My dogs will never be vegetarians. I appreciate your sentiment about my animals eating other animals, but they were designed to eat other animals so I’m not going interfere. Besides Greta’s bowels do bad things when she manages to get a single corn chip, and as much as she loves a nice raw head of cabbage last time she got at one the neighbors called the city suspecting that we had a corpse rotting in our backyard.

Actually, rotting corpse would have been an improvement. CSI wouldn’t have scooped that poop. Lawrence Fishburne’s character would have been all “F–k this, I quit.” and then he would have stormed off, the rest of the episode would be the other characters trying to figure out who stepped in what and where did Lawrence Fishburne go?

Bacon grease is an essential ingredient in blueberry muffins. It makes them last longer, taste better, and its cheaper than coconut oil which frankly does a 2nd rate job. I will make you any other type of muffin, even the cranberry ones, completely vegan if you like but I draw the line at my blueberry muffin recipe.

Tofu is awesome, stop pretending that its a meat replacement and accept it as tofu. I will defile neither tofu nor my meatloaf recipe attempting to appease your perverse appetite that craves both moral superiority and down home good cooking at the same time.

Justify it all you like, if you are vegan and don’t eat beans and bean products you are a crappy (and likely malnourished) vegan, pastatarians don’t count. Fake chicken nuggets and egg free ramen do NOT have enough protein to keep your brain functioning, which is probably why you feel like crap and don’t have the mental acuity to calculate exactly how much protein you need to eat each day.

Finally, I’ll happily make as many vegan portions for dinner as there are vegans, which tends to include enough for seconds if you like and a bit extra for the omnivores to sample if they like. Do NOT pout because you don’t feel included or because you think I’m trying to single you out somehow by not offering you meat products that I know you will make a big deal out of not eating– that attitude just makes you come off as a permanent window licker on the short bus of life, its just rude.

I thought that was it, but I have one more: Under no circumstances are you EVER to claim to be a strict vegan with “soy sensitivities” and expect me to cater to your bizarre dietary claims with anything other than a good stout bowl of oatmeal and a look of piercing disdain mixed with a pinch of distrust.

But first– the markers. Lets just linger here for a moment to let the glory that is handmade goodness sink in.

Just breath. Relax. Try not to covet. It feels like warm sweet sunlight showering down after a long cold winter doesn’t it?

I’m shocked and delighted by the two extra stitch markers– the little elephant and the Hello Kitty. Squeeeee!

And more Squeeeee!

Her very own handspun yarn and a book and Hello Kitty swag– it’s like Christmas without all the annoying fire hazards and relatives.

There’s even candy!

(I will make the yarn nekkid and try to take some really sexy pictures of it later)

She even sent me some catalogs to give to Lexi. (Yeah, my 5 year old likes to read catalogs– a little weird, but at least she’s reading something.)

Last month I bought some Shetland roving from Serenity Sheep Woolens. I’ve been playing with it for a little bit and after a few samples, I went for a more rustic yarn.

I love naturally colored wools. This stuff is a dream to spin up, I’m not predrafting at all (even though I probably should) and its cooperating fully with long draw spinning.

I haven’t put forth any serious spinning effort in a while, every once in a while I grab my spindle and work on the reddish brown baby alpaca but the wheel has languished in the closet since August.

Opal knows what it takes to get a girl spinning again and put it all in one care package for me. Caramels, warm hats, comfy socks, and of course yummy roving. Thank you Opal!

Not pictured is the HK notepad, the coolest cabled hat ever (I’m not taking it off) or the caramels (because I’ve eaten them and they were yummy) or the gorgeous bracelet (note to self, buy more batteries for camera.)

Aren’t the amigurumi the cutest ever? Lexi loves them so much (according to Lexi they know all the funniest lines from Finding Nemo, it’s rare to find such movie loving crocheted sea dwellers.)

The roving is called Evil Clown, but spun up I think it is more “kind hearted Gypsy princess” than white faced carnie gone bad.

On other fronts I was called an “elitist b*tch” because I commented on how many knitters and spinners had cool blogs. That’s almost as good as last week when I was called a passive agressive control freak, not sure what that was for, or what the writer hoped to accomplish so I’ll go on assuming that the writer of that message had a psychotic break of some sort. This is the best I can do since I’ve given up on the cussing words.

