07.26.07
Posted in random at 10:00 am by wendy
(Interspersed with pictures of a cactus at my Dad’s)
Yesterday was my 29th birthday, and despite being the first birthday without my Mom, it was a great birthday.
I got to spend nearly the whole day with Nick. He went to work with me, walked one of my favorite dogs around Lindo Lake while I walked Holly (who is like a giant Libélula, I love her so much, but being almost exactly like Libélula means she can never be home with us [it would be a supernova of bitchdom] but she makes you feel like you are the best human being ever, a superhero, the one she waits for, she is like my Wallyball was in this respect) and then we went home.
Nick’s family called to wish me happy birthday which was very sweet and I went briefly to the local spinning group. Nick washed my car and got flowers and we took our kids to dog beach. The weather was great, although the sun was so hot on the sand, Crivvie will need booties if we go around one again this summer. I took off my sandals in solidarity (she sat down and kept lifting up each foot, she looked so pathetic) and we both toasted our feet a little bit. It was great to swim in the ocean, and Libélula swam a little too, although she doesn’t like ocean swimming. She’s a lake and pool girl. We stopped at my grandmother’s and caught up on a little bit.
Then we dropped the kids off and went to a bike shop and got my birthday present–a 2007 Marlin GS WSD, yay, bike! And a spiffy helmet since I left mine on a train in Oregon and Amtrak’s customer service regarding lost and found items is pretty much nil. Anything left on a train is considered sacrifice to the Commuter Gods. But this is a much nicer helmet than the one I left, so it’s a good thing.
After that, we went to sushi with my Dad and stepmom, my uncle and aunt, which was very game of them, as my Dad and stepmom have very specific culinary habits which do not include raw fish. And then, Nick and I came home and fell into bed, tired, but not too tired. It was a wonderful birthday and I feel very loved.
Today I’ll fly for the first time since the summer of 1998, (I solo’d but never got my license) and my first time ever flying the brick with wings they call the Cessna 152 (we were made the same year).
I’m nervous but not anxious, I’m curious to see how much comes back. Not much, I expect.
Nick and I have been going to ground school on Tuesdays and Thursday evenings, and I’ve been surprised at how much I’ve forgotten, and how much sounds new to me. We’re doing it with Golden State Flying Club–there are lots of places in San Diego to learn to fly, but I liked the structure they offer and the fairly relaxed but not careless atmosphere.
While we were out at Dad’s, we had a little visitor. Sunny D was barking at something, and when we went out, we found a relatively little king snake.
These things bite like the dickens.
Not very big, and since they eat rattlesnakes, we just chased it off the patio.
Unfortunately, it seems our little buddy returned a couple days ago and tried to make himself at home amidst the finches inside the aviary. My dad dispatched him and the finches ended up eating king snake instead of the other way around. And so it goes. 
In knitting, the sock has slowed down in the gusset, but progresses. Just not a lot of free time with hands free for knitting.
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07.22.07
Posted in books, knitting, socks at 8:38 pm by wendy
I have to admit, I haven’t been following the Tour. I’ve checked the paper every once in a while, but I’m not seeing much around, not like last year where it seemed the Tour was everywhere. I guess the lack of Lance is a biggie for the networks. Or I’m just oblivious. Equally likely.
So, I took my rest day yesterday, and the day before was a slacker day, maybe only a half hour of spinning. Instead, I started on my Sockapalooza socks. I cast on on Sunday, knit the picot edging Monday, and here it is Wednesday:
I haven’t felt like I’ve had much knitting time, so in my opinion, I’ve been whizzing along. As of writing this sentence (the above was written Wednesday, at a cafe with wifi, & now we’re back home with my wonderful own broadband wifi) I’ve finished the heel flap and am picking up stitches for the gusset.
I love this pattern–it’s the Cedar Creek Socks designed by Kaci Kyler Hayes, and it’s the perfect pattern for variegated yarn. Simple enough you memorize it quickly so it’s good take-along knitting. But between the four row repeat and the variegation in your yarn, it’s still not a dull knit. I’ve not done a right twist slant the way this pattern has it before, it’s ingenious and creates a wonderful depth and texture–and flexibility.
