You may need to be family or know me personally to appreciate this post, but I’ll try to explain well enough that you’ll at least understand.

I bought some flax to try spinning awhile ago. Spun flax is linen. In Exodus, and throughout the Book of Mormon, they mention “fine twined linen” and when I told the girls that I was spinning flax into linen, they picked up on it. Abby got an amused look on her face and, somewhat mocking, asked if I was spinning “fine twined linen?” Ha ha, we all had a laugh. But not as much as a week or so later when Veronica came into my room and picked up the knit linen swatch on my bedside table and in reverent awe asked if it was the fine twined linen? So very funny. It’s good to know they’re paying attention. I just said I was spinning linen, they made the scriptural connection on their own.

Of course in the Book of Mormon, “fine twined linen” primarily comes up when the Nephite civilization has become worldly, prideful, and are headed for some serious chastisement and humbling. Hence Abby’s sarcasm my direction. But whatever.

I washed one fleece yesterday and it looks like it washed up nice. I’m waiting for it to dry so my drying racks will be free for the second.

Last night, I spun my sample purple batt into 3 ply. Today, I knit it into a long cuff, just to see how it would look and feel.

The photo is a smidge bleached out, and the towel on the floor in the background is making me crazy, but the color is pretty accurate. Just imagine it a little richer and with more luster. It’s really, really nice. I love how the tweed handles in a 3 ply. Definitely the way to go. It was knit on size 6 needles and I spun it worsted. Not my favorite method of spinning by any means, but I really liked the resulting yarn.

I think I have enough fiber already dyed to make about 2 pounds of these purple batts. Gotta start carding. I’m meeting with a friend on Monday who is going to help me figure out packaging. I need to come up with a weight and price point for packages of batts, and then I’ll be ready to move forward. Not exactly sure HOW I’m going to sell them yet. If I can get Tweedybatts.com up in some simple format, or if I should go with Etsy, or what.

Stayed up ’til midnight, all by myself spinning. It was glorious. I spun the alpaca lace.

I started at 2 in the afternoon while my brother was visiting, and finished about midnight, taking a combined hour and a half to two hours off to do stuff. I ended up with only 1.6 ounces of yarn, 220 yards. I’m surprised there was so much waste. I started with 1.9 ounces of fiber. It looks heavier in the pictures than it does in person. It’s quite fine yarn.

It looked pretty dyed. It looked pretty spun into singles, and as I was plying it, I was worried. It wasn’t plying up nice. But I finished, and wound it onto the niddy noddy to skein it, and it was beautiful again. It’s so weird how that works. I hope to find some nice beads for it today, a deep blue or purple I think, so I can knit it during General Conference this weekend after finishing the rosy scarf I’m working on now. General Conference provides 8 hours of knitting time over 2 days, and I’m really looking forward to it (the broadcast and the knitting).

Today is Clark’s birthday. Can you believe he’s 3? It’s amazing to me how time flies. I’m about to go to the store to get donuts.

So, it went pretty well. I test dyed two little skeins of yarn. The first was overrun by blue, the second wasn’t quite as dark as I’d like. I test dyed 2 ounces of tan alplaca top.

And then I realized I hadn’t added vinegar to any of it.

So I added vinegar to my dye and redyed the alpaca top, feeling like an idiot. Then, I held my breath and dyed 2 ounces of baby camel.

Here’s some pictures.

This is the alpaca and two skeins of yarn I test dyed.

I happened to have a sleeve of seed beads on the counter and saw that they might look really pretty with the yarn when spun up.

Here’s my camel, still wet. The red color isn’t that red in person. It’s more of a plum. And the green isn’t that green in person, either. I wanted two blues and two purples and that’s pretty much what I got. Maybe there’s a reason most people handpaint fibers. It’s easier.

While I was digging around in my fibers yesterday, I came across 2 ounces of dyed bombyx that a friend of mine asked me to spin for her. I thought I’d given it back because I was worried about ruining it, but I still had it, and being more confident in my spinning skills now, I’m not worried anymore. I spun a tiny little sample and it’s really pretty.

I’m going to spin the alpaca and the camel, even though they’re the same color. The camel is a gift for someone else.

