Anything Fiber Sale 2016

Yesterday was the Anything Fiber Sale which was an absolutely wonderful experience. It's set up to be a place for people to go and destash the fiber related stuff that they've decided they're never going to use. So it's basically a big yard sale for just fiber arts stuff. The booths are relatively inexpensive so I thought it'd be a good opportunity to take my dyed wool out to the public and see if there was any interest. I wanted Jackie to come with me but unfortunately her hip has been hurting her real bad. Fortunately my good friend Sue decided to come with me - she had some really cool needlepoint kits she wanted to offer for sale.

It was a four hour drive and table set up started at 7:30am - that meant we had to leave at 3am. Hoooly cow, I was sure Sue would bail after I told her that but no! That woman is intrepid! So with a car full of Jackie's detash stuff, 36 braids of hand dyed wool, and Sue's awesome kits we hit the road. Despite my best plans, we arrived late at 8 am but we still had plenty of time to set up before the 9:45 am deadline and take a walk around the place. There were a lot of vendors will awesome stuff including some folks selling merino for $3 a braid. THREE DOLLARS! My heart did a little flip flop, I don't mind telling you. I thought after people saw that, no one would want to pay for my stuff which was priced between $10 and $14 a braid, depending on what the fiber content was. I felt really anxious at 10 am when the doors opened and people started coming in.

There was a great crowd - people were actually lined up at the door. A few people showed polite interest but kept walking and I started to think I would never sell anything ever when a fellow walked up, chatted with me a bit about wool properties, and then bought a braid of corriedale in a colourway I named smoldering coals.

My first sale at a fiber show. <3

That sale really gave me a lot of courage - no matter what I wouldn't have to go home and admit that no one had bought anything I made. And that really helped loosen me up. I made an effort not to lean too hard on people who showed an interest (don't you hate the awkward feeling when you just want to browse but a very talented and well-intentioned sales person / artist tries to sell you?) but I passed out cards with my website address, answered questions, and generally had a great time. People actually wanted to listen to be babble (at excessive length) about the material and mechanical properties of wool! Amazing!

I sold 18 braids of wool, precisely half of what I brought. I had two tables - one with one wool and one with destash stuff and Sue kindly ran the destash table so I could focus on my fluffy stuff. We did pretty well. Even neglecting the destash stuff, once I account for my material costs, booth rental, and gas money I made a modest profit on wool sales alone. That's just amazing. It's given me a lot of hopeful confidence and I'm looking to team up with Julia, my fellow dyeing friend, to get some booths at local fiber festivals.

I learned a lot of things:

1. Different people have totally different tastes in colour. I think we all know my feelings about blue and Jackie has often encouraged me to be more adventurous in my dyeing. I have produced some braids I thought were downright ugly. Jackie insisted some of them were really beautiful but I was pretty sure she was lying with a motherly affection. In reality all of my favourite braids like Witch Queen and my graceful blue and green blends sold but so did my least favourite braids. I came home with stuff I like but don't find very exciting - isn't that interesting?

2. Felters will buy hand-dyed wool. This is my bias showing through - I don't really felt much, though I've looked into the wool types that felt well for a potential customer. As a spinner, I've selected my wools and dyes to suit other spinners. I had no idea felters would be such a big marker but I think atleast a third of my sales went to felters. Wow! That's pretty neat to me because I'm in North Carolina where a lot of finer sheep breeds don't do as well. To get semi-locally sourced merino and the like I've got to head north where there's a less oppressive humidity in the summers. But Romney sheep do well here in NC and in the beginning I bought a lot of reasonably priced romney wool top to practice my dyeing on. I thought I'd have to abandon my Romney - it's great for durable garments like hats and mittens but it's really not as soft and fluffy as a lot of people want their homespun to be. But Romney is great for felting! So I have a great excuse to keep supporting my local Romney shepherd.

3. I can't be trusted with a pocket full of cash at a fiber sale. I guess we already knew this. :p Sue, that wicked enabler, watched the booth so I could go wandering around several times. I didn't go crazy though, I just made a some purchases that I feel really good about. I got some camvas aprons for my little table loom, some Chicagoo sock knitting needles - I've been wanting to try them out. I got a knit picks binder for Jackie and also all the dyes that were for sale at one wonderful booth. :x That's an investment, right? Hardly counts.

Busy, Busy

So I rented a booth at the Fiber Anything Sale, which is a place where people can destash their extra fiber arts stuff. So sort of like a jumble sale but just for fiber arts stuff. It's supposed to be purely for people selling their stuff off but! My prices are already so low I think it could work. :) I'm hopeful, anyway.

So last weekend I went up to my parents' place and Jackie filled my trunk full of stuff she doesn't want to look at anymore. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do if no one buys it but my yarn cone population may have just doubled. And I have been dyeing my fingers off (Well not so much off as blue. And green. And purple. I'm not good at wearing gloves) and producing many braids in hopes of having a range of colours and fibers on offer when I get there. As you can see... I have been very busy:

So much dyeing! I really feel like I've been improving both my process and my eye for colour... though I'd be lying if I said none of my attempts got quietly shuffled out of sight. :P In any case, today I printed up a bunch of labels so people will know what the braid is.

Look at that. I made that with my own little hands and there it is, looking very nearly professional. I had to send these two braids off to (hopefully) happy spinners who won them in the recent Team Merlin Tree Tour Du Fleece, but I took pictures and I keep pausing to open the image and coo at my own creation.

And We're Back!

Well my imaginary fiber folks, since last we spoke I packed up and moved into Chez Arienna. I got the keys a bit earlier than I expected which gave me a chance to pop over and crawl over the place, get some painting done. I had one moment where I walked into my big (to me), empty house with nothing but a spinning wheel and some knitting for company and I felt so, utterly alone. I got that panicky, I-have-made-a-huge-mistake feeling and was not comforted when I walked barefoot across my yard and discovered a fire ant infestation. Man was I regretting everything.

But then the lovely Cheryle, my Mama Elf, arrived. She brought me an air mattress, flowers, and the rest of my local family to help me paint my house. Somewhere between all the chatter and my newly blue walls, I started feeling a whole lot better about everything.

I felt even better after I'd called the pest control folks. Apparently the county I moved to is just... just ants. All the time. If you check out the county FAQ page it basically sums up to, "The ants are here to stay and I, for one, welcome our new ant overlords." So I've signed up for a lifelong battle against ants.. but fortunately the fire ants are gone now and there's no sign of carpenter ants. So that's that!

