Jananas

Today was one of those days that ended on a frustrating note. It was one of those situations where I’m just a little too new and inexperienced to be able to really get what needs to be done or defend what I did do or answer questions, but still have to do it. I know that it’ll get better as I learn more. In the short term its frustrating and demotivating.

But, but, but. I made a stop on my way home that mostly cheered me up. A woman had dropped by the Knit Cafe last week looking for someone to spin yarn for her. The lovely Iwona immediately thought of me and passed along the info. I did some research about pricing and was nervous about having the “it’ll cost you” conversation. [There's a reason handspun sells for $30-40USD per skein its because it can take hours to spin up and that human labour'll cost ya!] I figured that I should follow up anything and it was right on my way home, so there weren’t any excuses not to.

I knocked on the door and the lady gave me a giant bag of fleece. Giant! I feel okay about using the descriptor giant and an exclamation point because this bag is taller than the seat of my couch. And its easily a foot wide.

I’m not really sure what sort of fiber this is other than fact that it is very soft and silky to the touch. I’m a little afraid though because its staple length is super short (like 1/2″-1″?). I don’t know if its even really spinnable. I may just rent the drum carder from Lettuce Knit this weekend and try to card it up into some batts. I’ll give those a shot. If they don’t spin up, I’ll mix it with some wool and card it together.

Here’s to a weekend filled with fleece-y good times!

p.s. I feel a little like the bottom right hand corner of the photo looks like a dragon’s mouth.

Yesterday I finished up my first ever mini hooked rug. It was pretty awesome to go from being 2/3rds done to being nearly done without being aware of how fast it was going. I’m glad that I picked this project back up after getting sidetracked and that I was able to finish it. I have some ideas for the next piece I’d like to do, but it’ll take me some time to wrap my head around what I’ll need to do to get there.

I still need to finish the edges, but I’m hoping that I can barter a skein of handspun with a woman at my local yarn shop as I know that she knows how to do it. Fingers crossed!

Do you have anything that you’re proud you stuck with to the end?

Yesterday we headed out to Mississauga to pick up our friends Jo & Guy. Then we were off to Elmira for their annual maple syrup festival. We had a fun car ride out with lots of pleasant and scenic detours through places like downtown KW  (why google maps, why?). And then a traffic jam for the last 4km into Elmira. But eventually we made it in, after parking our car way far away and catching the sort of hay ride behind a tractor thing they had going on.

I’m not entirely sure that I was expecting, but there was way less maple syrup goodness and way more more food vendors of every kind action going on. In fact, it was sort of strange. We did enjoy beating our way through the crowds, ogling the puppy dogs (including the woman who had her little toy dog in a stroller in a packed, packed, packed crowd), and eating ridiculous foods. We had soft preztels, beef jerky, pickles on sticks, maple flavoured cotton candy and kettle corn, and deep fried mars bars. I’ve heard tales of them before and figured that since we’d never come across them in person before that we should try one. You know, bucket list and all that. In this case the bucket list refers to a list of things that will kill you faster…

Jason caught this photo of me showing the mars bar off. It was a pretty strange experience. Partly because the chocolate bar was hot/warm which made the nougat get all extra chewy and tacky. It may just be that mars bars are really really sweet, but this was almost too much. Nevertheless, at least I tried one now.

We did round our evening off with a 4L jug of maple syrup and a pocket full of maple sugar candies, so I’ll consider the day itself a success even if there wasn’t as much fun learning about maple syrup action going on.

Last night was pretty eventful. We were up in our room getting ready for bed, which last night consisted of playing fetch with the dog. In our room. For some reason its about the only place that he’ll consistently bring a ball back in. I’m getting sidetracked. So we’re in our room and can hear sirens. And then I can hear sirens an awful lot closer, which on my quiet one way street means that they are right outside.

We went over to look out the front window and there’s a firetruck parked right outside our house, lights flashing, and hoses being pulled out. We look a little farther and there are at least three more parked on our one way, one block long street. [we found out later when our roommate can home that there were another 5 parked at the intersection!].

We got to watch as we could see flames/smoke starting to become visible in the third floor window of a house across the street. We heard the window break and saw the flames get bigger and brighter – for a while there were even small flames coming through the roof!

We got to see the fire fighters hauling hoses around, getting ladders set up, evacuate the house next door (people and animals) just in case there were sparks from the fire [the houses here are really close together so it totally made sense]. It was pretty crazy and I have to say that it made me glad to see how fast acting the Toronto Fire Fighters are!

Eventually we made our way downstairs and spent some time on the front porch talking with the neighbours about the fire and general life on the street. Then I was able to catch this picture of Mitzy checking out the action. She was pretty intent on watching the firefighters do their thing.

As of 9:30 this morning there is still a firetruck parked outside the house next door. In fact, there are two fire fighters hang out on the little wall in my front garden as I type. I guess that they need to hang around for a while to make sure that the fire doesn’t reignite.

It was a pretty exciting way to end our day!

Friday night I ran around the kitchen like a mad woman trying to get a few small batches of dying finished while Jason was out picking us up some dinner.

At this point its more about playing than about getting things perfect. Partly because I just want to have fun with my fiber after a long week of work and partly because I can’t quite face sitting down to read books on exactly how to accomplish the perfect dye job. I know that it probably makes more sense to do it, but right now I feel like the being creative part is more important than the book learning and perfection part.

Its about a 1/2lb of merino/nylon blend rovings. There are three different concoctions below. The first was the teal vs. violet set in the middle. The second is the royal blue, violet, and pink random splotches  on the right. The third was the autumn colourway that was initially meant to be bright and vibrant, but ended up being more muted when the dyes ran in the giant pot. Regardless I quite like the way it turned out – so much so that I spun it up last night.