Know These Mushrooms?

The last couple of afternoons Leeloo and I have been walking around the neighborhood for exercise and to expend some energy for her. ;-) She's loving the solo walks, but it really shows that I have made absolutely no attempt at loose leash walking. She's on a flexi and she's here there and everywhere. I'm paying close attention to cars, so that I can shorten the flexi and keep her out of the road. The last couple of days have been in the low 50s so she's walking without her t-shirt on.. I still need to knit her up a second sweater and want to sew her up a raincoat. The raincoats I have are too big for her. Should bring one over to Tammy to see if it fits Lily if they're interested in continuing their walks through the fall/winter weather. ;-)

In three different yards we've spotted different types of mushrooms. I have no idea what they are, so thought I'd take the camera today to capture them and put them out here for people to help identify them. I don't think they are edible, not sure if they would work for dyeing. I'm just curious.  Can you help?

 For some reason this one just seems like it should be edible, like a chanterelle.

 Almost flowery in the waves of the caps.

 Flat yellow-brown, along with the brown with white under sided one above. The cap is flairing up too.

 I don't know if it fell over on its own or if it had help. Yesterday it was upright and probably about six or seven inches tall and just as wide as you can see. Its a red-orange with white spots and then there are the white round balls to the left of them.

Three clusters of these in the lava rock.

Kind of like potato chips.....

I've used up all the handspun samples that I had on hand. Turns out they made a total of seventeen blocks. Fifteen of them are 6-1/2x6-1/2 inches, one a little bigger and another a little smaller. I'm sure they'll balance out once I get more samples or leftovers from using stashed handspun.

Here's all the blocks:

 Biggest one in upper left, smallest in lower right. I didn't even try to get them that way....

 The oranges or lighter colors.

 The brights along with the natural yak/merino 

The blues/purples

I'm ready for something with larger needles. I have the yarn, pattern and needles in the bag to start Leeloo another sweater. The temps have been dropping down into the mid-40s this week, so she could use another.

BSJ and a new addiction

With the many kind suggestions, I started a Baby Surprise Jacket for the cousin-in-law's baby. Her name is Alyssa and she was born on October 22nd in the afternoon and everyone is doing fine. The Ravelry group for the sweater is awesome! I joined the monthly KAL and with the help of the their wiki and helpful suggestions for each stage (its broken into five), the sweater zipped along. There was a bit of boredom but I trudged along and soon things were interesting again.

I showed my WWSiP day samples all spun up in the last blog post. I was trying to find something to do with them and others that I have in my stash when I was reminded of doing the Barn Raising Quilt blocks for Sock Summit 09. I've been busy knitting them since completing the BSJ. Perfect TV watching project or knitting with the ladies. Their kind of like potato chips right now, can't stop at just one. I've used up all the mini-skiens from this year's WWSiP:

I have a few small skeins left to become blocks and then the project will go on hold until more join the stash. I'm spinning up a 7.9 ounce batt of Spinner's Hill. Its a combination of wool-mohair-silk in a gorgeous burgundy color. I'm going to try to finish up the first bobbin this afternoon. There's Portland Spinnerati Tuesday night, Wednesday spinning and Spinning Bee next Sunday, so lots of time to get the second bobbin done.

At the family dinner a couple weeks ago we found out that it had been decided not to the family exchange, so that helped with some of my knitting. I have some other craft ideas in mind for gifts that don't involve knitting. I'm also considering quick knit projects for those that do, like slippers.

Our spinning group had fun this last week. We all brought pumpkin items to share. There was pumpkin spice lattes, pumpkin curry soup, pumpkin cookies and bread, pumpkin pie and pumpkin fudge. I made pumpkin pie from a roasted pumpkin that I pureed. It was the third such pie from that pumpkin. I had already tried out Bobbie Flay's Throwdown pies and everyone liked those. The recipe as is made two pies for me. Brandon took one to work for their Halloween party and it was gobbled up. I had half of one left so took that along with the Pumpkin Struesel I tried out. I had enough filling that I filled a few ramekins. This made it so that Kim who is on a gluten free diet could have some. If I do the pie again, I'd make sure that I had pecans on hand (had to sub in almonds) and some more butter so that it would actually kind of caramelize. We enjoyed our pumpkin potluck so much that we've decided to do something similar for December. Maybe a cookie one? 

