Canned Sheep



Some people don't believe in Kismet (or serendipity, if you prefer a more elegant word).



But I do.



How else do I account for another spinning wheel coming into my life in almost the exact same way that my first wheel found me and made me buy it? And only a matter of weeks after I told the story of my original wheel in my May 29 post?



Once again, I was not shopping for a wheel. I was flipping through the newspaper and my glance fell on "SPINNING WHEEL" in the classified ads. And folks, it's not like Baton Rouge is throbbing with disillusioned handspinners looking to unload their gear. Stumbling across that classified ad was pure luck. When I phoned, I learned that it was the last day of the ad run, and the seller hadn't received any calls but mine.



The seller was an extremely pleasant woman who was selling her house and, after much consideration, had decided to part with her spinning wheel. She'd done a lot of handspinning back in the '70s, and a good bit of dyeing as well, but her interest in spinning waned over the past 20-odd years, so she parked the wheel by the fireplace as a conversation piece, and packed the other supplies in her attic, where they've remained since the mid-1980s.



There were two Romney fleeces, each packed into an airtight five-gallon flour tin. One was in fairly good condition, as you can see from the portion remaining in the can. It had been purchased clean and scoured, and had been packed away untouched. It does need a warm bath to loosen up a good bit of caked lanolin, but it's definitely salvagable:











The wheel itself is an Ashford Traditional, and, as a testament to Ashford's reputation, it operated smoothly for a test-drive after sitting in a corner, unoiled for over two decades:

The keenly observant among you may ask, "what's that hanging off the wheel there, near the knob for the Scoth tension? The orifice hook had gone missing, so the seller had replaced it with a loop of stout nylon fishing line attached to a bit of cotton cord. The wheel is in excellent condition, missing only the spring for the Scotch tension (although I rigged a temporary substitute with a piece of cotton twine so I could give it a test drive).

It also came with carders, a noddy, a lazy Kate, two drop spindles and a lump of brown fleece of indeterminate sheepy origin, the lot being inspected by Blue, the feline in charge of incoming inventory here at the Asylum. He was particularly interested in smelling the brown fleece:

Inside the box containing the accessories was a smaller box contaning some samples of natural sheep-colored and vegetable-dyed handspun yarn, each neatly tagged with the dyeing information:

Also included was the dyebook documenting the owner's numerous experiements with natural dyes, ranging from the brightly colored onionskin and marigold samples shown below, to subtle hues of pink and lavender from local roots and flowers. She was a busy dyer back in the day -- there were over 200 samples in the ring binder:

And last, here's the second fleece, which had apparently been sold fresh-shorn and then stored away unscoured, firmly packed into a five-gallon tin much too small for its volume. See how it broke apart into two heavy lumps there on the right? I doubt that this fleece is salvagable, but I'll give it a try anyway. I definitely won't have garment-quality wool, but if I scour it well and card it mercilessly, I just might have passable rug yarn.

The worst that can happen is that I'll have clean wool for stuffing pillows.

And check out the groovy vintage paper bag from Wildfower Fibres in Oregon. Now I'm itching to find out if they are still in business. Anybody out there remember them? To add to the '70s appeal, the wheel came with its original paperwork, and the fleeces came with their own vintage invoices as well: a grand total of fourteen dollars and twenty cents, including postage and handling!

The decent-looking wool from the first photo went into a mesh bag and was soaked the bathtub overnight with 1/4 cup of Dawn dishwashing liquid, in hopes of loosening up that caked lanolin. That fleece was reasonably clean -- after an all-night soak, the lanolin de-caked and the fleece opened up ... the water was just a little bit on the murky side:

This was drained, rinsed, and given a second wash with Mane-n-Tail horse shampoo. Tomorrow it will be placed under the carport, on a raised rack, in hopes of drying. When it's still slightly damp; it will be spritzed with a 1/32 mixture of hair conditioner and water, wrapped in brown paper, placed inside the car, and parked in the sun, to steam. This is not a scientific proportion, I just find that an ounce of conditioner dissolved in a quart of water sprays nicely and doesn't make the fleece sticky.This is the best way I know to loosen up old lanolin in a fleece that's been sitting around for awhile.

My hopes are not nearly as high for the other fleece, but I'll give it a soak and a fair chance.

The best part? The owner was mainly looking for a good home for this wheel. She didn't want to simply sell it to the highest bidder on Ebay. I couldn't even have bought a new noddy, lazy Kate and hand carders for her asking price, which included the wheel and everything else. I call that a bargain. She just wanted to re-home her wheel and make a spinner happy.

She did.

Meanwhile, I'm so delighted to have such a nice wheel at such a bargain that I'm trying to think of something nice to do for her, with all her handspun samples. They, too, are a bit stiff and gummy, having been dyed in the grease and stored in her attic all these years. I think there's enough to make a nice, felted pillow. Maybe I'll do that, and leave it on her doorstep one night, so she will have a souvenir from her spinning and dyeing days.

Now to see if that other fleece is salvagable.

Cats, Tornadoes
and Time Management


Some random things from this week:







Tessie, our eldest cat, she of the achy joints and great fondness for all things soft and warm, loves her new, felted pad. You can make one for your cat, too -- my Critter Cozy pattern is just a few posts back, on July 4, 2007.


On Thursday, I took a weekday off to visit my Mom in New Orleans, and while I was there, a storm front came through the city, and this is what appeared over Lake Pontchartrain. It's a waterspout -- a tornado over water -- a couple of miles offshore and about 5 miles north of downtown New Orleans. The weather goddess was merciful, and the horrid thing both touched down and spent itself out over the vast lake. If you look closely, can you see the huge white wake of high waves and white foam it created in the water as it moved from right to left? Pity the folks fishing, and the leisure boaters out there. That is actually a column of water -- many tons of water being sucked up into the sky. It was HUGE -- consider that the shoreline is several miles away from the photographer, who was high up in a downtown building -- a close call, and terrifying to behold:

And no, I didn't take the picture. The credit belongs to New Orleans' key newspaper, the Times-Picayune, copyright 2007. For more on the waterspout story, you can click on

www.nola.com and search for "waterspout." The city has already suffered a couple of devastating tornadoes since Katrina. They didn't need another one.

And ...

Look, cats on laundry!

Why don't you admire these lovely cats for a moment before I go off on a rant?

