State of the munchkin
Four year olds are interesting. One minute they’re big kids, and the next babies. And they often start speaking clearly and making up their own words. Funny!
Noodle Girl got new shoes, again, already. I guess I should quit worrying about her eating habits; she’s clearly growing. Just not as fast as her cousins! She started drawing faces, recognizing whole words, doing things for herself. The fear of everything is almost gone, and only shows up when she’s really tired or presented with a strange food. She still loves the water and has been asking to go to the lake.
My new favorite web site is Filth Wizardry. I don’t know which makes me more jealous, her total fearlessness towards crafting with children or her having enough space to keep a huge model space shuttle in her house! She has inspired me to let Noodle Girl use Sharpies and other crafts I’ve always thought of as too messy. If I ever find my camera I’ll share the results!
Playing with fluff
It’s an obsession that matches my earlier experiences with beadworking. I have collected all sorts of fibers to play with: cat fur, recycled silk fiber, wools, alpaca, bunny down, dog down, and assorted stray fibers from deconstructing garments and weaving thrums. I made spindles, bought large dog slicker brushes to use as budget hand cards, got Dad to drill holes in scrap 2-by lumber for spindle stands and makeshift lazy kate. When the egg dyes went on clearance, I bought some of those and some fiber reactive dyes, and collected lichens, onion skins, and oak galls. Then came the umbrella swift and ball winder, building a frame loom, making weaving shuttles with Mom and experimenting with heddle options. And I’m still knitting and crocheting, sewing and embroidering, and possibly tatting. Maybe this is worse than the bead thing. 
I started spinning by rolling cat fur down my thigh, the most primitive form of making yarn. Then I learned spindle spinning by parking and drafting for what felt like forever, but it didn’t take too long to learn to draft and spin. Keeping tension on the singles while plying is kinda hard, especially when plying directly from one spindle to the other. At least, I’ve had trouble; the single has drifted apart a few times while I plied the sock yarn. It’s easier to use my spindle stands to provide tension while plying, but plying spindle to spindle is really portable. Better yet is ply-on-the-fly, where the single is spun and immediately chain plied. I think that’s my favorite spinning technique!
My second favorite technique is actually making rolags, which is a type of fiber preparation for spinning. I card out the fiber and roll it up off the hand cards, making nice fluffy tubes that are really easy to draft. They make for a lofty yarn, too. And I can card in whatever grabs my fancy, like alpaca with bunny fur or wool with recycled silk. Really, I can see where making my own blends could get out of hand.
My least favorite fiber task so far is washing and picking fleece. Alpaca fleece is considered to be easier than sheep fleece to process but if this is easy, I don’t want to try hard. A fleece is heavy and dirty and sort of matted together. It doesn’t help that I don’t have a good place to wash it, even though an alpaca fleece doesn’t have to be washed the way a sheep fleece would to be clean.
To dye for
Quite a while back, I dyed my NZ wool roving using Easter egg dye and microwave steaming to set it. I have to admit I had some doubts, but it works really well!
I did two batches, a little more than half the ‘bump’ dyed (8 oz.?) and half of that spindle spun one weekend. Bump is one of those technical terms that crop up in the jargon of any field, and seems to mean a quantity of processed fiber rather than locks or raw wool. This bump took up a gallon zip-top bag. I’ve managed a fairly fine single, thanks to all the practice on the cat fur and the felting fiber. Then I chain plied it into about 92 yards of DK to worsted weight yarn.
At some point I’ll decide what to do with it!
This year I dyed more fiber with egg dyes, this time a pound of Romney wool and about an ounce of silk cap.
Pretty, don’t you think? I decided to do color families on the wool instead of the rainbow effect I did last year.
I used red, blue, and lime green on the silk and you can see that brilliant in the cap does not necessarily mean bright colors after drafting for spinning!
I also tried using the egg dyes on the cotton roving, with baking soda to make the mix more alkaline.
It is very pale, but pretty. I may try using wash soda to premordant the cotton as recommended, then use straight food coloring and see if that gives stronger colors. I also intend to try fiber-reactive dyes and some natural dyes on the cotton.
