One Week Out

 I am 1 week out from surgery last Friday and am being to feel better.  I am taking less Tylenol. I am sleeping better.  My daily numbers are down.  Apparently pain and the stress that the pain causes make all numbers go up.  I feel like my old self joking around with my husband.  I am getting faster with my zingers. 

So as much as the first week after surgery was difficult for me, in the end run it was very good to get the repair work done.  Yes, I do for the most part consider surgery repair work.  I still have 1 week of resting to do.  And my 1st post op next week.  I am hoping that things are healing to plan.  

Today I managed to finish plying the last third of my Tour de Fleece yarn.  I even managed to work out chain plying on my Hanson e-spinner, I just wish my arms were longer.  I am almost finished with the brim on the hat that I started yesterday. This one will be a planed scrappy hat.  

At this time blogger is having trouble uploading pictures. I will post the hat to instagram.

My First Plying

 Ok I have the first 3 plys done for Tour de Fleece 2024.  As you can tell by the 3 skeins of yarn the first plying attempt was not as good as the second or third.  I find that’s the great thing about being an artist, everything is not set in stone except marble sculptures.  

So instead of going from the top down on a shawl with my Tour de Fleece spinning, I have a new game plan.  The first skein of yarn will go into a one of a kind scarf for a child who utilizes the Flowing Well’s School District Clothing Bank. Since the yarn is way too bumpy to knit.  The yarn will add a unique texture to the scarf.  Nothing goes to waste.  Everything in art has a purpose.  

I will continue with my Tour de Fleece spin and come up with a game plan for the rest of the yarn.  The pictures below are pre snd post washing and thwacking.  

New Glasses and more

 Dispute my body and I not getting along today, I did manage to get out of the house early.  We headed to Costco to pick new glasses and get the lenses replaced in my sun glasses.  My new indoor glasses happened to be the first pair I picked out.  For the first time in I can’t remember when, I did not need to get high index lens.  This is all due to the cataract surgery.  They should be here in about 2 weeks.  As usual we bought more than was on our list of nuts and new glasses.  It was not all me getting extras this time.  

After dinner I was finally ready to spin, so I plyed 1 skein of yarn out of the 2 that needed to be plyed.  The skein will hit the hot water as soon as I wake up tomorrow. Then thwacking and off to a hot garage to dry. The only question remains, will the thwacking water evaporate before I finish hanging up the yarn. I will ply the other skein tomorrow.  Then decide on my next spin.

Did I mention that they extended the heat emergency until Monday?  So there is not much to do except cleaning, spinning, knitting, weaving and deep cleaning.  

The Last of Day 5

 These are the last 2 skeins of day 5 of Spin Together 2021. With a total contest yardage of 480 yards.  I like the colors of Bees the best.   Bees is the yellow green and light blue color way.  This. brings my contest totals up to 1,578 yards.  Since a mile is 1,760 yards I just might have a chance at spinning a mile of yarn this week.  No wonder my calf muscles are protesting.  

Sorry for the second post you know is coming tonight.  

Spin Together Day 5

 As you can tell from the picture below I spent the afternoon spinning mini batts. I managed to spin 5 mini batts today. With the 3 batts from yesterday that is 8 spun in 2 days, waiting to be plyed.  These are 4 ounce bobbins and I managed to get 6 ounces on the front left bobbin. I will try to get them all plyed and skeined after dinner.  Usually plying goes fast for me.   I would have spun more but ran out of bobbins for my woolly winder.  

This is the only plyed yarn that got skeined tonight. I am calling it shades of blue. This is a keeper for a me project.  It has a nice even balance and the coloring is fantastic.  Under traditional counting it has 182 yards. With the Spin Together 2021 rules it has 546 yards.   Which will bring me to over 1000 contest yards.  My biggest bobbins that I plyed tonight did not get skeined because it bed time, and there is always  tomorrow morning.  I also have to spin another bobbin of white plying yarn. I still have 2 bobbins that need to be plyed. I thought 6 ounces of white was going to be enough, I was wrong.  So I will fill another bobbin tomorrow.  Then ply the rest before I spin more batts.  

The Next Challenge

My next Spinning and knitting challenge is to take these 2 tubs of lace and fingering weight yarns and reaping them to make a worsted weight yarn for charity hat and scarf knitting, and scarf weaving. There was a phase in my knitting where I actually thought I could find the perfect time to knit lace work.  After adding bits of lace to some projects I found that lace knitting was not fun and not for me.   To compound the problem well meaning friends gave me a lot of wool to knit with.  I just don’t knit with those weights of yarn.  

So the first part of the challenge will be to sort the yarn between super wash and non super wash wool.  The super wash wool will be plyed to make charity hats and scarfs.  The non super wash will be plyed to make woven scarfs.  The reason for this is that when a scarf is woven and washed there is a certain amount of shrinkage that goes along with the finishing process.  So I don’t have to worry that it will shrink. The shrinkage would be a major problem with hand knit hats and scarfs.  

