Bronka and Merry

Bronka (my Kromski Minstrel spinning wheel, named for a friend) is ready to turn the cotton project over to Lily ( my Louët S15, otherwise known as the "ply wheel"). Other than an initial experiment to see how well the process worked, this is the first time I've spun cotton on a standard wheel. Bronka can be fitted with a fast whorl, unlike the Louët, and I was surprised at how easy it was to spin fine cotton on her. Of course the advantage over spinning cotton on a charka or tahkli is that her bobbins hold enough for an entire project. I zipped through 2.5 ounced of natural brown cotton in the space of two weeks. I will have to pick a quick project for my next spin because Tour de Fleece starts on July 4. I haven't participated before, and my challenge will be to complete a fractal spin from a Malabrigo Cloud colourway in greens. My summer "spin cycle"is full of firsts: cotton on a standard wheel, learning to use a drum carder, a fractal spin, and Tour de Fleece. As for Merry, his involvement is a given.

Clarkia, Farewell-to-Spring

Also known as Godetia, our native Clarkia is commonly called "Farewell-to-Spring." Hang on a mo'...did that authority say "native?" Why had I never seen it until the developers planted the roundabout at Nisqually-Mashel State Park with it? I've gone by several times en route to somewhere, and each time, I've continued on my journey, wondering just what the hell all that pink stuff was. Yesterday, I made a point of stopping. Upon closer examination, I was still none the wiser, so I looked it up when I got home. Clarkia, aka Godetia, aka Farewell-to-Spring, native to western Washington in several species. As often as I travel this route, you can bet I'll be keeping my eye on the seed heads. The Barren Wasteland needs some Clarkia.

Spin Cycle

No question about it: I am on spin cycle. After finishing the "confetti" yarn, I went digging in my cedar chest to see what I wanted to do next. Several ounces of blue "Charm" (a Merino/bamboo blend) came to the top of the list. I found a smaller packages of it as well, something I remembered setting aside to do with a drop spindle. I spun it all up and thought I was done until I checked the box of drop spindles where I found one more small package and a nearly full spindle which fortunately, I'd spun at the same diameter as the rest of what I'd just completed. Plied, the lot gave me 436 yards.

Then came my reward. I'd promised myself that when I got the "Charm" done, I'd try spinning cotton on the Minstrel. I'd become fairly adept at spinning cotton with a tahkli or on my book charkha, but it's quite a different procedure on a standard spinning wheel. As it turned out, I was pleasantly surprised. Using a very short forward draw, I was able to produce a uniform, fine thread. The 62-yard skein you see here is my first attempt. There are a few lumps and bumps which occurred as I tried to determine the best technique, and now I am well into spinning another much larger skein with far fewer irregularities. In fact, I might get it done in time to put in the Puyallup Fair!

Of Cats and Carders

For years, I've wanted a drum carder to expand my spinning capabilities, but my budget simply would not allow for one. Having tried to use a blending board to combine recycled sari silk with wool, I discovered (painfully) that my repaired shoulder was not up to the task. I put out a plea to my friends, and very shortly received a message from one of them who had one she said she could provide me as a "long-term loan." She even delivered it to my doorstep! There was a bit of a learning curve before I realized that in order to get a decent batt, it wanted to be loaded to at least half the depth of the pins, but once I figured that out, I was ready to make my first real batt. It took five passes through the machine before I was satisfied with the distribution of silk. Pulling it off as rolags rather than a flat batt presented another complication. There was no brake for the drum other than the handle coming into contact with the table at one point in the rotation. In order to get the remaining wool off in rolags, I had to engineer a way to keep the drum from rotating when the handle came around to the 4-o'clock position. Velcro straps solved the problem. It's still a lot of work to pull the rolags off, although it's easier than trying to make them on a blending board. And yes, the Supervisor in the background is curious about mama's new toy, but the pins prickle his nose.

Footnote: over the next 24 hours, I learned a few tricks of the trade for using this device. One, a brake is not necessary if you draw rolags off in layers rather than at the full depth of the batt. It's easy to keep the drum from rolling excessively with thumb pressure. Two, when loading fiber, you should keep it thin enough to read through when you lay it on the feeder tray. I only had to put the fiber through three times before achieving the same results as I did the first time. I'm learning!

