Happy 4th of July!

It's that time of year again . . . .

I crashed and burned so badly in '07--hopefully I can do better this year.

Thank you, OG&E!

I LOVE electricity!!!

We had a pretty bad storm roll through early this morning, and our power went off about 2 am and was off until about noon or one. Can I tell you how happy I was to come home to lights and air conditioning? If I have a choice, I'll take no power in the winter over no power in the summer any day. Yikes . . . .

There has been gardening and spinning, and cleaning (yuck, but totally necessary), and lots of other stuff. I'll have photos later.

Right now I want to go veg on the couch and then decide when I can go to bed early.

Rendezvous 2008--or "As My Wallet Gently Weeps"

Saturday was Rendezvous 2008, held this year for the first time at the American Legion Hall in Edmond:


A grand time was had by all. We had demos and classes, local vendors and a yummy potluck lunch, and best of all--air conditioning! Unfortunately, since we were indoors, we had no animals, but I'm hoping that will change next year--maybe we can have them outside in the park next to the building. I miss seeing the babies. I was so busy goofing off that I only took one picture, and that was when everyone was leaving at the end of the day:


There was a "sheep to shawl" demonstration, and everyone did an incredible job. The resultant shawl that Wanda produced was amazing, and of course that makes me want a loom even more. There be monsters . . . .

Of course, because this is a once-a-year thing, you have to grab your chance for the good fiber buys while you can, and grab I did. Yikes. I've convinced myself I bought so much because I wanted to support our local fiber folks, but there was definite stash enhancement going on. As you will see below, I am easily led astray.

There was a wool rug hooking demonstration, and my friend Susan twisted my arm to buy a kit and try it (no photo because there wasn't one included in the kit--when I get it from the vendor, I'll post it.)

I bought alpaca and an alpaca/silk blend--yummy.


Six hundred yarns of fingering-weight wool and mohair:


There was this incredible Wensleydale fiber from a sheep named Madonna:


A friend told me Wensleydale has an incredible amount of lanolin in it and is hard to spin when it's humid--and when is it NOT humid in Oklahoma? But I didn't care--I had to have it. Look at that curl--yum.

These were my two best purchases of the day--


a great big yummy batt of dyed goodness, bought thanks to Katie telling me "you need this" (enabler, much? On top of that, she had a gorgeous turkish spindle that I must have, maybe for my birthday.) Isn't it awesome? I can't wait to get into it and see how it spins up.

And then there was this:


I had no plans to buy anything other than fiber--I was going to be good. But Aubrey had several of these, and I got to playing with one and couldn't put it down. It spins better than any other spindle I have, so of course I had to have it. Its story was even more enticing--Aubrey has a friend who does stuff with wood. He saw one of these and told her he thought he could make some. She didn't think anything more about it, but Friday night he showed up at her house with six or seven of these, and they were all winners--perfectly balanced and beautiful to boot. Aubrey sold all of them except for one, and she decided to keep it for herself. This one is a two-ounce spindle, with a whorl of birdseye maple and the spindle of cocobollo. It is just gorgeous, and I love spinning with it. I hope this gentleman continues to make these--he definitely has the touch.

My other favorite thing was something I didn't have to buy:


My friend Noel, who is a coworker of mine, did this while we sat on the floor in a corner of the room. This was freehand and the second one she had ever done--the first one was a few minutes before for her daughter. I love it. I love mehndi, especially the fact that it's not permanent, and this was so much fun. It's my own personal, somewhat private rebellion. We sat in the corner and laughed at what our bosses would say if they ever saw these. I say what they don't know won't hurt them--and get over it, as well.

Anyway, it was a great day, getting to see friends and step outside the box and do something fun. I was so wound up that night that I couldn't sleep and ended staying up until almost 3 am Sunday morning doing this:


This tatted heart pattern can be found here. My grandmother taught me to tat, but she wasn't very proficient at it, so I never really "got it" until I was an adult. I haven't done this in years, but I found my shuttles the other day and thought what the heck. I think this turned out pretty darned well. Now I have two people at work who want to learn to tat.

