How Cool is this?

I started the new socks.

Then my sweetie took me on a road trip and I found a cool thermometer for the green house which marks the highest and lowest temps. This should help to start pinning down plant starting timing, or if I need any heating aids in there.

I also found a store with some plain white superwash sock yarn and I bought a couple of skeins to play with. I knew I should wait a bit, but I couldn't. Playing with colour is far too exciting and intriguing to let plain white skeins sit in a bag, which with my recent track record, I'd just misplace anyway.

So I broke out some more modern dyes and went at a bit of vat/kettle dyeing.

How cool are the results?

I had to force myself to set the skeins aside and finish up the "other" socks first before I start another pair. Otherwise for certain I'd have a single orange striped sock sitting around making me feel guilty everytime I looked at it.. for years! Anyway... yummy varigated colours and I can't wait to see how it knits up for more socks!
Of course there are a half dozen things I should be doing first, not to mention finishing up that first pair of socks.


Needing some colour to spin, I dug out some previously dyed madder fleece. Generally, I prefer dyeing yarn, but I had way too much colour and not enough yarn. The problem is that I didn't get all the madder out of it and it was a tad sticky, so there may have been a bit of lanolin left in it. The risk of felting while rinsing can increase when one gets the urge to smoosh, swirl, wiggle, flip or perform some other sort of agitation in hurrying the rinsing process. It took another 3 or 4 rinses to get the water to run clear and I stayed well away from the fibre in the process. After it drained, I lay it out on a towel in front of the fire to dry. Isn't it pretty?
It was still a tad damp when I went to bed, so I set a towel on it, to act as a cat deterrent. The cat will sit on dry fibre but I've not seen him snuggle up to covered fibre. I figured I was pretty safe. The next day my son congratulated me on making such a nice cat bed!
Now I get to do alot of combing and prepping before I can run the fibre through the drum carder.


Garden update - seeds are ordered - plans are being made - I'll replace the herb garden I left at the old house and plant a new dye garden, with a few more varities of dye plants in it. The rest will be veggies. I'll start redoing the perennial beds to have plants and flowers that I like. Right now the main bed has lots of low growing non-flowering green stuff, some oriental poppies and a bit of golden rod. The rest around the house has hostas, hostas, hostas and lots of what I'm told is Euronymus......... and...........weeds............. lots.............and...........lots..........of..............weeds.

Hide and Seek

When we were packing to move, I remember trying to pack sensibly.. all the stuff from one room in properly labelled boxes or packing like items with like, such as whole bins of fibre or sewing supplies. There are only a couple of items that I willed myself to remember packing. One of the items was the cable which connects the sewing machine to the computer so that I can download embroidery designs and stitch patterns. Yes it's a cool machine, but it's ancient; one of the first out there and no longer supported by the manufacturer. My software package is a manual stitch placement pattern digitizing program designed for Windows 3.1 originally, although they may have updated it for Windows 95 :) It's on a 3.5 floppy which took a bit of time to figure out how to put the software back on my computer since I no longer have a 3.5 floppy drive!

At anyrate, I digress... I was finally able to digitize some new designs for blackwork and a household badge. I went to hook up the machine to do some test stitching and couldn't find the cable. I KNEW.. absolutely positively remembered that I'd packed it in a pocket in the sewing notions wall caddy. It wasn't there. I checked the sewing table drawer.. nope.. the sewing basket, the bins with fibre tools, the sewing machine cases... I checked everything twice or three times over and distinctly remembered thinking to myself to pack this cable where I'd find it and thinking about my sewing room.
After a time I even tried pricing a new one. Hmmmm, they don't make new ones... there are probably 2 replacment cables, after market at that, for this model machine left in the world and they are $120 u.s. Yikes!

So I sat down with a cup of tea.. stopped panicking .. and had a revelation.. no, it was packed with the computer items not yet unpacked 'cause that was where I normally kept the cable. There are a few boxes with misc. computer and office items still unpacked. It was in the second one, sitting happily waiting for me.

Insert here..............HUGE SIGH of RELIEF ..........


