Spinning Has Changed My Life

One of the signs; while vacuuming or sweeping the floor, those bundles of pet hair are no longer thought of as dust bunnies. They are rolags. In the wild. (If I've been really very lax, they are batts.) But they don't reflect poorly on my housekeeping standards, no. They mean I'm not brushing the dog (dogs, cat, whatever) enough and I'm losing valuable spin-able fiber.

Scipio's fur, especially his undercoat, is far to short to spin. But, enough of it seems to get caught up in my knitting and spinning that I don't think he should feel left out. Plus, he often 'supervises' my spinning activity. Last night he kept insisting on helping control the amount of twist (well, he claims he was only trying to help) entering the yarn. I'm trying to find a new hobby for Scipio, and this morning I hit on this, a live camera feed from the kelp tank at the Birch Aquarium. It did catch his attention.

Spinning Samples

For a change of pace, I tried spinning small samples for fibers, just to see how they'd turn out. I spun some white Suri alpaca, a little bit of brown bison, 2 samples of a Shetland/Alpaca blend I tried blending on the combs, and a small bit of Great Pyrenees hair I carded on the hand cards.

The above is, all of the above mentioned fibers, after plying and washing. Everything was plied from center pull balls.  Below is a knit up sample of the dog hair, knit on US #2 size needles.

It feels soft and has a great halo. Feels slightly scratchy on my neck, but then most things do. There's no elasticity to the yarn, so I think it would work best for making something with drape, like a pattern that would work well with alpaca. I may try blending the dog hair with a little bit of wool, for shape retention.

And Then There Were 2

My two. The spare college kids went home, or to other family room sofas, or where ever. It was fun while they were here, and its nice now that they've gone. I can actually take my coffee and sit on the sofa in the morning. I can turn the water heater up to "VERY HOT!" to wash fleece, and not worry about anyone getting accidentally scalded during the mid-day wake up.  They didn't eat nearly as much food as I expected.

shucks, the picture doesn't do the texture justice.

Since then, I've been combing more Shetland, and carding the leftovers. I tried some novelty type spinning with the drum carded batts, and ended up with 2 little funky skeins of yarn, one from each spinning wheel. Both wheels worked pretty well for spinning the singles, but the Ashford with the jumbo flyer is a thumbs up for plying lumpy novelty yarn. The sliding hooks on the Pocket Wheel seemed a bit small, and sometimes the lumpy yarn caught on the sliding hooks.

The best part is I loved playing around with making this yarn, and I love how it turned out. I already have a little project in mind for these 2 little skeins.

Speaking of washing fleece, I just finished up a few pounds of crimpy, soft, silky merino, and another few pounds of soft, crisp, resilient cormo. The cormo wants to be a sweater of some sort, maybe with cables. I think this fiber will make great cables. The merino wants to be a sweater too, but something lightweight and cozy.

rich dark cormo

squishy soft merino

Dog!

Oh yeah, dog hair. This last bit comes from Jombee (I really don't know how its spelled), a Great Pyrenees  belonging to my brother's roommate. There seem to be 3 types of hair in there; short soft and fluffy undercoat or down, outer coat that might be like not quite fine alpaca and then the guard-hairs longest and strongest could be used for sock heel and toe reinforcement. I hand carded a few bits and removed most of the guard hair and spun a bit into a two ply. Its not bad. I'll post a picture later.

Time Slips

Time. What an unusual thing. If I use it well, I seem to have more of it. If I give myself plenty of time to get somewhere, not only do I have time left over when I arrive (good for knitting a few stitches), but I have so much I can very easily afford to give some to others. I have time to let the other driver go first when we both arrive at the intersection at the same time. I have time to let a person take a place in front of me in line at the grocery store. I have plenty of time for offering a smile to a stranger, and lending an ear to someone who needs to be heard. I have time to be polite.

I like to imagine that when I give myself the time to be on time, the time to be polite, ripples are created, and maybe other people will find just a bit more time in their day as well, and can pass the gift along. I don't know if it works that way, but I do like to imagine it does.

