Signs of Spring and How to Be An Enabler

Well, I told you the newness would wear off of this blog thing. lol Last post was on 1-3 and here it is 1-21. We're now a full month into winter and I can see it's staying light longer in the evening already. Instead of closing the chickie girls in at around 5:15 pm, I can wait until about 5:40 or so and still see to walk down there without falling on my face.

Back in October I had dropped a couple of fleeces off with Ozark Carding while I was at SAFF. I got a ship notice last Wednesday, the 11th. The post office finally delivered the box with the roving yesterday, the 20th. NINE DAYS! They must have been sent from MO to TN via Anchorage. One fleece is just carded roving, which I'll use for spinning students (if I ever have any more ) or other demo type stuff. The other, heavier, fleece I had pin drafted after it was carded, which aligns the fibers much more than plain carding does. It looks like it turned out really nice and should be easy to spin, although there is a bit of VM in it, as all the fleeces from "that" place do. I should mention that the box is about 12x14x14, and AFTER I took the fleeces out of the box and opened their bags, they took up 4 or 5 times that space. I've already rolled all the roving into balls so they'll be easier to use.

The first of this year's planting has been started. There are 25 each of small Chinese cabbage, broccoli, and red and green pak choi seeded in trays out in the little homemade greenhouse. They were all planted on Monday, the 16th - first day of the 4th quarter moon, in Virgo. Yuck! We also have seeds for full size Chinese cabbage; they'll be started in a week or so.

Now, about that enabler title - A new woman at the Limestone Creek Fiber Guild wants to learn to spin and weave, so I said I'd bring my small looms, the Dorothy table loom and the Harp rigid heddle. (She already tried her hand at spinning last Saturday) I have to warp the Dorothy with something small to play with and I'll just measure the Harp warp, maybe enough for a scarf, and will warp it when I get there, to show Betsy how to do it. I'll have to read up on it to remember. Plus I'll haul all the various accoutrements with me. I might even take that enormous fly shuttle. Now I just have to get my butt in gear and start measuring. And I have to get everything ready by Feb. 18th. I hate measuring warp. Gee, I can't even add a picture of the Dorothy because I'm on the wrong computer. Have to get that DSL line switched back.

The grocery store has hyacinths in bloom already. I ALWAYS stop and smell them. Spring is coming!

Mostly Spinning

Nov. 5 - The Bradford pear trees in the surrounding yards, as well as our own, are getting to that "Red Sails" lettuce stage - red on the tips of the branches and green at the base, so they look like giant heads of leaf lettuce, like the trees at the shopping center a few weeks ago. And the gingko trees in town have finally turned bright, pure yellow.

I've finally finished one bobbin of the wool/silk blend I'm working on. On to number two, probably tonight after supper. Sheesh, it's only 6:40 and it's already getting dark. Time to close the chickie girls in for the night.

Nov. 6 - Well, I did get some spinning done last night, almost three hours' worth. That's not as much as it sounds like, though, because I'm spinning it quite thin. It's between 1/3 and 1/2 a bobbin-full. I have an Ashford Joy that I use for spinning singles and an Ashford Traditional that's mostly reserved for plying. Ashford wheels are made in New Zealand. The Joy is a folding wheel that's easy to transport to guild meetings, demos, my SIL's house, my front porch, or wherever. I have it adjusted to spin at an 8:1 ratio, that is, it puts 8 full twists into the yarn with just 1 revolution of the drive wheel. That way I can spin faster without treadling faster. The Traditional is set up for a 6.5:1 ratio, since plying doesn't need to be spun as tight as the singles. I also have a plying flyer and bobbin on the Traditional so I can ply the two bobbins of singles together without having to stop halfway and empty the bobbin. The only time I put the normal size flyer/bobbin on the Traditional now is if I have a spinning student, though, come to think of it, that's not REALLY necessary. It's more an aesthetic thing.

Tonight I'll be putting the girls to bed at 5:45 instead of 6:45. Time to start getting light-deprivation syndrome. LOL

Fall Colors and More

Our fall colors have gotten to the gold/bronze/ maroon stage now. Still pretty, just more subdued. This picture is from 2007, looking out the front door. Glad we didn't get that early snow over the weekend. Heck, this place gets paralyzed when it snows in JANUARY! Snow before Halloween would have put them over the edge.

The six new pullets have integrated pretty well into the rest of the flock. I think they're over trying to fit four or five into a nest box to sleep. Tonight I found two boxes with a pair in each, one with one of our more docile older hens, and one by herself on a roost. I'm only getting one or two eggs per day right now, and sometimes none at all, due to molt and shorter daylight. I could put a light in the coop on a timer, but it would involve 3 extension cords, so I'd rather just put up with less eggs.

