If you’re into Harry Potter, the film is worth seeing. I’ll be honest and say that the first two were my favorite, as were the first two books. I felt as if the later books needed trimming and shaping, some good editing, and became commercial productions rather than exercises in good story telling. But they were still fun. While this movie only covers half of the last book, it takes its time and ends at a solid point. It doesn’t feel as if it skims over anything significant, and in some ways it paces better than the book itself.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening despite the cold, and I was definitely thankful.

Work has settled down, and for the first time in months, I think I’m caught up and don’t have any nasty deadlines shrieking at me for attention. So, there have been a few “finishing” moments, and I’m thankful for those, too.

This has been on the Victoria for nearly two months, and finally got finished about 3 weeks ago.

Wensleydale fingering-weight singles, from Spunky Eclectic in the “Cold Front” colorway.

Given the weather at the moment, that name seems appropriate.

In August, we made a short trip to Taos. The historical district there is incredibly cool, filled as it is with art shops, crafts, and so on. Admittedly some of the shops are a bit on the amateur side, but it’s a fascinating area to explore.

We walked in through the gate, and what did I spy but a yarn shop—a proper yarn shop—off to the left. It was The Yarn Shop, owned by Lori Adams. I was drawn to the door by the art yarns hanging just outside the entrance, candy to the fiberholic’s jaded eye, then through the door as if by magnets. It’s not a large shop, but it is jam-packed. I stood there, simply enjoying the visual riot of color and texture, while the woman who seemed to be the owner chatted energetically with another about a BFL yarn. I couldn’t quite quell the shiver of sheer pleasure, and my movement must have caught her eye, because she turned, and without pausing for breath, tossed me a skein of BFL yarn, explaining that BFL was a lovely fiber and could be used for . . .

“All sorts of things,” I answered with a grin. “It’s short for Blue-faced Leicester, and it’s a lovely middling fiber which can sometimes be soft enough for next-to-skin use, and can be used for everything from hats to scarves to sweaters to lace.”

She paused, but her own enthusiasm for what I later learned was all things fibery was apparently bigger than her controls.

“Right! Isn’t it just great stuff? You’ve used it before?”

“Yes,” I nodded and smiled, a bit self-consciously. “I spin.”

“Ooooh!” she cried, and the next thing I knew, she’d grasped my hand and pulled me around the corner of the table to show me a Lendrum wheel sitting next to a Majacraft Rose. The Lendrum had a bobbin of bluish singles started, and as she tells me that she’s just learning to spin herself, she thrusts an 18″-long strip of roving into my hands to show me what she’s spinning. It’s a lovely blend of alpaca, silk, and wool, and I found myself a little worried. It was a beautiful fiber, but not what I’d have recommended for someone just starting spinning; it’s slick. But her singles look good, so she’s clearly mastering the fiber, even if she doesn’t feel she is.

“Wait,” I ask, “you’ve spun other things before this, right? This isn’t your first fiber?”

“Oh, no,” she tells me, and I learn that she’s done a few fibers I would encourage new spinners to start with, but just had to try this particular roving after she laid hands on it.

Her enthusiasm was infectious, and as we talked, I found she had shifted from the Rose to the Lendrum because she found the Lendrum easier to control; it seemed to fit her better at the moment. But when she found I’d never tried one, she couldn’t stand it; the next thing I knew, she’d pulled the wheel out, grabbed a chair and plunked it down in front of it, and told me to spin away. I looked at her a bit aghast; I didn’t want to mess up what she’d already started, and I didn’t want to use her good fiber. She wouldn’t take “no” for an answer, however, and I couldn’t resist the temptation for long. It took me about six inches to get the hang of it, but once I found how the wheel worked, I was at least able to match her grist and avoid turning her yarn into a disaster zone.

The Lendrum is a very smooth wheel, but it has a surprisingly heavy feel. I’m accustomed to the light agility of the Rose, and the Lendrum feels like a Clydesdale to the Rose’s Morgan. Once it got moving, it moved—and kept moving. But getting it started took a push, and in that way made me think of the Majacraft Suzie Pro. It’s a simple, no-frills wheel, plain in its lack of ornament, but very functional. But the weight—that was surprising.

So, Lori and I talked about spinning for a little while as I span a few yards on her currently-favorite wheel, and what a pleasure that short visit was! But before I stopped, she dived into a back shelf and came back out with a clear plastic bag.