Still some roasted pumpkin leftover, so may try out these pumpkin drop biscuits. Have you tried using roasted pumpkin that you've made?

Why not?

I appear to be in a knitting conundrum. I have lots I'd like to knit, but I have several things I *should* knit. One of them a baby sweater for a baby due any day by the cousin-in-law. I have the yarn, I have the pattern - Baby Surprise Jacket, that I've never knit. Pretty yarn too. So why am I not knitting?

With the cold I've had the last week, I could blame it on excessive napping, and foggy brain. I really hadn't been knitting much before the cold though, not like normal. The cold is just down to a stuffy head, some late night coughing and a HUGE cold sore on my upper lip.

I don't think I've done a lot of knitting though since Nessa. Depression, then getting Leeloo and having a small puppy to keep an eye on. Leeloo though is now eight months old and lets me do things more often. I'm way behind on what I wanted to knit for people for Christmas gifts. So I'm trying to remind myself I can let go of these expectations of myself and come up with other things.  Probably good to shake things up a bit. I can then start on the bin of projects in the new year.

I have been spinning though! I've spindle spun half of the World Wide Spin in Public samples and chain plied them. The other half I spun up over a couple evenings and then chain plied them at the first Portland Spinnerati meeting in its new location, Urban Fiber Arts. I've even come up with a plan for the samples, making up Barn Raising Quilt squares. The World Wide Spin in Public Samples:

In other spinning news I had been working on three two-ounce bundles of what I think are a 50/50 merino/silk blend that I had gotten with my wheel purchase from Morgaine of Carolina Homespun.  I have two more similar bundles to spin up, but they were just different enough in color that I didn't want to spin them together. I put each bundle on their own bobbin and then took a few days to ply them together. I opted to use the bulky flier and more treadling rather than trying to force them all on to one of the four ounce bobbins.

So I ended up with 953 yards of three-ply lace weight yarn. I think I'm going to do the Torreyana Shawl with the yarn. I may need to find some pretty lavender beads to go along. I think there's another Gem Faire next month to help out with that.

I did end up with twenty yards of leftover single. Picked up a drop spindle and two plied it for a little over ten yards to play with.

"Coat" for Leeloo

Rachel at OFFF Saturday afternoon gave me a little red 'coat' for Leeloo. It didn't fit her family's Yorkie, but Leeloo is a little smaller in the chest. It's a tiny bit snug on her, but its given me tons of ideas on how to make more for her. Some that can match my garb and some just because. I just need to get or make some bias tape. I think I have some D rings.

Leeloo all bathed and modeling it:

Very cool fabric!

Thank you Rachel!!

PS: The ears are down here, but usually the right is up and the left is down. Then there's the 'full alert' mode when both are straight up. I tease her about her lazy ear, she just sniffs.

Oregon Flock & Fiber Festival 2010

Trtlgrl and I were up ridiculously early, for us. We tried waiting for Gail, but her GPS was out of date and didn't know that our feeder street had been reconstructed from the main road, so she wasn't finding where to turn. This meant that we were later than we had planned to arrive in Canby. So we left everything heavy in the car and walked into the fairgrounds. Rachel headed to the Registration line to check into her Goat Cheese Making class and I met up with some of the PDX-Knit-Blogger/Portland Spinnerati ladies who had already arrived.

Since it was almost 9am, I dropped off my stuff with Duffy and headed in to see if Blue Moon Fiber Arts had their sale bins like last year. I looked through their area carefully and no bins were found. Then took Susan her samples and received my payment from her. She was very excited to receive them. ;-) So back out to start getting things setup.

Estonian Lace Wrist Warmers, Madrid Wrist Warmers, and Winter Twilight Mitts

Nadine came back to the car with me and we brought back the canopy and chairs. Cindy had loaned her canopy (I picked it up Friday morning). I dropped the canopy off then went back for the rest of the stuff, my chair and lunch.

This worked out well, because by the time I got back both canopies were set up and tarps down and just had to make a suggestion on which canopy sheets were hung from. Set up my folding chair with the help of Michelle's DH (he'd also pointed out the sheet problem, I just voiced it.) Sat down to let my muscles stop screaming from the overload I'd put them under and say hi to people.

