The Great Wash

Saturday's numbness did indeed give way to a nasty sinus headache, so the wool washing had to wait a day.
I started out with a bunch of rather brown wool with lots of vegetable matter (VM), a few dead bugs, and some...sheep matter, we'll say.

I really had no idea how much I was starting with. My little scale was too small for the task. The fleece was too sticky to separate into manageable chunks.

The VM was mostly straw, but there was really a lot of it. I used a window screen to sift some of it out. Not as much came out as I was expecting.

I gave it three cold-water rinses in a big metal tub in the backyard.

The water immediately turned an amber-brown color. As the fiber relaxed, I picked out more and more VM. I let it soak in between changing the water. For the third one, I left it soaking for about an hour. The purpose of that was to allow the water temperature to gradually rise so that there would not be a temperature shock when I took it inside for the hot-water wash.

I combined hot water from the tap, boiling water from the stove and 2 oz. of Unicorn Power Scour.

After letting it soak with the soap for a little while, I rinsed it twice with the same tap water - boiling water mix. Then I gave it another wash with the soap followed by three more rinses.

There was visible dirt sediment settling out after each rinse

Honey, what's for dinner?

Finally, the water ran clear and I did a final rinse with the Unicorn Fibre Rinse.

I drained it through a mesh bag before taking it back outside to dry.

I spread it out on a clean window screen.

What happens now? I don't quite know.

Starting Off Fuzzy Today

This is what I felt like when I woke up this morning, which can just barely be called morning. My head and face felt like they where packed in raw wool. The rest of me was kind of numb, too. I'm prone to sinus problems, so that's probably what it was.

Our neighbor, Alex, gave me two bags of raw wool from her sheep. Vova met her when he was working for the 2010 Census. Neighbor is a relative term, I suppose, when someone lives farther away than two houses down.

Anyway, she was very excited when Vova told her about my interest in spinning and knitting. She doesn't do either, so she was looking for a use for the wool she's been collecting from her sheep. Alex was even more excited when she found out that we had been thinking about raising sheep ourselves. Her flock has grown so quickly that she is going to give us a ram and a ewe.

Now that I've resuscitated myself with coffee and cinnamon rolls, I can start on my to-do list for the day, which includes scouring that wool.

Still Not Enough Hours in the Day

We've been busy lately, in addition to our Internet access being intermittent. I finished the first of Ashley's socks last weekend.

I started on the second one, determined that it would not take me as long to finish it as the first one. Then, wouldn't you know it, my last working needle broke.

I'm concentrating on the sleeves for Vova's Totem Pole Jacket until the replacement needles come.

I've got wanderlust. As a result, I've decided that we have to go away somewhere on vacation this year. More to come on this.

How apropos!

I feel like I've been knitting this sock for Ashley forever. According to my notebook on Ravelry, it's been about six weeks. Don't get me wrong, this is not a case of Second Sock Syndrome (a condition in which the knitter has little or no desire to finish or even start the second sock in a pair). I'm actually impatient to finish the first one so that I can get on with the second one.

It occurred to me today that the main color on these socks is called grass. I love the way it has a hint of yellow so that it really does look like grass. Considering how long these are taking me, it has been a lot like watching the grass grow. Actually, I think the grass has been growing faster than I've been  knitting. Okay, enough whining and moaning.

My friend who belongs to MATTS confirmed that the mother turtle was indeed a box turtle. By doing some research online, I found out that the eggs will hatch in about 2-3 months. I suspect the Great Turtle Watch of 2010 will consist mostly of watching a muddy patch in the garden. Had we not witnessed the mother laying the eggs, we probably would not have noticed the spot after she buried them.

Yeah, see that slight ridge of dirt to the right  of the cilantro? That's the nest. Don't bite off all your fingernails in the suspense.

 On a sad note, the nestling did not make it. I checked on it when I got home yesterday, but it had been dead for quite some time, judging by the smell.

Since I don't like to end things on a sad note, I'll end on a silly one. Tik Tak gave me a preview of her one-feline show, One Fell Out of the Cuckoo's Nest. She's really not demented, despite what Vova says.

In a Family Way

I can't believe it's been a month since my last post. A lot has been going on, but nothing I want to blog about or that other people would care for me to blog about.

We did plant an herb garden and some fruit trees.

We also went to a nice party for Memorial Day. The hostess and some of the other guests are part of a turtle conservation group. I love to talking to people who are passionate experts in their respective fields. We had some really interesting conversations trying to figure out which kinds of turtles we had seen on our land and in the area. They all encouraged us to send them pictures the next time we came across a turtle in our yard.

This evening, Vova and I strolled over to check on the herb garden while he was out smoking his pipe. We were surprised to see that we had a visitor, who seemed to look back at us in equal, open-mouthed surprise.

I ran back inside and grabbed my camera. The garden was planted fairly recently, not to mention that we have had a couple of good cloudbursts in the past two days. The ground was still loose and soft, good for easy digging.

From the front, we didn't immediately notice that the turtle was planting something of its own next to the cilantro in our garden. When I went around behind it to get some better pictures of its shell, I found this:  at least eight little eggs in a neat hole under the turtle's tail.

We went back inside to call our hostess from the Memorial Day party. Vova asked her if we should take any precautions to protect the eggs. He could only laugh in response to her question about whether it was a water turtle or a land turtle.

I emailed her some pictures, so we'll see what it is. I think it's a box turtle, but I really don't know.

Our backyard has turned into a regular nursery now. Our lawn mower shed is a favorite spot for the birds to build their nests. We haven't had any luck in keeping them out the past couple of years, so we just wait until the babies leave and knock out the nest. I thought they usually only have one brood per year, but it seems like we're already on the second one.

Yesterday, I went out to water the garden when I noticed one of the nestling's on the ground. I left it alone at first, not wanting to do more harm than good. I also figured there wasn't much I could do for it other than make sure the cat didn't bother it. A couple of hours and some Internet research later, I put some dried clippings from the meadow in a plastic container. I gently put it in the makeshift nest, which I then put up as near as possible to the one it fell out of.

One of the sites I read said that the mother bird will go back and forth between the nests. I haven't seen her doing so, but the nestling seems to be doing okay. It even seems to have more down on its body than when I rescued it yesterday.

The knitting has been slow going, but I'm almost finished with the first of Ashley's belated birthday socks. The pattern is not clear, but the sock is still cute. I would like to make a pair for myself. Since Ashley is 10 years old, I only did four repeats of the pattern on the foot. I know it will stretch, but kid socks always look so small to me.