MUD.

My impatience and wishful thinking for springtime got the better of me the other day.  

I got inspired to try a new trail, put my pretty new boots on and took the Piccadilly Line to the very last stop.  

The London LOOP trail- London Outer Orbital Path- is 150 miles of trails that takes a walker around the outer suburbs of London, mostly through green spaces and parks.  It's broken down into 24 easy-to-reach sections with train and tube stations as your start and end points.  How nice is that?

Most people who fly into Heathrow end up taking the Piccadilly line towards Cockfosters, so it's the train that everyone knows (and giggles at the name) as soon as they get to London.  However, taking the tube out there was quite nice as we ended up having the entire train car to ourselves for most of the trip and celebrated this rare occurrence by singing and dancing loudly and erratically.  

Down the muddy lanes, we took off- the trail is right outside the tube station- and it soon became apparent that even on a nice winter day, it was still winter out.

The mud, the mud, the mud.  It made the going awful.  Despite the way being fairly flat, every step was a slippery mess, and sometimes so sloppy walking became treacherous.

It wasn't long until I had mud coming up over my socks and most of the way to me knees.  This was exhausting work.

Still, we did 10 miles, and it felt more like 20.  The sticky clay mud weighed us down, and later, it took me hours to get the boots cleaned off.

While parts of the trail were kind of pretty- much of it went through small stretches of forest, parkland and farm fields- I found myself terribly bored after just a few miles and ready to be done already.

From a hill in Enfield, the city punctured the horizon.

We were so tired and cold and exhausted at the end, we canceled our dinner plans and curled up on the sofa with Netflix and hot soup for the night.

The trail was understandably quiet- we only passed two other couples on the trail all day.  What, no one wants to join us in cold slogging misery?  Until the springtime winds and sun dry up the bogs a bit, I think I'll not do this again any time soon.  Yes, I have a big walk planned in a month and I want to get the boots broken in and not die on the first 16 mile stretch, but I think I'll stick to the pavement for a bit.

Scarves

Right before I packed up and moved from Brooklyn, I had an insane urge to make a few bulky-yarn projects in order to:

1. Use up the bulky-yarn stash. I think all new knitters go through a phase where the answer is "bulky yarn" to all their yarn questions. It's fast all right. But damn, if you could get something to look flattering on something other than a waif, you deserve an award.

2. Justify my use of knitting time as making visual progress at a time when I felt like I was getting no where and spending my days on endless hold-music calls. Most of these things were all knitted in the course of an afternoon, and in one case, in the time it took for AT&T to dick me around and not resolve anything at all, even though I was asking nicely.

First up: a handspun cowl. It started out as a braid of Corriedale/Alpaca blend from Spunky Eclectic in the "Thunderstorm" colorway.

Great colors...nice and moody.

Spun it up as a chunky 2-ply.

Then I learned a fantastic new technique...the Mobius cowl.

It's a little tricky to get started, but it's simple once you do it. Randomly altering your knit and purl rows makes for interesting texture, and there are tons of different ways to make this your own.

I loved it so much, I went ahead and dug up bags of scarps of some Rowan Biggy Print (which may or may not have been in my stash for more than 7 years) and made a stripy, ultra bulky one on size 17 needles.

It's enormously warm, and I love the texture that the thick-and-thin yarn produced. I randomly alternated the two colors I had until I ran out of yarn, and poof! it's magic! Really, it would have been pushing it if I invested two hours in this.

So I kept on rolling with the Biggy Print, and made a mistake-rib scarf with what I had left:

The pattern (if you could call it that) is Franciose from "French Girl Knits". Mine came out short, so a pin or a button might be added at some point.

One more:

A VERY GLITZY alpaca batt from Loop!

I bought this ages ago, when I first started spindle-spinning. 2006 or '07. I spun it up pretty quickly, but then the yarn just sat in a bin for all these years. Shameful!

Spun up and plied, I only had 74 yards.

So I made a wee necktie out of it, based on this pattern (which called for laceweight yarn).

It does need a good blocking, but it used up all my yarn. Mission accomplished.

I felt clean and purged when that was done. No more odd skeins of overweight yarn to slow me down! Overly warm neckware to the rescue.

