Adventures in Babysitting

Jersey Twins were in town for the 3rd Annual Escape from Jersey Mama. They had a few forays into unorthodox summer vacation activities, like ice skating
and safe-cracking

Apart from that though, it was mostly summer things. We went to the Howard County Fair featuring punk rock chickens
important information about horse diseases,
massive vegetation,
opportunities for indigestion
and dizzyness,
and the promise of woolly things to come
The fleeces were all covered with plastic, so no fleece petting :( But the Sheep and Wool 2009 flyers were out :)

We got a chance to see a Redskins preseason game. Jersey Girl opted out. Jersey Boy came along and was interested for all of about 20 minutes. I don't think he actually knew the rules, so I can see how it would be confusing.
I started a sock on the way to the game and knit on it throughout.
This is Garnstudio Fabel, my all time favorite self-fair isling sock yarn. As you can see, this is my current commuter sock, so it's grown quite a bit.
I'm also working on another Best Friend Scarf, this time in very colorful handdyed silk.
This is yarn from my spoiler from quite a few Secret Pals ago. It's super nice to knit with and the colors knit up beautifully together. I could get used to this kind of luxury he he he!

Ready, Set, Spin!

I bought a new wheel. What can I say? I'm weak. I've been eying a portable wheel since I signed up to go to SOAR. I truly heart my old Louet, but it's just not made for traveling. When I got a 10% paypal coupon, I jumped at the excuse, er, I mean, "opportunity" to get a good deal on a new wheel from ebay. So what have I spun so far?
This is 4oz of a merino tencel blend in "spruce" from Kendig Cottage. I'm working on another four ounces now.

I also took the Joy on it's first outing this weekend to a cotton spinning class at the sadly soon-to-close Springwater Fiber. It was a very small class of just two students. Sylvia, Springwater's fabulous spinning teacher, packed lots of information into a three hour class. We got to pick seeds out of cotton, which is a real pain in the butt - no wonder Eli Whitney is in all the elementary school history books. Because of cotton's short staple length (1 to 1.5 inches on average, compared to 3 in or more for wool), it's takes a lot more twist to spin a strong yarn. We tried out different preparations.
From left to right:
1. hand-seeded (ugh!), hand-carded
2. light commercial prep, sliver
3. same as 2, only hand-carded before spinning
4. same as 3, only spun with long draw.
5. commercial prep, organic brown.
6. commercial prep, low land cotton (I think?)
7. commercial prep, pencil roving
8. cotton ball, dyed blue (1/2 inch staple length - yikes!)
9. cotton tencel blend, spindle spun.

The pencil roving took no drafting at all, so it felt like zero-effort yarn. The cotton tencel was also nice, the tencel making it infinitely easier to draft.

In knitting news, I made an angel scarf for the International Scarf Exchange. During the stash reorg, I dug up some nice alpaca.
I had totally forgotten about them until they appeared from the bottom of the stash like furry little potatoes. They weren't even recorded in my Ravelry stash (which means they didn't really exist, right?) I found a pretty, but easily memorized lace pattern on Ravelry and made this:
I did a lot of the knitting during UM Summer Chorus rehearsals, so there's a lot of spitty German text embedded in this scarf. Hopefully, it all came out in blocking :)

Catch Up

Since it's now mid July and I've totally missed out on posting about June, here's a quick summary (Now with Knitting!):

I went to the Nat's Stitch 'n Pitch with my brother, my friend Nancy and her friend Chris. It was lots of fun. The stadium is brand spanking new.
See how shiny? We certainly got our money's worth at that game. Washington beat Texas in 14 innings (I have to say the 14th Inning Stretch is way more interesting than the usual 7th Inning version. Imagine what a 21st Inning Stretch would be like!). Chris worked on a sweater, Nancy worked on a hat and I worked on the second butterfly sock:
This pair has since been finished and sent to it's new home.

At the end of the month, I reorganized my yarn and fiber stash. It took forever, but many countless ziploc bags and plastic storage bins later, it's done. My sock yarn is tucked away in 5 drawers, arranged by weight (fingering or sport/dk) and type (solid, self striping, commercial variegated, hand dyed). I know people say sock yarn isn't stash, but for something that's not really stash, it sure does take up a lot of space. Cottons, dk animal fibers and undyed skeins took one container each. Worsted/bulky took two big containers, as did spinning fibers. Phew! Let's see how long it stays organized... During the stash toss, I unearthed some Kureyon and made a quick skinny scarf.
Extra bonus points for a) using stash yarn and b) getting started on the holiday knits. Score!

Mt. Rainier

We had a late night flight back to DC and we decided to spend our last day in the Pacific NW doing something sort of outdoorsy. So we went to the mountains. Or rather the mountain. Ok, it's a volcano.
Mt. Rainier was asleep, but I guess it's always good to be prepared.

The drive there from Seattle was very pretty. The trees there are different from the ones back east, really tall and slender.
Once we got closer to the mountain and entered the national park itself, the woods were full of huge, knotted old growth trees. They had had more snow than usual over the winter. The two-lane roads were clear, but there was plenty of snow still left.
It was 8 ft deep in many places, and the higher up you went the deeper it got. We were there well into spring, and as the temps went up, spontaneous little cataracts came down.
We didn't see much wildlife. The birds were clearly very used to human contact. They knew well that people bring food, so they weren't shy about approaching visitors to get a free meal.
We didn't feed them, so this bird got bored quickly and left.

Now the mountain itself was stunning.
Real climbers can go all the way to the top but we tourists only went as far as the observation building (I said "sort of outdoorsy" remember?), which was a flying saucer shaped thing with windows all around, some of them completely blocked by snow drifts. From the raised viewing platform in the middle of the building, we could see the main attraction and it's little siblings too.

There are lots more smaller peaks not pictured. They may all have different names, but I suspect it's just one big pool of magma way down below.

And that, at long last, is the end of my vacation posting. Yay! Now maybe I can post about more current events and maybe even (*gasp*) current knitting!