Kitties and yarn just don't mix...

My cats absolutely looooove yarn, much to my dismay. The latest is Panda retrieved an almost full skein of Patons wool. He grabbed it out of a knitting bag with two projects in it, I was working on the other. That cat is so sneaky I didn't even notice! The project end of the yarn stayed in the knitting bag, but the skein end... He took it from the family room, through my office, down the hall, up the stairs, around my bed leg, back down the stairs, through my office again to anchor it, back up the stairs then back down... He ended up with 3 round trips on the stairs, 6 strands of yarn on the stairs!! And nobody heard anything... It wasn't until my oldest came out of her room and saw the evidence. She came and got me, I saw the strand leading out of the family room and thought no big deal until I saw just how big a deal it was. Thank goodness for yarn winders, I had to make a whole new pull skein out of it. Luckily he really didn't tangle it, just stretched it out. After I finished winding it, I set down the yarn for a second and he tried to grab it. That cat has a one tract mind most of the time. Wish I had taken some pictures, one must see to believe. I usually keep my yarn and projects in locking plastic boxes for just this reason. Cats, got to love them... kitty spit only adds to the project, right?

Here we go again!!

And again, I'm going to try to write regularly... hope it lasts this time!! My new focus will be knitting. I first learned knitting basics from my grandmother when I was in 4th grade. I've continued on and off since then and am mostly self taught beyond the basics. Now I have enrolled in the Master Knitter program through The Knitting Guild Association. I'm very excited about this. I'm looking forward to learning more and improving my craft. I'm on Ravelry, abooknerd, for those of you sharing my love of knitting.

In addition to knitting, I'm sure I'll mention traveling, bicycling, gluten free cooking, and wines as those are my other loves. Of course books are up there on my favorites scale, but I have Goodreads to talk about books (abooknerd). Pets, yes they'll definitely get mentioned. Family only briefly in passing, we do like some privacy. Suffice it to say I have a great supportive hubby and 3 wonderful kids to help me ride herd on the menagerie of 1 bird, 3 Golden Retrievers, and 7 cats (should never have done kitten fostering!!).

Back to Writing

Okay, I'm going to try this again. As most of you know, I'm a lousy writer, but am trying to improve.

Christmas has been wonderful. Heather is home with us, though she's threatening to be traveling in Europe over Christmas 2010. Nice of her to prepare me for that. I got my Kindle this year. Another way to store and read books! Much more portable way to travel with my books.

I'm on facebook, at ABookNerd. I also use ABookNerd for my Dragon Cave. I'm going to try to keep my eggs and hatchlings posted on this. They don't seem to want to hatch yet.

Day 3, Alafoss Lopi Yarn Factory

It was the answer to a knitter's dream today. A tour of a yarn factory. There were a couple of American knitwear designers at the Alafoss Factory Outlet at the same time I was who were going to get a tour. They let Tom and me join them. Alafoss is an Icelandic company that makes the traditional Lopi yarn in addition to other kinds. They have a great website at http://alafoss.is . The website is mostly in English so it's easy to navigate.

We got a ride from the factory outlet store to the factory in the company vehicle pictured here. We started the tour where the yarn comes in. Bales and bales of yarn, both separated into white or other colors and natural mixes. I'll be posting more pictures on my flickr page, which I've also just started. From the bale room we saw where they ran in up a converyer that almost looked like putting it on a comb, but this conveyer just led it to a dryer where it was fluffed. Then it was put on a comb of the machine and as it ran through it looked like a very thin blanket. As it continued through the machine it started becoming threads.

We saw one woman with a very interesting job. She was running a machine that made skeins of yarn from cones, as the yarn from one cone got low, she'd use a little hand held knot tier to connect it to the next cone. YES, I saw the woman who puts knots in the yarn that you run into at the worst possible time!

We saw where they dye yarn. Some they dye before spinning, and some they dye after. It seemed like most was done before to give it a fairly constant color. The yarn dyed after spinning was being done in different shades of the same color. Not too much of that could be done in one batch, so I could see why it never seems like there's enough of a dye lot.

We saw they machine that makes pull skeins, then the skeins were sent down the line to be labeled and from there into bags holding about 12 skeins.

Of course there were racks and racks of a veritible rainbow of yarn. I was positively drooling.

Day 2 Iceland National Museum, cont.

A note here, I'm writing this now that I'm home because it was taking forever to upload pictures and I wanted to include them in the posts.

The Iceland National Museum was very interesting with a great variety of natural exhibits and man made historical exhibits. I'm a sucker for exhibits that have anything to do with geology. This picture is of a cross section of Iceland's land from before settlers to now. You can see volcanic eruptions and other interesting bits of history with it.

Another intersting fact is that when Iceland was discovered it was during a warm time in world climate so more of Iceland was underwater than now. I know what we add to the air is causing global warming, but I found it interesting that people did live at times when it was warmer than now.

Day 2 in Reykjavik, luggage arrived!

The luggage finally arrived, delivered around 9AM. It came in from Boston, so it looks like it went from DC to NYC to Boston before finally making it to Reykjavik. At least it didn't go by way of Kiev.

The picture was taken at 10:15 AM, dawn over Reykjavik. Hard to wake up in the dark, even though the watch assured me it was time to wake. We toured the Icelandic National Museum today. Very interesting. One thing I found extremely interesting is that about 80% of men here descended from Scandinavians, but 60% of women descend from Irish/British roots. Guess those Vikings stopped over in the UK to pick up a few wives. We also tried to go to the Natural History Museum but that was indefinitely closed, I imagine a victim of the fiscal crisis here.

We've arrived in Iceland!

After a shorter flight than I figured, we have arrived in Iceland. It's only a 5 hour flight and 5 hour time difference. So you leave at 8PM and arrive the next morning in Iceland at 6AM. Not a very long nights sleep, but a nap afterwards will do wonders. Unfortunately our luggage wasn't so lucky. The United Airlines folks in Wash DC wouldn't check our luggage through to Iceland. When our luggage didn't arrive at JFK in NYC, they asked "why didn't you have your luggage checked through?" grr, maybe the right hand should start talking to the left. If it had at least been on the flight after us, it still would have made it in time for the Iceland flight, but it didn't make that flight either. Now the punch line to this story is this morning when I called the United luggage desk at JFK, I was told the luggage had arrived there and had been routed to Kiev. Ummmm, that would be an interesting town to see, but I'd rather be with my luggage when it toured there. After I questioned the routing, they said oh yea, it was routed to Reykjavik. There's only one flight a day from JFK to Iceland so we'll see tomorrow morning if it was correctly routed.

We walked around Reykjavik today. It's a really nice sized city. You can see a lot of it on foot. Starting tomorrow we have a three day bus pass. The weather here is the same as DC, 30s-40s and rainy. I'm looking forward to getting my luggage so I can add some pictures to these blogs. I took some interesting ones at sunset (~5PM) of some houses reflected in the lake downtown.

Keep your fingers crossed that there will be some solar activity so I can see the northern lights.