catch up

[dragonlady7]

via https://ift.tt/2HKzyKP

whew. am attempting to bask in as much human contact as possible before heading back home to erie co, who today posted numbers of a whopping 8.35% positive test rate. good fucking lord.

near-miss at work– an employee tested positive, but by coincidence i did not overlap with him or with anyone he’d worked directly with, and because of the timing of my leaving it’s very unlikely anyone exposed would have overlapped with me during the sensitive period and I was gone before they in turn would have been contagious. helpfully, i’ve been avoiding coworkers, and have been lucky enough to be able to, so while everyone else is getting tested, i don’t need to. but holy shit. a day earlier for me or later for him in our schedules, and if i were less unabashedly assholish about just straight leaving the room if anyone’s there– well, anyway, i would not have known in time and would have brought my potential exposure straight to the turkey crew and everyone at the farm and my parents.

so i’m going to get back to my house in buffalo, and i’m going to see how much of my work i can do before 10 am when the store opens, and i’m going to attempt to overlap as little as possible with other humans, and i think we’re going to try to minimize even grocery store trips. it’s bad out there. and we’re not seeing anyone for Christmas, possibly not even dude’s mom– depends on whether she gets stuck in quarantine again. just gonna sit at home as much as possible.

It’s fine, I’m fine with this. I hope you all are somewhere safe and warm and have food. It’s such a distressing fucking time to be alive, I tell you what.

Anyway– end of the farm season, I’m going home tomorrow, though I wish terribly that we didn’t have to. But it’s all right. It really is.

Comments

[redstapler]

It's super upsetting how many areas that did well earlier this year have gone full FUGGIT and don't care about climbing rates.

It's wild that I felt safe in Austin back in April, but now I'm feeling like I'd be better off still in NYC. What the hell.

[dragonlady7]

i really really really really wish i didn't have to leave my house at all now. i really wish that. it's taken all my introversion shit and cranked it up and broke off the knob. i want to not leave my house.
i have to go to work, i'm out of unemployment.
ARGH

[unicornduke]

now really is the time to be an asshole about covid stuff. I was waffling on farmers market trips but I think I'm going to skip for now and do the online ordering next week. shit's getting wild

[dragonlady7]

I did my grocery shopping today at the farmer's market and at Honest Weight on my way out to the highway, because Rensselaer Co is at like 3-4% and Erie is at like 8-9% testing positive, so like.
i wish i didn't have to leave my house. i don't, tomorrow, but monday, man-- my one coworker was like "oh we all tested negative, you should get tested too, probably just come in normal hours tho" and I was like bruh I am coming in before the store opens and no I am not sitting in a room with all y'all even if you did just get negative tests because you had to get those tests because you got exposed here!!!!!! no thanks!!!!

He seems to think me traveling to a lower-risk area is more dangerous, because I traveled. BRUH. anyway.

[unicornduke]

I think everyone is assuming all travel is dangerous because that's what every announcement is saying but there's like, varying dangers with types of travel. Taking an airplane and a taxi is so more dangerous than driving yourself with no stops.

Also a negative test is no indicator that they won't be positive later because they're doing stuff out and about???? what even???

[dragonlady7]

I know.
He's mostly serious about it-- he didn't see anyone for Thanksgiving, etc.-- but he is, I think, overestimating the danger I was subjected to, and underestimating the danger our coworkers are subjected to.
He's also sort of a controlling kind of person and mostly it's fine but it has been driving me fairly insane lately, lolllllz.

[dragonlady7]

OH UNRELATED
but i was googling to find out more about storage bobbins for spinning and wound up clicking around the archives of this magazine and there was a weird little article about spinning for embroidery and I am astonished it had never occurred to me before that I could do that?? anyway!!
I do more embroidery than any other kind of textile art so like. !!! well sign me up. now I need to dye tiny bits of the white combed fleece I have, LOL.

[unicornduke]

That's super awesome! You're spinning short forward draw so you'll end up with nice smooth and dense yarn - worsted. It may also be easier to dye yarn, not 100% sure on that but honestly, go wild! I know there's some good dye groups on ravelry. Did your fleece come with a tag for what breed it is? If not, I can take a look and consult the fleece and fiber handbook to get you a general breed group.

