What Housework?

Shop update

Four new colorways of superwash sock  yarn:

Stonewashed:

Puddle Jumping:

Hot Chocolate:

and Aegean:

No Milo photos today, I'm afraid. But I will have more sock yarn Monday, some superwash merino top for you spinners, and pictures of my spinning progress and probably our two new sheep! In the meantime, tonight is eventful in that I am about to go pick apples off our very own, very old, very unpruned apple trees and make pies. Yum. This is the kind of thing that happens to you when you read (or listen to) Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

Enjoy the weekend and, for Vermont at least, seasonal temperatures at last.

There's no place like home

We're back from Stillwater, OK (home of the OSU Cowboys and hot damn don't you forget it). I really don't know what to say about the trip other than (a) my stepson is extremely happy and successful and we're proud of him and (b) I really, really love Vermont. I took the above photo on Monday night, shortly after we got home and it's pretty much the essence of what I missed while we were gone.

I didn't want to update the blog until I had a shop update to go with it, but the days out of town slowed me down. Tomorrow, you'll see more sock yarn. On the other hand, two days of air travel allowed me to turn my handspun from this:

into this:

It's a narrow feather-and-fan pattern which I got from extravayarnza.com but which you could probably pull out of any stitch dictionary. I settled on this pattern because it's 3 rows plain and 1 row of lace, memorized after one repeat and easy enough so that if I did mess up (and I did frequently) I could rip a few rows and know instantly where I had left off.

I chose not to model it with the jacket it was made for because it's 85 degrees in Vermont today (WRONG on so many levels), and muggy, and I just couldn't bear it. But I do like it.

In spinning news, I hit a milestone today: I'm ready for the next phase of Opus 2007 (my noble goal of processing fleece from sheep to sweater before Christmas). I finished drum carding both the brown BL-ish wool and the white probably-Hampshire wool, yielding 1 lb., 15 oz., of the brown and 1 lb., 9 oz., of the white:

The volume of the white is greater, I think because of the characteristics of the wool; this stuff is springy and airy and spongy and was practically bursting from the drum carder. The brown is much denser. I knew today would be the day I finished the drum carding (which I've been slaving at for months in small doses) because today is the day I found out that Majacraft makes a jumbo bobbin and flyer especially for plying two full bobbins together. (So I ordered one from Crown Mountain Farms about two minutes after I discovered such a thing existed. Now I just need to spin and ply a little over 3 pounds of fiber and I'll be ready to knit. Piece o' cake. Right?

The animals were fine without us. By chance, last week I caught this picture of Rose, Larry, Ed, and Trixie sunning themselves on or near the back porch. Can you spot them all?

Milo continues to grow. Luckily, the days away from home allowed some of my open flesh wounds to heal slightly. I know what you're thinking: How could such a cute kitty be evil? Just look at the widdle puddy-tat (pictured here with a black hole known as one of my giant nostrils):

But this is how it starts. First, he insinuates himself into your environment:

Then he prevents you from actually getting to your work:

Then, when he's got your full attention, he moves closer:

And then, once he has lulled you into a false sense of security, he moves in for the kill.

Sometimes I hate that cat.

Just a shop update, contains no Milo

I've just uploaded more Colonial Superwash sock yarn in four colorways. Garnet, Sapphire, Fresh, and My Favorite Jeans (the overdyed Faded Jeans that no one liked from my last update--much better this time around!):

Okay, one Milo picture.

Wild-eyed

I have a lot going on in this post, but let's face it: You want Milo. If you want calm, affectionate Milo, I have managed to capture just a few such moments. Here he is with my daughter and Sophie, who sleeps with one eye open around him:

Most often, shortly after I catch him acting civilized, like here, where he's sitting on a wholesale order to One Planet Yarn and Fiber (check out their site),

it's just a matter of moments before he goes off:

He likes to sink his teeth into the fleshy part of your hand between your thumb and forefinger.

Which really hurts.

Moving on. I forgot to mention the best part of the Vermont Sheep and Wool Festival (which I did not attend). I was visited by Indigo Di and a friend of hers on their way south. So far I have met a number of people I had known only through blogging and it's fun to get together with someone you already feel you know. One of the things we discussed, however, is that as far as we know, there is no definitive Blog Friend Etiquette. For instance: Do you hug goodbye? (We did.) Someone ought to write a handbook on this. Anyway, we had a wonderful time and talked out on the porch until after dark.

