The secret...

Ok, Ok... I can't keep a secret very well. I'll start with a little background first, though.

Seth and I are both state employees. Clerk Typists, to be exact. Because state employees tend to get shafted in many ways (which I won't get into here), the title classifications haven't been reviewed for something like 50 years. The governor and his associates, in partnership with the Union, recently redid the classification scales and such so that it better represents not only our current jobs, but also so we better fit in with other state employees around the country. This is enabling all of the affected employees to get a lump sum bonus as a way to pacify the fact that considering the cost of living and all, our wages suck nuts.

So I had planned on taking this bonus and putting it toward bills because that is the sensible thing to do. I was talking things over with Seth, though, and he suddenly says, "Sara, I'm going to be using mine for a snowboarding season's pass. Why don't you use yours for a spinning wheel?"

*gasp*

What an awesome idea!

So I need your help and recommendations. You can even solicit this post to other people you know that spin and who don't come here to get their thoughts as well. I would appreciate any advice on this that I can get. I would love to get a wheel that is easy enough for a beginner, but that is able to transition to more advanced use as I learn what I am doing. Something slightly more portable would be good, but not absolutely necessary. I would like to spend no more than $350 (because I'm not sure how much of the bonus I will have left after they take taxes out). Halcyon has a gazillion in their catalog, but since I don't know anything about spinning, I don't know what would be best.

I'm so excited about getting my own wheel... I just want to make sure I make the right decision about which one to purchase. I am hoping to get many years of use out of it.

Thanks everyone!

I put a new battery in my digital camera just in time for Seth to come get me while I was doing the dishes and tell me that Norton had found a trojan horse virus on my computer. And they say that computers make our lives easier.

I mentioned last time that the Dulaan Project knitting from my mom and her co-workers was going fabulous. Here are a few pictures of Dulaan Project work:

some more of my Dulaan hats...




And some of the hats contributed by my mom and her co-workers. My mom told me tonight that she has finished another one since I took the picture, and one of her co-workers finished another 5. Pam, the one that just finished the 5 has already contributed 30. You read that right, 30. Her goal is 40. And I thought that making my 7 was a big deal. I'm in awe of how much she is willing to contribute to the Project. The hats with the pompoms on them are my mom's.









I also mentioned in my last post about the sweater that I whipped up for my new niece Emily Jane... you can't see the cute ties that close it, and the stitches aren't very defined in the picture which bums me out a little, but here it is in it's fuzzy glory...


Finally for pictures, I looked at the calendar this weekend and realized that I still had not started my mom's mother's day gift. I had planned on making her a doily in black crochet cotton thread that she can put under her display of Native American dolls and pitchers that she got along her trip to New Mexico and Arizona. I thought that the black would look lovely against the bright colors of the dolls. I'm not sure that I will be able to finish it in time, but at least I've started it and can show her that it is in process. I'm currently on row 46 and there are about 120+ plus the crochet border. The pattern is from yarn over dot net and is based on a peacock's tail.


I've got something cooking in the works... not a project per se, but something big. And I can't wait to reveal it, especially to Beth from big geek since I've been soliciting her incredibly helpful advice about a few things. Keep posted... I'll be reveling things in the next month or so!

It's been a while since I posted, although it certainly hasn't been for lack of projects. Instead, it is due to my lovely digital camera battery flashing a bright red light to tell me that it's dead and under no circumstances is it going to upload the 7 or so pictures I have on there.

I have been busy with Dulaan Project stuff. I've finished my 6th hat and have started number 7. I also spent the better part of the long weekend (Maine celebrates Patriot's Day with Massachusetts) hurridly finishing the sweater I had been planning to crochet for Seth's sister Chris and her partner Brenda's new baby girl. Emily Jane was born on New Year's Eve, and due to complications in the delivery (Emily was born with full blown pneumonia), she spent quite a bit of time in NICU. Since I wasn't sure how big she was going to be once she got on her feet, I didn't want to start the sweater too early. Imagine Seth's and my surprise when Chris surprised us with a visit at the end of last week with a very healthy Emily in tow! Chris, Brenda and Emily will be heading back to Seattle in October (Chris and Brenda are both engineers, and Brenda is currently on assignment in California), so the sweater should get quite a bit of use in the rainier weather.