The first photo is how the yarn will look like after it is replyed the second picture is the first stage of the challenge. Once this is finished I will move to odd balls of dk weight yarns. If you are a spinner and want to learn how to do this and just happen to live or visit the Tucson area just call Grandmas Spinning Wheel to schedule a class. I can schedule a class with anywhere from 1 to 5 students.  If your spinning group or guild would like to learn just contact me.   It is a great stash buster.  I even make art yarns with plying.

Crazy Busy

It has been crazy busy around here lately. Today was the first day in almost a week that I could knit. I have been spending my knitting down time plying very thin yarn into a heavyweight yarn to knit with. I tend to get a lot of bits and pieces of lace and sock weight yarn that I am given for hats. I generally prefer to knit charity hats on larger sized knitting needles.  So I ply the yarn on bad hand days. 

I have also been Zenning more and Teri helped for a few hours last weekend. Sadly the space she made is almost filled. It has been a long day. So night all. 

Feeling Better

Tonight I finally started to feel better.  After a few days of napping and being a couch potato I really wanted to spin tonight. Since I was not up to much, I plyed some sock yarn to make it more suitable for charity hat knitting.

Eric and John are feeling better too. We fell line dominoes with this cold, first Eric, then John and because I was exhausted I got it too.  I hope to have my voice back soon, right now it is very spotty. Some times I have it and sometimes it is gone.  Although I think we will be staying home until our regularly scheduled activities next week.

I expected the laundry to be knee high tomorrow.  I do not intend to get caught up for a few days.  We will e on minimum work and maximum rest for a few more days.

What to Do With Lace Weight Yarn

For those of you who know me well, you know that after 20 years of knitting I still don’t have time to knit lace or socks. This should read that I usually need mindless knitting.  So I decided to ply my lace and sock weights yarns into yarn for charity hats. 

An elegant solution to having too much lace weight yarn.  I took 2 skeins of lace weight yarn and did the 1st spin in an S ply. It was still to thin to knit hats with. So I wound the yarn into a cake and Z plied from both the inside and outside together. Tomorrow I will skein it and give it a hot bath to set the twist then track and hang dry. Below is a nicely balanced 4 ply yarn. The sock yarn will only need to be plied once. 

Normally I do my plying on my Louet S15, but in this case I used my Louet Victoria for the second round of plying because it was easier on my right leg.  The S15 is a single treadle Wheel, while the Victoria is a double treadle Wheel.

Plying

I spent the day plying art yarn for the retreat next week. I plyed close to a thousand yards of art yarn today, with my largest skein being close to 300 yards.  I have a few more samples to make so tomorrow I will be spinning again. Pictures to follow as soon as I am finished.

I Cheated

I am not usually the one to really break into any kind of present early. I really enjoy the aniticapation, wondering what is in the box. That said, I knew what John had gotten me for my birthday this year and the box was taunting me to open it. The box won, I could not wait any longer to play with my new WooLee Winder for the Lendrum spinning wheel.  

Well I have to say this, I do not feel guilty about it.  I actually played 2 skeins of yarn and spun another 2 skeins of yarn yesterday.  I have not measured ounce for ounce but to the naked eye it seems to get twice the amount of yarn on the bobbin. I think this may be due to the way the yarn is wound onto the bobbin. I have to say that John really knows how to pick out birthday presents.  Thank you John.  

Tour De Fleece Day 2

Well it is that time of year again. Time for the annual Tour De Fleece. I think I signed up for a couple of teams. Yesterday got off to a rocky start. However today was fantastic. I spun, plied and washed over 200 yards in mini skeins. A mini skein is when I start out with any amount less than 1 ounce. Usually in the 1/4 to 1/2 ounce range. I have 9 mini skeins in the garage drying, I am sure they will all be dry by morning since the high was over 110f today. 

After everything got plied and washed I started spinning again. I am using my Louet spinning wheel for some larger skeins and every one of my spindles. If I can't play with all my spindles during the Tour De Fleece when can I get away with having so many spindles out at once?

My goal is a lofty one this year. I want to spin enough yarn to bring in at least 1 of my overflow bins of roving and fiber in from the garage. I am thinking of putting all the Tour De Fleece yarn in a basket to see just how much I can spin in the next couple of weeks.

This does bring up the conundrum of the Tour De Fleece. I am still on a yarn diet and for the most part doing very well, but the Whole idea of Tour De fleece is to set a goal to learn something new, this is not going to happen with Eric on the road to recovery. Perhaps spin a very special skein of yarn with some wonderful fiber that I don't spin often, I don't have the skills or have planned for that one. So this basically leaves volumes of yarn spun. I guess I will have lots of yarn for very creative projects in the coming months.

Well I hear the washer and dryer calling my name so it is time to call it tonight.