I Got Bupkis

I've hit the wall, word-wise. I can't think of a single thing to write about that's appropriate for a blog entry. I don't even have any pretty pictures to post. I feel like I should be saying, "Forgive me Father, for I have sinned...it's been two weeks since my last blog entry...", but that could be construed as blasphemous by some people, so I won't.

Right this moment, I'm trying to split my time between

• Monitoring the computer system running BitTorrent
• Combing some of the free merino fleece I scored last weekend at a demo
  
• Reading different threads on Ravelry
• Writing a blog entry

None of these are things I should be doing. I should be grading notebooks and preparing the last progress report of the year before final grades in June (27 more days!). However, I'm a firm believer in never doing today what you can put off until tomorrow, so the notebooks sit. They'll still be there tomorrow, and Saturday, and Sunday, and maybe even on Monday (grades are due by 4:00 p.m., Pacific Time, on Tuesday).

Black Holes and Electronic Time Sinks

Some people think black holes are a myth. I can't speak intelligently on the fine points of black holes--or quantum physics, for that matter--but I can prove one exists in my computer, and it's sucking up my time. I should be fair to my poor little laptop--the black hole in it isn't unique. There's one in the big 19-inch flat-screen monitor the laptop is frequently attached to in the studio. There's one in the TV in the kitchen. And there's a really big one in the living room, in close proximity to the home entertainment system. All of these black holes seem to attract me, pulling me into their orbit and suctioning off seconds, minutes, and hours until I wonder what happened to all my free time.

I like technology. Technology is my friend, and that wonderful, vast network of networks (the Internet) encircling the globe has allowed me to explore libraries, visit museums, and talk to people around the world, transcending time and space. However, all this lovely technology takes time--inordinate amounts of time. A lovely example is the time I spent this weekend with the laptop, a high-speed connection, several pieces of software, and a large quantity of time. I downloaded a bunch of rare episodes of Doctor Who, along with the recently aired (in Britain) Doctor Who Easter special, Planet of the Dead, and two of the most recent episodes of another British sci-fi sitcom, Red Dwarf. Once downloaded, the recently-aired TV programs had to be converted to a format compatible with the DVD recorder in the home entertainment system ("ripping"). The downloading wasn't a problem--I can read and answer e-mail, chat with people, and blog as necessary while downloading, but ripping is another matter. Ripping requires most of the available memory (I have 2GB of RAM), so everything else s l o w s t o a c r a w l while the software works its magic...slowly. I have to keep checking back on the progress of the programs while they're working, and each time I sit down, I have to swing through my e-mail accounts and check the Ravelry fora for any new messages. And there goes a bit more time, lost while sitting in front of the computer instead of my wheel, or with my needlework in my hands.

Is there a solution for this odd time-space problem? I haven't come up with one...yet. But give me time; if I don't lose it to the black hole inside this little box, maybe I can come up with a solution.

A Space To Call My Own

This is what a finished, tidy fiber studio looks like:

The painting is finished and dry, the curtains are hung, the furniture and equipment is all back in place. The only thing missing is my wheel, which was still downstairs in the living room when these photos were taken last night. Even the desk is clean! This state of affairs lasted 15 minutes--about the time it took to snap the pictures, complete with the happy artist standing in the doorway of her studio.

As lovely as a clean studio looks, it doesn't stay that way for very long because I need to work. The current work is finishing the picking and carding of nearly all the washed fiber I still have. There are two fleeces I'm not touching: the white Border Leicester cross that I carefully washed by the lock is done until I start to use the locks; and the black Romney I bought from Ace Vandernack a couple years ago that is awaiting combing. However, there's more than enough for me to do right now.

One of the tasks I set myself this week was to go through the fiber stash thoroughly, both to check on the condition of my fibers, and to refresh my memory regarding what I currently have. It's quite a bit of fiber, including:

• 1/2 a black Jacob
• a moorit Border Leicester
• the above-mentioned black Romney
• the above-mentioned white Border Leicester/Corridale/Merino
• a black Merino, already turned to pin-draft
• a Romney/Coopworth hogget, turned to batts

and lesser amounts (usually a pound of each) of dyed merino, superwash merino, gray Shetland, black Shetland, Leicester, Jacob, Gotland, and Blue-Faced Leicester tops. All in all, it's a lot of fiber, enough to keep me spinning for a while.

However, fibers have to be made ready to spin before they can be spun, so I'm picking and carding the moorit Border Leicester and the Jacob. Quite frankly, I had forgotten I had that fleece--I carded half of it on Joan Kintcher's big Duncan double-wide motorized carder in 1997, and although I washed the other half of the fleece, I hadn't carded it when I stopped attending the spinning class. The remaining fleece, stored in a bin, has sat since that time, waiting for me to remember that it was there. I pulled it out and checked it, and it's fine; more than I can say for the yarn I did spin from this fleece (it was attacked by moths and was thrown out several years ago).

The Jacob is completely different than the Border Leicester--it's soft and bouncy, more like a Down sheep than the longwools I've been handling recently. Picking it is different--it jack-rabbits through the picker and into the box, so it doesn't take long to fill the box with fiber to be carded. Carding takes time and muscles--I've discovered that I can pick enough fiber to fill the box in less than ten minutes, but it can take 20-30 minutes to card that same fiber. It's work to do the carding, and I find myself wishing I had a motorized carder to make the job easier, but I know it will be done (eventually), and I can relax.

Ten Percent

Why is it that the last ten percent of any project seems to take as long as the first ninety percent? I'm finding that's truly the case with finishing the studio. I'm ninety percent finished, but I just can't seem to get the last few little things finished.

Part of the delay might have been a weekend full of delightful interruptions. After writing the last entry, I went back and was able to put on the final coat of trim paint before falling into first the shower and then into bed. On Friday morning, I started putting the studio back in order. First on the list: replace the light fixture with the new light ordered from Rejuvenation Lighting, our favorite source for period lighting fixture. We went with a very classic flush-mount ceiling fixture and a "school house" shade similar to others in the house. Once that was installed, we put the bookcases back against the wall, this time with holes cut for access to the blocked outlets. For the first time in fifteen years, I have electric power on the far wall! Everything else went into place slowly, as I carefully cleaned behind, under, and around each item before it was put into place. I finished most of the furniture moving by Friday afternoon, and called it a day; I had a spinning group meeting to attend!

