A good start to May

We've had a very slow time easing into spring.  We've had snow storms, ice storms, wind, rain and cool weather.  We're even still loading up the wood stoves because the evenings are cool or uncomfortably damp.  However, that doesn't seem to stop Mother Nature from keeping things from happening.    There is a green haze on most of the trees.  We have baby leaves!   The oak trees and a few other very late  leafing deciduous trees aren't quite there yet, but they never are this early.   Some of the flowering trees are in bloom.   We always have leaves on most of the trees by Mother's Day, and despite people's worries about the trees leafing out late this year, it's happening just like it should.

I got my little tray of watercolour paints out and played around with some new techniques to make non-wintery scenes.   I've played with flowers, winter scenes obviously because I paint my Xmas cards, and have started experimenting with summery scenes.   These 2 worked out well enough that I'm happy with them, but I'll practice some more. While I've seen a few sunsets like this one, with pale colours, many of ours tend to be a bit more dramatic with deep oranges and purples.  Sunrises though, often have pale pinks and lilacs, if you catch the right time.  They are fast and the colours don't last all that long.   I decided to send out a few birthday cards though, so I figured I should practice about bit for summer cards.

I've been spinning up some of the leftover bits and pieces from my "stash" of leftovers from over the years.   This is some green ramie.  I had purchased 1/2 lb of it, and spun up maybe 3/4 of it and left the rest.    I remember it being quite slippery and an effort to spin.   Obviously my skills have developed because instead, it's just effortlessly sliding off my fingers into lovely, fine singles.    I should have divided it into two equalise pieces of roving before I started though, so I could have spun two bobbins for plying.  Instead I'm going to have to much around with either guessing or plying from a centre pull ball.   While that is how I first learned to ply, I've found over the years, that you have to be very careful when plying fine yarns from centre pull balls, so that they don't collapse in on themselves and tangle before you finish plying.  It's been fun to spin though, because I don't seem to have to really think a lot about it while spinning.  It means I can chat or "egads" watch the hockey game at the same time.

This is my friend A's dog Teddy.   While he's getting older and a bit greyer, with thinning fur, he still blends remarkably with the rug.  He's exactly the same colour as the rug and in the right light, and angle, the parts of him that are his original colour really could be the rug.   He's a sweety and a very cuddly dog with his kids.   Today though was funny as he was sleeping when I arrived for spinning day and he didn't notice for about a 1/2 hour.  Then of course, as the good watch dog he is, he made sure to let everyone know that I was visiting.. too funny.

Small projects

A small group of us run an SCA arts and science event every May, with the whole May long weekend full of different classes.  This year of course, with the pandemic social distancing rules in place, we've had to cancel it.  We decided to make it a virtual event.  We'll see how it works out.   It's been a huge amount of computer work though, and some days it feels like I've done nothing else but sit in front of the monitor.

I spun up 100 g of grey ramie.   It's nice yarn.  It was nice to spin, although sometimes it seemed I was wearing it as much as I was spinning it.  It's very fine and clingy, especially since the weather has turned cold again and the humidity is low.

I made homemade egg noodles for dinner the other day.  .  I haven't done that in a very long time.  They are easy to make and fun to slurp.  I made stew for supper and didn't want to make biscuits, and we were out of bread.  The guys had been moving the woodpile, so I thought they'd like a hearty dinner.

The lemon tree is flowering.  The tree is loaded with flowers.  Every day I check out to see which ones have newly opened.  I've been helping Mother Nature by taking a cotton swap and rolling it in the pollen tipped bits (stamens?) and daubbing it on the central spikey thing (stigma?).   I've done this in the past.  It usually results in fruit setting.   Often the tree blooms in the summer, and the bees do the job for me.   I do like being able to pick a lemon and use it, so helping it along is okay.

I'm finishing up spinning the brown cotton.   I'm pretty sure it's the last of the good coloured cotton sliver that I have. I will miss it.  It's something I'd have to order in from either the west or the U.S. since I haven't been able to find a supplier locally or in central Canada at any rate.

