On Saturday, Nate took the family out to Snoqualmie Falls. I haven’t been there in many years. It was unbelievably crowded. We hiked down to the bottom (major round ligament pain) and when we were done, Nate hiked back up by himself to get the car to pick us up.

Clark has developed a sensitivity to loud noise. He spent all of the 4th of July with his hands over his ears, and I guess the thunderous falls were too loud as well, though it really wasn’t that loud.

We’ve been enjoying heading out after dinner when the house gets hot and outside is starting to cool off. We typically go to a park for some fresh air and shade.

I carded 4 ounces of my Green Tea batts,

still sampling, unfortunately. I’m testing out a new silk to see how it cards and knits up since my old silk is no longer available. So in the next day or so I should have it spun and I’m trying to decide what to knit it into. Maybe some picot edged leg warmers? Or a hat? Or a scarf? Any suggestions? I’m going to spin it woolen and am hoping to get about 180-200 yards out of it. If need be, I can card and spin more.

I’ve felt a little down this week. Not really sure why. Hormones, or fatigue, or something. Not very sociable.

Today, I sold a spinning wheel. That’s not something I thought I would ever do. But it has become apparent to me that we don’t in fact need 4 spinning wheels in the house because as much as I’d like it to be otherwise, we don’t have 4 spinners living here. There just isn’t the interest. SO, as I’m in the mood to get rid of extra stuff and simplify life somewhat, and as a friend of mine had expressed interest….

One of my Clemes is gone.

It’s bittersweet. It was my first wheel, and now it’s gone on to teach new students how to spin.

I’m expecting a 35+ pound shipment of alpaca, silks, etc today from my new distributor. I wonder if you can jump into a pile of alpaca like you could a pile of leaves. I’ve never jumped in either, but I’m thinking about it. I’m so excited.

Nate took and passed a motorcycle permit test at the Department of Licensing today. He’s always wanted a Vespa, and it’s looking pretty convincing that he would actually save money buying one to commute to work on. I’m both happy for him and completely freaked out because it’s dangerous. Moreover, I’ve wanted to drive a motorcycle since I was 16, so I’d imagine I will also be acquiring a motorcycle license at some point, if we’re going to have a scooter around.

Finally, silk noil is my enemy. It’s a big, long, really big, really long uninteresting story that you don’t want to hear. Suffice it to say that I’m in distress. And I don’t know what I’m going to do. And I’m waiting to hear back from people as to why it seems to be impossible to get what I need to make my batts.

The fleece I’m working with now is the only fleece out of the 8 I’ve washed that I didn’t separate and wash lock by lock. I washed this one handful by handful, still picking through it of course, just to see how much time I would save. The answer is- a lot. It was washed carefully, but after the washing and then dying, it matted more then the other fleece and is taking significantly longer to dry. I spent an hour or so this morning picking through it to open it up and help it dry faster, and I moved it into my bathroom because it’ll be hot in there this afternoon which should also help. I’d rather spend the time on the front end with the washing than on the back end with matted and wet locks. But they’re beautiful.

Yesterday was fun. We went to a city park that is just re-opening from a remodel.

Then we went to the library.

It took awhile to get oriented. I’m still used to the libraries of “card catalogue” days. Library computers intimidate me. Besides, they’re PC not Mac, so they might as well speak Japanese as far as I’m concerned. BUT, we got pointed in the direction of the Junior chapter book section and after staring at a screen for several minutes that said something like “Windows XP, please wait while the program loads” or some such nonsense, I ended up asking a little girl who was absentmindedly pushing random buttons on the only library catalogue computer that appeared to be working to move on over, and we started making some progress.

I had each of the girls fill out their own library card application and as we were standing there, opening accounts and holding up the rapidly growing line of people trying not to glare at us, Clark was whining for a card. I told him he was too young and then the librarian said he could have one. They even registered him.

I walked out of the library with 4 beaming children, each in possession of their own, shiny new library card, and 3 of them carrying a stack of books and a library “summer reading club” form. As for myself, I had the pleasure of hearing the librarian tell me what very well behaved and intelligent children I had.

