Today I want to take time to highlight Winderwood Farm.  I have previously spun up items I was gifted from this company, but I recently made my first purchase from them.  The roving caught my attention and held it for quite awhile.  After sending that pay pal payment, I had to wait less then a week for this to arrive:

It’s 4 ounces of alpaca, silk, merino and it’s like buttah to spin.  I started spinning it early this morning during my quiet time before the kids woke.  I am barely having to pre draft it’s that soft and silky.  The colors are keeping me entertained (and believe me, lately if it doesn’t totally keep my attention, it’s outta here).  I already have plans for this to meet up with some bamboo on the loom.

Stay tuned.

…and today was one of those days.  I woke up later then normal and that threw me off my schedule.  The kids seemed full of mouth and attitude this morning.  Add my schedule re-adjustment and let’s just say it wasn’t the best of mornings.  While locked in the office on the phone with the internet trouble shooters, my kids were strangely quiet.  In this house, that’s usually NOT a good thing.  However, they surprised me.  While Josh and Cassidy were finishing up their school work, Chris, Jac, and Jess were doing this.

Chris got Jac started on a card weaving project.  While he didn’t do everything “technically by the book”, he’s a sharp kid and picked up the basics from me yesterday.  They were happily weaving and working together.

My friend, who was also having a rough morning, texted me asked us to meet her for lunch.  Sorry Jim, we just had to do a “Los Tres Lunch”.  And it was well worth it to get out and chill a bit.  Here’s hoping the afternoon goes a whole lot smoother.

I actually finished weaving this scarf last month.  I had wanted to dye it colorful. However, my dyes and I just aren’t communicating very well these days.  Ok, other things have kept me away from the dye pots lately (but I hope to get back there very very soon).  I decided that the white on white was growing on me and went ahead and twisted the fringe adding some clear beads as I went along and viola…another finished object.

If you look closely you can see the diamond pattern that I really enjoyed weaving.

This will be a nice winter wool scarf for someone somehwere.

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I’ve been wanting to try my hand at tablet or card weaving for awhile now.  I have been too cheap umm lazy umm unwilling to do a lot of research on it.  But early this morning I started the search for inkle looms.  I thought it would be a great compliment for a woven tote or pillow to make matching woven bands.  In doing the research I found I could just make my own cards for tablet weaving.  So while the kids did their school work this morning, I cut card stock and punched holes in the squares.  After lunch, I started this.

For a first attempt, I am really proud of it.  Of course, I have a few other kidlets chomping at the bit to learn this technique, so I think I found our new summer project.

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And now, since we are done with school, the projected rain hasn’t come (yet), we are off on a bike ride to the post office and around the neighborhood.

Catch ya all later.

Ok, so last week in honor of Mother’s Day they came out with something that stated a “Mother’s Worth” or something like that and it had a bunch of jobs thrown in and gave an obscene yearly income.  I honestly didn’t hear the entire report and it didn’t really register with me until yesterday morning while doing chores, trying to conduct school, and mediate an argument.

Here’s what I have come up with.

These pay scales are based on “National Averages” I found at payscale.com

Teacher for special needs children 40,285.00 a year.

Counselor (clinical therapist…although I think I could possibly qualify for something much higher these days) 36,000.00 a year.

Chef (as I don’t consider myself simply a short order cook) 47,700.00 a year.

Maid 23,338.00 a year.

Prison Guard (since these days my children tell me they are living in a prison and well…there are days lately that I feel like a prison guard) 30,100.00 a year.

Grand Total: $177,423.00 a year.

Hey I didn’t even throw in seamstress, weaver, mediator, supervisor of all things, etc.

I am extremely underpaid. 

Remember my post from Saturday about getting a warp on the loom? I didn’t tell the whole story.  I actually intended to make pillows for my newly redecorated bedroom out of the cloth.  I was getting a bit frustrated warping front to back and wondered if I was supposed to be making something else.  About the same time, the phone rang and I received a call from a friend letting me know about the death of another friend’s child.  It was such a blow and so unexpected.  Their baby boy had been sick in the past, but I hadn’t heard of any recent illness so wasn’t prepared for the news.  As I ended the call and laid my head on my loom to pray for the family, a sense of peace filled my heart.  I just knew that I needed to make a prayer shawl for “C”.  You see I had made one before that was used to cover baby “J” through many tests and procedures and I know it brought comfort to his momma.  I just felt the need to get this done and out in the mail to them ASAP.

