This, that and the other thing

Lake Lure NC

This past weekend, my husband and I took a trip to the mountains of western North Carolina, where we used to live.  I was extremely excited to go, because it meant a trip to Asheville to my favorite fiber store, Earth Guild.
My husband and our friend Gary write songs together, and have done so for many years.  Their partnership has landed a platinum record, and many years of supplemental income. In the last several years they have worked together to write an album full of songs which they recorded.

Jamie and Gary leading worship

This weekend they performed the songs, and a few others at a couple of churches in NC.  It was a sweet weekend seeing old friends and enjoying some of the most beautiful scenery in the nation, the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Balcony view of Bald Mountain

Saturday was my day to go to Earth Guild in Asheville, with my dear friends Midge and Gary's wife Debra.
Midge always makes me feel like I'm fifteen, whenever I'm around her.  She's the kind of girl who says what's on her mind, and makes me do the same thing, whether I mean to or not. Lovely Debra got caught up in the whirlwind of girl-talk, telling a whopper of a story that I'd never heard before. I really didn't believe it until her husband, Gary confirmed the story.   Midge, Debra and I walked the streets and enjoyed the light snow, smiling, laughing, and snapping pictures. 

Bamboo Fiber

I bought the dye I expected to buy at the fiber store, as well as a bobbin for my spinning wheel, some bamboo fiber, a diz, and elastic thread for sock knitting reinforcement.

 A lady who does all the fiber dyeing for the store offered me an assortment of jars to use for mixing colors.  I wish I knew her name to thank her - what a sweet and generous gift. And Midge bought a DVD on how to knit, and some yarn to get started!! Woo hoo, I multiplied myself!  Debra's also a knitter and she picked up some novelty yarn and origami paper for her grandson.

Debra and Midge in front of Mayfel's

We ate lunch at a place called Mayfel's where I had the grilled cheese. Yum. And I found another yarn store as we were walking back to the parking garage!

Purls Emporium

I listened to quite a bit more of my audio book, and knitted on the second little walnut sock. Its almost done and I will jump right in on the second purple sock as soon as I'm finished.   Socks go slow, and I'm remembering why I don't knit socks more.  They just take so darned long!

Eutychus Cocoon

SPINNING
A while back I bought a little bag of silk cocoons, de-gummed and ready for spinning.  Only I assumed that I needed to draft them like I would have done for silk hankies.

Silk cocoons, worms removed and degummed

  I assumed I needed then, to do something with the spider web of silk that was floating around in the air, catching on everything including my clothes. It needed to be wound on something like a stick.  Pre-drafting the silk creates a mess; silk is so light that it literally floats in the air.

At the time I bought the cocoons, I dyed some of them, and then pre-drafted them, and then spun some, while wrapping the rest on whatever I could find to wrap them on. But I just knew there was a better way.

I knew that this seemed to be the long way home, and I really wanted a shortcut.  Surely there was a a right way to spin from cocoons.  Interestingly enough (you are interested, aren't you?) I could only find a single PDF tutorial online about spinning straight from cocoons.  But when I found it, I felt like my little bag of silk had been raised from the dead, like Eutychus in the Bible!!  Finally, the right way to use these beautiful leftovers from nature. 

So yesterday morning, and throughout the day, I spun and spun silk cocoons on this tiny little spindle.  I get more compliments on my spun silk than on any wool or other fiber, so its encouraging to find another way to process it.
Its probably the most beautiful fiber in the world. Maybe not the most useful, or the warmest, but really, truly beautiful!

Blue silk dyed in the microwave with food coloring

READING
I got a new audio book yesterday called Hallucinations, and it is fascinating!  While we automatically assume they are connected to mental illness, we can at least admit to having seen a puddle of water on a stretch of pavement, only to find its not real.  We all hallucinate, from time to time, and its way more common than we realize, whether something we hear, feel, see or smell.  Really like this book and the narrator makes this almost-textbook come to life. (Did someone say Eutychus?)

PERSONAL
On Sunday we all went to lunch at a local pizza parlor, to celebrate a my daughter's birthday.  She is a doll, and I just love to be with her. 

Betsy's turning 25!

The weather was beautiful and sunny and we checked out a gardening shop, from which my daughter and son in law had bought me a gift certificate.  What a great sensory experience!
Great herbal smells, little bars of soap, potpourri, plants and what-nots.  I bought this to keep on my desk, and it reminds me of the delicate nature of life.

Wee little bird!

  

Get It Together!

