A Stitch In Time

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I talk about my various and sundry hobbies here as well as my life in general. The primary focus of this blog is my spinning and my knitting but you can find just about anything covered if you hang out long enough.

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My sweetie got tagged for a meme recently, and actually tagged me!  This is a bit of a surprise, but he said it was so I would post about something other than fiber! 

So here it is:  Music Meme

1) How much music do I have?

Heh, by myself? 400-500 albums.  Ranging in styles/genres from Classical to Heavy Metal.  Between hubby and I it’s about 1,000+.  When we combined our CD collections (this was a bigger deal than buying a house, and getting pets together!) we had about 13 duplicates.  I can tell you what most of them were too:  2 AC/DC albums, Back in Black and Who Made Who, Depeche Moade’s Violater and Personal Jesus, Queensryche’s Rage for Order, Van Halen’s 1984, Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, Motley Crue’s Dr. Feelgood, Metallica’s Master of Puppets and the Black album, and possibly a Pearl Jam CD…

2) What was the last CD I bought?

Ofra Haza.  Arab pop music actually.  I took a belly dancing class and one of the songs is one we did our warm ups to.  (I also bought a couple others but can’t remember the names.)  Wait, the most recent might have been the Frank Calliendo CD’s we got at his performance at the Baltimore Improv.  But since we’ve been hooked up to iTunes, it’s a rare thing for us to even go into a music store…

3) What am I listening to right now?

Hmmm, well, nothing actually.  But during the work day I listen to the 98 Rock morning show until 10am then I switch over to a commercial free Classical station.  In the car I have lately been listening to a lot of Poe, Jem and Madonna’s Immaculate Collection.  (Yes, I AM a child of the 80’s, how did you know?)  At home, if I listen to music, it could be anything from Pat Benatar’s Tropico to A-ha’s East of the Sun West of the Moon, to Suicidal Tendencies, to Garth Brooks.  It’s rare that I listen to music of my own choice at home though.  We usually listen to whatever Kirk wants to listen to because I like 90% of his music and he only likes 10% of mine…

4) Five songs I listen to that mean a lot to me?

Hmm, this is difficult.  I tend to like a body of work, not a single song. 
    1. Proud to be an American by Lee Greenwood.  This song means a lot to me because it came out during the Cold War and while my family and I were living overseas.  Because I had been to Communist Block countries and saw first hand the difference in freedoms, this song hits me hard in the chest like a hammer.  It was also the song that closed down the NCO club every night on the PA, not that I was old enough to have witnessed that mind you… 
    2. I Was Brought To My Senses by Sting on the Mercury Falling album.  This was the first song my husband and I danced to as husband and wife at our wedding. 
    3. Closer to Fine by the Indigo Girls.  Why?  Not sure, but I passionately LOVE to sing that song. 
    4. In My Life by the Beatles.  The sentiment is one that touches me deeply not to mention that I simply love the song.
    5. That’s What Friends Are For - Gladys Knight, Dionne Warwick, Stevie Wonder and Elton John together.  Oh, what is there to say?  The sentiment says it all.  On of my all time favorite songs.  Reminds me of a few people I lost touch with from the move from Germany to MD and how very much I miss them.  Even now, 20 years later… 

5) A few Artists who’s body of work has effected you the most.

Hmm, effected me?  Eh, how about ones I love.  David Lanz/Paul Speer, Michael Jones, (their music got me through college. New Age instrumentals), Queensryche, AC/DC, Depeche Mode, Sting, Peter Gabriel, the Beatles, Sarah McLaughlin, Melissa Etheridge, The Smiths

6) I’m adding this one myself.  What Genres of music do you dislike?

For me, Jazz is about the only genre of music that I universally do not enjoy.  Rap is hit or miss, as is flemenco guitar and country music.  But universal dislikeis reserved for Jazz. 

Now I’m supposed to pass this on to other people.  Hmm, I don’t think I will do that per se, but if you think this is remotely interesting, (and you weren’t tagged when it went around the knit blogging world, please take it and run with it. 

Happy Friday! 

So, this week will have quite the cultural opposites.  Last night, I dragged my hubby to this.  It was a really well done production of King Lear and which also happens to be one of my favorite Shakepeare tragedies.  It was a fun, if long, night.  There is major construction going on in Baltimore right now, and the trip that could normally take 30 minutes took an hour and fifteen.  But, on the up-side, I finished the foot and to shaping on the Fascine braid sock #1.  I still have to graft the toe.

