Well, today’s as good a day as any to do a little writing. It’s been a month of ups and downs, but such is life!

For now, some positive moments… because as deeply as I feel the darkness at times, I understand that you, dear Reader, don’t necessarily want to hear all about it. You’ve got problems of your own.

1) My oldest daughter creating space music:

2) No Money + A Need For Batt Storage resulted in this brain fart of a free solution, which took all of twenty minutes to tape together (plus it’s completely collapsible):

3) More Time At Home + First Large Batt Order from the Etsy shop prompted some packaging design action:

4) developed medium-format film for the first time ever in my “darkroom”:

… and not wanting to wait to find a proper film scanner or spend money on prints of my very first attempts, here are some extremely lo-fi results (hover over the B&W’s to discover the er… “process” I used:

Again with a visual recap of the past month. Apparently it is much easier for me to snap pics, hoard them for a long time and turn them all loose in one big, incohesive mish-mash.

Enjoy!

winning little battles in the war on amblyopia

look what the Faux Pa dragged in

when big sis is in her Girl Scout meeting, this is what we’re doing

the cast of “Lowcountry Boil”, which I got to see a couple weekends ago

someday I’ll do something with these tiny Sculpey faces I make

we traded her in for a younger, less tired car who likes to run instead of always walking (according to The Chublet)

I’ve been keeping Jags waiting so long… just hoping she doesn’t see this picture! But it’s been forEVER since I’ve played in my fiber stash and I have to show these off.

Rather than editorialize about this past weekend’s trip to Penland School of Crafts and downtown Asheville, I’ll just give you a whole buncha pictures to look at. We had a really good time… and got to do a lot more than last year.

Last weekend the girls’ grandpa moved in! He brought his cat and his library:

I finally bought the Corn Puppy a twin-sized bed:

I got to trade kapok fluff for some “mini moonbeams” from Moonwood Farms:

free sample of handpainted milk fiber included:

I also received my first top-whorl drop spindle and have spun a lace-fingering weight single out of one of the included handpainted silk samples (!) There were THREE 0.5 ounce samples… two silk and one cashmere. I don’t have a picture to share just yet.

Last night we began our drive up to Penland for the open house and spent the night here in Prosperity, South Carolina. I have to say, this is a pretty darn nice Day’s Inn… and I’m enjoying the free wireless!

Oh! And it’s the first time I’ve ever rented a car… a cute little Chevy Aveo. I’d thought this might be a nice model for my next automobile purchase (gasp) but I’m glad to have this test drive. It’s a tad small, storage-wise, for me. And it lacks power- and child-safety locks. But all and all it’s cute and a nice change for this little trip.

Oh, and Jags… if you’re reading this… I’ve cleared a path to my fiber stash at home, so I’ll get those batts mixed up stat

Just thought I’d share a little of the fun with you… I took this picture a year and a half ago of my homemade kombucha. Well, the author of Wild Fermentation is looking for input and pictures for the new book he’s writing, so I offered this pic via email. I don’t know if it will make it into his book, but he asked me to put it up on his website. So go check it out! Isn’t that neat?

I need to make some more of this stuff. It’s tickle-your-tummy good and really revitalizing.

The drum carder came yesterday and we promptly made a giant green slug of a bat:

I absolutely love that the girls can get involved in this part of the fiber preparation now. They were almost as excited as I was.

After they went to bed I tried again… a little more refined this time:

So that’s what I’m gonna be playing with for the next infinity. And here are some more pictures from this past weekend for your enjoyment:

It's always nice here until someone lights up in the next booth. I used to be one of them; now I herd my children away quickly.

If this was humor, wouldn't they have slapped a happy-face sticker on it?

Top to bottom:

• Friday night was the Corn Puppy’s school spirit night at the Stingrays hockey game. Her principal was really jealous that I bought myself a nice, fat beer.
• Vic-20 and some motherboard… because my circuit-bending career never took off and I am taking pictures of my random vintage electronics so I can develop the fortitude to get rid of them.
• The Chublet in front of the Angel Oak, running full tilt toward me (to see how that ended, you can click the picture through to my Flickr account and look at the next photo in the stream).
• Saturday we went to the park and ran into a group of people steering their radio-controlled vessels around a pond. They were fun to watch, moving in tandem as they were.
• First light box experiments underway! Onward to more professional-looking photographs for the yarn-peddling business!

Well, I just did a very official noodle bowl drawing… and the winner is Jags of Jag’s Funky Fibers! This makes me very happy because she was the first one to respond to my original blogiversary post and had some really kind words to say. I’ll let you know what she picks out!

Of course, the concepts of “heaven” and “hell” are pretty subjective. But still.