S.T.E.A.M. on a Sunday

I haven't worked the rigid heddle loom in a while so I thought, what the heck... I could use a scarf for winter. More on that next post. Anyway, I had some left over yarn. Then I got to thinking, what can you do with yarn you don't seem to have any use for? How can you reuse? Experiment time. 

I cut some bits onto the carders and combed them out.

Made some funky, colorful batts!

Which spin into funky, colorful yarn! Groovy! I'm doing a spinning demo for kids in November, so I'm thinking this would make a good STEAM program. Teaching the kids about spinning and recycling and reusing materials. Anyone wanting to do this with their class or group, fear not. You don't have to spend a lot of money with this project. You can substitute wire dog brushes for the cards above and you can make spindles easily and inexpensively. Spindles can be made from CD's or toy wheels.

The sock is coming along. Coming along slower than I'd like but it will get there.

Isn't he cute? Che made him. She was so nervous waiting to hear back about a job she'd applied for that she cranked out a bear in a day. Much faster than her mom...

Remember the muscadine grapes from the last post? Well, here's another yummy thing you can do with these southern grapes

Vacation's end

A brief summery of week 2 of our vacation...

We took a dip in Silver Glen Springs in Ocala Natl. Forest. It was gorgeous and cold! The water, as Jerry likes to remind me at any given opportunity, is a constant 72 degrees, as it is at all of the springs in Florida. So you can either dive right in, suffer the mammalian dive reflex, and have to have your heart jump started again... or, you can go in gradually. I opted for the later.

Once you get used to the cold, the water feels wonderful, especially on a hot day. I floated in the crystal blue water, very blue, and listened as someone on one of the boats on nearby Lake George was playing the Grateful Dead. Home.

We went to the wine festival at the Log Cabin Vineyard in Satsuma. These are muscadine grapes, which are native to the southern United states. They produce a sweet, dessert wine. I bought a bottle of a white wine infused with key lime. Can't wait to try it!

And here the wine goddesses are crushing the grapes. There was also live music. It was a small but nice gathering.

Our neighbor across the street, Mr. Counts (he's a math teacher... no really) brought us over some of his homegrown veggies.

I spent a good part of the vacation knitting and reading. I'm reading this book by Susan Gordon Lydon. It is a really good read about knitting and the healing power of craft in our lives.

Will knit for chocolate

We have been here in N. FL at the parsonage for the past week and heading into a second week here. The weather has been very nice. June and July were definitely the hottest months. It's been warm and dry, in the 80's, in the mornings, hot in the afternoon, and mild evenings. Of course anyone from up north would just think it was hot. But when you've lived in the subtropical mire that is S. FL, you can tell the difference. I'm sitting in the yard now watching a pileated woodpecker inspect a knot hole in the giant oak next door. Pretty close to Heaven for me. And this has been a rough summer, so I'm happy to be home just watching the birds. And now a sandhill crane has just wandered into the yard and is looking at me. Totally unmoved by my presence. The same can't be said for me, however. He is beautiful and very tall.

I had a fun, chocolate filled lesson in sock knitting from my knitting guru Cindy of DelightedHands. I now understand why there is such a cult following for sock knitting. It is very challenging and three dimensional. Cindy taught me Judy's magic cast on  for knitting socks toe up on circular needles. I'm using Patons Kroy Socks FX in Clover Colors on size US 2, 32" circular needles, which Cindy gave me to use as well as a sweater knitting CD, homemade soap, the best brownies you've ever had and M&M's. Well, we needed the M&M's to help us count rows and stitches. No really...

See the little toe emerging? I was reading in my copy of Vogue Knitting that socks are probably the earliest application of knitting, dating back to 1200 AD in Egypt. 

And the fiber fun didn't stop there. Bridget came over from Jax and hung out with us for the day. She brought the crochet blanket she is working on and we hung out knitting, catching up and watching TV. It was a mellow afternoon. 

The other creative offspring surprised us with this cool little fire pit that she made. Good job Che!

Mein Shotzee

The Shotzee spindle has arrived. It is a medium weight, cherry wood tool of beauty. I like the way it spins. I do believe I'm more comfortable with a top whorl spindle. But I'm going to keep working with the Louet. I've separated the shetland top into two, 4 oz. bundles and will spin each with the 2 new spindles. I love the color of this shetland too!

And speaking of color... I found this lovely skein of wool purchased at the Earth Guild in Asheville, NC about 2 years or so ago. I was having a hard time deciding what color to dye it. But I've decided to dye it red, inspired by the book I've just finished reading, The Museum of Extraordinary Things by Alice Hoffman. I don't want to give anything away in case you want to read the book, but at the end of the story we find one of the characters is a spinner and knitter who dyes all her wool with madder root, producing red yarn. So I thought by George! Red! However, I didn't use madder root. I did something I've been wanting to try for a long time... Kool Aid! Cherry red. I used the directions from the Knitty website found here.

And here it is. The dye job came out a little uneven. When I do this again, I will bring the dye and water level up to where I think it will cover the wool before I add the wool and I will stir it more often than the instructions say. But otherwise I was happy with the color and the process. Just the fact that I wasn't dealing with toxic materials made me pretty happy.

