One Crazy Fiber Lady

This is a hard post for me to write. I’ve struggled for several hours now to write this. Partly because the longer the gap since the last post, the more that has happened that needs/should be included. But mostly because this year was one of loss and significant change. I lost my best friend in July, which had rocked the foundation of my world on many fronts. Ten days later I lost job as a management change was implemented.

If I where to be truly honest there have been gains in my loss. Not commuting to Maryland any longer has allowed me to be home and spend more time with my family. I’ve reconnected with my children in a beautiful way. I’ve found that Kathryn is a beautiful person inside and out.

She’s been a monumental support for me and makes me extremely proud as a mother of the person she is. Thank you Kat. I love you more than I can say.

Another gain had been discovering all the other wonderful people who have supported and consoled me. I found I have a much larger community around me than I thought I did. Thank you all.

I’ve also reconnected with my love of the fiber arts and they’ve been greatly therapeutic. I finally started using the Schacht Baby Wolf that I bought in 2010 and rediscovered the beauty that is weaving.

So much so that I decided that I needed a bigger loom and added an 8H Mighty Wolf.

I’ve pushed past my comfort zone of simple tabby and twill scarves that I made in the first phases (years) of weaving. Currently both looms are dressed and have ongoing projects.

The baby has a tencel scarf underway. While the mighty has a tea towel and napkin project that marks my longest and wisest project ever.

Spinning has also played a part, though I haven’t done it much since spending so much time with the wolf pack. It began with finishing yarn I had started on the wheel I kept in Rockville and had earmarked to knit Art a pair of socks.

It hurts that I can’t finish them for him so I’m making myself a very special pair.

And because I don’t have enough projects going I started something I’ve always wanted to do, knit an Orenburg style item. I bought the yarn at Rhinebeck and have been waiting for the new issue of spin off to come out with the pattern. It’s out now and I cast on for it yesterday.

All told I’d rather be in Philadelphia as the saying goes. I’m trying to be grateful and positive as I say a good riddance to the awful year that was 2019 and head into 2020. I want to believe that it will be a better year, but it can be a struggle.

Taking it moment by moment.

Happy New Year.

It feels good to be blogging again, though I don’t know how many readers are still out there :/

I spent the last of the time off before returning to work taking time to enjoy my spinning wheels. Yes, I used more than one of them. I finished up spinning that really pretty blue/green fiber that I showed in my last post on the Pegasus. Using the slowest ratio (12:1), I split the fiber in half and spun a thin single onto two bobbins.

I got scientific halfway through the second bobbin and weighed the first bobbin, weighed the second bobbin, weighed the remaining fiber, weighed an empty bobbin, did the maths and figured out which bobbin needed how much more fiber until it hit halfway.

When done, I set about plying it on the Golding, using the same ratio (turns out it’s middle ratio is 12:1) and the jumbo flyer…

When done, I wound it off.  I now have 520 yards / 4oz of Merino/Silk to play with.  Should be able to get a decent little shawl out of it.  Might actually knit another Simple Yet Effective Shawl with this.

One 4oz bag of fiber down.  Pounds and pounds to go 😉  I figure between being in the two fiber clubs (ITW and Spunky) I need to spin a tad more every month to keep my head above water and I drown in the accumulating stash.  We won’t talk about the sock yarn clubs I’m in.  Sigh.  To that end, off to spin a bit before bed!

Craft on!

And so starts another year.  We spent a quiet night at home with sparkling cider and appetizers while watching various tv shows. I actually made it to midnight, which isn’t the guarantee that it used to be.

Yesterday was a mix of old and new. We spent the morning alternating between marathons of The Honeymooners and The Odd Couple.  I took the twins to the 1pm showing of Star Wars. We liked it. Might not have been overly original but it was good. It was worlds better than any of the three prequels. It was like visiting with old friends. Looking forward to seeing episode 8 to confirm my suspicions.

My current knitting projects are finally reduced to two active ones. I have a pair of socks that I work on while out and about. Used to be the train knitting but now that I hitch a ride to and from work, they are now car knitting as long as it is light enough to see :). The home project is Minetta in yummy MadTosh.

I’ve got two more repeats of the decrease section left. While the cables don’t exactly pop I don’t think that they are completely lost in the colors.

I’ve also been spinning.

This pretty stuff is on the Pegasus. I’ve forgotten how very fast that wheel is.

This is using the largest whorl. Just looked up the ratios, 12:1, 18:1, 24:1. Guess I won’t be getting a worsted weight yarn off this thing with less than a billionty plies 🙂

I’m going to sit with my coffee and the Soap marathon on IFC and work on Minetta while I wait for the rest of the family to awaken. My 6:45 AM weekday departure time means that I get up early over the weekends too. I call it my me time.

Happy New Year

Craft on!

Lets pretend that my last post wasn’t in May of this year. I won’t even attempt to cover all the things that have happened since. Suffice it to say that it has been an interesting year.

I finished a project that I started no too terribly long ago. It started with the acquisition of a new wheel on Columbus Day weekend. I went to a spin in that weekend at the Golding’s farm and studio up in Vermont, where I tried out a new style of their portable wheel. I loved it so much that I brought it home. Meet Golding Gossamer, signed #1 by Seth. A sweet little wheel.

