A Craftsteader's Journal

Gardener in winter

2012-02-05T06:56:00.000-08:00

Jasmine is better than scented candles.

Jasmine blooms in my living room--an exquisite scent steeped in mystery. It also makes my eyes water and I may need an antihistamine--such is the life of the gardener in winter . The lettuce is doing well, and so is the cilantro. I need to plant some basil, though my frozen supply from last summer continues to flavor sauce.

While my plants have been busy growing, I've been busy in my workshop making things. I've been on a bit of a beading spree. My jewelry wardrobe grows, so much so that I had to go shopping for outfits to go with it. Metal smithing might slow me down, so I'm thinking of looking into a class at The TLD Design Center and Gallery in Westmont. This would also expand my design options because right now, everything is pretty much straightforward. They also teach glass bead making, which would be a nice addition to my craft repertoire, and further slow me down. An advanced class at my favorite bead store, Kasey's Beads in Naperville, would expand my design options. She's having a month-long string of sales on beads so I expect to do some shopping. The red carnelian/fire agate/clear quartz necklace includes some of the Czech glass beads she carries. She also had a great selection of quality findings, as well as natural semi-precious stone, spacers, crystals and other beading supplies.

Additions to my jewelry wardrobe.

Photo above was taken the old-fashioned way without a flash, a steady hand, a window and some judicious cropping. I took a lot of photos that way with a manual camera back when I was a newspaper reporter and digital cameras were an innovation. I vaguely recall the terminology now but I knew what speed and whatever to use. Film was a nice medium, but instant zillion mega-pixels is just too easy. I will need to go out and get myself that contraption people use to photograph and post on Etsy so the photos look better.

Experiments in sustainability

2012-01-30T18:25:00.000-08:00

Growing lettuce in front of the slider.

Trying something new keeps sustainability interesting. I found some lettuce seeds left over from summer so I put them to work in this pot, which is actually a baking dish I discovered couldn't be used for baking when I read the instructions. Go figure Makes a nice looking planter, though. I sowed the seeds densely and am waiting to see what develops. The soil was a little dry when I took this photo, but now the seedlings have been sprayed down. Will I be able to get a few salads out of this? We shall see. I put a large plant stand in front of the back slider and also use it for making sprouts. Sprouts are a great way to grow fresh vegetables in winter and are tasty in sandwiches or just as a salad. I want to try to keep two jars going, but recently had a failure when the sprouts got moldy. If anyone knows why that happens, please let me know. I'm pretty good about rinsing and draining the jars regularly.


Yummy bats from BohoKnitterChic

Diet and exercise has paid off this month with a lovely blend of merino, silk, bamboo and Angelina in shades of sunshine and amethyst. Gorgeous, isn't it? This is the work of indie dyer and blender BohoKnitterChic who has an Etsy shop by that name. I can't wait to spin it! But of course I have to be methodical about this stuff and I make myself finish up whatever I'm working on before I start something new. Sounds boring to me. Oh, wait, it's me doing it! Now, I'm confused.

Requisite diet food photo.

If you've looked at as many diet blogs as I do--I love reading blogs--you will know that many diet bloggers put up photos of the food they're eating. Above are some toastadas I made with those sprouted tortillas--I prefer the corn ones but the store was out of them. I made the refried beans myself--they are fat free but loaded with flavoring, and the green stuff is organic spinach that was on sale, then tomatoes and organic pepper jack. I popped these in the oven till the cheese was nicely melted and served it with homemade guacamole. They were pretty good. I have no idea how many calories are in each one. So much for diet blogging.


Perfect little knitting bag.

I'm a sucker for tote bags. I'm fairly certain this is a knitting thing because we knitters need something to transport or store projects in. Those reusable grocery bags -- available just about everywhere these days -- are perfect. Whole Foods just came out with a mini bag, so I bought one. It holds quite a bit, and I'm thinking small knitting project, water bottle, odds and ends for work. I gave up on the fancy briefcase, though I have one for things like writers' conferences. Tote bags are better.

Candles at work.

Soy candles are pretty nice. The colors aren't as bright, but I like these pastels, they are a cheery way to light the dinner table in January. And what I really love, is that I can have a pretty candle without the overbearing scent which makes my eyes water. Plus they are easy and fast to make, a big plus for a spinner, knitter, weaver etc. It's nice to start something in the morning and have it done that night. It's like cooking, but the product doesn't disappear as fast.

Sustainability keeps me busy

2012-01-15T12:42:00.000-08:00


My garage has become my root cellar. These will become part of a stew.

Besides writing a harangue about an article on obesity this morning (see earlier blog) I've also been busy with maintaining a sustainable lifestyle. This is work! Above are carrots, turnips and onions I had stored in my garage that are becoming a stew made with grass fed beef. Yesterday, I spent a chunk of the afternoon grinding up my organic 8 grain flour for future loaves of bread. And I worked out both days for my diet attempts as well as doing a bit of weaving and spinning and my newest hobby candlemaking. So yes, it has been busy.

Yep, those are old heddles you see holding the wicks in place.

Making soy candles has been my latest interest. It is fast and easy and uses color. The candles above were just poured. They hardened as a lovely creamy yellow which I will show you later. I had the opportunity to retask some items around my house to do this. I heat the wax in a small slow cooker and poured with an old ladle. It's a little messy, but it's kind of nice to have pretty candles that aren't heavily scented. I don't really like scented candles that much, and unscented candles are hard to find. So, now I can melt some wax and make what I need.


A jar of my ground flour.

I will have to see if my homemade bread allows me to lose weight. Besides flour, salt, water and yeast, I throw in a cup of walnuts. I like bitter marmalade so that's low sugar. Will this work? We shall see. I will try to get a photo and recipe in the next few weeks.

Nailed it!

2012-01-08T11:22:00.000-08:00

I LOVE silk. My niece purchased these for me in Thailand.

Lost the six ounces I needed to order fiber from Bohoknitterchic for her challenge! Yes, I was going to leave updates to the Flab to Fluff Challenge to once a month but then I remembered I had to lose weight to order the fiber for a contest I entered on Ravelry. I ended out losing 2.5 pounds, giving me a net of 2 pounds more of fiber to buy.

In the meantime, I got the Yarn Barn's Mill-End Fiber Club mailing yesterday and OMG they have SILK yarn for FOUR dollars a pound! So, today I woke up and did thirty minutes with Coach Nicole of Spark People and then sucked it in and faced 20 minutes with Jillian. Then I did the usual 45 minutes on the exercise bike and had an incredibly healthy lunch. I'm thinking of 30 minutes of BL bootcamp after I spend some time warping my loom.

Here is a green linen/cotton blend I'm warping for placemats. It's a former mill-end special.

Yeah, I know, overdoing it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah but we are talking SILK here! Yum, yum, yum. They have other yummy things and if I want a chance at them I had better get going before every other weaver snaps them up. Well, loom warping is a little strenuous, and I need to do some carding. I have piles of alpaca to work on for spinning and I've discovered I lose weight when I do a bunch of carding. Carding Cardio?

Has anyone seen my camera? I wanted to take pictures of stuff but I seemed to have misplaced it. Above are pictures I haven't shown yet. I wanted to show you my new hobby of candle making and the second 8-foot workbench my husband made over the Holidays. Now I have tons of space for projects and mess making.

That's it for now, I have some warping to do and then cooking of healthy meals. Oh yeah, and some working out. Silk. That's my mantra. Silk.

Flab to Fluff Challenge

2012-01-01T17:41:00.000-08:00


The Holidays have been good to me, adding to my stash.

Happy New Years Dear Readers! I hope this finds you happy, whole and still sane after the long rush of Holiday Fun. As you can see above I've started my New Year with a big headstart in the stash department thanks to the appearance of my favorite magical being, Befana. Yep, I stopped with the Santa business this year when I discovered that Befana, the Italian version, not only delivers presents to good little girls but also sweeps the house before she leaves. Now that's something I can believe in.

Okay, so now it is resolution time again. This year, I am making resolutions I can keep. One Resolution I am absolutely NOT going to make is anything remotely related to "destashing." I love my stash. I can always use more. Avoiding the purchase of lovely fibers is not only unnatural, but it is just simply wrong.

The only destashing I need to do relates to the lard on my posterior. Oooh yes, I've grown large over the years and yes, it is in my best interest to see that stash diminished. So I got this ideas: how about a little stash switchero resolution? For every pound of lard I shed, I can get myself a pound of fiber! If I really get after working out, I should be able to walk out of Tall Grass Farm with a couple of fleeces and still have poundage left over for Greencastle! Yep, I can envision myself doing jumping jacks right now as I sweat off pounds of flab to gain pounds of fluff!

The Flab to Fluff Challenge is born, complete with my very own fiber greed to drive me to salad eating.

Truth is, if I'm busy playing with fiber, how can I eat? I wonder if I can knit on the treadmill? This will be a challenge to my time, but should help keep me out of the candy dish in favor of the fiber bag. Oh yes, I can so do this. Anyone want to join me? My plan is to announce how many pounds of fiber I've earned at the first of each month. You can join me simply by leaving a comment and then on Feb. 1 let me know how many pounds of flab you've converted to fiber.

By the way, it is easiest to just leave a comment as "anonymous" and then give your Rav Handle or other moniker. Craftsteader also has a Facebook Page.

What is with that music?

2011-12-18T09:34:00.000-08:00


Falalalala--giant Poinsettia

Considering all the beautiful music written for this season it is pretty sick that we are stuck listening to Rudolf and Jingle Bell Rock in the stores and restaurants. This jolly drivel is enough to make me run out to the street screaming. Even the Irish pub didn't have the decency to pop in a few CD's with some instrumental Christmas Carols played on Celtic Harp. Oh, no, stores and restaurants alike blast "Hideous Holiday Music Streaming Radio" and subject their customers to migraine inducing trash. Trust me, I would much prefer to do my Yule shopping to the strains of Silent Night or Carol of the Bells.

Brings out the Grinch in me. Though I did break down and purchase a 4 foot pre-lit tree that fits our favorite decorations and packs in up in one piece. This by the way, is a genuine sign of aging--in my youth I'd laugh at aging friends and relatives who didn't get a full-sized tree. But now the laugh is on me! This tree is such a lazy thing I don't even need to artistically drape the base: it has a pretty pot it sits in with blinking red and green star-bursts. I found it at my local Ace since I refuse to enter a box store this time of year. I've also sent off my handmade gifts created to the strains of Mozart and Vivaldi instead of purchased under the influence of the country version of Frosty. What have we done to the Yuletide?

But I won't let the Pac-Man Consumerism ruin the specialness of this time of year! Or the gift part. We are stacking our Yule gifts under the coffee-table with the pointsettia. Under the plant you can see a pile of used LeClerc rag shuttles I purchased on E-Bay. I opened them because of the return policy.

Lovely aren't they? I can use them for weaving my handspun blankets and rugs. I have other rag shuttles, but I've decided LeClerc's are the best, made with the care and quality one finds in products from the Deep North. Some of them are really old and well-used but still in great condition. Yep: quality. Yep, I am a fan of LeClerc looms, and I'm saving up for a LeClerc 8-harness Compact to replace the Schacht I bought. Maybe next Yultide I'll find one under the coffee table!

Down with the Bah Hum-bug

2011-12-11T19:13:00.001-08:00

I finished and tested this yoga rug this week and it is great of standing poses!

"Seems like we just put the tree away," the DH observed and I have to agree. It doesn't seem all that long ago that we wrestled the decorations back into the storage box in the basement. Do we really want to go through all that bother again?

Just finished this handspun, handwoven rug.

This, dear reader, is just another sign of aging. The Bah Hum-bug, is, like creaky knees and greying hair, a sure sign you reached the top of the hill and are hiking down the other side. I never thought I would ever think like this, but I'm fairly certain a good-sized pointsettia would make a fine tree stand-in.

This is many yards of kid mohair. I need to count it again.

Despite embracing the inner grinch, projects are reaching completion, including a gift or two. I'm up to bookmark number three on that warp I put on last week, so I'm happy. I've also finished up a few projects that have nothing to do with the holidays, like finishing the rugs I cut off the loom last week, and winding off all that plied kid mohair I started spinning in August. Plus, the holiday is the perfect excuse for a little baking. There are some traditions I'm not about to shirk.

'Tis the Season to be Manic

2011-12-04T09:57:00.001-08:00

I'm making this hat for my sister.

Will we be putting up the Tree today? Ted asked me this in the morning before my first cup of coffee. So he got a grunt instead of "Falalalala-lalalala!" because I was stumbling around without my contacts and I'd forgotten it was December already.

Cutting off this giant warp seemed a better use of my time.

A few bars of "Falala" will be my standard answer to all holiday related inquiries this year--you know the usual ones about whether I've finished shopping, baking, decorating whatever. I'm just not in the mood to be manic about doing the holidays. I don't want to turn my home into a tinsel and glitter light show any more than I wanted to run out to a big box store to be pepper sprayed by some moron over a cheesy electronic gadget. Yep. Bah Humbug!

I started weaving bookmarks as little gifts.

Sorry people. I'm sitting this one out. I'm not putting on a little bow and being a Miss Pacman Consumer Robot and join the throngs in orgy of consumer debt. Oh, I plan to have fun. We'll do lunch in our cute little downtown and visit a few local stores, but I'm not going nuts. The tradition in my home is small gifts for family. As for each other, my husband and I set modest budgets for our hobbies so we can get some of the things we want. We'll put them under the tree if we get around to putting it up. We are old enough now to have forgotten enough of the contents to be a little surprised.

Falalalala-lalalala!

Slow Cloth gets a boost!

2011-11-27T06:23:00.001-08:00

A picture of my copy.

Slow Cloth has received a big boost in Deb Robson and Carol Ekarius' new book The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook, More than 200 Fibers from Animal to Spun Yarn, published by Storey, the publisher who brings us all the books about raising sheep and other animals. Deb Robson is more familiar to fiberfolk as former editor of Spin-Off, but to those of us stuck in apartments and suburban track housing who dream of hilly green fields populated with sheep, Carol Ekarius is familiar to us for her Storey's Guide to Raising Sheep. Together, these knowledgeable veterans are a powerhouse and the book they wrote together more than delivers.

Fiber folk: put this book on your holiday wish list or just call up your independent book seller or yarn store and see if they have it in. I found mine at Battenkill Books in Cambridge, New York, where I was for the last holiday, and where I often am as that's where I'm from. This is prime sheep country and some of my favorite fleece is produced there (but I may be a little biased!)

The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook is not only filled with lovely fibery pictures of sheep and fleece but lots of information that is well-written and enjoyable to read. This book can feed your fiber longings for a long, long time and will definitely be my go-to book for information on numerous breeds of sheep and other fiber critters after I've read it cover to cover. This is the book for fiberfolk everywhere, who like foodies and their heritage tomatoes, want fabulous heritage fleece to spin and knit or weave with joy.

I hope this book helps bring an end to the current fascination with those over-processed rovings from overseas (and worse superwash) and open greater interest in local, sustainably grown, uncovered fleece. Maybe we'll be seeing more painted roving that come from local sheep and local small mills. That's what I'll be looking for. Maybe more people will embrace Slow Cloth as a way of life.

Just to mention, I was in Battenkill Books with my sister-in-law to pick up a copy of Jenna Woginrich's book Barnheart. Jenna has a farm down the road and not only raises Scottish Blackface sheep, chickens and other critters but has a day-job and is a prolific author. I didn't reserve a copy, but I know I'll be back there to pick up a book--but I think I'll ask my own local bookstore to get me a copy.

Get pie with a little help from a friend

2011-11-18T18:08:00.001-08:00


I had a little help with my pumpkin pie.

Piecrust and I haven't gotten along for several years. I blame it onincessant dieting. Somewhere during a “low-fat” binge I lost myknack for making a decent pie crust. I tried to regain it but endedout wasting a lot of otherwise good ingredients. So here I amrunning to the Pillsbury Dough Boy for help! He's a friendly andhelpful little guy, providing pie crusts ready to unroll onto thepie plate.

Therest of the pumpkin pie was made the old fashioned way with realpumpkin cut up and roasted in the oven in a pan of water untilsoftened. I went newfangled again when I scooped the pumpkin out of the skin and put it in the food processor. It didn't blend so Iadded three eggs to puree it. Then I made my pie. Here is the recipefor extra spicy pumpkin pie:

3 cups(about) of pumpkin puree

3extra large free range eggs

1 cupof organic sugar

1 cupof heavy cream

2 tspof ginger

¾ tspof cloves

2 tspof cinnamon.

Blenduntil smooth and pour into a pie crust of your choosing.

Bakeat 375 for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until the custard is set.

Thistastes really good. I usually don't like pumpkin pie because itseems bland, but this one has a lot of zing. Okay, I should mentionI don't measure my spices all that often, so some pies have more zingthan others. You may also notice I gave up on that low fat thing.

Have ahappy Thanksgiving everyone!

Microwave popcorn with a twist

2011-11-12T19:17:00.001-08:00


This corn on the cob was popped in the microwave.

