07.08.08

More sewing, some spinning, some dyeing

Posted in natural dyeing, sewing, spinning at 11:25 pm by wendy

I was talking to my Grammy on the phone and realised I haven’t posted the apron kit I finished, or the disaster of a reversible wrap skirt.

I’m very happy with the apron, although of course it’s not perfect. I had some trouble easing in the ruffle, I think because my seam allowances are always so inconsistent. I don’t think there was originally supposed to be any easing in needed.

(click the pic to view more in the set)

The pockets came in handy when I wore it during the dyeing workshops at BSG for keeping my tissues in for my constantly dribbling schnozzle.

For one reason or another, I’m fascinated with aprons lately. They’re not too intimidating to make, and I like the pretty vintage lines. And, since I’m still learning and trying to be better and more consistent in my sewing, they’re a good exercise. I’ll be doing some more, from this book A is for Apron.

But this:

was supposed to be a reversible wrap skirt. But it’s awful. I love the fabrics, but together, the bubble fabric is just too thick and the skirt has no drape. So, I’m going to plan out some pockets for it and give it to a friend up here as an apron. Ze circle of sewing and apronage, she continues.

I haven’t sewn anything since that devastating blow to my fragile sewer’s self-esteem.

No, it’s just been hot, and I disassembled the sewing portion of the room to take the table to BSG and haven’t reset everything up. I’ll do it tonight, maybe plan out a couple projects.

On spinning:

July 5th was the start of the Tour de France, and I figured I’d do the Tour de Fleece this year again. There’s actually two different groups–I love Katherine’s philosophy of it, but I also joined the newer organiser’s Ravelry group because it was there and easy to do.

Other than that, the only official joining of all this is in my head, since my goals are loose and vague and don’t necessarily conform to the rules well. Essentially, my goal is to finish up the projects I’ve already started, to put a serious dent in my stash, and to try to do something different and improve on skills outside my usual comfort range. So, really, I’m just going to use the group thought of the Tour as an impetus to be a little more spinning-focused this month, and a little more goal oriented and end product-minded than usual.

I had three goals last year and only completed one, and I’ve already failed out this year by not doing any spinning on Sunday.

But I’ve got a darn good reason.
Nick and I had the World’s Worst Day of Fishing–seriously, we got up at 5 am and went to Trout Lake, which was gorgeous, where I used my early birthday present (a great whippy rod and new reel setup from Nick) to not catch any d@mn fish, but a lot of weeds. And occasionally reeds. I was a danger to myself and others (as long as they were not fish).

Nick was equally skunked, with only two nibbles between us and again, no fish.

This was our first time at Trout Lake, and we didn’t realise that at this time of the year, it is really only set up for boat fishing. There’s a relatively weed-free area by the boat ramp, but that’s about it.

It was still relatively early and cool, so we went to breakfast and then fished at Greenhorn. There I managed to really spaaz in my casting, catching lots of branches and logs and reeds and more lakebottom. I had no idea how lazy I had become with the Zebco reels, which are pushbutton, one handed dealies, but needlessly complicated inside and snag like the dickens and can be fiddly to fix.

We left, went home and napped.

Because that is how we deal with disappointment in this house.

We snuggle up in a tangle of blankets and dogs, each with an iPod earbud in and fall asleep listening to some Terry Pratchett book we’ve heard a bazillion times before.

We woke up, we puttered.
We thought about going to see Wall-E at the Broadway Twin, but I didn’t want those stupid fish to think they’d won so we went to Greenhorn again. And fished and fished (and actually, can you call it fishing if there are apparently no freakin’ fish involved?) and snagged more reeds and Nick lost his second lure of the day and I lost my first, and then, since I’d just spent the last twenty minutes carefully retrieving that lure from the reeds and untangling all the line I’d fed out to it…I flopped onto the bank crosslegged like a little kid about to tantrum cry in utter frustration and said, “f#ck it, I’m done.”

