More Yarn

July 9, 2026Leave a comment

The galette and jar of caramel last weekend went with me to a 4th of July get together with some friends just up the street from me. We had a lovely time chatting and eating, there were some laughs, and I got to visit with one of my very favorite dogs. The galette really wasn’t sweet enough and I think that would have been fine, but it was really missing something. A scoop of vanilla ice cream did wonders, but I think I’ll have to try it again. Perhaps lemon zest and the barest pinch of salt added?

In the last entry, you may have noticed that underneath the grey wool on that bobbin, there was some white yarn. After I got home from the get together, I set to work on that white yarn and plied it.

The difference in color is due to evening lighting and actual daylight. I’m very pleased with this!

Though, I also really need to start tagging these because I’ve made so many little sample skeins now, I’m forgetting which one is from which fleece. On the other hand, I’m having a really good time making these regardless of what fleece they come from. But I did wonder, what can I do with small skeins? They’re pretty to look at and soft to the touch, but I’d rather they don’t just sit around, so I thought I might pull out some dye materials I’ve been squirreling away over the last couple of years just to see what happens.

But also, I’ve been hankering to do some embroidery (you know, with the oodles of spare time I have – I should be working on painting the rooms on the second floor…my knee and collarbone are just about functional enough), and I thought, oh, crewel embroidery would be perfect. I need a new tea cozy, which could be embroidered, and this could be a small enough project that wouldn’t need to be confined to a dedicated space, because I have no space to dedicate to any projects right now. And so I went down a very brief rabbit hole looking up crewel yarns and the qualities in wool that are needed for them: mostly fine and soft, nothing about staple length, apparently Dorset is a popular breed (which makes no sense to me, but maybe they’re using lamb’s wool)…?

Okay, okay, I know, probably I don’t need to restrict myself to any particular qualities of currently available commercially made crewel yarns. I can make what I want, dammit, and that’s how I extracted myself from the rabbit hole. There was a bit of an entirely different fleece I bought this May that I hadn’t yet spun much of. It’s extremely fine, the staple of the bit I washed is fairly short, and it is absolutely filthy. I really needed very fine combs for this (I tried carding, and I still suck at it), but on Monday evening I started coming with my usual combs and did the best I could.

I’m VERY pleased with this! This is a pearl grey fleece and so unbelievably fine and soft. I really wasn’t sure how this would turn out, partly because I was spinning it so fine, I couldn’t actually see the twist anymore. I am middle-aged and require reading glasses now, which I’m still furious about, so there was some assistance with a camera and then zooming in. But it all worked out! I haven’t wet finished this yarn yet – it’s currently tucked next to my work laptop so I can pat it now and then. I am really hoping the bulk of the fleece isn’t as dirty as the bit I washed because that really slowed everything down.

Aaaanyway, the point of this test was to see if I could spin fine enough for a two-ply crewel yarn, and clearly I can. I might divide this skein up into a couple skeins and see what walnuts or avocados might do. Or marigold petals. Or I might see if I can find some madder root. The great thing about tiny skeins is that they will only require tiny dye pots, and hopefully also relatively tiny amounts of time. I can’t get exact about any of it, to be sure, but it feels like it might be fun to just mess around and get a feel for playing with dye stuffs.

Stay tuned.

Wring the joy out of the minutes

July 4, 20261 Comment

It has been some time since I last posted. Honestly, I wasn’t sure I’d ever post here again, and maybe this one will be the last? I don’t know. Life continues to poke and prod me towards thinking about what’s really important and how I should be spending my time. (Not scrolling!) I’m not sure if documenting this is important. It’s complicated and it’s also not.

I got into a car accident in February in which my car was totaled, I got a pin in my collarbone, two months in a wheelchair, and needed to rely on my friends for…an awful lot. I still can’t play the cello and stairs are sometimes tricky. I learned (again) how kind people can be. Catherine talked to me while I was stuck in my car until the fire department came to pull me out – I never saw her face and I have no idea where she lives, but am unbelievably grateful to her. People helped me bathe, go to the bathroom, stand on my good leg, braid my hair, fed me, took me to doctor’s appointments. It is July now and I have a car again (as of one week ago), I can walk, take care of myself, work both jobs, do a bit of gardening, spin wool, and cook. And the best thing? I’m alive.

And so.

In May, my friend Rachel and I went to the sheep shearing we go to every year 30 minutes north of me. It was a delightful sunny day, and the company was excellent. We had a lovely time and bought more fleeces than we had planned (of course). I bought three for myself and they’re all fabulously soft. Of course one is grey. Because of course. The following day, I pulled out handfuls and washed them, and when they were dry, I put them away for a time when I’d have a chance to spin them. I’ve been trying to make more time to spin because making is really my reason for being and I’ve spent years trying to make myself do the things I have to do (not making) so I can get them done faster and have my life back. This current way of life, bottling up all my making urges for later, isn’t making me happy. So I spent some time yesterday spinning a couple of those handfuls of wool and plied the grey this morning. While it’s not a totally even yarn, it is a very good yarn, and it is grey with a subtle sheen. I love it.

My dear friend E passed away from pancreatic cancer on June 9th. I mostly have two words for this: Fuck cancer. Two words that must be said in the rudest, loudest, ugliest voice crowned with spittle. E was 89, but if you saw her even two months prior, you’d think, this woman is amazing! She’s no where near her 80s. Look at her go! She’s hilarious! We got together once a week to walk the dog in the park, and after she was diagnosed a couple of years ago, I made it a priority to not miss a single time if I could at all help it. Every Saturday, I went over and we’d walk. When she couldn’t go for walks anymore, we’d have tea, and the teas became meals with five or six bowls and plates of little tasty things, a cheese board with four or five cheeses, crackers or bread, conversation, laughter, hilarity. Her brother would sometimes show up. Or her daughter. Her husband would join us. Sometimes there’d be a table full of people, telling stories, laughing, arguing, encouraging. For hours. Right up until almost the end. I miss her so much.

