PippiKneeSocks.com

It’s another cold morning here. My hands are little blocks of ice! I’m clad head to toe in wool (YAY WOOL!) and there is Ice (okay, frost) on my car. In a few short hours the temp should be up to 90f and it will be hot as Hades in the sun.

Not buying it?

I offer photographic evidence. (Please do say a small prayer that my basil isn’t done for, I forgot to take it in last night.)

As much as I’ve been complainy about this house (Mentally ill ~ thanks Riin for hitting the nail with that one ~ hysterically ORANGE kitchen, dangling, ripped clear plastic in the studio; 50 degree temperature fluxes within 20 hours, not knowing anyone, and so on and so forth… I feel entirely blessed. I do. I feel lucky to have a roof over our heads. Especially one that doesn’t leak! Walls that don’t have toxic mold inside; water that we can drink, cook with and bathe in; and most of all a land-lord we aren’t related to. (FWIW, He’s been much kinder to us than our last land-lord. Cough.)

The first wave of post cards went out yesterday! If I had your snail mail addy by 3pm left coast time; the card is in the mail. There is still time people, I’m forever buying post cards for the kids to send. It’s nice to get something in the mail other than dreaded bills…. Plus, I have grand plans for your cards. Oh yes, yes I do. I plan to hang them all in the (cough) “studio” to help take away the rough edges! (So, I will need a metric butt ton of them)

a diamond in the rough? Sure, I think so. With some time, postcards, elbow grease, insulation,(?!) and a nail gun it will be fab! I should get on it then, before the mercury reaches 90.

XO!

I’ve gone and updated the webpage, and as promised I am announcing it here. The individual photos didn’t come out so stellar. I have yet to find the right spot.
Anyway… Here’s an odd request.. Well, perhaps it isn’t a request as much as an idea and a call to participation. heh. Who wants to swap postcards with me? (OH! SaY YES!) I’ve been buying post cards for the kids to send their friends back in VT, every time I go to the market. And now I want in on the fun. (the cheesier the better, too!) Who’s game?

I do enjoy orange, as I enjoy All color. The paint job itself, and maybe perhaps the tones selected are the things in question. It’s one of those “decorative” faux paint jobs. Florescent tones of orange with spatterings of yellow. It makes me wonder the mindset of the painter. Who on earth would have stood back, to admire this work and said “Yup, that looks GOOD!” I’m not too sure I’d like to meet that person, the way their brain works scares me a bit.

Please, dear reader. Shelter your eyes. Don your protective eye wear, and perhaps put on a bit of SPF 50 for good measure.

(I made it small here, to spare you, one and all.)

What bothers me the most about it (perhaps more than the color(s) itself and decorative sponge technique, is the sheer sloppiness of it. It either says “I don’t give a rats’s ass” or “By golly this is super!” Whichever, it scares me.

On the brighter side, I had no clue just how many of you were kind of near by. The prospects are exciting!

There should be an update soon (tomorrow? maybe?) I’ve been working out the studio’s many kinks, now I just need to figure out what to do about the clear plastic that was (sloppily!) put up and is now dangling from the ceiling.

XO!

Oregonians (or is it Orgunians?) can I get a show of hands? There are two of you that I’m aware of. Could there possibly be some more?

The dust is starting to clear, boxes are becoming empty, and I find myself alone (well, not really alone, because 4 & 6 are nearly always underfoot.) and sometimes after alone, comes lonely; which, more often than not equals not good. What’s my point? I need some human beings that share my interests, to come and get spun with me. My mother can’t pay you, but I have a studio space (abet, a bit rough [okay, really rough] at the moment) and I bake a mean chocolate chip cookie!

Any takers?

So, here we are in the desert. It’s been HOT again, good thing it cools down at night. One clear benefit (besides solar dyeing) is I can put clothes out on the line, and in an hour they are dry! It makes the laundry day much shorter.
I hope to see some of you here soon… I was just told that SOAR is going to be held in this very town!
I’m sorry dear faithful (even in my long absence) blog readers, I eeked in a fiber update the other day and didn’t inform ya’ll. So, if you weren’t on the mailing list, you may have missed it. I’ll beg for forgiveness and plead my case, 3(?) days without coffee, and I’ve been using stolen & unreliable wi-fi… See, it took me a while just to get things up, and I didn’t want to be a hog as well as a thief. I do declare, next update I will announce here as well.

Big thanks to everyone!
I’m working on getting everything out today.

xo!

Things I learned on my summer vacation cross country move.

