Catch up time

I apologize for my long absence. As you know, I went to SAFF (Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair) last weekend.

Much earlier this year, way back in the spring, I decided that if I went to SAFF this year that I would take a class. I've been to SAFF two times previously, but as I only knitted at the time, I actually found it kind of boring. Yes, I said it. Boring. As in I finished seeing what I wanted to see in about 3 hours, and I was done. When Keith and I went back in 2007, we had just put Pixel to sleep several days earlier, and Brownie had died the previous month, so we checked out a day early and headed back home.

Fast forward back to the present. During the past 3 years I've increased my fibery knowledge, and much of that is due to hanging around with Gale. She does things like buy a fleece and process it herself. This means she takes the wool fresh from shearing, cleans it, dyes it, cards or combs it and then spins it. A gal's bound to learn a thing or two hanging around someone who does all that.

I've also started dyeing yarns. This has changed the way I look at other people's yarns and rovings. Part of this is also due to Gale. While she can sometimes exasperate me with all the follow up questions as to why I like a certain handpainted roving (sorry, Gale), her relentless questioning and search has caused me to look at yarns and ask myself the same question. Do I like the color, and is that all I like about it? Is the technique different? Is it something that I might want to try myself? Or is it so labor intensive that I will buy from the master? (There is a woman on etsy who does the most incredible handpainted self-striping yarns. My mind staggers at the work that goes into them. As I've taken classes and dyed yarns myself, I know that if she's asking $47 for her yarn, that she's put way more work than that into it. I want to give the Chicken Goddess a shout out for pointing her out to me.)

Sorry for the long digression. Back to the point is that I looked for a class and found one that I wanted to take. It was with Lynne Vogel, one of the Twisted Sisters. Hmm, famous author and teacher meant the class would fill quite quickly. I decided to become a member of SAFF and get the early sign-up.

SAFF is run by volunteers, so I soon thought that since I'd paid for both Keith and I to be members that we should work a volunteer shift. We'd done it once before, years ago, when I joined the Georgia Mineral Society. We'd had fun working the desk, and I knew we could have some fun at SAFF.

I'm going to admit that SAFF was a blast. I had a great time. Lynne is a fantastic teacher, and I encourage you to take a class from her if you have the opportunity. I consider myself at best an intermediate beginner spinner, and this class taught me some very interesting techniques to try.

As for manning the workshops desk, I have to say that Crystal and Nancie were a delight. They stayed cheerful, which is mostly easy to do as many fiber people are good natured, and when faced with a challenge, did so with ease. I would certainly volunteer again. However, I paid for a booth for SAFF 2011, so I won't be able to volunteer. Crystal has asked if she can still have Keith for a few hours, and I said that we'd give him a say. :)

Near the end of our time working, Nancie said the volunteer for the "How to pick a fleece class" was unable to work. Needless to say, I jumped on that. Robin, the teacher, ended up not using me much at all. I had to bounce a few people who wanted to sit in and hadn't paid, and I got to put my hands on some lovely fleeces. Yes, there was one that I didn't buy, and now I wish I had.

Some friends fared better than I did and purchased blue ribbon winning fleeces before the judging had occurred. I was with Steve when he saw his fleece had won. I can only imagine the rush you would feel when your choice is justified so fully by the judges. Gale had also purchased a fleece, and it too had won a blue ribbon.

That's probably enough about SAFF for one day. I do have some pictures, but my hands are slightly frozen. It got down to 60F in the house last night. I was just running the a/c two or three days ago, and I'm not ready to turn on the heat. Let's not forget that I live in The South, and by this afternoon temps will be back in the upper 70's. In the meantime, I suffer from cold fingers, so I'll end here and go sit in the sun for a few minutes.

I haven't disappeared

I've been busy!

I'll update in the next day or two with tales of SAFF and some pictures of spinning and knitting.

