A Little Bit of Wooly Wednesday, Ginny's Yarn Along, and Unschool Monday All Rolled Into One.

Today's post is a blog roll mash-up. A little bit of Spinspiration's Wooly Wednesday because I have been really loving spinning and found myself surrounded by delicious roving with no idea how it happened. There's a bit of what I'm working on mixed with what I'm reading for Yarn Along over at Small Things. And then what I'm reading and how it inspires my family's unschool adventure for the Owlet's Unschool Monday... even thought it isn't monday.

I find myself standing in my yarn room looking around at all the different wooly choices. I was recently blessed by a box of 16oz pin drafted roving, some Noro, a Manos top braid, a copy of Taproot, Mendo Homemade Blackberry Jam and Vanilla, and special gifts for the Littles. My beloved friend Lily went to the fiber fair in my place (she was going any way, but she made time for wool) and totally scored for me. No really. Big win. I'm not sure if it was intentional, but she found the hottest yellow orange dorset x merino with firestar... it's like spinning the sun. I was enchanted by it right away, at the same time, I thought it kind of odd, sending me this hot sun while I live in the desert. Then I realized it will be perfect during our first winter in Maine. Perfect. I've spun about half a bobbin of teeny little singles that I'm going to wind around card board and keep tight in the bag, ready for the dark and cold. Then another 7oz of alpaca / bamboo silk / Corriedale in a sort of fluffy purple. I'm really excited about this one, I haven't spun with any of this blend and that makes me a little nervous, but man, it's gonna be fun. Both from Morro Fleece Works and both pin drafted roving both on my floor being drooled over right now. 

Those, plus the Manos braid she stuck in, plus the sparkly stuff and that gorgeous angry ocean grumpy rainbow braid from Wanda, plus the stuff I brought with me, plus all the undyed heaven I've been lugging around with me.... well, let's just say, I never need to buy roving again.


Meanwhile, I'm feeling a lot of pressure from various fronts regarding the education of my kids. The more I read about unschooling, the more interested I am in just letting the kids be kids. I feel like moving to Maine is going to plant us right in a community that supports that idea. The issue of Taproot (thanks lil, even huz is reading it) that I have my hands on right now supports that idea. I am aware that things are rarely as awesome as they seem from outside, or, in this case, from the other side of the continent. It will be cold, and we will be outsiders. KaBean told my mom today via skype that she "has concerns about moving" but is "really excited to have a garden where it snows." Huz and I are ready to switch our struggle from 'explaining why daddy is always gone getting money for the family to live' to 'growing a garden and raising some chickens and at least trying to be a little self sufficient'... As I read thru Taproot and share ideas with my man, I see people who have already walked this path. People and families who are trying and failing and succeeding to live on their own, in a community of people who want the same thing.

Wooly Wednesday, or, I'm Really Scared to Use the Wrong Oil

what if i gum up the ball bearings in the center of the fly wheel?
what if the olive oil turns rancid and then my wheel smells like old french fries for ever?
what if, by using non-Ashford-aproved oil I rip a whole space-time-wool continuum and suck the universe into the void?


Turns out, I'm scared to death to oil my spinning wheel at all, unless I know for certain the oil is spinning wheel safe. Before we moved, I had a needle oiler and it was perfect. It came from a spinning wheel company via my spinning mentor so I knew it was legit. I could squeeze the exact right amount of oil into all the spinning bits and know that I was doing well by my wheel. Well, the hellspawn wonderful and beloved fruit of my womb snapped of the tip of that ever-important needle oiler and then removed the cap and dumped all the oil onto the deck... days before we packed up to move. I very carefully moved my sacred spinning wheel, it rode in the back of the rental car with the kids and I so that I knew it would be safe...

it is a horrible picture taken in the middle of the night, the only time on the whole adventure that I remembered I wanted a pic of the way I packed the wheel with the house plants, diapers, and snacks. useful.

So we got here, to our new house and I set up my very own fiber room. A special place for my wheel to be safe from heathens who love whirling anything. A wooly sanctuary, I've written about it before... But I have yet to spin there... I haven't replaced the oil and oiler and I am petrified that I will cause the metal bits to rust into oblivion and the plastic bits to melt like lava. So my wheel sat, untouched, not feeling any love... I tried to show it love by surrounding it in fibers and glorying in all the wonderful yarn spun so far, but it is still mad at me. 


A few days ago, I went to Ravelry and asked around about the types of oil I could use in a pinch. The same amount of people said "Yes, olive oil is fine in a pinch." as said "No! it'll go rancid and you're wheel will never recoverrrrreeeee......." I did what any desperate addict fiber artist would do... I tried it. The wheel hated it... or maybe I was projecting my fear and uncertanty. I oiled it up, I gave it a few test treaddles and everything seemed fine-ish. I hooked up the drive band and the tension thingy and got out the rest of the brown and grey merino I'm trying to spin into self striping sock yarn. I fussed and fidgeted, I adjusted tension, seating arrangement, hand positions... I moved off the carpet... Turns out, that helped a lot, but not enough. It felt like my poor wheel hated being treaddled. like hated hated. I don't know what to do besides wait till I get a new bank card and order a new oiler. In the meantime, though, I arranged my beloved wheel with The ManChild's birth plant in another attempt to make it feel loved...

