Hooray!!! A Very Happy Tuesday!

It's official - the Red Sox have signed Mike Lowell (3rd Base) for three more years!! (In case you missed it, he's my absolute favorite baseball player - and he won the World Series MVP this year! Whoo-hoo!)

Apart from his excellent playing, he just seems like such a class act, a real team guy. Doesn't crave the spotlight, quietly gets his job done, works hard, and is a wonderful liaison for the Spanish-speaking baseball players (he's Puerto Rican, just like my hubby and kidlets).

And, here's another reason to be happy:

Snow! And Stowe is open for skiing! (Man, I hope we can manage to move to Vermont sooner or later... Or at least build a little ski house/yurt up there.)

Oh, and I sold a scarf yesterday. :)

MVP!

Ah, finally, a chance to post. The resident Woodland Fairy has been hogging the computer today.


(She has wings, too, but we decided they were a little big to wear to preschool.)

Things are insane around here. Conall is croupy and teething, I'm sick and stressing out about the Guild sale, and Carlos is working (literally) around the clock (he's gotten about two hours of sleep since Saturday - seriously, two hours). Huge design review for him at work, yesterday (from 9am - 8pm) and today. Tape-out (when the chip schematics go to the fab to get built) is next Friday. Here's hoping he'll actually sleep tonight - I'll be the one pulling the all-nighter tonight!

The baby blanket is off the loom, I have a huge array of scarves, and I'm working on a quick bamboo shawl, which needs to be finished tonight. Then tomorrow night will be dedicated to tagging everything with care instructions, etc.

Oh - and the Red Sox won the World Series! :) And Mike Lowell, my favorite player, got the MVP award for the Series! Red Sox management, please, please, please sign him and stay miles and miles away from stupid-head A-Rod!

Baseball, Pillows and More

Now *that* is what I call a baseball game! Heck of a game last night at Fenway - of course I'm happy the Sox smucked the Rockies in Game 1, but last night's game was a real classic pitching duel... Both starters were excellent and the final score was 2-1. That's the kind of game that is fun to watch!

OK, on to weaving matters... I managed to put together my inventory for the Weavers' Guild Sale. Phew. One task done. Now I just have to finish up the last few items that are on the list but are still on my looms, eeks!

I did finish what I thought would be a turned Ms and Os shawl last night... Twisted the fringe in front of the game and got it washed, etc. But, as I suspected while I was weaving it, I'm not wild about the stripe pattern that I put into the weft. Looks kind of table-clothy for a shawl, at least to my eye. So, I'm thinking of cutting it up and making bolster-shaped pillows from it, which should suit the pattern perfectly. And it's made from bamboo, so it should stand up to use as pillow fabric (though that will be interested to discover). I've never made a pillow from my handwoven fabric before - fun!

I would post a picture, but half the batteries are missing from my camera. Taken to put into some toy or another (a little flashlight, actually, I think, for Bella, who loves that sort of thing).

There are never enough rechargeable batteries in this house! :) And we don't even buy the munchkins very many electronic toys...

So, here's a picture of some bamboo from Wikipedia article about bamboo:




And I really wish I had batteries in my camera because the leaves are soooo much prettier than last week! The colors are really spectacular this fall... We had a pretty terrible drought in August and September, I wonder if that contributed to the colors (eeks!)?

Whooo-hooooo!

Go Sox!!

After coming back from a 3 games to 1 deficit in the ALCS, my much-beloved Red Sox are going to the World Series!

I chose this picture because that's my favorite player over there on the right - Mike Lowell (our third baseman) - with his arm around Josh Beckett's neck (Beckett is the guy in the red jacket - he's a pitcher and quite possibly the Cy Young winner for the AL this year, but we'll see - really like him too). Please, please, please, Red Sox management, extend Lowell's contract!!

We're facing the Colorado Rockies in the Series. They're 21 for their last 22 games. They've won something like 10 straight games. (For those of you that don't follow baseball - that's practically unheard of).

Gulp.

:)

It will be fun to watch!

WOW

Holy Macaroni - Clay Buchholz just pitched a NO-HITTER for the Red Sox.

He's a rookie.

It was his *second* major league start ever!!

Fenway Park was going crazy... When I was in college, I lived off-campus very close to Kenmore Square and we could hear the crowd at Fenway (went to quite a few games, too, when bleacher seats were $8 - not any more!). That sort of reaction would have everyone around the tv, hearing the crowd in stereo over it and through the window.

Random Stuff and Kumihimo

So, Sox fans, how about that Jon Lester?? Whoo-hoo! So proud of him! (For those of you who aren't part of Red Sox Nation, lol - Jon Lester is a very talented, *very* young pitcher (21? 22?) for the Red Sox who was diagnosed with cancer - lymphoma - last fall. He underwent treatment over the off-season, made a complete recovery, has been working his way through our minor league system and made his first start last night against the Cleveland Indians - and he did great!)

OK, onto other topics. This little guy visited us again yesterday:



That's a woodpecker, attacking our garage! LOL - I was wondering where those holes in the trim came from... How weird. Wonder if there's something living in there for him to eat?? Yikes, there's a scary thought. Another thing to add to the list of repairs we need to do in our copious spare time. HA.

Lastly, something fiber-related! So, I've always thought Kumihimo (Japanese braiding/cord-making technique) is really neat. Finally got around to making some cord from some of my bamboo yarn:

Hmm. Well. Ms. B decided she wanted to be in the picture, so it's kind of hard to see the braid, lol. That's ok, it's just kind of ok. Trying to think of what to do with it. So far, it's made an excellent cat toy, Madeline loves pouncing it. I am thinking of making a bracelet and earrings out of it - exactly the sort of thing I'd wear...

Argh!

Let's play spot the threading error...


Can you see it? It is about halfway across in the photo. Ugh. See, this is what I get for my hubris/tempting the PTBs by saying that I rarely make threading errors. LOL. Serves me right!

Glad this fabric is just for me and Conall - if it were for a customer I'd have had to fix it. This way I get to be lazy. Now that it's off the loom, though, there's another problem - I think it's too short! Argh! Could I have made any more mistakes with this project? Well, yes, I suppose so.

Maybe I'll think of something else to use the fabric for... Little bags of some sort? Promo samples? I've covered journals with woven fabric before and they came out quite nice...

Oh - Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there! And what a gorgeous day for Mother's Day here. Sunny, low 60s, perfect weather, the lilacs are blooming (YUM). Not too hot, not too chilly, warm in the sun, but not too warm - I actually got some gardening in today as well as weaving. And I had the audacity to stop watching the Red Sox game before the 9th inning - oops. Missed the hugely dramatic come from behind win. Rats. A very nice, low-key Sunday!