Drop spindles

I purchased two drop spindles from a shop on Etsy and they arrived yesterday. One was a top-whorl and one was a bottom-whorl spindle. They came with a bit of yarn with which to get started.

I spun and plied half of the included yarn on the bottom-whorl spindle, and half on the top-whorl spindle. Combined, I made a 19 yard skein of yarn.

I like spinning with the spindles more than I thought I would, but I haven't decided yet if I like one type (top or bottom) better than the other.

As of this moment, I still like spinning with a wheel best.

The first...

...of my purrennials is starting to sprout.

The state of my sprouts - or - Time for re-potting

I started some seeds earlier than usual this year. I usually start seeds about six weeks before I plan to plant them outside, which means starting them right around the first of April. This year I chose a few varieties of tomatoes and peppers to start extra-early, on February 24th. I've had them under some grow lights that my husband installed for me in the basement. They hang from chains so I can adjust the height of the lights as the plants grow, and they're set on a timer so I don't have to remember to turn them on and off everyday.

It's been about four weeks and they've done really well down there. Today I re-potted them from their starter tray into pots. They'll stay in the basement under the grow lights until I'm ready to plant. Let's hope they continue to do well down there under the lights.

I've got nine varieties of heirloom tomatoes and two types of peppers. Here they are:

I'll be starting more seeds soon. I might do it before the first of April because it looks like we might be able to plant early this year, as long as the ground dries out. It's pretty swampy here right now, and last year the planting was late because the soil was too wet for a long time.

We usually plant right around Mother's Day here in northeast Ohio. That's usually when the danger of frost has passed. This year will probably be earlier in that respect, but we may have to wait for planting anyway because of the moisture. Everything seems to be about three weeks ahead of schedule this spring.

Making blended sock yarn

I've been working on making some sock yarn with a baby alpaca fleece that I bought last summer at a fiber festival. I wanted to blend in some nylon for durability and some silk for both durability and silkiness. In the picture below, the nylon is on the left, the silk is in the middle, and the washed baby alpaca fiber is on the right. The fleece was a gorgeous mix of gray-white, medium-gray, and darker gray with bronze tips:

The blend was approx. 6% nylon, 6% silk, and 88% alpaca. I blended three different bats with my drum carder. I ended up with a light-gray bat, a medium-gray bat, and a darker-gray bat because I randomly plucked the handfuls of alpaca from the varied fleece. one handful had more of the light fiber in it, one had a more even blend, and one had more of the dark fiber in it. The fiber in the picture above produced the medium-gray bat, which is to the right in the picture below (the light bat is to the left):

Here are the light and medium bats rolled out. At this point, the third, darkest bat hadn't been made yet:

The yarns made with these bats are pictured below. The medium-gray is on the top left, and the light-gray is on the top right:

The yarn made with the dark-gray bat is still hanging to dry on a doorknob after letting it soak to set the twist:

All told, I came out with just over 400 yards of yarn. I would classify it as a light sport weight or a heavy fingering weight. I was considering putting it up for sale, but I think I'm going to make a pair of socks for myself instead, the yarn is very soft and silky.

This fleece already produced 256 yards of sport weight, two-ply yarn (unblended), and I have enough fleece left for maybe another 400 yards, give or take.

So in the end, I'll get somewhere around 1,000 yards of sport weight/fingering weight yarn out of this fleece, which I purchased raw for about $38.

We don't fear you, Mr. Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh has issued a fear-of-losing-more-sponsors,-after-all,-money-talks apology to the young woman he called a slut. He also stated his view of what the 'other side' must think, "And now, at the end of this week, I am the person that the women of America are to fear the most."

No, Mr. Limbaugh. Your self-aggrandizement is pitiable. Women don't fear you. In fact, we don't give you a second thought. We tuned you out long ago and your buzzing is nothing more than a minor irritation, like that of a fly dying on a windowsill.

Mr. Limbaugh, you are not feared by us, you are nothing to us.

Sprouts!

My early sprouts are sproinging up! These are several varieties of heirloom tomatoes.

Halfway to a loom!

I'm saving up to buy a loom. A good used one can run anywhere from $300-$800, depending on what kind of deal you can find. I have over $400 socked away in my loom account, all earned by sales of my Christmas book over the holidays. I make $0.35 per ebook, and $0.22 per paperback. I sold somewhere around 1200 books over the holidays, so, yea, I'm on my way to a loom!

