Sunday Night...

I spent nearly the entire weekend straightening up my house and working on my Etsy shop. You wouldn't know it by looking at either of them. I picked up my crocheting needles and worked on cosmetic bags to put in the shop. They seem to be attracting some attention. They're actually very nice and I'm making some more as well as some other bags.

I have also been working on a crocheted teddy bear. He's big, about 24", and has jointed arms and legs. The joints aren't here and neither are the eyes so I have mutilated parts strewn about for now. Pictures coming of the parts as well as of the finished product.

I have been spinning up a storm as well and I'm quite pleased with the results. My spinning has taken new leaps lately. Practice does make perfect. I have been spinning more than I can use so I put some homespun in the shop as well.

We're also ripping up the bathroom, a project that we started Christmas Eve 2007. Today, the walls got painted and the floor is going down. Hmmn....husband is toiling away at this. I'm going to have to photograph him and put it on Facebook.

For now, no pictures! I'm holding out for my new lens. It should be here this week, finally. I ordered it on July 19th!

Eye Candy Friday

Beach Clouds

Tobay Beach, Massapequa, NY

Playing Catch Up

Well hello there, remember me?


Sorry that I've been away so long but I've been watching the kids and spinning and spinning and spinning as well as working on my fledgling Etsy shop. Below are two new listings. Both are spun from Colonial Wool which I enjoyed spinning very much. I was not expecting it to be as soft as it was and I will definitely buy some again. It's lovely and the colors were scrumptious! These are all Navajo plied, my latest craze. I love round yarn. I am finally so pleased with my spinning that I can barely contain myself. Looks like the kind you buy in the store, doesn't it?


This week, I'm on vacation and have been doing things with the kids. The weather has been so-so here but we did get a nice stretch to hit the beach. Here's some cool clouds.

Awesome clouds, hah?

I have a nice ocean shot but my computer seems to have misplaced it....:( I'll find it and make it eye candy some Friday. Oh wait, tomorrow is Friday already! Sheesh! Time flies. One more day off and it's back to the rockpile!

They also built a spray park, a great idea. See that 'brick' wall? It's plastic. Patterned, molded to look like brick. Amazing what they can do with soda bottles these days. The spray park is a great idea because the kids can go there after the beach and get rid of all the sand. It's private so it's generally not overly crowded. I love Tobay Beach.

My babies are growing up. Missy is going to lose her second bottom tooth any day and my son has his four front ones in. He's entered the beaver stage but doesn't really look as bad as some kids do.

We also went to the see the movie Ice Age 3 in 3D. It was my first time seeing a 'real 3d' movie and it was AWESOME. The glasses weren't those stupid funky colored ones that you cut out off of the back of a cereal box. They were like cheap plastic sunglasses. I didn't get a headache and they fit over my regular glasses. Stuff popped right off the screen at us. It was so cool! I really only liked the effects, lame storyline. Like, beating a dead horse. It's the issue I have with most sequels, hard to top the original. My son was in heaven and leaned over and said to me, 'Mom, how do you like it so far? This is awesome!'. I was happy mostly because he was concerned about me, that's a good thing. If I ever let him get married, I'm sure he'll make a good husband.

On the knitting front, I decided I didn't like my toe up socks and ripped them out. I also have been working on a black pair for hubby for like, eons... I have been turning the bulk of my attention to spinning and haven't been knitting! I must've spun 30 miles of yarn this month.

I've also been playing with photoshop and I'm running low on disk space on my computer. This is not good considering that I just (FINALLY) bought a macro lens. I am very excited over the lens and can't wait to receive it. I bought it online, natch. It should be here in about a week. Hasn't shipped yet. Pooh.

Stay tuned for macro lens pictures. The bugs, raindrops and other things are waiting!

Skeptical....no pix Sunday.

It's been awhile. I've been de-cluttering my office and have made good headway. With the kids home for the summer and only in camp for the first 3 weeks, I need a place to comfortably telecommute. The place is normally the sun room but they'll be in there with the babysitter. Sigh...

