We have a pupster!

Last week we adopted a 2 year old Beagle from Great Dog Rescue New England.



All we know about her is that she was dropped off at a high kill shelter about a year ago with a brand new litter of puppies when her owners decided they didn't want to breed Beagles anymore. A wonderful woman rescued her and fostered her for a while, then she was sent up to MA to be fostered with a great couple in Shrewsbury, Elaina and Alan. Elaina keeps a blog about their rescue fosters here. She was named Cherry by the original rescuer because she had a cherry eye. A vet took care of that for her, and we have renamed her Beasley.



Ken and I have fallen head over heels in love with this little doggie. She is so sweet. She's pretty low energy, when she's inside she's snuggling up to one of us on the couch, or laying across the whole thing if we're up and about.




When we go for walks though, she likes to run ahead. When she gets going her back legs trip her up, so she ends up running with her front legs and actually skipping with her back legs. A-dorable.




She's shown a little bit of separation anxiety, so this morning before we left for work (the first day we've had her where we're both gone all day) we took her for a loooong walk, packed a kong full of yummy treats and hid it, gave her some calm pets before we left, filled up her food ball (sort of like a puzzle she has to figure out in order to get her food out- she scarfs it up without chewing otherwise!) and while she was occupied with that, we quietly snuck out. She didn't make a peep while we left, so we are really hoping we don't come home to a stressed out puppy and a lot of pee on our floors! Last week I left her alone for a little under 3 hours while I went to Yoga, and she did just fine, so I think she'll be okay.



I'm just surprised at how much I miss this little ball of beagle! I can't wait to get home to her!

My long lost friend Ariel has recently started blogging again, after she moved her sorry ass out to crappy northern California which is full of golden sunshine, flowers, cheese and wine and left me here in awesome Massachusetts-where-it-fucking-snows-in-fucking-October.

It occurred to me that I never blog anymore, and the reason why is because I hate taking pictures, getting them onto my laptop, uploading them to Flickr and putting them here. I think I'm going to stop feeling like I have to do that. I'm also going to stop feeling like I have to put out tremendously exciting or lengthy blog posts. So there.

I went to Rhinebeck this weekend, and stayed in a big, fat house with like 12 women who were all totally, incredibly awesome, and only 2 of whom I had ever met before. It was very... how you say... kick ass? In particular I met this one woman named Muffinista (can you BELIEVE her parents named her that?!?) with whom I did a lot of Rhinebeck shopping, and a lot of Rhinebeck laughing. She actually reminds me a LOT of above mentioned friend Ariel. The two are kind of each other's bizarro twins. And they don't even know it. It's weird. In particular, I got to know this other woman named Kate a little bit better, and discovered that she's also freaking awesome. In particular, I got to hang out a bit more with my ever-shepherding friend Susie, who always puts a smile on my face.

In addition, there were so many other incredible people there with whom I'm sad I didn't get to spend even more time.

I did NOT go overboard on the spending. I am incredibly proud of myself here. I simply bought a rug hooking kit (I'M A HOOKER! A DIRTY, DIRTY HOOKER!), a few bits of roving with which I'm going to make thrummed mittens for myself and my new husband, some needles for needle felting, and a new small tahkli spindle with 3oz of baby camel. Not bad, right? Oh, and a lot of cheese and maple cotton candy!

We spent the weekend eating, drinking wine, telling stories, being snarky, fondling gorgeous fiber and laughing our asses off. All in all, a damn good weekend.


In other news, I'm a wife. That was pretty damn kickass too. :) I won't go into that now except to say that our wedding was like a big community barn raising, and if I had it to do over again I wouldn't change a damn thing. I'll post about it later, but for now here are some pictures. And here is a slideshow. Music plays on that slideshow, so if you're at work turn your speakers down.


In further news, we think this weekend we will be getting a dog! :) We found a beautiful, sweet, loving little Beagle to rescue, and we want to rescue her. They've checked our references and tomorrow night they are coming to do a home visit (ACK! I NEED TO CLEAN!) and we are very, very excited about it! We've been wanting a dog for years and it's finally time.


One more thing. If you have any interest in quilting at all, get this book.

Wedding Papercut!

I finished a Scherenschnitte for my wedding! Initially I had an idea of what I wanted but I knew I could never do the drawing/designing part myself, so I asked this amazing artist who I follow, Cindy Ferguson, if I could commission her to design something for me. She responded a day or two after I sent her the email, and in that time I thought I might just take a stab at it just for the hell of it, and I just kind of dove in and ended up drawing out exactly what I wanted! So, although she was very gracious and offered to design something, I hunkered down, cut my own design out, and here it is:



Stupid blogger won't resize, it just cuts the image off, so this is a small view. To see it in real size it's here.

I haven't been doing any knitting at all except for The Wedding Shrug That May At The Very Last Minute Not Work Out At All, however I am ARMED with some Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm bulky in their awesome Kiwi and a Menemsha sweater pattern in Baby-Size for Heavy Kevvie's 1st birthday, which I will attack on our honeymoon.

