Cabin Crafted

Category: Fiber Arts and Equipment

  • The calendar flipped and so did the weather

    All day yesterday in preparation to turn from November into December, the temperature that wasn’t that high in the first place, fell. From mid 40’s to 28. Yesterday morning and the night before, we got about 2″ of rain. Overnight, a dusting of snow and there are still flurries.

    It isn’t the earliest snow we have ever had here, but with it are gale force gusts of wind driving the wind chill to bone penetrating cold. When I opened the coop pop door, they just looked at me like I was crazy if I thought they were going to step their dainty claws into that white stuff and wind. Their water is frozen, that I have to remedy even if they stay indoors all day. It is only going up a couple of degrees today and even colder tonight.

    As November ends, so ends another month of Jenkins spindle challenge.

    The month ended with a bit more than 130 g of spun fiber, some spindle plied. The purple skein on the left if BFL wool that came with my birthday spindle, plied with BFL/silk blend with more of it on the spindle. The white/burgundy is Alpaca blended with dyed Coopworth. Last night I finished spinning it on the wheel as I didn’t like the way it handled on the spindles and ended up with 268 yards of fingering weight yarn that went into my shop for sale.

    December will begin finishing the gray Jacob seen in the bowl above and here, along with more of the Redbud colored BFL/Silk.

    Last month’s spinning was slowed by knitting as I finished the sweater for one grand daughter, the Intarsia knit Christmas stocking for the newest grand son, and a pair of fingerless mitts from spindle spun yarn for my shop.

    All have been wet or steam blocked and ready to go.

    Somewhere during the month, I also finished this skein on the wheel as it frustrated me on the spindles. And it joined the Alpaca/Coopworth in my shop.

    Yesterday a jar of Daikon radish kimchee was started, two batches of soap made to saponify overnight. Today I will wash out the pots and spatulas now that the caustic mix is soap and make one more batch of the soap I use as shampoo and body soap for my use this next year.

    I decorated the outside on the porch Sunday afternoon, I guess I should start on the inside too. I also need to get some gifts wrapped that will have to go in the mail soon.

    I guess I should get busy.

  • Post Thanksgiving, Heading into Christmas

    We always had a rule that no Christmas decorating could be done until after Thanksgiving, then daughter got old enough to complain that we had to wait until after her birthday on the 29th. It became a family tradition to which I still comply. Even when she was younger, she wouldn’t complain if I put up the door wreath between Thanksgiving and her birthday, but nothing else.

    She is a grown woman with children of her own and her own house, but still, I wait. I still usually put up the door wreath and pull out my Santa lap quilt in the interim, but nothing else. I am struggling to make the holidays as normal as they can possibly be, and will haul out the Santas, Christmas linens, and in a couple of weeks, the lights and ornaments for a locally cut tree. First, the house needs a deep cleaning. Living on a dirt/gravel road and driveway and having two large shedding dogs in the house, keeping the hair and dust down is a full time job and though I vacuum the exposed areas daily, the deeper mopping under furniture and thorough dusting doesn’t get done as often as it should. Each year that I pull the Santas out, I dream of the Library box shelves with the glass fronts that would help keep the books cleaner and the decorations I take out more dust free. Or maybe the revolving shelves like in mysteries, so the shelves just need to be revolved to the decorated side at Christmas and the book side the rest of the year.

    All gifts are purchased or made and ready to be wrapped and packaged. One box to be mailed to Son 2’s family which will include the Grandmom made hand knit stocking for the youngest grandson, born about two weeks after last Christmas. Another box to be delivered in a second socially distanced meeting with Son 1 in early December. The gifts for daughter and her kids, as she lives nearby, will be delivered to their door on Christmas, an opportunity for us to not spend the day sitting in our house alone because the kids can’t visit this year. We will give them their gifts outdoors and come home.

    In mid December, I have an opportunity to again set up a craft display and honor sale at Wilderness Road Regional Museum. Since the spinning challenge that I do each month with the Jenkins spindles encourages projects made with the yarn spun, I spent the last couple of days knitting a pair of plain, no pattern, hand spun, hand knit fingerless mitts to take to the sale. A few hats, mitts and mittens, a couple woven and lined bags, and a few smaller simpler shawls or scarves will also go along with a basket of handspun yarn skeins. The event is by reservation for two afternoons/early evenings and will hopefully reduce my inventory a bit before I have to report it to the county for tax purposes early in next year.

