Guess what? We had snow again Sunday and yet more today. Just after a nice warm stretch and as usual just when we all start thinking about gardening again. :) I had managed to side step the urge to garden, thinking that it wasn't time yet and that Winter was just not over yet. However I am wishing it would warm up just enough for more frequent motorcycle rides. I am missing that.

I have been filling my time with some spinning and knitting. I'm still knitting the same thing, but have finished off some yarn. Yesterday I was able to get the purple/black/gray thingy skein done. I'm still not sure I like it but I am sure I'll keep it. It intrigues me too much to get rid of it. In normal daylight it's got this purply black color, but every time I try to photograph it the pictures show a washed out gray/green. Wierd. It's super soft, supersquisy and I'll do something with it.

This is unknown fiber, and the dyeing was done way back when I was trying to get purple. Or was it black? Who now knows? lol I suspect I was going for black and was using the Wiltons dyes at the time. What I do know is that it's approximately 352 yards, 3.75 oz. and 14WPI. I was most excited that I remembered to dig out my WPI tool and use it. I know! Impressive, huh?

The pictures are dark as I had adjusted the camera down to a point where it would take a picture showing that there is acutally a pinky purple part in there and not washed out gray. I know, it's not the most stunning. (You can click on it for a more close up look if ya want though. It's better looking close up.)

I'm still working on the grey Jacob but should be done with the singles tonight. I've already plied up two skeins and this last bit should make three. (Love the jumbo flyer for plying!!!) I also dug out the mostly white Jacob last night as it occured to me that I was close to completing the fiber in my spinning basket. So next up with be the mostly white Jacob and a dull rusty pumpkin color. I know...sounds so exciting. ;) I forsee another day spent behind the carder making up goodies to spin.

Pretty soon I'll be doing some dyeing of the Corriedale top I bought and would love tips from others who have dyed top before. I have visions of it dyed and braided. lol I should have bought it dyed, me thinks. ;)

Well, waiting for Blogger to load my pictures due to my crappy slow dial up connection has made me grumpy, so I'm off to spin and regain some happy.

Bloggers not playing nicely........spell check isn't working......I give up. I hope the typ-o's aren't too bad.

A Little of This...

"I didn't do it. It was the cat. Honest."

I have a few things to post up here in a random fashion just to tidy up the loose ends and be nearly caught up for reals. I do have another (probably multi-part) post on our Christmas pressy to each other but it will wait until this ones' done.

First off I want to snivel in full whiny fashion that I can't just upload a stinking picture. Every post I've done lately with pictures has required me to go through extra steps* and really, I'm blog time impaired as it is. I don't need the extra steps. It's silly stupid hassles like this that keeps me away sometimes as I just don't have the patience or time and it's one of the reasons I still have the "other" phantom blog. I'll have to spend some of my extra (snort) time over there playing around and I will have to seriously think about moving permanently. I know, I know I keep threatening to move, but never do. I hate change. So I'll snivel a bit more.

Onwards! Up first is the first (left hand) red/black/grey glove. I'm happy with the fit and wish I had more of the yarn already completed so I could cast on the second glove. It looks a bit funky in the pictures and makes my fingers look overly long me thinks, but that's due to the nature of the finger construction. If you recall, I knit them with long fingers and open tips so that they would keep my fingers warm, but allow for grip inducing pull back.

Here they are with their tips pulled back to allow for grippage. Grippage. Heheheh. Sorry, just amusing myself. As I knit these up, I notated any changes I made as I was customizing them for a better fit. Overall these are larger and super comfy, if not as soft as the last pair. I'll have to clear the fiber off the wheel asap and get some more of this colorway blended and spun so I can complete the right hand.

Next up is Maria's purple skein. (Sorry for the blurry pic.) This one is a three ply and nice and squishy. It measures in at 158 yards and is a nice plump round yarn. Ya gotta love Navajo ply for making a nice round yarn! I've already started the Vermilion skein and hope to have them finished this weekend. As always, I'll post when I'm done. Or whenever.:)

Now I give you a picture of my back yard. It's only snowed a small amount in the last few days, but the rains come down and you'd think it would wash away the snow faster than it does. This is what we had in the back yard as of this afternoon.
And this is why I'll be sharing the truck with the hubster for another day or two. At least. Still lots of snow surrounding the car and with all the rainfall it's smooshy and slushy and icky and all those little girl words depicting icky.
Did you want proof that he loves this stuff? He really wanted to wrestle but when he realized I meant business he decided to settle for a belly rub. He's such a sucker for a belly rub.

*What extra steps, you ask? Well I have to first put some words in the body of the post. Then I have to hit save now. Then I have to return to the list of posts and click on edit post. Once that opens I can usually upload pictures to the post. Its not a whole lot of steps and if I were on DSL or satellite internet connection it probably wouldn't bother me as much. However, I am on dial up and each page refresh is a chance for carnage. ;) And yes, I'm reporting it to the powers that be at Blogger.

Me and Roo

Tucker Roo that is.

Here is a rare occurrence in blog land. Pictures of me on the blog. I wanted to share this short story and the pictures with you but couldn't do it justice without keeping a few of me in there too. I hate to have my picture taken and am usually quick to delete them. However, these are of the Tucker boy too, and I just couldn't get rid of them. So sorry, you're stuck looking at me too. :) Focus on the dog and you'll get through it. ;)

Before we started shoveling snow I was trying to get Don to walk out in the front yard and see exactly how deep it was in the areas Tucker hadn't packed it down. Don was having none of that so I had to go out there and show him. Tucker hadn't been playing in these areas because it was so deep. He thought it was a great time to play and I figured with the snow that deep it wouldn't do much harm. It's rare when I get out and wrestle with him as he is so large and so powerful. "Mama is for cuddling, Daddy's for wrestling." That's what I tell him. We had so much fun though that I couldn't stop laughing!

And it begins.

He's always been mouthy.
That's a power slam headed my way.

It's like wrestling an elephant.

Making snow angels? Naw, getting kisses after I pinned him. lol
Trying to stand up after rubbing snow on his belly.

"Truce?" Naw, Lets play more!

I'm holding onto his fangs and trying to distract him so I can walk to the driveway.

It was lots of fun playing with him in the snow but I'm glad I don't have to do it all the time. This weather is his kind of weather and he's always "on" right now. It's either full bore play, or sleepy time. He sure is a lot (and I mean A LOT) of fun in this stuff!

Tucker and Snow

The 19th of December marked Tuckers 2nd birthday. I know! It's hard for me to believe that he's two already. That really went fast. At his last weigh in he was 156.8 lbs, but that was before the cold weather (some single digit nights which are rare for us) prompted hot oatmeal in the morning and at night. It's something he really likes and has gotten quite attached to. I don't think it'll be fun to break him of it. ;) Anyway, it appears he's put on a few pounds since then, but he wears it well. For his birthday, I brought home a T-Rex stuffed toy that I had originally put aside at work for his Christmas pressy. It's about 18" tall and super tough. (I got him another toy for Christmas.) Monday while I was home cleaning out my craft closet (the power was out) I looked out the window to see him playing with it. I was able to snap these pics through the window before he realized what I was doing.

It pretty much says it all.

Evidently he liked his pressy! He's carried it around the yard and we keep bringing it back up to the house at night but it's none the worse for wear. That's a tough toy!

Well, that's far too many pictures for one post, so I'll wrap it up and start another. ;) It's feast or famine around here with now being FEAST time! The next one might take a bit as I have to steal pictures off Don's computer and Photoshop them first. ;) Bear with. I've a goal to get caught up tonight!

Finding the Blog Button

It's been another gap in time since I've posted. At times lots has been going on, and at other times it's been blissfully serene and quiet. I'll admit to enjoying both and only really feeling guilty about not updating this during the serene times. Of course, during those times, I'm crafting away and can justify the blog silence by thinking, "I'm creating blog posts for the future." As I've used this excuse all year, and have never really gotten everything posted, I'll have to think of another excuse for next year. ;)

