Filling the Pantry

 More flax has been spun and more is being spun.   I'm still spinning it as singles.  It's still enjoyable spinning.  I'm almost done another 100g bag of long flax.   It's going fairly quickly, but as I'm wet spinning it, I need to take breaks to let my fingers dry out or they get all wrinkly and uncomfortable.     I checked my container of hand spun linen skeins and I'm pretty sure I have enough to weave something.  I just need to decide what to weave.

A friend called up and asked if I wanted her excess garden produce as they were heading out on holidays, and didn't want to leave the veggies to grow too large to use.    I ended up with a ton of cucumbers, zucchini and some beans.

First, I found apricots at the market, so ended up making an 1832 jam recipe for Apricot Marmalade.  It's very yummy.  Then I made cucumber relish.   I'm still trying to decide whether to make a second batch or not.   It's a bit time consuming though.   

After the cucumber relish, I made bread and butter pickles and finally zucchini relish.  We should be set for a while.

dyes and flax loooove!

 I totally can't believe that almost a month has passed since my last post.    I've been busy but still feel like I haven't accomplished much.   As well, we've had a lot of rainy and stormy weather which tends to knock our wifi connection out until the weather clears again, making blog updates difficult.    The weather has been really odd.  Flowers are blooming early and our trees look like they do at the end of the summer.   

The garden has been a partial success.   The green beans and salad greens have loved the straw bales.   I've had issues getting cucumbers, zucchini, radishes, beets and carrots started, not because of the bales, but because something was eating all the young plants down the night after they sprouted.   Next year I'll have to work out some way to protect all the seedlings; maybe cloches pinned down or something.

After an extra week of delays due to backorders, the new dishwasher has arrived.   It also arrived while my sweetie was working from home, so while I had an afternoon with the hookers (rug hookers) in the park, he installed it on his break.   He told me that there was an issue with it though as it was so quiet that he couldn't tell if it was running!

I did some spinning.  I finished up the superwash merino.    Then  I did a sample dye vat of Japanese Indigo, to  see what sort of colour it had.  Just a bit early maybe, and I was using up old Thiox, so it was a bit of an iffy experiment.    But there was colour, lots of colour.    

I dyed 2 skeins of the superwash merino.   It is a lovely soft blue.  I'm happy with this colour.   My indigo vat wasn't fully reduced.   I'm thinking it was the old Thiox, but it could have been that I jumped the gun a bit on timing as well, so it may not have had the extra time needed to be fully useable.   Still, it's the sort of blue one would expect from a woad or indigo vat, so yay for that.    

Then I shoved a handful of merino/cashmere/silk in the vat to see how much dye was left.  The photo is actually a bit lighter blue that in reality.   It's super soft of course, but the colour is lovely.   After this came out of the vat, there was more colour, however after a late start, the light was fading, so I ended it there.

A day trip to the Fibre Garden , my favourite spinning supply store was my birthday present.   I got some extra heddles for the 8 shaft table loom and some lovely Finn sliver.   Best though, was some long line flax.    Flax strick is really difficult to find here, but sometimes the shop has some long flax sliver.  It's processed, but with 12 inch lengths of flax.  It's super slick to spin and really it feels like it spins itself.    

I absolutely love spinning this stuff.   It feels like flax. It spins somewhat close to spinning strick spins like.  And it smells like flax.    This skein is 76g of long line flax sliver.   There were 3 packets in the shop.  I came home with all 3 of them.   

Hiking, jam making and other things have happened.   I'll try to post things more frequently.

Spinning

This is 298 yards of 2 ply merino.   It's lace weight and I haven't yet spun enough of it to use it for any real project.  Maybe a scarf could be made from this, but I really, really don't like knitting scarves.  I'd want much more yardage in order to weave scarves.  If I'm going to dress the loom for a scarf, I'd better have enough supplies for 2, 3 or better yet, 4 scarves.  Same amount of work to dress the loom,  for more woven items!   

It's super soft, bouncy and I've no idea what to use it for.    

I was a bit tired of spinning fine white yarn though, so I dug through some of the bits and pieces looking for some dyed wool.   I found absolutely nothing in the way of dyed wool roving in my stash.   How did I let that happen?   Next I thought that I'd spin some flax. Spinning flax and cotton are both fibres I need to practice periodically.   Since I spin neither of these fibres as much as I do wool, I like to keep my spinning muscle memory active.  I can always tell when it's been too long as it takes me a few yards to get warmed up and spinning them comfortably.

