Checking In

Hi, there! I moved out of the chilly caboose and into a cozy apartment, and then had to wait a week and a half for my phone and internet to be turned on, which is why I haven't posted in a while.

Coming soon: pics of new place and new pets, a not-contest with prizes, and... not much knitting. As usual. Stay tuned!

Minding the Store

Thank you all for your messages of sympathy and condolence. I'm doing my best to find a balance between mourning and living, and I seem to be doing okay. I am eternally thankful for the vast and strong network of friends I have made, both online and in real life, who help me through tough times like this. You remind me that life goes on, and not even harsh words from small minds can take away the wonderful memories of the time I shared with my girl. Thank you again.

Life does go on, plans get made, and sometimes plans get un-made. For example, this Saturday, instead of going to Rhinebeck, I'm going to be working at the Spinnery. On Sunday I'll be curled up with my beau, enjoying some peace and quiet, and playing with the newest members of my household. (More about them another day.)

I thought I would be disappointed not being able to go to Rhinebeck this year, but I'm actually okay with it. First off, I have no money to spend on yarn, or even the gas to get from here to there -- just getting groceries is a stretch these days. Secondly, my full-time job is making yarn, which means my spare time... what little of it I have... is spent doing non-yarny things, because there is, as it turns out, such a thing as fiber overload.

So, to all of you happy fiberholics headed to Duchess County this weekend, have a great time, have a deep-fried artichoke (but not a deep fried pickle), take pics of the punkin' chuckin' contest, and remember to look at everything twice before you decide what to buy...

...unless it's something that's really screaming at you. Then buy it on the spot. ;-)

In Loving Memory

My beloved greyhound, Sassafrass, passed away yesterday. She had been having health issues for a while, but the decision to end her pain yesterday was the result of bone cancer that wasn't discovered until yesterday's x-ray. It was so far advanced and causing her so much pain that, even with amputation, meds, and chemo, she would only have had a few weeks at best, so it was time.

Sassafrass was 13-and-a-half years old, a retired racing greyhound who never officially made it to the track, and she came into my life just before her second birthday. She was especially fond of peanut butter and ear skritches, and not so keen on fireworks or things flying through the air near her. She recognized other sighthounds and was friendly with them, but was much more of a people person than a dog person. She never could figure out why blankets didn't behave like dirt when she tried to dig in them. She will be loved and missed and never forgotten.













Goodbye, babygirl. I love you.

Roll Or Bowl A Ball, A Penny A Pitch

My beau spent a week and a half at Pennsic, arguably the biggest living history encampment in the Northeast. I couldn't afford to go this year, so he sent me pictures as the event progressed, and he brought home a present for me.



It's a yarn bowl! It keeps one's balls of yarn from running rampant while in use. I love it!



Pretty, huh? I love functional things that also have an element of beauty to them.

Speaking of beauty, I've been knitting and finishing! The alpaca neckwarmer I knit up a while back finally has buttons:



There's also a project that I've had up on Ravelry for a while but haven't mentioned here, the Merry Little Bag. Last year at Birka I bought some yarn from The Merry Little Lamb, and it finally decided that it wanted to be a felted colorwork bag. The pieces are made but not assembled yet, as I'm still trying to decide how to assemble them.



Then there's some more colorwork that I think will be a pillow (the bit on the left):



I've started another panel that reverses the colors, and that will be the other side of the pillow. The yarn is rejects from work -- some Mountain Mohair that's too thin, and some custom yarn that became impregnated with rubber bits from the carding aprons. They both work just fine for this particular project.

I picked up some more free waste roving at work today, which has me itching to spin, but I've promised myself that I'll finish the curtains I promised a friend months ago before I start anything new. I've also been informed that, after over four months of working at the Spinnery, I'm finally due for my three-month review. I would tell y'all what I'm hoping for from that meeting, but I don't want to jinx it, so you'll just have to stay tuned and see what happens.

Happy knitting!

Feed Me, Seymour!!!

Either I work in the Little Shop of Horrors, or... well, it's just another day at Green Mountain Spinnery. Something got stuck or clogged, and Laurie crawled in to pull it out. As he keeps saying, you'll never get rich at the Spinnery, but you'll have a lot of fun.

Speaking of fun, I wanted to make something romantic but quirky for my beau, and I settled on giving him my heart... my vaguely anatomically-correct heart, that is!



The pattern is from Knitty Winter 2008, the yarn is Ella Rae Classic, and the veins and valve-ends are needle felted.



I brought it to him in a cooler packed with ice. He loved it!

Also, as promised, the handspun FO. Here's the Northumbria Cowl from the Fall 2010 issue of Knitscene. I discovered once it was blocked that the dye in the silk bled onto the white in places, but I think I'm okay with it. When the weather isn't 90°F and humid, maybe I'll model it.



I have the sudden craving to knit up a model of Audrey II, for some reason. Hmm...

Walk Right In, It's Around The Back...

Shortly after I got to work this morning, a crew of high school students descended on the Spinnery to do some landscaping work. The funny part is that they showed up in a VW Microbus with shovels and rakes and implements of destruction. Guess what song was stuck in my head for the rest of the day!

