Or,

Laundry Day

We’re not quite home yet, but I’ve finally found a relatively clear tabletop surface to fire up the computer. The train trip east was a hoot, and if you happen to be either my friend on Facebook or my husband’s, you’ve followed the progress of the Family Party through the week. One of my sisters has a place on a lake, and most of the family made it to the party. We’re now back in town, and get on the plane  tomorrow to head home. Here are just a few highlights;

That would be Larry, my brother-in-law. It’s a family tradition to celebrate the emptying of a bottle by playing taps while everybody stands and salutes. Let’s just say that Larry got the chance to perform this many times over the past week.

As you can see, nearly everybody was wired in some fashion. That’s me in the foreground, being a Luddite and spindling.

That’s a sign in my sister’s kitchen.

The family!

A little expedition out on the lake.

Sock on the lake!

Sisters! And an honorary sister!

Sunset over the lake!

This is the primary mode of transportation at the lake. Because God knows, we wouldn’t want to have to walk 100 feet to the bar.

Lake food!

More lake food! And a bonfire!

I even found a yarn shop. The closest little town to the lake is only about 14,000 people, but by God, they have a yarn shop, and a nice one at that. The photographic proof is on my camera however, not John’s, and I quite inexplicably forgot to bring the camera cord.

That’s enough for today, since John is threatening to revoke my laptop privileges. We head home tomorrow!

1600 miles

Good to see you! Yeah, you too.

Where’s the liquor store??

Courtesy of Rick Steves

The Tour is winding down, I’ve been spinning like a madwoman, but not much knitting going on. That pretty much sums up the days since my last post. Though I’ve enjoyed the challenge of trying to spin every day, it will be good to get needles back in my hands.

I also need to report back on the allergy thing. I haven’t taken the camel out of the bag since I decided that it was what was making me sneeze and wheeze. I’m not sure if this is good news or not, but my theory of camel allergy was blown all to hell. It’s not nearly anything that exotic, but just good old-fashioned seasonal grass allergies. It’s a bit surprising, since I haven’t had much trouble with it in years past, but I’d have to admit that this has been one of the wettest, weirdest summers we’ve had since moving here. The symptoms are now under control with prescription junk, but still there despite quarantining the camel. Good, in that I can still have my camel fiber, bad, in that I can’t quarantine the grasses nearly as easily. Oh well.

I tried a new spinning technique yesterday. Here’s a photo.

We went to the dog park with the mutts, and I took my spindle bag with me. I need a little more practice at spindling and walking, but it worked OK. John was a bit horrified, but I’m already considered certifiably weird by most people anyway, so what the hell. It worked OK, that is, until I stepped in dog poop because I wasn’t watching what was under foot. That is a little problem I’ll have to work on.

In other news, we’re off on an adventure again. We’re meeting my sisters and their families in Minnesota for a week for vacation. My older sister lives in North Dakota, and they have a summer place on one of the lakes nearby in MN. We’re all headed there for a little family reunion, complete with all the usual fun lake things: eating, swimming, drinking, Mexican Train competitions, etc. The other fun part is that we’re taking the train there. We get on the train early this afternoon here, and spend Saturday and Sunday riding the Empire Builder across Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, and Minnesota. We get in early Monday morning. I think this should be a blast. We have a sleeper car, and John has the martini shaker and vodka packed, so I think I’m set. Of course I don’t have anything else packed, so I probably ought to wind this up. We will have internet access while there, so I’ll try to post while gone.

By the way, if you happen to be trolling the internets looking for an empty house to rob, go away now. We have someone who moves into our house when we go away. It works out well, since the dogs can stay here, and there’s someone to get the mail and water the plants. The pups are OK in a kennel, since we’ve found a good one, but they far prefer being here and getting to go to that dog park every day as usual. So if you’re thinking that the yarn and fiber stash are fair game while we’re gone, forget about it. It’s well guarded. I’m off to pack!