Jigsaw (the muted tortoiseshell) and Guinness (the tuxedo) are shown here, making themselves useful. Somebody has to keep the laundry from escaping.

I've had another uninspiring workweek, so my creative streak is sorely strained. The downside of grant-writing for humane non-profits is that so much time is spent waiting for answers,waiting for requests for more information, waiting for feedback. And as I am not working actively in a shelter or clinic at the moment, I get dispirited during long spells with little feedback from the prospective funding agencies. If you like swimming through peanut butter, consider a career in the non-profit sector!

In addition, our little spell of Seattle-like weather passed as quickly as it came. So I've been indoors most of the weekend, working on a shawl and spinning, and reading the knit lists as well as other people's blogs. Which brings me to my ....

Yarn Diet Spoiler

Those of you who know me personally know that I'm the sort of person who's the first to point out that you're probably not going to lose weight and keep it off on that new celebrity diet, and you won't end up looking like a celebrity or hanging out with one on the weekends, either. Call me a spoilsport, but it's my nature.

I'm also likely to point this out while chomping on a mouthful of chips.

So I need to know ... what's going on with this "no buying yarn for a year" fad? On the KnitList, KnitU and on many, many blogs, knitters are fretting out loud over their stashes, determined to buy no more yarn. Those who have a moment of weakness berate themselves publicly after indulging in a paltry skein of sock yarn. Many people are also de-stashing.

This wouldn't bother me if a few individuals in posession of seriously out-of-control stashes were providing the knitting Internet with amusing descriptions of their space-saving woes.

But it's not just a few people with comically unmanageable stashes who are going public with this. One knitter after another seems to be jumping on the de-stash wagon, for what seems to be no good reason. Why?

Everyone else is doing it.

Many people with stashes of a perfectly modest and humble size (say, a closet full or less) have suddenly found themselves wracked with guilt and have jumped on the idea of self-flagellation with acrylic I-cord: "Bad knitter! Self-indulgent! Too much yarn!"

What's going on with this? Why the guilt? Is it another excercise in womanly self-denial?

If I look around real hard under my own saddle, I think that's the burr I'll find. So many of the women I see de-stashing just happen to discreetly mention that a husband or boyfriend has decreed that they have "too much yarn."

Some of these self-appointed yarn managers have found the knitter "disorganized," insisting that she chose only one project at a time and buy only the yarn needed for the desired garment. Others declare that too much money is being spent, and demand that spending cease immediately.

One young knitter, who I know from the LYS, confided that her husband decided that she was spending too much time knitting, and that he was uncomfortable with her knitting in front of his friends because he feels that knitting is "dorky and behind the times," and (here's the kicker) "why don't you find a sexier hobby?"

Which begs the question, what is she supposed to do with all the "free time" she'd have without her knitting? Scrub flooors on her hands and knees? And how is she supposed to demonstrate a state of sexy and au courant non-dorkiness? Should she pole dance instead of knitting?

Sadly, none of these knitters write about what the complaining husband or boyfriend is doing to contribute his share of self-sacrifice to the family budget, household storage space, or self-improvement through austere hobby management. There is no mention of sadly foregone titanium golf clubs, no discussion of the sale of surplus computerized gadgets, no sportscars going up on Ebay, and no talk of cancelling any subsciptions to Playboy or Sports Illustrated.

And that bugs me. I do not intend to be sexist in this little rant, but so far I have not found one male knitter who's jumped on the de-stashing wagon because his wife, partner or significant other has drawn a line in the sand and laid out the ultimatum of No More Yarn.

So... hey cowgirls, are y'all listening?

If your kids and pets are not in danger of starvation ...

If you are not accumulating massive credit card debt...

why jump on this particular bandwagon?

Think about it:

Your local yarn shop counts on your business.

Employees count on the LYS for jobs.

When yarn shops close, employees lose jobs and yarn companies don't get orders.

When yarn manufacturers don't get orders, they cut back on production.

When they cut back on production, employees lose jobs and wool producers lose orders.

When wool producers lose orders...

Do you see where I am going with this? If everyone joins in on a fad of self-deprivation at once, the whole yarn and wool industry will suffer.

Rant over.

Me, I am counting on my yarn and fleece stash for retirement entertainment. Dave and I live in a cluttered house full of yarn and books and records and cats, as well as Dave's Museum of Obsolete Technology. He has manual typewriters, and I have spinning wheels.

And, speaking of which:

That lovely Oussant fleece sample from Jo is ready to be spun. The drudge of the past week was pleasantly interrupted by a spinning windfall. More on that later.

--Mambocat

Hello ... Seattle?
We have your weather,
and we're not giving it back.


Some Sunday mornings start out with a good, long, lazy sleep-in, to the tune of rain hammering on the roof:









And when the rain stopped, I went to the door, bracing myself for a blast of superheated, humid air.
But it wasn't there.

I looked everywhere: in the garden, under my car, in the mailbox. But July in Baton Rouge was nowhere to be found.

Due to a complete freak of Nature, we're having a cool front in July -- a precious few days of daytime temps in the high 70s F. (Okay, it might hit 80F tomorrow, but still). And, if you can sneak outside between the torrential downpours (that's the catch), you can do what I did this morning -- stroll outdoors with your cup of coffee, and have the following conversation with a neighborhood cat:

Me: "This is unbelievable. It's ten o'clock on a Sunday morning in the middle of July, and it's 72 degrees."

Cat: "Meow."

Me: "What gives? Not that I'm complaining. Not at all. I'm just stunned. In shock, actually. I need to find out how this happened."

Cat: "Meow."

I spot a neighbor jogging -- yes, jogging -- towards me and I wave at her, calling out "Morning!"

(Yes, I am the kind of helpful person to point out the fact that it is, indeed, not dark.)

Jogger, slowing down: "Good morning!"

Me, sweeping out my arms all-inclusively: "What happened?"

Jogger, not needing any further explanation for the nature of my question: "Beats me, but I'm not asking any questions. This is too nice."

Me: "I think UPS got our weather delivery mixed up with Seattle."

Jogger: "No doubt ... Isn't it great!"

Me: "Sure is! Later!"

Jogger: "Later!"

Cat: "Meow."

I spread my arms and take in the coolness (77 is cool, my friends ... it was 96 two days ago). The cat licks his left front paw and then sniffs the nearby border grass, no doubt contemplating a hunt for field mice on this fine day.

Frogs and toads are chorusing a hallelujah choir of pure amphibian joy. I take my coffee to the porch and sit there, watching the neighbors walk by (people are outside!). The lack of heat is so remarkable that entire families are outdoors, walking the kids and the dogs, marveling at the wonder of it.

Y'all have to understand that even a few summer days like this are absolutely and completely freakish in our part of the world. But freakish in a good and very welcome way. The summer norm is for the Louisiana thermostat to have an ugly breakup with the 80s sometime in early June, and then get real friendly with the 90s part of the thermometer, and stay there quite obsessively unti mid-September (with the occasional dalliance into the 100s in July and August).

But here it is, the middle of July, so I take my only opportunity for the whole summer to sit on the porch, drink coffee, and knit.

The amazing weather has done wonders for my mood, so as I work away at my sock, I consider what I might do later in the day, and remember that I've been so dispirited by last week's suffocating weather and bogged-down grant work, that I have fallen over a week behind on my blog.

I have been meaning to post a few things about spinning:

A few weeks, back, you may recall, I went through a bag of natural off-white and natural grey singles and did a little Kool-Aid dyeing.

There was gradient dyeing, with tropical punch Kool-Aid and two four-ounce skeins of Romney singles:

Then, a one-ounce sample skein of Romney singles got tie-dyed with black cherry Kool-Aid. This one will be plied against itself for a speckled effect:

And next, there was a two-ounce skein of natural grey singles -- somebody please hit me with the stupid stick, I forgot to write the breed on the bag label -- that I space-dyed with Kool-Aid Mountain Berry Punch. It will be overdyed with lime green Kool-Aid so that part of the grey remains grey, part becomes green, and part of the green overlaps the blue:

And here's the whole whack of samples hanging out in the bathroom with a fan blowing on them to help with the drying process:

Next time I post, you'll see all of these yarns plied in their final state, and skeined up for future use.

Most of my spinning is fine worsted singles, which I 2-ply for sock yarn or lightweight knits. For worsted weight yarn,I spin fine woolen singles, and the end product is a 3-ply worsted. All of the above yarn is worsted singles (except for the solid blue, which was already plied).

Late this afternoon, we treated ourselves to dinner at the neighborhood sushi bar, and then I took a 2.5 mile walk (about 4K) around the neighborhood just before sunset.

Ordinarily, the 10-meter sprint from the air-conditioned house to the air-conditioned car is the most outdoor excercise a person can handle in Louisiana in July. Anything more strenuous and you'd have to hire an ambulance to follow you around.

But this evening, I walked all the way to the end of the neighborhood, where the creek empties into a small lake, and back again, to the accompaniment of deliriously happy frogs and toads. Birds bathed in the fresh puddles, and shy green anole lizards licked raindrops from the undersides of leaves.

While I was walking, I also remembered that the pesky Mercury retrograde is over. So I came home, paid a pile of bills, pulled out my hand carders and that Ouessant fleece from Jo, and oiled my wheel. I'm plannning to spin this yarn woolen for loft and softness, but two-ply for light weight so it goes further. Once it's spun up, I'm sure it will tell me what it wants to be:






I'm happy as a frog in a puddle, for a few days, at least.

--Mambocat

Tuffet for Tessie


Tessie is our eldest cat, nineteen years old that we know of. She was a young adult cat when she came into our lives.

Lately she spends most of her time in the position you see here, as she poses with the materials for her half-done nap cozy -- curled up, usually sound asleep. Prodigious napping is appropriate for a girl her age; in human years, she's somewhere between eighty-five and a hundred and ten, depending on which cat-age calculator you prefer. I prefer the method which distinguishes between ageing rates in indoor and outdoor felines. Tessie is a full-time indoor cat, which puts her well into her nineties:





But she's a bit creaky and achy these days, and she spends most of her time searching for a warm spot to snuggle in. Even though we keep the house at about 76-78 degress F in the summer, she still gets chilly, and spends a lot of time in her plush bed.

So when I checked out the yarn sale at Hobby Lobby last weekend, I had in mind a simple felted square for Tessie to curl up on, for her favorite spot on the futon.

I liked the results and thought you might want to make one for your own feline or small dog. This is a simple garter stitch square knit on the diagonal on large needles. It's a quick weekend project and the perfect size item for summer knitting -- mindless and fast. It would also be a good first felting project.




FELTED CRITTER COZY



Note: due to the fact that this cozy is felted, it is not suitable for charity knitting, because pet cozies for animal shelters must be machine washable and dryable. After this cozy has shrunk to the desired size, it must be laid flat to dry after subsequent washings, otherwise it will continue to shrink. Animal shelters don't have time for special laundry handling, so be sure to knit charity pet cozies out of densely-knitted acrylic or superwash wool, which can be laundered mercilessly.


Materials:

Yarn: two skeins Lion Brand "Lion Wool" for felting (I used dark teal), and two skeins Yarn Bee "Dream Girl" (colorway "Lydia"). This provided a color scheme of blues, greens and a hint of yellow. If you want a different color combination, choose two skeins of Yarn Bee "Dream Girl" that you like, and then choose a "Lion Wool" or other felting wool to coordinate with one of the colors contained in the "Dream Girl." The Lion Wool is the background, unifying color.

IMPORTANT! Fuzz can be a choking hazard! Please note: Ordinarily, I do not use eyelash or other fringey, novelty yarns for pet cozies, because in most cases the eyelashes can be chewed off and swallowed. However, I found that the "Dream Girl" is firmly secured to the binder thread. No small bits came off, even with vigourous tugging on my part. I was looking for silky softness for an elderly cat who is not a chewer. Even though the "fuzz" is firmly secured on the "Dream Girl" yarn, I would not use it for puppies or kittens, or adult animals with vigorous chewing habits (think "Siamese" here). Novelty yarn is NEVER suitable for puppies, kittens, or animal shelter cozies.

Needles: US size eleven


Cast on two st., holding together one strand of Lion Wool and one strand of Dream Girl.


Row 1: knit into front and back of first stitch, knit to end of row. Repeat until you end a row with only about two yards of both yarns remaining.


Next row: Knit first st., SSK, knit across until you are almost out of both strands. Join in both strands of remaining two skeins, and continue knitting.


Subsequent rows: Knit first st., SSK, knit to end of row. Repeat until only 3 st. remain, Knit one, SSK, pass knit st. over. Cut remaining yarn.

