He's a Lumberjack and He's Okay..

He sleeps all night and he works all day!

Yup, this is one of my favorite Monty Python skits (second is the Dead Parrot) and I'm just so thrilled that it's Week 55's Fiber Friday Challenge on Ravelry! If you're not familiar with the Lumberjack Song in its entirety, here's a look:



I did have the fiber for the parrot one, but the Lumberjack being my top favorite, I just had to drop everything and card a few mini batts for spinning. It turns out that I have tons of fiber - they're just not organized well enough for me to identify what I have. So while moving boxes here and there yesterday I took a note of which type of fiber was in what box and this morning, simply set out to work.

Carding is still a challenge for me, and part of it is because I'm so afraid to bend the teeth on my Strauch Petite. It's not exactly built for novelty yarn, and so I've been so scared to use it the last few days. This morning, though, I threw caution to the wind and keeping in mind the basic tenets of carding (feed small amounts slowly, separate the fibers, etc.), started carding some mini-batts for my Lumberjack yarn.

I've read Deb Menz's Color In Spinning and it's so true that while reading it and knowing it is one thing, doing it is totally a whole different creature altogether. But I think I pulled it off okay...

I spun it along with some test batts from Crosspatch Creations that I considered totally ugly on its own, but I guess blended with the Lumberjack batts, they didn't look too bad. The skein hasn't been soaked yet, but I'm looking forward to some "rugged" yarn to show you tomorrow!

I spun the next yarn a week or so ago from an art batt from Sandy of Homestead Wool & Gift Farm. Leo really likes it, and I think along with my fresh-off-the-bobbin Lumberjack batt, they'll surely make an interesting pair!


Fern Trail Handspun Yarn

This reminds me of beautiful hiking trails in Portland, Oregon. I don't know if there's such a trail named Fern Trail, but really, who cares?

With my practice really really slow, I've been staying home (staying away from mindless shopping or even etsy shopping) and doing my taxes. When I'm not doing taxes, I'm spinning or cleaning (or trying to), and when I'm not cleaning, I'm indulging in one guilty pleasure - listening to a wonderful Pride and Prejudice podcast on iTunes! Best of all, it's free and if I start talking with a British accent, don't worry. It's only temporary...

My Neurons Are Taking A Break...

Yup...my finals are over! I didn't do as well as well as I thought (overconfident there for a second) since I didn't look over my Reproduction notes at all. And at least 25 questions were about reproduction...so, even though I may have done well in Digestion and Urinary systems, as well as Acid-Base balances...25 answers out of 113 doesn't sound too good right now.

BUT! The semester is still over and I haven't been this excited for classes to be over in a very long time. I can't wait to spin and knit, that's why. Besides, there's this whole Christmas thing to do...I'm running out of time here.

Anyway, I've been knitting very slowly the last few days. Knitting and studying do not go together - you get far in the knitting part, but definitely not far enough in the studying part. In the knitting department, I've been working on a diagonal scarf with my handspun Gallica:


I wish I would have alternated it with some other yarn. It's getting a tad boring - and I can definitely see a difference in the weight of my own handspun from one skein to another since Gallica has two skeins. Oh well...

Now that class is over, I can now concentrate on work since my practice has sorta dropped off the face of the earth since I went back to school, and started spinning and knitting in earnest. Now I can return to the normal scheduled programming and with the impending holidays, I can now cram a lot of gift knitting into the schedule as well.

Yesterday I got a few surprises in the mail, and one of them was this pretty cool fiber from Homestead Wool and Gift Farm. It's a pound of "Cool Beans" fiber and since I don't have a drum carder yet (I keep buying wheels and drop spindles instead of dropping that said money onto a drum carder) and have only a set of hand cards, I carded a few buns out of it, as well as two little buns of Sandy's bag of random fiber:


Cool Beans Picked Fiber


Carded into little buns and sitting in their little basket...