I've let time slip away as far a blogging is concerned, and it seems like the longer the delay, the easier time slips away. What a curious thing.

I haven't been blogging, but knitting and spinning go on. We had some cold weather here, by Southern California standards anyway, and I decided I needed some mittens. Really! I'm one of those people whose hands feel like icicles when it's 60 degrees F outside. The mittens are almost done now, and I might just name them the Seriously Overkill for S.Cal. Dog Hair Mittens. Some where along the way, I decided they should be flap mittens, so I could uncover my fingers if I wanted to use them for something. It made sense at the time, but we've had at least of week of 70 F+ daytime temps here, and any kind of mitten seems ludicrous right now. Except for maybe cute little fingerless ones. But I 'm almost done, and I'm sure that eventually it will get cold enough that I will absolutely need such warm mittens. If not, I'll just plan a visit to my sister in Minnesota. Construction details; cuff is one strand each natural white and natural brown 2 ply wool held together, 1x1 ribbing. Hand and thumb is one strand each natural white and natural color dog hair 2 ply yarns held together.

As I'm using up some hand spun yarn, I'm just as busy making more. I spun some merino roving that I dyed, and plied it with another hand spun merino dyed by someone else. I don't have any pictures of what the "by someone else" roving looked like before I spun or plied it - I can't figure out how that happened. But at least there is a picture of the finished item. I haven't weighed it yet, but it should be about 8 oz. Pretty blues.

 Some time before Christmas I finally figured out who made the drum carder that lives at my house. It's made by Duncan Fiber Enterprises. That bit of info meant I could finally get a replacement drive belt and handle and boy-howdy! Does that ever make a difference in using the drum carder! Its much more fun (and productive) now. I carded up some brown merino cross wool and spun a single, the thinnest stuff I've ever spun on purpose. I'm not really sure what to do with it now, maybe 2 ply or even Navajo ply, I'll figure it out eventually. Then I finally gave myself permission to start playing with this lovely Shetland fleece I got last June. So far I've tried spinning from the lock and spinning from a batt, both turn out very nice. (no pictures yet) I'm in love with this stuff. I need to ply it and get a little swatch knit up so I can decide what to make.

During all this knitting and spinning, it occurred to me that while a knitted project can be frogged and returned to the state of 'yarn', spun wool cannot be returned to the state of 'fleece'. At least I don't think it can. And I love the fleece part. So much raw possibility. Sigh. So much responsibility in deciding what kind of yarn. :-)

It seems to me like I've been so much busier that it reads. I'm a medium speed knitter, I'd guess, a slowish spinner, and an even slower drum carder operator. And I enjoy it all. I'm sure once I'm done with this post I remember other things I meant to mention. OH-Oh! I remembered one already. My new Pocket Wheel is complete and ready for shipping. Just a few more days and I'll finally see it in person!

Busy Busy Busy

Time is flying by and there's so much to be done. I feel like the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland. Went to the Torrance Fiber Festival yesterday with some pals from my local knitting group and spinning group. There is some overlap. We had a great time, started with breakfast, drove to Torrance, shopped and had a late lunch. I didn't buy much, but did treat myself to a beautifully dyed roving of 50/50 silk and yak from Red Fish Dye Works. They also have some of the most wonderful silk yarns. I really wanted to buy a kit for making this splendidly simple a-line silk cardigan, it was sooo pretty. I decided I would wait until next year, because very soon I expect delivery of my new spinning wheel. That means I need to pay for it.

It's called a Pocket Wheel, designed and crafted by Doug Dodd and I think it is the most clever little wheel I've every seen. I've been waiting for a while, and last week I learned my wheel is in production. I can hardly stand it.

I finished knitting my dog hair scarf. It is the first finished object I've made with my own handspun yarn and I am pleased with the result. I have enough left over that I can knit a pair of mittens or maybe a hat, I haven't decided yet. I've also spun and 2-plied a nice little 50/50 silk and cashmere roving from Abstract Fiber. There's enough to make a small scarf or a self indulgent pair of fingerless mitts. I'm leaning towards mitts right now.

