I'm pumped. I'm excited. I'm rarin' to pieces. Why? Sock Summit is this week. I've arranged to take the days off as well as the following Monday from work. It's exciting that the Summit is happening in Portland instead of one of the larger cities. I have plenty planned for the days -- volunteer work at the Summit, helping fellow fiber artists sell their wares, hanging with my spinning and knitting pals. I hope to have enough energy to record it all here. In the meantime I've been working on a sample sock and pattern for Susan and Gail at Abstract Fibers. You'll find Arbor Rose at their booth.

Heat recovery

I survived our heat wave pretty well for the most part, taking refuge in my house. The cats, unlike me, were really enjoying getting cooked outside. I'd come home from work and find furry pancakes on the back porch. They'd come in, eat a little, drink a little, and insist on returning to the heat. Well, considering that during the winter they prefer to sit on the register when the heat comes on it's understandable, but all that fur. Ugh.

Tour de Fleece -- The numbers are in!

I sat down and calculated how much yarn I spun up from the Icelandic fleeces. These are the final numbers. I'll be able to make my jacket!:

Tour de Fleece Icelandic Fleece

1361.1 yds, 2 ply, 10-12 wpp

Upcoming projects

I've been looking over my projects that I have coming up --an alpaca scarf; a dog sweater; spinning up the Earth Angel fiber-- and wondering what else I need to get done. One thing that has been sitting on the WIP pile for a while is the Kauni sweater. I've been stuck on the gussets of the sleeves and the body but I've worked so much on it that it would be a shame to leave it dormant. So between obligations I'll be working on it.

The one good thing for heat like this

is that it dries washed yarn like nothing else. We don't get weather like this very often -- maybe once in a couple years or so -- but we don't deal well with it. I'm talking 100 degree weather for several days. It turns people into zombies, then grumps, then ticking time bombs. And since a good number of folks don't have air conditioning here in Rose City the chance of trouble in the usual places is increased. Fortunately I don't live in one of those places so I'm safe. Yesterday the plied yarn was washed and hung out on the back porch to dry. In weather that maybe got up to the 80's it took a good two days to dry. Today it's taking maybe 24 hours. Even better, I can view them from the interior of my nice cool house. I won't be getting up as Grumperella tomorrow.

For my other PDX buddies who don't have AC, I hope you find a cool place to spend the next few nights. It's gonna be tough.

Fin!

It's still daylight here in the west coast but the last of the Icelandic has been spun and plied. It will rest tonight as will my fingers. The roving escaped another mauling from the cats so I didn't have bits and pieces. There's a fair bit of vegetable matter I didn't get out but I did get quite a bit removed. These will be added to the other five skeins of spun Icelandic. I found a big ball of Shetland/alpaca blend in a beige that will work well for a contrast pattern for the yoke of the jacket I want to make from this yarn.

Now to finish a sock for Sock Summit 09. It's less than 2 weeks away. Whoo!

An end to the marathon

This weekend had one goal in mind: to spin up as much of the Icelandic as I could. Considering how out of shape I am I did pretty well. I completed the spinning up of the light Icelandic fleece bumps and plied them up. Three of my Louet bobbins are now stuffed with their plied yarn and will spend the next day resting before getting their twist set and hung out on the back porch to dry. Estimated amount of yarn spun this weekend: 19 oz.

I still have the two bumps of the other Icelandic to spin and only up to the 26th to complete the spinning for the Tour de Fleece. A healthy chunk of it will be spent cleaning out the VM from it as it has much more than the lighter fiber. If the weather is decent in the evenings, I'll be doing that on the front porch as it's a messy job. If I don't drink coffee in the morning, I should have the energy in the evening to spin the product of my labors. Saturday I'll be volunteering at the Oregon Humane Society but will have time in the morning and evening. Sunday's wide open for finishing up the yarn.

I think I'll make it.

