Etherknitter

Summer garden, Wine of the Week

Maybe I've been a doc for too long.

(Digitalis purpurea "Pam's Choice")

Open wide and say "Ahhhhhhhhhhhh".

How about a Wine of the Week?  This one was an unexpected stunner.  2005 La Spinetta, Langhe Nebbiolo, ordered at a little Italian hole in the wall restaurant in Cambridge, MA.  Great vintage, great winemaker, generic Nebbiolo, which is the same grape that Barolo and Barbaresco are made from.

If the maker just says "nebbiolo", it means that he is forbidden by the winemaking rules to name the vineyard.  It probably came from MULTIPLE sites, or from vineyards that already had their quota of wine bottled.  The winemaking rules state that only X numbers of bottles can be taken from a given vineyard and labeled as coming from that vineyard.  This is supposed to prevent overcropping, or growing too many grapes from the vines for the wine to be any good.  It protects the consumer. 

It is the spinner's equivalent of roving labeled "Australian wool".  You don't know what breed, or what grower, just that the sheep came from a certain country.  In this case, the winemaker declassified his young vine production from a vineyard he already used for other, more expensive wine, and put it into this wine.  Lucky us!

A rising tide lifts all boats.  The vintage was so good, that it didn't matter that this bottle has no pedigree.  The winemaker put in lots of good juice.  You can taste lush, fruity, ripe grapes.  It has a black cherry smokiness, and a dustiness (in a good way) that makes you want to keep going.  The backbone of the wine (tannins and acids from the grape stems, skins and grape itself) are in perfect balance.  Your dental enamel is left intact after you finish, although your teeth may look rosy purple.  I loved this wine, called my local wine guy, ordered a couple of bottles.  The price has gone up this month.  But it is an excellent value, at this price, in the current wine market. 

Digging deep into bottomless spinning pits

This is the Year of Order.  I am decluttering, tossing, cleaning, organizing. 

No one told me that stash had many parts.  They snickered as my stash grew.   The yarn came first.  Then the needles were followed by patterns.  When the spinning came, the roving and fleeces stacked up like planes approaching O'Hare.  Without warning, yarn can now be subdivided into discrete categories.  Sock yarn became a colossus unto itself.

Organize. 

Julia led me down the bunnycrack path when she gave me a spinning lesson in 2005.  Cataloguing stash items brought two ounces of purple and lavender Kim merino/angora back into awareness.  (The exercise of cataloguing intends to do exactly that:  pinch the memory into remembering what lies beneath the first layers.)  The picture above is each ball spun separately, then two-plyed into 209 yards of softness.  Someday I will cease to be lazy, and document whorl, WPIs, and other technical information.  That day is not today. 

Another archival fiber is two ounces of fawn alpaca top.  I bought this at Cummington, 2005, in the full throes of wannabe spinner alpaca lust.   

Top is really a wonderful spin.  It was easy and sleek and soft. 

I am having lots of fun with Ten Minutes a Day spinning.

Sadly Blogless Manise has no soapbox on which to display her FOs.  When knitting, pattern, color, yarn and face all converge into perfection, the event MUST be blogged. 

Fickle Fingers scarf:  I'm relying on her to leave the yarn and pattern details in the comments.

Ubiquitous Meme

I never do these without prompting.  But Cindy tagged me.

The rules: Posted here at the beginning. The player answers all questions. The player then chooses six people you want to know more about and tags those people by listing their names at the end of the post and going to their blog and leaving a comment, letting them know they've been tagged and asking them to read your blog. Also, you let the person who tagged you know when you've posted your answer.

1. What was I doing 10 years ago?

I was tackling my garden edgings as a way to deal with mother-loss grief.  Stunningly, I had not yet started knitting, spinning or blogging.

2. What were five things on my to-do list today (not in any particular order)?

Pay bills, plant the stuff I bought at the nursery,  clean the clutter, call a friend whose father died a year ago today, exercise

3. What snacks do I enjoy?

almonds, pecans, granola bars, dried figs

4. Where are some places I've lived?

New Haven, CT,  Portland, OR, Washington, DC, Ohio, Faribault, MN, Boston, MA

5. What things would I do if I were a billionaire?

Retire. Get involved with the Museum of Fine Art in Boston:  become a docent and memorize 200 items in the collections, then give tours.    Fund something medical in preventive care for kids, probably in Africa or India.  Buy a nice ski house.  Create a fund with earnings that go to Alzheimer's research.

No one left to tag.

Etherply

Gardens are a living river marking the flow of time.  One can sense the hurry, the frenetic pace of budding, flowering, fruiting, all before it is too cold and too late.  My lupine is hollering at the top of her lungs right now:  "ME!  Look at me!  Look at ALL of me!  Even just ONE of my flowers must tempt you!"

Twelve bobbins of Coopworth singles.  A different kind of abundance, spun over thirteen months.   I planned three ply, from three bobbins.  (I did not want the texture of Navajo plying.  The little knots where you loop the yarn change the yarn, as does trapping the twist in each section between knots.)

I measured and weighed the singles as I finished each bobbin.  Calculations loomed.  It wouldn't be hard, just boring, I thought.  Figure out yards per gram, and match groups of three so that the resulting yarn was as uniform as possible.  Who can knit to gauge if the skeins are variously worsted, DK weight, AND light aran?  I wanted worsted weight.

