Eat your heart out, yes, I have a crafting studio. I had the bulk of the basement for a while. But with a new one on the way, dad decided that I needed to wrangle my space. It’s probably a good idea, I’m like water, I just try to take up all the space I possibly can.

Let’s start at the beginning. We we moved into this house, there was a room in the basement and some open space. The room was office for a while. I had parts of the open room. Early this year, we took out about half the wall between the open space and the office. (we as in we hired someone to do it!) The kids had a play room in the office, and I had the open space. The idea was that the kids could have a room to stay wrangled in, I could work, and we could all see each other. The wrangling part wasn’t always so successful.

Then with a new one joining us, Dad decided the kids needed a bigger space. Me and the kids traded places. This makes it sound so simple. All toys went upstairs, then a closet in the office got torn out, then the carpet went and was replaced by linoleum. Most of moms stuff moved in. (The loom, even while being small, is not able to fit.) Linoleum went into the rest of the open space. Then new desks for the kids AND dad. New chairs for the kids. Toys move back down.  While we were at it, we took out the old solar water heating system (which was so old, inefficient, and not even connected!) and moved the washer and drier down about 6 feet, opening up the open room even more!

I was quite sad to move into a smaller room, I did have to get rid of some stuff. But now I love it. I only have the stuff I am activly using. It’s pretty streamlined and useful. My husband is a brilliant man, all this was his idea!

I’ve take pictures. I posted them over at flikr, and rather than move every single pict over, I’m just going to point you over there. The pictures have notes on them!

I moved most of my frequently read blogs (FRB!) over here. Look! they are in the side bar. Some are for info, some are to keep up with fam, and some just make me laugh.

I adore Halloween. I love to make costumes and play dress up so this is an IDEAL holiday for me! I also have two very enthusiastic youngsters who love to dress up and are full of ideas. I’m going to ride that one as long as I can! Early October I talked to the kids about who they wanted to dress up as. Last year Cupcake (formerly known as Tiny T) had a great suggestion to be ’scarecrows’ so I was hoping to have great ideas this year. Cupcake picks up the dvd box for Star Wars epi 4 and says ‘I want to be Princess Leia!” Little brother quickly chimes in “I wanna be Luke Sky-Walker!!” (That’s how he said it; with MUCH enthusiasm in the ‘walker’ part.) Aw, sweet, I think. Not only can we do this, we can WORK this. See, Luke and Leia are twins, the offspring of Padme Amadala and Anakin Skywalker, or Darth Vader. In case you didn’t know. Mom (me) is pregnant with twins. So that means if the kids are Luke and Leia, I HAVE to be Padme. And we will have to talk Dad into wearing his Darth Vader helmet.

T and K’s costumes were pretty simple. I made T’s dress in two pieces (front and back) and literally just laid her on the fabric and traced around her. It comes in a little too much at the waist, but it gets on. I made her a belt with some brown scrap I had laying around (not accurate, I know). I decided to make K jedi Luke instead of whiny Luke. All I made for him was a vest, the turtle neck and black pants were purchased at the thrift store.

hm, I have a picture of the kids in their costumes right after I finished them. I obvously haven’t uploaded it. Found it!

costumes finished!

Mom’s Padme outfit was a bit more difficult.

I decied to go with the brown outfit that she wears at the end of the move. It can actually be made a little warm and the shirt can be used later, and isn’t a hiding the belly outfit. I hit the Padawans Guide for help. There was a recommended pattern for the top, and I was able to find it. That was quite an adventure, BTW. It appears most pattern companies have pulled their maternity patterns. Um, why? Of course, we decided to move our basement around (and give mom a new studio) so there was a little worry about actually finding all the pieces and getting it all done. I managed to get it all together pretty quickly once the moving dust settled. I attached the sleeves to the outfit and tucked them under so I could pull them out later. I was planning on hitting the thrift store to find two belts to go across the chest but then a huge snow storm hit and we were stuck inside for two days. And so I improvised. That same brown that I made T’s belt from became my belt too! Sadly, my serger suffered in the move (Seriously? I picked you up and put you down. That was all. Why did you break?) so the belting didn’t get done as fast as I wanted to. It was ok, remember the snow? Wasn’t going anywhere….. The belting was all safety pinned so that it is removable after the fact. The collar was also added separately, and would have been easier with the serger too. The arm warmers were done before the serger break, gratefully, but I swear they kept shrinking. I ended up just using the brown maternity pants I own.

We never did get Dad into that Vader helmet, though.

How did we all look? FANTASTIC!

The kids were so excited to run around with lightsabers and tell everyone who they were. They got lots of compliments. People thought it was great. And my greatest compliment of the night came when I opened up the door for trick or treaters and a little guy yells “Nice Padme costume!”

