The Heathen Housewife

I spent the day at Shepherd’s Harvest as planned. It was at least as much fun as I’d hoped, perhaps even better. I came home this afternoon happy and exhausted from the wild, woolly fun.

My class was first thing this morning, and despite the chilly weather and working in an unheated concrete-floored barn, I had a lot of fun teaching a full class of ten enthusiastic knitters. It was a bit of a whirlwind fitting the material into the three hours allocated. I couldn’t believe how whip-smart and enthusiastic those ladies were! Thanks for a great class, ladies!

I rushed over to the Ravelry meetup, where I got to put a bunch of names and faces together, and I met up with some good friends who were there for the day as well. By the time that was over, I was starving, so I found the food cart that sells the awesome wrap sandwich I had last year – barbecue pulled pork and creamy coleslaw together in a tortilla – oh my!

And then I got to go run amok in the vendor barns. One of the first things I saw was this glorious display of Jensen wheels. I even got to chat with Mr. Jensen himself for a few minutes after I admired his tensioned lazy kates. Maybe I can save up my pennies and buy one eventually – but I’ll probably have to order a custom one to fit my Majacraft bobbins.

Okay, and this is a little snarky, but I felt a little superior standing there in front of the beautifully carved, very expensive wheels knowing that I have an even more beautifully carved, very inexpensive wheel sitting in my living room. Still, Jensen wheels are incredibly beautiful, and I didn’t even consider sitting down to spin on one because that would be dangerous.

Later in the day, I saw this sight.

Do you know what that is? If so, I’m guessing you’ve already been over to the Rainey’s blog. That, or you are really smart and/or well-informed. This lady is spinning yarn directly off of her Angora bunny, which is happily cuddled in her lap. Joe and I already have had the discussion more than once – I’m not allowed to have a bunny. Alas.

The good news is that I did bring several very nice items home with me. First, a Mother’s Day gift for my MIL – a very pretty mug from Jennie the Potter.

MIL SO better like this mug, because it is beautiful and feels really nice in the hands.

And then there was roving, roving, and more wonderful roving. I knew from the Shepherd’s Harvest vendor webpage that Cloudlover was going to be there selling her lovlies, and that was one stop I’d already planned for. I’ve worked with her roving before, and she does a grrrreat job of dying beautiful colors without felting the roving at. all. Go buy some of her stuff one etsy. I’ve got my share for the time being.

This is two very similar colorways, one on Falkland wool top and the other on Merino. I’m planning to spin them up and ply them together once they’ve fully marinated in the stash.

Next is a giant hank of BFL from Frabjous Fibers. I think I bought this from the Celestial Designs booth, and she had a huge rack of this stuff, all of them beautiful. It was crazy-hard picking out just one.

This is also super-soft and fluffy. It is so nice getting to buy roving in person, touching it first and getting an idea of what it’s going to feel like to draft. I hate trying to spin felty wool.

At this point, I really thought I had enough take-home goodies, but then I stopped by Kim Leach’s booth. She had this fabulous little hank of superwash merino that will make some lovely stripey sock yarn and it was only $12. Buying this one was a no-brainer.

And then I was totally convinced that I was finished buying fiber. Really. I’d satisfied my new-fiber craving. But there were so many wool fumes floating around, and I accidentally wandered into the Enchanted Meadows booth and my hand brushed against the piles of alpaca roving.

Yeah, and they only sell it by the pound. But it is soooooo soft and fluffy. I think this will be my next spinning project.

And that was pretty much it. I grabbed the obligatory bag of kettle corn and my close friend and neighbor and drove on home to crash and recover from the excitement.

Now on to the Stuff…all totally random I tell you.

My computer has been getting wonkier and wonkier lately. I’ll be happily working or playing on it, and then it locks up doing this:

My super-smart computer-dude hubby says he thinks the video card is going bad. Probably. I think he’s probably right (I used to be a super-smart computer dudette not sooo very long ago.) The question is what to do about it. I can keep using it and hope it doesn’t get too much worse too quickly. It’s a three-year-old machine, so the warranty is long gone. Is it worth the hassle of trying to send it off to be fixed, probably coming back with all of my data and software gone and have to fix it all again? Or would it be better to hold off as long as possible and then fall into the throw-away consumer trap of just buying a new machine, hoping that it works better than this thang? I have no answers, just more questions. Very frustrating. I think I need to spend even less time using my computer and more time using my pretty spinning wheels.

Uncle Dave came over to watch the girls for a while the other day. They wrangled him into some arts-and-crafts projects, and this is the way I found them when I came home. Sophie had made a monster mask, and Julie made a series of crowns.

I finished another pair of plain-jane socks last week. These seemed to drag on forever, probably because I tagged along other projects with me on-the-go instead of sticking exclusively with the socks.

Joe agreed to take some pictures of them for me as usual, and I told him to go ahead and do it while I stood at the kitchen sink washing dishes. Like the wonderful husband he is, he got down near the floor and took some shots for me.

And then he stood up, looked at the preview screen on the camera and shook his head. “These aren’t any good. You can see the sand (from the sandbox) all over the floor.” So I took a look at the preview screen and had two thoughts. First, it’s a great view of the socks, and second, this is exactly how my kitchen floor looks almost all summer long, even with regular sessions with the broom. The photos are fine. Right?

Here’s part of the collection of allergy medicine on my kitchen counter this week. Everyone but Julie is suffering from the seasonal allergies big-time.

Poor little Sophie has been rubbing her eyes constantly, and one day last week her eyes were almost swollen shut. That, and we’re all really snotty. I’m a big baby about it, Sophie is in denial (getting her to blow her nose is a big fight, but then when she finally does the results are amazing), and Joe is his usual stoic self. Julie is just suffering the secondary effects of crabby mom and little sister who is getting way too much sympathy. Damn trees and their springtime sexual frenzy.

Oh, and the girls love to pick dandelions.

Good thing we have plenty of them in our yard.

And finally, a couple of totally gratuitous swimming-lesson pictures.

I love those cheezy smiles.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 10th, 2009 at 1:26 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.