Spinning, Kittens and Floods, oh my!

It's been quite the weekend a Chez Zimmerman.

First, it's about time to build an Ark. You might remember last year at this time that Oklahoma was on fire due to several years of drought conditions. Well, this year fire is not such a big concern. But the flood waters are. A good portion of Bartlesville is under water, including most of the roads that lead from my house to civilization. I can still get to work (the office is closed today due to the floods), but if I try to go to Tulsa, the mall or even the grocery store, there is currently a slight chance I might not make it home. The water is supposed to crest this afternoon, and more rain is predicted tonight. It could get interesting. Here's a photo of a road that is about 3 blocks from my house. I live on a hill, so I'm not so worried about it making it to my house, but I would like to be able to leave my neighborhood at some point.



As far as the ark goes, I'm doing my part to populate it with kitties. On Thursday, I adopted two absolutely adorable kittens. They are 8-week old sisters, a calico and a tortiseshell, I've named Purl and Ashford. They were named after two of my favorite hobbies, knitting (the purl stitch) and spinning (the brand of my spinning wheel). Meet the kitties:


This is a rare instance when they are sitting still. I had forgotten how hard it is to take photos of kittens.

Xena is not so happy about the kittens moving in. They haven't officially met yet since the kittens are living in my bathroom as step one of the introduction process, but she knows something is up. As she walks by the bathroom on her way to my bedroom, she likes to stop at the door and hiss at it. I'm a little concerned about the face-to-face meeting.


Xena sits in the cat cave to express her displeasure.

They look like kittens, but I'm concerned Purl might be part puppy. She's quite good at fetch.


Finally, this is the last weekend the kittens will be contained. I realized that once they're free to roam the house anything to do with fiber/yarn will be much more difficult, since I'll probably have several paws helping me with it. So, I spent the weekend working on my spinning skills. I received my first fiber club delivery last week from Spunky Eclectic. Absolutely beautiful stuff. It's Blue Faced Leicester...so soft and it has a beautiful sheen. This is how it looked before spinning.



I'm actually really happy with how it turned out. I still need a lot of work on being able to maintain a consistant size and tension, but it still looks cool.





Xena liked the fiber too.

Spinning in Color

I've finally felt brave enough to put aside the practice wool, and see what happens with some of the fancy stuff I've acquired over the last couple of weeks. And to add to the pressure of ruining something absolutely beautiful, it is wool that was picked out by my niece, who thought it was beautiful as it was. No pressure there.
It is a beautiful roving. It's a multicolor blend of wool and silk with an occasional sparkle worked in to the mix. When you spin it you get a fantastic random pattern. It's going to be gorgeous when I'm done with it and I can't wait to see it plyed. As I've spun it, I've figured out that the blue is mostly silk. If you've ever worn anything made of silk, you know that silk is very slippery. Same thing when it's unspun. My biggest challenge is keeping the yellow, green and red segments up with the blue. I think that if I wasn't careful, I could easily have spun the entire blue section before the rest of the roving. Fortunately, I realized what was happening relatively quickly, so I was able to work in the other colors. So, when you see the final product, just ignore the big blue section at one end of the skein.
So, here's how it starts out:







And here's the semi-finished product:





I'm not able to get a very good photo of the spun wool on the spool. I can't tell if it's the lighting, the shininess of the yarn, or the photographer. I'll keep trying.

Creating a Rainbow

I just spent a fabulous weekend in Iowa. The main reason for the trip was to attend my cousin Greg's wedding, but my sister Linda and I managed to turn it in to a super fabulous crafty weekend. The knitting obsession has hit a new high, and has the possibility to increase my yarn stash exponentially. Now, on top of The Loopy Ewe addiction and the recent spinning/fiber obsession, Linda and I have begun our quest to become world famous yarn dyers. And I think we made a good start.

We used food coloring in Crockpots...


We used Kool-Aid in Ziploc bags sitting in the sun...


And we tried a few other techniques...


And for our first attempt, we created some really cool yarn.


The biggest lesson we learned is that when you think you've used enough dye, use more. The dye doesn't spread out as much as you would think, so you end up with a lot of white. BUT, once it's reskeined, it looks beautiful. I think our futures as world famous yarn dyers is bright.

My Favorite Souvenir

When I went to New Zealand to visit my little sister Mary (visit her blog for some other photos from my trip), I never would have predicted what I'd be bringing home with me. I took a spinning class from the wonderful ladies at the Christchurch Spinners and Weavers Guild, and they got me hooked. I have been wanting to learn for a long time, but I never expected to love it so much.

