Five things make a post

1. My siblings came to visit in this weekend, which was a delight. I still had work and employees around but I stopped working as soon as they were done for the day and started the campfire in the backyard. There was much delicious food, chatting and my mom gave me some fleece as a birthday gift. Gorgeous fleece from Clemes and Clemes, looking forward to working with it. My brother brought his dogs, so I got dog snuggle times and much general amusement because his dogs are so weird and funny

2. My mom still hasn't apologized for using my strainer but she offered to pay for the new one, so that's solid

3. Between me and the employees, we got all of the old plastic mulch out of the field that has been lingering there for years, my dad didn't want to just pull it up by hand the year we tried it and then he kept putting off removing it. We've got strawberries going in that field next year, so it had to get up. 

4. I was going to run to town today and get groceries and pick up more fertilizer for the strawberries, but it's a holiday and probably no one is open. Oh no, I'll just need to stay home and enjoy my day off work and bake things :)

5. The weather has been SO NICE. I can't believe we got weeks of nice weather in August and so far predicted into Sept. Hoodies and blankets and not that much sweating while working. It's incredible. I've been irrigating because it's dry but nothing like beautiful temps in the upper 60s, low 70s to make me appreciate it after how hot and muggy most of the summer was. 

Six months of crafting update

Time has passed but I'm now getting back into the swing of things

Vague goals for crafting from the last time

• spin yarn - I have been spinning, both on my supported spindle and on my little electric wheel that lives on the top of a small shelf next to my desk. This setup works decently, the spindle I take with me and spin on register and I've filled it just about, so I need to wind it off. I've completed a pound of merino spun as a fine 2ply and started an 8oz spin. I desperately miss my CPW but it's just too big to have in the house currently.
• knit sweater - I have worked on this, I'm most of the way done with the sleeves, I need to try it on and see how much farther I have to knit.
• get loom up and running- I did this! It took me forever. I chose a simply herringbone to get it back in tune and then worked on everything an hour at a time a few times a week. The weaving is now going quickly which is nice
• sewing project - I'm making progress, now to the actual sewing stages. I was stymied for several weeks by my mom's iron leaking water everywhere and I really needed to iron the pieces I was working on, but new iron has been acquired. I've been piecing the fronts together and dealing with how fiddly the fabric is. I should have fulled it more but oh well
• fleece processing - I have made a significant dent in the fleece, I'm almost done, just need to dedicate some time to it
• other - I fixed my skein reel, which fell off the truck tailgate during the move and broke in half. It's not a beautiful fix but the reel is now usable so I was able to skein a bunch of yarn and measure it. I also soldering the connectors on my electric wheel's pedal that had broken apart, easy fix. I canceled my subscription to Ply magazine, despite my joy of spinning, I didn't find it super useful. It was a lot of writing that boiled down to: yes you can do this thing and here is exactly how you do it. which. I just do the thing and don't worry about it. I think people need a lot of permissions with spinning to really get out of their comfort zone and most of the stuff is pretty intuitive (for me). Instead I subscribed to Weft, which I'm enjoying a lot more since handweaving has a lot more technical details and tips/tricks to make it faster and easier. Plus ideas!

Merino spin!
1 pound of purple merino, it had little streaks of other colors in it which was nice. I picked this up at the weavers guild bucket sale, it was originally from Ashland Bay. I spun it as a 2ply and it was very fine. 2494 yards. I haven't washed it yet but hopefully soon. The colors are very difficult to get an accurate photo


( more pictures! )

Goals for the next month or two:

• finish knitting the sweater because then I can wear it. I really want to wear it
• spin!
• weave!
• sew!
• pull out, clean and finish the great wheel while the weather is nice
• process fleece

its monday

Hey all, if you'd like to join the crafting hangout, it is tonight from 6-8pm ET!

 

Video encouraged but not required!

 

Topic: Crafting Hangout

Time: Mondays 6:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

 

Join Zoom Meeting

Link

 

Meeting ID: 973 2674 2763