Spinning Wheel

Alpaca Spin – Half Done

/ LDSVenus / 11 Comments

I am spinning a deep stash cria (baby alpaca) fiber on my Rick Reeves wheel. 1st bobbin is done, this will probably end up plying as a sport weight yarn. It looks thin, but after I wash it, it will plump up and be a bit thicker. Alpaca is a slippery fiber to spin and takes a practiced hand so I wouldn’t suggest alpaca to a beginner spinner, but I really like it, it’s so soft to spin. After I get the 2nd bobbin done and ply the two bobbins together, my plan is to turn it into hat for a friend :). I have started the 2nd bobbin and will work on it tomorrow :).

We are back in the 80’s this week, sigh, 90 on Friday and 89 on Saturday, but next week it will be in the lower to middle 70’s. If only the weather could make up its mind :P. Of course I will probably complain this winter when it’s way below 0 too :P.

Tour de Fleece Update and Weather

/ LDSVenus / 14 Comments

1st picture is my progress on the 50/50 camel/red Eri silk for days 16 – 18. This is spinning faster than I thought, I’m around 1/2 finished on the 1st bobbin. Because the silk is very slippery, even tho the camel being soft and short would normally require a very short draw to spin, the length and slippery nature of the silk allows me to draw it out more than a short draw but not a long draw, so it is going faster than I estimated. I love the softness of the fiber as I spin it. I’m trying to not let it be very thin, tho it would be easy to do that, because this is a gift for my previous sister in law, who I feel pretty close to. She has a medical disorder that makes it harder now with tremors to handle smaller things, so I thought if this yarn is more of a heavy fingering or light sport weight maybe she could still knit something with it, and if not, she can just feel the softness of this fiber, which is amazing. I will definitely have to get more of this fiber when Camaj Fiber Arts gets more in! Post Script, my ophthalmologist loved the skein of yarn and said she had had a very hard last couple of days and that this skein of yarn had just made her day! Giving is a blessing for the receiver and the giver :).

Well today was very nice in the upper middle 80’s and less humidity, however you can see where our weather is headed starting tomorrow though next Tuesday. The blue picture is the normal temps and the red one is with the heat index (the dew point and humidity level will be high.) I will be staying inside most of the time. Sunday I will go to church but it’s an air conditioned building and I have a/c in the car so I should be ok :P. Monday however, I’m not going anywhere. August is normally our hottest month of the year, so I shudder to think what next month will be like. Well actually I can imagine, 2 years ago when my daughter had an outdoor wedding in August, it was 118 with the heat index (that’s abnormally and obnoxiously hot for here), yeah, everyone was melting! Told her if I melted she could pick me up with a stick and a spoon and carry me inside to the reception :P. Everyone stay safe!!

Alpaca Farm Days & Hat Tags

/ LDSVenus / 8 Comments

Ok, as promised :). The top pictures from left to right – The first picture is my son’s sock machine, it was rather windy – you can see the yarn blowing in the breeze, lol. He can whip out a pair of socks in about an hr, pretty cool huh? It’s made of metal and he lets the kids that come take turns turning the handle making a tube, they love it. Next picture is my spinning wheel, a Rick Reeves double drive wheel. It’s the smallest of my two wheels and will actually fit in the back seat of my car. My Kromski Polonaise is much bigger and would have to be taken apart to travel in my car, and nope not gonna do that! I’m not as sharing with my wheel at the event, it’s not replaceable, lol. I spin and people watch and ask questions that I am very happy to answer about the alpaca fiber and the wheel and making yarn, I do let them feel the alpaca fiber :). That cria fiber spins like a dream!! The 3rd picture is my son’s drum carder that he makes batts with for the dryer balls he sells at his farm store. I have two and put lavender on them before they go in the dryer, makes my clothes smell nice :). Behind the drum carder you can see his little tractor, that makes it easier for all the farm stuff he and Ev have to attend to. The 4th picture is the skirting table he made so it would be easier for them to skirt the fleeces and let the dirt fall to the ground and behind that you can see the frame with seats he made and attached on the trailer (that he pulls with the tractor) for hay rack rides he does once a week, everyone seems to enjoy the ride and the fire pit making smores afterwards :). My son is very handy with making things. The bigger picture to the left are his pea fowl and a family member who came to help. The peacock is starting to color out on the feathers on his back and a little on his tail, but it will be another 2 years before he has full color on all his feathers. He already looks at himself in the mirror that my son set out for him, the peacock is a narcissist, lol. The next 3 pictures to the left are of some of his herd. I did cover up faces of two people who were there because I didn’t get to ask them if they minded being in my blog. The last of those 3 pictures is the newest cria that was born a month ago, they call him Wish, but his full name is Wish Upon a Star, because his mother’s name is Star. He’s a cutie.