Making Time to Spin

That's really my biggest spinning challenge now. It takes me so long to set myself up and sit down in front of a wheel that I need to commit time to it. Also, it's bad to run back and forth from spinning to cooking dinner, as no one wants chunks of alpaca in their kale and bean soup.

So here we go.

I'm still trying to consciously control my spinning and not just zone out and make laceweight like I do when I'm on autopilot.



4 oz of Spunky Eclectic Corriedale/Alpaca blend in "Thunderstorm".

Singles:



Plied:



Fin:



At 62 yards, this is not my personal best yardage-wise, but it is a true bulky weight yarn, and I managed to keep the singles even enough so that I don't have to call this a thick-and-thin yarn. Whoo hoo! My first bulky yarn that I'm happy with. Sweet Victory.

Here's another one. This one started out as a Spontaneous Spinning Batt from Loop.



Holy Tinseltown. This was ridiculously fun to spin, but I have sparkles everywhere now. I mean- it worked its way into everything I own, to the point where complete strangers would stop me on the street to point out the big clumps of tinsel attached to my tail. I just cooly and calmly smiled and pretend that I wanted it there. I'm sure there's been a fair amount digested as well. Actually, I'm positive.



I also had an assortment of purple babycakes that I've been collecting. Ever since Loop opened up a studio close to NYC, there's been a pretty hefty trade in these going on. I felt like the don of purple babycakes.



I striped the babycakes (which are just 1oz mini-batts) into the big 4oz batt so I have a nice variegated skein of purple yarn. This was my try in spinning artsy imperfect singles.


The results:





Squeeee! It's so girly and pretty. I'm thrilled with it. It needs to be knitted up ASAP.

On the other end of the spectrum, here some of the fleece from Muriel the Moorit Merino.



Which was processed into this by the mill:



And which I spun into this:



330 yards, woolen, dk weight. It's so soft. I have oodles of this stuff left- I'll never be able to spin through the pounds of this that is in my spinning basket, so I'm selling off some of it on my Etsy Store. For the rest of the month, it is 30% off.

Also on the wheel is some Merino/Tencel blend from Silver Moon Farms. I got this at Rhinebeck ages ago...even though pastel rainbow isn't really my color scheme, I decided to give it a try.



I've never spun tencel before. It wants to be lace and it's a bit slippery, and I'm finding that it wants to be spun worsted rather than woolen. It drafts out like butter and I'm enjoying it immeasurably.



It's shiny! The tencel is almost luminous. I'm thinking of making a delicate lace scarf with it.

Enjoy your weekend, and get some spinning done!

I Feel As Though I Owe a Rhinebeck Post

Or maybe two. I took a lot of pictures.

I've has quite the roller coaster ride the past couple weeks...my long-term business partner/ boss resigned, a great deal of the company is being reassigned to unemployment, and I've been dealing with a pesky and painful reoccurring kidney infection that knocks me out for days at a time. Morale is pretty darn low in my 9 to 5 world. Some quiet meandering upstate was a great way to clear my head and catch up with friends I don't see enough.



It's been a tough few months upstate...all that rain from Irene and a generally soggy fall means the autumnal colors aren't quite as brilliant. Still, it's a beautiful area and completely enjoyable regardless.





It was, dare I say, unseasonably warm for October. Perhaps a little tough to think about woolen things. The best remedy for that is to surround yourself with wool and woolie creatures. Soon the spirit of a woolen wonderland will take you away.



Unusual for me, I did not get to the fleece sale first thing and nab some primo crimpy soft fleece. I think the three fleeces that I have from last year still have me content that I have enough fleece, and maybe I need to start looking for more time to sit down and spin said fleece.

The Loop Booth looked great, as usual. Steph had a rather tough year, and she's missing a digit to prove it. Irene was not kind to her either...her studio flooded and she had to move, all while trying to get enough batts and roving made to fill her booth with goodies.



I'm not really a glitter girl, but her stuff is so pretty.



On to the animals, who are the ones doing all the hard work and producing all the goods (and plenty of organic fertilizer as well).

















Angora goats:







More tomorrow....