Fiber Follies

Well…yarn barf, that is. And I ain’t showing pictures either.

Unlike actual factual barf, yarn barf is pretty. And it doesn’t stink. But I still ain’t showing it. Suffice it to say that the barf resulted from a bobbin’s indigestion. And my own impatience. Hey, I can still use the fiber, so maybe it won’t be yarn but it will be…something.

Precious Child and I went off to the farm again. She mentioned wanting a custom dyed fiber~Bob had it in the dye vat in minutes. It came out gorgeous. A rosy pinky red, greens, brown, and beautiful. She was very happy with it.  So was Bob.  He made another vat with some similar colours and some remarkable others, coming out with lots of teal along with everything  else.  Really nice.

Naturally I came home with more fiber. From the top, it’s a dyed Wensleydale in several colours with a mainly green cast; suri alpaca/kid mohair in silver; cranberry silk; and merino/tencel in blues with strips of red and grey.

Bob most valiantly tried to prevent me from buying more, as I’d so requested at the previous visit. sigh. I also bought a wonderful covered basket to keep some of the fiber in. And Bob gave me the nice soft ball of suri alpaca and kid mohair. It’s so darn soft I almost can’t feel it. I watched as he ran it through the carder, then he showed me how to make roving of it. Neat process. He handed me that lovely ball, and I can’t wait to make something of it. Right now I like to haul it out and fondle it a bit.

Oh, the purchases: a bit of dyed Wensleydale had caught my attention on an earlier visit. It came home with me.  The Wensleydale is coarser than what I’ve been spinning, but its colours are fantastic. I hope to weave it once it’s all spun. I have some undyed Wensleydale and might try to weave it all up in a plaid. Who knows what it could become, but my first home made plaid? The notion flutters me shriveled little heart.

I’d sent Precious to the shop to find a bit of silk. I want a nice contrast to ply with the gift silk, and she has the best eye. She returned with that beautiful cranberry silk. That ought to make the colours pop, eh?

And of course, that lovely blue merino/tencel. I just plain enjoy spinning this blend. And these colours are satisfying. By the time I get to start in on this, maybe I’ll be accomplished enough to make it into a sock yarn?

Meanwhile, I’m half done spinning the Wensleydale, and nearly finished the merino/tencel that Precious bought me from Susan’s Spinning Bunny. The colours got more intense in the middle of the ball. I’m not sure how I’ll ply this, probably Navajo ply although a cabled ply would look pretty nifty.

Then it’s back to the llama, and on to the cranberry silk, and who knows what else? Oh yeah, the blue and white batts, which should make enough yarn for a sizeable project.

I’ve finished knitting another pair of socks, not bad for me, two pairs knitted in thirteen months (I do work for a living, and was also busy knitting on other things. So there.). By the end of summer I plan to have finished off all the UFOs and started a pile of new projects.

Riiiiiiiiiiiight.

Five months. Five months of occasional hell. I naively started my son-in-law’s birthday gift about a week before his early January birthday. January. Early January. I knit the last stitch on 21 May. May. That’s over five months of knitting. Five months to knit a scarf. My first attempt at Fair Isle, of course I couldn’t be bothered with a practise piece, I had to decide right then that my youngun’s husband would have a nice Fair Isle scarf for his birthday. Didn’t stop to consider that anything knitted on 3.75mm needles would likely take a while. Never gave thought to the poor old joints, that De Cuervain’s and a very long scarf done up in even the simplest Fair Isle would take nearly the rest of my life. No. I breezily made up a pattern, striped in an ascending and descending Fibonacci sequence repeated through its length, with the FI pattern heavily distributed on one end tapering off to just stripes at the other end.

Five months.

But isn’t it handsome?

And now that I’ve managed to uncurl my fingers and drop the little needles, I’m digging right in to a few new projects. Using much larger needles. Ball-bat size needles. And big yarn. Tow line would do…

Saturday was the day to meet bluecanary (from the knittyboard) at Winderwood. She’d planned to meet her dad for brekkie at Bob & Ruth’s in Naples, just a few minutes away. Made sense to trot over to the farm afterward.

Of course I was late! Suffice it to say that Saturday was the Day of the Driving Dead. No matter which road taken I’d get stuck behind a poky puppy snailing along at not quite 30 in a 55. Doesn’t help that I’m horribly impatient. Doesn’t help that these people just happened to be in front of me in no-passing zones. So, nothing to do but slow down and hope the guys wouldn’t file a Missing Person report.

Thankfully, bluecanary saw the farm and not my vehicle so drove past and on round the valley. She returned a few minutes after I’d finally arrived.

I couldn’t wait to get her into the shop! First of course, she had to meet Bob & Patrick. I think they clicked right off, instant conversation from all sides. As they talked, I checked out the kittens. Here’s the other mamacat. She’s uneasy about people peeking in at her babies so usually hides them.

I did manage to see one. Here’s the little bugger:

Eyes just newly opened, the little thing looks so delicate!

