December: The Month of More, Part 2

December also features a couple of notable fiber-oriented gatherings for me.

First is Christmas On The Farm - a cozy group of vendors who kick off the holiday craft festival season at Stone Edge Fibers in Phelps, NY.  Fibergoddess Amy (and DH Fred) clear their garage to make a lovely venue for herself and five other vendors to offer goods to early Christmas shoppers. 

I made up more beginner drop spindle kits and packaged some yummy alpaca/silk, camel/silk and dyed waste silk roving.

Besides Amy's and my fiber and yarn (and Andy's fiber tools and 'gift items' like cutting boards), there are vendors with amazing soap and lotions, jewelry, turned wooden bowls, holiday decorations and jams.

 

Don't you love this sweater? I asked the lady if she had made it.  She did not, but I think it could be done reasonably simply by embroidering those flowers on a plain sweater with yarn.  Done by someone... probably not me.  Sigh.

Also at this event was a Guiding Eyes pup in training and an information booth about the organization which was selling baked goods and hot cider as a fundraiser. 

This is Vanguard.  He's actually a 'loner' pup from another family as a female pup in his household was coming into heat and the policy is to remove males from that distraction until it passes.  He was a very good boy and worked very hard at ignoring people and tempting items on the floor during his lessons and concentrated only on his handler.

But don't worry, he eventually went off duty and we all got to pet him and he had a good nap too.

The other fun gathering was my spinning guild's December meeting.  It features Christmas cookies and a 'secret Santa' style fiber gift exchange.  Participation is not mandatory but many people choose to join in. 

The cookie table (more came in later, too).

Look at these!  Almost too cute to eat!  (Almost).

And the table of gifts was full to overflowing.  Anne Marie presided over the drawing of names and gift choosing.

My name came up second!  I took one look at the box with this little guy on top and grabbed him up.  It's Dominic the Donkey!!

Alas, I didn't get to keep him very long as 'stealing' was allowed during the course of the gift game and he changed hands many times.

It's been such a busy month I didn't get a chance to give the crazy guild challenge roving much thought but I figured I better jump in and decide how to handle it.  I laid it out and stewed on the colors a while.  I could make them harmonize fairly well except for that white - it stuck out like a sore thumb to me.  I finally settled on laying them out in a dark/light/dark/light sequence and hoped it was random enough that the white would be spread out and quieted down when the finished yarn was eventually plied back on itself.

I started from the left, rolling the roving like a cinnamon bun and adding each length of roving in turn as I had laid it out.  I also sprinkled some Forest Blaze angelina on the roving as I rolled it up.  In for a penny, in for a pound.  It ended up looking rather appealing and I was eager to spin it.

I had to spin it a little chunkier than I had wanted.  Since the fiber came from lots of different sources the preparation varied a lot.  Some colors spun easily, some seemed to have been around the block a few times and were almost felted and didn't draft well.  All in all, it didn't turn out too badly.

Next was plying.  And measuring.  The plying went well in that the colors blended quite nicely and the only color that matched up to itself in one place was the white.  Wouldn't you know.  Happily it was only a few yards.  Then I measured it.  Ninety-nine yards.  In the immortal words of Scooby Doo... "Ruuh-rooh!"  The pattern we're to use calls for a minimum of over 200 yards.  It's adjustable in that you can make it shorter or narrower but I have a sneaking suspicion that to avoid looking like a choker I'm going to need more yarn.  At this point I turn to the vast stash of handspun samples I have from roving colors that are long gone.  I'm thinking I can alternate a few rows of the challenge yarn with something from the stash to stretch the total yardage.

I hemmed and hawed and held everything to the light of day and finally decided on using the mocha (moorit) in the middle.  At least, that's the thought right now.  I know I don't have time to get started until after Christmas so I'll look at it again then with fresh eyes.  So it's decided......kinda.

Mischief Managed

We managed to get one large job finished this week.  It took a few sessions but we finally got the ewe flock coated.  It's a big job that takes more time than you'd think it would.  We've gotten quite good at estimating which size coat will fit a ewe but when it's actually on them, before you lift hind legs to slip into the straps..... sometimes you see it's going to be too long or too short and you pull it off and reach for the next size.  Lots of bending over.  It's really nice to see them all jacketed and know their fleeces are safe from the dreaded VM.

They will pick up some chaff from the floor on the area we call "the butt poof" and some on the back of the neck.  Our feeders are really good but there's no way to protect that area other than put a show hood over their heads and that's unnecessarily extreme.  Only the locks on the back of their necks suffer some - what's under their throat is often clean and lovely.

