And this is my tire.
Please do not be fooled by the fact that it looks like this truck tire weighs more than I do (it probably does). I am fierce enough that I can drag that tire across the yard as I see fit. It only slows me down a little. Too bad the humans in the house are unaware all they are doing is providing me with resistance training for my shoulder muscles. Next week, I'm moving the car...........to Vegas.
Wanna make something of it?
Mane.
(Y'all didn't think we'd pass through the rest of the entire alphabet without another horse-related post, did you? Seriously?)
All for now.....
So, after a whole week, here are the STR "Fairgrounds" colorway socks in a not-so-plain-vanilla sock.
I knit these up using a basic stockinette stitch pattern with my preferred rounded toe. I really like all the color changes in this colorway. AND, they almost perfectly match the colors in one of my rosebushes and the summer sky here in SLC. I finished up sock #2 on the ride back from Estes Park last weekend.
I also started and finished up a very soft hat in Debbie Bliss Cotton Angora (80% cotton and 20% angora bunny). The pattern is from an old Knitter's Magazine (from the years right after they got weird but before my subscription ran out) - it's the only pattern in the entire thing I would have knit. This lady is a friend of a coworker of my mum's. The gentleman has had not only his wife recently diagnosed with cancer, but now his daughter, who has two small kids, has been diagnosed with breast cancer. I thought this little close-fitting cap with eyelets for ventilation would be perfect for the summer. You better believe it is SUPER soft as well - oh, yes...and in purple, which happens to be a favorite color of the recipient.
I'll get that packed up and ready to go off to my mum in tomorrow's mail.
Otherwise, this weekend, we have a Missouri Fox Trotter show in town, so tonight are the "ranch" classes - roping and cutting - and we'll go off to watch those. Tomorrow are a few more of the show classes in the finals, which we may also go to see. In between a few rides on our two to enjoy the summertime.
All for now.......
Pictures as promised of finished weaving project - some kitchen towels. These are for my mum for her birthday (plus some teas she likes), so they are off to her in the mail tomorrow. (She rarely reads the blog, and if she does, can't download the pictures because of the high levels of security on her office network, so I think I'm safe).
Specs:
I followed the pattern on these and I think I would have preferred them wider/bigger, so if I do another set (because I really like the checkered pattern), I'll make them 9 instead of 7 repeats wide. They wove up quickly once I got my arse in gear and sat down and wove them off. I got three towels off this and one hefty sample. I like to keep at least one of a set I weave as a sort of study towel, but I decided I'd send the two complementary towels off rather than two of the same pattern, as I think they are more interesting that way.
Here's a closeup shot of the two patterns - squares in front, stripes in back.
All for now........
Loom! (Suggestion courtesy of Norma). Not exactly a great artistic photo, but a fun story to go with it.
After my friend, Jan, taught me how to weave and I was hooked, I decided I had to have a loom of my own. I looked and looked and found this Schacht floor loom on eBay. I didn't win the auction (outbid by like 150 bucks), but the person who did win it apparently neglected to pay for it, so the seller contacted me and asked if I would like it. It had been in storage for 5 years somewhere in the Bay area near San Francisco - keeping in mind we were on the east coast in New England at this point in time.
So, we haggled back and forth and I finally found a shipper who would ship the thing out to me. The seller agreed to pay half the shipping. Total cost for this loom was around 1250 bucks including shipping - a very nice deal. The catch about the shipping, however, was that the only way the shipping would cost less than the loom itself was to do it as a freight shipment. ....... which meant it wasn't delivered to the house, but rather, I'd have to go pick it up at the trucking depot.
We didn't have a truck anymore at that time, just a Jeep Cherokee, so Jan told me we could borrow hers/her husband's truck and she'd go with me to pick it up. We get to the loading dock in the diviest portion of downtown Providence, RI, you can imagine (ya, go on...imagine...now imagine worse.... keep going..... keep going... yep - right about that skanky). There are a bunch of overweight Italian guys in dirty T-shirts standing on the loading dock smoking cigarettes and talking. We back the truck up to the loading dock and realize that the bed of the pickup is about oh....2 feet below the level of the loading dock. We get out and I show the guys my bill of lading. One of them ambles off into the bowels of the storage facility to get the forklift to move this crate. As he comes out the door, we are somewhat appalled at the size of the crate. The loom is big - 48" wide, but the crate is MONSTROUS.
