Royal wedding

I've been watching the preparations for Charles and Camilla's wedding with a certain degree of bemusement...okay, I've actually bookmarked the news site. Not because I have any deep interest in the couple, but because the whole thing is so utterly compelling....it's like watching a train wreck unfold. I had never realized just how much pageantry, tradition, etc. there was around the British royalty before, and how completely flummoxed the system is about handling something as simple as marrying a divorcee (or having a civil marriage in Windsor Castle). It's incredible.

Even more amazing is the degree of examination (and apparently argument) over everything--like what tables and how many, whether Prince Charles gets his favorite organic vegetables served, and so on. The latest: Queen Elizabeth has apparently nixed an actual sit-down dinner reception for her son, and is instead offering only finger foods. And this after refusing to turn up for his wedding.

All this is making me think, "Gosh, how on earth did Lady Di manage to marry into THAT?" and "My God, is THAT what she had as a mother-in-law?" Well, hopefully her influence will loosen things up a bit for Princes William and Harry.

I always figured being part of the Royal Family was kind of like being a movie star, but without having to do all those tedious movies. But apparently there's even more pageantry than that.

Tien

orchids, yogurt, and other miscellany

By the way, it's getting to be orchid season. How do I know? Well, I boarded out my orchid collection when I left, with a nursery that keeps your orchids in their greenhouse, and sends them to you when they're blooming. November, December, January--nothing. Now it's February, and they're making deliveries twice a month. They just called me up to say they have another delivery tomorrow--and I still have four orchids on my desk from their *last* delivery!! Heaven save me. I won't have any desk space left! I'll be farming them out to friends!

But they're beautiful, and fragrant, too. I had a Cattleya a week or two ago that had two giant, deep burgundy flowers, with a heady cinnamon aroma...incredibly intense. The ones that just left my office (to go back to the nursery until they bloom again) had sweet, tropical fragrances and a peppery (no, really) fragrance; the one left on my desk has a "chocolate" fragrance. (I actually think it smells waxy, and sweet, but not exactly like chocolate.)

Can't wait to see (and smell) what I get tomorrow!

Meanwhile, I have been making my own yogurt. Yeah, I know. You can get the stuff pretty cheaply at the supermarket, and up until last year, I did. But I've been getting more and more lactose-intolerant over the years, and it's now reached the point where I can't even eat yogurt--even a small cup is iffy. So I tried an experiment yesterday, and it worked!!!

1 cup nonfat powdered milk
1/2 gallon whole milk
2 tsp "starter" yogurt

Mix powdered milk into 1/2 gallon whole milk. Let sit for a few minutes, then stir again to make sure all milk powder is dissolved. Heat milk to 180 degrees (kills bacteria), then quickly cool to 106-109 degrees. Take a few tablespoons of milk out, mix with "starter" yogurt until thoroughly dissolved, then mix it all back into the warm milk. (If you're lactose intolerant, add 10-15 drops of lactase droplets.) Pour into containers, cover loosely, wrap with a towel, and stick onto a snake heating pad** for 8-10 hours. (If you don't have a snake, use a regular heating pad on the "low" setting.)

**Do NOT put the yogurt inside the snake cage. (Sheesh! What are you thinking??) You can borrow the heating pad for a few hours, the snake won't mind.

Anyway, after eight or ten hours I got a wonderfully mild, creamy, and LACTOSE-FREE yogurt. Of course, now I have half a gallon of yogurt that I've got to eat in the next week or so, but I think I can make later batches a bit smaller. [grin] I'm really psyched--during the spring and summer, peaches and strawberries with yogurt are one of my favorite foods. Best of all, this yogurt is very mild, very creamy--better IMO than the very tart yogurts generally sold. (My recipe says that if you start with a very little starter, you get a mild, creamy yogurt; but if you use more starter, or a warmer temperature, you get a sharper yogurt--maybe that's what the supermarket yogurts are doing. All a matter of taste, I guess.)

Finally, an update on Isis: she just finished 6 weeks of antibiotic shots, and she goes back to the vet in a few more days. The vet thinks her Pseudomonas infection may wind up being chronic, with Pseudomonas cysts embedded in lung tissue--and she may need supplemental antibiotic injections for the rest of her life. I'm sincerely hoping not. She also has an abcess on her right eye--she will almost certainly lose the eye (which is fortunately not too serious for a snake--they mostly hunt with their heat sensors anyway), but they're hoping to prevent it from becoming a more serious infection.

But she does seem to be feeling better (she is certainly wheezing a lot less), and I've put together a humid hide-box (sphagnum moss in a big tupperware container) that should help keep her warm. I've also increased the temperature in the cage and bought her some other cage furniture to help with humidity.

Meanwhile, I nearly got a mate for her, but he turned out to have a respiratory infection, so I sent him back to the pet store. I've heard there are some pretty ones up at East Bay Vivarium, I'll have to check them out. Adult male Brazilian rainbow boas with good color and nice temperament are NOT easy to come by, so I'm hoping one turns up. Isis herself may or may not be able to breed again (because of the Pseudomonas infection), but Astarte, Isis's daughter, is nearly breeding-size, so I could use a male anyway.