I'm dressing the loom.  It's a fussy colour pattern gamp.   I was going to put it on hold, and do waffle weave tea towels, but nope, I decided to do the projects I'd listed in order.   I'm sort of regretting it now.   It's going to be fussy to thread the heddles.  I'm now thinking they'll be fussy to weave.   Since I've seen the finished project, I know they the pattern makes for spectacular towels though.

The only thing about small projects is that it doesn't feel like I've accomplished a lot.  I still haven't started on my new dresses for Westfield, nor a new medieval gown, that I've been promising myself.

The end of many things

A stupid spammer hit my blog comments so I had to change some of the settings.  My apologies if it's a bit inconvenient, but spammers... ugh!

 The Weaver and Spinner guild challenge for the winter and spring was to choose a holiday card, take some colours from it and make something.   The card I received from my daughter this year was white with black and red.   As I didn't have any black thread on hand, I chose to spin instead of weave.   Here is what I came up with.  Black, Red and white Merino, carded into rolags and spun with a long draw.  It's a fluffy, airy yarn.  It was a fun project.

 I cut the pickup inkle project off the loom at 84 inches.   I could have done another 10inches maybe.  It would have taken a bit more effort for iffy results.  There is a lot of take up on the grey, skinnier threads and not quite as much on the thicker red threads.   Every once in a while, there was a hiccup in the pattern and the non-picked up threads would show in the wrong place, or pop up where it shouldn't and that was despite re-weaving it.  By the last couple of repeats, it was obvious that the tension differences were just becoming a bit of a regular issue when weaving.   So, instead of letting myself get frustrated, I chopped it off the inkle loom.   This is not a project to get frustrated over.

The ramie is spun and plied.  I have a bin for my spun cellulose fibres.  This includes cotton, linen, ramie and bamboo.  One day, I'll have enough of any one of those fibres to weave something.  Until then, I just keep tossing in spun skeins.

I'm whipping the edges of the hooked rug and I'm looking for a new project.  Hmmmmm, what to do next?

I've some Ramie top on the wheel right now, in a lovely colour called earth.  It's a really nice brown and because it is ramie, it has a bit of a sheen.   This top has been really nice to spin, although when I stopped last night, my non-drafting fingers (the ones holding the fibre) were black with either dirt or excess dye.  Still, the yarn should be quite nice when done and any dye or dirt will get washed out when I wet finish it.


I'm still plodding away on the inkle loom with the pick-up pattern.   I did the math and I still have 2 weeks to go before I finish, if and only if, I manage to do my 3 inches a day.   I'm guessing that there will be a few days it won't happen, so it will likely be closer to 3 weeks.  

I had a single skein of a white tweed yarn which was exceptionally ugly.  It was bright white with some dots of colour and it looked totally wrong.  I dyed it a grey which in reality is a bit darker than this photo.  I started making mittens with it.  The first mitten was almost done but every time I looked at it, I saw fingerless mitts instead.   I ended up ripping back the first mitt and changing it up.  There are a bit shorter than I normally make fingerless mitts.  I usually like them to come up past my knuckles, to keep my fingers warm.  However I've found that when they are that long, they don't lend themselves to activities like spinning or playing the banjo.  So these shorter ones allow for those sorts of activities easily. 

I need to set up a Pysanky work station, so I can start on Easter Eggs this year.   My daughter was in the city, so she stopped by the shop and picked up a few dyes that I needed.  There was a new brand out, the same price as the basic dyes so I got her to get a few so I can sample them for differences.   I'm wondering though if they are just the traditional dyes, repackaged.   Different colour names, all with a Canadian cultural theme, but with the similar price point and a similar colour selection, it could be the same dyes, in a different envelope.

Catching up with chores.

 The other day we finally got hit with frost.    Just a light frost, but enough to finish off the 2 remaining tomato plants and one of the lettuce plants.  There is still Swiss chard, some lettuce and a couple of turnips in in the beds.

