First Fleece finalized

 The knitting can be revealed finally. My head is still wonky and I'm not supposed to be on the computer yet, but I couldn't resist.

Winter 2009, fleece is washed and has dried enough that I can card it, with a little help.

Spinning in progress over the next two years on my lovely little Herring Wheel 

 Lucas modeling his Christmas (2012) vest and a close up of the knitting. I'm proud of myself for not showing this off before Lucas received it.

Now back to staring at the walls until the head is better.

Spinning the Blues - the good kind

I was recently at the Maritime Fibre Arts Retreat at the Atlantica Oak Island Hotel with tons of women. We stopped into Have A Yarn for a sock yarn fix. Two for me, one for Steve.

During the weekend, I picked up an order I had placed with Bobbin Tree

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Bobbin-Tree/370613014589


I needed colour and couldn't resist the yellow orange combination. I am hoping a nice goldy colour comes out of it.

I just couldn't leave the blue-y-mauves alone, although they aren't really happy colours. They are more content colours.

I had been meaning to get the spinning wheel going for about 3 weeks before the retreat and seriously considered shoving it in the car along with two other women, three suitcases, food, wine and project boxes. I'm glad I didn't because I would have lost an eye sharing the back seat with the wheel. Once home, I pulled out the 4 ounces of lilac Blue Faced Liecester Top from Mountain Colors Inc. (American spelling so probably an American product)

On Thursday, I divided the roving into two parts and started spinning. I started just after lunch and kept going until I had to leave to meet Steve at 5:00. I finished off the last bit that evening. On Saturday I started the second half and managed to nearly spin through it all.

On Sunday, the last bit was spun and then I plied it all.

Cleo Belle thought she needed to help with the photos.

The resulting yarn is very nice. There is 130 metres, meaning a nice pair of mittens might happen next winter.

Shetland fleece or dust bunnies?

Dust bunnies?

Although it is a possibility, especially if I were to sweep in the studio, these are not ferocious dustbunnies massing for an attack, but "rolags" from two unknown sheep fleeces. When I was at the spinning retreat in PEI two years ago there was a huge box of donations of fleece and fibres that people could dip into and make crazy batts to spin from. There was a bunch of grey curly bits and some dark grey crimpy bits, both of which I pulled out and stuck in my bag.

My daughter was over helping me sort out my I-tunes music and while she was doing that, I decided to card these and see what would happen. I used the hand carders, placing bits of fleece on the teeth.

Then, the second comb is flicked through the bits and the fibres start to open up. This has to be done a time or two more, depending on how easily the fibres open. The light grey fibres were very curly and greasy, meaning that they had not been well washed, if at all. The dark grey was like combing through a baby's hair, very easy. (Unless you are my daughter who refused to let anyone but her grandmother comb her hair until she was 15)

Eventually I had combed everything and the results were a small pile of the dark grey and a larger pile of the light grey.

The problems with my I-tunes were not substantial but took a lot of waiting around for the music files to move around. While Phoebe and I were waiting, discussing the problems of love and prom dress hemlines, I managed to spin up the dark grey. I think it is a Shetland wool, due to watching someone a few days ago spin a Shetland. She was spinning a tighter yarn, I opted for a slightly more open yarn, meaning it will hopefully be warmer with the increased air space between fibres. Did you know that? The softer or loftier your yarn is, the more air is between the fibres and therefore the better the insulating opportunities.

This is the final yarn from the light grey, also spun as openly as I could manage. Phoebe had long gone from the house by then and it took about 3 hours to spin. I had lanolin all over my hands and jeans from the unwashed state of the rolags. This fleece has been washed in a light detergent and dried as a skein. There is a surprising amount from all those dusty bunnies that you saw at the top of the post. I managed to get 140 metres out of them all. That means a very nice scarf is possible.

New Obsessions

Life is rarely slow around here unless it is the second or third day of pouring rain, everything is closed, we've caught up on all chores we are interested in doing and the book pile is getting low. And that's how it was just a few days ago but, luckily, Steve's Christmas present arrived in the mail (a few days late but we were expecting it to arrive in February). Steve did several happy dances and nearly killed himself doing them.

The box opened and lo and behold...Yup, all the ingredients for a gourd banjo. Steve skipped down to the basement,

and hauled up to the dining room all the tools he needed for putting his gourd banjo together.

This kept Captain Eccentric busy for the remainder of the holiday season and he is threatening my recorder group with coming to a session and accompanying us. The ladies are simply confused by this offer.

I, on the other hand, did something sensible and washed half the fleece I had purchased at the spinning retreat.

Icelandic fleece....

Corriedale fleece....

Even the soap and vinegar are local, so the whole darn thing means 100% local spinning.

To illustrate the essential difference between Steve and I, imagine us each in our seperate corners going about our business.

I am thinking, "What a crazy thing Steve is spending his time on."...

while he is thinking, "Isn't it nice that Laureen will have some neat fleece to spin in a few days." I'm Rome, he's Greece. I'm a black streak, he's a happy sky. It seems to work, we both had a really relaxing holiday.

Shorn Sheep

Urban farming in the winter is a bit of a joke. Beyond tidying the garden up and getting the lawn furniture and tools tucked away, there isn't that much to do. We've dug the pea and bean stems into the soil, emptied the heavier containers into a heap near the compost bin and put the lighter containers, soil in, into the shed.

We rake our leaves onto the beds, both ornamental and veggie for two reasons. One to keep the frost heaving down (I think this is more wishful thinking than anything) and because none of our neighbours rake we inherit all their leaves over the winter and I have to do it all again anyways. This is a spring job for us.

Time to turn to the sheep. Nope, I don't have a little sheep, or “bap” as Phoebe used to call them, roaming around the garden. It would be neat though to have a mini sheep with a bell on, waltzing around the neighbour's yards, seeing as how most of them see gardens as a place to hide beer bottles. This is why I think I can get a bee hive and no one will notice and I wouldn't be surprised to find out that chickens would go unnoticed for a long time also.

But to the sheep. For the past two springs I have purchased a fleece from local shepherd Marilyn Rand's farm, Lambs Run Farm in Canning, Nova Scotia. The first fleece was a warm grey brown (or taupe for those of you who insist) and while I detest the colour, I love the end product.















When I first bought this, I was terrified of the processing I faced. I was afraid I would felt the fleece, not wash it enough, wash it too much or never get around to spinning it. Spinning it would be a real challenge, since I had no idea how to spin. Yet, buying a fleece seemed like a cool thing to do.















This spring I bought another fleece, last year's having worked out so well. It is a light oatmeal kind of colour unspun but once it is spun, it will likely go lighter and turn into more of an eggshell colour.















The fleece has gone through it's first bath. Yummy looking water, huh? The water temperature is as hot as it can be coming out of a tap, and it has to soak for 20 minutes, first in the one bath, then after sort of draining it, for a further 20 minutes in the second bath.















The fleece is in its final bath, which contains vinegar. This helps to cut the remaining grease. It doesn't harm the lanolin.














The fleece is sopping wet so it can't dry in a big heap. The centre would start to smell probably horrible things would happen. I've tried to spread it out around the basement on things that air can circulate around. You can't see it, but there is another amount drying that is double that in the photo.

I think this process of buying, washing and eventually spinning and knitting a local sheperd's fleece is keeping in the spirit of urban farming. It keeps me connected to the parts of farming I can't do in the city, such as keeping livestock, the left over fleece is used to stuff small toys I knit for my mom's charity,














and the spinning keeps me connected to a craft that is gadzillion of years old. Wait till you see my spinning wheel!