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!

A Quick Update

Just want to put up a quick update. I’ve had a rough month and finally things are starting to look up again. Jer’s fine, and the dogs are fine, I’m just dealing with some personal stuff that’s come back to roost. I have plenty of fibery goodness to share once I get my head straightened out and my Lincoln samples unearthed from the “safe place” I put them.

Lincoln-Father Of Many Breeds

Curly haired rams

Originally uploaded by baalands

As I go through and look at many of my favorite breeds, I find that Lincoln was one of the original parent breeds used to develop it. That should be no surprise since many of today’s breeds owe its roots to Lincoln.
Lincoln (also called the “improved” Lincoln) itself is believed to have been developed from crosses of Leicester and sheep native to Lincolnshire (called “old“ Lincoln) at the end of the seventeenth century. This produced a sheep with a large, meaty frame and long wool well suited to be combed. In the US Lincolns were imported during the late eighteenth century, but the breed organization did not form until 1891.

During the late 1800’s the value of Lincoln for cross breeding was starting to be explored. Breeds such as Corriedale, Polworth, Bond, Columbia and Targhee are breeds that are either the result of a direct cross with Lincoln or a second generation cross.

Lincolns are among the largest breeds of sheep with ewes ranging in weight between 2oo and 25o pounds while mature rams range from 250 to 350 pounds. Their wool clips average 12 to 20 pounds with a low amount of lanolin and the wool itself is very coarse. Micron counts can range from 33 to 41 microns, and it carries a bright luster.. Uses for the wool include carpets, tapestry, and upholstery.

Lincoln is well worth exploring. Dye a bit and spin up for some small tapestry exploration, letting the luster shine.

The Dog Has Left The Loom

YAHOO!!!!

Remember this?

That was the Romney blankets going on the loom back in January 2008.  It is now officially OFF the loom!  No it’s not finished yet.  Right now it is just a collection of interlocked threads, it needs to be fulled and I’ll be doing that tomorrow.  But for today it is cut off the loom and the errors I could find repaired.  Pictures will come later, after finishing.

What’s next?  Well, a baby blanket in cotton for the 2 year old niece…oh well, I’m not fast that is sure!

What about the socks?

Socks, what socks?

Oh these socks!  But I’m getting ahead of myself.  I finally decided that The Niagara Falls pattern by Janel Laidman.  I had done the pattern before with commercial yarn, but the blue of the Snow Moon batts begged me to knit them again.    It took me about a month to knit them in my spare time and on the train.  I’m happy to say they are done.  I am a very loose knitter and knit these on size zero dpns.  The foot looks short, but that’s because my foot is short!

My next handspun project?  Well, I have the Patches Memory Shawl I just sampled for.   I hope to swatch it and also get the rest of the batts I’ll need carded.   So I’ll get a few more details later.

Nothing much happening with the dogs, but last weekend I went to The Fold and took an indigo dyeing class with Toni.  I took fiber and yarn and learned to control an indigo dyepot to dye protein fibers.  It was facinating, a lot of chemistry happening in a dynamic system.  And yes, it does smell like an outhouse…and it lingers.  It wasn’t on my clothes, it was stuck in my sinuses!  I also helped someone fall down the rabbit hole of spinning   I am always happy to enable!

A Weekend To Remember…If Only I Could!

For some reason I didn’t feel like pulling out my camera.  I’m not sure why.  I think it was partially because I didn’t want to draw any more attention to myself than I already was going to.

It started on Friday, when I packed up wheel, spindles, dog, fiber and knitting and headed north to Columbus Wisconsin for Crazy Susan’s Retreat with Judith McKenzie McCuin.  I arrived in time and was able to spend the day working on worsted yarns and worsted sock yarn.  Once again, I managed to solidify some things in my mind about the relationships between ratios and drafting zones.  Things I knew from experience, but never had put it into words.  Greg from Iowa who I met at Beth’s last year was there as well as Jim from Brooklyn, NY.  Jim got to meet Luke even though Lukey was playing shy sheltie.  Luke did take a couple treats from Jim despite his fears.

Too soon I had to pack up and head to go do flyball!

Lukey, seen here barking at another team racing, loves flyball.  He is only 1800 points away from his ONYX title.  After this weekend’s racing I’m hoping it is less than that…but then again, for some unknown reason the team captains decided that running 3 teams on Friday night was a GOOD THING. Um, NOT!  The next day we only ran two teams.

Mad City Dog Training did not look like this!  The snow that had pelted us in December was almost gone and this weekend we were in swampsville from the ever present rain coming down that was melting what snow was left.  No flyball team members were hurt despite random acts of stupidity and falling that happens to someone at every tournament.  Some one once described if obedience is a formal dinner, and agility is a wine and cheese party, then flyball is a kegger.  It isn’t as physically demanding on the human partner as agility, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to run.

Here is a video from the same location we were running at this past weekend.  This will give you a sense to the insanity of racing from the handlers point of view.

So, after two days of this my husband, bless his heart, comes up to meet me in Madison to pick up Luke to take him home so I could go back to the retreat.  It was a win all around.  I got to go back to the retreat and only had to worry about myself, Luke got to go home where he was more comfortable and Jerry got to have dinner with me.

Saturday night was a too short lesson on dyeing with weak acid dyes.  Judith showed us two methods, immersion and painting with dyes.  Most of which I already was familiar with.  However, since I was tired and let my guard down I started asking rather pointed questions about indigo, natural dyes and synthetic dyes.

Sunday was a blur…I had missed the lessons on boucle yarn on Saturday and missed a lot of what she said about novelty yarns.  I spent some time spinning woolen and then plying that and then took my singles from Friday and plied and cabled them, ending up missing more of what she said.  I think the worsening weather had a lot to do with it.  I was trying to calculate when to leave to avoid the worst of the weather, and ended up leaving during the worst part of the snow.  But after a short stop at Susan’s shop to pick up a few needed things I found the weather a good bit better and it only improved as I headed south.  I did get some advice from her about going to SOAR though.  And one of my first choices of a workshop was also one of the two she recommended.  And she also confirmed my suspicions that originally Shetland Sheep were double coated, not single coated.  Also, that most of the so called Shetland wool yarn sold is actually a down breed.

All in all it was a good weekend, I just wish I could remember more of what Judith said.