1. So then I tried spinning just the plum and the red sparkly today and got these 272 four-plied yards.

2. The tart cherries are trying to catch up to that color as fast as they can. You can tell which side the sun hits them on.

3. This video of Glenn Stewart rock-climbing city hall and banding baby peregrines.

4. It was the last Thursday night knit night at Purlescence: attendance has been low of late (all those political debates on Thursdays, I’d say) and they really did need the extra space for classes. So of course it was quite the turnout tonight. I’m so glad I got to go (thank you, Richard) especially given that I’m not driving yet.

5. Meantime, we got the very happiest of messages: Crystal, our seven-weeks-premature new grand-niece, after a month in the NICU was pronounced healthy and allowed to go home today. Her parents are ecstatic. We are, too.

And then there was Sherry’s other part cone (thank you!) of Colourmart cashmere in purple.

I had some plum extra fine merino and some red cashmere/merino/sparkle, from same, all of them very fine and soft yarns.

I plied about a yard of all three together but stopped the wheel, thinking, when that becomes six? No. Too thick. Pulled that off and started over. Sherry’s with the red, one bobbin, the plum with the red, second bobbin, then ply those two together.

Yeah, I like that. I like that a lot. And yes, you don’t have to have a wheel, you can just knit from any number of cones straight up–but a single ball of yarn at a time is simply a lot more portable than three cones of delicate snaggableness.

The concussion: I was feeling pretty good yesterday, did a lot of plying, turned on the stereo and even sang along to Alison Kraus a bit as the wheel whirred. Not entirely resting but not pushing it, right? We went out to dinner to celebrate a birthday and on the way home I was saying, hey, a few more days like this and I’ll feel confidant enough to start driving again. (With him in the car the first few times as a backup.)

Uh, Houston, we have a negative on that trajectory.

The doctor on the phone today decided I didn’t seem to need imaging for a brain bleed but if things were in any way worse in the morning speak up (it was, and that’s exactly what I did today) and we’ll move that neurology appointment forward.

When she said rest for once it was easy to do. Stabs said my head really didn’t want me to turn it to the left. They did let up a lot as the day went on.

And so off and on across the afternoon I did manage to get one bobbin plied. One really pretty bobbin that just makes me happy to look at, some Zegna Baruffa Cashwool that I stumbled across while looking for something else and went, oh, that’s what that peachy-pink has been waiting for all along!

More of Sherry’s cashmere. Add spinning wheel and there you go.

I found this in a description of the production of that superfine wool: the pasture must be perfect and only calm sheepdogs need apply. There must be no stress on the Cashwool-worthy merinos.

Sounds good enough to me to pair with Sherry’s gift.

To be continued.

Colourmart was selling 10g mini cones of cobweb cashmere/silk for $5 a year or two ago, ppd as always, enough to put a pop of color in the right place and I always knew they could really turn into something–if I only knew what.

Now I know what the what is.

Sherry’s blue cashmere danced with a matching light blue, and then the second cobweb mini-cone in turquoise that it totally clashed with before I held up their two strands and twisted an inch or two together and thought, wait, I do like that–okay, go!

Let’s see, that’s 278, 226, 222, 224: the yardage on the four hanks aside from the finished cowl. Out of the 200g of the closeout dark brown merino/silk cobweb, I have 76g left (cone excluded). It’s the smallest amount among the three colors, so, 124g of that=950 yards finished yarn=I have roughly 575 yards left I can ply in this combination for a total of 1525 yards that knits up nicely on 4.5 or 5mm needles and then that’s all of that there can ever be.

(Yeah, the cowl probably took some out of the equation except that Colourmart nearly always sends more than the amount stated. I didn’t weigh this time before starting though so I don’t know.)

I have no idea why it’s so important to have that yarn all ready to knit up but it is and so I’m spinning it. That sense of anticipation of discovery is keeping me going on the brown yarns against the brown spinning wheel against the brown rug with the brown piano in the background. I don’t want to stop till that one cone is empty and I can declare this stage done.

Let me distract you from all that with a photo of a hawk trajectory.