I've opened an Etsy shop in the hopes of further decluttering. It gives me something to do with all the things that I make. It's just fledgling and I have decided that I simply must buy a macro lens. I want one anyway but now I simply must buy one. Another game show toy?

The Tour de Fleece. I haven't officially enrolled yet I have been spinning. I spun about 6 oz of llama and now I've moved onto the most beautiful steel gray bamboo. I have 8 oz and if this comes out nice and soft it'll be a scarf for hubby should he behave himself and become deserving of such a present. It's the first time that I have spun bamboo and I'm liking it although I think that I like the tencel better. Merino/Tencel is very slippery and produces a very nice yarn. Merino/Bamboo feels 'starchy'. It's slightly sticky which makes it easier to spin. I like it very much though. I have knit with merino/bamboo only once and made a very nice pair of socks. Hmmn...

OK, now, onto something that I've been reluctant to blog about. The other day, while cruising the web, I came across Sensa - the Sprinkle Diet. Maybe you have seen this on TV. I read all that I could find and have seen mostly good reviews. For the price of shipping and handling, ($4.95) you get a two month supply of Sensa, a DVD and a brochure. What, you haven't heard of this stuff? It was around years ago (version I) with a different name, Sprinkle Skinny or something like that. If you don't want to read everything, here's the skinny (pun intended). Sensa is powdery crystal formula, it kinda looks like sugar or salt but is a little lighter in weight. You need not change your eating habits, you need no exercise, you need not go on a restrictive diet. You need to use common sense; however, and not, "well, I'm using this stuff, I can eat whatever I want". Just do whatever it is your doing that is keeping you the same weight when you're trying to lose some. You just sprinkle Sensa on everything you eat, completely covering the food, not overly densely, just sprinkle, like you're using a lot of salt. (the DVD show this) It comes in two types, "SALT" and "SWEET". You sprinkle salt on just about everything you eat and sweet is for goodies. It works by smell. You sprinkle it on your food, take a whiff, eat and your brain thinks your full WAY sooner than before. That's it. I can't smell anything with the salt one and the sweet smells like berries, faintly. It's made of food products, no msg or salt or anything like that. After 30 days, you switch off to "Month 2" because your brain and your nose get smart and need new smells to be tricked. You sprinkle on food, it doesn't work on liquids.

Bull bunky, how could this work? This is yet another scam. I am skeptical!

I figured, for $4.95, it's worth it being I spend thousands of dollars to be skinny.

Well, today is day 4. I am 6 lbs lighter. I am the lightest I have been in over TWO YEARS. I have not been trying at all. I just ate what I normally eat and I feel full. I do put less on my plate and then take more if I want it because I don't want to waste my sprinkles on food if I'm not going to eat it. I am still skeptical....but when you read about it, there seems to be some scientific basis behind this.

I had ice cream everyday....with chocolate sauce. I had bananas, nectarines, ham and egg on English muffin, steak and cheese sandwiches, salmon, corn on the cob. Last night, I had skirt steak (all that fat, usually makes me heavier the next day for sure.) with melted cheese on a hamburger roll. I even had extra steak. I had green beans and couldn't eat any more. No corn on the cob, couldn't squeeze it in. I did squeeze in a scoop of ice cream though. I have not eaten after dinner because it feels like I have consumed MASSIVE quantities of food. Every night is Thanksgiving.

No gas, no bloating, no ill effects. The only thing that I've noticed is that I'm a little bit thirsty and have been drinking more water which is probably a good thing.

You can read about Sensa on http://www.trysensa.com/ and then buy some if you want. They do sign you up for autoship if you don't cancel after 30 days. Enter code ROCKETXL if you order more and you'll get a discount.

Remember, it's not a magic pill. You can't pig out. Just eat what you normall eat and see what happens....?

Eye Candy Friday

Sunset at the Marjorie Post Park, Massapequa, NY.

Busy....Catch You Up Soon...

