Knitting, with Dogs

Just takin' it easy this week

Hi from vacation!

Yes, I'm lounging in a hammock on Fripp Island, listening to internet radio and reading Ravelry on my new black Eee PC 901 that I got just before we left.  (Image taken with the built-in webcam.)

Life is good.  Only thing better would be to have the dogs here too.

But could you EAT IT??

Dog cake:

Boy, it's hot!

How's that for an original sentiment in July?  I was at Stone Mountain today, spinning in the shade under the porch.  (It was hot there too.)  I was wondering why I met hardly any other spinners when I was doing demos when a lady and her husband walked up and started asking intelligent questions about my wheel.  Then the husband volunteered that his wife was a spinner. 

How about that, eh?

She has an Ashford Elizabeth, a Traddy and a Joy.  I asked her if she was on Ravelry (no, but she'd heard of it), and we talked shop for a while.  Cool.

Later in the afternoon, there was a cute kid (maybe 3 years old) who came and sat beside me and asked lots of questions.  She (I thought) had a gorgeous huge curly head of hair, and she asked me to guess what her name was, and volunteered that it started with an "E."  After guessing Emily and Elizabeth, I was informed that HE was NOT a girl. 

Oops.  I promptly apologized and offered in my defense that a) I'm not around kids much, b) the hair fooled me and c) I'm an idiot.

Oh well.  Can't win them all.

Dyeing

I dyed some cotton punis the other day:

I deliberately didn't try to get a solid color here.  I soaked the punis first, made a dye solution and just poured it on kinda randomly.

I was pleased with how they came out.  One interesting thing:  I squeezed the water out of the punis when I was done dyeing, and they were pretty tightly compressed.  But they fluffled back up as they dried!  Cool.

Here's a closeup, though the color's more accurate in the first picture:

And I'd just like to extend my condolences to the family of Ruth,  the Twisted Spinster.  I'd just recently gotten to know her online, and was enjoying reading her blog about her cotton, and her vacation.  It was a huge shock to find that she died suddenly the other night. 

Peace, Ruth.  I wish I'd known you better.

That picture meme

I've seen this meme go around before, but for some reason, the post on AmpuTeeHee today prompted me to try it this time.

The rules:

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.

The Questions (I chose to use a loose interpretation of the answers):
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name.

My answers:
1. Janice  2. Nachos  3. MPHS 
4. Today it's purple  5. Duane "The Rock" Johnson  6. Margarita
7. Hawaii  8. Banana pudding  9. A wise woman
10. Contentment  11. Moody  12. Archergal

Left to right, top to bottom:
1. "Janice In Tomorrowland" Front and Rear Covers, 2. Jack Black - Nacho Libre, 3. MPHS, 4. Purple fingers, 5. Rocks in the sunshine, 6. 'FLOWERS SMILING IN NATURE' - 'A yellow Margarita', 7. Tree of Light, 8. banana pudding gang demands your respect., 9. Wise Woman, 10. path to happiness, 11. path to happiness, 12. Archergal

Bark in the Park, and Knitting (picture heavy post)

On Saturday Jun 12, we leashed up the dogs and headed out to the Dog Days of Duluth celebration.  You know those cities that have decorated cows and mermaids and stuff, where they parcel out the figurines to artists and the artists decorate them?  It was kinda like that.  Though honestly, the dog figures were kinda small and hard to find.  I don't even think we saw all of them.  There were also dog-related businesses and rescue groups set up on the green.  (Lots of freebies and samples!) 

Some of the dog sculptures we saw looked like these:

or this (that's a butterfly on his nose):

Or this (Bouncer got in the picture):

Or this:

Surprisingly, Jasper didn't try to steal the tennis ball.  :)

It was a hot, sunny day.  Jasper kept heading for shade and flopping down.  We thought he might like to get wet in the fountain, but her really wasn't interested:

Dear Robert and I laughed while we thought about our Sasha.  When she got hot, she'd flop down in ANY available water to cool her belly.  Whether we wanted her to or not.