“Try this,” she said with a wicked smile, thrusting the bag into my hands with the same energy she’d used with everything else.

I noted the writing on the bag as I reached in to stroke the fiber: farm-grown Suri alpaca roving from a male named “Merino” on a ranch in Colorado. I had to laugh at the fun; an alpaca named Merino who’d won his class at the Colorado state fair. But it was incredibly silky, and a gorgeous chocolate color that I’m absolutely a sucker for . . . and again I couldn’t resist. It was far too expensive for me—even after she reduced the price by 25%—but I couldn’t stand it. Part of the issue was the fiber, I know, and I had happy visions of laceweight yarn dancing in my head. The other part of it, however, if I’m honest, was simply the chance to buy something from a stateside yarn shop—something I very very rarely have the opportunity for. And, let’s get real: I cannot remember the last time I bought yarn. I consider buying fiber in a yarn shop a very good alternative.

So, that farm-grown roving, that bit of “Merino,” came home with me. Of course.

It’s been on the wheel for the past month, but it’s finally finished.

Fiber: Farm-grown roving, Suri Alpaca from a male named “Merino.”
Yardage: 911 yards / 833 meters
WPI / TPI: 32 wpi and 10-11 tpi.

And the color doesn’t even come close to doing this yarn justice. It really is a luscious dark chocolate, and I just can’t capture that at the moment in the current lighting conditions. For those who’ve not tried it, Suri is as soft as Huacaya, but has a VERY silky feel, and the fabric will have marvelous drape. I need to find a lace pattern which will do this fiber justice. Because, friends and neighbors, if I say so myself, it’s gonna be gorgeous.

The couple of inches we had before had long since melted off, and there’s been more since this shot was taken. Cross your fingers that the neighbor manages to get us dug out before morning, or getting to the uni is going to be . . . interesting. There’s a bus that runs from about a block away, but that block in between isn’t exactly any better than the yard.

Where’s a dog sled team when you need them?

It’s the first snow of the season.

Lois said that she’d rather have a clone. And, given the insane pace at which she’s working and traveling for work, I think she needs more than one. But you know, this past week has convinced me that she was wisdom personified and I was wrong and I just need another me or two. You may not need another me, but hey . . . !

See, totally aside from work prepping for the coming term and working on course development for the next, this past week has been filled with all those jobs you’d really rather send your clone off to do. Like clearing out all some of those catch-all areas which seem to gather everything, including the kitchen sink. You know, the corner in the hall where you find the missing saw, a never-installed faucet you’d forgotten you had, a can of spray starch you’d given up on finding an entire size of shirts ago when you were still actually ironing shirts, and the Big Mouth Billy Bass singing fish which, if you drank, you could at least have a good excuse for having bought in the first place. (C’mon, ‘fess up; you’ve got one those silly things hanging around somewhere, and still giggle when you hear it singing “Take Me to the River.” If, however, you’ve led a sheltered life and have no clue what I’m talking about, you can find a dozen videos like this one on YouTube, and Gemmy Industries even has an iPod version. Really.)

But aside from excavating my office, putting sanity back into my files by actually filing things, and going through three major “miscellaneous” areas, I’ve been doing a few other things.

See all those glossy reflections? Dearie, that’s because the house has now been painted. Windows (the trim between the panes), doors, and the trim on one side are still to go, but the house is otherwise painted. Ok, that doesn’t sound so bad, does it? Except that the Norwegian tradition is to paint the doggoned thing with brushes. All of it. Every single board. With brushes. Seriously.

Sigh.

I can’t quite figure out whether it’s because Norway was historically a very poor country until fairly recently and people used what they had (brushes), or that the technology for commercial sprayers has just been terribly slow arriving, or that “this is the way we’ve always done it” is controlling the work, or if there’s truly a good reason to not use a sprayer. I’ve no clue, but DH has now spent his entire vacation period painting a house (with help from me and his dad), and it’s still not entirely finished. And bless his heart, he had to go back to work this morning. Frankly, I think that’s a pretty sucky vacation and I feel for the dude. Even if he did decide he was absolutely not going to use a sprayer and he really did want to use brushes. By hand. On every single board. By hand. Brushes. Every. Single. Board.

Did I mention it’s a two-story house?

Then there’s this.

