Riding the Rails

View from the Jackson Street Blue Line stop

I'm writing this short post aboard the CTA - from O'Hare airport to downtown Chicago.  Whenever I travel, I like to take public transportation if I can.  In DC, I take the metro.  In Minneapolis, it used to be the city bus from the airport to my sister's house, now it's light rail.

Today I am traveling to Chicago for a 2-day business meeting.  I'm on the blue line and writing this post on my phone.  Multiple new experiences at the same time!  Since I had better than an hour, the train @ $2.25 seemed like a good value as well as a cultural peak into big city life.

Earlier this month my friend Sally and I took Amtrak to DC, a long night train ride.  This is very different. We trainsters are moving along while the cars are crawling. People getting on the trains include people in suits and Tshirts, speaking English and Spanish.  They chat, read the paper, play with their phones, write, and just sit with eyes open or closed.  I started to knit, but then decided to write this post.

Requisite knitting content:  A short trip, I brought only the llama-cotton vest.  I guess I am making an assumption that all will go well, though I did bring an additional book and MP3 player.  The vest is kind of a slog.  It is knit top down, with yarn overs that make each row progressively longer.  It's the second one, destined to be a combo shop sample and class 'knit along' but the class didn't make.  So now I just want to get it done!

I'll try to post this with a picture, though the learning curve will likely take its toll.

OK, I posted the picture back in my office a day or two later. A fine trip, everything ran on time and I even snuck in a trip to the Chicago Art Institute.

Cousins Count

This busy summer continues to roll along.  Between my professional work, my creative work and a bit of down time, it is hard to believe that August is here already.  There has been a good bit of travel (NC, VA, OH) with more to come (DC & Chicago).  The picture here is the view from a lovely hike in the New River Gorge (WV).

Last weekend I made a little trip to northeast Ohio to visit family.  When I was growing up, there were at least 2 family reunions each summer - often 3.  But we are all grown and spread out now, so it's hard to get together.  I was one of the cousins who moved away early.  I have not lived in the town where I grew up  since I was 18, and I really lost track of most of my cousins.  Since Facebook has made it easier to keep track of each other, we have reconnected.  So about a year ago my sister Ronnie & cousin Tony decided that we should have a reunion.  Last weekend the Quinn Cousins came together.

My mother was one of 8 siblings in an Irish Catholic family and they were nothing if not prolific.  I grew up with 38 first cousins, plus a couple of long-term foster children who I never knew weren't real cousins.  Now there are only a few of my mother's siblings and in-laws still alive, so it's up to our generation to keep this slightly crazy and very fun family from becoming lost to one another.  I think I chatted with a few cousins for the first time.  When you are a child, a few years difference is huge. Now, not so much.  So it was lovely to gather in the parish hall and visit.  We shared a meal, talked, laughed and caught up with one another.  Three of my sisters and their husbands were there and we had fun catching up and shared a few important conversations.

I admit that I did not go to all the events -  I missed dinner on Friday night, touring the town were we grew up, the poker games and Sunday picnic.  I wish I could have stayed through Sunday, but a deadline required that I head on down the road.  I am so glad that I went.  My fiber-geek reputation is not unnoticed.  I brought home a bag of alpaca fiber!

I'm also glad that I stopped for a hike half way there.  Rather like family, you have to see the big and glorious picture (like the photo above), but remember to pay attention to the small, but remarkable details.  I looked down to see a couple stands of Indian Pipes.  A walk in the woods is a great way to break up a long drive.

Official Fiber Content:  I started a 2nd Equinox Raglan - this time in Noro Silk Garden.  I like the cotton/linen one so well (I'm wearing it now), that I know that I'll want to keep wearing it when it gets chilly.  I have a vest class on the schedule at Friends and Fiberworks, but I'm not sure it will make.  I'll make my own even if no one else joins me!
  

Silkworm Success

If you define success by the fact that the silkworms emerged from their cocoons, mated and laid eggs, that is.  I saved out 5 cocoons for next year's starter stock.  The only 2 that emerged are of the correct genders, because eggs were laid and they have since turned a brownish grey, meaning they are fertile.  It the next day or 2 they will go into hibernation until next spring. Hibernation happens in the crisper drawer of my refrigerator. I'll just gather up the paper towel, place the eggs it contains in a little tub and they will be happy there until next spring when the mulberry trees leaf out.

This has been a very knitterly spring and summer.  Because I have been working part time at our local yarn shop, Friends & Fiberworks I am surrounded  by yarns, patterns, and knitting ideas.  I have knit, finished or reworked several knit tops, some knit in record time, others that have come out of the marination chamber where they have been living for several years.  That should bring on a parade of finished objects, but oddly, it has not.  I'll try to do better on the blog.  I have put them on Ravelry, but the pictures are far from stellar.

This is also Smoky Mountain Gardens time and this summer is no exception.  I am already eating radishes (duh!), blueberries, kale and chard.  I noticed a blossom on one of the yellow squash plants this morning - a very good sign.  We had a few rainy rays this week followed by a few days of not-too-hot sunshine and that usually makes the garden take off.  This evening chores include a bit of weeding and a careful picking of blueberries.  I have the bushes netted against the birds.  If not, I'd never get even one. This way it is harder to harvest, but I actually get blueberries. The fig plant is filling out nicely during it's third year in my yard, so I should get plenty lovely figs this year - up from last year's yield of six!