Weave in loose ends and snip off excess yarn. Be sure not to weave ends in tightly. My finished results are about 30" square:

This results in a very soft, appealing fabric with a nice drape. Without felting, you could make a larger square, using "Dream Girl" along with a coordinating solid-color worsted acrylic for a colorful, fun and fuzzy couch throw or kid's throw. The amount of yarn used here, with acrylic substituted for felting wool, would also make a nice, WARM lap blanket for someone in a wheelchair. I chose this colorway because most things in our house, including most walls, are ocean colors, but many other colors are available in "Dream Girl."


Toss into washer on heavy-duty setting with a bunch of T-shirts or dead tennis balls. Use hot wash and cold rinse.

Dry in the dryer on "high." If the fabric doesn't feel dense enough for your liking, repeat process.




You now have a soft, warm cozy for your pet. My finished measurements in the above picture are about 20" by 20." The cozy came out square, but the surface I used for a backdrop isn't quite flat.

Your results may vary -- felting is not an exact science, and both the water hardness in your area and your choice of soap may affect the results. It also takes longer to felt an item in a front-loader than in a top-loader, because the agitator in a top-loader helps with the felting process. I have found that, instead of jeans, the best felting aids are a bunch of old T-shirts, a pair of plain old-fashioned canvas sneakers, or half a dozen dead tennis balls. If you don't play tennis, beg some off a friend who does.

For good results with your washer, be sure to use the "Beat Your Clothes to Death" setting. If you choose to wash the felted item with a couple of pair of jeans, be sure the jeans are buttoned and the zippers are fully closed, or the zipper teeth may snag on your yarn, and knitterly catastrophe may ensue. Ask me how I know.

Happy Fourth of July to my American readers. We're going to see the fireworks tonight if the rain holds off. Go see some fireworks tonight if you can, and remember that no matter how grim things seem right now in this country, there is always hope for a better future.

--Mambocat

Happy Canada Day!

Today, I want to wish a happy Canada Day to my Canadian readers, eh?

Thank you, Canada, for Koigu, Neil Young, Patons, maple syrup, real beer, and many other Canadian exports, including Cajuns.

Thank you for setting an example for human dignity.

And thank you, Canada, for Canadians. Great folks, all.

--Mambocat

Meanwhile ...

3,978 Miles Southeast

of Dutch Harbor...

Captain Dave, Deck Boss Dez and the crew of the Brown Plaid Couch are tuning up all available weather channels and practicing our foul-weather skills by eating microwave popcorn and sitting anxiously in front of the TV, watching "Deadliest Catch" and flipping to the Weather Channel on commercial breaks to see if a giant, pulsating, red blob has appeared in the Gulf of Mexico in the last 17 minutes.

Greetings, tourists, and welcome to the opening of hurricane season.

"Deadliest Catch" is serious business at our house. Even the cats watch it. Crazy Aunt Purl is much, much better at taking pictures of her TV than I am, but here's a shot of Jigsaw, our tortoiseshell who is the Deckhand in Charge of Cats, watching Captain Phil, who is her favorite crab captain. Jigsaw really digs Captain Phil and the whole crew of the Cornelia Marie.

I mean, sure, we are Southerners, so not only can we fish -- we can sit and watch other people fish on TV. Especially if they are fishing in 50-foot seas.

If you are a Southerner, watching "Deadliest Catch" is like pre-season training for dangerous weather. We watch it faithfully, breathlessly waiting to see who will be in peril, and if they will survive. And we are not taking this lightly -- we know it's for real.

"Deadliest Catch" isn't a contrived "reality" show where you plonk a bunch of accountants and supermodels on an island full of tiki torches, and watch them have childish ego altercations. It's a real-reality reality show. People sometimes die. But most of the time they do not, and disaster is narrowly averted, and we get to watch all this from the safety and comfort of the deck of the Brown Plaid Couch, where we have fortified ourselves against the weather with cats, diet soda, yarn and Fritos.

As the summer approaches, and hurricane season starts leering at us, we start to get bragadocious and competitive about the weather on the show, which is another Southern proclivity:

"I bet the weather can't really be that bad up there on the Bering Sea. I mean, it's damn cold, sure, and high seas ... but it's not like Captain Sig pulls up one day in the Northwestern and Dutch Harbor is gone."

"Yeah, if they had a real storm surge, Dutch Harbor would be toast. It's right there, smack on the ocean. It's only a little bump of an island. The weather just looks worse because it's cold, and the boats are on open water. Maybe they have 40-foot seas today, but it's not Katrina."

Even if you aren't a local, you can easily distinguish between Cajuns and other Southerners who are debating whether or not the weather in the Bering Sea is worse than a hurricane.

The Cajuns are the ones taking bets.

I'd be upset if opilio crab season overlapped too much with the critical part of hurricane season, because then I'd have to move the little-bitty bedroom TV into the living room, so I could put it next to the big TV, and watch the Weather Channel obsessively and track every rainstorm in the Northern Hemisphere from now till Thanksgiving, without missing out on any action in the Bering Sea. I wouldn't be able to leave the house for fear of missing something.

It's a Southern thing. Folks in Hawaii and Bermuda share this OCD thing about weather, too.

We are helplessly obsessed with bad weather. Our weather, other people's weather in North America, the weather in Ireland .... it doesn't matter. We will watch any bad weather. Especially bad weather involving boats. We can sit there and watch a 47-foot wave smack down on the Time Bandit and holler, "DAMN DID YOU SEE THAT!" without even getting wet or having to pump anything out.

"Deadliest Catch" gives you the refreshing option of watching other people deal with weather that can kill you and, most of the time, they come out of it alive. It's encouraging for those of us in Hurricane Alley. If Captain Sig can get through it without losing any of his brothers, if the crew of the Time Bandit can pluck a guy out of the surging, freezing ocean with his hat and glasses still on ... well, maybe some of that good, lucky mojo will rub off on us, as long as we stay tuned.

I was somewhat disquieted last week when a reporter on some news channel announced that a recent survey of Florida residents revealed that a majority of them didn't feel that they would be in serious danger of experiencing a hurricane this year and that they also hadn't made any preparations for hurricane season. This alarming news inspired the governor of Florida to give retailers the chance to have a no-tax sale this month on hurricane supplies, hoping that the prospect of big savings would inspire common sense in Floridians.

