Blocking

What a wonderful relaxing weekend! The sun was shining and there was plenty of reading, knitting and soaking up the rays going on. The garden sure enjoyed the sun as well. Things are really growing like crazy.
I finished the cashmere cardigan for Church on Wednesday. I was hoping to have had it shipped by Saturday but it still wasn't dry. I will be able to ship it out today though. We recently got a new washing machine a few months ago. It is a front loading machine. I was wondering if anyone else out there has one and has ever put a sweater in it to spin out the excess water? The front loading machines really are pretty much just a big drum. They do not have the big middle turning piece that agitates your clothes when turning. After washing the cashmere sweater and gently wringing it out in a towel it was still really really wet. I thought maybe I could get away with putting it in a garment bag and putting it in the washer on the spin cycle. I lasted about 2 minutes before anxiety of ruining the cashmere cardigan finally took hold of me and I stopped the whole process and just let it dry out on its own. Anyways if any of you out there have done this I would love to hear how it worked for you.
Just a quick note to let you all know that July is an extremely busy month for our family. I will continue to at least blog once a week, but can't promise much more then that. I do hope you all are having a great summer.

This blog post cracked me up!

All you knitters will get a giggle out of Lady Trouble's latest post!

Ho Hum week

Not much has been going on this past week. The weather hasn't been that nice. Very gloomy and overcast. It rained quite a bit this weekend so we didn't get much done in the yard. Father's day was a nice relaxing lazy day.

I am happy to say that we have been eating our romaine lettuce out of the garden this past week. Very exciting. The zucchini is moving along quite nicely and so are the peas. We could use a bit more sunshine to help things move along though.




Our neighbors have been in Ireland the past week and we are watching their dog. They live behind us and back up to nothing but woods. What a different world they live in even though they live right behind our fence. We have been taking their dog on daily walks and have seen quite a few deer. Last night we saw a buck. It was really neat. It is not very common for us to see deer on our neighborhood, so this has been quite a treat.

I am still working on the cashmere sweater for Church. I am done with all the fun knitting and now to just sew it all together. I have been distracted a bit from working on it as I have been into reading. We watched season 1 of the True Blood series on HBO and now I am reading the books. The author is Charlaine Harris and she has a few different series that you can read. I just finished Grave Sight. Prefect quick summer read, except it distracted me from my knitting.

Just whack it!

My friend Petra from Germany is just getting into spinning. She has a drop spindle that she has been working with. She just finished plying her first yarn and I was telling her my method for washing my yarn and just had to post these pictures. As I mentioned in an earlier post I have been saving up all my leftover fiber from carding and have been spinning on that. I finished my fourth bobbin and decided to process the 4 skeins yesterday to show Petra the process. I soak my fiber in hot soapy tap water for a good 20 minutes and then rinse in hot water for another 20 minutes. The yarn then goes right into my washing machine on the spin cycle to get all the excess water out. This first picture was taken right after I took the skeins out of the machine.

The yarn has a ton of different fibers in it. Granted my carder sees mostly merino and bamboo. I have also been carding alpaca, cashmere, mohair, yak, corriedale, and romney these past 6 months. I also spun this yarn in a single ply, so as you can see it had a ton of energy and twist in that yarn. This next picture was taken after whacking the skein on a chair seat a few times. It took the majority of all that unwanted extra twist right out.

I then let my yarn dry to a bit of tension on a drying rack that my husband made for me. Normally I will just let the skeins hang straight down and dry, but beings this was a single ply with a ton of energy in it drying it with a bit of tension will help to take out any extra twist.


That is all there is to it.
I also wanted to make mention that on my Ravelry group I am trying to organize a fiber swap. If you are interested check the group for further details and let me know. Should be a lot of fun and a great way to try out some different fibers and get to know some fellow spinners.

Twitter is fun!

After fighting it for months, I finally caved and joined Twitter. I was so against this. Between blogging, Etsy, Facebook, Ravelry and trying to update my website I spend a ton of time online and wasn't looking for yet another thing to do with my computer. I have to say Twitter is by far my favorite thing. It is super quick to post and to the point. You have a limit of 140 words that you are allowed to post at one time. Sounds silly and stupid and I wondered why would I want to do this when I have facebook. Twitter allows anyone to follow you(unless you block them). People can find you by searching certain topics that they too are interested in that you talk about. Of course I am posting about knitting, spinning, fiber, blue heelers, and raising 2 kids. Just by posting a few times a day I have met some great people that I wasn't coming in contact with before. Each week I am going to feature some of these people on my blog.
The first person I am going to feature is Mandalinn25. In the 2 short months I have been on Twitter she has cracked me up. Whether she is drinking wine and trying to knit lace or getting attacked by her cats, she definitely is one that I look forward to her posts. You can check her out on Etsy and Ravelry too.

Pictures

Living in the woods surrounded by trees can cause a problem with lighting. I have a very dark house that not a lot of natural light comes through. Taking pictures of my batts, yarn and fiber and getting the true color has always been a challenge. The majority of the year it is not feasible for me to photograph outside. I don't know much about photography to begin with and as far as using my camera I know the basics from the manual and that is it. I recently purchased a portable lighting studio and have been messing around with that. I would appreciate any feedback on the above photos. They were taken three different ways, so if you could just comment on which you look you liked the best to the worst that would be great. Thanks for your help, Jen

Relaxing weekend!

I am happy to report that we did absolutely nothing this weekend! It was nice to just hang around home and not have any obligations. We got some work done in the garden. Things are really doing very well. So far it is looking like you can have a successful garden while living in the mountains. Tyler spent yesterday building trellis's for the tomatoes, peas, and beans. The romaine lettuce is looking like it will be ready to eat in a matter of a few weeks. The strawberries are growing and we are having the same problem as we did last year. Before they are ready some little critter is eating them. We think it must be a squirrel or chipmunk beings we have a huge fence, so a deer isn't getting to them. We don't really have an issue with rabbits but they also wouldn't be able to get in because of the fence. I would love to hear any advice on protecting our strawberries. My good friend Susan suggested a motion detected alarm to keep the cats away. The device sends a piercing alarm that only animals can hear when they pass by it. She too has had a cat issue and this has worked for her. We are definitely going to be ordering one and hoping that not only does it keep the cats out, but some of these other little critters that like to steal our berries.
Even though I didn't partake in world wide knitting in public day, I sure indeed knit that day! Living in the boonies and not having any friends nearby that knit didn't really make me want to get out on my own and do anything. I was there in my garden knitting away thinking about everyone though! I am still working on the cashmere sweater for Church. I talked to them this week and the girl who wants the sweater is out of town for the next couple of weeks so there was no major rush to have it to them by the end of last week. I am almost done with it though so I will definitely have it to them by the end of this week. I was also able to get some spinning done this weekend. It had been awhile since I had my wheel out, so that felt really good. I spun 3 bobbins of the wonderful cashmere/merino blend that I love so much. I also plied all three of them together and got a nice big 12oz. skein. This too will turn into a project for Church. I have also been saving up all my leftover fiber from carding for the past 6 months or so. I have a good 2lbs of a variety of fibers and colors all blended together. I ended up spinning 2 bobbins of that as well over the weekend. I initially planned on making a 2ply but once I got done with the first bobbin I decided against it. The yarn is very fun and full of texture and color and I didn't want to lose the look of that by plying. I will definitely be using this yarn for a project for myself.