Woolgathering

Grover

I seem to have introduced all my furry family except Grover. Meet Grover he's a very good  kitty. He's feeling a little confused by our new kitten. He's really curious about the tiny creature, but isn't sure. So he'll sniff her and then hiss at her just so she'll know her place. We're giving him extra attention and pets so he doesn't feel left out. He loves to be carried around over one's shoulder, although he is quite a load so that can only go on for so long. Grover likes to supervise when I spin and knit, but he's not a micromanager.

Say hi to Zoe

We have a new bundle of fur in the house. Her name is Zoe. She is very sweet and cuddly and also really full of energy.

She was found by a friend deserted in a parking lot in a sad and disheveled condition. Whoever would just leave a tiny little kitten  should be shot in my book. Anyway, Scott took her home and gave her a bath then took her to the shelter he has enough kitties of his own (which is good for us). He then told us about her and my husband headed straight to the shelter to fill out her adoption papers. Zoe had to spend some time quarentined at the shelter where they fixed her up with vaccinations and all the good stuff a kitty needs. We got to pick her up Friday which is earlier than we' d been told  because they were too full of kitties.

Zoe and I both ask that if you are looking for a good pet to be part of your family go to your shelter and rescue a kitty or dog from there. If you can't handle the animals you have don't just dump them off in the middle of nowhere, take them to your nearest shelter so they can find a family to love. And in any event get your pets fixed don't add to the population of unwanted animals. I'll get off my soap box now. It just makes me so sad and angry that people treat animals this way. This is the third wonderful kitten I've gotten because someone else has abandoned her.

We call them pets because we pet them.

Kermit The Kittie

Fall 1995 - July 25, 2006

She was a very great and wonderful kitty with the biggest purr I've ever heard.

Tuesday night I thought I saw a single flash of lightning in the sky. I like to imagine that was Stormy Dog telling me that Kermie is safe and sound with Honey Kitty and him now and that they will take care of each other.

Best Friends

This is Morgan with her best friend Woodstock. Most mornings Morgan walks me to work and on her way home she visits Woodstock who comes running down her driveway meowing to greet her. They give each other kisses, rub faces, smell each other ...sometimes they feel the need to sniff each others butt (I guess there is a lot of information back there). Recently, Woody met a skunk so she really smells interesting these days.

After conversing in their puppy kitty ways and getting plenty of pets from the people who love them, Woody escorts Morgan to her property line and they get on with their day.

Vermont Quilt Fest 2006

Last week was the Vermont Quilt Festival and I spent 5 wonderful days immersed in it. This year the festival moved to a new home outside Burlington. I stayed in a dorm and took classes on the campus of St. Michael's College, while the show itself was down the road a few miles at the air conditioned Champlain Valley expo. Air conditioning was a new and wonderful improvement at the festival.

I arrived Wednesday evening and hiked all my stuff up the stairs to my fourth floor dorm room. Quilters do not travel lightly and we had to bring our own bedding etc. I also brought my spinning wheel and some knitting to work on at the end once I'd had enough of my sewing machine for the day. You just can't relax and unwind at a sewing machine the way you can at a wheel of with needles.

Thursday morning I took a half day class in quilt conservation at the Shelburne Museum. They use all sorts of wild techniques to repair their quilts including the use of adhesives. All the repairs they make are documented and reversible if necessary. After class I spent some time exploring the rest of the museum. They have wonderful Georgia O'Keeffe and Tasha Tudor exhibits this summer.

Thursday evening was the opening of the Festival show. I white gloved that evening, protecting the quilts from people just itching to touch them. The quilts were amazing. People are just so talented.

Friday I took a class from Jan Snelling McTaggart where we started working on making a Stonington star quilt. Jan's quilt is an adaption of a 18th Century Connecticut quilt. I'm making mine in modern wild fabrics, instead of reproductions. I still have one more border of squares to add before there is a border of flying geese and a final border of squares and stars.

Finally, I took a day and a half class in shibori dyeing with Carol Anne Grotrain. We learned all sorts of shibori techniques. We had great fun and I came out with enough fabric to make a sampler quilt.