Normally there’s a fabric-covered door covering that black hole behind my desk, but remember those catch-all areas which were cleared out? Well, this was one of them. Except that it was more of a “catch and forget” than anything else, and some of the stuff in there had been forgotten for at least 25 years. I won’t tell you what I found, and you should be grateful I didn’t show you a pic of the place before I emptied, swept, and vacuumed it out. Let’s just say that everything went out of the house, mostly into a burn bin, and I went straight into the shower. Sheesh.

But, there are a few details you should notice here. See how low the roof is? My office is right under the eaves, and it’s a pretty small space. But if you look in that closet, the roofline there is still nearly 90cm/35″ up off the floor, which is just enough for a bookcase and some storage shelves or boxes. The closet runs the length of the office (8.3′), plus an additional three feet (behind the camera) which runs behind a tiny closet inside the office. It’s not very deep . . .

It’s only about 70cm/27″. And yes, those are glimpses of light you see through the boards on that end wall, which is about 7 feet away.

So, what are we doing? Well, a layer of insulation is going on top of those walls and ceiling. Then the wall you saw in the first picture (surrounding the door) is coming out, and new paneling is going on top of the insulation in the closet. The floor will need some click-in-place flooring, and that beam on the ceiling will need to be painted. And that will extend the office space by almost exactly 2 feet. That may not sound like much, but when it’s only 8.3′ wide and is filled with a daybed that’s 2.5′ deep, a computer desk that’s 3.5′ wide, a legal-sized file cabinet that’s almost 2′ wide, the writing desk in the picture, a bookcase, a folding work table, a free-standing radiator, an office chair, and part of a fiber stash . . . Get the idea? Two feet is huge.

Just don’t ask me when that’s actually going to happen. One sort of needs to be sure that ripping out the wall isn’t going to bring down the roof. Minor detail, that.

I’m about to decide I don’t need a clone after all. I need a Home Makeover team of my own who’ll do what I need done while I go away for a few days. Now doesn’t that sound like a plan?

By the way, the Feather and Fan shawl? It’s here.

At row 125.

There are 189 rows plus the edging.

It takes me nearly an hour and a half to knit a pattern row. Have I mentioned I’m a slow knitter?

Don’t ask me how many stitches there are. I refuse to count them. No, wait, now I want to torture myself by knowing . . . There are 792 stitches. That’s not bad, right? But wait, there are 64 rows to go, and of those, what?—23?—are pattern rows, which will increase a stitch at 24 equal points across the row for every pattern row. So there are, assuming I’m counting correctly and let’s not push that assumption too far since there’s a reason I teach English, 552 stitches left to increase. I’m just over halfway in the stitch count. That’s not exactly much comfort since each round gets progressively longer, and takes increasingly more time. Have I mentioned I’m a slow knitter?

I figure it’ll take me a day to do a round by the time I’m finished. Doing nothing else. Maybe I’ll brush my teeth.

If you’re having trouble with perspective, the white stuff on top of the trash bin is what came down in less than 48 hours.

Just sayin’.

Am I happy with what she’s getting?  Not entirely.  I felt as if I were obligated to use hand cards, and there’s a reason why I don’t.  I have them, but my hands are too fragile for that.  Combs and flick cards I can do, but there’s a reason why I bought a drum carder.  As a result, a number of the breed study skeins are slubby, uneven, and not at all what I’d have liked.  But what is, is, and if I need to redo those skeins later, I will.  In the meantime, it’s gone.

And suddenly I have some time on my hands.

So, I’m spinning that fake cashmere, catching up on e-mail, working on DH’s Cobblestone (it’s up to the yoke, yay!), starting a quick dyepot, and  running up some quick cable yarn samples.

Exams are next week, but I’ll only have about 80 or so, so I’m alternating syllabi and lesson planning for next term with play time.

We still have snow.  It’s about -10C/13F at the moment.

And we have a few icicles hanging from the roof . . .

The longest of those guys is about 2 or 2.5 feet. But after a lot of slush and sludd, the weather is drier, and it’s easier to see who we’ve had visiting the snack spot in the yard.

We’ve had magpies, crows, and deer.

And there are a couple of cats.

We have no idea which is actually someone’s pet and which is wild, but the one we’ve seen most often lately is the big black bugger I told a coupe of friends about earlier this year.  I’ve searched and can’t find that it actually made it to the blog, so let me just risk repetition and tell you about the cat (and forgive me for pasting from an earlier text).