A Shower of Stars

Monarch butterflies are exceptionally rare in western Washington, but if you're going to see one, June is the most likely month for them to be on this side of the Cascades. Their breeding ground is centralized in the Columbia Basin, but occasionally, an ambitious or misguided individual may cross the mountains. However, milkweed is also scarce here, and it is the host for Monarch caterpillars. I wouldn't want a little Monarch caterpillar to go hungry, so I've put some milkweed in the Barren Wasteland "just in case." I'd also like to have some dried pods for crafting, but although insects succeeded in pollinating a few of the flowers last year (where my own attempts failed), the pods rotted on the plants when our customary wet fall weather arrived. For the record, milkweed has a lovely sweet scent. I can understand the Monarchs' attraction to it, but I have yet to see one.

Madia Gracilis

 

"Hmmm," I said. "DYD I don't remember seeing before." DYD is a botanical euphemism meaning "Damn Yellow Daisy," a counterpart to DPD in instances where the suspect is purple. The Asteraceae comprise one of the largest (perhaps the very largest) family of flowering plants. DYDs and DPDs fill a high percentage of the family. A little further down the trail, my brain kicked in. "Madia...Madia somethingoranother." After mentally exploring several options, I was none the wiser, but its long, slender leaves suggested that I might not have to dig too deeply into Hitchcock to identify it. Indeed, it was fairly easy to narrow it down to Madia gracilis, Slender Tarweed. I sent photos off to the Burke Herbarium for inclusion in the database. For once, I'd had my GPS with me, and could pinpoint the location. That said, it's a fairly common plant, which is probably why it escaped my notice previously. Familiarity breeds contempt, as the saying goes. But photos of the plant were not the only thing I brought home with me. I picked up two ticks along the way. You may ask, "What's so unusual about that?" if you live in other parts of the country. Ticks were never something we used to worry about here in the Pacific Northwest, but they are becoming much more prevalent with the warmer, drier shift in the climate.

Cotton on the Minstrel

I have been wanting to try this experiment for some time, but a couple of wool projects kept the Minstrel occupied. My old spinning wheel (a Louët S10) is a "slow" wheel, i.e., the ratio between the whorls is on the low side (1:5.5-1:7.5). Since cotton requires a lot of twist, it really needs to be spun with a higher ratio and very light tension. The Minstrel allows for four ratios, and from what I'd read, 1:12 was the general recommendation. That meant changing from the standard whorl to the high-speed whorl, and I wasn't sure I could effect that with a cotton drive belt using double-drive. I really didn't want to have to change drive belts (that's a major operation!), but a quick test between skeins of wool showed that it wasn't necessary. After finishing up the "Charm" project (a blue slubby wool), I decided to give cotton a try. My first attempt (above) is a little irregular, but not so much as will matter once it's plied. I found that with punis (mini rolags), using a very short forward draw works better for me than long draw. The advantage to being able to spin cotton on a "standard" spinning wheel (as opposed to a charkha/tahklis) is that I can load the bobbin with a significantly greater length of finished thread...enough, in fact, that I'll be able to use it for weaving.

Confetti Yarn

I began spinning this "confetti" yarn from an 8-ounce bag on May 26. I was so taken with the end result that I eventually ordered a total of 28 ounces, more than enough to make myself a sweater. The photo really doesn't do it justice. The base wool is a pale warm grey, sprinkled with thousands of variously coloured viscose nepps. The last two skeins finished drying yesterday, and I've already knitted a test swatch (between 9 and 10 o'clock in the photo) to determine gauge. On size 6 needles, the yarn is perfect to use with my favourite raglan pattern, fitting the stated gauge exactly. This isn't the only spinning I've done since that date. I've also turned out a skein of magenta wool for the Fair, a skein of "lilac haze" wool and several other smaller projects. I've really just been spinning my wheels for the last month and a half.

A Zuke!

To put this into perspective, I have to admit that my success rate for growing anything edible (at least in the line of what one normally considers "garden vegetables") has been appallingly bad. I have failed Radishes repeatedly. I got an F in Zucchini. I scored a fat zero in Green Beans. I was lousy at Lettuce, poor at Peas, crappy at Cucumbers and Corn, tragic at Tomatoes with a couple of exceptional years. Therefore, this zuke is worth celebrating. It's one of two developing on a plant which is still quite young. Not only that, I've been enjoying kale as microgreens as I thin it out, and have discovered that it's not as nasty as I remembered. I don't want to sour my luck, but I think I may actually have some gardening success this year.

Tragopogon Dubius, Salsify

Yellow Salsify (Tragopogon dubius) is also known as Oyster Plant (for the taste of its edible root) or Goat's-beard. The latter annoys me because it is also applied to a native shrub, Aruncus dioicus, totally unrelated beyond being vegetative. Salsify is an introduced (but not invasive) species and I first saw it growing in the disturbed soils of southwestern Washington prairies where it quickly found a special niche in my heart. The yellow flowers are only open early in the day, giving way to 3-4 inch diameter seed heads resembling enormous dandelion clocks. While walking on the Yelm Prairie Line Trail yesterday, I saw several fully open, but I had left my camera in the car. By the time I was able to return to the site with it, the flowers had already begun to close.

