Summer of Spinning Results

Looks like I placed 5th in total yardage spun out of the 26 entrants.

Results are here.

Dave was impressive with the amount of spinning that he accomplished over the summer - 16.5 pounds of fiber spun up to give him 58 skeins! Or if this is easier for you to wrap around your head - 28,916 yards of 2-ply yarn.

Tiggywinkleknits due to various factors over her summer came in with 100 yards of spinning and gets a prize for that.

Patience please

Patience is a virtue. People tell me that all the time. I *can* be patient, really, I can. I after all have knitted more than a handful of scarfs and survived them and had the scarves turn out well.

Maybe that's not a good example of patience? Does raising a child to adulthood and not beating/abusing/killing count?

We had a deadline of September 1st to get our application in for a booth at OFFF. The check and paperwork were sent in before then, okay, by just a day or two. It was getting all the money together from the various people that caused the slow down, but we did get it postmarked before September 1st. It was only going to Jacksonville, a five hour drive south. I tried calling on Sunday of Labor day weekend to find out if we had a booth.

Waited until Tuesday for being out of town over the holiday weekend. Called again. Left another message. Called Wednesday and still no reply. On Thursday, I got lucky. I got a real person to answer the phone. The person coordinating the booths was at work and here's the cell phone. Progress! Called it and left voice mail there. Friday afternoon called again. Called on Saturday too. Sunday I politely refrained from calling.

I've left another voice mail this morning, Monday. I have a dozen or so people who are contributing to this booth and I'm sure they are busily getting their wares ready for sale. It would be really nice to confirm to them that yes, we have a booth and it is 'this' size. We had requested two 10x10 booths. I even left in my voice mails that if there's a space limit that we would take just one. See I'm flexible.

I am being selfish. I don't want to go through the mental gymnastics of coordinating shift schedules for all these people to work over the weekend in the booth, if there's no booth to be worked in. Selfish.

There's also one person flying in from Arizona and it would be nice to tell her more than a day or two before that she doesn't have to bring a suitcase filled with batts. Okay, she might do it anyway so she has a bag to bring back goodies in, but I'm sure she'd like a choice.

So....Does anyone have some patience they can loan me? I'm clearly not patient *enough* and need some more.

New Fibers

I tried for more of this, but was given 4 ounces. It's raw unwashed, undehaired buffalo. It's very pungent smelling. Kind of reminds me of trips to the zoo for some reason. ;-) Shelia looked at it with me on Saturday when we were spinning and showed how to dehair. Good news is she says that the guard hairs, that don't seem very coarse, can also be blended in and used to knit socks to make them a little firmer, kind of similar to nylon.


Patience, and a nice white surface, will be the name of the game while dehairing. I'm looking forward to having this in my stash to work with over the winter.

Shelia spent a few weeks on the island of Gotland studying the sheep there. Hopefully she'll do a blog post soon about her trip. I had asked her to bring me back some Gotland fleece so was happy to get it on Saturday. It's lambs fleece from probably their first shearing. Pretty curly locks in light, medium and dark grey with whites and blacks thrown in. The fleece has all been washed, so no smelly bits, but some vegetable matter can still be found. Shelia screened it a bit to get most of what would willingly fall out, out. We also bagged up 20 little baggies as samples for the WWSiP day event. Shelia shipped home 120 pounds of fiber, so if you have an interest in spinning this, contact her. ;-) I'm lucky to get to play with a little over eleven ounces of this lovely stuff.



Just one week until WWSiP day and two weeks until OFFF (I'm *still* waiting to hear confirmation on the booth!!!). Lorajean has started a group on Ravelry for spinning your stash from the Fall Equinox (September 22) to the Spring Equinox (March 20). She's also tempting me with sales of fiber at OFFF. ;-)

Since I'm currently trying to spin up the Cormo/Silk that is the last of the purchased fibers from last year's OFFF, Lorajean's Spin Your Stash group will be fun to see how much gets spun up out of the remaining stash. Mine sounds like it is a smaller stash as it all currently mostly fits in one big bin. Though after OFFF, I may need another bin.

World Wide Spin in Public Day Event Scheduled!

