So many hobbies!

Still not satisfied with the color

Well, my peeps, you know that sky blue yarn that I overdyed to a medium turquoise?  It's still not right.  Or rather, I want to use it for a nice warm cowl and that color won't look good on me so I need to try again.  Possibly purple but I'm leaning more toward a deeper blue.  Yeah, definitely blue. 

As for purple dyes, I dyed up some Merino/bamboo roving today.  Because bamboo is a celulose fiber and not a protein fiber like wool, it won't take acid dyes.  This means you need to dye the roving darker than you normally would because the undyed bamboo fibers will lighten the color.  Anyway, the finished roving is drying and will be available for a photo shoot later this week.

 

My newest spindle was delivered Saturday.  It's a .8 ounce Comet spindle from Tracy Eichheim.  It's one of his production spindles which means it's nicely affordable but still very well made.  I've been searching for a spindle that will spin for a long time and I'd heard good things about Tracy's spindles so I ordered one.  Everyone was right:  these spindles do spin forever.  This thing is the Energizer Bunny of drop spindles!  Seriously!  By the time it slows down, I need to wind on anyway.  If you've been looking for a long-spinning drop spindle, order one of these.  Love!

I'm in the mood to bake something scrumptious.  Anyone got any good recipes they'd like to share?  I have some bananas that are happily on their way to black so I'm thinking banana nut bread will be forthcoming... as soon as I clean off the kitchen counter. 

Half-leather book binding

 

I had forgotten how much I liked bookbinding.  The class was offered by Hollanders in Ann Arbor, MI.  Tom and Cindy Hollander were wonderful teachers; very encouraging and supportive.  I'd never worked with leather before and we learned to pare down the leather's thickness so it wouldn't be quite so bulky on the turned ins on the spine.  There are two kinds of adhesives used in bookbinding:  PVA glue and paste (either wheat or rice).  Leather doesn't react well to PVA so paste is the adhesive of choice.  It dries slowly and can be repositioned and manipulated it for a longer time.  Very useful.

 

Cindy taught us the fine art of hand sewing end bands.  Most end bands you see on books are machine made and glued in.  These take longer but are physically sewn to the spine and won't come out.  Besides, they look nice.  From Tom, we learned to round the spine which is something I'd only read about but wasn't really able to understand until I saw it done.  The Hollanders basically tag-teamed the instruction of the various parts of the book, each one teaching what they do best.  I have to say, I really enjoyed it.

 

The last thing we did was glue on the cover papers and then glue down the end papers.  Much as I'd like to play with my new baby, it has to stay in my book press 4 or 5 days till it dries... then I'll be showing it off to everyone I know. 

It's a good thing I've already decided to skip SOAR this year because there are two classes I want to take in the fall: one taught by Daniel Essig and a marbeling class. 

Still searching

 

The beaded thingy has been frogged and I'm still looking for the right fingerless mitts or wrist warmers to knit with the yarn.  The purple yarn was dyed on Sunday but as you can see, there are light spots that I can't figure out.  It's also a bit darker than I wanted so I'm thinking of overdyeing it in magenta to see if it will cover the light spots and make it more of the red-purple I was shooting for.  Besides, the experiment will be fun and I'm all about the fun.  The purp is the Merino/cashmere/angora yarn I made for my mom's fingerless mitts two Christmases ago.  I decided it didn't have enough twist and would hold up better if I gave it a little more so I ran it through my wheel again.  Now it has the quantity of twist I think makes a good-looking yarn.  I've been told by some people that I add too much twist when plying.  I say, they don't have enough. 

My spindle storage shelf is almost done.  All I have left to do is add the cuphooks and figure out where I'm going to hang the darn thing.  Oh, I suppose I ought to seal it with something - darn!  I used nice bright ash for the everything but the back piece.  The back piece is darker recycled wood that gives great contrast to the lighter wood.  I'll try and get eveything completed this weekend but I'm taking a class all day Saturday and Sunday and I just may not have time.