The further misadventures of Lily

(or why I was cleaning pooped on linens late last night)

I know I've mentioned before that it's rare for both of us to be gone from the house during the day at the same time. It's even more rare for us to be gone for long periods of time at the same time. I'm usually at home or popping in and out when I run errands. Keith gets to do a lot of telecommuting, so our pets have gotten really used to someone being around.

Yesterday was one of those rare days when events conspire against our kitties. My schedule was rearranged (I had an appointment thrust upon me because Keith couldn't go), and my dye day turned into a run here and there with maybe a quick trip home to check the mail.

It's a little after noontime, and Keith is ironing his clothes for work. The linen closet door is standing open a cat's width, but no one had seemed too interested in it. It's stuffed pretty full, and quite honestly, there's not much space for a cat in it. Keith put the iron and ironing board up, shut the closet door and left. It was about 1:20 p.m.

I had to leave also, and I left about 1:30. I did run back home and was there for about 45 minutes before I left again to get some catfood and meet up with some friends for knitting. I didn't see Lily or Monster at the time, but I wasn't worried about either one of them. After all, cats like to find their hiding places and snooze, and I knew they were inside, which was my concern.

So, Keith left around 1:20, and I left about 3:30. Everything seemed calm and normal.

I didn't get back home until about 7:50. I came in and fed the critters. After all, my dinner can wait, but theirs can't. No sign of Lily, but that can be normal. She eats elevated from the others, and her plate had food when I left. I figured she just wasn't hungry.

About 8:15 when I'm walking down the hallway, I hear thumping from inside the linen closet. I open the door, and Lily is out like a shot! Then I notice the smell. Ugh! There's poop somewhere in there.

First things first. Lily needs dinner, and she needs it now. I'm still eating my dinner, so I just leave the closet door open. While I'm chasing Lily off the kitchen table time and time again, I notice she's got cling-ons. One thing about Lily. She is single-minded and determined. She will wear you down. I must have chased her off the kitchen table and countertops more times than I want to think about before she and I reached a compromise. OK, I caved and let her finally sit on a table that she wanted to be on.

Finally I'm ready to tackle the linen closet. I figured that poop wasn't going anywhere, and I could take the time to eat my dinner and digest it. I find that she had a kitty cave on a shelf, and she must have panic-pooped when she realized she couldn't get out of the closet. We've accidentally shut her in the closet before, but we've been home and could rescue her more quickly. I'll admit to always checking the closet, and Keith usually does too, but this time...

I washed one load last night, and I've got a few things that don't look like they have poop on them, but they were in the vicinity.

Did Lily learn her lesson after all this? Hell no! I was in my yarn closet looking for something, and I turn around when I hear rustling. There is Lily trying to get on top of all my yarn bins and behind the winter coats for a new hiding place! Needless to say, I pulled her out with a hearty "Lily Dammit!", put her into the hallway and shut the door to the room. After all, sheets can be washed with hot water and bleach, but wool yarns can't.

Sunday pictures are running late this week

This is a side view, followed by a top view, of a hat I just finished. Next is the wrap sweater that I also just finished this week.

I've had a case of finishitis, so I also finished a stoma cover that was waiting for one strap and a fun fur scarf I was knitting to list on etsy.

I do have a couple of more photos, but blogger doesn't like them for some reason. I'll see if I can upload them later.

I'm back!

These past few weeks have been unusually busy for me. My to-do lists seems to have mushroomed from doing laundry, buying groceries and dyeing some yarn into long lists of must be done sooner rather than later.

I'll make an effort to keep this post shortish since there are no pictures at the moment, and you probably don't want to read the entire short story of my errands, chores and adventures of the past couple of weeks.

Let's hit the highlights, shall we?

I went with Gale of Gale's Art to the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival. I went with Gale last year to both this show and Rhinebeck, and I'd been planning only on going to Rhinebeck this year. However, and if I'm repeating myself, I do apologize, this year the Dalai Lama will be here in Atlanta on the same weekend as Rhinebeck. His Holiness or a major fiber event. Needless to say, an opportunity to hear him in person won.

