How I spent my weekend

On Saturday, Cat, the Mimi and I went to the spin-in in Newport. In spite of trying on (and discarding) four different outfits that morning, the Mimi still managed to be clad in nothing other than training pants when Cat arrived so we could car-pool. (And then decided to wear the first outfit of the day.)
The Mimi was amazingly well-behaved for the spin-in. She held my hand (and hissed "no touching, Mama!" every time I visited a fiber booth) and was polite to people. My father-in-law was kind enough to keep an eye on her for an hour or so, letting me sit and spin with people. When I told him I didn't want him to think I was dumping the kid on him so I could goof off, he said, "No, you're going to sit and spin. In our family, that's perfectly fine work." Love the in-laws!
The best part was seeing the expression on his face when someone asked the Mimi "what are you going to do after lunch?" and she said "gonna take over the world!"
I made out like a bandit, if I do say so myself. I picked up a pound of miscelaneous longwool for ten bucks, got some silk hankies (I felt inspired by the Yarn Harlot and I've already dyed them up) and even found some silk/camel fiber at an insanely good price. I'm out of mad money until March, but find it hard to care.
Because the Mimi is prone to crawling in my lap while I'm using the drop spindle and saying "me help make yarn?" and "helping" me spin, she now has a very pink starter spindle and some equally pink wool roving that's for her. Baby's first fiber stash!

Toddler excursions into taxidermy and photography

Shirley's teddy bear, photo taken by Shirley

On Saturday, we went to Cat's house to celebrate the arrival of BTK ("Broken Toothed Killer") from the taxidermist. I was slightly nervous about taking Shirley to the open house, but decided to anyway. For the last eight months or so, our Saturday morning routine has been that she and  I go to the farmer's market for a few hours. Now that the market is closed for the winter (because really, who wants to go shopping at an out door market when it's windy and rainy and 35 degrees?) Shirley has been having difficulty adjusting to the new (marketless) routine.

Every Saturday, she wakes up and asks "Me go market?" and then has a meltdown when I try to explain the concept of "closed." (Techno-baby that she is, we've settled on telling her "it's buffering, just like Netflix does. It just takes a lot longer to buffer.") So I thought an open house gathering with friends would be a great Saturday event--as long as she didn't get freaked out by the large dead cougar that was the guest of honor.

[stuffed] cougar, photo taken by Shirley

Shirley and the cougar

She thought it was great! As soon as she saw that people were posing for pictures with it, she wanted her picture taken with it. Then, she wanted to take pictures of it and everything else in the house. Like the picture of "Teddy," her bear that she carries with her everywhere. She's got a good eye! 

Sheep Christmas in July

I probably should have written about this several days earlier, but I've been having too much fun. Audrey sent me a box of fiber last week as part of our occasional fiber swap. (Someday we may extend this practice to include swapping toddlers, but I doubt they'll be travelling Priority Mail.)

She sent me about three pounds of fiber, and all of it was pretty. I've mislaid the sheet I wrote everything down on, but here's a general idea:

Spice-colored wool roving, with streaks of cinnamon, orange, red, and dark brown. Two batts of Finn/Merino wool in the lightest of grays. Three "Audrey batts" of alpaca/wool that she dyed and blended herself. The infamous "Electric Popsicle" roving. Organic alpaca roving from a small farm in Kansas which has the names of the responsible alpacas on the package! Eight ounces of alpaca locks, some superwash wool, and an absolutely exquisite bump of merino/tencel from Th'Red Head Designs in green and gold! The spinning wheel is calling to me.

Brian says this should keep me in spinning fiber for about a week.

Ren Fests and good friends

We spent all of Thursday driving to Hermiston, Oregon and back to see Jon and Lindsay. Why did we spend four and a half hours in the car to drive to a strange Wal-Mart, spend an hour with them at WallyWorld and then turn around and drive four and a half more hours home? Partly because we're nutters with an unfortunate amount of free (jobless) time on our hands and a questionable grasp on the concept of "carbon footprint." (If we drive nine hours in a Prius, it doesn't count, right?)

But mostly because Jon and Lindsay (and their little dog, too) have been our friends for the last eight years. Brian and Jon survived NNU's religion department together, while Lindsay and I were in the same dorm. Then Lindsay and Jon were our next door neighbors when we lived in Nampa. When we moved to Nome for the summer with our four suitcases, not only did they drive all our stuff (and our truck!) to Kansas City, but they also let us live with them for a couple of weeks before we found an apartment.

J&L are moving. Unfortunately for us, they're moving to Alaska. Hermiston was literally the closest they would be to us in all of their 3700 mile road trip. One of the last times we saw them when we all went to the KC Renaissance Festival in 2007. I sadly neglected to bring the camera that time, but we had a blast.

Shirley was much easier to transport at that festival, as I was five months pregnant with her. On Saturday, we went to Shrewsbury. The ground was too uneven for her stroller, so she had to walk a lot more than she was used to. Here she is giving us the patented "I can't believe you took me to this strange place and are expecting me to use my legs!" baby glare.


We saw a lot of strange costumes at the Faire. I didn't take pictures of the worst one I saw, as I firmly believe that some things are so awful they should not be preserved for posterity. (Suffice it to say that if I were an excessively hairy obese middle-aged man, I would choose to wear something more than just a baldrick and a kilt made of skunk skins.)

The runner up, however, would have to be the dragon-girl in the photo below. She wore a parochial-school outfit (think Britney Spears circa 1997) with a felt dragon hood extending down her back. She and her boyfriend were so inseparable during the joust that Brian and I briefly wondered what their inevitable offspring would look like, then shuddered at the mental pictures created.

I was unable to get a picture of the two gentlemen dressed as King Arthur and his squire from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, (complete with coconuts!) but they were a far second from the best costumes I saw on Saturday. This group of cranky Celts with their trophy took the cake!

One Year Ago Today

One year ago today, I was heavily pregnant, and very whiny. (And puking, but that was pretty much the default setting during the whole pregnancy.)
And I was knitting this for Jen:

(Yes, it is what you think it is.)
But now we can all celebrate Kendyl's safe arrival with Jen and Troy!

Knitting update

One of the most annoying things (other than that whole pain part) about the contractions is that ignoring them makes it very difficult to concentrate on anything else. Not only can I not recall the last time I was able to read a book from start to finish, but I haven't been able to do much knitting. (As I hate frogging projects for any reason, if I'm worried that I'm going to mess up the project because I can't concentrate enough to follow the directions, I don't work on it.)

I did, however, manage to finish the last sleeve on Arisaig. But because I started it when my measurements were 34-28-34 and I'm now 38-38-38, it's going to live in the cedar chest with my lace shawls until after Shirley arrives and we see what my final postpartum measurements turn out to be before I finish sewing it up and add the neckband and ties. If it's meant to be, it'll fit me eventually. And if not, I had a lot of fun making it. But in the meantime, there's no point in getting frustrated that it doesn't fit me.

I'm also working on a different wrap cardigan in the Jade Sapphire silk/cashmere Brian bought me for my birthday last year. I hope I've got enough yarn to finish it, because I've only got 1200 yards and they've discontinued anything even remotely like that colorway.

And I won't post pics of it, because I do want it to be a surprise. A dear friend of mine has been going through infertility treatments, and having a rough time with side effects from the meds. So I knit her a little something as a reminder that she's in my thoughts and prayers. Loosely inspired by Snatchel, it should give her a good laugh if nothing else.