Crackin' the whip

Wow, that Dusty sure runs a tight ship! Hee, hee. She's had me busy making graphics for the new LoomingAngels group (where we loom knit for a cause). I don't mind. A reprieve of sorts, I suppose. I had my nose burried in my laptop, head bent, neck cranked working on my "monster" website, I needed a couple days break. We make a great team, we bounce ideas off of eachother to make some really great graphics! Now I am working on a blog button to link to the Looming Angels group thanks to RavenStardream, and I got the idea to create a webring to create more interest and to recruit more members. When the buttons done, it's yours for the taking (please use your own badwidth), as long as you join to loom for a worthy cause :-)!

Yipeeeeeeeeeeee! I get to spin yarn tomorrow!!!! Who hooooooo! Have a great weekend, I know I will.


Paige feeding Amanda.

Tension

No, I am not talking about the yarn on my needles or my loom. I have a tremendous amount of tension in my neck...I was up all night not loom knitting, but thinking about my ecommerce web site and how much work I have to do to it. I have had children home from school and lots of work to do with my husband for his business so I've had no time to work on the web site. I am getting anxious to get it done since I have a lot of marketing dollars going into advertising this thing so we can finally get it to make money. I have put so much time and energy into this web site I need it to start really pulling in the cash. Based on what everyone is telling me, it is a lovely site and very well done, I just need to get it marketed.

Guess what??? My Looming Angel is going to be used in a new group for looming for a cause over on yahoo. I am truly honored to share my talents for such a worthy cause. I was also honored that I was asked to share my design!

Have a great day!

Knee deep in wool

I am so excited! This weekend I will be working with a gal practicing spinning alpaca fleece and the following weekend we will be shearing our alpacas! For the next two weekends I'll be knee deep in alpaca fleece! I'll be as happy as a pig in mud :-)

I am just about finished with my dragonfly dishcloth I designed. I only get minutes a day to work on it so it is taking me a long time! It's a busy household with six kids running around. Amanda is a little cruiser now so she is into everything.

It was close to 80 degrees today and we spent a lot of time outside (tomorrow and over the next week it is going to be only in the 40s so we enjoyed the weather while it was here). Amanda just loves being outside. She got out of her stroller and just walked around and around the garage! She was so excited to be on the ground. I let her walk barefoot (even through the mud) and she just loved it! She washed up in the tub so it wasn't a big deal.

Meat my pet alpaca sock:



I call this my pet alpaca sock because I made just one, felted it (it of course shrunk) and when I went to make the matching sock, I couldn't find my row counts sheet. Now I have a sock I have no way of replicating. It feels so nice I have on more than one occasion (ok, more than several occasions) found myself petting it. I have watched my husband pet it. My kids pet it. My dad pet it. The alpaca rancher we got our animals from was petting it. Based on what everyone wants to do to it, I've affectionately named it "my pet alpaca sock".

Joining yarnaholics anonymous

I know I am not alone, a gal really gets into knitting, crochet, looming, etc. and suddenly she can't get enough yarn. You find yourself going into the store to get yarn for a specific project and suddenly here you are tossing this yarn and that yarn into your cart as well. You walk up to the checkout with this feeling of guilty pleasure and then you get home and can't remember how you got all that yarn! I should be ashamed of myself, I opened my hall closet today and yarn balls came tumbling out! I swear a little yarn fairy came around during the night and filled up my closet! I was also digging in our storage shed today and found yarn from a long ago project and found myself snatching it up, coming into the house and stuffing it into what I now call my "yarn closet". Tell me I am not alone.

This coming Saturday my sister and I will be taking a two hour course on spinning alpaca fleece. Oh boy! More yarn! Alpaca yarn is even more of a guilty pleasure. It is so soft and so beautiful I don't WANT to use it. Does anyone else find themselves petting there alpaca yarn? I did start an alpaca sock on one of my new sock looms I just received in the mail yesterday. This sock WAS for my husband but feels so luxurious, I just might keep it for myself :-)

Well, I need to put my nose back to the grind stone and work on the web site again.

I'd rather be looming instead

Ouch! My neck is sore! I have been busy hunched over my laptop for days trying to get my ecommerce website's product line switched out (mylullabybabystore.com). I have so many more products to upload and lost of body copy to write. I'm burned out for the night, I had to take a breather and focus on something else. I sure wish I were looming instead! I also have this darling dishcloth I designed that I am needle knitting that I am anxious to post. I need to learn how to convert it to the loom too. Funny, I learned to loom knit to convert patterns from needles to the loom and now I have started really loving my needles and my looms are getting a little neglected. I have some fine gauge sock looms coming my way in a few days from Decor Accents, Inc. so I am sure I'll be looming up some socks here pretty soon. I have a lot of alpaca yarn that would make some lovely socks! Well, I am pretty wiped out, I best hit the hay for the night. Have a great week!

Gurneys catalog, dishcloths, and fences...

Aaaah! It must be Spring... when thoughts turn to fresh fruit, fragrant flowers, fresh vegetables, cotton cloths, and fences...

