I got a pony! I got a pony! And other excitements

Yesterday a box arrived with beautiful yarn, Texan candy (nuts and caramel in milk chocolate), and, drumroll -- a pony!

I can't wait to use the yarn, beautiful stuff, silk/merino, cotton, self striping and much more. The candy has already been thoroughly tested.

Thank you so much, dear Texan blogista R!

And Pony, who needs a name, please, has already done her first photo shoot.

Ready to help take a donation to the food pantry.

This gift box enabled me to Freecycle a bag of handspun, single skeins and balls in various colors, with an instant crowd of requesters. 

Then Tuesday Knitting Group was fun, all the usual suspects and a nice couple of new people, the wife adept at crochet and the husband learning, in order to have a shared interest with her. 

They're Korean, unew here, and still dealing with the English language. He works doing engineering research here, on secondment from his home Korean University.  But they coped pretty much, made a hit, and we hope they'll become regulars.

♥️ Red resistance hats under way, destined for family and friends 

Here's a demo of one of the splices D learned at a recent class 

And Toad's bathing suit is coming along 

A top down sweater being rethought 

Another resistance hat, using hand dyed yarn, the knitter wearing her handmade jacket

Someone did some shopping at the event where she studied splicing

 

Here's her latest lacy shawl in progress, graduating light to dark.

Talk ranged over snow, ice, Korean food, children's language, Paris, Brittany, the high Pyrenees, Francoise Sagan, kimchi, resistance hats, pussy hats, yarn gifts, Indian and Burmese (Myanmar) independence, and more.

Home to tea, banana bread, Texan candy and Textiles and Tea, with Teresa Georgallis,  a high end low key production weaver and teacher currently based in Cyprus.  She grew up and studied in the UK, getting a number of degrees there.

She specializes in subtle designs and colors, some she dyes with local mud. There's a range of pigments naturally occurring in the mud, including copper -- hence the name of the island of Cyprus.  She usually uses cotton, contrasting mercerized glossy cotton with the more matt nonmercerized.

Her life and business partner is a potter, also using local clay. They've traveled to several countries to highlight artisan work from there and exhibit it in Nicosia.

Mud dyed yarns hanging on the wall behind her

She teamed with leather workers to create these bags

She has designed and built a four harness collapsible loom, formerly distributed by Harris, no longer, and now created and distributed anew, using laser cutting and 3D printing. It can be folded down completely, warp still in place, a great inventive feat.

These are high end shirts she designed, hand woven in India.

She's a teacher, too and has used her loom to introduce kids as young as seven, all the way to adults, to principles of weaving. She emphasizes to kids how similar computer programming is to weaving, which gets their interest quickly, the binary principle easy to grasp.

Happy day, everyone! I had my usual Beautiful Tuesday. And the temperature was all the way up into the thirties f.

And in today's resistance I messaged my state legs. to resist the ICE attempts to buy NJ warehouse space for concentration camps. Sent a donation to Minneapolis to support daily help with food and diapers for house bound residents. 

Greetings from Ted, Big Ursy and Pony 

No ice is good news and food happens

 An older person's view of the weather forecast

No ice! This is big.

Lately I've been cooking good meals but not photogenic ones. Ground turkey with cannellini beans, that kind of good stuff, and my food designer never turned up, again, so you didn't get the benefit.

Yesterday I did make something to show you, very simple, not up to anything elaborate at the moment, a tired time of year.

Broccoli/tomato sauce with penne and a lot of Serrano peppers diced in, big grind of long red pepper.  Enough for three meals, always a plus, that I can heat and eat.

This probably has an Italian name, penne primavera or something. 

Yesterday saw a bit of free cycling, lights which I've had around for ages, wrong size for outside, my original intent, wouldn't charge adequately indoors, my backup plan, too late for a return for refund, my backup backup plan. 

