Obsession du Jour

Catchin' up.

Hey, cool...you're still here.  I kinda thought you might have given up by now.  We kind of have a lot to catch up on, I know, so why don't y'all just pull up a chair and we'll head back a ways.  It might take us a while to get all up to date, but get there we will.

First, let's head back to the midlands of Ohio and the midlands of September.  Back when I was visiting these guys.  In addition to visiting 'the grandkids', I also visited some sheep.  What?  You thought I'd just take off cross-country and not have any wool at the end of that journey?  Not anymore, baby.  It's all about the fiber now, whether it's on the hoof or off.

In this particular case, it's on the hoof:

Cute little buggers aren't they?

This festival, the Midwest Festival of Fiber's 'A Wool Gathering', seemed small when we first arrived, but each of its 3 giant tents was chock full of fantastic vendors.  It was especially fun to get to see the Wooly Knob guys live and in living color.

Other than a new spindle for both myself and my host (it's just not a festival unless there's a new spindle is it?), there was remarkably little stash acquisition.  Seriously.  Oh, don't get me wrong, I bought a few things, but it was mosty gift purchases, so there won't be much reveal here this time.

Instead, I'll show you this:

This little thing is almost as cute as those sheep up there isn't it?  It's called the Ettrick Windwheel, and you can learn more about it here: http://www.ettrickwheels.bigpondhosting.com/.  It was really quite adorable and clever, but because it was just someone there with their own personal wheel, I wasn't comfortable asking to spin on it.  It seemed sort of....personally invasive, if you know what I mean.   This was completely new to me. Has anyone ever seen one of these before?  Spun on one? Like it?  Hate it?

All in all, we loved our day at Young's Dairy and Midwest Fiber Festival, and would definitely reccommend it if you happen to be in the Dayton, OH area on the 2nd weekend in September next year.  My only regret is that I don't seem to know any knit-bloggers in the area, and thus missed any sort of meet up that might have been taking place (if there was one....surely there are Ohio knitbloggers, yes?  And surely y'all would have congregated at a local fiber festival, right?).  That would have been fun as heck.

Maybe next year.

Lunatic

Apparently, even though it is hotter than the SUN in my apartment today, Josie is still 'down' with the wool.   

It actually makes me a little sick to look at this because the very thought of touching wool (much less curling up and NAPPING in it) in this heat gives me the skeevies.  When I took this photo, it was 88F in this room. 

If you'll excuse me, I have to go lie back down in front of the AC unit.

There's a story...

...of a lovely Shetland.....hey - y'all remember Stewart, right?  Stewart the mystery Shetland from Maple Ridge?  He's back! That will mean less to you because I never told you he'd left, but he did.  He went off to a nice wool spa out in Michigan for a few weeks.  He's feeling much, much better now, thanks.

See, I had this unbelievably stinky Stewart fleece** and a CVM named Hershey, and both were turning out to be problem chidren this spring.  Stewart whith his rottiness, and Hershey with his stickiness (and maybe also his shortiness, but I don't want to make him feel bad).   I washed that fleece over and over and over again, and just could NOT get him to give up his greese, no matter how aggressive I was with the detergent.  Also, his staple length ended up being more like 1 1/2"-2" rather than the 2"-3" I had somehow imagined, and that's just shorter than I wanted to deal with.  So, I dropped them at Zeilingers' booth at NHS&W, and asked them to blend the two fleeces for me.  I thought it would be a fun experiment to blend the two to get the length and luster of Stewart (aprox 4 lbs, white), and the SPROING of the CVM (just over a pound of dark chocolate).

Here's some Stewart after having been washed and hand-flicked:

And one of the sample spins (yes, it's true, I've been chasing the goal of consistent laceweight this spring.  just....because.):

And here's a sample of Hershey by himself:

I have to admit that the combination of short staple and still-greasy-when-spinning kind of made me want to set my wheel alight. Thank heavens Stewart came along.

And here is what they look like together:

Ain't it purty?  3-ply. Light worsted. Springy. Glorious.  Absolutely glorious. In real life it looks a little like ice-frosted caramel.

