Month: May 2003

Silk Cap

On 6 May, 2003

Hey Grace! Guess what I’m making for Iris? I’m knitting a play shawl for Iris from the silk cap that I dyed during Rainbow Dyeing with the Microwave workshop that I took with Barbara Bitetto at The Shepherd’s Extravaganza. (Click on picture for enlarged view.) This is one of the items that I dyed during the workshop. I just poured a bunch of leftover dyes around the classroom at the end of the class into a ziploc bag with my wetted silk cap. Closed it, and squished it around before putting it into the microwave until the dye has completelly taken up.

Anyway, I’m pulling a small bit of roving out and knitting directly from it. I’ve only seen this done but never tried it myself. What fun! If you have chapped hands, make sure that they are well lubricated or you’ll catch on all the little silk filaments.

Fuzzy Feet Update — I suppose is time to update this. They are finished, but we weren’t happy with the fit of these. Martin’s were a little too tight, even after I dried them with his shoe tree (wrapped in plastic bags). I didn’t like the feeling of the slippers slipping off my heel. So, we found homes for both of them. Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of them before I gave them away.

Martin’s went to his brother (just in time for an early birthday present), and mine went to Martin’s great niece, Abby. Abby needs to feel like a princess right now. The entire family is down in Guatemala to finish the adoption process of her new brother and sister. After being an only child for 3 years, she now has to share. I thought the bright pink slippers with the colorful trim would be perfect for play time. I hope so. She’s going to have some tough times ahead.

Itchin’ to Spin

By Ann

On 5 May, 2003

In Spin

Wool/Mohair Skeins I’m healing nicely, according to my self appointed doctor. But with all the itching that’s going on, I have the attention span of a gnat. It’s all I can do to sit in front of the boob tube and spin. I can’t concentrate long enough to work on my Pi Shawl.

I did finish these skeins of a wool/mohair blend from Willow Creek Farm. It started as 8 oz of roving. There’s a little bit of turquoise, purple, and yellow. It came out more lavender than I expected from all the turquoise that I saw in the bump, except for the last skein, which is primarily turquoise. The final product is about 556 yds/6.25 oz of fingering weight 3-ply yarn. Perfect for socks. Unfortunately, that will have to wait until I can concentrate again.

That will be a while, since apparently, secondary blisters are coming up behind the healing skin. So, now I both burn *and* itch at the same time! Yuck. Nothing worse than itching but you can’t scratch, I thought, until the pain and burning came back on top of the itch. Yeow!

So, more spinning for me. I’m working on the black/turquoise/red/purple roving that I picked up last fall. Isn’t it gorgeous? I not only love this colorway, and the fiber, but I also love the way that this roving is dyed. It’s not totally saturated with color in the red/turqoise/purple areas. You can actually see horizontal stripes of uncolored rovings. Why is this important? There are some really subtle color changes going on here that is very difficult to describe. The color intensity fades in and out that makes the end result all that more dramatic.

And it drafts like butter. Perfect for someone who can’t focus — and perfect for perfecting the long draw. It just comes out soooo smoothly. You don’t even have to move your hand. Just take all the tension out of the brake, and hold on to the roving lightly, and treadle. No work at all.

I’m taking lots of pictures and notes on the roving. I hope to duplicate it sometime. I’d love to thank the artiste that created this roving but I can’t find the tag that came with this roving. I know it’s around here somewhere. I just need to unearth it. At least I remember where I bought it (fiber shop in Pt. Townsend). I’m navajo plying the yarn to preserve the color transitions as much as possible.

On other news … I went in for my exit interview at my former company today and turned in the old laptop and pager. What a relief. Even though the old pager hadn’t been on (nor had a battery in it for weeks), it’s nice to finally be rid of that thing.

The company in California has rescheduled my interviews for next Friday. So, 3 weeks after THE Incident, I’ll be going back to the scene of the crime. I wonder if I’ll be wearing pants again by then? I’m running out of casual skirts to wear around the house.

Best Laid Plans … or … Mother Knows Best

By Ann

On 2 May, 2003

In Dye

Best laid plans and all that. It’s been a week and I still can’t decide if I should laugh or cry when I retell the story … I might as well tell it here since so many people have heard, winced, and laughed over this story — before it becomes an urban legend.

As I mentioned before, I was supposed to fly down to California for a job interview. One day down and back. Easy. Easier than a lot of business trips that I’ve taken in the past. No big deal.

