On Monday evening, I decided to work a bit on my batt that I’d begun on the wheel. An odd thing happened. My eyes started to itch and my throat got all scratchy and some sneezing was done. It took me awhile, but I finally realized that it was likely that I was NOT getting sick, but could have something to do with my fiber. To be honest, it had a very slightly musty smell when I took it out of the package. Probably not noticeable to the general public, but as Mr. Ink says, I’ve got an oversensitive nose.

Well, my nose, AS USUAL, was not wrong. I sniffled and sneezed through the rest of that batt, and then washed my hands and face, ate dinner, took a benadryl, and went to bed.

There’s the resulting singles. They are quite pretty actually! But not sure they were entirely worth it. The unfortunate fact is…I’ve got 3 more of these batts! And, I just CANNOT toss them or give them away, I mean, fiber is an investment. So, I think I will spin them. I just have to pick a day that I am willing to power through them all at once, and deal with the resulting allergies.

I do think that once the yarn is properly washed, it won’t be a problem. I just have to get it to a point where it can be washed.

I do have a long weekend coming up, made longer by the fact I took an extra day off. So, I am thinking I may just pick one of those days as “the” day to finish the project.

In any case, that’s where I am right now! I admit that because of this, I haven’t been able to get tiny bits of spinning done in the mornings before work, lest I go to work allergic. And last night we had company. So crafting is slightly slow going at the moment. I AM hoping it picks up quite a bit over the long weekend!

Mr. Ink and I spent this weekend at a biking/camping/music festival. Quite frankly, the two of us have been so entirely focused on the yard that the summer slipped by, and we ended up looking around and wondering where it went, and why we hadn’t been out having fun. (Well, the yard is fun. BUT, that’s not the type of fun we ended up looking for.)

Last weekend, I decided to purchase a new to me, one of a kind, fat bike. Quite frankly, it’s maybe more like I am the bike’s foster parent, as the previous owner didn’t truly want to sell it. So, I have given her the option of purchasing it back in the future if she decides she’d like to. In the meantime, I have a cool new bike to run around on, and that’s great fun for me.

Now, fat bikes are still a bit of a niche item, and you don’t see that many of them on regular rides. Though there are more and more all the time. In part, it’s because they take a lot more energy and muscles to actually ride. Those thick tires really hold you back, and the frames are heavy as well. I decided to take my new bike on the jamboree with me, even with Mr. Ink’s questioning of my plan.

Here she is, isn’t she the cutest? I ended up doing great! A little slower than usual, but Mr. Ink didn’t seem to mind at all, and agreed that it had gone better than he’d expected. The real bonus to these types of bikes is that you can roll over anything and you just don’t feel it. So, instead of avoiding sticks and cracks and bumps and fields, I head directly to them, running anything in my path over with my big fat tires, and it absolutely brings a grin to my face. Furthermore, the custom paint job on this one brings smiles to the faces of everyone around me. This is an awfully joyful bike! If someone commented on it at a stop, I’d let them take it for a spin, and the general consensus was that riding it makes you feel like a kid again, and that’s exactly the experience I had with it.

In the end, I rode 72 miles in 2 days on this bike. On a normal bike, that’s a long ride, but nothing to brag about for me. But on this thing? Yep, I am bragging!

The jamboree has a stop every 7-10 miles where you can rest and listen to live music, and then it culminates with a couple live bands in the destination town where we all camp. The headliner this year, and what truly sealed the deal on the trip, was Big Bad Voodoo Daddies. That just seemed like a fun show to see, and indeed it was!

I don’t love camping, but even that went well. I slept okish, and the trip home the next day was great. It did NOT rain! We arrived home, and I took a look at the radar only to see a huge storm popping up over the trail we’d just been on, encompassing the entire 35 miles we’d ridden. Boy were we fortunate!!! And I am glad we’d decided not to dawdle, but get home and take care of business.