So we went to the grocery and video store, got Death at a Funeral, Beast with a Billion Backs and The Golden Compass, a six pack of beer and a frozen pizza and slunk home. We drowned our sorrows with pizza and beer and zany comedy and dealt with the next morning’s headache as the logical aftermath of the World’s Worst Day of Fishing (Hopefully Ever).

So obviously, there was no room for spinning in there.

Anyway, though, I turned the silk top I dyed during the Nancy Finn workshop:

into a bobbin full of singles while waiting in the mechanic’s office while the wagon had its 100,000 mile service:

And then, put into a center pull ball, I navajo plied it into a teeny little skein: 2 oz., 124 yards, approx. 14 wpi. I knew I wanted to spin it with texture, so I hadn’t been too careful about consistency when spinning the single, because originally I thought I might do a coil yarn, spinning the silk single over a some fine thread.

But then, when I finally finished spinning up the dark BFL Nick bought me from Copper Moose way back when I first started spinning,

I ended up with a spare ball of singles and no other balls to finish plying it up with as a 3 ply yarn. So I navajo plied it.

But first, I used some leftover singles from another project.

My texture and consistency was all over the place, but I loved the way it looked, all the unexpected coils. (I wasn’t pinching back the twist, just doing it one handed. Oops, that’s what working from memory using a technique you only know the theory of and not the practice will get you–and not logically transferring process elements…) Then I did it on the BFL.

I liked the texture so much I figured I’d do it with the silk. But I fired up youtube and watched this video in the interim and pinched back the twist and…blech.

Boring.

It just looks like bad spinning, badly plied.
Which I guess it is, really, but I had envisioned a much more interesting effect and shouldn’t have changed the game plan. Kind of ironic I suppose, that an impulsive change in process created a yarn I dislike for its mundane predictability revealing its poor textural planning in an uninteresting way.

And of course, this ordinary 3 ply thing was the effect to be expected by controlling the twist: the elimination of coils, so why the heck did I do it?

I guess I just got caught up in practicing this new-to-me technique and forgot about what I had wanted and envisioned as the end product. I don’t know what I’ll do with the yarn now.

Another disappointing aspect is that the color seems to have fled from it. Such strong fantastic colors in the single, even though plied to preserve the blocks of color, have become nearly pastel.

Perhaps a combination of some color lost during the wash to finish the yarn and the 3 ply breaking up the way the light reflects from the yarn? I had thought it was the opposite however, where the smoother the yarn, the lighter it appears because of the greater surface reflection…ah, I dunno.

Speaking of disappointments in color, I did a lightfastness test on the natural dye samples (well, pieces, at any rate) and turmeric is definitely not lightfast.

Unfotunately, I’d already wound out, mordanted, and plunked a whole bunch of yarn into the turmeric dye pot:

If you click on the really yellow one, it has notes as to all the samples’ fiber contents.

It’s a bummer, but oh well. Some will be overdyed in the indigo vat, including that skein of dark BFL. I’ll either figure out a usage for these yarns that will take the light sensitivity into account, and/or just deal with the future fading. Fortunately, yellow is not that hard to get in the world of natural dyeing, even such a strong lovely orange yellow. I’ll have to plant the weld seeds I got, and of course, I have some osage dust. Different, perhaps, but better in the lightfast category.

On the knitting front…meh. Knitting is boring.

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05.18.08

I’m back!

Posted in love, sewing, spinning, travel at 1:45 pm by wendy

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02.21.08

“I can guarantee that if that gets hot enough it’ll explode!”

Posted in Shop Updates, Uncategorized, dogs, spinning at 3:30 pm by wendy

So, small town life is not without its big city hazards, that is to say, the crazy busybody old man who wants to know what it is you are packing, and then without listening to your answer, tells you that it is ILLEGAL to send in the mail what you are sending, that it is a CHEMICAL and there are LAWS and it will EXPLODE! And so on and such forth.

