Another Contest…

Since it is my birthday this week, I decided I’d have another contest this week. Do you know what is casting this shadow? If you do, post your guess in the comments and your name will go in a drawing to win your choice of one of my sock patterns. All guesses will be entered into the drawing! The drawing will be held Thursday morning. My mom will draw the winning name.

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Last night was had SnB once again. It was a pretty good night. Cathy joined us and had her Jacob/German Shepherd yarn with her. I thought it felt pretty soft, but the dog was shedding everywhere. Occassionally I’d look over in her direction and there would a cloud of dog fur drifting through the air, LOL! She also brought me some fiber samples for my birthday! Many of them I haven’t tried before so I’m quite excited to give them a try. Thank you sooooo much, Cathy!

It never fails to amaze me the effect one person can have on the dynamic of a group. One person can make the group awkward and full of long stretches of silence and then suddenly as soon as that person leaves the group perks up and returns to their normal jovial and joking selves. It’s truly amazing! I’m so glad that Cathy got to experience our usual group dynamic for at least part of the evening.

I also cannot understand the purpose of coming to a SnB gathering if you are going to play computer games or read a book. Those are not social activities. What is the point? It seems to me if you feel like doing things other than knitting/crochet that perhaps you shouldn’t come to a SnB group. I have my Mondays where I’m not quite in the mood to knit or I don’t have an appropriate project on the needles for knitting in a public area with lively discussion, but I want to get out of the house and visit with my friends. But I sit there and take an active role in the discussion and sometimes I’m flipping through pattern books or doing something at least remotely related to knitting. I’m also close friends with the majority of the SnB gal regulars - we do things outside of the usual Monday night gatherings and occassionally we do couple things as well. So it really is visiting with good friends who really know me and with whom I have things in common. It isn’t a group of people who have nothing in common with me other than knitting.

Enough ranting from me, it is probably back to house cleaning for me… Mom arrives in T-40 hours or so…

I’m at a loss…

Seraphim is coming along, though not a lot of progress was made on it over the weekend. I needed to slow my pace as I got an e-mail from Brown Sheep (2 weeks after writing them) and they are sending two more balls from the same seconds dye lot so I didn’t want to hit the end of
ball 4 before the other two balls arrived. Fortunately, I’ll be heading to Boulder next Saturday and can return the other two I purchased at Shuttles a week ago. I’m also having to pace myself as for some reason or another spring and fall weather patterns tend to make me a bit more likely to develop tendonitis. I don’t have an actual flare, but I need to be sure to take a good break at the completion of a row now that it is over 400 sts in width. I have less than 30 rows to go, so I figure roughly 12 more hours or so as long as I knit my design rows without too many errors.

Mom’s yarn for her Seraphim has arrived! We first placed an order for some purple Jawoll, but they were out of stock so we called to find out what other options they had in stock in a pretty purple or a rose color. We ended up going with the slightly more expensive, but still superwash, Soft Touch Heather from Shelridge Farms in the color crocus. It is unbelieveable gorgeous and super soft! We ordered 6 hanks. 4 should theoretically do it and I’m hoping it does as any leftovers mom has I’ll get and I can make socks from them. Although, I’m thinking I might not be able to hold off on knitting socks from this, I may end up folding and ordering some of this yarn for myself in another color…

The heathering isn’t the deepest heathering I’ve seen. It appears to be just a magenta sort of color mixed in with the main blue-violet color, but it still is pretty and I think it’ll make a wonderful shawl for Grandma!

This Saturday also marked the beginning of the anniversary sales at Woolen Treasures so a few of us headed down there for lunch and yarn shopping. I was restrained and came home only with some needles and notions. The needles were pretty picked over when we got there, but supposedly a new shipment will be in before the end of the week. So I’m sure my mom and I will head down there at some point once she gets here. She said she’s taking me shopping for my birthday so I figure I can get yarn when I go down with her if I’m so inclined. I’m seriously thinking about picking out something to knit Calla. The largest size might be a titch too small, but it’ll be close. And, even though my weight has stayed roughly the same since January or so things have been shifting around and becoming more toned so the sizing on that may not be quite as far off as I think as I haven’t measured too recently.

