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.
A week ago, I stepped off the curb while unloading the car and managed to put my left foot wrong. It did a crazy 90° angle to the leg thing and went CRACK! Fast trip to Nausea City and later, Cankle Town. Whee.
Check out the blood pooling/swelling and bruising –
The flash kind of flattens out the bruising colors but looking at my ankle made me feel really squicked out. Here’s what it usually looks like:
I did cancel what I had to do that afternoon, and iced it, but the next day there was too much stuff to cancel so I put it in a hiking boot. It’s stiff in the morning, but otherwise fine.
Anyway, that’s my big news.
Whee.
If I was a better blogger I would have shaved my ankles before Nick took those pics. It’s definitely time for the waxer; it’s getting on bikini season and when I look down thereI see this.
I’m pretty sure that’s not sexy. Nick is a real trooper.
Snuggly symmetry.
It’s The Big Bunny’s birthday today and we’re just taking it easy and having a mellow day. He had to work last night and has to work tonight, but today is a day for snoozly love.
Knitting and spinning
I’ve been in a bit of a knitting/spinning funk. I zoomed through pieces of Sophie’s Kai Cabled Sweater, but stalled out because of a Realisation. Yes, the yarn shortage epiphany. I’ve been making it longer, since she’s a baby Amazon, and I think that barring a miracle, I don’t have enough yarn to finish the other sleeve and collar.
I won’t be short by much, but I’m pretty darn sure I’ll be short…so I’ve stalled out, as if delaying it will deny it entirely.
So I’ve been knitting on a sock for my Sockapalooza pal. A bit. I’ve had a really good run of one-day books (you know, the ones you end up reading all in one day, sometimes even at stoplights) lately though, and strangely, my reading has been almost themed.
The Book Thief (the story itself is riveting, but the “Death” narrator kind of brings a big disconnect, breaks up the flow, and is kind of a cheezy melodramatic hook the story could have done well without). A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian–funny, charming, frustrating, sad, and utterly enjoyable, you can see everything. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress–gripping with beautiful imagery. And in here as well, various pickups and putdowns of Everything is Illuminated and The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, which are certainly fun, but just haven’t managed to grab me like the others, haven’t been one dayers. In all of these, totalitarian regimes are nearly a character themselves.
I finally read I Married Adventure. Wow. What a charming book, and a bit of a time capsule. You know that part in King Kong with the scary natives? They lived that. (link is to Amazon and a version with a different cover. Mine is the cooler 1940 version. ;))
I picked up Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns from the library and cried my way through it on Thursday. It’s brutal and oppressive and frustrating like The Kite Runner, but there’s more hope, more love. And no anal rape. Yay.
Yesterday I read Water for Elephants, and that’s a great summer read, really fun, really sweet, but some heartbreaking parts, especially if you dwell on them.
I’ve spun a bit.
I took the Polwarth locks I bought over a year ago and carded them into rolags and spun them up.
There were a lot of pale colors, so I carded the pale like colors together for one bobbin, and the stronger colors for another bobbin. I’ve never carded more than one or two rolags at a time, never really enjoyed it before, but this was fun.
Maybe it was blending the colors, just letting it go as an experiment, so I didn’t care when my clumsy carding prep made for neps, and I spun thick and thin and let them stick out willy nilly to be tacked down later by the ply, but it was really enjoyable. I don’t think I have the discipline in prep to create consistent color blends in large amounts with handcards though, for that, I’m going to need a carder.
I spun and plied with a lot of twist (well, a lot of twist for me) but it doesn’t look like that much of an angle on the bobbin, because it is wound on under tension. (I spun the singles on my Victoria and plied with Heidi’s Joy, since my third bobbin is still with Elton the woodworker and I didn’t feel like winding off into balls.)
When released and wound onto a niddy-noddy, it looked like this:
Usually, to finish my yarns I just give them a quick wash and rinse and hang them up to dry. Sometimes I’ll full them a little bit if I want a more durable yarn, but it’s been more along the line of reasoning of “beat the cr@p out of them now so they can take a lot of cr@p later” not any consistent logic based on staple length and crimps per inch. But I read Judith MacKenzie McCuin’s article in the Summer 2007 issue of Spin-off magazine and thought I’d try out her theory (she specifically mentions Polwarth as being a weird exception to the staple length rule, so I thought it must be kismet).