The cat.  See, the thing is that the general consensus is that I’m a total wuss when it comes to animals.  I love animals in general, and have a really hard time turning away anything that looks like it needs help.  Nearly all my pets—barring my GSD—were adoptions and strays.  Like the 17-year old cat my parents are keeping which showed up at the office one Christmas season for several days running and devoured the remnants of a leftover frozen lasagne.  But what people don’t really realize is that DH is absolutely no better than I am.  They just don’t quite expect him to be a total mush, and he really is.  He’s just as quick to throw old bread out the window for the deer or badger as I am, and he even calls them the same way you’d call a cat.  Funnily enough, they’re getting used to it, so when he opens the window and whistles, they stop, turn to look at him, and then just wait until the window is closed before they turn around and mosey up to the spot where he tosses the bread.

One day in March, I had opened the kitchen window a bit in order to air out the house.  But what you need to know is that Norwegian houses have wood-frame windows which open out or up and out.  And they don’t have screens.  If there is a screen, it’s hand made by nailing 4 pieces of trim together and stapling screen over the frame and hoping you’ve measured the thing properly so that it really fits. It comes out during summer, and is shoved in a closet for the remaining 9 months of the year.  This window in particular is one of those which swings out.  And it has plants on the sill.  Mind you, only three of those pots actually had living green things in them (houseplants just don’t survive if I’m responsible for them, poor buggers), but they’re there.  And there’s a heavy set of lace curtains covering the window.  Can you see it?

But in my haste to catch the bus, I forgot to close the window.  It was only ajar and not fully open, but there it was.  DH picked me up on his way home and we drove into the yard, and his first question was to ask why the window was open.  I looked at it blankly and then remembered, so that explained that.  We parked the car and started unloading groceries, but as I opened the kitchen door (the front door opens to a tiny foyer which sends you either up the stairs or to the right through the door to the kitchen), I heard something that sounded like someone or something was in the house.  And a small crash.  My first thought was that a bird had gotten into the house.  We have magpies in the area, and while they’re shy, they’re also rather curious, and it’s just possible—although unlikely—that one may have had a wild hair and gotten into the house.  But then I heard a miaow.  THEN I hear DH outside calling, “Puss, here puss puss.”

The pieces clicked and I realized it was one of the semi-wild cats we’d been setting out food for over the previous few weeks.  (We saw one digging through the snow to get the bread we throw out for the deer and decided to start putting out a bit in the evenings.)  Sure enough, I look outside and there’s DH trying to call a big black cat.

The cat is talking like crazy.  Nonstop chatter.  And DH decides to call the cat into the house and get it a little food.  He does, and the cat cautiously comes into the kitchen, chattering the whole time.  The moment DH puts the bowl down, the cat tucks into it, but is still chattering between bites.  Seriously, I didn’t know it was possible for a cat to talk with its mouth full.  We decide that maybe it needs some water, so we get a little bowl and put that out . . . but no, it’s really interested in the food.  We pet it without problem, and it likes being petted.  It leaves the bowl a few times just to be petted.  So we do.  And it’s still talking.  Then I reach down to move the bowl out of the traffic pattern and the cat comes back to the bowl, then grabs my hand hard enough to draw blood . . . and keeps talking.  I figure it was the “don’t mess with my food” warning, so wash the hand and blow the incident off.  But then I walk around the cat and the bowl, and the cat growls in a half-hiss kind of thing as my feet come near it.  And by now, Trond and I are looking at each other and laughing and deciding it’s totally his fault that we have a psychotic cat in the house.  Then he walks around the cat to get to the other room, but he gives the cat lots of room—and still gets a heavy-pawed thwap! for his trouble as he passes by.  Of course, it would have been much less effective had he still had his shoes on . . .

But the cat—still talking, mind you—follows him to be petted, and when it does, I scoop up the bowl and head outside, calling the cat as I go.  We’ve been putting food in the kennel run on the side of the house, so I put the bowl there and left the cat to it, then scrambled back through the front door and securely closed and locked the sucker.

It was a riot, and we did see the cat on a regular basis after that.  It wasn’t fat, but was fairly muscular, and a wee bit too lean, but it was healthy enough.  I saw it in the daylight for a change a little while after that.  It was crossing the yard going up into the little woods behind us, and it walked like a bruiser.  You know, that  “if cats could swagger” kind of walk?  The sort of bulldog walk which says that it owns the place?  That.  That was the cat. 

