Weird dream

Hopefully Celeste can shed some light on this one.

I dreamed that I was responsible for taking care of a whole bunch of bunnies that were in groups in different parts of my house, except it wasn't my current house, it was a house I've never seen before. They appeared to be wild baby bunnies (very little, with brown fur). I also owned some ferrets that kept wanting to attack the bunnies and I spent a lot of time trying to keep the ferrets away. Also, the bunnies shed their skins periodically like snakes, which freaked me out when I found the first one because I thought the ferrets had killed one of them.

Spinning update

I posted about this on Ravelry, but not on my blog, so here's a series of photos showing the combed-top-to-finished-yarn progression for about 4oz of merino (soft soft!) that I dyed and spun into a 2-ply yarn. I am fascinated by the way hand-dyed tops/rovings develop into finished yarn. The results are never quite what I expect (in a good way!). And I'm still in the throes of my barber-pole 2-ply obsession; I'll be spinning 2-ply yarns for some time to come.

They want us to die

I am convinced that the makers of battery-operated CO and smoke detectors must secretly want all of their customers to die of asphyxiation or burn to death.

1.) CO and smoke detectors are programmed with special factory-set timers to hit their low-battery warning state between the hours of 1am and 5am on a work night. Have you ever had one of these devices start its warning chirps at, say, 2pm on a Saturday? Me either.

2.) The battery cases on CO and smoke detectors are not made to be easily opened by bleary-eyed, sleep-deprived people in the wee hours of the night. They require a screwdriver, a chisel, or at least a determinedly-wielded butter knife to pry open, as well as intense illumination to read the "battery compartment instructions", which were molded in 4-pt barely-raised type that blends perfectly with the rest of the case and is nearly illegible in direct sunlight, let alone the crappy 60-watt bulb in the hallway light fixture you're standing under, squinting and cursing.

3.) By the time you've finally ripped off the battery cover and flung the handful of AAs to the floor to get the incessant, hellish chirping to stop, you've broken off some fragile but vital plastic tab that secures the batteries in place and without which the unit will simply not operate. You decide it's probably time to replace the damn thing with a new one anyway, maybe a hard-wired unit that won't awaken you at 3am the morning before an important work meeting, so you set it aside and decide to deal with it later. Much later. Months in the future, when your house bursts into flames (or your furnace starts pumping carbon monoxide through the vents), the plans of the evil smoke/CO detector companies come to fruition.

Blue fingernails

I've been dyeing fiber nearly every day for the past week and a half, and I think my cuticles are permanently blue. Nothing has sold yet in the Etsy store; I have nothing to replace, so tonight I'm taking a break. Here are a few of the latest Columbia/Dorset tops I've dyed, each in the 5-6oz range. They'll go up in the store in the next few days; I'm adding new items one at a time as per the advice of other Etsy-ers. Including these I have 5 more already-dyed tops/rovings to add.

African Violets:

Raindrops on Roses:

Field of Flowers:

I've noticed that I like the results best when I say, 'Hey, I have 7 partial containers of dye solution sitting around, let's mix 'em all up and slap them all over the fiber."

I've been spinning up the Lupin Bandit roving, and I'm about halfway through the second bobbin. If I can get this all spun up, I may get to ply it this weekend.

I've also been knitting away on the Simple Yet Effective shawl. To make sure it turns out a reasonable size, I decided to add in random stripes from a skein of brown Fibre Company Terra that I bought last winter to make a scarf for Jag (except that I stupidly didn't ask what color he wanted, and it turned out he wanted green). It seems to coordinate well with the handspun and I'm getting to use up some really nice stash yarn (it's a very soft silk/alpaca/merino blend).

Yay for handspun

After considering a number of patterns, I cast on for a Simple Yet Effective shawl with the Autumn Bliss handspun.

I think a plain garter/stockinette fabric like this will show off the colors much better than something lacy.

The shop is live!

The first 5 rovings are up for sale at the Etsy store! I spent the morning outside taking pictures of the rovings I've dyed so far, with Jag acting as wool taxi, and the afternoon getting the photos all picked through and post-processed. Then I crossed my fingers and opened the store. I'm reasonably happy with the pictures I managed to get, which use a cute metal cat Greg gave me a few years back as a prop.

Here are some pictures of the three new rovings I dyed on Saturday, with the metal kitty:

Sweet Petunia, Merino top.

Dreaming of September, Merino top.

Rocky Shore, superwash merino.

We'll see how it goes. I comfort myself with the thought that I really like everything I've dyed so far, so if nothing sells, I GET TO KEEP THEM HAHAHAHA. It would sure be nice to sell a few, though!

Things that have pissed me off today

1.) My crappy new health insurance company (hi there, AETNA), which requires that you mail-order all prescriptions after you've had them refilled twice at retail. And doesn't tell you about this little requirement. And then just flatly refuses to pay their share of the prescription when you show up at the drug store to pick up your latest installment, so you end up paying full price because you kinda need that prescription right now, which is why you have "refills" in the first place.