Saturday, I spent the day in a spinning workshop taught by renowned fiber artist Judith MacKenzie McCuin. She teaches a workshop and gives a lecture to the guild every March; this year's workshop topic was "Fleece Evaluation," and we spent the day looking at different fleeces and wool, spinning some of them, and carting away baskets of samples. It was a good workshop for everyone, and we are all now filled with enthusiasm for the Black Sheep Gathering's big wool show and sale in June.

After the workshop, I dropped Jane off at her house and began the shopping to finish the studio. A trip to IKEA netted new curtain rods and two picture frames, but the hardware store was closed by the time I finally got there at 7:45 p.m. (they closed at 6:00). I was in Pinole, on my way home, when I suddenly thought: Orchard Supply Hardware! Sure enough, they were still open, and a bevy of bored store clerks were more than willing to help me find the odd litle items (1/4-20 wing nuts, a small sink plunger, and picture rail hooks) still on my list. They were so sweet and patient--I was so tired after two days of moving furniture and spinning that I was punchy--and I was soon on my way home with more items crossed off my list.

Sunday dawned and I hustled back down to the East Bay for the Spindles & Flyers meeting and lecture by Judith on the development of different sheep breeds. The meeting was packed, the talk informative, and when it was over, I went back over to the hardware store (now open) to get the last item on the list: picture hooks. No such luck--the only picture hooks available were inexpensive stamped brass that I know better than to use (they don't stay on the picture rail). At some point, I'll have to order more hooks from Rejuvenation Lighting, but I have to be miserly with the hooks I currently have.

After two more days of putting things away, hemming curtains, and running errands, the studio is nearly complete. I've done some rearranging of storage, so I need to make another trip to IKEA to get more little wooden storage cabinets and baskets for the shelves, then finish putting the last things away. I have two fleeces out to pick and card once the studio reaches 100%.

...And Then We Paint (and Paint and Paint)

I can't believe I'm able to write this--I have one coat of paint to put on the trim and I'm finished (except for putting everything back). Three hard days of work, but the studio is looking really sharp. The gray is perfection: exactly neutral, it reflects the color of the light outside, so when it's early or late, the walls seem a warm gray, while looking cool and slightly blue in the middle of the day. The white ceiling reflects additional light into the room, while all the white trim "pops," and sets off the gray. I'm planning on hanging more artwork in the studio, and the gray walls will show the art to its best advantage; one area is being kept clear, so I have a place to photograph fiber.

I'm looking forward to finishing, and moving everything back into place. I miss my studio!

...Then We Prime...

The priming is done, and I'm only a day behind schedule! If I was a responsible, energetic person, I'd put the first coat of paint on the ceiling this evening, but I'm not that responsible, and I don't have that much energy.

Spackling the cracks put me behind, because I had to spackle not once, but twice. I was filled with enthusiasm for fixing all those pesky cracks on Sunday evening, and had them all neatly filled before calling it a day on Sunday night. On Monday morning, I went in to check if all my handiwork was dry. Much to my disgust, I discovered that the fancy "polyester elastomer" spackle had shrunk into the cracks, rather than filling them. Feh! Not only do I have to redo all that work, but I have to find something that is going to work!

Home Depot carries an amazing number of different products to fill holes and cracks in walls. Powders, pastes, for plaster, for drywall, and so on. One of the newest (and neatest) is spackle that goes on pink, but dries white and can be sanded. I bought a bucket, went back home, and spackled the entire room...again. However, this time the product worked; as small cracks began to turn white, I could see that they were completely filled and ready for sanding. It took longer for the large areas and deep patches to dry, so I decided to wait until today to do the priming.

While I was waiting for the spackle to dry, I decided to make use of the time and get some dyeing done. I dyed several pounds of Border Leicester/Corriedale/Merino locks last summer, but I didn't have any orange dye at the time; I attempted to mix an orange using red and yellow, but ended up with red-orange. At that time, I also dyed some locks black, but for some reason they came out dark gray. This time, I have the orange dye and the time to try again for a good black. I sewed some of the net "envelopes" I washed the locks in closed, set them to soak, then decided that I wanted to also dye some roving, so I dug out the dyeing crockpot and measured out some roving.

Dyeing the locks was a pretty straight-forward affair. I've used Jacquard dyes for years, and they usually perform just as I expect. This time was no different. I measured out the dyes, added them to the pots on the stove, put the locks in, and brought each up to temperature. I used vinegar, rather than citric acid, to acidulate each vat, and as I was doing so, I suddenly realized:

Citric Acid: 4% of WOG = Vinegar (5% strength): 100% of WOG

Once each vat reached temperature (190 degrees for 15 minutes), I pulled each off the stove to let the locks cool overnight.

That left the roving. I was in a mood to play, so I measured out royal blue, dark green, and violet dye solutions, added the vinegar to acidulate, and poured each solution into a squeeze bottle. I coiled the soaked roving in the bottom of the crockpot, and went "Jackson Pollack" on the roving with the squeeze bottles. I set the crockpot on "Low," and left it for three hours, then unplugged it and let the roving cool overnight.

This morning I washed and rinsed everything, and put it out to dry while I primed the studio. It takes an amazing amount of paint--two gallons--to prime an entire room. I got through the cutting in (and got a blister from the piant brush), rolled primer onto the ceiling and walls, and primed the doors and windows. As usual, paint was everywhere, including all over me.

With the painting out of the way, I spent the afternoon dyeing more roving. My experiments continue--this time, I braided the roving before putting it in water to soak. The braid helps keep the roving together, but it's harder to get the dyes to penetrate fully without making the roving too wet. I found I could open the braid up, and by using the squeeze bottles, could get some nice effects. I tried to keep it pretty simple, using three-color combinations (light green, turquoise, lilac; red, purple, blue), but I let Stephen pick the colors for one braid, christened the "Firebird": yellow, orange, red, with a violet "kicker." Once each braid was dyed, it was wrapped securely in plastic wrap, slipped into a ziploc bag, and microwaved. I let each cool, then washed and rinsed. After a quick spin in the washer, I unbraided each braid (easier than it sounds) to dry.

