Last night there was a possum in the henhouse. I chased it all over with a stick to try to get it to leave, but it was very sleepy and cranky and just wouldn't go. As you can see, American opossums are not terribly lovely creatures.
The chickens were all ready for bed themselves. Odo always takes a spot on the top roost.
He likes to supervise all the goings-on.
Finally I grabbed the unruly possum and threw him out in the snow. It did try to bite me, but I had thick gloves on. I don't think it would bother the birds, but I have heard that they like to eat eggs. So I decided No Possums in the Henhouse.
We are about to leave for New York for the holidays. Yay! Coming back to the farm on the 29th. My mom and dad will be taking care of the birds and llamas and cats. Thank goodness for that. I'll do my best to check in with y'all form the Big Apple.
All the girls, Morgan included, observed the drifts from warm indoor vantage points.
This is Louet Northern Lights, a spaced-dyed wool top in a skinny preparation that is extremely easy to spin. The colorway is Icy Winter.
This is my Joy's "Yarn Appreciation Shelf"--from which I've been doing all my plying...
...until I just got this tensioned lazy kate to ply from. Wow, what a difference. I'd never even tried using a kate until Spinning Spider Jenny's plying class; I can't believe how much better it works. I don't think I would've been able to Navaho ply without it.
I knitted the spun Icy Winter into wristwarmers.
Chelsea also spun up some Icy Winter...
...so here she (Chelsea) models her new wristwarmers for you.
Some of the spinning I've done lately...
...like more Lacey/Switzer/shetland yarn. 60% llama/40% wool. Two skeins are 2-ply, one is 3-ply.
Here's a better picture of the Llannie "espresso" yarn I just spun.
It's for a special Christmas knitting project I started today.
The lavender merino-tencel I'm spinning now. I'm trying to get a fairly bulky yarn, and this is so pretty and lustrous. It's hard to get an even bulky yarn, but I'm getting better at it. I have a holiday project in mind for this yarn, too.
I did a lot of spinning today-- finished 2 lovely espresso-black skeins of Llannie/shetland that are drying in the bathroom and began some lavender merino-tencel. I'm also on a pre-Christmas kintting binge, so pics to come soon, honest. The ones I can share, anyway (some may have to wait until after gifting time *grin*).
The llama-shetland looks like this. (Boy, is it hard to photograph black.)
The llama, Llannie, looks like this.
Llannie's fiber.
Okay, now I'm just posting videos here so I can listen to songs I like whenever I feel like it. But this Motion City Soundtrack song really strikes a chord with me, and--having spent my share of time in psychiatrists' offices--I get a kick out of the video. It kind of goes with the craziness of the season, too. Anyway, maybe KnitXcorE will enjoy it with me.
I've been knitting and spinning, but it's Friday Night Video time so you'll have to wait for photos of craftier things.
First, because Mr. O'Kitten says I like loud things, here's something loud: A loud song by Filter that's been stuck in my head for the past year or so. If you haven't heard it already, don't listen to "Hey Man, Nice Shot" or it'll be stuck in your head too.
As a side note to Mr. S.U. regarding Coheed and Cambria, they don't remind me of Rush so much as that song hearkens back to Yes (Owner of a Lonely Heart era) every time I hear it. And everyone needs a good cowbell song now and then (even though it doesn't have cowbell--it should; I swear I can hear it even though it isn't there). I also like that the lead singer has a sort of grunge-troll thing going on.
Just to prove I don't only like loud stuff, here's something that's not loud. And as someone who actually has been to rehab, I fully appreciate Amy Winehouse's fine New Motown sound on her "Rehab."
Finally, for something completely different, cute British boys. This wasn't the song I was looking for, but it'll work--The Streets with "Don't Mug Yourself." Because I like him.
I'll be at the Spinning Loft tomorrow. Pics soon, promise.
Yes, Mr. O'Kitten is home all safe and sound, to everyone's delight. Emma has stopped glaring at me and Isis can't seem to get enough time in his room, which has been left relatively unused--it has a comfy chair with a good view of a small black walnut tree that attracts a number of birds that set her off into a gleeful chittering and chattering.
Yesterday we ran a few errands and Mr. O'Kitten picked out a small, mesmerizing tree for us. Fortunately, fiber optics seem to hold no interest for cats.
I've completely neglected knitting, but have been spinning a good bit. Here's a few skeins of Llannie/Shetland (60% llama/40% wool) that I spun to swap with Woolies for this adorable llama. She makes really cute stuff and is quite the lace knitter (check out her pretty shawls and really lovely shawl pattern).
The Lannie/Shetland I spun
Shannah Rocks (More Spinning)
Here it is--the beautiful merino hand-dyed by Mysticleeme and named for yours truly! *Blush* I couldn't wait to spin it.
