JenLa

Nope, no meme here. Nope, nuh-uh. I’f you’re looking for a meme, you better just keep on moving, cuz JenLa’s a meme-free zone, dontcha know. Not a single solitary meme. Instead we have shameless pimpage of cuteness. The fact that it just so happens to be Friday is pure coincidence people, that is all. No way, no how should this be considered in the general vicinity of…

Just so we’re clear on that.

Pretty in Pink

Yes. That giant person is none other than my darling granddaughter, Marina, taken around Easter time. I can’t believe she’s almost 18 months!

And then there’s Baby Levi…

nom nom nom nom nom

Daddy pillow…good

Can you believe that his parents have made me partially responsible for this little dude’s spiritual upbringing? Yep, I’m his godmother, can you believe that?

And just so you know, things are starting to progress over at Dizzy Blonde Yarns. Wanna see? Okay, but just a peek…

Yummy!

You’re guessing angel hair pasta?
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Well…guess again.

Even Better!

That there is 60 grams of delicious yarny yumminess in the form of some super-soft laceweight that Wen brought over for a little Sunday to Dye For. Carolyn joined us for a brief spell, mezmerising us with watching her do the amazing flat-knitted-argyle-sock voodoo that she do so well. I wish she could have stuck around longer, not only cuz I like hanging out with her and not only to see the finished products (both successful, pictured below; and unsuccessful, which we shall never mention again) BUT to witness a miracle of Martos proportion: The man actually cooking something.

We also tried our hand at some slate blue, and for shits and grins, I threw in a skein of mystery somekindahandspun I got form the ASK swap a few months ago.

Mine’s the top skein. I could tell the spinner was going for high-end Noro-type yarn. Why else would she have put so much vegetable matter in it?

Wanna see what my pooches look like when they’re not stinky?

(pictures not to scale)
Home from the groomer’s and April fresh!
(thanks Carolyn for helping me get them there!)

And in answer to Jen’s question:

Lolcats. When can we finally put these wherever ‘where’s the beef?’ and ‘isn’t that special??’ went?

I leave you with this, and let you be the judge. I wish I could take credit for this paricularly excellent poking, but it’s all Pacalaga’s fault (and so worth it!).

Mayflower, aka Miss Smiley Goat laid down under a walnut tree, rested her head on a protruding root and died yesterday. I have no idea why; there were no signs of anything being wrong and everyone else appears more or less fine. I said goodbye as I sheared her for the last time. Tinkerbell is taking it kind of hard, they were buddies. I’m trying to be a farmer about it. The saying goes that if you have livestock you will also have dead stock, but I was quite fond of her. Sad day. I’ll miss the silly young thing. Meantime everyone has been wormed, vitamined, mineraled and probioticed just in case. As I was trying to find a place on the property soft enough to dig with the tractor, I found another guinea had been attacked by something in the pasture. It was a hot, busy, sucky day and I got sunburned, too. If we don’t get some rain soon it’s going to be a terrifying autumn and winter on the farm. And if this batch of eggs doesn’t result in keets, we’re probably going to be guinea-free here by winter’s end.

I dyed the yarn I showed you the other day. I put sapphire over that teal/turquoise hoping to tone it down some. Well, actually I had envisioned a dark sapphire color, but the yarn is a blend of alpaca, wool and mohair and it had other ideas. It barely took up the dye. In fact, I put some mohair locks in the dyebath that was nowhere near exhausted and it barely took any of the dye, either. Hmmmm…. Anyway, here’s the new result:

Much more grey/blue now and I think I can live with this. I’ll have to go fairly pale with the body. I hope to start knitting sleeves tonight.

Also, I have decided that this:

Which is Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran Tweed and is actually a very dark green [not that you can tell from my pic] shall become Central Park Hoodie. You know, because I’m gonna finish spinning, dyeing and knitting that Ribby Cardi so fast. Oh yeah, spinning. Better get back to the wheel.

So The Rhine-O’s are home. And as always, it looks like they had a fantastic time. Now we SAFFholes are in the throes of fiber fever. Which explains why this post is all over the map. I, myself have gotten precious little done all week because I’m so keyed up. I would have been excited anyway, but now that La is coming back for a fiber reunion tour, I’m like a kid at christmas. I don’t even plan to buy anything-not saying I won’t, but I’m not looking for anything in particular. Nothing like a best friend coming to visit, a fiber festival, knitting parties and booze to make me cheerful. I even broke ice on the goat and bird water this morning without complaint. ICE. In freekin’ OCTOBER. In the south. Oh wait, that was a complaint, wasn’t it. Well ok, but it was ICE. Cold. Just sayin’.

