Hot hot hot

Whooo wee - it has been h.o.t. here in Northern California - record breaking hot. 109F in the shade hot. Not much fun, but it's been a nice weekend anyway.

We spent a lot of time at the pool, yesterday and today. Nice to get a bit of color, and exercise. Then we decided to go back to my house which is a couple of miles inland, and in a valley. Must have been another 10 degrees warmer, so we decided that going to the movies would be a lovely idea. Well - we get to the movie theater, and it's closed! Problems with the power apparently. The ironic thing? They were scheduled to show a movie about global warming.

First big news!!!!! My wheel came!!!!!! Yes I know, many exclamation marks. But it was shipped 6 weeks and 1 day from the time that I received my little pretty. I introduce to you my little Skipper wheel. Here it is pictured with my Joy for scale. It's bigger than the Joy, but not by much.

The very best part of the new wheel - my Skipper - is the bobbins. Don't get me wrong - I love love love my Joy - I've had it for 5 years as my only wheel, and I can do just about anything that I want on it - though to be honest - what I want to do most of the time is spin a fairly fine single, and ply 3-4 ply yarns that I can actually knit with. The spinning part is great, wonderful, very comfy - the plying part - not so much. In no time at all the bitty bobbins on the Joy are full, and I have to wind of small skeins. Premature winding off is not as good as being able to wind off big skeins. Here's a pic of the Ashford bobbin in relation to the lovely new Skipper bobbin.

I'm still trying to make friends with the Skipper. It's a bobbin led wheel like a Louet. I'm pretty sure that it will be great for the plying that I want it for. But the spinning so far? Not so easy. I'm having some troubles getting enough spin into the singles themselves to hold together. I understand that this wheel is happiest spinning a bulky single - and I have problems spinning bulky singles anymore - though I'd love to get back to spinning a bit more of that type of stuff. And I really am with the Skipper. I think a lot of is just the adjustment of getting used to the new wheel. I feel like a newbie spinner again - and I'm spinning singles like I did when I started. I will perservere though, and am very interested to see how it plies.

In other news - I've been spinning silk on the Joy. It's from a really long graduated roving that I dyed with EE dyes a year ago or so. I also dyed some corriedale and merino in the same jelly roll with this silk. There's a pic way back here of the corriedale (I think it was corriedale anyway, that might have been the merino). The dye didn't take with the silk quite as much as with the wool, but you get the idea. It's awfully pretty! No idea what I'm going to ply it with though, just enjoying the spinning more than anything.

I also have been working on my spindle spun silk/wool with silk that I will cable ply soon - I'd say I'm 3/4 of the way done with the next batch. Looking forward to figuring out what I will knit it with!

I also dyed some silk yarn - Henry's Attic when I dyed my last batch of silk for spindle spinning. Not sure what I'm going to do with this either - but I needed to post some pron. I love the colours on this - it's on my skein winder at home I'm having a heck of a time winding it up on my ball winder as it's got a lot of tangles in it - and it was just way too hot in the house to really work at it.



And of course - I have a couple of purty pics that are for just because they make me happy!

This was the sunset last night from near the BBE's house. You can see the Marsh in the foreground, San Quentin and the East Bay hills in the background. Kind of nice, eh?











And this is a pic that I took tonight on the property that I live on.

Have fun everyone!