Hopefully, in a few weeks, all this will be a sea of little sprouts.
We planted two kinds of beans, carrots, turnips, leeks, two kinds of cabbage, zucchini, and cucumbers.
It was so nice today that here are a couple of random shots around the yard:
I swear, I think spring might finally be sprunging!
here’s my Merino:
Ta da! 277 metres/303 yards of squooshibility. It’s just a touch under 5 ozs. My bobbins weren’t perfectly the same so I have a bit of single left over.
Brandy asked about the metric thing. Sorry, I keep forgetting that not everyone is Canadian. 
Okay okay, I secretly want you all to be Canadian! There, my secret is out. Anyway, 50 grams = 1.75 ozs, think a ball of Knitpicks Wool of the Andes. One metre = 1.0936133 yard. Not to put too fine a point on it! I made up a spreadsheet to calculate the yards & metres for me for my spinning. What? You’re surprised? I doubt it.
Anyway, hubby and I picked up the taxes today and I’m getting a refund. Huge relief for me. I was really worried because I had three different jobs last year (for the first time ever) and I wasn’t sure if they all had taken off the right amount of taxes at each place. Luckily for me all was well and I’m getting some back. Enough to pay for my wee trip to the Gibson’s Landing Fibre Art Festival in August. Whoo hoo! I was feeling some guilt about that but not anymore.
And that’s about it from the old homestead for tonight.
I’ve been spinning up a storm lately. First there was this really pretty 100% llama that I got last year at the Langley Spinners & Weavers sale. The colours were all the colours of fall and I didn’t want to spin it until I could do it fine enough to give me good yardage from that little 50 grams. Here is the result:
It was so easy to spin, like it just wanted to be what I wanted it to be. Now I have to find something to spin to ply with it. I’m thinking maybe a black alpaca, and how convenient, I just happen to have some in the stash.
I also had this on the go:
5 ozs of ‘Maldives’ from the Hello Yarn fibre club. 21 micron Merino top. Very soft and I was very intimidated about spinning it. I told you I was going to do the fractal method of spinning. That’s the whole 5 oz up there split up for spinning. Then it became this:
Last night I plied it up and I got…wait for it…277 metres. I’m amazed. I’ve never gotten yardage (metrege?) like that. The plying took forever last night and the skein is still drying and it’s very dark & grey today so I’ll try to get picis tomorrow after work. There is also part of one bobbin left too, because of course they weren’t perfectly matched. I’ll just make a small centre pull ball out of the remainder and ply it up.
In knitting news, here are the promised picis of the two main projects on the go right now. Top down handspun cardigan:
Wool Peddler’s shawl:
There was a bit of a bad moment with the shawl where I discovered that I had dropped a stitch about 26 rows back. I tried to pull it up but it looked awful so I frogged. I’ve reknit all that was frogged and a bit more for good measure.
And that’s about it around here. The heat turned to rain, for which my plants were very grateful. Me too, truth be told.
Don’t you love it when people say that? No? Yeah, me neither. Because it is way hot enough for me, thank you very much. Two weeks ago we still had frost at night and we even had a bizarre snow flurry/hail incident. Today? So hot. Our three dogs and two cats were just laying around looking like fur puddles all day. Hubby and I went out shopping for a new ceiling fan for the living room and found two that we like. One, at the lighting store, very nice, on sale for just under $500.00. Two, Home Depot, also nice, $149.00. Which one do you think we got? Ding ding ding, we have a winner, we went with the $149.00 model. Seriously, $500.00? Not going to happen kids.
I’ve been doing a tonne of spinning this past week. I got sort of brave and stuff so I’ve been working on another of my Hello Yarn fibre club offerings. This one is called Maldives and is 5 oz of Merino. I don’t have a lot of experience with Merino and it was a bit of a learning curve at first. I’m on my second bobbin and hoping to ply it all up this weekend. I don’t have picis of it yet. I wanted to wait until I had both bobbins spun up. I’m doing something called fractal spinning. You can read all about it here. I’m just hoping it ends up looking pretty.
Last but not least, a friend from work and I went out for some very lovely coffees (camera phone pici, sorry):
Aren’t they pretty? They also tasted amazing.
Happy Victoria Day long weekend to all of you in Canada! Don’t forget your sunscreen, you don’t want to be all red and funny looking when you go back to work on Tuesday.
My baby was showing me how the multiple shots feature works on my camera one fine afternoon. The pictures aren’t great but I’ve kept them because they make me smile when I look at them. He makes me smile too, all the time. Sometimes he makes me laugh so hard I can’t breathe. He’s wicked smart and I’m really glad he’s in my life. And, we’re inseparable.
Posted in ABC 2008-Along
Just resurfacing after fighting off the latest commuter/Skytrain plague. I swear, whenever I hear someone sneeze, sniffle, cough, or just sort of clear their throat I duck my face into the collar of my coat and hold my breath until I’m almost passing out. I have managed to catch each and every possible catchable (real word?) illness this past six months or so. Ridunkulous! But…I’m feeling better now and that’s the most important thing. Right? I also seemed to have caught startitis. Don’t know where I got it but I got it bad! Every little project I see makes me go “Oh!” and reach for the stash and the needles.
I also lost the bet with Leone. She’s pretty happy about it to, ’cause now she can satisfy her yarn buying needs. 
I took her out for her victory lunch and we had a really nice meal at Locus. Super yummy food. What that meant to me was that I could buy this:
Two skeins of Smooshy sock yarn (Gothic Rose – darker burgundy, In Vino Veritas – lighter burgundy)and one amazingly beautiful skein of Indigo Moon called Starlight. I had coveted the Indigo moon since last time I was at Three Bags Full back in February or March but I had no justification to buy it. Plus, I was still in the throes of the no yarn buying bet with Leone. Well, let me tell you, losing that bet and finding a pretty project and – boom – all the pieces of the puzzle were in place. I was in Three Bags Full buying that pretty yarn so fast. And then I started this;
Wool Peddler’s Shawl. So pretty. I’m using a 4.0 mm needle and getting a lovely sproingy and squishy fabric. I’ve never been a great lover of garter stitch but I think I might be coming over to the dark side on that one. I’ve got about twice that much done since I took the pici but I was too lazy (okay, I forgot) to take a new pici today.
I’m onto the body section of my handspun sweater. It’s going pretty good and I’m still playing the fun game of “I wonder if I’ll have enough yarn?” Good times!
I’m also way further along on this too. About 4 or 5 inches into the body. Again, too lazy (forgot) to take a new pici.
Thanks for all your kind words about my Fleece Artist handspun. Seriously, the stuff almost spins itself. So nice. Go get yourself some.
Not much else has been going on around here lately. Plague seems to take up a fair amount of time. Oh! Wait, there was a fabulous SQOD* the other day. Two secretary/administrative type women. You know, blouse/blazer/skirt/Nike runners, sitting together and chatting about their day. I wasn’t really listening, no really, I wasn’t, then this sentence just jumped out and made me snort out loud. I had to fake cough to cover the giggle. Twenty-something girl in a dead serious tone, “Well, yeah, I mean she’s ESL, but you can’t really tell or anything. (long pause) So she’s got that going for her.” It almost made me wish I’d been listening the entire time because I couldn’t think of a single instance where that sentence would be okay. People are hilarious . And odd…really really odd.
*Skytrain of the day
