Woolthing

It appears that my computer will soon be as good as new.  It needs its memory chips replaced.  It appears that whatever bug got in there went for the memory.  That’s a relief as the cost is much less than a new computer.

And to totally change the subject …

I tried to spin a mile yesterday for the Tour de Fleece.  I don’t have any way of measuring the yarn until it’s all done so I just spun and spun and when the bobbin was full I plied it with a bobbin that I had spun the day before.   Then I plied them together.  And skeined it off.  That’s when I measured.  It came to 1400 yds or about .8 miles.  A bit short.  Of course I could say that I spun 1400 and then plied 1400 but that is a bit of a cheat since plying is faster than spinning.  I know now, however, that I could have spun a mile and I’ll give it another try in a few days.  For some reason I don’t feel much like spinning for hours and hours today.

I must say though, that I am very pleased with this yarn.  It is even better than I had hoped for.

Good enough to eat.

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What’s not to love about a farmer’s market.

Lovely people, good food, no beautiful food.

These Ranier Cherries were so sweet, yum.  There were babies and elderly folk,  a  violin player and dogs.  It’s a very small market near my home but it’s within walking distance and it has everything I need.

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My youngest daughter was here for a few days and is continuing on her journeys with her husband.  She’ll be back in a couple of weeks but the apartment seems very empty and quiet right now.

It will take me a couple of  days to regain my equilibrium again.   Meanwhile I continue to spin.   I finished spinning a brown corriedale fleece and have turned it into several skeins of lovely dark brown three ply yarn.  Now I’m working on some BFL top that I dyed in berry colours.  Unfortunately, I can’t show you photos.  My main computer is very, very sick.  Most of my photos are on that computer.  They’re backed up; I’m just not up for the brain power involved in figuring out how to get them on this post today.  I’ll get on that for tomorrow.

Today I spent a couple of hours at “Fair in the Square” spinning in public.  It’s always fun because people are generally fascinated with the spinning wheel.   I spun and chatted while spinning for almost an hour and got about an ounce of fine yarn on my bobbin.  It was then the circus performers finished and one of the races finished and I ended up with a few children watching me.

It was then that one brave lad asked if he could try it.  And what could I do but let him.  I let him treadle for a while and then he gave it a shot.  His first yarn was better than my first yarn and I let him know it.

After that I had a row of children from under two years old to ten years old wanting to give it a try.  It was great fun.  Some of them just treadled while I drafted the yarn and few got to try a bit of drafting.  They all went away with the yarn they had made.  It was hard getting away as if there was a child who wanted to try I felt I had to let them.  But eventually there were no more children standing in line and I beat a hasty retreat.  My family was waiting for me.

Who knows, maybe one or more of those children will become a spinner.

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I’ve gotten the loft organized enough that I can actually work there.  I will always have to move stuff when I change course.  If I’m sewing my carders need to be put down and the sewing machines need to be brought out but until we have a bigger place that is just the way it is going to be.  What else do you expect with two looms hogging all the space.  Ellie, the countermarche loom is back up and ready for a warp.  Mac, the Macomber jack loom, has some new treadles and a new beater bar but will have to be folded up for a little while.  The couch has been uncovered.

Here is one side of the loft.  The floor is visible and there is a path to the door.

The stash is organized so that I can see what I have and start using it up.  Yup, it’s ridiculous.

There is a spot for George, my antique CPW, and he is easy to move so that the couch can become a bed.

I do have a bit more organizing to do to clear my desk tops but everything is there.

Yay, there is room for my sweet daughter and her darling husband.  Now I have some spinning to do

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I am gradually getting my loft in shape.  It looks pretty good today and I hope to get it as organized as all that stuff can be by tomorrow.  I’ll post pictures so you can see.

The floor under the carpet (Richard) did not have any small animals or insects on it.  I could have used some gnomes to give us a hand though.  What it did have is nails sticking out, staples left in and a lot of large gouges from a past life.  All of that had to be taken care of before we could lay down the underlay and then the laminate.  By the end of day one (we’re old, we’re slow), we had the first width of underlay down.  We ran into our 5:00 p.m. deadline and laid down down tools and moved everything around so that we could live and sleep.

