Wait til you see!

This is the "Louet Northern Lights Handpainted Pencil Roving" that I bought with some of my "Christmas money". The colorway is called Fire Moss - spins up pretty darn nice, I think.

Wait til you see it plyed with the silk that I spun last month!

Quick, call 911

Quick, Mummy, call 911 - get the KCSI (that's Kitty Crime Scene Investigators for those of you not in the know) over here right away -

We think Bella 'sploded!-!-!-!-!-!

There's black furs allllllll over the floor!








Oh, silly Kittens - - Bella is just fine - just been grooming some of that winter coat off -

"Sorry for the mess on the floor Misses...."

Happy Valentine's Day

Happiness is having someone to snuggle with,

even if it is your brudder.

Love, Gracie

Need I say more?

A precarious perch

Mummy gets kind of freeked out when I climb on things -

Like in the trees or on the roof.

The Shepherd really doesn't like it when I climb on the greenhouse...








But if I sit up here, I can keep an eye on those vishous sheep.











And I can practice my balancing act.













But mostly keeping an eye on those vishous sheep!

(to be continued tomorrow)

Now you see me -

The Shepherd says I have natural camouflage -














Now you don't -

I hide from him in the garden all of the time -

We kitties have to get our fun some how...

It's Frosty out there -

A drawback of the beautiful blue sky days that we've been having is the cold frosty mornings -













But they present their own beauty -











with leaves perfectly edged in frost -














And as the air slowly warms, the frost melts

Happy Caturday

Hello everybody and everykitty!

It's me, George, with the Caturday Report.

Mummy says I have some 'splainin to do about the kitty prints on her car.

I told her that Bella did it, but she didn't believe me....







It's been a real hubbub of activity around here for the last week or so - but everything is sealed and fixed and etc. now, so we'll have some peace and quiet during the days.

Hope you all have a great week!

Best to you - George!

Hey Everyone it's Caturday!

Hello everybody and everykitty!

It's Caturday, and it's nice to have Mummy home all day. We miss her when she goes off to the salt mine and doesn't come home until after dark.

The question for the week is:

If a tree falls in the driveway and no one is outside to see it fall, does it make any noise?








It was really windy on Tuesday afternoon and this is what happened!

The Shepherd was home, but HE didn't hear anything - so maybe it didn't make any noise...









Mummy had to park out by the gate and walk through the muddy garden in the dark - luckily she had a flashlight in her car - she would have been in a lot of trouble otherwise. She's not too steady on her feet in the mud.







Since the driveway was blocked and he could not get his truck out, The Shepherd took Mummy to the salt mine on Wednesday morning and used her car to go to a wonderful place called Hardware Sales where you can get just about anything you want to do with hardware or plumbing or electrical - (they even have a wedding registry of all things!) and they rent chain saws too. (A friend of Mummy's says if they don't have it or can't get it at Hardware Sales, you don't need it)

So even though we thought that tree would be an excellent Jungle Gym for us, The Shepherd cut it all up and a friend of Mummy's came today and took away the wood for his fire place.

"All's well that end's well", I always say.

Everyone have a great weekend.

Love, your roving reporter, Gracie!

It takes all kinds -

See the lady mid-picture by the grey truck? She owns another business on our block. She thinks we take up too much of the parking. (he is parked a half a block away from her business entrance - and as you can see, there is a bit of parking available on her side of the street)

She is leaving a little pile of brown poo courtesy of her doggie where my co-worker will unwittingly step in it before he gets into his truck.

I guess she didn't realize that all the cameras on our building might catch her in the act....(we are a "security company" after all). Sheesh!

Just wrong on so many levels.

Spinning Silk Caps

What the heck is a silk cap? I asked my friend and spinning teacher, Yvonne, when she offered to teach a seminar on Spinning Silk Caps at our Guild meeting. She said that she had been "gifted" some silk caps and would love to teach people how to use them in spinning. And we had a big group of people who were interested too - several visitors from guilds to the south even.

Quoting from The Silk Worker : "Silk caps are made from cultivated cocoons that have been degummed and stretched over a frame shaped like a bell. They consist of a number of extremely thin layers (maybe 10 or 12 layers) each layer is one cocoon." (There are also "Silk Hankies" where the silk has been stretched over a square frame instead - several people were working with those)

And they really are the size of a cap, in fact the one you are looking at here was a birthday present from our friend Nancy - and it really was big enough for me to put it over my head like a cap, but I digress...

Nancy had taken a silk cap and dyed it all these beautiful colors.

When I was in China in 1981, I remember going to a silk factory and watching the little ladies and probably young girls putting the cocoons on the thread machines - Each cocoon has about a MILE of silk strands on it - and these strands of silk are very strong -







The trick is to separate ONE layer from the cap and then you pull it out flat, sort of like you were shaping out a pizza dough - then, you pop a hole in the middle and take this "donut shape" and keep making it bigger, and bigger - one cap will stretch out so much that you can have a circle of "roving" that will go around your hands if you have your arms stretched out to each side (like wings)

Then you can, as The Silk Worker suggests - put the stretched out silk roving into a bowl and spin from that, or Yvonne suggested wrapping it around a TP roll or around your wrist. I couldn't get it to stay on the TP roll, so I opted for winding it around my wrist. That worked perfectly for me - as you can see, it perplexed Gracie - who was very interested in snoopervision of my efforts.

