fibergarden

OK, maybe not “big time”, but I am moving….moving it all over to my new URL, finally! Right now the new blog is kind of lousy in a layout and graphics sense, but I’m slowly working on it. I’m not the kind of person to say: “…and now….I unveil this totally fantastic, finished, never-to-be-updated or changed format”, so it is what it is and can only get better as Craig helps me work on it while the software is in it’s development stages.

I toyed with the idea of having two blogs, one personal and one fibery/business blog. But the reality is that life is way too short for two blogs, and that my fibery existence is completely tied to my “Momminess” at this stage in life–an obvious fact as I write with a snuggly one year old on my lap–got the picture? So, that said, away I go! Please join me at TemptressYarn. I’ll keep this blog up and running until I can hopefully transfer all of the old posts over there to save.

My goodies will still be for sale at Handmade for now. I get too much organic traffic there to ditch it, and it’s my official business name, so I think it’ll stick with it for a while. And I opened a new Etsy shop under TemptressYarn and will be moving my items there from the old Etsy shop as I offer new items.

I dunno…here, there, everywhere. Too busy to blog in too long. Here’s the dirt, quick updates, a few pics:

Home and Shelter Island, shuttling back and forth for weekends by ourselves, with friends, and my parents before they head south to FL for the winter. Up to Rhinebeck for the NY sheep and wool festival in late October, where I bought a ton of fiber, a few tools, and a test run on that Ashford country spinner that is now on my want list for sure:

In laws visited on a weekend in late October for a quick fix to squeeze their grandkids and go home. We got to go to a really muddy but pretty cool halloween display (2000 carved/lit pumpkins!) at the Nassau County Museum of Art…

Working my arse off spinning a selection of yarn to get some into NYC for the first time ever, which is very exciting for me. Some of these yarns can now be found at The Point NYC!! The rest are available at Handmade (my web shop) and/or etsy shop for great last minute quick holiday knits, or just give a skein to your favorite knitter:

Kindergarten…PTA meetings, school, wow. Keeping track of homework, permission slips, school paperwork. Little A is learning so fast and loving K, thank goodness! Also managing the Feingold diet to see how it affects her behavior…the jury is still out on this one, I’m afraid.

Hugging baby O, who is almost a year old now. Time flies. He is currently on a nursing strike and I don’t know how long it’ll last. I sneak him some mama milk when he’s half asleep, but otherwise he won’t take it. He got mad at me when he bit me and I yelled “NO!” at him (not really, more like raised my voice a fair amount, but ouch, he was really hurting me!!!), we’ll see how this situation resolves soon enough, I guess.

My Sister has opened up a gallery in Greenport and has some of my finished fiber art wearables on display there with her beautiful photos of the East End of Long Island, so I’m currently scrambling through all my UFO’s for things I can finish up and put there. This is keeping me busy, along with an ever increasing array of new projects, feeding my kids, keeping the house in order (not really), holiday planning, etc.

Aaaaah…the life of a fiber-artist-mama is busy but fulfilling. Aside from not having enough hours in the day, and no longer being able to keep my eyes open late into the night, I can’t complain really.
xo

Craig’s truck made some nasty noises last week on his trip back from working at Brian’s house, and it was labeled ‘condemned’ when he dropped it at the shop–too many things wrong and rusting to drop more money into. Digging through for the title, I found the original window sticker. The old F150 cost us $14,000 and lasted 14 years for us, and I am sure we got our money’s worth from her.

We donated her to The Mothers Center today. The guy came to get the title this morning, and a salvage place picked it up later in the day, complete with the perfect background music blasting out the flatbed tow truck windows: Willie Nelson, singing “You were always on my mind”:

“Maybe I didn’t love you
Quite as often as I could have
Maybe I didn’t treat you
Quite as good as I should have…”

It was a melancholy but bearable goodbye until little A, standing on her chair at the front door began yelling/crying “I don’t want Daddy’s truck to go away like this.” Then we all got weepy. Craig caught the sad goodbye on video to share with the world:

It’s the end of an era for us, the last piece of equipment that belonged to our long-dissolved landscape company. Old truck, I could hear you coming down the road, transmission whining, from a mile away. In recent days, you often smelled of spilled coffee, fish and bait. In your heyday you hauled tons of stone and mulch and compost, plants and tools to many a landscape job. You transported half of our belongings from upstate NY to Long Island over several (usually rainy) trips. You picked up many a tag sale treasure and curbside trash for our collections. You were scratched, your upholstery was ripping, your radio tuner was broken and had to be tuned with a golf tee that stuck out of the dashboard. Your second gas tank couldn’t be filled any more because it leaked. But you were our first purchase of something major, “new”, together, way back then. Little did we know that just two weeks ago, when you hauled that load of debris to the dump on Shelter Island that it would be your last. Now we say good bye as you ride off to be recycled, going to some salvage yard to sit and be pulled apart into useful remnants to keep other old trucks running for years to come.

