Cath Emery

04:08 pm: Kate brought over a spinning wheel for me try. It's an Ashford Traveler. Kind of exciting. Hope I'm a spinning prodigy. It'd be nice to be a prodigy. ;)

I got to hear about her SOAR experience and she brought me spinnable presents, which is also exciting. Really neat stuff, with color changes along the length of the fiber rather than in sections. Fascinating, and in lots of dark blue.

03:20 pm: He likes me!
The other day G and I were out walking and a very tiny black cat came running up to me as if I had tuna stuck to my jeans. We had a bonding moment and it was hard to leave such affection.

Its neighbor, known as Tiny Cat because I didn't know an even smaller cat lived near there, came out and expressed a certain annoyance that the chosen petter was taken (G was, for some reason, not considered a suitable alternate, which is highly unusual for me when I am walking with someone else: the cats almost always choose whoever that is over me).

I've been rereading Harry Potter. I keep hearing the actors' voices, especially for Professor McGonagal, Hagrid, and Snape.

I found a tiny brown bug on the yarn I just brought up from lying on the floor downstairs the last couple of days. I am totally grossed out. What if it was a carpet beetle? Suddenly I want to put everything I own into a freezer.

Except the plants, of course.

p.s. The power keeps blinking off. I am not happy about this. It makes me nervous. It is too early for power outages!

02:49 pm: Stashbusted!
I had the cedar chest open last night looking for a bit of yarn for a special project and G came downstairs and looked over my shoulder. He made pleasant but worrying noises about look at all that and I didn't know you had this full (most of it is actually other made things such as blankets) and I made squeakings about how it was er not taking up all that much space and uh useful for later and mm.

02:10 pm: Spin: Falkland!
Yes, the 2nd ball of BFL is resting before plying and I am moving on to a new color, a new braid of fluff that I have unbraided and half-fluffed and am fretting about --- ha ha, just like last time -- whether I should split it in half lengthwise and whether I'll be able to actually get the "in half" part right without having lots of loose bits hanging off.

I took a few minutes and unloaded my little stash of fiber onto the bed. It's a good thing no one else was home to hear me glorying over the purple Corriedale and the shine on the merino-bamboo-silk and the shiny blue of the merino-tencel. mmmmm.

I unbraided all the braids so they could fluff out. I hadn't thought about how being wadded up tightly might make it harder to spin until after the BFL. I would spin more fiber from that supplier, and I love the rich colors. Still, I'm going to admit that if that had been my first spinning I might not have persevered.

One reason is that I might have decided spinning was going to hurt my CTS too much. I ran into a lot of sticky, stiff, hard-to-pull spots, especially with the black areas. I suppose one of the next things is to learn how to revive overly mashed fibers or ones that are sticky from the dyeing process.

Anyway, I have left the Falkland in one piece lengthwise but I did pull about a foot of it off the rest. It was interesting -- this must be a really long fiber, because it was hard to do. I had to separate it in small sections. I hope I can join successfully with the thinner yarn. It's going well so far, in a kind of semi-park and draft style.

Tags: fiber spin falkland bfl

08:42 am: We ate out last night, and dropped by my parents' place. I couldn't remember the gate code, but Dad had made the talking part work and we got in ok.

The funny part was that after we got home, there was a message on the answering machine from them asking if we wanted to go out to dinner. oops.

02:09 pm: Spin - Work those toes
I've discovered I can spin my Turkish spindle with my feet. Not really *well*, but enough to keep it going just that bit more or prevent backspin when both my hands are busy.

A little ingenuity, another spindle, and I should be able to spin both halves of my combed top or roving at the same time, right?

02:21 pm: Spin
After you've spun that yummy fluffy fiber into the shape of yarn, you get to do other things to it, such as plying, soaking, and thwacking. Plying, of course, is more twirly fun with the Turkish spindle. The fun part about thwacking is pretty obvious.

The fun part about soaking, however, can go unnoticed with a small skein. The one I just put in the hot water in the sink demonstrated the funness of soaking wool by bubbling air as I thrust it mercilessly into the boiling depths! (ed. note: There was no boiling; someone around here likes to *exaggerate*.)

(Never mind that editor: she has no sense of adventure!)

*glug glug glug glug*

So yes, I plied the last of my Corriedale and got two skeins because I had a snap while plying and at my current skill level gave up on joining both strands. Besides, the spindle crossbars had already vanished under the yarn. One is approximately 36 yards and the other is somewhere around 182 yards.

I thought of a new question to research: why a niddynoddy and not just a swift?

07:51 pm: I forgot to put the trash out last night. Luckily we have a big can.

I soaked and thwacked a thin test single and the first BFL and the former is still extremely crinkly and the latter is just a little crinkly. Plying would be good for both of those, apparently.

Or less twist on the next batch. Or hotter water. Or something.

Tired.

Neighbor came over for help on a crocheting project and asked where the dog is. I wouldn't mind if people just asked that one question: it's when they start the follow-ups that I want to just shove them out the door and wave. "See you another time!" How the heck am I supposed to sublimate all my suffering into nice, unhealthy, relaxed denial if people keep asking questions, hmm?