Once home, all sore, sweaty, and exhausted, we decided to mow while we were still gross. I think between 4 p.m. and 11 p.m. on Sunday evening we managed to pack an entire weekend’s worth of work. Maybe not quite, but it felt like it!

In spinning news, on Friday night, in between packing for our trip, I finished the entire 8 oz. of crown mountain farms singles I’d been putting on support spindles. I am not sure if this is the first time I’ve ever done 8 oz. exclusively on support spindles, but if I have, it’s really rare. Generally I start out on support spindles, get bored of having an unfinished project, and throw the remainder on the wheel. This time? That entire 8 oz is on the spindles.

And, they look quite nice! I don’t think I’ll get an opportunity to ply these immediately though. I started a 3 batt project on my wheel before the wheel fell out of favor, and I suspect I’ll finish those singles first, then ply these singles after. I do actually have my heart set on a 3 ply, I think that will be the best use of these colors overall.

I hope everyone had a great weekend, now it’s time for me to catch up on your blogs!

On the couch, feet up, spinning. That’s how I spent a good portion of my day yesterday.

I made good progress too! Here’s where I started:

I began the project in March, and that’s exactly how far I got. as you can tell, I added to those two spindles, and then pulled out another 3. This is an 8 oz. project and somehow I’ve got it in my head that I should do it all on spindles. That being said, any other time I’ve said that, I eventually get bored with that idea, want a finished object, and spin the rest up on my wheel. We’ll see what happens this time.

As is always the case with Crown Mountain Farms, I tend to want to make a 3 ply since the colors are so crazy and different. But, it would also be fun to someday try a 2 ply. But, that’s hard to do when the fiber is so hard to come by these days in the first place. So, I haven’t decided if this will be my 2 ply or if I’ll wait and hope to get my hands on more CMF in the future. (Um, NOT counting the 3 bumps I have in stash currently.)

We did also do yard work, mowing in particular needed to be done, and I got a nice long walk in too. I am guessing we are looking at more of the same today. I know that cleaning out the fridge is on my list, due to a spill. However, despite the fact that I never WANT to do that job, it doesn’t actually take that long, I just avoid it on principle. But, I’ll also continue to enjoy my spinning today, maybe a little knitting too!

I managed to spin more loop cloud 3 ring circus singles and get those plied with the remainder of my fatcatknits batt. I guessed how much I needed in the way of singles to match the fatcatknits singles. When I finished the fatcatknits singles I had exactly 2 inches of the loop cloud singles left. There’s NO WAY I could have been more accurate in my guess. That was fun!

I ended up with 370 additional yards of this fabulous and weird combination. That means I have a grand total of 1,230 yards of 2 ply!

All I need do now is find the perfect project for them. I feel certain these won’t sit in my stash for long, my obsession is pretty strong with these skeins.

In other news, Miss Butterfly and I have been enjoying some Pokemon Go these past two days. Or rather, I’ve been enjoying the company on my walk, and she has been enjoying pokemon go. I am pretty much her handler while she plays the game. However, we are enjoying it greatly. It gets me out of my walk routine, as she’s off chasing a nearby pokestop, or wanting to explore a new area. And, she wants to play more than I would typically walk, so our walks get long when we have the time for it. It’s been a pretty nice way to spend some time together!

We are headed to a water park this weekend for some fun time away. I figure it is one of the last weekends to do it, since despite the fact that it remains hot here often through September, they close everything up after Labor Day anyhow. So, we’ll enjoy a little quality time with Miss Butterfly while the summer remains.

I hope everyone is having a lovely weekend!

We’ve had some pretty amazing weather here. In the heat department, upper 90s with feels like temps of 114. Then evening storms. Our Wednesday night surprise storm crept up on us, and then gave us hurricane style wind and sideways rain. It came out of nowhere, and Mr. Ink was outside pulling weeds, so all of a sudden he comes running across the lawn with his weed bucket quite soaked.