If you recall, last week I ruined some silk/merino top. Then I dyed more. Luckily my friend Donna (blogless) invited me to spin with her at the Shelburne Farms Harvest Festival. Shame on  you for not attending; it was fantastic, your kids would have loved it, what with the animals, the crafts, the music, the food. Best of all, I got more spinning done in a day there, surrounded by huge crowds of curious people, than I have in months at home. This:

became this:

which later on was plied into this:

(I'm not showing you the areas that I overplied just a bit.)

The goal was to create a yarn in time for our trip to Oklahoma (tomorrow) so that I could work on a simple scarf pattern for traveling. I ended up going with a feather-and-fan. Voila:

I took this picture early this morning with a flash so it's not quite as impressive as in person, colorwise, but the silk gives it such a glow:

There's an awful lot going on around here at the moment. Not only are we packing up to visit my stepson in his new apartment and to see an Oklahoma State football game--Go, Cowboys, I guess--but I've been working on a lot of yarn and fiber. I recently updated the shop with some Real Vermonter yarns and fiber. Here's the roving, with enough mohair to make it perfect for spinning sock yarn:

 

And I meant to take a group photo of the five yarns but I forgot.

(Actually, the green already sold; if you were on the Piece of Vermont mailing list you would have known about this earlier...) And if you are loving the Colonial Superwash wool/nylon sock yarn, hold on: There will be a shop update later today, including a redo of the Faded Blue Jeans, which was met with underwhelming enthusiasm. I overdyed it slightly darker and I think you'll be pleased. Check back later today if you want to see what I have. (Did I mention you could get on the mailing list and get notified sooner?)

And in case you are still reading, I'll close with more animal pictures. I tried getting good goat photos yesterday but they move around a lot. Snowy and Lucy clamoring for grain:

Trooper eating my pajamas (yes, I usually feed the goats before I shower, don't you?):

And in case you thought I don't care about them anymore, Lars and Roy and assorted poultry:

Ed and Trixie are growing up fast:

As are this summer's chicks, two of which are shown here:

They should be starting to lay in the next month or so.

Current animal inventory, in case you care:

2 dogs
2 cats
3 pigs
3 goats
3 peacocks
5 turkeys
2 bantams
8 chickens

With 3 goats and 2 sheep waiting in the wings. Sheesh.

And last, more of the wild-eyed Milo:

He is evil.

   

Much better

That's what merino/bombyx is supposed to look like, as in Not Felted Rope. This stuff is like heaven. Can you see the predrafted stuff in the foreground and right side? It looks almost liquid.

Aaaah.

I am envisioning this as yarn for a scarf to go with my new jacket:

I had wanted to go with more saturated colors but I think this will work. Of course it will be more homogenous once it's spun. The other two bumps, both of which are similar to this but not quite the same, are available at the shop:

I've already started spinning it but I forgot to take a picture. Spinning silk is different from wool. It's got a very long staple and it's slippery. The first bit is a little sketchy, but I eventually got the hang of it.

I also updated the supply of Colonial Superwash sock yarn. I tried to re-create the Blue Jeans colorway of the other day but ended up with something significantly paler. It's nice, but more washed out.

Here are a couple of teasers:

Jam

Away

Hopeful:

Last week, the yarn sold out quickly so I started a mailing list. It's also available at A Piece of Vermont near the bottom any screen. If you would like email notification when the shop gets updated, sign up. You can always unsub.

It's been a very busy week in the dye studio and I'm loving it. Just me, the yarn, the colors, and the iPod. Paradise.

Tomorrow I'll be gone all day at the Shelburne Farms Harvest Festival. My friend Donna goes every year and has asked me to come along and spin and maybe sell some product. I thought I'd better bring some Real Vermonter yarn and fiber with me so I've been dyeing up a storm all week. I have no idea if I'll even sell any, but whatever's left will go up on the website next week.

By the way, if you do order any yarn or fiber today, I may not be able to ship it until Monday. As I said, I'll be gone tomorrow. And I won't have a car for a few days. Bye, bye car!

My lease is up and we can't pick up the new car (also a Matrix, ha) until Monday. Timing is everything.

