TL;DR, or, Coffeeneuring 2015 Summary

The summary.

My theme within a theme was Fibers.  Mostly knitting, but not always.  Finished projects:
Handspun Elemental Shawl
Thuja Socks

Still in process:
Flower Fair Isle Socks

Being retired, I got out whenever I wanted.

Ride: 1
Writeup
Date: Sunday, Oct 4
Destination: Council Crest Park, Portland, OR
Beverage: coffee brewed right at my picnic table, with milk and sweetner
Bike friendliness: picnic tables under shady trees.  Pretty nice!
Total mileage: 15.75 miles
Fiber tie-in: Elemental Shawl





By the way, the shawl was finally finished.



Ride: 2
Writeup
Destination: Jim and Patty's Coffee, Beaverton, OR
Date: Saturday, Oct 10
Beverage: Borgia Mocha
Bike friendliness: strip mall has the same crap wheel-breaker bike rack.  Baristas make up for it.
Total mileage: 2.73 miles
Fiber tie-in: Flower Fair Isle Socks



Ride: 3
Writeup
Destination: Nike West Campus, Edo Building coffee cart, Beaverton, OR (just across SW Walker from the THRPD ball fields)
Date: Thursday, Oct 15
Beverage: Mocha
Bike friendliness: When I worked there, I was used to wheeling my bike into any building and leaving it unlocked in the lobby, or in a corner, or under some stairs.  This day, I locked it outside.
Total mileage: 11.59 miles
Fiber tie-in: delivered 3 skeins of handspun wool, which I processed all the way from the dirty fleece right off the sheep.

Finally delivering some handspun yarn to the former co-worker who gave me four bags of fleece.



Ride: 4
Writeup
Date: Friday, Oct 16
Distance: 28.47 mi
Vertical feet: 2000
Location: Saint Cupcake SW,  1138 SW Morrison St
Bike Friendliness: Adorable whisk bike rack.  See the picture.
Bike: Rivendell
Beverage: Americano
Food: a Lemon dot and an Chocolate Hazelnut dot (mini cupcakes)
Fiber tie-in: Thuja socks, because I hit a roadblock on the Fair Isle Flower Socks.



Ride: 5? (might be too many in a week...)
Writeup
Date: Sunday, Oct 18
Distance: 4.8 miles
Destination: Ava Roasteria Beaverton
Bike: Rivendell
Beverage: Pumpkin Spice Latte
Bike Friendliness: well, they've got a rack
Fiber tie-in: Thuja socks



Ride: 6
Writeup
Date: Saturday, October 24
Distance: 2.42 miles
Destination: Hits the Spot Cafe, North Plains, OR
Bike: Sweetpea
Beverage: Coffee
Bike Friendliness: just lean it outside somewhere, don't block the door.
Fibers tie-in: Thuja socks



Finished  the socks that evening.



Ride: 7  (I think.  I might have 3 rides in one week and will need another ride)
Writeup
Date: Monday, November 2
Distance: 4.72 miles
Destination: Bogza Coffee, Beaverton, OR
Bike: Rivendell
Beverage: Borgia Mocha
Bike Friendliness: Super nice today; garage door was open, so I parked it behind my chair
Fibers tie-in: Flower Fair Isle Socks



Ride: 8  (Although my official #7)
Writeup
Date: Saturday, November 7
Distance: 2.1 miles
Destination: Verboort Sausage Festival, Verboort, OR
Bike: Sweetpea
Beverage: Coffee
Bike Friendliness: Leaned it up against a building, no lock
Fibers tie-in: Flower Fair Isle Socks



Ride: 9
Writeup
Date: Tuesday, November 10
Distance: 22 miles
Destination: Symposium Coffee, Tigard, OR
Bike: Rivendell Bleriot
Beverage: Mocha
Bike Friendliness: Bike rack outside; viewable from large windows
Fibers tie-in: Flower Fair Isle Socks

Coffeeneuring 2015: Coffee Outside

Ride: 1
Destination: Council Crest Park, Portland, OR
Date: Sunday, Oct 4
Beverage: coffee brewed right at my picnic table, with milk and sweetner
Bike friendliness: picnic tables under shady trees.  Pretty nice!
Total mileage: 15.75 miles



Coffeeneuring 2015 is underway, with its delightful collection of rules.  Given the traffic on the Coffeeneuring facebook group yesterday, it looks like participation has exploded this year.  There are postings from Kyiv (Ukraine), and somewhere in the Central Asian Steppe!