God damn. Listen: you have to wring every last bit of life – every last bit of joy – out of every minute, because one day you’re out of minutes and none of us knows when that day is going to come. As soon as I have a dining room table again and some chairs, I’m having people over for tea. There will be little bowls and plates of tasty snacks, crackers, a cheese board. It’ll be a regular thing.

So here I am making an effort at making stuff again. There will be fits and starts because my house is still a construction zone and will be for at least the next six months (hoping to finish by Christmas if I can scrape up the funds), and I have a full time job. Though I am really making an effort to sleep more and work a little less.

My first attempt at a galette. The crust is 80% almond flour, there’s a dash of wheat flour in there, some egg white, almond extract, butter, a couple of tablespoons of sugar, and the cherries are cherries. With a dash of sugar and cornstarch. I made it trying to keep the carbohydrates to a minimum because the event I was attending today would be populated with mostly diabetic folks and there was to be ice cream. This looked better than it tasted, alas. It needed whipped cream on or something, and the crust really needed a bit more sugar or something but considering I sort of made it up, I think I did an okay job. Also, now I have a cherry/olive pitter. I feel there may be some olive bread in my future.

May adventures continued. Plus a vacation.

April 17, 2024Leave a comment

(This was a draft I wrote in May of 2020 – today is April 17, 2024. So much has changed, but I’m going to publish this anyway, because it’s a fine post in itself, reminding me of The Before and all the things I was doing at the time.)

I tried very hard to get through that grey fleece I had bought from Balky Farm in 2019, but that didn’t happen. I did try, though, and that resulted in quite a bit of yarn.

Good yarn! Squishy yarn!

This time, I decided to measure and tag it. I have enough yarn that I swore I would remember which fleece it came from, how long ago I spun it, and how many yards there were. Good grief. And I have a terrible memory, and I know it. So. This time: tags!

You’d probably not guess that the fleece the above yarn came from was grey, but it was. It spun up brown, which I think I did not quite expect. Well, I did expect some yellowing from the sunburnt tips, but I didn’t expect brown. Not that I’m necessarily complaining! It’s still really gorgeous wool and made Really Good Yarn.

I also started combing some of that new! grey! fleece! that I washed up a small bag of.

So fluffy! So beautiful! And I wanted to do some experiments to see exactly how I should prepare this wool for spinning. So I combed some as they were, I combed some locks that had been flicked first, and I combed some locks that had their sunburnt tips trimmed off.

Combed fluff to spin! The color is off I think, but you’ll see some yarn spun up from it in sunlight, which is truer to the actual color.

Three tiny skeins!! So tiny. I spun each nest up, then Andean plied them (a technique that I very much appreciate now). The skeins on the right are probably closest in color. YOu can only just see the difference. The middle is the one with the tips trimmed, and while I was certain that was the one I was going to love the most, now I am not so sure. Oh yes, it’s grey. But it lacks a certain texture in the color. Or a layer of color. I’m not sure I can explain it. My eyes say that yarn is boring. And yet, I look at the Gotland yarn sample I spun up some months ago, and I think this is the perfect, beautiful grey and it is not boring. And it is way more homogeneously grey than that middle mini skein. Well. I can’t figure it out. But what I did like was the one on the far right. It’s the most even, and it’s grey, but with the very slightest tinge of creamy yellow, like that yellowish tinge silver has. And I loooove it. I really do. I’ve decided to spin the whole fleece with the tips attached.

In the meantime, I spun MOAR of the fleece I’ve been working on forever. Got two skeins. Washed them up.

Looms are very handy for hanging yarn on. I had been working on finishing the measuring portion of a dishtowel project that I started back in September 2019. You can see the warping board hanging on the other side of the loom.

Had some singles left on a bobbin, so I Andean plied that, and got a smaller skein that I wound into a cake. Then I knit a swatch.

I don’t hate the swatch, but I don’t like it either. I used three different sizes of needle, and I think I could go down another size even. This yarn would definitely resist pilling and it’s stretchy enough for knitting, but I’m not crazy about how it doesn’t fluff up after washing and blocking. It is, after all, a weaving yarn. If I want sweater yarn for knitting, I’m going to have to card the wool, and then spin using the long draw method, which, frankly, scares me. I’m pretty good at spinning a worsted yarn. Pretty darned good. I cannot spin long draw to save my life. It’s awful. And a thing I will have to learn.

Marlie and I got out and about in May. We explored the dirt roads near where we live.

Photos at the bank

October 24, 2020October 24, 20203 Comments

Way back about a year or so ago, I got my name on a list for showing art at a local bank. They got in touch with me a couple of weeks ago – I had totally forgotten! – and so as of yesterday, my collection of Dutch Master inspired photographs is now hanging at TD Bank on Triangle Street in Amherst, MA for the next month.

This turned out better than I’d hoped. 🙂

It’s been a stupidly busy and exhausting few months. I’m chalking it up to the pandemic and the ongoing house hunt (which has been made far more stressful by the pandemic). Making has not been happening, which just makes me more exhausted. I know I’m not the only one – we’re all exhausted. Of course, the election is also adding to the pervasive existential dread of the year.

About a month ago, I did finish (finally, a year later) the grey-with-a-red-stripe dishtowels I had started. I ended up with eleven total, and I chose the six best, packed them up, and mailed them off. They arrived on the couples’ one year anniversary, so that was getting it in just under the wire! I am not sure what I will do with the others I have. I might add them to my online shop, or I might keep them. I will take some pictures soon and post them here.

For any of you who may be reading this and are wondering about my shop, I’ve got it on hold at the moment. I haven’t had time to take decent photos of the towels, and to be honest, I’d really like to redesign my shop. So, if you see anything on this site that you think you might like to buy, you can email or comment.

