What Housework?

Fiber heaven, and some piggy pics

Saturday: Rainy, cool, gloomy. But there is goodness to share.

First, I updated the A Piece of Vermont with three colorways of Panda Superwash. Here we have Fern Lake:

May Day:

And River Rocks:

If I ever finish my April socks, my next pair will be in Panda Superwash. It's nice and shiny and makes a good warm-weather sock project, in my opinion. But what with the spring weather and the longer days, knitting has hit the back burner, I'm afraid.

Fiber, however, is right up front. I just put hand-blended batts up in the shop. These are primo fiber: 65 percent Tussah silk, 35 percent alpaca from Champlain Valley Alpacas right here in Vermont. I processed the raw alpaca here, dyed it and then blended it with the silk that I dyed separately. The way the colors end up totally floors me. Check it out.

This silk:

plus this alpaca:

Becomes these Champlain Sunset batts:

You can't see all the color variations that well, but they're in there. Here's the fiber still on the carder after the second pass:

And this silk:

And this alpaca:

becomes these Shore batts:

My friend Jenn was kind enough to spin up a tiny sample of the Champlain Sunset:

I Andean-plied her singles and made a very dumb (too wide, too short) swatch:

It doesn't do the fiber justice, but you can see a bit of the sheen from all the silk. So soft.

Anyway, I've put a bunch of batts (plus or minus 2 ounces each). Honestly, they're pricey. But the alpaca, being local, cost more than the silk, plus I processed it from raw fleece to fiber. But if you're a spinner looking for a unique and really luxurious fiber to spin, this might be the ticket. I'm still swooning from touching it all day yesterday.

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for: Piglets!

I didn't get such great shots, as the lighting is low and I had a backlighting situation going on. But I lightened these up a bit so you could see the growing babies. I have nothing to add to these, so just enjoy them and get on with your day.

I know why you're here

It's not for the knitting or the spinning. It's this:

I wish I had better pictures of these fast-growing little piggies but I haven't done very well with the camera. The above picture is a couple days old and these are even older (see how fat they're getting already?):

The thing is, these guys move like lightning and I have to use a slow shutter speed because there's not enough light in the barn. In lieu of adorable baby pig pictures, however, I did get some good ones of the older three. It was barn-cleaning day on Sunday and pigs absolutely love to burrow in fresh hay. Here, my brother in law is tossing forkfuls onto two of them. They run around and roll in it and snort and come for more when he stops.

There. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, there's more to report. Such as this on Sunday evening:

No, I don't mean the tractor, which saw a lot of use this weekend. And I don't mean the acre or so my husband tilled for my 30' x 40' garden (the man is a maniac on a John Deere). I mean that black dot way out beyond the pond. Here's a closer shot:

Yeah, that's a black bear. On our property. This was my first bear sighting, since last year I only heard the one that overturned furniture on our porch and bent our bird feeder pole. Maybe it's the same one.

I've got a bit of a shop update. There are four imperfect skeins of Crazy Love in Colonial Superwash:

That violet blotch appears once or twice in each skein. Still, at 20 percent off, maybe it's worth it to you. Four skeins could make a good-sized shawl...

I also put up some Blue-Faced Leicester in what I think are very cool colorways.

Suite: Judy Blue Eyes:

Peace Train (my favorite):

   

Scarborough Fair:

Long Ago and Far Away:

I spun up a tiny bit of this last one and got this. I Andean plied it and apparently the midpoint was in the middle of the black, so it knit up with a sort of gradient look, which was not actually what I was trying for. But it's neat. (And sooooo soft.)

Now, a couple of weeks ago, I spun up some merino/bamboo top. I finally figured out what to use it for: Katja from Knitty, for my nephew's new baby daughter. I'm not sure it's going to fit, as a lot of people on Ravelry said it was kind of wide and mine came out the same. But I'm hoping the colors are going to distract everyone:

I will be putting up more merino/bamboo top next week, and I am most certainly going to re-post these pictures, for advertising. This stuff is incredibly soft and silky.