At her suggestion, I pre-drafted it really thoroughly. This made it a breeze to spin.
It was so much fun to watch all the gorgeous colors wend their way through my fingers and onto my bobbin.
Here's the finished yarn, a 3-ply. Thanks to Spinning Spider Jenny's plying class (and some help from Lisa to get it started) I managed to successfully Navaho ply this skein. I have another full bobbin. What shall I knit with it? Hmm...
New Additions
Last week we added two new residents to the farm in the form of two boarders, Sean's year-old Showgirl and 7-month old Andretti (a.k.a. Andy).
Today he came by to force some Christmas spirit upon them. All in all, I must say they were pretty willing victims. Both of them have great personalities, and are getting along well with everyone here. Pepper, in particular, seems happy to have someone her own size to play with.
I think they're saying Happy Holidays in Llamaese.
Yes, Mr. O'Kitten has safely been returned to Michigan. Huzzah!
In honor of his return (even though he won't like it), here's Coheed and Cambria with "The Running Free." I've been liking the 70s rock sound of it. A lot.
Mr. O'Kitten, who is convinced there's no new music out there in which he might be the least interested, requested this instead. And of course we all love A-Ha, no?
Just go take a look. Better to watch the video--super creepy and, as the designer says, mesmerizing.
Next time, I'll share with you Shannah Rocks! A very dear friend who is an excellent spinner and hand-dyer created a beautiful merino roving and named it after ME! (That's Shannah to rhyme with Donna, in case you were wondering.) Shannah Rocks. It's gorgeous, I just gotta get a photo so you can see it. How cool is that?
I'm home safely, belly full and fiber happy. Tomorrow (Saturday 12/1) at the Spinning LoftBeth is celebrating her one-year anniversary with snacks, lots of door prizes, and gifties for everyone, so I'll be there all day for the Open House. Should be fun.
I'm too lazy to get my camera out, so you're getting recycled photos. That's me on our honeymoon trip to New Mexico in 2002. We went to Roswell, if you hadn't guessed. Because, you know, if you're in NM, you just have to go to Roswell.
I've been talking to Mr. O'Kitten every night and getting long letters from him. He sounds like he's making some improvement and may get out in about a week. We all have our fingers and paws crossed here.
This is one of my favorite pictures of Isis. She was very small back then. Of course, she is quite big now. But I still love this photo. She is fearsome despite her small stature. She already had the enormous feet, though.
Lately she's been sleeping stretched out next to me under the covers. She kneads me with her oversized paws and purrs until she falls asleep. Sometimes she does that little twitching-in-her-dreams thing. I love that. Emma sleeps next to my pillow, facing Mr. O'Kitten's pillow. She keeps looking at me expectantly, as if I could just bring him home by wishing it so. Ah, if only.
Friday Night Videos
While watching The Wombats over and over again last weekend, I was recalling how much I've always liked videos. When MTV went on the air way back when, we didn't have cable at my house. In fact, we only had four channels--ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS (which was on another dial and usually rather fuzzy).
Hard to imagine this now when TV comes in the hundreds of channels. Not that there's anything better to watch than X-Files and CSI re-runs anyway. But I digress.
I was saved from my cable-less predicament (and hence, no MTV) by the advent of Friday Night Videos in 1983. For a full 90 minutes late Friday night, and on regular network television at that, I could watch Duran Duran prowl the jungle Hungry Like the Wolf and see Kim Carnes' Betty Davis Eyes. It was a godsend.
So, now--thanks to YouTube and this interweb thingamajig--I will inflict upon you my own Friday Night Video, which you can expect to be a regular O'Kitten feature (as much as I can manage to do anything regularly).
This week's feature is The White Stripes' "I Fell in Love With A Girl" and it renewed my hope for video a couple years back. And who doesn't love Legos?
Just a quick note to say Hi. I'm snowed in at the Spinning Loft--bummer! lol
I came out to Howell to give Beth a hand and get a dose of sanity, and the snow began. Now I don't trust the little car (remember the demise of the 88 Bronco last spring?) on the increasingly icy roads, and Beth has kindly offered to put me up for the night. AND feed me pizza. (Yes, I work for food.)
Fortunately my parents have once again generously offered to tend to the animals (including my hungry felines) and I have the liberty of a night away from the farm. So it's all good.
Yes, it's Obsidian Kitten. If you haven't been with me for awhile, you may well be wondering what obsidian actually is. I once attempted to explain, with many pictures, here.
I lost a bit of my excitement about Ravelry when I realized I needed to upload all my photos to Flickr. Yes, I have a Flickr account. No, there is nothing in it. Yet.
