What?

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Today I’ll try something new. I’m going to write this blog without knowing what it’ll be about! That could either mean a really short post or half a novel….

I’ve wanted to say something different rather than just dye reports, especially since I haven’t in fact been dyeing anything. Playing at mordanting cotton in as many possible ways that I can think of, to then be dyed together, but that will be a while.

I did crack the nettle -> green mystery though, so I may do a batch of that for you.

But, as it were, right now, today, I have nothing to show and tell. Drove all the way to a new forest with the dog just for some variety and didn’t bring the camera because it was grey and dull out. Of course it ended up quite lovely with sun and lots of potential shots!

Yesterday it rained and rained, I had to fire up the woodstove. In fact, this morning the house is only about 16° C, so I’m tempted. My newly replanted weld plants got drowned, I’d just put them outside to get ready for putting in the ground, but I fear the roots have all gone to rot now standing in soup instead of soil. All of the weld, obviously, not a variety of plants or just a few of the trays…

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My hands are sore again, and yes, I’ve been trimming hind hooves on the old guy. Then the farrier threw his (own) back and didn’t come to fix the fronts, but I think they’ll be ok for a little while yet. So today I really should take a break from my spinning marathon (3 colours to go + some plying) and tidy up the house – free some space for fresh crafting rather than just piles of supplies all over. Doesn’t look like the rest of this month is going to be about lounging in the garden, smelling the lilacs. I suppose I could rip them off the bushes and throw them in a pot instead. Or a vase, possibly.

Ok, lots of words and nothing interesting happening yet. Perhaps my brain is frozen too. I’ve dared myself to try to get used to getting up at 6, just because. And it’s actually quite rewarding, because it means I’m done with my internetty stuff around 8 and ready to work on my procrastination project. It doesn’t matter what I do, as long as I do something. And it’s so much easier to justify an afternoon nap. 😉

01Being as I’ve mentioned a relatively tired person, I’ve also decided to dedicate some attention to the “exercise” form called NEAT. Or “non exercise activity thermogenesis” if you want to google your own selection of articles. I’ve never seemed to be able to build muscle or stamina from training, it just keeps feeling like a chore, I don’t get more energy either. Runner’s high? Whut? Dunno what that means. I just get knackered and see stars. The only thing that ever motivated me is doing real stuff. Dig a hole in the garden, paint a wall, and you can SEE your accomplishment, it’s useful and makes you feel good. Running just to run? Boooring….. So maybe I’ve been on the right track for my kind of sport all along, and now they’ve just come up with a neat name for it.10 And I like the mental challenge as well in coming up with more ways to deliberately move a bit extra during the day. I don’t need to pretend I’ve forgotten something upstairs, because I do that quite naturally, but perhaps movement could be exaggerated?

Now I’ll go find some pretty pictures to throw in here and perhaps that will spark something interesting to write about. Or, more likely they’ll be completely random and irrelevant.

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Right, after a shower, a fire and more coffee, I’m back. Perhaps I need to get out more, if I persist on (in? with?) being so chatty without actually saying anything. So tell me, do you like or dislike smalltalk (IRL or otherwise), why or why not? If you never ever smalltalk, do you find enough people to have conversations with? Because I find that out there, outside the windows, most people engage in nothing but. And most of the time it really drains me, whereas the rare interesting encounters I have really fire me up. So I tend to, well, not go. I don’t need to, I’m very good at entertaining myself, but do I in fact build up a back log of chatter this way?

<<Wandering off for a second to feed Arthur his second breakfast.>>

Got my keyboard back from under the cat. And still nothing coming forth of true value or profundity. That’s it, I’m going to declutter my desk! I love a clutterfree desk – I just seem to, you know, get a lot of stuff going and then I put it down to sort out … and oh gosh where’s that bill I need to pay and before I know it the cats have thrown a party in the middle of everything. And then I just get tired and go do something in the living room.

Over and out!

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The wool tree

You’ve probably seen my pix of yarn drying in the sumac tree in the front garden, it’s so easy to use, good branches. Today it’s really been put to work! It’s my montly headache day, but I felt perky enough to do some “dumb work” as we call it here.

On Sunday I put out the rest of my Gotland fleeces to soak in a tub before scouring, today they are promising a quiet sunny day so I filled my carrot bags and hung them up to drip dry the dirty water before getting the soapy baths ready.

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I’ve also started mordanting my tapestry yarn, I’m going to keep a “regular” batch as well as some of the other forms of mordanting I’ve been contemplating.

Some cotton yarn that has been scoured, waiting for the next step.

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And some small test skeins for a test tapestry. I had a bunch of purples and blues already from a colour blending test session, I wanted some black as well and as an afterthought did some greens and yellows on some strands that had already been cut for more testing which never happened. Only plan is to use a lot of white (remember my dream?) and then wing it row by row. Will probably end up needing more black. 😉

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Next batch of fleece soaking: Wensleydale
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A tiny bit of colour is finally happening outside

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MÃ¥nedens hovedpinedag i dag, men ikke værre end at jeg fÃ¥r lavet lidt “dum i arbejde”. Vinde garn op, binde snore pÃ¥, bejse uldgarn og vaske bomuld i soda, sÃ¥ det hele er klart til plantefarvning. Puh, det er kedeligt, men det skal jo gøres hvis man vil have lov til at lege.

Uldtørretræet blev også lige læsset med gulerodssække med gotlandsham, som har ligget i blød siden i søndags, det kan lige få lov at dryppe det snavsede vand af inden det skal i et varmt sæbebad.

Og så smed jeg for sjov et par garnstumper i syrefarve, til evt. brug i mit nye eksperiment gobelinvævning. Har nogen andre stumper fra testfarvning jeg også kan bruge bare til at øve mig med.