I am breaking with recent tradition and not posting any Milo pictures today. Rest assured he is just as wild and crazy as ever. This morning, in one swift move, he jumped on my keyboard, pissed off the big cat, and retreated at top speed, spilling my coffee on the floor (barely missing the computer and the spinning wheel). All in under 3 seconds. Kids.

One last thing: This picture is all over the Internet now and for some reason I get an evil chuckle out of it every time I see it. Does that make me a bad person?

 

The tomatoes are coming...

Perhaps this photo is more dramatic from a different perspective:

The plum tomatoes are destined to be marinara sauce, the above haul representing the harvest over three days. There are more coming. Make it stop.

There are good things going on here, like Rogue. I am having a great time with this sweater. The cuffs are both done.

The purple at the bottom is a contrasting hem, which will be sewn down on the inside later.

There are bad things happening, too. You see, we're going to Oklahoma next weekend to visit my older stepson. This in itself is good. But I needed a simple knitting project for the trip. I decided (probably) on the Yarn Harlot's One-Row Scarf and wanted it to be done in something soft and something handspun. Which meant I needed to dye some fiber. (Any other suggestions? This is to go with a corduroy jean jacket in olive green. I don't want anything that requires a chart.)

I happened to have a couple of pounds of lu$ciou$ merino/bombyx top lying around (waiting for me to have the courage to dye it). So I soaked it for a day, then, last night dyed up four 4-ounce portions, one for me and 3 for the shop. The colors were FABULOUS, if I do say so.

This morning I rinsed the tops and spun them out in the washer.

Bad idea.

Mistake #1: I put them in a mesh bag, which I suspect actually causes more friction than leaving them unconfined because the fiber inside forms a ball that rubs against the inside of the bag.

Mistake #2: I believed that the spin cycle was safe. While front loaders supposedly don't felt things well, I have learned that they sometimes do. My Real Vermonter roving, for instance, I swing by hand in the back yard because the spin cycle felts it. Rather than spin out at one constant speed, it spins for awhile and then tosses the fiber back and forth to keep it from compressing. This smacks of "agitation." Bad.

Here's a very expensive pound of merino/silk roving after it's felted:

Fuzzy rope. Can you bear a closeup?

I didn't cry. But I did sigh a lot today.

No matter. I've got more. I had to write a column today and I wasn't in a humorous mood (see silk disaster, above). But tomorrow, I'll skein up more sock yarn and dye even more (yes, Blue Jeans, I know, you want more; I'll try). I'll also dye up more silk (three 5-ounce portions, one for me and two to sell). I need to have the silk done so I can spin it before next Friday.

I'm tired and my head hurts from silk sadness and writing all day. Milo couldn't care less. (He is now Milo the Mouser, having killed two mice in the kitchen last night. I knew his mean streak would have benefits.)

New sock yarn!!!

Are you feeling blue? Would you like to be? I've got 8 skeins of Ashland Bay Colonial Superwash yarn, 2 of each colorway ready for you at A Piece of Vermont. This is a new product for A Piece of Vermont, a gorgeous, soft 3-ply in a fingering weight, 75% Colonial wool (whatever that is) and 25% nylon. Each 4-ounce skein has 434 yards and best of all, it's $4 cheaper per skein than my previous wool/nylon blend. I was in a blue mood (in a good way) when I dyed these up, but I have at least a dozen more not-necessarily-blue skeins that will be done by next week.

There's Blue Moon, touching on violet really:

Blue Jeans:

ETA: BOTH BLUE STEEL SOLD Blue Steel, my absolute favorite--very dark, and all the jewel tones are in there:

And Am I Blue? (more of a lavender/periwinkle):

I apologize for the lack of inventory over the summer. Gradually I should be cranking out enough for my wholesale accounts plus the website, which is not exactly bursting with yarn these days. This should help.

IMPORTANT NEWS: Here's the deal. Most of my yarn sales, other than wholesale, are generated directly through this blog. Since the arrival of Ravelry, however, I myself have been neglecting the blogs I usually read and I suspect a lot of other people are doing the same. There is a forum thread over at Ravelry discussing whether people will give up blogging now that they have Ravelry and I even saw the phrase "I'm over the blog thing" in that thread.

