Woolthing

I like traveling alone.  I seem to be an anomaly with the people I know but that’s just how I am.  I get to leave when I want, do what I want and make seemingly stupid decisions without anyone else complaining.

Today I went to Gibson’s Landing for a Fibre Fest.  I ended up getting the day off of work so away I went.  Drove to the ferry terminal and parked to car to walk on board.   Then I caught the bus to the event.  There wasn’t that much to see although I managed to spend all my money.  I got some yak, some muskox (quivit) and some cotton.  I haven’t spun with any of these before so I’ll be learning.

When I wanted to go home I found out that the next bus to the ferry wouldn’t be by for a couple of hours I decided to walk the 5.5km.  There is no companion on earth that would have agreed to do such a dumb ass thing.   And yes, I should have been wearing better shoes but I enjoyed the hour walk and I got some exercise.  I made the next ferry by less than five minutes.  I’m sure that I wouldn’t have been so pleased with myself if I’d missed it by five minutes but I did make it.

Sometimes it’s nice to have a companion on the way.  I like that, too.  The same, but different.

My weaving was sadly neglected while I concentrated on spinning for the three weeks of the Tour de Fleece.  But that’s all over now so it was time to get some weaving going.

I have my Swedish loom all ready to go for a bunch of towels.

There is something so nice about a newly warped loom.  So full of promise, the hard part done.

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… Or the loft.

This week has been very hot so we’ve had the doors wide open and fans going to make it bearable.    Well last night we were sitting around simmering when a small dark shape flitted past us a couple of times and we heard an unusual sound.  We thought something had come in and gone out again.  Then we looked up to the cathedral ceiling in our space and low and behold there was a small, very silent shape circling.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen we had a bat in our apartment.

Now, I’m not one to freak out very easily, but this kind of freaked me out.  Yes, I pulled my feet up and covered my head for an instant, until common sense kicked in.

We have seen bats flitting around outside and I think it’s kind of cool.  But I didn’t want one to fly into our place.  My concern was what we would do if it couldn’t get out and it did circle for a while.  Then I thought about the nature of a bat.  We turned off the lights.  Turned off the fan and moved it away from the door and silently watched and waited.  The bat circled several times getting a little bit lower every time and then it flew out the door and did not return.  Makes sense, of course, since they do live in small tight places.  I would hope they could get out of a big cave like our apartment.  Now a bird would never have figured it out.

It makes me think of all the things that we are afraid of.  Snakes, spiders, bats … all from the stories and fairy tales of our childhood.  Those cautionary tales kept us safe in a way but they also made us fear things, perfectly innocent things, because they’re not pretty.  We put our guard down when something is pretty or cute but I suspect more people are injured from dog bites than snake bites.   Far too often we judge by appearance alone.  But I still don’t want a bat staying with me.

Not that we’re wimps here on the west coast … oh yeah, we are.  The thing is we don’t have air conditioning.  I could go to the mall but … then I’d be in hell.

Yesterday, I went to the Vancouver Art Gallery to check out the Dutch Masters of the 17th Century Exhibit.  My heritage is Dutch after all and I’m a fan of Vermeer, even before that movie.  I was a bit underwhelmed, I’m afraid.  There was one small Vermeer and a couple of Rembrandts.  There were plenty of paintings and I did enjoy it, I just expected more.  It is always great to see the original when all you’ve seen is prints.  There is a spark that you can’t explain.

Most of the painting had such detail that you could look at them for a long time and still see something new.  Unfortunately, there were lots of other people wanting to see so, it would have been rude to take up a space for too long.  I didn’t buy the catalogue.  I’m getting tired of everything being about money and yes,  I know that the gallery has to pay it’s own way.  I’m not going to get into how the government should do better job of supporting the arts.  It is the soul of the people after all.

And the homeless.  As I walked up Robson Street, the shoppers meca of Vancouver, I can’t help be turned off of our never ending spending on the newest and brightest when there is a homeless person holding out a cup for some change or scavenging in a garbage pail for the food that someone else just threw away.  Poverty sucks.

But it actually takes me back to the paintings.  In one very large painting (sorry don’t remember the artist) there was a fair of some sort with people of all kinds.  There were the refined, wealthy people in their silks and ribbons and there were also the pick pockets and the street people of that day.  Nothing much has changed.  And one of the themes, of many of the painters, was that for all our wealth and striving after the stuff of the world, we will all die and return to dust.  It seems that they foresaw the decline of the prosperous Dutch Empire.

I’m not ready to give up all my worldly goods and I still get a lot of joy out of life and the things I do but when I looked in the shops I just kind of went,  mmmhwa.

Or maybe it’s just the heat.

Today is the last day of the Tour de Fleece.   I met my goal of spinning every day, spinning only from stash and spinning a mile in a day.

Yesterday I went to a spin in and spun with several other people.  This was my point of view.  We got a nice shady spot.  There were people selling things but I was very good.  I didn’t buy any new fibre although I was sorely tempted.  The book totally doesn’t count.

Some of the fibre did give me some ideas for my next dyeing session.

I started working on my last yarn for the tour, a superwash merino that I’d carded up earlier.

I finished it today.  It’s a three ply, spun with long draw.  I love spinning long draw but my left shoulder was complaining by the end.  Here’s what the yarn looks like.

It’s a lovely soft blue with a hint of green.  Three ply, 6oz., 460yds.

Now, I had a lot of time to spin and spin I did.  I got a lot of yarn made.

So here’s the rundown.

Mostly green 2 ply Romney:  1.16 kg, 485 m.

Brown 3 ply Corriedale: 740 g, 1190 m.

Berry colour 3 ply Blueface Leicester: 765 g, 1280 m.