First We Prep...

I dislike painting. I dislike the disruption to my routine, I dislike tearing a room apart, I dislike prepping, I dislike the actual painting, I dislike the cleanup. The only thing I like about painting is the clean, tidy look right after I'm finished--in my studio, that will last about 15 minutes.

I particularly dislike prepping. Prepping is annoying because it has to be done, but there's no lasting benefit--unless you count not having paint all over everything permanently. However, I am not a neat painter, so painstaking prep work is essential.

My mother is a neat painter. I have no idea how she does it, unless it's from years of painting, first with those oil-based paints that were full of lead, and more recently with latex-based paints. She gets up on a Saturday morning, pulls out the old paint roller and older paint tray and gets to work. It seems she needs only a single piece of yesterday's newspaper, no matter the size of the job, and there are never any drips, spilled paint, or goofs--she simply doesn't allow it.

I, on the other hand, and one of the messiest painters around. The only time my can of paint doesn't have drips around it is when it's still at the paint store. When I paint, it is on everything and in everything--I've ruined pairs of eyeglasses by wearing them while painting a ceiling, and nearly every floor in the house has a few little drops and drips of paint on them. Prepping is an absolute necessity.

After moving all the furniture and equipment to the middle of the room yesterday, I took the time to start scraping open the cracks in preparation for spackling them. New problem: after 100 years, the finish coat on the plaster is finally beginning to fail. Several large pieces came away as I was scraping open the cracks, so I'll have to do some fancy faux-plasterwork to fix the spots. Scraping and spackling is an exercise in futility. The house is "indeterminate framing" (basically, a box)--good for flexing under shear stresses (e.g., it moves but doesn't collapse in an earthquake), but tough on inflexible materials, such as plaster. Add to that a condition known as "soil heave," and you have a house that is always in need of spackling. A lot of our neighbors have ripped out the plaster and replaced it with more flexible gypsum dryboard (sheetrock), but I am trying to hang onto the plaster as long as I can: replacing plaster with sheetrock requires a professional and is expensive.

Once most of the cracks were scraped open, and the debris swept up, it was time for covering and taping. This is the hardest part of the prep work, but the most important. Guaranteed: if I don't cover it with taped-down plastic, it will have paint on it before I'm finished. Two 10x20' plastic drop cloths were enough to cover the gigantic mound of furniture in the middle of the room. Once covered, I went around the room, carefully taping down heavier 3' wide plastic. All the window frames were taped, the face-plates for the outlets and light switch removed, and the outlets and light switch themselves covered with painters tape. It took several hours, but I'm finally ready to start spackling and priming.

I Am My Mother's Daughter

A year ago, I was in sunny southern Spain, sipping sangria on a sandy beach in Marbella. Every even-numbered year, we go away--preferably to to some place warm and sunny--and last year it was to Spain for a week, followed by five days in London before returning to the Bay Area. It was a lovely vacation.

However, this is an odd-numbered year. Even if it wasn't, the economy--both national and personal--have made travel next to impossible. Because we aren't traveling, the two weeks of Spring Break are a perfect time to do a Big Project. This year's Big Project is repainting my studio.

I love my studio. I love that I have a place to call my own, to mess up (and clean up) as I please. However, even the nicest place occasionally needs a bit of "freshening up." The studio was painted in a hurry-up fashion in March, 1994; a paint job necessitated by the absolute revulsion I felt whenever I walked into a room with bubblegum pink walls, and complicated by my being in a cast from my toes to my hip and unable to do much more than sit in a wheelchair. Stephen was a lamb and got rid of the pinkness in my studio, but I've had Sea Mist Green walls for fifteen years, and it's time for a change. It's time for the green to go, and with two weeks off, I have the time. I mentioned to Betsy that I was going to spend my Spring Break painting the studio; she just chuckled and said, "Of course you are--you are your mother's daughter." (My mother is famous for spending the spare time of a long weekend painting the interior of her house; we joke that the house is smaller inside from so many coats of paint.)


First big "problem": there is a lot of stuff in my studio. In addition to two file cabinets, there are two large bookcases, two small bookcsaes, a large worktable, a floor loom, several small small chests of drawers, and my combing stand. There are also a lot of boxes and baskets of things that need to be put away. All this stuff has to be moved away from the walls so we can get to them, plus everything has to be protected from the spackle, primer, and paint. I began moving things on Friday evening after work, and quickly realized that moving things when one is tired is folly. It takes three times as long to accomplish anything, and I won't remember what is where because I put it there when I was tired. I gave up, went to bed and vowed to make a real start on Saturday morning.

Spin Journal #12A: Silly Sally Spider Sat Spinning Silk

It's such a lovely feeling of accomplishment when you look at a finished skein of yarn. No longer are you contemplating bobbins full of singles. No longer are you sighing over the time it's taking to spin a very fine thread evenly and consistently. It's done! You can sit back and marvel at the beauty you have added to the world.

Back in November(?) I started spinning a batt I bought at Black Sheep last summer. It was a lovely batt: 40% pygora, 40% alpaca, 18% bombyx silk, and 2% yak, in a lovely shade of lavender. This was going to be my personal challenge--spin it as fine as I possibly could, and see if I could get enough for a large scarf or shawl out of its tiny two ounces, along with two ounces of something else that could be spun fine. I spun. I spun some more. Then I spun some more very fine thread. Who knew that two measly ounces could be so much!?!

I finally finished the batt, and turned to the next bit to be spun: two ounces of handpainted roving. Not just any roving: handpainted bombyx (silk) roving from Chasing Rainbows. The colorway is "Purple Haze," a variegated roving in shades of medium purple, deep purple, and silver gray. The medium shade was a match for the spun pygora, so I was looking at the possibility of creating a yarn that would have color definition both in minute detail, and over the range of several stitches. This could be interesting!

