Trenchwork

The second week of classes for the students on this side of the pond is nearly finished, and things have gone well, if a bit breathlessly. The first week for students on that side of the pond is also well under way—and under way well. It’s been a bit chaotic, so I’m behind schedule here, but I’m working on getting caught up on a number of fronts. For instance, tomorrow is the first meeting of my local spinning group after our summer break. I’m looking forward to it, and I’m dying of curiosity to see what they’ve been up to.

Hang in there with me; I have lots to share.

First, you’ve seen ONE of the fibery things I worked with this summer:

(Go to the flickr page for bigger if you need the refresher.)

While I’d really intended to get all that into the luggage on the way back, other things had to take priority, so a good portion of it is winging its way over in a couple of very tightly packed boxes. And I’m realizing that I need to come up with an additional shelving unit in the loft to hold it all . . .

However, the first results of that Louet Victoria which is sitting rather cozily in the middle of that heap of now-clean fiber were these:

The big lump to the upper left is Spunky Eclectic’s club fiber for May, a Corriedale dyed in a colorway named “Rosebud.” Amy is brilliant about colors, but the name of this one really nails the colors. It’s got the various roses, but it also has that new-bud green which tempers the pinks exactly like a spring rose garden. To the left, though, is the fiber Terry of Bizyhands on Etsy sent with the Victoria so I’d have something to test the wheel, and I simply cannot get over how closely matched these two colorways are. The photo doesn’t do them justice, and shows Terry’s a bit darker than it really is. But they’re the products of two artists in two comletely different parts of the country. I’m convinced that large portions of the fiber community are psychically connected.

I hate to give you the technicals of these, because they’re absolutely not brilliant spinning. They were the orientation fibers for the Victoria, and they really do show that the spinner was unfamiliar with the wheel she was using.  The little skein was done first, and that one is the more inconsistent of the two and includes a couple or three breaks in its three or four ounces. It’s roughly 18wpi, and I chain plied it in order to get a handle for the wheel—and because I didn’t have my usual handy tools for making a center-pull ball worth working with.

Amy’s fiber benefitted from the other’s lessons, and by the time I finished plying that one as a standard 2-ply, I’d managed to form a fair relationship with Victoria. It’s still irregular and I found a couple of snarly eyelashes when I skeined it, but it’s a decided improvement over its little sister.

Fiber: Corriedale
Weight: 8 oz
WPI / TPI: 16-18 / 7-8
Yardage: 402 yards

It really does amaze me how different wheels have different personalities.  The Victoria is, however, a very cool little wheel. It’s not one I’d want to use for long-term spinning—it’s a sprinter rather than an endurance runner—and I find myself having a more difficult time judging the twist than I do with the Rose. I can’t necesarily explain why that is. You’d think that because the Victoria sits lower and you can see the yarn as it spins, well, that it would be easier to see. But somehow, it’s not. Even though the Rose is nearly level so that I can’t see the single actually on the bobbin, it’s still easier for me to judge the amount of twist I’m actually adding to the yarn.

Other than that, though, the Victoria serves its purpose just beautifully. I’ll admit that the plastic connection on the footman—the one which has to be snapped out of place when you disassemble the wheel—makes me a bit nervous.  It works, but I have a concern that it’s going to break at some point, and it may be that I’m just worrying needlessly. I’ve yet to see a report about anyone actually experiencing that. Once it’s broken down, the wheel is light, compact, and transports very easily. Not an eyebrow was raised on any of the international flights when it went into the overhead bin with room to spare. Nor did Atlanta’s security blink twice when it passed through their scanners. Interestingly enough, it was the Amsterdam security who wanted it unpacked and examined because they couldn’t figure out what it was; I had to explain it. It says something when a wheel’s country of origin knows less about the product than the country to which it is imported.

There was other spinning as well, but I won’t show you that just yet. Let me finish getting it all transcribed and boxed up, and then I’ll share. It is, however, the first level workbook for the Master Spinner program. Aside from transcribing my notes from hieroglyphics into something readable, it’s done. I won’t say that it’s done well, or rather as well as I’d like it to be, but it is done.

And there was a bit of dyeing. The colors aren’t good, and I can’t seem to  get them properly captured, but look at this:

(I’ll try to replace it with a better photo later.) From top to bottom, there’s a very soft camel color from live oak leaves. That surprised me; I expected an olive or sage green. Next is actually a very soft butter yellow, not the ecru you see in the photo. You won’t believe where it comes from; I didn’t: Spanish moss. Seriously. In reality, it’s a lovely, clear, soft butter yellow. The pale kind, like real butter—not margarine. Finally, the bottom skein is actually a sharp lemon yellow, and it’s from kudzu. You know, that plant which is threatening to take over the South? That stuff. So, dyers take note, and harvest to your heart’s content. Maybe the stuff will be good for something.

Like many others at the moment, I turned some of the handspun into a Morning Surf scarf.

I changed the dimensions slightly so that it would actually be more of a rectangular shawl than a scarf, but the fiber is a soft Merino roving, and the yarn was dyed with onion skins to get that color. It’s very vanilla, but it’ll work.

The trip

Spinning and fiber aside, I promised to share a tiny bit of where we were and what we saw. I’ll do more later, but for now, I rather thought you may need to see dimensions, and a very, very rough route.

In 15 days.

We started in Atlanta, jogged a bit north, then took the interstate across to Colorado Springs. Outside Colorado Springs, we went up Pike’s Peak, and I have to tell you that that was very, very cool! It doesn’t seem like much as you’re going up . . .

. . . but once you get there, it’s easy to feel a bit overwhelmed.

Of course, it doesn’t help that at 14,110 feet up in the air, you’re gasping like a fish out of water after a few steps and seriously wishing everyone else would leave so that there would be enough air! For a couple of folks who are accustomed to being pretty much at sea level, it was extreme. That’s when you walk fifteen feet, pause to pretend to catch your breath, look at each other, and have to remind yourself to NOT laugh because laughing uses precious oxygen which seems to be in very short supply at the moment. Sheesh.

The altitude was a serious adjustment for us during the entire trip, and I think we were only starting to get accustomed to things when we returned to Tallahassee. Along the way, however, we did see a few things, and I’ll share some of those photos shortly. For now, though, check this out:

That’s Sheep Rock in Arches National Park in Utah. They believe it’s part of an arch which collapsed ages ago, leaving this very sheepy-looking support rock standing. Is that not just too cool? It’s impossible to get an idea of the sheer size of the thing from this photo, but it’s huge. And I have to laugh: Send a spinner into the desert and see if she doesn’t find something to do with fiber!