So many hobbies!

So much to tell...

First let me tell you a story.  There we were, my sister and I, driving up north on the 4th of July.  I was only driving 60 mph because gas it too freaking expensive and I had a 3.5 hour drive up and back.  Anyway, I changed lanes, because the car in front of me was going even slower than I, and I wasn't paying attention to the traffic in front of me.  My sister, starting out quietly and getting louder, said, "Brake.  Brake!  BRAKE!  BRAKE!!!"   The traffic in front of us was slowing down fast and I slammed on the brakes.  We weren't slowing down fast enough and I knew I was going to hit the guy in front of me.  Hard.  So, desparate, I swerved into the far left lane, praying the car I'd seen there was not right next to me any more.  Fortunately, he wasn't and everything was okay.  Except that now, in order to slow down, my brake pedal was almost on the floor before the brakes would start to catch.  Very bad.  A moment after I got back into the far right lane, the Brake light came on and half a tick later, the warning ding started sounding.  Loudly.  The owner's manual said to pull over immediately and call a tow truck but we were 2 hours from my house and 1.5 hours from the cottage.  We listened to that darn warning beep for the rest of the trip.  I figured since we were just driving with no stopping, we could at least drive to our exit and then stop.  We wouldn't need the brakes until then.  The end of the story is we got to the cottage without incident but I had to have all four brakes lines replaced because they'd rotted out.  Nice.

All of this leads to my announcement that going to SOAR is now no longer an option.  I really, REALLY wanted to take the color blending class with Deb Menz but that's out now.  I was also looking forward to finally meeting Elizabeth face to face and having some nice, long chats.  Yup, new brakes ate a huge chunk of my vacation fund.  Sometimes life is a huge pain in the arse.  As a consolation prize,  I'm hoping to be able to get a group together for a road trip to Rhinebeck.  Road trips are very doable if you have enough people sharing the gas and the hotel room.  My apologies to my cousins in Texas:  a plane ticket is out, too, if I want to go to Sanibel Island in February.

On the plus side of my brake problems, when I was visiting with my family, my brother offered me the small chest freezer he has in storage that he doesn't need any more.  This solves my freezer needs.  And, as an extra surprise, my SIL's parents were visiting from Florida and her dad saw me spinning.  He said he'd bought his wife a spinning wheel when he was in New Zealand that she never used and asked me if I wanted it.  Of course, I said YES!  All I know is it's about 10 years old, was never used, and isn't a castle-style wheel like Owen.  I don't know who the maker is as they didn't remember.  I can't wait until the next time they drive up for a visit!

Is this not incredibly beautiful?  I bought this on Etsy a little over a year ago and I've been saving it all this time until I was good enough to do it justice.  It's 4 ounces of a Merino/Tencel blend.  It's spinning like a dream.  I haven't spun Merino/Tencel in a long time and I'd forgotten how easily it drafts and how smoothly it spins.  I haven't decided if I'm going to ply it with itself or ply it with a white singles.  I don't know if I'll get enough yarn for a pair of socks with just the 4 ounces but I don't really want to dilute that beautiful color with white.  It's my current spinning project for the Tour de Fleece so I'll just keep spinning and hope a solution occurs to me soon.

The blueberries are ripe for the picking starting this weekend so that's where I'll be Saturday morning, and possibly Sunday if my freezer isn't full after Saturday.  That reminds me, I need to clean out the freezer and see just how much room I have.  I don't have the gifted chest feezer yet and the blueberries won't wait.  Have a good weekend!

Never long enough

Hiya!  Did you miss me?  I had a wonderful time at my parents' cottage with my family.  It was pretty quiet.  I read, spun every day and almost finished knitting my sock - I just need to bind off.  Do you want to see where I was?

 

My parents built the cottage the summer I turned three so we've been coming up here for a while.  The level of the lake has been rising and we've been losing land to erosion so we had to put in a sea wall.  We used to have a nice little beach as you can see, not any more.  No, I don't sail - unless someone else is driving.  The catamaran is a blast to sail but a huge pain when you want to come about (turn around).  One time a certain member of my family managed to flip and got the mast stuck in the bottom of the lake.  Dad had to come rescue them.  Nope, not me.  I know the basics of sailing but I'm not confident enough in my abilities to go out on my own, at least not with the cat.  Give me a nice, small Sunfish and I'd be happier.

Some of my best memories are being up at the lake.  One summer, we spent the whole summer up there - Mom and us kids.  Dad came up for long weekends.  We'd pick wild blueberries, visit the gravel pit (trust me, it was fun), go mushroom hunting (for fun, not eating), go petosky hunting, swim, hunt for worms one day to fish the next... it was a wonderful way to spend summers.  My birthday is in August and when we were at the cottage, there were always kids up there to help me celebrate.  At home, I can't remember ever having a birthday party because everyone was on their end-of-summer trip.

