Ice Cream & Cold Water Days

BJ Fluff

It's been lovely since my new-to-me fridge arrived. I'd forgotten how nice ice water could be. Although I haven't found my expensive Tupperware ice cube trays yet, I have that big jug of water in the fridge. Vancouver still has the best tasting city water fresh from the tap!! Mix that up with Magnum Ice Cream bars &  you have Heat Wave Heaven. I've not enjoyed either one in a very long time. My little fridge just didn't have the room for luxuries.

The new fridge came with door shelves wide enough to put 4 litre jugs of milk in them!! And 6 bins for fruits, veggies, meats, cheese & other things. I'm spoiled for choice!! People talk about living off the grid but I'm not ready to give up running water, a big fridge & electricity just yet.

Since I never did go back to spinning for the Tour de Fleece after my rather disastrous beginning, I have managed to knit every day on my blanket. Except for the day I decided to wind off all the yarn I spun up LAST year on the Suzie Pro. Her extra bobbins were all FULL. And I filled all four bobbins last year with NEON Pink & Green for the Steven West Shawl that caught my eye. But, I never wound it off. I got involved with other projects & ended up just looking at it for a year. Time just goes so fast these days! So, I finally wound it all off in one evening. And ended up giving myself a wrist strain from using the niddy-noddy for so long!!

Suzie & I don't really like each other even though I've tried to love her. I suppose it was a bad match from the beginning even though I fell in love at first sight. I worked very hard at getting along with her snippy little attitudes & fast ways, to no avail. She doesn't like my under-twisted singles yarn & I don't like her galloping, tightly placed treadles. She's

too heavy to haul anywhere comfortably with my arthritic hands, scratches easily for all she's supposed to be hardwood & isn't comfortable to spin on since I wrecked my knee - the treadles are too close. And I've never liked her small bobbins!! I thought we could work it all out with some time but  .  .  .  .  She's just too modern for me, so I'm selling her on to a new home. I still love my Old Indian, the best. He's the one I always took traveling even though he has a couple of scratches, a chip out of his orifice, water stained feet & glue inside one big bobbin - my fault - he still spins silk thread to bulky yarn comfortably without complaining.

Blue Jeans

I love my handspun yarn in skeins. I often hang up the ones that I really love as ART, like Blue Jeans, a mixed fluff skein that appalled me when I first opened the bag it came in. Some of the fibre looked like dirty dryer fluff!! But I spun it up anyway & loved the result so much I ordered another bag!!!  It's soooooo soft & scrunchy I don't even want to use it for anything. I just want to pet it. What a change spinning made to that awful bag of stuff.

Lazy Days

It's been a while since I had anything to say on this blog. It seems I've become a dull person. My 86 year old client - I've done his small business bookkeeping for 30 years now - called me this morning to tell me he just survived his latest birthday & the physical to keep his driving license. His doctor said he doesn't need to come back for 5 years since he's in such good shape. Ralph still leads an interesting life & works bidding BIG construction jobs. He WALKS the entire site, estimates board feet of standing timber(trees) & general costs to dig, haul & clear. And he still rents out two ROCK Trucks to Really Big Projects. Any time my old crapper cars die, Ralph finds me a better one.

I've been inundated with paperwork. I think I'm being punished for being so lazy for several years before I 'retired'. If I could've had half the work I've been doing since I 'retired', I'd have been much happier. But better late than never, I suppose.

The latest car socks are finally finished. They sat in the car for so long, I never thought they would get finished but I snuck out a couple of times, found a shady spot at the Starbucks closest to home & knit while snarking back a super BIG Passion Tea Lemonade.Tall, Icy & Pink. My favorite. I'm thinking I should knit some short scrappy summer socks for a change since I've got lots of winter socks in the bin.

I have been working away at the Tote Bag Blanket when it's not too warm to have it in my lap!! I'd like to have it finished by September but it's really hard to sit sweating under a pile of wool in a heat wave. Maybe it's the one I should take with me to Starbucks when I knit in the shade!!!

I decided to knit for the Tour de Fleece this year instead of spinning after getting a rough start. I spun for the first couple of days & was doing rather well - even if I do say so myself.  While communing with my machine, the thread broke & buried itself - somewhere.
I tried tape - tape should catch the end when you run it over the bobbin. Nope.
I tried fingernails - run fingernails lightly over bobbin & an end should pop up. Nope.
I rubbed, I picked, I pulled, I cut. In the end, I broke/pulled/cut half of what I spun off the bobbin without finding an end. Until I made about 50 of them, that is. I cut it all off & went back to knitting.  Sorry, no picture was taken of the destruction.
I suppose this is equivalent to crashing my bike, falling off & breaking a leg while pulling away from START.