Unspun:

There's this much of it, and it's beautifully processed:

Now, if you were roughly 5 pounds of a fawn-colored CVM/Shetland blend, what would you want to grow up to be?

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**Note: I'd like to poin out that I don't think that it was in any way MRSF's fault that this fleece was so disgusting. It was actually no dirtier than other fleeces I've process, and definitely cleaner than some I've bought.  However, we had a biblically damp spring here in NE, and the normal barnyard smell of a fleece that has been put up even the slightest bit damp for even the shortest time possible is magnified exponentially. Don't get me wrong, I love a good 'barn-y' fleece, but this thing was just......awful, and I was afraid that the wool might actually begin to decompose (if it hadn't already) before I could process it all myself.  Plus, did I mention that it STANK?

Queen of the World!

Just for funsies, here's a full picture of the building in Friday's clue:

Queen of the World Cathedral

Still doesn't help?  Well then, how about this one?

Tee hee! Look! Beer!

Yup, Anne and Liz both guessed correctly that Montreal was the city in question.  This was our first trip up to Montreal, and what a treat! I can't say enough great things about this city.  We had a fantastic time and really, really didn't want to leave.  It's beautiful, fun, hip, friendly, vibrant, cosmopolitan, they have THE most adorable accents EVER, and even though it's a pretty large city, it seemed imminently approachable and livable.  If you've never had a chance to visit, you really must.  Plus, for those of us in the Boston area it's only 5 1/2 hours away!  How cool is it that we can drive to a completely different country in less time than it used to take me to get to beach back when I lived in Atlanta?  Go!  Go now!  Go hug a French Canadian today.

More fun stuff!  Look what was waiting for us when we got home!

Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Maxine.  Maxine is a straight up Romney from Melissa's flock at Skylines Farm, the same place that I got Nadine and Collette last spring.  Cat added for scale...as if I could keep them away.  Both of the cats go stark raving mad for the fresh fleece, rolling around in it, chasing each other through it, trying to eat it, and generally making absolute fools of themselves.  It's good to have someone else in the house that's as excited about shearing season as I am, even if it's only the cats. 

Here's a close up of this lovely, silky, lustrous fleece. So soft!  So clean! I washed up a handfull of it last night, and have not stopped thinking about it all day.  I'm dying to get home and spin it up!

*SIGH*  Shiny, yummy wool.

And just because I found this on the memory card, here is a long, long, long overdue picture of Rick's lucky game day socks, completed during the pre-Olympics finishing spree.  These were supposed to be for football season, but at least he's got them in time to cheer his team through March Madness.  And yes, the orange really is that bright.


Go Gators.

Specs:  Game day socks
Yarn: Colorado's Vail - sport weight superwash wool
(Wow, they FINALLY seem to be starting to run low on colors.  I still have a TON of this from a mini buying frenzy last year when it first went on closeout.)
Pattern: Adapted from Ann Budd's Handy Patterns, FINALLY adjusted enough to get it to the right circumference for Rick's tiny little ankles.
Needles:  Addi Turbos Sz 3  (two circs)

Creep show

There are no pictures in this post.  There is not even any real knitting content, though there is some coincidental talk of fibers and spinning.  I mention this only so that all of you who care nothing for the status of our battle with moths can just skip on by, and we’ll see you later in the week when the fun stuff comes back.  For those of you who are gluttons for punishment, hiya!  Welcome to hell.

I wish I could say that it seems like only yesterday, but two very, very, very long weeks ago, demons descended upon our home.  Mothdemons.  Foul denizens of a fiberholic’s hell. We hate the mothdemons.  They suck.  The cats, however, thought this was a great idea.  They loved the mothdemons, and as their particular version of love involves claws and teeth, we encouraged them to continue loving the mothdemons. We even paid them to…in tuna. That’s right, kill a moth, get some tuna.  It’s fabulous. If only that were enough to make our home safe from them, it would be grand. But it wasn’t.  We also discovered that we had not one, but TWO infestations.  That’s right folks, clothes moths AND pantry moths.  At.the.same.time. I don’t know which gods we offended, or how, but it must have been bad.  I’d also like to mention, just in case they’re listening here, that we’re really, really, really sorry, and we PROMISE we won’t do it again. 