I remember quite distinctly being too sick to knit when I was pregnant with Clark. Fortunately, I’m not that sick. Yet. I’m too sick to want to do much of anything else though, including eat, and I totally bailed on exercise yesterday, but I did get a lot of knitting and beading done. And a tiny bit of guitar practice.

At some point, I’d like to make one of these for me. They’re so luscious. But this one isn’t mine. And the next one won’t be. I’ll probably think of someone else that needs/deserves/should get the one after that. I need to write the pattern out so I’m not re-working it each time.

I’m a little annoyed that it looks like I’ll have quite a bit of yarn left, but not enough to make a second scarf. So I have no idea what I’ll do with it.

I wish I had the luxury of being lethargic today, but I don’t. Tuesday is my insane, go-go-go day. And to start it all off, I’m hauling 3 lunches, 22 planted pumpkin seeds, 16 wave bottles, 10 zen gardens, some assorted beaded things, a measuring cup, the original copy of a school newsletter to be copied, and a number of kids to school this morning. On her way to band practice earlier today Abby asked, “Oh mom, could you please bring my ukulele when you come? I want to play something in music today.”

Sure. Why not? I’ll just load up the pack mule and get right on it. Maybe I should re-think the pack mule. It’d make more sense for me to have an alpaca, wouldn’t it? They pack stuff. But, “I’ll just load up the alpaca and get right on it” doesn’t have the same effect.

I’d rather have an alpaca.

Remember the tussah silk/baby camel I spun a couple weeks ago? Well, on Saturday I picked up some bigger seed beads and have started another of those little neck scarves with it. And it’s really pretty.

I was concerned about how it would look knit up. The top (spinning fiber) was raspberry, salmon, and muted yellow/green. I was worried that the green would only serve to muddy it up, being a complimentary color on the color wheel. The yarn isn’t all that pretty where the berry plies with the green. It looks odd. But I’d hoped it would look nice when sitting next to other combinations in the ply. The berry with berry and the salmon with green or berry each look nice. There’s a little bit of green with green, we’ll see how that looks when it pops up.

But really, the colors change so subtly, flowing from one to the next… I’m loving it. It’s lovely. And I’m really surprised. I only persevered because it was a small project and I wanted to finish it. There’s a lot of yarn left and it’s possible it’ll get yuck, but I’m very optimistic now.

Clark treadles my spinning wheels. This is nothing new. He loves it, and is careful about the hooks and orifice to not hurt himself. Yesterday however, he took it a step further. He got my lazy kate with three empty bobbins on it. He positioned it “just so” at the foot of my Ashford Traditional. He started treadling, reached down to one of the bobbins on the kate and grabbed the leader, and holding it fast with one hand, started rhythmically rubbing up and down the leader with the other hand. Not only that, but his grip was perfect, and he held it very soft. It was unbelievable. And incredibly cute.

I finished spinning and plying the silk/camel on Friday. It’s pretty. We bought beads for it on Saturday but discovered they’re much too small once I started swatching. They’re size 8. I don’t have a picture of that yet.

Today is my guitar lesson, and I’m ashamed to say I haven’t done my homework in about a month. I was really busy with school stuff, then house stuff, but I assured him I’d practice this week and I haven’t because I felt so lousy. Dangit. A week flies by so fast.

I’m wanting to cast on something neat and fun. Maybe that Philosopher’s Wool shawl I keep talking about. I’m really missing serious knitting time and need to get on that.

I really appreciated all of your comments, thank you.

I wrote this big, long post and was just adding pictures at the end. I highlighted all the text to cut and paste it so I wouldn’t lose it. Then without thinking, I added the image, but since all the text was highlighted, it put the image in place of my text. I didn’t realize this, thinking that it had just been put at the very end of the text, so I highlighted it and cut it to move it. But when I tried to scroll up, and couldn’t, I realized what had happened. At that exact moment, the automatic saving feature on my software kicked in and saved the image in place of my text, and I didn’t have the text cut to paste anymore, ’cause I’d cut the image. And my “undo” button didn’t undo.

I’m so completely annoyed.

I’m going to begin to recreate my stupid post. Some of it was in an email, so I’m going to cut and paste that to get me started…..

Sigh…

The most amazing thing happened today.

