Fiber-y goodness

It's been a while (again) since I've posted anything and I've got some fun stuff to show! I was lucky enough to get to the Monterey Fleece Auction at the Monterey County Fair (they sell tequila *shots* at the fair, how cool is that!??!) two weekends ago and that kicked me in the butt to start dyeing.

I've been wanting to dye my own stuff for quite some time, and the carding fun during the TDF really got me thinking about it. Finally, what pushed me over the edge was the wonderful fleece I bought at the auction. Nine pounds of Coopworth Romney cross, in a lovely gray. Oh, here's what it looks like:



Isn't it gorgeous? The majority went off to Morro Fleece Works for processing, but I stashed about 1# in a ziplock before heading home. This is post washing and pre-dyeing. Since it's gray, I wanted to try and get some blues and purples for scarves. I dyed the locks using acid dyes in the microwave. I don't think I got the water hot enough, but here's the blue pre-carding, and then the two finished batts:





I was quite surprised at how much the colors muted after carding, but the softness of both is just amazing. Have I mentioned how much I love my drum carder? Love. LOVE.

Anyway, I also had two pounds of merino top just lying around waiting for some love, so I decided to do some quick experimenting with kettle dyeing and hot-pouring. I'm much braver now about really heating the water/wool mixture and I just dove in. All the examples below use 4oz. of roving, so I've still got a pound of un-dyed roving leftover. The kettle dyeing was simple - just dump the dye in the bath along with the wool, then heat to set. For the hot pour, I heated the wool and bath *first*, then added the dye.

While I didn't take pictures of the kettle dyeing (too simple, I guess), I did try and document the hot pour. First experiment was with a blue mixture. I used a syringe to squirt the dye on half the roving:



Once that was done, and the dye started to settle, I carefully turned the roving over in the bath to distribute the remaining pigment:



For the green, I first added some water to my dye solution so that it would be less concentrated. Then, I poured more equally across the top of the fiber:



Again, once the dye pushed through and settled, I turned the fiber to better distribute the remaining dyestock




In both cases, I let the fiber cool completely in the dyebath and the dye was fully exhausted. Then, I picked the rovings out of the dyebaths, rinsed under luke-warm tap water, squeezed out as much water as I could, gave it a whiz in a garment bacg ala Alden Amos and then left to dry overnight. Results of the whole shebang look like this:



Again, the blue and green were hot-pour and the orange and yellow were kettle dyed.

All four of them are just *lovely*. The yellow is so wonderfully bright and makes me smile whenever I see it. I'm really in love with the blue - there are these great bits of blue/green in the darker areas and it's all pretty close to what I wanted. I'm going to try one more hot-pour experiment with an intent of getting more colors into the mix. I think I need less water in the bath overall (the wool floated too high) and to not rush the dye getting into the undyed spots. Regardless, I'm definitely on my way!

Oh, and in case you've not figured this out, the next color is in the reds/magentas. That part is missing from my color wheel.

Spinning soon!!! I need a happy, yellow scarf to chase away the winter chill. It is summer in San Francisco, after all.

And in other news ...

I've got a quick FO sighting for y'all.



This is a Beech Wood Cowl done in bamboo/merino handspun. Colorway is Sangria by Spunky Eclectic. I got the fiber from a fellow Raveler as part of a "bag of crap" fiber swap. I was shooting for something heavier weight than the light fingering I usually end up with. This is about 10wpi, chain-plied. BTW, I'm falling in LOVE with chain-plying. Now that I'm confident in the process, it makes yarn happen almost instantaneously.

Yardage: ~170
WPI: ~11
Fiber: 80/20 merino/bamboo




I'm wearing it 'round the office today 'cause I lurves it.

Off to the mountains tonight for the long weekend and the start of the TDF. I'll post the "stash target" when I get back next week.

Beer-thirty

This weekend, we hauled the brewing equipment out and made beer.

Before moving to California, brewing was a monthly (minimum) exercise with a very dear friend. I have wonderful memories of sitting on the porch, in all weather (even in the snow), with our cauldron of malty goodness bubbling away while talking about, well, everything. I've not found a new brew-buddy out here; and Chris and I brew together (he's good for the heavy lifting), but I still miss Andy on brew day.

Anyway, yesterday's beer was dead simple.

Grain Bill:

7# 2-row klages malt
1# malted wheat
1# Vienna malt

Strike with ~13qts of water at 165F, aiming for a mash temperature of 150F. We used about 12 quarts and hit 152F. Perfect. Skipped the protein rest 'cause it was all in the Gott cooler and I just couldn't be bothered.

Let rest until conversion is complete. We went hiking for an hour. :-)

Add about 3gal of sparge water at 180F to get the mash up to 170F. Sparge until liquor is at 1.008. We netted out about 6.5 gallons.

Add 1 oz Hallertau (~4.8AAU) at 0 mins, 1/2 oz Saaz and 1/4 oz Fuggles at 30 mins, another 1/4 oz Fuggles at 40 mins, another 1/4 oz Saaz plus 2T rehydrated Irish Moss at 55 mins.

After 60 mins, chill to ~80F and siphon into a 7g carboy. Add White Labs Kolsch yeast, slap on the air lock and Bob's yer Uncle.

Original Gravity: 1.050
Original Volume: ~6gal

Not bad at all. BTW, it's already delicious.

I'll take two.

Must. Make. This.

I'm going to go sit in the corner and be very, very good. Hopefully this will show up.

Little things

For me, the little things in life are important. I tend to get so busy that I don't always do the "normal stuff" like cleaning, vacuuming or folding the laundry. And, in life's silly ways, neglecting the "normal stuff" can lead to neglecting the big stuff.

Suffice to say that last year was not my finest. I'd say it was a continuation of quite a few years of not paying enough attention to the world around me and really losing track of what was important. I came within an inch of being single again - after nearly 20 years together - and boy was that horrible.

Where am I going with this? Well, in "happier days", Chris was pretty good at letting me know he was thinking about me by sending me flowers. It didn't happen regularly - but he always managed to figure out when I was feeling sad, or missing him, or just totally overwhelmed by life. A lovely bouquet would show up at work, on the table at home - and even once in China! There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that touches me so.

Anyway, when we were having "trouble", I actually noticed that the flowers didn't happen anymore. We'd argue. We'd pick on each other. I'd cry. While I didn't "expect" them per se, I did notice that he didn't seem to think about it anymore.

Fast forward to today. I was away again last week and came home on Saturday morning. He's been working his tail off to get the race car up and running again for a track day tomorrow and he and his partner ran into all sorts of problems. Knowing I'd be all foggy and tired, I sent him off to work on the car. Turned out that they had more problems and "one day" became "all weekend". Plus, tonight he's off to head up to the race track. Yeah, I was a little sad about it but I didn't want to prevent him from getting his stuff done. It's not every weekend, he really loves doing it, and it needs to happen.

He noticed.



I really do love that man.