New knitting group!
Mood:  bright
Now Playing: WEIB 106.3 fm Smooth Jazz
Jenn and Lauren from the area put together a knitting group, which met for the first time last night at Barnes and Noble in Hadley. What a nice group of people that turned out, and we had a great time. The exchange of ideas, sharing the knitting community with people that were unfamiliar with the resources in the area, and just hearing tales of people's families, farms and friends was enough to give even the most tired of us, some well needed friendly energy.

I worked on the first of a pair of Inca Alpaca and wool socks, double stranding the yarns. I have about 6" of the sock done now.

Thank you to Jenn and Lauren for getting this group together. It will be meeting the first Thursday of every month at 7 p.m. I hope that it continues for many years to come.

And on a non-fiberish note, I spent the day yesterday with my friend Carol, shopping in Templeton. Carol took me to a very interesting store (actually, it's two separate stores, but owned by the same people), called Casual Mischief. After having a lovely lunch in their restaurant, we were walking back to do some more shopping, and I spied the coolest sheep sign I've ever seen. It's a reproduction, but the sheep is 3' wide by 2' high, and says "American Woolen Mills. Est. 1867 Dyeing Carding Spinning Knitting". This sheep will be hung up on the wall in our family room. :)

This is who I am! ;-)

You are Schroeder!

Which Peanuts Character are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

I'm back
Mood:  happy
Now Playing: Toto "Ninety Nine"
It smells like Spring is in the air! The snow is slowly melting with these 40 and 50 degree days. While taking a walk out to the bunny barn is still treacherous due to the icy walkways, I'm seeing patches of bare ground throughout the yard. The sun feels warmer on the face, and the wind isn't quite so cold right now. We have 23 days left until Spring, and to be honest, I can hardly wait! We'll be planning the garden soon, and I just got my flyer from the local nursery telling me what plants will be available for Easter, and then for Summer. Even the rabbits are more active, and full of energy!

I've sent in my application for MA Sheep and Wool. I'm hoping for a spot in the barns, but will take my spot in the stalls back by the food concessions are if nothing else is available. One benefit to being in the stalls is that you can lock up at night, but it's a lower degree of traffic too, especially if the weather is bad.

Not much knitting going on right now. I'm seriously contemplating starting a pair of socks so that I have some easy knitting to do. I have a top down raglan sweater pattern and yarn (Lamb's Pride in the color Limeade) on order from Claudia at Countrywool for Calvin. Once it arrives, I'll be working on that.

OFC
I forgot to add earlier; it was a fibery weekend!

Harry and Jimmy are in the process of moving themselves and their sheep out to Western MA. We are EXTREMELY happy to have them here. But in the process, we were asked to help unload the moving trucks into the storage facility yesterday.

DH and I pull up to the storage place, and find two trucks, one of them overflowing with fleeces! For a girl like me, it was heaven. The fresh wooly/fleece smell coming from that truck was wonderful! It took us a good 30 minutes to unload all those wonderful Icelandic fleeces, and Deanna and I were laughing at what Thrillers would have been doing had they been there. We even got a good laugh when half the fleeces fell down from their stack, and landed near Deanna. Buried under Fleece Mountain (and you Thriller's thought I had Fleece Mountain; let me tell you, it's nothing compared to what we unloaded last night), what a way to go. :)

Let me be the first to publically welcome Harry and Jimmy to the area. We are so happy you are here!

Busy Weekend
Mood:  chillin'
Now Playing: WEIB 106.3 fm
It's been one of those weekends.

It didn't start out so good. We had our taxes done on Thursday night. Usually it's a good thing; this year it wasn't. That's all I will say about that.

Valentine's Day passed here with little fanfare, as usual. I gave up a few years ago trying to live up to society's assumption of what we are *supposed* to do, and we do nothing. Probably in part because the last time DH presented me with roses on Valentine's Day, I told him that he could have spent the money on something else. ;-) Yes, I'm ever the Yankee in that aspect. It's not that I don't like fresh flowers, I do, but roses on Valentines Day are usually 3 times the normal price, and I find that to be outrageous. We don't do cards either.

However, I did pick up a nice potted tulip for my mother from my father. Since my Dad can no longer drive due to his Parkinson's, he asked that I get something for my mother for the day. I'll make sure we get her a gift certificate for a pedicure later this week too.

DH and I did have a nice Saturday though. We loaded the kids into the truck and went down to Enfield so that I could pick up a battery operated tattooer for the rabbits from Charlene, who was at spinning guild that day. After that drove around northeastern CT just siteseeing. We enjoy that type of thing. When we got home, after I delivered the plant to my Mom, I picked up Taco Bell at the mall for dinner. Since there were 20 people ahead of me in line, I had to wait a while. When I finally got to the head of the line (with at least 15 people behind me), the cashier said to me "Nothing must say Happy Valentine's Day like Taco Bell. It's been like this since noon today!". That gave me a chuckle. There are other tightfisted Yankees out there too. :)

Not so bad after all
Mood:  on fire
Now Playing: WEIB fm 106.3
Today held a whole host of things.

First off was the Upper Endoscopy that I had done at the doctor's office. If you ever have to have one fo these done, don't worry about it. It's completely painless, and the sedatives they give before hand are *great*! :D I'm not the type to go for drugs (either recreational or prescriptive), but I give a thumbs up for whatever they gave me to make me enough aware of what was going on, but relaxed enough so that I didn't really know what was going on. The good news is that the doctor said it looks o.k., and that they will have the results of the biopsy's within a week or so.