I’ve been thinking about Charkhas again. I borrowed a Bosworth Book Charkha a couple years ago and really enjoyed it. Teaching spinning to 75 elementary students during a month long medieval unit at my girls’ school has started a lot of spinning conversations with non-fibery folk. Or “muggles” as I think someone on a Yahoo group said recently. I really laughed about that one.

So, I’m talking to a friend of mine whose parents are from India. I believe she was born here. I told her about the Charkha and she had never heard of it. She said her mom is going to India real soon, and she’d have her pick one up for me ’cause she thought it’d be much cheaper there. I emailed some links to her, as she was trying to get information to be able to tell her mom exactly what it was that I wanted. In talking to another relative who studied in India for a few years, my friend learned that they’re hard to find, and I told her not to worry about it.

But all this got me really thinking about charkhas again, so I was poking around on the internet. There really isn’t much info, but I saw a reference to two Spin Off articles in the early ’80s. When I bought my first spinning wheel, a Clemes and Clemes, it came with a plastic bucket full of old Shepherd’s newsletters (I don’t remember which one specifically), and a bunch of old Spin Off magazines. I have never looked through that bucket, but when I was in the garage this morning trying to find a dowel for something else, I saw the bucket and started digging through it, remembering that one of the articles was Spring of 1983.

There it was, right on top of the Spin Offs, under the newsletters. It’s 25 years old! And in perfect condition!

Now I need to find where I saw them referenced, so I can see if I have the other one. How incredible would that be?

Back to cleaning… I’ve been working really hard and have made great progress. I feel productive now, instead of hopeless and reactionary. Today, I’m tearing apart Veronica’s and Clark’s room. I can’t begin to describe the scene I discovered under her bed. Eww. We’re setting up bunkbeds, and will paint and organize. They need a new dresser. It’s been ugly and inefficiently arranged in their room since we moved in 3 years ago, and it must be fixed.

Dear Susan, who reads here and who I adore even though I never see her and don’t even know that well, said that when she needs to get rid of old, sentimental things she takes a picture to remember them by. I took that advice today. I have this old music box (I am SO resenting having to write this twice) that was given to me by Italian relatives I don’t know for Christmas when I was 5. It’s a rabbit, that watches a bunny spin and dance in a circle in front of him. It’s completely broken, the bottom has fallen out, the music box doesn’t work and it’s not made well enough that I can disassemble, repair and reassemble it. I tried. I haven’t been able to get rid of it, though, but today, I took a picture and now it’s gone.

Thanks, Susan! I feel lighter already.

Last week was extremely busy at school. But that should all be over now. The medieval unit is over. The spinning teaching stuff is over. I’m so done. Except I’m hosting a cooking party this Saturday for moms to come over and cook stew for 40 people, 2 meals worth for an overnighter field trip next week. I was going to go on the field trip, but they didn’t need me, so I backed out.

I’m so done.

My house, and most every other aspect of my life has been completely neglected for a month or so while I’ve been doing school stuff. I’m going crazy. I want to set my house and everything we own on fire so I don’t have to deal with it.

That’s not true.

What I’d REALLY like is for the Garbage company to deliver one of those huge dumpsters in front of my house so I can throw away almost everything we own without having to sort through it. That way, I’d still have a house to live in, and I do like my house, but it’d be clean and empty. That sounds so nice.

So very, very nice.

But, it’s not going to happen. I can’t escape the fact that I have a phenomenal amount of work in front of me, and it’s all on me.

I managed to exercise 2 days last week. An hour on Monday and 40 minutes on Friday. Now that I’ve dropped out of school :-), that sounds so nice, I should be able to do at least 4 days a week again.

While carding tons of batts for young children to spin last week, I squeezed in two Tweedy Batts for myself.

I haven’t spun them yet. On Friday night and Saturday, in an attempt to decompress and relax a little bit, I spun an ounce + of a hand dyed Tussah silk/Baby camel top that was given to me a couple years ago.

I’m working on the second ounce now, then I’ll ply them together. I think it’d be pretty to knit into another of those little neck scarves with all-over beading.

It’s going to be really hard to focus on my house when I could be spinning that second ounce. But if I do that, it’ll just prolong my clutter-stress. And I don’t want that.

If you feel so inclined, leave me a comment to say hello. Seeing some friendliness in my inbox today will help lighten what looks to be a pretty joyless day.