Jan and I are looking at each other a little nervously. The guy puts down the forklift arms at the edge of the dock and says "There you go". We ask him if he will load it for us. He laughs and says "No. This is a frieght shipment." Jan and I look at each other more nervously. We ask if anyone will load it for us for a twenty. More laughs from the group. We assume the answer is no. She and I climb into the bed of the truck and then up onto the loading dock and survey the situation. After some discussion about the mechanics of leverage and some weight calculations, we heave to and push the damn crate over the edge, where it teeters precipitiously, and then slides down at an angle into the bed of the truck.
Smiling smugly at the now quiet group, she and I lash the loom and crate down into the truck bed and prepare for the drive home, which is maybe 45-50 minutes of drive time. At about 5 minutes into the drive, the first drops of rain start. At 10 minutes, it's definitely raining. At 20 minutes, it is raining like it only can when you are 15 miles or less inland from the ocean (read cats and dogs with big drops). When we finally pull into the driveway at my house, the cardboard (Oh, did I mention the crate was a wooden pallet with cardboard built around it?) is completely waterlogged - and it's still raining, although not as hard.
We get the loom out of the truck (with a lot of huffing and puffing and more than a few curse words) and onto the driveway. I had thought we could take it in through the kitchen/back door - since it was going directly into the living room, a short drag/shuffle. No dice. The loom is too large. It will fit through the door, but won't make the turn necessitated by the narrow kitchen to get into the living room. So, we drag it over to the front door and up two steps. I get the door open and we get it halfway through the door when we come to the realization that the wooden pallet is slightly wider in the middle than the edges, so we now have this loom stuck in it's rapidly disintegrating cardboard crate in the now-open front door.
By this point, we are laughing hysterically, and I go to the kitchen for my largest, sharpest butcher's knife. With Jan holding the loom up so it will remain mostly horizontal while wedged into the doorway, I hack and chop the cardboard off so we can get into the crated package. We finally do this, and we are preparing to slide the loom off the pallet and into the living room, when we realize now that the loom will not turn neatly into the living room. So, with the last ounce of patience and strength (having been laughing now, not even hysterically, but like Jack the Ripper on a bender), we push the loom up the stairs, Jan holds it in place, I climb over the loom and her, pry the pallet out of the doorway and toss it into the front yard into the rain, then help her ease the loom down the stairs so it will make the turn into the living room.
We then had several glasses of wine.
And forged a great friendship.
All for now......
We drove (8 hours), we saw (lots of stuff, but particularly antelope, cattle and sheep - and wool, of course!), and we conquered (the trunk was packed to the gills). And as much fun as having an outing is, I'm glad to be home again too.
I'm sure Margene will have lots and lots of photos to show you, as will Cathy, but all I've got are photos of my stuff. Not that y'all will turn those down, right? A little vicarious shopping never hurt anyone.
I was very good and did not sneak back to the S&W festival to purchase fleece after everyone else had left. (just sayin'). Nope, I bought all my purchases out in the light of day.
I picked up 5 skeins of a wonderfully soft and bouncy, pale gray Cormo sportweight yarn from Elsa Sheep and Wool Company. I had an AS gansey-type pattern in mind for this, but even at 6.5 stitches to the inch the gauge isn't quite right (yes, yes - I swatched for it last night already - sue me), but I have another Jade S. pattern that might be just the ticket.
I also picked up 3 skeins of a hand-dyed single ply sportweight from Plain and Fancy Sheep and Wool. (No website presence, but if you know em, you KNOW em!) The colors are grays and sun-baked reds of the desert southwest. I don't have a specific project for this yet, but I'm thinking either designing a shawl or a lace pullover from IK a few years back.
AND, in the car on the way back through Wyoming, I achieved an FO! My "plain vanilla not-so-much" Socks that Rock in the "fairgrounds" colorway. They are currently having a wee bath and dry in the sun, so pics to follow later this week.
I had a great time, although I think I need another day off to recuperate from the weekend tour.
All for now........
I finally got a set of huck lace towels cut off the loom (and pictures to follow after they have been washed and cleaned up a bit - still a lot of loose ends hanging off those), and decided I wanted a quick and easy project.
I had ordered an organic cotton baby blanket/lap robe kit from Yarn Barn of Kansas a while back. These are all naturally colored cottons - the brown and green grow that way - and will get darker as they are washed. They are all lightly spun, VERY soft, and with the larger yarn diameter, warp up quickly in an 8 dent reed.
The pattern has larger blocks of a rosepath threading interspaced with smaller bands of plain weave. The weave will tighten up a bit after it's off the loom and washed.
Here's a closeup of one of the rosepath blocks.
