The boy is in a bucket

Well.. only to his shoulders. Poor guy has the flu.

I haven't heard from Mug yet, she's too busy 'chillin' I understand, but Dida said that besides West Jet losing her luggage, all is well in the Dominican.

Me? I spent the long weekend knitting and carding, and knitting and knitting and spinning and knitting. You can't beat that.

Mary told me that she had Qivuit...

And that she would like to give it to me. I couldn't imagine anybody giving Qivuit away, so I assumed that she had some raw and although I would be so grateful to have it, that it would be a good deal of effort to clean it up.

Today she came into the shop and gave me a little bag with 3 - 10 gram packages of clean, wonderful, beautiful Qivuit fiber. I'm so thrilled. I now have enough to spin for a shawl. I doubt I'll finish it on a spindle, since I how have so much that it would take me at least another year to finish. Maybe I'll see if I can slow my wheel spinning down enough to do right by the fiber.

Thank you Mary, that was a thoughtful and kind gift. I really appreciate it.

More spinning tonight.. I haven't finished plying the last of the Cormo, but snuck 20 or 30 grams of Columbia into the lineup. I scoured and combed it, so I was really anxious to see how it spun. Much softer than I had anticipated, and also, as white as the driven snow. I think I'll Navajo ply it and make a nice pair of white socks.

I did one tier on the Targello deux. I am loving the Noro Silk Garden 205 colourway; it's really bright and beautiful. Very mojo restorative...

Targello the deux

targello 205a
Originally uploaded by spinknit

When you lose your mojo, and you've knitted one particular shawl 2 or 3 times and it's still not where it ought to be.. well, you have to revert to what you know.

I still plan to spin/dye one for myself, but in the meantime, here's a happy fuchsia version to get me over the hump.

I'm unexpectedly sad about Gokey leaving AI tonight. The man has soul, and he has class.. that's for sure.

Have you seen this yarn?

I mentioned that there was a missing yarn.. a silk Koigu. After feeling like there were more yarns that I hadn't seen during the spring cleanup, I started going through iPhoto, and sure enough I'm missing some handspun too. Where does yarn go when it escapes?




The search is on.

Spring has sprung

The grass has riz,
A big ugly spider climbed along the yarn I was plying
and it was so creepy that this doesn't even have to rhyme.

Bonus video of the Paiko glass spinning wheel in action. Non-creepy vs. creepy.

It was a dark and stormy night.

Well, actually it wasn't, but it seems like everyone should get to type that sentence once in their life.

This weekend turned out to be especially productive; I can barely remember all the things that I accomplished. Roxy (the pup) kept me up most of Friday night; I was totally and completely exhausted by her whining and crying. She would have liked to sleep on the bed, and I would have liked her to sleep in another city. Neither of us got our way. Eventually I got a few hours sleep, and was about to get up to take Mug to soccer, when BFML offered to do the deed for me AND take both dogs as well. I slept from 9 to 12.. it was like absolute heaven.

Once they returned home I packed up Mug and headed for Make One to talk to Bess about dyeing and to spin for a while. The store was pretty darned busy. AnneK brought in a warm coffee cake, studded with chunks of apple. Did I say heaven?

I don't know what possessed me, but afterwards I started bringing all of my yarn and allll of my fiber downstairs to organize and.. well, spring clean. I've been thinking it needed to be done, but dreading it. Man, what a job. I got to a point with the yarn that I'd think I was done, and sure as crap yet another bag of it would be hiding behind something. In the end my entire upstairs area was sorted out and organized, and all of my yarn/fiber is contained, labelled and, shockingly, findable. It was kind of fun being reminded of frogged projects, successes, failures, plans... I got rid of very little, and realized that I'm missing one skein of yarn.

Silk. Koigu. From our New York Trip. DAMN.

Anyway, we won't discuss mileage, or Rubbermaid totes, or green garbage bags. None of that.

I knitted, I spun... the Cormo basket is completely and absolutely empty. To be honest I never thought I'd see the day, but now that I have combs, the fiber is under my control. The Cormo is about 50% plied.... I wish now that I'd Navajo plied it, because it's thinner than I would have liked, but still soft, still gorgeous. (Yesterday the 2009 hoggetts were sheared. I so want one).

I dyed and dyed and dyed; the kitchen is absolutely resplendent in a rainbow of fiber. Tonight I'll bag that up and get it off to it's new home. I felt inspired, for the first time in an age.

Ahhhh and it was Mother's day. Dida and Ike (and Nini, in a stroller) ran the 5k, so BFML and I walked downtown to cheer them over the finish line. It was such a great thing for Dida.. her first race ever. Later we went to their car and Dida gave me a framed picture of Nini in a red raincoat. It's the best ever.. honestly.

BFML treated me like a queen all day on Sunday, and gave me a reconditioned mailbox that he and the kids had worked on. We so needed it! I can hardly wait for it to be installed.

Seems like this is about enough information.. but honestly there's more! Mug and I watched The Colour Purple together, we had poached eggs, drank Lambic Framboise - not Mug; BFML, I did washing/carding experiments, BFML freecycled and I landed up with a copy of Eat, Pray, Love... the only book I've wanted to review by the time I was reading page 9. It's that good.

etc. It was an etc. kind of weekend.

All spinning, all the time

Since I got combs from Vikingmaid I haven't knit one single stitch. Not one. I keep spying perfect little Cormo locks in the big cloud of washed fleece that I have by my chair.. and I think how nicely a particular lock will slide onto the comb, and I wonder how much it'll fluff up. The first pass is easy, and it seems to get tougher each pass.. yet the more passes, the cleaner and more oriented the wool becomes.

As I work, residual lanolin softens my hands. Piles of fluffy clouds grow.

Initially it was all about spinning, because the combing was awkward (get enough done to spin for a little while and hope for the best). Now, I'm at another place, where the combing is as enticing as the spinning.. and gosh, the spinning is great.

I have a sense of urgency about it because I have 6 lbs. of Cotswold calling my name. 3 lbs. of Border Leicester, 3 lbs. of 17 micron (no, you did not misread that) Merino. I have Targee. I have.. well, more. It calls my name (you might know the voice of wool in the form of yarn, but in truth it begins speaking as soon as the fiber has been sheared); and frankly there are a lot of voices in this house at the moment.

And, best of all? 40 grams of Qivuit is coming my way. I can spin it as thin as a thread, so 40 grams represents a long, long, long spin.

Somehow I need to win a lottery, because the real world is cramping my style. There aren't enough hours in the day.



ps: If you have been interested in Kiva and found that of late it has been next to impossible to find lending opportunities, it seems to have resolved itself. Yesterday I was able to do 6 loans in areas that are meaningful to me (a seamstress, a craftswoman, a weaver, a woman selling timbers, a woman in construction and a blacksmith). Kiva is truly the most sustained fun you can have for $25.00.

Picture? Mug and Banana playing together at the park; the day's last sunlight streaming though golden hair.