Just Another Winter In The Midwest

Last weekend it was raining and melting everything, this weekend it is much more like a normal winter weekend….cold cold cold.

But in the past month we have found 28 geocaches, which is a personal record for January.  I’m still shaking my head as most of them were found on a local cache run and we broke our finds in a single day at 21.  Okay we are not into number runs, we like taking our time and enjoy the journey.   We still haven’t decided what our goals are for the upcoming year.

Currently I’m gearing up for the Ravelympics 2010.  I currently have 2 projects set up, spinning merino for the Elizabeth Zimmermann Nether Garments.  I’ve made a pair before so I’m looking forward to making a handspun pair for myself.  And my on the road knitting project will be Madrid Fingerless Mitts with some absolutely beautiful yarn spun by my swap partner from Enchanted Knoll Treasure Chest Batts.

That’s the bottom skein.  I have some lovely ruby colored beads to go with them.  I still need to swatch before the event start to make sure that the colors don’t clash.

Since I’m going to be spinning plain, white yarn I’m desperately spinning very colorful yarn until the Ravelympics starts

The top yarn is Patches Memory blend that I run out of  edging my shawl last fall and the bottom bit of lusciousness is also from Enchanted Knoll.  It is Pumpkin Juice Wildcards.  Oh my much prettiness coming to a sock near me!

I have also have used more than just the 30″ Reeves recently.

The Majacraft Alpaca wheel has been dusted off and I’m spinning some serious worsted with it.  I’m finding while my lovely Reeves handles very fine yarns well and long draw well, I have an easier time with worsted on a scotch tension wheel.  Notice I’m using the wild flyer and the regular bobbins.  I also spun some super bulky finn singles on my Louet S10 and plied them using the wild flyer and the large bobbins simply because the S10’s orifice barely handled the singles.

The fiber on the Alpaca you ask.

You mean this fiber?

Pygora/Fine wool punis from Rainbow Yarns Northwest that I bought at SOAR.  I fell down hard at Terry’s booth there and brought home lots of drool-worthy pygora fiber.

I’m also hoping to spin up this lovely batt from Dyakcraft before the opening ceremonies.  I traded some fiber with a friend for this batt.  Wow is all I can say right now.

So I’ll be spinning colorful items or weaving on this.

Yeah, not done yet…still working…

Texel-Market To Market

Texel sheep

Originally uploaded by baalands

Texel appears to be the body builder of the sheep world. The large, meaty carcass, with its clean head and legs looks out of proportion for the person more familiar with Suffolk and Dorset.

The breed originated in the Isle of Texel off the coast of the Netherlands during the late eighteenth century, probably from the native short-tailed breeds that were common over northern Europe. These native sheep were cross-bred with Lincolns and Leicester Longwools to produce a well muscled, lean animal that would be marketable in central Europe where there was a preference for lean lamb.

Breeding has emphasised the characteristics listed above as well as being docile, easy to work with and having a good feed to muscle conversion. The only requirements of the wool in the US breed standard is for it there is less than 10% colored fibers in the fleece with pure white animals preferred. The fleeces average anywhere from 6-8 pounds and has a micron count of about 26-33 microns, (46-56 on the Bradford scale). This is comparable fineness to with a Dorset or fine Romney.

In looking for a fleece you may have to do some searching to find someone who has fleece worth working with. But come with me on this adventure and I believe you will be pleasantly surprised with the wool from this breed.

Bond-As Versatile As It Is Beautiful

The Bond samples were finished at SOAR, but could I find them…NOOOOOOO….  Finally they were located, in a bag that contains all my spare knitting needles.  Why they were in that bag I have no idea except those needles were with me at SOAR (don’t ask).

Here is a sample of a lock.  This particular sample had a very distinct crimp and a bi-colored lock.  Usually when I find locks with two different colors they break where the two colors meet.  Not so with this sample.  The tips were a bit tender but not bad at all.

Even after being stored in a bag for months the carded rolag came out and with a slight bit of fluffing came out looking good.  I can’t say that for all the rolags I stuff in plastic bags.  The crimp gives it loft and resilience that I love.  Think about mittens and socks.

Here is how it spins up.  Okay, it looks like I had too much swill when spinning this, but honestly it is high in squish factor and will wear well for those before mentioned mittens and socks as well as a comfortable cardigan.

Bond works equally well when combed.  Here are a couple tiny puffs of combed top.