When I called Gale with the news, I asked if I could go with her to Wisconsin again this year. I took a look at the class schedule and signed up for two classes.

People who have worked with me know that I've got a strange brain. We all have different ways that we learn, and while seeing a demonstration of something does help, I can read a book and learn how to do whatever it is I'm trying. However, if I then have the chance to take a class from someone who really knows their stuff, I'll take the class.

The first class I took was how to dye self-striping sock yarn. I think I've mentioned before that what I was most curious about was the math involved. I know how to dye self-striping sock yarn, as I'd read it in a book, but Nancy has methods for determining how long each painted portion needs to be in order to make your stripe so many rows high. Her class was for the hobbyist dyer who only needs a skein or two, not a production dyer, yet I did learn the math part.

The second class I took was soapmaking. This is something I've had an interest in for a very long time, but I now have a much more urgent reason. Lush has discontinued their I Should Coco soap, which I dearly love. Honestly, as much as I love it, I don't buy much of it. At $40 a pound it's a special treat. It's also a softer soap, melting away into a puddle of dried coconut in my shower way too quickly.

The thing that has always held me back about trying soapmaking on my own is the lye. The book I have from the mid 1990's made me feel about as comfortable handling lye as I would handling the nuclear waste from Chernobyl. Lye was my personal stumbling block. There were also all these things that could go wrong with your soap.

I've now handled lye and even survived having a few droplets land on skin. I'm ready for soapmaking here at home now, sometime between the yarn dyeing and that batch of plum jam that I really want to make.

However, a rather odd thing happened in the soap class. The class was full, having had 12 people sign up. Only 10 showed up. When it came time to divide into teams, I found myself alone. In my youth I would have been so upset that no one liked me. As a more mature adult, I did puzzle about it for a minute. Is there some "otherness" about me? I pushed that aside when I let it fully sink in. I wouldn't have any partners to mess with. I actually prefer working alone. I knew in theory how to make soap, and now I could learn how, just like I would at home, alone where I could think and not have to answer any questions. However, one attendee had brought a friend who went and signed up, and she became my partner. I can't remember her name, but she actually was quite good to work with. She was intelligent, understood the processes, and it was great to have someone else to share stirring the soap while it underwent the thickening process. One batch of our soap turned out great, and it's still curing. The other batch did not turn out, and I threw it away after consulting a couple of books. It seems that when she measured out the water for it, she measured by volume and not weight. I'll fully share the responsibility about that as I saw her measuring the water, and I wondered about it, but not enough to grab the teacher and ask. I learned from reading that this is a common mistake among new soapmakers, and it does explain why the second batch didn't behave quite as it should.

All in all, I had a great time. I'll have to write about the food a little later this week.

World's are colliding!

I'm sure some of you recognize that quote.

This weekend is Dragon*Con. We had thought about going to the parade yesterday, but one of us (not me) has issues with the time/space continuum. Apparently the time when an event starts is really the time you think about leaving the house. We're meeting someone for dinner at 7 translates into we may leave the house by 7.

This time I can't lay all the blame on the vagaries of one's personal relationship to linear time. I was rather wishy-washy about it too. While I wanted to go see the spectacle that is the Dragon*Con parade, especially as I know people who were in it, and I've never seen it except for excerpts on TV, I was reluctant to be in such a crowd.

Anyway, by the time we were ready to go, we'd miss at least half of it, if not more. This led to an interesting conversation we had on the way to the Decatur Book Festival, which we attended earlier than we'd expected. I can't repeat the conversation verbatim, so this is how I remembered it.

I said, "Well, we can go next year." (I'm talking about the parade only here.)

Keith: "We could get a hotel room."

Me: "We'll have to book early."

Keith said, "Maybe we'll go to Dragon*con."

I replied, "Tickets are $100 each."

Keith: "So?"

OK, this is when I pick my jaw off the floor of the car and look around furtively for the aliens who have flipped Keith's brain and are laughing their asses off at me. We go on down the Decatur Book Festival.

