Escaping Suburbia

I haven’t done one of these in a long time… thought I’d start it up again. As always, please click the links to visit the Flickr pages of the photographers! Photos 1, 4, 7, and 8 are all by local photographers (Corvallis/Albany, etc.). Photo 2 is from the OSU Archives and is part of the William L. Finley Papers collection.

1. country wedding – color + texture

2. Half-grown Barn Owls

3. poppies!

4. stylin

5. spinning wheel

6. Epilogue

7. 1May 24 092

8. Tulips redux

9. Sunken Treasure – Corespun Bulky with Beehives (109 yards)

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys

Well, the tour is over and I made some great progress. Got out of my spinning slump and taught myself to use a drop-spindle besides. Here are the results of the final week… I didn’t keep great notes on the dates, but I’ll estimate.

Days 17-19 (July 20-22)

Monday was a rest day, but I kept practicing with the drop -spindle:

Days 20-21 (July 23-24)

Decided to go back to the wheel & ply the fiber from Sporfarm. I thought about plying with beads, and even started stringing some, but in the end I didn’t want to bother:

Lousy photo. I know.

Day 22  (July 25)

Started spinning this BFL from Easy Knits. It was gorgeous & so easy to spin. These are probably my best singles ever, mostly even & quite thin:

Day 23 (July 26)

Final day! I wanted to finish the entire roving from Easy Knits and ply it. This is the completed second bobbin:

Unfortunately, I was hating the way it plied together. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I’d done one bobbin without tearing the roving into strips, so the color repeats were extremely long. The second bobbin I tore into strips and had shorter repeats. With these colors, it just wasn’t working out at all. So, I scrapped that idea and decided to practice my chain-plying (aka Navajo-plying):

OMGWTF, why is this technique so difficult for me?! I finally, FINALLY ended up with this tiny little amount of chain-plied yarn with which I am somewhat happy. I like the way the colors  came together, at least. It’s way over-twisted and broke in a couple of places. What a pain.

So, of course, I am now spinning up another bobbin of BFL and I’m going to Try. It. Again.

And there you have it — the tour is over. No prizes won by me, but I spun every single day and I (sorta) learned new things (which need lots of practice). Need more wool…

P.S. This is way better than last year when I joined the rookie team and started to spin this:

… and then never went back to the group after day 2. Heh.

We found a new home for our rooster yesterday. He’s very vocal and it was bothering our neighbors, and we’re not supposed to have a rooster anyway. He’s gone from being the king of our big, sunny yard to being at the bottom of the rooster pecking order now that he lives with an older, bigger, Barred Rock rooster. The two of them have a larger flock to split. I know he’ll be okay, but I still feel sad about it & I’m going to miss him.

About four weeks ago, one of our hens broke her foot. We were using a recycled fence board as the ramp into the coop, and it had a split in it. She got her foot caught at the top of the ramp and gravity did the rest. (The board has been patched!) We got her put into a splint and isolated her for three weeks. I’m thinking maybe that was a mistake — we should have splinted her and let her stay out with the flock, because now she’s getting picked on by the head hen. (I’ve started calling the head hen “Aunt March” in my mind.) Broken Claw has been out in her own little run in the yard now for about a week, and at night we put her into a medium sized dog crate & put her in the coop. She seems to like the crate at night, but we really want her to be mixed back in with the other hens now.

The chickens are 19 weeks old today.

Love the morning light in our kitchen.

Marcus:

Miley:

Hellooooo! Wow, going back to work last week really put a crimp in my spinning time. The noive! Well, I guess the job helps pay for more fiber to spin, so… yay, job!

So, yeah, I didn’t finish much this week, but it was still a good week and I spun every single day!

Day 10 (July 13)

Technically a day of rest, I still spun a little. I finished plying the Wensleydale that I posted last time (the purple at the end of the last post). It’s all right. Very, very purple. No photo of the finished skein yet.

