Saturday, October 4, 2008

If the Bible is an authoritative source

Proverbs 6:12-19

“12 Troublemakers and villains,
who go about with corrupt mouths,
13 who wink maliciously with their eyes,
signal with their feet
and motion with their fingers,
14 who plot evil with deceit in their hearts—
they always stir up dissension.
15 Therefore disaster will overtake them in an instant;
they will suddenly be destroyed—without remedy.
16 There are six things the LORD hates,
seven that are detestable to him:
17 haughty eyes,
a lying tongue,
hands that shed innocent blood,
18 a heart that devises wicked schemes,
feet that are quick to rush into evil,
19 a false witness who pours out lies
and a person who stirs up dissension in the community.”

Sound like anyone we know?

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

And now for something completely different...a working drumcarder!

Well, it always worked. But I haven't used it for a LONG time. And not because I don't want to. But processing wool in my kitchen is a long, arduous process of boiling pots of water and such and I have just been looking longingly at my beautiful machine. However, at the moment I have a couple of issues that the drum carder can help me with:

1) No money for buying fiber. Which means October Frost will go the way of all things this winter unless I think of some other way to get the wool. I wanted to use Oatmeal Bluefaced Leicester from Paradise Fibers but no way, not right now.

2) I do have 1 whole raw fleece and 2 half raw fleeces in bins in the garage. Which I haven't really been able to reach for a year and a half. But DH has been redoing the garage (since the happy end of our now ex-friend's extended stay with us) so that we can reach things like books (!) and the children can play with their large-format toys. So the fleece bins are reachable.

Yesterday, I washed some fleece. Here is the raw material: gray fleece raw This is a beautiful fine gray fleece with tan tips that I purchased at the very last L.A. County Fair Fleece Auction in 2005? I think it's about 6.5 pounds. The first year that I competed in the spinning contest (and won the Novice Class). It is super bouncy and soft. Here is some of it drying out in the sun: gray fleece washed It doesn't look like much now, but I will have pictures of batts later today, I hope!

Of course, the first batch was a bit sticky and had to go through one more wash and two more rinses. Ho hum. I should have better luck today as the second batch was clean after 2 washes and 2 rinses. I just MUST get the water hot enough to melt the lanolin.

I think this wool will make a beautiful gray aran sweater that I will wear for years and years. The Oatmeal BFL that I bought for sampling will make a couple of gorgeous pairs of socks. Now the trick is to spin yarn that won't pill. I plan for a true 3-ply, nice and firm. And I know there will be enough, yay!

Here goes! I'll be carding while watching MSNBC, C-Span and CNN all day. Can't miss anything!

Peace.