much time doing nice things

I haven’t even been able to bring myself to write, since I’ve been doing all these other things around here that I like so  much. yesterday was pretty much the perfect day.

first, I got up with the sun, made coffee and tackled finishing off the bobbin I’d started the night before, and then plying it.

easier said than done, four hours later!  first the plying ball wouldn’t cooperate, then everything got tangled and I spent a lot of time getting it untangled. 

but the spinning looked better than it ever had before and I didn’t want to lose it.

sure enough, around 11 I emerged from the struggle with 120 yds at 16wpi, right on target. it was still too squiggly in places, which I don’t really know why. especially since I have no way of knowing how much twist I lost in the untangling part, but a lot.  I had spun it with 3 twist treadles to one release treadle (is there a notation for that?) but I had to untangle so much, who knew? still, when I put it on the niddy it came to 120 yds and when I took it off, magically  it was balanced, somehow, and I adjourned to a gorgonzola omelet and read for the rest of the afternoon.

when it dried I had this:

16wpi

120 yds

so my first two real skeins were 100 yds of corriedale at 12 wpi (top) and 120 yds at 16 wpi. the Tour de Fleece starts on sunday and runs through the sunday I leave here, so what I do before then will be practice for spinning up the café au lait fiber I got for daedalus.  i’m thinking it just might work--even considering the carving class I’m taking right in the middle!

I fired ash up again when the guys came out for chores and spun another bobbin until the fireflies came.  then I put that one on the kate, and will do another bobbin this evening so that tomorrow morning I can make two plying balls and see how they ply.  (still don’t want to chance the disaster that was plying from the kate the last time I tried that!  streamers all over the place!)

spinning until the fireflies come out is just about the most perfect thing I can think of these days.  so I have been doing that and not writing about it.  today I slept in, possibly a result of the benadryl I took at 4am, and then made coffee and futzed around here until I went down to town around 11. stopped by silva gallery on the way in, where I gave the last two pairs of soxes to pam and we chatted, mostly about local drama I didn’t really need to get involved in much. then I went to yarn circle, where that pam, karen, and becky walker were having lunch, but I barged right in anyway.  did a little chatting and a little knitting, a little email checking, and then left to do errands, which consisted of mailing my little/middle checks to the bank and grocery shopping.

and that was today, until I came home and put everything up and made myself some mid-afternoon spaghetti with tomato basil sauce and ingles’ barbequed chicken legs, and had a glass of pinot noir. and here I am. Michael gave me the first cuke of the season, and I bought some tomatoes and a vidalia from the stand.  I have peaches and blueberries and a big seedless watermelon.  I have hot dogs and apple pie and chips for the upcoming holiday.  And I have my book, which I’ve finally gotten into (Anathem, which took about 200 pages and well over a year to engage me, but has finally done so, and i have some 600 left :) what more could one ask?

Flickr Tags: brigadoon,spinning

plying

this morning’s work produced about 200 yds of corriedale singles wound into a plying ball and then 2plied

making just over 100 yds on the niddy noddy.

 

I think I’m getting closer, anyway.  I want even fingering in the long run…

I really had hoped to buy some spinning lessons from martha while I’m here, but pam said she’s going to france for Annie fain’s wedding!  so I guess I’ll remain self-taught (except for spinning some with pam at yarn circle, of course.:)  I sent for the aldon amos book from interweave and asked them to send it here, so that will give me something to study, as well as practice. this is my starting place.

tour de fleece. here I come!

eta:  I skeined that up and it came out still 12 wpi! so I saddled ash up again in the evening and spun while the guys were doing their evening chores, out in the garden and over at the barn.  what a lovely evening; I spun until the boys went away and then the fireflies came out.

 

Flickr Tags: spinning,brigadoon,tour de fleece

first rivercane spinning

at last!

   

but then brigadoon is the perfect place…

Flickr Tags: brigadoon,spinning

a very frustrating weekend

very. no pictures even.

i couldn’t make ash spin anything at all yesterday and got so frustrated i felt like i was going to have a coronary.  either it disappeared up  the pipe or just fell apart when i tried to pull it back out, and it was the same nz mixed top i  did so well with last week.  and then, regarding that, i’d asked a simple question on one of the ravelry forums and got back such insultingly condescending, idiotic ‘answers”—to the effect of who did i think i was, anyway?-- that i swore i would never do THAT again.  so now i have nowhere to go. spinning was a total bust..

so today i tried some stripping of bonnie and got a bit more started.  it’s looking increasingly like i’m just going to oil this wheel as the wood and its and subsequent depravations are too good to lose.  then  i managed to lose the  150 year old norwegian hand wrought hardware i’d been soaking in wd40 for a week. i simply have no idea where i put it this morning when i took it out of the dish.  i even went through the garbage i already had taken out to the dumpster and then this evening, in total desperation, brought back in today’s three bags, back to the porch (in a bigger bag) just in case i’d somehow missed it.  i have no idea where i could have put it.  but i figure if i don’t get  rid of the garbage, at least it can’t go anywhere right?

a VEry fRUSTRAting weekend.  at least i got the leftover bit of leather in the rear maiden out.  had to gouge out the peg that was holding it in, with a nail, and it didn’t help the surrounding wood,which already looked somewhat disintegrated.  started a triangular shawl from the bits of spinning i’ve done before.  it looks like crap of course, but i figure i’ll just keep making it until it doesn’t look like crap.  it even got so bad yesterday i briefly posted on ravelry somewhere that i quit.  but i don’t quit, of course.  i’m hoping that several weeks on my own in brigadoon will get something happening—maybe martha will be in town and i can buy an hour of spinning lesson with her, and that will help.  something has to.