    For now, I am going to grab mop and dust cloth and get ready to set up for the next holiday as soon as it is “legal.”

    Take care. Hopefully next year will be closer to normal, even if the normal is a new normal. I want to hug my kids and grandkids, not see them at distances of a dozen feet.

  • Zen

    “Zen emphasizes rigorous self-restraint, meditation-practice, insight into the nature of mind.” Meditation of any sort can help reduce stress.

    My Zen time is spinning with my spindles. It is total focus on the single process, it quiets my mind, slows my breathing. That wasn’t always the case, like with any new endeavor, there is a lot of tension involved as you learn the skills, but with time, you relax and it becomes enjoyable. I have been spinning now for over a decade, starting with spindles, moving on to wheels, and for the past 8 months or so, returning to spindles.

    When spinning with my spindles, whether in my chair, the car, waiting for an appointment, or out in nature, I feel my shoulders relax, the tension drain from my neck, my breathing focused. It gives my mind a non stressful activity on which to focus, a form of meditation. It ceases to be production and instead, is a serene, peaceful activity. I am still making yarn, but at a much slower pace.

    As I am approaching the end of the month, as a spindle is filled and emptied, it isn’t necessarily getting refilled. The Fig Aegean, my largest spindle is resting right now, my newest Ambrosia Wren is filling, the smallest Honduran Rosewood Finch is almost full and will soon sit idle for a few days. The notched shaft bottom whorl in the left of the bowl is my Living History spindle and doesn’t generally spin at home. They rest in a wooden trencher, also from living history, or sometimes a basket or pottery dish depending on my mood. And it all sits on a small hand woven “towel.” The weaving process is still in the tension filling realm as I haven’t gotten good enough at it for it to be relaxing, maybe someday.

    In a few weeks, some of my yarn, knits, weaves, body care items will go to Wilderness Road Regional Museum to an Honor System craft display during their Noel Nights weekend. If you are interested, you can reserve a spot for a tour, goodies, and shopping on their website. Twenty percent of my proceeds from that event will be donated to the museum for their operation and educational programming.

  • Rainy Day activity

    A front came through with wind and rain, the warm is gone. We will see two nights in the low to mid 20’s this week. After all, it is mid November.

    The day was spent crafting. The men of this family are tall and bearded. Son 1’s face is long and he has to go to campus a few times a week to teach and for meetings. I had made his family some masks late summer and when we had our distanced meet and greet, he expressed that he wished he had a couple that covered more of his beard, and he liked the ones with two ties, so today I played with my pattern to extend the sides by about 3/4″ and used bias tape folded and stitched for ties instead of using elastic loops. Four more larger masks are finished, packed, and will be shipped off to him tomorrow.

    In my early fabric purchases, I had gotten two that ended up being lining, but found a use.

    This morning during my alone time, I finished spinning most of the frustrating fiber on the wheel, all but a few grams. After the masks were done and packed up, the last little bit was spun and then a major plying session done. The two bobbins of very fine singles ended up a very full bobbin of 2 ply yarn that is 22 wpi, lace weight. This is the second skein I have done recently of soft, smooth, shiny yarn that is thinner than I like to use, so it will look for a new home.

    The fiber is 50% Merino wool, 25% baby Camel, 25% Mulberry Silk, so it has great sheen and should knit with great drape. The bobbin couldn’t hold any more. Tomorrow I will measure it off and see what kind of yardage it is.

    Tuesday and Wednesday nights, the peas will have to be covered, hopefully to protect them enough to get a small harvest from them. Daytime temperatures this week should be great for some walks and hikes.

  • The Rain Did It Again

    I think we got our month’s worth yesterday and last night. It rained hard enough last night to again clog the ditches and culverts along our road, filled the ditch on the top end of our culvert with road gravel and washed huge ruts down our driveway. Again I have filed a report with VDOT, but they would rather come in and grade and clear ditches half a dozen times a year than do it right the first time. The ditch needs to change sides of the road several times which would involve putting culverts under the road.

    I had a package to mail, so we went out to get a newspaper, drop the package in a post box and get carry out lunch. I also needed two flower pots as I made a decision to let the two huge hanging spider plants stay outside for the winter which will result in their demise, but I cut plantlets and brought them in to root to start them over in clean soil in the spring. The plantlets were ready to be planted, so we went to the local nursery to get two terra cotta pots and plastic saucers. The nursery is near the road down to the river so we chose to come home along the river. This is what we found.

