Ok so I ordered a new charger and new batteries from Amazon and they finally arrived.
Here are the pictures from last week. I apologize in advance for not matching the creativeness of your imaginations!
If the images appear blurry in the post that’s my fault btw… the watermarking thing screws with them, I have turned it off now, but it does not retroactively remove the watermark, so click through for non blurry pics if you are interested.

Rosemary, Lavender, and Sage

Basil and Parsely. Unfortunately, the cilantro didn’t make it. It finally gave up this past week. However, I have some pineapple mint waiting in a little pot to go into that slot.

Mints and Morning Glories

Macroed Morning Glory

Mr. Stripey Tomato

And for Helena, the tutorial I read before doing my skirt is here:
http://www.savvyseams.com/clothing/jeanskirt.php

Next week, if all goes according to plan, I should have some nice shots of the birds at the feeder, since I am setting up the tripod in the kitchen to furtively takes lots of photos of them whilst they eat.

Let’s pretend that I haven’t lost my camera battery charger and I have lots of pictures to share… shall we? (Squinch your eyes up really hard.. that always works right?)

Here’s our back deck. We cleaned it up a bit about 2 months ago and I got some herbs and a fern and a flowering plant, and two bird feeders, and then we got a nice little table and two chairs to go with it. And it’s lovely for spinning…. except the two bird feeders… attract a lot of birds, and their eating mess. But still I’ve never been a bird watching type before, so it’s new and different to try and identify the things that come to visit.

And this? This is my recent spinning. I plied the green-blue stuff. I plied the heathery green stuff. And I plied some naturally died red stuff, done by Stephania that I got at MSW last year. Come to think of it, the heathery green was from MSW last year too… and look how lovely and old fashioned Christmasy they look together!

And here’s my green monkey sock, only the one, as I had to stop and work on this baby hat here…. I should be done with it by next week though, which is good as it needs to be mailed across the pond and the baby is due in about 2 months as it is. But it’s a lovely cute hat no?

I also cheated and cast on for some lace. I am using a nice green silk and my US 1 needles, which makes it rather tiny but I think fabric would be too airy if I went any larger, though perhaps I should, I am not so far along I cannot stop and swatch I suppose….

Oh! and I sewed myself a skirt! Ok, not quite. I just refashioned one. I took my most favorite pair of jeans that had finally had an inner thigh blowout they just couldn’t recover from, and made it into an a-line style skirt using a tutorial I found online. It was about 2 or so hours worth of work, and I love it! It’s still super comfortable like my jeans were, and just as casual, but lemme tell you, if you just throw on a Tshirt and flip-flops and head to Home Depot in this skirt instead of the jeans they used to be… well… I can only say the Gardening section fellas were very attentive for some reason. A skirt! Who knew?

What is so wrong with people that they feel the need to fake their own deaths?

Including a knitter!

…A contributor to a knitting forum, for instance, faked her death rather than provide patterns she had been commissioned to design….

Srsly?

David Eddings died yesterday from a stroke at age 77, and I am sad.
I grew up alongside Garion, and wanted to marry a man like Sparhawk.

Thank you Mr Eddings. You and your wife gave the world stories that I will always love.

DMB’s new CD is out today and this makes me very happy.
If I had to say why I liked their music so much, I think it’s because they just really get life and all it’s crazy and communicate well in their music.

Not much crafting in general to report. I’ve been poking away at my monkey sock and am at the heel of the first one, but I”ve only been knitting in while on the go. My home project is a crochet afghan for our couch.

How many of you wear glasses? Yeah, me too! (Non-glasses wearing people feel free to skip this post.)

So.. one of the WoW-ish related blogs I read happened to mention that she had ordered her glasses online and how she was waiting for them to come in and she hoped they didn’t suck. They came, and the glasses didn’t suck.

So, I checked these folks out on the web, and figured, hey, why not? It’s only 20 bucks, and if you are one of the types of glasses wearer than cannot be without glasses or contacts and function, you know the need/beauty of having a spare pair around. (I have the nearsightedness with a seriousness. Like, when people try on my glasses to tell me it’s not that bad, they scream “OH MY GOD!” and throw my glasses back at me while running to find the Advil.)