For the curious, it was a gallon bottle of Fibermaster, a scour discontinued by Louet. It is lovely and the continued availability of it will be missed.

But it will not explode. Not unless you attach some dynamite to it. I just shook my head and politely disagreed, and I am coming to believe that the nicer you are to mean people, the more egged on to @ssholery they are.

But what is to be gained by being mean as well? Perhaps a shorter conflict, but a hell of a bad taste in your mouth. And I try to only put good tasting things in my mouth and keep anger and bile out. Trying. Complaining on a blog feels like a very clichéd and sneaky way of circumventing that hippy goal though.
Speaking of being hippies and trying to be better about putting our money where our mouth is and supporting local etc., we bought a bed (and frame)! You walk into this shop and smell delicious sheepiness and it’s all over, no other mattress will do.
We’d just been in Black’s Furnishings (Yreka’s furniture store) and bought a leather couch, pretty close to our idea of what we wanted, close enough I think that we’ll be happy with it for a long long time. We’ve been wanting leather furniture for ages, they’re better for Nick’s asthma, comfortable and easy to clean. We’ll keep it covered in blankets though because the dogs can be rough on furniture, what with their nails and stealing milkshakes. Blankets can be washed easily, upholstery just sucks up the dander, even with our carpet cleaner.

Anyway, Crivens likes it.

We had thought about ordering a furniture set, finding exactly what we wanted.

Turns out, Crate and Barrel makes exactly what we wanted. But this is still not the world where we will pay that much for furniture…even when we tell ourselves that it will last us twenty or more years…

And it turns out, we really needed a couch. Crivvie was peeved when we gave away her couch (our only couch) before moving, and the movers didn’t show up when we had been told to expect them–turns out we could have stayed nearly a week longer visiting our families, no big deal, right?–so we’ve been eating our meals hunkered on the floor.

Of course, the couch doesn’t really solve this since the dogs have taken it over, but it’s nice to have a cushy place to set your tuchus now and again. I really look forward to the rest of our furniture joining us.

Hey since I took so long to post this, our furniture arrived yesterday! Yay!

Anyway, back to the mattress/bed topic.

We’d just been in Black’s basement trying out their beds and mattresses. The Simmonseseseseses are very nice, but with that crazy pillowtop, how the heck do you get sheets that fit and stay on?

Plus, Nick and I, somehow, are hard on mattresses.  And I don’t mean that in any flip “hehrheh, knowwhatAhmean?” wink, wink, nudge nudge way (well, not completely); I really don’t understand how two people who aren’t overweight manage to make such fancypantz mattresses as we’ve had get lumpy so quick.

We tried these fancy mattresses made of plastic and steel and I wondered how long they would last, really.

We were steered toward the Tempurpedic. I laid down on it and nearly freaked out.

Every time you lay down, or move, there’s this slight sinking shift. Which is what they want I guess, because according to the salesman you sink down to a level and then that’s it and everything’s even and your spine is in alignment with the spheres. Anyway, that weird motion without motion thing reminded me of that motion shifting of perception after lying down when you’re really sick.

I really don’t like that feeling.

Then there was that little discussion of “offgassing.“

We’d already called Shepherd’s Dream from home and Montague is the next town over, so they were our next stop.

And we laid down in the demo bed amidst all the sheepy smell, and it just felt like a good bed. Nothing fancy but a bed without chemicals, made locally and from locally raised sheep and processed conforming to organic principles. Any offgassing won’t be from the bed itself.
So there’s a saga for buying a bed, who knew there was so much to say about it?

But all the things we’re buying now in this frenzy of economy stimulation are things we’ve been waiting on, planning on.

For about four years now, anything big that’s needed replacing has been put off, and now we’re in what is basically a practice house. We bought a washer and dryer. Wow. A very nice washer and dryer. So they darn well better last. They are both supposed to be very energy and water efficient though. But slow. I’m kind of missing our old rental ones with three settings. Nostalgia, eh, whatcha gonna do?