Day 11 (July 14)

I taught myself how to use a drop spindle! Looking at photos of what others can do with drop spindles really inspired me to try it again. Before I learned on a wheel, I tried using a cheapie bottom-whorl spindle and I hated it. Just never got the hang of it. This time, I got a well-made top-whorl spindle and caught on right away. I certainly have a lot of practice ahead of me before I make nice yarn, but still…! The fiber in this photo is Corriedale from Dicentra Designs.

Day 12-16 (July 15-19)

I kept working on the teal fiber from Sporfarm — a little bit all week — and just finished the second bobbin on Sunday (day 16). It’s pretty, but it’s just not keeping my attention. I thought I might try to ply it with some beads on a thread, but I don’t know…

Here’s the same photo from last week.

Day 15-16 (July 18-19)

More on the drop spindle! I started to feel that I was muddying up the colors in the corriedale, so I wound that off and pulled out some merino/alpaca/shetland blend from Lavender Sheep. Please ignore my very messy winding technique… it’s about all I can do to just keep a twist going and not break the yarn and, and, and! Neater winding will have to come later.

So, there’s the end of week 2! There’s a suggestion that we challenge ourselves on Wednesday as that’s the day of the  Tour de France’s densest mountain stage with 5 mountain passes. Hmmmm, maybe by then I can try to ply on this drop spindle. That should be challenging enough!

So, I’m participating in this challenge called “Tour de Fleece” — the idea is to spin every day of the Tour de France & share progress. There are awesome prizes, too, but I doubt I will win anything unless it’s in the random drawing. The TdF runs from July 4-26 with resting days July 13 & July 20 (just like the real Tour). I was actually feeling it a little bit in my calves yesterday… couldn’t believe it.

Here’s my progress for week 1:

Day 1 (July 4)

Spun in public in the morning at the Corvallis Artisan’s Market. That was fun, I’d like to go join those ladies in their booth again sometime. I started spinning the New Hue Handspuns, merino/angora that I got at Black Sheep Gathering.

Days 2 – 4 (July 5-7)

I set aside the singles from day 1 and spun this 100% Tussah silk that I found at the Rose & Ram knit shop in Independence. This is a gift for someone… I hope they like it. It is most definitely not perfect. In fact, I broke the strand a couple of times, so there are two knots. Boo.

Days 5-7 (July 8-10)

Started in on this superwash Merino from I’Did’A'Twist & spun two bobbins of singles to ply together. LOVE the color:

On day 7, I also spun a little more of the fiber I started on day 1.

Day 8  (July 11)

Done plying! Very happy with this.

I also spun the bobbin on the right in this photo. That lovely plummy-purple comes from Bellwether Wool & I’m pretty sure it’s a Wensleydale/Mohair blend. (I’d spun the other one a while ago — it’s from a batt I put together myself on my drum carder.)

And then plied those together — the result is just okay. The blending in the single from my carded batt really doesn’t show up, it’s just overwhelmed by the solid color of the Wensleydale.

Day 9 (July 12)

Yesterday I started on this & got one bobbin of singles done. This is a Shetland/Merino blend from Sporfarm:

I feel like I want to make a 3-ply out of this and use a thin midnight-blue velvet ribbon for the 3rd ply. But I can’t decide if that would actually look good or not…

So, there’s week 1. Back next week with another update!

I’m participating in a swap on Ravelry, where I send a package of yarny stuff off to one person, and someone else sends me something. I think there are almost 150 people participating… I’m glad I didn’t have the idea and then have to organize it! Our theme is “shop local”. SO EASY to do here… I already purchased a few things at BSG and am going to finish up this weekend.

I received my package on Saturday, all the way from London! One of the gifts inside was 2 oz. of fiber made of a blend of recycled plastic bottle caps & rouge de l’ouest from Moonspinning. I’ve never spun with anything like it. I decided I needed to make a deliberate art yarn.

Here is my end result. About 82 yards:

The fiber itself was very lumpy and full of little bits of fluff. I kind of let it do its own thing while spinning, then I plied it with a heavy blue thread and a metallic white thread. The image above can be clicked to see a larger photo with more detail.

Now what to do with it? Thinking of making a small pillow with this as the front and a solid knit back… maybe in red?

A series from the front yard: