The Independent Stitch

Garden harvest, just a bit

We've been on the edge of first hard frost for over a week. It's predicted yet again for within the next forty=eight hours or so. Sooner or later. . . .

Meanwhile, the raised beds offer promise for next year. We got some teasers out of them this year (well, out of the two we planted; we never got around to the third because it took so much to get the other two going).

Enough basil for a double batch of pesto (three quarters frozen, one quarter eaten).

Plus parsley, sage, and thyme:

And that lovely summer squash that the packet said could be used like zucchini, although its skin is a very light green and it was so sweet and tender it made the whole garden worthwhile. All that from ONE squashlet. We might get a couple more if the frost holds off for another few days.

The parsley turned into something pesto-like (only no nuts in it) and the sage and thyme are hanging in the office, drying.

We've already got a squirrel-deterrent cover in the works to be used on one of the beds next year.

I spent last weekend enjoying locally grown foods at the Artposium in Delta County, Colorado. Yum. More on that coming up.

Ready to move forward: Priscilla's Cowichan sweaters book, revised edition

This past weekend, I drove out to western Colorado to attend the Artposium, about which I intend to post more as soon as I can.

While there, I stayed and visited with Priscilla GIbson-Roberts. And this is what I brought back with me to my home office:

It's a treasure box. It contains the photos and reference drawings for her book on Cowichan sweaters, originally published in 1989 as Salish Indian Sweaters. The revised edition will include the material in the original edition, additional traditional designs that Priscilla has collected in the past twenty years, and a chapter on Priscilla's own designing process for sweaters that draw on her own family and cultural imagery in the way that the Cowichan sweaters draw on the visual heritage of the Northwest natives who originated this style of sweater.

Here's a peek of what's inside that box:

And here's another:

One of my next tasks is to figure out the best way to convert the negatives to digital positives. It'll be easy once I determine the right resources to use to do the job. I have some places to start asking questions.

The charts for the book were ready a year ago. It will be great to move the project to the next phase!

Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm: Community Supported Agriculture for fiber folk

Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm made it to the top ten in the Shine A Light award process, which I mentioned in my last post, although it was not among the three finalists. Because I can't imagine any more appropriate business to win this award, I'm guessing that in the final judges' review larger outfits with more traditionally defined communities got the edge.

In every regard that I can come up with, Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm is a clear winner. So I see its nomination as an opportunity for people within the textile world to vote for it in other ways that involve more than just a click of a mouse on a website, in ways that support the farm itself and also help spread the ideas that are coming out of MVFF.

Here's the gist: Susan Gibbs originated the idea of using the Community Supported Agriculture concept for a fiber-related enterprise—an idea that is absolutely brilliant, deserves to have the brightest of lights beamed on it, warrants huge direct support, and demonstrates a model that could, as I noted earlier this week, boost the chances for survival of rare breeds of sheep while introducing people who use fiber to materials they haven't had the opportunity to encounter. And more.

• Here's the Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm nomination on the Shine A Light website.
• Here's the farm's own website.

Part of Susan's mix of animals are Cotswolds, which are one of the rare breeds. She also has Angora goats (which grow mohair), and Cormo and Babydoll Southdown sheep. Overall, a lovely spectrum of fiber qualities, combined with the critter personalities she likes to spend her time with. . . .

Those who are not involved with fiber production tend to think only of the final product. Those who are involved with it—and that includes the shareholders in MVFF who have, thanks to Susan, access to information about daily farm life and individual animals—know that the goats and sheep (and roosters: poke around the farm site) have both breed-based approaches to life—just as, say, chihuahas and Golden retrievers differ—and unique personalities. Small farmers in particular will select types of animals that are compatible with the life of a unique farm family, in addition to being able to contribute the desired crops, such as fiber.

Here's some of what's cool about what Susan is doing at MVFF:

• creating community around the farm, where participants share the risks and the benefits inherent in any agricultural pursuit
• developing a different, more viable, economic model
• setting up a "lambcam" and other resources so folks can stay in touch with what's happening at the farm
• helping other potential shepherds get started, by supplying animals and support
• consulting to folks who'd like to change their ways of doing business to be more rewarding in all regards, including economically
• providing a focal point for "Yarn Storming," where fiber people with excess stash share their abundance with people who are having trouble obtaining materials

There's more, even though that's already a lot. But stepping back to the central definition and the reason for this post. . . .