Then it was off to take a look at some booths. I don't think I really went around to all of the booths, this was a safety measure on my part since I was really, really trying not to buy anything. I even had told Klaus that I wasn't going to be buying anything from him this year. I think it was an hour and a half later I was eating my words. Spinning friend Pam had told me about his great deal on Targhee. I had wanted to spin this for a long time and getting some at Klaus's great prices only made sense, and I had already checked that Woodland Woolworks didn't have any on hand.

From there it was a slightly slippery slope. A skein from Upstream Alpacas booth, but not dyed by her came home. Some additional chinese cashmere, and a pretty braid from Knitted Wit found their way into my bag. There was also the bag of goodies from the Knitmore Girls they were handing out in the Abstract Fiber booth.
Collage of the goodies:

Lots of friends were seen and talked to, and not everyone got the picture taken, sadly. We had Melissa back visiting from her move to the desert known as the Tri-Cities. Local knit designers and dyers that were seen in and out of booths. People helped out with learning new skills in the booth and friends remembering the joy of spinning on their 'Delights', and food enjoyed:

Then there was the trip to the barn to see the 'flock' portion of the event. Seeing the alpacas, llamas, variety of sheep and goats. Watching the Navajo-Churros be judged. I have some films of that because I found it pretty darn hilarious that these horned sheep were pretty woosy about the whole judging event. Saw one flop over on the way to the ring - no don't want to go, you can't make me! Then was shown that yes, you will as he was picked up and carried in. After watching the judging where the first thing the judge does is reach under the dangling fleece and grope up their testicles, I guess it was a lucky thing for the sheep that it was warm out and the guy's hand should have at least been warm! ;-) Told that story to a pygora breeder, I think Marcella of Weldon's Merry Menagier, and she was jumping into the pen with her goats trying to feel them up because another friend had mentioned that she might have missed one of the teste on a goat when she was castrating. The things you can learn in the barn! ;-)

Rachel and I headed home after the 5pm booth closing. There was a Starbuck stop to help Rachel stay awake for the drive. Rachel plans to go back and a some other friends. I had planned to get some yardwork done, but the rain has foiled that plan. We do have a birthday dinner for the niece who shares the same birthday as Norbert. They both turn nine today. Happy Birthday Keisha and Norbert!

Susan G Komen Breast Walk Portland 2010 - 20th Anniversary

Ravelry friend, Michelle was short a couple of people for her team and was going to lose that status if she didn't find people. So I checked with Brandon and we agreed to help fill her team. Friday afternoon we met up and went through the Health Expo they were having and for her to hand over our t-shirts and numbers. We scored some nice swag and each won free appetizers from a prize wheel at the PF Chang's booth. I'm also in for a $100 gift certificate, but I'm not holding my breath!

We were up again early Sunday, so that we could get downtown by 8:30 - the 5k co-ed walk started at 9am. We missed meeting up with Michelle and the rest of her Shell's Angels, but we did get over to say hi to Dawn-Marie and Devon (her chi that Leeloo likes). Dawn-Marie was helping her husband out at the Stanley Steemer booth and so we did get one of the bottles of spot remover. They apparently ran out a half hour later, so we were lucky to get a bottle. Thanks Dawn-Marie!

Leeloo ended up walking about 2/3 of the walk. She would have walked the whole thing if she had her way. There were other dogs and some barking. Funniest was when she barked at a reflection of herself in a building windows. Everyone loved that she was wearing pink.

We ran into Denise, she's a survivor of breast cancer and the wife of a co-worker of Brandon's. He didn't get a picture of her though, darn it.

Waiting for MAX to go by

At the end we made a line of teenage girls in green happy. They were volunteers and they were trying to cheer on the walkers and no one was giving them high fives, so I took Leeloo through to high paw them:

I see this got more people started doing it behind us. ;-)

Did mention that Leeloo set the pace? We finished in an hour and thirteen minutes. It was a brisk walk. I'll definitely be feeling it tomorrow!

William ran the co-ed untimed run this morning. We did see him in passing when we got there. So it was a family event. ;-) We'll walk again next year I'm sure.