Baby, It's Cold Outside!

Brrrrr.  but yet, I still sleep with the window at night.  Do you?  I just love snuggling under the comforter, being toasty warm, and breathing fresh air! BUT, I sure want to be warm during the day. I love spinning yarn on cold days.  The fiber feels sooooo soft, I just want to jump in it the way we do leaves after they have been carefully raked into a pile.  Better not...might felt it! 

I have been spinning my hand dyed fiber and the yarn is turning out to be sooo pretty.  It is in shades of burgundy, lavender and green.  When I finish it, I will see how many yards I have.  What will I do with it?  Well, lets count the ways....I can knit it into something (depends on yardage), I sell it (and buy more fibery stuff - poor John), I can embelish  my felting with strands of yarn....BUT, I do not knit and full (some call it felt, but it is really fulling), or I can hang it in the studio and admire it.  Hummmm, I need to think about this. 

This fall we took at long vacation (our first long trip in 10 years!).  Both John and I have fallen in love with traveling in our Winnebago 34' home on wheels.  So looking forward to our next trip.  When is that, you ask???  Well, that depends. 

At the present time - after removing walls in what was the "living room" and turning our home into a open, airy family centered home, cherry hardwood is being installed in all but the bedrooms and 2 baths of our house.  Then comes the new columns, all new paint and a kitchen update, and last, but not least.....remodel all bathrooms.  Do you think we will be able to head south this year?  Don't know, but hope so.  If we go, we plan to head to southern California to see daughter #2 then to Texas to spend a few weeks. 

If not, I have a new toy, an antique Legare 400 sock machine.  I knit socks using knitting needles, but gee, I started a pair 16 months ago and they are yet to be finished.  Now, with the sock machine, they tell me a pair takes me approximately an hour?  hummm, I wonder, it that a pair or one sock.  Heck! either way, it beats 16 months!  

Much of the yarn I hope to use is from my llamas.  Until 2 months ago I had a wonderful herd of the most loving animals...llamas and one token alpaca (to show I am open minded, ah hem...unlike some people).  John's health has made it necessary for the llamas to live at many wonderful new homes.  I miss them terribly.  I feel so sad when I look out to an empty pasture.  BUT on the bright side, we can now travel without worrying about them while we are gone,  without hiring someone to feed, water and look over them, without checking fences to be sure that they don't do their Houdini act, without wondering if I locked each gate. Again on the down side, they coyotes seem to coming to the bedroom window to sing.  That, I don't like. 

I'm putting together my show schedule for 2011.  I hope to do more art shows. In Louisville, the St James Court Art Show, the first full weekend in October is so much fun.  I plan to apply to the Broad Ripple Art Fair, Talbot Street Art Fair.  Both are in Indianapolis, so we can be around family more.  The other part of the schedule will be fiber festivals where I will teach at some and be a vendor at all.  We have developed some outstanding friendships at the fiber festival.  Each time we go, it's like seeing family again.

OK, enough time on the 'puter for now.  Thank you for reading my ramblings and do come back soon.  Bring a cuppa and we will chat.  Till then  Nan