What's Community Supported Agriculture?

Community Supported Agriculture has evolved over the past 20 to 30 years as a type of business partnership that provides non-food-producing people with safe, local sources and gives farmers more stable markets. Farms that operate on this model are called CSAs. Members, or shareholders, pay in advance to participate for the year. This money provides the farm with operating cash when it's most needed: during planting and growing. At harvest time, the farm's production is divided between the members.

In our city, we have had CSAs for vegetables and fruits (and, as a bonus, flowers) for quite a few years. Our family participated in the first CSA in the state of Colorado. There are now at least half a dozen food-oriented CSAs of varying sizes operating nearby. They range from tiny to relatively huge. The biggest ones operate partly as CSAs and partly as suppliers to local restaurants and grocery stores, and the word "huge" still applies only in relation to other small businesses.

In this year of multiple hailstorms, one of the larger CSAs, a farm that escaped the worst of the battering, shared produce with the members of a smaller CSA that had its crops wiped out repeatedly by the weather. In addition to the connections among the people in each CSA, the CSA groups also choose to be part of a larger, mutually supportive community.

CSA and Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm

Applying the CSA idea to fiber took a bright idea, a leap of faith, and a bunch of creative work. It also sets up so many connections: between growers and fiber users, between people and animals, between humans and landscapes.

There are more wonderful things to say and share about MVFF than I have time or space to cover. Browse around the website for fun and a lot of great ideas.

Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm offer shares for knitters/crocheters and for spinners. The flock includes Angora goats . . .

and the three breeds of sheep I mentioned:

• Cormos, which grow very fine, soft, long-stapled wool (ballpark 17-23 microns and 4 inches/10cm long).
• Babydoll Southdowns, which grow a wool that's on the fine side for the Down breeds (ballpark 23-31 microns and 3 inches/7.5cm). These are the variety of Southdown that is closest to the old-style breed, before industrial factors influenced development of the larger, commercial Southdowns.
• Cotswolds, one of the classic (and rare) longwool breeds (ballpark 33-42 microns and 8-10 inches/15-20cm).

Here's a quote from the website: "[A] Yarn CSA share makes a great gift for all the knitters and crocheters in your life. If you’re a spinner you can purchase a 'spinner’s share' in the form of raw fleece or roving. Our farm practices humane animal husbandry, we are 'predator friendly' and none of our animals are ever sold for meat."

Here's one of the secrets of being "predator friendly":

If you're not up for a share just now, don't want to wait for next year, or the shares have all been sold alerady (each CSA has a limited size . . . there's plenty of room for more CSAs!), the shop has yarns, needle-felted sheep, wool-filled pet beds, and other treats.

It's all about relationships

When I first mentioned the idea of CSAs as a way to provide more financial stability and incentive for people who are raising endangered breeds of sheep, one friend suggested that I could do this, setting up a system where I'd coordinate the purchase of shares by fiber folk, would channel money to the growers, and would send out shares of wool at shearing time.

This is a perfectly valid small business idea, and a fine one at that, but it wouldn't be what I'm talking about. I'm not the grower. I would be just another business standing in the middle between the producers and the shareholders. I couldn't offer the direct relationships which are key to the success of CSAs. (I've also got a few other commitments taking up my days . . . and nights!)

CSAs are about people helping people, not just providing a product (however fair trade, local, or sustainable). They're about our understanding with some immediacy (even when carried out through the internet) our interactions with the natural world, including specific places and living beings. They're about sharing the risks involved in producing farm products, and also about sharing the pleasures and the bounty. They're about connections between unique, identified, people and animals.

Even a large CSA will be small by today's business standards. One of the exciting things about them is spreading the idea. Our local veggie-and-fruit CSAs have helped each other get started and grow, and also, as we've seen this year, have helped each other smooth over some weather-inflicted rough spots.

While a CSA has to operate successfully as an economic entity, Susan Gibbs at MVFF has given animals to others who want to start growing fiber. She also provides consulting services to farmers who want help with creative ideas that will set up new relationships between people and make life more rewarding and enjoyable for everyone involved. She does, and should, charge for providing that help—her experience can shorten other folks' path to forming more nurturing communities and more solid financial arrangements.

So let's take this opportunity to shine a BRIGHT, BRIGHT light on Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm! It's a winner in all the ways that matter.

____

Images copyright © Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm. Used by permission.