Hey guess what? I knit. Who knew?

Exhibit A:

It’s the Irish Hiking Scarf pattern from Hello Yarn, knitted for the Red Scarf Project. Which is a project in which I very dearly believe. (Sorry, Norma, I just can’t tell Panera that I want to knit there. Our group had our first meeting in the local Panera and it was noisy, crowded, poorly lit and lacking in other comforts. That won’t stop me from knitting red scarves, though. ) I also have another red scarf nearly ready to bind off, but I figured why take a picture now when it’ll be done shortly-I’ll just do an FO shot later.

Exhibit B:

Fingerless Mitts from Garnstudio. Only I knit them in Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran because I’m a rebel and I’ll never never be any good. Sorry the picture is so blown out by the sun. I have one that shows the colors better, but you can hardly see my dry, scaly skin in that one so how can I post it? If it upsets you, please be appeased by the fact that I took the pic of the purple mitts against my purple Beautyberry bush and pretend you can actually see the knitting without getting a migraine. I’ve decided I really like Fair Isle. This is nothing new, I’ve liked it since I learned to do it, but lately it seems to be the only knitting that I actually consider fun. I don’t know why that is. I don’t dislike other kinds of knitting, I’m just so……whelmed… with everything out there lately. Hopefully SAFF will get the mojo running.

Oh. I have a handy tip for you today. Yesterday I was dyeing yarn and I stained my hands red. No, the tip is not that you should wear gloves-though you should. Yeah, yeah, Scout, I know. I picked the skein up out of the rinse water one time and bam! Looked like I’d been working on a horror film and had my hands in fake blood for a couple of weeks. So I remembered this trick I learned on set and tried it out to see if it would work. I squirted a liberal dollop of shaving cream on my hands, rubbed it to give a nice thick coating all over both of them and let it sit for a couple minutes, lightly rubbing them together from time to time. When the foam had a slight tinge of pink, I rinsed and repeated. And lo and behold! Less pink. It wasn’t 100%, but it was a vast improvement. If you ever find you’ve :ahem: accidentally dyed your hands, try it. It works best with plain, unflavored Barbasol. I once used it to take fake blood out of an off-white carpet and I’ve been a believer ever since.

Now I must go and sip tea to cleanse my liver in preparation for the weekend.

In honor of , Knitpicks shall hereafter shall be referred to as ASSpicks, with the aLink and everything.

I used to LOVE their stuff. I would order their Fingering Weight Peruvian Wool by the buttload, dyeing it to my heart’s desire. But only ASSpicks could turn this

beautifully Moze-colored, hand-painted skein

into this:

muddled-up, color-running-all-over-the-effin-place piece of fiber excrement. Bleh!

At that moment I vowed I would never buy from them again! Thank WOOL I have a lovely alternative. And CK really knows how to take care of her clients! Seriously, if you like hand-dyeing/painting/whatever, YOU MUST GET THIS YARN!

So, I’ve been pretty secure in my decision to boycott ASSpicks. I’ve read that their circular needles are proving to be less than desireable, the cables constantly breaking. And unlike the wonderfully self-contained and moderately-priced system that is my beloved Denise Interchangeables, their Options (Italics for sarcastic emphasis) requires major investment for something comparable.

Then, 2 days later I get an email announcing that they now carry Jacquard dyes. Bitches!! I’ve heard so many good things about jacquard dies, I was sore tempted, because, you know, I MUST try them. It’s a moral imperative! Besides, the ProChem dyes I’ve been using are pretty good, but they have so many colors, it sometimes boggles the mind just to choose only what you need, tricky aren’t they? Then Jen reminded me that my all-time favey source for dyeing yarn now carries the dyes as well, see? And they’re priced right! (You really should go check them out) Ha! Whew! Jen saved my ass on that one. Thanks, I owe you one!

NOW, as if they just knew, like they have this evil mind-reading ability, I get their catalog in the mail. A sensible woman after TWICE vowing to never purchase from them again would have just thrown it away, muttering under her breath about how another tree was sacrificed so that they could peddle their swill, but not me. No. Nuh-uh. I open it, and what did I see? Only two of the handiest, dandiest knit gadgets in Knitopia today. BASTARDS!

Man, I’m SO screwed.