Lady's Circular Cape - in shell pattern

I stole my Addi Turbo lace needles from my not-quite-begun lace shawl so I could begin the caplet. They're 4.0 mm, so aren't exactly the right size, but that's what I have. It really does go quickly - the stuff on the needles on the left shows all I've done since last night. Too bad damp hands make it difficult to knit with mohair, but I’m still making progress. I figure when I get near the end and it's a 56-stitch repeat, it’ll take forever to do a row. I used a bunch of stitch markers to remind me where the repeats start. That way I can see when I make a mistake before I have to undo an entire row. The purl side is what’s killing me. I hate purling, especially purling YOs. Oh well, the practice is good for me.

Also in this photo is the mohair I dyed blue earlier this week. Notice how it’s uneven? I figure I’ll use it every other row with a skein that:

• I haven’t created yet and
• Has been dyed better.

That way the variations will blend in a little better. Just gotta find time to make more yarn and dye it.

Goat me, big boy

Yesterday I got a package of mohair I purchased on craigslist.org. The fleece is an off white doe’s third shearing, a more wavy than curly, and I promptly felted it during scouring. I did up about .5 kilo (1 lb) – it was pretty clean, little grease, and ended up as two huge fuzz balls. Today, I spent time pulling them apart and was able to salvage about 70% of it. Glad I scour in small lots – the other 1.1 kilos (2.5 lbs) may yet be safe from my touch.

The next lot I do will be to lightly scour and then dye. The second round of scouring will clean it and remove any extra dye – a real problem for me. I dyed the second skein brilliant blue, and the exhaust was almost colorless (yippee!). Of course the dye job wasn’t the best in the world – since it was spun more tightly, there’s white at the core. ‘Sok, for my nefarious purposes, it’ll do.

I think I should show a before and after of the mohair, scouring, and dying. I want to dye in the fleece, but I’m not sure how much fleece equates to how much string on the bobbin. Gotta start weighing things out here. That way I could dye enough fiber to produce the material I need to knit. (Now if I were knitting a goat or sheep tea cozy, it would be the circle of life!)

I also bought some Seacell on eBay yesterday from my favorite vendor. I've been looking for this fiber for a while now, and lo, there it was! It's sea weed. So far, I've tried: alpaca, llama, Shetland, Corriedale, Leicester, Suffolk, Cheviot, Romney, Lincoln, Merino, Targhee, Rambouillet, mohair, silk (top, hankies, and caps), Ingeo, chiengora, and bamboo as well as Colonial top (blend of wools) and Superwash. I'm sure I'm leaving something out. I'd like to try Silk Latte and Optim, but they're really proud of those fibers.

One little project that some may find disturbing is my desire to braid a bracelet for my poor spouse from my own hair. He thinks its strange, but is willing to wear it. My hair is past my bosom, so it's long enough. Now that I have a couple books on braiding and kumihimo, I just need to start my project.

Now for some color
Here are the photos I promised earlier. The brown is the chain plied alpaca and the green is the first mohair single. You can really see how fluffy it is by the shadow it casts. The second skein of mohair I did wasn't as long and didn’t have such a nice halo (pix to follow). I think I spun too thick and it was how I abused the first skein to get out the extra dye that made it fluff up so well. Maybe all my mohair will have to undergo a little torture to make me happy. I have about ½ of a bobbin with more mohair, only much thinner. This’ll have to be plied, but at least that’ll give me more practice with the fiber.

I’d like to make a caplet from Victorian Lace Today (ISBN: 1933064072). I think you know the one: twelve segments, knitted on border, fluffy and feminine, … so not my style, but I covet it none the less. Since this’ll be my first go at lace, I feel a little hesitation. The only other lace item (well, besides socks) I’ve tried was a simple rectangular shawl pattern from Folk Shawls (ISBN: 1883010594) that never made it past the first repeat. I bought some smoke Rowan KidSilk Haze to make the caplet, but I’m also hoping that the mohair I’m spinning now will be a good material. I only need about 1000 m(1100 yds) to do it. On the first skein, I ended up with about 390 m (425 yds) and the second was about 348 m (380 yds). I just need to keep my singles fine and consistent across bobbins, and I think I’ll be able to do it pretty easily. This is also my first go at spinning for a specific project. Actually makes it more interesting for me.

Cooties
Well, the GI thing I had is still here. I worked from home one afternoon this week because of it, and today I didn’t want to go too far from home. I’m wondering if my husband and dog are trying to kill me. (I doubt my husband would do anything like that, but the dog …) My hands are swollen and I’ve had a headache all day – I know I’m dehydrated, but I’m having trouble forcing myself to drink. Right now, I’m whipping up a batch of instant oatmeal to see if I can send a cease and desist down the line.

