Yesterday Jag dropped me off at the house of Jeff and Michelle so that Michelle and I could head out for a trip to the fiber festival at the “Got to Be NC” festival and then stop over at Peace College for the North Carolina Quilt Symposium.

We weren’t sure what to expect from the fiber festival, but we managed to park and trudge through the antique tractor displays and fair food vendors and make it to the Village of Yesteryear Building (as I like to call it). As “fiber festivals” go, this was pretty sparse, but the few vendors who attended were great and had some good stuff.

Michelle and I split a bag of sari silk that we can drum-card into our batts:

…and then we went in on a one-pound bag of lovely, soft, unprocessed, honey-colored alpaca that we can card up and spin.

I’m beginning to be really glad that I bought the drum carder from HLF, because I never would have considered either of these purchases a few weeks ago. Um, wait, maybe that wasn’t such a good idea after all!

I also picked up 10oz of hand-dyed cotton for spinning. This should be enough to make a little summer tank top with, if I can get past the screaming-and-crying part of spinning cotton.

Aside from the handful of fiber vendors and some very friendly folks doing spinning demos, there wasn’t a whole lot else to see. We did go down the hill to see the milk goats and alpacas.

After a short detour to the flea market, we hit the road again and headed downtown. The quilt show was somewhat confusingly hosted in a couple of different buildings on the Peace College campus, but once we figured out where to go, we wandered around admiring the quilts and checking out the vendors. I have 50+ quilt photos in a Flickr photoset, but here are a few of my favorites. The venue was pretty crowded and it was tough to get enough space to take full pictures of the larger quilts, and the vendor booths were packed.

I managed to control myself and only bought some batik fat quarters and a pattern.

Then we headed home for gaming, where the vampire came in. Annoying bloodsucking bugger is still running around.

The End

Bad: The AC has out since Saturday.

Worse: The AC repairman tells you on Tuesday that you “have a problem under the house”, which turns out to be a leaking water pipe which has caused a puddle in the crawlspace and probably shorted out the blower unit.

Weekend breakfasts are the best.

Homemade buttermilk biscuits…

…plus sausage gravy…

…equals nomnomnom!

Also, kitties who sleep with their tongues sticking out are cute.

And I made some more batts.

BFL and mohair and random grab-bagginess:

Harrisville tweedy felting/spinning batt (more felty than spinny, really, it pulls apart in clumps when you try to draft it)…

…plus more random grab-bagginess, and we have this experimental batt:

In closing, the new Star Trek movie was awesome. And who’d have thought that Voldemort, Lex Luthor, Dracula and COBRA would all be fighting the Federation at once? Brilliant!

(All of the pictures below were taken with Jag’s iPhone, hence the worse-than-usual quality.)

Our Day:

1.) A quick breakfast, then a trip to the Hillsborough Farmers Market to stock up on soap and ground bison and local sausages and say hello to friends.

2.) Home for lunch, and then out to Occoneechee Mountain State Natural Area for a hike. This was a new park for us, so we were quite excited. We marched expectantly up the Summit Trail (which is a horrible gravel road, not really a trail), eager to see the “the highest point in Orange County at 867 feet”. Well, it turns out that the summit consists of a cell phone tower and an old forest ranger fire watchtower, and you can’t see a damn thing. So back we went down the hill to the Overlook Trail, which we surmised would have something to look at, given the name. Once again we were to be disappointed.

No overlook. Denied.

The view is probably pretty, but we didn’t feel like plunging to our deaths, so this is the best shot we got.

So. We trudged back down and decided to hook up with the long end of the Occoneechee Mountain Loop Trail. Things were looking pretty bad at this point, what with the trail going right under some high-tension wires…

And some really sketchy descents on poorly maintained winding uneven steps full of ankle-snapping gravel and stone chips.

Then we got lost and ended up on a feeble, overgrown semi-trail that ran along the Eno River and could have used a machete or 3. Luckily, we heard voices at this point, and we encountered Nice Man and his Family, who were walking along the Actual Trail. Nice Man asked us if this was our first time in the park (he must’ve been psychic! Or heard me cussing a blue streak in the weeds!), pointed out that there was a really awesome quarry about 50 yards back the way they had just been, and informed me that my credit card was about to fall out of my back pocket. So all in all, a most fortuitous meeting. Thanks, Nice Man!

The quarry was most impressive; this is the view of the Forbidden Collapsing Overlook from the ground.

The quarry is many, many Jags high.

After exploring a bit, we headed back onto the Genuine Trail and were blown away by how nice it was. The trail next to the river is shady and lovely and full of ferns and flowers, with plenty of places to sit on the bank and look out at the peaceful waters. These views alone made the trip worthwhile.

The trail winds back around the side of the mountain through some woods that were really lovely and must be totally spectacular in the fall. So, what seemed to be a total bust and waste of time turned out to be really great! The end of the trail is uncomfortably close to I-85, but oh well.

3.) We came back home (by way of the Hillsborough Mapleview Farm store for ice cream), showered (finally!), and then headed out for dinner.

