Sunday 7 August 2011

Decompression Zone

Peaceful

Since my last post, too much time has been spent in the realm of anything that can go wrong, will: having to tell yet more people about my sudden change of personal status, vehicle issues, receipt of the autopsy, dangling at the end of a telephone trying to book a second job interview, and email snafus, for starters.

Being able, if only for a brief interlude, to remove myself from some of that, was welcome, especially as I was accompanied by two excellent and unconditionally loving pooches.

Go away!

I am glad they were not along for a small walk I took when I ran into this beautiful Swainson's hawk however: one that obviously was not impressed with me.

Busy as a ....

And yes, I'm still labouring under the shadow of disconsolation, although those times are becoming less pervasive and frequent: I can only hope they continue to recede. Work continues on upcoming projects, with details to be revealed soon: with this bee as my guide, I'm applying myself in the studio.

Camelid combination

And outside of it as well, since I prefer to spin in the living room: this is the other major project I wanted to spin for the Tour de Fleece this year. It's two plies of cinnamon llama, one ply of dark brown alpaca, one ply of light tan Dromedary camel (formerly the property of the late heiress Doris Duke: there's a long story about this stuff I should write about some day).

Because of the varying amounts I had of each fibre -- 113 grams of llama, and 50 grams each of the alpaca and camel -- I eventually ran out of the camel. So I took the biggest bobbin of llama, wound it on my hand (Andean plying), turning the yarn into three plies of llama and one of alpaca, until the alpaca ran out, and then did the same thing with the other bobbin of llama.

Like most camelid yarns, it's not as long as a yarn spun with wool with the same sort of plies and wraps per inch would be -- and I haven't measured it either, so I'm not exactly sure how much I've got to use for a future, and unknown, project. But it's pretty stuff, and will be interesting worked up.

Jacob

And then there's the two ounces of Jacob roving from Snook Farm that I bought at Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival in 2008 that I spun up as well. Lovely to spin, and delightfully soft since I washed it. Another mystery project ahead for this, I'm sure.

Well, back to work: I've got a show proposal due for the end of the month, and two book projects on the hop for upcoming deadlines. It's only been since the last blog post that I've finally managed to feel artsy most of the time, and much more productive doing something other than autonomous knitting.

Books for Sale

The shop is currently empty.