Off to the Fair, Tra la

This week is all about the Nevada State Fair. For several years now I have coordinated our local Spinning Guild's efforts. This makes some sense, since I am an absolute fair junky. I love the animals, kids, corndogs, cheesy contests and all around excitement. The Fair starts officially on Wednesday, but it has actually been going on since yesterday when the equestrian events began. Today the tents started going up, the carnies started rolling in, and mobs of youth exhibitors came in to have their cakes, pictures, crafts, and whatever judged. These are, in fair parlance, the "Static Exhibits". In other words anything that doesn't moo, neigh, baah, oink, squeek, cluck, or spit. For the umpteenth year in a row I served as a photography judge and spent this evening interviewing droves of kids about their pictures. Some of these kids are extremely talented, and with today's cameras even the Peewees (8 and under) can take technically awesome photos.

The Guild will have a large tent back by the livestock barns. As of this afternoon we had a roof but no walls. I have a promise of walls first thing tomorrow and hopefully will be rolling out flooring by mid-morning. Then the tables arrive, we hang the banner and we start setting up for display. Here's the banner drying after a nice hose-off in my back yard. I'll have lots more to say about the Fair as it progresses.



Another topic: Here is an unusual spinning wheel that has come my way. I once saw an identical one on eBay, so it is probably not a home-built. It looks kinda vaguely like a Country Spinner, but the orifice is off to the left from the treadle. I would love to have more information on its origins.











I'll leave you with one more picture from the Fair. They were laying out carpet in the large indoor arena and some poor slob had the job of vacuming about an acre of it with a standard vacume cleaner (and a really long extension cord). Glad I don't have that job!

Spinner's car repair

Emboldened by the success of my first foray into auto repair I turned my mind to the sun visor problem. Both the sun visors on my 1994 truck are broken off. The visors are just fine, but the little plastic thingies holding them in became brittle with time and broke in half. Nissan does not sell little plastic thingies. Instead they will happily sell new visors at $140-some each.
I considered canvassing the local junkyards, but was stymied by the concept that plastic thingies of the same age would also be brittle. Hmmm... Perhaps I could jury rig something.

Long time friends may recall my misguided attempts to build a CD spindle using the directions in Spin-off Magazine. Suffice it to say that after much angst and several visits to Home Depot for varying sizes of rubber grommets and flexible tubing, I ended up with a wobbly spindle that never did spin evenly. I have finally found the silver lining to that experience. I used the leftover grommets, plus rubberbands, to create a sort-of stopper I could shove into the hole in the roof that formerly held the little plastic thingy.
Tada! It worked! Now I needed something to keep the visors from flopping down. Add in some double-stick Velcro and I have functional visors. (OK - add in a particularly hot afternoon and regluing the double-stick velcro with superglue finished the repair.)

Total new outlay: $1.88
Reward: mostly working visors (they flop a bit when down) and just a bit of smugness.

Such a busy weekend!

So much to tell!
Friday Sharon and I drove up (and down) to Grass Valley, CA for the Nevada County Fair. As members of the Foothill Fibers Guild, we were there to demonstrate handspinning, see the Fair, and most importantly, visit with friends.

The Nevada County Fairgrounds are absolutely beautiful with meandering paths and lots of shady trees. Last year I debuted my painted Kiwi wheel at this fair. This year I had the matching chair and lazy kate. The Foothills folks are amazing artisans, so there were many beautiful items on display. My favorite entry was probably Sue's sweater.




It was especially fun to spend some time with Birdsong, who has become a good friend through blogging.




Some other fair entries of note included the duct tape bathing suit and the alien-looking squash attacking a tractor.









Among the displays of antique engines was a 1957 Airstream "Bubble" Trailer. The owner proudly allowed me to look inside. He has done a great job restoring it and was happy to talk vintage trailer with me.


Saturday was the Carson Sierra Spinners and Weavers' August Guild Meeting. This time it was up at Sharon's farm in Red Rock. It was quite the crowd, but lots of fun. There are lots of new members excited about learning to spin. Lots of folks had recent projects to show and tell. I especially love Linda's felted scarf that looks like something alien. Allison has one too, but I didn't get as good a picture of it.

Mim gave a great demonstration of nuno felting.




All this creativity and friendship in 2 days! I'll have to save my latest adventure in car repair for another post.

Of course...

What does a matching spinning wheel and spinning chair need? A matching tensioned kate, of course!

Eat your Heart Out, Nissan of Reno.

I have always left auto maintenance to the professionals. It is not that I am incapable of learning these skills; it is just that I have put my brain to other uses. Just before my March trailer trip my truck encountered a post, taking out the driver's side mirror and putting dents and scrapes along the door. With no time to wait for repairs before the trip, I over-nighted a trailer mirror that clamped to the fender. So what if it required strapping tape to keep it pointing in the right direction? Until the trailer is painted it just adds a little more to our scruffy low-rent appearance.

