Sled dog?

Another busy week, working from home, working until 8:30pm, traveling for training and not much free time.

Today, I managed to get home while the sun was still in the sky and illuminating the earth enough for Sadie and I to venture out. Too bad it was only 9 degrees. Dang, that wind cut into my skin!

Of course it didn't help I was rolling in the snow.


I bought a sled on Tuesday and trained Sadie to sit in it with me while sitting on the living room floor. This worked great, but although I expected it, I did not realize how slippery the sled would be for her once it was cold.

We went down our first slope okay - I had to hold her upright and she tried to jump out. But I swear she loved it. She definitely got a adrenalin rush - she was zooming all over like a crazy dog after that! Even 1/2 hour later when I took these photos, she was still going strong.

I am going to stop at the dollar store tomorrow for a bath mat to see if that works for traction. I think I will get some of that shelf gripper/shelf liner stuff as a back up. Then we will give it another try tomorrow. I sure hope it is warmer out then.

Coming soon: EdenPure energy saver analysis. I am still gathering facts and verifying meter readings, and taking screen shots of their graphs and tables. Bet you can't wait for THAT boring report. :)

Sunny Snowy Days

"This is the best walk ever!"

This has been another hectic week.

The big wrench in the fan was Wednesday. I worked 7am to 8:45pm. On the bright side, I pulled all my hours on that site in one day. So I did not have to work Friday afternoon and I do not have to work on Saturday! I may finally go snowshoeing tomorrow!

Sadie and I had two opportunities to walk this week. The sun has been out and I swear the days are getting a little tiny bit longer. It is still daylight a little after 5pm, so we had a short walk yesterday and a much longer one tonight.

That means more photo ops too. I took several photos, then the battery died. I came home and tried some new techniques I learned today for Photoshop. I played with a little creative cropping as well.

I have been researching Photoshop tutorials for my 8th grade class. The class was originally 3 classes of 6 week duration and I have them a total of 20 weeks. I use the extra weeks to cover the material they are having trouble with and then whatever is left over goes toward the non-credit course. The last few weeks they are with me, I teach them how to create graphics for their web pages and how to modify and save them for use on the web. This group is especially sharp and I want to vamp up the materials to challenge them and I want to find video tutorials for them to be able to watch and learn from while at home. So I have been spending my spare time searching Creative Commons for materials to use in class. I am finding a bunch of stuff and the hard part is deciding what to use. I am going to have to sit down and draw up an outline of what I have now and build from there.

Weekend fiber projects

Weekend fiber projects? As a self-declared yarn snob, I am not sure I would call acrylic yarn a "fiber", but it was my yarn of choice when I decided to take part in a colorwork mystery knit-a-long. I did not want to invest a lot of money when it was a last minute decision, I did not know what I was knitting, and I didn't know if I would stay with the project until the end. After all, it was a ambitious learning experience. Colorwork, a zipper, sewing and steeking! All before Christmas? As it turned out, I did not finish with the rest of the KAL participants. Obviously, since I am still working on it! I have more photos of the progress on this in my Ravelry projects.

I finished the chart this weekend. Then I "sewed" along the steek outline by crocheting on either side. Then I steeked! Woo woo! I had never done this before and was worried I would have trouble actually cutting something I had spent months knitting...even if it was acrylic! I didn't have a problem. :) I blocked it also. I didn't think blocking acrylic was necessary, but I decided it was part of the learning process and did it anyway. Then I picked up stitches and knitted along one side of the steek. I will work on the other side tonight.

I gave up the KAL when they announced what it was at the end. At the time, I was disappointed and set the whole thing aside in order to prepare for Christmas. I picked it up again a week ago and fell in love with stranded colorwork again. I re-embraced the learning process again with enthusiasm. It has been fun and a challenge. I am almost ready for sewing in the zipper. It calls for a 30" zipper and I found one online at Joann's for less than $5.

More true to the meaning of fiber project....I did some spinning as well this weekend. I wanted to get started on the brown wool - I call it Laverne and Shirley. The names of the sheep the fleece came from. It isn't the greatest quality, since it is some of the first fleece LC Guy sheared and the first I processed. It was sunburned and full of VM. I wanted to use it and ended up sending it to a mill for processing. They did an amazing job with what they were given! The girls are shown (left) and the amazing results from the mill are also shown. The bag is 3 or 3.5 lbs of roving.

