A nice surprise

While Liz and I were in the basement yesterday, I refound some fleeces that I had forgotten were there. The mystery fleece on yesterday's post, for example, is what I called "Mark's fleece" as Mark picked it out in the fleece sale tent at the NYS&WF last October. It's a Cotswold, thus the scratchy nature.

Another fleece that I forgot was there had a piece of paper in it that said "Blackie-Lincoln/Coopworth Lamb". It looked ok, it was a pretty nearly black, but no big deal. Well, today while I was waiting for the washer to fill to wash another fleece to dye, I started carding some of Blackie. Talk about "poofy", the fiber length was short, there were fly away fibers everywhere, and I was thinking it wasn't going to be any fun. When I went to take the batt off the carder, it didn't come off as a batt either, it had to be coaxed out of the tines of the carder with my doffer brush. What a mess. But I decided since it was so very soft to do a sample skein just to see how it would turn out. It was like spinning yak, very short and kind of a "pull it out of the bag and spin", fibers in every direction. But this stuff spun up nicely, albeit not as easily as roving or off a nicely carded batt.

What a surprise, the color is really nice too, and it's not too scratchy, perfect for a hat! I just downloaded a free fair isles pattern, it might someday become part of that, honestly I haven't decided yet. I have too many UFO's right now to worry about another one!

Tomorrow I have to get back to working on my dyed fleeces to take to the processor. I don't think I'm going to be getting much personal knitting or spinning done.

What a fun day!

This morning, LizzyB came to visit, bearing gifts and her Ashford Joy spinning wheel! And oh we had so much fun chatting, spinning, fondling fleeces, spinning, eating, spinning, sharing our experiments, spinning, sharing our finished projects, spinning, and just generally having the entire day go by in the blink of an eye!

Dear Liz brought me 4 ounces of gorgeous Chocolate brown CVM roving which I promptly began to spin. I actually got a skein of 2 ounces of it finished, it's washed and drying in the kitchen, I have a couple of ideas for it's use in mind, updates to follow. Liz also brought a generous gift from LadyVee who couldn't be with us today, some Teeswater that was so incredibly bright and shiny white. I went out and bought a dog comb after dinner tonight so I can begin to spin it very shortly. Thank you again Vee, I really love it!

Liz did quite a bit of spinning, too, despite the fact that we talked non-stop! But you know when you're really having fun when you look at your watch and the entire day has gone by and you didn't even notice!

We managed to find a few moments and delved into the depths of my basement that held quite a few mystery fleeces including this one:

which Liz combed a handful with her handy dog comb and made the sample skeins seen in the foreground. I'm not sure what it is, it's a longwool and fairly coarse, but I thought it was beautiful when I purchased it. It has a very shiny lusterous feel, and it's actually quite soft to the feel. I might have to spin it fairly loosely and see what happens. I might have lost the note that I usually put in each bag of fleece saying what it is, I'm not nearly as organized as some of my fleece friends.

I have some other fleeces of undetermined origin in storage, and I'm so very glad that Liz and Lady Vee sucked me back into the fleece vortex, I might actually get some of them out and spun eventually! I have been spinning prepared roving, but it's a shame to waste all the beauty found in these fleeces. This one's note simply says "Long Tail". It is significantly softer than the Mystery fleece, but the luster isn't as high. I'm going to try to comb this as well, perhaps divide out the colors a little bit and make a variegated yarn.

I also have to remember that I'm in the process of making two Alpaca/Angora scarves, so there's that fiber to finish spinning. I did manage, over the past couple of days, to do 3 new samples for the fleece study. I got the Cheviot, High Mountain Cheviot, and Cormo spun and washed. I'm trying to finish that project as there are little bags of wool all over the place. I still have some to card and some to comb still as well.

I did get a couple of rows of the Alpaca/ Angora scarf knitted today. Some days aren't good for knitting, so I did have to frog a bit before it seemed to flow nicely. I now have a foot finished, only 4 more to go!

