sunny Sunday

It was a pretty day today! Not too hot and just a little breeze to keep the mosquitoes from being pesky. I drove out to Craven to take a look at a couple of Golden Retriever puppies at Jean Juno's place. I had the forethought to throw my camera in my purse before I left but totally forgot to take pictures of the puppies because I was entranced and distracted by them. They are so cute I am apologizing now for forgetting to get a picture to share with you. I did remember to take this picture before I left though. It was taken in front of Jean's house overlooking the valley. Imagine the smell of sun-warmed grass with faint but distinct whiffs of sage in the mix. Summer.

I finished the skein of sheltie and Targhee plied with pin-drafted Cormo.

And finally, this picture has been lurking in my camera since last Sunday. I took it just before I picked the cucumber and shared it with Dan. It's definitely the earliest that we've eaten a home-grown cucumber. The cucumber plants in the garden are still babies. I bought this plant at Costco and it sits on the deck where it's sheltered and sunny. Unfortunately the plant's leaves are getting moldy-looking and I think that this one cuke might be its only harvest.

storms

Now that the weather is heating up, we're getting thunderstorms. I love thunderstorms as long as they don't bring damaging winds or hail. So far, we've just have lots of lightning, thunder, rain, and wonderful energy in the air.

I snapped this pic on my cell phone camera while I was heading into the medical clinic for a doctor's appointment this afternoon.

Myrtle

I finished spinning up Myrtle, the brown BFL from the March Spunky Eclectic Fiber Club shipment.

3-ply, about 300 yds., 88 g, 19 wpi. I'm thinking socks.

I'm not a huge fan of monthly clubs but this one is wonderful! The fibers are beautiful, spin up easily, and you can join or opt out at any time. The payment is monthly and you're not locked in for a set period of time. This shipment is a good example of why you should join a club once in a while. I probably wouldn't have bought this fiber if I had seen it advertised; it was quite drab with blotches of red, blue, and green. However, once it arrived I was delighted with its texture and I think the finished yarn is so pretty! The Spunky Eclectic fibers aren't overprocessed and the club allows me to try some fibers that I don't have local access to.

Targhee

I don't usually spin from fibers that I've prepared from raw fleece. I'm allergic to a lot of weeds and grasses and can't handle most fleeces without a reaction because of the vegetable matter. However, some wool is okay if the sheep haven't been pastured with any of the specific green stuff that triggers my allergies. There's no way for me to know which fleeces will cause me problems without my handling some of it.

Sharon at Golden Willow (Rav link) had a bit of washed Targhee for sale. I bought it, picked some of it, and knew it wouldn't cause a reaction so I bought some of the raw fleece. Here's how it looks before a bath.

After several hot baths in a lingerie bag in hot water with no agitation, I can now start to play with it. (I used Orvus Paste for the first couple of baths, then washed it and rinsed it with Unicorn Fibre products which I love, love, love!) Here's a lock to show you the lovely crimp in this wool.

My hands hurt when I tease fiber so I combed it which helps trap the vm in the short noils left in the combs...

and opens up the fibers into this yummy pouf.

If I diz off the fiber, I get a lovely little nest of top like this.

Because I'm carding the fiber with sheltie undercoat, I don't need to diz off the fiber so I can take it off the comb and feed it into the drum carder. I put a layer of wool, then a layer of sheltie fluff, then another layer of wool; I find that keeping the sheltie fluff in the middle of the 'sandwich' helps to card it evenly.
Eventually, I end up with lovely pillows of batts ready to spin.
I can't imagine doing a lot of this preparation for most of my spinning but the end result of clean, bouncy, fresh fiber makes it worth doing every now and then.

a cute pic

My sister Darcie snapped this photo of Bentley this evening.

Hard to believe that innocent face was responsible for this crime scene the other day, huh?

just out walking the....

cat.

A new family moved into our neighborhood a few months ago. They have three little boys and a cat. I've seen the cat in our yard and it seems incredibly mellow. It continued to walk along the top of our fence even though the dogs were barking like mad.

I saw one of the boys in the park today. He had leashed the cat to a yellow rope and was out for a stroll. Talk about a good-natured cat.

no sun Saturday

It's raining here in Saskatchewan. It's supposed to continue to rain for a couple of more days too. It's also chilly. My fingertips were going numb this afternoon (slight bit of Raynaud's Syndrome) so I caved and turned on the furnace. It could be worse - Calgary got a dump of snow.

I finished the first Zigzag Anklet from Knitting Socks with Handpainted Yarn.
I used Panda Wool in the Hydrangea colorway. It comes in 50 g skeins with only 170 yds. and I bought two skeins from Little Knits a while ago. I figured there would be enough for anklets. I hadn't thought about the fact that this pattern's anklet folds over itself so isn't really a short sock yarnwise.
After the heel turn, I started to panic about running short and ordered one more skein. I had enough after all. There is a whopping 8 g left of the skein.

I've been spinning up some merino from Sheepish Creations on Etsy. It's the Maid Marion colorway. The plan is to keep the color order while spinning the singles and then navajo ply it.

I left it for a few minutes while I took a phone call this afternoon and came back to this:
Apparently it was too much temptation for a small Dachshund on a rainy day.

Now this is what I have to organize to keep the color sequence going.
Sigh.