For some reason I thought that I'd get less done in the garden because of my new as a singleton, but it didn't work out that way.  Like many elements of my life, the dissipation of tension has made everything easier, happier and healthier. I can plant what I want, where I want it, no negotiation required. OK, I have to cut the grass myself, but I did it about 75% of the time anyway.  A fine trade off! 

Shhhhh...They're Sleeping

The silkies have all spun their little cocoons and are snoozing away, growing into moths.  Vegans: Stop reading now!

Most of them won't make it all the way, as I intend to harvest their silk before too long.   I'm okay with that.  Frankly, I think I worked harder than they did.  I gathered leaves each day - sometimes twice when they were the most voracious. I cleaned their trays regularly, adding silk worm manure to the composter & some directly into the garden.  Watching them get ready and then look for a place to spin was fascinating.  I really liked them, even when they got kind of big and creepy-looking.  Since this is my first effort at silk raising, I had a couple of good sources - Cassie Dixon, whose class I took at the Friends & Fiberworks Winter Retreat (she's teaching again this summer, and I highly recommend her class) and a website, wormspit.com.

I was prepared that they would stop eating and look around, then crawl around as though they were looking to get away from their siblings to find a quiet, cozy place to tuck in and spin.  I provided a nice mix of toilet paper and paper towel tubes, rolled up paper towels and paper bags.  The paper bags were the easiest.  When one of the silkies was on the prowl, I dropped it into a bag and turned the top over once.  No staples or even a mere paper clip required.  They just aren't that interested in getting out.  They just settle in, spin a little hammock and then a cocoon.  Kind of cute.  Plus, the acoustics are right so you can hear them spin.  The tubes you see here allow the worms to travel a while to try and get it just right.  Hence a bit of worm doo visible in the webs, as well as the little guy on the right who's not yet fully committed. 

I have about 12 days to do the dirty deed that decides whether they lay eggs for next year or harvest the silk.  Watch this space.

Munch, munch, munch

So spin some silk already! A month ago yesterday, the silk worms hatched out of their tiny eggs and each day since then I have gathered mulberry leaves from a tree a few blocks from my house. As they have gotten larger, they eat more and more and more.  They are now quite large as you can see in this picture.  I've been posting pics every few days on my Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Smoky-Mountain-Fibers/193995020071), so you can see their progress.

Any time now - hopefully when I get home from work - they will start spinning their little cocoons of silk.  One actually started yesterday.  I noticed him (or her) moving his (or her) head in a figure 8 pattern and there was actual silk coming out.  So I put the little guy in a paper bag and turned the top down.  I checked later and there was a good bit of spun silk. I could even hear it.  A nice change from the sound of about a hundred worms chewing.  

In other news at the world headquarters of Smoky Mountain Fibers, I have been dyeing fiber for the Carolina Fiber Fest in Raleigh on May 18-20th.  You'll find my fiber at Friends and Fiberworks booth.  There will be  grab bags as well as a healthy amount of hand dyed roving for spinning and feltmaking.  I won't be there.  I'll be back in Asheville, holding down the fort at the shop.  This is a great show for your non-fibery friends as it's at the state fairgrounds and there is other agriculture stuff going on.  Take a look at their website - It makes me want to be there!

But no travel for me.  I have silkworms to feed and provide places to spin cocoons!

The Kids Are Alright

Raising silkworms is a tough job, but it seems that I rather like doing it.  More than half way into their life cycle of about a month, the silkies have eating lots of mulberry leaves, shedding their outgrown skin and definitely getting bigger.  Here they were on Friday morning:

]Here they are today:

 The white ones are getting ready to shed their skins. The striped ones have already shed and they eat a LOT more.


 

Their appetites increase along with their size, so I gather more leaves each day.

Last weekend I went to the John C. Campbell Folk School for a English Country Dance weekend and took the little guys with me.  (It was really fun, but that's another story.)  Their home at that time was a recycled envelope box, which I placed inside a copier paper box.  They stayed in my room (luckily I did not have a roommate to negotiate with), but had to accompany me on Sunday as we had to get out of our housing by 9 am, but the event wasn't over until 1 pm.  I couldn't leave them in the car, but a copier paper box stashed under a bench doesn't seem to freak people out too much.  Some people did think I was a little bit crazy, but other folks were fascinated.

The Tiniest Fiber Animals

are not baby doll sheep or angora rabbits.  The newest livestock at the world headquarters of Smoky Mountain Fibers are silkworms!  I took a silk class back in January, and was given a small number of silk worm eggs.  I took them out of hibernation (the refrigerator) on April Fool's Day.  I wasn't even sure that they would wake up, but on April 15th, they started showing signs of life.  They looked like tiny snips of thread.  As son as I put a few mulberry leaves in their home, they started to eat.  Over the next 3 or 4 days, they all  woke up and now I have to harvest mulberry leaves about every day.  The biggest ones have already started to shed their first skin.

Here they are in their new home - a lettuce tub lined with paper towels.  I put the leaves in about 5 minutes before taking this picture. Next time I'll add a coin for scale.

Say hello to Mary, Harry, Larry, Terri...