Tonight will find us at the film Serenity which should be absolutely fantastic.  If you haven’t heard of it, the film is an extension of the TV show Firefly, which was prematurely killed by the evil folks at the Faux network…  Bastards never even gave it a chance.  Didn’t air all the episodes, and the ones they did air they aired totally out of order.  I think what I loved about Firefly so much is how much it resembles the “future view” of one of my favorite Sci-fi authors, Mike Resnick.  His description of how life was in “the Rim” is very similar to the universe of Firefly.  While his books are rather hard to find these days, the Widowmaker series, Oracle, Soothsayer, Prophet, Santiago (and the recently published sequal), and many others written in this same universe are just wonderful.  Firefly and Serenity remind me of them

So in the space of 48 hours I will have travelled from Elizabethian England to the far future.  Quite the culture contrast…    Hopefully the rest of the weekend will hold less excitement…  I really want to commune with my spinning and hopefully find my Bramble Berry in-progress.  I seem to have mis-placed it. 

I read one of the best posts over at Annie’s site Knitty Gritty this morning.  I enjoyed it and the resulting comments so much that I decided to post the questions posed by her reader as well as my own response because as usual, I have oh so much more to say on this! 

Here’s the question: Has blogging about knitting (or just blogging in
general) enhanced your knitting? If blogging has been a benefit to
your knitting, how? If not, why?

What a wonderful set of questions! 

For me, the answer to if blogging has enriched my knitting, the answer is yes, but not in the way it has for many others.  It’s all about exposure for me.  I had no idea about so very many patterns and designers until I started reading blogs around cyberspace.  For that I am grateful to the online “community”.  It has not improved or changed my personal knitting however, because I am the type of person that just doesn’t realize I should have trepidation about something new and possibly difficult. I have been doing things related to yarn or thread since I was 5 years old, and whether I blogged or not, I would still be doing the same things. 

What blogging has really done for me is that it has enhanced my spinning bravery.  I realized through blogging that I enjoy spinning and knitting from my handspun more than I enjoy just knitting with a commercially processed yarn.  Because of blogging and friends I have met through and because of it, I got introduced to one of my greatest joys as a spinner.  Raw fleece.  Were it not for blogging, I would not have gotten involved with raw fleece due to the fact that I would have no one to share the journey with.  While my own crafting is a largely solitary pursuit, it is nice to share an aspect of it with friends. (LadyV and Vicki, this is where you two have enriched my life so very much… Not to mention you are just cool chicks that I am lucky to call my friends.)

I see blogging and my own projects as a journey.  While I must travel my path alone, I can enjoy companionship along the way, each fork in the path is one that I choose the direction I will take and maybe I’ll continue along with my current companion, and/or meet a new companion to travel with for a while until our paths diverge.  I look at RL friendships the same way.  We travel with friends down the path of life and sometimes we have a different pace, or take different forks in the road.  Will we ever meet on the road again?  Maybe, but maybe not and that’s ok.  To have had them as a companion on the journey, however brief has enriched my life and my world view. 

The reason I look at myself and my life this way is two-fold.  I am an only child, and as such I have spent a lot of time alone and have come to appreciate and enjoy that time.  Second, my childhood consisted of moving around a fair bit due to my dad’s military career and the Cold War.  I lived in PA (2 years), MD, Great Britain, Germany then finally back to MD to stay.  While yes, I spent a lot of time in Germany (6 yrs) and England 4 yrs) , the other folks I met along the way also moved around a lot so it was rare to find a lasting friendship.  I looked at friendships as transient things and always looked forward to meeting new people.  I went to 3 highschools in 4 years (High School was grades 9-12 where I lived).  Starting with Germany, moving to MD one school my Sophomore and one school my Junior and senior years.  College was yet another group of people, and those are the friends I have really worked hard to keep as those are the people I truly have a connection with as we have similar interests intellectually and personally.  I’ve also found that the friends I have made through my hobbies have lasted a long time also.  So hopefully you all understand me a little more now.  My wanderlust that I had as a child has manifested itself in a different way now as I have stayed in the same area and even the same house for 6 years.  It is why I have to change my surroundings by changing the colors around me every few years.  It is the only way I don’t start to feel stagnant and suffocated.  Spinning and knitting help with that too… As do blogs…

So yes, blogging has enriched me as a person as well as a crafter, but it boils down to its effect on me in the end.  I am more of an observer when it comes to blogging.  I only comment if something truly moves me, or I feel I have something relevant to add.  Lately, I’ve not been very relevant feeling.  It’s not that I don’t visit the same blogs every day, I still do.  I just haven’t had much to say lately.  Hopefully you will all forgive me. 

