Card the sky !

Today I was out and about and happened to have my carders and camera with me. The sky looked just like pieces of washed fleece. So I had to take this picture :)

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Day 7 of the Fermented Suint Project came. I took out the white fleece. It was soo clean! It still had some yellowinq so I did try a hot wash with Ecos on a few locks. No real chanqe. Carded its lovely anyhow - a nice cream.

I added a chocolate Icelandic on the 18th.. Today when I checked the  ‘vat’ it was very obvious that I have fermentation! There is a very thin layer of white scum and the mixtures stinks badly. This is in spite of our coldest temperature since I started the fsm on the 11th of March.The 18th it was 11 with a low of 1. The 19th was 8 C ( approx 45 F) and 0 ( 32 F) Yesterday was 10.5 C and 0 overnight. I am really surprised and happy that this worked even in the colder temps. It was cloudy a good portion of this time too so not a lot of solar warmth.
I took out some of the icelandic - cold it has flecks of lanolin in it.Once I did a quick wash /rinse to get rid of the smell, I dried it over my heater and voila. Perfect. Tomorrow I will pull the rest and rinse it outside in cold water. As long as it stays dry out I will be drying it outside too, just in case it smells. I'm so happy to be doing processing with so much less water plus not needing to use the hot water or soap is awesome. My pictures don't do this justice.

Batts make me happy

I took up the YarnHarlot's spinning challenge this week and have spun quite a bit. Hardly a dent in my stash however. I also picked and carded up some nice batts. I find the whole process very soothing. Somedays my living room looks like a wool factory tho! I really need to stick to working in the studio. My hint for making less mess? I keep a stick vacuum close by and vacuum every time I stand up. This keeps me from tracking fluff all over the house. Well its my attempt at it anyhow :)
My pictures seem to be crappy these days so I'll be setting up a dedicated area in the studio. But for now, here's one of a nice fat batt I made up today for my friend Barb. It's darker than it appears here, and is made of 98% local wool Alpaca, llama, romney and icelandic. Theres a small amount of blue that I can't recall the source for. The browns are natural colour, and the reddish brown is alpace cria. She has sworn she will only spin flax so it'll be interesting to see what she says when she gets it .

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The Fermented Suint Project continues. Day 6 but my fleece still just smells like dirty fleece. The water has not yet a scum on top either. I am not sure if it's the lower temperatures ( we've been  consistently at about 10c/50F all week with lows of 3 or so) I will leave it until tomorrow and then remover the fleece and add some icelandic that I have, It seems to have lots of lanolin. The fleece that's in there looks  a lot cleaner  so no loss really .

Experiment in Fermented Suint Method

A few years ago iI had the idea to restrict myself to using only local wool/fleece. It's part of trying to live a more sustainable life and to support people who have local businesses and farms. We do the same for our food as much as budget allows so it was a natural move really.

In practice it turns out I can manage really well at about 80% local wool ( ie fleece) with the remainder being acrylic and other purchases used for family members who have low wool tolerance. So it kinda goes in this order:
1. Local fleeces to be processed spun and dyed by me.
2. Local people selling their stash or thrift store wool. Sometimes that means unravelling a thrift buy.
3. Buying mill ends or 'eco' type yarn at  a chain store. When I am in Ontario visiting my family go to places like Lens Mill.Or the tent sale in Listowel.Or I buy at my amazing lys.

I don't buy a lot of wool. I really like using my own.

I said all that to say this :)  : I'm trying a new to me method of cleaning fleeces. Its called Fermented Suint Method. There is lots of information on Fermented Suint thread on Ravelry ( see the spinners groups) and some online as well.
Basically you take a fairly dirty fleece and soak it for 5 to 7 days. The potassium salts in the sheep sweat (suint) breakdown and saponify.The water ferments, looks milky and smells badly. The action dissolves a lot of the lanolin, but not all. This releases a lot of the dirt.

On Monday we put a pretty dirty greasy fleece in a blue tub along with lots of water. You need soft water and luckily we have it. Today I took pictures - This is day 4. The water is starting to look sliqhtly milky but it just smells like dirty fleece so far. I am hoping its warm enough for this to work. Its been 10 to 12 degrees each day. ( 50 to 54 F.) I'm prepared for it not to work, and soaking the fleece can't hurt it :).

bubbly and milky

Ukulele!

Hi my name is Laurie and I own a ukulele. Or am owned by one as of  this week.

I have had some depression issues and really need to get out of the midwinter slumpy low down rut. I was reading the Knitty blog ( I also spin, knit, crochet, process fleece, dye and design patterns blah blah blah), and Amy has a page 'you want a uke?' there.Excellent article on how to choose one and  right away I was like 'thats what I need! something cheerful and fun!". Pro tip: There is a  knitting pattern for a felted Uke case on Knitty.

So I asked Kent if he'd take the money set aside for my new glasses and get a ukulele instead. I did some research on the net and noticed that Larsens Music seemed to have a good selection. I called and asked about the Cordoba concert . The man who answered was informative and helpful and said they did have them in stock. So off Kent went. I'm so happy he did - I really needed to just do something different and fun.

I had no idea but Victoria is a huge hotbed of Ukulele-ness :). Apparently Larsen's has the best selection and is the centre of a lot of Uke activity too.

At first it was difficult to make my fingers use the ukulele chord patterns: they wanted to default to guitar chord shapings. But right away I could sort of play, and practised probably 2 hours that night. Yesterday I think I played 4 hours . And today 2 hours already too. Kent says he now has a soundtrack to his day. He's pretty happy for a metal lovin' guy !

I spoke to Jamsang Lodto about his new classes that start at Esquimalt Rec today. He was really interesting to talk to ( and listen to! ). I don't know much about the local scene but it's obvious he's very well known by what I've seen on the web. I did a lot of research while looking for songs to play. As usual, I can't do anything at a 'normal' pace but must immerse myself. I've long ago stopped trying to change myself from that way. It's just natural for me.

Back to Jamsang and classes - the evening class was what I thought I could get to plus my lovely daughter Cori had agreed to go with me. But sadly it was full and there is a waiting list even. So I'm thinking I will attend the every other Wednesday night ukulele circle instead. I'm not sure I would be classified as a complete beginner anyhow since I can tune the instrument, play songs and know about 10 chords now. Hard to know.

I'm excited !