I finished spinning the silk at the end of February and started plying. I quickly discovered that, while my double-treadle Sonata is great for spinning, it's not so good for plying. I ply very fast, and, since I want to get it d.o.n.e., I try to ply everything all at once. Treadling away as fast as my little feet could go, I plyed, and plyed, and plyed, and still couldn't get more than half of the plying finished at one go. There was a lot of thread on those two bobbins! It took two days to finally finish all the plying.

Reeling the finished yarn off the bobbin was a shock--it just kept coming and coming. By the time it was finished, I had 837 yards of finished lace-weight 2-ply that tipped the scales at a tiny 123 grams (4.3 ounces). The finished yarn has been wet-finished (washed, thwacked against the side of the clawfoot tub to fluff up the fibers, and dryed). While not absolutely perfect--there are the odd slubs and occasional boucle loops from combining two strands with different characteristics--the yarn itself is a glorious combination of purple and silver. The silk, carefully spun as a true worsted, sparkles and shines, while the pygora and alpaca beg to be touched.

This finished beauty needs a design to show off its best qualities, so I'm swatching (with other laceweight) the lace pattern for a Canadian Cloud, originally published in Weldon's Practical Knitter around 1890. A Canadian Cloud is a combination hood and scarf: approximately 20 inches wide, and 72 inches long, one end of the scarf is finished with a large tassel that serves as a counterweight, while the other end is folded and sewn to create a hood. The Canadian Cloud is worn by putting the hood part on the head, then wrapping the end twice around the neck with the end thrown over the shoulder in a dashing manner. The tassel weights the end and keeps the Cloud closed. It should make a pretty, light-weight head scarf for next winter.

Go Outside and Play!

Sometimes, you just have to stop for a bit. I spent three hours this morning trying to write a blog entry, basically a rant on the idiocy of people that expect the customer service of a Fortune 500 company from a 1-person fiber microbusiness, but to no avail--all I was doing was making myself angry and incoherent. Angry, I don't mind, but incoherent is itself annoying. I could hear that internal voice stating firmly, "Step away from the computer. Go outside and play." So I obeyed.

Lo and behold, there was a lovely day outside! Winter in Northern California never ceases to amaze me. I grew up in Southern California, where "winter" is an occasional gray, rainy day with temperatures in the low '60s. Here in the Bay Area, winter is an actual season. I have a reason to own multiple sets of gloves, mittens, wristies, scarves, and hats, along with several different coats. I even have two umbrellas! Winter in the Bay Area means (usually) a lot of very cold rain and going days--sometimes weeks--without seeing the sun. I kid you not--one year (1998) we had measurable rain every single day January. Newspapers reported sheep turning green as the VM in their wool sprouted. Winter seems to last forever here; then the weather pattern changes, the rain goes away, and everyone is startled by the beautiful Northern California in late winter. The sky is a very blue blue, studded with cottony white clouds sailing above emerald green hills. Everything looks freshly scrubbed. The air warms in the sun, and a gentle breezes carries the unmistakable scent of orange blossoms.

Right now the yard is, quite frankly, a mess. Not much grows until the rains start, and once they start, it's impossible to do any gardening. As a result, I let everything go until most of the winter rains are done, and our first big yard clean-up takes place in late March or early April. Today I just wandered around to see what was happening. The daffodils I planted 18 months ago have naturalized, and are poking up through the oxalis, trying to be brave in spite of being beaten down by the heavy rains. The deep purple early irises, originally confused by some very late warm weather in December, have recovered and are beginning to bloom, letting me know that the other irises will follow along eventually. My much-worried-over Kaffir lily is finally pot-bound enough to attempt a bloom this year, while the tiny pine tree--a Christmas gift from a fellow teacher two Christmases ago--is tiny no more, but now a small shrub.

I can't simply look, admire, and plan--before I knew it, I was pulling a weed here, or a misplaced bit of crab grass there. I checked on the kitchen herbs and found, to my delight, that the thyme thrived over the winter, and the oregano turned into a dense velvety mat in its pot. I weeded the herbs and other potted plants, checked on how a few other plants fared, and finally stopped to marvel at the Tuscan rosemary on the patio. After 4 years, it has become a large shrub, covered in tiny blue flowers. A gentle hum rose from it, as dozens of bees circled around it, finding fresh flowers to sample. Above it, the plum tree hosted its own white and green buffet for the bees in the hope that the magic of pollination would result in fertilization and eventually plums.

After an hour puttering about in the garden, a bit of clean-up is done, and I'm feeling charitable once more. Sometimes, the best solution to a problem is to go outside and play!

SpinJournal #12: Pick a Card

Today is the Big Day! I'm going to pick those fleeces and get them whipped into something closer to spinning shape than scoured fleece in laundry bags.

I got my picking station set up, and started on the Romney/Coopworth hogget I bought last June. It's a good fleece to start with: lovely-soft, but full of VM (vegetative matter--hay, sticks, dead lady bugs) and second-cuts. I started to comb the fleece, but that's taking forever, and the lock structure is not as intact as I would like for combing. The fleece has been sitting in the studio since last June, and it's time to either spin it or get rid of it.

I discovered pretty quickly that the advice Paula Simmons gives in her book, The Handspinner's Guide to Selling, is accurate: don't let the picker try to take too big a bite. A big chunk of fleece only jams the picker. As the fleece was still pretty much in bunches of locks, I grabbed handfuls and pulled them apart a little bit to keep entire blocks of fleece from being pulled into the picker. The perfect technique seems to be to let the teeth at the closest edge of the rocker skim over the unpicked fleece, pulling a little bit of the fleece down onto the teeth in the cradle. The rocker then moves the fleece across the teeth of the cradle, and off into a basket. It took a few minutes to get the rhythm down (it's more just "push," rather than "push-pull"), and then dark brown clouds of wool began to fall into the waiting basket. Someone with experience can (supposedly) pick 6 to 10 pounds of fiber an hour; I'm not nearly that fast, but I can at least operate the picker safely and efficiently.

