Fiber Exchange

I went over to Mim's this afternoon. We had talked about making a trade - we likes the barter economy. She loves hand knit socks but hates to make them. She hasn't finished the pair she started last September! I love to knit socks and only have three wethers and thus three colors of fleece. So we made a swap.

She got two pairs of socks and I got three pounds of wool: a variegated wheat, red and slate gray (it's the brillo pad, Laura). It was relaxing to chat on the sofa and pick through the fleeces. I love the smell of fleece. I had already started washing Wilson when I realized that it was almost too late for a picture.
A lamb was born shortly before I got there, probably not more than a half hour. The ewe is Tru but her baby ewe is still unnamed. Tru is still cleaning up her wobbly baby girl - all legs!
Mim weighed her at seven pounds, one pound less than Charlie, who BTW, ran from me like a crazy cat for the first hour after I got home. I can only surmise that I smelled scary.
I took this picture, hoping to show the relative size of the lamb to Jo Beth, Mim's Jack Russell Terrorist. This little wobbly girl was already frisky and had us in stitches, pun intended. I felt so fortunate to have stumbled into this special event. We just stood and watched - it's awesome in every sense of the word.
I took some cuttings from Mim's yard and was getting ready to leave, when we decided to take one last look at the lamb. Will you just look at that face. She's such a funny girl. I can't wait to see how her fleece grows in.

Experiments with Sock Blanks

I was finished at the dye day and cleaning up when Lindsey said, here - try these. She pulled sock blanks from her soak water and challenged me - go for it. Lindsey is a life force. We need more Lindseys.

I picked three colors -I'm a Fibonacci kind of girl. My colors of choice were turquoise, gold and red violet daubed on with stencil brushes.

After I got home, I rinsed the blanks, let them dry, then pulled out the yarn and wound it onto my knitty knotty. I know that some people knit as they unravel, but I need a little more control than that.
I am happier knitting socks from these center-
pull balls. I hope this doesn't label me as a control freak. Oh wait.
And here they are, the fraternal sock twins. It was a fun project, from start to finish. After seeing how harsh this path is for sock color, I'm not sure I'd take it again. The yarn showed obvious signs of stress. Just the same, it was fun.

Ready and Done

I weeded the lavender this morning and got poppy seeds planted. I also finished the towels and got the hems stitched and the towels washed. The left towel is the same in warp and weft and the right is pink weft (you have to click for big to see the pattern).
These two are the same treadling, only one is black weft and the other a brighter teal than part of the variegated warp. While the black is pretty eye catching, I think I really got it right with the teal. One of the things I want to understand, besides just how to thread a loom, is how to get the color juxtaposition to work. It's really fun to play with and dish towels are a great playground.

I also finished reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I realize that there's a bit of buzz about this book and it keeps popping up everywhere, but if you haven't already read it, you owe it to yourself to get a copy, especially if you liked To Kill a Mockingbird. I cannot stop thinking about it.

Not Birthday Dishtowels

I've been trying to finish DD Christina's birthday towels though it appears that they will be a Mother's Day present instead. Last month she entered her fourth decade of life and I my fifth year of blogging. I'm quite surprised at the role blogging has taken in my life and still am amazed that I'm still doing it. I hurt my back and had to stop weaving, then had a frenzied week and am glad to finally be getting back to them.

I am using a lavendar/pink variegated 8/2 cotton for the warp and for the first towel, have chosen black warp. I think this one will appeal to her. That's the maple shuttle that I just got from Ed Jenkins last month. This is the first time I've used it and I like it very much.

I learned from my other variegated towels that I need a different color from the variegated yarn if I want the pattern to show throughout. I picked this color since Alexia's favorite color is pink. This was pretty assaulting on my eyes after the black. I was going to unweave and try something else, but Ian thought it was "neat" so I made the second towel pink.
The third towel is blue and the last I'm weaving in tabby with the same yarn as the warp. I hope to finish weaving off this warp tomorrow, but my back announced that it was done for today. This is the other shuttle I got from Jenkins. I can't find my receipt and I can't remember the wood, but it's substantially heavier than the maple and is a dream to weave with. It practically runs down the shuttle race by itself and is now my favorite shuttle. I don't know wood, so I asked him to pick it, and I'm thrilled with his choice.

Mijo

I went over to Mim's last week just to visit and see her new lambs. Though we live in the same valley, her end is higher and also has a higher water table. I have pasture envy.

