I haven't really disappeared....

And I have been busy, though you can't tell from here.

I have been spinning, and learning a lot. 

I have some photos to post (later) of a bagful of border leicester.  The owner was pulling off about half the fleece was going to discard because it was loaded with VM ("vegetable matter").  The fleece was beautiful stuff.  The sheep was barn-raised and so it was full of loose chaff on the underside, but clean.  Boy, did I nab that!  I knew that chaff would simply fall out in the combs-- that's what combs are for!  I made short work of that, and then spent some happy hours spinning that wool and learning all kinds of things.  Tomorrow I'll pile up all the different ways I spun it and post it for you. 

Right now I am busy hand-blending some brown corriedale with white corriedale. I love the feel of corriedale.   I want to have a kind of random tweedy look, so I decided to blend by drafting. This is commercial top, and I've been pulling off shanks from each, plucking them apart, then laying the "feathers" into a bundle, varying the arrangement and layout. 

To blend, I gather up the bundle, and gently start teasing it out in a roving, not too much at a time, and keeping the ends spaced evenly as much as I can. Then I break it in two, keep the fibers pointing the same direction, and redraft.  I do this however many times it takes to get a look I like.

Some of the bundles are more blended than others, giving a softer look.  Some have more white, some have more brown.  I am spinning the bundles end to end, and working to improve my feel for larger diameter singles.  I want to 2-ply this and then use it to weave a scarf, or maybe crochet if there is enough of it.  I think it should make a handsome variegated pattern.  I promise photos! 

Eileen

Eileen Mahoney

I took a trip west for a month in May and June to see family and friends.  There'll be a post about that (weavings I made for gifts and other fibre stories).  But right now I'd like to share this:

I got to know Eileen through an online group of wonderful women, from many different places, all of whom shared a passion about natural fibres.  We not only shared our projects, our ideas, and our passion, we shared our lives.  I have come to know many of these women as well as I know almost anyone in my life outside my family.  Ups and downs, fears and hopes, the whole of it. 

As I learned more about Eileen, my regard for her grew and grew. She was one of those women who are both ordinary and extraordinary in unexpected ways. She had cancer. and she wrote about it in the most open, gentle, honest way I have ever seen. 

Her goal was to live to see her first grandchild born, and to hold him. She made it, and then some. 

When I left on my trip on May 24th, she had just gone into hospice care.  The day after I returned, on June 21st, I learned from a friend that Eileen had died early the day before. 

She left a hole behind.  At the same time, she left a remarkable legacy:  she taught a lot of people how much we are capable of, by sharing herself the way she did.   In addition to her posts in our little group, she wrote a blog that is both a treasure and a challenge to read. I urge you to take a look at it:  

Looking at the World through Rose Colored Cancer

I'll miss you, Eileen. And at the same time, you've left something of yourself in me that I will be able to turn to when my time comes.  Thank you.  

The ladies at Hand-Prepared Fibers just put up a memorial page honoring her:

 Loss of a Dear friend

And that started the tears again.  Thus this post.  I want you to have a chance to see why Eileen meant so much to us, too.  Her blog is as remarkable as she was.