This news will come as no surprise to most of the people who read this blog, but I just wanted to break my self-imposed blog silence with the announcement that me and Jag are (surprise!) expecting a baby in March (on the Ides of March, to be specific). I’m at around 9.5 weeks right now.

We went in for our first scheduled ultrasound today. We saw limbs wiggling, saw and heard the heartbeat, and were totally blown away. The baby measures about a week bigger than expected, but this is apparently quite normal.

I’m still late in the first trimester and we might live to regret spreading the news far and wide this early, but we just couldn’t keep our mouths shut any more, and it’s been very freeing to share our excitement with friends and coworkers. I feel like my life has been on hold while we’ve counted the days towards the magic 12-week line. I haven’t been spinning at all, I’ve done hardly any knitting, and I’ve been heading to bed around 9pm (one night at 8pm!) every night after reading pregnancy forum posts that make me freak out at my every symptom, or lack thereof. Here’s hoping that I’ll be moving to a much saner (and less nauseated) state of mind in the next few weeks!

Answers to Frequently Asked Questions

1.) Yes, it was a total surprise.
2.) Yes, we’re completely thrilled.
3.) Yes, we’re shopping for rings, but we were anyway.
4.) We don’t know yet (too early to see), but we’ll do the ultrasound to find out in month or two.
5.) Cloth.
6.) Breastfed.

I think that covers it. 🙂 Please think happy sticky thoughts for us.

Every year Interweave Press has an overstock and “hurt books” sale, and every year I end up with a few half-price additions to my craft library. This year’s current favorite is Lynne Vogel’s The Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook.

Sometimes I’ll find myself nodding in agreement with an author, but this woman makes me feel completely validated as a dyer. Most of the reading I’ve done about dyeing has been focused on the scientific side of things, with pages of charts of dye color formulas that cover the minutiae of obtaining “Dull Red Orange” vs “Intense Cool Red”, equations to help you calculate how much water to add to the pot vs how much acid vs how much dye, what size brush to use to apply the dye, pictures of lengths of fiber laid out next to a tape measure to mark off the lengths of each color, for god’s sake.

As I read Lynne Vogel’s description of how she dyes, I kept wanting to shout, “Yes! Yes! Exactly! This is supposed to be fun and playful, not a paint-by-numbers project following someone else’s directions, or a chemistry lab assignment with a predictable result.” As she says, “No measuring, no anxiety, just pour and see what happens.” This is exactly why I dye. I get out the supplies, sometimes with a colorway idea, sometimes not, mix it all up, squirt it on, and wait to see what happens. I don’t want solids, I don’t want repeatable colorways with exact 6″ repeats, I want exciting random color combinations and I want the final result to be at least somewhat of a surprise. It always is, and generally a pleasant one.

She takes the same approach to her sock patterns, which include everything from toe up to top down to knitted-flat-and-seamed with an afterthought heel. I am really looking forward to dyeing, spinning and knitting more socks with inspiration from this book.

Speaking of dyeing, I never consider anything I’ve dyed “done” until I’ve seen it all braided up, because the fiber colors look so different in a braid versus spread out full length. I’m even happier with my latest two after getting them braided up to await their turn at the wheel.

Koi Pond:

Earth From Space:

On a slightly different note, I experienced one of the grossest moments of my entire life this evening when I walked outside on the deck to take pictures of the fiber and book for the blog. I stepped directly on a dead bird. With bare feet. I’m going to go throw up now.

I am a total Tour de Fleece cheater, and I don’t care. I’ve given up following along on Ravelry because the number of posts is just overwhelming, and I’ve decided to just try to spin up what I’d originally planned and ignore the rest of the rules.

Today was a Tour de Fleece rest day, but I took advantage of a vacation day and finished spinning up my 4th bobbin of singles for the worsted-weight gray and blue/green 2-ply I’ve been working towards. Then I was finally able to start plying 2 of the older bobbins together. I was a little worried that the color changes in the Falkland wool would be lost, but they’re still visible, and they should make some nice subtle color shifts in the knitted fabric. I’ll want to knit this up with a fairly simple stitch pattern so the different shades will show up. It has sort of a faded denim look at the moment, so maybe something I can wear with jeans.

I also did a little dyeing of superwash Corriedale for sock yarn. I ended up with a turquoise/jungle-green/yellow/orange batch and a dark blue/green/yellow/orange batch that should both make some bright fun 3-ply sock yarn. I’m very interested to see how these will spin up.

We somehow managed to be out of bed, dressed, and at the Durham Farmers Market with a coolerful of ice by 8:30 this morning, which was good because every reusable-bag-wielding, local-food-eating, Prius-driving citizen of the city had descended upon the place by 9. (Crowds make me grumpy.) We got some very tasty cheeses (including a smoked farmers cheese from Chapel Hill Creamery that is truly amazing), some herb-garlic bread, some tomatoes, a bag of basil, and some ground bison and pork breakfast sausage (which are not in the photo because frozen meat is not so photogenic). And a bouquet of pretty flowers, too (zinnias, I think). Oh, and a bottle of semi-sweet Scuppernong wine. I guess we did get a lot of stuff.

I kind of have to wonder about some of the produce prices. I’m all for growing heirloom varieties and supporting local farms, but the day I pay over $3 for A SINGLE FRICKING TOMATO is the day hell is going to freeze over. Almost everyone there was selling tomatoes at $2.85-$3/lb. What are they fertilizing them with, the dried blood of virgins? One good-sized German Johnson can easily top 1.5lbs. I found a nice lady selling tomatoes for $0.40/ea and I bought three. I’m sure the Committee to Fleece the Overpaid Wellmeaning Yuppies of Durham will be breaking her kneecaps tonight.

My Tour de Fleece has been progressing at a somewhat languid pace. I do have 2 bobbins to show for the week, containing about half of the 11oz of blue and gray fiber that I want to ply together into an approximately DK-weight yarn.

Here’s a plying sneak preview!

After 3 or 4 (or has it been 5?) years of using Pivot as my blogging software, I’ve decided to finally make the change to WordPress. Pivot was great back in the day, when WordPress was still new and Pivot and Blosxom (!?!?) were on my evaluation list. But Pivot is such a bit-player now and lacking so many features that I just couldn’t deal with it any more. Welcome to my shiny new blog!