This little black lamb is Mijo, along with his mom. Mijo is going to come live with us. Yes indeed, I do get my own, I mean Ian's own, full-time black lamb. In the meantime, I have Sven's fleece so no pressure on Mijo to grow and be fluffy.
Mijo is a pip. He's checking out Jo Beth, Mim's Jack Russel terrorist, if you happened to notice her in the first photo on Mim's heels. She's always mixing it up with herd, her homeies. Mim can't use Mijo for breeding and doesn't want to eat him, and thus he will become one of our wethers.
We walked over to the large pasture to see Mim's grass. What she means is native grasses and because of the wet and prolonged winter, she has an abundance. Notice the sheep forms in the sagebrush. Shetlands are native to thriving on shrubbery. We have shrubbery in spades here. Click for big recommended here.

Looking east from Mim's property.

Looking west from ours. I still love it, warts and all.

National Poetry Month

I have always claimed to be a poetry agnostic, however, several years ago Valerie posted a poem that absolutely knocked my socks off. She supplied me with a list with recommended poets, starting with Mary Oliver and Billy Collins. Being in a library, I had endless choices and even found the trendy Charles Bukowski to be delightful. I'm happy to know there is more to poetry than The New Yorker and Robert Pinsky. I have fallen completely in love the poetry of Ted Kooser and hated to let this month get by without sharing a poem.

In an Old Apple Orchard

The wind's an old man
to this orchard; these trees
have been feeling
the soft tug of his gloves
for a hundred years.
Now it's April again,
and again that old fool
thinks he's young.
He's combed the dead leaves
out of his beard; he's put on
perfume. He's gone off
late in the day
toward the town, and come back
slow in the morning,
reeling with bees.
As late as noon, if you look
in the long grass
you can see him
still rolling about in his sleep.

The Colors of April

Sue has put up the call for colors of the month, and I don't have much color to offer. We woke up to snow this morning, but it pretty well melted during the day. It's nearly May, there's still not much growing and we're running low on firewood. It's snowing now again and sticking, but the promise of spring is in the air and the wildflowers next month are going to be spectacular. The best part of all of this is that I get to live here full time.

The Morning After

This is the roving that Lindsey dyed on Saturday. She came with a photo and wanted to create those same colors. You can see more about it at Sara's blog here. Sue called this color pathway "squadgy" but I think it needs a nicer name.

I was in a hardcore crowd. Lindsey moved onto sampling and when she had enough on three bobbins, she tossed them into a bucket and started plying. When one bobbin ran out, then it was two-ply. You could hear her plying from the barn. I completely missed the squadgey train but I want on board.
Yesterday, I spent the day reading a book, resting up from dye day. This morning I stumbled into the kitchen to see this box on the counter. Ian takes the dogs to pick up the yesterday's mail. He asked me if I knew it was coming and I said no.
It was from Kathy. Ian was ticked because Kathy had messaged him on Facebook for our address. Co-conspirators! I didn't realize how much I had blathered on about needing a black fleece, until I opened the box. Sheep fleece can't get much blacker than this. I've started sampling - waiting for the rest of the locks to dry. It's from her wether Sven who was mauled in the marauding dogs attack. She apologized that one shoulder of the fleece was missing. I am speechless, and that doesn't happen very often.
These are my results from the dye day. I am yet and still stuck in the purple, green and gold mindset. Since they're close and combined are 12 ounces, I'll probably try to spin them into a single result. Next year.

As for the book I read yesterday, I don't often recommend chic lit, but I have come to appreciate Claire Cook, author of Must Love Dogs, now a movie. I didn't see the movie, but I have read all her books, actually to my surprise. Yesterday I read Wildwater Walking Club. The author walked 10,000 steps a day while writing this book, but more importantly, she asked the question - Who are you? and do not spout your resume. Oh, and she's very funny.

Dye Day

Sara, Sue, Eileen and Lindsey - looks like a visit, maybe a spin-in? Other than the steamer to Sara's left, there's not much to say "dye day" is there. We're at Sue's, overwhelming her life and house - and yes it is a dye day.
I wandered onto a conversa-
tion and learned about pickling, That's what I'm doing here. I'm pickling a pound of Blue-faced Leicester in a bath of Dawn, vinegar and gold dye for an hour. All the colors I paint onto my wool will be on this base, with no white blank spaces.
These are the dyes that we're using. Sara instituted the dye days about five years ago as a fund raiser for the guild, and in spite of her heavy teaching schedule, she has continued these sessions. Allison and I drove over from Reno for the second one and Sue's garage was packed to the gills - we kept tripping the fuses and tripping over each other. It was March so we were freezing and the garage door had to be closed. April is much better.

