Boo Humbug

I hate Halloween. Maybe it started when my mother made me a cool black cat costume and Shirley Niklas won the first place costume prize for some cheesy princess get-up.

Once or twice I relapsed and reluctantly played along with the rest of the world. Most often I've worn my jammies, carried a teddy bear and blankie for a few handfuls of free chocolate. The best one was probably the time I wore a forest green head-to-toe leotard festooned with Christmas ornaments and silver garland. After a time however, life as a Christmas tree grew wearisome. Everyone just wanted to "feel my balls."

We had a few good years when my kids were small. One year, Dan was a mummy and I wrapped him up in strips of muslin. He started unraveling the minute he stepped out the door. When he returned from making the rounds in the neighborhood, he looked like an angora cat who'd lost a fight with the weed whacker. I picked up strings from the carpet for weeks. When Julie was about 3, she decided she wanted to be a "cockalooda." After a few minutes of careful interrogation, we concluded that she wanted to be a brightly colored bird. I cut long petal-shaped "feathers" from a number of different cotton fabrics and sewed them onto a cape, which she wore over tights. She was the cutest little cockalooda in the Halloween parade, right down to her red high-topped Converse sneakers.

Now, I find Halloween a bother. I dislike having to listen to the dogs bark all night as we run back and forth to dispense cheap candy and a heartfelt, "Aren't you cute!" Check back later--things may change after we get grandchildren.

In the meantime, here are a few photos of Halloween in our small town.

My Sweet Puppygirl

I'm sad to announce that my beloved Molly passed away in my arms after a brief illness. We will miss her greatly but cherish the memories of the many years she blessed our lives. No one ever had a cuter wiggle-butt and her kisses were ever so sweet.

Shenandoah Valley Fiber Fest

Julie and I had talked earlier in the summer about going to Rhinebeck for the NY Sheep and Wool Festival to see what all the talk was about. Then, I heard about the Shenandoah Valley Fiber Fest in Berryville, VA and it seemed silly to travel all the way to New York when we had something so close.

We watched the weather forecasts for the week prior and they went from possible precipitation to certain downpour. When the day finally came, the temperature was almost balmy--no rain when we left--but the skies were ominous. We dressed for the worst, with boots, slickers and umbrellas. We were determined to have fun, regardless of the weather. And that's exactly what happened.

We were delighted to discover that a large group of Julie's friends from the Reston Stitch 'n' Bitch group were also there. Every time we met some one we knew, we invited them to lunch at The Cup and Crumpet. (Elizabeth McCarus from Fibersmyth had a booth and her husband had one right beside her with pre-made goodies from his tea room.) By noon, we had a party of ten--the food was delicious and the company was even better. We all sat at a large picnic table, eating and chatting about what we'd seen, bought, or planned to buy. Suddenly, everyone finished eating at the same and they all left. It was like rats jumping off of a sinking ship! One minute we're all having a great time and the next, Julie and I were alone!

I'd been looking forward to the juried fleece sale and it was really interesting to browse through the 50 or so fleeces there. I bought a cream colored Romney fleece and half of an alpaca fleece. I hadn't planned on the alpaca, but it was so soft and had so much crimp--usually alpaca has little or no crimp--that it looked like a sheep's fleece. I kept coming back to it, as did another spinner. We were going back and forth, each one urging the other to buy it. Finally, we both bought half.



The festival was only about 1/4 of Maryland Sheep and Wool, so we were able to check out all the animals and visit with the vendors. We especially liked watching the rabbit owners blow dry and fluff their bunnies in preparation to judging and we absolutely fell in love with the lop-eared dwarf bunnies--so cute!



It was an absolutely wonderful day--regardless of the weather!

A Weekend With Julie and Cookie

I had a marvelous mini vacation last weekend with one of my favorite people, Daughter Julie, and one of my favorite designers, Cookie A. The event was a two-day sock-knitting seminar put on by one of Julie's knitting pals. It was held at a private home in Solomon's Island, on the shores of the Patuxent River, with a view of its convergence with the Chesapeake Bay. Even on a cloudy grey morning, the setting was beautiful and, when the front passed, leaving a bright sunny afternoon, it was absolutely spectacular.

One of the classes we'd signed up for was called, "Intuitive Chart Reading" and actually, I really didn't expect much to come out of it. Fortunately, I was greatly surprised.

Let me explain. I learned to knit in a time when knitting patterns were either painfully terse, leaving much to the imagination, or verbose, dictating each stitch in its place. I went out of my way to avoid the former and sought out the latter. When I worked those patterns, I felt a sense of pride that I could make sense of it all, akin to being able to read Klingon. I felt like the designer was present with me as I knit, coaching me stitch by stitch. So, fast forward to the present age. Almost no one writes patterns in English anymore. OH NO, they draw charts. Each stitch is still there, in its specific order, but now each one is represented by a strange arcane symbol--one looks like a Breast Cancer ribbon, others resemble ceiling rafters or bridge support fixtures. I never thought knitting charts made much sense and working from them was tedious. Usually, I retreated to the past and transcribed each row onto an index card. Then, I felt comfortable again, flipping each card as I completed each row.

Cookie began the class by asking each one of us to say how they felt about charts. Those women who were of a certain age--that is, over 40--said almost the same thing, "Charts are strange and I hate them." The younger members of the class were, as a group, less passionate, just wanting to better understand charts.

Cookie A is a perky, cute-as-a-button young lady with green highlights in her "pixie" haircut. It doesn't take long to recognize that she's very bright and extremely knowledgeable about all things knitting. Still, I had doubts that I would witness any conversions, especially not my own. In the course of a few hours, using a dry erase board and four different colored markers, Cookie A, made sense of the whole business of charts. She showed us that the silly little symbols weren't silly at all, but stylized representations of how the stitch looks and what it is doing in the pattern. The "Breast Cancer Ribbon" symbol indicates a twisted stitch and the bridge fixtures are really cable stitches. She also helped us to make sense out of charts that aren't square and the little blackened-in squares that I now know mean "do nothing."

Soon, we were all speaking Chartese, discussing yarnovers and double decreases, like it was our native tongue. By lunch time, I felt like I'd discovered and conquered a whole new territory in the Land of Knitting. It was pretty damn awesome.



After that, it was all just gravy. We had dinner at a nice Italian restaurant and a group of us stayed at the local Hilton. Sunday was a taste of Indian Summer--clear blue skies with a warm breeze. Julie and I attended another class about designing rib stitches and then, spent the afternoon in the front yard, chatting and enjoying the view. Cookie even taught a short lesson on the lawn and the sailboats scooted by. I couldn't imagine that a trip to Europe could have been any better.

Our Hero, Pretzel

This morning we took Molly for a spa day at the the local kennel. (Really, it's just a bath and a haircut but we want Molly to feel like it's special.) The owner, Connie, told me the sweetest story. She has two cats who have been boarding since June. Yesterday morning when she arrived at the kennel to start work, she noticed blood all over the cage where the cats were and her first thought was that they'd been fighting. Immediately, she removed one of the cats and it was then that she realized the one remaining was in the process of giving birth. Off to the side, there was something small and dark, a kitten that appeared to be stillborn. Connie took the kitten and proceeded to massage it with a towel. Occasionally, it would gasp and try to breathe, but she could feel that its body was cool. In desperation, she held the little bundle out to her dog, Pretzel, who sniffed and then, started to lick it. After a few seconds, the kitten let out a healthy cry. Connie put him back at the mother's side and he started to nurse with the other three kittens. Pretzel, a pit bull with an enormous heart had saved the day!

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.