It's Another Gray Sunday. . .

Gosh, how can I get you guys good pictures if the Sun never shines on the weekends? It's making me crazy that it rains all weekend lately. The dogs give us new meaning to the name "mud room"! Which is actually our back door entry into the house and kitchen, but it's becoming more and more difficult to keep the floors and walls clean in there!

Anyway, I digress as usual. I have been spinning and dyeing lately and I wanted to take pictures to show how nice some of this is coming out. I will give it my best shot!

This was a pound of roving that was super cheap on e-bay, a blend of a variety of different wools that is not really soft or harsh, so I guess just a medium wool (at $5 it was a steal). Now, I was going for a super light blue, but this is what the dye pot yielded:


Then I used the remaining dye to put in some merino wool I am going to make a sweater from, but the end result was one skein looked green and two looked blue, so, I over dyed that result with a more brilliant blue and this is that result: (please ignore the clean laundry drying with the wool!)


I think this will be ok, I hope so anyway, since this is slated for the FLAK by Janet Szabo. I was going to purchase some Araucania Nature's Wool, which would have been mottled too, so perhaps this will work too. I will be doing a swatch soon to check it out, but of course that would mean I have to give up spinning to knit! And look what finally came from Ohio Valley Fibers:



I sent this in to the mill in September (first week of) and got it back just last week. Just a bit slow, but I had them wash and pin draft it for me. This is a cormo fleece, and the sheep's name is/was Keiki, the fleece was 5.2 pounds and came back to me at 3.9 pounds.It is lovely, and I have no clue what will become of it yet! Then, I found this lovely fiber on e-bay:

Oh man! The Seller's E-bay name is "FrayedKnot" and I just can't say enough kind words about her. You just have to touch this stuff, but, now all my bobbins have something on them! So, I am carding this by hand to fulfill my tactile needs! (lol) Plus April from WoolyVines sent me this (I was asking for more Berry Lush to go with the Merino I spun up last time.) You guys have to get some of her stuff it is fabulous!

Where'd the weekend go??

Geez, I look up and bam! The weekend is over, and now I can officially say that the "fat lady" was singing at the Potere's officially on Saturday night at 7:00 PM CST. The party is now officially over for us!

We brought Caryn to Romano's Macaroni Grill for her birthday dinner, last night, although it officially was no longer her birthday. She had her girlfriends over Friday evening and they pulled an all nighter. Unfortunately for us, we did too!

Anyway, it's late, I need to wrap this up, here is my bobbin of merino two plied, of course it is the one on top:


And here it is Navajo plied:

Well, that answers that question now doesn't it? But the yardage only came out to 143 yards! See how much that method of plying takes up your singles? Wow. But look how nicely rounded the yarn is too. (Well, don't look too closely, this was my first official attempt at plying this way.)

Ok, well, gotta get to dinner now.

Bryan went back to school today, and I was quite sad about it. I wonder if this ever really gets any easier?

The Party is Not Over!

Well, this wasn't a Christmas present, but I am so in love with her that I have to show you how wonderful this wheel is! Please ignore the background football game, it was actually very dark in the living room when I took this shot, and didn't even notice the game on TV (and that was a Christmas present to Chris and myself). So, here she is all put together and oiled twice, by moi!


This is a shot of merino that I was spinning, and it spun like a hot knife going through "butta". I have never set up or seen a wheel set up for double drive, and I had a few questions for the Spinning List over on Yahoo Groups, but as you can see, I got it!



More merino, aren't these colors gorgeous? I am trying to decide if I should try to Navajo ply to try to maintain color runs, or to simply wind off and ply from two toilet paper rolls:



The party continues here, as we gear up for Caryn's 17th birthday next Friday! Can't tell you what she's getting as that would ruin her surprise! In the meantime, Chris is continuing to work on the barn, (we had 7 tons of rock delivered and the kids and Chris spread out while I was at work) I am trying to pull down all the Christmas ornaments and get my house back in order before Tuesday, when it's back to the real workday (inventory) for me.