Weaving anything new is on hold at the moment as I’ll be moving, house purchase or no, elsewhere around the end of the year. My big loom may end up in a friend’s studio or in storage – it’s not yet clear. I hadn’t been spinning for months because of the weather. It was just too warm, and the tamoxifen-induced hot flashes meant my hands got all sweaty, which is a terrible thing for unspun fiber. It isn’t at all clear if I’ll have room to spin where I’ll be moving to if I can’t find a house in the next couple of weeks. Things are so uncertain. However, at some point in the future, I will have a place of my own, and then I’ll be able to make All The Things again.

Stay safe, everyone. Hang in there. Make things if you can. But also definitely rest if you need to.

Balky Farm

July 6, 2020July 6, 2020Leave a comment

May was a very busy month. One of the highlights was a trip to Balky Farm in Northfield, MA to watch the sheep shearing and get first dibs on the freshly shorn fleeces. Last year, the weather was perfect: blue skies, a gentle breeze, birds chirping, a warm spring sun…this year, it was freezing cold, very windy, and flurried for most of the day. The few of us from our spinning group who showed up huddled in the barn out of the wind, but did go back to sit in the car to thaw every couple of hours.

If things hadn’t been so restricted by the coronavirus, we would have planned to bring a few thermoses of hot drinks to pass around. Alas!

The barn is large and spacious. On shearing day, some portable gates were set up to hold the sheep.

Before!

Then the shearers – there were three of them – would ask for another sheep, and a farm hand would let one out. The shearer would carefully lead the sheep to the shearing platform and kind of wrangle it over onto its side and then its back, keeping the head up. I have heard that you can’t keep a sheep on its back for too long because its insides get rearranged in a really awful way for the sheep later. So, the shearer has to be careful to work quickly when starting as the first cuts are at the belly. When the belly wool has been shorn, the sheep is moved to her side and shearing continues there.

On the right is Kevin Ford, an international sheep shearing champion (though I do not know what prizes he has won), shears his sheep with hand shears. No electricity, no motors, nothing to freak the sheep out. Everyone stays calm. The two shearers on the left are Kevin’s apprentices, and I’ve totally forgotten their names. (If someone knows, please let me know!) There were 60+ sheep this year to be shorn, and it was expected to take at least a couple of hours, but we were told the shearers arrived about 7:30ish and they didn’t leave until about 1pm.

After! Nekkid sheeeeeeep!

However! Having arrived at the farm about 10am, we got to see plenty of sheep being shorn. And, maybe the best part, we got to see each fleece up close and personal immediately after it came off the sheep!

There were lots of white sheep, but also lots of colored sheep. And I have a thing for grey wool. I honestly do not remember if the two fleeces I bought are any of these in the picture, but they were all purchased. The breeds are all mixed, but mostly they’re Shetland/Finn with sometimes some obvious Cheviot or a touch of Romney. They’re SO soft.

This one just kept staring at me and chewing its cud. I felt so judged.

I ended up with a light grey (very like the one on the right in the picture above), and a dark grey, almost charcoal in spots. They’re both stunning, and I can’t wait to wash them and spin them up. There’s So. Much. Going. On. (I sometimes with there were an extra 6 hours in every day.)

Our haul. Our cars smelled luxurious on the way home.

These fleeces are not expensive. We tried to pay more for them, and hopefully, next year the shepherd, Stewart, will charge more. The fleeces he doesn’t sell to hand spinners he sends off to a mill on Prince Edward Island. There, the fleeces are scoured, carded, spun, and woven into blankets. I love this so very much. (Almost to the point where I want to set up a mill to do the same thing here in New England. Anyone got some money they want to invest? Oh we have mills in the New England that will wash, card, and spin, but none that also weave.)

When I got home, I really couldn’t wait, so I washed up a few small handfuls I picked from various spots on the lighter grey fleece I bought. I wanted to see if there was a lot of variation. And, well, I just wanted to spin up some samples.

The perfect grey.

Catching up

June 30, 2020July 1, 2020Leave a comment

So, I failed to write anything since the first week or so of April. Which is surprising because it’s not like I wasn’t busy! And while I did take pictures, I don’t remember all the details, but let me just give you some pictures anyway as highlights of what I’ve been up to! I will post additional catching-up entries as well.

My bread has been improving steadily. I would say that it is bakery-quality now, which pleases me very much. The favourite in the house is cinnamon raisin, though I do make a plain one, adding a bit of coarse rye for added flavour, that I like to eat. Since I don’t eat a ton of bread all the time, I slice that one and keep it in the freezer, then when I want some, I take out a slice and pop it in the toaster. The results of that keep reminding me that I have got to make grilled cheese with it at some point because I think it would be so, so good. (I have got to learn to make cheese, too.)

April 18th. Out of nowhere came snow. Kinda pretty though, eh?

Snow just means either “time to go skiing” or “yay! indoor projects!” Skiing was still out of the question. Drat?

See what I mean? They look really good! I’m pretty happy with my bread progress. So happy that I ended up wanting to eat quite a bit of it. With butter. That is spreadable. Which meant finding my butter keeper. But alas! It is so well packed away that I couldn’t find it without completely unpacking all my kitchen stuff, which would be…a whole other project I don’t yet need to get into.

So I did the next best thing: I bought one. When I finally find a place of my own, I will either donate it to someone who needs one, or I will keep it and use both that I now own.

It was still at the beginning of the pandemic restrictions (no, they haven’t really changed at the writing of this entry…states are trying to ‘reopen’ but then they’re finding that outbreaks are occurring, so they’re closing again…), but a local shop was doing curbside service, so I ordered one sort of via email and the phone and picked it up literally on the curb outside the shop. I really like this shop – the service is great and they have a good variety of kitchen tools. (Plus, I worked there a lifetime ago.) Yay for soft, spreadable butter!

I’d been practicing gamba regularly:

Six strings! Gut strings! So many strings!

But I’m sorry to admit that after a few weeks, I stopped again. Practicing two instruments while working a full time job and having other very time-consuming hobbies made it slip off my daily list. Also, I no longer had a class to go to. When I started cello, I knew I was going to need lessons, both for instruction (which is, yes, super important) but also for a person to be answerable and accountable to. I had tried to teach myself to play the harp a billion years ago, and practice was…irregular. I did try, but since there was no one to be accountable to, it didn’t stick. On top of that, there was no one to play with, which is what I think I was aiming for without knowing it.