So thank you again to Annie for making me really evaluate my own motivations.

Well, over the weekend we had fabulous fun with our friends P&W.  They make the best margaritas, both strawberry and original varieties.  So we decided that we would try to make some ourselves. 

This would be easier of course if we had a decent blender.  The original plan was to get one on Sunday, but exhaustion took over after we finished work on the wall.  So after work I went to the grocery store to pick up the stuff for tacos.  I was exhausted, and forgot the lettuce and remembered when I was nearly home.  Turns out my sweetie was home and we agreed to go get the lettuce, and a blender so we could indulge in those margaritas.  We went to the Bed Bath & Beyond near us and picked out a Kitchen Aid blender.  We also got a new coffee grinder.  We went to the liquor store and got some white tequila and triple sec, then on to the grocery store where we got lettuce and some other stuff.  It had been raining since we left the house, and so we were happy to be home for the evening so we could try out the new blender.  So I put away the groceries while my sweetie opens up the blender.  And lo and behold, we have aBlack & Decker blender in the Kitchen Aid box!  Doh!  So back out into the rain we went.  They recognized us at the store, since it was a week night and we had just been there…  They let us go get a new box, which we opened to see if it really contained the Kitchen Aid blender this time, and we were on our merry way with many apologies.  I feel bad though because someone cheated the store.  That kind of thing really irks me.  The B&D blender is $60 less than the Kitchen Aid, so someone must have bought 2 blenders, one B&D, one Kitchen Aid, switched the Black and Decker into the Kitchen Aid box and then brought the Kitchen Aid box back.  That or they switched them in the store.  Anyway, that sort of thing really irks me because of the dishonesty.

So by the time we got home we were SO ready for margaritas!  We overfilled the blender and got all kinds of red stuff all over the floor, counter, stove, Max and ourselves.  We had to laugh.  After that we re-blended, finding a good ratio by the end of the night…  Boy was it funny though.   

Not much else got done last night! 

LadyV stopped by my house on Saturday for a bit of a swap meet.  We swapped fleeces with one another.  We hadn’t seen each other in a few weeks, and it was time!  I had 10+ pounds of fleece to give to LadyV and she had probably twice that to give to me!  I have a boat-load of washing to do! 

Earlier in the week I was doing some spinning of a present I had received after the Estes Park Wool Festival in Colorado.  Snow sent me a 70/30 blend of Camel and Silk.  The bag said it was only 1 ounce, but I weighed it when I was done and it was 1.6 ounces! 

Score!  I finished up all of that over the weekend, and I started spinning the Tri-colored Jacob roving I purchased at MDS&W.  I have a total of a pound.  I separated out the 3 colors and am working on the cream color right now. 


My plan is to make a Charlotte’s web shawl, but in these naturals.  I’m looking forward to it. 

On the stonework front, we finished the entire back of the house over this weekend and last weekend.  It is a fun process, but VERY hard work.  We never cease to have aching muscles when we’re done for the day!  We’re showing our age no doubt!  I’m so glad that neither of us depend on this kind of work to make our living, else we’d be broke!  We’re just not that fast, or good at it! 

I also got a pattern I had ordered.

It will be made with something I spin up.  I’m thinking maybe some dyed silk roving that I have…  That might be fun to work with…  (I actually have to spin it first of course, but that’s a minor detail… 

So anyway, that’s my weekend in a nut shell. 

Last night, (Monday) we went on a retail adventure…  I’ll have to tell you about that one soon…  We also finally had some good soaking rain.  Our first in well over a month.  Yay!