I've joined up with the Tour de Fleece 2008 and I've been spinning every day.  I decided not to take David along so I spun the roving for my second Divine Melon sock while up north and plied it yesterday.  This will be the next yarn I use.  Sock #1 is longing for a mate.

I'm putting some of the roving I dyed two weeks ago up in my store tonight.  It's getting late so only some will be going up.  Here are a couple more I dyed but haven't posted about:

4 oz. of Merino/Tencel.  What do you think?  Pansies?  Purple Haze?  Grapes?

4 oz. of Superwash Merino.  Any name suggestions?  I really love this one.  The colors are very saturated, which is what I like.  The more color, the better.

Okay, gotta go stock the shelves.  'Night.

I has yarn!

Approximately 350 yarns of soft angora/merino goodness.  This picture makes it look brown.  It's not.  It's more purple and pink but the merino is black and that saddens the other colors quite a bit.  That and my camera's wonky.  What am I going to do with this lovely softness?  Not a clue.  It's between a fingering and sport weight.  What can you make with 350 yards of fingering/sport weight yarn?  It would have to be something that won't take a lot of abuse.  Oh, and I'm not a scarf person.  (So many people just put their hands down.)  Think I should buy another 4 ounces?  700 yards will be more useful.  Any suggestions?  I'm open.

Is it possible that I'm the world's slowest knitter?  It seems to take me forever to finish something.  Still, I did turn the heel and I like knitting k2p2 rib so in theory, I should be moving right along on this sucker.  In theory.  Sorry the picture's lousy.  Without a sock blocker, the ribbing wouldn't lay down and behave so I could get a decent shot.  Of course, with the ribbing misbehaving, you can't see the pathetic excuse for a short-row heel.  I blame lack of practice.  Would someone please take pity on me and show me how to knit a heel flap and gusset on a toe-up sock?  For some reason, when I read directions for said heel, it sounds like Charlie Brown listening to an adult talking, "Wahwah wah wah wah."  Short rows were much easier to grasp.

I've finally come to the conclusion that I'm not going to do rubberstamping any more and I need to get rid of my stamping stuff to make room for my current obsession...um... hobby.  Now that I've made that decision, I'm trying to decide between one big garage-type sale or listing everything separately on Craig's List.  The sad reality is a) I just want to be rid of the space-hogging stuff and b) I'm not made of money.  Two ideas that don't necessarily play well together.  I want/need a chest freezer for all the summer goodness I plan on putting up but, well, money doesn't grow on trees.  I could probably get more for things if I list them separately but it will take much longer and be much more work that way.  If I list a big sale, I can (hopefully) get rid of a lot of stuff all at once, and believe me, I have a lot of stuff.  Frankly, I'm leaning toward expedience.  Hopefully the sales will be enough for the new freezer.  Now I just need to find an open Saturday.  And space in the basement.

The first two ounces

The first two ounces of the angora/Merino roving.  I love the flecks of color that show up here and there.  As usual, I can't wait to finish spinning so I can ply it and see what the yarn is really going to look like.

The weather has me feeling very blah.  Here I am, trying to get into a regular walking routine and it goes and rains.  Alot.  So not only am I feeling the frustration of actually wanting to exercise and can't, but it's also cold and gray.  I shouldn't complain:  some parts of the country are dealing with very serious flooding.  Makes you wonder if nature is ticked off at us.  Anyone seen the new M. Night Shyamalan movie?

My goals for the week and weekend are the same as last weekend:  cleaning and organizing.  I didn't get enough done.  I also want to do some actual cooking.  Wow, cook in my own kitchen.  What a concept.  Jacki blogged about making homemade tortillas and I want to try it myself.  They look really tasty.  Of course, that means tacos this weekend.  Mmm, tacos!  I hope my grocery store carries masa harina.

Hey, my peppers and tomatoes have flower buds!  The tomatoes are a'comin!  I can hardly wait for the first one to be ripe.  There will be pictures!

Wensleydale

 Approximately 400 yards of 2-ply Wensleydale, spun from roving.  Wensleydale is a long-wool (an 8" staple length!) and for the breed, this stuff if pretty soft.  I have no idea what I'm going to do with it.  It's not soft enough for mittens, hats or socks and there isn't enough for a shawl.  It'll have to marinate in my stash for a while until inspiration hits or I give it away.

