Spinning Fibers-updated

   Good morning, I thought I would drop in with a post.  I have been spinning most every day for the last 10 days or so.

  Over the weekend I grabbed the bag I had of odds in fibers and blended them together on my blending board. This is always a fun project, and I now have pretty much used up everything that was in the odd fibers bag. I had allot of yellows left with a few other colors-this yarn will go into my bag of Yellowstone colors for weaving.

This is a bulky yarn, which will go well with the other Yellowstone spun skeins I really love how this came out.

   After this one I have been spinning a UK Wensleydale fiber over the weekend-wow this is an amazing fiber. Very very soft and a very long staple length, and soooo easy to spin-wish I would have tried this before.  Here is a photo I found online   I am in love with this fiber. If I didn't have so many bags of fiber to spin already I would buy more.

Some of my readers may remember back around 2016 and later I went to Fiber U for classes on spinning and other fiber related classes. During that period I did go a bit overboard buying fibers to spin. smiles

  I went through my stash early this morning-which is a surprise now after all these years and the move from the woods home-and found another good spinning practice bag of roving. It was full with 2 pounds of USA blended long wools. I couldn't believe the price either-the 2 pounds of roving plus shipping was less than $24.00. Now that price will get you around less than half the amount of fiber plus shipping

  This will keep me busy and hopefully improve my wheel spinning.

    I did buy some new wool breeds to try though-which should arrive in the mail this week. I was intrigued about the sheep in Iceland that Erika posted about. I enjoy spinning the different rare breeds that are not as popular any more. I found an etsy seller that had icelandic white and greys. I bought two greys.

 Here is a photo of the darker grey and a link to the shop

  I found this photo online of an Icelandic sheep-grey

I also bought a rare Shetland roving from another Etsy shop which is a dark brown.

 Those of you that know me-I do not like white, so all the white yarns I am spinning will be going into the dye pot-I have allot of dyeing to do in the near future, more than I had realized.

Have an awesome new week

Oh and this is a view of Lake in the Ozarks-Father's Day weekend-found online

T Stands for Spinning Yellowstone & Sailboat

 T Stands for Tuesday, where we gather over at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's to share our "doings" with a drink related photo. Find link in sidebar. 

  I am writing this post early afternoon on Sunday where the weather is glorious!  I still don't have a working car as of yet, so Larry drove me for a few groceries early morning. By mid day we had full sunshine,  light wind, and warmth-up in the 60's F  Loving it!! Tomorrow more of the same.

 I had a pretty thick layer of fall leaves on top of the creeping thyme ground cover that I planted last year-and that needed to come off so it would not kill these plants. I ended up with a huge black trash bag full of leaves. I hope to be able to get allot of leaf burning accomplished on Monday as we will have the same weather pattern.

  I have dug out my folding table that I use for allot of projects like soap making, and planting seeds in my gallon "greenhouse" bottles-I have a huge bag of bottles ready to use for planting.

 Larry caught a sailboat out on the lake Sunday-perfect day for it-very few boaters on the lake, and the perfect wind too.

This photo below is a bit blurry as I had to really zoom in to enlarge. This is to the left of us looking out the wall of windows.

  Friday I grabbed my spinning project-which I have not gotten back to since last year fall. These are the spinning fibers I picked up back in 2018 that reminded me of Yellowstone Park.

The sunshine was really pouring through the window here-this is the coffee table in front of the couch. Behind you will see  my drink share-a cup of green tea and lemon balm

  I had bought a big bag of small amounts of different rovings at one of the last Fiber U events I attended before we moved to the lake. I am down now to a couple more colors to get spun-then to decide want I want to weave with these handspuns-thinking of some sort of wrap for me. I will add in the buffalo yarn I have spun too.

  This one  below I just started today.  I still don't make "perfect" yarn, but for weaving I don't mind the thick and thin yarns I am ending up with. This one below is mostly wool and I am having an easier time making nicer yarn. Mine are usually singles. and some of these I will ply together with a fine angora yarn.

  I am really  loving the colors of this one too

 I also have the pretty one below to spin up next. I have a bit more of this color to spin than I had of the others, I also have a light grey to spin-time is passing by too fast-My goal now is to get all of these rovings spun up and ready to weave by end of this year.

This past week I made us biscuits and gravy-yum, and a rice dish also made in cast iron with poblano peppers, onion, and beef chorizo to go with the boiled shrimp that I found in the freezer. These are a couple of our favorite dishes.

   Amazing-haha the biscuits on the right are gluten free and they gave me a nicer rise than the wheat ones to the left-I used a King Arthur white whole wheat for the biscuits on the left.

  I have one more drink share-in the back of our frig-I keep a few ciders, I haven't had one in months-so grabbed this Pineapple cider to go with our left over lunch today.

