You'd Think I Was Becoming a Botanist

The day was spent on plants, plants, plants. At any given time I had two books open (heavily papered with flags indicating desirables for the garden), and tabs for 16 websites up on my laptop so I could cross-reference availability, native status, and characteristics, and put it all into a spreadsheet. If only there was a place where all of this data could be put for easy querying and customized results! There actually is a place where it all lives, the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service seems to have all the data one could ever want on North American plants, but I wasn't able to get any data out of it using their advanced query tool.  It is also limited on the number of rows it will return. If only data.world had this data! Maybe I can talk to someone there about getting it from the USDA...

In the meantime, bed building begins tomorrow. I will take pictures. this is going to be a rough garden. It's Hill Country Native, not polished suburban flowerbeds. I'm very much looking forward to it! Tonight was the Travis County Beekeepers Association monthly meeting and we had a presentation on, you guessed it, native wildflowers for bee gardens. A very nice woman from the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center presented and made it very clear that I MUST attend the plant sale in April if I want my heart's desire.

Glass, sheep, spinning, knitting, cooking, cleaning, laundry, bathing, have all been forgotten in my mad lust for garden planning--not the gardening mind you, just the planning. I think I'll also be good at the directing of the work. Doing the weeding myself, not so much. Good thing I have guys for that. And it's time to head to bed again. My nightly routine: post, sleep.

Half Measures? What Are Those?

blackbrush acacia

Two minutes ago I finished the list of all the native plants I plan to add to our garden--mostly this year. There are 121 ornamental trees, shrubs, grasses, perennials, groundcovers, annuals, and biennials--and that's before I add in the fruit trees, dye plants, bog plants, and favorite non-native species for bees and butterflies. Tomorrow I am going to start searching to see which of these plants are available commercially. The last time I looked for many of them was in 1998, right after we built our first house here in Austin. At that time, many of them weren't available. I am more optimistic about my chances of finding them this time because I am not just looking for plants, I am looking for seeds, and Native Seed Search and other companies like it are a great resource for native plant seeds. The Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center Annual Native Plant Sale is also coming up in April and I hope to find many desirable plants there.

Today wasn't about plants, however. I finally oiled my great wheel and assembled it, and I unpacked all of my fleece from Wisconsin in preparation for my Master Spinner homework. Little by little I am working through projects I have going--some of which I started many years ago. Back to plants for a moment, today I went through my Master Gardener handouts and notes, and I sorted and organized them into my main Master gardener binder for easy reference. I did the Master Gardener program in 2002. It took me 15 years to sort the notes. But that's not as bad as it seems as we moved to Atlanta not long after I finished the program and was too busy building a life there to finish it up. But now I'm back gardening in Austin and it was the most natural thing in the world to organize those old materials.

As is usual these days, I am now exhausted and must head to bed. Good night fellow gardeners!

Transgenetic Goats, Trump, and Trevor Noah

Today in Austin it's rainy and cold, and after going out for Torchy's Tacos with Dave for breakfast, I have spent the remainder of the day hibernating. Sometimes it's good just to sleep. When I woke this morning I thought about the programming I saw on the science channel yesterday about the transgenetic goats whose DNA has had a gene from a spider inserted into it. The milk from the goats can be used to make dragline silk. You might ask, why not just farm the spiders? Apparently spiders are both territorial and cannibalistic, which cut way down on the silk production. Besides, goats are cuter than spiders. I wonder if Jessie would be afraid of a goat that's part spider as she is completely terrified of spiders. She said she wouldn't take care of goats if we got them here because it would mean going out at night when the tarantulas are out. Somehow I think going out to care for spider goats would be worse.

When I woke and remembered the goat segment I was so excited to tell Dave about it, but he was all, "Oh yeah, I saw that on the Internet." I was bummed because it's apparently old news, and I just now heard about it. Clearly I need to spend more time in different parts of the Internet. Parts where there is less Donald Trump and more transgenetic goats and dark matter (another segment on the show).

Alternatively I could just get cable tv and watch the science channel, HGTV, the Travel channel, the Discovery channel, the History channel, or BBC America! But no. I think there's even more Trump on tv than there is on the Internet, and I don't need to pay to be bombarded with it (though Trevor Noah would be a treat). Oh, hey! Trevor Noah is also available on YouTube! Well, that solves that question. Now off to see Logan at the Alamo Drafthouse and hope to have water (new hotwater heaters being installed now and all water is off) when we get home.

