I fully realize that what I’m about to say could totally change in the next few months so just bear with me and try not to laugh. I don’t really want to spin wool. My drive for getting the spinning wheel is that I really want to spin the fiber from my angora bunnies. Right now, that’s kind of it. I know, angora is slippery and hard to spin and I should learn to spin with wool first. Okay, I will. But I’ll still try the angora, since I have a free supply and can mess up all I want.

It’s heavenly. I can’t wait until I can spin it well.

On the chicken front: Our chicks are getting big! They are pretty much fully feathered now and I hardly recognized them after not seeing them for 8 days. This is what they looked like a few days before we went on vacation. They were 4 weeks old then. the still had puffs of downy feather around their necks and they were small!

Today they turned 6 weeks old and they got their first outside adventure to celebrate. They were very reluctant at first, what with frightening green grass and all, but eventually I dumped them out of their box and seemed to enjoy it. It was so cute to see them pecking at the grass and flapping their not-so-little wings.

We got these 3 little girls (hopefully! we are only 90% sure) at Livingscape Nursery. They had so many different kinds of chicks and the employee was super nice and helpful. If you’re in Portland, I totally recommend going there.

This is Buffy, a Buff Orpington. Yes, I do realize that her name is a little obvious. Mike started calling her that early on and I never meant for it to actually be her name. By the time we started thinking of “real” names we discovered that Buffy had stuck and nothing else really worked. This is what she’ll look like when she grows up.

This is Wynona, a Silver-laced Wyandotte. When Buffy had an obvious name, I decided that this little girl may as well too. So far she’s the spunkiest and I think she’ll be the boss as they get bigger. (I have a slight fear of birds with their sharp beaks and claws and their flappy wings. I’m being brave with these cute chickies but to be honest, I’m a little scared of Wynona. Yes, I know how wussie that sounds.)’ She’s going to be so pretty when she’s older!

Last but not least is little Oolong. A note about her name:’ I really like theme names and originally wanted our hens to have names that all related to each other. We tossed around pop stars, tv characters, Buffy the Vampire slayer characters (Mike’s favorite) among other ideas and then decided to name them after teas because it’s a little strange and there are lots of cool names to choose from. They were going to be Chamomile, Gen-Maicha and Oolong but that’s when we discovered that Buffy had to stay Buffy so it all fell apart. Oolong still worked though. She’s a nice little chick and may just be my favorite. She’s an Australorp, though there’s a slight chance she’s a Jersey Giant.

On a totally unrelated note, check out this cool moss! We have tons of moss growing on our patio and before we clean it all off, Mike and I are using some to make a moss terrarium. I love the different colors and textures. More pics when it’s done.

I realized recently that I hadn’t really introduced you to my newest little bunny! I showed you this picture but that was before she officially belonged to me.

Little Kona has settled in to her new home and Oliver has gotten used to having a neighbor. I still have to feed him 1st, though, or else he gets grumpy. She’s the prettiest little french angora ever. Look at how cool her fur is.

Sesame knows a lot of signs and seems to learn a new sign or word almost every day now! For the last few weeks she’s been doing a weird sign that Mike and I couldn’t figure out. Just today I realized that she’s been asking to go outside and see the bunnies! She’s been asking that about 5 times a day for the last few weeks. Poor girl. She was so excited today when I brought them inside to play.” She loves the bunnies so much but gets a little frustrated when they don’t come when she calls them. The picture below is Oliver, my fluffy English angora.

If you’re near Portland, you should come to Sellwood on Saturday and visit me at this craft fair. There’ll be food and all sorts of awesome handmade things! Stop by and say hi!

Have a great Thanksgiving everyone! Yes, a lot of things are not so great right now but there’s still A LOT to be thankful for.