Fiber art--it's contagious. Who knew? :<)

Sadly (not really), tomorrow morning there will be more stash enhancement--sock yarn and two bundles of fiber from Loopy Ewe. Missy will be handing it off to me before work in the parking lot of a local Mexican restaurant--I hope no one thinks we're dealing drugs. Or maybe we are . . . .

And now, I'm off--I finally finished spinning the red silk I've been working on for ages, and now I'm plying. Ugh. I love spinning, but plying just seems to take so long. But I'm excited to see what I come up with.

Hey, remember me?

(LOTS of photos ahead--BEWARE!)

Yeah, it's me, the really bad blogger--it's been, what, almost a month? Sorry, but my blogging genes have been on vacation for a while. It's too bad I didn't go with them.

So, let's see, where should I start? Well, since this blog is supposed to be focused on knitting and other fiberly goodness, let's see what I've been up to. (Yes, I have actually been doing fiberly things--I know, SHOCK! I've had to work my way back into it, but it's coming along.)

At some point late last year, I promised a picture of my FO shawl:


Yeah, it's a schmattah, but I love it. It's some sort of acrylic boucle in a basic "prayer shawl" pattern (K3, P3). I don't think I like that pattern that much, but this yarn makes it look like ribbon roses. This took me, what, four years to finish? But I love it--it's lightweight yet very warm, sturdy enough that I don't worry about "hurting" it, and big enough that I can wrap it around myself and still have enough left to cover my lap. Perfect.

Let's see, what's next--


This is Mountain Colors Weavers Wool in "Ruby River," in the pattern "Crest of the Wave" from Smatterings. I think this yarn is actually a little heavy for this pattern, but it's knitting up quite pretty anyway. I'm loving this simply because it's such an easy pattern--all I have to keep track of is the row count, aces for someone who can't always remember what she did five minutes ago. This is a little over 50% completed. It won't be super long, but I don't like really long scarves anyway, so it's good.

Now, I need some help with this one:


This is a Fan and Feather Sock based on the pattern from Wendy Knits). The yarn is from Sunshine Yarns in the colorway "Wildflowers." This has been on the needle since, what, November 2006 (?), and I'm about ready to frog it, not because it's awful, but simply because I'm not feeling the sock love any more. I like the yarn, but I need to knit some PLAIN socks--even this simple pattern is making me itch from the inability to concentrate on it. It IS pretty:


So, what do you think--keep it or frog it?

Moving along, the first Saturday of the month, Missy and I took a trip up the highway to Guthrie to SWAK. We hadn't been in over a year, and even though they now have a store in OKC (which I live pretty darn close to and STILL haven't been to), we like to hit the open road once in a while. I was happy to see that they are carrying some new yarns (for them) and have expanded their sock yarn lines. Missy bought some yarn to make some cute stuff for her daughter (who turns 2 this week--happy birthday, Mo!), and I bought this:


This is a washcloth kit with Euroflax linen, a new yarn for SWAK. I have read about Catherine's obsession with this stuff for ages now, and I've been wanting to try it. I thought this would be a good way to start, and the fact that the kit contained a small soap from Vermont sold the deal!

Since it was such a beautiful day, we got a little wild and decided to go out to the Indian Meridian Weavery. This shop is just a few miles east of town. Donna Hilton has had the Weavery now for about a year, and this was the first time we had been out to see her. Unfortunately, she was out of town, but her husband Steve was happy to open up the place so we could spend some bucks, and we had a great time talking to him--he's been around us fiberholics long enough to have learned a lot! I think I about have Missy convinced to buy a spinning wheel--she was able to play with the new Schacht Ladybug and really liked it (me, too, but I don't need another wheel--drat!), and I was in the market for something 'loomy.' I came home with a mini-inkle loom, made in Oklahoma from Thomas Creations in Sapulpa:


After one false start with the warping, I got right into the rhythm of things:


Once I finish this warp, I'm going to do another one just like this and use it as a lanyard for my row counter.

Of course, now this has whetted my appetite for a "real" loom, but there's no way I can do that now, even for a rigid heddle loom (which I have been looking at for a while), so I'm going to have to be satisfied with this. I think this loom will be a lot of fun, and who knows, I may end up getting a regular-sized heddle loom, too--they're not horribly expensive.

