Stuff from the last month or two

Soooo...yes, I have been doing a little knitting, spinning, and felting. First up, a teddy bear for my grandson.
And some spinning on my tibetan spindle. I love this spindle! Sadly, the artisan passed away this past winter. No more of these to be made.
And I knitted and felted a little gray mushroom hat. She's warm and toasty, and will be in my Etsy shop this fall, hopefully along with a few other hats.
This beauty is a Rose supported spindle, made by Lisa, of Gripping Yarn. It's heavy and big but spins great! It's got a bit of wenselydale wool on it at the moment.

needle felting madness

Here are a few pictures of my latest experiment - needle felting. I took a piece of old felt, not a very good one really, and began to play with whatever came into my mind. It's a little like using colored pencils and doodling. Just a random floral pattern. I love doing it, but I wish the piece of felt didn't look so much like a piece of ragged cowhide. I think I might make this piece into a wall hanging, since the fiber is really not evenly felted. It's really heavy in some places and has spots so thin that a hole could appear with the least bit of wear. The piece was felted by the residents here at the ranch, so I think it must be one of their first efforts.

The Bad and The Good of it.

One of my guys here at work turned violent a couple of days ago, during a temper tantrum, and hurt one of the staff members here at the ranch. You see, mentally, neither one of them is more than 12 years old. The one who had the tantrum is more like 6 years old most of the time. He talks about himself and others as if they were all kids, and he watches the QUBO channels, which is all cartoons all day. In reality, he's 48 chronological years old. When he has a tantrum, he goes through all the motions and emotions that a little boy has. The big problem is that he hits, kicks, and throws things just like a little boy, but he's a stout, strong guy and hitting and kicking and throwing stuff gets dangerous for anyone around him. He's hurt 2 staff members in the last 6 months and is on notice that next time gets him on lockdown in the psych ward at the hospital till he gets a psychiatric eval. He honestly didn't get the seriousness of it until I told him that next time I'll call the sheriff. He knows that means that he might have to spend a night in a place where criminals have to stay, which is not where he wants to be.

One of the results of this vocal, physical, and emotional uproar from this person is that Porter is reacting. Not necessarily in a bad way, but in a more forceful way than before. He's barking at people who come in the door and rushing the door to see who's not stopping to wait to be invited in. People here tend to knock once and walk in, and Porter is all about checking them before they enter. Another thing is that he has been sounding the alarm at nothing...and then getting embarrassed about it. His hair trigger is too hairy and goes off for no good reason really.

One of the benefits of working here at the ranch is that we have several angora goats and a couple of alpacas here that are strictly kept for fiber. So I have been learning a lot about the end of fiber working that I have never really had much experience with - the shearing, skirting, picking, and carding of fleeces. And there are lots of scraps of dyed fiber that are used for needle felting or thrown in the trash, so I've been playing around with blending colors and fibers on the carder and also the needle felting. I'll have to get some photos of what I've been doing...it's so much fun! I end up doing a lot of it at night, after all the residents have gone to their rooms. I tell them I'm working on my secret projects, so they don't try to follow me around. Remember, my guys here have the mentality of little boys between 8 and 12 years old. They think I'm a secret agent right now, working on my secret projects down in the basement. Hope I don't get to carding too fast and blow the house off it's foundation!

And you thought I was gone...

Right. I have some new spindles to show!

2 new spindles made by Heidi, who is RestlessPeasant on Ravelry. The top spindle is the Posey, and has my spin a long fiber on it. The middle one is the Big Lotus, a bottom whorl spindle made to ply with, and the lower spindle is a tibetan-style supported spindle made by Grizzly Mountain Arts on Etsy.com. I haven't learned to spin with it yet, but ooo la la! It's a beauty!
This is also a spindle made by Grizzly Mountain Arts. It's a tahkli supported spindle, the fat part (the whorl) is made from Tiger Maple and the tip is of mesquite wood. The shaft is birch. this spindle is a LOT of fun to spin on, but I don't think I'm terribly proficient with it yet, because it takes me a really LOOONG time to spin with. I use it to spin laceweight singles and it does great!

Here's the Big Lotus, with some plied laceweight yarn on it. I love the artwork that Heidi does on these spindles!