Shine A Light award nominations and voting

There's a national award process going on right now called Shine A Light, intended to "recognize small businesses for persevering in tough economic times with their concentration on community involvement."

Readers who are so inclined can vote on the finalists for this award beginning 9/24/09 (the date of this post) and ending on 11/16/09 at 11:59 (I assume p.m.) EST.

The three finalists were selected by Diane Von Furstenberg, JJ Ramberg, and Ellen DeGeneres (interesting collection of judges!). The finalists are Beacon Paint and Hardware of NYC, a strongly generous and neighborhood-oriented business that's been on the same street for 109 years; Sacred Wind Communications of Albuquerque, NM, which brings telecommunications to the Navajo nation; and Happy Baby Organic Baby Foods of Brooklyn, NY, which promotes awareness and use of organic foods for babies.

On the project's site, click the orange "view the nominations" button to find details on the finalists. Heads-up: Despite the high-profile sponsorship, the website design leaves something to be desired in readability and is challenging to navigate. Since the finalists were posted early this morning, I have unfortunately not been able to locate and directly access information on all of the other nominated businesses. I think those original pages still exist. The navigation has just become obscure.

Moving on to our primary topic of interest, which I'm going to give its own post in a short while. . . . 

Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm

One of the businesses nominated is Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm (MVFF), in Massachusetts. Here's the nomination link I picked up for the farm on the award site yesterday. Because MVFF is not one of the three in the last set (although it came close), and also because the whole idea of a competition for community-oriented activities seems odd to me, I'm inclined to transform the original, official "award" process into an unofficial "aware" process and spread the word in ways that will shine a different type of light on this truly exceptional endeavor, which speaks to community in the fiber world in many innovative ways.

More in just a bit, after I finish writing it up.

Note: MVFF has Angora goats (producers of mohair), and Cormo, Cotswold, and Babydoll Southdown sheep. That's a Cormo up there. Based on the image title, I think this is Cosmo the Cormo. Thanks to Susan Gibbs for saying it's okay to use the images in this post and the next one.

______

Photo © Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm. Used by permission.

Gardening: summary of a year of hail and squirrels

Predictions call for a hard frost tonight. If we don't get one, we may have a few more tomatoes and the tiny zucchinis may have time to get big enough to contribute to part of a meal.

However, we're close to closing out our gardening experiment for the year. It has not been a blazing success, but we do have this, which my daughter gathered in a few moments ago:

Parsley, sage, thyme, (no rosemary), and one home-grown zucchini. We also got a few tomatoes, and I have enough basil, clipped two days ago, for two batches of pesto.

Perhaps not remarkably abundant, but very pretty shades of green.

I know how to preserve basil in several different ways. I'm deciding what to do with the other herbs: freeze, dry, ? My daughter will probably saute the zucchini with a bit of garlic. We just had some (purchased) kale that way. She does a lovely job cooking simple, fresh vegetables.

We left the carrots and beets in the ground. They should be fine even if the temperatures drop. We haven't eaten any of our crop of root vegetables yet, so we're looking forward to seeing what happened underground. We think there's something down there under the leaves.

Santa Cruz wool: how to show a rare breed's magic with a less-than-ideal sample?

I've written before about Santa Cruz wool, in conjunction with a post about making the best of a less-than-ideal wool sample. Now that it's time to do my write-up on Santa Cruz wool, I have been distracted by my desire to show at least some of the capacity of this breed's wool, which is not evident in the sample I've already spun.

Santa Cruz is one of the rarest sheep breeds. It's on the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy's priority list with critical status. There's a long story behind this—one that I won't go into right now, because my goal is to highlight the superb qualities of the fiber. No one knows exactly when or how sheep got onto Santa Cruz Island off the coast of California, somewhere between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. They were well established by the mid-nineteenth century. By other people's best guesses, the breed was created through some combination of Merino, Rambouillet, and possibly Churro. The sheep don't look like Merinos or Rambouillets, although their wool is clearly fine enough to have been influenced by those breeds.

Remembering the magic, and struggling with the available fiber

What is most stunning about the fiber is its combination of fineness and bounce.

When I coordinated the Save the Sheep Project for Spin-Off Magazine in the late 1990s, one of the entries was a shawl that Nancy Van Tassel made from Santa Cruz wool shorn from one of the few rescued sheep. I've seen and handled a lot of handspun yarn over about thirty-five years of intense involvement with spinning. That shawl and the yarn it was made from have stood out vividly in my memory for the combination of softness and resilience. I have never felt anything like it.