Rob (my ex) also still has four of Isis's children; he's offered them to me, I may take the two females. That would give me a fair-size snake colony, but Brazilian rainbow boas still fetch pretty good prices--I can get $40 store credit for each of them, and 3 litters of 18 each x $40 = over $2000 in store credit per year! (which is way more than yearly upkeep for the snakes)

So it looks likely that there will soon be more snakes in my future.

Knee-wise, I was having more knee problems, went in for an MRI, they're discussing the possibility of exploratory knee surgery (ick!). But it's improved a lot in the last week, so, well....we'll see.

Tien

Cool fiber toys from Carolina Homespun

I wound up at Carolina Homespun yesterday, in search of a lighter spindle. I've been spinning for my latest shawl, but it's coming out heavier than I'd like--about 5300 yards per pound vs. 9000 ypp for my last shawl. I haven't been able to get it any thinner because my spindles are relatively heavy--which wasn't an issue when I was spinning worsted, because the hand pinching off the twist can support the spindle, but becomes a real problem when spinning long draw. My silver spindles weigh about an ounce apiece, and for superfine yarns they tend to yank it right out.

(Weight on a spindle is the equivalent of brake band tension on a wheel. The heavier the spindle, the "tighter" the brake band. So, a too-heavy spindle is like having the brake band "too tight"--the yarn tends to break and/or yank in on you while you're spinning.)

First I tried making a lighter spindle out of a tiny stone ring (for displaying stone spheres), by filling the ring with fast-curing clear acrylic (i.e., epoxy) and covering the epoxy with gold leaf to make it prettier.

(By the way, epoxy really just is a fast-curing clear plastic; it tends to yellow over time and isn't the best casting plastic ever made, but if you just need a little bit and don't care if it yellows, epoxy will do just fine. I just mention this because I had always thought of epoxy as "glue", so was astonished to find out that it can be used for casting. If you're ever intimidated by the idea of casting plastics, think of it as filling a mold with epoxy-like stuff.)

After casting the whorl, I found the center of mass (which is not the same as the center of the spindle; it's often a trifle off-center), drilled a hole through it, stuck it onto a brass shaft, and had a very nice Akha-style spindle for my pains. Worked pretty well--spun fast, and was lighter than the silver spindles--but a little too fast for my work, and still too heavy.

So that's how I wound up in Carolina Homespun, looking for a good-quality wood spindle. And, of course, for small, fast, light spindles, there's nothing like a Bosworth mini.

Morgaine had six of them in stock, and I spent two hours spinning on each in turn. All of them were nice, finely-balanced spindles, but after spending ten or fifteen minutes on each one, I found that two of them were slightly better-balanced than the others. Then I spent another hour going back and forth between those two--one was walnut and I *think* the other was Chakte Vega. It was interesting comparing the two spindles...they were both laceweight, yet they had subtly different "feels". The walnut was very slightly heavier (I think), put more vibration into the yarn as it formed, and felt more authoritative, solid--like a mountain bike. The chakte vega (or whatever else it was--a beautiful yellow-orange wood with darker stripes) spindle was lighter, more responsive, but twitchier about the balance, and didn't spin quite as long as the walnut one. It felt like a racing bike. I went back and forth for almost an hour, and finally took the chakte vega one, as the weight felt more suitable for ultrafine spinning. But really, they were both beautiful. Both weigh about half an ounce.

So now I have a Bosworth mini, and I really really REALLY love it. If you're looking for a fine laceweight spindle, they're fantastic. (That said, I still plan to make more spindles.)

Other stuff I picked up at Carolina Homespun:

8 oz of white firestar, which is a dyeable, SOFT nylon sparkle fiber. It's been discontinued by the manufacturer--Ashland Bay has over 1000 pounds of it in their warehouse, so it should be around for awhile, but eventually they'll run out, and I wanted to make sure I had a good supply. So far as I know, it's the only sparkle fiber that can be DYED(!!!)--so I can use it to add sparkle in exactly the color I want. Cool stuff.

6 ounces of 150's (yes, I said 150's) merino top. This is from Peace of Yarn, and is from an Australian cooperative that has specialized in ultrafine merino for some time. It's 15-micron merino (!). Yes, I said 15 microns. And natural, not stretched like Optim. I stuck my hand into the bag and it felt just like cashmere--which is not surprising, because it's actually finer than some cashmere. (The cashmere standard allows for up to 19 microns.) Tried spinning a little bit and it spun like an absolute dream--spun into a very fine, very smooth thread with almost no effort. It's definitely finer than the brown cashmere/silk mix I'm currently spinning.

I am absolutely in love with this stuff and if I weren't about 200 yards into another project, I'd probably pitch it and make a shawl from this stuff. At $6.50/oz, it is not cheap, but it's beautiful, spins better and more evenly than most cashmeres, and is incredibly soft to the touch. I may well make my next shawl with this merino, I like it that much.

