12.18.06

Wheel Wednesday, Fiber Friday, Marketing Monday, blah, blah, dogs, Mexico, camping, blah, blah…

Posted in Fiber Friday, Shop Updates, Victoria, Wheel Wednesday, dogs, shameless marketing monday, spinning, travel at 1:13 am by wendy

Keeping the catchup short and sweet (scroll down for dog stuff and whatnot):

Wheel Wound Wednesday!

The plastic cup on the footman that goes over the bearing on the wheel has flanges of a sort so it can pop over the bearing and then be held tight by a ring. The instructions talk about removing the cup from the bearing with a twisting motion, so I was holding it with the sides of my thumb and index finger instead of my fingertips and it pinched a bit of skin out.It didn’t hurt, but it surprised me, as I was talking to someone at the time. I hate bleeding in public.I go to the spinning group straight from work, so my hands and nails are generally a mess from being washed a zillion times. So, um, sorry about all the hangnailies, hope it doesn’t offend anyone’s delicate sensibilities. I keep my nails really short, because, well just trust me, it’s better that way.
Fiber Friday

Remember the 80s merino/tencel 50/50 blend I showed on the wheel a while back?

I finally got around to taking a picture of the two ply made from it:

This spins up like buttah, so it’s easy to make a low twist soft and silky single but I think next time I spin this up, I’ll spin with more twist to I can have a plied yarn with a more extreme angle of twist and more bounce. It’s 172 yards and 2.5 oz, and 10 wpi. Hmmm…a Rosechapeau from Hilari?

I finished spinning the 80s merino singles to make a 3 ply worsted weight, and have plied up four skeins:

There are differences among the skeins, in colors, in singles spun and the plying, although they are less dramatic in person.Two of the skeins have an embarrassing “tag” sticking out, a little section of single which plied back on itself and then went into the plied yarn, like a little quarter inch two ply arm wavin’ howdy.

This comes from me not paying enough attention and letting slack get into a ply and letting the twist run along past it. I didn’t use my ghetto homemade plying card and I really should have.

The Victoria’s lazy kate is not tensioned, so the bobbins spin a little more freely and it makes it easier for that to happen. After the first time I saw that (when skeining up the first bobbin) I stuck a sports bra on the middle post of the lazy kate, and it provided resistance so the lazy kate was tensioned. (Why a sports bra? It was on the floor next to the spinning chair. I’m a slob.) The next bobbin after that, I had cleaned the house and thus the sports bra was nowhere around the spinning chair. I lifted a paper towel from a nearby table and wedged that around the middle post. That worked just fine. Then, one of the dogs must have stolen the napkin to shred as it was nowhere to be found with the fourth skein. No biggie, I thought…nope. Upon skeining, I found another little tag. Dangit.

Hypothetically: you could cut the little tag, but then the ply could work loose and form a loop, or worse an end waving out there like a frayed little piece o’ spinner’s shame. You could knit it just as is, and hide it to the back of the work and hope it doesn’t flex to the front, but really…you should cut the yarn on either side, treating it like a knot in the yarn.

Ugh, I hate ends.

So, here’s the skein breakdown (not interesting to anyone but me, but since I’m always losing these scraps of paper I write stuff down on…) 168 yards/2.4 oz, 176 yards/2.5 oz, 190 yards/2.7 oz, and 230 yards/3.2 oz. So that’s 10.8 oz and 764 yards at 9-11 wraps per inch.
I have two bobbins left, one with .6 oz, and another with 1.9 oz. So, plenty of yarn for another skein, but I have to attempt winding .6 or so of the second bobbin into a separate ball for makin’ the 3ply. Sigh. Dork.

So…I thought I had 14 oz of this stuff…I wonder where the other .7 went? I guess I pulled out more disorganised portions than I realised. I’ll probably find a little bit of it somewhere…oh wait, I remember where the .7 is. A sample two ply I made way back when. Never mind me…talking/thinking/typing aloud.
Anyway, even if I do manage to use all of that leftover 2.5 oz and end up with another 176 yards, that leaves me at 940 yards…cutting it a bit fine, even for a worsted gauge st st V-neck sweater of snug fit for me, I think. Anyway, that’s counting yardage before it’s made. It may end up a manly matching hat, mittens and scarf set. Ooh la la.