The moral of the story is that DH no longer invites strange cats into the house.   And I—who might have thought of it on my own first—have no intention of considering it either.

And that’s the story of the cat.    It amazed me that it jumped through the window which was over four feet off the ground (which meant that it was jumping blind), through the curtains, through the plants, and didn’t disturb anything until it went on a scramble to get out of the house.  It dumped over the garbage and tucked into some crackers which had been stored in a plastic bag on the counter.  I scrubbed everything down and sanitized the place after we got it out of the house, and we still joke about the beastie—but DH still puts out food for it when the weather gets cold and there’s snow on the ground.  It may have a Napoleon complex, but we’re not gonna let it starve. 

That’s the cat.  That’s the cat that owns the track in the snow.  At least, we think so.  When we came home the other day, it was sitting at the side of the house and started talking the moment we got out of the car.  We fed it some fish, and it purred like a chainsaw when I pet it.  This evening, DH saw it sitting in the yard, watching the kitchen window.  Waiting. He tossed out some fish, and when I looked a little while later, it was on the front step, calmly washing away.

Is it possible for a cat to be a stalker?

It’s easier to see it when you see it contained in some way. Such as on top of the folding lawn chair that someone forgot was still out on the back porch . . .

Wednesday’s forecast is for rain. Care to guess what it’s going to look like then?

There has been work.  One class ending and another starting and 4 others ongoing, and a realization that I need to find a way to steal time from something in order to get some writing of my own done.  While I still find myself a bit nauseated when I sit down to work with anything which had to do with the doctorate, I at least am at a point where I can write again.  But in order to do that—and that’s the only way that an academic can make herself competitive—I may need to adopt a more limited approach to fiber pursuits (or perhaps just a more organized one).  In the meantime, however, there’s been plenty happening.

Spinning group.  The public spinning group met for the second time a week ago.  We didn’t have as many as we had had in the first meeting (14), but we did have 8, and that 8 included one new fellow who happens to be a weaver, blacksmith, and art teacher.  I’m looking forward to the point when he finds himself more comfortable in the language, because I frankly think the other spinners will find him fascinating.  Now if we can just recruit his wife, too . . .    However, aside from those 8, there were three others who had planned to be there but could not attend at the last minute.  My feeling is that we’ll stabilize at about 8-10 regulars with an increasing number of them on wheels and not just spindles.  But I’m concerned about the push for a wheel . . . Somehow, it seems as if some of them have the idea that spindles are good for play but they’re not “serious”; in order to be a “real” spinner, you need a wheel.  I wish I could convince them that they’re entirely wrong on that point, but since I spend most of my spinning on a wheel rather than spindle, I suppose I’m not a stellar example.  In other words, I just need to find a way to introduce them to Abby Franquemont!

Our new fellow has asked if I’d do a little spindle workshop for his classes–about 46 junior high students–and of course I’ve agreed.   I’ll dye the fiber for them when he has it, but that means I need to make up about 30 CD spindles.  There’s been a lot of that happening lately, and thanks to Lucinda I have the grommets for them!  However, between now and then I also need to spin up some very funky yarns so that they can see that handspun does not necessarily mean a smooth yarn.  It can be as wild as their imagination, and my gut feeling is that that approach will appeal to more kids.  So, the next few weeks are going to be spent in wild experiments.

The previous spinning group meeting netted another spinning demo, and that took place on Saturday.  There was a rotating crowd of about 25—about half what they expected, but the beautiful weather is probably the reason for the lower population–and I had a blast.  CD spindles and fiber in hand, I had 6 kids at about 5th grade spinning away and making their own beautiful, lumpy-bumpy, thick-thin yarn, and one adult who had tried a wheel some time ago and didn’t get it then but was now making a surprisingly even fingering-weight single.

It would be an understatement to say that I’m proud of them all, but doggone it, I am.  Especially the little kids.  They took their yarn sample and showed them off to mom and grandmother and were entirely pleased with themselves and their accomplishments—and I cannot blame them.

With the demo in mind, I had dyed up fiber again:


The second is a resist dye using blue and red, but while I like the colors, I don’t like handling the fiber to rearrange the ties, and I don’t like the way the fiber comes out packy afterward. This technique would be great with yarn, but I won’t do it again with fiber.

