Yarn at Last

It's great to be home again, after my adventures on the road last week.  Over the weekend I taught at Village Yarn and Tea in Lake Forest Park, WA, where the knitters are sassy, and so are their Selbuvotter.  Big Fun.

Strangely, I seem to have fatigued my wrists and elbows.  Maybe I did something weird using my drop spindle while I was teaching?  Maybe I was in too big a hurry to finish the Rare Gems cardigan?  I did, by the way, finish it, in time to wear it to class, just as I had hoped.  Where it was (naturally) much too hot with a dozen people crammed into a tiny airless room to actually wear it.  

It's a bit of all right, though, no?  I like the elbow sleeves.  Which is good, since I ran out of yarn and had no chance of making them longer.

Anyway, since my knitting parts hurt, I realized that they are probably long overdue for a rest.  I think my last official day off from knitting was in June of 2008.  I view knitting restriction as a punishment, not a vacation, so it's not a decision I make lightly.

I made the mistake of mentioning to my family that I was going to try not to knit for a while.  They all looked like deer in the headlights.  Then Campbell snickered.  Lindsay giggled.  Then Phillip (on brief parole from the garage) openly guffawed.  I have the sense they don't think I can do it.

Just to show them that I don't have to knit, I spun.  I finally filled the 5th bobbin:

I pressed the 6-bobbin plying kate into service (the empty bobbin on the left is just there to even the tension band - I'm really making 5-ply here).  Note the copy of Miss Manners Guide to Raising Perfect Children holding the kate at a perfect 45-degree angle.  At last, that book has found its true calling.

The learning curve for plying 5 strands is exactly as steep as you might think.  Bits of it (like the part where one of the 5 plies breaks for no reason at all) totally sucked.  I stuck it out, though, desperate to finally see real yarn after an entire year of fleece processing and singles-spinning.  I wasn't going to let a little thing like complete lack of know-how get between me and finally seeing yarn.

And here are the first two skeins.  818 yards, so far.  There is still a lot of fleece to comb and spin.  I am reassuring myself that it's all washed, and safely hidden from my husband and an unintended jettison.  I put it in a place that I know to be safe from him: the cleaning closet.  Unless he falls prey to a sudden (and unprecedented) fit of polishing, I think the remainder of the locks are secure.

The finished yarn is much blacker than I expected.  The singles looked chocolate brown with silver streaks, but the yarn is black as can be.  I'm thrilled with it.  I'm also surprised at how much finished yarn the five bobbins yielded.  There are probably still another skein's worth of singles, but they need to be redistributed between bobbins.

So that was day one of my self-imposed knitting hiatus.  I planned to take five days off, but between the shawl, which keeps calling to me, and my family's heckling, I'm not sure if I'll make it.  Stay tuned.

Love and Loss

Sometimes emotion overcomes me and it's easier to tell my story in pictures than in words:

Or to put it another way, Phillip, who usually fails to operate trash receptacles, never mind round up and discard unwanted items around the house, managed to throw away my fleece.

That's right.  Beloved Caora Dubh, which I have been chipping away at processing for an entire year, has been donated to the toy drive.  I'm not sure which mental image taunts me more painfully:  The 5-ply gansey of my dreams which I now will not have enough yarn to make, or the poor kid who opens that plastic bag expecting teddy bears and gets half a smelly sheep. 

Either way, I am in mourning.  And Phillip is sleeping in the garage until further notice.  

I only wish I could express my pain properly.  I recognize that in the scope of losses, this one does not qualify as tear-worthy, or even really more than an emotional hiccup.  Which may be part of my problem.  How can I be so utterly wrenched by the loss of something that effects my loved ones and the rest of the world not at all?  It's not as if the roof fell in, for heaven's sake.  But I'm just so sad about it.

In an attempt at healing, I have washed all the rest of the locks that I had picked and ready for scouring (fortunately those were in a different bag):

That's all there is, there ain't no more.  It looks like a fair amount in the photo, but believe me, it's only half a sheep.

I decided that the only way to work through my grief is to finish processing all the fleece I have left.  When I really have yarn, and know how much, then I will be able to alter my goal accordingly.  Maybe there will be enough for a vest?  

Here are the singles: 4.5 bobbins, plus whatever I get from the locks I have left.  No clue what that will be, but something tells me I'll be able to let Phillip back in the house once it's yarn.  Probably not before that.

I'm keeping my chin up by promising myself a new fleece.  Black Sheep Gathering is in a few weeks, and I wrote to my favorite vendor for samples.  This one is a serious contender:

Behold the crimpyness!  What's not to love about a Coopworth lamb called Gigi?  Perhaps one day I shall love again.

More String

In which I ignore perfectly sound advice. 

My pal Carson said "You won't like spinning that.  It's for needle felting".  He was perfectly correct.  I would probably not like spinning, or wearing an entire sweater made of this fluff.  But it's put up in these adorable little knots of roving that are every different color!  How could I resist?  So I made a bunch of cute little 2-ply skeins, and when I'm done there will be twelve different colors of yarn to play with!

And in case that wasn't enough fun, check out my e-bay score:

These are the coolest old textile mill bobbins.  They are marked "Gull Silk Co." on the end, and needed only a bath in oil soap to be ready for action.  What a fun way to store my tiny skeins!  I searched for "antique wooden spools" on e-bay, in case you would like to do the same.  So other than an unscheduled break to redecorate my daughter's room (yeah, I know - how is there an unscheduled redecoration?), I've just been sitting around,playing with string. 

The room redecoration began with an innocent attempt to change the sheets on Lindsay's bed, which caused the bed to actually fall apart.  In Pieces.  So it became obvious that she was ready to have the more sturdy (and larger) antique iron bed moved up from the garage.  And while we were between beds and the whole place was in chaos anyway, I thought I might as well paint her room, which I'd been blowing off meaning to attend to for the entire four years we've lived here.  Which led to a whole new set of bed linens, and well, you know how it goes.  All I wanted to do was change the damn sheets and the next thing you know I'm hanging off a ladder replacing a light fixture.  Go Figure. 

Remember when I used to knit things?  Me either.