Do you ever play jokes on your pets?  My hubby and I play a game with our dog Max.  Ever since we found him he has gotten very upset when he doesn’t have his collar on.  We always said it was because he wasn’t owned when he didn’t have a collar.  He had no family to love him and he was scared and ill when he didn’t have a collar so in our minds, he associates no collar with not having a family.  Now Max has skin allergies.  (Yet another reason we think he has a lot of Bull Terrier in him…) He gets 2 25mg Benedryl a day to keep him from chewing his own skin to bits.  But the worst area for him is under his collar.  He scratches until he bleeds and it upsets me to see him that way.  So we have taken to keeping the collar attached to his leash and just taking it off when he comes in the house to allow his neck to heal.  Max is NOT amused when we do this, and he gets rather feisty.  He decides that he has to chase the kitties to make himself feel better, and then he just gets whacked in the head repeatedly by Ivan and Calvin.  It’s funny to watch, but Max really is unsettled without his collar.  When he was a tiny puppy we would take his collar off before baths and tease him that he was no longer owned.  Now it’s just a running gag in the house and Max knows that when his collar comes off it doesn’t always mean bath time.  I hate to see him go through this uncertainty, but it is for his own good.  We want his neck to heal.  And while we joke about his not having an owner without his collar, he is chipped, so God forbid if he should ever get loose and lose his collar, hopefully a vet would read the chip and we would have our baby back.  I adore Max, and to see the change in myself in less than 2 years from a cat lover and dog fearful to a dog lover has been really amazing to me.  My husband and friends still sometimes shake their heads and laugh seeing me snuggling with my puppy and letting him lick my face.    But anyway, if you have a dog, does he get upset when he doesn’t have a collar or is it just my goofy mutt?  As I have never had a dog until now I don’t really have much experience with this sort of thing.  I would love to hear your thoughts on this. 

Deb tagged me for this meme:

Rules:
1. Go into your archive.
2. Find your 23rd post.
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag five some other people to do the same.

Ok, here goes:

Kirk & I have been designing and sewing a carrying case for this: underwater video camera housing.

That post was on June 30, 2004 right before we left for our dive vacation on the Grand Cayman Island.  We had a wonderful time on that vacation, but sadly about 6 weeks after we got back, Hurricane Ivan completely demolished the Cayman Dive Lodge.  We were so sad to hear of it as we had been ready to sign ourselves up to go back!  They are hoping to be up and running again for the busy season in 2006.  I just hope they are able to rebuild at all, as the location is pristine, the people fun and the diving is spectacular!!!!

Thanks for that trip down memory lane Deb!

Who to tag?  Hmmm, I think Rebekah, Kristi, Ann, Jacqui, and Susie.

My blog has been attacking me since I got home on Friday night.  Every time I go onto it to check my favorite blogs, it stares at me and says, “What about me?“  I stare back and pretend it didn’t just talk to me.  Otherwise you all would think I lost a marble or two.  So anyway, after finishing the spinning ofthe blue fiber on Tuesday night prior to leaving for California, I plied the small bobbins.  The resulting yarn is very pretty, but I only finished one skein before I had to pack and go to bed to wake up at O’dark-ugly to catch my flight Wednesday.  5:00am comes too early on the best of days…  So anyway, considering I wasn’t awake, and felt surly at best, I decided to read.  I had picked up the sequel to Eragon a week or so back and started it.  It’s called Eldest and is so far a pretty good book, but it has a tactic within it so far that I find distracting at best, and downright torturous at worst.  It is the tactic used by Tolkein in Return of the King.  A chapter or 2 about one set of characters and a chapter or two about another, flip-flopping back and forth.  Invariably, an author picks the group I have the least interest in to be the subject of most of the material, while only giving me info on the set I care about in a trickle.  I found the sections of Tolkein which involoved Slogging through Mordor were torturous.  I despised them and was nearly bored to tears much as I was through the entire book of The Hobbit.  I was rooting for the Dark Elves, trolls, spiders and Smaug.  I wanted those whiny dwarves and Bilbo to meet a painful end.  But anyway, I digress.  I read about a third of the book on the way there.  It’s good, don’t get me wrong, but the bits I care about are short and spread thin for my taste.  I don’t hate the other parts, I just find them boring by comparison. 

Anyway, the trip went well.  I learned a lot and enjoyed the meetings.  They were enlightening, which is a rare thing in business meetings. 

By Friday morning, the alarm rang too soon, and by 7:00am PST I was in a cab ferrying to a bus, which took me to the airport.  I got home at 8:00pm EST and was pretty wiped out.  But I did watch the movie on the flight.  It was The Longest Yard with Adam Sandler and Chris Rock.  It was funnier than I expected.  The rest of the time I knitted on the Fascine Braid sock I had started on my trip to see A in St Louis for the Fourth of July.  I managed to finish the heel flap, turn the heel, pick up the stitches, complete the gusset and start on the rest of the foot.  At least now it is recognizable!    By the time we landed, I was so happy to see my hubby, and when we reached home, my puppy and kitties mobbed me!  No knitting or spinning happened Friday night! 

