Your IQ Is 105

Your Logical Intelligence is Below Average Your Verbal Intelligence is Genius Your Mathematical Intelligence is Above Average Your General Knowledge is Above Average

A Quick and Dirty IQ Test

hee hee hee..... I just love these blogger tests. They are like crack to me. I tend to 'test' well, and sometime have to fight myself to actually answer the test honestly rather than pick what I know is the 'right' answer. This one surprised me a bit. I expected math to be horrid- obviously I stumbled on the correct answers for the math questions, and I've never been mislabeled as a genius in anything, but the thing that cracks me up and keeps me coming back for more are answers like- logical intelligence: below normal -that is just too funny. Even more so because I don't really know what 'logical intelligence' means! ......'scuse me while I go peruse a dictionary!

First FO of 2007

Handspun silk, slightly altered "Christmas Angel" pattern from the 2006 Daily Knitting calendar. I'm going to continue to tweak this pattern to see if I can make her look more like a fairy. The head is a needle felted bead, I think on my next try I'll add a couple of pointy ears and make the skirt less bell shaped. I have just enough silk yarn left for one more. After being left alone all night on New Years Eve (the dogs were only alone over night- the same amount of time they are on their own Monday thru Friday during the day!) this is how Bailey and I spent most of our New Years Day. The little prince looks so happy/relived/comfy I just want to make a sandwich out of him and eat him up!

Gatherin' Wool

Attended The Wool Gathering fiber festival in Yellow Springs yesterday. I took my Tour De Fleece bag and told LD when it was full, I'd be done. There was literally nothing of interest for him at the festival, but he kept me company and held my bag when needed like a champ.





Happy Day!






I scored some cool stuff:

a pound of merino top, half a pound of textile grade hemp sliver, a couple of ounces of very pretty mohair curls, 4 oz of a gorgeous Alpaca roving colourway (I have had NO luck dyeing muted colors like this) with just the slightest amount of angelina blended in for a tiny amount of sparkle. Gorgeous! and a couple of cute little finger puppets. I was very proud of the shopping restraint that I showed. Even saved enough money to pay for dinner out of my fiberfest fund.


This guy had so much character:

His owner said he was annoyed at being kept inside the tent, so he kept humming and sort of stomping back and forth- very comical. You could see it in his eyes that he is quite the character. What can I say, I've always had a thing for 'bad boys'!


I wore my homemade spindle pin:

but didn't run into anyone else from the Yahoo Spindlers group.


Never been to Yellow Springs, so after filling up my goodie bag, LD and I went into town to check it out. Wicked, wicked cool. What an artist's haven. If I were independently wealthy and/or a bit more talented, I would make Yellow Springs my new home.

Now THAT is what silk should look like!

This:


not this:


In trying to poke around at the cocoons to avoid touching the icky stuff, I ended up matting them together into a sad mess. Done. Stick a fork in them. I've enough pride to know I'm beat.
-but I couldn't stay sad for long, because just look again at what arrived from the marvelously talent Carol of http://www.silkworker.com !


Gorgeous incredible handpainted silk top! The colourway is Trumpet Solo, and when I saw it on the website, my heart dang near skipped a beat. Complete lovely silky goodness. I'm spinning it on my favorite drop spindle, my Lambsy Divey All Day Lollipop, spinning it fairly fine, hoping that when I Navajo ply, it will be lace weight-ish, and will then be knit into a shawl/wrap. Don't know what pattern yet, I'm just enjoying the spinning. Happy happy spinning!

Bombyx Mori project ends with a splat

EEEEWWWWW! Lord in Heaven! I am trying very hard to process my silkworm cocoons so that I can be done with the whole "silkworm saga" and we never need speak of it again, but, seriously, YUCK! What the heck?! I thought that by letting the moths emerge from their cocoons I would be left with fairly clean, empty cocoons. Yes, allowing the moths to emerge damages some of the silk, but I'm planning to spin it, not reel a continuous strand, so that was fine. Plus, added bonus of no bad karma-stifling issues. Yea! ........dude.
What was left behind in each cocoon --and let me pause here to say that not every worm that spun actually made it to the pupa stage, a few died off and left me with nasty dead wormies-- but the ones that did pupate into moths and emerged, well, they thoughtfully left me with a pupa shell (?) in each cocoon. <'scuse me while I get a breath mint, I just vomited in my mouth a little bit>
So Gross! I have to pull each cocoon apart and try to 'pop' out the pupa shell, but some of them don't want to pop, they want to get tangled. And once their tangled I've discovered that if I keep trying to get the buggy part out, it gets all smooshed in the blob of silk. Lord have mercy, I don't think I have the strength to finish this. I'm touching dead bug guts and stuff! And NO! I am NOT taking pictures of this part of the process!!! Once finished, we will never speak of it again, and I will deny any knowledge. I'll take pictures of the 'de-bug gutty' silk blobs, if I get that far. Dear readers, I'm going back in.......give me strength!

and the moths emerge....

Wicked cool- bombyx mori moths! Sorry for the crappy photos- semi cheap camera combined with moron photographer= blurry pics. I'll see if LD can't get some better pictures when more moth emerge. They are fabulous looking creatures! I really wish I could have zoomed in on this little moths face. She is beautiful and fierce looking.
Now that the silkworm experiment is coming to a close, I've decided that bombyx mori silkworms are not something I will try to raise again. If I get any viable eggs, I'll find someone who wants to give it a go and gift them the eggs. I am amazed and awed at the amount of work that goes into producing silk, but I am also a bit saddened by the process and what has been done to these creatures over centuries of domestication. *and please remember, this is just a blog- only my opinions and thoughts. I certainly do not look down on or judge anyone for anything* It is fascinating, but sad that once they emerge from their cocoons, the rest of their life cycle consists of mating, laying eggs and dying of dehydration. They still have rudimentary wings, but can no longer use them to fly. sad. At some point, I may try to raise one of the wild native to North America breeds of silkworms, but for now I'll stick to spinning soy or bamboo silk, renewable resources.


and while I couldn't get a decent picture of the moths, Draco, our bearded dragon did a fab job of posing for this picture. He is beautiful and fierce too.

Pretty posies and pierced nosies

Check it out! After many many years of wanting to have it done, I finally sucked it up and did it! Well, no, I didn't do it myself, so I guess that should have said 'had it done'. And I like it! I've been told many times that I didn't have the right 'nose' for a piercing and was asked if I was sure I wanted to draw more attention to it, and now I can tell those peeps to put a sock in it. I think it is kind of cute, and trust me, it is very rare for me to think that anything about myself is any kind of cute. But my nose stud is. :) and if nothing else, it does draw attention away from my Dumbo ears!
Not much fibery goodness going on. I'm still stalling on the gauge swatch for LD's sweater. I hate gauge swatches. Really really hate them. But a finished object (sweater/hat/socks, whatever) that doesn't fit, well that just sucks. Far worse than the suckiness of knitting a gauge swatch. So, I will get to it. eventually.
But for now, I'll share a pretty picture of some of the flowers in my backyard. I tried growing nasturtiums in pots for years, w/o any sucess at all. Threw some in the ground this spring, and, viola! They are growing like crazy. And the clematis blossom surprised me, we just planted that vine this year. I thought it would take a year to establish.















Oh, and the silkworm caterpillars! Well, we have a few straggler caterpillars, but most of them look like this: