Things are waking up pretty quickly this year.  I can’t even believe the racket going on out my window so very early in the morning lately.  How many different kinds of birds?  There are three that I can identify – the omnipresent crows, the dueling woodpeckers, and the wacky Canada geese, and then all that uninterpretable songbird twittering.   I am sure they are up to something.  World domination possibly?  Everything is progressing so fast this year, I feel like the grass is greener and the trees are fuller with each trip I take back and forth to The School (which can often times be several trips in one afternoon).

This is all is such striking contrast to last year, the year of rain and gloom with rare occasions of sun.

And I love it!

You always hear this talk of the possibility of “an early spring.”  I thought it was a myth.  It hasn’t happened in so long.  Spring used to be my favorite season, a long time ago and lately, I could not remember why, but so far, I like this spring.  It is making me happy.  Busy, but happy.

Oh and I have been busy!  This is the year of what I’m calling our “decade quell*” of living in our “new” house.  I’ve been a bit behind in some of the home maintenance so I’m getting everything done, that needs doing. Ever.  The list includes such fun things as getting the septic pumped and the furnace and chimneys cleaned.  It also includes getting the house and windows washed and anything else serviced that could ever possibly need servicing.  Some of this has been easy, but others are taking a while, especially things that need estimates from more than one person.  I can never decide, but I know I have to choose just one.  I’ve also been doing things too. So far I have scrapped, primed, and  painted all the outdoor trim around the outside doors and window mantels.  I have to say, I think it is starting to look pretty nice.  I wish I had a before photo but I see below for the the after. Let’s just say it wasn’t so clean and white.

I’ve also done tons of yard work, which, of course, is never ending…  Last year we had a ton of stumps pulled and grass seed planted.  I wasn’t sure it would come back as that was in November directly preceding ice, cold, snow, and more ice but it is growing and it is green!  I added some lime and fertilizer today just in time for tomorrow’s April shower.

Next week is finally spring break. I think the girls are ready. They have been so busy lately with homework and sports, but there were a few more smiles tonight; I think in anticipation of at least a few evenings without homework.

We are going to be busy though.  J is off to Bermuda on a school science trip.  K and I are visiting friends in Michigan (travel knitting: Hedera, travel reading: Life of Pi) and Dave and B are going to be home. I hear that he has some fun plans for her (she mustn’t despair!).

I have put my Etsy shop in vacation mode to get ready for these trips and to get this house stuff done as quickly as possible. I have been missing some great dyeing weather, but I just know there will be more to come. My plan is that when I arrive home from Michigan, I will finish up my house stuff as quickly as possible and get back to dyeing. I have some new stuff I want to try and I just can’t wait to submerse myself again.

Thanks for reading and hope you are also having a great spring!

* Yes, I’m going to “ thoroughly overwhelm and reduce [my house] to submission or passivity.”

[Edited to add just for the record:  We had record high temps here in CT yesterday on 4/7/10.  It was 93 in Windsor Locks which was warmer than Florida!  It was in the 80's here and it was nicer than summer!]

I really do love candy, I just finished up a bag of M&M as a matter of fact! (Not a good thing to do, but chocolate was needed.) The very first time my sister ever showed me wool roving I just could not get over how much it looked like cotton candy. I wanted to eat it SO much. I still believe that fiber looks like cotton candy, and last year I even made some Ravelry ads that featured my roving dressed up to look like cotton candy.

The Phat Fiber theme for this month is “Meet me at the Fair” so, of course, I had to do cotton candy:

So what do you think? Real or not?  Okay – that’s the real thing–we went to Dave’s company picnic last night and the girls favorite “activity” there is eating the free cotton candy

My cotton candy is not quite that authentic, but I think it is pretty darn close!

Perhaps it is a little pinker than the real life cotton candy and it doesn’t “melt” nearly as quickly but I think it is cool.  I think the darker pink will make it a bit more fun to spin than the paler real life company picnic cotton candy was much closer to white which is good for food, bad if you are trying to advertise your dyeing.  (I wish I could get a matching photo with the girls pretending to eat the fiber candy, but the weather and our schedules are not cooperating.)  So I’m sending off 30 of these cotton candy samples and then a bunch of “Tilt-a-Whirl” samples.  Before I send them though I need to hunt down a bigger box, as you can see they overflowith from this one:

Here are what the labels look like on the backsides:

Did you notice how I had previously alluded to the weather not cooperating?  Well, it is totally crazy! On this, the last day of July, we have already (before noon) had 2 inches of rain!  This is the month where we have already had over 10 inches of rain!  If June was the cloudiest month ever, this July is certainly the rainiest month ever.  This is just not the best of situations for a solar dyer!  And as I’ve said every month so far this year, next month has GOT to be better!  We are counting on you August!  You are going to have shine!

