Stash Management: Part 3

Shelves!
I spent today putting up the shelves in the fibre room – which means that I first had to unload everything that was in there on the existing shelves, pile that in the living room, build the new shelves, and then reinstall things in a better order than before.
I would like to point out that ratchet drivers are awesome tools. And having a Boy who will fetch you the exact size you need is really wonderful, too.
The cleanup took all day, and I am exhausted. I was ready to quit a couple of hours ago but I really wanted it done so I pushed through. I’ll take it easy tonight.
Here’s the wall where the wire cube shelves used to be:

Wooden shelves with the Ikea bags stacked nicely along them, as well as the dye crock pot, the sewing machine and serger and assorted other things. We already had a wine rack in the room, so I was able to attach the shelves to it and get more space that way.

The cube shelves were reconfigured and reinstalled in a different spot, and I made space for the big carboys. We haven’t been doing much brewing lately, but I think we’ll probably give it another go soon. The boxes of sewing fabric and other things are stacked along the back wall, and there is actually room to walk in here now! You do still have to step carefully, but hey, you can get where you are going.
I am quite motivated to get through the processing jobs I have, as that’ll clear out three bags of fibre. I also want to process some of the fleeces I have here from my sheep and get that fibre sold or bartered away. Right now I’m doing a lot of knitting and design work, planning for the new book, so although I’ll still do some spinning (of course!) I’m not going to plow through that much fibre any time soon so it might as well be rehomed.
It does feel good to have this much progress made: there is still the closet to deal with (it is behind the door to the room, so it’s out of the way and not in the pictures!) but this will do for now.
I wonder how long it’ll last.

I love my family

Today, I got to see my sister and her husband. They live 3 hours away, and with the very busy lives everyone leads, we don’t get to see one another anywhere near as often as we’d like.
However, today we got to meet up for lunch and hang out at Chapters and have coffee and visit and just be together. It was great.
My brother in law is <this close> to completing his Masters degree. He is a superb teacher of English as a Second Language, and after working hard to get his Bachelor’s degree (after many delays and challenges), he signed up for a distance learning Master’s program and has been writing papers and participating in Skype meetings pretty much every day for the last couple of years. We are so proud of the hard work he’s done!
In celebration, I needed to knit something for him. I dug through my stash of handspun yarn and found all the lonely and lost bits that were waiting to become … something. I plied all the random singles, then dyed everything navy so that it all looked like it went together, then I cast on for a lap blanket.

I just kept on knitting until I was out of yarn, and ended up with a blanket the perfect size for putting on your lap or over your shoulders while you read.

So, even though the Official Finish Line hasn’t quite been crossed, I was able to deliver this today. I am so happy to be able to knit for the people I love.
And I’ll get to do more of it, too – my sister’s birthday is coming up and as I didn’t have time to finish anything before we met up today, she was simply handed a couple of balls of yarn and asked to tell me what to make. After looking through a bunch of knitting books at Chapters, it became apparent that I’ll be making a long and narrow rectangular scarf out of this:

… which may constitute regifting, as quite a lot of the fibre this is spun from was a gift from my sister and her husband *last year* on my birthday!
I think it’s okay though.
I’ve tried three different patterns so far, and finally settled on a very simple, very plain lacy scarf. The yarn can speak for itself, and doesn’t seem to want a complicated design: something lofty, to take advantage of the fuzzy softness of the yarn, and nothing complicated, as the patterns would disappear anyway.
It’ll be a good project to alternate with the Mary Maxim contest entries that are my focus for the next six weeks – they have to be done and in Ontario by mid-June!

Stash Management: Part 2

In Stash Management: Part 1, I got the yarn organized into a series of Michael’s shopping bags hanging on one wall of the fibre room.
Now, it’s time to start dealing with the rest of the mess in there.
Today, The Boy had a school event in town, not too far from the Ikea store. I dropped him off and then went to the best place around here for storage gear (and cheap lunch: spinach and cheese crepes, a salad and a drink for five bucks isn’t bad, and it’s even pretty healthy).
On to the storage gear. I picked up three sets of the tall Dimpa recycling bags, two sets of the mixed size Dimpa recycling bags, and two Gorm shelving units along with a few of the little metal baskets you can hang under the shelves (since they were on for half price today).
And, as I was picking up those little baskets, I saw the most awesome thing for fibre shows: a little hand cart with a rectangular sack that fits onto it! This is perfect for Olds, when we have to walk from the motorhome to the classroom carrying gear for the day, and also for things like the alpaca shows at Northlands, where the distance from loading bay to demo area is substantial.
Now that I’m home, the first job is to actually dig out what’s in the fibre room and put it into proper storage bags/boxes and organize everything. This naturally entails making the living room into a total disaster area … and I’ve started. I hate this part.

