The Thanksgiving Issue.

Today Carole asks us …."What are we thankful for RIGHT NOW, in addition to the daily things we are always thankful for such as family, friends, etc…so here I go.

1.  My pottery class that I just came home from.  I am working with a great group of women.  We have a ton of fun, lots of laughs and in the process we are learning some cool things.

2.  My new job that I am really enjoying.  Life had become very quiet with all of the kids on their own.  It's nice to have conversation in my life again.  (no, the Woolen Rabbit hasn't gone away…at least not yet.)

3.  Along with that new job is wearing real clothes again instead of the daily dye uniform.  I still don that dye uniform a few times a week, but it's nice to wear big girl clothes too.

4.  Plumbing in the bathroom…whoo hoo!!!!  It's so nice not to have to haul upstairs numerous times a day.

5.  Having Hannah home for a few days. We'll be celebrating her milestone birthday!

6.  The beautiful flowers that I picked up on my way home from Pottery class for Thanksgiving.

7.  Arranging those beautiful flowers.  I think I would love being a florist.  I love putting bunches of beautiful, colorful flowers together.  It's kind of like dyeing yarn, but smells a whole lot better.

8.  My camera that allows me to capture all of the moments of life in a snapshot to remember forever.  Both my phone camera and my big girl Nikon.

9.  For the ability to knit.  I am really enjoying my Mystery KAL, "A March Through Time".  Ironically, I have not been able to keep up with the walking as I adjust to a new schedule, but I have been keeping up with the knitting.  It's been a fun knit and I will figure out the walking part as I go along.

10.  You knew I would have to put this in here, but it's true.  RIGHT NOW, I am very thankful for my family and looking forward to hostessing most of them and a few others here on Thanksgiving.

Yesterday I mentioned that it was a day of special birthdays, so today I want to share and celebrate our littlest member of the family's special day. 

Say whaaat???  I didn't eat that many, I swear I didn't.

Little Mr. Finley has the very best expressions and we got to see most of them yesterday…LOL.  In the first picture you can see how very happy he was to eat cupcakes and cupcakes he ate indeed!  I believe over the course of the day and evening he managed to eat 7 of them.  I love how after every.single.bite, he wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his brand new shirt.
It was his birthday though, right?

Along with the cupcakes is the joy of discovering that birthdays also means new toys.  We brought him down a couple of big trucks that Ken picked out, because you know even big boys and grown men remember playing with their trucks in the sandbox and they want to be sure that the little guys get to do the same.
Finley will have no shortage of trucks between his and his brother's to build those sandbox memories.

…and when you take those toys away to introduce another present, this is the face you get…ha!!
Of course once he realized that a new package means a new gift, he started to get it.
I just love little kids, they have no filters…LOL

All in all, I think he had a very nice day.  Surrounded by his family who all love him very much.

Happy Birthday Finley!

 

Nov. 22nd is a day filled with good things.  21 years ago this beautiful young lady entered into our lives.  Hannah is my youngest child and is a whirlwind for sure!  How can it be 21 years already when she is still 10 in my mind??

Hannah has always been a feisty girl who you never have to guess what she is thinking, because if she doesn't tell you, her expression will say it all..ha!  Here is a picture of her when she was about 3 years old and it's a picture that her siblings always remember and chuckle over.  You can tell she was not happy about something here!!

…but this is how I always remember Hannah when I think of her young years.  She is the hardest worker that you could ever want to work alongside with.  Hannah frequently came to dog shows and fiber events with me when she was young and was a wonderful travel companion, always doing more than her share of he work.  Making her own waffles at a hotel for breakfast and spending time with the dogs was something she always looked forward to.  We had fun. 🙂

Always kind and compassionate with the dogs and always thoughtful and helpful with me.

Goodness….21 years!  Legal cocktails for Thanksgiving. :) 
Happy Birthday Hannah….Love you!!

Tomorrow, I will share the other birthday munchkin. 🙂

Yesterday I told you that there have been some big changes in our lives over the last few weeks and one of those changes has made my weekends a little busier.  Amazingly though I think I get a lot more done because my time is a bit more prioritized.