What was I thinking? All these years I've been buying microwave popcorn and it never occurred to me that all I had to do was throw a handful of corn kernels into a paper bag, crumple it closed and zap it for about 2 minutes, depending, and voila! microwave popcorn. Consumer robot that I am, I thought I had to buy it in a special bag with great fake butter flavor and too much salt. For the past 20 years I've paid a premium for a very inexpensive product. If I add to that all the broken popcorn makers, for the times I decided to save money, and then remove the cost of plain popcorn and some paper bags, then it's downright embarrassing how much money I've wasted. If I spent about $100 a year on microwave popcorn (not impossible considering all the single serving bags I've squandered money on during my many "diets". ) That would be $2,000 just enough to get that LeClerc Compact loom I've been thinking of. It is amazing how dependent I can be on gimmicks.

Those ears of dark red corn were grown by the Maple Park farmers at my farmer's market. You put an ear in a paper bag and nuke it for about 2 minutes (you know the drill about waiting and listening to make sure it is popped). Most of the corn popped right off the cob, but some of it stayed on creating "corn-on-the-cob popcorn" which you have to eat that way. The popcorn was delicious--so fresh and flavorful it didn't need butter or salt or whatever that fake slimy stuff is that lines the bottom of microwave popcorn bags.

Color choices for placemats.

I'm also planning placemats for my fine china. The pattern we purchased is a little whimsical, and it complements the antique china the dish is sitting on. The two different china's work together quite nicely and now I would like to make some nice placemats to go with them. The dishes have a strong spring/summer theme. I have some cotton/linen yarn in a bright green, and some viscose bamboo in glowing gold. With a green warp and gold weft and a nice pattern, I could have something interesting for the table. And the bamboo is handspun, making it that much more special. What do you think? I'm looking forward to working on this on the big loom once the rugs are done. Soon, I hope.

When alpaca looks like broccoli

2011-11-06T17:07:00.000-08:00

Freshly picked green-dyed alpaca.

Weekends just aren't long enough. Someone should find a way to cram some extra time in--it doesn't have to be a whole day. An extra morning would do. My weekend started with the farmers market--well actually, it started with me drinking coffee and doodling with this blog page. I came home from the farmers market loaded down with a half bushel each of broccoli, spinach and peppers and spent hours getting them ready for the freezer. That's a lot of broccoli, so when I look at that alpaca picture, it looks to me just like broccoli.

Today, my whole day was spent out in the garden "putting it to bed" for the winter. That's another reason the green alpaca looks like broccoli to me. We went through lots of plants picking off the last of the peppers and the last of the beans, getting it all ready. Ted dragged home 25 bags of topsoil--we are creating raised beds--but we still have a ways to go. By spring we should have more compost to fill it in. With all that, I didn't get to my weaving.


No time for weaving this weekend.

I did redo this blog page and added a bunch of tabs. This includes some of the articles I've written about spinning and carding from my old website. I'm migrating everything over to this site. I know it may be a little cheesy, but I added a donation button too. I mean you never know when some millionaire happens upon this site in a generous mood--like maybe Melinda Gates will decide to take up spinning and find my site when looking for tips. Of course, the donations are not tax-deductible but they will go to furthering the Craftsteading cause. I plan to investigate and write more tips and ideas for people interested in fiber pursuits and provide them in this blog and on this page.

If you hit the "Craftsteading" Tab, you will find a definition of what Craftsteading is. I would like my readers to leave comments on that page and tell me about how they Craftstead. I would love to feature my reader's work--talk about some of the beautiful things you are all making! So please leave a comment!

Workbench!

2011-10-31T07:31:00.000-07:00


Looking down the length of my new workbench.

Happy dance time: I have a brand new 8 foot long workbench! It is build on a metal frame Ted found at Menard's. The top is an inexpensive 8 foot piece of kitchen counter top I picked up at Home Depot. Total cost of the project was under $150, so it is pretty doable. In the picture below you can see that I have room underneath it for an old dresser and some of those ubiquitous plastic storage containers. There is only one overhead cabinet so far--a door-less reject from having the kitchen redone. I plan to add inexpensive cabinets when I find some on sale down the road.

The new bench is a relief because it opens up the workshop. I have the big table on the other side, though now it is covered by a table loom. One of my long-term goals is to get a small studio loom. I would like the 24 inch 8 harness LeClerc Compact. It folds nicely and I have space for it opened or closed. I would then sell my 20 inch 8 harness table loom to free the table to make way for other projects--like jewelry making, project planning and sewing. And writing a book, though I can do that from my easy chair.

There's room for stuff underneath.

I took today as a personal day and it is a crisp, clear perfect morning. Walking around in the backyard there was a certain softness to the day, a bit of mist hanging in the light of the morning sun. I saw a sharp shinned hawk try to snag a squirrel. The squirrel would have nothing of it and challenged the hawk aggressively. When the hawk took a place on a fence and tried to look nonchalant, the squirrel went on the offensive. He climbed the fence and made himself big by curling up his tail and hunching his back--a squirrel version of what cats do--and challenged and pestered the hawk until he flew away. This squirrel was not letting down his guard or taking any chances because scampering away up a tree is not going to help him against an air assault. He had to face the hawk head on. I admire that spunk and perseverance. There's always something to learn from nature. Use what you have to chase off predators and don't give up even if they seem stronger than you.

I checked on the Cornell site and that may have been a Cooper's Hawk--a very similar looking bird to the Sharp Shinned but bigger. Of course, hawks vary in size with the female being bigger than the male, so it's tough to gage, but the hawk I saw was on the big side but I didn't have my binoculars to check out tail roundness etc. . My only clue is that it was going after a mammal, a trait Cornell attributes to Cooper's Hawks and not Sharp-Shinned. Also, like Sharp-Shinned Hawks, Cooper's Hawks have moved to the suburbs to enjoy all the easy bird feeder meals.

A white crowned sparrow was jumping around in the cover of the giant non-flowering broccoli plants in our garden. I suppose he was finding something to eat to refuel as he continues his trip south. I should have asked him what the North Country was like this summer but he was pretty busy bouncing around. The giant plants at least provide cover for the little guy. I doubt a hawk could find a way down in there. We will be winterizing the garden soon and planning for the next season.

Early Birds can catch more than worms.

2011-10-25T05:13:00.000-07:00

Finished a towel before work today!

I was up early this morning and I was able to finish the first towel on this warp. Above, you can see the towel and some of my experimenting with the tie up on this Schacht table loom. I have one of the older looms and the tie up has a few issues, so I've added a gizmo I found at JoAnn's to see if I can come up with an improvement.

Heart of Craftsteading

2011-10-23T17:42:00.000-07:00


Dried beans from my garden. I grew two varieties of pole beans.

Craftsteading is a lifestyle choice, much like homesteading. Unlike homesteading, one isn't likely to have a hog growing in the backyard, or five acres of wheat. Instead one will find a house overflowing with tools and projects--crafts of every sort flowing out. It shares the self-sustaining bent of homesteading, though not toward growing all one's own food. Craftsteading is the sustainable, do-it-yourself lifestyle for the city or suburban dweller. It's great for people with small lots, lot of zoning regulations, or a brown thumb.

A sign of being a craftsteader is having craft-type items fill up the house--and I certainly have that. My husband has a workshop in the basement and I've overtaken two spare bedrooms with my looms and other craft materials. There's a spinning wheel in the living room and there tends to be fleece in the family room if I happen to be picking one while watching TV. Otherwise I have a knitting project there. I have my dyeing operation out in the garage and below, you can see some linen/cotton yarn I dyed today for some placemats.


This natural linen and cotton yarn was dyed green for placemats.

If we are overrun by a zombie apocalypse, being able to weave one's own linens and spin lovely yarns will not be as handy a skill as growing food. It will take years for people in a zombie eclipsed world to run through all the clothing already stuffed in their closets. We have so much stuff in our consumer culture that it's ridiculous.

I think that's why I like the idea of slow cloth. It takes a long time to go from fiber to yarn to cloth--much longer than it takes to work the hours, even at minimum wage, to earn the money to fill a shopping cart with cheap machine-made imported goods. But there is that certain satisfaction of having something handmade, and designed to suit one's needs. I'm sure it's a very similar satisfaction as having one's table filled with food you've grown yourself.

But just as I can't grow all my own food, I can't make everything myself. As a city dweller, there's that trade-off. I've definitely made the handmade pledge and now eat off of handmade pottery. The bowl the beans are in was made by an artisan in Vermont.

Another facet of craftsteading is trying to find food grown as sustainably, locally and organic as possible--and therefore supporting small farmers and homesteaders. Fortunately, through my local farmers market here in Naperville, I've found a good supply of sustainably grown vegetables and meats. Since I've taken the no-factory-farm pledge, we are lucky to have Yuppie Hill Farm and the Hometown Sausage Kitchen visiting regularly. Hometown Sausage Kitchen is new, a chef turned entrepreneur has worked with local farmer(s) to grow sustainably grown Berkshire pork and now heritage grass fed beef for those who would like to eat meat sometimes, but not from animals grown in prison and fed noxious hormones. Being a chef, he has created some excellent sausages, as well as providing well thought out cuts of meat. This make me quite happy because next week I'll be picking up ground pork to make my own secret family recipe Italian sausage for the Thanksgiving lasagna. Yes, lasagna is a traditional Thanksgiving dish--at least in my family!

I also dyed some alpaca red today

Craftsteading is my life. Of course, there is the day job, but afterwards, I get to come home and craft away. I've been dyeing some alpaca for a throw I want to make. I have this idea of a multicolored warp and a weft in that lovely chestnut brown alpaca fleece I purchased recently. I think it should be gorgeous! At least it looks that way in my head. The hard part is getting it to come out that way on the loom.

The other aspect of craftsteading is growing at least some of my own food. I try, but my garden was so-so this year. At the top of this blog, you can see some dried beans that were supposed to be green beans. Well, we tended to leave our green beans on the vine too long so they were tough and bitter. I decided to go ahead and let them finish the "bean" process. This winter, I think I will cook some of these up and see how they turn out when served with pasta, one of my favorite vegetarian meals.

Weaving complexity

2011-10-22T19:20:00.000-07:00


This book is opening my eyes to weaving's possibilities.

Weaving should be able to keep me engaged and challenged for many years to come. That's why I got started with it some time ago, but now that I'm reading Sharon Alderman's Mastering Weave Structures, I'm realizing just how wonderful an art it is. And I'm only on page 32! I've already learned interesting things about weaving and know I will not just read, but study this book. I plan to do a more formal review down the road, but the book is already opening my eyes and inspiring me.

One of the things I started to do is dig through yarn bequeathed to me by former loom owners. I purchased two looms from people who were giving up weaving and both came with a sizeable stash of mystery yarn. I was able to figure out that all the yarn surrounding the book above is 8/2 cotton. I can see quite a few towels on the horizon!

My little Schacht table loom, which I have name Milly, will be busy. With a 20 inch weaving width and rug warp on the big Leclerc, Milly is the perfect choice for my towel ambitions. I have a few ideas for some interesting towel warps with all that stuff. I really enjoy the small loom. Now that it's warped it is easy to stop in and weave a few pics. I'm enjoying the straight twill structure too.

Craftsteading has never been so good! Well, the garden part of it is almost over and to be honest, it wasn't as productive as it should have been. We have broccoli that has grown big and strong but has yet to flower! Thank goodness for the Farmer's Market because without them we'd be stuck with the supermarket. We have locally grown potatoes to store, and I bought a bunch of the summer's last peppers, summer squash and tomatoes to make one last batch of my favorite summery food mess--essentially a mixture of all of the above with some olive oil, garlic, hot pepper and basil to spice it up. This can be served over pasta or with crusty bread--whatever you have on hand at your craftstead.

Weaving Joy!

2011-10-18T17:00:00.000-07:00

Warped and weaving.

Despite being outwitted by warp gremlins, and needing to patch a couple of threading errors, I can finally start to weave. Above is the start of my first towel using mystery fibers that came with one of my looms--mostly 8/2 cotton, maybe a little linen in one of them. I was able to get a nice twill pattern together as you can see above. I still have more to deal with: keeping the selvedges nice, beating evenly so I get the right number of pics per inch. I think I started out a little skimpy in that department, but It's my first towel and I'll get it down by the time I'm finished this 12 foot warp.

Perseverance has got to be the single most important attribute for the weaver. I learned that over and over again as I struggled to get all that twisty warp on. It was just a matter of time and voila, the fun part begins as I weave along and watch the pattern form. I am looking forward to using these towels. Yes, using them. As a craftsteader, part of my crafting is to make my own useful, yet lovely items. And also, once I weave all of this, I can get more yarn. I'd like to make some holiday towels too! And there's my giant placemat project, but more about that later.

My loom from the back: nice neat threads.

Above is the back of my loom. You can see all the threads so nice and neat going into the heddles. Yep, I got them all to obey my commands! Muwahahaha! I'm quite happy with this.

Gremlins 2 , Craftsteader 0

2011-10-11T19:20:00.000-07:00

I was threading when I realized the Warp Gremlins tricked me after all.

So, whose keeping score? I think the Warp Gremlins are, and they are laughing their heads off right now. You may remember from last week's episode, my elaborate ploy to fool the Warp Gremlins by tricking them to the other side of the room with a tasty craft brewed beer so they wouldn't snarl my warp as I wound it on. Never fear, the Gremlins got me anyway. I just didn't realize it until a week later.

As I wound the warp, I forgot to add the sticks you need to pack it. Can't believe it, but I really and truly did that. I hang my head in shame and add it to my upcoming book Five-hundred Weaving Mistakes to Learn From.

Okay so maybe the beer distracted me as well as the Warp Gremlins. Gremlins 1, Craftsteader, 0.

What was I thinking? This isn't enough space between rug projects!

The next dumb thing I did was start a new project too close to an existing project on a warp. Gremlins 2, Craftsteader, 0. Those of you who weave know that you can put on a warp and use it for several projects--and this is especially so with the rug warp seen above. I don't know what I was thinking really, but there is definitely not enough space between the end of one rug and the beginning of the next. It would have been fine for kitchen towels, but not rugs. What I will do is unweave all the handspun rug yarn, advance the loom, and weave some of the ugly spacer yarn and then start again. All the rest can be taken out when I cut the projects off the loom.

So that is two mistakes in one week. Three in two if you include the warp that had to be thrown out. Gremlins 3, Craftsteader 0.

But this is just the top of the first inning and I have a plan to fix the errors on both my looms! So, Gremlins, you haven't won yet!

Appeasing the Warp Gremlins

2011-10-04T18:56:00.000-07:00

A good dark beer can distract Warp Gremlins from their usual mischief.

Anyone who has been weaving for some time can tell you that warp is an opinionated beast. Sometimes it goes along with you and winds on smooth and even and other times it just becomes an unfathomable tangle of snarls and weird tangles. If you follow me on Twitter, you'll know that just last week I had to abandon an entire towel warp to the bin of doom (a.k.a. waste basket in my workshop).

Here's my warp, draped and ready to be wound on the back beam.

I soon realized my error: I had failed to appease the Warp Gremlins. These are the little guys who encourage your warp to twist and tangle and do some really odd things with the lease sticks—No matter how careful you are some chunk of warp has a way of not being in the lease stick. How can that happen when the sticks are tied at the ends?

I considered the mischievous character of my Warp Gremlin population and decided the best way to appease them was with a decent bottle of porter. I poured it out and took a sip (this is to shows the gremlins it is safe to drink) and left it on the other side of the room on my carder before I began winding on the warp. I did this casual like, knowing that the tasty beer would catch their attention and keep them occupied. It worked for a bit but they have short attention spans, especially after a little beer. Snarls, twisting strands and a bit of warp that escaped the lease sticks began to plague me.

A good swig of the beer helps make the gremlins behave. Providing a snack is a nice touch too.

I then sighed loudly saying, “I'll never get this warp on, I'll just go drink that beer.” I had a pretty good swig of it, before turning back to the warp. This scares the Warp Gremlins into thinking you're going to drink all the beer so they run back across the room and stop jumping around on your warp. And so I had a yard more of winding peace until they started up again. Fortunately, my husband came in with a plate of cheese and crackers for a snack. I put a morsel out for the gremlins, and with his help, I was able to wind on more warp.

Here you can see the mischief my gremlins were up to.

Eventually it did get finished but it wasn't easy. You can see in the photo in the one bit of warp that jumped out of the lease sticks (my friend Beth made these from dowels and I've been working with them. They are pretty slick.) But the warp is on and now I can start threading the loom. And the beer was nice too. Baxter, my personal assistant, scarfed up the cheese and cracker morsel. He doesn't mind the gremlin nibbles, he's a dog after all.

At the top of the picture you can find a bit of warp that managed to escape the lease sticks.

And so goes my story and I'm sticking to it. A good beer makes winding on warp so much easier, with the added benefit of distracting the Warp Gremlins.

Happy and Warped

2011-09-25T19:22:00.000-07:00


This will be a pillow to go with the yoga mat.

The yoga mat is woven, but it's still on the loom. I've decided to conserve warp by rolling it onto the cloth beam and continuing on. I'm using up leftovers here, and this will be a pillow the width of the yoga mat. Whereas the mat was plain weave, this time, I'm weaving a rosepath pattern so the weft packs in. It will be nice a cushy and if I add more padding it should be perfect for my head or for sitting on. I want to make some yoga blankets too, but first I need to finish this warp! I like the way the colorful yarn looks woven. I'll have to rememeber that when designing yarns for future projects.

Here's another picture!

