Tea for two...or two hundred!

Many, many of you have asked if I really have over 30 pounds of tea. Well, at one time I did have over 40+, but that was over a year ago. I used to compile it all on an Excel spreadsheet, but that just got too time-consuming. So now I just guesstimate.

To give you all some idea of some of the tea I really do have, I took the liberty to start cleaning out my stash and reorganizing the cupboards. Note that the tea has been "spilling" out onto the shelves, in the extra sink, on the....you get the picture!

Almost all of the tea packets have 4 oz of tea in them. Maybe 20 or so have less than 2 oz; and the larger jars have anywhere from 2-8 oz, depending on how much tea is left in each container.

I emptied most of the tea out of the huge cupboard over the refrigerator. (top picture)
The shelves are about 30" deep, so I have been able to stash lots of tea up there!

In the next two pictures are most of the bagged tea and medicinal teas (echinacea, colds, sore throat tea, etc.) in the left picture, a smaller side cupboard; and in the right picture, the cupboard is devoted mostly to sencha and shincha (first sencha of the year, from Japan).

Next four pics:

First pic: Group picture of most of the rest of my tea.
Second picture: green teas, white teas, needle teas.

Third picture: oolongs, special china blacks, yunnans and gold teas; Assam, Ceylon, and Darjeeling teas.

Last pic: Flavored black teas, decafs, and in the back: chai teas.

I also have a number of pu-er teas, and samples from tea companies that I will be sampling and reviewing shortly!

Just thought I'd share!

And the Wheel Keeps on Turning, Turning...Summer Stash Bustin'!

No knitting. No swatching. No tea reviews. In the last week I've just been spinning. Spinning up a storm! I wrote a couple posts ago about this being the Summer of Stash Busting--knitting with yarns that I have stock-piled, and spinning yarn out of the stash of rovings and batts (rectangular sections of carded fiber).

Over the last week I spun up 600 yards (4.75 oz) of Lincoln/silk blend roving from something I bought way back at SOAR at Smuggler's Notch, Vermont in 1996; 475 yards (3.1 oz) of Cormo almost-lace my friend Joanne at Pine Ledge Studio carded with perfection for me over 8 years ago; 380 yards (4.1 oz) of alpaca/merino/silk roving from the Men's Spring Knitting Retreat in Easton, New York in May; and 255 yards (3 oz) of dark brown alpaca from my friend Maple at North Star Alpacas in Michigan.

First four pics are of the Lincoln/silk blend...
click on for larger view...

top pic is of the attenuated fiber
next pic is of the first attempt balled up
third pic is a close up of the second attempt of lace, next to the control lace yarn
last pic of this project is of the finished skein

The Lincoln/silk blend was fun at times to spin. I have oodles of it, about 12 oz, and spun up the best of it in this skein. I had to pre-draft it (attenuate it to make it easier to spin), as it was sitting around in a bag in our fiber room for years, which compacted the fiber in places. Lincoln is a long, shiny, hairy sheep fiber, very durable and strong, but not too soft. The silk blended in with it adds more sheen and shine, and some softness. My pile of this was a mixture of part rovings, which were kind of snarly (from the Lincoln), and some larger sections that I think were "clouds" which is kind of like a batt, but thinner.

I spun up about an ounce of the stuff, trying to achieve lace-weight yarn, but it was late at night and my spinning got worse as the night went on. I plied it from a single that I balled up on my ball winder, using the end from the center of the ball and the end from the outside of the ball to yield a two-ply. I washed it up, let it dry overnight. See the pic of it at the right. It's about twice as thick as my true lace sample I had hanging from my wheel, so I spent the second night spinning up another 4.75 oz onto two bobbins.

My second attempt (the third pic) was closer to the true lace, but I'm pretty happy with it, as the fiber just got more wiry the thinner I spun it. I could have spun it a bit thinner, but I think it would have been termed "iron yarn" at that point!

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The second spinning project was the Cormo, a supersoft sheepwool, that I think is 3/4 Merino, which is the softest sheep fiber. Cormo is typically white, and yields a brilliantly white yarn, although I believe there are now black and possibly gray Cormo sheep. I think that it is spongier than Merino, is extremely soft and is great for against-the-skin garments, but like Merino, it also felts easily.

Pics at right: first one is of the white Cormo batt
Second one is a shot of the attenuated fiber

Third pic is a shot of the spinning
Fourth pic in this group is of the two skeins of Cormo yarn

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The third spinning project was the alpaca/merino/silk roving I got at the Knitter's Retreat, and was really fun and easy to spin. It is a luscious yarn, and I can't wait to knit it up! Maybe socks...

The dark alpaca from Maple in Michigan was fun, easy, and quick to spin up. I spun it all up last night, plied it today, and washed/soaked it and it's drying right now. The true weight of the skein may be a little lighter, as it is still slightly damp. I absolutely love the dark color of it, I believe it is from an alpaca named Polaris--I'll have to check!

More later! Have fun...

An Ode to Old Friends (longterm, that is!)

