When I first bought E.Roberta I purchased a kilo of tops made up of three colours, white, grey and brown. Having not done any spinning for about 20 years and having never used an electronic spinner and having never spun tops before I wasn't sure how to go about spinning them. Eventually I decided to split the roving into its approximate colour groups. I broke off about 2 metres at a time and then split them more or less into their separate colours.
The first 200gms was a disaster but I got better as I went along and eventually produced a reasonable, if rather thick, yarn. I used this to knit a scarf for myself. Here it is: (Click on the picture to enlarge)
Notice how, quite unintentionally, the colour progresses from light to dark. If I had tried to get this effect I doubt if I could have done it so well, if at all, considering that it was randomly spun and plied. This scarf used the whole skein; there are no joins in it.
Yesterday I de-skeined one of the earlier efforts (so quick and easy with the swift and jumbo winder) and started to knit what will eventually be a beanie and was quite bemused to see this growing before my eyes: (Click on the picture to enlarge)
Once again, there are no joins and I am knitting it just as it was plied. This time I am getting stripes!
The scarf had opened up the possibility of manipulating colours but that was before I had ever heard of fractal spinning. I am now anxious to finish spinning the black corriedale tops which, as I am spinning much finer now, is taking ages and I am still only about halfway through my third bobbin. The bobbins each hold about 100gms so I have a way to go yet. I have a couple of stashes of hand-painted rovings but suspect that I will never do as well when I actually try for an effect.
Poppy has had a weepy eye for about a week and had been going around with it shut most of the time. Assuming that she might have something in it I irrigated it with normal saline a couple of times. This improved it temporarily and then it would start to weep again. On Wednesday I made an appointment to take her to see Dr Sophie and miraculously the eye cleared up; so I cancelled the appointment.
On Thursday is was weepy and watery again so I did the irrigation thing again and for a time it looked good. Then yesterday it all started up again so I made another appointment with the vet and again it miraculously cleared up but I was starting to see a pattern and determined to take her anyway.
She was not happy with Dr Phil and I had to hold her very firmly while he examined her. He said that the tissue behind the eyelid was very inflamed but there was no damage to the cornea so he has given me some ointment which is part anti-inflammatory and part antibiotic and the change has been remarkable. The eye is now clear, she was curled up on the bed this morning when I woke up, something she has not done for about a week, and not only is she happier and very bright-eyed again but she allowed me to put the ointment in this morning so twice daily for a week will hopefully not be a struggle. Hopefully that will be the end of it.
But they are both very anti-vet and both have bitten Dr Sophie. It is not a problem which I have encountered with any of my other cats although visits to the vet were not enjoyable at least they didn't bite. I am wondering if all my previous outdoor cats had more experience of different places and were therefore not freaked out by being taken out of their familiar environment. It is a bit of a worry ...
Today is D2's birthday. I tried to phone her but she was not answering on either her mobile or her landline but I will be seeing her tonight anyway. I have made the requested chocolate mousse and bought some clotted cream which only wife-in-law and I will be able to eat as the rest of the family is milk intolerant and D3 has decided to avoid gluten as well. Thank goodness for the internet - there are recipes!
It is supposed o be summer here and I have just climbed back into my thermal underwear and turned on the heating in the apartment. There is a freezing gale-force wind blowing straight in through any window or door I open and we have a cloudless sky. Go figure!
I have almost finished the vest I am knitting from the 'Storm' spinnings. I have had to go on to some of the extra fibre I bought and it looks a bit different but with the general roughness of the spinning due to bad blending of the fibre in the first lot I bought, the better blending and therefore better spinning of the last 200 gms isn't really going to show all that much. Not that it will make a difference as there is nothing I can do about it short of undoing the lot and knitting something else. That is something I don't intend to do since I am only about 10cm from the end.
I am already planning my next knitting project and will use some of the yarn from the first efforts on E.Roberta. I should be able to get on with that as soon as the weather warms up and my fingers thaw out.
Poppy has a mucky eye and we are off to the vet this afternoon. I irrigated it with normal saline last night and it does look better than it did yesterday but it is still not looking too good - although she is opening it normally today.
It is D2's birthday on Saturday and we are having dinner at her place but she doesn't want to cook so I have volunteered to do the dessert. D3 has decided to go both dairy and gluten free so she is not easy to cater for but D2 has requested chocolate mousse which fits the criteria ; I will be the only one who gets to eat cream with it since all my kids and grandbabies are lactose intolerant - thanks to their father who is lactose intolerant - something he only found out a few years ago.
Luckily there seems to be a whole industry devoted to food intolerances and I have been able to source enough ingredients to organise Christmas food - although I will not be actually doing Christmas dinner this year. We will probably have a barbecue on boxing day but D3 won't be able to eat the sausages - they contain bread.
I must say that using a swift and ball winder beats the old method of putting the heavy on one's kids to hold the skein of wool while you wind the yarn into a ball.
Even though I was missing a couple of parts from my new swift (they turned up when I stopped searching for them) I was able to wind a jumbo ball in about two minutes; it is certainly an improvement on hanging the skein of yarn around the backs of a couple of chairs and trying to keep everything from descending into a tangle.
Yesterday the window cleaners turned up to clean the bits which I am not expected to be able to reach. They have to abseil down from the roof and almost finished before double disaster struck. Firstly it started to rain and then a swarm of bees descended. I found a couple of dozen clinging to the anti-cat mesh and shouted a warning just before I heard a voice from the roof announcing that there were bees everywhere up there.