I could see this either knit into a fine and open lace or woven into a warm shawl.  It isn’t apparent in the picture, but the yarn here has a subtle shine to it.  Perhaps a twill pattern to show off the shine?

Bond is certainly one of my favorite wools and I hope you will take the opportunity to take it for a spin.  Even if it isn’t moorit I believe you will find a col0r that will take your breath away.  Gleason’s Fine Woolies is where this Bond originally came from.  I bought the washed locks from an Etsy shop called Woolslinger who is currently taking a break from selling.

It’s been cold here in the swamps, and snowy.  We have something like 12″ of snow on the ground right now.  So I’ve been working on my weaving a good bit.

The handtowels are off the loom and that includes the extra special one woven with my own handspun tow linen!

And it actually looks good!  Much better than the crappy cell phone picture shows.  A little short, but hey, that’s what ends of warps are for!  But I still need to hem the ends of all the towels I made.

I’m weaving a rug on the rigid heddle loom.  What you see are rya knots made with Icelandic locks.  Yes the same fleece I did the review of the Icelandic wool.  I also took the Lincoln locks I had left and are using them as well.  It’s quite the contrast with the longer and matte Icelandic.  I’m really growing to like the rigid heddle loom for a quick and easy project.  Well, warping is much quicker anyway.  I’ll probably start playing with some pickup.

My knitting currently is focused on the Blessed Thistle Tsock pattern by Lisa Grossman.  I am currently much further than the above, but still not done with the ribbing and the little leaves before the main choke.  This pattern so far has been fun and I love lace so am itching to get into the main body of the pattern.  I also need to finally decide what fingerless glove pattern I’m going to knit using some of these yarns.

Bling bonanza here!  This is yarn from my Enchanted Knoll swap partners.  It’s sooo tempting to cast aside my sock and cast one one of these but patience is a virtue and I’m waiting until the socks are done.

And I’m also spinning Enchanted Knoll batts.  This is Pumpkin Juice Wildcard batts I’m spinning to knit more socks with.    I also have queued up some more batts for my Patches Memory Shawl.  I feel like I’m  almost done, but then again, no where near done.

As you can tell, dogs are not getting much training.  That was a bobbin for my Journey wheel.  Masi ate the rest of it.  Oh the joys of puppyhood.   I just keep reminding myself, slow to mature, slow to mature…

So I better go and train some dogs because in the words of Shirley Chong, “Management always fails.”

What Do You Mean It’s Almost 2010?

Yeah I know, I still have to post the Bond.  I finished spinning the samples while at SOAR, but I still haven’t photographed them.  Story of my life.

I have been knitting and weaving.

The Daughter Of The Regiment socks are now complete.  Lisa got to see the one I had finished while at SOAR was was tickled pink to see them “in the wild”.

Speaking of “in the wild,” Abby Franquemonts book Respect The Spindle came out just before Thanksgiving and I spotted it at a local bookstore.

Very cool.  I also attended her book signing at The Spinning Loft on Black Friday.

I will leave this picture up to your imagination.  However, for those of you who need more information let me just point to Kat’s Blog where she explains what happened.

As far as the weaving is concerned.  I have now warped my large Oxaback loom with a short dishtowel warp.  It is the Striped Kitchen Handtowels from The Big Book Of Weaving by Laila Lundell.  It is the second project in the book and while it is a very easy project, the warp is set closer than I used to warp my previous dishtowels in 8/2 cotton.  The next project is a rag rug which I have never done in my almost 15 years of weaving.  Remember, I said I  have a lot of holes in my weaving education.

My dog training mojo is slowing coming back.  I could spend 24/7 training Masi, but there are other dogs that need my attention.  Luke is happy to just play training games and chase the ball.  Adam is plenty busy just being cute and occasionally doing a bit of agility stuff.  Danny, Roo and Daisy are all working on either rally or obedience.

So what will 2010 bring?  Oh heavens I hope good things!  SOAR is in Delavan Wisconsin in the fall and I no longer have flyball to get in the way of agility trials.  We will just let the days roll by and see what it brings.

P. S.  Please excuse the large amount of blurry cell phone photos, but that’s the way my life have been going recently!

I SOARed

I’m back, well at least part of me is back.