On a different topic, I got the chance to meet up with my new friends, the Siskiyou Spinners and Knitters, or at least some of them.

Everyone was very nice and friendly. I didn’t have my wheel yet as it was Tuesday and the movers didn’t come until Wednesday, but I took my knitting and enjoyed chatting and watching, and finished the collar of my sweater. I still need to do the bottom rib, so no pictures yet, and it might be a while with all the unpacking we’ve to do.

I was blown away by the beautiful paint job of Jo Alice’s s17 though, created by her daughter:

I just can’t imagine anything more perfect.

And on another note:

It’s Tahoe’s birthday! Yay! Our little firstborn bastard son is seven today!

We may go on a little walk later, but Belu is still limping from some mystery accident (we heard a thump on the stone tile floor in the middle of the night and now she’s limping. So, not much of a mystery really. ) and Crivvie just stopped limping from the Jackrabbit Incident.

We were walking in a field and a guy walking his dogs around a neighboring hill flushed a big, fast Jack across our path.

Thus we discovered that Crivvie actually does have some prey drive, and she got pretty close.

But the wily Jack led them up and around a hill which had a lot of volcanic rock, and we got them back with cuts all over. Tahoe had blood dripping from his chin, so he may have biffed it or run the Jack into a hole out of sight. We’ll never know, since none of those involved in the incident are talking.

Most of the damage was self inflicted because of their double suspension gait and the interference, so I think we’ll have to get muttluks (or similar, if someone out there has experience with dog booties I’d love to hear opinions–I like the long liner cuff of the muttluks but it looks like the ruffwear booties fit well) with those long cuffs to protect their legs, and the paw coverings will also help them from knocking the tops of their toes.
Since Tahoe is white, his wounds looked most dramatic:

But we took them home and washed their wounds in a tub full of warm soapy water, and after all was revealed to be relatively minor despite all the blood, sprayed them with WoundKote, and let them be.

No one had any wounds that needed stitching, or breaks, thank goodness, although Crivvie’s limp worried us for a bit. But nothing was broken, or even very hot, so we let it go. She had really gouged the heck of the back of that front leg, and had a cut on the edge of that pad, so that may have been the cause.

Amazingly, that was the only cut pad out of the whole deal, and she’s done worse to her pads playing on the deck at home.
And since Tahoe had run up to a bloated looking fox terrier-type at dog beach the Sunday night before the movers came to say “hi” and got a bite in the side as a reward, we already had an anti-licking cone and him on precautionary antibiotics.

So we’d been putting the cone on whoever seems to find theirself most delicious at the moment.

And hoping this is the end of dog injuries for a while. Dogs are such fast healers though, everybody’s nearly a hundred percent again, except for Belu’s limp.
And Belu bit her tongue during the Jack Incident. Which made a nice change from her biting Tahoe or Crivens or me or Nick’s juicy upper thigh, even if by accident.

Heavens to Betsy, sorry about the novel!

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07.16.07

One Week and One Goal Down

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

The Tour is On!

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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06.18.07

A Day at the Fair, etc

Posted in random, spinning at 10:41 pm by wendy

(wow! what a creative title!)

I went to the fleece judging at the San Diego County Fair Sunday with Heidi and Lionel and Sophie; it was a fun day.
I went last year (pictures in a flickr set here).

(pictures from this year here)

I really like listening to the shepherds talking and the judge and all that. I didn’t realise it until I went through the piccies from last year, but there where much fewer entries this year. Still some serious gorgeousness going on. I snagged me some:

   And like last year, I’m thinking of the ones that got away.But I have a fair amount of raw wool already…plus Black Sheep this week, gotta take it easy, wait and score some of the doubtless premium fleeces that will be at BSG.

But, because I’m a dumb@ss, I’ve got classes during the wool sales, so I’m not sure how I’ll get my hands on them.