Now that everyone is safe from contamination we started feeding out in the 'picnic area' again - that's the hay feeder Andy constructed in the old feed bunk.  Some of the young, athletic ewes jump up from the backside and eat out of the manger.

This eases any congestion in the barn proper and no one is crowded - unless they want to be.

Some of the geriatric girls and the rams are still without coats.  The ewes I had to order a few more of certain sizes for.  The rams are still enjoying going outside for a morning apple party followed by grazing so I don't want to coat them until they are solely "barned up" and on hay.

Another item ticked off the list is the Oxford rug punching kit I learned on when I went to the school earlier this month. I finished it and am think it's a decent first effort.

I'm pleased with how it came out. Despite how simple it looks the pattern teaches you borders, shapes, curves, filling in areas, the stitch gauge you should try to attain in various areas, how to make dots..... and how to stray off the instructions.  I didn't care for the navy and white marbled yarn they included for the sheep so I substituted some of my gray handspun which was languishing without purpose in a bin.  I also wasn't jazzed with the random squiggles all over the sheep so I reduced it to just a few along the back.  If anyone is inclined to try an Oxford kit you will get the foundation fabric with pattern drawn on (they have hundreds), yarn in very generous quantities, and a boxed punch tool with a stitch gauge and small (20+ pages) instruction book.  The bigger book on the left I purchased on Ebay and it's really super.  You can easily get by with the small pamphlet that comes with the punch needle but the bigger book is so pretty and full of pictures and information that you should get a copy if you can.

The next project that needs attention is a guild spin-and-knit along.  For this one, those members who want to participate brought in 4 ounces of ready to spin wool - roving or batts were OK as long as the fiber was clean and carded in some manner.  The fiber was sorted by the project organizers and put into piles and then randomly creatively reassembled into 4 ounce lots of mixed colors.  All included one neutral (mine's white) and the rest is colored.

Alrighty, then.  We are to spin yarn by combining these rovings in any way we choose and then knit something using That Nice Stitch.  Hmmm.  Put opposites against each other so they all pop?  Try to blend those in the same color family?  If my goal is to keep the colors unadulterated I should chain ply.... which I don't usually like the feel of.....but if I spin and ply the yarn back on itself I will totally randomize the colors which might not be too bad although I don't usually like striped yarns.  I do like all the colors.... by themselves.   This will take some thought.  The project is due in May so I can't dither too long.

Holly says,

"When the sun comes out in late November you should stop, drop and enjoy it.  You can think about stuff later."

What a smart dog!

Dominoes

You know the elaborate patterns people make out of standing dominoes and then with one finger they push the first one and a whole cascade starts?  Welllll................. I took a little trip to the Oxford Rug Hooking School in Vermont.  Oh my.  I think I have a new addiction enthusiasm.

I've always liked the thought of using yarn in rug hooking but didn't know a 'real' way to go about it.  I have four - count 'em, FOUR - Rubbermaid 35-gallon totes full of handspun yarn I've accumulated over the years waiting for a purpose.  After last year's moth debacle (Don't worry.  This was in the house, not the wool shop, and says far more about my housekeeping habits than I should share.) I was more determined than ever to Use The Yarn.  While following some topics in a punch needle group I saw a reference to the Oxford Rug Punch, followed a link to a video and I was a goner.

Here was a different way to use yarn that wasn't knitting (I love knitting and kntters and knitted goods, I'm just too slow at it to be effective) and could be picked up and set down as time allowed.  I love weaving but I have to teach myself everything all over again every time I do it because, well, time.  This art looked much more promising!

I called and set up a time for an afternoon of lessons.  The folks there are super accommodating and we picked a date before the weather was going to get bad.  I made a hotel reservation as it was much too far to go both ways in a day, and yesterday I set off at O' Dark Thirty.

I can't say enough good things about the place and people.  The school is an entire house bought expressly for this purpose and turned into a gallery/studio/classroom/retreat/business area.  Everywhere you look are examples of punched rugs, patterns, supplies, antique tools of the trade, books...  it was amazing.

This was the classroom.  Bright, clean, cheerful, functional.

Another room for gatherings or to sit and peruse pattern books.

Full kitchen.

Fully stocked shop - kits, patterns, yarn, blank fabric.

And inspiration everywhere.  Big, complex rugs - about three feet by four feet.

This massive rug measures roughly five feet by seven feet and features tiny details and great realism.

Somewhat more simple but charming.

And there were lots of small projects, too - chair pads, mug rugs, trivets, small wall decorations, pillows and even punch rug purses.

