In a world awash with opportunities, a cat dreams of sparrows. I dream of a cat.

Amazing to think that I have a friend like this

She is wonderful, humorous, kind
She doesn't criticize my housework
Or my cooking
Not even the way I braid my hair Vexes her
ONLY
If I mess with her catnip,
then she might disagree, but in an agreeable way
perhaps a tiny bite as admonishment, never breaking the skin
otherwise she is a peaceful furry person
unless you're a fly come in from the back yard
then there's trouble.

Procrastination

/sigh says I/

no picture

just words

drifting by

their own true inclination

not butterflies in the wind

not laughter in the sunshine

never oceans

or marigolds

ashes

ah

All rules have exceptions

All rules have exceptions, that's a given. Here's my exceptional one. She came here as a skinny, knocked up feral. Her kittens were born in my yard, and promptly killed by a grey tom cat who wanted her to be available to him. My daughter helped me get her spayed, and when she was recovering from that, she resided in the laundry room. She adapted to life inside, and liked it. She liked being on a lap, and having catnip toys, and fresh food when she was hungry.

And she's remained loving and kind and sweet. Imagine that?

People could take a lesson from formerly feral cats at times.

Blogger, Meet Jacob, Jacob, Say Hi to the Blog.

Not too long ago, we came back from Birding by the Bay, and found a large bag of what looked to be (from the outside) pig chow leaning against our front door. Since we're what passes for an urban center in a rural county, sometimes we do get gifts from the farmland, but we certainly didn't need pig chow. When I peeked inside, this (up there above the text) is what I saw. When I figured out who had left it, I was told that it was a lamb's wool. Comparing it with some of the wool I had led me to believe it was Jacob. Not that I'm brilliant in wool identification, just that I held a lock of the Jacob I got from my good friend Elaine up and compared it to these locks, and they were the same shape, crimp, and length, although this, being lamb's wool, was a bit softer and finer.

So, you savvy wool folks, take a look. Does this look like Jacob lamb's wool to you? The staple length is pretty short, the fiber is fine and soft, and it is currently being washed in batches and carded with my smallest hand cards. This stuff is too short for the combs, but it looks like it will spin up to something wonderful. The blue cast you see above the fiber is the reflection of the sun through the pig chow bag.

Whatever it is, I am looking forward to the spinning.

What the Garden Says These Days

Playing in the garden.

Right now the garden is chaotic, as the bricks from the quake are still stacked and covered with weathering plastic tarp. That doesn't stop the beauty from coming through, though. Beauty and joy seem unstoppable, no matter what the circumstances. Here you see some volunteers creeping over the bricks to make shadow puppets and challene the orange in the bricks with an orange that is vibrant and alive.

As goes the garden, as goes the world.

That thought reminds me of a film, Being There, Peter Sellers spoke of the garden, and people took it as a metaphor. So let's do that, the garden as a metaphor. Today my garden is in chaos, but it's a lovely chaos. Lovely because life is lovely. Oh, some people don't see it that way, it's true. There's bitterness and anger among the rich, and among the rest of us as well.

Like Chance, I like to work in the garden, and I like the garden to work on me. I like to play in the garden, and enjoy its playful way with me. Here are the orange flowers making puppets on the remnant of a disaster. These puppets dance in the wind, and make shadows that remind us of their vitality.

Atop the disaster, on a field of blue, there's a little fluttering hope. Common and patient it is, not a Hummer of triumph driving through old town, just a little white flutter. We'll watch it and see where it takes us, what do you say?

Birth of a Notion

A current passion is spinning yarn for my Sis. My Sis, hereinafter known as Squirrel, is a dear heart, and brings me happiness with her very creation. When we both lived in the same town, we'd spend every weekend together. Now we email, and I dream of being able to be able to walk into the transporter and tell Scotty to beam me down.

My sis loves my hand dyed and hand spun yarn, and I'm determined to give her as much as I am able to. This particular bit is part of a piece involving wonderful combed Romney, dyed many colors in one process. (See earlier posts about KA dying if you want some details.) It's a slow process, but often good things do come slowly.