Frankly? I was speechless. How short is your memory, Florida? The 2004 season, remember?

Possible explanations for la-de-da Florida attitude:

1. Surveyors failed to interview actual Floridians, and questioned contestants for Girls Gone Wild and frat boys on spring break from New Jersey instead.

2. Demographics: high percentage of extremely elderly Floridians, many of whom pass away each year and are promptly replaced by brand-new retirees from Minnesota and Idaho who have yet to experience a hurricane. Minnesota retirees think they can handle anything after 65 years of blizzards. Idaho retirees think they are sufficiently well-armed to scare off storms.

3. Televisions blown away in 2004 Florida hurricane season hadn't been replaced in time for residents to follow coverage of Katrina and Rita destroying Mississippi and Louisiana in 2005 season.

4. Crack is cheap in Florida.

5. Surveyors interviewed people in line at Disneyworld, who will be long gone before the first hurricane hits.

Now knitters are generally sensible people, and no doubt have already made plans for their families, pets and yarn stashes should the need to evacuate occur.

But for the rest of Florida? Hello? Reality calling. Get your head out of the sand. You know what you need. Go get it. Get stuff for your pets, too, and get 'em outta there of you need to.

Hurricane Season Checklist for Southern Knitters:

If you live in the South, on the Atlantic coast or in Hawaii, you need something to keep you from chewing your nails down to the bone during hurricane season, so I highly recommend sorting your knitting out in advance so you know what to knit and when to knit it.

I took advantage of the past few weekends to do some housecleaning and to sort out some yarn and needles for the upcoming season of weather-watching.

I find it convenient to break my hurricane-season knitting down into categories, just like the storms themselves:

Tropical Depression Knitting: No big deal -- while you are knitting on your current project, just click onto the Weather Channel once in awhile to see if it has intensified.

Named-Storm Knitting: This is what we used to call a "tropical storm." But in recent years, weathercasters have started to use the term, "named storm," probably because they are hoping people will take it more seriously than "Tropical Storm," which sounds like a big pink drink with an umbrella in it.

Actually, it is a big pink drink with an umbrella in it. But I digress.

A named storm out on open water means that it's definitely time to start watching the damned thing at least once an hour -- it's starting to get its act together, and it's clearly up to no good. You can still follow knitting charts or patterns if you like, because tropical storm monitoring doesn't require diligent attention. You can check on the thing once in a while, see how far it's moved, and ponder its potential to grow and thrive in the sizzling waters of the Gulf of Mexico. At this point it's probably a good idea to have all your scissors and other notions in the same room with the TV so you don't have to get up and run after them, but you can still refer to the pattern, measure swatches, or follow a lace chart without losing track of any important meteorological developments.

Category One Knitting: Okay, now the damn thing is actually a hurricane, so "keeping an eye on it" needs to be replaced with "concern," provided the thing is 72 hours or more away from landfall. As this point you can work on most basic Aran, lace or Fair Isle patterns, but it's not a good time to cast on for a Kaffe Fassett chart.

Category Two Knitting: "Concern" becomes "serious worry." You will now be spending a great deal of time in front of the TV, so you will need a large project in a familiar pattern. While you can still manage a pattern with a few cables or a little openwork, you do need something you can knit more or less on autopilot. If you're on your fifteenth Wonderful Wallaby, or you've knitted the Charlotte's Web shawl six times already, this is a good time to cast on another one.

Category Three Knitting: Socks. Specifically, the sock pattern you can knit in your sleep. Stocking caps are okay, too. You need something which allows you to watch TV without looking at your knitting very often, and also you need a small enough project to carry to and from the kitchen, where you are cooking and eating every fresh or frozen thing in the refrigerator so it doesn't spoil when the power goes off. You also need to be able to stick your knitting in your pocket so you can keep an eye on the guys, who are hanging around the barbeque grill, making sure all the frozen meat gets cooked and eaten before the power goes out. They need the protien for strength, and beer for motivation, so they can put the patio furniture in the swimming pool, and fill up the garage with bicycles, garbage cans, bird feeders and other small things which might become airborne.

Category Four Knitting: By this time you are watching TV in exactly the same way that you would watch a live king cobra cruising around on your living room floor. You can't move, and you can't take your eyes off it. Garter stitch only, or stockinette in the round. At this point you are not sleeping. Garter stitch is good for keeping your fingers awake, which improves blood flow to the eyes, so you can watch the weathercaster point urgently at the giant, throbbing, howling red amoeba which is about to engulf Houston, Oahu, Savannah, New Orleans or Miami. At this point your car should be packed with your family's supplies, your pets and their supplies, and a month's worth of knitting.

Category Five Knitting: If you live in a state within 300 miles of the projected landfall area, you can relax a little, because at this point you are in your car and on your way to Idaho, to replace the foolhardy retirees who moved to Mississippi last year. In fact, you can even knit if you are the driver, because northbound traffic is at a dead standstill due to the seven million other people also fleeing the general Gulf Coast area. Knitting while waiting for traffic to move helps squash the nagging concern that you will die in your car because you have only managed to get 3.7 miles outside of the New Orleans city limits in the past three hours.

So.

If you're feeling kinda smug because you live in Tennessee or Iowa, think again.

Even if you aren't directly in the strike zone, the same knitting categories apply if you have friends and relatives who may be evacuating to your house for the duration of the storm. If your relatives hail from New Orleans or the Mississippi Gulf Coast, you may want to peruse your stash for spare yarn and needles.

They will need something to do for the next six months.

So It's that time of year. Relocate the spinning wheel to the living room, move a big plastic tub full of knitting supplies next to the couch.

Me? I've learned one thing from Deadliest Catch. If I am ever in peril in the wake of a storm, and my life is depending on somebody? I don't want FEMA coming to rescue me.

I want the crew of the Time Bandit.

--Mambocat

Smoke. Sheep. Spinning ...

and Non Sequitur Sunday,

Again

So ... where was I? This past week has been so off-kilter at my office, I've lost track of myself.

Catching up... here's the intermediate result of some Kool-Aid dyeing I did last Sunday evening ...

Intermediate, because all of the reddish yarns are singles, space-dyed and waiting to be plied. I'm saving the details on these for when I post about the finished yarn.

