the spirit of the thing

I have a habit of attempting to publish a pattern around Valentine's Day.  Some years, this works out.  Other years, well, something gets in the way, and what was intended to be a Valentine's Day release (or before Valentine's...) doesn't work out.  Some years I run a big sale.  Sometimes nothing happens at all.  I am working ahead this time, because, well, it turns out that when everyone has been sick, you cannot predict what things will look like a day or two away.  I've been trying to rest a lot, but in the meanwhile, things still seem to be happening online, with or without me--patterns and articles I wrote a long time ago are finding their way in the world, without my help, and that is heartening.

 Last year, I published the Thump Thump Mittens, (Be still my heart). Another year, I did the Hole Inside Mitts, which is really more a story about heartbreak...but relevant to Valentine's.  Long ago, I designed the Heart's Ease Socks, while pondering things that cause heart ache.  Distal was first published long before Valentine's, but I knit the red version out of handspun for myself...and it became my go to shawl/scarf for this cold time of year.

A long (long) time ago, I came up with the Turkish Lace Camisole, but I'd have to say that unless I'm wearing the dark green linen version of these, as a layer, it doesn't get much use these days...and definitely not over a bathing suit :)  The post-twin figure doesn't lend itself to this item, but surely someone out there needs something fetching for a cruise or mid-winter trip to somewhere warm....?

This is a circuitous way of saying that I've got a new pattern coming, and I'm working on it.  If I feel up to it, it might be published by Valentine's Day...?! Or not.

In the meanwhile, I'm showing you lots of happy red items to knit,(Just look away from all that winter weather if it gets you down and knit--it is cheering!) and all these patterns are also available on Loveknitting.com, which is selling a lot of patterns these days...complete with the yarn to make them.

I got my own little present today--The Jewish Independent, a Vancouver publication, posted an article that I wrote that I'm especially fond of.  It combines two of my great loves: Talmud and working with wool (knitting/spinning, etc.).  It's called In the spirit of Jewish law.

Stay warm!  Knit (and wear) wool!

PS: This weekend, we've got a project--I'm lining up little boys with lots of Valentines this year for their school classmates!  It will be the first time they can write their names on every card.  Very exciting. :)

Why polar fleece isn't as good as real (wool) fleece

Here's a link to my latest CBC piece:

Make green clothing choices to protect Lake Winnipeg from microplastics

Always a bonus-- it has a sheep shearing picture!

Otherwise, we're super busy over here...getting ready for a big holiday, and with kids on vacation, so posts may be few and far between for the next few weeks.  We'll just have to see how it goes!  Wishing you lots of wonderful spring holidays/events with your family, too!

what I did on my vacation...

Long time, no post!  Sorry about that.

My twins started winter break after school on December 16th.  Things got very busy.  In the meanwhile, late at night and during naptime, I managed to accomplish a few things I am very happy about.

Big Things: From the Outside In is now available in paperback.  It's available as a Kindle download and it's available from a whole pile of other places if you use another kind of digital device.

Also, after six months of running low fevers, having lots of unpleasant symptoms, and feeling generally crummy--I have been diagnosed with Lyme disease...and the lab test was positive according to CDC guidelines, so there is that.

This was a relief!  Instead of being seen as potentially hysterical or ill with something vague and undefinable, I've been handed a pile of antibiotics.  I sure hope it works and I begin to feel better soon.

Small Things:  Grown ups in our household did not get anything really glamorous for Hanukah.  We do not do really big presents, but even so, a few things really made winter break better.

1) A new microwave:  When your microwave has hot spots, it can make you run like a crazy person to get your (smokin') bag of popcorn and rush outside to dump it into the snow.  Then, when even the dogs won't approach it, I was forced to bring it back inside, run it under cold water, and then rush out to the compost to get rid of it.  Note: the temperatures here are really low, and I put the bag in the snow, and it was all still smoking.

You can bet the house smelled bad.  Time for a new appliance!?

2) A Gleener 
This thing removes pills from sweaters.  It is amazing.  We wear our woollies very hard, and a lot of handknit things in our house were looking mighty worn.  I set up a little schedule with one of my twins and we "gleened" two sweaters a day for a while and removed a lot of pills.  My kid still says "pins" when he means pills but he is very keen to take all the fuzzy bits and throw them away once the sweater is tidy again.  It has been a super investment.  Not romantic, mind you, but I am very glad the Professor bought it for me from Canadian Tire.

3) A gift from my parents:  A traditional gift on Hanukah is "gelt" which just means--money.  You may have noticed that Canadian currency has dropped a lot when compared to the US.  My parents sent us some money to spend on going out to eat/take out to make the break easier.  We had a lot of fun, and those American dollars went farther than one might think.  Thanks, folks!

That about sums up our break, aside from sledding, playing outside in snow suits, cooking a lot, playing inside a lot, three play dates (I baked challah with three five year olds.  I still can't believe I attempted this.)  and a lot more...