Rule 2 allows for Coffee Shop Without Walls (Coffee Outside).  At its simplest, one procures coffee, rides somewhere, and drinks it.  More elaborate undertakings include collecting all the equipment needed to grind and brew coffee in the Great Outdoors, and doing that.

Every year I have said to myself "gonna do Coffee Outside!", and then I don't locate the needed equipment, and it doesn't happen.

Part of the plan was to do this with the gear already at the house.  I used to backpack, and had certainly made coffee outside!

This year, I rummaged in the shed, went through my backpack twice; no Svea 123 stove...  More shed rummaging (this includes climbing over the riding mower, and balancing on a few things to reach the upper shelves, without inside lighting, so it is kind of dim), and I finally spotted my Sigg Tourist cookset, which I knew contained the stove.

The stove has not been used for a couple of decades.  It had some fuel, and right next to the cookset was my old fuel bottle, which had more fuel.  Filled up the stove, and it fired right up.

Next up was to get a mug and a drip thingie.  Mugs are easy.  For that matter, so was the drip thingie.  I had a choice of the cone, or a Bodum Solo.  Grabbed the Bodum Solo, just because I hadn't used it before.  I think it, and the mug, came into the house many years before as part of a Drum Corps Auction.

My destination was Council Crest Park, one of the two high points in the Portland area, and a popular destination for cyclists wanting a climb.  From my house to the summit is about 6 miles and 800 vertical feet.

Got to the park, and as usual, rode to the very top, to enjoy the view.  Another cyclist started a conversation by admiring my bike :-) and we went on from there.





Then I prospected for a spot to set up.  There are some picnic tables under some tall trees down below - no path, and a steep embankment, so I had them all to myself.



I had ground the coffee at home (blend of Mocha Java and Espresso Decaf), so had only to heat up the water and brew away.



Pulled out my knitting while the water was heating, and worked away on my lace Elemental Shawl.  Now in the final 8 rows, but each row is 855 stitches.  Won't finish quickly!

So I'd knit 50 stitches, and then sip some coffee.  Coffee was ok; maybe I'll use the drip cone next time.  Or more coffee.

Coffee consumption complete, 2/3 of a row complete, and the stove cooled down, I packed everything up to finish the ride.  Tradition dictates that one circumnavigate Council Crest on Fairmount Blvd before returning, so that's what I did.

It was SUCH a nice afternoon that there were many cyclists out on Fairmount, and even more on Hewett Blvd on the return.

The Other Spinning

There is still a wheel involved, except it is attached to my Ashford Traditional spinning wheel.  Back in February, I finally started spinning my Black Currant 80% Merino 20% Silk Top.  I can only reliably spin laceweight, so there we were.



It took FOREVER to spin the first 2 ounces.  There were long period of non-spinning, and, I am not the world's fastest spinner.  I have a choice of speed or consistency.



A month or so ago, I finally started on the last 2 ounces.  Slow progress.  Never to be finished.  BUT!  A Craftsy spinning class was getting a lot of positive chatter on Ravelry.  It would teach me how to spin worsted to long-draw (woolen).

My spinning is mostly self-taught, with a little help from one or two friends, reading, and watching YouTube videos.

The first lesson was on the short forward draw, which wasn't what I was doing.  I switched to that, and immediately got a LOT faster.  I even moved to a smaller whorl on my flyer (for cyclists, it is EXACTLY the same as moving to a smaller cog on the rear cluster.  Lots more twist.) Not only that, but I also gained vocabulary.  A week later, spinning for a few hours in the evenings, I finally finished.

I let the singles rest overnight before I started plying.  I also bought a plying class, but haven't started it.

Six treadles seemed about right.  Maybe.  Maybe not.  I plyed over three evenings, eventually finishing off one bobbin and completely filling the bobbin on the wheel.  Hmm.  Maybe not totally consistent.