The woodworking class continues, but I don't really have any progress pictures. First the lumber looked like big rough pieces of wood, then smaller, smoother pieces of wood. And then even smaller pieces of wood. It wasn't until last week that I even had enough piece to put together, and with any luck I'll be gluing the carcass together this Thursday. Yup, that's the official name, carcass. I've learned that mistakes in cutting pieces of wood are much more permanent than mistakes in knitting sweaters. Some mistakes can be glued back together, and other mistakes just become smaller pieces of wood that might be useful as something else.

Saturday I went to a woodworking show, and I was kinda underwhelmed. It didn't seem nearly as fun and lively as a fiber festival and I didn't see anything that begged me to bring it home. Maybe as I get more experience these things will see more exciting. I do have some tools already, I was able to retrieve some of my grandfather's hand tools. Chisels and hand planes and brace and bits and some other odds and ends. They all need some TLC, but Russ, my woodworking instructor says many of them will be worth the work. And I'll end up knowing all about the right way to take care of them.

Today I removed all the old caulking from the bottom of my shower and put in new caulk. Removing the old caulk took hours, and some of that stuff was so hard it seemed fossilized, or at least calcified. I'm glad its done, because I really don't want to think about it for another 10 years.

Tomorrow I volunteer at the Birch Aquarium at Scripps. 

Other than buying supplies, I've done no work on repairing/refurnishing the old furniture. It would be good if I did some research first because I've got questions like; should I glue the lifted veneer down before I try refinishing (a yes, I suspect), is there a way I can tell what kind of glue was used under the veneer last time it was fixed? I know my grandmother had the desk refinished and repaired about 15 years ago. I'm really hoping hide glue was used, as it can be re-glued to itself. Wood glue has to be cleaned out first. That sounds like more work, but even worse it sounds like more chances for me to mess something up.

Lining up the to-do list at string, fluff and random stuff

Getting Started Again

Wow, I find it difficult to get my writing started again after such a long break. Keyboard inertia? Or just not knowing where to start?  Most likely its the latter.

I wasn't upset when my grandfather died, it just came so hard on the heels of my cousin's son's death. My grandfather truly was at the end of his time here on earth, and by all accounts he was tired of waiting for the beginning of the next journey. He spent is last days in his home, amid people who love him. My cousin's son was only just starting his life, only 19 years old, and he died of a drug overdose, alone in a Tijuana motel room. The contrast wallops me every time I think about it. So it goes; the unexpected can and does happen any time. And I still spin and knit when I can.

My grandfather left behind a house full of stuff, and now I have a small portion of that stuff. I brought home a marble topped table I call the toaster table, for years it sat near the dinning room table and held the toaster, so my grandmother wouldn't have to run back and forth to the kitchen for the morning's toast. It might have belonged to my great grandmother, I'll have to ask my dad if he knows. For years my dad was planning on taking the roll top desk that belonged to his grandfather, but now that he can take it, he's decided he doesn't have room for it and so it has come to me. I've decided to call it The Grimes of the Fathers, as it is so very dirty. I selected a few of my grandfather's woodworking tools, see below, but they'll need some work to become useful. And finally, I brought home Caddo, the Whippet that belonged to my grandparents. Nobody else seemed to have space for her, but we have plenty of room here. She's in her teens, in good health, and an easy going dog.

My updates are very far behind; at the end of August I started a woodworking class at Palomar Community College. I completely love it, I'm building a clock body (carcass, according to the instructor) and once again I'm very busy learning from my mistakes. But just like with sewing, once the wood is cut, it cannot be made whole again. I'm astounded at how when I'm completely sure I'm being very clever, I am actually making huge mistakes. Wood glue can fix some, but thank goodness I bought extra lumber. Any way, I hope to eventually construct my own spinning wheel(s)

The dog hair spinning is complete, and I decided on a simple garter stitch scarf, uncomplicated, like my dog. I may also get a hat or mittens, but for now a scarf is fine. Since the dog hair is now yarn, I'm spinning up the remainder of an alpaca/silk roving that I started soon after I began spinning. Hopefully there is some difference between the first skeins and the most recent, I'd like to think there is. What I really want to be doing is prepping fleece. Everything is washed, and I want to get it picked and get some of it carded, and some if it should be good for spinning without carding, I think. I really like handling the fleece, something about it grounds me. On the other hand, it takes me blinking forever to actually turn out a carded batt or two.

