So many hobbies!

It's a start

I ran into some frustration this weekend in regards to my cleaning and organizing project.  You see, I have so much freakin' stuff, if I clear off a surface, I literally don't have any place to put the stuff I'm trying to clear.  I kind of turn in a circle, not knowing where to start.  You have no idea how frustrating that is.  My only option, since I have no more storage, is to move up.  I didn't get done all that I wanted but I did put up some shelving and cleared off my wool/fiber area.  This is the before picture:

And this is the after:

I'm so proud of myself I can hardly stand it.  I still need more storage but it's a start.  I learned it's nearly impossible to put shelves up by yourself.  I needed my neighbor to mark the spots for the holes while I held the shelf level.  Once that was done, it was a breeze to drill the holes, hammer in the anchors and screw the shelves into the wall.  Well, maybe not a breeze - I was dripping by the time I was done - but don't they look great!?  Damn, I'm good!  I finally have some place to hang my ribbons, storage for the 6+ pounds of yarn blanks I just bought, as well as some open shelf space.  My computer desk is to the left of the table and coming out at right angles to the table and I'm already planning on putting up a third shelf to hold computer stuff.  I'm not quite there just yet but I expect I'll be studying the rest of my condo later this week looking for potential locations for new shelving.

Saturday at our guild meeting, I bought 4 oz. of roving that had me walking up to people, handing the roving to them and saying, "Touch this!"  (You can do that with spinners - they don't think you're a wacko.)  The roving is 75% angora/25% Merino.  Oh.  My.  That's part of the reason, I suppose, that I didn't get more done this weekend:  I just had to start spinning it up.

Naturally, I have no idea what I'm going to do with the yarn when I'm done spinning it.  That wasn't the point.  I just really needed to experience the spinning and the touching.  Okay, yes, I groped the fiber.  What of it?  You would, too.  Trust me.

Goats, 'pacas and some fleece

I love wool but I think I might love goats more than sheep.  They have great personalities and the babies are very charming.  I think I've said this before, but if I ever get any fiber critters, it'll be pygora goats.  If you produce your own wool, you're limited to the breed(s) you have.  I like more variety than that.  Pygora can be spun alone or blended with just about any wool you want.  Plus, pygora fiber stays wonderfully soft throughout the life of the goat, unlike angoras whose fiber often is only soft up to the 3rd clip and gets coarser as they age.

I'm also rather fond of alpacas.  Don't these guys look like teddy bears?  They're so sweet.  Did you know they hum?  They hum when they're content, they hum when they're upset.  They hum.  And they're fiber is lovely and very warm.  They are, however, rather pricey so I'll be admiring them from afar.

Some of the Border Leicester fleece I bought Saturday and washed yesterday.  (The photo is crap.  I took it under the overhead light in my bedroom so it yellowed out the wool.  It's really gray.)  Ah, the crimp.  I'll have to cut off the brown tips to keep the gray color.  It'll be pretty spun up.   

Getting closer

On the bobbin is the last of the Merino/mohair for the edging of my shawl.  In the bag is the last 8 ounces of the Polwarth/kid mohair blend I'm using for the shawl.  I've finished the last swatch but I haven't taken the time to count how many yards I used.  Last night was Spin Night and tonight I pretty much concentrated on finishing spinning up the Mer/Mo... and reading the cable book I got from Amazon, Cables Untangled.  Ooo, it's a good one.  I'll have to do some practicing with scrap yarn but I don't anticipate any problems knitting the center, cable panel for the shawl.  It really doesn't look difficult.  I want to start on it NOW but it'll have to wait for the weekend when I have long stretches of uninterrupted time to spend knitting.

More Ming

Lately I've been craving Chinese food.  What does that mean?  Do I have an MSG deficiency?  A soy sauce deficiency?   I'm free tomorrow for dinner.  Anyone want to join me for some Cashew Chicken?

Someone asked for a custom order for a fair amount of Ming.  She wants to see it before she buys it to make sure it matches some she bought earlier.   I'm a bit nervous since monitors can be deceiving in color representation but if she doesn't want it, I'll just put it up in the store.   Along with the other roving I'll dye up this weekend.  I've been working on some new colorways so I'm all a'tingle with the possibilities.

What will you be doing this weekend?

Possibilities

Our seeds arrived today from the Seed Savers Exchange.  Two of my co-workers and I ordered together.  I'm buying my seed starting supplies this weekend, then I'll be counting down the days until I can start the peppers.  Woot!