I'm hoping to find a good loom, at least a 40 inch weaving width, hopefully with a bench and some yarn thrown in. I don't want to pay more than $700, and I want to be able to drive to the seller and to pick it up. I'm willing to go anywhere in Ohio, and the parts of neighboring states that aren't too far away, and probably the closer parts of Maryland, too.

I'm happy about my book, and I'm happy I'm on my way to a loom!

Icelandic fleece, or, entering the world of tog and thel

I recently received an order of two raw Icelandic fleeces. One is white/oatmeal in color and the other is a brown/red.

Icelandic sheep are a bit unique in that they produce two types of wool in one fleece. Usually if a sheep produces both long and short fibers, the longer ones will be kemp or guard hair, which is structurally different from wool. The Icelandic breed of sheep produces both long and short fibers, but they are both wool.

The longer fibers are called tog, and the shorter fibers are called thel.The two fibers can be separtated fairly easily by pulling the longer fibers out while keeping hold of the shorter ones. Traditionally the children were set to this task.

The long tog fibers make an excellent warp yarn when spun, and the short, cushy, warm thel fibers make wonderful yarn for sweaters and the like. 

Viking combs were designed for this fiber, and I wish I had some, but I have four-pitch wool combs, which won't work well with this fiber. Anyway, I washed a bit of both of my fleeces and this morning I set about separating the tog from the thel of the red/brown fleece.

The picture below shows the piece of fleece at the top, and some which has been separated below it. The short, warm thel is on the bottom left, and the longer tog is on the bottom right (click on any of the pictures to see them closer):

Again, a piece of whole fleece:

And the same piece separated into thel (left), and tog (right):

I have a couple of dog combs which I used to in place of Viking combs to comb out both types of the wool, separately. I then carded the short thel wool with hand cards and made two rolags, and I pulled the tog off of the combs into a short piece of roving. They are picutred below, the two rolags of short, cushy thel are on the top, and the tog roving is on the bottom. You can easily see the difference between the two types of wool produced from this one fleece. Both are soft to the touch:

I have a lot more to process, this was just a little test of how to go about handling Icelandic wool, it's my first time. You can also skip separating the fibers and card everything together and spin it. I'll try doing it that way, too. Apparently the longer tog stays toward the center of the yarn and the softer thel migrages to the outside. I can't wait to spin it separated and all carded together.

A few specific pics of my Hoosier cabinet for a fellow owner

This post is for a person who is fixing up an old Hoosier cabinet which is just like mine. They requested a few specific pictures to help with their restoration, so here they are:

Here, I've put a dark color behind the glass to make the etching stand out more:

This one is looking up from below the sifter in its pulled-out position, just so that you could see sort of how it's attached (don't mind the weird patch in the lower right corner, that's where I did a botch job of removing my face from the picture (this was barely after my morning cup if coffee, not a pretty sight):

If you'd like more pictures, let me know!

A little bear for my grandniece

Here's a little bear that I just finished knitting for my grandniece. She'll be born in March. The little scarf is made with the two ply, stripy yarn that's pictured in the previous post.

And let's just say that I'm a better spinner than I am a knitter and embroiderer ; )

Two ways of plying yarn

There are different techniques you can use when plying colored yarns, and they will give you different results.

I will sometimes ply the regular way in which the two singles are twisted around each other. On yarns with varying colors, such as those made with hand-painted rovings, this will result in a candy cane stripe effect.

Most of the time when I'm plying these hand painted yarns, I'll use the Navajo plying method. This makes a triple-plied yarn in which the colors match up with very little striping.

In the picture the Navajo- plied yarn is on the left and the regular two-ply is on the right. These were spun from the same hand-painted roving.

Murder and Seed Savers

Today the mail brought me my order of seeds from Seed Savers Exchange, a place to buy heirloom varieties. I bought quite a lot of seeds, don't know where I'm going to plant everything.

But quite by coincidence, today I also began reading The Heirloom Murders, by Kathleen Ernst. I'm only a few pages in, but Seed Savers is mentioned and I think plays a part in the book. The heirlooms in the book may refer to seeds, or antiques, or both, because we've been introduced to a gardener who saves seeds, a house full of gathered antiques intended for a museum, a lady who works at a local museum, and a possible murder.

Ah, to snuggle down with a book and await the coming of spring...

My first attempt at trying to knit the reindeer tattoo

This is my first attempt at translating this reindeer tattoo design into a knitted article:

 It's done in handspun alpaca yarn:

I think it turned out okay for a first attempt. I may only make a couple of minor changes.

