The Plague And A Fiber Event

Our house has been hit by some horrible plague! This likely is influenza and last week we began falling one by one. Only Hubby escaped with minor damages. Super high fevers, chills, aching, cough/allergy type symptoms, no appetite whatsoever and everything just hurts. Saturday it hurt to open my eye lids. Not kidding! I can't remember a virus that was so bad. The disappointing thing is that we won't be better in time for our homeschool Valentine's Day party. This makes me sad because the kids are making Valentine's and taking them to the memory care respite clients at our church. I think it is such a neat idea and it is good for young children to interact with the elderly. It was a really important part of my growing up and something my children have not experienced. Hopefully there will be some more opportunities as we have several home school families in our church, so we will probably have future events. For now it's disappointing! :o(

Yesterday I was bad. I was so disappointed Saturday that I could not go to the annual spinning and weaving guild show. I had really been looking forward to it. Have I mentioned that I am stubborn? Yesterday I medicated myself and went. I felt almost human and I made as little contact with other humans as possible, not wanting to spread the plague. Honestly, the fresh air felt really great. It was a short trip and I paid for it later, but it was nice to get to see a few things. In case you are wondering, this is a very small show and was not very busy on the second day, otherwise I would not have gone. Disappointing for me, but good for the pocket book was that most of the rovings and yarns that were really awesome were gone. But I did buy two handwoven dish towels that I will have to photograph later. They will be for my bread baking (when I cover the dough to rise). Below are pictures of what else I saw:

Sacramento is supposedly the Camellia Capitol of the World. There certainly are a lot here and they are very pretty. These are just a few different ones. You can see the weather was nice - close to 70*!

This lovely lady was a greeter. I don't have permission to show her identity, so that is why she is missing a head. Look at her lovely modular knit vest! She was making sleeves for another sweater as she greeted visitors.

Here is what the sweater looks like.

I loved the tulips and pansies together. There didn't seem to be as much work displayed this year but what was there was really nice.

I especially liked the shawl on the right. Hand spun and hand woven.

Navajo weaving and another shawl.

This was my favorite! Isn't this gorgeous?! The front was a woven piece and knitting was sewn to the side and a ribbing was picked up and knit.

This is a close up for Kimberly because she sews and doesn't interesting things with all her weaving. The purple heather handspun was so gorgeous too. I would have loved a whole sweater just from that!

There is a theme each year and this year it was something like beauty from nature. This is from a King Palm and the fronds are woven back onto itself. It reminded me of seaweed I have found dried on the beach.

There was a lot of basket weaving this time of various kinds.

I saw a couple people spinning on Lendrums (which I have) this time. They seem to be getting more popular. The gal was spinning while I took this picture. These yarns coordinate with another she was spinning and she said they will probably go into a woven blanket.

These are two blankets the same spinner has woven. Honestly, I think it takes as much talent for someone to design beautiful with neutrals as it does colors. I think she has a great sense of balance in her designs.

This was not labeled as such but I believe this is from the Dale Ingeborg pattern or a modifcation of it. It is all from hand spun Corriedale, Romney and Merino. I love this design and have thought about altering it for myself some day.

This sweater was so beautiful. Simple, yet elegant. I love how the knitter/designer took the lace panels and staggered the height. It really adds to the overall design. The same person spun, designed and knit this garment.

This is made from hand spun Shetland yarn.

And there were even a few pieces of lace knitting there.

This interesting sweater was knit by the same lady whose face was cut off in the above picture.

Part of the small sales area.

Especially after so much rain lately, I enjoyed seeing the sunlight come through on these yarns.

There were many handwovens to purchase if you had the $$$. This was a table runner and napkins.

But if I were a weaver, I would LOVE to learn how to do Tartans.

Another one of those shawls. It is almost like a modified ruana. They were labeled as V Shawls.

And I leave you with these beautiful woven palm stars. Now it's back to fighting off the plague! Please pray we will all improve quickly. Thank you.

El-Jo's Heart

Cary is such a sneaky little sheep! :-) I played with the color balance to try and get this right, but it didn't work well. You can see it more accurately at the Serenity Farms site.

This beautiful fiber came in a box along with a cute sock pattern she designed with coffee cups on it. I should have taken a picture of it too, sorry! This was all a shock when it arrived. What a nice surprise.

This lovely creation is called El-Jo's heart after her inlaws. It is a mix of Corriedale/CVM from Cary's ewe Bunny and Pygora from my friend Tina's Take Heart Farm, as well as silk from my other Christian Artisan friend, Eve at Perennial Grace. I'm not sure what I am going to make with this gift but I am thinking of spindle spinning it to make something lacy!