I'm not sure yet who this is designated for. It may just get folded neatly when I'm done, and put away in the closet for a gift in the future.
All for now....
I dunno. I USED to be funky.... funkier maybe? In high school I had an odd hairstyle, wore black every day in some form or other and my red Converse high tops. I went to a private preparatory school in a rather conservative city, so while not exactly over the top for these days, it wasn't really typical for the rest of my "peer" group back then.
Don't get me wrong - I still like quirky things, things that are not totally mainstream, but I think my years in New England as a frugal Yankee make me want to have things that are.... well.... practical. Quirky AND practical - can you have that?
So where I'm going here is the next sock club installment from the Rockin' Sock Club. I don't groove on the pattern. It has a linen stitch cuff with buttons on the side, and I cannot imagine how many times a day this will catch on the hem of my jeans. I cannot envision myself wearing such things - even if they DO imbrace my former funkalicious self.
I give you the plain vanilla version of the "Fairgrounds" STR colorway. I opted for basic ribbed top and plain ol' stockinette. Which, as it turns out, isn't very plain vanilla when you throw in a little color funkiness.
The colorway is so varied and busy, I couldn't pick a pattern I thought wouldn't be overpowered by the yarn. This is another one I probably wouldn't have picked for myself (too much orange, I thought), but I do like how it is working up and the color changes keep me occupied and amused.
If I don't crank through these this week, I'll likely carry this along as a travel project when I'm going to Estes Park this weekend in caravan with Margene, Carole and Birdsong. I'll be staying with Cathy so we can be fuddy-duddies and go to bed early and not completely bore the entire group with horse discussions. These are a perfect travel project since they are small and I really don't need a pattern per se to work on them (not much concentration either, come to think of it).
All for now.....
This weekend, we decided on another new-to-us trail ride. This was up in the Ogden area, north of SLC proper. Those of you familiar with the area - this trail is up near the Snowbird lodge and ski hills. We had a wet and stormy day on Friday, but Saturday and Sunday were gorgeously perfect summer days.
The trailhead for this ride is based at one of the campgrounds. The great benefit to this is there were actual bathrooms there - truly....this is a really big bonus. Here's the view from the parking lot looking SSE towards Mt. Ogden. The trail is visible at the left of center of the picture; the main paved road runs across the picture, left to right, while the trail slopes upward at a slight diagonal from it.
The parking lot was filling rapidly with mountain bikers, and a small group of them were bad-mouthing horses and how the riders "destroyed" the trails all the time. Um...yeah. Not so much. The flip side of this is bad trail manners on the part of the bikers. If you mountain bike, the rule is that YOU yield to the horse - 100% of the time. Get off the trail and don't move your bike. Talk quietly to the rider so the horse knows you are a human being. Do NOT barely inch off the trail and then rock your bike back and forth in an odd lateral motion, particularly if the rider is riding a green horse and at the last minute, you slide your bike wheel back onto the trail next to his hindquarters. It pisses off the rider when they have to ride through a panic-stricken bolt and buck, and makes them vow to train the horse to kick you and your little puny bike off the edge of the trail and down the mountain. Just sayin......
Anyhoo, I digress. The trail wound along the base of the hill and through open meadows, as well as through aspen and scrub oak groves. We stopped for lunch in a small clearing where wildflowers carpeted the area and a small spring kept the ground nicely moist.
We gave the horses a bit of a break and let them graze while we ate. John had a very attentive audience when he was eating his gorp. I think Happy got a raisin out this.
This is a nice, easy trail. Only about 1600 feet of altitude gain to about 6700 feet. The trail is narrow, but not too rocky, and the majority of the mountain bikers we shared the trail with were very courteous. There are a dozen or so stream/gulley crosses, but these are all spanned with heavy-duty wooden bridges and the horses did those just fine. We weren't able to completely make the circuit this time, tho. With the heavy rains on Friday and snow melt still coming down from the mountains, there is one creek crossing that was extremely steep and slick from the mud, with high rushing water. Being unfamiliar with the creek, and not being able to see the bottom for obstacles, we opted to turn back at that point, but we'll likely try this ride again later in the season when the water isn't so high. This would also be a great ride in the fall with all the trees in color.
All for now....
I got the "Jasper" colorway Socks that Rock - the first installment in the STR Club - finished up this weekend. They aren't exact twins, but they are pretty dang close. They took a nice bath yesterday and dried outside in our very warm (90 degrees!) weather yesterday, so I'll have them to take to Colorado with me next week as a hostess gift.
Project Specs:
All for now.....
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