I think that covers every thing; string, fluff and random stuff...

Dog Hair; Its a good thing!

 Lately, most of my fiber time is spent prepping and spinning dog hair. Partly in tribute to my old dog, Plato, who was put to sleep last June, and partly just because I want to see what it turns out to be. Maybe I'll have enough dog hair yarn to knit up a scarf, once I'm done.  Back in July I weighed the hair I had collected, and it looked to be about 400g. The sure doesn't sound like all that much hair, really. Not when I consider the pounds of fleece stashed in the closet. So why is it taking so long to card it?

I washed the hair, while dog hair may not technically felt, it will definitely mat. I remembered this just in time. I sorted by color left the guard hair in. Plato's outer coat was pretty soft, and I really didn't want to try and de-hair the fluff. Tried drum carding, but all the hair refused to transfer from licker-in to main drum. Some day I'll figure out why. I switched to hand cards, blending in a little alpaca and wool as I went. It's tough to get very much dog hair on the cards, so the rolags are kinda whimpy, but spin-able. This might be why its taking so long to card. Some day I'll learn the answer to that mystery too.

I sorted the hair into "colorways"; white, dark gray, light gray and light tan. If you own or know a blue merle dog, these are all colors in their coats, as well as black, but black undercoat tends to actually be dark gray. I blended in, as much as possible, matching colors of wool and alpaca, but only a little bit.

Initially, I was going to spin the yarns by color, then knit them together in such a way as to create a 'merle' pattern in my knitting. I have no idea how I was going to accomplish that, I figured I work it out latter. After carding and carding and carding, as in "Wow, this is getting tedioius", I decided that when I spun the yarn, I'd just try to randomize the color of the rolags and see how the yarn spins up. But I think I'll Navajo ply the yarn to keep the color together. Now I wish I hadn't kept the white separate, but oh well.




I'm actually looking forward to working with wool once this dog hair is done. Wait, that's not right, I have been working with wool as well. I finished spinning and 2 plying fleece that I'd kettle dyed a few months back with fluffysgarden. From top to bottom we have a Romney and Shetland skein (white wool), a skein of different Shetland and Rambioulet (brown and gray wool) and a small skein of Cormo/x (white wool). About 120g altogether. I spun and 2 plied a small sample of this natural colored fleece, but now I'm having trouble remembering which fleece it was from. Can anyone say, "spinner's log needed here." I do remember it drafted and plied very nicely. Its a 14g sample skein. So far, I've been working on spinning every thing woolen style, and I think I'm getting the hang of it.

With all my focus on the spinning, not much knitting is happening. I'm thinking about frogging the Summer Waistcoat back up to mid-armhole and reknitting; this thing stretched way more than I expected it to. Yeah, the armholes now end at the bottom of my ribcage. Twenty years and 30 pounds ago this might have looked good on me, but I'm not so crazy about it right now.  I think the ripple rib pattern had something to do with it, and the fact that I used a fairly heavy cotton yarn. Live and learn, or knit and learn, eh? I did finally finish camera sock #2.

Well, I'm off to card more dog hair!

But Wait, There's More! (lots more)

Oh dear, sounds like an infomercial, doesn't it. But I promise there won't be any coaxing for you to "call now, and receive this free whatsit for only the cost of shipping and handling."

When we went to Fiji, we did visit more than just Toberua Island. And I only posted a few of the lovely photos. Here is a link to the pictures in my Flickr account if you want to see more.

