Rainyday Spin

And a Great Rainy Day was had by all. I've held on to very few fibers and yarns. One that did not leave my non existent stash is a hank of Handmaiden Seasilk, my Viking Wool and a bit of fluff. The Sirri yarn was one of my early political fiber purchases. Exercising political opinion by being a consumer, right. In this case, a protest against the emargos cross the mid-East after the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy. It's quite versitile. Finely spun singles spun from Farose Island sheep at 600m a hank. Just too much of a bother to measure when designing. But, it's great as a play yarn. It felts and fulls beautifully. Even a simple St st scarf on large needles then fulled in alternating hot and cold water with a bit of conditioner makes the yarn double in thickness as the fiber blooms. Even better, though delicate in appearance the wool strengthens as the fibers lock together.

The single Vikings also work well as, well, singles! I plied them with some random bits I'd spun up of wool waste. And spun up a bit for Kiddo. The first with the tan, second with the cream. The blue/green/white hanklette was immediately claimed by Kiddo, she wanted cuffs with the squiggle on it.



Kiddo got a long lesson in color theory, applied maths and then hand blending. She came up with the next two wooly colors we'll be creating.

Then we baked peanut butter cookies and a fine Rainyday was had by all.

Today's Walk

A Wee Bit of This

A Wee Bit of This takes about fifteen minutes to hand fluff and floof. It takes a wee bit less than fifteen minutes to enjoy spinning it all up. I really do have to step up my mad blending game. While I continue slow and steady, I have gotten a few more colors to play with. Bright, vibrant "waste". More once I clear off the spindle of the soysilk/alpaca and experiment a bit this evening. Yes, parked in front of the fireplace is where I'll be. They are predicting snow again. Yay! Snow is fun! Nooo! We been exploring the walking trails and came across another network that goes to new to us places.

It's so cool how the Wee Bits look like cocoons. When you squeeze them the colors darken giving you an idea of how they will spin up. Today's walk was spectacular! Pics will be up soon. Those new trails, wow. We left the cottage at 2pm. We'd discussed the trails we'd take to make a nice loop woods walk and a bit of village walk. Near the end of the second segment Kiddo spied the next string of trails. After the second trail we had to choose from a split we thought it best we turn back and come back mid morning so we'd have more time to explore. The point at which we had stopped had a grassy lush green trail to the left and one to the right was one heading up a hill and around to another ridge. We stopped, had a look around, both blurted out ~ We're goin UP THERE next time!

A new neighbor moved in this last weekend. Today a van pulled up out front. I was sitting out on the front deck weaving in endless ends, glance up, see a man hop out of the van and immediately hoist up his trousers. Eyes glance down to my fine weavinginendlessends job then back up as a second guy hops out of the van and immediately hoist up his pants while turning and look over towards me on the deck. I stopped messing about with the ends wondering if they were indeed coming here and not to the neighbor. Then, a third man exits the van, hoists up his pants, turns back to get something out of the van and shut the door. They head to the neighbor's house. It was then that I noticed that they were plumbers.

Made my day.

Eeks! Leeks!

This is part of the view from the front deck. Open the door and voila! The surrounding valley in its wintery glory - sans snow! I love how the strands of evergreens mix with the deciduous trees, colors muted in the distance, once closer, tis an endless riot of green. The distant side of the valley is obscured by low fog. Fog, not smog. Love it.

I have learned that the leek is The Vegetable of Wales. That explained why they were so readily available and on the one pound coin here. Leeks leeks leeks. Leeks are a new veggie for me so I asked a couple of people how they normally prepare them and googled recipes as well. It was only fitting I give the leek and potato soup making a try. A very basic soup was prepared with leek, potato, garlic and herbs. I didn't have any cream on hand so I added a splash of milk. Kiddo thought it was quite tasty, just asked for pepper and suggested I add more potatoes so it would be thicker. The UK divas over at glittyknittykitty have up an awesome leek and potato recipe as well as olive, feta and sundried tomato scones which immediately went to the top of my To Do List. I've never had a scone, high time I made some.

