Saturday, August 27, 2005

What a fun day!

This morning, LizzyB came to visit, bearing gifts and her Ashford Joy spinning wheel! And oh we had so much fun chatting, spinning, fondling fleeces, spinning, eating, spinning, sharing our experiments, spinning, sharing our finished projects, spinning, and just generally having the entire day go by in the blink of an eye!

Dear Liz brought me 4 ounces of gorgeous Chocolate brown CVM roving which I promptly began to spin. I actually got a skein of 2 ounces of it finished, it's washed and drying in the kitchen, I have a couple of ideas for it's use in mind, updates to follow. Liz also brought a generous gift from LadyVee who couldn't be with us today, some Teeswater that was so incredibly bright and shiny white. I went out and bought a dog comb after dinner tonight so I can begin to spin it very shortly. Thank you again Vee, I really love it!

Liz did quite a bit of spinning, too, despite the fact that we talked non-stop! But you know when you're really having fun when you look at your watch and the entire day has gone by and you didn't even notice!

We managed to find a few moments and delved into the depths of my basement that held quite a few mystery fleeces including this one:

which Liz combed a handful with her handy dog comb and made the sample skeins seen in the foreground. I'm not sure what it is, it's a longwool and fairly coarse, but I thought it was beautiful when I purchased it. It has a very shiny lusterous feel, and it's actually quite soft to the feel. I might have to spin it fairly loosely and see what happens. I might have lost the note that I usually put in each bag of fleece saying what it is, I'm not nearly as organized as some of my fleece friends.

I have some other fleeces of undetermined origin in storage, and I'm so very glad that Liz and Lady Vee sucked me back into the fleece vortex, I might actually get some of them out and spun eventually! I have been spinning prepared roving, but it's a shame to waste all the beauty found in these fleeces. This one's note simply says "Long Tail". It is significantly softer than the Mystery fleece, but the luster isn't as high. I'm going to try to comb this as well, perhaps divide out the colors a little bit and make a variegated yarn.

I also have to remember that I'm in the process of making two Alpaca/Angora scarves, so there's that fiber to finish spinning. I did manage, over the past couple of days, to do 3 new samples for the fleece study. I got the Cheviot, High Mountain Cheviot, and Cormo spun and washed. I'm trying to finish that project as there are little bags of wool all over the place. I still have some to card and some to comb still as well.

I did get a couple of rows of the Alpaca/ Angora scarf knitted today. Some days aren't good for knitting, so I did have to frog a bit before it seemed to flow nicely. I now have a foot finished, only 4 more to go!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It sounds like such a fun day - I'm sorry I couldn't come.