So I beat the bejeezus out of this skein. Superhot water, lots of soap, cold rinses. I ended up reskeining it, because I think there was some shrinkage and some bits stuck together. Some dye came out in the water, but not much especially considering how hot the water was.
3.3 oz, 216 yards
There was considerable plumping up and fuzziness, all told. Parts that had more twist and were spun finer didn’t full in the same manner. I don’t think this is a necessary way to finish a yarn spun, but is definitely another option to finish for a certain effect.
BTW, if you haven’t seen the new Spin-off, you should definitely check it out.
The Type As of the spinning world will find the Fractal Stripe spinning article appealing, plus I liked the Yucca fiber article(s), and of course, the aforementioned finishing yarns article.
But…the first thing I turn to is always the “Your Yarns” feature, and that’s missing.
Plus, no Spinning Basics article, which is probably the second thing I look for, despite being a relatively new feature. I know they recently did a poll, so maybe I’m in the minority, but I hope these changes aren’t permanent.
Speaking of a series, here is part one in Dogs Using Toys as Pillows:
Crivens with wheels behind her, Love Monkey beneath her.
Belu appeals to the power of the Internets. “Please don’t let them wash my dirty fluffy ball!”
She loves this thing, she has it seasoned just right…which means it is well past time or it to get a wash. It used to be Crivvie’s, but we find Belu carrying it around everywhere.
I blame Yul Brynner for my inability to say “etcetera” just once like a normal person.
First some etcetera:
A picture of a quiet evening in.Mom would love this pic, and really, it’s thanks to her that this pic happened. When she took Belu for the week because we had foster dogs coming out of our ears and Belu was seriously PO’d, Crivvie and the Weasel really worked out any issues they had over ownership of Mom/Grandma and with each other. We miss her everyday.
Ooh, that turned into a bit of a downer, sorry.
Um, here’s something that’s totally boring except for one person:
whole bean please. We have a grinder and we know how to use it.
2. Fully-loaded or decaf?
Caffeine is my bestestestestestest friend.
3. Regular or flavored?
Regular.
4. How do you drink your coffee?
Usually with 1% milk because it’s what’s in the fridge, but half and half when I’m out and about, black when we’re out.
5. Favorite coffee ever?
Hmmmm…not sure. The Wild Divine roast from a local merchant (Divine Madman Coffee–619-339-5379, they specialise in certified organic, shade grown, fair trade coffee and donate 10% to a local wildlife rescue) sticks out in my mind.
I get a 2 shot 12 oz. mocha in the morning before work because milk+chocolate+caffeine= perfect morning meal.
6. Are you fussy about your coffee or will any old bean do?
I’m not an expert. I won’t pretend to be some dilettante. But, um, some coffees taste manky, some don’t. I generally like something in the mid category–not french roast, not a mild breakfast type. So, mid acid, mid roast. I’m a moderate in nearly everything.
7. Favorite treats to have with your coffee?
I like lemon bars too, good accent, but um, most times it’s a donut or blogs with my coffee. Depends on if it’s a day off or not.
8. Anything else about your coffee preferences?
Local roasters rock!
9. Yarn/fiber you love?
It’s possible that I love everything and everyone.
10. Yarn/fiber you hate?
But maybe I hate nylon.
11. What’s on your needles?
A bottom up V-neck stash buster. Wear Everywhere Pullover in linen. Map of the World afghan. Baby socks x 2. Socks for me. Um, there’s more but what, I can’t remember. Ooh, a Sherwood in Pima Silk.
12. Favorite colors?
Blue and green (but not teal ;)) Red and yellow, like flames… Not really keen on pink or purple.
13. Allergies?
Cats (most). That’s about it. I don’t expect I’ll get sent anything dipped in pymethrin, so I figure I don’t need to bring that up.
14. Anything you really love, really don’t like, or just need to get off your chest?
Underpants!
So here’s the natural dyeing thing:
Carrot Tops & Copper Sulfate!
So, I took 3 skeins of the Henry’s Attic Inca Organic Cotton in Ecru, Sage & Desert, weighed them, scoured them (that’s where you fill up a big pot with water and soap and boil the shit out of it, then rinse it. Okay, maybe don’t boil it. Whatever your end purposes speak to) mordanted with alum (5% weight of goods as recommended by Michelle Whipplinger of Earthues for cotton) and eventually got around to getting some carrot tops with which to dye them.
