Oops! I almost missed Dogs on Thursday.

It's not midnight yet, so I haven't missed it. I spent the morning getting a new crappy job and the afternoon/evening at my current crappy job. Leaning over the chair to snap photos got me this:

I give up. Here is a lovely photo from last Christmas.

Speaking of black cats...

A neighborhood cat has been tearing up our trash. We work to prevent it's access to said trash. Then I mention that the cat looks much thinner. Then we notice that the home of the elderly couple down the street has an auction sign in the yard. Crap! They were the stray cat feeders. So we save our scraps and put them out at night when we lock up the trash. Only... last night we both forgot to save part of our supper for the d@*n cat. So Mom scrambles him an egg! This morning I asked the next door neighbor if she has adopted it. No, but she did cook an extra piece of sausage for him this morning. Yeah, we're screwed.

WIP, handspun yarn, and spilling the beans.

A work-in-progress update: log cabin baby blanket & ball-band dishcloth baby blanket.

Today I spent some time filling my lists on Ravelry. Here are some of my handspun yarns as I cropped them. I still don't have the hang of cropping appropriately for ravelry, so only bits of the pictures survive to the stash file.

Pictures of the knitted Halloween cat that I made to swap with Veronica at Berry Faerie ( http://berryfaerie.blogspot.com/ ). I think it is safe to post pictures because I mailed the package last Thursday.

The candy corn hat really does it for me.

A Quickie

I'm in Ravelry as unfinishedknits. I've been so disconnected this past week that I've barely had the time to look around. No work tomorrow. I'll take photos and prepare to blog.
Things are looking up, though. I decided to quit my job and get a less stressful one. More time to sit and knit and sleep and play with dogs. Last day at "running-me-ragged" job: Nov. 10

Sinkhole

Last Thursday, a sinkhole opened in the road next door. Whoosh!
It's hard to tell from the pictures, but a large car could easily fit inside. If a car fell in, then you fell in, you could stand on top of the car and still have trouble reaching high enough to climb out.

Handspun Blanket

I crocheted this baby blanket / lap cover from my handspun wool yarn.

The yellows and pinks are lincoln wool carded and dyed by me. The blues and orange were from purchased roving.

Attack of the Zombie Dog?

Playing Dead Dog

Playing Reanimated Zombie Corpse Dog

Attack the Zombie Dog!

Sheep!

Last year at the MO Botanical Garden

Unintentional local meal

The farmer's market produce is starting to back up on us. I made a list so that we would be sure to eat at least one thing each day. Halfway through supper we realized that except for onions and "accessories", our meal was locally grown.

salted cucumber slices

fried gold potatoes & sweet potatoes

green beans w/ onion

Our need-to-eat list still contains: yellow squash, spagetti squash, cukes, potatoes, sweet potatoes, eggplant, & watermelon. I also got indian corn to grind up for johnny cakes after we are tired of using it as decoration.

On the topic of food... at work last week I met a man from Casablanca. He told me about his small restaurant out in the country not too far away. This weekend Mom & I set out to find it. We got lost a couple of times, but eventually found it. We told him we wanted Morracan food, but he didn't have any prepared. (living in po-dunk as we do, there aren't many people interested in international foods.) Miloud went to his own kitchen and brought back chicken pastilla for us. We liked it even though the meat was very dark. (we have pigeon suspicions... which is still okay with us.)

One for me, one for H.B.

For Holly B. You can't tell from the picture, but the orange w/ pink strays from a yellowish orange for a few feet and them back to a reddish orange for a few more. Also, the plying was so lazily done that I didn't even bother to join the mohair when I changed yarns. You will have to work all the loose ends to the back of your project. I didn't block the orange yarn after I frogged it out of an abandoned project. Personally I don't mind knitting with squiggly yarn, but you can block it yourself it you do.

For me:

Mostly pink with yellow and orange. I like. The solid lumpy pink would make a nice border for a mohair/wool fingerless mitten. It will have to have a very short wrist or I'll need to find yet another yarn worthy of it's great ugliness.

Miscellaneous Dog Shots

Whirling Dervishes

Camping trip, dog tent.

A ghost of Christmas morning past.

Lora, Mom, Jill

Puddin, Bitsy, Jackie, Maddie

Please visit Dogs On Thursday today. The Doggie Spotlight features Puddin!

Fulled Handbag

Last night I finished my knitted purse. I used one strand of dark charcoal wool and one of a wine red wool. The I-cord handles were sewn on at the end. It was fulled in the washer with a load of towels.

At first it really stretched out. After resetting the agitation for a second run, then air drying overnight, this is where it was.