I still have piles of unpacked boxes but I'm getting my craft room and goodies back together. This past weekend I finally unpacked the dyes and got to work, putting a couple of pretty new Corriedales up for sale in the shop:

I also *drum roll* finished my homespun February Lady. :D I'll talk about that on a separate post but, man! I'm just so proud. I finished her last week and since I've been halfheartedly working on Jaime's socks. I've just finished the instep decreases on those and have nothing left but a couple miles of foot knitting and a couple toes.

I spun up some merino... First I spun this lovely, beautiful, sparkly purple-grey stuff from my talented friend Julia, you can find her store here. This was a bit of a challenging spin for me because it had some texture in it and I'm too much of a control freak to tolerate that. So instead I paused and worked out each bit of texture and produced the softest, squishiest heavy fingering I've ever touched.

Now I'm not a huge fan of purple but it turns out my friend Christian is, it's is favourite colour. And this particular purple has such a subtle hue that I think we can work it into a fairly masculine scarf for him, using the herringbone stitch. Unfortunately.. I've only got around 325 yards of heavy fingering / DK and that won't make much of a scarf unless we abandon all pretenses of masculinity and go straight for the lace. I experimented a bit, laying it next to some different shades and I decided it might work if I did some stripes with black. And what luck, I had bought 3 lbs of black merino from the wool processors up at the Maryland Sheep & Wool!

I spun up a similarly sized skein but.. oh, boys and girls. The differences between these two fibers is night and day. The black merino is stiff and wiry and rougher against my skin than Romney. I'm really incredibly disappointed. I've given it a wash so far with Soak and a little conditioner - it left a bunch of grey in the water. I'm not sure what else to do because I've got 3 lbs of the stuff and if it all turns out this awful, that's money right down the drain.

What's On My Reading List: Sweater Quest

Because I am moving and shouldn't buy too many new things until all my old things are at my house, last weekend I went to the Stuff Redux, a place similar to my beloved Scrap Exchange but in Richmond, VA. Jaime took be there a month or so ago and I'd made an absolute killing, picking up some acid dyes, some alpaca yarn, and a cone of lace weight mohair all for under $20. I'd considered buying up a bunch of knitting pattern books and then someone, in all the excitement, I'd walked out without the books. I spent the last month gnawing on the table and kicking myself for forgetting them. So my first order of business, on arriving in Richmond, was to go get them. I picked up about half a dozen pattern books (for $1 each!) and found a novel by Adrienne Martini.

Sweater Quest: My Year of Knitting Dangerously is a novel that bills itself as the story of her year spent tackling the Mount Everest of knitting... A Fair Isle sweater designed by Alice Starmore. She does this while raising two kids and working two jobs and, obviously, writing a novel. This is the sort of thing I can really get behind and I was super excited. All the other knitting books went into a box but Sweater Quest and I retired to my sofa with a glass of wine and a couple of cats. Ms Martini started strong, discussing herself and why she knits and covered a fascinating chapter about the Alice Starmore drama. I had no idea there was a brilliant and litigious Scottish woman out there, producing and defending intricate colour work!

The topic interested me enough that I went out and did some research. I think the issue is more nuanced and double-sided than Ms. Martini presented in her book but I can't really hold that against her. I can say the book sort of slid off after that chapter. I'm about half way through and it's become a painful slog. It's starting to read more of a who's who in the knitting world as Ms. Martini travels extensively and chats with the big names in our weird little world. Whole paragraphs, even pages, are transcriptions of these chats. She also includes a header on her chapters, listing how much she paid for materials... like, $130 for the book with the pattern in it. And that's where the book started making me really uncomfortable.

Knitting is a pretty self-indulgent hobby for me and probably for a lot of people. This is the first time in my life I've had enough money to spend significantly on a hobby (drawing comics is not a major money maker) so maybe that's part of the problem. I feel a little awkward about how much I spend on knitting and spinning. I'm trying to defray the costs somewhat by selling my dyed wool on Etsy but really... I spend a lot of money on fiber. And that's totally okay! I don't have a lot of responsibilities. I'm a single woman with two cats and a small house. Once we're all fed and the mortgage is paid for, I'm not really responsible to anyone else. Even if I shared my finances with a partner I would have spending money written into my budget and I would totally spend most of it on wool.

But it's super self-indulgent. Especially since I live in North Carolina where we get below freezing weather for all of a month during a bad winter. I don't need to knit to clothe myself or my family. I do it because I love it. And I spend lots of money to do it with unnecessarily nice materials. And that's fine, it's how a spend my spending money budget. But reading about Ms. Martini's year long traipse around the country (remember, this was billed as a book about a woman struggling to knit a complicated sweater while raising two kids and working two jobs), meeting the shiniest of knitters, buying the rarest of yarns really throws a harsh light on the wanton consumption aspects of fiber and tool acquisition. Belonging to the same group as the narrator of Sweater Quest makes me feel worse about myself.

I don't know. I don't leave a lot of books unfinished so I'll probably keep reading this but it's put a really bad taste in my mouth. I need to go do some community service.

An Inelegant Sufficiency of Yarn...

So I started packing up my yarn for the move.

Not all my yarn, you understand. Just the yarn I'm absolutely certain I won't need in the next 10 days before I move. So I made a very sensible analysis of the situation - clearly I need my February Lady yarn. And I need the yarn for Jaime's socks (man, I should finish those, huh?) and I need a couple skeins of alpaca in case I go hat knitting crazy. And it's probably best not to put away the rest of the sock yarn for now. And I need to keep my pet skein out so I can admire it's gradients in times of stress...

So I was diligently packing the rest of my yarn and I realized... Gosh, I've got a lot of yarn.

I've always maintained that I have an elegant sufficiency of yarn. That is, enough yarn. Not too much, not too little.. just exactly enough for my purposes. Now granted, some of my purposes involve owning yarn. I like the look of happy skeins on a shelf, waiting to become awesome. I like flicking through Ravelry and knowing I can knit most patterns I see without searching for the right yarn. But even still, I've always protested when people tell me I have a lot of yarn. I mean, it's all still in one room. A room it shares with both my computer, my giant computer desk, a cat tree, and the spinning stuff. If it still fits (barely) in that crowded room, it can hardly be all that much!

But actually packing the stuff and carrying it all downstairs to the box storage area we have previously called a kitchen I've been forced to admit it - I have enough yarn to open up a small modest sized yarn shop. A very specific kind of yarn shop, to be sure. A yarn shop devoted entirely to high quality natural fiber yarns with an unusual proportion of hand dyed, hand spun skeins. A yarn shop that would inspire my customers to long philosophical considerations and deep questions.

Questions like, "Hey. What's with all the blue? Why not some green or something?!"

I think I'll call it the Blue Ewe :D

What's On My Wheel: Not the February Lady

So I thought it'd just about kill me while I was spinning all the brown (brown, brown, brown... so much brown...), but I finished spinning all the yarn for my sweater. At least, I think I did. I might have screwed up the math and will wind up having to desperately try to match the dye... but it's not like I think about that constantly and with a jittery nervousness that keeps me up at night.

This is somewhere between 1200 and 1300 yards of 3-ply wool and the biggest spinning project I've undertaken so far. It wobbles a bit between a dk and worsted weight But I'm still proud. :) I did the main body in a Norweigan / Romney mix for durability and elasticity but I also did about 500 yards (see the caked section up above) in merino for the collar, the top of the yoke, and the bottoms of the sleeves... all the parts where the sweater might touch my skin when work over a t-shirt. Hopefully that's not doing something super crazy because I already started it.

I'm a little worried that the yarn is too busy for the lace panels so I knit a swatch and pinned it as if it had been blocked...

It looks pretty good, colour wise, but I'm not sure how well the sweater will hold a blocked shape under its own weight soo... we'll have to see. This is my first sweater, no one expects it to be perfect, right?

I cast on during the Maryland Sheep & Wool and have knit very diligently all week. I knit on my lunch breaks, I knit at home. I very carefully didn't start any interesting spinning projects so that I wouldn't be distracted from my knitting (except that gradient spin. I had to spin that to work in my new Roadbug. Hardly counts). And I have been rewarded with... a whole yoke of a sweater! And some chest. I'm not a fast knitter, guys.

Maryland Sheep & Wool Part 2

Jackie and I missed the Spin-In. I can hardly believe it.

We had this brilliant idea of going to the hotel before it started to check in, drop off some stuff, and get something to eat before the Spin In. But then traffic was really bad and we didn't realize how totally exhausted we were... We crawled into the fluffy, cloud-like beds and it was all over. Each of us were laying there, wondering how to mention we didn't want to go back without totally ruining it for the other.

Fortunately we were on the same page so pizza was ordered, movies were watched, and we got to bed pretty early. Early enough that I didn't bite anyone when I was woken up at 6 am. We had a lovely breakfast in the hotel restaurant and then skedaddled right back to the Sheep & Wool. First we had to drop off a bunch of alpaca Jackie wanted the mill to process for her - I can't wait to see what they make of it because doing all that by hand is a bit much. 1 or 2 lbs, yes. Not 90. :P

The young man who took our fiber was terribly charming and so handsome that I had to take my sunglasses off to admire him better. We met some interesting people at the fiber drop off (and fondled their fleeces with more glee than manners), especially a wonderful lady named Julie who is raising merino x corriedale sheep. The fleece she had there was a lamb's fleece and so especially lovely but I can't wait to get my hands on some of her fluff! If I hadn't spent all my money and half of Jackie's at the auction the night before, I'd have bought it all up then and there because she was sell it for $5 a lb. Excuse me, I need to wipe the drool off my keyboard.

We watched the Sheep to Shawl competition which was just amazing. Those folks have clearly put a ton of work into practicing and planning. The crowd favourite was a group who were all dressed up in an Alice in Wonderland theme. They were just amazing - their costumes were excellent and they built a little display stand that was right on theme. The decorations were amazing.

After the competition while they were waiting for the shawls to dry to start the auction, this group of clever ladies mingled through the crowd, taking pictures and staying in character. I didn't get to stay for the auction, but I bet it really improved the price of their work. We had to go because Judith Mackenzie, THE JUDITH, was giving a talk on the origin of sheep. This was basically the highlight of the show for us. We got there very early so we had front row seats. In fact, we were so front and center, I managed to make a complete fool of myself.

See, while she was waiting for everything to get going, Judith came over and asked me what I was knitting - I was working on the February Lady from my homespun. "It's a February Lady" I told her. "Ah," she said. "It's beautiful.

"Thanks! I dyed and spun it myself!" I chirped. Just like I wasn't a person sitting there with yarn full of thinner and thicker sections. Yarn that hadn't been over spun in places. Yarn that wasn't a solid column of merino wool foam because I have NO IDEA how to spin Merino!

"It's very nice," she said kindly, while I tried to crawl into the floor, taking me amateur homespun with me.

Maryland Sheep & Wool Part 1

In order to get to the Maryland Sheep & Wool I had to leave my house after work and drive up to my parents' place 3.5 hours away. The general idea was that we'd leave around 4 or 5 am and Jackie would drive the five hours there while I slept. In reality I napped for about.. one hour. The rest of the drive was spent chattering excitedly about wool and spinning and knitting. Should have expected that, huh?

That left me in a short of hyper, underslept and over caffeinated state which is exactly the right state to be in if you want to spend all the money. We started strong, boys and girls, looking but not purchasing as we swept out from the entrance. We saw sheep and coo'd at them. We saw yarn and squeezed it. I studied roving but observed that I could dye what I saw myself. We visited The Merlin Tree booth and almost had a falling down. Merlin Tree is very, very clever and put out several of their wheels so people can try them. I spun happily for several minutes while Jackie arranged to have her Hitchhiker fixed and all thoughts of saving up for a Kromski Sonata escaped me.

Still, it wasn't until we found the Love Happiness Sangria booth that we got in trouble. They were selling lightly alcoholic, delicious sangria by the jug for $15. So we bought a jug, got a couple cups and a whack of ice, and proceeded to spend all the money. The first stop was The Homestead Hobbyist, an incredibly talented dyer I know from Ravelry. He'd done the dyeing for a spin-a-long I signed up for and when I got my fiber I just knew I'd been a jerk not to get some for Jackie.

*drool*

I'd gotten the two monster braids and asked around but Ken wasn't selling them at the Faire. D: Fortunately the lovely Lenora offered to bring her extra braid and sell it to me. Lenora is very kind - now Jackie and I have matching braids of some really luxury fiber to spin. She also bought two braids of Ken's Merman blend. He'd brought quite a few beautiful things but hadn't increased his price like every other vendor on site... making his amazing colours and exquisite fibers (yak! Mullberry silks! merino!) the most affordable thing at the fair. Seriously... he was selling merino-silk blends for less than some folks were selling junk felting wool.

Merman sparkle!

I bought 3.5 lbs of black merino from the fiber processing company Jackie likes and she picked up a whole whack of craft Romney for her dryer balls. She's making really pretty, useful things and has a shop down in Florida stocking them for her. I want her to make some for my Etsy shop but first she has to stop selling out instantly.