Life it seems has been up and down and going in fits and spurts the last several months. There has been a low level of underlying stress - nothing BIG - just lots of little things adding up. I have not been knitting other than a few dishclothes. It's not likely to lighten up as we have a lot going on this spring with Hubby doing some extra training for a possible second job and home improvement projects. But today we received our couch and love seat. This is the first new piece of furniture (other than mattresses and the kind of things you put together from a box) we have purchased since we got married. We've been without a couch for so long and the only time I get to sit next to my Hubby is in the pew at church! LOL I miss him! So now, we got the couch in place after many discussions and much moving and purging of other items as well as a sad goodbye to my old recliner - the one I nursed all my babies in and my girls learned to walk with it, by holding the handle and walking in circles - but our living room is looking more like a home. Soon I will be taking photos of finished objects on the new couch instead of the old blue chair! And I am in the process of "nesting" and building a new knitting spot and hoping to start again. I miss it!

Some Actual Fiber Arts Content

Between my ongoing migraine, the holidays and attempts at organizing, I have not had as much time for knitting as I like. I have been making a few dishcloths because I don't have to concentrate hard on those and I have been spindling. That gives my hands something to do while watching we watch movies, that does not tax my headache. I have the hardest time sitting still doing "nothing".

Several years ago, Melissa at Ram In The Thicket recommended Winderwood Farm eBay store. He doesn't have as much hand dyed as he used to but I can attest that the quality is really something. This is Blue Faced Leicester wool in blues, greens and purple. The photo has a little too much yellow-green in it, but I thought you would get the idea without an hour of Photoshop to correct it! :o) I didn't wind it on my WPI tool to see what thickness it is but it is about fingering, maybe slighlty thicker, but less than sport. BFL is very nice to spin and is soft. This skein is about 130 yards and I have at least that much more to spin. I'm thinking about fingerless mits. I was really pleased with my results. Even though there are some overtwist areas, it is getting more like what I want to see AND I understand more what I am doing right and wrong. I think that is half the battle. It was spun and then Navajo plied on my Cascade Pilchuck spindle which I love. I think I'm going to ask for another Cascade spindle for my birthday. It can't hurt! :o)

Since we had the big windstorm and three more rainstorms following it, we have been snuggling down in the evening to watch our choices from Netflix. I enjoyed Pride and Prejudice by myself - not much to Hubby's liking! :o) I also enjoyed Babette's Feast, which I watched first in Danish with English subtitles and then with English. I was surprised both by how much Danish I could understand (it, like English, Dutch, Swedish and Norwegian are Germanic languages and I studied German in hs and college) and how different the subtitles and the dubbing were. Babette's Feast is the kind of movie that you have to think about for awhile; the kind where on the first run you aren't sure if you like or dislike it. One could not help but notice the knitting though. There were beautiful shawls, some knit and some crocheted, including one that looked Faroese in construction. And when the sisters were not serving others they were busy knitting socks on dpn's!

Sadly, we watched our last Monarch of the Glen last night, though I must say the sweater viewing was sparse after Duncan and Archie left the area. Towards the end the story lines were a little more scattered and a little less developed without much continuity. Still the scenery was incredible and I think they left off right when they could have gotten much better story lines going. Most of all I will miss the Highland scenery. Maybe this year I need to get busy scanning my slides of Scotland! (More hours in my day!)

Any more suggestions for viewing Scotland that I could find on Netflix? Or sweater/knitting rich films? I'm open for suggestions.

Secret Sister Surprise

I am late in getting this posted. A couple days before Thanksgiving, this arrived in the mail. Isn't it pretty? My Secret Sister on the Christian Artisans list spun it. She also made me some pretty pink and turquoise stitch markers. I have so many projects with stitch markers going on that it was the perfect timing. I really needed some more. I'm not sure what I am going to knit with this, but it is wool and mohair and all the colors I like.

I do still knit. Sometimes. Between being sick, doing homeschool and working on adjusting Hubby's thyroid meds and his work stresses, this fall just has not been a great knitting time for me. I still have a couple shawls to block, including two Swallowtail Shawls, one of which, I hope to wear Saturday to women's brunch with Sonia and Pam, my scrapbooking friends.

Finished Chevron Bag and a Fiber Gift

While poking around on Ravelry, I found this pattern for a Chevron Bag . I'm a sucker for color striping and it intrigued. I have never knit with Noro Kureyon because it feels like scratchy straw and cheap wool! There are bits of vegetable matter in it...I would not spin something with that much VM in it, so why knit it! Well, this project drew me in. The above picture is the "before". After that it went into the washer for some felting!

This is the "after' picture. Wow, what a transformation! This is so SOFT! It's like a little baby lamb and has a very fuzzy halo to it. The disappointing part is that it is so wide at the top that it could not be used as a purse unless it was lined with a zipper or something to keep things from falling out. It will however, work as a project bag, which is what I had in mind for the person I made this for. The colorway was Kureyon #150, which has greens, lavender, brown and turquoise.