The last picture at the bottom is a hat with the new tags I ordered. I didn’t get leather because I was worried about how they would handle being washed and I wanted these to be easy care hats with a little something extra, so these are faux leather (a thick vinyl, lol) I chose the one that looked like bamboo. I think they look nice and everyone likes something nice. For the shelter I will make some with Child of God showing and some with the knitted heart showing so they have a choice. I think when I reorder I will get the ones I have to sew on instead of the snaps so they won’t come off in the washing machine. I’m a worry wort and I worry about everything, lol.

Prayers are going still going out to all those who were affected by Helena, please keep asking Heavenly Father for peace and comfort and help for them all. The devastation was massive and the emotional toll, for those who lost family and/or all they had, is great :(. I saw that there are many people out there trying to start helping with clean up and bringing things in, water, food etc, even tho FEMA and the Red Cross weren’t out there yet (where the heck are they?). My church always assesses what is needed and sends truck loads of things and there will be some of my church members from all over going to help with the clean up as well. I know that Ryan Hall Ya’ll (a YouTube weatherman) also sends trucks of things out to help from donations from those who watch his channel. Because food and things are coming in, I think clean up and housing will be the biggest issues, along with accounting for everyone that is still missing. :(. My heart is broken for all of them.

New Fiber and Alpaca Farm Days

/ LDSVenus / 2 Comments

Well I might have accidentally bought some more fiber :O. I love yellow and this has sparkles and it was for 8oz at a sale price, so my excitement got the best of me. It’s Merino and Glitter and is called Sunny Day . The yellow is now only available by the lb and will be discontinued when sold out. I’m excited to see how it will spin up. The fiber under the yellow was a free 1 oz sample of Rambouillet from Camaj Fiber Arts, it is as soft as the merino. It will be fun to dye it too :).

It will be a while before I get to spin the yellow merino tho, because I only have two spinning wheels and my Kromski Polonaise has fiber still on it that I need to finish spinning, and I need my 2nd spinning wheel, my Rick Reeves wheel, empty because my son and his spouse are having their annual Alpaca Farms’ Day event on Saturday and I have to start the alpaca to spin on Saturday at the event. The fawn colored alpaca bump is not a new purchase, it’s a deep stash cria (baby alpaca). It is as soft as butter!!! I will try to remember to take pictures on Saturday. Usually the event is Saturday and Sunday but they are only opening their farm on Saturday this year so I expect it will be VERY busy!!!

Sending prayers out for those in Florida for safety with this hurricane :(.

RAGBRAI 2024 – There’s Still Hope!

/ LDSVenus / 6 Comments

For those of you not familiar with RAGBRIA, it stands for Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa. It’s a non competitive 434 mile bicycle tour across the state of Iowa from west to east. This is the 51st year for this. So instead of spinning to the ride across France this year I will spin to the ride across Iowa, so all is not lost with my spinning. I planned on starting today which is the first day of RAGBRAI, however I noticed my the plied string I use as my drive band, is very frayed and being held by two of the small strings, so I will go get more string tomorrow and fix the drive band and start tomorrow. Always something isn’t it, I’ll call it a flat tire on day one.