My goal is to have enough brown handspun ready by the beginning of the Olympics. If I have enough, I have a project and pattern in mind to gift to LC Guy for showering me fleece. I have promising him an item made from his hard work and learning experience ever since the beginning. So it is long overdue.

Why by the Olympics? It is a traditional knitting challenge on Ravelry. You cast on when they light the torch and finish the project at the end of the closing ceremony. Do they put out the torch? I am not sure they do, so we will just say it has to be done by the end of the closing ceremony. Two weeks should be enough time....

My knitting group is participating in the challenge and we are having a party for the opening where we will all cast on our projects for our chosen event category.

Two entries in one day...Now I am tired of typing. Time to check email and then sit down for some spinning.

Fall Lamb Fleece processing

I have been promising LC Guy and my readers an update on the progress I have been making on the Fall '09 Lamb Shearing.

I have had many people question a fall shearing. I can't answer this. My thinking is this: Sheep raised for their wool are sheared only in the spring. They want the wool as long as possible. All sheep are sheared in the spring to remove the dirty fleece prior to lambing to make it easier and cleaner during birth. It is also more comfortable for the sheep to not have a heavy coat during the heat of the summer. The wool I am being gifted with is from sheep raised for meat. There is a school of thought that indicates the sheep grow faster without their metabolic energy going into wool. They have time to grow an adequate coat before winter and allowing the flock in a smallish barn would provide additional benefit.

I have made some progress on the 31 pounds I was given this fall. Not much progress, but some. I have no place to store the unwashed fleece. Therefore, I have it in a large Rubbermaid container outside in the carport. I won't have to worry about moths until spring. But, I was concerned about how the cold would harden the lanolin. I had learned in one of my podcasts, that this may make if difficult to wash it all out. So far, I have not had a problem. As you can see in the last photo, it cleaned up gorgeous! I will try to wash all of it before spring.

The photo above and below are fresh out of the feed bag and dumped onto the wool bag I made. I had to use lots of air freshener on this day! My cat, Mister, is shown enjoying the pungence. Sadie and Lucky sniffed around it as well. It was kinda hard NOT to escape the smell. This is why storing my uncleaned fleece indoors is not an option.


Below is a close up of some of the better locks. I am becoming more picky about what I save to process myself. When I was first gifted with fleece, I was salvaging whatever I could - like a Scrooge. It was a lot of time and work - and the end product was not desirable. Now, I am pickier and love the results. One of these days, I will do a new batt vs older batt photo comparison so you can see the dramatic difference. The main visible difference is in the number of neps in the batts. As LC Guy and I both improve our knowledge and skills, the overall quality improves as well.

After some sorting, picking out the VM, and washing in the washing machine, the locks come out looking like this photo below. NICE!


Drumcarding still has many challenges for me. I am working on going very slow. With 31 lbs in my future, this is frustrating! I am playing with ways to minimize the time, without changing the speed of the drum rotation. I have been checking a "batch" of locks for cuts and VM before putting them in the feeder. Then I put them through without flicking the ends in advance. I know that would be the best way, but that process is extremely hard on my hands - probably due to the fibro. So, I have to save that for the best of the best locks.

I laid the batt above over a lampshade. Normally, you can hold the batt up to a window or sunlight to see through the finished batt. I used the lampshade to be able to photograph it for the process. I love how it turned out...a couple neps, but otherwise it is thick, soft, and consistent. I sent it through the drumcarder 3 times - slowly.

Below are photos of the finished batts taken indoors, in front of the window on a sunny winter day.


Besides going slow, the most trying challenge I have discovered recently is the time of year. Static electricity makes drumcarding a pain in the batt. I tried lotion on my hands, dryer sheets on my fingers, and on the wool, and the teeth of the drumcarder. The results were briefly effective. I did not want to use oil or spray on diluted liquid fabric softener. I used a little water to mist it while I compiled enough to spin a sample. I may just wait until spring to do the rest.