School started again January 3rd.  I love kindergarten. :)

That's the news from here.  How are you?  Drop me a line?

spinning-one day at a time

Yesterday I taught my first 'intro to hand spinning workshop with a drop spindle' since 2011.  It was a blast!  The weather outside was so cold (-45 windchill) that the Professor's car wouldn't start.  (It started later, after we'd plugged the block heater in for a good long time...it was just too cold.)

Our boys were suited up in snow pants, boots, lots of layers under the parka and more just to go to their dance class, so they took my car. After the dance class, we did a quick shuffle.  Boys were rushed inside to have a hot lunch.  I rushed outside with all my gear to the car that would start to teach my class.

Luckily, we all made it on time.  Every single one of my registered students showed up, even the one from Brandon, 2 hours away. Every class is different; this one was full of experienced fiber arts folks, who basically started spinning and kept on like they had been born to it.  It was a delight!

Also this week, my essay Reading the Whole Megillah came out in the Jewish Post & News. 

Surprisingly, there is a thread that ties all of this together.  These days, if I want to be prepared to teach a class, I have to start days in advance.  My work time is limited...and always has to be flexible.  So, for instance, last Thursday, I had a medical appointment with a specialist.  That morning, one of the boys woke up a bit under the weather, and his brother decided he wanted to stay home from preschool to keep him company.  Since I had this doctor's appointment, the Professor cancelled his workday to stay home with twins.  I maneuvered the cold weather and got myself to the appointment and made it home.  (Also got a local and 4 stitches while there, but all is well for now and nothing to worry about.)  Between the kids missing school, the mom who needed to rest after her appointment, and the cold, the whole day was just shot.  I had to budget every hour and every moment between Friday and Sunday to be sure my teaching supplies were ready to go.

I've learned from this "having twins experience" to take it one moment at a time.  The essay on Purim is about that too, in some ways.  In Jewish tradition, we read (or don't read!) the same sacred texts every year.  Over the years, we read different things in the same texts.  One time I read the Book of Esther on the floor in a crowded airport when my plane was delayed due to bad weather...other years, I heard it in other ways.  Maturity, life changes, different surroundings--these all cause us to read a text differently, whether it is a novel or a part of a religious tradition.

Finally, these photos:  When the boys were babies, perhaps in the fall of 2011?  or fall 2012?  A business named Rovings in our area that specialized in importing Polwarth wool from Australia and processing it for handspinners began to downsize and had a big sale.  The professor's father was visiting and they decided to help me get to the sale.  It was a bright sunny day and the babies mostly napped in the car while I went inside.

I bought a lot of yarn, a raw fleece (still unopened!) and a 'dyed in the locks' fleece that had won a prize.  The colors were amazing.  I rarely buy dyed fiber like this, but I loved the colors.  When the boys were about 18 months or 2 years old, I moved a spinning wheel down to our basement playroom space.  I started spinning this Polwarth wool, one lock at a time, whenever I had a moment.

Recently, I finally finished spinning up all the wool (maybe 2 lbs total) and I have now plied most of it for a total spinning process time of roughly 2 years.  I am doing a 3 ply, approximately worsted weight and this is what the first batch of washed skeins looks like.  I love it. 

In the old days, before twins, I could spin a pound of clean wool in a week, and still get lots of other things done.  Now, I guess it takes years...but I can still do it.  Little by little.  Bird by bird.    I am reminded of Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.  I'll finish with a quote from that, and you'll see what I mean.

"Thirty years ago my older brother, who was  ten years old at the time, was trying to get a  report on birds written that he'd had three months to  write. It was due the next day. We were out at our  family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen  table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper  and pencils and unopened books on birds,  immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my  father sat down beside him, put his arm around my  brother's shoulder, and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy.  Just take it bird by bird.'"

Learn to Spin on February 22nd!

UPDATE: AS of Wednesday, February 18, this class is full...
(please let me know if you are still interested and maybe we can plan another class in the future)

It's been a long time since I offered a spinning class...so fibre friends in our community are hosting one.  Here's the info for Winnipeg locals...I can't wait to meet you!:

Norwood Naughty Knitters, Cloverleaf Art & Fibre and Joanne Seiff present a class:

Learn to Spin!  

Taught by Joanne Seiff*

Handspinning with a spindle is an ancient craft that is still important even today.  Everyone in a household, including children as young as four, used to help spin yarn that clothed the family and kept them warm!  Join Joanne and learn a bit about wool and learn to use a handspindle to make your own yarn.  When you leave this class, you’ll own a spindle, some extra wool, and you’ll be able to practice spinning at home.

 

Note: This class is all you’ll need to begin spinning.  It’s also a great introduction to the skills you’ll need if you decide to learn to spin on a spinning wheel.

 

When: February 22nd from 1:30-4:30 pm     

Where:  Norwood Community Centre

87 Walmer St, Winnipeg, MB

Cost: $60

This includes: a $30 materials fee for a beginner’s spindle, wool, other materials & a $30 class fee per person

 

Spaces are Limited! Register via Paypal (click that button) to reserve your spot!

Visit cloverleaffibre.com for registration information, email cloverleaf.fibre@gmail.com or comment on this blog post if you have questions.

Learn to spin in a friendly, hands-on environment!