Alpaca/Angora scarf

After a frustrating and hurtful afternoon of finding and dealing with more vandalism and damage done by the "black sheep of the family", I decided to sit and spin to decompress and try to regroup my normally upbeat attitude. Of course, having a pint of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream in the freezer and a handy glass of wine came in handy with the recovery. :)

While I was thinking things through (and thank you, Elaine, for allowing me to vent to you!) I finished spinning the alpaca angora blend that I started last night, and got a few rows of the "Rabbit Tracks" scarf on the needles too. These are size 11, whopper needles for the lace weight yarn, but I tried smaller needles and it just didn't look quite right. I really don't like metal needles, I really don't remember why I even have them, but I don't have any wooden size 11's so I guess I need to run to the LYS tomorrow. Since I tend to make all my own yarn these days, I don't get to the yarn shop much anymore. I inherited a bunch of metal needles many years ago and these might be part of that group. I thought I'd replaced all of them by now, but I guess not. In any case, I frogged the beginning rows a couple of times, and I'm still not sure that everything is as it should be. Lace is tough for me to envision as it doesn't all come together as a pattern untill it's blocked, and of course, then it's too late to fix any problems. But try, try again is my motto!

Slow day

I'm home again today after working yesterday on my feet for about 13 hours, with the pressure of the airplane and the length of time walking and standing, the ankle was screaming half way through the day. I think it's wise to give myself a little more time to get feeling better. I managed to get another sample (Border Leicester) spun this morning, it's drying in the kitchen now. I wanted to get another picture of the developing sample collection, it is simply amazing how valuable this experience is for me, getting to know the different fleeces by feel and the way they process and spin. Samples I'd loved in the grease are absoulutely coarse when spun, things that didn't "wow" me before I washed them have become my favorites, and it's amazing how much combing and/or carding changes the feel and appearance of many fleece types. My absolute least favorite so far has been Black Mountain Welsh because of the fiber feel, length, and how scratchy it was when I spun it. I couldn't wait to finish spinning it so it was over with! But the color is beautiful and deep, and I love naturally colored fleeces.

I'll continue the process slowly. I'm also spinning some alpaca/angora that I think is going to want to be a scarf for a special person. I've picked out the pattern already, it's called "Rabbit tracks" in reference to the Angora bunny blended into the alpaca. I'm still on the first ounce going onto the bobbin, more to come on that.

Feeling of accomplishment!

I finished the exotic fiber project I'd been working on lately. I began knitting it after finishing the spinning of the buffalo yarn on Sunday. This "Andean style" headband pattern is on the Spin-off website shown there using Paco-vicuna. My own version is made from baby camel, white yak, and buffalo down, all of which I found to be "fragile" yarns which were prone to breaking during the plying process depending on the pressure put upon them. The pattern was pretty easy, I just love doing color work and watching the pattern emerge from the chart! I still have to weave in the ends and block it, but I wanted to get a picture of it finished since I hadn't reported any real progress in awhile. I did have quite a challenge at binding-off loosely enough to make it stretchy but not too loosely so that it won't stay on when worn. The headband is a little bit big anyway, although I did a swatch with camel, the buffalo seems to stretch much more and with giving a generous bit of yarn for the stranding, the headband seems to have grown. It's still so soft that I want to pet it, and I'm sure that it'll get a lot of use come winter! In fact, this pattern is so easy that I'm thinking about some Merino ones in various colors for gifts-maybe 2006 or 7.

Now to work on the mind-numbing garter stitch shawl. It bores me, but I need to work on it none the less. The amount of UFO's (unfinished objects) around here is staggering, and on top of it I have a full plate of paperwork to do today. I'm going to give myself rewards as I get the chores done...perhaps an hour of paperwork rewarded by making a bobbin of the sample wools. I'm actually up to 9 spun samples now, and every time I go into the basement I make myself card another one! Now I'm getting behind on combing and spinning. Oh, for 48 hour days and the need to sleep to be diminished!