I guess the fiber key to this section of the post was 80s merino, straight up and the mixed half and half of tencel. Huh.

So let’s make that the marketing monday blurbo and get that over with eh? Yeah. You can click here to look at prices if you’d like to buy some to spin yourself (please note the new put up amounts including 5 oz! –1 oz to play with for sampling, 4 oz to do a little project with–) but they are undyed. In the new year, after we get back from the month long hiatus, I’ll have dyed fibers for sale.

Have you ever seen how big ten pounds of Kona Superwash is?

My gigantic, unscoured, sportweight superwash lover…So much for “short and sweet” catch up, oy.
Random: so I was just leaving a comment on Elabeth’s blog and I made a cheesy pun. Then I thought, “whorling dervish?” That would be a cute business name! Maybe better than this foreign language name that makes so many people go “leebahlahbah whatnow?”! So google turned up no whorling dervish, and no server responded at whorlingdervish.com…but my host, dreamhost (a host I’ve been very happy with and a good recc from MJ lo so long ago, and they give free hosting to charities, how cool is that?) says it’s taken. Bummer.

My downstairs neighbor asked me if I know how to crochet or knit and if I could teach her and I nearly snorted my brains right out the back of my head. I believe I said something like, “I’m not much of a hooker, but I rock the knitting house.”

Fershizzle, I’m all up on the knizzle.

Anyway, I’m going to try and get together with her sometime this week to spread the knitting virus.

Pomona/Angelina is doing awesome, and proving that her Mommy is a good one and she’s made a lot of progress with her. She’s been coming out for snuggles and hanging out in the living room of her own free will and snoozing on the couch.

Fast asleep:

So freakin’ cute. I love this beautiful girl, but I’m really glad she has a great home and that her mommy has let her visit us.
The boys are doing well at the kennel. When I do a turnout shift, I let them out on the slab together after the shift (they go out with a bigger group together during the shift too) and we play a little. A bunch of dogs got adopted this weekend (Nick and my favorite among them) but not Snuggle and Kilt. Snuggle has an adoption lined up, but he’s had that twice before and they just seem to evaporate. He and Kilt are both so normal, so easy, it’s a bit funny that they’ve been so long at the group. It’s partly a testament to how fantastic all our dogs are, really. Compared to the all breeds rescue work we used to do, there’s a rare few that Nick and I wouldn’t want to have in our home.I had a dye workshop on Saturday. It was very small since most everyone is caught up in holiday madness, but it went very well, and the students went home with some beautiful handpainted fiber and yarn and some new skills, knowledge, and confidence. The next date is the third Saturday in February, which hopefully will be warm and sunny, because this kitchen is a bit small and while that is sort of the point (you don’t have to have a big honkin’ separate studio! although boy wouldn’t that be awesome) people still need space to paint and work comfortably.

The other night I had the television on and It’s a Wonderful Life started. I’ve never seen it before so I watched it (and marveled at the marketing, the commercials seemed very much geared toward women with catastrophic brain injuries [seriously, the desperate lameness of the yoplait commercial “dating a masseuse -shh!–good” makes me want to punch something. Same with diamond commercials.]) and really liked it…but I turned it off when he started being mean to his family. So I guess I still haven’t seen it. I’ll put it in my Netflix queue.

And WHOA. A few days ago I looked at the prices for going to and from D.F. (Mexico City) from/to San Diego and was irked to find them over a thousand dollars for the both of us, after taxes etc. So when I looked last night and could snag the roundtrip tix all told for $800, I did, although I was worried that this was the start of a drop and they’d go lower and I’d be “d’oh!”ed. I told Nick about this and he said, “Yeah, and now we won’t look at the prices anymore.” We both don’t have much of a stomach for fluctuating values.

But I did look.

And ¡jolín! Wow, I’m glad I bought those tickets, as the price has jumped right back up. The industry is a mystery. Is it exchange rate? Demand? Some sort of ridiculously complicated algorithm?

I am so excited abut this trip. I’m going to teach a beginning spinning class at our local library on the sixth, then -boom!- off on the seventh for 29 days of aventura pura…pues lo que espero. I wish I wasn’t going to miss TNNA, I wish I wasn’t going to miss a month in the “industry’s high season,” but…it’s Mexico. A country I love–I’ve been to more states in Mexico than I have here in the U.S.of A. And Guatemala and Belize. Whee!