I also got a chance to fondle vicuna fiber, although since it was priced at $75 for a quarter-ounce pack, I didn't actually try spinning any. It felt very soft, but not all that much softer than high-quality cashmere or guanaco (which it closely resembled)--if I had $800 to spare, I'd happily drop it on the opportunity to make a gorgeous shawl out of vicuna, but more for the cachet and the rarity of the fiber than any real quality difference. (And I think it's perfectly reasonable to spend extra money for the cachet of, and chance to work with, a rare fiber...people spend hundreds of dollars on pretty rocks, photography equipment, etc.--collecting rare fibers is really no different than any other kind of collection. I don't think it's worth it from the standpoint of additional softness, but heck, it's one very cool new fiber and I'd love to work with it.)

I actually think a shawl of copper satin angora, bombyx silk (or that ultrafine merino), and vicuna would be absolutely gorgeous--shimmery, fuzzy, delightfully soft, and with great cachet. Maybe my next project...

Anyway, that was my shopping trip for the month...I have been spinning up quite a bit of this black satin/cashmere-silk blend (1 ply black satin angora and 1 ply "brown" cashmere-tussah silk blend). It produces a beautiful pearl gray/smoke-colored yarn--the black satin is darker than the cashmere/silk, which produces a "ragg" yarn effect in the skein, but when knitted up it comes out a beautiful smoky gray with "highlights" (which are actually the lighter yarn). It's so fine it practically floats.

The one difficulty for me has been finding enough black satin angora to spin...satin angora is *very* hard to find. Fortunately, I have a friend who's a satin breeder, and she's been reserving her black wool for me. Equally fortunately, I don't use very much wool at a time. But with each animal only producing a few ounces at a time, I worry a lot about whether I'll be able to get enough, and whether the colors (from different rabbits) will be close enough to be unnoticeable in the finished shawl.

If you've never worked with satin angora, find yourself a satin breeder and get into his/her good graces. It's gorgeous stuff--the fuzz of angora, but with sheen like silk. More lustrous than my cashmere-silk blend, believe it or not. I love satin angora, and given a chance I'd only work with it, not "regular" angora. The luster is beautiful.

Tien

Stone and fossil spindles

In my eternal quest for fast, small spindles, I've been playing around with the idea of stone spindle whorls. I've tried the ones from the stone donuts and have been moderately impressed, but they mostly weigh more than I like. So I bought some stone cabochons at a gem shop's sale, and thought I'd try drilling them. Thus far I've mostly discovered that agate cabochons are WAY harder to drill through than I had expected (even with diamond drill bits), and that I'm not going to be able to get through them with the jury-rigged "drill press" that I currently have. (It consists of a battery-operated power drill hooked up to a multi-angle jig--the power drill is horribly heavy because of the attached battery, and it takes a lot of muscle to keep it oriented correctly and keep the drill going.) So I have set those aside until I have a "real" drill press.

I have, however, gotten interested in ammonite (or other fossil) spindles. Ammonites, if you're not familiar with them, are extinct relatives of the nautilus--flat spiraled shells. They're common fossils--a pair of small ones will cost you about $10--and very beautiful, often with tiny crystals in the chambers. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonite for more info on ammonites.)

Anyway, they appeal to me because the spiral is a symbol of life in Wicca, so small, round spirals are nicely symbolic. They're also small, pretty, almost-round fossils, which (potentially) makes them good for spindles. They're pretty seriously unbalanced, because the end of the spiral weighs way more than the other end, but I'm playing around with pewter and silver, hoping to find a way to balance it out. It will be very tricky, but I think I can manage it.

I bought two ammonites, one of which has this lovely semitranslucent, glimmery, silver-gray-brown crystal on the inside, and one of which is mostly brown and golds, embedded in sandstone. I had planned to use the brown one mostly as a "tester" for the crystal one, but decided to clean it off before monkeying it--and wow!! after I got it out of the muddy, clayey rock clinging to it, it's beautiful! The mother-of-pearl shell has been beautifully preserved and so it has a lovely opalescent iridescence around the outer shell. I think I'm going to use it with the mother-of-pearl side up, and counterbalance it with a setting of either pewter or silver, with inset opals. That should bring up the iridescence nicely and produce a very pretty piece. IF I can figure out how to do it, that is. It's NOT going to be easy, if it's do-able at all.

I'm thinking vaguely about trying other kinds of fossils in spindle whorls--small fossil shells, maybe a leaf or something, haven't really thought it through. I think it would be very difficult to get a balanced spindle (even if you cast everything in plastic, which is what I'd probably do), but it might be a fun thought-experiment. Also a good excuse to play around with plastic-casting. :-)

Tien

Well, it's been awhile...

...thanks to an, umm, interesting situation at work, my time's pretty much been booked since the start of the year. (Not that you would have noticed, or anything.) Fortunately, it looks like it'll resolve itself soon.

Quote of the Day:

"I found a Bonanza [small airplane] shell on eBay, without an engine! I figure with about $30K worth of laptop batteries, I should be able to build an electric-powered airplane with a flight distance of about three hours." --my ex, as quoted by a friend.

(Demonstrates neatly both why I married him, and why I left...!)

I'm going to separate out the stuff I've been up to into separate posts--if I put them all into this one, it'll be long beyond compare.