Sheep, Dogs, and a new Camera

So I finally got a little purse sized camera for my birthday. I really like it and have figured out how to download my pictures to our (linux) laptop. It couldn't be any easier. My old camera works nice but it's big, eats batteries, and only loads to our old, slow, turdy computer with Windows. So now I'll be blogging my guts out! With pictures of everything! Wheeee! Above is a picture of our dogs Rex and Clover. They are Great Pyrenees and live outside in the barn with our sheep and cats and do a good job of guarding them from the coyotes.

Here are the sheep nibbling on some hay. They are wearing their coats to keep their lovely fleeces clean. Without the coats on they will get hay, straw, burrs,etc. all over their wool and nobody wants to spin that. These two pictures are just my test pictures from the first day with the camera. I'll be back with some closer shots of the animals.

Bears and Sloths

My first bear for the Mother Bear Project. I finally gave him a face after about a year of shuffling him around my studio. Poor thing, another victim of my procrastination.
Actually, what prompted me to finish him is that I will be going to the big knitting convention in Illinois -Stitches Midwest, this weekend, and I read on ravelry that there will be a booth where they will be collecting these bears. So after finishing this bear, I quickly started another girl bear. I figure just turning in one bear would be kind of pathetic, so I should at least make one more.

This is going to be a girl bear with a striped dress -It will have a skirt attached. They are really quick and easy, (if you don't put it away for a year somewhere in the middle). They do look kind of strange until you embroider a face.

Boomoo returns:


I also finished the Boomoo the sloth pillowcase mentioned in an earlier post. It has been finished for a while now, and has seen much use.

I only had 1 yard of fabric so I didn't have enough to make the pattern go horizontally on the pillowcase, which would have been better, but Zane doesn't mind at all. He picked out this really cool black swirly fabric to go on the end himself!

Cranking Out Some Sweaters

I've been doing a lot of knitting lately making plain raglan sweaters. Why? Because for me they are very easy and relaxing to knit. Miles and miles of stockinette stitch. I also have come to realize that plain pullovers are really what I wear most often in the fall and winter, so I needed to add some to my wardrobe. So here is the black raglan drying. Notice the terrible color quality of this picture.



And here is the green sweater drying. Now take a look to the left - you can see a bit of the black sweater -notice the really nice color quality of the black! What the hell! Why can't I get the black to look that good in the main picture?

Anyway, moving on...



I dug out this old handspun cardigan I started a few years ago and got back into it. I bought this Merino roving from The Fold a few years ago. It is a very soft almost black roving with bits of red and blue in it from Ashland Bay. You should be able to get it from any fiber shop that carries their products. In this picture the color is very accurate.



I still need to spin up the rest of the roving, even though I think I might have enough yarn spun to finish the sweater. And here...the color is way off again.



This is the wool spun up into a two-ply. Again, color is perfect in this shot. Maybe I need to get a book on taking better pictures.

Boomoo the Sloth

I recently received my first fabric order from Spoonflower. If you are not familiar with Spoonflower it is this really cool site where you load your own artwork and have it printed on fabric! It is so much fun and really easy -even those of us that are technically challenged can do it.
I created an account ages ago, but I was a little intimidated by all the other people on the website that are cranking out really wild fabrics, so I spent a long time trying to come up with something suitable to experiment with. Well, lo and behold my 8 yr old son was at the table drawing his current obsession -Boomoo the sloth. I opened up our drawing application on our computer and had him draw Boomoo on there, then I loaded it in the Spoonflower site and ordered a yard of fabric.


The fabric arrived in about 10 days. We are all pretty excited about it even though we didn't do much with color. Now we have to think of something to make with it. Maybe a pillowcase? I will keep you updated.

Awesome studio

We just moved into our new house in the middle of February, and of course it was a nasty, cold, snowy day, but now we are settling in pretty well. There are a lot of special places to hang out like the library, screened in front porch, home theatre room....but my favorite is my awesome new studio. I don't mind bragging about this because if you saw the dungeon I was forced to sew in (for 10 yrs) at the old house, you would agree that I earned this.




It took me a while to get things set up to even this small degree of organization, so I am thrilled to have a nice place with light and no spiders leaping out at me whenever I would pick up a piece of fabric.
My last place was the unfinished basement at our old house which was essentially a dark, dirty, cement box full of huge spiders, crickets, some centipedes, and the occasional mouse.
Needless to say, I didn't get a lot of stuff done there. I would bring my projects upstairs whenever I could, but my sewing machines were down there along with stacks and stacks of bins with all my stash.



Eventually I hope to thin out my stuff and get some cubbyholes on this wall so I can "un-bin" all my yarn and fabric. :)

Blog Do-over

So, I've been reading up on blogs and how to create a better one, which brought to mind this old abandoned blog. Should I start a new one or update this one? I think for the time being I will stay with this one until I get some momentum going. Then probably move to a new one.
I am planning on posting once a week, and will try to post a picture each time. Let me know if anyone is reading this beside my friend at baabins. Ha Ha.