Slow Progress

Progress rather than "finished product" seems more attainable as a goal, and in fact has been my only goal these past couple of days. After being fatigued from my "klutzy" episode on Thursday, yesterday went by in a blur. But over the last couple of days, I did manage to finish spinning and plying the white yak fiber for my exotic fiber project. That's shown on the bottom with the camel down that I had already spun. Now to work on the buffalo, and I did get some wonderful alpaca, and alpaca/angora so I'll choose which to knit in the project when everything is finished and in yarn form.

As for the fleece sample project, I'm working on it slowly but surely. Yesterday, my double Dutch Combs came, and I was able to begin the process of combing some of the fibers that are too long to card. I really enjoyed working with them, they aren't sharp but comb through the fibers so very nicely, just as nicely as the sharp Viking combs. Knowing that I'm often a klutz, I know I'm saving myself from disaster in the future by getting the Dutch ones. After hand carding the Wiltshire Horn fiber (yick), I finally got tired of the hand carding chore so I dug my way through my basement to rediscover my drum carder, managed even to plug it in, and carded around 5 or 6 samples. Boy was that easy and fast compared to hand carding!

Now understand that for me, cleaning the left over fibers from my drum carder is somewhere up there with having a root canal and driving on the Washington beltway at rush hour in terms of my likes and dislikes. The teacher of our fleece study class suggested that some wide hole nylon netting placed over the tines of the drum carder will make cleaning it a snap, just pull the netting off and all the leftover fibers just pull off with it. So off I trudged with my gimpy ankle (I know, I was supposed to stay off it, but fiber is important, you know) to the fabric store where I got a yard of said netting for $0.99. What a deal! Right?

Well, I cleaned my carder as thoroughly as I could, and after measuring and cutting, wapped it with the netting which is a beautiful bright blue. It seems that my trusty carder didn't really like being wrapped, in fact, it so hated to have the netting on it that it kind of ate the stuff, requiring me to pull small slivers of netting out of my carded fiber. Ok, maybe I need to refine my method, but the netting couldn't make it past the two small rollers without being torn apart. I can adjust the rollers to make them further from the large drum, but then the fibers don't get carded as nicely. I'm back to carding (and cleaning) the old fashioned way on the drum carder, sans netting.

There are the first 4 of my fiber study on the top picture, left to right, Navajo Churro (combed), Wiltshire Horn, Columbia, and Clun Forest. The CVM which was wonderful is drying in my kitchen.

Busy day :)

Last night my daughter and her friend came to visit with my "Granddog" Nutmeg. That's a picture of my daugher taken around the Holidays last yeat. We all had a slow and lazy (at least for them) day around the house. I got a ton of fibery things done from washing up the majority of the wool samples for my class (the middle picture is the samples drying on a screen that's balanced on my little used loom) , to spinning the second bobbin of brown shetland for my simple shawl that's in process.

The top picture shows the brown shetland drying next to my sample of Columbia yarn from the fleece study class. I have only a couple of samples to finish washing after my work today, but the big job is going to be to card them all and get them spun. I have begun to card another sample using my hand cards (I actually enjoy working on them with the hand cards because I really get to experience how the fleece is reacting and how soft or coarse it is). I did break down and order some combs as some of the samples are longwools that won't take to carding well. I have used combs before in classes I've taken so I'm looking forward to experiencing them too.

The biggest learning point that I've taken from the fleece study class is the knowledge that I really prefer to use processed fiber! It's so easy and I don't have to pick anything out of it as I spi, nor take the time to wash or card. When I started spinning, I did absolutely love working with fleece right off the hoof. Perhaps having probably 50 or more pounds of fleece still in my basement for me to eventually work on has colored my love of raw fleece. Now, I make no promises that I'll never purchase another raw fleece, there's an irrestible draw of touching, experiencing, and working with it, but for now I'm probably going to enjoy the processed fibers. Since I have such limited time to spin (and today was a fantastic day of zen spinning for me between doing everything else), I don't want to spend too much of my time washing and carding, I just want to sit down and spin. Somehow I just don't get the same zen feeling from washing!

