Learning to spin

This is one of those "occasional asides on other topics" that I gave myself permission to post. As an archivist, I have a fondness for anything old--including traditional skills. I like to write with quills and dip pens, I've made my own paper, and now I've learned to spin wool into yarn.

I've been a knitter off and on for many years, but yarn always came from the store, in neat packages dyed to pretty colors and ready to use. But for the past 3 weeks I've been taking a spinning class at Yarns Unlimited in Bloomington, Indiana. This was the first time I had ever held a fleece in my hands -- wool "in the grease," right off the sheep. It's rough, greasy with lanolin, full of burrs and little plant bits, matted and pretty dirty. How this becomes yarn soft enough to wear is still a bit of a mystery.

Before you can spin, you have to prepare the wool. Sometimes it's washed before spinning; ours wasn't, but we did card, or comb, it, pulling the fibers straight and opening up the matted parts -- this removes much of the dirt, burrs, etc. Back when spinning your own was the only way to get yarn, young girls got this job. It's not as difficult as it sounds, and it doesn't take all that long.

There are two tradtional ways to spin: with a drop-spindle, which looks like a child's top, and with a wheel. A drop-spindle is totally manual -- you spin it with one hand and feed the yarn into it with the other. It shows you how spinning works in slow motion, and it's portable -- but very slow. Using a spinning wheel requires that you keep your feet and hands both moving, doing different things, at the same time. The first week, I really struggled to get the hang of it. But switching to a wheel with a double treadle made a huge difference for me, and now I'm totally addicted!

I took the wheel (on loan for the class) out to the garden for awhile, and hubby took this photo. Spinning can be soothing and peaceful; the soft rhythmic sounds of the wheel and the feel of wool moving through your fingers are oddly satisfying. The wheel I had the best success with was the Louet, shown here. It looks more like a piece of modern art than a spinning wheel, but it's easy to learn on.

I made one bobbin of grey-brown yarn, from the fleece shown at the top of this post, and one of white. The white was from a Romney sheep. Neither was dyed. Yarn from the two bobbins was plied, or twisted, together to make 2-ply yarn. In my handspun, you can clearly see the yarn from each bobbin.

The yarn will be a bit softer after it's washed, but it is a rough yarn. I'm still a beginner at this, and my yarn is kind of bumpy and too thin in spots. But to me it's beautiful. I'll probably knit a hat with it. And I'm on the lookout for a used wheel, because now I've just gotta keep spinning!

Growing fast

Wow. I always thought our babies grew up fast, but they can't compare to baby birds. The wrens in our birdhouse are now five little balls of fluff with voracious appetites. Last week they could barely hold up their heads, and it was impossible to distinguish individual birds except by counting the beaks.


Now we can see why the parents are so busy, constantly bringing worms and insects back to the nest. The babies are so hungry that sometimes, one little beak can be seen poking out of the entrance hole. "M-o-o-o-o-m, hurry up!" I imagine him calling.


I actually got caught taking the top photo by the ever-vigilant parents. I chose a moment to check on the nest when the parents were away, but they returned while I was still up on the ladder-- and oh, boy, did I ever get a scolding! Both parents were hopping from branch to branch, chattering and screeching at me. Chastened, I got out of there fast.

The garden is in full bloom now, and visited by birds, bees, butterflies, and even dragonflies and an occasional toad. The goldfinch in the photo below is perched on one of the sunflowers in the butterfly bed. All too soon we'll see the end of the gardening season. It will be some comfort to watch the birds plucking the seeds from the sunflowers, coneflowers and zinnias-- but let's not think about that just yet!

Baby wrens

Mr. Lonelyhearts is lonely no more. The little house wren we've been watching in our backyard as he sang next to all our birdhouses and stuffed twigs into each one (a kind of birdie hope chest) has finally made it. Not only did he get a date, but he has married (for the moment), settled down and is raising a family. It's difficult to count the babies. Two little beaks can be seen on the left; in this picture they're closed. They have feathers, so they are a few days old, or perhaps a week.

We opened the roof of the house to take this picture. It's OK to do this if you're quick. The parents resumed bringing food in to the nest as soon as we were out of the way.

Both parents are helping to feed the little guys, coming and going in an endless relay. They also clean the nest, carrying away the poop sacs so that parasites don't endanger the health of the babies. (Been there, changed those diapers!) I won't be able to check on them again until Saturday, but I'm thinking about them often.

Engage silent drive!

I love our canoe. There aren't too many kinds of boats in which you can sneak up on a heron, but we're lucky enough to have one of the best. We have two travel modes. There's Full Steam Ahead, in which my mate-4-life, sitting in the back, applies full power to a kayak paddle (blade on each end), so he can easily alternate strokes. I sit in the front seat and pretend my paddling helps, while my expensive, can't-live-without-it digital camera sits wrapped in a towel in my LAP, for heaven's sake! We make a bit of splashy noise in this mode, but I have never yet dropped the camera.

But we have the most fun when we travel in Silent Mode, paddling very slowly through the shallows, looking for birds, snakes, turtles, flowers -- anything interesting. We usually manage to see something new, or learn something, or at least come up with a new question.

This past weekend we went exploring in a flooded area of Lake Monroe, gliding through "islands" of swamped trees. We watched herons and tracked songbirds through the trees at the edge of the water.

We spent a long time following songbirds. One bird that I didn't recognize was heavily streaked with brown and white, with an orangey throat. It turned out to be a female red-wing blackbird--a very common bird after all. But at least next time I see it, I'll know it immediately.

We saw a couple of other unfamiliar birds. One tiny black and white bird was very elusive. I have several pictures of big green leaves, with a beak or a tail sticking out one side or the other.