A good day to ply!

It’s nasty out there I tell you, mean and nasty! Wind directly from Siberia – I didn’t even stop to take extra pix for you to describe the misery just right, here’s my oversize hamsters coming in for breakfast.

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I’m force feeding the woodstove as fast as I can and moved the wheel over to ply that braid I spun the other day. Plus some odd singles I had sitting around, purpose forgotten.

First I needed to make an extra lazy kate however, for my weaving bobbins converted for spinning, since their center diameter is too small for my regular kate. Good thing we have this gizmo, also used for making all the holes in my blending hackle.

boreFirst I thought it had frozen to death, but it sped up as I let it run a bit. Voila, one piece of wood and some nails, good enough to go. Yes, I’ll make a base for it, so I won’t have to clamp it to the table, but never mind that now. We also don’t need to mention that I’m officially too old to read a rusty drill in a dark garage without my glasses, so the holes are too big… I can find another piece of wood I’m sure. It still worked with wobbly nails and no clamps, at least for transferring the singles onto a proper bobbin on the wheel.

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Bottom of the board with indents for nail heads and all

kate2The one on the right was lovely as fiber and then I did a really poor job of spinning it. Don’t like it much as plied yarn either, but I guess sometimes that’s the way of it.

All done and washed. The Rambouillet is incredibly elastic and squishy, I don’t know if the former is a good thing in yarn, but I love the feel of stretching and bouncing it. I’ll spin the other braid in the same way.

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And well, it was also a good day to dye, as I had enough to try a bit of snow dyeing. More on that later!

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Guess who doesn’t care about the weather…

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Tvindevejr

Ja, jeg behøver jo ikke fortælle jer danskere hvordan vejret har været de sidste par dage, så jeg har bare tvangsfodret brændeovnen og ellers flyttet rokken tilpas tæt på, så jeg kunne få tvundet det jeg spandt forleden.

Jeg vidste jeg havde nogen 3 mm tykke søm, der lige passede i de små, billige spoler, men havde overvurderet min egen evne til at gætte diameteren på boret; så det blev lidt vakkelvorent, da jeg lige hurtigt ville lave en spoleholder. Men jeg fik da flyttet garnet over!

Singlen til højre er jeg meget skuffet over i forhold til fibrene, og jeg er ikke blevet gladere efter tvinding, men sådan kan det jo gå. Jeg kan vel bruge det til et eller andet en dag, måske bare bamsefyld.

Rambouillet garnet er helt utroligt elastisk, jeg ved egentlig ikke om det er en god ting, men jeg kan godt lide følelsen, så jeg regner med at spinde den anden fletning på samme måde.

Beautiful morning

Even though it’s getting cold and nasty, doesn’t mean it can’t look pretty from the inside. This pheasant clearly thinks he’s king of the garden. Or maybe he’s just waiting for the sparrows to drop a few seeds from the feeder…

Winter on the march

After a frosty, beautiful, sunny weekend taste of the season to come, we’re now facing a rainy prenovember this week, temps around 5 C and winds to chill your bones. Weather for crafting, yeah? October has been really mild, but I guess it couldn’t last.

I haven’t been doing anything fibery really. I’ve been busy, and then I’ve been too tired. Next up is plying my “black” shetland, I managed to spin it a lot thinner than the last batch, so now I have to make more plies to match or I’ll never have that sweater.

I did manage to finish one wip though, the new collar on my scratchy sweater.

I unwrapped my last cotton plant print experiments – very disappointing, but more about it later since I did not take advantage of the sun to take pix. I think next year I’ll try to get some silk instead.

We’ve been remodelling the bedroom wardrobes this weekend, now all that remains is reORGANIZING stuff. I just love it when I can fill a few garbage bags with old useless stuff (and get more efficient space for fiber too). I have 5 new shelves instead of a double coat rack – the other 5 I had to let the tall guy have since I made him throw out the mint green shirt his mum once bought him. 😉 I’m determined to have a clutter and dust free bedroom without his piles of whatever just draped across every possible surface. Some training in addition to the shelves will probably be involved in this project, but hope springs eternal… Come summer it’ll be paint the walls and wardrobe doors as well as carpet begone and we’ll have at least one room that’s relatively spiffy and up to date. Ok, I won’t invite any interior design magazines, but it’ll do. My life must be really dull since I can get all excited about cleaning house!!! (oh that promised trip to IKEA for my paint “studio”, when!?)

from ikea.com

And I still have outside stuff to do, small trees that need to be replanted, some baby lilacs need to be dug up, the stable is overdue to have the cobwebs removed and I need fresh gravel in front of the door instead of mud. It’s good to move your body they say. And so much more fun to do real stuff compared to mindless exercise! That said I got inspired by a tv show about the human as a running machine and got some Vibram Five-Fingers on sale. Not exactly the season for trying them out, but I do have issues with landing hard on my heel, instant knee pain when running and just feeling stiff and awkward in normal trainers. Could be just the thing? And they included free socks. 😀

Baby Arthur is now turning into a teenager and has been allowed trips outside to burn some of that energy. Oh, he sleeps so well after exploring the big wide world. He’s learned to use the cat flap, which was one of the requirements, since we have the occasional stray tom, and I want the little one to be able to escape to safety. Right now he’s feeling poorly after his 2nd vaccination, I do hope he perks up soon! I’m soo fed up with sick animals over the last few years.

You seem to need an additional brake, yeah?
No mom, we iz not fightin’!

I came across these nifty images from space, when I was zapping the interwebs, I’m thinking cool stuff could be made from some of these with Photoshop, as backgrounds for something?

ESO/Igor Chekalin

But after I’m done – I will get back on my wooly track I’m sure. Moorit Shetland to be spun (thicker this time), fiber to be dyed.