The Forecast was for Snow

Look what we woke up to. It was forecasted to snow, and for once, the weather actually did what the forecast said it would. This is the southern end of Peterson Mountain, our view to the west. Typical of the basin and range topography that John McPhee wrote about in his book, "Basin and Range," the north-south mountain ranges appear like "an army of caterpillars marching south to Mexico." Our valley is higher than Long Valley and Hwy 395 to the west of us, but if it's a school day, the County road crew will have plowed and sanded our country road and that makes it a safer bet than the highway.

But today, because it's my day to close the library at 8:00, I decided to go in through California and take the highway. I'm such a big chicken. The best pictures of Peterson were from the west side of the highway, but there have been so many deaths on this stretch, I am very respectful of the road and chose the one dedicated pull-out. You can hardly see Peterson from here. I was very sad. So to make up for the fact that I had stopped to take the picture and would probably be late for work because I did, I turned around and shot the Shoe Tree.

Because of the snow, you can only see one shoe! Last year, California did some major work here, widening the lanes and shoulders. Throughout the work, they put up orange barrier tape to protect this tree. Peterson looks a little more respectable here. I love being a part of Big Sky Country. I can't post about my dye day results - my results aren't dry yet. Can't wait to share!

Foothill Fiber Guild's Dye Day

This is Sue's two-car garage. Inside are three large tables, twenty women, two sets of eight tubs of dye at a 1% stock solution - one set for protein and one set for celulose, lots of fiber, brushes, plastic wrap, buckets, water, water, water, and enthusiasm.


Birdsong and Allison are admiring my skein. I'm admiring the machine-knit blank that Allison is dying. She purchased two of them from Nancy Roberts (available on her website), is dying them exactly the same, then will unravel them and reknit the yarn as socks.

This is my skein that they're marveling over - hah! I spun it from Brown Sheep wool/mohair combed top, which was brown and white. I hope the colors are as rich after the colors set. This is one of eight dye projects that I did today. We started dyeing at 9:30 and Allison and I were done and back on the road home by 3:00 with a leisurely lunch in the middle. The day was so nice that we were able to eat outside - tomorrow it's forecasted to storm.


I took this picture after clearing out my work area for the next project. Note the partial cups of color. Lindsey had a creative use for them. See the fiber in the center of the table. Those are mop-ups. She had at least a dozen of them going on the tables. I had a couple of handfuls of clean raw fleece. I hope they turn out as cool as her skeins.

More crazy Lindsey stuff. She had just poured an abandoned cup of dye into a skein she had soaked in vinegar water, and now she's applying syringe-fulls of various colors. She filled an electric cooker with fiber which tripped a breaker, but it was time for us to leave, so we didn't get to see how that fiber came out - there was a lot of it so hope it turned out well.

This is the first packets of our finished work. I'll bet Sue's power box was absolutely sizzling with all the cooking we did. Because we did trip her circuit breakers, Sara suggested that we steam our packets again when we got home. All eight of mine are re-steamed and cooling in a laundry hamper in the garage. It is taking a huge amount of will power to leave them out there and not peek!!!

What a great day - what a great group of women. What makes fiber women so wonderful to be with?! Thanks, Mom, for teaching me to knit when I was nine. She was one of us too, you know.

My Own Socks

In all of my knitting years, I've never had the experience I did with these socks. I picked an all-over lace pattern from my Harmony Guide and even though I knew the gauge was right, it just didn't look right. I felt unsettled all the time I was knitting. I mean, look at this. It's ugly. With socks, you finish one - then you get to do it again. And ugly twice, is one too many.






But it did work and now I'm hot to try it again. I have literally pounds of this sock yarn. I am anticipating the fun of two projects - dyeing and knitting. Does anyone else have an entire drawer of their dresser dedicated to socks - besides me??

