Blessed

I am feeling very blessed. This will be short as it is late and I am tired. But wanted to at least touch base and let you know I am still here!

Last week I started my volunteer equestrian internship at Glade Ranch. It was an amazing amount of work but wow, I am learning so much. My body is very tired and my mind is taxed but it is wonderful.

The Sock Summit was incredible. I took pictures which I need to post and get a blog written. I know, I know. It may take some time. Just finished spinning up some lovely merino roving from Sweet Grass. I've never spun colored roving or merino roving so it was interesting. I have to say, I didn't enjoy it. It was very stressful trying to get the two bobbins to more or less match so that the 2 ply yarn wouldn't turn out spotty. I will ply tomorrow to see if I managed to do that. I am planning on making either socks or mittens with it. It's greens and blues fairly muted.

I am just about done with a pair of socks I am knitting from painted yarn - I am not sure what else to call it. As I knit it up, a pattern appears. It looks like sort of sloppy Fair Isle but is just one yarn. It is charming to knit up and a lot of fun.

Saturday, my husband and I got the dogs in the car and drove to Sonic of chili-cheese dogs with cherry limeades! Yum. Then went for a walk along the river. It was still too hot, but it was fun.

We worked today re-arranging our weirdly shaped living room. We aren't sure how we like the arrangement, but it's at least different. We moved stuff around and I got to vacuum under everything. It made me happy.

We also went out and bought a new bed. It's been a while and our old one needs to be retired. It gets delivered on Tuesday! Also got new "air pillows" which are very cool.

Tonight I made some fresh applesauce. Way yummy!

oof, yawning so big my jaw is cracking. Night all!

Jitters

There is so much going on in my life right now that I am .... what? I am many things.

I am thrilled that my dad will be turning 90 years old in March. The four kids are putting together a birthday party for him, currently I am spearheading it. And trying to delegate like mad. But have "catering snacks for 200" on my calendar for the end of March. I sure hope I can delegate the sorting pictures and inviting people to my sibs.

I am giddy with excitement about the upcoming Sock Summit 09. To be held in Portland, a gathering of insanely enthusiastic sock knitters at which I have booked a booth to sell our artwork and my herbal products. There are 1600 folks signed up for the 4000 class slots plus a whole lot of folks just coming in for the Marketplace. I'm traveling with 2 great friends and we're going to spend the week in Portland.

I am terrified and overwhelmed with the upcoming booth at Sock Summit 09. The event has been a long time in the future - "I'll think about this tomorrow" - for well, a long time. Now it's like days away. And while I have actually done a fair amount of thinking about it, not much is actually done. I've made some prototype shawl pins that have sold well at the local yarn shop but I'm not sure how many shawl pins several thousand very enthusiastic knitters will buy. This may open up a whole new market for us as we are thinking of other knitter things as well. But I've got to get stuff mailed off by the end of the week.

I am tired. It's been such a busy summer. There have been many large events in the studio entailing a lot of work cleaning and such. We've had a pretty busy summer in the studio with orders as well. We put in a giant garden which is truely lovely, I'll try to get some photos of it. But after nearly a decade of being hurt and unable to garden, it's been a physical challenge to keep up with it.

I am filled with joy at the upcoming equestrian internship. Three months of working with Rick and the horses is something I am so looking forward to doing. I am having to cut back on the many things I normally do to focus on this but I am determined to fufill this lifelong dream.

I am jazzed about a local studio tour that I am helping to organize in October. I think it will be great! We are talking about having our studio on the tour and inviting in a number of our friends to show their artwork. And I'd like to have some food vendors and live music. Make it a destination so folks can see a number of artists and have some good fun. But it's during the internship so this year it will have to be what we have time to organize. But I'm on the committee organizing the tour and there are lots of things to do. There seem to be good folks to work with. We've been wanting to get to know the art community in our town so this seems to be a pretty good way to do it.

I've got the mead comp local (in September) and the mead comp international (March 2010) to organize/plan/etc. First one, not too much to do, second one - a scary amount to do. And my carboys have been dark for months now. I got in some rasberry flower honey that is amazing. And it sits in the bucket for lack of time. I need to enter some of the mead comps around as well. We got terrific support last year from some of the other organizers and I really fell down this last year on supporting them back. It's such a small community, it's important to be supportive.

I've been spending so much time trying to figure out dates in 2010 that I keep forgetting that we are still in 2009. I have been cursing my calendar for only being 2009.

I have been spinning rather than knitting. I am too jittery to read a knitting pattern. The shorthand they use is so hard to read for me. I wish I could find a pattern writer who actually writes out the words. I think I'll go spin a bit now as a matter of fact. Writing this post has gotten me pretty wound up and jittery all over again.

Kyra

Here's a recent photo of my horse, Kyra. She's a Friesian/Shire mare who's 10 years old. I've had her since she was about 9 month old. She's an amazing joy.

I have to look at the photo of her because things have been too busy to get out to see her. We've been doing some traveling as well as working like crazy.

Every year I promise myself more life in our life. I remember seeing Buckminster Fuller speak in Vancouver BC at a Habitat for Humanity event in the 70's. He talked about many things but what sticks with me is the concept of making money at a job being called "earning a living" as though your job was the thing that gave you the right to continue to be alive. I wish my brain hadn't been banged up so much as I believe I used to remember more about it. Seeing him is on the Top 10 Coolest Things I've Ever Done.

Enjoying the relationship with Kyra is on there as well. Snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef in 1980. Marrying my husband.

All of these things are about the quality of life. There are times when this quality of life is strained.