And last Sunday afternoon? I was taking a shower, after doing some morning chores. And I was all slathered up with soap and shampoo and our own special, local, Deep South Industrial Strength Sweat Remover TM ...

and I smelled smoke. And I'm not talking sniffsniffsniff...is that smoke?

I mean, smoke like Crazy Horse's Bureau of Tribal Communications had moved into the bathroom.

So I jumped out of the shower all soapy and wet, and threw on my bathrobe, and went tearing around the house in search of disaster. Nothing.

I pulled down the attic stairs and stuck my head up there. Nothing.

So I figured I had time to rinse off, and get into some real clothes, and then investigate further. The whole time I was running around the house trying to put my jeans on while hopping on alternate legs, I smelled smoke that I couldn't see.

Quite distressing.

So I went outside.

The sun machine was on. It was 96 degrees. Humidty on the "sauna" setting.

And I discovered that our neighbors were not only firing up the barbeque on two grills, but they'd lit a nice romantic fire in their patio chiminea. See?

And their mood-enhancing hotspot is located about ... oh, 20 feet or so from our central air return.

I tried to imagine the conversation: "Honey, I don't think it's quite hot enough out here ... let's light a nice romantic fire in the chiminea, eh?"

Gawd.

But you can't really blame people for not knowing how to act. After all, if you have been watching the news over the past few days, you already know that news reporters don't know how to prioritize things. Sure, we have Very Important Events going on in Washington, but at the precise moment when a Major Public Official is in front of cameras and is about to go into detail about matters of Extreme Newsworthiness and Possible Corruption in High Places .... things the public may take into consideration when it comes time to vote again .... things that actually matter ...

CNN cuts him off midsentence so they can cut to an Urgent, Developing Situation in which the World's Most Rich and Famous Floozie is being stuffed, weeping and disheveled, into a sheriff's car.

Sigh.

So of course people don't know how to act. If you don't know what's actually important in the world, how can you possibly know when it's the right time of year to light a nice, snuggly fire?

So I went back inside.

Meanwhile, back inside the Asylum, although we are annoyed that rich and famous floozies can get special legal privileges and a temporary repreive from jail by whining, crying and refusing to eat (how anyone could distinguish a celebrity hunger strike from compulsive dieting remains to be explained) ... the Management of the Asylum is not actually interested in famous floozies.

The Management of the Asylum is interested in this package of fantastic yarn and a generous sample of real Ouessant fleece (!) which arrived from Jo at Celtic Memory Yarns:

The yarn is "Midwinter," which I'd ordered from Jo's Ebay store. But the Ouessant was a surprise. It was even marked "Lagniappe," Louisiana-style.

Of course anything arriving from Ireland is best displayed on the emerald green fleece throw, I think. Here's the Ouessant fleece by itself:

This is a good, true-to-color shot of the wool. Doesn't it look like a cup of espresso? The Ouessant will sit in an airtight container for awhile, where it will pupate, and decide what it wants to be. There is deifnitely enough for a pair of socks or a hat. I can't tell you how delighted I am to receive this. A fleece sample from a rare breed is always a treat, and there is nothing like sinking your nose into a lanolin-rich wad of wool from a nice, clean, well-kept sheep.


I feel compelled to note that the Ouessant -- just in case you're not up on your sheep breeds, although you have likely deduced this from the name -- is not an Irish breed. It's a sample from the Ouessant fleece that Jo picked up from her visit to Renee in Brittany last month. See Jo's May 21 post for photos of the actual sheep, and for more information about Renee. Use the link to Celtic Memory Yarns, above.

This particular sheep is named "Muguet," or "Lily of the Valley." I love having wool from a sheep with a name.

This Sunday, I'm a little out of sorts. It's Father's Day in the US, but my Dad is no longer around to knit socks for. So I entered a pattern for sandal socks in the Father's Day contest at Knitivity.

Apparently, I was the only knitter to enter the contest. I'm hoping that's only because everyone's been too hot to knit, and not because you haven't been buying Ray's wonderful yarn. It's soft, gorgeous stuff, wonderful to work with and even in our blistering Southern heat, you can still make socks.

Which I did. Here's a photo, which I took rather carelessly, with the sock not pulled up all the way, or even neatly, on the foot of my patient sock-model, because I was hurrying to beat the deadline for the contest.

Yarn: "Poolside" from Knitivity. For the pattern, go to Knitivity, and buy some of Ray's luscious yarn to make the socks with. The pattern for my Mini-Cable Sandal Socks is posted over there. Knit some for your Dad.

Meanwhile, I have another design deadline, for a worthy cause. Which shall be revealed, all in good time.

And one more thing:

Random Sunday cat picture.

Off to spin.

--Mambocat

Voodoo Shawl Update:
Maui Style

Lisa Louie guest-blogs today from Maui, and gives us an update on the Voodoo Shawl's progress. Lisa is test-knitting the pattern before it is offered for sale. The protoptype Voodoo Shawl will be auctioned off soon to benefit an American Buddhist monastery, in memory of designer Lily Chin's mother and sister. If you're a new reader; I designed the pattern and knit the first half of the shawl for this fundraiser, then mailed it to Lisa for completion. For more information about the fundraiser (and earlier photos of the shawl in progress) go to my 4-27-07 post in the archves: "Listen, do you want to know a secret?" --Mambocat

Lisa writes:

Tarnation. Damnation. Ripnation. These words don’t seem to have much in common, and in fact, I made the last word up. But, at least to me they seem to have something in common: me and the shawl for Lily’s family. Tarnation because it’s been quite………… vexing in some regards. Damnation, because that’s probably the least offensive of some of the words I’ve used about it recently, and ripnation, because it seems I’ve been visiting the nation of ripping. As in ripping out rows of knitting. Also known as “tinking” or unknitting stitch by stitch.

I am making progress, however, but have been troubled by a couple of areas requiring extra attention. First problem was the dreaded “color stacking” or “color pooling” problem. This occurs when the individual colors of your variegated yarn start collecting themselves into unsightly blobs on your knitting instead of flowing into graceful and attractive bits of color disbursed throughout your work. This is a simple problem to fix. Once you notice it. It took me a few more rows than I care to admit to before I noticed the problem and ripped back. This, as you may have guessed, lead to the second word of the series: damnation. Some language, which I will not sully this blog with, ensued.