I haven't blogged in a while because suddenly it's spring in Vermont and we've been doing a lot of outside work. It's been so refreshing (and exhausting) to be able to get outside and hang out with the animals.

The sheep and goats got a new electric fence and lots more pasture:

I have started brushing the goats with the horse slicker I use on the dog. They are becoming frighteningly addicted to getting a good grooming.

My friend Jenn, the newish knitter, just finished a Classy Slip-Up from the Knit Socks! book. I believe she used Plymouth Happy Feet yarn in a clever colorway such as 8. Or maybe 9. I forget.

I believe this is only her second pair of socks and she has quickly mastered the Kitchener stitch, although she has to have a paper bag to breathe into the whole time she's doing it. I was working in the shop (playing with my new toy, below) while she was grafting, and I think Sassy did less heavy breathing when she was giving birth to the piglets.

Look what I got:

It's not actually a Milo warning, although it could be:

It's actually my Pat Green Triple Picker, which makes short work of raw fleece to prep it for carding. That, or it's a medieval torture device.

I had some plans to offer some custom dyed Romney and other local fiber this week, but the Romney turned out to have too much VM for me to sell. On the bright side, I'm in the middle of blending up pure silk with Vermont alpaca, which is going to make batts so delicious I can't stand it. I'm carding the alpaca right now and it's so soft I feel like going to sleep while I'm carding. Just wait. More Panda Superwash is coming, too.

Well, I think I've gone on long enough here today. I've covered everything but the gratuitous cat photos. Here:

March socks

A boring blog post is one that contains knitting and spinning and a shop update, but no pictures of Milo. Prepare to be bored.

I finally finished my March socks. On April 3rd.

Note the heel, as suggested by Elizabeth Zimmerman:

Here's my take on the Colonial Superwash yarn, which, as you will see, has been restocked at A Piece of Vermont: I love it.

This is only my second pair of socks using this yarn, because typically I don't knit socks very often. The last pair (the Anastasias) I did on size 1s and the fabric was a bit wimpy. I dropped down to 0s for these (sob), and I love the way it knitted up. I haven't washed these yet, but the Anastasias softened up beautifully with machine washing so I imagine these will, too. I'm all over the purple and green combo, and although I've really become enamored of the toe-up, short-row heel sock, these do fit my high arches well because of the heel flap. This is a very comfortable pair of socks.

My April socks, which are already behind schedule, were just a pile o' fiber a few days ago. As planned, I blended dyed superwash merino and Sophie's Border Leicester wool into layered  batts (skein of yarn for scale):

That right there is just over 6 ounces, while the skein of yarn is 4. Fluffy! I tore off strips of roving

and started spinning:

Or, for a photo taken by the window:

I know one thing: This is wonderful spinning. It's about 30 percent merino to 70 percent BL, I think, and I can't begin to describe the smoothness of the spinning. The question is: Will it make good sock yarn? It's not especially elastic, so that may be a problem. We'll see. When carding, I alternated layers of merino and BL, all of which were dyed differently, mostly blue but also a layer of green and one of dark pink. I'm hoping the finished yarn, if I 2-ply it, will have subtle color shifts throughout. I can't wait to see.

I made two more batts, but those were already on request and have been sold to Sherri.

So, I updated the shop with lots of Colonial Superwash sock yarn. (By the way, if you are on Ravelry, I finally got in and edited my yarns, something that  Kim at Knits with a Silent K had kindly been doing until I got my invite lo these many months ago. Until now, I haven't had Colonial Superwash entered, so people have had to use the wool/nylon superwash that was there, but it's not the same yarn. Sorry about that.)

Here's what's left of the new stuff:

You're My Blue Sky

Honey Love

Cream of Mushroom

Water Sprite

Still Waters

One colorway (not shown) is sold out already. If you want to get early notice, sign up for the mailing list at the bottom of any page at A Piece of Vermont.