Saying goodbye was bittersweet. Rest in pieces, old friend.

We took off last weekend for a much needed recharge/getaway. Drove off on Saturday morning early (well, around 8:30 which is early for us!) and headed to Vernon CT for the CT Sheep Breeders Association’s ‘Sheep, Wool and Fiber Festival’. It was a nice, smallish fiber fair–just perfect for a few hours of fun. There were plenty of animals…sheep being sheared, a sheep dog (Border Collies) demonstration, a few Alpacas, and some Angora Rabbits. Oh the bunnies…thank goodness we didn’t come home with another one this time around. Me to Craig “…yes that one is cute, now put him down and step away from the rabbits, dear.” You’d think the 4yo girl would be the bunny collector, but no siree, it’s her Dad who is the one I have to keep an eye on when shopping the fiber fairs! Whew, narrow escape…. Of course, he attended an hour long demo on German Angoras and learned a lot. I think eventually that’s the breed we’ll end up with. The woman who did the demo has 30 of them, she shears them 4x a year and gets around a POUND of fiber off them each time, Wow!!! That’s a lot of bunny hair (with the going rate being about $5 an ounce!)

The fair also had a nice assortment of vendors, mostly with naturally colored fleeces and rovings, some lovely handmade fibery things, sheep and goat milk soaps, fibery tools (though no lendrum wheels or ashford country spinners there for me to try out, waaaaaah!), sheep cheese and yogurt, a cool sheep to shawl contest and more. I only ended up buying about 3 pounds of fiber…not shabby but not ridiculous overkill. I got some lovely prepared roving to spin, a pound of short fibered ‘felting’ roving, and an alpaca fleece that was going for ridiculously cheap prices at the end of the fair. Hopefully it’s in as good shape as I think it is. Anyhow it’ll keep me busy (as if I didn’t have enough fiber to last my lifetime already, heh). Overall the fair was just right. Full but not overcrowded and a little fix to keep me going until Rhinebeck this Fall!!

We spent the night in a nice hotel and on Sunday we drove to West Hartford and shopped at the Whole Foods for some things I needed and some lunch stuff for a picnic, then headed to the Children’s Museum there so little A could have some fun that was all her speed. It was a great museum with just enough to keep her interested for a few hours–more animals, lots of space info, a bubble machine and tons of hands-on kid science–Very nice! Then we drove around a state park trying to find an entrance. We could see the picnic area but all the gates were closed and there was no way in but to park on the road and hike in quite a distance, which wasn’t going to work with our hungry bellies and two kids to schlep and not even a backpack in the car. We gave up and finally ended up eating lunch at an empty baseball field on the bleachers, well after the sun went in and the temperature dropped quickly…ya win some, ya lose some, right?

Regardless, it was a relaxing weekend that we needed…fresh air, sunshine, a relaxing drive in the country. Just right. Now back to your regular (busy) schedule.

OK…countdown begins. I’m officially at 37 weeks as of today, and my midwife assures me that I am ‘allowed’ to have this baby any time now with a minimum of medical intervention, provided that he gets (and keeps) his little head down in the right position, and no weird stuff develops to throw us off the path.

I grant that we are officially not ready for this baby to arrive. One big thing is that he has NO NAME yet. It was so easy to pick a girl name and this boy name stuff is just so hard, aargh. We want to be a bit non-traditional and nothing seems to fit. I am hoping it will just fall into place. Meanwhile, Craig’s choice of ‘Zeus’ just isn’t going to fly with me–sorry dear. Aside from the name trouble, mentally, I think I’m ready for this to happen. The house, however, is NOT ready for our new addition. I bought a handful of onesies and some warm clothes for him today, but have much to work on. Granted, if he arrives, it’ll be tough luck and we’ll survive–babies have been brought into this world in far worse conditions than disorganized homes with parents who have too much on their plates daily, but I’d like to get a few last minute things ready, just the same.

