Spinneret

Yo Ho ho

Welcome aboard!

Pyrate Yarns in port:

CherryBomb PopUp, Beacon, NY

 

 

also at sea on Zibbet

Pyrate Yarns

 

or Etsy

Pyrate Yarns

 

 

 

Mystery Barrel Washes Ashore

The Pyrates are up to something over at CherryBomb.

ye gods and little fishes will nothing stop them in their dastardly plans?

 

ask for no quarter,

never

surrender

 

#195

Dated 10/15/13
Wee Traveler
photos to follow

It Was A Set Up

Friday night in Rhinebeck:

the eclipse made the moon refract like Saturn.  Crazy.

let the games begin …

3rd Weekend in October

Looks like it's going to be a beautiful weekend.

Cucumbers Lie

Vengeance shall be mine.

I CHOSE a 3 gallon pickling crock for several reasons.  1) Who needs 5 gallons of any one flavor of pickle? 2) I would have to go back to scything the yard to have the necessary muscle bulk to lift a full 5 gallon pickle crock. 3)  Cucumbers flat out lie.

    There were enough cucumbers to fill the 3 gallon job about 2/3rds of the way.  Plenty of room for the guys to be fully submerged in the briny deep.  Everything proceeded swimmingly, if you will.

    Canning day arrives. The brine and the pickles are separated.   The brines goes on the stove to heat.  The pickles come out to rest before being packed off to bedfordshire.  Except I need another big bowl to put them in after filling the first.  huh.  I sterilize 8 pint jars, fill them and process them.  I sterilize 4 more jars, thinking by eye SURELY only 3 will be called for.  If in the interest of quality control and self defense I hadn't eaten about a pint of them straight out of the crock I would have needed to sterilize a 13th pint jar.  Now that is simple math,  and I have annotated the recipe accordingly.  But I am also putting a close watch on those cucmber vines and am not above slipping the deer a 5 spot for his troubles.

 

Yes, Virginia, that is more than a dozen pints of pickles.  5 pints required immediate fresh packing because THEY WOULDN'T FIT IN THE 3 GALLON CROCK.   What?  You only see 4 additional pints?  Yes dear,  I'm eating the 5th pint.  Be nice or you'll get pickles in your stocking.

 

In other news;

 

We, The Ulster County Handspinners Guild, rose to the invitational challenge on our competing teams' home ground and  slipped away under time with the blue.  Silently checking our time pieces and the bottom of our shoes the conversation began almost immediately - who weaves next time?

 

On the subject of jam making (can you tell I've been hitting the County Fair highlights?).  How to know when it's done enough to "set".  Well, that's a little secret I'm going to let just a few of you in on.  

    Forget about the Plate Test, take your damn spoons out of the freezer somebody is probably trying to put sugar in their ice tea.  

    Jam is done when it's heated up your kitchen pretty nicely for August, has had just about enough it's own self, thank you, parts of it start committing hari kari and carbonizing themselves to the top of your stove.  It will then spit at you and leave a MARK.  That's when it's time to start bailing that stuff out of the pot, slop some down the cabinet front and on to the floor, forcing it into jars big enough to be considered a proper size for filling a week's worth of toast.

    I think Grandma called it the lava stage.

Harboring Pyrates

They've landed.

Having loosed the hawsers of harrowing hold what's bobbed to the surface is this;

Oh, Beware their cunning.  Dead men cast away.

There's a  rough and heady hand at the wheel.  At the Lendrum wheel.  Save yourselves or cast on.  

                     Click on the Pyrate and Beware

Rhinebeck Won

or Rhinebeck 1; Spinner 1

I think that makes it a tie?

Folding Lendrum complete.

Pyrate Yarns® to follow.

Keep to the Code.

Fleece to Shawl 2010

Nearly wrecked the car getting to the fair - the view over the bridge was so stunning;

It was a gorgeous day, chilly in the morning.  A bit of a breeze most of the rest of the day and not so stinking hot  that the goats had to complain about the sheepy smell coming from the spinners and  weavers in The Wool Room.

There were the requisite County Fair stations to prostrate oneself to;

 

though I am offended by snow cones served in plastic cups.  WTF?  Half the flavor is in the disintegrating paper cone.  snow CONE.  GET IT?

I love coming up here for this event.  It's a fun day with friendly people and we have a great time.
More than one spinner/weaver heard me say Corn Dog for the quick lunch break we had;
Oh yes I did.

And now here's the part I wish had gone differently.  I underestimated the time I would need to produce 2 yards of fabric.  It can be done in 3 hours.  We had 4 from start to finish, so there was a good head start for carding and getting the single plies in process.  I chose to not begin weaving until after the break.  Which left me with 2 hours during which 4 feet of fabric was produced. The goal is  6 feet for a really full bodied shawl.  Now, I use a  boat shuttle.  And I am a damn fast weaver.  The other three teams were all using stick or rag shuttles.  Which I had counted on to even the pace out and equalize the challenge.  But … I was wrong.

The warp was beautifully spun and plied by one team member, dyed to an edible array of raspberry reds and pinks by another team member who graciously filled in as a spinner at the last minute, the weft was a splendid team effort and we had a boatload of fun doing it.  I hope we'll do it again.  We learn something new every time.  And the shawl we made is a beauty.

 

It is reversible.  Warp faced on one side and weft faced in a plush 1/3 twill on the other.

Here's the warp face for you.

 

and here is the cow face for you.  Saucy minx.

 

No, the angora is not out of focus.
 

This my friends, was the neatest trick of the day.  Cup holders for your wheel.  "N" had one for her folding Lendrum.  Oh what a cheap scene we all made when we saw that.  Maybe when my Wee Robin comes bob bob bobbin' along …
 

We did place.  4th.  There were 4 teams.  It was nice to get a consolation ribbon but I really wish things had worked out differently.

This shawl can be seen at one of the craft events the team attends.   Maybe the Labor Day craft fair on the same grounds?  There was some warp left over … it's very lovely yarn.
  
 

 

Offending the Zinnias

So it's um … er … snowing. On October 15th. snowing. Like it usually does … some time after Thanksgiving, if anybody is counting. The zinnias are ferklempt, the snapdragons don't seem to mind much, but the cannas - the cannas look like debutantes at the end of the evening when the lights go back on. Poor things. They need to be put to bed.

I'm blaming the snow on the martians who landed on the mountain on Sunday.
As you can see the trees have made very few arrangements for their usual gig. Monday morning there was the smallest amount of frost, Tuesday a touch more, Wednesday was cool, brief sun, and today it is sloppy clumpy snow. Almost as if someone threw a switch and jammed the weather rheostat all the way up

There may have been a little yarn crawling on Monday. maybe. some. a little.
In support of the local economy. This roving is merino from Seaport Yarns, under the owners own label - Jefferson Yarns. This may be what I will be spinning when I demonstrate Sunday morning with the Ulster County Handspinners Guild at Rhinebeck (39 A&B if you plan on stopping by). The nice folks at Seaport gave me a few 5% discount cards for folks who want to stop at their booth during the weekend. Just sayin'. The early bird and all that.

It's still snowing

In other news: The Birds of Prey exhibit is still running at Highstead Arboretum - through November 10th (we've been extended a bit). That exhibit will move to the Environmental Science Center at Yale in January for a 6 month run.

Over the last few weekends there was also the kick-off and brief installation of the Beacon Open Studios weekend. This was a complete blast. A group of us shared an amazing space in the old Bulldog Studios - now Beacon Studios. Scroll down the BOS site for more of that.

For those of you playing along - The snow is starting to stick in the back yard.

I may ask Helen about this.