Happy 1000th to me

G'day all!

Nearly five whole years ago, I decided to start blogging. Today is not my fifth blogiversary, nope, today is my 1000th post!

To those of you who have been here since the beginning, a big thank you! (Are any of the two of you still reading this drivel? OK, DH is cos he wants to know what I've been up to! LOL Anyway pipe up and let me know!) To those who have come in somewhere along the way, thanks to you too! Leave a comment and let me know who you are. And to those who aren't reading any longer, well it was nice knowing you! And to those who read but never leave a comment, I can only say I guess it is nice not knowing you! Cos surely you want me to know who you are too?

I was going to do a retrospective and show off my favourite projects over the years but I realised that some of the pics are on a server that doesn't exist any longer and I have to dig them up from an old hard disk and load them on Flickr and y'know what? My connection is slow and I just cannot be stuffed!

Instead, I have sooooo much to catch up on.

I can spin! Yay! I've joined the Tour de Fleece on Ravelry. My aim is to spin up the various rovings/top/batts I obtained at Black Sheep Gathering (flickr set) along with the Spunky Eclectic superwash BFL sparkle batts I bought recently. I doubt I'll be spinning up all the fleece though!

These batts look like sweet little fist sized things when you take them out of the packet:


But untwist them and suddenly they turn into a big fluffy persian cat all over your lap!


And they spin up like a dream. I can only describe my spinning style for these as a long forward draw. I never sit close to the orifice of my spinning wheel. I am told that I tend to spin semi worsted. That is ok with me. I spin in a way that is generally easy for me to do. No tight gripping of the fluff or the new yarn, I'm working on my posture when I spin (whilst sitting in my armchair cos the upright chairs really hurt my butt), and I can usually make the yarn I want, in this case something thin enough that I can make sportweight or fingering weight socks when i three ply it.


I can ride my bike! Yay! I'm still wearing the ankle brace


for riding though cos I tend to do dumb things like putting my foot down on the curb that isn't there.... BTW that brace is *excellent* for driving long distances when you don't want to/can't use the cruise control (assuming you have one). I never got the stiff/achy ankle from driving whilst wearing the brace and I was driving what I consider insane distances (500 miles in a day, with only me driving). I think I might have to take it with me on long distance trips! No more hobbling out of the car because the ankle is stiff from being in one position for so long.

A quick question. I bought this tshirt for DH way back in December. I washed it, as I do before anything is worn, and hung it on the rack to dry. The rack left this horrid mark on it:

So far I've tried a Sharpie on it (washed out) and then it has has sat on the back of my chair for MONTHS. Any suggestions about how to fix it? Should I try a permanent fabric marker? Should I batch it (dye it like I would a tie dye tshirt)? I love the iguanas on the shirt and as it is it is unwearable.

Speaking of tie dye, get a load of the tshirt I am wearing today:


I bought it at the 4th of July market up in Bend, Oregon. If we had been in Eugene, I would've picked up another couple of tshirts from the guy who does the ones that look like brains, only lurider.

There's so much more to show and tell from recently! I am putting trip pics up on Flickr, along with all the recent acquisitions. I've finished stippling the little quilt (the practice one, also the one that I could set the backing up properly - you have to tape it down. I just don't have a hard flat horizontal space large enough in our apartment to tape down a roughly six foot square quilt and I can't do it on the wall cos that needs two people! And then it has to be safety pinned together with the batting and the quilt top. But a 3X4 foot quilt is fine). And I am sewing up a top! This time I've chosen a much easier top. I could've chosen an even easier one but that was not what I wanted to make out of this material No pics yet - it is still in pieces and I have to go find another 20cm of it to make the ties out of. Then there's some more spinning (not that I am going nuts or anything spinning) and the new material acquisitions (my v. bad) and July's Personal Sock Club....

(Hope this post works, my connection to blogger is up and down, first time in ages!)

anon!