When I spun my sample last year, I got what looked like the best possible option out of the wool sample we were able to obtain—and with Santa Cruz, we are fortunate to be able to get a sample at all. With a breed this rare, the primary focus of husbandry is simply keeping enough animals alive to keep the breed going and, ideally, with enough genetic diversity for a healthy population. Wool quality is not at the top of anyone's agenda. If the genes are there, a future year's wool quality can be tended to and the crop will have some value. At this dire survival level, there's no well-defined market for the wool anyway.

Here's the sample I spun then . . . there was no way it could be regular, because of the fiber quality:

I was disappointed but felt like I needed to settle for what I had and move on. It didn't have the "life" that I remember so well from Nancy Van Tassel's contribution to the Save the Sheep efforts, but she had control over her fiber source and some experience in spinning the breed. Last year, that skein was the best I thought I could do, perhaps because I wasn't yet desperate enough.

I've been having trouble getting the breed written up, and I finally realized why. I want, somehow, to be able to at least hint at the magic that I know, thanks to Nancy, Santa Cruz wool is capable of. My existing sample didn't do that. I had no idea what I could pull off that might. But I determined to go at it one more time.

Throwing out all the rules

This is where all standard guidelines for wool prep and spinning have to go out the window, and vision and stubbornness take over, seasoned with a pragmatic awareness that perfection is simply out of reach.

Background: I had an OFDA computerized analysis done on a small tuft of this fiber. I'm having scans run for most of the very rare wools because we don't have much data on their characteristics. A data sample of one or two or five entries isn't much at all, but it's better than nothing.

Fineness: The average micron count of the piece I pulled (clean) was 23.2. That's fine. A full 97.3% of the fibers were under 30 microns, the industrial line of demarcation for fibers to be used in next-to-the-skin applications. The finest fibers in the sample were 14 microns; there were just a few fibers at the sample's maximum of 32, 33, and 34 microns.

Fiber length: 35 mm, or 1.4 inches. That's the kicker.

Because of the short fibers, and the fact that it was difficult to separate out anything resembling a staple, I used fine hand carders to prepare the wool for my first sample. This was the obvious, reasonable, normal choice for a short, jumbled fiber. The many neps and second cuts were just something I had to live with. I did end up choosing a drafting technique that would minimize the effects of these elements on the finished yarn.

This weekend, bullheadedly determined to see if I could do a better job of showing what the Santa Cruz wool is capable of, I decided to try combing. COMBING. Fiber less than 1.5 inches long. Right.

Okay, here goes.

From yuck to yum, believe it or not

Raw Santa Cruz wool, as I received it, with gratitude that I had any at all:

These look and feel like what would be skirtings for a "normal" fleece, but as I've mentioned this wool is probably just a shepherd's afterthought of survival care for the living animals. Based on my experience in washing, at least part of this came from the rear of the animal—not prime fleece territory. I had the sample above available to photograph in its original state because when the wool first arrived I only washed the portion I needed. It wasn't inspiring enough to wash the whole batch. That ended up being okay. I used Dawn dishwashing liquid, which was what I had at the time. I've since shifted to Unicorn Power Scour and took on the rest of the raw wool with that resource on my side. I knew the Power Scour wouldn't overclean (thus making the wool harsh or brittle), so I used more than I usually would and I ran the fiber through three, rather than two, cleansing baths, with one pre-soak and two rinses, using a mix of half hot-tap water and half boiling water from pots on the stove and not letting the water cool off for more than 20 minutes on each cycle.

Here's what the clean version looked like:

Not beautiful, but compared to what I started with it was greatly improved. I wasn't concerned about the flecks of dirt, because although they tend to stick around in carding and cause problems, they normally drop out in combing.

Most combs couldn't handle such a short, fine fiber. Fortunately, I have a pair of two-row Louet mini-combs that I thought might do the trick. Even so, because the fibers were so jumbled I needed to load the wool onto the combs not-quite-randomly, searching out bits of the fiber mass that seemed to have long-enough fibers and simply snagging them onto the teeth of the mini-combs as best I could. While I combed through two complete passes, I didn't look for perfection. That goal would have left me with zero fiber.

