M is for Mine

When I was a very little girl "THE" Christmas present was The Little Red Spinning Wheel and I really wanted one. It was the only thing I asked for that year. And my father, being the best father, searched and searched and searched, and there it was under the tree on Christmas morning. I was so excited. We put it all together and I thought I could spin straw into gold. And then I realized it made icord, it was a spool knitter and I couldn't spin. I did make miles and miles of icord though.






Ever since then it's been in the back of my mind that someday I would get a real spinning wheel. I've looked at them everywhere we go and even Mr. Truck knows a lot about spinning wheels now. So when I, just by chance, came across a wheel on ebay that was from the town that Reese lives in and was in my price range I was so tempted. I called Mr. Truck and he said buy it so I put in my bid and watched and waited and I won. And it's mine.





Ashford Traditional, almost new, spins really well. I can't spin. But I can learn because it's mine. Finally.

L is for Llama

On Sunday I went to a fiber festival at Woodsedge Wools Farm. I met up with Pam(mackenzieknits55 on Ravlery) and we saw this baby llama. It's only one day old.



And it's mama.




There is an amazing barn on the property and there was lots of fiber to see and touch.



There were alpacas, which are just so cute.






And bunnies. One person was spinning right from the bunny.





Of course there were spinning wheels. This is the kind I always see in my mind when I think of spinning wheels.







I knit on size 50 needles, really strange, but fast.




And I got to weave on a loom. It was much easier than I thought.



I bought some beautiful yarn and some honey soap and Pam fed me lunch, thanks Pam the sandwich was great! I really enjoyed it. And then we went out to dinner for Father's Day. The sun finally came out, too, which made it almost a perfect weekend. Oh and I almost forgot, Reese and I found out we have matching sneakers.

K is for KIP

Did you KIP on WWKIP day? My plan was to go to the boardwalk at Rehoboth Beach, Delaware where there were knitters planning to be in the pavilions.



But after walking up and down the boardwalk, I couldn't find them and it was hot! So I went back to Allison's shop where I knew there would be someone knitting on her front porch. And there was.


Of course Allison was there knitting a sock.



But I also met Michelle who was on vacation with her husband. He was fishing and Michelle was working on a sock.




Dorothy also had a sock going out of beautiful hand-dyed yarn. Her DIL Kate does this at Dragonfly Fibers . It was just gorgeous and so soft.



Then Nicki showed up, she was test driving some needles.



With Nicki was her daughter Tammy who had the most beautiful lace weight yarn.




But the best was Tammy's son Robert who was crocheting a blanket and an amigurumi.



Afterwards, Mr. Truck and I relaxed with some of these.





I was working on a sock but it wouldn't cooperate so I made a baby bonnet instead.

Shhh, it's a secret!

A couple of weekends ago, BDE and I met for lunch and a trip to an LYS I hadn't been to before. I was looking for sock yarn for a KAL that's starting soon. And I found some beautiful Malabrigo in a green called Lettuce. I can't stop petting it.





BDE, who is afraid of wool, actually had a good time walking around picking yarn up and looking at it. She really liked some of the sock yarn, so being a good mother, I offered to make her a pair of socks. What she really wanted was another pair of pedicure socks instead so we checked out all the yarn. She decided that the Regia Silk Color was really soft and not itchy at all. And I totally lied and told her that was because it's silk. You see, she's not allergic to wool, she just thinks it's itchy and if she doesn't know it's wool then it won't be itchy. So don't tell her.



Pedicure socks are quick and fun and don't take much yarn at all. I don't use a pattern I just start late and end early on my plain vanilla sock pattern.

I is for Insulation

Our house is really old and there's no insulation in the walls (although we did put a lot in the attic) and we have balloon construction and the price of heating oil is unpredictable at best. So last summer, Mr. Truck decided we were going to insulate our walls. After much internet research, he decided on this blown in insulation. It's made of recycled paper fiber with some sort of fire retardant in it. I totally approved of his choice.



But then he took me to Lowe's and showed me this blowing machine. Apparently, he thought we could do this ourselves. He'd be up in the attic and I'd be running the machine. It would all work out just fine. Now he knows I'm really afraid of machines. I can run the snowblower because I have to but it always scares me and I stay away from all the other power tools. And, as I reminded him, I'm little and old and not very strong. And did he not remember when we carried the stove down to the cellar and it got stuck half way and we spent a long time yelling at each other because I couldn't pick up a stove? So finally he agreed that maybe that was not the best idea and did more research on the internet. It turns out that there are people who come and do this for you. And they're very nice. They promised us that they could do the whole job from outside, just move the vinyl siding a bit and blow the stuff in, we would never know. Then they got here. It turns out that the siding on the top of the house, which we picked because it kept the house looking original, would not cooperate. So the had to poke holes in the walls upstairs, about every 16 inches, and blow the insulation in from the inside. In every room. They did fill in the holes but it still looked like this when they left.




And that's why we're still painting. One room left. Now I'm not complaining too much, we probably were due to repaint anyway. And the insulation is wonderful. The house was much warmer this winter, no breezes at all and the best part is we used a little less than half the amount of heating oil this winter than we did last winter. And we're being green. Oh, and Mr. Truck admitted that we could not have done this ourselves, they blew in 75 bags with a big machine.

More Squares

I just got the Celtic Collection by Alice Starmore. And I'm probably not ever going to knit one of these sweaters. But I thought it would be fun to knit one of the cable designs for my afghan. There are some really amazing cables in this book.






So for my first one I picked the center panel of Cromarty and did one repeat of the chart. It really wasn't hard at all, although doing the whole sweater would be a bit daunting.





I also realized I had never posted my April square. It's the center of the Elegant Celtic Cabled Rug by Donna Druchunas which is also something I'd never make.





This project is one I'm really enjoying because I can knit bits of things I really like but I'm not committing a lot of time to a sweater. It's like going to the buffet, I can have a taste of a lot of things. I'm thinking of doing another one next year, maybe fairisle.