So of course today was the Folk & Fiber Fest or whatever it's called. Went to look at the exhibits and booths at 2 pm and took over the guild table at 3, stayed until closing at 6. At least the questions were intelligent, but they should be when you're at an event that exists solely for people who already knit, sew, weave, crochet, or whatever. There was plenty of activity, but I honestly didn't see a lot of people carrying loaded shopping bags so I suspect that merchants are going to be disappointed again this year. People are looking but not buying.

And maybe that's not surprising when you have a hundred sellers and over 90% of what is displayed is yarn. How much yarn could anyone need? Show us something new, different or imaginative, please.

Meanwhile, Gary is having problems with Windoze. AdAware (an unreliable program at best in my experience) informs him that he has some kind of Trojan called W32.TrojanDropper.Delf and offers to remove it. When told to do so, it says it was removed, but it's still there after a reboot.

Trying to research this thing produces a number of reports claiming that AdAware gives false positives for it, and also claiming that it is a real nasty piece of work that will download tons of spyware and advertising onto your computer unless you get rid of it. The later sites all offer to sell you a "removal tool" but give no useful advice about removing it yourself. They claim to tell you, but say generic things like "Go to the control panel and uninstall the W32.TrojanDropper.Delf" software. Right, sure.

So he decides to go back to a prior checkpoint, a handy feature of XP. Except it apparently doesn't work. No matter what checkpoint time or date he chooses, it comes up with an unhelpful message that the restore was "unsuccessful" but gives absolutely no information about why and nothing useful about how to fix it.

And people just can't understand why I hate Windows and Microsoft so much.

Tags: geekery, rants, spinning
Current Location: Home in the oak grove
Mood: tired

Set of six additional photos from last week's dyeing experiments. This one shows cochineal on wool yarn, with color variations resulting from use of four different mordants. The mordanting compounds were, from top to bottom: potassium aluminum sulfate (alum), potassium dichromate (chrome), copper sulfate (copper), and stannous chloride (tin).

For the rest of the images, click here and use the thumbnails on the right of the linked screen to scroll through the list.

Tags: dyeing, spinning
Current Location: At work, alas
Mood: artistic

Here is Argos in the role of Winston the Book Wolf, with storyteller Ms. Janet dressed as "Granny Winston" as she appears at the end of the book by Marni McGee.

For a sequence of six photos, click here.

The event was an unqualified success. Most of the children were a little bit afraid of the wolf, but after the story was finished they had a craft session in which they made wolf hand puppets from paper lunch bags, and then they were all eager to show the puppets to Winston.

Tags: books, fursuiting, work
Current Location: At work, alas
Mood: accomplished

The story session was a hit. Only a small number of kids, about 12 or 14 I think, but parents and grandparents were there too. The adults were very impressed with the fursuit and presentation, the kids were a bit young to appreciate it all but many did want to "pet" the wolf and some were afraid to get close.

It was hot! The space in the library that I chose was ideal for what we needed, but I forgot that late afternoon sun would be pouring in through a glass wall there. I survived, drippily but it didn't show.

Janet and I posed for photos afterward that may be made into a READ! poster (toes crossed.) I made ears for her and pinned them to her flowered hat, and she split the back of her long skirt so the tail I gave her showed nicely when she stood up at the end.

A nice change for a Wednesday, in any case. Photos by Friday, I hope.

Next project: spinning demos this weekend at McHenry County College.

Tags: fursuiting, work
Current Location: Home in the oak grove
Mood: accomplished

I did get the paws, both hands and feet, done last night. Janet, who will be our storyteller, was delighted this morning when I showed her the tail I made for her. She has a flowery housedress and a straw hat with flowers ready to wear, matching the drawings of the wolf in disguise reading stories to the children in the book. It occurs to me that I should make her ears to pin onto the hat, maybe I can get that done tomorrow morning. The only other crucial thing is a couple of small seams at the neckline, and since I don't have to go in until afternoon tomorrow, I'll get it done in the morning.

Not as heavy a day as yesterday, though there was a fair amount of cataloging again. I did not get any upgrades installed. Weather was cloudy but not rainy, and I did sit outside for 30 minutes at my lunch break so I could work on my spinning.

Need to write checks for some small bills, but none are urgent, and I think I'm going to go to bed early. Not enough sleep the last couple of nights.

We are at the very end of our hay supply, so I sure hope we'll be getting a delivery soon. Yes, even though that means we get to unload and stack hay bales again. We think it's time to get rid of the sheep, but Gary doesn't want them to end up as dog food so likely they will be here for a long time.