Some Samples….

When Liz and I went to Black Pines Sheep we got to see the shed where Myrtle skirts the fleeces. We got to pet many unwashed ones. Then, Myrtle allowed us to have a handful of fleece from four different ones. I’ve since spun up two of those samples…

For the Wensleydale/Lincoln cross the fleece was washed, dried and then teased by hand before spinning from the lock on a CD drop spindle. I got 18-yds from the 4gm sample. This was my absolute favorite in the lock form. It looked like curly tarnished silver. It has really good luster which I don’t think I’ve managed to quite capture digitally.

Here is the Teeswater. In the first picture you can see from left to right the flick carded locks, the original washed locks, and the handcarded rolags. The tiny skein (4 yd, unmeasureable on my postal scale in terms of weight) in that photo was spun from the flick carded locks on a drop spindle. I found it awfully slippery to have much luck from the locks on this one, though I’m thinking it could be easier to accomplish using the wheel. So, I turned to hand cards I’ve had on a seriously long loan from Snow. It carded quite nicely even though the staple length was about 5-5.5 inches (I didn’t actually measure) and I later read handcards are best for staple lengths of 3 inches or less. I found it much easier to spin on the drop spindle from the rolag in the case of the Teesewater. The third photo is a 28-yd skein spun on a drop spindle from the rolag. I also *really* like the overall appearance of this one, as it is soo shiny you’d swear there was a good percentage of silk in there though once again the digital realm doesn’t really do it justice.

Both of these are quite hairy yarns, I think due to the way I processed and spun them. They both still have a lot of luster. Howver, the Wenselydale/Lincoln cross as a really nice, soft hand. The Teeswater isn’t quite as soft. It isn’t harsh, but some wouldn’t want it next to the skin. However, I think combed Teesewater would be *heavenly*! And, Lizzy B told me that Teeswater takes dye exceptionally well!

I think I can say without a doubt that some of both of these types of fleeces will enter my home at some point. The real question is when? :-)

Washing Fleece ala Lizzy B!

As you all so wisely knew long before I did, when Liz and I went out to Black Pines Sheep I of course came home with some fleece. I was reserved though since I do not have a drum carder or combs or even so much as a proper flicker. I bought a 1/2 CVM/Romeldale fleece of about 3 pounds. So, on our way home from lunch and the IWP tour we stopped off at Bed, Bath and Beyond to purchase a salad spinner and some mesh laundry bags. Then Liz gave me a lesson in washing fleeces. Since Myrtle was very generous I got instructed on the differences in washing between Wensleydale and Teeswater versus the CVM/Romeldale. Below are some photos and instructions on how Liz taught me to wash fleece.

First, take the fleece out of the packaging and roll it out flat to double check the skirting and seperate the fleece into batches of similar characteristics if it isn’t uniform. Similar staple lengths and crimp should be together of if you want to sepeate colors. We did this on the kitchen floor on an old bed sheet. It worked quite well.

Take roughly 1-lb of fleece (or 1/3 the size of your mesh laundry bag) put it into your mesh laundry bag and close. Then run one side of your sink full of the hottest water you can get. Place the bag into hot water while filling the other side of the sink with equally hot water. Gently press down until the wool all sinks to the bottom and is all wet. There is no need for soap here yet you are just removing the dust and dirt. Don’t leave it to soak too long or all the dirt will resettle onto the fleece, so pull out by the top of the bag not really getting in contact with the wool and drain the sink. Remove fairly quickly after about 1-2 minutes. Let gravity drain most of the water off and then gently use the pressure of the bag to push a bit more of the dirty water out. Because I have some after effects of a car accident and am a bit weak I’ll often use the side of the sink to help me remove so the water. Place the bag agains the edge and with one hand gently apply pressure straight to the wool. You don’t want to agitate as the hot water has opened the scales on the wool and could cause it to felt. But, don’t be scared of the wool either.