More Garden Planning, and the Week Ends

I have a plan, and it is mine. I didn't draw this plan--I have Haley to thank for that, but it is mine nonetheless. To make it, we walked the land together, I marked where the beds, paths, bench, swing, pond, bog pond and bridge (yes, bridge) were to go, Bobby measured the circumference of all the beds so the stone can be ordered for delivery next week, and Haley followed us and captured all the measurements and did the drawings. This may not look like the most professional landscaping plan you've ever seen, but it gets the job done, and the space is going to be incredible. As I look at it, I'm going to increase the size of the topmost right bed to three times its current size, and I'll probably up the size of the pond a bit too.

The paper only shows the areas we are currently developing. And another 25% of the width to each side and that's the actual area. The bee hive area isn't shown but it runs along behind bed #4 on the left. Oh this is going to be a magnificent space! Dave doesn't think I can get it built before June... I'm planning on the beds and paths, and maybe even the pond and bog pond being in by the end of the month--mid-April tops. Using split-faced block to build the beds and a Bobcat to move the dirt will make all the difference in the world.

Plant selection has also been going apace--though I'm not as concerned about getting the beds filled with plants as I am getting them filled with cardboard, manure, dirt and weedcloth. Plants will come in good time--they are much easier to add than beds. Now back to the books (see all the little red flags for plants to consider?)...

Rabbit Holes and the Garden

In the process of working on garden plans today, I fell down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out ways of reducing our water usage. I got started on it when I went to wash my hands and we had no water. Our well system is set up so that we can't run out of treated water without first finding out there's a problem because there is a reserve shut-off that activates when we get down to 800 gallons. We tripped the shut-off today and I panicked about our well having gone dry (or Timmy having fallen down it). Turned out that it was one of the hot water heaters failing and gushing water out into the garage that caused the water level to drop so precipitously. Two new hot water heaters are being installed Saturday even though only one failed today. Both of them were installed on the same day 16 years ago and I don't want to wait till the second one fails to replace it. Now the well is slowly filling the storage tanks back up and the RO system is cleaning .5 gallons of water and hour...

Messing around with the system and talking with our system maintenance guy made me think about the reverse osmosis system again today, as often happens when I feel the need to fret about something, and I again felt the burning need to repurpose all the waste water from the system. Reverse osmosis is one of the most wasteful desalination methods possible in terms of both energy cost to process the water, and amount of water that comes out as waste in the process. For every gallon of drinkable water, 1 to 3 gallons flows out as waste, and my frugal Montana soul just shrivels. So I set to work to see if I could find something I could do.

The first thing I stumbled upon was a passive solar distilling system that you could build yourself. It's relatively inexpensive, but it's also slow and not as efficient. I found a really cool solar-powered one in use in California called Aqua4 from WaterFX, but it's a slightly larger scale than I need, producing 1.6 billion gallons of freshwater each year.

Then I stumbled upon a solar-powered home unit that was crowdfunded a couple of years ago and I missed out. Now I have to wait for one till they get them to market, and then I'll be able to go to zero waste for our water with all water processed by the second stage desalinator going to the gardens and the pond. It's called the Desolenator and has been getting some really good buzz. The company hopes to have it out by the end of this year (which most likely means mid next year), and I will be one of the first people in line for one. Check it out!

I Can See Clearly Now

the garden from far north side looking south--
the trees in the way back are just on the other side of 
the driveway (middle of the property)

The new garden area clean-out was finished today. There are still some oak trees that need to have branches trimmed, but I am not going to do that until after June when oak wilt season is over. All the other trees and shrubs have either been selected to stay or removed. I didn't remove any oaks, but almost all the juniper cedars went as well as many mountain laurels and Texas persimmons. They are all nice plants, but over the past 20 years they have been let to grow wild and reseed wherever. I needed more room for bees, gardens, a pond, paths and other plants so they had to go.

the garden from the center looking north

Tonight I luxuriated in scanning through my entire Native Texas Plants book by Wasowski and Wasowski. It was my favorite gardening book the last time we lived here and still holds many flags in the plant lists. As I went through it I reveled in having the space to put in pretty much anything I want from trees to groundcover.

Tomorrow I plan to walk the garden with a bunch of rope (seagulls are in a flock, owls are in a parliament, crows are in a murder, but I have no idea what rope is gathered into and it is bugging me) that I will lay out where the beds will go so I can get an idea how much area I'm actually looking to plant. Since I decided to go with stone, I'm able to follow a more organic path with the shapes of the beds and contour to the existing topography and plants.

the garden from the center looking south

Not all of the garden will be planted this year--all evidence to the contrary I'm not INSANE--but the beds will all be constructed and filled while I have access to the labor, and trucks to haul soil, manure, and stone.

