So many hobbies!

Weekend projects

The babies are ready for transplanting into larger pots.  Some of the peppers were flopped over so they've already gotten new "pots."  I couldn't find any 6" plastic pots so I had to improvise.  So far I've used a sour cream container, 2 containers that once held cored pineapple, a clay pot and over the weekend, I'll use styrofoam cups that were destined for the recycler.  Here in Michigan, our last night of frost is supposed to be between May 15th and 30th.  I need to get these guys repotted so I can start to harden them off outside during the day.

I've been knitting slowly but steadily on the second fingerless mitt.  I've only got a couple of rounds of increases to go on the thumb gussett which means the majority of the mitt is done.  I'd like to have it finished by the end of the weekend but I've got three spindle boxes to sew for a couple of orders and knitting time may be at a minimum.  I've had several people request either a handle or a shoulder strap on one end of the box.  Since this seems to be a popular request, part of the weekend will be spent trying to figure out how to do it.  I'm already sewing four layers of fabric together on the ends and by adding a strap, I'll be adding another layer or two and that's where it gets tricky.  Sewing the ends in is already a tight stitch and adding more will only make it harder to get a neat seam.  I have a couple of ideas I'll be exploring.

Besides sewing and repotting, Spinner's Flock meets this Saturday, I have plans to see Speed Racer Saturday afternoon and I'm meeting a friend for dinner Friday night.  Oh, and I have to go shopping for new work pants.  The darn things were plenty long enough when I bought them but since I only wear cotton pants, with repeated washings the legs have gotten shorter.  I'm now wearing floods and I look ridiculous.  All in all, it's looking like another busy weekend.  What do you have planned for the weekend?

Goats, 'pacas and some fleece

I love wool but I think I might love goats more than sheep.  They have great personalities and the babies are very charming.  I think I've said this before, but if I ever get any fiber critters, it'll be pygora goats.  If you produce your own wool, you're limited to the breed(s) you have.  I like more variety than that.  Pygora can be spun alone or blended with just about any wool you want.  Plus, pygora fiber stays wonderfully soft throughout the life of the goat, unlike angoras whose fiber often is only soft up to the 3rd clip and gets coarser as they age.

I'm also rather fond of alpacas.  Don't these guys look like teddy bears?  They're so sweet.  Did you know they hum?  They hum when they're content, they hum when they're upset.  They hum.  And they're fiber is lovely and very warm.  They are, however, rather pricey so I'll be admiring them from afar.

Some of the Border Leicester fleece I bought Saturday and washed yesterday.  (The photo is crap.  I took it under the overhead light in my bedroom so it yellowed out the wool.  It's really gray.)  Ah, the crimp.  I'll have to cut off the brown tips to keep the gray color.  It'll be pretty spun up.   

More of the fiber competition

Besides handspun, there were competitions for garments, weaving, sculptural pieces and photography.  I took photos of some of my favorite pieces:

This one was my favorite.  It's a dinosaur (an Iquanadon?) head needle felted onto/around a mitten made specifically for that purpose.  It's a beautiful piece. 

This bear was quite the charmer, eating his salmon.  I don't think he placed but I thought he was quite wonderful.  I think it's the eyes I like the best.

Mr. Frog was great, too.  He took Best in Show.

The Maryland show was fun but it was HOT and it was crowded, at least on Saturday.  I would have liked it to be longer than just two days.  You need a day or two for shopping and another day or two to see everything else that's going on.  There were the working sheep dog demos and the Sheep to Shawl contest, both of which I completely missed.  We saw the Parade of Breeds.  My pictures are not very good because the sheep were in motion so I don't think I'll post any of those.

