Karen's Craft Odyssey

Over the past several weeks I’ve been having fun with this thread over on Ravelry.  In it we’re discussing all sorts of combinations of different hand painted fiber into a single yarn.  I took three different hand painted rovings:

Coloured Stone from EGMTK:

Falkland from FeltStudioUK:

and Coral Sea from Spindlefrog (Corriedale top):

spun them into singles:

Then plied them on my jumbo electric spinner:

The result? About 350 grams of 11wpi (about 8-ply, or DK weight) yarn:

Well, it wasn’t really broken.  But, we have been speed-limited for almost 2 weeks now.  So I’ve been spending my time at my spinning wheel instead of the computer.  I have several skeins of yarn to show for it.  Tonight I finished plying these two bobbins:

And these two as well:

I had fun with the second set — they were originally these batts from Wooldancer:

and came with some cut threads and ribbon, which I placed in between the strands while plying.  Can’t wait to see what the washed skein looks like.

Last week I finished this skein from some batts I bought in the UK:

I spun each batt onto a separate bobbin, and tried to keep the colors in the same order on each bobbin.  The resulting skein goes from rust to yellow to green.

Of course, it hasn’t been all spinning.  Last Saturday we melted at the QSWFA Christmas Fair.  It must have been almost 35C, and no aircon.  It’s hard to get people to buy woolly things in that type of heat.  Sunday was a warm one too, so we spent most of the day out at the mall, where the aircon worked pretty well.  In the afternoon there was a massive thunderstorm, but it had all blown over by the time we finished shopping.

Meanwhile, Alan has left for his semester in Oslo.  He’s started his own travel blog at http://alan.imagin-itis.net — go over and say hi.  It appears that he is settling in to the cold weather and the different choice of computer games at the Oslo office.

Whoa!  Has it really been that long since my last post?

After Reno, I got to spend a few days at the Disney Shrine, also known as the R&S Ranch in northern California:

It was great to see Sue, Ron, Crystal and Ryan.  Of course, nothing is ever boring at the Ranch.  I did get a chance to see a film in the Ranch Movie Theater — Ron has put in an amazing home cinema in its own shed in their back yard.  Reclining seats, projection TV, surround sound (the seats are even wired to vibrate with low, rumbling noises) and tons of movie memorabilia.  It’s like going to Gold Class.  While I was there we went to Ron’s birthday party one night, complete with Halloween candy and temporary tatoos.

The plan was to drive down to Anaheim on Wednesday afternoon after a (hopefully slow) day at the clinic.  We would have breakfast with my parents at Goofy’s Kitchen (at the Disneyland hotel), then they’d drive ne down to Escondido while Sue, Ron, and Ryan went to Disneyland for Ron’s birthday.  Well, there’s never a slow day at the clinic.  For those of you who don’t know my sister Sue, she’s a veterinarian with her own clinic in Empire California.  Her husband, Ron, is the business manager for the clinic.  Wednesday morning as we were packing up the truck, they decided that their dog Bond should be taken to the clinic to see why he wasn’t eating.  After checking him over, they found a mass in Bond’s spleen which needed immediate removal.  So, rather than having a slow day at the clinic, Sue had to operate on her dog and have the spleen biopsied. Sue asked if I wanted to observe the surgery, but I declined.  When Ryan got out of school, he asked for a snack and I offered to take a cake that had been sitting in reception back to the staff kitchen to cut him a piece.  Of course, you have to go through the procedures room to get to the kitchen.  So, there I was, carrying a lovely iced carrot cake back to the kitchen right past the HUGE dog spleen sitting out on the operating table.  (Not appetizing)  Ryan, of course, had hundreds of questions (what’s that? did that come out of Bond? can Bond live without a spleen? what does a spleen do?…..)  Now, there’s a reason I chose to work with numbers rather than blood and guts; so I couldn’t answer any of his questions.

Clearly, Bond couldn’t stay at the Ranch, so Sue decided to bring him along.  Ron had to rearrange everything in the truck to make room for Bond, and Sue arranged to drop him at an emergency vet clinic in Anaheim.  So,  rather than heading off early, we didn’t leave the clinic until well after 5pm, and Ron drove us down to Anaheim.  We got to the emergency vet clinic around 1am and to our hotel around 2am (just a bit later than planned).

Everyone converged on Escondido over the next few days for my Dad’s 80th birthday party on Halloween.  Sue brought down a ton of Halloween decorations;  Anne & Mike (& Emi) came down from Seattle;  my uncle Bob (Dad’s brother) came out from Tennessee; my cousin Craig flew out from New Jersey (hadn’t seen him in 40 years); Bob’s kids Nela (Seattle) and Willie (Southern California) were there; and, of course, my mother’s two siblings and 7 of Frances’ 8 children (David even flew out from Tennessee, as it was his 50th this year).  All up about 80 people showed up for the party.

We were in California until Friday 6 November, when we flew to Maui…. but more about that in the next post.