I was offline just after the inauguration (power outage) but I did watch the inauguration ceremony and President Obama’s speech online prior to the outage and I made some notes when it was was clear I wouldn’t be able to comment until the lights came back on.

First and foremost is that I have a dim recollection of the National Lampoon’s “The lost white house tapes” and I half expected, half hoped that there would be a swearing out ceremony for George W. (perhaps Jesse Jackson could have delivered it.) I was rather disappointed that there was no swearing out ceremony.

Second was that the hot phrase on Fox News, was “a peaceful transition of power”– their correspondents must have said “a peaceful transition of power” at least 20 times in the ten minutes that we actually watched the live feed online. So much so that I figured that Fox had gone with the “If you can’t say anything nice, say nothing at all” bit of wisdom.

MSNBC was much better, and still it was a little creepy coverage-wise. There were many comparisons between Obama and Lincoln and Obama and Kennedy. As nice as those comparisons were, I figure it’s not good luck to compare a newly elected president to two presidents who, when all is said and done, are most famous for being assassinated. Don’t jinxy Obama!

(Yes, I am just superstitious enough.)

Is she not the most adorable thing? The t-shirt was made by the boy-child especially for his little sister.

Next is the table in progress. I only have the latest pictures although I took pictures of the “before” and each of the stages up to this point– I don’t have those pictures.

My husband copied the shortcuts to the disk by accident and then deleted the pics. Oh sure the pictures are gone, but the disk space we’re saving! Ah technology all makes it worth while doesn’t it? Never fear, there’s more work to do before I’m ready to declare it as a finished piece.

Finally there’s my little art plushies. Two plushies and a doll actually. From left to right there’s “Wish” a serious little bear with the rose bead collar (I don’t care if the beads came from the dollar store– they were totally perfect for Wish’s collar.) In the middle sits “Covet” he’s got the green eyes of envy and a yellow heart (behind Happy’s left hand), he’s got quite the scowl doesn’t he? And in the right is “Happy” he has a butterfly in his right hand and gold beads down his chest. I like Wish very much but Happy is my favorite, he just turned out just right.

Okay so what has me making this bountiful art? Well. When you hang out online with people like Mai Liis, Griselda, Vicki, Aisling D’art, Doreen, and Ash amazing things start to happen. I love the groups that we’re all on together, and always seem to find just the right inspiration just at the moment I most need it from them.

I also ordered more of the Moorit Shetland and some white Shetland. I can’t say enough about their processing, it’s a special treat to order clean roving that is still lively and hasn’t been processed to death. I like my wool with the character of wool in it.

I still have half a bobbin of cashmere that I haven’t the patience to put back on the wheel yet, it’s lovely stuff and I’m looking forward to the resulting yarn, but it just takes forever and a day to spin.

I swear it grows.

When the cashmere came with the first order it was in a plastic zip type bag, I’ve spun about half of it, and yet the bag is still full of cloud. Stuffed full.

Christmas was good, we did the big family party Christmas Eve at my mom’s house. The more dramatic of my two stepsisters didn’t show so it was actually very nice and calm. We had a quiet Christmas dinner with a few gifts exchanged at home. No drama, no traumatic craziness, just love, Peace on Earth and ham.

Today is Josey’s big 10th birthday, so this year he wants to help make and decorate his own cake (German chocolate) and he gets to pick what we have for dinner tonight. He’s also thinking that he’s old enough for a blog of his own, so– we’ll talk about it.

I trust my child, I just don’t trust the rest of the world.

Opal is having a contest on her blog, guess what her project is and score some yarn.

Ahead of schedule means that I get to play a little, of course, luxury fibers don’t live unspun in baggies for long and I broke into the (drum roll please..) cashmere down.

OooOooh.

Cashmere.

I love it.

I am revelling in my accomplishments and spinning cashmere is the cherry on top of the sundae. Half a pound of lace-weight moorit Shetland. Merino sock and fingering weight yarn abounds– virgin white; waiting for the warping board and dye pot. Falkland wool hanging neatly in rows. Balls of camel singles waiting patiently for plying and washing. And freakin’ cashmere on my bobbin.

Cashmere is champagne for the fingers, effervescent and light. Best to sip it slowly and enjoy the delicate flavor of cashmere.