After I fixed the problem, I kept going, and found myself making good progress. I also made a serious boo boo and placed a series of YOs (yarn overs) in the wrong places. Oops. Yes, it was obvious. Yes, it needed to come out (sob, sob) and yes, there was both tarnation at myself for screwing up something so simple, and again, more language politely covered by the word damnation. This time it was about 10 rows that had to be removed. Ouch.

At this point, I can safely report that I am over both roadblocks and find myself rapidly approaching the end of the second skein of yarn. Total yarn usage on this shawl will be about 2 ½ skeins worth of knitting, so significant progress is being made. (Yarn: Blue Moon, Socks That Rock.)

I have come to the conclusion that this shawl seems to have its own agenda and time frame. I was hoping to have it done and for sale by Mother’s Day, but that is obviously not the case. It will be done when it is ready, and not before.

Often when I am knitting, I play a music or concert DVD. My soundtrack for this project seems to be Concert for New York, which is a collaborative effort of many, many famous musicians (think Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, Bon Jovi and more) to honor and support the firefighters, police and medical personnel of New York after 9/11. I’m not sure if this is a fluke, but it seems to be appropriate for this shawl to be “born” to a soundtrack created after a tragedy of unprecedented horror which affected New York, and the world. The shawl is, after all, created to honor Lily Chin’s mother and sister and their losses and the hole they presumably left in Lily’s, a native New Yorker, life. At some level, the inspiration and message of the concert and the shawl are the same: Hope, healing and comfort after a terrible loss. Honor those who are here no longer. Comfort and support yourself and go forward. Or, maybe the shawl just likes rock and roll.

Either way, it’s on its way to being done, and just so you know, it right now is about 400 stitches wide, and growing at the rate of 4 stitches every two rows. It’s going to be awesome.

--Lisa Louie

You and me, Cassidy


This is Cassidy. She is a venerable, upright Thumbelina wheel. I bought her second-hand from Hazel Davis, the master spinner and weaver who helped me learn how to spin about 15 years ago. Hazel had purchased it new, in the late 1960s or early 1970s.

I had my first brush with spinning way back when I was in college. To earn extra money, I knitted chainmail for stage props, and historical items for friends in the Society for Creative Anachronism. Although I wasn't a full-blown SCA member, I found myself out on the skirts and the fins of a lot of SCA events, and at one of these events I saw a woman spinning yarn with a little wooden spindle. I asked her if she would teach me, and thanks to her kindness and patience during the short time we had for a spinning lesson before the jousting began, I learned a few things:


1. I learned that it was called a "drop spindle."

2. I learned why.

For some unknown reason -- although beer may have been a contributing factor -- the kindling simply didn't ignite that day in the late '70s, and I went back to my dorm thinking, "that was interesting, and maybe I'll ask her again one day when she has more time."

I continued to knit, largely with Red Heart Superwash from Woolworth, which I could afford with my part-time waitress budget, and an occasional splurge at Schoolhouse Press through the mail when I had birthday or Christmas money.

Fast forward to the early '90s. I was married, working, and an official grown-up. Still knitting furiously, but spinning only crossed my mind when I bought a hank of lovely handspun at a crafts fair, and I would sigh deeply, wishing I knew how to do that.

One day, my dear friend Leef Bloomenstiel decided to buy a drop spindle and teach herself to spin. I learned to spin from her, and this time I learned that you could drop the spindle without breaking the yarn, and that the spindle would hang suspended in midair and continue to twirl, and it would make more yarn, and you would drop it again on purpose, and that was the real reason is was called a drop spindle.

And this time, the same thing happened to my fingers that happened the first time knitting needles were placed in my hands as a child.

I needed some guidance to manage the twirl-and-drop-the-spindle part. But my fingers figured out how to draft right away. Something in my genes (likely the Irish genes) told my fingers exactly what was the right amount of fuzz to deploy, how hard to pinch, when to let go, and when to pinch again. Just like when I learned to knit, I could almost hear my fingers saying, "Wait a minute! We remember how to do this!"

My first spinning efforts turned out reasonably un-lumpy, but grievously overspun. It took me about four ounces of wool to teach my right hand that the twirling-the-spindle part was not an Olympic event.

Once I figured that out, I could make decent and consistent singles.

Some time later, I bought a Navajo spindle while travelling on vacation, and learned to Navajo ply.

This was all fun, but it was slow. I had produced only enough yarn for a pair of mittens and a few hats. I started to yearn seriously for a wheel. On Saturday mornings, Leef and I would spin, knit, drink coffee and experiment with dyeing while her kids went about their kidly business.

Except that the excited shrieks of "LOOK IT'S TURNING BLUE!!!" weren't coming from the kids.

Then one evening, Leef phoned me and said, "Come over and see what I got in the mail!"

It was a spinning wheel.

I had a turn or seven at Leef's wheel, and this time I could make yarn fast. The same problem resurfaced: drafting, no problem. Treadling? Yes, it was a wheel, but if I carried on like I was in the Tour de France, I got singles that looked like stubby, kinky, eyelash yarn. With way too much mascara.

It wasn't long before I found my own wheel. By chance I saw an ad in the "miscellaneous" section of the newspaper classifieds: SPINNING WHEEL FOR SALE.

Hazel Davis had been spinning and weaving since God had baby teeth, and she'd spent countless weekends as a docent at Magnolia Mound Plantation, dressed in period costume, spinning and weaving for the touristy public. But her health was starting to fail, and she was selling off most of her wheels and looms.

By the time I found Hazel's ad, she'd sold off all of her surplus things, except for the Thumbelina wheel. I sat down in front of it, and fell flat-out in love.

"I bought that wheel for teaching, only because it was small and portable," Hazel said. "But it runs away from you, it rattles, and it's quirky. It has a mind of its own. If you can spin consistent yarn on that wheel, you can spin anything."

She sighed and added, "I'm not sure it's the best choice for a beginner."

So of course I bought it on the spot.

Because I am a Capricorn who has her Saturn (and also a few other major planets) in Capricorn, I really tried to study all the different ratios, and wanted to become an expert technical spinner, but in the long run, I turned out to be a "spin-by-feel" spinner. I count treadles: one, two, three, four. Then I draft a bit more and count again. I actually don't count -- it's more of a rhythmn, and I know which rhythmn yields firm plies for sock yarn and which rhythmn yields soft plies for sweater yarn. I could show you how I do it, but I couldn't write a technical article about drive ratios and all that. Hats off to those of you who can.

