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.

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.