A Dozen Days Until the Sheep and Wool Festival!

I'm all excited about the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, which will be the first full weekend in May (always), and is the largest thing of it's kind in the United States! This year it will be on May 1 and 2, and we'll be going on the first.

This year, the big draw for me is that the Majacraft people will be unveiling their new wheel, called Serenity (another Firefly fan was responsible for this), which was designed specifically for spinning "art yarns." I can't wait to see it, and see how it works, and what makes it special! Here is a photo of some of the yarns that have already been spun on a Serenity:

This photo is from the Majacraft blog, which you can find and read at the above links. I'm showing the photo because I want you to go look at it on their blog. It's an incentive.

This year, I may have some money coming to me, but if it doesn't arrive by the end of the month, I'll be going without any money. There will be a lot of things I can later buy over the internet, but there will be a lot of things I'll have to miss out on if I have to go with no money.

Here's a couple of photos of their Rose wheel, which is the one I have:

Holly went to a knitting retreat this past weekend, and she was telling me about one of the women who was there and spun on what she thought was a Rose wheel all weekend. She said she wasn't sure and would tell me the next time she saw my wheel, so I thought I'd put photos of the wheel up so she could see them.

Money or not, I'm still getting excited about the Sheep and Wool Festival!

**********************

I have actually been doing some knitting, but what I've been knitting is gifts for others, so you won't be seeing photos of them here for a while. Sorry!

***********************

There's a rerun on Chuck and The Big Bang Theory tonight, but a brand, spanking, new episode of Castle. No Ghost Whisperer on SyFy, though because they're doing their "miniseries" month. It'll be back on Monday nights eventually, at least once in a while.

Tomorrow night, as usual, there will be a new Lost and V!

Wednesday is an evening to spend watching what you recorded on your TiVo, DVR or VHS.

I hope you're having a terrific start to your week!

********************

Addition:

The apartment place I live in promised that the people would be coming out today to turn on the air conditioning. They say it takes a whole 8 hours for them to do this, but it's now 6:30, and it usually goes on around 4 or 5 when they actually do it, and it's 80 degrees in here, so it's obvious they haven't done it.

It's cool outside, so that's not a problem. The problem is that the windows are open and there's a fan blowing in not only cool air, but all the pollen, too! My health can't stand this!

********************

Another Addition:

Get your fix of cute little lambs here!

New Majacraft Wheel!

There's a new Majacraft wheel that's been under development for a while. They've been sending me emails and dropping hints about it, but they won't let me see a photo or tell me what's actually different about it.

Here's what I know:

• It's called Serenity. The person who named it is a Firefly fan! That may be a temporary name.
• It can spin very, very fine lace yarn
• It can spin thick, bumpy "art" yarns
• The currently available bobbins won't work on it
• It can do things that no other spinning wheel can do!

The best news of all is that it's going to be available to see and buy at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival! If you go to the listing of vendors, you'll see that they aren't listed. They said that they will announce their location later.

Here's what they said about the new wheel in their latest email to me:

New Wheel Release - Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival - May 2010
Glynis and Owen will be attending this years Sheep & Wool Festival at Maryland, USA; and will be publicly releasing the much awaited "New Wheel."
The wheel is a collaboration of Majacraft and Lexi Boeger (Pluckyfluff) design, and is specifically focused at art yarns, however it can also be a general purpose wheel, as it is compatible with most of the Majacraft accessories.
The Poad's intend to be at our vendors stalls at different times, with plenty of saleable "new wheels" available (program of time and place to come), and as a special bonus Lexi will also be demonstrating the "new wheel's" special concept and design features.

There is other news from Majacraft, too. They have out new flyers that reduce air resistance when they turn. I don't see them on their website yet, but they announced them

This is what one of the new flyers looks like from the side view.

This isn't exactly really new news, but they also have a new skeiner out. If you click the link, you'll see that you can put a bobbin on the skeiner and thread it through a guide, fasten it to one of the pegs on the skeiner, and then just wind it up! Very easy to use. And it can be placed directly on the wheel to wind your skeins if you want to take it traveling!

You can probably tell that I really love my Majacraft Rose wheel, and Majacraft in general! If you're on Ravelry, you can find a discussion of the new wheel here.

************************

We have a new telescope, and it has detected a new, previously unsuspected ring around Saturn!

*************************

Tonight, we have new episodes of Chuck, The Big Bang Theory and Castle! There will also be reruns of Ghost Whisperer on SyFy.