So for the last two weeks, in addition to much, much tear-inducing work, house renovations, and family visits, there has been a T.O.N. of inspecting/cleaning/tossing/freezing/inspecting/cleaning/refreezing going on at Chez Obsession.  The upside is that the pantry has been well and thoroughly cleaned out. The down side is that we lost fair bit of food (mostly to my own paranoia, but you know...moth larvae, ick), and there is now a fairly complicated yarn/bean/rice/flour/fiber freezing and re-freezing schedule on our fridge.  All rugs have been taken outside and beaten until we cried and then cleaned thoroughly.  All furniture has been vacuumed, pillows have been sun-baked and beaten, and the cats are giving us a wide berth for fear that they will be next.  During these massive cleaning/inspection sessions, I believe that we found “ground-zero” for both sets of moths.  In the pantry: a bag of masoor daal (red lentils) from a local indian grocery, and in the fiber stack: a large bag of a mostly angora/finewool blend. Large being one full pound. 

One pound. Angora. Finewools.

Kind of makes you go all cold and clammy, doesn’t it? As Julia has noted is their habit, they couldn’t have come in on my embarrassingly large stash of cheapass Peruvian Highland Wool from Elann could they?  No siree, they came straight out of the single most expensive item in my fiber stash.  There may have been some foul language, and there was definitely some tequila.  I have to be honest, that fiber is still in my freezer because I simply can’t make myself throw it away.  I know logically that I should bring it out, let it sit for a week or two, refreeze it for a while to kill any new larvae (thanks again for that tip Julia), and then spin it up.  It should be completely safe by then, but I feel like every time I sit down to spin it I’ll get the creepy-crawly-heebie-jeebies because of the dead moth eggs/larvae/bodies in it.  Also? Even if it gets all cleaned, I’m afraid (and I know this is stupid, I do) that I’ll never trust it not to sprout more mothdemons to take over the stash room, or worse, the closet full of hand knits.   Eventually I will have to ask Rick to throw it away for me because I don’t think there’s enough tequila or chocolate or wine in all the world to make me voluntarily do it myself.  For now it’s resting peacefully in the freezer, blissfully unaware of it’s fate, and I am quietly ignoring it as I go about the rest of the damage control activities.  That is, however, the only fiber I’ve actually “lost” so far, so it’s hard not to feel pretty grateful that we caught things early.  

There’s been lots more stuff going on around here, but this is quite long enough already, so stay tuned for actual knitting content,  quite possibly even tomorrow, including a River-along update.  I'll warn you now, it's not pretty.

Y'all might want to sit down.

Let's suppose for just a moment that you went to visit a fiber-holic friend one evening, and in fixing yourselves a nice, frosty beverage you noticed two things:  the first being that she looked a little haunted around the eyes (maybe even a little haggard from lack of sleep), and the second thing being this:

...her knitting and spinning WIP baskets in the freezer.

Would you:

A) Ask her why in hell she'd be freezing perfectly good wool 

B)  Give her a big hug and offer to help her fumigate all four floors of her house (including the basement)

C) Go on with your visit as if there was nothing wrong, meanwhile making sure to sit only on furniture that does not have any fabric upholstery, trying desperately to remember if she'd given you anything recently that you might need to burn quarantine in your own stash, and trying to make up excuses about why you're not pulling out your knitting to work on while you chat

D) Run screaming away from this obviously demon-infested hell hole while stripping off all clothing on your way to your car, reasoning that driving home naked is a small price to pay for the safety of your own stash and vowing to never ever return

Warning: The following is not for the faint of heart.

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Bastards.

Send wine.  No, wait -- send Tequila.

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Updated to add:  I'm pretty sure this is going to have a happy ending because I'm pretty sure we caught this early enough to keep it from reaching the actual STASH, a consequence of a driving paranoia regarding pantry moths born from having lived through a year-long pantry infestation once that made me want to kill myself before we were finally able to eradicate the disgusting little bastards.  I suspect that clothing moths deserve an equal amount of fervor.  Plus, I have FAR more cash invested in my stash than I ever will in my pantry.  How many moths have I seen flitting near my fiber and avoiding the pantry-moth traps?  Um. Three.  You think this is extreme action for three measly moths?  I say NUH UH.  And if you disagree, go here.

