Recap af Madrona

I had a lovely, but tiring weekend in Tacoma, at the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat. Jennifer and I drove down and got there around 2pm. We hit the Market Place immediately. There were many fine displays at the Market Place. Below is a Manos del Uruguay display that caught my eye.




























What really got my attention was this beautiful red combed wool top. Is was so amazingly soft and luxurious and the color is very rich. I had trouble walking away from it, because I just enjoyed touching it so much. I also enjoyed speaking with the seller, because this wonderful roving came from her sheep. This is a mixture of wools from different types of sheep and also from mixed breed sheep. I spoke with her about the processing and verified that there was no harsh treatment involved. My skin is very sensitive and I often cannot wear wool. One of my theories is that the harsh processing roughs up the cuticle, leaving little barbs on the wool and that this is what troubles my skin so. To support my theory, "superwash" wool does not seem to bother me. Superwash has been treated with a fancy chemical (sodium hypochlorite -NaClO, bleach) to remove the entire cuticle and therefore the barbs. Anyway, this wool was minimally processed and feels superb! I bought a whole bunch to spin!




Surprisingly, I didn't buy much yarn. I mostly bought fiber to spin into yarn. The only yarn purchase I made was at the Blue Moon booth. I bought 4 skeins of Socks That Rock. One is destined to be a gift (and therefore not shown). The two pictured are destined to be pedicure socks for my sister, Annika, and my step mom, Valerie, respectively.

I mentioned that I drove down with Jennifer. The second car included Rachel, Emily, Kristin and Shibani. We had two adjoining hotel rooms for Friday night. After some shopping, we all went out to dinner and then returned to our rooms for a belated birthday cake for Shibani. We spent our time wandering the Market Place, knitting, spinning and chatting and then we returned to Seattle Saturday afternoon. Then, Rachel and I drove back down Sunday morning. We met up with her mom, Gretchen, and two friends. Rachel and I were signed up to take the "Three Wild Downs" class. This was a spinning class to introduce us to spinning the downy fur on three animals. Cashmere is the one most people know. This is down or undercoat from a goat. We also played with buffalo down, Yak down and Camel down. Yep, you can count, that makes 4 wild downs! She gave us the camel as a bonus! This class was taught by Judith MacKenzie-McCuin. She is a great teacher, incredibly knowledgeable, totally approachable and down to earth... and on and on. I agree with the Yarn Harlot: I would take a class on flushing the toilet from this woman. She is all that. And the content in this class was great. I learned that I can use the same techniques to spin dog hair. Yes, I have been collecting Denver's soft downy coat for some time now and have plans to spin it and knit something. I have way more confidence for how to do that now.

I would like to give a special thanks to my parents-in-law. Loren and Barb gave me the carrying case for my spinning wheel for Christmas. It was so great to have and made transport of my wheel effortless! Thank You!

I will recap some of the cool fibers I purchased in a future post.

Madrona

You may have noticed that the knitting content on this blog is VERY low. I guess life has just been too busy. I have not knit at all lately! I did knit on the flight from Reno to Seattle on Wednesday. And now, my focus will be entirely on knitting and other "fiber arts" for the next three days. I am going to the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat in Tacoma, WA. I will be heading down there early this afternoon and basically there until Sunday evening. I am taking the Three Wild Downs spinning class which The Yarn Harlot really enjoyed at Granlibakken this fall. And of course, time with the fiberphiles is precious, now that I no longer live in Seattle.

Hey look, a chicken: I love to see what the spell check suggests for words it doesn't know. For example, it would the the fiberphiles to become fiberglass! Tee hee. And I'm sure I forget to use it frequently, so don't expect this blog to be free of misspellings and typos!

links updated

For some reason, the links to Emily's and Jack's blogs were broken. They are now fixed.

Our Big Day

Today, a big truck came with Salty's (the mason) materials for building the new fireplace. It had 4 pallets on it, but I didn't get the photo until the first two were off-loaded. The city owns 10 feet of land on either side of the road, so we couldn't heat the bottom of our driveway. Salty got there early and applied his blow torch to the bottom of the driveway, which had a couple inches of solid ice. Then the delivery arrived. It seemed unlikely, to everyone except Salty, that Glenn, the delivery guy, could bring the materials up the driveway on his forklift. This is the same driveway that the snow removal folks said was too steep to come up. Well, it turned out that it was a non issue. It didn't even phase Glenn. Everyone else (plumbers, electricians, contractors and us) was totally impressed. We all ran out to the deck to check it out.
We left the rental at 9am. We walked through our entire house with the electricians, discussed details with the plumbers, and walked though with the low voltage wiring guy (phone, coax cable, cat5 and speaker wire). We came back to the rental for ~ 1/2 hour, then left again to check out some potential stair rail material, visit a plumbing show room for all of our fixtures, and meet with the cabinet guy for the final kitchen plan. We grabbed a quick dinner on the way home and got in just before 7pm. It was a long day, but we got a lot done!