As a seller of hand-dyed yarn, my reaction is "Eeek." For that reason, I have just added a mailing list feature to A Piece of Vermont. If you sign up, I will notify you via email whenever I have added more yarn or fiber to the site. Head on over, but bear with me while I figure out how it all works. I may even try to add an autoresponder message thanking you for signing up. If I do, don't expect immediate confirmation; it won't go out until the day after you sign up. Give it a try, at least. You can unsub at any time and I promise I won't sell your address to anyone (as if I could figure out how). 

One more thing: Anyone know why my blog's traffic went up fivefold for the past couple of days? Here's a hint:

Yes, Milo. Someone submitted the flowerpot photo to Cute Overload and it linked back to here. I love the comments that people left. Most were positive. But some were concerned that Milo has a health problem and that's why he's pooping (peeing, actually, but who was I to spoil the image) in a flowerpot. Others think I'm the one with the health problem; I did, after all, take pictures of Milo instead of removing him immediately from the kitchen counter. (For the record, this was only his second day or so with a litterbox and he hadn't quite figured out the whole potty thing. He's got it now.) Another person questioned how an animal defecating could in any qualify as "cute."

Well, yeah, I thought it was pretty cute in a horrifying kind of way. But then I think turkeys are cute, too. 

A busy girl neglects her blog

School has started, my days are childless, and I'm making the most of every moment. (Whose idea was it to throw a 3-day weekend in on the first weekend that school is back in session?) The tomatoes have started:

This is a typical daily harvest. We eat a lot of tomatoes now.

I dyed yarn.

That's some Real Vermonter (Weybridge blend), but it all went to one of my LYSs. Remember A Piece of Vermont, that online store where way back when, before summer vacation started, I actually used to sell yarn? Fear not. I have just finished a small but awesome order of Ashland Bay Colonial Superwash fingering weight yarn. As soon as I get the pictures uploaded, I'll be updating the shop and the blog. Sock knitters, rejoice.

I've been knitting, too. Crazy but true.

My felted mittens are done but not adequately felted, so I'm still working on them. This picture is one of two cuffs of Rogue, my new obsession. I have actually done about twice what you see here, on both cuffs, but it's not easy. I'm pretty new at reading cable charts and because of near-constant interruptions (see "three-day weekend" above) I can usually only manage a single row before I have to stop. This is a really cool pattern and I only tackled it because someone on Ravelry made one as her very first sweater. One of the things I love about Ravelry is that you get to see the same sweater made by 100 or so different people, with comments about it. Rogue gets consistently high marks for being a clear, well-written pattern, and so far it hasn't let me down. If only I had more time!!!

You asked for Milo pictures. Here he is helping my daughter wrap a present:

 

To his credit, he is so wild during the day that he generally sleeps all night.

You also requested other animal pictures. Ed and Trixie are growing fast, and seem to have developed a real sense of identity (at least as far as a creature with a peanut brain can). They have started roosting with the turkeys instead of the chickens.

The growing chickens will soon start laying eggs. (Yes, I have 11 birds and due to age, gender, etc. I have not had any fresh eggs in months. Pathetic.) Genevieve, the banty, is back on another clutch of eggs in the soffit of the turkey house. These probably won't hatch either, only this time I don't have any chicks to give her. We'll see in a few days...)

Last night we took the goaties for a walk out to the apple trees, which a friend just cleared for us. They were surrounded by boulders and debris for some reason. Trooper likes apples.

 

I love to watch goats run.

Snowy is growing up.

As I have mentioned, there will soon be sheep and more goats. My husband spent most of the three-day weekend (with my constant companionship, if not actual help) finishing the sheep/goat barn:

He has to make the doors and I have to paint it.

And look what came to us, thanks to a sizing error on Jillian's part:

That's Rusted Root, apparently in a child's 8/10. Oops. Jillian did a beautiful job and my daughter LOVES it.

I'm heading back out to the shop to dye more yarn today. I think I'm going to stick with sock yarn for awhile. I've jumped all over the place trying out different yarns and weights, but it seems like the sock yarn is the most popular of all. Shout if you're looking for something else. There will be more Vermont yarn and fiber going up soon, as well.

The cool weather we've been having is set to go away for the weekend. Temps in the 90s don't bode well for knitting. But the cold will come soon enough....

I'm not the first to post a picture like this, but I couldn't resist.