Comfort Fibre

It is Saturday, and I'm so glad. It hasn't been one of my best weeks at work, and finished with a major screw-up Friday afternoon, and a migraine triggered by sun and stress. Suffice it to say I went to get changed out of my work gear when I came home, and unconsciously started getting PJs out rather than pants - apparently my brain just wanted the day to be over already.

So I snuggled on the couch with a movie, had chips and only chips for supper, wound wool, and started a shawl. Serious fibre therapy needed this weekend, especially since the cat is still at the parents' - she was potentially supposed to get returned today, but looks like she's been avoiding capture again. So I figure I will see her next weekend - going down to the parents' and bringing stuff to sell at the local Corn Festival's craft sale.

The socks I was working on are done and blocking, so the shawl is my new knitting project. Onion and indigo-dyed lace weight wool, planning a triangle with gold accent stripes on a green body, and a lace edge.

I have the grey Jacob skeins finished from my Tour de Fleece spinning, and washed them along with 10 other skeins of handspun, last night.

During the week, though, I only got a little tiny bit more spinning done, of the Rideau Arcott from my cousins.

And I should be working on that, but I really want a wee break from the undyed stuff. So I broke out a braid of cochineal and onion merino roving dyed a while back -

And got about a quarter of it spun and navaho-plied this morning. Man, the spinning goes so much faster when you don't have to stop and pick out bits of hay and nupps all the time!

While The Cat's Away...

Last Sunday, about to leave the parents', and we found the cat had disappeared while we were having supper. Didn't come when called, couldn't be found in any of the places we could search in a reasonable amount of time. (There's 60 acres of space for her to hunt in, and most of it's bush filled with mosquitos. Not practical to turn every stone searching.) And I had to go, in order to get a reasonable amount of sleep before work the next day. So Julia is having her summer vacation, and apparently enjoying herself - report says she comes in for two bites of food a couple times a day, and spends the rest of the time outside.

Until she comes back here, I get a bit of a vacation too. It's awfully quiet, but on the other hand, I have a little extra free time. And the Tour de France/Tour de Fleece starts today.

I'm not playing officially this year, really. I know I won't have time to spin every day, and I didn't sign up for any teams. But I've got some stuff I want to finish, and this is a good excuse. So I took a picture of my start stash, like everyone does.

The dark grey and grey-black are Jacob fleece, which I'm spinning on my old wheel. The light grey and white of the same fleece are done (see the skeins in the picture), so I'm looking forward to having it all spun. Not a huge quantity, 30 or 40 grams of each, or about a skein, but a nice soft texture. The bag of carded fleece is a bunch of my cousins' fine stuff, probably a Rideau Arcott or cross, about 4 skeins' worth, that I picked and carded last weekend. Because summer and dyeing season are upon us, and I want some stuff ready to dye soon!

The only other thing I've got on the go right now is the second pair of scrap socks for Caroline. First one is done, and the second one started - knitting during travel time really adds up! I like the way they're coming out - may use the same notion of shaded triangles again with some of the scraps I have from Johanne's stuff.  

Fluff and Stuff

Too bloody hot out there - so glad I'm not out working today. Instead, I'm out at the parents' for the weekend, in the country. Granted, I did go out and weed the dye garden after breakfast, and cut back the madder and the bedstraw - they were flopping all over the path, and the bedstraw was in flower, and I don't want it re-seeding all over the place - but right now, I'm staying in. Even the porch in the shade is on the warm side; I was picking fleece out there, but have given up and moved that in also.

And if you really want a picture that will make you sweat, this morning I finished the alpaca gloves I was working on, and got them blocked. They're nearly dry now.

This year's shipment of chicks arrived last week, including a few of different breeds and colours that will be kept for laying hens.

One of them, a Barred Rock chick, is a little smaller than the others, and she wasn't very lively this morning, and looked like she was panting, so we brought her in to keep an eye on her and keep her from being squashed or trampled. She's perkier now, and is back with the rest (she was feeling lonely, and making plenty of noise to let us know that), but we're keeping an eye on her, since she's still panting and not running about as much as the others. Hopefully she's going to be OK. She's very cute, and has a bit of an owl or a penguin colouring right now, dark on top and a creamy belly.

Wet

So...has anyone noticed it's a little wet out today? I sure did, because I was out working in it. And after the four-hour job my co-worker and I had this morning, (during which we got soaked, rain jacket and all), we bargained for a half-day off. It's not good to be in gardens, compacting the soil, on such a wet day anyway. We'll have to work our asses off for the rest of the week to make up for lost time - but at least said asses will probably be dry apart from the sweat. Right now every item of clothing I had on this morning, from undies to rain jacket, is hanging up drying, and my boots are under the fan, and stuffed with newspaper, which will get changed a few times tonight, to help dry out the insides. I need them wearably dry for tomorrow - and steel-toed boots can't readily be tossed in the clothes-dryer.