And I've been doing some spinning, as well.

I've been participating in a "Year of the Tiger" spin a long, and you can see some of that on the purple flower spindle. It's gorgeous fiber, fun to spin, and well prepared. I hope the yarn turns out as beautifully as the unspun fiber is!

Yesterday, O and I closed on a house in Trujillo. We have sold this apartment and the car in anticipation of moving to the US in mid-May, and WHAT?? O's family finds themselves evicted from the house they were renting because the owner sold it to someone who plans to live in the house (It was a major GAAAAGH!!! moment for me.) So...being the good son he is, O decided to buy a house for them. Not like we're so well-off that we can just go around buying houses whenever we feel like it, but neither of us could stand to see his brother and his wife and new baby, and his incapacitated father out on the street with no place to go. Their income is barely enough to get by on, and they usually end up living in a little ramshackle place (like the one they were just evicted from.) Isn't it just typical that just when everything seems to be coming together, something falls to pieces and things don't turn out like we planned?

So. Nearly all our savings here in Peru went into this house, which is plenty big for everyone. The roof is good, the walls are sound, the door locks, and each person can have his or her own bedroom, even O's mother, when she comes to visit. There is a mall planned to be built not far away in the near future, so the property values in this area are predicted to double in the next few years. The brother plans to buy his own place in a year or two, and it may be that the father will not live for too many more years. If all this comes to pass, we'll sell this house and hopefully earn our money back (fingers and toes crossed.) If not, then O's family will have a place to live as long as they need it, with no danger of being evicted. The deal is that they have to make periodic improvements in exchange for living there. In theory, it's a good deal for them, and possibly for us, but in practice...well, I have my apprehensions. I've already had my experience with other people living in my house, and it wasn't good.

Don't you just love it when a plan comes together? I mean, after all...What could possibly go wrong? :o(

Fiberwebs

I've been doing some spinning...




The read, blue, and black sparkly stuff is Vardo, from Farm Witch. The brown skein is handspun of wool from Maggie's Farm, Inc.





And a little bit of crocheting. The beret is of handspun Flickabunda wool that I got from Maggie's Farm.









Hmmmm...I thought this would be the underside of the beret, but...

Merry Christmas to me!

In anticipation of the coming hot, snowless, and mostly un-celebrated Christmas holiday, I treated myself to a couple of drug-and-alcohol free indulgences for the holidays with this:


and this:


The Gypsy batts are still kicking my behind, too. This is almost 500 yards of fingering weight Gypsy, with about 2 more ounces to go...




I think I'll have to find a nice project to make with it, but CRAP! I think I must be the slowest spindler in the world. Maybe I'll be done with Gyspy by the New Year...

The plan is coming together...slowly.

A week's gone by and I still have this head cold. It's in it's final phase, but what a pain in the rear - ...err... - head it's been. Classes have started once again and I have 6 full days of classes, from the very beginning in Basic 1 to Intermediate 3. Almost all of my students this time seem to be good ones. There are a few that will make me tired, but most of them seem to be enthusiastic and ready to participate and learn. At least for now.


I've been spinning, yes, and finally finished the Ginger & Plum fiber, plus two skeinlettes of complimenting orange yarn and purple yarn. Just enough of each to do toes and heels in socks, or a border of mostly solid color. So, I'm happy with that. I also started another set of batts in Enchanted Knoll Farm's "Gypsy". This yarn will be more along the worsted weight (I hope), but I have no real project in mind for it right now. I thought I did when I started spinning, but I've already got one spindle filled and all my great ideas have evaporated. Now, I guess I'll just see what it wants to become.


The most exciting news for me is that we've got a buyer for the apartment next spring. He's already made his offer, and we've accepted it. He'll give us our asking price and make a substantial down payment, then take over the remaining payments. He'll take possession of the apartment in May next year, so that will give me time to send things home to the farm, and repaint, and replace things as needed. Yeay! Maybe by that time, I'll have all of Celeste's fuzz trapped and under control. But, anyway, things do seem to be going according to plan.

O is off to see about a scholarship for a post grad program at the University of Northern Colorado - possibly. You never really know about things down here in Peru. They seem to go great guns, and then somebody stops for a beer, and things go off track for a few...well, ummm...months. We'll see how it all goes. Here's O (the tallest tree in this little orchard) and his compañeros, having left the track already, chowing down. Beer to come.

of eye glasses and fiber...