So they went to the first of a horde of requesters, within a couple of hours of posting. Even without pictures, sometimes the site won't, though when that happens I offer to email them.

And, the Izzy dolls moving right along, I did send for a different shade of possible face-colored yarn, and this arrived

Looking like clay or something, and at first I didn't realize what it was, since the package was so shrunken you couldn't read the words. I did find "yarn" and all became clear. Vacuum packed! After I managed to find a way in without cutting the yarn, it sprang to life

 

Made in Turkey, like a lot of yarns. It seems to be a  thriving Turkish industry.

Happy day, everyone, whatever mysterious packages it holds for you. Like the surprise big Izzy, the result of picking up the wrong, too big, needles, but what's a manufacturing glitch between friends?

Winnowing redux and other plans

 I saw a bee on the lavender this morning, first one on it, which tells me it's nearly ready to pick and share. Bees are great indicators of when blossoms are ready.

Several friends will dry their share to use on the linen shelf, one, a great cook,  is planning an ice cream experiment. A day or two more sunshine will bring up the scent into the flowers.

And our cool rainy spring has kept the pansies going much longer than usual

And driven up a lot of foliage

Indoors, Winnowing is happening again. After waiting long enough to be sure, I'm moving along some crewel and other yarns.

They'll do well at the thriftie, when I get there. I've used all I can of them, and they're good quality, so someone may be happy.

This is the result of receiving an email about a yarn sale, which caused my Inner Cheapskate, I mean Green Warrior Guarding the Earth, to say are you sure you need to buy? Check upstairs 

And I did, finding the Winnowing material, also this, 

Beautiful fine wool, which I'd forgotten about and is  just like the thing that I nearly bought and now don't need to. And some fine cotton that will go with it. 

I don't have a great track record of rendering skeins into usable balls, not having one of those machine things (swift?)  but my mom didn't have one either. 

She did usually have a kid, me, though, available as a yarn holder and steady waver-about to keep the rhythm going without snagging the yarn and annoying the knitter.

The Tunisian Mitered Square learning seems to have reignited my Square hunger, so the skirt can wait a little. The weather's stormy anyway, not exactly skirt weather. Anyway that's my story.

No, I don't know what I'll make. I'll make squares until I find out.

Good news and catch-up, and pearl unfurling

 Today is turning out well. From the feds finally depositing relief in my account, overnight, after a delegation of NJ members of congress recently shamed the SocSec into handing over the files to the IRS

To a wonderful upcoming gift of yarn from dear C, a rl as well as virtual friend, in support of the Mitered Square Caper. She asked what would be good, and these warm colors will be great for lifting up the rather gloomy shades I'm down to.

Then, yesterday the backup phone,  the one repaired with tape, that has been playing the part of a tablet.gave out. Black screen no matter what I do.   

Soooo, wondering if I'd finally have to spring for a tablet, I pulled out the old tablet which stopped working weeks ago. It's now, after a rest and recharge,  partly working, luckily the parts I want. I can access and play audiobooks, and a nice version of solitaire, yay. 

They're a sleep aid, same few favorites, like a kid's favorite stories. So it will stick around a while. This happened after I'd been looking up electronic recycling, right in front of it. It knew.

And since tomorrow Handsome Son and I will finally celebrate Easter, there was today the Unfurling of the Pearls.

When I opened the box I noticed they'd worked themselves into a map of the UK. This would never do, Albion being in the rear view mirror, 

So this happened, an approximation of my home state, New Jersey.  Only moderately accurate, but they didn't have cartography in mind when they strung the pearls.

And the Easter eggs, cats, dogs and Dollivers are reunited

You see the white cat, foreground, guarding the two remaining cockatiel eggs, the other having collapsed from the weight of the air, I'm guessing.

Dogs guarding whatever they can find to guard, and the Boehm bunny in place. The blue and pink plastic eggs were a present from a little girl down the street.

Good day, all things considered. I've heard that phrase before somewhere.