the hungry Moosie

My Moosie devours yarn! I have trouble putting it down. It's such a lovely spindle.

Tour de Fleece

I have been spinning for the Tour de Fleece. I have spun every day - some days a lot and other days a little. Here are some of the spinning projects from the first week.

SW Merino, Scenic colorway, from beemiceelf on Etsy. I split the fiber in half lengthwise and spun one half as it presented itself. I split the other half into thin strips and spun them for the second single. Plied together, one single has long color repeats and the other has very short color repeats. It was the first time I've tried using the fractal stripes prep for fiber. I don't think the striping patterns are very evident until the yarn is knit up. I'm planning to knit an EZ Baby Surprise sweater with it.

Some Romney top (Odysseus colorway, Sheepish Creations on Etsy)on the Golding spindle.

I dyed some BFL fingering weight yarn to knit socks for my friend and vet-extraordinaire, Jo-Ann Liebe, using her color choices. It's very pretty but I had a terrible time swatching it. It's very fine yarn and, to get a gauge swatch that I liked, I would have had to use 1.5mm needles or finer. So I decided to add twist to the yarn and ply the two 2-plied yarns together to make a cabled yarn. I'm much happier with it now.

And my Bosworth Moosie arrived in the mail! I've been on a waiting list for it. The spindle is made from shed moose antlers.
I raided my stash and found the perfect fiber for the Moosie's first spinning assignment. It's an Abby's Batt in the First Frost colorway - merino, baby alpaca, silk, and firestar - and it's the most beautiful batt I've ever seen! I bought it from someone destashing on Ravelry a while back. It's demanding to be spun laceweight.

Sunday at home

I cleaned off all three wheels the other day in preparation for the Tour de Fleece on Ravelry. I joined with the modest goal of spinning every day. I usually spin every day anyway so it's not a big challenge. My problem is usually stopping spinning once I get going. I spin until my body aches tell me to back away from the wheel.

Anyway, here are a couple of finished yarns off the wheels.

This is the Spunky Eclectic club Soul Windows, a SW Corriedale and nylon blend. I three-plied it for sock yarn - 23 wpi.

This is some more sheltie blend yarn. It's about 30% sheltie and 70% Cormo, two ply - 13 wpi. It's posing with one of peonies that's still blooming in the back yard.

I convinced Robbie to pose with it too. Cute, don't you think?

And on a completely unrelated note, one of my former grade 2 students posted on Facebook today that she was celebrating her 12th anniversary!! Egads! I can't possibly be that old, can I?!

Happy Canada Day!

The friendly neighborhood gargoyle is sporting his Canada hat today. We're glad to see him back after a serious accident beheaded him this winter. (Whoever is to blame for this act of vandalism, get a life!) We were wondering if he would be able to recover from this unfortunate incident. However, once the weather warmed up enough for the mending adhesive to work, he was back at his station as the neighborhood beacon. Love ya, gargoyle dude!

Happy 142nd birthday, Canada! I wouldn't want to live anywhere else.

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.

dyeing experiment a success

Remember this?

It's the merino/nylon top that I spot-dyed using the idea from The Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook.

I finished spinning it and here is what it looks like now.

The top skein is 470 yds., 82 g of 3-ply.
The bottom skein is 430 yds., 42 g of 2-ply.

I divided my fiber into three supposedly equal batches before spinning and you can see that I ended up with way more singles on two of the bobbins than on the third so that's why I have a bunch of 2-ply from the leftovers. Weird how that happened. I used a scale and everything.

I was spinning very finely so that I would get fingering weight 3-ply but I obviously got a little carried away because it's very fine even for socks. I think the singles were roughly 57 wpi. Good grief. I'm not sure what to knit with it. It may have to become lace of some sort.

fiber goodness

Just a quick post to share some beautiful fiber that came in the mail.

The first batch are from BeeMiceElf.

Superwash merino

Merino

and a sample of alpaca/silk.

I think that these fibers are some of the loveliest that I've had the pleasure of feeling and seeing. Dyeing didn't overprocess the delicate merino at all. I'm sure that it will be a pleasure to spin. I'll be popping into this shop frequently!


And this pretty Corriedale is from Lakehouse Loft. It's gorgeous too!

thank you and a sad update about Kelsey

Thank you for all of your comments about Harrison. They mean a lot to me.

Dan came home from school with a sad update about Kelsey, one of the students at the high school where he teaches. Here is a link to my previous blog posts about Kelsey and her battle against a brain tumor. The world-wide knitting community has been wonderful about sending prayers and good wishes, as well as hand-knitted socks (which she wears!), her way.

She needs your prayers now more than ever. She had surgery recently and it didn't go well. She is very ill. Please add your prayers to mine for comfort to Kelsey and her family.

good-bye Harrison

We said good-bye to Harrison today. His passing was sudden and unexpected, probably the result of a heart attack. He had a good morning, ate his breakfast with gusto, barked at the birds, and happily greeted Margot, our long-time cleaning woman. Then he just laid down and was gone. It was quick and, I think, painless. I'm glad that I was with him. We just weren't ready to say good-bye yet. He was a good dog and will be missed very much. My heart is heavy.

spindling

Since I started attending a spinning class at my awesome LYS Golden Willow, I've become much more comfortable spinning on my spindles. Because I am a mostly self-taught spinner, I never learned to appreciate what great little tools they are. Now I love to park-and-draft when watching TV. So I've been playing around with various ways of plying from the spindle for the first time in my life.

First, I'll show you a neat little gadget that my spinning instructor shared with us. It's an inexpensive little plastic clamp from Canadian Tire with little holes in the handle. Then you put a fishing line swivel in the hole. The only reason there are two swivels on mine is because they came two to a package and I figured I wouldn't lose the extra one if I just put it on the clamp too.
You can hook the spindle in the swivel and it rotates freely to allow you to wind off the yarn. A close-up...
Cool, huh? And all for under $5.

I decided to Andean ply my singles. This technique allows you to ply from both ends of the same single. You can use your hand for this but then you have to finish all the winding before you can use your hand for anything else that might come up in the meantime. You also have to be very careful not to cut off your circulation while you're doing it. Or you can get this nifty little Handy Andy tool from Nancy's Knit Knacks instead.
Here is the paddle all filled up.
Then you pop the peg out of the top of the paddle and let the yarn fall into a 'bracelet' at its base. Both ends of yarn are available to begin plying. The paddle fits into a sturdy base that stays put so its easy to ply from it. No tangles.

Once I had it all plied I decided to slide the copp of yarn onto a straw.
I have a Katie-a-go-go where I could use the storage straws as bobbins to ply from if I wanted to use separate singles i.e. plying from different copps rather than from both ends of the same one like the Andean plying. I lent my Katie-a-go-go to my sister so used this yarn holder (also from Nancy's Knit Knacks) instead. I used this holder when I had the knitting machine but it's also great for skeining off of spinning wheel bobbins when I'm using the tensioned yarn meter. (Can you tell that I like gadgets?) The metal post fits into the straw.
I used the mini niddy noddy to skein it off.

And the finished little skein of practice yarn.

In a totally unrelated topic, we woke up to snow this morning. I decided it was too depressing to take a picture.