Fiber Musings

Silk Hankies made during Celia Quinn’s silk workshop.

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Remember when I posted about how I wanted to drag out the cashmere silk scarf? Well, no more. I auctioned off 3 of these babies at the club’s auction for youth sailing. What was I thinking????

I gave the scarf away before I had a chance to take a picture of it for my files, but I snapped one last night. It’s Chasing Rainbow‘s Cashmere Tussah in Purple Haze colorway. The pattern is Madeira and Diamond. You can find the pattern in Heirloom Knitting or Lavish Lace (“A Season of Mellow and Fruitfulness”).

I asked the person that I gave the scarf to, to bring it back in as a sample. I put 5 of my Chasing Rainbow Cashmere Tussah packages out for the winning bid to pick from. Someone asked if I would consider making a second one, if there was a bidding war. Stupidly, I said yes, thinking that it would be 2 scarves, at most. I ended up with 3 winning bids. (There were 4 at one point. I think one of the ladies saw the panic in my eyes and retracted her bid.)
Not only do I have a lot of spinning and knitting to do, but I’m only down to 2 packages of Cashmere Tussah in my stash. Sob. But SOAR is coming in 2 weeks. Hopefully, I’ll get to replenish my stock before they run out.

I took the scarf to my guild and to Spinning at Retzlaff Winery back in June. There was a huge run on the Chasing Rainbow sales that day after the scarf was passed around.

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With some help from Celia last weekend, I finally got over my fear of spinning from the fold. I had never been able to do it without ending up with a mass of mangled fiber covered with sweat, half way to felt, in my hands. I had this fear of the whole mass flying out of my hand so I clenched it tightly in my sweaty paws.

Celia imparted several pearls of wisdom and it now flows like butter! I can spin silk as fine and smoothly as I normally do when spinning worsted from the end of the top. More importantly, I can spin silk thicker and faster than I had been in the past. No longer do I end up with the fine thread that I don’t know what to do with.

What were the tips that finally got me over my block? First, only pull off the fiber length. Whatever the fiber length is. And instead of spinning of the tip of your finger, wrap the fold over your knuckle. I don’t know why that mattered for me, but it felt more secure. And instead of having to scootch the fiber forward, you just roll your hand to get to the fiber toward the back of your hand.

I think the other thing that has helped is that I have finally learned in the past couple of years to have almost no take up on my scotch tension. That and replacing the spring with a rubber band for better tension control.

On a non-fiber note, I replaced my RedHat linux on my workstation at work yesterday with my company’s own variant of Ubuntu. (The graphics are so much better than gnome, if anyone is interested.) Anyway, I got to futzing with the themes on Firefox, and I came across this fun little theme. I now have it on my Mac at home too.

These are absolutely adorable. I especially like the folders on the bookmark bar (See the icon next to “Software”). When you select the folder (and it drops down), the kitty goes from the relaxed purring pose to ears folded back, go away, you are bothering me pose (just before the teeth and claws come out).

Instead of the Firefox animation at the upper right hand corner, you have a little kitty playing with a ball of yarn. And little goldfish mark the progress of the page load. Best fully integrated theme I’ve seen in a long time.

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I spent a glorious weekend in Celia Quinn’s Spin Basics and Silk classes. You know how it goes. You get to spin a whole lot of different fibers with different methods. You come home with all these odd bits of fiber and yarn. You put it all away, and then, a year later, you ask yourself…now, what was that silk blend we played with and how did it spin up?

Which would you rather look up?

Celia had us bring a photo album (I brought a scrapbook) with tape and cards. A few minutes spent in class produces something like what you see on the left. On the right? Samples from another silk class that I took two years ago at Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat. (Do I get points for at least knowing exactly where to find the pouch of samples, and laying my hands on them on the first try?)
Honest, I did intend to put it all in a notebook. I may still. Maybe.

But now, seeing the end results, I will definitely bring a keeper notebook with tape and labeling materials in the future. Even if I just spend an hour the evening of the class cleaning things up. I’ll have a better chance at remembering what it was that I did.

Live and learn.

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My club had a cruise out to Aquatic Park in San Francisco to watch the Fleet Week festivities and the Blue Angels perform. I loaded up my boat with enough food to feed an army and wine to sink a, well, a boat. Thankfully, that didn’t happen because I also brought floation devices — 4 knitting projects. You know, just in case I have time between stuffing my face and staring up in the sky.

I even had several knitters that joined me to inspire me: Barb, a knitter extradinaire, and a fellow cruiser; Petra, another fellow cruiser; my sister, Grace; and Karen, who was also my crew for the weekend.

You would think, that with all that time, and inspiration, I would have at least knitted a few rows. The closest I got was unknitting a few rows of Icarus on the leisurely trip home yesterday. Yes, unknitting. I found a mistake several rows back when I picked it up and spent the time unknitting. Thank goodness for autopilots and GPS.

What about the weekend? We had a FABULOUS time. The Blue Angels were spectacular. And we ended the evening with a big chocolate birthday cake for Grace. I had told the girls that they could decorate the cake when Grace, Mark, and Iris arrived, because I wanted Iris to help with the decorations. Wow. The second they arrived by dinghy, they whisked Iris away to their secret mission several boats over. I never got to see Iris to give her a hug until an hour or so later. But the 3 girls did an awesome job of keeping Iris occupied all day, and Iris got to hang out with the big girls. According to Iris, that was her favorite part of the day.

Uh, did you say something about a birthday? Yes, Grace turned 40 yesterday. Hop over and wish her a happy birthday!

That’s all for now. I’ll need a few more days to recover.

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