The demo and the growing spinning group has had me thinking about a sample book for a while, beyond the fleece sample book for the Master Spinner program. With that in mind, I’ve been doing little spins in the spare moments.  Part of the reason for that is to organize my own notes, but the other reason is a bit more practical.  See, a lot of the spinners here have only spun or seen spinning with plain old Norwegian sheep fleece, and you and I both know that there is an entire world of fiber out there (which my stash will now attest to).  It dawned on me that if I span up some test skeins in different fibers, then they would be able to actually see and lay hands on a few of those possibilities.  That’s where Mary came in.  She had sent me a fiber swap package with a lot of different sample fibers, and they were exactly what I needed.

From top to bottom, there was a flax-silk blend, soybean tops, tencel tops, bamboo, black diamond/carbonized bamboo, a viscose-silk noil blend.  The flax-silk blend has a nearly cotton fabric feel to it, and I have a feeling that it would make a great structured fabric.  The soy is impossibly soft, and the carbonized bamboo is a different texture than the normal white bamboo.  But the carbonized stuff . . . Oh, my goodness.  It drafts like a dream, and has a cool, soft feeling that I love.  This stuff begs to be spun laceweight and turned into a shawl.  The viscose-silk blend makes me think of a plush teddy bear; it’s textured (there’s no way to spin it smooth) and cuddly and soft.  The mohair-Corriedale boucle wasn’t in the package, but I span it (not necessarily well) to show that they too could create their own boucle . . .

There was Egyptian cotton (which, incidentally I love and could barely stand to sacrifice even a little of for a test skein), and flax spun wet and then dry.  The wet-spun flax is smoother, tighter, crisper.  The dry-spun flax is fluffier and a bit more hairy.  It has a bit more texture than the other.  Of the two methods, I found I preferred spinning the flax wet than dry; it was easier to draft.  I am, however, amazed at how much it softens as it’s handled.  When I’d washed and let it dry, it was pretty much like twine; it was stiff.  But as I’ve moved it about and twisted it into a skein, it’s grown increasingly soft.

From top to bottom, there’s an ounce of Class A Pygora goat from Peppermint Farms which I received from Nicole . . .   The fiber was predrafted into something close to pencil roving and I span it semi-woolen.  But I’m amazed at how lofty and squishy this yarn turned out to be, and how soft it is despte the fact that it’s the coarsest class of Pygora.  It feels very much like a soft mohair to my hand.  (For more info about Pygora goats and their fiber classifications, look here:  http://www.pygoragoats.org/Fiber/Fiber_Types.html)

The middle fiber is a truly funky yarn using the dyed Wensleydale locks Mary sent.  The singles are an Ashland Bay merino-tussah blend I had on hand, and the locks are twisted into the yarn during the ply process.  I gave it an abusive wash in order to lock things further in place, and it’s actually very soft to the touch and makes me think of a rather odd collection of flowers.

The bottom fiber is a blend of alpaca and silk throwster’s waste.  Mary had sent a small bag of dyed throwster’s waste, so I carded it into some fawn alpaca I already had on hand.  It spins up into a textured yarn, and while you have to watch to be sure the alpaca and the silk don’t separate, it’s wonderfully soft and colored.  I have to admit, though, that I wasn’t keen on the carding process.  Silk is incredibly strong, and if it gets tangled and hung in a clump, it nigh well needs an act of God to loosen it up into draftable form.  In other words, I just need to practice.

Here they are . . .

There’s one fiber sample missing here, and that’s hemp.  I realized I overlooked it on Sunday and haven’t had a chance yet to spin it up.  However, there’s a reason why I’m showing this photo, despite its darkness, and it’s because of the stuff at the bottom.

When I started spinning, I started saving a tiny sample of each new fiber, plus (if I remembered) a wee bit of the yarn I made from it. Those two samples were tucked into a ziplock sandwich bag and attached to a page where I noted any observations about the fiber, the preparation, where it came from, thoughts for future spinning and use, and so on. But I know it’s difficult for new spinners to visualize yarns and new fibers, so for the demo and training purposes later, I span these samples into test skeins, then added the fiber sample and any notes to the skein. I have a notebook with plastic sleeves which will let me bundle them all up safely, and I can add my own fiber notes from past spins to the collection.  I’ll introduce the book to the spinning group at the next meeting so that they can get an idea for their own organization now that they’re starting to experiment with more than just the Brown Sheep Yarn mill ends I’ve used to get them started!