So here's what's happened so far.  This stuff all lives in the living room (which is two floors below the office where the stash lives and there's been no traffic UP the staris in well over a month due to a bad case of start-itis recently), and I'm now 95% sure that the evil demons came in on these new baskets purchased a couple of weeks ago in a fit of organizational frenzy.  Last night, all fiber (and baskets) went into the freezers, all rugs & pillows went out onto the deck for some solar radiation today prior to tonight's vigorous cleaning, and what little upholstery was left inside got a thorough vacuuming.  They'll get another before the stuff comes back in tonight, the curtains will go in the wash, and the floors will get a thorough scrubbing.  How long should this stuff stay in the freezer?  Is there anything else I can do - short of toxic chemicals - to help keep this infestation from spreading? 

p.s. Don't get me wrong, there is a freezer rotation in the future of every scrap of fiber in the stash, because one can't be too careful, but what else can I do?

Travel news

So I'm reading the Globe today (online of course), when I run across this fun little article - you can read it here.  It's basically about the current rise in popularity of "agri-tourism" where people go and stay on real, working farms instead of the more traditional beach or theme park family vacation.  Leaving aside for a moment how much I KNOW my Grandfather would be cackling up a storm about how crazy "city folk" are, here's a little peek at my inner conversation.

"...blah, blah, blah, hey, this is kind of fun, blah, blah, blah, oh sure the 5 year olds love it, wait 'til they're 13, blah, blah, blah, we should take Zach to one of these next summer, blah, blah, blah, blah, tee hee-a tire swing and kittens, I love tire swings, blah, blah, blah, this is kind of like what they do in the English countryside B&B's, blah, blah, blah, man, do I NOT miss milking cows, blah, blah, blah, not to mention mucking out the barn, blah, bla...OH MY GOD, ALPACAS! WHERE?!?!

http://www.colonialhillfarmatpetersham.com/index.htm 

I am SO there.

Others in the area:

http://vtfarms.org/farm.php/fid/56 (sheep); http://www.crescentbaybb.com/Llamas.htm (Llamas); http://vtfarms.org/farm.php/fid/20 (Jacob Sheep & Llamas); http://hawkmeadowllamas.com/index.html (more llamas); The Good Shepherd Farm(no web site)/142 Griffin Hill Rd./Savoy/(413) 743-7916 (Romney sheep! Fleeces!)

Also: Keldaby Farm/12 Heath Rd./Colrain/(413) 624-3090 (Angora goats and spinning\dyeing\design studio.  Not B&B, but interesting anyway)

MA Dept. of Agriculture's AG-Tourism page: http://www.mass.gov/agr/massgrown/agritourism_farms.htm

Support your local farms.

Magic

Hi there boys and girls!  Today's obsession here at Obsession du jour is magic.  As in, magic tricks.  Since this is still, ostensibly, a knitting/spinning blog, today's magic trick will involve wool.  This wool, to be precise:

Ya'll remember Nadine, right?

Well, she had a bit of a run in with some magic powder a couple of weeks ago.  Me, I'm not always a fan of "magic" powders, but Nadine came home with some great stories involving tequila shots and hot tubs and she looked like this:

Not bad, eh?  I know I've never looked so great at the end of a "lost weekend" before.  I mean, I wouldn't....if I had ever had a lost weekend. Which I haven't, of course.  Uh, hi Mrs. Wainner.  Ahem.  Right. Sorry about the fuzzy picture, she was still so excited that I was having a hard time getting her to stop bouncing around.  Not impressed yet?  Well then, hocus pokus slibbitey slye presto chango, what am I?

Now THAT'S impressive.  8 ounces of carded roving. Sooooooo soft and fluffy. Such colors! Yum. What?  OH, you want to know how the trick works?  I probably shouldn't tell you, but there IS a little secret behind the magic.  Do you want to see?  Well, if not, stop reading.  Otherwise, behold!

