Sweet little Clark is cutting his two bottom teeth, which is probably why he wasn’t sleeping well last week, and why he’s been so fussy. They’re cute little teeth. He’s also starting to show signs of crawling, which pleases me for his sake, and fills me with dread for mine. I need to figure out how to block off the stairs and keep the floor clean of dust bunnies, choking hazards, and anything else that he shouldn’t be putting in his mouth. Because everything he touches ends up there. If I were the only one that runs through this house, it wouldn’t be a problem. But I’m not confident in my ability to keep up with the dust bunnies and incidentals of all 5 of us. For example, the little bits of Battleship that were left on the floor last night and nearly ingested before I could get to them.

You’d think I’ve never had a kid before. And I haven’t, at least not in this house. It’s a whole new beastie.

I went to a spinning group last night at Village Yarn and Tea. It was great. I saw Pat (see Tuesday’s post) and she gave me pictures of Abner. She’s a regular there, and I hope to be, so we’re going to get to see each other often.

I spun about half of the black, baby alpaca roving I bought at Madrona. Alpaca is weird. I’m no good at the short draw, so I was fighting with it much of the night. I couldn’t get the fibers to release, even after being fluffed and separated. Grrr. I’m hoping to have enough 2 ply to make some fingerless mitts, or a short scarf. I have no idea if that’s even realistic.

Next, aside from continuing to work on the Sea Silk stole, (mmmmmm….), I’m going to start spinning up the multicolored targee fleece to make me some clogs. My pink ones are dying. There are holes.

I have a few lace projects I want to spin for, but I’m holding out in the hopes that I will get one of those Kromski wheels with the faster ratios sooner rather that later. 2000 yards of laceweight 2-ply on a 5:1 ratio will get old, and I don’t want to hate the project before it even sees needles.

Another thing that happened while I was at Madrona…

Nate had the bathroom painted.

We’ve had the paint for months, and I had done a little of it. Enough to know that although I enjoy painting, I really didn’t want to do the bathroom. All that’s left to do in there now is re-glue one of the handles in the shower that has come loose (bad design), and buy some plants. The one plant I have in there now is a great buffer between the blue and green we have going already.

Also, it wasn’t until someone (I’m so sorry I can’t remember your name) in my Silk Spinning class asked about my dining room table that I remembered I hadn’t posted about it. Yes, it finally came back, like, the 4th time, and it’s ok. Not great, but ok. Probably as ok as it is possible to get, so we’re done with it. The color isn’t quite right, and it looks a little milky compared to the legs and the way it was before the floor guy ruined it. It’s sad, but like I said, it’s ok.

Last night I started spinning some core-spun mohair.

I like it a lot. I need to finish the bobbin, wind it onto my swift, ply it with thread, re-wind it onto my swift, and ply it with thread the other way.

Nate is concerned there is nothing I can actually do with it, without looking like a neanderthal, but I’m going to try. I’m thinking about a scarf in a slipped stitch pattern, similar to our Hayden hat on my size 19 needles, if I can find them. I haven’t used them since 2004, and I have no idea where they are. They don’t exactly fit in a knitting basket conveniently, so they were stashed somewhere well before the move. Of course, I can’t imagine losing them, either. Did you follow the link? They’re HUGE!

I’ve been playing with fiber instead of posting.

Let’s see, Thursday was a class on Spinning Novelty Yarns. It was neat to spin so much with mohair. After class, Colleen taught me how to spin “tailspin mohair”, which is holding a handful of teased mohair locks and turning it into yarn. It’s beautiful.

What I really want to do is figure out what to do with this novelty yarn that I like, so I can justify and focus spinning it. I don’t knit with novelty yarn. I don’t “trim things out” with it, I certainly don’t knit entire projects with it… But I’m trying to come up with something that I’d like to make with it. Right now, I’m thinking about decorative pillows and hats. Possibly a scarf, if the stitch pattern were right. It needs to be knit in a way that preserves the beauty of the yarn, instead of hiding it in the stitches.

