You may have been following the spinning experiment thread, but in case you have not, I will explain.   
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I knit, design and teach sock knitting.
I spin.  
I want to knit socks from my fingering weight handspun yarn.   
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Given the above, I have been spinning about a year now, but have not experimented in spinning in a specified weight.  I have been spinning by default.  To spin fingering weight, I needed to spin a specific weight or size single.  I have gotten to the point where I was spinning pretty fine.  I needed a little confidence and a guide to go by to make myself think I could do this.  I purchased Sock Hop Yarn in the colorway Beat Goes On from Crown Mountain which is a handspun, hand dyed yarn.  Having this yarn showed me exactly what I needed to do to obtain similar results.   
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My bobbins and CMF handspun yarn
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I spun up two bobbins on my Majacraft Rose and let the singles sit on the bobbins for a few days to set the twist.  I then plied the singles on my Ashford Espinner.  Nothing like plying on an espinner!!!  Fast, fast, fast.    I wanted to make sure I got enough twist in the yarn.  After spinning, I let the bobbin set for a day to help the twist set in on the resulting yarn.  I then dunked it in cold repeatedly per Teyani’s instructions to help make this yarn sproingy when dry.  I snapped the hank of yarn a couple of times and then hung it up to dry. 
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  The finished yarn is very sproingy.  You pull on the yarn a little and it just really bounces right back!  I love, love, love the finished yarn and it is very similar to the Crown Mountain yarn.  I measured WPI for both the

Crown Mountain           Mine

18 WPI for both, Crown Mountain on the left and Mine on the right.
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Fun experiment!  Now, I am thinking I need to knit both and see if there are any noticeable differences.

Dogs, Fiber and Spinning Content today. 
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Not much about me feels fresh or new after just finishing up a dog agility trial.  It was really hot outside, but thank goodness for the A/C inside!  It was a lot of work, but always fun.  Jake had an off weekend.  He usually Qs (qualifies) at least once a day, but he only Qd once the whole weekend.  The time he did Q, he made it count.  He placed second and got his Exc A Standard Title.  He missed first place by less than one half a second.  He was really running…and on the last day too!  Usually he moves a little slower on the last day and is not quite so perky.  I am wondering what he took so I can take it too.  Ha!    

Gracie Qd once this weekend too and really made hers count as well.  She got first place and now has her Novice B Standard Title.  A big WAH HOOOO!   She started competing last August and you have to get three qualifying runs to move to the next level.  I am so happy for her.  Her biggest stumbling block right now besides her handler is her ring nerves and weave poles.  She loses all confidence and did not even do 6 weave poles this weekend without having to try again.  My instructor saw our qualifying Novice run and suggested that I take my weave poles and Gracie to lots of places and have her weave.  If you see a strange lady and a dog weaving on TV in a strange place, you know who it is.

It was really nice to bring these home! 

Thursday was a really long day and we did not get home until way past 7:00 pm.  Saturday was a little better, we got home before 6:00 pm.  I was so tired and hot on Satruday night that I came home and jumped in the pool for awhile.  I noticed that the water level in the pool was getting a little low since we are in a drought, so I put the hose in the pool and turned the water on to fill it up a litte.  I showered and fed the dogs and sat on the couch to knit.  Yeah right.  Knit.    It was more like sleep.  Right through the movie.  I am watching my neighbors’ dogs while they are out of town and he called to check on them and woke me up as I watched the movie through my eyelids.  I let the dogs out and was going to let the neighbors’ dogs out and heard this noise like a waterfall.  Oh, you should have seen how fast I really became awake!!!   The Pool!   The Water!!!   Oh, no…..the water was gushing over the skimmer.  I was afraid the pool walls would collapse and flood my house.  I got a vacuum hose out and siphoned that to get it going and my yard got a major watering.  Moral to that story is…..don’t fall asleep while filling the pool.   Well, my yard liked it anyway. 

On the fiber front, another little 437 yard hank of RDLP sneaked into my mailbox last week.  This hank is not one of the tweed versions, but hand dyed.  It is quite beautiful.