It’s finished, it’s pressed, and it’s ready to go.

I treated myself to a Sugar Free Coffee “thang” from my church’s coffee shop on the way out of service yesterday.  I got to talking to a friend and didn’t pay attention to the lady making the drink (usually I am a hawk about such things to make sure it’s sugar free).  I received my drink, said goodbye, and headed out the door.  After drinking not quite half of the drink and not yet home, I began to get pretty ill. By the time we walked in the door I was doubled over doing what I do best when I have a sugar dump into my system (those who know me well, know what happens).  I was on the couch after that for a bit.  Let’s just say it was NOT a fun time. Still feeling the effects of it today.

Kids wanted me to open gifts, so that happened while laying on the couch so please excuse the lasiness of the shots:

Grandpa pitched in the money for this gift but the boys had decided that I needed the next DVD in the “Love’s Long Journey” series.

And this gift touched my heart in a very special way.  Chris bought this one himself with saved up lawn mowing money.  Apparently he picked it out several weeks ago and had just enough money.  It’s a Precious Moments Snow Globe which reads, “Mother You are my gift from God, for every good and perfect gift is from above”  Talk about a klenex moment!!

My daddy and Barbara came over for what the kids term “Linner” (which is lunch and dinner).  We then chatted with Jim via Instant Messanger.   Finally it was shower and bedtime. 

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Today we have school work to complete, chores to do, a bike ride to take, and whatever else comes our way.

I hope your day is blessed beyond measure.

I received a phone call Saturday morning asking for directions to our home.  “Excuse me, who is this?”  I asked.  “Richard” was the reply, “and I have a flower delivery for your mother.”  “Ummm…no you don’t.” I said.  “She passed away.”  Silence of the other end.  Finally  “oops…my bad”  (I deplore that phrase).  “But I still need directions to your house.  They closed the main road for this stupid race (he’s talking about the annual “fun run” … as if running is actually fun… that is hosted on our post each year) and I can’t figure out now where you live and I have a floral delivery for Kimberly L.”  “Oh, that would be me.”  And figuring it wasn’t an axe murderer at 10:00 in the morning, I told him where to find my road from his location.

These loverly flowers were delivered just a few minutes later:

I am assuming they are from my wonderful and amazing hubby due to the message on the card, however, there was no signature to verify this.  My children have denied all knowledge of this, but they have been known to keep the truth from me in the past.  They smell great and really liven up the house.  So thank you very much. *by the way, Jim has now claimed responsibility for the flowers…and after the anniversary fiasco I would too…even if I didn’t actually send them

The kids and I went for a bike ride yesterday.  I hadn’t been riding since last year.  I must say, for being so out of shape, I did well even though the seat of my bike decided to come undone about half way through the ride and I had to stand up and ride the rest of the way home. (and I must admit that in itself was quite a work out and quite a feat as well) We fixed the seat and headed out again.  By the end of the ride, I was fairly sore. This morning all things seem to be working in the correct order, though.  We will head out again on Monday after school for a bit of a longer ride.  At one point, I felt like the Pied Piper or something.  Not only did I have my 5 trailing behind me, but along the way we picked up a few of the kid’s friends and I ended up having 9 trailing behind me through the streets of our neighborhood.

I need to finish getting ready for church as the kids will be up shortly.  After church, daddy and Barbara are coming over and we are just having a fairly simple meal of brats, hot dogs, potato salad, and home made baked beans.  I made the bread for the hot dogs last night.  An easy recipe (and new) and they turned out pretty well.  (As a side note, everytime I make bread these days I recall our last large shopping trip to the grocery.  The bagger, an elder gentleman who showers all the kids with lollipops and gold dollars for their birthdays, made a comment to Jess that it looked like momma forgot the bread.  Jess smiled and said, “Oh no, mom makes ALL our bread these days from bagels to muffins to sandwich stuff.”  He was quite impressed. Said that you just don’t find that much these days.  I smiled and thought of all my on-line pals who have encouraged me lately to make our breads and silently thanked and saluted them. Of course, Jessi’s pride about my bread making skills helped a bit too)

Happy Mother’s Day to all you moms out there from the wanna be moms, the soon to be moms, the brand new moms, the seasoned moms, and those who are mom mentors (you know that special lady in your life that isn’t your mom but they sorta take you in anyway).  I pray you all have a very blessed and peacefully calm day.