Timing has been bad with all the travel I have been doing and I'm taking off for a week again in a week so I haven't been able to start plants from seeds. This year I plan to sow seed that can go directly into the garden and doesn't need to be started indoors. I will also buy some plants--especially the trees and ones that are too slow to grow from seed--but that's a more expensive route and I'm not in that much of a hurry for once.

the garden from the north again,
but this time just on the inside of the tree-line

I'm even redesigning the pond and bog pond layout so that the bog pond takes up a bigger area and can be used for extensive natural filtration for the pond. The bog pond I put in in Atlanta was not a good design because when it developed a leak in the liner, it would have been an enormous effort to take all the rock out of it to fix the liner. This one won't be deep. Instead it will be bigger horizontally so the water flows through a lot more plant roots and bacterially-rich river rock before flowing back to the pond. As a special treat, tomorrow afternoon I am going to run by the water garden store as I will be out in that area anyway.

Wasn't Groundhog Day the First of February?

Ever had one of those weeks where it felt simultaneously like you were running in quicksand and doing a remake of "Groundhog Day" with you in the starring role instead of Bill Murray? It's only Tuesday, it feels like it's been days since the week started, and I keep doing the same things over and over again. If I go back to my post on Sunday, I was gleefully defiant about not getting to the taxes or packing up glass orders to go out the door. But then I washed, rinsed, and repeated the not-getting-to's yesterday, and again today. For glass, it's not that I'm not firing, I just can't complete. I still haven't been able to get the orders I planned to ship the middle of last week shipped. Between pieces needing to be redone, kilns erroring out and not firing, and new orders coming in which need to be added to the glass I'm sending to Todd, it feels like I'm never going to get it all in the mail and out of the studio. I'm not even going to get to ship the glass to Todd tomorrow because I still have one more firing to do in the sequence before it's ready. At least I should be able to get an order out that's going straight to a gallery instead of via Todd.

Tonight after dinner I finally got all my business accounts reconciled from last year. I still haven't done the personal accounts so I don't know if there are transactions I put on the personal credit card or paid for out of the personal checking that I should be deducting for the business, but at this point it's hard to care. Personal taxes next. God help me.

While I am having completion anxiety, the guys working in the garden are kicking butt. They brought in the chipper/shredder today, and with one more day at it, they'll have three piles of mulch and a pile of cedar logs for me. Then it'll be time to build the beds. In an interesting turn of events, it turns out to be cheaper, more durable, faster, and less maintenance--as well as better looking--to do the bed walls in stone (decorative concrete block) rather than wood.

Some day soon I hope to be able to get to choosing plants, checking on bee delivery dates, putting together the flow hive, and building/buying a Top Bar hive. Then maybe washing fleece and starting my homework for the Master Spinner level 1 class, putting up the new studio website, contacting all my galleries about this spring's orders, and a dozen other projects that I have in mid-flow.

I really am trying to be okay with not getting everything done Now! Now! Now!, but I am struggling.

All About the [Fill In the Blank]

Way too soon in the evening I am finding myself with droopy eyelids and an inability to stay awake. It's only 9:44 pm for pity's sake! But exhaustion is as exhaustion does, and I can't seem to do anything about it. So I quickly post, and then I toddle off to bed before 10:00... Man, am I getting old!

Today was supposed (again) to be all about the taxes... and again, I failed. I did get another glass order and loaded about half of it in the kiln. I even worked out the price increase for work this year to cover Bullseye's glass price increase and my new shipping costs because I have to ship all the glass for the work I do with Todd to Atlanta so Todd can do his thing with it and ship it on to the customer. I also got the new website to the brink of being done (enough) and up, and I have every confidence I will scale that summit tomorrow.

Today was also all about the new garden and finishing the last clearing of the undergrowth. Tomorrow the chipper shredder arrives and then we're really going to have some fun! Well, I'm not as I'm not going to be anywhere near the chipper shredder. But I am very much looking forward to turning an enormous brush pile into an enormous mulch pile. Then we spec out the place for the pond with it's built-in bog pond, and bee hives, and begin building beds! I decided against doing a plan. I'm not really a plan kind of gal. I'm going to let the land tell me what it wants and what's appropriate, rather than imposing a layout determined by a drawing on paper. It'll be much easier to take a list of everything I want to fit into that space out there and start staking it off based on the trees, shrubs, cactus, and rocky outcroppings that are left, rather than try to put it all down on paper. If I had a flat field in Iowa, paper would be find. But the Texas Hill Country resists paper plans.

