the cotton is high and so am I!

Not really, on either count (well sort of) but the cotton is up!

Oh! guess you would like to see it without a hair net?

you may be asking, why the hair net? cotton seed is very nutritious to little mice, and this is, an old cabin, after all. I have to protect all interestingly tasty seeds that I try and germinate, or I wait, and wait, only to discover upon close scrutiny little tiny foot prints, and little tiny holes dug in the flats, and all tasty seeds eaten.

And am I high? well I am pretty stoked about the most recent prototype for the new spindolyn that I finished this afternoon. I am actually happy with it and I got carried away spinning on it and lost track of time (a good sign) and it has not been tossed in the corner, into the growing pile of strange knitting and spinning prototypes that didn't make the mark with me.

No, I dig it, and am looking forward to more spinning on it this evening after the obligatory shower and tick inspection...
but best of all, I am caught up!! everyones spindolyn has been shipped....hooorayyy!

Crummy Cotton and Catching up

Business first~
I am catching up! only running a week behind now, was so excited to "almost" have a post ready for this weekend saying that I was completely caught up! Then two things happened, we had an amazing local flood on friday (6 inches in 1 hour) the creek got out and destroyed a section of fence, driveway, etc, So had to stop everything and clean out the culvert.
Then my laptop adaptor jack quite working. I had to stop everything again and scramble to get the business data and your orders backed up to a desktop computer before the battery died, rats! foiled again. I am learning about laptops, they are kindly fragile.

Now on to spinning, the fun stuff.
I finished that lovely pill bottle cotton and wound it off on a piece of perforated pvc (say that fast three times) the better to dye the singles with my dear.
But when I dug around in my other pill bottle cotton, it was crummier than I remember, not nice like this last little bit, which is probably why it was sitting around in a basket un-spun.
So...what does a southern farm girl do? she declares in her Scarlet O'Hara style that "why, I shall just grow my own!"

Pill bottle cotton

First, wait list status-8 days went up to 10, I am waiting on a materials shipment (they mis-shipped the first shipment, argh!!!) sorry y'all.

I have been under some stress lately, so was opening a new bottle of B-complex, when out flowed some of the loveliest pill bottle cotton I have ever seen...prepared like fine puni, soft, real cotton, for sure.

I know, I know, I do remember the dire warnings and heated discussion years back on the original "spin list" about the perils of spinning pill bottle cotton, but delight in the texture and quantity overcame my fear. I admit, I am by nature, a "reckless spinner"

Throwing caution to the wind, I reached down beside the kitchen table into the overflowing box marked "rejects" for a Spindolyn and began sampling this cotton. Nice. Smooth. My mind moved into this mental fantasy of living in the Andes surrounded by swaying, glowing amaranth and having a huge family to divide all my chores while I sat graceful, brown skinned and happy with the richness of enough time to actually spin enough cotton to dye and knit a (rather than the traditionally woven) highly modified colorful little huiple, and as long as I was fantasizing, my entire village would be tolerant of my fiber explorations and unconcerned about me breaking traditions.

The thing about me and fantasy is that it never lasts more than 30 seconds before I am on to the "what if" stage... the inventing, designing, playing phase of "lost mental state while spinning" So I got this idea of using the "stop and start" ability of the spindolyn to make little boucle like blips (can't remember what you call them) Perhaps I could dye this strand something, then ply it with a strand of soysilk dyed something else so the little blippy knobby things would stand out knibbity colorwise and maybe, if I aim for a little amulet bag, it might be done in the next century.

Starting to surface

whee hoo! I am catching up! now only an 8 day waiting list!

You know, spinners are really nice folks. They are patient. That makes sense, of course, because if we weren't, we never would be able to spin enough for socks, let alone a sweater.
I have thought a lot about that as I work. I appreciate people's kindness and their advice .. "don't hurry on my account"
Spinners supportive words have, in a way, freed me from a stressed-out self imposed pressure, and helped me focus on working with "intent" and patience with myself, instead.

It actually moves things along as fast, if not faster, and certainly adds more to my merriment.

That's what I decree, as spring arrives, "more merriment all around!"

Are you waiting on a Spindolyn??

If so, I want to first say, thank you for your patience!
It looks like the wait list is about 2 weeks at this point (If I told you 8 days, I was being a bit optimistic about my superhuman powers, and I had no idea that orders would pick up so drastically, and that I would be called out of town again, so it looks more like 14 days at this point)

Explanation part 1 (-the business stuff)

And thank you to all who have said such nice things, and who are enjoying their spindolyn and spreading the news...I am unsure where the news got spread (I am out of the loop right now) because I have NO time to read blogs or things right now because I am making spindolyns and staying with my Mom in between.
Night and day, time to make the spindolyns... No time to post, no time to knit, no time to garden, just spindolyns from dawn to dusk, sometimes I feel like Mickey Mouse in the Wizards Apprentice, but I know the rush will soon pass, and I will be wishing that someone would order a spindolyn because my phone bill is due or my electric bill overdue, and they are threatening to cut me off, or some such.

Don't misunderstand, though, I like making spindolyns, I like handling the wood, watching them spin, testing each one (honestly, I have to say, I hate cutting and polishing the brass, and their are a few motions involved in making the spindolyns that hurt my arthritis, but a little suffering is just part of the artists life, no?)
Mostly, I like packing them for people and wondering at the far away places or the cute addresses or the lovely names (spinners have some great names, my name is kinda plain)
Please just know that I am working as fast as I can...

Explanation part 2(-the personal stuff)

I appreciate all your private emails and kind thoughts wishing Mom well, her treatment (radiation for pancreatic cancer) is really wearing her down. I am spending as much of my time with her as I can, and the family is all trying to find things that sound good to her so she will eat. She used to joke that there had never been a time that she was too sick to eat, even when she had the flu, but now she says maybe she shouldn't have joked about it.
Thank you for your kind thoughts her way.

Moving along

Seems like February is always the best knitting "idea" month.

But just when I get excited about a new technique or design, the month starts to take on a frantic frenzy of ideas, because the arrival of new yarn catalogues and new seed catalogues starts to coincide. How cruel is that?

Now it turns out that some of my new ideas are being put on hold because a project that I have been toying with for a while has bubbled up to the top due to shipping problems. Over the years, I have been right happy with the United States Postal Service, only a few packages have gone astray, and it was mostly pretty prompt.

But then here lately, unless I mail out via priority, pattern booklets have been arriving 2-6 weeks later! Rats. This is not going to work from me or my customers who find it silly to pay so much for priority when what they are buying will fit in a flat envelope.

So, I decided to break down and make the patterns available as downloadable ebooks. I have resisted this for a while but the time has come.

Well, you know how one thing leads to another...

While in the process of converting the patterns to ebooks, I have decided that some things need updating, photos and wording, and so forth, and the project is turning out bigger than I planned. But it will be better. I am working on the revision of Hats Volume 1, right now, and it will be the first one available as a downloadable ebook.

Next will be the socks, slippers and then finally the new unpublished patterns that I am most excited about.