Waiting for the band

I received a lovely new tensioned Lazy Kate for Christmas and I was spinning away, just getting ready to use it and - bing - the drive band broke. Now, I'm waiting eagerly for my replacement band to arrive and I ran across this poem about Saint Distaff's Day on January 7.

 I thought I would share with you - historically, it was the day after the Christmas festivals ended (the 12 days of Christmas), and most women went back to work with their spinning… but it was also a day of pranks and horsing around.

Saint Distaffs Day, or the morrow after Twelfth day

by Robert Herrick,

Partly worke and partly play
Ye must on S. Distaffs day:
From the Plough soone free your teame;
Then come home and fother them.
If the Maides a spinning goe,
Burne the flax, and fire the tow:
Scorch their plackets, but beware
That ye singe no maiden-haire.
Bring in pailes of water then,
Let the Maides bewash the men.
Give S. Distaffe all the right,
Then bid Christmas sport good-night;
And next morrow, every one
To his owne vocation.

You can also hear 12 lovely versions read on Librivox here!

And, now, I'll go back to my knitting - not spinning, sigh!

The Full Elvis

So, I'm working away at home. Mr. Daisy comes home for lunch (yes, if his office was any closer, it would be in my living room) and starts making some bacon. He looks at my sad little peanut butter and banana sandwich and says, "That looks like it needs some bacon."  And, surprisingly, it did!

We called it, "The Full Elvis."

It was delicious!

I will just tell myself it was in honor of my blogaversary. Yes, I started writing about knitting six years ago just prior to Thanksgiving. Bit by bit, I've added in spinning, weaving, cooking, sewing, etc., etc. 

Thanks for hanging in there!

I'm not knitting baby sweaters very much anymore but I'll tell you one embarrassing fact: I still have the blue sweater that I was knitting for my daughter. I knit it. Ripped it out. Swatched for another sweater. Tried another pattern. Ripped it out. I'm hoping to finally finish this project before she graduates from college. Keep your fingers crossed.

As for knitting, I'm currently ripping apart an unfortunate-looking hat (it was supposed to be Elizabeth Zimmerman's Snail Hat) to turn it into a Star Tam from Homespun, Handknit.

Long ago, the ripped apart hat was originally some of my own hand-spun yarn.

I think I bought the fiber at a Weavers' Guild Holiday sale but I know I didn't start spinning it until summer 2009. After about two skeins, I got bored. Well, I finally unearthed the rest of the fiber and it turns out, I need a winter hat. It's currently 20 degrees F. outside.

This is why the shoemaker's children have no shoes!

Add this to the fact that I'm doing NaNoWrimo this year and Thanksgiving is next week and I'm really suffering from a lack of sleep!

Back to those sandwiches . . .

From zombies to college

Any week that starts with zombies might be a bad one - unless they are made from delicious cake!

It's been a busy week at Chez Daisy - and it all started with a lovely wedding and some tasty CAKE! I didn't get a piece of this one so I'm hoping they are using it for their anniversary cake.

Then, we moved onto hockey camp.

As I am not the one at camp - I thought I would get some time off. Actually, I've reffed more home patio hockey games this week than I could have imagined. And what with moving all the patio furniture and actually making goals out of drying racks and towels - I think I've done mothers everywhere proud!

Any of my own free time has been sucked into participating in the Tour de Fleece - and you know, my rear end really appreciates a well padded bike short right now. Those spinning stools just aren't as  comfortable as they could be.

But the results are coming along and I am dreaming of what I'll be knitting this fall out of the Mystery Shetland Fiber.

Youngest Daughter will going off to college in August - so there also has been a lot of college themed clothes shopping going on. It almost makes me long for the days of high school uniforms . . .

Busy, busy, busy . . . ah, summer!

Funny how things catch up with you

I really thought I would have at least one pair of socks done by now. 

The Vampire Boyfriend Socks? About two inches. 

The Hedgerow Socks? Almost to the ankle.

The Mr. Greenjeans cardigan? Ripped back, cast on again in a smaller size 

and about collarbone length.

Not even a neckwarmer size!

With my hand now officially declared fractured and in a brace, knitting has become difficult. 

And you know why? The yarn catches on the velcro on my brace!

 Knit, knit, knit - pull the yarn out of the brace - knit, knit, knit. Just a little tedious! 

