To everything - turn, turn, turn

Lately, I just can't get enough of my spinning wheel. I'm doing some knitting here and there, but man - the spinning? It's just recharging my batteries in such a way that I find it's about all I want to do in the evenings - so much so that I actually first contemplated then mourned the fact that our bathroom was too small for me to bring up my (admittedly compact) wheel so that I could get in just a few more minutes while I supervised the Munch in the tub.

(And don't anyone even *say* the words 'drop spindle' to me - they are evil & are never to defile my house again!) With apologies out there to everyone who loves their drop spindles more than their Addis. I know - I know - it's my issue, and my failing - but I'm going to keep blaming the equipment as long as I possibly can.

Last night while my two men slumbered the sleep of the just (and the totally exhausted) I watched a classic 80s movie and spun up the second half of my latest - and last - Hello Yarn fiber club offering.

Hello Yarn's April Fiber Club - 'Hive' 100% Falkland wool.

I'm very excited about this, as I actually have a plan for it. I'm going to take some of the undyed rovings that I [ahem] ordered from H.Y. yesterday and do a kettle dye of either a very pale yellow or else a very pale (bright) brownish orange and then hopefully spin that up as semi-finely as I did this. Then the two will be plied together into a more or less thick fingering weight and I'll knit the latest Veronik Avery offering - the Lace Ribbon Scarf from the resultant handspun. I'm absolutely tickled with the idea - so ducks, if there are any glaring problems with this little ol' plan of mine, send them my way nicely and softly, so that my bubble bursts slowly, 'kay?

Oh. My. Trouble.

I just went to Hello Yarn's shop to link to the two rovings above that I bought and, uh, Adrian appears to have snuck in a wee fiber update *just* as I was clicking in to get the appropriate links. And I appear to have bought 8 ounces of this and 8 ounces of that. Oh dearie me. How on earth did that happen?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? (n.b. 8 ounces of Wenseydale & 8 ounces of 70/30 merino/mohair. Oh. Oh oh oh oh oh. YES!)

{ahem} Moving right along, people. Nothing to see here. Move along, now.

So anyway, back to my handspun that I've been working on lately. I'll start off with the picture(s) of shame first - my butchering of the February Hello Yarn Fiber Club offering - 'Insect Wings'.

U. G. H.

Overspun. Overplied. Gnarly as all hell. Rescued in terms of touch only because I followed the advice of an article in Spin Out and beat the living hell out of this skein. I dropped it in just-boiled soapy water (!) and then pounded it with a pestle. Then I lifted it into a sink of cold water, squeezed it, and then dropped it back in the hot pot and pounded it again. Once more into the icy sink, and then spun out in the washer. Then whacked repeatedly against the floor, then hung to dry. It's obviously a bit felted now (hah!) but it is MUCH softer, and while it is still overspun and overplied, it is at least nicer to touch now, and should be better to knit into something. Now, let's just put that behind us and call it a (painful) learning experience, shall we?

Banish it from your thoughts, all.

Better. BETTER!!! Balanced. Squishy. Much more even. Happiness in yarn form!

A fat, happy skein of yarn.

Hello Yarn's March Fiber Club offering. 'Red Velvet'. I cannot remember the exact fiber, but it was lovely to spin up. BFL? Merino? I cannot remember. Shame on me and my horrid note-taking! This was majorly fun to spin up. Loads of fun to ply. The difference? I slowed waaaaay down in my overall spinning, pre-drafted until I was happy with the result, and tried a different hand position for the actual spinning/draft triangle action itself. I also decided that I'd rather be a slow, decent spinner rather than a fast, crappy spinner. I decided to embrace my learning curve, as it is, rather than try and deny it and shoot right on past all of the (obvious) learning that I need to do to ultimately be the kind of spinner that I'd like to be.

A final shot of the good & the bad. (No ugly. I don't & won't take pictures of those skeins!)

The two next to each other for a rough visual comparison. One fat and happy, the other twisted and miserable. Maybe the one on the right needs a little therapy to become more mellow and relaxed - hmmmmmmmm??? (if only it were that easy to fix a skein of arsed-up handspun!)


