New Art

Progress is still being made! I'm having another exhausted day. I'm too tired to lift my arms again, but I'm pressing through!! I've been on my bed surrounded by all my favorite things, just seeing what happens. I've been planning a large piece that I got the "canvas" made for. I'm already calling it my "Mother-Daughter" piece. Both my Mother and my oldest daughter, suffer from mental illness and drug addiction, and creating this next piece is apart of my therapy for healing and coping with these two outta control women who are missing from my life. This is an old wool cabled sweater that I washed until it was 75% felted and then I cut it into pieces. This is the front and back of the sweater joined in the middle by the bottom ribbing.

Even though I've already put in two months of planning, I have yet to begin because of it's overwhelming emotional content. So I took a little side line break to make something that's just pretty and fun. After I got the back ground made, it just called for a fairy.

I used new needle methods that I hadn't tried. I did most of the fairy with a single fine felting needle. I have a bag of novelty yarns that I never use, but have just in case. So I broke out some of that to play with.

More Gifts

I always get a little crazy when I don't have enough projects on the needles. So I CO for some more goodies. A pair of men's knucks, and a pair of ankle socks for my Mother-in-law for Mother's Day. Also, I'm still working on my comfort shrug and Daniel's cabled sweater. I love to sit surrounded by my many projects and spend my weekend afternoons knitting on each of them in turn, Round Robin style!! That's what I'm doing today, on this rainy Saturday afternoon!!

Happy May Day Girls!!!

My girls have claimed that I love my yarn more than them. They base this on the percentage of blog posts that they're included in!! So here they are, my beautiful teenage girls, Samantha and Saschia!!! Saschia is the one with the shorter hair cut. Both of them are such goofs!!! I love you girls with all my heart!!! You are always in my thoughts......yes, even while I'm knitting!!

Bits and Scraps

We got the idea from Merce over a year ago. To save all of our scraps and clippings from all of our yarn and fiber projects and collect them in a bag until we had a bunch to spin up into Treasure Trove Yarn. Both Twilight and I jumped on the idea!!! Of course, Twilight having a spinning wheel, has already spun up her very first batch.

I immediately fell in love. (I'm so easy) She's making a pillow, but it screamed a new rug for my art studio to me!!! The colors remind me of the rag rugs that used to be in my Grandma's house. So we made a deal to do some work trade. She loves my cookies, and I love her yarn. If you follow Twilight's blog, you already know that Twilight doesn't cook or bake unless she absolutely has to. So she's gonna spin up my bag of bits and scraps in trade for my baking skills. A batch of cookies whenever we get together. I think it's more than fair!!

So here is a pic of my odds-n-ends, and bits and scraps. All ready to be recycled into a Treasure Trove. It's a beautiful pile!! I'm going to follow Twilight's example and hand card it with some of the multi-colored fleece I have left over too. Then I'll hand it over to her and let her do her magick thing!!

April Flare

I need to write about my April flare. I haven't wanted to, but the whole reason I began this blog is to document things inorder to help my failing memory. I'll begin by saying that the weeks leading up to the flare were wonderful. I felt great, strong, energetic, and inspired. Unfortunately this probably encouraged me to overdo things, because I really felt like I could do it all!! This pic was taken the week before the flare hit. This is me and Twilight at our Beyond the Fringe art show opening party. I'm the redhead.

April 14th was a huge busy day for us. We were in Santa Fe that morning getting new tires put onto the little truck, and then we headed to Los Alamos to meet Twilight and Thebes to take our amature radio, HAM license tests. After we all passed with flying colors, D and I headed to Albq. It was really late by time we got there, and I had a huge energy rush. I felt wide awake and D and I were chatting up a storm!! So we went out for a late night dinner. I noticed that the skin on my hands and arms had started to tingle, burn, and itch. I remembered that on my Lupus Board they had said this was a warning sign that I'd had too much sun exposure, but I blew it off because it had been hours and hours since I'd been in the sun. So I dismissed it as irrelevant. I got to bed at about 2am.

April 15th I woke up at 9am and felt like I'd been hit by a truck. I felt like I imagine I would if I had drunk a bottle of wine, a 6-pack of beer, followed by a bottle of champagne. My head was in a tight vice of pain. I got up and stumbled across the room and grabbed hold of the table to hold myself up. The room was spinning. I started to get really hot all over my body. I could feel sweat starting to form in a rush on my forehead, my armpits, and covering my back. Then nausea hit and I began to dryheave. I made it to the bathroom and spent sometime hugging the toilet with more dryheaving. I fumbled for the faucet of the tub and got water to splash onto my face and neck. Daniel helped my back to bed and suddenly I was freezing and shivering. Every cell in my being hurt. Every joint was screaming. Even my toes were throbbing, and the sheets felt like lead weights too heavy on my feet. I stayed in bed until 6pm. Then D helped me outside for a few minutes to breathe some fresh air, and I was able to contact my friends to let them know another flare had hit. This pic is of me dressed in my Lupus clothes. This was taken during my first outing after the flare. The sun can't get to me!!!

This flare lasted about 7 to 9 days. Each day felt a little better than the previous one. But each day was filled with pain, exhaustion, and brain fog (confusion). It was at least 7 days before I could walk normally again. My joints felt thick, like they were made from clay, and my coordination was lost, and everything was clumbsy. Especially during the first few days, I was so weak. My muscles felt like I had worked them out intensely. I'd reach to pick up my glass of water, and not be able to lift it off of the table. Daniel was my hero. He never left my side or took his eyes off of me. He gave me constant TLC. He made sure I did everything possible to get better, including spending alot of time in bed. I love him so much. This is a pic of us also taken at the art show, pics taken by Thebes. I am so blessed this man loves me through everything!!

Daniels Sweater

I started this cotton cabled sweater quite a few months ago, and then set it aside to focus on artwork. Thankfully I have a very patient husband. What could have been a great Soltice or Birthday present is going to be a Father's Day gift. This is a modified version of the Organic Man Pullover published in the winter 07/spring 08 issue of KnitScene. I made Daniel the Organic Man last year in cream, and it quickly became his favorite sweater. He loves big tunic style tops so this is a perfect pattern for him. I have the back and sleeves finsished already, and I CO for front this week. I was a little worried about my gauge and whether or not I'd remember the cable pattern. But it's coming out perfectly.


I designed this version with a Saxon cable down the center of both front and back, with a Seedstitch Wishbone Cable on either side of the Saxon cable and down the center of each sleeve. It's very handsome and compliments the Viking inside my man!!

Shrug update

The cuffs (done in Merce yarn) turned out beautifully. Each one is 7.5 inches. Now I'm knitting with my yummy Twilight handspun that I got for my Soltice gift. It's very very soft and bulky. It's knitting up into a hard core warm fabric. It feels reminicent of the old Irish fishing sweaters.

I love the color of the gray yarn. It's my favorite shade of gray. I could have chosen any color for the cuffs and it would have looked great, but I'm thinking I picked out the very best from the stash!!! This is the first project that I've knit out of my yarn bowl, and I'm loving that too!