Rooted in Mississippi

I have a class with Amy Oxford in Canton at P is for Primitive and the Ariellah workshop coming up soon. It is going to make for a very busy and long weekend. I have been collecting ATCs for a swap and I will need to get into the studio and make some more to have enough to send one for each participant. Either I did not have as many left as I thought or they got misplaced after the exhibit in Flowood.

Anyway, I worked on the crochet pattern I am testing for DudleySpinner and am nearly done, but awaiting some clarification before I can go any farther. It is not quite as easy for me to crochet with roving as yarn, but it was certainly not hard and did not require a lot of concentration. As soon as it is done and felted/fulled, I will post a picture here.

I also finished plying that brown wool/mohair roving from the other day. It came out very nice. I should probably wash and block it today, since I will not be going to Lisa’s to spin.

I also did not stitch anything for Sharon Boggon’s Take it Further Challenge, even though I loved the theme this month and had many ideas for it. Between getting the new issue of CQMagOnline ready and the chronic server woes this month, I just never really had time to execute my design. Well, I suppose I should have juggled things better and made more time for the challenge, but it was easier to spin, than it was to be creative when there was so much going on in my head. Does that make sense?

Anyway, my solution was to do a photo collage. These are all the strong women from my mother’s side of the family and Minnie, the woman who raised me. There is also a photo of brother in law Jim from his Desert Storm days. I really admire his tenacious struggle to live as he battles brain cancer.

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I finished another bobbin of brown wool/mohair blend.

I started to ply the two bobbins on the Traveller, but it got late and my legs got tired. I really was treadling for all I was worth. In fact, I almost tipped my spinning wheel a couple of times. I sure love those bulky bobbins! You really can get a lot of yarn on them, especially when it is spun fairly fine.

Today I spent most of the day doing newsletter things for Mississippi NeedleArts. We are pretty excited that Barbara Jackson is coming down to teach a Crewel workshop on March 8, 2008. If you are even vaguely interested in this “all levels” class, send me an email and I will send you more information.

I also spent some time crocheting and proofing a pattern for someone from Ravelry. It is a big felted (fulled) bag, crocheted with roving. I am about half way through the bag, but it has big, sort of complicated straps…so it is hard to accurately judge my progress.  I’ll post photos soon, but it will not look like much until it has been finished and put through the wash.

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Even though they made it seem like we were on the verge of a solution to the problem over at CQMagOnline, the web host has not managed to actually fix the problem and the site is still down. To say I am frustrated is an understatement. However, I have managed to get a lot done around the house, despite the drama and the mountains of email this web site snafu has generated.

I finished the gauntlets for Ariellah (once I had the pattern worked out, the second one took less than two hours) and spun a whole bobbin of wool/mohair blend on the Ashford Traditional.  I also spun more “snowed-in” on the Reeves while my friends were over, but I did not take a photo.

Of course, no weekend post would be complete without a little dog cuteness. I gave the giant white bear to the dogs.  It has Rudy and Roscoe’s paw of approval.  Those two sure love toys!

But nothing was quite so cute as Roscoe falling asleep on the other stuffed bear…he was mildly perturbed when mommy woke him up with the flash.  He is such a funny baby.

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We are having huge web hosting problems over at CQMagOnline and of course the problems started after I renewed for another year.  They are very uncooperative and unwilling to fix the current problem.  I am getting more and more frustrated by the hour.  No amount of email or talking on the phone seems to have resolved the issue, even though they “escalated” the ticket and someone is supposedly working on it. 

Basically, they say we are using too much bandwidth, even though I have checked out statistics and we are well under the allowed amount for our plan.  They are holding the website hostage, because they want me to pay more…a LOT more…which I think is completely unfair.  It would be one thing if we really did exceed our bandwidth allotment for our account type, or if they were a good web host…neither of which is true. 

I am so frustrated!!!!   Mostly because I really wanted to move the site to MyHosting.com which has hosted the Pretty Impressive Stuff website for a decade and this blog for a few years.  Oh, well, I suppose I needed to vent a little.  I just wish they would get their act together and the site was accessible again.  The timing could NOT be worse and readers are getting frustrated.

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Last weekend at the Ravelry knitters get-together at the Knit Studio, I started making a pair of gauntlets. They are a gift for Ariellah, the bellydancer who is coming to do a workshop here in Jackson on Febrary 2, 2008. I knit the “Swingin’ Gauntlets” from Punk Knits in two different yarns and did not like the way they turned out either time, so I ended up frogging them both.