Mushrooms A La LEGO

Last week, a mysterious package arrived on my doorstep. The return address gave me a clue, and I hoped to find a gift card inside, but when I opened the box, there was nothing to indicate who the benefactor might have been. I had a couple of ideas, one of which dominated the list of possibilities, but I wasn't 100% certain, and I didn't want to thank the wrong person based on an assumption. After posting an inquiry on Facebook, the person came forward in a private message and asked to remain anonymous. Respecting that, I promised to post a photo when I had finished building the kit.

Now, y'see, I love LEGOs. I haven't built many kits...two before this, to be precise (Doctor Who and a cute little ranger cabin)...but I have been impressed by the quality of LEGO products. I've never been missing a piece. In fact, there have always been a couple of "spare" pieces which I had to assure myself weren't remaining because I'd missed a step in the assembly. In this case, there was no question with respect to one spare part: I got two ladybugs instead of one! The instructions placed one on the stump. I put the other one on one of the Amanitas, red on red camouflage. This was certainly the most complex kit I've built (806 pieces), divided into seven bags which I carefully rationed out over the week. I only had to backtrack twice, and both of those were minor errors and easy to fix. LEGO provides the clearest instructions I have ever seen in a product. So, let me say "thank you" again to the Junuary Faerie who brightened my day/week with this delightful exercise in patience!

Gotcha Day

Two years ago today, I brought home a little "teacup cat" whose feet and ears seemed disproportionately large for his body. I knew from those indicators that he was going to be a big boy when he grew up, but I never expected him to weigh more than 12 pounds, and certainly not 17.4! By anybody's standards, that's a lot of cat. And it's impressive when at high speed, it tackles you around the knees from behind. Very much still a kitten with regards to his behaviour, he loves to play (especially with me), and he's full of mischief and curiosity, opening cupboards to look for food, following me everywhere I go and supervising whatever I'm doing. As important as his birthday, Merry's "Gotcha Day" is cause for celebration.

Silene Latifolia

Among my finds yesterday were a geocache in bad need of TLC (which I provided), a trail I had never been on before, and Silene latifolia (White Campion), an introduced species which nonetheless occupies a soft place in my heart. Why? I don't really know, except that it was one of the first plants I learned to identify. As for the trail, I only went up it far enough to find the geocache because I was actually on my way home, cold and tired following a caching CITO event, and because from that point on, the track began climbing Osborne Mountain on a sharp incline I didn't feel up to tackling. It was on my way back that I found the Silene, its slender, long leaves telling me "latifolia." I like it when the Latin is informative. All in all, I'd say it was a nicely productive day, and the Osborne Mountain trail and I will have to have another discussion in the future.

Candy Canes in June

Today was the annual geocaching CITO in which we set up the platform tents in the volunteer campground at Longmire. I always watch for the mycoheterotrophic species here, and was rewarded with a lovely cluster of Allotropa virgata, aka "Stick Candy," which looks like peppermint sticks. I don't think the handful of people I collared en route back to the picnic pavilion were expecting a botany lesson, but y'know, I just couldn't help myself. This plant is among my favourites, not only because it's pretty and unusual, but because it survives in spite of incredible odds. First of all, it requires the assistance of a specific fungus for breaking down soil components into something it needs, that fungus has its own set of requirements. Some mycoheterotrophs are more "sociable" than others, which is to say they rely on a wider range of fungi, but in my experience, the rarity of a plant seems to correspond to the number of fungal partners it is willing to accept. Ah, to be fifty years younger, and to have it to do all over again! Mycoheterotrophy fascinates me like nothing else.

Garden Cart

I've had this garden cart for several years, and it only just occurred to me that instead of lugging plants in and out of the house morning and evening, I could just put them in the cart and wheel it into and out of the garage while I'm hardening them off for planting. I'm going to take a chance and put them out later this week, although our nighttime temperatures are still dipping into the low 40s. If I have to, I'll put protective covers on them if there's a threat of frost. What you see here includes two Sungold tomatoes (a friend calls this variety "tomato candy," and I have to agree), one zucchini (no one needs more than one), an eggplant (experiment!), and four peppers (two sweet and two jalapeno). Given how well my other plants are doing, this year may well be the best garden I've had in the 35 years I've lived here!