A part of me is still wanting to be back in the mountains, but that’s a the geologist in me.  I have returned from SOAR 2009 that was held in Sunriver, Oregon.  I cannot say enough about the staff of Sunriver, especially the shuttle drivers!  Tireless they drove us all over the place, brought our to our rooms and generally were my salvation when I didn’t think I could make it another step with all the stuff I was dragging around.  And another thing,  I really debated with myself during the trip if I should have brought the Victoria or not.  Honestly, I would have been better off in so many ways if I had brought the much lighter Victoria, but I didn’t want to chance bringing a wheel that I would not be comfortable treadling in my cotton workshop and to be honest, the thought of borrowing a wheel never crossed my mind.

Ah my workshop with Stephanie Gaustad.  What can I say?  Early on I had narrowed my workshop choices down to three workshops, two of which I was having a hard time deciding between.  Then back in March I asked Judith MacKenzie McCuin what workshops she would recommend for someone like me.  The intersection of the sessions I wanted to take and what she recommended was cotton with Stephanie.

My goals were simple.  Spinning cotton on my Lendrum and making multiple ply yarns.  In no time at all on the first day she had many of us spinning cotton on our wheels.  We also got to do a lot more in her workshop.  Ginning cotton, willowing cotton, cotton biology, cotton economy and politics all interwoven during our spinning times.  Stephanie brought a lovely great wheel.

As well as charhas built by none other than Alden Amos.  Well, who else would they have been build by?

Our sessions were punctuated by bits of banter and well as some fabulous hot chocolate make by the resort.  Stephanie, bless her, will be getting copies of the video she allowed me to take.  Yarn handling skills I found I was weak in.  With wool it is so forgiving you can get away with a lot of sloppy handling, but cotton is a whole different beast.  Improving my  yarn handling skills will allow me to branch out.  Some of it is a lack of the right equipment.  But other is a problem I have locking myself into a list of items and not allowing myself the time to to learn skills, some of them quite basic.

Sigh

So what did I learn at SOAR?  That I have a lot more to learn!

The retreat was exhausting.  I found that after three days of staying in one place I resented flitting from room to room with the junk of doom in tow.  This one needed combs, this one needed five bobbins and a lazy kate, this one needed half my bag of stuff.  The sessions themselves was fine, just packing up and moving I found daunting.  Either I pare down my “stuff” or I invest in a cart to move my stuff around with!  Met many many lovely people including a woman from Perth, Australia who seems to have traveled the farthest.

My favorite of the retreat sessions was certainly reeling silk with Michael Cook.  Very cool to do and not as hard as one might imagine!

The marketplace was fun, especially when I walked around with a box of chocolate offering pieces to the vendors on Friday evening.  I had fun buying books, pygora (ah), pacu-vicuna (ah), batts (ah), yeah you get the idea.

I really enjoyed the gallery and attempted to document it as well as I could, until the batteries gave up the ghost in the camera.  I caught the rest of the gallery on video which is now posted on YouTube.  I also showed a couple items in the fashion show and both were well received, but the shetland/shetland shawl was fondled and admired all week long.

And no mention of SOAR is complete without  a mention of Dan and Phredde.  The two of them made my first SOAR memorable and delightful and yes a bit relaxing with a bit of swill.  Thank you for the cotton, the instruction, the rubber bands, and the talk!  Good to know other geologists out there in the fiber world.

Next year?  Certainly, it’s only an hour from home!

Royal Oaks Blue On Black ONYX

That’s right, Luke the blue merle tornado, I mean sheltie finished his ONYX titles having earned 20,000 points over his lifetime of running flyball over the last 8 years.

I honestly didn’t think we were going to make it about 6 months ago. He isn’t exactly one of the faster flyball dogs nor did we have one of the better organized teams. He doesn’t care, he loves to run. So we are not retiring, but he will certainly only be going to local tournaments from here on out.

Bond-A Recent Import

Thomas the Bond

Originally uploaded by Lowder Colours

My first encounter with Bond, also called the Commercial Corriedale, was a sheet of samples mailed to me from Australia by Cyril Lieschke. The fine, moorit and silver wool samples immediately caught my eye and I ended up selecting a silver one to be shipped to me from his station in New South Wales.

The Bond breed was developed in Australia by Thomas Bond around 1909. He bred his Saxon/Peppin Merino ewes to imported Lincoln studs to produce a line that suited his environment in eastern Australia. The breed is known today for it’s large frame, it’s high fertility and on average produces more wool in a finer micron than Corriedales. Lambs reach market weight quickly and have a desirable carcass.