The inevitable happened yesterday: I got glasses...again. Yes, I admit it - I have the over 40 eye syndrome. When I last went to the eye doctor, I had just turned 44, and he told me that "everybody goes through this after they turn 40." So I got glasses. And almost never wore them. Then I came to Peru, went camping, and lost my glasses, but didn't realize it till several weeks later. I talked to O about it, but he was no help. So I squinted along, fumbling through things, until July, when I really couldn't see something that O was trying to point out to me. He apparently thought I was joking way back there 3 years ago when I told him that I lost my specs in Canta. We talked about going to the eye doctor (one of his friends is an optometrist), then he promptly put it off until I came back from vacation. I returned and fell over his bag that he left in the middle of the living room. (I'm not really THAT blind, it was dark, though, and I wasn't expecting him to drop his briefcase right there.) He noticed then, and decided that MAYBE I really did need glasses. Then other things happened and my eyes were put on the back burner until this weekend, when I THREW THE FIT FROM HELL and we went to the eye doctor and then to the optical district in Lima Centro.

As it turns out, the vendadora de lentes has a contract with the optometrist around the corner, and the eye exam was free. Then the salesgal did her best to sell me frames that were de moda (in style). She managed to do that, but not before O did some squabbling with her about price. We finally left there with a pair of fashionable glasses, complete with proper prescription lenses, for 80 nuevos soles, about $30 US. Not bad! (wish I'd have had them about 3 years earlier.)

In other news, I've finished spinning 550 yards of fingering weight yarn of Plum & Ginger merino/silk/sparkly fiber, and it's hanging out the laundry room window. Pictures when it's totally dry...maybe tomorrow!

New spindle!

Here's my new spindle from ButterflyGirlDesigns. It's beautiful! Now I can get on with spinning the Plum and Ginger batts from ArtemisArtemis!

a bunch of random late night stuff

1. I'm still working on the knitted roving bag. I think it will felt very nicely, since it seems to be felting right here in my hands.

2. Still spinning Waltzing Matilda. Gads, lambkins can be spun for frickin' EVER and still have a pile of roving left in the bag.

3. Still spinning on Rough Cut Diamonds...less than 2 ounces of the original 6 to go. Hoping for enough to make some nice long socks.

4. Still spinning on ArtemisArtemis Ginger and Plum...kinda held up while waiting for my new Butterfly Girl spindle to come. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. WHERE IS IT??? I've got the mailman traps baited and set out, but haven't caught anything yet.

5. Have 8 ounces of beautifully rustic rambouillet roving from Fat Cat Knits to spin up into stockings, if I ever get finished with what I've got on the spindles already.

6. Celeste has a beautiful cushy new bed and where does she sleep whenever possible? (Hint: NOT in her own bed.)

7. No Bubys or Butsys in my classes this month. Only 7 Luises, 5 Maricruzes, 4 Jorges, a whopping 15 Joses, but just 1 Miguel. After calling on Jose 1, Jose 2, Jose 3,4,5, and 6, I'd give my eye teeth for just one Livinton or Wasinton. I'd even settle for a Dooby or a Dohboy, just to break up the monotony. (They're one's in someone else's class. Such a pity.)

Just quickly...

Damn this day job! It interferes so much with my REAL life, my fiber life. Between a correspondence course on line, a presentation and class observation with another instructor, getting evaluated, and a full day of teaching, I'm not getting the proper quality time with my projects. Knitting with the mermaid blue/green/purple roving has become so addicting; just watching those gorgeous colors slip through my finger is mesmerizing. It's been quite an interesting experiment so far. I'm not advancing as fast as I'd like, partially due to a little vegetable matter (VM) that's cropping up as I split the roving and draft it out to the thickness that I want for knitting. And partially due to the fact that I spend a lot of time just staring at the colors and imagining that I'm in a clean, clear river in the mountains.

