Star...

She liked Parades.
She would Dance and Prance and show off.
She loved drinking Beer out of the can.
She loved rolling in the mud after a good rain.
She loved Bread and Butter Pickles.
She loved trail rides in the woods.
She never gave me an ounce of trouble.
She loved chewing tobacco, and Pimento cheese sandwiches.
She was a Good, reliable companion. She carried me thousands of miles.
She brought me pleasure for 15 years.
She loved to run in the pasture, bucking , kicking with her head up high and her tail straight up in the air, trailing her like a banner.
She never bucked while ridden, never kicked or bit anyone.
She loved her sweet feed.
She was a McCurdy.
She never faltered, no matter where I pointed her nose.
She loved dogs, cats and goats.
She loved a good scratch under her belly.

She loved a good cooling off with the water hose when it would get hot in the summer.

She loved kids and was very gentle.

And I loved her…
She will be in my heart until I die and she will be terribly missed.

born late 70's, early 80's - died 10.29.2010

　
　

At long last, progress !!!

 I've finished a couple more socks and a pair of DK weight fingerless gloves (they're called 'texting gloves ' now), and I'm almost done with redoing all of my shop pics.

I'm suffering from insomnia for the last 8-9 days. i think i hadn't had more than 10 hours of sleep in that time. I walk around like a zombie all day , so very tired, but if i try to take a nap i can't sleep!! and am wide awake at night. it is now midnight and i am bouncing off the walls. what is wrong with me??

oh, look at this:

aren't they cute?! I looked up out of the window this morning and there they where, Bib half asleep and Jack watching over her with his paw wrapped around her, like he's saying : " your save , i'll look out for you ".

Disclaimer: No beer was consumed during moving of building and no animals or humans where hurt in said move.

Just a little knitting...

I have spend pretty much the last week and this one revamping my etsy shop, from banner to descriptions to pictures.Even at less than 30 items that is very time consuming and a lot of work, especially if you're on dial up. I try to get the pictures down in size as much as possible without loosing quality but it still takes several minutes per pic to upload.I think i took about 300 new pictures in all.

But now i'm almost done, i think i've got a couple items left to redo.

But i got a little knitting in.After all the black socks i knitted a pair of patchwork socks which i promptly sold and got a custom order for another pair.

After that i got a custom order for these cute fingerless gloves:

and then i made these and put them in the shop today:

and i already started on another pair, this time a DK weight, they should be done in a couple of days.

David Taylar Daniels is my Hero....

....and here is why:
Last week i had my etsy shop critiqued by several people and the biggest issue was that my pictures could use a major overhaul, mainly they where too dark and boooooring.
So after tweaking around the shop on some other issues i started taking lots of pictures , trying to lighten them up and make them more appealing.
Unfortunately the only program i have to work my pics on is the Microsoft program that came with the PC ( five years old). It was a trial issue and half of the features quit working after six month.
I've always loved how good Dave's pictures look, especially the ones without a background.
So i contacted him to find out how he does it.
I downloaded one program that will let you make your picture background transparent, well, that is everybody elses pictures, not mine. I could not get it to work right for me :(
So i tried to download a program that Dave recommended , but, i live in the boondocks, all i have is telephone dial up. Very, very slow. So after being informed that it would take 360 !!!! hours to download the program , i gave up. and I sure can't afford to buy Photo shop.
So, here is where Dave comes in:
When i went to the mail box this afternoon, i had a small package. At first i was stumped, i hadn't ordered anything!!
Then i saw the name of the sender: Dave.
now I'm even more stumped.
So back to the house i hurry, because it was one of those bubble wrap plastic envelopes and you just can't tear them open, you need a knife or scissors.
And to my surprise this is what was inside:



Oh, i can tell you: that was one of the nicest things anybody has done for me in a long, long time.
I immediately installed it and it works great!!! So now y'all watch out !!
I'll have some b*&%^ing pictures in my shop!!!
I'll be forever grateful.
Thank you Dave !!!

Updates...

This is just a short post , no pics.I 'd just like to update on a couple of things that have impacted my life in the past weeks and thank everybody ( here and in the homeland ) for their well wishes.

First my old mare: she has fully recovered from what I'm sure of now was a snake bite.She has lost quite a bit of weight during the first 4-5 days because she didn't eat. It takes many pounds of feed a day to keep a horse looking good. If they don't eat for several days they loose weight fast. Sometimes a hundred pounds or more in a few days.(boy, wish i could do that !!!)

But, she is back to eating everything i put in front

of her and asking for more.

So, hopefully I'll have her a little while longer.

Next, my ankles.

They are almost good as new. Well, not really. Both are weak and i wear braces on both of them ,especially when I'm outside wandering in the yard. I'm very careful where and how i step.I've always had weak ankles and unfortunately always will, I'll just have to be careful.

On the knitting side : I finished another pair of ( black!!) socks for a customer in Washington state, must be getting cold there :)

Also still trying to figure out how to get those holes centered in those beautiful beads.Any help or suggestion is greatly appreciated. Just be reminded that they are lentil shaped and do not lay down flat.
I started on another pair of patchwork socks last night. They should be ready to go in the shop by about Sunday.
I will put a picture in here after all. It has nothing to do with above story's.
These are my mother in laws African Violets that i inherited from her.

She had them for many years and tended to them with lots of love. They bloomed all the time and every time we visited her i admired the pretty little flowers.
So when i brought them home i got all the info on how to keep them off the Internet( i remember my mom had one for years and remember that hers was very fickle especially about the light it got) . I re potted them with new soil and tried to find them a good spot by a window, but after a couple of weeks decided there wasn't enough light and moved them to another spot and that's when the miracle happened:Blooms!!!

This plant has been blooming for about 3 weeks now.

I have one more plant and four cuttings. I hope they will bloom too once matured.

I wish i could tell mom-in-law but due to her advanced stage of Alzheimer's she won't understand :(

Well, this was not that short of a post after all and pictures too !!

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!!!