Carding and Dyeing Adventures!

So, about a month ago I got 3 whole fleeces from a friend's farm. I've washed them, and this past weekend I mixed up my acid dyes and dyed and carded a bunch!

Carding is SO SLOW. Well, it's not the carding itself, so much as the flicking to get the fiber ready for carding. I borrowed this carder, I need to start saving to buy one. I'm thinking a Schacht or a Duncan.

I hooked it to my BBQ so I could card outside hehe


before and after


Playing with Dye


I did some in the crockpot, and some in aluminum caseroles.


I love this color!


There was pink, and blue, and rainbow as well! Fun, but time consuming.

And I'm currently spinning my big Rambouillet batt from MDSW

J says it looks like drier lint, but I love it anyway!

We're Getting Married and Moving to Germany!

SURPRISE!
J got orders to Germany for AUGUST and I'm going with him! We'll be stationed at Weisbaden, near Frankfurt on the Rhine river. FOR THREE YEARS!

And we're getting married! Eee! Not quite the big family wedding we were originally planning for next year, but I think we found a happy medium. Oh yeah, and it's at the end of the month!

Sad things are that I had JUST signed up for Art Ed, then had to drop them. Guess it will be another few years before I'm an art teacher.
We have to sell/give away all our pets except Subi (Charlie is going to live with J's brother).
We have to leave MD, which we love, and all our friends, and be even further from our families.

BUT Europe! We'll get to go everywhere and see everything! Weekends in Prague! Honeymoon in Italy! Skiing in the Alps! And of course mountains, castles, beer and brats in Germany. We're very excited. Truth be told we were getting the travel bug again.

We just got bands for now, as we're on a budget, but it sparkles! Hard to get a picture of though!




I'll be updating my blog much more often after the move, with all my European adventures!

Spring is for Sheep!

The last 10 days have been wonderfully full of sheep-related activities! From my twice-monthly spinning meet, to sheep shearing day on the farm, to MDSW, it's been fiberlicious! Click on any picture to view the whole set.

Last Sunday I went up to visit a beautiful pre-civil war farm owned my a very interesting woman in my spinning group. She has a small flock of Border Leicester Crosses, and she was having them sheared that day. We helped skirt the fleeces and got our pick of the flock! I took home 2 and a half HUGE garbage bags full of raw wool!


Her neighbor brought over 2 sheep, and one is a Jacob! I want to raise Jacob sheep!







The farm was so beautiful, and we sat and spun on the lawn in front of the pond, in the shade of ancient trees.


Yesterday my friend and I went to Maryland Sheep and Wool! The best day of the year for most NE fiberphiles! My budget was on the small side this year, and since I still have a lot from last year I bought some non-wool items as well.
8 oz cotswold locks (to dye)
4 oz Silk/Merino/Angora roving
9 ceramic buttons
a whole bunch more dyed locks
6 oz batt of naturally gray Rambouillet
a niddy-noddy
2 llama finger puppets and an alpaca xmas ornament!
also bought 4oz BFL FatCatKnits hand-dyed fiber from Clover Hill Yarn Shop before the show, and got some awesome mini stitch markers from LizardSmells at the LSG post-MDSW meetup!



so cute!


buttons


I was going to mow the lawn today, and plant my herbs, but it's raining. OH WELL guess I have to stay inside and play with wool!

I do need a warm sunny weekend soon though! I have 10+ lbs of wool to wash and dry! And then dye!

Spinning and Geckos!

So I guess J thought the side table where the old smaller fish tank used to be looked a bit empty, so he went out and got a pair of Satanic Leaf-Tailed Geckos!
(He'd wanted them for a while, he just found a great deal). We set up the tank last week, and he drove to NY to get them yesterday. They are so cute and tiny!


Here's a full body picture (not our gecko, just an example of what their tail looks like)


They eat crickets, which I'm not too happy about keeping, but the new Cricket Keepers they have now seem to make it easier.

Also working on some new yarn! This is some overdyed brown BFL that I got at last year's MDSW from Gale's Art
It's going to be a traditional 3-ply fingering weight, probably for socks.




I'm slowly but surely collecting the equipment and supplies to dye some yarn and fiber. I need to get a table to put in my spare room to work on though! I could try it in the kitchen, but there's really not enough space.

I went to the library today and got out Deb Menz's book "Color in Spinning", and it the BEST book about color with regard to fiber that I have found!

Also reading Lisa Lloyd's "A Fine Fleece: Knitting with Handspun Yarns", which is much more informative than I thought it would be, and has some great traditional sweater patterns!

Also very much enjoying

1st Baby Snake!

1st Baby Snake!, originally uploaded by RedQueen715.

We have new babies!
The Carpet Python eggs are hatching! Each egg had a 50/50 chance of looking like its mom or dad, and happily 7 of the ten have the reduced pattern (Jaguar) like their dad, Brutus!

Lazy weekend

We got a taste of spring last week, but now it’s gone. Went from being in the 60’s to snowing. blech. I’m ready for spring! I’m ready to get my container gardening going this year! I’m hoping most of my herbs will come back from last year, but I’ll have to buy basil of course, and cilantro, and maybe a few others. Not going to bother with bulbs or tomatoes this year, the bulbs took way too long and the tomatoes don't get enough sun on the north side of the house.