I’ve managed a little spinning this summer. Nothing like a Tour de Fleece–more like tour of my backyard or something, but spinning none-the-less.

This is Robes of Autumn hand painted bfl silk roving by ArtemisArtemis from New Zealand.  The colors are fun and it is easy to spin.  I’ve actually been spinning this while watching True Blood episodes which I have been Netflixing this summer.  True Blood is a highly addictive show which I must confess will cut this blood blog post short because I must go watch my nightly episode!

Oh, yes, and in case you are wondering–the sun has come out in Connecticut! We have had blue skies and mild weather!  Of course, I always live in fear that the dreary will return, but for now we have sunny dyeing days and cool sleeping nights.  For now.

June sky: clouds of gray

I wasn’t going to blog about the weather but then I decided that I need to write at least one post for historical information.  I just took this photo out my back door at 7 a.m.  This is pretty much what our sky has looked like everyday this month.  The last day we had a truly sunny morning was June 8.  We did have one morning last week with a couple of breaks in the clouds.  Overall though, dreary has been the predominant theme; sometimes with rain and sometimes with fog.  There has been no severe weather–not really even a scary thunderstorm and certainly no earthquakes, hurricanes, or tornadoes.

I was looking forward to June seeing as each of the previous months didn’t have much good weather to boast about either.  I was ready for really building up my hand-dyed roving inventory.  My plan was to dye at least 3 to 4 days a week.  I think I may have dyed only 2 or 3 times this month! July and August–I’m counting on you!

The weather is not doing much for bringing on the joy of summer vacation either.  Yesterday was the last day of school and it was rather anti-climatic.  It is hard to get excited when you can’t even imagine what it would be like to go swimming or even for a bike ride!  Agent J has had her last 3 softball practices canceled due to rain.  Agent K who has a job picking strawberries keeps coming home waterlogged.  When I talk to my dad every morning, the featured conversation is “yeah, it’s raining again…”  People are running out of clever and sarcastic things to say about the weather on Facebook even!  Sunshine – we need you back!

No sunshine for solar dyeing

Clouds, clouds, clouds...

As IHA and I were both nursing colds and achey backs today, we also had to entertain 3 children home on a snow day.  Apparently, the dreariness of our weather (as it was an “ice” day rather than a true go-out-and-make-snowman snow day) has forced us to find other ways to keep warm and cheery.  Here you can see us “cooking” up our own tropical island:

Can you see all the little sculpey trees we were making last night for Dr. Franklin’s Island?  They needed to bake at 275 degrees for 15 minutes.

It didn’t really help all that much as when we looked out the window we still saw this:

What else to get through a dreary snow day?  An American Girl tea party of course!

Felicity and her lamb await their tea and crumpets (in this case the crumpets were actually bananas and kiwi). Below, you can see Agent B and Kit posing while J sets the table.

We also watched Mama Mia today.  It was a great movie for a dreary day; happy and uplifting and it takes place somewhere tropical even.  I hadn’t realized this movie was a romance. I had just thought it was about a girl trying to get a dancing part in a Broadway play.  That was way off-base!  I think the girls liked it too though at one point K said “I wish they would just stop the singing so we can find out what happens.”

Last night, I cast on for my 2-at-time Socks using my hand-dyed flat sock blank from Knitpicks.  It is quite miraculous the way this all works and I’m sort of following the pattern blindly in hopes that it will soon click and just all of a sudden make sense to me.  I was knitting during the movie in some pretty dim lighting, so I think I may have a couple of mistakes that may need to be fixed before I proceed.  I’m using the pattern called Twilight on page 80, but I only cast-on 60 stitches instead of the 64 called for in the pattern.  I’m probably going to regret this, but I just thought that 64 would be too big.

Sorry for the poor quality photo – very low lighting here today. The colors are much nicer in real life, I promise.  I didn’t do any precast-on research on these socks. Usually before I start a project, I scour the internet and Ravelry looking for any helpful information.  This time, I decided to just go for it and I can always google later if I need to.

What is up for the rest of tonight?  More homework help — J needs to paint some water for her island and her written part still needs some proofreading…  Also, I will have to go into each girl’s room tonight and make sure there are no spoons under their pillows. I really need them to go to school tomorrow!  Cross your fingers!