Tomorrow I may watch The Jungle Book. I don't remember ever seeing it as a child and the bits I've seen walking by televisions in shops makes me think it might be entertaining.

03:40 pm: Wait, I thought of something!

I watched a movie I hadn't seen before -- Matilda. And then G and I watched HP: The Order of the Phoenix.

03:39 pm: Nothing, really. Still here.

Well, all the usual, I guess. No dog still a surprise at odd moments, MIL has her little oddities, family froo-froo over our jaunt, still trying to decide whether to do the other half of the BFL the same as the first half and make a 2-ply or move on to the smaller spindle and make it a skinny single, leaving the first half to be a fatter single, with the questions of whether it has enough twist to hold up as a single or will bias horrifically, leaving me convinced that I never want to knit a single I've handspun again, or -- yeah.

Nothing, really.

06:34 pm: I made pumpkin pie.

I didn't bake it an extra hour this time, just an extra ten minutes. And the crust is ok, though I think it needed . .. more water? because it was tearing when I tried to roll it out and move it into the pan. I dunno. But ok.

The whipped cream came out ok, too.

09:36 am: Spin
This BFL is kicking me around. It wants to spin fat, and if I try to spin thinner it drafts completely apart. I'm getting a lot of practice joining, which may be good for my joining skills but is not good for my temper.

There's still plenty of fiber to get more comfortable with it. Strikes me as funny, though, that BFL was recommended as a fiber for beginners when it seems so cranky in my hands. I guess it's like the experts say, everyone is a little different.

09:00 am: Spin
So, mixed BFL instead of Corriedale this week.

We're talking Iris colorway by Abstract Fiber, a dark combination of blue, black, purple, and a redpurple/wine color.

First impression: stickier than Corriedale, fibers requiring just a touch more tug, but very willing to draft thin. Feels long.

I draft a little, and a little, and a little, and oh, the spindle is on the floor and my arm is too short.

Still trying to decide whether to split the 'strip' and do two plies or just do one really long one and not worry about color barber-poling if I ply. Might be a fun single, with long color changes in whatever's knitted up later.

04:21 pm: Oh, and you people with dogs?

You have a great responsibility now --- you must keep us all in cute/funny/awesome dog stories!

Do not fail us!

:)

06:59 am: Yesterday I was deleting files on how to groom afghan hounds and make dog treats from raw liver (blech--- they didn't turn out well and he didn't like them).

I ran across a file I'd saved of emails I sent to Val full of amusing anecdotes.

I'd forgotten what that moment was like when I was lying on the couch, all tired, and G yelled, "Look out!" because he'd just given the dog a pig ear and the dog was in mid-air and about to land on me. (Adrenaline works!)

And G has never been good about believing me --- when I told him not to set his glass on the low table because Jagger would drink his milk, what did he do? Set his glass down, whereupon the dog promptly inserted his nose and started lapping up milk.

And the cheese -- well, who would have realized a dog who preferred the small biscuits would try to mouth an entire pound of cheese at once? (Probably anyone with more experience of tall dogs, but oh well - live and learn!)

And the pork chop -- has anyone noticed a theme here? Val *did* warn us that he'd help himself, though not in those words. Judging by the two we did get to eat, that was one mighty good pork chop. Jagger thought so, too: it was gone in record time.

09:30 am: Spencer the next-door neighbor's cat, having succeeded in getting into the house and being unceremoniously removed in, as they say, short order, is sitting on the deck table in the sun, licking a foot.

07:42 am: Thanks for all the kindnesses, readers and commenters.

It hurts about like I thought it would, and I got through the phone call to Val without crying, so except for letting the rest of my craft night buddies and G's mom and . . . oh boy. Other friends and all of the family. Never mind. It's not done yet. No wonder people take out ads and post obituaries.

I've cleaned up and packed up a lot of things for giving, and we rolled up all the plastic and dog bed foam and rugs and got them into the garbage.

I did find a hair when I was buttering G's toast, but I think it was one of mine. I tossed that bit of butter and kept going.

01:17 pm: D'Lorah Sparks Will Fly "Jagger"
May 1995 - November 2009

01:10 pm: The dog has been driving me insane.

He won't lie down and relax. Back and forth. Down and up the stairs. In and out, back forth. His legs are not working right so there's this awful drag-slip going on.

ah. He just lay down. Please, please, please *stay there* for a while.

07:55 am: Spin
The last couple of days I have been working at making sure I give the spindle an adequate flick to be sure I am getting the best speed possible from the dealy-bob.

(I don't feel that flick is what I am doing at all, but the spindlers have been calling it that longer than I've been alive, so there's not much point arguing.)

I am on the home stretch of the last two ounces. I had to arrange the rest of the coil so it would not fall off the desk in the bit before I stop and wind.

I need to see about a means of weighing the stuff. G had a scale, I think, that weighed small things, but I can't find it in the closet under those four old steering wheels (which don't all even work).