This is the result of some older singles that were on a bobbin and just hanging around the house - I spun up an equal amount on Monday and then plied two strands together until I ran out on one bobbin - then practiced doing a triple ply. I think the skein is halfway decent only because the first bobbin's worth was so old that the majority of my bad (over)spinning was calmed down due to the long resting time. Another lesson to be learned! I've left the bulk of this roving to be spun later, when I have a better sense of what I want to do with it. It's PRETTY, and spins wonderfully - a beautifl blend of merino & tencel that I bought off of FatCatKnits via Etsy several months back.

And lastly, just because I can (tee-hee!) a picture of what I was looking at and who I was talking to when I was taking all of the other above pictures:

Kim. Staking Baptisia australis. Standing next to a species of allium that is nearly as tall as the Munchkin. Ducks, there is not a single thing that this woman cannot make grow and grow and grow!

And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to buy my little guy a kiddie fishing pole & make a picnic for the two of us to eat next to the lake tonight as a surprise treat while Daddy is away for the evening playing volleyball.

Buried

I'm almost literally buried in work at the moment - I've got thousands and thousands of books to order before vacation kicks on at COB on Friday, and nary a spare second between now and then to rest (or blog). Add to that a near constant headache from squinting at order cards all day, holiday stresses, and a very very cranky toddler and you get...............................desperation knitting and late-night spinning-wheel distributor online surfing on my part!

:)

I'd post pictures of our luverly Christmas tree and my most recent yarn purchase (a birthday present to myself from Sundara!) plus my hubby's birthday gift to me, but alas our camera is currently engaged in more honorable pursuits - it's at the law office being used for Real Work Purposes and not documenting my knitting as usual.

Once the camera comes back, I'll take some quickie pictures and post what my world currently looks like.........and spill all about my exciting upcoming combination birthday/Christmas present - - a new spinning wheel! (Which I'm currently in the process of deliberating, debating, picking & choosing. But I'm leaning - this week, at least - towards a Majacraft Rose.)

Last Weekend Discussed This Weekend

Last Saturday Kim and I kicked off our pre-holiday weekend starting with a Little Gingerbread Endeavor.

(And for those of you who are wondering, the answer is yes, red wine does in fact make gingerbread-house construction that much easier & more enjoyable.)

The gingerbread house (complete with a string of mini Christmas lights stuffed in the back to make the butterscotch-candy-pane windows glow becomingly) will reside in the library for the next few weeks.

Sunday we went to Gryphon's house for a spin-in. It was - in a word - glorious. Not only did we walk away with a lovely amount of fiberish booty from Gryphon's in-house shop, but I also walked away with a borrowed wheel for the next few weeks.


Booty.

Wheel.

(An Ashford Traveller double-treadle, for anyone who is wondering.)

Using this lovely little beauty I finished spinning both the dark purple & pale purple superwash bundles that I bought from Jessie a few weeks back. I was so excited by my progress that I went ahead and plied them together last night with amateurish yet exciting results for yours truly - and the resultant lovely huge skein is currently lightly weighted and drying in the kitchen. I will show you probably far far too many pictures of it when it is dry.


Dark purple superwash singles in all their wee loveliness.

It might not sound it, but I have in fact been knitting in addition to all of this spinning and gingerbreading - - and once I get the camera back in action and pictures taken, all of my recent FO's and two newly-cast-on WIP's will be shamelessly paraded in front of everyone.

Shamelessly. :)

A little regrouping down time

I love my job. Sometimes though, I love even more the fact that I get to take vacation from my job.

Like next week.

I looked at the calendar and realized that I am already 'given ' Wednesday - Friday off as paid vacation - and that by spending a mere two of my vacation days (which I have several of saved up so far this year) I could get a whole week off of work.......two days of which would be just me, the DVD player, and my knitting/spinning.

So send in my vacation notice I did, and take the time off I will.

Even better, this vacation time will be following what promises to be a FANTASTIC weekend - tomorrow Kim and I will spend the day making a wonderfully ornate gingerbread house, and Sunday Kim and I are driving up to Gryphon's house for a 4+ hour Spin-In. (Our first.) We're not only excited by the opportunity to get in some more spinning, but also by the opportunity to get some tips and tricks from the other spinners there while also trying out some different wheels than the Ashford Traditional that we currently practice with. (Gryphon owns a grand total of 7? 8? wheels, dontcha' know. Including a great wheel that I most certainly will NOT be brave enough to test out!!!!)



And then, to think that the day after such a wonderful weekend I'll get to spend two full days home alone with only myself and the pets for company, with all sorts of knitting and swatching and spinning and plying to occupy myself...........not to mention just a wee bit of hand-carding.


