Fiber Fool

When Chris was visiting after EPWM she turned me onto swap-bot. I had heard about it and even occasionally had an invite to join a swap there but had never done so. I really joined to take part in some music swaps as I have been wanting to mix up my music listening lately. However, I discovered newbies are not readily welcomed in lots of the music swaps. I did discover these awesome Photo ATC (Artist Trading Card) swaps though. They are quite low cost, quick, and allow newbies to establish a rating. There are also postcard photo swaps as well. I signed up for a few and really enjoyed it.

I decided to jump in and host my first swap-bot swap. They often have a specific theme so it struck me - how about a fiber arts themed photo ATC swap? There are some amazing fiber arts photos out there and it is always inspirational to see how others photo style their WIP or FO shots, or even their stash shots. There are many other yarn-theme swaps on there as well so if you think you’d like to do other fibery swaps, this one is a great way to get a rating. I do have the send date out a bit as I wanted plenty of time to recruit people so it won’t be a quick turn around rating getter. But whether you are old or new to swap-bot I’d love to have you play!

For those who are unfamiliar with artist trading cards there is a lot of info on them if you just Google it. For the photo ATC the “standard” is to have 2 X 3 inch prints made (or high quality home prints are okay here) and then mount them to 2.5 X 3.5 inch pieces of sturdy cardstock. Some people embellish them further, some don’t. Since they are trading cards contact info should be on the back - name, e-mail, web site if you have one. Some include a bit info on the back. If you are photographing commercially available stuff it would be nice to have the info on that on the back as well.

When I get my 2 X 3 inch prints I just order the 4 wallet 4 X 6 inch print. It’s 99 cents at Walgreens. You can save a bit of money by making your own file with 4 copies up and just get a standard 4 X 6 print for 19 cents, but I find that to be a little less precise, but it does save money. The photo ATC swaps are usually 3 partners so you get 4 copies of each photo you are sending and it allows you to keep a set yourself.

To read more about it and to sign up head over to http://www.swap-bot.com/swap/show/5970. If you have any questions, just ask! I’m fairly new to this, but FarrStarr has been of great help to me in finding my way around the photo swaps.

Firstly, thanks for indulging my absence last week. It took me until Wednesday to finish Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (I liked it, but that is about all I’ll say on the blog, e-mail if you really want to discuss it in detail) because I was trying to be good and still get my gardening and work tasks completed. By that point I had kind of enjoyed my hiatus from the blog. We were also originally going to be on vacation for a week starting last Wednesday so I decided it was okay to just take a brief vacation from the blog.

It ended up being a very good thing to do. Last week was almost unbearably hot so I didn’t accomplish much in the way of fibery stuff other than to think about it. But I even felt that my brain was par-boiled and I couldn’t think straight anymore. There was no way I was going to cook either. Not even grilling because the grill is on the west side of the house. This week is looking to be improved. Still hot, but not in the upper 90’s with lows barely below 70 so I should be in a bit better place.

Anyway, I seem to have won Deb’s contest to celebrate her 1000th post. I can’t tell you how excited I am to knit with someone else’s handspun!!!! But since I won a contest it seems I should hold one so I can pay the kindness forward. I haven’t decided upon the prize yet. I was thinking perhaps two of my patterns, but I might sweeten the pot a tad too. You just never know :-) Just asking for comments isn’t enough though. I have to make you work a little :-)

I finally finished up my first skein of lace weight for my Spun Stitches shawl last week. I used Abby’s plying technique and that is a fantastic method. I did end up with some inconsistencies, but overall I’m thrilled with the final product. It is in a warm bath as I type.

For the contest I’m asking you to guess the total yardage for this skein. It weighs 3.1 oz. The bobbin is the standard Majacraft “4 oz” plastic bobbin. The niddy noddy here is in the 1.5 yd configuration. The WPI of the unwashed yarn was ~25 WPI. My yardage total will be based on the niddy noddy unless I get assistance in getting a measure from a McMorran Balance (I don’t own one so I’ll need to borrow one or get someone to measure it with one). The winner will be the one closest to the actual measure without going over!

Well, my signing up for Tour de Fleece was awful optimistic given that the later part of July is often the worst as far as heat goes. Not that we’ll hit August and everything will be magically better, but come August usually we actually start cooling off decently at night again. As it has been we’ve been starting the day off with the house only cooled down to 74 degrees. That is plenty comfortable, but it means we climb over 80 by mid afternoon. My brain is cooking! Seriously, I can’t put three words together anymore. I’m not sure if it is directly correlated to the heat or if it is a matter of the lack of sleep due to the heat but it is driving me nuts!