Getting to Toberua went like this; drive to LAX and wait, fly to Auckland and wait, fly to Nadi, get driven to Suva, change to a different car and driver, get driven to Nakalo Landing, board the launch, ride out on the river and into the sea and finally disembark at Toberua, get serenaded on arrival and offered cool fruity drinks to refresh us before dinner. Each leg of the journey got quieter and more remote. The drive between Nadi and Suva was over 4 hours, but I liked watching the countryside slide by. I learned that besides raising sugar cane, Fiji has a timber industry and a dairy industry.



To leave Toberua, we reversed the above, very early in the morning. Except we went past the airport and were dropped off at Vuda Marina. For some reason, the drive back was only 2.5 - 3 hours, maybe due to less traffic and our driver's enthusiastic application of force to the accelerator. At the marina we boarded the Amberly, a small boat that belongs to Octopus Resort on Waya Island, our next stop.

Luckily the seas were calm, though some of the other passengers were a little green-faced, but we felt fine during the 2.5 hour trip to Waya Island. As with many of the small island resorts, there isn't a dock or marina for disembarking; instead we transferred to a smaller boat to get closer to the beach and then gracefully or not, jumped to the sand/water to get ashore. I was glad the staff carries all the bags, I'm sure I would've dropped something in the water.



On approach, Octopus Resort looked just like I'd read; all lovely long beach and coconut palms swaying in the breeze and small buildings tucked just beyond the beach, and staff members singing and waving a welcome. There were happy guests lounging on chaises, families with young children splashing in the pool and sprawling across the very large Turkish daybeds. Fruity drinks were offered here too.

After a quick briefing we were shown to our bures; #4 for the boys and #18 for DH and me. I was a bit confused about the numbering system, as there were only 2 bures between 4 and 18, I never did figure that out. After we were shown our bures, my opinion of the resort started slipping. (lots of grumbling comes next, feel free to skip)


My thoughts went something like this; "Wow, the bures are much smaller than what we'd had at Toberua, but the cost was much less. And hey, the windows actually have screens, and glass louvers. Whoa! It smells really musty in here; why is all the furniture pushed away from the walls; look I can see light through places in the walls and ceiling but I guess its okay because there are mosquito nets over the bed and it really, really smells musty in here, how can something so ventilated smell so musty? Its not bad, I can handle this for 3 days. OK, so this is more like camping except my tent, even my backpacking tent, is nicer. Oh, look, here is the bathroom. Outdoor shower, just like it says on the web site, I love open air showers but oh yuck, the shower floor is badly finished concrete, it reminds me of a bad beach campground shower. Wow, the vanity cabinet could use some refinishing, I don't even want to put my toothbrush down here. Hmm, housekeeping forgot to stock with soap and shampoo. I'll just put my toiletries bag inside the cupboard, ohhh, it smells like mothballs in there. Where in the heck am I supposed to hang things like towels and wet swimsuits? Why does it smell so musty in the bure?"

And so it went. Our bures were rather run down, with dirt falling from the walls and ceilings, ripped screens in the windows, millipedes, earthworms and centipedes on the floor at night, rodents rustling outside the walls after dark. Thatch doesn't insulate against outside noise much either. At least it didn't rain while we were there. The resort was over crowded during the day, due to visiting day trippers. I tried to upgrade our accommodations, but every thing was full and the staff wasn't interested in even asking if they could do anything to improve our stay. Probably they couldn't have, but I would've felt better if they'd asked. During our first night I went from "We can manage, its only a few days" to "Lets go somewhere else." I kept wishing I'd brought my tent along to sleep in instead. I'm not a big complainer, and I can't think of another time where I'd felt like this.

After breakfast the boys and I went snorkeling, its a very pretty reef, and then we had a family discussion about staying or leaving. We all voted to leave, and so I went to the office to let them know. The staff didn't ask why, but they did help us make arrangements to stay elsewhere. They hustled us out of our bures, and had rented them to others before lunch was over. No, we didn't get any refund. We left on the Awesome Adventure Yasawa Flyer, as the Amberly didn't have room for us since we were leaving before our scheduled departure day. It was a longer trip back, because the Flyer is like a local ferry, and it stopped at many small resorts on the way back to Port Denarau. I enjoyed seeing so many different places, and I think some of them are worth further investigation.