Awhile ago (and no, I can't really tell you exactly how long ago) it snowed. This caused the personal life to go into a bit of a holding pattern as the work life for both of us ramped up into high gear and we were really busy. Hubby works in the automotive parts field and I work in a farm/garden/hardware type store. A little snow around here doesn't change much but more than a little causes a frenzy of panic shopping like you wouldn't believe. All of it's for the good, and I truly believe that most people were doing what they should and could to prepare for the worst. It's not normal for our area of Western Washington to get deluged with snow for weeks on end this early in the season. That's more like January weather for us, if we get it at all. Well this time we got a whopper of a snow system in, and while I truly enjoyed it, it caused a mess for a lot of people I know. When this type of weather comes in, Don has to park the motorcycle and fire up Tuckers truck. When the snowfall is as deep as we had, my Saturn gets left in the driveway and we share the truck. Some days he takes me to work on his way in and then picks me up and other days I take him in on my way. (We work in opposite directions of each other, but ya do what ya gotta do. Even if it means sitting at work after the day is done and waiting on your ride.) I'm just thankful that we were always able to get out and get to work. My neighbor has been home from work for two weeks as of today and gets no pay if she doesn't go into work. Sucky!) So much of our personal life during the snow storms were spent getting each other to work, taking care of the animals, shoveling snow off of roofs that were potential danger points and just getting through. I still own up to loving the snowfall and thinking it beautiful. For the first week we also contended with the power going out pretty much every day, but thankfully that subsided (for now) and we're pretty prepared for that eventuality. For us, being on a well system, if the power goes out we also loose water. Thankfully we had some water stored and we were able to work through that hurdle without too many difficulties. It all went well. The only true hiccup with this storm system for us was that it messed up my plans for getting Christmas gifts and cards out. Thankfully my friends and family know I'm erratic at best with special day gifts and cards and not only do they understand (or pretend to) but they're pretty used to it. ;)

With the roads being so crappy even after the snow stopped falling, Christmas Eve with Mom was canceled, to be rescheduled when the hills to her house were safer, and Christmas with Don's parents was canceled to be rescheduled when the threat of getting stuck on their road passes. So Christmas Eve was a quiet affair with us at home. Me bathing dogs and cleaning carpets and doing basic household chores and Don taking a nap. ;) ( To be fair, he'd put in some grueling hours the week previous and I didn't begrudge him. I clean the carpets all the time so it's not a huge chore...just a must with the old dog living here.) We were invited to the neighbors for Christmas dinner and after a morning of knitting for me and another nap for Don we headed over. We all had a great time and agreed we needed to get together more often.

I am trying to upload pictures of the snow at this point but Blogger is having none of it. Just keeps saving my draft and not bringing up the "add a picture box." Hmmm.....do I still have my Wordpress account? I think at this point I'll save this and try to reopen it to add pictures.

Whaddya know! It worked. Ok, so here's some pictures from two weeks ago. ;)

This first one is of the icicle that formed in the downspout on my garden shed. The water normally drops from the down spout and hits a plastic planter with rocks in it below. (One day I hope to have water barrels at the bottom of this for watering in the garden area.) The icicles that formed on both the front and back of the shed are the largest we've ever had.

I took this picture during a break from shoveling snow. Don was cleaning off the deck covers and I was digging out a pathway around the gates and to the garbage cans. (Glamorous, I know. It was quite the workout though and I'm glad we did it as you'll find out why later.) I took a few pictures of the branches covered with snow before I started shaking the snow off all the trees. Last spring we lost a few branches off this tree due to a late snow. It's a good thing we did this work that Sunday as we got about another 8 inches that night.

This is the roof line of the front shed. This shed houses my motorcycle on one side, Dons on another, as well as housing a whole bunch of crap that needs to be gone through and disposed of. It's a summer project that I dream of completing but never get to. Something to do with the weather being too good to work in and much better for riding. VBG! I thought it was cool that you could see how much snow was building up on the lower roof line, and the icicles forming from the top roof line.

This one is of THE Pooch running at us in the snow. That blob of snow on the left is my car. There is a fair bit of snow on the ground and he's loving it!

OK that's it for this post. I've got a picture heavy post of Tucker in the snow planned for the next one, so it's time to wrap this one up. :) Read on.

Blah, Blah, Blah!

So Wednesday April 2 dawned beautiful and sunny. Look at that sky! With a lawn to clean up, flower beds to straighten out, pruning to be done; not to mention a veggie garden to get in, you'd think I spent all day outside working. Right? Until you see this.

Yep. I still had snow. Due to the lovely freeze on Monday night, my snow hung around for the better part of a week. I think the last of it disappeared this last weekend. Due to the rains. It's rained pretty much the whole last week. ;)

At least the weather doesn't mess with Tucker's plans.

I spent the day playing around with fiber and doing some chores. The cabin fever thing is starting to set in, but not as bad as it should be. I'm pretty content playing with sticks and strings and spinning up fiber. :) Probably because I know that I'll be toiling away in the yard soon enough.

On another note. I haven't been riding my motorcycle much due to the weather. Oh, and the fact that the hubster is still working on it some. He rides it pretty much any day that there's not ice and snow and keeps working the kinks out of it. It's becoming a household joke that he's really just looking for reasons to keep it to himself.;) Not that he doesn't have his own. lol I know that soon he'll work all the kinks out, and the weather will improve so it'll be more enjoyable for me to ride too.