Prada colour 2 ply Alpaca: 370 g, 1315 m.

Light blue 3 ply Superwash Merino: 170 g, 420 m.

Total of 3.2 kg (7+ pounds)  and 4690 meters finished yarn.

So I busted through a lot of fibre which is great but now I have added all this yarn to my yarn stash.  My only consolation is that yarn takes up a lot less room.

Now I need to get back to doing a bit of weaving.  My looms are naked and they are calling to me.

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More spinning today.  I got the alpaca yarn done.  Phew.

I’m very happy with it.  And now I need to think of what I want to knit with it.

This is what I finished today.

This is all of it together.

Three days of spinning  totals about 13 ounces, 1440 yards.   I have lots more of this fleece.

Wendy sent me a picture of Prada so you can see how it all started.  Imagine my surprise to realize that Prada is actually a girl.  Here she is.  She’s pretty cool.  I hope I did her fleece justice.

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Yesterday was challenge day for the bike riders and for spinners.  I chose to set myself a number of challenges at the same time.  I wanted to spin 100% alpaca.  I wanted to spin lace weight.  I wanted to spin a mile and I wanted to bring out the best in an alpaca fleece I had gotten a couple of months ago.

I had gotten a couple of alpaca fleeces from Wendy at Dream Weaver Alpacas.  And I fell for Prada’s fleece.  Prada is an alpaca that would have gotten culled out of the herd by most breeders.   His fleece was multicoloured and that makes it a pain for anyone who sends fleece out to be processed.  I wanted to use the unusual to make something exceptional.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of Prada but here is picture of the fleece as it is drying in the sun.

He had a bit of brown, a bunch of grey and a lot of black.

I separated each of the colours out and carded them into different batts.

I split each of the batts in half so that when I plied them together I would retain the colour shifts.  8:00 a.m.,I got my wheel set on it’s fastest ratio (33:1) and  I started to spin.  By the time I’d gotten through the first bit of my three batts I knew that I wasn’t going to get it all spun in one day.

I discovered that I needed to put quite a bit of twist in the singles.  I got the first bit done by 12:30 and the second half of the first three batts done by 4:00.  I treadled fast and got some music with a good strong beat to help me keep my feet moving.  Well, I thought I’d get it plied in short order and then spin up another bobbin full.  Not so fast.

The alpaca needed even more twist in the plies to stay together.   Alpaca is smooth like hair.  Wool has little barbs on it that help it hold together.  If I didn’t put a lot of twist in, it started to drift apart.  Well,  that was why I was doing this wasn’t it? so that I could learn how to spin alpaca.  I went on a plying marathon and that is where the real challenge began.  I find plying to be … well … boring.  Faster music, faster treadling, I mean my orifice,

(minds out of the gutter) was getting hot.  I wanted to quit.  I didn’t need this.  I could finish it tomorrow.  Why was I doing this?  I was doing this to proof that I could.  I finished plying it around 7:30.  I skeined it off so that I could measure it.  665yds.  Yes, I’m counting the plying this time so I did make a mile of spinning.  2 bobbin of singles at 665 and the plying makes over 1900yds of spinning in one day.  Oh and the best part.  I like the yarn and I like more every time I look at it.  It isn’t all flash and sparkle.  It’s soft but solid and strong.  It has presence.

I meet all my challenges.  So what did I learn.   I can spin fast if I have to, but I’m glad I don’t have to.

Today I continued spinning on the rest of the alpaca that I had carded.  I spun at my own pace, which is still pretty quick but I enjoyed it a lot more.  Do you suppose we all have a beat that we are happiest moving to?  A cadence that is all our own.  It might explain those different tastes in music.

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I spun for 12 hours today.  Pictures tomorrow.

Well, no new ones anyway.  Yep, I went to the dentist today for a cleaning.  They are clever those people at the dentist’s office.   They somehow knew that I’d been putting it off.  They called yesterday and told me they had an opening.  Was I available?  I had no excuse.  So off I went.

Now it feels like a bunch of mouth elves had a party in my mouth with sharp, pointy shoes.  My own fault for not taking better care of my teeth (really how many people floss every day) and waiting almost two years between cleanings.

The good news is that my teeth are just as good as they were when they were last seen.

Now, I feel like I should go brush my teeth.  I’ve got a new toothbrush.

When I was a child we rarely went places.  We went to school of course and we went to visit our cousins a few times a year.  And we went to church.  That was all standard and not terribly exciting.  We were farm kids so walking to a store didn’t happen.

In my parents defense, I don’t blame them.  With nine children in tow it was a bit of a challenge to take us anywhere.  It was in fact a major undertaking.  One of us got forgotten once when we all went shopping together.  It wasn’t realized till we got home.  My mom was very careful and a superwoman but that one time she counted one of us twice and a small quiet one got separated from the rest and …   It ended fine and the lost one was found.  Dad made a quick trip back to town to get her and all was well, except for the emotional scars, but we all have those.

What I wished for was to go to the local fair with enough money to have some fun.  My mom thought this was a silly waste of money.  There would be nothing to show for it when all was said and done.  A bit of excitement, a laugh or two and then what.  Money down the drain.  It wasn’t  till we were earning enough of our own money that we went.  I don’t remember it all that well, but for a few rides that increased the level of  adrenaline in my body from fear.  I think we went a few times and then the thrill was gone.

This all came back to me as hubby and I went for a walk to the quay where they were having FraserFest.  There were rides for the kids and tables selling stuff, a cacophony of sound and people.  It made me think that there isn’t much at these fairs that change.  The same calls from the tables try to entice us to buy things we don’t need and the same rides are there to excite us, but when all is said and done there is nothing new, and when you come home from the fair you still have nothing to show for it.  I am so becoming my mother.