Further Adventures

Last night, I read a post on Ravelry from someone who has bought at least one yucky fleece before. She said that she soaks everything overnight in cold water and after one trip through a hot detergent bath and a couple of rinses, the fleece is transformed. I tried it and, sure enough, in the morning, the water in the bucket was brown and murky. After 20 minutes in the hot soapy water, there was hardly any mud at all!

I was regretting this project, thinking that I should perhaps put the whole mess in the trash, but now I have hope that I can salvage it.

UPDATE: I'm on the road! I'm spinning Mercy's fleece into bulky yarn and it's really quite nice. Here's a photo of my yarn and another showing the start of my cardigan. I'm using a Drops pattern, #109-3, which is a hoodie with Celtic ropes up the front and on the back.

Adventures in Fleece

Yesterday I received the fleece I bought last weekend off Ebay. I've really been looking forward to it, even dreaming about it, but now, having opened the box, I'm not sure why. The auction description said that the sheep, who's name is Mercy (as in, have mercy on me!) was supposed to have been coated (the sheep wear covers to protect the fleece) but I'm thinking that this guy only wore his coat on Sundays. I'm new to this fleece business but there just seems to be an awful lot of muck and other dark matter on the wool. The picture on the auction site didn't look anything like this mess--wonder why.

The top photo shows what came in the mail. Actually, the picture doesn't look that bad--it looks like something a Klingon would eat for dinner--but the reality was really very disgusting. If I didn't know that there was creamy white and silvery grey wool in there, dying to be cleaned, I'd have chucked the whole thing into the garbage.

My spinning teacher had discussed "scouring" or cleaning raw wool and I've gone online to get some more pointers. I got my lingerie bag and filled it 2/3 full with some of the best locks; the really grungy stuff went into the compost heap. I filled a drywall bucket with hot, hot water and some dish detergent and placed the bag in the bucket. Most of the directions caution strongly against touching the wet wool in any way, since Abrasion + Hot Water + Soap = Felting so I resisted the temptation to mess with it. I soaked the first bag for 30 minutes and then plunked into two hot vinegar baths to rinse. When I blotted it with a towel, there was still a fair amount of mud in the tips of the locks, so now I'm doing two 20 minute washes.

Let's see: each bag of fleece is about 3/4 of a pound and the process takes a minimum of 55 minutes to get the fleece to the drying stage. Something tells me that nine pounds of sheep fleece is going to take a little more time to wash than I thought!

The second photo is a batch of wool, drying on the porch. Every dark area is muddy crap.

Annapolis Spins

Recently, I was reading a message on Ravelry from someone who had recently moved into the Annapolis area and wanted to find a group to spin with. She had several responses but all of them were invitations to join groups that were an hour's drive away or more. Annapolis has a great quilting guild and an active rug hooking guild. I've heard that there are also chapters of the national knitting and weavers' guilds--could it be that there isn't a spinning group?

Having enjoyed my own knitting groups, I decided to do something about it. I immediately got on the phone, called one of the libraries near Annapolis, and reserved a room for the following month. I started posting information on Ravelry and hoped for the best.

On appointed day, I left home with much trepidation. Who would come? Would I sit in the meeting room all day, spinning alone?

I got to the library a few minutes later than I had planned and when I made my way to the meeting room, I heard voices. Inside, there were two young ladies, all set up, spinning and chatting away! After I got there, two more showed up...and then another. I was so excited, I could hardly breathe.

All of the ladies there were what I have found to be typical spinners--warm, open and eager to share what they knew. One of the ladies was even so generous that she brought an extra spinning wheel, a spindle, and fiber to share. When a young knitter came in who had never spun before, she was invited to sit down and try her hand. One of the members of my hometown group also came with a borrowed wheel and I worked with her to get her started.

Throughout the day, we got to know each other, chatted about our spinning, our families and our lives. As our time ended, I asked them if they'd be interested in meeting again and everyone seemed eager to do so on a monthly basis. The drive home was a little longer than planned due to beach-bound traffic on the Bay Bridge but I hardly noticed. I smiled all the way home, thinking, "I have a spinning group!"

Who Am I?

Throughout the course of my life, my identity has changed. When I was small, I was Frank and Dot's little girl or Ted's sister. As I got older and ventured out into the world, going to college and then to the workaday world, I felt that I came into my own. My family was unknown to most of the people with whom I came in contact and I felt as if I was my own person. Then I had children. Again, I became known primarily for my position as Julie's mom or Dan's mother.