I’m in the final countdown of getting ready to go up–cleaning, laundry, packing…avoiding those by blogging & browsing…

and carding….

(red BFL, orange & red tussah silk & black dyed merino)

Um, I guess I should have a picture of the yarn here. Whoops.

Anyway, back to BSG.

I’ll be up in Oregon from Wednesday to Wednesday, the 20th to the 27th and I’m going to try the whole “roughin’ it” thing. Well, relatively. Remember, I’m used to sleeping cradled in the arms of love and all.

I am so excited!

I’m taking Shearing On Your Own, Meat Cutting, Organic Certification for Fiber: Standards, and Emergency Treatment & Prevention. Wheeee!

I’ve been hesitant to try and make plans beyond the classes, but it’d be fun to meet up. (I got some good tips for fun things to do in PDX from vj and in Eugene from Martha and I’m looking forward to wandering and exploring with little plan) Call my cell at 892-9055 (area code 619) if you’re game, or if you see me walkin’ around all befuddled, please say hi. I don’t know if I’ll have e-mail access, but I probably will find a way (or face deleting a bajillion spams when I get home).

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06.09.07

“Today we continue part four of the agonizing pain that is my life…”

Posted in books, dogs, entertainment, knitting, spinning at 10:35 pm by wendy

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 there I 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!”

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04.29.07

Natural Dyeing & KCS, etcetera etcetera etcetera…

Posted in books, natural dyeing, random, spinning at 10:02 pm by wendy

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:

Knitters Coffee Swap Qs:
1. Whole bean or ground?

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.

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03.14.07

I did mention that I suck, right? (+ fiber content)

Posted in clippings, dogs, knitting, skype, spinning at 8:22 am by wendy

I forgot to set the Skypecast to repeat, I forgot about it completely until about 7 o’clock tonight; this last week has got completely away from me. Thankfully, I’ve been keeping a dayplanner lately and so I can look back and see that, yeah, I did do stuff even if it’s all a big ocean of vague with the odd islands of memory now.
Here’s how lame I am though, I can’t figure out a quick way to grab everybody’s e-mails from the comments who said they were interested in participating, so I set up an announcement list –dreamhost.com’s webpanel makes that about a minute’s work v. going through all the comments and cutting and pasting people’s addresses and then accidentally closing the window and then starting all over and…anyway, if you want to give the Skype SnB thing a try next week, please hit this thing up:

Name:
E-mail:

Hopefully that’ll work.Needless to say, the only mail you’ll get from that is the confirmation e-mail and the actual announcements themselves with the link to go to to join the Skypecast, no organ enlargement spam or hot stock tips from this direction, I promise.Also, if anyone savvier with Skype knows how to get a permanent link for the SnB so I don’t have to bother with setting it to repeat and send out e-mails, please give me a shout.

Spinning and Knitting

I finally got a chance to get to Stick and Stone Fiberarts in Van Nuys. We were up in Riverside for a wedding and drove down to check it out and meet up with a fun couple we met in Guanajuato who live in the L.A. area.It’s a great little shop, with a nice selection of fibers out and fondle-able, including Chasing Rainbows and unprepared camel down. So much beautiful stuff, including this lovely Kundert spindle.

I’d spun on one briefly before–MJ’s–and the lines of it stuck in my head. It’s light and pretty and spins purty durn good. When I got it home I started spinning up some of the 80s merino/tencel blend I’d painted, but I still need to ply it. Heather helped me out pulling the yarn off at the Whistlestop (it all fell off in a wad) to make a skein and I’ll eventually get to it.

Oh my gosh. I’m watching showtime and they just showed an ad for This American Life, premiering March 22nd. And they have a freaking series for Henry VIII. I am so mad that Mom is gone, she would have got such a kick out of those.