Original Mamacat’s kittens are all over the place. They’re exploring and climbing and wrestling and not still long enough for pictures.

We had a look at the sheep and goats. As usual, they stroll to the fence to see if we bring goodies. No goodies so they soon lost interest.

Now it was time to shop. The shop isn’t gigantic but it is quite large and filled to the rafters with great stuff. Such a big variety of fibers! Oh, the colours! Spinning wheels and spindles and looms, oh my! Baskets and magazines and books, bobbins and and and… well, just about anything you can think of for happy fiber life. Bluecanary enjoyed it. she knew right off what ingeo is, see, here she’s telling me about it:

Patrick had to run off on errands so told us to haul our stuff to the house for Bob to tot up. Here’s bluecanary with her choices:

Including an inkle loom, a lazy kate and fiber, I think she bought that ingeo as well as good old hand-dyed merino, and what’s that small packet of brown stuff? Must be something lovely and soft and unusual. See how happy she is with her choices!

Now it was time to enjoy a cuppa and recuperate from the shopping. Nice to relax against a backdrop of dyed stuff drying by the wood stove. Bob had dyed more silk-see the true yellow? She had a try at the Sonata and the talk and general yappy opinionated political stuff that is often heard here.

I shopped too. Mine was the usual inability to resist fibers and more bobbins. I believe I’ve now got 7 or 8 bobbins for the Sonata. And will have more. It’s fun to swap out a bobbin of this to work on a bobbin of that. I now have more llama which is strange to spin-kind of like human hair, long and heavy but makes a mighty nice yarn. And a merin/tencel blend I’ve eyed for a time. I really need to stop buying fiber and get busy spinning what I have.

Your Vocabulary Score: A

Congratulations on your multifarious vocabulary! You must be quite an erudite person.

How’s Your Vocabulary?

I just had to. But I don’t know which, if any, I got wrong. Thanks, Zuma! That was a fun one.

I enjoyed another day at Bob and Patrick’s Thursday. This required some advance planning. Firstly, I had to be sufficiently ahead in work to allow myself to catch up completely before half-past Friday. Secondly, I was picking up Precious Child, which cannot be done “on the way” as she’s twenty minutes in the other direction. So, then, if I want to get to the farm early enough to settle in a bit, I must convince Precious to get up early on her day off (”early” to her means something in a different time zone than it does for me). And I must head out reasonably early. If I go by meself, I arise at my normal time, pack the wheel and whatever fiber and knitting I want to work on, then work an hour, clean the litter pans, and get things in order for an easy dinner before leaving. And I’ll still be at the farm well before noon. When Precious Child comes, I entreat her to arise early. I pack whatever I’ll take the night before. I arise early and clean the litter pans, then rush out. And it seems that the days we both go I have a half dozen stops to make on the way so we don’t arrive til noonish.

Anyway. Wednesday night I spent some time spinning, then decided to pack the wheel. I zipped its bag open, turned to fold the wheel then turned back to see this:

and then this:

Now I know what to get Risky for Christmas. I got her out of the bag and the wheel in, packed some roving and a knitting project and the camera.

Thursday was a glorious sparkling day. Sunny and cool and dry. The guys were just finishing the day’s shipping when we got there. We sat on the porch a few minutes when Sadie reminded us that there were kittens to look at. Here they are in their mohair nursery:

The other mama cat has three kittens but she isn’t happy with people looking at them.

Later, we wandered about to visit the livestock:
Who all thought we bore gifts of food so came running most undignified to the fence.

Suckers.

I did get some spinning in. Precious plyed my merino/tencel for me, and did a super nice job of it. Here it is before I set the twist.
Bright and cheerful isn’t it? I really like the way it’s turned out.

Bob had dyed some silk top. I was crazy about the colours, all goldy-antiquey-yellow with well- saturated blops of purple and pinks and blues and greens. Absolutely gorgeous.

He sent me home with more than 50g. I was all about admiring it and petting it and naming it George then decided to spin it instead. It’s my first try at spinning silk. I’ve heard it’s a bit tough to spin but I’m not having any more troubles with it than I would with anything else. Probably since I’m so new at spinning, I cannot distinguish between difficulty levels from merino to silk. And it spins very pretty, quite different from what I’d expected.
I’m also spinning two more batts Bob made from the aqua merino and the white wools that I got off-site. He makes them into beautiful batts that spin into beautiful singles.

And, since I’m bobbin-crazy, I’m filling yet another bobbin with a wool that Precious Child bought for me from Susan’s Spinning Bunny at the fiber festival three weeks ago. I don’t remember what wools it is, it’s super soft and slippy slinky like merino. The colourway is called Roses for You and I just plain love it. It’s spinning up pretty too.
There. That’s all for now. Back to the work for me…

Oh. Yeah. The post title. It’s Risky’s birthday so I’m letting her get away with more than the usual nonsense. She wanted to stroll across the keyboard when I started the post. If you wonder what it might mean you’ll have to ask her. I’d sooner not know. Happy Birthday Risky Malarkey O!