She Was Twisted

Chickens. Yes, chickens. I haven’t really written yet about our move to Arkansas from Atlanta, so let me enlighten you!

In May, the hubby and I decided that we wanted to move to NW Arkansas to get away from the noise, pollution and overcrowding of city life in Atlanta. Why Arkansas? Well we have family and friends here that we just adore, and upon our visits we fell quite smitten with the place. It is small, slow paced, tons of open country land and the people are incredibly friendly. Brian has always dreamed of living on a small hobby farm, so we thought this might be the future.

We began looking for land online to eventually build a house and move the family within the next couple of years. We found a few lots we liked and contacted a realtor to find out more information. He sent us a ton of other property listings, along with one that he knew wasn’t what we were looking for since it was already developed, but the price had just been dropped $30,000 and it was a terrific deal. OH MY was it a good deal.

A 4 bedroom, 2300 sq. ft. house that was only 4 years old, 10 acres of property that was half pasture, half woods, an unfinished guest house/cabin, a brand new metal barn, a stocked pond, and all the quiet, peaceful country life you could ever want only 15 miles from town. Plus the big kicker, it was totally in our price range since houses are so much cheaper in AR than in GA.

Brian drove to AR that weekend and snagged it. Totally unprepared, for me, site unseen, insanely freaked out. The same day the owner accepted our offer, he received 6 more offers. We were quick to the draw, and it was ours. Oh shit, is all I could say.

Since there were other offers, apparently better than ours, we had to drop our contingency clause that we wrote in that said we had 90 days to sell our house before closing. Now, we had to close in 30 DAYS. Yes, you read that correctly. We had to prepare our house for the market, list it, sell it, get a loan, figure how in the hell we were going to move the family across 4 states, and possibly afford to pay 2 mortgages while our house sat on the competitive Atlanta market. Oh wait, but there is more. I will have to quit my dream job of 8 years that I’ve had in ATL and start looking for something else. Brian will have to find a new teaching job in Arkansas too. How will we afford the moving truck? How will we move 3 large dogs and 2 cats, 2 cars, and ourselves with a baby? Am I stressing you out yet?

Somehow we managed to get our house ready to sell in 2 weeks, and put it on the market. It sold in 5 days. Seriously. We got super, super lucky. There was a family 3 houses down, currently living with the wife’s mother, who were looking for a home of their own not too far away from their family support unit. They saw our For Sale sign go up, came by for a showing and made an offer that night. They wanted to close in 3o days. YIKES.

So we moved. Packed the house in 2 weeks, started moving the next, everyone was here by July 4th. After much trial and error of proving that my job could still be done 100% remotely from another state, my employer was gracious enough to let me keep my job, however only part-time and on a contract basis. (a.k.a. Bye-bye benefits, health insurance, 401K and paid vacation.) The hubby, on the other hand, is still struggling with the stupid Arkansas school board that won’t accept his Georgia teaching license unless he pays to take a whole bunch of classes through the AR state – that he has already taken, mind you. So he is subbing at the moment until we figure things out.

We are poor. We are broke. We have no insurance. But darnit, we have a beautiful home, clean fresh air to breath and tons of peace of mind. We don’t regret it for a single moment. Quality of life has gone up at least 5 times.

So if you are still reading this, we come to the chickens.

Brian always joked in Atlanta that he wanted a pet chicken. And I mean, he would bring it up ALL the time. So about month after we settled in here, he decides to order some baby chickens. He does it online after I am in bed, WITHOUT asking me, and orders 25 of the darn things!

25!

O.K. remember I am not a country girl. Raising chickens is not in my “things I’d like to do” list. But Brian did know that I grew up with ducks and a pond in the backyard. So he threw in 4 ducks as a “see honey, I got you something too” compromise. Oh, clever devil.

I have to admit, I did love the ducks – while we had them. Since releasing them to the pond as adults, the neighborhood dogs have killed all but one girl, and I am extremely sad. We hope to fence in our property and the pond soon, and try again. Lots to learn.