Oh, and that Dr. Bronner's soap didn't clean the Icelandic fleece to my liking, so I'm rewashing it in the Trader's Joe cruelty free laundry detergent. I like that it has lavender in it, so it leaves the fleece with a lovely scent.

Not Doing that Again!

2011-09-24T13:05:00.000-07:00


Salvaged one fleece worth of fiber out of six bags.

Note to self: Never, ever purchase six bags of mystery fleece from a shepherd who is getting rid of them for a friend, no matter how cheap you can get them for. Especially if these fleeces are stuffed in feed bags because that, likely, is your first clue.

Every so often I do this sort of thing--try to rescue some fleece or another. Sometimes it works out okay, other times it ends out in the trash. This is probably my worst "fleece rescue" operation. So what could be wrong with six Hampshire fleeces? Oh lots.

I suspect these fellows were not field raised. I suspect they spent a good part of their lives in a smallish, muddy paddock eating grain and hay. Why do I suspect this? There's lots of dirt in the fleece, likely from standing out in mud during downpours. The fleece was just pure yuck. I was able to save some of it, but not much, and this required a pair of heavy duty scissors to pretty much shear the yucky tips off. I was left with maybe 4 inch staples from something that was eight. Not really bad. I think I have a few pounds--a small fleece's worth.

I might have been able to salvage more, but I have a limit to how much trouble I will go to for wool. And as a salvadge operation, considering what I was starting with, this really wasn't too bad. I should have taken a picture of what they looked like, but they were just too ugly.

Argh, I can still taste sheep, and I had to wash my hands 5 times in dawn to get the sheep smell out, even though I was wearing gloves. Now that's fairly serious sheep. Okay, so I got to play farmer with stinky fleeces, I'm ready for craftsteading again.

Oh, and that Dr. Bronner's soap did not clean the lovely Icelandic Fleece I purchased--even though it was a fairly ungreasy fleece. I'll be sending it through again with something stronger.

Equinox and Fruit O' the Loom

2011-09-23T14:14:00.000-07:00


Fruit O' the Loom

Happy First Day of Autumn everyone! I'm enjoying a day at home doing crafty sorts of things. As a Craftsteader, the Equinox doesn't involve quite the flurry of activity a Homesteader might run into. My garden is pretty small, and even with the added bonus of squash growing out of my compost heap, it's not like I'm out there digging up potatoes.

But I did have a harvest of sorts to celebrate today--I finished weaving and was able to cut this length of cloth off the loom. It is pure handspun and I'm making a pillow. Purchased the filling today and Joanne's and I plan to start the finishing soon.

Two of the Hampshires I purchased were a little dissappointing. I ended out skirting them with scissors. Which means, basically, that I cut off the matted tips and kept the nice clean stuff underneath. It's a good thing it has such a long staple length because with the tips off, I still have a good four or five inches of nice stuff to spin. Tomorrow, I'll work on the rest of them and take some pics so you can join in the fun. My husband negotiated a great deal on them, so it's not too bad. I'm getting some nice wool out of it.

I'm going to get back to Craftsteading. I'm making real progress on the yoga mat I'm weaving! I hope to have something to show soon.

Lopi dreams, Hampshire heaven, big trouble

2011-09-18T14:28:00.000-07:00


Gypsy, an Icelandic fleece from Hedgegrove Farm, Le Moille, IL.

My favorite kind of fiber fair is the small local one, like Fiber in the Park in Earlville this weekend. Cozy, friendly, completely local and with plenty of fiber for everyone. You know from past posts I don't need to go to Rhinebeck to fill my car with fiber. Lovely Icelandic fleeces were readily available at the Hedgegrove Farm booth staffed by Michael Bates, a friendly and informative shepherd. (You can find him through Local Harvest).

I was admiring his fleece realizing I have yet to spin Icelandic wool, except maybe maybe at a guild event, and all I could think of was combs and heavy leather gloves to keep me from impaling myself. I don't own combs for the same reason I don't needle felt. I'm a klutz when it comes to crafting with sharp objects. I muttered something about carding it and an attentive Mr. Bates said the magic word "Lopi" and I could see myself sitting at my Lendrum filling the giant bobbin with lovely lightly spun singles and making a really cool Icelandic sweater. Which of course led me to buy two fleeces. One is from Feta, who came along and was very friendly, so I had to buy her fleece. And the one above which has some brown, and I can dye some of it for a pretty yoke.


This is where I got in trouble.

Two fleeces is a pretty good haul for any fiber festival, but I had my husband with me, and Hedgegrove Farm happened to have a pile of unskirted Hampshire fleeces a shepherd friend gave him to get rid of. I was kind of interested in just one, but I was also sort of distracted by the other fleeces. Ted is the business type who enjoys negotiating and in buying Gypsy and Feta we ended out with six bags filled with Hampshire. Now this is one of the down breeds of sheep, and the wool has a springy, crimpy hand. It is quite soft, dyes well and many people love it for socks. The beautiful thing about this particular Hampshire is the six to seven inch staple length! The stuff is lovely!

But it needs work, including skirting. I've set up a skirting table in the garage and I will be getting to it after work tomorrow. Craftsteading has never been so good!


Tomatoes and zucchini from the farmers market.

On the same Saturday, we stopped by the Farmers Market where I picked up two pecks of plum tomatoes from my favorite farm from Maple Park, IL. That was enough to make two big pots of pasta sauce. One was a peck of tomatoes and mushroom marina, and above is my special recipe tomatoes, zucchini and pepper pasta sauce. The freezer if filling up with the flavor of summer. I also had enough to make a big vat of tomato, zucchini and black bean chili!

This is Feta: gray Icelandic with colorful yoke?

I said goodbye to my 36 inch, counterbalance four-harness loom today as it was packed into a little red sedan bound for Oklahoma. I'm glad she'll have a new good home and will continue to produce lovely cloth. Plus, I've learned something important: yes, you can have too many looms!

Can ripe toamtoes survive chipmunk connoiseurs?

2011-09-13T15:17:00.000-07:00

To pick or not to pick? I picked.

Fresh tomatoes! We've all heard people opine about the wonders of growing your own and the sublime experience of chomping on a tomato that is at its peak of freshness. The herd of chipmunks in my back yard are sure to agree with this wholeheartedly, and they do wait for that lovely moment of peak freshness. The problem is, this peak appears to occur in the middle of the day while I'm at work. I've found more than one half eaten gorgeously fresh tomato lying on the ground.

Which is why I'm faced regularly with picking my tomatoes just ahead of their becoming fare for my chipmunk connoisseurs.. I gave up on the heirloom varieties last year when every last one of them was snapped up by one of those endearing critters or drilled into by a bird. I just do plum tomatoes as can be seen in my picture. They work great in all my recipes. I've had a good run on ripe tomatoes, but I've learned to be careful not to leave them out too long, especially now they are growing scarce.

Weavers frog too!

2011-09-10T13:46:00.000-07:00


I'm weaving a yoga mat from my handspun.

Joy is what weaving feels like. Even when I have to frog a few rows because I see a glaring mistake. Yep, just like knitters, weavers can frog too, except it's more like unweaving and it doesn't make the satisfying "rip-it" sound that unraveling knitwear has if you listen very closely. It is drowned out by the sighs of the weaver.

This rug is woven on linen rug warp at 5 dents per inch. Originally threaded for a warp faced weave, I decided to use up some grey Wensleydale, and some multidyed strands of four ply as a plain weave. So the warp is still showing, but the end result will be flexible and lightweight yet cushy and I'm hoping it will provide the same grip for standing yoga poses as rubber mats do. We shall see. Either way, I really like the way it's coming out, and as I write this I have about two feet woven. The colors are a four ply, one each of turquoise, red, green and purple, all from a Rambouillet cross I purchased at Elihu Farm in Valley Falls, New York. The Wensleydale comes from Homestead Acres Farm up near Door County, Wisconsin.


My loom is a four shaft 60" LeClerc Nylus II.

There's my loom as you see it when you walk into the little room I call my studio. The sixty inch width is a bit beyond my wingspan, but I know I can comfortably weave up to four feet wide, especially if I keep up with my yoga and remain flexible. I know I bought this loom a couple of years ago and haven't wove on it. I think I had bad fengshui with too many looms crowded in all over. I found a buyer for my 36" LeClerc Fanny who I know will love and appreciate the loom. That was a great loom to work on but I also love the big gal too. And I'm finally weaving on her. I want to make some really pretty throws, using luxury fibers like Alpaca, and maybe kid mohair. I've just scoped out some nice handspun Alpaca yarn stash to use on a "trial run" blanket. I think I'll make a camelid yoga blanket to go with my yoga rug. This will ensure maximum flexibility for future weaving enjoyment.


The garden is doing well.

With all this, there's still the garden to keep an eye on. I found all these peppers on a stroll around the yard, and quite a few squash among the compost heap volunteers . You can see one of those yellow warty ones next to it. I plan to cook these all together. I also picked three more acorn squash, a couple of which I will cook tomorrow. I really enjoy gardening, though I'd like to have seen some better production such as spinach that will actually sprout and grow. Next year, I will know better!

Weaving Wonderland

2011-09-05T20:54:00.000-07:00

A long crafting weekend is just about behind me. I had a lot of fun making some jewelry with the citrine I showed you last week, but more importantly, I took out my table loom and started winding on a warp. Here you can see the some handspun llama on the small warping board. Behind it is the Schacht 8 harness table loom. I'll be doing plain weave--more loom than I need for the job. I wanted to try something simple in two colors. So far, I've successfully wound on the warp and I'm ready to start threading. The yarn is decently thick, so I'm weaving at six ends per inch and I only have 108 ends to thread. Yeah!

Facebook Follies

2011-08-30T19:33:00.000-07:00

I've started a Craftsteader Facebook page. so if you can go there, please "like" me. It feels a little odd to have only one like (me) on the page.

Thank you, dear reader.

No need to travel: Fleece finds me

2011-08-28T09:33:00.000-07:00

Meadowsong Alpaca's Thriller arrived at my doorstep this week.

My quest for fabulous fibers to spin has reached the tipping point: I no longer need to travel to fiber festivals, wonderful fleeces just come my way. Exhibit A: this lovely fleece from Meadowsong Alpaca's in Michigan. Diane, of Meadowsong, a quality alpaca grower thoughtfully e-mailed me about a lovely fleece grown by her new boy Thriller. The photo doesn't really do it justice, which is good because I'd hate to have people swooning while reading this blog on their I-phone or something. Yep, it's really that lovely. Honest.

Lovely strings of Citrine nestled in luxury.

To represent the loveliness, I posed a couple of strands of Citrine I purchased a Kasey's Beads in Naperville, hopping to allow this semi-precious stone to reflect the beauty of this precious fleece. Oh, it sunk right into all that soft, fluffy, spin-able loveliness. Okay, I'm using too many superlatives. Got it.

Just to let you know, this fleece is going to be the cornerstone of my hand woven throws made with sustainably grown fiber that will one day be the cornerstone of my Etsy shop, once it opens. In the meantime, maybe some rally nice Citrine and quartz crystal jewelry? I love using natural stone because I do believe it imparts some positive energies to the wearer. Plus, stones will stay nice looking, bright and clean even when worn against the skin. I'll be working on my Etsy page, my new web page (you can still go to http://www.whorlwindweaver.com for spinning tips while it's under contruction, and I have a New Facebook page. It's all under Craftsteader.

More green beans grew overnight.

While my fellow crafters enjoyed a lovely day in Allegan at the fiber festival (I'm not rubbing it in east coast, but mother nature has been merciful this weekend) I was slaving away in the garden, picking and tying up tomatoes, cleaning out the dying squash in the garden proper and finding more and more green beans. I swear, a green bean can grow overnight because the ones show in this picture were not there yesterday.

We like to grow sunflowers for the birds.

Abbondante, is how I would describe the garden. I can speak Italian now because after all the work and a trip to the bead store and Trader Joes, I sipped an Italian Red they sell called "Bastardo" and listened to Pavarotti cranked up from inside the house. Okay, I used Google translate, but really it was a fabulous day yesterday with blue skies and enough breeze to keep away ravenous mosquitoes. Sorry for this mention, my East Coast readers, but we also get a certain share of the wrath of global climate change. Remember, we had Jim Cantore stationed in Chicago last winter for the thundersnow blizzard. Though, a blizzard isn't so bad as long as you make it home from work before it gets bad and have stocked up on dark chocolate and red wine. Plus blizzards bring moisture in the solid form--work to dig out but it doesn't seep. I do feel for you guys.

Mystery squash revealed!

2011-08-23T18:44:00.001-07:00

016, a photo by Craftsteader on Flickr.

This squash had been growing out of my compost heap since early summer. As you can see, it has taken over the entire "fence wall corner" behind our shed. I had no idea what kind it was, but it appears to be a winter squash of the acorn variety. I got a look at my first fruit today. I think it is the result of some squash seeds I chucked last year, including possibly a squash that had "gone by.' It is nice to see something growing so well! I am pleased. My zucchini is doing awful. Next year, I'm planting it right here!

Rainy Saturday = Crafting Holiday

2011-08-20T12:14:00.000-07:00

There's something wonderful about waking up to a Saturday rife with dark clouds rolling across the sky, rumbles of thunder and storms spewing downpours, runnels of water in the gutter, grass glistening with wet. Ah Paradise!

My kind of rainy day gray: a chance to get caught up!

A rainy day means Freedom to stay inside and to spin and card to my heart's content. I might even fire up the dye pot because the cool rainy air means I can open a window and keep the smell out of my house. I woke up fired up to get going, and have already filled half a bobbin of luscious kid mohair from Tallgrass Farm and carded myself a small pyramid of batts. Free creative time is the lifeblood of the craftsteader.

Yep, the carder needed some exercise!

I'm just a wee bit behind in my pledge to have spun this entire fleece by the end of August. But determination, and a few good downpours, and I'll up caught up and meet my deadline.

A pleasant pyramid of Tallgrass Farm kid mohair batts to spin.

I'm way behind because of vacation, and then some medical issues that cropped up--everything is turning out okay, but as you know, the in-the-middle-of-it stage is really not fun and not conducive to keeping up with hobby projects, which include this blog and some of my activities on Ravelry. I was so caught up with what was going on in the non-hobby part of my life that I haven't been able to create ideas for the August round for my team on the Nerd Wars group! Yep, even one's geeky side can be chewed up and spit out by adversity.

My personal assistant lends his moral support to all parts of my life.

But life continues, and things do get better, and though there might not be a Santa Claus, there is a light at the end of the tunnel and if we should walk through storms with our head held high, we will never walk alone. Is that enough mixed adages folks?

The rain didn't stop me from checking the garden for goodies.

So I'm back again with crafty things to share on this lovely, grey rainy crafter's holiday Saturday. Woohoo! May you all have lovely days of creating beautiful things by hand.

Winning Wildflowers!

2011-08-16T19:34:00.001-07:00

007, a photo by Craftsteader on Flickr.

This gorgeous indie dyed BFL braid is aptly named Picking Wildflowers. I won it from Wildberry Moon in Ravelry's Tour de Fleece. I think she still has some in stock, if you want to visit http://www.wildberrymoon.com/. I'm looking forward to spinning this.

Compost's bounty

2011-07-23T06:56:00.001-07:00

011, a photo by LemonPrairie on Flickr.

The summer squash in my garden is really not doing well despite buying strong, healthy, already started plants. Think of how surprised I was to discover these growing out of my compost heap? We started vegetable-only compost last summer and didn't use it in the garden. It is in what I call the "fence wall" corner. That's the spot in suburbia where all your neighbors put up a big tall fence at the back corner of their property and leave a nice little niche for the suburban craftsteader needing an out-of-sight spot for country-type activities. The burbs can be a little uptight about some country-type things. Anyhow, Nature has left me with a wonderful gift of strong, fertile squash, the seeds likely coming from some vendor's fruit in my farmers market. I'm not sure what they will be yet--pattypan, yellow or zucchini, but I will let you know. There are also quite a few tomatoes coming up and I am curious what I will have come fall. My planted tomatoes are doing beautifully too, by the way, and I hope to show you a bowl full of them soon! May your garden also do well!

Day 18 & 19 Scooby Snack

2011-07-20T08:21:00.001-07:00

003, a photo by LemonPrairie on Flickr.

As a break from all the grey mohair, I'm spinning this art batt from Ambrosia & Bliss. She cleverly calls them "Scooby Snacks."

Experiments in nerdverse

2011-07-17T07:44:00.000-07:00

Ravelry's Nerd War's competition has led me to new heights in geekdom. Below, I am answering a challenge to use the scientific method on a Raverly sanctioned crafting project, in this case spinning. I took the extra step of placing my research in my favorite nerdverse, Star Trek.

Proceedings of the Vulcan Academy for the Arts

Maintaining color synchronization during production of two ply yarns from Indie dyed rovings.

Lemon Prairie, F.A.; Janice Rand, M.F.A, Ph.D.;

Introduction:

Conventional wisdom has long taught that the most efficient way of synchronizing colors in multi-colored Indie dyed rovings is to use the Navajo, Chain or Andorian ply methodology (Surak, 2215). However, this creates a three ply yarn which could create a yarn too thick for projects such as laceweight shawls (T’Kola, 2297). Experimenters, with a large grant from the VSF (Vulcan Spinners Foundation) will see if it is possible to synchronize a two ply yarn by splitting the roving down the middle.

