More wool washing

I did some more wool washing today. It was actually the same wool I had washed yesterday, but I had stacked them too deep so not everything got washed the first time. First I laid out the locks on the netting and safety pinned them closed.

A shot of them soaking in the castille soap bath in the sink. I did two soap baths and two water only baths, then squeezed them all out and laid them on the sweater drying rack in the bedroom where the fan was going full speed.

After they dried (and I took a nap), I used my flat hand carders to open up the locks a little bit before spinning. I did both ends and put them in a nice little fiber pile that is coming with me this weekend to do a test spin with it. I wasn't totally pleased with how they washed - they still feel a bit greasy to me. I might try just straight dawn instead of the castille soap next time. Now it's off to nap until Laurie gets home and we go to the airport.

Oh! - whilst writing this post, our brand newly reupholstered furniture arrived! It all looks amazing! I'll have to post pictures when I get back!

A delightful new addition

Again, I'm writing on the eve of an out of town trip. Tomorrow, Laurie and I head for Nebraska for a wedding reception of a cousin. I'm really looking forward to this trip. Rachel and Andy are taking time off work to show us around and possibly go to a pioneer museum on Friday and I really love spending time with them. We all hit it off really well a year ago, camping and I am looking forward to this visit!

In other exciting news, we purchased a new addition for the bedroom tonight on craigslist. It's a secretary that will be serving as my bedside cabinet/desk/drawers. We've been thinking for awhile about what we wanted to put there and nothing really looked good. We went to Ikea on Monday and looked around, a little while ago we had seen that they had pretty nice sized wardrobes in their kid's section but when we checked this time, the choices were pretty slim. I was really bummed, so I went a-looking on craigslist and low and behold, a beautiful secretary in just the right style popped up. We went and looked at it last night and a friend with a truck brought it home tonight. I'm loving it! It's not a huge and menacing piece of furniture, like a lot of armoire/wardrobes that are popular right now. No, we cannot fit our 46" tv in it. (Not that we have one...) But it is perfect, the top cabinet has a little light and the glass doors lock with a skeleton key. The key also opens the desk, which has all sorts of little nooks. And the key locks the dresser drawers! I love the drawer pulls on the drawers, too. I've always dreamed about having a lockable cabinet like this (since oh maybe childhood) and I'm very happy. So here are the pictures:

My spinning is going well, I'm finally mastering the "long draw" technique that I've been practicing. This yarn isn't going to be particularly even but I am enjoying spinning it. I have 2 more russian spindles coming in the mail soon. I have been hoping that they will come before we leave tomorrow but I'm not sure if they will. I got some camel down to try them out on (more long draw practice). I'm almost to the plying part of spinning the silk for the last expressions in spinning gathering, I'll be excited to see it finished. Today, I also did some wool washing of the fleece. I didn't wash much (and I hope it will dry so I can take it with me tomorrow) but I'm looking forward to trying to spin it! I didn't realize just how dirty that wool was. Anyways, tonight's a busy night - still have packing and cleaning to do - so I better get back to that :).

Little bit of spinning

A week ago, the last friday of September, we had another expressions in spinning group. This time the choice of inspiration was music. The song that got picked was "Dancing Queen" by Abba. After liking the alpaca so much, I was looking for the appropriate color for my yarn and ended up getting some yak and not alpaca. I also got some sari silk to card together with the yak. Trying to spin the yak on my lightest suspended spindle caused much frustration and loss of good fiber and general unhappiness. Yak is a very short fiber, like cashmere and angora, and I wasn't able to get enough twist in fast enough to keep it from breaking every time I tried to have it bear the spindle's weight. A quick search on Ravelry revealed that if I wanted to spin the yak without dropping my spindle every 5 seconds, I needed a different sort of spindle - a supported spindle. A supported spindle spins in a little bowl or hard surface and the fiber never has to bear it's weight. So I got a new spindle in the mail last friday and I've been test driving it with some merino out of Laurie's stash. I am not over the moon about it's color but it's working well for practice. Not only am I learning the ropes of a new spindle, I'm trying to learn a new drafting technique - long draw. From what I've read, it's the best way to spin really short fibers. It's been fun weekend, practicing these new things. I'm still a little scared to actually try spinning the yak right now, so more practice is in order. From some work I did for my mom, she is being very generous and two new russian support spindles are being made for me. I love spinning lace weight yarn and these support spindles are the best way to do that :). The pictures are of the support spindle that came last friday and the little bit of usable yarn that came of my disastrous attempt and spinning the yak on my suspended spindle, as well as a picture of the yak fiber I have. It's so soft, I'm hoping I will have enough to make a small shawl.