Remember this bundle of grubby fleece?

Fun fun fun fun fun.

Thank goodness I gave in and did a wee bit of retail fiber therapy yesterday during the middle of a Very Very Very Bad Day At Work - as the following beautiful bundle of superwash merino/tencel is now making it's way towards my house:

FatCatKnits handpainted merino/tencel superwash - 4.3 oz. In her 'Mars' colourway.

A girl has got to keep herself properly occupied, you know.

A Loaner is Loaned

Kim came over on Sunday and we had ourselves quite the fiber-filled day amongst the other norms of your basic family weekend. (Grocery shopping, lunch w/ a 2-year old, dinner, laundry, etc.)

We knitted.

(No pictures. Use your imagination on this one. Socks & a Fetching were worked on.)

We spun.

(Kim's first handspun! Real Vermonter wool/mohair/alpaca
blend in Jessie's 'Berry Picking' colourway.)

We photographed.


Elizabeth Zimmerman's BSJ in some Paton's SWS for a good friend's new son.

I love these buttons.

They were found in a huge 'button box' that was given to me by the wife of a co-worker who was retiring & moving across the country to Oregon. Cool buttons. Cool wife & ex-co-worker!


We un-plied and then re-plied with amazing results.................

(my s-spun yarn that I accidentally s-plied) (same yarn after un- then re-plying)


We photographed again because we were just too-happy with our results.

Singles, and 2-ply. My first ever handspun. (!)


Then last - but not least - we did some more knitting (Kim - Monkeys out of some Claudia handpainted in the 'Butter Pecan' colourway) and some unraveling of a thrift sweater (Me - 100% merino wool in a pearl-ish grey shade that I'm going to turn into a cardigan along the lines of this.)



We had a very good day.

At the end of the evening (with both boys fast asleep, I might add - that time change sure tuckers out even the grownups!) I persuaded Kim to take home the loaner spinning wheel for the week so that she can keep working on the Berry Picking. It's looking LOVELY and she's really liking the spinning - as am I!

I can quickly see where we're going to need a 2nd loaner wheel sooner rather than later. Either that, or she's simply going to need to move in to the guest bedroom upstairs.

:)

Eat. Wash. Spin!

(Just not necessarily in that order.)


Porcini-mushroom roast chicken

Parker house (wheat) rolls & mushroom gravy

Fresh green bean & shiitake mushroom casserole. Not to be missed.
Taken from the Nov. 2007 issue of Saveur Magazine. Page 42.

After all the work I did this weekend, I was very very hungry.

But OH, I had such a good time working up that appetite!!!!

First on Saturday I re-read the relevant section in Alden Amos' Big Book of Handspinning (despite the fact that I keep messing up poor A.A.'s name - I keep calling him Amos Alden - this book is still SO on my Christmas/birthday list!!!!) and then I pulled out one of the two (TWO!) fleece that Oma sent me a few weeks ago and decided that I was going to wash it.

To try this the first time, I went with what looked like the more amusing fleece - the crazily-curly 1st place winner - which was a Lincoln/Shropshire mix - from the Northwestern Pennsylvania Sheep and Wool Association Field Day.

Here my pound of curly locks sit, in their plastic bag with Mr. Frog happily watching over them.

Following Alden's directions, I filled the tub with HOT water, added a large capful of appropriate detergent, and then carefully let the fleece sink down and slowly slowly slowly patted it along in the water from one end of the tub to the other. Back and forth. Back and forth. He said to do this as if you were herding a bunch of kindergarten younglings down a very narrow museum hallway. This is what the tub & fleece looked like after a few trips were made up & down.




UCK. See that kind of scummy film on the water? Double-uck! This is just about where I stopped thinking that magically Oma had gotten me a fleece that was naturally part white and part brown, and realized that the "part brown" locks on the fleece were in fact part green, and were most likely green from sheep feces.

Triple uck.

I drained the tub, and shuddered.

Then I filled the tub again with hot water (with the fleece resting & draining safely above), added in only half the amount of soap this time, and repeated my sinking, patting, and herding. This time around the water was much cleaner, and the tub refuse was much less disgusting.

Then the third time I filled the tub only with hot water as a last-step rinse.

