I hate when this happens.....

I had made a nice center pull ball out of my yarn for the Icarus shawl. Lo and behold, it turned into a knotty mess last night. I don't know yet what I want to do; do I just toss the spaghetti and start my second ball (luckily I have another skein), or do I try and screw arond with this mess?

Since I just started my blog, I might just go ahead and introduce myself properly. My name is Ellen, and I hit the big 4-0 this year. I was born in Denmark, grew up in Norway, and moved to Holland when I was 18. My life long dream of being a veterinarian came to fruition while I was there. I met my husband in Amsterdam, and when he was offered a job in the US I decided to come along for the ride (we weren't married yet at that point). A year after he moved to California I crossed the pond with all my belongings. I still had to finish vet school, so I spent my senior year at UCDavis. Once I graduated I moved up to work at a small animal clinic in Seattle, Washington. After 9 months I moved back to San Francisco and worked at another small animal clinic for a while. Since I like a challenge, I decided to up the ante and do an internship in emergency/critical care medicine. Unfortunately, I had to leave my husband behind and move to Fresno, Ca to do that. Since I worked weekends, evenings, and holidays, my husband and I didn't get to spend much time together. He was travelling a lot, especially to Denver, and when I finally had a weekend off, I decided to fly out to Denver and spend some time with him. Just for the heck of it we'd made an appointment with a real estate agent. Needless to say, we found our dream house the very first day.

Leaving the rat race behind was the best thing we've ever done. We have a 35 acre ranch with quite the menagerie of animals. They are: Nuggett the Anatolian shepherd (he's our livestock guardian), Effie and Otto the German shepherds, the cats (George, Cobweb, Mini Bikini, and Moby wan Kanobi. Outside, we have the horses (Ballade, Vlekje, Musette, Agapito de Luna, and Rayo de Luna. They are all Andalusians, pure and partbred, except Musette who is an Arab. Then we have our 3 llama boys; Apollo, Einstein, and Lone Star. Our recent addition to the ranch is the cashmere goats; Lancelot, Leslie, and Annabelle. And last, but not least, we have Horation the lone rooster. We used to have a boatload of chicken as well, but the coyotes have unfortunately worked their way through the ranks.

I started knitting when I was in school in Norway. It was very common for us to be knitting in class, and a lot of the boys were knitting as well. I stopped knitting for over 20 years, and just picked it back up this past Christmas. My first project was to finish a fair isle norwegian sweater that had been laying dormant for all those years. Since then, I've made 6 pairs of socks, a nice aran sweater in alpaca, a cozy mohair cardigan/wrap thingy, the Pacific Northwest shawl, a felted bag, dischcloths, and some other small stuff. My stash has grown quite impressively, and I probably could be knitting for a year or 2 without ever having to buy more yarn.

Since we got the llamas last fall, I decided I needed to able able to work with their fiber as well. Enter the spinning wheel. I love spinning, and can't wait to make lots of my own yarn, especially from the cashmere I'll be getting next spring.

So, now you know a little bit of my background. I'll leave you with a picture of the llama boys...