No, there is no such thing as “too much” salmon.

4.) …And then came home to discover that the AC is dead and we probably won’t see a repairman til Monday at the earliest. Ceiling fans ahoy! At least it won’t get any warmer than 85 or so.

The End

Well. I haven’t blogged in a while because I’ve been too busy and life has been sucking. Now life is sucking less, and I will present you with some thrilling updates.

First off, I got a letter from my sheep. Or more correctly, from the nice people at the farm where my sheep lives. There was a brief rundown on the Icelandic sheep breed (for example, they have little herding instinct due to the lack of natural predators in Iceland, and they aren’t very social with people), and a little info on Arowin in particular. She’s 3 years old and her previous lambs have all been boys, too.

Here’s Arowin, looking sheared and uddertastic.

And here’s Arowin with her little ramlets, which I get to name! I’m thinking Magnus and Karl sound like good Icelandic names.

I finished spinning up some bulky 2-ply merino in eye-bending colors. It’s huggable and squishy. Jag suggests using it to make cheerful mittens for this winter when the colorless blahs set in, and this sounds like a great idea. Maybe with some black Lamb’s Pride for the cuffs as a contrast.

This is a sock which will not become finished. I don’t know what its problem is. The cuff is short, the yarn is not particularly thin, the pattern is simple, but I’ve been working on it for months. At this rate the pair will be done in Q2 of 2011.

I have a fabric tote bag that I carry my knitting in, but I store the individual projects in plastic grocery bags that inevitably disintegrate and spill pencils, cable needles, instructions, stitch counters, and everything else useful into the bigger bag, which is full of so much crap that I have to dump the entire contents to find anything, Since I refuse to spend $20 on a GoKnit pouch, I whipped up a little lined drawstring bag to contain my current sock project. It’s stupid, simple but really useful things like this that make me happy. The only cord I had in the house was some grabby leather rawhide, but once that’s replaced with something more slidey, it’ll be perfect. I need to make a bigger one for my current sweater project. (The Egyptian fabric is left over from a wall quilt I made for my mom in the late 90’s. I never throw nuthin’ away!)

And now, the biggest news, which is my new toy. The fabulous HLF decided to ditch her current drum carder for a new, nicer one, and asked me if I wanted to buy it. Less than a week later, I was the proud owner of a Louet Roving Carder!

It looks like this:

The night I opened it, Jag and I set it up on my craft table upstairs and started feeding semi-craptastic compacted wool top from a Dyepot.com grab bag into it. We made 2 little test batts, each made with ONE pass through the carder. (If you own a carder, you know that one pass is sadly insufficient, but I was impatient and ignorant.)

Throwing caution and good sense to the wind, I immediately spun and plied the one on the left. Given the total rush job and the neppy, tangled, unfinished state of the batt, it came out much prettier than it had any right to, and I was encouraged to card, card, card some more.

The first 2 “real” batts were shades of brown with blues, purples and pinks added in (including the brown/teal batt above, which got thrown back into the carder and remixed). I’ve always been spinning-from-batts-challenged, since I find that I make a huge mess when stripping batts for spinning and end up with stands of loose fiber floating everywhere. I stumbled across this tip on making rolags from batts on the Spunky Eclectic blog, and it has worked really well.

Rolaglike objects:

The brown tweedy result:

I of course wanted to make more batts, and in colors that less closely resembled dryer lint, so I sorted some more of the dyepot.com grab bag and made one purple/violet/blue and one orange/pink/yellow batt. These are about 1.25-1.5 oz each. Once I get a wallpaper brush for the carder to smooth the fiber on the drum, making 2oz batts should not be a problem.

Perl is thrilled with the drum carder, too.

I’m planning to use up the rest of the grab bag fiber for batt experiments and will hopefully make a colorful Justify shawl with the yarn.

The End

I don’t know why I never posted these pictures. It’s been kind of a busy week, I guess.

Last Sunday we celebrated Mother’s Day with a delicious dinner of potatoes, pasta salad, and about 40lbs of Robin’s amazing ribs, which had been lovingly prepared with a dry rub, baked in the oven, then grilled with Bone Suckin’ Sauce. Everything was perfect.

We ate outside because the weather was so amazingly nice.

Mom had some quality time with Cary, whose poor little belly was shaved for an ultrasound recently.

Mom is almost done with the handspun afghan. I’ll try to get a more full-on picture once the border is finished. It looks awesome.

Among other things, I gave Mom a skein of 70% Alpaca/30% Cormo fingering weight handspun I recently finished. This stuff is so amazingly soft and drapey, it was hard to give it up, but I made the sacrifice. I wanted to give her some handpun yarn that wasn’t a worsted 2-ply wool for the afghan. It should make a lovely cowl or scarf.

We got an email update on my adopted sheep, Arowin, this morning. Arowin had 2 ram lambs, and her fleece has been sent off to the mill for processing. I should get it in a few months.

Here are some pictures of the lambs that were sent along with the update. The cuteness, it overwhelms!

Our 5-day, 4-night sojourn at James River State Park is now regretfully over. It was a very nice trip.

The park sign is always a thrilling sight. The drive took around 3 hours even with some detours for gas, a cash machine, and lunch. (There are no cash machines in Rougemont or Southern Roxboro, apparently.)

The cabin was very much like the one we stayed at in Occoneechee, with a couple of minor improvements. Same nice back porch with rocking chairs:

and great view from the back:

But this cabin had a massive 4-burner-wide gas grill and keyless entry (you typed in part of your reservation number into a keypad to unlock the door). This meant no exciting shoeless lockouts like we experienced at Fairy Stone.

The cabin circle was more treeless and subdivisiony than others we’ve been to. This is a very new park, so a certain immaturity of the landscaping is to be expected, but once our neighbors showed up on Friday afternoon, we could no longer leave the side window blinds open without worrying about whether we were properly attired for public view.

The cabins are all along an oval road with a huge raised grassy area in the middle. There’s a walking path along the outside of the grass dotted with picnic tables and charcoal grills, and part of the center has this neat little gravel garden.

The cabin interior was exactly like the Occoneechee cabin. Well-furnished and comfortable.

We did a lot of hiking. The trails are all multi-use, for hiking, mountain biking, and equestrian use. This park is clearly extremely popular with the horsey crowd. The trails were often churned up quite a bit by hooves, and I have never stepped over, around and in so much horse poop in my life. It actually wasn’t that awful, but I was beginning to wonder if the park had recently been visited by the Incontinent Horse Fanciers Association of America (the horses being incontinent, not the fanciers). We did not spot any bike poop, so I cannot say how popular the trails are with mountain bikers.

Despite the horse leavings, the trails were very nice, by and large. There are 3 large ponds in the park, as well as a trail along the James River, and we tried to hit all the interesting spots.

The park map scale was a bit off and the trails weren’t always well-blazed, so we spent a fair amount of time like this, saying, “Where the heck are we again???”

There were lots of flowers.

And an amazing number of butterflies. I think this is a zebra swallowtail.

The best view was the famous Tye River Overlook, from which you can see the Tye River flowing into the James. (The Tye is the river in the center middle here, and the James is flowing horizonally, mostly hidden by trees). Apparently the view is so popular, people get married up here.

Here we are after our hike to the overlook.

If we look tired, it’s from lack of sleep. Miranda handled the trip extremely well in most respects. She was quiet on the drives to and from the park aside from the occasional indignant meow, and she adjusted very well to the cabin; after around four hours she was out and about, trying to climb up on the fireplace mantel and exploring her new domain. However, around midnight every night (sometimes earlier), she would begin howling disconsolately in the living room. We would call her to the bedroom for snuggles, thinking she was lonely, and about 5 minutes later she’d jump off the bed and start wandering around, caterwauling again. It got to the point where we had to lock her in the spare bedroom (with her food, litterbox, and bed), close our bedroom door, and run the bathroom fan, just to drown out the noise enough to get some sleep. Arg. At least she ate well. And the pet fee was cheaper than vet boarding.

Aside from hiking, we hung out and read, played Scrabble (Jag won, boohoo), and I knitted and spun. It was mostly overcast and often very windy, but it never rained til Sunday.

The wind was so fierce it blew some of my roving right off the back of the chair where I thought I had it tied securely. Luckily it stuck to the door frame and didn’t float off into the woods. NONE SHALL PASS THE MAGIC WOOL BARRICADE.

On vacation I started a cardigan from Wendy Bernard’s new book, Custom Knits. After 3+ years of knitting, my first cables! I don’t know how I’ve managed to avoid them this long, but I’m pretty happy with how this sweater is going. I guess fair isle is the last big knitting skill I have yet to try.

Me and Jag are about to leave on vacation. One quick knitting note before I go. I finished my green multi-multi-multi-yarn Liesl shrug. It fits, it keeps my shoulders warm in the ridiculously cold AC that’s been turned on everywhere, and I love it.

Many many thanks to Robin for helping me and Jag clean out my old house yesterday! It sucked, but it sucked less with help. Also, driving a cargo van is fun. Not as fun as an F350, but fun.

After much thought, we decided to take Miranda with us on vacation (yes, pets are allowed at the park). Given how much coaxing she needs to eat twice a day and how ritualized the whole feeding procedure has become, we had visions of getting a phone call from the vet on Friday asking us if we wanted to come collect our anorexic cat and would we approve an IV in the meantime? And I can’t expect a vet tech to sit there and spoon-feed my cat. This idea may be completely insane, but having her with us is better than spending the time worrying about whether she’s eating while sitting all stressed out in a cage with strange animals making noise around her. And we always miss the kitties on vacation, so it’ll be nice to have one to snuggle with. I’m sure we’ll have some fun stories about this.

Royal Velvet

and Mars, Bringer of Wool

I may have to take one of these on vacation with me!