I still can't get over how the sun is not OVERHEAD where it belongs. We're at a latitude of 52, much higher than any place I've ever lived. NOW I get the whole winter gloom/lack of sunshine thing. It took me a few days when we first got here to realize what was different. The sun always seems shoved to the south. Sure, it rises and sets but it's always so low in the sky. Quite unsettling, frankly, but I suppose one gets used to it. I'm told it doesn't set till round 10, 10:30 in the summertime, so there is a good flip side! When the sun does come out the jackets and boots come on and out we go. Today we walked to the village of Ysbyty Ystwyth to have a look around. We saw horses, sheep (of course), the village cemetery with the small war memorial in front of it.

On the way back down to our village we discovered the entry point for a new set of walking trails to explore. We also saw early signs of spring. Big green buds on the rhododendron trees that line the road and the first flowers of the season. No idea what they are but they are quite tiny and lovely.






*grumbles*

Zibspin ~ Hand Blending

Here I posted a couple of photos of a soysilk spinning project. Yes, I had been calling it bamboo, then.. I actually read the label on the bag, whoops. I had spun the soy into energized singles while manipulating color and weight then knit it right off the spindle. The most challenging part of that was spinning thick after a stretch of finer spinning. Knitting it up I changed from knit to purl rows as color and weight changed. I now have a long, narrow scarf with great weight, drape, tactile and visual interest. I had a second bag of the soysilk that was earmarked for a matching hat. I thought about spinning up some alpaca and doing colorwork or a band in the same style of the scarf and the rest done with alpaca etc.

But but but, spinning lovely white fiber for meters on end gets quite tedious so simply plying a single of soysilk and a single of alpaca was out. After reading this article in Fall 08 Knitty by the Loop lady, I was quite inspired. I should be able to mix the fibers, blend those colors in to the alpaca, right? Of course, I have neither drum carder or the hand carders, dog brushes or whatnot around.

After a couple false starts I found the only way to achieve the blending I wanted was to break the fibers down to comparable lengths so they would draw fairly evenly. I alternated several thin layers of the alpaca and soysilk making sure to keep the fibers going in the same direction. Then I patted it down and squished (oh yes getting technical here).

Once the pile felt dense I gently pulled the ends as I twisted the fiber. This allowed me check for any soysilk globs/clumps that snuck in and time to further floof them out.


Out came the trusty spindle, gift from a goddess and it was time to see if the fiber would succumb to my demands. The fiber must bend to my will! It must! I love the warmth of the alpaca and lightness of it and the colors of the soysillk. Is a lovely, tough, fine, strong, able to handle being handled and shuffled about without having a complete collapse too much to ask for from spindlespun? I don't think so.











As I spun, the single formed with ten to twenty cm stretches of soysilk then alternatively spun with both mixed in equally.




I did about thirty meters before winding it off on a nostepinne for a quick ply z-spin two ply job.






Once plied, I grabbed some needles and knit up a stitch that had been in mind for a few days now. I am quite pleased with how the color behaved on the tiniest of swatches. I know it will lay differently in the full blown project which prompted some design features to showcase, if you will, the play of color.

Starting with 100g of alpaca and 100g of soysilk. Shooting for at least 300m of two ply. No idea if that is enough fiber or way too much for the wpi I'm spinning. Humm.

Instant gratification is not had oft in spinning or knitting. It does take time. Since spinning the soysilk/alpaca up for the project will take a few days, I started a design draft of the project subbing in cotton. I had picked up a couple balls of Peaches & Creme while in Charleston intending to submit a fab summer bag design to Amy but we had to relocate and I completely missed the deadline. So I've repurposed the cotton for the first run, already a variation as I had to take in to account the very different behavior of the cotton compared to the soysilk/alpaca blend. No, I can not explain why I would purposely design something which would have you wind up with an assload (another high falutin' technical term) of ends to weave in other than - it makes it look pretty.

Proper Usage

After living in Europe for twelve years then a brief visit back to the States I have surmised that *insert drumroll here* America has lost its collective mind. After living here in Wales a bit more than a month, I have continued surmising and have learned quite a bit.

Most surprising is the fact that I do not speak English. No, I do speak English, I just do not speak it very well, apparently. I do love the language with the history, flexibility, nuances, flow. It is as absolute joy to read or listen to a master of it. Not only have we been learning proper usage of English words, we have also started Welsh lessons. Kiddo is picking it up quite quickly. Ah, to have a young brain ready to learn all. I think I can count to ten now, so it is a start :) Nothing says American buffon better than calling trousers pants.

