Drop Spindles anyone?

About two weeks ago i got inspired by a forum on Ravelry about hand made drop spindles.Most are made out of wood with the whorl also made out of wood. I've never worked much with wood and don't have the tools to do so.I remember  seeing some very pretty chop sticks on eBay a couple of days before, they would make great shafts.

So i kept thinking what other media could be used for the whorl part. I looked at spindles on etsy and eBay and there i saw some made out of polymer clay. Aha !! I used to make jewelry out of fimo clay years ago and, hoarder that i am , still had some clay and books and tools to go with it. After looking at different shapes i decided that a lentil shape would be best.I looked at some videos online and tried it myself. Didn't come out too bad after some practice but they where not very even. They got to be as even as possible, you don't want any wobble when you're spinning.So i found Carola, of craftsbycag , a polymer clay artist on etsy who has been doing clay art for many years, (visit her store and look at her beautiful beads.)
She made me these:

Aren't they beautiful? Each one is a perfect little ,one of a kind, gem .

I paired them of like this to match the shafts:

this will be my personal spindle:

and last ( but by no means least ) :

I just love the one on the right( thinking about keeping that one too :-)

The whorls are between 1.5 and 1.75 inches in diameter and weigh 24 and 26 grams. the spindle shafts are 8 inches in length. So these spindles would be perfect for lace/ fingering weight yarns.Now i have to figure out how to find the exact middle of the whorls so i can drill holes and assemble the spindles.

If everything goes OK ,they will be available in my shop.

What a perfectly horrible day....

Talking about a bad day, yesterday was it !
First i found that my old mare Star , which I've been desperately coaxing along to hang around a little longer before galloping into the big pasture in the sky, had not ate her supper from the night before. Which is very unusual. I promised myself that as soon as she would stop eating i would do the humane thing.
She went of her feed a couple of times before in the last year but after a day or two she started again, i guess sometimes she's just not feeling good.I got days like that...
Well yesterday she just seemed different. I spend loads of time with my animals and watch them closely.So when they're behavior changes i notice right away.
After looking at her more closely i noticed a lump between her front legs on her chest, about as big as an egg.It was hard as a rock but didn't seem to be painful when i touched it. Well, that wasn't there the night before! So i decided that something bit or stung her during the night. I've never seen a bee or hornet sting look like that so i ruled that out.
Next thing :  snakebite!!
I haven't seen any snake around the house this year but that doesn't mean there not here.
Anyways, i dumped the uneaten feed out (since it had soured over night) and gave her a fresh ration of sweet feed.
 She took a little bite and i thought "Yes!!" but then she turned around and walked of.
Not Good!!!!
So i went down to the local Co-op and got a big bottle of penicillin and gave her the maximum dose.
I watched her close all morning and noticed that she was constantly drinking water. She also came back numerous times to check her feed but never ate any.
By noon i was afraid that this might be it.I'll not let her stand over a trough full of food and slowly starve to death. I could see that she wanted to eat but just couldn't.
By this time i was pretty upset. I know that she doesn't have much time left , she is about 28-30 old , that's quite ancient for a horse. I lost several pets during the years either of old age or sickness but it doesn't make it any easier.
Also I've got the problem what to do with her .This is not a little dog, this is a 8-900 pound animal.
It requires a little more than a shovel . Nobody in our neighborhood has a backhoe, also, we don't have enough room here to dig a huge hole.We can take her to the dump but i just can't handle having her buried in garbage! what to do, what to do ? Then my son called and i told him about the situation.
A couple of hours later my daughter-in-law  called me back. She apparently talked to her mom and she is willing , when the time comes ,to bury her in her pasture ( she has a backhoe !!) and since she is working for a vet and has put many horses to sleep over the years, to send Star, quietly and with dignity to the big pasture in the sky. The relief !!
Late in the afternoon i noticed her nibbling around on the sweet feed. She also looked a little more alert. YES !!! maybe, just maybe....
Well, stepping out of the house all excited , i tripped and , can you guess it ?,  sprained my ankle!!, this time the right one.This was one of the times where I'm grateful that we live in the country, far away from neighbors ( well, at least out of screaming distance), because the words coming out of my mouth!!! a sailor 's got nothing on me!!!
I laid there, on my back (talk about deja vu ), cussing and crying at the same time.Frustration, pain, worry all pouring out of me.
The pain!!Uhhhh
So now i got two bad ankles and i don't know if you ever seen what it looks like , someone limping both sides.It looks like a footsore duck.