We watched that storm from the living room, watching our trees bending dangerously and the busy road completely flooding. It was pretty wild. And, it allowed us to get stuff done in the house since everything was then watered. I did a bunch of plying, Mr. Ink worked on one of his fish tanks, and I ended up finishing a skein.

I hung it out to dry Thursday afternoon, figuring the 97F weather would dry that skein fast. It sure did! So, I got some snapshots of it prior to the next nice big rainstorm that came through.

815 yards of 3 ply fingeringweight yarn. I adore it!

Let’s take another look!

Yep, that one turned out quite well, I am glad I did a full 8 oz project.

During yesterday’s storm, I began spinning up more 3 ring circus so I could complete my 3 ring circus/fatcatknits batt project. The heat has left outdoors so undesirable that my spinning production seems quite high at the moment.

The latest garden area that we edged and walled was an area that was creating a water problem in the basement. Now, our basement isn’t finished, so it isn’t a big deal. However, we’ve been anxious since we moved in to cure that water problem. We decided that before we tried particularly drastic measures like digging trenches and laying in rocks or a pipe for drainage, we’d try the simple measures. Mr. Ink chose the viburnum for that garden as we needed something larger to take up the water there. Removing the rotting raised wood edgers was also priority, and the new garden slopes nicely to the side as well as building up the dirt at the base of the house to keep water from the foundation.

After two heavy rainstorms in a row, causing flash flood warnings to pop up all over my phone, I can honestly say with a bit of confidence we got the basement water issue fixed. We don’t have any immediate plans to finish the basement, but it is one of those things we talk about from time to time. I’d say that getting the water issue fixed is absolutely step one!

That’s all from me this morning, hoping to have a pleasant update tomorrow as well, maybe even some finished yarn again! Have a great weekend everyone!

It’s been a nutty few days. On Monday, Miss Butterfly was to arrive via airplane from a visit with my parents. It would be her first flight where she was a Young Traveler rather than an unaccompanied minor. Young travelers are basically responsible for themselves. Due to this, I’d decided she should be on a flight which kept her on the same plane all the way through to her destination. But, the destination had to be an airport 3 hours from home. So I was to leave work and drive 3 hours to pick her up, and drive back home.

I got a call mid day saying that if she stayed with that flight, she’d end up stranded in Orlando, and so they were going to move her to a flight that did change planes, arriving in her destination city a little earlier than I’d anticipated.

Well, I wasn’t thinking. I mean, I was at work, and had a visitor here who was also having flight issues, and as soon as I hung up the phone I realized that if she was going to be changing planes, the ENTIRE PURPOSE of me driving 3 hours to a different airport was moot. I quickly texted my family who were already close to the airport that things had changed, quickly looked at flight options, picked one that would get her into our airport, and called the airline. The rep that I spoke to wasn’t that eager to change things, but put me on hold while she asked a supervisor. Meanwhile, my parents arrived at the airport, noticed the change, and called me. So, now I’ve got two phones, one to each ear, trying to figure out what to do. Thankfully the rep at their airport was quick to agree to the destination city change, and I hung up on the airline from my end.

Now, you would think that flying alone and changing planes would be a bit distressing to a youngster, but not our Miss Butterfly. To be fair, I’ve been training her from a young age to be able to figure out what needs to be done at the airport. I started by explaining everything to her, showing her tickets and how to locate gates and information, when she was 4. By the age of 8, I began asking her what we should do next, so that she could work it out herself. When asked if she could do the plane change, her response was basically “I can if you give me all the information!” She was very confident about it, and seemed to think her mother and grandmother a bit silly for their anxiety.

Not only did she travel beautifully, but she was very good at keeping in contact with the airline where she switched planes, letting someone know when she was headed out for some food, and then letting them know again when she got back to the gate. They do worry over their young travelers and try to keep tabs on them, and the airline rep was so pleased with her communication, she sent Miss Butterfly back out with a $10 gift certificate for ice cream.