I can't wait to start spinning them as soon as I card enough, maybe 4 - 6 ounces or so. I also got a few flyers to test from a spinning wheel maker I am not naming just yet, and so far, I'm loving all of them.

Which is just another reason I need to spin a bit more, eh?

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone! I'm spending the day at home today spinning and watching all these scary shows on cable. Right now "The Haunting" is on Bravo, and although they do re-enactments of actual events (and get a bit melodramatic), it's still a bit scary.

I had a fit of remorse yesterday and wished that I didn't throw away the "bad" bamboo merino I had just spun. It could have been operator error after all. Unfortunately yesterday was trash day and so hasta la vista, Miss B.

Anyway, what was left of the bamboo merino on the bobbin made up this:


Don't you just love the sheen of it? I can't wait to spin more bamboo!

Last week, I tried out a method using the hand cards Jamie lent me wherein I turn some hand carded fiber into a long piece of "roving". After hand carding white wool over and over again, trying to get a feel of the hand movements, I finally graduated to colors and attempted stripes. It would have worked out great if only I had matched both bobbins up - but I didn't.


This morning, I woke up early and decided to start working on some purple wool I had dyed a few weeks ago. I may have felted it in some places but hand carding solved any of my worries. It is purple in most places and blue in some, and after a few rounds of carding away, I came up with a tutorial on how I turn all that hand-carded wool into a long piece of roving.

Yup, you heard it - a tutorial! Click on the image to view the actual size:

I start out by hand carding some fiber. I kinda "stand" up the fiber on a flat surface and continue hand carding some more fiber and line up the next one against the first and so on. I usually will have about 4 to 5 of the handcarded batts lined up back to back against each other (and they will stand up like that). The photo shows the view from above.

I then take the 4 to 5 batts and - if you're working with striped batts, make sure you don't rearrange the stripes - hold all batts as one piece in your hands. I usually lay it on my lap and while gripping both ends securely, making sure that all the batts, especially the ones in between the outside layers gets moved, too. I gently pull my hands apart inch by inch, making sure that the batt remains intact in between. Then I start pre-drafting the batts, starting from the left. My hands are about three inches apart from each other as I grip the batt with each hand. I gently bring my hands apart slowly, predrafting the fiber almost inch by inch.


This is how the batt looks like as you gently pre-draft it. The letters represent the hand placements as you go from left to right, gently pre-drafting the batt as you go. This then turns it into a long piece of roving. It wont' look like commercially carded roving you get, but because it is hand carded, it's more lofty and airy than commercially carded roving.

It's kinda ghetto but it works for me. So today, after all that hand carding and pre-drafting action this morning, I ended up with 3 ounces of purple "nests" or "roving" that, with the addition of some dyed cotswold locks here and there, came up with this:


What do you think?

All the Pretty Colors

Thought I'd open my post today with something I found while surfing:


Interesting, huh? I found this on a rug website, a link I can't find at the moment, but it is very educational, that's for sure.

But before I proceed, some bad news: I threw my back out two Fridays ago, and had to take a break off work for a week (which coincidentally, should have been the time for me to study for my midterms in Physiology). I was in denial for about 2 days, thinking This can't happen to me! I'm a massage therapist, for crying out loud.

But unlike the stages of grief, which begins with Denial, I jumped right into the stage of: Acceptance. Hey, I am not getting younger, you know, and Thai Yoga can get pretty hard on your body (not if you exercise, do yoga, eat healthy - which I don't really do anymore these days - I'm too busy spinning and knitting). But there have been more and more days when I think that the fire has gone out in that department...but that's pain talking so I'm going to move along.

When I returned to work this Friday, I saw only two people - which was enough for me. But as the weekend speeds along, I'm finding that maybe the back pain could be a symptom of something else - like the flu or something, since my joints ache continually until I pop a few Motrin. Not good for someone who prefers homeopathic remedies and stuff. I even missed the Greater Los Angeles Spinning Guild yesterday - something I've been looking forward to for months!!! I had been hoping to meet Bee there and maybe check out her Majacraft Pioneer wheel, too. I swear I'm gonna be all cheesed out after all the whining I've been subjecting Leo to!