Septimus Heap is over for now. Wah. It was a fast and fun read, but now I have to wait to get the next volume until I go visiting Barnes & Noble when I go home next month. The SH series is a result of the Harry Potter craze, but these books are a little more gentle and less violent. Not that there's a lack of danger and adventure - there is plenty - but it's handled in a way that's more suited for a younger reader. So it focuses a little more on the fun aspect of the magical imagination than Harry Potter does. Things also take place outside of the walls of the castle, in the forest, in the Marsh, in the Badlands, and in the Ramblings, and things seem a little more verdant and fresh, and not so dark. Plus the characters are kind of different. The story is a little less sophisticated than Harry Potter, and so are the characters. I definitely recommend The Septimus Heap series if you want a fun, quick read! The good thing is that there doesn't seem to be an end to the series looming on the horizon.

And, speaking of going home, I really cannot wait to go! It's been 2 years since I've had a vacation, and I'm ready. It's been 2 years since I've spent much time at all out of the smog and car exhaust. I need a few lungfuls of clean country air, even if it's flavored with eau d' dairy cow, goat, or alpaca. Plus, I need some clothes. My work clothes are getting worn out and I seem to be too big to be able to find affordable clothing and footwear here. My tennis shoes have several holes in them now and the soles are so smooth that I get no traction at all with them.

*Sigh* It's time to get ready for work again. See you later.

a little progress

I've never been able to stick to just one project at a time. I've been playing with the rovings bag, knitting little here and a little there. I've also been spinning on two sets of batts, and I've got a crochet project in the works, too. Project ho, here. And, I've been reading. I'm in the middle of the second volume of the Septimus Heap series, Flyte. I know, it's a kid's book, but it's also a LOT of fun. And I like fun with no strings attached. A kid's book - just what I need for these gray, damp and fungusy, dreary winter days!

So here are some photos of the experiment of knitting with roving, so far (and a little peek at Flyte.) I like it, but I need to devote a little more time to it. This is how it's going so far:

The mermaid roving.

knitting with roving

Well, today's my last day of the Independence holiday. As usual, I've been drop-kicked by a bug too small to see. A head cold. Luckily, today is the first day in a week that I've felt half-decent. I've had WAAAY to much caffeine and have too much energy for my own good. I've had a ton of projects bouncing around in my head, but so far, all I've managed to do is get groceries, get some laundry washing, and take the latest spinning project down from the drying rack and bag it up.

So I have some really gorgeous wool roving - mermaidy colors in blues and greens and purples - that I've been working with. There's a LOT of it and I'm kind of spun out on it for the time being. And I've been, of course, reading a lot on Ravelry and getting a hankering to felt something. I want to make a bag with this roving, but I'm so sick of spinning it that I've decided to go with just knitting the roving. I've pulled some down to pencil roving size, more or less, and begun to knit it on US size 11 straight needles. They're the biggest needles I've got for now. It's going surprizingly well! I had some misgivings about it at first, envisioning the roving falling apart, but this fiber still has a little sheep grease in it, I think, and it's kind of sticky. That makes it a little hard to spin, but it's making it fabulous to knit with! So far, no falling apart, and when I was pulling it into smaller sections, if it broke, I just rolled it between my hands a couple of times and PRESTO! it's whole roving again!

The only drawback to this whole process is that there's no hot water plumbed into the laundry room. I'll have to heat water in the teapot to carry to the washer for my felting process. Plus the fact that every time I pull it into pencil roving, I want to grab a spindle! This fiber is just beautiful! I'll have pictures of this experiment later. Right now, I've gotta get my overly-caffinated brain back down to the ground!

Handspinning Sunday

Superwash merino, 64 ct, Waltzing Matilda colorway, from Enchanted Knoll Farm
Superwash merino and sparkly stuff, Rough Cut Diamonds colorway, from Enchanted Knoll Farm
70% bamboo, 20% firestar sparkles, 10% sari silk. Colorway "Riot", from Butterfly Girl Designs.

The thick and the thin of it all...

Tour d' fleece spinning

Here's my last photo of TdF spindling. Rough Cut Diamonds:

This is about 1 ounce of sock weight singles. Unfortunately, I still have 5 ounces to go.

Rough Cut Diamonds is superwash merino with sparkles, from Enchanted Knoll Farm.

