No good deed goes unpunished

This past week, one of my fiber friends and I demonstrated spinning at the Salomon Farm farmers market. The Salomon Farm gardeners expressed the wish to get rid of boxes of "weaving supplies" that were in their shed. Of course I volunteered to take them off their hands, mostly out of curiousity over what could possibly be in those boxes.

While loading the boxes into my car, the head gardener warned me there would probably be evidence of mice in them. So yesterday I dumped out the boxes in the driveway. Not only were there mouse turds, there were several mouse nests (uninhabited, fortunately) and the boxes smelled like mouse urine. (I have had a white rat and hamsters as pets, so I recognize that smell.)

And the weaving supplies were all for basket weaving, something I have no desire to learn. I "advertized" them to guild members on FB, but so far, no real interest. And there are a LOT of supplies. I'll press the guild members a bit more, but if still no takers, I will offer them up for free on FB or donate them to some organization.

Knitting: Almost ready to turn the heels on the socks. Working on the bottom of the L-Bag.
Spinning: I spun a lot at the farmers market, working on one color of a three-color braid.
Weaving: For the farmers market, I warped about ten small branches for weaving, in case any of the kids wanted to try, but the spinning wheels are what captured everyone's attention.

As I approach the end of yet another felted bag, I'm in a quandary of sorts. My fiber friends who have made L-Bags have had them lined by another fiber friend who is also an accomplished sewist. I may want to enter my bags in the county fair and feel that having someone else line them would not be appropriate. I am NOT much of a sewist, but I considered trying to line them myself. The L-Bags are rather large, though, and more like project bags. What to do?

Well, one idea I am toying with is to felt a couple of knitted squares and needlefelt them onto the bags to serve as pockets, some inside, some outside. Or I could sew a purse insert that could move from bag to bag. Stay tuned.

Picky, picky, picky

When I spin yarn, I try to pick out all the pills, vegetable matter (VM), guard hairs, etc. to the point of looking like I am OCD. Yet when I ply the singles, there is still a lot of missed garbage. Or it seems like a lot, particularly after my attempt to eliminate all of it. Ugh.

Knitting: I'm making good progress on the socks and the L-Bag, considering (see below).
Spinning: I finished chain-plying the dark brown yarn. I had assumed the color was natural, but when wet finished, the yarn bled a bit.

Weaving: Playing with branch weaving. This is my first attempt - a learning experience.

My daughter and granddaughter were marooned at the airport on Friday because of the global IT outage. They were in Myrtle Beach, with no idea of when they would get out. Finding a rental car was next to impossible, and when they did find one, the company would not rent it to them for a one-way trip. So they Uber'd to Winston-Salem, then rode the Greyhound bus to Charleston, WV, where I was waiting on them. We stayed the night before driving home.

I discovered that I can drive for six hours by myself, something I have not done for a long time. Cruise control and lane mitigation helped, plus the roads were twisty-turny enough that I had to remain alert. That was not how I was expecting to start the weekend, but I was happy to help.

Time flies

This past week, while driving my 13-year-old granddaughter to or from one of her summer activities, I commented that in a few years, she would be driving herself. That day feels like it is some time in the future. She pointed out that in a little over a year, she could get her learner's permit. That made it feel so much closer in time. Hard to believe.

Knitting: The L-bag is still decreasing; each round is over 200 stitches, which takes a while. The latest socks are now my TV commercial knitting: I've been rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation on Paramount and it is loaded with ads.
Sewing: Clio has been receiving a nightly treat of peanut butter in her Kong, which I place on one of her "bagel beds". The cover was getting gross, but I hate wrestling with the stuffing. So I sewing another cover for it, an envelop pillowcover of sorts. It's functional. My daughter suggested using an old sheet to make one with a drawstring, so maybe I will try that next.

Spinning: I've been chain-plying the dark brown single - it is taking FOREVER.

I think I have mentioned that I have been working on getting tee-shirts for the spinning guild. It's a slow process. At an earlier meeting, a color was selected by a non-democratic method: who spoke up the loudest. The choice, dark brown, didn't seem like a good choice to me, so at the most recent meeting, I brought along a printout of the available colors; those present could indicate their top three choices. Indigo blue was the obvious favorite, which I think will look better. The art work is done, so now I just need to collect sizes.

Foreign germs

I missed last week's Fifth Saturday spin-in because of a memorial service and this week's monthly spin-in because of illness. Last Wednesday I didn't feel well, ditto yesterday after spending Thursday with family. I must have picked up a bug at each event. Today I'm back to normal (or as normal as I get) and getting caught up on chores, etc.

Knitting: The L-Bag is into the decreases, which one would think would be near the end, but it doesn't feel that way, as each decrease row has seven non-decreasing rows in between. I started a new pair of socks, top-down, that should match.

Spinning: I'm done with spinning the dark brown roving; it awaits chain-plying. I skeined and wet-finished some yarn I plied a while ago, just to get it off the bobbin. And I started a new three-color batch that will be three-plied.

It occured to me that I never posted a final summary of the Lempi sweater. I'm working on that, but it is taking a while because I am including a bunch of detail about the modifications I made and the natural dye materials I used and the order of the colors. The sweater is sitting on a chair in my bedroom where I see it everyday. It is one of my finer knitting projects.