I swung by too early for a farmer’s market in La Mesa, when they were just setting up but asked a vendor if she could save tops for me, so when I came back and bought several bunches I got 3 times more the tops–in fact, I ended up with a 1:1 ratio of WOG (weight of goods) cotton to carrot tops, which was just what I wanted to try.I put half of them in an enamel pot with enough water to cover and put them on high heat. When the carrot tops already in had wilted and browned out, I added more water and more carrot tops.
Eventually, I had something like this:
In smell and color it was just like my dandelion reduction (which I never used and never blogged) so I suspect a similarity of results could be had. A Handbook of Dyes from Natural Materials by Anne Bliss is a great resource–its only drawback is perhaps that it is organised by dyer’s name– not color, material, lightfastness, or whatever criteria might be most important to you.
I love it because it does consider lightfastness and subjects the end products to that objective test. Surprisingly, this is an important end step that many natural dye resources gloss over (or regard seemingly indifferently).
Anyway, it looked like tea when I dipped a cup in.
Alone, carrot tops on a material mordanted with alum make a strong yellow with a very high lightfast rating.
But add copper sulfate (blue vitriol) and you get a green:
Unfortunately, I forgot to document the weight of the blue vitriol/copper sulfate I added. I just poured until I liked the color of the dyepot. D’oh!
Here are the end results, after simmering and cooling, simmering and cooling. (perhaps a two day thing, I let it get hot and simmer for a while, shut it off, went to bed, and later the next day turned it on and up again and let it simmer/boil again and cool off when I had free home time). Sorry, good documentation would have specific times.
I didn’t exhaust the color in the pot. So far, in my experience, that doesn’t seem possible in natural dyes. But I was happy with the color I saw in the pot (my eyes and brain as a dyer have managed to do an automatic adjustment of the number of shades reduced to see the end color between dye pot and dried and expected washed/rinsed product. I am such a schmartypantz.)
So, from the top to the bottom.
Natural white (ecru)
Natural white (ecru) overdyed with carrot tops and copper sulfate
Sage
Sage overdyed with carrot tops and copper sulfate
Desert
Desert overdyed with carrot tops and copper sulfate
I let the dyed goods boil, washed them in a warm water machine with normal detergent, and put them through a hot dryer… I treated them roughly because I want them to be bomb/babyproof.
So, the undyed cotton is softer and more unprocessed than the dyed. But there it is.
And also, to prove I’m still doin’ it:
Here’s 2.1 oz, 184 yards of 2 ply, averages out to 1401 ypp, and sportweight. Corriedale roving from Dove & Jager (sheep names) in Pennsylvania and handpainted by Sue of Love Interwoven. I have no idea what I’m going to do with this but I enjoyed spinning and plying it and that’s what matters.
BTW, Love Interwoven is a new company in San Diego. I love talking to Sue. She’s my new Mary-Kay.
;P
Anyway, she’s become a Louet dealer too and is working on blending custom batts and handpainted rovings. Expect great things to be uploaded soon. But until then…she’s taking phone orders. Her prices are fair for the market, you can call and order yourself some schweet spinning surprises.
And, at least Lion Brand admits their yarn is lame.
The things you find on flickr. You know those Biore pore strips? That pull stuff out of your pores? Someone took a picture of theirs. I can’t look away.
Mourning Update
I had a dream the night before last about Mom.
This is the fourth one that I remember, and while I had the “yay, you’re alive! but this is probably a dream and not the other way around, but yay! I don’t want to wake up!” feeling I still got to hug her and smell her again and it felt so real, so it’s all good.
It’s incredible and encapsulation would do nothing but mislead you, but it’s fantastic— but it definitely contains his bleak awareness of darkness, of evil, of selfish cruelty.
And the helplessness of guardianship of another life in a world full of this selfishness and cruelty.
Also joy and love and pride and fear and hope. So don’t let the sticker on the new releases of this book scare you, don’t be shallow like me.
The joy of trying to be a natural dyer in the disputed meth capitol of the world.
Despite every resource I read on natural dyeing assuring me that pool supply companies stock these chemicals, I get nothing but attitude and “NO! We don’t sell that here!”