   
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I did take pictures of my experiment with spinning sock yarn, but did not measure the WPI yet.  I will blog about that tomorrow for sure! 
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Have a great day

Sometime ago, I posted a picture of the pretty glass bottles I have in my kitchen window that is right over my sink.  I love how the light reflects through the bottles and looks so pretty in my kitchen.  Well, I got a new bottle.  From the left, it is the second from the end and is the pink, swirly color bottle that is not transparent.  (click to make pictures bigger)
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On the Agility front, we competed yesterday and go back for more fun on Saturday and Sunday.  I took a day off from agility to get some rest work today, but will go back tomorrow.  Actually, my dogs are not high drive dogs and cannot compete four days in a row, as much as I would like to darn it.  Yesterday was a long day and not one of the best we have had performance wise, but you always need to find some positives.   

Gracie is my green dog which means she does not have a lot of ring experience.  This is evidenced when she has to wait long periods of time before running and it shows in her performance.  She had to wait six hours yesterday before running.   She ran half her normal speed, but was still 7 seconds under.  She got befuzzled in the weave poles too, but that is common when she is stressed.  The positive is that she did run, she finished, and she jumped in my arms at the end of the run.  If she is really shut down, she won’t jump in my arms. 

 Jake had a really off day that I hope won’t be repeated the rest of the weekend.  He did not want to sit and looked at me like he was saying “Make Me” and he blew his weave poles on both runs.  Jake is Mr. Consistent on his weave poles and has been trained on just about every conceivable hard entry there is.  I am not sure what was up with that except he is not a machine, he is a dog.  On the bright side, he had great speed on the first half of his second run which was 5 hours after his first run and he was tired of waiting too.   

I have been competing three years and my Mom came to watch us compete for the first time.  I felt bad that we did not do better for her first visit, but two of my knitting friends, both sadly blogless…Jan and Lisa, came so I had a small cheering sections.  When I was walking the JWW course, I overheard my Mom say when I executed a front cross “Oh, look, she twirled.”   I added some comic relief on my next walk through there by doing a ballerina pirouette.  I am not sure how graceful that was, but hey, I was tired by then and it was fun to have a little comic relief.  Jan and Lisa knitted socks and my Mom was busy working on a beading project.  I was amazed they could see in there!   

I will post more about our weekend next week.  Have a great weekend!

I attended a Fiber Forum this past March and participated in a seminar titled Socks to Dye For offered by Charlene Schurch.  What a great experience!  This seminar consisted of two days, the first day focused on dying and the second day on sock knitting techniques.  Saturday, we dyed sock yarn two different ways.  The first technique was the most interesting visually and was very well thought out-dying self-striping sock yarn.  Charlene kept everything moving, was good at focusing on someone that needed attention at the time, and was great at sharing her expertise on the subject.   The method Charlene offered for dying self-stripping sock yarn was to use a machine-knitted blank that consisted of two strands of sock yarn held together and knitted on a knitting machine.  Each section was a specific number of rows and then the machine needle size was dialed up larger to knit a row to show the demarcation line in between the sections.  This was done so you could see the different sections to paint.  Notice that the cuff, heel and toe had more rows knitted as those sections are larger.  We chose how many colors we wanted to use and handpainted our yarns with dye.  
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  Machine Knitted Blank - Self-Striping Sock Yarn
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This was my first experience with dying and I had worn an old outfit in case I made a mess of things.  I did not get one drop of dye on me!   If I had not been prepared though, I would’ve looked like I had been making mudpies!     The machine knitted blank that I painted is not ‘just’ stripes.  I accidentally got a spot of orange paint on my yellow and I kind of liked it, so I went back and made spots on other sections similar to the first for effect.  My plan is to take pictures (whew, one goal already accomplished) of the blank and then unravel it and knit it into socks and then take an ‘after’ picture.  I can’t wait to see the finished result.  I was not quite as excited (but I still like it) about the handpainted hank of sock yarn versus the self-striping yarn because there were not quite as many dye colors left to choose from.  We had spent most of our day dying the self-striping yarn too and we were tired at this point so that could have been part of it too.  On the handpainted hank, we coiled our hank into a pinwheel and painted it in quadrants.  One color for each quadrant.  It looked like wet spaghetti to me while I was working on it.   We also dyed a very small hank of yarn that would be used to knit a mini sock with the next day.   I think dying is definitely an art form and admire people such as Teyani-Crown Mountain and Amy-Spunky for the amazing dye work results.  
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  Handpainted Sock Yarn from class