Now I'm going to take my droopy little self off to bed and, like the phoenix, rise anew tomorrow to take on my day.

Off to the Oscars!

In a bit of ridiculousness, I find myself blogging in the car on the way to see the Oscars on the big screen at the Alamo Drafthouse. The mechanics of the post reflect my scattered processes all day. I managed (with Dave's help) to get the Christmas lights down today. I managed to get the cotton carpet warp I ordered some months ago unpacked, inventoried and arranged. I spent far too much time making a Word doc with all the colors of cotton carpet warp available through Great Northern weaving. It ended up being a fruitless endeavor as the printouts--which I was trying to use to reconcile the inventory--didn't have nearly the color quality necessary to distinguish red from cranberry, pear from tan, or a host of other color distinctions. It's better to just load their webpage on the laptop and work from it. Anyway, it's pretty, it's functional, and it's not in direct sunlight ever so it won't fade. It's also carpet warp so it doesn't really matter is it does fade.

The rest of the day? Not so productive. At this point I could continue on with all the things I meant to do today and didn't get to, but who cares? I am certainly not going to be bothered by it. I made progress, and that's enough. Tonight I get to drink white wine, eat chicken tenders, and watch the Oscars on the same screen where I saw some of the nominated movies. If that doesn't mark a successful day, I don't know what does.

I SHALL Pass!

Lord of the Rings, Stansborough Farms, Gotland Sheep Wool Cloaks

As I was reminded yesterday, I have other things to do than just play with the garden. Today reinforced this reality with another glass order coming in, and the arrival of the box of raw sheep fleece and other miscellany from my spinning class in Wisconsin the week before last. I haven't opened it yet as I'm not quite sure where to put all the stinky fleece! Guess I'll have to wash it all next week and then I can store it with the rest of my clean fiber (all 200+ lbs of it--the rest of the clean fiber, not the new...). In addition to the wool I got from my class and the additional raw samples I bought, I also have some raw Gotland (real Lord of the Rings fleece from the same farm that raised the sheep whose wool was used in the middle earth cloaks) coming from a friend in Atlanta, and a whole, fresh, raw BFL (Blue-Faced Leicester)/ Cormo cross coming from a friend outside Atlanta. She just sheared the sheep, and I am using just about the whole thing for my homework.

Today, in preparation for doing things, I organized! Most of my time was spent in the textile studio (I found my sewing machine foot pedal and power cord so I can make Dave shirts again), but I also worked on my desk and a bit in the wood shop under the master bedroom. I even took time to go down to San Marcos to pick up the child from an art competition (she got a gold medal) and then we went to see the Lego Batman movie. Tomorrow will be more of the same with some time in the glass studio to make the new order and play around with the whorls for the spindles I am going to be doing with Scott. I do need to do a bit of housework--floors and bathrooms--and I promised myself time planning the plants for the garden... Sounds like I am already out of time so I might as well not think of anything more. It's a good life.

The Garden Gets Cleared

Right front of new garden area

We are now three days into clearing the thicket from the area that will be the garden. It's about half and acre and is composed of a big gravel area in the middle where a greenhouse used to be, a poured aggregate driveway, a well house, and a bunch of scrub land. It's bounded by the main street, our neighbor's driveway, our driveway, and the shared driveway for us and our other neighbors. I thought it would be a lot more open after clearing everything out, but I'm not going to take healthy oaks, and there were more of them than I thought there were. But that's okay: the oaks provide shady areas in which to put benches, bits of art, sculpture, fountains, etc.

Left front of new garden area

The only bad thing is that I was planning on putting 4 ft by 8 ft vertical panels made of 4-gauge wire staggered across the front of the property on the main road to serve as privacy screens and supports for the espaliered fruit trees and passionfruit vines. But there are so many oaks left out there that the trees won't grow on the south side of the panels--too shady. I could put them on the street side, but that would be facing north which is bad for light in summer and winds and cold in winter. I'll figure it out. Maybe I'll put up a fence along the front similar to the one that fronts our main yard along the private drive. It's the same wire either way, just put horizontally instead of vertically. Then I could save the vertical panels for screening in the middle of the garden--make it so you have to walk all the way in to see everything. Yeah, I like that.

