Fiber Arts and Equipment – Page 24

Readjusting to Just the Two of Us

At 8 a.m., Grandson 1 was put on a bus home to get ready for his next adventure, his first away from home camp. He and his Dad messaged me when he arrived. That means readjusting to meal prep for two seniors instead of two seniors and a 16 year old boy that eats more than the two of us combined. It means our walks are a bit slower as we aren’t trying to keep up with his long legs and teenaged energy. It means doing the mowing and other chores on my own again. We do enjoy having him here, for his companionship and certainly for any labor he provides. It means hubby doesn’t have his Ping Pong competitor to harrass him into games twice a day.

He got our lawns mowed twice, on the “go cart” as he calls our riding mower, did Daughter’s twice with her AWD mower (while her teenager was visiting his other grandparents), helped me refill the huge hole that was dug to get the septic pumped, toting the 40+ pound bags of soil, mulch, and the animal feeds that were purchased during his visit. That area is now reseeded and grass growing except in the edged bed filled with large pots of blooming perennials to mark where to dig next time. He helped me make prestaining repairs to the chicken coop. We didn’t get the staining done or the deteriorated chicken tractor totally dismantled, but some fun had to be tossed in to his visit. There were a few walks and hikes, a bike ride, some basketball time, a pool visit, and a couple of cookouts at Daughter’s house, one with fireworks and S’mores. And lots of beating Granddad at Ping Pong.

In spite of activities with him, I managed to fulfill one of my spindle challenges and I’m working on the other. The “July” challenge actually coincides with the 18 days of Tour de France, so began in late June and ends in mid July. My challenge was to learn to ply on the fly (Ply at the same time you are spinning), instead of creating turtles or balls that are wrapped together then plied in a second effort. With that yarn, then create a finished project. I could have spun it and used it for blanket squares, but wanted to further challenge myself to get both done. The TdF yarn was thicker than I normally spin on spindles and it became a hat.

It ended up being about 56 g of yarn spun and 43 g of it went into the hat. I made two stripes of yarn left from blanket squares as I wasn’t sure I would have enough of the other.

Toward the end of May, I purchased a small spindle from a gal in Sweden. She mailed it promptly, but it sat in customs in the US for the month of June, arriving here finally on July 1. She packed the spindle in enough Havre wool for me to make a blanket square, which was such a nice surprise and wonderful gesture. She had seen a blog post where I mentioned the Breed Blanket. She had washed the fleece herself.

When I finished the hat, I began combing and carding the box of wool, making rolags to spin. In the past two days, I have continued the Ply on the Fly with the Havre, getting it fine enough for a blanket square and have spun 11 g of it on the tiny 9g Finch spindle in which it was packed.

As soon as there is enough spun, I will wash the yarn and knit a special square for the blanket. Thank you, Lisa. With much of the month of July remaining, all of that wool will be spun and knit, then I will move on to a second breed of Navajo Churro that arrived in a trade for some wool that I had too much of. I love these groups. They are great social contacts, enablers to keep spinning, and provide challenges to keep me active in that skill.

Hay is done, so is the garlic

This is starting off to be a good year. The hay crew cut and baled 89 five foot round bales off of our farm. Last year is was about 82, but more than half of them were only 4 foot round bales, so there was a lot more hay this year.

Those are way down in the south field and they finished baling it mid afternon and are gathering it to move. A couple of trailer loads have already been hauled from the near field. They managed to mow and bale a few areas that we have just brush hogged in the past and got a couple bales there as well. Because they were all large bales, one of the men brought me a 4 foot bale from the cutting on his property as I use the hay in the chicken runs as the hens make great compost from it to use in the garden.

The garlic was pulled and left in the sun for a few days and when rain showers threatened, it was moved to the garage floor for a few more days. This afternoon the garlic was trimmed of stalks and roots and left out to further cure in the garage on a raised screen. After a couple of weeks, it will be moved to the wire shelves in the non climate controlled part of the basement. There are 83 heads of garlic, plus 4 tiny ones from the bulblets from last year that were planted, harvested, and will be replanted this fall to make heads for next year. I ended up giving garlic to daughter and Son 1 for their gardens from last year’s crop, so I think I will reduce the amount planted this fall to about 50, enough to get us through a year.

With the garlic pulled, the last box can be finished in the garden. The end was cut last spring, but the garlic bed had to be cleared before it could be fastened in place. Since the peas are all pulled and the stalks chopped for the compost, that bed will be planted with a second crop of bush beans. The first crop is blooming and soon there will be beans to enjoy and freeze.

We have Grandson 1 for only a few more days this trip, he will return later in the summer for another week or so. Rain is expected for the next couple of days, but I am hopeful that it will be dry and cooler on the weekend so that we can get the chicken coop repaired and stained. The repairs can be made between rain showers, but it has to be dry to stain it. Today Grandson 1’s hard work was rewarded with a play day, getting him in a pick up basketball game with two other guys, followed by an hour and a half in the local outdoor pool to cool off.

