caracolina

John got me a variety of cotton fibers for my birthday, among them were two large bags of Pima cotton, from Cotton Clouds in Safford, AZ. He thought they said it could be spun right out of the bag, but I just couldn’t do it. Instead I used a set of Strauch hand cards which I bought at Yarn School and practiced carding cotton fibers. I filled a basket of rolags (I wouldn’t call them punis because I didn’t roll them around a dowel when pulling off the card) and used those for spinning practice. In the photo you can see the bobbin with my yarn resting on the uncarded fibers and behind the bobbin a rolled up rolag. There are lots of little nubs and noils in the rolags but no amount of carding seemed to get rid of them. I just have to practice more, I guess, but at this point I need a break because I keep hitting the knuckles on my pinky finger and they are sore and bleeding. I am considering putting masking tape over them when I card again.

The bin is still infested, but I found out, thanks to this blog, that those things are fungus gnats, not fruit flies. One dead giveaway was that they were not interested in fruit (duh!). Luckily, since they are mostly interested in moist dirt, they’ve been hanging out in the bin a lot. I hope to pick up some sticky fly paper or other gnat catching device soon to cut down on their numbers. If that fails, we’ll have to gather the boys and start over.

Here are my first 5 inches of rug mark II. I certainly learned a few things and I’m pleased with how it is turning out, but I’m curious about that big dip in the middle. I wonder if the warp is too spaced out in those areas. I’ll find out at tonight’s class! Also, I hope to add some diagonal patterns (squash blossoms, maybe?) as the center design, let’s see if I can pull this off with some help.

A few days ago John found out about a farm near Yuma, AZ, where folks can go pick their own blackberries for less than $4 per pound! And they don’t count how much you eat while picking! Well, we couldn’t eat that much because we were on a fast, but a few were sampled and they were sweet!

We got up at 4:45 AM so that we’d be there early because John had promised Sonal he’d watch the store from 4 PM to close. On the drive down there I started my first lace shawl, the swallowtail shawl (by Evelyn Clark from Interweave Knits Fall 2006). I tried this one last week but the needle I was using was too dull (one of my Denise interchangeables) so I bought new one at Fiber Factory and started over. I’m using Knit Picks Alpaca Cloud in smoke and so far it is working out well!

After our arrival at the Silvas Farm around 9:30 we set out to pick and ended up with over 16 pounds of berries. The picture above was taken when we were done and you can tell it got quite hot. We left around noon and where back in Phoenix by 3:30 PM. Berry season doesn’t last very long, get more information at www.silvasfarms.com.

Tonight we tied our warps on our looms, made heddles, wound yarn on shuttles and got started weaving. Never mind if you didn’t get all that, it’s just weaver lingo. Two things were very exciting for me: 1) John was doing well, enjoying himself while appreciating the challenge and 2) I got to use our own loom which is so neat although the thing is so big it is tough to fit into the back seat and it makes the warp look tiny because I chose the make it the same size as the rest of class who is using smaller school looms.

Regarding the pattern: all I know so far is that I’ll finish at least an inch of tan, then do some coal mine, and then a variety of stripes. I want to try some squash blossoms in the middle of the rug because they use diagonals and that will be my new challenge for this rug. I don’t want to overdo it on the rest of the weaving and instead will focus on keeping the sides neat and the warp covered. Let the weaving begin!

The weather report was right for once. This morning has been cool, cloudy, and windy and I can almost smell some rain. We opened the front and balcony doors to let the breeze go through. The trees are swaying in the wind, just beautiful. Nice break in the hot weather, although it hasn’t been as hot as last year around this time (yet).

It’s done! The ceremony lasted longer than I thought and I managed not to trip or drop my mortar board while walking on stage. After receiving my “degree” from college president Kickels I am shown here shaking hands with former AZ senator Dennis De Concini. I’d never heard of him before, but he was a good speaker. By the way, the curtain thing I am wearing is my honor cord, for my 3.925 GPA. I’m happy I got that because I had never bothered with joining the Honor Society or Phi Theta Kappa. When I realized I was eligible it was too late and I could not join PTK retroactively, missing my chance to wear a golden stole and blue cord! Oh well, they saved me $70,  which will go to a good cause – namely John’s new camera. After the ceremony John and I skipped the reception and instead celebrated with dinner at Claim Jumper. 

I bought a share at Martha’s Vineyard Fiber Farm a few months ago but just received my shareholder’s certificate in the mail, yay! MVFF is the first “official” fiber CSA that I’ve heard of and buying a share means I’m getting a bunch of unspun fiber in the mail after Fall shearing. In a CSA the share is paid for in advance which means that you may get more or less, depending on how the season turned out. John and I have subscribed to a local CSA for vegetables before and we never quite knew what we’d be getting in our share box (that was part of the fun, actually). 

MVFF just celebrated the Spring shearing in April with a big fiber fest. I wish we could go to the Fall shearing…

After our day out at the Farm Stand we stopped at Indo Euro to chat with Sonal and picked up a mehendi cone that Rinku left there for me. I applied two design, the one above (from a book by Lezard Cheung) and some flowers on the palm of the left hand. I love having henna on my hands, don’t know why, but it just makes me feel good. Maybe it has something to do with my former life as an Indian (as our Indian friends would say). Or maybe because it is the closest thing I’ll have to a tattoo.

Although tempted to stay at home and spin, spin, spin, I opted for the nice thing to do and joined John at Tonopah Rob’s Farm Stand today. Of course that meant getting up at an ungodly hour but it is nice to pitch in (yes, I have my own chore – fill the CSA boxes with fruit and veg for the subscribers), chat with the locals, have fun with Rob and Jerry, and I even got some spinning in because I brought my drop spindle.

On the way home we stopped at Chile Acres and dropped a few fiber goodies off for Celia. Friends can’t let friends run out of things to spin!