Studying Wool

On Friday I took an all day class at the lovely Hoosier Hills Fiber Arts Festival. We spent the whole day talking about the different properties of different wools and the best uses for them. Being a new spinner, I also picked up lots of new skills. It was a super class with fantastic spinners and I'm gonna tell you all about it to make you jealous!

We talked about 11 types of sheep. We didn't get a chance to spin all the breeds in class (I think this could easily have been a six week course - or six months - instead of just six hours), but I will be playing with them all at home.


We started by spinning three breeds - a long wool, a fine wool and a down. The type of wool helps you determine how to spin it and what to use it for. A coarse wool makes a great, durable rug, but it terrible for baby blankets.

Here is a fine wool (Cormo) on the left and a long wool (Wensleydale) on the right. See how different? Isn't it awesome!?!?


I only spun 5 breeds, but I'm quite smitten with Cormo. I haven't tried the Wensleydale yet. It has the most adorable little locks and I haven't found the nerve to muck them up yet. See how cute:


How a wool is prepared and spun makes a big difference too. You can line all the individual fibers up in one direction and spin the wool tight, or you can make the fibers go all which-ways. This makes lots of room for air to get in the nooks and crannies of the fiber, which results in a fluffier yarn.

These are both cormo, but you can see that one is fluffy and one is tighter and smoother. The top yarn was spun woolen - the wool is carded so the fibers go nutty and produce a fluffy yarn. I'm not very good at this yet, so my newness accounts for some of the bumps, but that's ok in a woolen yarn. The next step is to wash the spun yarn in hot water and then beat the crud out of the skein. It makes the yarn "bloom" and fluff up even more. I haven't done it yet, but spinners say it is very gratifying.


The bottom yarn was combed. This lines up all the long fibers, and helps discard the short ones, and creates a lovely strip of smooth wool. I am now addicted to hand combing.

Here are some other samples I spun:


After class, I bought stuff! My first raw fleece!! These are both fine wool from mutt sheep. The dark is Maine Island/Cormo/Border Leicester. I forget what the white is.


I also bought 4 oz balls of roving. These are a mix of different sheep and alpacas. I got them to experiment with blending colors. I think there will be enough for a vest when I'm done.


The brown one is 50% camel! (Yes, Mom, I had to get brown.)


There are interesting economics in wool and you can really see how value is added as the wool becomes processed. For the same price as 1.25 pounds of colored roving, I got over 3.75 pounds of unprocessed fleece (the garbage bag might look small, but trust me, it's heavy!):


Had I bought yarn for the same price, I would have gotten about 0.4 pounds of sock-weight yarn from an independent dyer. I like that the economics of wool seem so honest. So many other consumer goods (doritos, ipads, oil) have wonky subsidies and outsourced externalities that make the actual cost of the good far higher than the price we pay. Buying fiber directly from farmers or mills or independent dyers feels a little cleaner for my soul.

So now, I'm off to play!

Saturday Snow

We've got about 4-5 inches of snow on the ground and it's still falling.

It's lovely!

Indiana isn't very pretty in the winter - lots of empty brown corn fields. It looks a lot like a wasteland, so it's nice when the snow blankets the ground.

The chickens don't like it much, though. These two ladies are trying to determine if it's worth venturing 6 inches outside of the coop for the corn we threw just beyond the door.

They decided not.

The turkeys, however, have been out playing. They're staying pretty close to home, but at least they're outside.

When I venture outside, I make sure to wear my newly finished mittens:

Not really. These are fancy mittens and when I go outside it's to do dirty chores like fill up the birds' water or bring in firewood. But...I thought it was a nice transition.

Happy Snowy Saturday!

The Summer of Indiana

We have been enjoying the summer of Indiana - lots of lovely folks have come to visit us, and this past week we took some time off from the day jobs, but didn't go anywhere. We hung out with the turkeys, canned up lots of peaches, read books, didn't do a lick of work on the house, and ate good food.