I still have the gamba in my possession for the moment. When the university figures out what it’s doing, I’ll give it back. Or maybe start another class. We’ll see. I still want to learn to play it. I just need to figure out a practice schedule. Maybe.

One of the best parts of living where I do right now:

Someone decided to hang out with me while I was practicing. Awwww!

Bread, yarn, German cuisine…and Nutella.

April 10, 20202 Comments

It does not seem like I last posted only two weeks ago. It seems like maybe six weeks ago. Staying at home…working from home…not leaving the house…all this seems to be playing with my sense of time. Which might not be a bad thing? I like routine, to be sure, and schedules are important so that I actually get things done, so I am so grateful to be able to work from home. But not having the same routine I’ve had for years is making me pay more attention to the detail of the overall shape of my day. It’s interesting.

In any case, I’m still on the Bread Experiment. Guys, I have baked some really awful bread. The first couple loaves were okay. The third loaf was pretty good. The fourth loaf had holes so large, not even cheese stayed on. There was more empty space than bread in that one. The fifth loaf was so bad, I think I’ve eaten maybe two slices from it, and it’s still on the counter and no one else has touched it. (It’s going out for the birds tomorrow.) And then….!

Yesterday, after a few days of No Bread and Extreme Frustration at Baking, I decided to try again. I had mixed some leaven the night before and I left it until late morning to use any of it for a new loaf. This time, I replaced 50g of AP flour with some coarse ground rye, because…I dunno. I’ve heard that rye is good at promoting starter growth, it’s got good microbial stuff. So, okay. I thought maybe this would help my dough and the finished crumb. The result was a very, very wet dough, because, I suspect, the rye didn’t absorb as much moisture as the AP flour, and I didn’t know this would happen because I am a Bread Baking Newbie. I stretched and folded, but not really according to any set schedule, just as I thought of it. And when about 7:00pm rolled around, I decided it was time to bake it. I very gently folded and shaped the loaf. OMG so carefully and gently. And because it was so very soft, I put it in a Dutch oven and ended up having to snip the dough with shears rather than score it. A razor blade won’t even do it. This dough was so wet, I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to amount to an edible loaf at all.

BEHOLD! Pretty liquid-like dough. And the resulting loaf was not at all what I had expected. This time, the holes are small enough to not let much Nutella or brie drip through!

I tell you, I was so surprised. My housemates have practically showered me with compliments.

This is today’s loaf. So, because the last one was so wet and I have not been able to score any of the loaves properly even with a razor blade, I thought about adding more flour or reducing the water. For this one, I reduced the water by 50g, and boy was it dry. But this one was started last night with leaven I had started yesterday morning. I think I managed to stretch and fold once before bed (so. dry.), and then I just put it in the fridge until this morning. Miraculously, the dough was so much nicer and Not Dry. (Not sopping wet either, though.) Then, sometime this morning late, I started stretching and folding, again without any set schedule. I think there might have been an hour or so in between S&Fs, and after four times, I just stopped. About 4:30ish, I shaped it very gently, preheated the oven, and put it in the Dutch oven. Still unable to score it – argh! I wanted a firmer loaf so I could score it! Why is it not firm enough? – I snipped with kitchen shears and put it in to bake. Today’s loaf is on the left in the picture above, compared with yesterday’s loaf on the right. It’s a little lighter, but still looks gorgeous, doesn’t it? I suspect it’ll also be tangier due to the longer proofing time (overnight). The dough certainly smelled tangy when I put it in the oven.

The moral of the story is: neglected sourdough probably results in pretty good bread.

In other news, I am still spinning that grey fleece.

I plied those two bobbins I talked about last time. I have no idea how many yards I have – I still need to measure – but there’s a lot. I’m okay with how this turned out, except there’s a lot of energy in one of the skeins, which I think means I put too much twist in the singles. Sigh. Probably it’ll be fine, but the next two bobbins I’m spinning with slightly less twist in the hopes that the resulting yarn will be a bit fluffier – maybe not too fluffy because I want to weave with it. I think. (I’m not sure, to be honest. I’m mostly considering this fleece to be practice yarn. But we’ll see.)

The spinning guild is going up to the farm in Northfield where I got this fleece to get more fleeces in May, so I need to make ROOM.

I’ve been cooking, too! I don’t know why, but I wanted Spätzle so badly, and I wanted to share it with the house. I ate Käsespätzle so often when I lived in Germany. The noodles are available for basically pennies there, but the last time I looked, the same bag of noodles is sold here for $8 at the grocery store. The sad part is that it’s dead easy to make from scratch. SO EASY.

When I was in Germany last visiting my dear friends Eva and Martin, I asked Eva if she had a good recipe for Spätzle as I hadn’t made it before, and she ended up pressing a whole book of Spätzle recipes into my hands with the promise that I’d use it. I picked up a Spätzle press at the grocery store there, too.

Yup. So easy. So delicious. I cooked up a huge amount, and it was enjoyed by all. Of course, to be more authentic to my college days, I also opened a bottle of cheap red wine, and we all had a little with supper. (It was really awful wine – I mulled it later and it’s much improved as well as being without alcohol now. Woo!) Anyone who wants to know how to make Spätzle from scratch, let me know. I can send you a recipe, and if you’re nearby, we can get together and I’ll show you how it’s done (when we’re not all under quarantine, of course). These noodles were made with AP flour and duck eggs. I think I want to try it with a little semolina flour and put some fresh herbs in too. YUM.

And of course, I am making masks so that my housemates and I are as safe as we can be when we are out shopping for groceries. The New York Times had an article on which fabrics have been shown to be adequate. The suggestion was good quality quilter’s flannel and heavy quilting cotton. I chose batik – it’s a fairly high thread count, and it seemed to be the only cotton I had that (gulp, I hate to admit it) I felt I could sacrifice. (Yes, much of my cotton is earmarked for projects.)

