Category: General Page 47 of 49

Life is finally settling down. I finally have a phone and an internet connection that works. And World’s Best Dog flew down to keep me company. First of the menagerie to show up. I can’t wait for Martin and the rest of the menagerie to move down permanently.

I can’t say that I’m short of things to do. But I can’t say that I’m missing my fiber stash. Why? Martin’s been sending down a few boxes of stuff each week. Each box is padded with my fiber stash — whatever he needed to fill the space and keep things from shifting. I’m now filling my new residence with boxes and boxes of fiber. It’s amazing how much they fluff up once you open up the box.

Here’s my new favorite spinning spot (sorry, lost the picture in a blog move) … It’s my front porch. Isn’t it wonderful? There’s even a waterfall in the back corner on an electric pump. The landlord requested that I turn it on at least 2 hours a day to keep the pond aerated. Darn! What a hardship!

I started to spin up some of that beautiful handpainted wool from Banana Belt that I purchased at the NwRSA conference in May. I’ve got 2 bobbins full of singles now. I had plenty time to spin while I was waiting for the 4th (or was it the 5th?) telephone repair person to show up “sometime between 8 am and 6 pm.

On the Crusoe socks … I’m afraid that I’m going to have to rip out the second sock and start over. There was a 3 week break between the 2, and with the stress of moving, I’m afraid that the second sock is a little tight. Oh, well, it’s been a little warm to wear socks anyway.

I also started a short sleeved sweater, using Heirloom Breeze. It’s going a little slow, because I just can’t seem to concentrate on the knitting. There’s just so many other things to do when I settle down for the evening. And now, there’s also the dust mop demanding attention. He feels that he is owed a trip to the dog park every night. By the way, the dog parks I’ve seen do not even come close to any of the dog parks in the Seattle area. Boy, I’m spoiled. I don’t know that Waldo noticed it much — there is room to wander, new smells to explore, and other dogs to chase.

I went to the NwRSA Conference Spin-In on Saturday. What fun! I didn’t get my act together in time for the Back to Basics Spinning with Judith, but did have an opportunity to sit down to a free color workshop with one of my favorite people, Micayla Lee. I also bumped into a lot of people and had a nice spinning & chatting session with Georgean. Georgean pulled out her laptop and showed me The Sole Solution. I didn’t even realize that it was something that I needed, but I think it’s going on my birthday list (next week).

Of course, my pocketbook did not survive the vendor booths unscathed. Here’s what came home with me …

(Click on the thumbnails for larger pictures.)
These came from Pastiche. Can you believe that these cultivated silk rovings were dyed with natural dyes? She calls this line, Only Natural. In the sun light, you can see a bit of amber, green, blues, lavenders in all that beautiful greys (indigo, logwood purple, fustic and osage orange). Black Pearls indeed. Absolutely gorgeous. These were the only two skeins ever made because she has never been able to reproduce this dye lot. (I had it hidden until she got back to her booth so I can buy it.)

Discentra Designs. Now, this woman has an eye for color. Wow! Even though she was in the back corner of the gymnasium, you can see all her glorious colors as soon as you enter the room. It helps that she was upstairs near the railing. I bought 4 different rovings from her. One I started to spin almost immediately (below). Left to right, silk-wool-angora blend (colorway Lobelia), silk-wool blend (colorway Elessar), tussah silk (colorway Dimdrill Dale). She will be at Black Sheep, so look for her. Everything was absolutely worth salivating over.

Since I had a craving for some bright colors after working on that hand-painted teal/red/purple roving on a base of black, I dove right in to this silk as soon as I finished navajo plying the other. This is tussah in colorway Imprahil. I split the roving in half lengthwise, and am finished with the first half already (in 24 hours!). I was wonderful watching all these gorgeous colors slide through my fingers.