Saturday morning, we were up and working in the yard by 8:00am.  We were working on our second set of stonework.  We did all of the line leveling and digging that day.  We worked for more than 4 hours, and by the time it got into the upper 80’s, we were sapped of strength and energy.  We came inside and proceeded to shower and go to the movies.  We saw Lord of War with Nicholas Cage.  My sense of humor is twisted.  I realize this.  I married a gun enthusiast.  I realise this too.  I laughed more times during that film than I have in a long time.  Some of his lines were truly classic.  I guess partly because I look at the world a little differently than most.  My favorite part was when Gorbachev announced the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and he kissed the tv screen, and kissed Gorbachev’s birthmark!  I don’t know why it struck me as so funny, but it did…  Anyway, it’s not a film for everyone…  After that we went to pick up the new Burnout Revenge game for XBox Live.  I made a couple fleece bags and we had pizza since both of us were too tired to cook.  Other than sewing I did nothing fiber related. 

Sunday morning, we were up and outside working at 7:30am.  We nearly finished the entire back of the house and with each brick weighing about 20lbs, I felt every one of them.  Great exercise, and it looks fantastic too.  Various chores and errands later, and I sat down and finally plied the rest of the Blues.  It yielded 13.3 ounces of yarn.  I have to figure out if it is enough for a sweater or not… I have 2 patterns in mind, but it might not swatch out as suitable for either… 

When I was done with the plying of the 2 colors, i had more of the dark blue left and plied it onto itself which resulted in this:

I’ve been steadily getting more fleeces…  More washing to do.  One of these days I will be done.  No, really…

Not much got done yesterday.  No fleece washing and very little spinning.  I expect even less fiber activities for tonight.  Bummer.  Trying to get myself together to be away for 3 days, while still leaving my household in some semblance of order.  Bleh.

Almost done spinning my blue fiber!  To answer Tracy’s question, I am not sure what I will do with it yet.  I hope to have enough yarn to do a sweater, but if not, it will certainly be enough to make a vest.  So, it just depends on how many yards I end up with and how it looks.  Yeah, I know, it’s a non-committal answer…  But it’s true at least. 

I did not finish my fleece washing this weekend.  I wanted to, but I did not have the motivation.  My hubby came home on Fridy night and I wanted to spend time with him rather than wash a lot more fleece.  What I did do however, is spin the blues.  At MDS&W this year I purchased a pound of roving in 2 colors of blue.  This weekend, I took this:

And turned it into this:

If I am dilligent, I should be able to finish the rest of the dark blue roving tonight. 

Then I’ll be in plying land…  Until my business trip on Wednesday.  So it’s just today and tomorrow for me to be posting this week. 

I hope your weekend was wonderful!

Hi Ho the derry-O, a washing I will go…  I’ve spent a bit of time fleece washing recently.  In fact, I’m down to only having half of Kai and half of the Targhee Cormo left…  Wheee…. 

I am finishing up Leeza right now.  That Targhee cormo should be hitting the sink a little later…  Maybe by the end of the weekend, I will be caught up!  That would be lovely!

Today is a wonderful day!!!!  I got to talk to my hubby!  He’s doing well, and his work is progressing ahead of schedule.  He got to have a chopper ride over the city of New Orleans and some of the surrounding area.  He’s very upbeat and positive and that is wonderful for me to hear.  I actually teared up a little when I got to talk to him.  I felt like a giddy school girl!   

Max has been doing a bang up job of taking care of his mommy.  And to show just how much lovin’ he’s been getting, I will give you all these photos of my baby pup with Kisses all over his face and head.  My friend J is the culprit on this one.  SInce her pup is reddish, she can’t do this with him.  I’m constantly leaving lipstick stains on Max unintentionally, so J left some intentionally and took these great photos of my baby pup.  The first shows him in his characteristic smile.  I like the second one a lot too because it makes him look goofy, which he most certainly is. 

Having a stainable pup can be fun sometimes!  And he loves the kisses.  He’s been getting a lot of them with his daddy being gone, so this was an appropriate day to post 2 of my favorite Max pictures.  I hope you enjoy them!

As promised, here are some pictures…  But first, I had a nice surprise when i got home from work today.  My mailman actually met me at my car window to give me my mail!  And I had a present!!!  Rebekah had asked a while back if anyone wanted some of the molted feathers from her parrot Basil.  I said that i would like to have one because my kitties like feathers.  They are almost akin to catnip for them.  They roll around on them and lick them.  So toaday when my mailman had an envelope from Rebekah, I thought I knew what was in it!  I was half right…  Rebekah sent me not 1, but 3 Basil feathers, and they are all so gorgeous that I am getting yarn/dye design ideas from his lovely feathers!  But, that’s not all!  I also got a wonderful vintage pattern that was published the same year that my hubby was born!  It is a pattern book for Lady Galt yarns and many of the designs are classic in their styling and will probably be knit by me at some point.  Thank you so much Rebekah!  And Thank you very very very much Basil!  You are too kind! 

