I feel like I was gone for awhile but it was only that I wasn’t on the computer for 4 or 5 days. I’ve gotten where that makes me feel very out of the loop. Jared came into town Saturday and left Monday evening and then I worked a long one yesterday. The day after a holiday is always an ass-kicker but yesterday I have to say the mail won. It wasn’t a bad day, just extremely demanding. Though I did have several “*&#(*&@” moments wondering why the hell people insist on planting stuff around their mailboxes. Probably the same mentality that leads people to decorate their toilets. Anyway, I drank a couple of hefewiezens [see a future post of Claudia's for the definition..], got a big kick out of the ridiculous drama going on about the opening of Ravelry and how public it will or won’t be, then had a night of good rest and I’m feeling a lot better.
The recipients of Rainycloud, Ninjabun and Uh-Ohs was thrilled with them and that makes me very happy. I don’t really gift knit unless it’s for someone very close, but that makes me more concerned with how well they are received. I’ve also been thinking of how the rest of the year is shaping up for me and my knitting projects. There’s not much time left in the year and how would I like to end it? With a bunch of larger projects in progress? With bare naked needles? Or like New Years is just another day? I know for sure there’s one gift I’d like to knit in time for holiday gift giving, and that’s Jared’s Bauhaus, but we have an anniversary, Valentines and his birthday all a bit after Christmas, so if I don’t make it in time, I won’t freak. Still, though, I’d like to clean CPH off the needles by SAFF and dedicate the post-SAFF to Christmas period to that project, which leaves me 15 days to work on CPH. Almost all year I’ve been deadline knitting, much of it self-imposed, but it’s actually been working for me for the most part. With that in mind, I’ve picked it back up:
I also have a pair of socks to finish by the end of November, so let’s call it Thanksgiving.
These are the Gentleman’s Sock With Lozenge Pattern from Knitting Vintage Socks and I’m doing them as part of the Wodehousian Fibre Artists KAL. The yarn, for those of you wondering, is Knitting Notions Texas in the color Aubergine. 55% mohair, 45% merino. I bought it last year at SAFF, so this fills a second goal of using up some of what I bought at SAFF last year in anticipation of this year’s Bankrupt-o-rama.
While Jared was home, not only did he bush-hog my garden and the fence and barn perimeters, but we also did some shearing. We did the lambs and Kitty and Carlina. We didn’t do the other angoras because they’re for sale right now and I think they’d sell better in fleece. We did do deworming and hoof-trimming on everyone, though. It kind of cracks me up when I think about how much some people want to visit on shearing days. They’re hot, dirty, frustrating, back-breaking and exhausting. I honestly don’t know how some farms manage to do it with a freaking audience looking on. However, since we didn’t have anyone over, I promised a couple of pictures. It’s impossible to hold a kicking, screaming, peeing and pooping goat while also trying to take photos, so all I have are the “after” shots.
It rained yesterday and the lambs are already looking disheveled because of it.
The goats, however, are looking and feeling great. Carlina is very pleased with her new fall ‘do and is all ready to meet the mangoat of her dreams:
I got a nifty new fiber prep tool that I’m going to show you soon, but it is supposed to help remove VM from the fleece. You might wonder why I would need something like that.
It’s because fiber livestock, those animals for whom it is most important to be clean and as free of hay and other ick as possible, don’t like to lay on the fresh green grass. They only like to lay in poop and hay if possible. Everywhere I look, I see spinners proclaiming with religious fervor about only buying coated fleece. I’ve been doing some preliminary research on coats because I’d like to have fleece that people want to buy. I can’t fully get on board with the coats, though. Canvas coats exist, but they damage the tips and can cause mold and other problems in addition to not holding up to UV and bramble exposure. Most coats are nylon. Some are “breathable”, as in they are made of that stuff old lawn chair webbing used to be made of. I’m not sure I can do this to my animals, but I admit I might be a little oversensitive about it. I can’t fully wrap my heart around the idea of having a natural fiber farm where the animals are living their lives in plastic bags. There’s also the carbon footprint issue to consider. But spinners will pay more for coated fleece because they only want to deal with lanolin, dirt and the steps involved in combing/carding and spinning as a way to take their craft back to its origins, not the part where there’s poop or hay. Kind of like how a lot of us want organic, humane beef but we still want it to spring forth pre-trimmed from plastic wrapped styrofoam trays. And how we want to go visit the fiber animals at the festivals, but we have to immediately hose ourselves down with pesticides in the form of anti-bacterial gels after touching them because OMG, animals are walking disease factories but we’d just die if we didn’t have their hair to play with. So you see, I’m torn. I discussed it with the llamas and told them that if they didn’t want to end up wearing lawn chair sweaters, they’d better try to stay a little cleaner in future.
Hay? What hay? These are the bits we’re saving for later.
I get the feeling they aren’t going to solve this ethical dilemma for me.