And while I have no doubt that the slightly yellowish cast of some of the curlier tips on the fleece means that I have not gotten out all of the grit and muck, I think I have gotten as much out as I currently feel safe removing. (Being new at this, and having NO idea of what I'm doing, I'm quite worried that I'm going to felt this entire thing in my enthusiasm to get it really, super clean. I will - however - wash it at least once more after it is spun and plied just to be on the safe side.) I laid the fleece out to try on the guest bed, turned on multiple fans, and walked away.



I had expected it to take a full three days to dry - as A.A. says it should in his tome, but apparently A.A. never reckoned on the drying power that a 93-pound dog has on a pound of spread-out damp fleece. If said dog spends the night on the drying bed, your fleece will be bone dry the very next morning, and won't seem even the slightest worse for wear. AMAZING. Please note that I would only recommend this for dog owners. Certain insane-cat owners {coughcoughjessiecoughcough} should probably avoid such things at all possible costs.

I think that some carding will bring this curly mass of white loveliness around lickety-split. I have borrowed a drum carder from the art department of campus, and spent a good hour or so this past weekend cleaning it as best as I could, but the thing is just SO disgusting and dirty (I wore gloves to clean the drum carder, but not to wash out all that green sheep shit - what does that tell you about how filthy & nasty the drum carder was?) that despite it being cleaned I still don't feel safe using it. Isn't it lucky for me, then, that Gryphon is an Ashford dealer (I chuckled when I said that to Kim feeling like someone who was doing something illegal - "Woooo hooooo!!!! We've got a dealer in the neighborhood!") and can easily send me a pair of basic but oh-so-useful-and-necessary Ashford hand carders! Plus - you know - a few locally-made yarn storage baskets that she now has for sale. Just two. Or three.

I also was lucky enough this past Friday to find my missing spinning-wheel piece when I went and re-poked around the storage building where it had spent the past year or so. With some help from Peggers I found a necessary (and totally missing) correctly-sized nut lying around our workbench that was needed to keep the treadle leg in place, grabbed some light machine oil, and got the piece in good working order. I then promptly dropped everything and tried to spin, and butchered some of the deep red fiber that Gryphon sent my way over the summer along with a loaner drop spindle. I loathed the drop spindle (so much so that I simply put it down & felt no compunction to keep trying with it whatsoever!) but loved the fiber. The result is the overly-spun little unbalanced skein below. {SIGH} My first ever baby handspun!

After messing around with the red, I tried my hand at some hand-dyed roving that I purchased at a county fair over the summer. Despite the butchering that happened while I played around with it, I had the most WONDERFUL time with both it and the red roving, and after watching a few video clips on the Joy of Handspinning website have picked up a few tips about what I am doing wrong (drafting over too short a distance, mainly, I'm also going to try and pull 'up' on the fiber to draft it instead of pulling 'down' as I have been doing. I'm also going to try to pre-draft my commercially prepared bump and see if that helps) and am going to take another crack at the rest of the fiber I have left either tonight or tomorrow night.

This is what I produced after sitting down a few times Saturday & Sunday with the county-fair roving that I purchased. Reminds me of cotton-candy colours! Still exponentially overspun, but at least a bit more even in thickness (at least in lengthier spots!) and a bit better overall. Once I'm finished with this bump of fiber, I'm going to 2-ply it and see what fun end result I get.

I only have a single drive at the moment, and so am wondering if maybe a double-drive would help some. I am consciously trying to treadle v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y - - so much so that my wheel will sometimes stop, I'm going so slow. This is why I'm wondering if the double-drive will help........or will that just speed me up and increase my horrid overspinning? Ah well - 'tis so much fun that I don't at all mind that I'm making wool versions of DNA every time I let the tension go on the yarn & it doubles back on itself!

In fact, I'm having SO much fun that I went right out and ordered several bundles of dyed fleece from Jessie - one in the most amazing chartreuse/purple/midnight blue blend - I can hardly wait to see what that turns into when I get my hands on it!

I also, after reading her two part posts on plying experiments, bought a double-bump set of hers in a super-bright/deep purple and a nicely-pale lavender complimentary colourway.

See why I couldn't resist the temptation to try some plying experiments of my own?


Fun fun fun fun fun!

My Christmas/birthday wish list is just growing by leaps and bounds every day now!

cleaned

The wheel got a nice Murphy's bath last night, followed by the first of many bathings in lemon oil.