So I leave you with tons of pictures. These were taken months ago, which will explain the green summer grass.

The baby chicks when they were only 3 days old.

One of my little duckies that was killed by the stupid dogs down the road. He is about 3 weeks old here.

This is our front yard!! Believe it!

A back view of the house. Sorry, Brian didn’t take a pic of the front and I’m too lazy to go there and take one now.

The big, open and airy kitchen.

And here is what is on the other side – the big, open and airy living room and breakfast area.

Part of the pasture.

Waaaay back, is my future studio and guest house. Behind it is the pond, next to it is a weird pavilion that they had a hot tub on. We are going to turn it into a gazebo.

Inside the studio. Look how big! (that is Brian’s Dad in the photo.) We still have much work to do on it. Insulation, walls, window unit, electrical, etc.

And there you have it. Our move in a nutshell. So much more detail, but I’ve already written the 200-page novel. County life is the best!!

I’m not so sure about this Rambling Rose cardigan. I have the back completed and it looks WAY too small. Even when I stretch it out to what I think it will block to, I’m still left with a knot in my gut. I guess the only way to know is to throw this baby in the tub and block it out for real. I’m scared. What if all this knitting is for nothing and I end up with a 12-year-old sweater that I can’t wear? Oh the horror.

Well let me show what I’ve done. The lace really is pretty. And I just love this yarn. (Debbie Bliss Merino DK) So it does have 2 big points going for it.

This is the back without any bocking or stretching. I just flopped it down and snapped the pic. Next up is the closeup.

It looks really different when it is blocked. Really. Bigger. Yes. Like for an adult. Yes. That is what we will all chant together. Ready?

It is not too small.

It is not too small.

It will work out just fine.

Now go get some ice cream and be done with it.

If you are starting to knit the Rona Lace Shawl from Knit Picks, beware of a pattern typo on line 50. – You won’t discover it is wrong until after you’ve knit the row and are going on to line 51. According to Knit Picks, the correction is (printed in red):

Round 50: *(KB, p1)10 times, KB, k5. Repeat from * to end of round. (26)

And here are the other corrections if you are just now starting.

Round 38: *K5, KP in next yo, KB, P&K in next yo, k6. Repeat from * to end of round. (16) (note, the first yo into which the KP is worked is followed by KB – then work a P&K). If you do not reverse the order, from KP to P&K, the ribbed design will not come out right. Keep on doing so through the 46th round). …
Round 43: S(1)RHN, * yo, k2tog, yo, (KB, p1)6 times, KB, yo, SKP, yo, SK2P. Repeat from * to end of round. (20)…
Round 46: *K1, KP, (KB, p1)8 times, KB, P&K, K2. Repeat from * to end of round. (24)…

Somehow I got by without the other corrections. I wonder if anyone will notice? Naaah.

But while we are on the subject, here is my progress on the shawl. I’m on line 52 now. I wish there was a way to photograph lace on circulars without it looking like a piled-up load of poop. So use your imagination!

And here is a closeup.

All the ribbing and knitting through the back loop is killing me. I had half a mind to change it to normal knit, but then I was convinced there has to be a reason. I HATE knitting rib. It annoys me for some reason. I think if I were a Continental-style knitter and not a thrower, it might not annoy me so bad. -I’ve been trying to learn to knit Continental for awhile now, and I still need lots of practice. One day.

I have progress on the Rambling Rose cardigan as well, but I am out of time.

Happy Sunday everyone!

Happy Halloween to everyone and their own little dragons.

Although both of these are already sold at my store (sorry) I thought I would post some of my new creations.

First up, is Organically Grown.

Then comes Earth Flower.

