Back from the dead

Pilot is doing great! We're down to one injection (of only one unit) once a day!

Those pictures are exactly a week apart. He's gaining weight and acting like a normal cat again - well, as normal as any of my cats ever act.
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I'm feeling better as well. Less apathetic about life and beginning to get back into the swing of things. Despite feeling extremely uninspired I've been dyeing and carding fiber. I'll be updating my (sadly neglected) etsy shop in the next day or so. Here's a peek at what I have ready:

I've also managed to create quite the "to do" list for myself. It's the end of the year rush and I always end up thriving on a certain kind of mad chaos.

Hard at work.

I've been crazily working on fiber. My etsy shop doesn't show it, but I've been busy. I've dyed and carded fiber for October's Phat Fiber box and am working on making it all into sample rolags. I've also dyed fiber for November's rolags but haven't carded anything yet. In non-Phat Fiber news I've dyed fiber for what was meant to be sandy/beach themed rolags, but ended up more bright and sunny as well as lush blues for a water theme and in the dye pot are greens for an earth/forest theme. I'm having a grand time with my blending board - the rolags might not always look "perfect" but I'm ridiculously happy with them.

These are about to go into the shop:


Here's my process (in not-great-light) for the sunny yellow not-beach-themed rolags.

I started with my board, a paintbrush (which I didn't use), two dowels, and the carded batts (polwarth, soy silk, alpaca, shetland, firestar, and some suffolk).


One of the batts unrolled. I love the soy silk bits and the sunny polwarth.


The board loaded with fiber. Instead of using the paintbrush I used my "burnishing" brush (a wire pet brush) to pack in the fibers.


The first rolag is done! Woo!


I got twenty-two rolags from the two batts. About 4.85 ounces of fiber.


Pretty, yes?

Linking up with Creative Friday.

Taming the Jungle

Let me show you something amazing (and embarrassing).

Backyard as seen from the bedroom window.

Before:

After:

Crazy, right? It took the super-powered yard guys three hours to clean our front and back yard.

This is a (bad) shot of the Rusalka batts I've been posting about. I have all my samples for July's Phat Fiber box packaged up. I just need to stamp the paper insert thingies and then it'll be ready to go. I'll also have a Rusalka batt in the shop. For once, I won't be upset if it never sells - I'd be totally happy to spin it myself!

Today I've been carding a blue/purple batt. The kids took over the table so I've had to set it all aside for now. If my energy holds, there will also be a shop update tonight. I've taken pictures and edited them but I still need to write the listings (not my favorite thing to do).

In the meantime I have a good book to read and a sleeping cat snuggled up next to me.