I had this idea to spin some flax.  I set up my wheel for flax spinning.  I filled my lovely little pottery flax water pot and hung it on the wheel.   Then I routed through my stash for some flax, but instead grabbed a bag of Egyptian cotton sliver.   Why I changed my mind, I don't know.   It's not like I don't like spinning cotton.  I love it.  It's a fairly fast spinning fibre, using a point of contact long draw.   I spin it relatively well.  What I don't really love is this particular cotton sliver.  It's white.  It's commercially prepared, so while it's relatively long staple, about 1 1/4 inch, it's super slick and slippery.   It takes a bit more effort to get it to spin nicely than the coloured cotton rovings which are processed with a bit of crimp left in, making them easy to spin.

I started off spinning this years ago, by making punis from sliver, to give it that little bit of tension which made it easier to spin.   A puni is a very tight, small rolag.   You roll the fibre off the handcarders, using a thin dowel as a puni core to get the cotton fibres rolled tightly.    Then you slide the dowel out and the puni is ready to spin.     It's been a while  since I've spun this particular cotton sliver, so I'd totally forgotten that I needed to make punis.   After spinning a few yards though, I realized that I didn't actually have to make punis and I was spinning it just fine.   I guess practice does make perfect.

I emptied 3 bobbins with flax singles on them.   It took a while, which was why I'd kept putting this
chore off.  It's done and they are stashed with the rest of my spun flax/linen yarn, for a future project.  I also dug through the bin and noticed that I'd been tossing in the bags of flax fibre.  I'd thought I was out of flax, but nope, I have some left.  I'd just hidden it.

Yes, the flax is pretty much the same colour as the weathered board.   Maybe a little browner, but washed out because at the particular moment I snapped the shutter, the sun came out!

 

Spin, Spin, Spin

Trying again...   I managed to delete my whole post just as I was finishing up the final proof reading.   Sheesh, twice now I've done this.   The third time's a charm, right?

I've been spinning a lot the past few weeks.   I don't normally watch the telly, but I tend to spin, knit or do some sort of handwork at the same time, if I do indulge.  I have a bit of a love for British period dramas, regular dramas, panel and comedy shows.    We ended up subscribing to the streaming service Brit Box, which has meant that I've accomplished a lot of spinning. 

This is merino.  It's a two ply.  I used a commercial sliver from The Fibre Garden.   It drafted like a dream and was so easy to spin.   I could spin well prepped fibre like this all the time!  I almost didn't ply it, but left it as singles for weaving.  There was a lot of it, but since it is mitten and toque season, I thought it could be  better purposed for warm woollies.

I had about 150g of flax sliver which I spun up as singles.   The sliver is a commercial tow preparation, with some very short bits and a lot of much longer ones.   It spins quite easily.   I have found that drafting and adding the twist works a bit more efficiently if my working hand has wet fingers.   I have a cute little flax water pot which I got from a talented potter one year when I was doing my Master Spinner at Olds College.  I like having the opportunity to use it.   It was also nice spinning the flax.  It's fun to spin and different than wool.  It makes a really nice change up.

I've also been spinning up the rest of some blue cotton.   It doesn't have the lustre that this photo suggests.  It's just plain cotton.   However, my plans for an outdoor photo shoot were scuppered today when I woke up to heavy rains and wickedly blustery winds.   Instead, I just took snaps with my phone.   It is so dull and grey outside, that even by a window, I needed to use a flash.   

I will ply the cotton and pop the finished skein into my container of cottons yarns, destined to become a garment.    I've been spinning up random skeins of cotton yarns and saving them for several years now.   The aim is to have enough to make some yardage for a shirt or jacket.   I should probably take some time to see how much I've actually spun.   It would be disappointing though, to find out that I wasn't even close to the yardage I might need. I think that's why, I never actually check.

With no Fleece Festival this year, I didn't stock up on winter spinning fibres.  Since I didn't purchase much last year either, I suddenly realized that my stash is starting to dwindle!  Egads!   I'm not buying anything right now though because we needed some electrical work done in the early summer.  We also just got the roof done and that was fun.  It cost $1000 over the estimate because once again we found the previous repairs had been done in a somewhat dubious manner, although likely the least expensive way possible.  

 When they removed the shingles, they found that there was no decking or sheathing on the roof. So they had to add a layer of plywood to seal up the structure and give something to nail into.  Of course wood is almost double in price these days.   But I will have to say that the roofers were very fast and efficient.   They showed up at 7 am on the dot.  They were finished, cleaned up and out of here by 3:30 pm.   We now have a roof which will not leak and it looks great.  As a plus, I can say they did the job the proper way.   We're happy about that.

