Cranky? I'm not cranky!

My usually sweet husband said, "You've been cranky for the last few days." Who's cranky? I'm not cranky. You're cranky! Okay, maybe I'm a little stressed. It's been a few weeks too long since we've had a, well, regular week. I mean, why CAN'T the world stop for me so I can do a great job on my very first published sweater pattern? Then there was the entire day I wasted trying to figure out an attractive way to decrease across cables. I really must get a knitting reference book.

It's the home stretch, just doing the finishing. The Dad sweater is due Wednesday. Think I'll make it? Did I mention that tomorrow is a half day at the school?

Happy Mardi Gras!

In New Orleans, people celebrate it like this:

Here are my parents on the right, my in-laws on the left, my little sweet potatos in the front, and my usually lovely husband in the middle with the "Puss in Boots" costume on.

Hey Mardi Gras! Throw me somethin'!

Last week, during our snow days, my daughter and I celebrated it like this:

You take a little Corriedale roving and some acid dye.

Spray some vinegar on it.

Cook it up nice and hot (it's the plastic wrap that's pink:)

Rinse it out the next day. (The girlie insisted on taking this one, and she was right - it is a good shot!) Let it dry all over your bathroom.

And you get "Mardi Gras Mambo". Aw, cher, 'dat wool look good enough to eat! Laissez le bon temps roulez!

Six Day Weekend!

(and a half). Now, imagine that sentiment screamed at full volume - over and over. My alternate title for this post was: Blizzard(?) 2007, or maybe the blizzard that never was but still closed Montgomery County from an early release on Tuesday through Friday. Combine that with a three day weekend and there you have it. And, to be honest, while the kids got a little cranky from an unexpected lack of structure, I love the anarchy that tends to come with a good snowstorm. Ice storms are a bit less fun, but it is good to stop life for a while.

After the ice storm on top of the snow, we had a crust that my rather tall husband could walk on with out leaving footprints. And you know what that's good for?

Penguin sliding! Emmy says, "It's always a good time play ball!"

What else is a snow storm (and a pretend snowstorm) good for? Throwing a party, of course! Conveniently, our great friend Mary O came down for a visit with her two adorable kids. She and her family had moved away to New England (now, they know how to have a snowstorm up there!) this summer and they have been greatly missed throughout the neighborhood. So, we have had much visiting and hanging out and Stitching and Bitching, of course.

More on what Mary O is knitting in the near future.

There was much decorating, and eating, of cookies and also some knitting. I am still knitting the mystery sweater - it is a big sweater!

FO's and other things

First of all, Lori's hat. The beginning (I forgot the bobbin shot and the skeined yarn shot-I promise I'll do better next time!):

And, finished, but still wet, shown off by the girlie:

My girl is presenting, with her big, cheesy grin, our fat cat Cosmo. I'll need camera batteries before I can show you a good picture of him. He's three or four times bigger than our skinny cat Max.

The boy insisted I take a picture of him with his animal, Emmy. She's a lot of dog, being mostly Chesapeake Bay Retriever, and it goes without saying that he's the only one who gets to do this:

Their relationship has been hard won, for all three of us. They're both six, but he's taken to calling her "Grandma".

Now, on a different subject entirely, I've opened an Etsy shop (does anyone know how to pronounce it?) Four different people suggested this idea to me last week, and it's quite a bit less expensive, and specifically focused on crafty things. Since I opened the shop less than 24 hours ago, my fibers have been viewed at least as many times as they were on Ebay. Wish me luck!

I'm back to knitting the mystery sweater now. I'll leave you with the results of my dye day with Gryphon.

I slept with my pj's inside out last night

And it worked! Not only did we finally get some snow, but the kids got a snow day. It was a little ridiculous, as the ground even wasn't entirely covered in my neighborhood, but I imagine the teachers needed a break, too.


And after all, a winter should not go by with out a few decent runs on Suicide Hill.





Can't you just hear the boy child saying to his best friend, "Awesome run, dude. Sweet!"


Actually, the real reason we were all there was do a photo shoot in the snow (while it lasted). My very accomodating and lovely friends agreed to let me take their pictures in their hats, made by me, of course, from my hand-dyed and hand-spun yarn.

