Yum!

I just ate a strawberry off of my hanging strawberry plant. Yum! The plant was a Mother's Day gift.

Pond life

Here's what the dog and I saw on our jaunt around the pond today:

A successful book signing at the indoor farmer's market

My book signing at the indoor farmer's market yesterday was fun. I brought my drop-spindle along with a finished skein of yarn to show anyone who was interested in my spinning.

I ended up selling not only several books, but my finished skein of yarn, too! I also got to eat a warm breakfast pie from the Gaelic Imports table, and I brought home some ground bison from the man who sells pasture-raised, grass-fed bison, and made a big pot of bison chili for dinner last night. Yum!

I love farmer's markets!

My latest project

I really like my new drop spindles. Here's what I'm working on now:

Cleavers tea

There's a small patch of cleavers growing along the fence in my yard. I plucked a little bit and brought it inside to make some tea with. It's one of those things that people use as a spring tonic.

I've also used it in salves to calm irritated skin; for example, it's one of the ingredients in my bug bite balm.

The roots, when you've got enough of them, can be used to dye with. They'll give you a range of reds. I've used cleavers roots to dye with and gotten a really pretty salmon color on the wool, which I spun into a pretty, salmon-colored yarn.

This little plant has a lot of uses and  these are just a few that I've touched upon.

It's easy to mistake Lady's Bedstraw for Cleavers. They look very similar and are related (they are both in the madder family). To tell the difference, all you need to do is touch the plant. If it 'cleaves to you', then it's cleavers. If it's content to let your fingers go without clinging to them, then it's lady's bedstraw.

A celebratory, half-off coupon for The Witch of Starmont!

I finally put The Witch of Starmont up at Smashwords.com, and within a couple of weeks it will also be available at Apple, Sony, Diesel, and Kobo ebook retailers.

Before now, it was availble only at Amazon and Barnes and Noble, but, as of right now, you can  purchase it through Smashwords and download versions compatible with just about any ereader device! And to celebrate, I have a half-off coupon for you to use at Smashwords!

Here is the 50%  off Smashwords coupon code for The Witch of Starmont:

DK36X

It's for use only at Smashwords, and only for The Witch of Starmont. Use it at checkout and pay only $0.99!

The coupon is good through this Sunday, April 29th, so hurry to get your half-price ebook! 



A homemade basket for washing fleece in the tub

I've been contemplating an easier way to wash raw fleece in the tub. I decided that some sort of basket would be the best thing. The fleece could be put into the basket, the basket and fleece submerged in the tub's soapy, hot water and left to soak. The basket could be lifted out of the tub to drain the dirty water and refill the tub with either more hot, soapy water, or hot, fresh rinse water, and then the basket re-submerged.

I went to the hardware store to scope out materials, and came home with a 3x15 foot roll of plastic hardware netting, the sturdy, yet still flexible kind that can wrap around tree trunks to protect them from deer, not the really flimsy netting that goes over berry bushes:

Here's the resulting basket along with the materials used to make it, netting, twine, and scissors:

 It was really easy to cut the netting to the right size and then fold the ends up to make a basket:

 The extra material at the corners was folded to the outside of the basket so that fiber wouldn't catch in the fold on the inside, and then tied in place with the twine:

I braided a length of twine and used it as handles, but I think I'll remove the handles and add loops along this edge for dowels to slide into. This will make it easier to lift the basket out of the tub to hang, resting on the dowels which will in turn rest on the edges of the tub, when changing the water in the tub:

Here is some Icelandic fleece in the basket, waiting for the tub to fill with hot, soapy water:

Here's the fleece soaking in the tub. It's so easy to place it into the water and let it soak this way. There's no agitation to felt the fibers:

I lifted the basket out and placed it on an old screen resting on the edges of the tub while I drained the filthy water and refilled for one more soapy soak. Again, very little agitation was induced:

After two soapy soakings and one rinse soak, it was easy to lift the fiber out of the tub. I let it drain overnight sitting on the old screen over the tub, and this morning it's drying outside in the sunshine:

This basket is super easy to make. The roll of plastic netting cost something like $16, and the hemp twine cost about $2. There's plenty of netting left to make more baskets, or use in the yard. If you wash raw fleeces, I'd recommend using a basket, it really makes things easy.

