Interesting Evening!

I've been washing the alpaca fleece and rewashing some of it. I have now figured out the key steps to successful washing without a lot of steps. Yea! Ask if you want them. ;-)

I loaded up my seven copies of the Outlander series and had hoped to arrive by 6pm at the Cedar Hills Powell's. Brandon and I arrived at 6:15pm and found the parking lot full. That was a pretty good indicator that there were a lot of people there. Sure enough the seats in the main area were full and the ones out into the mall were also full. After snagging a couple of tickets for the book signing, this left standing along the sides.  We started at one point and I moved forward. Brandon was off to check out the Sci-Fi area and got to chat with Peter the Awesome.

After Brandon was safely ensconced in the Sci-Fi area he texted me to let me know his ex-wife was in the audience. This after I moved up a couple of aisles and ended up right across from her. ;-)  So there was much texting about the experience. I'm not really sure if she saw us together because as far as I knew she had never seen me before. She saw me there and I was looking in her general direction many times, but I couldn't tell if I was being sent evil glares or not. I just wish her a happy life. We're happy, so hopefully she is also.

I think that there might have been about 300 people for the book signing. One of the ladies that was standing near me was doing the math with the rows of chairs and chairs per row and its about right. After the actual book signing portion started and I was knitting on the Kernel scarf, a lady in the row ahead of me gave me her ticket and her friend also game me hers. One was a significant bump in the number line and the other was just a few numbers before the ones I had picked up. I passed one of mine off to a lady that had been standing behind me during the talk which was a huge bump up from her number. Then during my second time through the line I passed on the other ticket and really made a lady happy. We all won. ;-)

So I was able to get four books signed the first time and it took another forty-five minutes to get the last three signed. Brandon joined me shortly after the first series, since the ex had her books signed and had left the building with her girlfriend.

Still more fleece washing to be done. I pick up the drum carder Wednesday night. I would also like to be able to drop off the Kernel Scarf Saturday afternoon after the Portland Spinnerati meeting. Wish me luck in getting it done!

Before leaving for the signing had to do another phone call to Knit Picks. I'd been too quick to try to cancel a duplicate order but apparently their system deletes a second order if the dollar amounts are the same. So when I told the lady to delete the one, it deleted both orders, so no shipment. Sigh. Read the order that I wanted and it will be shipped. Should be in time to still be able to get the hat done, but glad I thought to check or it might have been a challenge to get it done.

Dogs & Fleece

The advantage of doing the Goodie Bags was getting to see the samples as they came in. Carissa donated fluffs of alpaca fleece that she has gotten from a church member. She has a garage full of fleeces that she's selling. She had taken samples from a pretty black fleece and I knew what she was selling them for, but didn't want a whole fleece to clean and process. So I asked her if I could get a pound from the partial that was leftover from taking samples.

I now have a little over a pound of alpaca fleece from Magnolia. Taking pictures of it in the sunlight washes out the black making it look a muddy grey-brown. Bringing it inside and with four dogs in the house, some pointy noses and not so pointy ones just had to investigate this new interesting smell. I'd love to know what was going through Nickel and Cedi's minds while they had their faces buried in this new to them experience. Norbert's an old pro now and while he did shove his face in, didn't have to do as thorough of a job at smelling the whole thing.

Cedi buried up to her eyes in the fleece.

If I thought taking pictures of a black fleece was difficult, a black dog with his nose in it was such that I had to pull back so you could see there was a body! ;-)

Norbert also with his face up to his eyes in the fleece.

Nessa getting her chance to smell it, but not so interested.

Nessa would rather be here, talking to her fish. They come up and give her fishy kisses. I had filled the pond this morning so accidentally got the level a little full. She didn't have to bend over as far to get her kisses.

The early sounds of fall were in the air I noticed while I was out filling the pond and taking pictures. The local blue jays/birds (we have both) could be heard in the Hazelnut/Filbert orchard behind us as they were attempting to liberate nuts from their shells. Tap tap tap tap. Means also Nessa will be cruising the backyard for the nut bundles the birds drop. She loves her hazelnuts!

Spinning, shearing, spring

One of the things I hadn't reported earlier was the home shearing that was done. I had decided that we were close enough to 'spring' that the dogs could go back to their non-winter coats. So trimming Norbert back into a more Scottie cut and Nessa into a modified Schnauzer cut. Nessa ended up a little shorter than planned but is looking good, well she's showing that we both need to get our butts out on the walking plan. ;^)

Norbert:

Norbert showing he doesn't like getting photographed with a tongue flick, but if you didn't know that you'd think he's dissing the camera:


Nessa:


If you've ever looked for a ball that you're dogs will love, look for a Cuz ball. They have feet and look odd but they have a tough rubber exterior and squeak.

I finished up on Wednesday spinning the first four ounce single of camel. It's deliciously soft and I've already started the second four ounces. There's more spinning on Saturday with the Portland Spinnerati at the Central Library. The camel:


In other shearing news I've been working the white alpaca and have 3.5 ounces. I'm going for a little more than one more ounce so that I can possibly ply it together with the apricot. Not fully decided on that plan of action though.

I've found out that my Icelandic fleece has something called 'scurf' - the dandruff that some may have noticed on the fleece. I've washed some of it and it cleans well and I think that a little work with the cat flicker and I can get it out and still let the fleece be usable. That's the hope anyway.

The bit of spring, my crocuses when they are shivering from the snow:

Couldn't resist taking pictures of the camel with them. ;^)

The shearing experience continues

So I came home with two bags of fleeces, one more than the other. What the heck comes next?

Washing them. I put back some of the nasty bits of the alpaca that PJ was loading me with but as you can tell from the previous posts pics, she did get some snuck in. I did a quick trip to the Dollar Tree for some mesh laundry bags - $1 three 12x15 inch bags. I then had to clean out the buckets that had been used with the pond fish and sitting out on the back patio all winter. Then since Duffy had shown the amazing results of the apparently clean but really not OFFF alpaca I decided mine should be washed too. This is the pretty apricot colored stuff I had gotten in case you didn't see it back in September:


I loaded up three bags with the apricot stuff and then took some of the worst nasty bits stuff of the white and then put them in the two buckets with some Palmolive (its what they had at the Dollar Tree) and hot water and let them soak over night. Oh my! The apricot water was just as brown as the nasty bits water. So I ran lukewarm water over the apricot stuff and then filled up the bucket with more hot water and detergent and let it soak again overnight. The white stuff took a little bit more work before it got its second soak. PJ had mentioned something about burrs and the alpacas. I found what she was talking about - there were burrs in the nasty bits besides the usual cause of the nasty. There was also a lot more grass and grass seeds and hay in their as well. I picked and washed, picked and washed and had the fleece come out looking much better. Still a little bit of darker areas where the nasty bits had been but looking like something that could actually be used now.

I rinsed out the second really dirty buckets today and got the water to run cleanly through them. I'm cheating with the drying process - I'm using the drying rack in my dryer and have the white fleece in the mesh bags going through a cycle. Then I'll run the apricot through. I figured the white if there was a problem since it was the 'nasty bits' stuff could be a better write off if something happened than anything else. Plus I don't have drying racks to setup to try to dry them any other way efficiently.

I used the cat flicker brushes that I had to try and get the 'blobs' back into a spinning shape. This also allowed me to get more of the vm still left in. So here's the progression, the middle row of the collage shows the same pic twice (Picassa does that if you don't have enough to make the collage) showing the nasty bits prewashing. The top and bottom rows show pics of the nasty bits after they have been washed and coming from the dryer and then the combed 'fluff'.


ETA: While working more with the white alpaca cleaned nasty bit bags I'm finding a lot of dead flea bodies in the mix. I've but those bags into a separate bag and on hold to decide it I really want to put the effort into picking out the bodies and the vm still in there.

I finished sock #1 of the "Band Stoppin' Boot Sock". I did a short row heel and a star toe as deviations from Sharon's "Traffic Stoppin' Boot Sock" pattern. I'm planning on giving the socks to my sister Jennifer I think.

This morning there was snow on the ground and I got a few pics of it with the previously posted crocuses (they were just poking through the ground):


The Cascade Lizard Ridge Blanket is shown on Cascade Yarns 220 patterns page! (Scroll to the bottom!)