Change of plans

 I had been trying to set aside time to write 1 blog post every day, but as you can see, I haven't exactly been doing so well at that. The reason is that I started a new job, which I'm in training for, and while I'm very excited to learn a new industry and make more income, it's leaving me without time for any of my crafts. 🙁 I hope I can find a new equilibrium soon so I can get back to doing the things I love instead of the things I need to do.

Let's Take Journey - Virginia, Washington DC, and Maryland Edition

 I have zero photos of this state because we positively flew through here. It was July 3rd, and I absolutely did not want to be driving through DC on the 4th of July, so we rushed through Virginia so I could get through DC as fast as possible and get to Maryland. So while we technically saw the Washington Monument and the capitol building, it was dark out and we didn't stop, we just drove by on the beltway. Because it was a holiday, there actually wasn't much traffic, much to my relief, and the cheapest nearby hotel was actually in Pensylvania, so I basically don't have an entry for Maryland either. I have literally no idea when I entered nor when I exited Maryland, but I'm sure it was lovely there. If you know, I'd bothered to look at it. 🤣

Spinning Progress

 As I've been spinning, I've been really loving this pattern as it comes up:

A small amount of singles yarn on a spindle, with an intersecting pattern as the yarn is wound on

I love the way the yarn intersects with the previously wrapped yarn as I wind on. It reminds me of a lotus blossom with the different layers of petals. It's one of the things that I find meditative about spinning.

A 12 inch skein of yarn, measuring about 17 yds

I made and washed this little sample, it didn't fluff up as much as I'd like, so I'm going to add just a little less plying twist this time; it was definitely too much. Even after washing it was a full twist and a half in the skein. It was my first time in a long time doing a 3 ply, and I'm still used to the amount needed for a 2-py and in contrast it feels like 3 ply just plies itself. Got to be more conscious of that. 

Anyway, I'm only into the first 3rd of the first skein so far, because I've got a lot of side work going on right now, but I hope to get back into the spinning groove soon. What are you working on lately?

Let's take a journey - North Carolina Edition

 From this point on, there's less photos, because we'd run into so many problems and headaches at this point that no one was really willing to wield the camera; we just wanted to get to our destination as fast as possible and hopefully outrun any other problems before they could catch up with us.

A highway sign: turn right to go to Florence and Quinby, or left to go to Darlington and TV Road

On a detour to refuel, I really wanted to check out TV road, but with the luck we'd had up to that point, that would be the road where a TV tower fell on our car and started a fire or something, so we passed it up. By the way, I think this was still in South Carolina, but it's in my North Carolina folder for some reason. Carlonians, please weigh in and tell me where TV road is. 😕

Also, there were so many pine trees in North Carolina, so can somebody please explain to me why the state tree is the palm tree? I mean, there were some, sure, but they were clearly planted by the state and it's citizens, they don't grow there naturally. Make it make sense, North Carolina.

Anyway, it took something like 5 hours to get through North Carolina, and I don't have any pictures aside from that one because we just rushed on out of there.

Let's take a journey - South Carolina Edition

So, I didn't mention this yet, but this trip took place during Tour de Fleece, and if you think I wasn't setting aside time each night to spin a little to keep up, you'd be incredibly wrong.

A picture of a cross-armed spindle with at least 25 g of yarn on it; in the background, you can see the yard and parking lot of a motel.

This was going to be the yarn that I'm currently sampling for now, but alack and alas, it was thrown away, literally, and lo, I am still Big Mad about it. 

A McDonalds attached to a Circle K which is also a gas station

 

I'd never seen a McCircle K before, but now, finally, I have truly lived. Thank you South Carolina.

A broken hitch; it should be horizontal, but it is bent to be angled toward the ground.

Unfortunately, 50 miles south of Florance the hitch broke. and Uhaul said they wouldn't send someone to me, and I had to drive 50 miles to Florance in order to get it fixed.

A really scenic river

So this gave us the opportunity to cross this really scenic river I didn't catch the name of...

A thunderstorm threatens overhead and in the midground there are some crops. What kind of crops? I don't know, I'm not a farmer. Sorry.

... some type of crops....

Take exit 146 for Olanta and Lynchburg. Or, you know, don't.