Several weeks before Christmas I bought 2 balls of fine weight sock yarn to make a new pair of socks. I'd not had a chance to start before so on Boxing Day I decided to start them. The wool was gone. I'd hunted high and low and still no sock yarn. It was like the two balls had just disappeared. On and off since then, I've hunted for those 2 balls of wool. Even my son helped one one day. After a bit of a rant about my mushy brain, my sweet hubby, being the thoughtful sort, dug out a bag that was in the bedroom and proudly presented it to me as the missing wool. It was the wool I'd bought at the K-W knitting fair to make a blanket with - 10 skeins of sport weight wool singles - Realizing that this was a good time to start this project as the loom was empty and it is winter after all.. good lap blanket weather... I started once again to look for the yarn swift. I hadn't unpacked it yet from the move, not for lack of trying.

My yarn swift was a gift from a dear friend and I love it dearly. It's a plain jane utilitarian sort of swift, but it has never failed to do exactly what I need it to do and also reminds me of friendship when I use it. I've been looking for the swift since we first unpacked! It was always kept on a shelf with other fibre tools in the livingroom. I'd checked all the livingroom boxes and there are none left to unpack. I found all the other tools but not the swift - nor one of my quilting rulers, the long, fat one - but at any rate, the swift was MIA. Without the swift, my middle son, has been having to do the two hands holding the wool while I wind it thing for me. Finally in an exhausted heap from moving boxes and digging though them, I sat down with a cup of tea, and I asked myself, where would I pack something like that.
My mushy brain said.. pack like with like and special items where you'll find them.. and I glanced over and there was the cardboard box with the drum carder in it. It travelled with me in the car.. I personally unloaded it into the house, leaving it beside the loom where I'd never misplace the box. The drum carder just couldn't go missing! It's been there from the day we moved here..... I opened the box. There sitting beside the drumcarder was the yarn swift.. and the missing quilting ruler to boot!

Insert here.......... another HUGE SIGH of RELIEF............

Those 10 skeins have no been wound into centre pull balls so that I can now easily dress the loom with a new project.

On a roll now, I made another cup of tea, went into my sewing room and looked about the mess. There was a basket which was in the diningroom before the holidays. On it was an Elizabethan flat cap and under the cap... was the missing yarn........

Moral of the story........ Drink More Tea!............. It obviously solves many, many problems.............

Spinning and Weaving and Cats... :)

My friend Vandy posted one of hers and he was awfully cute. Here's our cat toasting himself in front of our woodstove. When the stove isn't hot and going strong, he'll yowl and pace in front of it to make sure we're aware that it might have gone out! Once he's warm and toasty, he'll retire to the sheepskin I put on one of his favourite resting places. Hubby says I spoil the cat, but it's much easier than listening to his very vocal complaints! Besides, I'm rather fond of my Mr. Inspector Helper Kitty.

The towels are off the loom. They turned out much better than I anticipated in the beginning. I used red, green and white as weft colours. The green one is okay. The red is the one I like the best of the lot. The white are nice enough, but a little washed out for my taste. On the other hand, the white really shows how soft such a wide range of deeper colours can really be modified. I used a bit of black tencel at the beginning to draw in the warp and check for errors and between each towel to separate them. If I had black cotton I would have used it because the black brought out the colours beautifully. No, they aren't hemmed yet.. sigh...

I spun up two bobbins of the black shetland. I plied them with the jumbo flyer to see how much I could get on a bobbin. 473 yards of fingering weight yarn in one skein. There is still a bit left on one bobbin. I haven't decided whether to add a bit to it and then ply it from a centre pull ball or just ply it to make a small skein. I've got two large skeins of the black now, a partial ball left from the mittens and a smaller skein spun up before. I have enough to do something with, I'm just not sure what! I think I need a bit of inspiration with this project. I'm not out of black fleece yet either. There isn't an awful lot left, but a bit. I think I'm tired of spinning black though for the moment. I think I need some colour or at least the potential for colour.

Small projects and Big surprises

The mittens are done! Why does the second of a pair take a gazillion times longer than the first one does? I swear that first mitten took only 3 days of intermittent knitting while the second mitt took until last night at 7:30 when I was sewing in the last tail!