I pulled off the little sausages of prepared fiber with my fingers—there wasn't really enough there to draw off a sliver with a diz. The clump of fiber on the left in the photo above was the "waste" (which I'll use to stuff something with), and the three little bits of fiber just to its right are representative of what's in the clump—really short and useless. While the good-to-waste fiber ratio is low, I was starting with truly unpromising raw material and the end result. . . .

got me what I wanted.

How to show the magic?

I still don't know how to show, in photographs, what the difference is.

After I washed my new little skein, I handed it to my daughter and said, "Just play with it."

She immediately started stretching it. "Spandex????"

"Just wool. Magical wool."

Let's try to get a hint here, with the relaxed skeinlet:

And, against the same piece of flooring, the skeinlet extended, but not overextended:

With a normal wool, I'd expect to be able to stretch a similar skeinlet to half to three-quarters of the width of that second, righthand section of flooring. Not all the way across it.

One more counterintuitive comment: You'd normally think that a carded preparation, woolen spun, would be more elastic than a combed, worsted-spun yarn. (In this case, the first sample was spun with a hybrid draw, because there were too many irregularities to tolerate a long draw, but carding generally encourages more elasticity than combing.) In this case, the combed, worsted-spun yarn is the one with the maximum elasticity.

A few thoughts

If there were a premium-rate market for the wool for the most endangered breeds of sheep, like the Santa Cruz, the people who are keeping the animals alive would have more reasons to care for the fleece in ways that handspinners and other fiber artists could value. This type of support would need to be easy for the shepherds to set up and maintain; it would require additional attention to the wool during the year, and would need to repay that effort and then some. Because I'm preparing a post for later in this week about the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) business model as it applies to fibers, I'm impelled to wonder what would be involved for growers of the rarest breeds to set up subscription-based CSA-type groups to give them extra income to help fund their genetic conservation work. The groups would need to be small, because the yields would be relatively small—too small for the more "normal" breed-specific marketing efforts that are helping some other breeds remain financially viable.

There have got to be some ways that fiber folk can give an extra boost to the prospects of a breed like the Santa Cruz.

I'd hate to think the magic might vanish entirely.

Clockwise from left:

• First sample skein, prepared on fine hand carders and spun with a hybrid draw. Nothing special.
• Second sample skein, prepared on Louet two-row mini-combs and spun with a worsted draw. Captured some of the magic!
• White, clean Santa Cruz fiber.
• Black, raw Santa Cruz fiber—the breed has color genetics, and I have a sample but not enough to wash or work with.

Handheld distaff question, with a quick overview of distaffs

A friend wrote this note to me yesterday:

I had a very cool interaction with a spinner in Crete who spun with a distaff and spindle. I realized as I tried out her distaff (to be tucked under one arm) that I'd really enjoy spinning that way.

Any recommendations on where to get a distaff? I'd like a long wooden one which I can dress primarily with wool. I'm not looking to spend a bunch, in fact, I'm wondering if I can cook one up myself perhaps.

Here's an expanded version of my response, because perhaps others might also be interested.

First, a distaff is a tool that holds fiber in an orderly and handy fashion during spinning, whether the spinner is using a wheel or a handspindle.

Distaffs are wonderful! (The plural is also, rarely, distaves.) They also tend not to be things one can pick up casually, but you're never far from something you can use as a distaff. . . .

Types of distaffs

There are also many kinds of distaffs!

• The ones that are easiest to find at shops are those meant to fit a specific make and model of wheel.
• What my friend asked about is a handheld distaff, which can be used with either wheel or spindle.
• Seated distaffs are constructed for use by a seated spinner—they're attached to a board that the spinner sits on (on a bench, most likely) to keep them stable. They're usually for spindle-spinners, although there's no reason you couldn't use one with a wheel.
• Freestanding distaffs can be used with any spinning tool (wheel or spindle), although they're not meant to be used while moving around (they look like the coatracks in some people's front halls).
• In addition, there are several types of wrist distaffs. One is a piece of fabric, like a cuff without the sweater to go with it, that's a nifty addition to any spinning basket; you just tuck your fiber into it, as many of us do when we're actually wearing a sweater or sweatshirt (there's one source of cheap/free distaff—your clothing). Another is more like a cord that goes around the wrist with a dangling section that you wrap the fiber around.

