Sunday, September 27, 2009


Things are going slowly right now, we are trying to get everything done outside before the cold / rain / snow hits. The days have been so beautiful here, 90's last week, 70-80's this week. A person could just forget how fast winter comes to north Idaho. All the fun inside stuff will have to wait for now. We got 90% of our wood in the carport. Decided to do the sawing and chopping later as its all inside. There was a lot of stuff left when the workers all finished up so just deciding what goes to the dump, what might sell and what we want to keep is a task in itself. In the studio I'm winding a warp of the nice wool yarn a friend gave me. I dyed several different pieces of it last week just to see what it would look like. I haven't decided for sure what I will make yet but I'm thinking of maybe a lap robe or small blanket. Its not 'next to the skin' soft but will be nice. I've got some black alpaca on both spinning wheels; the Ashford has the single and the Sonata has the double ply. I ran out of one of the single bobbins while plying, so that's why I started another one. Then I decided to see what the black / brown / white alpaca would look like blended together so that's on the carder and started on a bobbin for the Ashford. Really nice looking! When I get ready to weave the black alpaca scarf I want to do a stripe of the blended just for an accent. Since I had some dye left over from the wool yarn, I took a small piece of the blended alpaca and put one in each of the little dye pots. What an interesting color combination it made. I can't wait to get some of these projects done so I can continue on with the rest of them. Alpaca is on the bottom, wool is at the top of the photo, same colors used.

Saturday, September 12, 2009


Labor Day is past and the weather feels like we're back in July. Near 90 this week. The nights are cool but it feels pretty good after a hot day. We took Bella to her first doggie training class last week. She seems to fit right in. So far she's learned she get treats if she listens to whoever is on the other end of that darn leash. One sad note, my daughter's beautiful white kitty disappeared the other night. I let him out, a short while later when he should have been coming back in, he never showed up. We've looked and looked but can't find any trace of him. So sad. My spinning, dyeing, decorating the new studio ... all of it is going pretty well. I keep re-arranging stuff. One of these days I know I'll get it right. Its so nice to have a place to go to when I just want a little quiet time to spin. There's just so much to do outside right now I feel guilty doing anything else. Winter will be coming, that's for sure, so we need to get all the outside chores done in just a few weeks. I had someone come over and grade the driveway getting it ready for gravel. He is so good with the loader / grader and he gave me some pointers on my little tractor. I tried them out this afternoon and actually was able to do some things like moving all that poopie hay that's been piling up. Thanks Jeff!