Still some last minute things to tie up that I’d like to finish–maybe it’ll help me if I post them here:
–making doubly sure I have backup with friends so A can be out of here if need be while I labor at home
–getting the upstairs uncluttered and bed ready so my Sister can stay here and take care of A until we come home with her new baby brother.
–getting extra clean blankets and pillows ready, keeping the living room and bedroom clean, etc. so I can labor at home in relative comfort for us and for our Midwife and Doula (until we transfer to the hospital at the last possible minute).
–setting the crib up in our room, which involves getting junk out of A’s closet so we can move a dresser out of our room/in there for the baby, and then have room for the crib in our room. I really wanted a new co-sleeper, but it just doesn’t fit with the shape and size of our room and/or bed height at all, so that’s out.
–pulling out the newborn stuff from A, to see if any of her stuff is gender neutral and go through my stash of cloth diapers to see if I need to supplement them much. I think we’ll have enough to get by for a few weeks. Washing the old and new clothes and diapers and getting them into that dresser…
–writing our birth plan, visual imagery for relaxation and anything else that we need to finish up…gotta do this tonight!
–packing my bag for hospital…also a gotta that I can’t leave undone!

On the other hand…I’d throw much of that ‘readiness’ out the window to make sure we don’t go too far post dates, please! Sooooo with that in mind, send positive vibes along for a successful (and fast, if you can throw that in there) VBAC birth, and most of all, for a happy and healthy baby and Momma when it’s all through.

As relatively new parents, daily life with this growing, exploring little person continues to amaze us. Little A is wonderful and intense–sometimes her intensity drives us batty, but that’s her job as a kid, right? At 3 years old, she constantly says things that amaze us, as well as some things that are cute and crack us up…it’s just an incredible gift to watch her explore and learn about her world every day. She was a very late talker, and I knew that once she figured it out there would be no stopping her (there’s no silence, either–as I type she is carrying on a huge conversation with her soft dough, and tools…singing, chatting away to herself. Just amazing!)

So I feel the need to write these funny ’supergirl’ quotes down for posterity…while they are fresh in my mind–I’ll be adding to the list over time:

Around 2.5 yo–little A was crying about something (that was really not worth it, in our opinion), and Craig told her she didn’t need to cry. Her response to him was “I have to cry, it’s one of the things I do best!”

We frequently read an old Madeline book before bed time. One of the lines is “..they smiled at the good, and frowned at the bad”. When A ‘reads’ it, she says “…they smiled at the good, and grumped at the bad”

“Daddy, your face is fuzzy, you need to scrabe.” (shave).

Grandma and Papa go to Florida for the winter, so at Christmas my Mom was telling A that she would send her a letter from FL. her response: ” ‘A’ would be a good letter to send, Grandma.” Of course, my dad cut an ‘A’ out of wood, Mom painted it, and they mailed her an A. Silly kid…sillier grandparents!

We say “yes you are ___”…she says “no I amn’t!”

I’ll add more later…gotta run. We’re meeting friends at the movies this afternoon, to see Curious George.

Later…

I have ten minutes left to write this and post it on my birthday, so I had better type fast. So, I’m now 36…OK, I made it! If I can make it 36 more years, that would be great! More…and I’ll be thrilled! Only time will tell about that, though. No point in worrying about it I suppose.

It was an uneventful day, really. Little A and I had a nice playdate at our friends’ house today. We got home late in the afternoon, waited for hubby to get home from work, and ended up having Chinese food take out as a really late dinner, and here I am typing at my computer. No cake, a pretty uneventful day overall. I think we’ll make up for it this weekend, as we have a few things planned already.

So…36, another day, another year gone by. In honor of my birthday, I got a pimple on the end of my nose, and look like Rudolph the red nosed reindeer. I guess that proves that I have a few hormones left in my old age, hehheh. Or maybe I need to scrub my face more when I wash…something like that.

I gotta get off this computer and make some yarn tonight…need to do it. I have a lovely birthday package from Craig on it’s way, due to arrive tomorrow. After fumbling with some wooly web sites to no avail, he finally just asked me to buy the stuff for myself, so I’ve got two new reeds for my rigid heddle loom headed this way (large dpi to handle bigger yarns). And I picked out a bit of fiber while I shopped because who can resist adding to their stash when the shipping is already paid for, right?

Signing off while it’s still my birthday. Happy Birthday to me.

OK, too funny…I had to edit to add that after posting this, I noticed that my East Coast blog is running on Pacific time.
OK, edited again, because it was only 2 hours difference…I guess this server is in the Central time zone? Whatever…