Fence by the front lawn

I ordered several books earlier this week on growing plants for natural dyes. Many of them can be sown directly into the garden and will yield a good dye crop the first year. I didn't get much more than a quick glance through one of them during lunch today, but it was enough to make me drool. Tomorrow, a longer perusal leading into a shopping list and actually ordering seeds so I'll be ready to plant when the beds go in week after next.

Keeping My Sanity

Breakfast--cheddar cheese pasty, sausage roll, and chai latte--at the Brentwood Social House, my Austin favorite morning hangout for the days I take J to school. Today I need to work on financial administration and taxes, and this is a great distraction-free place to do it... though I guess posting counts as a distraction. But I'm waiting for transactions to download so I have a couple of minutes.

It's the end of February, close enough to March that I can say I made my prediction for the year just about perfectly. Back in December, during the sleeping months, I made grand plans for all the things I was going to do this year--restart the Master's program in ikebana; start the master's program in handspinning; revamp my business model and website; spin for 15 minutes a day; set-up my new glass studio; continue remodeling the new house; put in major gardens, a pond and bees; do a knit-along; take a drawing class; pick-up a pottery class again; renovate the apartment above the garage and set it up for renting through Homeaway or AirBnB; blog every day; and do the 365 project and submit a picture every day. Now I sit in the BSH listening to Wagonwheel performed by the Old Crow Medicine Show, and I laugh at myself. As expected, the train rattled out of the station in January, and now it's hurtling toward certain destruction if it keeps going as it is. Normally this would be the point where I would throw my hands up in the air and just give up on a bunch of stuff (and that was my prediction for the year: hurtling into fiery oblivion). Or I would try to make unrealistic life changes to keep everything.

In past years about this time, instead of giving up on activities, I have vowed to give up on sleep--if I started earlier in the day and finished later at night I could get everything done. But there are two flaws with that idea. First, it doesn't take into account the need for family downtime, and second, it's stupid. This year I'm going to try something else. I'm going to keep all the activities, but I'm not going to keep the amount of them I have to do--in fact the concept of _have_ to do for any of them . Drawing and pottery (which starts in a month) have set times each week and I know from past experience I can manage two classes a week. The knit-along ends just as pottery begins so that will take care of that one. I might not finish the homework for the Master Spinner's class in time to take the second class in April as a distance learning class and the third class at Old's College in Alberta in June (there is anywhere from 150-250 hours of homework for each). It might actually take me six years to complete, and that's okay. I can continue ikebana if I set a day for it, like Sunday, when J and I can do it together, and we each do one arrangement. For the rest, they won't get done in one pass. It'll take as long as it takes to get them done.

Yesterday I spent enough time in the studio to clean up and organize three working areas and get a kiln load in. I left those areas still clean when I finished so next time I can work on another area. I don't need to get the studio or the apartment set up in one balls-out day. I don't need to get anything done in one pass. Pick it up, work on it for awhile, put it down without guilt, and move on. The hardest thing, as I was reminded anew yesterday, is just starting. Take away the balk at the beginning, the inertia, and the tasks themselves are easy. Take away the need for a deadline and the stress and guilt are gone with just the joy remaining.

Now my accounts have updated and it's time to reconcile shit. Rock me mama. (PS--Just found out the great music this morning is from the Jason Isbell station on Spotify: Townes Van Zandt "Dollar Bill Blues", Jason Isbell "24 Frames", Old Cow Medicine Show "Wagonwheel". It just made my favorite stations list!)

Goodnight Moon...

Today was spent, for the most part, in the glass studio. I managed to clear off two main work areas and Bettina (the biggest kiln) before making a load of work that I'll ship tomorrow. Before the studio was a piano lesson and a lot of garden clearing, after the studio was a trip to the dog park. I'd like to go on about the studio, but I'm just too tired. Tomorrow is the solar system inspection by the City of Austin (finally) and we hope to be solar-powered (for the most part) by this time next week. But for tonight, after all of the excitement of the day (and sushi and sake tonight), I am unable to keep my eyes open a minute longer. Goodnight all, sweet dreams.

Home Again, Home Again

Travel wears me out anymore (how do you like the use of the "positive anymore"?) When I touched base with the contractors this morning and found out they wouldn't be coming today, I'll admit I was giddily relieved. I was less sanguine at 8:30 when I remembered that I had a drawing class at 9:30 and I was barely out of bed. But I made it to class and had my first lesson in shading. It was a beautiful day today, and when I arrived on campus for class I looked up to see all of the peafowl roosting in the live oak outside of my classroom. No one had noticed them before I spotted them and stopped to take pictures. Just goes to show, people don't look up.

