2009 Completed Spinning & Knitting (Teresa)

2009 Completed Spinning:

Mardi Gras from Alaskan Sass (4 oz), Blue/White Puffy from Mom (8 oz), Earthy Rainbow (8 oz), Bump from White House, Yellow Bamboo/Merino Batts from Jela, Blue Puff Batts from Corgi (8 oz), Colorful Roving from White House in Oregon (8oz?), Gray Aplaca/BabyDoll (6oz)/White Alpaca/Merino/Mohair (6oz), Woolyhands Box of Crayons (3.5 oz)/Artist Pallet (3.25 oz); Turqoise/Purple from Miss Babs (8 oz); Seamist Merino/Recycled Soda Bottles (3.5 oz); Gale's Art Pastel Corriedale(8oz/146yds/5wpi); White/Gray/Brown Alpaca (6oz/256yds/9wpi)(4 oz/138 yds/9wpi)(4oz/124yds/9wpi); Midnight Roving (8oz/302yds/?); Brown Alpaca/Merino blend (12oz/640yds/11wpi); Mossy Glen Roving (6.6oz/220yds/?); Samples from Phat Boxes/Wensleydale; Pink Mystery Wool

2009 Finished projects:

Four Baby Hats, Bearfoot Primavera socks for M, Handspun Ishbel, Blue Baby Blanket for Peggy, Red February Lady for Tina, Totoro & Soot Sprite, Emily's Hearts, Jennifer's Sweet Georgia Hat, Gramma's Catnip Mouse, Icing Swirl Hat, February Lady Sweater, Brooks Farm Riata Purple Sahara Vest, Blue Northern Lights Midnight Shorty,Green Sheepish Mossy Glen Shorty, Leyburn Socks in Mountain Colors, Toasty Twist Sockalong in Galaxy; Eyelet Garter Ridge Shawl in Handspun Alpaca; White Sock-a-long Socks; Handspun Bucket; Publish Peppermint Twist Sock Pattern; Malabrigo StoneChat Shawl; Spinning Brown Wool; Monterey Socks in Lou's Brews (S); MissBabs Biological Clock Socks; Remake of Turquoise Hat; Bear Ribwarmer

Pictures: Polo and Cielito

Cielito is giving Nancy a kiss and Polo is looking longingly at the girls.

Polo has bred and knows where the girls are. He was way more interested in girls than us.

Cielito was getting and giving love his way.

Pictures: Encanto and Sonqo

Encanto is brown with a red necklace with his name on it. Sonqo is white. The one picture with a brown guy (Encanto) looking straight on at you and Sonqo sideways looking at you.

Merry Christmas to Teresa and I

First a vocabulary / language lesson.

Quechua ("qheshwa") is an indigenous language of the Andean region, spoken today by approximately 13 million people in Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Northern Chile, Argentina, and Southern Colombia. It was the official language of Tawantinsuyu, the Inca Empire.

Cielito Lindo: Cielo means sky or heaven. It is also a term of endearment comparable to sweetheart. Cielito would be "sweetie". Lindo means beautiful.

Sonqo: Sonqo means heart in Quechua, which is a language of the Incas and ancient civilizations in South America

Enquanto: means something about singing / song?? (Look here at a momma alpaca named Serenade here.)

Polo: means Polo as in Marco Polo (You can see a picture of an alpaca named Marco Polo here and here)

You guessed it. Alpacas.
Four for Teresa and I to share. I hope I got the pictures marked correctly (next post because I want to make sure the names go with the pictures I think they go with.

And I hope I remember who is whom - (will correct in another post but want to get something out here).

But there is Polo son of Marco Polo. He's a brown (not sure what the colors are called either.)
Enquanto is brown and mom is Serenade. Cielito Lindo (white) is Nancy's baby and will be a permanent guest here. (Meaning if he ever leaves, it will only be to return home to Nancy at HummingHerd Alpaca's. And Sonqo is white.

Identify please

Mushrooms or toadstools, I need someone who actually knows the difference between the two. Someone who can tell me what kind of fungi are in the pictures.