*About the Instructor:

Joanne Seiff is a co-organizer of the Manitoba Fibre Festival and the author of Fiber Gathering, a book about fiber festivals, and Knit Green: 20 Projects and Ideas for Sustainability.  She’s been spinning for over 30 years-- and knitting longer than that!  Her writing has appeared in Spin-Off Magazine.  Her handspun yarn and fiber art has been sold in galleries and won awards at state fairs and in art competitions.  She teaches throughout North America at sheep shows, fiber festivals, and yarn shops. 

wool consultant?

 


I thought you might be interested in some of my latest adventures.  A little while ago, I heard that someone was giving away "free wool" but the story was more complex than that.  The short version?  A local stable was going through a transition and had an empty arena and a lot of empty loose boxes indoors this winter.  The province animal welfare folks seized a flock of sheep, plus 2 guard llamas.  I have no idea of the details, but this farm ended up with 40 sheep.  The flock was not in good health; there were dead animals in the field.

 The flock was cared for by the provincial vets and animal control folks and stayed indoors in the arena, warm and dry, during our very cold winter.  (-20 to -40 can be too cold for sheep to be outside without any sort of shelter, too!)  Before the sheep were sent on to their new home, a shearer came in and helped out.  Some (or all?) of those 40 fleeces ended up in a loose box in the stable in March.  Although I think the shearer did do brief skirting, there was no sorting or careful containment as this shearing was entirely for health reasons. 

Sheep who have been stressed often have breaks in their fleece, and some of these sheep had serious health concerns.  The stable had very caring horse people there, but they knew nothing about sheep or wool.

By the time I got out there with a friend to really help go through the fleeces, it was maybe 2 months later.  To our surprise, it was, in some part, a wool flock.  There were a mixture of breeds, Jacob and Jacobs' crosses, Icelandic, and some fine wool white sheep. 

When I was a kid, just learning to spin, a huge pile of free raw wool seemed like a good dream.  Unfortunately, adults know those pesky details can get in the way.

 What happened?  My friend and I managed to salvage 4 fleeces that looked ok.  One dark brown/reddish Icelandic fleece, a Jacob, and a couple of fine wool (one was maybe a Finn cross) fleeces.  We were making good progress on a very windy, cold day on the prairie.  We were indoors, but it was cold and wet and we had only a couple hours before I had to head back to town for preschool pick up.

I stepped into that great mound of wool to retrieve half a fleece and (if you are squeamish, please sit down now) mice TEEMED out of it.  I screamed, of course, it was surprising.  Not really surprising, in retrospect, as I would choose that place to nest if I were a mouse, but...when I described it to my boys, they said, "TWO mice?" and I said no.  They said "TEN mice?" and well, I said, "Ok, ten."  It was more than ten.

 

Worse, after that moment, the next 4 or 5 fleeces were checked were damaged beyond repair.  There was water penetration in the stable from a large snow bank and the fleeces were very wet.  We're not sure how many fleeces were from sick sheep, or if the water or the pest infestation was the problem.  Short version?  The rest had to go to the landfill.  Sad, but true, especially because getting rid of those mice was important, too.

What happened to the fleece?

 

I ended up parking 4 fleeces on my front porch.  I washed them all--not to get them spotlessly clean, but clean enough so someone would be willing to bring them into their house.  The Icelandic and Jacob fleeces have gone a new home for $15 a piece, to benefit the Manitoba Fibre Festival.  I have two white (ish) fine wool fleeces left....good for felting or maybe for spinning.  They will require a thorough second cleaning and do still have vegetable matter in them....  Drop me a note with contact information if you are interested.

I know that many spinners these days focus almost exclusively on cleaned wool roving and even hand-dyed roving.  Some people never process a raw fleece from scratch.  Meeting sheep and being at shearing day, starting from scratch?  This has been one of my great joys as a spinner.  I have more than one garment from a friend's sheep--and I was there to catch it when it was shorn, I washed it, I teased, carded or combed it, I spun it, I knit it...I like this process.

I also like being there to try to save something from nothing.  These rescue sheep have gone on to a better home.  I hope now a small fraction of their hard work, their wool, can be made worthwhile.

crush

The Professor is lucky.  I'd have to say that I encounter few people that actually turn my head these days.  (Yup, nearly 16 years of marriage and counting...)

I cannot say the same about yarn.  I occasionally get a crush.  Sometimes, the crush is totally fulfilled and runs its course.  Icelandic yarn, while I will always love you, while I will return back to you, I'll have to say that my crush is over for now.  I spent this entire winter knitting SOMETHING out of Lopi.  I made a bathmat, two women's sweaters and two little boy sweaters.  Most, if not all of that knitting happened while the boys watched their 20-40 minutes of Sesame Street, Caillou, Thomas, Busytown, or Curious George in the evenings while drinking their bedtime milk.  (We have recently started watching Clifford, it is a thrilling alternative.)  I sit nearby and knit as fast as I can.  Any more complicated knitting happens around nap or night time, and I am usually denying myself sleep to do it.