    The river was over it’s banks, the rocks at the falls totally submerged. We saw a pick up truck go through that overwash on the road, but we wisely turned around and came home on the high road. That isn’t the only low spot, or even the lowest spot on the route home.

    Our creeks are rushing, the one at the bottom of the mountain is very full, but not as full as we have seen it a few times.

    The rain seems to have tapered off, though it is still thick with gray clouds out.

    Yesterday I commented that I didn’t care for the red fiber, it is very slick and not fun to spin on the spindles. Last night I decided to just spin it on the wheel and though it is going faster, it requires so much hand tension to keep it from pulling apart or slipping away, it is still going to take a while. An hour of spinning and my hand, elbow, and shoulder ache. I still have more than half of it to do. The singles are spinning up at about 38 WPI, so it is going to be fine yarn. I hope someone wants a lot of yardage of fine, smooth, soft yarn.

    I have plenty of Shetland, Jacob, Coopworth, and Alpaca/Coopworth blend to keep me busy. Not the pretty colors, but much more fun to spin.

  • Happiness and sadness

    I am happy for the most part today. Last night I finished the knitting and cross stitched tag for the newest grandson’s Christmas stocking. It needs to be steam blocked and the lining made and sewn in.

    I’m happy today because we drove a couple hours to the Skyline Drive and met up with Son 1 and Grandson 1 and had a socially distanced, masked visit, and picnic in the woods. We hadn’t seen them in person since last Christmas and miss them terribly. The grandson is now 15 and taller than his 6’1.5″ tall Granddad, but he hasn’t caught up with his Dad yet. It was a chance to take them some of the pickles and salsas that I canned for them and to deliver part of their Christmas gift that we couldn’t mail. We are going to try again in about a month and do another meet up. The time on the road was so worth it.

    The drive to and from gave me some spindle spinning time as hubby drove the interstates and while we sat on picnic tables to visit.

    Sadness, because we are approaching two holidays where our family tries to gather and won’t this year. We learned today that DIL’s 90some year old grandmother had passed during this pandemic with Covid but we just found out today. I will have to send her Mom a note.

    Slowly, through local artisan shopping and online shopping, gifts are being gathered to be wrapped for family members for local delivery to daughter and her kiddos, mailed to the sons and their families. What a different year this will be. Son 1 and his family got me a native bee house to put up in the spring. I enjoyed watching the native bees in the garden this year and look forward to seeing if they occupy the house and produce baby bee families to enjoy the flowers in the gardens. More flowers will be planted in the new walled garden bed next year to expand the options for them. The more flowers available will bring more bees and butterflies.

  • Pre Freeze Salvage

    Yesterday was in the 70’s and pouring rain from Zeta going just south of us. In the afternoon it partially cleared with some sun peeking out, a gorgeous nearly full moon last night until just after 9 p.m., then the wind kicked up and it poured again as the front moved through to drop the temperature into the mid 40’s where it is staying under thick cloudy skies today. Tonight it is going down to around 30 f. The peas have pods and they can take that cold if it isn’t too windy. The peppers and ground cherries won’t, even covered. After a run out to grab drive thru lunch and go to pick up my sewing machine that was kindly repaired by a friend’s Mother-in-law, a former “Home Ec” teacher, I pulled up my hood on my wool, grabbed a basket, clippers, and sheets of plastic and headed to the garden.

    The fig was covered again, the figs still aren’t ripe and may not ever ripen, but I’m going to keep hoping. The peas were covered to protect them from the wind tonight. The pepper plants stripped of all the ripe Thai’s, all of the Serranos and the Jalapenos. The still green Thai’s were cut in branches and all brought in. I am a popsicle, though I need to go do a better cover job on the peas.

    The basket was sorted, the ripe Thai peppers will be strung, the ripe Serranos were strung, the Jalapenos and still small green Serranos will be pickled, maybe a few chopped and frozen for winter use.

    The green Thai peppers still on the branches were strung across a rod and hung over two hooks in the windows on the north side of the utility room to ripen or dry green. As they ripen, I will pull them and string them. The red Thai peppers become the crushed red peppers and used whole in stir fry, ground to make chili powder as a substitute for cayenne. As there will be 8 or 9 strings of them, Son 1’s family will get a couple for their use. They had a new garden this year, but somehow ended up with mild Jalapenos, mild Habeneros, and very hot Ghost Peppers, so some hot peppers will be welcome in their household.

