No pictures, no promises


I AM vertical even though I'd prefer to be horizontal. Not much knitting going on these days but I did make it to Starbucks last night for a large, Skinny Mocha with my techie buddy Steve. Steve's usually ALWAYS ready for a trip to Starbucks unless he's only just come home & still has a full cup in his hand. He & my other Tech buddy Kelly are flashing their new Starbucks Aps to make me feel old & dumb. Well, phooey to both of you - I just LOVE my new Starbucks Chinese New Year CARD which is very difficult to photograph! Is it me or my camera?? Probably me. I keep getting the shakes or the fuzzies . . .

So, even though I feel like hell, I've been working my brains out at the office with the pooches. The pooches' Owners have been sick too - She's been flat on her tush for the last 3 out of 4 days & actually got dressed yesterday while He's slowly been getting worse & now has the cough. They're leaving this morning for the Caribbean for a 10 day cruise - I'll bet they spend most of it sleeping in a deck chair!! Meanwhile, I've been there every day banging on the keyboard, sending out paperwork, doing payroll at the last minute & trying my best to function. While they're gone, I'll be in charge of cuddling!! And bank deposits. Hallelujah!

Everybody is spinning &/or knitting with quivet these days. It seems to have become the fibre of the minute!! I haven't played with quivet yet but it seems to be very much like camel down which was available but quite expensive waaaaaaay back there when Romney Wools was in Vancouver. I loved Romney Wools. They had bins of local fleeces, fleeces from New Zealand, silk bricks from China, silk cocoons, nylon & raimie rovings, mysterious little bags of curls, red, blue & yellow wool rovings for blending, raw materials for dyeing like chrome, tin, iron etc which are considered toxic today!! I bought a lot of tussah silk & raime rovings & still have a bin full of the toxic 'natural' dye stuff I need to get rid of. One of the things they stocked was camel down. Still had the dandruff in it too! You had to separate the coarse hairs from it yourself & blend it with wool to get a very soft, yummy yarn. It was just too expensive to use on its own. Once I remember a down/silk/wool blend available in roving form - I still have a sample in my knit book!! A tiny 2" sample!! I bought enough to try but it was gone when I returned & they were never able to get any more in. I always wanted more so when quivit hit the market, I wanted some of that too. But the price, well, I decided I'd have to live without it.

Now my new husband - we're talking 20+ years ago here - & I went visiting my parents who hauled us off to the Okanagan Game Farm just down the road. We took huge bags of veggies - mom cleaned out the fridge & the excess in the garden too - because we were allowed to feed the animals but didn't want to pay for the little bits the dispensers gave out. The big male Giraffe sure knew a grocery bag when he saw one, the pig. He actually laid his head on my shoulder so his lips were closer to the bag & tried to muscle out the female & baby!! He loved the wrinkled celery!! And potatoes too. Now the Game Farm had several Musk Oxen & they were shedding huge slabs of hair. They looked really strange with them hanging on their sides & spent a lot of time rubbing against the posts in the centre of the compound. Now I, being a spinner, was interested in all the fur/feathers/hair dropped by all the animals in the pens but was not allowed in . So, when a muskox drifted over to see what we had in the bag, I offered goodies with one hand while tugging on his fur with the other. Oooops. Wrong thing to do. He charged the fence. We got out of there quickly. And the new husband & old parents wouldn't let me near another animal except the Giraffe. Damn.