Wonderful Weekend

I hope all you faithful readers have had a good weekend. 

First things first. Joanie, please show this top photo to Bob. It could be entitled, Wish You Were Here! Having brother Jim in town has been a nice treat and a great opportunity to catch up with each other (and share a Ponti's!).

My Jim got an early start to Jenny Lake on Saturday morning and got there in time to do some fishing and closing chores before going to Saratoga to run the course where he was racing today. I'll

post his results in a blog entry later this week.

I got my sweater seamed so it is now complete and I love it! It will be my Rhinebeck Sweater for next weekend's  New York State Sheep and Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, NY. Of course, my sweater will pale in comparison to some of the works of art that other knitters will be wearing.

My big project on Saturday was the washing of the yak yarn. I posed a question about cleaning the yak yarn on one of the knitting websites that I read and 2 people responded with ideas. In addition to the ideas I got from my faithful readers here, Sally and I were armed with lots of things to think about as we tackled 2 tightly wound balls of yak yarn.  We started by using my swift (see 9/2/07 entry for photo of my swift) to convert the

balls of yarn into skeins of yarn. We made one large skein of the smaller ball of lighter

colored yarn and we split the larger, darker ball of yarn into 2 skeins. We thought draping the skeins over the bench by the lake side was a nice artistic touch, plus we got a breath of fresh air. Remember, I have mentioned that this is stinky yarn. After skeining, we filled Sally's bathtub with lukewarm water and baby shampoo. We submerged the skeins and set the timer for one hour. When the timer went off, we discovered an incredible amount of dirt had come out of the yarn and the smell was most offensive! We repeated the

 process 2 more times, shortening up the time

 before we changed the water to 20 minutes. 

And we continued to have a disgusting tub after the water drained out ( see the photo to the right). Sally and Bob were going out for the evening so I wrapped up the skeins and brought them home where I continued the rinsing process. Finally, at 9 PM the water was almost clear after a soak and the smell was greatly reduced and my hands were pruny so I quit! I used my salad spinner to get the water out of the yarn and hung the skeins in the garage to drip dry. They still need more work but are much improved from where we started at 2 PM. We might just leave them hanging outside to get rinsed by the rain and de-odorized by mother nature. This is quite an adventure and whatever we knit with the yarn will have quite a tale to go along with it. 

Tucker called last night and he was in New Mexico, hiking and camping with his friend, Kellum. He is doing well and work is keeping him busy. He expects to be working on this project until Thanksgiving. What's after that, Tucker?

Today I had to ring bells in both worship services at church so I was up early. I went to Gram and GrandDad's for a Ponti's lunch with Jim. I didn't hang around too long (think eat and run) because Maw and I were going to Spirit Work yarn store. We are taking a knitting class there in a couple of weeks and we wanted to select the yarn we wanted to use for our projects (a felted purse). I got a load of wash hung up, but it may take a couple of days to dry!

Jim just called from Syracuse University. He and 2 of his running buddies stopped in to see Corey and they were going to have dinner in the SU dining hall and then continue on home.