[dragonlady7]

No, my fleece was in a plastic trash bag and one of the two had a 3x5 card that said "2014". One of them is white and the other is brownish.

[unicornduke]

Okay! If you can get an unwashed lock or chunk of each fleece and take a picture of it, I can look and see what I think it is close to. Something like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staple_(wool)#/media/File:Wool_staples.JPG. Maybe from the middle of the fleece? I think that's the most consistent wool. My guess is that it's probably merino or similar breed because they're so popular but who knows!

[dragonlady7]

hmmmm how to send you pictures. i may text them.

they are kind of crinkly like those!

[dragonlady7]

https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipP0WHIENgkJXnpS3kBSsX0s5v8IKO0pVqoyjv-m

does that do anything? hm i may have to have sharing on.

this one:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/aW8qoiiJvynggr9r6

[dragonlady7]

(that's the two fleeces)

[unicornduke]

Okay, that's a good photo! It looks like the brown one is a Merino type, rectangle locks, weathered tips, probably dense with a lot of grease. If you want to spin something superfine for thread, it might be interesting to spin from a scoured lock. Carders may cause neps because it's so fine so either expect a lumpier carded prep/yarn after spinning or comb or spin from lock to get fine and smooth.

The top one is a little less clear. If it's very similar to the brown lock, I'd say merino again. But if not, it looks like it has less crimp per inch and the structure is different. Does the crimp wave back and forth more like the brown one or does it spiral? After some looking and poking around on etsy, it might Cheviot, which is the rabbit ear sheep! Cheviot is versatile and can be carded or combed and shouldn't produce neps in carding and can be spun from washed lock as well.

I hope that helps a little bit, that was kinda fun!

[dragonlady7]

I'll have to compare them more; in person, I think the two fleeces are structurally quite similar, I just happen to have distorted the white one more when I yanked it out of the bag. The crimp certainly doesn't spiral, it's not longer or shorter than the brown one, in that respect.
I have a bunch of the white washed and of that, some carded; it's what I was working on with the drop spindle. I haven't done much of anything with the brown one yet. I'll try to wash a tiny bunch of it in a lingerie bag or something (by hand! though i've realized i had so much luck with my washing machine last time because it's partly broken and doesn't agitate very well, lol; we're going to replace it but I'm thinking man I should wash the rest of these fleeces in it while we've got this busted-ass thing, that's maybe the way to go here...)
anyway. Thanks for looking, LOL!

Now I'm dealing with the fact that the one leather bearing on my spinning wheel is suddenly deteriorating now that I'm using it, and i have to replace it, and where do you get a 1x2" hunk of bridle leather and once you have it how do you cut it? ARGH. Maybe I can just... glue it back together before it falls apart the rest of the way.............. listen I am not good at fabricating things, instead of pegs I have wedged fragmentary dowels into the holes because I forgot to get a stick from the farm and live somewhere entirely free of trees.

[unicornduke]

Ah, makes sense! Yeah, it's actually hard to find ideal locks for looking at. I think they're both merino then, the brown one seems like it. If you've got the busted washer and it didn't felt it last time, it might be work running the fleeces through. Make life easier. The actual scour process sounds like a pain in the ass by hand. I think some folks send their fleeces to mills to be washed and then sent back sometimes.

Dowels work good for quick repairs. If you end up at the farm at some point, there's a restorer down in Coxsackie who could always do the fixes for relatively little expense. He does wood turning at least but he might also be able to do the leather work as well. You also might be able to sub a cord in for the piece of leather if you have anything thick enough and can make a loop.

[dragonlady7]

For some reason there was an old belt on the shelf in the office at work, and it's worn about through in one place, and I don't know why it was in a box of camera parts, but I've stolen it and am going to attempt to cut out a new bearing from it because it's definitely leather and it's definitely thick and it's definitely too damaged to keep using as a belt, so--
I own decent shears and leather sewing needles but no punches or anything of that sort so uhhhh pray for me i guess, LOL

[unicornduke]

oh boy, good luck to your fingers! that does sound good enough to work though