Yes, there is a rubber snake in my fibre. Someone I know on Ravelry told a story about hearing a rustling sound in her fibre stash one night, but thinking it was the fall leaves outside, ignored it. In the morning, there was the remains of a snake on the floor under her loom … the cat had taken care of the invader. EWWW! I totally freaked at the very thought of a snake in the fibre stash. A few weeks later she sent me the minor’s head for my great wheel cushioned with spinning fibre … and a little rubber snake. I keep it in my fibre stash to remind me of that package and how much I laughed when I opened it!
The tall Dimpa sacks – which are intended for sorting your newspapers and pop bottles for recycling – are perfect for a fleece. They are about the right size for one whole fleece and because they have rigid plastic supports in the edges, they stay rectangular and upright. This will make stacking several side by side on a shelf very easy – as opposed to the crazy wrangling necessary with garbage bags of fleece, which just slip and slide and fall off each other. There’s also a convenient spot in the front to tuck a label, so you can tell what’s in it, and you can grab the bag you want and take it to your fibre prep spot, work with it, then put the bag back … super easy to deal with.
The smaller, multisized boxes are good for smaller quantities of fibre – I have a bunch of alpaca in a couple of them, and the two tall ones at the front have white mystery rovings that look suspiciously like Custom Woolen Mills products. I use them for testing out dyes and other experiments, so it’s nice to have them easy to grab.
Sorting all of this made me realize that there’s only about three of these bags that contain stuff that doesn’t belong to me (fleeces I need to process and return to their owners). This is too much for me, so I’ll be destashing a bit – some of what’s here is going to be used as barter for other things, and some I’m going to just give away to other spinners. It’s nice to have enough to share!
Next step … dealing with the shelving.

Walking

The ability to walk is something we often take for granted. Most of us are fully mobile, able to quickly dash to the other room to get something we forgot, to hike out to the barn over uneven ground without worrying, to pace the floor as we think.
Having your ability to walk suddenly impaired is a very eye-opening experience.
I have palindromic rheumatism – a mild, non-degenerative form of arthritis that flares up without any rhyme, reason, or warning, and then disappears. My ankles are the joints usually affected – one or the other, thankfully never both at once (so far), and occasionally I have troubles in my hands and wrists. Honestly, I have a very mild variety of the trouble: I can go years between flares, often the pain lasts no more than a few days, and the longest episode I had lasted a few months. Advil manages the pain, and really, it’s not so bad.
However … when my ankle gives out, putting weight on it can feel like the bones are grating against one another inside the joint. This, of course, makes walking somewhat more mindful than it is the rest of the time: every step is carefully considered, and I place my foot gently, testing the joint before shifting my weight, to see if it’ll hold without pain or not. Even during the course of a flare up, the pain will ebb and flow – I can be walking fine, then suddenly my joints are screaming at me to stop.
Now I have figured out how to walk without stressing that joint – usually. Gently testing the steps, not twisting the ankle at all, and walking on the ball of my foot rather than heel-toe, or with a careful limp that prevents the full flex of the injured ankle. None of it is particularly graceful, and sometimes, I just need a little extra support.
So, today I picked up two rubber cane tips at the drugstore ($2.99 for both of them), and went out to the stand of poplar saplings with my machete. I cut two straight and sturdy trees that looked like they could probably be stuffed into the openings of the cane tips, shaved the bark off, and shaped the ends.
I have a little bit of sanding to do, and I need to add a coat of Howards Feed-n-Wax, then they are ready for use.
If you’re local to me and you’d like one, just let me know!

The new lambs

On April 20, we had twins born here: however, the mama sheep was quite sure that only one of the babies was hers, so we have a bottle lamb. He’s very cute though. :)
Here is our bottle baby, Herman:

He’s kind of a messy eater, so he has drips of milk on his face and his coat. :) And no, he doesn’t drink that whole big bottle at once – that’s a 2 L milk jug with an opening cut in the side: the big bottle fits nicely in the fence bottle holder from the feed store, and then I slide a small pop bottle with milk replacer into the milk jug. It works better than most of the other things I’ve tried!
And here is Hermans’ sister, Hattie:

Doesn’t she have the cutest markings?
This morning I opened the curtains and looked out to see a tiny white and black shape that was definitely brand new. She is so very small, smaller even than most of the ‘smaller twins’ born too our Icelandics, but she seems to be doing fine. Her mama talks to her and seems very interested, which is good, as she is a first time mother and sometimes they are a bit puzzled by the whole thing.

She and her mama are in the barn now, where they are out of the wind and rain. I think this little one will need a few days to get her strength up before she and her mama can go back in the pen with everyone else. She still  needs a name  … it’s an “H” year. What’s a good name for a tiny girl that starts with H?

Stash Management: Part 1

I am going to get the fibre room cleaned up and organized, and hopefully, this time it’ll stay that way!
Proper infrastructure solves a lot of untidiness problems, and I definitely do not have proper infrastructure for all the wool and fibre I have here. I have a set of those wire cube shelves, but they are a bit wobbly and not as sturdy as one might hope … and things tend to get piled on the floor and eventually, you can’t walk in that room at all.
Part 1 of the Stash Management Plan was implemented today. I cut two 5’ pieces of 1x2 (we had some here, it’s what we use for baseboards and trim) and marked it at one foot intervals. The coat hooks I picked up at the hardware store the other day were then attached at the marked spots, and the boards screwed directly to the wall in the fibre room. I found reuseable shopping bags at Michaels (the craft store) for a dollar each, and bought ten of those for yarn storage: you can’t beat that price, and it’s easy to grab the bag that contains the relevant fibre stash (sock yarn, bulkier wool, miscellaneous acrylic for mitts and toys, cotton, warp thread, random handspun, etc.) and take the whole bag to the couch for swatching and pondering. Thus, there is now a Wall o’ Wool …

There’s also all of this to be dealt with:

Which is why I said “Part 1”.
Stay tuned for more.

The frogs are back!

I can hear them singing.

That means that spring is really here! The geese have arrived, the frogs are singing, and we’ve had actual rain … not just snow. And there is grass that is starting to turn green, and any day now the trees will do that magical transformation where one moment they are brown when you glance up at them, and the next time you look, they are shimmering with green.

Yay for spring!