MINE, all miiiine...mwah ha ha ha!  Drum carders RULE!  I don't have any idea how Claudia could stand to part with it, but wooohoooo!  I can't believe how much fiber can be processed in such a short period of time.  Thanks again Claudia; she's found a very loving home where there is LOTS (no joke, 13 lbs of clean, uncarded fleece in the stash) of work for her. 

Now if you'll excuse me, the cats need to be....er, brushed.

If they could see me now..

Those of you who know me AT ALL will be thoroughly shocked by what I am about to show you.  You may even want to sit down. Really.

No really, sent TO me, not BY me.  Tee hee hee...Steam Queen....me.  I know. I told you to sit down. 

That Julia, she's the best (also please note the beautiful plum wool as packaging.  LOVE the way this woman thinks).  See, we had this really, really fun dyeing shindig last weekend at the fabulous Julia's, and it was really, really hot outside.  Really.Hot.Outside.  (It bears repeating.) So anyway, there was yarn and sangria and fiber and margaritas and really good food and really fun people and....well...dye.  And where there's dye, there's a steamer pot.  The rest I'm guessing you can figure out on your own.  There's a small album over on the sidebar and you can also go see other pictures here, here, and here for more goodies. What you may or may not be able to tell from these pictures was how much fun it was.  It was a million degrees, and we still had a blast.  I'm here to tell you, folks, THAT'S saying something.  Oh, and George?  Cutest damned dog ever.  The Futureman of the dog world.

Thank you Julia. 

Score!

New toy!

Yeah, not actually new, but new to me, and best of all...FREE.  The lady next door is selling her place and moving away, and as part of the clean up, put this thing out on the street...yes, as trash.  Can you imagine that?  Lunacy I tells ya.  So I, of course, snapped this baby right up, so fast in fact that she had to knock on my door a few minutes later to give me all the various bits and sundry pieces that they hadn't had time to carry out yet.  This thing feels like the '57 Chevy of sewing machines and it weighs a TON, but woohoo!  New sewing machine AND TABLE.  Gotta love that.  Hell, even if I end up hating the sewing machine, I can toss it and put my crappy cheap-assed machine in here.  Assuming I ever find it in The Black Hole* of course. 

So, inspired by this and Carolyn (yes, those of you who saw it earlier, I DID come back and change this.  Shut UP, I did SO know her name wasn't Caroline, I'm just a dumbass.  Really, really sorry, Carolyn, really.) I got me some quilty goodies:

No decisions yet on which of the quilts in the Modern Quilt book I'll make, but I've definitely been itching to get back at the sewing machine for a while now. 

How about a knitting picture?  Remember the little kid socks I mentioned FOREVER ago?  Ahem, so yeah - it's taken over a month to get a picture up here, but look!  Ain't they just the cutest?

Specifics:

Pattern: Standard Ann Budd sock, only way, way smaller than usual and with a little 5 row rolled top added above the ribbing.  Just for fun.

Yarn: Elann's Cotton Colori in Cancun Fiesta, and I'm pretty sure I didn't even use half a ball for the pair.

Needles: US #1 Addi turbo (2 circulars)

He asked for rainbow socks.........

Finally, speaking of the nice neighbor-lady and her move, anyone who's looking to move to the hip and exciting neighborhood of Spring Hill, Somerville, do I have the scoop for you!  Attached single family home, townhouse style (uh huh, no one above or below you and a brick firewall between you and your neighbors) 2-3 bedrooms, small front and back yards, full basement, private driveway, two car garage(stone), and seriously cool neighbors (if I do say so myself). The place was renovated a bit in the (i think) 80's, so your bathroom and kitchen will look way, way better than ours.  Hell, they even call them "modern" in the listing. I can also attest that she just had the hardwood floors redone...phew!  It's a mere 10-15 minute walk from Harvard, Porter, AND Union Squares and 20 mins walk from Davis (that's 3, count 'em, THREE yarn stores in walking distance), good bus service (about 5 mins from each of the aforementioned squares by auto), and lots of local color.  We don't have any fun crack houses, but we do have a resident crazy lady on our street, so we've got THAT going for us.  Um, OK, so it's not really all that hip, but it IS a great neighborhood. 

* My basement full-o-boxes.