Wool To Yarn.. What A Pleasure

I took a bunch of yarn off my wheel last night. It sure feels good. For two weeks I've been spinning and because the spools are so big, and I'm spinning so fine,... well it seems like I will never get the spool filled.... and then I have to spin another spool before I am able to ply the two singles together to get a nice stable yarn. The good thing is that the plying goes very quickly and all of a sudden, where I had an unusable mass of unstable singles on my hands, I'm now sitting there with loads of 2 ply yarn... to the tune of 650m.
The washed yarn is on the right and the kinky stuff on the left is what I am washing today.
Woo hoo! It makes you feel pretty good. Today I have to blend some purple rovings with some dark strawberry red rovings and spin them for the little bit of plum that the jacket commission requires for contrast. It's going to be nice I think.

Meanwhile my silk samples for my level 3 are calling. I've been searching through my supplies to find Bombyx silk. I have some but it is not enough I think to do what I want. I need it for my woven silk sample. It is going to be beautiful. And that's all I'm saying about that. Meanwhile, I'm going to spin today a knitting yarn out of Tussah Silk. That will give me a bit of a break from the jacket commission which I have been spinning for the last five days pretty much non-stop. Tonight is knit night and hopefully I will get the finger I'm working on,on my knitted lace gloves, and one more done. I would really like to get this set of gloves done before the end of the month. Then I have a request from Daughter #2 to, "please, please, please, finish my wristlets, Mom!" So that will be my next knitting project.

The last thing I have to say is this. When I decided to purchase cotton cards I had decided on a set from the Howard Brush Company so I ordered them and then afterwards, thought about all the cotton blending I would like to do and worried that the very fine and soft teeth on the Howard Brush cards wouldn't hold up to the other fibre I would be using. I panicked and ordered a set of Ashford cotton cards which have a much smaller number of picks per inch allowing you to use them on other fibres too with ease. I got the Ashford cards for Christmas and the Howard Brush Company cards a while ago. The Howard Brush cards languor in their box waiting for me to get my guts up to spin cotton. In the meantime I decided to try out my Ashford cards on some Alpaca fibre from my own animals. Boy am I glad I got that very brilliant idea. They are super on the alpaca. Far better than regular wool cards for preparing the alpaca.
See how wide the pics are on my regular cards on the right which is great for wool especially coarse wool. While the finer pics are great on my very soft and fine alpaca.

This picture shows the difference between my regular cards on the right and the Ashford cotton cards on the left.

I am so pleased with how it is working out, and I think I am going to be very happy with them all round..... what am I saying?!!! I already am happy with them. I'm looking forward to getting my silk samples out of the way so that I can try out my Howard Brush company cotton cards on my cotton samples (Hubby has them stashed away to give me for my Valentine's gift). The one thing that has come out of all my carder issues is that some time in the future, I'm thinking cotton blended with alpaca would make an awesome yarn..... I'm not sure if that will be something that I can try in my level 3 homework...(I will have to look more closely at the questions on blends and see if there is room for experimentation).... but suffice it to say that there is no worries with the Ashford cotton cards so far.

So there you have it.... I'm fired up for another day of washing skeins freshly off my wheel, blending and spinning a contrast colour for the jacket commission, and a little silk spinning before knit night tonight. A day of work??.... not a chance.... I call it a day of pleasure.

Proof That I Finish Stuff

It seems like I do absolutely nothing... or at least finish nothing but I am happy to say that that is not true. Every now and again I surprise myself.... once in a while I finish something and make myself proud.My guild has looms that they set up for projects and every so often I decide to participate in those projects. Last year we were asked as a guild to donate shawls to the Transition House For Women so we got right on that and set up a 36" floor loom with a cream coloured mixed warp long enough to accommodate 15 shawls. We all chose different weft and started one after another to weave shawls and so mine was finished in August but I had to wait till two more shawls came off the loom. Saturday past, when I went to my monthly guild meeting, I was handed my shawl and I was so pleased to see it. So here it is...



With three fingers left to knit on a pair of lace gloves I'm thinking that I'll be able to show them soon too. Knit night is my only chance to work on them and most knit nights I don't get there till late so I only get an hour and a half to knit a week. And with any luck there will be a jacket done soon too.

@$%%^$^#$^&*&^*%$

Ol' Parritch Muffins work a whole lot better when your oven doesn't give out in the middle of cooking them..... argh!

Good Ol' Parritch

I just made porridge for breakfast. And not that wimpy kind that you poor boiling water over. I just made old fashioned, rolled not cut, stick-to-your-ribs, pull-your-stomach-down-to-your-toes, porridge. I have been making porridge now for nigh on twenty years. Hubby likes it. I make it about once every week or so. This time I threw in some apples and a little granola and some pancake syrup to sweeten it. And you know it was really good.

Have you ever noticed that sometimes you can be eating something regularly for years and years and then suddenly you realize just how good it is. I mean porridge is fairly normal food, but I think I had forgotten just how good it is. I tend to think that a glutenous mass of grain is not necessarily the most appetizing thing in the world. But pop a spoonful in your mouth and mm... mm... mm... it's just delicious.

I realize that I'm starting to sound like an add.

Have you ever heard the story of the Magic Porridge Pot? Well my porridge pot this morning is a little like the magic porridge pot. I made waaayyy too much porridge! We'll be eating porridge hot, cold and nine days old at this rate. So I guess I'll have to make a few porridge muffins later on.

Porridge Muffins
2 cups porridge (already cooked)
1 egg
1/4 cup of oil
1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 c milk

Mix all the above ingredients, add dried or fresh fruit... such as apples or bananas and pour into muffin pans that have been greased. Bake in usual manner at 350 degrees for 20 - 30 minutes depending on your oven. They are good for breakfast too.

Bon appetit!

Been There Done That

Life is pretty simple these days. It's pretty much the same old same old for the most part. That's why on Saturday I didn't blog. There isn't a whole lot to say when life is blandly normal. I have been reading other blogs instead. Mostly blogs that I follow anyway but then I have been surfing a bit too. And of course, I'm following along with all that is happening in Haiti.

I've been finishing the Christmas cleanup.... I know, I know.... that was weeks ago and we should be done by now.... but we had a little set back this week in the form of our new coffee table. It was bigger than we thought and so required some shifting of other things in the living room in order to accommodate it. We also moved our TV and computer and DVD player. This is no small feat since there are so many wires that criss cross our room either above or below, that it is a maze which is not easily untangled. I still have two speakers to hook up. I've also been organizing my studio. This too is no small feat since there are things I had forgotten I owned needing to be put away..... but of course with any stash you don't want to throw stuff out just because you haven't used it in a few years... (that would be horrible)!!! Hubby brought in some boxes from the shed and I have been sorting through that. I did find some rovings from New Zealand that are a blend of Possum and Polwarth ..... mmmm. Can't wait to spin some of that. Hubby keeps checking on me when something comes out of a box that I get excited about. He says I'm making weird noises..... any noise that signifies delight is ok with me!

But for today I'm back at the jacket commission...... and even though it seems like a never ending process, I am making progress.... that's good.... very good. But I do have to say, I will never take another commission again as long as I am working on the Masters... am I repeating my self??? You bet.... been there done that!

Dawn Comes Sneaking Over The Horizon

Yesterday by mid morning the sun had come out and more welcome sight you have never seen. Suddenly the temperatures soared and I watched the snow melting off my roof.

Drip, drip, drip, it was a pleasantly warm afternoon.

Problem: with all the new changes with our house we have discovered that our upstairs is just too warm. I don't sleep well when it is warm and so I have been opening the window in our bedroom at night.... even in the dead of winter.... we don't even have all of our windows in our bedroom properly insulated and still it is too warm!

This morning I got up and came downstairs in a fog bank.... not the wet kind.... but the kind that muddles your head.... mostly because I took some pain medication for my bad back in the middle of the night. Hubby took pity on me (he's so sweet) and got me a drink of juice which helped to clear some of the fuzz from my brain. And so it was that the sun came creeping over the horizon with a bleary eyed me able to watch. Nothing is so heavenly as when that sun hits the top of our trees in our yard.

Blue skies, nothing but blue skies......

For Christmas I had moved the computer under the steps and there is no window there so it is good to be back where I can look out the window and see the goings on of the world around me. I love to watch the sheep and the alpacas, and even the deer that drift across the yard in their ongoing search for food. (They always stop at our hay bails.) It is a peaceful scene laid out before me. The sheep are gathering at the fence posts for their morning scratch while the alpacas are still lying in for a chew on their cuds. There's a deer at the bails licking up seed on the ground. And behind me the sun has risen golden, changing the blue of the snow to a pinkish gold. Oh happy morn...

A nice cup of tea and a wee spin before I head off to town...

Hope your day is a golden sunrise too....

Walk Through The Woods

This is a hard time of the year to get through, there is no doubt about that. It is dark till quite late in the morning. When it is 9:30 before it gets light (on a sunny day) and dark again by 5 p.m., you have a tendency to want to sit by the fire and read or just veg. Yesterday was a day for vegging out by our fireplace. The forecast has been calling for warm temperatures all week and while warm temps are generally good this time of year, it sucks since it doesn't come in the form of a chinook wind with glorious sun to perk you up.... no, this warm is coming and carrying with it, freezing rain. My poor sheep are looking bedraggled and sad. Yesterday I sat and read and looked out at my sheep and listened to the radio news coming out of Haiti... and then around late afternoon I couldn't take it anymore, I felt I would sink into mid winter blues, so out the door I went for a walk.

Usually this time of the year, I stick to road walking but yesterday, the bush was calling to me and so after checking to see if the trails were packed with snowmobiles running over them, I felt I could handle a short walk through the bush. I entered the woods where thick pines and spruce border the trails in quiet solitude. I instantly noticed the peace and tranquility of the forest silence. All around me the pines and spruce brooded in their dark green garb. The only noise I heard was the sound of Duff galloping past in pure joy of getting out to sniff new scents, and Tootsie yapping after Duff in an effort to keep up. Shortly they disappeared into the bush ahead and all went silent again.

It was only after about 5 minutes of walking that I had this weird sensation that something was watching me.... I looked up to the right and I am not sure why, but there in all it's wild silent beauty, was a Great Grey Owl. He flew through the tops of the pines seeking a new branch from which to get a better view of me. I of course, stopped dead in my tracks as I watched him/her beat her wings and slip between the trees like a ghost. The thing that amazed me was the quiet of its flight. I could not hear a sound. The wings were beating but it was amazing how silent the beat of its wings were..... and it was huge. I would have to say that if it stood on the ground next to me it would have been about 25 inches tall. Awesome!!!!

I quickly found a fallen tree trunk to sit on, and there I sat watching that owl while the owl watched me too. In the back of my mind I hoped that Tootsie (the Shi-tzu) would stay away for a while and stay with Duff as that owl would easily pick up wee Tootsie and fly away with it's daily meal. The owl watched me and I watched it for a while... I'm not sure how long... but probably no more than ten minutes. Then silently, and with more dignity than I would have thought possible, it spread its wings and jumped off the branch and carried on it's silent way winging through the branches of the pine and spruce.

Such moments renew your pleasure in just being alive. (And Tootsie didn't get eaten....)

Wow I'm glad I went for a walk.