Postscript to the Bavarian Cream Pie - extra strawberry cream is most excellent on Sunday Morning Banana Waffles.
Just saying.

The Kodak falcon eyases have fledged and probably won't return to their nestbox. A group of people go down every day and fledgewatch from the bridge, keeping an eye on the fledgelings as they learn to fly and then to hunt. One of people blogs at:

http://marchlords.com/birdblog

Summer's here.

The strawberries are ripe and it's time for Strawberry Bavarian Cream Pie. This can be made with any berry; strawberries or raspberries are recommended. I honestly can't tell you how it tastes with raspberries. It's rich enough I only make it once a year and strawberries are ripe before raspberries, so...

1 quart strawberries, whole -- hulled
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons gelatin powder, unsweetened (1 packet Knox gelatin is 2 tsp)
3 tablespoons water
3 tablespoons water -- boiling
1 tablespoon lemon juice -- optional
2 cups whipped cream
1 pie crust -- 10 inch pie pan
Mix up pie crust (I like to use 1-1/2 c flour, 1/3 c nut flour, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 c shortening). Chill dough.
Crush hulled strawberries. Add sugar. Let stand for 1/2 hour.
Roll out pie dough (10 inch pie pan is best; you'll still have filling left over) and bake pie shell at 400 for 10 -12 minutes. Let cool.
Soak 2 t gelatin powder in 3 T lukewarm water.
Stir in 3 T boiling water until dissolved.
Stir into berries, addiing lemon juice if desired.
Cool gelatin mix. When about to set, fold in lightly 2 c whipped cream.
Pour strawberry cream into pie shell. Chill for 8-12 hours.

The extra can go in small single custard dishes or a single dish for scooping from later. It can be eaten at any time, but might be better for several hours of chilling.

This has, of course, a bazillion calories per serving, most of them fat calories, but I don't recommend trying to rescue it from itself. Just make it only once a year.

It was quicker and easier to tink the whole damn thing. Suffice it to say, the Hyrna is back on track and making progress again. Slow progress, to be getting slower as each row is more than 300 stitches and will be much more than that when finished.

Why do people who don't spin/knit/ weave/crochet/ sew/whatever think that what spinning/ knitting/ weaving/ crocheting/ sewing/ whatevering takes is patience? Patience is what it takes to watch your child do something slowly and clumsily in 3 minutes when you could do it in 15 seconds flat. Patience is what it takes to wait (and wait and wait) at the doctor's office while they don't call your name. Patience is what it takes to wait at the gym (or the soccer field or the baseball field or the music store) while your kid has practice or a lesson. Patience is what it takes to not scream on a 10 hour driving trip when your kid just asked 'are we there yet' for the 15th time and you still have 8 hours to go.

It might take patience to learn to knit or sew or whatever, but after that knitting or sewing or crochet or spinning is what gives me patience to do all of the above. Not a bad return on investment.

Razzafratza.... Where's Yosemite Sam when you need some really good cussing?

Somehow, in the heat of knitting and watching the CHAMP car race on Sunday, I managed to screw up a line on my Hyrna. Now, each line has two distinct halves. I screwed up the first half (instead of k1, yo, k2, k2tog, yo I managed to k1, yo, k2, yo, k2tog, yo, k2 and went on from there). How I managed to NOT NOTICE THIS at the time, I have no idea, but apparently when I got to the midpoint, I reset and got the second half right. I discovered this after the return trip when I got to the end, some 600 stitches later.

It should be possible, one would think, to just tink back on that side, reknit those stitches and then refinish the purl row. Yes, it is possible, but my tension was different. I had too little yarn to finish the row and now I have too much. So, I'm slowly working my way back across, evening out the tension in the stitches as I go.

Let me just say, it will work. But it would have been quicker and probably easier to just tink the whole damn thing to start with.

Camporee! Whee! It wasn't raining. It was too hot. 225 girls, women and men in a perfectly lovely campground on the side of a hill (everything was either up or down) with too many mosquitoes (scritch, scratch) and a lovely cool breeze all day even when it was too hot. The cots didn't suck, the campfire was wonderful, the girls had a good time. We had a nice time with the activities and the hike we took in the evening was a good one.

Question: If the parents had to sign a special release ahead of time to allow the girls to have facepaint put on, why on earth did they tie dye shirts without gloves or notice to the parents? There were some pretty purple hands going home.

