Merino Roving -#3

Here we are! This is the FINAL yarn from the Merino. We were both very pleased with the finished piece since the color blended well and the "visual" effect of the different weights being plied together is extremely pleasing! Once Susie decides what she is going to knit with this, I will post a picture of that as well! (I apologize for making multiple posts to tell a story but for the life of me I can't figure out how to place photos throughout the post. Everything I try "piles" them all at the top and I don't like the way that either looks or reads!)

Merino Roving-#2

This is the first stage of the finished yarn. Susie stripped the roving out into thicker and thinner sections, then spun both a "thick" and a "thin" yarn. Once these were done, she plied them both together again on the Country Spinner and once that was finished, we skeined it off and washed it. I will post a picture of the "final" finished yarn momentarily!

Merino Roving

When we purchased the Ashford Country Spinner from Alaska, we were sent a fair amount of dyed Merino roving as well. This was something somewhat out of the "norm" for us since we tend to mainly spin natural colored fleece. I have a hard time knowing what the finished yarn will be like by just looking at the top or roving, but Susie felt the end result was going to be very nice. (I don't have ANY problem knowing if I like it BEFORE it's spun but the finished piece can sometimes be very disappointing!) These colors blended well at the wheel and the spinning went very smoothly. Susie has something different she is doing with the yarn and I will be posting pictures of that as well!

The 2010 Cotton Is In!

We finally got the rest of the cotton that was planted this year in today. This was the first time we had planted these three varieties and even though we got them in almost 2 months too late, they still produced very well.
The browns were Mississippi Brown and Sea Island Brown and the green was called Eileen's Green. Even getting them in as late as we did due to the flooding, the plants still managed to grow close to 6 feet high and were still setting blossoms after the first frost!
Where we live, the growing season is JUST long enough for cotton IF (key word here is IF!) nothing goes wrong! This year EVERYTHING seemed to go wrong from the May floods that destroyed not only Nashville but many of the roads and structures around here, to the unreal heat and humidity we experienced the bulk of the summer! If we had been able to get the crop in sooner, I have no idea if the result would have been more or if it would have all died from drowning!

Today we spent several hours cutting the remaining branches that were heavily laden with unopened bolls and bundling them in groups. Once bundled we tagged each one (experience is a HARD teacher!) so we would know which ones were which, and hung them in the living room to hopefully continue to dry and open. I'm curious if the quality of the cotton may suffer somewhat from not naturally maturing but it's a chance we are willing to take at this point. The only other option would have been to leave hundreds of unopened bolls out in the garden to rot. At least this way we have a chance to get some more! Next year we hope to return to planting white Pima AND get it in the ground much sooner. If all goes well, I will be documenting the planting and harvesting next year and will post it here!

Let the Woodstove Season Begin!

We have arrived once again at that time of the year when we stock up the wood pile and enjoy the warmth of the wood stove! Yesterday was spent dragging down wood off the hillside out into the field where I can cut it without doing my mountain goat impersonation! While we managed to haul in enough wood for several weeks, it wasn't without "incident". I did manage to get hit in the face and broke my glasses, stabbed myself in the gut with a tree limb, and twist and hit my knee which is now black and blue. (Guess it's a good thing I enjoy cutting wood!) Besides stacking in a pretty good store of firewood, I also managed to set aside a pretty good pile of nice spalted oak and dogwood that I will use in the wood shop. All in all it was a good day but I do have to admit that the pain today is more than I expected. I guess manual labor on the weekends is rather rough after standing at a printing press all week.

After getting cleaned up and having supper, we spent the evening watching a new DVD from Interweave Press that I bought called "How I Spin" by Rita Buchanan. Susie and I had the pleasure of taking a class with her several years ago at SAFF and I for one was rather intimidated and in awe of her, although she appeared to be a very down to earth person. (Part of that was probably being "male" in what tends to be a primarily female craft) I think the thing that interested me the most in her DVD presentation on her approach to spinning is how alike her technique and Susie's are. Neither of us realized that, since during the class, she didn't really do much actual spinning. I was also interested to find that Rita has only been spinning a few years longer than Susie has! (And her studio is the stuff dreams are made of!)

Tonight's feature on the DVD player is another set I recently purchased called "Spinning Luxury Fibers" by Judith MacKenzie.......stay tuned for an update on it as well!