The night I came home from my class, I started doing some online research about spinning wheels. And found this on a New Zealand auction site:



And it cost me about $300 less than I would pay for a new one. Well worth the hassle dragging it home on the plane with me.

It was built in a town just a short drive away from Christchurch, so it will always be a good reminder of New Zealand. Now I just need to find some more time to practice. I have improved DRAMATICALLY from my first skein...you can see my most recent skein below...



But I have a long way to go before I'm going to be brave enough spin some of the beautiful fibers I brought home with me. I can't decide which I'm more excited about. The possum/merino blend (NZ possums are very different than US possums...their coats are really luxurious), or the alpaca/silk/wool blend. It is a gorgeous silver color with a white silk streak through it. One of the ladies from the guild was spinning it while I was learning. Absolutely amazing.

Stewart

There is a lot less kitty love in the world today. This morning, I had to make the sad decision to put my best buddy Stewart to sleep due to complications from his diabetes. The decision was even more painful since I am halfway around the world in New Zealand and couldn't be there with him.



Stewart was a great cat. He and his sister Xena are the friendliest, most social cats I've ever had. And he thrived on attention. You always knew he was in the room because he would announce himself as he entered and would usually reorganize things that were laying around to suit his taste. His favorite toy was a purple ball of rabbit fur on a black string. He would carry that toy around the house yowling to himself (which is hard to do when you have a toy in your mouth!). He would always put the toy in his food dish, which I joked was because it was his favorite thing in the entire house. So, imagine how special I felt when he brought the toy to me and dropped it in my lap a couple of weeks ago. I had reached food dish status!



Stewart was the social chair of my house. He was always the first to greet anyone who walked through my door, and made sure I was supervised as I went about my day. Privacy was not in his vocabulary. Closed doors weren't tolerated, and the bathroom was his favorite room of the house. It was expected that the sink would be turned on as soon as he entered the room so he could have a drink. And if I'd peek around the shower curtain, he would be curled up on the rug, waiting for me to turn the water off so he could climb in the tub and have a drink there.



I have so many memories of the 11 years I was lucky enough to have Stewart in my life. It will be hard getting used to coming home without him standing at the back door waiting for me. Xena and I will miss him.

The First Sign Of Spring...

Is not a robin or the beautiful flowers blooming. It's the act sleeping in her warm and cozy fleece bed. It sits empty all winter,but it's her favorite place in the summer. Cats are strange.

New Stuff!

It's been an exciting week here in the land of the kitties. The new bike FINALLY came in and I got another delivery from The Loopy Ewe.

First, let's talk about the bike. I decided to get a Kuota Kalibur, which is a bike that was ridden by the winner of the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii twice. I doubt I'll be winning an Ironman anytime soon, but I'll look awfully cool. My friend Renee, who owns an online triathlon shop called Core Multisport, just became a Kuota dealer, so it was nice to help her out with her business. If you need any tri gear, check out her store, she has some cool stuff.

I took the Kuota for it's first ride on Sunday. What a great bike! And what a perfect day for a bike ride. It was probably the one day of the year in Oklahoma when it is sunny and gorgeous and there's not a bit of wind. There are a few things I need to adjust, but I'm in love with this bike. Plus, with the black and white paint job, it matches the kitties. My other training is going well. Last week, I did a 1000m swim for time, and came in at 17:45. That's pretty good for me. I'm just a couple of weeks out from the Oklahoma City half marathon, so I did a 9 mile run on Saturday. I'm hoping I can come in under 2 hours in the half. I set my PR of 1:56 at the Austin Half Marathon in 2006. Austin is really flat, and from what I've heard OKC is a little more challenging. It will be a good way to gauge my fitness level.

On the yarn front, I couldn't resist ordering a couple of skeins of yarn when The Loopy Ewe posted some gorgeous yarn from The Yarn Pirate. It arrived on my doorstep yesterday. I'll be using the purple and lime green skein to knit the Monkey socks from Knitty. I don't have plans yet for the other skein, but I'll probably pick something out of my Favorite Socks book.

I'm also working on my Magic Loop socks that I'm learning to make at Loops in Tulsa. It's my first time making socks using a size 1 needle. That's really, really small. They're going to be very pretty. The yarn I'm using is a hand-dyed yarn from Colinette called Jitterbug. I love the way a pattern is forming as I knit it.

Xena has always loved to help me knit, but I think the combination of tiny, shiny needles and skinny, bright colored yarn is too much to resist. She has really taken an interest in this project. It gets a bit annoying.