The glasses came today. I love them. They were 20 bucks, including shipping (shipping did take forever, but hey..20 bucks!). They showed up in a plastic case with a cleaning cloth. For 20 bucks, I expected a cardboard tube and maybe some cellophane. Seriously. And I think the lenses are far better than the pair I paid 300 bucks for last year. And more comfortable than the pair I paid 275 for the year before that. I will never pay more than 40 bucks a pair for glasses again. And I can spend a fraction of what I have spent previously and get several pairs, including sunglasses! ZOMG LOVE!

20 bucks people. And they do sunglasses. So if you wear glasses, or your kids do, or whatever… check out Zenni Optical online. Cause who can’t afford to save money on something they have to have?

*Note: I have no affliation with Zenni Optical, nor have they paid me or even know about this endorsement. I am just really happy with my glasses and smitten by the idea that “Hey! You can get something you’ll love for far far cheaper than what you are used to paying!!” Don’t take my word for it, try it, with these guys, or someone else. Don’t pay some conglomerate way way too much of your hard earned money. Think of all the yarn you could be buying!

Edit: In case you are wondering, I got these, in black and clear.

I bought some glitz. A rather lot of it. I have this nice really black Alpaca see… and it’s been in my fiber stash for over a year…. waiting on me to spin it… and when I got the carder, it occurred to me to use what I just learned in the Camp Pluckyfluff class and make myself some batts like the one I got from Loop last year.

So here’s the first glitzy alpaca bat I made. (Beside it is a batt made with the roving that is sitting on top of it, from when I was playing “get to know your carder”, and now I am thinking of doing all the remaining roving I have of that stuff in the carder as well, it makes it so light and floofy! But I also have another plan for that roving so it shall have to wait to see if the first plan sucks or not.)

batts

And here’s how it turned out. It’s a bit rough.

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And here’s the comparison shot with the Loop batt I spun last year. My sample is not near as smooth nor did it spin as fine. Some of this is because I think the Alpaca isn’t as clean as it could be. Some of this is, I believe, because I didn’t card it enough.

comparison

So here’s the next batt experiment. It is waiting to be spun up now. But I need to clear some stuff off bobbins, so it’s in the queue instead just being done.

moremixedbatt

Oh and here’s the rovings I got from the Cloverleaf Farms booth at MSW. 50/50 Merino/Silk. YUM. The blue/green stuff will be 2plied. Not sure about the green/brown, but it’s just … lovely.

cloverleafrovings

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Oh and here’s the skein from my rainbow locks experiment all balled up waiting to be used for something.

locksyarn

And I finished another sock yesterday. I am making myself a pair of Pomatomus. Because this pattern seems to move so slow, I am making a pair (or at least one) Monkey sock in between this first sock and the second. But I love how it fits, so the 2nd one is definitely getting made.

pomatomus1

And finally, my photo taking “helper”.

helper

Just testing a new plugin for photos named Scissors since Image Manager is now discontinued.
It has an option for watermarks which I am not sure I like…. but hey it’s worth trying out….. right?

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You can find photos from our camping trip here.
Photos from the Camp Pluckyfluff spinning class I took are here.

And this is the yarn I spun from the batts I made from the locks I bought at MSW.
(This is the house that Jack built….)

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It’s somewhere around 5 or 6 ozs total and 100 yards of chain ply. It’s the bulkiest yarn I have ever made. Hopefully that will be enough to do a quick skinny scarf of .. or something.

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Miss me?

Ok so I have lots I could post about, but the camera is in the car still and the cord is I-dunno-where, so, wall of text is all you get today.

I started the Flore hat for a friend who’s gonna be a daddy sometime in the next 7 months or so…

I went camping at Assateague Island National Park last weekend. It was good. Primative but good. Even if the great outdoors decided it hated me and gave me two days of hives and a week of itchy eyes in return. Daisy was funny on the beach, it was her first time seeing the ocean, and the water was really really cold. She followed me in when I went to get some sea water to take home though, and got soaked, and then spent a half hour being really pitiful so we would hold her all wrapped up and warm.