Here she is sitting between her bigger sister and my Matchless.

She is indeed a tiny little thing.  Unlike the previous portable style, this one isn’t foldable, though the flyer head is removable.  Since she isn’t an accelerator wheel like her predecessor, she isn’t quite as fast, but I don’t really notice as I can spin fine on just about anything.  She shares the same bobbins and flyers as her bigger sister and since I have the jumbo and regular flyers for the full sized, I opted for the lace flyer and bobbins for this one as the second.

My first project was a batt of Falkland wool that I got from my favorite crack vendor,  ITW, at I think Rhinebeck this year.  I spun the batt onto two bobbins after splitting it in half, maintaining the colors.  I then plied both bobbins together to get a fingering weight yarn that was just squooshy and divine.

I never measured the yardage but figured it was enough for a smallish shawl so I got busy as soon as the yarn was dry.

I cast on over Thanksgiving weekend, took it on my trip to Texas and finished it up today.

Project details are here on Ravelry.

On another note, the blog is back on WordPress and actually at a new (old) hosting provider.  I moved it all today and migrated back to the old WordPress platform.  We’ll call the last year a failed experiment and I’m gonna blame it for the lack of posting 😉

Craft on!

Having now spent a couple of nights with the new Lendrum, I can truly say that I’m really happy I picked it up.  I really did miss having one in the stable and with her multiple ratios and flyer options, she’s far more versatile than any of the other portable wheels I’ve been playing with in my quest for the holy grail.  Of course, this wheel is bigger and heavier than most of the other options, but with the carry bag might just do the trick.  I happen to have the carry bag since I bought it for the Wee Robin (which will probably be looking for a new home shortly).  While the super fast flyer would be a nifty addition, I don’t know if I really need it, but then I didn’t need the Lendrum at all 😉  I finished up the first bobbin of the mystery purple bonus wool last night.

Does how I packed this bobbin bother anyone?

I realized that I never posted my favorite calendar picture from April.  This made me smile every time I saw it, and I saw it a lot as the calendar hangs on the wall in my bathroom 🙂  It was the reason I bought this calendar at all.

Craft on!

Kat and I went for the annual spring pilgrimage to the festival in Maryland.  As is par for the course, there is absolutely no photographic evidence of the trip, other than a couple of the acquisitions and assorted miscellaneous.  No pictures of sheep, or vendors, or even massive crowd shots.  Not like that’s a change of behavoir for me.  Can’t remember the last time I came back from a festival with loads of festival pictures for everyone.  We’ll get by.  K?

Anyway, Ms. Kat and I have developed the Saturday crowd coping mechanism of attending the used equipment auction.  Last year, I got a little sunburned, so this year, I made sure to remember to pack sunscreen.

Next year, I’ll try to remember to actually apply it.  That white stripe is where my fitbit charge sat during the auction.  At least I remembered to use my facial moisturizer that has sunscreen in it.  No facial burns this year.  Yay me.  We’ll ignore that both arms look like this, as well as my knees because I was wearing shorts.  Heh.

I discovered a safety feature in my car.  At the 4 hour or so mark, it popped a warning up on the dashboard:

Nice eh?  I hit the OK button and continued driving 🙂   And yes it was 83F on Sunday during the drive home.  The weather was gorgeous for the whole weekend!  It was really nice to be outside and enjoying the sunny instead of instead tanning by light of CRT.. or LCD screen these days.

Acquisitions you ask?  Yes.  There were a few.  We were rather restrained this year as the stash is beyond SABLE at this point, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t do our part for the economy.  Kat and I each got two spindles from the Bosworths, a couple of batts from Cris/ITW and some other assorted things.  The bigger purchase was something that I’ve had before and have really missed.

Yup.  A new Lendrum Upright has joined the herd.  I got the complete this time.  It came with that big ball of purple wool blend that Kat picked out.  I started spinning it up last night.

I should have a nice worsted weight three ply out of this, with enough yardage to make the little (not so little) miss a sweater.  I might be on the prowl for a super fast flyer for the wheel.  I didn’t even know he made them, color me surprised when I discovered them!

Yesterday I introduced one of the new spindles, a Bosworth Baby Moosie (have the details at home but its somewhere around 20g), to the commute.  Did some spinning at lunch and on the train last night before it pulled out of the station.  The fiber is some alpaca/silk (70/30) that I picked up from Gale’s Art at the festival.

Craft on!

With the ankle being what it is, I’ve had more sitting around time than I’m normally used to.  It is getting better and I managed to commute into the office this morning without too much of a problem.  I am sore though and halfway from the ferry thought it had been a bad idea to even try it.  Sitting down now, it is much happier.  It will be even better when the ibuprofen, which I meant to take before I left the house but didn’t, kicks in. 

Anyway!  I finally finished that pair of socks.  It is safe to say, that was my last pair of two-at-a-time-afterthought-heel socks.  I didn’t like the afterthought business, nor was I very happy with the two at a time.  Might be why it took me so darned long to finish them. 

The yarn, as it almost always is, is from itw.  The Rav project details are here.