Two days and counting before the dye day in Grass Valley with the Foothill Fiber Guild - with the one and only Sara Lamb. I'm pretty much stopped on dyeing until after that, because I've used up my dyes and I'm waiting until after this session before I order more. Than lookout. I have so many things that are just waiting for me to buy dye. Weekends are too short - work weeks are too long~

Bad News Day

Bad News: This is where we employees park and right behind is the charred remains of the fire that someone set last night about 10:00. I became testy by late afternoon with the clever quips about unexcused fines, charging for damaged books, etc. I don't think arson is funny. Why does everyone want to make it into a joke.



I took this shot from the staff room - the fire was close. I am so not ready for another season of fire arson. Ask the families of the twenty homes damaged by kids "playing with matches" last week. We all left tonight with sore throats, blah, blah, blah - whining is never attractive.

Serious bad news on my favorite alcoholic drink front: One bottle of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is 200 calories, one bottle of Dogfish Head 60-Minute India Pale Ale is 206 calories. Sierra Nevada now has a spanking-brand-new IPA - I am so-in-trouble.

And sparing you photos though I will show them if infestations recur , this the news from today on the insect front - you have no idea how disgusting they are:

Mormon crickets have begun hatching in northern Nevada, marking what state agriculture officials say is the longest infestation in recent memory. Officials say Mormon cricket infestations generally last two or three years. This is the seventh the large insects that munch their way across the landscape have invaded northern Nevada. Made famous by nearly destroying the crops of Utah's Mormon settlers in 1848, the insects eat lawns, gardens and crops. When starved for protein and salt, they eagerly gobble up one another. At the infestation's peak in 2005, 12 million acres of Nevada, stretching from the California to Utah state lines, were covered with crickets. Officials estimate 8 million to 10 million acres were infected last year.

Wind Clouds

The forecast is for rain tomorrow. This morning that didn't seem likely at all, but look at the wind clouds all stacked up. It is possible. I love to see wind clouds - it means weather, or the possibility thereof.



These are the same wind clouds, but I stopped the car at the Bedell Flats overlook. I couldn't resist the colors.





Okay, okay - it's overkill, but I thought the clouds looked really pretty as I started into our valley. I pulled over just before the cattle guard and I'm sure the car that drove past me wondered about my sanity. It was quite blowy by then and I'm learning to deal with a new problem. My short hair blows into my eyes. It's really windy now, but that can work against us and blow the storm right over us and on to Margene.

Where I've Been

This is where I've been.







I am a SoCal transplant to Nevada and it's always nice to tag up to my roots. The black dots in the waves are surfers. Please note that I hadn't eaten breakfast yet, and had only consumed two cups of coffee, but there they are.

I stayed with my sister-in-law and her mother at the beach house for the event that we would attend together on Saturday - the bridal shower of Ian's youngest son's intended. Is there anything that trumps family? We are so excited to welcome this newest member of the Campbell Clan.How did this happy couple meet? They were both tending bar at the Islands restaurant in between semesters. Now he's a SD DA and she an educational psychology candidate. Isn 't life crazy?!

This is the bridal party, with our beautiful Esther on the left - clue, the bridal veil and her bridal party trailing behind her. This outdoor bridal shower was on Mission Bay in San Diego, with lots of Victoria's Secret packages on the gift table. We had great fun.

I am back home now, wearing sweats and looking at the kindling that Ian has set in the wood stove. My head is swimming just a little from the past two days. I fell asleep to the hypnotic sound of waves crashing last night, and tonight...can't open the windows. I'll fall asleep to the sound of snoring dogs.

Weaving Assistant

Have I mentioned that I have a weaving assistant?

His name is Charlie. He's very helpful.

One Done

I finished the first sock from my handdyed sock yarn and the Harmony Guides pattern, Double Eyelet Rib. It looked terrible all the time I was knitting and I was sure it wouldn't fit. I tried it on after I had washed and blocked it, and it's quite a handsome sock. The lace looks just right. I'm so pleased that I'm knitting the second sock with quite a different attitude.