So I traveled for 21 days and this is all the knitting I have to show for it. My excuses:

• linen + mistake rib + US 1 & 3s = sloOooooOOOoow going
• mostly I can do it by feel, no problem, but when the scenery is really interesting / the road is really curvy / I was in class / walking (I can knit and walk, yes, and sometimes I did, but most times I’d rather enjoy the moment wholly for the wonderful experience it was)

So, by the end of our expected month long vacation, I expected to have a sweater to wear on the plane ride home. Instead, we came home early because the worst possible thing we never expected happened, although I wouldn’t have made the finished sweater goal anyway. For some reason, I couldn’t give much of a crap about that.
I still have the second sleeve on the needles and I knit on it when I just NEED something to knit, but I’ve been knitting on more fun, worsted weight and unphotographed things lately.

More spinning

Pin drafted pencil roving moorit merino and angora blend fiber, (unknown percentages) 4 oz. I bought this from Flying Colors Ranch (Robin Snyder) way back when the Cuyamaca Water Gardens had that very small fiber fest.

a more attractive picture of this fun fiber

I’ve been trying to spin with more twist so that when I ply I can have a greater angle of twist.

Usually my singles are really low twist and my plied yarns, while soft and lofty and squishy, aren’t tightly plied. But I’ve come to the conclusion that I live a high abrasion lifestyle, so more twist is needed. Plus, with this stuff being so fine, it turned out great. Of course it’s angora blend so it’ll poof out no matter what.

Crivvie Interlude

I hope Crivvie had half as much fun here when Mom was staying here with the dogs, Crivvie’s goofiness is happy-making.

More Spinning

I finally got around to busting out the scale, the lazy kate, and the ball winder and dividing the remaining 80s merino I’d dyed up so long ago.

My desk is such a mess. I’ll edit all these later with yarn measurements & so on; I’ve misplaced the original scraps of paper I wrote them down on.

I ended up with a fair amount of single leftover so I ran it through to add more twist, then plied it with itself with a lot of twist, then plied it again in the opposite direction to make a cabled yarn I feel pretty “meh” about.

There’s not much of it so it’ll be the stripe of something.

It’s a good exercise though for me with plying: to practice focus, and to be watchful of the effects. It’s pretty hard darn near impossible to make a good looking cabled yarn if the single isn’t consistently spun, but since I had spun this to be a three ply and I like a little variation in my singles (why spend time handspinning if it’s going to look machine spun?) my variations in thickness and twist weren’t a good base for a cabled yarn.

I like to practice anyway, by adapting the amount of twist in the plying process to each section–that’s where the focus comes in. In some parts you can see I got it all right, in others I needed more twist.

Here’s a favorite family photo:

It’s not the greatest scan, but in it you can see my Grandmother, my brother (two years old[?] at the time [he’s eleven years my senior]), my Aunt Dian, my Uncle Deke sporting the pimpin’est pair of trousers, my Mom, and my Dad, who was apparently anxious to return to his yachting cocktail party when this pic was snapped.

Is fashion sense (or lack therof) genetic?

Happy Wednesday, here’s an earworm for ya.

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12.19.06

Technique Tuesday–Tailspinning

Posted in Tutorial Tuesday, spinning at 2:09 am by wendy

How to turn this:

  into this:

  I’ve wanted to do a tailspun yarn for a long time.

I have so many little packets of mohair locks, a whole bunch of yearling Lincoln locks, in so many pretty colors, just waiting to be tailspun yarn (or a a light airy and soft bouclé) but I was intimidated, and now of course, I can’t think why.

  Tailspun yarn is a yarn that has whole locks of wool hanging off a core, like a big ol’ eyelash yarn.

A lock of wool has a butt end and a tip, the butt being the cut end or skin side of the lock, and the tip being the sproingy curly tapered bit.

You can do tailspinning using just the locks themselves, by just drafting them a bit, then catching the next butt end up and letting the twist run up to it, then another butt end, always keeping the twist one butt end behind and leaving the locks hanging out…but I used the corespinning method.

Corespinning is just using one yarn as a core and wrapping another yarn around it.