We also got to go out and see Donna and Steve's angora goats and alpacas. They're beautiful, so if you're taking a drive, give Donna a call and go out and see her. I'm sure she'd appreciate it.

Unbeknownst to Missy, I had an ulterior motive for going out to Donna's--our family farms are about two miles southeast of there. So with very little arm twisting (thank you, Missy), we drove through Meridian and out to my grandparents' place.

This is where I spent a huge amount of time when I was growing up, since we lived just up the road:



There used to be a porch on the front with a huge cedar tree on each side for shade. They've been gone for years. The window on the right was the living room, on the left was the bedroom, and there's a bumpout in the back that was the kitchen (you had to go through the bedroom to get to the kitchen). They had running water but no bathroom--there was an outhouse out back. (I got locked in there once--scared me to death, because I was afraid no one could hear me screaming from inside the house.)

My grandmother's "flags" (iris) are still there--I can't imagine how old they are, they've been there as long as I can remember, and I'm (ahem) almost 51:


There used to be a tree line that ran along with the flags.

And you see that hill just above the pond?



That's where I dream of having a tiny place of my own some day. I can promise you that it will never happen, but I spend lots of time dreaming about it. It's so peaceful out there, and the day was so beautiful, poor Missy had to practically drag me back to the car. I wanted to dig in and stay.

On the way back we found these little guys sunning themselves on a log (there were three, but one was frightened away):


Let's see, what else is going on?

Garden wise, I started some tomatoes, peppers, basil, and some pansies and violets. They're about ready to put outside. I don't have the gardening mojo this year that I've had in years past--my apartment's new owners/management had the Fire Department do an inspection, and I got a nasty note that I was in violation of fire codes for having so many flowerpots on the walkway. Good thing I have a second bathroom--it's now full of garden stuff. I still have some things out there, but I'm not going to be able to go overboard as I have before, which is good, 'cause I could use saving a few bucks. So in the next couple of weeks I'll start putting a few things out, and we'll see how it goes.

Work is stressful, as always. Tax season always does me in--I'm in charge of getting the returns processed and ready for mailing. Thank goodness this year we have a Controller who is highly knowledgeable in tax stuff, and we were able to get through it with very few of the problems we had last year. A few days before April 15, I was stressing so badly that I ended up at Gourmet Yarn just to try and get out of work mode for a few minutes. Poor Margaret--when she asked me how I was doing, I said, "I just need to be around something that's not--work stuff." She knew exactly what I meant.

Of course I came out with this:


Two skeins of Schaefer "Miss Priss" in the colorway "Jane Addams." I think I have enough to make a shawl or wrap. And it still smells like the vinegar they used to set the dye--just what I needed to remind me that work isn't everything I do.

We have puppy news as well--a friend of mine at work has been fostering a mom and her pups that were rescued from the animal shelter, and another friend has adopted two of them. This is Eddie:


and this is Chloe:


They are small, a mix of pug and Boston Terrier and who knows what else, but they are absolutely adorable. My friend S definitely has her hands full!

And as for Maggie, she is loving the spring--she's spending lots of time in the bedroom window, working on her tan. A couple of weeks ago I caught her just before she woke up (photos courtesy of my BlackBerry):




Hope to see some of you at Rendezvous on May 10. If you haven't heard, there is going to be a flax-spinning workshop on May 9--see the Yahoo OkieFiber site for more details.

Happy Spring!

Happy Spring . . .

and Easter, too . . . .

Just a quick check in . . . .

I had hoped to report that my coworkers and I were bouncing back after the loss of our friend and fellow employee, but that is not to be for the present. We have an employee whose teenaged daughter has been battling cancer for several years. About a year ago she received a terminal diagnosis--there was nothing more that could be done. She fought with all her might, but last Wednesday night, she finally lost the battle. She was 18 years old.

This, along with the loss of our friend Tim and another coworker's sudden loss of his 38-year-old brother three weeks ago to a stroke, has pretty much squashed all of us. We are tired, worn down, and beaten up. Three funerals in three weeks--for people 44 years, 38 years, and 18 years old--does not make for happy times.

We received news this week from the initial NTSB report on the plane crash that there was no distress call and that the black box voice recorder was not operating at the time of the crash. So it will probably be a year before we know what happened. We were hoping that the voice recorder could have given the investigators a better idea of what happened; however, I guess we should be glad to be spared hearing those last few minutes broadcast over and over again on the news.

