Fabulous, isn't it? (If I do say so myself)

Quoted direct from Lexi Boeger, aka Pluckyfluff, on her blog recently.  I love this woman...she needs to write a book I think, and not just about yarn.  Maybe yarn and horror/sci-fi combo, yes, that's it.   I think I will put her quote in my signature.  What do you think?

Here it is on the line, doubled up, (idrying:

and draped on a picnic bench:

These pictures make me realize just how much I need a dress form to shoot my stuff on.  The pictures just don't do this piece justice.  I just have to break down and buy one soon, because it's just silly not to get good photos of my work.

After my negative rant of the last post, I felt the need to share something positive today.  This picture was too cute not to share, so here he is, my very own Garden Gnome in his pointy gnome hat, tromping through our raised beds, compacting the soil and causing all kinds of trouble a few days ago.

And  below I have  another pointed item to share, a finished object  (hooray for me!) destined for Winterharbor Studio.  Hand knit from recycled sari silk yarn primarily in a deep red color with splashes of bright colors throughout.  This is probably the first and last time I will work with this yarn.  I love the effect this fiber gives, but it's difficult to work with.  The yarn separated now and then so I had to weave the loose strands into each other occasionally so it would be seamless.  If you have to frog it (I did) the tangle of loose threads is a major challenge to separate and keep your sanity.  And this sari silk is so overdyed that it bleeds like no tomorrow.  I have a bag of loose fibers to blend into spinning batts and it always manages to bleed and change the color of the finished yarn after I'm done.  Sometimes I like the results, more often I don't.  But it does make for a pretty shawl if you have the patience to work with it-the "Rejuvenate Shawl":

Back in January I noticed a $25 debit to our checking account and questioned it in an email to them.  Somehow I let it slip through the cracks.  We keep tabs on our accounts mostly electronically, and it takes a few months to catch up sometimes.  I really don't know how I let it slip under the radar that they have been charging us $25/month for our checking account, which used to be FREE before we gave them more of our business.  The return message I was sent (and just read, 3 months later--that part is 'my bad'), tells me that we need a combined total debt and/or savings in our accounts of $250,000 in order to avoid the $25 fee!!!!!  Where the heck did that come from? 

I have a couple of accounts elsewhere that will charge me $5 if I go below a $500 balance.  That seems reasonable to me.  These guys have a half dozen assorted accounts with us, and a very long relationship with us.  My first credit card I got when I turned 18 is still with them--20 years, folks!!  Now they have decided they need to nickel and dime us to death.   Leave it to corporate America to screw you for giving them a bigger piece of the pie. 

Anyone who knows me well (and some who don't) know that I have a case of "start-itis", a term I lovingly stole from another fiber artist on one of the many lists I subscribe to.  I come up with new ideas, sometimes write them down, and start them.  Finishing isn't my strength <----understatement of the year.  So the stack of UFO's in my stash is quite impressive, maybe 20+ ok, more like 30.  OK, lets be honest I just have no idea how many items are out there floating around, waiting for some attention. And if you counted all of the supplies I purchased with a specific project in mind and haven't started...well, let's just not go there now as I'm feeling good about progress made recently, and don't want to rain on my own parade.

In the past I've tried new project  "diets" that  required me to finish one UFO in between each new item started.  It worked for a while, but then I'd find that I needed something small and brainless to work on while at the PTA meeting, sitting on line, waiting during ballet class...so I'd grab some yarn and two to five pointy sticks and whammo...great plans out the window (but nifty new hat started, cool :)

So on the verge of the Spring craft shows, and updating Amy's gallery with seasonal items,  I am grabbing some of these bad boys and plodding through the pile, putting the proper Spring UFO's at the top of the heap. This past weekend I finished a beautiful sari silk triangle shawl that I started over a year ago.  Yesterday I finished a yarn necklace that's been sitting in my bead box for a few months, and I worked for a few hours on the hairpin lace scarf shown in the photo, started last summer?   I plan to finish that today.   As I finish each, I find new things hiding  and add them to my queue.  Some of them  only need a half hour of my time to finish up, and it feels really good to have completed things to photograph, sell, gift, and show off.  After a bit of progress I feel confident that my persistence will pay off.

Ooh...gotta run, I just got an idea for a new spinning technique and need to go try it out...