Recently, I bumped into this pattern on Ravelry.  Then I looked over the whole ebook: Kestrel and I swooned.  A whole lot of Pam Allen designs, and I am a great fan of her work.  Then....only then, I allowed myself to wander over to her yarn company's website--Quince & Co. and looked around.  Another SWOON.  That yarn, Kestrel, is made out of Belgian organic linen.  (Quick, stop yourself before you cruise around to the other yarns.  You could go bankrupt.)

I am on a strict yarn diet.  First off, my stash just about insulates our house.  Second, I knit much less than I used to, before twins....I just don't have time.  Third...shipping anything to Canada is a drag, the postage is expensive, it takes forever, and we are erratically charged duty on weird stuff.  (The latest weirdness?  Secondhand cloth diapers from the UK.  Yes, they were spotlessly clean...but USED NAPPIES?  Really?  We owe money on that baby/kid necessity?!)

Anyway, all that has kept me from buying out Brooklyn Tweed or Harrisville's new yarn, Watershed.  I've even looked at the Irish, UK and Icelandic sites, as we seem to have less problem shipping from there than from the US...

You'll note that there is not a single photo in this post.  This way, if you do not feel the urge to fall in love, to look at yarn p*rn, to covet, you don't have to.  Now you know what I do when I am faced with hours of mindless child-related clean up, or when I am up AGAIN in the middle of the night.  I dream of yarn, of course.

(I'm knitting with this Canadian yarn right now, and it's just about taking the edge off.  The strong woolly odor of spinning oil and fleece does it.  Ahhh.  For now.)

PS:  Trust me, no one is paying me a dime to promote or link to their yarns.  Not even a skein.  I'm just, well, crushing too much to hold it in.

Manitoba Fibre Festival & A Spinning Class

I may have mentioned before that I've been working with a friend to help organize a fibre festival here in Manitoba.  Well, actually, my friend, Margaret Brook, has done the lion's share (or is that ram's share?) of the work.  I have worked behind the scenes, making suggestions, talking up people at the farmer's market, printing flyers, and trying to support my friend as she does the heavy lifting.  I am so excited and pleased that Winnipeggers will now have a chance to make connections right in town with local fibre producers and to learn, buy, and gather to discuss all things fibre!

Of course, if you live in North Dakota, or South Dakota, or in Ontario or Saskatchewan, this might also be the festival for you...we'd love to have you!

I am also teaching an informal spinning class at the festival.  I believe there are still spaces left!  Here is the description:

 "Ask a spinner!" 

Instructor: Joanne Seiff
Spinning is a solitary activity; lots of questions can pop up on your own. Many of us experiment or research by ourselves, but sometimes it is good to talk out solutions with your peers. Join Joanne Seiff, longtime spinner, fibre arts writer and educator, as she facilitates a question and answer learning session covering anything to do with spinning. Bring your own wheel or spindle, some fibre, and a willingness to ask questions and share the answers you’ve found on your own. 

1:00 - 3:00 pm    2 hours
Registration fee: $20
No materials cost

To register for my workshop (or any of the others!), visit the festival workshop page here and click on the Paypal "Buy Now" button for the appropriate class.

I am really looking forward to seeing you at the festival!

knitwear past and present

I'll start out by saying that I found all the comments to the last post very interesting and thought provoking. I've lived in lots of places (summarized list in the last post's comments) and seen beauty and scenic views in all of them. I think what I was trying to say was that the prairie "scenic views" do not have to be seen at the top of an observation tower--I see them every day. Maybe my thoughts weren't just written out clearly. On reflection, maybe I also assumed some things about travel since I've done a bit of it and lived in a lot of places.

For instance, it is not a small thing to say that a road enables good knitting time. I've been on some roads in North America and abroad (In the U.S., for instance, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Colorado, New England and upstate New York) that basically made knitting impossible. If the hills are straight up and down, the turns are "hairpin" and you're trying hard to keep your lunch down, well, it's not a good time to knit. In fact, in winter, just staying on the road seemed a real achievement in some places. You know, the places where the snow on either side makes the twisty, ice covered road feel like a tunnel?

Obviously, I should get back to knitting talk here.

Photo one is of my first sock for the KAL. I have just turned the heel (this photo was a bit before that) and things are going very well, for the most part. I think the socks will be roomy, but I find that superwash wool tends to sort of tighten up in washing, so I think roomy is fine as a starting place.

Yesterday, I took advantage of our lovely warm fall weather to wash a lot of woolens. We have a big basket of scarves, hats, mitts, and dog sweaters in our front entry. I turned out the pockets of every one of my coats and sorted things into dark and white washes. Using the washing machine as a set tub (Fill up with hot water and detergent, stop, let things soak, spin out. Fill up with hot water, rinse, spin...) I gave some hard working wool items a good wash. I won't even tell you how dark the water looked in my "white" wash.

The Professor reminded me that we get used to thinking some things don't need to get washed too often. Mittens are one of those things I could do with washing a little more often! All in all, I counted 6 pairs of handknit mittens that I wore on a regular basis last winter. These are rotated among at least 3 different winter coats depending on temperature and occasion. I tend to wear a double layer of knitted mitts when I'm out walking the dogs. This means that it is "all hands on deck" in terms of my mitten usage. In this collection, I saw some mittens I'd spun and knit 15-18 years ago (in college) as well as mittens I'd made in the last 3 years. I also have too much white in there--some of these should definitely visit the dyepot!