I also have some silk/merino DK ready to go, and I'll have some bumps of merino superwash top going up next week.

In shop news, good stuff: I got my new water extractor so I'll be able to spin out my yarns and fibers in the shop rather than in the house, and it won't felt my spinning fiber the way our front loader does. (Yes, on the spin cycle, it repeatedly stops and changes direction to "fluff" clothes. Remember the silk top disaster?) On the tech side, I can't get a wireless connection so far from the house, so I have to run a cable, or at least make my husband do it for me in his spare time. Which he doesn't have.

Spring is coming, and looking through my archives I see that pictures used to be a lot colorful in the warm weather. I'm looking forward to more of those.

Fortune cookie fun

It finally came to me what happened here. Either something was lost in translation, or the writer of this fortune confused the Golden Rule with golden sh*wers. (Gross. Sorry.)

Anyway.

How 'bout those March socks? I'm sure you've all been sleepless with anticipation. Well, they're not done:

They weren't done on March 31, either, but that's they day I almost finished the second one and decided to try on the first one. It was too short. (It's been a while since my last pair of top-down socks.) My first thought was to give them away so I wouldn't have to knit on them any more, but I really want them.

So I ripped out both toes and added some length. While I was at it, I adjusted the toe shaping. Toward the end, I decreased every round rather than every other to get a more rounded shape. The other is ready for its purple toe now.  Maybe today.

I've been super busy in the shop. There's an update on its way soon, hopefully tomorrow. I've got merino/silk yarn, to die for:

A crapload of Colonial Superwash:

And hopefully, I'll have blended up what you see there on the table (in the SUNLIGHT):

That's a coil of merino top on several batts of Sophie's Border Leicester fleece I dyed up. It's soooo pretty:

Whatever this turns into, half will be for sale (yes, Sherri, you get first crack at it, as promised) and half is going to become the yarn for my April socks. The last two times I've hoped to spin sock yarn, it's turned out too thick. It's not because I can't spin finer; I finally realized it's because I knit so loose that I dread spinning something so fine I have to use really small needles. This time I'm not going to worry. If I have to, I'll 3-ply it.

I also have some merino roving to dye up but that won't go up until next week. I just ordered a bunch of new fiber, including some merino/bamboo top, which I'm dying to try and which could become my next Clapotis, because I really want one out of handspun, and I lost my last one. I also bought some pure silk and something else (which I can't remember at the moment), which I want to use in some more custom blends. I have some light-colored alpaca coming in from my friends at the alpaca farm, and I see great things happening with all those fibers.

I will be busy today, since a guy from the local computer store* is coming to test the shop and see if I can get a wireless connection from the house--because I will have a new computer out there by next week! Then all my photography, packaging, and shipping can happen right from the shop and I won't always be lugging stuff back and forth to and from the house. As my friend Jenn says, "Work smarter, not harder."

*I am a big fan of buying local, having concluded that a slightly higher price usually is a good tradeoff for personal service and higher customer satisfaction. I noticed that a certain computer mfr was having a big sale online. So I built the system I wanted online, got a price, and called my local store. They are coming within $100 of the major manufacturer for an almost-identical system (and that's assuming there was no shipping charge from the online place) and they're already going out of their way to make sure I'm all set up and good to go. And they know my name. And when I have a problem I don't have to wait on hold for hours and speak to someone on another continent. Buy local. Saving pennies for crappy customer service is totally not worth it.

Since I'm on my high horse, I might as well throw in some other animal pictures. Polly and Gert:

The four little piggies:

Love the curly ears on this one:

And, of course, Milo causing trouble:

We are in full mud season in this part of Vermont but today we will get a break before the next two days of rain/snow: sunny and 52F. Now that's springtime, for us.

Best day ever!

Okay, best FIBER day ever.

