The Eyes Have It

Well, Baxter and I had an interesting afternoon. Total disclosure; Rhonda went along too, and was quite miffed that the nice tech lady petted and put drops in Baxter’s eyes and completely ignored Ronni. How dare she?

Anyway, Baxter’s appointment today with the eye doctor came about because of minor but noticeable changes in his behavior over the past 6-9 months. They were small changes that didn’t amount to all that much.

When we would open the front door to invite him out to go potty, instead of trotting right in front of me and out the door as he always has, he started hesitating and then trotting around behind me and out. Weird, huh?

He seemed anxious and hesitant to run up the doggy ramp on the left side of our bed and needed coaxing.

Then last month, I started taking both dogs to weekly Rally practice. Baxter is/was an old pro at both Rally and Freestyle (Heeling to music), although admittedly it’s been a few years since we’ve worked at it.

He struggled, which really surprised me. He ignored hand signals for turns, pivots and spins, and surprised me by popping out of heel position several times to scoot around behind me to walk at my right side.

There were a few other little things, but taken together, I was leaning towards believing Baxter was developing a vision issue rather than forgetting his training.

In a happy happenstance, a local breed club was hosting a 2-day, low-cost eye clinic this weekend, so I jumped on the opportunity.

Baxter, on our way to the eye clinic.

Baxter was a model patient, prompting the Doctor to comment that he was a delight to examine. Bax allowed the doc to shine bright lights in his eyes, peering through his devices with his (the doctor’s) face right at nose distance. Our boy just wagged and stood there quietly. ❤️

Because of my previous observations, I was prepared and not particularly surprised by the results.

The vision in Baxter’s right eye is quite limited. In layman’s terms, he has a degenerative eye disorder with an excessive amount of “floaters” in his right eye, which is blocking his eyesight. There is no sign of cataracts in either eye, and he isn’t in any pain. He simply can’t see much from that eye.

On the bright side, thankfully, Baxter can see pretty well out of his left eye. The doctor said the vision in that eye was fairly normal for a 12-year-old dog. Not perfect, but not bad. No sign of eye disease.

Anyway, now that we have confirmed the vision problem, his odd behavior makes a lot more sense. He is compensating fairly well, all things considered and since there doesn’t seem to be any problem with his left eye, we aren’t looking at him having to cope with total blindness any time soon.

Baxter remains as cheerful and sweet natured as ever, still plays with Ronni and loves spending his days keeping his Dad’s lap warm.

We look forward to playing nose work games when summer comes again. He enjoys the game as much as ever – and really, all a dog needs is a good nose.

Baxter is a happy, if somewhat quirky little guy and much loved. ❤️

Our boy, Baxter, in his youth. Always ready for a good game.

Knit1, Purl2 … Tink Tink

January was a month for knitting. That’s not to say I haven’t been spinning as well, but although I started the month with all sorts of spinning plans lined up, I ended up with needles clacking away almost non-stop.

This is remarkable only because I’m generally more called to spinning, at which I’m proficient. The spinning wheel is one of my happy places; where I am able to feel relaxed and at peace while still being productive.

A sense of purpose is the best way to get through January, I’ve always thought. The purpose itself doesn’t matter – just that you have one.

Having said this; I consider myself a fairly mediocre knitter, most comfortable with simple patterns and small projects. I do enjoy knitting – my brain just struggles with complicated patterns including such intricacies as lace or cables. Give me a nice stockinette or ribbed pattern and I’m happy as a clam.

Not long after Christmas, a friend asked me to knit a pair of fingerless gloves for her husband. She offered up suggestions as to his favorite colors and glove size and left everything else to me.

What fun! I had plenty of yarn in my yarn stash, but decided to delve into my fiber stash instead. Hand-spun is always more special. I pulled out a bag of soft, black Merino roving, setting aside 2 ounces to spin up by itself.

Then I weighed out one more ounce of black Merino, as well as an ounce of royal purple Corriedale wool. The Corriedale would give more strength and body to the gloves.

I striped the two colors onto my drum carder carefully, running them through just once to blend lightly while keeping the colors fairly distinct.

My plan was to use the super-soft black Merino to knit the top half of the ribbed cuffs and a band along the finger edge, and use the purple and black blend for the rest.

Mike’s fingerless mitts; a work in progress.

I was chagrined to discover partway through the first mitt that I had completely forgotten how to knit a thumb gusset, which is an important part of the pattern. Several rows of tinking followed. Ohh … that’s right. Place markers, do knit front and back increases. Now I remember.

