What Do You Think?

** Warning: this post is in part a copy of a post over on my other blog.  I reward you for your patience with a homely picture of myself in cute charming hat.  The photo does not do justice to the beauty of Timary's needlework or to the lovely colors and gloss of the yarn used (if I do say so, myself).  It just sort of hints at it.  You pays your money (or in this case, your attention) and you takes your chances, people...

Here is the darling beret that my brilliant friend Timary made for me.  It's a new design of hers, so I hadn't seen it before.  You can find her patterns (including this slouchy beanie beret) at her Etsy store right here.  Go ahead and check it out, especially if you are a crocheter - you'll be glad you did.

Thing is, when I got the hat she sent, I thought, "Ooo, FUN!!"  And then I thought, "Ooo, the colors are so ME!!"  And then I thought, "Ooo, this yarn is so soft and pretty!!"  And then I thought, "Hey, this yarn looks sort of familiar, actually..."  And then I realized... Timary bought my yarn a while back, and put a lot of work into making something out of it, AND THEN SENT IT BACK TO ME.  It was my own handspun yarn!!

So now I am going to send her more.  Some of it will be for her... and some of it will be for the really cute 20's Flapper Hat.  Because I don't crochet, and am not up to learning how at the moment, but she has designed one darling hat, I must say!!

So, what do you think?  Should I add a big fancy pin to one side?  Or just leave it as it is?

I also bought a couple really cute, silly, fun hats yesterday - just in time, since I lost about half my head overnight last night.  I'll model those soon, but I know you shouldn't be expected to handle so much feminine pulchritude at once.  (koff, koff...)

Now I have these really cute hats, and no place to store them properly (the only hat I've got stored/displayed currently is my floppy old straw hat, which is sitting on the head of my son's wooden rocking horse.  It's very fetching, but not very protected).  So if anybody just happens to have a nice big hatbox sitting around, and wants to donate it to a needy cause, I'm it.

Brown, Brown, Brown...

I WISH I had something brilliant to say. But it's been a bit boring around here.
Well, not completely boring. After all,

I unexpectedly received a truly fabulous bouquet from my generous (and beautiful) cousin and auntie...


I've spun some Just For Fun yarn...


I've hung around with two of my lovely women friends and with my particularly lovely mother...

So that was all interesting to me, although it's not all that interesting to the innocent bystander, I'm sure.

I've done the mundane workaday sorts of Mom stuff and Wife stuff, as well, but that would be even less interesting to the reader. It was not particularly enthralling for me, either. There's just so much thrill one can get out of grocery shopping and paying bills (or putting them aside and fretting about them).

But lately it seems to me that I've mostly been endlessly spinning brown alpaca fleece. Brown alpaca fleece that has small bits of VM that I have to laboriously pick out of my yarn every couple inches or so. At least, I pick out the bits that get caught in the yarn. A lot of it just falls out of the fiber as I spin, so that I and the surrounding square footage end up covered in a brown snow of grot.

Vegetable matter, for those non-fiber folks amongst my readers, is what we fiber folks call the bits of grass and burrs and other stuff that ends up in fiber when the animal who used to wear it lived on the actual dirt-enhanced Earth, rather than on a fluffy pink cloud.

Not that I'd mind getting a bit of fluffy pink cloud caught up in my fiber. It would add visual interest. This fiber is pretty much uniformly brown. Not a lot of variation. It's not that it's a bad brown, or anything. But I've never been a fan of brown, and this alpaca is really determinedly set in its basic unsubtle brownness. If it wasn't for the fact that leaving the VM in would render the yarn fit only for a particularly penitent knitter bent on knitting the equivalent of a Hair Shirt, I would leave the grass and burrs in, to lend a bit of color.

In my infinite wisdom, when starting this project out I decided to continue in my largely unsuccessful attempts to learn the art of Navajo Plying. Navajo Plying gives you a 3-ply yarn (one with bumps and weird spots, if the spinner is me), which means that the yarn can be pretty darned chunky if you don't spin the original singles fairly finely. Chunky plain brown yarn is pretty useless, IMO, and the shorter length involved wouldn't give me the practice at Navajo Plying that I need in order to master the skill. So I am laboriously spinning (and picking through) a large bobbin full of miles and miles and miles of lace-weight brown.

It's taking forever. I may expire of fiber-induced ennui. And the worst thing is that I know that once I get through with that, I will then be facing miles and miles and miles of brown that needs laborious and inept plying. At which point I will have a skein of lumpy, weird, puritanical yarn that nobody in their right minds would want to actually use, much less buy.

Clearly I am driven by some psychological compulsion to continue with this dreary and seemingly endless pas de deux with the drab Willi of brown, brown, brown...


I hope it's a reflection of newly-forged virtues of Persistence and Determination or perhaps some slightly nutty form of Optimism (maybe it will turn out better than I expect?), rather than an indication of a compulsive mood disorder or creeping fiber-induced insanity.