Material and Methods:

Two four ounce Indie dyed rovings were purchased from separate dyers residing in disparate locations on the Federation Planet Earth and were chosen from existing stock so custom dyeing bias would not arise. One roving was chosen by the experimenter before she was given this project, a second was chosen by her niece, also prior to initiating the project.

Both rovings were prepared for spinning using the snapping method (K’Katow, 2301) while watching an episode of Burn Notice, provided by the North American 21^st Century Entertainment Archives.

One roving was randomly chosen to be split in two, right down the middle, so that each ball of yarn to be spun would include the same color sequence. Two balls weighing 2.15 ounces apiece were created. Each ball was spun onto separate bobbins and then plied.

As a control, the second roving was rolled into a single ball for spinning into one single. This was plied using what is commonly known as the Navajo, Chain or Andorian ply method.

All spinning was done on a circa 2006 Lendrum double treadle spinning wheel. The ancient “spinning from the clump” method (Prairie, 2011) was used exclusively throughout.

Results

The second roving (Figure A) which was Navajo, Chain or Andorian ply, created a color synchronized yarn as expected and documented in the literature (K’Katow, 2213).

Figure A: The control yarn was plied using the Navajo/Chain/Andorian ply method.

Despite great care to evenly divide the first roving and spin so each color remained separate and in the original sequence, when plied, the colors only synchronized rarely (Figure B). As can be seen in the photograph, there is a wide color mixture in the yarn. Though some areas did synchronize, when subjected to rigorous statistical analysis (see Figure C) it was found that the synchronization was not statistically significant.

Figure B: This two ply painted roving did not show statistically significant color synchronization.

Conclusion

Spinners wishing to create a color synchronized yarn using indie dyed painted roving should use the Navajo/Chain/Andorian plying method.

Acknowledgements:

The researchers would like to thank the Vulcan Spinning Foundation for providing funding, as well as the Vulcan Academy for the Fine Arts and the Andorian Shuttle and Spindle Foundation for technical assistance, as well as the Klingon Culinary Institute for the lovely catered lunches. A special note of appreciation is extended to my thesis advisor, Dr. Janice Rand for her expertise and knowledge in the field of art. Special thanks are extended to Star Fleet Command for their suspension of the Temporal Prime Directive to allow the lead investigator to travel freely using a time machine craft that looks remarkably like a 21^st century prepaid cell phone dispenser, the “Tardy,” and where the lead researcher is known to Star Fleet and others in this timeline simply as “The Graduate Student.”

For those of you readers who are not Trekies, Janice Rand was the Yoeman in the original series. In one episode we see her quarters where we discover she is an artist working on numerous abstract paintings in a 20th century style. Though she remains in Starfleet and shows up in the transporter room in the first movie, I am further assuming her Starfleet career was her day job as she also pursued her interest in painting and received advanced degrees in the arts and her specialty was 20th century artistic movements (as evidenced by the canvases in her quarters).

Yarn

2011-07-16T05:07:00.001-07:00

001, a photo by LemonPrairie on Flickr.

I'm a little behind on posting for the Tour because I've been under the weather. However, I did manage to spin and Navajo ply the True Blood Corriedale roving from Wildberry Moon. Here it is!

Day 6: True Blood

2011-07-07T08:43:00.001-07:00

003, a photo by LemonPrairie on Flickr.

Right now, I'm spinning this Corriedale Roving from Wildberry Moon in her "True Blood" Colorway. I hope to be plying in Navajo style tomorrow!

Day 4: Seeds of Change skein

2011-07-05T16:18:00.001-07:00

007, a photo by LemonPrairie on Flickr.

Here is my second completed skein for Ravelry's Tour de Fleece. This is BFL/Tussah from Wildberry Moon in the Seeds of Change colorway. It has a nice golden look to it and I am quite pleased.

Day 3: First Skein

2011-07-04T13:30:00.001-07:00

002, a photo by LemonPrairie on Flickr.

Here is the skein I created from Raveler Jessiebird's lovely handpainted skein. She calls her indir dyeing business A Piece of Vermont. I LOVED! spinning this. This two ply is 234 yards for a 4.15 ounce skein, and 13 WPI. Plus it is luxuriously soft being superfine merino.

Day 2 production

2011-07-03T15:38:00.001-07:00

005, a photo by LemonPrairie on Flickr.

I'm making progress on the Tour de Fleece and today I managed to spin up the Wildberry Moon BFL/tussah braid in the Seeds of Change colorway. I look forward to getting it plied tomorrow! that's four ounces down, for a total of 8 ounces of spinning. Will my two pound Tour de Fleece goal be easy peasy?

A Piece of Vermont

2011-07-03T08:03:00.001-07:00

005, a photo by whorlwindweaver on Flickr.

This is what I spun yesterday for the Tour de fleece. I have two full bobbins waiting to be plied. This is from a dyer and small farmer in Vermont who you main know on Ravelry as Jessiebird. She has a nice blog about her homesteading and crafting activities, "What Housework?" This is superfine merino and I was n heaven spinning it.

Seeds of Change

2011-07-03T07:50:00.001-07:00

001, a photo by whorlwindweaver on Flickr.

Ravelry's Tour de Fleece is in it's second day and above is a braid I dismantled and prepared for spinning today. This comes from an independent dyer and Angora rabbit grower in Maine, Wildberry Moon. I'm halfway through the first ball and it spins like a dream!

Garden: Stones, Stakes and Thrums

2011-06-26T13:54:00.000-07:00

I built this wall around my garden today.

Gardening kept me busy all day, and I know I have my farmer's tan from staking tomatoes and building the low wall you see above. Our neighbor has had these stones stacked up behind his shed ever since he replaced his patio and he was more than glad to have my husband haul some away in a wheel barrow. I did the actual building, and I must say it was a workout. My eventual plan is to add more topsoil so we have a raised bed garden--and there's nothing better to use for a raise bed, in my opinion, than free stone.

Free stone is one of the advantages of suburban living. With people coming and going from homes, there is always something stacked up behind sheds. A couple of years ago, we took out all the paving stones our home's former owners had put in, and now they've been reincarnated into a raised bed for my tomato plants.

Yeah! More, more more!

Thinking of tomatoes, I had to get into the garden and really get to work on staking them up! I had neglected this. We had to purchase stakes at our local Ace Hardware. I go to our local Ace because I am trying to avoid the big box stores and support the little guy. Anyhow, they have a great stake department, and we didn't have to walk 20 miles to find it. I don't mind the big box workout, but when you have lots of gardening and wall building to do, I would just like to have a store where I can find things. I also picked up some extra basil to complement the tomatoes and lettuce seed mix to keep us in greens all summer.

Because I weave, my tomatoes are tied with pure linen rug warp. It is lovely stuff and I have tons of thrums left over from my earlier rug projects. It was pretty enjoyable being out there, and working on the tomatoes. I have 12 plants in all--two small potted ones and 10 that I hope will inundate me with tomatoes. Oh, I hope so. I'm also looking forward to the great zucchini and summer squash invasion. The plants are doing really well, but already two little summer squash are gone! What varmint invaded my garden? I don't know. So that is where the wall idea came in because I thing some critters were slipping in under the fence. Of course raccoons will probably just climb right over. Sigh.

Strawberry heaven

2011-06-19T11:53:00.000-07:00

Oh Yum! I could smell the strawberries as I wandered into the farmer's market this sunny Saturday morning and these taste as good as they look, trust me. Someday, I might try my hand at my own strawberry patch, but for now I'll cart them home all June long. The bowl is handmade by an artisan in Vermont. We came across her shop while driving through Dover--a tiny building filled with lovely hand painted treasures. I've been waiting until last fall to see it full of fresh berries!

The garden is doing well, and yes, I'll have pictures next week. But for now, I have a project or two I made for challenges in the second round tournament for the Nerd Wars group on Ravelry. I'll not get into details of the tournament other than to say each month there are new challenges and it's up to each contestant and their own creativity to figure out how to answer it to gain points for their team. We get extra points if our project can be related to our particular corner of nerdom, which in my case is Star Trek.

So here I have a small makeup bag, which on Ravelry is billed as a "Ferengi change purse" to illustrate Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #3: Never Pay More for an Aquisition than you Absolutely Have To. So it is small. We were asked to knit something that represented an adage, and what better "adage" than one made up especially for Star Trek so I can earn team points? It will be great to hold all that loose stuff in my purse like lip gloss and eye drops.

And above is a potholder I made to answer a challenge asking for something that illustrates lightening. There is a popular nerd T-shirt something along these lines--so the idea isn't completely original--but I figured out the pattern myself. I hope to eventually have the pattern available for anyone interested in knitting it.

And so goes my sustainable life. There's also been spinning (8 ounces of luscious white Targhee), fiber prep (picking through a bag of lustrous kid mohair) and then all the cooking and exercising. I may have found a diet secret--I've lost 10 pounds so far this month--but I'll tell you more about that next week.

Luxury and lettuce

2011-06-12T19:52:00.000-07:00


This Angora and Jacob crepe yarn is luxuriously soft.

The weekend has been a busy one--working in the garden, spinning at my wheel and cooking organic lunches ahead in the kitchen, and snatching a moment or two to knit. Our local farmers market is open and the strawberries are plentiful, ripe and sweet and filling the air with a tantalizing aroma. It is nice to have fresh berries in the morning cereal again.

My fiber efforts have concentrated on plying my crepe yarns. After doing the dark brown, light brown and gray yarns shown above--about 10 ounces worth of yarn in total, I still have half a bobbin of the angora singles! The angora was a joy to spin and has a softness that is silky, smooth and delicious. It deserves to be plied with something similarly wonderful, so I dug out a bump of Targhee--a lovely springy fleece-- to create another crepe yarn with the angora. Spinning that has also been a dream and I managed to fill a bobbin over the weekend. I hope to continue this progress and have something to show you next week.

I also hope to be picking my own lettuce next weekend. Did I tell you my garden is going great? I have flowers on my tomatoes, two little summer squash forming, and the green beans are already climbing the trellis. I felt a bit like a character in Jack and the Beanstalk planting them a couple of weeks back, all the time wondering if they would bring me the gold I craved--in this case loads and loads of beans, enough to save into the winter. I love green beans. With broccoli and spinach it is my favorite vegetable. In the meantime, I have blank spots in my garden waiting for when I can plant the latter.

Thinking of broccoli, I planted all my little purple sprouting seedlings and they've grown quite big but give no sign of providing food. I worry, because summer is coming on quickly and I'm not sure what will grow. But this is okay. I have more seeds for later summer when broccoli will have a chance to bloom in fall. I am still fairly new to vegetable gardening, so I have things to learn. Trial and error works for me.

Indigo and Roses

2011-06-05T16:31:00.000-07:00

Native plant blue false-indigo blooms at the same time as pink roses, creating a colorful contrast in front of the craftstead.

North Country

2011-05-30T08:07:00.000-07:00

Laundry's sorted, a batch is swishing around, and I'm sitting back in my chair after many days away visiting North Country family for the Memorial Day weekend. I've got that weird feeling I sometimes get after driving a long way--kind of like my body is still moving forward at close to seventy miles an hour and the four shot mocha is still kicked in. Not exactly a comfortable feeling.

But worth it for getting the opportunity to stay someplace where Perkins and Old Heartburn Cafe haven't made any headway, and real country diners still thrive on the local highways. I love Jean's especially, it's the kind of place where they ask you if you want "real" syrup, by which they mean Maple Syrup, not some artificially flavored caramel colored corn syrup in a nostalgic looking ye-olde plastic bottle--or worse in some plastic tub like it was grape jelly. The eggs come from a shell from a chicken who lives down the road, not a carton off a restaurant supply truck. The butter comes from cows. The little town even boasts a pizza place that has homemade crust and uses local ingredients including smoked sausage from down the road. This is the North Country.

Surprisingly, I didn't come home with any fresh, field grown fleece. There was lots of family stuff to do and that kept us busy the whole time. Despite being out there in the midst of all that bucolic loveliness, the distant mountains, the hilly pastures perfect for growing excellent fleece, I still missed my little suburban home. It is nice to be back with my studio and workshop surrounded again by all my many projects--spinning, weaving, knitting and I can get back to work on some dyeing and fiber prep ideas I've dreamed up. Plus, there's the garden that got plenty of rain so needs a little TLC.

Zombie Apocalypse? Not right away

2011-05-22T04:23:00.000-07:00

My latest stash addition is 1.5 pounds of a cotton/lyocel blend destined to be spun into a summer top.

With the latest date for the possible start of a Zombie Apocalypse passing without incident--yes, I checked CNN just in case--it is time for those of use with historic stashes built up to tide us through the end-of-the-world-as-know-it to take a deep breath and enjoy the latest additions to our stashes. Above you can see my newest fiber, arrived fresh from the Copper Moose, a fawn cotton lyocel blend that spins up rather nicely. I hope to explore this blend more after the Tour de Fleece, and I'll let you know how it goes.

I guess we will have to look toward the next proposed Zombie Apocalypse date... the end of the Mayan Calendar on December 21, 2012. I'm something of an expert on this having half-watched a television special on it, while flipping during commercial breaks to watch a gay couple purchase a summer house in Mexico on House Hunters International. Did it ever occur to anyone that perhaps the Mayan Academy of Sciences chose to close down the project? That perhaps funding a bunch of scientists and stone cutters to create a calendar that stretched a thousand years into the future lost its appeal in face of other budgetary considerations? Why do we jump to the conclusion that they stopped the project on the day the world would end?

Practical old fiscal politics is not nearly as sexy as the end of the world, and would not generate scripts for over-the-top disaster movies. There really is no mystery here. Apocalypse is sexy and is able to generate money and media interest as we saw from the latest spate of RV-driving prophets of doom. I am always fascinated by what people manage to find in the Bible. Some people find hope, solace, and a freeing love, others find gloom, doom and condemnation. Could the message each person finds be decoding some deep workings of the soul? Now this is a mystery. It is a mystery why people fixate on the Zombie Apocalypse thing in the first place.

Enough mystery! This is a fiber blog after all, dedicated to all of us who enjoy spinning lovely fibers peacefully at our wheels, knitting beautiful things, puttering in our gardens or among our potted plants, and generally doing our bit to make the world a saner place. And, of course, supporting all our favorite fiber producers and purveyors by choosing among their beautiful offerings.

Too much fiber? HAH!

2011-05-17T11:34:00.000-07:00

"What is "destashing?" Sounds very wrong...wrote Eva a knitter, spinner and dog rescuer (yeah!) in comment to one of the blogs where I'm obsessing about having accumulated too much fiber. Too much fiber? Really? Who am I kidding?

Eva is right, all this destashing madness I've been blathering is very wrong. I should be rejoicing to have enough stash to survive the looming Zombie Apocalypse! As we well know, zombies are repelled by lovely fiber stash.

But back on topic: a fiber artist must have her stash, and she must replace it as she uses it. This idea of using it and not replacing it is sheer madness and is deeply wrong. And with this I end the pretense of being overwhelmed by my stash and I embrace it! I celebrate it! I spin, knit and weave it and replace it with joy!

And I welcome the newest addition, dyed by fellow Raveler and blogger Etsy shop called A Piece of Vermont:

001

2011-05-16T14:40:00.001-07:00

001, a photo by whorlwindweaver on Flickr.

I just wound this yarn off the bobbin: 8.7 ounces of a crepe yarn made with two-ply brown Jacob's lambswool and a single of fiery red dyed Angora. It is 10 WPI and I hope to make a warm hat and gloves.

Sustainability's "Ouch Factor"

2011-05-15T13:23:00.000-07:00

Tomatoes have been planted in the large planter I built along the south-facing side of the garden shed. They are not heirloom varieties because those don't grow well for me.

Gardening is part of my quest for sustainable living in the suburbs. I'm talking primarily vegetables here, not growing all my own food. I leave the meat, egg and wool production to the expert people with the small craft farms who are really into that sort of thing. I'm more into the craft side of things, hence I'm a "craftsteader" NOT a homesteader. I do my part by going to the farmers market and buying free range eggs and meat from people who know what they are doing.

But vegetables I enjoy growing. I'm not a CSA kind of person because my foodway requires large quantities of specific vegetables: namely an assortment of broccoli, spinach, tomatoes, zucchini, peppers and green beans. Oh, and plenty of basil and cilantro. I have no use for clumps of kohlrabi (which to me taste like broccoli stems) or cabbage or eggplant for that matter which is more work than it is worth. Kale is okay, in small quantities, but it can be tough and unpleasant.

For the past two weekends, DH and I have been working to put in our expanded garden. This means digging, turning, seed planting, trips to the garden center, fencing, turning, weed barrier placing, trips to the garden center, some more digging and planting, and weeding, and trips to the garden center. All of this has left me stiff and sore. Hence the "Ouch Factor" of sustainable living.

Which has made me kind of grumpy about the varmint who has taken residence under the shed which forms one side of the garden. I hope it got the hint when we put up the chicken wire yesterday along the bottom. I saw whoever it is dug a way out afterwards, but where could it go? Sorry, this varmint is not getting a vegetable filled private patio. Whoever it is had better tunnel out the other side and find somewhere else to live.