A long parade

It seems like we have been busy every weekend for awhile, and that's not about to let up any. Last weekend, after recovering from Seattle all week, Laurie's parents flew in for a weekend visit. We had discussed what exactly we wanted to work on while Dave and Nancy were here, as we have so many projects vying for our attention in the new house. We thought that having the goal of building something to hang the porch swing on seemed reasonable to accomplish in 3 days (Laurie took friday off). Well, they worked really hard and finished way more than we could have hoped for - and only 2 trips to Lowe's! We now have lights and outlets in the master bedroom closets, the front door lock is working more efficiently, the ramp to the front door is now slipped into the door threshold to keep it from moving, we have a light in the backyard that we can turn on from inside the house, our washer tubing ? was replaced with stainless steel piping, AND the porch swing is up and working. Now, I think I've forgotten several things, but as you can see, a LOT got done in such a short time. I was even able to make myself helpful. It's so nice to live in a place where I can help cook meals and clear dishes, and just generally take care of myself. This house is by far the most accessible place that we've ever lived and I'm definitely enjoying it. Over all, it was a great visit. The only thing that was a little sad was that they didn't get to see our new upholstered furniture because it's not come back from the upholsterer yet. To add to the parade of very busy weekends, Laurie's grandparents will be coming to stay with us for 3 days on Friday. They are motorcycling in and this will be the first time that they've stayed with us. We also have Sara's wedding reception, the southwest fiber festival and a bunch of other fun filled weekends ahead of us, in October. Lots of fun to look forward to!

The real pictures

Laurie finally did give me the "real" pictures from our trip to Seattle, she's been bugging me to post them since I got them downloaded to my computer (although they are posted on facebook).

Our trip in a nutshell:

We arrived on Thursday pretty close to midnight, so we slept in on Friday. Both Laurie's brother and sister-in-law had to work so we took the bus into downtown Seattle for the day. We did Pike's place market and ate lunch there. I ate a peanut butter, banana and hot fudge sandwich which Laurie took pictures of - it was delicious! After wandering around for awhile, we took the bus into the U district to a yarn/fiber/weaving store there. While we were waiting for the bus, we saw someone get hit by a bus. Pretty random - it wasn't the bus driver's fault, it was an older woman with a walker who got hit. She was trying to bang on the back door of the bus after it was pulling away. Not a very smart thing to do. There were tons of people waiting for the buses, so we didn't get involved. I've already posted what we got from the yarn store, so I'll skip that... We met Matt and Monica for dinner at a Argentine restaurant and had some yummy south american food... Monica was a little disappointed by the food and we ducked out just as they started the tango portion of the entertainment there.

Saturday, we did the Puyallup Fair, which was a lot of fun :). We spent a lot of time looking for fiber but we did do other things! I got to pet a baby alpaca and Matt and Monica took an old western photo at one of the booths. We also looked at the quilts and knitting competitions and were a bit disappointed with the llama obstacle course. We ate all the traditional fair foods - cotton candy, candy apples, hot dogs, etc. (We were so ready to have real food when we went home!) The last thing we did was ride the ferris wheel, they let us push the wheelchair up the exit so I could get on. Monica wasn't too keen on the height and it went pretty fast for a ferris wheel. It was awesome though, we hadn't been on a ferris wheel since germany.

Sunday, we met up with one of their friends, David, and went out to Mount Rainier national park. We had a nice picnic lunch and they went for a little hike while I napped in the car. We did dinner at a good seafood place by Matt and Monica's house and watched Amelie pretty late. (Well, I didn't watch the movie - I was way too exhausted.) We flew home early Monday morning. It took me pretty much all week to catch up on sleep after we got home. It was pretty exhausting for me and I really pushed it to do the things that I wanted.

Laurie's parents arrived here on Thursday night and have been helping us out with projects around the house. So I have lots to catch you up on still... But it's pretty close to nap time so I think I'll leave that for tomorrow. :)

Loot from the weekend in Seattle

Well, I was going to post a bunch of pictures about our trip to Seattle to see Laurie's brother and sister-in-law, but Laurie stole all of the pictures we took off of the memory card before she gave it to me so I can't do that right now. :( Instead, I have pictures of the yarn/fiber/spindles that came home with us! (Which is just as entertaining to me!) Without giving too much info on exactly what we did, I don't want to repeat stuff with the pictures of us later, I can tell you that we went to one yarn shop in Seattle and went to the Puyallup Fair, which had an artist in action store (one of the arts was spinning...) Let the pictures begin!