A "full" year so far

Yesterday, I worked until noon and then returned the Steamvac to Erin. :( I hated to part with it! I have been using it frequently and it is super easy to use. I may have to run out and buy one soon. It comes in handy for all the accidents pets tend to have. I have two old cats and they are the source of most of the messes, but my Sadie dog has stomach problems once in awhile.

Image by Velo Steve via Flickr

We went to eat lunch around 1 and stayed until 3pm! I had to run to Walmart after that. I spent the evening talking on the phone with my sister - totally cracked me up with her story about Jordan's wisdom teeth extraction. Apparently, my naturally talkative niece had to ask tons of questions while still under the influence of the anesthesia. You will have to ask her to tell it, it was priceless.

I have been spending a lot of time on the phone lately. It isn't something I planned, just happens that I have been getting calls from people I haven't heard from in awhile, or others have news to share, or I'm getting to know someone new.

Today, Sunday, I went back to bed around 11am because I was in pain and sore. After a short nap, I felt better and got dressed. I really wanted to go to Grayling and check out a store someone had told me about. Apparently, this store has always been there, and I did not know of it's existence! A store that sells Woolrich and Smartwool and I don't know about it? I packed a gift card received for Christmas and Sadie and we headed out the door.

But first, a stop at the top of the hill for a short frolic for Sadie. It has been so cold, I have not been able to walk her. But lately, I have found I can go to the hill and watch the sledders and Sadie gets lots of exercise, running up and down the hill, and she gets to socialize with people, something she isn't good at and needs the practice. She likes people, she is just afraid of them. I don't know what happened to her before I adopted her, but I'm sure she wasn't treated well by a man. She is more likely to approach kids than adults.

In Grayling, I found the store, North Country something, but it was closed. In fact, I wanted to spend money, but every place I tried was closed! Even the feed store. Oh well, I know the store hours now and I can go another time. Not spending money is a good thing anyway.

So we went back to the hill for about 45 minutes. A long time, considering how cold it was. It was 25, but the wind was bringing it down even more. There were even more people there, and some of the same people as well. Sadie ran up and down the hill and let the little kids pet her.

When we came home, I put some pots on to boil and while Sadie laid in front of the EdenPure, I began fulling 4 skeins of yarn. I had done the last batch of plying on Friday and I needed to get this done so I can start with the dark brown (Laverne and Shirley) roving. I need the dark brown to start a fair isle hat for LC Guy. I promised him this when he first started showering me with wool two seasons ago. I need to get'r done!

Fulling yarn goes against everything they tell you about fiber preparation! When you are cleaning and wool to prepare it to spin, you have to be very careful you don't felt it while washing it. Felting is when wool sticks together when soap, hot water, and agitation are combined. When you "full" yarn, you put your hard earned skeins into a pot of boiled water with soap added. Then you take a toilet plunger and pound the crap out of it. Then dunk it into cold water - then back to the hot water. The first time I did it, I was a wreck just thinking about it. But it turned out awesome and I knew I would do it again. I used this method to prepare the skein I made for the skein competition last September. Although, I neglected to mention the part about "fulling" in my blog posts due to a lack of time. I followed the directions on this blog page and found them helpful and it certainly helped that the author, Barbara, had the same concerns as I did.

I still need to pound (whack them on a counter) the skeins, but they are hanging in the bathroom after I spun them out in the washing machine. I am beginning to dream of a studio that includes its own sinks, washer and dryer, has lots of windows, and would take up 2/3s of my house. I don't see a problem with that, do you?

I still need to add a photo or two, so I am going to stop here. I will be editing photos this week for the lamb's wool I have been working on and want to post here for documentation.

Coming Soon: EdenPure Analysis & Wool Processing Update

Last short post - I promise!

Things are finally starting to settle down. I loved having all that time off - much needed! I hope to have a "real" blog post this weekend. I have been working on processing 8 of the 30+ lbs of lambs wool LC Guy gave me. I am loving how it is turning out! I have been comparing it to the batts I process last summer and there is a dramatic improvement. I am not sure it will "show" in the photos, but the quality and feel are apparent. So soft, light, and fluffy! I have lots of pictures, just need to prep them.

The lake photos were taken from the North end, west side. The island is to the right, but not in the photo.
And yes, the lake has NOT frozen over yet. This was taken Jan. 2, 2010