Tags: farm, fursuiting, work
Current Location: Home in the oak grove
Mood: tired

It was a bad day. I know that because I was the first one into the library (not all that unusual) and yet didn't get to my own desk to do anything until 11 am. There I found a stack of 20 or so new books waiting to be cataloged, in addition to the network technical stuff that I'd left over from Friday.

Tails completed. Argos has a new, bushier tail, and his old one has been improved and handed over to the storyteller who will wear it under her granny dress for the presentation Wednesday evening. I built the canine tails using a length of 5/8 in. vinyl tubing for support, and adding padding and fur over the top. They swing and wag pretty convincingly and would probably be really effective on a dance floor. ;p

I think I'll do paws tonight. Loose seam in one boot, and both need some stuffing added. Paw gloves or else the body suit sleeves need some lengthening to keep my bare wrist from showing when I'm not being careful as necessary.

There are improvements to the head that I want to make, but they are mostly fairly complex and I may put them off. It's usable as is for this event, needing only some minor work around the neckline.

While I was sitting in the staff kitchen taking a break around 2:30 pm (no lunch for me...) I saw a movement out of the corner of my eye and turned to see a baby cottontail bunny looking in at me through the glass door to the butterfly garden. We stared at each other for a few seconds, and he hopped away only to come back again half a minute later and repeat the whole thing. I watched him sniffling around the doorstep and looking at everything for a couple more minutes before he wandered off into the flowerbeds. He couldn't have been more than five weeks old, I think. His ears were only about an inch long, his tail so small as to be near invisible. Very cute. I hope he avoids being eaten by an owl or hawk.

Tags: fursuiting, wildlife, work
Current Location: Home in the oak grove
Mood: busy

By hand. Not because I don't have several sewing machines here, but because I want more precise results than that. So, I'm assembling a new tail for Argos, sewing with blanket stitch overcast seams and doing it by hand. His old tail will be plumped up a bit and given to the story teller to wear.

Other costumey things to be completed: repair a torn seam in one boot, loosen the fur under his jaw, improve the neck to head interface joint, and add longer cuffs to the gloves. Most of this is fairly trivial except for the jaw fur. If necessary I'll take half or all of Tuesday off to get it done, since I have vacation and personal days available. In fact, I have an extra day because July 4 came on a Saturday and we did not close the day before.

Went to Sam's Club because Gary wanted a filing cabinet. He got that, and we replenished our supply of coffee beans (we like their beans better than the ones at the supermarkets.)

Watered plantlets. Took Tess out to the pasture. Made dinner. Mundane stuff. It was sunny and warm. We actually need some more rain: the creek is dry. But it won't do any good if it all comes in one huge deluge, and we need hay more right now than we need rain.

Just got a stack of additional photos from the dyeing session yesterday, haven't had time to download or sort through them, but I'll post more if they are interesting enough for non-fiber folk to appreciate them. Chances are at least one or two will measure up.

Tags: farm, fursuiting, gardening, weather
Current Location: Home in the oak grove
Mood: busy

Colorful Day's Work Some of the results of about 8 of us playing with wool, silk, and natural dyes on July 11, 2009. There are more colors, but they were hanging over the porch railing and outside the frame. The rippling pink and violet stuff in the foreground is a pile of silk "handkerchiefs" which are not actually woven, but merely stretched sheets of raw silk ready for dyeing and spinning. These were dyed with cochineal, using various mordants. The nearly black and charcoal wools were dyed with logwood, the red and burgundy samples next to the left with cochineal. The brassy colors at the far left of the table were dyed with fustic. The pale bluegreen yarn at the top left has not yet been dyed at all. That's the color left by using copper sulfate as a mordant. Photo courtesy of Barb Bundick.

Tags: dyeing, spinning
Current Location: Home in the oak grove
Mood: artistic

No, not dying. Dyeing. With colors.

I spent a good chunk of the day cataloging Spanish language kids books. Never a fun exercise, that, but these were really yuck. Books spun off from Hannah Montana and then translated into Spanish. Talk about rotting kids brains twice, there it is. Then there were the High School Musical ones, no better. No wonder no one in the entire US had bothered to catalog this junk before.

Argos' appearance at the library has made it onto the website. Look quick if you want to see, after Wednesday it will disappear.

