A Mānoa Girl's Bloggie

Ho, I wen fall so far behind, yeah? Now stay pau da Tour de France and I stay playing catch-up! So today I going post da next three days of da Tour de Fleece.

Everyday I tried to get creative with my collages. Some days I had a lot of time, some not so much for that. For Day Thirteen, I thought it’d be fun to have the underneath of my myrtlewood wheel for the background. Joe Jorgensen made several hundred beautiful, myrtlewood wheels; there are several of us on Ravelry who are trying to locate as many of them as we can.

As you can see, the bobbin is getting a little fuller. Spinning a new fiber was a real learning experience for me, but the more I spun, the more consistent I was able to get.

This was my attempt at humor. I’d taken the photo of the Pileated Woodpecker right outside my office window and am really happy with it. I thought this could work well for my Day Fourteen collage.

For Day Fifteen, I did what a lot of handspinners do: put a coin underneath the singles to demonstrate how fine we’re spinning. I’m not spinning major fine, but as you can see, my singles is definitely getting more consistent. And oh, yeah, the bobbin is getting fuller. Hee hee. I took the sheep photo on one of our appraisal assignments near Jefferson, Oregon.

Ho, am I ever far behind! So I will do several photos in this one post to make up for it. Since the Tour de Fleece is almost pau anden!

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On Day Nine, I filled up the first bobbin!! Whoot! So, trying to be creative, I decided to put it on a daylily for contrast. A little bit of the daylily’s pollen da kine got on it; I think it’ll wash out when I ply the two bobbins together, but if not, I kinda like it!

Oops. I neva wen post one photo yestaday… so I stay going post two today.

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Are you getting bored yet? Same old stuff on the bobbin, I know. But it’s getting fuller, and I am perfecting my craft. Ha! This is really challenging stuff to spin, and I’m having to figure out which spinning technique will give me the result I want. Long draw? Short forward draw? Something in between? Kamaʻāina draw? (I made that one up. How did you guess?) How do I get enough twist in the singles without making it looks all corkscrewy? How do I get more consistent in spinning this slippery fiber?

I am definitely being challenged! I’m glad I’m doing da Tour de Fleece, even if finding spinning time in my busy schedule is difficult.

Today I had to take ʻUkulele, my very special pōpoki, to the vet. She’s sixteen years old and may be having some kidney problems. It’s been a really hard day for me today. I get the report tomorrow.

I find spinning soothes me at times like this. It’s repetitive and rhythmic. It’s nurturing and creative. Some people like their wheels to be as quiet as possible, but not me. I love the clickity-clack that most of my wheels’ bobbins make as they turn, spinning fiber into thread.

I pray the report gives us some hope tomorrow. I will be spinning while I wait for the doctor’s call. It will help calm me down.

Here is the collage from Day Six… having sheep in it seemed appropriate.

Well, here we are on Day Five. At least back then we were, yeah? Ahahaha….

In this collage is one lone daffodil blooming among the tulips at the Wooden Shoe Bulb Farm here in Oregon. Well, you know that, right? Cuz I jass wen do a couple of blog posts about it! Anyway, I thought I’d add the photo. Because you know why? Because it reminds me that each of us is unique, and that photo reminded me of that. Each of us has his or her own beauty even though we’re among a whole lot of other people.

The rhododendron down at the bottom is at our house; it bloomed like crazy this year!

And oh yeah, the spinning! The bobbin is getting more full, yeah? I am finding this Merino wool is a real challenge to me. I’ve never spun it before and it’s not easy to get a consistent singles. (That’s what you call one spun fiber. Then you ply it with another singles, and that makes yarn. Though some people just spin it thicker and leave it as a singles. I know it sounds like my English is bad, but “singles” is a real word.)

Some people even do a 4-ply yarn, but that’s a story for another day. My goal is to ply the singles on both my bobbins together before the tour is pau, but I don’t know if I’m going to make it. My main challenge was learning to spin superwash (that means it won’t felt) Merino, which is very slippery and hard to control, and to spin it consistently.

Anyway… here is the collage from Day Five.

Day Four. I didn’t get to have a whole lot of spinning that day, but I could still see that my bobbin is getting fuller. It’s not filling as evenly as I’d like because my flyer hooks (da flyer is the U-shaped da kine that the bobbin slips onto) are all hamajang. I went to the hardware store to get new ones, and asked my talented neighbor if he’d be able to help me with them. He couldn’t do it for a couple of days, so I just did the best I could in trying to fill the bobbin as evenly as possible, considering that a whole bunch of hooks were missing!

I was so blessed that my Bird of Paradise was blooming on the very day that I needed to take some photos for the collage! And the Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly had stopped by a couple of months ago, so I added his photo to the collage too.

Day Three. It was a really hard day for me because it was the anniversary of my mom’s death, and this year it was hitting me particularly hard. It was like I was experiencing the desperation to get down to California to say goodbye all over again, yet knowing that I didn’t make it. So I was more tense as I was spinning, and I can’t say that it went all that well. I was crying and spinning at the same time.

And yet, spinning was a good thing for me to do. There’s something wonderful about being able to create beauty in the midst of sadness. My friend Linda always suggests that when I’m having a hard day to find something nurturing to do, something that will touch me in those deep places where I’m hurting so bad. As my spinning progressed, I knew once again that she was right. I began to relax and was able to take a measure of joy in what I was creating.

Like this:

And this:

The white wicker chair is my favorite spinning chair. It used to sit in my mom’s bedroom draped with a pastel shawl that I’d knit for her. I like that I’m using it to create beauty, because my mom instilled in me a love for nature and its glories.

Here is the collage that I created for Day Chree:

I was so excited that my red hibiscus was blooming that day. We used to have a large red bush right outside our kitchen in Mānoa Valley, and the flower reminded me of home.

Kʻden. Here is the photo collage from Day Two. As you can see, the bobbin is a little fuller. I am learning how this fiber behaves and more and more how it wants to be spun.

Then I did this other da kine for artistic effect with the same photos. I kinda like it!

Next up: Day Chree!

“Tour de Fleece? I thought it was Tour de France!” I can hear you asking. Well, yeah, there’s the bike race, but there really is a Tour de Fleece. And guess what? I’m entered in it!

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