I’m a miscreant spinner, there’s a lot of do as say and not do as I do in spinning. With almost anything else I sample in small quantities; knitting is swatched and washed and measured constantly, wood turning I’ll happily cut chunks of wood, weigh, and turn a ball or something simple just to get a feel for the grain and resistance, when I weave I do a quick test run, even when I sew I make small samples and check my angles prior to ever setting blade to fabric.

But misbehaving spinner that I am I have this habit of considering anything around an ounce a sample in itself– and a small one at that, so my way of sampling this cashmere has been with the intent of spinning up the whole ounce in my possession and finishing the yarn to see if I like it. I didn’t tear off a foot length of single to wrap around a bit of cardboard for comparison (which I do for some yarn but not this one.) I didn’t carefully divide the fiber by weight so as to have two mostly equal balls, I didn’t spin up and ply and wash a couple of yards to have a final yarn. I haven’t attempted to card or comb it.

I’m just grabbing little balls of delicious fluff and spinning away. It’s a cohesive lace-weight single so I’m spinning it fine enough and some how managing to add enough twist despite spinning it on a double drive. I love cashmere.

I could swim in the stuff

If I ever come into huge amounts of cash I’m going to knit myself some cashmere longjohn and a cashmere camisole and live in a cashmere house. If I ever need an organ transplant I would knit the missing organ from cashmere.

It’s an omen.

Fortunately I figured it out and it seems to be working again. If figuring it out means deleting and uploading files and extracting things and swearing a lot.I’m so proud of myself for fixing something. If I hadn’t already had a shot of Robitussin, I’d be cracking open a beer to celebrate this.

I might be tempted to chastise others but I’m guilty of not backing up things as much as I ought. So there.

The shawl is Kiri and it’s absolutely gorgeous, the pictures really don’t do it justice. I’m not really a shawl person but I have a hard time taking it off. My poor sweaters are getting jealous and my jacket is threatening to run away.The size is perfect too, long enough to wrap around me and stay in place, not overly large (so that I don’t drag it through my coffee cup or catch it on things.

Opal’s mom sent me the journal and towel. The red yarn is actually quite lovely, Opal is too hard on herself, this fiber wanted to be spun this way. But then she sends it to me for plying, then she tells me just to keep it. I think she has yarn dismorphic disorder. Save Opal from the tragedy of YDD.

a pile of lace upon my chest.

Should I die before I wake–

that’s one less yo, k2tog I’ll get to make.

Amen.

I was desperately bored with the garage sale today (it was really slow) so I decided to whip out my chartreuse mohair and start spinning a fuzzy yarn on a fresh bobbin. I wish now that I’d dyed more mohair in this particular batch, and some silk for a binder, silk is easy to match colors to but mohair is a bit of a crap shoot, no matter how specific my notes are I can’t seem to get the batches to come out exactly right.

Of course there’s the temptation to use some metallic gold commercial thread for a binder, might look kind of spiffy with a sparkle here or there peeking out from the eye searing fuzzy.

I had to laugh when a guy came over to pay for his books commented “That must have come from one strange looking sheep.” I popped back with “Just because the sheep near Hanford have 3 eyes doesn’t mean there’s any contamination.” (Yes, I know mohair comes from goats but it would have ruined our banter to point that out.)

Then some strange killjoy lady (not strange because she was a killjoy but strange as in wearing a coat and sweatshirt on a steaming hot day and not breaking a sweat) interrupted to ask how old my spinning wheel is (“it’s an Ashford Traveller, not antique”) and exactly what was wrong with my yarn (“This is a novelty yarn, it’s supposed to look like this.”) She raised her eyebrow at me disapprovingly, (which was what made her a killjoy) “But I like your other yarns, if I want that I could buy it in town.” (meaning Salem, not downtown Stayton.)

Okay, I guess because Madame Sweatshirt Killjoy has spoken this will be the end of my novelty yarns because I can only spin yarns she likes. Let’s not forget that Madame Sweatshirt Killjoy has never purchased yarn from me, or that I’ve never seen her before and will probably never see her again– I have through my errant spinning and indiscreet color selection provoked her disapproval and I shall seek until my dying day to gain her grace and acceptance.

Or, more likely, I’ll forget about Madame Sweatshirt Killjoy and move on with my life as best I can.