I hit another little speed bump on the Tour de Fleece. As I’ve been telling anybody who would listen, I’ve been sick all week. I’m not one to suffer silently; rather, I whine loudly to anyone who will listen. I was pretty sure I had some modern version of the plague since last Tuesday: cough, runny nose, runny eyes, itchy, sneezy, wheezy, drowsy (sounds a little like the seven dwarves, doesn’t it?). I’ve been taking every version of cold remedy on the market, with little or no relief. Even the whiskey didn’t help, it just made me Dopey.

Today it dawned on me. This is the fiber I’ve been spinning on my new Moosie spindle for the Tour.

Here it is again being wound off the spindle onto a tennis ball.

The fiber is from Corgi Hill Farm. It is just lovely stuff, and spins up like nobody’s business. It’s a merino-silk-camel-firestar blend.

Damn. It’s the camel. The only other camel stuff I have in my stash is two things; one is a very small amount of pure camel fiber. It made me sneeze when I stuck my nose in the bag. The other is a bit larger bag of tussah-camel. It also made me sneeze when I stuck my nose in the bag. Fortunately I didn’t go nuts and buy boxes of this stuff.

The camel fiber has all been quarantined. When I’m feeling better, I’ll do a semi-controlled study and play with it a bit and see if the same thing happens. It just won’t take me a week next time to figure it out. If I start sneezing again the next time that bag is opened, the camel fiber will all be on the auction block for sale.

Here’s what’s replacing that fiber for the rest of the Tour:

The color on that is just all wrong. This is also from Corgi Hill Farm, it’s a merino-silk-firestar blend (no stinking camel!), color name True Blood. I’ll work on getting a better photo if our sun ever shows its face. The photo on my monitor looks pink-red. In real life, this has no pink, just deep blood red with shots of darker red and sparkle.

I’m off to find the allergy pills.

I was treadling like a madwoman this morning, trying to finish the sock yarn plying. We have an annual boat parade on our lake every July 4th, and it’s become a tradition that a bunch of neighbors and friends show up at 10AM to have Bloody Marys by the gallon and food by the ton. I wanted to get this finished before then. Then this happened.

I’m off to find the kitchen cotton to make a new drive band. Then it will be back on the road for the Tour!

Well, yeah. I’ve disappeared from the blog again for 2 weeks. I have no excuse. It’s not even nice outside so I could blame it on summer. I think it got all the way up to the mid-60’s today, though at least there’s been sunshine this afternoon and evening. I think everybody in this neck of the woods is just sick to death of grey and rain. It normally doesn’t hang on this long, but there you go. And I have a nasty sinus infection and/or cold, so it makes it even worse. I guess if it was gorgeous outside and I was sick, I’d be even more pissed off, so there’s that.

I have been doing a little knitting, but mostly on my plain old sock. Sinus medicine doesn’t go well with complex lace knitting, so that’s pretty much out. If you think I do stupid knitting tricks on whiskey, you should see my knitting on antihistamines and decongestants (and cough medicine, and ibuprofen, and pretty much anything else in the medicine cabinet offering even a remote possibility of relief).

I do appear to be able to spin on drugs, however. The Tour de France started today, and the Ravelry Tour de Fleece started as well. I’ve signed up, of course. It won’t be too hard, since I spin almost every day already. The only rules are that you try to spin every day that the Tour rides, and to spin something challenging on the 22nd, the toughest cycling day.

Here’s what I’m doing. Though I have 7 spindles, all with something in progress on them, I’ve chosen one to be the primary Tour spindle. Hey, you don’t see Lance changing bikes every hour, do you?*

This is the spindle entry:

Pretty, eh? Click on the picture to see. That’s a Bosworth Moosie, made out of real moose antler. Of course he’s named Bullwinkle. What else would you name a moose antler spindle? I’ve had my name on the waiting list for this since last year, and got it this week just in time for the tour. The fiber is from Anna at Corgi Hill Farm. It’s a blend of merino, camel, silk, and firestar for sparkle. Sparkle is always good. And isn’t that a lovely color? You could get a lot of Corgi hair in that and never know it. The color name is really something like Sea Salt Caramel, but I think it looks a lot like Corgi.

