It’s day three of a heat wave in the land of no A/C, with daytime temps in the mid-90s/mid-30s and at night we don’t reach our low of 70/20-ish until around 4am. I am shutting up the house by 9am each day, and kitties don’t get more than 5min on the balcony at a time during the day, followed by a rub down.
I did a short essentials-only grocery run earlier today, and it left me hot and tired. Luckily, we have an ice-vest which I donned for a bit to cool down before falling asleep on the couch.
In short, my crafting is not impressive today. I do have a few pics of what I have done this week though for you.
The first half of my rainbow is fully plied! I found my rhythm last Saturday for chain plying and progress picked up rapidly. The spindle was getting pretty full by the end, but I basically use this as a supported bottom whorl, so the increasing weight slowed the spin, but didn’t strain my hands.
Normally I am pretty haphazard when I skein off my yarn onto the niddy-noddy, but I was more careful here because I wanted to see all the color transitions. Now I am working on plying the 2nd half.
My other news is that my new spindle came. I ordered these back in March after I received the awesome bog-oak spindle from AwesomeE (which I used for the singles in the yarn above). I may have gotten a tad carried away…
I wanted another bog-oak, but in the larger size…
But the tulip shaped supported spindles with their stands looked so lovely…
And I had to try a drop spindle. I love that his smaller whorled drop spindles don’t skimp on shaft length like many, and yew would seemed so quintessentially British and unlike the exotics more commonly used in the US…
One of my friends here told me that every time I show up with my spinning, I have a different spindle. This… is not going to help things. Oops.
So now I am both torn between which of these to play with first, or if I should just nap away the heat some more. In the end, I decided this was a great time to pull out the Undercover Otter Hysteria colorway merino I purchased some time ago, and try it out with the supported spindle. This feels like an appropriate celebration of Pride Month as well, since Undercover Otter is one of my fav queer dyers.
I’ve chosen to pull off short lengths of the braid to draft from the fold. By drafting from the fold, I achieve two things:
- It allows me to use a long draw, which is the natural drafting method for a supported spindle
- It keeps the colors from muddling as much. I’m pulling off the side, which means I get 1-2 colors at a time. I’ll produce a yarn with lots of short pops of color, instead of a black yarn with bits of various colors mingled throughout
We are trying to go swimming today, but at the moment it’s still too hot to contemplate walking 35-40min to get to the lake. So I’m going to stay camped in front of the fan with my spinning and a bottle of water. We already finished off the mint & lemon tea.
How’s the weather where you are? If it’s hot, is it killing your craft mojo?
Happy Juneteeth Fellow Americans!
If you missed the news, on Thursday Juneteenth was officially proclaimed a Federal Holiday in the United States. It takes place on June 19th (though also often celebrated on the third Saturday in June when it doesn’t coincide with Saturday as it does this year) and commemorates June 19. 1865 when the proclamation to end slavery in the United States reached Texas, the final state permitting slavery. It’s a really important date in American history, but has often been overlooked or downplayed by white Americans, who see the Emancipation Proclamation as the end of slavery, even though it only ended slavery in states rebelling against the federal government, and even then only when Union troops could enforce it. It took another two and a half years to fully eliminate slavery.
This is an important new Federal Holiday, as one which recognizes the importance of African Americans in our history, and that the road to ending slavery wasn’t easy. At the same time, we must not let this become merely a symbolic victory. A Federal Holiday can be symbolically important and impactful, but only when coupled with other meaningful systemic changes. These include voter rights protections, overhauling policing around the country, addressing systemic judicial inequalities in sentencing, dismantling biases, and fighting racism wherever we find it. So, I hope your celebrations of Juneteenth, are joyful but also reflective.