snowrain drifts
melts winter hardness
gone.
Delicacy.
This knitting project is an exercise in delicate – the yarn is light as whispers, the needles are feather shafts between my fingers. The pattern is simple and elegant. It requires a shift in my focus, a narrowing so that the smallness of what I am doing becomes large enough to fill my mind. Lace knitting at it’s finest.
Buffalo Gold 2ply lace weight yarn(100% american bison fiber), size 1 needles, Evelyn Clark’s ‘Estonian Lace Wrist Warmers‘
A little spinning.
This is one of my current spinning projects. The spindle is Sakura, a .8 oz Spinsanity that I got a few years ago – the fiber I don’t remember anything about. I’m fairly sure it is a wool/silk blend, and I love the mossy lake like greens and browns in it, and how soft it is. I haven’t decided how I want to ply it you – I think it would make a nice two ply for lace, but I’m waiting to decide until I see how many bobbins of it I have.
Combing.
A few years ago I bought a longwool fleece from a local shepherd.
It’s not a great fleece, but it is the first one I ever bought, and the largest. It weighed eight pounds before I washed it, and over the years I’ve played with it, trying out different spinning and processing techniques, and generally just putzing around with it learning about how to deal with raw longwool fleece.
I have two pounds of it still, rough washed and packed up into 8oz lots in zip lock bags. Last year I bought my self a pair of the most excellent Valkyrie Viking Combs, and the plan is to comb the fleece one bag at a time, and eventually end up with a nice lot of worsted spun yarn, and a nice lot of woolen spun.
Today I started working on this project, by pulling out the combs and setting them and getting the little 1.4oz bag of the longwool out and combing it.
I haven’t done a lot of wool combing, so there’s a learning curve, and it took me a few hours working on and off through the afternoon to get the whole small bag combed.
In the end I had .5 oz of cardable short wool, .4oz of nicely combed top, and a big mess on my carpet. Loss was .5 oz, some in a couple of locks that were just too matted and gunky to comb at all, and some in the mess of dust, VM and wool bits left on the carpet.
Conclusions — this is going to be a slow project. The fleece needs to be washed again before I comb more of it. Combed top is lighter then air. This is going to be fun!
Simplest Sesame Halva
tahini
sesame seeds
honey
powdered sugar
Start by blending honey into one cup of tahini until it is honey flavoured enough for you, but not as sweet as you want. This batter will be shiny from the oil in the tahini Stir in sesame seeds until you have a very very thick batter or loose dough. Finish by stirring in enough powdered sugar to take the shine out of the mixture – start with half a cup. Taste for sweetness – more sugar or honey can be added if it is not as sweet as you like. If it is not as stiff as you like, you can add more sesame seeds or more powdered sugar. Press into a pan or roll into balls and refrigerate. It is nice to roll the balls in some sesame seeds or powdered sugar.-
Sew sew.
I’ve been getting back into sewing recently. I’ve sewn a kit apron that was almost entirely hemming, and am most of the way through a second one that was a little more involved. The second one has a ruffle at the bottom which was a fun technique to practice, and has a faced neckline. I finished edging it yesterday, and still need to turn down a 1/4 inch hem all around the apron and top stitch it. Then I’ll put on the neck and waist ties, and it’s done.
I got the apron kits at Jo-Ann’s, along with fabric and notions to make two more aprons – I have a nice pattern from Burda that I want to use, and it also has patterns for some other kitchen accessories to make if the scraps from the aprons are large enough. I also have a fabric stash, mostly intended for skirts, and a quilt in progress.
I like aprons, have always worn them, and think they are a good learning sewing projects for me. I learned to sew when I was young, and have sewn off and on for ever, but am not really skilled. This has never stopped me from sewing what ever I wanted (including my wedding dress) but it would be nice to feel skilful and competent at my sewing machine. There’s a different between a handsewn garment that is complete (I’ve always completed my sewing projects) and one that is good and that fits.
Sewing and stuff.
I’ve spent today getting my sewing stuff in better order. I got a new sewing box last week, and the old one will be thread storage only now, and can live in a cupboard while the pretty new box sits out.
I also emptied out my fabric bin, and sorted out all the small scraps into a heap and shook out and rolled up the large scraps and yardage. My quilt project is still very pretty and unfinished, and I’ll probably sort out it’s components into their own box or bag or something.
I still need to work out a good way/place to store my patterns, and a home upstairs for the sewing machine. Then the machine will need an inspection and maybe servicing, and I’ll be set for sewing projects.
A swiffer cover.
I”m knitting a swiffer cover. it’s the first new project I’ve started in a long time, and I went to start it and found out I had forgotten how to do the long tail cast on. Scary. My nerves are acting up me, the way they do when I try to pick up something I haven’t done in a while.
Trying to learn to spin. On a wheel, this time.
I’m already a very competent spindle spinner, and I quite like my spindles. But there is this spinning wheel that’s been around the house, and all this fiber, and I figured, why not?
It’s like trying to learn to type with toes – I’m suddenly all thumbs and dis-coordination, and my brown roving that I know could be this fine thin single is this lumpy over spun twisty tangly mess. But it is a single. And I am slowly slowly getting the hang of using my hands and feet at the same time.
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| From Drop Box |
This is the wheel – my husbands Little Diana. I also picked up a set of Valkyrie wool combs for myself! I’ve been lusting after these for a few years.
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| From Drop Box |
I’ll use these to finish (maybe finally finish) processing the wool for my sweater. And maybe I’ll spin it on my spindles, and maybe I’ll do it on the wheel, and maybe I’ll eventually actually knit it!
Some days…
…are longer then others. And this has been one of the long ones. The Bee had her first day of school yesterday, and her first full day today. Math, Social Studies, Educational Technology, and state test study. Language arts we had to skip, since our text books haven’t arrived yet.
We’ve been homeschooling for years, and it’s been wonderful, but the wee girl is not so wee anymore, and starting to need more academic education rather than the practicum approach we’ve used. We gave a stab at a formal school a couple of years ago, and she just wasn’t ready for it, but so far this year she’s taken off with a bang! It helps that this school is much better organized and the teacher we have is much easier to get in touch with. I’ve spoken with our current teacher more so far in the past two months then I spoke with the first teacher the whole year we had her.
So there was that – and then a dr’s appointment, and the usual fuss with dasHusand having lost X and needing to find it before he went to work. X varies from day to day, but is almost always lost. Occasionally it’s missing parts, and very rarely it’s the wrong one. Then we had lunch – english muffin pizzas are perhaps the quintessential school lunch food to me, and now I get to share them with my daughter!
So it’s half past four now, and I am finishing a pot of rose congou tea, and finally getting to slow down a little. The Bee has bundled off to her room to read Harry Potter, and I have a little time for tea and blogging and chess. Later I’ll have part of a bottle of very good beer, and try to make a little priority list for my personal spending this month. I have a ton of things I want to do – chess tourneys with entry fees, and it’s the World Tour of Beer buy-in season again, and I need some piano books, and there’s my drivers license temps kit to get, and a couple of books I want (okay, more then a couple. It’s always more then a couple.), and I’m getting a quote on a homebrewing kit, and I’m low on oolongs, and and and.
All in all, a good start to the new year, if a long one.
