Pick, Card, Spin, Repeat

February project goal: get the fleece from my aunt's sheep all spun, so I can knit the baby sweater she wants for her son's firstborn. This is going to be a job. Part is still white, part is already dyed. The white is going first. I got the picking done, and filled a bag with it, now I've started on the carding and spinning. I figure as long as I'm spinning it, I might as well spin all of it, not just what I think I need for the sweater.

Based on how fast the level in the bag is going down as I card, I figure it'll be 7-8 skeins of white total. (There may be a few darker hairs in the white, though, since someone has decided she likes to help keep the fluff from escaping while I card.)

Then will come the fun of the coloured stuff! I figure by then I will be happy to spin something not white, so royal blue and taupe will be a treat.

Summer To Fall

The last of summer is speeding by already. All the signs are here that fall is on the way. Cooler mornings, geese flying overhead, asters and chrysanthemums blooming, and a few early leaves turning. In the veg garden the tomatoes are ripening (there will be bruschetta this weekend!), and I took enough beets and onions out last weekend to put up nine jars of pickles.

Work has slowed down a little, but there's still plenty going on. Last week (yeah, in that heat wave)  we had three of us out to an all-day job, clearing a massive set of stone terraces and steps on a waterfront property. The owner wanted some of the wildflowers left but the massive stuff and the bad stuff (like burdock and nettle and weed trees) gone. We put a good dent in it, but it will take another day's work at least to do it all. And thank goodness he had a burn pile, because that was so much easier than bagging it all - we got the pile to the point where it was six feet tall and at least twice that long. It felt at times like we were clearing Mayan ruins, and we should have had pith helmets and machetes. Yesterday we started another bigger job which will continue Monday - tidying up a property that I don't think has had much care in a year or two, but needs to get to a decent point, after which we will be doing regular maintenance. It's an older house and gardens, and definitely has potential, but some plants, like the day lilies and hydrangeas, have sort of started taking over - I think about 70% of the space is orange day lilies at the moment.

I'm still trying to finish re-skeining all the dyed yarn from the summer's batches. The bag of things to re-skein is slowly emptying (most of what's left in there is pastel shades of alpaca), and the box of things to label is slowly filling.

Only three weeks until the WoolGathering and Havelock Fair, and things need to be labeled and packed, and I'd like to do a bit more spinning and knitting if possible. Just finished a pair of fingerless mitts that are definitely seasonal, though!

The main reason the re-skeining goes slowly is HRH Julia. Standard session goes like this: I have the swift and the reel set up on the dining table, which is pretty much the most convenient spot in the place for me, and start working, then she decides after I get set up that she needs to stretch out right there also. So I shift the reel out of her way, she rolls over and gets whacked with it,

I move her over, she gets grouchy and comments that she's trying to sleep and I'm in her way. I reply that Temptations don't grow on trees and someone needs to buy them for her. I get a little more work done before she rolls over in the way of the reel again, I get up and go do something else, then several minutes later she gets bored and wanders off elsewhere. I go back to re-skeining, and try to get as much done as I can before the next round of need-to-nap-on-the-table-now-plz. Which is where I'm headed now, since the table's free for now...

Ticking Things Off The List

It's always nice to feel progress is being made. I keep feeling like things aren't getting done as fast as I'd like, but once I started adding up the last few weeks, it's not so bad.

All three pairs of socks for the cousins are now done, blocked, labeled, and wrapped up, ready to pass along.

And there is a pair of mittens and a pair of fingerless mitts done and ready to bring to Jo at the Ranch the next time I go. Right now I'm working on a pair of baby socks to add to that pile, and they go fast enough that they should be done by tomorrow.

I finally got the yarn on the wheel finished and plied - it's cormo that I dyed with bedstraw, walnut, and indigo. Not sure I like the texture of the wool, but we shall see how it is after washing. 

No thanks to the Julia, who makes it very obvious she dislikes me spinning by running out and flopping down in front of the wheel when I'm trying to use it. 

At least this time she was far enough from the wheel that I could work - sometimes she's right against the wheel like a hit-and-run accident, so I have to stop. Well, she won't be getting away with it for the next little while. Jo's cria rovings are the next thing to spin, and there's a lot of it. Probably close to a kilo. I'm glad it spins easily, but it will still take a while.

New Yarn Going Up and Cat Antics

About half the yarn from the past week's dyeing is dry now, and I've started to do the re-skeining. That's usually the final step for a few reasons. For one, after having me dipping and rinsing and turning it on the drying rack, most of the skeins are not precisely tidy anymore. Re-skeining at a different length from the original skein, so the colors are more mixed up, I find also gives a notion of how the yarn will look in a project, and what the dominant color/effect will be. And last but not trivial, for the indigo-dyed skeins especially, I get a chance to see whether the color is going to crock (rub off) significantly.

Light's half-decent, so I got a couple skeins of sock yarn photographed this afternoon, and put the first one up on Etsy. The rest will get added gradually over the next few weeks, minus anything that sells this weekend.

This is the Foxglove colorway.

And this is Strawberry Swirl, going up tomorrow.

Longer day of class today, including 1.5 hours on study habits and student success...my pillow top is coming along nicely. Ginger provided an extremely apt illustration by wandering into the classroom and along the tops of the desks looking for pets (and getting them) while the teacher was talking about managing distractions during studying. Who says cats don't understand English?

Back to Reality, and Cats are Way Too Smart

Job interview tomorrow. I have to get my brain out of it's fibre and color rut and start thinking about things like polymerase chain reactions, and decide what in my wardrobe looks presentable. Supposed to be miserable weather also.

Julia (the cat) has been waking me up at 5 or 5:30 every morning now it's getting light earlier. I refuse to get up until 6, but she runs around the apartment, cries, jumps in and out of the window, and comes to my room every 10 minutes and tries scratching the (antique) bureau to get my attention, then runs away - not when I scold her, but when I show signs of getting out of bed to smack her for it. Tape, sticky side out, or splashing her with water has worked, but briefly, and I'm not keeping tape on the bureau permanently.

Last night, I filled a cup with water, put it on the bedside table, and angled the door so I had a clear shot at where she goes for the bureau. Apparently, the threat was sufficient - I woke up to the alarm for the first time in over a week, with the cat sleeping beside me, despite the fact that it was sunny out. No early morning crying, races, or bureau attack. Huh.