The Glenfield Academy

As usual, life has interrupted my blogging plans.  I imagine these clever entries.  I intend to keep all my loved ones "in the loop", and then life dares to challenge me for time!  Aarrrgh!  Well I have the answer.  I am going to travel through time.  Let’s see what time has to give in response!  I’ve already downloaded the photos.  I’ve transferred them to Photobucket, and I’m ready to go.  Let’s begin!

Our launch pad for the beginning of our time travel is at a book signing by the author, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, lovingly known as The Yarn Harlot.  I highly recommend a visit to this lady’s site, whether or not you are a knitter.  She is a very talented and funny writer, who knows how to strike a chord with women.  And especially with knitters.  She makes me laugh, and I love her for that.  She was a diminutive lady with a lovely Canadian voice, and she was very kind to give us all so much of her time and her wit.  I enjoyed the experience with several other knitting friends, and managed to capture a few photos in the process.

Here I am, with friends on either side.  Yes, we all brought our knitting!

So, okay, Trish was blinking, but here’s another photo of some lovely ladies!  Alas, two of my newly formed Florida friends were unable to be there.  Chris was sick (feel better soon, lady!), and Ruthie was working (bummer!)

Before that visit with The Yarn Harlot, my dear hubby and I got to take a lovely trip out to Scottsdale, Arizona all by ourselves!  This was our first official "vacation" without kids.  Keep in mind, our oldest is 11 1/2.  11 1/2!!!!  Yikes!  Now that’s way too long!  While there, I was able to visit some lovely yarn stores, knit, and even hike Camelback!  I managed to capture a few photos along the way…

This is a photo of Camelback taken from our hotel balcony.

Here’s Brett and his associate Scott, as we were at the trailhead preparing to hike up Camelback.  It was probably close to 100 degrees out, but I couldn’t tell, as there was no humidity!  Oh joy!  It was a huge change for me from Florida.

Here’s a view of some of the cacti that we got to hike by.  It was absolutely stunning!

Here’s a cliff face we hiked right by.  At one point, the hike was steep enough, that hand rails were supplied.  We greatly appreciated these, as we did not come prepared with the proper climbing equipment, but rather were doing this just in our regular athletic shoes.

Here’s one of the many breathtaking views we got to enjoy on the climb.  Most of the way up we did a fair amount of bouldering.  I was glad to stop and rest occasionally!  At one point, we met Claude the Water Guy coming down off the mountain.  He gave us some good climbing advice and offered us some of his water.  He told us he’d done this climb over 5,000 times, but that he knew some people who’d actually climbed it over 30,000 times!

One mile!  We’re almost at the top!

At the top!  It took us about 2 1/2 hours to climb and a little over an hour to descend.  I slowed the guys down a fair amount, but they took it in good stride!

Oh, here’s one more image of that cliff face.  It was near the bottom of the climb.

And moving on….

Here’s a photo of my completed Shalom Cardigan.  This was a fun knit, and went very quickly.  This is the project I worked on while in AZ.

And here’s a close-up…

Now, switching states… back in September, I had the pleasure of returning to Ohio to visit some friends and attend the Wool Gathering in Yellow Springs.  I had a great time.  I had come just after Hurricane Ike paid a visit, and my friend Sue and her family was still without power! 

Only in Dayton is it possible to look up in the sky and see a Wright Bros. airplane (the Wright Flyer) and not be surprised.  I saw this guy when I was on my way to pick up my girlfriend Melissa from her 10K race.  Go Melissa!

And here’s my incredible racer, with enough energy to go with me to the Wool Gathering!  It was so much more enjoyable with her there to share it with!

Five day old lambs.  Cute!  I wanted to take one home with me!

Now here I am at Tim and Sue’s.  This may be what you see,

…but this is what we saw!  Yep.  She was still without power!  It made for a very relaxing evening, visiting on the porch and dinner out at a restaurant!

Okay, moving even further back in time!!!  Here is my darling daughter…

Those of you who know her, know that this photo captures her personality pretty well.  It was right about the time this photo was taken that we learned that she is indeed dyslexic.  This was a bitter pill for both of us to swallow, but it also supplied so many answers we had been praying for.  While her road will not be an easy one, I am convinced that God has wonderful plans in store for her, and she will prevail.  And yes, I believe she will even learn to read.  We are working dilligently on a specialized program for her, and we are seeing slow (but steady) progress.

OK, I’m really not schizophrenic, but I wanted to show you guys a photo of these fellows…

This is the sort of traffic we experience out here in the wilds of Florida!  We have a pond in our back yard, and across the street is another pond, so it is very common for us to see these fellows traveling through our yard and heading over to the other waters.

Of course, the kids wanted to help them on their way…

And now onto something more current…

Here are a few photos of projects I’m working on (or have just completed)…

This is my current favorite… a cross-stitch scarf.  I love the colorways!

Here’s an Airy Scarf that has been packaged up and sent off to someone I love very much!

And yup, here’s another dishcloth.  These are fun little knits that take next to no time.  It’s been a couple of years since I’d done one, so I cast on for another.  This one will likely become a gift as well.

And now you guys are pretty much caught up.  I’ll try to keep up better with this, but life is so much fun living forward than looking backward, that I have a tough time keeping up with everything!  God bless you all!

All right, I was tagged bylalaith

The Rules:
Link to the person who tagged you.
Post the rules on your blog.
Write six random things about yourself.
Tag six people at the end of your post.
Let each person know he or she has been tagged.
Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Now, I’m pretty certain I don’t know six people to tag, but I’ll do my best to fulfill the requirements…

1.  I tend to be an insomniac.  I have a healthy fear of medication, though, so I muddle through life as best I can with no more than an occasional Advil PM.  It creates lots of time for other things though, like tagging people!