Along the finishing line, I also *finally* wove in the ends on the last pair of socks.  These go back a long ways.  Didn’t realize they were sitting around waiting for that. 

These babies are for Miss Kat.  And yes, as soon as I was done with my socks, I took care of hers. This meant that it was time for new socks!

I haven’t knit with my own handspun in a while, it was time.  I recently posted this yarn as I spun it.. The fiber was spun and plied on my Hansen.  I did it a true 3-ply.

For the curious, this is the fiber info:

All wound up and sock started:

Why yes, one at a time 🙂  Here it is this morning on the train:

Love it!  As of getting off the ferry this morning, I am ready to start the heel.  Which I didn’t do this evening.  Tomorrow is another day.

I also finished up another project that has been hanging about.  The knitting has been done a while, I wove in the ends. All that remains is a good soak.  Qualifies as finished in my book 🙂

This was my second Emergency Landing, and probably not my last. It’s a nifty little sweater and I’m quite pleased with how it came out.

Not to be done there, I also plied more yarn.  This final batch is 4oz braid of ITW in Inara, Polwarth/Mulberry silk.  I spun it on the Pegasus and n-plied on the Hansen.  It shall become socks.  Maybe.

And on that note, I’m tired and sore.  Going to enjoy watching pre-season baseball and call it an early night.

I’m totally enjoying my time off.  I definitely needed this week to do nothing, nothing work related anyway.  I’ve had social and fiber time for sure.

Monday I met Deb for lunch and knitting!  Managed to make a deal of progress on my handspun Caramel:

I’m about a centimeter or two from starting the ribbing at the bottom.  Maybe today, or not.  Doing a bit of running around today, unlike yesterday when I didn’t leave the house!  I was busy bonding with Pegasus.  She has sealed bearings on the bobbins like the Golding (and the Sabrina which has since moved along)..

I love the sealed bearings.  No need for greasing the shaft of the flyer.  No gunk on the hands when changing bobbins.  Smart engineering.

So what am I spinning on this?  A Loop batt that I picked up at MDSW.  Yes, this year.

Fiber is merino, bamboo, tussah and angelina in the Lights Out colorway for a total of 40z.   Yesterday morning I finished the first two ounces:

and went to work on the second 2.  I finished it last night.

I foresee plying in my near future!  Production wheel indeed!  Oh yes, I do like this wheel.

Off to get a pedicure!  Craft on!

So much for more regular postings 😉  My bad.  I’m finding that the stuff I used to blog are now quick status updates on Facebook.   Which makes it sort of weird as the people who wouldn’t be reading this blog are technically reading it.  There might be less postings about knitting there, but then there was a lot less knitting going on.  That’s not to say there isn’t fiber related stuff going down around here outside the work drama.  Which as of Friday last, I’m off.  I took a week to recuperate after ending the gig from hell and starting what looks to be somehting awesome.  Anyway, enough about that, here’s the other stuff.

I did go to Maryland this year, taking my little festival buddy, Kathryn, with me.

Alexander stayed home with his grandfolk while we went to sniff wool fumes.  We were reserved this year, employment issues had me a little conservative, but we still came home with stuff.  This is my haul (Kat has her own)

Not too shabby.  Some fiber.  Some yarn.  A spindle or three 🙂  If you look closely you can see that I already starting spinning some of it.  The white fiber in the box (2 of em) are 2oz of Cormo/Silk from Roclan’s that I started spinning froghair thin on the brandy new Spanish Peacock Amboyna Burl bead spindle.  Awesome is all I can say on that.

Moving along, I’ve been spinning on wheels too:

This fiber is from Cris, fiber is BFL/Silk and the color is a 2014 club color of Cat’s Pajamas.  And yes, it is on the Golding.

The big news is that I’ve been wheeling and dealing again.   This time the herd numbers have remained stable though as I traded the Norm Hall for a new baby on Saturday:

Meet my new to me Wyatt Pegasus in a gorgeous cherry.  She had a bit of a mishap while transporting in the trunk home from the meetup where the wheel exchange happened.  BTW, a wheel this size doesn’t fit overly well in the trunk of a 2010 Camry.  I really need a bigger car!  Sadly, the plastic tubing between the footman arms and the treadles snapped.  I tried a number of things to repair without success.  Until last night when inspiration struck.  I recalled the general repair for Canadian Production Wheels that have lost their metal footman.  Wire hangers!

I was finally able to use her last night.  She’s FAST and super quiet AND super smooth.  LOVE LOVE LOVE this wheel.  While the decision to trade off the Norm Hall wasn’t an easy one, I’ve covetted this wheel for years.

Craft on!

I know its been a while since I last posted. Stuff has been going on. Work hasn’t gotten any better and as a matter of fact it is gotten worse. Can’t go into details but it is what it is. The kids and I went on a cruise with stops in Nassau, where we did this at Atlantis

and Florida where we went to Disney.

I both bought another wheel and have sold one.  Both are in this picture 🙂

I finished a pair of socks:

Started a new pair:

And I’ve been spinning!

That should catch us up.  I’ll try and post more regularly now that I’ve caught up 😉

Craft on!