Crocosmia In Orange

Day 322: It had entirely slipped my mind that my botany partners Joe and Sharon had brought me a few bulbs of their orange Crocosmia three or four years ago until I was on my way back from the compost heap and spotted this one small panicle of flowers. "Orange?" I said, and my first thought was that a red one had faded in poor soil as my irises have done in the past. Then I remembered planting bulbs from theirs, but to date, all I'd seen was foliage. My red one ("Lucifer") is long done with its blooming period. Does this one bloom later normally, or is it trying to adjust to the difference in climate between sea level and mountain? Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised, although I do know that this plant has a tendency to spread and is notoriously difficult to remove once established. That said, given its own space, it is usually content to form a large clump without encroaching on other landscaping. If you want to grow Crocosmia (and who doesn't love those showy flowers?), be sure you locate it in a permanent spot. Otherwise, you'll be pulling little baby Crocosmia bulbs for the next thirty years. Trust me, I learned the lesson early on. I hope this is a sign that Orange is happy in my back yard.

Nuts To You!

Day 321: "Well, nuts to you!" sez I to the chipmunk who's been scrounging under the bird feeders lately. No, I'm not really expecting a crop of filberts from Harry Lauder's Walking-stick, although the tree is producing some. My experience with our native Beaked Hazelnut and the small grove of filberts we had when I was a kid leads me to think that the few the worms don't get into will be consumed by birds, squirrels and chipmunks long before they ripen. I planted Harry Lauder shortly after I moved here, meaning that the tree is roughly 30 years old now. Only once in the past have I seen evidence of nuts, and that was in the form of a few shells on the ground. I don't recall having ever seen one on the tree before. It will be interesting to see how these progress.

Folklore Charm

Day 320: Spinning blends on a Turkish spindle can be challenging when one fiber is neppy (i.e., full of slubs) and another is slick as a greased pig. One quickly learns why it's called a "drop spindle" unless great care is taken to ensure that some of the longer, grippier Merino is included in each pull, but on the other hand, spinning such a blend will help you improve your skill and control of the fiber. The name of the game is to pull apart and distribute the slubs aesthetically throughout the finished yarn. This does not necessarily imply that they must be evenly distributed, because part of the charm of slubby yarns lies in the occasional larger slub interspersed among smaller ones. In fact, "Charm" is the name of this particular colourway, one of my favourites in the Folklore series from Paradise Fibers. It is comprised of Merino, viscose and bamboo, and spins up beautifully at 26 wraps per inch (fingering/superfine weight). This skein is 95 yards and weighs one ounce.

Curl As A Cucumber

Day 319: I have often said that although I can grow beautiful flowers, I am almost a complete failure at vegiculture. I flunked zucchini, failed radishes, got an F in green beans. Now we can add cucumbers to the list, unless this one deserves redemption as capital-A Art. From stem end to blossom end, it forms a curl of nearly 540 degrees, and would have made the full circle-and-a-half had not that blasted little chipmunk gnawed off the tip. What caused it to grow so strangely? Was it lack of water? A cold snap? A hot spell? Poor soil? Any of the above might or might not apply. I think perhaps the pots which now contain said curly cucumber and two sickly tomato vines will be given over to some type of berry next year. A berry is a fruit, and therefore they seem to be unaffected by the black thumb which governs vegetables under my care. After all, one should play to one's strengths.

Spinning My Wheels

Day 318: I feel like I'm just spinning my wheels, and for at least a portion of the day over the last several months have been doing exactly that in one form or another. The current project on my Louët is reddish-purple Corriedale top, spun at a fingering weight (i.e., 18-22 wraps per inch). That's kinda my default diameter for Corriedale, and I tend to spin Merino somewhat finer on this wheel. On the other hand, when I'm using a drop spindle, my default for Merino thins down to 26 WPI. I seldom spin heavier yarns these days, largely because commercially produced fine yarns have become prohibitively expensive in recent years. Besides, if you spin your own, you get double the pleasure of working with fibers, and I do prefer to knit with fine yarns. That said, I'd hoped to upgrade my spinning wheel for September Morn this year, but was knocked out by several hefty financial setbacks at the start of the year. Oh well, Louët and I have been friends for fifty years now, and as long as I am able to find replacement parts when the inevitable breakdowns occur, we'll keep the partnership alive.

Developmental Stage

Day 317: Recently, I stumbled across an alternate way to work krokbragd on a rigid heddle loom (as opposed to "turned krokbragd" as done on my band and inkle looms). In the past, I've had problems with warp tension when executing this style of boundweave on the rigid heddle while using a pickup stick and heddle rod in combination. I was anxious to try the new method, so I set up 31 warp threads at 7.5 epi so I could use leftover knitting worsted as the weft. The alternate system uses a pickup stick placed in front of the heddle rather than behind, a process which must be done each time those sheds are required, i.e., two times out of three in a sequence. It is slow going, to be sure, but I have had no issues with tension, which seems like an equitable trade-off, all things considered. However, there was another factor to consider. Because different sheds are opened with this method, none of my old patterns would work as drafted. Krokbragd does not lend itself to being designed on graph paper like many other weaves, so for the last two and a half days, I've been using good old "trial-and-error" as I tried to work out how to weave alternating rows of flowers. There have been a few hitches in the development of a pattern, but I finally have it nailed.

The Cone Of Fame: Plying Turkish Cops

Day 316: Sometimes I just have to drop something in here for ease of personal reference, and in this case, it has to do with manipulating Turkish cops. No, I'm not talking about bribery. I am referring a process by which the cops of spun singles yarn are controlled so that they can be plied together without tangling up with each other. I've had no end of problems with this in the past few months as I've been doing more drop-spindling, and have tried several different systems, none of which worked particularly well. A few days ago, the light bulb over my head lit up. Because they are light in weight, they tend to roll around if not somehow confined. Additionally, rolling around loosens up the outer end of the thread, so that even if they don't twist around each other, they often twist around themselves. Putting a rubber band around each one didn't work. Neither did running them under a stationary object. I needed something which would do two things: hold them in place separately, and allow for a smooth feed of the thread. Brainstorm! I stuffed each one into its own cone of weaving yarn, fed the working ends out through the top of the cone, and I was able to ply right down to the last few feet without a single problem. The process shall forevermore be known as the Cone of Fame.