Thursday, February 12, 2009

fiber, toes and cats

Well I have finished my first skein. I still have a lot of the roving to spin, but my first spindle got too full for me to spin any more. I Andean plied it. I think I may use it to knit a hot water bottle cozy.


Before I get to the ugly pictures, I was out walking around the house and saw these crocuses. They are about a week and a half old now, but it has been really nice outside lately, and I couldn't resist the picture.


So earlier this week I tried to step over a chair and struck my toe in it. I got a nasty bruise, but my wife and I don't think I broke it, it was still rather sore for that day. The first picture is what it looked like a few hours after I hit it, and the second picture is what it looked like the next day.


We have five cats, so I figured I would introduce some of them. First is Dewi. She is the smallest of our cats, weighing in at only twelve pounds.


Next is Hammie. He is the youngest of our fur-kids and quite often hyper.


Pala is our fat kitty. She loves to sleep and cuddle, and is happiest when she can do both at the same time.


Matahari is the last one in this round. He is about seventeen pounds and loves to lay on my lap, or at night, on my chest.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

knitting, spinning, work and fish

My knitting has been progressing.  I have finished the red band that was in my last post, as well as the white band and I'm starting on a black band.  As I get further along  will take another picture.  I am about halfway through the broken rib scarf.  I have started another scarf, a 3x3 rib, that will be a Christmas present for a another extended family member.

I was putting away some of my Christmas presents and found a book on spinning yarn that my wife gave me.  This got me to want to try my hand at spinning again.  I have taken a few classes in the past, so I grabbed one of my spindals and some roving that I bought many years back.  I'm still having some issues with a consistant thickness, but it should be some interesting yarn when I'm done.  I have no idea what I'm going to do with the yarn, but practice isn't a bad thing.

I got my first freelance project done.  I was having trouble maing sure that I was working on the project effectively, so I started moving the office from the spare bedroom upstairs to the living room downstairs.  One of my first projects in this move was to shift the aquarium.  This is a 55 gallon tank that my wife bought for me many years ago.  I had it running for a while, and i ended up letting the fish die.  It was in a room that we hardly used, and as you can see it started to get some nasty hard warter stains.  I'm going to need a bit of time to get the aquarium cleaned before I can refill it.


Monday, January 26, 2009

silly and odd songs

I was listening the the Cast On podcast today and she played a song that I liked called "Code Monkey" by Jonathan Coulton.  I find this musician very funny, but admittedly I have a rather twisted sense of humor.  Some of his other songs that I like are "Re: Your Brains", "Ikea", "Mandelbrot Set", "Bacteria" and "That Spells DNA".

Sunday, January 25, 2009

knitting updates

I have gotten a bit done on the baby blanket for which I was commissioned.  It is turning out rather nicely I think.  It currently measures about 10.5 inches across, and the request was for it to be about 48 inches square.

The other project that I'm working on is a scarf for a friend of the family.  It is the first present that I'm knitting for Christmas.  


It is an early start, but I have a few small, easy travel knitting projects for Christmas presents, so I'm using them as filler knitting, when I have only short periods of time to knit.

Friday, January 16, 2009

cold weather and hot drinks

It has gotten cold down here in Atlanta.  For the last two days we haven't gotten out of the mid 30's (F).  Thats has made me think of hot drinks that I enjoy.  I'm currently sitting with a nice hot cup of cocoa, but I just finished making some Spiced Tang Tea mix.  I didn't quite follow this recipie, as I looked at the spice rack and added in some allspice and cardimon.

As I sip my plain hot cocoa, I'm wondering what I can add to spice it up.  I know I could add some flavored booze, or some cinnamon, or nutmeg.  I have to go looking and see what I can find for suggestions.

a small change

For those of you have who read this blog in the past, you may notice that I have added in ads to the right.  I'm not sure how I feel about them yet, so I'm going to play with it for a while and see what happens.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

baby hat pics

As promised the commissioned baby hat.