I was finally able to talk to the manager of the farmer's market to confirm that yes, she had received my application and that we are able to use the Hillsboro Civic Center as our meeting location and that since we aren't a truly organized group, that there was no vendor fee to be there. Sigh. Took way longer than I really think it should have and a hoop too many really.

Details:

Location - Hillsboro Civic Center, 150 E Main Street
View Larger Map
We're going to be on the steps area above the fountain if its nice out, so bring sunblock and an umbrella for shade. If it rains, or if its too hot, we'll sit under the overhang area by the Starbucks.
When - September 19th, 10:00am to 2:00pm
What to bring - your spinning device (wheel or drop spindle), something to spin with - fiber of your choice, something to sit on and money for brunch/lunch/coffee - but that's totally up to you. ;-)

As mentioned the Farmer's Market will be going on with lots of vendors to check out if you'd like to take a break during your spinning.

If that isn't enough to get you to come spin with me, I have pulled together some Goodie Bags for the first 20 people who come with their spinning devices in hand. You're more than welcome to join us knitting or weaving, but the Goodie Bags will be for spinners.

I have received sample donations from Stitchjones, Abstract Fibers, Dicentra, Knitted Wit and still have donations coming in from Woodland Woolworks, The Cupcake Factory(some alpaca fleece), and some Gotland from Sweden - courtesy of Shelia January.


The bags already filled with samples.

Those of you who receive a Goodie Bag, please do remember to stop by each of the vendors booth's and say thank you for their samples at Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival the following weekend. I plan to spin my samples while at the spin in public event so I can use that as a guide for my shopping at OFFF. ;-)

The long weekend

Friday we loaded up the dogs and headed to Cannon Beach. Brandon ideally would have preferred leaving the dogs at home and walking the shops, but I had wanted a beach trip with the dogs "on" the beach. ;-) Cannon Beach by Haystack Rock had a lot of people, less than I'm sure there would be later in the weekend. We did walk from one end to the other though. We then headed south to Manzanita and after Brandon showed me were as a kid the family would stay we headed to their beach. Another long hike down the beach to rock where Brandon remembered during low tide there would be tidal pools to look through. Once we were past the majority of people and dogs we were able to let both dogs romp off leash. Nessa gets scared by big dogs, so Norbert protects her, often when not needed.

Beach pics, if you're curious:

Beach Trip Labor Day Weekend 2009

Saturday was, what and how much did I spin for "Summer of Spinning"? So a spreadsheet was created and I went back through the photo album and refreshed my memory of all that I had spun. Thankfully Tour de Fleece was also in there or I think I probably would have less to show for my summer. ;-) As it is for finished spun yarns I have 2744 yards(math error had a previous 2800) and I think what I have will fit into the "If It's Furry, Spin It" with sixteen different fibers spun up.

Sunday I was offered apricots from Lavendarknits. She'd bought a box and made a couple batches of apricot jam and didn't want them to go to waste. So a trip over to her house with some Peach-Pepper Jam, Fig Jam and a small jar of Salsa in exchange. Brandon really enjoys apricots but when asked if he wanted regular or pepper, he went with the pepper jam. So, that's how I spent part of my afternoon, making Apricot-Pepper Jam:

This is trying to show the difference between the Peach-Pepper and the Apricot-Pepper jams, can you tell which is which?


Monday was the last day for Summer of Spinning and I had already started some Stitchjones BFL (Blue Faced Leicester) in red-orange, yellow, cream, and purple. Here's the finished singles:

I decided that I would try to keep the color stripes that were going on, so that meant chain plying. My right thumb is really unhappy with me today from repetitive stress. The yarn was unwound from the stuffed bobbin and the twist set in a hot water bath. The finished yarn was a little damp still when I took photos but I wanted them before it got dark. Here's the finished yarn, 383.5 yards of 3 ply, newly named Sunset (the colors just reminded me of some of the sunsets I've seen), since it had a name of 'Untitled' from Sharon.




This morning I took the rest of the apricots that needed another day to ripen up and cut them up for the food dehydrator. We'll have dried apricots for the winter. I might even dip them in chocolate and give them at Christmas. A neighbor dehydrates pineapple and chocolate dips them and gives them along with mini cherry cheesecakes.