For those of you who were sweet enough to make the lonely okitten your friend on Ravelry, I thank you--a bunch. Because now I have some Ravelry friends and I feel like one of the cool kids. Very soon I'll be able to move that silly list of FO's cluttering up my sidebar over there to Ravelry...as soon as I put the pics in Flickr. Feh.
Instead of playing with Ravelry today, I engaged in some fall housecleaning. I did laundry (even sheets and bathmat) and ran around the house with big black trash bags throwing things out. Even bedroom closets and under the bed. You know, worn out clothes and pants X sizes too big and thrift store shoes I never wore. I even hit the basement and cleaned the litter boxes. I actually had to run to the grocery store for more trash bags. It was that kind of a fit.
Emma always likes to help with the laundry.
And guess what? I have 100 hearts on etsy -- kind of a nice landmark to hit...it means that 100 etsians have bookmarked obsidiankitten.etsy.com. I haven't had many sales lately, but neither have I added anything new to the shop in awhile. If I could just get myself together enough to get my camera out, I do have a lot of new things to add, especially since I didn't really sell anything at the craft sale the other weekend. Things (including a funny holiday tree) kind of like this: By the way, I've been talking to Mr. O'Kitten every day and he is sounding a bit better with each day that passes. Thanks to all of y'all for your many well-wishes and good healing energy. It must be working, so please keep it coming.
Now I must to bed because tomorrow I'll be at the Spinning Loft enjoying the company of my dear Beth and attending to (hopefully) some holiday shoppers. Plus--there'll be spinning. And thank goodness for that.
Thanks to all of y'all for all of your good healing energy and loving thoughts. Mr. O'Kitten flew back home for the holidays and is now in the hospital in NYC. Maybe the doctors out there will figure out something that the Michigan doctors haven't been able to. Fingers and paws all crossed for luck and healing here.
Meanwhile, I took refuge at the Spinning Loft with Spinning Spider Jenny (she was so wonderful and what a treat to make a new friend and learn SO much) and dear friends like Beth and the new spinning buddies that I made over the weekend. This has been my thread to sanity and thank the spinning goddesses or I'd likely be in the hospital by now, too.
There are pics of our Wool Shop Sleepover and other excitement here at Beth's blog, including what seems like an inordinate number of pictures of me making funny faces and gesticulating wildly and the like. But all in all you can see what a fantastic time we had -- at least I suppose you can; maybe you just had to be there.
Since I didn't take my camera to the Spinning Loft--not even last night when Sean and I went to see Michelle's baby bunnies--I will insert here some of my birds. You know, just for fun.
These are my last incubator hatch. The black one with white speckles in the middle was an unusual all-black chick that Mr. O'Kitten named Johnny Cash.
They are getting very big already; I've heard a couple of them trying to crow.
Now I have to go and do my profile and stuff on Ravelry at long last because that's what all the cool kids are doing. My ravelry name is okitten if you wanna find me there. Woo-hoo!
Sorry, no Cats on Tuesday today. Our regularly neglected featured is being side-lined until I'm in a slightly better humour.
My dear and much-loved spouse (generally referred to herein as Mr. O'Kitten) is back in hospital as of yesterday. The girls are certain I've once again left him high and dry at the watering hole; Emma sits on his side of the bed, alternately staring at his pillow and glaring at me, extremely puzzled and thoroughly annoyed by his absence.
I'm generally having a rather hard time of it; hopefully spinning workshops later in the week with Spinning Spider Jenny will perk me up a bit. By the way--if any of y'all are in the mid-Michigan area, I think there's still some room left. And you should come, because it should be fun. Check out the workshop list: Thursday Nov. 15 ... New Wave Fibers (i.e. soybean, corn, milk, nylon and mylar) Friday Nov. 16 ... Thick, Medium and Thin - Spinning for a Specific Yarn Saturday Nov. 17 ... Wheel Plying Techniques for Beautiful Yarns
Oh, as for the craft show...hardly anyone came on Saturday. But I hung out with some really nice people (and my mom, yay!) and got a lot of spinning done. Plus I have a lot of new things to put in the etsy shop -- if I can just motivate myself enough to take some pictures and get the stuff posted. With everyone seemingly getting into the holiday shopping mood, now's the time...even if I'm not in the mood myself.
Please send some healthy healing vibes our way--me and Mr. O'Kitten are in need of them again. Especially Mr. O'Kitten:
"One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it--it was the black kitten's fault entirely." (L. Carroll, Through the Looking Glass)
I'm Yankee-Born and Southern-Raised, which makes me kind of Southern Gothic (in the old literary sense of the word). After 15 years in the Big Apple, I spent 4 years on a farm in Michigan raising chickens and llamas and learning to spin, knit, and needle-felt. Now I'm back home in NYC with my much-beloved spouse and one crazy tortiseshell cat. You can also find me on Ravelry.com as okitten.
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