After coming home and the spacey feeling wearing off, I finished up our tax information, as I'm meeting with our accountant tonight to file the 2003 taxes. That is a huge relief out of the way, and it took me 10 hours to get everything together. But it's done, and I can relax with one less major thing on my plate.

On the fiber end of things, I bred Annie to Winter two days ago, and again yesterday. Twist was my first choice of bucks, but he's developed this little attitude where he doesn't really care that there is a doe in the cage with him. I'm seriously thinking that he's one of those gay guys that all the girls like "because he's SO sensitive"!. (And I know my brother Luke is going to get a good chuckle out of this; he's one of those guys). Thankfully, Annie was hot to trot, and Winter was more than willing to accomodate. Keep your fingers crossed that we have a healthy litter here in 30 days.

What to do, what to do?
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: WEIB 106.3 fm. Smooth Jazz
The glizty/eyelash scarf has held little appeal. So truely boring that I haven't knit on it since Thursday. Infact, I haven't knit at all since then. I've been preoccupied with other things.

I did make a call to Claudia at Countrywool and found out what colors she had in the various "greens" in Lambs Pride. True to form, Calvin has picked out a color called "Limeade" for his sweater. This doesn't surprise me, and Claudia assures me that this is one of the more popular greens right now. I'll be using Claudia's Top Down Kid's Raglan Sweater pattern.

In the process of cleaning up my office and straightening out the stash, I've discovered quite a few patterns. I'm organized enough right now that they are all being put into a binder. Who knew I had so many patterns? :)

Snow Day!
Mood:  lazy
Now Playing: WEIB 106.3 fm Smooth Jazz
It is snowing outside. We only have a few inches so far, but due to the fact that it is supposed to turn to freezing rain/sleet by 3 p.m. today, the powers that be in our school district did the smart thing and canceled school.

So the boys and I are hanging out this morning, taking it easy, while DH sleeps before he goes back into work tonight for overtime.

I finished the raglan sweater two nights ago. I'm happy with it, although the sleeves are a bit short for my liking. I think the next time I make this pattern, I'll be sure to have 18" sleeves, instead of 16" sleeves.

After serious sleep deprivation again yesterday, and a trip to see the Gastroenterologist (I'm dealing with Acid Reflux Disease, and they want to do a scope down my throat next Thursday just to check things out; oh joy, and I have I mentioned that I seriously dislike going to any doctor???), all I wanted to do was mindless knitting. So I cast on for a glitzy scarf. It is easy garter stitch using a fur yarn and a ribbon yarn. It is easy, but so very boring, especially on size 17 needles. I did 3 inches of it yesterday morning. When I got back to it last night, I'm knitting to the end of the row, and there is a loose piece of eyelash yarn. Where the heck did that come from? Then I look at it more closely. There are a lot of loose ends. It seems that my beautiful little 2 year old son Nate found my scissors (o.k., so I didn't have them put away, so it's partly my fault), and decided to do some cutting. I've got to admit, flashy, furry yarn is very tempting. So I rip out what is left of that 3 inches of knitting and start again. But it is very boring. I knit two inches before falling asleep in the chair.

I've been on a bit of a yarn diet myself, having bought no yarn since the early fall. Since I've been cleaning up my office (which doesn't look any better, but in fact looks worse as I've been moving things around to dig out the stash), I've found a lot of yarn I had forgotten that I had. I did find the Cascade yarn which is green with blue/yellow flecks that I purchased from Claudia at Countrywool. I do love this yarn, and so does Calvin, my 5 year old (green is his favorite color). Cal was begging me to teach him how to knit with it yesterday, but I convinced him that I will buy yarn in the color of green, and knit a sweater for him, in his choice of two patterns. He seems o.k. with that. I also found the sweater kit that I had purchased from the Wool Connection a couple of years ago. It is a slip stitch cardigan, using Jo Sharp yarn which is just delicious to fondle. I'm really tempted to start on this before the Cascade sweater. Decisions, decisions.

I'll post pictures of the sweater later today.

It's a new day
Mood:  cool
Now Playing: WEIB 106.3 fm. Just Once by James Ingram
Today I plan to put Twist and Annie together. I tried doing that earlier this morning, but since they had both been wearing bunny coats, they were more interested in grooming themselves than mating. Once they have gone through the "let's get my fur right!" phase, I'll put them together this afternoon.

The rest of today I plan to spend cleaning and organizing my office. For those of you that haven't seen it, this will take a while. ;-) I'm very unorganized when it comes to yarn stash, plus I need to put together all of my paperwork for taxes, which we are having done next week.

Shearing day
Mood:  blue

I set to work shearing Twist and Annie today. Both were due for their three month shearing, and the wool production numbers were down. I attribute this to the feed I was using until a few weeks ago. I have switched feeds, and we'll see how they do in 3 months when they are sheared again. Plus, I will be adding wheat to their daily food intake, and that should help.

The rest of my day was spent doing a little knitting, and finishing up the brochures for the classes with Sara Lamb and Leslie Samson.

I'm very tired today, and a little sad. I suspect that I'm just overly tired, as I was awake from 12:30 a.m. to 4:30 a.m. today. I can't wait for my husband to get back on the day shift. I'll have normal sleeping hours then.