JenLa

Ponchos don’t kill people; people who knit ponchos kill people.

SkEye Candy Friday

Filed under: eye candy friday, newflash — La at 3:47 pm on Friday, March 30, 2007

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Want some more eye candy? Madge and Marie have yarn porn. These have got to be 2 of the wickedest ladies I have ever met, flashing their yummy 50% off Black Sheep loot to a KFYSer! Evil. Wicked. Hateful women. Okay, so, actually they’re a couple of my newest blog crushes, and they should be yours too. Trust me.

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(skimmers, pay no attention to the content behind the jump … )

Moody

Filed under: Fiber Farming, Filter Purge, Spinning — jenifleur at 1:45 pm on Thursday, March 29, 2007

As threatened, I have Navajo plied the “Dandy Lion”.

dandy lion yarn

The picture makes it look almost decent, but trust me I did an AWFUL job with the plying. I got much better toward the end, and I’ll definitely try again. And just in case you think you’re done looking at these colors, you aren’t. I’ve decided NOT to overdye and I’m going to knit something from this. Something appropriate.

I’m in a hormonal funk. Luckily it never lasts long, but while I’m still moody, I’d like to give the finger to Yahoo groups. For starters, I’m not on a terribly high number of these lists, because I can’t take the volume. Some I’m on digest, some I’m on no mail and others I actually let all the mail come through. I go through phases of wanting to join and be a part of something and then I get all this chit chat and I get disgusted and start hating people and I unsubscribe. On some lists, there’s so much irrelevant CRAP that comes through that you can spend an inordinate amount of time deleting and if your internet time is limited, it gets really frustrating. Or-occasionally there’s so much mail that your inbox fills before you can check it and your REAL email gets bounced. Now that’s when I get livid. I want to reach out into the internet and throttle people who have to type to hear the sound of their own keyboards, adding nothing to the discussion. “Yeah, me too! LOL” gets me every fucking time. I always think, “I’m using my valuable internet time to read this? I’m gonna kill someone.” People are so disrespectful of others and nowhere is it more evident than on an email list. And yes, you can always unsubscribe, but for certain things, they’re a necessary evil. It’s the lack of netiquette that is completely unnecessary evil. As if it’s not irritating enough already, today Yahoo decided to publish every message on most of my groups 5, 6, 7-even 10 times. My PMS enraged brain wants to go apeshit crazy with a brickbat. SCREW YOU YAHOO!

I feel a little better getting that off my chest, thank you.
Ten bucks says I’m going to get 80 emails from yahoo lists in the next ten minutes and be right back at square one.

Possibly the record breaking pollen count has some effect on my mood, though it’s not making me especially stuffy. We had something like 5400 earlier this week. Moderate is between 30 and 65. Anything over 100 is unhealthful. The state is covered in a blanket of yellow-green. The barn cats are a miserable mess. They can’t breathe, their eyes are red and squinty, they won’t eat and they are quite pitiful. I have them on antihistamines and antibiotics, but the poor babies need a sealed room with a massive hepa filter. The llamas will be getting chopped tomorrow, the tractor arrives tomorrow and we’re hoping to pick up a few sheep over the weekend. Then shearing next week, planting and Jared returning to L.A. for work the following week. Seems like I’ll be sparse again for the next few. I’ll be sure to pop some pictures of naked animals up here, though. And possibly some ideas for lamb names.

Recap Quickie

Filed under: blogger hookup — La at 2:53 pm on Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Saturday was the 2nd official ASKnitters Hook-up.

In a nutshell?
Yes, I was a complete dork…in several instances.
Yes, the dogs behaved themselves.
No, no one got lost on the way to the wang.
Blogless Nancy-Mac had to cancel at the last minute due to illness, but yes, pretty much everyone showed.
Yes, I’m sure I made an ass out of myself more than once.
No, surprisingly. The DH did NOT help out in the La-into-ass-making by showing his face, opening his mouth and allowing words to issue forth. Instead he opted to remain sequestered in his man’s sanctuary (garage) with his Rome friends, and was perfectly charming the couple of times he wandered into our presence.


Zoe & Susan. Looks like they’re knitting with the same yarn,huh?
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Wen & Andria. Get a load of the evenness of Andria’s knitting. Wouldn’t even know she had just learned to purl, would you?

