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Spent a few days on Whidbey with friends this week. Right on the water very near the Clinton ferry dock.

Was a really unique and characterful property- originally located in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, it was barged to it’s current location in the 1950s to make way for I5 construction.

The daylight basement has been recently renovated to look just like the auto deck of a WA state ferry-

plus a captain’s stateroom

It was kind of amazing. More photos available at the Airbnb listing

Some spinning was accomplished- here is the resulting yarn relaxing in a hammock

Also did a bit of exploring the coastline in a kayak!

I had such fun paddling and taking in the beautiful scene- herons, kingfishers, killdeer, gulls, and also seals that came up pretty close to say hi.

Got back on friday, and am now back in farm mode, catching up with garden and critters. Things are really coming along in the hoophouse-

It already feels a bit like a jungle in there already, with poppies, borage and nasturtiums filling any gaps between veg, but they are so colorful and seem to bring in a lot of pollinators, so I just try and make sure that noone is getting shaded or squeezed.

Out in the garden beds the cabbages and broccoli seem to be really happy under their floating row cover-

but they are rapidly filling the space. Will have to see how long I can keep them covered before they start busting out!

and on the other side of the yard, peonies are popping

and sheep are just hangin’ loose, enjoying the spring sunshine

The beach was fun, but I’m happy to be back at the homestead. Been doing some more lanolin reclamation and making progress on my weaving-will plan to have updates on both next time.

Take care folks, and have a good week-

This past week or so has been about sampling and practicing.

I think it was a project on Ravelry that sent me looking for the Sheepfold cable stitch pattern. I can’t even remember now. It’s something I’ve wanted to incorporate into a garment for a long time, but couldn’t find a reference, until I made the connection with the Elizabeth Zimmerman Aran Coat. It turns out I had it here all the time in The Opinionated Knitter! I’ve always liked how the pattern undulates but lays flat and doesn’t add bulk.

But in order to work it back and forth rather than circularly I needed to have it charted.

It has twists on both even and odd rows, so I decided I’d work it back and forth across the front of the fabric to make it easier to follow the chart. So that meant working in my normal mode from left to right, then knitting like everyone else in the world back from right to left. I’d gotten a good deal of practice with right handed knitting while working on my Pluviae Vest, but that was just knitting, no purling or cables.

I’d developed some comfort with English style (throwing) over the course of that project, but purling was still pretty awkward. So I decided to use the swatch as a chance to switch up my technique, going Continental (picking) and also figuring out the right handed Norwegian purl.

Did a nice long swatch to get familiar with the flow of the pattern and practice the new stitch techniques. My tension is still a little wonky, but feeling pretty good about the flow- feels a lot more efficient!

Second swatch- is another lefty/righty exercise- this time just knit, tho. The yarn is my first go at blending the goodies I picked up at the Skagit Weavers Guild Auction a few weeks ago.

Figured I’d try out the yarn, and get a bunch of practice with the right-handed Continental knitting! For future reference, that’s 1.55 oz of yarn, swatch measures 18″ x 5.5″.

I’m toying with the idea of dyeing the swatch for future reuse, perhaps a gradient (?) . That could be fun. Or maybe some other interesting color effect.

And speaking of color- wanted to share a combo out in the hoophouse that is making me smile

The chive flowers are really cool- they seem to almost glow in their centers-

So that’s this weeks tiny bit of garden magic. Poppies will be coming on soon!

Last weeks rolags have been spun into about 65 yards of chain-plied worsted-ish weight yarn.

It’s a nice oatmeal color, and quite squishy. I thought it might be fun to use up some of my KoolAid leftovers from January to turn some of it a nice olive green. Partial packets of Orange (3g) Lemon-Lime (2g) and Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade (4 g)

DyeBath mixed and yarn pre-soaking

In the microwave-

and after sitting a few minutes, all color transferred to the wool. It was interesting that the colors seemed to fix to the fiber at different rates. Blue was the slowest, but given a little extra time, it all taken up and the desired color achieved.

And here we have our dyes and natural shades side by side.

This oatmeal color base will fun to use in more dyeing experiments over the summer!

May is here, and it is weirdly glorious so far! Almost too hot. Or perhaps I’m just not ready for it 🙂

This weekend brought a couple of cool local fiber events- The Skagit Weavers Guild Silent Auction, and the Wonderful Woollies sale. I made sure to hit both.

Was my first time at the Weavers Guild auction. Amazing bargains. Tons and tons of yarn. But I was mostly interested in fleece/fiber. I came away with some beautiful white kid mohair ( 10 oz, $9) and a bag of white washed wool (2-3 lbs? $5) that looks vaguely border leicester-ish. I think that the two will work really nicely together, and will give me lots of material for dyeing experiments this summer.

At the Wonderful Woollies event, the farm hosting the sale was offering up imperfect romeldale fleeces for $5 each. I picked up a smaller (maybe 8 lbs ?) light brown one, because how can you not, right? Whatever is not usable can just go in the compost.

I’m all about imperfect fleece. Matted tips? veg? discoloration? No problem. As long as there is something worthwhile underneath. So for starters, here’s a picture of the underneath

The length of usable fleece varies a bit, but the wool is so fine and crimpy that it doesn’t need to be very long to be spinnable. I was high on wool fumes when I got home, so dove right into sampling.

Here are the steps I’m taking to salvage the good stuff from under it’s cruddy exterior.

First off, I’m wielding scissors. Trimming off as much as necessary to remove all weathered/veg encrusted/dirty bits

like so

the results-

From there, it’s on to washing. There was quite a bit of yellowing, but I figured that it might wash out.

And some of it probably did, but certainly not all.

For this batch, I thought I’d just card it up and see how the yellow affects the overall color. Might look kind of apricot mixed with the taupe-y brown. And might be a really interesting base color for over-dyeing later on.

So now I’m spinning up my little rolags. Fleece feels really nice and springy. I think I did a better job this time of getting all the grease out in the wash. That has been a challenge for me in the past with finewools. Hope to have some yarn samples to share next week.

And speaking of samples- I did a second run on my Apple Bark dyebath just recently. This time I mordanted the yarn with Aluminum Triformate. Starting colors

In the dyebath-

and the results!

Much brighter/stronger colors on this batch.

In wool-on-the-hoof news, I finished up shearing today! Here is Dottie out enjoying the amazing spring sunshine after her hair appointment.

Here’s looking at ewe, Dot!