    This morning, I emptied my 4th spindle onto the bobbin of singles and chain plied the yarn on the bobbin. I haven’t measured it out yet, but it is 7 WPI so Aran or Bulky weight, a good weight for a Monmouth style hat. And while my spindles were idle, I decided on November’s spinning challenge fiber.

    The two Aegeans, the larger two will be used to spin the “Apple Picking” braid of Merino/Baby Camel/Mulberry Silk. The Honduran Rosewood Finch will work on the Alpaca/Coopworth fiber that is white and burgundy and I want to learn to ply on the fly with it. The Olive wood Finch will continue on the rare breed mixed Jacob. I want to end up with enough of it to make a Monmouth hat and a pair of fingerless gloves. I had decided that those 4 spindles were enough to keep me busy when the Jenkins group posted a pop-up lottery of 11 Masur Birch spindles and two of them are Aegeans in the weight I like, so needless to say, I put my name in for the two I would like a chance to purchase. The drawing will be Monday. If I get lucky, I will have to decide if I want to keep all three or let one go, that is going to be a difficult decision because I love the two I have.

    In the meantime, I will knit on grand daughter’s sweater. The sleeves need another inch plus then knitted on to the body and continue on up to the neck and the hood. When it is done, the Christmas stocking for Son 2’s youngest born January 5 needs to be made. Each grand gets a Grandmom made stocking for their first Christmas.

  • I Fibbed a little

    and my obsessive compulsive side partially won. As I pulled the rough, quick, down and dirty basket down off of the refrigerator to take out a couple potatoes tonight, I decided I couldn’t live with it that way. Not having a finishing rim on it and the ovalish shape, bothered me. I had plenty of the thicker reed that is flat on one side and curved on the other, and I didn’t like the tall handle that was disproportionate to the diameter of the basket. While waiting for the oven to heat, I soaked a piece of the thick reed and a couple strands of chair caning reed, cut the handle off level with the top of the basket, bent the heavier reed around the basket and anchored it on with the caning reed.

    Still far from perfect, but I’m happier with it, it is more round, more rigid, refilled with potatoes and covered back with the tea towel on the top of the refrigerator.

    Only two hens are laying, two Olive eggers, so all eggs are green and have good hard shells. With the extended free range time, the yolks are dark orange, firm and round, but because they are feasting on grass seed and insects all day, they don’t want to go to the safety of the run before we let the dogs out to run.

    Another basket of peppers were picked and strung yesterday. There are at least 100 ground cherries, but they are all too small to pick and it is going down to 31f Friday night, so I guess this isn’t the year that I get to try them. I will plant early next year. The pepper plants will be pulled Friday afternoon and hung upside down in the garage so the remaining peppers will ripen. The peas will be covered with plastic in hope for some fresh peas as the daytimes will still be mild.

    The bees were busy on the marigolds, the only flowers still blooming except for one errant Stella day lily.

    The lawn area should be mowed one last time before freezing nights. That means purchasing more fuel and pumping up the tire again. It may get done, it may not.

    I finished the monthly Jenkins spindle challenge with 182.04 grams of singles spun for the month. The entire 4 ounce braid of Shenandoah colorway purchased at the virtual fiber festival with two small samples of BamHuey, a bamboo/merino blend, and 4 turtles of rare breed fibers, Moorit Shetland and mixed Jacob to round out the month. Now on to ply the Shenandoah Falkland on my wheel in preparation for the November challenge. The scale says 187.04, but I had to subtract the weight of the two plastic cables and two paper tags.

    Another month in the life on the farm with the fading garden, many walks while the weather is nice, lots of spinning, a bit of knitting, and sewing mishaps. The sewing machine that wouldn’t work is being checked out, the new leather band for the antique treadle machine should be here tomorrow and I will finish sewing the masks cut out over the weekend using foot power instead of electricity.

    Stay safe everyone. “Chose science over fiction.” Joe

  • Fiber Intervention

    I don’t need to buy fiber for years. In the past two weeks, I bought Shetland from a friend who is thinning her fiber out, it is about a pound and a half, traded some fiber for some Moorit Shetland, bought the Shenandoah braid and the two 4 ounce bumps of Coopworth from vendor friends at the Shenandoah Virtual Festival. I still had a 4 ounce braid I had bought a couple months ago from Corgi Hill Farms that I was going to spin this fall. Then there are bags of Jacob that I washed from two raw fleeces that I use when I can do living history, and random bags that need labels, each with a few to 4 ounces. My storage cubes don’t hold it all.

