That man, you know the one; he’s about 6 foot, lean, nice strong features, and wears a wedding ring that matches mine claims to know nothing about the missing ball winder. I think he’s involved with the crime, but he refused to break during the course of interrogation so I was forced to let him go.

The yarn-winder is obviously some place where I have not yet thought to look.

I can’t go on like this so I’ve ordered a new one. A better one. Well, hopefully it’s an upgrade from the old one. The first one was an ordinary table top ball winder that claimed to make 4 oz balls of yarn (average wool yarn was between 3.25-3.75 ounces before the ball exceeded the capacity of the winder) and did a wobbly dancy thing while the yarn guide was stationary. The new one is an inline ball winder, where the yarn guide moves– it also claims to create 4 ounces.

Anyone have any experience with the inline kind? (I know, kinda late to ask since I already ordered it) Amazon claims I’ll see it somewhere between February 6 and 11.

This is the same red/brown baby alpaca that I was spinning. It so lovely and soft. It’s weird how wire hard singles can turn into the loftiest softest yarn when plied. It’s such a nice vacation from the cotton which demands that I pay close attention to every inch.

I also did something today that I haven’t done in 9 years: I mowed the weeds lawn.

Yeah, I know I’m the rough and tumble chick with a chisel. The only thing more fun than spinning or knitting is the acquisition of shiny new things that go “vroom!” and carry the potential of removing digits, or whole limbs, or putting out eyes.
I know this is a shocking revelation; my life without serious yard work, but as my husband knows I think it’s extremely sexy when he does the yard work I haven’t really had an opportunity to do any mowing or hedge trimming. (Please note, it took years of positive reinforcement to get this most desirable behavior from him. I have yet to convince him that taking the garbage out is totally hot.) However, this year the ragweed is really obnoxious so the husband can either breath freely in his little hermetically sealed atmosphere or do yard work and turn into a barely animated corpse.

Needless to say barely animated corpse is just not sexy.

So after much fussing and warning me to not run over the cord to the electric mower I was *allowed* to cut the weeds grass. I am not the one who whacked the other mower. I do not shred power cords (most of the time.)

I think I might make this mowing of the lawn a regular gig. It was definitely a whole body workout, burned some serious calories and it’s far more interesting than the stupid yoga DVD. Warrior pose my foot. In a real fight that sort of standing would get someone kicked in the codpiece.

My husband said “Someone took all the sunshine and tubby toast and left these dead bodies.”

Lexi said “Ok, my kitties.”

Josey said “Why don’t they have tails?”

Greta says “…”

And that about sums it up doesn’t it?

Here is the boy-child, note his father’s shiny pate in the background. Perhaps this is the very moment where his character says something charming like “Die already.”

Doesn’t that just warm the cockles of you heart?

And here’s my sweet husband. Look at the poise, the majesty– (at least he’s wearing clean sweat pants.) At this moment he’s blaming me for distracting him from the game. Aww.

So instead of one of the 25.5 cubic feet fridges, I suggested we fix up and send the offending fridge to a Freecycle member with a larger family and go with a brand spankin’ new compact fridge and see if it works for us. We usually don’t keep a full sized fridge more than a quarter full anyway (condiments do expire and I’m a teeny bit obsessive about aged food.)

Odd thing– my husband thought it a good idea.

After two weeks of impassioned JFGI, browsing random appliance stores and debating on whether or not we need a separate freezer or just one of those little ice box thingies we decided on this baby. (The freezer debate rages on.)

I love it. It took a reconfiguration of the shelves to manage to fit a gallon of milk inside, and I am using a plastic bowl for holding the eggs (who wants to keep eggs in the door anyway? I never do.) It’s as cute as a button.

What we’ll do is build a drawer to go under it, and mount shelves above it– which will give me more storage room in the kitchen. The estimated yearly operating cost of it is $24 (Yay!)

On the art front, I’m working on making more plushies and back to spinning some BFL. I carded the muppet entrails silk noil with some matching wool (the dye match was perfectly unintentional, but I’ll go with it) and I’m itching to get a free bobbin to make some yarn that is all about the texture.

This year is starting to show a disturbing trend for our family. Since the beginning of the year we’ve managed to have one good family emergency, dilemma, or drama at least once a month. Matt packed up the kids, the laptop and me– sending us to my Mom’s and he stayed here until the day before yesterday so that he could take care of the critters.

Of course, there’s no wireless over at Mom’s so I have limited computer time on her computer, no camera, no way to network her computer to mine and no access to civilization.

Oh, and because we weren’t expecting an extended stay at Mom’s; I didn’t take yarn, wool, spindle, or knitting needles. I did take the laptop– did I mention that? I also managed to not pack my reading glasses, medicine, or watch. I did remember to take my toothbrush.

So last week Friday (I think it was Friday) we went to Tupperware Bingo. I think that I really enjoyed it means I’m way to close to being domesticated. I cleaned cupboards for fun on Saturday. Went to church with Mom and my kids on Sunday. Went to lunch with everyone after church on Sunday.