Have a great day!

More Tour de Fleece

I haven't been doing much for the Tour de Fleece, but I didn't set myself a very difficult goal, either. I have been doing a bit of spinning, although not as regularly as I'd like. But I'm starting to get back into the swing of things.

After a look around today, I found a total of four regular (plastic) bobbins for my Majacraft Rose wheel. I had one, and bought one at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, and found two more today. 

I am spinning my current project on the baby bobbins, and I've discovered that I don't like the fact that the center of the bobbin is so thin. No matter how much I back off on the Scotch tension, when I first start on an empty bobbin, the choice is between tug-of-war or no intake onto the bobbin at all. Once I ply the current batch on the baby bobbins, I'm going to see if I can find something to make the center section a bit thicker. I was looking at the photo of the baby bobbins in the link I provided above, and it looks like the updated bobbins have a thicker center, so that probably won't be a problem with the new ones.

While on the Majacraft site, looking at the baby bobbins and their improvements, I found another improvement. Majacraft has out a spindle that works with their wheels, and even has a bobbin that works with it.

Photos tomorrow.

As I said, I seem to be picking up speed, volume, and interest on this spinning project for le Tour de Fleece. While finding the bobbins, I found some pretty roving, some wool (in a soft blue and other colors), some wool and Tencel (in a very soft light and very dark green), and some pastel multicolored silk (really beautiful stuff). 

I was reading over the article in the Spring issue of Spin-Off about wrapped yarn. The woman in the article uses cotton crochet thread for a core, but it strikes me that wooly nylon might be a better core, and I'm thinking about trying that. If you're not familiar with wooly nylon, the photos at that link won't give you a clue. It's nylon thread, suitable for sewing (on a sewing machine or serger) with. When under tension, it looks like regular thread. But when the tension is released, it bulks up a bit, and looks remarkably like wool (hence the name). It's strong, and has elasticity that's very similar to wool. If you're interested, check it out in a fabric store.

I'm getting down to the end on the triangular shawl I'm knitting in Knit Pick's Telemark (royal heather). The royal heather color looks darker in person than I anticipated from both the printed and on-line swatches.

After ordering this yarn and knitting with it, I realize that Knit Picks doesn't really carry any sport weight yarn. Telemark is listed as a sport weight, but I'm finding it isn't really.

If you look at the yardage for their worsted yarns, they average around 110 yards for 50 grams. Skip to their DK weight yarns, and you get more like 160 yards for 50 grams. DK is thinner than worsted, so the finer yarn yields more yardage. So, you would naturally expect the sport weight yarns to have even more yardage per 50 grams. 

Wrong. Telemark is listed at 103 yards. I thought that was a typo, and that there was actually more yardage, since it's even finer than DK. So, I ordered the amount of yarn by weight, expecting to have a generous amount of yardage, but I think that what they did was take their worsted weight yarn and just give it more twist to make it thinner (and shorter). The yardage they claim is probably correct, and the shawl is turning out kind of skimpy. It's also stiff, being over-spun/plyed, scratchier than a more softly spun yarn would be, and still really worsted weight. I usually use a size 6 needle with sport weight, and get 6 stitches per inch, but a size 6 needle was giving me something that would stop bullets with this yarn. I had to go up to a size 8, and the resulting fabric is still stiff. I'm hoping that blocking will cure it, but I'm not happy about blocking because it isn't necessary with this pattern (my simple triangular shawl pattern).

Oh, well. Photos real soon now.

Doctor Who on Friday evening was outstanding! The episode they showed was Turn Left. I hope you got to see it, but I won't discuss it in case you didn't, except to say that Rose was back, and it's starting to build up to the season finale.

My granddaughter, Malaia, is moving to Baltimore tomorrow, and I'm really excited about it. Her aunt, Heather, is very upset that she's moving away from Toledo.

Oh, and John corrected me on my post about him yesterday. He will be at the National Cartoonist's Society Booth #1307 at Comic Con, and "I'll be hanging out there off and on when I'm at the con. Laura is tagging along with a big HD camera and is going to videotape the panel and stuff for me to use on the DVDs." 

Laura is my friend from so far back it's hard to remember. She's the reason I have a computer to blog on instead of my phone. She's been at a lot of the SF Cons I've gone to, and worked on one of the movies I worked on. I cannot wait to hear about it all!

I hope you're all having a great weekend!