And purling? Oh, man - purling takes forever!

I'm thinking of wearing a sock over my brace (which, ironically, I wear over a sock for padding) to speed things up.

On the bright side, spinning is absolutely no problem. I don't know why but it doesn't make anything sore and I've been using my time wisely.

Once upon a time, GFMelissa gave me this unpleasantly dirty, messy fleece.

It wasn't her fault it was a dirty fleece - someone had actually given it to her about six months before. And, bit by bit, last winter, I cleaned it and washed it and carded it. 

Over the last two weeks, I spun and spun and finally ended up with a pretty basket of yarn.

From left to right, starting inside the basket were three skeins of a soft black/gray, one skein of steel or dark gray; then outside the basket, two skeins of black with coarse long white hairs, one bobbin of light gray singles and then two skeins of dark brown/grey. 

Enough for a traditional gansey - if you don't mind itchy rough wool. 

There was one more bag of dark, extremely VM'd ("vegetable mattered") wool left but I think I'm going to pitch it. Or something. Maybe I'll need it come the nuclear winter but . . . maybe not. 

As for the basket o' yarn, I'm not really sure what I'll be doing with it. The Minnesota Knitters' Guild has a charity program knitting hats and gloves -  this may be the stash for that. 

But I did feel very good about getting it all out of the fiber stash and into the yarn stash.

One of the things I was doing while spinning was watch Eddie Izzard comedy films. Uniquely British and a bit foul mouthed but very, very funny! 

*And for the Saturday Seven - socks. Seven small pairs of sports socks. Even I have bad weeks for giving things away!

Rainy days make for spinning days

This has been a week short on knitting - literally. I've been making chenille washcloths again.

The great thing about washcloths is that they are extremely portable - even more than socks - and if you make a mistake, no one will know. The chenille yarn (the remains of Crystal Palace Yarns Cotton Chenille from the last set of washcloths I made!) is extremely forgiving!

Today has been my first day using my Lendrum since Shepherd's Harvest - I've just haven't had the time to get things set up - but I've been spinning with a vengeance. That wretched free fleece? I've worked it up into a series of greys and black yarns and I'll be using it for something where itchiness isn't a factor. Hats? Bags? Mittens?

I've been using this rainy Saturday for spinning mostly so I can get caught up on episodes of Stargate Universe.

This is a fabulous sci-fi show with a plot very much like a "lifeboat in the stars." Using the Stargate technology (from the two previous Stargate television shows), survivors from an alien attack have ended up on an ancient starship going goodness knows where. They are trying to get home, all get along and figure out the ship's controls at the same time. Very intense! And it has Scottish actor Robert Carlyle as a good/bad scientist . . .

I did take a break to assemble today's Saturday Seven. Luckily, Oldest Daughter is moved to a new apartment this past week and supplied me with some cast-off clothes.

A pair of jeans and two tops came from her - I contributed two turtlenecks, a swimsuit cover-up, and a cycling jersey. I think this covered all the seasons! Back to SGU!

Snow day means (wool) wash day

This morning, I decided to use my snow day (at 15 degrees F. and blowing snow - no way was I going outside!) to check out the RDF (Really Dirty Fleece!) that I've been cleaning bit by bit.

I have six bags of cleaned and carded fleece. Each section is a different color.

Mostly gray - black, dark black/brown, dark gray, medium gray and light gray!

The last section of cleaned and carded wool is a nice colored gray but I don't think I'm going to be able to use it with the other colors. It is just the dirtiest section . . .

that what looks like heathered gray is really - VM. Vegetable matter. 

It got to the point today when I looked over what I was cleaning and I just bundled up that section and tossed it. The remaining sections -  dark brown, black and dark gray - were relatively clean so I washed them up and I'll get a final carding session in later this week. I don't really know what I'm going to get yarn-wise but I'm hoping to get something good enough for hats and mittens. 

One of my favorite links that I've gone to over and over this week is Spinning Forth. Ruth MacGregor's great links, videos and articles make me think this nasty old fleece might actually make some fun yarn!

Staying up late with the Dyers

I've been on the search for some new fibers to spin but I thought I'd better get my current crop out the way. So, I finished up some Punta roving that I bought from Paradise Fibers. It was very soft and a little hard to manage but I THINK that the final product wasn't too bad.



