Paging Dawn F.!

Hello, Dawn F. who chose AQUAMARINE for her crayon color ... you won the giveaway! Please get in touch with me so I can send you your prize!


In other news ... I've been knitting myself some sweatbands. With sock yarn. 

I have a large head, and none of the commercially-available headwraps/bands fit me ... so I did what any enterprising knitter would do. Made some for myself!

Mostly garter stitch ... but the one on the right is seed stitch. They stay on, soak up the moisture, and are much more comfortable than the sweat rolling into my eyes! I wear them when I run...I might make some from cotton to see if they are more absorbent. I don't want to get breakouts on my forehead.



Aside from knitting headbands and gardening ... that's about it!

The overflowing herb garden ... survived last winter, and has been severely pruned twice!

And this years' vegetable garden. I'm trying to be a bit more conservative than I normally am, and I only planted 7 things in this little space. Three tomatoes, cucumber, basil, and parsley. That's six .... oh, and eggplant. It was originally going to be two tomato, but I found a tomato sprout in the front, where I haven't grown tomatoes for two years, and I'm insanely curious as to what it could be. Supersweet 100? Yellow heirloom? Juliet? Margarita? Jellybean? I can't wait to see what it is! I hope it's not Juliet or Margarita, because I'm already growing those!

I have to be honest. I'm probably going to try to squeeze some sort of squash in here, too. 



Thanks for stopping by ... don't forget to visit Wonder Why Alpaca Farm, Andrea's, for Fiber Arts Friday!

And the Winner is ....

Aquamarine Dawn!

Four stitch markers and 2 ounces of blended fiber will be on the way to you ... as soon as you tell me where to send it! Message me in Ravelry (SpinsterBeth) with your address, unless you can magically find my email link somewhere on this blog (honestly, I am so stumped...and I can't load your google+ page for some reason!)

Congratulations, and I hope you enjoy spinning it!

Happy Fiber Arts Friday, all ... be sure to check in with the fabulous Andrea  and see what everyone is up to!

Hey, Maybe I Should Have a Giveaway...

A Cat in a Box! Who doesn't want one of those?! Just say MEOW in the comments, and she's all yours! Add a few purrrrs, and you can have the cat doing the photo-bombing in the upper right hand corner.


Just kidding. Molly Cat not available. But since I am so lucky to be living close to the West Friendship Fairgrounds, site of the fabulous yearly Sheep and Wool Festival, I thought I'd share some of my happiness.

2 ounces of alpaca/wool/angelina, by Little Barn, inc.

(Clematis not included)

Also, four handmade stitch markers.















The recipient will be decided next Friday in a random drawing by a stranger I will accost on the street and ask to pull a piece of paper out of a jar. To enter this drawing, leave a comment in which you name your favorite color of Crayola Crayon ...and write it in all caps with an exclamation point: CERULEAN! for example. That way I won't inadvertently draw the name of a non-spinner for the giveaway. So, get out that crayon box and choose a crayon!


Here's what I've been working on:

Spinning the merino I bought at Sheep and Wool.



Er, let me try this without Edgar Cat in the picture.

SIGH.














THERE. I'm going to do a 2-ply of each color.

These are my favorite Zebisis spindles. I adore them. They are just the right weight for just about everything. 

















Anyway ... here's what else I've been doing. Harvesting a ridiculous amount of chamomile. Everything in my herb garden survived the winter. So now it's barely into May, and I have enough herbs to last a few years. I've snipped off the flowers and I'm going to dry them for tea. I love chamomile tea ... so relaxing! It's like a sedative.








So that was my week! I have another 5.3k tomorrow (Friday) ... this one is sponsored by my workplace, and electronic devices are not allowed where I work, so there will be no pictures to share.

****update from work: I ran the 3.3 miles in 40:58. About a 12:24 pace. Now I'm ready to come home and drink wine and relax!****

I won't be blogging that one, but my friend has just written part two of her 1/2 Marathon adventure from this past St. Patrick's Day Rock-n-Roll 1/2 Marathon. So if you're interested, stop by and take a look!

Happy Fiber Arts Friday, all! Don't forget to stop by Andrea's!

Another Awesome Sheep and Wool Festival!

I'm going to post the images without too much commentary ... it was a lovely warm day, and the rain held off till I was all the way home.

Below is Misty Mountain Farms, my favorite vendor. Last year, I paid their mortgage.

Above are some lovely trindles!  Below, a Christmas ornament.

 

In retrospect, I should have purchased this lovely pink-and-green-and-white Zauberball. It reminded me of roses.

 A peg loom

   

A friendly blue-eyed alpaca and some less-thrilled friends ...

This little one was hopping around like mad ... then she suddenly lay down and rested.

This is an extreme close up of a sheep's nose. A very curious sheep. 

 

 

My haul ... very restrained! Three bags of roving, some mawatas, a nostepinne, a skein of mixed wool/acrylic/mohair/somethingelse. Last year I over-indulged to a ridiculous degree ... I still have unspun roving from last year, not to mention yarn! So I kept it simple this year. I wanted another spindle, but the only ones that caught my eye cost $100. There were also spindle-lazy kates, but those were well over $100, and I can get by with cardboard tubes. No matter how nicer a real wood spindle kate would be ...



Now I am determined to get through some of my stash, well before next year's Sheep and Wool. If you're going to the fair tomorrow, have a good time!

Finally, a Finished Object

All done! And gifted. It's gone!

The baby it will cover is not due until the very end of November ... but I have a small house, so I figured, hey, let them store it for 7 months! This is their third baby, and they don't know yet what flavor they're getting.

I warned the baby daddy, very apologetically, that it was hand-wash only ... he said, "That's okay, babies hardly ever spit up!"  Heh.




I also finished the Zauberball socks, but didn't take a picture. I figured there were enough pictures of them in progress. I'm working a little on the Angry Eye Scarf from a couple of posts ago, and girding myself for the most fabulous, most wonderful time of the year ... the Sheep and Wool Festival! Now a mere 40 hours away! I've got my picnic lunch all planned out, and I hope to restrain myself to purchasing sundries and pattern books and not any more yarn, and hopefully no roving. I have made almost no progress on the stuff I bought last year, because I buy yarn and fiber with no plan in mind. Then when I want to make something, I find that I have absolutely nothing to wear/spin, so off I go to buy more.

And if you're wondering how I did in last Sunday's race, you can check it out here. I had a wonderful time, and I am so glad I went ... and I'm even happier that I didn't know about that hill before I was chugging up it. That hill was a major --

Happy face!

Don't forget to stop by the Wonder Why farm for Fiber Arts Friday!