In the meantime, I will never get on to something more interesting if I don't get on with it. You stay here to keep an eye on things. If I don't come out in a week or so, call for help.

Shepherd's Harvest!!

Yes, it's almost that time of year again, folks!

On Mother's Day weekend, the good folks of Minnesota (and specifically, of Lake Elmo) put on a big shindig for us fiber fanatics. At the Shepherd's Harvest Sheep & Wool Festival you can see demonstrations of all sorts - sheep herding by those clever dogs, sheep shearing by that clever shearer, spinning by those clever spinners, knitting and weaving and rug hooking and felting and crocheting by those clever textile artists, cooking of lamb by that clever chef, music played by those talented musicians.

You can try out the equipment yourself at the various booths. You can go to the fashion show. You can eat wonderful lamb burgers and other wonderful treats. You can buy all sorts of supplies, fibers, tools, clothing, and various other goodies. You can admire and sometimes pet llamas, alpacas, sheep, goats, and bunnies. You can learn a lot about wool and handspun yarn by checking out the various competitions, and sometimes you can get a good deal if you bid on the wool from the wool competition. You can indulge yourself and give to a good cause at the same time by bidding at the charity auction. If you are clever and act quickly, you can sign up online for wonderful classes in everything from dyeing to knitting to basketry and rug hooking.

Best of all (from my point of view), you can see ME. And my folks (buy their lovely book - they'll even sign it specially for you). And Denise, and Jane, and Pam, and maybe even Nancy.

I'll be selling spinning wheels, yarn, the wonderful Timary's patterns and products, and who knows what else. I will also be demonstrating, and I'll be chatting with you, if you come. So put it down on your calendars now - I'll meet you there!

Sticky

FINALLY, the ground is cold enough that some little bit of the snow is sticking. This is bad for us, because we don't have the leaves off the part of our back yard that we definitely don't want even slightly composted (no weeds growing between the pretty river stones, please). This is good for The Pretty.


Not that the snow is thick enough to be pretty really, and it is likely to melt again in a day or so, but it's a harbinger, one hopes, of the near future. Once I have to turn on the stupid furnace, I like snow outside - at least, I like it on this side of winter. No promises about how I'll feel in February.

In other news, here's the latest production, still on the bobbin, ready to be washed/set.

It's probably the lightest gauge I've ever spun, pretty much laceweight, I think. Assuming it doesn't puff up a lot in the wash. I will be selling it on the etsy site - to see what I've got for sale now, click the button on the top left of this site, it will take you there. Go look just for The Pretty, even if you aren't in the market...

What have YOU been doing during the past week?

Paorino

Busy, busy! I'm getting my new etsy store ready, and in the meantime I am madly working on that scarf *and* on the handpainted fiber that the fabulous Paos sent me from the UK. Because of the texture and preparation of this particular wool, I decided to try some newish ways of doing things. So this is going to be a bit more thick-and-thin and a bit heavier gauge than my usual yarn, and I tried doing a long(er) draw than I am accustomed to. I had so much FUN!!

What do you think? How will ply up?

Wheeeeeee!!!

Admissions, Brags

Okay, first of all, the admissions:

The roving with the little bits of yarn did not work out. The little bits of yarn did not want to stay in the fiber as it was spinning, so that the ones that *did* stick were much too infrequent to be useful. I haven't given up - I will try it again when I have some light colored roving (or, conversely, very very dark colored roving) that isn't 50% silk.

In the meantime:

Is it permissible to brag about one's own child? I mean, I know pride goeth before a fall, and the perspective may not be so bright at the end of the semester, when he's totally burned out... but still, I'm pretty chuffed re the Thug.

First of all, he's still officially a high school student, but he's taking a *heavy* full time credit load in college. He's writing articles for the college newspaper and getting praise from the editors, in spite of the fact that he's a self-declared liberal humanist/agnostic in a particularly conservative Christian college. He wrote/is still writing a play that is being considered for production at the local Fringe Festival next summer. And he is playing Mozart in the college's production of "Amadeus" in November.

All this, and when he comes home from school at night, he's actually polite and friendly to his Aged Parents.

Don't get me wrong; he's got his faults. But he's always been a pretty great kid - and right now he seems to be on his way to being an *accomplished* great kid. What's not to be proud of?

(Knock on wood - the nearest of which at the moment is the body of my Ashford carder. There, we're back to fiber, as always!)

Experiments R Me

This may be a HUGE mistake and waste of a deal of time and effort. But what the heck, right?

Meet... um, well, sort of a Bride of Frankenstein thing going on here. I think I'll just spin up half an ounce and see what it looks like before committing to anything else.
What do you think?

*Click to embiggen, I think it may be a bit difficult to tell that that's not bugs in the roving. It's teensy chunks of yarn of other colors, actually. Hmm...