We ended up staying at the Sheraton on Denarau Island. Its not what I'd consider a proper island, as you get there by crossing a small bridge from Viti Levu. And I wouldn't consider the Sheraton a proper Fiji resort, its more of an "I don't like surprises when I travel" resort and wouldn't seem much different if it were in Hawaii, or even here in San Diego. The food was fair, but over priced, the Fijian staff friendly, but not as friendly as Toberua, the beaches gross and everything sort of vanilla-ish. We only stayed there because it was close to the airport. It had things like in room telephones, flat panel TVs and internet access, a kitchen and a washer dryer unit. It was like being at home. I did laundry and knit, the boys watched TV and waited for their turn on the laptop. sigh


We did do one cool thing, we went for a half day inland/upland guided hike, with lunch at a village. Getting into the forest was great. Click here for more pictures. We learned about local food plants, local history including how cannibalism began and ended, saw some water vines (wow), swam in a waterfall pool (chilly!) and lunched in the village. Eighteen year old Aaron was our guide, and I tried to imagine my son of the same age leading a group of strangers on a tour. Aaron walked barefoot the entire way and had toes that looked like they could open a bottle of soda. I really wanted to take a picture of his feet, but thought it would be poor mannered to ask. The ladies of the village, including Aaron's grandmother, prepared lunch for us; we had some
Fiji sausage, fried fish, cassava boiled or fried and several versions of a vegetable dish made with mashed and cooked young taro leaves mixed with coconut cream and tinned fish. I really liked that, much more than I expected to. At the end of our visit the village chief (Aaron's father) drove us back to our hotel, and along the way he spoke of his many business ventures (including the tour company our guided tour was booked through), the size of his 2 villages and Fijian politics. I thought the entire experience was very interesting.

I will return to Fiji, to visit Toberua again and to explore new places and dive different reefs. At 330+ islands, I imagine never being able to see it all. But why not try. In fact, on the way home I had a revelation; New Zealand is a lovely country, and a great place for the knitting and wearing of woolen garments and, it's only a 3 hour flight from Fiji. Maybe a relocation is in order?

And to put some knitting into this post, I finished the Summer Waistcoat while on Toberua, and worked on the socks and lace project at other times.


Since we've been home, I've been working on a new camera sock to replace the one forgotten at Octopus Resort, and carding, blending and spinning dog hair, spinning some other wool odds and ends and rewashing some fleece that I didn't get so clean the first time.

Promises, Promises

I do fully intend to relate my train riding experience up to lovely Eugene, Oregon and back, and even post some scenery pictures. And pictures from the Black Sheep Gathering as well. I promise. I do.

Two things happened when I returned from BSG; seeing all the fleece (fleeces? is there a plural for fleece, or is it like sheep, or deer?) instilled an intense desire to really work on my spinning technique, and Wednesday after I got home it was time to put my old dog, Plato, to sleep. That one zonked me some. It wasn't a surprise, but it did hit me a bit harder than I expected. Plato had lovely soft hair, of a very spinnable length, and off and on over the years I've collected bits of it and I've decided to start spinning with it.

My 16 year old son thinks that's creepy, but I think its a great idea. Hey, its spinnable fiber, all of it was collected while he was alive, and once I learned to spin my intention has always been to spin the stuff. Its not like I waited for him to die so I could start this project.

I'm sure I've thrown out, swept and vacuumed up far more Plato hair (coat, fur, fluff) than I've saved, I'm sure but it looks like there is at least 400g to work with. Its washed, and I'm sorting by color; brilliant white, light tan and grey/black and so far I plan to blend in some matching alpaca to up the volume and color intensity. The plan is 'so far' because I've never worked with any of this before, and have no Idea what I'm doing, or how it will turn out.