In spite on the fleece purchase on Saturday, this year continues to be the year of stash reduction, which is challenge when each year we add four more fleeces to the stash.
I'm spinning to weave a lap robe and have decided to do it in three of our Shetlands' colors: brown, oatmeal and white. My loom has a 42" weaving width so I can weave 2" stripes of each color, then repeat this in the weft. I used the McMorran yarn balance this morning to see what kind of yardage I'm going to need, and I'm going to need to spin a lot more than I already have. Driving home tonight, I realized that I can substantially reduce loom waste by using a dummy warp so I need to recalculate my yardage with that in mind. Even so, I have a lot of spinning left - lucky me. I love to spin Shetland.

Fresh Fleece

Look at these coats. Last year we sheared in May, but it's just March and they need these off. Earlier in the week, Mim emailed me to say that she couldn't go to the Guild meeting on Saturday because Devon was coming to shear. I got on the phone and called Devon to see if he could do our four boys since he'd already be in our valley and he said sure. He drives over from Yreka so got started after lunch on her 36 sheep. It was almost dark yesterday when he got here, but he had those coats off in no time. Mickey Mouth, on the left, was the Reserve Grand Champion last year at the Nevada State Fair. Devon said sheep don't ordinarily have repeat fleeces of that caliber, but Mickey's fleece is just as nice as last year.


I was driving out of the yard this morning when the boys caught my eye. Buster was visiting them - he and George rub noses through the fence. I was surprised at how small they look without their fleeces compared to the dog. They look so bare and they probably feel the same, I'm sure to their relief.






Mim brought these skeins over on Friday to show me how many colors she is getting from her sheep. There are seven separate colors here. Shetlands and Alpacas have the most color range of fleeces, and since Alpacas aren't in my future, I'm glad our sheep are Shetlands. I have four bagged fleeces upstairs in my workroom - black, white, brown and oatmeal. They are lovely.

My first transgression of 2007

I bought this Merino fleece from Wayne today. I just couldn't capture all the colors, no matter what I did. I've never seen so many colors in a Merino fleece - it ranges from white to black. I swore I wouldn't buy anything this year - this is my year of stash reduction. But Wayne came to the Guild meeting today with fleeces and also the announcement that he is moving to Oklahoma this summer to begin teaching high school agriculture in the fall. I am so thrilled for him, but at the same time, it's hard to believe that our Wool Pimp will be gone. He has been such a huge part of our wooliness and the Nevada State Fair program. I am so excited for him because he gets to go home. He came here to go to school and never left.

These are the hats that Wayne commissioned for his nieces and nephews last Christmas. He's really excited that he will living so near to them and his parents at the same time. He told me today that the hat on the bottom right was worn my his nephew in the McLean County Fair last month. His nephew wore the hat and led his other brother's Shropshire ewe in the Wool Lead parade (like the Shepherd's Lead at Black Sheep Gathering) and he won first place. I'm not sure how that works but I'm pretty happy anyway. I spun the yarn from Wayne's sheep and he told me today that he has ordered special bloodline ewes (the specifics are lost one me) for his nieces and nephews as presents so they can develop their own bloodlines. As for fleeces - he says he ships.

Socks and Yarns: tales that is

And now there are two. Amy asked me yesterday at our KIP lunch on campus if I would use the same lace pattern for another pair of socks and I said no. But now that I’m done, I think I will, but in a solid color. The pattern is called Little Arrowheard in volume 2 of the Harmony Guides. I swatched this yarn about four ways, and this is the only thing that didn’t produce diagonal clumps or stripes. I think I’m done with variegated sock yarn for a while. The toes are drawstring. When Margene asked everyone to share a secret for her contest, I should have said, “I don’t know how to Kitchener.”

This is some sock yarn that I dyed – badly. I didn’t catch on to the need for vinegar at first - the first four years or so. I belonged to the Robin and Russ yarn club and purchased about four pounds of undyed 80/20 wool/nylon sock yarn a number of years ago. It came in four ounce skeins. I tried to rainbow dye this but it’s more of a heather and quite blah. I have another four ounces upstairs that turned out downright ugly and will have to be overdyed. I went back to my volume of The Harmony Guides and after several swatches, chose Double Eyelet Rib. I think it’s going to be a good sock pattern.