I’m already forgetting a lot about Madrona.

Friday was a half day for me. I took Fiona Ellis’s hand embellishments class. It wasn’t very structured, and although it was fun to chit chat with her, I think I could have learned a lot more if the class were taught differently. However, what I learned is going to be very helpful. Basically, the whipped chain stitch.

Fiona said it is very helpful for outlining curvy designs in knitting to soften the edges so you don’t get the jagged, stair-step effect.

This is my practice swatch from class where I worked on curvy lines. I have designed a lot of curvy colorwork for my knits that didn’t end up in a final project because they looked bad on the curves. I’m excited about this one. Plus, she showed us a ton of swatches she had knit for inspiration, and I took pictures of most of them.

Saturday was my silk spinning class which gave me the confidence to try what I’m doing now.

which is blending together some silk and wool, spinning it, and swatching for a scarf.

That’s all I can post right now. Veronica is throwing up today, can’t even keep a sip of water down, and I have a brief amount of time before the girls get home to get a handle on things.

There is so much to talk about from Madrona, the thought of organizing it all into coherency is daunting. Thus, today is not that day.

The house is trashed. And it isn’t just the result of Nate and the kids being motherless for three days, it’s also my stuff spread out everywhere. I’d get home late at night, dump everything, go to bed, wake up, dig through it all to get what I need for that day, and leave.

Repeat.

Twice.

Plus, Nate and the kids were motherless for three days, so you can imagine. The shenanigans they pulled while I was gone are worthy of a post, with pictures, all on their own. Today is not that day, either.

No, today I am cleaning things. But I can leave you with a picture of something beautiful.

The braid in the back is dyed corriedale and the ball in front is tussuh silk top that was dyed at the same time, so it matches. Pretty isn’t it? It wasn’t until an hour or so after I bought it that I realized what I’d done. Can you see it?

Teal.

What the heck is my deal with buying teal fiber? I don’t buy anything else teal. Just fiber. Lots of it. I have pounds of teal merino top in 3 shades from a few years ago that I have become very tired of. I bought those teal Romney locks in November, and here I am, home from Madrona with freaking teal Corriedale. Unbelievable. However, I do love it combined with the red and lime green.

I’ve made a few sample skeins of yarns already, trying to figure out what I’m going to do with it.

The skein on the left is a “cloud” yarn, which has little slubbies plied into it. The middle skein is just varying thicknesses of singles plied together, and the one on the right is a crepe or cabled yarn, which is two 2-plies plied together. I really like the slubbies.

Finally, this is what I took to Madrona to work on during the down times.

I finished the toe, wove in oodles of ends, and started the duplicate stitch over the course of it all. I’m quite proud of myself.

I don’t even have words, although, knowing me, I’ll come up with some eventually.

Madrona is awesome. It is incredible. My class was brilliant. Carol Rhoades is brilliant. I learned many wonderful, amazing things to do with mohair, which at this point is even more my favorite fiber than it was before. Don’t get me wrong. I love wool. I love to wear it, I love to knit with it, but something about handling mohair locks…. their silkiness, the curls! I just love it.

So, the class was fantastic, and I made a friend :-). A beautiful woman named Colleen that has covetable hair.

And this is also something exciting for me. I used to be so horribly shy, I’d die before even going to an event like this, quite frankly. But if I happened to be there anyway, I’d be the one sitting off in a corner, by myself, not talking to anybody, wishing like mad that I could come up with something interesting enough to say to justify talking to someone. Wishing like mad that someone would come over and talk to me.

The fact that I can now speak up in class, approach people, converse, and basically ask if I can tag along with them and/or join their group is manifestation of some significant personal growth that thrills me.

It’s no fun being painfully shy. And people that know me now really don’t believe me when I tell them I was.

The little niddy noddy came in very handy. Here’s some of the samples I made yesterday

I want to talk about them, but my computer was being naughty, rainbow swirlies and super slow and everything, so I managed to save the post and restart the computer, but now I HAVE to finish my preparations for my afternoon class with Fiona Ellis (you’re jealous, I know) and get my gregarious butt out of here.