Today, I spent the day juggling dyeing yarn for orders and doing some more test painting before I take the color commitment plunge on the kitchen after Thanksgiving.  I also spent time in my office taking care of some of the more tedious parts of running a business and then spent time finishing the first scarf on my loom. I started the second one as well….it was a good and productive day.

Ken also worked hard, putting up some drywall in our mud room which is on the other side of the bathroom and did some repair work on the piles that hold up the sun room slash dog room then buttoned it up for winter with some new insulation.

Whew…we both worked hard today but we ended the day with a few competitive games of Bananagrams and a few snacks and beverages.  I love this game!

Tomorrow we head south to visit my son and his family.  Little Mr. Finley turns 2 and as I mentioned yesterday, my baby Hannah turns 21. The wheels of life keep turning so quickly, I can barely keep up!
I will have some pictures to share with you all tomorrow. 🙂

So if I have any readers left after yesterday's post and today's picture, I will count you among my dedicated readers and friends.

I'm sure not many people would consider a toilet to be eye candy, but seriously, I have waited almost a full year for this functioning toilet in my first floor bathroom to be a reality.  ONE.FULL.YEAR!

We had to completely rebuild the bathroom from the rotted floor joists up, which meant Ken working his very busy job during the week and doing this on the weekends that we had free.  Throw into that mix a plumber who does a fabulous job, but when plumbers can pick and choose what they want to work on, squeezing through and working in a basement crawl space is not a high priority, so we waited months to get him here…months…grrrr!

We will have a houseful for Thanksgiving with family, friends and 2 birthday kids. 
Finley turns 2 and Hannah turns 21!  It will be fun.
I am really looking forward to spending time with friends and family, and even more, I am very happy that while our bathroom will not be completely finished until the next holiday, at least everything is functional…whew!

 

So….I am posting 2 posts today on Friday.  I am posting a back dated Thursday and today's post.  Normally I would not do the back date thing, but Ken was peer pressuring me last night and shaming me today, so I thought that this would be the perfect song…LOL.  Yep, I am wearing that "L" on my forehead today.

I was so blessed exhausted last night after a long 10 hour day and just couldn't dig down deep enough to come up with a creative post, so I knit for a little bit and fell asleep early.  I will talk more about the reasons why on Monday. 
So many changes happening here, but they are all good. 🙂

I have to admit that I really did love this song back when it came out in the 90's, but yes, today it was fitting..ha!

Thanks Ken! whomp whomp…

I am so fortunate to work alongside some of the most talented and nicest designers, one of which is Anne Podlesak.  As I have mentioned a few times in the past, Anne and I have collaborated on a number of different projects.  Anne is also very generous and always sends me a copy of a pattern or book that I have contributed yarn for, so I was very excited when I received a copy of her newest book, "Free Spirits Knits".

It is a BEAUTIFUL book full of such wonderful and wearable patterns.  Twenty patterns in all and so many of them are ones that I would love to wear.  I was exceptionally excited when I saw this beautiful pattern in the group of pre-book photos that Anne sent to me.

This lovely "Three Sister's shawl" was knit with my Lucent yarn in the Suede and Butterscotch colorways. 
When Anne sent me the pictures of all the patterns and I saw this shawl, I fell in love with it before I noticed that she used the yarns that I sent to her for this shawl.  I was over the moon when I saw that the yarns were the ones I sent to her.

I have a few Christmas projects to knit and the never ending sweater that I am sucking up my energy to finish first, but this is going to be my cold winter night knitting project.  I just love it!

Also included in Anne's book is this scrumptious sweater, "Monument Valley Sweater", made with my Sporty Biffle yarn in the Pumpkin Patch and Straw colorways.  I love the texture and color.  Anne knows that my favorite colors are the autumn colorways and this sweater is everything that I love.  Beautiful and very wearable!

As I was paging through this lovely book, I want to tell you that it is of the highest quality.  The paper that it is printed on, the content and the pictures are all very well done and worthy of your knitting book library.