And this is what I’m doing on my wheel.

Yeah, I’m mixing drugs and alcohol. What can I say, I live on the edge.

The fiber is Wensleydale, from Damselfly Yarns. I finished the spinning today, and can now wade into the plying part. The goal for this is a 3 ply sock yarn. I think it will be a little heavier than fingering weight, but I’m still pleased with how it’s turning out. Here’s what Wensleydales look like, if you’re interested.

And just because I learned how to do this today, one last photo:

Hope your 4th of July is full of great picnic food and fireworks tomorrow!

*I’m making that up, I have no idea about that. He might change bikes every hour for all I know. Humor me, I’m sick.

We’re still here on vacation, and I’ve managed to take hundreds of photos. There is a ton of stuff to see and do here, and we’re making a grand attempt to take it all in. Today is our last full day here, then we drive back to the DC area for a day, then home.

I did manage to find the yarn shop, and even bought a couple of things. Now there’s a surprise!

I also found some lovely sheep. These are in Colonial Williamsburg. They keep them in the pastures around the old reconstructed town. They shear them every year, and you can buy their wool in the shops. John drew the line at me buying a fleece and trying to stuff it into the overhead bin on the plane, so I settled for some finished wool. I’ll show photos of the loot in a different post when I photograph them. The sheep are Leicester Longwool, an 18th century breed from England.

This next photo might be familiar to those of you in the medical profession who use digoxin in your practice. This stuff (foxglove) grows all over the place here.

The nice thing about having a timeshare is that we have a kitchen. Even I can get tired of eating out for every meal. We tend to have lunch out, then cook dinner at “home”. That way we can have wine with dinner and nobody has to be the designated driver. Here I am stirring the stew pot.

Notice that like any good Colonial woman, I’m doing two domestic chores at once.

Speaking of spinning, I found the weaving and spinning cottage in Williamsburg yesterday. John gets the award of the week for standing patiently while I took photos and asked the very knowledgeable women every question I could think of.

The last place we toured yesterday was the Decorative Arts Museum, which has a fabulous collection of Colonial (and some later periods) furniture, pottery, quilts, and other household decorative items. I could have spent days there alone. The museum is on the site of the former Public Hospital, which was an insane asylum in Colonial times. A corner of the museum has a display of some of the items from the hospital. Here is John, demonstrating that perhaps I have driven him crazy after all.

Today we take the ferry across the James to the Smithfield area. It’s supposed to be hot and humid. The weather here makes me appreciate the Pacific Northwest. If I don’t melt in the heat, I’ll be back again with more photos next time!

There might be a “real” post later on. I had a great weekend last weekend at the Spin-In on Whidbey Island. Dorothy and her husband Bill were great hosts, as was Maggie the Corgi girl. Dorothy unfortunately didn’t feel well, but she soldiered on and finished her sock yarn for the class anyway. When I get the photos together, I’ll post something. My sister will be here visiting this weekend, so I need to get my butt in the shower so we get to the airport on time. Have a great weekend!

This is for Lora. She and her husband are moving to the Pacific Northwest this year, and I got a very plaintive email recently asking about the weather. (Remember when you did this, Kris?)

Here’s the photo of the day. It was cool and grey this morning, then all of a sudden I looked up and the sun was out, one of those famous sun breaks that we get.

Not the best photo in the world, but yes, Lora, the sun does shine here. This is not an April Fools’ joke. Of course it’s supposed to rain all weekend, and it’s only 40 degrees right now. It’s sort of a wimpy little sun break, but sun nonetheless. You can even see shadows on the lawn. All the trees are leafing out, the camellias are bloomed, the pansies are out in full force. I caught a Stellar’s Jay in our front tree right outside my home office yesterday collecting twigs for a nest, so baby birds can’t be far behind. The boy ducks on the lake are starting to jockey around for the attention of the girl ducks. I think spring might be my favorite season here, but then I say that about summer and fall when they roll around, too.

What’s your favorite season where you live?