My mom's co-workers who are donating to the Dulaan Project have been amazing- I now have 4 grocery bags full of hats that they have donated to the project. I'm going to need a moving van to get them to Arizona.

I bought my Kool Aid to dye some of my yarn yesterday and had a sudden realization of my age:

Cashier starts swiping my Kool Aid packets over the scanner and notices that one of the lemonade packets has a slight hole in it. "You're going to be losing most of the flavor in this one since it's leaking."

I tell him that it is fine and just to put it into a separate bag so I can dump out the mix that falls into the bag, and that I am using it to dye yarn.

"You're dying yarn? Wow, that's cool. Does it wash out?"

"Not really... it's pretty colorfast."

"That is so neat. I bet your laundry tastes just like Kool Aid."

I just kind of look at him.

"Yeah, one of my friends once asked me if I dyed my hair with Kool Aid since it was a bright red color. You can't dye your hair with Kool Aid. I mean, I've never heard of anyone ever doing that before."

I'm still just kind of looking at him.

"Yeah, I don't think anyone would ever dye their hair with Kool Aid. I mean, really."

He put my Kool Aid in a bag and wished me luck in the yarn dying. I didn't have the heart to tell him that he obviously was too young to have lived through the Grunge period of the early 90s since *everyone* I knew was trying to dye their hair with Kool Aid.

It is with sadness that I have to announce my first knitting casualty:





Yep.

I busted my first Denise needle.

I was at work on lunchbreak working on Dulaan hat number 3 and had just started decreasing the crown when I suddenly heard this loud *snap* and my knitting slacked. Thankfully since I was at work, I was able to grab my cup of paperclips and start snagging stitches before they unravelled too many rows down. On break I knitted all the dropped rows back up and stuck the hat on a set of dpns I had with me.

Here it is finished:


Not being the biggest dpn lover, though, I knew that in order to reach my first goal of five hats for the month I was going to have to get a new temporary circular needle until my Denise gets replaced. I put in an emergency call to Yardgoods in Waterville and they set a 16" bamboo one aside for me to get this morning.


Either they don't have many people calling ahead to put stuff aside, or I must have sounded really... cracked... on the phone because the clerk at the counter knew me by name when I said I had called last night. I didn't even have to tell her what it was I had reserved for me. I also grabbed a couple of skeins of...

so I can dye my first pair of socks this month! Woot! I chose this brand since not only is it superwash, but the clerk mentioned that quite a few people had used this brand to dye with koolaid and they always came out beautifully. We'll see how it works, I guess... the worst that can happen is that I will dye my hands and arms permanently in Berry Blue or something. Or the cat... or the counter... or the kids.

My mom has rallied the "Knifty Knitter" folks that she works with to also help with the Dulaan Project and gave me this group of hats that she and her co-workers have made in the past couple of weeks. I can't wait to see how full the box will be.

Happy April!

They say "April showers bring May flowers," but they don't really say what sleet and freezing rain could bring. Only in Maine would we have colder weather in April than we did most of the winter.

I know I said I would stop talking about my grandmother's afgan, and I will... eventually. Her birthday was on March 29th and my parents and I met up with her for gifts, cake and ice cream. I thought it would be nice to put in a picture of me showing Gayer her new afgan.


She didn't cry like I thought she might, but in retrospect I think she was a little overwhelmed that the whole family came together for something like this.

It's the fourth day of April and I have been working hard on my contribution to the Dulaan Project. I've already completed two hats- one a small child size and one an older child size. Since I have so many different yarns to use from my stash I am hoping to make a large variety of sizes. First up... a basic stockinette roll brim hat:


and modeled by the ever lovely (albeit increasingly dirty) Dead bear...


Second... ribbed brim then basic stockinette:


and again, modeled by the Dead bear...


I'm not a huge fan of pompoms on hats just because they are sometimes a pain to make, but I feel like the blue one is somewhat unfinished. I'd contemplated making an icord tassle thing at the top. Thoughts either for or against?

I also discovered this crazy bright yarn in my stash:

How do you think kids in Mongolia would respond to hunter orange?? I'm not sure if I should make an attempt to use it or give it to someone that has a liking for hunter orange. A pumpkin/ jack-o-lantern hat perhaps?

Since it is cold and nasty outside, I wanted to leave this post with a little bit of optimism taken this past weekend, despite the fact that these flowers are probably going to be either dead or mighty pissed off in the morning. From my flower bed: