I had a great time at the Cummington fair yesterday. There was a gaggle of spinners meeting for a potluck lunch, and I was lucky enough to drive up with people who allowed me to tag along to such a tasty event.

Here’s an obligatory picture of livestock (and puppies!).

Instead of watching sheep dog trials (one of my favorite sheep-and-wool show activities), I was instead entertained by Kate’s heretofore unseen talent.

We’re blocking the view of a vast mountain of fleece in the car.

Presenting Kate, Carolyn, Rosemary, and Claudia

I bought a cone of yarn (Rosemary and I shared a 1 kilo cone of 2 ply Shetland) and a book at Webs. A fleece grown by one of Mary Pratt’s sheep managed to come home with me, too. It is a Merino-Romney cross that combines fineness and length.

I’ve been doing a lot of dyeing lately. However, I’ve decided not to provide pictures until the stuff is carded up into roving. I kind of hate the way a fleece takes up dye so unevenly, it looks really ugly until it’s blended. So – no pictures of dyed fleece – but when the stuff comes back from the processor, you’ll definitely have an eyeful.

Matt and I went out on our first date nine years ago today.

Note the handknit sweater on Matt

Whee…!

Today was an infinitely better day than yesterday. The good thing about a nadir – the only way to go is up!

A couple of weeks ago, I bought eight ounces of “Blooming Lilac” roving from Liz Cowdery of Linden Lane Farm via ebay. It is 75% Romney, 25% mohair.

No photographs of unspun roving, but here’s one from Liz’s site:

I managed to squeeze 4 ounces of singles onto each bobbin. They should ply into a worsted weight yarn.

Emily asked me to detail how I fixed my plying problem. I will take pictures when I ply these guys together and go over my new-and-improved method.

If you read Mariko’s blog (Supereggplant – link at left), you know she has an older brother Hisashi. I don’t read his blog regularly, but I stop by from time to time. (We don’t know each other at all – quite frankly, I don’t believe either of them know I exist.) I bring him up because he had a quote on his sidebar about why he keeps a blog:

“Because a few people seem to disbelieve just how bad my luck can be.”

I think I can give him a run for his money this week. Let’s see…

a) I needed a tax exemption form from my insurance company before going to the RMV to register my car. I left work 3 hrs early to take care of it, but my commuter bus didn’t come for over a half hour. Furthermore, there was exceptionally bad traffic that afternoon. By the time I made it the 4 1/2 miles home and drove the 4 1/2 miles to the insurance agency to get the form, the RMV office had closed.

b) The day after I tried to register my car, I got a letter that my insurance company mistakenly sent me stating they were canceling my policy because they could not verify a MA registration.

c) Sometime yesterday, I lost my Palm pilot. It contained, among other things, all of my “sensitive” financial information – bank account numbers, credit card info, the works. No, it isn’t password protected.

d) I got completely lost in Harvard Square (really not a big area, but I get lost very easily) trying to find a post office that Matt and I had walked to on Monday.

e) My beloved GPS unit Giselle (which I need because I get so lost) has temporarily died. Her car charging unit is mangled slightly and no longer gets an electric feed.

f) A bird crapped on me today. Right on my arm. It was disgusting.

Jeeze. Two things make me feel marginally better.

Karolina’s socks are almost finished

I have two cute cats

Are any locals going to the MA sheep and wool show? I skipped the NH show, but after seeing Kerstin’s haul, I feel determined not to miss an almost local event. At this point, I’m planning to go alone – in my big, roomy station wagon – and would be happy to drive with some other fiber folks. It’s very close to WEBS, too! Drop me a line, let me know if you want to go on Saturday (May 29).

One of the ladies in the Tuesday knitting group likened my travels seeking wool to being a Grateful Dead groupie. I enjoy that idea immensely. Imagine traveling to a sheep and wool show every weekend for a few months! Speaking of Tuesday knitting, go check out Carrie’s blog – she has pictures posted of our group blanket project, as well as the happy, expectant mom.

I’ve never lived as far north as I do now, and my Chicago upbringing and many years in NJ for graduate school had taught me that spring generally comes somewhere in late March or early April. Naturally, that’s not the case in Boston! A month ago, I wistfully asked one of the facilities and grounds fellows when spring actually starts in this part of the country, he winked and replied, “Around summertime!”