Sometimes Spinning is Magic

It depends. On the wool, on the prep, on the tools you use to spin it, the mood you're in, and sometimes a bit of magic. I've been working on this Lincoln Lambswool, and using one of Nate's marvelous custom made spindles and my new Valkyrie mini combs, all of which combine to make for a blissful experience. But then, along comes this blast of color from a prism in my window today, and KABOOM, magic. It takes a good camera to capture magic, and I'm lucky, I have an old Konica Minolta Dimage Z2, a wonderful camera that has been my friend now for quite a few years. It's like good soup, good stew, the right ingredients at the right time can make magic.

Here's my recipe:
Take the lamb's fleece from a Lincoln, wash it after skirting.
When dry, prep it with Valkyrie minicombs. They're making them again!
Finally, get a custom made spindle from Nathan Stipek, and blend these ingredients to produce first, pleasure, and finally wonderful yarn, and ultimately Magic.

The Finished Yarn

I was telling a yarn about dying Romney with Kool Aid. Well, this is what happens when you do that, then spin it on one of Nate's fabulous spindles. I'm fortunate that I have two of them, one you can see bare nekkid in the second photo there, the other is wrapped with the KA Finished Wool experiment. If you hazard a guess as to the flavors I used, put that in the comments, otherwise, just enjoy the colors, as well as the colors of the wood on the spindles.

Nate is a remarkable wood artist, and has begun to shift from doing large sculptures and architectural elements to making things that support my and his loved one's spinning and fiber working interests. I have a few of his crochet hooks and now, spindles. I love them, they are so well balanced and lovely to look at.

Lucky me!

Trickle Trickle Little Star

This ought to be fun if the video actually runs. While photographing my newest KA romney I put my digicam in movie mode, and shot this. It ought to play, we'll see if it does.

Continuing Adventures in KA dye

No, it isn't a pond, and that's not a Koi in the light. It's a microwave cake dish with little balls of Romney that have just been dyed with three colors of Kool Aid in the microwave, and are currently rinsing. If you look closely enough, you can see one of the balls to the lower left corner.

What I love about dying with Kool Aid is that, with just three packs you can make an amazing amount of colors. This time, I can't tell you which three colors I used, because I forgot. I really have no idea at the moment, except that one was reddish, and another was blue. I might have simply stuck to the primaries, and left it at that.

The mystery part was what effects would take place, since I'd made balls or birds nests, as they're sometimes called in spinning circles. I'm not really sure if anyone else uses them to dye with, but to me, they are seriously to dye for. I've found they achieve a unified random effect when applied to all the balls, it just depends on how much you apply. At this point, I had no idea what the final product would look like. In this way, it was different from other times, when I carefully laid out the colors and planned the blends. Here, I had two layers of the balls, enough for a full spindle on my small spindle, which will result in a decent center pull ball (which I will then ply.)

The dance of color ought to make me dizzy.

Ka Romney

Ka Romeney colors shown to left
Originally uploaded by OldTownTreadles

I guess everyone gets around to dying at some time. I decided to get some practice at it, and read up on dying with Kool Aid in a Ravelry forum dedicated to KA dying. This showed my first effort. The colors used are on the counter, the fiber is unspun Romney, which has been cleaned, carded, and attenuated, then soaked in a solution of vinegar and water. After allowing the solution to soak into the fiber, I choose my colors, exotic, aren't they? I lifted the layers and placed dry flakes of unsweetened kool aid in with the fibers, some with the red, some with the mango (I think it's mango). After this, I placed the microwave safe cake pan in the microwave, and gave it a few minutes on high, a bit of a rest, a few minutes on high, a bit of a rest, and did this till the water in the pan was clear and all the color had been absorbed by the fiber. The intensity of the dye tended to spread a bit, and blend a bit, and turned out to be wonderful stuff. Some was used in a hat, the rest will be spun up this weekend, with any luck. I've done a few batches now of this particular color combo, and have just finished the first batch of a second color combo.

It might not be as exotic as using wildcrafted herbs and mushrooms, but I love the ease of it and the durability of it. The wool is as soft after as it was before, in case you wondered.

And, of course, it's fun.