The second day using our mini hank of handpainted yarn, we knitted a small sock and learned some of Charlene’s tips and tricks for knitting sensational socks.  Speaking of Sensational Socks, I have both of her sock books and highly recommend them.  I teach sock knitting classes at Haus of Yarn and tell my students if they can have only one sock book, I recommend either of the Sensational Sock books.   If you ever get the chance to take a class with Charlene, JUMP on it.  It was very exciting, energizing and I learned a lot.  I left the seminar wanting to run home and MAKE something!     On the subject of socks, I am almost through with the Seascape sock made from Crystal Palace Panda Cotton.  I have a few knitting rows left and will be decreasing for the toe.  Due to my crazy work schedule the past few days, I am surprised I got ANY knitting done!
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Agility competition starts tomorrow! Yah!

Boxes can be used for different things.  They can be tangible or intangible things.  Intangible would be where you compartmentalize thoughts or concepts in your life.  To fiber enthusiasts such as me, tangible would be cool ways to organize things.   Boxes are places we put ourselves in repeatedly.  Do you find yourself repeatedly going to the same ‘color box,’ i.e., choose the color families over and over again because that is what you are drawn to???  I am guilty of just that. 
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I have made it a challenge for myself to branch out and diversify my color box/palette.  My most favorite color combinations are purple and green.  I gravitate towards blues and purples or the cool colors.   In the challenge to diversify and broaden my color palette and get out of my usual color box, I find that no matter what other colors I am drawn to, I am repeatedly drawn to the same colors in that family, with small differences.  I find that my choice of color is usually deeply saturated as well.  Another similarity I notice is that I tend to be drawn to multicolor or variegated colors versus solid colors.  When I do choose a solid color, it is often not quite solid – it is not usually one flat color, but degrees of the same color whether it be kettle dyed, immersion dyed, etc.  When I choose something natural versus something dyed, I choose a natural cream color or deep saturated colors such as a rich brown.   This past week, Amy - Spunky Eclectic posted new items on her site.  I got her update notice and swiftly went and browsed as the colors ‘get gone’ quickly.  I chose two different colorways in BFL.   Aztec and Burning Bush.  I received my shipment yesterday.  It is always like Christmas when you have a package on your porch and I love the anticipation of opening the box and seeing in person the goodies inside.  Back to color boxes. Both Aztec and Burning Bush belong to a far different color box than my usual choices.  Interestingly enough, the colorways are so very similar with the main difference being the color green.  These two colors were not next to each other and did not look THAT much alike.  One is a greener green and the other is aqua.  Interesting how I ended up with two very similar colors and I really did not try to do that. 
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 Aztec           Burning Bush
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|You may not have thought much about this, but your choices happen without you thinking about them.  How many color boxes do You have?  What are Your favorite colors?  What are You drawn to?  On another note, I had another fun package on my porch yesterday as well.  I ordered some handmade soap The Soap Shed, a soap company in the Appalachians in North Carolina.  To date, I have not found a soap that did not leave my skin feeling like there is a film on it or drying my skin out.  I ordered five different bars of soap from this place upon their recommendation.  I love the smell of them all and they are very prettily wrapped too.  I will be gifting handmade dish/wash cloths this year with handmade soap and want to test the soaps before deciding on what to give.  The shea soaps are supposed to be the most moisturizing.  The goats milk soaps are next in line.  I got one facial shea soap.  Rock-A-Bye Baby Goat Milk Cream Soap smells really good and seems like it would be really gentle.  Oatmeal, Milk & Honey is another goat milk soap I chose.  I then chose some shea soaps.  Two hand repair soaps which has an exfoliant in them:   white spice and then bergamot/mint.  My most favorite scent of them all is the shea facial repair (no exfoliant in it) soap:   scent is grapefruit and bergamot.  I will actually use them and test them out to see which are my favorites.  I think the the grapefruit and bergamot and rock-a-bye baby are on the top of the list right now. 
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I am suffering from change in sleeping patterns so may be a little disjointed.  Work is causing me to keep strange hours.  I slept from 12:30 to 2:30 last night, then from 5:15 to 6:15 and then 6:15 to 7:30.  We are in the middle of releasing new computer changes and have to test them in the middle of the night before business ramps up during the day in case we need to roll something back.   My knitting and spinning time is suffering, darnit. 
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Agility…..big agility competition this weekend in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.  Two competition rings, four days, 330 dogs/day running, Thursday through Sunday.  Come by and watch, it is free.  You could get the agility bug though…and that is NOT free.

