Tuesday, November 22, 2005

 

How Do I Dry Thee?


Let me count the ways:

There is the "hanging in a vegetable steamer, suspended by an unbent paper clip from the bathroom heat register" method. A method which made my husband tell me that the green wool had built a spaceship and was escaping:




There is the "hanging out in a stainless steel bowl in a very dirty stove that that rabbit should be embarrassed to have photographed and then oh my god put on the internest!" method:




And then there is the "put the wool in a lingerie bag and dry on air fluff for a couple of hours" method:




I have quite a bit of (quite) green wool that has to be dry in time to be spun for Saturday, so I've been experimenting. Can you tell?

One of the ladies I'm splitting the table with at the craft fair (there will be three of us) mentioned in casual conversation on Sunday night that there were a number of knitters who were coming to the craft fair specifically to see and perhaps to purchase some handspun wool. This set me in a bit of a panic, as although I had sort of hoped to get a couple of skeins spun up, right about now my entire inventory consists of half a bobbon of clownbarf, and I'm keeping that for myself.

I tossed a big pot of hot water, vinegar, soap and Dorset fleece onto the stove while I took the kid to the babysitter on Sunday night, and then when I came back I poured in different blotches and splats of green and yellow and blue, let it get very very hot and sit there while I slept a couple of hours. I then turned the heat off while I went to work and let it sit there until after I got up the next day. I'm fairly pleased with the colour, however wool takes quite a lot of time to dry. It also takes quite a lot of time to spin, and if I have any hope of having anything to sell this weekend, it has to get dry, and fast.

All three methods seem to work fairly well. I'm favouring the "hanging from the heat vent" method at the moment, as the air dry takes hours and I have to keep putting the dryer back on, and with the stove you've got to make sure you don't cook it to death. The hanging from the heat vent method requires considerably less effort.

Yes, I'm lazy.

Stay tuned for some kermit-green spinning, hopefully tomorrow.

# posted by Rabbitch @ 8:57 PM
Comments:
hmmmmmmmm, setting sun, rising moon, and floating green fluff. interesting art composition, woman.
# posted by Blogger dragon knitter : 8:59 PM
 
Get thyself a salad spinner (check the yard sales and thrifts-- Everyone who used to spin their lettuce buys it in a bag these days, I think).

You can extract a helluvalotta water with one of those suckers.

I always use mine (formerly used for spinning lettuce) for semi-drying small knitwear.
# posted by Blogger Ann : 4:28 AM
 
Of course, that is of no help to you right now, is it?

Did the package arrive? Wait, tomorrow's not a holiday in Canada. . .

(I think the spam-screen word I got is an obscenity!)
# posted by Blogger Ann : 4:30 AM
 
Golly, it's a good thing you didn't put yourself under any pressure with deadlines or anything. Looking forward to seeing the kermitspun though.

But seriously - that idea with the pawn shop trip to fund, um, medicinal liquids? Now might be a good time.
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 6:02 AM
 
Do you have more heat vents? And, oh right, you are lazy. Sheesh. I wonder what your definition of busy and responsible is?
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 9:51 AM
 
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