This was my favorite dog sculpture.  Those are 1's and 0's all over it.  Its title is "Computer Lab."  :D

That's my elbow, but I looked so hag-like I cropped the rest of myself out.

Knitting new -- a FO!

No, not a serious moth attack, just a bunch of holes on purpose.  It's the Full of Holes Triangle Shawl (Ravelry link) from Etsy seller Yummy Yarn.  (She's not showing the pattern in her shop right now, but I'm sure a quick email could get you a copy.) 

I probably over-blocked a little (I'm an aggressive blocker), but I still like the way it came out.  And it's  a GREAT pattern for variegated yarns.  I used 1 skein plus a little bit of another of Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn.

Obligatory bathroom mirror shot:

Tour de Fleece report:  I'm still spinning cotton.  I got Eileen Hallmans' video and her tips on getting the charkha set up were worth the price of the dvd by themselves.  My creaky old Indian charkha is now purring along much more happily.  I ordered directly from Eileen via email, and I think the dvd was in my mailbox before the money was out of my Paypal account.  She's that fast.  :)

I'll leave you with a last shot of Dear Robert and the dogs before I go off to do battle with laundry and housework.

Summer doldrums

Yes, I'm still spinning for the Tour de Fleece, but one spindle of fine cotton yarn looks pretty much like another.  They're not nearly as exciting as some of the pretty wools that some folks are spinning.  Oh well -- I'm learning a lot and getting faster and better at point spinning, and for me, that's the main point of this whole exercise.

I don't know if it's the heat or what, but I've got a serious case of the summer blues.  I'm no stranger to blue moods, but it's a little alarming how glum I've been feeling lately.  One of the few good things about getting older is that in times like these, you pretty much know what's coming, and you know what you need to do, and best of all, you know that the bad feelings ease up after a while.

I saw an ad for a spinning wheel on the local Craigslist last night.  I couldn't tell from the picture whether it was a real spinning wheel or a spinning wheel-shaped object, but she was only asking $45 for it, so I thought it might be worth taking a look.  So I headed over towards Marietta after my last pet sitting visit. 

It had just started to rain a little.  As I entered the ramp onto I-285, I though, "Hmm, going a little fast into this ramp.  Better slow down."  All I can say is, thank Og there was no one immediately in front of or behind me, because the next thing I knew, I was skidding out of control and headed for the angled dirt bank beside the road.  I ended up with the front of the car up on the bank, facing back the direction I came.

Don't worry, I was fine, and actually the car was fine.  Emotionally, I was STUNNED.   I just kept thinking, "How did that happen?? HOW?? And why couldn't I do anything about it???"

Of course, while I was sitting there pointing the wrong way on the ramp, about a zillion cars started coming around the curve.  I just had to sit there till there was a break in the traffic.  I didn't even get out of the car.  I figured if I started moving and heard bad noises, I'd stop.  But everything sounded ok, so I drove on out to Marietta (SLOWLY and CAREFULLY) and saw the wheel.

It was a spinning wheel-shaped object, alas.  Not functional.  But I did have a lovely chat with the seller.  I'm afraid she asked just enough questions to make me loose my Inner Spinning Geek on her.  But she had a great wheel with a bat head, a clock reel, and a neat tall skein holder/swift, as well as antique cotton carders (not usable, but of historical interest). 

I drove home (still SLOWLY AND CAREFULLY, annoying the people behind me, I'm sure.) 

When I looked at the front of the car this morning, I could see that the rubber part that hangs down under the front bumper had torn loose, but SO FAR that appears to be the worst of it.  I went back and double-checked the tires to see if the tread was lower than I thought.  Nope, ok there.  All I can figure is that there was just enough rain to make the road extra slick, and that, combined with the fact that my dad's car handles differently than my Mitsubishi, were enough to break the tires' grip on the road and send me spinning.  And not spinning in a GOOD way.

I wish this wasn't such a busy week.  This is one of those days I'd really just like to sit in the back of the closet for a while.

But I'm ok.  Mostly.