In a fit of organization, I had weighed my empty bobbins, so I knew how much fiber was on them.  Wound off half the remaining singles onto another bobbin, and continued plying onto another bobbin.



I skeined the second bobbin ; counting the number of turns on the niddy noddy gave me 238 yards.  After letting it sit overnight on the niddy noddy (twisted flat to help relax the twist) and removing the skein, I started skeining that really full bobbin.  About 90 minutes later (Call the Midwife on the tv), I was done.  Counting those turns revealed another 933 yards, so about 1200 yards of two ply laceweight altogether.  I know there will be less after finishing, but that is still way more than I need for the planned project.

I did worry a bit about the wrong amount of plying twist, but letting the singles and then the plyed yarn rest between each stage seems to have taken care of it.  The yarn appears balanced.

Finishing - a soak in gentle wash detergent, a soak in vinegar water, a soak in plain water, squeezing the water out by rolling up in a towel, some snapping, and hanging to dry.

The Swallowtail Lace Shawl

This knitting project has been in my queue for awhile. After I finished plying up my very first handspun, I thought there might be enough to knit that shawl.

I cast on during the Winter Olympics. Ripped it out twice (only 10 rows in, no biggie). Spent bits of time since then knitting spiderweb-weight yarn on (relatively) bigger needles. Put in lifelines. Cut up plastic drinking straws to use for the amazingly large number of stitch markers (one between each pattern repeat). Spent my days muttering "k2tog, yo, k, yo, ssk, k". Then the section including the nupps ( Estonian for "you can really screw it up here if you are not obsessively careful".

The pattern called for 14 repeats of the first lace pattern chart, but I wanted a bigger shawl. There are instructions out there for a 19 repeat variation; I decided to do that one. Guidance was found here:

• Pepperknit's Blog
• LittleBerry Knits Blog
• Musing Racoon's Swallowtail Tick Sheet

It always amazes me (in knitting, and in life in general), how the getting to the end of something is generally much more exciting then the actual end of something. (bicycling may be a bit different).

It is done, and blocking.

Spinning, Part 2

No wonder that pencil roving took so very, very long to spin and ply. The best son ever (TM) gave me a McMorran Balance for Hanukkah, and tonight I used it to figure out how much yarn I had made up.

47.25 inches balanced. Times 100 gives me 4725 YARDS in a pound. The total weight of the yarn is 110g, or .242 pounds. Basic 6th grade math (or 4th; don't remember. It was New Math back in the day, and I thought it was pretty cool) renders a shocking total of 1143.45 yards.

Wow. That's a LOT of very, very fine yarn. For comparison, 100g of sock yarn is in the vicinity of 400-450 yards.

So I knitted up a bit of it on US sz 2 (2.75mm) needles:



I probably have enough for that Swallowtail shawl, yes indeed.

A Lace Scarf

A friend: "isn't making lace done by tatting?". Well that's one way. Also bobbin lace, crochet, and knitting.



I've been wanting to try knitted lace. The Branching Out scarf pattern seemed a good place to start - it had all the lace techniques (well, most of them, and all the common ones) in it, and, in theory, wasn't a hard project.

I had a large amount of Schaefer Anne fingering weight yarn leftover from some socks, by weight it appeared to be sufficient.

And so I cast on, and started out. Having learned from the Pink Ribbon Socks that it is really annoying to rip the whole thing out when you've made a mistake and can't figure out how to fix it, I put in lifelines after each pattern repeat (10 rows). The first 6 repeats were error-free. Piece of cake. I almost did not put in a lifeline after repeat 6. Good think I did - I think I did repeat 7 at least 5 times.



Error analysis showed that something was going wrong between pattern rows 3 and 5. I'd probably forget a yarn over.

My error correction techniques involved blowing up the lace chart so it was more easily readable and marking out logical (to me) groups of stitches, putting markers in the knitting, and running an additional lifeline after row 4. And slavishly counting stitches at the end of each row.

It worked, and I proceeded along with much less ripping out. My plan was to use up the yarn, so I kept doing repeats until it looked like I wouldn't have enough for a repeat and the five final rows, and bound it off last night.



Blocking wires had been borrowed from friend K; it is now blocking on the floor in a spare bedroom. It looks way cool.