Oh, BTW, I'm looking for some Romanov fleece just because I've never even seen any! I haven't found a source yet, so if any of you have any suggestions, please share! Thank you!

When you love what you do, you never have to go to work

After a rainy and icky day through Chicago yesterday, I got reassigned to have today off and fly tomorrow instead, such is the state of my unpredictable scheduling! That's ok though, I just unpacked a box full of beautiful Greensleeves spindles last night. They'll be requiring my attention today. I also got a shipment of Bosworths. I really want to sit down and spindle with each one of them, but they're not for me so I have to behave! I really do have such a passion for fiber and all things fibery that I love what I do every moment that I am working at it.

Come to think of it, I do enjoy my flying job, at least most of the time (lol) but my passion is fiber.

Then maybe I'll get a little bit of spinning done! I'll at least get a few other wool samples from my class washed and put out on the screen to dry. I hope my gentle readers have a wonderful and fibery day!

Fleece Survey & Other time management skills

Today is day 3 of 5 in the row of huge 14 hour days flying. I'm tired, I can only imagine how I'm going to feel Friday morning. Needless to say, nothing much is getting done on the spinning front. I've knit a few rows on my brown shetland shawl while sitting in the gaterooms waiting for planes but that's about it.

I did have the opportunity, thanks to a lovely fiber person, Jill, to take a class last Saturday. It was a wool and fleece survey class where we went to a wonderful Alpaca farm (A'paca Fun Farm) for a morning spent touching and learning about fleece. I met some wonderful fiber folks, got kissed on the cheek by an alpaca, and came home with 8 ounces of gorgeous alpaca rovings in a couple of colors that grabbed my eye, as well as 45 one ounce fleece samples from the class. I'm in the process of washing them one by one, and have even started to spin one, the Clun Forest. These are all different breeds, some rare and many I had never heard of, much less worked with in the past. We discussed each breed and fleece as we went through the class materials and touched the sample skeins that the teacher had brought. We received a notebook with pages to fill in information about each sample as we work with it. I can do this just a moment or two at a time, so I've been sneaking one into the wash water every time I go downstairs (like I'll do this morning before getting in the shower for work). I'm really enjoying this project, although I do have several bobbins that need their mates' spun so that I can play off them before they get too old to use! And I really want to get going with my exotic fiber headband. Perhaps this weekend will be one of spinning for me, I sure do hope so.

Home Again

Well, we returned home yesterday from the Jamboree to a bit cooler weather than we experienced in Virginia. It was a fantastic experience, and I don't know of anyone that isn't wanting to be at "The Hill" in 2010 for the next one. Here are a couple of pictures of our experiences.

That's me waiting to fill tanks at pool #1. Mark did a bunch of patch trading and came away smiling, and I managed to become the recipient of a few that I needed/wanted for my own collection.

I came home to a box of fabulously soft Bison down, but I have had to spend the day working through the mountain of paperwork that has grown on my desk the past two weeks. There's always the pile of things to organize and put away from an event like this one, and laundry to be done. But still, every moment was worth it! As soon as I get the housework done, and the fiber divided and packaged that came in the last two weeks, I'll be free to sit down and spin. It'll have to use it as a reward, but I have to fly every week day from now until the 15th of August, so we'll see what I can manage to get done.

Hello from the Jamboree

Hello from the Scout Jamboree. Or I should say, home for a few hours to take care of things with Kendig Cottage. The scuba program is officially open for business today, so we're going to be on the road by 0430 to get back in time. The boys arrived Sunday and yesterday and our program is completely ready to go. The 4 scuba pools have already seen about 1000 kids and adults for our program.