Happy weekend people.

Beads and knitting

I've lost count of how many times I've watched the extended version of The Lord of the Rings and yet every time, at the end when Frodo says good-bye to the other hobbits, I still have tears rolling down my face. 

 

My second attempt worked out better tonight.  Getting the beads on the end tightened up was a pain.  It looks better than this picture.  The flash makes it look harsher than it is.  As I've been working on this, I've realized I'll likely never wear these.  They really aren't me.  I just wanted to make them.  You know, now that I think about it, I may frog these.  I've done the part I wanted, which was to try a bit of beaded knitting.  I need to sleep on it and decide how I feel about it tomorrow.   The 80/20 Merino/angora yarn is wonderful and soft.  I want to actually wear it.  I seem to be into fingerless mitts and wrist warmers right now so I'd definitely use the yarn some other way.  Much pondering will ensue.

Changing it up

When was the last time you cleaned out your pantry?  I've been in my condo nearly 10 years and today was the first time.  Boy, did I have a lot of old stuff in there:  soup that expired 4 years ago, beans that expired 6 years ago, a jar of Orville Redenbacher's popcorn that moved in with me.  Does sparkling grape juice have a shelf life?  I have two bottles that have been here almost since I moved in.  My recycling bin will be overflowing this week.  I'm a bit slow in learning an important lesson:  if you don't need it right now and it isn't a oft-used staple like tomato paste, don't buy it.  My pantry has a lot more room tonight than it did this morning.

I treated myself to a new book this week:  Luxury Yarn One-Skein Wonders.  It prompted me to dig out some of the luxury yarn I've spun over the past couple of years.  I have a couple of skeins of Merino/angora and about 100 yds. left of the superfine Merino/angora/cashmere yarn I blended up for my mom two Christmases ago.  Neither one was a color I liked so I overdyed them.  The Merino/angora went from a sky blue to this:

 

The Merino/angora/cashmere was overdyed a dark purple but it's still drying.  Pics later.  The yarn above I'm thinking will be the beaded wrist warmers pictured on page 21 of Luxury Yarn One-Skein Wonders - provided I can find the right beads to match.  Considering I could practically open my own bead store, I'm a bit annoyed to find I don't have the right color beads.  I'll be visiting my LBS (local bead store) sometime this week to look for a match.  I'd like something with some sparkle. 

The joy of the crock pot

Today was spent in the knowledge that dinner would be waiting for me when I got home.  I found this recipe while web surfing last week.  Man did the house smell good when I got home tonight.  Since I don't drink, I had to ask a few people if I could buy just one bottle of beer (the recipe calls for 1 cup - I added about a cup and a half) and bought a bottle of Bass.  Once it was done cooking, I pulled out the meat and pulled off all the visible fat.  The juices in the crock I poured into one of those measuring cups with the spout at the bottom, waited for the fat to rise to the top and poured all the good stuff back into the crock.  Then I put the meat back in and shredded it with two forks.  Dinner was served over pasta with some fresh-grated parmesan cheese sprinkled on top.  Yummy!

Did you know you can actually bake in a crock pot?!  Seriously.  You cook the same as you would for any other recipe except you stick a chopstick under the lid to let the steam out.  I'm going to try it this weekend. 

My iPod has been absolutely wonderful to have at work.  I have all my favorite music which ranges from Barenaked Ladies to Scott Joplin to Riverdance to Blue Oyster Cult.  It makes boring data entry a little more tolerable.  A couple of weeks ago I started uploading podcasts:  Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me; The Splendid Table and Sticks & Strings.  How did I ever manage without an MP3 player?

Surprise

 

When I got home Friday night, this box was waiting for me.  I wasn't expecting Stonehedge to process my Corriedale fleece so fast so it was quite a surprise when I opened the box.  As you can see, I've already started spining it up.  I knew the fleece was a nice one when I sent it off but I wasn't expecting just how soft it would be once it was clean.  I'm very happy with how it's spinning up.