However, for the good news...I have been busy!

I finished knitting up another slouch hat although this one is meant for a child because a) I used a smaller needle than required and b) I ran out of handspun yarn. But it looks quite interesting. This was my handspun from Copperpot's Beyond the Realm roving:


Now if it had come out just perfect for, let's say, me - then it would have been modeled excellently by "Amanda" my new model-in-residence. Here she is modeling my Don't Be A Slouch hat, and a scarf (well I can't very well have her hanging out in the house naked to begin with!). I think Amanda and I will get along just fine...


I've been meaning to post this photo of a cute drop spindle that Jamie gave me a few weeks ago. It's such a cute lady bug drop spindle and although the dowel is just too light and makes it top heavy, and thus harder to produce a decent spin, it's adorable! Here she is, spinning some carded merino - and she seems be doing quite well.


Yesterday was spent knitting up another slouch using something from my stash, Moda Dea Tweedle Dee in Sagebrush originally meant for hand warmers for my friend Tsuya. However as I knitted away and was on the 11th row of stockinette past the ribbing, I found the end of the yarn. Turns out that although the handwarmer didn't work out, instead of frogging it, I probably simply cut the offending piece (I'm sure it wasn't - just my over-achieving and perfectionist twin not liking it) and threw the remaining ball of yarn into the stash. So now I'm searching for another ball of Sagebrush to complete my slouchy hat!

One thing I did notice is that although I have also lived in Long Beach close to three years now, I still don't know where places are. I could not find a Joann's if my life depended on it - but I can drive you anywhere you need to go in the South Bay still! In fact, that's where I'm shopping for the yarn tomorrow after work!

Today's agenda - have some brunch after Leo wakes up, then head over to the Pantages to see Wicked! If only Kristin Chenoweth were still playing the Glinda...

I Really Should Be Studying...

SO, now that I got that out of the way, let's get back to regular programming! Here's my latest October buying spree. At the top is some roving I got from Etsy. It's really just three different colored roving that's braided together I found out. Nothing spectacular...I could have dyed it myself, but it's done, and I've got it. The other two bamboo looking rovings are bamboo merino tops from Flawful Fibers, which are pretty cool! Then there's the dark roving from Gale's Art. The Gale's Art and one of the Flawful Fibers roving are actually from someone on Ravelry destashing her stash...


I also got a vintage 4" Weave-It loom and I'm so thrilled. I got it for $15 postpaid! I can't wait to make some loom blooms for the holidays with it!

So while in pain yesterday I just had to be busy. Sure, I could have studied for my Physiology exam, but noooo...I had to spin. It got my mind off my pain anyway. And so I tried my hand making this...






As if you haven't seen enough coils in your life, huh? Well, this is my first attempt at both needle felting and spinning coils! I used one of my tough serging threads as the core yarn for the coils and went ahead and coiled a newly spun bobbin of three colors. After almost three hours of work - including spinning the singles for the coils - I ended up with...19 yards!

Can you imagine that???? I still can't believe it myself. But at least I got some neat coils! So I really can't complain.

I also decided to try out the hand cards that Jamie lent me. I used the short ends that were left over from Leo's blending of the roving balls and practiced away. It was awkward at first but after watching a few Youtube videos and referring to my Spin Off magazines and the corresponding photos, I think I got it.

I then went ahead and spun it into this yarn. It's a little course and I guess that's because they're all the shorter staples, and since I didn't combine it with any other fiber, like long stapled onese, it has that halo effect and feels a little scratchy, too. Maybe it'll soften up after I soak it...


So, I guess I better get studying, now that I'm sort off done with my fiber distractions. But wait! Let me show you a WIP. This is from my handspun yarn (from copperpot's Beyond the Realm batt) which I'm currently knitting into another tam. It's coming along really great! Now if I can only study and knit it to completion at the same time, life will be grand!