One kind of dyeing I really want to try: lichen dyeing. I think a good chunk of the lichens I collected from downed limbs after the ice storm can be fermented to produce a nice purplish color. The rest should produce some nice grays and browns. It’s really fun to experiment!
Spinning in (and out of) the wind
A few years ago, I was bitten by the spinning bug. Not the bicycle exercise kind, the making yarn kind. It’s surprisingly portable, easy, and addictive. I’ve spun in all sorts of crazy places, including while walking to class, and almost nobody has so much as given me a second look! It’s amazing how much yarn I can make on a spindle. Not that I don’t covet a spinning wheel all the same. I even have some mad scientist plans to make a wheel, but they will get their own post.
I made a couple of spindles with wooden toy wheels and dowel rods, light ones that I’ve been using to make really thin singles and heavy ones with a hook that I’ve been using for plying and ply-on-the-fly. All supplies for them except the sandpaper from Hobby Lobby, since I worked there and all. I plan to make a few more; old cds, decorative wooden motifs, big glass beads, and stone donuts all beckon to be stuck on a dowel as whorls.
Actually, the first non-cat-hair fiber I spun was wool sold for felting from Hobby Lobby, from which I have knitted some pretty sweet socks. Easy access makes a difference, sometimes, and the local yarn shops are just starting to have spinning fibers and equipment. Oooo, and now the farmer’s market in Fayettville has a fiber and yarn seller!
When I decided to take spinning more seriously, I bought a pound of natural cream-colored New Zealand wool roving from Au Gres Sheep Factory at the big War Eagle craft fair.
Being the pack rat I am, there were soon more fiber acqusitions: dyed and natural Romney roving from fleecemakers on Etsy, 8 oz. of Paradise Fibers’ Potluck domestic wool roving in multi-colored naturals, a silk cap from a local shop called KnitWicks, 4 oz. of gorgeous purple-pink batts from the farmer’s market, and about a pound of cotton roving from the thrift store for $2!
And…I found bags of alpaca fleece on Craigslist. I only bought one bag, and it weighed 5 pounds! Beautiful, rich reddish brown locks and fluff, although it’s really dusty. I’d still like to get some bamboo, and try some different wools and exotics, but these fibers will keep me busy for a while!
I’ve been trying out ‘ply-on-the-fly’ with the pretty dyed Romney on a bigger plying spindle with the hook. It’s a fabulous technique, but it’s much harder to make light weight yarn with the bigger spindle and the results so far are roughly worsted weight. Not that I mind; the Romney is really fluffy and will make a great hat and mittens or something similarly warm and cozy. I’m using a smaller spindle as a supported spindle to make cotton thread. I think it will ply up into something like size 5 pearl cotton, which I’ll dye and crochet or tat into lace.
The opposite of yippee
Humankind cannot stand very much reality. T. S. Eliot (1888 – 1965)
We definitely can’t stand much reality right now. Because reality sucks. I’ve been spending most of my free time in Velgarth or assorted fictional Japans. The mister spends nearly all of his time in the World of Warcraft. Noodle Girl, being four, always lives in her own little world populated with talking animals and a variety of magical artifacts.
I feel like all the escapism is creating distance between the mister and me. Maybe it was there all along, and I just didn’t notice it before. Either way, it worries me. Hopefully I’m just being paranoid, though.
I’ve been cooking from scratch again. I don’t really like cooking at all, but ingredients are cheaper than prepared foods. Since two of the world’s pickiest eaters live with me, it’s tricky to find things that at least one of them will eat. I did, however, score the easiest, most addictive fudge recipe while wandering the internet. We’ve eaten two and a half batches already.
One good thing: our taxes were done months ago. No April 15 rushing around for us!
No sir, I don’t like it
I have got to get journaling again. Things have gotten really crazy and writing it down usually helps me cope. Or at least remember it correctly later, for comparison. Humans are built to forget the really yucky times, and I’m afraid this is one.