Slacker

So here I was all gung ho for Tour de Fleece and what have I spun in the last week? Nothing! Outside of a very busy Wednesday evening that would have normally been spent spinning, I have few excuses. Part of the problem is that I've been dealing with some insomnia so by the time I get home from work I'm pretty much worthless. I could set up the wheel and churn out a few yards but by the time I'm through my email and dinner I'm ready to just sit and turn into a blob. (I did ply up the bobbins of the dark into yarn, but that took little time to do. I love fat yarn.) Tonight hopefully I'll be more productive since I got a full night's sleep last night and I have nothing planned for the weekend except for laundry. I'll borrow a bunch of movies from my neighbor and crank out bobbins.

An afternoon on the mountain

Today I took a jaunt east to Welches and Deb and Mark Accuardi's farm. Welches is west of Government Camp, the gateway to the ski resorts of Mt Hood. Deb invited me for a day of spinning with friends and if the weather was cooperative some fiber dyeing but rain came in. It wasn't bad though -- just a drizzle -- but it was enough that we couldn't do any dyeing. It was a pleasant gathering though of just the four of us with our wheels.

The Accuardis raise angora rabbits, pygora goats, and chickens. Mark took me on a tour of the farm so I got to see their set up. The goats were not happy about the rain so had to be coaxed out but the chickens didn't care. Some of the bunnies had been clipped but others still had their coats. They have a very nice group of furries, including their gray cat Julian who made the rounds of the spinners for scratching.

On the way back from Welches, I opted to avoid Sandy, which was in the middle of their annual Sandy Mountain Days, and Gresham, which in my opnion is the commercial armpit of the Portland Metropolitan area. During the summers when I was in high school I'd visit the house of my best friend's dad who lived out in the country between Sandy and Troutdale. It was an idyllic place and when I have the opportunity I take the back roads to revisit the area. I did that today and in the soft grey of the day the forests and hills were beautiful to see. It made for a very peaceful ending of the day.

Tour De Fleece

Today I finished off one bobbin and spun up another of the lighter fiber. They will rest while I fill up more bobbins with fiber. To clear them up, I plied off the remainder of the dark fiber on the Louet. This week will most likely be that routine: fill bobbins, ply the singles, start again. So the next update will be next week. Spin on!

Swatched

Today I took the plied yarn to work to swatch it for knitting into a sweater. I learned two things:

-- The dark yarn is the one that had sun damage. The yarn made solely from this fleece sheds during knitting not only vegetable matter that I was not able to get out during the spinning but also broken fibers, indicating it's not strong enough to work well as a yarn for a garment. They also create a rough fabric.

-- The dark and light singles plied don't shed. The fabric is softer. The color difference isn't too radical so it works well. However, the testing of the dark yarn makes me consider using just the lighter fleece for making a garment.

What do you think?

Tour De Fleece Day 4

The spinning continues apace. I spent this evening finishing up a bobbin of the lighter fiber for doing some experimental plying later. I haven't decided if I'm going to ply one dark and one light single together or ply the colors separately. The color difference is subtle but enough that if I started a light skein after a dark there would be a distinct line. The lighter wool is not as full of vegetable matter as the dark so it's spinning up quicker. It'll come with me to Wednesday night along with bobbin number 4.

A box arrived with some things from Widget Supply. This fall during Oregon Flock and Fiber a group of us will be selling things under the PDXKB Co-Op. I may have some handspun but I'm also considering making orifice hooks for spinning wheels. The handles will be beaded instead of having a wood or polymer clay handle. I'll try to affix the beads closest to the end of the hook so that they don't roll around. The wire for the hook has been the challenge because most beading wire is fairly thin and coiled on a spool. I wanted wire that is straight and thick enough so that it can handle being shoved into an orifice without kinking up or bending but not so stiff that it can't be bent to the spinner's liking. I found the perfect wire: 16 gauge in a multitude of colors. I got some crimping pliers and crimps but the crimps turned out to be too small. They'll be used for other projects, but I'll need to get larger crimps for this project.

Yarn in more ways than one

The canteloupe Romeldale is plied and set. It came out uneven because of using the Journey Wheel with some sections thick and thin and the rest even at a sport weight. The color is pretty though. I don't know what I can use it for -- perhaps a child's sweater or hat.