Picking was just the first step. Once the basket was filled, I had to card the fiber. Carding makes a nice break from picking. Too much of one task leads to inattention; inattention leads to disaster! Carding the picked fleece led to the next big discovery--why the drum carder came with clamps. My drum carder--a Strauch's Finest--is big, heavy, and doesn't move very much when I card, especially as I'm pretty gentle. As a result, I never put the clamps on it to clamp it down; it sat on the chest of drawers and everything was copacetic. The clamps sat in their little plastic bag in the drawer of drum carding tools until today. I'm no longer working with little teased open locks, or the bits pulled from my English combs, and it became evident pretty quickly that the fastest, most efficient way to card the picked wool was to turn the crank on the drum carder with one hand, while feeding handfuls of the picked fiber with the other. Great! Then the drum carder began to slide around a bit. Not Great! Everything ground to a halt while I installed the clamps and clamped the drum carder down to the shelf. When I started carding again, the drum carder was rock solid, and I started turning out batts of chocolate brown goodness.

After an entire day of picking, carding, and breaks at the computer, I finished! Where I had a laundry basket full of fleece, I have a storage bin (plus!) of dark brown batts. I need to card them all once again, both to thoroughly blend the color and to remove more of the VM, but it's been a good day's work!

SpinJournal #11: Pickin' N Grinnin'

Having the proper tools makes life so much easier. Yes, it's possible to do nearly everything with fewer tools or lower technology, but it almost always takes longer, and is more frustrating than the same task with modern tools and technology. A cake can be baked in a dutch oven over a wood fire, but isn't it easier to mix it with the KitchenAid and bake it in the self-cleaning oven?

Fiber-related tasks are no different. I discovered this several years ago, when I was using a set of handcards to make rolags for spinning. I new I had to make a lot of them, and I had a lot of fleece, so I put an audiobook on, sat down, and handcarded rolags. Three hours later, I had a basket full of beautiful gray rolags, and no feeling in my hands. I ordered a drum carder the following day.

Two weeks ago, the Guild had their annual "Big Carding Day." We do a lot of demos and public outreach that includes teaching people to spin on a CD spindle, so we need carded fiber for teaching. Everyone that owns a drum carder brings it, and we spend the day carding up lots of donated fleece. I took my big drum carder and a couple bags of fleece to contribute to the effort. The fleece was, quite frankly, not in the best shape. It was scoured by an outside source, and the lock structure is nearly gone, so it's not suitable for combing. I set up my carder and my teasing pad, and produced several pretty nice batts out of this fleece before I finally wore a hole in my thumb from teasing open the locks before throwing them onto the drum carder tray. Obviously, teasing open the locks for 5 laundry bags of fleece wasn't going to be possible. I needed a better way.

A few days after Carding Day, someone on the SpinList posted a link to a beautiful bench picker. I've always resisted the idea of getting a cradle picker, mostly because it's a frightening piece of equipment. Six hundred steel points, all waiting for me to stop paying attention so they can seriously hurt me. But a bench picker is a different animal. I e-mail the link to Stephen, and got a quick reply: Where would you put a bench picker nearly the size of a floor loom? Oh. I hadn't thought of that--the studio is only 120 square feet, and the only way I could fit a picker the size of the loom is to get rid of the loom. So much for a picker.

Suddenly, another message popped up: "Doesn't your guild have a picker you could rent?" Well let me quote Homer and say, "Doh!" I had completely forgotten--the Guild did own a picker that members could borrow. A flurry of e-mails over the next couple of days took care of the arrangements, Stephen picked it up, and the Guild's Triple Picker was sitting in my studio.

On the floor.

Where it couldn't be used.

Fortunately, the picker is a lot smaller than the bench picker, so I just needed to rearrange the studio a little bit. The swift and ball-winder that were under the window moved to my worktable. The drum carder moved from its station at one end of the studio to the shelf under the window. The picker went on top of the chest of drawers, in the spot where the drum carder used to be. Once I switched the position of the table clamp on the picker, and found a big basket for the picked fleece, I was ready to go.

The KnitMeter

In the last few years, as the world has moved further and further into the online world, people have been designing "tools" for the online person. Usually called "widgets," they're tiny programs that run on a desktop or a Website, and do lots of different things: give the temperature, track the Wall Street's ups and downs, or let people know that it's OK to build a fire in the fireplace without getting a whopping-huge fine. Most of them are probably pretty useless--after all, if you want to know the weather, go outside--but occasionally they're rather nifty little tools.

This proliferation of widgets has finally reached the fiber world with the creation of the KnitMeter. A tiny widget designed by Brandon Checketts for his wife to keep track of how much she had knitted, it was released into the world a few weeks ago, and has taken the online fiber community by storm. It's really a pretty simple little tool: you enter your project(s), then enter how much (in feet, yards, or meters) how much you've worked on that project. The KnitMeter keeps a running total of the yarn used, and announces it in a little box that can be put on a Website or on a Ravelry profile page. If you look to the right, you can see my KnitMeter, which I've currently set to announce miles. I've left it the original colors, but if you know HTML color coding, you can manipulate the color of the text and the box. Altogether a very cool widget, and Mr. Checketts is to be commended for creating a tool that caters to those of us who obsess over how much yarn we're burning through.

One Step Forward (Two Steps Back)

Stash reduction is tough, especially if you have a naturally acquisitive nature, and not nearly enough time to use up all the fiber you've acquired. To help get rid of some of the more "unusual" fibers (OK, crap I'll never use in a million years), I joined a group on Ravelry: the Karma Yarn Swap (KYS). The idea is to turn some of your unloved darlings loose out in the world, and things you like will come back in their place.

The idea took a bit of getting used to (about 10 seconds). Basically, people post what they're offering, then if you like it, you claim it, and than have 3 hours to offer something else in its place. Most of the threads in the group are regular trades, but weekends are another story entirely.

While the Ravelry fora are set up for messages, they can be used to do a bastardized version of IM or chat by staying online and frequently hitting the "refresh" button on the browser, or hitting the F5 key. As a result, weekend evenings are time for a KYS specialty: the Kick-Ass trade thread. One person serves as the moderator (a necessity, as there are dozens of posts a minute), and puts up the first item. It goes to the first person that can type "Me" and hit "Send," and that person then has 10 minutes to put up the next item. Meanwhile, everybody is busy chatting. It's fast-paced, nerve-racking, and fun! The items offered are also supposed to be "kick-ass" (really nice), so there's a chance to pick up nice goodies to add to the stash in exchange for less-loved goodies.