And after a long day of driving and learning I stayed at the Middlebury Inn.  I got a nice rate on the room through Expedia and was very comfortable.  The Inn is massive and old and I wish I had had more energy to look around.  The room I had was a quirky shape but clean and cozy and with the biggest bed I've ever been in.  Seriously.  The picture doesn't do justice to its width.  You could put six people in this bed and nobody would have to shove over.

I'm so glad I went and soaked up both information and inspiration.  I've got tons of ideas in my head featuring Cotswold wool rug yarn.  The kit I started there to learn on is about half done and I hope to work on it some nights this week.  After that I'll dig in those big bins of yarn and decide what some of them want to be!

Yarn Along - Yarn Carnage

First, a bit of good news. The blue roving I had been working on is spun and plied.  It was a painted roving and I tried to split it into equal strips so I could match up the colors when they were plied.... It seems to have worked for the most part.  It came to 190 yards of 2 ply and I like it lots.  I'm working on the more somber shades of blue and purple now.

Next, a reassurance that the Yarn referred to in the title was no. where. near. any of the fiber or yarn or roving or anything that we have for sale.  This debacle happened in the house, in a bedroom, in a cupboard that housed only a part of my personal, spun-loong-ago (and ignored) stash.   To say I'm disgusted with myself is an understatement.  It's also a sad commentary on my housecleaning skills but there is some redemption to be had in that department at the end of this story.  Fiber people out there have already guessed......moths.  (Picture the figure in The Scream)

Family was coming to visit for a weekend and I needed to return a bedroom to its intended purpose (instead of catch-all/storage room).  With the door shut against feline mischief the room had received minimal attention for *coughyearscough*. Approaching the cabinet I saw a little white coccoon on the floor under the door......nooooooo......   I won't repeat the X rated language I used but between that and the vacuum cleaner nothing came out of that room alive.

Everything got hauled outside and assessed.  Anything with angora in it was a total loss and went into the trash.  Since those skeins were disintegrating as I touched them it was a sad but easy decision.  Other skeins seemed to have been ignored but the majority had varying amounts of damage.  They all got shaken out, retied where necessary and washed.

Some seem to have escaped damage completely.

The rest are sad.  I *should* probably toss them but I can't quite bring myself to since I know there is some good sound yarn in there.  Sorting it out will be my self-imposed penance for having let it get damaged, I guess.  I'm especially upset about the camel/silk skeins, the llama/Border Leicester and the 2+ pounds of purple/pink which was an early satisfying dye experiment.

Now that I know the yarn is inert and de-bugged I can store it PROPERLY and plan some projects to use it.  I'm thinking fulled items, maybe some rug hooking and incorporating the shortest pieces into decoration on felted wool balls.

The best news on the whole situation is that I now have a pristine bedroom for guests and I can finally reach and maybe USE my loom again!  I'll have to teach myself all over again but I'm looking forward to getting back to it.

While working in the wool shop lately I've listened to 'Fevre Dream'  (yes, that's the correct spelling) and now am into 'Windhaven', both by George R.R. Martin (he of 'Game of Thrones' fame).  Both are quite engaging.  'Fevre Dream' puts vampires on Mississippi steamboats (sounds goofy, but it works) and had a satisfying end.  'Windhaven' is rather like 'Dragonriders of Pern' without the dragons.  There's a good bit of social and political wrangling but it's not as dark and mean as the 'Game of Thrones' series and the story moves along at a good clip.  Two thumbs up if you'd like some popcorn for your mind while you're doing something mundane.

Joining in with Ginny......

August In A Nutshell

The days of August have gone too quickly.  This month is like the Sunday night of summer - September is the mental break between summer and fall seasons.  The weather may stay just as warm (for a while) but all those years of going to school has branded my brain with the thought that summer's over on September first.

So what was the bulk of August like?

We had drought that made us bring the sheep in off pasture for four weeks.  They complained but did well on the hay and small grain ration we gave them.  The weather threatened many times but it was just so dry the storms couldn't form.  We had lots of interesting skies.

There's a tiny bit of rainbow near the horizon.

Ominous, no?  But we barely got a sprinkle out of it.

Rain finally did begin to fall and the landscape became green again.  It was startling after so much brown and tan.  Today we just started turning the flock out for a short period.  We'll have to be careful not to let them overdo.  The grass is as lush and tender as it ever is in May.  Just like having a second spring!