I'm back

October has been a write-off month for getting personal projects done.   The guild found a new studio so it seems like everything was about getting the space finalized, the equipment moved in and organized.   We met with the building owner both productively and unproductively.  We had two moving days, one where we got a few of the looms in and the second where the movers came and brought the library, shelves, the 12 and 8 shaft looms, reeds, shuttles and what I've now come to realize is enough heddles to supply several generations of weavers.  It seems like I've had little time to finish up my own projects in between.

Not to say I got nothing done.   I wound a warp.   I dressed the loom.  I re-threaded the last 1/3 of the threads a second time.  I re-threaded the last 60 threads 2 more times.   I finally added 3 repair heddles and was done with it.    It is the project for my September guild challenge, where we brought in 50 g of thread or fibre and pulled someone else's out of the hat.   I got a partial spool of 2/8 cotton in a light gold colour that was handed over by Kathryn with the comment that she hated that colour.   This is what I've done with the colour.  I didn't have enough thread to do stripes on both sides though.

 I finished spinning the blue and plying the multi-coloured singles for the blue marled yarn.   There are almost 600 yards here.  There is way more than enough yarn for a pair of socks here, so now I'm not sure what to do with it all.   It seems a waste to pull 200 yards out of it for socks and then not have enough for a larger project.  Then again, I don't like knitting shawlettes or scarves, which would use the full amount.   I guess I need to see about a possible weaving project.  That would eat it up pretty quickly.


I have some tow linen on the wheel.   It's not advertised as such, but that is what it is.  It is some special linen roving or sliver.   However, it is made with shorter bits.  So far the longest strands are maybe 10 inches long.  Most are between 6 and 8 inches.  There is lots of short stuff too, fuzzy bits about 2 inches more and definitely less.  It's strong thread, needing scissors to cut it rather than just being able to break the thread with your hands.   There seems to be a limit as to how fine I can spin it as well, so I might just keep this as singles and use it that way.   It's a bit fuzzy because I didn't bother to spin it wet. It's so processed that I found it didn't really make a difference either way, so it was easier to not wet it, than to do so.

It's Hallowe'en, Apparently we don't need the apostrophe any more and spell check doesn't like it with it.  I didn't even have time to put together a costume this year.  Oh well, more time to work on it for next.    I did get an 1830's hat pattern from Westfield so that I could try making one or two over the winter.   There is definitely a shortage of hats from that era in the costume department.

Spinning blends, flax and Kevin update

I finished up another bit of that Indigo dyed, Merino/Cashmere blend.   It weighs about 53g and I haven't counted the yardage yet.  It's pretty enough. I have to track down the other skein of this and store them together for future use.  I think the yarn would make yummy socks, but it would also make a nice cozy scarf you or if I had enough, a stellar baby sweater.  Although, I'd need a bunch more than 50 g for that last idea.

I brought some flax sliver with me to Westfield on Sunday and spun it.  It's really a finely processed flax tow and while it's much nicer than the actual tow that is sold, it is still difficult to spin finely.   This is a bit coarser than I'd been trying for, but I was also chatting away while I was spinning and it took little effort.   I was glad that I was spinning flax as a visitor came in and was excited to see it being spun.   Despite the pouring rain for most of the day, and fewer than normal visitors, it was a really fun day.

I brewed up a can and kilo batch of beer -  it's fast and easy to get the lower alcohol levels my sweetie likes.   I've done a couple of these with decent results, but I usually substitute the included yeast packet for Nottingham.  That's mainly because it has a good lower fermentation temperature and our house is cooler in the winter.  Because it was so warm outside when I brewed this, I just used the yeast packet in the kit.   Oh la la.... there was yeast coming out the top of the airlock something fierce.    The next day I had to go to town, so I picked up some hose and put together a make shift blow off tube.  I should have dipped the hose in boiling water first, because then I could set the jar of sanitizer on the table, but I only had a few minutes and didn't think about it until the only place I could set the jar was on the lid.   I dunked the whole kit and caboodle into some sanitizer ( I use Star San ), including running it through the 4 ft plastic tube, before assembling it.   Of course by the time it was all said and done, there was nary a burp of excess off gassing.  At least I'll have this in case I need it in the future.

Kevin update:  He's almost been good lately.  He's hardly gotten into any trouble at all.  It's been difficult to know whether it is Kevin or one of the ginger kitties, who also get into mischief.    Kevin does love to lounge regally on the high shelf of the kitty tree, watching over his little kingdom.