I still wanted it to be more dense so I tossed it in the dryer for 20 minutes.
Now the only thing left is to shave off the fuzzies. And then maybe embellish it with beads?

Not a quiet yarn

I found this yarn yesterday when I was looking through my stash. Yikes. An orange mohair single, a pink wool single, and 2ply green wool all plied together. I was hoping for an interesting novelty. Instead I found something even uglier than the sum of its parts. If you look away and back again quickly, you can almost see a swarm of caterpillars invading a pumpkin.

Our first intentionally local meal

From our garden: tomatoes with basil & summer squash.
From friends' gardens: sweet potatoes, mixed lettuce, radishes, peppers & chicken.
Purchased but local: bbq sauce & honey.
Cheaters: salt, vinegar, cinnamon.
A feast! It started out a lot easier than I thought. Just telling people what I was doing opened most of these doors. My salad connection also told me that a friend of hers raises wool sheep so now I have a local wool source for spinning. I already have a familial connection for local cotton down in the Bootheel (MO).

Step aside. I'm here to save the world.

What will I do?

1. Replace regular light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs. This house is 80% converted already. At first it was hard because of the difference in price and the frequency of changing. After we got into it, we hardly ever even think of needing to buy bulbs.

2. Wash laundry in cold water. Also a hard sell at first. If you spot clean the really bad parts and leave the lid open to soak it for an extra 20-30 minutes it will be just as clean. For stink removal add borax(20 Mule Team Borax laundry additive) and let soak. It works.

3. Dry towels outside. This saves a lot of electricity from the dryer. I don't like the stiffness of line-dried towels so I tumble them on air-dry for ten minutes after.

4. Compost garbage from meals and cooking. We're better about this during active gardening season. This one is a re-pledge.

5. Eat one locally grown meal per week. This is new. Starting next week. I expect this to be hard. Especially finding new food sources this late in the season. Right now we have peppers, tomatoes, herbs, eggs, milk, chicken, okra, squash, lemons, pears, sweet potatoes, & honey. Seasonings will be exempted. I won't give up salt to save the world.

Bath Day & High Fashion

Why are we in doggie lockdown?

It's bath day and we're rubbing eau de wet dog on all the furniture!

Who, me? A hand model? You must be kidding.

Here's Pudding wearing the latest in toddler accessories: a fingerless mitten. ( They are actually for my sister's girls.)

Little Bitty Fingerless Mitten

The first toddler sized mitt for Jill's girls. I think I'll have to make Jill a pair also so that they will imitate her by wearing them.Can't quite visualize it? Maybe this will help with scale.
And in the category of WIP: the log cabinish baby blanket is inching along.

Spinning Wheel and Spinster

Mom's French aunt Micheline painted this spinster with a distaff. Her son Jim gave me the painting after I learned to spin. He said that she didn't like to paint hands. The fact that I can't know if she was spinning with her other hand or not makes me crazy. Just looking at it makes me want to go can jelly for Jim for Christmas. The generosity of the gift still moves me.

Here is my first spinning wheel. My aunt Joyce gave it to me. She said someone made it, but it didn't have the mother-of-all. I found someone to make that for me. Since I learned to spin on this, most of my yarns are long-draw. My great wheel is definitely a walking wheel. I spin as long as I can before winding back on. Now I need another part. Notice the 2 legs? There should be three. I have it propped up against the wall. Mom found someone with a lathe to make a new leg. I'm anxious to try it out again. It is actually very relaxing if you can get past the screaming cursing part where the band slips off every 45 seconds.

Mmmm...Monday

Not Chicken & Egg Noodles...TVP & Spelt Noodles

Mom goes to the farmer's market last Saturday and picks up some eggplant. She's wanting baba ganoush but we're out of tahini. When I get home from work, off the the health food store we go. (Not many options in town here. Every time I buy a mango at the grocery, I have to tell the cashier what it is.) We found Soy Chicken Chunks.

Let's make chicken & noodles! Yeah, chicken & noodles. But I'm not rolling out the noodles. Well, I don't want to roll out noodles either. Let's buy noodles! I don't see any. They have whole wheat. Do we want chewy yucky whole wheat? Look, spelt noodles! Have we tried spelt? I don't know, how bad could they be?

I'll tell you, not bad. We rehydrated the chunks in turkey broth,(that's right. We cooked a turkey- get over it) so I have no idea how they taste alone. By the way, the baba ganoush was very good, but was it ever ugly! So no picture.

Something for the crafty cause.

A cross-stitch angel that I never finished. It's supposed to have gold beads and sparkly embellishments. Since I have met ME, I decided to slap it in a frame and hang it on the wall.