I bought myself a lovely gray/black Border Leicester fleece (which is much stinkier than the Cormo I bought last year).  After Zeilinger's ruined the Cormo/Border Leicester fleece I had them process last year, I will be doing it all with this fleece.  Later this summer, I'll be getting a drum carder and I'll turn the cleaned wool into batts for spinning.  Aside from being rather fragrant, it's a very clean fleece.  What vegetable matter I've seen is large and very easily removed.  I'd say it was from a coated sheep except the tips are bleached brown.  It's definitely been skirted for spinning, too.  All the nasty, dirty, poopy wool has been removed.

I really didn't buy that much besides the fleece.  I bought a couple of books (Cat Bordhi's New Pathways for Sock Knitters and a book on planting a dyeing garden), a couple of T-shirts, some angora, a couple of bottles of wool scour to clean the fleece and a single skein of Socks that Rock sock yarn.  I'd heard good things about the yarn and decided to try a skein.  I was thinking of buying a Golding spindle but decided that the three spindles I have, in various weights, are enough for any spindle spinning I might do.  There wasn't anything else that called out to me.  Well, nothing I could afford or carry back on the plane.  I chatted with Otto Strauch about his Petite drum carder and learned how to clean it, how to use it and what fibers it will card (nearly everything, the exception being cotton with extremely short staples don't do well - long-stapled Pima cotton does fine).

Maryland Sheep & Wool - Part 1

Sorry, tonight I'm going to brag... a little.  I'll do the rest of the Festival tomorrow.  I'm too pooped to be witty so tonight's post will be picture heavy and light on text.   Anyway, I entered five skeins of yarn in the contest and I'm pretty pleased with how I did:

I thought the Cormo skein would do the worst since it was so uneven but instead, the skein I thought was the best, did the worst.  Go figure.

Singles to 2-ply

This has become this:

I wish you could all squeeze this yarn.  It is so soft and so amazingly squishy.  It's just amazing.  My singles weren't very even and the final yarn really shows it but I'm entering it anyway because I want as many people as possible to squeeze it.  Ooo la la!  I need some expert advice on spinning even singles from carded and flicked wool.  Toward the end I switched from hand carding to flicking and spinning from the lock.  I got a little better but not a lot.  There's something I'm not getting... or I just need loads more practice.  I'd like someone with experience to watch me and give me pointers.

I'm bringing my camera so I'll have lots of pictures to post when I get back.  Have a great weekend! 

Ready to transplant

My babies are growing up.  The six on the left are peppers and in front and to the right are the tomatoes.  I think the peppers are ready to move to larger pots but my container gardening book says the tomatoes should have three sets of leaves before transplanting.  Those little peat pots look awfully small for the size of the seedlings.  I doubt I'm going to have time to do any transplanting before I leave to Maryland so I hope they'll be okay until I get back Sunday afternoon.

I finished spinning 3 ounces of Cormo tonight... and then running the singles back through the wheel to add more twist.  I was using too small a ratio and they needed more twist.  Tomorrow is knit night so all I'll have time to do is to wind the singles into a centerpull ball for plying Thursday after work.  That's cutting it close since I leave at 7:00am Friday for the airport.  I can't remember:  did I mention the Cormo skein is going into the skein contest, too.  The Merino/mohair wasn't plying even enough so that one stays home.  Now that I'm thinking of all the work I still have to do, I don't think I'll be spending more than an hour or so knitting tomorrow.

I ordered a duffle bag online to bring home the fleece, or two, that I'll be buying this weekend.  I didn't realize just how BIG 20"x20"x40" inches was until I opened the darn thing up.  It's HUGE!  I could move a body in that thing!  I could send home 4 entire fleeces in it!  Needless to say, I'm sending it back and going to Target or KMart to find one in a more managable size.  I'm telling you, guys, it's absolutely enormous!  I had to call my sister and tell her what I'd done so she could laugh at me.  Hey, who couldn't use a good laugh?

Let the sun shine in!

This morning Seli very happily celebrated the return of the sun to the couch.  She slowly moves down the couch following the sun and when I pet her, she squeaks.  It's probably just me but I find her irresistibly cute.