The whole cootie thing had better end soon. I want to visit the UK without obviously looking like I’m not from around there, so I'd better start exercising. Two years ago before I started to fall apart in earnest, I would have been fine. Now, I have a task ahead of me. It’s good to have a goal.

Feeling unproductive

At work, we’re preparing training, creating online help, doing troubleshooting, creating job aids, … for a skazillion projects. All due between now and around the middle of October. I also attend meetings and try to have a life, but that last bit doesn’t work out so well these days.

I volunteered to work this weekend to help fix a problem that could have been avoided if we’d been more coordinated in all phases product roll out. It wasn’t my fault, but I was there to help. Unfortunately, there were … glitches, and it took us 8 hrs to correct only 1/18th of the problem. Had we proceeded as planned we would have done a huge boo boo. Luckily, the team I was working with decided to test the process we were going to implement, and realized it made things worse. So, later this month, I go back to help and lose another half weekend. (Not like I wasn’t going to work this weekend anyhow, I just hoped to make headway on some of my projects.) C'est la Vie.

Before I dive into the whole fiber prep, spinning, knitting, inkle and table weaving thing, I’d like to say for the record, I love the Internet! I live hundreds, sometimes thousands, of miles away from my suppliers, and most of my hobby junk shows up within seven working days of online purchase. Does anyone remember getting a catalog and calling in your order? How about mailing a check?

Back to string
Friday, my second box of mohair came, and it was glorious. I completely scoured some, dyed my mohair single yarn (rather splotchy since I wasn’t bright enough to undo the skein before drowning it), and did a little experiment. I soaked a second batch of mohair locks in the original scour water, then rinsed them and dumped them in the exhaust from the yarn dying. I let them soak over night, then really scoured them when I got home Saturday. Not only were they dyed an acceptable shade (I was using Jacquard Emerald), but the scouring pulled out most of the bleeding and I ended up with a “spring green.” (And I scoured another batch of locks in that scour and rinse water and got “mint” as a reward!) I really like this mohair scouring thing – it’s more water and detergent efficient than the “wool in the washer” method I usually use, I can dye in the wool after only a brief pre-treatment, and the final dried-and-ready-to-go locks are mostly dye-bleed free. How can people say this raw fiber is more difficult to process than wool?

I also completed my fiber assignment, sorta – I spun and plied the alpaca, but I still need to wash it (since I spun it “in the grease” as it were) and knit a swatch. Surprise to me, the yarn has a nice halo, but I must the world’s crappiest chain plyer around. And I’m not saying my spinning on this project was anything to write home about either. Maybe I’ll give it another go and see if I can produce something I wouldn’t mind admitting I made. (When I showed one of the ladies at work some of the mohair I spun, I told her I want to make better singles and learn to ply evenly. She said I’m a “perfectionist,” and it looked fine. Well, maybe I am.)

Were the sun not slipping into the ocean, I’d go outside and photograph my alpaca skein and my skein of splotchy mohair. (Photos for next post.) I’m not upset about the color mishap – I just need to make something with it as is instead of the color/natural barber pole I’d planned. Having abused it pretty well to get most of the dye-bleed out, it’s getting a nice halo. And that’s even after I spun half of it worsted. I’m thinking a simple scarf with a cat’s paw pattern, or maybe print’o the wave to disguise/work with the color changes. Now if I had a yarn meter, I’d know how much I had as I wound it into a ball from the swift and could plan my knitting project. Hmm…

Did I mention I love my squirrel cage swift? I got it last month, and though a whinge-o-matic, it does make winding balls from skeins a breeze. I think a little graphite might mute my rodent pal.

Back on the mohair soap box: I found someone on CraigsList in the Sacramento area who has mohair at a reasonable price! She’ll have a shipping quote for me tomorrow, and I have the check in the mail when I know the total. I suggested PayPal, but it sounds like she doesn’t have an account. Oh well, as long as I get what I want and she gets what she wants, all’s good. So much for online payments!

Vacation plans
We’d like to go to the UK in spring ‘08. My spouse wants to see a Reading game or two, and I want to hit every museum in London (well, not quite, but there are some things in collections I’d like them to pull for me). We should have made our reservations already, and my passport renewal still hasn’t come back. I think I mailed it before my surgery, so maybe I have only another month to wait. The US Department of State sent a nice form letter telling me how to look up the status, but all you get is a nice form web page that says “8-12 weeks from the date of receipt.” I feel special.

Before we go, I’ll have to see what fiber festivals, shearings, … string-related amusement is available. Imagine, Cotswold or Leicester right from the point of origin! Oh, I could purchase whole fleece and ship them home! I'm getting tingly just thinking about it!

In early ’09 my sister and her husband and the two of us would like to go to Hawaii and finally use my timeshare. We have a week there every year, and two alternate-year weeks in Palm Springs. I really wish we’d bought at Tahoe instead of a second in PSP, but as mother would say, “too soon old, too late smart.” I need to manage my weeks so that I can get free weeks when I trade mine. That way I'll be forced to take time off from work! (Only 20 more years to retierment... now I'm sad.)