Happily i can report that this morning Star is looking much better and is eating again, she still drinks a lot of water and the lump has gotten bigger, about the size of a small orange, but softer. If i could, I'd do the happy dance , but.....

If you look close you can see the lump between the legs.

I had calmed down enough by last night to start a new pair of socks to go in the shop.

It's a pretty easy lace pattern, only four rows repeat with every second row a straight knit row.I made several mistakes anyways, guess i was a little preoccupied, and had to frog several times.

oh, by the way , i also broke my glasses yesterday. Thank goodness i still got my old pair. They are not as good as the new ones but they'll do till i can get the other pair fixed. All in all, a horrible day!!!

Hoorayyy...

Yes !! Finally with Dave's help i got this comment situation straightened out. Thank you Dave !!!

So, comment anytime about anything :)

Otherwise not much new around here. I finally finished the order of black socks going to Germany. I know they will be appreciated once winter rolls around there.

It's been some what cooler here this last week ( only in the upper eighty's , lower ninety's), which one of my friends in Germany just thought funny that i would describe those temps as "cooler". But if one has endured months of 100+ degrees it feels cool .As a matter of fact it has been down right beautiful the last three days. Upper 50's in the morning, cool enough for a long sleeve shirt, haven't worn one of those since end of April.

On another subject: i acquired some beautiful chop sticks on e-bay a couple of days ago .

I've got very special plans for them.

 i will post on the finished project at a later date.

Here on the home front the Goats are finally getting along much better.

Lulubelle still sometimes gets a good lick in to Clyde but at least now she doesn't actively chase him any more.
Also, here is a new pic of Tom , Bib's kitten.
He has grown tremendously  ( bigger than Bib now) and speculating on the size of his feet he will be a huge cat.They are twice the size of his mama's .
After no less than 11 tries to take a picture of his face i got this.

 At least one can see his face on this one , the other eleven are either of his butt, back, side or top, no face.I don't know how Dave takes all these beautiful pictures of his cats. they are very well behaved. Tom is just camera shy. i even tried to hold his head while taking a picture and all i got was the back of it since he twisted it around just at the moment the camera went of.I love the little white moustache , he looks like one of those " Got Milk ?" ads.

This afternoon i will try to hook my sewing machine to my carder in a try to motorize it. I have probably about 150 pounds of fleece accumulated . I need to get to processing it but i really don't want to crank that carder handle by hand.If successful, post on that will follow.

I also will post on my new addiction ( and boy, am i hooked and just after one try!!) sometime next week when i have some pics to go with it.Thank goodness it's not illegal :), and No,it's not fiber related at all :O

OOOoooohhhh that burns me up !!!!

I just discovered that the setting concerning 'reader comments' has been sitting on "Don't allow" for probably several months. I know my blog doesn't have a big following but i have not had any comments on any of my posts since early summer.I was wondering if everybody had abandoned me. I love to get comments on my postings,or questions.That's why i got this blog in the first place , to share and get feed back from my fellow (wo)man . blogger has changed the way how you control your settings. Now you have to specify some settings for every single post. I DID'NT KNOW!!!
They also changed how to include pictures and i am not impressed.Before the change i could write on the blog while the pics where loading,( time saver), now i can't work on it until the pic is fully loaded and inserted. I'm still on dial up and that takes awhile, so the option to keep writing while loading was great, well, no more !!! Why don't they just leave things alone? If it works, don't fix it ! Always trying to improve but in the end complicate things.
 So, anywho.. from now on the comment setting is on "allow" and I've opened up my older posts too. So please feel free to comment on them too, i welcome any questions or input or just an "ata girl " here and there.