So far, I've been able to send away some linen-cotton blend, a wild chenille with bits of Lurex, a skein of my handspun, several skeins of Spinnerin boucle mohair, a couple skeins of Panda Silk, and a gorgeous skein of Jaggerspun Zephyr that I'll never knit (but it's so pretty). It's a good bit of yarn gone, but in return, I've gotten a skein of DK-weight superwash, 2 skeins of alpaca, and I'm waiting on more alpaca, some Filati cotton, and a couple skeins of Southwest Trading Co.'s Karaoke.

So, does improving the stash count as "stash reduction"? Stay tuned...

"Marathon" Knitting

A week in, and 2009 is turning out to be an interesting year--I'm learning all sorts of new things, including a lot of words that probably aren't in common usage (and probably shouldn't be).

Firstly, the stash diet. It's...going. I don't know if "well," is really accurate yet. I've gotten two things finished, and gotten a few other things started. On Ravelry (where I spend too much time that I should be spending on fiber), I joined the Burning Up The Stash (BUTS) group, for some support in reducing the giant stash. It's been good for me--I spent two days cataloging a large portion of the stash into my Ravelry stash (the weaving fibers and the raw fleeces aren't cataloged), so I have a good idea of what I have. I also borrowed Stephen's camera (the really good one) and took photos of everything, so nearly everything has at least one identifying photograph in the stash database. It's nice--I can now go "shopping" right in my own closet, and if I really feel the urge to stroke my fiber stash, I can still pull things out of the TARDIS stash closet.

So, what's finished? The first is a cute little tea cosy, based on a pattern published around 1890 in Weldon's Practical Knitter, an English needlework magazine. The pattern is for a "Bachelor's Tea Cosy"; my guess is that the bachelor in question isn't bright enough to take the tea cosy off the pot of tea, as there are openings for the handle and spout. I worked this first one in Patons Classic Wool: Regency for the garter-stitched lining, and Bright Red for the brioche stitch outside. I love the brioche stitch--when each row is done in brioche stitch, it makes a really pretty rib pattern. I may knit a couple more of these very "homely" tea cosies--I think a giant tomato in red and green, and a pumpkin in orange and green would make nice gifts for friends.

The second is yet another pair of mittens, this time out of the leftovers of the Regency yarn I used for the tea cosy. I started this pair last Sunday, when I went to the Asian Art Museum to see the Treasures from the Afghanistan National Museum exhibition, and stayed for the knitting meet-up hosted by Afghans for Afghans. This pair of mittens, along with whatever else I can get knitted for them in the next few months, will eventually go to some child in Afghanistan so they won't have cold hands next winter. I've knitted so many pairs of these mittens I practically have the pattern memorized--I just check to see how many stitches/rows for the size I'm knitting.

I've also cast on my Irish Hiking Scarf, and I'm well up the leg on the second sock of a pair of Opal socks, so I'm keeping my needles busy. I also spent a couple days at my Bond knitter and cranked out a bunch of knitted squares (Good-bye acrylic!) to make a baby blanket for Warm Up America. That was the easy part--the "hard" part is crocheting around each square (a round of single crochets, followed by a round of half-double-crochets), then sewing them all together. However, it ate up all the leftovers that have been kicking around since I finished the Fibonacci stripe afghan several years ago.

The total yardage either consumed or being consumed is now at 2,355 yards. A "marathon" of yarn is 46,145 yards (26 miles, 385 yards), and that's my goal this year. At this point, I'm in my second mile, so I'm doing pretty good.

2009: A Low-Fiber Diet

In case anyone hadn't noticed, the economy went to a small town in southeastern Michigan (Hell, population 266) and decided to stay for an extended visit. Things are tough for a lot of people right now: the financial system is tottering, jobs are getting scarce, and neighborhoods are becoming ghost towns in some communities as banks foreclose and people walk away from money pits they can no longer afford. At Christmas dinner last night, the topic of "hard times" came up once again, and my long-time friend, Betsy (she of the great attic emptying adventure) noted that it seems that every two generations, something really bad happens (war, recession/depression) because people forget. There may be some truth to that: my parents were born in the Depression (Dad in 1931, Mom in 1933), and I picked their brains, and later my grandmother's brain, about what life was like during the Depression. They got through it through hard work, frugality, and being creative; their "tricks and tips" can make getting through these Hard Times a little easier. While the Big Bad Wolf (an iconic figure during the Great Depression) isn't quite at the door, he keeps sniffing around, and I want to keep him away.

One way to make things a little easier for us to is reduce the discretionary spending. "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without," was a popular chant during the 1930s and early 1940s, and tracking all those pennies means more of them stay in my pocket. However, my hobby/passion/avocation for all things fiber is one of the few things that I really hate to give up. Fortunately (?) I'm currently sitting on a huge stash: at least 6 fleeces, boxes of other fiber, and boxes of millspun fibers of varied types. There's so much that I really don't have any room left for any more fiber. So what's a girl to do when things don't fit? Go on a diet.

For 2009, I'm going on a "low fiber" diet. This means that I don't get to buy any more millspun yarns until I make a good-sized dent in what is already stashed away. This means that I don't get to buy any more rovings, fleeces, or batts until at least some of what I have is combed, carded, and/or spun. This means I finish the projects I've started and dropped, or I frog them and use the yarn for something else. The fiber has got to go! This is stash-busting on a serious scale, so I have to get serious about it.

The list of projects is long and varied, including:

• an afghan for my mother
• two sweaters for Stephen
• two sweaters for myself
• an Irish hiking scarf
• 6 prs of socks
• a "Canadian Cloud" scarf
• hats, scarves and gloves for my niece and nephew
• gifts for friends

At this point, projects underway (the second of a pair of Opal Peacock socks and a tea cozy) should be finished before New Year's, so I can start with a fresh slate. How much stash will will I use up in 2009? We can only wait and see.

