Thursday, July 5, 2007

Y HALO THAR

It's been a busy month for me, involving very little spinning. Most of what I've done has been Sock Hop-related, though I managed to take a bit of a break to spin this:



The fiber is wool/mohair from The Painted Sheep, handpainted by my friend Kristen G. She'd offered some of this at our Guild's Scotch auction last month, and I ended up having to get some for myself. :) There are 2 skeins of this, each about 85yards of 3-ply. I spun and plied it on my Babe using the 'Navajo' or chain-plying technique. I got about 18wpi, which isn't bad, but nowhere near what I wanted. (I was going for 22-24wpi) This will probably end up as an accent on socks or gloves. The color changes were preserved nicely with the plying, so I'll have a nice stripy fabric when I'm done knitting.

The other fiber-related thing of note is...Batt Club. How perfect is this? 3 packages of luxury spinning batts, each with enough to make, say, a pair of socks. Hee. The first package looked like this:



It's merino/silk. Three batts are fully blended to make a nice mixed-color yarn, while the fourth is left for stripes or other color effects. They make me happy.

Other than that, there's not much to tell. I'm doing MS3 (Mystery Stole 3) and am falling behind a bit, though it helps me that one of my LYS is having a knitalong every Friday night for the locals who are participating. My stole is being knitted from some white vintage yarn I acquired through a swap last year, with beads from EarthFaire. I recommend them for beads--they have a nice selection of colors & sizes, and the beads I ordered came with some sample packets & a bead threader. Not bad, plus they take PayPal. :D

I promise a more cohesive update in the future. Right now, I'm trying to deal with the chaos in my house after we moved ALL of our furniture around. It's nuts. I had no idea there was so much stuff in my apartment that I won't ever use again. Salvation Army, NADA, and FreeCycle will be hearing from me within the next week or so. :)

Drop me a line and let me know if you're still reading my stuff--sometimes I wonder if I'm just shouting into the void.

5 comments:

Amelia of Ask The Bellwether said...

Yep, still reading :-) that batt club looks awesome -- but I read Abby's blog a day too late (sigh) so I will live vicariously through your blog -- show the spinnings of the batts, please!

Ah, who am I kidding -- in my house, the batts would stay batts for a LOOONG time. I have some Abby batts from January, they are 1/2 spun now, LOL. Lovely to spin, just NETITD (not enough time in the day...)

Lucy said...

That is beautiful yarn... is that what you were talking about last friday? yup, definitely accents on some socks or gloves or something... or maybe just a small neck warmer? Very Pretty :)

Bridgett said...

Just started reading you.

I have a friend doing MS3, I'm living vicariously through her chocolate mohair.

I've bloglined you; I'll keep reading...maybe I'll learn something. Or just get too tempted and dive right in.

Beverly said...

That yarn is even prettier in person!

Anonymous said...

The handspun is gorgeous! Love to see it spun up. Glad you enjoyed it!