What the???
Mood:  irritated
Now Playing: WEIB fm
Tripod must have a serious gremlin working at it, because last night, when I uploaded the new photos to the blog, they were in the correct order. I had a picture of my sheep sign and a sock I was knitting on Saturday's blog entry. Then I put 1 picture of my boys sitting at their new table on the entry from last night. It looked fine when I signed off.
Then this morning, I go into my blog, to find the pictures completely rearranged. I spent 2 hours this morning trying to get it straightened out. It appeared to be fixed finally (I even checked my blog from another computer), only to log onto it tonight, and find that the picture I had up of my boys has suddenly morphed into the sheep sign. What the?????

I'm not fixing it again. It took too much damn time this morning to get it done, so I won't even try again.

On the plus side....
Topic: Various things
Annie, my German doe from Leslie, appears to be in nest building mode. Please keep your fingers crossed for a successful delivery.

I had another nice chat with Leslie today. We spent a great deal of time discussing IAGARB, and the direction it is headed in. Primarily, wool production records. That said, I really need to get a scale that gives me weight in grams, rather than ounces, as it is more accurate. Wool production records are going to become more and more important as time goes by, and let's face it, besides having these beautiful animals, and loving them, we all want to make some money to help cover the cost of having them, yes?

My husband's creativity
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: WEIB 106.3 fm Smooth Jazz
My husband works for a company that makes point of purchase display units for companies such as Yankee Candle and TY Beanie Babies. He used to be a moldmaker, but this change of careers really suits him. He has access to all sorts of machines that can do various things with wood, and melamine.

Last night, he told me he was planning to make our boys a new arts and craft table, to be used within his office, here at our house. He showed me the design, and my only suggestion was to have 2 cut outs, instead of just one in the middle.

This is what he came home with tonight. :)
Our happy little campers at their new table.



Here is a picture of my husband and boys putting the table together.

Blue Eyes
Mood:  celebratory
Now Playing: I'm Still Standing by Elton John
Yes, I'm celebrating. For the first time ever, I scored tickets to see Elton John within minutes of them going on sale! The first time Elton John was at the Mullins Center, I got a ticket 45 minutes after going on sale; they were almost sold out and I was in the nose-bleed seats. The second time, I totally missed out, not being able to get through at all. The last time he was in Amherst, I got tickets, but had to call Philadelphia's ticket office to get the tickets. Today, I got lucky, and was able to get my tickets within the first 3 minutes of them going on sale. I am so excited about this. Elton John is my favorite performer, and his music means a lot to me; songs of his always seem to say something about my life at the time they come out. He is really an amazing performer!

Now, I have a picture to share of my sheep sign.

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?
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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.