Halfway to the Green Mountain Spinnery, I realized I had forgotten my camera. Fortunately, when we got there, David (one of the owners) lent me the Spinnery's and then emailed me the pictures later. This would be great if I had been capable of focusing an auto-focus camera not familiar to me. It would also be great if I had photographed something other than machinery, such as, I don't know, PEOPLE. Because while the mill was very cool, the people were even cooler. I was so overcome with fiber I couldn't think straight.

The shop:

The storage room, full of fiber:

Jenn trying to abscond with a 500-pound bag of wool.

The mill process was more interesting in person than in pictures (esp. blurry ones), but we saw the scouring area, the picker, the carder (which cards once into a big sheet of fiber and then cards that fiber in a perpendicular way, to get a woolen yarn, into pencil roving), a long spinning machine, a steamer, and a big ol' skeiner.

Scouring. The process of washing the fiber is problematic because it wastes a lot of water. The Spinnery filters the water and reuses it several times. As for the leftover "sludge," they are looking into ways to use the by-product, such as by extracting the lanolin to be used in salves. I think David said they're hoping to eventually have the scouring done off-site but I could be wrong about that.

Picker:

Carder, first pass:

Pencil roving:

Spinning machine:
 

I don't have pictures of the spinning in process, but at the end of our trip we did catch a woman named Patty, simultaneously supervising all those bobbins up there while knitting (crocheting?) up some little Easter eggs. Must suck to work there.

Coffee and yarn (and patterns). It's all good.

The final word: Warm, friendly people treated us like we were the first ones to ever tour the mill; dropped everything to talk yarn and fiber; and allowed us to fill the small shop area completely with bags of fleece. Then customers, people with car troubles, and even pattern designers* started showing up to climb over the bags. It looked a little like this:

*A woman showed up with the back of a sort-of cabled baby sweater in a natural yarn, which turns out was GMS's organic yarn. The pattern is going into their next book. And the woman was "Melissa," who, it turns out, designed lots of projects in the Green Mountain Spinnery pattern book. How cool is that?

Jenn (knitting only since December '07 and cranking out the FOs) had to breathe into a paper bag after looking at all the patterns and feeling all the yarn in the shop. She fell victim to the Mountain Mohair and is almost done with her hat already:

Now I can't even remember what we settled on for Real Vermonter yarn, but it's going to be either a DK or sport weight 2-ply (wool/alpaca), and I'm having them use the non-petroleum spinning oil on it. It will be ready in May or June.

I'm telling you, if you are anywhere near southern Vermont, make plans to visit the Spinnery, even if you don't have time for a tour. It's worth it just to meet people who are actually interested in the same things you are, who talk the talk (only better than you becaues they're pros), and who don't think it's weird that you like sniffing wool.

Speaking of wool....

I have this idea I mentioned in my last post, and I gave it a try. A few weeks ago, a friend sold me this Romney hoggett fleece, some of which I scoured

and then picked, and then carded into batts:

Well, last week, I dyed the batts:

Then I quartered the dyed sections and ran them through the drum carder in this order, with no clear idea of what would happen:

Jenn took pictures of the progress:



And we got:

Actually, we got four of these 2-ounce batts.

Who wants four ounces' worth?

That's right, they're for sale. I am currently spinning four ounces myself and would be done plying if those people my family did not suck the life out of me need my attention every waking moment now and then:

Do you love it? If so, I'm asking $17 for four ounces plus shipping, and the first person to email me gets it. [SOLD] With any luck there will be more in the future, and soon I may be able to make it more efficiently because I GOT A LOAN for the business! Just a little one, but it's a start and will allow me to buy, in addition to lots of yarn, this, which will speed up the picking process by up to 10X.

For my next project, I'm thinking of white Romney blended with black alpaca and then overdyed. Ahhh. And if I can "cheat" a little, I might buy some non-Vermont silk and add that in. Are you swooning?

I don't have the time or energy to post all the Easter morning pictures. There was a hunt with clues that, when turned over, formed a puzzle, which led to a new bike.

Milo stalked the bike:

Do you ever get the feeling you're being watched?

And last, why we have a hard time getting dinner guests to come back:

Milo, in a deceptively loving mood:

Leap day might come in handy

I said I'd knit one pair of socks per month in 2008 and I don't want to be called a liar.

But I abandoned my February socks when Margene extended her NaSpiMoMo (National Spin More Month) to February. Finally, finally, finally, I finished the spinning for Opus 2007. To refresh your memory, I had a raw brown fleece of mystery breed from fall of 2006, and a white Hampshire or Suffolk fleece from our own sheep J.J. and I spun them into a 2-ply bulky. The final tally was just short of 3 pounds. Phew.

I had already decided I didn't want to use the yarn undyed as it looked a bit busy to my eye. My husband (the future sweater recipient) also didn't care of the dark/light so I overdyed two samples:

He (and all the other men polled) preferred the darker version. I thought it was (a) a bit too dark to show enough variegation and (b) a bit too brilliant a blue. I toned it down with the magical addition of orange (love you, color wheel), which neutralized it a bit. The final result, dried outside today while it's sunny (7 to 14 inches of snow on its way tomorrow):


I am ridiculously pleased with myself over this. I love it. The color is perfect, the yarn is a lot softer than I had expected it to be, and J.J.'s super-sproingy fleece makes a wonderfully bouncy yarn. I can't wait to get started on it.

Then there's this other problem. After finally finishing a dozen skeins of the same thing, I thought I'd be happy to stick to 4-ounce projects for a while, instant gratification being A Good Thing. I spun up the Real Vermonter roving I had predrafted last week. I loved the color changes so much I decided to Navajo-ply, even though I knew it would be a bit thicker than I wanted. The good news is that it came out wonderfully soft and sproingy, not string-like, as it did the last time I (over)spun it. The bad news is that it's bulky. I only got 100 yards!

This is my fault for getting used to very thick yarn (12 skeins' worth); I didn't realize it wasn't nearly fine enough. What's worse, I have been selling 4-ounce bumps of Real Vermonter roving and I forgot that mohair is very dense. My last Real Vermonter fingering weight yarn (60 percent mohair) required 6.2 ounces to get 440 yards, as opposed to a typical 4-ounce skein of superwash. So my next bumps will be heavier. It's a bit late for anyone who bought a 4-ounce bump and got shorted for their project. I hope this didn't happen to anyone!

But that's just one problem.

The other problem, or more correctly "problem," is that I still want to spin a sweater's worth of yarn. It got a bit draggy there for a while, but the final result is so exciting, I can't wait to do it again. I had just started thinking about commercially processed fiber versus raw fleece. Despite the daunting work involved in processing a fleece, I have really started feeling that it's more satisfying and allows you to get in on the whole process with no mysteries about the origin of the fiber or the chemicals used in the processing.

And then the phone rang. A friend who had a few fleeces to sell me for my next Real Vermonter order said she had 3 Romney fleeces, two of them from lambs ("hogget" fleeces, right?). She brought them over, and Milo checked them out:

Then he actually ate a piece:

After I wrestled him for it, and put up the bags, I got a good look at the fiber:

Most of the fleece has a looser, more Romney-like crimp to it, but I just love this. It's sooo soft.

I decided to scour just one pound at a time in the sink, rather than break my back in the bathtub, and the first batch is now ready for picking:

Isn't that yummy? While I am picking and carding this I will have to decide whether to dye it many colors or one solid color, or just leave it natural. I'm leaning toward natural at the moment.

So, it's a good thing we have an extra day in this month because my socks are not finished:

I love the color, but I cast on only 56 inches, and it appears I needed at least 60; they are a bit stretched over the arch. I thought I could compensate by making the foot a bit longer. Now they are not only too tight but also too long. I added a "garter cable" up the sides, but the variegation completely hides it:

If it were a solid yarn, you'd see one stockinette twist and one garter twist going around each other. Bonus points to my husband, who suggested that each sock's cables should wind in opposite directions, for symmetry. They already do, but I'm fascinated that it even occurred to him. I'm rubbing off on him.