PERSONAL
So yesterday we were expecting to babysit our little granddaughter for a couple of hours, and for me that meant straightening up.  It meant putting out the mulch we bought the other day, in the front flower bed and mulching around the two builder-installed Bradford pear trees by the driveway.  It meant sweeping, or better yet, shop-vacuuming the garage.

I like to vacuum because then I can't hear the voices.

 After months of winter with the garage door closed,  a few inches of dust and fuzzy things had accumulated on the garage floor.  With the garage door opened, it was obvious that I am blind.  Blind as a bat!  Good grief, I was embarrassed at what I found.  Sorry folks, I know now what I disappointment I've been.  My sincerest apologies. The garage floor is now somewhat cleaner than before. :-(

Anyway, baby girl came and went, and I had some more good memories to deposit in my mental bank.  She now has discovered that when she makes her pterodactyl sound, and when we put a finger over her little lips, she can make all sorts of fun sounds. I laughed till tears ran from my eyes!  She is a true joy to have around, and  lights up the house when she's here.

KNITTING
Well, its that time.  Time to start the the decreases for the toe of this little ripple sock.  I'm flat out ready to start the next one.  Not even kidding.

Time to start the toe decreases

The cuff has begun with the little Walnut sock #2.  Love these bamboo needles and love the yarn.  Again, not even kidding.

Second Walnut sock started

SPINNING
We're taking a trip to NC next weekend and I am SUPER excited that I'll be going to Earth Guild next Saturday.  This is the store where I learned to love spinning wheels, and where I learned to knit socks, and where I nearly got hit by a bus.  (Okay, the bus part is a bit of a stretch, but there was a runaway bus on the street, the last time we were there!) I plan to buy another bobbin for my spinning wheel, because I only have three, and that means I can't ply three strands into one unless I Navajo ply. 
I also will probably some wool roving or possibly dye.  Okay, probably dye.  Okay, definitely I'm going to buy some dye.  

Banjo

After a lovely, cool, sunny, windy day, I curled up on the couch to watch the last episode of Downton and I won't spoil it.  I will say though, again, how much I love this show.  It is beautiful, elegant, classy and real.  Well done, Downton, and you slay me yet again!

Downton Castle

SPINNING
The cashmere I bought is completely spun (all on my new Bosworth spindle) and plied on my wheel.  It is the softest yarn I've ever spun, and truly lives up to its reputation.  If you're a spinner and have never tried cashmere, I highly recommend it.  Worth every penny!

BANJO cashmere

I like the natural color and I'm going to call it Banjo! 

I started spinning the pure white angora on the same spindle, once I had it emptied.  Again, a pure, soft experience in spinning.  Very much an exotic fiber, and meant to wear close to the skin.

Pure White Angora

GARDENING
Today I bought my seeds for the garden, and scored on the selection.  I think Home Depot had just put them all out, because every single variety was there to be had!

Dreaming of Spring

Hopefully tomorrow I'll get out in the dirt for a while and at least plant some lettuce and kale.  I'm ready to be outside again! And I want to spruce up the front yard and beds before Easter.  I am imagining my our first Easter egg hunt, at least for Instagram purposes!

Grand Central

PERSONAL
In the middle of every home is a kitchen where people congregate and bump into one another.  It is sometimes a pain, other times a blessing to bump into each other.  What we really need to remember is that it is a privilege and a blessing to 1) have someone to bump into and 2) have someplace to bump into other people/pets.

Julia Child in the kitchen

I was blessed to be a part of a team helping a lady and her daughter move yesterday, and I noticed these 2 things.  Its a good thing to have companions around, either visiting or permanently. And its a wonderful thing to have a place like a kitchen where you get to heat up a cup of tea or coffee, pour a bowl of cereal and put away a few groceries.  Sometimes we take these important elements of civilization for granted.   Take a minute if you will, and thank the Lord for providing these things, if you have them!!  Many do not!

SPINNING
While it would be great to spin for hours at a time, I'm content lately to just spin and card whenever I get a minute.  Here's what's happening lately:

Wool/Angora blend

This is wool and angora blended roughly and spun with a little umph and left a little knobby.  Its 3ply and soft as all get out.  LOVE it!  By the way, Happy Valentines Day, a few days late!

There's still a lot of wool  left in my stash in the garage, to card and spin, and I'd really love to spin it all this year.  I kind of doubt that I will reach that goal at this point, but I'm still gonna try. 

What you can't see in the basket above is the rest of what I carded for this batch.  I'll probably get about 5 skeins at least from this blend, meaning about 3 more.
Can I tell you how I figured this out?  In a very low tech way, I paper clipped all the un-spun wool/angora blend in a large baggie to one end of a knitting needle, then paper clipped those two skeins to the other end of the needle and made a make shift scale.  The bag of wool was much heavier so....do the math.  Roughly.