Tour de Fleece 2024 Day 4

/ LDSVenus / 4 Comments

The first picture is my progress so far! The 2nd picture is what I have left to spin. I separated them into about 30″ pieces and then separated in the lengths of colors to spin back to back. If I had started them on a bulky bobbin I would do them as a chain ply to keep the colors seperate but I didn’t so I will ply the two bobbins together and the colors will overlap each other more of a fractal spin, I didn’t really have a plan at the time, it will be pretty. The last picture is my Kromski Polonaise spinning wheel and the beautiful view (a braided hibiscus tree and night sky pansies) that I get to see on my balcony while I spin :).

Accountability Time, FO, WIP and Mail

/ LDSVenus / 15 Comments

I decided it’s time to do this. The dishcloth is one I have worked on for a while because it’s my mindless knit and I only work on it when I’m bored doing laundry at the laundromat or in a car doing some waiting. It’s the grandma’s favorite discloth pattern, you can find it on Ravelry. I use Sugar and Cream, Stripes, this color was Country Stripes and a size 5 needle. I knit a little looser than most so I generally go down one needle size but for this pattern I go down 2 sizes.

The next two pictures are wips (works in progress for my non knitter friends). The hat is one of the hats for warmth I do for the shelter. I like to use the Hobby Lobby yarn I Love This Yarn. It’s a worsted yarn and I like the stripes this makes on a hat. This color number 424 Green/Turquoise/Red. The diagonal scarf was a scarf-a-long I started with a good friend several years ago. She was killed in an auto accident and so I work this scarf off and on as my brain is ok with it. I’m on the 2nd skein, it’s also a mindless knit project. I don’t know where I got the pattern but it’s very easy. Because you do the increase and decrease on one row and just knit the next row, I put a progress keeper on the right side (increase/decrease row) so I remember to increase and decrease :P.

The next picture is a wip spinning project, this fiber is Pop Rox from Camaj Fiber Arts. Almost done with the first bobbin. I thought maybe I would spin all of it on one bobbin and then chain ply but I don’t think I will be able to get the other half on there. On the side of the bobbin, I laid out the rest of this half of the fiber for you to see, then I have another bobbins worth. So I will go ahead and make this a fractal spin, it’s going to my eye dr, who is a knitter, for her daughter a hat. 🙂

The next two pictures are things I bought for myself for Valentine’s day :P. The fiber was something that I didn’t need at all but when I saw it I thought oh my gosh look at those colors! I bought it from Fiber Love Diary I got the last one in this color, it’s a gray BFL base dyed over, color is called Dark Prism. I loved the jewel tones.

The next item was something I needed but had put off a long time getting because it not cheap for the bulky flyer and 2 extra bobbins (the flyer comes with one bobbin) and tax and shipping. I don’t really spin bulky yarn but I needed something that would hold more than 4 ozs for plying. 2 ozs on each bobbin (you can see my reg bobbin on my wheel in the 4th picture) when plied together is over full on the reg bobbin for anything over a fingering weight otherwise I’m stuck just spinning up to 4 ozs of fiber. I have also wanted a Wooly Winder, but could only get one, and I can get by without the Wooly Winder, it just makes things easier, but I needed a flyer with a bigger bobbin more, sigh. Next time :P. I forgot to say I bought the bulky flyer for my Kromski Polonaise at Yarn Barn in Kansas.

We are getting snow tonight, the weatherman said a trace to 2 inches but he was leaning toward the 2 inches, dang we just got all our snow from before melted. Oh well, it’s still winter, I’ll live, spring is almost here!!!

2nd Fiber Festival

/ LDSVenus / 7 Comments

The pictures are so much better on my new phone!! I forgot to take pictures at the fiber festival again, :/ sorry. I also forgot to get pictures of several skeins of yarn I bought for my son to make socks on his sock knitting machine for his spouse Ev, who picked out the skeins of yarn for his socks :), and I bought some roving for my son to spin on his new E6 electric spinning wheel, was too exciting to remember some things, like taking pictures :p. I bought 2 needle felted zipper decorated pieces of art, but yeah, I forgot to get a picture of one of them before I gifted it, it was a beautiful nativity for a friend who collects nativity deco for her Christmas tree. The first picture is one of the needle felted zipper decorated pins I bought for myself, because I love sheep, I didn’t see an alpaca, but I love all things I can spin :).