Then I found someone selling the Banana Belt hand painted rovings … I’ve been wanting to make a trip to Sequim just to see her stuff since I saw someone spinning some of her rovings at the Norman Kennedy workshop in April. And lucky for me, there they were! It took me several trips to the booth before settling on these two. I wanted to take everything! I can’t remember what the names of the colorways were. I seem to recall the one on the right was something like Oregon Spring or something. The colors reminded her of rhodies in spring. The left has a lot of brashy neon greens in the midst of all that darker green and browns. So for the purposes of the rest of the blog, I’ll call them BB Green and BB Spring.

Anyway, I decided to split these down lengthwise because I wanted to keep the color progression intact. Then came the fun part … I sat down and started spinning them in different ways to see how they’d turn out.

So here’s what they looked like spun up (left) and as knitted samples (right). From left to right, 2 ply, navajo ply – thick(er), navajo ply – thin(er), singles. It was very interesting how these colors played out. The 2 ply (sport weight)almost looks beaded, both in the skein and in the knitted fabric. And the end result looks much more spring-like. In the thicker of the 2 navajo ply (sport weight), the colors are much more intense. And with the shorter color transition, it stayed much truer to the original roving. The end result looks like late summer colors. The thinner navajo ply (fingering weight) resulted in a much softer, muted colors, similar to the single. Although it has a little more depth. The single looks a lot like Kureyon yarn, doesn’t it? Except it is fingering weight. And the singles definitely look fall-like.

Although I love Kureyon yarns, the single in this batch looks downright boring compared with the plied yarns. It lacked the depth of color that plying brought out. Current faves in this bunch are the thicker yarns, the thick navajo ply with the 2 ply coming in as a close second.

Interesting how you can get 3 different seasonal colors from one set of rovings, depending on how you spin and ply, isn’t it?

And here’s what the Spring colorway looks like. I didn’t do as many spun samples as I did with the green. Both of the samples are fingering weight, one 2 ply and one navajo ply. I think I like the 2 ply best in this bunch. The fine single in the navajo ply muted out the colors a little too much for my taste. The 2 ply looks like dappled sunlight in the woods with Oregon rhodies in bloom.

What do you think?

Felted Bag Update: The bag itself is done, but I’m struggling along with the strap. It’s 90 inches of double i-cord for the strap and I’m bored stiff. I-cord is difficult with unspun roving because you run the risk of pulling too tight and breaking the roving. So I can only do a few inches a day before I go bonkers. I’m at about 36″ … only 54″ left to go. Sigh. It really would have been faster to just use Brown Sheep, but I really wanted to try this. Anyway, I now know why most of the knitting with rovings projects (for felting) are on smaller scales. Sheer boredom factor.

Since I’ve started my leave of absence, I’ve been busing filling it with lots of fiber activities and not much time to blog. But it’s been fun and satisfying.

Last weekend was AlpacaPalooza. I bought this beautiful grey alpaca fleece that received 2nd place in the fleece show. It lost by 1 point and it was docked for low annual fleece production by the animal (La Jolla from Alapacas from Mars). I can live with that. I gave the locks a test spin with my drop spindle and came up with a beautiful dark grey yarn at 32 wpi. It is soooo soft and light that it’s like a cloud — the typical stormy Seattle sky. I’m thinking a shawl.

Martin also “talked” me into buying a grey woven alpaca shawl (he had to push really hard, ha!). It is 40″x82″. Can you see a recurring theme here? I love greys.

Tuesday was a grueling full day of interviews for a different position within my current company. Strangely enough, I want that position now more after the interviews than before. Now I’m scared. It’s a new team that has full executive level support, that’s both the good and the bad news. A lot of exposure here. Everyone will be watching, including The Street.

I had another phone interview with another large internet company down in California. It’s for the same position that I just left. But it’s a brand new team that I would have the say in building and hiring — AND, get this, it has full management support and budget to go with. What a difference. I think a trip to California is in the stars for the next week or two for another set of grueling interviews.

Now, I have to jump in the shower and head off to Shepherd’s Extravaganza for the Judith MacKenzie’s Dyeing for Color workshop. I’ve signed up for 2 other workshops during the show and the Norman Kennedy Natural Dye workshop later this month. I can’t wait.

I wish I can do this all the time — but if I don’t work, how will I pay for all these workshops, fibers and tools? Can’t something be worked out?