the girly who shall end all girls

It rained. A lot. So much mud.

Fortunately, Mom (who didn’t want to ruin her sneakers) suggested that we look for rain boots last night. It’s rural enough here that there was a Tractor Supply Co a short drive away, and cute patterned rubber boots were a whole $20. Totally worth it. Our feet stayed warm and dry and I made sure to go to every damn vendor in a tent because they were not having a nice day.

I shopped victoriously: a store had the level winder attachment for my e -spinner that has been out of stock from the manufacturer for some time. It cost a little more than my EEW6 did, but everyone at the spin-in tonight assured me that it was going to change my life :D

I got to see the Neighborhood Fiber Co peeps in person (I bought their merch, Mom bought their yarn). I was sad that the Ketanji Brown Jackson colorway was a blue I would never use (and I honored mimerki’s request to not bring them yarn).

My spinning class got me fired up about color blending so I bought some fiber with that in mind. We only stayed through mid afternoon today - the cold damp was hard on Mom’s joints and honestly I was tired too - walking through squishy mud in rubber boots uses some muscles I don’t usually engage in city life. So while we were lolling in the hotel room I knit my last sample yarn into a single scant fingerless mitt instead of a swatch. I love it and it makes me more excited about my idea for the fiber that I bought.

Dinner ran a little later than planned but I still got back to the fairgrounds for most of the Saturday night spin-in. I missed almost all of the contests and drawings (event advertised for three hours, all giveaways happened in hour one). I made fast friends with my power strip and ended up in a group of five random folks - 3 EEW6, 1 Sidekick (my treadle wheel at home), and one DIY wheel. The DIY was a determined high schooler - she learned on a borrowed Louet and decided to repro it in wood shop because she didn’t have money. So she did, including 3D printing her bobbins and painting both sides of the wheel. The kids are alright. The other EEW peeps were an immigrant from Gothenburg Sweden and someone who spends the winter mushing her Malamutes. The Sidekick person grows her own indigo and does shibori. Spinners are a bunch of weirdos and I love them.

Also got to squee today with someone about buying knitting nerd Tee Turtle shirts at gaming and comics conventions (we feel so seen), and a couple passing comments about the SHIELD patch on my jacket.

We also saw some sweet sheep being combed, trimmed, and fluffed for the show ring. Surprise highlight at the end of the day: bakery stand by the gate with delicious flavored scones (I had lemon-ginger, Mom had cranberry-orange. We’ve determined that tomorrow with start with those instead of ending with them.)

Hopefully tomorrow Mom will be up for standing through the sheep dog demos. (SHEEP DOG DEMOS!) And maybe some of the sheep to shawl competition.

I put the new "wheel" together today and lost the late afternoon and evening to spinning fiber samples and binging most of series 4 of The Great Pottery Throwdown. This may be the most evenly-matched group ever and they're so lovely to each other (they filmed in a bubble like GBBO). I would be happy to see any of them win. It's new to the US, no spoilers please, UK fam. Especially enjoying that Rich is judging now and the new Rich appears to be a trans person.

i volunteered to do the last dog walk of the day and let C finish watching his soccer match, which means podcast time.

tonight it was Fiber Nation, on Gunnister Man (there's plenty of text and links on the landing page if you don't feel inclined to listen). basically a beautifully preserved set of wool clothes were found in an isolated peat bog in the Shetland Islands in the 50s; the person who had worn the clothes had rotted away, but the clothes remained. the podcast is the story of the painstaking effort to recreate the clothing for display in a local museum, and what the clothing and its composition can tell us about where this unknown person came from and why they might have been in the middle of nowhere in the first place.

I'm finally spinning the rest of the fiber that became a felted dog toy. It's...challenging. I couldn't find the right settings for my wheel, so I pulled out a drop spindle for the first time in months.

Now when the fiber is clumpy or suddenly breaks it's no big deal. (Although I hate having this not-cheap spindle hit the floor.)

This stuff has little blobs of short fiber in it (neps). You can either obsessively pick them out, or make lumpy yarn.

It's neps all the way down. Let's just call it rustic texture and admire the colors.

i got a big bag of Polypay roving at Fiber Fusion last year. i'm just now getting around to playing with it. it's quite springy and easy to draft. so far i like spinning it way better than the Romney raised in King County. (i really wanted to like the Romney. it's black! but the yarn i've made so far with it is just kind of hairy, and it doesn't seem to matter what technique i use. maybe i need to be more skilled, maybe this bag of fiber is just kind of sucky.) i'd like to source more wool from the Northwest, but it's taking a bit of work.

anyway, the Polypay was all undyed, so i tried test-dyeing a few ounces last night. it's interesting stuff. i left it soak in water for a good half-hour and it seemed pretty resistant to saturation. i am impatient, so i dyed it anyway (Wilton's paste food coloring, white vinegar) and did a steam set on the stove per Ilga's method. it was too hot to handle last night, so i'll do a rinse and look at results before bed tonight. i'll be curious to see if the dye struck properly. the fiber was cheap so no harm if the color didn't stick this time or i felted it.

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the answer is that the color struck fast and the fiber took every bit of dye. zero color in the rinse water, and it's really intense. what it didn't do was run together as much as I expected. no pics at this point - it was dark when I put it outside on the drying rack. anyway, bright true colors, no evidence of felting, more undyed fiber visible than I intended. looks like it will be fully dry tomorrow.