 

...and this lovely town. Which, as you can see,  we did not stop at. No thank you. If you haven't figured out what's wrong with naming a town "Lynchburg" and changed that by the year of nobody's Lord two thousand twenty, bye Felicia.

This is around where I stopped taking pictures because I spent the next several hours arguing with Uhaul about how we were going to fix it, which is not as picturesque as it sounds.

Sampling in progress

 I ran out of stuffing in my small yarn-and-wool-scraps-and-trash jar, and while I do have a much larger jar.... somewhere, I don't know precisely where, so the blanket project is on hold. I still have about a pound and a half of corriedale to make a cardi for Little Monster with, so I began sampling yesterday to determine how to make the yarn I have in mind for it.

3 small cops, each wound in a different way

In addition, I sampled 2 different ways to wind the cop on my cross-arm spindle. After reading a discussion that said the downside to cross arm spindles is the slow wind on, I tried 2 faster methods of winding on: the first (top) was to wind in the same 2-up-1-down method used to create the right-most cop, but without being fussy about it and letting it lay where it lay; the second was something I'd seen in a YouTube video. It's hard to describe, but sort of went around and around the edge of the cop. It was the fastest of the 3 methods I tried, but as you can see it creates a sort of messy cop. The method on the top was the messiest and tangled the worst as soon as it was removed from the spindle. The method on the right is the fussiest method in use, but since it creates a very stable cop when removed from the spindle, I effectively only have to wind on once (as opposed to once on and then into another form to get it off the spindle), so I'll keep on with the fussy method because it is saving me time in the long run. It does frustrate me to have to pause and wind on in this really fussy way when I'm in my flow, but for little samples like this that will tangle extremely easily, I'm basically trading one minor annoyance for a potentially big annoyance as I wind it off into an outer-pull ball or something and it tangles.

Anyway, the 3 cops are for a 3 ply yarn. I'm aiming for about heavy-fingering to DK, so we'll see how that goes.

Let's take a Journey - Georgia Edition!

 A couple of days ago I posted about my trip out of Florida. Obviously I then made my way into Georgia because it's the only way out. Georgia is honestly a beautiful place, but I would never live there.

A poster that says "Georgia's not buying it. Child sex trafficking. There's no excuse

This is the only state I passed through that had anything similar in it's rest stops and welcome centers, so I have to imagine there's a reason and it's that a non-zero number of Georgians are, in fact, buying it. I'm sure this is an issue in every state, but I just feel like this isn't really the best way to tackle such a sensetive topic, but thanks for trying, Georgia.

An informational board about the Cumberland Island National Seashore

I did like that they were hyping up their national parks, but unfortunately, I didn't have time to check any of it out. Also, it was like 100 degrees out, so I had 0 desire to even be in nature, but I liked the thought.

A river we crossed over traveling through Georgia

It's incredibly hard to get good photos while driving (no, not me, my Spouse was taking them, but at 70 mph it doesn't really matter because once you focus on one thing, you're already past it), but the rivers in Georgia were so beautiful. The water was clear and blue, and the sky seems to perfectly mirror it; if the bridge was raised by a story or two, it felt like you could see forever.

Me, looking like a melting creamsicle, pointing at a sign

Please excuse how much I resemble the wicked witch of the... west? east? whichever way she was from. The one that melted, not the one the house fell on, though I kind of resemble her too, actually. Anyway, it was 105 degrees, my car's air conditioner decided that was just too much for it and was pumping out air that was about 95 degrees, which, in fairness to my car was cooler, just not as cool as it needed to be, and I legitimately felt like I might have been dying. But we stopped outside Savannah, Georgia at a place I ate at almost daily during my time working there for the census: Flacco's Tacos. When I say those tacos were spicy... 🔥🌶👅 They had really good elotes too! If you're in the area, I highly, highly recommend.

We also spent like an hour driving around Savannah's historic district and looking at all the cool buildings, but I didn't get any photos of that because the traffic was insane for the middle of the day in summer, like, where was everybody going? So people behind me kept honking and encouraging me to gtfo of the area so we did. And that's what I did in Georgia.

