Obsession du Jour

How mama got her groove back.

Well now...that little burst of blogging energy fell right off, didn't it?  Let's try that again.  I'll start by thanking everyone for their ideas both here and offline on how to manage the new-mom-crazies.  I would most especially like to thank all of you who by your suggestions imply that I might be even a wee bit anal about the housecleaning and that I should let it go.  It's the first time in my life that anyone has implied that sort of thing.  I think maybe I love you.

What I DID do was to take some of the suggestions to heart, and I also started carving some time out for myself (read: neglecting some more chores) on Fridays during nap time, which is making a big difference.  For instance, I did this over a couple of nap sessions:

Spunky Club July 08
Fiber: Romney
Colorway: Eclipse

I've really missed the spinning, a LOT, and this was a lovely way to jump back in.  I always love Amy's fiber explorations and this was no exception. 

Then came  a week of travel to visit G'ma and the old stomping grounds, and after that, the two weeks book-ended by having some friend into town on one end, and Rhinebeck on the other.  I'm sorry to say that I don't have the time to do a proper Rhinebeck post tonight - it's already WAY past my bedtime - but I should have time to pull the pics out of my camera in the next day or two.  I'll still be the last person out there to do the Rhinebeck Roundup, but then, what else is new?

What?  Oh, you say you want MORE random pics of my kid for no good reason?  Cool.  I can do that.

Two birds and all that...

Knitting AND spinning update, all in one go:

(Ravelry link)

This yarn was what I was spinning during the first half of labor last summer, and so ended up having a fair bit of sentimental value.  I had THE HARDEST time figuring out what I wanted to do with it.  Knit it? Pet it? Stick it in some sort of 'time capsule'?

In the end I decided I wanted it to be something that would see a lot of use and be an everyday reminder of a special time.  Then I had to pick a pattern, which ended up being tougher than I expected.  I think I've started about 6 different projects with this handspun, looking for just the right thing, and I think this is finally IT. 

Interestingly enough, it just really wanted to be a simple (and I am ALL about the simple these days) woven stitch scarf which will allow the fractally-spun color changes to shine through.  Even though these are not my typical wardrobe colors, I think this will be both practical and cheery enough to get a lot of use during the long, cold, Boston winters. 

We interrupt this broadcast.

I had every intention this morning of showing y'all the progress on the Rhinebeck sweater.  What?  you say you don't remember me announcing a Rhinebeck sweater?  It's true, I didn't, but of course I'm doing one, along with two shawls.  The sweater will absolutely be finished.  The shawls?  The jury is still out on that one.  We shall see.  At any rate, you are probably asking yourself what could possibly be more important on one's knitting blog (who just snickered?  I heard that.) than showing progress on one's knits, aren't you?

Ladies and Gentleman, it is with great pleasure, and no small amount of pride, that I present to you a sheep who really needs no introduction around here, a sheep who's name has oft been spoken in the dulcet, whispered tones of love and adoration, a sheep saved from the brink of filth and stinkiness by none other than our beloved Matt and Jamie, a sheep for whom I have harbored a deep and unstinting passion since the first day we met......

Roy (well, a wee, tiny bit of him anyway) - Reborn:

I do not have the words for how proud I am of this spinning.  I really, really don't.  Not that it's going to stop me from rambling on incessantly though. Now, I recognize that this just looks like your basic 280 yd skein of a natural colored light worsted weight wool, and for many of you this will seem like extraordinarily basic stuff, but stick with me here. I'm still all fresh, new, eager, and flushed with the first signs of really 'getting' it.

So yeah, this is the first time that I ever looked at a pile of fluff, envisioned an end result, planned how to make it happen, then sat down at the wheel and bit by bit, step by step, created EXACTLY what I envisioned.  Exactly.  It is, as a matter of fact, so exactly what I thought it would be that I feel almost disassociated from it.  Like, maybe the spinning elves showed up and possessed my body and hands whenever there was work to be done.

Prior to this project, I've mostly just spun stuff in whatever way the fiber told me it wanted to be spun (or we came to some agreement about that, like with Nadine and the long draw) and then, once there was a bunch of yarn lying about, I might pick it up and knit with it.  Or not.  (I have plenty of never knitted handspun, don't we all? ) So far, I've been pretty happy with my spinning, and it's always been all about the learning and the fun and the puttering, but THIS?  This makes me giddy.  And maybe a little excited about the future of spinning.  Which, now that I think about it, is probably a good thing given the sheer volume of wool hidden stashed living in this house.

Another thing this project taught me?  A tensioned lazy kate is SO in my near future -- as in, probably at Rhinebeck where the good wood abounds, near future. Here's what I rigged up for the purposes of this project:

One clothes hanger, some CottonEase (see?  cotton IS good for something.), a dining room chair, and a big fluffy towel (for the 'tension').  As I was trying to figure out an improvised kate and going through the process of rigging this up, I couldn't shake the feeling that I had seen this somewhere before, but couldn't find it in any of the books that were easily reachable.   So if I've stolen someone's favorite impromptu lazy kate idea w/o proper credit, I'm sorry.  Don't hate me.  Do, please, speak up, because this saved my ass and I'd like to thank you. 