Several months later I set out to have this fixed. Only the dealership has the right part (why doesn't everyone carry parts for a 1994 Nissan pickup?). I received a quote of $230-some for just the mirror; over $400 when you include the labor. Highway robbery! Meanwhile I am planning to trade the truck in for a stronger tow vehicle in the next few months and I have been assured by all local dealers that it is not worth more than $500 in trade, probably less with a missing mirror. Sigh.

Time to bravely enter the world of auto maintenance. I went online and ordered an offbrand replacement for $15 (plus $15 shipping). At that price I wouldn't be out much if it didn't work. Then I went out on the internet looking for instructions on how to remove the inside door panel. The range of advice was magnificent. I even found a You-Tube video of someone removing the door panel of a 1994 Nissan Sentra set to music. Anticipating trouble, I set aside Saturday for this task. Imagine my pleasant surprise when the entire operation took about 40 minutes and that included 10 minutes looking for a dropped cotter pin!

OK, replacing a mirror is not like replacing the transmission or anything else complicated, but I still feel triumphant. For $30 and a coat hanger I have accomplished what costs over $400 at Nissan of Reno.

I think I'll go treat my truck to a wash.

Puttering

I have been puttering along on a bunch of projects. It's been ever so hot here this summer, making it hard to concentrate on any one thing.
I am still hoping to paint the little vintage trailer before winter so I managed to run out at lunch one day to R&E Fasteners and purchased the first installment of 250 size 10, 3/4 inch panhead stainless steel screws.
It is too hot to spend the day out in my driveway, so I have been working on screw replacement for about 45 minutes each day at dusk. This is not a quick process since most of the old 1953 screws are pretty much rusted into place. It does have a sortof meditative quality though, working one screw at a time. I've replaced somewhere around 100 screws at this point, and will have to buy more soon. Why so many? Because the aluminum skin of the trailer is made up of a series of panels that are screwed to a wood frame. Not only are the panels liberally tied down, but every seam has a seam cover that has screws every few inches. And every window has screws all around the frame plus a gutter piece that is screwed on above it. Lots and lots of screws. Anyone want to guess how many? I'll reveal the answer down the road when I find out.

During the weekend I got the urge to dye something and pulled out the tunis roving I bought from Becky. I used a method that is totally uncontrolled. I soaked the roving for about 20-25 minutes, then squeezed it lightly and layered it in a plastic container while pouring dry Kool-ade powder directly on it pretty much randomly. I put the lid loosely on the container and microwaved it on medium for about 10 minutes. Let it cool in the microwave, then rinsed it out. Almost no color rinsed out so it really soaked up the dye. The result was a bit different than my usual as it still has a lot of white. I am looking forward to seeing how it spins up. Intended destination: socks.

One more fibery note: The lace vest is coming along slowly with some surprises. At first my mind kept tripping up on the lace pattern, but with practice it has become enjoyable to work on. The fabric is turning out more stripy than I expected but I am liking it anyway. I just hope I have enough yarn for the project!

And here is a gratuitous cat picture.

My Fireplace

I am terribly proud of my fireplace. Five or so years ago when I bought my house, I told the real estate agent that the most important criteria was that the focal point of any prospective home had to be a great fireplace. I love the house I ended up with, especially the floor plan. The fireplace was larger than average (for 1956 houses) but REALLY ugly. It was faced with white painted brick and someone had glued down odd sized pieces of black slate on the hearth leaving wide dirty white grout lines. For a year or two I lived with it, plotting its reinvention. Tile was the answer. Now some folks would hesitate before using the focal point of their home as their very first tiling project. I am made of more foolhardy stuff. After only a brief Home Depot tiling demo I went ahead and jumped into the job.

Here is a "before" picture of the fireplace, as I set up to start tiling.

Tiling turns out to be easier than you might think as long as you apply a little math and you count on lots of spare tile for breakage. Oh and remember to get out all the cat hair before sealing the grout. I ran into a slight conundrum when I tiled above the opening. The Home Depot demo didn't cover vertical surfaces and the effects of gravity. Luckily I had a little table and a length of 2X4 of just the right size.

I finished the fireplace a long time ago, scraped the popcorn off the ceiling, and painted the walls orange. I am ever so pleased with my livingroom. But for over a year now I have had a blank wall over the fireplace. It is directly opposite the couch so I have had huge opportunity to contemplate adding the perfect piece of art. I have even fantasized about maybe painting the right picture myself. Yesterday it hit me - the print I have had hanging in my office at work for about 10 years might be just the thing. Here it is, now hung over the fireplace. It is not perfect (it is too small) but it definitely will do for now. And the subject matter goes great with my small herd of folkart farm animals on the mantel.