On a different note, I posted yesterday about a debut novel that I enjoyed. I’ve read several debut novels that I’ve enjoyed, so thought that I'd pass some on to you.

Cotton Queen by Pamela Morsi - picked up at a bookstore in the Ontario airport.
Center of Everything by Laura Moriarty - from an independent bookstore in Davis when Amy, Eileen and I went to Lambtown USA.
Three Junes by Julia Glass - from the author at the Public Library Association conference in Boston last year.
Brick Lane by Monica Ali - from the library used book sale.
My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki - my niece put it in my hands at a Barnes and Noble in New York, saying that it was one her favorite books so I bought it.
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahri - my niece had given me her collection of short stories for Christmas.
Crossing California by Adam Langer - Christmas present from Ian.
Life of Pi by Yan Martel - Christmas present from Ian.
Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger - Christmas present from Ian.

Book for a Snowy Day

I read The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield when I was home on my snow day. It came to my attention on a couple of book sites, and part of what caught my attention was the cover. It turns out to have been the perfect book for the day. It reminded me of a Du Maurier's Rebecca meets Jane Austen - keeps you turning pages. There’s a great minor character, Mrs. Love, who knits socks and is vexed by a couple of occasions of turning her heels twice. “The second time I turned a heel twice, I was beginning to get old. Kitty and me were sitting by the fireside here, together. It was a year since her husband had died, nearly a year since she’d come to live with me. She was getting so much better, I thought. She’d been smiling more. Taking an interest in things. She could hear his name without welling up. We sat here and I was knitting – a nice pair of bed socks it was, for Kitty, softest lambs’ wool, pink to go with her dressing gown – and she had a book in her lap. She can’t have been looking at it, though, because she said, “Joan, you’ve turned that heel twice.” I was more than half way through the book before I realized the significance of the title. Surely, you will be quicker than I.

Publishers Weekly Review: Former academic Setterfield pays tribute in her debut to Brontë and du Maurier heroines: a plain girl gets wrapped up in a dark, haunted ruin of a house, which guards family secrets that are not hers and that she must discover at her peril. Margaret Lea, a London bookseller's daughter, has written an obscure biography that suggests deep understanding of siblings. She is contacted by renowned aging author Vida Winter, who finally wishes to tell her own, long-hidden, life story. Margaret travels to Yorkshire, where she interviews the dying writer, walks the remains of her estate at Angelfield and tries to verify the old woman's tale of a governess, a ghost and more than one abandoned baby. With the aid of colorful Aurelius Love, Margaret puzzles out generations of Angelfield: destructive Uncle Charlie; his elusive sister, Isabelle; their unhappy parents; Isabelle's twin daughters, Adeline and Emmeline; and the children's caretakers. Contending with ghosts and with a (mostly) scary bunch of living people, Setterfield's sensible heroine is, like Jane Eyre, full of repressed feeling—and is unprepared for both heartache and romance. And like Jane, she's a real reader and makes a terrific narrator. That's where the comparisons end, but Setterfield, who lives in Yorkshire, offers graceful storytelling that has its own pleasures

Andean Dreams

This is how much snow fell overnight. I left work about 4:00 yesterday when it started snowing in earnest. I have never experienced such a harrowing drive, and I've lived here since 1975. I drove about 12 miles in near white-out conditions, with snow falling so fast that I had to put my windshield wipers on high. With only a couple hundred feet of visibility, headlights appeared almost at the same time as I came upon the vehicle. At one point, a pair of headlights crept past me on the left, then almost immediately I saw a pair on my right side - freakout! It was the lights of a car that had spun out, but they were able to pull back on the road after I passed which is good because I was afraid to stop.

I took a picture of Zaria this morning. The distortion is because I had to shoot through the window. I still hadn't shoveled the deck. She came to us from Oregon so the only weather she had experienced before coming here was rain. She's chewing her cud (is that what llamas do?) and completely is contented. I believe she's having Andean dreams.