I used to think bunnies and other critters were so cute until they ate the fruits of my ouch-producing toil down to the roots. Bunny fencing has become standard all over my tiny suburban lot, and whoever has moved in under my shed has been served with an eviction notice. There's no room for sentimentality when it comes to growing food. Yes, hours of hard labor in the garden brings out the curmudgeon in me.

Takeout for the fiber obsessed

2011-05-07T09:49:00.000-07:00

This snack-sized bit of fiber goodness was delivered right to my door!

Just as I am likely to make a pizza from scratch--including grinding my own whole-wheat flour and running to the garden for fresh tomatoes and zucchini--so I enjoy knitting a sweater that began as a farm-fresh fleece purchased at the source and lovingly shepherded through the involved fiber-processing steps to make something lovely to wear.
On the other hand, there's always take-out for dinner, whether it be Chinese or pizza delivered straight to my door for those days when playing kitchen goddess seems a bit too much, and I admit to the frailty of my humanity and those days I'm tired, or irritated, or whatever. So, it is also nice to take a needed break from all that washing, dyeing, carding and other fiber-love task.

Yum! More wheel-ready takeout for the fiber obsessed!

Enter those snack-sized, ready-to-spin braids with all the lovely, colorfulness ready to go "wooohooo" on the wheel and providing as much "squeeeeeeeeee!" as a deep-dish Chicago-style pizza delivered to my door. Yep, whether it be the pizza truck or the postal truck, there's delight delivered right to our doors. And it can both be done online these days, as I did when I ordered from Wildberry Moon earlier this week.

Oh yes, the "extreme destash" pledge I opined about in my previous blog. (Turns slightly red).

Okay, so maybe I should be a politician or a tax lawyer or something, because there is a convenient loophole large enough to drive a delivery truck through, be it FedEx, Brown or the US Postal Service. I only pledged fleece at fiber fairs and didn't say anything about mail-order braids! Oops! Anyhow, I've decided to take TinkerTots advice and will take the cash-only route since I don't want to miss a couple of the local fairs. And I get extra credit if I buy, say an extra bobbin for the Schacht, rather than more wool/silk/whatever kind of fiber catches my eye. And my latest purchase is earmarked for this year's Tour de Fleece, Ravelry's annual spinning frenzy that just happens to coincide with the Tour de France! This will be a big stashdown opportunity for me.

These are the four snacks I'll be spinning as a member of Team Lendrum in the Tour de Fleece. The blue and purple are from Ambrosia and Bliss. This was truly take-out since I picked it up at Tallgrass Farm.

Oh, and did I mention this latest addition brings me to an even 100 items on my stash page? (double oops!)

The Merry Month of May!

2011-05-01T06:00:00.000-07:00

Spinning 27 ounces of brown dyed Elihu Farm Romney into three-ply super-bulky rug yarn has made a satisfying little dent in my stash.

Bird song filtering through the various layers that protects the typical suburban abode from the out-of-doors woke me early this morning to the wonderful knowledge that it is May, and brings to mind a song sung years ago in Chorus. It is an unusually gorgeous day, bright blue skies, soft breeze carrying the fragrance of ornamental shrub blossoms, the far off purr of a lawnmower a number of houses down--yes Spring in the Suburbs

It would be a great day to set the Lendrum outside, fire up the grill, you know all that stuff. But I decided to live sustainably. Oops! That means gardening doesn't it? Yep, trips to pick up bags of mulch, and composted cow poop (though I really need to contact some farmer friends for sheep poop) etc. and a certain amount of digging around. But that's pretty normal. We need to do that anyway in front or we are in danger of annoying our neighbors by having an unkempt front yard. It's bad enough its organic and dandelion prone. I'm sure there will be time for both pursuits.

And I do have some lovely broccoli plants and the perfect place for them in my flower bed. Oh, the joys of May! Oh the weirdness of living sustainably in the suburbs!

In the meantime, I am incorporating TinkerTots' cash only pledge for fiber shows to my "extreme destash" pledge. This seems reasonable. And the thing is, I plan to avoid buying whole fleeces until at least next spring, you know those 5 to 10 lb bags that require lots of TLC? Purchasing an Indie painted braid or a bit of silk for dyeing and blending won't hurt as they are easy to store and spin. And I wouldn't mind an extra Schacht bobbin or two to accommodate multiple simultaneous projects. And I really want to go to the nearby Midwest Fiber Show and that new one out in Franklin Grove. It's a lovely drive and near a Nature Conservancy prairie that boasts a rare butterfly.

In the meantime, I am proud to announce a decrease in total stash weight! I managed to card and spin up 27 ounces of rug yarn for the May challenge on "Spin Your Stash" and I shipped away a pound of yarn to my niece as a gift. I am so glad to have a crafty relative!

For May, my first order of business will be to spin up 8 ounces of dark brown Jacob lambs wool and ply it with dyed Angora to make a soft, warm yarn.

So now, that it is May Day, I would dance around a ribbon decked pole, but this certainly would raise eyebrows in my neighborhood, so instead I will relax in my backyard with a nice cup of coffee. Happy May and the hope of Spring to you all! And to those readers Down Under, well, fall is nice too.

Going cold sheep: No More Fleece-Extreme DeStash pledge

2011-04-23T10:03:00.000-07:00

This little "Holstein" lamb growing up at Elihu Farm in Valley Falls, NY will probably produce a gorgeous fleece next spring. Will I be able to resist?

Taking the "No More Fleece: Extreme De-Stash Pledge" is not going to be easy. I love fleece! There is nothing more beautiful than a farm-fresh fleece, glowing in the sun streaming into the fiber fair shed or barn or wherever I have been stopped in my tracks by the sight of its loveliness. I've been drawn to a particular fleece from across a fiber-packed fleece sale shed, such as the one at Rhinebeck, as if the fiber cried out to me to be spun. I've even remembered fleeces I've passed up because I have so much, wondering over the years how they spun up for whoever the lucky purchaser was.

Which could explain the two closets packed with fleece and the work table in my workshop taking the "overflow" with buckets lined up underneath. I may be in denial, but since I actively use these fleeces, I don't think I can be classified as a hoarder. I've also thrown out or given away "mistake" fleeces: those I've discovered later to have breaks or serious flaws that I missed due to a case of delirium that sometimes overcomes me when I am surrounded by too many gorgeous, crimpy, glistening, yummy fleece. Thirty years from now people won't be having to pick their way through tiny passages made in my house by plastic buckets crammed with stash. I also never leave a fleece unwashed. so there won't be stinky, tacky, greasy plastic bags of raw fiber either.

Which is why I am taking the "No More Fleece: Extreme De-Stash Pledge." Ravelers are welcome to peruse my stash page if they think I am overstating the situation. I still have three or four things to add to it too my stash page as part of my "come clean" 2010 pledge.

I will go Cold Sheep and avoid the source of my most serious temptation: Fiber Fairs. I plan to not go to them until next spring. Sorry sheep farmers and braid dyers. But I did stock up at Tallgrass Farm and during my visit to Elihu (where I also buy lamb--her freezers are strategically placed near her bagged-for- sale freshly-sheared fleece stacks), so I think I can do it. I hope.

Below is a re-ply of the braid I purchased from Ambrosia and Bliss at the only Fiber Festival I've attended this year. A lovely Rambouillet roving dyed in her Planet Earth colorway. I ran it through the wheel one more time to firm up the ply. You can compare it to my first showing a blog or two down to see what it looked like the first time through. I think it is much improved.

A second run through the wheel improved the ply on this Rambouillet two-ply.

If you are interested in joining me in this "No More Fleece: Extreme De-Stash." Please let me know by contacting me or posting a comment below. We can form a support group of sorts and of course, you will have your own strategy for resisting temptation. Remember, this is for people with extreme stashes. The plan is to not buy any fleece until the next vernal equinox. Can it be done? Can we resist? Can we make a dent in that time? Time will tell...

Great Spring Destash

2011-04-17T16:45:00.000-07:00

Ambrosia and Bliss's Planet Earth done in two ply.

Record time from stash to finished object above you can see the Ambrosia and Bliss Planet Earth colorway. You are seeing it pre-wash as I wanted to show it off right away. I love the colors. They remind me of the hot pools at Yellowstone National Park. My only regret is I wish I had planned a three ply. I think Rambouillet looks better in a three-ply.

I'm taking the "No More Fleece--At Least For Now" pledge. I hope this commitment to destashing lasts and lasts. I'm missing fiber festivals this year after being a bit too jubilant at the Spring Fiber Jubilee. I stayed home from Stephenstown and Greencastle and I will probably sit out a few more in vain hope that I can finally make a dent in my stash. Can I actually dip into my stash archives and make a difference?

Brown rug yarn is being spun on my Ladybug.

Maybe. I carded all the teased brown rug yarn fleece I have and you can see it being turned into yarn on my Ladybug. I plan to have it all spun by the end of the month! Honest!

Spring is really bouncing along and we have a backyard filling with daffodils. Here, you can see some bloodroot blossoms. They are a native wildflower and a potential dye plant. I don't have enough to really dye with, as I don't want to dig them up and I'm not about to go dig up the woodlands either. I hope these will spread all over my yard someday. We have a shady area I'm turning into a spring woodland garden.

Bloodroot growing in the backyard.

Oh, I probably should be gardening too. Maybe next weekend. It was sneeting* on Saturday and today was the only good day for a bike ride, so the garden gets to wait.

*Sneeting is what I call snow, sleet and rain combinations. It's kind of like nature sneering at us.

Purchase to wheel

2011-04-07T16:56:00.001-07:00

I'm about a quarter way through one of the Ambrosia & Bliss braids I purchased on Saturday. I plan to make a fingering weight two ply. In terms of time from purchase to finished yarn--this may set a de-stashing record for me!

Slipped and fell flat

2011-04-02T17:30:00.000-07:00

Ambrosia & Bliss had a booth at Tallgrass Farm's Spring Fiber Jubilee, Opening Day for the Midwest Fiber Festival Season.

Spin Your Stash is a Ravelry group I belong to and one of the threads is called "Slipped A Little." Since the aim of the group is to spin down stashed fiber before buying more, there is a thread for those little slip ups while visiting fiber fairs. I have to admit, today at Tallgrass Farm's Spring Fiber Jubilee, I didn't merely slip, I fell flat. Ouch!

This is the first fleece from Sweetie, a lamb living on White Dove Farm.

Though I got there kind of late morning, my friend Mary Wallace of White Dove Farms still had two of the most gorgeous lambswool fleeces I've ever seen. I was looking at one fleece when this little Sweetie caught my eye. Lovely, lustrous deep natural colored fleece shinning in the sunlight. Soft, crimpy, absolutely scrumptious, this Sweetie's' first fleece is a beauty to behold. Naturally, I couldn't let that one go.

While chatting with Mary, and helping a customer figure out yardage of a skein, yet another fleece caught my eye, the white Lilly's lamb's fleece. This is also a delightful fleece, crimpy and soft and so card and spinnable looking. Yep, you know what happened next.

Lilly's Lamb's first fleece also came home with me.

I wonder when I'll ever get to all this wool. I know I'll have to live until I'm 105. I love spinning, but knitting the fingering weight wool I adore can take a long time. But now I think I have a secret weapon. A dear raveling relative who loves to crochet has agreed to take some stash off my hands. Mooowahahahaha! Where can I find a nice big shipping crate?

My next stop was Raveler Minoux's Ambrosia & Bliss display in the store. Realizing some of my stash was being mailed to a new home, I figured I could use a few replacements. I bought two braids and what she calls a "Scooby Snack" which is a tiny batt. I bought the snack after telling her there is no way I would ever buy carded batts because, well I have a Pat Greene and plenty of dyed fiber and glitz and could always card my own. Famous last words indeed...

I never miss the barn and there was Linus's second clip. Linus is an Angora Goat born and being raised on Tallgrass Farm and I bought his kid fleece last fall which is this fabulous tri-colored fleece. His second clip was gorgeous too. Fortunately, I lost the arm wrestle with the other shopper as I have yet to spin Linus's first clip. But yes, I will spin it soon. I'm saving him for the Tour de Fleece he's that pretty.

So, yes, I've got two fleeces and two braids and it is only Opening Day of the Midwest fiber festival season. This isn't looking good for my destashing plans.

Sweet face

2011-03-26T21:15:00.000-07:00

This little guy is one of the new lambs at Elihu Farm in Valley Falls, New York, my favorite source for pasture raised fleeces.

Vernal Equinox!

2011-03-19T09:00:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is the first day of spring and tonight we have this nice big full moon. I think getting a full moon to coincide with the Equinox is pretty unusual. The moon is also supposed to look nice and big in the sky.

I don't know about all of you, but I'm enjoying the longer days and am pretty excited about spring. I find myself visiting my tiny broccoli sprouts every day to see how they are doing. On warmer days, I prop open the cold frame so they don't get too warm. I keep them watered.

I also wander around my yard taking note of all the emerging bulbs. The crocus are doing great and you can see them below with one of the tribbles I knit for my Ravelry Nerd Wars challenge. I must keep my fiber addiction alive in the blog even as I slowly transfer my postage stamp suburban plot into a little vegetable farm! I'm still not sure if backyard chickens are allowed in Naperville. I doubt it.

I also spend a lot of time checking out the daffodils and other spring flowers we have in a large area under our linden which we refer to as "the grotto." Grass doesn't grow well in the deep shade so we are putting in lots of native woodland wildflowers like spring beauty, trillium, wild geranium and ferns. We are hoping to have our own little wildflower haven right in our backyard. We also added quite a number of daffodils because they are fast and confident producers. Plus, it keeps my neighbors from complaining too much about the profusion of violets, which, though they are the state flower, are considered weeds by some suburbanites because they are hardy and spread rapidly. Later this season I'll treat you all to a photo of them. They are lovely in full bloom and grow well in the shade.

Suburban gal

2011-03-13T12:52:00.000-07:00

Broccoli getting a head start.

Tina Fey, in an autobiographical article in the March 14 New Yorker, described herself as an "obedient white girl from the suburbs." The label struck a chord. Here I am nestled in my upscale suburb doing all the right things (I am cooking for my elderly relative as I write this) and my idea of boldly stepping out is planting some ruby chard in my front yard amongst the roses.

Sheesh, what has happened to me and all those youthful dreams? I have a job, of course, but it is not a "career" by a long shot. It's a dead-end gig that helps shape my days, provides medical insurance and funds my fibers addiction and my quest for sustainable living. I love to write having been a journalist in my earlier manifestation. But, I cringe to admit, I was definitely the obedient white girl from the suburbs back then. No envelope pushing for me.

I blog my suburban middle-aged white gal angst, knowing full well I am just a drop in the bucket of an over-committed demographic doing the right thing expected of us. Pictured above is my latest attempt to break that mold. Okay, not break it, let's say just a tiny chip. No not even that. Let's say, drop it on the floor so, though it doesn't break, it is weakened just a little bit so maybe the next time it will chip.

My experiment in turning my tidy suburban plot into a suburban farm--baby broccoli I started a few weeks ago. I have tucked them into the cold frame I put up against the back of my house which has the most awesome southern exposure. Will enough heat escape from my house to warm them at night and allow them to survive and eventually flourish? They are suppose to produce deep purple florets that I hope to sneak into my front yard amongst the daffodils. I have plenty of seed for fall planting also--a sort of edible aster.

We shall see and I will pick up the dropped mold and move forward.

Woven Heart Fibers

2011-03-05T17:32:00.000-08:00

The next time you see this yarn, there will be tribbles.

Naperville finally has a new yarn store, which is great since we lost three in recent years. The new one is at 232 Washington, in that little building that once housed one of the yarn stores. I really loved the store! The owner is an artist an you cans see her unusual knit work all around the stores.

What I love best about the store is that she groups her yarns by color, so you can get all kinds of ideas for making lovely things. I went in the store originally to get furry yarn for making tribbles for NerdWars but I was amazed at all the lovely yarns she had including some scrumptious bamboo. I plan to head back to get some accent yarn for this gold bamboo I've spun and would like to make pretty summer pullover with. I'm also thinking of some green cotton she has, also with some interesting embellishing yarn. Obviously, I need to go back. More later....

Twisted Prime Socks

2011-02-26T20:00:00.000-08:00

Just this once I'm going to create a pattern, sort of. I don't use patterns, so this is a pattern for people who also don't use patterns because I'm tempted to say "just make the heel the way you usually do" hoping you usually make heels a certain way. I do. I will give you my heel as best I can. Those of you who have knit lots of socks undoubtedly know there is a certain logic to how a heel is crafted, which is why this is a pattern for people familiar with knitting socks who can go "oh yeah" and knit along. These are my Twisted Prime Socks done up with numerous prime numbers for a challenge in Ravelry's NerdWars--so there are lots of odd numbers in here.

This pattern uses about 5 ounces of fingering weight sock wool (they weighed 4.35 ounces finished but it's good to have a bit extra). I used a two ply, handspun wool and silk blend and size 0 double pointed needle. You will want to go up one if you are a tight knitter as I am not.