Now the dyeing. Tomorrow my spinning group is having a session on natural plant dyeing. I chose curly dock (Rumex crispus) as my color source since I happen to have a lot of it around. I also gathered daisy fleabane for a fellow member who is going to make dye from that. We have to chop up the plants and simmer them in distilled water for 45 min. or so, then let it cool and strain. That will be the dyestock, which we pour back into the distilled water bottle to take to the workshop tomorrow. The other thing I'm doing is preparing some small samples of white wool yarn by treating them with a mordant. The mordant is the chemical agent that helps the dyes bind to the fiber. The most common and least toxic of mordants used with wool is alum, but the workshop leader is going to provide samples prepared with that. I plan to do mine with copper sulfate, which produces what are often very different hues from the same dye. With daisy fleabane, for instance, alum yields yellow, but copper yields green. Copper sulfate, or copperas as the old dyers used to call it, is a poisonous substance that was once used in pesticides. It is also known as blue vitriol, and has to be handled with care. Fortunately I have dedicated enamel coated kettles to use for dyeing, so that's not a big problem. Other metal salts sometimes used as mordants include iron sulfate (non-toxic, but it dulls colors rather than brightening them,) and tin in the form of stannous chloride (brightens and intensifies color but it is both toxic and caustic, so no longer used much.) There was a chromium salt used at one time, but I don't even know where to get that one, it's so nasty. (Oh, yeah, I remember, it's potassium dichromate, and you can get it from chemical supply places but not from the pharmacy or grocer.) A few dyes require no mordant, or will work with common chemicals such as vinegar, ammonia, or washing soda.

I'm expecting a rusty yellow or a greenish beige from the curly dock, depending on the mordant. If it works, I'll have photos in a day or so.

Gary will be gone with Rob to a Civil War event all day tomorrow, so I am animal care, grocery shopping, AND get to attend my little class. It's going to be busy.

Tags: dyeing, fursuiting, spinning, work
Current Location: Home in the oak grove
Mood: busy

Yesterday Gary handed me a strange-looking plastic gadget about the size of my two fists placed palm to palm. (Maybe one fist if you have big hands, I don't.) It had a big curved hook to go on your belt, and a slide switch on the front. Turns out it's a mosquito repellent gadget marketed under the familiar "Off!" trademark. There's a small battery powered fan in it, and you insert an air filter thing with a tiny capsule of oily looking repellent that very slowly oozes onto the filter. The claim is that it works better than spray on repellents and doesn't have to be on your skin. I was skeptical.

But I tried it today while doing barn chores. The breeze was very light, so whatever the little fan put into the air around me didn't blow away instantly and I'm sure that helped. But it really does work. They claim the unit will clear a cube ten feet on a side, though they don't say how long that takes. It did work best when I was standing in one spot or staying within a small area for several minutes. Even moving around at ordinary speeds it seemed effective, including in some very bad areas, like the duck yard and the pasture gate, where there are usually swarms of mosquitoes just waiting for me to show up. I have no idea what it cost or what the refills cost. One refill lasts 12 hours if running continuously, or up to 14 days if the unit is turned off. Presumably putting it into a zip lock or back into the plastic box it came in would help reduce evaporation while turned off. The active chemical is called metofruthin, something I've never heard of, rather than the usual DEET used in spray ons. Supposedly it is a pyrethrin derived substance, of low toxicity to mammals but very toxic to invertebrates and aquatic life, so you don't want to drop it into your fish tank or pond. It was approved for marketing to the public in 2007, under one of the laxest administrations for regulatory action that we have had in my lifetime, so I'm suspicious of the claims. But I can't deny the functionality of it. If you were sitting on a lawn chair or something stationery, it would probably keep you completely free of bites after the first 20 seconds or so.

Tail waves and whinnies to flaredragon, who is here as close as O'Hare tonight, stuck waiting for a flight home and worrying about whether he can get his bag on board to avoid paying to checked luggage. I would have enjoyed seeing him but Thursday is the worst day for such a thing to happen for me. I can't be away from here for more than a couple of hours at a time because of leaving all the animals alone. I worry too much about what could happen, I suppose, but I'm alone on Thursday, and have to be up early on Friday too to do chores in the morning before going to work. Alas, getting through traffic and then security just to park at the airport would take so much time that it just doesn't work within my rigid schedule for a Thursday. Likewise, for him to get out closer to here by public transit, though possible, is a scheduling nightmare unless he could have stayed overnight and gone out in the morning. With a 5 am flight and the need to be there to get through security before that, it just didn't work out well at all.

Still upgrading software at work, still with the same problems each time. Oh well, only two more machines to go with this level of complexity. The remaining five are much simpler because they operate in kiosk mode, and shouldn't require so much intervention.

OK, time to feed dogs before they eat each other, or me.

Tags: farm, work
Current Location: Home in the oak grove
Mood: tired