Well I made that hat

 Here it is

A pale pink hat with a pompom and a textured panel on 1/4 of the hat

Even though it was about 90 degrees when I finished it, Little Monster immediately put it on and kept it on for about 30 minutes. At that point the weather won out, but I'm glad she's so thrilled with the thing. I was pretty satisfied with it myself, having essentially winged it with yarn I'd designed for something completely different.

I'm also starting on a blanket idea I've had for the longest time, but am only just getting round to. It's a kind of quilted idea, but made from scraps of yarn left over from my big projects? Here's a picture of the couple of squares I have finished:

Please excuse the different sizes, the green and brown one is drapier than the grey, so the grey looks about half the size, but once it's got something pulling on it in each direction, it'll even out. (At least, I'm hoping that's how it'll react.)

And here's one that's currently in progress:

Red and white fair isle square in progress.

What I really want to be doing is to start spinning for a cardigan I promised Little Monster, especially since I've noticed quite a few flowers dying and leaves starting to turn and I'm anxious that there might be a bit of an early autumn and while I do have a few things set aside for her for autumn, nothing really nice and woolen like I have planned for her, just cotton blends and mass produced things we were gifted. I know we're a few years away from having a fully hand-made wardrobe (a goal I'm slowly but steadily plugging away at!) but I want her to have one more-or-less handmade fall/winter outfit by the time the weather turns. It'll be her first cold season and I want her to feel wrapped in love as she goes into the unknown. I'm probably reading way more into it than she will, but it matters to me, dammit!

Anyway, that's what I'm up to lately, but I've got to run some errands, so I guess I'll leave it here!

Let's take a journey - Florida Edition

Out of Florida and into the oddities of the Atlantic South of the United States. I enjoyed the drive to my new home partially because of the beautiful views, and partially because the Atlantic South is just... a trip, y'all. If you've never lived in this part of the country, prepared yourself to be just as baffled as I was as a displaced Yankee during this Journey to the North.

A map of Florida, with a You Are Here! arrow pointing at Palm Bay

 

This map actually represents about 3 hours of driving, maybe 4, I don't honestly remember anymore. For reasons that are really stupid, I ended up not leaving my home area until about midnight on June 30, meaning I was leaving just as it became July 1st. I was coming from much further south than this map shows and since it was the middle of the night I ended up pulling off the highway in Port St Lucie and napping in my car at a Walmart (fun fact - Walmart encourages travelers to park overnight in their lots, in the hopes that they will wake up and purchase items from Walmart before they head back on their way again. They even have a PR website called Walmartting Across America to encourage people to do this! So if you ever need a safe-ish place to crash overnight, Walmart is your best bet.) This was the first "official" road stop (because I didn't count that Walmart) and I'm so glad I stopped at this particular Rest Area because it was just So Florida.

Click to make bigger - there's a lot going on on this information board.

Whenever I stop at a rest stop, usually just at the state lines, but also if someone has to pee or something, I love checking out the information boards. The things that are chosen for these usually pretty clearly show the priorities of the local-ish community. So top left,  we've got a map of Florida, which cuts off the southern-most, more liberal parts of Florida. Not a co-incidence, I feel. The map itself also listed a bunch of locations of interest and their lat/long on the map. Under that, some information about the municipality I was in and some emergency numbers I think - it's hard to read now, but I think that's what it was. Then 3 separate and clearly differently aged posters about not driving distracted (which I can attest is a MAJOR problem in Florida; everything thinks they're some kind of master multi-tasker),  and then a poster bigger than even the map that lists venomous snakes in the state, where to find them, and how to avoid them. So here's what you need to know to survive in Florida: Have good relationship with the authorities, don't worry about anything more than a few hundred miles in any direction, stop texting and driving, and don't bother the snakes. Actually, no that's pretty accurate, good job info board!

Some publications for sale labeled "Fun Travel Paper" and is in fact 2 separate editions of some kind of swimsuit model photoshoot

 

Directly in front of the information board was these lovely publications for sale. There was also the typical hotel coupon and tourist attraction ads and publications, but the fact that you can also get soft-core porn at the rest stop was just a Florida thing I couldn't resist documenting it.

The other extremely Florida offering - Real Estate!