All in all, a grand success. Miss Butterfly arrived home a tired but triumphant traveler, ready to putter about the house, and sleep in her own bed. Where she told me how much she loved the perfectly perfect yellow color on her walls in her room.

Yellow. It’s a theme lately.

I began plying the yellow/purple/grey singles yesterday. I took the day off to hang out with Miss Butterfly. We got her physical done in the morning, along with 2 immunizations. She had her first experience with almost fainting. She doesn’t like those needles AT ALL, though she tolerates them because she knows they keep her from getting ill. Then we headed off to finish school supply shopping, and home to do some laundry. Pretty soon she was in contact with her local friends catching up with them. We walked down to pick up one of them, then the girls walked to the school to turn in her immunization records and physical sheet, and to put her stuff in her new locker.

This left me time to mow. She spent a few hours meeting up with all her local friends at the local pool, then once she arrived home we got to spend some time with her and have a nice dinner together. All in all a lovely day spent together, which is great because….

Today I have a middle schooler. She’s in 7th now, with a locker and changing classrooms, and everything else middle school entails. Apparently she was so nervous that she really didn’t sleep last night, and was quite frustrated when I woke up this morning. I suspect she’ll sleep great tonight!

More yellow, the color of these two gorgeous missouri evening primroses on our front bank. I noticed them blooming beautifully when we brought Miss Butterfly home from the airport Monday night. I just had to go get a photo. We planted these tiny plants earlier this year. There were 4, but only 2 survived. They seem to also be thriving! I think I’ll have to have a set for the back yard next year, I really love them!

Yesterday I spun. I mean, for real, it’s basically ALL I did. I mean, I took a walk, and cleaned a few things up, and swept the patio, but mostly, I spun. Mr. Ink worked on my latest garden wall and edging, and then had a friend over to visit, so he wasn’t asking me to go places or do anything in particular with him, and so I just…spun. All day.

I finished the second bobbin of this dyeing arts 8 oz. project. And then I kept spinning some more, and finished more than half of the third bobbin.

So so much spinning! I haven’t spun like that in ages. It was extremely pleasant to lose an entire day to my wheel.

Mr. Ink did finish the wall and edging of the iris bed. It looks amazing. As is typical with our home, each task becomes a surprise, and the surprise for this task was finding a large pipe of some sort, capped off, directly under the sod.  It was exactly where Mr. Ink was to be putting stones, so he decided to put one oddly shaped stone there so that we’d know exactly where it was, in case it is an important pipe in the future.

Another great looking improvement in our garden area, I can’t wait to see the next one!

I guess you could say that yesterday was spinday. Actually, I finished this skein on Friday, wound it off, and then soaked it saturday morning. After some time outdoors in the afternoon sun, it was dry enough for a photo.

That is 860 yards of 2 ply yarn. One ply is a fat cat knits batt, and the other is loop’s 3 ring circus cloud. It’s possibly my favorite yarn ever created. And, I had almost half a bobbin left of the fat cat knits batt singles!

That’s a ton of leftover singles! I’d been trying to pace myself with making a decision about purchasing some more 3 ring circus, but really as soon as I saw that yarn dry, I had to do it. So, needless to say, I am not done with this spin. And I can’t wait to get the next loop cloud!

In the meantime, I am back to that dyeing arts purple/yellow/grey combo.

I got about half a bobbin of that done yesterday, which feels like amazing progress since the entire project is an 8 oz. one. The weather was blissful yesterday, so much of this was patio spinning while listening to podcasts, just a beautifully relaxing day.

I did get some garden stuff done as well though! I dug up almost all the hostas from my shade garden. That might sound like sacrilege, but when we moved in, hostas were the ONLY thing in that bed, and that was just boring. As of right now, I’ve left 3. However, I think I’ll remove one more. The two that are left are different, one is green leaves with an off white edge, and the other plain green leaves.

