christmas

Christmas came early here this year, well part of it.  Keri from 3AM Enchantments came down for her visit to put the club packages together.  She showed up with a bag full of goodies.   Books for Emily some very appropriate coasters and a glass for Bob and this beautiful quilt for me.  Not sure what on earth I did to deserve such a wonderful gift.  I know that it will always be keeping me warm in the years to come.

I have also been blessed with a complete set of Paula Dean cookware, new silverware set (service for 12) and new dinnerware (service for 12).  If you know me, you know that I do a lot of entertaining so all of this is going to come in very handy!  I do the Grandma's house kind of entertaining nothing fancy just wanna make sure everyone has a full belly and a smile on their face. 

The final shipment of the Tempted @ 3AM Bag and Yarn Club is now in Santa's sleigh and on it way to the waiting arms of each member.  So now it is time to announce that YES indeed we have decided to do it again!  Here are the particulars for next year.

 2010 Club: 
Current Club members, please notify Stacy via email (stacy@temptedyarns.com) by 12/14 if you wish to continue with us next year. If you have already notified Stacy, you are good to go. We will be opening the club to the general public on 12/15 at 2PM Central Time - sign ups are first come, first serve. You will receive an acknowledgment within 48 hours of sending us a message!

Here’s the breakdown for next year’s club: 
Cost: 
$200 if paid up front or $27.50 x 8 for installments 
Money will not be collected prior to 2/1/10 - we will have a for-sure billing and shipping schedule posted some time in January 
Shipments: 
Total of 4 shipments, starting in late March or early April, and ending in December. Each shipment will contain: 
Yarn: a skein of hand dyed yarn from Tempted - the base yarns will be suitable for socks (or projects with similar weight/yardage requirements). 
Bag: 
Handmade bag from 3AM Enchantments - the plan right now is for 2 KIP bags, 1 Emily Lace, and 1 Large Notions pouch 
Goodies: 
We plan to have buttons again, Soak sample packets, and additional hand crafted goodies from a surprise artisan (will be similar in value to 2009 Club goodies). 
Pattern: 
We will not be including patterns this year. Mainly this is a cost issue (time to design, plus the enormous cost of ink!). We look forward to seeing what everyone decides to do, and will have plenty of suggestions ourselves! 
Theme: 
The theme we have selected for the year is really exciting, and should inspire some truly incredible yarn. Stacy is planning to introduce at least 1 new yarn base to the Club again this year. The fabrics will all be high quality quilt shop cottons … I wish I could give you more of a hint, but I don’t want to spoil the surprise!!

Long time no Blog....

The holidays are now over and life is kinda starting to settle back in to something resembling normalcy.  There have been a bunch of changes in our lives here at 'Tempted', Bob has retired from a 32 year long career and now started another job.  Do you have any idea how much paperwork and how many phone calls go into retiring and starting new jobs?  Seriously stacks and stacks, I think we have it lined out now, well I sure hope so anyway.  

The holidays were nice but I am happy that all the craziness is over.  Speaking of the holidays I have to brag about a gift I received from Keri of 3am Enchantments.  Can you believe how beautiful these are? They are the Endpaper Mitts by Eunny Jang.  What a wonderful gift from such a great friend.  Thanks Keri!  Wish I had pictures of the goodies that I got from my Gray Ladies, Del put together an amazing gift bag together for Kaye and I, she really went crazy.  So many wonderful knitting accessories, I will have to get a picture and post it later.  Thanks girls I love it all.

I did finish the Clapotis and I love it, the length is perfect and it is so soft.  I am not a big scarf knitter but I really enjoyed this project.  Spinning the fiber was like a dream and the yarn felt wonderful in my hands.   I love the way the color changed throughout.   I wore it out last week and got a ton of compliments but the best came from the lady that owns the local liquor store.  She requested one for herself, now usually I would tell someone that I am way too busy to be doing personal knitting but this woman has been listening and encouraging me for years now.  She is not a knitter and still doesn't think I am crazy for pursuing such an unusual profession.  She thinks its great but has NO desire to start knitting, believe me I have tried to talk her into it.  Anyway I told her I would be happy to dye (hot pink and pale pink), spin and knit her a clapotis.  It is done and I am happy, I will stop by and give it to her tomorrow.  Hope she likes it.  Someone on Plurk told me it should bring me good Liquor Karma.  LOL

Ok so I have spent the last week either dyeing, re-skeining or sick in bed, in fact sick is where I am right now.  I have 2 big orders that need to be done and I am laying here coughing and whining, they will get done as soon as I can stay awake for longer then 2 hours at a time.   There is some serious whirlwind dyeing sessions in my future I think.

As I promised in the last post I am showing off the 50% Soysilk/50% Wool roving and yarn I made recently.  I love it, not at all difficult to spin and it is so soft.  This one is in the process of becoming my very first Clapotis, I know I am way behind the times but I just couldn't ever find the yarn I wanted to use.  Now I have and I love the way it is knitting up.

I am really enjoying the yarn and the pattern, lots of knitting fun.  I will be sending an order of the Soysilk roving off to The Loopy Ewe today, if I can get to the UPS store.  We have snow and ice so not real sure I will make it.  But I will share a picture of all the pretty colors.

Due to scheduling conflicts we quite commonly open gifts early, our kids are all over the place at Christmas and it makes it very difficult to get together.  This year we opened gifts this past Sunday evening when our middle girl came home from school.

Those of you who have tried to surprise an older child at Christmas will understand the dilemma we were faced with this year.  Emily is 11 and it would be impossible to hide a large box from her, so what do you do?  Well we wrapped it up and stuck it under the tree without a name on it. Of course that only peeked her curiosity, so when she started asking who it belonged to she was led to believe that it was for Mom.  My DH whispered in her ear "you know that momma wants a new spinning wheel" thus began the teasing and hinting. LOL  Several times over the last few weeks I said things like "I think I will peek at my big gift today"  her response was an outraged comment like "Don't you dare, you will ruin the surprise!!!"   This went on for weeks, every once in a while I would try to get her to tell me a little about it to no avail she wasn't telling anything.  LOL  Getting smart in her old age.

Finally it is time to open gifts and everyone starts in and Emily pushes "My" big gift over to me.  She tries to get me to open it for a few minutes and finally Dad says "but it isn't hers its yours".  The look on her face was priceless!  Then she exclaimed "but I don't want a spinning wheel". LOL  She finally opened it.  She was ecstatic and kept makeing comments about how mean we are one second and how much she loved us the next.  This is one of the memories she will hang onto forever.  Oh and btw she got Guitar Hero World Tour the complete Band.