Been busy, setting up Etsy shop, spinning and making believe I'm doing the Tour de Fleece, Family visiting, and...camping.

Happy Belated Fourth of July.

Smell the campfire?

Eye Candy Friday - Caladium

ONE of my Caladiums finally sprouted...wear are the other 17 plants that I planted?

Natural BFL

I spun this last night, plied this morning, washed and whacked, hung to dry. It's perfect.

Eye Candy Friday - Handspun!

We interupt this post to let you know that we have been unable to photograph nature in its finest due to the massive drenching downpours we have been having. It has rained and rained and rained pretty much every single day since Memorial Day weekend. Therefore, today's eye candy will be handspun fiber.

I am becoming the spin master and ready to tackle new obstacles, to boldy go where no fiber has gone before! To spin and spin and spin things that have yet to be spun! What's on the frontier? Dog hair, dryer lint, paper from my shredder...

Ahem...

I spun my Candied Hearts, a bit over 6 oz, washed, whacked and nearly dry now.

I attempted to preserve most of the colors and have only a limited amount of barbershop pole which, it appears, I did to a degree. The skein isn't perfect but it's really nice. It is perfectly balanced and hangs in a nice relaxed loop. I had a little trouble with this fiber. There were a few places where there was some matting. I need one of those thimble sized flickers that could just comb out those spots. I was tugging and tugging and couldn't draft at times. Part of it was the matting and part of it was me. I'm getting very spoiled spinning commercially prepared merino / tencel top which is like spinning pure silky hair. It's icy slippery but gorgeous. I have spun about 4 oz so far so I have 8 to go.

Speaking of 8 oz. I bought some alpaca/llama/some wool at the Guild meeting the other night. It is lovely and stripey and burning a hole, calling to me from it's plastic bag, "spin me, please spin me". If I send the kids to school and do nothing except spin....it could be on the bobbins tonight. The issue is that I have only 6 bobbins and I have other stuff on some of them now. Hmmn...I'm spinning the unloved Rose Quartz, the Deep Sea merino / tencel and a I want to start a third project? What about cleaning and organizing my fiber, stash, library, needles and office? Plus, I have an ark to build.

Best get the kids up and off to school. Stay tuned for an update!

Toe-Up?

A few weeks back, maybe longer, I bought Socks From the Toe Up so I could, you know, look at the pictures. I haven't knit a sock toe up yet. I actually tried to do two at a time, Magic Loop, toe up but the dog attacked it and I haven't gone back. :(

I am really enjoying the pictures in this book! I decided to tackle my nemesis, a toe up sock. While I was tackling, I tackled Judy's Magic Cast On. I must admit, dealing with the magic cast on is much nicer than dealing with waste yarn and unzipping. It wasn't overly difficult to figure out, I think once I got the hang of it I thought it was ingenious. It's also alot easier than casting on two socks at once, 70 sts each, all those strings hanging, one circular. This was cake compared to starting a top down sock.

So, first, I picked a "wild" handpaint, STR Minestone.

The colors are pretty. I don't really like the name for this colorway. It reminds me of snow covered evergreens with pine cones not a mine. Winter Pines or something like that would be nicer than MINESTONE. But alas, I don't get to name yarn.

ANYWAY...

Then, I attempted the cast on. This took awhile. I practiced it a few times so I would feel confident.

Here's the top view.

And here's the back or the bottom view.

It looked like it was right and like it would work. After you do this, you just flip it over and start magic looping.

Here's the tip of the toe after a few rows of increases. I do have a small hole where the tail is. Hmmn... Nothing that I can't snug up when I weave in the yarn. I also have small ones where the M1's are but I didn't know if twisting them would be uncomfortable or ugly so I did them the normal way.

See, you can't see any holes from the side.

Then, I stuck it on my foot to see how it would look....

Of course, this is as far as I'll get. I don't know how to knit toe up socks! I'll just make one long foot - clown feet!

Stay tuned to see what transpires...pattern details and progress coming soon to a blog near you.....