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.