I'm also planning a stop on my way to the train this afternoon to Windsor Button to pick up some Manos, perhaps, for a beautiful bulky shawl that's on the new Knitty which I COVET.

Clearly I've had my fill of laceweight yarn for the time being, lol.

I'm also dying to spin up some yummy stuff for a cowl/hood on Knitty.

As for the wedding, I am so excited I think I might piddle. I'm also approaching BROKE, BROKE. This shit is expensive, and I'm becoming glad that we cut our wedding down to a smaller size than we originally wanted. It's insanely expensive, but I feel like we might recover. With our original plans, I would have just been feeling nauseous!

I seriously can't wait to be knitting on Prince Edward Island... It's one of the many thoughts of wonderful times ahead of me that are holding me through these last couple weeks of work! :)

pictures and some yuletide love

The dyed fiber and yarn (post black wash):






The sun wasn't shining directly on it, this one really is this bright



This is actually quite toned down after the black wash:



Meanwhile, Christmas came about 5 and a half months early this year, when my mom came over yesterday and decided she couldn't make me wait to give me these:



A brand new set of Valkyrie mini combs! I am thrilled, thrilled, thrilled. Mom did some dyeing of her own yesterday, you can see it here, and one of the many lots of fiber she dyed were some Romney locks, in this absolutely gorgeous combination of orange and coral. I just fell in love with the luster and color of it, she just up and gave them to me, so today I combed them up, spun and plied it and now I have 74 yards of this gorgeous yarn. Just need to find something to do with it.

My attempt at self-striping sock yarn turned out very well, I believe, (I won't know until I actually knit with it to see how good the striping is), however the colors are SO FREAKIN' NEON it's like being back in 6th grade and listening to the Micky Mouse Club group The Party and watching Back to the Beach.

So, this morning I mixed up a very watered down black and overdyed it. It's cooling now. I think it toned down the colors a bit. I'm just hoping it doesn't come out all muddy. Right now it's hot and wet (heh heh) and looking a little muddy, so we'll see.

This weekend I don't have much going on, I just dropped off my wedding dress at the seamstress to have it altered, so I'm nervous and hopeful about that.

Ken and I are pretty much planning on a whole lotta nothing this weekend, which sounds just about perfect to me. We might go out and look for some wedding clothes for him, otherwise, I just plan on doing a lot of knitting and spinning.

It's damn hot and humid, though. I want my next house to be on a small, swimmable lake. A lake on which no motorboats are allowed, only canoes, rowboats, kayaks, and where you can just swim across over and over for exercise. There isn't slime or too many weeds, and no bitey fish. A nice, clean sandy lake floor, and maybe an island where we can canoe out and have a campfire.

dye, bitch

Yesterday I had a fiberlicious day. I got an awesome dye kit from Hello Yarn and I dyed up 3 different lots of 4oz of combed mystery-wool top (which is something very similar to merino, we just don't know for sure) and a skein of Bare yarn from knitpicks.

I am not overly adept at color theory. I mean, I get the basics, but I don't have that natural talent that some people have, though I'm pretty psyched about some of the things I got. The first batch I definitely put too much dye into, so it got a little muddy, but after that things ended up pretty much how I wanted them to.

It's cooled overnight and when I get home I'll wash it and hang it to dry. I need to get a bunch of superwash sock yarn. All the stuff I dyed is not superwash, and I'm kind of over handwashing.

That could be the percocet talking. Again.

My mom-turned-obsessed-fiber-junkie bought a drum carder which she has loaned to me, which is great. I've always wanted one. However, now that I see how drum carders work (producing batts) it's becoming clear that what I really want are a set of combs. I want to be able to create combed, um, whatever they ares. Though, batts are wicked frickin' cool too, so I still want a drum carder (or just unlimited usage of hers. :)

I dyed some roving a year ago with food coloring, and it felted a bit in the processing of it, so I'm flicking it open with my new flicker brush that I got, and I'll card it up into batts. I can't WAIT. It's nice to get into processing fiber again. The wedding has kind of taken over my life.

the perks of perc

Starting on my 3rd pair of Monkeys. Don't know what it is, really, I usually hate knitting the same thing over and over again, but I just' love this pattern.

I'm using this special colorway of STR lightweight dyed specifically for a yarn shop called Tricoter in Seattle. I bought it when I was out there visiting my lovely cousin Jo. I WANT to knit these for her, but I may decide to be selfish and keep them for myself. :)

We'll see.

I had a dental implant put in yesterday. I'm in a bit of pain today, so I'm utilizing the Percocet. It's a good thing. :) I feel like my perc-high is probably coming through in my blogging right now. Which is a-okay.

Just sent the dude out for Rice Krispies and some marshmallows. We're going to the birthday party of his Best Man and I wanted to make these amazing cookies, but I just don't feel like going too deep into it, but RKTs are super easy, so I'm going to make those.

I pretty much just want to stay here, buzzing on the couch knitting and listening to old episodes of the Ricky Gervais radio show. Really kind of digging the ride. :)