I've had some luck on my wool search.  Aphelion clued me in to Forestfibres on ebay (Thanks, Aphelion!) and I hit pay dirt.  Forestfibres sells wool from rare sheep, among other things.   I have some washed fleece winging it's way to me from England.  It's the next best thing to a wool tour.  This has gotten me thinking about my specimen book and it's occurred to me I could make several books just as easily as I could make one.  It's possible that I will make several to sell but there are some issues I'd need to work out first.  (1) My specimen book will likely be a continuous work in progress which means any copy I sell will inevitably be incomplete.  I'll have to determine what breeds will be included in each book that I sell.  (2) The re-design of each page will include space for a photo of each breed.  Copying pictures off the Net, even if it wasn't a copyright infringement, which it is, won't work because the resolution is too low and copies will poor.  This means I'll have to either take the pictures myself or ask if someone has a photo of each breed and can I use it.  I hope to get sheep pictures at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival this spring.  Oh, yeah!  Figuring out the logistics of putting together and selling copies of my specimen book will be a fun exercise.  I wish my sister lived closer so she could help me brainstorm ideas.  I also wish I had Pagemaker or some other page layout program so I could organize my page design more efficiently.  Another puzzle to solve.

These photos are all from the Library of Congress' Flickr page.  Check it out! 

Fiber Monday

Sunday's laundry.  From top to bottom:  Wensleydale, Lincoln, Borderdale and a BFLxClun Forest.  The first three are long wools and the second is a cross between a long wool and a down wool sheep.  I'm eager to try the BFL/Clun Forest.  It was a pretty dirty fleece to start with and didn't clean up very well but it has beautiful locks with fabulous crimp.  Lovely.

I spent breaks and lunch at work today trying to track down someone who might sell me some samples of primitive and feral sheep wool, specifically Manx Loughton, North Ronaldsay, Soay, Boreray and Hebridean.  (I don't know if my request for wool is totally weird to the Brits or what but I've gotten pretty good responses from folks in the US and mostly silence from across the Pond.  Maybe this is the Universe's way of saying I need to start saving for that wool tour.)  All five breeds have been isolated on their islands for hundreds or thousands of years.  One characteristic of a primitive breed is that some shed their fleece every year.   Where modern breeds need yearly haircuts, these sheep just molt and start over.  It's pretty cool.

Blogiversary Contest

Well, not exactly a contest per se.  Here's what you need to do:  leave me a comment, between now and 5:00 pm Thursday night (Eastern time) telling me what country or state you live in.  I'll do a random draw Thursday night and the winner will have a choice between a skein of sock yarn or some of my dyed roving.  I've always been curious where all of you live and this is my chance to find out.  So, comment away!

I've really enjoyed sharing my passion for fiber and spinning and knitting with all of you.  I can't believe it's been an entire year!  I would love to meet you.  I'm going to be at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival this May.  Let me know if you plan on attending and hopefully we can work out a meetup.  All that wool!  I'll probably get high on all the wool fumes. 

High fiber weekend

I live for the weekends.  I spent the weekend playing with fiber:  knitting, scouring dirty fleece and spinning.  I've got Wensleydale and Lincoln drying and Borderdale and BFLxClun Forest washing.  I got a response from a request for a couple of ounces of Clun Forest.  She sent along a sample of BFL/Clun cross lamb's wool.  It's pretty dirty but I'm hoping it'll wash up well.  I haven't washed the Clun Forest yet.  The staple length of the Clun is pretty short.  I may have to cheat on my spending diet and buy some hand carders.  Maybe.  TBD.

Do you remember my dyeing experiment to dye and spin gradually darkening shades of blue for a Faroese shawl?  The spinning had been languishing for quite a while.  I'd still like to knit a Faroese shawl but I think I'll knit something simpler first.  Anyway, the blue skein is what's spun so far.  I'm no longer so wild about the light blue and I'll probably dye it darker.  The picture above is the washing pile from today.  The purple is the BFL I spun on my vacation, the white skein at the top is Icelandic and the bottom is BFL.  I'm really looking forward to the gray BFL fleece I've reserved from this spring's shear.  It's going to be lovely.