And, last week, a package of "animals" arrived in the mail for me! My stepdad Jack sent me this...the first picture is llama. My Mom described it as "It needs cleaning, but I checked it and approved!" LOL My Mom is pretty picky about cleanliness, so this seal of approval from her assured me that I wasn't getting all the remains of someone's dirty stall! It is kind of "Palomino" colored and then to the right is a nice hunk of white that is creamy and soft. Can anyone tell me how to wash llama and prepare it to spin? I don't have a drum carder, I do have hand cards and a flicker, which should be doable for this small amount. How do I de-hair this?

And this is not a Llasa Apso sleeping on the dining room table, this is Angora rabbit clippings. It is in multiple shades of gray and very lovely. It does also have someblack hairs mixed in this. How do I get the hairs out? How do I wash and prepare this? Since I tend to react to Angora in sweaters I have never spun it. I understand it takes some skill due to the short staple length and it's slick. I am thinking that I may need to find some lovely gray wool and blend this with it. That might be a job for a drum carder?? Any help would be appreciated.

Spindling Splendour!

Mr. Hisey, Grandma Hopkins, Theresa and Cousin Wendy at the trail head to Mt. Pilchuck, ca 1980. Look at my "big hair"! I didn't have to try to have big hair in the 80s, God just gave it to me. I was forever trying to tame it, as in this picture where it is pretty brushed down so that my hair would feather! LOL I see I'm also wearing my snazzy Appaloosa jeans. (When I was this size, my perception of myself was that I weighed 300#! It makes me a little sad to see the difference between my perception of myself and my actual body.) You'll see the connection to the picture in a minute!
Let me introduce you to my new spindle, a Mt. Pilchuck spindle from Cascade Spindle Company in Kent, Washington.
Here is a closeup showing what I have spun and some of the beautiful fiber it came wrapped in courtesy of Kendig Cottage's eBay store. The fiber is very luscious and reminds me a lot of Cary's Comfort Wool. It is very sproingy and is in a color I would not naturally be drawn to, but is so lovely in all it's naturalness. Cary, does Corriedale come in this color?
This is what Cascade has to say about their spindle: This is the spindle you've been awaiting to spin designer yarns and also the ultimate plying spindle. Engineered for an easily-controlled, fast, long and consistent spin. Maple, rim-weighted, long shaft, weight under 1-7/8 oz.

I knew I wanted a Cascade spindle. Not only are they beautiful, but they come from my homestate where I grew up at the base of the Cascade Mountains. I have spent many happy hours there...when I wasn't playing at the ocean! But I couldn't choose which one. I narrowed it down to the Pilchuck and the Mt. St. Helen's. I have a feeling that Mt. St. Helen's and the "wristaff" are going to sneak their way into my collection in the future! :o)

I settled on the Pilchuck because I already have a great Bosworth Purpleheart Maxi spindle and I have been slowly spinning some of Cary's wool from her sheep Valerie to make Evelyn Clark's Sheep Shawl. When I used that spindle to ply, I was very frustrated, though some of that may have been my inexperience! The Pilchuck was advertised as being good for plying. A second factor was that, as you can see in the above picture, I climbed Mt. Pilchuck.

I am the third generation in my family to grow up with Mt. Pilchuck in the panoramic vista of my neighborhood. It is considered the easiest and most accessible peak in the Cascade range, with a six mile trail to the top where there is a fire lookout. On a clear day you can see for miles across the Cascades and over the Sound to the Olympic Mountains. I have photos of my grandparents as teens, at the lookout with their families in the early 1920s. None of them were scanned otherwise I would show you. Unfortunately all the pics I took on this hike were from an old 126 film camera and are not very sharp. Mr. and Mrs. Hisey, lifelong neighbors of my Grandma Hopkins in Lake Stevens, WA, took us there. Grandma must have been 74 years young at the time.

Back to spindling... I love it already! :o) It practically spins itself! I would highly recommend it to anyone. I have to admit that I never understood before why people "collected" spindles, though many are beautiful works of art! My favorite are the wood ones because no artist is greater than the Creator! I am not monogamous in my fibery projects. That actually helps me be more productive because then I don't get too bored on any one project. I do like to keep them under control however. But because of this, I think it is fun to have a few different spindles so that I can work on different projects. I think I am beginning a spindle collection too! LOL I will continue to spin Valerie the Corriedale sheep on my Bosworth and will probably try something colorful and fun on my Pilchuck.

Another note on spindling. I started with an inexpensive spindle, basically a stick with an unfinished wood whorl, a gift from an SP exchange. It was a bottom whorl and having never spindle spun before, I knew no different. Then when I tried the Bosworth, a fine piece of workmanship, a gift from Pamela in England, I realized that a "Cadillac" really does drive better! I am finding that my drafting skills have improved greatly since learning how to use the spindle and that I am more consistent on the spindle than on my spinning wheel. I never could walk and chew gum at the same time! :o)

If any of you are spindlers and have any pointers to add, I'm all ears (or eyes as the case may be!).