Two plies each medium, light, and dark brown from the cones: I’m up to 504 yards, apart from the small skein I knitted up today. Not very often do I get cobweb yarn in the mail one day and a finished project with it the next.

The pictures are right off the needles and after rinsing in preparation for blocking.

So. After I six-plied as much of last night’s two bobbins together as I could squeeze onto the third bobbin, I still had a bit of yarn left on the first two–I’d filled them too full. Happens. So I started to spin those to make a smaller skein, ran out of just the one, found a bobbin over thataway with a bit of that leftover light brown cashmere in the same state of anticipation and just added it on to where the one had run out to see what I would get.

Just about perfectly half and half.

I tried it on and loved how the lighter top rolled down to the darker bottom, rewarding my randomness.

A $12 mill-end merino cone arrived from Colourmart today and it sparked one of those sudden bursts of creativity: hey! Spinning on my wheel, not even really spinning, just plying, that would be a very gentle exercise for my stomach and back and arm muscles while not being enough to raise my blood pressure like the doctor wants me to avoid. It would be just enough to strengthen and not too much. Right?

I had to test this hypothesis.

Take three cones of cobweb/laceweight, two of cashmere, one an extra fine merino in a dark cordovan brown. Ply. Ply a second bobbin. Ply the two together with the wheel going the opposite direction to balance out the twist.

It. Was. So. Soft. as it ran through my fingers. Even with the mill oils not yet washed out, and that part surprised me, just SO soft. There are cashmeres and then there are cashmeres that just melt in your hands and that merino did nothing to take away from them.

Hot hot hot soapy water. Rinsing, same.

After looking at this last picture I had to go back to check, a little concerned, and hung the hank from my hands: did I ply it evenly? Did it hang straight down with no twisting?

It did. And I get to make quite a bit more of this before I empty those cones. It’s extra work but it’s extra nice stuff and it gives me more ways to use this time well.

I finally went to go buy a new niddy noddy. I didn’t call ahead; Purlescence sells weaving looms and spinning wheels and there’s no way they wouldn’t have them in stock.

Not only did they have a plain Ashford like my old unfinished-wood, no-frills broken one of that make but they had a Kromski.

I’ve never spun on a Kromski wheel but I’m marginally familiar with them. Of course they make niddy noddies. Even if I’ve never paid attention to the fact that they do. I mean, usually you buy one niddy noddy ever and then that’s it, you’re done, right? No point in shopping for more.

Unless you have to.They were so pretty that I almost didn’t let myself look at them–surely they were way out of my price range. Beautifully finished and turned wood, engineered to keep the yarn from slipping off the end you don’t want it to and to slip off the end you do want it to when you’re done. Nice.

Pamela saw that I loved it and steered me back to it: they were almost the same price. I was stunned. Both brands under $25. If I had known that I would have replaced my falling-apart one ages ago. (Counting on my fingers… It would be 22 years old this summer and I paid $20 way back then.)

Buying mill-end cones can get you great yarns at great prices but then you have to hank, scour the mill oils out, dry, and wind into a ball, a fair bit of extra work that’s already been done on yarns in your average shop. You can have your bargain but you have to work for it. Hanking is one of those things I just have to do sometimes.

I couldn’t wait to get to it. It was such a pleasure to hold and see that I actually looked forward to the task and enjoyed it, and that earned it its price tag right there.

To the Kromski family: well done, and thank you for this.

The bird feeder was empty and there were no finches nor chickadees trying to get at that one last seed or two nor doves picking up the toss-outs below. I opened the slider, Corning two-cup glass measure in hand, to go scoop and refill. (Metal mini-trash cans are good for keeping the raccoons out–they’ve tried but they have never succeeded.)

The Cooper’s hawk sauntered away, if anything elegantly airborne can be so described, and I went oh oops sorry didn’t see you behind the orange tree there as I went back inside.

No problem. He people-watched awhile, shaking off a bit against the drizzle, preening.

Then he flew half way across my yard to where the sun could be on rather than behind him, showing off every bit of chestnut, white, grays, and those bright yellow feet, well-fluffed above as if there had been no rain.