Have you ever seen someone do something and just ‘know’ that you are going to do that thing?   
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When I was little, I would visit my Dad’s office and watch the ladies in the office type.  I just ‘knew’ I was going to type one day.  About five years ago, I went to an agility trial with my Mom and just ‘knew’ that I was going to compete too.  I sometimes think that you get further if you find something that you want to do and figure out how to do it  I also think we don’t always set our goals high enough or have enough self confidence.  I think many things in life are like knitting, if you are determined enough and stick with something….you can do it. 
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Of course, there are things that I did not ‘know’ I was going to do, life’s journey just kind of led me there.  Case in point – spinning.  I never had aspirations to spin.  I am glad that I can now spin, but I never had it on my ‘list’ of things to do.    Another thing not on my ‘list’ of things to do was to rescue dogs.  I believe this is a life calling though and is just programmed into my DNA somehow.  I even think my Mom has gone from fighting it to going with the flow and now she wants to keep them all.  Or at least Mr. Wiggles, AKA Ace.  She calls Ace Mr. Wiggles because he gets on her lap and is so happy that he wiggles everywhere and can’t be still.   Some things you just can’t fight, you just have to figure out how to maximize your talent or gift and go from there. 
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Speaking of Mr. Wiggles, he and Lacey got a bath yesterday.  I am working on getting the yellow stain out of his coat from where he sat in a cage.  Lacey had a Phyllis Diller look, so she got in on the bath scene too.  Nothing better than clean, sweet smelling puppies to snuggle with!  Mr. Wiggles          Lacey
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Spinning experiment.  I have been spinning the Beat Goes On superwash fiber from Crown Mountain into sock yarn…my first.  I also have a couple of hanks of this yarn spun up from CMF and am going to compare mine against the pros.  I finished the yarn yesterday and it is almost dry.  I will write up my findings later this week.  Here is a preliminary picture though.
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Everything is so dry and dead here from the drought, it was hard to find something pretty to take a shot of.  I decided to take a picture of a MUCH different kind of tree that you fiberaholics would be very interested. 
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   This, my friends, is Koigu Tree.  Unfortunately, there are only so many branches on this tree, so there are hanks in the wings waiting to sprout as leaves.  I got this beauty when a local craft store was moving and no longer had room for it.  It is mounted on wheels, so I have a Portable Koigu Tree. 
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I also took a picture of some of my sock yarn stash.  Too much to list and it is likely that you really can’t appreciate it fully as it is almost system overload to see if all in one picture.  There is hand dyed, hand painted, Opal, Regia, Trekking, you name it.  Actually, I was online when Opal first came out.  They did not have names or even lot or color numbers (Farbie and Partie).  The US distributor would cut out a small white piece of paper and number them and show them online and you picked what you wanted and emailed an order in.  For those die hard older Opal fans.  I have Blue #3.  Yepper!   I did have two, but knit one ball into a pair of Scrunchie socks.  I have everything organize in gridded cubes.  Behind the Opal is more Opal, three deep.  Maybe I should invitations out for the sockaholics to come shop in my sock yarn store??? 
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I have ten hanks of Fantasy Cotton Naturale to knit into a summer tank or shell.  I wear my cotton sweaters more than any others due to the warm temps in Nashville. 

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Have a great weekend.