Want another shot of yarn?  Of course you do.  Why the hell else would you still be reading this?:

Oh sweet, sweet Roy, how do I love thee?

If y'all will excuse us now, we need to be alone. 

Wool is love. Love is wool.

A few weeks ago I mentioned that Lucy and I had come to terms with the long draw.  Just for fun, here's that same stuff all plied up for the happy-making.

Closer?  Sure.  We can do that.

Spinning is fun.

Oh, and the last of the spring fleeces has finally come home.  No, seriously.  No more fleeces to reveal.  Um, yet.  One never knows, what with Rhinebeck just around the corner and all.  Anyway, voila:

Jeff Jordan Corriedale from NHS&W processed by Still River Mill into slightly color-sorted, center pull bumps.  It started out at 7 lbs and I got back about 5 1/5 lbs in two pewter bumps and three charcoal gray bumps.  It arrived just before I headed out of town, so there hasn't yet been time to spin anything, but I promise you'll be the first to know when I do.  Mostly I'm just incessantly petting it every time I'm near it.

Have I ever mentioned how much I love wool?

Passages

For quite some time I've been itching to yank down our front door and remove a century of paint layers and sloppy glass repairs.  Over the last few weekends I've been able to fit in some quality hours on that project.

All that's left now is a date with some sandpaper & elbow grease and it will be ready for a fresh staining.

Before that though, it will be time to take care of the crappy leftover glazing so that these stained glass panels can be cleaned and repaired.   Hopefully, that will happen next weekend.

Speakng of quality time, I believe that Lucy and I have come to an agreement over the Long Draw drafting thing.  Basically, we both love it.

Patience and good fiber prep.  It's a good mantra, eh?  On the far right end of the bobbin the first layers of inconsistency and frustration can be seen peeking out, but the latter half of this bobbin? Sheer heaven.

Here's another shot, just for fun.

And here are some helpful linky-links:

http://www.interweave.com/spin/spinoff_magazine/files/Spin_Basics_Win04.pdf
http://www.joyofhandspinning.com/spinTech-inchworm.html - video

 

Dear UPS lady:

I realize that this summer of constant deliveries continues to bring us closer and closer together, and I appreciate your determination and loyalty in geting my packages to me no matter how terrible the weather or how busy your schedule.  I am also quite fond of the sound of your lovely truck trundling towards my door in a warm rumble of cheery engine growl.  It doesn't hurt either that you are young, spunky, and cute.  Nor does it hurt that what I have seen of your tattoos only makes me want to see, er, more of 'them'.  However, as much as I love all of this, the humor in your eyes as you delivered this latest example of my fiber debauchery is the final straw on the proverbial camel's back pitching me head over heels into full-on crush, and do you know why?

**

Because it means that you KNOW.  That you have read the shippers' labels on these shipments,  you have recognized their names, AND you have deduced what's in the boxes. If that weren't enough to make me love you, it also means that not only do you know, it AMUSES YOU.

I think you may well be perfect.

----------------------------

**Chris Hall Montadale ewe from CT S&W just home from Twist of Fate spinnery in CT.  So lovely.  So creamy white.  The heart flutters.

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?

Spinny, spinny....

Now that we're finally (mostly) caught up on the knitting, we finally have some spinning updates in ODJ's summer of spinning. 

First up:

Spunky Eclectic BFL in...um...gah!  Does anyone know this colorway?  I think it's 'Spring Flowers' or something like that.  I don't see it on her site right this second, but it's a lovely blend of lime green, bronze, and raspberry.  The colors are a tad washed out here, but it's the best I could get.

It's just shy of 200yds of a light worsted weight 3-ply (Navajo for low-effort color continuity) & was purchased and begun in February at SPA, but finished ages later.  Months later.....in May, for pity's sake.  It's not really all that consistent, as you can see, but given the great gaps in time between sessions at the wheel, not to mention the drunk-late-night-PJ's-in-the-ballroom-spinning at SPA, I'm OK with it and all the fun it represents.

Have we ever talked about my love for the BFL? If you've never spun the BFL, run out and get some ASAP. Big love for this stuff and for Amy's colorways.

Next up - Somewhere on this damned hard drive is shot of a handful of skeins of Nadine in her natural, undyed state. About 450 yds total of a soft, fluffy woolen-ish spun 2-ply yarn destined, I believe, to adorn the frame of Mr. ODJ.  Once I spin a bit more, that is. I reserve the right to turn selfish at the last moment, because i'm fickle like that, but for the time being, that's it's ultimate destination.  I can't find the picture, though, so just pretend it's right here:

Final installment for today.....Roy.  Remember Roy?

This was my first sample-spin of his roving which I then swatched for fun:

Soft.  Yummy.  Too soft as a single to be of much use, of course, but still a fun experiment.

Now Roy is well on his way to becoming 3-ply sock yarn:

I measured out 3 different roving bumps of just over 2 oz each to allow for some waste.  Two of those have been spun onto separate bobbins so far, and I'm about half-way through the third. 

There's also been a TON of fleece washing and test-spinning and the like.  More on that later.