Here inside, more presents are wrapped and ready, the guest bedrooms are cleared and vacuumed, and the–oh wait, the electric spinning wheel is still in baby-grab range. Right on it.

Yesterday I saw a flash of gray out of the far corner of my eye, heard a bang–and thought, no, please don’t tell me, it couldn’t be, they never… It had seemed too big for a dove.

If it were still there, it would be in the alcove part of the deck just to the left of my desk.

I waited a minute or so and then, seeing no sign of the hawk coming in after its prey (I didn’t want to disrupt it if it were), I stood up to see if anything might be there.

To my great surprise mixed with willful disbelief, crouching down a bit and looking up into my eyes was indeed a Cooper’s hawk–so yes, apparently he had hit it. That or a dove and he’d missed catching it, but then he wouldn’t have stayed put.

Which makes me think this was last year’s juvenile with his adult markings grown in rather than our long-time resident Coopernicus, who had studied every bit of that glass and knew exactly where it was, even coming to check it out after a window washing. Whatever, this one wasn’t comfortable with the combination of my movement and my staring at him from so close and he took off for the trees. Not at hunt speed, but at least now I knew he could fly okay. And hopefully he learned about glass barriers.

Today I kept going back to my new cashmere 4-ply I spun yesterday, willing that thick hank to dry faster, petting it again and again. SO soft.

The other reason I’d put it aside so long? I had gotten it for $10 lb plus shipping because it had been in a warehouse in the humid South where the roof had leaked. It takes some washing to get the (not strong) mildew smell out and I’m always afraid it will reek when wet after being knitted up for someone else. And yet–two rounds of soaking in hot laundry detergent and it seems okay. Or real close.

So did I order Colourmart’s uncontaminated, not-mildewed cobweb weight cashmere, 1100g for $35 ppd? When I can make hanks that feel like this with it and not have to worry when I gift someone after knitting it up? Oh honey you bet.

And then there was a Cooper’s hawk again this afternoon, perched this time on the center of the fence. If it was my old friend he’d grown in quite a few fresh feathers. Dressed in his finest.

He turned to look in every direction while making no effort to hide (and I thought, oh, right, we’re near winter solstice, it’s territory-claiming time.) He proclaimed MINE to the whole world–I couldn’t hear him but I could see him.

The sun was at its highest point for the day, making his feet glow yellow, surrounded by white fluff, his chest a soft orange.

He tucked a foot up and enjoyed his domain.

I silently thanked him for sharing the day with me. He was fine with that, too, my being there didn’t bother him a bit.

At last he took off across the top of the house and not a minute later a junco, then a Bewick’s wren, popped out of the tangle of the tomato cage in relief from just below where he’d been.

You know that whole spin-dye-knit thing? Long overdue on the spinning part.

Richard bought me one of the Kickstarter Electric Eel Wheels (and seriously: they call it the EEW) for Christmas. Only thing is he’s been wishing I would try it out once to make sure it works okay before wrapping it up and pretending I don’t know about it.

Today greed finally got me motivated: Colourmart was selling their mill ends of their mill ends of cashmere and there were some listed at ohmygoodness prices even for them and the best bargains, of course, were on the cobweb weight that few people want.

I actually had a few cones of taupe cobweb 90% cashmere 10% nylon that I bought from a wholesaler years ago, and at the time I spun and spun and spun and dyed and made all kinds of things out of it. Two cashmere afghans. And then I’d just plain needed to do something else that wasn’t brown-based and the last of the cones were left half-forgotten. They take a lot of work to be usable.

Tonight I pulled two out, set up that new electric wheel, read the instructions twice, had the resident geek going over it too because, hey, gadgets, and sat down to see how fast I could make this stuff usable now.

About two hours and I had 637 yards of 4-ply on the first skein and I’ve run out of time to hank and count the yards on the second but I’d guess about 250 yards. That’s a huge payoff on the time.

But see, I had two cones of the taupe to work from. If I were to buy the black, I’d only have the one in that color and I am not going to hand wind thousands upon thousands of cobweb yards in black–I’d have to ply it with something else. (Edited to add: duh. You don’t wind it by hand, you use the machine and a bobbin. So yeah, I ordered it.)

