Twin Colds, Sister Skeins

You know, I really think that when both of us are sick for more than three overlapping days, someone ( God perhaps, or someone from The Heavenly Infimary...I don't know. Someone!) should really send in a maid. We can each take care of ourselves in a pinch, but who the heck is going to cook, do the dishes, move the laundry along, and vacuum the sneeze-inducing cat hair and multiplying dust bunnies? Not to mention pick up kleenexes, take the dog to the dogpark, feed the cat, let the chickens out, and change the sheets?

Sadly, all week, no maid appeared. Enough said about the state of our house.

And right in the middle of illness, piling up laundry, sneezes, snot, and the need to take down the Christmas tree, I realized I hadn't finished a holiday gift for my two indispensible and dear glassblowing helper-buddies and close friends! Yikes! My (admittedly unconventional) plan for this year is to give them both yarn, since one knits and the other aspires to knit. For their upcoming birthdays, I can give them glass knitting needles to go with the well-past-Christmas yarn.

So, in a rush, and on the first day I could get out of bed and actually do anything at all, I plied up this alpaca/merino yarn. The alpaca is the grey, and the merino is white.

A quick dye job in the kitchen was undertaken on the very same day. I wanted to make one skein blue and brown to possibly go with one winter coat, and the other skein to be red/orange and brown to hopefully go with the other winter coat. Here you see the blue/brown batch just before microwaving.

For the detail-oriented and curious among you, I use Country Classics dye for its simplicity of use and reasonable price. I just mix some random small amount with hot water, dilute it or mix colors until I like the looks of a drop of it on a white paper towel, and pour/splash it onto the presoaked yarn. (presoak in hot water with syntropol and vinegar) Then I put it in a refrigerator container used for this purpose only, and microwave it for maybe 8 minutes. Occasionally I microwave for longer, depending on how much water and yarn is in the container. It all has to get pretty hot.

The trick is to let it then cool to no more than lukewarm, to finish taking up the dye. I often turn the yarn over after maybe 15 minutes on the counter, but don't rinse till nearly cool.
Then when the skeins are rinsed, I take them to the washing machine and put them through a spin cycle to get them mostly dry. Hanging on the shower curtain rod finishes off the job.

And here are the finished skeins. Sadly, I didn't get to give them at our appointed get-together time because we were too sick to keep the date. But that's probably just as well; its taking them a long time to dry all the way in the wet air created by our constantly-running humidifier.

But the sun is shining today, and its warm out (frightening and amazing for Wisconsin!) so the windows are open for fresh air, and I'm thinking Spinning Thoughts. This must be a sign of recovery! Maybe I'll fold the laundry before doing any projects, though, since the maid still hasn't arrived. And then maybe a nap...

Desperate Measures, Desperate Times

Well, there's no good excuse for neglecting my blog for so long, but I'll put it down to grief, combined with the holidays. Since I'm a glass artist by trade, the holiday season is my busiest, and I often make about half of my annual income between October and the end of December. Combine that with the fact that since Nancy and my mother died I've found it hard to do anything at all some days, and then the holidays, a tree full of family history...well. What with one thing and another, its a blur.

I'm embarrassed to say it, but not only didn't I post to my spinning blog for way too long, but I didn't even spin! In fact, the horrible truth is that I knit with commercial yarn, which I rarely do, and I knit my way into several good sized projects, and so now I've got a last sleeve of a sweater, a hood with attached scarf, and about 8 inches of a second sweater on the needles, and none of them hand spun! Desperate measures for desperate times. At least I did something fibery, right?

Finally, though, the fog is beginning to clear, and a new year is dawning. Along with it, hopefully, some clear spots between the moodiness, and some totally handmade projects on the needles!



First up, I'm continuing to work on these mittens; I cast on in the summer when Mom and Nancy were sick, using tiny, tiny needles, looking for something that was so absorbing that I couldn't think about other things while I knit it. Eventually I had to set it aside, as more pressing things took over. Its taken me a little while to be ready to face these again, but I love the process, and the pattern, and it really is nice to have something so absorbing, and cheerful. Plus, now I want to wear the mittens!

You can see the back of the mitten on the left, and the palm of the mitten on the right. I'm knitting them simultaneously, from both ends of the dark colored balls, and two matching rainbow balls. Quite a tangle! Lots of tiny needles! The beautiful rainbow alpaca yarn was a gift from my very talented Secret Pal, if you remember that One Skein exchange from awhile back. She blogs at http://www.froghollow.typepad.com .

Next up is an over-the-top yarn I spun a long time ago for a spinning contest and just got back about a week ago. I love the bright and crazy colors, so I cast on immediately for mittens for my goddaughter who is 7. She'll keel over in a fit of pink ecstasy when she sees the color!

I got this wacky yarn by combining two separate and equally high-spirited colorways; one ply from roving I had dyed in yellow-orange-pink progression, and the other in purple-magenta-pink progression. Then, in a fit of silliness, I plied them together.


It took me about an hour of looking at this yarn to decide to knit it up just as it is; I contemplated combining it with a second color, something dark and plain, or maybe light and fuzzy...but in the end, pure crazy won out.

I know; all this is from vintage spinning, nothing recent. That's true, but one thing at a time. At least I'm knitting hand spun yarn. And I'm starting to feel the urge to spin again, so presumably in the next week or so I'll have something to show for the irrepresible creative spirit, the healing of a little bit of time passing, and the new year arrriving, with all of its promise.