what I took, so those will be up in the next week. in the meantime, check out our lunch options at the cookinator blog; out to lunch . Updated: Episode 2 is done! take a look at the video below -

One of the most magical transformations ever is taking the wooly coat from a sheep and turning it into a pair of socks, or toy or sweater.  But nothing compares to doing it yourself. Awhile back John bought me some fiber to spin and I had worked it up and practice for weeks to get enough to spin and all I had was about 100 yards (estimated).  There was also some other yarn I spun that was turned into a zombie.  It was bumpy and lumpy. However now, I have been able to spin a better quality yarn (just over 300 yards) and knit up some socks with it.

Yesterday I finished the dinosaur from the book Knitted Dinosaurs I received as a special gift from Never Not Knitting .  I worked it in leftover yarn from my stash and really whittled it down to only the darker purple and white remaining from this project.  The pictures are the best, but still really cute. his legs are jointed so he can sit and stand his head is a little tilted, due to the frill, but he looks inquisitive

This week, John and I went to Solvang for the afternoon.  We had both been waiting for this day for a couple of weeks and were glad that it was here.  I had also been wanting to get a niddy noddy for my hand spun yarn to both measure the length and to prep the skein to set the twist on my singles. We stopped at the Mustard Seed on Mission street for lunch and had some really good danish food.  Usually I think of danish food as, well danishes or pastries.  But instead, we had danish meatloaf and meatballs and they were delicious.  It helped that were pretty hungry, but regardless, the texture was smooth, the flavor not like anything else I had eaten before and the combination with the cabbage was out of this world.  We sat on the patio and people watched through a leisurely lunch and just enjoyed ourselves. Our next stop was at Village Spinning and Weaving on Alisal.  We had been there before, but like I mentioned I wanted to pick up a niddy ...

I'm almost finished with the latest quilt.  I had a lot of trouble getting the inner borders right and after a LONG day working and another one with the homework, I got it exactly right.  Not almost right, but EXACTLY right. Today was my second day with makeup time and I have finished the quilting part and will trim and bind off in two weeks when I return to class.  That should be plenty of time that day to finish it all.  In whole, I have spent 4.5 days working on the quilt and another partial day to finish the binding. pinned and ready for masking tape and quilting in progress quilting process

Last week a friend and I went to a local park in our area and did a photo scavenger hunt.  This is actually pretty popular (because I searched online for it and as we all know everything online is truth).  Aside, since I picked the spot, I chose the items we were to look for.  I had been to the park before, so I had an idea of what could be there, but then I threw in a few doozies. The List - a tree a clearing water wildlife shadow a great height a sign that humans were here a window shelter smooth something that represents the current season rough right angle pattern change in texture Extra credit - letters spelling your name each color of the rainbow the numbers in your birthdate (mm/dd) a plants defense yourself Updated: included is the video of the photo shoot.    

Yesterday was week two at quilting class I was able to get the rows sewn up and half of them sewn together.  I will be missing next weeks class, but I will be posting the "homework" so you can see the progress.  I hope to be on time still with the final product the following week - last week of class. I had some trouble this week sewing the pieces together, but I think I may have figured out how to work through it.  There are these tiny little 1 inch squares at each intersection which have really been tough for me to ease into the rows and keep their seams matched up.  Now, if I wasn't totally anal about it, it wouldn't bother me.  In fact there is one that refused to match and I am already in self therapy about it. I hope to get the rest of the top done today, work on the borders tomorrow and then Thursday get it basted to the back.  Then the following week, work on the quilting portion (in the shop when the teacher is there) and finally bound off on t...

This week starts the new quilting class and I am enjoying it as much as the last one.  That's a good thing since I will have a lot of homework for the class and will need to pay close attention to the instructions before I leave each week. This first week, I prepped, cut and sewed the 4 patch kaleidoscope squares together and then homework was to get the borders on each of the 36 squares sewn on.  Two full days later I have 36 squares with borders.  Frankly some are kind of crappy looking, but I need a seam ripper to take them apart and redo.  It's okay though, just like frogging the left side of a sweater full of cables and double knitting, it's necessary to look right. Take a look at the surprisingly easy process to get an innumerable number of squares from one fabric.  Actually you could easily count the number of squares it's 42 so far and probably another 36 if I cut the rest of the fabric totalling 78 DIFFERENT 6 1/2 squares. When I say it's easy, it...

A while back now, I knit a little karate gi for Happiness Bunny.  Then a bit later I knit him a giant carrot, in the hopes he would like me better.  Which is to say that his persona given to him by my hubby would like me better, since it's not a real bunny. I also sewed some velcro on his hands so he could hold the carrot, instead of just sewing it to his hands and he can't let go of it. It's a neat little trick I learned from Susan B Anderson . I mention this in post, because I think I am knitting better, without a pattern and being more creative with my craft.  This is important to me because, I know there are a lot of knitters out there that rely solely on patterns and while patterns are really cool, there is a bit of freedom to making it up as you go and simply "knowing" how to do it.  In fact there are entire countries that just "know" how to knit and do it without thinking about it.  Like cooking without a recipe.  I haven't mastered t...

Yesterday was a great day.  I don't think we (as people) say that often enough.  I had a great day.  John picked me up for an outing in Santa Barbara, I met some new people, ate some food (not awesome, but that's okay) and we stopped in Solvang on the way home and I was able to visit Village Spin and Weave on Alisol.  I have been once before when I purchased a nostepinne about a year ago when I first learned how to spin.  I liked their shop, but since I was still pretty new at spinning I picked up just a few ounces of fiber and then head home to practice. I realized after a few weeks of spinning with my "CD on a stick", my fingers hurt like something awful and I needed something a little easier.  Jump forward and after reading and seeing it in action yesterday, I think I might have been doing it wrong.  As the incredibly nice woman who owns the shop says, I have good form, I think I was trying to hard.  As in - storing too much twist, spinning...