Maia Spins

Not Covered

Velma and I are on the road to the Spin-Off Autumn Retreat (SOAR) in the new (to me) camper.  We just landed in Grants Pass, Oregon.  Tomorrow we go to Bend, Oregon.  I can't wait to see everyone!

Leading up to SOAR I had been dyeing like a mad woman.  My dye studio is in the courtyard of my house.  My house is C-shaped and the courtyard is a nice centrally located spot to work in.  It is outdoors though.  That isn't an issue most of the time as we have very mild weather here (down to the 30s in winter and rarely hotter than high 70s in summer).  I do need some rain and sun protection, otherwise I just dress according to the temperature.

I have used a 10 foot by 10 foot canopy for the last year and it has served me well.  Last year we had a big wind storm that blew it over and put a few rips into it.  I learned my lesson and staked it down (apparently, they come with the canopy for a reason - who knew?).

A week ago we had a huge wind and rain storm.  I awoke in the morning to find this:

Pretty blue sky where no sky should be visible.  Not the end of the world as the sun shifts this time of year and I don't get a lot of direct light into the courtyard.

Until this:

Not so blue skies over my "canopy".  Houston we have a problem.

A trip to the hardware store for a few supplies and all was well:

All MacGyvered up!  Please note the cunning use of large binder clips.  I am particularly proud of that innovation.  The plastic was even long enough to cover the bikes that don't fit in the garage at the moment because we are also living in a construction zone (bedroom remodel).  I went inside feeling very smug and self-satisfied.

You see what is coming don't you.  I didn't until it started raining just an hour later.  It was coming down by the bucket load (I think we got about 6 inches of rain that day).  After an hour or so of heavy rain I heard a loud thud.  Yup, canopy collapse!  The plastic had allowed ponding that put the sides of the canopy in lateral bending (gotta use the engineer speak once in a while or I get rusty).

The result?

I don't think chewing gum and baling wire will fix this. 

Luckily, the rain moved on and I was able to complete my dyeing.  Here is a bit of what I did:

Tussah Silk Lace and Silk Caps.  Yummy!

What about the canopy?  We have been meaning find a better solution.  I guess that time is nigh.

On Top of the Crumpetty Tree

In my last post I mentioned that I would be vending at SOAR.  Since I am a solo operation now, I do a fellow fiber fiend to help me out at shows.  Enter Velma.  If you don't know Velma, you should.  She is fun, funny, earnest, sweet, smart, and all around lovely.  Did I mention that she is hee-LAIR-ious?

Give the woman some chocolate and she gets nutty.

Now referred to as the chocoincident.

You can find her in Velma's World.  She also spins art yarns and dyes fibers at COLORBOMB Creations.  Her color sensibility is rather different than mine (read bright and LOUD!) in a delightful way. 

She went with me to California Wool & Fiber (aka Boonville) last month.  We camped out behind the fairgrounds.  (The camper wasn't with us yet, the clutch dropped out as we were driving it to my house for loading.  At least that happened close to home!)  When we were breaking down the campsite to go home, Velma caught this shot of me.

Yup, that's me with my finger in the air valve.  She says I am adorkable.  Did I mention that she is a wordsmith?  Love that!  Life is always interesting in Velma's World.

The Good Guest

Recently a friend came to visit us.  Luckily, we just finished fixing up Kay's old room as a fiber & yarn / guest room (a.k.a. The Study).

We (okay really this is Roger's handiwork, however, it is MY blog so I shall take some credit) stripped the room down to studs, added insulation, and put in new doors and windows. The wall treatment is a picture rail, chair rail, and a plaster finish below the chair rail (not shown, but it is a lovely warm tan).  The room is the nicest one in the house now complete with a comfy fold out couch (segue back to the guest).

Gretchen spent 5 wonderful days with us.  We explored the East Bay, ate yummy food (we pulled out our mad cookin' skillz), and just hung out.  She kept me mightily entertained during long hours of fiber and yarn washing. 

I know Gretchen via an old and wonderful friend, not via fibery/yarny goodness.  However, she is a knitter (we are EVERYWHERE!).  I was even able to lure her into the wonderful world of yarn making.  We started with a spindle, but she quickly moved on to my Matchless.  A natural spinner!

I think I may have learned a new spinning trick from her.

I so enjoyed having a house guest; I'm busily inviting out of town fiber friends.  Okay, maybe some non-fibery friends too (maybe I can convert them?!?).  You know who you are!

Need Lots of Post-it Notes

We all need a reminder.  OperationBeautiful.com. 

Many thanks to Mary-Heather for the link.  More here. 