After dropping off our giant bags of wool, we got to the auction site just in time for the spinning and weaving tool auction to start. Whuff. We, uh. We bought everything. Okay, not *everything*, but we made a few key purchases. I bought an adorable Roadbug spinning wheel with one bobbin and a second bulky flyer and then later a bag of 5 bobbins to go with it. Jackie got an umbrella swift, a pre 1860s yarn weasel in really good shape, a Louet sized carrying bag, and... I feel like there was something else, but I can't think what.

The auction was very interesting. The auctioneer was engaging and professional as well as being a fiber artist herself. She generally knew exactly what the items were worth and got it out of us. The lower priced items went for much more than I expected - ball winders and shuttles were selling for crazy amounts as people got swept up in the bidding process. But the high priced items - spinning wheels, looms, and the like... they often sold for less than I'd expect.

There were a few exceptions - the auction had three pieces of Golding  equipment for sale and basically everyone was waiting for those. A ballwinder went for $550, a spinning wheel (!!!) for $2000, and a ring spindle for $150. The auctioneer said she'd never seen a single piece of Golding equipment up for sale in all her time and I believe it. These were exquisite pieces of craftsmanship and everyone knew it.

Of special interest to Jackie and me were two Country Craftsman spinning wheels. Jackie and I each have one and Jackie recently bought a second one that's missing a few parts (treadle and footman). We love our CC wheels passionately and we've been debating whether the spare is worth getting the missing parts turned... if we could sell it at a profit or what. The CC wheels at the auction went for very pleasing prices. There was an unfinished Franzek with stool, distaff, lazy kate, and six bobbins that went for $600. I had to chew on my auction number to keep from bidding on it myself - it had a jumbo flyer and all those bobbins. I've never seen one of those for sale.

The Merlin Tree Is Amazing

So we spent the weekend at the Maryland Sheep & Wool and I have soooo much to tell you about that. But first, I want to talk about The Merlin Tree. They make ultra portable, reasonably priced travel wheels in two models: The Hitchhiker and The Roadbug.

Hitchhiker.

Roadbug!

Now Jackie bought a Hitchhiker some time ago and really liked it right up until she tripped over the thing and damaged the wood on the drive system. It was really minor damage but in a connection point so she decided not to spin on it again until she could get it fixed. So when we saw that Merlin Tree would be at the Maryland Sheep & Wool, we took it with us. Jackie asked if she could buy a replacement for the part that was damaged... but Merlin Tree said, leave it with us for the day and let's see what we can do.

And then when we picked it up that evening it was totally fixed and spinning beautifully... and they didn't charge her. That's going above and beyond there. It was a total accident, absolutely not the fault of their craftsmanship in anyway. But they took it and they made it a beautiful, fully functioning wheel again.

And then they did something that absolutely floored me.

At the auction a Roadbug came up for sale. I'd spent about 10 minutes spinning on one of their demo wheels so I knew I could spin on it and the travel design is perfect for my lifestyle that involves a lot of going to see Jaime. And a lot of going to spin ins. :) So I bid. And bid. And bid and bid and bid... and won. It wasn't in perfect shape but the biggest problem was that the tension knob had been chewed on by a dog and was split - no longer functioning well. So I went to see if I could buy a new tension knob from them.

First, they were pleased by the price I'd paid for it - about $180 less than it would have been new. I can understand that... knowing that your wheels hold their value used is an important consideration to a spinner. Keeping more than 50% of it's value even after it's been beaten up a bit and badly needs some wood wax, that's good information for a dealer. So I asked if I could buy a tension knob, and they gave me one for free.

This is a really little thing - they cost $6.50 on the woolery and I'd have gladly paid for it... But it absolutely floored and charmed me they they let me have it. If you go and wander around their website, look at their wheels, you start to understand something about this husband and wife team: They're people. They're a couple of people who decided to fulfill a need they saw in the spinning community. They adopt sheep, they have huge, spoiled dogs. They made design choices for the needs and convenience of their customers... who they want to be happy spinners.

They could easily have designed the wheel, like every other spinning wheel company in the world, to use only their specific bobbins. Then we'd all have to buy another set of a million bobbins from another company.. but instead, they chose to use the most common and inexpensive bobbins on the market so that we'd always be able to find some. They've made ethical, thoughtful design decisions that have a direct effect on their bottom line. That's amazing.

For that tension knob, these people have made me a fan for life.

Judgemental Cat

This is the face Noel kept making while I was knitting Jaime's hat...

Little cat throwing shade on my knitting, y'all.

Maryland Sheep & Wool: Preparations Continue

Tonight after work I'm going to drive 3.5 hours Jackie's house where I will sleep until approximately 4 am and then we will drive 5 hours to Maryland. I have not packed. I have not even figured out which wheel(s) I am taking for the spin in. I am almost utterly unprepared.

But I have finished (I think) spinning all the yarn for my February Lady cardigan. I have spun around 880 yards of Romney wool and another 330 yards of merino wool. The merino is still drying so I don't have a good picture of what it all looks like yet. When I get home I'll take a picture of my sweater's quantity of hand dyed, hand spun wool... But for now here's a picture of some of it drying:

Here is a picture of some of it, hanging out in my dark house...

And in a spirit of uncharacteristic diligence and planning, I actually knit a swatch of the lace panel to make sure the colour wasn't tooooo busy for it.

Having finished my spinning, I resolutely put everything down and began knitting frantically. You see, I only let myself have four projects going at any time... and I have exactly four projects on my needles right now. Soooo many needles, so few projects. :( And they're all really boring right now! Garter stitch forever, stockinette forever, foot rows leading to a toe decrease. Boring, boring, boring! But I absolutely must finish one of these projects so that I can start my cardigan. I have nothing exciting to wear to the MSWF to show off my knitting... But I can absolutely be working on the February Lady while I'm there!

... You think I should take a half day from work to finish my knitting?

Maryland Sheep & Wool - Preparations

There are 5 days until I leave for the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival... or, atleast, until I leave to grab my stepmother and THEN head to the sheep & wool. Certain preparations must be made!

1. Reserve a hotel room.... Done! I found a good deal on Groupon - $42 off for a decent hotel and 30 minute drive from the festival.

2. Pay all bills for the month... almost done. Mortgage is paid, Rent will be paid shortly. Credit cards, phone, insurance... all done.

3. Decide how much I'm willing to spend at MSWF, remove that cash from bank account.

4. Freeze all non-cash methods of payment in a large block of ice. If I want something badly enough to excavate it from a foot of ice, I probably ought to buy it.