About 3 years ago, I visited a really cool little yarn shop in Lancaster, PA called Oh Susanna's. If a yarn shop could be on an episode of Hoarders, this would be the place. There were shelves and baskets and boxes full of yarn. So much that you just wanted to jump in and swim around like a pile of leaves in autumn. And out of all that yarn, I bought one little skein of lace weight tweed yarn. Yes, just one. I am a doofus. So while straightening up in the loom room the other day, I came across my little green ball and decided to finally do something with it. Since it's lace weight, and since I saw a really cute narrow scarf in a magazine the other day, I'm thinking scarf. Mostly too because it is just one little ball. If it turns out I don't have enough for a scarf, then it will be a cowl.

Want to share this website... it's really cool! And fun. House of Tartan Interactive Weaver

Wool and Key Lime Pie

For being good and taking all my nuclear medicine, I decided to buy myself some presents. So of course I bought fiber related fun. I ordered a Louet drop spindle, bottom whorl, and 1/2 lb. of Shetland top, both ordered from Yarn Barn. I also ordered a Shotzee top whorl spindle from Halcyon. That one hasn't come yet. The top spins up nicely but I haven't used a bottom whorl spindle in a while... all my spindles are of the top whorl variety. So the yarn was coming out a little slubby at first. But after a while it evened out as I got more acquainted with the tool.

I'd also like to share a website that I recently discovered through fellow blogger, Delighted Hands. The KnitPicks website is a very nifty site. There is yarn and fiber for sale, patterns, and lovely needles. There are also videos and tutorials. Check it out.

Ooooo what is that you ask? Why it is a genuine key lime pie made by a genuine Florida girl! The pie was our contribution to a dinner invite from our good friends. I had not made a key lime from scratch in a loooong time, so I was a little nervous as to how it would turn out. First off, a real key lime pie is not green. Nor should it be sour. And it absolutely must have a meringue topping... none of this whip cream stuff. Want to make one? You will need:

1 graham cracker pie crust

4 eggs + 2 or 3 more eggs for meringue

  1 can condensed milk

1/3 c. key lime juice

sugar

1. Beat the 4 egg yolks and 1 egg white together. Save the other egg whites

2. Add the can of condensed milk and beat again.

3. Add the lime juice and beat until thick

4. Beat the 3 remaining egg whites until thickened and fold into the mixture.

5. Pour into the graham cracker pie shell.

6. Seperate 2 more egg whites and beat with 2 tablespoons of sugar until meringue forms peaks. For more meringue, use 3 egg whites and 3 tablespoons sugar. 

7. Don't put meringue on pie yet. Bake the pie at 350 for 10 min. 

8. Take the pie out of the oven, spread the meringue on top, and bake for 10 more min. 

That's all there is to it. You will have a sweet yummy pie. A Sunshine State original. I'm going to bake another one before the summer is gone. 

  

Oh Puddy... don't you know it's bad luck to walk under a ladder?

Bears!

The bears for the Mother Bear Project are finally finished and ready to be shipped off on Tuesday.

These little bears are very easy to make. I used the knit pattern and Che used the crochet pattern. I think the pattern is like $5 and you order it from Mother Bear. I think this would be a good project for tweens and teens too. Also good for beginning knitters.

And at the risk of sounding redundant, let me say again that my new URL is warpedandwoaded.blogspot.com ....

Light at the end of the tunnel

I finally feel like I'm coming back to the land of the living. Was able to work a half day yesterday and am going for a full day today. I will have to pace myself and rest when I feel I need to. Most AN patients say this and I believe it. I have added a page to talk about my Cyberknife experience for anyone who is thinking of doing this. So many people on the AN website have been so helpful. I would like to give back.

I should probably say that I've changed my URL (didn't know I could) to warpedandwoaded.blogspot.com just in case any of you dear readers have me bookmarked. And speaking of internet techie stuff...Jerry got a Google Chromebook and so far it is pretty nifty. Blogging is much nicer since I can now take my time and write instead of trying to hurry through my posts during my lunch break at work. My only complaint is that Chromebook seems to have a hard time working in certain parts of the house, like the loom room where I like to sit and do my thinking. You have to be in the living room where the modem lives to get any kind of speed.

During my convalescence, I did quite a bit of reading. One of the books I got interested in is The Knitter's Life List by Steege. There are lists of what you could or should try as a knitter, some techniques, knitting history, info on fiber festivals. It's an all around interesting book for needle clickers.

I also had time to catch up on some old Handwoven magazines. Found an interesting article in the May/June 2013 issue about Anni Albers and the Bauhaus weavers.

The article was saying that the Bauhaus weaving was attempting to stay "true to the vertical and horizontal nature of weaving" and was heavily influenced by the industrial landscape of the 1920's. This got me thinking about the bar and chain inkle I'm working on and much of plain weave inkle, which can have a Bauhaus "bent" to it. So this all excited my curiosity in reading more about Bauhaus textiles and Anni Albers. Grabbed a copy of her Selected Writings on Design.

I also had time to finally finish knitting this bear for the Mother Bear Project.  He's only been on the needles for like a year. My daughter said that the child this was supposed to go to has probably graduated from college by now. Wise guy.

I'll embroider a face on him and use all the long tails to sew up the sides. Then I'll make him a sparklie necklace with some bling type yarn and voila! Ze bear... she iz fini!