Last week, we came up with a final design for the fireplace. Last night, I created a cartoon of it. No, that is not a double fireplace. The big one is the fireplace and the small one is for wood storage. There is no hearth, because we will have slate floors. A masonry hearth seemed to be too big of a presence in the room. Not having the masonry hearth also allowed us to have the wood storage and remain within our budget. To create the stone texture in this picture, I created a "swatch" taken from an actual photo of Satly's work. We have chosen the same stone, which is a mix of local granite and some granite from just east of Tahoe. We have chosen a "mortar-less" style, unlike this example. Basically, the mortar will not show, and the stone will have a stacked appearance.

It never get's old

While skiing on Saturday, Tim stopped to enjoy the view...

... it just never gets old. This spot is in the same general area of Tim's official proposal. In other words, this is where he gave me the ring. We had actually already set a date. Our actual marriage took place down the hill a bit and to the North (left)of here.

A beautiful day in the neighborhood

Rainbow Ridge at Homewood is one of the most beautiful spots I know. We got a few runs in today and it was beautiful! Below is a shot from the top of The Face.
Homewood Ski Area has the best Views of Lake Tahoe. As you can see, Homewood is literally across the street from the lake.

no DSL yet

DSL was supposed to be active yesterday, but it didn't happen. I've had some conversations with the appropriate folks and we have an idea what's wrong. Basically the wires were not hooked up properly. Hopefully it will be fixed tomorrow afternoon.

I took a bunch of house pictures today to show you how it looks right now. I'll post them tomorrow, hopefully. The stair well is nice and open with the post removed... oh and the stairs. They're gone! We have a big open shaft there now. Stay tuned for pix..

Big Metal Cross Beam Thing

The house continues to progress. As far as I can tell (which doesn't mean much) the framing is all done. The electrician is doing his thing and and we should have a final decision on the fireplace tomorrow.

The big news is that the Big Metal Cross Beam Thing is in. Yep, that IS the technical name for it. It spans across the opening to the stairwell from the great room and basically holds everything up. Since I can't take a picture to show you (i can, i just can't download it to my computer) I'll use my photoshop skills to draw it on the original architects sketch.



The big red stripe across the top of the sketch is the "Big Metal Cross Beam Thing". There is no longer a column/post in the middle of the opening, so it is totally opened up. We think it's pretty neat!

"The House"

I'm writing/posting from "the cabin" today. Tim and I keep saying "the house" to each other, which is totally non-specific, so it only confuses the listener. "The house" could mean any of three houses! There is "the house" we are currently living in, which I propose we call "the rental". Then, there is "the house" we own and will live in once the remodel is done. I will attempt to refer to it as "our house". Finally, there is "the house" that belongs to my family. Tim has been staying there for the last many months when working. I plan to refer to this as "the cabin". Got it? Good.

I have arranged to activate a second phone line in "the rental" and get DSL on it. This will be in our name, so that we can take it with us to "our house" when we move in. Right now, I am accessing the internet at "the cabin".

We will have our own DSL up on Tuesday, so it will be easier to post. Most of the framing is done at our house, so when I find the camera cable, I'll post some pictures.

For that potential interested reader (you know who you are), we only got a light dusting of snow the last couple of days, with no measurable accumulation. It has been really cold though, so the snow-making next door has been very active. The hill looks well covered -The Face is groomed and has no obstacles showing. The outside temp is 15.1 F at 1:30 PM.