Dang, it was a good thing these were dark colored mitts. I also totally spaced the “lean right or lean left” part of the knit increases.

Happily, they were a big hit – and I was bummed I had forgotten to take a picture of the finished gloves.

As soon as I had delivered the manly black and purple fingerless gloves, I started another pair. It was mid-January and Jer’s birthday was right around the corner. When I asked what color or colors he would like, I was surprised when he promptly responded with “Orange”.

Orange?? Yep. Orange. Jerry has taken up curling this winter (in a senior sort of way), and wanted the extra warmth of a pair of warm, woolen fingerless mitts to cover the light gloves he wears out on the ice. And, of course, he wanted them to coordinate with his orange curling helmet.

Having absolutely no bright, solid orange in my stash, neither fiber nor yarn, I chose a tweed yarn that would wear well and not show dirt. Not totally orange, but close enough.

This pair worked up much more quickly than the last. For one thing, it’s lighter colored yarn, so I could easily knit well into the night. I had thumb gussets sorted out now, so no delays there. It was also yarn I had spun years ago, so I was able to use hand-spun without taking the time to start from scratch.

Jerry’s birthday mitts.

Next, since I was on a knitting roll, I decided to see if I could remember how to do the spiral decreases necessary to knit the neat crown of a hat.

This meant pulling out my double-pointed needles, which have always been a challenge for me.

OK, let’s start small … maybe baby hats? Oh, perfect! I had some colorful nylon and acrylic, (store-bought) sport-weight yarn I’d picked up at our local yarn shop, “Fiber & Ice”. Super soft and machine washable. A must for baby hats.

Hmm … I quickly realized these hats would be too small to make full use of a self-striping yarn. Silly me. But it seems I can create two totally different looking hats from the same single skein of yarn. What fun!

Managing to evenly space the spiral decreases to create the crown of this tiny hat with my four double-pointed needles was challenging, but the result was worth the effort. I only had to tink out a couple of rows.

By the way, for my non-knitting friends and followers; “tinking” is the term we use for going backwards and un-knitting to get to where we’d made a mistake. Sometimes it’s just a few stitches (if we’re lucky), but sometimes it can be several rows. The word TINK is simply the word KNIT spelled backwards. 😉

I finished off my month of clicking needles by knitting up a simple ribbed cowl for myself. I’d spun the luscious fiber back in October (I think?).

It was one of those impulse purchases that happen when your eyes fall on something beautiful and you just have to touch it. My mistake. I really should leave my wallet in the car when I visit the yarn store, “Fiber & Ice” in Wasilla, but really – what’s the point? It would just mean an extra trip to the car. 🤷🏼‍♀️

It was a 4 ounce braid of 90% Polwarth wool blended with 10% silk. Love at first sight.

It’s hard to describe the squishy wonderfulness of a skein of freshly spun Polwarth yarn.

Since I’d already decided this soft, squishy, sport-weight yarn was meant to be worn against the skin, I chose a simple ribbed cowl pattern. This would keep the squish factor and knit up in short order.

It doesn’t look like much laying flat on the drying rack, but I can easily envision it snuggled or doubled over around my neck with a pair of jeans and a simple, pale gray sweater or a long sleeve top in one of these shades.

Perfect for February in Alaska. Which just happens to have started, so it seems I finished up just in time. Wow, January flew by this year. I guess what they say about keeping busy has merit.

Now to come up with a purposeful plan for this month …

Lazy Sunday Morning

I got a kick out of Ronni this morning. I was having a lazy morning, just knitting in bed with hot coffee and a bran muffin close at hand. Ronni and Baxter were curled up with me and we were all perfectly content. 🧶🧶

I realized just HOW content Ronni was when I noticed she was watching Maude, the squirrel, on the bird-feeder outside the window. She didn’t do more than lift her head – the rest of her body remained warm, toasty and completely relaxed, enveloped in a blanket on my lap.

Baxter, of course, could have cared less. He was happy with his chew toy.

When I queried, “Squirrel?”, thinking she would jump up, Ronni gave me “the look”. Obviously, there are things more immediately important than squirrel chasing.

This morning, napping on a warm lap trumped squirrels. Ronni repositioned and closed her eyes.

Maude continued to devour her breakfast of black oil sunflower seeds and suet unmolested. Happy squirrel. Happy dogs.

Now, to get back to the baby hat I’m knitting.