Cast on 65 stitches (13 repeats of 5).
Knit 3, purl 2 for 11 rounds.
Round 12: Put a purl stitch on cable needle hold it behind, knit one, purl 1, knit one behind, put a knit stitch on a cable needle bring it in front, purl one then knit the one on the needle, keep doing this all the way around. (you will actually be crossing your first stitch behind your round marker. don't let this bother you.)
Round 13: purl 1, knit one behind, purl 1, knit 2
Round 14: same as last
Round 15: purl 1, knit one behind, purl 1, baby cable stitch with two stiches (see page 40 of Barbara Walker's A Treasury of Knitted Patterns for directions). Essentially, you knit two stiches together but don't totally slip those two stiches off until you've gone back and pulled a second new stich through the rightmost original stitch. Then you let the two old stiches go and keep the two new ones. This gives you the same effect as using a cable needle without all the fumbling. Do this the entire round
The next two rounds are purl 1 knit one behind, purl 1, knit two. On the third row, you do the baby cable stitch at the knit two.
Continue in this way--twisting one round and knitting the other two-- until you've created five rounds with baby cable twists, with the twist every third round.
On the third round after completing your last twist get out your cable needle and undo what you did in Row twelve to bring your pattern back to the original knit 3 purl 2. This should line up with the knit 3 purl 2 you started with.
Knit 3 and purl 2 for 7 rounds.
Triad stitch: on the seventh round you do a cable maneuver I will call Triad Stitch which I "unvented" just for this pattern. My deep apologies to anyone else who may have also come up with this stitch.
Triad Stitch is the combination of the baby cable stitch and a slipped stitch as follows: Hold first stitch in front on cable needle, knit last two stitches as a baby cable, knit the stitch on the cable needle. This should make a nice single cross in the front. Then purl two and do the next triad cable. Keep going until you are done the round.
Knit 4 rounds of knit three purl two. On fifth row do the Triad stitch. Repeat again (you will have three sets of Triad crosses) Then knit three, purl two for seven rounds.
Repeat Row 12--that is cross everything back so you can do what you did: purl 1, knit one behind, purl 1, baby cable stitch. Once again, cross the baby cables on the third row and do 5 full sets of baby cable crosses.
When you are done, get out the cable needles and bring the stitches back to the knit 3 purl 2, do this for two rows and then divide the stitches for the heel.
HEEL
In this case it works perfectly to put 32 stitches for the heel flap and then save aside 33 for the instep.
To keep the instep pattern in good order, I took one extra stitch from one side of the center and one less from the other. I think you will see what I mean when you get there as this removes an awkward purl stitch from each side of the flap.
I do heel flaps with the purl side as slip one, purl one and the other side as slip one knit, knit, knit, knit etc.
I keep going until I have enough flap to pick up half the stitches on each side, in this case about 16. This is about 2 inches of knitting. If you are a row counter, I suspect you need to two 32 rows in all. Make sure you end on the knit side. This should allow you to pick up 16 stiches on each side of the flap.
I then turn the heel, using similar math:
slip one, purl 15, purl 2 together, purl 1 turn
slip one, knit 2, knit 2 together, knit one turn
slip one, purl 3, purl 2 together, purl one turn
slip one, knit 4, knit 2 together, knit one turn
slip one, purl 5, purl 2 together, purl one turn and so on and so forth until you have 16 stitches--half of the beginning of the heel flap.

pick up sixteen stitches on each side of the flap, This leaves you with 16+16+16+33 stirches on the needle (81 stitches) knit all the way around once and place your markers for the decrease, one before the 33 instep stiches and one after. After this full round, start decreasing by doing a knit two together before the marker and a knit one slip one after the marker. Do these two decreases each row and you'll hace a nice angle. Keep decreasing until you have 55 stitches left on your needles or 11 repeats of 5. Remember to maintain the knit 3 purl 2 pattern on the instep but keep the bottom plain. You should have the same number of stiches on the instep as you started with--take your decreases before and after the instep stiches!

Knit for as long as you would like the sock to be. When you get to the toe, start making a toe by putting markers before and after the last two purl stitches. This is an uneven 27/28 split but it will work out nicely. go ahead and do one round in plain stitch and then start your decreases, four per round, one before and after each marker. Remember to choose your decrease method so they go in a pleasing angle relative to your sock. Keep decreasing until you have 26 stitches total and divide them evenly (13 stitches) onto two needles. Break off a long length, thread a darning needle and use Kitchener Stitch to sew up . I use the directions in Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitting Without Tears when I forget. I highly recommend this book and she coined the term "unvented."

Below, is a detail of the tops:

I hope this works. Feel free to contact me if you run into problems and I'll try to help. This is my first attempt at writing a pattern down. I keep updating my verbage. Someday I might even add a graph.

Nebula

2011-02-26T10:15:00.000-08:00

Inspired by a Nebula, I spun this yarn from two different fiber sources for Ravelry's NerdWars challenge. The blue is dyed Corriedale with some silvery flash in it. The light purple is a blend of mohair--it has quite a few other colors in it including orange and green. This was a lot of fun to make. I Navajo plied it to keep the colors together. I purchased the prepared fibers from the Coed Mawr Woolen Mill in Wisconsin.

Hope of Spring

2011-02-12T15:36:00.000-08:00

Sub-zero temperatures do not discourage me. I know the sun is moving higher in the sky each day, the snow will melt, the soil warm and I'll be outside working on my garden. In the meantime, I can snuggle in my favorite chair warmed by handmade comforters and a nice stack of seed catalogs.

My garden is definitely moving into heirloom varieties this summer. But I'm doing all this slowly since I am a new gardener and so far my heirloom tomatoes have been a catastrophe. But I do want to try a zucchini I found in Annie's Heirloom Seeds "coccozelle di Napoli." A striped heirloom from Naples. I'm a big fan of Italian cooking, so I'm a big sucker for any vegetable with an Italian name. I really wanted to try their "Cosse Violetta Pole Bean" but they were out when I ordered.

I did order their Merlo Nero Spinach and Purple Sprouting Broccoli. I use spinach and broccoli regularly in my cooking and I wish I could have some fresh right away. The seeds just came earlier this week and I'm thinking of getting a few started real early.

I'm thinking cold frame. Will it work? Can I do it? The back or our house has a sunny southern exposure which should be ideal according to the Rodale book I got for Christmas. So, I'm trolling the Internet for cold frames right now. Yes, I know we could build one from old windows and wood scraps cheaply, but I'm a suburbanite and I want to do the suburban thing and buy one. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

Giant space amoeba

2011-02-05T15:37:00.000-08:00

Ravelry's Nerd Wars inspired this sock which incorporates prime numbers into the design.

There is nothing quite like a challenge to spark creativity. Which is why I love Ravelry and like to join things like the Nerd Wars challenge. Being a Nerd helps, though I will admit there was a time when I tried to deny my inner nerd. I'm letting her out to play big time.

The yarn is a merino/silk blend that's been in my stash for a very long time. I'm calling it my "phaser-blast" colorway to keep in tune with my team, Team Enterprise. For fellow Trekkie geeks, the colorway is modeled after the phaser blast in the original series. The challenge: to craft a pattern that somehow incorporates prime numbers into its design.

Those who know me understand that I'm not big on following patterns. I'm one of those knitters who doesn't really even use patterns, relying Elizabeth Zimmerman's percentage method for all my projects, even when I'm doing someone's established pattern, such as an Alice Starmore. When it comes to socks, well, I just cast on and knit them. Which is what I did with these. I had an idea of sorts in my mind. I was thinking of one of those "alien arrays" the Enterprise (or Voyager) runs into out there in space. Usually it does something like fling them to the other side of the galaxy or causes a temporal shift that makes everyone to act zany, or else entices a giant space amoeba to endanger the ship. You know what I mean.

Keeping with the prime numbers theme, I cast on 13 repeats of a 5 stitch pattern. I first knit 11 rows of a knit 3 purl 2 pattern. Then it got interesting, and I cabled into a twisted rib medley with a knit behind set off by two purls. Now, I twisted the rib on every third row, and I made five twists--both prime numbers. Then I reunited the knit three rib, knit seven rows and then put in three Triad Cables each cabled on the fifth repeat. I just unvented the Triad Cable, and I'll explain how those are made when I post the design on Ravelry in case anyone is interested.

I'm not sure what to call this design. My original idea was Alien Array but I'm not sure if it is array-ish enough. My alternate name is Twisted Logic, since it is twisted and it does follow a certain prime number based logic. I'd love to hear from all of you regarding which name I should pick.

Dashing through the snow

2011-02-02T17:28:00.000-08:00

My personal assistant enjoys the powdery snow.

As a rule, you pretty much know you're in for it weather-wise when Jim Cantore is posted to your area. And so we had one heck of a storm last night, complete with thundersnow--that weird heavy snowfall that includes bashing thunder and crashing lightening. The wind was howling so loudly with it's 60 mile per hour gusts, it almost drowned the thunder. Almost. Looking outside last night was a blur of white in the street lights. This was a bad storm and we woke up to yet more snow falling thickly in the early morning light.

It was a storm of childhood memory proportions--which means we haven't really had a storm this big since I was a teenager. By midday, the sun was out, the air was cold and it was time to join the neighbors in the post-blizzard ritual of digging out. Shoveling took several hours and really taxed my improved fitness level. We are still waiting for the snowplow to reach our street. I expect quite a pile to dig through tomorrow when it blocks up our driveway.

One of the great things about record breaking snow is that when I'm not shoveling, I'm inside knitting and spinning etc. This is the first week of the three month Nerd Wars challenge where participants get to show off their nerdiest crafting. I'm having particular fun with a pair of socks I'm making for the prime number challenge. I'm knitting cables in prime number multiples. My cast on was for 13 repeats of a 5 stitch wide pattern (65) which began as a 3/2 rib and is now something quite different. I'm improvising this as I go, using as many prime numbers as I can, including creating a mini-cable every third row. This will be fun. I'll post pictures once it looks like something.

Phoning it in?

2011-01-22T05:21:00.000-08:00

My Ravatar has taken on a nerdy new look in honor of Nerd Wars.

My next New Year's Resolution is to get into shape. It's something I've been doing since last July but have intensified lately. Thanks to a Ravelry group, I found out about SparkPeople, a free online diet and exercise program that has helped tons of people. It has amazing nutrition and fitness trackers, along with solid diet and exercise advice, so if you are wanting a healthy lifestyle, go to SparkPeople.com and check it out.

Exercising and cooking healthy meals has taken a significant bite into my crafting time. I am still knitting the same sweater, and still spinning the same purple skein--I hope to be plying that by the end of the month though because I joined Ravelry's Nerd Wars. Those who know me from that online knitting/spinning etc. community may have noticed the sleeves of my sweater have taken on something of a Star Fleet look since I joined Team Enterprise. I do my cardio to old episodes on DVD so it works. I'm hoping the challenges to Nerd Wars will ignite me to use up some stash. Warning: I will be talking about spinning "tribble" fur. That's Nerdspeak for angora rabbit fluff.

Swearing is on the uptick as I started a Jillian Michael's exercise CD. She's the one on The Biggest Loser who yells at people to keep going. Her 30 Day Shred is not for the faint of heart. The first time, I couldn't do more than 3 minutes and a lot of swearing. Despite this, I went back for more and did an (expletive deleted) official Day 1, I (expletive deleted) gasped through it. I survived Day 2, but it felt like my bellybutton actually glued itself to my spine. Jillian doesn't let you "phone it in" as she likes to call going through the motions of a workout. "Bead of sweat" has taken on a whole new meaning for me. Yes, sweat does pour down in beads. If I survive the 30 days, I will highly recommend this CD. We shall see...

And the winner is...

2011-01-15T17:45:00.000-08:00

Wow, this is difficult! I'm reading all these clever posts and trying to decide who I should pick. Then I realized I couldn't decide! Argh. There's a a lot of talent out there. I have to say I love the poems and songs, and can feel for the person whose early cotton spinning efforts looks like cat turds--been there.

So, I did what any indecisive spinner would do--I wrote names on pieces of paper and put them in a handspun, handknit hat. My DH was given the honors of drawing a name.

So the winner is (drum roll please) Lisa G. the woman taking spinning lessons and raising Pygora goats. I know it is meant to be because I love Pygora and once did a study on it with my guild. I'd like to get one and tell the city it's a dog--though I suppose Baxter (my personal assistant shown in profile picture) might not approve. So Lisa, please contact me at rose@whorlwindweaver.com so I can get your address and mail the fiber off.

Next: In a few weeks, I'll be finding a new reader for a travelling book on urban farming.

And I'll have more stash that needs new homes.

Win Organic Top

2011-01-09T14:59:00.000-08:00

This organic cotton will go to whoever will give it a good home.

I'm looking for a new home for about eight ounces of red-brown, naturally colored, organic combed cotton top. Just leave a note on this blog saying why and I'll pick a new home for this fiber from the respondents. (Hint: lighthearted is best!) I'll mail it to the winner. I'm slowly going threw my stash and finding thing that would be better off in other people's hands. I purchased this cotton about two or three years ago from the Little Barn booth at the Midwest Fiber Festival. I brought it home, spun a few yards worth of single and remembered why I don't really like spinning cotton. But I know there are plenty of you out there who do, so please post a comment and let me know!

Giving away some of my excess stash is resolution #4.

Putting the pieces together

2011-01-08T20:20:00.000-08:00

My big loom is being reassembled in it's new sunny location.

Early this Saturday morning, I was staring at the treadle gizmo on my loom trying to remember how to do the tie up. Just a year ago, it was so straightforward, easy-peasy. Now, I might as well have been holding a rubric cube or trying to translate an alien language.

Fortunately, my thinking muscle relaxed enough for me to deconstruct what was there and backtrack into figuring out what to do. A cup of coffee helped. As you know, I'm selling one of my looms (the smaller one). I moved my work tables and carding equipment downstairs to the spare bedroom I'm calling the workshop. Now my big loom has a place all its own, the studio.

I really like the feel of the loom here. The light in that room is fantastic with the south facing window and the white painted walls. It is really a nice place to create. As I sit on the bench in the filtered sunlight, I dream of all the things I can make, imagining my warp taught and perfect stretching out, the weft filling in with bright colors. I want to make some really amazing things.

I'm really happy with the towels I made. Despite the warping disaster, they are very functional and absorbent. I've been using a couple of them and just today finished tying off the fringe of the last one. As they come out of the washer, they are a little small, but still usable. Next time, I won't make these mistakes and they'll make great gifts.

Another thing delaying the rebuilding of my loom is all the cooking I've been doing. I love to cook, and now I'm making a conscious decision to do more of my own cooking and less processed-prepackaged food. I'm even making warm lunches to take to work. This also takes a lot of time, but like weaving, spinning and knitting, it is enjoyable, creative and meditativetime . So that is my resolution #3, to change my diet to "slow food."

Resolution #2: Stop buying fleece (mostly)

2011-01-01T17:02:00.000-08:00

Using a sense of feeling crowded as my guide, I've come to the conclusion that I should stop buying fleece. Since I need to wear a helmet to protect me from falling objects every time I open the door to one of my stash closets, I can classify that as crowded. I also have the odds and ends of bags and buckets of yarn and fleece under my work table, so I have to admit: enough!

I can probably exist for a decade on what I have. Add to this the realities of life--working for a living, and other interests like cooking from scratch and gardening, I can easily extend the life of my stash by another five years. I think saying that I won't buy until spring is a bit of a cop out because, as we all know, fleece buying season really starts in spring. But considering I had thought of buying some bamboo processed like flax, I think stopping myself until April would be a smart thing to do. And with that resolution, I will buy only three (in case of roving, which I don't buy much of (relatively), it will be enough for one large project or two pairs of socks). So that is it. Can I hold myself too this knowing my capricious fleece buying capability? We will see..

What is everyone else cooking up for resolutions? Feel free to share in the comments section!

Resolution #1: Sell a loom

2010-12-30T16:37:00.000-08:00

It's time to downsize my loom collection and let this one go.

What is the difference between enough and too much? This really depends and I'm going to keep my discussion of this topic to the world of crafting. With two closets crammed full of fleece, I think I can safely say that I have enough and probably too much fleece. This I can remedy by using it up and by not buying any new fleece until then.

But what do I do about floor looms? I started with a 36 inch counterbalance loom until I a saw a 60 inch jack type loom that I couldn't live without. So I purchased it and crammed it into my house. At the time, I didn't have the heart yet to part with my original loom, pictured both above and on the front page of my website. I was sure I could put both to use.

My personal assistant is helping me disassemble my loom.

Who was I kidding? There is only one me, and since I also like to spin and knit, how much time can I possibly spend weaving? I realised I had to make a choice and since I'm not going to give up the dream of weaving throws that sparked my purchase of the wide room, I decided to sell the small one. It is solid and sturdy and nicely weaves rugs as can be seen in the picture on my website.

This week, I went ahead and disassembled it. One of the nice thing about Leclerc's is that they can be taken apart and can put back together. It essentially becomes a pile of lumber making it easy to transport. This was especially good since I decided to move my big loom upstairs. We took that all apart too and right now, I'm putting it back together in the bright little room that held its predecessor. I'll call that room my studio. The table and carder that had been up there are being moved downstairs to what has become my workshop. It makes a lot more sense, much better feng shui. I definitely don't feel so crowded.

The loom breaks down into a pile of pieces making it easy to move.