On other fibery fronts, there’s been progress on the grey.  About 1500 yards worth, and I still have about a pound of fiber pending.

There’s even been this–

Please note that ball on the right which is actually connected to knitting needles (although I need another set; these are too short) and that those knitting needles actually have something on them and one of Karen‘s stitch marker to mark the start.  Don’t faint!  But . . . Yep—the Cobblestone is officially cast on.  Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean the thing will be finished before next Christmas, but hey–it’s begun!

In the midst of the grey and little samples, there’s been a wee bit of color:

You have to see the original fiber to really understand what drew me to it, but it’s a wonderful space-dyed crayon series of fuschia, blue, and yellow, with “bleed” spaces in purple, orange, and green—and all in bright, pure colors.  In the midst of all the grey, it was just what the doctor ordered.

(photo borrowed from Louet’s site)
Fiber: Louet’s Northern Lights “Circus” (from Kendig Cottage)
Weight: 8 ounces
WPI/Ply: 10/chain
Yardage: 272 yards

Much to my surprise, the yarn actually spins up rather nicely; it’s a moderately soft but firm yarn, and not all of that can be credited to the spinning.  I chose to chain ply the singles because I was afraid that a straight 2-ply would create a muddy effect I didn’t want.  I find I’m not particularly keen on barberpoling, so chain plying allowed me to at least control which colors ‘poled—and that meant that I could allow ‘poling within multiple shades of one color, with a bit of overlap here and there to create small transition spaces.  I’m actually rather pleased with this yarn; it’s fairly even, and I didn’t overspin the singles as prep for the ply (which I have a tendency to do if I know I’m going to chain ply; don’t ask me why).

And to leave you with a non-fibery photo, we’ve had snow.

Lots and lots of snow.

Of course, we’re now having rain, so would you like to guess what things will look like by the end of the week?

Sigh.  Seriously, I do fine with snow.  I even like snow.  It’s the ice that really puts me into a spin.  Er, literally.  I took a fall a few weeks ago, and while the football-sized bruise has finally gone, the knots are still there.

And you know you’re in the presence of a fiberholic when she looks at that bruise in all its stormy glory and her first thought isn’t that it’s really a good thing she’s not keen on miniskirts, but rather that wouldn’t it just be too cool if she could duplicate those colors in the dyepot?

When fiber gal tells her DH about the success of the whole thing, he smiles, agrees that it was wonderful, and privately (and totally silently) commiserates with the unwitting and momentarily innocent SO of the newly enabled enthusiast.  A CD spindle, he knows, soon leads to a commercial spindle, which of course seems to multiply since there must be spindles in different weights and styles.  A pair of 4 ounce bags of generic wool soon multiply exponentially into many pounds of wool, silks, synthetics, blends—and which seem to occupy every possible spare corner of storage.  A single wheel seems to suddenly have morphed into three, and of course each must have its own accessories.  A simple plastic ball winder transforms into a jumbo which can handle at least a pound of yarn, there’s an umbrella swift tucked under the sofa, a drum carder nestles under a corner table, and a niddy noddy hides in a drawer.  A wicker basket sprouts a bizarre assortment of nøstepinnes, dowels, cotton yarn for tying skeins, yarn ends and measuring devices.  Stainless steel pots, a spare microwave, measuring cups and spoons are stashed with a growing supply of dye ingredients.  Screens are stashed in the garage and sawhorses no longer seem to be used for sawing but for supporting screens full of washed fleece.

So DH smiles, nods in the appropriate places and makes the appropriately supportive noises.  And he thinks with something akin to relief of the fact that she’s contemplating her own little herd of Angora rabbits rather than dwelling on his near fatal blunder of observing—out loud—that alpacas didn’t seem to take much space and a pair could probably be housed on as little land as they had in the back yard.  Fiber hobbies should come with a warning.  He shakes his head, and wonders if he shouldn’t start a support group for the SOs of fiber enthusiasts.

“Hello.  My name is George.  My wife is a knitter.”

“Hi, George. ”

“Hello.  My name is Mary.  My husband is learning to spin.”

“Hi, Mary.”

Seriously.  Those of us who are the significant others of the Georges and Marys of the world probably should come up with some sort of support network for those folks.  Or at least give our enablees a brochure for their SO.   You know, something along the lines of:

So your wife is a spinner.

Breathe.  Relax.  It will all be ok.  Just remember to breathe.  Some rules which might help you . . .

