sheep show 2007

We had a delightful time at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival last Saturday.

Naturally, we saw many sheep of many varieties.

I feel that I could be very content raising sheep...but since I realy have no room for sheep, I spent my money in other ways.

My first stop was Putnam Hill Nursery, where I chose some dye plants--woad, weld, and indigo--and a couple of nice flowering vines.










I also bought fiber in varying stages of readiness. I brought home my first fleece, courtesy of "Amadeus," a Jacob sheep.

I bought merino roving in a shade called "garnet" from Cloverleaf Farms...

...and a skein of "Duet," a kid mohair and wool blend from Brooks Farm Yarn.

















Perhaps my most interesting--and not at all fiber-related--purchase was a bracelet made from a fork. I wish I had managed to obtain a business card from these folks. They had all manner of jewelry and other goodies crafted from silverware. Amazing!

Good thing tomorrow is my Fiber Guild meeting! I need a lesson on carding so I can get to work.

going in circles

Our new fiber arts guild has had only two meetings so far, and already I'm a spinning convert. I've tried the spindle before, as an academic exercise, but I've never given the craft any serious time or made any attempt to hone my burgeoning skills. I considered buying a drop spindle at last year's Sheep Show, but I decided my limited funds were better spent on finished yarn. I've finally taken the plunge and bought a top whorl drop spindle..a beginner's model, called the "bare bones."


I'm enraptured. I'm also dying to leap to the next step and buy a wheel. The Ashford Traveler, to be exact. Naturally, the wheel is a much bigger investment than the bare bones, and I'm hoping the funds for such a purchase will be in the offing.


In the meantime, I'm spinning away, using wool pencil roving (which feels like cheating, it's so easy) in a lovely dark brown natural shade. I just can't get enough of this color.


I've no idea what I will do with the yarn once it's spun, particularly since I've no idea how much yarn 8 oz. of pencil roving will produce. Interestingly, the color blends very nicely with the two skeins (still unknit) that I bought last year at the Sheep Show. Perhaps a shawl...


In addition to spinning...buns.

bunny boys

In my completely unbiased opinion, the boys grow more adorable every day. What could be more lovable, after all, than bunnies at Easter time?

Tonight, their house had a long overdue Spring cleaning. This means all the lovely redecorating they've done with bits of hay and pieces torn from the phone book has gone the way of the dustpan. Naturally, the boys have not taken this well. Many raisins were required.

buns

Just before Christmas, our family expanded with the addition of two new (rather small) members. Percy...

...and Rupert.

We adopted them from the Animal Welfare Association, where my students volunteered last marking period. They are now almost 7 months old, and they're loving their new digs, especially the maze.

The maze gets topped with a lid, which makes for tons of burrowing fun but very poor photos of the action.

floored

We've spent many hours hanging drywall and slapping spackle.

After much ado, we finally began the new subfloor.




In the meanwhile, I've added a few inches to Thorn and Thistle. Here, the work in progress poses on the newly laid plywood.

I really enjoyed this lace pattern. For once, I completed the lace section with minimal mistakes.

As usual, I'm spending lots of time knitting this project while thinking about my next project. I'm gearing up for the Sexy Knitters Club's next knitalong, which begins later this month. I'll be making the long sleeved Simple Knitted Bodice. The featured yarn, and all the suggested substitutes, turns out to be way beyond the budget of a simple kitchen remodeller. Luckily, Webs is having a summer sale. I bought seven skeins of Knitaly in color 41257, a lovely rusty brown. The yarn is a superwash wool, worsted weight, and the whole lot, including shipping, cost less than $30. Insidentally, one skein of the the featured yarn cost about the same as my entire supply. I love a bargain!

a digression

I'm taking a break from kitchen posting today. We spent today planning and purchasing supplies, so no new pictures to present.

Instead...news from the garden.

We had a rather dramatic thunderstorn last night, and the hail tore holes in the cucumber leaves.

All the same, we had a delightful harvest today. Too bad we can't prepare any of our bounty into tasty dishes due to lack of a kitchen.

We checked on our arachnid friend, the Black and Yellow Argiope, and discoered that her mate was repairing the rain damage. He is much smaller than his wife.

As I was busily snapping pictures of the spider, I looked down and noticed one of our bunnies calmly sitting under the sedum plants about a foot from my sneaker.

Apart from gardening, I took advantage of this evening's remodeling lull to work on a bit of knitting. My current project, which has been waiting in the wings for some time and finally made it to the needles last night, is the Thistle and Thorn tank from Interweave Knits.

The yarn is Jaeger Trinity, a silk and cotton blend. Maybe I'll actually finish this one before the weather turns too cold for sleeveless knits.

holes and some wire

We devoted Wednesday and Thursday entirely to electrical work. Pete installed two new recessed lights in the ceiling, first cutting assorted holes in the walls and ceiling, then using a nifty apparatus constructed from a rock, several lengths of rope, and two coat hangers to feed the various wires through the ceiling and walls.

This was much more difficult than one might imagine. The electrical work also included adding circuit breakers to the box in the basement and running several additional lines into the kitchen counter area.

Today's project was the window. The old jalousied windows had to go.

Once both windows were removed, we were surprised by the size of the remaining hole.

Here are the old and new windows side by side.

Pete built a new frame.

And the finished product...

Here's a bit of interesting wildlife we discovered in the yard on our way to the Window Factory.

Turns out our friend is a Black and Yellow Argiope. Her body is nearly an inch long. Check out that bulbous behind!

toil and trouble

Another toilsome day of kitchen duty, and the demolition phase of our project is officially complete. We finished emptying the back wall of fluffy black insulation and pried off the last of the wallboards and baseboards.

In the midst of this action, our cabinets and dishwasher arrived--even more elements of our kitchen stacked in other parts of the house in haphazard fashion.

The next to go was the old subfloor. At first examination, the floor appeared to be held in place by a few rusty nails. Unfortunately, closer insepction revealed that the plywood was in fact not only glued in place but also fastened by thousands of nails, most of which had to be pried out by hand.

At last our work is done for the day.

out with the old

After many long hours haunting the aisles of Lowes, our kitchen remodel is well under way. Here are the obligatory "before" photos:

Our first step was to empty all the cabinets (the contents of which are finding an uneasy home in the dining room, packed in assorted crates) and to scrape all the old plastic tiles off the walls. This proved time consuming, but not too difficult, and I became very proficient with a crow bar.

Interestingly, the tiles were marked on the back with the Good Housekeeping seal of approval. We're not sure exactly how long the tiles were in place, but we do know they were put up by my grandfather who passed away 34 years ago, so...I guess they really lived up to the GH seal!

Once the tiles were gone, we began to demolish the cabinets. The countertop came away with deceptive ease--it was held in place by one screw which was not fully screwed in--but the cabinets put up a much bigger fight. We had hoped to reuse them in the basement for tool storage. This might still be in the picture, but only if we completely rebuild the cabinets.

As we were pulling apart the cabinets, we came to several realizations. One is that we'll have room above the regular wall cabinets for a set of 15" cabinets and lots more storage space (once payday rolls around on Friday, we'll even be able to afford more cabinets). Also, despite our original predictions, the wall behind the sink and the window frame are in terrible condition, and we'll have to spend a day or so rebuilding the window frame and sheet rocking the wall. Unfortunately this also goes for the floor, which will need to be redone in plywood before we can begin tiling. Yet another trip to Lowes.