So many hobbies!

Sometimes I'm slow

I'm sure I'm almost the last person to figure out just how warm fingering-weight wool socks are.  I know.  I know.  Duh.  I mean, I've always known wool was nice and warm.  That's a given.  But I hadn't really gotten just how warm my feet would be until I wore a pair of wool socks.  They're not any thicker than my regular, store-bought cotton socks but my feet were toasty warm the entire time I was wearing them, even when the socks got damp from my feet sweating.  I now only want to wear hand-knit wool socks and I could just scream because I only have the one pair that I can wear in my tennis shoes.  I'm a terribly slow knitter when it comes to fingering-weight yarn and I have Christmas presents to knit and spindle boxes to make for a sale coming up.  I won't be able to start a pair until after Christmas and even then, it'll take me months to knit them.  I'm going to ask my friend Beth from Knit Night to teach me to knit two socks at once using the Magic Loop.  I really love knitting with two circs but I have horrible Second Sock Syndrome and I figure I'm much more likely to get an actual pair of socks if I knit them both at the same time.  I'm sure I'll get them done just in time for spring.

Victory!

 

Finally!  It took a lot of work (and bad words) and breaking the singles twice, but I finally got the cashmere wound onto my plying kate.  As you can see by the singles on the right side, cashmere gets fuzzy when you abuse it.  Happily, I had almost no waste from the ordeal.  The spindle is currently in the doghouse and will be punished by not being used for a while.  Saturday I'll be getting 2 ounces of Tussah silk to spin for the second ply.  I've never spun silk before so this should be interesting.

I've signed up for a woodworking class that starts next Wednesday:  Woodworking 101.  It's a 4-week class and it's on Wednesdays so I'll be missing Knit Night for a month.  The class introduces you to all the shop equipment and teaches you how to use them safely.  What I'm really interested in learning to use is the lathe.  I want to turn my own drop spindle at least once.  The class description says we'll make a tool box and a small table.  Yawn.  What I really want to make is a display/storage rack for my drop spindle collection.  A collection that is already bigger than I ever thought it would be and I have my eye on more.  I'm hoping for a Forrester Dervish spindle and I'd love to get my hands on a spindle made from burl wood.  So beautiful!  And if I turn my own spindle?  Well, I'll need someplace to keep it now won't I?

Can you say frustrated?

 

Last night at Spin Night, I had almost finished the ounce of cashmere I was spinning when I dropped the spindle.  The entire cop of singles slid right off the bottom of the spindle.  Using my will of steel, I didn't say all the really bad words I was thinking (I waited until I got home for that) and tried to slide it back onto the spindle.  It didn't work and I'm left with an ounce of tangled cashmere singles.  I've been trying to wind it off onto my new spindle lazy kate but that knot of tangles at the top is making it a very frustrating experience.  Did I mention this was cashmere?  I'm afraid I'm going to have to cut some of the knots out but I don't want to waste even the tiniest bit.  If anyone has any suggestions to make this go more smoothly, I'd be very happy to receive them.

The BFL I was spinning for my mom's Christmas present turned out to be more bulky than I wanted so I decided to go for plan B.  I pulled out a 3-ply skein of Cormo I spun last year and hand dyed it blue and green.  This is the result:

 

It's been so long since I'd dyed yarn, I'd forgotten how exciting it was.  The colors blend so you don't really know what you're going to get until you rinse out the cooked yarn.  I'm thinking there may be some dyeing in my near future.  Oh, yes!  Fodder for my ailing Etsy store.  Oh, if you decide to dye some up yourself, don't spin out the wetted, undyed skein in your washer.  It'll be so dry the dye will just bead up and roll off.  I can't begin to tell you how irritating that is when you're trying to dye the yarn laying in front of you. 

Saturday Spin-in

I'd never been to our host's home before and when I got there, the mailboxes were clustered together on the opposite side of the road.  I wasn't too sure which was Kate's house until I saw the loom in the window.  I was pretty sure there wouldn't be more than one house owned by a weaver in the area.  Problem solved.  I was greeted at the door by Rosemary, fellow spinner, and Katy, Kate's Border Collie.  Kate and Katy do agility training and the two of them have won A LOT of blue ribbons. 

