So, to begin my (re)discovery of my love of music, I’m trying to listen to a new (to me) album every week. I’ve been wanting to hear this one in particular for a while.

Electric Owls – Ain’t Too Bright

This was a pretty sweet album. I originally heard of it through Last.fm, when the first track of the album, Magic Show, popped up on my recommended music stream. It was so catchy, I had to hear more – and this compulsion to hear more hasn’t happened for me very often with recent music so I went with it.

Now, the video isn’t all that hot, it’s just something a Youtube user cobbled together, but listen with your eyes closed if you have you. Awesome. I want to say the whole rest of the album rocks in the same way, but it doesn’t. It’s still worth listening to, but Magic Show is definitely the stand out track for me.

Next Week: Passion Pit – Manners

Since I last posted, my word count has doubled and I feel as though I’m running out of steam. I’ve found wonderful and exciting new ways to procrastinate, like watching music videos on YouTube that I would be embarrassed to admit to, learning to thread my eyebrows and jail-breaking my iPhone. I’ve done a little in the way of plot development, and have been concentrating on fleshing out what I have written. Perhaps it is time for another round of rough outlining on the page summary sentences of various scenes to boost my productivity and give me something more to write.

I’m now going to read a bunch of other people’s blogs and learn their strategies for getting past this stuckness. I’m not procrastinating still, I swear! >_>

I like to surprise myself by doing what I never thought I could do.

I uploaded the updated first draft, and there’s a link to the right, let me know if you’d like the password to check it out :). It’s looking like it’ll turn out to be a really heart-wrenching story, all told.

I had the day off, and managed to hit my word goal for the day in two hours, and that seems to be my average time as of late. I’m 10% complete and it was easy, I just have a feeling things are going to be a little bit more difficult for me as I continue. There are going to be more characters, to be sure, I’ll need them.

Anyway, if you do take the time to read it, let me know what you think, I’m really interested.

I started NaNoWriMo two hours before midnight last night for no reason other than I was struck with such sudden, fierce inspiration that I had to. I wasn’t planning on doing it, honest. I literally sat down and wrote 1318 words in those two hours, and submitted my word count 3 minutes before midnight, to make it official that I started on day 1. I haven’t written anything fictional since elementary school, it’s a big deal for me to even be inspired to do such a thing.

I wrote today for a good three hours and beefed up my word count to 3384, going over and above today’s total word quota by 51 words. I’m caught up, and it wasn’t even that bad. I have my manuscript linked in the sidebar, let me know if you’d like the password :)

My husband Alex is doing NaNoWriMo, too, so I have a feeling we’ll get a little friendly competition going shortly ^_^. He’s creating a race and society of people for his text-based role play game, and it’s going to be awesome.

If you’re doing NaNoWriMo, add me, I’m Goethe over there

Voila, the maiden voyage!

Site’s almost finished, and it’s been a learning experience (read also: horribly frustrating). The image map on the front page is all set after a few false starts, ready to direct here, to my About Me page and my art portfolio.

NaNoWriMo is now up and in full swing, and I find myself wishing I knew some people nearby who were participating for mutual encouragement and brainstorming. I’ve never been very good at writing fiction, but I’ve always wanted to try. I think this year, attempting to blog something every day will suffice.

With blogging, painting and knitting I hope to be buzzing for the next while. I redid my kitchen table/painting space and I’m quite fond of how it looks.

I began painting the lower half of Alex’s face, I’m hoping to do a small series of super zoomed in body parts and such. It’s still very much a work in progress, but I think it’ll be great when it’s finished.

(I have strange patterned old wallpaper. We rent. I am not culpable.)

Snow is here. My heart, she breaks! It’s treacherous to go walking already with all the icy sidewalks around where we live right now. Here’s a photo I took with my iPhone on the way to Tim Hortons (OH, Canada!) for breakfast.

The roads are quite dry for now, but not for long..

I had a great find recently at the painfully understocked thrift store in town – a hand-knit sweater just a little too big for me. I consulted the hive mind that is my twitter and was told to wet and smell it to determine fibre content. Being the reasonable girl I am, and not being totally in the mood to commit arson on the thrift store (should I burn the sweater and find it is baby-melting) I took this wetting advice and Lo! Wool smell! (Don’t even try to convince me that you don’t know what I’m talking about, don’t even front). So, I’m unraveling that baby-blue beauty. A sweater’s worth of wool for a buck-fiddy? I think so!