The Great Christmas Cookie Adventure

I know my way around a kitchen. There's a big sheaf of ribbons--mostly blue--for my cooking and baking hanging in the corner of the kitchen. I also got my grandmother's and great-aunt's recipe collections when they died, so I have multiple generations of recipes, especially cookie recipes.

Just like Christmas, Christmas cookies are a big deal in my family. Everybody has their favorites, there's a lot of entertaining, and naturally, I make nearly every "favorite cookie." I don't make small batches--most of these make 3-10 dozen, so by Christmas, I have a dining room full of tins of Christmas cookies, most of which will be eaten or given away before New Year's. I used to make several kinds of candy, too; that has stopped, as the weather is always a bit "iffy" around Christmas, and candy doesn't respond well to "iffy."

This year's great Christmas cookie adventure had to be in two parts, as I had a Christmas party to attend early in December, then I had to concentrate on work until the 19th. The first big "bake" included some of my favorites, along with mixing up the dough for the Christmas fruit cookies, a long-time, often-requested favorite of nearly everybody. For the first big bake, there were:

• Georgia's Cookies (a kind of brown-sugar shortbread with pecans)
• Spritz Cookies
• Mincemeat Cookies
• Christmas Fruit Cookies (a refrigerator cookie full of nuts and dried and candied fruit)
  

This year, I found a nice 9x13" shallow basket that serves as a perfect cookie transport and serving device. All it needed was a large towel folded in the bottom, then a fancy"Christmas" towel for the cookies to rest on until they were gobbled up. The first basketful of cookies went off to a potluck Christmas party, and came home nearly empty.

The second big bake was Christmas Eve, as the time until Christmas was drawing to a close. This was a "scary big" bake, so I could wrap up everything before Christmas Day. The day before, I had mixed up the doughs that needed chilling, so Christmas Eve I started early and worked hard, cranking out as many cookies as I could. This marathon cookie baking was interrupted only by a batch of jelly for Christmas gifts, but it was a nice break, because baking pan after pan of cookies gets old after six hours. For this bake, I turned out:

• Christmas Fruit Cookies
• Brown-eyed Susans (a short cookie with a Hershey's Kiss in the middle)
• Striped Susans (the same cookie but with Hershey's Hugs)
• Anise Drops
• Spritz Cookies
• Festive Cookies (my grandmother's name for Mexican Wedding Cakes or Russian Tea Cakes)
• Santa's Whiskers (another sliced refrigerator cookie that is rolled in coconut)
• Lebkuchen
• and a batch of scones for breakfast

Making Lebkuchen is...interesting. The dough, full of nuts, candied citron, molasses, honey, and spices, is incredibly sticky, so there's a lot of flouring surfaces to keep the dough from sticking to everything. Flouring surfaces means everything is covered in flour, especially your intrepid author--I had flour in my hair, all over me, and I finally had to kick off my clogs and work in my bare feet, as I was starting to slide around on the floury floor. However, I got the little cookies, cut in the shape of hearts with an old canape cutter, into the oven and baked. So far, so good!

I hit a snag when I tried to glaze the lebkuchen. The "original recipe brought from Germany," which is identical to the recipe in my Betty Crocker cookbook, calls for making a sugar syrup, then adding confectioner sugar and glazing the cookies while hot. This was fraught with disaster, as I needed to create basically a candy syrup (cooked to soft ball stage) in the middle of a rainstorm, and the results were somewhat less than what I wanted. OK...take a deep breath and try option two: a thin confectioner sugar-water glaze. Better, but still not perfect. I had to settle for that, however, as I was running out of time. Later, my palate memory finally identified the taste as the wonderful "molasses" Christmas cookie my mother's close friend made when I was small. She finely ground the hazelnuts and candied citron, used cookie cutters to create fancy shapes, and then frosted them with regular cookie frosting and sprinkles. Ah-ha! The next batch (there's still dough in the refrigerator), will be frosted just as Mrs. Weaver's cookies were.

I finished the last batch of cookies around supper time, and Stephen chased me out of the kitchen to make us soup and sandwiches for dinner. Not fancy, but wonderful after a day spent up to my elbows in butter, flour, sugar, and spices. The dining room is full of cookies, the refrigerator is full of cookie dough, and I'm feeding all my friends cookies for the near future!

Playing Santa's Little Helper

Christmas gifts are lovely things--fun to give, fun to get. Handmade Christmas gifts are particularly lovely, as it means the person took some of their valuable time to make something for the recipient. The bad thing about handmade Christmas gifts is that they take time--something in very short supply these days. There's an old saw about "having either time or money": if you don't have the time, you can usually rush out to a store and buy the recipient something; if you don't have the money (these days, because you're unemployed), you probably have the time to make some thoughtful handmade gift.

The problem with this is when you: a) don't have the time because you're one of the lucky ones with a job; and b) you don't make enough to spend a lot of money on gifts. Trying to make thoughtful handmade gifts is tough when you're trying to fit 36 hours into a 24-hour day.

The economy, quite frankly, stinks this year; it's become chic to be cheap frugal. Handmade gifts sounds like an excellent alternative--after all, who wouldn't like a set of hand-embroidered kitchen towels, or a hand-knit tea cozy? Even better when the gifts can be made out of the overly large fabric and fiber stashes--stash-busting and giving at the same time is a "two-fer," and always a good thing. A great idea, but the sands of time are running out.

I gave it my best--got the kitchen towels, out of a beautiful bunch of huck toweling, sewn in a couple hours. The "wrinkle" was in the embroidery--even a simple Swedish weaving pattern on the end of a towel takes about 8 hours, and I have 8 to do. I think I can make it, if I give up eating, sleeping, and everything else between now and Christmas. Not practical; I'm on the 15 yard line, and it's 4th and long in the Christmas Bowl. Time to "drop back and punt."

Thank God for gift baskets. Those wonderful inventions, that in good years provide an interesting (if somewhat expensive) solution to last-minute gift-giving, are a lifesaver for the crafty giver. The trick is to know how the fancy baskets are done.