It was a good afternoon. And as if that weren’t good enough, the next 2+ hours at home were delightfully quiet as Clark was down for a nap and the girls each had their nose in a book.

Yeah, I think this is going to be a weekly thing.

updated-

I was asked in the comments how I wash wool. Here it is…

I use large lingerie bags and pick through the raw fleece, aligning the locks in rows top to bottom so they’re all laying the same direction in the bag. The locks stay in little clumps when they’re cut off the sheep. I don’t separate them out of those clumps too much, if they’re still organized and orderly, but I’ll pick through and separate them a bit to look for grit and pick along the cut ends looking for second cuts. I don’t like surprise grit in my clean wool, I’d rather get it out before washing so the fleece is all the nicer when it’s done. Because they’re still in their little clumps, I’d say I average about two to three locks deep in my rows, as in they’re stacked on top of each other a little bit. Kind of like a handful of organized locks are put in the bag at a time, right next to the last handful. The wool is probably four inches tall in the bag, but the bag is not remotely stuffed.

I then put them (3 lingerie bags at a time, stacked on top of one another) in super hot water and lots of Dawn dish soap in my sink. Let it sit for 20 minutes. Move them to the other side of the sink and do the same. Then again once more. They get two or three washes at 20 minutes each with my hottest tap water, 120f?. Then they get 3, 10 minute rinses in the same manner, just moving back and forth between sides of the sink.

Then I drain the water, squeeze the water out of the bags gently, open the bags and lay the wool on a towel. The wool tends to stay in rows. I lay another towel on top, roll it up and sit on it. Then I take it out of the towels and lay it on a drying rack. I have something like this in my laundry room in the basement. Without the plastic cover, it works good.

There’s nothing cooler than a sheep’s worth of clean, curly, dry locks of wool when you’re done. I can’t stop playing with them.

Yesterday was a busy day. I carded the rest of the watermelon batts, the wool I had dyed for sample black/gold batts, and dyed 3 1/2 pounds of wool and alpaca for a new colorway. I don’t know if anyone else is going to like it, I’d say it’s a bit unconventional…

A friend of ours’ husband travels the world for work. He brought a tea set back from Japan which his family had on display in their living room and which I had admired frequently. It was broken, so when Pat went back to Japan, he bought a replacement for them and a set for me. They offered me the broken one in case I wanted it for display, and I took it for the color inspiration. I think it’s a very happy colorway. Tell me what you think.

In order to really know, I’m going to have to spin a whole batt and knit it up. My fibers are still wet, so this was just a bit carded into a rolag on my handcards but if nothing else, I certainly succeeded in duplicating the color. I’m quite pleased and think it’d look really nice woolen spun and knit into that cropped sweater in Debbie Bliss’ most recent magazine, pg 38.

The black and gold batts from yesterday’s adventures are nice, too.

In the photo you can’t really see the underlying gold very well, but it’s pretty. I’ll spin them up soon. I think the luster in the wool will give it a metallic look which’ll be neat. If I do more of this color I’ll play with the wool/alpaca ratios to bring out more of the gold.

Veronica got her ears pierced on Monday night.

She was very brave.

So, here we go. Tim backed up, tested and updated my site because he rocks. It may look the same to you, but it’s totally weird on the back end. The posting part anyway. But we’ll see if we get pictures. Thank you so much, Tim and Carol! Again. This is how many times now?

Ok, so if you like foreign movies with subtitles, and like romantic movies, have we got one for you. Nate has taken to renting Bollywood movies. I’m really not much of a movie watcher, and becoming less so as I get older because there are, in my opinion, SO many more interesting and productive things to do with 2 hours. Or in the case of Bollywood movies, 3-4 hours. So I don’t watch all of the movies he brings home, but the girls eat it up.

Anyway, we just watched Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi. It’s incredible. The sweetest, most touching movie I’ve seen in a long time. You laugh, you cry (how cliche is that?). Still. I highly recommend it if your tastes bend that way at all. It does have some crazy musical numbers, but if you don’t enjoy them, it’s still worth suffering through them to see the film. The main character is one heck of an actor. Again, wow.

I’m listening to the soundtrack right now which I downloaded off of iTunes for $5. It doesn’t make me as sick as other music (remember this freaky pregnancy can’t play, sing, or even listen to music thing?) because not speaking Hindi myself, there isn’t the slightest chance I could sing along to it :-). That seems to be a real issue for me. How sing-along-able it is. I really miss singing actually. I cried on Friday when I tried to play my guitar and gagged as soon as I CONTEMPLATED singing. I hadn’t even gotten to the actually singing part.

Ok, so this is a majorly rambling post, eh?

Getting to the picture part… Here is the skien I spun from my watermelon batts. I have more batts carded, but I haven’t photographed them yet.

That seems to have worked. SO, here’s some catch-up. (It’s going to take me forever to insert all of these, ’cause I have to do it one at a time).

Liv’s dyeing and spinning experience with her 4 ounces of BFL. (Blue Faced Leister). Oh yeah, and there’s Calcifer in the background in his hospital tank. He’s all better and back in my room now.

Then there’s Veronica’s dyeing experience. She hasn’t shown much interest in spinning it.

And then there was the silk lace I spun for Carol.

Whew! I’m done. Enjoy the color, I’m going to go do something else with my day now.

I’m finding that it’s a lot harder to think of things to write when I can’t SHOW you anything. My friend is going to update my software when he has time, so it isn’t a permanent problem. In the meantime though….

We had a nice 4th of July. My brother almost blew himself and the younger children up, but since there were (miraculously) no injuries, we can all laugh about it now.

I spun a heavenly skein with 4 ounces of my watermelon batts last night. It’s really very pretty, and I’m excited to do something with it, but I didn’t get as much yardage as I expected.

Um, what else?

I’m starting to look pregnant instead of just big. That’s kind of fun. It still depends on what I’m wearing.

I have a shipment of new dyes scheduled to arrive today and I’m excited to try some new colors.

I guess that’s it. TTYL.

This morning, after Veronica’s playdate comes by to pick her up, we’re heading out to pick up fifteen pounds of locally grown strawberries already sliced and sitting in their juice in a bucket. I’ve never bought strawberries this way before, so I don’t know how far they’ll go, but I’m hoping to make my year’s supply of strawberry freezer jam this afternoon. I’ve got the Costco bag of ripe lemons, big bag o’ sugar, and many boxes of liquid pectin all ready to go. My kitchen counter is even clean.

I have a feeling we’ll be making biscuits in the near future. Which’ll send my blood sugar into chaos and I’ll probably have to sleep it off. But whatever. We had cupcakes with whipping cream and fresh raspberries last night after dinner, and I felt fine.

I still haven’t figure out what sets me off, but I’m making considerable efforts to get more protein, and to get it frequently throughout the day.

Ok, what the heck just happened??? I scanned my post after publishing it, and all my dye talk has vanished. It’s gone. I’m so grumpy.

So the short and cross version is that I’ve come up with a new colorway that I really like. It looks like watermelon. I only have a pound of it dyed right now, so I need to dye more, lots more as I’d like to make myself a vest a la the cool sweater in the first Debbie Bliss magazine that I like. Yes, I said a vest. Me, who has ranted about how much I hate them. I’m over it. I concede that like anything, there are good vests and bad vests.

In my post that vanished, I said something about dyeing enough that I can have my vest and sell it too. I was quite amused by that.

The three vests that I have worn for years (not fully realizing that I was wearing vests) are about worn out, and I’d love to make some that fit me well. That go in at the in bits and out at the out bits. (I do in fact have a waist).

I’m excited.

I also test dyed a bit of one of my dark gray lamb fleeces with a dark, golden yellow dye. The fleece came out the most fantastic, warm, chocolatey golden brown. I want to try carding it with black alpaca and gold silk. I think it’ll turn out a bit dressy. More formal than a typical tweed. We’ll see how it goes.