Week (ish) in Review

We were vendors @ Bayfield Heritage Days. I made a little money, and we got to visit with folks we knew and make new fiber contacts. It always amazes me how fiber people make instant here's my number, come to my house and we'll hang out kind of connections. Very cool.

The Mr. turned a year older. He seemed slightly freaked out about his advanced decrepitude, and now he's on a diet and thinking about marathons. He does that every year, though, so I'm not worried. I haven't heard the OMG LET'S SELL EVERYTHING AND MOVE TO NEW ZEALAND spiel lately, so it's all good.

Kittens keep us on an even keel. If we sell everything and move to New Zealand, where will the cats live? Answer me that!

I set up shop at home for some customers a few days ago. Much easier than setting up and tearing down the vendor tent. Also, I always have access to coffee and a clean bathroom. The only thing I don't like about vending is port-a-potties. Ugh.

We had some seriously glorious days, so we went on a picnic.

Chimney Rock.

Taylor.

One of my favorite things about where I live is that we can drive for 15 minutes and be somewhere gorgeous and completely away from everyone else. I don't think we even saw any planes in the air. It was wonderful.

Dead deer. You can't go anywhere around here without finding deer or elk bones. Which is pretty cool, actually. Tay took this photo. She's a girl after my own heart.

The champagne of beers! Now in handy dandy quart size!

Adam and Taylor took their annual colors trip. This is Engineer Mountain, north of Durango. It's a fourteener.

Silverton, CO. Taken 9/29/09.

So, that's the week in review. I expect my next blog post will be about how Halloween preparations have taken over our lives.

Finding Normal

Adam and me. Weminuche Wilderness, September 2009.

Things are good. We've gotten through all the overwhelming stuff, and we're in a really good place now. Things feel normal and not frantic. We're relaxing and kicking back and spending time doing things that we want to do, not have to do, which feels like playing hooky or something.

I have a show in 9 days, but I'm not sweating it. It's nothing at all like that first show where I was freaking out about being a complete N00b and dyeing everything I could get my hands on until 2 in the morning and such and being worried about putting my products next to the pro's. It was all ohmygodohmygodI'mgoingtosuckaaaaaggggghhhh!! Now it's more like, yay! Show! We love doing these shows because invaribly, we end up meeting really cool people and making instant friends.

Taylor at the stream.

We are back home, back in the community we love, back in the home that we love, and there are fresh kittens to squeeze. The firewood has been gathered, and I'm slowly rebuilding our pantry supplies. We're working with that instinct that says to gather and save at this time of year. Battening down the hatches. It's a nesting instinct, only we aren't pregnant. More of a seasonal nesting instinct, I suppose. If I had a garden, I would be canning and freezing like mad right now. That'll have to wait until next year, though.

Winter heat. You have no idea how good this pile of wood makes me feel. It's like a big, splintery security blanket.

Fresh Kitteh. Johnny Rotten is his name. This little dude rocks so hard. Too bad they don't stay this tiny and evil forever.

Coffee on the deck with Jack, our constant companion.

The biggest thing on our plates right now is planning our annual Halloween blowout. The party we had last year did not rock as hard as it had in past years, owing mostly to the fact that we didn't live here and it is hard to pull off a party like that in one day of decorating/cooking/etc. This year though, look out.

Ode to a Dead Lizard

Ode to a Dead Lizard

On the path to my front yard I spied,

A tiny lizard who had died.

Oh, little dude, all gnawed and chewed,

I blame my cats, they are so rude.

In other news, we have moved. At last! There are about a metric fuckton of tiny annoying and hugely annoying things that are pressing and or not so pressing right now, thus the lack of blogity blog on my part.

Things like my husband saying, "blah blah, blah, refinance the house, blah, blah, blah, good interest rates, blah blah blah, appraisal in a week or so." Did you catch that last part? Yeah. My husband is a great guy, but I don't think there's any question why I intend to take up slurping vodka tonics for my cardio.

Oh, and he dropped a washer/dryer combo on me last night. I'm only slightly exaggerating here.

Emma's Yarn

100% Punta wool, hand-dyed and hand-spun by yours truly. I am really digging the drop spindle these days.

Thick and thin single, 236 yards. This yarn is for Emma, who saw me spinning it at our knitting group and insisted in her very charming way that I let her buy it.