This is carded Cormo waiting to be spun.  Turns out I've been carding correctly all along except that I was loading too much on the cards.  I probably still am.  The static is still horrible and that makes carding challenging.  I'm not making rolags because I'm terrible at spinning long draw.  All I do is peel the wool off the card and starting at one end, spin semi-worsted singles.  It seems to be working.

Saturday I was invited to a local spin-in.  I found myself spinning with some of the founding members of the Spinners Flock.  Of course I forgot my camera.  A couple of the ladies were totally out of control and they had us all cracking up.  I'm looking forward to the next spin-in at the end of next month.  One of the ladies, Barb, ordered one of my spindle boxes for holding her sock-knitting.  Which reminds me, one of the things I need to do next week is to finalize the measurements for the larger spindle box and make up paper patterns for each of the pieces.  It's a short week at work and Maryland for the weekend!

A lesson in hand carding

These are my wonderful Schacht hand cards.  I'm not very good with them so my friend Eric (from spin night) offered to give me a lesson tomorrow after work.  Thanks, Eric!  (Hey, Eric, do you want to have dinner afterward at Shalimar?  Mmm, Indian food!)  I have a large plastic tub full of Cormo and since I don't spin a very even singles when I spin from the lock, I thought I'd try another method.  I've played with them a bit the last couple of days and the static is terrible.  It's possible I stink so badly with them because of the static.  The fiber flips around and clings to the backs of the cards and poofs all over the place on the front.  I've tried wiping the cards with a dryer sheet (a hint I got from a back issue of Spin-Off) but it didn't make a difference, although that may be because the dryer sheets are 6 years old.  (I don't use dryer sheets or fabric softener because I'm allergic to the perfumes and unpronouncable things they add to them... I should probably throw the darn things out, huh?)  Hopefully, it'll be a bit more humid tomorrow when I get my carding lesson.

Aside from the carding lesson, I don't really have any plans for the weekend, aside from finishing up a spindle box I'm making to trade for another Butterfly Girl spindle and some of her lovely batts, and playing with my hand cards, of course.  What fun things do you have planned for this weekend?

Oh, I almost forgot, I found out from Elizabeth today that she's going to SOAR, too.  Elizabeth and I have been commenting on each other blogs for a while now and I finally get to meet her.  I'm totally psyched about this.  I've made friends because of my blog but they all live too far away for us to actually meet.  Elizabeth will be the first of my blog-friends that I actually get to have a face-to-face conversation with.  If I wasn't thrilled about SOAR before, I certainly am now!

I'm in!

I found out today that my SOAR application made it and I've been accepted!  Yippee!  I'm signed up for the three-day workshop with Deb Menz called Creatively Carding with Color.  I've got her book and I'm pretty darned excited to be taking such an intensive class with her.  Now I have to decide if I'm going to have a roommate or a single.  On the one hand, SOAR is very intensive and I'll be with people from breakfast to bed.  I am absolutely an introvert and after such a day, I'm going to need time alone to recharge.  On the other hand, if I have a single, I'll miss a great opportunity to meet someone new. 

Green for Earth Day

Did you know that cotton grows in natural green and brown colors?  Believe it or not, the roving on the right is the natural color of the cotton (I know it doesn't look green... it is).  This was yet another cool thing I learned because I took up spinning.  I'd always thought that cotton only came in off-white.  Another cool think about the natural colors:  when you boil the cotton, the color gets darker and deeper.  God, I love spinning!

The fiber on the left is 50/50 cotton/wool called... wait for it... Golden Fleece!  (Spinning and Greek mythology... two of my faves!)  Okay, so now that I have this lovely cotton, I have to figure out how to spin it.  Cotton has a reputation for being difficult to spin.  The staple length is about half an inch which is MUCH shorter than wool.  I'm trying to talk myself out of taking up weaving.  So far I'm succeeding... mostly because I can't afford to buy a rigid heddle loom right now.  But if I fail, some cotton yarn would be nice to weave with.