ECF - Mystery Location Edition

I bet you'll never guess where I took this picture.

I took this shot exactly a week ago during my trip to New York. We spent most of the week in Queens but we did take one long drive up the Taconic to visit my sister-in-law's country house. I'd never been there before.
My in-laws were there visiting from Florida and my brother-in-law was there with his family too. We rarely have the opportunity to get together as one big group and all of the cousins had a blast. The adults relaxed, drank wine, and caught up with each other by the fire crackling in the fireplace.


I liked this picture too. Stinkerbelle was so jealous when she saw this treehouse. She would love to have one. I suppose that when you have 5 or 6 acres of tree covered land to work with it's not too hard to find a suitable tree. We don't have nearly as many to choose from in our little yard in Fairfax.


How perfect is this cute little rowboat that sits in a small pond in front of the house? By small I mean barely more than a large puddle. The ducks seemed to like it.

So where is this? Believe it or not it's in Rhinebeck!

Two Ply, 5 Ply - Oh My

After wrong turns and other assorted traffic woes Stinkerbelle and I finally arrived at Springwater last night and we were so glad that we did. Stinky had a "play date" with Linda (an instructor there) who has been teaching her how to weave. They warped up her little loom a few times and wove wonderful things.
Every now and then Stinky would pop in to see what we were doing in spinning class. We were laughing and talking and enjoying ourselves immensely as we did more work on the long draw before moving on to plying.

Here is a shot of my bobbin early in the evening. On the left side are singles I spun using a long draw. On the right are singles spun using my old comfortable short draw. The whit in the middle is Teesdale that was spun from the fold. I took this picture to capture the visual difference that the spinning method made. The long draw stuff is so much looser and softer. Sylvia says that the softness is always found in yarn spun long draw. The short draw stuff is crisper and more defined. I cannot wait to play with the long draw more.
As promised we did some work with plying last night. We started with a 2 ply and I learned how to produce a balanced yarn rather than the wickedly overspun stuff I usually do. It's funny to think that such a simple adjustment as feeding the yarn in faster would make such a huge difference. I still like the stuff I made before with it's tight, crisp appearance but after creating lovely rounded 3-ply yarn I saw the possibilities with that too. Oh the possibilities. I just want to stay home and spin endlessly.
We worked with chained singles last night too and I'm still kind of hopeless with it. Two nights of spinning class just wasn't enough. I don't have any local spinning buddies so, without classes, I learn from books and online sources. No matter how good the books are there is just nothing like having someone who really knows what they're doing there to demonstrate and correct your technique. Sylivia is a fabulous and patient teacher.
I really wish that you could all take classes at Springwater. If only they weren't closing... but wait... there's hope. I'm sure that locals have heard by now that there is a pledge drive going on to keep Springwater going. The goal is $100,000 and an anonymous donor has comitted to the last 10k. The good news is that, as of last night, the pledges have reached 80k so there's only a gap of about 10k. Yay!
I really hope that they are successful and find a way to continue. I would welcome the opportunity to take more classes there. There is just so much to learn. Stinkerbelle agrees. Last night as we left she told Linda that if she does another needle felting class she should call her. Stinky has been bitten hard by the needle felting bug. The next generation needs Springwater too.

Taking a Quick Breath

Wow! I am so busy this week that I barely have time to breathe. I'm trying to catch up on stuff that piled up during my vacation while dealing with twice the workload because my assistant is out and family emergencies have kept people in our New York office out too. As if that wasn't enough I've had spinning class on Monday and today and... I had an appointment that made me late to work yesterday. All this while doing battle with a nasty headcold. On the positive side, most of my work is done by email so very few people in my office even know that I've got laryngitis.
I'll catch up on all of my blog reading and vacation reporting at some point. For now here's a little proof of knitting. This is a slipper I made over the vacation. Naturally it's part of a set. It looks pretty cute in it's pre-felted state. I just hope that it's as cute after felting.
I used the Fiber Trends family slippers pattern and it was super easy. The only problem I had was with the size selection. Totally my fault. The first version I knit got ripped out because pre-felting it was just right so there was no chance that the post-felting version would fit for more than a day - if at all.
The biggest surprise to me with this project has been the yarn. I used KP Wool of the Andes in heathered colors. The red is a color called Firecracker. I'm not sure if it comes through in the pictures but the depth that the heathering gives this yarn is just wonderful. To me it almost glows. It was soft too. There was nothing about knitting with this yarn that was unpleasant. I can't wait to see it felted.
In Monday night's spinning class I learned other drafting techniques. We spun from the fold which I enjoyed. I'd actually done that once before but not well. It's so much better when you have a good teacher rather than just your own guesswork. We also learned the long draw and this one is going to take a bit more practice before I'm even competent with it. I look forward to playing with it though. Tonight we're going to explore plying. Sylvia says that we're going to do 2, 3, 4 and 6 plys! I think my brain may explode.