It's a wee bit happier now:


Now that I had a good chance to look the wheel over, I find that it's missing a few pieces. Most importantly, I'm missing the conrod that connects the wheel to the treadle. I'm also missing the tension knob, a fourth bobbin, and the base to the Lazy Kate. Obviously I can live without the base to the Lazy Kate (more honestly, I can make my own) and I can obviously totally live without a fourth bobbin for now - and I can probably figure out how to jury-rig a makeshift tension knob for the time being. But I cannot do without the conrod.

I'm going to go back to the storage spot and do some more poking around the next time it's open to see if I can't find these missing pieces - and if not............?

..................check around to see if I can order the conrod & tension knob from an Ashford dealer on line?

What else would the spinners out there recommend that I also get? A decent drive band? The wheel now has nothing fancier than a knotted cotton string - but I've read on the Ashford site that they now offer a 'polycord' version that doesn't slip and makes pedaling much much nicer. And anything that makes spinning much easier/nicer sounds great to me. Also, the flyer is only a single drive - would those of you in the know out there recommend that I get a three whorl flyer, or maybe even a lace flyer? (Ooooohhhhhhhhhh..........spinning lace. It boggles the mind to think that maybe possibly someday I could learn to do that...............)

Spinners? Serious education is needed here, por favor.

dirty, dusty, grimy

.....it might not be a beauty queen at the moment, but for the time being, it's mine and I'm going to have tons of fun playing around on it! The drum carder (poor abused thing that it so obviously is) is for the two half-fleeces (an Icelandic & a......something else that's fun & curly that I forget this very second) that Oma sent my way - I need to do some washing and carding before I can do any spinning, and when I saw the carder just sitting there in the dust and grime and dirt and it was offered to me along w/ the wheel I certainly didn't turn it down!

The wheel (an Ashford) could maybe possibly end up mine forever, but the carder is only a temporary figure passing through my life. 'Sokay. I can live with that. I'd prefer the wheel over the carder in the end anyway!

There Is Such a Thing As a Free Lunch

....not necessarily an actual lunch, though.


Much, much better.


A FREE SPINNING WHEEL.



Now, this delight is not mine to keep (at least not yet!) but it is mine to use for the next several months and play with and decide if I like to spin, or if I loathe it because I suck at it as truly and terribly as I suck at drop spindling.

Apparently my university used to teach both spinning and weaving way back in the dark ages (or the 70's depending on how you regard that particular decade) and the wheels and looms have been all but languishing in forgotten disregard ever since then. This past summer when the art department ran out of storage space they combed through their vaults and decided that the wheels and looms would be the first to go to free up additional space for more recently-used and therefore more-relevant items. However (and luckily for me!) one brave ceramics prof spoke up and promised storage space in her non-profit studio downtown..............so the looms and wheels were spared for at least a few months more.

Fast forward to last Friday, when I was meeting Kim (the Horticultural wonder) for our twice-weekly knitting meeting and she mentions to me how one of her student workers picked up some extra cash this summer helping the art department move out things from storage....and how some of those things were both wheels and looms.

The greedy gears in my head started a-clicking, and Tuesday I was in the art office chatting up the department secretary putting on my best face and offering to very kindly "rent" the wheel from them for a semester - putting it to good use and cleaning it up, etc. - hoping all the while that she would say that I could surely just borrow it and that no fees would be necessary. The very next day I received a confirmation call saying that I could certainly borrow the wheel - as long as I could bring myself to wait until next Monday at the earliest, as the ceramics prof was headed out of town and I wouldn't be able to arrange a pickup time with her until then.

Perfect!

In the meantime I've solicited a few suggestions as to what books I should be looking into first, have put roughly two dozen books on spinning on request to be sent to me here at work (I've already gotten 4, and read my way through part of a wonderful work last night - The Complete Spinning Book, by Candace Crockett) and am just as excited as anything to get started.

My hope is that in a few weeks if I'm really really nice I can find out about snagging a second wheel so that Kim (the Horticultural wonder) can have one at her house too and that she and I don't have to both practice on the same one - because as she's the one who had this incredible piece of knowledge in the first place and was kind enough to share it with me - she totally needs to get in on this fantastic piece of luck as well!

Dudes! A free spinning wheel!

Wouldn't it be fantastic if the wheel turns out to totally not suck, and they let us keep them for ever and ever and ever?