KNITTING
When I started the Walnut Socks, I also started this pair of socks.

I've been carrying them with me everywhere.  Lots of fun to knit with a little ripple pattern at the top.

These have a slip stitch heel, which looks amazing great.  The yarn seems to be a cotton blend so its not very elastic, but these are footies I hope to wear in the summer, so the cotton thing is a bonus. I got the yarn from my friend Suzanne's stash months ago. 
Don't you like them already?

Walnuts and hashtags

KNITTING
The color of this yarn is pretty close to Walnut, don't ya think?  I LOVE the earthy colors and the heathered look of the yarn!
I'm almost finished with sock #1, and mostly just have to get into the decreases and close the toe.  Let me tell you, making "footies" as opposed to full blown socks is  incredible much more fun because you're in the homestretch before you know it.

Walnut sock yarn on white linen handspun, handwoven bag

Even if you've never taken anatomy in school, this next picture should be worth checking out.  Why, you ask?  To make a sock fit, certain aspects of shaping have to be present. 

First, the cuff has to have some elasticity.  Ribbing of knit 1, purl 1 gives you that in a flash. EZ.

K1 P1 ankle ribbing, with a plain heel flap

Heel shaping means more coverage going down and around the back of the heel, and less square footage on the front or top of the ankle.  This is accomplished with a heel flap, that you later decrease back to the original number of stitches that were present in the cuff ribbing.  If you care one iota about this topic, do click the link for a better visual (thanks to Lion Brand Yarn).

Thankful for these metal sock shaping forms!

The foot portion is usually loose, when I make socks, so I decided to add ribbing in the last portion to snug it up a bit! I'm having fun, in case you didn't notice.  :-)

READING
I haven't read a bit of my novel, since my last post.  #fail  

SPINNING
Working on all the same stuff, so no news is just that. No news.

PERSONAL
I went to the dentist this week, to fix a broken tooth.  Well, actually the dentist did the fixing, while I sat back in the chair trying to answer the dentist's questions about spinning while he and the assistant vacuumed and drilled the daylights out of a tooth three-quarters of a mile down my throat. Gee!
He did a fine job, though, and my husband had a similar procedure done as well.
I left the office rubbing my jaw and sipping water that drizzled down my face. #awkward
But, I am so thankful for my teeth!  While no one ever sees those teeth in the back, they are so important when I eat.  When I want to chew my favorite foods, they are there like soldiers, ready for action! Weapons of minimum destruction.

No Strings Attached

Its cold outside, though sunny, and that's awesome. Sunny and cold is way better than wet, cloudy, with a 30% chance of gray-all-day.  Give me sunshine, Mr. Weatherman, and you can keep your job!

KNITTING
After posting all my needles on Ravelry, I discovered I had some cool little needles that I never use.  Needles that are great for socks, cause they're super small. Sizes are from 2 down to 000. That's small!

Ravelry online chart to keep track of knitting needles

And I've been playing with my yarn stash, trying to find inspiration. Time to put those needles to work, busting my ever aging stash of yarn.  

Size 2 Knitters Pride DPNs and some homespun Shetland wool

Home spun yarn with label courtesy of a brown paper bag!

 Casting on a couple of pairs of footie socks, using a couple of different patterns and a calculator to fill in the gaps.  (Why does knitting always involve math?) 
I believe this is 56 stitches, which is divisible by 8 and 4. Great numbers for sock knitting!

This project is getting around lately, mostly because it is so portable, and doable in the car.  I can't really knit while driving, but its a blast to knit as a passenger.  It makes the drive something to look forward to, and keeps me optimistic.  And it really serves the "Off the Grid" challenge for 2013.  Staying off my cell phone, and getting back to more organic things.  Even down to the label I swiped from a paper bag.

One thing that slows me down when I go to knit, is the time and effort it takes to wind a yarn hank into a center pull ball on the swift in the garage. So I took a whole bunch of hanks, wound them into balls and cut strips from brown paper bags to make labels. The yarn looks more inviting and the balls won't fall apart when I throw them into my knitting bag!