I’ve been having a lot of fun with silk flowers. I’ve always wanted to try adding them to my yarn, but just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. The yarn with the yellow flowers is my favorite-ist of them all. I just wish I had put aside more fiber for it to amount to more yardage. (I only got 46 yards – bummer.) I’ve got a bunch more small flowers that I’ll play with next.

I think I’m finally getting back into my groove with Yarn Rescue. I’m starting to feel creative again, and I’m always thinking of what could be my next yarn. This is good. I’ve been in such a slump for the past 6 months. Not sure what my problem was – well actually I DO know, just I’ll save it for another post.

Having a sick baby in the house has got to be one of the scariest things ever. You feel so helpless. You want to help and make it all better, but you want to be careful and extra safe too. You can’t just run to drugs like you would for yourself or another adult – the self-help easy way out. Instead you worry about if the dosage of Tylonel was o.k., oh god, please don’t let me overdose him, or let him get to hot, or I wish he could tell me what hurts and what I can do for him.

Evan has had a cold for about 5 days now. Nothing horrible – or at least we thought. His appetite has been good, he was running around like usual – just with lots of fun rasping breathing and tons of extra snot. However on Thurs, he starting throwing up. Couldn’t even hold down water. No fever, thank goodness. So we started him on the Pedialite treatment of an ounce every 20 minutes or so, and eventually got him to the point where he was holding down 5oz at a time. He slept through the night fine and woke up Friday morning feeling good.

Friday went pretty much as usual – his appetite was back, he drank tons and tons of fluids, couldn’t get enough of the greater outdoors, had a good nap, etc. But then around 5:00 he suddenly became pretty listless and I discovered his forehead was hot. Took his temp. and got a 100 reading. Called the hubby in to help me decide what our plan of action should be. It took about 15 minutes for Brian to clean up and come inside. He takes Evan’s temp – it was now 102!! We run for the Tylonel, and hope for the best. Well this little boy’s head was on fire. He could barely keep his eyes open. We are in slight panic mode. (Remember since moving to AR we have no health insurance – a.k.a. no pediatrician that we can call.) The decision is made to get this boy into a tub of cool water to see if we can cool him off. Temp is now reading a 103. Evan screams his head off the entire bath and is desperately trying to climb out. No amount of comfort is going to help. It took about 15-20 minutes for his head to start cooling off. Poor baby.

I wrap him up in a towel and we cuddle in the rocking chair for a bit. Temp is now down to 99. Oh thank god! Change him into his PJs, we snuggle back down in the rocking chair with all the lights out, he is asleep in my arms within 5 minutes.

He slept through the night with some wakings and fumbling around to get comfortable, but the fever stayed down all night. Today he is acting like himself – but yesterday he also acted fine until the evening. So we are trying to take is slow and easy. Let’s hope the worst is over.

So I leave you with a photo of our little guy, taken a couple of months ago. Don’t you just want to kiss his little forehead?

Yes, fake cashmere. I couldn’t resist buying some of this stuff. It is synthetic, made from rayon I believe, and is advertised as being as soft as cashmere. Machine washable and long fiber length is a bonus. Humm. Sounds fun, right?

Dyeing
Dyeing the fiber was a lot of fun. It soaked up the dyes beautifully. I used Lanaset acid dyes in pink, mauve, fushia and tan. I dyed the fiber in the crock pot, just randomly pouring color over the layers of coiled up fiber. The dye bonded just like an animal fiber. I didn’t have any color wash out in the final rinse. So that was a good thing.

But spinning it was a bit tricky.

Spinning
The fiber is so fine and has such a long staple length, that even just pulling the fiber apart was a challenge. It is STRONG. My first attempt was to spin a single-ply, bulky yarn. No, no, no. I got extremely frustrated. Drafting was a nightmare because if the teeny-tiniest bit of twist got anywhere near the fiber supply, the whole thing would harden up and not budge. After fighting with the roving for a half hour or so, I gave up. – Not worth my time.