• Trust that while it all looks insane, she has not lost her mind.
• She may forget basics now and then in the excitement of a new toy or fiber, but she has not forgotten you.
• Love of an agonizingly soft fiber does not mean she loves you any less.
• Now and then the house may smell like hot vinegar baths while she dyes fiber or yarn.  Don’t fret; it’s not permanent.  There’s a cake on tomorrow’s menu.
• The new dust bunnies which seem to have reproduced on their own are also temporary.  They’ll get picked up on the next vacuum run.  Eventually.
• Consider how clever she is to have learned this thing, how creative she is to have made something new, and how much you’re going to enjoy that thing she’s making for you when she finally finishes it—even if it’s the ugliest of its kind you’ve ever seen.
• Consider the possibility of fiber pursuits being a lesser evil.  There are certainly worse obsessions.
• Trust that eventually—hopefully—she will acquire some sort of balance with it all.
• Above all, remember to breathe.  Everything else falls apart if you forget to breathe.

I thought about all that last Saturday, when we had the first open-house spinning meeting.  So far, I had recruited 6 new spinners.  Six.  I’m proud of them, and they’re a foundation for something new and wonderful.

I didn’t know how many to expect at this first meeting.  I’d made the appropriate connections with the regional Husflidslag consultant who had then sent the information on to the heads of the local chapters.  I’d briefly announced the meeting on Spinnerens Hjem and Hobbyboden.  I’d dropped off a flyer with the three local yarn shops:  Garnhuset, Jens Hoff, and Husfliden.

But there was no way of knowing what to expect.  As far as I knew, I could be the only one there, although I’d gotten word that there would be at least three others, and a number of other folks wanted to come as well.  But you and I both know how those things go; people often say they’d like to do something but life and other interests intervene.  So, I packed my starter-spinner box of fiber and improvised spindles, the Babe in case I needed a training wheel, my Rose and some Spunky Eclectic fiber club fiber and half prepared to have a quiet afternoon of solitary spinning if none of my new recruits showed up.

They showed up.  Of my 6 new spinners, 4 were there.  Plus Wenche (a relatively new but fast-learning spinner who has begun her own online shop), that made 6.

But we didn’t have 6.

We had 14.

Fourteen.

The six of us (plus one daughter of about 8 who got to help her mom by treadling Wenche’s Baynes while her mom handled the plying process), plus 8 new faces.

I was astonished.  Fourteen.  I keep turning that number over in my head and feeling absurdly pleased.

In the group, there were 3 experienced spinners, two of whom were older, and I was fascinated to see some of the things that had changed between their spinning history and mine.  They were taught to spin singles counterclockwise (S) while most new spinners today spin their singles clockwise (Z).  Accustomed to spinning Norwegian fleece (which usually means Norsk Hvit/Norwegian White), they worked toward less twist rather than more, particularly in plying.  The older of the three used “snelle” where the younger population seems to be using “spole” for “bobbin.”  There are changes, and I’m mightily intrigued.

But 14 for a first spinning meeting . . . Of course we won’t have all fourteen back; some will have discovered that spinning isn’t for them, and those SOs will sleep soundly never knowing how big a bullet they may have dodged.  But the others . . . I can see at least 8 of them becoming regulars.  Two of my earlier recruits have purchased wheels—and they’ve only been spinning for a few weeks on spindles.  One is on the hunt for a wheel.

One of the new folks asked if I’d do a demo for her knitting group in March, and perhaps let those who want to try their hand at it experiment a bit.

And I’m wondering whether we should print those brochures and attach one to each spindle . . .

Her blog is here: http://wiashobbykrok.com/blogg/.  Take a glance at her first spinning experience here:
http://wiashobbykrok.com/blogg/?p=162 .  It’s in Norwegian, but you can see the pictures if you cannot read the text.

We also have Britita:  http://britita.blogs.no.  Her first spin is here:  http://britita.blogs.no/2007/12/11/min_forst_spinneopplevelse~3427781

And Marit:   http://strikkeri.com/ (the blog is here:  http://blogg.strikkeri.com/ ).  Her first spin is here:  http://iloblog.strikkeri.com/blogg?Home&post=7.  Marit is so hooked that she’s already considering a wheel!

Seriously?  I’m proud of these gals.  And I’m looking forward to seeing them—along with a few new folks—on Saturday for another spinning intro.