I’m beefing up my blog roll, so if you want to be added, leave a comment here and I’ll link you!

À Tantôt!

I am writing a few articles for my first year of the Master Spinner program through Olds College outlining basic wool preparation and spinning techniques. Below are the first couple topics that I thought might be of interest to the spinners who frequent my blog and my twitter pals. -Kaitlin

Methods of Wool Washing Prior to Spinning

Before spinning from a raw fleece, the fleece should be washed to remove impurities such as dirt, suint (sheep sweat) and grease if these are present in large quantities. It’s not necessary to remove all grease (lanolin) prior to spinning, and some spinners see it as an asset to have a small amount of grease left behind in the wool to add an element of water resistance to the finished object. It is necessary to remove all grease prior to dyeing, though, as the lanolin prevents dye from penetrating the yarn and acts as a barrier.

To remove impurities from a fleece while leaving some grease behind, soak the fleece overnight in cold water, and then with a half-hour soak in tepid water. Do not add detergents. Prepare the grease fleece and spin. It is also possible to remove suint and dirt after the fleece has been spun into yarn, though this is more difficult.

To remove all impurities and lanolin from a fleece, heat and detergent is required. Water must be at least 48°C to melt and dissolve lanolin. Detergent is required to encapsulate the lanolin and prevent it from settling back onto the wool.

To scour a fleece:
It is much easier to effectively scour a smaller amount of fibre.
After having skirted the fleece (removed the dirtiest and grassiest portions, most often found on the belly), soak a portion of it in water hotter than 43°C without detergent.
Before the water has cooled, and the lanolin has reattached itself to the fibres, drain the water.
Prepare a bath of water above 48°C and a suitable amount of detergent. (Finer wool has more lanolin than coarse wool, and therefore requires more detergent.) Add the fibre to the bath after having shut off the tap to prevent excessive agitation and felting. Do not let the water run directly onto the fibre.
Rinse the water in at least two more fresh water baths of the same temperature to remove the remaining detergent. The same temperature is required to prevent shocking the fibres and felting the wool.
Repeat the above steps for the remaining portions of fleece.

Dip washing is another method of removing lanolin while preserving the integrity of the lock and the natural alignment of the fibres for preparation in worsted spinning. To dip wash, arrange wool locks onto a screen, roll the screen and secure. Continue with the steps for scouring, paying attention to the orientation of the locks. Repeat the steps as necessary to remove all grease and detergent.

Wool Processing Equipment

Hand carding: Hand carding is a method of combing, blending fibres and aligning them in the manner desired for woollen or worsted spinning. It also aids in cleaning, in that vegetable matter falls down between the fibres as they are carded. Fibres are passed from one card to the other by using a gentle brushing motion, being careful not to interlock the tines on the equipment. Once the fibres are sufficiently blended, a woollen rolag is made by rolling the fibres on the card from the bottom to the top towards the handle. It is then spun from one end, trapping air in the yarn and creating woollen yarn. A worsted sausage is created by rolling the fibre from one side of the card to the other, aligning the fibres. It is then pulled apart slightly to help it hold its shape and is spun from one end, creating a worsted yarn.

Flick carding: Flick carding is a method used to tease and separate fibres while maintaining the structure of a lock, making it easier for the spinner to draft. One hand holds the lock while the other pats the flick carder into the spinner’s lap, lightly tugging the fibres apart, loosening any vegetable matter stuck to the fibre. These locks are then spun worsted. Teasing by hand is another method of accomplishing all of this, although because the fibres have then been scrambled, this is a technique best used if one were to spin woollen.

Hackles and diz: Hackles are large combs mounted to tables, used in fibre and color blending. The fibres are brushed through the combs in layers. A diz (small disc with a hole) is then used to pull the fibres into uniform roving for easy drafting and spinning worsted.

Wool Combs: Wool combs are used in much the same way as hand cards are, though they are more useful in de-hairing and combing fine fibres that may otherwise be damaged by hand cards.

Today has been quite productive! I’ve finally put together the blog portion of my domain. I’ll be tweaking quite a bit, but here I am!

I hope to have a bunch of fibery articles, patterns, photos and art projects up soon, all in one place.