Some things got done.

[which_chick]

Last weekend I didn't have any internet so you didn't get updates. However, not having internet makes me go outside and do things, so still kind of winning. This post is a combination of last weekend and this weekend projects and updates because there's not really enough stuff for two posts.



I did some raking in my yard. I don't rake in the fall because we get enough wind over the winter that by spring I have to rake again anyway. I cleaned out the fences around the garden areas and along both sides of the woodpile (including picking up the bricks and rails that keep the wood from resting on the ground so that it doesn't rot).

My woodpile always seems to get messy by the end of winter so spring woodpile cleanup is a thing. Sometimes there are amphibians but there were not this year. I took some pictures of the woodpile situation to illustrate my efforts.

Before:


After (a day or two later, because I forgot at the time):



I also raked the leaves out of my daffodils (peeking up a bit) and checked on my peonies, also peeking out of the ground.

Here are the daffs, leaves removed but unmulched:


I bagged up some horse poop (dry, fluffy, easy to shovel) from the bottom of the bank barn and mulched the daffs, a rosebush I forgot last year, the garden areas, and the peony that didn't get mulched last year. (I do the peonies and the asparagus in the fall, but this one didn't get done because I divided it and gave half to my brother.) It's supposed to be 22 tomorrow night, which is a bit harsh. Maybe the mulch will help keep things warmer. I have no idea.

There was some spinning for the afghan project this past week. A lot of spinning, actually, I did two full bobbins of brown singles and then made a full bobbin of 3 ply plied and washed. (I still have two half-full bobbins of brown singles and a less-than-half-full bobbin of white single but I got tired of plying.) The brown singles take a while because it's not just "spin", it's pick locks, flick card locks, spin locks. More steps means slower progress but I do batch process -- I pick a bunch of locks and then card them and then spin them. I have a smallish box for the carded fluff and when the box is full, that's a batch. The batch processing divides up the work and prevents overuse issues. There are still only fourteen squares and a partial, but since a lot of spinning got done, it was still progress on the afghan project. Here's a yarn picture demonstrating that I'm finally warming up to the idea of sufficient twist in plying...



It's amazing what practice will do. I thought this yarn would be a little unbalanced (it was just starting to twist when plied this much) but a nice little wash settled it. I think part of my issue with the lack of twist in plying is that it's boring. There's really not much to do there but wait for the twist to get to be enough. Spinning singles is more interesting because you can mess around with the fiber and stuff.

Comments

[ranunculus]

Good job on the cleanup. I bet the dry horse poop does insulate. It sure is a moisture barrier in the summer!

[unicornduke]

That's beautiful yarn! The singles always will stiffen up as they sit, so it feels like too much ply twist but the washing always brings it out. Plying is boring but part of the process and it makes such beautiful yarns!

[which_chick]

Thanks! I look at all the pictures of other people's yarn on the internet and worry that mine is too uneven or too... something. I have improved my plying by adding Longform YouTube Explainers (nonfiction-ish youtube about history or something, it's not, like, a channel so much as a thing I call the genre) to the process. Helps tons with the boredom issue.