Under the wire

It's Rhinebeck Eve!  

Ok, for everyone else in the world, it's a regular Friday but for fiber people, it's a pretty awesome holiday.  Better than Christmas and Halloween and Easter and all the other things where you might get presents and/or chocolate all rolled into one.  Mostly because Rhinebeck involves yarn and fiber and apple cider doughnuts and sheep and border collies and goats and music and garlicky artichokes and people with amazing sweaters that don't look at you like you're a nutter when you ask what pattern/yarn they used.  People who understand that all the best wooly clothes can't be bought in a store.  

We got our job finished, just under the wire (we're happy with it and they seemed to be too, which is always a wonderful thing) so we're excited to hit up the fleece sales.  We're even bringing a second pair of hands to haul wool this year, someone who understands when you text her screaming RHINEBECK!! and is more than willing to dig through bags of fleece to find the perfect stuff to become the perfect sock yarn.  She's the perfect shop assistant.

And my sweater is down to half a sleeve.  So that too might come in just under the wire.  Only three more decreases and a cuff left to go.  

So Happy Rhinebeck Eve, everybody.  Hopefully we'll get to see some of you at the festival tomorrow.  

Just... you know... don't stand between us and the fleece sales.  

Start Finishing

So we're having one of those weeks in the mill.  One of those weeks where you start to question fate, and why she seems to have it out for you even though you don't remember doing anything to her, and when this current streak will end.

We are this close to finishing a job.  A big one.  A job we desperately need to finish to get paid so that we can buy wool at Rhinebeck (our land only holds so many sheep and yak; we have to supplement) so that we can stock up the shop and hopefully have an awesome Christmas open house.

This job was huge, and we're down to the very last bit, which is the rug yarn.  The easiest bit.  It just goes through the picker and then the carder and wraps around a cotton cord and voila!  Rug yarn.

There's 98 pounds of fiber total that needs to be made into rug yarn.  Adam got the white fiber washed before realizing that he couldn't wash anything else because our septic tank was full.  So we called the guys to come do that.  They couldn't make it out until after the weekend, so we had to wait on washing.  Then we had a carder snafu that took an hour and a half to fix.  Then he discovered that we're going to run out of cord before we finish the job.  And the place we have to order from isn't open on Saturdays or Mondays so we have to wait until tomorrow.  And now the washer is giving him fits.

It's one of those weeks.  We just want to finish what we started.

I'm having a week like that with knitting too.  I went stash diving a week or so ago (to find yarn to cast on yet another project, if I were to be honest) and came across a sweater I started in 2011.  That was a bit cringe worthy.  It's a beautiful sweater, in beautiful yarn and it's an easy pattern, so I'm not sure what the trouble was- other than miles of stockinette in fingering weight yarn.  I've been chugging away at this sweater in hopes it'll be my Rhinebeck sweater and made some great progress.  Got the body finished.  Got to picking up the sleeves.  Got to the point of looking for my size 6 16" circulars and...found one tip.  The other one has disappeared into the ether.  And when I asked Adam to bring home a circular for me, I got a size 10 24".  With all respect to him though, even husbands of knitters who own fiber mills can't be expected to know that there's a difference between size 6 and 6.00mm.  I don't even get why we have two measurements.

So now it's languishing on the windowsill waiting for sleeves and I'm waiting for the local yarn store to open tomorrow and wondering if I can get away with casting on some sparkly socks to beat some rainy day blahs.
Or, you know, finish something.


In other news, we will be at Rhinebeck on Saturday.  As shoppers, not as vendors.  However- we do have our application in for Maryland 2104, so keep your fingers crossed for us.  Also, got fleece?  Want us to process it? Got an overflowing stash closet full of roving or fiber that you need made into yarn?  Send an email to info@skirtedfleecemill.com and I'll get you our cell numbers so we can do a meet and pick up to save you some shipping costs.