I love the orange color. I am still having trouble with tieing the dyer's knots just right - I am getting some color changing there but I can probably cut out spots of the yarn while knitting. Yes, I do cut yarn when I have to. I think I'm going to use the orange for a wrist and waistline stripe on a blue sweater. Or as part of Fair Isle yoke. Youngest Child would like a hoodie but I've already done one of those for him.



I divied the total up into a couple of skeins after I finished spinning it but I began the dyeing process a little too late for comfort. I ended up staying up to to 1 a.m. with the green and orange skeins. Sometimes, waiting for that dye bath to exhaust is exhausting! I made the yellow skein this morning and hung the whole lot out to dry on the line. Thank goodness for sunshine - it's been horribly rainy and yucky this fall.



Tonight, I spent some time taking it from skeins and turning into center pull balls. Once I get the purple vest going, I'll spend some time coming up with a pattern. Cheerful colors - they'll make it easy to spot Youngest Child in a crowd!

Settling in for the long haul . . .

I've been spending more time than usual in Chez Daisy knitting and spinning but really, there isn't much movement. Things are slow. The spinning is more of the blue ("Blue Skies" is the colorway) for Youngest Child's sweater. It's lovely - blue with a bit of a sheen but I'm having a bit of trouble mastering my new plying head. Good thing the yarn is for a sweater.



My poor pathetic pink sock. I didn't bother to reskein the yarn and steam out the kinks left by my last sock. Somehow, it seems ever sadder today. It's a good stop on the road to the last resort of knitting.



At least the giant pumpkin is still growing. I swore it would be done last week - I guess I'll have to give Rumplestilskin my first born child now. Or do I owe it to the witch who grows the rapunzel? Some fairy tale creature better show up and finish the pumpkin soon or I'll have to keep it in hibernation until next fall. Since I bought this yarn and patterns last year, I'm pretty sure my fall decorating will survive without it!



I've got some knitting company tonight - Die Kinder scattered as soon as we fed them ice cream (Ben & Jerry's "Steven Colbert's American Dream" Yum!) - but the Old Man and the Dog stuck around. Until the liver treats run out. Then, I'll be on my own.

Inanimate objects make me feel guilty.

I think one of the reasons I really like the Saturday Seven concept is that unused objects make me guilty. Here I have a stack of perfectly fine school uniform skirts, a school polo, and an outgrown pair of Kermit pajama pants are going unused. I don't have any reason to keep them and they are all too good to throw away. Yet, they've been lounging about my laundry room all summer. They have no purpose any more in my family. Not allowing these objects to have a purpose makes me feel bad. Guilty, even. It shouldn't matter - it's not like they are animate, living beings - but I feel like their purpose is being denied.

In Nina Kiriki Hoffman's great book, "A Red Heart of Memories," Matt (Matilda) Black can speak with inanimate objects. She talks with cars and trash cans and walls - generally everything. Mostly, they tell her that they are happiest when they are doing what they are designed to do. Garbage cans are happy when they have trash in them. Walls like standing up. Cars like running smoothly. Now, I don't really think that these skirts will feel happier being worn by school girls - but that's what they are for and I want them to go on working. Someone needs them and I don't, so - off to the uniform exchange. The pajamas will probably go to the daughters of a friend of mine. They can fight over Kermit.




My trusty Lendrum has been making me feel guilty for another reason altogether. I pulled it out last spring to spin up some pin rovings I dyed. The roving is just too rough, however, so I left it out to use after Shepherd's Harvest in May.

Well, since then, it's been gathering dust. Just something to vacuum around. Friday, however, I found the lovely Riverwinds Farm Cormo roving I bought at Shepherd's Harvest and went searching for fiber. I dug up this gorgeous blue Corridale roving (from last year's SH, I fear) and began some spinning. Late in the day, I had a spare hour and ran over to Creative Fibers in Minneapolis where I picked up this great Oak Lichen greeen cloud roving made by the Matt Shimon's Red Star Yarn Company. It is the nicest prepared fiber. I think I was almost giddy with happiness on the way home. Sometimes, you just need to make some yarn. That roving was calling to me to be made into yarn! I am a bit puzzled about what the yarn will need to become but . . . that can wait. After all, it took amost two years for the blue yarn to "become."