The trunk the wheel is sitting on came from the old country with one of my grandma's people. Inside are clippings from the Ukrainian or something newspaper. I've had it for years and I love keeping all my special things, photos, baby clothes... special stuff, in there. 

yes, I know that if I intend for this to be an even remotely successful knit blog, I might need a better camera... working on it.

..... And I spun this on my drop spindle out of random leftover bits that got left behind out of their own braids...

The color looks mostly blue in the picture but it is a crazy mix of purple and yellow and pink and orange and blue (yes, a lot of blue) and green and I love it. It is a blend of every different fiber I've ever spun since the very first yarn all combed together and plied with some white mystery sheep roving. At the very end of the plying I realized I hadn't spun enough white so I stretched out the last of the blue and plied it back on itself so there is about a yard and a half for a border or something. Honestly, it's kind of itchy so I have to figure out what to do with.

Now, make sure you head on over to Spinspiration to see what every one else has been working on, some of these ladies are quite talented...

Silk

I got some great comments on my previous post and they inspired me to fix the blogger app on my phone because I really did take pictures of the silk singles!

So...

This is what it looks like to spin out died silk singles. The unspun silk is super fluffy and soooo soft, just a dream to spin once you get a good long draw draft (?). After I spun these singles I plied them together and I am sort of disappointed in how it looks. I mean, yeah, it is gorgeous, because it is silk died the most wonderful combination of purple and blue and green, so of coarse, it is amazing... but... it is too... heavy? BUT! I did save some of the singles to ply with my blue/green/ocean merino, and THAT yarn is perfect. Unfortunately, I do not have pictures.

That is all for now... Pretty soon, we will be in our new home and I will unpack all my yarn and make have Huz take real pictures of everything and feel like a professional artist... or... I'll just keep spinning and stashing and spinning and giving. 

PS- I forgot to link this in my Wooly Dreams post, but if any of you readers are interested in seeing more aahhhh-mazing hand spun yarn, check out Woolly Wednesday over at Spinsiration. There are some great links, but I'd love to see more so if you spin too post something!!! 

posted from Bloggeroid

Wooly Dreams...

oh, spinning. I have been just spinning. non-stop at my wheel... roving into singles into plied, washed, hung, dried yarn... all the fluffy wool, like a rainbow cloud. soft in my fingers... loving all the finished skeins hanging in the window... mmm... woooollll...

and then i wake up.

and i should be preparing my family to move. Officially. It is almost time. We are leaving the house, and eventually, this town. But all I can think about is yarn. I'm not really knitting at the moment, although I did just knit the teensiest swatch out of some merino single plied with silk (yum!)... No, not so much knitting, and that's ok. Well, I know a certain aunt who wouldn't think so, but tough luck cookie, I packed all my yarn, but none of my roving.

Here is the run down of everything I've been spinning, in my very exaggerated estimations:
(oh also, because I'm awesome, I can never find my tags, so it all becomes mystery merino... i'm pretty sure all the wool I have right now is merino. And the only other thing I've spun lately is that silk {oh.my.god.} . . . )

ok, never mind... it's all merino, or silk, or merino with silk... and the colors are all to die for. *I have this brown the I hope will be the finest yarn I've ever spun- like a 3 or 4 ply... I'm trying to do the worsted (? maybe? i don't really know...) technique for this...  I read that it is stronger and better for socks. and that is what I hope to have at the end- brown, self striping sock yarn. *Then there was about a bobbin full of the yellowandpurpleandmaroon polwarth I bought at the fair last summer that needed to not be on the bobbin because I needed... Any way... I decided to ply it with some merino that had been um, resting? around the back of a chair in the closet for months to test if the big ball of it would look good with some ice white merino combed top I have... both packed. Let me just say, Experiment success! So fluffy and bouncy and bright... *The reason I needed the bobbin free was for this gorgeous merino sea blue/forest green/rainy day hiking color... Spinning the singles and plying them is what got me spinning again... This stuff is my favorite handspun so far. *I spun almost all of my silk. but i don't love it. It was gorgeous to spin, but... *I did ply some of the leftover silk singles with some of the left over dark merino singles and that has become my 2nd favorite. Actually, since there is so little of it, it is just going to get knit up into a bunch of squares for the crazy blanket.

I have piles of new roving in a new color for me... as in: not containing purple, and I have some more purple that will be spun with some mohair locks... I seriously go to sleep at night and see wool. I dreamt about plying the polwarth with the white for 2 nights before I did it, and when I finally did, I had one last night of awesome, wooly dreams and then my fiber focused dreams shifted to the fluffy blue/green/brown roving waiting to be spun...