I’m just about off to Madrona. I’d link it, but I’ve been talking about it for weeks, so it seems redundant at this point.

I’m a total nerd and labeled everything with my name and phone number. Like, everything. Every bobbin, my camera, every bag… The parts to my wheel aren’t replaceable, and there’s going to be a lot of people there, lots of bags, lots of wheels, lots of activity… I’m assuming something will be lost before it will be stolen. Let’s hope neither occurs.

One of the classes I’m taking at Madrona is a Hand Embellishments class by Fiona Ellis. We’re supposed to bring with us a 6×6 swatch of stockinette, several lengths of smooth, medium weight yarn, a blunt ended sewing needle, and fancy beads and buttons. So, although it doesn’t say as much, it seems to me that the beads and buttons should be big enough to string onto the worsted weight yarn, don’t you think? I don’t have any of those. When I think of “fancy beads”, I don’t think of the big honkers that you could pass an embroidery/end weaving needle through. I guess I need to get out there and look. I hope the class goes beyond sewing on buttons, that’s for sure.

Yesterday was interesting. I managed to do almost all of the laundry. Wanna see what 9 days of laundry for 6 people looks like? Hold on to something.

That picture doesn’t accurately communicate the magnitude of those piles, which are almost as tall as my dresser.

That’s 3 loads of darks/blues, 2 loads of reds, a stuffed load of whites, another of lights, a load of cold/delicates, a load of Clark’s clothes, and half a load of towels.

Whew!

So I did that yesterday, and then decided to get out the jumbo head for my spinning wheel.

I’d never used it, and I thought it might come in handy in the Spinning Novelty Yarns class so I wanted to put it all together and see how it worked. I’m glad I did. It took most of the afternoon and evening to figure out and get adjusted.

As it turns out, I’m missing the little peg that holds the scotch tension brake across the flyer.

(When the regular flyer is on, it’s a double drive wheel). So I hunted all over the house, looking for things that might fit in the hole, and I found one.

Know what that is? It’s an eraser that you stick on the end of a pencil. As it turns out, it works very nicely.

It took me awhile to adjust the length of the driveband and the tension to get things “just so”, and to get everything sufficiently oiled and smooth, but I think I’ve got it. I had to wrap one end of the flyer shaft with masking tape because the bobbin was very loose and knocking around quite a bit. It’s all quiet and smooth now. This thing is huge!

HUGE!!!

I spun a bunch of teal merino top on it to get the feel and make the adjustments, then pulled it all off and threw it away. It was pretty bad.

It’s very cute.

I didn’t buy any dyes at Weaving Works on Friday because their dyeing expert is out of the country this month, and I wanted to talk to her before committing to colors. I got a printed sheet of the Jacquard Acid Dye colors, and it looks like there were several colors used in the bag of mohair I’m wanting to recreate.

I have so much to do before Madrona. Laundry, gathering supplies, cleaning my house… Today is the only full day I have to myself before Thursday. Tomorrow and Wednesday I have half days to get things done, which is making things very difficult.

Yesterday, I took Veronica and Clark to a goat farm outside of Monroe. I met the owner, Aline, at the fiber sale in November, and the kid mohair I got from her was wonderful. Having fallen completely in love with a lot of the shawls in the Victorian Lace Today book, I thought it would be fun to get a 1st clip kid fleece to dye and spin into laceweight yarn.

We had a good time. Aline is a jewel, and we were delighted to see she had peacocks, chickens, dogs, blue headed turkeys, and baby goats! Veronica got to hold this little angel that was a whopping two days old.

and a baby angora as well

We were unfortunately in a terrible rush by the time we got out to the barn, so I didn’t have time to take great pictures, which is a shame.

I came home with a 49 ounce fleece that has gorgeous luster, and is incredibly soft.

I also bought a bag of kid mohair dyed various blues, and she gave me a baggie of tussah silk and angora rabbit to blend and play with.

But right now, I HAVE to do laundry, dangit.