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.)