I do hereby designate....

...this summer as the 'Summer of Spinning' here at Chez Obsession.

It's not that there won't be any knitting -- ha, as if! There's a whole series of sock experiments going on, so I guess you could actually call it the 'Summer of Spinning & Socks'. At any rate, the focus will very much be on fiber, fiber prep, spinning, etc.  Why?  Because I am drowning in fiber and fleeces here!  Mind you, I'm not in any way complaining (truthfully, it makes me embarrassingly giddy), just stating a fact.  I think we've proven that I can stockpile wool pretty much anything fiber. Now it's time to see if I can actually DO something with it. In the next few days I'm going to put together an inventory and get it listed here so that there's nowhere to run. 

Meanwhile, here's a couple of sample skeins from some of this season's purchases:
Remember the Spinner's Hill Hot Rod?

Fresh singles showing a good full range of Lisa's colors.

And here's the rest of the test spin, Navajo plied.

At New Hampshire this year, out of curiosity, I picked up a couple of ounces of a merino/tencel blend from The Sheep Shed in the colorway 'Bermuda':

Verdict: It's a little annoyingly sticky on the draft, and maybe it's a fiber best spun sober (what?  just let it be a leson to you, that's all I'm saying), but it has a very lovely sheen and drape and seems like it would knit up into a lovely fabric.

In general, I also tend to like richer, deeper colors than I normally see in this blend.  Is that just current dyeing fashion for this stuff, or is there something about the fiber properties of the tencel that makes it harder to get the rich colors?   Anyone?

Feast or famine.

So.....yeah....it's definitely feast or famine around here.  I've been given a short lunch break by the Construction-Master in the midst of hanging these:

,
along with painting and installing quarter-round along the living room floor, stripping some of the woodwork in the hallway, running all new wiring for the floor outlets (ha!  you thought the great wiring adventure would be LONG finished by now, didn't you?) on the first floor, washing a month's worth of laundry, and cleaning a month's worth of neglect in the house.  These last two seem especially important to me because we have company coming next weekend, and while I am not what one might call 'anal retentive' regarding housekeeping (thanks to 3 years of living with 6 graduate student males in one house, before that I was a nightmare), I do still feel the need to scrape the Spaghetti-O's off the stove and vaccum the cat hair off the floor from time to time.  Figuratively speaking, of course.  We would never eat Spaghetti-O's in this house, much less leave bits to dry on the stove for days/weeks.  Ahem.   Also, there's been some weeding of the garden, which is settling in nicely for the most part.  I think we're going to lose one of our transplants, a 'Multi-Blue' Clematis, but everyone else seems pretty happy.  Like this Echinacea:

Echinacea 'Sunset' loving this sunshine.

Since my disappearance, some stuff has happened, there's been some traveling (updates to come), and there's even been a teeny bit of actual knitting/spinning/blog-type activity(ditto).  Not much, but some.  We'll start with the newest family member and her adventures with an old friend, Nadine .

Lucy and Nadine.

Oh yeah, she says her name is Lucy.  I'll admit that I tried to talk her into Lucretia, but she's having none of that sort of frilly name stuff, so I guess Lucy it is.   

The three of us have spent some time getting to know one another, because me?  Completely unfamiliar with the world of double-drive spinning, not to mention the speed with which a wheel this size will spin up fiber.  Folks, they don't call this a 'production wheel' for nothing. Fast drafting and good fiber control are key, apparently.  By the end of the bobbin nadine looked like this:

I think Lucy and I have come to a basic understanding of one another.  Next we'll try plying some of this, but before we did that, I decided that I needed a wrist distaff, so I ran a little bit back through to increase the twist even more and made this:

I used the examples in 'A Handspindle Treasury' (thanks again Santa), and oh my, my, how I love this thing!  Lookit!

Stunningly beautiful Hello Yarn hand painted roving from the Maine Fiber Frolic (what? I said there was travelling.) and the newest drop spindle in the stable, a Bosworth in Tulipwood from New Hampshire S&W. 

Can I say? SO MUCH BETTER to have a distaff for the handspindling.  Call me uncoordinated (and I am), but my enjoyment level of the drop spindle, which has always been mitigated by the fiber control issues, has just skyrocketed.  If you think you don't like handspindling, I'd like to suggest trying this before you completely dismiss this particular outlet for your spinning addiction habit hobby.  It bears mentioning here that plenty of folks have said the distaff was important equipment in the past, but I sort of always thought that just wrapping the fiber around my wrist was good enough, especially given that one of the joys of handspindling is the distinct lack of necessary equipment to tote around.  Who me?  'I don't need no stinking crutch'.  Foot?  Meet mouth.  Mouth? Meet foot.  Yeah.  So.Wrong.

Here are some links to other wrist distaff photos, but Urbanspinner's site with instructions for these seems to be down (temporarily?  permanently?):
Woolflowers
Notsoswift
Tessa
Fibernut

Spinoff Summer 2005 also had instructions for making a wrist distaff using an interesting technique.

Ooops...breaktime's over. Hear that whip crackin'?  Gotta go!  More stuff to show you!  Dang! I'll try to sneak away later.....