The Rabbit Hole and more

 My car is now freed from the garage. The garage door was fixed today.  The broken spring was older than the service man who fixed it.  The spring was from the late 1980’s,the original garage door spring from when our house was built.  He had never seen one so old.  The new spring is made of lighter more brittle steel that should last only 10 to 12 years.  How is that good for the environment? We should be making things that last as long as the part it is replacing.  We definitely live in the era of greed by big business.  Make things break sooner and don’t provide replacement parts of the same quality if they break.  

I did a bit of hand carding of an art wool batt that was just so not right for spinning as it was.  The carders worked great.  Now if I can just get a decent rolag off the carders.  I do admit that it has been a few years since I have carded wool by hand.  I am keeping up with spinning one 2 ounce/ 50 grams batt a day.  I can feel the difference already, which means that I am almost hopelessly out of shape.  Maybe by the time I go through all 3 boxes of mini batts, I will be ready for the 4 ounce/ 100 grams a day. If not 2 days is not an unreasonable amount of time to spin a braid.  Even after a major de stash of wool, I still have a closet full of wool. The good news is I kept only what I wanted to spin.  

Then that of course will lead to more weaving and knitting.  It will mostly go to my charity projects.  That is unless I like it a bit too much to let it go.  As I feel better, hopefully more projects will get finished and leave the house.  

They Don’t Make Things Like They Used To

 This was the bane of my existence today.  When the garage door closed this morning, the garage door made a strange thunk. I thought the garage door had came off the rail.  John came home and noticed the broken spring. The space between the spring is not supposed to be there. The spring was the original spring from when the house was built.  Not even 40 years old. The poor thing, the heat must have gotten to it. It could not possibly be metal fatigue. 

I only found this out on the way to the grocery store. Needless to say my car did not make it out of the garage. So until the garage door is fixed, meaning a new spring is installed. My car is stuck in the garage.  Hopefully they can fix it tomorrow.  Until it is fixed I am stuck at home.  

Hopefully this will give me a chance to tweak the numbers on the third piece of the new pattern. Then warp the loom. I have started spinning one, 2 ounce art batt a day to increase my exercise. Eventually I hope to increase my spinning time, on my Louet Victoria.  Which is equivalent to riding a bike or using the sitting elliptical machine. I currently have three boxes of 2 ounce mini art batts. I am spinning them as singles because it is easier to weave with them. Then hopefully I will have more to donate to the children’s clothing bank that I support. I have a feeling that it is going to be a rough year for many families. 

This and that

 We were lucky enough to be the first service call of the morning.  The garage door is now fixed.  The cause was above my pay grade.  The sensors went out.  The repair man installed new sensors.  He also cleaned the tracks and greased them.  We are good to go.  

On the other hand it is rag weed season in Tucson.  Because of the unusually high temperatures we have rag weed in December.  That’s supposed to be a late January- February thing.  Also don’t move to Arizona if you want to get rid of your allergies.  The people who moved here in the 1920’s to 1950’s to get better air quality brought all and I do mean all their pollinating plants with them.  So because of our moderate temperatures we have some form of pollen all year long.  My poor nose.  

I did get to a color change on my latest 60 inch scarf. I do have to say that by the time I am finally finished with this scarf nobody will be able to tell that I have 2 full skeins of yellow in the scarf.  The yellow which is worsted weight yarn is dominated by the sock weight yarn.  It is making some interesting color ways.  

It’s time to call it a night.