5. ... Two feet of ice...

6. Pack. Pack.. everything I've ever knitted, ever. Maybe a few especially phenomenal skeins of yarn to knit on while I'm there. I need to represent around my knittas, yo.

7. Check weather... done. It is going to be in the SEVENTIES all weekend! Why! I have knit NO summer stuff! I'm going to be surrounded by knitters and NOT SHOWING MY COLOURS. For the love of wool, why!

8. Begin knitting summer garment. I'm pretty sure if I knit non-stop I can finish something in time for the festival. I mean, I have a few vacation days and Jackie's driving the first leg of the trip...

Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival - Totally Unprepared

I just realized the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival is THIS WEEKEND and Jackie and I have made NO PLANS!

How did this happen?! What were we thinking?!

I immediately texted my (beautiful, talented, wonderful) stepmother, "The MSWF is this weekend and we have made no plans!"

She was quick to reply, "I thought you had no money."

Ridiculous woman! Obviously I have sheep and wool money! I just won't have any food money... which is fine, because I need to lose some weight anyway.

So... we're going. I'm looking for hotel rooms now. :D

Misadventures in Knitting

I'd like to show you a picture of Jaime's socks and how tiny their little stitches out and how manly the greens and tawny brown plies look, all knitted up... Unfortunately, the socks are in time out and do not deserve to have their picture taken.

Let me explain... Thursday I went to my fiber arts guild meeting where we had a guest giving us a lecture on bobbin lace. I originally thought we were going to have a hands on bobbin lace experience but it was more of an informative speech on the history and materials necessary. Now, due to my obsessive / addictive personality, I have to sort of limit what I allow myself to get interested in (See: my three spinning wheels and metric arseload of fiber). It didn't take me long to realize that for the sake of my sanity, storage space, and eyesight... I absolutely can not get into bobbin lace.

Still it was a lovely evening. I like spending time with other fiber folk - there's something very relaxing about being surrounded by other people with a shared passion for something the rest of the world thinks is a bit quirky. And I'd taken my socks along so I sat back in my comfy chair and commenced to enjoy an hour of devoted knitting time in excellent company. I finished the heel flaps. I began turning the heel cups. I finished the heels and started my decreasing instep rows, complimenting myself on my speedy mastery of two-at-a-time DPN socks. Once I've finished the heels and picked up the stitches, I feel like the whole sock is a home stretch from there. I was definitely feel confident about those socks when the meeting ended.

So, uh. Imagine my surprise when I pulled them on later to check the length and found them feeling... really odd. After some squinting, poking, and fussing... it turns out, I screwed them up. I mussed up the heel somehow - apparently I was distracted enough to turn them off center - both the same way. So I have to frog and start over but I'm just not feeling up to it right now, so the socks are in time out. That didn't stop me from dragging them all over this weekend, but they're still in time out.

But that's alright because progress was made on other fronts. I took the alpaca to Jaime's place, measured his head, and cast on a beanie. 

Ignore my messy work desk. 

It's just flying along. Spend enough time working 2.25mm needles and 3.75 will feel HUGE!

I also started plying all that sweater stuff for my February Lady. I filled one giant bobbin and now I'm chewing on my fingers over whether I'll wind up with enough yardage for the whole shebang.

So far I've plied, washed, and dried about 530 yards. It's a 3-ply, light blue, dark blue, and a dark brown. I've yet to take a picture that does the colour justice but I love it. Love it, love it, love it. If I don't have enough I'm not totally sure what I'll do... sob hysterically for awhile, probably.

I was a little worried my yarn would be too busy for the lacey part of the pattern so I knit up a few repeats to test - again, terrible lighting but so pretty!

My Neighbors Think I'm Weird

This morning I woke up was forcibly awakened by hungry cats an hour before my alarm went off. I didn't hold it against them for long though because the sun was shining it was it was in the high 60's (Farenheit) outside - perfect weather for drying fluffy wool things. So I shuffled out in my PJs, nodded to the fellow mowing his lawn, and set up my drying rack.

And then a few hours later I was crawling around my bushes, trying to position things in the best lighting and background possible. At one point one of my neighbors drove by and sloooowed down to stare at me. I waved my alpaca at her but I don't think that helped.

As promised, I plied up that alpaca. At first I was a little worried by how stiff and itchy it was - I expected alpaca to be way, way softer than the romney I usually work with. But I held my breath and gave it a swish through some Soak and that made all the difference.

Here it is, all twisted up into a beautiful hank of squish. There are some longer, coarser hairs that I wish I'd made more of an effort to pick out when I was spinning but they're coming out much easier now that it's be washed and allowed to bloom. I've got around 250, 300 yards of the stuff which may be enough for two beanies, we'll see.

I also got hard to work with my dye pots in the wake of this week's success. I did a a yellow and green braid using an interesting new method. I let the braid sit in a yellow dye bath until all the dye had been exhausted and then I added splotches of blue and allowed this colour to rest where it wished. When I first pulled it out, I was horrified by the 70's appliance green look... But once I got it into the sunlight, I completely changed my mind.

It's already up in my Etsy store and I've got another braid on the stove, becoming wonderful.

2 Etsy Sales!

Holy cow, boys and girls, I made two sales on Etsy. :D Call me butter, because I am on a -roll-! My shop is still really small because the only things that go up for sale are the things I dye and then decided I don't instantly need to spin them myself. Or give them to Jackie. There's only five things left in my shop right now! So I'm planning on getting hard to work this weekend, and trying out all sorts of new dyeing.

Jaime checked in to see what I wanted to do this weekend and I had no nice way to say, "I want to dye wool! Don't distract me!" so I encouraged him to take one of his weekend hiking trips. "Are you sure?" he kept asking. "I don't mind coming over". He doesn't realize that showing up this weekend will get him repurposed as a drying stand for wet wool.

I'll also be plying the 8 and a half ounces of huacaya alpaca singles I spun up in the last couple weeks.

This is the alpaca for Jaime's hat which I washed and have been carding and spinning for... just forever. Or two weeks. One of those. I knew I'd need about three ounces to knit the beanie (always rounding up) and I started carding and spinning and carding and spinning. I guess I had some vague idea of spinning it all at once and then splitting it or chain plying or something... but instead, I just kept carding and spinning. For... days. Basically, every night I came home from work and did about an ounce of carding and spinning. I finished two days ago and the singles have been resting on the bobbin.

