Monday, November 26, 2007

a spinning post

Yes, I have been tempting the Christmas-knitting fates and continuing to do a little bit of spinning. See, I think the fates are on my side. The evidence: I got an email from my aunt last week suggesting maybe the adults just enjoy each other's company for Christmas, and only do gifts for the children. Yay! That cuts about a third off my list! See what I mean?

So as far as what I have been spinning - I ordered some fiber, a blend of cormo, rambouillet, and corriedale wool from this etsy store. As least, I thought I did. Turned out, when I read the listing a little closer, it's all from the same sheep, and the sheep is a mix of cormo, rambouillet, and corriedale. Also, his name is Ray. How cool is that, to know the name of the sheep your yarn comes from?

I wanted to play with overdyeing things a little, so I picked a darker-colored wool. Here's what it looked like when I got it (picture is from Artclub's etsy listing):


I put it in the dyepot with a little bit of orange dye:


Yummy, no? It was actually on the stove when J got home from work that day, and I had to hurriedly inform him that the nasty brown bubbling stuff that smelled like zoo + vinegar was not our dinner.

And here's how it looks now:


I like it. Actually, I liked it both ways. I remembered to divide it in half before spinning it this time, so I can hopefully make a two-ply without too much left over. So far I've spun the first half, although I haven't got any pictures of that yet.

When I ordered that wool, they also sent along a little free gift - a small amount of some mystery wool (white, very soft) carded together with some pink and green sparkly stuff. Not something I would have ordinarily chosen, but I figured it would be perfect to bring along to the craft fair. If somebody wanted to try out the wheel, I wouldn't really care too much if the yarn got all messed up. It spun up into this:



Such a cute pretty sparkly little skein! It's not enough for anything, really, but I think my horizons have been broadened.

But that's enough of this nonsense for now - those gifts aren't going to knit themselves, you know.