Flannel on the left, batik and some other quilter’s cotton on the right.

I haven’t quite finished them yet. I still have a couple with the swirly green fabric and blue flannel to sew up. I did cut elastic for them, but I’m thinking I’ll just make bias strips and make ties.

But I’m trying not to think about making masks and why too much right now. The news as well as the certain level of ignorance and not-critical thinking in people online right now have made me angry, so I’m trying hard to spend a little while concentrating on crafty stuff. Stuff that makes me happier. And Nutella. There’s not a lot that chocolate + hazelnuts cannot help.

I am prepared for so much bread in my life.

(I understand there are people who dislike hazelnuts and/or chocolate. I am not one of those people. Not even a little.)

How are you? What have you been making?

Definitely not bored.

March 27, 2020March 27, 2020Leave a comment

So the seams of the world are starting to come apart. Things are weird, everyone agrees. We’re all living in a dystopian science fiction novel, and very probably, nothing will ever be the same. I am hoping there will be a silver lining for the United States when the worst is over: universal healthcare, better welfare, less emphasis on capitalism, more emphasis on helping everyone. We are all human and we are all in this together; this life on this planet.

But. That is not the topic for right now. Right now, I want to blather on about all the things I am doooooing! (Or trying to do.)

When it looked like the proverbial sh*t was going to hit the fan and the BossMan declared we should all work from home for the foreseeable future, I drove over to my friendly baker and asked for a cup of sourdough starter. The bakery is LOVELY and they want to encourage people to bake bread, because they’re makers and makers want to encourage other people to make. I also got 12 pounds of bread flour. I figured while I was working from home, I could also wait for bread dough to rise, and learn the ways of baking sourdough bread. (The crew at the bakery agreed this was a most noble cause.)

I’ve been eating a LOT of bread.

Behold the leaven made from the starter!

This sat on the counter all night – 100g of it will be used to make the bread dough. IT’S ALIVE!!

My first loaf looked so promising right up until it came out of the oven…

So weirdly crooked. I have no idea why it does that – I’m still learning how to do this and what it all means.

Loaf #1 compared with loaf #2. The second loaf was baked at a slightly cooler temperature. I cut the first loaf right open as soon as it was cool. Lots of holes!

But, as oddly as I thought this bread looked, it tasted WONDERFUL. So, success! Of course, I kept going:

Loaf #3. So. Tasty. And slightly denser, which holds in the Nutella more easily.

Today’s bread:

Which I had high hopes for! But, the oven was slightly too high, and it’s a lot darker than I wanted, and very tall. (No picture yet…) I’m positive it will taste wonderful. Positive.

I’m going to need more flour soon. This is very compatible with working from home. The schedule isn’t strict – I can get up and have a five minute break to go stretch and fold or shape a loaf.

So, a friend gave me the basic recipe, but she got it from the book Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson, which was recommended to me by the baker at Henion Bakery in Amherst, MA. (Where you should totally go for all your bread and pastry needs!) I failed to get the book, and up until now, didn’t have the time/circumstance to learn about baking bread. My friend did – she was frustrated, so amassed knowledge and then practiced for a year. I will totally buy that book when I have the opportunity!

A few weeks ago, I was working on another project. It was cold, still below freezing at night and above freezing in the day. I have a bucket and spile, and there is a line of totally tappable maple trees in the front yard. Of course I tapped one. Of course, I totally forgot to take pictures of the bucket on the tree – it’s a big bucket.

It was bit complicated. For a week, I got a lot of sap – about 5 gallons – which I did not expect, and at the weekend, I started boiling. Twelve hours of boiling later, it was almost there, and I sat down to supper. Unfortunately, I should have stayed by the pot because I missed it by about 3 minutes. Smoke rose from the pot, it had cooked to just about the hard crack stage. People, if you’re boiling sap and you get down the the end, for goodness’ sake, stay by the pot and watch it. I had to throw it all out. But! I left the spile and bucket on the tree for another week, and amazingly got another two and a half gallons of sap. At the weekend, I boiled again.

I did stop short of actual syrup. It’s more like maple juice, and still in the fridge. I think this weekend, I’ll pour it back in a (smaller) pot and cook it down some more. Watching it very closely.

I also had supper with my dear neighbours from when I lived in Hatfield!! I miss them so, they are such kind people. And they have the most beautiful fish!! I got to see them in their huge tanks – they’re so beautiful, I’m awfully tempted to plan my own tank one day.

They’re discus fish, about 4″ across. Sooo beautiful.

Aaand, on with projects.

It’s spring, and my spinning guild has plans to visit at least two farms this year for fleeces. I still don’t have a single whole fleece spun up. So I’m determined to try to get as much of the two Shetland fleeces spun up as I can. The tendonitis is so much better and I can wield the combs again and spin.

Lovely hand-combed Shetland top! Sooo soft!

Combing is slow because this fleece has some dandruff, and I’m having to brush it out first. Some bits are faster than others, but it’s mostly slow. However, the results are so wonderful to spin.

This is as of this morning! I’m planning on plying this weekend. Other crafty friends of mine and I were planning another Crafternoon – people show up at one of our houses, sit around with crafty projects to work on, eat snacks, and chat. Or just work on projects, sitting quietly working and not talking like a room full of cats. Well, in light of the corona virus, we can’t do that. But we can get together virtually, so a bunch of us are going to try it out with video chatting and see how that goes. I’m really looking forward to it.

I have been in the house for two weeks – my brother came down with something that was suspiciously like the symptoms of the corona virus about a week ago, and I had hung out with him a week before that, so I stayed home. It turned out that his oldest daughter had been sick with a different virus at college a couple of weeks before, but hadn’t said anything until just recently. So. I’m safe. And today was the last day of the two week quarantine anyway. Tomorrow, I am going to venture out for a few groceries and maybe try to get some stamps at the post office. Maybe not. Things are weird out there.

