I have started on the last bobbin of the Falklands wool. It’s almost sad, because I have really enjoyed working with this wool. It’s the first wool I have spun well enough, and like enough, to make a garment from. I’ve improved tremendously while working with it, and gained the courage to move on to something fabulous next – the green Fusion merino.
But I will have the Callicarpa scarf to remember it by, and that will be a wonderful thing.
Until tomorrow.
Definitely better, spinning without bandaids. I finished the second bobbin, and have just the one more and I’m all done with the Falklands wool. The chunk on the right side of the picture is the last of it.
Until tomorrow.
New experience tonight – spinning with bandaids on my fingers. Fortunately, the wounds are on my right hand, which holds the fiber source. Not the left hand, which controls the pinch and twist process.
However, the little sticky edges of the bandaids caught the wool fibers just enough to make the spinning process a little problematic, so I only did about 20 minutes.
These are not serious wounds, and should be fine by tomorrow. Until then.
So nice, after my travails in the kitchen, to sit down and bliss out at my spinning wheel. I’m trying to time things so that I am finishing up the Falklands during the week this week. That way when it’s done, and I move on to the lovely green merino, it will be on the weekend when I have more time and I’m less tired. That should be about right, today I finished the first bobbin, and got started on the second.
Until tomorrow.
It’s been lovely having the day off today – I decided to try something new, a recipe for Sweet Potato, Caramelized Onion, and Butternut Squash Lasagna. It’s from this cookbook: Smith & Hawken: The Gardeners’ Community Cookbook, which is available on Amazon right now, starting at a penny.
Now, I don’t make lasagna very often. In fact, it’s been years since I made real lasagna with actual noodles. So I am not an experienced lasagna maker. BUT I’ve learned several things from my experience today, which I will share with you.
It’s actually quite tasty, and now I know where it needs tweaking. So next time, it will be much closer to perfect.
Short session today. We are going to the Little Yellow Music House today, and I made risotto, so that’s why I just had a little spinning time. But I’m happy, because I figured out how to avoid a problem where my fiber was fanning out away from the pinch as I draft.
What I’ve been doing is splitting the fiber “chunk” off almost to the end and just working my way through the “join”, but that was causing me some issues. Plus sometimes, I’ve read, you always want to draft the fibers in one direction. So what I was dong would make that harder. Anyway, what I figured out today is that if I grasp some of those fibers as they are starting to spread out, and twist the fiber source a little, they fall right in line as I’m drafting. Yay!
Until tomorrow.
Ok. I plied the 3-ply Falklands – this plus the previous skeins gives me a total of just over 300 yards, which is enough to complete the Callicarpa scarf. I have about 34 grams of wool left unspun, so I’ve divided that up and will spin it to make a final skein. Who knows what that will be used for??
I did start the first bobbin of this last part, so I got some spinning in on top of the plying. I still have to go wind off the new yarn on the niddy noddy and soak it, so until tomorrow.
Hooray! I finished the last bobbin for this 3-ply, but I’m not plying it tonight. I’ll save that for tomorrow.
Instead, I decided to load all my fiber information up to Ravelry, since you can have a fiber stash. I got all the info there, at least as much as I have. I had to go to IE to upload the photos – Firefox can be hinky sometimes about things.
Anyway, they are there, and if you are on Ravelry you’ll be able to go see them! I may add a little photo gallery here on my blog, as well, and if I do you can be sure I’ll let you know.
Until tomorrow.
Hard to believe it’s been almost three months since I started this whole thing. On the other hand, it seems like I’ve been doing this for a long time. Funny how time perception works, isn’t it?
I am close to finishing the third bobbin now. This week has just been crazy, back in the full swing of work and exercise and teaching and clients and everything. But it’s OK, because I am doing things I love and fewer and fewer of the things that drive me crazy. And more importantly, not stressing over any of it. Except work, where it’s the nature of the beast.
On a fun note, I’ve discovered that Ravelry now lets you have a “Handspun” section where you can put your spinning projects and link them to things you’re making, like the Callicarpa scarf. Yay!
Until tomorrow.
Tonight was discipline, pure and simple, to sit down at my wheel and spin. Long, long, long crazy day at work, two reformer clients after, and after 7:30 by the time I got home. So I can get ready to do it all again tomorrow.
But it was a pretty good session for being my “tiredest” day of the week. And now I feel better, and I’m going to go knit some on my beautiful scarf.
Until tomorrow.
