Dressed for the Holidays

She is all dressed in her holiday best. Get this chicken some ice skates!

Beyond

We are back from the desert and beyond. It was beautiful and vast and very, very windy. The same wind collapsing (and blowing away) our tent was fueling fires in so cal. Check out this satellite image with smoke, dust AND Von Karman vorticies. More of our photos on flickr.


Apparently Ive been tagged by Jena at eloomnation. Ive never done one of these so I supposed Ill give it a go. There are also apparently rules:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself: some random, some weird.
3. Tag 3 people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs.

well then, here I go:

1. Im currently obsessed with tweed chickens.
2. I am a closeted (or maybe not so closeted) crazy cat lady. I have been hoarding the brushings from my cat apollo and plan to spin his fur into yarn and knit him a hat (or maybe sweater.)
   
3. I once had a pet duck. It met its demise at a young age at the beak of a hawk.
   
4. I have spent a lot of time sailing small boats. In high school it was every weekend, and in college it was 5 days a week. This is funny because I hate getting wet.
5. I have an immense collection of jackets. I love coats, sweaters, fuzzy things--you get the picture. Again this is funny because I have spent most of my life living in northern California where to most peoples observations it does not appear cold.
6. I can do a fairly accurate chicken impersonation. (these are turning out very poultry-related arent they...)
7. I cant think of a seventh interesting/quirky item right now, maybe someone can leave one in the comments?
   

And now to pass it on: Amber at Yarn Junkie, Carmen at Rosebrier and Cara at Craftin On the Couch. If being tagged makes you upset then ignore me!

there it is

The wedding quilt: "What a Bunch of Squares" pattern from Denyse Schmidt Quilts with a pieced back. It is machine quilted with unevenly spaced vertical lines and I added an embroidered patch with the names of the recipients and their wedding date. Most of the work was completed in the span of a month (actually, most of it the first week) - check out the progress in blogland and on flickr.

I really like it, and while its a big weight off my shoulders to have it done Im sad to give it away!

the EC

Or, more accurately, the ECCWGS (El Cerrito City Wide Garage Sale). I love the idea of a whole town organizing garage sales on the same day. It makes any particular junk-finding probability so much higher! This year's find? A crock pot. A fantastic shade of red-orange and free to boot!



the instructions were with in in the box -- dated 12/29/1973. There are some "exciting" recipes in the booklet made even more fantastic by the by-lines for the titles and the super cute little illustrated vegetables and meats. They are quite similar to the box of recipe cards we found last year but without the heart stopping photos.



The cat had to check it out also. He even had his head stuck down inside but I was too slow with the camera, so all you get is the feet.

spinning away

Im slowly getting better... This is one strand of domestic white top and one of something grey-- honestly I dont really know. Im just practicing with all the pieces of roving ive got in my bag. I have also been really enjoying spinning some merino roving dyed by Karrie.

This weekend I received a package in the mail (always exciting) with musk ox fiber my friends found in Alaska while doing field work. So exciting! Its got some plant material in it and smells like animal, but its much cleaner than you might expect to find. The cat is pretty interested in the smell and spent a good 10 min sniffing around after I opened the envelop. Im going to need to find myself some cards that can handle it.

I also have for you today an indication that we have made progress on the wedding quilt


and a furrier version


We have actually finished all of the sewing and just need to snip off the tails of thread hanging out and take some photos before we can deliver it. Winter is coming at some point (its even supposed to rain today) and they might need it!

rules for life

add this one to the list:

dont chase kittens on roofs. they have four legs and claws, you only have two feet and possibly slippery shoes.

thankfully, my dad is mostly ok and suffered only a broken arm and smashed face after falling 8 feet from the roof while trying to "rescue" his kitties (the cats subsequently spent the entire night on the roof and loved it). the injuries could have been *much* worse but let this serve as a lesson to everyone else--dont do it!

the felines in question