Deer and great expectations

Last fall I planted something like 200 bulbs in my front yard. I waited all winter, hoping that my bulbs were doing what they do to get ready for the show come spring. A few weeks ago, I was excited to see some of the plants emerging from the soil. And then the deer struck. They nibbled most of the emerging plants down to nibs, and here is an example of the results:

There have been a few survivors:

But it's nothing like the show I was hoping for:

The few that made it are very pretty, and I've been enjoying them. It's more like a display of 10, rather than 200, but I'll take what I can get:

In the back yard, the wild violets are blooming. They're some of my favorites:

My garlic is a success so far, something between 25-30 bulbs have come up from the fall planting:

And here is the first of my asparagus spears:

Over the weekend, I finally spun up some of the fiber I dyed with natural dyes a few months ago, this is roving dyed with pokeberries and marigolds, ready for spinning:

And here is a skein of yarn spun from the roving I dyed with cleavers root, it's a very pretty salmon color:

My expectations for a glorious spring floral display didn't pan out this year, but my yarns are colorful, and I'm excited about the garlic and the asparagus, and ready for the planting of everything else to begin as soon as the frosts pass.

Can you believe these gorgeous colors are from natural dyes? The yarn on the left gets its color from cleavers root, the middle gets its color from marigolds, and the right gets its hue from pokeberries:

Book Club Treats and Tomato Plants

Book club was at my house last month. I made some of the things I learned how to make in my cooking school classes last December for refreshments:

My husband surprised me with the classes as an anniversary present.

Mmmm... chocolate croissants.....

And in other news, the tomatoes I started back in February are going gangbusters under the grow lights in the basement:

I'm hoping to till the garden plots in my yard sometime this week. The community plots have already been tilled, but I'll have to till my plots (I'll have two community plots this year) again when the gardens open in order to work in the soil amendments I have planned.

My new drop spindles

I recently purchased a top-whorl spindle and a bottom-whorl spindle from this shop on Etsy. They came in the mail very quickly, and over the weekend I played around with them. I've never spun with drop spindles before, but it wasn't hard to get the hang of it.

I ended up spinning about 1.5 ounces of fiber onto each spindle. The white fiber on the top-whorl spindle below is Bluefaced Leicester, and the red fiber on the bottom-whorl spindle is merino (you can view larger versions of the pictures by clicking on them):

Once I had spun the fiber up, I decided to ply it right from the spindles, using my spinning wheel (I have a Kromski Fantasia). Here's my set-up for plying:

I'm not finished plying yet, but here's what's on the bobbin already:

I call it Candy Cane yarn. I've made it before with my wheel. I really like it. I made a pair of mittens with it that look like crushed peppermint, and I sold a kit with enough yarn and a pattern for the mittens. It's really soft and yummy yarn.

Spinning with the drop spindles is a little addictive. I really like it, and as of right now, I don't have a preference between the top- and the bottom-whorl types. Spinning with a wheel is faster, but there's something really satisfying about the drop spindle. I'm looking forward to using them lots more in the future.

If you'd like to try spinning with drop spindles, I'd recommend the shop I've linked to above, and I'd recommend this book, by Priscilla A. Gibson-Roberts:

It deals mostly with the top-whorl spindle, but you'll pick up how to use the bottom-whorl as well. It recommended adding notches to your top whorl spindle if it doesn't already have them. Mine did not have notches and I did add one. I'll probably add at least one more. The notches really help keep the yarn in place, which is important as the amount of yarn wound around the spindle starts to become substantial.

Happy spinning!

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!