summer...?

Wow...it's September, the kids are back in school, and it's raining (again).  Think we're channeling Pacific Northwest weather in Jersey this summer, punctuated by an earthquake and hurricane Irene.

My big event of the summer was a trip to Prince Edward Island, Canada (of Anne of Green Gables fame)...thanks Dad & Linda!  This place has my ideal climate, I've decided: never gets much over 80F in the summers & lots of cool sweater weather - a must for knitters.  AND there is Belfast Mini Mills, a fiber lover's heaven on earth, not to mention wonderful people, beautiful yarns and spinning fiber (including quiviut), a tea room, fascinating fiber processing equipment, classes...yes, I'm completely enamoured!  You will get to read more about it later when our travelogue is posted but I'll try to get some pics up sooner.

Long time no see

Started a part-time job in May so, needless to say, I've had less time to knit, spin, or dye, much less post about it. But now I do have all my windows and doors framed in the kitchen and den, and baseboard, and crown moulding. Yay!  Closure! (BTW, this kitchen remodel was started over 3 yrs ago!)  This was, after all, the whole point of getting the job.

But my fingers have not been idle:

This little baby shrug for a friend's soon-to-arrive baby girl was a surprisingly quick knit and I love the shaping and crochet border. Check out DROPS Design # 0-683 if you're interested.

Judith MacKenzie's article "Paper Chase" in Spin-Off, Spring 2011 inspired me to try my hand at spinning paper.  I used sewing pattern paper as she suggested in the article and plied it with Lion Brand Collection Wool Stainless Steel.  It knits up so much softer than you would think!  Definitely need to find this type of paper by the roll...all the joining breaks up your rhythm.  Still, I think it ain't half bad for a first try.

Going public...a not so wee step

It's a little scary to me but this blog is now searchable.  People can find it.  People who will be interested, love it, hate it, think it's silly, laugh, sneer, snicker, spew coffee on their keyboards... But the people who will stay are the ones I'm really writing to, sharing with.  So here it is folks!

I also now have a little (smallest they had) banner ad.  It's the purple one over there on the right that says "Paradise Fibers".  They have an affiliate program so if you link to and order from their site through this blog I get a little something in return.  It took much perusing of Blogger Q&A's to figure it out but I'm pretty sure I won't get nabbed by the Spam Eradicator Robot for this l'il purple button.  Not many of the fiber resource retailers I might recommend here have affiliate programs so I don't think I'm in much danger of overrunning the blog with banner ads, but if you happen to find "Wee Steps" today and it's gone tomorrow, you'll know who got me!

a web presence

A mere generation ago this phrase might have evoked images of spiders, at least for anyone besides techno-geeks, but I have one now and I am neither arachnoid or technoid.  Not designed or published yet it hangs there in cyberspace, my little corner of webdom.  Shep at GoDaddy (if that's his real name) was very patient with a newbie like me, so tonight I get to play around designing my Home Page.  Progress.  A step.  And no ellipses, either.

Don't cry over spilt...latte?

OK, I didn't cry.  But when my dear STP accidentally spilled my freshly made Autunno latte yesterday a.m., I just couldn't bring myself to use a paper towel, or any towel for that matter, lest you think my hesitation came from the greener side of my conscience.  I ran to the kitchen and grabbed...a straw of course!  Yes, even at (by then) room temperature and spread unceremoniously across a toddler's tray table (crumbs & all) it's still my 2nd favorite espresso ever!  A completely undignified but satisfying solution. Totally green, too.

BTW, my all-time fave espresso is Primavera, also from OQCoffee, but it is currently out of season.

The dyeing pics...really.

Here's my dyeing set-up on the kitchen counter: lots of newspaper, Jacquard acid dyes, white vinegar, spaghetti sauce jars, chop stick for stirring.

 Jars of dye & roving in the steamer to set the color; beautiful vermilion roving drying on the radiator

Sky blue, sun yellow and vermilion roving ready to be blended with carding combs.



A rainbow of blended tufts just staring up at me, begging to be spun...alas, no empty bobbins!

Houston, we have pics!

I'm sorry...was that confusing?  You were expecting to see the pics?Understandable.  All I did was the first wee steps of actually remembering to find the camera and take them in the first place...document a little piece of process.  Now actually getting them on the big computer and learning how to post them, that's another few wee steps.  Using the big computer actually feels bigger than a wee step.  I have considerable resistance to using it, especially for anything visually oriented, because 1) it never quite seems in focus, which makes my eyes and head hurt and 2) at some point the color mysteriously became ultra saturated, which makes my eyes, head, and psyche hurt.  AND neither of these respond at all to anything I do with the monitor settings.  Even Joe can't fix it.  I suspect a visually impaired poltergeist.

This process I documented was dyeing roving, actually. Thanks ever so much to rexenne and BlondeChickenYarn for their YouTube videos that nudged me into just do it mode.  The roving is for practicing color blending with carding combs (snap! forgot to take pics of that part), so all the tedious aspects of dyeing (consistency of color, repeatability, etc) were moot points.  Yay!  Free play!  So now I have a nice box full of rainbow-hued tufts made from just sun yellow, sky blue and vermilion rovings.  Or we could go art school and say I have completed a carding technique color study.  Either way, can't wait to spin it! (pssst! Did you catch the other wee step? Adding links!)

And yes, there will be pics...eventually.

BTW, we are now using "snap" as our expletive of choice since the STP has added "cwap" and "tupit" to his repertoire, which is so incredibly cute that it's well nigh impossible to keep a straight face.