The 2nd picture is a beautiful tweed braid of roving that I bought to spin, I love the muted colors!!! This will be fun to spin and knit up!

The 3rd picture is from a class my son signed me up at for the fiber festival, a needle felting class for felted pictures. It was so awesome, but I am going to need to practice a whole lot more, but it was fun!

I love Spring but I always forget at the front part it’s back and forth between cooler weather and warmer weather and all the storms and rain. But that is ok, it’s not below 0 and it’s not snow anymore!! I hope everyone is enjoying their weather where ever you are. 🙂

Alpaca Farm Days 2022 Last Weekend and General Conference this Weekend

/ LDSVenus

I went to my son’s Alpaca Farm Days on Saturday and after Church on Sunday to spin while people came to see the alpaca and feed them carrots and pet a few of them. My son has 22 alpaca, 4 males and 18 females. He didn’t breed last year so no babies this year, but he has bred them this year so there should be babies (alpaca babies are called Cria) next year! Here are some pictures from the event, 2 pictures of those beautiful alpaca (I wanted to get a picture of the yoga with the alpaca but it was on Sunday morning and I was at Church). He had a skirting/sorting table set up with a fleece on it and he had a tumbler that he built and used to clean the fleeces before sending them off to the fiber mill so they don’t have so much work to do but I didn’t put the picture in (sorry), and he had his drum carder set up to show people how to make batts. The last picture is my Rick Reeves spinning wheel, that I brought to spin some alpaca with. I managed to get 1 bobbin done there and I have started the 2nd bobbin, hope to finish it this week and ply it so I can finish the 2nd bobbin on my Kromski Polonaise. I get anxious when I have too many things going at the same time, so one at a time to get it worked down!

I am going to finish the hat I am knitting (very close to done) and start a sweater to work on this weekend for General Conference week end (friend’s baby is coming in two months). Because it’s on the BYU channel on cable or on the BYU channel free to add on the Roku plug in on TV, and at http://www.churchofjesuschrist.org on line, Saturday from 11am to 1pm and 3pm to 5pm and the same times on Sunday, I can sit and enjoy the wonderfully spiritual talks that bring peace to my soul and knit at the same time, can’t get any better than that! Hope you can enjoy some peace in your day and watch a little bit of this wonderful General Conference time.

Please join me in prayers for less damage, injuries and loss of life as possible during the hurricane. I know there will be some of all of that and the devastation of any kind of loss is horrible, so I’m praying for the blessing of help from others, and peace and comfort as they deal with and rebuild what damage was done and that people not affected by this large hurricane will reach out with prayers and physical help to help them. I know the help was much appreciated a couple of years ago when we had that awful derecho.

Finished Fractal Spin!

/ LDSVenus / 2 Comments

Finished the 2nd bobbin on Saturday and plied them together yesterday and washed it and set it out to dry. Done today!!! It is 187 yards and 91 grams, I figure maybe a dk weight. I should have been closer to 200 yards and maybe 93 or 95 grams but I didn’t weigh the halves before I started and I had more on one bobbin than the other, so there’s that, sigh, should still be enough for a hat :). It’s much more vibrant on my phone picture so I’m hoping that the muted colors that show to me are just my monitor. Let me know in your comments if they look muted or vibrant to you.

I want to start some cria (baby alpaca) fiber on my Rick Reeves wheel also, I haven’t used it in a while and I need to get back on it and make sure I don’t loose what I gained on spinning on a double drive wheel.

For my knitting, I am working on an orange color baby sweater (I might have already shown the start a month or two ago) and still working on the sock (lol) and a comfort shawl and one of my charity hats. I will post pictures later this week on how far along they all are. There are a couple of bookmarks I want to get started and done too, but they are small and can be done quickly. I don’t like having too many irons in the fire but here I am, sigh.

Hope everyone is enjoying the wind down of summer and thinking about the fall weather. 🙂