Like red. Ooh, I like that…!

He found it. He pointed it out to me. He offered to buy me one for the fun of it. I said something about Mother’s Day by way of justifying it and he just kind of waved that off–no need for an occasion.

I was so not expecting any of that.

And so I am finally going to have an electric spinning wheel: small, portable, useful, and the Electric Eel Wheel might actually make it so my nerve-damaged fingers can spin laceweight, but even if it doesn’t I would love it. I could spin on my lowest-energy, highest-flare days. (And it would just flat out be a fun toy to play with, he’s right.)

On Ravelry they say they expect to charge about $200-240 with a single bobbin after the Kickstarter campaign is over and then they will get to work getting them made and mailed before they consider how far they want to take this business after that. “This project will be funded on Tue, Apr 7 2015 10:42 AM PDT,” meaning, that’s your deadline if you’re interested. Everything’s open source in case you want to make your own, including the bobbins, but meantime, the single-bobbin+wheel price starts at $149 (with one still left in that option as I type). We went for three bobbins.

I like these guys.

Milk Pail turned 41 today and Steve threw a cheese tasting party in celebration and that it wouldn’t be the last. We got the invite.

Seeing the Wensleydale with cranberries, I said, “I’m going to tell you something I bet you don’t know.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

I told him that Wensleydales ate too much for how much wool they produced and so the commercial flocks pretty much had vanished except for one flock (actually might have been two, come to think of it) hanging on preserving the breed. And then the handspinning market found out that there was this rare really cool lustrous wool to play with and that was the start of its comeback.

“Cool!”

Milk Pail is the little shop that spent years and finally successfully fought off a developer who’d wanted Steve’s land. The problem being that Steve had had an agreement to share parking with the other businesses surrounding his but one by one they had all sold out to said developer, who proposed building eight to ten stories in a solid block around Steve’s till he starved and sorry about that, pal. The mayor even told the guy’s rep to shorten those in the plans so that they could make better use of Steve’s land when they got it. Charming.

They did a test run by illegally cutting off another small shop from its customers, and its owners caved and sold.

Not Steve.

Years.

City council meeting protests. Standing-room-only turnouts, again and again. Appeals to reason. Because Steve had owned his place so long (the distortions of long-ago Proposition 13 being the unspoken elephant in the room) he could keep his prices very low; a new owner would have to pay current-market-value-rate property taxes in one of the most expensive parts of the country. Local zucchinis at fifteen cents? Ears of corn at twenty? Triple-creme brie? Manufacturing cream for your chocolate torte, which no one else sold? You want local, Steve even owns his own cows now, having saved someone’s family farm.

You had the most and the least well off in Silicon Valley calling the eclectic little place their favorite shop and coming together in their day-to-day, being human together no matter their circumstances. And that is no small achievement.

Steve knew our car situation and that there had been times when Richard had taken time off work so I could go to those city council meetings, and he made a point of telling Richard how grateful he was for that and that I’d not only gone, I had told him when I wouldn’t be able to make one.

It told him the fate of what he’d poured his whole life into mattered not just to him. That had meant far more to him than I had ever had any idea of.

And, he continued, “Have you seen the video? You’ve got to see the video!”

I cringed but I quoted: “If. You. Shaft. Steve!” and we laughed together at that moment when I’d stood at that podium. “Yeah, I kind of lost it.”

“You should show it to your kids! Save it for your grandkids!”

“Four, two” (almost), “and one month.”

“Yeah, okay, a little young yet,” he agreed. “But still. Who would have guessed it. I mean, with your religious background, and you’re a…knitter! I mean-! He grinned, “You really took them on!”

“Yeah, she can be a real rabble rouser,” said Richard, and we both kind of explained our Washington DC/political family backgrounds: you speak up when you see an injustice. You just do. (But then, one does anyway, I would hope.)