But now, finally, I get to ply it. Mind you, those are the only three bobbins I have for the Prelude I spun the singles on, so I'll be plying on my beautiful Louet... and that means I should be able to ply it all onto one continuous bobbin. That's pretty cool. :) I forgot to measure Jaime's head so instead of immediately starting the hat I may do something drastic. Something terrible and unheard of.

... I might knit a swatch. Gasp.

New Wheel: 1996 J. Franzek Country Craftsman

Did I tell you all I was going to buy this wheel? I may have forgotten to mention it out of embarrassed greed, but I did. Take a look...

My precccciousssss

By golly is she beautiful. You'll remember a couple weeks back my stepmother had me pick up a Country Craftsman wheel she bought with her friend in mind. Well the two of us absolutely fell in love with this wheel. The Country Craftsman wheels are big, sturdy things that spin smooth as silk. I often find when I'm using my Prelude that if the dog or cats move too fast that poor little wheel will tip right over. This one... this one isn't going anywhere. I saw her for sale on Craigslist and mentioned it to Jackie who was like, "Go. Buy it." I dithered for a bit, making foolish excuses about already having two wheels and not having space until I move into my house. "You can keep it at Jaime's," said Jackie, selflessly volunteering my boyfriend as a storage depot. "If you don't get it, I think you'll regret it."

I had to admit she was right and so Saturday morning I packed Jaime into a car and drove off for a blind date with my new love - a 1996 J. Franzek County Craftsman wheel. She's only got one bobbin and I'm pulling some strings to fix that (I know a crafter who'll tide me over until my dad gets the 3D printer I plan to use shamelessly) but my fingers itch to finish all my other projects so that we can be together with the shiny new Midnight Blue batts the lovely indie dyer Julia sent me as part of a swap. More about those later. :D

What's interesting is comparing my CC wheel to Jackie's.

Jackie's CC - A J. Rooney

The Country Craftsman wheels were made by J. Rooney, who started making decorative display wheels until he realized people actually wanted to spin. He went to work studying and eventually started producing the CCs we love today - replicas of a 1700s saxony flax wheel. He produced the wheels by himself until 1972 when Franzek joined him, taking over the business when Rooney retired in 82. Franzek continued to produce the CC wheel until 2003, when he also retired.

My wheel has a name and date carved into the bottom so I know it was made in November in 1996 by J. Franzek. Jackie's wheel has no dated, only a J. Rooney name carving. So we know her wheel was made by the original crafter... sometime between 1971 and 1982. I'm interested in narrowing down that time range a bit so I'm trying to find more information on the CC wheels, what sort of stylistic changes were made over the years and what woods they preferred working in. So far I'm thinking Jackie's wheel is from later in Rooney's career as it has 12 spokes and I've heard that Rooney started with 13 spokes and by the time Franzek took over, the 12 spokes were standard.

Fetch me a deerstalker hat and pipe, I'm on the case!

What's On My Wheel? February Lady

Sometimes you need a really huge project to totally take over your life inspire you to new heights, right? Forget hats and socks... it's time for me to knit an entire sweater. And not only shall I knit my own sweater but I have decided to also dye and spin my own yarn for the entire sweater. Crazy, right? But I'm going to do it.

The sweater or rather, cardigan, I'm knitting is February Lady. It's a beautiful cardigan, adapted from one of Elizabeth Zimmerman's baby sweaters. It's got everything I want in a cardi - it's beautiful, the pattern is free, and it doesn't look tooo difficult. I think. I'm definitely going to regret saying that in a month when I'm fighting with the pretty lacy repeats, just you wait and see.

I'm using a mix of Norweigan wool and a surprisingly soft Romney. These are both more rugged fibers so the cardigan may be a bit itchy but it'll wear well. The spinning is done worsted style, from combed top, using a short forward draw technique. This will produce a strong wool with very little bloom that'll have great stitch definition.

I took 8 ounces and dyed it a fairly consistent dark blue and another 8 ounces dyed in a variegated lighter blue. After a great deal of thought, squinting at my blues, I decided a dark brown would warm would tie the blues together and give the sweater a balance. While most of my wardrobe is blue and black lately I've found myself adding some brown. I'm fairly set in my ways but brown feels a bit warmer and cozier than black. Or maybe black is just really hard to dye - who can say?

The darker blue

The lighter blue.

All that's left now is the brown. I don't actually have brown dye, I only have the primary colours right now - red, yellow, blue - so all my work is a combination of colours and doing the heat and acid right. Or, uh, wrong. Usually wrong. I got to work with my dyes and had moderate success.

On the far left is the first braid I tried and it's 2 ounces I think, maybe four. It turned out very well so I tried it again with 6 ounces. That didn't turn out nearly as well - I think I didn't use enough vinegar so you can see the red bound very well but the green didn't do nearly so well. Except! All that washes out quite well in spinning and what I'm left with is a somewhat variegated but generally warm brown.

I'm about 4 ounces into that spinning so I should be able to ply this coming week - exciting! I'm not sure what kind of yardage I'll get. If I don't get enough (say 1400 yards? I should lose some weight, it's much easier to clothe a smaller person) then I'm thinking I can do the neckline, button band, and cuffs in a solid brown because I definitely can't dye more of those blues. If this happens I'll probably use a much softer wool, like my merino, so it'll be softer and less pricky against the more delicate parts of my skin.

I'm dragging more people into my February Lady spin and knit challenge because craziness loves company. So far my guild member Tricia and my lovely and talented stepmother are joining in. Tricia has a sweaters worth of corriedale she spun undyed when she first started spinning and she's been trying to decide what to do with it, so this project is perfect for her.

Jackie has decided she'll spin something that I dye for her, which is a bit intimidating. It's all very well for me to look terrible, but not Jackie! I have 5 lbs of Corriedale roving though... I think she looks lovely in green. So maybe one batch with bits of a warm, golden yellow mixed with green, one set in an emerald green, and one strand in brown? Then her sweater will be similar to mine, but in greens instead of blues.

Stay tuned! This will be an exciting (but suuuuper sloooow) project.

What's On My Wheel? Jaime's Alpaca

I'm pretty sure you all spend all day wondering sorts of projects I'm working on, right? I mean, I do! So today I'll talk all about what I'm spinning and what it's for. I'm trying very hard to be the sort of spinner who spins for a purpose - I see a lot of people making a single skein of beautiful, lovely yarn that... will never be made into anything. I'm trying to avoid that but, as I spin a lot more than I knit... it's taking some serious planning.