The Pirate Sez...

You're going to like this one!







All sorts of ripe berry colors, in 50/50 Merino Tencel. Not very elastic, and not the most even plying job ever, but that will even out a bit after I 'set' it, and it will have a really nice sheen and drape.

Better Than a Birdie!

I'm so excited. I weighed out the fiber for two bobbins of singles, and I spun them up, and I plied them...






And look!! This is what was left over after the singles were plied together!!


I'm thinking I should frame this, or something. It's practically like hitting a hole in one, isn't it?

(Take a guess at DH's favorite hobby)

Spinning In Circles

Between the school-based needs of the Teenaged Thug, the medical-based needs of my sister, the dollar-based needs of the family in general, and the business-based needs of my own, I hardly know if I'm on my feet or my head (or, more likely, falling on my butt). Too many things to do, all of them Top Priority, and not enough hours to do them.

It doesn't help that I'm experiencing Empty Nest AGAIN. Is this going to happen every autumn? It's not that I see the Thug all that much during the summer, but at least the possibility flutters around on the edges of the week. When school starts, I know that we'll be playing tug-of-war with his friends and girlfriend for his few valuable Free Hours - and mostly we'll be on the losing end.

*Sigh*

In the meantime, with the fiber fair in South Dakota looming, you'd think I'd be producing like a madwoman, but NOooo... it's taken me several days to manage this. Another couple days before I'll end up with one small skein of plied yarn. Pitiful!








I need more bobbins, too, so that the day of waiting between spinning and plying don't represent a day of sitting around uselessly, waiting for a bobbin to open up for spinning. Not enough time between now and the fair to order them from the company. I don't suppose anyone has any Fricke bobbins just laying around unused that they want to get rid of?

Audacious

Here's the newest yarn, straight off the bobbin~


I present to you: Audacious!










As always, the photos can't capture the color completely accurately, so it can only give you an idea of what the yarn is like in person. The colorway is pretty rich and saturated, and you can see that instead of the long fade from one color to the other, this time I tried repeated (more-or-less) stripes so that if someone wanted to make socks out of this skein, the pair would be at least somewhat related to one another.

I think it came out pretty well, don't you?

If you stretch the point a fair bit, the colorway is kind-of-sort-of based on red, white, and blue. At least, as close as I'm likely to get at the moment. So I'm going to donate the profit on this one to a certain presidential campaign.

Fiberfilled

Don't get me wrong. I love the woolly stuff, and I can't think of anything else I'd rather be doing. But...

My computer



Under my computer

View just to the right of my computer
(notice the wheel and just visible is a basket of knitting stuff)

View just to the left of my computer
(Notice on far right you can see edge of the giant blue basket. It's filled with... you guessed it!)



It is just possible that I might need to organize this whole fiber thing the teensiest bit. Before it eats The Cat. Or the Family. Or the house...

Name This Yarn

Here's the latest off the wheel. The material was a bit challenging (higher silk content than I'm used to, and I am experimenting with a different carding process), and the yarn didn't come out as I'd like, since I'm currently on that part of the learning curve where I'm trying to get things very even. And I didn't have as much control over the color distribution as I was hoping, either. Ah, well, everything is relative and hopefully somebody will love it and give it a good home. I'm too fried to think of a name right now... what do you think?



BTW - the skeins you've been seeing on the blog can be seen/felt for sale at the upcoming North Country Fiber Fair in Watertown, SD on Sept. 20 & 21. My folks will be there with their wonderful book, and have been kind enough to offer to take my wooly stuff with them. What doesn't sell there will go up on Etsy.com shortly afterwards - more info will be available when the time comes.

Something to Cool the Heat

Here's the newest thing off the bobbins - doesn't this look like a bucket of nice cool sherbet? Just the thing for the heat and humidity lately. And since it's about 30% bamboo, it should keep the unpleasant moisture at bay.


The Boys say this is their favorite so far.








The Cat says I should stop blathering and get on with things.


There's cats to feed and heads to scritch, and time's a-wasting...

Adventures In Bamboo

I am NOT having fun with the carding process with the bamboo - long and laborious and too much fibre-up-the-nose.



But the resulting roving/yarn sure is pretty, isn't it?

Is It Possible...

... or permitted, even, to lust after your own yarn?

It's just so pretty!!
I can't get the colors entirely right in the photographs - the coral one has subtle little glints of copper sparkle here and there (angelina, just a bit), the purplish one is more varied, the other one is much less violently green (it turned out much nicer than I thought it would, a bit like a lily pond).


The lily pond one and the purplish one graduate slowly from color to color from one end of the yarn to the other, as you can see from this photo of the lily pond yarn. The colors can be seen much more clearly if you click on the photos for the larger version...

I think I'm going to cry when I have to send these to some other home!

