How I spent my weekend

On Saturday, Cat, the Mimi and I went to the spin-in in Newport. In spite of trying on (and discarding) four different outfits that morning, the Mimi still managed to be clad in nothing other than training pants when Cat arrived so we could car-pool. (And then decided to wear the first outfit of the day.)
The Mimi was amazingly well-behaved for the spin-in. She held my hand (and hissed "no touching, Mama!" every time I visited a fiber booth) and was polite to people. My father-in-law was kind enough to keep an eye on her for an hour or so, letting me sit and spin with people. When I told him I didn't want him to think I was dumping the kid on him so I could goof off, he said, "No, you're going to sit and spin. In our family, that's perfectly fine work." Love the in-laws!
The best part was seeing the expression on his face when someone asked the Mimi "what are you going to do after lunch?" and she said "gonna take over the world!"
I made out like a bandit, if I do say so myself. I picked up a pound of miscelaneous longwool for ten bucks, got some silk hankies (I felt inspired by the Yarn Harlot and I've already dyed them up) and even found some silk/camel fiber at an insanely good price. I'm out of mad money until March, but find it hard to care.
Because the Mimi is prone to crawling in my lap while I'm using the drop spindle and saying "me help make yarn?" and "helping" me spin, she now has a very pink starter spindle and some equally pink wool roving that's for her. Baby's first fiber stash!

Spinning report

I've been spinning up some local wool from Hungry Hill Farm. The proprietress has such an amazing color sense! Colors I wouldn't dream of combining--sage green, ochre, flaming crimson--go into her carder and come out in a riotous Mardi Gras of fiber. It's like happiness in a batt. Not the exhuberant manic intensity of Loop batts, but more like the solid comfort of Mexican hot chocolate. It's wonderful and warm with a surprising bite that keeps you interested.
I'm making a S-twist fingering weight single out of it, which I plan to "menace" slightly to make it more stable. I've never tried this particular spinning technique before, so it's interesting to see what happens.

Sheep Christmas in July

I probably should have written about this several days earlier, but I've been having too much fun. Audrey sent me a box of fiber last week as part of our occasional fiber swap. (Someday we may extend this practice to include swapping toddlers, but I doubt they'll be travelling Priority Mail.)

She sent me about three pounds of fiber, and all of it was pretty. I've mislaid the sheet I wrote everything down on, but here's a general idea:

Spice-colored wool roving, with streaks of cinnamon, orange, red, and dark brown. Two batts of Finn/Merino wool in the lightest of grays. Three "Audrey batts" of alpaca/wool that she dyed and blended herself. The infamous "Electric Popsicle" roving. Organic alpaca roving from a small farm in Kansas which has the names of the responsible alpacas on the package! Eight ounces of alpaca locks, some superwash wool, and an absolutely exquisite bump of merino/tencel from Th'Red Head Designs in green and gold! The spinning wheel is calling to me.

Brian says this should keep me in spinning fiber for about a week.

Irony

My art supplies showed up yesterday, the day after my birthday. Unfortunately, since I've got a scratch on my glasses that cuts directly across my line of vision, anything that requires extensive focussing on small details (like, say, looking at a photograph and trying to paint it) causes severe eyestrain headaches. Back to fiber arts for now!

Packages and road trips!

(This is probably the third or fourth attempt to write this post. I keep getting distracted by things like work, dishes, and the cold which the Mimi graciously shared with the family. It's hard to write anything sensible when your sinuses feel as though they're about to explode from the pressure.)

Last week, the county's infectious disease department, whom I used to work for, had their required H1N1 debriefing and requisite planning for the next mass vaccination pandemic.

Even though I don't work for their department anymore, they still invited me to come--and then badgered my current bosses into letting me come, and paying me to go! I love public health! So we went to Seaside, where I just had to snap a pic of this famous statue of Lewis and Clark. Don't they look impossibly heroic? It says "End of the Trail" on the plinth, but I can't escape the feeling they're saying "Well, Bill, looks like we're lost again!"


When I got back from the conference, I had a fiber package from Silfert waiting for me. (Every six months or so, we do a fiber swap. It allows both of us to rotate our stashes, and cuts down on the nagging from husbands about "you spent HOW much on fiber?") The Mimi promptly rifled through the box, grabbed the baggies labeled "Shirley's girly goth batt" (pink in the photo) and danced around the house with them.