Sunday

Well, this is the last day of the Tour d' Fleece, and I've definitely bitten off more than I could chew. I managed to complete the Cabaret yarn, and filed a spindle with Rough Cut Diamonds, but only one, and I've got a private English lesson coming at 11, and a correspondence course on the puter that I've got to work on. Wah. I need to learn to stop over-committing and pace myself. I'm a non-finisher. But at least I've got 900 yards of really pretty sparkly yarn for a shawl and matching socks, probably...and the Rough Cut Diamonds is going to be nice, too. I should probably do some housework and laundry, too, before the lessons show up in a couple of hours. This apartment smells like STINKY DOG FEET.

And, I've been reading the Yarn Harlot's blog. She has a troll. Terrible. You may remember that I had a troll of my own a while back. I have sympathy for her, but Steph is lucky in that her troll doesn't personally know her, so cannot personalize her nastiness to the extent that mine did. I think, though, that she will be able to get past the ugliness by not responding to it. Delte all the ugly comments without posting a one, and not responding in any way to the comments or e-mails. I wonder what moves people to be so ugly on line. I wonder why they always feel so justified in their written attacks on others. I've had a lot of time to think about it, and I know that it has to be some kind of mental imbalance. After doing some research, I have learned a lot about Borderline Personality Disorder, and I feel like this fits my previous troll to a T. If you Google this, you will find a wealth of information on it. I can't think about this anymore - it still bothers me - so I'm moving on to another topic.

I went to see Harry Potter and The Half-blood Prince last yesterday afternoon. I loved it! I went kind of apprehensive, because all those child actors are growing up and I wondered how good it might be. I hoped the movie would still have all the charm that the first couple did. And it did. The ending is left open for the continuation, so I imagine that another one will be on the way in the next year or two. No spoilers here. I'll just say thank goodness there was no extended quiddich game. Just a short, quick match to prove the power of the mind.

spindling Cabaret

300 yards of Cabaret; superwash merino fingering weight yarn. Only about 1.5 ounces to go.

Tour d' Fleece, spindling and some excuses

You may have noticed that my posts have been woefully devoid of photos this winter (summer for you up there in the northern hemisphere). Yup. I've been neglecting the camera in favor of spindling. I'm participating in the Tour d' Fleece, spinning my little fingers down to the nubs, but so far I'm just managing to complete the plying on one skein of Cabaret fiber. Wah. My 6-days-a-week job gets in the way of spinning, and what a danged inconvenience it is. I think I'm in a fail situation. I may have to concede that I have set my goals too high. I hope not. I still have another 10 days to go, so it's possible that I could still pull this off.

Even if I don't reach my goals, I'll still come away with some nice yarns, and a bit of space cleared on the shelf for more fiber stash. I'll be able to do some vacation knitting and spinning in September, when I go home to the farm for a month. Hopefully, the pair of laceweight spindles that I ordered will be waiting for me, but I'll take one with me, just in case.

What? What's that you say?? Why, YES! I've bought my plane tickets for vacation! Yeay! O is a little bummed out, because he STILL has not applied for his visa, so he gets to stay home again this year and play with Celeste and do his own laundry. Tut tut. It's his own fault. The Embassy will not give you a visa if you do not ask for one. I tut when I think about it.

And, honestly, I must confess that my camera batteries are dead again. Grrr. Must rectify that when I get groceries sometime this week.

I hope that Peru is about done mourning Michael Jackson. I'm totally over seeing the funeral and the 1980's music videos played over and over every day. You do know that there were only two music videos that Michael Jackson made, don't you? They were Thriller and Billie Jean. At least that's the way it seems here. Nothing else is shown on TV, and on the radio? The Man in the Mirror. Over and over and over. The world was fascinated with Michael Jackson, but I'm ready to let him rest in peace. How about some Nickelback or Everlast, just for a change of pace?

Hot Off The Spindle

Colorway: Catwoman, from Enchanted Knoll Farm.
Fiber: Superwash merino wool, 64 count.
Handspun on a spindle from Restlesspeasant (Ravelry ID)
Approximately 182 yards of light fingering weight yarn from approximately one ounce of fiber. Still have about 3 ounces left to go!

Cabaret spun up (mostly)

Here are the pictures of Cabaret, posing in her colorful glory: (click a photo to enlarge it)