"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"
- Barbara Bush, 3/18/03

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i love you poppy

charles jesse hull ii
august 28, 1945 – july 22, 2008

comment [25]

posted 23 July 08 & filed under

oh yes i've been busy

.. i couldn’t let june go bye with only one post. happy first of july, hope the summer is treating you kindly ~ ~

comment [10]

posted 30 June 08 & filed under busy bee

seven fleece spinner

note to self: do not fall asleep without getting ready for bed! contacts out, teeth brushed, pyjamas on, lights off, under the covers, books and laptop off bed – - these are allll good and normal things one does before going to bed, and for good reason! otherwise, invariably, like clockwork, it’s restless sleeping + uncomfortable positions + bad bad dreams. so. wake up! and fix things. end of note.

on to a happier subject: fleeces. last year, at maryland sheep and wool, i bought three – my first three – and i processed one (my jacob, aww, i love that fleece). then in april when i bought my victoria, a finn (cross, i think) fleece jumped into the truck with me, so that makes three fleeces again. so, this year, i was determined to have no more than seven fleeces total. seven just felt right. and i had to stick to last year’s rule (more or less, i discovered this year that last year’s merino is 6 1/2 lbs, which is pretty small for merino, but.. ) that no fleece could be over 5 lbs. so i did exactly that – got four fleeces, all under five lbs. a certain someone kept whispering to me that eight is a lucky number in some countries, but i ignored her. i’m looking at 35 lbs. of fiber, thankyouverymuch – i have more than enough!


ok, first, an aerial shot (with skippycat in the background. the dogs were very interested in the sheepy smells too, though i had to keep telling them that no sheep were harmed to get me my beloved fleeces. they do kinda look like carcases though :Z but i know they’re really just little piles of gorgeously stinky greasy fluff.)


i realized i tend to like the colored fleeces more than the pure whites, which is great because most people are drawn to the easy-to-dye white cormos and such. here’s one exception that i couldn’t resist: a teeny border leicester fleece. i assisted at the fleece show, and judging (moving and opening bags as the judges requested, but mostly just listening in on what they were saying, really interesting stuff), and one judge really had a preference for the bigger fleeces, which makes sense practically for commercial reasons, but not for handspinners, it seems to me. anyhow, all the leicesters were judged together and of course the border leiscerster and blue-face leicester fleeces were much smaller than the others, so they were immediately taken out of consideration for ribbons. hmph. i remarked that i was glad the same criteria wasn’t used for humans, or i’d be out of luck (5’2” since i was 14, and that’s it folks).

so, this is a 3.25 lb. fleece, at $6.25 a pound, from a farm in culpeper, va. the staple length is ok, but the luster and hand of the fiber is real nice, plus it just looks like butter, doesn’t it? and how can anything that reminds you of butter be wrong? yup, it just drew me right in. fleeces are divided into three categories at maryland sheep and wool – either show only, sell only, or show and sale. this fleece was a sale only, which you’d think might mean an inferior fleece, but noo way – it costs a bit more to enter a fleece to the show, for judging, and often too, people didn’t want their fleeces competing with each other for any given category. anyhow, so that’s a lesson i learned this year – their were some gorgeous sale only fleeces to be had.


fleece #5 is a lincoln x ewe, from a lamb named ‘latifah’ in west virginia – helpful info to have, though not all sellers include it. during my fiber prep class, we spun some adult coopworth and some lamb coopworth, and the adult stuff i didn’t care for much, but the lamb? oh it was great great stuff. i was surprised at how nice this lincoln fleece was – there’s so much to learn about fleeces, clearly!! – as i don’t like the super curliness of the locks. they often feel rough and coarse.

i’d like to know what the cross is here though – the curls are still there, but they’re so much softer and loftier. and the colors! oh this was as close as i could get to buying another jacob fleece (which i almost did. from the same flock as last year, coincedentally! it felt so much like fate. but then i ran out of cash, so that seemed even more like fate. ha.) without buying another jacob, so into my hand it jumped. i think it’ll dye up just great. i can’t wait to try out overdying some of these darker fleeces.


next, another lamb fleece, but this time an icelandic cross. again, surprised! you’d think such a long staple would be rough rough rough, but no, this stuff is just the opposite. i’m really interested in double-coated sheep, the primitive breeds, so i was very happy to get this fleece. 3.25 lbs, at $10 a pound, from a farm in alliance, ohio.