And finally, I realized that my ‘home office’ right now is pretty great. Here’s the view:

Yep, it’s messy. But it’s full of sunlight and craftiness! The only thing that’s missing is the pot of tea. I had drunk that earlier.

I have heard many people say that they are bored in their self-isolation at home. This is not a thing I can relate to. If anything, I no longer have to commute anywhere, so I have nearly a whole extra two hours in the day that I can devote to practicing cello or gamba, or I can work on weaving, spinning, drawing, baking, sewing, etc etc. It’s wonderful!

Part of this month’s practicing for cello!

I hope you all are well and that you stay well.

Stay home! Knitting/spinning/weaving/baking/reading can help save lives.

I’m still here!

March 1, 2020March 1, 20201 Comment

Wow. It’s been a while.

Things got really busy with doctor’s appointments and general exhaustion. I am better now! I had a lumpectomy on November 14th and radiation therapy for the entire month of January – my last day of radiation was also W. A. Mozart’s birthday, so there was a lot to celebrate. It wasn’t until about two weeks or so ago that I realized exactly how tired I had been because all of a sudden I wasn’t that tired. I still am tired, and my joints are creaky, but that’s the tamoxifen. But hey, as far as I know I do not have cancer, and that’s a win.

I’ve tried to keep up with practicing and making things, but tendonitis struck again. I’ve had it since about this past September in my left elbow, and I did not do what I was supposed to do (rest, heat, NSAIDs), but kept practicing both cello and gamba. The result was that I stopped cello the end of October until mid January, and I stopped gamba in the first half of December until the very end of January. I couldn’t button my sweater or braid my hair anymore, and I still can’t believe I let it get that bad. It’s sooo much better now, but it’s still there, so I’m being careful and doing what I need to do to make it better.

This also meant that all that hand work I was doing wasn’t possible anymore. Spinning for any huge length of time made it worse. Knitting has been right out for months and months. Combing wool was only possible in about 3 minute chunks. And then my friend Lee started a make-a-thing-daily project and invited everyone to join in. Her process of choice this time was embroidery.

Well!

I have been itching to embroider for some time, and Lee’s rules seemed simple enough: gather all your materials ahead of time, set the bar so low you can roll over it (quick and dirty, Kate, quick. and. dirty.), and do not fret about what you are making. Quantity over quality. Okay, okay, so I naturally fret over quality. Always. But I also recognize this is a thing that I need to maybe let go of now and then. So. A daily thing for February. The Short Month! Yes, I thought, I can do this. As long as it’s in tiny chunks.

I found all my embroidery floss and hoops and needles. And I began.

Week 1. These are Very Small, which keeps to the quick-and-dirty principle.

I had no patterns – so I just doodled. And doodled. Some I like, some not so much. But I did start to look at embroidery online and got to thinking about flowers. Lee presented me with tiny laser-cut frames she made. I love them.

Week 2, plus one. Moar doodles!

I re-learned how to do French knots, I learned the bullion stitch, and I learned that some of the yarns I spin are perfectly suitable for embroidering with. The purple flower (there’s a bit of charcoal on that one from the frame – the frames were laser cut, and so had carbon on the edges) is a silk/merino blend I spun up, as well as the purple in the octagonal frame. The grey sheep/mouse (it was supposed to be a sheep, but didn’t quite work) is a bit of Gotland I’d spun.

Week 3, plus a bit? Feeesh, flowers, and…more flowers?

I am really enamored of French knots. And embroidered flowers. And in rayon floss! I really wanted silk yarn (because who wouldn’t?), but all I could get quickly and on the cheap was rayon, so I settled (for now). The tree I’m especially happy with – that one is all in cotton floss, but from three colors I kept pulling out and staring hard at. I’d been looking at pictures online of tiny, gorgeous embroidered flowering trees made from satin stitches and French knots. Eventually, I knew I’d get to it. And I did. And I’m happy with it. And I think this particular tree with this particular color scheme will inspire Something Else (stay tuned?). The dandelion was a doodle to see if I could do it. I have a skein of variegated yellow cotton and I thought, “O, that reminds me of dandelions.”

I’m telling you, I have so much appreciation for those professional embroiderers who can create depth with needle and thread just through the use of color and stitch direction.

Late in the game, I ran out of white linen, so reached for a scrap of blue. But you know, it just wasn’t working. I love this shade, but I just wasn’t happy with how the colors of the floss were working with it.

Well. In any case, you’ll notice that there are fewer than 29 embroideries. I framed the last batch (Week 3 and a bit) yesterday, and while trying to start another wee embroidery to catch up on the last day of the month, I realized that the tendonitis really did not like it. I practiced a ridiculous amount of cello yesterday (yay, Vivaldi [except I can’t play it yet]), but the thing that made the tendonitis really painful was holding the embroidery hoop. Argh. The embroidery can wait. There will be other months, and an almost endless supply of floss and handspun yarn.

This is not to say that I did not make nothing prior to February. Spinning did aggravate the tendonitis, but as long as I did it in small chunks and took care, I spun. The spinning also helped with the mental stuff going on – a repetitive task that I don’t have to think overly much about and at the end, I get soft, squishy yarn. That I can squish.

I’ll try to go in order.

This was a bit of dyed Leicester Longwool and I got from a destash pile at one of the spinning guild meetings that I spun up in late December. I’m pretty happy with it. It was very easy and very mindless to spin, and there was a lot of it. I believe this is 8 ounces – each skein is 4 ounces. The only thing about this project was that the dye still hasn’t finished washing out, and I washed that skein about four times. I had used some cotton weaving yarn as ties on the skeins, and those picked up some of the dye, which leads me to believe the dyer used fiber reactive dyes rather than an acid dye. Which is aggravating. It would explain the lack of luster one would expect in this breed of wool. So, I’ll have to be careful when washing whatever project I use this for. (I’ll likely get a dye magnet or another fresher bottle of Synthropol to remove the rest of the excess dye.)