By holding the second yarn at an angle (angle depends on desired effect) to wrap around the core yarn you can get a beehive/coil yarn look, and by holding a fiber at an angle (roughly 90 degrees) and using the grabbing action of the core yarn being spun as resistance to draft back on, you get a really fluffy soft looking yarn with a strong solid core.

Tailspinning creates a really unique looking yarn, maybe not terribly practical for knitting (you can keep the curls to the front of the work by purling on the right side) but I really dig it, and it looks really cool in weaving too.

It is pretty labor intensive though–you have to flick open the lock ends and treadle rather slowly. In the 25 minutes I was messing around with it and trying to film a tutorial, I only ended up with 6 yards (1.5 oz).

For a similar effect with less work for knitting, look at the cuffs Brooke made at SOAR.
You can use an overspun single or a plied yarn, the important thing is to execute the tailspinning by spinning the wheel/spindle in the opposite direction of the last direction that the core yarn was last spun (so if you are using a plied yarn, odds are you’ll tailspin clockwise, if you’re using an overspun single, odds are you’ll be spinning counterclockwise).

So, you hold the core yarn right out in front of you, as you might with any other drafting or plying, but in another hand you lay the butt end of the lock on top of the core as you treadle and the twist travels along the core and grabs the lock (use a flicker, or slicker brush from a pet store, or a regular hair/tick/flea comb to open the butt end of the lock into a fanning of fiber and it makes it grab incredibly easily) and you move onto the next lock. You can slide the locks up together along the core to pack them densely or you can space them loosely, with separations of wrapped soft fluff.

The more tension, the tighter you tug or wrap the locks, the less soft the resulting yarn will be.

I don’t have pictures in progress of the spinning because I made video, but it is taking forever to upload. I will embed them and you’ll have a choice between Pomona-packed and Pomona free Quicktime video that you can download to your video ipod (Hi Mary-Kay!) if you want to see it in action.

Tailspinning quicktime video:
I’ve removed it from being embedded, I guess it’s so huge it just doesn’t want to load.

Over a year later, I found a way to upload it to youtube (it was too big before) sou you can now find the not so great tutorial video right here.
If I can do it, you can do it. ;p

The hardest thing might be letting go of expectations of exactly how it should look and just enjoy the serendipity of the way the locks wrap the yarn.

Diane Varney (does anyone know if this is the same Diane Varney?) describes this as Curly Locks in her Spinning Designer Yarns. She says that an advantage is that you can use a perfectly hideous commercial yarn, as you’ll be covering it up, but I don’t have any hideous yarn in my stash anymore.

I don’t think.

I did have a beautiully dyed yarn from Siri, with colors that seemed meant to be mated with the locks I’d dyed way back when. Just in case the core peeked through after all, and plus I like having all parts be pretty, even if they aren’t to be seen.   Kind of like wearing pretty panties.

This is my view when I started writing this post:

  Everyone on the couch!Pomona/Angelina was in a silly mood earlier; she kept stealing wads of locks and I kept having to go retrieve them before they were too thoroughly killed and subdued. But could I be mad?Not with the silly girl with such a face, no.

   Wait, are you sure you’re not mad at me?

  A quick note about the locks–they’re from a yearling Lincoln fleece I bought from Lorraine Powell of Powell Sheep Co (PO Box 183 - Ramona, CA 92065 760/789-1758, she’s also an Ashford Dealer). in Ramona.

It’s a great fleece, well skirted and relatively clean, with great luster and actually quite soft.

Updated: I meant to say something about spinning this on a wheel.

My orifice for my Victoria was way to small for this, and my s17 has hooks which would snag it.

I used the Jumbo head on my Lendrum and still had to feed the yarn manually onto the bobbin.

If you have a Country Spinner, this type of yarn would probably be no problem for doing a big ol’ skein on a wheel…but otherwise, this might actually be most easily done on a spindle…

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