It’s been a big day – the FedEx man brought me a present on my de-bracing day!  Meet Keiki:

And after she made herself comfortable in the guest room:

She is soft, squishy, crimpy, and gorgeous!

Keiki is 5lbs of cormo, from Cormo Sheep and Wool Farm.  I can’t wait for tomorrow night so I can scour some and comb it up!

Before:

and….AFTER!

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here you go:

Nursing school starts Monday!  I’ve sewn my patch on my vest, made a trillion copies of all my health forms, and even started reading the first couple assignments.  I can’t wait to get started, which is probably really silly because I give it about a week before I’m ready for it to be over.

I’ll let this one speak for itself and just say… FINALLY!  (after only 26 months and five days)

After reading Cara’s blog post yesterday, I started really thinking about what my 2009 knitting goal is.  Last year I focused a lot on spinning (which was great), and I was really stumped trying to decide what I want to accomplish this year.  After much deliberation, I finally decided – and I’m announcing it here so that you all will have heard me say it, and then I’ll have to actually follow through:

This year, my goal is to go from sheep to sweater – get a fleece, clean it, prep it, spin it, maybe dye it, and knit it into a sweater.

I’ve talked about this in vague, general terms for quite a while (”oh, someday I’ll spin enough yarn for a sweater”) but now I’m going to put my money where my mouth is and actually do it.  I sent an email to Cormo Sheep and Wool Farm about a couple of their gorgeous lamb fleeces, and I can’t wait to hear back!  I’ve been eyeing these for a while but I’m just going to jump in and go for it.  I’m aiming for about six pounds, because I know I’ll lose some to cleaning, combing, etc and I want to make sure I DEFINITELY have enough.  If I get the fleece and finish prepping it by May(ish), I can spin through the Tour de Fleece, then knit for the rest of the year.  (I know I’m a psycho planner, but if I don’t start with a plan it’ll never happen.)

In the meantime, I’m going to try to finish up some 2008 projects that have been lying around.  I’m also trying to get my house/guest room/office cleaned up in the next week before nursing school starts, because I doubt I’ll have time to do it again until May.  We also have to rake/weed whack the grass/pick up in the back yard so we can call Paul (the yard guy) to come and help us put in the plants, bushes, and new grass.  And plant spring veggies.  And I want to find some rain barrels locally and get them installed sometime before the rainy season in June.  (Just please remind me in a few weeks how excited I was to get all this done, because I know my energy is going to run out soon!)