At some point, I realized I needed to start making progress on the Shetland fleeces. Because I have way too many fleeces and need to get through them! Especially if I want to buy more fleeces to make into more fabulous yarn to weave fabulous cloth. I’d been spinning samples for a bit (pretty sure this was January), and this one was one I was reasonably happy with. It’s got a bit more twist than I think the Shetland really wants, but I would absolutely weave with it. And let me tell you, Shetland is a joy to spin. It almost spins itself, it’s so very soft, and it’s so very lustrous. Can you see the shine?!

FLUFFFFFFY SHETLAND!

I tried another sample of the Shetland, this time with slightly less twist, and look at the difference! It’s much puffier than the stuff in the previous photo, and it’s so, so squishy. I loves it, I do. I want so much to weave with this, but I’ve had two people (experts in weaving and spinning, actually) tell me that this yarn is Really Suitable for Knitting. Sigh. I mean, it’s a sample. I can’t quite knit yet (tendonitis), but I might be able to weave it into a sample. Maybe. A tiny one.

Honestly, I love that yarn. I have never loved yarn I’ve spun so much as I love this one.

At some point in January, I decided to try out R.H. Lindsay Wool Merchants. I follow them on social media, and some of their pictures of wool are just so delicious. They sell wholesale, but they’ll also sell by the pound to whoever wants it. And I did. They’d posted a picture of super bouncy Dorset/Polypay roving from New England sheep. For $8.50/lb. I ordered two pounds. (The shipping was nearly that much, so I did briefly consider getting three pounds – I have no where to put it!) It came lickity-split and I pulled some of that off to spin:

Super springy! Super bouncy!

Yep. That’s pretty springy and bouncy! I gotta say, I really like this. You can’t beat the price, even with the shipping, and the roving is not carbonized. There were bits of VM in there, which I very happily picked out.

And then!

Look at that luster! Look at the color! Ooooh! Aaaaah!

I’m putting in a full size photo of the Gotland. I mean, how could I not?

This was my first attempt at spinning it. It’s not easy to spin. This is from commercially prepared roving that had sat in storage for some time, so was compressed some. There’s no crimp, there’s no wave. It’s a bit like spinning mohair, except it’s a bit less slippery. Getting the right amount of twist was a challenge, but I am pretty happy with this. It’s a two ply and if I can, I’ll weave a tiny sample out of this and full it to see what happens. But, on the other hand, I have more roving, and really what I should do is spin up the rest of it, and weave that into a sample, but cut the sample into three pieces, and go to town with experimental fulling. “Why all the trouble?” I hear you ask. The answer is that I want so much to sew myself a grey wool coat, and, believe it or not, I cannot find the right grey wool. It’s either not the right color, not the right weight, or some combination of wool and synthetic fibers. Or some combination of those three. And it pisses me off. So, I’ll just weave my own cloth, and spin the yarn if I have to. Dammit.

I know this is a huge project. I’d like to get it done in the next three years (before I’m 50).

Here’s another snap of that yarn:

I guess all that practicing spinning really paid off. I seem to be improving!

And then!

My friend Rachel (over at Spotted Sheep Studio) found some Gammelnorsk fleeces. I bet you had no idea there was a breed called Gammelnorsk, did you? Well. There is. And it’s rare. And she found a person in Norway who raises this breed, and got to buy a bag of fleeces from her. And Rachel and I stool around in the Webs parking lot after a spinning meeting opening the bag and smelling the delightful fumes of Norwegian barnyard and lanolin. And, of course, fondling the Gammelnorsk fleeces. The colors are amazing.

This breed is a dual coated breed, which means it has hair and a downy undercoat (tog and thel, respectively). I do not know much more than this, but Rachel is a fount of knowledge and will impart all her wisdom if I ask – also I’m going to be helping to prepare these fleeces for spinning, and then with the spinning. So I’ll have to know.

And the very last picture I have to show you is a bit of yarn I spun up yesterday. I have been learning about spinning and preparing the fibers via some Interweave videos. And so I tried combing the alpaca batts I have, because who doesn’t want alpaca top? Well. The batts are made from garbage alpaca. Or they were carded into oblivion, I’m not sure. In any case, the batts are only suitable for felting. The fibers are way too short for even spinning yarn. I even tried to card it and spin it. So aggravating. So, then I decided to turn my attention to a red Spelsau batt that Rachel’s husband brought back from a recent trip to Norway for me (and Rachel too, you should have seen her haul!). I tried combing a bit, and I got some top off it, but I think this batt is really suitable for carding. However, the color is AMAZING. Behold:

And lo! The Perfect Red!

And you know what? No dye came out of this when I washed it. None. Not even a little.

I love this red so much I want to roll around in it.

Really, what makes it so gorgeous is that it’s a tan or brown fleece that has been dyed red. The brown deepens the color and brings it over to the orangey side rather than the blue side. I’m thinking about experimenting with dyeing some of that brown Shetland – I have a white fleece too, but man, this red…

Unexpected things. Mostly brown.

September 24, 2019September 24, 20195 Comments

This past weekend was full of unexpected things. But good unexpected things.

I did not know there were going to be house guests, but breakfast out was really nice! We went to a local café on a farm down the road from us. The building is a strawbale construction, a simple design, with rustic decor. The food is tasty and plentiful. And the owners know my friends (of course). During the course of chatting with the owners, I happened to look out one of the side windows and noticed a walnut tree laden with nuts, so at an appropriate moment in the conversation, I changed topics and asked about their tree. Would it be possible to collect some of the walnuts I had seen on the ground? I wanted to make a dye. Of course! was the answer. The one tree I had seen turned out to be part of four trees. I was given a small paper bag and after we’d finished, I went outside and around the corner to the walnuts. And lo! there I saw so many walnuts. In fact, I’d never seen so many walnuts, and I wanted all of them. However, not knowing how many I’d actually need to making dye, I happily filled my paper bag and asked if I could come back if I needed more. The owners were more than happy to oblige. I can come get as many as I like. Woohoo!

(Sadly, I did not get a picture of the trees.)

