whackadoodle coconut

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...