Stuff shouldn't crowd our lives. Once we let that happen we've moved from enough to too much. Now with my dedicated studio (loom room) and my uncrowded workshop I feel lighter, free. I like sitting at my partially assembled loom and look at the peacefulness of the surrounding space. I will be putting an ad up for it in a week or so on Ravelry's Warped Weavers Marketplace and probably on the Spinners and Weavers Housecleaning pages and some guild websites with all the details.

So what are you all doing for New Year's Resolutions? Please let me know!

Beating the Stash?

2010-12-27T06:30:00.000-08:00

The ceiling high double stack of stash buckets has been reduced to just two outside my downstairs closet.

If you remember around this time last year, I posted a picture of my out-of-control stash pile. I was able to get this all under control. Not by some amazing feats of spinning, or by my ability to resist the lure of a new fleece. I rearranged my closet. Yep, that was it. Apparently, my stash wasn't very well organized and now it is. And it is posted on Ravelry.

Posting it all was itself an amazing feat. I posted the 100th on a couple of days ago. Above you can see the a photo of the two remaining buckets left outside the closet. Yes, only two. And yes, I'm a little bit amazed myself. But there is more to do. I'm working on my resolutions for next year. I'll be posting in a few days and I'm also curious to know what you my readers are thinking for your resolutions.

Holiday Wishes!

2010-12-23T16:17:00.000-08:00

May this season be filled with peace and joy for you and all your loved ones!

Color blending for a heathered yarn

2010-12-05T18:02:00.000-08:00

I used .4 ounces each of raspberry and elderberry dyed Cormo for each batt.

Blending fibers is an enjoyable process for me, and there's nothing I like better than color blending. I had a large Cormo fleece which I dyed raspberry and elderberry and then picked and teased to get ready for blending. I wanted a heathered yarn and decided to do a 50/50 blend of these two rich colors. You can use any ratio you want, and it is fun to play with ratios to see different affects. I weighed out .4 ounces of each since I've found .8 ounces of fiber is a good amount to card on my particular carder.

I alternated running small teased bits of colored fiber on the first run through the carder.

For carding, I took the teased locks and fed them into the machine in alternate small bits to enhance the blending on the first round. All the handwork preparing these fibers was delightful because this Cormo fleece was wonderfully soft. I know some knitters who swoon over Malebrigo yarn because of its softness--if you really want to enjoy luxury, sink your hands in a bag of freshly teased Cormo. It is wonderful!

For this project, I did a second pass through the carder, just enough carding to give a nice batt, but not blend the colors too much. I wanted to be able to still see bits of the original color as I spun the fiber. The more times through the carder, the more blended it is. Below, I set one of my twice through batts (left) next to a three times through batt. The color is much more blended in the one on the right, and the resulting yarn would be more uniform in terms of color. I wouldn't get the splotches of color I want in the yarn.

I did a second pass by pulling thin strips off the first-run batt and sending them through again.

If you want to spin a yarn with the effect found from one pass through, you may want to card each color separately once before blending them to get a nicer batt. I should also note that I have a handheld tool I run over the large drum while carding that acts as a second drum, giving more nicely carded batt with only two passes then I would otherwise get. I bought this tool on the recommendation of Susan at Susan's Fiber Shop in Wisconsin, from whom I purchased my Patrick Greene Deb's Delicate Deluxe. She is very knowledgeable about carding and combing.

The batt to the left went through two times and the one on the right three. You can see the one on the right is more blended.

So that is a short course on creating a heathered yarn! Happy spinning!

Bah Humbug!

2010-11-28T18:26:00.000-08:00

This is yarn for some rugs I was making. Unfortunately, I spun while watching TV and my loss of concentration shows.

No Christmas knitting for me this year: I'm just too far behind on my projects. I'm still millimetre-ing along on the Kinsale sweater I hoped to have done by Thanksgiving, and I haven't even begun weaving rugs I've been planning for a year.

Above is my second bobbin of the last color needed for my rug project. I tried to rush and spin while watching TV and I'm not too happy with the results--which demonstrates my need to take time and focus. Fortunately, this is a three ply yarn, so the unevenness can work it's way out through the next bobbin I fill. As you can see in my last blog, I don't even have one skein done toward a sweater for my SIL. Everything is going very slow plus this is yarn I definitely don't want to rush. I'd like it to come out nice and even for a top-notch sweater.

Rather than trying to dash off some quick projects in time for the holidays, I've decided to maintain my focus and continue the projects I have. I don't like having more than two or three projects going at a time, so this makes sense for me. This will also allow me to maintain my latest practice of only knitting for maybe a half-hour at a time and not multitasking while I spin. It leaves me time to make some headway into learning to weave. Perhaps if my next kitchen towel project works out, I'll have a few gifts for next year.

Slow Cloth

2010-11-21T12:44:00.000-08:00

Sustainable living includes the concept of Slow Food as apposed to fast food. We used to just call it home cooking. Hand in hand comes Slow Cloth, something hand made from scratch. In this case I started from a freshly shorn fleece and worked up from there. I've washed, picked and carded and spun the yarn and now I'm a the final stage: knitting.

You can see the work in progress above. I'm doing Alice Starmore's Kinsale design, which requires fingering weight yarn ,and a tight gauge. This is taking forever to knit. Perhaps it should be renamed Snail Cloth. But the work itself is enjoyable. It just won't be done in time for Thanksgiving. Christmas perhaps.

The purple yarn on my Schacht is my next fleece to sweater project. I had hope to be much further along, but below is all I have despite having started the project last month and keeping after it. Slow Cloth indeed.

Key to sustainable living

2010-11-14T08:18:00.000-08:00

Organically grown wheat berries which will someday be bread, brownies and more.

Cooking, I've discovered, is the key to sustainable living. You either cook, or hire a chef, or maybe ride your bike to work. Thank goodness I love to cook as I can't afford a chef and my commute to work is five miles clogged with irritable, half-asleep drivers--one of them being me. Plus, we have something called "winter" here. I lower my waste and dependence on fossil feuls by buying organically grown hard red winter wheat berries and grinding them into flour. Unfortunately, I couldn't get any locally grown--I went to Whole Foods. I purchased the Blend Tech flour mill becasue it was the only one made right here in the US and it was small enough to fit in my limited kitchen space. I love it. It grinds coarse enough for corn meal.

I have yet to find a local source of wheat. I've only started the "locavore-slow food" thing recently. That's where you go to the farmer's market and seek out small farmers and patronize them. I found a great source of local eggs, chicken, turkey, pork vegetables and fruits. These foods are more expensive since you end out paying the "true cost" of raising the food--especially the meat. Yes, it is counterintuitive to those who are trying to cutback and live more frugaly, but in the longrun, by doing my own sustainable style cooking, I will save money, even with paying twice as much for eggs and chicken. I will also have tastier food, which I believe will lead to a healthier me.

The farmer deserves to make a living too, and the truth is, you can't have small family farms without people willing to pay a fair price for the produce. By being willing to pay more, the homesteader or small farmer gets to pay her mortgage. And we need to be willing because the factory farms filling our grocery store shelves can do it all a lot cheaper than the small scale farmer.food reflects it--the eggs I buy direct from the farm have four times the flavor as the cheapo megastore brand. This is important to all the people who dream of a more simple lifestyle on the land, because they won't be able to make a living without customers.

So, I am on my progressive soapbox, talking about supporting the little guy and protecting animals from the abuse of factory farming. Oh dear. I was meaning to talk about the joys of cooking and the single loaf of bread recipe I am working on. It is coming along really well, but I forgot to photograph the finished product in its Bennington Pottery bread dish. Maybe next week after I picked up my locally grown heritage turkey for Thanksgiving .

Goodbye, Cruel Warp!

2010-11-08T17:36:00.000-08:00

Cutting off this lousy warp was a relief. It had a lot of problem.

Just minutes ago, I gave myself permission to cut a troublesome warp off my loom. I had started another towel when I discovered even more broken warp strings leaving even bigger gaps in the weaving. Time to cut my losses quite literally. As you can see, my scissors made easy work of it.

This is a tnagle of broken warps on the lease sticks.

It was a good thing. You see the snarl above, those are all broken warp threads. I had started weaving this on my table loom, but then decided to abandon the project when I realized the web was all tangled. I was going to throw the warp away when I discovered it wasn't as tangled as I thought. I was able to salvage it because the crosses were still tied and put it on my floor loom. As it would happen, as I wound on the warp, I ran into another issue which caused many, many of the threads to snap, and so now it is about 17 inches wide.

Problems with the warp show up in the nearly finished item.

Despite all this, I manged to weave a few towels, four in all, use up some of the yarn that came with the loom and learn quite a bit. Sure, the towels are a imperfect. In fact , they scream "I'm a mess" but still, it was fun. I'm already planning a "next time" for my kitchen towels: a twill pattern with colorful stripes. These are coming soon to a blog near you.

Thank you for visiting my blog. For spinning tips and more you can stop at my webstite: www. whorlwindweaver.com

Thumbs up!

2010-11-01T14:42:00.000-07:00

The mitt mentioned in my last blog was fixed.

It took about 20 minutes and voila, a mitten with a thumb I won't have to hide from fellow knitters. The original was too short and squared off. So now these are really done.

I also managed another milestone today, finishing yet another towel on that warp I don't like. Yeah! I don't recommend weaving on a warp you don't like, but I'm too pigheaded to take my own advice. Yes, I will finish weaving it, no matter how long it takes. Okay, maybe I should make a pledge to have them done by Thanksgiving!

Thanks for stopping by!

Finishing frenzy

2010-10-31T19:39:00.000-07:00

I finished these mitts, but perhaps I went to fast.

Rushing to finish a project has been a weakness of mine, and this is best seen in the thumb of the mittens above, which I'm not showing of course. Trying to finish up, I made the final thumb a tad too small, which means I'll be undoing and redoing it. Which means that technically they aren't finished.

This kind of final push can ruin projects, especially when I'm spinning. Usually, the yarn gets thicker the more pressed I feel to reach my goal. It is something I'm learning to control. I remind myself the process is what is important, the joy and calm of spinning and knitting. None of my projects really ever go "fast" and these leftover yarn mittens are probably the quickest "idea to finished object" thing I can do--mainly because the yarn is spun. So much starts from a fleece and builds outward.

So tomorrow, I'll be picking out some stitches and fixing that thumb. A bother, but also a way to bring the lesson home so maybe I'll remember not to do it next time.

Thank you for visiting my blog. Please stop by again. For fiber tips, please visit my website at http://www.whorlwindweaver.com/.

Apples of my eye

2010-10-26T16:03:00.000-07:00

These apples where the result of Office Foraging.

Urban Homesteader, an excellent book, talks about urban foraging--the practice of picking fruit from public greenways--you know that strip down the middle of the road that is often planted. The authors grow vegetables in the strip in front of their house, not something I would do though I might grow pole beans over my mailbox. Anyhow, after reading this, I started eyeing apple trees on the way home through my suburb, wondering if I could talk my husband into helping me pick the fruit so I could make apple butter.

Fortunately, I discovered something even better than urban foraging: office foraging. That beautiful bag of apples shown above was excess from a co-worker's parents who happen to have a hobby orchard. So I was able to make apple butter without climbing a ladder. I just had to lug a full shopping bag down to my car.

Those apples were delicious, by the way . I saved a few out to eat for lunch. And the apple butter is excellent. I brought a pot load (literally) home and cooked it down to 1/3 with lots of cinnamon. Yum. Most of it is in the freezer, with one container left out for immediate consumption.

Finishing these socks was postponed when I ran out of yarn. I quickly spun some more.

I also finally finished the green bamboo/merino socks and I'm looking forward to the temperature dropping so I can wear them. Or maybe I'll just wear them tomorrow. I'd like to get a sock wardrobe going, but with everything else I'm doing, it's not happening too soon.

Thank you for visiting my blog. Please stop by again. For fiber related information, you can visit my website at http://www.whorlwindweaver.com/

A soothing North Country autumn

2010-10-20T19:37:00.000-07:00

One stranded mitten knit, one to go. Sorry, I didn't take any leaf pictures to show you.

Traveling to see family and foliage, we drove back to the North Country just in time to enjoy the Nor'easter that hit those parts. At first, I was concerned the rain and wind would ruin the leaf experience. It wouldn't be the picture perfect time I'd originally expected from earlier weather reports.

But who needs perfection? As we drove along back roads in the Southern Adirondacks, we found something different: Against the dreary, drizzly gray sky, the golds and reds seemed to glow from within. There was a mood to it, a special beauty--a texture even--that I can carry in my head. This was an exceptionally lovely fall for me, soothing and pleasant in ways that I can't completely explain.We drove up narrow roads lined with golden leaved trees, and looking into the woods, there was a depths of golds and reds shadowless and bright in the dim light.

During our ride we did a little foraging--stopping at a farmer's market and farms we knew of for maple syrup, aged cheddar and some frozen grass fed lamb and beef to fill up our cooler for the dash home. So we'll have a little bit of the north country with us, either splashed on our oatmeal or sizzling on the grill.

Oh, and yes, I did pick up some fleece. What else would I do?

Thank you for visiting my blog. Please stop by again. For fiber tips, you can visit my blog at http://www.whorlwindweaver.com/

Wheat has a flavor

2010-10-10T10:13:00.000-07:00

A Cormo fleece was dyed two shades and then blended to make this batt.

For years, wheat was this bland thing I made taste better by adding ingredients like maple syrup or cinnamon to my bread and cocoa to my cookies. Last Saturday my electric wheat grinder arrived at my doorstep and I ran several cups of organic wheat berries through it. Surprise! Wheat does have a flavor.

Lately, I had been noticing an odd sharp flavor in my store bought pre-ground wheat, which is why I decided to go ahead and buy a flour mill. It is a logical extension to all the hand processing I do with wool. Why not process my food too? I bought an electric one, since I read that wheat can be tough to grind by hand.

The flavor of freshly ground wheat is mild and sweet. It's a flavor not present in even the best quality flour. I liken the flavor to the difference between buying fresh-from-the-cow milk vs. homogenized store milk. The flavor finds its way into the bread too! It is really quite delicious.

The picture at the top is my latest carding project, which of course turns into a spinning project etc. I dyed four pounds of Cormo wool from a sheep named Rachel. One-half lilac, the other half is Raspberry and now I'm blending the two fifty/fifty to make the batts shown. I just started spinning and I think I'm going to go for a light fingering weight wool. Yes, I'll be doing this FOREVER. The batts alone will take time--think .8 ounce batts. I have 64 ounces of picked fiber which means I'll be making 80 batts! This is the kind of thing that makes me w wish arithmetic wasn't so final with its answers. I wonder how many yards I will end out with?

Thank you for visiting my blog. Please stop by again. You can also visit my site at http://www.whorlwindweaver.com/

Stashmonster rears her locky head

2010-10-03T14:37:00.000-07:00

This is the first clip of Linus, an Angora kid at Tall Grass Farm

I don't need a big festival like Rhinebeck to come home with a bags and bags of stash. In fact, I do better at the small fairs where I get to talking with people I've known for years and end out walking away with some bags of their products. One of the beauties of living in the Midwest are all the cozy little fiber festivals, such as my all time favorite at Tall Grass Farm. They have one twice a year, so Saturday I was attending the Fall Fiber Jubilee.

Naturally, I had to spend some time over in the barn where the Tall Grass Angora Goats are being sheared. That's where my friend Elaine sets up her Coed Mawr Woolen Mill booth. We had a lot of catching up to do as I missed the spring fling, so here we are chatting up a storm in her booth full of the colorful fibers she cards herself at her mill. I ended out with three bags full.

This blend of Targhee, Angelina and Tencel will be socks oneday.

During this chat, I spotted a bag full of kid mohair, shown at the top of the page. What I loved about this one is it has three shades--dark grey, silver gray and white. This just caught my eye and I know it will be a puzzle as I decide what to make. I love a challenge. Tall Grass Farm has lovely fleece, and for those of you who like it processed you can go up in their store and find fabulous yarns, rovings, blends and more.

This Coed Mawr mix of Corriedal and Mohair ought to make some interesting socks.

Stopping in to see Mary Wallace of White Dove Farm was a must. I've purchased some of the most lovely Corriedale Wool from her (soon to star in a dyeing project to create an Alice Starmore design). I once used three consecutive years of one of her ewes named Winken to knit a king sized blanket. Mary is quite the fiber artist herself and has some gorgeous felted scarves and other items. She's also going to be on the Earth, Wood and Fire Artist Tour which will be October 23 & 24. Wisconsin artist studios will be open around Wisconsin and it sounds to me like way to get a start on holiday shopping and purchase handmade gifts (if you aren't making them all yourself).

Thank you for visiting my blog. Please stop by again. You can also visit my website at: http://www.whorlwindweaver.com/.

Progress!

2010-09-26T14:36:00.000-07:00

Enjoying every stitch, I'm making progress on my Sheep to Wool Sweater. This Alice Starmore Kinsale is being knit with my own handspun, a two-ply at 14 WPI. I purchased the raw fleece in August of 2009 and hope to complete a sweater by Thanksgiving. The pattern is enjoyable, though it took a bit to get the hang of it. I was unknitting rows at first, but now I've reached the point where I "get" the pattern so knitting is very enjoyable.

I'm way behind on those mittens I showed you a few weeks ago. I misplaced my directions so I've been looking at what I've already knit to figure out each row. Not quite as relaxing as the Starmore, but they will get done.