    Some sorting, re bagging, and labelling later, it is mostly contained. Some of those books have been shelf weights for too many years and need to be donated to Friends of the Library or the YMCA Thrift shop. That would give me one more bin for storage as the remaining books could go on another shelf or on top.

    Spinning on the spindles will continue with the pretty fibers, making thin yarns that may someday sell or my arthritis will permit knitting lacy knits. Much of the Shetland, Jacob, Coopworth, and a mystery soft brown fiber will be spun thicker, probably on the wheel with the idea of making Monmouth or Freedom caps and proper fingerless gloves to sell at Living History events. I’m leaning toward only doing historical knits for vending in the future. If some of my finer lacey knits ever sell, I may return to making more of them from the colorful yarns.

    Yesterday, I finished the first color band of my Shenandoah braid, about 18 grams spun. Today I will begin on the browns that match the spindle.

    With the first of October and a concession to a changing season, the fall decorations were brought out for display. There are two rotating fall table cloths that are used instead of the daily woven placemats, followed by two Christmas ones.

    The house was damp mopped to try to reduce the dog hair load, they are shedding like it was summer time, and all the wood furniture was given a good clean and wax with a beeswax based polish. It is so futile because within minutes, there is hair everywhere again.

    Tonight, I will have to cover the ground cherries, peppers, and tomatillos to protect them in case we receive frost. The peas that are finally blooming should be okay and the beans are only setting seed at this point, so they will likely be left uncovered. I have had beans survive light frost in the past with just some leaf edge burn. As the weather chills down, each trip into the house requires brushing off the stink bugs that are gathering trying to find entrance. They are heavy this year and if the winter is mild as currently predicted, they will be worse next year. I wish they had a natural predator here.

  • Month Ends, Challenge Begins

    The last quarterly spindle challenge begins tomorrow. I couldn’t sit idle from several days ago when I submitted my end of month total, so I used a top whorl spindle to continue spinning the mixed Jacob roving and spun another 33.55 grams for the month that won’t count, but I had plenty official spun.

    The scale says 35.55, but the ball has a 2 gram felted ball in the middle around which it is wound.

    I will probably go ahead and ply the Jacob on the wheel and leave it on the bobbin until I finish with the almost 3 ounces left of the fiber. I was unsure what I wanted to concentrate on in October until I went to the virtual Shenandoah Fiber Festival and Wild Hare Fiber Studio, one of the vendors I would have sought did a Shenandoah gradient dyed fiber for the weekend. I ordered it, I had to get something significant from it, I also ordered from my friend at Hearts of the Meadow Farms. The Shenandoah was shipped Monday and arrived today and it is the perfect decision for the month.

    The colors toward the center of the braid match the figured Big leaf Maple spindle so well they just go together. The fiber from my friend is white and a white and burgundy which will be nice colors for the cold of December. Yesterday I logged on to Facebook, just in time to see that Yarn Tools website, the ones that make the Jenkins Turkish spindles were having a shop update of spindles in the size I prefer. I’m not usually lucky enough to catch the updates, but I was and purchased a Honduran Rosewood Finch, it is heavier than the Olive Finch I own. Then later in the day, the group update showed they would be having a lottery for the right to buy 1 of 18 spindles. In the lottery, you can select 2 to enter and I put my name in there too for two small spindles. I’m not generally lucky there, but who knows.

    Today we went back to the museum to pick up my knits, yarn, and soaps that didn’t sell. I was pleased to see that I did sell some items and the museum purchased more of my salves as they seem to sell there. In talking to my friend that organizes all of their events, we discussed that two of the hats are really too large. I am toying with whether to run elastic thread through the ribbing or just frog and reknit them. One has a zigzag pattern of colorwork and I may cut it below the zigzag, pick up the stitches, decrease about 10 or 15 stitches and knit the ribbing in reverse to make it better fit a “normal” head but maintain a slightly slouchy top. I have to decide if I am that brave. The other just needs to be frogged and reknit with fewer stitches and/or a smaller needle. That is the only hat in my stock that I actually followed a pattern on.

    Hats don’t usually sell in my Etsy shop, maybe I need a wig model to show them off better.