I am using these chemicals in natural dye processes. I am careful & moderate in the use and disposal, no need for the hostile freakouts I’ve been receiving.
I’ve said what they are, I’ve said what I need them for…I mean seriously, if you don’t know what the hell sodium hydroxide or copper sulfate are, all you need to say is “I’m not sure we have that but I’ll look.” I guess pool supply and customer service are mutually exclusive. No need for the reaction I got the last time, her anger was so out of nowhere it was surreal, but it was consistent with the weird defensiveness of other pool supply store employees.
I think asking for the actual chemicals (even by the common names of lye or blue vitriol) instead of brand names makes them feel stupid. Maybe it’s all those chemicals that make them stupid. Hello? Who sells chemicals but doesn’t know what the hell they are? Only as brand names? Jeebus, these are things that children are swimming in!
But at least I fuckin’ know what their molecular structure looks like.
Yeah, like THAT means anything.
“I was eloquent! Shit!”
I guess I should start compiling lists of the brand names these chemicals are sold under. Or just tell the “help” to go away and let me look through everything myself. Boy, I read this and it seems so melodramatic and witchy–really, buying something from a shop shouldn’t be a big deal at all. I don’t know what’s up with this, it’s really odd. Looking Forward
The Golden Compass movie! I pictured Lyra as grubbier, but okay. And I have to admit, the armored bears are my favorite part of the series. The very graphic part where Iorek rips Iofur’s jaw off made me go, “whoah? This is a kid’s book? Awesome.”
Also Captain Tightpants is Lord Asriel. Rawr. I didn’t finish the sweater or the bicolor cardi.
I suck. I’m a knitting lame-o. I picked up Sherwood again too. So I can inch along on various projects and not finish anything indefinitely. I’m a genious.
Okay, so you’ve probably figured out I just got a new little camera for Christmas. And it has a built in quicktime video maker with sound, so I’m bludgeoning you all to death with the danged videos.
Jumpcut hasn’t panned out though, so I don’t know…stick with youtube and its weird sound sync or upload and host the quicktime videos as they are myself? What do you guys think?
So I have a video of parts of the Louet Victoria which I uploaded to youtube but it had the sound synced wrong (as it has with all the videos) so I deleted it, because I don’t like it when there I am pointing something out in the video with my hands and the sound has it completely wrong (so when my finger is on the 6:1 part of the whorl my voice identifies it as the 9:1), so I look like an @ss, which I don’t need any help with, thankssomuch, and a video of spinning on the Louet Victoria. Yeah, I’m still quacking about the wheel.
Spinning on the wheel:
And the fiber I’m spinning in the video is the superfine 80s merino, which is incredibly spongey and yummy and a pleasure to spin (but more fun to squish and knit). (And $23/lb, or $6/4oz here. Apologies for the shameless plug[s]). In watching the video, I’m totally “d’oh”ing that I didn’t adjust the angle so you could see both my hands, although the rear hand looks about as active as the forward hand really, as I have a very passive drafting style that makes it look like the wheel is doing all the work.
Wow, I was going to do a history of merino thingy, but there’s a wikipedia article that rocks the merino breed history house. Google turned up this cool page with a list of sheep breeds, and since it’s Friday, and you presumably have time to surf, check out SheepUSA which has loads of pdfs and pages with interesting information. Not exhaustive, but some pretty good breed information with staple length and micron count in the directory here. No pictures of locks though, at least not that I’ve seen.
Can anybody tell me why it’s so hard to get my own copy of In Sheep’s Clothing? For the last four or five months Amazon has been postponing my order and now I see–$34?!? Are you kidding me!? I’ve ordered from Buy.com, but don’t have high hopes. All half.com’s prices are above retail and even ebay doesn’t have any copies.
See, the title has a little to do with what is probably my most exciting piece of news (to us). I’ll get back to it in a moment.
Meanwhile, this is going to be random.
