Rooted in Mississippi

We had a good time at dinner with the Chimenyville Weavers and Spinners Guild. One of the members has a brick oven built in the back yard and she used it to make pizza for everyone! It was wonderful.

Then late last night, Ben had a major allergic reaction with little bitty hives all over his body (something that never happens to him) and we were up most of the night. Then this morning I had a major reaction, complete with giant wheals all over my legs. Since this is not particularly unusual for me, I wasn’t alarmed until I started having respiratory trouble. So I took some benedryl and ended up going back to sleep. I was still scratching, even with all that anti-histamine on board. Now the hives are gone, but I feel like a truck hit me. LOL For me, I think it is related to holding Omar the cat while Ben gives him his pill and puts drops in his eyes, but we have NO idea what the trigger was for Ben. I sure hope we don’t have a repeat tonight at bedtime!

I also learned that the Vice President of my local EGA chapter is resigning because she is moving back to Bristol. I will really miss her.

So now I am sitting on the sofa, watching TV and wishing I could get my act together. I have about a million things I need to do, but my guess is that I won’t even get off the sofa.

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Okay, I bought 3/4 of a pound of this funky natural brown and white mixed roving. I dubbed it “Look to the Cookie,” a not so obscure reference to Seinfeld. Well, when you are using Wilton’s Black, they recommend that you start with dark icing, such as chocolate. So when I was going through my roving and saw “Look to the Cookie,” I knew that it was destined for the dye pot! I love the way it came out. I used Wilton’s Black and Violet. While I was at it, I also dyed a skein of wool in straight Black.

I also got one of the new Swan Hook Sleeping Beauty Spindles from SimpleMarketFarms in the mail! So of course, the very first thing I had to do was spin up some wool. I really like the look of these spindles and I think they are wonderful and economical. I really think that Jeanne and Paul are on to something.

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You are dependable, popular, and observant. Deep and thoughtful, you are prone to moodiness. In fact, your emotions tend to influence everything you do.  You are unique, creative, and expressive. You don’t mind waving your freak flag every once and a while. And lucky for you, most people find your weird ways charming!

Okay, I thought this was so cute. The freaky thing is that except for the popularity part, it was deadly accurate! I am weird, moody, emotional and dependable.

On the fiber front, I was able to get a little spinning done at lunch. I have the Sherbert Surprise on my Sleeping Beauty spindle and I like it. I wonder how it will appeal to me after it is plied.

Speaking of plying, I had trouble plying the second spindle full of the green mystery fiber. My yarn kept breaking, which was strange, because I had thought I had too much twist. But I guess I had some places that must have lost their twist. This was the first time that I had a centerpull ball get totally out of control, but my dog jumped in my lap, it came off my thumb and I never regained control. Go figure.

I bought this mass of tangled wool from someone on eBay who bought it and could not deal with the mess, so she sold it at a loss. It took me forever to wind into balls and I had to use my dining room table as sort of giant swift. I plan to skein up the rest of the wool I have wound into balls so that I can dye some more! Now that I have seen PugKnits latest dyeing adventure, I definitely have to try Moss Green and Teal together.

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Okay, Cynthia and Rodger came up for a long weekend and helped me with the house. They painted and fixed sheetrock and worked so hard…and it was a pleasure having them here…and make no mistake, we did take some time out to dye wool! Several of these are wool I bought on eBay and one is a skein of Lamb’s Pride Bulky that Cyndy brought with her.

We did teal & royal blue…brown, moss green & brown…burgundy & rose & kelly green & black,… and finally black and violet on the Lamb’s Pride.

I hope that they were as comfortable staying here as I was having them. It was so much fun to have someone to play in the fiber with me! Even Rodger thought the whole process was cool and that the wool came out great.

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On Spindlers, Nanette posted about her piercings and Sharon wondered if she would go for a tattoo next. Well, it is time to admit my secret, I had some trouble with turning 30 and got this:

It’s a custom job…I went to Biloxi to get it…I figure any place with a Navy Base is a good bet for decent tattoo artists. LOL My mother still doesn’t know about it and my father used to lecture me about Hepatitis C every chance he could after seeing it. Oh, well.

On the fiber front, I had trouble plying this last spindle of green mystery wool…it got out of control and broke several times. It might have been a case of bad timing…I was pretty pooped from working on the other house…I used a dremel for about three hours straight…so maybe it was just a bad time to be using my hands!