Sock Summit Dye For Glory Yarns

Hola, yarnies and non-yarnies. These are the yarns I submitted for Ravelry's Dye For Glory contest. It's limited to those of us who will have yarn at the Sock Summit, so I figured, hey, give it a shot, free exposure, etc. I dyed up three batches of yarn, all based on the colors in the Sock Summit logo. In each batch I emphasized a different color and then fiddled with the other colors randomly. I kettle-dyed these yarns, which means that all of the dyeing took place in a kettle of hot water. I combined dip-dyeing, hot-pour method, and then sprinkling the dye powder directly onto the yarn. They are gorgeous, and my pathetic photos really don't do them justice.

All of the skeins, just in from drying outside. There's the Sock Summit logo for reference.

Batch One, side by side. Before re-skeining and after.

Batch Two.

Batch Three.

So, if you like my yarns and you're on Ravelry, please vote for me starting tomorrow 7/23.

In other news, our renters are officially moved out. Taylor and I start painting and cleaning tomorrow.

In other, other news, I completely lost my damned mind and ordered myself some more sock yarn. Commercial yarn. Not dyed by me. Because, you know, I didn't already have hundreds of skeins sitting around the house. It's an illness, I tell you. Sock Yarn Fever.

Also, we are going to go see the new Harry Potter movie AGAIN tonight. That's probably another form of crazy altogether. I don't wanna talk about it.

Catching up here, but not in real life.

So, hey! I thought I'd take a few minutes to semi-catch up here. Life's a bit mad at the moment, but that's alright. I wouldn't mind at all if I didn't have so damn much to do! Adam and Taylor are out fishing. I suspect that we'll be having trout for dinner.

Adam w/ last week's catch. They aren't very big, but they're damn tasty...and I don't even like fish.

Anyway, we did the SLV fiber fest this last weekend in Monte Vista. It was fun. We got to catch up w/ Mac and Monica, make a little money, make new friends and generally enjoy the mellow atmosphere. I am totally digging vending at fiber fests. Fiber people are just so nice to be around, and there's always something to talk about.

My vendor tent.

We stayed at the Movie Manor Motel, which is a motel w/ two drive-in screens. So we watched a couple of movies, both of which sucked, (Year One, & the new Sandra Bullock one) but whatever. The novelty, people! We have to leave town to go to a drive in, which is sad. I keep hoping maybe the tribe will build one or something.

My friend Mizpah groping the fiber. Her husband, Chris, makes all sorts of wonderful drop spindles and tahkli spindles and other beautiful things, so we arranged a trade. Fiber for spindle.

My new toys. A walnut tahkli spindle and a darling beehive yarn guage.

A little bit of my yarn. There's so much that I have trouble displaying it all. We're working on that, though. Hopefully for the next show I'll be more organized. We can always hope, anyway.

Also, many people asked me if I dyed it all. The answer is yes. Everything you see comes to me with no color at all. That's where the fun starts, dawg. Ya dig?

It puts the color on the yarn or it gets the hose again.

Anyway, now that we're past SLV, I have to think about Sock Summit. I was contacted by a business owner who wanted to represent my yarn at Sock Summit, and naturally I said yes. So I need to prep a bunch of stuff to ship out w/in the next few days. Also, Ravelry is having a yarn dyeing contest for people who's merchandise is going to be at Sock Summit. Naturally, I also need to do this, as it would be good exposure for me. I understand that there is DRAMA over on Ravelry because people are all butthurt over not being able to enter the dyeing competition. I shall make a point of avoiding that shit. It's yarn, people. Get over it.

Taylor is such a good sport. Both Adam and Taylor are, I suppose, and invaluable helpers. These shows are lots of work. I couldn't have gotten that tent up all by myself, that's for sure. Plus, Adam can make small talk. This is such a bonus for those of us who can't seem to master the art of random bullshitting.

And now, on my horizon: I'm moving. We're moving. Back to Allison, back home, back to my house and my land and my pond and my trees and my garage and my storage shed, and my driveway....did I tell you that I missed being home? Well, now you know. I told Adam that he is not going to be dragging me away from home again. And now he knows.

Mrs. Slocombe is dead.

Michael Jackson dead? *shrug* Farrah Fawcett dead? *shrug* Billy Mayes dead? *shrug*

Dudes, Molly Sugden, the inimitable Mrs Slocombe has died. Now I feel sad, and I am unanimous in that.