It's Time For Alpaca Goodness!

Saturday our spinning guild had our annual meeting at Bill Shaddox's alpaca farm. That is his partner Bruce holding the lead for Lulu Mae. Do you remember last year she was called the Kisser? She is now called the Ambassador at the alpaca shows.

I think his bangs are much prettier than mine ever could be.

I didn't get to ask, but I think this might be the little guy we saw last year as a cria in Bruce's arms. Isn't that the cutest face?

I never could get a good photo of General Beauregard. He has a streak across his forehead and a white triangle on his nose. Quite a charmer!

We had a good time. There is much discussion about the upcoming fiber show this weekend. Unfortunately-or fortunately- I am off to Mirkwood for our annual family reunion. You know this is October when we all trek off to the woods and camp out for the weekend. Hopefully it won't be too wet this weekend. We have had a cold snap with rain, but no freezes yet.

I am still plugging along with the shawl that I started the day the Hurricane hit Texas. I am always working on a pair of socks. I love the yarn. It is gray with small stripes of orange, yellow, and occasional olive green. There is a white space that comes up periodically due to dyeing issues, but it is okay.

I have dug out my handspun yarn that I have done in the past year. I smelled it, fondled it, and looked it over. I want to do a sweater like the Twisted Sisters did in their book. I have put the idea in the brain and now it has to percolate. I think it is a good idea to make a pattern so one knows where the knitting is going. I wish I still had the butcher paper that I used to have. I'll have to do something else to equal that. Maybe a paper bag would be strong enough.

I also have plans for the yarn that I spun a hundred years ago to make my husband a sweater. I never did that, but I have 1,295 yards of it spun. It is a single, and it has thick and thin quality. It is about the weight of Aran yarn-5 stitches to the inch on size 6 needle. I do not like the scratchiness of the yarn that much, but it was all I could get at the time. This was pre-Internet and pre-getting decent wool. I think I want to dye it something to bring it up to the 21st century.

So as soon as the shawl is done, the percolating will be done and I can get down to a sweater. Yawn! This is kinda boring, isn't it?

Moon Shadows!

You start here! Black and White Alpaca!
Spin it into a little bit of yarn!
Then knit it into a shawlette!

I call it Moon Shadows. When I first starting spinning it, I looked up at a pastel drawing on the wall. I like the drawing because it is in the shadows, and the frame I bought extended the feeling of the shadows. As I stared at the drawing, I admitted to myself that shadows are really interesting features in an art piece. A few nights later I was driving home late and noticed the shadows from the moon. Remember I used to live really out in the boonies. Then when I was spinning the yarn, I thought, "This is like moon shadows." I thought of the differences in sun shadows and moon shadows. So this is what I focused on while I was spinning it.

I chose the shawlette because I really don't need another big shawl. I found this Sivia Harding design called "Victorian Shoulderette." It is really lovely and light and soft. It just covers the shoulders and drapes about bicep level on the arm. It fastens in the front with a pin.

Oh! That's the other thing I thought of while spinning it. I have a silver pin that is oval, has a tree in silhouette, and a moon out of mother of pearl peeking from behind the limbs. I knew it was perfect for the shawlette after I started thinking of moon shadows.

So that's how crazy my creativity is. I love this because it worked out just as I was thinking, and it is the perfect little something to put over one's shoulders to keep a draft off the neck.

And The Winner Is.......

Ten ozs of yellow wool. I could not get a picture of true color. This is a bright, clear deep yellow-almost golden. I forgot how much room and mess dyeing can be. I have been using Kool-Aid and other easy dyes that are convenient. So I had to dig around in the shed to find my big pots, and to find my mordants. So now the mind is saying, "We need a dye shed." Some place to store all the mess, some place to find things easily, and some place I can go to, mix up the dye, turn on the new dyepot, and get it done. Right now I have a HUGE mess in the kitchen, and this is not going to work.

Today I am off to see some black walnut. I have a friend that I call a Scrounger. He finds things. He asked me if I wanted some daffodils. So we spend a half a day at this sight that had been bought by developers. The older houses had been torn down, and the new construction had not been built. We dug and dug and dug. He calls me when he finds stuff. So yesterday he asked me if I wanted some black walnut to carve. I am supposed to meet him this afternoon to see what's there before they remove the tree.

Yesterday was a play day. I went over to CJ's house, and we worked a little bit in her studio. Then I cooked a frozen pizza while she went to get her mom. So after eating our pizza, another friend stopped by and we knit, carded wool, and just visited. It was a nice early Fall day and we sat outside. It wasn't too hot since the clouds hug around mostly.

Have a good week.

What Is That Smell?

My newest toy! It is a 28-quart turkey fryer/steamer. It is electric with digital controls. I was going to buy one of those big propane kind on a stand that has to be done outdoors. But when I found this one-there was no question. It can be used indoors, and it has a spigot to drain the pot.
So no lifting the thing to drain the pot. It's like a giant crockpot. So I am initiating it! A dye pot that will hold 8 ozs of wool easily. None of this fussy cooking 2 ozs in a regular dye pot. The only catch-I have to stand on a ladder to see the controls. I have already set the temp and it got there in about 15-20 mins. So while the dye pot is cooking, I turned it off for a while.

Yes-sir-ree-bob! It's marigolds!! I know I am not the only person in the world who puts flowers in the deep freeze until there is enough for a dye pot. But it has been a long time since I have actually made a dye pot from scratch. And I forgot that the smell of boiling flowers is really pungent. Thank goodness it is not a stinky dye pot. I have made a few of those.