I also got a stunning superwash wool/tencel blend from a dyer I adored in Kansas, but haven't been able to get her products here, as well as some amazing roving dyed by Silfert herself. The brown bag in the above photo is a wool/tencel blend from the spectacular Traci Bunkers of Bonkers Fibers, who has a wonderful eye for color. It turned out to be too slippery to spin on the wheel, so I've been spinning it on the drop spindle instead. It's great fun to spin, and I think I see a shawl on the horizon.

The Mimi turned two a couple of weeks ago. One of the gals from San Francisco sent her this adorable vest. Pink is always her favorite color!

I may post the rest of the pictures another time, but we went on a mass family excursion to OSU Hatfield Marine Science Center to celebrate, and then to Brian's parents' house for a birthday party. Her favorite toy was these over-sized cat toy balls. At least she's stopped meowing at people!

Worlds bestest husband!

I've wanted to go to the Sock Summit ever since the Yarn Harlot sent out the inital post about it. Unfortunately, the budget wouldn't allow for that this year. But it was only two bucks a person to get into the Marketplace, where Brian selflessly minded the Mimi while I wandered around in a fiber-haze.

It was total sensory overload! So much to see, so many wonderful yarns and fibers to pat. So many things calling "take me home with you!" Only the knowledge that our budget is very limited kept me from draining the checking account right then and there.


The Mimi likes people. Doesn't matter, who or where, she likes people. Needless to say, she had fun meeting a lot of new people Saturday.


I love batts and "sparklies." There's just something about the smoothness of the various fibers combined with the fact that I'm simple-minded enough to be amused by not knowing which color will come up next that makes them incredibly mesmerizing to spin. Unfortunately, angora fiber gives me a rash--and almost every custom batt I saw contained it in some percentage. And nothing takes the joy out of spinning or knitting something like getting an itchy rash from it. That's why even the most bored and financially insolvent spinner feels no need to spin fiberglass insulation.

So I was incredibly excited to find this superwash/angelina/recycled silk batt from Enchanted Knoll Farm. Sparkly and angora-free! (And when I showed it to Brian at their booth, he said, "Why do you think I was at their booth? I wanted to make sure you noticed it.")

I found that with enough patience, my wheel will do laceweight. I love this fiber, and I'm having so much fun spinning it that I want to get the most possible "mileage" out of it. I bought 8 ouncess, so I'm envisioning a glittery shawl. (Or I could do a laceweight February Lady sweater, but that's been done by so many people at this point that it's become the knitting equivalent of shopping at the Gap. While I'm busy conforming to everyone else's ideas of cute and beautiful, I might as well go plaster my car with Hello Kitty stickers and paint it pink. )

The colors turned out a lot more subtle in the yarn than they are in the batt. Brian was pleasantly surprised by this. After six years of marriage, it's still a mystery to me how two people with such completely different tastes in fashion and color can live together happily most of the time. He loves earthtones, blues, grays, greens. If the color occurs in nature, he likes it. And while it's not as bad as the proverbial "blind showgirl on an acid trip," there's no denying that I prefer the more saturated end of the color spectrum.

Although my attempts to replace my current drive band (which is several yards of doubled, highly twisted sock yarn) with flexible aquarium tubing didn't work, the wheel spins like a dream. It only has one ratio, but is very sturdy. I can transport it in the car to and from Monday morning spinning without having to disassemble it.

Night off

I have tonight off work, and my sister in law Meegan was crazy enough--I mean kind enough--to watch the Mimi overnight tonight. Brian will be out at a meeting until late tonight, so a traditional date night is slightly out of the question. I'm thinking I'll bake some cookies, watch random things on Netflix, and spin more yarn. Currently I'm trying to spin enough lace weight yarn for a cardigan. 600 yards down, much more to go!

In other news, I joined Ravelry, but have no idea what to do there. Any tips?

Babies steal yarn

As evidenced by the security sock (which you can spot in all of these pictures if you know where to look) Shirley likes soft fuzzy objects. (Except for this teddy bear, which she ignores.

Perhaps it's the fact that it's bigger than she is?)

She regularly grabs yarn, roving, and WIPs if I'm unwise to leave them within her reach. (And now that she's learned how to balance on tip-toes, arm's reach is much higher up than it used to be.)

While I promptly tell her no and take the WIPs out of her hands, (Most of my projects are socks on sharp DPNs. The potential for baby self-inflicted injury is pretty much endless.) I don't mind near as much with the yarn and roving.

