Trails - Reno

Lupines by the Walker River

After going through my pictures of the Reno trip, I find that I didn't take many photos. Must have been having too much fun.

Some owls we met in Bridgeport.

A nicely dressed silver longhorn.

Mono Lake from above. The island is an island again.

Had a hard time with the pictures not going where they were supposed to. 

Trails - Reno

Wow, a whole week has gone by.  Between the Conference and sight seeing with Melissa and Lisa I barely had time to sleep, I will post some pictures later.

Trails - Reno

Tomorrow morning RedFish is heading to Reno for the Quilting, Stitching and Crafting Expo.  This is the first time for this venue, hopefully it will be a good show.  I decided to take 2 days to drive and most likely will camp tomorrow night around Bridgeport.

Enjoy the Summer Solstice.

Sock Machine Knitting

Sometimes is really hard work to have a great time.  Lisa and I drove to Solvang last night and were up at the crack of dawn to have breakfast and get to the Sock Machine class.

Sometimes the first attempt of the day just doesn't turn out as planned.

I might have gotten carried away with this one.
All in all I had a great day and learned tons.

Worms

 It has pretty well disappeared inside it's magic chamber. In the bottom picture, the tiny dark speck is it's head spitting out the silk. The cocoon is gold, but very, very pale. I'm amazed!

Worms

My silkworms are spinning.  The first to start is a Howard Gold, it's cocoon is a very beautiful gold. This worm did all the outside work while I was learning how to operate my sock knitting machine yesterday, so I missed it.  The second one is spinning white silk and started this morning. I will take a series of photos until it's encased.  Then I will give them back to Lisa to add to hers for reeling.

This is the gold one, it's still spinning inside. The gold cocoons don't yield as much silk as the white ones.

This one is setting up his frame work. It chose a corner with a paper towel to spin.  To the left of the paper towel, you can see two lines of silk that are heavier that go across to the other side of the box. This is it's hammock for support, then it start's a bubble like structure.

Better angle of the hammock. It's little feet were like suction cups when it was eating, now they come to little points, I guess so they don't grab onto the silk.

Still working away, silk is getting denser.

Sock Machine Knitting

I met a lady who offered to help Lisa and me get our sock machines up and cranking. Lisa is more advanced than I, her machine was out of the packing crate. Mine has been nestled safely in it's crate for a couple years.  Today we traveled to Riverside to learn about these machines.

First thing I learned - my machine is very old and very dirty.  Spent the first part of the day cleaning the main cylinder which was fairly decent, I could have done better with some cleaning oil and an air compressor.

This is my basic machine with a 72 needle cylinder in it. It's clean and I put all new needles in it.

 The needles show better here.

My first cranking. I have a new vocabulary to learn and new tools to buy.

This is the machine with the ribber attachment on top. The needles wouldn't slide in, spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning the gunk from the needle slots.


Knitting has never been one of my favorite things to do, but I do like hand-knitted socks.  I know these aren't hand-knitted but they are the next best thing. They will fit perfectly with no seams. I'm happy.