can you believe how long this staple is?? i tried to separate the two coats, but i think i ripped more than separated. i need to look up more info, probably old spin-off articles?, on icelandic sheep. can’t wait to spin this up – - but how? semi-woolen would be best, i think, taking advantage of that long staple, but they’d have to be handcarded or combed, since i don’t think my drum carder would treat this fleece very well. hm. oh and the color of the fleece is lovely too – lots of variations, but fundamentally a dark dark brown.


last but not least, for my maryland purchases, a maryland fleece! you get extra points for this in the skein competition, so you know i’m already thinking ahead to next year. ;) this fleece is from howell hill farm, in glenelg, md and it just a gorgeous fleece.

this will make a beautiful shiny worsted – the staple length is somewhat short, but the lustre and color make up for everything. it’s like a mother of pearl color. plus it’s so soft and will take dye beautifully i think. natural dyes for sure.

and while i’m at it, here’s my other three fleeces, including the first two from last year’s maryland sheep and wool. it was interesting to see how the feel of the fleece changed with one year of storage (in big cotton laundry bags my mom gave me – no moths, no problems, phew). they definitely stiffened up and the lanonlin changed from buttery to tacky. still, it’ll all wash out.


here’s my six pounder merino. i learned last month that merino, like many fine-wooled fleeces, like cormo, rambouillet, etc, have a lot more lanolin in them than a coarser fleece, like a jacob or a shetland. at the fleece show, it was amazing how much grease would be at the bottom of some of those cormo bags – the paper entry forms would be already turning transparent from all the lanolin! so, as a result, i’m expecting this six pounds of fleece to turn into at least 4.5 lbs. once scoured and washed.

this fleece is from lessburg, va. and was $8 a pound, so a decent price for a merino. i saw one fleece this year that was $40 a pound. $40! and it was a 10 lb. fleece to boot. that’s $400 for one fleece! can you imagine. it was a really nice fleece, but not that nice i’m thinking..!! i wonder if it sold. last year i was very impressed with the crimp of the merino fleece i bought, but this year i’ve learned that though the crimp is ok, it’s a bit too fine, and ideally should be a bit more apparent. anyhow, still a nice nice fleece. i was thinking of sending it to be processed, to see how that works, but i’m worried about getting roving back full of neps. plus i’m interested to see how much actual fiber i get out of a merino fleece. so, here it stays.


next up, the finn fleece i bought from misty mountain farm, in amissville, virginia. it’s a six pound fleece (i know! i know. but i was dazed from seeing the brand-new lambs still, so how could i resist? you can’t split up a fleece, that would make it sad..!) whose color just drew me in. unfortunately, the camera doesn’t see that color, but here’s a rough approximation of that. happily, i’ve already cleaned over three pounds. hooray!

i was thinking that with one of these fleeces, i’d like to spin half of it worsted, and the other half woolen, just as an experiment, so that i can really see how the different preps and techniques look, apart from the fiber itself. i’m thinking i might do that with this finn – it’s a nice medium wool, i believe, so.. anyhow, still thinking. no spinning yet. oh, and that’s a washed lock on the left and an unwashed lock on the right. and in the first finn pic, that’s the underside of the fleece on the left, and the outerside on the right. nice contrast, i think – great colors.


last but definitely not least comes dicken. he comes from shepherd’s hey farm in comus, maryland, about thirty minutes up the road from me. when i was standing in line last year to buy my fleeces, a woman came up to me and said, is that dicken’s fleece? oh good! someone is buying him! and she proceeded to tell me that he was her lamb, a bottle-fed lamb at that (!), and though the staple length was quite short, she was sure it’d be a great fleece. of course, knowing he was a bottle-fed lamb (and as a result, he follows her around the farm like a little puppy), that his name was dicken, and that she said i could come up to the farm whenever to meet dicken.. well, you can imagine how happy i was to ring that fleece up.

so, lucky #7 is a 4.75 lb. fleece, at $8 a pound, and he’s a romney x corriedale. plus the lanolin content! wow, soft soft soft. since i don’t see the curly bits at the end (i forget what they’re called) that you usually see on a lamb fleece, i’m wondering if maybe he was shorn already, just a bit. but he definitely wasn’t coated, which i prefer, as the tips are all that nice light brown from the sun. in the pic you can see two staple lengths – and this is the best part – guess what? this year, dicken won a second place ribbon in his division! (i forget which one it was..) i couldn’t help but grab a little lock, to compare to last year’s lamb locks. all grown up, snif snif. anyhow, a nice happy conclusion to my fleece-extravaganza-of-a- post

so. how much spinning have i done since the festival (already a month ago. wow!)? the answer: none. well, i spun a bit that first week, but since then nothing nada. i figure i gotta recharge my spinning batteries. they were definitely working overtime. plus, there’s the day-long spinning festival at the mannings coming up in two weeks – free and demos alll day long. what more could help me feel inspired to spin spin spin?

