This week’s accomplishments- woolly twill and holiday cookies.
NomNomNom.
Was considering getting a tree, but I think maybe I’ve gotten enough fir bough exposure from our recent windstorms.
So I might just dress up Mighty Red
She’s pretty darn festive just on her own, but maybe she’d be up for a snowflake garland, or some sprigs of holly(?)
Now that Thanksgiving is behind us, it’s time to get busy with cookies!
I’m trying to be super-organized this year, to ensure I stay on track and leave time for all the various stages of the multi-step varieties.
In preparation, I developed a spreadsheet of the ingredients required for each cookie type.
This will hopefully remove any need for emergency grocery trips. A separate tab holds the schedule for how I’m going to get everything done this week (leaving time for spinning guild meeting on Saturday 🙂 )
So far I’m on pace.
Nekkid gingerbreads are standing by for frosting later this week (they always benefit from a bit of aging)
and springerle are resting/drying, awaiting baking Tuesday morning.
On the docket for tomorrow are Pfeffernusse (am- dough already chilling) and Cinnamon Mandelbrot (pm).
You might be asking yourself, who is Thor?, and what to they have to do with this?
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.
.
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This is Thor (name from The Man- I’m thinking that it’s a girl kitty, but we don’t know, so are going with Thor for now )
and the only connection to this is that he showed up here last monday evening, and has been hanging out ever since.
We’ve had Thor checked for a microchip (nope), posted “found cat” notices on craiglist, nextdoor, and with our local humane society, checked with neighbors. Noone seems to know where this very friendly kitty came from.
So he’s sleeping in the hoophouse for now.
If you happen to know anything about Thor or if he has a family missing him, please let me know!
Hope y’all had a nice Thanksgiving.
We had a great meal here- The Man made his famous spatchcocked turkey, and we also enjoyed the first of our garden pumpkins, made into pie. Lots to be thankful for. 🙂
And the long weekend provided me some time to start prepping for my Expo classes in January.
Will be covering a lot of the same territory this year (fiber prep, spinning) but with different steps broken out into individual classes for more scheduling flexibility. The one new bit is Knitting with Handspun Yarn, so I need to work out the best approach to that topic.
Washing or scouring of wool is something that I’ve taught many times at the expo, and while the basics are pretty straightforward, there as so many variables (cleaning agents, temp, types of fleece, hardness of water ) and options that it can be a bit overwhelming.
While I’ve usually had good success with Dawn dish detergent and moderately hot water, I find that sometimes there are fleeces that just don’t get as clean as you’d like with the baseline procedure.
And occasionally you don’t realize how much lanolin is left in the wool until further down the project pipeline. Take my (Chone) Forest sweater vest-
After finishing the project, I realized that the yarn had a bit of waxy feel to it, and it affected the way the fabric draped. I have since re-washed the garment in hotter water to try and reclaim some fluff factor, but I think I slightly felted it in the process.
So I’m re-visiting the topic of wool washing with the hope of identifying potential grease-busting bath additives that help dislodge stubborn, waxy lanolin.
I had some yarn left from this project, and thought that might be a good place to start.
That’s waxy yarn caked in the rear, and today’s two contestants- Simple Green on the left, and ammonia on the right.
They are still drying, but both seem to have worked to some degree, and neither appears to have caused any significant damage to color or texture, so I think we’re off to a good start.
Blind texture judging, weighing, and swatching to follow-
I’ve also heard of wool washing recipes that use rubbing alcohol as a solvent. Anyone have experience with that? I’m in an experimenting kind of mood, and have some non-quite-clean-enough romeldale to play with.
The loom is dressed! I managed to get it all done fairly quickly this time, but no pictures (sorry). Only one minor setback along the way- once I had the pre-sleyed reed back on the loom and had attached the warp to the rod on the back beam, I realized that I had miscounted when winding the warp on my board. One of the dark stripes only had 4 threads instead of 8! So I had to wind off 4 more lengths of dark green warp and insert it int he right spot. But besides that it was pretty smooth.
No real pattern or plan for this weave. Just more playing around with twill.
After evaluating weft options, I decided on using my Sister Jean (of Marietta Shetlands) yarn. It’s a very soft, creamy white that I think will work well with the two shades of green. And i think I probably have enough of it to use it for the whole piece (only about 3 yards).
And so we’re off!
This is probably the widest piece I’ve done so far. Just about the widest that the loom can accommodate.
I especially like this perspective
Something about the zigging and zagging and the furrows they create that I find very pleasing.
In other news, I continue to make progress on Candelaria, and really need to do another try on to make sure that we’re still on track. I’ve put the sleeve stitches on holders and am working down the body, but it’s scrunched up on the circular needle and so it’s hard to tell if the gauge I’m getting in plain stockinette is consistent with that of the colorwork yoke.
So maybe that will be today’s thing- getting it off the needles and doing a quick steam block and try on to see how it’s shaping up.
Today’s other thing will be attending to post-storm cleanup out in the yard. Had a medium size tree from next door fall into our side yard (thankfully didn’t hit anything) that will need to be chopped up and hauled off.
That was really the only big bit that fell anywhere on the property. The rest was mostly small debris, but a pretty good quantity in all, as we’ve got quite a few trees.
I decided to try and use some of the fallen fir branches out in the pasture for mud control along the border of Dottie’s enclosure, since it is getting a lot of hoof traffic on both sides and the grass is all worn down. It seemed like they might form a nice resilient but permeable mat to keep the area from getting too mucky.
Worth a try anyway-