After class I headed to Jerry's Artarama to pick up a new sketchbook (mine went missing in the the last studio move from Atlanta) and some other supplies. On the way I stopped and picked up Jessie from school and took her for a quick McDonald's lunch. Amazingly enough I was able to meet her in the office at school, go through the McD drive-through, shop at Jerry's, and have her back at school in time for her next class 30 minutes later. It was some quality mother-daughter time, McNuggets and all.

When I got home I tackled organizing the gardening books. I have loosely grouped them before, but I never separated them and shelved them by categories. It was a good exercise for finding duplicates, of which there were a handful, and it helps me gear up for the upcoming garden creation marathon. Although I am having doubts about starting it. This may very well be the last really big garden project I undertake. So do I just continue with my current plan of raised beds, trellis, pond, benches and beehives, and scattered benches and places for sculpture, or do I hold off for another year? I could put just the beehives in now--they can always be moved. Then I could spend the rest of the year going through all the garden design books I have been collected and creating a design based on all the things I've always wanted to do.

I know that gardens change over time, but the fundamental architecture, the bones that you initially lay out provide the framework for the growth of the garden. If you don't get the bones right, you can stunt it with a bad design. Of course that's not the end of the world as nothing living and growing is permanent, but I feel a bout of cold feet coming on. And I need to consider the needs of the peacocks in the design too (I am hoping that was some quality husband-scaring). Whether I go forward with the full thing now or wait, tomorrow the guys will be here to clear out overgrown brush and thin out scruffy juniper cedar and low thicket. Then I'll be able to see what I have in order to better make a decision.

Leaving Wisconsin

What a tightly packed slice of life a five-day event like the Master Spinner class is! You laugh, you cry, you get frustrated when you don't get it, you get exhilarated when the lightbulb goes off. If you're lucky, you make new best friends. At worst, there are people you are glad to be well shot of, and because it's only five days you get to do that fairly quickly. We had three strong alpha personalities in our class, and at time there was friction. But I think we all got out with goodwill intact. Out of the rest of the class, nine are definitely taking the level two class together again next spring, one is definitely not, and two are on the fence. I am one of the on-the-fence ones as I wasn't planning to wait that long to take it, and, besides, Wisconsin in February isn't always 70 degree days...

But that's the next level. For this level I have a full fleece to process. After it's processed (skirted, soaked, scoured and dried), I have to spin woolen and worsted skeins from the legs, shoulders, sides, back, britch and belly, make a finished (woven, crocheted or knitted) sample from each skein (12 in all), and write a detailed description of the look and feel of each part of the fleece indicating what it would be good for.

The other big portion of the homework is the breed study. We are to collect raw fleece samples from ten different breeds of sheep (and the instructor and some local members of the class mostly supplied those), scour them, prepare them for spinning (card, flick, or tease), spin both woolen and worsted skeins from them, and prepare a finished sample (crocheted, knit, or woven). The physical spinning and prep is one thing, but because this is a college-level course, there is also a lot of writing. We need to write descriptions of the sheep, the fleece, and an evaluation of the yarn this particular fiber would be appropriate for.

There are also natural dyeing exercises, blending wool with tussah and bombyx silk, the usage of different spinning equipment, alternative fiber prep methods, and more on alternative spinning techniques. And of course write-ups on all of it. At the end of the level is the final project. It begins with pairing an appropriate type of fleece with a pattern or design, and then executing every step of the project all the way through the finish. The fleece is scoured, prepared for spinning, and spun. At some point, either the fiber, the yarn or the finished piece is dyed in natural dyes (which we are to source--maybe collect--ourselves), and the yarn is crocheted, knitted or woven into a finished piece. Of course there is a written report that needs to accompany the project with a justification for all of the choices made and --pluses and minuses. I'm thinking I'll use my sock knitter to make a pair of hand-dyed, handspun wool socks.

All of these projects required a bunch of material, and I am very grateful to Ingrid of Spry Whimsy for shipping my great, big, bow of stuff to me tomorrow. I love you Ingrid!!

For tonight, I sit at O'Hare airport waiting to board my flight to Austin. Taxes and glass await me there. And sleep. In my own bed. With my spouse. Heaven.