in the meantime, my garden is calling. and so are my parents. plus i get to see one of my sisters today, and there’s a wedding next weekend. and lots of library work this week too. so, busy as always. thanks for reading, also as always ~ ~ happy weekend!

comment [4]

posted 1 June 08 & filed under spinning

a may valentine

my dad, son of a farmer, set up a small orchard in the back a handful of years ago and he’d told me that he’d planted some strawberries in one of the corners of the orchard. i wasn’t surprised, he’s such a berry fanatic. (he’ll buy forty pints of blueberries in the fall and freeze them for his morning cereal throughout winter.) he didn’t tend the orchard much last year – my parents were busy traveling to bolivia a lot on various projects – and this year i’ve done a teensy bit of pruning here and there, but really it’s been kinda neglected. however, today, after a nice couple of hours puttering around in the back, i decided to go peek around.

see what i found? the perfect strawberry. the first of my dad’s harvest, from all those years of working the soil, caring for the plants. i carried it back to the house, proudly showed it to him, he looked at it, said wow, and ate it in two bites. a little red valentine, from the land he loves.

and me? trying to follow in big footsteps. here’s some pics of my first try..

happy may ~ ~

[notes added for plants here.]

comment [7]

posted 21 May 08 & filed under familia!, hungry

seemingly random dreams & promises

i just woke up from a beautiful dream. so sweet and longed for, but still a surprise, with a mix of real and not real, like any good dream should have.

in a few hours, i’m going with my mom to baltimore for her citizenship test and interview.

i’m finally putting together my notes from my fiber class, and i thought maybe i’ll do two little videos of how i used the drum carder and the combs. sound fun?

after years and years of daydreaming and falling asleep paging through seed catalogs and gardening books, i’m finally making my own garden. i bought plants at maryland sheep & wool – dye plants too! – and got a bunch more yesterday from a little old general store down the street. i tried to grow some veggies from seedlings but i sadly killed them all. ! there’s two leeks or so that survived, that’s all. anyhow, pics to come.

finished two languishing knits, and i’m happy with them, but i gotta take proper pics there too. my mom and my oldest sister are in the middle of knitting projects too, so some nights we sit around the kitchen table (ok, island) and watch tv and chat while we clickity-clack away. very nice.

my dad is holding steady. the doctors gave him a couple of weeks over a month ago. he’s so thin, it’s a hurtful surprise to see it, remember it, every morning when i go to give him a kiss hello. he squeezes my hand, most of the time, to communicate, but yesterday i got a handful of words, and it was a combination of happiness and sadness – happy to hear him, of course, but so sad to realize all the more how he’s still here, just trapped in a brain and body that is falling apart around him. it’s just so insane.

i think the older i get, the more i realize how precious love is. and i don’t mean this just about my dad, though of course he’s a big part, but also about people you meet, along the way, that you love. i mean, it sounds so hokey, but i kinda shudder to think how carelessly i treated love when i was younger. like i thought it just grew on trees, no biggie, when in reality, you have to handle love, and those you love, with so much care and attention. they’re precious! they’re one in a million! if not more like one in a billion. now, with losses of love around me, imminent or done, only now do i get it.

maybe this is the part about growing up that makes one slow down. i remember always being disappointed in anne (of green gables, of course ;) ) when she grew up – she got so less spunky and fun, and instead was all wise and matronly. i’ve always been a fast talker, walker, do-er, and i like that about me. but maybe anne slowed down because partially because she learned about loss and how easily it happens, about how fragile we all are in our lives, and so by slowing down, you’re more careful, of yourselves, of those around you.. hm. i don’t know if i want to learn this then. i like moving around with the friskiness of a kid, babbling away at a million hours a minutes, laughing and crying within the space of ten minutes. it’s a crazy hectic way to live, but that’s how i’ve always been.

but again, it probably doesn’t have to be one extreme or the other, right? silly andrea. !

off to putter around my plants, take some pics, and get dressed for baltimore ~ ~ hope each one of you have a good thursday ~

p.s. two songs in my head this morning: violent femme’s good feeling and these days by nico.

comment [6]

posted 15 May 08 & filed under busy bee, familia!

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