My friend Shannon gave me a bunch of garlic, which I planted in to the garden.   Then I found that the feed store had some seed garlic in stock, so I bought 4 heads just to have a bit extra.

The forecast said it would snow today, so I wanted to make sure all the garlic was planted before then, so yesterday was a garden day.  The garlic was all planted and most of the beds have been cleared.   Then I realised there were a few more potatoes to dig up, so I got those done as well.   I haven't purchased potatoes since the beginning of August, except for last week as they were $1 for 10 lbs.   I ended up with almost 5 lbs of potatoes from the last few plants.   They aren't huge but they are big enough.  The weather was such that I'm super happy with the harvest.

Grey ramie is on the wheel.    There is only 50 g of it.  I started spinning it the other day.  It's done now and I have to figure out what to do with the singles.   I should have divided the fibre into equal halves before I started spinning.  I tried to with just a few grams spun but the weighing got weird, and either this packed was grossly underweight or something was wrong with my scale.  Instead I just went on a spinning marathon, and while I don't normally watch TV, due to being spooked last night, because of marauding raccoons, while I was alone, I actually did watch a show or 2.  It was a good way to keep from hearing them rustling and banging outside.

Today, almost all day, it has been snowing.  Enough said about that!

Felting and spinning and spinning and spinning

 It was Textile Day at Westfield yesterday.  I ran an activity for making wet felted beads.   These are the samples I made up ahead of time.  I have another container full, but it's in that super safe place and really, I didn't have the energy to dig it up.  It was easier to just make new ones.  I started decorating a couple of them just because.   Most of the kids and adults who made a bead, had a great time and were very successful. We made necklaces and bracelets with a little bit of embroidery floss.   Once people started coming in, it was non-stop beadmaking.    I haven't been that tired at the end of a Westfield day in a while.   Silly me though.  I'd brought my wheel and some cotton to spin during the down times.   I probably got 4 or 5 yards of cotton spun as there was no down time during the whole afternoon. 

Just a heads up that if you come to Westfield on Sept. 2nd, I'm currently planning to churn ice cream!   Yay!   That's a good way to end the summer. 

 When I got home, we had a campfire.  I picked some of the drying Tigerlily (those orange ditch lilies) leaves and turned them into cordage.   My sweetie thought it was a lot of work, but really, I was sitting around the campfire doing nothing otherwise.  Now I have 2 metres of cordage suitable for basketry.   I'm drying some of the still green leaves to see if they make a difference in workability.   I wonder if bull rush leaves would work as well?   There are a bunch in the ditch, up the road!

 This is some ramie I dyed when I was first playing with Fibre Reactive dyes.   It is definitely a bold colour.   The ramie sliver was pretty compacted when I was done dyeing.  I tried shaking it out,  spreading the fibres manually, carding the fibres and then finally just stripping the sliver into thin bits.   The carding worked reasonably well, but of course was extra work.  The stripping into thin bits of sliver worked the best though and was quite fast.   There was a fair bit of short bits and neps in this fibre, but it looks pretty decent despite that.

This is more ramie.  The right skein I spun up in the past two days.   It was a bit of roving which was perfect.  All long staple lengths, with no short bit or neps.  It flew out of my hands and onto the wheel.  It was a joy to spin.  The skein on the left is from a previous batch of this same colourway.  What a difference in dye lots!   Just a reminder to get enough of one dye lot if you need it for a particular project.   I didn't believe they were the same colourway at first, but I'd been storing the skeins in their original packets, and sure enough - same colourway, just a different colour.   It won't really matter for what I have in mind though, so I'm happy enough with it.

I've two projects to put on the loom, which I'd planned to do over the summer.  I guess since summer is almost over, I should get started on those.   :)

Bobbins Emptied! Yay!