Our Gurneys catalog is becoming tattered and torn since my husband and I have been busy leafing back and forth through the pages trying to decide what we want to buy, anxious to get our hands deep in the dirt with thoughts of fresh, sweet fruit and fresh vegetables making our mouths water. My husband keeps pointing out these beautiful, full-grown trees pictured in the catalog too. He has visions of trees lining our driveway (mind you, the trees would only be a couple inches tall when we get them in the mail!)

I have been working on designing cotton dishcloths and needle knitting them. Once I get my pattern needle knit, I can then turn my attention to converting it to my loom. I am anxiously awaiting my loom order I placed with Decor Accents (fine gauge) which will work wonderfully to replicate my needle knit design. My design features a dragonfly and is turning out very well. Once I figured out how to do it, I started designing lots of dishcloths in my head.

And finally, our thoughts turn to fences since our alpacas can come home once we can get those fences done! Yeah! My brother-in-law is helping us tear down the old so the new can go up. He got all of the barbed wire off today and the old fence post taken down. Now we need to clear out the weeds and we are ready for our new fence posts and fencing.

My husband asked me to take his picture of him and the girls with his new "do", enjoy:

Our hills will soon be alive with the sound of music...the humming of alpacas!

My husband and I are embracing the lifestyle of alpaca ranching! We purchased our first animals a week ago and we are ready to purchase one more sometime this week. We will have a total of two pregnant females and one maiden female (she too will be ready to be bred this fall). By next year we should have a total of eight alpacas. We are getting anxious to bring our animals home. My husband and I have both fallen in love with these gorgeous animals and can't get enough of them! We are both finding ourselves waking up during the night with these little creatures dancing around in our heads! Take a look at these faces! You can't help but fall in love:




I am anxious also to get my hands on this luxurious fleece and to begin making some very special things. I am trying my hand at spinning the fleece to make my own yarns so I can loom knit and/or needle knit this spun gold into products we can sell and to wear for our own enjoyment.

Once the frost goes out we can get out to our pasture and get our fencing in. We will be working very closely with the ranchers we are purchasing alpacas from in order to set our ranch up properly and to learn how to raise these animals to be happy, healthy, and gorgeous fleece producing animals. The hills on our acerage will soon be alive with the sound of music (humming alpacas)...thus the new name for our ranch--Humming Hills Alpacas of Avon, MN.

Great News...Is this God or what?!?!?!?!?!

I received this email last night from my good friend who has had cancer before and the doctors were once again worried it was back:

"Here is the report I just received yesterday. God is definitely alive and well and working in my life.

Well, would you like to hear something really amazing? I called the doctor's office today to get the results of my blood work. If you remember, the CA125 which is supposed to be 35 or less was 6464 one month ago. Well my prayer since I decided to go and have another test was that if it is not cancer, the Lord would make a significant difference in a way that would show people He is at work. For some reason it kept going through my head that maybe it would drop to around 5,000. That way it wouldn't be normal, but it wouldn't be climbing; and this would show in my mind that something is wrong in my body BUT NOT cancer.

Well, when I called in today, her first remark was that the number had gone DOWN. She was telling me all the other blood test results like creatnine, oxygen in the blood, etc., but it took her a minute to find the CA125 number. FINALLY she told me it was 5169. WOW! That is lacking 5 points of being 1300 lower than the last reading. Is that God or what?!?!?!?!?! How can I help but love Him!!!!!!!

My first reaction was to wait a month and do the blood test again. The secretary said she would have to check with the doctor, so I am thinking the doctor is going to want a cat scan, etc. Today I called back as I had not heard, and even the doctor is saying wait a month and check the test again. I think it is truly amazing and just like God!!!"

A looming angel watching over those suffering in the world below...

I put my graphic design skills to work and contributed an original design to the LoomKnittingNewbies group over on Yahoo.com for the chemo slumber cap relay. I am very proud to contribute my skills for something very close to my heart. This has been such a rewarding experience for me, creating caps for little girls suffering from such a devistating illness (all of my caps are made on the red Knifty Knitter and are made from pale pink and purple yarn). I look at each of my girls, so healthy and full of life, and my heart strings ache for those little girls who will be donning my slumber caps I stitched with love. I wish I could take each of those little girls up onto my lap and hold them tight wiping all of their fears away (if only for a moment). Yes, may my looming angel watch over those suffering in the world below!

Here is a picture of my first four chemo night caps:

Five hats down...working on the sixth...maybe one more

I haven't posted in a while since I had such an incredibly busy week with appointments; alpaca ranches to visit; a birthday party to plan and have; and two feet of snow to move, shovel, and just sit and watch. I got alpaca yarn to knit with and I made three socks :-). I felted one sock and now I am working on the matching socks (hee hee). I started teaching myself how to felt raw fleece since I had a request for a fleece vest; I started taking a writing test to get into writing school; and last, but not least, I am working on a spreadsheet to figure out our corporate taxes due on March 15th. Whew! I am tired. I bet you are too after reading all of that! And on top of everything, I still have six children to chase around the house.

I am now on my sixth chemo night cap. I will have enough yarn left over to do a special 7th hat using two colored yarns wound together that will look lovely together. I can burn the pictures onto my cd digital camera of all of my chemo caps now that I have it filled with birthday pictures so will post them tomorrow. Tah, Tah.