Weekend Meetups

Well, I have had quite the busy weekend regarding fiber!

Saturday

Saturday was a really great day. I met up with the San Antonio Handweavers Guild. They have a meetup every third Saturday of the month starting at noon at Yarnivore. There were quite a few people there, I was very surprised! It was nice to meet new people and learn from them a little. My little spinning wheel was quite a hit and a lot of people thought it was cute and had questions.  I also got quite a bit done, as well! I spun up some of the dyed merino I bought from WishFox Dyeworks. It's probably the only merino I have done well with thus far and I think the spinning is coming up great! I will probably navajo ply it to keep the color changes nice and consistent, since the roving is a bit wild. I would hate to lose the gorgeous colors in the business of plying it. I'd rather try to keep it consistent. Anyway, I bought 5 oz so I'm hoping it will turn out lovely with quite a bit of yardage.

Another great thing is that this particular fiber seller is part of the Phat Fiber group. Apparently, this month each purchase made from the etsy shops of any of the sellers listed gives you a chance in a drawing for a fiber box. Wooo! If you are interested in the details, please check out the thread on the ravelry group. These fiber artists do amazing work so being the nasty enabler that I am gives me warm, fuzzy feeling inside.

Oh! Pssst... speaking of enabling! Yarnivore is now carrying Tosh sock and DK weight, and waiting on the worsted. I would hate to be alone in this dangerous place, you know. :)

Sunday

Today was a local LSG meetup at 2 Rivers Coffee in New Braunfels, TX. It took me forever to get there, and not just because I underestimated the time... but because I got lost. Yes. I, even with the superpowers of a GPS and iPhone, got lost. Horribly. I will say, though, that New Braunfels is hardly the worst place to get lost. The scenery is quite wonderful and it's nice to drive around there, lost or not. Also, I will mention that it is not a horribly big place, so getting lost there is kind of... special. I did eventually figure it out and we met up and had quite a bit of fun! I gave away some fiber to the daughter of one of our local hoars and also traded her some sock yarn for her blankie, which I totally convinced her to do in the first place! She had some great sock yarn for me to add.

Please ignore that purple ball toward the bottom, there. I had meant to add it to her bag and had a brain fart and dropped it into mine on accident, even though I have an entire ball of it. I'll keep it and give it to her when I see her next. When I came home, I totally ignored my sock (the almighty last few inches of it!) and worked on four squares. The blanket is looking less and less scarf-like by the day, it seems.

I took a picture cutting off the area I haven't worked on all month, so that blue square in the top left is where I started off this month. I'm submitting my blankie squares to BSGFPB this month, so I'll probably doctor a picture up at the end to outline the squares from May. I love that big red one. You can't see it too well, but it's actually a lovely gradient yarn starting at a deep fuschia color and going to a red-orange at the top. I like it.

I'm really hating the yellow light in the house. I'm going to have to definitely take pictures outside, probably on the picnic table in the yard. Everything looks so muted and jaundiced it's not even funny.

Spinning Insanity

Lately, I have been jumping in on the spinning bandwagon again. I'm glad. I have seen a huge amount of progress in the past few weeks. So, let's give a time line, shall we?

This yarn was spun up on 4-26-2012, the day I quit smoking. I will be honest, it seems spinning has helped me out quite a bit in quitting. This was spun up from some merino I purchased at Yarnivore and it's dyed locally by Alisha Goes Around. Her yarns were also at Yellow Rose, but I did not purchase anything of hers there because my local yarn shop carries her stuff. I also did not see any roving, which made me sad because I was very happy with what I got. Anyway, I actually purchased this wool quite some time ago when I was experimenting with spindling. I do still use a drop spindle here and there, and have determined that I am just better off with a bottom whorl drop spindle instead, but I stick with the wheel more often. Anyway, this is the yarn that I ended up spinning. It's... not very good. I did not record the yardage, which if I do recall was actually quite small (about 40), but it's an attempt at navajo plying. The best demo I have ever seen of this is this:

Anyway, this is the result:

I was honest, it does not look great! However, I had a bit of that roving left over s I decided to do something else with it the next day. I went ahead and spun it into a single and then plied it with a single of undyed Australian wool I spun from some roving I had laying around I had bought from Dharma Trading. Anyway, it came out much, much better. It's just a traditional 2-ply. It came out to about worsted weight and 120 yards. I really like it and hope to knit up Calorimetry from it. It's the perfect yardage for it.

Then, I went over to Yarnivore that weekend and could not help myself. I bought some BFL top and spun it up. In reality, the yarn is dyed varied orangey browns to greys, but it came out orange and brown so it's the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Yarn, officially. It also had some thick and thin here and there, but I think it came out better, still. 175 yards, 2-ply, worsted-ish.

The single:

Plied:

Next is the yarn I was spinning when I posted my last blog entry. I purchased the fiber from Natural Obsessions. It's Targhee wool in her denim colorway, 4 oz. It was unfortunately too much for one skein, so there is one that is 190ish yards and another that's 40ish, so probably somewhere around 230 yards total. It came out to be a mostly worsted weight yarn. I keep spinning thicker yarns, but I know that I'm getting thinner and thinner singles as I go on, so hopefully I will be doing better. This also had more thick/thin problems than I am happy with, but it's better than before. Also, this is the first yarn I wound up on my new niddy noddy I ordered from Nancy's Knit Knacks. I love it. Really.

Single:

Plied:

Now, finally... the fiber that I was gifted by Lazy Pi Farm's Jules. She is an awesome person and we compete on the Battlestar Galactica FPB group on Ravelry. Anyway, she gave me a few ounces of fiber from her farm and I was very happy to receive it. It's the shiniest yarn I have ever seen. It's breathtaking. I look at it and wonder how I did that. It's yarn I would see at the store and want. Anyway, it came out to something around sport or DK weight, 120 yards with some slight fluctuations out of that range, but the thick/thin is minor, as compared, and nowhere near as frequent as with the targhee yarn. It's also the first time I have done end-to-end plying. It's where you take your single, wind it up into a ball, then ply it from the outside and inside so it goes from one long single to a 2-ply. Anyway, it's a neat technique and it explains why it's wound up in the ball in the single picture.

Single:

Plied:

Anyway, I need to figure out what to do with all of this yarn! :) However, I have decided to jump in on Tour de Fleece this year. I'm excited about it! I will be on the rookie team if anyone is interested in joining us! :)