Wild and Wooly

Last time I did a library run, I found something I thought I really ought to read in the mystery section.

According to the synopsis on the jacket, it involves sheep who track down their shepherd's killer. And the sheep have names like Miss Maple (the flock leader) and Othello (a black ram). Somehow, it seems like something that ought to be animated a la Wallace and Gromit, and I'm looking forward to reading it.

And what's the book sitting on? A bag of wool that arrived on my doorstep this week. When a friend who knew I was a spinner mentioned she had a bag of fleece and would I like it, I said, sure, I could find a home for it, and she showed up unexpectedly the other morning. It's a bit on the coarse side, and it has some dark hairs mixed in, but it's washed and carded into roving, and I will find a use for it. It's really amazing how once people know you use/like whatever, a lot of it falls into your lap. I've got several random sheep fleeces and a llama one at the parents' waiting to be washed, and I didn't go looking for any of them. It was all, 'Oh, so-and-so mentioned that you spin. Do you want...' Maybe I should be surprised the stash isn't taking up more space than it does!

Blue Morning

...but not in a bad way. Just I noticed that dishes, breakfast, and placemat were all blue. Very co-ordinated for a Saturday morning. And it feels terribly decadent to have cake for breakfast at 10am.

The sky is also beautifully blue, so I put in a couple hours of gardening. Maybe I'll do a bit more later, get everything trimmed and tidied, and spend the evening in fiber-y pursuits with a clean conscience.

Random Notes From the StatsCan Basement

People will ask, 'how's the new job going?', and I'll say 'OK'. That doesn't really adequately describe it, though. In some ways, sitting and calling people all night isn't exactly the most interesting/stimulating job description. On the other hand, when you're actually talking to people and not just leaving messages on machines, it can range the gamut from tragic to comic to educational to...whatever.

There was the guy who described how his horse and his dog team up to hunt coons and rabbits, which was the best mental picture all night.

And the guy who is essentially out of business because he lost all his bees to the CCD or whatever that was going around, and can't afford to replace them.

And the people in the Prairies, who've had several years of drought and this year had all the backlog of rain, and fields so flooded that growing rice would be a better option than about anything else.

And the 90-year-old man who still works in the family greenhouse.

And the lady who has sheep and is also a spinner, who I would have loved to chat with, except I was working...

And the guy who commented that he figures about 150$ would be a good payment to him for the effort it takes to fill out the form. (Note it usually takes well under an hour to do the form on the phone, based on what I've been seeing. That means his hourly wage would be 10X mine.)

And the guy who manages his mother's farm, while living and working halfway across the country from her.

And the ones who refuse to participate, but who can be gotten around by calling back another time and speaking to their spouse.

It's a jungle out there. But the work is getting done. And I, for one, am looking forward to the weekend.

A Glimpse of History

I don't watch much TV, which is how I missed this (60 Minutes showed it), but someone posted the link on Ravelry, and I had to share it, for anyone who hasn't seen it. Apparently a few weeks before the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906, somebody made a film of the scene on Market Street, basically by strapping a camera to a cable car/trolley or whatever and letting it run as they covered the route. Seriously cool.

60 Minutes - 1906 San Francisco Trolley Film

Someone else on Rav did a nice job of hunting up further info, and she posted the following:

"Lots of extra historical info on this video that I found while looking this morning.

Background info on the film: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/stew/detail?entry_id=...

A high quality download option and great info in the comments, especially about why there seems to be so many cars in 1906: http://www.archive.org/details/TripDown1905

A similar film made after the earthquake, although not from a cable car as those systems were damaged in the earthquake:

http://www.archive.org/details/tmp_50168

The CBS link posted has the best version of the film (with no rolling frames.)"

Back to Work

Lovely weekend out in the country, but busy. I think we were on the go almost constantly, between berry-picking, and prep and performance of the washing/dyeing/carding/spinning session chez Johanne, and getting the incidental things done, like eating and laundry and sleeping. And getting a last bit of spinning in for the Tour de Fleece. So I did manage to spin every day, but I'm still not done the challenge fiber, so no new pics of that - I'll wait until it's plied up to show it off.
Left Monday morning, stopped to pick up fleece at a friend of Deb's and to have lunch, and got back to the city with an hour or two for me to start unpacking, pack food, and go to work. I only have one picture of the weekend, and that's Julia expressing her displeasure in the schedule and itinerary on Monday. Don't worry, she didn't spend the whole trip like that.

All the car travel, though, I did manage to finish the baby hat I was working on.

And I wound some of the yarn for Jen's sweater, cast on en route to work, so that's now officially on the needles.

Catching Up

The heat this past week or so has ripened the blueberries faster than expected, so tomorrow morning Deb T and I are off to my parents' for the weekend, in search of berries, and with a spinning/dyeing workshop thrown in for someone who wants to learn. Today before work, therefore, is getting ready to go and catching up on all the essential things that need to be done before the weekend.

The first thing I caught up with was sleep, though. Managed to sleep until 10 after getting up around 6:30 to feed the cat.

Caught up with dishes for the first time in a few days. It's too hot to cook, so at least they've been building up slowly...

Laundry packed up, check. Dyed roving drying, check. Plans for tomorrow made, check.
Need to make food, and then should have time to play with fiber before work...

Another New Project

I'm finally about ready to start the sweater I promised my friend Jen. First I had to get her onto Rav to look at options, and discuss choices and sizing, and whatnot. Yesterday I worked on getting the yarn ready to go. The yarn I have for the project is recycled cashmere yarn, courtesy of Julie's business, Fine Fiber Finds.
She had three skeins of burgundy, and a handful of white ones, so my aim was to dye the white burgundy. I picked up a couple packets of dye (commercial, sorry!) to that end.

I threw all the white skeins in the bathroom sink to soak, and set about making the dye.

Since it's commercial dye, I couldn't really use my spaghetti pot, like I do for food coloring. Or my mixing bowls. Garden buckets? The large one was in use for collecting shower water for my garden, and the cat drinks out of it. So I ended up scrubbing out and using the smaller bucket, and after a while, ended up with a spaghetti-like mass of colored yarn (and slightly pink hands - I did use gloves, but there was a leak issue).

Unfortunately, not as much dye stuck as I would have liked. Possible this may have been because I couldn't simmer the yarn as instructed, since the bucket was plastic. I used hot water, perhaps not hot enough/long enough. Still, the yarn is a nice sort of raspberry color.

And knit in a swatch with the burgundy, it's hopefully not too bad. The fabric texture is good also, so I will go from there.

I had plenty of color left in the bath, it seemed. So I threw in some merino/silk roving, which ended up soaking overnight, as I didn't really want to rinse it last night when I got home from work. That's a slightly redder shade than the yarn, and is currently dripping off in my bathtub, with the fan going to try to remove the extra humidity. Sticky outside and hot, sticky inside, but cooler, a good day to stay in and play with fiber.