After making a variety of wool scarves and the tencel experience , I decided to wind off a cotton tea towel warp. I hunted through my limited stash and there wasn't enough of any one particular colour to work with. There were lots of partial tubes that I'd picked up along the way and several that I'd purchased but didn't like the results. Nothing really "went" together in a traditional colour sense. So I tossed a bunch in a basket, used the two full tubes as background and randomly wound a third colour, changing whenever I felt like it. Four towels which should be about 36 x 20 before wet finishing.

I hated the warp halfway through winding it! I perservered... Threading the loom - 534 threads took a while because there was this holiday stuff happening in between, but I had planned it so I'd be weaving on Boxing day - as it's usually quiet. Nope.. I was still winding that darned thing on. Without a paddle, I separated the strands while winding with my fingers. Obviously I didn't do a very good job as it twisted around itself horribly.
It was a slow winding job and needed frustration breaks! I thought I'd broken tons of threads while winding, but it was only 5 :) More than I like but at least the warp is on, tensioned and I.... Can... NOW.... WEAVE.........YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Guess what? after grumbling the whole way through about not liking the colours and worried that I'd hate weaving it... I don't! It's maybe not an elegant or pretty project, but it's interesting to weave, with all those colours. I'm glad that I didn't give up and cut it off. Not only does wasting that much thread go against the grain, but I learned much in patience, problem solving and that sometimes the project gets much better as it goes on. Ask me as I'm approaching half way through the last towel though. That is always the fatigue point for me, wanting to get on to a new project! hehehe

You know, none of my weaving books or magazines had a draft and tie up for waffle weave. This project would have been perfect to try it out with! Right now it's a plain twill. With all those colours, I didn't want to get too fussy with a pattern.

Sometimes people surprise you in amazing ways. Without my knowledge and totally nothing that I'd asked for Christmas, my hubby '' tricked" out my Kromski Minstrel spinning wheel! The Distaff is functional. There are extra bobbins! Who doesn't want extra bobbins so you can switch out projects or do a 3 ply wool? There is a very pretty upright lazy kate. Which I might add, I didn't need because he made me one which is plain but works perfectly. His reasoning was that the new one was "pretty". It is, I'm not complaining. And.. he added in something I'd have never in a million years thought about getting myself.... A Jumbo Flyer...... It's huge for making fat or novelty yarns (says she who loves to spin fine and smooth yarn) but also for plying larger amounts. The bobbins are enormous. I say bobbins because it comes with one and he added a second one as well! It's ratios are much slower and will take a while to get used to. It required a 3 second adjustment to the wheel - and a trip to town to get the required drill bit. I plied with it. I filled a regular bobbin overly full- so full that I couldn't actually get my fingers in to change the hooks. I used the jumbo flyer! I only filled the bobbin halfway! I have the biggest skein I've made yet!
For weaving, I can see that larger bobbins mean less waste from not quite long enough ends and less knots. This is a very, very good thing..
For spinning, I can see fatter yarns and more ease in plying. With a shawl project upcoming, which is designed to be woven with fatter yarns, this will make the project so much easier.

Colours of December

Inspired by Leigh at 5 Acres and a Dream and by Life Looms Large. Sue at Life Looms Large challenged people to post their own set of colours. I'll say that in December, around here we don't have the range of colours that one might see further south. Still, it was interesting too try to capture them. These are from my yard.

The view from my front window - The hay field looks like gold when the sun shines on it.
A small shot of what is firing up the woodstove. It's a small stove but not doing too badly at keeping the rambling cottage comfortable. We'll still have to see how it performs at -20!
Our small barn. It's not very big but apparently housed 40 pigs at one time. I'm guessing they were weaners or something small like that. We're hoping to clean it out and set it up for a few chooks - some meat birds for the freezer and maybe even a few for eggs.

A cranky old blue jay chasing off a downy woodpecker. There are at least 6 blue jays, the woodpecker, a pair of cardinals, a couple of blackcapped chickadees, a gazillion junco's and a bunch of assorted brown wrens and sparrows that we see on a daily basis. They are hungry little beasties.Sunset through the trees. As the days are finally getting longer, it felt good to offer up a prayer of thanks to the sun for coming back once again.

