skittermagoo!

A large sigh of relief . . .

Sheesh, am I ever glad that I drink my coffee without sugar or cream . . .

Lemme 'splain:

Yesterday morning I was up early (darn cat!) and reading blogs and drinking coffee while I let Hub sleep in a bit . . . and (you can see where this is going) spilled the better part of a full cup of joe right on top of my laptop.

!!!

Luckily I acted pretty quickly . . . shut down the computer (which didn't even flinch when I spilled) and turned it over and shook as much liquid out as possible. Then I propped it up on its side, tilted so that hopefully any remaining coffee might drain out of the corner. I also used a paper towel to try and wick out as much as I could from the keyboard. Tried not to panic. And I waited. And waited.

Four hours later, I tried to start up. I got the "I'm starting" noise (good!), but no monitor (baaaad).

!!!

Tried not to panic, turned it off, and put it back on its side. Waited some more.

This morning? Turned it on and it started right up! All the keys work just fine, and other than a slight coffee aroma, there seems to be no problem with the little guy.

Macs ROCK!

No more coffee + laptop for me, thankyouverymuch.

Lots going on . . .

. . . here in skittermagooland!

Since we last talked, I went ahead with my gut instinct, and ordered a Lendrum double-treadle spinning wheel! I didn't have the chance to try one (after MSWF, that is), so it was kind of a leap of faith, but hey, sometimes that's just how I roll. Plus I had a lot of people commenting here that it's a really good wheel.

Okay, that sounds like it was oh, so easy and effortless . . . but I had to call around to no less than seven or eight different vendors to find one that had a Lendrum DT in stock! Two places I called had a six-month waiting list (!), and one was all, "Oh, um. I think we're supposed to get some in next week". (yeah, right). One even just said "nope" and hung up on me! Being an instant-gratification kind of girl about some things, I didn't want to wait six months. So, I finally found a place that had ONE left. Of course I snapped it up!

And . . . just less than a full week later, a big box showed up on my doorstep, containing this:

and some very sketchy photocopy-of-a-photocopy assembly instructions.

About 3 minutes later, I had this:

A spinning wheel!! Nevermind that I had absolutely no clue how to use it . . . of course, being the tinkering mad scientist I am, I managed to get it going . . .

so far so good

It started out pretty good, considering that I forgot for a minute that I actually had two pedals to use (I was stomping away with just my right foot, which worked remarkably well, considering!). I also sort of forgot that I could actually stop pedaling if I wanted to (or in this case, needed to!)

I proceeded to spin a bunch of semi-bulky laceweight DK worsted . . .

It's pretty lumpy and inconsistent, but it's yarn! I made yarn!!

After I did that, I realized that the roving I was using was actually intended for needle felting. Ummmm. I wonder if that made a difference in how it spun up.

Tonight I had a chance to try again, and got out the giant hunk of brown romney roving that I bought about a week ago especially for learning purposes . . . I sat down and promptly forgot how to get started.

The second effort? Much more even (though still pretty iffy). This picture is kind of bad, but hopefully you can see that it's kind of at least sort of the same thickness:

something clicked!

I gotta say, this spinning thing is FUN! I had been spinning on a drop spindle, and never really got the hang of it at all . . . and then at MSWF, a vendor lady told me I should get really good at a spindle before I even try on a wheel. To that I say "PHOOEY!". The wheel thing makes so much more sense and feels a lot more natural. I can't wait to learn how to ply! I have a feeling that I'm going to run through the big brown hunk of romney really fast, and might soon be trying to spin dryer lint and cat hair. Or maybe I'll have to buy some more roving or top or sliver or whatever online. Any suggestions?

OH! And I almost forgot about the garden! (That's actually a phrase I've been uttering a lot lately -- it's starting to get hot here, so I'm not nearly as eager to get outside and play in the dirt as I was a month or two ago).

The first tomato on the vine is FINALLY ripening! It seemed to take for-freakin'-EVER.

Tomato, I can't wait to sink my choppers into youuuuuu!

Also, there is a tiny baby jalapeno on one of our container plants!

And our compost bin is composting, but I won't show you a picture of that. It's brown and leafy and has coffee grounds and vegetable guts in it. Use your imagination.