Project: Fireplace

I need to make the final decision on a fireplace design in the next couple of days. We are replacing the old fireplace with a "Rumford". This is the only kind of wood burning fireplace that meets the strict emmission standards in the area. I think the story is pretty cool. This guy designed the most effective fireplace that he could for heating, and it is still the best, not only for heating, but for burning clean and minimizing emissions. Following is an article I took from the Buckley Rumford website:

What is a Rumford Fireplace,
Anyway?

by Jim Buckley
Rumford fireplaces are tall and shallow to reflect more heat, and they have streamlined throats to eliminate turbulence and carry away the smoke with little loss of heated room air.
Rumford fireplaces were common from 1796, when Count Rumford first wrote about them, until about 1850. Jefferson had them built at Monticello, and Thoreau listed them among the modern conveniences that everyone took for granted. There are still many original Rumford fireplaces - often buried behind newer renovations-throughout the country.

Count Rumford, for whom the fireplace is named, was born Benjamin Thompson in Woburn, Massachusetts in 1753 and, because he was a loyalist, he left (abruptly) with the British in 1776. He spent much of his life as an employee of the Bavarian government where he received his title, "Count of the Holy Roman Empire." Rumford is known primarily for the work he did on the nature of heat.

Back in England, Rumford applied his knowledge of heat to the improvement of fireplaces. He made them smaller and shallower with widely angled covings so they would radiate better. And he streamlined the throat, or in his words "rounded off the breast" so as to "remove those local hindrances which forcibly prevent the smoke from following its natural tendency to go up the chimney..."
Rumford wrote two papers detailing his improvements on fireplaces in 1796 and in 1798.* He was well known and widely read in his lifetime and almost immediately in the 1790s his "Rumford fireplace" became state-of-the-art worldwide.

Today, with the extensive restoration of old and historic houses and the renewed popularity of early American and classical architecture in new construction, Rumford fireplaces are enjoying a comeback. Rumford fireplaces are generally appreciated for their tall classic elegance and their heating efficiency.

____________

*Most recently Rumford's two essays on fireplaces have been published in The Collected Works of Count Rumford; Vol. 2; Sanborn Brown, ed.; Harvard Univ. Press; 1969; available in most libraries or through Inter-Library Loan or On Line Version

Well, now we know about the fireplace itself, I have to decide exactly what the outside will look like. ASAP!
Here is a list of decisions to be made:
1. How high to make the hearth - we kind of like 18" but we're concerned about$
2. What size rumford (fireplace opening) -42" or 48" square
3. Built in wood storage?
4. Chimney -from fireplace to ceiling.


We have picked out the type of granite to use and the basic look of it. Here is an example or our mason's work and the particular stone we're using.

I'll let you know when I've got the rest figured out!

Internet Ski Lodge

I'm hanging' out at the local internet cafe ski lodge, eating my lunch. It is so great to be here. I've come home!

We arrived here at 3am Monday. The drive took longer than usual, due to the trailer. We had rain as we left Seattle, which dried up in the middle of Oregon somewhere. The roads were dry the rest of the way. The dogs were both pretty good. We had them in the truck with us, as the back was filled with stuff. The back seat in the extended cab isn't so big, and definately cramped Jack's style. He said that was OK, that being on the soft seat in the heated cab, was totally worth it. He just stretched out and left Denver stuck in a tiny corner, anyway. Pictures will be added to this post when I find the cord for my camera!

House News:

I have lot's of good news to report! Both dogs get along with the dogs at our home construction site. This is Tahoe, land of free dogs. They go everywhere with their people -no leash law just "verbal control". So there are two dogs at work (with their people)at our place, and J & D both get along well with them.

It looks, to me, like the framing is almost done. The electrician was there this morning, fixing up some of the wiring and prepping for the future stuff.

The other guy, who was there this morning, was the guy from the gas company. He was connecting the gas! Once he was done with that, the heat was turned on! So now, I really can sing, "The heat is on..." The heat/furnace deal is kind of interesting. We got no choice at all. On every other issue, Slater (GC) asks us what we want, and bends over backward to get us what we want. The furnace was different. His normal furnace guy said "No" to our job and another this winter. He had a hard time finding a furnace guy this year for his jobs, so when he found one, he said here's what you pay, period. The good news is that we got a very nice, quiet furnace! We were concerned about the noise, because some gas-forced air furnaces are quite loud. Apparantly, the air intake has a lot to do with that, and because there was room, they put in 20" ducting. Bottom line: quiet heat, happy us!

Internet Ski Lodge

I'm hanging' out at the local internet cafe ski lodge.

sorry, false post. see complete post above.

We've had enough; we're leaving!

It is official, we are moving tomorrow! We are packing today, and tomorrow, we drive away.