We hibernated on Sunday. The temp was up over 90 and as I may have mentioned once or twice, anything over 75 makes me melt. Today is a more reasonable 80 with rain showers.

Odds and ends

It's been a peculiar week. We went on Saturday (KIP day - I had my shirt on) to the Aquarium at Niagara Falls. Nice little aquarium. The subject of knitting in public came up and one of the other mothers said "Well, it's nothing new for her. She's ALWAYS knitting. She even knitted through Intermurals." (Well - Duh! Sitting through 1.5 hours of supervising 3 boys bowling, or 1.5 hours of watching other people supervising 12 kids playing tennis?) Another woman came out with that standard "I just couldn't knit. I don't have the patience" and I gave her my standard " I don't have the patience not to knit". She gave me sort of a double take...

I need to update my list of books read - One Good Knight by Mercedes Lackey was quite amusing. I'm stuck in Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass - don't know if I'll finish it. I'm in the middle of A Walk in the Woods and Notes from a Small Island and Neither Here nor There, all by Bill Bryson. My MIL lent me all three and I keep being able to find only one at a time, not the one I was most recently reading. All have hysterically funny moments in them, as well as, WHAT on EARTH were you THINKING? moments.

I found a copy of Ha!Ha! 24 Great Comedy Songs on the discount rack at the grocery store. I've never heard Anything You Can Do all the way through before, or anything but the title of I'm My Own Grandpa. It's got Flat Foot Floogie, which is one of those serendipitous moments as I was just watching a Looney Tunes cartoon which referred to this song and the commentary mentioned which song was being referred to. (The more period music I know, the funnier the Looney Tunes cartoons are because many of the musical motifs used were from contemporary music that emphasizes the action on the screen. And yes, I'm a Looney Tunes junky.)

I've been trying to get caught up on my sleep since the weekend (overnight at the aquarium with 15 Cub Scouts) and moving books on Tuesday morning followed by moving dirt on Tuesday afternoon left me with muscle twitches that interrupted sleep Tuesday night. I staggered around like a zombie Wednesday. I did manage a nap Wednesday afternoon but that merely changed the quality of my zombieness as I moved into that state where one's head is stuffed with cotton wool and nothing really processes. A reasonable night's sleep last night left me with merely a headache this morning and a desire to avoid doing anything useful. Maybe a swim will help.

There is that old saying: "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." When I was younger, I thought of this saying as a sort of metaphysical "The universe will move a teacher to your location as soon as you are really ready." I have come to believe somewhat the opposite as I have grown older: I believe that teachers are all around us, giving us information all the time. When the student is ready, they hear the information they need. Until the student is ready, the information doesn't stick.
It's a variant on that other phenomenon that once you hear about one xyz, you suddenly hear about xyz in all sorts of contexts. It really just means that you have become sensitized to xyz.
The relevance? Well, a short while back, June of Twosheep posted a lovely entry on the subject of keeping one's grist constant through the simple use of an index card. Place several wraps of a singles around an index card and fasten them down under tension. Then, as you are spinning, every so often lay a current bit of singles between the ones on the card and see/feel how it looks.
June credits Elaine Benfatto with telling her about it, and it is very possible that I was on a list to which Elaine posted this idea before; it sounds vaguely familiar. But when I (may have) heard this before, I wasn't ready for the information. It didn't stick. Now, it's a solution to a problem I know I have but hadn't addressed consciously. When I read June's discussion of the technique, I went Aha! Just what I need.
I used to spin one thing at a time. I had one wheel, I had no particular use for spindles (I had only two spindles, both the same size) (whoops sorry, I had a boat anchor too; I still have no use for that one). I spun one fiber til I was done and then moved on. Sometimes I stopped for a while and had trouble getting back to the grist I had been spinning, but all in all it worked fairly well.
Now I have multiple spindles at varying weights and I have (shhh!) several different projects going on the wheel. Keeping track of making even grist has become more important to me. This is the (current) perfect solution to my problem. And the proof of the pudding is that my grist on the latest two skeins of the same thing is 1. 1490 ypp and 2. 1450 ypp, which is really good for me and well within the tolerance level of my ability to measure either weight or length; i.e. my ability to do either with my current measuring tools has a fair amount of error built in. Best of all, the skeins feel like they go together, which has not always been the case on previous projects.