I experimented with novelty yarns and textures and found it ironic that the over-spinning I had to teach myself not to do, was necessary for certain effects, and it was very hard to make myself do it on purpose, and I did not like this at all. I decided that if I wanted novelty yarn I was going to buy it, that what I really wanted to spin was good, consistent, smooth yarn in sock, sport or worsted weight, as needed.

There are two things about spinning which I find extremely compelling: natural-color yarn right off the sheep with only a bath and carding ... and wild color variations. I would never insult a good natural yarn by dyeing it a boring color.

Natural undyed wool in worsted and sock weights.

I am endlessly enchanted by Jacob's sheep and other uncommon breeds who manifest multiple colors on the same sheep. So many options ... you can grab bits from the various colors at random, you can card colors together into a gradient, you can make one ply of dark brown and one ply of cream and then ply them together .... you can then ply the randomly-spun plies together, and get yarn that looks like fudge ripple ice cream.

I also like to make ragg yarns combining one strand of a natural black, grey or brown wool with one strand of boldly dyed wool, preferably in a color gradient: one natural grey ply and one ply with shades of teal; a brown ply together with a ply of golden yellows, a grey ply with a rainbow ply. I tend to consider this combination my "signature" yarn. It's rather yin-yang, actually: a balance of that which is calm and that which is vibrant; natural sheep color and colors imposed upon the wool. I like it.

Clockwise from top: Two-ply fudge-ripple randomness in natural Jacob's sheep ... natural grey wool with variegated green and turquiose ... natural grey wool with variegated navy, green and blue ... natural brown with Kool-aid red ... natural alpaca in tan and brown.

I am also easily amused. Other people need skydiving vacations in Bali, frequent relationship changes, fast cars, and surfing excursions at Tierra Del Fuego to keep their lives interesting.

I just need something that changes colors on me.

I neglected Cassidy for many, many months after Hurricane Katrina. Working in the animal rescue efforts meant running full tilt every waking moment, collapsing from exhaustion after midnight, and getting up again before dawn. From the day of landfall through Christmas of 2005, it was all I could do, most days, to get in a few rows of knitting right before bedtime. Many nights I fell asleep with needles in my hand, having knit one or two rounds on a sock.

Spinning at the wheel, on the other hand requires a chunk of time to actually sit and relax, and for a long time after Katrina I was utterly incapable of relaxation in any form. For the first few months, with the immediate business of sheltering rescued animals, it was almost impossible to knit at all. And once the immediate business was under control, I spent many more months commuting between Baton Rouge and New Orleans for shelter recovery efforts, so I was either working, sleeping, doing household chores or driving. Again, if I found myself with twenty minutes to knit before bed, I was ecstatic.

At about the same time as the animal sheltering situation came to an even keel, we were able to begin repairs on my mother's house in New Orleans, and, as anyone who's ever renovated a house knows, that is a full-time job in itself.

There was also a problem beyond the actual lack of time in which to relax: as the enormity of the jobs became somewhat more manageable, and my schedule began to approach something resembling normal, I realized that I had completely forgotten how to function in a non-frantic environment.

So, when things settled down a little bit in the spring of this year (2007) I had to learn to relax all over again.

What I actually had to do was give myself permission to relax again.

So I removed the old pillowcase I had draped over Cassidy, and cleaned her, and lovingly rubbed all of her wood surfaces down with lemon oil, and waxed and greased her various moving components, and started spending time with her again.

Lately, I have been spinning color-variegated roving. If it looks like Jackson Pollock threw up all over it, so much the better. I want color. I need color. There were only three colors after Katrina: dirty-concrete grey, dried-floodwater brown, and gunky, dark, dried-mildew green.

Oh, yes ... there was also FEMA-tarp blue.

So now I want color. Lots of it, and lots of variety.

I am also enjoying some samples of natural fleece, fresh from healthy, spoiled-rotten sheep belonging to friends. Nothing quite like the smell of a clean, fresh fleece from a healthy animal.

That's another post-Katrina yearning, wanting things to smell good.

So I have discovered that it's fun to lubricate my wheel with essential oils. I like a gentle fragrance to fill the room when I spin. I dab it onto the leather components and use it to lubricate moving parts. It soothes me.

Now I suspect that some engineer-type spinner from MIT is going to chime in and helpfully suggest that I should be using sewing machine oil or silicone spray or mineral oil, and it will have something to do with higher or lower viscosity being good or bad for the metal parts, or the wood parts, or something like that.

I don't care. This creaky old wheel and I have been friends for well over fifteen years now, and we both just like things to smell good.

I may be revealing myself as a helplessly hopeful hippie (just in case you haven't figured that out by now), but I like the scent of patchouli oil best for spinning. Sometimes I use sandalwood, clove or lavender oil, and occasionally bergamot or cardamon. Now and then, it's rosewood, ylang-ylang or lemongrass.

It depends on the mood I am in, and who the yarn is for, and the purpose for which the yarn is being spun. I'm more than a little bit of a granola-head in that department. But if I am spinning for my own pleasure, I oil the wheel with patchouli, and, yes, of course it makes our house smell like a head shop ... and I don't care. My wheel is named after a Grateful Dead song, for Pete's sake. It would almost be wrong not to oil it with patchouli:

"Flight of the sea birds,
scattered like lost words,
wheel to the storm and fly."

If I am spinning for somone else, I most often use lavender because it helps to disguise the wooly scent from marauding moths. I'm also aware that a whiff of fragrance always manages to get into the wool, and that the scent of lavender rarely causes allergic reaction and is pleasing to almost everyone.

Scent is a good medium to help me meditate, and to travel without leaving my spinning chair. Some scents remind me of places I've been to, and others help me travel farther back in time. A little patchouli, jasmine or sandalwood in the air, and all of a sudden I can remember how it felt to be that slim, black-haired girl in a batik skirt and huarache sandals, threading her way through life with a bicycle and a backpack. A girl whose biggest worries were finishing papers on time, earning enough money for tuition, rent, groceries and cat food ... and wondering if the "Curse of the Boyfriend Sweater" was really true.

"Close the gap of the dark years in between
you and me, Cassidy."

Hmmmmm ... I've got a few ounces of periwinkle wool roving, and a few ounces of wool from a real black sheep, patiently waiting for me over there in a basket.

I think I'm gonna go spin now.

--Mambocat