i just opened iphoto and realized that there is a bunch of stuff i never got around to posting. here is some of it:

jon and laurie came to visit. among other things, we threw a picnic (sadly, no pics), picked strawberries:

(i have a picture of laurie from many, many years ago picking strawberries, that i seem to remember looks just like this one. i should dig it out.)

went to the bookmill:

and rested:

a week or so later, we took a co-worker’s extra tickets to see james taylor off her hands. or, at least, we think we saw james taylor…from our seats it could very well have just been a big-screen broadcast of a recorded james taylor concert:

either way, we found out just how awesome it is to hang out at tanglewood.

***we will now take a moment for a doggie intermission***

***feel free to get some snacks before the next portion of the catching-up begins***

ok, what else does iphoto say we have done?

we visited with good friends, and their amazing twin girls, who were staying in a nearby town. (again, sadly, no pics.)

tom’s parents came for a visit. among other things, we took a boat ride on the Connecticut river:

and went to a bunch of flea markets. we came home with many goodies including, a salt grinder that looks like a bunny, though i don’t think that’s intentional:

and two display heads:

don’t the heads look like they would fit perfectly into a dr. who episode?

finally, these amazing flowers are growing in our garden:


we rescued these from the community garden compost pile at the end of last season. at the time, they were only a root and stem and we weren’t sure if they were even going to grow, let alone what they would look like. they seem to be pretty happy to be in our plot now.

phew! that was a lot of stuff. thanks for hanging in there. now i think i am back up to date!

remember when the yarn harlot fell for the tank top i knit for the store?

well, she finished knitting it, and blogged about it yesterday, and she sort of, kind of, said nice things about my knitting, indirectly:

It’s a remarkably weird yarn for me to choose to knit with, not at all what I usually buy, and I would have walked right by it in WEBS, if there hadn’t happened to be a shop model hanging above the yarn. (There’s a lesson in there for shops.)

and, fancy-ist of all:

I enjoyed knitting with this yarn about as much as I enjoy knitting with cotton or linen or rayon at the best of times - which is really not much at all…The shop model of this was so beautiful though, that I though that I would suck it up for one garment, and I did, and I’m so glad I did.

she said the shop model was beautiful! awwww. :D thanks, stephanie.

oh, and in my last post about this topic, i predicted:

the store should probably stock up on that yarn, because what the harlot knits, the world knits.

and i was right! we sold a ton of all of the colors of this yarn, both online and in the store. and, while the color my store sample was knit in (and the color stephanie used) wasn’t selling super well pre-may, we currently can’t keep it on the shelves.

i’ve finished a few projects recently. want to see?

a scarf to use as a sample for the store:

some yarn spun on my snail shell for selling:

a shrug for me:

and a few other things i still have to photograph.

oh, and i’ve started a new thing, too:

i’m going to wait and see how it turns out before i give you all the details on this one.

on another subject: project runway started up again tonight! love it.

when i took the spinning class i didn’t expect to enjoy spinning. i was just taking it to learn more about fiber and because it was a free class. but, alas, i did. whatcha gonna do?

but wheels are expensive.

while perusing craigslist one morning i noticed an ad for an ashford traditional wheel being sold for $40. it was in pretty rough shape, needed some parts replaced and the wheel put back together and balanced. but the seller was willing to part with it for only $25, so we took a chance on it.

a few parts were purchased, tom did some deconstructing, gluing and reconstructing:

and got it all fixed up:

it seems to work just fine:

the person selling the wheel bought it from the fiber art center, which, sadly, recently closed, and we’ve been able to determine that it was manufactured around 1976 (a bicentennial baby - just like us!)

we call it snail shell:

i was able to take a class last weekend through the yarn store - introduction to spinning:

we rented a wheel and got a basketful of fiber-y goodies.

this was my first attempt at a single ply:

it started as this:

and became this:

ick. not so good.

attempt number two started as this:

became this:

and ended up as this:

a little better. (it’s got a little thick ‘n thin action going on, but so does debbie bliss soho)

on the second day of the class, i turned a big pile of brown fluff (i guess i didn’t take a photo of the roving) into this:

i then plied the two singles together to get this:

much better!

and what’s that skein hanging on? i’ll show you tomorrow…

as of monday morning, jaz was still knitting! how do i know? well, jaz is the fabulous sidekick on, and producer of, the bill dwight show (in addition to being on-air and music director at wrsi.) and on monday morning, the first two and a half minutes of the show went like this:

that’s right, bill dwight considers us a “knitting cult.” nice.

oh, and what’s that you say? you would love to own one of those t-shirts bill and jaz discussed? you’re in luck! just click right here!