We saw prothonotary warblers for the first time ever. [This is a correction--I had earlier identified this bird as a pine warbler, but pine warblers have white wing bars.] These energetic little yellow birds were difficult to keep up with, but fun to watch as they flitted from branch to branch. The bird in this photo has caught a caterpiller. (I wish they'd eat something that wasn't supposed to turn into a butterfly!)


Photographing birds and nature is an obsession for me. I'm not sure why, but I just have to take pictures. I'm not a great photographer--in fact, it's very frustrating for me. I have terrible eyesight and find it difficult to focus my camera. I lack patience with manuals and can't figure out my own light meter...in fact, taking pictures is so frustrating that next weekend, I'm going to do as much of it as I can. Go figure.

Water Lines

Water, water, water. It's clear to everyone by now that Indiana, though hit hard by flooding in some areas, got off easy, and it's hard to imagine the situation in Iowa.

We've been canoeing around Lake Monroe whenever we get a sunny weekend. The lake is at 548.73 feet this week, with a level of 538 feet being normal. Last weekend, when these pictures were taken, the level was 550.79 feet. (As my mate4life has carefully explained to me, the lake levels refer to feet above sea level and not the depth of the lake -- thank goodness!)

The businesses around the lake have suffered, as several weeks of boat rentals, cabin rentals, camping and so on were lost to the flooding. You'd have a hard time cooking anything on the grill in the photo! But a few weeks ago, we canoed right over top of it and couldn't even tell it was there.

The high water has left a brown strip of dead foliage all around the lake. Herons can be seen hanging around in areas that would normally be woods, while the sand bars they usually occupy are no longer in shallow water. I don't know if the fishing for them is better or worse.


My garden, too, would like to see a little more sun. The bee balm has mildew on its leaves and some of the shorter rudbeckia flowers look beaten up. The forecast calls for sun tomorrow. Shabbat Shalom!

High water

The water's been very high at Lake Monroe, near Bloomington, for the past few weeks. On the first of June, we took our canoe out for a little exploring. It was really strange, paddling around through the trees, where normally we would be walking. At one point the road leading down to a launch site was under water, and as we paddled across it we could see the yellow no-passing line beneath us. Recent heavy rains have made the water even higher. Last weekend, after the storms had stopped, we went back to explore more of the lake.

We saw: several turtles basking on logs, 2 small snakes, 1 eastern box turtle, 2 lizards, a red fox squirrel, a chipmunk, lots of yellow swallowtail butterflies, 2 baltimore orioles, 1 yellow warbler, a great blue heron, 2 families of Canada geese and their goslings, and 1 unlucky catfish. The catfish is a long story--we freed him from a fishing line tied to a tree, and then, realizing that he had been hooked on purpose and not by accident, fled the area for fear of running into the person who had set the line!

Fishing is not a kind sport--and sometimes it is not friendly to other wildlife, either. We untangled quite a bit of fishing line from trees, as it endangers the birds who get caught in it, and collected lead sinkers left behind. We also pulled plastic bobbers out of the trees; these I'm stringing together as a kind of trophy.

Southern Indiana has been hit hard by recent storms and flooding. Homes have been damaged, even destroyed. The full extent of the damage is just now being assessed. We haven't heard much yet about the impact on wildlife; I suppose that will become evident over a longer time.

Saving the Monarchs

Monarch butterflies are one of the most easily recognized and beloved butterflies we see. Everyone knows the bright orange and black markings of the monarch. It's hard to imagine a world without them-- but it could happen. Monarchs, like all butterflies, are threatened by the loss of habitat that happens when development turns meadows and fields into condos and shopping malls. Host plants are mowed down, and pesticides and herbicides are lethal. Monarchs are in particular danger because the plants they depend on, milkweed, are disappearing in the wild.

What can one person do to help?! Last year my mate4life and I planted a new flower bed, a butterfly garden. I did some research and came up with a list of plants that are good sources of nectar. Word must have spread, because we had many beautiful butterfly visitors to the flower beds. The photo above shows a monarch on one of my lantanas, taken last Sept.

This year, I am taking the butterfly bed a step further --planting host plants, where monarchs and perhaps other species can lay their eggs. Milkweed plants support the emerging lavae and adult monarchs.

There is an organization called Monarch Watch that helps people start butterfly gardens and certifies back yard butterfly gardens as Monarch Waystations: http://www.monarchwatch.org I'm preparing our back yard garden to meet the requirements of a Waystation.

Nectar plants in our flower beds:
Lantana (planted as annuals every year, not hardy in Indiana.)
Rudbeckia (perennial variety)
Galliardia (Blanket flower)
Echinacea (purple coneflower)
Coreopsis
Bee Balm
Zinnias (important to include single flowers like Pinwheel Zinnias--bees need them, and hummingbirds like them!)
Salvia
Catmint (purple flowers, looks like salvia)
Joe Pye Weed (native species, very good nectar plant--and besides, I love the name!)

Milkweed host plants: so far, 3 swamp milkweed plants (Asclepias incarnata) and 2 butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa). Monarch Watch says 10 plants or more is ideal, so this weekend's task is to add some more plants. You can do this more cheaply with seeds, but it is not so easy, and I think my chances of success are very low.

So far this spring, we've had Tiger Swallowtails, an American Lady, a yellow sulphur, and a small blue butterfly that was too quick for me to identify. We'll keep watching, and planting, for more butterflies.

Further reading:
Brock, Jim, and Kenn Kaufman. Butterflies of North America (Kaufman Focus Guides), 2003.
"Butterfly Blues: Rescuing Rare Beauties," National Wildlife. June/July, 2008.
Marent, Thomas. Butterfly: A Photographic Portrait. Dorling-Kindersley, 2008.