The majority of my weekend, once again, will be taken up with dealing with the mess my condo has become.  My lack of storage space is starting to overwhelm me and the stress of the mess is starting to affect me all the time.  I'm just enough of a control freak that a messy house makes me feel like my life is out of control.  So not good!  Tomorrow night I'm going for sushi with friends (yummy!) then I'll be home cleaning; Saturday is our spinning guild meeting, then back home for more cleaning/organizing; and Sunday, if I'm good, I get to see a movie.  It's not the world's most exciting weekend but hopefully I'll feel a whole lot better by the end of it.  (Hmm, floating shelves...?)  I may even get some work done on my sock.  I'm half done with the short-row heel so I should be working on the leg by the end of the weekend.

Plying, how I love thee

Take two bobbins whose singles look nice, ply them, and you get a yarn that's totally fab!  I'm having impure thoughts about my new yarn.  Does that make me a sick wacko?

The yarn came from some batts I got in a trade:  Merino, alpaca and bamboo.  Oh, my!  This yarn is so very soft... I may have to sleep with it tonight.  Well, probably not; the bamboo gets a bit fuzzy if it's abused.  Does all bamboo do that or is it just that this isn't spun horribly tight?

And now for a close-up:

Hey!  I did a pretty good job on this!  [Note to self:  Rats!  Try to sound more modest!]  I mean, I owe it all to Owen.  We've spent some quality time together and I'm getting the hang of using a double-treadle wheel.  I especially love the plastic? rubber? drive band that doesn't have to be tweaked all the time.   And the batts!  The batts were just lovely.  [Note to self:  buy more batts!]

Lazy day... mostly

My initial plan for today was to cook up a mushroom chicken dish in the morning (for work lunches) then after lunch, make the dessert I would take to Eric's.  This plan probably would have been carried through if I hadn't started reading "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver.  It's about a family's one-year commitment to only eat locally grown food... and it's completely sucked me in.  There's a lot of information in this book and most of it is a real eye-opener.  After you read it, you'll be shopping at your local farmer's market and by-passing the grocery store.  It's made me even more eager to grow my own food and even more frustrated that I can't.

That said, I bought out-of-season, imported sweet cherries and made this:

Eric, Terry and Alice all liked it, and it was good, but my taste buds wanted something more tart.  If I make it again, I'll use tart cherries, or maybe rhubarb.  Rhubarb would be fabulous. 

I finished up the last of the Border Leicester fleece today.  Hot, sunny days are wonderful for drying wool outside.  I only had to leave it outside for about 45 minutes and not only was it dry, it was hot.  I'd imagine white fleeces would take longer to dry but the dark gray wool dried super fast.

I know I said I'd have a finished skein of yarn to show off but I'm afraid I only got as far as these.  Tomorrow...

Meet Owen

He's my handsome new love.  Unlike my faithful David, Owen is very portable and I expect I'll be taking him with me everywhere.  (Well, maybe not everywhere.  He's portable but he's still a bit too heavy to be schlepping on the bus with me to work on Mondays when we spin after work.  My plan had been to take him to work with me in the morning then after work, take the bus downtown to where we meet, thereby saving on ever-more-expensive gasoline.  His carry bag has a shoulder strap but I've already torn something in my shoulder by carrying a too-heavy work bag and Owen's carry bag doesn't have a side handle, which would have been helpful.)  I'm still getting used to him, but I can tell Owen and I will be very happy together.  I hope to have some of our first yarn together by the end of the long weekend.

Wow, that sounded weird.  Even to me.  I need to get out more.

Enjoy the long weekend.

Oh, so wrong

Remember when I was brimming with excitment because I got my confirmation and I was going to SOAR?  Yeah, all that was was the confirmation that my application was received.  We won't find out until June if we made it in.  I'm such a dork.

A small skein of the Border Leicester I bought at Maryland.  It looks brown; it's gray.  It's not next-to-skin soft but it not terribly far off.  Once I get it all scoured, I'm considering it sending it off to be processed into roving.  I tried carding some up on a drum carder and it didn't work very well.  I don't spin evenly from combs and that pretty much leaves roving. 

I bought my new wheel tonight but I'm saving the big reveal until I come up with its name.  I'm currently trying to decide if it has more of a masculine or feminine feel. 

I'm sorry I don't have much tonight.  I fell asleep on the couch with the cat and now I'm all fuzzy headed and I can barely keep my eyes open.  Honest, I was just going to lay down with her for a minute...

Singles to 2-ply

This has become this:

I wish you could all squeeze this yarn.  It is so soft and so amazingly squishy.  It's just amazing.  My singles weren't very even and the final yarn really shows it but I'm entering it anyway because I want as many people as possible to squeeze it.  Ooo la la!  I need some expert advice on spinning even singles from carded and flicked wool.  Toward the end I switched from hand carding to flicking and spinning from the lock.  I got a little better but not a lot.  There's something I'm not getting... or I just need loads more practice.  I'd like someone with experience to watch me and give me pointers.

I'm bringing my camera so I'll have lots of pictures to post when I get back.  Have a great weekend!