Really?

Evidently I've gotten over feeling guilty if I don't post regularly to the blog. ;) It's been weeks since I have and I've got a lot to catch up on. There's been "stuff" going on and I've been somewhat busy, but the main reason for the bloglessness started with a general feeling of "meh" whenever I'd think about posting. I don't like to post in that frame of mind cause my snarky grumpy side shows too much and then I'd feel I should delete the post. So why bother? Pair that up with my general inclination to hibernate in my own "happy place" every once in awhile and you get a state of no blog posting. Doesn't mean I haven't been checking in on all your blogs and keeping them read up. Does mean I haven't been commenting though. I did miss sending out some important birthday cards/gifts the middle of last month though, so I'll be fixing that up soon.

So let me take you back a couple of weeks to the last week of March. The end of March is the end of our fiscal year at work, meaning our annual inventory. This year it was decided that the auditors would be in our store on Sunday the 30th, so we all worked a bit late on Saturday the 29th to insure our part of the counting process was done. That left the boss and I with the auditors on Sunday. All of it went exceptionally well and we were out of there faster than we expected. Yeah! The only down side was that on Friday the 28th we woke up to this.

And I don't mean the cute pooch on the deck....look past that. See the white stuff?!!! What the???!!!! I figured it would melt off by noon and we went to work. This is what it looked like when we left on Saturday.

Yep. Very pretty. Tucker loved it. Not only did it not go away during the day, but we had more fall that night. Sunday morning dawned, we got up and decided to head into town for breakfast before I went to work for inventory. While it's not normal to have snow like this at this time of year, it is normal for us to have snow and for it not to be snowing just down the road. We were surprised that it was still snowing in town and kept piling up the whole time we ate. By the time we were done eating, hubby decided he'd just go into work with me and play on the computer in the office while we were working with the auditors.

When we got home, we were greeted by this.

Yep, he wanted to play. I managed to get out of the way and take some pics of the two of them.

Monday it snowed some more and then, joy of joys, froze solid. Yep. Dandy. And here I thought I was going to be able to maybe mow the lawn and toss down some fertilizer. HA!

Today's Snow

"Whatcha doin?" We snapped this out the front window. Tucker was watching the neighbors try to maneuver their cars in their driveway. They were doing the "We gotta work and hope we can get out" shuffle with two Honda's. One did fine...one not so much. My own car hasn't moved an inch since we got home Christmas night. ;)

Heavy pic post. Sorry about that. I have another post in the works that actually involves crafting.

Hey now...pick yourself up off the floor. Pour yourself a glass of wine and take a nice steadying sip. OK, I know that was a shock for you, but really, are you all right? lol I really do still craft you know! I've got proof somewhere. Wait till I tell you about the Jaywalker sock. You will NOT believe your eyes!

Today it's been snowing pretty much non-stop. I expected snow overnight, but the winds were suppose to come in today. So far it's not been very windy, but the snow....oh yeah, it's HERE. I enjoy seeing it and don't mind it too much as long as I don't have some place I HAVE to be. i.e. work. Being on vacation, if I have to go somewhere I can usually convince DH to go along and he's got 4 wheel drive. The smart type. (The type with a driver that knows how to really use it. ;)) Anyway, it's been snowing all day and the pooch (AKA Tucker) got a bit bored with his multi-million dollar toy collection and decided to get into something he's not really suppose to. Plywood. So the hubster announced he was going out to "kill the dog". This is (almost) always said with a grin as it usually translates into a huge wrestling/playing session between himself and Tucker. DH seems to really understand that although the pooch is approximately 135 lbs, he's still a one year old puppy and needs some play outlet. Me? I'm a wuss. Having the Large One hurtle himself at me in wrestling mode is not my favorite activity and to be quite frank with you, I'm a fearin' for my crafting limbs when he wants to play that way. So it's a no go for me and I stay out of that. So that left me on the camera side of things. I just have to say that hubsters camera is awesome and took great pictures out the window!

So I give you...

"The Many Faces Of Play."

Tucker Style

"Look! I can hold my ears up!"
"You threw it. You go get it"

"Come and get it!"

"Come on....Throw it!"

When they were all done I noticed that he snow was weighing down the roses on the fence so much that the wire was bending down too low. I figured I'd better go knock some snow off the trees and the climbers on the fence so that they didn't pull down the fence. While I was in the back shaking tree limbs on a large cedar Don got these pics.

"My mom is back there and I can't get to her!"

"Maker her come play with me. Please Paw?