Hello Bedhead

Part of my plan to post smaller, more frequent blog posts.  Hopefully more interesting than this! I know I have been a bad blogger.  (But a VERY busy dyer).

Follow me on twitter, I post there regularly as MaiaSpins.

Lazy Day

Happy Easter and Passover!  I hope spring is treating you all well.  The weather here is bright, sunny, and warm.  A delightful spring day.

I woke up sore this morning and feeling lazy.  I did something I haven't done in ages.  It involved rolling over and picking up a book.  There was a time when every morning started this way (or at least I wanted it too!).  Somehow I lost my habit of reading.  Bad move.  Reading is such a joy. 

But, what to read?  I am so out of the loop that I don't have any ideas.  Please suggest some titles for me.  I like Barbara Kingsolver, Isabelle Allende, and Alice Walker.  A bit of quirkiness never is amiss.  And, animals, love me some critters.  Non-fiction maybe?  Clearly, I am not very focused.

The lazy day continues.  Some shawl knitting, a baseball game (viewed from home and my comfy couch), maybe a bit of gardening.  Somehow Easter has become my day to plant tomatoes.  That would require getting out of my jammies and going to the getting place though.  Might be too tall a task.

My (not so) big news today . . . a hair cut.  And a few self-portraits a la Rachael the Queen of self-portraits.

Roger says it looks like I have deep thoughts.  I'm pretty sure he was making a joke at my expense.

Way too many chins happening here.  And, why do my eyes disappear when I smile?

This one is so very wrong.  For so many reasons. 

Not too bad.

Impish!

Love the hair cut!  It is short, sassy, and easy.  Can you believe that I had hair to my hips for 20 years?  No bangs or anything.  Never again.

Have a happy day!

Madrona Adventure

I have been looking forward to the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat for a while.  It is a wonderful event with great teachers teaching wonderful classes and a nice marketplace.  While I am going just to be a vendor, it is crazy fun.  I know that as soon as I walk in the door I'll see fibery people I love.  What I hadn't accounted for the adventure it would take to get here.

We (I am traveling with our friend and fellow fiber fiend Kris) left Tuesday morning and drove up I-5 hoping to get to northern Oregon before stopping for the night.  The northmost edge of California is very hilly.  The Siskiyou Mountains span from northern California into southern Oregon.  Well, as we climbed into the Siskiyous it started to snow.  Neither one of us has much experience with driving in the snow.  At Yreka we were diverted of of the freeway and it became clear that we had to have chains in order to drive through the pass.

Luckily, the local auto parts store was well supplied with chains.  How much of their annual income do you think is in chains?  Talk about a captive audience.

After a dinner of bad Mexican food (so cruel for those of us accustomed to really good Mexican food), we headed back to the freeway.  $20 will get a nice fool man to install them for you.  Money very well spent I say.  Never having installed them, I didn't want to get cold and wet and dirty (and probably quite cranky) by trying to do so in the dark on the side of the road.

A cute officer of the highway patrol was verifying that all vehicles had chains on before allowing them onto the freeway.  We stopped, awaited his signal, and then pealed out.  Maybe I should have mentioned that we are driving Brooke's pick-up (full of fibery goodness of course).  I has an itchy accelerator.  The lightest touch and it jumps forward.  I had already pealed for a toll taker and after just about every time I'd come to a full stop.  Who knows what kind of reputation I am leaving in my wake.

The drive through the pass was long and grueling.  Visibility was often only a couple of car lengths and it was anybody's guess where the lanes actually were (did I mention that we had thick fog too), but two hours later we came down out of the snow and fog and into Ashland, Oregon.  We unchained (anyone else singing Ray Charles now?) and pushed onto Roseburg.  It was not nearly as far north as we would have preferred, but we made it through the pass (huge relief!).  It also gave us the opportunity to have a really fabulous breakfast at Peggy's just off I-5 in Rice Hill, Oregon.

We arrived safe and sound at Madrona in time (barely) to set up the booth.  We did lose the truck key, finding ourselves trapped in downtown Tacoma without a room, but that is another story.  Right now we are happy to be here with our fibery friends.

Portal to the Good Stuff

They is a lot of Ravelry love out there.  Here are a few of my favorite replies to the contest post.

Rachel says:

My favorite thing about Ravelry is how I can look up a pattern to see what it looks like on 'real' people, and also to see what yarns others used to knit them. Conversely, if I have a yarn for which I haven't decided on a use, I can check out what others are doing with the same thing. I think I've avoided a few mistakes this way!

Mrs. C says:

I love the feature of checking on friends activity...they pick some great patterns & it gives me another place to search for ideas for knitting.

Issy says:

It's hard to narrow down a favorite Ravelry feature. The fact that a free site has so much accessible information is pretty awesome.

Very good point!

Cathy says:

Ravelry has so many features that I love, from the inventory of one's needles and yarn that can be printed out at the click of a button, to the great search feature for patterns.

Karrie Says:

I think the "Ravel it" bookmarklet (bottom of the main pattern page) is an under appreciated feature. I have mine in my toolbar and when I am blog reading it lets me dump pattern directly into my queue.

Marcia says:

My favorite thing about ravelry is the links. When I see some has made something beautiful, I can immediately follow links to other things they have made, their designs, web page, and shop. It's a portal to the good stuff.

But, you want to know who the winners are don't you?  The random number generator picked Marcia, Anne, and Nicole.  Congratulations ladies!  Let me know if you are interested in spinning or knitting (or both) stash.  I'll send a picture with some options for you to pick from.

On the knitting front, I am more than half way through the crochet cast off of Amaryllis.

I'm really not sure about the orange at the edge.  The whole shawl may end up in the dyepot.  I'll wait until it is blocked before I decide.  Blocking can work miracles (said hopefully).

New Looks

I am playing with the look of my blog.  Just needed to mix it up a little.  I am also revamping my link lists and creating separate pages for them.  They will trickle back in as I clear out broken links and create the pages.  My hope is to get a more streamlined look. 

It is a bit like cleaning out the closet.  You look at a jumbled mess and think 50% must be junk.  Then you get into it and can't part with much.  More proof that I am a pack rat.

We are also clearing out the garage.  It will get insulated, sheet rocked, and painted.  Guess why.  I am getting a dye studio!  Yes!!!  Huge thanks to hubby for making it happen.

In cleaning out the garage, we found stuff that is usable, but not for us any more.  I joined Freecycle and posted it.  Not only have I found happy homes for all of it, but we got some free insulation!  If you aren't familiar with Freecycle, it is a group that puts together folks who have useful stuff with folks who want it and always for free.  Check out the website to find a group near you.  Recycling is great, reuse is better!

No knitting content today.  Nothing much to show yet.  Amaryllis has just a few more insanely slow rounds to go.  Each round is about 900 stitches now.  I want to finish it before I work on other projects.

To distract you, I present my new addiction: IHasAHotdog.  Thank you Rachael for the link.

This is so Sammie (but not literally Sammie).

There is still time to enter the I Heart Ravelry Contest.  Contest ends this evening or whenever I get around to drawing a random number.

Little Things

Sometimes little things can really brighten a rough week.  Today I am very grateful for little things.

I ordered some clothes from Lands End hoping to find jean I like.  We all know how hard it is to find jeans that fit right.  When your source changes from basic jeans to trendy-stretch-flared-leg-which-is-so-not-your-style jeans, the hunt is on.  Not only did I find at least one pair that I like, there was a mystery pair of chocolate chinos that fit well too.  I swear I don't remember ordering them, but I do love them.

The local hardware store was having their annual sidewalk sale and I scored some things that I've been meaning to buy for cheap, cheap, cheap.

My Rhinebeck Blogger Bingo bag and button came.  I am a square this year.  I say this year like I always attend (don't you know).  This is my first time and I am sooooo excited!  It is just around the corner.  If you are also attending, please look for me and say hi.

And my absolute favorite not-so-little thing is that my loved one is home from the hospital!  Yay!!!!!  What a relief!

While I try to catch up, I'll show you a couple of projects.  Both are for patterns for my friend Jeane of Elemental Affects.  We were in the booth next to her at the California Wool & Fiber Festival (my report coming soon, check out Brooke's report in the meanwhile).  Jeane is so much fun!  Anyway, I am writing a sock pattern for her and rewriting my Big Bag pattern for her yarn.

These are the socks.  I knit them in two different color patterns.  The yarn is her Natural Shetland fingering weight.  She buys Judith MacKenzie's Shetland wool and has it processed into this fingering weight yarn and a worsted weight.  It is 100% US yarn!  Gotta love that!

Here is the Big Bag in Jeane's worsted weight double stranded.  It isn't felted yet, but it does come with two cute doggies!  Okay, it doesn't, but they are very cute and sweet.  They are Brooke's dogs; she is test knitting the pattern and making a sample for Jeane.  The dogs are for scale.  They can't be more than 4 pounds each.

I am working on the final installment of the mystery sock.  It has been delayed for obvious reasons.  The irony of writing up the most complicated sock pattern I've ever written, during a time of great stress has not escaped me.  Ah, a kick in the pants from life.  Thank you life.  Reminds me of the curse "may you live in interesting times".  I am hoping for the regular and mundane.  Just for a little while.