I counted them – about 60. But I had to toss a few that ended up being full of worms.

I must say, black walnuts smell delightful. The hulls have a sort of earthy citrusy fragrance that makes me so happy. I can’t quite adequately explain it.

The hulls will also stain your hands brown like crazy. We got home, and I put the rest of my day’s plans aside for a few hours so I could peel the hulls from the nuts – the hulls are used for making dye. The shells are too, but if I’m going to use the shells, I want to save the nutmeats, so I spent time separating everything into two buckets.

Nuts in the left bucket. Hulls in the right. Unexpected fun with walnuts!

Most of the instructions I found online made it seem like getting the nut out of the hull was really hard and that I needed to drive over them, whack them with the claw of a hammer, or find a mallet and whack them until they yielded the nut. None of that was necessary. I got a steak knife and just ran the blade around each walnut, neatly dividing the hull into two hemispheres. Then a twist released one hemisphere, and if it didn’t, then one more cut to divide a hemisphere in two did the trick. It was a bit reminiscent of pitting all those peaches I canned a while ago.

So, the staining. Because black walnut hulls have so much tannin in them, they stain things pretty permanently – the tannin is the mordant. Cloth, skin, any natural fiber…brown. All the sources I found online told me to wear heavy rubber gloves. I didn’t have any, but I did have some disposable food service gloves at hand.

Yeah. So, all this brown? Still got through, and my forefinger and thumb are a bit brown.

I got them all hulled! But what to do with them then? Most instructions say to simmer them for an hour or so, but I do not want to have an accident in the house and stain the kitchen. It is not my kitchen after all. So, I’m trying what I think is a far more likely historical recipe (even though I have no proof at all): I’m soaking the hulls in that bucket in water for a couple of weeks. Then I’ll strain everything and maybe might see if I can find an outdoor cooking arrangement so I can simmer it and kill any mold that might have formed. Or not. Maybe I’ll put some in quart sized mason jars for later.

This dye is also apparently an excellent wood stain! I loves me a multitasking thing I can make! So, after a little experimentation with some wood scraps and some research, I may do any final prep and put some in jars for my woodworking friends. (And I am filing this knowledge away for later when I want to build bookcases for whatever house I end up with!)

I’ve got a couple of white skeins of two ply yarn I’ve spun – one skein I really have to run through the wheel again to give it some extra twist. And I have so much more white (Down breeds blend) that could be dyed with local black walnut dye handmade by me. The dyeing process itself is apparently super easy. You simply put the yarn or cloth in the dye and leave it there until it’s brown. If simmering it, I think you simmer for something like 30 mins to 1 hour. I will likely try just soaking it for a day and see what happens. (I do have to look into some sort of outdoor cooking equipment, though…)

I was also thinking of dyeing some bamboo rayon yarn and/or cotton yarn for weaving cloth or towels or something. Because why not?

But, don’t you need more walnuts for dyeing all that stuff? I hear you ask. It turns out, everyone seems to agree that you only need 12-15 walnuts per gallon of water. For just the hulls. So I have 4 gallons of the stuff. That’s a LOT of dye. Even 2 gallons is a lot if some of the water is supposed to be lost in cooking it. I am planning on also getting the shells, which apparently yield a darker brown. (Of course, that may not work, but I will try.)

I filled up the bucket with the hulls with water. I’ve set it in the garage with a piece of wood on top to soak for a while. The bucket with the nuts got filled with water, and I started scrubbing the remaining hull gunk off. I had read that the gunk could rot and mold and make a mess, but most importantly, it would dye your hands dark brown. I don’t feel like walking around with dark brown hands and having to explain that I have been playing with dye everywhere I go, so I elected to scrub. The two floaters were thrown away – I suspect if they float, there’s probably a problem with them.

I got about half scrubbed before I ran out of time and energy. So I drained out the water, put a tiny bit in so the ones that were left were only barely covered, and set those in the garage too to wait until I have some time to resume scrubbing. I’m hoping the soak will help to soften up the remaining gunk.

The real work to this project is going to be actually cracking the nuts. A quick read about black walnuts online seems to show that I’ll need to use a vice as a regular nut cracker will not do it at all. Woo.

Excuse the messy counter – my first attempt at waffle production!

I also unexpectedly found an as-yet-unused, brand-new-in-the-box, three-year-old electric waffle iron in the house! Of course I tried making waffles. This is the first time I’ve tried making waffles. It was an adventure. Definitely an unexpected adventure.

I thought I’d double the recipe, because ultimately, I wanted waffles in the freezer that could be toasted in the toaster for near-instant waffle goodness. But then I accidentally put in twice the amount of butter for a doubled recipe, which meant I either had to throw everything away and start over, or end up with a quadrupled recipe. I went for the quadrupaling.

We have a LOT of waffles in the freezer. The house guests tried the waffles the next morning in the toaster, and declared them delicious. Successful experiment! I think the recipe needs tweaking – it needs a little sugar, and the optional cornmeal actually sounds good, so I might try that. And they were a little dense, probably because I didn’t whisk the egg whites nearly has much as the recipe said I ought, so maybe I’ll try that next, but with some cream of tartar to help things along a bit. So many tweaks. Or I could try another recipe.

In weaving news, I have a crazy idea involving 60/2 silk and some very fine baby alpaca and an overshot pattern. First, I want to make myself something beautiful like a shawl or scarf, but it occurred to me that I could sell one, and the pricetag would be fairly high – this would be a very time-consuming project with excellent and expensive materials. The bulk of the cost would reflect the labor involved. I wonder if I could sell one or two (or three?), because then I could buy a cello. It looks like that experiment has been successful enough that I’m close to outgrowing the cello I rent. Do you guys have any thoughts on this? Advice? Suggestions? Is this an idea worth pursuing?

(I can rent a viola da gamba, it turns out, and it is affordable. I kind of hope that I don’t love it as much as I think I will, because there are almost not enough hours in the day for adequate practice…)

Crafturgency

infinite ambition. finite resources