The personnel from the Ag building at the county fair asked me to demo spinning again so I had a pleasant four-hour shift actually spinning something for the fun of it.  I had another rainbow batt from a guild project in the stash and I didn't weigh it before starting but I did just nicely finish it in the four hours.  I already have a skein of this that I plied with a silver thread for a slightly sparkly yarn that preserves the color shift.  I now have this one and I think one more bobbin like that which will need plying the same way.  I have no clue what I'm going to do with it but I'll have enough!

While I was spinning I enjoyed watching what other people were doing in the building.  This man had lots of different 'pioneer' type items and demonstrated flint knapping (note to self - learn to do this.  Might be handy in the zombie apocalypse and it does have a certain 'gee whiz' factor to it) and making turkey calls using turkey leg bones.  He had a whole bunch of them and was teaching kids how to produce the call.

 This boy caught onto it pretty fast and practiced a long time, then went and signed up at the DEC booth for the Turkey Calling Contest.  You can't get much more rural than that.

There is a display of glass milk bottles from local dairies, now all long gone.  They represent a lot of people making a living.  I dimly remember our family getting milk delivered to the door when I was very small.  The milkman always came very early and put the bottles in the small metal cooler at the front door.  The paper caps were yellow around the rim and white in the center with writing but I don't remember the name and was too young to read anyway.

After spinning I always go and get a root beer float and then walk around some.  Most buildings don't want food or drink brought inside so I wander the blacksmith area and antique tractor display.  This machine caught my eye.  Guesses?  The shovel shaped part slides under the soil and lifts the crop up to where the spinning tines can separate it from the dirt.  OK, that pretty much gives it away.

A horse drawn potato digger.  Apparently Corning had a functioning foundry.  A google search shows the digger advertised in The Rural New Yorker in 1910.

I like the simple but efficient design.  You can't feed the country's population with such equipment now but at the time I'm sure the purchaser was thrilled with such a sturdy labor saving device.

I have done a little bit more spinning.  This small skein was spun from a demo batt I made on a blending board.  The batt was pretty wild looking but the skein is more domesticated. 

And I spun up a sample skein of a new colorway that will be making its debut at the Finger Lakes Fiber Festival - "Autumn Blaze".  It's a hotter color than the picture suggests - more orange and yellow.

The power company, NYSEG (New York State Electric and Gas), came through doing a yearly check of the electric poles and discovered some alarming posts in the sheep pasture.

Yikes.  These are slated to be replaced, perhaps this week.  Amazingly, they are the original poles which were placed when electricity reached the farm - in 1946. They have served their purpose well and deserve retirement.  The cross arms all rotted off in the 1980s and the wires were then attached directly to the poles but the wires and poles themselves never failed, even in the big ice storm of 1993.  NYSEG would have liked to relocate the power line to the roadside.  We gave it considerable thought and decided we wanted them left down in the field.  Andy already has to work around a few poles and guy wires up the road and they are a huge annoyance.  Also, the distance between poles will be shorter due to new regulations (never mind that the current spacing seems to have worked well here since 1946) and a pole would have had to be placed essentially at the road in front of the sawmill/tractor shed plus the wires would stretch over the front lawn and become a focal point no matter how you tried to ignore them.  Of all the many many times the power has gone out here it's never been because of a problem with 'our' poles - it's been up the road where the poles are by the road and scrub trees grow up and cause problems.  That will never happen here as long as we're around.  I'll give the company credit for being very nice and polite about us not wanting them moved.  They said it was our choice and they never gave us any argument when we said we wanted them left in the field.

Any ornithologists out there?  We've been having a nocturnal bird of some kind calling off and on for a couple of weeks.  Here's a recording of it taken a few nights ago while he was likely sitting on the electric pole in the yard.  You might need to turn up the sound a little.  Ignore the video - I was trying to hold the phone down so the camera light wouldn't scare it off while I recorded.  I wish 'audio only' was a setting in the camera function.  Oh well. 

I'm guessing it's a juvenile owl of some variety but don't know for sure. I recognize most of the owl species' adult calls - the cadence of their hoots is distinctive - but this is a squawk.  I consulted my trusty Roger Tory Peterson field guide but didn't find any mention of squawking.  I did like the description of a short eared owl's call - an emphatic sneezy bark - and I thought our bird might be that but then I found the Macaulay Library of bird calls and their short eared owl doesn't sound like our bird.  I had plenty of opportunity to memorize this call.  The stupid freaking bird majestic creature was as regular as a metronome, calling every 8 to 12 seconds from about 1:30 AM to 3:00 AM.

I shouldn't complain - it's better than gunfire, car alarms, music from the neighbors, heavy traffic and lots of other sounds people have to deal with when they're trying to sleep.