  Happy T and an awesome new week

Sunday Post-Race Boats and Projects

 Good Morning Friends,

    It's a cooler cloudy early morning here at the lake this morning. Looks like rain may move in. Nice for me, but not so good for the weekend race boat events-The Shootout-34th year.  I am actually looking forward to them all going home as many have been here since last week Monday.

  These race boats are fun to watch as they are all different boat lengths with bright colors, but they are also very loud and noisy.

   I caught a few photos but many didn't turn out as well as I wanted to. These boats are beautiful-very fast, streamlined, they cause no waves as they glide on top of the water  The race-timed for each category-is broadcast live both Saturday and Sunday. One boat's time was 199 miles per hour-that's fast.  If they don't get rained out today there will an air show as well.  This event raises allot of money for local charities and rural fire departments-their goal is to surpass 1/2 million dollars this year.

This first photo I found online-a view of some of the spectators

All photos will enlarge for better viewing-just click on them

A smaller one

Yes the ocean boats were in the mix of boats too. Late afternoon Saturday there were kayaks too-scary for them I would think  I saw the pair near our dock waiting for the lake to clear-thinking they were headed back home at the time.

     It was a very very busy lake Saturday, Labor Day weekend will be very busy on the lake too, but then finally much quieter. I expect if it doesn't rain today will be busy too with race boats and spectators.

Early Saturday morning, we watched many boats full of people headed to the event. One needs to get there really early to be in front of the lines of boats to watch the Shootout

Not a good photo but only one I was able to capture-the film crew

This larger boat to the right broke down in front of us-they managed to get over to the bank opposite us The boat on the left came back to help-they were there for a couple hours before they got the boat running again.

  My calendula plants are producing lots of flowers now-so I am still picking a few more to dry. Want to have enough for a couple batches of soap.  The rest I will leave to bloom and enjoy and then gather the seed heads for next year.

  I am still not inspired to create journal pages, or pick up the sashiko project not sure why. Actually this year is the first time I have actually felt old-so perhaps my body is changing into the next phase of my life cycle. I will blame it on that for now-haha.  Speaking of journal pages, I just ordered a handmade journal that I am excited about-more when it arrives in the mail.

    I did remember that I still have lots of fibers to spin. I need to get out the bags soon and see what I can hopefully sell. At the time I bought too much.

    Haven't done any spinning in over a year. I have a bag of fibers to spin that are Yellowstone inspired colors, so I grabbed the last project I was working on and finished that skein. Then I grabbed my bison fiber-which I love to spin. Just love the feel of this fiber-very short fibers but they just seem to stick together well. Most of what I have spun already is more bulky yarn but so far I got this finer-finally.

   I wasn't totally pleased on what I spun Saturday to finish this one off-very thick and thin and bulky-but for weaving it can always be wove into something fun-pillow covers, shawls etc I sprayed it down with water to set the fibers and let it dry outdoors-it was in the shade here.

   I was fortunate at the time to find this bison fiber at an affordable price. This is labor intensive as this is the extra top layer of fibers for the bison over the cold winters. In the spring it falls off or they rub it off. So one must find it and gather it.  The person I bought it from had her own bison herd out west and was in a co op so she was pretty much selling it wholesale to the public

   I have allot of skeins where it came out very bulky, the rest I will work on getting it much finer. Would like to make some sort of garment with it. Thus is very soft  fiber that I am in love with. I still have enough left to make several skeins of yarn

  I also dug out a bag with more of the Yellowstone inspired colors, and will work on getting a finer yarn with these too. I need to search around as I know I have a few other colors. Thinking I will switch off spinning with these and the bison fibers. Feeling better getting back to my fiber craft-maybe back to weaving is in the near future-the project is waiting for me.

 I have been thinking about my Christmas cards too that I want to make this year. It's time for a new stamp, so I spent hours looking online.  I fell in love with two rubber stamps that I "had" to have. They came fast in the mail and I really love them-so now to decide on papers. If you would like to swap a Christmas card just message me with my contact form in sidebar.

  Yesterday I also dug out another project that I started on back in 2015 I had gotten stumped on how to do it, and with the move to the lake house,  just hadn't thought about it again. It's time. 

   I have been wanting to publish an ebook on Kindle of my late sister's poetry. At her early death (car accident) my Mom years later had split her writings up with me and my brother-and then I later learned she tossed allot of it-why she would do that is beyond my understanding.  I also have an original art piece for the cover that a friend painted for me and gave me the copyright for it-should I get it published. 

   I am working on figuring out how and where to type this up and get it ready to publish. Looks like Amazon Kindle has a better program to do that in now-so I will see how that goes. I am computer illiterate for sure.

 A few early morning views today

a lone duck

I was trying to capture crows flying by, not sure if this is a crow though I did also see the back of an eagle flying by to far right of me on the deck

  Happy Sunday and new week ahead