2.) VistaPrint, the online business card company. I ordered cards from them August 2 and paid extra for their 7-day processing and shipping. The ship notification came on August 4. By August 14, still no sign of the cards. I contacted DHL about the tracking number listed on the VistaPrint web site (which had showed as permanently "Shipping Info Received" since August 4) and DHL had no record of ever receiving the package. I called VistaPrint; the first CSR took my info, put me on hold, and promptly hung up on me. The second kept putting me on hold due to "system problems" and being unable to track down a supervisor, and was unable do so anything for me except order a re-print at the same priority as the last one, which meant waiting at least another week for something that should have arrived days ago. I cancelled the order, asked for a refund, and ordered MOO cards instead with happy imported-from-Flickr pictures of my hand-dyed rovings on them. They'll ship from London, but I bet I'll get them before this coming Friday.

Last two....

Here are the two more subdued rovings I did last night. They came out REALLY fluffy and nice. I'm trying different methods of rinsing/soaking after dyeing to see what works best.

I've discovered that 1.) I'm running out of blue dye and 2.) all of my rovings except ONE has some blue in the color mix, so my challenge to myself for the next three rovings is to use no blue dye at all. Apparently I really like blue.

"Sing Blue Silver", targhee wool.

"Fairy Garden", a bigger-than-usual 6oz-er of Columbia/Dorset

Three more....

I forgot to take pictures of these tonight until it was getting pretty dark out, but here are the three rovings I dyed on Tuesday evening:

Jeans and an Orange Sweatshirt, Targhee wool top.

Open Water, Merino wool.

A Day at the Bazaar, Merino wool.

It's occurred to me that although I like really bright saturated colors, not everyone does, so I dyed up 2 more subdued rovings this evening. Pictures of those probably tomorrow.

What I've been up to

I've dyed 7 rovings in the past 2 evenings; the first 4 were dry enough to photograph when I got home after work last night. The other 3 dried fully last night and are braided up, but the light this morning was bad (and then there's the issue of the RAIN making it hard to take outside pictures). I really need to make a light box for photographing these things. I want to have at least 12 rovings ready to go before I start updating the store.

I've had my first experience dyeing superwash merino, and it's a super pain in the ass. It's like dandelion fluff. Wonderfully soft, but damn does it want to be cotton candy and shred all over the sink. The regular Merino and Targhee I dyed last night were great to work with by comparison, and they dry up so soft, fluffy and plump. I suspect I just don't like superwash wool very much, period. I have some Wensleydale that I want to try dyeing up tonight.

Assuming that it's not pouring rain when I get home, I'll post pictures of the newest three rovings this evening, but here some samples of the first four:

Ice Palace (Columbia/Dorset)

Tropical Sunset (Superwash Merino)

Dappled Firs (Superwash Merino)

Sea and Sand (Columbia/Dorset)

All spun up

I've just posted my first entry on www.crazycatfibers.com, my "shop blog" for the soon-to-open Etsy store. It's about the same info as I have below, so no need to rush over. I plan to update it every time I do a shop update, the first of which will hopefully happen later this week if the shipment of roving arrives tomorrow as expected. It's going to be a busy couple of evenings! Stupid day job.

The Autumn Bliss roving that Jag and I dyed is spun, plied, washed, and whacked, and is nearly dry from hanging out on the porch. 4.8oz/139gm of fiber, 520 yards of sport to light worsted weight 2-ply yarn. I'm looking at shawl and shrug patterns so I can get to knitting with it ASAP.

Jag is moving along with his weaving project. It's been slow going, and there are mutterings about his never doing tapestry weaving again, but he's finding ways to speed things up and has made a good bit of progress. The fabric he's making is very sturdy and the color transitions are looking pretty much perfect now.

Autumn Bliss

The lovely, unseasonably mild weather so far this weekend makes me wish it was October already. Jag and I drove down to Little River Park this morning for a walk, after first heading to West Point on the Eno and finding that the gates were still unaccountably chained shut at 8:55am (they open at 8am, according to the signs).

In keeping with the autumnal theme, I plied up the first bobbin of the Autumn Bliss roving today. I'm really thrilled with how it's turning out. I'm hoping to get the rest of the roving spun up and all plied by the end of the day, mainly so I have something to put on my new "shop blog" (link to come later).

From this:

To this:

In which I enter the cut-throat world of Etsy

This past weekend was pretty good, despite my being on an electronic leash the entire time. (The pager handoff is tomorrow morning; I feel like drinking a bottle of wine tomorrow night, just because I CAN). In addition to Starrlight Meadery's very tasty and fun Mead Day celebration hosted at the Chatham Hill Winery in Morrisville (in which I regretfully had to limit my participation, due to the above-mentioned leash), there was the predictable craft activity.

I've spun up an entire bobbin of the "Autumn Bliss" roving, and I can't wait to get the second one filled so I can ply them together.

Jag has made some more progress on the wool and cotton 2-color weaving he's working on; you can see here how the colors are going to zig-zag back and forth.

I finished knitting up the ribbed mini-scarf with my first 98 or so yards of plied, hand-dyed handspun. This is a very cute and useful project if you have limited amounts of yarn. After it's washed and blocked I'll be looking for a large button to sew on.

Finally, I've decided to stick my toe into the Etsy waters and see if I can sell some of my hand-dyed rovings and various other items. The virtual shelves will be empty for at least another week and a half, but in the meantime, here's my little storefront, crazycatfibers.etsy.com. If I can sell a few things, great; if not, I won't have to buy any spinning fibers for many months.