This weekend a large number of SCA folk came out to the studio for a Natural Dye Workshop. We got some amazing colors! The event was taught by Bjo Trimble from Griffin Dye Works who is a really cool person. She and her husband John were behind the "Save StarTrek" campaign. She talked some about it this weekend and I soaked it up. I also got her to sign my Concordance. She was impressed that the wheel was still there on the front cover. It's got some use damage, but even when it was new I took really good care of it. It's been boxed up for years along with 4 other boxes of ST stuff. I should think about culling it down to a few pieces that I can have out to enjoy rather than 4 boxes in the basement.

The event was Saturday and Sunday. I am so tired. This was the weekend following our annual camping event in southern WY and largest event our local SCA group hosts. Some years it's been so scary dry up that fires have been forbidden. This year it rained everyday and usually a rather large portion of every day. While it is always wonderful to hang out with our SCA family of choice who are amazing and wonderful people, the weather was draining. I am not good with storms and that is what we had a lot of.

We came home with everything we owned wet and muddy. The studio was full laundry and crazy making. The tent hung out on the porch to dry and to let the sun bleach out the mildew it got from being wet all weekend. I guess the wet is better than the fear of fire so there you have it.

I wanted to get up into the mountains and hang out today. To get up to the tundra and see the alpine wildflowers as this has been such a wet year. Instead I have been able to move from couch to fridge and back again. But this is one of the joys of working for ourselves - we can take a day off from when we have worked ourselves into the ground on the weekend.

The next thing to bubble up is another group we are hosting in a couple of weeks. Then Sock Summit in Portland. Then hopefully putting up produce from the every burgeoning garden!

In September I am doing an intensive equestrian training internship for 3 months. That will consume me fully as it's 6 days a week.

I'm not quite sure how everything is going to get done, but this is something I've wanted to do for a long time and now is the time. None of us are getting any younger.

Not very profound tonight. I sort of have exhausted "flea brain" hopping from thing to thing as it slides into my brain.

Hope you all are having a great summer!

June thoughts

whew.

We got back from LV safely. It is a lovely drive through the mountains. Last time we drove home from this show it snowed a lot on us and the drive took hours longer than it should have. But not this time.

The studio has been at about 150% of capacity since we got back. Which is wonderful and we are blessed. But we are tired. We even hired back our intern on on hourly basis to try and get caught up. It really bugs me to send out orders even a few days late. It makes me feel like a flaky artist.

But we are late again this week. But we really busted our hump this week and are less behind than last week.

Along with this, the gardening still is going on. We are harvesting lettuce, turnip greens, Italian dandelion greens, arugula, peas, kohlrabi, broccoli raab, and herbs from the garden! We had a mess of turnip greens with a bit of kale and a garbanzo/parsley/arugula salad tonight along with grilled brats. It is such a pleasure to eat from the garden.

The tomatoes are suffering from the cool wet spring we've had. But I've never had such good lettuce in all my life. The tree has leafed out so the lettuce gets shade most all afternoon. And the hill slant away from the sun. I think this helps keep the lettuce cooler which keeps it from being triggered to bolt to seed.

The peas have been superb. I don't cook peas. I snack on them in the garden. I plan my gardens so that there is a snack available from them when ever I visit. The new thing is pea shoots. The pea plant tips are tender and yummy. Almost as good as the actual peas. The broccoli raab is blooming but even the flowers are delicious. It's a great plant of the cabbage family to grow. Much easier than broccoli in this climate.

I should be starting farmers markets on the weekends. But we've been (blessedly) too busy in the studio. I've got a few more designs worked up for shawl pins. It's fun to mess about doing something that is *gasp* actually creative.

Thanks for asking - Kyra is doing well. She is such a beautiful spirited companion. And Henry has settled in quite well. He is a joy in my life. He's not yet much of an actual watch dog, but I do feel that he would defend me if need be. He was goofing around and jumped into my lap the other day and snuggled right in. A 60 pound dog in my lap but I was laughing too hard to do much about it!

We finally saw StarTrek. I enjoyed it. *spoiler alert*


I was disturbed by the variations in the mythos until I grokked that the timeline was buggered. I thought they might set things right as has been done and done and done. I like that the buggered timeline was left running. It gives them all sorts of leeway to do more shows.

I like the new actors. I think each had a sense of the importance of what they were doing without being pompous about it. I liked though that they were new kids with new quirks but with clear homages to the original characters.

I love that the hopeful StarTrek is once again a part of our collective consciousness.

whew. I am tired. 12 hour days in the studio plus a couple of hours a day in the garden plus various chores with critters/house/etc. I guess it keeps me out of the pool halls.

More of my work

At the nekkid party!

My stone necklaces

On the display. A few of these designs have been ordered. It seems like other people can sell my work better than I can!

What I do

Hello from Las Vegas. Weird town. I snapped a couple of pictures of our jewelry booth from the tradeshow where we are working. I call it "the naked party" booth. Our handmade recycled copper jewelery in modeled by the torsos and are selling well.

We went and actually visited the Strip. We viewed the Belliagio's water show and really enjoyed it. Walked around Paris and Bally casinos. Lost $.96 in the slot machines. It was actually a fun time to see LV as we went later afternoon and into early evening. People watching is always a fun time.

I keep forgetting the the caricatures of people that we see (old rich fat guy with doll, mobster, gambler, etc.) all the time on the television and see in actual flesh and blood here are really people and not live theatre. I giggle at them and point and then remember that I'm being rude.

oops. Can't take me anywhere.

I've gotten my second sock on the orange madder dyed alpaca past the turn of the heel, again. I finished it once already but it didn't actually fit. I was knitting much tighter on the second sock so it didn't actually fit. So I tore it out.

Someday I hope to actually knit something once.

On the wonderful knitting news - M and A and I are going to Portland this August for a Sock Summit organized by the Yarn Harlot (see her blog link in the side bar). We are crazy excited!

I'll post up a couple more pictures including my work following. Then get back to work!