My heart also aches for another friend at work. Her wedding was in Guthrie Saturday evening after Tim's memorial service. (Many people went straight from the funeral to the wedding--can you imagine?) This accident has been devastating for her not just because she knew Tim, but because her father was killed in a well-publicized plane crash several years ago. She was dealing with not having her father there, but having this happen four days before her wedding pretty much knocked the feet out from underneath her. She was inconsolable--it was like she was reliving her father's death all over again. She's coming back to work tomorrow after being gone for the wedding and a honeymoon in St. Croix--I hope she's doing better. It broke my heart to see her so upset.

Speaking of work, we've been working for the last seven months toward getting some cash infusion into the company from outside investors. We are to receive the offers from those potential investors this week, and I don't know that it will be good news. Whatever the result, there will be many changes afoot. We have already dissolved one department and have lost several employees to better job opportunities. People are worried, and, as happens so many times, management is less than forthcoming about what's happening and what our options might be.

And to top it all off, I've done something to my right arm just above the wrist. It hurts like crazy, right at the bone, almost like I have a hairline fracture or something. I can't remember hitting it with anything, but it's been difficult to grasp or lift things the last week or so. I've kept IcyHot and an Ace bandage on it all weekend, and it seems to be a little bit better, but I'm totally stumped as to what I've done to myself. The way I'm going, people at work are going to believe I'm hurting myself on purpose.

All of this has resulted in all of us having a big ole case of the Spring Blahs. I just don't seem to have much enthusiasm about anything lately. I can't even get worked up over the garden this year, as it seems that our new apartment complex overlords have decided that I have too much stuff on the walkway and it has to go. (They're probably right, but I was hoping to continue to get away with it. I wouldn't mind it so much if they'd actually take care of the property, but they seem to be stuck on the little things and not on the bigger things like removing the now-dead trees from the December ice storm that probably would have survived if they had been taken care of properly, or the unsafe stairs, or the parking lot full of potholes. Instead let's pick on the one thing that people seemed to enjoy . . . .)

Anyway, I have started a few seeds, but nowhere near what I had planned. My hope is that I can pare down the garden and keep everything up by the railing where it will be out of the way and still get the most sun. My tomato seeds and a few flower seeds have sprouted and are now under lights. I plan to direct seeds some herbs and flowers in a couple more weeks when the weather gets a little more consistently warm.

Basically, I'm just in a funk. All these things at work, and then add in the rising costs of food and fuel, the tanking economy, a government that is sending us into another Great Depression, and a presidential race that both scares me and pisses me off, and I just don't want to play any more. The old standard, "life isn't fair," isn't even coming close to explaining how I feel these days.

I just want to stay at home with the covers over my head, please. That's not asking for too much, is it?

Today's my third blogiversary.

I don't quite have the same enthusiasm about blogging that I did when I started out, but I'm still checking in once in a while, so that counts, right? So happy blogiversary to me.

Unfortunately, it's truly not a very happy one. Tuesday afternoon there was a small jet crash outside of Wiley Post Airport. My company's head pilot was flying the plane--it was not our plane, but he frequently picked up extra flights when he wasn't flying for us. Eyewitness reports say they flew into a flock of birds and then spiraled to the ground. They landed nose first. As you can imagine, there were no survivors.

My coworkers and I are, quite frankly, devastated. Tim was the nicest, sweetest, friendliest guy you could image. He did not have your typical pilot ego, but he had incredible talent--he was meticulous in his responsibility as a pilot. I've never seen so many people at such a loss for words. Even our hard-edged, Boston-born CEO has just fallen apart. He flew with Tim a lot, and they were very close.

I can't say that we got much done at the office for the rest of the week (I know I didn't), but at least we were together. Yesterday afternoon we gathered to look at some photos and share our memories of Tim. It was very, very hard. Many of us had seen him in the office Tuesday morning, and a few short hours later, he was gone.

There is a memorial service this afternoon in Yukon, and my company is providing a reception for the family members after the service. I know we need to get through this to be able to move one, but it won't be easy.

We will miss you, Tim.