So instead, I opted to treat the fake cashmere just like silk. – I split it down to tiny little strips about the width of my pinky, and I spun long woolen-ish style, never allowing the twist to ever come in between my front hand and the back hand holding the fiber. Now we are spinning! The biggest challenge was to keep the twist away from the drafting triangle. I plied it and ended up with some really nice worsted weight yarn.

Now is it as soft as cashmere?

IMO, not really.

The Yarn
In my opinion, it is identical to silk. It feels like silk, it spins like silk, it has the same strength as silk and it knits like silk. I really think they should call it fake silk. And if anyone thinks I’m out of my mind to say this, please! let me know. I’d love to hear what other folks think of this stuff.

I do love the slight sheen, the softness and the “crisp” in the final yarn. However there is very little stretch (what is that called – elasticity?) so you wouldn’t want to make anything that is going to require a lot of stretch and memory.

Oh wait – but I am one for doing exactly what you shouldn’t do…so I decided to knit a pair of wrist warmers.

The Knitting
I looked through my handy-dandy book, The New Knitting Stitch Library, and found a simple cable-looking pattern that isn’t really a cable. (The cross-over is actually formed by knitting behind 3 stitches.) Then I knit up a swatch on size 7 needles, calculated my stitches per inch, measured my wittle wrists and found me a cast-on number. Last some fiddling here and there and figured where to place my cable.

The cable was a pain in the butt to knit with the fake cashmere. Remember my saying that there was little to no elasticity and memory? Well try knitting in the back loop of a stitch that is 4 stitches over on your needles. You have to stretch across without dropping all the stitches that are being skipped. I found it very difficult. I would imagine had I been working with a nice stretchy wool yarn, it wouldn’t have been such an ordeal.

To add some frills and thrills, I added a ruffle border that I found in the book, Knitting Over The Edge. Again, this was not fun at all to knit with a non-stretchy yarn since you are knitting like 3-4 times in the same stitch over and over again. But the ruffles are so cool. I love them.

End Result
I do like the faux cashmere a lot. It created a strong, super-soft yarn that I can dye with my regular acid dyes, and can throw in the washing machine when I please. However, I did learn to treat it like silk in both spinning and knitting. Plan projects accordingly. My wrist warmers are warm, snuggly and soft. Now I need to start all over again and see how much more I can learn with my next project!

Well heck yes, I finally have found a blog application that I like. MT 4 was just awful. I hate it, hated it. First, I forgot my username and password. Well guess how MT 3 helps you find your password? By asking you to fill in your username and the “secret question” password that I created 3 years ago when I first installed the program. Who is going to remember that?? So I hacked and hacked and hacked and never found my way back in again. I re-installed all over with the latest and supposedly greatest MT 4. Yuck. Impossible to customize unless you are a programmer. And the interface was all blocky and hard to navigate. Many options gone. bleh. Not for me.

So now I’m on with WordPress. And I love it! I still have to create a template that I like, and see if somehow I can get all my old entries from the unhackable MT into here. But this is a good start.

Hum, what do we have here?

Why it’s a box. A really cute suitcase box.

And inside? Why there’s knitting!

What knitting to be exact? It’s the start of the Rambling Rose Cardigan from Interweave Knits Winter 2006 issue. My first attempt to knit a sweater ever. Yes, I am a sweater knitting virgin. (I’m not counting the few baby sweaters I’ve knit.) Let’s see how many YEARS is takes me to complete this one!

There has been a lot of negative criticism on this sweater all around. And I have to agree with most of it. The original sweater is 2 colors which makes it quite hideous in that “baseball jersey” kind of way. The second thing it has going against it, is the model they choose to wear it. The sweater stretches on her like a glove, and accentuates all the wrong parts. She is completely popping out of it. Beautiful model, not so beautiful in a sweater 2-times too small. But the RR has so many nice things. I love the lacework. Interesting, daring, different. If you can look past the 2-tone thing and the way it looks on that particular model, it is a really beautiful sweater in my opinion.