Thank you for visiting my blog. Please stop by again. You can also visit my website at http://www.whorlwindweaver.com/.

Surprise at my doorstep

2010-09-19T12:54:00.000-07:00

A care package from my sister-in-law in Maine came at about the same time I realized I didn't have enough yarn to finish the green socks and would need to spin some more. The box contained some of her farmette-grown organic garlic, some of her bunny fluff and chiengora from my dog's girlfriend Freya. Talk about good delivery mojo!

Right now a few cloves of her Maine garlic are being cooked with some Wisconsin-grown organic potatoes to make garlic mashed potatoes, the angora is drying on a rack and the Freya fluff is awaiting my skill in weaving to improve. All in all, it is great to have such excellent additions to my stash.

I also received my copy of the new and much-awaited expanded edition of Alice Starmore's Aran Knitting and I still scratch my head and ask: Why didn't I buy it back then? Duh? I also purchased Urban Homesteader so some day I'll be sending organic garlic to Maine! Well, maybe not. Maybe spun and knit angora? I'm looking forward to growing lovely looking veggies in my front yard.

Thank you for visiting my blog. Please stop by again. For a compendium of fiber-related tips, please visit my website at www.whorlwindweaver.com

Gadget aids consistent spinning

2010-09-16T17:24:00.000-07:00

My favorite spinning gadget is a small clear plastic item called The Spinners Control Card and Yarn Gauge. The yarn gauge allows me to keep track of how thick the yarn is I'm spinning and gives me a rough estimate on the thickness of what the finished plied yarn will be. I was spinning a yarn I wanted to be 14 wraps per inch as a two ply, so as you can see above I was checking the thickness of the yarn against the 28 wraps per inch gauge. Two strands of that thickness will roughly ply to be 14 wraps per inch. Because yarn is variable, and some fibers "poof" when plied it is a good idea to check the wraps-per-inch. This you do by winding off a length of yarn from your bobbin and letting it ply onto itself as shown below:

You can use a fancy wraps-per-inch device, but I went ahead and wrapped my yarn onto an embroidery floss holder. These just happen to be one inch wide and are great for those who like to do sampling and keep track of what they do. It's even better for absent minded people who tend to misplace their expensive fancy wood one. The floss cards come in packs of 100 and are inexpensive, so when I lose one, I can just go get another.

Determining wraps per inch can be tricky and you may want to do it more than once for any given bit of yarn. It requires wrapping the yarn on evenly, so the strands are next to each other in a natural way. A good thing about using the floss card is the little edges keep you from "cheating" and going over a marked line. You can still cheat as I did below by cramming the threads in to make sure it is 14 wraps per inch for anyone who may be counting. That's why it is good to do the check more than once and with different parts of your yarn. Spinning is a manual, and therefore, uneven process. In my mind, it is the random imperfections that make handspun so beautiful and fun to knit.

Knowing wraps per inch is a boon to the hand spinner, because you can find out how thick the yarn is for any given pattern by looking it up on Ravelry. This is also one of the reasons I love Ravelry. I used to have to divine yarn thickness based on knitting gauge, needle size and tiny pictures of the yarn in magazine. Now, I can just click onto Raverly and get the wpi for any yarn for most every pattern. With some swatching and experimentation, I can find the yarn I want. This is how I am able to spin this yarn for an Alice Starmore Kinsale.

You can find this gadget at many stores and online spinning gadget providers. Here it is at The Woolery--you'll find it if you scroll down the page http://www.woolery.com/Pages/spinaccess.html. You can find it at Woodland Woolworks at http://www.woolworks.com/Shop/Spinning/Spinning-Aids.1/Spinners-Control-Card. You might also be able to find it at the next fiber festival you attend or at your local spinning store, if you have one.

Thank you for visiting my blog. Please stop by again. You can find this and other spinning and fiber related tips on my website www.whorlwindweaver.com.

A sense of community

2010-09-12T19:09:00.000-07:00

I roasted my first locally-grown organic free-range chicken today and served it with roasted garlic chive mashed potatoes and string beans. I think I'm going to like this sustainability thing and going to the Farmer's Market to buy local. There is something really nice about actually meeting the people who grow your food. As I mashed the potatoes, I couldn't help but remember the elderly gentlemen in a John Deere cap who grew them up in Wisconsin. When I asked him if they were organic, he said, "All I put on them was cow manure."

Then there's the woman who grew the organic chives. I also bought out her basil as mine had been dug up by our chipmunk. I spoke with the sisters who grew my tomatoes and green beans, most of which are put up in my freezer. I didn't meet the person who grew my chicken but I did meet the person who knows the person. I could reflect on these people as I prepared my meal--no impersonal plastic and Styrofoam wrapped grocery store chicken where you don't get to see anyone but some kid stocking the shelves with an IPod plugged into his head.

This is the essence of community. It is the same community we build when we go to a farm or a fair and speak with the shepherds who grew our fiber and purchase their lovely fleeces. There's a connection there. A chance to know where these vital things-- our food and the raw material for our clothing--began. I can think of the rolling foothills of the Adirondacks as I knit my Kinsale from an Elihu Farm fleece. And I can think of the Wisconsin moraines as I eat my roasted garlic chive potatoes. And I have met the hard working people who make it possible.

The photo has nothing to do with the blog since the pot of chicken stock I made with the leftovers isn't exactly photogenic. It is a first shearing Jacob I purchased from a woman in Wisconsin and some angora bunny fur I dyed tiger-lily. I'm going to blend it and tell you all about it in the near future.

Thank you for visiting my blog, please stop by again. You can also visit my website for spinning tips and other info at http://www.whorlwindweaver.com/

Sustainable weekend

2010-09-11T20:33:00.000-07:00

Having finished Bill McKibben's Deep Economy, it is not surprising I found myself at the farmer's market in the misty rain looking at plum tomatoes. I bought a half a bushel of them and, with Ted's help, soon had two pots of tomatoes cooking on the stove--a simple mixture of olive oil, garlic and basil. Now there are 18 tubs of fresh sauce in the freezer so I can enjoy summer flavor into December. The leftover basil, I also froze so my canned tomatoes can get a little boost in January and February.

With all this activity, I also managed to cast on my Kinsale! That's a project that's been a long time coming, starting last August when I purchased the fleece at Elihu Farm. I washed, picked and carded it and am now almost finished spinning the fleece into two ply fingering weight yarn. It's been an enjoyable process, but I think successfully casting on the sweater has to be the most satisfying. Spinning and knitting has made me appreciate clothes so much more in this throw away world of ours.

A newly cast on sweater is not particularly photogenic, so I'm showing you the stranded mittens I'm making as part of the September knit-a-long on Ravelry's Stranded group. They are coming along quite nicely. The stranded designs come from Nancy Bush's Knitting in Estonia. I'm adapting an Elizabeth Zimmerman method of mitten making to this. The yarn is leftovers from other projects and I hope to burn down more stash with these. I really like making these so maybe there are more mittens on the horizon.

Thank you for visiting my blog, please stop by again! You can also visit my website at http://www.whorlwindweaver.com/.

Stranded digression

2010-09-03T16:13:00.000-07:00

Stranded knitting has long been a love of mine and a new knit-a-long in Ravelry's Stranded group grabbed my interest--knit a pair of stranded mittens. Above, you can see what I cast on. The project fits perfectly into this gorgeous handwoven basket I was given as a gift! The project is a complete remix of ideas from a variety of sources and one of its beauties is I'll get to use up some of the odds and ends from past projects. Yes, I know I should be casting on my Kinsale, but maybe just one little digression wouldn't hurt!

Fiber festival reunion and destash strain

2010-08-28T05:41:00.000-07:00

Meeting up with Alice Field of Fox Hill Farm in Lee, Mass., was the highlight of my visit to the Michigan Fiber Festival last weekend. I purchased my first fleeces from her two decades ago back when she raised lots of Romney--Rosalie, Blanche and a cross named Alecia. These lovely fleeces have long since been spun up and knit into projects--though an odd or end of leftover yarn may haunt a corner of some storage bucket somewhere. A picture of part of her booth is shown above.

Fox Hill Farm is now better known for truly lovely Cormo fleeces, that have been skillfully covered. Now, many of you know that I generally don't like covered fleeces--this is because I have seen some lousy ones. However, Alice Field knows what she's doing. For one, she makes her own covers from cotton fabric, which breathe and allow the fleece to dry out after a rain. Her covers have modifications that allow for better fleece--more air circulation etc. Second, she is selective about which breed is covered--that is she covers her Cormo which responds well to covering. She's found that not all fleece should be covered--for instance a luster wool like Romney will lose its character and loft under a cover.

I enjoy talking to a thinking shepherd. I'm a little tired of blanket assumptions like "a covered fleece is a spinners fleece." A spinner's fleece is a fleece from a shepherd who knows what they are doing. I've washed, handpicked, carded and spun dozens of fleeces both covered and not covered. I'm sick of hearing about "VM" (vegetable matter) as a scourge because skillfully raised sheep won't have this problem. But I can go on with this topic forever. Let's just say I am picky and don't make assumptions. When I buy a covered Cormo, it will be from Alice Field. I will have to put this treat off until next year as I still need to make room in my stash closets.

Another mission at the Michigan Fiber Festival was to have a look at Kessinich looms which are made right in Allegan. You can see a picture of the booth above. This is a lovely loom crafted of sturdy wood with lots of thought going into the detail.. Someday, I would like to replace my 36" counterbalance loom with a 36 inch eight harness jack type loom. But not right away. I have to get a little better at weaving first!

Going to a fiber festival and not coming home with something is a strain on one's self-restraint. I did pretty well, I think. I purchased a pound of fiber. One was 11 ounces of raw alpaca in a light shade of brown that I don't happen to have from Meadowsong Alpacas. I want to make an Andean motif sweater in pure alpaca, so I can justify an extra color plus I have room in my Alpaca storage bin. Later, I purchased five ounces of alpaca silk blend roving which I might use for socks. I also stopped a Susan's for an extra large bobbin for my Lendrum--I love Susan's because she has EVERYTHING. I also found some size 0 knitting needles I was looking for.

The Michigan Fiber Festival was a lot of fun. My husband and I made a weekend of it, and stayed near Granville and then explored down along the Lake Michigan coast on our way home. I think I'll go back next year--especially if I haven't already picked up a Fox Hill Farm fleece.

Thank you for visiting my blog! Please stop by again. You can also read more articles on my website at http://www.whorlwindweaver.com/

A compendium of weaving errors

2010-08-15T21:35:00.000-07:00

Diving into weaving with gusto, I soon found myself tangled in any number of warping errors. Warp, for those of you uninitiated in weaver’s lingo, are the strings that go across the loom and form the structure on which you weave. In the accompanying photos, the warp is white. Warp needs to be threaded carefully, because if it isn't, you will have trouble that lasts and lasts and last. And that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

The olive green weaving above is my latest round of warp troubles. As you may recall, I had some threading errors with this warp earlier when I was weaving with the dark orange colored yarn. To refresh your memory, I add a picture of that here: I had a gap due to missing a dent in a reed (those are the verticle slats the white thread passes through) and to the far left, I’d made a mistake threading the heddles creating a pattern mistake. Heddles are shown right here from the back of the loom:

To fix my first mistakes, I wove for about 18 inches and then cut the piece off the loom. My intention was to rethread the warp so I’d have a nice perfect looking bit of cloth. That wasn't happening though and after long painstaking rewarping, I started weaving and more errors hidden in my threading jumped out and tweaked my nose.

Yes, you see the bundled threads in the close up? What on earth did I do? It took time to get up the courage to investigate my mistake. I wasn’t really sure I wanted to know. Or maybe I was sure I’d made the same stupid mistakes. I wove on doggedly thinking to my mantra: These are dishtowels. I will use them myself and they will be worn out in a few years. After a foot of weaving, I was ready to have a closer look.

I am proud to say, I’ve discovered a whole new class of weaving mistakes! I discovered the tangled web and Shakespeare’s reference gained fresh meaning. All my heddles were threaded properly (I pat myself on the back), but somewhere between the heddles and the reed I had managed to cross the warp threads —I’m showing you a close up of this area just to give you an idea what I’m talking about.

Anyhow, as I weave and create patterns by lifting and lowering groups of threads, the crossed/twisted warp holds some of the threads down creating the odd ugly bundles of improperly unwoven, not in pattern thread.

Warping fine threads at twenty threads per inch is a daunting prospect for a new weaver. I should probably have done something easier. But had I done this, I’d never have found all these interesting ways to mess up the warp. I expect my journey from apprentice to master weaver will be a long and interesting one.

Thank you for visiting my blog. Please visit my website at http://www.whorlwindweaver.com/ in my soon to be published tell-all about the trials of a new weaver: “The Dark Tangled Side of Weaving.”

Snacks, Ice and Wool: A Road Trip Find

2010-08-08T20:35:00.000-07:00

Villa Grove Trade is my kind of general store. I knew as soon as I stepped inside and saw a big bag of Karakul roving, along with the softdrinks, snacks and ice one expects at a roadside store out in the country. I won’t use the cliché “middle of nowhere” because Villa Grove Trade is definitely somewhere. It is in the hamlet of Villa Grove, Colorado, in the San Luis Valley and the shadow of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Beautiful country.

I spied the store on our way to a hike in said mountains as we sped down Highway 285. We’d been camped near Poncha Springs and we were looking forward to a nice hike through pinyon juniper woodlands up to a spring. It was an enjoyable outing, complete with a packed lunch. On our way back to our camp, we stopped at Villa Grove Trade.

Besides having roving, they sold lovely jewelry, and art objects along with the chips, soft drinks and icecream one associates with little stores. The best was in the back—a restaurant complete with homemade pies! We bought a couple of slices of their apple pie and it was delicious. The buffalo chili smelled good too, but we’d already had lunch. The restaurant also offers live music and dinner specials on the second and fourth Sunday of each month and you can learn about this at their website http://www.villagrovetrade.com/ They also rent western style rooms and we are thinking of checking in the next time we pass through.

I had a nice chat with Amber Shook, a spinner and weaver, who owns the business with husband Jeff. The roving I purchased come from her own Karakul/Rambouillet sheep, which are naturally raised nearby. At first I was just going to buy a little, but you know how it is! My eye caught site of firt the light brown and then the lovely gray shown above. Despite all my stash busting resolutions, I couldn’t resist. I hope to be spinning it soon.

Karakul is a primitive breed with a double coat with kemp blended in with the finer fiber. When I purchased two pounds of grey roving and about a half pound of the light brown, I was kind of thinking of a sweater, but now I’m thinking weaving. I have some chocolate brown Navajo Churro in my stash and that would be a great complimentary color with the other shades. I don’t know for sure yet, but I’m really glad I found this fiber. Once I clear out my current projects, I’ll be spinning it.

Unfortunately, I took no pictures of this cool little restored Western store, but my husband did buy the T-shirt, which is what I’m using to give you an idea of what it looks like. It is a nice place and definitely worth a stop for lunch and a little shopping if you are vacationing that way. They also have espresso, if you just need a perk up on your road trip.

Thank you for visiting my blog. Please stop by again. You can also visit my website http://www.whorlwindweaver.com/ for tips and ideas on all things fiber related. I keep a collection of things found here on my blog. http://www.whorlwindweaver.com/

Cleaning House

2010-07-31T09:53:00.000-07:00

Resisting the draw of the brand new Chapin Creek Fiber Festival in Franklin Grove, Illinois, I am staying home to clean house. Franklin Grove is a picturesque little town and their historic area is lovely. I'm sure this first ever fiber festival will be excellent, but I can't buy anything because I have far too much stash and the clutter in my house is building up. I would just be one of those people who paws products and doesn't by anything, so why annoy the vendors?

I'm getting rid of things and putting together yet another haul over to Goodwill or the recycling pile. Getting rid of stuff for me is completely therapeutic and keeps my house from looking like one of those places in that cable-TV show about hoarders. I'll also be selling some extra books and magazines on Ravelry with the money going to benefit Ravelry and Northern Illinois Samoyed Assistance--where I got the dog who stars as my Ravatar. There will be more about that later.

Good news, I've started spinning the last big bile of batts for my sheep to sweater project. I'm also working on a gauge sample. Hurray!

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Two-thousand Yards!

2010-07-25T14:41:00.000-07:00

Plying took up many hours on this last day of the Tour. Stashbusting went well and I used up more than 1.5 pounds of fleece creating the three big 8 oz. skeins shown. One in still on the bobbin because I like to let the yarn rest at least overnight. I will wind it off tomorrow and get the yardage, but I'm guessing it will yield about 600 yards bringing my total yardage for the Tour up over 2,000 yards. Not bad for 23 days! But the pace felt slow, so next year I'll spin worsted weight or bulky so it goes faster!

Plus, I still have a way to go to finish Stashbusing--The gold is bamboo and I have 16 oz. left, and the tan is wool and I have more than a pound carded and ready to go. That's a lot of spinning!

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Stashbusting Satisfaction

2010-07-22T15:13:00.000-07:00

I finished carding my "sheep to sweater" fleece. I picture the work in progress on my Deb above. Nothing feels quite as good stashbusting-wise as carding an entire fleece. Now to finish spinning! I'm making a Starmore Kinsale so this means a fingering weight yarn.