 Ta Da!  I've emptied 9 bobbins of bits and pieces of the tail end of whatever I'd been spinning and either ran out or got distracted.   The 10th bobbin is holding reeled silk from level 6, Master Spinner at Olds College.  I need to wind that off onto holding bobbins. The bobbin isn't needed immediately,so the silk is safe where it is for the moment.  It was interesting digging up all the bobbins and figuring out what was on each one.   It turns out I'd stashed the bobbins together, so the hunt for them wasn't all that difficult, once I'd figured out where I'd put them.

There was a bit of natural green cotton left on one bobbin.  It was still wet and wouldn't cooperate with being turned into a skein.  I'm pretty sure the larger white skein is Merino.  I'm not sure about the small one, because it's a little bit whiter, but it feels just as soft.   The Merino/Cashmere/Silk is easy to identify because I'd dumped a bunch of it into the exhausted vat of Japanese Indigo, just to use up the last of the dye.   I've a large zip-lock full of it. 
The Ramie isn't an end of bobbin but was a 50 gram bag that I'd spun up.  The colour is oddly called sunrise, and I'm presuming it is the sky colour at sunrise.  However if I had ordered this site unseen on colour alone, I'd have been quite surprised.  This bit of ramie shows that all commercially processed sliver and roving isn't the same.  The dark blue that I'd spun before (aptly named midnight) was long fibres, smooth and easy to spin.  This stuff was chock full of short bits and neps.  The short bits were less than 2 inches long, often only an inch and a lot of the neps just got spun in as they were well blended into the fibre.   Even when picked out by hand, they wouldn't budge.  It took a lot more concentration to spin this pale blue ramie.  If I'd gotten this bag of Ramie the first time I'd ever spun it, I'd be turned off the fibre.  However Ramie is generally lovely to spin and a nice bast fibre.

I've often mused over why the packaging of so much fibre in 50 g amounts.  It's great for sampling, for sure, but I find it not so great for actually using in a project.  I'm going to have to just keep getting 50 g of Ramie and spinning it up until I have enough to use for a real project, instead of just decorating a bin or basket.

More Spinning

For some reason I had this great idea, to switch up my spinning and spin up this green ramie.  A couple of problems with that though - 1st, there is half a pound of it, which is a lot of roving to go through.  2nd- it's been bitterly cold out and that means our old cottage is much cooler inside.  I like to spin ramie wet, which means a little pot of water to dip my fingers into every few minutes.  It makes a lovely, smooth, glossy thread, but means in this weather, my fingers get chapped. 3rd - it is not my favourite fibre to spin.

So I've taken it off the wheel.  I'll wind this bit of spun thead onto a bobbin and set it aside for the spring or summer, when wet spinning will be easier on me.

I switched back to spinning cotton.  This is white Pima cotton, so a bit longer staple than the coloured sliver.  I'm surprised that this stuff hasn't spun itself  already, because it really is the easiest cotton I've spun to date.  I am sure that it just glides through my fingers, drafting itself into lovely yarn.   Even with being distracted at times, it just seems to want to spin nicely.

The last pair of Christmas mittens for the kids.   I still want to make or remake a pair for me.  I've tried on every pair of girl sized mittens I've made and they are all too big on me.  I believe that I am pretty much over making mittens for the season though.

As an aside, I've been itching to toss something in a dye pot, but have been holding back.  The new sink was supposed to be installed 2 weekends ago.  The sink cabinet needed some specific modifying because the sink is from Ikea, which meant a bunch of other small adjustments.  Then the weekend weather was icky, so we didn't get the wood for finishing the framing around the kitchen window, which needs to be done before the sink cupboard gets installed.   So, I've been hesitant to dye up the laundry tub, in case all my nice, new wash basins, need to be used for dishes. :(

Our guild offers a beginner weaving class, which is an introduction to not only weaving, but colour manipulation.  We use pre-warped 4 harness looms to make tea-towels.   This is our last class' pretty towels.   The next class is at the end of January.  This spring we'll be doing a follow up class, which will include winding a warp, and dressing a loom.   This class seems to attract fun and interesting people, who all make cool towels.