First Lace

This is the first lace I've ever knitted. It's just one sock and I can tell you that there is two socks worth of knitting here. I ripped as much as I knitted. It took forever before I finally was able to see what the stitches produced and keep track of the pattern but when I finally did, I found the knitting very enjoyable. It's only a four row repeat but it feels gratifying now that one sock is done and I'm pleased to find that I like working on the second one.

I caught this picture of finches feeding in the front yard. There have to be at least a hundred of them. No wonder the thistle socks are empty tonight.



Speaking of tonight, I drove home through the worst snow conditions I have ever experienced. I just thought I'd take a picture of one of our llamas contentedly kushed in the snow but all I got was a picture of blowing snow. Buster is on the edge of our deck and, at this moment, those tracks are erased. We haven't had snow much all winter and now it's decided to fall all in one day.

Vegetative Matter

Ian took the camera down this morning when feeding. How do our sheep get so much hay in their fleeces? I just don't get it.

Clouds

I was driving down to the surface street this morning when I suddenly realized that the only clouds in the sky were these. Here on the eastern side of the Sierras, I'm used to interesting clouds. If you remember from school, it's all a part of the orographic lifting over the mountain block that makes photographs of our clouds find their way into textbooks.



I might as well have had a bumper sticker that said "I brake for clouds" because that's what I did,multiple times. Every time I drove into another valley, I'd think, oh man, look at them now. Pull over, get out camera, shoot from car window.



Suddenly I realized that I had reached the clouds and was driving under them. Brake, grab camera, get out of car, shoot picture, see man in truck in driveway across road with tractor on trailer, wave, get back in car, go through gears to get to speed because car is coming and promise self not to stop anymore or risk being late for work. I'm bummed because my brand new camera, now two months old, needed to have the battery charged. But you can still see the lovely eastern Sierra clouds. The wind has blown hard all day and snow is forecasted for tomorrow, however, my head and knee have not confirmed that forecast. When I drove into the next valley, I realized that these clouds were the northern-most of Reno's cloud cover. Sometimes they will get a storm that will completely miss us - weird.

Dye Purchase Postponed

I finally decided to order the Landscape Dyes from Woodland Woolworks and was just trying to determine which six colors I was going to get, when an ad on the opposite page for this book caught my eye. I forgot that I had ordered this book to get free shipping from Amazon when I was buying some other things last year. I put on the shelf of my bookcase upstairs and that's where it has been ever since. I started reading it and was fascinated to realize that the color harmonies I was selecting actually had a reason and that's why my eye was drawn to them. It seems that I'm prone to select split complementary colors. So I decided to postpone ordering the dyes until I finished reading the book.

Meanwhile, the Foothill Fiber Guild is having a dye day on March 25th. Sara Lamb will be there and has promised to answer any questions we might have. Allison emailed to say that she would drive if I wanted to go. We both belong to this guild even though it's on the west side of the Sierras and we live on the east side,. It simply cannot snow that weekend! I'm really excited for this opportunity and am spinning up generic yarn to dye. I'd like to take some roving too, but will wait for the emailed supply list before I finalize my selection. And so I postpone my order of more dyes, yet again.

I was disappointed to realize that the fused glass class this Saturday is in conflict with our grandson Logan's sixth birthday and he would like us to buy him either clothes or books. It will be books. We gave him the first two dozen of the Magic Tree House series last year and they were a huge hit. That's my boy.

I don't know what I was thinking when I enrolled for this glass class. It's on the 24th. Logan was born on the 24th. He carefully printed the information on his own invitations. I'll cancel as soon as I get to work tomorrow. So, no Amy, no fused glass buttons for your birthday this year.

And yet more bags

During my houseboundness, I found myself watching a lot of mindless TV and movies, thanks to the brainfog of Percocet. And in that mindless TV and movie watching, I was thankful to have yarns available for mindless knitting. I did finish these three bags

The body of the purple bag is rainbow dyed, not so you can notice, but it was supposed to be rainbow dyed with purple, pink and green. I dyed it with hot pour and didn’t wait long enough between pouring to get good color definition. The color variation is slight, but it looks pretty cool against the contrasting purple.

