A Wonderful Weekend

I am late to the party, and the important things have been said by others. (Apologies to any posts I missed). Oh, and I took no pictures. Not a single one.

But I am here to tell you that Cummington was a blast. It's just the right size for a first-ever fiber festival--large enough to entertain, but not so large that it's overwhelming. At first when I misplaced my car-mates Claudia and Laurie, I worried that they wouldn't be able to find me when they wanted to leave. A few minutes later, I realized that wouldn't be a problem. You can't lose anyone for long at Cummington.

Unless, of course, you're looking for Kellee and Elisa. We lost them all day Saturday! Turns out their car accidentally drove to Webs instead of Cummington. Thank goodness the car eventually found its way to the "blegger" at Cate's house, or we might have lost them all weekend.

As Cate noted, any fiber gathering is notable for the friends you see there. Yarn and wool are nice, don't get me wrong, but it's the people who make it all special. Thanks to Katy for bringing us together for lunch on Saturday, and to Cate for bringing us together for dinner.

As for stash enhancement, I really didn't buy much. I have so much already I can probably coast 'til Rhinebeck. I did buy some of the stinkiest patchouli soap--I mean, I love patchouli as much as the next aging hippie, but the whole second story of my house smells now. When I showed Maryse the yarn I bought, she asked me whether I bought patchouli soap too, because she could smell it on the yarn. It's a wonder Laurie didn't get a headache riding in the back seat with that stuff.

And I bought a shawl pin, and a niddy noddy (that I should have measured first, as it's not 18 inches long, a pet peeve of mine. Not that I know how to use it anyway, maybe there's a secret to using a 15.5" niddy noddy). And some yarn:

for a possible Icelandic shawl someday. Oh, Hyrna, knock knock...

Clearing My Desk

I'm very excited about going to Cummington this weekend. It's my very first fiber festival ever. I'm planning on restraining myself, money-wise, but have a few key purchases I'd like to make:
*a niddy-noddy
*a lazy kate
I was hoping to buy a Grafton Fibers batt to match the batt on the right in this photo,

but have been informed they won't be in Cummington this weekend.

I've been looking forward to this weekend for a long time. While all of you have been going to fiber festivals willy-nilly, I've been trapped at home. So this week, I went on a pre-Cummington clearing-my-desk binge, finishing up projects right and left.

First, on Monday and Tuesday, I made new "curtains" for the potting bench in the breezeway, and pillowcases for the breezeway bench cushions. (The potting bench "curtains" hide all the crap that is stored on the potting bench shelf. You know those charming pictures in catalogs of terra cotta pots neatly lined up under the potting bench? Mine's not quite so quaint.)


The fabric is Amy Butler's Charm. Amy Butler is another resource I would not know about if it were not for blogland.

Then, I finished the Trellis Scarf, in all its bumblebee-striped glory:

And THEN, I plied up two skeins of the merino/silk fiber I got with my wheel. Each skein is just over 200 yards.
I got two skeins from two full bobbins (double-plied). I am hoping to get another two full bobbins out of the remaining fiber, so I might just have enough for a small sweater.

Which would be great, because the more I look at it, the more that's what I think it needs to be.

Behold, the Spring Spinning Begins!

This is why I wanted a fairly portable spinning wheel, so I could spin on the patio. Not that larger wheels are really hard to schlep the ten yards outside, but I'll be trucking this thing out here almost every day, so I'd just as soon it be as light and easy to carry as possible. So far, the Suzie is perfect.




The bag of fiber is the merino/silk blend that Toni packed my wheel in. It's fluffy and lofty and spins like a dream. This picture gives you a fairly good impression of its sort-of-mousy, silvery brown color:

I've completed one bobbin already and am working on the second. On the singles, you can see the white flecks of silk noil a little better.

See the little knob on the top of the flyer assembly? If I'm too lazy to fold my wheel up and use the handle to carry it outside, I can just loop a finger through that knob. Yeah, I know, that's pretty lazy, since all you have to do to fold the Suzie is pretty much just give it a hip-check.

I've been racking my brain to figure out what I can do with the yarn I make from this fiber. I don't expect to have enough for a sweater. I'm guessing I'll have somewhere in the ballpark of 500-600 yards of slightly roughly spun, silk-slubby, worsted weight natural brown/grey wool yarn. Maybe a vest? I don't tend to wear vests (because they don't tend to be flattering) but maybe there's an attractive vest pattern out there? Or maybe a shawl. I'd probably get more wear out of a shawl.

Suggestions are welcome!

Apres le Deluge

Just like everyone else, now that the rain has stopped the dog and I have been very excited about being outside (she doesn't like to go out in the rain, either).

So this morning, we breakfasted al fresco on the patio next to Lake Sumpump.


Then we went for a long walk in the woods.


I don't usually walk this far in the morning, but I woke up early and wanted to see if the very small creek had risen much. It really hadn't, because it had spilled over its banks so much upstream


that downstream, the creek was at pretty normal levels.