Late addition

And here is tonight's pretty sunset...





Now back to the Battle of Hogwarts...

Holding Pattern

I know... slow to post. Not too much to show for the week, though.

I started a new knitting project, but with the swatching and the calculating (and a small bit of frogging) I am only a few rows in. I am trying a simple lace pattern that I made up. I won't go so far as to say I invented it, since it is so simple it must be out there lots of places. It is going to be a cardigan vest made from some green yarn I spun last year.

Garden-wise I spread a dozen bags of mulch, but it was to replace what had evaporated since last year, so no new progress.

Trailer-wise I set out to replace large numbers of loosened screws, only to find I had bought the wrong kind. Darn. A trip to Home Depot later and all I have to show for it is a referral to a specialty bolt and fastener outfit in Sparks. Apparently 1953 travel trailers used an odd size.

I'll try to have more to report once I have finished reading Harry Potter. Meanwhile, here's a pretty sunset from last Monday.

Spindling

Saturday was meeting day for the Carson Sierra Spinners and Weavers. We met in Heidi's shady front yard and had a lovely time chatting, meeting, and chatting some more. Sadly I didn't have my camera with me, so no pictures. The workshop topic was hand spindling and it was great to see all the folks who brought their spindles! I was the workshop speaker, so after lunch we passed out more spindles and lengths of roving. By the end of the workshop everyone was spindling away. Several of the spindleless went ahead and purchased guild spindles, so hopefully I have hooked a few more on the portable magic of handspindles! Now everyone is encouraged to go out and spindle at ArTown events. (Reno holds artsy events all over town every day of the month of July, so there is no end to the venues suitable for spindling.) For the workshop I went through all my bags and bins and collected up all my handspindles to show the variety. The total, including top whorl, bottom whorl and supported spindles, came to 28. Hmmm... could it be an addiction? At least they take up less space than the 4 spinning wheels, 2 charkas and 3 inkle looms. Let's not talk about my wool stash...

Spin-in in Calpine

Once again I must apologize for being slow to post. At this point Sharon, Birdsong and Sara have all blogged about our lovely Dual-Guild Spin-in at Anna Harvey's ranch near Calpine, CA last Saturday. Sharon gets the credit for putting it together and having the stick-to-it-ness to pick a date and make it happen. The Harvey Ranch was around an hour's drive for most folks and well worth it. Beautiful country no matter which road you took. Despite the smoke from multiple wildfires, the views were fantastic. Some of the big open west at its best. There were attendees from both the Carson Sierra Spinners and Weavers and the Foothill Fibers Guild (and a few of us who belong to both). It was good to see some folks in person that we mostly talk to online.
For me the best part of a day like this is the total relaxation that comes with sitting under the trees with friends and no expectations whatsoever. We chatted, looked at fleece, talked to the chickens, did a little spinning and chatted some more. Good times!

Another Stash-Buster Project

I have been admiring the lovely fulled and felted purses that Sharon, Mim and Allison have made. Although I have made several knit-than-felted bags, none of them were of a suitable size and shape to carry as a purse. In my continuing quest to use up the stash bits leftover from other projects, I paired up the leftover handspun from my green shawl and a blue sweater I made years ago. Both are approximately 50-50 wool-mohair, so they should felt up fairly consistantly and very fuzzy. Sharon's lovely purses are always an interesting, yet subtle combination of colors. Very elegant. I decided my personality lends itself more to funky stripes. Perhaps I lack subtlety. Hmmm...

I knit the bottom, plus about an inch up the sides with 2 strands to add a bit of strenth to the bottom. Then I knit up to the top with one strand, knit 1 row with 3 strands, then cast off with 3 strands. This gave it a fat lip, so to speak. I made a patch pocket for the front to hold either my iPod or my cell phone. The strap was a bit trial and error. Since I wanted to use it as a shoulder strap, it needed to be a bit thick for comfort, yet still be able to thread through the sides to cinch the bag shut. After trying several combinations of stitches and strands, I ended up making 4 stitch I-cord using 3 strands and size 11 needles. I am very pleased with the result. Here is the pre-fulling bag with a book for scale (I am rereading book 6 in preparation for book 7).
After putting both bag and I-cord through the wash for a couple cycles, and blocking it around books in a plastic bag, I put it outside to dry.
With our current heat wave still in force, the bag dried completely in about an hour or so. I strung the I-cord through the bag's sides and grafted the ends together. Since the I-cord is now a circle, I can use it as either one long strap or 2 short ones.

Record Heat in Reno

July 4th at my (non-airconditioned) house:


And today Reno officially tied its all-time record high for any day of the year at 108 degrees (at the airport).

I am making frequent use of squirt bottle and fan. Yikes!