Not gonna lie, at first glance I thought this was selling "Homes Gland Magazine," rather than "Homes & Land Magazine," and I was certain that it was combining Real Estate and Prostate issues (ads for prostate issues air all the time in Florida, is that A Thing elsewhere?) but it's just an oddly prominent ampersand; either way, it's very Florida that tucked in with the hotels and tourist traps is a free magazine selling you a bridge. Of course there is.

A sign from a rest stop in Jacksonville outlining Florida law regarding seat belt use for children and adults

A couple hours after sunrise, my daughter needed to pee so we stopped at a rest stop in the Space Coast area, where I saw this interesting sign outside the bathrooms. It basically warns you that adults not wearing a seat belt will be fined a minimum of $20 and a minimum of $150 if you don't buckle up your kids. This is the only rest stop I saw that had anything to this effect, so I can only imagine that they must be having difficulty getting people to buckle up over there. But why? Do people seriously not wear seatbealts? In the year two thousand and twenty? How have they not been convinced? Do people on the space coast just really want to die? I don't understand.

Jesus on a prayer candle, epically rolling his eyes

 

Before leaving Florida for good, we stopped at a Publix one last time in Jacksonville. Thanks for the memories, Publix. The PubSubs and iffy sushi were pretty lit, but they just don't compare to Exasperated Jesus. He seems to be saying "Bitch please. I will not help you find your car keys. 'Influence of the devil,' no, I was the one who hid your keys because I'm just so tired of hearing from you." Love that sassy saviour. If this was my religion, I would have bought one for sure, but I didn't want to be disrespectful, so I left it on the shelf for adherents to pray to (with? for? I'm not really sure how these candles are used. Comment down below if you know, it's been a mystery my whole life!)

And that's it for Florida. I'm leaving behind a lot of memories, but being completely honest most of them aren't even good, so good bye and good riddance Florida. Enjoy Sassy Jesus and 100+ degree weather all the time, I'm out. ✌

 

What is a muse, really?

A Starbucks Dragonfruit Refresher; it's a pretty color somewhere on the border between pink and purple

 

There’s a lot of things I find inspirational, even if I don’t end up doing something with the inspiration. Like this drink. I really really want to make a yarn with that color. I don’t think I’d wear something that color, and I know it would be really really hard to achieve with the dye set I have (what up, McCormick?) so there’s not a lot of point in trying, at least at this stage of my career, but I keep finding myself drawn to this image. I like to look at it and just absorb all of what the picture says to me. First of all, I bought this drink on a really hot and sunny day in Florida (think about 105F with 100% humidity and very little to no cloud cover – it’s like being in a brightly lit, feverish mouth, it’s the absolute worst) and I finished that drink in about 3 sips. So there’s this contrast of hot and cold and discomfort and relief and I can’t look at this image without thinking about all of those feelings, too. The color is one of my favorites too, but for a kind of odd reason. It’s pink, but it’s also purple, and I love colors that are right on the border of being other colors; that complexity is just so compelling. I strive for that level of color complexity in my dyes, but I just don’t have the level of control yet. That, and part of the allure of this color is its luminance; the light shining through the color gives it a whole new dimension that wouldn’t translate well to fiber. I’ve thought about maybe coming close to it by dyeing silk or a silk blend, but I have a feeling it just wouldn’t come across the same way. Ultimately, I think part of the allure of this is how ephemeral it is, or I guess I should say was. My work is always striving to create something durable, something timeless and ageless. So the frivolity of this image, this color, this drink – it’s a refreshing contrast to what I do all the time and it just gives me energy in a way that’s hard to describe.

What gives you inspiration and why? I love hearing other perspectives on this, especially from art forms I don't participate in. There's just something about creative energy in all forms that's exciting and makes me want to start in on a new project (especially if I have some kind of deadline looming!)

Dog Days of Summer

When I tell you it is unfairly hot, you know you can believe me because I'm currently living in a tent. Did I mention I’m living in a tent? Well, I am. Not because I’m a Yurt Hippie (though that’s looking more and more appealing by the day – some Yurts are really nice!), but because, you know, that’s where I’m currently living.🤷 So there’s currently a heat advisory for the next couple days, and I can’t even go hang out in the library or something because Coronavirus is ruining everything, including being homeless.