Have you ever worked with silk? The tiny fibers catch on ANY little rough place on your hands. I forgot to mention that one of the things that we had to do before we started working with the silk was to do a little "spa treatment" on our hands - use an emery board to smooth off any hang nails or chips on our fingernails then we did a scrub with sugar and oil, of all things - it really did get rid of most all the places that the fibers were catching.

Here is my silk roving ready to be spun. It is such strong fiber that you can actually knit directly from the roving.










One thing spinning silk requires though is a LOT of patience. This is the result of TWO HOURS of spinning! I have two caps to spin - One is the one pictured above and the other is just reds and golds. I decided that I will ply the two together for my silk thread and use it to crochet jewelery - necklaces, bracelets, etc - guess what everyone will get for Christmas NEXT year? Ha ha ha...

Wishing my Sister Wisten a Very HAPPY Birthday!

This big bouquet of flowers is a "virtual" birthday bouquet for my oldest sister.

I won't tell you how old she is, but here is a hint - she was ten years old when I was born.

















This picture was taken at my grandparent's 50th wedding anniversary. My sisters and I were the youngest of their eight grandchildren. (one sister was on the other side of the "eight" and I'm not skilled enough to photoshop her into this picture)

She was about 15 in this picture -














And because we both have January Birthdays, here is a big bouquet of summer flowers!












Here she is in her thirties - I wanted her granddaughters to see how pretty their Grandmom was when she was younger (not that she isn't pretty now - ooh, ooh, I'm stepping in it...)














And because she loves Hawaii - some plumeria -










So, to my dear sister, with love, I hope you have the happiest of birthdays! And Many, Many more! (and your present and card will be there sometime in the middle of the week)

And you know what they say - Hogs and quiches!

The Caturday Report!!

Hello everybodies and everykitties!

Gracie here with the Caturday report.

Well you know all about the snow that we had this week. Georgie and I were too little last year when it snowed, so this is the first time we've had to play in it. We go outside for a little bit, the come back in and warm our toesies on Mummy's big bed.

This week's report though is about this guy who has been climbing in and out of under the house, both yesterday and today!

It is a mystery to me, because every time he climbs out from under the house he is dripping with water and saying bad words. Then he comes to the back door, reports to The Shepherd and then he climbs back under the house. If it is so cold and wet under there, I don't know why he keeps going back. Mummy was mumbling something about "Many green papers going out the window...."

(Yes, folks, Mummy here - the reason that man goes back under the house is because he is a very highly paid plumber - (although I don't think you could pay me enough to do the job he is doing)
We are hoping that our insurance will help cover some of the costs.)

And take a look at Gracies little toesies that were warming up on the big bed. Aren't they sweet?

The snow is almost gone - maybe tomorrow - Mummy has lots of Laundry & other errands!

Love and smootchies to you all - especially to our friend Momma Maria who has started her own new blog called The Cat's Meow. Mummy has known Maria for a long time now - maybe 20 or so years! She has lots of kitties and a very quirky sense of humor.

See ya next week! XOX Gracie!

The view from the Cat Door

Yup, 16 degrees - that's what the little widget on my computer said this morning. What it didn't say was that there were NE winds of about 30 mph blowing out of the Frasier River Canyon up in Canada.

Make that about 2 degrees. Brrrrrr!

With my bad knee, I move so slowly that I'd freeze to death between the back door and the car. I decided it was a good day to stay at home.



So I spent most of the day at the computer working on "work" stuff - "Logmein" is a wonderful program.

I got two of my quarterly reports done!

And spent a lot of time monitoring the cats coming and going - mostly worrying about them when they would go out and wishing they'd get back in the house.

Hmm - doesn't really look too bad out there -



Look the wind has died down -








.




"18 degrees - schmeighteen degrees - that's what I've got a fur coat for", says Gracie on her way out to check up on The Shepherd when he went out to feed the sheep!















George finally succumbed to his favorite snoozing spot after deciding that "Schmeighteen" degrees really was too cold to spend much time out there...













Even Bella spent most of the day inside. But with a careful watchful eye on bird TV.











And Gracie - after a few short trips in and out, spend most of the day on "the big bed" -

"Come join me Mummy" -

No, sorry sweetie, I have to get back to work. You have a nice nap now.

Snowdazed

Thank heavens.

Mother Nature waited a few days to deliver my "Birthday Snow"

I had WAY too many things to do last week to have to do them in the snow!








It started snowing Saturday night when we were driving home from the Asian Bistro.

And it snowed all night, scuttling my plans to do errands on Sunday morning - Oh, well, I'll just sleep in - since my spinner guild meeting was Saturday morning and I didn't get to sleep in then either.






And it snowed the better part of Sunday too.












Until Sunday evening when it warmed up a little and the snow flakes fell off of the trees - do you recognize this picture from the first one?

Do you see the Witch Hazel, all covered in yellow blossoms? If you biggify the first picture, you can see it all covered with snow.








The Shepherd said it was mighty slippery on the roads when he came back from church.

The Mrreows were racing around "like crazy pants" in the snow. In and out the cat door about
eighty seven times - They were very little the last time there was snow here and I think their previous mommy kept them in the house because they were so tiny.




It ended up a pretty sunset on Sunday, but then started snowing again during the night. I decided to stay home from work yesterday, but went in today. The roads were traveled enough that they weren't too bad. It is only supposed to snow a "skiff" tonight and tomorrow then warm up AND IT WILL ALL BE GONE!!