I washed my Cuddle Coat too, the white sweater that you can see me wearing in the little picture of me on my blog. (the one with Harry the dog) This sweater was so easy to design and knit and has seen hard wear for the last 5 years. I love it and sleep in it nearly every night in the middle of winter. None of the photos I've done or others have done have shown how truly comfy it looks/feels.

Since I can't seem to give up knitting along on my red sweater at the same time as the socks, here are a couple of photos of my progress. When I design a sweater for myself, I often do it as I go, on the needles. The directions I gave myself here were: "Cast on 300 sts on #15 needles. Knit garter stitch for 18" or so. Then you can change yarn and stitch pattern." I am nearing 18" at this point and have created a lap full of sweater. While mohair boucle can be tricky to knit, the luminous nature of the finished knitted fabric is something else. I tried to catch that in this last photo.

The complicated bits with dk weight alpaca and wool yarns, shaping armholes and sleeve lengths, edgings and neck--all that is to come. What I think people will notice about this sweater? This mohair boucle's shine and energy. That's probably true with most things--the most difficult parts look plain jane and simple...even unglamorous. (turning a heel, for instance) It's only the maker that can tell which parts were easy glitzy attention seekers and which parts were prim, proper, and took hours of care.

Ain't that life for you?

production..and acquisition

As of today, my summer teaching marathon is over. Hurray! I love teaching, but I also really missed my summer this year. Everyone here in Manitoba had their vacation time but me! The kicker is that I seem to acquire raw goods (wool, vegetables, fruit) in direct correlation to the lack of time I have to process it. That is, the more stress I'm under, the more raw wool and food seems to appear in my house. Some people might call this retail therapy. I'm more inclined to think that without a steady production stemming from my hands, I feel like I'm not accomplishing much..even while teaching grad students four days a week. So, I somehow acquire more...and more...and then there's more stress to find time that I don't really have...to cope with it all.

I realized that in order to stop myself from missing summer entirely, the Professor and I had to go outside and enjoy ourselves a bit. Over the weekend, we dodged rain clouds and went picking vegetables at grenkow's u-pick. This is the second year in a row where I've forgotten a camera, so you'll have to believe me. Roughly 8 miles out of town, there's a lot of prairie. A field with dark charcoal colored earth that stretches on and on with a layout like a big veggie garden.

We picked tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, beans, some cucumbers, a dill stalk or two and 3 pie pumpkins. All in all, we paid around $78 and picked for less than 2 hours. The produce was something in the range of $1 or $2 a pound. I'd venture a guess that we picked over 50 lbs of produce. That's a whole lot of eggplant. That's a passel of peppers. That's (more than a) bag of beans...our refrigerator is full. You get the point!

I've de-skinned and roasted tomatoes and garlic in the oven, pureed, them, and popped all that sauce in the freezer. The Professor and I cooperated on the eggplant. I chopped them in quarters, he roasted them on the gas grill outside. I chopped them up further and got them into freezer containers. Covered them with a bit of olive oil and popped them in the freezer. I sat down, plugged myself into an audio book and dealt with an enormous amount of beans, my hands moving methodically while I listened.

I sauteed some of the red and green bell peppers with garlic, coriander, vinegar, salt and great amounts of olive oil. This makes a kind of Morrocan chermoula (chermoula is a certain combination of spices, I think, the recipes vary). I put it in bottles and then put it too in the freezer. One bottle at a time, this ends up in the refrigerator, and then on sandwiches, in pasta dishes, and other treats all winter. The flavored oil is delicious for salads. The floppy marinated peppers themselves, with some cheese, make a great melty sandwich.

The oil also goes very well on homemade bread. This is a photo of some bread that came out of the oven at the height of the guest visits this summer. (That would be the Joanne's bed and breakfast crash course experience of 2010?!) I snapped a photo before everyone ate it.

The next week or two I will be transitioning back into something that looks a bit more like my regular working life. I've got some editing and some writing deadlines to meet. I've also got a date with my canner. Putting up the harvest is next on my list. It's great to help people learn and grow in the classroom. It's rewarding and satisfying and exhausting all at once.

That said, what the students gain can be intangible at times. A full freezer and a shelf full of jars? That's definitely an accomplishment that can tangibly set us up for winter...and it's a task with a beginning, middle and end. Along with all this, my loom and knitting needles await. I hope to have time for more than an exhausted and mindless few rows of a sweater sleeve at the end of the day, too.

As soon as the rain lets up a bit, I'm off to mailbox to mail off my grades to the university. Then it's back to reducing (with great glee) the great mounds of food and fiber I've acquired.

So, are you putting anything up for winter? Do tell! Descriptions are always welcome here--if comments give readers good ideas, our pantries (and families) will enjoy it together.

festival nostalgia

I don't know how other people feel, but I find that the intense, short, and wonderful experiences I have at a fiber festival --any fiber festival--remain with me for several days or weeks after the event. In fact, it reminds me a lot of summer camp. At summer camp, everything is intense, short and sometimes bittersweet, too.

