Spring Cleaning--and Creating!

Got busy today!  I decided to clean my office in 1/2 hour spurts, which coincidentally is the amount of time wool roving needs to cook in the crockpot.  So I thought, why not dye some roving and clean at the same time? That way I'd have a few breaks from the tedium of cleaning, yet still dedicate some solid time giving away, throwing away, and putting away stuff.  Yep, spring cleaning is here!

I am glad to say that I was productive in both ways.  No, I will not post pictures of my office/library because it still looks like a tornado went through it.  There is improvement:  now a path from door to computer desk can be seen, plus I cleared off a bookshelf and put my yarn in tubs on it.  A box of books now sits in the living room, ready to be delivered to Goodwill.

However, as you see, I am posting pictures of the roving I dyed, because it is much prettier to look at.  I may end up selling the roving or spinning it...I haven't decided yet.  It's nice, soft wool: I have one set that is purely Merino wool, so very soft; the other one is a touch coarser, but still soft and has a somewhat elastic, bouncy feel. 

The pictures don't quite do justice to the colors of the roving.  Except for the primary colored one (to the left), which is that intense in color, the others are actually a bit lighter and more pastel than they look here--very much spring colors.

It's been very wet and rainy lately--I think we've had a month of rain and clouds with perhaps half a day of real sun--so I was feeling very much as if I wanted to create some spring if I couldn't have it in the weather.  I guess that's why there's a bit of yellow and green in all of the rovings I dyed today!

Since each set of colors took half an hour to cook, I guess because I have four colorways, I actually spent two hours cleaning!

I think this deserves some definitely spinning time.  After that, I'll put up some of this roving on my Etsy site.   I haven't put anything up there right now, but if you go there, you can be notified via e-mail once I do start up my shop again.

End of the old, beginning of the new

Whew.  So I said goodbye to the folks at my day job  on Friday (BergerABAM, the best place I've ever worked--I'm going to miss my coworkers something terrible, seriously.  That place is alive with creativity and innovation, not to mention just plain ol' nice people) and today is my first day at home full time. 

I'm just as busy, although I took some breaks to play Farmville, Country Life, and Cafe World.  Bad, bad me.  At least I've stopped playing Farm Town, and I'll put the other games on hold within the next few hours.  There are too many things to do, and too little time in which to do them.  I have to get taxes done early, make sure the insurance is all up to date...so many other things.  I just sold my old spinning wheel (and got rid of more wool fiber), and have a buyer my car (although the owners-to-be are fine with me using it until I don't need it).  Got my medical info updated and in order. 

But taxes...ugh.  I really do not like doing the taxes, even though we have TurboTax.

Numbers.  That's what gets me.  I have a fear of not doing the arithmetic right.  Funny thing; I'm all right with algebra, I could do calculus in college just fine (averaged a 3.5 in my calculus classes), but it's possible to do those without ever having to add, subtract, multiply, or divide actual numbers.  You ask me to do basic arithmetic in my head and I freeze.  I can do it, of course.  But my first response is to freeze, see the numbers in my head, and feel overwhelmed.

One of these days I'll get over it.  Luckily, I have no trouble when I write it down, it's just the doing it in my head part.  I swear, there is nothing that makes me feel more stupid than being asked to do arithmetic in my head, without paper or pencil.  Give me a paper and pencil/pen, and I'm fine, though.  Maybe one of these days I'll get over it.

Meanwhile...there are other things I have to get done around here.  I've given away/sold, packed away more yarn than I want to admit to, ditto wool, silk, alpaca fiber.  It still looks like a mess around here.  (Sigh)

Knitted result

Well, this is the knitted result of the yarn I hand-dyed and hand-spun. I'm very pleased with it. The colors blend rather nicely one to another, and are kind of self-striping. That's the result of the Navajo three-ply method of plying I did with it. The swatch was knitted with U.S. size 2 (3 mm) knitting needles, the size you'd use for socks. So, I guess I have indeed created some sock yarn!

I did try to spin it very fine, but I think I need a bit more twist than I had in this yarn. It's still very sturdy, though the ply is loose enough that if you're not careful, it's possible to pick up a strand instead of the whole ply. It worked out to about 6 1/2 stitches to the inch, but I tend to knit loosely rather than tightly.

All this motivates me to dye some more roving, which I've done, and I'm working on spinning up that one now. It's in shades of blue and green, with slight touches of yellow.

Spinning fiber and yarn - clearing out stash

The last day of work for me at the contract job (web editing) was yesterday. I liked working at the place, the people I worked with and for were fun (all younger than I am, I bet!), and the work pretty steady and satisfying. I'd work there in a minute again if I had the chance. However, I do want a permanent job (tech writing and/or editing), and so I'm looking around again.

Meanwhile, I need to clean house, and need to destash my fiber and yarn hoard. I have my handspun yarn at my Etsy shop for sale, but I really do need to get rid of my store-bought yarn, too, not to mention my bags and bags of roving and fleece, both wool and alpaca. Ditto some of my store-bought yarn.

I'm keeping the finest stuff for myself (merino, camel, alpaca, silk), but will let go of even some of that. I was thinking of selling the fleece and roving, but what I'll do is give it away for donations to UMCOR (United Methodist Committee on Relief), since 100% of donations to this organization goes directly to those in need, as the denomination members pay for administrative costs themselves.

I have a lot of fleece and fiber. I didn't think I did, but when I gathered it together from the various places I had stashed it...well, it's a lot. A whole lot. The floor of the unfinished guest room downstairs is covered in fleece and roving, that's how bad it is. I've begun organizing it into types of fiber (Merino, alpaca, Shetland wool, mixed type, etc.), so that whoever comes over to take some will be able to see what's there.

I also think I'll go to the local Arachne Guild meeting on January 3 from 10 am to 2 pm, in Edgewood, WA. I understand I can possibly unload a lot of fiber there. I hope. If I don't get rid of most of it there, then I'll also go to the MoonSpinner's Guild in Sumner, WA on January 8 at 7 pm.

Truth is, I can't possibly spin all of this stuff, since I now have tennis elbow and some carpal tunnel of my right arm and hand, and tenosynovitis of my left hand (thumb). I got it from--believe it or not--knitting too much and too fast. I had some pneumonia this fall, complicated by asthma, and so had to take some prednisone. I decided to knit an ambitious amount while I recovered, and I can knit at a very fast pace. What I didn't know was that the prednisone I was taking suppressed any symptoms of inflammation or fatigue I normally would have experienced when knitting this much. I had no idea I was injuring my hands....

Until I was finished with my prednisone. Dear God. The pain was awful. My hands were hurting from elbow to fingertip.

I'm still recovering. I can knit and spin a bit, but I don't dare do it for more than a few minutes, though, and I'm wearing an arm brace and carpal tunnel brace on my right arm. I also have a thumb-and-wrist brace for my left hand, but only wear it at night, since, geez, how can anyone expect to do anything, much less knit or spin, with a thick brace like that on one's hand? Plus, the yarn and fleece stick to the stupid Velcro, and my arms end up looking oddly hirsute with vari-colored fiber.

Ugh. This does not make me happy. Still, better those who will appreciate the fiber get it, rather than it just sitting around.

I can do some spinning and knitting, though, just as long as I don't overdo it. But I'll never get to dealing with all this yarn and fiber unless I let some of it go. (Sigh)