Repeat in the other side of the sink and continue until the water is mostly clear. You may wish to change the orientation of the bag in the water to expose other parts of the fleece to the water.

Once the rinse water is semi-clean and definitely no longer opaque add some mild detergent to the next sink of water. Liz recommends Era Plus. We used Palmolive dish soap because it doesn’t have drying agents like many other dish soaps and we could not readily find Era Plus without a chase around town. If using laundry detergent, choose one without extra brightners or chlorine etc. Continue in the same manner, letting it soak in the soapy water for a few minutes, but don’t let the water cool down too much or the grease and the soap will redeposit on it. I’d say we left it soak in the soapy water for about 4-6 minutes. For cleaner fleeces like these usually 2-3 sinks of soapy water will remove the lanolin and any remaining dirt.

Repeat again with clean water to rinse out the soap. Again this will likely take 2-3 sinks.

When the sink water is free of soap put the wet fleece in your salad spinner and keep running it until you have no water to tip out of the spinner’s bowl. You would flip the fleece over and reposition it for each round in the salad spinner. This fleece took about 3-4 runs through the salad spinner per bag of fleece washed. Then spread the fleece out on drying racks or a bed sheet. I only lined the sweater racks with towels because DH is a little finicky and I was concerned of his being convinced that the racks forever smelled like sheep.

Repeat all these steps until your fleece is all cleaned.

There are many different ways in which to clean a fleece. I prefer doing small batches in the kitchen sink because it is easier on my back. Also, I can be filling the other half of the sink for the next step while I’m completing each step. But if this doesn’t sound like the method for you, one of these might work better…

* ICanSpin.com
* Fuzzy Galore - has really good scientific reasoning for some of the steps
* The Joy of Handspinning
* Divergent Threads

Oh, and one last photo… Check out the difference between the washed (left) and the unwashed fleece…

Happy Washing!

We Have a Winner…

I know there have been grumblings out there that these blog contests are fixed. I hope this graphic proves that even though Snow and I are great friends that she won the contest fair and square! I have given her a choice between the fibers I dyed and the sock yarn to go along with the fiber-art journal. I’ll let you wait and see for yourself what she has chosen. I’ll be delivering it to her office tomorrow.

My thought on these contests and who wins them is that if someone is a regular to your blog, which in most cases means they are good friends whether just over the ‘net or in real life, they are going to comment with more regularity and more often than others. So, these game of chance sort of contests have a higher probability of someone who comments more frequently winning because they are playing the game more frequently so to speak.

In knitting news, I’ve completed chart two of Seraphim! That was the largest of the charts I believe. Also, my mom and I may tag team a Seraphim for my grandmother. Mom may also do the lace herself. We’ll see. There is a chance I might also change the lace at the bottom to a lace pattern she already has memorized or can easily memorize. For those people not in the know, my mom is blind, so while she is a good knitter it takes a certain type of lace pattern for her to knit it usually. We ordered some purple Jawoll for it so that it is blockable but still washable if the nursing home would accidently grab it on laundry day. It is going to be a gift to Grandma provided we get it knit fast enough. Mom bought some cheap finering weight yarn yesterday and is planning on practicing on a very mini version (36 sts on either side of the center st plus the edge sts on either side) to see if she can handle the ever changing lace pattern or if she’d like me to substitute feather and fan or something a bit more regular. Then, when she gets here I’ll get her started on the real shawl.

Yep, a week from today Mom is coming!!!!! I’m sooooooo excited!!!!!!! Last summer for her 50th birthday we told her to pick any time and we’d pay her airfare out here. Kind of a selfish gift I know, but she hasn’t been out since our wedding in October of 2002 and that was a quick and busy trip. She’ll be here to help me celebrate the big 3-0!!!! About 20 people are going to Dushanbe, a tea house in Boulder that was gifted to them by thier sister city in Tajikistan. We’ll be having high tea there. I think some of us fibery people will go a little early and also visit Shuttles before hand. Mom will also get to visit SnB that Monday as well!