So they won't be the best socks ever, but I still like them. I need to get them done because I want to spin the yarn for my March socks (out of 6 ounces of Real Vermonter) and time is flying!

P.S. Look for a shop update, including BFL bumps and Panda Superwash sock yarn, later in the week.

Slowly gaining speed

Unlike me, Milo has never felt better.

Thank you for all your kind words during my recent near-death-experience illness. My brother-in-law has taken to calling me Typhoid Mary and has renamed our home The House of Pain. I have never been so sick for so long.

I was only totally flat on my back for 3 days, but the recovery period has been very slow. Maybe not eating anything for several days (not to mention not touching a drop of coffee for over a week) took a bigger toll on me than I realized because it's been almost two weeks and I'm just now starting to feel totally human again. As a person who likes to be able to get things done, it's been pretty demoralizing to have day after day of fatigue, and I truly started wondering if I'd ever be able to get back to normal.  Fortunately, my appetite is returning, I drank coffee yesterday and today, and I think I might be able to eat a normal Thanksgiving dinner by next week. Sadly, my love of squash and pumpkin collided with my severe intestinal problems and at the moment I can't even look at orange food. Hope that passes.

I finally managed a shop update, albeit a small one. I have two regular skeins of Dark Malachite:

And one large skein each (5.8 ounces, 629 yards) of Pomegranate [SOLD], 3-Day Weekend [SOLD], and Evening:



I'm afraid I have nothing else in the queue as of this morning, but next I'll have more of the sock yarn, plus what may be the last batch of Real Vermonter yarn for the year. I'm taking ideas for the next round and if I get my act together maybe I'll post a poll to help me figure out what you guys would like in terms of Real Vermonter yarn weight and fiber content.

I have been knitting, actually. Rogue is mostly done except for the top of the sleeves. I put it on hold while I switched to a Christmas-gift knit which I can't share here. You see, we went to my stepson's first college wrestling tournament in Rhode Island this weekend, and I needed something really portable. Then, on the spur of the moment, we went back down to Mass. on Wednesday night to see him wrestle in his first college dual meet, because he nailed a starting spot in the line-up and we were very proud of him. For the record, Wednesday night is the first time my husband and I have gone away overnight without any children in 8 years. All you single and/or childless people out there, think about that.

I finished my first large skein of Opus 2000 yarn:

My husband has basically declined my offer of a sweater for him, so it's going to be a big oversized warm one for me. However, I've stopped spinning it to make way for another Christmas gift project. On the spur of the moment the other day, I found a cool pattern that looked suited to a very drapey yarn. So I grabbed some fawn alpaca I have (which is for sale except I haven't put it up on the website):

ran it through my friend Donna's drum carder and soaked it:

And dyed it up:

I'm planning on spinning it and then Navajo-plying it to keep the colors somewhat distinct. The pattern I'm knitting up (secretly, of course) lends itself to subtle striping and I think this might work. Wish me luck.

That about covers everything. I'm almost better, I'm going to get back to dyeing (and to all my devoted customers, thank you for being so understanding about delayed shipments and any mixups that may have occurred during the Dark Days. I hope it never happens again!) I did, however, want to share one customer's results with some roving my daughter rainbow dyed. This spinner turned this merino superwash:

into this:

And through the magic of Navajo plying, kept the color gradations and knitted the yarn into Fetching:

(For the non-spinners, I will mention once again that Navajo plying is sort of like making a long crochet-chain with one strand of yarn. Because you are not twisting two or three different strands together, Navajo plying keeps each section of color pretty much intact. Margene did a nice comparison between standard plying and Navajo plying, if you are interested.)