I've recently read that human beings can differentiate more shades of green than any other color. Something to do with our gatherer past I bet. When mentioning this to a friend at dinner last night, she promptly told me the Celts once had over thirty words to describe green. I've made a mental note to tote the camera along on our next hike, there are most definitely a lot of greens out in the forest strands. More than thirty, to be sure.

The pebbles are from the beach of Aberystwyth. Kiddo and I hit the beach last week when we went in to town for a few hours to run some errands and just get out of the village. Aberystwyth is home to, if I recall correctly, Wales' largest university. If not the largest, then a pretty large one at any rate. I was told it has an oddly high number of pubs, something like fifty five licenses to serve in one square block. Wonder if any studying gets done!

A long walk down the beach looking for shells and interesting rocks was enjoyed. Back home we came with all sorts of stones and pebbles for various projects. I do like these ones, my intention was to get a nice mix of them, right size, interesting colors for a Mancalamia set felted from local wool. Some felted projects are in the works, yes, the BCoD is alive and well in Wales. More on that once the knitting part is complete.

Not quite

The past few evenings have been too cold to knit or spin. Sitting with toes nearly in the fire just isn't prudent when there is dangling yarn and fiber being flung around the abode. So I've been doing the next best thing, catching up on the Yarn Harlot. I've two years to catch up on. Two years of archives I've been perusing, one post at a time (don't like scrolling thru an entire month). I'd forgotten about the blog until I was mid-knittyboard drive-by and saw somebody ask if they really needed a ball winder and swift. No, I thought, no, you do not. You could just knit from the hank as does Ms. Tuttle Hamilton. Is it bad that I aspire to be so coordinated as to be able to knit from the hank? I pondered that as I dove into the Harlot's archives.

Today, after kindling duty was completed, it was decided we would build a snowman. During my much needed coffeebreak, Kiddo made a 'practice snowman'. Then off to the garden it was to build the 'real snowman'. So HOW exactly are giant balls of snow made?? I vaguely recall something about rolling an already big ball across the snow and it grows bigger but... grrr. Kiddo and I are not slow people but the logistics behind making a giant snowball was suddenly as mysterious as pyramid and Stonehenge construction techniques.

Perhaps some chocolate would help. Who knows, an empire was built on several cups of tea, surely a snowman could benefit with a bit of chocolate. A friend happened to post some Barack chocolate bars to G. G tossed a couple to me after we were done with the kindling and it was break time and out of my pocket it came. We were quite amused. Barack simply did not meet our expectations. The wrapper just built it up way too much. Barack Obama CHANGE HAS COME TO AMERICA. Change! We will be Newed and Improved and retsin filled by one man! Mommy? (Happy to note I've not been called Wendy since our time in Charleston, Thank You, Gary!)Huh? Did George Bush have a candybar? I don't think so. I think his bar would have been better. At least there would have been nuts! I could see George pulling at the very least World's Finest Chocolate quality. I can't be the only one who sold those for school fund raisers!

Back to the "snowman" we went. About ten minutes in to the middle section we figured we just were not going to have one of those classic curvy snowmen. I am quite certain Obama's change is at work here. I just know it! Are people still blaming Bush for things? Humm, I'll give Obama the snowman point at any rate.

We were quite pleased with our SnowShmoo, even if it is not what we'd set out to build. It was just enough time outside to lob snowballs at each other and get all rosy cheeked and appreciate the hot cocoa and toasty fire that much more once back inside.

Rhinos Do Travel

Every evening as the sun creeps closer to the far side of the valley, I creep closer to the fire. The handspun creeps closer to the fire too. this particular handspun is a lovely wool/tencel blend from Traveling Rhinos. I found wickets work quite well as an impromptu drying rack.




I can't be the only person who thought wickets was what pirates got due to not having enough vitamin C on those long piratey voyages.



Destined to be knit up with some smushy alpaca from Erica. Tis the first time I've knit due to necessity.. and spun for the same reason. Of course I'd also fantasized about toe cozies. The merits of designing while living in a coldass environment have not escaped me. I will keep the experience close while continuing my fiberly pursuits from the beach in Barbados.






He approves of said plan.