I just finished watching disc 6 of the first season of "Enterprise."  I know I'm a little slow on the watching but for my fellow SciFi geeks who may not know, I found 3 Easter Eggs in the Special Features.  Instead of using the down button to scroll through the list of features, use the left button.  In the first menu, two of the images on the left of the screen hide Easter Eggs and in the next, the middle image hides one.  Also, my friend found an Easter Egg in disc 4 of "Firefly" that hides Adam Baldwin singing the Ballad of Jayne.  It's a hoot.  Same thing as "Enterprise," use the left button instead of the down button.  Scrollwork on the left lights up. 

Spring is finally starting to arrive to Michigan.  Most of my bulbs are up and the birds are coming back.  I always forget how quiet winter is until I start to hear the first birdsong of spring.  It's a very welcome sound.  I'm not fond of silence.

A girlfriend and I saw "Watchmen" today.  I was warned that it was very violent and even so, I was surprised by how much violence there was.  Still, I liked the movie.  The acting was great and the CG graphics were incredible.  I'll admit, I haven't read the graphic novel so I'm not missing what they had to leave out.  One of my friends who has read the novel, was rather grouchy about the missing parts but they are apparently going to release a DVD of the entire graphic novel with all the bits added back in.

A taste

 

Singles from the fiber I was blending with my wool combs.  It's pretty subtle but I think you can see a bit of color change.  The handpainted BFL was very close in value to the Coopworth so the color changes won't be very obvious. 

I'm having a dry spell this week.  This evening was taken up with a long nap with Seli and watching part of season one of "Enterprise."  I am a SciFi geek and proud of it.  I had intended to work on the socks I started long before Christmas and haven't touched since January.  It's hard to get up the desire to work on a project when you know you've screwed something up.  Let's just say the socks are in a time out.

Peachy's been plied

 

Did I mention that I'd named the BFL roving I was spinning "Peachy."  I just seemed to fit.  The singles were finished Friday night and the plying Sunday.  I haven't counted the yardage yet but there's plenty for the socks I'll knit from it.  BFL doesn't bloom nearly as much as Merino; this yarn looks almost the same after washing as it did before. 

 

New socks from Eric and his sock machine.  I had to use the flash so the photo is a little overexposed.  Sorry.  The yarn is from Fleece Artist in the "Tiger" colorway.  I LOVE these socks.  He owes me one more pair of socks and then I'll start having him knit me tubes and I'll finish the toes and do the afterthought heels.  That little project got stalled while Eric figured out which cylinder would be the best one.  He settled on a 72-needle cylinder which will make perfectly fitting socks for my feet.  Yay!  Warm socks for winter!

I did a little color-blending experiment Saturday using my wool combs.  I had bought 4 oz. of a natural fawn-colored Coopworth roving and 3 oz. of hand-painted BFL roving.  I thought I'd spin them for socks but I didn't have an even amount of each kind which meant I couldn't just ply them together.  I loaded up the combs starting with the Coopworth, alternating with the BFL and ending with the Coopworth.  Then I dized the fiber on the comb into top that I then spun.  (I know, this would be easier to picture with photos but I didn't take any.  Bad blogger!  No cookie!  I promise to take some the next time.)  The color in the spun singles is subtle but I like now it's coming out.  I'll have an update later this week.

Still 10 fingers

I don't have much except to say I made it through my first woodworking class with all my digits still attached.  The first class was pretty much "This is all the equipment."  Next week we show up with a project.  I'll be making a shelf/drop spindle storage rack.  Since I've started a spindle collection I never planned to have, I figure I should store them properly which is by hanging them.  If you leave your spindle laying on its side, you risk it warping.  I don't know how common the warping problem is but it gives me a good excuse for a project.

Going to bed now.  Have a great weekend!