Nope, I haven't done much spinning, just a little bit of the Peruvian cotton. I haven't done much knitting either. It's been so very hot down there in Virginia, heat index yesterday was 115 and it's expected to be even hotter today and tomorrow. It's been too hot and we've been way to busy to be able to do anything. I'm "facilitating" or instructing in the pools pretty much full time, but with the schedule changing today for the full contingent of boys to come in, I should have some time, but I can't stand to touch the wool or cotton if it's this hot and humid.

Scuba staff made a grand entrance to the staff Arena show the other night in full pirate field uniform. DH and I got into the act too. We had pirate flags and all of us were saying "ARRRRRRGH" and it was quite fun. Well, off to finish packing orders and get back in the non-air conditioned car to drive down to Ft. AP Hill in Virginia.

Now, what did I forget?

This is my dh, shipping manager, and favorite teddybear in the world. So off we go (dh and yours truly) in the wee hours to the National Scout Jamboree to teach scuba diving to the kids that will be there. It's going to be fun, but I'll admit that I'm kind of disappointed because my buffalo fiber won't be going with me. Ruth Called me today in response to my "where, oh where can it be?" email to say that she would send me some extra due to the mix up. What a nice lady, and although I did pay for 2nd day air back on Thursday, she was really attentive to my angst, and I do recommend her for Buffalo rovings (sight unseen, you know). If you're off a mind, I've added her link. Hopefully I'll have something to show from my wheel in soft buffalo by mid-August, she's going to hold the rovings until I get home. (I will, however, be home at least every several days to do shipping and deal with arrivals, so if you're thinking of ordering something from the store, it will be shipped in a timely manner, at least within a few days of the order. And yes, there will be a new sale item for August. I am still deciding on what it'll be. )

So what's going with me to spin? White yak, Diablo Merino Mohair blend, Red Colonial Multi-colored roving, and some 80/20 Merino Silk. Of course, I might change my mind on what I'm going to spin when I see what conditions are going to be while I'm spinning and how much time I have. I doubt that I'll touch everything, but I'm just not sure what I'm going to want to work on. I also brought some more brown shetland roving in case the shawl gets knitted faster than I think it will. It's very heavy and dense, just a simple garter stitch but perfect for my living history outfits. I doubt I'll get too much knitting done while Mark drives, the a/c is broken in the car. I am praying to the humidity powers that be to go gently upon Maryland and Virginia. We just had a bunch of work done on the camper, so timing wasn't good for fixing the air.

And yes, I've been effectively sucked into the vortex of exotic fibers. I can't wait to finish and ply the yak, the buffalo is going to drive me crazy waiting for it, and I really want to start working on knitting with the camel I've already made and plied. Thank you Liz and Lady Vee! :)

First yarn for a new project

I spent the evening making yarn from some baby camel from the Kendig Cottage store. It is so very soft, I'd not spun it before. The yarn just spun itself! I plied it this morning while the lightening and thunder played in the background, and it came out really nice. It kind of reminds me of being briefly in "Camel land". That's our crew at the Airport in Kuwait after shopping in duty free. I hoped to find some camel items there to bring back, but most of them were made in the states or the UK so I got a small camel hair keychain for my DD and a camel statue for my DS and was quickly on my way back to the airplane and then bound for home.

Now, what to spin next. I'm thinking in terms of my headband project, the camel will go into it, as well as the Buffalo that I'm eagerly awaiting, but I need a third yarn and I haven't quite decided yet...yak probably, but which color?

Camel yarn about 12/13 wpi// 

Spinning Lace weight

Between the last couple of days of spinning, at Lady Vee's house and at the museum, I've managed to finish up a bunch of brown shetland for a future shawl (I have to finish the one that's on that set of needles first, and I'm not quite sure where I put it!), and worked on the 100% silk a little bit with Liz's help...plan to ply that with Alpaca. What you see here is green Merino and Silk on the left and "Diablo" Merino and Mohair on the right. The Diablo looked kind of muddy to me when spun up about sport weight, but I've been working on spinning it up for a lace weight project and I'll tell you that I really think it's coming out beautifully, all blue and mauve and pastel. To me at this weight it doesn't look muddy at all. I went to Kinkos last night and copied the charts (so I can carry them around without ruining my book) for the First Lace Shawl and the Faux Russian shawl from "A Gathering of Lace" with the thought that the Diablo would want to become one of those. I'm doing shawls because I can wear them with period dress for the museum and just because I like them.