I mean, it was cold and wet last weekend. I didn't actually feel tiptop and I was sort of worried to leave 2 different sets of house guests to fend for themselves. However, that didn't stop me from having a great time at the spinning circle after I taught my class. On the left here is a candid shot of a bunch of us spinning. At any one time, there were 3 or 4 of us, and we created a "floor" in the dirt of the barn with an old sheet. I met some readers of my blog, some fascinated onlookers, and some shepherds who came by just to visit. The ladies nearby at the next table were selling pie. How could I have had better neighborly company than that?

While this was happening, my professor shot photos of possibly the cutest border collie puppy ever (see that photo?) and he spent time watching the show ring. He also met an entertaining kid who showed him all his digital photos and discussed bugs with him...never a dull moment for a biologist! The 4H sheep show part of this event was well organized. I was surprised to see how they numbered the sheep (on their rear ends) and that was definitely different than the arrangements I'd seen at the U.S. festivals.

I made connections with people I'd met on Ravelry or emailed with, and I admired some of the (few) fleeces that were entered into the wool competition. Sheep producers gave me their contact information. This week, since coming home, I've contacted 3 different Manitoba sheep producers. I'm expecting (at minimum...), 2 Cotswold fleeces, perhaps a Romney fleece, some Texel cross wool and maybe an Icelandic fleece or two to show up at my house sometime in the next month or so. Many of these farmers come to Winnipeg to do big city errands. My house will now be on their circuit!

The Professor joked that this fleece delivery system sounded a lot like pizza delivery, only it would hang around a lot longer. With the rate I've gone through wool roving for my weaving, I'm not so sure. :) Plus, we do need more insulation for winter, right?

Lately, it's occurred to me that teaching this graduate level writing class at the university 4 days a week is also a lot like camp. While my earlier class seemed almost leisurely at 2 days a week, this class feels like we're on speed. Several people have dropped out and I'm not surprised...we're on warp speed and I can barely keep up with grading the papers.

I managed today to get down to the Forks and saw my rug, carefully wrapped around a concrete pylon near the river. The colors matched and it looked like camouflage. The tag with any information had disappeared..so it did fade right into the scenery. Oh well..next time I'll have to do something a bit brighter. I went off to get myself frozen yogurt with fruit mixed into it...a great treat during my very quick distraction from work.

On my way to the car, the sun was shining. I ate my frogurt and saw an African man about my age with his 3 year old kid walk by, hand in hand. "Look," the man said to his little boy, "Did you see that beautiful lady!?" I stopped and smiled and said what I'd been thinking-- "Look at that cute kid!" Everybody was happy. It was a perfect moment.

perfectly...ordinary

Lately I've been thinking how perfectly, well, ordinary things can be fascinating if you find the right person to share it with.

The first part of this is a spinning tidbit. I am doing a Navajo-ply or a chain ply for the combed yarn I spun up recently. This turns one strand of yarn into a 3 strand plied yarn. The phone rang at one point and I just put the open "loop" on a hook on the edge of my spinning wheel's flyer and answered the phone. The yarn has been sitting like this ever since. (Click on the photo to embiggen!)

I have read and heard countless times that it is difficult or impossible to stop in the middle of plying handspun yarn. Obviously, not all frequently repeated statements are true. I've been stopping in the middle for years! When I come back to the yarn, there is never any big red stain of shame on the bit where I stopped. I can't even find the "pause" when I return to the skein of yarn later.

I find this reassuring because it seems as though modern life is always finding ways to make things--well--more complicated. Passwords and cell phones and speed cameras, etc.--technology sometimes makes things harder than they might be otherwise.

So, what I figured out on my own is that for hundreds or likely thousands of years, people have paused while plying their handspun yarns and everything turned out ok.


Also, while I've been in the middle of a knitting slump, I knit anyway. You see, I still need lots of warm clothes here--so here is a pair of perfectly ordinary wool/cotton blend socks. The predominate colors are brown and green, although that is hard to tell in this photo. The only interesting part? I made this pair of socks with only one skein of Patons Stretch Socks. I used practically every last bit of the yarn! (Again, a perfectly ordinary detail that our ancestors knew well...using every last bit of a valuable resource.)

What got me thinking of this were two different comments this week. First, I used spindle spinning as a demonstration in a writing class I taught this week. I passed around wool roving to show everyone. Then, despite all my explanations, one of the students asked "Is this artificial wool?" I had to explain that it was the honest to goodness real thing. In fact, I knew the farm the ram was born on, the farm he now lives on, and his name. In fact, I even helped go sheep shopping for that ram!

Yup, sometimes it's the real thing. Honest. Perfectly ordinary (well, prize winning, gorgeous) Romney wool.

The second example was another exchange. Someone was recommending mints as a way of freshening the breath. I suggested that if you wanted to avoid sugar or sweets in general, that chewing on fresh mint or parsley would also make your breath smell better. The response was... "Really? That works?"