WELCOME to SWEETHAVEN!!
It’s the new home of the Queen of the Universe!
We decided to expand from Lamina’s Closet to all of Sweethaven. It lets Loretta put everything she makes (and that’s a lot!) into the shop. Also gives room for Dave to put some items in, sometime. Cause Dave is creative and arty too!
Updates do move a little slow. In personal news, we are expecting TWINS (?!?!?!?) so Loretta gets tired easily and things don’t move as fast as we would wish, but we are still moving forward, creating, and sharing!!
Welcome!

I rocked the Tour De Fleece this year. Like just about everything else fiber related, it has moved over to Ravelry. Which made it easy to watch but almost too hard to participate in. The boards moved so fast and had so much going on that I really couldn’t keep up. Which is a bummer because I never entered or voted for prizes. I also seemed completely unable to take a picture DURING the TDF and now that it is done I’ve got some finished skein picts. So I share. (all my yardage notes are in the basement…)

A blend of white angora and colored firestar. Angora from when I raised rabbits, back when I was 13.

Frankenstein. I got the roving in a swap. I quite like it!

After the Storm. Fiber of the month club from ArtClub on Etsy. It’s still not speaking to me.

I also worked on some handspun projects.

I traded the roving from Whirlygig yarns. It was spun up thick and thin. Knit on the bias, which was fun.

Rainbow scarf. I got all the fibery bits from a ‘make yarn out of this’ swap on craftster. I have a hard time describing what I did, but the yarn was completely different from beginning  to end. I wanted to knit it up so that you could see the yarn shift, so I knit the scarf on the horizontal. It’s a REALLY LONG scarf, but I think it captured what I wanted!

And it wasn’t just handspun projects all the time. I knit some socks on the sock knitter. They are a hair big for me, so they may go to a new home soon.

Behind and blogging. How long will this post get… let’s play catch up and see!

Estes Park wool market!

I was flying solo this year. Me and the tiny people did pretty well. We walked, both kids in backpacks with leashes on them. Don’t harass me, it kept the kids safe. I ended up carrying Mr K aroud a bit.

We met up with Ellen of Wooly Wonders and showed her the dragons we had knit from her pattern. I figured after all the questions I had asked, the least I could do was show her them in real life!!

At one point the kids walked over to a wall of alpaca yarn and started touching skeins and looking at price tags.

I’m so proud of them!

They loved petting the alpacas, seeing the goats, and got to hug a sheep!

THEN!
It was the Renaissance Festival! The kids got new costumes. I had some green fabric in my stash that I thought would be perfect for them. Honestly, I think it’s silk, but that makes it even better for kiddo costumes- it wears well, washes well, looks awesome, and breathes well.

I tried making them hats and wings and failed at both, so I got them some when we got there. I was planing to get them muffin caps, but they LOVED these hats. That’s actually K’s kilt from last year, now that he’s wearing undies (AND USING THE POTTY!!) it still fits! I made T’s dress a few sizes too big so that we can use it for a few years. K’s gonna need a new shirt- his melon is almost to big to get into this shirt.

I didn’t take a pict, but I attached a pair of plastic horses to the front of the stroller (yes, brought the stroller, much easier!). I got so many laughs and compliments on that!

And finally…

I discovered I had a couple of albums in my possession that were worth over a hundred dollars, each. In fact, one was worth about 400. No joke. Ebay here I come. Just guess what I did with that money- guess!

I scoured ebay again until I found this gem!! It’s a legare 400. I bought it from a woman who had bought it refurbished about 3 years ago so it’s in good shape. I took it over to Hank and Candy, local crankers who do good work making sock machines happy. I’m getting the insides media blasted to get the rust off and make it AWESOME. I can’t wait to get it back.

I have lots and lots of pictures from all of these adventures over at my flikr. T is having a great time with the camera and documented my unpacking of the sock machine. What a big helper.

Back before Princess T was born, I was the newsletter editor for the Rocky Mountain Weavers Guild. I was given a few boxes of old newsletters for inspiration and helpful hints. Sadly, I didn’t look through the boxes much, until recently. RMWG has almost always had a weaving sample in their newsletter, and sometimes  a spinning sample. The spinning samples are newer thing. So I went through the boxes and pulled out all the weaving and spinning samples I could find. And I’m totally inspired. This is why I kept them- I love looking and examples of what people have done. And usually you get the draw down so you can repeat if yourself!

I saw a yarn that was a 2 ply- one ply was wool and one ply was silk. I was hit by a lighting bolt. I’ve got some purple BFL that I’ve been sitting on, wondering  just what to do with it. I’ve got some green silk hankies. I have inspiration. I will have yarn soon.

Dear self,
When you are knitting, please pay attention.
I think you did some crazy wrap and turn, added stitches, and forgot where you were at, thereby finishing what should have been a purl row as knit.
Good thing you are just swatching!

In trying to get some work done on the CSM this morning, I dropped the cylinder and broke it into 5 parts. I’m on the look out for a new one, I guess.

sigh.

I believe I will name my new sock knitting machine Koloth.

Because he is a cranky old man who likes lots of weight.