1) Smaller is better. The trick to a lot of gift baskets is the size of the basket--it's slightly smaller than all the stuff that's going into the basket. "Small" means the basket will be overcrowded, giving a feeling of abundance.

2) Excelsior is my friend. I love excelsior. It's the straw-like stuff that is in the bottoms of the fanciest gift baskets. It makes great padding, is natural and biodegradable, and is once again easily available. Fill up the basket well with excelsior, so the goodies are shown to their best advantage, then pile them in.

3) High quality items mean a high-quality basket. Cost Plus World Market is a wonderful place to find basket goodies, and if you're a great baker or an awesome chef, this is the time to whip up a batch of incredibly luscious treats, or put up that special Christmas jelly that everyone loves. Great handmades also personalize a gift basket in ways that commercial baskets can never duplicate.

4) Shrinkable cellophane. I don't know who invented this stuff, but it's a wonder. Just wrap up the basket (I usually pull it up to the top and put a big bow on), then use a hair dryer to shrink-wrap the basket, just like the fancy commercial baskets.

This year, everybody is getting "Breakfast in Basket," a selection of coffee, tea, cocoa, scone mix, and my award-winning homemade jelly. The baskets are beautiful, everybody seems to like what I put in them (they fight over my jellies and jams), and now I can focus on making wonderful, thoughtful handmade gifts for everyone next year.

Note: This was posted after Christmas, so my friends didn't find out what they were getting for Christmas.

Hurry Up, Santa*

It's the most wonderful time of year--the papers are graded, the tests are taken, and the next two weeks are dedicated to celebrating. Like most teachers at the end of a term (our fall term ends the Friday before Christmas) the past several weeks have been a mad rush to finish the teaching and testing, the grading and the meetings; I finished entering the last grade at 5:01 p.m. on Friday evening and collapsed, exhausted but secure in the knowledge that I do not have a stack of papers awaiting my return on January 6th. Let the holidays begin!

First on the very long list is decorating the house. Being married to someone that didn't celebrate his first Christmas until he was 22 is a mixed blessing--Stephen loves Christmas, but doesn't know how to decorate a house, so the major task of cleaning and decorating falls to me, with an assist from him. This year, the annual decorating frenzy had to wait until school was finished; I'm ready to start, but my assistant has a full schedule of photo shoots, so I'm on my own, once the decorations are out of the attic. All the work in the attic hasn't deterred the squirrels: we discovered the center well of the Christmas tree stand filled with fiberglass, used by some enterprising squirrel to line a cozy nest. Fortunately (for the squirrel), we aren't putting up a large, live Christmas tree this year, so his nest is secure for a bit longer.

Decorating this year is relatively easy: wreaths on the front door (one on each side), decorated, greenery, and the Victorian feather tree in "pride of place" in the living room. I'm particularly fond of this little tree, as it's perfect for the largish collection of glass ornaments we've amassed over 32 Christmases. They're the only things that go on the tree, and the result is a tree with a glittery, jewelry appearance. I've purchased most of the ornaments, but there are some that have come from the Christmas fairs in Germany, and others that were made in Poland. Two special ones are little gold and silver glass balls that were on our first Christmas tree in 1977--they don't look like much, but at least one of them has been on every single tree we've decorated together.

Once the tree was up, I got all the presents that are finished wrapped and under the tree. There isn't much--yet--but by Thursday morning, the table under the tree will be groaning under all the packages. I still have some Christmas shopping to do, and many gifts to finish before Thursday, so I need to quit writing and get back to work!

Next on the list: Finishing Christmas gifts.

*but not too fast.

Restocking Time

Every couple of years, I have to buy yarn. No, I don't mean buy a skein here or there because I need a bit to finish a project. I mean Buy Yarn. I have to restock the stash with millspun yarns for my charity knitting projects, dyeing projects, and for any large-scale projects (sweaters, afghans) that are going to use up a lot of yarn.

It seems the Black Friday sales are the best time for big yarn purchases, and this year is exceptional. With the economy foundering, retailers have hit the panic button, and are in full discount mode. Recognizing this fear the way a shark smells blood in the water, I started watching the advertisements at the beginning of this week for the real deals on millspun yarns. My favorite is Patons Classic Wool worsted-weight yarn. It's soft enough I can wear it, it's good quality, and I like most of the colors and colorways available. I also like their Kroy sock-weight yarn, even though it's not superwash and I can't throw the socks in the dryer. Since those two are my favorites, a good deal on Patons is something I'm willing to investigate.

JoAnn's fired the opening salvo with their post-Thanksgiving flyer advertising Patons Classic Wool for $3.50/skein. They also had a 20% off coupon good for Friday morning. Michael's Arts & Crafts returned fire with their flyer: all Patons yarns for $3.49/skein and a 25% off coupon for Friday morning. Hmmm...this was going to require some thinking, as the two best caches would be approximately 20 miles apart.

Friday morning, I bounced out of bed early (OK, after 5 hours of sleep, I didn't exactly "bounce"), got some coffee, and headed to Michael's. I walked in the door at 7:45 a.m., armed with my coupon and a shopping cart, and proceeded to clean out their bin of ecru yarn. Ecru is a wonderful color, because you can dye the yarn to any color or colors you need or want. I supplemented with mound of ecru with some specific colorways for charity knitting--two variegated with purple got matching skeins of purple, while two green variegateds got matching green and olive skeins. I also got a good quantity of sock yarn, as it's not just for socks; gloves are also knit from sock yarn, and since I have a special request for a pair of "rifleman mittens" with a separate index finger, I need sock yarn to knit them.

Once I cleaned out Michael's, I headed to our Super JoAnn's. Much larger than a regular JoAnn's, the Super JoAnn's was also a lot more crowded, but I was prepared for the crowds. I found a nice gray for a special-request "skull" sweater, and some black for the intarsia skull. I also found several skeins of a lovely peacock blue for an Irish hiking scarf.

I dragged home all my yarn, cataloged it (thank heavens for Ravelry, or I'd never keep all this organized), and packed it away in the stash closet. I'm now set for another couple years, and can resist all the future sales (yeah, right!).