Boredom is not a pretty color on me. I can read without my glasses but I’m doomed to a headache sooner or later if I push it. I did a bit of cooking. I organized photos that are already in my laptop, deleted unused files, un-installed old programs, de-fragmented the hard drive, cleaned up the flash drive thingy, created new homework for Josey, made phonics flashcards for Lexi, and so on.

A few things I’ve learned from staying with my mom:

• Mood music with waterfall sounds do not relax me. It makes me want to go pee even when I don’t really have to go.
• Always check the dates on refrigerated items before opening the container.
• When setting a security alarm before bed, be sure to bypass the hallway motion detector so that it does not go off when the 10 year old gets out of bed to go to the bathroom.

I think that’s pretty much the summary of my wisdom for now. I’m glad to be home.

Garage sales are the best for spinning time. I get more spinning and plying done on garage sale days than other days, mainly because the husband takes charge of the kids and I can just sit outside, sell things and spin yarn all day, it’s like a vacation in a foreign land where I’m queen. The husband even brings me coffee and food– sweet huh?

The only problem is that people keep interrupting my lovely spinning time in order to give me money. If only I were so troubled more often.

Matt and I noticed that our neighborhood is slowly changing demographics, when we first moved here there were mostly older people and a single family with teenagers on one side and grandparents with occasional grand-kids visiting on the other side. Now our street has four families besides our own with kids, they are more our generation with kids nearer to our kids’ ages. Play dates are easier to arrange now which is always a good thing.

I have no idea what I’m going to do with it, beyond just staring at it reverently.

I also finished spinning another 8 ounces of the moorit Shetland, and started on 8 ounces of the white Shetland. I have also kept plugging away on the Icarus shawl, although I’m only to the second graph.

My husband really has to stop hoarding the camera. And start moving his stuff off the memory cards. I was pretty ticked to go through all the trouble of getting the camera, finding fresh batteries, laying out my treasures carefully– only to take a single picture and find the memory card full. That stinks.

Months ago Matt started grumbling that I was not taking pictures off the memory card, and he could never use the camera. So I thought I’d be cool and kind of pile up pictures in my mind and then take them all at once in a marathon style instead of a snapshot here and there. It’s just futile. I waited and waited. Finally, I just asked him to take a picture of something here or there, he’d grumble “What, now you can’t use the camera?”

Which leads me to say something along the lines of it’s not using the camera that’s impossible, just using the camera, his computer (to which the printer with the card reader is attached), and finding memory or batteries enough to use it.

Which leads to him saying something along the lines of how he’ll just drop everything (even though he is usually not doing anything when I ask) and take the picture since it’s so damned important.

You can probably guess this doesn’t completely halt the conversation. It usually ends up going on for some time much longer than it would have had he simply a) taken the picture and put it in the shared file as I asked or b) just let me use the camera in peace in the first place– since it is his pictures habitually undeleted on the memory cards and not mine.

And shall we talk of leaving dead batteries in electronics? Should we, as husband and wife, have that little conversation Darling?

In the greater scheme of things I know stuff like this probably shouldn’t be such a big deal. It’s just annoying.

Which means you understand that I’m reduced to knitting bulky acrylic yarn on large bamboo needles which have proven to be virtually indestructible and sewing. I just don’t tend to spin bulky yarn, I could break into the mohair I suppose and knit a lacy scarf but I tend to frog a lot when deciding on lace patterns and don’t want to torment the yarn in that way.

I have yet to devise a Lexi proofed system for knitting. I think it’s going to require moving all my knitting stuff into our bedroom or digging a super secret underground yarn and needle bunker under the house. Lexi is quite sneaky and very cunning, in order to thwart her plan for world yarn domination I must think like a three year old.

Anyway, my darling husband is good at consoling me so he bought me a book to keep me entertained as I start rebuilding my knitting needle collection. The book is Omiyage by Kumiko Sudo. Matt knew that I’ve been trying to talk myself out of buying this book for at least the past two years. He is also smart enough to figure out that this required a trip to the fabric store for supplies. Clever clever man! (It will still not get him out of digging my underground knitting bunker.)

I love the projects so much, I’m working on the Avalanche Lily pattern and have made two different babies, and have a distinct need for a new pin cushion, and all the pictures are so beautiful and the instructions are so clear. I got distracted (inspired) yesterday to sew some pretty knitting and spinning related gear. If we can keep the camera and sewing machine away from Lexi I’ll take some pictures to post when I’m finished (ha ha, I jest, I’m at the mercy of a three year old.)

I finally have a doctors appointment for my migraines, and I’m worried that if the headaches go away so will my insomnia, and with the insomnia my creativity. If next week I am boring and uncreative, and I start following patterns stitch by stitch– promise me that you’ll hide my medicine and keep me sleep deprived. Please?

If I even look at a plastic canvas toilet paper cover– kill me.

I know it’s not good to feel brain twisting pressure behind one’s right eye and not sleep, but aren’t all the greats somewhat off kilter or tormented in some way? There was Monet, going blind. Mozart, deaf. Opal, yarn dysmorphic disorder.