I used the sea water in my latest soap. The soap turned out lovely to use, if ugly to look at. 50% Coconut, 30% Shea Butter, 15% Castor, and 5% Castor. Sea water, Dead Sea Mud, Kelp Granules, and Coarse Sea Salt. I scented it with Citrus Basil, which I am running out of and the supplier shut down, so no more once it’s gone. It’s a shame too, cause it smells like pure sunshine to me. The soap itself is a drabby gray and looks rather granite like with the salt and kelp specs in it, but it lathers up so fine and small it’s almost lotiony and it feels nice to use.

My spinning class with Lexi Beoger was this past Thurs and Friday. I’ll be honest, I took it for the experience and the knowledge to do this kind of thing in case it is something I wish to do someday or get something crazy in mind, but it’s really not my kind of spinning. I had a good time though and learned a lot.

Then on Saturday we went to MSW. I took no photos, and it was raining anyway. I did bump into Carol Sulcoski however, but didn’t recognize her at the time, and that’s a shame too because I read her blog and I would have liked to tell her that I like it. (I’m a lurker folks, sad but true. If you get regular/semi-regular comments from me, then know that must really like you or something, because I generally hate leaving comments.)

So I went into MSW with a list. I was going to look at the Signature Needle Arts needles, A drum carder, a Kromski Harp Rigid Heddle Loom, maybe a fleece, and maybe a tiny bit of prepped roving since I have so much already. Oh and possibly a wooley winder if the other stuff did not pan out. I bought some US 2 dpns from SNA and then I wandered around and looked Strauch drum carders. I wanted Petite. I found one at the Earth Guild’s booth for the same price as the one from the Strauch booth, and the Earth Guild’s carder came with a free starter set of Lanaset dyes. So while thinking about this… I wondered around and looked at the fleece sale, which was just too crowded and I’ll be honest, I have two fleeces already processed that were just sitting at home waiting on me, so I didn’t feel like I should be buying a fleece. I stopped by Cloverleaf Farm’s booth as I do every year though, and bought 8 ozs total of 50/50 wool silk blend roving. Gorgeous. I’ll have to make a point of getting photos taken and up for you to drool over. And then wandered around some more….bought 4 ozs of very colorful dyed locks…. went back for the carder finally from the Earth Guild booth. I hadn’t seen the loom I wanted anywhere really, and when I mentioned it to the guy checking me out, he pointed right to one in their booth. All set up and ready to go and the were selling it with the warp on it. I really considered it. But after some talking it over with shmoo (he was all for it for the most part) I decided to wait. They didn’t really have a box to carry it in, and we were already taking out the carder as it was. Shmoo also said he wanted me to get the stand when I get one because he doesn’t want the loom on *his* coffee table. I considered that and figured, ok, he’s probably right there. But I personally postponed buying the loom for 3 months. I don’t know about but you, but when I get too many toys at once, I tend to bounce around between them all and don’t really spend any quality time with any of them. I didn’t want that to be the case with the carder and the loom.

So.. back home we go. If you don’t count the walking to and from the car time, I spent just under and hour at MSW. I feel shamed every year that I only go one day and don’t stay that long. But the people overwhelm me. I think that next year I will skip it altogether unless I decide I want a fleece or two. Really, there’s not much you can’t find online these days and have delivered and since I don’t really get into the community of knitting anymore, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with just not going.

So once home, before left for the Kentucky Derby cookout we were going to…. I got out the carder and the locks and my combs and the baby alpaca fleece that I had in the basement… and started carding. I made a rainbow of bats. 2 shades each of red, yellow/gold, green, and blue. I padded the locks out with the baby alpaca as I went, and have since spun up all but 2 of the batts. (the red ones) onto a bobbin. I have taken no pictures of this process at all, or it’d make a great blog entry. Oh well. I was excited. I plan to chain ply this once it’s all done up and then knit the one row handspun scarf pattern from it. I should at least have a picture of the yarn fairly soon once it’s done, so at least you’ll have something to see then.

I also cast on a pair of socks with the SNA needles. And they are very nice. I am not sure they are as nice as all the reviews say they are, but yes, they are nice to knit with.

And that’s it. I am out of words!