I originally took this yarn with me to Oregon as my only knitting. Carefully I packed the yarn, the needles, made a photocopy of the stitch repeat I wanted to use on the toe-up socks I planned…and left the the 16 row stitch pattern behind. So on the plane, at 9am, making reassuring mooing sounds to the alcoholic bull next to me from Kansas City, I tried to decide on a new plan. I was wearing my favorite cabled sweater, so I mimicked those in the sock after making the requisite increases. Meh. Cables are not as flexible, and flexible is important when making socks for a stranger. But ribbing is blah. And then I was there, and present in the moment and…
So I started my Sockapalooza socks for reals this time on Sunday, the 15th, and they are due August the 2nd. I am hosed. Other knitters would be fine, but me, yeah I’m hosed. I’m still going to try, and August 1st, I will contact my sockapalooza partner again and let her know that I am a lame-o, but just a slow sock knitting lame-o, not a swap finking lame-o.
Not like my Sockapalooza pal, who sent hers early–I got these beauties in an envelope from Canada:
It looks just as cool inside out. (sock on left is inside out)
So between this and Harry Potter (I’m done, but no spoilers here, since I bought a copy for Nick too we now have a spare–if you’re local and you want it, holla), I stopped caring about the Tour de Fleece. Whoopsie. Still, in tribute to my fallen goal, when I spin, it will be the merino-possum, and I won’t spin anything else until it is all spun up.
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07.16.07
Posted in spinning at 4:56 pm by wendy
(btw, pretend I wrote and posted this Saturday. We’re dog&house sitting for my dad out in East Bumfork and dialup.just.can’t.handle.it. so I’ve been snatching post composing & uploading time here and there between Work and Home and Schtuff.)
Done with the sock yarn!
(click for bigger)
7.5 oz/212 grams and 468 yards/428 meters
about 14 wraps per inch….which means this is some really dense yarn.
predrafted and ready to go…
Fastidious predrafting was a necessity to preserve the color blocks and minimise mixing and muddying just in the singles. Usually with superwash top, most top really, I just open up the end like a fan and spin back and forth across it and work my way down. I end up with a fairly light lofty yarn, despite the worsted prep and semi-worsted drafting I do. But this superwash felt coarser and was much grabbier along the length of the top, spinning across the fanned width of it just didn’t work.
So that was good, actually, I changed up my spinning style a bit to adapt to the material being spun. Gasp!
First bobbin…
I bought this roving at the Black Sheep Gathering “tradeshow” from the ladies of the Blue Moon Fiber Arts booth (also snagged a “mill end” mediumweight unlabeled colorway skein and a lightweight skein in ‘Fire on the Mountain’ colorway superwash sock yarn, ‘cuz I wanna see what all the fuss is about).
I didn’t really get to talk to them because they were distracted by a lady doing a total hard-sell approach to offloading angora bunnies. Seriously, this woman was shameless, using her kid and everything, and just not taking no for an answer.
I wondered if she did the same thing at every booth. (If you went, you saw her fliers everywhere.)
It was a little strange.
Anyway, this roving is from their Sheep 2 Shoe kit, and at $30 for 8.5 oz of superwash merino…well, I bought it just to see. I was intrigued by the promise of instructions inside to spin to the specification of Blue Moon’s sock yarn. I just thought it was terribly clever packaging, simple but lovely.
When I opened the bag, my nose was hit with the strong -pow!- of vinegar and wool. Sweet alchemic ambrosia smell that it is, but I was a little surprised.
I always rinse out my fibers and yarns after dyeing, it’s just another doublecheck that all dye is set and as it should be, but maybe I’ll stop.
After all, wool loves being acid, and as long as you are sure that all dye has been absorbed, there’s really no reason to do it, it’s just another step using more water, time, and energy, and can further disorganize the roving/top, (superwash merino is especially tricky because it is so slippery; the stuff I have is so slick when wet, it feels like snot. seriously. And it slides everywhere, you have to handle it very carefully. If you add some twist to it, it behaves much better through the process, but if you forget…oy.)
So what do you guys think? Final rinse or no?
When I left it in my tent and came back to it in the heat of the afternoon there was a ton of condensation in the bag, and I ended up spreading it all out so it could finish drying.
There are a lot of possible reasons for moisture in the bag (it could have been humid in the shop it was packed in, felt dry but wasn’t quite, for one) and the moisture didn’t affect the instructions and certainly not the superwash, so no harm, no foul.
But it is a good reminder that if you are storing stuff in plastic (even just those plastic tubs) you should try your best to make sure it’s dry, and put some moisture absorber in there with it (I’ve heard sticks of chalk will work, haven’t tried it myself) since in sealed plastic it has noplace to go, and if I’d stored it for awhile before getting around to spinning it, it could have been icky. But hey, it’s Blue Moon–it doesn’t stay stash for long.