I've also been working like crazy to get some Springy things made to take to my Sister Amy's gallery in Greenport, NY:  Winterharborstudio is on Main Street, open weekends and a few other days and for Greenport's monthly gallery walks. (And I need to update her web site to reflect all that and more!)   I've been doing some lightweight felting, knit and crochet handbags and I hope to finish a few spring shawls and scarf ufo's that have been kicking around here.  Will go pull the wintry things next weekend and swap them out, or at least that's the plan. My friend Jen has been making some new felt soaps to stock up there as well--so to add color to the site, here's a pic I swiped from her web site, LillyZoo.com   She is also on Etsy as Lillyzoo :

She has some easier technique that works in her washing machine for felting soaps so I envy her that.  Soap felting is work....well, maybe not hard work but lots of time for little profit, so anything that makes it faster/easier is the way to go.  Customers literally eat them up, so it's great to have a stock (well, maybe not literally eating them, but you know what I mean).  Anyhow,  my washing machine ate the soaps when I tried to make them in there...can you say "shrinkage?"  So I have to do them by hand, which means I rarely get around to it.

Off to finish our TAXES, eeeeeew.  And then housework and fiber fun (that should be sometime around Thursday, I think).  With luck I'll get some fun things to look at here in the next few days...

I heard the postal van transmission whining down my street, and then heard the telltale "thump" that means a package has arrived.  I looked out the door to see a giant plastic canvas bag like you might imagine Santa Claus carrying over his shoulder.  Strange, I thought....then realized there was cardboard inside the bag....even stranger yet.  Why would Barbara ship fleece inside a box, inside a bag?  After a bit more inspection of the package, I realized that her box was inside an "official USPS" bag because of some kind of  postal accident (the kind you can only imagine):

So there it was, in all it's glory.  Three fleeces in bags, each bag ripped somewhat with fleece peeking out.  And then there's this:

Thoughts on this accident ran through my mind, not necessarily in this order:

"How, where, and why did this happen?"  and   "Thank goodness I don't buy antique Tiffany lamps"  and of course the best of all "I wonder what the people at the post office think I do with bags full of greasy sheep fleeces.  I can just imagine the looks on their (very, very, suburbanite) faces"   That third thought made me smile...a LOT...in fact, I'm still smiling about it.

In all, no harm was done.  The fleeces (Faith, Nancy, and Grace) were intact and in great shape, well skirted without too much dirt or vm.  Even the invoice and photos of my new sheepy friends survived without a crease, despite being found in the bottom of that box!  And I immediately opened one of the fleeces up and here it is--from Nancy.  I put half in the washer and it's already halfway finished, turning from this to a nice creamy white as I write this:

I'm sure more Navajo Churro posts will pop up, since I now have so much to work with.  I do hope this  post is the last I need to make about postal mishaps.  Happy spinning and good night.

Alright, enough baseball talk.  It will be summer before I get this thing finished, but I am so determined NOT to let another thing go into the UFO heap.  I love making things up as I go along, but this goes to show that sometimes a pattern is worth a couple of bucks, no?

Off to frog and give it one more try before I cash in the chips and make it a plain old beanie.  One good thing comes from all the cussing and griping I've put myself through for this hat:  I learned that my handspun can take the ripping, hold up and still look great.  That's a plus that I had counted on, but it's nice to be sure.

Top left, tread softly batts (on etsy).  Top right "I dream in Color" yarn.

Bottom left, "Irish" yarn.  Bottom right--Border Leicester locks for sale on etsy.

For a first try at this method, I am very happy with the results I got.  The locks came out cleaner than many I have purchased with the word "washed" in the description, and were much easier to handle than the dishpan-by-hand method I've used in the past, so that makes it worth repeating soon.  This was from a 3lb, 11oz Border Leicester fleece that I bought at NYSWF at Rhinebeck, October, 2007.  I washed about half the fleece in one batch and am very happy with the ease and speed of the process and the great results I got.   Just a reminder that you can only do this in a top loading washer that has a way to run a "spin only" cycle without agitating.  Otherwise, don't try this at home.

1. Raw Fleece    

2. Judging Card from the NYSWF fleece sale

3. Fleece info card, weight, name, cost

4. Put the fleece into lingerie bags in a  loose, single layer.

5. Add very hot water to an empty washing machine (turned my hot water heater up one click).

6. Add soap after the water is finished filling to avoid massive bubbles.

7. Agitate for 3 seconds to distribute soap (wool is NOT in the water yet)

8. Set washer to "spin only" before you forget!  DO NOT AGITATE WOOL lest you get a giant felt glob!

9. Drop bags of wool into soapy water and gently push down.

10. First soak, 15-20 minutes, (again a reminder: do not agitate!)

11.Spin washer out--showing a sample of the locks after first soak and spin

12-13.  Set bags aside and repeat steps 5-11.  Use less soap this time.