When my friends and family were telling me weeks earlier about how warm it was in their part of the US, with the flowers and trees gearing up for massive color displays, I looked at the dormant grass and leafless tress, saying to myself, “There have got to be people who planted tulips and daffodils here. It just hasn’t been warm enough yet.” Tulips and daffodils are, of course, real heralds of the winter’s end. Now when I walk around outside, I see the trees finally give good shade, the forsythia have twinkled yellow and gone out again, and the neighbor across the street has in fact planted a variety of red tulips that stand regal in their guard of the front door.

These are pictures taken on the Harvard campus. I wanted to show you the tulips across the street, but I thought it might freak my neighbors out to find me taking closeup pictures of their property.

Over the weekend, I was a spinning fool. I took that red and green ball of fuzz (featured a few blog posts down) and spun the whole damn thing in two days. Worsted weight yarn is not something I usually mess around with, but 8 ounces goes by pretty quickly when you are spinning at a fat grist. I even kept a sample on my lap the entire time and made sure my newly spun yarn matched it every few minutes. Lastly, I also figured out how to overcome my plying problems!

Ta dah!

What surprised me most during spinning was that the red and green colors completely masked the dark brown wool that made up the core of the roving. This looks very much like a “Forest Floor” sort of colorway, rather than the “Ghastly Christmas” that I thought it was in the roving form. The yarn has come out quite handsomely, and I’m ready to move onto the next spinning project.

I received some not-unexpected-but-still-stinging news in March that I would not be receiving NIH funding to continue my current postdoctoral studies. The review of my application came a few weeks ago, and I was very relieved to note that the main problems with the application had nothing to do with my personal credentials. In fact, quite the opposite is true – they judged me to be a very strong candidate – and it was in fact the training environment that put me into the “uncompetitive pool” of applicants. My supervisors are young, non-tenure-track research fellows, without their own postdoctoral experience and have either limited or non-relevant-to-this-research publication histories. Furthermore, they have no experience in mentoring postdocs. This, combined with a “risky” set of specific aims, was enough to strike my application to the depths of unfunded project hell.

So be it. I did learn some things here (I certainly don’t regard my time here as a total waste), but now I have to face the reality that my funding ends in July. I’ve started circulating my resume and have been slowly applying for jobs since mid-March. It seems that having only 9 months of postdoctoral experience is viewed as a distinct negative for the jobs I am interested in, and thus it looks more and more like I will have to go do another postdoc before I am regarded as a competitive job seeker.

On a positive and perhaps more interesting-to-readers note, I have begun to spin the stash. I have a vague idea in mind that I can sell stash fiber-into-yarn to help fund my eventual purchase of the Womack electric spinner. In any case, I have now 14.5 delicious ounces of 2-ply fingering weight wool/possum yarn. The fiber was purchased at least two years ago. It feels good to have this project spun up. I ordered and received a full pound of fiber, but upon washing, I found that a good 10% of the weight was in fact a mix of carding oil and dirt. *sigh*

This is the natural, undyed color

I’ve also made a little more progress on Karolina’s sock. It is a little slow going because the gauge is very tight and makes my hands hurt if I work on it for too long.

I was very good at MDSW. I’d given myself a budget of $200 for the whole weekend and didn’t even spend half of it! While many vendors had beautiful fibers for sale, I kept feeling that many of them looked similar to each other and to mail order sources. I only bought one batt that included a thicker layer of colors than anything I’d ever seen before.

From Indigo Moon

It turns out that the daughter (?) of the woman who runs Indigo Moon is going to start grad school at U. Penn in neurobiology this fall. We were talking about grad school, future plans, etc. I couldn’t believe the stipend that UPenn gives to incoming students. I don’t know if this is a nationwide trend, but she’ll be bringing in 2.5x the amount of money I earned during my first year of grad school. (Granted, my first year was 96-97, but still!)

Anyway, I also got myself a zippered tote (last year’s bag, at discount) and a t-shirt.

Flock on!