Cammy (whose nickname is Scammy) took advantage of my distraction with the camera to leap into the water for her first swim of the season. She's a sly one, that dog. This is a huge NO! on our morning walks, because I don't have time to brush the resulting mats out of her fur, but it was hard to yell at a dog this happy:





Anyone want a matted, smelly dog?

Absolutely No Knitting Content Whatsoever

I could have predicted you'd have bad weather for NH S&W, because every single year we have spectacularly bad weather for my garden club's plant sale. I mean completely over the top, Cecil B. DeMille bad weather, Shelby Scott clinging to a pier for dear life bad weather. And guess why I wasn't at NH S&W? That's right, garden club plant sale Saturday.

The plant sale weather actually seems to have worsened since I took charge of the sale in 2005. Last year was a Nor'easter with 60 mph winds, rain and hail. Plants were blown over, and it was so cold we had to rotate staff so people could go inside to warm up.

And this year was a deluge. At least it was reasonably warm. That's what we kept telling ourselves: "at least it's warm, last year was so cold...." Despite the weather, we did pretty well financially. Last year we actually raised the most we've ever raised at a plant sale, and this year probably came in second. We have the sale outside the local library, and I suspect the bad weather helps us there. Rain=good day to go to the library. (The money we raise funds a scholarship for a local college-bound high school graduate).

Here are some pictures from the plant sale:



And here I am. I learned from last year and wore plenty of layers: Hot Chillys long johns under fleece, wool hat and wool gauntlets, all topped by a rain slicker. I was relatively warm all day--the chills didn't start until after the plant sale ended.


(The hub calls that my Darth Vader coat. It's two sizes too large and trails in the dirt after me like a ball gown. But it keeps me dry, head to foot).

And I scored some plant loot! I have a lot of shade, and it's hard to find plants that thrive in it. But one of my club's members has an outstanding shade garden (I mean, it's been on multiple garden tours, it's that good) and she donated some choice plants:


something called epimedium, which I am told I am going to **love** (if you G**gle "epimedium" you discover it is believed to have aphrodisiac qualities. Hmmm. Now I really just hope the deer don't eat it);


and something called a petatsites japanicas giganteus.

Oh good, I see from the link that it likes wet boggy areas. It should be in hog heaven right about now.

The Evils of Barberpoling

Here are the not-feather-and-fan socks, done:



One's shorter than the other, but I don't care. It was my first experience with short-row toes and I think they might be my favorite. I can't tell if I like them because they feel familiar (since that's how commercial sock toes are made) or if I like the way they fit your toes.

And then I was looking through my yarn stash, with the best intentions of starting another pair of socks, but I realized I needed to see how the tequila sunrise handspun yarn knit up before I started to spin up the Grafton Fibers batts I picked up at Spa. So this is the Trellis Scarf from the most recent Interweave Knits:



You probably don't remember, but rather than Navajo plying these singles (because I don't know how, and I wanted to see what would happen this way), I spun them in roughly-matching blocks of color and double-plied them. Mostly the colors matched up, but on one skein--near the end, where I was running out of one of the colors--they barberpoled more often than they matched.

And here's where we discover why so many spinners hate barberpoling. It looks so pretty on the yarn, you know? But then you knit it up and it's all muddy and gross. Here's a closeup, where you can see exactly where I attached the second, far-more-barberpoled skein.



I must learn to Navajo ply. I bought four Grafton Fibers batts at Spa, hoping for a subtly-striped sweater (medium blueish green and lighter blueish/greyish/green). I don't mind heathered, muddy colors on a scarf. But on a sweater? Disaster.

I don't regret this experiment, and before I started to run short of one color, the colors matched more often than they did not (as you can see to the left in the picture). Had I taken more care (and bought another batt), I probably could have avoided the poling altogether.

However, the other constraint with this method is that in order to avoid barberpoling, your blocks of color must be a decent size. You can only switch colors in your single after about three feet so that when you're plying it's bound to match up at some point. If you switch too quickly you've substantially narrowed the odds of your colors matching when plied (and as we see above, odds are they will miss each other entirely throughout). But the long strands of color mean that when it works, you end up with a bumblebee effect rather than a subtle, thin striping effect (again, as seen on the left: 1" of orange, 1" of yellow, etc.). I'm pretty sure you can't spin subtle, thin stripes in double ply. At least not this way.

Oh, and I know what you're all thinking: yes, I am a bad friend who hasn't finished sewing her fishie blanket yet. I just haven't felt like sewing. I know, I know. I never said I was a good person.

Lastly, in aviary news, we have a chickadee couple building a nest in a knot in one of our oak trees. I'm pretty sure this means the tree is dead, the leaves just don't know it yet. It can't be a good sign when a tiny little bird like a chickadee can peck a hole in a trunk knot big enough to build a nest in.




I believe that is Mr. Chickadee there. Mrs Chickadee spends more time inside the nest. I think the mister brings her the nest materials, and then she constructs it. At any rate, he does more flying in and out than she does (although she does some, too).

You don't think of chickadees as being particularly camouflaged until you try to take a picture of one up against an oak tree.