First up, I decided to knit an alpaca beanie for Jaime. I've mentioned before that he's a thru-hiker and he's planning on doing the Pacific Crest Trail (one of the three big trails, right up there with the Appalachian Trail and the Continental Divide) next year. Merino is a popular material for thru-hikers for its softness, it's moisture wicking, and most importantly... it doesn't stink nearly as bad, even after days of wearing. Alpaca has similar desirable characteristics, as a fiber. Great odor control, less shrinking and felting danger when washed, higher tensile strength and arguably better durability, and it's even warmer than merino.

So I picked out and washed a huacaya fleece I liked in a warm, tawny brown. It's not the best colour to go with him - his beard grows in black and silver after a few days on the trail and I think he looks very good in greens and creams. But I don't want to dye the alpaca and cream will show the dirt too much. He won't wear the beanie for the whole trail because he'll be traveling through a lot of climates, so I'm choosing my spinning and knitting style for the high-altitude, cold weather portion of his trip.

The washed fleece

It's a lovely fleece, surprisingly clean for alpaca. It only needed one wash and a rinse and it's got a reasonable amount of vegetable matter. It barely needs to be picked, though some of the tips need flicking. I pull any defined locks apart and them load them into the drum carder sideways. This alpaca gets one run through the drum carder sideways (someone just gasped in horror) and then two runs parallel. I use a pair of size 15 knitting needles to wrap rolags off the drum carder.

Some different rolags I've used.

I tried with puni-style rolags and they spun alright but a looser rolag seems to work better for this alpaca. I also tried making a very large, loose rolag-batt (about half an ounce) and spun that. Again, this worked alright but what I really want for this beanie is a rolag that can be pulled out into a tube of fiber and spun in a woolen style. I'm using a long, back draw with a little forward action to control the twist. This should make a lofty yarn that will bloom well and create many spaces for air to get trapped, providing a layer of insulation and warmth for Jaime when it's very cold.

I'm spinning it rather fine and with quite a bit of twist. I'll make a 3-ply yarn to knit the beanie with. I'm about half done with the carding and spinning but I haven't quite decided on what pattern to knit. It's going to need a good amount of ribbing and negative ease because alpaca likes to stretch and sag.

Blue Gradient Results

So this morning I rinsed my blue dye, rolled it in a towel, and walked all over it. Then I laid it out in my bathtub on a drying rack.

Look closely: I use horse shampoo.

Predictably, it didn't turn out as well as I hoped. Partially because the plastic wrap failed (curse you, store brand!) and towards the darker end, I didn't get total dye penetration. I sent the picture to Jackie and, bless her heart, she said she likes it and wants it. I doubted her until it finished drying and I took it into better light.

Ignore my messy table.

You guys, look at that. While there is quite a bit of variegation and blotching, that's all going to smooth out *beautifully* when it's spun. This is going to create a heathered dark with depth and shading.

Do you know what that means? Jackie's magic colour skills work at a distance.

Dye Experiment: Hand Painted Gradient

So normally I kettle dye but that can have unpredictable results, especially in the little pot I have until I get into my own house. Today I decided to try something different - hand painting my fiber.

Making sure I have enough plastic down to cover my entire length of roving.

The first step was to lay out plastic to protect my working surface. I chose slightly over 4 ounces of romney wool top. Romney is my go-to fiber as it's pretty inexpensive and easy to work with. I also decided to go with a blue dye. Blue is always a bit finicky to dye but I love blue so even if I totally screwed it up, a few runs through a blending board and I'd be happy to spin anything that came of this. I got these squeeze bottles from the dollar store - they're meant for condiments but I checked them out before hand and they're *mostly* water tight.

I prep my fiber by soaking in in a hot water and vinegar bath before I dye it. This removes the air pockets from the fiber and changes the pH a bit to make it more conducive to an acid dye. I leave it to soak for atleast half an hour before I work with it. While my fiber was getting good and acidic, I prepped my dyes.

Cat for scale?

I filled each of the squeeze bottles with 1 and a half cups of warm water, half a tablespoon of white vinegar, and then a measured amount of liquid acid dye - see the pictures for the measurements that went into each bottle. The far left one I just squeezed some dye in to get a very light colour. The others all look the same, dark blue, but they definitely have different amounts of dye in them.

After that I laid the fiber down on the plastic and squeezed the dye onto it, going from light to dark along the length. I used about half the bottle along the section, then flipped it over to dye the underside too. A little bit of handling and patting the fiber (wear gloves!) seemed to help the dye penetrate evenly, but I'll have to see how the length turns out. Once I emptied dyed the whole thing, I wrapped the plastic wrap up to trap the dye inside.

You can sort of see the gradient here, inside the plastic. Acid dyes need heat to set - I had a large pot of water on the oven. I brought it to a boil and then turned off the heat, putting my blue plastic fluff inside. The fiber will sit there until the water reaches room temperature, then I'll rinse it and we'll see what we have. Wool hates rapid changes of temperature so all that will have to wait for the morning.

There -was- a snag in the process. I bought a bunch of cheap, off brand plastic wrap because if this works I'll want to do it a lot. Unfortunately, it didn't wrap securely so my roving sprung a few leaks. I tried to patch them up but it make ruin my perfect gradient.

It also made a huge mess. Gonna get some funny looks tomorrow at work. :)

Knitters Have Big Personalities

Last night I was invited to a social knitting dinner by Tricia, one of my favourite people at the guild. I don't think the social knitting group has a name or anything complicated - it's just a group of knitters and if they can, they generally show up on Wednesdays. It's nice and casual - I really dig that and it's awesome to have an undemanding social outing in the middle of the week.

I've mentioned before how awesome it is to find so many STEM women in the fiber arts and this group was no exception - there was me, a structural engineer, Tricia, an industrial engineer, and one woman who does IT for clinical research and another who does massage therapy (not really STEM, but still cool). Their names escape me because I'm just terrible with names. Still, lovely ladies and I was happy to spend the evening in their company. Edit: Karen is the clinical research IT geek and Sue is a kids physical therapist. Thanks Tricia!

Another thing I've noticed about fiber artists is they tend to be very interesting people with broad personalities. I'm sure there are shy and retiring knitters - perhaps they don't come to social gatherings? But all the ones I meet tend to have lots of knowledge and experience in interesting realms, stories to tell, lectures to give... and boy, will they give them! Now, please don't get me wrong. These are interesting people with interesting stories to tell and I enjoy listening, but it is a little funny to watch a group of women each... more or less... take turns completely and utterly dominating all the conversation.

... I may also do this.

And, of course, watching the social knitters reminded me to treasure Tricia and people like her who selflessly surrender the foreground and seem to have endless patience and interest with other people's stories. I wanna be like Tricia, if I grow up.