Until she puts them in her mouth. Which means that several times a day, I give the following soliloquy:
"No, we do not chew on yarn! We can admire it. We can pet it. We can say 'Oh, what lovely yarn! What pretty colors... It's so soft on my skin...' We do NOT put it in our mouths!"

And as I was giving this speech for the umpteenth time the other day, Brian chimed in with a few thoughts of his own:
"All yarn belongs to the mother! Pay homage to the mother and her yarn stash!"

Look on my fiber, ye mighty, and drool.

Bedtime stories and counselling funds

Before Shirley was born, we started a counselling fund for her. As I see it, all parents WILL eventually make some stupid mistake that their children would benefit from a bit of therapy about. But good parents not only try to make different stupid mistakes than their parents did, but they also try to not make so many mistakes (or such catastrophic ones) that they won't be able to afford the shrink's bill.

In my more cynical moments, I have serious doubts about my ability to do the former. However, I realized that thanks to the power of compound interest, we should be able to do the latter if we started saving early enough. So every time Brian or I say or do something that could conceivably result in a need for therapy, we put some money in the jar.

How much money we put in the jar is directly proportionate to the severity of the offense. Saying "That's Mommy's little nudist!" as she's squirming wildly and protesting getting dressed in the morning--fifty cents. Saying "You're so happy being naked I worry you'll be a Playboy bunny when you grow up!"--empty your entire wallet into the jar right now. And then write a check to the fund for twenty bucks.

We average about fifty dollars a month.

This week, Audrey sent me a ginormous box filled with all kinds of fibery goodness. Cotton, five different colors of wool, and pretty close to a pound of light tan alpaca. (It's hard to tell how much. The only scale we own in this house is used for our ancient coin collecting fetish and therefore refuses to weigh anything heavier than 100 grams.)

I washed up the alpaca yesterday. I've never washed alpaca locks before, so I was slightly concerned that I might have felted it. But I divvied it up into a pile of natural-colored fiber for Pop, and dyed the rest of it in the oven with food-coloring.

Tonight, Shirley was being a real Screaming Mimi. Brian had to deal with the worst of her, as I went down for a nap about 1300 and didn't emerge from my blanket cocoon for another five hours or so. After she failed our "polite society" test several times ("Coo, and the world coos with you. Scream incessantly for no apparent reason, and you scream in your crib alone.") I finally resorted to feeding her and doing her bedtime routine an hour early.

Since Brad and Billy were here this weekend for the annual brotherly computer game festival, I've had very limited floor space for drying fiber. So the alpaca has been drying on towels in the only unused floor space in the house--under the Mimi's crib.

She wasn't calm enough to get to sleep yet, and I wanted to "fluffet" the fiber and spread it out so it could dry faster. Thankfully, it didn't felt too badly, just a little bit around the edges. It turned out so amazingly soft and fluffy that I was sorely tempted to spin it right then--until I remembered that the smell of wet alpaca is akin to the smell of wet dog as far as scents I want permeating the living room go

So I told the Mimi some stories, as she's more likely to overlook the fact that no one is holding her as long as someone is talking to her. And being short on inspiration, I just started rambling with whatever stories wandered into my head. El Cid, how Odin made some questionable decisions, and the less salacious bits of
Wagner's Ring Cycle. It settled her down nicely, but now I need to go stuff a ten in the jar.

stuff in the mail!

Two weeks ago, as I was in mid-whine about cramps and periods and "why don't heating pads have a setting hotter than high?" I received a lovely prize package from Barbara.

Not only did she send me a Baby Surprise Jacket kit, but also a (signed!) copy of one of her books. It didn't make the cramps go away, but it really helped with the whining.

As promised, here is a picture of the finished Tour de Fleece silk: (Yes, I realize that it is wound around a picture frame. One of these days I'll get around to making/buying a niddy-noddy, but this works fine for now.) 215 yards of silk, now wound on a bobbin (known as a toilet paper roll in other households) awaiting something to ply it with.

On Thursday, we were awakened by the Screaming Mimi. Some time between her 0615 feeding and sunlight hitting the living room, she had managed to kick off all of her covers. After waking up cold and with a full diaper, she announced her displeasure to the world. Brian changed her, and handed me the 13 pound ice pack to warm up.

She cheered up promptly, but this is what I look like without caffeine.

In other news, the neighbors had a yard sale last month. And for under ten dollars, I managed to pick up an eight quart enamel stockpot, and a 12 quart one. With lids! I'm going to use them for dying fiber, (hooray for non-reactive cookware!) but they do a good job of amusing Mimi as well.