Yup. Our ancestors chewed on mint (not a mint candy) to smell better. As my dad says, "who'd have thunk it?" Sometimes, when something is perfectly ordinary and logical? That's just the way it is. Maybe it's only in a perhaps overly complicated age that we're looking for it to be artificial instead.

spinning to keep up

My life has been a little busy lately. (Who am I kidding? It's been NUTS around here!)

Since my last post, house guests #2 and 3 have come and gone. I'm doing my best to keep track of things, and here's the running total:
Resident Student=house guest #1--She is here all summer and so far is fitting in nicely.

House guests 2&3: Relatives who have never been to Manitoba and who needed a lot of, umm, kind hospitality. (Southerners, read between the lines here and you'll get that!)

House guests 4,5,&6?: Coming in a week and a half...I think. Note to self--check on that.

House guests 7 and 8 will come separately, in July. It feels a bit like I'm running a bed and breakfast sometimes!

Meanwhile, I've started teaching a graduate course in writing at the U. of Manitoba. The first section of this course, running in June and July, is full and I understand a second section in August may fill as well.

Did I mention the editing job that needs to be complete by the end of July? (or preferably, mid-July?)

When evening comes, if I have the luxury of sitting down for a few moments, I don't seem to have the mental energy to design or knit much. Instead, I've been spinning or occasionally doing simple weaving.

It has been mostly cold and damp so I have had no struggle with the notion of wool work in warm weather. In order to answer a commenter's question, (sorry this isn't more personal!) I'll explain that here...no, we don't really live on a rise. The prairie, where we live, is flat flat flat. I think we're likely only a few inches higher ground here than right by the river. I particularly chose a house a little bit away from the river. Even so? We've had a lot of rain here and there's really no place for it to go, so the floodway is still open to divert some of the flooding. I'm dreaming of sunny skies and drier conditions. My basement (fingers crossed) is still dry.

In the meanwhile, I find spinning a fair bit is very calming! I have a project going on every floor of my house at the moment.
captions:
Top photo is a SpindleWood spindle with little balls of handspun alpaca and silk in my living room.

Second photo is handspun naturally gray Romney wool and mohair on my antique Canadian Production Wheel.

Third photo is a scarf on my loom with a silk aqua colored warp, black mill-end rovings, and handspun, hand-dyed rose colored wool singles.

Last photo is a part of my spinning library with a bobbin of this handcombed wool. I'm now making a 3 ply yarn with it. Pretty nice for a fleece full of burrs, don't you think?

lurking in the basement

The professor and I are still in the clutches of a bad head cold. It's the kind where you think that cutting off your head altogether would make everything all better. Luckily, that seems so difficult that in between coughing and blowing your nose, you just sit on the couch and stare at nothing, so in actuality, our heads are pretty safe.

This slow motion approach to life is ideal for processing the wool I've just received. Aside from the burrs (see photo 1 there) it's quite nice. I deal with it pretty simply.

First, I sit down on the basement floor for an hour or two at a time, usually in the late afternoons when I am good for little else. I pull off a clump of locks of wool, with burrs embedded in there. (just like a journalist with the military) I take a pair of sharp scissors, and I chop off the very top of the lock, where the burrs are. I assemble a big pile of greasy locks, ready to be washed. I throw all the burrs away along with wool that is too short or too stinky into a trash can. (Absolutely never consider composting this seedy kind of trash. Burr seeds in your compost could potentially mean big ole burrs in your garden if your compost wasn't hot enough to kill the seeds. Oh no.)

When the pile is big enough, I wash it as one would usually wash wool, but with a bit of deviation to maintain a small amount of lanolin in there. The water in my washing machine (I use it as a set tub) is hot but not really hot. I do one wash and one rinse. The wool that comes out is cleaner, but still a little greasy, which is ideal for wool combing.

You'll see there are still some burr seeds in there, but otherwise, it's now pretty much vegetable matter free. Unlike wool from the east coast, I found the burr species here did not puncture my hands, and there were no tree leaves in this. Another benefit of the prairies and bush land here, I guess!

I used basic tools to make this work. One thing was a pair of sharp scissors. The other thing was a set of well-loved 2 row Indigo Hound Viking Combs. I will note here that I don't comb when I'm too tired as it is dangerous. I also found that raw or really greasy wool and combing can be dangerous too, as the combs get sort of slippery and, well, I don't want one of those spikes through my hands, do you?!

The next stage was to do some combing to see how this was coming out. As you can see here, this wool looks nothing like that first photo up top. White, relatively clean and hand combed top-- with a little grease in it for ease in combing and spinning? It's practically my favorite stuff to spin in the world.

Yesterday I had to sample a bit, just to be absolutely sure it would be a delight to spin. Oh yes, it was! The spindle here is one of Ray's. I spun a very fine yarn for the heck of it. My keys are next to the spindle for perspective's sake.

Then I plied the yarn, using a Navajo 3 ply technique. I plied it directly off the first spindle and onto a Hatchtown Farm Kaari Spindle.

When the tiny skein was complete, I put it on a tiny niddy noddy, ideal for sampling. (I've never used it before, as it was a gift and I usually use my hand and elbow, but it's quite a nice little piece of woodworking!)

