Last day of my Impromptu Staycation :(

Happy Sunday!  Unfortunately everyone goes back to school tomorrow.  Oh well.  It was nice while it lasted.  This morning I looked through my fiber stash and sorted through it a bit.  Seems like I have a Jacob and a half, one baby Icelandic, one baby Shetland, the rest of Guilia (Coopworth/Border Leicester cross), one black/brown cross-breed from SAFF, half a silver Lincoln/BFL cross, and some more odds and ends.  The cross breed from SAFF is in the bathtub right now.  Gosh it's nice stuff.  Magicstix felted hers by accident from getting used to going crazy with the Cheviot this last year.  The dirt practically fell away from the fleece.  It's one of the cleanest I've washed in a long time.  Also, the electric centrifugal spin dryer works fantabulously!  I recommend anyone who works with copious amounts of fleece or roving to own one.  I happened to snag this one for free just before I left NY, but they cost about $145.  Definitely a worthwhile investment.

On the gardening front, the snow is pretty much melted, and I have a few more seedlings.  I see the beginnings of some fungus/mildew and am worried about damping off.  I'm going to try chamomile tea and see if that helps.  If not, next is boric acid.  We'll see.  I'm sure they'll be a lot more action next week.  Here's hoping.  I know my blog is seriously lacking pictures, but iPhone is not doing a great job (yes, i'm blaming it on the technology, not the user.)  Will dig out my camera and see if I can wrangle up some pics.

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In fiber-related news, the black/brown fleece is drying and it's heavenly.  Spun up a tiny sample.  9 oz of Guilia is on the stove right now.  I'm trying to figure out what to do about my Post-Apocalypse coat.  It needs to be finished by the time Fiber Fallout comes around in September.  I dyed up about 2+ pounds of fleece a few years ago, then carded all the colors separately into batts.  My original idea was to have Steph card them together on her mini-mill to get a heathered green, but after the flood, it became hectic and no longer feasible.  Eventually, I got restless and started spinning up the batts by color with no real plan.  Now I see that I'll prolly need about 3-4 pounds for the sweater/coat and need to dye up some more.  The original design was based on an acrylic sweater coat I wore the crap out of, however, it's progressed from just a plain copy-cat design.  The bust had a horizontal cable across it, with the rest of the sweater ribbed from the empire waist.  Now that I have a bunch of colors, I plan on making a fair isle design and steeking it.  Something with green/brown/orange/white and possibly mushrooms.  Then I can knit down from the waist plain ribbing and increase my needle size to give it a slight a-line shape.  If I run out of the main color on the body, I can revise the design to include fair isle on the sleeves.  So anyway, I spun up 12 oz of green and 5 oz of green/brown.  I have 4 oz of green left over.  My plan is to dye up 9 oz of similar green, card it with the original green, and then dye up another 12 oz of similar green, ply the 3 together to get a little over 2 pounds of the main color.  This leaves me with some extra white fleece to work with for the fair isle part. If necessary, I can also add in some other fiber, like the black/brown
SAFF fleece, or the silver Lincoln/BFL.   I've also decided that the fair isle body will be 2-ply, while the rest will be 3 ply.  It will also have a hood, but it remains to be seen what kind of design.  So far this thing sounds like a hot mess, but I have faith in my skills.  I can do eet!!  I'm crazy.  This is my first handspun sweater.  Clearly, I love to stuff my mouth with more than I can chew.