So I started it about a month ago using Debbie Bliss Merino DK wool yarn that I bought at Little Knits. (LOVE this store btw. I got all 10 balls of DB for under $30!!) The color was much brighter than what I was hoping for, but I decided to truck on anyway.

Then I ran into a huge snag after knitting what you see in the photo. The back width looks like it is going to be teeny-tiny. (oh please don’t make it fit me like it does the model.) I checked my gauge and it was right on. I had to remind myself that this is lace, so it will need to be blocked and will become much longer than what is on my needles now. When I stretched it to what looks right, it does become the total 30″. Well I still wasn’t convinced. The last thing I want is a sweater too tight for me to wear. I put it aside for about a month while I tried to decide if I should go up a needle size or two or start hunting for a new pattern. Finally last week I pulled out a stretchy, fitted cardigan I forgot I had to wear. I loved the way it fit me. So I compared it to the knitting I had so far for the RR, and lo and behold, they matched almost perfectly. That made up my mind to leave it alone and keep going. Over the past fews days I’ve gotten a few more inches done. So far so good, and I’m really liking the patten so far. Fairly simple, yet complicated enough to keep me interested.

(this is a re-post from my old blog)

As if I don’t already have a difficult enough time keeping my brain on track these days, I decided a month ago that I needed a lace fix….and an intense one at that. I saw the pattern for the Rona Lace Shawl at Knit Picks and just HAD to have a go. I’ve only knit one other lace shawl before, so you can see why this pattern will be such a challenge. Look at the variety in stitches…wowee. Love it. You heard me complain before that my biggest challenge as a knitter is not getting bored? Well this one will definitely keep me going.

Here is my progress. The yarn is also from Knit Picks, it is a laceweight 100% Merino called Shadow, in the Jewels colorway. Nice, nice yarn with great depth since it is basically 2 shades of blue plied together.

I am loving this pattern so far. Here is the coolest part (well, at least I think so) – the pattern is written out line by line, not in chart form. That I love. Following a chart is all handy-dandy since it is small and easy to take with you, but in the end when you are working on complicated stitch repeats, writing it out, at least for me, is the only way to go.

Besides, if I REALLY want to freak out a non-knitter (or knitter for that matter), all I have to do is flash the 3 PAGES of written out lace, line by line, and they will gasp for sure. It’s like looking through one of my brother’s electrical engineering books from college. All numbers, formulas, symbols and who-hauz you have no clue how to read. Now I can arm myself with my knitting pattern and go head to head with the math and science geniuses. ha ha. I’m on line 35. Big proud smile.

Here is what I’ve learned so far from this project:

1. Don’t get too cocky.

Every time I think I’ve memorized the repeat and can do it all without looking at the sheet, I eventually mess up. It also seems that every time I’m feeling good about it and I speed up the knitting – dropped stitch city.

2. Don’t try to watch TV or have conversations while knitting difficult lace.

I have to repeat that I do have Mommy brain and it flies away very quickly and suddenly, so this could be just me, but when engaged in something or someone else, I stop paying attention and I end up backtracking more than knitting.

3. Knit just a few rounds everyday and you’ll feel like you’re getting somewhere.

I don’t have much time AT ALL for knitting, so I keep this project beside the bed for my “bedtime reading” if you will. Even if that means one round before bed, I am still making progress.

4. Cheat when you need to.

I tried to knit the first 6 rows 3 times before I decided there was no way to knit 3 stitches with YO increases every other stitch on DPN’s. How do you make a YO between needles?? I couldn’t get it to work. So I cheated – I knit the first 10 rows on straight needles, then stitched the ends together to form the circle. Brilliant. In the end, who will notice?

There, I’ve cleansed my knitting self. There is a tiny ridge where the edges meet up, but it doesn’t bother me. You should have seen the horror when I was trying to knit the center on DPNs. Talk about some BAAAAD knitting. But we are all better now.