We’re all familiar with the current economy, right? It’s way overdue for a remodel, and I think that’s part of what’s happening to it. However, right now it sucks. We’re both unemployed. The husband was rather suddenly fired, and I haven’t been interviewed seriously for a job since I quit working retail. And of course we have no health insurance now, no prescription coverage, no hospitalization.
Oh, our families will help us out, but I hate taking money from our parents. We’re plenty old enough to fend for ourselves, dammit! I’m perfectly fine with letting family buy Noodle Girl whatever they like, though,especially shoes. Unfortunately, if it takes longer than 3 months for us to find new jobs, we’ll be scrambling to make mortgage payments. Thank goodness we have no car or credit card payments!
Inflation hasn’t hit us too hard yet, but we do have a growing child that can drink a gallon of milk every 9 days and outgrow shoes every 3 months. We’ve been making good use of our warehouse club membership, and I shop thrift and resale whenever possible, but still. We are cooking at home from closer to scratch, and cutting out anything we can. Except cable and internet. Those will be the dead last to go, after one of our cars.
The unemployment office just underscored how sucky things are. We weren’t the only couple there, and a few people had half their extended family there too. The staff was super efficient, though, and after the initial application one makes weekly claims online or by phone. The husband resisted going, but it’s his income we live on anyway. I didn’t apply for unemployment for now since I’m going to school. After finals, I’ll get less picky about the jobs for which I apply, because hey, it’ll be summer anyway.
So I’ve been having paranoid feelings, sleeping oddly, but I feel okay otherwise. Of course we’re both stressed out by the situation and the lifestyle changes we’re having to make, but at least the mister is getting some time off. Noodle Girl knows that something is different, but hasn’t really changed her behavior much, so it isn’t affecting her too badly. Just her toy acquisition! We’ll be okay. We just won’t like some of it.
Now we’ve done it
Well, mostly. There is still the sorting of all the stuff we shoved into boxes to get it out of the way. But, new paint! New floor! New couch! New TV! And it’s eerily clean for now, too. Awesome.
The tv is one of those LCD flat panels and I love it. The couch is a silvery sage green microfiber and it’s very comfy. Plus it has dual recliners that lay down almost flat! The floor is a subtly textured laminate in a nice warm color and I REALLY love it. The best thing is that all of these things are paid for, and our credit cards are paid off as well.
Fun with home improvement
We finally got a flat panel TV! LCD, full HD, 1080p, high color ratio and quick response time. Good for next gen video games and so forth. And fully digital for that digital broadcast changeover, not that we’ll notice.
It’s actually part of some minor renovations to our home: paint, new laminate flooring in the living area, getting rid of some junk. Oh, and another attempt to organize my craft space into usability. I even rented storage to stash everything while I sort it and figure out how to arrange the space. The paint will be neutral, a toasty tan color and maybe a creamy color too. It’s currently a minty green and contractor white in here, and it’s been so for nine years now! The flooring is “amber oak” and really pretty. We’re installing the flooring with help from my parents; installation costs more than the laminate!
Since it’s us, a renovation is not complete without some new electronics. I guess we’re getting an XBox 360 as well as the TV. I wanted a spinning wheel instead, though. We may even get a new couch. I think it’ll be the first non-storage furniture we’ve bought since we got the futon. Stimulating the economy, that’s us! (poke, poke, are you awake yet, economy?)
Happy Valentine’s Day?
Every publication has its horrible puff pieces for this day. Of course, for this holiday even my science news sources just haveto have a related story. Like what men and women want in a partner, because that is vital research that’s been going on since the 1930s. It’s almost interesting; apparently we’re all about love and money this decade.
Anyway, I hope you spent your Saturday doing something you wanted to do, no matter what holiday it is.
Another reason to keep small pets
Hamster electricity. No, really. Hilarious hamster jackets are a bonus. It’s not the first time that piezoeletric effect has been eyed to tap mechanical energy for electricity, but it’s the first time to effectively tap irregular biomechanical energy for electricity. Bring on the piezoelectrc gloves! I have a small colony of electronic gadgets to power.