Canteloupe Romeldale

3.5 oz, 99 gms -- 254 yards -- 2 ply

Spun on Journey Wheel, plied on Louet S10

The first bobbins of the Icelandic have been spun and I have an idea of what I'll be doing with the two rovings since one's lighter than the other. I'll ply the lighter fiber with the darker to create a kind of tweed. There's a lot of vegetable matter in the fiber despite the cleaning so the challenge has been cleaning out the stuff while spinning it up. I'll most likely do at most one bobbin a day of spinning just to avoid straining my hands.

Spinners, start your whorls!

This year I've decided to join Le Tour de Fleece challenge now that I'm feeling more capable of producing even yarn. My challenge is to spin up this:

This is 4 pounds of Icelandic fleece from the trip earlier this year to the Schultz's farm. It's going to be spun into worsted weight on my Louet S10 from today through July 26th. Insane? Perhaps. But fat yarn uses up fiber faster than thin yarn. Insane would be making fingering weight from all this fiber. This will make a great jacket for the colder weather for the yarn will most likely be woolen and fluff up in the process.

Prior to this I was enjoying the opportunity to use a friend's Journey Wheel. I had a bump of Romeldale subtly dyed up in orange, yellow, and pink that I called the Cantaloupe. I used it to try out the Journey Wheel and packed the entire bump (over 80 grams) onto the bobbin. If you've never spun on the Journey Wheel and get the opportunity to spin on one, I highly recommend that before you open the box that you read the manual that's on the Bosworth's website. When I received the wheel, it had a super strong draw and was on the fastest whorl. Adjustments on the drive belt in addition to the brake belt on the bobbin solved that problem.

Happy Canada Day

To all of my Canadian friends, happy Canada Day to you! I can attest that good things do come from Canada. Let me name a few.

-- My Dad. -- Hockey. -- The Yarn Harlot Stephanie Pearl McPhee -- Hockey. -- Montreal. -- Hockey. -- Politics without religion mixed into it. -- Hockey. -- Poutine. The Canadian version of chili cheese fries. -- Hockey. -- Quebecois folk music. -- Hockey -- Banff and Lake Louise. -- Did I mention hockey?

So wave a maple leaf and be proud of your country! I know that the more I learn about it the more appreciative of it I become.

Michael

It was a shock to hear that Michael Jackson died. But now that the shock is wearing off, I don't know what to think. He did have an impact on the music world, but it's sad to think that this man with such strange ideas of how to behave in society never got a chance to prove to the world that he wasn't a freak. The image I have of him is of a man chasing an bubble holding the key to happiness. He never reached it. Now the media circus will have a field day and we'll be seeing the tabloids screaming about this, that, and the other fantastic things about Jacko. Ugh.

The question is now will Paul be able to get the Beatles catalogue back? I hope so.

BSG 2009

Saturday's jaunt to the annual Black Sheep Gathering was graced with perfect weather in my eyes: overcast but not rainy, warm but not too warm. The drive to Eugene went well and part of the way was reminiscent of road trips with my parents. Past Salem my public radio station, OPB, switches gradually from the FM station in Portland to the AM stations in Corvallis and Eugene, so the clear fidelity of KOPB 91.5 FM switched over to the fuzzy fidelity of KOAC 550 AM, complete with the buzzing when passing under high voltage power lines. So after a trip laced with the news and Car Talk, I arrived at the Lane County Fairgrounds.

The small brown sheep above are Babydolls. One farm brought one of their Jacob rams with the four horns. Interesting fleece, hey? The goats are Angoras and at the time I was there they were doing some judging. Two of the Angoras were tiny guys and their bleats were reminiscent of a cranky baby.