They are Large, Tall, very pretty fungi. But I don't know what kind.

As you might have guessed from the photos, these are growing indoors. Behind the wall seems to be full and then some and they are coming up through the crack between the wall and the floor.

They will have to be destroyed but in the meantime - are they edible??

Happy 18th!

A Good Christmas, Thanks to All!

First, this is an old gift, but it's been on backorder for many months. So, when it finally came, I just wrapped it and put it under the tree. It's the extra spools and a fast flyer for my Lendrum.

It was, for me at least, a very knitting Christmas. And I really liked it! I got tons of knitting needles. I got some from Mom and some from Dena. I loved them all and you can never have too many knitting needles!

And I got knitting books - tons of knitting books. I got some from Mom, some from Dena and each of the girls gave me knitting books too! (They know what I like . . .wonder who told them?)

I definitely have some projects picked out in the Ganseys, Bohus and Twined books!

My young musician got a piccolo and was pleased. She also got piccolo lessons (well time added to her flute lessons to work on the piccolo.) She is also getting guitar lessons, but they weren't under the tree and are hard to take pictures of . . .

The soon-to-be-college student got the Mac she wanted so badly and was happy. Some evil person convinced her that she absolutely was NOT getting a new computer of any kind, which had made her rather unhappy.

I got a new smart phone - which means I can now get emails when I'm not at home. Mostly it doesn't matter except when I'm at the beach for a week, then I miss getting my emails.


And it was a happy day for the dog too - she got a giraffe stuffed toy that squeaks, some dingo bones and a cool shirt to wear at the beach!

Christmas Trees

This year we decided to put up two trees - well, I thought it was a good idea and twisted an arm until I got my way. The one on the left is the big girl's tree and has all her ornaments on it. The one on the right is the littler girl's tree and has only her ornaments on it. Big girl has her own light up angel tree topper but Littler girl has none, so she borrowed the angel that Mom made years ago. The original idea called for three trees - a small one for each girl and a big one for the parents. I'm kinda glad that idea got nixed cuz trees smaller than these are hard to come by and there isn't room for three this big in my living room. (Really wasn't room for two but don't ever tell my husband that I admitted that.)

Knitting

So, even tho I haven't posted here much at all lately, there has still been knitting going on. I've just been so busy with teaching the knittng class, the last year of high school, the college search and applications and all the other things that go along with two teenagers that I haven't had time to post. So, here are some pics of some of the things I've been doing. First pic is two of the four baby hats I've made in the last two weeks. One of these isn't quite finished and one of the two missing (already given) ones was not this style. But they were all similar.


And, then there is the Mr. Greenjeans that I'm making for myself. It's been sorely neglected but it's still coming along. Knitting the cabled ribbing is tedious but it's gorgeous when it's done.

And this is just a plain old vanilla top down raglan that I'm making for myself. I've knit and reknit this much several times and I'm still not sure I've got the formula right. I'm also not sure if I'm up for ripping it out again if it's not right . . . This is very nice yarn and wasn't terribly expensive.

High Flying in Cyberspace once more!!!

Ok, some of you know this and others dong. Every computer in this household got whacked by some stinkin' virus - or trojan or malware of some type. In fact, I think that a couple of the computers got hit by several of each. I'm reasonably sure that these bad things came from Facebook. Each child and their mother all use Facebook now and while it's a great way to get viruses, trojans, spyware, malware and all other forms of bad crap on your computer, these people are not going to quit using it. That means cleaning up the computers and getting newer or better virus/spyware protection. Cleaning up the computer has cost a bit of $$$ and taken a huge amount of time. Seems that computers are like closets and although it seems like you can keep stuffing stuff in there without looking at whatever is in the back, eventually you open the door and it all tumbles out because there isn't really enough room for even what is already in there, let alone more.

Anyway, two of the four computers are running now. One of those two has been purged of about 5gb of crap and is running pretty well (especially considering said computer's age). One still needs to be purged. The third computer is still being worked on and the hopes are that it will recover eventually. The fourth, and last, computer is a goner. I'll deal with that after Christmas because it's just too depressing to mess with it now.