Among all the authors there is a young man, Nick Valentino, who has written a Steampunk adventure novel, Thomas Riley. Keith has been hearing about Steampunk lately, as I'll be dyeing a Steampunk themed yarn for the Phat Fiber Sampler Box in October. We talked to Nick for a little while, and I asked him why was he there at the book festival instead of Dragon*Con. He said he was dividing his time between the two. That's understandable. His publisher had a booth there, and new authors, like new dyers, need to promote their wares. For the record, I did buy his book. I haven't started reading it yet, but it's gotten good reviews.

Later at home, I broached the subject of Dragon*Con and asked Keith if he would want to dress in costume for it. His answer was "Yes, Steampunk."

I'm still looking for those aliens. I know they whisked him away in the night and messed with his brain.

Cook's Warehouse, have I said I love you?

We took another class yesterday at The Cook's Warehouse. Their classes are so much fun, although grating carrots isn't the most fun I've ever had.

We took Pickling and Brining: Not Your Grandma's Pickle Pantry. After taking the class on canning earlier this summer, when I saw this class, I knew I had to take it.

We were to meet at The Cook's Warehouse in order to carpool down to the Morningside Market and get some of our ingredients. I'd never been there, although I'd driven by on a Saturday or two and thought about stopping. We'd received an email on Friday reminding us to bring cash and a cooler if we wanted to buy anything. I was planning to meet Beth afterwards, so I decided that I wouldn't worry about getting any cash. No credit cards accepted, so I was safe from spending.

Ha! Two vendors of things that could sit out in the car for a couple of hours did take credit cards. I got some locally made granola from Pure Bliss Organics, and a grab bag of soap ends from Hazelbrand Handmade. I haven't tried the granola yet, but I did open up the grab bag and smell all the soap pieces. Those only reminded me of how much I'm looking forward to my soap making class in a few weeks.

There are cooking demonstrations by local chefs also on Saturdays. We watched Chef Gary L. Mennie prepare Roasted pears with speck ham, blue cheese and arugula. Thank goodness they handed out the recipe! Although I'm not a fan of prosciutto, I thought it was delicious, and quite honestly, I'm sure I could find another meat that I'd like better. Maybe a more common ham.

Of course, I couldn't be at the Morningside Market without seeing people I know. One of the women in the class was someone I recognized from when I was working at the local yarn store. I also recognized another woman I knew from there, but as I couldn't remember her name, I let her pass me by. As I was buying the granola, I heard, "Is that Eve under that hat?" from Kim of Knitch. Funny that everyone I knew down there was knitting related!

After getting a danish and latte from Alon's, I was fortified to go back to The Cook's Warehouse and start the class in earnest. (As an aside, almost everyone in the class had ventured to Alon's at some point during our field trip.)

Before we go back to Cook's Warehouse, I should tell you a little more about the market. There are local farmers, bakers and soap makers there. Grass fed, feed range beef and pork are available. How cool is it to be able to talk to the person growing your food? I found the market to be one of those simple and wonderful pleasures. Fresh food and an overcast morning that was a few degrees cooler than it's been lately, along with a delightful danish and great coffee made it very enjoyable.

Anyway, this class was an accelerated version of brining. We honestly didn't have enough time for everything to be brined as long as it should be, but there was a corned beef that had been brining for 5 days and was pressure cooked during class. My mouth is watering thinking about it even now. The aromas being carried upon the steam shooting from the pressure cooker were sublime. I do love savory foods.

However, we do have the recipes, and I understand about brining now. It's one of those techniques I'd actually never thought about until I took the canning class, and to be honest, it was the word pickling in the class title that caught my attention.

One of my favorite quotes, which I'm sure I've shared with you before, is from Ellis Peter's Brother Cadfael. "Nothing learned is ever quite wasted." You can read this quote it The Raven in the Foregate as I don't know which page it's on.

Have a great Sunday!