There were a lot of other really luscious prepared rovings and batts, but I just noted which booth sold what. I may go to the MA Sheep and Wool show at the end of May (or the NY show in October), and it will be nice to be able to pick the must-see booths ahead of time.

One of my goals for the Maryland show was to test drive a number of spinning wheels. I’m not in the market to buy one right away, but I like to do my research in advance and then fantasize about my future.

I sat at two Timbertops wheels – the Beaver and the Leicester. The Beaver is an accelerator wheel that specializes in going really fast. I am not a big fan of equipment that has only one purpose, although I will occasionally make exceptions for things that do their one function exceedingly well. In any case, the Beaver was too fast for the thicker yarns that I occasionally like to spin. The Leicester was a nice wheel, but it seemed rather lightweight overall. I’m not crazy about the smaller wheels, anyway. I spent some time talking to wheelmaker Anne Williamson, who was very British and very charming.

Bill Wyatt was a first time vendor at Maryland, and I had the honor of trying the Great Wheel and the Pegasus. I stink at spindle-wheel spinning and thus did quite poorly at the GW. (This is one of the reasons I rarely use my charkha. Gotta practice more!) On the other hand, the Pegasus was truly amazing. I tried a double treadle model, and it worked very well even with only one foot. It hummed smoothly and was a real delight to use.

The Norm Hall booth was packed, as I expected. I waited >15 min. to try a wheel, but the lady who was testing out the Saxony refused to budge (I had to come back later to check it out). NH is a true master craftsman. The wheels he had on display were gorgeous, and the one I sampled was wonderful to spin on. NH noticed the giddy smile on my face and invited me to join the waiting list. I told him I’d be turning 40 in ten years, so I might hop on his list in 2007. Yes, it’s a seven year waiting period. Wow.

I also sampled three electric wheels. I liked the feel of the SpinTech wheel, but the sort of futuristic airplane aluminum look turned me off. The Fricke eSpinner also performed well, but its fastest speed felt a bit on the slow side. The one that really earned my respect was Jerry Womack‘s electric wheel – the one with the wicker-encased motor. Yeah, it may look a little cheesy with the wicker, but this one was the quietest, fastest, and gave the least vibration. The price was reasonable, and he and Nathan Lee of Woolee Winder fame have collaborated to produce a level-wind flyer system.

Three more points of note:
1) When I approached Curt Fricke to ask if I could try his wheel, he responded by asking me if I knew how to spin. Um, of course! Then it occurred to me that there must be a lot of wannabe spinners who try to demo a wheel when they have no idea how to make yarn. That must be so frustrating for both parties!

2) Jerry Womack said it was really difficult to keep up with his spinner at its top speed. I grinned and said, “Oh yeah?” He responded by cranking up the speed to the max. I whipped my arm back and spun out armslength after armslength as fast as I could. I probably made about 20 yards before I broke the yarn. He laughed and conceded it wasn’t impossible to keep up with the wheel, and he added that I was a pretty good spinner! Tee hee.

3) Having tried the Wyatt and Hall wheels, I have come to appreciate my Drudik wheel even more. I believe the drive wheel of the Drudik is thicker and heavier than either of those wheels, giving it greater momentum. This makes it easier to treadle and maintain a steady treadle speed, although it takes a little more effort to stop the wheel. Surprisingly, I didn’t notice any real difference in how much downward treadle push it took to start the wheel spinning, but I do think the Drudik is easier to treadle overall. Knowing this has lessened my wheel lust a little bit. Still, if I had a spare $2k…

I had the best time in Maryland this weekend. I don’t think I’ve enjoyed myself this much since I moved to MA last August. By the end of the day Saturday, my face was literally aching from talking and laughing.

It turned out that Claudia was on the same outbound flight, and I finally got to meet her sister, the famous Red Silvia. (I’m sorry I couldn’t wait for you guys after the flight – I had some urgent bathroom issues to consider!) During the flight, the three of us managed to impress an attendant with our knitting prowess. Too funny!

A number of my friends from grad school took the day off on Friday to drive down to MD, and Carrie also came down from Boston to join in the fun. I saw, spun, ate, and experienced too much to talk about it one post, so I’ll just give you some of the photo highlights from my weekend for now.

It was really crowded

My favorite publicity poster

My friends