OH! And I have been knitting and did some kool-aid dying (dyeing?) over the weekend, but you'll have to wait for next time for pictures of those. (yep, I tease you).

How's this for timing?

Okay, so recently I went to this itty bitty fiber thing in Maryland, right? (sidenote, I will get pictures of the haul and stuff up here eventually, I promise!) Okay, so at this itty bitty fiber thing, I bought yarn and yarn only, no roving or fleece or sliver or any of that spinnerly stuff (though I did buy a turkish drop spindle). Mainly this was because, though I've been planning for ages to buy a spinning wheel, I knew it wouldn't be in the budget for a while, so there was no point in buying fiber for spinning, right?

Well.

Yeah.

This is where the timing thing comes into play.

So this past weekend Hub asked me what kind of spinning wheel I had planned on buyuing, and how much it was and such . . . and then told me that we'd had a bit of a windfall and I could order a wheel this week.

!!!

Just for the record, I've been drooling over the Lendrum Folding wheel for over a year now . . . this one is the favorite because it has the widest range of ratios available (I have a very vague idea of what that means), and seems like the most versatile. Plus, it folds down for travel and I like the way it looks.

So, unless someone around here can give me a really good reason why not to buy the Lendrum (as well as what kind of wheel is preferable and why), I will be ordering one! Today! Also, if you have a Lendrum and you want to tell me why you love it and why you chose it over all the other contenders, that's cool too.

Also, I have to arrange for someone to teach me how to use one of these things . . .

Baaaa!

Just got back from Maryland, where the weather is cool and the sheep (and bunnies and alpaca and llamas and goats) are plentiful this time of year!

NanC and Good Girl Purl and I managed to make it to Maryland this year, and I was going to say something about it beforehand, but I'm superstitious and didn't want to jinx things in case we didn't make the flights (we flew standby) or something. I didn't really believe we were going to be there until we actually arrived.

In any case, we went, we're back, and I have pictures (though not as many as I'd hoped to take) and I met lots of other knitbloggers (again, not as many as I'd anticipated because I'm lame and shy in crowds, apparently), and I can't wait to write a real post about it! Alas, I'm back at work this morning, and I actually had trouble finding my desk when I got here, so it'll have to wait a bit.

Now I have to go remember what it is that I do for a paycheck around here, and try and get the sound of bleating sheep out of my brain!

New and Improved! Now with bigger pictures!

Skittermagoo has been upgraded! For a while now I've been toying with the idea of upgrading to a newer version of Movable Type, but never got around to it. Then, a couple weeks ago it was time to renew my blog hosting, and I'd just been hit with yet another bout of icky blog sp*m, so I had the always fabulous Becky upgrade it for me at the same time. (by the way, if you're thinking of starting a blog, she's got lots of great hosting packages and support and stuff -- check it out!)

Word on the street is apparently that I have been neglecting my knitting in favor of playing in the garden, but I gotta tell you, it's just not true! I've been knitting, I swear!

Here's a bit of proof . . . I got inspired by Ann and Kay's new book, and cranked this out:

I "designed" it on the fly, and when I was done, the only thing I could think is, "If Mondrian and Andy Warhol had a love child who loved to wash dishes . . . "

I've also been working on some socks, but the pair for me has been boring, the pair for Aubyn is a secret, and the ones for Pamela have been ripped out and restarted several times (woe to the knitter who does not swatch). So no pictures there.

But I DO have a photo from way back in the archives before I was born that has to do with knitting . . .

Okay, so here's how it goes . . . my mom had this box of old slides, see. And Matty agreed to use his neato-keeno slide scanner to scan them and put them on a disk. So I'm going through and looking at all the cool snaps from the 50s and 60s, and came across this.

It's my grandmother, sitting in her garden wearing a goofy hat and knitting.

So. The knitting thing, the gardening thing, and the goofy hat thing? Seems to be maybe genetic or something.

And to distract you further from the lack of actual knitting content on this supposedly knitting blog, here's a photo of one of my verbena plants. These dudes seem to totally thrive on being in the hot sun and neglected, so yeah, okay!

Next time, more exciting news, and maybe a picture of a cat. Uh-huh!