The parade was my kind of parade. Your basic small town parade: be there by 8:30, line up with the other 99 Girl Scouts and their leaders, fall in at 9 behind the 18 year old with the deely boppers who is shepherding this gaggle, between the fire engine and the Cub Scouts. (The Vets, the American Legion's Ladies' Auxiliary, the marching firemen and the high school marching band have already gone). March around the block (wave at the folks on the front step and at the people in the window at the retirement home) and head down (up?) Union Street to the cemetary. Wave to everyone as you go by, arrive at the end point at 9:30. The Mayor makes a speech. The Assemblyman makes a speech. The Memorial Day Volunteer Middle School Band (seated at the end point from the beginning of the parade) plays God Bless America. Two recitations by veterans (Flanders Field and Gettysburg Address). The bugler plays taps, a bagpipe band plays Amazing Grace and we head back to our cars. I'm home by 10:27. A little hot and sweaty, but a nice start to a holiday morning and not a problem that I parked in a 2 hour parking space.

The rest of the day was quiet. The younger offspring managed to fry himself in the sun the day before when the neighbors opened their backyard pool for the first time. (We've since had a few discussions on "I'm not treating you like a baby if I tell you to put on sunscreen" and he's now had a lecture by the dr as well.) He needed to hibernate from the 95 degree weather and I was not loathe to accomodate. I got spinning done and knitting. My mother got me Gathering of Lace for my b-day and I spent some time leafing through that. Lovely stuff.

Thanks for all the good wishes about my birthday. It was one of the nicest in a long time.

Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to me!

I'm off to go march in a parade. Have a good day!

Pictureless blog for a while - the camera is dead. It's been eating batteries for a while but yesterday it just flat gave up the ghost. Pity about that - I was all set for a picture taking orgy, catching up on everything I've been working on.

So, your imaginations will have to go into overtime for a while...
Item 1 - I've reached the end of the upper fan section on Hyrna Herborgar in the extended mode, which means I've gotten to row 62 (227 stitches) and am about to move into the diamonds. In a not-overly-blocked state (stretched but not as it will be in final blocking) the upper fan section spans my shoulders so I think it will be enough to add 3 repeats in the upper section and 3 in the lower section for 13 fans total. Sylvia, I can't thank you enough for the spreadsheet you sent with the numbers all worked out - for as far as I've gotten, they're bang on the money.

Item 2 - I've been spinning the black cherry and have plied the first batch with the yellow/orange/red and I like the way it's coming out. More on that later.

Item 3 - I've been spinning the cherry end of the multicolor ball on the spindle and I really like the way that's coming out as well. It's a subtly variegated red and in such nice matte shade. It makes me want to spin a compatibly colored silk and weave a scarf so that it came out in blocks - one block all wool, one block all silk and two blocks wool/silk. Small blocks, about 1 inch or so, all over the piece. I can picture it, I just haven't figured out the best way to get from here to there.

I dunno when I'll get the camera working again - I may have to borrow a friend's.

Falcons

The falcons at the Kodak site have had a rough start this year - six eggs laid, three viable eyases. The female parent (Mariah) had an accident early on and her leg is still not "right", but they are fun to watch and the kids are big enough that mom isn't always on top of them.

Weaving?

Sara has posted a series of very interesting commentary and questions on the state of weaving, weaving guilds and conferences. There is no particular doubt that weaving is on the wane at the moment, the guilds are growing somewhat older and the conferences available are consequently in danger of falling to the ax of an aging, tiring membership. I have absolutely zero answer to any of her questions. (Except as a sidelight to one comment she made, that only 20% of the subscribership to Handwoven is estimated to actually currently weave, and that is just to say that that would strike me as typical of any endeavor - that catch phrase of 20% of the people do 80% of the work has truth behind it no matter what the field. So what are the total numbers of subscribers to Handwoven and are they going up or down? 20% of 100,000 is a lot larger than 20% of 5,000)

Her posts have given me furiously to think, however, and have made me pull my head from the sand to some extent. I'm not a weaver. I am not exactly sure I want to be a weaver. But in view of the cost/time/space/effort thing perceived to be involved with being a weaver, I have been doing that metaphorical sitting in the corner, fingers in my ears, La la la I can't HEAR you. So I haven't really explored what I need to do in order to be able to do what I want to do. And if someone came up to me tomorrow and said, you have 3 weeks to live, I would be kicking myself big time for wasting time and that's just plain stupid. I may not want to do what I think I want to do, but not finding out whether I do or not is idiotic.