Milo, no longer looking like a kitten, has dodged a bullet twice in the past two weeks but I won't be rescheduling with the vet again. Wednesday he gets tutored.


Ignorance is bliss, right?

When worlds collide

(Get ready for a very long, photo-filled post featuring animals, food, a shop update, and a lot of words you can just skim over.)

The newcomers on the left are Sophie (another Sophie!) and J.J., the two most recent acquisitions at the Raymonds' Home for Surplus Farm Animals. Snowy and Lucy were somewhat concerned. This photo shows it better:

The sheep arrived on Sunday and the re-establishing of the livestock social hierarchy began. Trooper comes out on top, as always:

What the sheep have in greater girth, they lack in assertiveness. But things are settling down to mutual wariness, which is fine for now.

As for breeds, Sophie is Border Leicester and J.J. is still a mystery, although I'm leaning toward Hampshire, based not only on his coloring but also on the dense, spongy quality of his fiber (more on that in a moment):

My husband tried to win the sheep over:

But they're still skittish. The goats, however, never miss an opportunity for a little scritch on the head:

Or a kiss on the nose:

All the animals were out in force on Sunday, seeing as it was a beautiful fall day:

Roy and Lars:

Ed and Trixie hanging with the big boys:

Larry fast-walking:

The girls, led by BigFatDaisy, enjoying a cantaloupe (from my garden! forgotten in the vegetable crisper!):

Overall, the weekend was fanstastic. The weather was great. We had relatives from out of town for the day on Saturday, and Sunday I actually did some weeding (two heaping wheelbarrows full) for the first time since June, I think. The garden is yielding some goodies in addition to many tomatoes. Butternut squash and peppers:

Most exciting of all, Friday afternoon I picked apples from our very own neglected apple trees way out back. We have three varieties (four trees). One kind, probably Rhode Island greenings, are still on the tree and in great shape. Hardly any blemishes even though the tree has never been sprayed or pruned or anything. Very tart and firm. The other two had kind of gone by, so I only got one apple on one tree and the ones I got off the other tree were small and looked terrible and scabby on the outside. Fortunately, they were sweet and juicy on the inside. I just wished we'd had more.

My daughter and I brought these in the house:

If you look closely at the two in the lower right corner, you will see they are suffering from a condition known as "goat bites." The goats went with me to pick apples and turned up their noses at the hundreds of apples already on the ground, preferring the ones I had just plucked off the tree. Dumb old goats.

Then we did this:

And the next morning I made this:

I would love to say it was the tastiest pie I ever made, but it wasn't. The fact that I made it not from store-bought apples, not even from pick-your-own apples, but from pick-OUR-own apples turned it into the best pie ever, even if it was a bit on the tart side. Next year I'll get out there earlier and get more of the sweeter apples. Still, it didn't last long:

Now, about fiber stuff.

I finally started spinning Opus 2007. I failed to get pictures of my singles, but the story is that I wanted a two-color tweedy yarn. I plied brown to white (J.J.'s very own fiber!) and got this:

This is very cool, and yet I think I would get a headache if I had to look at my husband wearing something like this in sweater form. Too busy. So I tried a little overdyeing:

This turned out too dark, but better than the above. It's overspun, too. But it's the right bulky weight for the heavy sweater I have in mind and I'm continuing with the spinning. When I'm done, I'm going to overdye it in some shade of blue/gray but not so dark that I lose all the contrast. I'm very excited about this project. And bulky yarn spins up fast!

Last, I have updated A Piece of Vermont with both sock yarn and superwash merino top. Here are Frosted Berry and Balsam (some of which sold already):

And the spinning fiber:

I just received an order of Ashland Bay Panda Superwash, so after a bit more wool/nylon sock yarn, you'll be seeing some wool/bamboo/nylon, as requested.

Of course, no post would be complete without a Milo shot. Here's Sophie expressing concern with the new dynamic:

Note her stunning resemblance to the pile of carded wool in the foreground: