Our small dog has mastered the fine art of extortion.
Yup. He’s a kamakaze sneak thief who  has super natural powers.
The problem is that he has psycho-kinesis down pat .
He can gaze at an object until
it simply drops off the table or desk
and lands in his mouth.
Then….
he takes off like a
shot with us in wild
pursuit.
He’s small, but
has jaws of iron,
and the 1/2 of him
that is chihuahua
makes him very large and fierce.
And the 1/2 of him that is dachshund makes him VERY determined…. so you could loose your arm if you just grabbed the purloined object.  (BTW, in the pic, he’s sitting …read more

Well! You never know what a day will bring.
Last week,
my daughter-in-law
fell at work and
schmorked her
ankle right properly.
The doctor x-rayed
it and gave her
the option of
putting a cast on it.
She thought about it
and decided to wait on it.
The next day, it seemed
like a good idea to get it
casted…. (It was agony, to put it politely)
and she and her hubby (that would be my son) spent the day in various medical facilities, but came home exhausted, without cast, because of staffing issues in said facilities.
(Funding cuts are not a good thing!)
Today, I took her into a medicenter where the doctor DOES do casts.
We …read more

Well, the guests have gone home, the dishes are washed, and now it’s all about the blissy memories.
Today, we had a baby shower for our daughter.
Oh wow the preparations!
We were turbo charged!
My husband was outside,
busting his chops,
getting the yard tidied,
while one of his visiting
sisters helped with the mowing.
His other sister was vacuuming
and cleaning sinks etc, (bless them both!)
while Darlin’ Daughter-in-law
was baking her world famous
lemon merangue pies.
The house was looking pretty bad,
because I have been quite sick for a couple of weeks, so things had seriously slipped…. so we were all racing around, getting  things organized and cleaned (entertaining is HARD …read more

The other day, I was so upset, because I broke a treasured vintage yarnie tool, a Crazy Daisy Loom.
I blogged about it
because I was so unhappy
about it.
I am so grateful
because a very
kind reader, Frank,
sent me a couple of
notes, explaining
how to fix my well
loved Crazy Daisy loom.
Here’s how…..
Frank said to look
for little dots that
are where the spot
welds hold the layers
together.
Drill them out.
So, here, I have drilled the
welds out, opened up the
layers, and released the
remaining wires. (Some had
fallen out already.)
And, here, I have
carefully
placed the little
bent wires into
their slots and
holes.
Interesting geometry
isn’t it?
After this stage,
I very carefully
clamped the top back on.
Then Jim ground
(oh so …read more

What would you do if you had a herd of goats, a horse or two, and not so much wood, and were in need of a house?
And, what if you wanted to be able to
pick that house up and take it with you
when things in your life decreed that
moving quickly and efficiently would be
a very good idea?
Well…. I am willing to bet that you would
look at your goats and think…
hmmm…. nice fuzzies!  and start stomping.
I bet you’d make yourself some fine felt,
and embellish it, and I am also willing to
bet that you’d come up with a fairly clever
system of interlacing …read more

Oh oh… I had a sad thing happen in the studio today. A much loved vintage yarnie gadget met it’s demise.
It’s my brass Crazy Daisy loom.
I have had this little loomie
since I was a teenager,
which was a very long time ago!
I assumed, that, since it was
brass, that it was sturdy.
Alas, I was wrong….
Now, it was sturdy enough
to rattle along with me
for lo these many years,
but it wasn’t sturdy enough
to stand up to me abusing it with
waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too tight yarn today.
Oh, woe is me! Poor little Crazy Daisy!  One little wire squinched over, and that was the beginning of the end.
Now, …read more

Tea is my most favorite thing to drink. I only like water when it has tea in it… and forget about coffee. Smells good, but doesn’t taste good to me.
Wine? nah? tastes like cough syrup…. give me tea every time. I often mention my love of tea on Hankering For Yarn.
In fact, I even blogged about some things that you can do with sheer cloth teabags:
Make yo yo circles,
cut it into ribbon yarn
and make a doll’s tuttu
One thing I have learned:
Don’t try to do any of
those things with
biodegradable corn fabric teabags.
Oops… they will vanish….
taking your hard work with …read more

Pardon me if I wince.
There’s a real corker of a storm snapping, pounding and snarling outside the studio, so I am somewhat distracted by the thunder, lightning and rain pounding down.
Rain. Sigh.
This is soooooo much the wrong time for rain…. my beloved husband has been watching the sky like a hawk, and finally took an educated chance on cutting the hay in the big field.
The weather folks ~promised~ 2 weeks of no rain.
So, he cut the big field, and now,
the hay is laying down, getting ‘washed’.
Sigh.  This is ~not~ a good thing.
That’s part of the ’squishie-ness’ of today in the …read more

Normally, I quite like yarncentric gadgets that allow me to play with yarn in interesting ways.
Well, I have found a gadget that I  truly loathe.
I have a rule about my blog, and that is that I only talk about stuff and books that I really like.
Well, this dumb thing is sooooooooooooooo bad,
you almost have to love it
have to pity the poor thing.
When I saw these two needles in
a drawer of a second hand store,
at first, I thought… hmmm….
plastic punch needles?
Nope…. it says: ‘K-Tel Knitter’ on it.
I still had to try it as a punch needle- and no no no… don’t …read more

Last week, a friend wrote to me from California, saying that she and a few other friends would love to join me in my studio for some creativity and yarnie goodness.
That’s not going to happen soon, so, I thought…. well… I should post some pics of the studio so we could have a virtual get together.
Then, I looked around the studio at the heaps of projects in progress, and generalized chaos, and went…. yikes.
Instead, I decided to just take a few pics of some of my fave shelves.
I have a lot of small vintage and handmade shelves, and I just …read more