The weather was crazy this weekend.  Saturday was sunny and beautiful.  I had all the blinds open to catch the light.   Sunday I woke up to freezing rain that changed to rain.  Toward sunset, we got this:

About two minutes before I took the picture, it was much brighter.  A rainbow in February.  I hope this means spring is on its way.   Man, I hope so.

It's raining cats and dogs!

Does it make me a bad person that I hope it turns to freezing rain so my car is frozen shut in the morning and I can't go to work?  Would it help if I promised to use the day off to do my ironing and clean the house?  Plus, I have a fabulous Polwarth/Kid Mohair blend I want to spin...

I had a large and unpleasant wrench tossed into the middle of my Quest.  I was informed tonight that you can't bring unprocessed wool into the US.  Nuts!  I wanted unprocessed wool for several reasons, one of which was it would be the easiest on the person sending me the wool.  For now anyway, I'm going to have to restrict my search to the US.  You know, I've been wanting to take a wool tour of the British Isles...

Are you familiar with the Toasted Tomato Sandwich?  You need really good bread and good summer tomatoes.  My cousin lives 2 hours north of where we were staying in Florida and went to a farm and picked tomatoes herself.  Oh, my !  Three days in a row I had Toasted Tomato Sandwiches for both breakfast and lunch.  How to make one?  Put the bread in the toaster, when it pops, put mayo on one slice (or Miracle Whip in my case), top that with thick slices of tomato, salt the tomato and top with the second slice of bread.  Eat!  Pure heaven!  I ordered two books on container gardening from Amazon so I can grow my own fab tomatoes this summer.  (Yeah, I know I totally blew my spending diet but hey!  Toasted Tomato Sandwiches!!)  Now I need to find a Super Target so I can buy some of that fabulous Tuscan bread... 

Update:  Weather.com says it's supposed to keep raining until long after I'm at work tomorrow so I'd better go to bed.  Darn weather!

My first pictureless post.  Sorry.  I promise I'll be pictorial tomorrow.

Tuxedo roving

This is going to look quite nice in its yarn form.  There's lots of contrast.  Won't this make some fun socks?  Hopefully I'll be able to complete it this weekend but I still have to finish spinning the Pale Jewels roving and I have an all-day needle-felting class on Saturday.  I kind of wish I wasn't taking the class because I want to concentrate on dyeing and spinning.  I'm sure the class will be fun but I'm not really into felting right now.

I'm still trying to work out the light tent.  I bought 100 watt bulbs but I'm not getting the photos I want.  I can't afford a new camera so I need to figure this out.  Does anyone have any suggestions?

Muppets sock yarn

Shanna said it reminded her of the Muppets, thereby naming the yarn.  Good thing, since no name was presenting itself to me.  I've decided I can live without this yarn.  I guess I just needed the weekend to bond with my latest child before sending it out into the world.  It's up on my Etsy store.  If you're intersted, you might want to go there now since my first skein sold the same night I put it up.

Saturday was the second session on luster long wools in the current Sheep Breeds Study class at the Spinning Loft.  We learned about the Coopworth, Cotswold and English Leicester breeds.  The Coopworth was snow white with an amazing luster.  Absolutely beautiful!  Unfortunately, Beth said this particular fleece was unusually fine and Coopworth is normally coarser than that.  Same with the Cotswold which was soft and white, but not as lustrous.  The English Leicester, once combed out, practically spun itself and I was able to spin a very fine singles.

English Leicester locks.  Aren't they beautiful?!  You can get an idea of the lock structure of the wool this breed produces.  While the fine wool breeds generally produce a very tight crimp, the locks of long wools are generally looser, more waves and curls than a tight crimp.

When I first started spinning, on my first visit to the Spinning Loft, I told Beth I wasn't interested in starting with a dirty fleece to process for spinning.  She laughed and told me I'd change my mind.  Now, every session of the Breeds Study class I attend, I have a new wool that I love and that I want more of.  It easy to go online and find ready-to-spin Merino or Blue Faced Leicester or Corriedale roving.  It's very difficult, if not impossible, to find English Leicester roving or Borderdale roving.  There are times when all I want is to just sit and spin and roving it great for that.  But if all you use is roving, you'll miss out on so many different kinds of wool.  I recommend you process a fleece to spin yourself, even if you never do so again.  It will really make you appreciate the wool you're spinning and the sheep who gave up its coat for you.  If you have an opportunity to take a class like the Sheep Breeds Study, take it.  You won't regret it.