The new asparagus bed has not produced any growth, but the old one is shooting up the tall thin stalks that feed the crowns for the rest of the summer. I am hopeful that the new crowns in the contained bed will produce, if not, I will try to dig more of the crowns from the old bed and transplant them, or move the new galvanized sides around it and fill it with more soil.

This month’s spinning challenge coincides with the Tour de France, so it began on June 26 and will end on July 18. We were to challenge ourselves but complete spinning at least 25 g of fiber and making something from it. My challenge was to learn how to ply on the fly with the Turkish spindle and use it and some other wools I have spun on the spindles to make a hat for my shop. I got the first 28 g of my wool done by yesterday and the hat started today while I work on the second half of the wool. I must say, that though it was a learning curve, and my yarn is much heavier than I normally do on spindles, it is 3 ply and a good weight for knitting the hat. I feel like a new spinner as I get the hang of it and I’m sure in time, my yarn weight will thin down. The wool I am spinning I usually spin a bit thicker anyway.

When I finish spinning for this challenge, I will begin working on my Breed Blanket wool of the month, Navajo Churro, not a soft wool, but this is nicely prepared and should spin thin enough for my blanket square.

The spindle I purchased from a destash from Sweden spent 28 days being held hostage by customs in Chicago. The tracking a few days ago showed it on the move and it should arrive here tomorrow or Friday. I also purchased from destash a plying size spindle with a hummingbird painted on one of it’s wings. Though it is new to me, it is my oldest spindle, having been made in 2015. I am quite enamoured with it.

When my Dad was alive, he filled the beds in the back and side of his back yard with orange Daylilies and Zinneas. When we bought our farm in the mountains, he dug several clumps of the lilies for me and I planted them along the stream bank at the top of the property as there was no house then. After he passed away, I went up and dug a couple of clumps from the stream bed where they had spread and stabilized the bank and brought them down to the house. They are not the first nor last to bloom from my collection, but they bloom the longest. In the past couple of days, they have begun to open.

And in his memory, I plant zinneas each year. I miss him always and the flowers he loved are bittersweet to me.

Olio

Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things

I finally gave up on trying to contain the mature hens. Ms. Houdini and Ms. Apprentice could get out no matter what I did to prevent it and the small area in front of the Palace was getting dug up to a hazardous state for my old bones. I took the plastic fence “gate” and put it on two step in posts across the front porch opening. The shorter pieces of plastic fence that had been protecting flower gardens but had to be removed to put the scaffolding up are being used to block the holes under that same porch to prevent the hens from going underneath. Those two hens will probably hide their eggs, but the production from the hens fell sharply when I stopped them from free ranging.

Yesterday, the wild birds had no feeders up. Today we went to Lowes to replace the Niger seed feeder and the suet feeder and instead I found a large tube feeder that was divided similar to the one that was destroyed by the bear, so again the three favored feeds are hanging from the double shepherd’s crook pole and they will be brought in every night. The Finches, Titmice, and Woodpeckers have already found them and started visiting again. The Chickadees which I favor, quit coming to the feeder in spring and summer and will rejoin the other small birds in the late fall and winter.

A couple of days ago, I finished my May spindle challenge spinning and plied the yarn on my wheel, gave it a wash and hung to dry. It is a pretty 4 ounce skein of turquoise Falklands dyed wool, about 485 yards. I haven’t measured it’s WPI since it’s bath, but it was about 18 prior.

I haven’t decided whether to knit it or sell it as yarn. Falklands is a nice spin and very soft.

Last week, I purchased a destashed Jenkins spindle that was in Sweden and figured it would take at least 3 weeks to arrive here. According to tracking, it has already been processed in Chicago, so I may see it by the middle or end of this week. It is a size that I don’t currently have and a weight that is within my preference.

This is a photo that the seller sent. It is Birdseye Maple, a very pretty spindle. It is only 9 grams, so it will be my lightest, though not my smallest spindle.

One of hubby and my walks is a section of an old paved over railgrade through part of Blacksburg and into Christiansburg. Since I moved here, it has been expanded from the original 7 miles to more than double that. There are two sections that we often walk, in both cases going out and returning on the same trail. The one at the origin point takes you to right across from the University stadium and last night we left the trail, took the sidewalk up a known road and picked the trail back up at the bridge that crosses that road. In doing it, we saw another trail that appeared to go along the edge of Stadium Woods, so once back to the car, we drove back toward the facilities buildings near the stadium to see if we could find it’s origin. In doing so, we discovered three streets with a cross street paralleling the one we had been on that we didn’t even know were back there and the trail and decided that the trail that we had seen from the stadium must be the origin. Today, we again walked out the section of the railgrade to the stadium and took the paved trail we had seen the night before. It wasn’t the same one. The one today took us on the other side of Stadium Woods parallel to the one we had found last night in our exploration, but it eventually brought us out near the same termination point and we walked back through the neighborhood to our car. I had hubby drive back to were we had seen it last night near the facilities building and let me out while he drove around back to the stadium parking and I walked it toward the stadium to see where it originated. I beat him to the parking lot as it seems that where he let me out was less than 1/10th of a mile from the origin and I walked out to the lot to wait for him. It looks like it will be a nice walk to do on another day. It will give us some variety, making an out and back walk into a shady loop.