Used up the last of the peaches by making a coffee cake that came from Emerile Legasse. It's been cut, but I haven't eaten it yet, but it smelled fabulous.

Things are just Peachy

I harvested the last ten peaches from the tree after finding that a bee was starting its own harvesting. I didn't want to just have them go into the Peach-Pepper Jam though. A couple went into a peach-raspberry milkshake that was yummy. No pics of that though.

I found an Alton Brown recipe for individual peach upside down cake, but modified it so that it was altogether. Sure I could have used the ramekins that he suggested, but I wanted to double the recipe and it was easier my way. This is what the peaches looked like before the batter was put on:

A slice of it ready to eat. Sorry, no batter pics, that's fairly boring to look at anyway.

Everyone agrees that the cake came out exceptionally well and are gobbling it up quickly.

I bought some peaches at the store, nice big ones and some habeneros. I toasted the habeneros in the toaster oven to brown them and carmelize the sugars in the peppers. I did forget to open up the kitchen window during the remove skin and seeds stage and almost hacked up a lung trying to get clean air back in. Roasted habeneros:

Comparison of store bought peaches and one of my peaches (in case you aren't sure, mine is the little one on the right):

I tossed the peppers into the food processor and pureed them to bits and then started peeling peaches and adding them to the peppers. Once they were all peeled and pureed, addition of a bit of pectin and they were ready to become jam:
The red in the mix happened naturally in the peach flesh close to the pit. Pretty! So after much stirring as you have to get it to a roiling boil before you can add the sugar then bring back to a roiling boil again. Then into the jars it all goes. Then the jars go through a hot water process in the canning container. After ten minutes boiling in there they come out and you wait for the lovely popping sound as the seals adhere to the jar. No pop, then you have something that goes in the refrigerator and have to eat with a week.

I took the extras that wouldn't have filled a jar to the Wednesday Night knitting group at Haggen's. Picked up some cream cheese and crackers and let the ladies have samples. They seemed to enjoy the jam.

In other things peachy-orangey I spun up the wensleydale I had gotten from Sharon [Stitchjones]. It spun up nicely and quickly. I'm going to play with a three-ply with the previously posted mystery batt and see what the resulting yarn looks like. The singles:



Rachel [Trtlgrl] helped me divide up the roving samples I received from Stitchjones and Dicentra for the World Wide Spin in Public event coming up on September 19th. She was fabulous in getting the most out of each sample to get the twenty needed for each of the goodie bags. I have more samples coming from other people, more previews as they come along - hopefully all in by next Wednesday!

Weekend Houseguests

Wednesday is spinning day in this area. We meet-up at the local Grange and spin for a few hours and if so inclined continue at the Wednesday night meet-up. Yesterday I spun a 'mystery batt' that Tiggywinkleknits had gotten last year at OFFF from Barbara. It had sections of orange, red, white, sparkly red, sparkly gold. I found that it weighed about an ounce.

It's all spun up. While spinning it I found that the intense red and orange dyes wanted to share themselves with me and dyed my hands. ;-) It's still pretty stuff. The plan I think is to spin up the red and orange wensleydale I got from Stitchjones and ply them together. Here's the mystery single:


In other things 'orange' I checked on the peaches that I'm patiently waiting to ripen and found one had fallen to the ground earlier today. Picked one and had one fall while I was trying to find the best spot on the property to watch the Thunderbirds.


While in the backyard found that the wisteria back there is in bloom again. We have another one in the front yard wrapped around the first post along the doorway walk.


The houseguests arrived this afternoon. Their names are Cedi (means penny) and Nickel (aka 'the Yak' or 'the Yeti'). They're australian shepards owned by friend Greta. She's taking her other two dogs, Mellie (border collie) and Nano (border-jack) to a Flyball Tournament up in British Columbia. Their team is the Portland Tail Blazers. ;-)



Work continues on the Transverse Scarf and the Simple Yet Effective Scarf. Some web site design stuff. It's not going to be a quiet weekend with a house full of dogs and the Airshow going on. I have donations round up for the World Wide Spin in Public day coming in from Stitchjones, Abstract Fibers, the Cupcake Factory and Dicentra. Looking forward to September 19th!