There were just four of us for a while until Rose and then Eric arrived.  Well, four of us plus Katy the Border Collie and Tiger, Kate's cat.  For some reason, Tiger was in an unusually crazy mood and he decided he LOVED Rosemary (she feeds him when Kate's out of town).  He was all over her:

That's me on the left.  Tiger was absolutely hilarious.  Kate said this was highly unusual for him and  this was the second time he'd decided to molest Rosemary.  The first time was about an hour earlier.  Man he was funny!  Kate kept asking Rosemary if she had catnip in her pocket.

We were there from about 10:00 in the morning to nearly 6:00 in the evening, spinning and talking... and watching Tiger declare his love for Rosemary.  I finished spinning and plying the 3 oz. of 50/50 Merino/Yak down roving I'd bought a while ago.  When I'm having a particularly rough week, I sometimes go to The Yarn Tree and shop for a fiber or fiber blend I've never tried before.  This one is sooo soft and warm.  It made a very soft and lofty yarn.  I ended up with about 125 yards of squishy goodness.

 

Apple Butter

 

Finally I've turned some of those 42 lbs. of apples into something.  I took Tuesday off and this is what I made - these are 12 oz. jars and I've got a pint jar that didn't fit in the picture.  I'd forgotten how long it takes to make apple butter.  I started around 11:30 and pulled the jars out of the hot water bath at about 4:00.  And that was the fast, no-peel version.  Geez!  Most of the time it takes isn't from the prep work, it cooking down 3 quarts of pulp until thick, adding the sugar and spices, and then cooking it until it's thick again.  The prep work wasn't too bad mostly because I used my grandma's food mill:

 

This is one of my prized possessions.  My grandma died over 30 years ago but whenever I use this, I feel close to her.  What can I say?  I'm a sentimental fool.

More raspberries tomorrow after work.  The weather should cooperate.  Hopefully I'll get enough for a batch of jam.  I've been invited to another spin-in on Saturday that I'm looking forward to.  I need to decide what to work on.  Lately I'm on a big drop spindle kick so I can't decide if I want to take Owen and start a larger project or bring my spindle and work on that ounce of cashmere.  Decisions.  Decisions.  What's on your agenda for the weekend?

I've been tagged!

By Maggie of Little Grey Cat.  Just like Maggie, this is my first game of e-tag. 

These are the rules:  1. Link to your tagger and list these rules on your blog; 2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog - some random, some weird; 3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blog; 4. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Hmm, random or weird facts.  Let's see...

1.  When I'm feeling like life is running out of control, to feel better, I sometimes watch Resident Evil 1 or 2 because Alice really kicks butt.  I think that one can go into the "Weird" category.  

2.  Like Maggie, I long for the day when I don't work for someone else, only for myself.  I think self-employment would be great.  Now if only the economy would improve...   

3. I love canning and preserving food because I like the feeling of security it gives me.  If something should go wrong with the world, I'll be able to feed myself and my family.  I suspect that there's a strong instinctual urge going on with that one. 

4. I find John Barrowman, Hugh Jackman, Oded Fehr and David Tennant so incredibly beautiful, they make me weak in the knees and if I were ever to meet any of them, I'd likely say something really deep and eloquent like, "Gah."  Yeah, I'm a dork.  

5. I'm a complete SciFi geek and proud of it!  I want my very own sonic screwdriver because, how cool would that be!; I plan on knitting a Dalek; and I'm absolutely positive that in some parallel universe, the TARDIS really is traveling through space and time.  (Oh, and I know what TARDIS stands for - Time And Relative Dimension In Space).  Okay, that was all Doctor Who geekiness but I really am a geek in other SciFi-related matters.

6.

I choose my spinning fiber by how it feels as much as by how it looks.  If it doesn't feel nice in my hands, I'm not going to enjoy spinning it and I'm certainly not going to want to wear it.   (Stupid Typepad keeps screwing up my formatting.  I've tried 4 times to line the "6" up with the text and it keeps saving the text below the number.  Stupid Typepad!  I'm so glad they decided to "improve" the software.)

7. Small amounts of lucious fibers I spin on the drop spindle to make the experience last longer.  I'm currently spinning an ounce of cashmere I bought at the northern Michigan fiber show.

I don't think I know 7 people to tag but here goes: 

1. Val is the mama of two pugs and spins and knits amazing things.
2. Jacki of Yarn Zombie is a spinner, dyer, knitter, photographer extraordinare and she makes the most beautiful batts.
3. Beth of Three Sheeps to the Wind.  Beth owns our local spinning store and we are darn lucky to have her and the store.  If you want it, Beth probably sells it or can get it for you.
4. Had I been able to go to SOAR, I would have met Elizabeth in person for the first time.  I'm in awe of her knitting.  Sorry I wasn't there, Elizabeth, to ease the new-kid-in-school moments.