See, I really did start to warp the loom.

As you can see, Bear-Kat, really wanted to help.  But , under penalty of a bath he was warned to leave the threads alone.  Amazingly enough, he did.

By 10:00 I still had a long way to go to get the loom completely warped.  It’s amazing how quickly I can warp and thread when going from back to front, but how slowly it tends to go for me when I warp front to back.  Perhaps because the majority of my warping is B2F.  I suppose I just need more practice.

I took the girls out and we got new haircuts (pictures of those tomorrow perhaps) and to do some “girl” shopping.  Grandpa took the boys out for super secret upcoming special day that mom can’t know about shopping.  After we got back home, I turned the kids loose on the unsuspecting neigborhood (ok so most of them weren’t THAT bad ) and I went back to the loom.  By 7:30 this is what I had:

Not too shabby for a days work.  The lighting is really off in the living room so this really isn’t an accurate color.  Will have to wait on that.

Today is supposed to be sunny and bright and there are things that I MUST do today to get caught up on things. Sure hope you all have a wonderful day.

What to do when it’s raining and icky and the kids can’t go out and play and burn off excess energy?  That’s right, have them crank the handle to the drum carder. That’s what we did on Wednesday afternoon after we were done with school.  And while I would LOVE a motorized drum carder (someday) who needs one when I currently have willing slaves children to do the job of turning the crank?

First, we took already carded fibers that I had run through the carder previously, and combined them together.

I am using white corriedale, purple merino, and gray mohair.

Of course, one has to post the “cheesecake” picture.  But here I am tamping down the fibers to make sure they sort of “mush together”.  You don’t want to do it so much you end up felting them onto the carder, but this just sort of packs them together to get more on the drum.

Once the drum is fully loaded, I just start at one end of the drum and peel off the fibers pulling them through the diz.

This makes a roving that is pretty much predrafted and ready to spin.

I got it on the wheel:

And all spun up:

Since today is Military Spouse Appreciation Day, I decided to honor myself with these two purchases:

A Double Boat Shuttle so I can feed two colors of weft yarn through at the same time. I also got some Texsolv Cord.  I plan on using the Texsolv to change out my chain tie up on the big loom.  Am hoping it makes it a bit easier to treddle and not quite so noisy.  Also wanted to make sure I had some extra on hand should the workshop loom need it replaced.  I am quite sure I deserve it after having survived the first 6 months of this deployment

I started warping my workshop loom for a project last night.  I just flew by the seat of my pants on this and grabbed 4 warp chains I had already painted.  Those 4 are completely perfect to go from end to end of the 22 inch reed.  I just randomly sleyed the reed across the length.  Then it was time for bed, so no threading the heddles or beaming the warp.  Hopefully later today I can get to that.  Maybe pictures tomorrow.

And I leave you with this:

While rolling out the fry bread on Wednesday, I ended up with a heart shaped bread quite unplanned.  This one is for you, Jim.  We love ya!

May your day be filled with HIS awesome wonders.

…proved to be pointless as the children kept finding me.  They thought it was a game.  I was trying to escape.  They thought I was playing hide and seek.  Stormy weather persisted through the morning leaving the day just icky and gloomy. By dinner time (we eat early these days), the tornado sirens were going off and we found ourselves in the hallway while our Indian Tacos cooled on the table without us.  But, the sirens were more for the expected straight line winds (65 mph).  We didn’t see that here, but to the immediate south of us, there were quite a few damaged areas. The storm apparently really developed in strength over us and got worse as it headed north.  There were several reports of tornadoes but I don’t know if any were actually confirmed or not.  Today is supposed to be a calmer day, at least weather wise.

On The Fibery Front

I finally have some finished projects to show off.  Still working on the green socks for Socks For Soldiers.  My hands just aren’t cooperating with small needles these days so the knitting goes on, but slowly.  April was a VERY non productive month for fibery stuff, but I did finish some toddler socks using larger needles.

These 4 pair were finished in April:

And these two were finished the first week in May:

Another pair on the needles as I type this.  I am using size 8 needles holding one strand of fingering weight and one strand of worsted weight using the Magic 28 sock pattern.  It’s easy and they work up fast.  A great pattern to use up scraps and small skeins.

Today I think I will be focusing on some spinning for yarn to use as weft for the next weaving project…should I ever make it back to the loom, that is.  I did finally cut off a scarf from the loom last month, but still haven’t finished it.