And I remembered the city council meeting where I had cast on at the start and cast off at the hours-later finish, wound the ends in with my knitting needles and presented Steve with a hand knit hat to tell him the community was behind him. It was later that I would be telling that city council how good they had it to have a business like Steve’s creating some of the better moments in Silicon Valley and with that memorable phrase announced that my family and I would take it as, then they didn’t want our business. Any of their businesses. Anywhere in Mountain View, if those politicians pocketed that developer’s money and looked the other way. “We have our own,” and I stormed off before their timer even beeped.

Totally earned Tiger Mom cred in his eyes that night. He was unfailingly soft-spoken and kind but someone needed to stand up for him and give it to’em like they needed it given to’em. Darn straight.

I handed out a few Peruvian hand knit finger puppets to two sets of parents for their toddlers tonight.

We had a great time, and let me tell you, that Wensleydale with the cranberries? I have a new favorite cheese. Clearly it wasn’t just the handspinners. I can’t wait to go stock up at the shop.

“You spun? You haven’t spun in a long time.” Then he stopped short with, “Wait–spun? Or plied?”

Busted.

Maybe a dozen years ago I bought the cashmere, I bought it all: cones of 90% undyed brown cashmere 10% wool, single-ply, spun very fine for the garment industry.

But when it arrived from China the importer found a moth in the box. Or maybe several. She debated shipping it back but emailed me, an old customer, saying it would be all the same to her if she simply unloaded it on me at her cost.

Fifteen bucks a pound plus shipping.

!?! YES please!!!

Granted, brown cashmere is cheaper to begin with because you have a far wider range of dyeing options with white. Brown makes for earth tones. I could live with that.

It came from the Southeast with a slight whiff of mildew. A really hot scour of the finished yarns helped greatly and it was all the more incentive to boil it in a dyebath (but that and the lack of superwashing made me hesitate later to use it for the grandbabies.)

I plied pounds and pounds of that thin thread on my wheel into a soft knitting yarn and I knitted and spun and dyed some more until I actually, honestly kinda got (forgive me) bored with it. (I hear you and you and you and you saying hey let ME be bored now!)

I knew all these years later I still had a little somewhere, but two days ago I stumbled across not scraps’ worth but three two-pound cones.

I had this laceweight offwhite silk on a Colourmart cone that had just been sitting there…

I was a little afraid to touch that brown for fear of finding that for having been left alone in their ziplocs for so long they were finally bug-damaged, never actually having had any problems before despite their beginnings, but no, there was no sign. The yarn was fine.

The bigger bobbin was 227 yards and 120g when I got done and when I finish I’ll have more than that again.

It was a distraction from the project at hand, but I felt like when inspiration strikes after a dozen years’ wanting, grab it while it’s there.

Do I dye it or do I leave it?

And I… There were originally fifteen pounds… I think I have another of those cashmere cones in that other closet, too, most of one pound, at least. Might even be two like that. I’d have to open those big awkward boxes that are above my head and I haven’t quite yet looked to confirm.

Happy the-last-of-Thanksgiving Day!

If I had a hot summer day and a dark car and a black plastic bag to intensify the effect, it would do it. All those warnings about leaving kids or pets in cars in the heat? Works on bugs too. But even in California, this is November.

Years ago, at CNCH, a weavers’ convention, I bought a baby mohair fleece from the woman who had raised Edgar–and talking to her and seeing the love in her face as she described him, he was clearly more of a pet than anything else. It was a fabulous fleece, her best, and I made several skeins and a few small things out of it.

I remember waiting for my kids to get out of middle school while I would sit, picking out the random bit of hay or the like and letting it float off in the breeze. There wasn’t much, but still. Opening those locks and spinning that stuff took a lot of work.

Edgar the goat would be a teenager himself by now.

I still had some. Who knew. And the bag it was in had come undone and opened, with the dreaded signs of infestation–not bad, but. Any is the end, you have to toss it. End of subject.

My second reaction was, but I fondled all that woman’s fleeces before choosing; she had the best in that whole show and she told me I’d picked the best of her best.

It is so very very soft. And I do have my wheels in working order again, with thanks to Kaye and Sandi at Purlescence.

What would you do?