The goats are doing very well. They are getting along much better, at least the baby's. Lulubelle still butts Clyde any chance she gets. I tie them out every day and they eat and eat and eat. It's amazing what they can put away!!! They have gained some weight and are getting round and fat. I'll have to start watching them now and restrict them somewhat. Too fat is not healthy, not even for goats .

If you look close you can see Clyde peeking out of the dog house:

Knitting wise I'm on my last pair of black socks! I've been working on them steadily . I can't wait to cast on stitches for a pair of wildly colored ones, this black is really mind numbing!! Plus , the knitting is sooo hard to see!

After I'm done with them I'm going to bring my carder in the house and start carding some of my beautiful fleeces i bought over the past few month.I got several pounds each of corriedale, BL,Targhee,Cormo and Polwarth.I also have about 20 pounds of Alpaca in assorted colors i have to process that i got last year.So that should keep me busy for awhile.

Just Great!!!!

This is my ankle as of 8:00 am this morning:

I went out to let Jack out of his pen and stepping back into the house i stepped in a small hole by the stairs and twisted my left ankle bad. I felt this wrenching sensation ,i heard a loud snap and a pain like fire and down i went, flat on my back. I laid there for a few seconds to catch my breath , it hurt so bad.

Then i sat up and took inventory, the pain was excruciating but i could move my foot, so apparently nothing broken.I got up and put some weight on it, it hurt bad but i could hobble around on it. So i got in the house and put a bag of ice on it. Within 10 minutes the ankle  had turned all colors of the rainbow and swelled up considerably.

 Unfortunately i had a doctors appointment at 11:00 i didn't want to miss.So i hobbled to the car , parked right in front of the clinics front door ( I'd take care of a possible ticket later).

The doc looked at it, said that nothing seemed to be broken ( i surmised that already ) and that the loud snap i heard where the ligaments tearing off the ankle bone. Just great!!

He said i"d been better of with a broken ankle , because for these tore ligaments to heal I'm looking at several month of painful limping.Just great !!!!

And just as the heat seems to abate and i could actually do some things outside like building a goat pen and shelter for Clyde and his girls.

But no! Here i sit on the couch, foot elevated and  in a brace . Just great!!!!

Clyde...

I found my Billy!! :) :)

Isn't he cute? and he is very small . Ellimae at nine weeks old is already a tad taller than he is .

His name is Clyde , he's 6 months old and i found him googling on the Internet.I called the owners, making sure he was still available.We went that same day to get him.Luckily he was only about 50 miles away and this time we had no mishaps on the way.

I am thrilled to death. Unlike the other two he is as tame as a puppy.A real sweetheart.The girls were less than thrilled.Lulubelle showed him she wanted none of him. Ellimae likewise. They butted him around for awhile and he's learned real quick to stay out of reach.This morning they seem to be getting along a little better.

Lulubelle:

isn't she gorgeous?

I must appologise for all these goat related blogs but thats all that's going on here right now.

Still knitting on the black socks, still got three pairs to go.

Getting aquainted...

So, this morning i tied Lulubelle out in the back yard so she and Ellimae can get some fresh greens ( weeds , which we have a lot of ).

Of course Skimpy and Jack had to investigate these strange creatures a little closer. They circled like vultures, trying to get a good look and sniff.Ellimae didn't care but Lulubelle kept a close eye on them.

Skimpy got tired of it after a little while and opted to watch them from a distance.

 Jack of course couldn't leave it alone and he got nailed pretty good by Lulubelle.

 after that he decided they weren't going to be much fun after all and he went to harrass the cats.

After awhile Star came over to say hello.

 The goats weren't scared of here at all and all three of them grazed together for awhile.

So far, so good.

Still looking for a little billy :)