My current project (that is staying far away fro the dog) is Bpt from Knitty. I’m using Cascade 220 Quatro in the Jamaica colorway. The color is so pretty in real life. This picture doesn’t quite capture it. It’s much more green but it’s cloudy and blustery outside so I can’t get good light for a true picture. I’m doing a turned hem instead of the applied I-cord and I’m undecided on the hood. I’ll decide when I get there. Here is proof that the girl is going to be a knitter! We went to an alpaca ranch last weekend and Sairshe loved them! With this kind of beginning, how can she not grow up loving fiber? That’s Snow White that she’s petting and you can see her cute little baby next to her.
P.S. I hope you like my new look! I decided that it was time for a fresh start and there’s nothing like some pretty flowers to get you through the cold, gray seasons.

Besides knitting, my project this last week has been painting my bathroom. My bathroom used to be terrible. Here’s the before:
It doesn’t look that bad until you see the walls up close.
It’s wallboard with wallpaper attached. (It’s popular in trailers and manufactured homes. Classy stuff.) It was super old and dirty and we couldn’t take the paper off because it’s fused to the wall so we had to use a nasty oil-based primer to cover it all up. Fumes filled the house for days. How I love inhaling chemicals. It was all worth it, though, because now my bathroom looks like this. The color is called spring rain and it reminds me of a robin’s egg. I love it! No more dirty, nasty walls! We even had this pretty print that matches perfectly.I haven’t been neglecting my ogee tunic. I started seaming it together the other night and it’s coming along slowly but surely. It’s still summer so I’m not in a big hurry to finish it. It’s not like I’ll get to wear it soon. It’s looking like it’ll fit nicely and I am excited to see it all finished!

My bread also won a blue ribbon! I love baking bread and last year I entered a recipe I had never made before. Bad idea. This year I entered my favorite recipe and it turned out great. It looks a little weird in the picture but remember people- at this point it has been sitting out in the open for almost 2 weeks. It looked beautiful the day I dropped it off. Other Oregon State Fair highlights included:

My friend Amber eating a fried snickers bar. Hey, someone had to do it and it wasn’t going to be me. After the funnel cake and giant sno cone, I couldn’t eat anything else.
(For the record, she liked it but doesn’t think she needs to eat one again. Mike feels the same way about the one he ate last year.)

I think these are the cutest tomatoes ever! I’m glad they won 1st place.
There was an entire display devoted to vegetables with faces. This was my favorite. Do you think it’s “supposed” to be a seal?This won the most unique vegetable award. I wish I had a vegetable that unique in my garden!This is a “cute vegetable.” I think that’s fair code for smallest vegetable. This bitty carrot lost to a teeny ear of corn.
Baby piglets (is that redundant?) are so cute!! They were sleepy. I wish I could have picked one up and squeezed it- not too hard, of course. This fluffy bunny won the award for “Best Wool.” It looks well deserved. The cutest bunny at the fair was a baby English Angora that won 3rd place and then came home with me! Yep, I bought a bunny from a 4-H’er and he’s really fluffy and cute. I don’t have a good picture yet but when I do, I’ll show him off.

I hope all of you had the chance to go to a fair this summer. If not, go next year! It’ll be tons of fun, I promise.

She’s a german angora and I have tons of her fur safely stored away that I’ve been wanting to spin. You can see my first attemps at spinning her fur here. I though I had lots of time to learn and lots of angora fiber to proctice with since she kept growing more. Now that I don’t have her anymore I don’t want to waste all her fur learning to spin it.

Is there anyone out there that can spin angora and would do that for me? For a price, of course. I just want some mittens with a Phoebe cuff or maybe a little mini-Phoebe to snuggle up with.

I try to make myself feel better by saying that I knit 2 mother’s day scarves and 2 silly apple cozies in the meantime, proving I can finish things. But there’s really no excuse. I’ve had plenty of time. The sunny weather has again turned rainy and grey so I couldn’t even wear it if it were done, I tell myself. Again, not a worthy excuse. I could have finished it before the weather turned bad again.