TENNESSEE WOOL COMPANY

PERSONAL
I took my project, plus one more, with me as we drove to my husband's friend's house yesterday.  It was a long drive (1 hour), and when we got there they sat me in the living room in front of the TV like a little kid  while they took care of some business.  For two hours!! I knitted and watched Katie Couric,then local news and then a German newscast on PBS (in English of course). You should see how far I got with this sock. So, so, so glad I grabbed my knitting. 
This was a real reward for having spent the morning shredding anything with numbers on it, from the file cabinet in my husband's office.  It was time to clean out, throw out and shred.  But with shredding, comes the inevitable shredder-stops-shredding moment.  Either its jammed or its overheated.  Usually the former, so I was quick to pull out the culprit; paper crammed in between the teeth of the shredder.
After a few times this did not seem to fix the problem anymore.  And since these office-y things usually have phone numbers labeled "Help line" on the bottom, I thought to myself, what could they possibly tell me to do? A reset button, maybe?  And sure enough, I found a little hole that didn't seem to have a screw in it, that looked like it might be the place where you could stick something skinny and reset the motor.  Nancy Drew, you taught me well!!  It worked!  One huge bag of shredded paper for man, one giant leap for this knitter/detective.

Spinderella

SPINNING
 This post is going to consist of spinning because that's what I've been up to. At the start of the year, I was trying to spin and ply some yarn completely on my Turkish spindle.

Turkish singles

This little skein is just a mix and match of odd balls of leftover roving, in multiple colors and types.  I was just wanting to spin without getting too involved.  Kind of like doodling with yarn.  The purple was from those mittens, the green was from the Color of Money skein, the blue is the angora below, and the yellow-gold  was from way back; featured in this post. 

plied purple and yellow

plied blue and green

I was also trying out ways to ply and combine colors randomly. These kind of look like the corrosion on a car battery terminal! Don't you think?  Weird how these things come to be.

Yarn spun and plied completely on my Turkish spindle

Another WIP is this super duper soft and squishy white angora and wool.  Spun and plied on my wheel with a large whorl.

And last but not least, the gun metal blue single, spun my new Bosworth Midi spindle, but plied on my Kromski Symphony wheel! 

One skein finished! Love this spindle

PERSONAL
Not too long ago I read on Twitter about a podcast episode that focused on the benefits of keeping a journal.  The speaker even listed 7 benefits that I link to here.  One of the things that struck me was the obvious part about clarifying and processing (the mental stuff). Of course (duh!) its so obvious because that's the point.
Keeping a journal is just that - writing down what happened, and how you or I feel about it.
Such a lost art, and I realized that even though I have a large cardboard box full of journals, I stopped journaling when I started blogging.  I think it kind of accomplishes the same benefit mentioned above, but with one major difference.  Writing in a journal is writing with no audience except yourself.  When you blog, you realize you may say things that offend (and so you don't), you may say things that offer too much information (and so you keep it to yourself), you may say things that are boring and once again, you stop right there.  What a nice memory I have of my younger years spent keeping a journal, and the fun I've had, reading over them, either mortified or cheered up when I considered the events in context and with hindsight.
I just may have to start journaling again......
Oh, and I know you've been dying to ask me about whether or not I'm keeping my nails painted. Well yes, I have, thank you very much!  But what color, you ask?  I'll never tell!

Fun with my granddaughter who really wants me to paint her nails, I just know!

Snow White

Hello February!  I can't believe another month has come and gone.  That's supposed to be a good sign, when time flies, you know.  I suppose its true that I'm enjoying the new year so far.
We had some light snow this week and in the south, it warrants a school closing so that kids have a chance to enjoy it outright during the day.  Kids in the north (of the U.S.) have lots of opportunities to play in the snow, sometimes more than they care to have.  But in the south, where I live, its pretty special and folks love to take advantage of even an inch or two, by making snowmen, snow balls and the occasional snow angel. 

SPINNING
I took advantage of the snow this week to spin a great new wool blend I made on my Fricke Petite drum carder.  Its about 30% angora and 60% lambs wool.  Light and fluffy like the snow!

I also used my spinning wheel to wind a bobbin of this Gunmetal Blue angora/wool blend from my new spindle. 

My husband called this "Gunmetal Blue"

 The spindle had become heavy with the weight of the cop of yarn, and the thread kept breaking, so I knew it was time to move it off the spindle.  I only own three bobbins, so I will need to ply it or something soon!

KNITTING
I absolutely LOVE this throw!  I love the colors, I love the size of the needle with the various yarns, and I love that its still really portable in this basket.  Perfect for knitting in the bedroom or living room while watching a TV show.

Makes me dream of the beach!

SEWING
I registered for the free sewing machine attachment class on Craftsy today.  Here is my first attempt at free hand machine embroidery.

Free hand embroidery foot - learning curve!

 One of the best tips I've heard, is from a user who recommended a home made option for lowering the feed dogs on the machine: tape a business card over them.  Wow.  What a great idea.  I can't lower my feed dogs and I don't own the attachment that covers them.  Someone online said they don't like to use that attachment anyway, and that the business card trick works just as well, if not better.