I started the calcs.  After about fifteen minutes, and a notepad full of numbers that I had to start organizing, I turned to home talent.  I asked Mr. Etherknitter to write me a quick calculator program that sorted the bobbins as I described.

Quick.  Ha.  He told me that the problem starts out as 12 factorial choices.  That means that the number of possibilities are 12 x 11 x 10 x 9 x 8 x 7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = whatever.  There were 15,400 unique possibilities.   I ruefully laughed at the idea that I had started to calculate this by hand.  Two weeks later, he gave me a program that performs the math AND has a polished user interface for the application. 

I am sharing his work with the spinning world.  My fiber consultants think I am obsessing.  Can I really be the only person on the face of the spinning planet who has spun multiples of bobbins and wants to ply to make uniform skeins?  Even if you have only four bobbins, and plan two skeins of 2 ply yarn, this eliminates the math (you would have 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 possibilities, not all unique, but all tedious to calculate by hand).

The program is here.  Feedback to improve the interface is invited and welcome. 

J is for Joy

The sign at the parking lot in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park said "Free Swing Dancing".  We had just toured the Conservatory of Flowers, and were desultorily looking for a cab back to the hotel.

The weather was perfect - warm, dry, sunny.   The couple in the center was really really good.

The joy was infectious. 

Straighten up and ply right

I am gloriously flunking the first heat wave of 2008.  "I'm NOT going to turn on the AC.  Not.  NOT."  And I haven't.  But I'm wandering the house, enervated by the heat, wilting, damp, unhappy.  After I finish writing this post, I will flee to the cool dampness of the basement, and start cleaning the messiness down there. 

This, then,  is the perfect time to show a stranded, warm, toasty FO.  It loses some of the punch of the presentation because of the heat.  But, an FO is an FO, no matter how the ambient climate disagrees with me.

Bosnian mittens, kit from Blackberry Ridge

#2 for cuff, #4 for mitten, lots of yarn left over

These were great good fun to knit.  I can't claim that the second mitten had fewer wonky tension issues than the first.  The second one went much faster.  I could see the clear progression of increasing speed in stranded knitting technique.

Neural pathways involved in learning seem to need two steps.  The first, short-term step of engaging brain cell connections already present, makes the beginning parts of new skills possible.  The part that takes time is making new proteins and new connections between brain cells.  That involves making new molecules, very much like bulking up muscle.  It doesn't happen in one weight-lifting session, or one session with the needles. 

One long knitting session is less effective than multiple short sessions.  This worked out perfectly for leaving the mitten on the bathroom floor, and working a couple of rows several times per day.  I'm very happy with them, and with having learned a new knitting skill.  I'm understating.  The word "exhilarating" has come to mind often.

I liked working with this yarn.  The 25% mo is soft, and unlike most mo.  I'm going to use the leftovers to swatch, so I can use this yarn in a future sweater for Mr. E.

I couldn't tell you why I have been unhappy with my plying recently.  Maybe I have been comparing what I see coming off my wheel with sumptuous stuff shown on other blogs.  So I tried a brief experiment.  I ran a previously plyed skein through the wheel again, and added more twist.

Before and after.  I like the second one better.  I have been  underplying.                                                                                             

I is for Incendiary

Container plantings = deck garden = ornamental flowers = white pepper flowers = pollination = a conflagration of ripe hot peppers = unexpected bonanza for winter recipes and kitchen decor

These are Thai Dragons. 

Cummington 2008

Cummington.  It is where I learned to spin.  It was my first fiber festival, and so the neural pathways governing fiberlust are deep and strong in me when I am there.  I was part of the feral roaming packs stuffing fiber in their sacks for the winter famines.

Cassie has done the linkage.  Some arrived, who were scarce and rare. 

The small hillside in front of the stalls is our headquarters.  No one else seems to think it is good space, so we take it over each year.  After having wrung out our wallets, it is a dangerous spot.  One leap upwards, and you can be at Amy Boogie's booth.  One roll downhill, and you will run into Barb Parry's feet.

I was camnestic until the end, and that's all you get.

Jess was trying to buy fiber from The Wool Peddler.  The wind was having its way with her.   Judy was warming in the sun. Cheryl was recovering from fibering.  Mamacate, Cassie, and Knitigator were inspecting purchases, and spindle-spinning.

Restraint in purchasing has not robbed me of the need for a serious fiber diet.  That glorious Ken Ledbetter spindle was from Judy's booth.  Wool Peddler roving (BFL, Berry Bark colorway) was whipped around my head in triumph at every opportunity.  It had to compensate for the Spinner's Hill roving (blue/green).  Twelve ounces of blue/green is a big presence, and everyone just nodded their heads knowingly at my color choice.  That's why I had to show my 8 ounces of new passion to them.  (Is there a spam filter for blogs?  That last sentence would NOT pass.)  That's 8 ounces of BFL in the colors of berry and bark.

I am so behind in posting.  I've had computer glitches for two weeks.  Every time I tried to download a picture to the blog, Firefox crashed.  I now have a new 'puter.  It's not REALLY new, says the nongeek.  It is a cheap reconfigured IBM something-or-other that Mr. Etherknitter picked up at the local computer geek place.  At least I can post now.

FO, garden, I, J, K,  coming so fast you won't even recognize this as my blog.