Finally, I grabbed the Lamb’s Pride Bulky that I liked, some large double pointed needles and just started knitting. After a few false starts and some tweaking, I came up with a nice basic gauntlet with a thumb hole. I took it to class last night and had a thin bellydancer try on the prototype for size. It looked nice, so now I can work in the ends and start the second one! I should be able to have the pair, plus a wool cap to add to her gift basket.

I also wanted to share something that my friend and fellow CyberStitcher, Anne, shared on the list today. She created a great tutorial on constructing a needleroll over at her Focus on Finishing blog. She covered all of the construction and finishing the linen, with detailed photos. Check it out!

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I just thought I would announce that a new issue of CQMagOnline has gone live, a couple of days ahead of schedule, despite some trouble with the web host.  You would think I would be breathing a sigh of relief and sleeping like a log, instead of being up at 4 AM!

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Well, the spin-in at Lisa’s was canceled yesterday, but she and Brenda are still scheduled to come to my house tomorrow afternoon to spin for a few hours. I am looking forward to them coming over, but I worry that the dogs will not settle down while they are here. I suppose such is the nature of having five small dogs.

Speaking of spinning, I wanted to share a photograph of the snowed-in yarn, now that it is all nice and skeined. This particular roving has a higher than normal mohair content for Brown Sheep Company yarns. I love spinning this stuff, which is a good thing, since I have a couple of pounds of it.

I actually spent some time yesterday cleaning and sorting through things. I emptied the last box from my move, sorted through my secretary and got about halfway through the last box I brought home from work. While I was cleaning, my white bear fell to the floor and the dogs took it over as their own.

This morning, Roscoe dragged the bear to his toy nest. He is just so cute tossing around a stuffed bear that is bigger than he is!

He seems to be doing OK after the third shot in his heartworm treatment, but he coughs a lot and gets winded kind of easily. Yesterday, he fell asleep in my lap, WHILE he was eating a rawhide bone. I am an over protective mamma, but such is the nature of things when you fall in love with sick dog.

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I got another skein of ‘Snowed In” spun! It is currently on the yarn blocker. I still have lots more to spin, but today I will be switching to some Fiber Denn roving, when I go to Lisa’s for a spin-in! By the way, I am trying big photos in the blog instead of small photos linked to larger photos.  It is just an experiment, so let me know if you hate it.

In other news, I am putting the final touches on CQMagOnline and it will go live in just a few days. It is a lot more work for me now that Nora is not there to manage things on the front end. She really did a lot of work before I ever saw the articles in the past! I have been thinking about her a lot recently and I hope she is as comfortable as she can be given her current health status.

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Well, it did not stick, but snow is snow! There was a light dusting on the roofs, but because it had been raining for hours before the snow, most of it melted as soon as it fell. It did not interfere with driving and it was pretty while it lasted. The photo is of my neighbors’ houses as seen from my back door.

I did manage to get to The Knit Studio for a Ravelry get together, although I was late. It was great to put faces with so many screen names. I started a gauntlet from Punk Knits, but have not worked on it since I left the shop. When I got home I decided to spin a little more “Snowed In.” Here is what I spun and what I plied.

By the way, that is the cool little tensioned lazy kate that I bought when I ordered bobbins for my original Reeves spinning wheel. I thought I would also add a photo of snow on my neighbor’s roof, so you can determine if my interpretation of “snowed in” for this spin-a-long worked out well.

And of course, no photo heavy post is complete without a dog picture! Here are Roscoe, Louie and Oscar lounging on the sofa after eating a little too much at dinner.

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The Shetland fleece is finally carded! Look at all of these lovely, fluffy batts. Then I put it all away in the closet. I thought it was the last of the fleece I needed to card, but when I did the closet cleaning, I discovered there was more. Ah, well, a spinsters work is never done.

I also took a few photographs of the newly reorganized cedar armoire. Plus, I added some close-ups of some of the wool that I dyed. I have a lot of spinning to do this year, that is for sure.

Speaking of spinning, I have some black and white roving from Brown Sheep Company on the Reeves. This is for the January spin-a-long on Ravelry, where the theme is snowed-in. It seems like an odd choice, but this reminds me of snow on the tarmac or highway. I am consciously trying to spin thicker than normal. I know that sounds funny, but I have gotten to the point where I spin much finer than I like to knit or crochet. I do not want to do four ply, because it seems like a waste of spinning time. I hope this will be worsted to bulky when I am done.

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