The biggest surprise was the connecting color on the bag going from purple to claret/merlot/whatever-red wine. That was the last of my very successful rainbow-dyed yarn that I did do the dyeing right. I actually waited in between pours and, boy, does it ever connect the two colors in the bag. When I do something like this, I get all excited and want to stay up all night and dye yarns and rovings. Thankfully I have a sane husband who brakes my insanity.

I get such a kick out of how each one of the bags turns out, because while I’m knitting, they look shapeless and ugy. It’s not until going through the several washing cycles that they look completed. And they don’t look like bags until they’re blocked. I’m starting to get the feel of how the different wools felt, and now I’m ready for a change. I’m finishing up knitting the wools that I have spun or dyed and am contemplating how to put different wools together to take advantage of their various rates of shrinkage.

I knitted this bag a while ago but just wasn't happy. I moved the button and changed the fastener from i-cord to crocheted band. I loved the button but it didn't show up well before. I'm taking another fused glass class next Saturday. My focus will be on buttons. I think glass buttons on the bags are oh-so-cool.

Happy Valentine's Day!

I love you so much,

I’m knitting you a treasure.

I hope you enjoy it too.

It gives me lots of pleasure.

I knit it in the airport

I knit it in the car.

I knit it on my breaks at work.

I knit it in the bar.

Am I being obsessive

Have I gotten carried away?

Only when you receive this eight foot scarf,

Will you be able to say.

Eddie

This is Eddie. He is the first dog we got after we moved out here four years ago. In town, we had three large dogs, but within six months lost them all in a short succession of deaths. Ian was reeling from the loss of his companion of 16 years, a remarkable dog that loved him unconditionally when he was drinking and no one could stand to be around him. Ian wasn’t ready for another dog he said – no one could replace Bud. And I couldn’t argue that. This was a dog who came racing through the dog door when he heard the theme song to his favorite TV show – America’s Funniest Videos then would kneel in front of the TV to watch and comment on the whole show. The other two dogs were my running partners. It’s hard to start over – dogs are family.

One day Allison called me at work and said there was a terrific dog that needed a home. She wouldn’t call if he wouldn’t something special. At first Ian balked, but co-incidentally, that issue of Black Sheep Newsletter had two articles of incidences of people losing livestock to neighbor dogs. We had purchased our llamas and were boarding them with Toni in Chilcoot until Ian finished our fence. I was nervous. Ian reconsidered and agreed to the meet this dog of Allison’s where he was being kenneled. Eddie had Ian at hello – still has him.

Eddie had wandered into the ranch where Allison boarded their horses. She and her girls loved him. He went by the name of Lucky. The name reminded me of the joke about the three-legged dog who couldn’t see out of one eye. Ian and I are big fans of the black and white photographer, Edward Weston, and decided this dog needed a black and white name, hence Eddie.

Yesterday when Allison drove down our long driveway, Eddie was waiting for her at her driver’s door. After four years, he was thrilled to see her. Different truck, different smells, but he knew her just the same. How do dogs do that?! He loved all over her, but when Ian came home it was clear to me whose dog he is. It was hard to take the first step of starting over on our dog family, but Eddie is lucky and so are we.

The Knit and Chat

Allison came out today to knit and chat. After bringing in her knitting bag and purse, and she toted a big box into the house, saying "I brought something for you." Mim came over with a felting project that she needed to continue working on, and that turned out to be perfect. (Check out her site for stunning wet-felted bags.) In Allison's box were bits and pieces of colored wool roving that were leftover from SOAR last year. She was helping with cleanup after the event and this box was slated for the garbage. She had nylon stocking legs and a paint tray insert for friction. We ended up felting over bars of soap. I have a bunch of imperfect bars of soap upstairs in my workroom. We didn't end up knitting a thing, but this is what I did do.