Monday, July 18, 2011

…and so…what have I been up to of late? On first glance, it appears to be not much of anything. With that being said, the summer muggies arrived and with it, ambition/energy to do much of anything at all went by the wayside. This has resulted in only a few buckets of fleece being put to soak in soapy water and rinsed, then leaving the rack sitting on the monkey-bars to dry – this morning only marked the second such batch that was brought into the house. Yes, it is dry; no, it is not quite spin-ready yet. The monkey-bars sits at the back end of the yard, under a pine tree – handles of fiber get shaken and pulled apart to lose their accumulations of dust granules, pine needles, and the occasional beetle that wandered in to check it out and got stuck in the fiber. So, AC has been running quite a bit, and once I sit down to watch TV at night, I am either working on something that does not require a lot of thought/counting of stitches/anything more than simple stitch patterning, or, after placing the old newspaper sheet at my feet to catch all the bits, I start in on picking the fleece apart/loose, a few handfuls at a time. Then pick up the spindle and spin away. Repeat from ‘picking…”

And just so you don’t think I am slacking…the fiber is from 6 sheep that average anywhere 6-12 pounds of raw fiber apiece – my wash buckets will only hold about 1 to 1.5 pounds each (depends how grubby the raw stuff is), and with only doing three of these at a time…..yeah, it takes a while to wash all of this, so expect to find notations on ‘washing’ – this will continue until the weather makes it not a good idea to be outside doing so any more (of course, this will also mean that the balance of this year’s fleece that doesn’t get washed before getting stored in the garage for the winter, will be in some of the early spring/summer wash buckets).

So, you may ask….what did I get accomplished, if anything, this week? In looking over my notes of what I have worked on (I have a notebook that I list how much time I spend on any fiber projects)….this week as previously noted, was not an overly ambitious one. Yes, fiber got washed. Yes, spinning did take place (the PinkLavender roving is completely spun). Yes, knitting did take place (working on a Test knitting project). On top of that, I have founds lots more, make that LOTS MORE, projects of various kinds that I would like to make (socks, shawls, and sweaters too!), so only time will tell which of the many will actually transfer from my queue to actual WIP…

…gotta run….lunchtime ends far too quickly for my usual verbosity…… So, will just leave you with a close-up shot of some of the spinning that I have been working on...just a little something to pass the time away while dreaming about all the wonderful items in my queue....

2 comments:

  1. That notebook sounds like a great idea - I might borrow that one!

    Have a great week :)

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  2. Spinning and knitting....sounds like you're having a good time.

    ReplyDelete