Happy Sunday!

Good Business Practices

Back in November, I found what looked like some lovely braids of hand-dyed Polwarth spinning wool on sale on Etsy. They had a great variety of colors, and my prior experiences with polwarth have been very promising. It’s like spinning a cloud, soft and luscious.

Polwarth was fast becoming one of my favorite spinning fibers, right up there with Cormo, super-fine Merino and Alpaca.

Still, I was ordering online from an as-yet unknown to me fiber and yarn shop all the way across the country.

I crossed my fingers, ordered two braids and waited with bated breath (well … take that with a grain of salt considering it would be 10-14 days for delivery) to see if they lived up to my expectations.

I was exuberant when the package from the Neighborhood Fiber Company finally arrived. Upon opening the bag, I sighed happily over the lovely colors in the hand-dyed braids of polwarth.

Sadly, as soon as I picked one up to give it a good squish, I noted the stiffness of the braid – not at all what I was expecting.

Although the colors were pretty much spot on, the roving of once wonderful, fine Polwarth sheep’s wool had been braided so tightly (perhaps for storage?) that it had compacted almost to the point of felting. It was actually a challenge to pull it free from the braid. The freed roving lay stiff as a board.

Tightly braided, badly compacted Polwarth roving.

I was SO disappointed.

As an example of what I’d been expecting to receive; this next photo was a recently purchased Polwarth roving from another source. This roving was so soft it all but oozed off my lap. You can almost see the squishy lushness, right? This roving was heavenly to spin.

Well-prepared Polwarth roving.

Yes, I could and did recover the poorly prepared wool, steaming it section by section to relax the fiber to where I could gently loosen and relax it. I slowly worked it back into a long, fairly flexible roving, still somewhat compacted but usable.

However, this was not the heavenly soft, relaxing and enjoyable spinning experience I was expecting and not worth even the “sale” price, in my opinion. It was more like work.

Since the company advertised “hand-dyed and hand-braided” rovings, it could have been as simple as an over-enthusiastic employee braiding the fiber too tightly, and/or a fluke tight storage issue… maybe. I had no previous purchases from this company to compare to. Still, not a good first impression.

After spinning up the 4 oz., bright, light-color braid in blue, aqua and tan, I concluded that the yarn came out nice enough in spite of the poor handling it had been exposed to. It was, after all, polwarth wool.

It’s just that the yarn, although it is of course important and will be put to good use, was not MY main reason for buying this fiber. My reason was to spend a glorious couple of days handling wonderfully soft, airily light, hand-dyed fiber of one of my favorite fine wool breeds. It was the spinning of the fiber I looked forward to. The yarn was secondary.

So, after giving it some thought, I set aside the brown-hued braid, adding it to my blending fiber stash (running it through the drum carder will revive it). It will eventually get used, but it hadn’t been what I was hoping for.

I decided to contact the Neighborhood Fiber Company. They had a good reputation and had received good reviews, which is why I’d made the purchase in the first place.

After checking their Facebook page, which was quite active, I decided – as a first-time customer – to give them the benefit of the doubt. I contacted them privately, via email, rather than posting my complaint on the open forum.

I sent a short email, explaining that I was a first-time customer but an experienced spinner – and that I was disappointed with the quality of their product.

I told them I didn’t think the original Polwarth wool was at fault, but that it seemed to have been braided so tightly (for whatever purpose) after dyeing that the fiber was compacted to the point of being nearly unusable – and no fun.

I let them know I’d chosen to contact them privately in hopes they were open to suggestions and might consider braiding their lovely fiber more loosely so as to offer their clientele the more enjoyable spinning experience a well-prepared polwarth roving should provide.

Some time in mid-December, I received a polite email response from the Neighborhood Fiber Company, thanking me for taking the time to reach out to them, and letting me know that my comments would be forwarded to the fiber prep department.

Then there was yesterday’s visit to the UPS Store. I know, I know … you were wondering when I’d get to the point. 😉

The unexpected box I opened when we returned home from the UPS Store last evening contained quite a happy surprise.

It held not just one, but two beautiful, loosely braided and gently boxed bags of Polwarth wool roving in one of their most popular colorways.

Kudos to the Neighborhood Fiber Company in Baltimore, Maryland. Your ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ star customer service reviews are obviously well deserved. You may just have made a doubter into a regular customer.

Beautifully dyed, loosely braided, squishy Polwarth wool roving! The colorway is “Fog Point”.