I mentioned on Plurk last week that I was off on a pilgrimage to my childhood village--Huntington, Vermont. Unfortunately I neglected to take pictures of the town: it's a little village in a valley in the mid-mountain area between the foothills and the higher peaks of the Green Mountains. It's south of Richmond, kind of north and east of Hinesburg, and west of Duxbury. Camel's Hump, the 3rd highest mountain in Vermont is mostly situated in Huntington. The "wrong view" of the Hump, as seen on the Vermont quarter in the U.S. State Quarter Series, is in Duxbury (the view you would get on Interstate 89 coming north from southern and central Vermont). Don't ask--it's a touchy subject!

Anywho, when I lived there from age 4 to 18 (I turned 18 in October 1981), the population was roughly 800-1,100. Now it is over 1,800! Phew--population boom! My father worked for IBM way back then, and my mom and dad saved a clipping from the Burlington Free Press--an article stating that Huntington was bound to become a 'bedroom community for IBM'. Lol. I didn't enjoy it much as a kid--I wanted to be from a big city like the ones we saw on tv. I also didn't want to be taken as an uneducated redneck--and times when we would go "into town" (which meant Burlington) were painful, especially in the winter, as we'd be wearing those big ol' Sorels (heavy Canadian-made winter boots with felted liners) or 'Pacs' (as the green rubber/plastic boots were called back then) as Huntington had tons of snow, and people in Burlington would be wearing sneakers! lol. This was before the Interstate System was built in Vermont. I think we got the Interstate in 1973 or 1974.

Pics in this post: click on for larger view

--top: pic of huntington
--Joyce modeling my merino/alpaca/cashmere lace shawl.
--Kim, who is laid up with a knee operation. HER kitty loves
to sit in her lap! (note: our kitty will only do this if we have paper on our lap).
--The mosaic vase picture Joyce made for my 40th

Back to our story. I do, however, have very fond memories of my neighbor Kim, and her mother, Joyce. Our houses were about 20' apart in the front, but we had about an acre of land in the back. I spent a lot of time hanging out over at their house. Joyce was like another mom to me, but also more of a friend. She was into plants, tea (Woohoo! And you wonder where I got it from?!), all kinds of crafts: knitting, crocheting, etc. And these days she's into folk-art painting, needle felting, mosaics, and way more wicked cool stuff. Oh, she's over, well--let's say she's over 60 something--spry as a hen, and way more energy than most people I know!

Kim was like another sister to me. We still have a deep friendship, and try to keep in touch with each other. Joyce and Kim have been to our house in Jericho, and J and me make a visit usually once a year, around the fall, to see them.

For my 40th birthday (5 years ago), Joyce made me a mosaic of a vase with roses! It's really fabulous. See pic at right.

I'm just blessed that we have stayed in touch with each other, and can share old times, and continue with newness in our lives.

ETA: I wanted to add that I neglected to put a paragraph in this post along the lines of "It took driving 'cross country in 1987 and spending a short time in LA for me to appreciate Vermont and many aspects of living in Vermont. While J and me do travel around a bit, we always enjoy coming back to Vermont. It has changed a lot in the past 20 years, and I'm also a bit older, but at this point in my life I have learned to appreciate many things that I didn't before."

Of Blueberries and of Lace...

Well, it sounds like a good title! Kind of Victorian or something.

Click on pics for a larger view...

Of Blueberries: we have 4 or 5 blueberry bushes in our fenced-in garden. Basically every other year we have a bumper crop. I've read that honey bees are the number one pollinators of blueberries, and with the tremendous loss of honey bees in New England and the U.S., J and me were really worried about getting many berries--and big ones at that. Well, take a look at this bowl of berries! They are huge! (Note: that's a quarter in the bowl.) J's been picking them (and blackberries) for a couple of weeks now (he's the #1 berry picker in this house), and I've been reaping the benefits of his hard work and time amidst the prickly bushes. Don't worry--I do a fair share of the work! I do all the canning and preserving (including occasional blueberry jam!). The really talented hard work.

Of Lace: Sigh. I lost the 'Sunray Shawl' I started in May. Somewhere between here and Easton (NY) it disappeared. I've also ditched the 'Rose of England' for a spell, as it was too frustrating to accomplish with dull needles. So, I found 'Springtime' from the same book by Marianne Kinzel: First Book of Modern Lace Knitting.

This pattern is a square one (the 'ROE' was round) and a lot more fun--but maybe I will bore of it too soon? I'm using the dusty rose alpaca/merino lace from Elann.com.

The second picture is a shot of the pic in the book. The last picture is a closeup of the center square, which is the part I have finished, chart A.

So, as you can see, there is lots more to do! But it's fun...

Note to self: less Plurking and more Etsying (putting my stuff on my Etsy site)

RU Plurking?

Blame Jason on this one, really. Seems I'm having a midlife crisis or something. Like I really need yet another techno thingy in my life! I mean, i just starting blogging about three months ago. I was talking to Jason (of Jason Knits) in Cali last night, and he asked me if I had heard about Plurk yet. Well, I had just heard about Twitter about a month ago--now I gotta plurk?

After seeing a news story last night about using Twitter for feedback on customer service, I decided that now everyone will be using it so I'll pass up on that. Like, I had bypassed both Facebook and Myspace (too adolescent for me I guess), and Twitter is going to be Uber popular now (probably be bought up by Coke or Uni or some huge mega global conglomerate thing), that I should jump in on the Plurk bandwagon. So, I'm Vtknitboy on plurk. There you go!