A peek into the world of that most rabid of all polygons... the triangle. Are you ready to be excited, charmed, and impressed? If so, you're probably in the wrong place. Please enjoy, anyway, though.
I have to admit... I live in a total mess. I need to clean up my living space. It's causing mental distress and it's just damn wrong. I deserve better. So, starting today, I am accepting the challenge to unfuck my habitat. There's a lovely tumblr group out there and even an iPhone app.
My goals are simple: get something done every day. Three things in my bedroom that need to be done before work each and every day. Whether it's changing my sheets or reorganizing my books or cleaning off my bedside table. My goal is to have my bedroom looking like a person lives here by January 1st. On my days off, I will be doing either additional things or more difficult and time consuming ones.
The whole idea behind unfuck your habitat is to do 20 minutes of work at a time and then rest. This helps avoid burn out and you get more done doing a little a few times every day than you do in a cleaning frenzy. So, wish me luck!
Today's unfucking included putting my clean work uniforms away in the closet, put my new sheets set on the bed, and wash one load of clothes. I'll be staying up long enough to pop my things in the dryer and then go to bed. I feel rather awful and I'm afraid I'm getting sick or something.
The past few days have been quite eventful for me as far as spinning goes! First, I started plying my rambouillet yarn. It looks great!
So far, it's come out to 580 yards of fingering weight 2 ply yarn. It's smooshy and soft and I'm very much looking forward to dyeing it. I'm going to save that mini skein, which is about 25 yards, and knit a square of my sock yarn blanket before and after adding dye. That's the plan, at least.
I have been spindling up a storm, as well! I have a few pictures here and there, but I haven't been posting them. Woops!
This is the 1 oz amount I spun up on the spindle and have now wound off and started the last ounce of the braid. Woo!
It's kind of awesome, because Dax helped and held the spindle while I wound the yarn off of it. It was very sweet and and helpful of him.
Anyway, it looks like my TdF progress is going very, very well and I'm interested in seeing how this targhee turns out once it's plied. It's not as uniform and even as my wheelspun yarn, but I really haven't had too much practice with the spindle. As it is, I'm just thrilled to be on the show. :)
I have finished working with half the fiber for both of my major projects and wound everything up into balls to be used for plying once the other half is finished! Yay!
The targhee looks good. The two amounts I spun up on the spindle are not equal, but I'm hoping I'll be able to join them up during plying since yardage is not going to be the same between the two of them, anyway. I wish I had bothered to get a picture of the cop on the spindle before taking it off to wind, but I was so excited I didn't think of it.
The rambouillet is my pride and joy. During the winding process, I realized exactly how consistent it was and was pleasantly surprised. Yes, it has nepps and it's a bit bumpy, but the overall consistency is pretty even, so yay! Also it looks like it'll ply up into a lace weight yarn... considering this is 4 oz already, I am actually rather upset about this because this is only the first half of the fiber. I have 4 oz left. No one in their right mind needs 8 oz of laceweight yarn. Anyway, I may end up plying this on itself and leaving it at that. I'm also excited about the prospect of dyeing this because it's my first time really spinning an undyed white yarn.
The little bit at the top is what I worked on with the tahkli. It got full pretty fast, but I think I was just not winding the cop on evenly enough. I will continue to mess with it here and there and report the results, but it's not a priority right now.
Today was a decent day for spinning for me. I spent some quality time with my wheel and some Battlestar Galactica. I think the yarn is turning out great so far and I'm looking forward to finishing up the first four ounces. That was the goal for today, but alas I was distracted by the humidity. I had more than one moment of desperately wanting to lay down spread eagle on the floor under the ceiling fan. It rained this evening and the humidity in the air is just awful and it makes everything feel sticky, so working with wool was not a terribly attractive idea. I did get quite a bit spun, though, so it wasn't a total loss.
Wow, I can't believe it's been thirteen days already! I have gotten quite a bit of spinning done today, I think. My main task was to get my fiber all portioned out and really get a good look at how much I've done as the tour is now more than halfway over. I'm about where I expected to be, halfway or so. I'm hoping to hit the halfway mark in my fiber for both of my main projects tomorrow.
I spent the entire day with my two good friends and their daughter and I had the opportunity to spindle a teensy bit while we were at an indoor playground. It was a fun place and I'm looking forward to going again sometime.
Anyway, a picture!
I love the red of this fiber. Andrea at Natural Obsessions does such a great job! I also spun a bit on the wheel, but not enough to take a picture of, really. It doesn't look too terribly different. Anyway, I'm going to have some free time tomorrow so I'm looking forward to getting quite a bit done. It's the second bit of the tour, now, I have to get a move on and push toward my goals!
Well, I bet the first question is about Day 11. Yesterday was a day of rest and I didn't spin a damn thing. It was well-deserved and it felt nice to just sit back and take a break and knit for a bit.
Day 10 was Monday. I had a really strangely busy day and didn't get around to spinning at all until about 6:30 while I was at game night. You see a recurring theme? Anyway, I had a lot of fun drop spindling and I'm getting pretty good at walking around while spinning, which is indeed necessary when you've been sitting debating rules and strategy for a bit and you just need to get up off your butt and move around.
Day 12 was today, Wednesday. I wasn't too horribly busy and, honestly, it was quite a rainy day and I wanted to do nothing more than sit and spin while watching random episodes of anime or Battlestar Galactica, which I did until about 5:30 and then went to dinner with a friend and then bought comic books and hung out a bit. Anyway, when I got home I was greeted by a package!
A few days ago, someone on ravelry messaged me after seeing a post I had made about wanting to try my hand with the tahkli. Turns out, she had an extra and asked me if I was interested in her sending it to me. I thanked her profusely and gave her my address and it shipped miraculously fast with some surprise unknown fiber inside, which I shamelessly began spinning before I even took a picture of the spindle. Since that's how I roll.
Anyway, a tahkli spindle is a very small spindle that can be spun sort of like a top and goes at really high speeds, so it's ideal for working with short staple fibers like cotton and, apparently, cat fur?
Anyway, this video shows some of the basics of using a tahkli and even making the puni, which is another way to prepare cotton fiber rather than just roving. It's a good video to just see the mechanics, at any rate.
Anyway, the generous, amazing, wonderful, amazeballs person of amazingness who sent me this beautiful gift has an etsy shop called Unwind Yarn Company and she has some gorgeous fiber and yarn and just... yeah. So, in return for her amazing act of kindness I am giving her a piece of my soul and a shameless shout out to my tee nincey audience that may or may not actually exist. Huzzah!
Anyway, I made some great progress today and I am looking forward to filling up my bobbin on my spinning wheel, probably tomorrow! Hopefully this is a sign of things to come and I may actually finish all 8 oz of my rambouillet roving I have!
I had a very busy day, today. Aside from work, which was good, I had a few errands to run. I went to the pet shop and bought food for the rats, cats, and my dad's parrot because he was out. Cat food and rat food are pretty reasonably priced, in my opinion, but when I got to the parrot food I was completely shocked. $22 for 4.5 lbs. Really? I was not aware that my dad's pretentious bird had a strict dietary requirement of unicorn farts and fairy eyelashes. Sheesh! I, of course, bought it and he is probably looking in my direction with murderous intent. Ingrate.
Anyway, after all of that excitement, I went and played Pathfinder at a friend's house and spun like the wind!
I wound a ball of singles and started spinning a new cop! Woo! It was fun and I really wasn't too distracted for game, to be honest. It was a lot of fun and I have game tomorrow, so I'm looking forward to bringing my spinning up to Denny's. Oh, joy.