Hey! that actually turned into a pretty good rundown... When huz gets back, I'll use his phone to take some pics...

Spinspiration's Woolly Wednesday! yay! I Love Spinning!!!

Yay! I went from spinning absolutly nothing for months to spinning over 500 yards in less than a month! I didn't count (or remember) all the singles and the 500 + includes like a bajillion yards of 2 ply. If that made any sense you deserve some kind of award. Thank you for reading.

Any way. The Boonville Fair just happened and it always has an amazing fiber festival! Jess took me and the kids to see the animals and so I could "check out" the fiber bestival. I even said "Jess please don't let me break my second $100." But with the entry and the food and the ride tickets, I sorta had to. so I did. and it was soooooo worth. It comes with a mini story... I have always been on the quest for a great yellow in yarn and it is always hard to find. I think yellow must be a hard color to get right. Melinda once told me she needs more yellow in her life. And so there it was, a beautiful maroon and yellow and purple braid of Polwarth roving. Just holding it I knew it was perfect. I have only ever spun various marino wool and silk, this polwarth is amazing...

ok, long break of about 2 days from writing that^^^

any way, I spun a lot this month. I picked up and knit something for the first time in a long time. I've been very pre-occupied by Occupy Wall Street. Little A is confusing me right now, I feel like I am on the verge of failing as her mother... but I sure do love her and that counts a whole bunch.

I wish I had pictures of my glorious yarn, there is a blue/purple merino blend 2 ply... tee hee. so soft and wonderful. and there is lots and lots of it. I'm not sure what to do about measuring it after I wash it. Should I get a swift and re niddy-noddy it and count that? or do I just have to go by weight? I wrote all the numbers that I remembered down on our white board but then we erased it to plan our top secret move to...?  Then there is that wonderful Polwarth. Yellow and maroon and wonderful. Even if I had a camera I doubt I could get the colors right. and it is so soft. and i love the way the color changes. Ooh! the color change, that reminds me. I don't want to ply the beautiful yarn back on itself and ruining the color change but I also don't want to knit it as a single... can I ply it with white yarn or... I dunno, I have a lot of it maybe I'll... play!

Spinspiration Presents Woolly Wednesday?

So I haven't really done any spinning in months. like months and months. I guess it was summer and warm and I didn't want to be in doors surrounded by wool. sweaty right? So last night, I finally sat down with my wheel and 2 half full bobbins of matching (or so i thought... dun dun dun) singles. I thought it would be nice and simple to just ply these together to get back into the spin (ha!) of things. yeah well, not so much. Turns out I had spun one bobbin S and the other Z. yay. sooooo, I decided to ply them any way. awesome. It looks very silly on the niddy noddy, but the plan is to just crochet it into my crazy blanket. It was really nice to sit and treddle for a while, even if I did do it all types of "wrong." lol.

A lot has happened for my little family this summer. We are in a very good space as far as emotions and connection within the family... but we're still broke. yay.
but now my kids want me to play, so I'm off!

Spinspiration Presents Woolly Wednesday- Spinning in the Sun

Spinning Submarine Mystery Wool Roving (?) on my new Ashford Traditional Wheel. Turns out I have been knitting for about a year and spinning for maybe 4 months (?). I love spinning! It is amazing how relaxing it is when I have a chance to spin for more than a few minutes at a time. While I was spinning, my babies were doing this:

Thanks to my amazing man for these beautiful pics!

Spinspiration Presents Woolly Wednesday

So I recently found this blog called Spinspiration and fell in love! She has some great posts and pics and explanations. Every first wednesday she hosts a great thing called Woolly Wednesday for spinners (what do you even call people who spin- spinners? spinsters? spindle jockies? lol). I hope to be able to keep these dates, I know, this one is late, better late than never yeah?

I would like to thank Farmama for the inspiration to go out and learn how to spin. She is an amazing, resourceful woman. She could prabaly out McGyvor McGyvor!

As a few of you know, I have recently begun my addiction- er, study, of the art of spinning. I bought my first drop spindle about 2 months ago. I was hooked. I met a wonderful woman who loaned me her hand painted Ashford Traditional Spinning Wheel.

at my mom's house. see the little sheepies? oh and isis peeking out...

Spinning on it has been amazing! (i know, i still have to put up the videos of me spinning) My first few attempts ended with some less than awesome awsome-ness. But I can't stop. I love the feeling  of the fiber pulling thru my fingers, even when it is being pulled to fast and I have to readjust the tension.

'orange-y, pink-ish with some yellow' single ply and fluffy roving (should i point out it is from a sheep and not a llama?)
purple, orange, pink, blue and pink double ply and single ply. mystery origin.
1 beautiful fluffy soft pink ball of... some sort of rabbit fluff? i picked it up from the holly hobby shop in town.

That's all folks!