All in all it was a exciting and successful week and I can't wait for next year now. On a knitting note the wonderful Kaleidoscope Yarn Shop is just down the street a ways from the Festival. This is a great shop.

Socks

Two socks down, two more to go. The top one is Nancy's sock, the bottom one is Tammy's. If I can scare up enough number 1 needles I may try to knit them both at the same time. Socks are fun, I love to knit socks but my Amazing Lace partner is getting kind of anxious about the summer moving along and we have only just started to knit. I keep telling legend that gifts must come first. It is threatening to unleash a sea serpent or some other creature of the deep on me.

Fiber Frolic

I'm a little slow in posting, but last weekend was the Maine Fiber Frolic. Its a festival put on by the Maine Llama Association. Besides fiber classes they have sheep herding demos, a llama obstacle course and the Llama Drill team - very funny and wonderful. This year has not been a good year for festivals. Once again the weekend was rainy and yucky. Hence, no pictures. I spent Saturday morning spinning at the Maine Spinners Registry booth. As well as having a spinning demonstration the Registry had a skein contest. I entered three skeins and won two ribbons! The first place ribbon is a spindle spun corriedale from Grafton Fibers. The second is hand dyes and wheel spun. The really helpful part of this contest is that the judge wrote a critique of the yarn so you know what he liked about it and what you could improve on.

Morgan's day of pampering

Morgan had her first professional grooming yesterday. Doesn't she look beautiful? All white and fluffy. Every year we have this argument about getting her professionally groomed. Mike thinks she should be shaved for summer, I disagree. Morgan doesn't want to have anything to do with any of it, she hates to be groomed. This year I finally gave into the grooming, although I won the battle over the shave. I comb her throughout the year, but once it gets cold I can't wash her until spring since she takes about 24 hours to dry thouroughly unless its a sunny breezy day and then it still takes all day. An icle dog would not be good. This year with all the rain we haven't had a good bath day yet and she was pretty yucky.

So, what does Morgan think of her spa day?  She says that being professionally groomed is just as bad as when I do it. She also wonders why the kitties didn't have to go too. They go to the vet with her after all.

Progress

Check out my new progress bars. I got the code from the Unlikely Words blog. The guy who writes it wrote the code for his wife then published it for anyone to use. I had trouble fitting the code into the confines of Typepad, but there was a comment from another typepad user about how she got it to work. I think its excellent. Now I'll feel really guilty if I don't make progress with my projects.

Rainbow of yarn

Memorial weekend is the time of my husband goes fishing with his buddys. For me it means three whole days at home with no reason to see another human unless I choose too. I usually get a lot accomplished on these weekends. This one did not disappoint. I spent the time dyeing yarn into all the glorious shades of the rainbow.

In the Interweave Press Spring Crochet magazine there is a wonderful blanket that I would love to make. The Babette Blanket designed by Kathy Merrick calls for 22 skeins of Koigu in 17 colors. This is one REALLY expensive blanket. Then I thought that I could dye the yarn myself so I bought 5 cones of white sock weight yarn instead. A much better investment and dyeing the yarn myself was ever so much more fun. I started making the dye stock and skeining yarn Friday after work. I continued this all day Saturday. Finally, Sunday I began dyeing. I still had three batches of stock to make (9 colors of stock in all), but I interspersed making these with steaming batches of yarn. While things simmered and steamed I mixed colors, dyed the skeins, and wrapped them in saran wrap.

It was a festival of color. It all came to a halt mid afternoon Sunday when I ran out of Saran wrap. I thought this was a perfect time to take a break. It was a wonderful hot sunny day out so I rode my bike to the store to get the wrap then took a detour to Gifford's icecream stand for a scoop of chocolate peanutbutter cup frozen yogurt. then it was back to work. I finally hung out the last skein to dry at about 9pm.

I'm really pleased with the outcome. The difficult colors were the pastel ones. I found the "melon" color really hard, I wanted a cantalope. It turned out a little anemic for a cantalope, but the yarn is quite nice. Bright colors are a piece of cake. I love to dye bright colors.