I've been knitting! Really! But I haven't taken pictures yet. I was flipping through the latest Knitscene at work when I saw the Northumbria Cowl and was so taken with the super-simple stitch pattern that I just had to cast on. It's nearly finished (ran out of handspun halfway through the bind-off, so I have to tink back a row), and it's pretty cute. I'll tell you what I plan on making to go with it when I post the pictures.

My last trip to visit my beau involved a romantic stroll through one of Boston's old cemeteries, so while I procrastinate taking pics of my knitting, let me show you these instead: Flickr set: Cemetery.

Next in the crafting queue is one of Voodoo Maggie's Baby Dragons, which, assuming I enjoy making the first one, will likely be made in bulk as presents for everyone I know, because everyone needs this level of cuteness. Srsly.

The last few weeks have been a roller coaster of sorts... one of my friends lost a beloved goatling but gained a cria... I misplaced my driver's license somewhere between Tampa and here, but got a new one (which I needed anyway) this morning... my car's brake pads needed replacing, and I didn't have the $220 the garage wanted, but I have a friend who's a mechanic, so that was taken care of for the cost of parts and a few six-packs of Coke... my dog was in the hospital for almost a week with heat stroke, and came out of it better than the vet expected, though her arthritis seems to be worse... my fridge died, but I got a loaner to last until payday when I'll buy a new one (and deduct it from the rent)... and the abusive ex's repeated attempts to harass me without technically violating the restraining order are making me laugh more than anything else (you'd think someone who claims he wants to get away from me would actually, y'know, get away from me eventually -- btw, if you get an email/call/whatever from him, please forward it to me so I can forward it to the judge).

So, life goes on, and things improve. How are all of you?

She Moved Through The Fair

What's Lilith up to, you ask? Being busy, she replies! Trips to Boston and Florida, encounters with drunken pirates, shy manatees, and haunted stones, and the excellent company of friends new and old have all been keeping me from my knitting, with no objection from me. So instead of showing you the one project I've managed to work on in the last month ('cause it's still not finished), I'll show you some highlights from my trips.


Sylshessa and me at Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo


Roscoe the bird, also at the zoo


a playful manatee at the zoo


the vivid carpeting at the Rodeway Inn in Tampa


a unique jerkin from Potted Fox Studios


a haunted place in Brattleboro

Oh, and for those of you who don't follow me on LJ or Facebook, I got that restraining order I was hoping for. The judge found, as a matter of legal fact, that the ex had stalked me, so she issued a final order for six months. It's nice to feel safe, finally.

By Any Other Name

So there I am at work, loading bobbins onto the plying machine, and I hear the bell that indicates there's someone in the retail shop. I go out to greet the person, and she has a vase of flowers in her hands... for me.



The fellow I'm seeing wanted to make me smile, you see. And he did. I've been smiling for hours!

Thank you, darling.

Hulk Smash?

I was going to work four hours this afternoon and then head down to CT for the weekend. However, the coworker scheduled for the first half of the day is down with the flu, so I got a call at 9 this morning asking if I could work the whole day instead. Oh, sure! Scramble to get dressed, make lunch, throw stuff in a bag, and get out the door on time, and I made it. Having expected to spend four hours doing other things before being at work, I was a little out of sorts, and naturally, the first thing I did was injure myself.



It doesn't look like much, but it hurts like the dickens. I was lifting the ramp of the steamer (a big plywood box), and my hand got caught between the ramp and a plastic file crate. Now I know where we keep the bandages at work!

There has been some knitting and sewing (pics eventually), some moving-of-stuff, not nearly enough sorting and clearing, and lots of time spent with dear friends in the last few weeks. Life is getting better, I'm singing and laughing more, and generally feeling happier. I even managed to get to an awesome Dave Matthews concert, where I took some crappy pictures with my phone from my "seat" (read: standing room only) in the pit.



And because it's spring, there are babies everywhere, including at my friend's farm. Isn't this the cutest thing you've ever seen?



I'll be in CT tomorrow, and my original reason for coming down has disappeared, so I'll have some time around lunch to hang out with anyone who feels like calling me. Happy knitting!

The Birds

It's probably a good thing that I haven't seen a certain Hitchcock film, as I've been having some close encounters with my feathered friends lately, and I don't need more reason to be freaked out.

First, there's a pair of what I think are flycatchers that have built a lovely little daub-and-moss nest on top of the security light just outside my front door. I like these birds, and they're very cute, but they're also somewhat territorial, and every time I leave, I have to pass right under their nest. They don't like this at all. They hover a few feet from my head and snap their wings at me, then pop off to the nearest tree and angrily chirp at me until I get in my car and go. I wish I could relocate them to make life a little less stressful for both of us.

Then this morning, around 6:45, I heard some tapping on my window. Initially my heart jumped to my throat and I reached for the phone because the ex has been stalking me, but when I sat up and looked out the window, there was a little bird sitting on the sill, staring at me. I didn't have my glasses on, so I couldn't see it clearly, and as soon as I moved again, it flew away, but it definitely made eye contact.

So that was an interesting way to wake up. Now, because I'm not completely awake and exhausted all of my nervous energy telling you about the birds, I'm going to wrap up this post with some long-awaited pictures. Enjoy!


neckwarmer made with yarn spun from alpaca fiber purchased at CT S&W


fiber purchased at CT S&W


14th-century-style hood made back in January and finally blocked the other day


Jaggerspun 2/20 Cobalt heather


yarn spun from the mystery fleece I picked up at work

More pics next time!