Day Two we got the majority of the floor down.   The last row was tricky with lots of cuts and notches and we ran into the deadline again.  We moved everything again.

Day Three we finished the floor fairly early but ran into major problems with the baseboard.  I won’t go into the details.  The baseboard looks bad but it is done for now.  It will get redone.  I was starting to panic with several pounds of fleece and yarn sitting on our balcony and a loom and a forecast of rain.  I got more than a bit stressed.  In fact I had to give myself a time out.  I vacuumed so I wasn’t  sitting idle but I had to have a break before there was bloodshed.

It got done; we ignored the deadline figuring a bit of tapping on baseboard wasn’t going to bother anyone too much.  Then we moved everything in. I’m glad it’s done.  It looks nice and it will be so much easier to keep clean.

We learned lots, which is good, because we still have to do the living room.  Fortunately, the flooring will wait till we’re ready.

The hubby and I worked on the floor again today.   We couldn’t start till 10:00 a.m. and had to finish by 5:00 p.m. (condo rules) so we didn’t get done.  Thank goodness it’s been nice as a lot of my stuff is outside.  It’s actually a good thing that we couldn’t work longer as I would push myself past misery to get it done but we were both getting tired.  It was also the first day of the Tour de France/Fleece.  Biking and spinning were necessary.

Hubby went for a bike ride.  I spun up some corriedale.  I have already spun some of this but I’m going to finish it for the Tour de Fleece.  I got the fleece at Black Sheep Gathering last year and it was a big fleece.

I can’t seem to get the colour quite right as it’s much darker and richer than in this picture.

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We’ve been working on the loft and pretty much everything is either on our balcony outside or in our bedroom.  When room is already at a premium taking a third of it out of the picture and trying to squeeze what was in there somewhere else is not so easy.  Also, we found some interesting things under the carpet that had to be taken care of.

This condo used to be a rental building and it shows and the reno the workmen did after we bought it was also fast and dirty.  I helped my Dad when he was building homes so I know.  It’s no fun trying to repair that without it costing an arm and a leg.  So we’re having a bit of a break and then we’ll be back at it.  There is some stuff outside that I’d rather not leave there overnight and our bed is covered with stuff so if we want to sleep tonight we better get that floor down.  I probably should paint but in the loft the wall is generally covered  and I like the, nondescript, colour it is right now.

Neither one of us is ready to commit murder yet so that’s good, right.

Hopefully picures tomorrow.

Disorder, confusion, a very good way to describe the way my loft looks right now.  Some would say it always looks like that but this is worse than ever.  It makes me very cranky.  I’m hoping that it will look much better in a few days and that order will be restored.  I have to squeeze a lot of stuff in there so it will always be crowded.

And from the other end.

Yeah, there’s a hide a bed couch in there somewhere.

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Today being a beautiful day I took my coarse carder outside to do some carding.   As I was working away I noticed a helicopter going around in a search pattern and I wondered what I might look like from a bird’s eye view.  I had a rack with alpaca on it drying beside me …

And I was working with a strange contraption that only fiberistas would recognize.  For all I know I could look like I was involved in some illegal activities.  No one has come to my door yet so it must be all right.  I’m trying to prepare all my fibre for the tour de fleece.  So I was carding up some Romney that I’ve had for a while.  I’d dyed it and made some yarn out of it and then lost interest.  Well, since I’m working from my stash and I want to finish up some projects it seemed the perfect thing.  Here’s what it looked like before carding.

And here it is on the carder.

This is a hand crank carder so it’s a bit of work turning the handle and impossible to take a picture of as you have to hold the fibre with one hand and crank with the other.  That’s an at rest photo.

Here’s what it looks like after it comes off the carder.

That’s about 100 gms.  I’m going to spin it up very thick and then two ply it to make a big yarn.  I made some a while ago and it looks like this.

The colours are a bit richer than the photo.  Thats around 800 gms and 3-4 wraps per inch.  I originally thought I’d weave a rug with it but I might crochet it to give a warm bouncy rug.  So far I’ve got 9 batts and I think I’ll get another 3 or 4 but it will spin up fast, just a couple of days of work.

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