Sara brought all her sample books with the ratios and the informa-
tion we needed to replicate each color. I started with the books, then lost discipline and started mixing. Let me say - if you ever get a chance to take a class from Sara Lamb, you really need to sign up. You snooze, you lose.
And while everything was going on, Sue's handyman Seth was painting house trim, and found this nest made from hay twine. I wanted a picture of the nest high up in Sue's entry, but we were a bit much for mom, who was nervous and skittish. It was endearing though to see Seth with his bird book, checking her out.
This is Lindsay's car, with the first of her dye baths drying. I fell in love the colors of the roving on her windshield and spent my time trying to replicate her results, but fell wildly short. This is my second dye day with Lindsay. I wish I could communicate how much fiber she ends up dying in the course of a day. This was just the first round. She is a legend.
It was a Lendrum-
heavy crowd. The empty wheel is Sara's - her husband picked her up to shop for a new heater - but mine, had I thought to bring it, would have upped the percentage. We're chatting and waiting for packets to steam. I simply cannot think of a richer experience. Really.
I was done, cleaning up, feeling sad that the day was drawing to close, when Lindsay put these Nancy Roberts knitting machine blanks in my hands. Here, she says, pulling them out of her soak water. My results I think are genuine dope-smoking, hippy Nevada County tie-dye. Socks to follow. Some pix from Sue's place~



Sorry. I get lost here because this where I thought I would live the rest of my life and when I'm here, I feel like my mom is having a romp too. I sometimes get carried away. She would have totally loved this day.

Stuff, Stuff and Stuff

When I posted recently about the 100 grams of silk I had won, wondering what to ply it with, Benita came right back and said brown. Oh, and by the way, I have just the ticket, and if you'll wait a minute, I'll send it to you. Ian brought the package back from the mailbox this morning, and Benita nailed it, right out of the ballpark.
I picked this up on my last trip to Jimmy Beans. I try to keep those trips to a minimum, because things seem to come home with me. However, I was really impressed with this book because the patterns are so applicable to handspun yarns. The gauges are gauges that I spin. The downside is that they don't give yardage, only weights of Noro that you need to purchase.

This is the pattern that I'm eying for my finished yarn. There will be more of the brown merino than silk, so I'll use it for bands. By the time this is done and I can wear it in a year, you'll forget I ever talked about it. Just the same, this have just gone into my queue.
I had to be in town today at noon for Sandy's book club, where we met to talk over The Rose of Sebastopol by Katherine McMahon. It wasn't my cup of tea and when the discussion wasn't exactly going anywhere, I asked how many stars they'd give it. Jill gave it 2 1/2. I said I'm giving it 2 in My Library Thing. And then we trashed it soundly. I don't understand how editors send books like this through for publication.

Afterward, I went the Friends of the Library big sale and came home with nine books (for $9) that caught my eye as ones I've meant to read, but haven't yet. I met another reader in the process and when we saw that we were picking up and putting down similar books, we teamed up to narrow down refine our purchases. She's the one who put Shoot the Moon by Billie Letts in my bag. We had so much fun - I was sad to part ways. I stopped at the library on the way home - I know, I'm an addict. I called Ian to see if he needed anything before I left town, and he said that the party we were going to tonight had actually started 5 minutes ago - Miss Communication.
It was called a Bench Warming Party, the occasion being the dedication of the bench that Harry bought and had installed for Carol's birthday. We came an hour after the party started but we weren't late. Carol and Harry's daughter Emily is in the foreground and is headed to art school in San Francisco the end of June. If we get to go to Black Sheep Gathering, it's because Emily somehow juggled her schedule to house sit for us.
This is the view due north from the bench. Their driveway is a bit of an adventure in the winter, but they live up in the clouds. Harry works at the ranch below - isn't that the commute from hell?
I am literally tottering on the edge of the bank, getting teased about stepping back for a better perspective. Carol and Harry are in the middle of the bench. There is a lot of ranching history here in this photograph, hard-working, break even, skin-of-the-teeth stories that keep me riveted to my seat.

Ranchers don't party late because they don't get to sleep in. We were home by 8:00 and I've got all my stuff ready to go, to hit the road tomorrow morning. I'm going back over the Sierras for a dye day with the Foothill Fiber Guild. We each get to dye one pound of fiber. It will be fun - it always is.

High Drama Sorta

I arrived early to grand-
daughter Alexia's classroom so caught the tail end of the creative ballet session. She is so fortunate. Her parents pay through the nose to have her here - worth it.

Here's the application for my knitted produce. And it's also the last photo from my camera, which announced heart failure, i.e, dead battery. I came to Alexia's kindergarten to show the class how a sheep's fleece becomes yarn, becomes a garment. Without pictures, I can tell you that I read a couple of picture books, pulled things from my bags, let boys play with my wheel and drummed up a whole lot of enthusiasm.
I took chunks of fleece from these, our three wethers. I also took my carders and let the kids have at it. They were the best pickers ever. I showed them a picture of our little sheep and what their coats look like.

The reaper cometh - three bags full. Added to the many other bags full.