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Madge & Marie working on their Central Park Hoodies.
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Lyssa (TOTALLY love the socks she’s wearing), Monica, Michelle with Baby Maya and Trixie standing (sitting?) guard over Betty’s plate.
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Lyssa’s Rambling Rose from IK. Just goes to show that you can’t judge a knit by the shitty picture in the magazine. Gorgeous!
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Wendy (Tortuga) drove up from San Diego and even brought her spinning wheel. Though sitting beside her, watching, I was mesmerized by it, I’m still not moved to do it for myself.
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Betty & Saber. At first I thought that Saber was ALSO guarding Betty’s plate. Not so which is a small miracle. That dog’s usually all about food…

Instead, he only had eyes for Baby Maya and kept watch over her the entire time she was there. Looks like Maya’s now Saber’s sheep. How sweet is that?

I had an awesome time! The food, though all delicious was NOT the focus of the afternoon; the conversation was as diverse as the company, and equally enjoyable. I just hope that everyone enjoyed themselves as much as I did. Stacey, Nancy, Elisa, Karen, you were missed. I sure hope you can make the next one! I am SO looking forward to the meet up next month, hopefully in Granada Hills.

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Oh!!!


Must…Get…This Bag…Or…Die…Trying!

(added link to company who makes that bag)

Hey, Fiber! I Remember That!

Filed under: Knitting, Spinning, roving, yarn — jenifleur at 12:17 pm on Tuesday, March 27, 2007

My part-time job sure takes up a lot of time. I feel like I’ve totally lost the knack to write a blog entry. And sometimes the inclination as well. But I have finally managed a few other things. On Sunday I went here [OMG, OMG it is such a wonderful store!!] with these people where I bought this, [wow!] this, a bit of this, [lucky baby] and a hell of a lot of this. Enough, in fact, to make this for this person. While there, I also started this:

purple tank

Three different times. The first time I screwed up the seed stitch border. The second time I twisted it when I joined it for knitting in the round. The third time was a charm and now I have a rhythm. It’s going to be a tank top, but the pattern I bought has been basically discarded. Right from the very start, I changed the pattern. It was patterned flat, I’m knitting in the round. There was a garter stitch border, it now has a seed stitch border. It was plain stockinette, now it’s got design features. It called for cotton yarn, I’m using linen. So the pale purpley tank is some sort of bastard step child of a pattern and we’ll just have to see if it turns into something good or not. If not, I’ll simply rip it out like it’s predecessor. The yarn used to be another tank from VK. I love the yarn (linen from Interlacements-a show special that there was only one hank of and no more to be found), it’s soft and the drape is perfect. But I didn’t like it’s prior incarnation as the pattern was written for a mannequin, not a person. Plus I hated the way I’d seamed it. With this one, the round knitting has preempted that issue.

Also, I got some roving in the mail yesterday. Since it’s Trash Talk Tuesday and a certain someone fell down on her duties today, and since I’ve been anything but responsible with my blogily duties, I’ll pick up some slack. I joined the Spunky Club and so far I’ve been whelmed. Now, let me just qualify it by saying that this applies to the club only. This BFL roving that Stacey sent me is awesome, for instance.

walking on the sun

It’s called “Walking on the Sun” and it’s BFL and I love it.

For comparison, here are the club rovings so far this year:

walkaboutforecast

“Walkabout”, a mixed wool on the left and “Forecast”, a merino on the right.

And this newest one that felt so nice I started spinning it right out of the box:

put your goggles on now

The camera refused to focus on it. What you can’t see is the blue that’s also mixed in with that. Here’s a picture of the roving.

dandy lion

It’s called “Dandy Lion”, I’m going to practice my navajo plying with this, then dye it over with maybe a darker green. I wish I could get about a warehouse full of this roving-undyed. I’d sleep naked in it. So I guess my Trash Talking is just that I wonder if I should stay in the club. It’s certainly not anyone’s fault that I’m picky. On the one hand, I’ve gotten to use a fiber that I know I love and will look for in other colorways, and I get to support a fellow blogger and fiber entrepreneur. On the other hand, I’ve gotten nothing I like color-wise and only one thing I like fiber texture-wise. In the immortal words of The Clash, should I stay or should I go?

And we really need to make a point of discussing what one can knit from X oz of roving once spun. And when we have this discussion, the first person to suggest “hat” and/or “scarf” gets a size 10.5 in the eardrum.

Fri Candy Eye Day

Filed under: Misc — La at 2:56 pm on Friday, March 23, 2007

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Marina

Sweet Dreams

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