I put together a laundry basket of dug out hostas and offered them up to locals on the book of faces. I’ve got two takers, and there are a good 6-8 solid sections that can be taken. I’ll be pleased if they go to a new home, but I am not going to be too upset if they don’t either. I am at a point I can trash them.

The best part? This means I was able to move the faltering bleeding heart I purchased earlier this year. It was desperately trying to produce in the area I placed it, even blooming a couple times, desperately, with one little bleeding heart hanging down. But, it just didn’t seem to be able to get ahead. I moved it to a section where a hosta used to be, giving it plenty of room, and gave it a good watering. This morning it already looks better. It shouldn’t! Transplants shouldn’t look better the day after you transplant. But…nevertheless, it does. It must have been in a fabulously poor place for it!

We did a lot more dividing and moving of plants in the cooler weather yesterday. I dug out some more orange day lilies, divided and moved some mums, and Mr. Ink divided his silver mounds. I even got a chunk of one of those! I am pretty sure I am just about done dividing and moving mums, I suspect the next thing will be just to dig them up and out of my veggie garden. I figure saving one chunk of each is good enough.

Today it may or may not rain. I figure, either way it’s all good. But, if I go out on the patio for some spinning time, it probably will rain! So, that’s what I am headed out to do.

Not that I am in a huge rush for it to. But I AM in a rush to own this yarn as a finished product.

That riot of color just thrills me to pieces. As do the chunky bits.

I actually seem to have a lot more yardage of the fat cat knits batt singles than I do of the Loop 3 ring circus singles. I am not entirely sure I won’t purchase more 3 ring circus and finish the project off that way. Let’s see what kind of yardage I get once I run out of the 3 ring circus singles, then I’ll take it from there.

I headed out to my garden after work, because I could see we had a bunch of storms brewing. I am NOT a particularly good midwesterner, I think it’s because I didn’t grow up here. So, when I heard the tornado sirens go off, I immediately looked around, saw nothing, and having looked at the radar before going outside, decided I was in no danger. I continued deadheading, and staking plants, and so on. And then I realized that TRULY I should be a better midwesterner and at least go inside, if not to the basement. I gathered my stuff, and meandered indoors. Only to look at the radar and the weather and find out that the sirens were going off here for tornadoes in a different county. I KNEW I didn’t have to take it seriously! (In all seriousness, I am always grateful when those sirens don’t mean anything to me. And thankfully, yesterday’s weather did not cause damage that I am aware of, though the pictures are pretty fantastic.)

After I realized the sirens didn’t apply to me, I headed back out doors for awhile, and was JUST completing what I’d set out to do when the rain began. I went inside and spun, as Mr. Ink had decided to stay at work until the worst of the storm had passed. The gardens got a great soaking, and since we’d planned to spend our evening watering, that was a relief. The storms pulled in cooler air, so we spent about an hour messing around in the garden, pulling weeds and so on since watering was no longer necessary.

I am still struggling with a nasty case of budworms on….basically everything. My roses, and all the potted plants. It’s SO highly irritating to see a fresh rosebud with a hole all the way through it! I am headed to the store after work to see what I can find that might more effectively deal with them.

That’s it for this Friday, we are looking forward to the weekend!

I came home from vacation to find this swallowtail caterpillar on my dill plant. I love the opportunity to raise some butterflies, so despite the fact that I know it will eat my dill or parsley to the ground if there’s not much of it, I always let them be. The dill and the parsley always grow back, and being out of an herb for a short time doesn’t bother me much.

I did pick a budworm off the same parsley this morning. Budworms don’t get the interfere with the swallowtail cat food source!

The rose of sharon is blooming! We’d cut it back SO far last fall that I really wasn’t sure it would bloom this year. It’s not having an issue.

It’s a little bit later than the other ones in our area, but it’s producing!

After mowing, I sat outside on the patio despite the humidity, trying to get my spinning done.

