In a spin

G'day all!

I've been too busy knitting and spinning to post! Shock and horror! Today I knitted up a hat for my MiL - silver faux fur trim on some hand spun mauve and plum thick and thin yarn. (Why yes, I did spin the yarn!) It will go nicely with the scarf I made in the same thick and thin yarn.

This week, I have spun up 125g of wombat brown corriedale and plied it up with a few nubby bits of olivey green and various shades of brown hand dyed silk tops. Not my usual colours but someone is bound to like it. No photos - only finished it less than and hour ago and it is dark dark dark here. The yarn needs to have the twist set. After having problems with the first 20cm of the tops, the rest has been pretty much fine - I must've had the end of the tops and they were a bit hard to tease out and draft. After that first bit, the rest was soooo easy to spin. I now have a bit over 200m of corriedale with little silky nubs in it. For neutral coloured wool, it is quite pretty.

I've spun up some white merino fluff that had some long straight white hairs in it - I believe that this was gifted to me when I began spinning and I have no idea what the long straight hairs are. I plied it with some rainbow colours silk tops. Looks quite pretty but I have to wash and set the twist of the second lot - it is a bit overspun. About 120m or maybe more out of about 50g.

Then there are the tops from a vendor who shall remain nameless because their stuff is usually good but this lot was absolutely full of neps. Horrid little blighters, plus it was a bit felted so it was really hard to draft. I had broken it into green and blue strips, and red and blue strips. Now I have to knit a scarf for the scarf festival out of it. It will truly look homespun cos I could not be bothered removing every last nep so there are little lumps all through it. 100g, less neps, and about 150m of yarn.

The pink and orange fluff was almost too pretty to spin up, but it got spun. Couldn't help myself.

A teensy bit of suri to see how it spins up. Mental note for self - must practise spinning from the lock. Or tease the locks out a bit more. I did card out the tips, which were full of gack and VM. Lots of short fine fluffy hairs came out too. Some of the stuff I spun looks like a really bad plait with chunks of hair sticking out. Very soft though. Browner than I expected - it looks silver in the bag but brown when spun. That may be dirt. I'd guess that suri alpacas also love to dust bathe.

I discovered what cashgora is, and that I should not fuss too much about spinning it. I can get some more! I'll dye it first.

I think I spun other stuff but I can't think of what it is. It has been a very good week for braindeadness, along with re-evaluating where I am in life. Can I say that I am not happy with my job situation?

Where are the pictures? Well I've been too busy knitting and spinning to take pictures! Plus today was cranky day - me and Nathan were really cracking the you-know-whats for some reason. We got better! Maybe pics tomorrow, if I survive the Mother's Day classic in the morning. Yep, off into the city to do a 4km walk all to raise funds for breast cancer research. It is a personal vendetta - my aunt Margie died of breast cancer in a most foul and horrible way, and Nathan's mum has been treated for it too. One of my sisters tells me I should be doing cancer research, but that requires a special sort of brain, one that understands chemistry, and my brain and chemistry just don't get along together. I was going to cure cancer, or so I thought when I was 18 but that is a long time ago now.

Oh, to those who have agreed Knitpicks should send stuff here - should we start a campaign? Email them? Tell them we want the stuff and are willing to wait a WHOLE WEEK or maybe even TWO WEEKS for it? Lawkasmercy me - fancy having to wait that long for mail to arrive!

anon!