Stayin' In Tonight

I did go ahead and stop at Fosdal's Bakery for donuts for the class this morning. My heavens. All I could think of was the Kliban cartoon, Never Eat Anything Bigger Than Your Head. They were all kinds of ooey, gooey delicious, and I'm both astonished and not at all surprised that  there were still a couple left at the end of the day. I wish I'd put something into the box to show scale. but that dollop of Bavarian cream in the one on the top is a about the size of a quarter. 

Besides the great pastry, we have also been enjoying unseasonably warm weather here in lovely Northern Wisconsin. I'm so glad I missed cold and snow on this trip! I'm also glad, at the end of the day, that I am not doing the Philadelphia show this year. It has not been a wasted trip for business either--Scott Snyder of Snyder Spindles is in my class, and we are going to make some spindles together out of glass and wood. I have a new collaboration partner! Scott works in both wood and 3-D printed material, and we are going to do some fused glass whorls from my cut circles, and I am also going to cast some of his 3-D-printed whorls in glass. The cast glass will have a better weight and feel than the plastic will, and by doing both styles we each get to do some design work.

 Now for all of you anxiously waiting to hear: I aced my test- with 100%. I think most of us got 100%--it really wasn't a difficult test. Even the people who missed answers did it more out of misunderstanding the question rather than not knowing the correct answer.

But the test wasn't the big part of the day. Nope, the highlight of the day was collecting our wool samples from the natural dye day yesterday. As I sat down to write this tonight I realized that I don't even know all the dyes we used! There are twelve of us in the class, and we paired up to do a total of six dyes. Char and I did madder root (shown on the bottom row of the rack), Scott and Suzanne did cochineal, but I have no idea what everyone else did. I'll find out tomorrow. What I do know is that we didn't just use the dye plant, we also played around with mordants which changed the resulting colors of our dyes. We did one batch of the straight color, one set of yarn that had been soaked in alum (and water), a batch that was not soaked in alum but which had iron added to the dye bath at the end, and a batch that had been soaked in alum and also had iron added to it at the end. Can you see how complicated it was and why it got so crazy yesterday? Each of the 12 of us had 24 skeins to be dyed--four skeins from each person to dye four different ways. 

We are all sharing our recipes (what we used, how we used it, at what temperature, and for how long) with Ingrid (the owner of the shop and our host who is also finishing up the sixth level project project for her master's), and she will type it all up and distribute it to us. For now l am enjoying just fondling the different colors. I can see how dyeing is bad for a craft-addictive personality (know anyone like that?). One more day and tomorrow night I sleep in my own bed.

Getting Ready For the Test

Name the two styles of spinning wheels and list their parts. What are the characteristics of wool? Label the parts of a fleece. How do you roll a fleece? What is the difference between washing and scouring a fleece? What is the melting point of lanolin? What is the function of a mordant in dyeing? Name two common mordants. How do you determine the drive ratio(s) of your spinning wheel? What does the drive ratio correspond to in the spun yarn? How long has it been since I've taken a test? Do you think my brain is about to explode?

Today was a challenging day in our Master Spinning class, and I am glad our instructor had the wisdom to put the most challenging day in the middle of the program: we had enough time behind us to somewhat bond as a group, then we had the drama llamas of today, and now we have two more days to mend bridges and bond anew. Had this day been at the end, we probably would have all gone home hating each other and swearing we would NEVER do another class together. Had it been at the beginning, we never would have come back after the first day. I won't go into detail on what made it difficult, but it boiled down to a need for extreme detail and organization in process from a herd of cats (not the most data-driven animals).

Tomorrow we start the day with a test on all the material we have covered so far. I think I'll take donuts to class. There is an incredible bakery just down the street from Spry Whimsy (the shop where our class is being held). Fortunately the test is only 4.2% of our grade for Level One (20 points out of a possible 473), and we only need to get a 70% (331 points) on everything to pass the class. I say fortunately, because I just read the book for the first time tonight, and I am still so tired I'm not sure how much I absorbed. Tonight, the same as every night, we went out for dinner. Tonight's location was the Viking Brew Pub (which comes complete with a viking longship in the middle of the room). When we got back to the hotel, I sat on the side of the hot tub with a glass of wine and quizzed one of my classmates (who was in the hot tub--I didn't bring a suit) on the material in the book. I wish we'd had a hot tub when I was in grad school--phonetics might have made more sense then. Now for a decent night's sleep and no test anxiety...