Back issues of Spin-Off magazine contain articles that show several kinds of distaffs, including ideas for constructing both kinds of wrist distaffs that I've described—it's very easy, can be done with scrap yarn, and you'll wonder what you did without one. (I've done a survey of the Spin-Off indexes through 2008 and listed the results at the bottom of this post.)

Buying a distaff, other than one that's meant to fit a specific wheel

My first thought as a source for obtaining a ready-to-go distaff is Alden Amos and Stephenie Gaustad at Studio Gaustad. They make many styles of handheld and freestanding distaffs, as well as wrist distaffs.

If you buy a distaff from Studio Gaustad, you will get a tool you will use forever—also, if you don't see what you want (they do make a fancy Greek version!), you could describe exactly what you want and they'd work with you to make it happen. All of their work is custom, so you might have a wait . . . or not, if they happen to have recently made what you're looking for! Say hi for me if you get in touch.

As I look through the major suppliers I can think of off the top of my head, I'm finding wheel-specific distaffs only (i.e., made to fit a particular model). Susan McFarland at Susan's Fiber Shop probably has several types of distaffs—that sort of thing tends to follow her around—although I can't find them on her web page.

It looks like some people are offering some types of handmade wrist distaffs on Etsy.

Cheap or free distaffs

I promised earlier that a workable distaff can be easily obtained, for free or close-to-free. You've got one already: tucking the fiber into a sweater or shirt cuff.

A dedicated wrist distaff, of any type, can be made from scrap yarn in probably less than an hour.

You could make a long, handheld-type distaff (for tucking under your arm) with a dowel, using crisscrossed ribbons loosely wrapped around the fiber at one end of the dowel to hold things in place and tucking the other end under your arm. The strict roundness of a machined dowel, though, makes it less pleasant to hold onto and not quite as easy to use as . . . .

a V-shaped stick pruned off a tree or bush, either because the plant needs shaping or because it's a weed that can spare a small branch. Look for a relatively straight section 18 to 24 inches (45 to 60cm) long, forked into a nice V at the upper end—about 6 to 8 inches (15 to 20cm) of V is plenty. You can peel the bark and smooth your stick with sandpaper, if you like. Smoothness is good at the top, to keep from snagging the fibers, and at the bottom, for the comfort of your arm. The V at the top gives you many options for how to arrange the fiber and the moderate irregularity of the branch means it will be easier to keep it where you want it when you tuck it under your arm.

Spin-Off articles on distaffs

When I edited Spin-Off magazine (1987-2000), we published quite a few excellent articles on distaffs, and there were a couple before and have been a few since, as well. You may have to look in a guild collection or a library to find some of these articles. Here's what I come up with from a review of the indexes, and I hope I haven't made any typos. For a good baseline, dig up the ones marked with asterisks.

From the early days:

• "Dressing a Distaff with Flax," Annual 1978, page 20
• "A Suitcase Distaff," by Harry and Olive Linder, Fall 1986, page 33

Articles I edited, so I am most familiar with them—just listing these brings back good memories of working with the wonderful spinners who shared their discoveries through the magazine's pages. These are all treasures:

• * "The Art of the Handspindle and the Sitting Distaff: On Sofia Dorfi," by Sigrid Piroch, Spring 1992, pages 57-59
• * "Simple Portable Distaff," by Larry Cross, Summer 1992, page 58
• "Spinning Silk from a Japanese Distaff," by Constance Bufkin Rizner, Summer 1994, pages 88-89
• * "Wrist Distaffs," by Patricia Emerick, SPring 1995, pages 70-72
• "Peruvian Spinning Tools and Techniques," by Carol Rasmussen Noble, Spring 1997, pages 44-47
• * "Simple Distaffs," by Rita Buchanan, Winter 1999, pages 54-61
• "Estonian Wooden Distaffs," by Susan Strawn, Summer 2000, pages 81-83

More recent entries:

• "The Distaff," by Martha Monson, Summer 2003, pages 30-31
• "Alexandra Ivanovna's Distaff," by Sharon Hudgins, Winter 2004, pages 78-80
• "Ply-Splitting for Wrist Distaffs," by Linda Hendrickson, Summer 2005, pages 50-57

Discover a distaff, any distaff!

Play around. Find something close to you. Then go farther afield. You can hardly have too many distaffs. Most of them are easy to store, too. . .

Apparently not the best year for a new garden . . .