The wool is long stapled and ranges from 22-29 microns and in appearance looks like corriedale, except finer. Moorit Bond has become available here in the US thanks to the work of Gleason’s Fine Woolies who imported some of Cyril’s stock in 2000. As a result, other farms have been able to add Bond and Bond cross’ to their flocks.

Bond; moorit, white, silver, no matter the color, this wool is bound to please.

Lincoln-Use It Well

After losing the first set of samples I finally spun up a second set.  I had assumed that since I spun a second set, I would find the first.  Alas, that has not been the case.

First of all this sorry looking thing is a rolag of carded Lincoln.  I’m afraid being stuffed into a plastic bag was not a happy thing for this .  I also found that this particular fleece felted pretty easily.  Not the most easy to felt, but a fleece does not  have to be fine to felt.  Coarse fleeces can felt just as well as fine ones.

Luckily, I spun the carded sample before this rolag got mangled.

The carded sample has a nice halo and shows a good bit of unevenness.  It is harder to hand card long fibers such as silk and the long wools.  Handcards seem happiest carding fibers shorter than about 6″ for me.

But to be honest, Lincoln and other longwools  beg to be combed.

This produced a yarn with less halo, more even drafting, and a more uniform yarn.

Neither of these yarns are suitable for next to skin.  This particular fleece could work for outerwear such as a coat, but would probably be best in a tapestry or woven in a rug.  When dyed these yarns will have a glow without being too glossy.  I have seen finer Lincoln fleeces blended with silk and spun fine for suiting.  Also upholstry woven from Lincoln will wear like iron.  So take Lincoln out for a spin and use it well.  Wool can be used for many things and not every breed is suited for the same purpose.

Life around here has been…um…interesting to say the least.

Most recently Daisy, my rescue sheltie girl, earned her APDT Rally Championship (ARCH).  It’s been a long strange trip we have been on together from the dog who was too afraid to even do a sit in her own house to performing among strange people, which is what scares her most.

Fiber-wise I once again “competed” (if you can call it that) in the Tour De Fleece!

Most importantly I finished this yarn.

The pictures do not do it justice.  It is the long awaited Patches Memory Yarn which is now being knit into an Elizabeth Zimmermann Pie Are Square Shawl.  I hope to have it done and blocked for SOAR.

I joined three teams this year, including one dubbed Team Suck Less led by none other than Abby.  The challenge for that team was to spin a mile in a day.  We could define our mile,  so I defined mine as a mile of singles.

Behold 2012 yards of corriedale singles in about 8.5 hours.

That wasn’t all I spun, but that was the bulk of it.

But I leave you for now, hopefully it won’t be a long as last time.  My energy is lagging but I am hopeful that we are getting to the root of the problems I’ve been dealing with rather than just treating the symptoms.

Spin Spin Sit Spin Spin Knit Weave

Sit and Spin DVD!

Originally uploaded by insubordiknit

I  just got Jacey Boggs new video in the mail, Sit And Spin.  She produces the Insubordiknit podcast (hint hint Jacey…we want MORE of them!) along with homeschooling her kids and spinning art yarns.

First of all, this video is nothing like Judith MacKenzie McCuin’s Spinning Exotic Fibers and Novelty Yarns video.  Some techniques overlap, but the types of yarns Jacey shows are quite different.  As a result these videos compliment each other well.  One thing about Jacey’s video that I adore is she states right off the bat that if you are wanting to learn to spin this isn’t the video for you, go somewhere else and learn to spin a good, stable plied yarn.  I will add, you will also need to know how to draft while spinning.  The music is well done and well produced and her young son is delightful.  Art yarn decorates the musicians and the props.  Now the music is not for everyone I will be the first to admit even though it’s pretty close to the genre I listen to every day.

She covers five major topics Puffs, Coils, Wraps, Loops and everyone’s favorite Foreign Objects.   These topics build on each other.  For example, you will need to know how to make cocoons before attempting some of the yarns in the Wraps section.  Many of the techniques use layered batts and merino roving in her examples, both easy to find to buy or to create yourself if you have a drum carder.  She is spinning on a Lendrum with the bulky flyer in the video, but one of her companions is using an Ashford Joy which has a much smaller orifice.  Having a large orifice is an advantage when spinning these types of yarns.  Wheels such as the Lendrum, some of the Louet wheels, and the Majacraft with either the delta orifice or the wild flyer will be the easiest to produce these yarns with.  But having a small orifice should not stop you from trying this, just keep in mind that a big old felted bead will not probably not fit through.  Each technique can be run in such a way that it loops just that particular technique over and over so you can work on it with the DVD running the the background.  In the extras portion of the DVD she has a part where she lists her sources for the fibers and yarns shown in the DVD.