Dyed silk

Sorry, forgot to post the picture of the Easter egg dyed silk I mentioned last time. Though I soaked it for over an hour before I attempted to dye it, only the outside of the roving was thoroughly colored. Maybe I need to mordant as well as use a surfactant. And a month later, it still smells like vinegar.

Vibrant, no?

Spoke too soon

Last time I posted, I said I was recovering from surgery. I was. Two weeks ago, I got some GI something that was so bad I couldn't go to work and I eventually dehydrated myself to the point where I needed IV fluids. The fluids weren't at body temperature, so I got chills during the process. The blood work and “other sample” came back normal, so we're assuming viral, not a post-antibiotic, “is your insurance paid up” nasty. This weekend, it returned, but I'm trying to drink more, albeit unsuccessfully. It's hot out, so I fear for my Precious Bodily Fluids and have been hiding in the air conditioned comfort of home. My hands and feet are so swollen they ache. Though in a self-imposed cloistering, I've been keeping myself occupied.

Last Sunday I scored big – bunch'o free alpaca fleece from a friend who's coworker is raising them as a business. This was her first go getting them shorn, and the shearer didn't realize they were for handspinners. She offered the skanked up fleece to my friend, and who took the more better-er ones and brought them to the monthly fiber frolic to share the wealth. I got an entire cria and parts of several adult fleece – a couple kitchen garbage bags worth – and my task is to spin a sample of one of the named adults, knit a swatch or two, and return it to the donor so she can see what it looks like. Our feedback will help her improve her flock, so I’m morally obligated to return the favor of free fleece. Since I'm flush with fleece, I split the booty with a spinning coworker.

Last week, I got my latest eBay purchase – mohair from angoragoat.us. I've never worked with it before, and it’s lots of fun, like silk from a goat. It has to be scoured at higher temperature than sheep fuzz, so I've been heating water on the stove and using a meat thermometer to verify I’m keeping the temperature way below 82° C (180° F). Not having nice Nitrile gloves, I scaled myself a few times, but pain is a good teacher. (I am buying gloves online even as I type.) Though it doesn't scour well in the washer, I use it to do my final rinse with hot, and spin it before I lay it out to dry.

My first attempt spinning the mohair wasn't as fluffy as I anticipated, but I'm sure I'll improve with practice. I think I’ll dye (Jacquard acid) the first bobbin and ply it with some natural to try to hide where I attempted to scour my first batch in the washer. I emailed Angora Goat directly asking to purchase more and expected to get an invoice this weekend, but nothing yet. I'll ping them again Monday to see if they got busy or if someone else is now being billed for my order.

I'm taking a spinning class from a local Ashford dealer next month. This'll be my first formal spinning class, and I'm hoping to learn how to make more consistent singles to ply into sock yarn. I'm not sure how they look from the bobbin, but I'm not too keen on how I'm going. I realize that a little practice will go a long way, and with the mounds of fiber around me, I'm sure I'll make headway.

Right now I'm staring a some Merino, Targhee, Cormo blend roving that I dyed bubble gum pink with cochineal last month. In its current state, it kinda looks like loops of gut hanging over my inkle loom. I didn't skirt the fleece as well as I should have before I sent it out for processing, so its has many second cuts in hiding causing slubs every time I spin it. I really should just spin it bulky and enjoy the heck out of it rather than pretending it wants to be fine or sport weight. That way I could spin the rest of that pindraft and its dark cousin, the pindrafted natural Merino, with the same slub problem and get it the heck out of my office.

Later this month, I’m going to the Fiber Fest in Santa Monica, CA. I'm not sure what all I'll do up there, but an outing may be good for me. I'd better not buy any roving or raw fleece, but I'm thinking that combs might be nice. I tried contacting a manufacturer in Canada who makes two pitch combs that fold flat. Their site is up, but they haven't responded to my email.

I'm also trying to catch up on my knitting. I'd promised a coworker socks to commemorate the Detroit Tiger's 1984 season. I’m not a baseball fan by any stretch, but she's seriously in to it. (If I go, I score the game to keep busy, though I may now take my knitting with me.) I did the cuff in two bands of “lacy” ribbing, one orange, one navy, then separated the leg from the cuff with three rounds of white. In the white, I added beads to show the playoffs: three wins, a win, a loss, and three wins. Now I'm using Opal Tiger for the leg and will try the heel flap in an orange and white lice pattern. I'll continue the food in Tiger, then the star toe in navy. I've only been working on them since before the 2006 season. I'll have a photo when they're more complete.

Work has been evil, thick with deadlines and multiple projects, and my brain is full. I wanna go play.

And no, I didn't go to Pennsic.