2.  My wedding anniversary is coming up in April.  It will be 16 wonderful years with my man.  We honeymooned on a cruise to the Bahamas, and my dear husband was sick with a sinus infection the entire time!  Still, we made the best of it, and had a great time.  The marriage, I’m very happy to say, has been a blessing, and absolutely wonderful!  I’m very thankful for my husband.

3.  I have a B.A. from the University of Kansas in English Lit.  That being said, I have always enjoyed math and science, but was afraid I wouldn’t be able to perform well enough in any of those majors.  Thus, the English degree.  I have no regrets, but some day, I could see myself going back to school to "collect" degrees.

4.  I really enjoy reading fantasy novels.  I just finished Brisingr by Christopher Paolini, and had such a great time enjoying it!  One of my all time favorite fantasy books is by Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon.  Of course, my absolute favorite fiction novel is Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

5.  I dislike flying in airplanes.  Even though I am a rational person, who knows that flying is a very safe mode of transportation, I tend to get very nervous way up high in the sky.  I much prefer terra firma!

6.  I am now teaching some basic classes on spinning.  Yesterday was my first class, on basic spindling, and I had a great time sharing a love of my craft with some new students.  Next month, I’ll be teaching a basic wheel class.

I guess that’s it.  I’ll see who I can tag now… How about Rohanknitter?  I can’t think of any others right now that haven’t already answered this tag!

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I have been working on a knitted lace shawl since the end of June, and I can finally say it’s done!  I am pleased with my first official lace shawl, and it’s given me the confidence to do even more in the future.

This is a photo of it, blocking on our pull out sofa bed.  It’s based on the principle of Pi, the ratio between the circumference of a circle to its radius.  If I remember my geometry right, it’s expressed as a fraction as 22/7, or in a decimial as 3.14 …(ad infinitum).  At any rate, it certainly makes a lovely shawl!

After all that math and lace, I switched to something much smaller in scale, and ever so much faster… the Shalom Cardigan.  Here it is in progress (note, it’s barely in progress!)

Lastly, I’ve been having fun dyeing yarn, so I decided to go ahead and dye some fiber and spin it up to see what I’d get.  I dyed using my left over Easter Egg dye, and I’m thrilled with the results…

It looks like candy to me, and so sweet, you could practically eat it!  I’ll definitely be doing more dyeing and spinning in the future.  It’s like big kid play time!

Well, for being in our new home state of Florida for such a short amount of time, we have discovered the excitement of tropical storms.  Or tropical storm Fay, to be exact.  For all my family and friends, I thought I’d share a few photos of what Fay looks like from our home.  Thankfully, it didn’t enter our area as a hurricane, but my, it was still plenty to deal with!

This photo was taken yesterday (Thursday, Aug. 21) in the afternoon.  Fay is just starting to get going…

Ok, this is pretty much the same photo, but what can I say… I was getting rained on!

This photo is taken from the rear of our home.  The rain was making the pond raise at approximately 1 inch per hour.  I took this photo this morning.

And here we are with a slightly different angle.

Fay seems to be slowing down somewhat right now.  It is still pounding down rain, but there are intermittent bursts where it isn’t bad, and sometimes it isn’t even raining at all.  During one of those breaks, I drove to the local Winn-Dixie and got some food and a movie for tonight.  I noticed several large trees down and water everywhere, but all in all, it wasn’t too bad.  We are very happy to have a solid roof over our heads for sure…

I’ve been wanting to do this for ever so long, so at long last, when we had a week off from school, I decided to take the plunge.  I purchased some left over Easter egg dye after Easter for .10 a box, so I dragged those out, along with the rest of my supplies as listed below…

• Easter Egg dye
• Undyed yarn (or fiber)
• Condiment bottles
• Crock Pot dedicated to fiber only
• plenty of newspaper
• vinegar and vinegar spray bottle
• candy thermometer
• pH paper and color check
• plastic mixing spoon

The first step on the path to dyed yarn was to soak the yarn thoroughly…

I let this yarn soak for a little over an hour in a tepid water bath.

While the yarn was soaking, I got the dyes ready…

I usually dye eggs with Paas, but this is what was offered for .10 at Wal-Mart, so this is what I got…

I mixed the dyes according to the directions on the box (2 tablets per bottle) in the condiment bottles.  This box had five different colors.

After I mixed the dyes, I mixed up the vinegar water.  I used about 1 gallon of water to I’m guessing approximately 4 teaspoons of vinegar to get to a pH of 4 (slightly acidic).

After I got the yarn put in the crock pot, I gently poured the vinegar water over it, and then turned the pot onto high.  I needed to wait quite a while for it to get up to 190 degrees, but at last we got there…

The temp was still climbing here!

Once everything got heated up, I took the squeeze bottles, and carefully applied the dye, started with the lighter colors, and progressing to the darker colors.  Once the dye was taken up into the fiber, I turned the pot off to cool overnight.  The water turned clear when the dye was all absorbed.

The next day…

I rinsed the dyed yarn by banking it so that the water kind of damed up on one side and slowly ran over the dyed yarn.  I kept pressing to remove any residual dye, and then added a couple of drops of Dawn, and continued to press it until the water ran clear.  Then I squeezed the yarn, and hung it up to dry…

like this!!!

I’ll update the blog once it’s all dry, and I’ve started knitting with it.  This yarn will eventually turn into socks.  All in all, I had a great time working with it, and I look forward to doing a better job the next time around.