I’m afraid of screwing it up in the final moments. It’s knitted beautifully, the grommets are perfectly aligned but I’m afraid my sewing will mess it up. I need to get over this. Tonight, people, I will finish the stupidly named but very pretty Modern Bustier.

Ah but the finishing will not end there. I have finished knitting all the pieces of the corset pullover. Here is the 2nd sleeve. It will not sit in my basket for weeks. It doesn’t matter that I have other projects I want to work on or that I enjoy knitting more than finishing. I will finish this in a timely manner.

I must admit, though, that once I finished this sleeve, I started something else. I have a good reason. Really, I do. Mike and I took the MAX downtown on Thursday night and the thought of sitting on the train with nothing to knit was terrible so I knitted this: It is much more suited to Portland’s current weather than a summery cotton shirt. Sad but true. I finished it last night but I will not start the other until I finish seaming my other things.

We took MAX to the Rose Festival Waterfront Village. A fancy name for a carnival and we went because it was the 1st night so it was free. It was grey and rainy (no surprise) but still fun! We rode the ferris wheel. I hadn’t ridden one in years so it was really fun!This is the carnival as seen from the ferris wheel. It’s blurry because the ferris wheel was moving.

The carnival didn’t have tickets for the rides, they had a credit card thing that you add money to and gets scanned at every ride! Everything is getting so modern. I liked tickets better. One benefit (maybe) is that the ferris wheel lady forgot to scan our card so we got to go on another ride for free! We picked a spinning ride and this is Mike, mid-spin.
On a completely unrelated note, I greatly enjoy seeing other blogger’s lovely pictures of their cats. You probably are aware that I have a dog, but I like cats too and even have 2 of them. but they are greatly under-represented on my blog.

Because of this my letter K for the abc-along is for KITTIES! Before you get too excited, my pictures are boring because my cats are not nearly as interesting as yours seem to be. They sleep all the time. When not sleeping, they are outside far away from the camera.

This is Gatsby.I found him on Craigs List and after a rocky start he’s a happy member of our household. He was freaked out by the dog even though the dog didn’t bother him and then he ran away and we didn’t see him for almost 2 weeks and I felt really, really horrible for losing him. Then he appeared on our front steps and wanted to come back in. During his adventure he must have decided that the dog is better than whatever he encountered while he was gone. His favorite thing is to get petted. Mike says he’s pushy and needy while I just think he’s lovey and snuggly.

This is Ramona. The pest. She is the prettier of the 2 and she has extra toes on all her feet. I got her before Mike and I got married and while he did help pick her out, she lived with me. After we got married, Ramona decided Mike is a million times better than me. She’s a traitor. She lets Mike do whatever he wants to her but if I just walk by her the wrong way, she hisses and attacks me. Sometimes I think Mike loves her more than me. The only time Ramona ever wants to sit on my lap is when I’m knitting and I don’t want her on my lap. I’m convinced she does it just to spite me.

I don’t want to leave you with Grumpy Ramona so here is something more cheery. These pretty cotton prints were on sale the other day. Check back for some sewing projects in the future!

B is for . . .

B could also stand for broken computer. My laptop is broken so my posts have been a little sporadic lately. I’ve wanted to post more often but I just can’t.

C is for . . . Cables!! I have postponed my second red sock in order to knit Mike a scarf. I know I said I was done with gift knitting but he’s been wanting a scarf forever and after the fun I had knitting my backyard leaves scarf, I decided to do it for him. He picked out the yarn- Rowan felted tweed- because he had to have tweed even though it’s not the softest yarn ever. He also picked out the cable pattern. Sorry about the slightly blurry picture. I had a hard time getting the cables to show up with the lack of natural light to help the camera out. This is the best one I got. The color is a pretty chocolate brown with little flecks of white and light blue. So far he really likes it but I’m not going to finish it for a while because the olympics start tomorrow! Good luck everyone!