Aren’t Basil’s feathers gorgeous? 

Now, lest you think I haven’t been doing any spinning, here’s proof!

These are all of the sample skeins I have made from some of the fleeces LadyV and I have been sharing.  The lighter brown skeins are samples of McKinnely the moorit Merino fleece that I received a few days ago.  The dark brown skein on the far right is Carla the Cormo, who will be coming to visit with LadyV and I sometime soon…  You’ve seen the others in different posts recently…

I also finished up the Wilton samples…

Brown
 

Copper

Teal

Moss Green

So, those are all done!!!! 

The Violet, Teal, Golden Yellow, Royal Blue and the 2 greens, Leaf and Moss are my favorites.  It has been an interesting journey so far…

As for the stonework, hers are a few photos:  the first is looking from the driveway to the back yard…

Next, the view from the back yard to the driveway…

Lastly, here is a closeup of some of the stones…

And that is almost everything…

I’ve gotten a few books recently to help inspire me as to what i am going to do with these fleeces…

Have a nice night all!!!! 

I have been a little overwhelmed during the weekend.  I had many fleeces to wash, including 2 fleeces that are 5+ pounds each for my half, and require me to boil water.  I decided to not finish the washing of the fleeces this weekend, but will pace myself during this week.  I will have some time to myself this week as I dropped my hubby off at the airport at 5:30am on Monday so he could fly to Pensacola, Florida and then drive to New Orleans.  He arrived last night late and is probably being choppered to his final destination as I type this.  He will be

is helping to restore communications both data and voice to the US Navy and the relief crews.  I am very proud of him, but at the same time I am missing him terribly.  This will be the first time in 10 years that we will be unable to communicate via phone or e-mail for more than a day.  Talking to Kirk while he is away is such a big part of my daily routine that this will be difficult to get through.  I am usually unphased when he is gone on business, since I can talk to him or e-mail him and I also always know when he will be home, and usually I know where he is.  This time, we can’t communicate, I don’t actually know where he will be, and we don’t know when he will be home.  He hopes on the 10th, but there are no guarantees.  Anyway, having that going on, packing chlorine tabs to make water potable, flashlights, video camera, hand sanitizer, medicines and other things that we normally don’t pack for a business trip certainly had a sobering effect.  But he is doing a lot of good and because of his efforts the relief efforts will be easier to coordinate, the Red Cross will be able to start uniting families, or delivering news.  Every little bit of progress helps.  So thoughts and prayers for all ofthe relief volunteers and the victims of the hurricane are at the top of my mind more now than ever.

But, lest you think I wallowed in sadness all weekend, be assured I did nothing of the sort.  I washed fleece and worked on the beginnings of a stone flower bed retaining wall of sorts.  The first section got done over the weekend before Kirk left, and boy did we work hard!  Saturday was spent making a level line for measuring purposes, and digging a trench to put the bricks and gravel in.  Earlier on Sunday we got 13 bags of gravel from H*me Despot.  Each bag weighs 60 pounds.  I lifted all of them from the cart into the bed of the truck and Kirk moved them around from there.  I gave Kirk the bricks one by one, and they are rather heavy!  we finished the first section of wall and it looks great.  I owe you all pictures, but I have been rather tired and unmotivated to photograph things the last few days.  Perhaps this eveing I will get myself in gear and take those photos…

Monday I washed more fleeces, and did some spinning.  I actually finiahed the 11 samples of the Wilton dye colors!  I’m very happy with the results of the experiment and am looking forward to playing around with this process some more.  Pictures are forthcoming…  Honest…

Just be patient with me the next few days.  I may be a bit flakey… 

I have been so saddened by what is happening in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.  But there is a way to help.  Margene and Susan have set up a blog called Give A Little to keep track of the Knit Bloggers who have donated to help this cause.  There are buttons as well on this site…  And just to motivate people into being more generous, there are prizes! 

It’s a small way to show our support of our fellow countrymen and every little bit helps.  Truly.

I washed fleeces last night…  The fun never ends…  I have over 5 pounds of Kai to wash, 2 Shetland fleeces, Leeza the Cheviot’s fleece, the rest of the Cormo/Targhee, and half of the Black Border Leicster/Lincoln to wash…  Oh yeah, and half of a 10 pound merino fleece that arrived yesterday!!!!  So my weekend activities are spoken for!!!!!