So. What do I want to do? I'll start by thanking Sara for outlining some of the ways to be a weaver on the cheap, to see if you like it. That's a most excellent start, because I look at all of those and say, No, that isn't what I want to do. And so for me, the answer is No, I don't want to be a weaver. Weaving for the sake of weaving is not what pulls me in. I admire the heck out of 99% of the woven stuff I see but it doesn't grab me and say come play.

What I want is something different - I want to play with silk. I adore silk. Playing with silk cocoons doesn't interest, I don't want to reel silk, particularly. It's fun to watch but doesn't draw me in. I like spinning silk, on the wheel and on spindles. I like needlepointing with silk. I like knitting with silk, and crocheting with silk, but while silk in any of these options is fun, it doesn't show the silk to its absolute best advantage, such as here, or here. So. What I want to do is make silk fabric. Which then leads back to: weaving. I don't want to be a weaver; I want to weave with silk. A distinction without a difference some might say, but one that I'm finding important in the clarification of my thoughts on the subject.

And that 's about as far as my coherent thinking has gone on this topic. I've more ideas rolling about in my head, but mostly what I have is questions. All of my other fiber activities involve miniaturization - itty bitty needlepoint and cross stitch, lace knitting on #2 or 3 needles, filet crochet with a #3 hook, spinning laceweight on a lightweight spindle. I'm not an ultraminiaturist but I like the fine stuff. How does that fit in with weaving silk fabric? What sort of weaving equipment will let me produce what I want and where do I get it and how best to learn how to use it? Can I start with a rigid heddle table loom and get to where I want to go, or is that a dead end. Much to ponder. Even more to research.

So, Sara, I don't have any answers to your questions. I do know that the items mentioned to lure knitters into weaving through Big Yarns just make me shudder. Not to say that they won't work, but I didn't get into knitting through Big Yarns either.

Grist

I finally calculated grist on the alpaca/silk lace. It's just about 4123 ypp. And since Sylvia tells me the Icelandic is 2234 ypp, my eyeball feel that this was a finer yarn has been confirmed. It doesn't really affect what I'm doing except to agree that I'm going to go with the expansion module on the shawl. And oh, by the way, I'm going to have finish spinning the last bit of silk hankie and ply the last skein or I won't have enough yarn. On the other hand, I'll get back the two bobbins that are being held up by my dilatory nature (or rather, by my unwillingness to spin the hankie - it was making my hands hurt).

Dyeing can be fun

My favorite kind at the moment is dyeing when you don't know precisely what you're going to get. As with many things, this may progress to the stage where one is happiest being able to reproduce exactly what one wants, but at this point in time, randomness is good.

This started life as a black and white spotted fleece (from Whitefishbay Farm, so it's Corriedale, but I didn't order it myself so who it was is a mystery). I washed it by hand and flicked it with a dog comb then grabbed random bits of white or grey or black for spinning. This was then dyed once and I didn't like it (too dull pink) and dyed it again. I'm now a happy camper. Red is good. Dark red is even better.

I did say I was working on the Hyrna Herborgar and I now have pictoral proof.
I'm up through the first fifty rows and am going on for that next three sets that will give me a larger shawl. I had vaguely worked out that this is what I thought I wanted and Sylvia says yes indeedy and went on to say I want three more sets of the next pattern too without my having to figure it out at all. Thanks Sylvia. This is being knit in a silk/alpaca laceweight I spun up last year. I've still been a complete slob about figuring out the grist. I promise I will. Soon.

Dyeing and spinning: I'm spinning up the dark cherry first - I'm putting it with some more of the red/orange/yellow which is currently hogging the bobbins. The blue/red bump will have to wait its turn. I think I'm going to go for a graduated look from one end to the other but I'm not going to try to preserve the colors with a Navajo ply. More thought is required before I start.

Books: Robbing the Bees is a history of honey and bee keeping. Makes me want to run right out and get some bees to keep, or if not that, at least to start buying exotic types of honey and comparing them. Half the types in there that were mentioned as special are things I've never heard of. I like alfalfa honey and buckwheat honey and wildflower, but there are any number of other types I need to check out. Most excellent reading.

