Gearing Up

I'm about to have an extremely busy, meeting laden couple of weeks so I decided I needed to gear up.  All I had on the needles that would be workable during a meeting were half a pair of socks, and an easy, peasy scarf.  I knew that wouldn't be enough so I've been casting on madly.

Like this:

 Thistledown doily, crochet

 Tatted edging that uses just the shuttle.  Nice, repetitive, easy pattern.

 Feather and Fan doily, knitted.  Size 20 thread, US size 0 needles.  How fun it that, to play off the classic feather and fan pattern.  This is one of the oldest patterns known to knitters.  Love it.

Priscilla book from 1959 with 2 of the existing projects and about 5 future projects.  This is a jam-packed book.  All for just 29 cents!

I got my Polypay singles plied, 2 for the lace weight and 3 for the heavier singles.  I was really curious how they would look after washing because I'd been sort of experimenting with the fiber prep.  For a true woolen yarn, which this fiber certainly suits being all crimpy and bouncy like it is, would generally call for a carded preparation.  I think I've already explained why I decided to go the combing route but I also used a very light hand on the drafting so I could keep as much of that bounce as possible. 

You can see from this close up (I hope) how much air is in the skein on the left.  That was the 2 ply thinner yarn.  The other skein was spun 3 ply and has a lot more twist in so it's a little harder to see and the skein has much less bounce in it.
The other thing you can see is that the lighter, less tightly twisted yarn is much whiter than the other.  The locks were well washed before spinning but when I washed the skeins, there was a lot of lanolin that came off them.  I'm guessing the difference in color is because the lighter spun skein was able to release the lanolin more readily.  I'm not at all bothered about the other skein because I will be dying it and I don't mind having some lanolin retained in the yarn since it will be used for socks.

Here are my 2 happy little skeins of Polypay.  As a show of how much bounce the lace skein has, the before washing measurement was about 166 yards.  After washing, that measurement is about 130 yards.  All of that was taken up by the re-activated crimp and the yarn has so much bounce, you could bungee jump with it.  No, really.  Want to try?

So now I need to think of something very Kentucky to make with it to make the circle complete!

A Pickle

In between other things, I've been working on spinning the Polypay fleece I got last year in Kentucky.  I thought it would be a nice touch to make a little something from that fleece as I go back this year.

The fleece was pretty dirty so I did a big wash to get the biggest part of it out and now I'm flicking each lock and washing a second time to get it properly cleaned.  Sounds time consuming and it is, sort of, but it's also very soothing work for me.  I've got a goodly bit washed, dried and combed and started spinning.  The reason I combed it, even though this is a pretty crimpy yarn, is that carding it just seemed to be too rough and I ended up with lots of neps.  With the beautifully clean locks, all I have to do is 2 passed through the combs and it's ready to go.

I had in my mind to spin a nice little 3-ply for some socks.  I would spin it and then dye the hank before knitting up a pair of socks.  But evidently there was something up with my memory banks because as I was plying along with a nice little Navajo ply and totally digging the yarn I was getting, fantasizing about how it would poof up once it was washed, I realized the singles had gotten very, very thin.

Evidently at some point in time my plans were clearly different because the singles got extremely thin and (for me) consistent.  It took me a while to realize that it wasn't a fluke and stop spinning.  Obviously some lace fairy came and spun a whole gob of lace weight singles while I wasn't looking.

I now, evidently have about 60 yards of lovely bouncy 3-ply sock yarn and I will have about 150 yards of beautiful bouncy lace weight 2-ply yarn.  I have small feet but 60 yards ain't going to crack it, no matter what level of delusion I go into.  Maybe I do lace tops for my socks and dk for the foot part?  A scarf and booties?  Spin more yarn?  Yeah, let's go with that one.

Like sand through the hourglass

I moved to Illinois almost exactly 7 years ago to take my current job post. I never post about my job, and am not going to do so now, except to share this photo.

Everything on this shelf has a story but the one I'm posting about is the jar of scented oil. That was given to me on my first Christmas here and it's a miracle jar. I've never added any oil it and you can see how much is still left after 6 1/2 years. I told someone today that it's my hourglass and when it runs out, I'll know my time here is done. Now I won't know whether to start filling it up or pouring it out!

P.S. Yes, it is still providing a wonderful scent to my office.

Gettin' my happy dance on

Everyone, please join me in the happy dance.

Too much fun

To answer the question of if you can have too much fun, I think I would definitely say, "Yes!" 
I just finished 3 hours of demonstrating cotton spinning. It was not 700 kids (thank goodness) but it was a steady flow of kids and their parents for 3 hours. I would estimate 150-200 kids although some of them felt like 700 kids all by themselves!! 
But it was so much fun to watch them as I explained that their jeans and cotton tees started out as the little fluff of cotton they were holding. They each got a cotton seed and I'd started a couple growing last weekend that were an inch or so tall. So I think there are going to be lots of cotton plants in Springfield this summer. 
Here's what my booth looked like:

(edited to fix pictures)

Ready or not. Mostly not.

On Saturday morning I will be participating in a family art fair that organizers hope will attract 700 kids. I will be demonstrating spinning cotton and will have cotton seeds the kids can try to spin from and then plant if they want.  This is Thursday night.

This is where I'm at in preparing my display:

So there can be no doubt as to how my Friday night will be spent.