It's time for another garden report, even though there has not been much progress. Between hailstorms (I think we had five big ones) and squirrels (they have been a far more damaging force of nature than we imagined), we need a couple more months to get significant results from our gardening this year, and we're about out of time. Even though we started over three times, the days are getting cooler and shorter too quickly.

Here's where we are now:

 

We built three raised beds.

The one on which my daughter is adjusting the Emergency Squirrel Cover contains one zucchini plant, which we might get a zucchini from—it has multiple blossoms, and one squash that is now about 4 inches (10cm) long, so it might reach harvestable size before the weather gets too cold.

First frost here occurs between September 17 and October 17, so we have between a few days and maybe a month. At the back of that bed are also parsley, sage, and thyme, which at least should come back next year.

Here's the biggest bed:

 

We've gotten a half-dozen or so tomatoes from our three plants (the hail and squirrels got more), and have quite a few small, green starts being optimistic within the two-layer version of Emergency Squirrel Cover.

The three basil plants are doing very nicely, even though we had to start over on those, too. . . . We'll have pesto in the freezer. The marigolds are cheerful, although only about a fifth of the plants we got made it through all the weather (the squirrels didn't seem to bother them).

And we have a few beets and carrots . . . we haven't harvested any yet, and this is a small percentage of what we planted (squirrels):

We never even planted the small bed at the back corner, although the squirrels dug holes in it anyway!

At least we know what we're up against next year, and we'll be spending part of the winter figuring out Intentional Squirrel Covers that will seal better around their edges and be easier to adjust to give the plants growing room.

The dogs liked that we spent more time in the back yard:

 

Tussah is good at basking. She does it in the sun, too.

Ariel is harder to take pictures of, because she (the one with arthritis) prefers to keep moving, especially toward me when I'm trying to snap a photo:

 

She used to love chasing squirrels—and they would tease her by running along the top of the wooden fence. Because she doesn't hear so well any more and her running is limited to short (happy) spurts, the squirrels have gotten a lot braver.

Our neighbor feeds them peanuts, so I think they should just stay in his yard anyway!

Well, next year we will be ahead of the game. The beds have been built. We know some of what we are up against—hail and squirrels. My daughter did a fantastic job of keeping things watered, so we know we can do that.

Last frost is mid to late May, so we've got almost eight months to figure out a plan for next year.

Bike saddle question settled

I was having the darnedest time getting a saddle that I could tolerate on my new bike. I finally broke down and tried (gulp) a leather Brooks saddle. Apparently these saddles take a long time to break in, require protection from the rain, and are otherwise part of the non-synthetic world. They are not inexpensive, and most of the models can't be obtained locally, but when you've tried everything within reach that is economical and readily available . . . and there's a six-month unconditional trial period, fully returnable. . . . Did I mention I was getting desperate?

After talking briefly by phone with the source I was using, I ordered a B-17S. That's a basic model (B-17) in the short-nose version. Short-nose saddles (generally called women's models) had been working better for me than long-nose saddles (generally called men's). No short-nose models could even be looked at here in town, although I did find one long-nose saddle hidden in a case at a local bike shop and the friend who later loaned me a pair of padded bike shorts for the break-in period rides a Brooks.

Here's my Brooks saddle on my bike:

It arrived just before my long road trip. I got it installed, took a test ride that said I would at least be okay for the duration of the trip, and took off with the bike disassembled in the back of the car, hoping for chances to ride. I did get three rides in while I was in Washington. I would have ridden more, except that I don't have a bike rack and the bike was under the rest of the load in the back of the car (fibers and the like), so I only got it out when I completely unpacked. And getting it down from the next-to-top floor of the hotel (where it stayed during Sock Summit) was a schedule-buster. Anyway, I did get to ride a bit during the road trip.

I tuck a plastic bag under the seat, on top of the flat kit, so I can cover it if the bike's parked outside and it might rain (this summer, we've had a lot of rain).

Over the past week, I keep forgetting to put the padded bike shorts on and it's basically okay, although for a while yet I hope I'll remember them for any ride over 5 miles (8 km). Nonetheless, they're already not essential.

This is the first saddle I've tried on this bike that I can't still feel an hour (sometimes eight hours) after I've finished my ride. And I'm nowhere near the end of the standard break-in mileage.

This saddle's a keeper, and worth every penny.

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I still need to figure out grips that are comfortable, but that's not quite as critical an issue to resolve as the saddle.