These days, since the kids are young adults, living away from home, I thought I had recaptured my identity, that is, until the other day when I met someone new at the neighborhood block party. The lady looked at me and said she thought she'd seen me before. I went through the list of ways she might know me--where I'd worked, where we'd gone to church, the things I like to do in town--until she figured it out. "You walk that funny jumping dog!"

So, that's who I am now. I'm The Mother of the Funny Jumping Dog.

It could be worse.

Sapphire Blue

Ask my husband and he'll tell you that I've been "spinning my head off." I don't know why, but he loves to say it--maybe, like the girl in The Exorcist, he thinks I've been taken over by a supernatural force! To some extent, it's not far from the truth. Since I took my first spinning class in April, I've been somewhat eaten up with spinning. I read about it, I talk about it, I do it all the time.

I didn't expect that I would like it so much; in fact, I was, for a time, totally opposed to the idea of ever spinning my own wool. Why did I need to do that when there was a whole world full of beautiful wool and when knitting itself took long enough to do? The answer wasn't at all clear when I started, but it's becoming more so as I go along.

Many spinners spin simply for the love of playing with fiber and for me, this is certainly a great deal of the attraction. I've played with fiber for as long as I can remember, starting with the little potholder loom that I received many Christmases ago. After that, it was the little spool i-cord knitter that my mom made for me--five nails hammered into the top of a wooden thread spool. (I wonder how many young fiber artists out there have never seen thread on wooden spools!) Then came the crochet hook, the knitting needles and later, the sewing machine. It's all a part of my personal history. I file them under, Gifts From My Mother.

The sensual pleasures that I get from fiber, however, aren't the whole of it. I love the process a great deal, but I usually need a functional purpose to keep me going. Knitting miles of i-cord was dizzying at first, but the thrill of accomplishment faded when I realized that I couldn't put it to much use. So it is, that spinning skeins and skeins of beautifully hand-dyed fiber has lost some of it's fascination. I have a real need to make something real from it and now I have started to come to that place in my spinning when I can dictate, to some extent, what comes off the wheel and knit it up into a real wearable garment. After much contemplation, I've decided to knit the Shalom Cardigan by Meghan McFarlane of Involving the Senses.

Here's the progress so far:






The top photo is a basket full of my hand-dyed roving. The lower shots show a bobbin of singles that I spun, a skein of wool that resulted from plying three strands of singles together, and finally, the half knitted cardigan.

A Dog Tale

On Sunday, Paul and I were out walking our dogs in the neighborhood, when a little white dog appeared. Molly, ever the Warrior Princess, started snapping and growling like she wanted to eat the stranger and the little stranger came right back with equal fervor, despite the fact that she was smaller than Molly. I separated the combatants before they got into it and the little dog ran off, right into the street. Luckily, no cars were coming. I tried to catch her, but she led me on a merry chase that ended at the doors of the local Catholic church. We danced around the porch and I managed to get a look at her tags--no name, only current a current license. She kept going back to the door. Thinking that the church would at least be safer than the street, I opened the door and in she scooted. When I realized, in horror, that the last service was still in progress, I ran off, feeling like a teenage prankster.

I rejoined Paul to tell him what I'd done and we saw a man leaving the church with the dog. Then I recognized the dog as one who usually barked at us from the corner house. I'd never seen her whole body, just her head and front paws, as she tried desperately to get out and chase us. The owner caught up with us, holding the dog at his side like a football. "There I was, standing in the church aisle, waiting to take communion and here comes my dog!"

I told him what had happened but now I wish I hadn't. What a great mystery that would have been.

Riding About in the Smokies

We've just returned from a week of riding the bike in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. One of the highlights of the trip was a trip to visit the John C. Campbell Folk Art School in Brasstown, NC. I've gotten the catalogue for years and always dreamed of attending so a chance to see it in person was a real treat.

We learned that the project was started by two visionary young ladies in the early '30's and based on the Danish folk art schools, which the two had visited while travelling abroad. Even then, in an increasingly industrialized world, the two saw a need to retain hand made arts. Today, the farm-like campus covers 300 acres and offers classes for anything from baking, spinning and weaving to blacksmithing, natural dyeing and basket weaving. If you can make it with your hands, you can find a class to learn it at John C. Campbell.




The stone building is the first thing you see as you come onto the grounds. On the lower level there's a gift shop which offers items made by members of the Southern Highlands Craft Guild and above, there are administrative offices.

That's me by the famous red fence. It seemed that whatever we were looking for, the directions started with, "Follow the red fence..." Paul is standing beside an interesting metal sculpture outside of the blacksmithing shop.