Mosheim School's Heritage Days is coming up at the beginning of Thanksgiving week. I'll be doing a spinning demo again for them. They have the various classes rotate through the demonstrations for 30 min. each. Last year, most of the younger kids (3rd grade was the youngest, I think) seemed interested in the spinning, but the 7th and 8th graders practically yawned in my face. I've requested that the 7th and 8th graders be replaced with K thru 2, so I'm not wasting my time being there. Hopefully they'll have time to rearrange the schedule.

One of my sisters was here last week, so we went through the family pictures that I have and she picked out which ones she wants me to send her. DD joined us for part of the time, so we had lots of laughs trying to figure out mystery people (unlabeled photos), trying to see details with a magnifying glass and a jeweler's loupe, and just seeing some of the stupid things in the pictures. For instance, my mother had a skunk coat when she was in her 20s. It was a knee-length, black fur coat that just happened to be made of skunk fur. Nope, no smell. Here's my mother wearing the coat and my father in something a little more sensible. Then when the kids came along, that coat went out for Halloween more than once. Ha ha! Just add a gorilla or monster mask and we were SET!

SAFF

Only two more days till SAFF. OK, so it's REALLY only one more day, since it opens tomorrow, but I'm not going until Saturday. It runs through Sunday.

SAFF stands for Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair. I've been going since 2002 (or 2003 maybe?). Can't remember exactly. It's held at the Western NC Agric. Center (read here: fairgrounds), right across the road from the Asheville Airport. There are a bunch of vendors selling all sorts of fibery stuff - supplies for spinning, weaving, knitting, etc., raw fiber, commercially processed fiber, yarn, stuff made out of yarn and other forms of fiber, books about fiber and what to do with it, plus live fiber animals - sheep, llamas, goats, and rabbits. There are also three days' worth of classes and workshops offered. There's even a guy who makes chairs, rockers, and weaving benches with woven cord seats. Way cool! It can be overwhelming for a first-time visitor, but probably just as exhilarating as for a Disney-phile visiting the Magic Kingdom for the first time. LOL

This is actually a small show compared to some others. The first one I went to is the Maryland Sheep and Wool Show, held the first weekend in May just west of Baltimore. That one is maybe twice or 2 1/2 times the size of SAFF. And the Dutchess Co. Fiber Festival (I THINK that's the official name), held in Rhinebeck, NY, is about half again as big as SAFF. There are other big ones around that I've never been to (yet). There are shows all over the country, but I've only been to Kentucky Sheep and Fiber (their first year in 2010), Michigan Fiber Festival (just a little smaller than SAFF), and Garden State Sheep Breeders show (small at the time, but may be bigger now; it's been at least 10 years since I was there), besides the aforementioned Maryland, Rhinebeck, and SAFF. Charlotte, NC, will host a new show next year that I hope to attend. Fortunately, it's not on a race weekend, so traffic will be manageable.

I have a few sheep fleeces that I've been holding onto for about five years now that desperately need to be washed and carded. I MUST take them with me and drop them off at Ozark Carding's booth. I think I might use the resulting roving to braid into a rug or maybe chair pads for the kitchen chairs and front porch rockers. It'll have to be dyed because the wool is white and there is no way I'm putting a white rug on the floor in OUR house. I'll just have to decide at what point I'll do the dyeing; while it's still roving or after braiding. Braids would be much easier to handle, but as roving, I can do different colors and then blend them as I braid. Or maybe a little of each. And I have a little bit of light gray roving left from a previous fleece, so I should be able to work that in too.

Fibery Stuff

Wow, it's been over a week since the last post. I guess nothing earth-shattering has happened around here.

This weekend is Alpace Farm Days, when alpaca farms around the country have open houses. So I took DGD and visited two of the four alpaca farms here in our county. The owners of farm #1, Silver Thunder Alpacas, are former spinning students of mine. I see him around once in a while because he works at our local Tractor Supply. Her I don't see but once a year or so. It was nice to see how their farm is coming along, with new gates (can never have too many gates), a new little farm store building, and a new cria from this spring. Baby alpacas and llamas are called crias. They're building their herd up slowly and have 8 females and at least 5 or 6 males (though not all the males are used for breeding, some are just for fiber).

The second farm is Appalachian Alpacas. I did a spinning demo and display there two years ago for Alpaca Farm Days. The first day was very windy and blew all my display stuff all over. The second day it rained just sideways enough to get my stuff wet (I was in a gazebo). So that was a flop. Today was much nicer. A friend of mine, the hostess of our local fiber guild, was weaving on a small triangle loom and a man, who I knew from a local weaving guild, was spinning (yes, men spin too, for you non-spinners out there). This farm has a bigger herd than the other one because the daughter and SIL of one owner lives next door and keeps their alpacas with mom's. So they had 8 crias, all fairly young, with their mothers, plus a few females with no baby. Didn't see where the males were.