I was so close to finishing this bobbin I couldn’t quit! Mr. Ink came and sat on the patio for a bit as well, and then started fussing about the neighbor’s junk trees again. I told him he should take time to enjoy the yard and he responded that he finds sitting and looking around the yard stressful. I told him it’s not OUR yard that is stressful! He just fusses about other people’s yards. He actually picked a bucket full of bagworms off the neighbors bush near our property line yesterday, figuring that working on the neighbor’s trees would save his trees in the future. That particular neighbor has a full 3 lots, with tons of trees, so the little wooded area near our property doesn’t get a lot of attention from the neighbor. Despite this, I think Mr. Ink has a good enough relationship with that neighbor to let him know about the bagworms. Of course, that doesn’t actually mean he’ll do anything about it, but it would be nice for him to know WHY Mr. Ink keeps picking at his trees!

In any case, I had to register Miss Bug for school this morning, which meant I spent more time at home than I generally would in the morning. Between a little after dark plying, and this morning, I’ve got a perfectly lovely start on this 2 ply.

If I keep looking at the two ply, I can almost forget what a complete cluster getting registered for school was!

We did it guys! We actually had a genuinely relaxing day. The kind of day most anyone would call relaxing. We had decided we were going to allow the morning to be relaxing, as there was a storm system that was moving through, and we thought perhaps it would be best to wait to see it move on, lest we get rained on during our planned bike ride. We decided to ride after lunch. But, then I wanted to nap. And it was windy. So I napped, and Mr. Ink napped, and he napped even more than me, and basically we did all our sleeping in during one nap. And I finished this bobbin.

I made sure that bobbin had a view.

Then we decided it was too windy, and we might go shopping. But we didn’t go shopping. Instead, I spun and Mr. Ink did yoga, and later in the evening we went out to dinner. Where we had the biggest size medium margaritas ever.

I would hate to see what a large looked like. The food was inexpensive, but those margaritas didn’t have a price on them, and as it turns out, they were as expensive as our dinners. Oh well, it’s vacation, right? After that we stopped at a store to get a few provisions for the house, basically replacing things we had used while there, and then we decided to go to a little dive bar the locals had recommended that was very near us in order that we could watch the sunset.

That bar was SUCH a dive. But it had SUCH a view! It was lovely. Then we headed back home, and I spun late into the evening while listening to some Cowboy Junkies, which always has the lovely effect of relaxing me quite completely.

This morning we’d planned another quick adventure. We were up bright and early putting the house back together for the next guests, as we had decided to take the tandem bike in the garage over to the little diner for breakfast. I looked at the radar right before we left, and it became clear the tandem ride wasn’t going to happen. We drove to the diner (In my brain I want to say “like losers” because it’s about a mile, and every other time we went into town we took our bikes.) to have our last breakfast there, and by the time we got home it was pouring.

This is a pic of the spinning I got done yesterday, I was also hoping to pick up the pouring rain on the deck, but that didn’t happen. Anyhow, this bobbin is my loop! cloud in 3 ring circus, it’s so fun!

We quickly finished putting the house in order and packing the car, then headed back home. We drove out of the storm, into the hotter weather, only to realize that my AC has decided to have some issues. Thankfully, it’s due for an oil change anyhow, so Mr. Ink can just take it into work sometime this week and all should be well. I am telling you, having a car tech for a partner is MADLY useful.

All in all, an excellent relaxing vacation. I am not sure if it was the amazingly good bed, the vacation, or the nice cool weather, but despite being a terrible sleeper, I slept amazingly well that entire vacation. I keep telling Mr. Ink I am going to ask my friend about her mattress and go get one. Our activities and non activities were fantastic as well. I am already looking forward to the next lake adventure, I told my friend that I am bringing garden implements of destruction next time and working on a few spots in her yard. I know she won’t mind one bit, and will be quite grateful. It’ll be a nice way to say thank you.