The marketplace was full of people looking for bargains and the unusual. I found all sorts of different fibers available including yak, bison, qiviut, casein, and maize. I came with a few items on my wishlist in addition to the task of picking up fleeces from Fantasy Fibers and talking with Nathan Lee of the WooLee Winder company about a winder for my Joy. It was tough not going through the bargain stacks of the vendors because the economic downturn has made vendors put discounts on items to bring in customers. By the time I reached StitchJones' tent to spend time spinning and drawing the curious to peruse her wares, I had found a number of goodies.

Snowy white angora bunny/Merino roving and Romeldale pindrafted roving.

Handdyed Corriedale roving

Handdyed Optim from Chameleon Colorworks

The Icelandic fleeces that I sent out to Fantasy Fibers.

The black Alpaca.

Merino top from StitchJones and the singles I spun while at her booth. The singles are tiny and drew a number of people to watch me spin on my Joy.

Hither and yon

Saturday was World Wide Knit in Public Day, an event that brings out knitters from their inner circles out into public areas to knit with fellow fiberistes. Over the course of the last week I heard about two other events besides the two I knew about: the Hollywood Farmer's Market (right around the corner!) and lunch at Casa Del Matador. The ones I knew of were at Pioneer Courthouse Square hosted by Teaknit Melissa and at the Glenn and Viola Walters Cultural Arts Center in Hillsboro hosted by Tami of pnwbookgirl. I had an appointment to meet with Melissa to drop off squares for a love blanket for Witt's partner Gary, then I was off to Hillsboro to meet up with my westside posse.

When I arrived in Hillsboro, I realized I didn't have the map I had printed out nor the address of the place. Having never been there before, I was clueless as to what to look for. I knew of it as the Hillsboro Cultural Arts Center but didn't realize until I finally arrived (thanks to my buddies' gentle coaching me through downtown Hillsboro traffic) that all my assumptions about its appearance and the name were all wrong. But it was worth it.

There were knitters.

And yarn.

And spinners.

And more yarn.

Did I mention knitters?

I came home with a book of baby knits and a lovely skein of peacock green sock yarn from Frog Creek Fibers well as finished bobbins of the Dicentra merino silk. I didn't get there in time to get a goody bag but it was fun to watch the door prizes go out to the knitters.

Thirty again?

Last Wednesday I went out for the evening with Dan and his friends to celebrate his birthday. I got to meet some of his friends and feast at La Buca. He got a lovely box of loot and many birthday wishes. It made him very happy, like a kid at Christmas. The gals at knit night missed me, but it was such a delight to see him with his goodies.

Monday was my birthday and the biggest surprise was the number of email messages from Facebook and the lists wishing me happy birthday. It was delightful and heart-tickling to see such affection from this community I've become a part of. Thank you! I ended the day with dinner with my pinochle buddies (except Reid who was busy recording a CD with the PGMC) and Dan. He went to Knit Purl and raided their ShiBui sock yarn, coming back with skeins in beautiful colors reminiscent of a beach by a deep blue lake. Combined with the bagful of chocolate from Linda and iTunes from Reid and Cristina it capped a lovely birthday.

Sockage

The Evil Sock Genius has begun his KAL on his Arch-Villain socks. I've jumped aboard but will be jumping back and forth between these and the Shaula sock from Anna Zilboorg's Socks for Sandals and Clogs (seen here on Tricofolk), a commission. I have toes so far for the AV's and am halfway through a toe on the Shaula.

As I say when faced with a challenge, it'll be interesting.

FO!

The man socks are done with a yard to spare. I have to say I was a little worried that I would run out on sock #2 but even though I didn't split the skein into two balls to make sure I had an even amount of yarn or knitted two at the same time I managed to knit both socks. You're probably wondering why. Honey, they're for size 12 man feet.

Gentleman Socks Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks That Rock Mediumweight Colorway Raven Haida Garter Rib toe up flap heel

Speaking of socks . . .

Yarmando, the Evil Sock Genius, is hard at work in his laboratory coming up with The Perfect Sock. He's looking for a few minions to join the knitalong he's hosting for testing some instructions. Now that I have the man socks completed I can join him in his pursuit. Who knows what improvements I may discover for my vanilla sock pattern.