Oh! I Get It!! (Probably Part I)

Most of this post is about spinning and fiber. But first, something completely different:

Random photo: why we call her 'Miss Fluffy Pants'

Now, back to our regular program:

Unfortunately I'm the sort of person who insists on reinventing the wheel.

And in this case I did it completely unnecessarily, because I'm sure that:

1. This must have been in one of the spinning books I skimmed through, and

2. If I had stopped to think about it for even one logical moment, I would have actually figured it out at Shepherd's Harvest, when I thought I was doing what everyone else was doing, and insisting that for some reason I was incapable of thinning/pulling a roving out without breaking it in multiple spots.

But I didn't stop to think, and I didn't read the right information, and I didn't figure it out until I had carded at least a couple pounds of fiber, and prepped roving for - let's see, I think that's at least 22 bobbins of singles that I've spun altogether in the past few weeks. And spun worsted yarn from the rovings, wondering why sometimes the same fiber seemed so much harder to draft evenly than it seemed at other times. All that time, all that wool, and I didn't figure it out. Because I'm brilliant like that.

But today it occured to me, as I was prepping a roving that the vendor had provided in two strips from the same roll (I needed a bit more than she measured out the first time). Same exact roving, but one length prepped/drafted out so smoothly and cooperatively... and the other broke in my hands immediately.

Roving pulled from 'stubborn' direction - ragged straight/concave separation

And the light suddenly dawned over my addled head... wool has scales, just like hair. All laying in the same direction, so that if you pull at them in the wrong direction, the scales all lock together, and if you pull them in the other direction, they slide along each other.

Roving pulled from the 'happy' direction - ends are tapered/pulled out towards center

Of course, this was me. So I used this sudden insight successfully in prepping my roving for spinning. And then neglected to use it when I started carding later in the day. Because of course if you card the wool in the right direction, everything goes smoothly, and if you card it in the wrong direction, it makes life difficult for you. Not terribly difficult - not difficult enough to knock you over the head with insight if you aren't really thinking too hard, for instance. Just difficult enough to be annoying.

So this is me, trying to warn the other frustrated folks who tend to reinvent the wheel - hey, try pulling in the other direction, okay?

Oscar, I Evidently Love You.

Why is it that so many of my skeins are ending up looking like they are made from the fur of Oscar the Grouch?

Pam at The Fiber Studio says that she likes the skein here best of the ones she's seen from me - that the youngsters like this sort of color combo.

Really?

Why My Bobbins Look Tipsy

Anyone reading my blog will probably, sooner or later, wonder why other people's spinning posts show beautiful bobbins of evenly ridged, evenly distributed fiber, while my spinning posts are full of bobbins that look like they'd slur and belch if they spoke.

Well, there are several reasons for this phenomenon:


1. My spinning wheel does not have one of those clever devices that fly back and forth evenly over the bobbin as I spin, nor does it have those evenly spaced hooks that distribute your yarn from the same spots each time. My spinning wheel has a sliding guide that lets me place it anywhere along the flyer, so that I can build up the yarn in any part of the bobbin that I like. If I knew where that was, exactly.

2. My depth perception is wonky.


3. I have the attention span of a gnat, so I happily get into the rhythm of spinning and forget to slide the guide along after a reasonable amount of yarn has built up in one spot on the bobbin. Thus a very UNreasonable amount of yarn builds up in certain areas of the bobbin - and my wonky depth perception takes care of the rest.

Or doesn't, as the case may be.

Tour de Fleece Update

I don't remember exactly what the official challenge I made for the Tour de Fleece was, but it was something about spinning all the fibre I had on hand into yarn. There was a reasonable amount on hand, I wanted to produce something I could eventually sell, so it seemed a reasonable challenge to make.

Katherine, being a sane person, kindly and tactfully reminded me that it would be okay to change my goal if, you know, things didn't go as planned. Or if I regained my reason. Whichever might come first.

The latter hasn't happened yet - understandable, since I can't regain what I never had.


So far I've done... let's see, 7 or 8 skeins. All 4oz., all fingering or light sport weight. I've got a couple ounces left on a bobbin (you've seen it before, I think), and have carded up a roving from some new-bought fleece and spun up a single (singles?) of something that hopefully will go nicely with it, and that will be another 4oz. skein.

I have one last bit of that older bunch of fibre that I'm going to finish carding up and turn into another 4oz. skein...

And then I'll be done. And even though I'll be out of commission Tuesday (that's today, I guess) for medical reasons, I am reasonably hopeful that I will be able to finish that last skein in the 4.5 days left of the Tour after that.


In spite of the fact that while I'm waiting for that second bobbin to 'rest', I'm letting myself get distracted from my goal and carding up some new and unrelated roving - the photo makes it look a bit more, um, exuberant than it actually is, but hopefully it will be cheery and fun...