Almost Too Tired To Post

Day Two of the Master Spinner Class Level One, and my brain is FULL! Today we didn't spin at all, but we reviewed the terminology we learned yesterday, we finished preparing our skeins for dyeing tomorrow, and we divided up the raw fleece for our breed study... It was like sale day at Filene's Basement. The fleece would hit the table, we would pretend to care about laying it out again, but really we were just waiting for the "go" signal to grab our chunks for the breed study. Most of the fleeces were cleaned off the table faster than a cheetah goes through a gazelle carcass.

For the breed study we are to prepare (wash and card) enough fleece to spin two ten-yard samples--one spun woolen and one spun worsted--for ten different breeds of sheep. Mary, our instructor, brought enough different breed fleeces (supplemented by some of the class participants) that we don't have to go looking for other fleeces to complete this part of the homework. We also had some lovely fleece we could purchase and I ended up with 1/2 of a lovely dark Coopworth fleece, some Rambouillet and either some Icelandic or some Finn.

Tonight after class we took a field trip to Susan's Fiber Shop run by Sue McFarland. It was so funny because when we walked in I knew it was Susan's shop, but I didn't know it was Susan McFarland. For the past few years, whenever I open YouTube it loads on the video below. I was very excited to meet her in person and to see her incredible Teeswater sheep. I didn't buy a fleece from her (yet), but it was a close-run thing. I probably got 1/2 a fleece worth as I bought two lbs of raw for my breed study and fun, and another 12 oz of washed locks. This sheep has lustrous curly locks from 6-9" long. I have wanted to do a jacket or a vest with a collar and border of longwool locks for awhile, and Sue's Teeswater is just gorgeous. I still would like a Wensleydale fleece, but I have enough room in my favorites for Teeswater too. The scarf shown at left is from a Wensleydale, the Teeswater sheep are white (shown on the hoof above). They remind me of Suri alpaca---which I haven't worked with at all.

First Day of Master Spinning Class

Homework. I can't remember the last time I had homework! But I'm taking a college level course now (Master Spinning, Level 1 through Olds College in Alberta, Canada) for college credit, and not only do I have physical work to do (like the skeins wound at right), but I also have research and papers with citations in specified formats to write. I even have tests with the first one on Sunday! It's very exciting. It's also somewhat exhausting--and a good part of that is because the women in my class, the host and the teacher are all party animals and I'm having trouble keeping up. There are men in the class too, but they haven't partied with us yet.

Today was the first day of the five-day classroom portion of the course, and we spent a good bit of time looking at sheep fleeces and learning about the characteristics of wool from different kinds of sheep. We looked at fleeces from both purebreds and crosses, light, dark, fine, medium, long locks, tight crimp, primitive, and everything in between. We also spun and plied yarn, learning about balance and the directions of the twist in yarn and how to correct the twist in our spun yarn. We even analyzed our wheels to figure out the ratios we get using them--one treadle with the band on this drive wheel is 11 revolutions (11 times the yarn twists) of the flyer. We will use this knowledge to put specific amounts of twist in the yarn we make... that's the theory at least. I'll write more later (probably more than anyone else wants to read), but tonight I'm pooped and heading off to sleep. G'Night!

Going To the Show... Not

Following a pattern established over the past 12 years, it's mid-winter and I'm at the airport waiting to travel. Oh some years I've driven and one year I took the train, but lucky years I flew. Dee is also at the airport--Atlanta, not Austin--as she is also flying today. But this year is the first time she is flying to Phillie for The Show, and I am not. Do I miss it? Not now. Not yet. Maybe by Friday night or Saturday I would if I were home in Austin reading about everyone's adventures, great sales, fabulous meals, fun reunions, and scrumptious food from the Reading Market. But come Saturday, I will be in mid Master Spinning Level One class spinning and dyeing and making new friends.

I'm also looking forward to trying something new to replace shows--repping. If I pay 15% commission to have a rep who will make sales on my behalf, my break even point for cost of shows versus cost of rep is about $45,000. That's more than I've ever made from a show. Additionally I don't have to travel, I have no exhausting set-up and breakdown, and I don't lose 2-3 weeks of studio time getting ready for the show, doing the show, and recovering from the show. I don't see my show friends, but at almost 56 years old, I am willing to give up some shared time if it means not having my body beat to sugar physically and being mentally and emotionally burned out from the show.

Of course success with the rep model requires a good rep, and I have found one--if she follows through with her idea to do it. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. In the meantime I am still working on my website (it and taxes feel like never-ending tasks) and planning to email my current customers today to let them know I won't be at the show, but that Todd and I do have new work so to save a spot in their orders.

Now it's time to board. Off to a new adventure in life, and a new chapter in glass.