I started Amused from the Winter Knitty, in some dark olive cashmere I got from School Products in NYC for an amazing price. The bf has been rubbing the swatch whenever he gets a chance so maybe I’ll make another trip up to NY at some point and get some for a sweater for him. He’ll have to wait in line though.. so many more projects and presents ahead of him!

I’m working on designing a sweater for my dad, a cabled yoke sweater with a tree motif. It’s still mostly sketches, but I got his measurements from his gf so at least I’ll know what size to make.

Nothing much else is new around here, J went to a snake show with his friend from NJ over the weekend so I had the house to myself. I was super lazy and watched movies and knit all yesterday :P I did get up early and go to yoga in the morning though! Today I did the dishes, restretched a painting I’ve had rolled up for years, and tidied my yarn room.
My yarn room/office feels so unfinished because I have no money for fabric to make curtains and a slipcover for my ugly green chair yet. I want to do the whole room in black and white damask pattern, with pink accents. So Girly! I also need to take a weekend and transform the 3rd upstairs room into a guest bedroom/art room. We need to get a futon though, and move all the junk out.

First Corespun Yarn!

My first corespun yarn! This hotpink and teal batt with Angelina was given to me a few years ago, and I never knew what to do with it!
I spun it around a commercial 2-ply, and threw in some purple mohair locks and some handfuls of sari silk fiber.

This is about 80yds, all that could fit on the bobbin. I have more of the batt left so I'll probably make some more of it.

Destash!

Getting rid of a bunch of stuff, hopefully. I've tried to do this before, but was unsuccessful.
Here's a link to my Ravelry Trade/Sell page. Please look!
Highlights include:
Sari Silk
Mohair
Alpaca
http://www.ravelry.com/people/redthread/stash/trade
There's some stuff that is "Free to a Good Home" as well.
I'm hoping for cash or spinning fiber in exchange.. FSM knows I don't need more yarn!

Also, on the yarn front, I ordered some Acid Dyes! I've decided to put my Art Degree and painting skills to work and do some COLOR! So, watch this space in the near future for my adventures in DyeLand!

The Big Fish Move!

Last August when I went to visit my Dad in NY, I dragged home a lovely piece of driftwood from Lake Champlain. This driftwood, while it fit in the new 55 gallon corner tank, didn't fit in the way we wanted, and didn't want to sit on the bottom either. SO it sat in the tank for months, while I bought the new filter, the gravel, etc, and cycled the tank around it.

About a month or so ago we finally dragged the thing back out of the tank, sawed off about 4 inches off the back, rigged it to fishline with suction cups, and stuck it to the bottom of the tank. Then we bought some plants, and a Pleco, and so it has been sitting, waiting, for the Goldfishes.

I finally got brave enough and confident that the new tank wouldn't poison them, and they made the big move last weekend!

More pictures in the set, click the picture to go to Flickr!


Unfortunately, it looks like my new plants brought with them a nasty guest :( ICK. I hate Ick (as do all fishkeepers), and I especially hate it in a planted tank because I can't use my old-standby treatment, salt, to cure it. So, here's my poor fishes, covered in Ick, and swimming in Malachite Green/Formalin for a few days. They're big healthy fish so they should make it out ok, but I worry when they're sick.
Guess we have to postpone ordering the new Panda Butterfly Goldfish!
Punkin is NOT a happy fishie :(


New Baby Snake!
This little guy is a pure Diamond Carpet Python. We don't have a name for him yet. All the light part will turn yellow.

Weekend, Charlie, Rush Hour

So, Friday I was a bit bummed out because J and I were supposed to go to this club in DC with a whole bunch of people and EVERYONE bailed on us :( suck.

We debated whether we wanted to go by ourselves, and decided to go out to dinner and then decide. We went to this Korean BBQ place that was within walking distance of our old house, and we never knew it was there. Apparently this place has the best, most authentic, Korean BBQ around here.
It's hibashi style, where you grill the meat at your table on a built in grill (gas in this case). We ordered marinated beef slices and shortribs, and a korean onion pancake on the side. In Japan you dont get much in the way of side dishes, so we were a bit overwhelmed when they brought out bowls and bowls of little appatizer/side dishes! kimchi and pickles and soup and egg and veggies... soo much food. We couldn't even make a dent in the pancake, but it was full of raw jalapenos, so we didn't try very hard anyway. The meet was great though, so now that we know how much and of what we like it will be easy and cheap next time!

After dinner we were too full to move, so we rented Max Payne and Pineapple Express and went home. Max Payne was OK, better than Pinapple Express, which we watched Sunday.

Saturday was a lot of fun, and totally saved the weekend. We went to the Visionary Arts Museum with some friends from DC. It was cool to go with people who really get into art and the stories behind it. They loved it! Then we had dinner at Paper Moon, which is a perfect complement to the museum :P Followed by beer RockBand at our house. Good Times!

Also, MEET CHARLIE! Charlie is the newest edition to the household. He came from PetSmart, and is the sweetest, nicest, cuddliest little kitty evar! He purrs all the time! He's still learning the rules of the house, but he's adapting, and so is Subi, amazingly. We even had both of them sleeping on the bed last night!
Click for more pics!


Also, I'm starting a project that I've wanted to do for a while. I'm going to try to take a picture on my commute home every day. Here's today's! Not awesome, but it was off the cuff.