At the end she talks about how important it is not to weight the yarn when you finish it and let it dry  so that it doesn’t show a false balance (YES!).  In a few cases her terms are slightly different than others spinners.  One example is “halos”.  Her halos are loops make using the cocoon singles which end up looking like little angelic halos.  My biggest gripe about the video, it will not run on my Polaroid Portable DVD player.  It will play on everything else in the house, but not the portable DVD player.  My husband, who has worked in the VHS/DVD duplication industry, suspects its the type of DVD it was recorded on.  Not a big deal, it just means I can’t lay in bed and watch the DVD.  (No we do not have a TV in the bedroom, but we also do not have a spinning wheel in there either.)  Overall this is a great addition to the spinners technique library.  I am happy I ordered it and will be trying out some of the yarn types on my trusty Louet S-10.

The Lincoln is still AWOL, which means I need to get on the ball and re-make the samples.  I also managed to ship out a couple of promised packages and a big box of fleece to Stonehedge Fiber Mill.  But there are some fleeces I’m not sure what to do yet.  I don’t have enough to have it combed by Zeilingers so I just  may have to bite the bullet and send it to Morro Fleece Works who do fabulous things with fine fleeces.

I have managed to put one coat of lemon oil on my new rigid heddle loom so far.  Obviously I’m not in a hurry to warp it.  I’m now finished  with one of the two alpaca scarves on Lupe….hope I can finish soon so I move on to other projects.

The Patches project has gotten a bit more attention.  I’ve taken another two ounces and test spun with a supported long draw.  It drafted much nicer for me, but the test will be in the knitted swatch.  I’m hoping it will give me a fabric that has some drape to it despite it being garter stitch.  Can this project be finished before SOAR????

Oh and remember this.

I need to frog this sucker…I’m finally pulling my head out of the sand and admitting that the foot is way too long! Ahem…  I can at least wait a while to allow the pain to subside.

Now, back to spinning…I have some sampling to do!

Taking Account And Looking Around

Life has been interesting around here.   But what it means is that I’m starting to work on things again like spinning, weaving and dog training.  The only thing I seriously seem to have been doing is knitting.

This is the first installment of the Tsock Flock Club called “Fearful Symmetry.”

Check out the tail.  Why are they not done?  Um, I ran out of yarn…  So I decided to start this project.

Bloom mittens!  The first stranded knitting I’ve done in a long long time.  Very successful and whoa does that finnish landrace yarn feel good.  I bought it from RIIHIVILLA.  Along with the mitten yarn I bought some sock yarn and undyed yarn.  Stay tuned for more projects with this stuff.  I’m in love!  Oh and mittens in May you ask, Elizabeth Zimmermann encouraged people to make mittens in May so that you are not making them at the last minute.

Now that the mittens are done its on to the second Tsock kit, Daughter of the Regiment.  This one is easier than the first pattern with the exception of one small area…ahem…and guess where I am!  Yup, I’m there.  So when the going gets tough, the tough casts on another sock!  So I now have 2 sets of socks in progress.  The Tsock and a pair of basic socks in Mountain Colors Bearfoot.  Until I get past this small section on the Tsock I can’t knit it on the train.  And I must have knitting on the train…hence the Bearfoot socks…

I now am the proud owner of a small tapestry loom from Grafton Fibers and a 16″ Ashford rigid heddle loom.  I’m looking forward to warping both of them.

See this, it’s wool, its wool I’m not going to process myself.  I’m shipping it out!  See freedom from a hot stove   Freedom from the sinking feeling that I have so much to do.  I need to reclaim my basement from the wool because we need to focus on training some dogs.

I need one or two more sets of foam squares and then I’ll be D-O-N-E.  As it is now I can set up Danny for a good broad jump.  Danny says the footing is much better.   We need to pull it all together, but then we will be able to start showing in Open again.  Daisy managed to earn her AKC Rally Excellent this past weekend.  Now I need to decide, do we play more in AKC or just in APDT and UKC rally?  Masi is still cute and still a pain in the butt like any one year old aussie is.  He needs training, badly.

I’ve decided that if I don’t find my Lincoln samples in the next week I’ll make up a new set of samples so I can then find the originals.  Wish me luck!