Linda graciously takes pictures of my dyed yarn and roving, as well as anything else I ask her to photograph. She is also the mother of boy-child's best bud, among many other wonderful things. I also knit her hat with some Malabrigio worsted yarn and Corriedale dyed in blues (Bell Bottom Blues colorway) and spun thick and thin style.

Mary, who might hate having her picture taken even more than the other two, created my beautiful logo and business card. An amazing and multi-talented person, Mary is not only the mother of the girl-child's close bud but one of my dog's favorite people.

Here's Emmy now, with three of her favorite people. It's not every dog who looks so good in a hat!

And finally, I leave you with a hat in progress.

Well, there is a hat in progress. I just need to find it. The yarn is lovely, too. Spun as singles from superfine merino, it feels like silk going through my fingers. I'll show you next time.

Mondays are for knitting

I kind of work three jobs. The main and most important one is that of mommy. That one is a bit more than full-time. Occasionally, I go to a paid job, as a clinical social worker; this usually happens on evenings and weekends, but just a couple times a week. The really very reasonable husband seems to think this job should happen more often. You know how those husbands who do most of the ouside-the-house, support the family work, secretly believe they would do a much better job as "mommy"?

Then there is the start a yarn business job. Also a full-time gig, although I realize that I am truly a work-in-progress when it comes to organizing my time. And that is getting better now that the boy-child is in school. This schedule makes Mondays particularly precious, in a take the kids to school, walk the dog, ignore the housework, and knit all day until they come home again kind of way. Now if the husband had not deleted my recording of the Aussie Open Women's Tennis Final, it would have been perfect. But it was close.

Mysteriously, I can't show you pictures of my progress as the project is a design that I am knitting for Deb Stoller's knitting book for men and boys. But I can't wait for you to see it. My dad has been waiting for the original version for two years; he is of the opinion that I don't finish things. While my dad has good reasons for this notion, he is actually mistaken. Best to keep it that way for now. Anyway, here I am with my dad-and I'm wearing a Finished Object!

It's the Modern Bustier from Leigh Radford's Alterknits, with a massive gauge problem. We won't talk about the fact that I ripped and re-knit this twice and it's still wrong. The Harlot is so right about the capriciousness of gauge. The piece was beautiful,, knitted in a merino-angora yarn that I kettle-dyed a lovely red-violet. Either I'm putting darts to shape the waist, or I'm frogging and re-using the yarn. I'll let you know.

I'll end with another FO, modeled by the girl-child. The pattern is inspired by several from Shannon Okey's very charming Spin to Knit and knit in my own hand-dyed hand-spun with ribbony-yarn accents. I finished it last night during the Superbowl (yay Colts! Did you know Peyton Manning is a Louisiana boy?) and blocked it before bed. This morning, the girl-child was so enthusiastic that she insisted it was not wet (it was) and wore it to school on our first really freezing cold day.

Is this thing on?

Testing, testing... Hi, I'm Kate, knitter, spinner, dyer, and sometimes sewer hoping to connect with the great wide world. Like many, I hope to make Dragonfly Fiber Designs a successful business providing hand-dyed and hand-spun fibers and yarn as well as patterns. I have a web-site in the works, but being the technical wizard that I am, that could take a while.

Luckily my usually lovely husband Jack, while maybe not a wizard, is at least a member of the 21st century and conveniently, an engineer. It was he who suggested, when the spinning wheel came home and it became clear that fiber was going to take up more, not less space in our house and our lives, that I do something useful with my obsession with wool. Something useful, in his opinion, like commerce, or feeding the obsessions of others. This is the same man, who, when I described my plans to start a kids knitting group (somehow it seems wrong to call it a Stitch and Bitch), said, "you're like the tobacco companies".

I have a very small, tiny Ebay store. My sense is that on-line buyers of hand-dyed fiber and yarn aren't looking on Ebay, but it seemed to be way to start without building or buying a shopping cart. The Catch-22 is that I don't want to list items because it will cost money and then no one will buy them, but of course, no one will buy them if they're not listed also. I have made a couple of sales.

I also have hand-painted rovings and some hand-spun on consignment with The Sanguine Gryphon. Gryphon is also looking to make her mark on the fiber world, although it can be argued that she has already begun, with a number of published patterns, line of handspun yarn, and a nice little spinning shop.

I think that's enough for now. I don't think I'll tell you how long it's taken me to set up this blog and write this post. I'll leave you with one last picture, taken by my girl-child, that pretty well sums up my life at present.