During the in-flight beverage service, I ordered my usual hot tea. Well, if any of you have had tea on an airplane before, you know that the adjective “hot” is subjective. Most of the time, it’s generous to call it “tepid.” Unfortunately, this was the outlyer … it was hot, HOT, HOT! During one of those smooth moves you make on a plane, trying to get yourself comfortable, or as comfortable as you can in the middle seat of a standing room only airplane, opening The Wall Street Journal to the page that talked about your current company’s quarterly earnings call when the fellow in front of you has his seat back — all the way back. You guess it. That there cup of tea landed in my lap.

I think the entire plane heard me yell. Then there’s the fumbling trying to find my seat belt and get everyone around me to stand up. Before I know it, I was up in the 1st class closet that they call a bathroom, watching my leg blister up in 2nd degree burns.

I won’t bore you with the details, but here are some of the highlights …

When we landed in San Jose, I was greeted by 1 female flight ops personnel, 1 female Emergency Medical Tech, 1 male EMT, 2 male fire fighters … the police officers stayed on the ground.
The bubbly 1st class flight attendant asked me if I didn’t feel lucky to have all these gorgeous young men waiting for me …
Then they asked me to take my pants off so they can decide what to do next, or would I prefer that they cut it off of me?
Then I proceeded to spend the next 3 hours in the Emergency Room, waiting for someone to take a look at my leg.

Needless to say, I never got to my interview. Once they got codeine down me at the ER (I turned the morphine down because I somehow still thought that I could salvage the interview), I asked for a taxi to take me back to the airport so I can catch the next flight home.

So, what’s the pithy moral of the story? Mother knows best … always wear clean, fresh underwear. And throw the old stuff out. You never know what’s going to happen and who’s going to see those holey underwear. The entire first class cabin, for example, when the flight attendant keeps opening the door to the ‘loo to see if you need anything else. (Yes, I had on fairly new underwear so I wasn’t too embarrassed … actually, the embarrassment faded rather quickly when the pain set in.)

As a friend told me, I beat all the best interview horror stories hands down — or is it “pants down?” You tell me.

On to fibery talk …

In any case, I didn’t get to spend any time knitting the Pi Shawl. It’s been sitting neglected for the past week.

Instead, I’ve knitted these instead … dressing covers that are a bit more comfortable than ace bandages over the dressing. I wear these now at night to keep the dressing from falling off while I twist and turn to find a comfortable position.

Norman Kennedy Natural Dye Workshop

Despite how much it hurt, I still went to the Norman Kennedy workshop on Saturday and Sunday … along with my pain pills and lots of bandages in case I needed to re-dress. Are you kidding? Of course I went. I figured I can take a pain pill and sit/lay down if I had to, but I was not going to miss meeting the legend.

Eye candy … the dye samples:

Yellows: left to right
– fustic on wool
– cutch on wool
– cutch on cotton

Blues: left to right
– fustic overdyed with indigo (resulted in a heathered forest green)
– indigo on wool
– indigo on cotton (short/single dip — don’t know, Eva did these for me while I rested my leg)
– indigo on cotton (longer/multiple dips)

Reds: left to right
– cochineal with oxalic acid and tin, some fustic as brightener, on wool
– same, second bath with more fustic, on wool
– cochineal with alum and cream of tartar, on wool
– cochineal with alum and cream of tartar, on wool/silk blend
– cochineal with alum and cream of tartar, on silk
– cochineal with alum and cream of tartar, on mohair

In addition to dyeing, Norman gave us demos on the long draw, the supported spindle, carding, and the walking wheel — not to mention a ballad or two. What fun. It was definitely worth the pain.

Yesterday afternoon, I started to spin a bit with my wheel. The excuse is that Martin wanted me to start stretching the healing skin a bit as it heals to make sure that it doesn’t lose its suppleness. I thought that treadling moves the skin without stressing it and would be a good idea. Would you believe that he agreed with me?

By the way, just in case you are curious. He’s been taking great care of me. Thank goodness for all those years of skin regeneration research he did for a living, huh? How lucky can a girl get?

Okay, I don’t want to hear it, I know … if I had been really lucky, that cup of tea would have been tepid.

Oh, and the company that I was to interview at? They’ve been great. They called me at the ER to make sure that I was okay. Cancelled my appointments for the day. Offered me a hotel room for the night if I didn’t feel like traveling home that day. And will be rescheduling my interviews once I feel up to traveling again.