This is the KCL Woods spindle my mom bought me, she came in the mail the day we left for Seattle, I'm looking forward to trying her out tonight. 1.4 oz cherry whorl and bloodwood shaft with carved shell inlay - I love her, so beautiful!

We found these perfect spindle bags at Pike's Place Market. (The one in the back was a must have - with the bandaids and Rx bottles :) )

The next couple of things we got in the yarn store in Seattle, The Weaving Works. 1 oz white angora.

2 skeins handspun BFL - I'm blanking on the colorway.

3 buttons for my sister's cowl, when it is finished. They are very cool, they change color from green to pink in different light.

1.2 oz Paela spindle made by True Creations. (This is resting on something very important that I'm super excited about and will talk about in a bit...)

This pic starts the fiber we bought at the Puyallup Fair. A "Tussah silk top sample pack" including 1/2 oz skeins of tussah, honey tussah, brown cashmere/tussah, white yak/tussah, baby camel/tussah.

My new pride and joy... a Romney lamb fleece!!! 6 pounds of unwashed but very clean fleece, all ready to be washed up and spun! It's my first fleece, and Laurie is planning to spin up some of it too but I'm sooooooo excited about it! I carried it around the fair in a garbage bag all day (after a very long hunt for fiber...) and had no trouble bringing it back on the plane!

Here is just one lock of the fleece. It's a beautiful brown and will probably spin up darker than that. We got a whole lesson on how to prepare the fleece to spin and I can't wait. Obviously, 6 lbs is a lot of fiber, but I couldn't get a good picture of how much there is! It will last me quite a bit of time! We were also told that it is a very good fleece, not only because it is so clean, but the strength of the locks and crimp is really good quality as well. When I say "clean" I mean that there's almost no vegetable matter, poop, or other things the sheep might have rolled in during it's lifetime. But, it still needs to be washed so all of the grease comes out of it. Right now, it smells like a barn when you get close to that bag, but I'm very much enjoying it and can't wait to be spinning it. Well, I'm supposed to be napping and I'm so exhausted from our trip I'll probably sleep all week until Laurie's parents get here on Thursday. So back to bed for me!

A new post

I haven't posted in awhile, so I have a bit of catching up to do... Laurie and I are leaving for Seattle tonight to visit her brother and sister-in-law. It's kind of funny because my sister who lives in Seattle is in Chandler right now. I'm excited about the trip! Hopefully, the weather will be nice and cool and it won't rain (ok - hopefully it won't rain too much). I think we might go to see Mt. Rainier, Laurie's never been. Also, we are going to a little sheep farm outside of Seattle and on the way to Mt. Rainier. It will be lots of fun and very cool fiber-wise.

I've started spinning the tussah silk that I got with my last expressions in spinning gathering. It represents the pearls in her hair. I'm hoping to make a beautiful lacy headband with it or see how much yardage I get and maybe make a silk handkerchief, we'll see. It's lots of fun to spin :).

I also finally started Matt and Monica's wedding gift, a hand knitted throw in green. It's a vintage pattern so it's a little hard to read, there are different abbreviations for stitches that are old school. I'm hoping the 3 inches of moss stitch goes quickly because it's rather boring. But it is a good mindless project as a break from the socks I'm working on. And once I start the "real" pattern it will be a fun and beautiful project. I hope they like it!

In other news, I saw the geneticist yesterday. I had hoped for a definitive yes or no on the MEN 1 thing, but nope. The testing is not completely accurate in all cases. Although the test came back normal, there is still a 25% chance that I have it. The geneticist thinks they should treat me like I have it, because I have all the clinical symptoms and with the family history there is a pretty big likelihood that I have it. She recommended I come back in 5 years to be retested, because the field of genetics is growing so much that in a short period of time, they might find all the genes involved. Oh well, it would have been so nice to have that yes but on we go :).

When I get back from Seattle, I promise some new pictures... I finished the merino/alpaca blend that I was working on and Laurie liked it so much that we bought more of those fibers and I'm going to spin enough to make her a pair of leg warmers. I also have a new spindle in the mail (oh how I want it to come today). We're going to the Southwest fiber festival in october and I'm signed up for a joy of spindle spinning class that I'm also looking forward to. Well, I better go check that I'm all packed for the trip - I wouldn't want to forget my fibery projects, if I did I'd be very sad...