Have you any wool?

I know it's been too long since I updated when I have to read my last blog post to see where I left off. ;)

March and April have been very busy months indeed. I knew March would be busy. My sister came to visit during March Break so between getting the place ready, getting caught up at work in hopes that I wouldn't have to work during her visit (which unfortunately didn't work and I had to spend a bit of time in the den during her visit.) and of course the visit itself.

All in all though, it was a nice visit. She was an awesome house guest. We did way too much shopping (Is that possible?) and she got her hair done at the salon. It would seem testing the limits of what hair dye can do runs in the family.

The grand finale of the trip was the Toronto AnimeCon (not to be confused with Anime North) The con was a bit of a disappointment. It was way smaller then Anime North, there were no real deals to be had (and any that were to be had were canceled out by the $15 you had to pay to get in the door.) But we still had a good time.

We all cosplayed this time. Shaggy went as a Jedi like always, I went as Aerith Gainsborough from FFVII : Crisis Core and my sister went as Near from Death Note (and got Shaggy hooked on Death Note in the process.)

Of course what's cosplay without pictures:

I've also been really busy with my spinning, knitting and crocheting. I got some new equipment. I needed a lighter spindle. But I didn't read the item description properly and got a much lighter spindle then expected. It's a pretty spindle, but I need to practice with something a bit heavier first before I can use this spindle:

It's a .6 oz Rose Quartz Butterfly Girl Designs Spindle from Spunky Eclectic.

I also got a wheel :) I finally found a used wheel in my price range (wheels can be quite pricey!) Shaggy helped me bring it home on the subway as it's quite heavy. It's a really old Louet S10:

And here's my first yarn on the bobbin:

And here's that yarn all plied up and dyed:

1/2 pound and 190 yards of Grey Coopworth wool, dyed with Grape, Strawberry and Changin' Cherry Kool-aid. I'm knitting it into a purse at the moment. It's knitting up nicely. There are a few over spun and under spun spots, but hey it was my first wheel spun yarn.

Of course I spun a bit of yarn on my spindle before I found the wheel.

1/4 pound 82 yards White Coopworth wool, dyed with green & blues Easter egg dye

45 Yards of Faux Cashmere & Alpaca dyed with Icing Dye

I also spun up more yarn on the wheel. The wheel is much faster then any of my spindles. I like to spin while watching Star Trek in the evenings. Especially if I have seen the episode before (Shaggy hasn't seen a lot of them. And I like watching them again anyway.) I was able to spin my second skein in less then a week. I needed to get it done for Guild Day. I bought the wool a week before guild day and it was spun and dry in time for me to go.

1/2 pound , 177 Yards of Blue Faced Leicester dyed with Acid Dyes

I dyed the skien during the guild day dyeing work shop. I also tried my hand at needle felting. We made pendant necklaces. I really enjoyed the needle felting and picked up some supplies to have on hand. It's a nice way to use up little bits and pieces of roving.


Wow, that was one super long post. But now I'm up to date and can stop procrastinating about updating. At least until I get behind again. :)

A belated Happy Imbolc

A belated happy Imbolc to all (and Happy Groundhog Day too)! We had a huge snowstorm up here. It was a quiet Imbolc, given that I'm still trying to organize things around here and get into some sort of flow.

Got back to belly dance this week. I realized how much I missed it. I'm going to get a mirror for the living room, so that I can practice in a larger space. Having the stereo handy will be nice too. It's sucks trying to belly dance with an iPod.

I finished LocoRoco! All 5 worlds. I'm so happy. I never beat video games! I never manage to stay focused enough to keep to one game (I'm inflicted with "Oooohhh Shiny!" syndrom)

I figure I'll try to stick to one console and one handheld game at a time. So right now it's FFVII & Sonic Rivals (I got in on sale at Zeller's. I picked up the last copy they had. Yeah me!) We'll see how that goes.

I'm back

I always have a hard time blogging when I've gone wandering for too long. I feel like I have to recap everything, but this time there seems to be so little to re-cap. Things have kind of been ho-hum and dreary. My in-laws have finally moved on, and anyone who knows me well, knows I have a hard time living with others. I'm don't like people disturbing my processes and I've grown quite fond of the ivory tower I've built for myself. It's not that I dislike my in-laws or that they are hard people to live with. On the contrary. I feel that I am a hard person to live with, and end up feeling bad for it the whole time.

But that has passed, and "normal" life is taking over, what ever that may be. :)

My birthday was last week and Shaggy got me an awesome gift! A PSP slim. I'm so happy with it. I've been spend way too much time enjoying LocoRoco. But it's so fun and so relaxing. Almost in a mantraish sort of way. "Stop stressing out and just roll this little ball around!" I'm already over half way done. And I'm really really bad at finishing video games.

Speaking of unfinished video games, I've been a Final Fantasy fan for sometime now. But I've never actually finished a game. I love the story lines and the characters but I tend to jump around and want to play the latest greatest thing. But I think I finally have a reason to sit down and actually finish FFVII (the first FF game I bought):

They made a FFVII prequel!

That's like the next best thing to remaking FFVII itself (which I hope they do. It's the series 20th anniversary. They re-released I, II, and Tactics, so there's still hope!)

I came late to the FFVII scene. It was so cool looking in Grade 9 but when I finally got a copy of it myself in college the graphics were soooo dated that it's almost hard to play. I actually prefer sprites to the first 3d rendered images.

But I know I'm going to want to play the new one, so I'll hunker down and work through the old one. FFVII is a great game with a great story. So I think I'll hook up the PS2 today (Shaggy hasn't gotten around to doing that. He's been too busy with the Wii & Guild Wars) take advantage of the fact that since Shaggy is so obsessed with Guild Wars that I'll have the TV to myself for a bit and finally play through one of the great games of gaming history.

See I told you people my life is boring. I'm blogging about playing a PS One game in 2008. :P