Humph, Looks like I scored a -karma for my efforts! Great system. :~
@Bobnova
Since I figured you were using the cores from here . ..
http://code.google.com/p/arduino-tiny/
I tested those cores with my libs.
After changing boards.txt to upload with the USBtinyISP I found that the TinyWireM lib worked with those cores.
However, the sketch was running 10X slower - even the Blink sketch. :.
So I changed the speed in boards.txt from f_cpu=800000L to f_cpu=1000000L and now it works fine.
I don't know why one set of cores uses an 8MHz clock and another set uses a 10MHz clock.