While I was there, our guild mom told me about a new fiber fair that will be held in Charlotte, NC, next June. They have a website, but there's nothing much on it yet. I hope to go, if I can save up enough spending money. Charlotte's about a 3 1/2 to 4 hr. ride, so I don't know if it warrants an overnight stay or not. Depends on how much walking around I do. There's another show next month, SAFF, or Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair, just south of Asheville. That's only 1 1/2 hr. away, so that's easy to do in one day. I have a couple of fleeces (sheep) that were given to me that I desperately need to have processed (since I don't want to wash them myself). I don't mind carding, but can't stand washing. Which is why it's taken me about 3 years to process another fleece that I bought. I still have about 2 pounds left to do. So, anyway, I absolutely MUST take those 2 or 3 fleeces with me and drop them off with the fiber mill that will be there as a vendor. They're in Missouri, so they'll then ship back a box or boxes of nice clean roving (long continuous strip of carded wool).

In keeping with the fibery vein, I need to wash yarn this week. The yarn I've spun for Howell Farm needs to be washed, measured, weighed, and labeled before Thursday. That last half pound of wool that still needs to be spun? Yeah, well, I guess it's not going to get done before we go, unless I get ambitious tomorrow. LOL

End of Two Tunnels

I supposed I'll slow down to posting once a week or so once all the newness wears off, instead of almost every day. I just finished yet another major branch of the Fisler family. Just one smallish branch to go.

I have a Family Tree Maker program that I enter all the informtion into. Then I can print out ancestor trees, descendant trees, etc. with whatever data I want to include. Some of the popular (and, therefore, annoying) first names on the Fisler hit parade are, for the guys, Samuel, Joseph, Benjamin, Charles, Jacob, Lorenzo (believe it or not!), Wade, Felix and Leonard. For the gals, it's Rachel, Elizabeth, Mary (no surprise there), Hannah, Henrietta, Sophia, Sarah, Ann/Anna/Annie, and, believe it or not, Euphemia. Yep, there are 3 or 4 Euphemia's just in one branch. At the other end of the spectrum are the "Your parents named you WHAT?!!" names, like Euphemia (LOL), Lynnton (male), Elbert, Mulford, Luberta (female), Thorn (male), Vestina (female - not a blood relative, thank goodness), Athalan (female - that's what it looks like on the actual census page, too), Kesiah (female - I've come across this name in a totally different section of the family, too), Barzillai (male - also unrelated to the Fislers), Gilden Elvin, who married Ola, the previously mentioned Oarmel/Armel/Armol, and one woman who also had three different versions of her name - Lorene (not bad), Lonzene (bad), and Alonzene (worse). There are a couple of names that I like, but would never name my kid that - like sisters Arabella and Isadora, and distantly related Cornelia. And one woman married Clayton Moore! No, not the Lone Ranger. He was a RR Express agent.

And then there are brothers who marry sisters, which isn't too bad, or the guy whose first wife dies, so he remarries . . . her sister or cousin. Got a couple of those. Or the guy who marries a distant cousin with the same surname. ACK! And THEN when he remarries, it's to her sister/cousin with the SAME NAME again. I think the only situation I haven't come across (yet) is where multiple wives have the same name, at least the first name.

Is there a gene for farming? I haven't actually counted, but at least 75% of my father's side of the family, up to 1930 anyway, were farmers. My mother's family were more city folk. I'm glad I don't farm full time. Just trying to get the garden to grow vegetables, not weeds, is a chore.

I'm also almost at the end of a spinning project. When in NJ, DH and I volunteered at a living history farm for about 8 years. Each year, after the sheep are shorn, they get the wool processed into roving (washed, dried, and carded into a long continuous strand about 1 inch in diam.). A spinner would then spin the yarn from the roving. We visited the farm last September and I learned that there are at least a couple dozen bags of roving being stored. The two employees there who spin don't have time to do it. Since I spin, I offered to bring one bag home and spin up some yarn that they could sell in their gift shop. I picked a bag of medium gray that's an amalgam of several sheep; it weighed about 8 lb. I'm now on the last half pound and expect to finish it in the next two weeks. That includes making two-ply yarn, winding it into skeins, and washing the skeins to set the twist. I also made some labels for the skeins with farm's logo on them. About half of the yarn has already been sent to the farm and the rest will go next month. So pretty soon I can get back to spinning for myself. I have a wool/silk blend that I think I'll work on next.

I am determined to get to bed at a decent hour tonight, so buh-bye