• Wood breaks just as easily as glass, sometimes even more so.
• Two small children can produce more toxic smells than in legal in all 50 states. I’m still looking over my shoulder for the EPA.
• Absence indeed makes the heart grow fonder. (HI VERMONTSTERS! I miss you terribly.This desert is dry.)
• Driving a 22 foot monster truck, towing a car isn’t that hard. Except for the fresh hell that is backing up. I could almost see myself driving a big rig. I’d paint it purple and write “Big Mama” on it.
• The gas tax is a bunch of utter bullshit. America’s roads are in sad shape. There are some interstate roads in Minnesota that make a class 4 road, in Vermont, during mud season look good. And construction… OY! Don’t get me started on the “construction.” For some unknown reason in the prairie states, when they decide to fix some roads, they route you to two lane traffic; only to be divided by mother-effing match-sticks. I kid you not. It isn’t comforting to know the only thing separating you from (certain death) traffic zooming by at a mere 70mph is a 3 inch plastic pylon. (At least back east they have enough common sense to use those concrete Jersey barriers! For crying out loud.) It makes that 400+ miles of South Dakota seem like 4K.
• South Dakota…. South Dakota. South Dakota. Humm, what exactly to say about South Dakota. My least favorite and most favorite. An enigma that way. No offense to any South Dakotans out there, but ya’ll aren’t too friendly. I guess I’d be pretty grumpy too if I lived near some gigantic, scary pseudo-patriotic sculpture. (Yes, we skipped Rushmore.) I do believe there are more billboards in South Dakota than there are people. That, too would make me grumpy. Just driving past them for 400+ miles made me go a bit ape shit. Mind you, I’m coming from Vermont, where billboards are illegal… as perhaps it should be. (I don’t think this was taken in SD, but I made Matt snap it because it made me think of someone.) Now for the positive aspects of South Dakota… … The Badlands. It is, dare I say it an oasis, abet, a dry one (cept for when we were there.) The Badlands are such a sight for sore eyes. After nearly a thousand miles of flat (Southern Minnesota is virtually indistinguishable from South Dakota or Iowa, or Nebraska –> FLAT! Windy etc) one approaches the painted buttes rising towards the sky as if to say “Save me from this god forsaken prairie” (and I can’t say I blame them) and it is like a mirage. No matter if you have seen the Grand Canyon or not; to stumble upon this land after complete desolation is a goddess sent. Needless to say, we enjoyed our stay and rest in the Badlands NP. (So much so there is a set over on the flickr.) The Hallowed ground otherwise known as the Badlands should have had it’s own blog post. I digress, South Dakota a bit of heaven and hell.
• Yellowstone is over-rated. (Nuff said?) Perhaps not. The campgrounds are a pile of shit. It is absolutely disgusting the way they pack people in there. I could have sworn we were in mother0effing Manhattan (speaking of over-rated.) We didn’t stay.The land is crazy beautiful.
• I can drive 20 hours a day in a straight line, on flat roads, but 5 hours tops on small mountain roads. And ya better not talk to me or touch me. Please no fighting or I’m going to feed you to that bear over there. And mountain roads, they look eleventy billion times more damming after midnight. For instance, one night, someplace in Montana near Yellowstone, I was too terrified to drive anymore. Granted, it was some mountain pass, and we had just crossed the continental divide, twice or three times (who’s exactly counting?)…. I pulled over on the side of this cliff, and declare, “That’s it, we are sleeping here” I load everyone into the back of the Penske (LORD, NO! WE ARE NOT PUTTING UP THE TENT THERE ARE BEARS OUT HERE!!!) I set up those orange triangle reflector things, so none of the semis zooming by would hit us and kill us dead; triple checked the emergency break, secured the garbage (LORD! THE BEARS!) and locked myself in to try to sleep. Try, because with every little noise I heard, I freaked. I must have woken Matt up at least 50 times. “Did you hear that?” “Are we rolling backwards??!!!!?” Eventually, I did get some sleep. Granted I shot awake at the crack of dawn. And when I emerged from the yellow submarine, I found we were parked on almost entirely flat ground, and not even remotely on the side of a cliff. Go figure.
• The Grand Tetons. Both Grand and Tetonious.
• Wi-fi; not unlike a good cup of coffee is hard to find west of the Mississippi. Speaking of the Mighty Miss, the Big River, the Old Man… I lost my lens cap in it. If anyone has a spare for a Rebel, I’d gladly take it off your hands.
• Country music is entirely more popular than I could have ever imagined. I do declare that it is the most popular genre in these here united states; followed closely by arena rock. (Note to self: If any type of trip like this is ever taken again; make sure a CD player is in the vehicle.)
• As spectacular and beautiful as this country is, it is just as ugly and forsaken as well.

I’ve been writing this piece meal on stolen wi-fi, so forgive if it is choppy.

I set up my wheels yesterday, and spun up a few bobbins of some very Vermont type stuff (”Peepers” in case anyone remembers it.) Today & tomorrow, I set up the dye studio. That is if the weather stays cool.

Over and out.

xo!

purple desert bloom

Originally uploaded by pippikneesocks

We rolled in about 2am (west coast time) on Tuesday after driving nearly 20 hours from Yellowstone.

What a long strange trip it was.
More details to follow, at some point. I’m using a neighbor’s wifi. (shusssh!)

curly

Originally uploaded by pippikneesocks

I do not know what on earth I’ve done to deserve such an outpouring of love, hope, strength and gifts.
I am honestly speechless. There are no words to describe my awe and gratitude to this community. You have moved mountains. (Four of them to be exact.) Truly remarkable humans, you are.

I thank you. From the depths of my being. I thank you.

XO!