This is too exciting! I can't hardly wait. I will report back the results. I always set my standards low on natural dye pots, since I am not a chemist and never-ever measure accurately.
I never can duplicate the darn things. I did measure the amount of water to put into the big pot. And I will measure the amount of alum/cream of tartar to use for mordant. But from there it is a guess. I could not tell you the amount of flowers I am cooking. I know I will use 8 ozs of wool as my test run. That's it! There are a few correopsis in this mess, but 90 percent is marigold.

So stay tuned! It is surely getting exciting around here!

The New Porch!!

My new screened-in porch is completed!! Isn't it beautiful? It will be a wonderful place to sit and relax when I get some nice porch furniture. A new outdoor knitting room or spinning room.

The last of the cross-ties went in yesterday. My neighbor helped move all the left-over dirt from the front to the back with his tractor. So the new dirt spot in the front is where I will plant a tree. I am about done with this yard stuff for the season. SH and I are going to the City of Fayetteville compost/mulch place and get a truck-load today. I need to get some manure from my friend with the horse farm. That should do it. Now the little planties need to survive through the winter. Then it starts all over again next year.

I leave you with this music video from Mason-Dixon. Whodathunkit? Not only do they write, but they sorta kinda sing! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUOgqefnt_I

Is This Monday-or What?

I was appalled to find out that two posts that I thought I posted were not posted. It doesn't make sense. I can go to where the posts are stored, and I cannot figure out how to get them posted from storage. I cannot figure out why they weren't posted in the first place. It's one of those deep-computer mystery things.

Anyway-I am totally exhausted today, and I declared this a rest day. Despite that, I am doing laundry, dishes, etc.

I finally sorta kinda finished the front flower bed. I haven't got all the cross ties in place yet. My neighbor finally got the part for his tractor and tootled over here to load up a big portion of the topsoil pile and place it into the flower bed proximity. He and his wife went away in their HUGE RV for a week, and that gave me plenty of time to rototill the piles of dirt and rake them into an assemblage of level. I finally decided to wheelbarrow several loads of dirt into the middle to pile it up higher. I them planted all my flowers I bought. Now it looks silly with this little batch of flowers in the center of this HUGE flower bed. But in a coupla years this will all be a memory. And it will look gorgeous.

HandHeld Knitting-my LYS- has moved a block and a half into a real store front. Yes, everyone complains because the little cottage was like a home for knitters everywhere. But this looks more sophisticated and upscale. It has a better traffic flow-hopefully-better lighting, and the whole shop is in one room. Better for the cashier/storekeeper. There is a small loft that is planned for a classroom. Several of us helped out last week with the move and arranging of yarn into bins. It should be a good thing once the newness wears off.

Our knitting night has changed with the move. We will now be meeting on Thursday evenings. Other stores will be open, and it should bring in traffic as well.

My friend from California came for the weekend. She has been at her cabin in Oklahoma, and she needed a break from her repairs. So we got the dump site mostly cleaned out in the back. When I began digging around, I found where the previous owners dumped all their trash. After we finished, we went into Fayetteville to the recycling center with 4 garbage bags full of beer and whiskey bottles. The rest of the recycled stuff can be picked up with my service. There were three garbage bags full of trash. There are bulk items that will have to wait until the end of October for pick up by my service. And I have a pile of metal and wires that I will have to call another service for that pick up. Of course, there will be plenty more to clean up once the leaf off is completed. But the majority of it is gone.

I could not believe that today I bought gas for $3.17. There is a gas war going on. I really didn't need any gas, but I topped off my tank while I could get the deal.

I am slowly getting stuff organized in my sewing and storage room. I bought these nice Rubbermaid drawer units at Walmart. They are deep drawers, and they hold a lot of stuff. I am emptying my Rubbermaid containers that are stacked up. I am trying to put one type of thing in each drawer, labeling the drawer, and that will keep things handier than the system I had. I like them a lot. They are not pretty or wood or anything, but they are highly functional. I am thinking about getting a door at Lowe's or Home Depot and put on top of two of them to make a big cutting table. It's a plan; we will see.

Hopefully this will publish. I don't know what to do about the other ones. I guess they are lost in the black hole of blogland.

Where Were You When............?

A friend and I were having lunch last week. He surprised me when he asked, "Where were you when Kennedy was assassinated?" I told him, and I repeated where I was when RFK and Martin Luther King were assassinated. I even told him where I was when Elvis died and Lennon was assassinated.

It reminds me that in a sociology class we were discussing values of a culture and mores, etc., etc. Boring stuff. It was interesting that the instructor said that our values are set at age ten from the adults and society we live in, and from age ten to around age 16 we develop our own values from experimenting with our place in that society. The only thing that changes this whole parameter is a catastrophic event. Like assassination, like war, like Hurricane Katrina, or a tsunami that wipes out everything. Or famine, or invasion of one's country, or anything along that line. So my generation was effected by 3 assassinations of world leaders and a really bad war that was killing my generation off. And two social icons were killed.

Now I am not trying to say that my generation was special. My mother's generation was effected by the Depression during their young years, and by a World War that was killing off their generation. My grandparents had their own struggles.

I don't know where I am going with these thoughts. But I do know that today is September 11. I do know where I was on September 11, 2001. I do know that I think it is a very tragic event in our history. And a monumental one at that. But I am not as effected by that as someone who is of the generation surrounding that event.

But go back to the original thought. When we think about Iraq or Afghanistan, think about the effects of our invasion on the mores and societal impact that we created for the children and young people of those countries. It will show up within the next 20-30 years.

And think of any other society we do not understand-or even pretend to understand. What impact will you have on the people in that society? What impact will we have on the children that were snatched from the compound of that religious sect in Texas at gunpoint? We will see in another 20 years. What effect did we have on the poor little Cuban boy that was snatched out of a closet in Miami at gunpoint?

I guess we will find out in a few more years.

Meanwhile, I leave you with a picture of Noodles birdwatching out his kitty door. I understand this more than I understand what we are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan.