Anne’s sister and her hubby have a mountain home on Lookout Mountain, Georgia. They spend time there and also at their home in Atlanta. We visit (both places) often as either are about and hour and three quarters travel on easy back roads – minimum motorways. Anyway Anne had a couple of days off so we packed up and drove up to the mountain. As usual we took a lot of food – more than we’d need!!
We arrived early afternoon and despite the weather had been cloudy on the way there, once we arrived at the top of the mountain it cleared to blue skies and puffy clouds. Perfect weather to move out onto the deck for some relaxing with the view. Anne and Sue worked on a jigsaw puzzle, Jack read and I continues to spin on my Rappard wheel.
The fiber is a bit of mystery. It was sent to me as a gift by a customer of R&M Yarns. https://rmyarns.com/ He weaves rugs made from sock loopers (it’s the part of the sock that is trimmed off as they are sewn together and was often thrown away) and would take natural colored sock loopers, ice dye them and weave the rugs which he said flew off the shelves. As it turns out a lot of the sock making industry moved off-shore and those that remained updated their processes which pretty well ended the supply of sock-loopers. We did however have a couple of hundred pound of them from a much earlier purchase by the owner. He was very pleased to find the new supply and eventually bought all of our natural colored ones. There was much too-ing and fro-ing in the process and he obviously appreciated it as he asked me if I would like some qiviut fiber to spin so I said yes, having heard of it before but as it is extremely expensive, I had yet to try it.
It eventually arrived and I was very surprised at the amount – a whole pound, which at current rates could be worth more than $800. So that is one part of the mystery. Another is that it is natural white, which for qiviut is very rare as it is normally light through dark brown Qiviut is the soft under fiber from the Arctic muskox and while it can be farmed it is more normally gathered from where it is found after it naturally falls off in spring (hence the high price). I can really only find out if it is qiviut if I can see, on a microscope, if the fiber is hollow. The staple length is short so that does match. Anyway it is fiber and I’m spinning it in very fine singles to eventually make 3-ply. Once I have some I will put out a blog entry on it and hopefully by then I’ll have identified it properly.
Back at the mountain we eventually moved to dinner: spare ribs, roast veggies from our garden, coleslaw and cheese garlic biscuits. After clean up we set up the fire pit on the lower level of the property – still looking out over Alabama.
It was a great sunset and as the clouds cleared we sat and spotted satellites in the night sky.
After that it was back inside to play a game of Farkle (Sue won) followed by an old episode of Midsomer Murders before bed.
As is typical with these visits we started the day with coffee in the hot tub (yes it too has a $1M view) before a hearty breakfast and for us a slow pack up. Jack and Sue are staying on for another couple of nights.
We returned home to the valley and continued work on the studio stairs. These are the stairs up from the studio to the spinning loft, library mezzanine, and the ‘Fairly Large Room’ – our second lounge which is the room above the garage.
Various shots of the stairs – the step parts are finished, I can now put the outer railing back on and then to the top step and landing finishing. They will finally look like stairs (after 3 years of open treads).