Lack of blog entries – I have been extremely busy at work and have not had a lot of extra time for the important things, such as blogging.  I had good intentions to do this last night, but the first opportunity was at 10:30 pm and I was too tired to write, much less spell correctly.  Sorry for the lack of content lately…. 
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 Without further ado, I will share pictures of this beautiful yarn:
 
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Remember my experiment in spinning sock yarn?    I bought some of the Sock Hop yarn from Crown

Sock Hop - Beat Goes On  
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What would be a day without dog pictures?  Boring.  Yep.  So, I was actually able to catch Ace being still for five seconds  so I got him on ‘film.’   His ear stands up much of the time, but sometimes, it is just plain tired..
Notice how pretty his coat is getting?       
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I have two whole days off in a row this weekend.  Woo and Hoo!    I have a big four competition coming up the next weekend so I need to save up energy for that one.  The competition is nearby in Mufreesboro, Tennessee.  Excellent only dogs run on Thursday.  All classes run Friday through Sunday.  We will be on the MTSU campus in the Livestock building off of

I really didn’t have much to talk or blog about today.  I walked into my fiber room for inspiration and thought about the things that I like to use and decided sharing some pictures of that would be something fun and interesting to talk about.  (all pictures can be clicked on and made bigger)
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Each year, there is a small fiber festival in October in Murfreesboro, Tennessee located at a pioneer reconstruction settlement called Cannonsburgh.  Russ Petersen is one of the artisans we are lucky enough to have there each year.  He hand carves crochet hooks and knitting needles.  He makes other items such as squirrel cage yarn winders, etc.  I am in love with his crochet hooks and am usually his first customer each year.  I get up early and hit his booth before he has everything out and ask to see what he has.  I use crochet hooks to weave ends in on my knitting, I use them for edgings and things like that, but I am not a crocheter by any stretch of the imagination.   His hooks are so smooth, I have never broken one and I just love to see them sitting in their snowman cup in my knitting room just waiting to be admired. 
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Snowman        closeup 
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Ever hear someone exclaim that they have a fetish for shoes, socks, or some other article?  I have a ‘thing’ for socks.  I also have a thing for comforters.  Okay, okay, I have a THING for yarn, fiber, etc.  I admit it.  I am hopelessly addicted committed to the art and the tools that go along with it.   Luckily, tape measures are fun and not THAT expensive.  Can you tell I like em? 
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We move on to scissors.  I don’t exactly have a plethora of them, but these are my knitting scissors (we won’t talk about my beading, kitchen, fishing line, etc., scissors).  The dainty purple scissors and fob are a give from my Mom.  She commissioned the fob and asked to see my scissors.  She was aghast at my purple scissors that she said looked like school scissors, so she gifted me with the pretty, dainty purple pair with flowers on them.  Notice the dragionflies (yep, I have a thing for them too, sigh).  The other darker purple pair are my SCHOOL scissors (not), but I like them and think they are especially spiffy with the Zucca fob attached. 
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Markers – I was the lucky recipient of handmade sterling silver markers that are heart shaped.  They are very pretty, unusual and handy to have. 
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Markers 
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Okay, I did save the best for last.  Those that know me understand how crazy I am about this tool.  They may not understand the WHY, but they know that I am crazy about this.  I got this little tool at an estate sale at least 15 years ago and I believe it is called a Susan Bates Crohook and was made somewhere in the 1960’s.  This little piece is just the most perfect size and shape.  I use it almost exclusively when weaving ends in.  I also use it to pick up stitches with when you need to rip back or have dropped a stitch.  I am so addicted to this thing and so much in fear that I will lose it forever that each time I did in my accessory bag to get it, I have this sick feeling that it is gone and nowhere to be found.  To take this picture, I had to do just that, scrabble through the bag and I just knew this time it was gone, BUT, there it was safe and sound.  Where it should be.  I have hung onto this little gem for such a long time and hopefully will go to my grave with it clutched in my hands as they cremate me.  If any of you have one of these out there and can bear to part with it….I would pay good money to take some of the stress out of owning one of these by having two (or three or four).  Can you tell I am crazy about this little thing?  Well, don’t be dismayed by its simplicity when you see the picture.