i know this photo is a little blurry, but what a great color, eh? perfect for a perfect summer day. this is the first year that we have so many nice pears on our tree . . . usually they are all speckled with something bad by now, but this year they seem to have escaped that.

today was spinning class, yay. i really look forward to sundays for that now. this morning i got up early and spun for a couple of hours before class; i’m still working away on the alpaca/wool top but am making steady progress. it’s laceweight, what can i say—laceweight is slow.

in lieu of continuing work on that during class, i hauled down the drum carder and a mix of fibers to do a demo for my students. little did i know that i was about to taint the process of carding for them for some time to come (i have every faith that some day they will revisit the idea with a more positive attitude).

not that anything went wrong—just the opposite in fact. it’s just that carding is, well, slow. and a little tedious. certainly you can make blended yarns much more quickly by purchasing pre-prepped fiber blends. but hey, i had to put it out there.

and, i admit, i had a specific project in mind that i’ve been lazy about for too long. you see, david’s very favorite socks are the ones i knit from handspun yarn. now, i wouldn’t even dream of knitting handspun socks for most other people. i mean, we are talking hours of work there for something that gets a big fat hole in it pretty quick. and that’s before the knitting commences.

but david has me wrapped around his little finger when it comes to indulging his sock preferences. and he does get plenty of mileage out of them—most pairs of handspun socks last him at least
18 months, with pretty steady wear. we won’t discuss again his mending practices when they do break down (shudder), or his fondest wish of all—that i would embrace replaceable sole socks (yeah right, like i want to pick up stitches from some old felted sock and make new soles with pretty NEW yarn. heh).

however, even i can do the math—the socks i knit from commercial blends that include nylon wear much better—at least twice as long. and that gives me more leeway to keep up with the constant need for more (i am also furnishing socks for several other loved ones).

so, a ways back while shopping at rhinebeck, i came across some nylon spinning fiber at the little barn booth. hmmm, a “brilliant” idea began to form; why not card some of this into whatever fiber i’m spinning for the sock yarn and see if that works as well as a commercial wool/nylon blend? while standing in that bucolic catskill setting, i totally forgot that i have like, zero time for carding these days.

but i remembered when i got home, and quickly shoved the whole idea to the back of my mind, knowing that i had a little stockpile of spun sock yarn on hand to last the winter at least. i would get to this project “some day”.

well, some day is here . . . i am pretty low on handspun to use for david-sized socks (i do have pink, and though he would wear almost anything, i’m sure some girl would appreciate it more). and fortuitously, i had a spinning class to play to. which brings us back to the carder on my (so-called) dining room table. i pulled out some bouncy, dark brown lincoln/corriedale blend from which i have made many socks, including these, and which is a real fave with my husband. i added some moorit corriedale top i had hanging around and some nylon to the mix, enough to make up 25% of the total.

i started passing small handfuls of fiber through the licker-in, and we were off to the races.
that is, turtle races. i soon realized that the blending was going to require several passes. usually when i card fiber for spinning i am looking for a chunkier blend . . . less mixed, more rustic (i like veins and tweedy effects). but in this case, i thought the nylon should be really well mixed, and not streaky. after one pass through the carder i had this

and i had processed only about one-third of the fiber. i passed it through again, this time tearing pieces off the first batt and distributing them across the intake tray to spread out the fiber some more (my students has completely lost interest already and gone back to their wheels; they did not take me up on the packets of blending fiber i made for them to experiment with, preferring instead to make observations from their chairs about how “meditative” it looked.). after a while i had the batt processed a second time

starting to mix, but truthfully, only slightly better. ok, one more time (by now anne marie and susan were outwardly laughing and making carding jokes. i think they each get an F for today, right??). after the third pass we had a much more respectable result

third time’s a charm (and good enough for me). all in all it took me about 4 hours total to get all 4 ounces of fiber this well-blended. they were right—carding is probably not going to be the most efficient way to get better-wearing handspun socks. maybe if i set myself up for a couple of days of it and processed a whole bunch of different things. but to do it like this, well . . . i’m not sure this will happen all that often when i’m as busy as i am these days.

now if i can just finish that alpaca blend, i will get started on the actual yarn. i’m not going to commit to tour de fleece, but i’ve been thinking that having a spinning goal or two during the tour wouldn’t be a bad thing. i usually set some sort of challenge for myself to accomplish during our daily viewings of the bike races—why not a spinning challenge this year? so here’s what i’m going to do: i’m going to finish up the laceweight alpaca/wool yarn (i have one bump done and one to go). then i’m going to spin sock yarn from the fiber i blended today. and if i have time left over, i’ll start knitting the yarn into socks.

once my fibery chores were done and everybody went home, i got to work on the garden. no pictures, but i did get a lot done . . . it took four hours to get the worst of it out of the way. i had totally planned to go bike riding with david today but backed out because i really needed to make more progress against the tide of weeds and insects that took over during the Long Rains.

now it looks like there’s a dent in it anyway; a couple more hours tomorrow should make it presentable at least, and give me time to spray for the aphids that have waged war on the tomatoes (organic compound spray . . . it’s necessary).

so, happy tour—time now for me to go watch bike races and knit.