 

Hat in progress, nearly complete; it's a warm beige color

But anyway, Winter is Coming (heh), so I’ve got work to do if we’re going to survive that. I mean, 🤞 hopefully I’m not still living in this tent come September or – God forbid – October, but either way I’m going to need things. The hat above is based on Barley by Tin Can Knits, as requested by my daughter, but I’ve got a lace weight yarn I spun up for this hat, so I just kind of eyeballed it. The garter ridge goes all the way down and is about ¼ of the total width of the hat. So far my daughter loves it and requests a pink pompom, so once I’ve got this finished I’ll dye some of the leftover yarn a darker pink (because yes, it is actually very pale pink) and sew it on.

Funny story about the yarn, actually. I spun it up with the original intention of having enough for a cardigan for Little Monster (aka, my daughter), but ¾ of the singles were accidentally thrown away 😡 while we were traveling, so all I had left was about 100g of singles that I plied into this lace-weight 2-ply. I salvaged about 560m, so not bad all things considered but 😔 not gonna lie here, folks, I spent about an hour properly mourning those lost hours of productivity. It felt somewhat silly, after all, it’s just yarn, which I’m more than capable of making more of, obviously, but this was special. It was symbolic of the love and care for my child and myself during a precarious time and it almost symbolized that we were going to be okay. But it wasn’t, and then subsequently, neither were we. And now we live in a tent. The reasons why I lost the yarn and the reasons why I live in a tent aren’t directly related, but like any thread, both things are connected, and tugging on one reveals the other.

But that’s more depressing than I meant to go in this post. Since I wasn’t able to use this yarn for the purpose I had originally intended, I decided I could experiment a little bit. After reading on Abby Franquemont’s blog that it’s common in Peru for yarn to be dyed at the singles stage, I was intensely curious. Everything I had read about spinning so far said if you wet the singles before plying, you’d ruin it because the twist would be “set” and it’d be just unreasonably difficult to get the right plying twist, but if this was done traditionally somewhere, it must be feasible. After all, millions of people over hundreds to thousands of years wouldn’t have been making yarn in a way that ruins it. So I took a shot on it and dyed 50 g of the singles, which actually: Story Time.

When I moved, I set aside my fiber dyes (a.k.a. a bunch of food grade dyes because I don’t have a studio space yet and all my equipment has to play double duty) in a Safe Place and… they are still there. Safe from me. Cough. So, once I realized I was Really Doing This, I rushed out to stop and shop to find that they didn’t have much food dye, practically none at all. I mean, I know Covid has taken a toll on all of us, but people are still having birthdays, right? Even if no one can come to your party, don’t you want a birthday cake? Was all that just keeping up with the Jones? Anyway, so they only had gel food dyes, these specifically:

Betty Crocker Pastel Gel Good Colors

And let me tell you I used the entire freakin’ tube on these 50 g and I got this:

Picture of a knitting swatch; it is a very pale pink, almost indistinguishable from white

I did not take any in progress pictures because I saw how this was going to go, and I was just… living in that comedy of errors, breaking the 4^th wall by talking to a camera that wasn’t there and asking “can you believe this shit? After everything I’ve been through to get to this point, this is how the universe is going to do me? Mmm.”

The skein was really only noticeably dyed on one half of one side, and fun fact about the dye I bought without reading the package, it’s a fugitive dye and I knew that looking at the package but for some reason I just… did it anyway? So it went from a pretty bright fluorescent pink to beige as soon as it was exposed to the sun. The part that kills me is as I put that dye in the water, I knew that would happen, but I still did it anyway? Like some kind of fool? I’m still kind of kicking myself over that one. So I plied it with the remaining, undyed 50 g in what I hoped would be a neat barberpole effect, but instead is just... pastel. But, on a positive note, I was able to kind of turn it around because Little Monster agreed that it’s “Ballerina Pink” because it sort of resembles the shade of pink used on ballet slippers, so 😩 crisis averted. But I’m still going to try and get a more recognizably pink color for the pompom. And I'll revisit this technique another time, for sure.

Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah, it's really hot. So I'm going to try and sleep it off because I'm so tired of being awake in this heat. See you tomorrow if I don't melt first.