Anyway, I’m not sure how much I can say about the instructions, but I didn’t follow them to the letter. Partly because the math of it didn’t add up. The wraps per inch range for the singles would have been too fat to get the desired thickness of the three ply, although it must have worked for them or they wouldn’t have printed it as part of the instructions.
I spun a single ranging between 32 and 36 wraps per inch and plied with a high angle of twist to get the sportweight yarn (on the heavy side at 14 wpi) which was in the range for the end product. I also spun the singles with a lot more twist than I usually do, so I could ply with extreme prejudice. Yo.
I separated the roving into equal lengths, hoping to get the same repeat of color within so I could get some bold striping in the knit piece, but no luck there.
But you can see that there were similar colors that ended up together, so there’s some muddy sections, some gradiating sections, and some nicely coordinated together plies that will make for a more interesting knit than just the same ol’ same ol’ bold stripe thing.
Once again, serendipity and reality collide and kick “what I thought I wanted”s right in the nadgers…but in a good way.
So, yep, that’s it. One goal down. I’m spinning up the possum-merino and have a fair amount, but much much more to go…and then a long long way to ply.
The latest installment in the That Can’t Possibly Be Comfortable, or How Can They Sleep Like That series (hi Rena!):
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07.07.07
Posted in entertainment, spinning at 11:07 am by wendy
Yes, the one in France, but also the Tour de Fleece. Yay!
I have to admit, I thought it would be sort of like a 22 day sheep to shawl: obtain a fleece, process the fleece yourself, spin the fleece, etc.
Wabi-sabi’s idea is much more inclusive, much better.Part of it is setting yourself a goal. I’m arrogant enough to think that if I set myself one single project-type goal, I’ll finish too soon, so I’m going to set a couple.
- Finish spinning and plying up all the merino-possum Mom gave me for a sweater for Nick.
- Finish spinning and plying up the 8.5oz of superwash Sheep 2 Shoe kit from Blue Moon Fiber Arts in Lapis colorway.
- Wash & comb out & spin my part of the Dorset fleece (bought from Laura Noll before she moved to VA) to recreate my favorite thrift shop bought cable sweater.
Given I also need to knit a pair of US size 11 socks on US1s in a stitch pattern I am always messing up on, that’s pretty good for my crafting goals for the month.
One of the rules of the Tour is no spinning before the start, but having just returned from BSG with all that gorgeous loot it was impossible to pull myself away, so I’ve probably already been DQ’d.
5.2 oz of 80% Merino 20% Tussah Silk in Anarion colorway from
Dicentra Designs, purchased directly from the Dicentra Designs booth at Black Sheep, 2.3 oz turkish spindle with King Wood from Jenkins, purchased from
Crown Mountain Farms.(links are both to Crown Mountain Farms product appropriate pages–I’d never heard of them before, but wow. Yummy stuff and nice people.)
Since I bought so much stuff that I really like from great producers, I’m going to be spacing out posting about it.
Anyway, this fiber was lovely and bright–the whole Dicentra Designs booth was awash with bright colors and contrasts and really stuck out. It seemed like a lot of muted muddy tones, or rovings with a fair amount of voids and naturally colored wools were everywhere (which I love too) but this booth really stood out, like a flock of colorful fiber parrots you could squish as hard as you wanted and none of them would take your fingers off.
It spins up beautifully. I’ve never used a Turkish spindle before but browsed the booklet at Crown Mountain and could manage to remember “under one, over two” for wrapping it (although it looks like I messed it up at times, we’ll see what horrible mess it comes to) and since I’d been spinning cashmere-silk laceweight on the teeny little 17 gram spindle from Spindlewoods, this spindle felt very heavy indeed.
But it spins like a dervish, Nick loves it. It just feels good in your hands.
By the time I post next, I’ll probably be done with the Sheep 2 Shoe kit, I can’t wait to talk about that, actually. (How lame am I? I am very lame. ;))
Oh, speaking of lame, my ankle’s fine. I waited a little over a week and then got around to getting an x-ray. Our doc looked at it and said everything was fine, no worries. Weirdly, it’s been stiffer lately than it was before, I may alternate running in the pool with running on the treadmill when I go back to the gym this week. It is still a little swollen and cankley looking, I really hope that goes away. ‘Cuz I’m vain and lame. But I thank everyone who commented with their concern, I’m sorry I’m so lame I didn’t get around to e-mailing back in person, I was caught up in pre-trip kerfluffling.
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