Look familiar? Maybe not, it was a long time ago. Amy sent me a wonderful feel-better package with this Fleece Artist 2 ply fingering weight BFL and I immediately started a top down raglan and relatively jammed through it, got halfway through the last sleeve and…stopped. Picked up something else to knit. What? I don’t know what.In my year end panic I’m in a frenzy of resurrecting UFOs, and this is one that’s pretty close to done, so it’s back in the mix. I’ve completely forgotten how many sleeve decreases to do, and I may even read my knitting to match it as I go, maybe. The little froggy stitch marker is part of a set of six I bought off etsy.com–the same seller has these cute sheepie stitch markers too. Instead of jump rings she uses a continuous wire so there’s nothing to snag. The frog being practically my scot, me gustan mucho, almost as much as the ones Mary-Kay made me (those are my good luck charms for troublesome knitting). Holy cow! The New Testament read by Johnny Cash! You can listen to a sample on audible.com of him reading from Matthew. He did a great job. But hey, I loved his version of “Hurt” too, so no surprise there.
I should have mentioned in my last post:That multi-color green & brown self-striping Noro lookalike that Snuggle found so appealing? That’s Boku, by Plymouth Yarns which I bought at our local Two Sisters and Ewe. It’s 95% wool, 5% silk, 99 yards/50g, a similar gauge to Noro’s Kureyon or Silk Garden. It’s tweedy, so I think the silk is probably tussah noils, but I don’t care. It feels very much the same, maybe less dense feeling, oddly. Not much vm and no sericin, but I did find a knot. It’s $2 cheaper per ball than Kureyon, and feels about the same, although I admit that my disdain for the Noro probably means I’m not the best judge of comparisons. Anyway, it takes ripping well. I ripped it back to the ball and restarted, doing a baby gansey based on Knitting Ganseys. Sort of tradition with a twist, if I want to sound all pretentious about it. I am so excited. I love Mexico. It’s a great country, with an incredible climate range–nearly any kind of environment you might desire, it is within Mexico’s bounds, forested highlands, jungle lowlands, desert and wetland… It’s an understatement to say that it is “too bad” that it is a country that was/is subject to some amazingly effective systematic oppressive regimes and cultural indoctrination, but we love it. Nick and I are going on this tour. I know that tours probably have the same reps as cruises, but, as veterans of this tour, we can definitely vouch that if you choose well, you’ll get access to activities and people that you (probably) couldn’t get just traveling alone (or “alone” in a couple). As with our last Mexico vacation, we’ll probably go down a week before and stay more time after to do more exploring in Mexico, since much of our tour is in Guatemala and Belize, although it starts and ends in Cancun. We’ll probably fly in and out of DF, and take buses or internal flights back and forth. We want to check out Guanajuato (ever read “Next in Line”? I used to be a huge Ray Bradbury fan), San Miguel de Allende, Puebla, Mérida again, and whatever else seems to be along the way. We’d really like to go to Oaxaca City again, but Nick’s not comfortable with the whole plainclothes policemen shooting into crowds thang. Fuddy-duddy. Anyway, we’re reading and thinking, planning and talking, a bit of the best parts of a trip– and hoping fares drop a bit soon. I don’t want to wait too long, but the fares seem a little high right now. I’m really enjoying The People’s Guide to Mexico. I’m not sure if we can really pull off the mochilero schtick, but we’re dang well going to try. We’re going to be down there about a month, so we’ll have to pack light. We schlepped way too much stuff around last time. Wheee!
I get a digest from a list called Sheep Thrills on yahoo.com. It’s a heavy traffic, no topic list full of mostly blather, the type of stuff you usually see on blogs, shared personal stories type of thing. Without the context of a blog, and given how many posts there are a day, I have a hard time keeping track of who’s who, and although there are regular posters and names from the fiber business world I recognise, mostly I end up skimming. There are interesting tidbits that pop out of the wash of type that flows over my screen, and I stay subscribed because even though I don’t feel like I have much to throw into the conversation, those interesting bits make it worthwhile, and maybe someday I’ll have something interesting to say that the group might want to hear. Thank heavens for digests though, whew.
Anyway, my point is, that amidst the many circular topics on lists, the podcast recommendation topic came up again, and this time, these two sites popped out at me:
Librivox and Podiobooker which have audiobooks, poetry, and serials available for free download. Some stuff you know (classics like Pride and Prejudice and Ragged Dick) and some stuff that I haven’t seen before but looks worth a shot.
I spend a lot of time plugged into the iPod trying to do my “work” quietly while Nick sleeps during the days now that he’s back on nights, and while I’m always game for relistening to what I’ve got, it’s nice to have fresh stuff too. Just thought I’d share the linky love.