Because my sister requested it, here's a shot of the new shelves I've put up in the basement:

 

It's not the greatest picture - there's another shelf up top - I was leaning against a table to get the shot.  I could have taken the picture from another angle but then you'd see how trashed the rest of the basement looks and I'm too embarassed to show you that.  Sorry Yen, you'll have to see it in all it's glory when you come to visit... or I suppose I could send you a pic from the other angle.  It's not like you don't already know I'm a slob.

New toy!

My weekends used to be fairly quiet, and frankly, lonely.  Since I've started spinning, I've made lots of new friends in my guild and it's been wonderful.  Saturday was our monthly guild meeting.  Afterward, Eric and I drove to another guild member's house where she had bags and bags for fleeces that she wasn't going to do anything with.  So, I got myself 5 pounds of a lovely chocolate brown Corriedale fleece for a dollar a pound.  Oh, yeah!

At the meeting, I picked up a drop spindle lazy kate made by Shannon of SpinSanity. 

   

You wind the singles off the drop spindle onto the PVC tubes until you're ready to ply.  I had wound my singles onto toilet paper tubes when I started spinning the Merino/pygora fiber I bought months ago.  My initial attempts at plying had the TP tubes on a regular lazy kate and that didn't work well at all.  I plunked the TP tubes on the spokes of my new kate and it worked like a dream.  Between Saturday night and Sunday, I plied this:

 

To give you an idea of the size, the whorl is 3.5 inches in diameter and the cop (the cone of wound yarn) is about 6 or 7 inches long.  This is the most spindle-spun yarn I've ever made, about 135 yards.  I still haven't figured out yet how to get consistency in my twists per inch but over all, I'm pretty pleased with the results.

As promised, here's a shot of last week's spindle-spun yarn, washed and dried:

   

I've been having a marvelous time

I'm having a ball playing with my latest drop spindle.  The ounce of Merino/silk fiber I bought two weeks ago at the Northern Michigan Lamb & Wool Festival is now spun:

   

And plied:

 

It will never cease to amaze me how much the singles are changed when plied.  The colors that were so bright in the singles are muted in the plied yarn.  Once I get the skein washed and whacked (to even out the twist), I'll post a picture.

Distaff, version 2

It's a rough example but since it's the first, I can be forgiven.  The principle is the same:  tuck one end of the roving between the twisted dangling part and wind the rest around until the distaff is "loaded."   If I make another one like this, I'll neaten things up.

I watched "The Other Boleyn Girl" tonight.  The movie was very well done, the acting was excellent and the costumes were glorious.  I couldn't, however, get past the very obvious idea that women were cattle and they were expected to do anything, including whoring with the King, if it meant it would advance their family, or more specifically, the men in their family.  After watching that movie, I've never been more glad to have been born in the 20th century in America.  There are still some parts of the world where women are still cattle and subservient to the will of men, and I find that thought so completely abhorrent that it makes me very, very angry that it's still happening. 

Some day when I'm not exhausted and prone to ranting, I'll tell you just how angry gay-bashing, pushy militant Christians and narrow minded people make me.  Mostly I just get angry at people who allow their fear to think for them, allow religions to think for them or allow political parties to think for them.  If you're going to check your brain at the door, for God's sake, just stay home.

If I only had one more day...

I'd be able to get done everything I'd planned on doing this weekend.  I don't know why I think I'm going to accomplish anything on Saturday.  You'd think I'd know by now that I'm pretty much a slug on Saturdays.  All the apples I picked Friday?  All I managed to do with them is bake an apple crisp - and boy was it good!  About half the apples I picked were Golden Delicious, which is my favorite eating apple, and those are in the fridge.  The nice thing about apples is they don't spoil very fast so I've got a while to make my apple butter and apple sauce.  I was going to freeze some for apple pies but I don't have that chest freezer and my little freezer is filling up fast.

The only thing I managed to make on Saturday was a home for my new drop spindle.  I love blue and I love batik fabric:

 

Sunday was my day of industry.  First thing in the morning, my friend Alice and I went to a local U-pick farm and picked raspberries.  Yup, raspberries the beginning of October in Michigan.  The picking was fantastic.  In 2.5 hours, between the two of us, we picked 7.5 quarts of berries.  Here's mine:

They're currently residing in my freezer and if I can manage it, I'll go back for more.