My friends made it into town and we all ate dinner together, then came back and watched Monk. Our very first house guests. LOL In a few minutes we will head over the other house and to Home Depot and get to work.

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My friend Cynthia is going to do some knitting for Tibet and she found out that they love bright colors like saffron and red, even though those are the colors of monks’ robes. She has also been interested in the dyeing and said she was going to bring up some Lamb’s Pride with her when she comes up this weekend!

She and her DH, Rodger, are coming up to help me work on the house. He can do the sheetrock work and we can paint. Woo hoo! I have so many things scheduled between now and next week, it just isn’t funny. I am going to have to take some personal time to get all the repair people over to the house, and some of that is just to get estimates.

I call this Sherbet Surprise and it really looks good enough to eat.

Then I decided to try some moss green. It did not split nearly as much as I expected it to, but I do plan to try again!

By the way, this wool is what came with my Sleeping Beauty from Simple Market Farms. I also discovered that you need to fluff and separate the roving before you dye it if you want it penetrate all the way through. It really can get compacted between the processing, the packing and she shipping.

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Wow, most of the house is cleared out and the floors are for the most part vacuumed. I am so ready to go back to work and get some rest. LOL One more solid day of working on the place and it will be ready to go on the market.

Last night I plied a small skein of the Wilton’s Black and I was very pleased with the way it looked. I will definitely dye more of this. I already have a project in mind! This was photographed on a quilt with a light blue background, so the color is pretty accurate.

Maybe I will have time to do some more spinning next week.

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Okay, the master bedroom and walk-in closet are cleaned out and mostly clean. LOL Both bathrooms have been given a once over and now need a little more intensive cleaning. I got most of the stuff out of the kitchen, but I just have no idea where I am going to put it all. The house here already was a wreck, not it is boxes stacked on top of a wreck. I am beginning to wonder if this was the smart thing. I have sorted, thrown away, donated and sold a ton of stuff…and yet I am struggling to find a place for what it left in my husband’s home. :-/

My former neighbor who is getting the huge deep freezer said she thought they could get it tomorrow or Monday. Maybe she wants the washing machine too. I just paid to have a new pump installed. I am really going to miss it, because that was my felting washer.

On the fiber front, I have not been able to spin at all, but on the bright side, my eBay auctions are going to end tonight. Maybe I can sell enough to end my fiber diet.

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Okay, why did I pick the hottest, most humid days to do this moving and cleaning? LOL I emptied out my last closet and realize that I have way too many clothes in way too many sizes. I work for a major university, but I am a techie and get to dress very casually. The few times I have worn hose and heels, I ended up on the floor checking cable connections. But, I used to have a PR job and amassed a huge collection of suits and shoes.

I have come to the realization that I will never wear any of these things again, I do occasionally wear a nice dress, but I just don’t wear the suits. Plus, I have a lot of things that are too small for me, some still with the tags in place. I am thinking I will donate some of it to Goodwill, but I was thinking I might sell the best of it on eBay. Is that strange?

I generated a lot of trash and dragged it all to the curb. Hopefully the garbage collectors will pick it all up including the furniture. I have also run about six loads in the dish washer. Don’t ask me why it was clean in my cabinet at old house, but I can’t put it into a cabinet here until it has been washed. I did manage to get a lot of the clothes put away and a lot of the kitchen odds and ends…but it is clear that I really did give up a lot of kitchen and closet space in order to get the studio! I do have about the same amount of storage in the master bath, but I haven’t been using it appropriately, because the contractor still has not delivered the doors.

I did have a nice break at lunch when I went out to eat with my husband’s cousin. She is a really nice lady and I am glad we got to know one another, even though the circumstances were abysmal…the funerals of both of my husband’s parents in the last three months. It was a very nice diversion.

Now, I am going to kick back, watch Monk and try to go bed early. I have a lot more work ahead of me in the next three days and not much help with any of it.

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Here are some photos!

First, here is the black on the spindle *and* with the wrist distaff I made using what I had spun yesterday.

And here is the Wilton’s No Taste Red over-dyed with Violet.

And this is Violet alone:

And the Violet mixed with Royal Blue:

And finally for Vee…Bronze with a little Golden Yellow and Brown.

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