Ah, well. Now I'm dry, it's nice to have the afternoon off. With cocoa and popcorn for a belated lunch, plans to make chocolate chip cookies later for a work BBQ tomorrow, and a chance to sit on the couch and knit on some gloves-in-progress, and no need to go water the plants outside!

New Toy and Scrap Socks

So...both fibre and garden content today. For those who couldn't care less about garden stuff, here's the pic I promised of the scrap socks I'm knitting.

Caroline wanted neutral to warm colours, so this is just a bit of everything I had partial balls of that looked like it might fit the colour scheme. She even gets four colours that are natural-dyed. The yellow ochre for rib, heel and toe is dyed with rose canes, the black/grey variegated is logwood, the warm brown is walnut and coreopsis, and the dark olive-brown (in the center of the stars above the heel and the ochre/olive band near the toe) was originally dark blue, which I overdyed with onion.

I am digging the socks, and my mother would steal them except for the fact that they're the wrong size and have Caroline's name knitted in. So I expect there'll be another pair of these in my future.

And for the garden content, I just have to share a picture of my new toy. The head gardener at work introduced us to it, and it does almost everything. Officially it is I think a big grip garden knife. She refers to it simply as 'the tool', which is appropriate, since you can do the week's maintenance on a garden bed with only this in hand.

Sturdy as can be. Works as a trowel, a dandelion/taproot weed extractor (it's been super for lawn weeding), soil cultivator, and slices roots and stems. All those edges and teeth are sharp, though, so definitely keep out of reach of children. I did my garden weeding with it yesterday and it went really fast. Sweep under the surface to slice weed roots and loosen soil, use the tip for any stubborn taproots, and the serrated edge for any stems and branches on perennials that need removal, or root balls that need sawing apart. 10$ at Home Depot if you want one of your own.

Out this morning transplanting eggplants, cucs, and tomatoes, lavender and basil. I know it's a horribly hot day to do it (28C high predicted, and before 10am it was already hot to work outside in a t-shirt). But I only have time on weekends, so today it is. I gave everything a good watering, and shade cloth or a screen of some sort for the afternoon sun, so hopefully they will be all right.

Summer's First Dyeing

A gorgeous weekend, and one I get to spend out at the parents', having fun. Yesterday there was a trip to the local greenhouse to ogle their stocks (and their cat), then a run to Johanne's with my latest knits. The crescent shawl I was working on turned out nicely, and I had also finished a pair of short-row fingerless mitts (the Mixed Wave mitts by Sybil R).

Right now I've got a pair of socks on the needles, scrappy and in stranded patterns, for my brother's landlady. She loved the ones Mom made her daughter for Christmas, and has commissioned two pairs for herself, so we're each making a pair. No pics yet, but I promise there will be.

Today we have had some fun in the dye pots. One of the local weaving guild members who was in the dye course I taught last year wanted to dye some yarn for a weaving project, so she and a friend and her husband all came over. He took off for a nice rural bike ride, and the ladies and I ran an indigo pot. I made the pot fairly strong, and cooked up a batch of fresh greenweed for myself as well, then dyed a bunch of fleece after the yarn was done. Now the clothesline is cheerful with fleece in aqua from the greenweed overdyed with indigo, and sapphire from the indigo alone. I can't wait to see how they look as yarn.

Yes, There Is Knitting

Life definitely feels like it's been all about the gardening - personal and work - the last month or so. And the days are long enough that my practical knitting time is pretty much the same as my bus time, plus some time on weekends, or evenings if I'm not nodding off over my tea. You will have to forgive the widely-spaced blog entries for the summer; my daily internet time on workdays is just about long enough to read e-mail and check the weather. But there is knitting going on, if rather more slowly than I'm used to.

I had a pair of navy socks for the boyfriend of the girl I was tutoring. Size 13. They're done and delivered.

Then I went back to knitting for Johanne's stock. She had some new colours in the last batch, and I fell in love with a silver-grey fingering in 80/20 alpaca and wool. There is now a pair of gloves done in that, with little 2-stitch cables up the back of the hand, and I'm working on a crescent-shaped shawl with a lace border in the same yarn.

I'm really loving the crescent shawls right now, and other shawls that are shallower proportions than the standard triangle, so I suspect I will be playing with more of them. The border on this one is a bit of a modified version of one of the lace patterns in Barbara Walker's Second Treasury - one repeat plus part of a second, with decreases in the last couple rows of lace to start the shaping.

I do have to get out and garden tomorrow (ye gads, the weeds are popping up fast!), but it's a bit cool today, and I have a four-day weekend, thanks to the combination of a rainy Friday and a holiday Monday, so I decided today is for the fibre projects. Maybe by Monday, I will have the finished shawl to show off before I drop into the oblivion of another work week.