We also spent a very exciting day in Lafayette...

...where we got ice cream. All summer vacations require ice cream...

...and a visit to the county courthouse(??)...

...and beautiful souvenirs.

Symphony. Prairie. Geekery.

Last weekend, we headed to Conner Prairie for the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra's Sci-Fi Spectacular, featuring George Takei. I know, right? How cool is that?

We brought some wine. This is Dragonsleaf Red we picked up during our trip in the fall at Imagery Estates. We figured the dragon part was fitting.

The folks in the stripey green chairs to the left of Bill had large plastic wine glasses and a fancy table. We had ball jars and a blanket.

And some local cheese.

Obviously, there was only one t-shirt I could wear.

Because it was a Sci-Fi concert, there were some interesting characters in attendance.

Boba Fett? Boba Fett? Where?

The stage. The crowd. The storm clouds.

We got scary-midwest-stormed out at intermission, but not before we got to hear Mr. Sulu admonish Darth Vadar for his lack of diplomacy.

It was a very unique night.

A very musical weekend

Friday we made our first visit to Lucas Oil Stadium for the DCI semi-finals. For any readers that aren't band geeks, it is the major league of drum corps - 150 college kids traveling on buses, sleeping on gym floors and competing across the US for the summer. We saw 17 corps, including my high school favs the Phantom Regiment.

Also playing were the Holy Name Cadets (previously the Cadets of Bergen County). In high school, we marched in the Cadets Marching Band Cooperative - a group of bands from the northeast that competed against each other throughout the fall and held finals in the Meadowlands. The Cadets were thought of as the big kids we would aspire to be some day.

About half way through the Cadet's show, I realized that when I marched in their cooperative, most of the current Cadets were in diapers.

Last night we saw the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra at Conner Prairie - a living history wonderland. It was a perfect night for the happy music of Mozart with clearly skies and a lovely breeze, though the moon didn't appear until after the show.

I just drooled on my keyboard a little

If you've ever thought to yourself "I'd like to visit Indiana, but I just don't have a reason," I'm about to give you two good ones.

1) We will have a guest room -- complete with bed -- by the beginning of July. Don't worry about the crazy pink and cookie monster carpet. We're going Wild Wheat walls with a something Thrush floor. It's gonna be awesome.

2) I just discovered my favorite restaurant in the hemisphere. Not just fav in Indiana. Or on the continent. In. The. Hemisphere. Better than anything in DC (Facia Luna, Carribean Breeze and Melting Pot included). Better than anything in NY or Iceland. Brugge Brasserie.

Oh. My. Gawd.

It's a Belgian place with amazing microbrews, and the best fries on earth. You might be thinking ...Fries. Seriously? You are writing a 7000 word post on fries? Listen up! They are cooked and seasoned to perfection and come with all manner of dipping sauces including horseradish, pesto and HOT CURRY. And if we are all honest with ourselves we would come to the conclusion that everything is better with curry sauce and ketchup is truly a sad, sad condiment.

So, here is the wrap up. Bill and I had three Belgian microbrews, enough cheese board (sorry Brickskeller -- your Pentagon board is shit) and fries to make us vomit AND a chocolate crepe with raspberry sauce FOR UNDER $40. I am not sure how they pack so much heaven in such a small little place.

In summary - guest room, bed, microbrews, enough fries to vomit. You'll be glad you visited!

The brochures never mentioned earthquakes

The pooch woke us up about 10 minutes before the quake, so we were awake and alert to notice it.

There are certain things I take for granted in life and just don't ever pay attention to...you know, like oxygen. Also, the ground. It's a bit freaky when the ground does something beyond simply existing.

Our house swayed a bit (kind of like rolling?) and we could hear the ground shaking. The noise definitely traveled in a uniform direction.

Everyone and everything is fine and I now have a new attitude about dirt. Didn't much appreciate the ground shaking my old house so much, though. Kinda rude.