As promised, here’s a glance at what I bought at Rhinebeck:

As you can see, mostly fiber.  On the top we have Romney lamb (85%) and tussah silk (15%) in the Painted Desert colorway. Immediately below, in bright rainbow colors, is 50/50 tussah and baby camel down.  Clockwise from there: 60/40 Merino/Bamboo (vegetable medley colorway, braided); two bags (natural cream and brown) of Romney roving, braided and banded, BFL in Autumn Fire colorway; braided Wensleydale roving in fire colorway; a bag of natural cream Wensleydale mix; jewel-toned alpaca/silk (70/30) blend; Icelandic lamb roving, cream; fawn colored Jacob wool.  The green shell shaped bit on top of the Icelandic Lamb is a needle gauge charm that goes down to 0.75mm.  And stuck in the lower left corner is a cute little turkish spindle:

As you can see I’ve started spinning the alpaca/silk, and the spindle works great.

And… in knitting news, I finished up some twined fingerless mitts just in time to wear at Rhinebeck:

No, we’re in New York, and it’s COLD!!!!!

We landed in NY late on Wednesday night.  Thursday it was cold and raining.  But we didn’t let that stop us.  We arranged to meet up with Frank’s nephew Robb at Grand Central Station and walked around Times Square.  We stopped at Brooklyn Deli for a HUGE American sized lunch:

It was great catching up with Robb, who was in Connecticut starting on the massive job of clearing out his dad’s collections of minerals, African art and loads of other stuff.

On Friday we spent the morning at the laundromat — unfortunately, you can’t travel for more than 3 weeks without doing your laundry!  The weather forecasts for the weekend were pretty dismal — some even predicting snow on Saturday.  So, I bought myself a pair of snow boots for Rhinebeck and Frank decided he’d spend Saturday in the hotel room catching up on academic work.  Friday afternoon we took the train up the Hudson to Rhinecliff.  It’s a gorgeous train ride, right next to the river most of the time.  The trees were just starting to change colors, it will be glorious in a couple of weeks.  Once there, we got a taxi to our hotel, the Rodeway Inn/Skytop in Kingston.  The hotel is up a hill in the forest, with a great restaurant/brewry right next door (and a mile to the next closest shop or restaurant).

The restaurant was packed on Friday night.  As we went in, we saw a couple of women with Ravelry nametags on, so we introduced ourselves and asked if we could join them for dinner.  Peta (Petaknits on Ravelry) is from Maryland, and was with her daughter Rachael (jetgrrl on Ravelry) who lives in New Hampshire.  (See, betsybookworm, we’re not the only mother-daughter set on Rav, not that I thought we were).  We had a very pleasant dinner, and swapped souvenirs (Australia magnets for Maryland lapel pins).  Peta and Rachael were able to give me a ride to the fairgrounds on Saturday (Rhinebeck without a car is a bit more difficult than you might think as public transport is non-existent in that part of the state).

After a stop at a local diner for breakfast and a pleasant ride through the wooded countryside, we arrived at the fairgrounds around 8:30 in the morning.  It is HUGE!  There are at least a dozen buildings full of vendors, plus the usual sheep shearing and animal judging.  I focused on the vendors and bought mostly fiber.

Just after lunch (Polish hamburger), there was the Ravelry meetup — very chaotic, but I got to meet Casey and “Bob”:

Later in the afternoon was the Weavolution meetup:

Weavolution is a social networking site for weavers, with the ability to put in all the project details that weavers want to know.  Claudia (on the right in the photo) is one of the founders of the site.  I’m on Weavolution as spinweaveknit, but haven’t put much up there yet.  The site launched in June, less than a month before I left Australia.

I still haven’t taken pictures of the stash I bought at Rhinebeck (or the cute little turkish spindle), but I’ll do that soon and post them in another entry.

I got a ride back to the hotel from Marion (desertrat on Rav) and Geri and we joined them for dinner in the Skytop Steakhouse.  Marion and Geri are retired teachers from the Toronto area and had driven down for the festival.

Rhinebeck was a great experience.  Great to meet such nice and friendly fellow knitters, and great to see all the vendors’ products.  Wish I could go again next year.  May have to satisfy myself with going to Bendigo instead.  Weather-wise, I was very lucky.  Probably could have survived without the snow boots as it was dry and mostly sunny all day.  A cold wind did come in the afternoon, but all in all, it was much better than the forecast.

Sunday morning we took the train back to NYC.  Since 9/11 there are no more luggage lockers anywhere.  It was quite a hassle getting around with our bags (we had left the big suitcases at our hotel in Queens while we were at Rhinebeck, and only had backpacks plus a duffle bag full of fiber).  We took the subway up to the American Museum of Natural History, and waited in line for 40 minutes to get in, then had to wait another 20 minutes for a bin to free up in the cloak room for our bags.  It was all worth it, though.  The museum is huge — we barely made a dent in it in the five hours we were there.  Frank enjoyed seeing the large meteorites:

And everyone loves the dinosaurs:

There was also an interesting exhibit on American Indians, including some details about the weaving they did:

Monday was our last full day in New York.  The weather had been miserable, but on Monday everything cleared up and we had a lovely day.  Taking advantage of the good weather, we started off at Top of the Rock.  The views were spectacular:

For the afternoon we decided to do a tour of the city so that we could see many of the sights we hadn’t yet made it to.  It was definitely the right decision — we could never have made it to so many places on our own.  It was a 6 hour tour starting near Times Square, going uptown to the Dakota and Strawberry Fields, and downtown to the Staten Island Ferry (for a view of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island), Wall Street, and Ground Zero.

After an exhausting day, we were ready for our flights on Tuesday.  I’m now in Reno, and Frank has gone to Pittsburgh — both for conferences.