Go take a look, you won't be disappointed.  There are at least 10 items I wish I could knit RIGHT now.

Thank you Anne!

Today was one of those days that was busy from the moment I put my slippers on this morning until I put them back on again before sitting down to write this post.  It has been a good kind of busy, but I won't lie… after having dinner and a small glass of wine tonight, I really didn't want to go back out again, but the classes have been paid for and truth be told, I am always glad that I went when I go.

So….tonight, we had a blast.  I love the girls I am working with.  Our teacher Jen reminds me so much of my daughter Ashley.  I know that they would be great friends if they ever met….kindred spirits for sure.  One of my class members just happens to be the mom to some of my youngest daughters friends as well and I really enjoy having her in my class.  We have good fun in class laughing at our failed attempts and cheering each others successes.

As an extra bonus tonight, we were able to collect the items that we glazed and had fired from the last round of classes, because we will not be able to have the kiln opening party with the upcoming holiday.  The picture I took was not the best as it was on the fly with my iphone in so so lighting.

I am going to take some better pictures with my big camera tomorrow and talk about the successes and failures of the finished items.  Pottery is very much a process and it is slow.  It is very tactile and takes many hours of throwing clay to get to the point where you are in control of the clay instead of the clay telling you what to do.  While it may sound romantic in a way, letting the clay lead the way…truth be told, if you want to be consistent in what you are producing you need to learn how to control that clay so that you are able to produce the same thing, such as matching bowls, coffee mugs, etc.

Tonight I had what I felt was one real success.  I made a batter bowl and I was in charge of the clay…it felt good.  The other two bowls the clay was in charge, so the clay still beat me…but I had one win, so it's all good. 😉

Well, it's been a little while since I have shared some Woolen Rabbit yarn pictures, so I thought that I would share a few today.  In trying to do so I had a big scare. Well maybe not "BIG", but big enough that I wanted to cry. 

Back during the crazy busy season of fall fairs when I was elbow deep in dyeing, I had taken a whole bunch of pictures that I haven't had time to process.  I went looking for those pictures tonight to find a few that would give a fall feeling to my Woolen Rabbit facebook cover photo and couldn't find them.  What?  I checked my Lightroom program, my camera card and dropbox, the usual places I keep photos.  Gah!  I have reformatted my camera card a few times since I took those photos, but I was pretty certain I had downloaded the pictures before deleting them.  Huge sigh!

So I went upstairs into the studio and re-shot some pictures of my Dove yarn.  I love these fall colors in the Mourning Dove, Suede and Enchanted Forest colorways.

I also snapped off a few pictures of the same base, Dove, in the Through The Looking Glass, Water Study and Blackthorn colorways, so that I could update my website with some pictures.

Wouldn't you know that after feeling huge panic and re-doing some work tonight, sure as shoot I found the pictures on my hard drive…aggh!  I rarely keep them sitting on my hard drive these days given that my computer is getting older now.  I usually send a copy of the pictures to my external drive and another set to dropbox.

I learned a valuable lesson.  Always check and re-check before you reformat your camera card and name.your.folders!

I received a little package in the mail yesterday….aren't they lovely?? 
This will be one of my next weaving projects.  The little loom that I have in my studio on the first floor is an 8 harness loom.  So far I have only done 4 harness patterns on it, but my next 2 projects will be my first attempt to utilize more of the harnesses.

The first project will be a solid colored huck lace scarf woven with bamboo on 6 harnesses (different color).  It will only be one scarf so it should move along quickly after the loom is dressed.  The next one after that will be this shawl woven in tencel and cotton using all 8 harnesses.  I saw a stunning one done with these yarns on facebook, so I decided to be brave and tackle the loom with all of her harnesses on.

All of the weavers out there will understand what I am going to say next.
  Weaving truly is all about the process, there is no way around it and no shortcuts.  Once I learned to accept that a good amount of time needs to be spent on things other than just sitting behind my loom and throwing the shuttle, I became more patient with the process and enjoy it more now.

The funny thing is….once you finally get to sit down and weave, you are already dreaming and getting excited about the next project.