I haven't knitted a swatch with it yet, but it's basically a fingering weight yarn.

The combing waste will be used for stuffing or carding into a woollen yarn. I'm mostly through "de-burring" fleece #1. Fleeces 2 and 3 await.

In the past, when I've done production spinning, this wool wouldn't have been a candidate for it--it's obviously not time effective. However, if you're enjoying process and not product, (and in no hurry) there's no reason not to use nice wool and work around flaws like a few -hundred- burrs.

It's not for everyone, but so far I haven't minded the quiet time spent in the basement, fondling raw wool and staring off into space. It's ideal for someone with a head cold and this glazed look...I'll see how I feel towards the end of fleece #3!

Was this helpful information? Have you ever gone the extra mile to salvage interesting fleece? Tell me about how you did it in the comments, please! Let's learn from one another!

sniffle ends

You may have been wondering what I've been up to. (I have been, too...mostly, I think I'm staring into space.) After I wrote that last post, the professor and I came down with a doozy of a cold. We're both snuffling through, but the last few days have felt like being underwater. It's no wonder, really, we were exposed to so many people on our trip. Also, we couldn't afford to feel sick on our travels, so our immune systems patiently waited until we came home.

I promised some photos of what I bought on our journey. All and all, it doesn't look that interesting from the photos. To me, though, it's great stuff. I ordered 15 lbs of Brown Sheep Mill Ends that were delivered to my parents' house. This is the tail ends of wool rovings used to make yarns, and while it's not useful for the yarn company's big industrial spinning machines, it is great for weaving, spinning and felting by hand. It's all washed and ready to go, and so far, I'm overjoyed with the purchase. Here's what the bag looks like, and here is the rug I'm working on, complete with interspersed dreadlocks of wool. I'll likely dye some of this soon so all my rugs won't be white, brown or black.

However, in order to make some darker colored rugs, I found these fabulous mill ends from
Old Mill Yarn at Maryland Sheep & Wool festival. It's hard to shoot photos of this, but here is over 2lbs of mercerized brown cotton "floss" at 2,200 yards per lb for warp...for $6 a lb! I also bought two bags (each bag weighs a pound) of very thick 100% wool rug yarn in brown and black for weaving. They cost $10 a bag. I couldn't believe my luck!

I also spent some quality time visiting with sheep while at the festival. Here's a very warm Lincoln Longwool that smiled for the camera... and this brings me to my wool acquisition. Right before leaving for my trip, a friend in Winnipeg let me know that her cousin kept sheep. I got in touch with him, and as if by magic, he happened to be shearing just a week or two ago.

Although the farm is 70 kilometers from town, I was again surprised to discover his lovely daughter, who showed up on my doorstep to "deliver" 3 fleeces. It's my first local Canadian wool and likely Rideau Arcott, or some fine wool cross with that breed. The wool itself is gorgeous, but sadly parts of the fleeces are like pelts--joined together with burrs which are in the outer parts of the fleece. I spent a couple hours cutting off burrs yesterday and washed up some of it as a sample. When I'm done posting this, I'll go downstairs to see whether I can comb out the rest of the vegetable matter that remains. The wool itself is nice--the burrs are not!

My knitting is sort of stalled, aside from a plain old sock project. I have been working on and off on a dress sweater. I bought this rich purple Filatura di Crosa Zara Merino yarn years ago, on a vacation in Vancouver, British Columbia. I used the odd ball for a hat a few years ago. Then, I started this project last fall, with what looked like plenty of yarn. (Uh Oh...)

When the yarn started to run short, I got nervous. Then I discovered an odd ball of yarn carefully lodged under my bed. (good thing I cleaned there!) No idea how it got there, although maybe my dogs thought it was interesting and hid it? Anyway, I kept knitting. On my trip, I neared the end of the second sleeve. I'd done everything but the shoulder cap and the neckband when I saw that the yarn left was just not enough.

I put out a plea to some friends. Amazingly, one ball of this very color yarn happened to be in a friend's stash---in Tokyo. She and her children walked it to the post office, and it's winging its way to Winnipeg. This will be one well traveled sweater, long before I even wear it.

Finally, you may remember my Fingerprinting post back in February. Well, along with the cold we got this week, we also got back our information from the FBI. The professor's said "no criminal record" and he can go right ahead to continue his application for permanent residency in Canada. Mine said "your finger prints weren't high enough quality for us to tell." (gee thanks) So, it was back to the police department this week for me to get my second set of Winnipeg fingerprints done. That's because our applications have to be sent at the same time, and now my lousy fingerprints are holding things up!

This is the second time recently when my hands were noticed in a negative way. The jeweler recently noted that I am wearing out the prongs that hold onto the stone in my engagement ring rather quickly, so it keeps having to be repointed. It also turns out that people who work with their hands often don't fingerprint well. I was gently chastised by the clerk that I should be taking better care of my digits. Lots of moisturizing lotion! Less handwashing!

I took the hint. When I spent two hours yesterday sorting wool and burrs, I took off my rings first. I expect this is why sheep (or shearers?) don't wear wedding rings. :)