14. Sample of locks after second soak/spin cycle.

15. Refill washer with hot water and vinegar to rinse soap residue and soften.  Repeat rinse soak until the water runs clear.  Keep using hot water, since some wool will felt with big temperature changes.

16. Baby gates used as drying racks---knew I bought those for some reason!!

17.  Wool spread out to dry, fluffed and flipped over once.

18.  Washed Border Leicester Locks, ready to dye now, hooray!!

I'm just doing a final rinse now on about half an off-white Border Leicester fleece that I bought at the NYSWF in Rhinebeck in the fall (2007) that I've been dying to work with.  This is the first time I've used my washing machine for this process, but it seems to be working beautifully in the "soak and spin" method.  Will post details and a few pics tomorrow.  I hope to make a fleece washing tutorial out of this so I took pictures through the whole process.

My spin cycle just finished, so I'm back to spread the locks out to dry, then off to my wheel for some plying and then spinning some of these batts I've been making lately!  Craig is watching old Dr. Who episodes on the TIVO without me, so I've got to run before he starts another, aargh!

The point of this is that today I made a little connection in this fiber arts world that made me smile, and just wanted to show how a bit of fluff begins the process of making the rounds.  I purchased this set of batts (coincidentally, a rainbow of little batts in different colors, imagine that?) from Loop on Etsy back in August of 2007.  Aren't they gorgeous?

At the time I couldn't wait to get my hands on them, and spun them into this fun striped yarn I call Kindergarten, plied with black thread and coils surrounding glass beads:

The yarn was then purchased from my Etsy store by Char of CharteChic.  She crocheted it into this gorgeous shawl, which was recently sold to a woman who has plans to take it with her on a trip to Peru:

It wouldn't surprise me at all to find out that some of the Alpaca or other fibers in the batts I originally purchased came from Peru.  What comes around truly does go around in this world, doesn't it?

Here's what happened when I separated the colors and added it to some gorgeous Coopworth roving I bought from Hatchtown Farm at Rhinebeck last fall.  I layered it on the drum carder, then split each batt into 4 pieces, fluffed them out and ran them through a second time. The blend is about 1/3 Coopworth and 2/3 Alpaca, soft and light as air.

And then I made some more, smaller batts from the same fibers, though I was not as precise on the percentage of wool and alpaca in these since I was running out of the Coopworth.  I turned these batts into roving with a method I saw on a great YouTube video that I can't find now, aargh.  I made my own diz using a chinese soup container lid and my hole puncher (how thrifty!).  I loosened about an inch width of the batt at one one edge and pulled the fibers off the large drum an inch or so at a time, through the diz.  These should spin up with no pre-drafting or other prep, which is a huge plus in my book.  Who knew you could make your own roving this easily:

I can't wait to see the different yarns I get from these three preparations.  I will add photos of the yarns to this post when I've spun each one up.

So, I used Leonard from time to time, and enjoyed making batts, sort of.  The carder worked beautifully with washed wool locks, and I could make nice batts using commercially prepared wool top, thinning it out and feeding it in.  But when I tried to use lightweight fibers like silk, angora, mohair, alpaca, or sparkle, all I got were these lousy flyaway batts that were thin and ugly.  The fiber laid on top of the teeth instead of going in.  As an added bonus, all of this flyaway fiber did just that--it flew--everywhere.  I got fiber stuck all over me, up my nose, on my face, arms, legs (which itches like crazy, by the way)  Yuck!  I got discouraged and didn't make batts that often, and was worried that I should have purchased a less "fine" carder for my big $$$

Then I read this wonderful post by Maple of North Star Alpacas, about using her Drum Carder with her Alpaca fiber.  She gave me the idea that I should buy a big brush to help get the fibers into the drum.  A few days later (and before buying the big brush from the paint store), a light bulb finally went on in my brain about the brush attachment the machine already had.  "Crank the brush attachment down" was what the voice in my head told me.  You see, I was letting the brush ride on top of the drum.  I tightened it down in place, but had never pushed it down hard enough to actually help push the fibers into the drum. On my first turn of the handle with the brush tightened down, it was pure joy!

Now take a look at some of these fabulous, big, thick and gorgeous batts that Leonard has helped me make.  This set is called "spring is coming" and they are all mine, though I expect I will list them for sale when they're spun up (soon):

And this set is "Carnival Ride" and is for sale in my Etsy shop, (along with some bright obnoxious St. Patrick's Day batts that I won't blind you with here):

There's nothing like falling in love all over again.