Ok. Time to admit to you that I'm not a great knitter. In fact, I'm less of a knitter even than that. The leaf shawl has a huge glaring error in it that I didn't find until a few rows later, and by then it was too far for me to take it out (I would never have gone back to it). I definitely have ADHD with many projects going at once and a lack of patience to rip out anything that is wrong. The best I can hope for is to do something simple and get it right. Doing another lace shawl scares me to death. Doing an entire sweater seems rather unattainable unless it's so very simple that even I can do it, and I have nothing else on any needles going at the same time. I try to finish one project and then start another but that never seems to work out.

AND, I'll also admit that, in Liz's words: "I've been sucked into the Buffalo vortex" by her and Vee. Yup. I ordered 2 ounces of Buffy fur last night. It's been suggested to me that I do an andean style headband from Spin-off online with that lovely fiber, and I've printed the pattern and am ready to do battle with the charted design. Now, what to add to the buffy (mind you, I haven't even received it, much less spun, and plied it yet) for the lighter yarn. There's white yak, grey yak, light brown baby camel down, alpaca, hmmmmm....the possibilities are endless. I'll have to see what's in the budget after the Buffy is spun.

The last few days' output 

What a Fantastic Day!

Yesterday was fantastic! I had the absolute pleasure to be invited to the lovely home of Lady Vee (with whom I have been emailing and talking fiber for awhile now) and her beautiful and fantastic spinning E2 for a day of spinning, great company, laughs and fiber! I also had the pleasure of meeing Vee's friend Liz (and her Majacraft that spins like a dream) who is a connsumate fiber addict like myself and Vee, as well as Brenda who is a new and learning spinner and knitter, and Linda who is a knitter, and a fairly new but accomplished spindler and now new spinner. Linda and Brenda were introduced to all of the wheels in attendance (I brought my world worn Ashford Traveler as well as my Beloved Louet S75) and we all had the opportunity to spin on eachother's wheels. Talk about getting to "pet" some yummy fiber! Vee and Liz had some buffalo that was absolutely TDF! (To die for!) and there were many kinds of fleece and varieties of roving as well to share and experience. I was able to get some green Merino / Silk spun while I was there (as well as working on my 2 ounces of pure silk that I started last October-it's sticky and I don't enjoy spinning it). I hope that the group will next come up here to the north country for spinning, chatting, and perhaps "Sex" which is a Stash Enhancement eXcursion...probably to the Mannings.

Some recent dyepot output 

Volunteering and Spinning

I've always done some volunteer work, mostly with Scouts or the kids' schools, but thank you to Pat Lawrence, I've begun to volunteer at the Carroll County Farm Museum as a "spinster" in their living history area. I really enjoy it, I've been introducing lots of kids to spinning and fiber while actually getting a little bit of my own spinning done. I really enjoy touching the kids with this link to the poast and interesting them in fiber arts. The spinning Room is right next to the weaving room, and the children that attend the farm's summer camp program get to learn to weave a mug rug on looms, and spin a little bit on a hand spindle that they made in the camp. They also have tinsmithing, quilting, caning, blacksmithing (which hubby Mark is getting into), hearth cooking, and a wonderful house full of antiques and history to visit. This is the middle of a very historic area just south of Gettysburg. The Farm Museum has also begun a fiber guild which I'm very excited about. I would like to encourage everyone to find even a few moments per month to give in volunteer work of any kind. It's rewarding for you and good for the organization for which you work. DH and I are also on staff for the National Scout Jamboree starting next week touching the lives of kids (boys AND girls) with Scuba and Snorkeling.

In period dress on the way to the Museum