All of My Patients are under the Bed. Somewhat dated, but still interesting story of a vet in New York City who came to specialize in housecalls on cats. If you like amusing stories about cats, or stories of life in NYC in the 50s, it's a good book to dip into.

New Rules. Political satire and social commentary; screamingly funny.

Why is the Foul Pole Fair? A trip to a baseball game with the history of the different parts of the game, ballpark, and people explained. Very readable even for this non-baseball fan.

Baseball an Illustrated History This goes along with the PBS series on Baseball from some years ago. I enjoyed that and I enjoyed this also, even though, as mentioned previously, I'm not a big baseball fan. My interest lies in the historical commentary and there is lots of it here. Wonderful collection of pictures and personal vignettes. It's a huge book and you'll get a hernia.

Feminist Fairy Tales. I keep meaning to check the copyright date on this. I liked most of the stories, but it falls into a category I've come to avoid: stories or books that are written just to emphasize that girls are just as good as boys. There's got to be something more to the story than just that, or why bother? It's readable but not something I'll bother to keep.

The Big Over Easy. Funny, but a lot harder to read than the Thursday Next stories. It took me a while to figure out what the problem was. One of the main characters had to decide if she was going to betray another or not and I couldn't decide for a while if she would or wouldn't. I hate that kind of thing and had a hard time making myself keep reading it till she got past that decision. After that I buzzed through the rest of the book and enjoyed it quite a bit.

Fun with Color II

Take one bump white top (lovely soft stuff) and dye it as is; i.e. don't unroll it, just soak in water with detergent, then add to dye pot (Cushing's Navy Blue) in its now soggy state. Watch the outer layer drift apart and wonder about the inside. Once it has been through the bring-up-to-temperature and let-cool-down stages, drain it out.






Rewrap so the outside (now very dark blue) is on the inside, and the inside (now still mostly white with large flashes of pink and some blue) is on the outside. Don't bother soaking it again, it's still soggy. Make up a dyepot with Cushing's Cherry (that bluish red aforementioned in the previous post) and plop it in to repeat the heat and cool cycles.


Result:

I found the way that the various portions of each dye mix penetrated the bump to different depths interesting. I think if I were to do this again, I would pick colors that were variations of the same rather than two different colors so that the range of color would not be quite as extreme. For this experiment I did want to see the effect of the two different colors. Now to spin it up.

Fun with Color
This week, in odd moments, I've been playing with the dye pot. I don't really have space for a full dye kitchen and I don't have a good scale for weighing dyes with and, at the moment, I'm satisfied with playing with premixed colors, so Cushing dye it is. Take one pound of brown heathery Falkland Islands Rosemary wool. Add Cherry dye (a blue tinged red) and voila -

Black Cherry!













Moving on then to white roving (Bump A) I used Crimson in order to come up with this:
I'm not sure what I did differently between the two dye sessions but the second set of top is significantly less levelly dyed than the first. If I were going to use this as a standalone I would redye it and even it out but I'm not and the color variation will work well for what I have in mind.

There is a bump B of white but that is currently in the dyepot and will have to wait to take its turn on stage in due time.

A-dyeing we shall go, a-dyeing we shall go...

I've got the dye pot simmering. Light brown Rosemary wool top with Cherry Cushings. It didn't all strike on yesterday so I'm bringing it up to temp again and adding more vinegar. Waiting in the wings is white Rosemary wool top and Crimson Cushings. Should be fun.

Last week was a whirl through spring break with the kids - Easter with the PGrandPs for two days in Pennsylvania, then 3 days in MD with the MGrandPs and my nephew (age 4) and a visit with my brother and his wife (who rented a Cesna for the day and took the kids for rides), and evening visits with my sister who was too overwhelmed at work to stay and play much though she would have liked.

Taking a 4 yo to the National Zoo was fun, although I didn't remember the zoo being on a hill. You can go uphill or down - we started at the up side, so of course it was all uphill at the end. A good time was had by all and he slept all the way home.

I'm actually making decent but slow progress on the Herborgar. Part of the problem is I need to switch to wooden needles - the Addis are too slick for the yarn I'm using. Sylvia, I appreciate the offer on the walk through, but I think I'm past the setup part now where I was losing myself and into the part that's going to be much more mindless knitting. I need to take a hard look at the yarn grist I've got and the recommended grist and make an assessment of whether I need to follow your lead and lengthen the shawl a bit. My gut feel is that I do need to.