On that note, today was the adultiest day of my life, so far, as I closed on my yarn storage facility house. My first house. My darling, beautiful house. I don't get to live in it for another three months as I have tenants, but still. I am so excited, boys and girls.

Home, sweet home. <3

I'm trying to think of it as three months to pack. And properly plan out my craft room.

Observational Data Supporting Belief in the Power of Knitting!

Today I went to the DMV to get my driver's license renewed. They opened at 8 so I arrived at 7:30am to be first in line (I was not. How did that happen?). Still, there were only a couple people in front of me so I was sure it would go quickly and I'd get to work in plenty of time.

... I'll wait while you laugh at me. All done? Okay.

I'd taken my welcome mat and Jaime's Socks-To-Be along with a Ply Magazine on spinning cotton so even though they didn't allow cell phones, I knew I'd be well entertained for the, what, twenty minutes it take? Half an hour? But while I knit and knit and knit on my welcome mat, I had a vague sense of time ticking by while person after person was called ahead of me. I started to get very antsy and emailed my team leader to ask permission to be late. I flipped through the magazine, I measured, knit, and measured my welcome mat...

And finally, I picked up Jaime's socks. I opened up my book on Two-At-A-Time-Magic-Loop and reviewed the cast on technique. I organized my two balls of sock yarn into ziplock bags, fed tails through little holes, took a deep breath... and then I picked up my tiny, tiny needles and began casting on.

They immediately called my number.

House! And Etsy! But mostly house!

Is anyone superstitious about their knitting?

The Yarn Harlot  has talked in the past about her belief that expected babies won't be born until the things she's knitting for them are finished. And that sounds like utter nonsense except I'm trying to buy a house and I have been fantasizing about all the wonderful things I will knit and weave for my house - rugs, welcome mats, lacy curtains, pillows, and every other thing a pair of needles and possibly come up with. The only thing I've actually cast on is a welcome mat which I have idly been knitting a few rows a week while jumping through loan hurdles. I haven't been in much of a hurry because the house has tenants so I won't be able to move in until August and even my little heart can't maintain enthusiasm for that long. And the house buying process is no joke! It's been an endless marathon of inspections, repairs, post-repair inspections, septic testing, water testing, negotiations, and paper work... at one point I was no longer sure whether I was buying a house or just writing checks as part of some vicious practical joke.

Until the other day. See, I finished my socks and frogged the socks I'd started for Jaime (for no reasons! Definitely not because two at a time magic loop is hard and I got lost some how! I... just didn't like them). I've felt too guilty to cast on another project for me while Jaime's socks languish, unloved, in a project bag but I haven't quite been able to get up the gumption to restart his socks, soo... I've been dragging around the rug and have knit many, many rows on it.

And now. I have a closing date.

Whoa. Like... whoa. After all that rigmarole, apparently all I needed to buy a house was to get cracking on some knitting! That's my kind of karma, let me tell you. The house still has tenants... do you think they'll move out early if I get some lacy blue curtains done? ;D

To keep myself busy while I'm waiting, I also made some lovely, colourful things for Fantasy Fibres.

First there is this beautiful variegated orange I dyed up in a fit of pique after it rained and rained for days. Doesn't it look like a pile of sunflower petals? It chippered me right up and I saved 4 ounces of it to sell.

I also blended this batt with alternating layers of gradients going from pale blonde to dark brown and layers of a pumpkin orange, to give the whole batt a consistency and sort of unifying theme. It's made entirely of the softest things - merino and bamboo, mostly - with a little bit of tencel for strength. Each colour has a slightly different texture to it and I think this will be a wonderful spinning experience.

Carolina Fiber Fest Day 2!

First, I want you all to know that I didn't buy anything. It was a struggle, but I made it through with my bank account intact! Phew! Mind you, Jackie arrived and bought us each one of those awesome canvas knitting bags I talked about yesterday. She also picked us up porcupine quills which were being sold as shawl pins. They're really cool but also absurdly sharp. Stand by for stories of me impaling myself on my own shawl. xD

She also got herself a lovely skein of 50 Shades of Gradient in Patina, from a shop called Yarns to Dye For. I love terrible puns like that and I probably laughed like an idiot after I read it.

Patina colorway. Gorgeous, gorgeous.

The skein is a 100% superwash merino 2-ply, in something like a fingering weight. You could definitely make socks out of it, though the merino would might wear fast. It cost $32 but it's 560 yards which is pretty generous for that kind of (I think) hand dyed yarn. There were all sorts of samples knitted up and one skein can make a lacey shawl very easily. I'm not sure what Jackie's going to make but I'm excited to see. Even though there was a gorgeous silver to blue to black gradient skein I didn't drool too much. I take a certain amount of pride in that. 

The Sheep to Shawl was very interesting.

When I originally joined it I thought it was going to be a competition type thing where you start with a sheepie and it gets sheared in front of you and a small team of devoted workers card, spin, and weave that fleece into a shawl, right there on the spot. It turned out that this was more of a demonstration event and no one expected to finish the shawl that day. Still, a whole bunch of folks worked their treadling feet off to make it happen. We had a lovely Jacob's fleece and every bit of it got spun and plied. It wasn't frantic or stressful, we just worked at our own paces, all together, for four hours straight.

It was especially educational and a bit challenging for me. I'm very picky about my fiber prep and my spinning. Nothing goes through my carder fewer than 3 times and when I spin up something bumpy and lumpy I get pretty grumpy. But at the Sheep to Shawl people just... loosely carded and then spun whatever they had, lumpy gnarls and all. At first I felt uncertain about my spinning around all these much more experienced spinners but after I took a break to look around I realized everyone else was just... accepting all the imperfections that popped up. A bit of an eye opening experience for me, I'll tell you!

Afterwards, I drove up to my parents house and introduced my fantastic boyfriend Jaime to them. That went great - I beat Jackie at cards for the first time in my life with him as my partner! That's never happened! I gave my stepmother an easter basket full of little bits and pieces I'd picked up for her along the way...

Including that awesome sock yarn so we can make matching socks.

I gave my dad a copy of Sid Meier's Civilization so he'd have something to do while Jackie and I babble about fiber... and that was fortunate because Jackie had an easter basket for me too. I tore it apart so I haven't got a picture yet, but it had some bamboo sock yarns, orifice hooks she made herself, and other awesome things. The bamboo sock yarn is perfect for this lace sock pattern, Summer Slice, I wanted to knit.

Meanwhile I need to find a pattern for Jackie and I to do our matching socks in - anyone have any ideas? :D