Despite the heat I did finally finish up the second bobbin of lace singles for Spun Stitches. Once they set I’ll be plying them. It also means I need to get moving on making the slightly darker version of batts here too! I need to come up with a method that allows me to card while sitting though as my feet definitely can’t handle standing on the garage floor for the hours it took me to make the first three batts.

A Harry Potter update - the book arrived on Saturday, but at 8:30pm!!! And, there are 4 pages of it that are nearly unreadable!!! DH was very close to done when we absolutely needed to go to bed last night, but we took SIL3 out to dinner for her birthday and she lent us her copy as well so I’ll be doing a bunch of reading today, though perhaps some of it will be at a coffeeshop or something in hopes of getting my brain back.

And because we know it is busy garden time and there is something new everytime you check on it…

We have watermelon! I swear I counted four the other night, but once I went out to take photos I only found two. But isn’t it twee??? It’s so tiny, but you can tell it is watermelon! :-) We also thought we saw some set midget melons, but I couldn’t find those either, but you can tell the plants are going nuts with new growth and blooms! The watermelon vines I swear double overnight, LOL!

On that note, it’s time to do the morning garden chores and then hit Harry Potter!

Of course everyone else has been reading the final Harry Potter book. However, our pre-order has not yet arrived at nearly 6pm on Saturday! And DH will be reading it first. So, because I ran across spoilers when reading blogs last time I will not be reading blogs until I get my chance to read the book. I think we are on the verge of giving up our Amazon Prime order arriving and may see if we can locate a copy locally. This is one problem with a Saturday release. If something goes wrong with your delivery you have days to wait to get stuff straightened out! *sigh*

This week though I did get a book read, Snow Blind by mother-daughter duo P.J. Tracy. It is the fourth and most recent installment in the Monkeewrench series featuring Minneapolis detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth who are backed up by the Mokeewrench geeks.

In this installment a mild Minneapolis winter breaks out of its rut and a couple bodies are discovered at festival attended by scores of families. Soon it appears copycats are popping up elsewhere, but all the clues keep leading back to a sleepy small town north of Minneapolis. An inexperienced new sheriff gets to deal with one of the cases on her first day and she had previously never left the dispatch desk. With the aid of one of her deputies and Magozzi and Rolseth her seemingly never ending first day comes to a head.

I enjoyed the book, though not as much as the third book. Here the Monkeewrench gang only made a few brief appearances, never playing a very significant role in the plot. Grace and her cronies and their interactions with themselves and Magozzi and Rolseth are the most entertaining to me.

I also decided with this fourth read that these books are very formulaic. That shouldn’t be too surprising for mass market murder mystery/thriller book. However, they glaringly followed the same prescribed path as the previous books. They all seem to open with the reader witnessing the minutes leading to the main murder and then we’re off and following the detectives around. Even following the detectives around is pretty predictable if you’ve read the previous books very recently. The last one I read was a coupe months ago yet the similarities were still very obvious. Due to that I am glad that I’ve got up to them. As far as I know a 5th book is not coming up on release in the very near future.

Oh, and if you are Shelfari, I’m over there as well as fiberfool. I mostly have only cataloged my fiber arts library and the books I’ve read so far in 2007, most of which are library books. But look me up so we can exchange reading recommendations.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to act surprised. In fact, I suspect you were all expecting more garden photos today. That’s okay. I don’t mind being predictable. But, today I’ll be more positive. Though if you know of something I should be doing with these plants let me know. If the back of the seed packet doesn’t advise me of it I don’t know what I am supposed to do.

Above you’ll see that the Minnesota Midget Melons are going to town growing. The bed was amended with a fair bit of compost, but now that it is growing vigorously and blooming should I be fertilizing? As with the tomatoes do I need to be careful of nitrogen content of the fertilizer? Or should I just top dress with some more compost? Really, these questions apply to all of the photos found below as well.

Here are watermelon blossoms and a squash blossom. Can you tell I love the twice daily check ups on the garden? It is ever changing!

Something has caused the everbearing strawberry plants to go nuts now. Prior to this it was only the wild variety that has been sending out runners. I figured it was because they weren’t trying to flower and fruit like the everbearing. That said, one of the everbearing plants has nearly overnight had 6-8 blooms, set a fair number of berries and is sending out new runners every day! We haven’t done any post-planting fertilizing, just deep watering every 3-4 days with a soaker hose. But it sure is nice to see that those guys are settling in as much as the wild variety. I just hope they don’t choke out the wild ones! LOL!