My white alpaca fleece

Last fall, I purchased  a white, first shearing fleece which came off of a 10-month old alpaca named, "Powdered Sugar." I finally have the time to process it. Two days ago I unrolled the fleece and sorted it. Here it is, shorn side up: 

I have to apologize ahead of time for the quality of the pictures. I took them one-handed with my cell phone, and the flash was off, so they all came out a little blurry.

My cat, Freki, wanted to help:

As soon as I got my hands on the fleece, I knew it was going to be something special. It was really soft and fine. It was so fine, in fact that the unshorn side was full of vegetable matter (hay, feed, bits of weeds from the edges of the pasture). It turns out the Powdered Sugar's fleece is so fine that it's spider web grabby.

But I was able to get most of that off during sorting, and then yesterday I washed a few ounces, and today it was dry and ready for combing. During combing, most of the rest of any vegetable matter tends to fall out, or get left behind in the combs at the end.

Here is some of the washed fleece on one of the wool combs:

There are two wool combs to a set, and here is how the fleece is combed, off of one comb and onto the other:

You do this for a while until everything is all nice and combed and ready to be pulled off (there is one step I haven't shown, called, "planking"). At that point you pull the fiber off of the combs through a small hole in a tool called a diz :

This turns the fiber into a kind of rope of aligned fiber, which is called top, or sliver:

When you roll that up into a nice little ball for storage, a tiny bit of twist goes into it, and then it's called roving. These balls of roving are ready to spin:

There is always a some stuff left behind in the combs:

It's full of things that you don't want in your yarn, like vegetable matter, tangles and lumps:

I said that as soon as I got my hands on this fleece I knew it was going to be something special. It is. It's incredibly fine and soft. I think it may even be as soft as the paco-vicuna I have. I'll compare the two when I've spun this up. I'm so excited to have a whole fleece of this stuff! And from a local farmer!

Silk, Alpaca, Reindeer Tattoos

I recently got some silk to spin. I'm planning on blending some of it with part of my nice, white, first shearing alpaca fleece I purchased last fall. I still need to sort, dehair, wash, and comb/card the fleece, but I will start attacking that project this week - along with various other fiber-related projects.

I still need to spin the fiber up and knit two pairs of texting mittens, one for my husband, and one for me. They'll be made with yak. I want to put a pattern on my pair. I don't know if I can, but I want to try to make a pattern for this design to go on the backs of my mittens:

It's one of the tattoos on the Ice Lady Mummy, found in the Eurasian Steppes. I will attemp to create the pattern with the help of the KnitPro application found here.

The whole reindeer-people culture is very interesting. Frozen mummies often have all sorts of intricate tattoos:

This book is a wonderful way to find out more about The Reindeer People.

On to the New Year!

I have so much to do, I'm glad I have a whole new year to do it in!

I've got fleeces to sort and wash and comb/card/possibly dye, and then spin. I've got several knitting projects in the queue, I've got some herbal products to make, and I've got my Etsy shop to put in order. The Esty shop is in vacation mode until Jan. 9th, but I'll probably be pushing the date back. I've got product pictures to take and descriptions to write, and other things to sort out. It all takes time.

And then there's my husbands department party, held at my house, coming up. And of course he told everyone that I went to cooking school in Paris, so they are now expecting pasrtries and croissants.

And the problem is, I'm sooo tired. I could probably sleep until the New Year is rung in. Well, it's better to be busy than not, I suppose.

I hope everyone is enjoying the afterglow of the holiday season and is looking forward to the new year. I think I'll enjoy the afterglow with one more cup of coffee, some Christmas carols, the Christmas tree lights, the dog laying nearby and a cat in my lap.

A little something to take away the humbugs.

A young girl from my nice little town, blind from birth, wrote and sings this Christmas song, Night of Our Lives:



Merry Christmas!

Texting mittens made from Yak yarn

Here are some pictures of the finished texting mittens that I knitted with handspun yak-down yarn. Yak down is the fine, fluffy undercoat on a yak that keeps it warm in the frigid winters of places like Tibet.

These are natural colors, a brown and a gray. I made them for my son, but I almost kept them for myself, they're sooo warm and cushy and soft. Here are the palms:

And the backs:

Here is my son modeling them with the tops flipped off:

And back on:

I used a modified version of the pattern found in the Fall 2010 issue of Spin Off magazine.

Notre Dame at night

Here is a picture of Notre Dame in Paris under a full moon and with a Christmas tree.

A couple of pictures

Here are some pictures from Paris! By Notre Dame, cooking school (an anniversary gift from my husband), and holiday decor around Montmartre.