And Another One On The Way

So, Yesterday, I had a day off with The Boy. The reason? 3 inches of snow on the ground (which had melted off the roads and sidewalks by about 9:00 in the morning. Oy.

Here's the backyard in it's snowy glory, though. Beautiful.

Tomorrow, I expect an early dismissal (The Boy's school has already said they'll be closed) because yet ANOTHER snowstorm (this time, a "real" one) is on it's way late tomorrow morning, and it's supposed to turn out to be a big bear by early evening, and will continue to be so until sometime on Saturday. So, yet another snowed in weekend, and that's fine by me.

I spent a good part of the day taking my new wheel apart in order to get it stained/finished. I'm going the easy route and using "Polyshades" from Minwax, which is a stain and polyurethane all in one. That way, I don't have to go back over it with a clear coat once I'm happy with the color, which is "Pecan Satin." It will have a bit of a rosy brown to it, but not dark red cherry or anything like that. Should be somewhat natural, but not yellowish or plain old brown. Those were two colors I just wanted to avoid, but which seemed to be everywhere at good ole Home Depot.



There's the lovely all taken apart. I'm staining it bit by bit due to lack of space to spread out with some paint/stain-like materials. I can't guarantee that the four-legged friends will leave things alone while they're unsupervised, so I've got a couple pieces on a TV tray in my little living room, and I'll continue this way until she's finished! I'll hold off on the peeks at the color until I have it back together, though - a nice, dramatic before and after would be nice, right?

Now, I promised to show the process I've been going through for the BFL/Cotswold fleece, so here goes:


Remember this cute guy? He's holding the box of dirty fleece. I divvied it up with two other spinners at my spin group shortly after this picture was taken. I came home with about 2 pounds, or 32 ounces.

To start, pull of some large bits in preparation to wash small amounts at a time - REALLY hot water, and some Dawn dish liquid (takes out the grease/lanolin).



I do it in a bucket like this - usually the first time in the hot water with Dawn, the second is with just plain hot water (I use one kettle of boiling water from the stove, and then fill the rest of the bucket with the hottest tap water I can get), then another rinse or two with hot, hot water right from the tap, to try to get the rest of the soap out. When I remembered, I also put some Unicorn Fiber Rinse in the very last rinse, as a softener, but I didn't really need it with this fleece. It's very lovely!

The salad spinner is to spin the excess water out of the fleece without squeezing, which could cause some felting (it is really, really hot, after all).

Then, you wind up with a nice, lovely pile of CLEAN fleece. I removed the brown bits you see above, and I'll see if I can get by without them. This fleece was relatively clean, though - I went from 32 ounces to about 24 ounces, so only about 6 ounces of dirt/grease came out in the wash.

Spin up some lovely singles with the hand-carded rolags (I'll get pictures of those steps as soon as I'm able to do all that stuff again - I'm still resting, icing, and stretching my poor trigger thumb. Triggering less, but still a bit uncomfortable.

So, clear as mud? Who's ready to become a spinner?

:O)