If you were a cold sleeper going to a place with lows of 40-50ºF, do you think you’d try to get away with one of those polar fleece sleeping bags (like from L.L. Bean), or go with a real sleeping bag?

Permalink 13 Comments

12.11.06

Earthues! (shameless marketing monday) and the return of the Prodigal Pup!

Posted in dogs, shameless marketing monday at 12:44 am by wendy

Earthues is a line of natural dye supplies and natural dye extracts of excellent quality, and I’m very excited to have some in stock to sell. Earthues is based in Seattle and was founded by Michelle Wipplinger, a master dyer who has traveled the world learning and teaching in the natural dye field.

I’m really having fun with the first part of the shop’s order, which includes COLORS kits.

The COLORS kit is made up of 11 Earthues natural dye extracts, 3 indigo agents, 2 fixatives (mordants) and scour, enough fun stuff for dyeing up about 60 pounds of fibers. I have three in the shop available for purchase at $150 with free shipping.

I’ve been playing with one of my own and mordanted protein fibers–superwash sock yarn, wool/silk yarn, mohair/silk yarn, cultivated silk yarn, finn wool fiber and superwash wool fiber and dyed with cochineal and logwood purple extract, a lovely purple violet variegation.

I’ve done silk, wool, wilk/wool blend, linen and superwash yarns in indigo dips and plan to overdye for some variegated green and blues, my favorites. Cochineal, with a very strong indigo dip:

$150 might seem like a hell of a lot of money to spend on dyeing, but pound for pound it’s about as good a deal as acid dyes/fiber reactive dyes.A half ounce of acid dyes/fiber reactive dye dyes two pounds to a medium depth of shade, and a half ounce goes for about $4.50-$8.00 (depends on whether you’re going for Dharma’s store brand or name brand Lanaset/Sabraset/Procion MX) so that’s $135-240 to dye the same amount with acid dyes, not including the peripherals like gloves, masks, ph strips, soda ash & an acid like vinegar or citric acid. And shipping. The peripherals and instructions are included in the kit, so I think it’s actually a pretty good way to break into natural dyeing, and not as expensive as one might think. Nor as difficult. The extracts are excellent, very concentrated and easy to use.  The instructions are fairly simple, whether you’re an experienced dyer or not. I will put up tutorials soon to demonstrate the processes, I promise and results.

Anyway, here’s the fun stuff the kit contains (all ingredients are extracts, in powdered or liquid form):

1. cochineal extract (dactylopus coccus) ½ounce
2. quebracho red (aspidosperma quebracho, Quebrachea lorentzwii) 2 ounces
3. logwood grey (haematoxylon campechianum) 2 ounces
4. fustic (chlorophora tinctoria) 2 ounces
5. chestnut (costanea sativa) 1 ounce
6. indigo (indigofera tinctoria) 2 ounces
7. madder extract (rubia cordifolia/tinctorium) blend 1 ounces
8. logwood purple (haematoxylon campechianum) 2 ounces
9. osage orange (maclura pomifera) 2 ounces
10. pomegranate (punica granatum) 2 ounces
11. cutch (acacia catechu) 2 ounces
12. iron (ferous sulfate) 2 ounes
13. soda ash (sodium carbonate) 2 ounces
14. scour, washing agent for cellulose 2 ounces
15. aluminum sulfate (mordant for protein fibers) 16 ounces
16. aluminum acetate (mordant for cellulose fibers) 8 ounces
17. reducing agent for indigo (thiourea dioxide) 2 ounces
18. Instruction book
19. mask and gloves
20. Ph strips

I think that’s about it, all packed in a box that seems too small to fit it all.

Quite clever packaging, really.Pomonabunny has returned! (and we are trying to remember to call her Angelina, her “new” name)

Man alive, I almost forgot how beautiful she is. But now she’s all snuggled up in our bed and it’s like she never left.I’ll try not to be such a damp, pathetic snivelly mess when her mommy comes back for her, this time.
The boys have been settled back into the GAC kennel. I called, worried, and was told that they were doing just fine, and Snuggle was “really hyper.” Yep, that’s our boy.

Permalink 2 Comments