Backwards Brain Day

When knitting with a particular grist of yarn, generally it can be said that more stitches equates with a larger size. So knowing that I was going to make a pair of mittens for my hubby with the same black lambs wool I made the half mitts from, I reasoned that they should be just slightly larger than the half mitts. Knowing that I cast on 54 stitches for the half mitts, using a ribbing pattern that was 4 stitches (2 knit, 2 purl), I'd need to cast on either 56 or 60 stitches to make a men's size small mitt. Knowing this and thinking about it at the time, I re-did the math, just to make sure I had it correct and then I cast on ....... 52 stitches......... yup... 52... How did I not notice that 52 is not more than 54? Then I started knitting. I was half-way up the cuff and thought to myself, this looks a bit small but a 2, 2 ribbing does squish in more than a 1,1 ribbing. I kept knitting. Half-way through the thumb gusset, I thought, hmmm, this looks a tad small, but figured that I still had lots of stitches to go, not to worry. A thumb gusset has generally about 1/3 the stitches as the rest of the mitten. By the time I got to that 1/3, I had half a mitten that I knew would fit my little hand and not much else.
I wasn't going to waste that much knitting though, so I'm now on the second one.

I've been spinning fatter yarn for some reason and it became perfectly clear when my evil research project enabling friend hooked me into looking up information about knitted Tudor flat caps. Start here from the link she sent me, which led to info on the Mary Rose and then to the Museum of London and the V&A where then have online photos of extant caps. I realized that I was spinning to make one of these caps. However, my fat spinning that I figured was a nice worsted weight yarn - that I measured out - all of it- isn't actually worsted weight - which is what I'd likely need for this project. It's fingering weight - it's not fat at all! All that embroidery thread I've been spinning turned my perceptions upside down and now I get to start again. sigh.. all backwards again. It might be easier to do this project by just buying the yarn but EGADS!... buying yarn? Don't know if I can do it.... giggle

On the other hand, the casing trim is up on most of the windows, the baseboards are starting to be cut and painted. The crown moulding will be last. It's needed to hide hide the large and unfinished seam between the ugly stucco ceiling and the nice, newly painted walls! We've used a semi-gloss durable, scrubbable paint for the trim. It's white and looks clean and pretty. Did I mention that the livingroom is almost done? Yay!

Done, Done and Done!

The embroidery thread project is finished. I ended up fussing about with a bit of overdyeing and put one of the grey skeins in the madder vat to see what would happen. I also used one of the extra yellow skeins in the madder exhaust and got a really nice soft orangy colour. They will become 2 sets of threads, 5 duplicate skeins and then the rest will have to be divided up somehow. The colours are really pretty. Each skein took forever to spin though.

The rest of the Coopworth rovings are used up. In order to feel productive because honestly, spinning teeny, tiny skeins of embroidery wools, means that after spending a week spinning and plying, you get 2 little skeins of about 30 - 35 yards plied, to show for it, I spun up the the brown coopworth. The slightly fatter yarn spins quickly mainly I think because the drafting technique is much less fussy than for the worsted lace weight stuff. This skein has 342 yards in it! I'm hoping that it is about the same weight as the grey from last week so I can make a hat with it. I managed to put the grey skein in a safe place, so I wasn't really able to compare the two to make sure!

The black shetland half mitts are also done! There is still bits of chaff in them because the beast the fibre came from is a bit of a piggy natured animal. He's adorable though and likes to be petted. The wool was difficult to spin because it really wanted to be something I didn't want at the time. This meant that the knitting was interesting because the skein I'd used was the first I'd spun and it isn't entirely even... yup, badly spun might be one term for it. This was a case of the fleece deciding exactly what it wanted to be and when I reconciled myself to it, all was good. However, regardless of the above, the mitts are exceedingly soft and most likely be very warm. They are also very pretty because of the colour. I hope the recipient likes them :)

The living room furniture is in a jumbled pile in the middle of the room. We have started painting! The poor gal at the store didn't want to sell me satin finish paint because apparently living rooms should have flat paint and not be easily cleaned. Ha I say to that.. Handprints and puppy nose prints begone!