Spinning Rainbows

One day while I was reading one of my favorite bloggers, The Scottish Lamb, I found out about this wonderful yarn swift from The Knit Store on eBay. Scottish Lamb has a better picture in her September 17th post. It is a very simple design and concept, but very efficient and practical. I have gotten tired of my laceweight yarns getting stuck in my umbrella swift. This one is the large size. I could have made one and have seen plans in various places but this was really not much more than what it would have cost for me to make one. It comes apart so is fairly compact, though long. I think I am going to sew up a bag to store it in, just to keep the wood from getting too banged and dent.
I had several things to wind and the kids were fascinated. The girls in particular are always interested in my fibery adventures and D asked me when we could start practicing his knitting again. We started doing that for a homeschool project and never got back to it. This year it might be easier as he is a little more coordinated.
A and J being silly and watching. I couldn't get very good pics and it was frustrating! J kept waving her hands fast in the air like flapping little bird wings while I would the yarn.

This is some Blue Faced Leicester from a hand dyed roving from Winderwood Farm on eBay. I noticed they don't have any of their hand dyed fibers on there site right now...I hope that is just a temporary thing. Their colors and fibers are really gorgeous. This happened to be a rainbow roving but there are others in subtle and varied hues that could make a color fanatic drool! :o)
J, D, and A all took turns winding the yarn into balls and they took their jobs very seriously. They look like they are being punished in the pictures! They weren't! Just mesmerized!
J winding purple "'cause purple is mommy's favorite color and my favorite color, 'cause we like purple."
D winds while J studies the movement. I couldn't believe how quiet they got while doing this. I think I may re-skein my yarns on the niddy noddy so when it gets too noisy around here I will just bring out the skein winder and have them take turns winding balls! LOL
A, waiting patiently for her turn. That's her little people bus and her "Maggie" in her lap.

I know I said this in a couple posts ago, but I know I owe a few of you emails. I am just behind from three weeks of crud in our household and someone turns 6 tomorrow, so that is keeping me busy! Six years ago today I was in pain and misery, thinking that boy was never going to enter the world! Six years ago tomorrow I was still in pain and misery but even the grog of an urgent C-section couldn't steal my joy at seeing my little man with my Daddy's cleft chin and my Grandpa's pouty expression on his face! Today he is much taller than a six year old should be and looks half like my Dad and half like hubby! Not a bad combo.

Spinning Away at This and That

Well, inbetween everything else that has been going on, I have been doing some more spindling. This is some more of Cary's wool from a ewe named Valerie. I wish I had a lovely yard to take pictures in. I don't so I try to take them on a neutral background, but it's hard to get it just right. I am going to have to do some experimenting with that. At any rate, the yarn is a lace weight currently so I am suspecting a fingering weight when plied. I am considering doing all spindle spinning for the Sheep Shawl from Fiber Trends. We'll see how I do with it. I might get sick of spindle spinning by the time I get the needed yardage!

And I am very excited to have finished a really small project which is long over due and I cannot blog about until the recipient receives it!

Currently we are waiting to hear that Mom and Jack got a rental van. The company allowed the van they had reserved to stay with the people who had rented it during the week. Now they are ready to pack and get in the car tonight to arrive here tomorrow afternoon...and there is no van to pack! :o( Hopefully we will get good news soon because we are all excited to see Grandma and Grandpa tomorrow! (They could come without a van but they are bringing some special surprises with them, that would be difficult to bring in a car.)

In other fibery news, it was fun to find out today that the theme for the MS3 is Swan Lake! Now that I have seen the schematic for finishing it, I have some decisions to make. I'm not sure how practical the shape will be for the person I am making it for, however, I have never grafted lace and I loathe doing Kitchener stitch even on socks! So, I need to think on this a little bit and will probably put it aside until after our family leaves.

At least the weather is cooperating and it should cool down to 90* over the next few days. That is a real treat! :o)

114 Yards of Lime-Aid Wool!

Today I finished plying the green wool which is not so flourescent as it seems here.
In spite of its rugged and scraggly appearance while plying, it actually is fairly well balanced. Just the hint of a turn on the right side here. I had a few breaks where it was not spun enough, but overall it went well.
Here is the finished skein with the spindle. It is 114 yards of *mostly* sport weight yarn. I am not sure yet what will become of it.
A final view. You can see it's not perfect, but I am proud of it, because this is my first spindle spun yarn and I taught myself how to do it mostly from reading a book! I will have to venture into some more spindle spinning soon. For now, my shoulders are a little stiff! LOL