The guys came inside and sat in the passage waiting for all the dangers to pass but the rain didn't stop for a couple of hours by which time they had given up and gone. So my bedroom window is not squeaky clean and I don't think that Apartment 611 has been finished either. Since the rain keeps the windows on this side of the building relatively clean anyway I am not particularly fussed. They will be back again in about six months and can finish off then.
Parsifal, who has been jumping onto the top of his igloo so that he can sleep in the resulting hollow, but expected me to puff it up again for him, has discovered how to restore it to its igloo condition without any help from me. He is really a very clever cat except when it comes to his diet. I am collecting the catgora but I missed the heavy moulting season and will probably not have enough for anything meaningful until at least next year. It looks grey even though both cats are black but perhaps when it is washed it will revert to black and I can blend it with dark grey. Maybe a scarf?
In the mean time I have plenty to be going on with. The 'Storm' vest is almost finished and I still have 800gms of the black corriedale to spin as well as four braids of "Jewel" and I am waiting for another nine braids of "Rosewood" from Carolyn Greenwood to add to the five I already have.
My cats are registered!! It was third time lucky but they are now registered as life-time members of the feline race. To be truthful, I am not sure whose lifetime they are registered for; that has never been made clear but it saves me having to tackle the Claremont Council annually, and as a senior citizen it was very cheap because I qualified for a 50% discount.
I did another speed spin yesterday and almost filled a second bobbin with that 'Storm' blend so I will have enough to finish my vest and some left over to play around with. Maybe I will get to blend it better on my blending board than the Kiwis managed. I must say, though, that the two hundred grams extra which I bought was better blended than the first half kilo.
My swift has arrived so now I can wind my skeins without having to resort to chair backs or unwilling family members to keep the yarn from tangling as I wind; and my four braids of 'Jewel' from Kathy's Fibres in Hahndorf, South Australia, arrived yesterday. That is destined to become a pull-through scarf but I need to finish spinning the black corriedale first.
My doctor has asked me to record my blood pressure in the mornings and evenings and it is much lower than it was last time I recorded it. In fact, it is so low in the mornings that I have taken to selecting the second to lowest rather than the lowest of three; and in the evenings it is way lower by about 40 mm. The only thing I can think of is that the yoga has somehow regulated it because I am not meditating at the moment. I must get back to it - I read this morning that meditation delays dementia.
This is a braid of the 'Jewel' roving. Click on the picture to enlarge it.
Having realised that I will not have quit enough of the yarn I spun from the 'Storm' silk/merino blend I bought another 200 gms which I have just started spinning; and now I have another grizzle. The original 500gms was very badly blended and the silk came in lumps which were impossible to draw so I ended up with a very uneven yarn. Surprisingly, with the pattern I chose to knit, the roughness actually enhances the vest and I am very happy with the results.
BUT ... the new lot is properly blended and no longer do I have lumps of silk mixed with the wool. The silk is well blended and integrates well with the wool. So - the last few centimetres is going to look different - which I am not very happy about. To add insult to injury, the roving looks as though it has been randomly put together with strips falling off the sides and one chunk which was not attached in any way but looks as though it was put into the package to bring the weight up to the correct amount. So I have stripped it down to its component loosely attached pieces. This will not matter, of course but I am not sure what the New Zealand supplier thinks it is doing. I have started buying my rovings from USA and South Australia.
However, I have not yet tried spinning any of that bit of my stash so I might find that it is just as difficult to handle as the New Zealand lot. Actually the black corriedale from NZ is fine and I am very happy with my first skein. But I need to get the Storm out of the way before I get back to it or my knitting schedule will be disrupted.
I asked the Ds to give me some time with them instead of presents for birthdays and Christmases and D3 treated me to a matinee of South Pacific yesterday. The story was changed around a bit to bring it up to modern thinking, it was rather raunchy and most of the cast were dancers so it was fairly spectacular but definitely not a kids' show. The star, as always with that production, was Bloody Mary who was brilliant.
D3 has also, for an early Christmas present, given me a subscription to PLY magazine. Any spinners out there who haven't come across it yet ... you need to check it out; it is full of useful stuff and a great read. D3 and I did spinning classes together when she was still at school and not supposed to gatecrash adult education and we have both taken it up again just recently - she because she stopped mourning the broken and unreplaceable flyer on her Camelot wheel and me because I bought E.Roberta.
However, as with her fabric collection, she seems to be buying more yarn than she has time to knit - but what the heck; she is happy. :)
I am going to have to spin the last of the 'Storm' blend fibre in order to finish the vest I am knitting. I pushed forward to the end of the penultimate ball to work out how many inches the last one would knit up to and found that I will be about three inches short. This is, of course, assuming that there will be the same length of yarn in the last ball as in the one I have just finished knitting but it is pretty clear in my mind that I need to bite the bullet and get spinning again.
Speaking of biting the bullet, I have been experiencing pain in one tooth when I chew on it (and only when I chew on it) so yesterday I took myself off to the dentist. He X-Rayed the teeth in the vicinity and there is no crack, no decay and no abscess but he was horrified at what my previous dentist (who thankfully resigned) had done to my occlusion with his idea that fillings did not have to be shaped to fit their opposite number with the result that only four teeth come anywhere near their partners and that is only because I insisted on a bit of remedial work when only one cusp actually touched its opposite number.
So my new dentist is talking of sending me off to a dental trouble-shooter. I am seeing him again at the end of next week and we will decide then what should be done. short of refilling all the teeth I can't see what can be done but Dentist Dr C. thinks that would be a major and hopefully avoidable way to solve the problem. Luckily I have dental cover with HBF.