Tour de Fleece, days 1 and 2

Well, we made it through the holiday weekend ok.  No big celebrations chez Knitting, with Dogs, though.  Holiday weekends are generally busy for petsitters, and this one was no exception.

I started off the first Tour de Fleece day with my first July session at Stone Mountain.  It was hot, but not as hot as it often is.  I carded and spun this:

Doesn't look like that much for four hours' work, does it?  I was hand carding as I went, in among the talking and occasionally taking the wheel apart to show someone (usually a guy) how it works.  Still, it's about 360 yards to 1.25 oz or about 4600 yards per pound.

BTW, I don't do wraps per inch, because I think it's too subjective.  Exactly how tight do you wrap the yarn?  It never made sense to me as a good measure, because someone will always try to pack as much as possible into an inch, whereas someone else may not.  Too much room for variation, IMHO.  But if you know your yardage (I skein my yarn off onto a niddy noddy and count the wraps) and the weight (scales are cheap), you can come pretty close to your yards per pound.  Granted, ypp is more of a weaver's measure, but I know the yardage for the kinds of yarn I like, so that works for me.

Day 2 was my first longer day with the bicycle wheel charkha.  (Appropriate for the Tour de Fleece, I'd say!)  It took me 2 one-hour sessions to fill up one of the little charkha spindles, and that yielded 190 yards.

My scale says this weighs 6 grams, which would give me a little more than 14,000 yards per pound.  Uh, that's a little thinner than I was shooting for!  And my left deltoid muscle is sore, from drawing the fiber out up and out all those times.  But I'm learning a lot about spinning off a point.  Every so often I'll feel like I've got the rhythm, and everything is going great.  Then something will happen.  The join in the drive band will bump, or a dog will run by, or something, and I'll be jolted back, and usually finding myself rejoining the fiber to the yarn.  Again. But I'm telling ya, I loves me some point spinning.  It's definitely the way to go if you want to spin really fine.

Haven't spun yet today, since there's been a little some running around going on.  This will be a busy week for me, with more petsitting visits than I've had in quite a while.  But I'm sure I can squeeze some spinning in at some point.  (Point -- get it?? Hahaha!  It's a laff riot round here, folks.)

We have a drippy outside faucet.  I catch the drippage in a pail and use it to water my plants.  Every now and then I find a critter floating in the water.  Usually it's june bugs, which I'm delighted to let drown.  Today I rescued this:

A little googling tells me this is probably a five-lined skink.  I was afraid at first that he was drowned, but after resting on my hand while I carried him around so I could grab my camera, he started wriggling and I had to hold onto him as gently as possible till I could get a picture.  I let him go right after taking this, and he scurried off, apparently unharmed by his ordeal.  :)

A little more handspun

100% tussah silk singles, approx. 225 yards.  All the shine is from the silk.  :)

It has a really nice scroop-y feel to it too.

Sorry, no white and blue to go with it today.  Happy 4th of July, USAians!

Spinning at Stone Mountain tomorrow.  You won't be able to stir folks with a stick out there.  I'm hot already.

Spinning: yarn and device

My first handspun bamboo fiber:

It's about 250 yards of 2 ply, weighing about 3.25 oz.  The color is actually a very pale lilac.  I dyed the fiber before it was spun.

The bamboo wasn't really hard to spin, but it was... unusual.  It seemed a little stiff in the single, though that may be because I am the Queen of High-Twist Yarns.  It softened up nicely in the plying, though.  It's slighly fuzzy, but should have some nice drape.

I'm still struggling to find a good way to spin cotton.  I can't get either of my wheels to spin the cotton A) fine enough AND B) fast enough.  I can get one or the other, but friends, I have POUNDS of cotton to spin, and I'd rather not spend the rest of my life doing it.

So I had an old bicycle wheel and some pvc pipe lying about.  Here's what I came up with:

I'm using one of the spindles from my charkha, and obviously the spindle support is just being held on by a clamp right now.  But it works, and it's almost fast enough.  :)  Now I just have to refine my technique.

Unexpected side effect:  my left arm gets TIRED reaching up and to the side when I'm drafting the fiber.  Who knew?